“How easy is it for you to shift your belief system from ‘I totally believe in my government to ‘Oh My God! What’s going on?’  That’s exactly where I went in all of this.” – Albert N. Stubblebine III

At the time of the interview, Albert N. Stubblebine III was a retired Major General in the United States Army. (Sadly, Albert passed away on February 6, 2017.) He was the commanding general of the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command from 1981 to 1984.  In this compelling interview, Stubblemine reveals the following information (what he calls “dots”) about the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001:

• Stubblebine initially believed the official story regarding 9/11.
• Then, he saw the hole in the Pentagon. He can prove that the Pentagon was not hit by a Boeing 757. DOT.
• All of the sensors around the Pentagon were turned off except one. That one sensor captured an image of the object that hit the Pentagon.  It looked like a missile.  But, after he went public, the imagery was changed to look like a plane. DOT.
• The collapse of the twin towers was caused by controlled demolition – not the fuel from the airplane. DOT.
• Larry Silverstein, the leaseholder of the WTC complex, admitted that building 7, which was not hit by a plane and had only a small fire, was intentionally “pulled” – which is word used for controlled demolition.  DOT.
• All of the air defense systems around Washington DC were turned off that day. DOT.
• Also on 9/11, there was an exercise designed to mimic an attack on the towers by airplanes.  DOT.
• When you connect the DOTs, the picture says that what we were told by the media was not the real story.
• Stubblebine, visibly upset, describes how he felt when he realized the truth about his government after having a strong belief in his country since early childhood: “My belief system was so strong from age five when I could remember standing on a parade ground at attention with not anybody telling me to do that – at West Point.”

Below are some notes from the interview including a partial transcript. (Be sure to watch all the way to the end, where you can see the deep hurt on his face when he recalled the moment that he realized that his government, the government that he proudly served for over 30 years, was not what he thought was):

5:15 Stubblebine hears about the 9/11 attacks: “We’re at war.”

6:00 Stubblebine said there must have been intelligence information to know that an attack was coming and we didn’t see the signals.  Somebody missed it.

6:35 He initially believed that it was a terrorist attack done by other forces: “Not my government.”

7:45 Stubblebine then saw a photo of the Pentagon showing the hole in the Pentagon supposedly made by a Boeing 757.  “Something’s wrong. There is something wrong with this picture…”

8:30 “Well there was something wrong. And, so I analyzed it not just photographically, I did measurements… I checked the plane, the length of the nose, where the wings were… I took measurements of the Pentagon – the depth of the destruction in the Pentagon.”

9:05 “Conclusion: airplane did not make that hole.”

9:10” I went public at the time. I am the highest-ranking officer, I believe, that has ever gone public… The official story was not true.”

9:25 “I was very careful to not say what it was because I couldn’t prove it. I was careful to say that it was not the airplane that did that, because I can prove that it was not the airplane.”

9:45 “In the hole, however, was a turbine that looked like a turbine from the missile… I can’t prove that, I don’t know. But there was something there that did not look like the engine from an airplane, but did look like a turbine from a missile.”

10:10 “Later I saw another photograph taken by one of the sensors on the outside of the Pentagon. Now, all of the sensors had been turned off, which is kind of interesting – isn’t it? That day, why would all of the sensors around the Pentagon be turned off? That’s strange. I don’t care what the excuse is.  That’s strange. There happened to be one that apparently did not get turned off. And in that picture, coming in, flying into the Pentagon, you see this object, and it obviously hits the Pentagon.  When you look at it, it does NOT look like an airplane.  Sometime later, after I’d gone public, that imagery was changed. It got a new suit around it that now looked like an airplane. But, when you take the suit off, it looks more like a missile – not like an airplane.”

11:30 “Let me go back to the next very important piece of information.  The amount of energy to melt the girders – the steel in the tower – cannot be gotten to a melt point with the fuel that was in the airplane.  Not possible!  So, any melting did not occur as a result of the hit from the airplane.  Point. I call it dot. OK?  DOT.”

12:10 “When you look at the tower coming down, what you see at each floor is successive puffs of smoke: puff, puff, puff, puff… all the way down. Where are the puffs of smoke coming from? Well, they claim that they are from the collapsing floors… No. No. No. Those puffs of smoke are controlled demolitions. That’s exactly what they are because that’s exactly how they work. And so, the fact that the airplane hit, it did, it did not cause that collapse of the building.  The collapse of the building was caused by controlled demolition.”

13:05 “Fact: Building 7 – Silverberg, I believe is the name of the owner…” (his name is actually Larry Silverstein), “…was on a video and you could see Building 7.  And, there was a fire in Building 7, there’s no doubt about that. No airplane hit it.  I assume that the fire came from some debris, but I’m not even sure of that.  But, in the lower right-hand corner of the building was a fire – not a very big fire. It didn’t appear to be out of control. It certainly was in a small part of the building.  But, then he is heard on the video and he says Pull it.  Then, the building collapsed. What does pull it mean?  Let me tell you.  That’s the order for controlled demolition.  That is the phraseology that’s used for blowing up something.”

CLN Editorial note: Stubblebine got a little mixed up with his facts regarding the Silverstein video, which you can see here.  The video is a PBS interview with Silverstein that was shot sometime after 9/11.   The footage of Building 7 going down is historical footage, not live during the interview.  Nonetheless, Silverstein does say that he gave the order to “pull it.”

15:00 All of the air defense systems in that part of the country had been turned off that day.  All of the air defense systems had been turned off… Why would you turn off all of the air defense systems on that particular day unless you knew that something was going to happen? It’s a dot.  It’s information. But, it’s strange that everything got turned off that day.  DOT.”

15:50 There was an exercise that was designed for the air defense systems that was an attack on the towers by airplanes.  Isn’t that strange that we had an exercise that mimicked what really happened?  Strange that we had planned an exercise that was exactly what happened. And, at the same time, the air defense systems were turned off.  Don’t you find that strange? I find that really strange?  DOT.  Just a piece of information.

16:50 “But how does it correlate with everything else? So, you see the dots.  You have all of these dots. They’re just bits of information.  But, that’s exactly how the intelligence world works.  You get a bit of information here. A bit here, and a bit here. And, pretty soon you’ve got a picture. To me, what does the picture say?  The picture says that what we heard and were told in the newspapers, the media, was not the real story. There’s enough doubt in the official story where the story is absolutely not consistent with what happened. They paint a different picture than the one that was given to the media.”

17:45 “How easy is it for you to shift your belief system from ‘I totally believe in my government to ‘Oh My God! What’s going on?’  That’s exactly where I went in all of this. Because my belief system was so strong from age five when I could remember standing on a parade ground at attention with not anybody telling me to do that – at West Point. I did it because I wanted to do it – because I believed! And then going to the military academy and serving, defending…

18:30 The real story was, I have a question I guess. The real story to me is: who was the real enemy? Who participated in this? Who planned this attack? Why was it planned? Were the real terrorists the people in Arab clothing? Or, were the real people that planned this the people sitting in the authority in the White House?

Physical Evidence and Eyewitness Testimony That A Missile Hit The Pentagon – NOT a Boeing 757

The following physical evidence and eyewitness testimony is presented in detail below, most of which is video footage:

1. Analysis of the physical damage to the Pentagon and lack of debris. You can’t fit a 125 foot wide Boeing 757 into a hole 16 feet wide.  The theory that the plane vaporized is idiotic.  And, what happened to the wings that allegedly sheared off?  DOT
2. The official story of how the plane arrived at the Pentagon by making a 270 degree turn at a speed of 800 kilometers per hour is absurd.  A Boeing 757 could not possibly perform that maneuver according to experts.   DOT
3. AA Flight 77 was lost from radar as early as 8:56 a.m. and then allegedly reappeared 36 minutes later at 9:32 am. According to Danielle O’Brien, an air traffic controller at Dulles International Airport, the plane that showed up on the radar was not Flight 77: “The speed, the maneuverability, the way that it turned, we all thought in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that it was a military plane.”   DOT
4. No unknown aircraft are allowed within 50 miles of the Pentagon.  The Pentagon has its own anti-aircraft missiles that should have fired to protect the building. Only a military aircraft with a special IFF transponder (identifying it as a friend) would have been allowed to approach the Pentagon.   DOT
5. CNN reporter on the scene shortly after the impact saying that there was no evidence of a plane hitting the Pentagon.   DOT
6. Aerial footage showing no debris (confirming the report by the CNN reporter), plus more analysis showing the size of a Boeing 757 compared to the size of the hole in the Pentagon.  Recall also that the initial hole was only 16 feet wide and the CNN reporter said that the Pentagon structure did not collapse until about 45 minutes after impact.   DOT
7. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and 9/11 Commission Member Timothy Roemer both saying that a MISSILE was used on the Pentagon.   DOT
8. Analysis of the Pentagon video footage of the alleged Boeing 757 (it certainly doesn’t look like a Boeing 757) hitting the Pentagon that concludes it was faked.   DOT
9. A leaked video showing a missile hitting the Pentagon.   DOT
10. Expert testimony that a high radiation reading near Pentagon indicated that a “depleted uranium warhead may have been used”  DOT
11. Two witnesses who were at the Pentagon who said there was no debris or jet fuel, and another witness who “was convinced it was a missile. It came in so fast it sounded nothing like an airplane.” DOT
12. KEY POINT. Many people reported seeing a low-flying plane heading towards the Pentagon.  Thanks to a series of videotaped interviews with multiple witnesses by the Citizens Investigation Team, we find out that: (a) a plane did approach the Pentagon, but it was smaller than a Boeing 757, and it approached from a different angle than reported by the 9/11 commission; (b) the plane did not actually hit the Pentagon, but instead flew past the Pentagon at under 200 feet – immediately after the missile hit; (c) the downed flag poles at the Pentagon were staged, which was admitted by the taxi driver whose taxi was supposedly hit by one of the falling poles. DOT

Connecting the dots, a very clear picture emerges: (a) American Airlines Flight 77 (a Boeing 757) disappeared from radar and never re-appeared; (b) instead, a smaller military craft appeared on radar 36 minutes later that was capable of performing a difficult maneuver and could approach the Pentagon without being shot down; (c) a low-flying military craft approached the Pentagon but merely flew past the Pentagon immediately after the Pentagon was struck by a missile.

CNN Reporter: “There is NO Evidence of a Plane Having Crashed Anywhere Near the Pentagon”

Jamie Mcintyre, CNN’s senior Pentagon correspondent at the time, was at the Pentagon shortly after it was hit. Here’s what he reported:

“From my close-up inspection, there is no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon… The only pieces left that you can see are small enough that you could pick up in your hand. There are no large tail sections, wing sections, a fuselage, nothing like that anywhere around which would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon and then caused the side to collapse. Even though if you look at the pictures of the Pentagon you see that the floors have all collapsed, that didn’t happen immediately, it wasn’t until almost about forty-five minutes later that the structure was weakened enough that all of the floors collapsed.”

More Visual Evidence (Including Aerial Footage) Indicating That No Plane Hit the Pentagon on 9/11

In the video below, pay close attention to the aerial footage that begins at the 4:25 mark and especially the closeup shot at 4:50.  Where is the plane debris?  The footage shows exactly what McIntyre described: there was no plane debris.

.

Leaked Footage of What Actually DID Hit the Pentagon

Undeniable Proof a Plane did NOT Hit the Pentagon on 9/11

(“National Security Alert – 9/11 Pentagon Event” originally released on 15 Jun 2009)

Citizen Investigation Team offers this compilation of independently verifiable evidence exposing the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon as a psychological black operation of deception. Consider this a non-violent call to action as everyone is encouraged to copy and distribute this conclusive evidence to media, political, and authority figures while first requesting, and then demanding a response. Inaction by authorities and media to this information amounts to a crime of obstruction of justice so it’s time they are held accountable. This is particularly the case as more innocents are slaughtered and additional billions of dollars are spent on a fraudulent “war on terror” perpetuated under any other name. Please visit CitizenInvestigationTeam.com for full resources and a step-by-step strategy as to how you can take action on this critical life or death information.

See ALL of the videos by the Citizen Investigation Team HERE.

Below are some of the key findings by the Citizen Investigation Team:

• We are shown images and animation of the path that the plane must have taken in order to knock over five light poles and damage the Pentagon in the manner that it did, which is the official story. The location of the downed light poles is important because it establishes the required location and trajectory of the plane down to the foot.
• Interviews with the first two witnesses (Edward Paik and Terry Morin), who were positioned on the south side of the Navy Annex (vantage point #1) as the plane flew over. Both Edward and Terry saw the plane fly directly over the Navy annex to the north of the “official” path.
• Of particular significance is the interview with Morin, an aviator and a program manager for SPARTA Inc at the Navy Annex. Initially, Morin was between the wings of the Navy annex, so he could only see the plane as it “flew over the top of me.” Morin than ran over to get a better view and watched the plane for 13-18 seconds. Morin, as an aviator, disputed the official report that the plane was flying 460 knots. Instead, Morin says that the plane was only flying at a speed of around 350 knots.
• Interviews with three witnesses who were at the CITGO gas station (vantage point #2) on 9/11 when a low-flying plane flew by.
• Robert Turcios, CITGO station employee, saw the plane on the north side of the station and initially thought the plane was going to crash onto the street between the station and the Pentagon, but saw the plane “lift and go up a little bit.” He did not see the plane hit the Pentagon.
• In addition, Pentagon Police officers Chadwick Brooks and William Lagasse each confirm that the low-flying plane flew by on the north side of the CITGO station.
• Morin and Lagasse independently draw a nearly identical, flight path lines showing an approach to the north of the CITGO station.
• Next, an interview with a witness who was located on the north side of the Navy Annex (vantage point # 3) on 9/11 is shown. William Middleton Sr., an Arlington Cemetery employee, said that he plane was coming straight down Southgate road on the north side of the Navy annex. Middleton also said that he could see the plane dropping in altitude and that it came so close to where he was standing that he could feel the heat from the plane. In addition, Middleton said that the plane was traveling at a “slow” rate of speed, corroborating what Terry Morin had said.
• After the interview with Middleton, interviews with Arlington Cemetery employees Darrell Stafford and Darius Prather, who was positioned at the Arlington Cemetery maintenance buildings (vantage point # 4) on 9/11 are shown. Both said that a plane was coming directly at them and that after barely clearing the Navy Annex building, the plane continued descending and at the same time was banking to the right. The banking of the plane to the right is irreconcilable with NTSB data, physical damage to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon security video.
• This video segment starts with an interview of another Arlington Cemetery employee, Donald Carter, who was also positioned at the Arlington Cemetery maintenance buildings (vantage point # 4) on 9/11. Carter’s testimony is similar to that of his co-workers, Stafford and Prather.
• Next, an interview with Sean Boger is shown. Boger, a heliport air traffic controller, was in the Pentagon heliport tower that is located directly in front of the Pentagon (vantage point # 5) on 9/11. Boger said: “I just happened to be looking out the window. And, as I was looking out the window, I could see a plane… The plane was coming directly at us… You know I fell to the ground and I covered my head.”
• Boger stated that he saw a plane come over the Navy Annex and bank right toward the Pentagon. Based on the amount of time he watched the plane after he first saw it, the plane was traveling significantly slower than 460 knots.
• From five vantage points, 13 eyewitnesses independently and unanimously confirm a north side approach. A drawing is shown depicting the paths drawn by the witnesses. The eyewitness testimony contradicts the official reports that are required to make the official story plausible.
• All of the eyewitnesses have worked in the area for many years and are therefore very familiar with the topology and landmarks. Since the release of their interviews in the public domain, all have been made aware of the implications yet stand by their stories as reported. None have claimed that their accounts have been misrepresented.
• Most of the witnesses could not see the alleged impact point due to the complex topography and landscape, and admit to running, dropping, or flinching for cover. This explains why they did not see the plane fly away and assumed that it had hit the Pentagon because of the explosion.
• The independent and unanimous placement of the plane on the north side and banking to the right amounts to proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the plane did fly away without hitting the building because the damage to the Pentagon required a south side approach.
• Although the witnesses presented so far did not see the plane fly away, some did (and are documented in the next video segment).
• Pentagon police officer Roosevelt Roberts Jr. saw the plane fly away immediately after the explosion. He was at the Pentagon south parking lot loading dock, only a few steps inside the building during the explosion. After hearing an explosion, he ran outside, looked up, and saw a plane flying around the south parking lot. Roosevelt describes seeing a commercial jet that was banking and flying away at less than 100 feet above the ground within 10 seconds after the explosion.
• Roosevelt could have only seen the same banking plane that all of the other witnesses reported seeing on the north side flight path.
• There is additional evidence that more people saw the plane continue past the Pentagon. Arlington National Cemetery employee Erik Dihle was officially recorded by the Center for Military History on December 13, 2001. Although he personally did not see the plane, he said the first thing that other people reported was that a bomb went off and that a jet flew by and kept on going:
• “A number of us were working building 123.  Right after the explosion… we got up and ran outside… Some people were yelling that a bomb had hit the Pentagon and a jet kept on going.”
• Multiple witnesses have testified to seeing a banking, low-flying plane approach the Pentagon from the north side of the former CITGO gas station. This means that the damaged light poles, of which one allegedly went through the windshield of a taxicab, had to have been staged. Although there are photos of a bent pole laying on the ground and a broken windshield, not a single photograph exists showing the 40-foot, 247-pound pole inside the cab.
• Taxi cab driver, Lloyde England, initially claimed that a silent stranger helped him remove the light pole from his car. A 247-pound light pole knocked over by a 90-ton Boeing 757 traveling 530 miles per hour certainly would have caused massive damage had it hit Lloyde’s taxi. However, the only visible damage to the taxi is the broken front windshield. Otherwise, the taxi was unscratched, which makes absolutely no sense.
• However, don’t forget that testimony from multiple witnesses has proven that none of the downed light poles could have been knocked over by the incoming plane. Therefore, the lack of damage to the taxi does make sense.
• After Lloyde was confronted with the information provided by the witnesses indicating a north side approach (and that therefore the downed light poles must have been staged), he had a very strange reaction. Lloyde then changed his story and refused to admit that his taxi was on the bridge next to the downed light pole, where it appears that photos of both Lloyde and the taxi were taken.
• Lloyde goes on to explain that history has nothing to do with the truth and that he was used by people who have money. He then essentially admits that the downed light pole was staged and pre-planned. But, he was cautious not to outright confess. He distanced himself from the planners while admitting that the staging was planned.

You Can’t Fit a Boeing 757 into Hole that is Only 16 Feet Wide

Watch this outstanding Italian documentary titled Zero: An Investigation into 9/11, which includes analysis by Stubblebine and addresses many of the serious problems with the official account of what happened at the Pentagon:

The discrepancies that are addressed in the above video include the following:

• There is no airplane debris visible anywhere in front of the Pentagon. Examples of what you would expect to see at a plane crash site are shown. Captain Russ Whittemberg, a pilot with over 30 years in military and civil aviation, said: “I have been at some accident investigation sites in the Air Force. And I have never come across any accident scene where there is no tell-tale evidence of the plane that crashed.”
• There is no evidence that either the airplane engines or the wings impacted the building. Instead, we are supposed to believe that the 38 meter (125 feet) wide Boeing 757 fit into a hole that is only 5 meters (16 feet) wide. We are supposed to believe that the wings folded up like those of a dragon fly and squeeze into the 5 meter wide hole.
• Major General Albert Stubblebine: “One of my experiences in the Army was being in charge of the Army’s Imagery Interpretation for Scientific and Technical Intelligence during the Cold War. I measured pieces of Soviet equipment from photographs. It was my job. I look at the hole in the Pentagon and I look at the size of an airplane that was supposed to have hit the Pentagon. And I said, ‘The plane does not fit in that hole’. So what did hit the Pentagon? What hit it? Where is it? What’s going on?”
• One theory is that the Boeing 757 was vaporized due to the speed and the force of the crash. The engines are made of a titanium steel alloy that would not vaporize unless they hit a temperature of 3,286 degrees Centigrade. That did not happen. Plus, the engines would have caused significant damage upon impact. Yet, there is no indication that the engines impacted the Pentagon.
• After a period of time, various photos of airplane debris began to appear in newspapers and on the web did not appear in any photos shown in the days following the event.
• The Pentagon had numerous cameras that had complete and separate recordings of the incident. The FBI was immediately on the scene and confiscated many video tapes from the Pentagon and nearby buildings. Yet only four videos were released after 2006 when FOIA requests compelled them to release them. Only two showed any useful information. But most experts believe the white image in the videos is too small to be a 757.
• The story of how the plane arrived at the Pentagon is absurd – by making a 270 degree turn at a speed of 800 kilometers per hour.

AA Flight 77 Was Lost From Radar For 36 Minutes, Then a Smaller Military Plane Appeared On Radar That Was NOT AA Flight 77

Please continue watching the next segment of the documentary Zero: An Investigation into 9/11:

• According to the official account, the Pentagon was struck by AA Flight 77, under the control of al-Qaeda hijacker Hani Hanjour. Hanjour was known as “a terrible pilot,”  who could not even fly a small airplane.
• An experienced pilot with thousands of hours would probably require 10-20 attempts to pull off the maneuver that was performed with the Boeing 757 on its way to the Pentagon. “You just can’t do that with one of those big airplanes.” –Robin Hordon, flight controller and flight instructor
• AA Flight 77 was lost from radar as early as 8:56 a.m. and then allegedly reappeared 36 minutes later at 9:32 am. According to Danielle O’Brien, an air traffic controller at Dulles International Airport, the plane that showed up on the radar was not Flight 77: “The speed, the maneuverability, the way that it turned, we all thought in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that it was a military plane.”
• No unknown aircraft are allowed within 50 miles of the Pentagon.  The Pentagon has its own anti-aircraft missiles that should have fired to protect the building. Only a military aircraft with a special IFF transponder (identifying it as a friend) would be allowed to approach the Pentagon.
• The official report of the final half mile of Flight 77 before it allegedly hit the Pentagon is aerodynamically impossible. “I challenge any pilot, any pilot anywhere: give him a Boeing 757 and tell him to do 400 knots 20 feet above the ground for half a mile. CAN’T Do. It’s aerodynamically impossible.” – Nila Sagadevan, pilot and aeronautical engineer.
• The alleged hijackers had difficulty flying small aircraft, which means that there is a zero possibility that they could pull off an impossible maneuver on the first try.

Donald Rumsfeld said that a MISSILE was used to damage the Pentagon

If no plane hit the Pentagon, then what did? In an interview with Parade Magazine in October 2001 (of which a transcript was posted on the U.S. Department of Defense website, defense.gov), Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked “How did a war targeting civilians arrive on our homeland with seemingly no warning?” Rumsfeld replied:

“There were lots of warnings… It is a truth that a terrorist can attack any time, any place, using any technique and it’s physically impossible to defend at every time and every place against every conceivable technique. Here we’re talking about plastic knives and using an American Airlines flight filled with our citizens, and the missile to damage this building and similar (inaudible) that damaged the World Trade Center. The only way to deal with this problem is by taking the battle to the terrorists, wherever they are, and dealing with them.” [1]

Note that Rumsfeld indicated that both a plane and a missile were used on the Pentagon, which matches up perfectly with the evidence presented in the video, Undeniable Proof a Plane did NOT Hit the Pentagon on 9/11.

Timothy Roemer, Former 9/11 Commission Member, said that the Pentagon was “pried open by a MISSILE”

In an interview in September 2006 with CNN’s Miles O’Brien, former 9/11 Commissioner member, Timothy Roemer, says that a missile caused the damage to the Pentagon and then quickly corrects himself to line up with the official story.

O’Brien: “At any point during this day were you just, in a very base way, afraid?”

Roemer: “There was — there were many times, Miles, that you were afraid. You were — you were worried, especially when I was standing in front of the Pentagon that night, seeing one of our fortresses pried open by a missile, an airplane, thinking about the number of people that probably died on the plane and on the ground…”

Click on the link below to see the above exchange between O’Brien and Roemer:

Expert claims that a high radiation reading near Pentagon indicates that a “depleted uranium warhead may have been used”

The missile hypothesis is supported by physical evidence. Dr. Janette Sherman, a well-respected radiation expert, used a Geiger counter to measure radiation levels from about 12 miles downwind of the Pentagon shortly after the attack on 9/11. Sherman reported that the Geiger counter reading was extremely high, 8-10 times greater than normal. [2]

Although Sherman’s findings are not conclusive, Dr. Leuren Moret, formerly a scientist at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Laboratory, stated:

“I’m not an explosives or crash site expert, but I am highly knowledgeable in causes and effects related to nuclear radiation contamination. What happened at the Pentagon is highly suspicious, leading me to believe a missile with a depleted uranium warhead may have been used.” [3]

The missile theory was echoed by retired Army Maj. Doug Rokke, a PhD educational physics and former top military expert:

“When you look at the whole thing, especially the crash site void of airplane parts, the size of the hole left in the building and the fact the projectile’s impact penetrated numerous concrete walls, it looks like the work of a missile. And when you look at the damage, it was obviously a missile.” [4]

Pentagon Employee Witness Says There Was No Plane on 9-11-2001

April Gallop and her child survived the ‘impact’ at the Pentagon. She was a Pentagon employee who was inside the building sitting at a computer when the explosion occurred.  After escaping through a hole in the Pentagon wall she waited on the grass near the road before being taken to the Hospital. She did not see any plane debris or experience any jet fuel or any other evidence of a plane crash.

USAF Witness: There was “a strange lack of visible debris…moments after impact”

Karen Kwiatkowski, PhD, U.S. Air Force (retired) wrote that there was a lack of debris moments after impact. Kwiatkowski, who was an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel employed at the Pentagon on 9/11, was a contributor to a book titled 9/11 and American Empire Intellectuals Speak Out, in which she wrote that there was “a strange lack of visible debris on the Pentagon lawn, where I stood only moments after the impact. . . . I saw . . . no airplane metal or cargo debris.” [5]

Another Pentagon Witness: I was convinced it was a missile.

Lon Rains, who was an Editor for Space News at the time, happened to be driving his car near the Pentagon when it was hit by a missile on 9/11. In an article titled Eyewitness: The Pentagon, published on June 30, 2005, Rains wrote:

“That morning, like many others, the traffic slowed to a crawl just in front of the Pentagon. With the Pentagon to the left of my van at about 10 o’clock on the dial of a clock, I glanced at my watch to see if I was going to be late for my appointment. At that moment I heard a very loud, quick whooshing sound that began behind me and stopped suddenly in front of me and to my left. In fractions of a second I heard the impact and an explosion. The next thing I saw was the fireball. I was convinced it was a missile. It came in so fast it sounded nothing like an airplane.” [6]

Conclusion: The Pentagon was hit by a MISSILE, not hit by a plane

The lack of any evidence that a plane hit the Pentagon, eyewitness testimony of a banking, north side approach, eyewitnesses who saw a low-flying “jet” fly past the Pentagon that “kept on going,” plus Lloyde’s confession that the downed light pole was preplanned and staged all provide ample evidence proving that a Boeing 757 did not hit the Pentagon, but instead a smaller “jet” merely flew past the Pentagon immediately after it was hit by a missile in order to appear as though a plane did the damage.

References

[1] Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with Parade Magazine, News Transcript, October 12, 2001
https://web.archive.org/web/20041118063828/https://www.defense.gov/transcripts/2001/t11182001_t1012pm.html

[2] Greg Szymanski, Radiation Expert Claims High-Radiation Readings Near Pentagon After 9/11 Indicate Depleted Uranium Used; High-Ranking Army Officer Claims Missile Used at Pentagon, Not Commercial Airliner, August 18, 2004
https://web.archive.org/web/20060111183631/https://www.arcticbeacon.com/18-Aug-2005.html

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Karen Kwiatkowski, PhD, USAF (ret), 9/11 and American Empire Intellectuals Speak Out, Edited by David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, 2006

[6] Lon Rains, Eyewitness: The Pentagon, Space News, June 30, 2005
https://web.archive.org/web/20060210130450/https://www.space.com/news/rains_september11-1.html

Supporters of Julian Assange gather to mark his 50th birthday as they demand his release. (Photo: Henry Nicholls via NTB) 

By Julia Conley | Common Dreams

The family of Julian Assange was joined by supporters on Saturday in Parliament Square, London, where they marked Assange’s 50th birthday—the third he’s spent in the city’s Belmarsh Prison as he awaits possible extradition to the U.S.—and to demand his release days after a key witness in the case against him admitted his testimony was false.

Assange’s partner, Stella Moris, was in attendance with the couple’s young children at the gathering, which took place two days after Assange’s father and brother wrapped up a tour of the U.S. aimed at building pressure on President Joe Biden to drop all charges against him under the Espionage Act.

“Democracies do not imprison journalists. Julian is a political prisoner,” Moris told the supporters in Parliament Square. “He’s a prisoner of conscience. He’s in prison because he acted according to his conscience, exposing the powerful and defending the weak and the powerless.”

Across from the UK's Houses of Parliament, supporters of Julian Assange join his fiancé @StellaMoris1 in celebrating the WikiLeaks publisher's 50th birthday. Speakers blasted the 'political prosecution' levied against Assange and called for him to be freed from Belmarsh prison. pic.twitter.com/1nMITyAMdO

— Mohamed Elmaazi (@MElmaazi) July 3, 2021

The rally came a week after a key witness in the U.S. government’s case against Assange, Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, “admitted that his entire testimony is false” in an article in the Icelandic news outlet Stundin.

“The article details how Thordarson, a convicted felon, pedophile, and diagnosed sociopath, used his position to steal money from Wikileaks and received immunity from prosecution from the FBI in a quid pro quo,” FAIR reported, noting the new information received virtually no coverage from the corporate media.

Jennifer Robinson, a legal adviser to Assange, appeared on Democracy Now! earlier this week to discuss the development, calling Thordarson’s admission “just the latest revelation to demonstrate why the U.S. case should be dropped.”

A key witness in Julian Assange's extradition case has admitted he made false claims against the WikiLeaks founder. "This is just the latest revelation to demonstrate why the U.S. case should be dropped," says Assange legal adviser @suigenerisjen. https://t.co/O79JpouxAJ pic.twitter.com/hALhZ7Fg2Y

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) July 3, 2021

By Jessica Corbett | Common Dreams

The father and brother of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are planning a nationwide tour of the United States next month to advocate for the release of the detained journalist and for the Biden administration to drop its extradition effort—and to highlight the broader implications that his prosecution has for global press freedom.

“The U.S. government wants to make an example out of him to deter journalists and whistleblowers.”
—Gabriel Shipton, Julian Assange’s brother

John and Gabriel Shipton, Assange’s father and brother, will kick off the #HomeRun4Julian tour in Miami on June 6, then travel to over a dozen U.S. cities for the rest of the month, wrapping up in Washington, D.C. in July. Some events will be live-streamed, and the pair plans to meet with activists, journalists, and policymakers along the way.

“My brother Julian Assange has effectively been a prisoner for over a decade because he published evidence of war crimes,” said Gabriel Shipton in a statement Thursday. “The U.S. government wants to make an example out of him to deter journalists and whistleblowers.”

ANNOUNCEMENT: The father and brother of award-winning journalist Julian Assange will undertake a nationwide tour of the United States from June 6 – July 2. #HomeRun4Julianhttps://t.co/IW2TyWyD8S

— Assange Defense (@DefenseAssange) May 27, 2021

Assange has been held at Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh in London for over two years since he was forcibly dragged from the Ecuadorian Embassy in the city, where he had sought refuge in 2012. A British judge in January declined the Trump administration’s request to extradite Assange to face charges of violating the Espionage Act, concluding he would be at extreme risk of suicide.

Since taking office, U.S. President Joe Biden has continued to ignore global calls to end the extradition effort and drop all charges. The Department of Justice formally appealed Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s decision in February. Forty-nine-year-old Assange could face up to 175 years in a maximum-security prison if he is extradited to the United States.

“Gabriel and I are excited to talk to the American public on why protecting journalism and freeing Julian are so important to a free press,” said John Shipton, who toured their home country of Australia this month to advocate for his son. “This issue is bigger than just Julian. Freedom of the press in America impacts every part of the world.”

The U.S. tour is sponsored by the Courage Foundation, which was founded in 2013 as the Journalistic Source Protection Defense Fund. Assange is a trustee of the foundation, which supports whistleblowers and other truth-tellers—or “those who risk life or liberty to make significant contributions to the historical record.”

“For the first time in American history, a journalist has been indicted for publishing truthful information in the public interest,” Courage Foundation director Nathan Fuller said of Assange. “That’s why press and human rights groups around the world are in agreement that this is an existential threat to investigative reporting.”

Support the battle to save Julian's life. NYC #FreeAssangeNOW event: June 10, 6-8pm, People's Forum.

Join the reception for John and Gabriel Shipton, father and brother of Julian Assange, in person and online. RSVP: https://t.co/fyvHIXyCOA #DropTheCharges pic.twitter.com/ig1WvfsKEz

— Bean🔥 (@SomersetBean) May 28, 2021

Press freedom advocates last month marked the two-year anniversary of Assange’s arrest by British police by reiterating demands that the Biden administration immediately drops all charges against him. Nils Melzer, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, has also long advocated for Assange’s release.

In a December 2020 open letter asking then-President Donald Trump to pardon Assange, Melzer wrote that “I can attest to the fact that his health has seriously deteriorated, to the point where his life is now in danger. Critically, Mr. Assange suffers from a documented respiratory condition which renders him extremely vulnerable to the Covid-19 pandemic that has recently broken out in the prison where he is being held.”

Melzer and the mayor of Geneva are among dozens of people planning to join a June 4 event in the Swiss city to launch the “Geneva Call to Free Assange,” which supporters are promoting online with the hashtag #GVA_FreeAssange.

Geneva Call for the release of Julian Assange

4 June 2pm – with @DaccordYves @StellaMoris1 @antoinevey @NilsMelzer @genevapressclub @CarloSommaruga
5 June 11am – presentation of @davide_dormino's #AnythingToSay statue#FreeAssangeNOW#DropTheChargeshttps://t.co/e9UpAAMlq3

— Don't Extradite Assange – #FreeAssange (@DEAcampaign) May 27, 2021

By John Vibes | TheMindUnleashed.com

In a surprise ruling on Monday, British District Judge Vanessa Baraitser rejected the United States government’s request to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on espionage charges.

Baraitser did not object to the overall charges but ruled that conditions in US prisons would be too harsh and that Assange would likely kill himself if he were extradited.

Baraitser rejected defense arguments that the charges against Assange were politically motivated and a violation of free speech.

“I find that the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America,” the judge said, according to the Associated Press.

She said that Assange was “a depressed and sometimes despairing man” who had the “intellect and determination” to take his own life.

The US government has promised to appeal the decision. At a bail hearing on Wednesday, Assange’s lawyers plan to ask for his release. Assange’s American lawyer, Barry Pollack, said the legal team was “enormously gratified” that he will not be extradited.

Stella Moris: US agents plotted to kill Julian #Assange on British soil. #FreeAssange ⁦@StellaMoris1⁩ pic.twitter.com/tPeVIr3nhb

— Don't Extradite Assange – #FreeAssange (@DEAcampaign) January 4, 2021

The US government has promised to appeal the decision. At a bail hearing on Wednesday, Assange’s lawyers plan to ask for his release. Assange’s American lawyer, Barry Pollack, said the legal team was “enormously gratified” that he will not be extradited.

“We hope that after consideration of the U.K. court’s ruling, the United States will decide not to pursue the case further,” he said.

In court, lawyers for Assange argued that he was acting as a journalist and is entitled to First Amendment protections of freedom of speech when he published evidence of US war crimes that were deemed to be classified

Despite ruling to reject the extradition, the Judge essentially agreed with the complaints of US prosecutors. Saying that Assange’s actions “amount to offenses in this jurisdiction that would not be protected by his right to freedom of speech.”

Kristinn Hrafnsson from @WikiLeaks, final statement on #Assange case victory. “Enough is enough.”
The fight is not over. pic.twitter.com/0oGIckDFBp

— Don't Extradite Assange – #FreeAssange (@DEAcampaign) January 4, 2021

She also said she trusted that the US court system would give him a fair trial, while at the same time admitting that prison conditions in the US would be too harsh.

“I accept that oppression as a bar to extradition requires a high threshold. … However, I am satisfied that, in these harsh conditions, Mr. Assange’s mental health would deteriorate causing him to commit suicide with the ‘single-minded determination’ of his autism spectrum disorder,” the judge said in her ruling.

Professor Michael Kopelman, an emeritus professor of neuropsychiatry at King’s College London, said that Assange has been hearing voices and has confessed to a priest that he was making preparations to kill himself. These preparations included drafting his will and writing a goodbye letter to his family and friends.

“He reported auditory hallucinations, which were voices either inside or outside his head, somatic hallucinations, funny bodily experiences, these have now disappeared. He also has a long history of musical hallucinations, which is maybe a separate phenomenon, that got worse when he was in prison,” Kopelman said.

The voices that Assange is hearing are saying things like “you are dust, you are dead, we are coming to get you.”

Kopelman said that the most severe hallucinations have begun to diminish, but Assange is still severely depressed and at a high risk of suicide. He also added that if Assange were extradited the risk would increase further.

By Elias Marat | TheMindUnleashed.com

(TMU) – U.S. intelligence assets and a private security company plotted to abduct or even poison Julian Assange during the WikiLeaks co-founder’s seven-year stay at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, a British court has been told.

The discussed plans were allegedly part of a wide-ranging and complex spying operation that targeted Assange and any of his visitors, according to former employees of Spanish security firm Undercover Global.

Two anonymous witnesses who worked for UC Global told London’s Old Bailey court that from 2017 onwards, after the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump, American intelligence agencies stepped up their surveillance of Assange. The witnesses had been granted anonymity due to fears for their safety, reports The Guardian.

Assange’s confidential meetings with lawyers were recorded by microphones, his fingerprints were lifted from a drinking glass, and moles hatched a scheme to obtain the nappy of a baby who was being brought to the embassy on routine visits.

According to UC Global founder and director David Morales, “the Americans” sought to establish paternity but called off the plan when the then-employee tipped off the child’s mom.

The witnesses, who are apparently equally afraid of Morales and the U.S. Government, alleging that their former director was won over to “the dark side” before giving instructions to install sophisticated cameras with advanced audio recording capabilities in order to secretly record Assange’s conversations with visitors, and especially his attorneys.

One of the witnesses claims that after Morales went on a business trip to Las Vegas in July 2016 to promote his security firm, he obtained a “flashy contract” with the Las Vegas Sands, owned by close Trump ally and billionaire campaign financier Sheldon Adelson.

“After returning from one of his trips to the United States, David Morales gathered all the workers in the office in Jerez and told us that ‘We have moved up and from now on we will be playing in the big league,’” the witness explained.

The other anonymous former employee claims that in December 2017, “the Americans were desperate”

and had demanded that “more extreme measures should be employed against the ‘guest’ to put an end to the situation of Assange’s permanence in the embassy.”

Assange had been living there since 2012 when then Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa granted political asylum to the Australian amid the British government’s attempts to detain him and extradite him to Sweden over a sexual assault case that was subsequently dropped.

The witness said an idea was hatched whereby the door to the embassy would be intentionally left open, “which would allow the argument that this had been an accidental mistake, which would allow persons to enter from outside the embassy and kidnap the asylee”.

Another plan involved the possibility that Assange could be poisoned.

“All of these suggestions Morales said were under consideration during his dealing with his contacts in the United States,” the witness said.

The witness claims that Morales requested that he install a microphone in a fire extinguisher in the embassy’s meeting room, as well as in the bathroom where Assange was holding meetings out of the well-grounded concern he was being targeted in a spying operation.

“I used a nearby socket to conceal a microphone in a cable in the toilet in the back of the embassy,” the witness said.

“This was never removed, and may still be there.”

Lawyers for the U.S. Government have not contested the anonymous allegations but have shrugged them off as “wholly irrelevant” to the matter being considered, namely Assange’s likely extradition to the United States. The extradition hearings had been delayed due to the ongoing pandemic but will conclude by week’s end.

After being removed from the embassy by police in April 2019, Assange has been held at the maximum-security HMP Belmarsh prison.

The U.S. government is seeking the extradition of Assange to the United States on 17 charges, including allegations of conspiracy to hack into computers in the U.S. and violating the Espionage Act. Analysts say he would face a sentence of up to 175 years in prison or even the death penalty if found guilty of the charges.

Assange’s defenders claim that he is simply being sought due to his role in the release of scandalous information implicating Washington in a range of crimes, including serious war crimes and violations of international law.

By Caitlin Johnstone | Waking Times

2020 is the year of Julian Assange’s extradition trials, the Kafkaesque proceedings by which the US government is attempting to imprison the WikiLeaks founder for the rest of his life as punishment for exposing US war crimes. Assange started an innovative leak publishing outlet on the premise that corrupt power can be fought with truth, and corrupt power responded by silencing and jailing him. They’ve proved him right about everything, right in front of everyone.

2020 is the year people began protesting police brutality, and police responded with ferocious and widespread acts of brutality. The massive deluge of video footage from these brutal police responses went viral all over the world. The argument about police brutality culture in the US police state was won clearly and decisively, right in front of everyone.

2020 is the year the most powerful government on earth responded to a pandemic virus with the largest upward transfer of wealth in history, leaving massive global corporations with record-high stocks while killing small businesses and throwing the rank-and-file public to the wolves after handing some of them a paltry $1200, all while failing spectacularly to address the threat of the virus itself. This financial abuse is happening right out in the open, right in front of everyone.

2020 is the year this same government’s electoral process is being exposed in front of everyone for the sham it has always been, as two corrupt racist right-wing warmongering dementia patients who’ve both been accused of rape are placed head-to-head in what will inevitably be the single dumbest presidential race in the nation’s history. Neither of these two men is capable of forming a coherent sentence, and their presidential debates will make them a laughing stock of the whole world, right in front of everybody.

2020 is the year the aforementioned pandemic virus brought more and more awareness to how insane it is that the most powerful nation on earth lacks a normal healthcare system and the basic social safety nets that are afforded to everyone else in every other major country on earth.

2020 is the year increased public consciousness was brought to racism and race relations, as the cultural inertia against actualizing insight humanity experienced decades ago finally begins to truly fall away. The gaping racial wounds caused by centuries of white supremacism are finally being dragged into the light of consciousness before the people who’ve resisted looking at them because they have benefitted from white supremacism. The ugly things our society has kept hidden from itself are getting brought into the light in front of all of us.

2020 is the year of the raging debate about “cancel culture” as a critical mass of people begin to shove hard against injustices and perceived injustices in the world. Some factions shove hard against things they find objectionable, other factions shove back hard against their shoving, and in the back-and-forth movement, long-stuck objects are becoming unstuck as all the commotion shoves more and more previously unconscious dynamics into public awareness.

Everywhere you look, the common thread across all plots and subplots of the story of 2020 is a revelation. The movement from the unseen to the seen, from the unconscious to the conscious.

Even the coronavirus itself seems to be doing this to people on an individual level. Over and over again I’m seeing anecdotes from people who’ve been badly stricken with the virus repeating the same thing: that it has made them seriously reevaluate their lives and where they choose to put their energy and attention during their time in this world. People are forced by the way Covid-19 punishes needless movement to sit still with themselves and reflect on just what they’re doing here on this planet.

It reminds me of the “ordeal medicines” or “ordeal poisonings” in shamanic traditions around the world that didn’t have psychoactive plants. In ordeal poisonings, you receive a toxic but non-deadly substance that puts you through a terrible existential ordeal which causes you to re-evaluate your life, from which you emerge with a newfound appreciation for life and a brand new perspective on things. This same sort of phenomenon is arguably happening around the world on a mass scale right now. Many have long had the thought that the world would be improved if a critical mass of people experienced psychedelics; 2020 may be the year where humanity received something ultimately even better.

What I’m getting at with all of this is, maybe try and relax a little bit. I know everyone’s really scared and stressed out and some are in danger of losing their homes or their loved ones, so obviously this suggestion can only go so far and apply to such an extent. But, to the best of your ability, perhaps try and relax. This might just be what it looks like when a thinking animal suddenly finds itself being hurled into expanded consciousness by forces it doesn’t understand and cannot control.

Anyone who’s done serious inner work knows that it is seldom pretty when things we’ve kept hidden in our subconscious begin moving into consciousness. But it’s also the only way things can heal since you can’t fix what you can’t see. It’s always awkward and uncomfortable to uncover things you’ve kept unconscious; that’s why you kept them there in the first place. But it’s also the only way forward.

This may be all we’re seeing but on a mass scale. It ain’t pretty, but it’s what’s needed for healing to take place.

So, maybe just try and relax. Maybe invest less energy in stressing and bickering about masks and cancel culture and the US election and if the left or the right are going to get us all killed, and see if you can enter into a state of deep listening. The world is undergoing a transformation, and it’s taking us in a direction that none of us can predict because we can only see what we can see. Maybe relax as much as you can and try to enjoy this weird and exhilarating tumble from the unseen into the seen, from unconsciousness into consciousness.

May all be revealed. This is the authentic human being’s foremost desire. May all be revealed, from our own innermost subconscious dynamics to power structures that affect the whole world. Let it all come out into the light.

About the Author

Caitlin Johnstone – Rogue journalist. Bogan socialist. Anarcho-psychonaut. Guerrilla poet. Utopia prepper.

The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list for her website, which will get you an email notification for everything. Her articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking her on Facebook, following her antics on Twitter, checking out her podcast, throwing some money into her hat on Patreon or Paypal, or buying her book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

By John Vibes | Creative Commons | TheMindUnleashed.com

Sources close to Ghislaine Maxwell have revealed that she has a secret stash of recordings and plans to use the footage as a bargaining tool with prosecutors.

Maxwell’s former friend, who spoke under the condition of anonymity with The Daily Mail, said that these tapes could implicate some extremely powerful people.

“Ghislaine has always been as cunning as they come. She wasn’t going to be with Epstein all those years and not have some insurance. The secret stash of sex tapes I believe Ghislaine has squirreled away could end up being her get out of jail card if the authorities are willing to trade. She has copies of everything Epstein had. They could implicate some twisted movers and shakers,” the source said.

“If Ghislaine goes down, she’s going to take the whole damn lot of them with her,” they added.

The former friend of Maxwell also said that she and Epstein intentionally collected evidence on all of their associates to use as blackmail.

“Not only did Epstein like to capture himself with underage girls on camera – he wanted to make sure he had something to hold over the rich and powerful men who took advantage of his sick largesse. I’ll bet anything that once it comes out that Ghislaine has those tapes these men will be quaking in their Italian leather boots. Ghislaine made sure that she socked away thumb drives of it all. She knows where all the bodies are buried and she’ll use whatever she had to save her own a**,” They said.

In an interview with The Sun, Epstein’s former employer Steven Hoffenberg said that Maxwell ‘knows everything’ and will ‘totally co-operate’ after her arrest.

Hoffenberg, said that ‘there’s a lot of people very worried’ about what Maxwell could tell investigators.

Following Maxwell’s arrest, Prince Andrew has canceled his trips abroad and plans to stay in the UK out of fears that he could be intercepted by authorities, the New York Post reported. Friends have indicated that Prince Andrew is one person that Maxwell doesn’t intend to share information about, but investigators have been trying to question him for months, but he has continued to avoid their requests.

Laura Goldman, a former investment banker who said she has known Maxwell since she moved to the U.S., told BBC Radio 4’s Today that she considered Andrew a real friend.

“No. She’s always told me that she would never ever say anything about him. I think she felt that he was her friend and she was never ever going to say anything about him. She really felt that in the 90s when her father died that Prince Andrew was there for her, in many ways,” Goldman said.

Epstein and Maxwell were connected with major players on both sides of the political spectrum, including the Clintons and the Trumps, who have a lot to lose if Maxwell discusses their involvement with Epstein’s trafficking ring. With how many people that Epstein was connected to there is no telling what can be revealed in these recordings.

A judge ordered Chelsea Manning incarcerated until she agrees to testify or until the jury is done, which might be 18 months. (Photo: Screenshot)

By Jessica Corbett | Common Dreams

This is a developing story and may be updated…

Federal Judge Anthony Trenga on Thursday ordered the immediate release of U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning less than 24 hours after Manning’s legal team disclosed that she was recovering in the hospital after attempting suicide in jail.

Multiple human rights advocates and supporters responded to Trenga’s order with one word: “Finally.” Manning has spent the majority of the past year at the William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center in Alexandria, Virginia for her refusal to testify to a grand jury about WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange.

Manning’s legal team had filed a motion last month demanding her release and said late Wednesday that despite attempting to end her own life, the whistleblower still planned to attend a related court hearing scheduled for Friday.

Trenga, with his order (pdf) Thursday, canceled that hearing and ordered her release, writing that “Manning’s appearance before the grand jury is no longer needed, in light of which her detention no longer serves any coercive purpose.”

BREAKING: Chelsea Manning ordered released from jail, where she has been held for over a year for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury. Her testimony "is no longer needed, in light of which her detention no longer serves any coercive purpose." https://t.co/Q1vC1VsrBn

— Freedom of the Press (@FreedomofPress) March 12, 2020

In a statement about Trenga’s ruling Thursday evening, Manning’s legal team said, “Needless to say we are relieved and ask that you respect her privacy while she gets on her feet.”

Supporters of Manning welcomed the order for her release; they also continued to charge that she should have never been jailed in the first place and wish her well in her recovery:

Our comrade Chelsea Manning will finally be released after a suicide attempt. We’re with you Chelsea. In safety and solidarity. ❤️ https://t.co/fNQ6IwWIqg

— ACT UP NY (@actupny) March 12, 2020

https://twitter.com/jaredlholt/status/1238225470359048192?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1238225470359048192&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2F2020%2F03%2F12%2Ffinally-judge-orders-chelsea-mannings-immediate-release-after-year-jail-and-suicide

BREAKING: A judge has ordered that Chelsea Manning (@xychelsea) be released from jail. https://t.co/bwIwhyXqYm

Tens of thousands of people signed our petition at https://t.co/aU6TW5vsYN calling for her release.

She never should have been imprisoned in the first place.

— @fight@fightforthefuture.org on Mastodon (@fightfortheftr) March 12, 2020

By  Aaron Kesel | Activist Post

Two whistleblowers—Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden—were nominated alongside WikiLeaks journalist and former editor-in-chief Julian Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize of 2020 by 17 members of a German parliamentary group.

Żaklin Nastić (MdB) writes:

I am one of a total of 17 members of our parliamentary group who have nominated Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden for the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize. These brave people should not be criminalized but should be recognized and honored. The war criminals and their henchmen must be held accountable.

We feel that Assange, Manning and Snowden have to be recognized for their ‘unprecedented contributions to the pursuit of peace and their immense personal sacrifices to promote peace for all.’ With the unveiling of US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq and the global surveillance program of the US secret services, the three have ‘exposed the architecture of war and strengthened the architecture of peace’.

The full letter was published on the Courage Foundation’s website and reads:

Dear Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee,

We wish to nominate Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden for the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize, in honour of their unparalleled contributions to the pursuit of peace, and their immense personal sacrifices to promote peace for all.

The year 2020 began with Julian Assange arbitrarily detained and tortured, at risk of death according to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and over 100 medical doctors, for revealing the extent of harm and illegality behind the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. 2020 began with Chelsea Manning in her secound year of renewed imprisonment for resisting to testify to a Grand Jury empaneled against Wikileaks, after having also been imprisoned seven years previously and tortured, following her disclosures that were published by Julian Assange. 2020 began with Edward Snowden in his 7th year of asylum for revealing illegal mass surveillance, in defence of the liberties underpinning revelations such as those made by Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange.

The Collateral Murder video, provided by Chelsea Manning in 2010 and published by Wikileaks, honoured the dignity of those slain needlessly in war. It gave names and identities to victims whose humanity had been kept from public view, capturing the last moments of life for a young Reuters photojournalist, Namir Noor-Eldeen. Namir, who was killed in cold blood while on assignment in Baghdad, was described by his colleagues as among “the pre-eminent war photographers in Iraq” with “a tender eye that brought humanity via quiet moments to a vicious war”.

For humanising Namir and his driver Saeed Chmagh, a father of four, slain in front of two children who sat strafed with bullets in a van, Julian Assange faces 175 years in a US prison under the 1917 Espionage Act, and Chelsea Manning is currently detained without charge.

As well as humanising innocent victims of war, in 2010 Julian Assange and Wikileaks exposed the means by which public abhorrence of killing is overcome, and peace subverted, by psychological manipulation and strategic messaging.

In March 2010 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) produced a memorandum, subsequently published by Wikileaks, entitled, Afghanistan: Sustaining West European Support for the NATO-led Mission-Why Counting on Apathy Might Not Be Enough.

At the time of the memorandum, 80 percent of French and German publics opposed greater troop deployment to Afghanistan. The memo expressed concern that public “indifference might turn into active hostility if spring and summer fighting results in an upsurge in military or Afghan civilian casualties.” To overcome public opposition to the “bloody summer” ahead, the memorandum advised tailoring messages for French audiences that “could tap into acute French concern for civilians and refugees,” given that French “opponents most commonly argued that the mission hurts civilians.”

“Appeals by President Obama and Afghan women might gain traction” the memorandum added.

With respect to the legalities of peace, Julian Assange and Wikileaks have contributed to the historical record on the International Criminal Court (ICC), established in 2002 under the Rome Statute of 1998, to promote the “peace, security and well-being of the world.” The ICC’s mission was to end impunity by prosecuting “the worst atrocities known to mankind”: war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide.

When the ICC’s enforcement capabilities were taking shape in the years following its inception, cables published by WikiLeaks exposed bilateral deals between nations under Article 98 of the Rome Statute, in which states placed themselves outside the ICC’s jurisdiction. The Article 98 deals undercut the ICC’s power to prosecute war crimes and other internationally illegal obstacles to a peaceful world order.

Later, in 2013, when Edward Snowden revealed the warrantless masssurveillance of citizens and officials worldwide, he exposed an immense global network with the capability to intercept and obstruct peace proponents such as Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange. Edward Snowden’s revelations have contributed to international investigations, transparency initiatives and legislative reforms around the globe.

These are but a selection of the contributions that Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden have made towards pursuing and defending lasting peace.

Together, their actions have exposed the architecture of abuse and war, and fortified the architecture of peace. In return, all three individuals have been forced to sacrifice the very liberties, rights and human welfare that they worked so hard to defend.

A Nobel Peace Prize for Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden would do more than honour their actions as individuals. It would ennoble the risks and sacrifices that those pursuing peace so often undertake, to secure the peace and freedom for all.

Sincerely,

Sevim Dağdelen Member of the German Bundestag

Doris Achelwilm Member of the German Bundestag

Diether Dehm Member of the German Bundestag

Sylvia Gabelmann Member of the German Bundestag

Heike Hänsel Member of the German Bundestag

Andrej Hunko Member of the German Bundestag

Ulla Jelpke Member of the German Bundestag

Jutta Krellmann Member of the German Bundestag

Fabio De Masi Member of the German Bundestag

Żaklin Nastić Member of the German Bundestag

Dr. Alexander S. Neu Member of the German Bundestag

Eva-Maria Schreiber Member of the German Bundestag

Alexander Ulrich Member of the German Bundestag

Kathrin Vogler Member of the German Bundestag

Andreas Wagner Member of the German Bundestag

Pia Zimmermann Member of the German Bundestag

Sabine Zimmermann Member of the German Bundestag.

It is worth noting that Bundestag Die Linke member Pascal Meiser called for the asylum of the publisher and whistleblower in Germany last year. According to the letter, Meiser didn’t sign the nomination appeal for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Earlier this month, more than 130 prominent figures in Germany from the world of art, politics, and the media signed an appeal for the release of Julian Assange, including former German vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel and Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek, DW reported.

Assange has won a total of twenty awards, Manning has won eleven, and Snowden has won nine for their individual bravery helping to shed light on the truth. Last year, Assange’s friend Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire accepted the joint GUE/NGL prize for Journalists, Whistleblowers, and Defenders of the Right to Information.

For that award, Assange was nominated by Courage Foundation “based on his contributions to journalism and whistleblower protections, his dire circumstances and need for public support, and what his case means for journalists and whistleblowers around the world,” the Courage Foundation wrote.

Maguire gave an incredible heart-wrenching speech in support of her friend Julian Assange during the acceptance speech stressing he exposed corruption and the war empire.

Assange is set to face trial for extradition on February 24 for publishing documents that exposed corruption and U.S. war crimes. Protests are planned all over the world as the future of press freedom lies in the outcome of just one man’s case.

Extradite Julian Assange & the UK extradites our rights: freedom of the press, rule of law, human rights…

Join the global protest on day 1 of the extradition hearing. More info+event pages: https://t.co/I8AXRKeJUq Update of the updated map: #FreeAssange #DontExtraditeAssange pic.twitter.com/0uNS0Qp2wE

— Bean🔥 (@SomersetBean) February 10, 2020

Last year in April, Assange was dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in violation of 2 UN rulings following the withdrawal of his asylum status by the Ecuadorian government.

Assange faces 175 years in the United States if convicted of exposing war crimes and various corruption within the United States, 17 charges of which are under the Espionage Act. In total, Assange faces 18 charges including an absurd charge under the CFAA for “computer hacking” by helping his source, Chelsea Manning, protect herself against being discovered to leak him information.

By Aaron Kesel | Creative Commons | TheMindUnleashed.com

Glenn Greenwald’s prosecution is an attempt to use computer crime law to silence an investigative reporter who exposed deep-seated government corruption. (Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

By Rainey Reitman | Common Dreams

Rainey Reitman leads the activism team at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Read more great articles at Common Dreams

Whistleblower Chelsea Manning is remaining defiant in the face of months of imprisonment. (Photo: xychelsea/Twitter)

By Eoin Higgins | Common Dreams

Two days after the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer published a letter he sent to the U.S. government urging her release from federal prison, whistleblower Chelsea Manning issued a response welcoming the support and promising to stay resolute in the face of her prolonged detention.

“My long-standing objection to the immoral practice of throwing people in jail without charge or trial, for the sole purpose of forcing them to testify before a secret, government-run investigative panel, remains strong,” said Manning.

thank you all – we may be separated by steel and concrete but with your love and solidarity i feel seen and heard and know i am not alone 😌🌈 💕 https://t.co/LwgspoKyEb

— Chelsea E. Manning (@xychelsea) January 2, 2020

By John W. Whitehead | Rutherford

“What happens to Julian Assange and to Chelsea Manning is meant to intimidate us, to frighten us into silence. By defending Julian Assange, we defend our most sacred rights. Speak up now or wake up one morning to the silence of a new kind of tyranny. The choice is ours.”—John Pilger, investigative journalist

All of us are in danger.

In an age of prosecutions for thought crimes, pre-crime deterrence programs, and government agencies that operate like organized crime syndicates, there is a new kind of tyranny being imposed on those who dare to expose the crimes of the Deep State, whose reach has gone global.

The Deep State has embarked on a ruthless, take-no-prisoners, all-out assault on truth-tellers.

Activists, journalists and whistleblowers alike are being terrorized, traumatized, tortured and subjected to the fear-inducing, mind-altering, soul-destroying, smash-your-face-in tactics employed by the superpowers-that-be.

Take Julian Assange, for example.

Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks—a website that published secret information, news leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources—was arrested on April 11, 2019, on charges of helping U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning access and leak more than 700,000 classified military documents that portray the U.S. government and its military as reckless, irresponsible and responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.

Included among the leaked Manning material were the Collateral Murder video (April 2010), the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), a quarter of a million diplomatic cables (November 2010), and the Guantánamo files (April 2011).

The Collateral Murder leak included gunsight video footage from two U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopters engaged in a series of air-to-ground attacks while air crew laughed at some of the casualties. Among the casualties were two Reuters correspondents who were gunned down after their cameras were mistaken for weapons and a driver who stopped to help one of the journalists. The driver’s two children, who happened to be in the van at the time it was fired upon by U.S. forces, suffered serious injuries.

This is morally wrong.

It shouldn’t matter which nation is responsible for these atrocities: there is no defense for such evil perpetrated in the name of profit margins and war profiteering.

In true Orwellian fashion, however, the government would have us believe that it is Assange and Manning who are the real criminals for daring to expose the war machine’s seedy underbelly.

Since his April 2019 arrest, Assange has been locked up in a maximum-security British prison—in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day—pending extradition to the U.S., where if convicted, he could be sentenced to 175 years in prison.

Whatever is being done to Assange behind those prison walls—psychological torture, forced drugging, prolonged isolation, intimidation, surveillance—it’s wearing him down.

In court appearances, the 48-year-old Assange appears disoriented, haggard and zombie-like.

“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law,” declared Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture.

It’s not just Assange who is being made to suffer, however.

Manning, who was jailed for seven years from 2010 to 2017 for leaking classified documents to Wikileaks, was arrested in March 2019 for refusing to testify before a grand jury about Assange, placed in solitary confinement for almost a month, and then sentenced to remain in jail either until she agrees to testify or until the grand jury’s 18-month term expires.

Federal judge Anthony J. Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia also fined Manning $500 for every day she remained in custody after 30 days, and $1,000 for every day she remains in custody after 60 days, a chilling—and financially crippling—example of the government’s heavy-handed efforts to weaponize fines and jail terms as a means of forcing dissidents to fall in line.

This is how the police state deals with those who challenge its chokehold on power.

Make no mistake: the government is waging war on journalists and whistleblowers for disclosing information relating to government misconduct that is within the public’s right to know.

Yet while this targeted campaign—aided, abetted and advanced by the Deep State’s international alliances—is unfolding during President Trump’s watch, it began with the Obama Administration’s decision to revive the antiquated, hundred-year-old Espionage Act, which was intended to punish government spies, and instead use it to prosecute government whistleblowers.

Unfortunately, the Trump Administration has not merely continued the Obama Administration’s attack on whistleblowers. It has injected this war on truth-tellers and truth-seekers with steroids and let it loose on the First Amendment.

In May 2019, Trump’s Justice Department issued a sweeping new “superseding” secret indictment of Assange—hinged on the Espionage Act—that empowers the government to determine what counts as legitimate journalism and criminalize the rest, not to mention giving “the government license to criminally punish journalists it does not like, based on antipathy, vague standards, and subjective judgments.”

Noting that the indictment signaled grave dangers for freedom of the press in general, media lawyer Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., warned, “The indictment would criminalize the encouragement of leaks of newsworthy classified information, criminalize the acceptance of such information, and criminalize publication of it.”

Boutrous continues:

[I]t doesn’t matter whether you think Assange is a journalist, or whether WikiLeaks is a news organization. The theory that animates the indictment targets the very essence of journalistic activity: the gathering and dissemination of information that the government wants to keep secret. You don’t have to like Assange or endorse what he and WikiLeaks have done over the years to recognize that this indictment sets an ominous precedent and threatens basic First Amendment values…. With only modest tweaking, the very same theory could be invoked to prosecute journalists for the very same crimes being alleged against Assange, simply for doing their jobs of scrutinizing the government and reporting the news to the American people.

We desperately need greater scrutiny and transparency, not less.

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE……

Image Credit: The Mind Unleashed

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture

The hideous treatment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange continues and many observers are citing his case as being symptomatic of developing “police state” tendencies in both the United States and in Europe, where rule of law is being subordinated to political expediency.

Julian Assange was the founder and editor-in-chief of the controversial news and information site WikiLeaks. As the name implies, after 2006 the site became famous, or perhaps notorious, for its publication of materials that have been leaked to it by government officials and other sources who consider the information to be of value to the public but unlikely to be accepted by the mainstream media, which has become increasingly corporatized and timid.

WikiLeaks became known to a global audience back in 2010 when it obtained from US Army enlisted soldier Bradley Manning a large quantity of classified documents relating to the various wars that the United States was fighting in Asia. Some of the material included what might be regarded as war crimes.

WikiLeaks again became front page news over the 2016 presidential election, when the website released the emails of candidate Hillary Clinton and her campaign manager John Podesta. The emails revealed how Clinton and her team collaborated with the Democratic National Committee to ensure that she would be nominated rather that Bernie Sanders. It should be noted that the material released by WikiLeaks was largely documentary and factual in nature, i.e. it was not “fake news.”

Because he is a journalist ostensibly protected by the First Amendment guarantee of free speech, the handling of the “threat” posed by journalist Assange is inevitably somewhat different than a leak by a government official, referred to as a whistleblower. Assange has been vilified as an “enemy of the state,” likely even a Russian agent, and was initially pursued by the Swedish authorities after claims of a rape, later withdrawn, were made against him. To avoid arrest, he was given asylum by a friendly Ecuadorean government seven years ago in London. The British police had an active warrant to arrest him immediately as he had failed to make a bail hearing after he obtained asylum, which is indeed what took place when Quito revoked his protected status in April.

As it turned out, Julian Assange was not exactly alone when he was in the Ecuadorean Embassy. All of his communications, including with his lawyers, were being intercepted by a Spanish security company hired for the purpose allegedly by the CIA. There apparently was also a CIA plan to kidnap Assange. In a normal court in a normal country, the government case would have been thrown out on constitutional and legal grounds, but that was not so in this instance. The United States has persisted in its demands to obtain the extradition of Assange from Britain and London seems to be more than willing to play along. Assange is undeniably hated by the American political Establishment and even much of the media in bipartisan fashion, with the Democrats blaming him for Hillary Clinton’s loss while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has labeled him a “fraud, a coward and an enemy.” WikiLeaks itself is regarded by the White House as a “hostile non-government intelligence service.” Sending Julian Assange to prison for the rest of his life may be called justice, but it is really revenge against someone who has exposed government lies. Some American politicians have even asserted that jail is too good for Assange, insisting that he should instead be executed.

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE……

John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford

“The exile of prisoners to a distant place, where they can ‘pay their debt to society,’ make themselves useful, and not contaminate others with their ideas or their criminal acts, is a practice as old as civilization itself. The rulers of ancient Rome and Greece sent their dissidents off to distant colonies. Socrates chose death over the torment of exile from Athens. The poet Ovid was exiled to a fetid port on the Black Sea.”— Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History

This is how freedom dies.

This is how you condition a populace to life as prisoners in a police state: by brainwashing them into believing they are free so that they will march in lockstep with the state and be incapable of recognizing the prison walls that surround them.

Face the facts: we are no longer free.

We in the American Police State may enjoy the illusion of freedom, but that is all it is: an elaborate deception, rooted in denial and delusion, that hides the grasping, greedy, power-hungry, megalomaniacal force that lurks beneath the surface.

Brick by brick, the prison walls being erected around us by the government and its corporate partners-in-crime grow more oppressive and more pervasive by the day.

Brick by brick, we are finding there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

Brick by brick, we are being walled in, locked down and locked up.

That’s the curious thing about walls: they not only keep those on the outside from getting in, they also keep those on the inside from getting out.

Consider, if you will, some of the “bricks” in the police state’s wall that serve to imprison the citizenry: Red flag gun laws that strip citizens of their rights based on the flimsiest of pretexts concocted by self-serving politicians. Overcriminalization resulting in jail time for nonviolent offenses such as feeding stray cats and buying foreign honey. Military training drills—showy exercises in armed intimidation—and live action “role playing” between soldiers and “freedom fighters” staged in small rural communities throughout the country. Profit-driven speed and red light cameras that do little for safety while padding the pockets of government agencies. Overt surveillance that turns citizens into suspects.

Police-run facial recognition software that mistakenly labels law-abiding citizens as criminals. Punitive programs that strip citizens of their passports and right to travel over unpaid taxes. Government agents that view segments of the populace as “subhuman” and treat them accordingly. A social credit system (similar to China’s) that rewards behavior deemed “acceptable” and punishes behavior the government and its corporate allies find offensive, illegal or inappropriate.

These are just a small sampling of the oppressive measures used by the government to control and constrict the American people.

What these despotic tactics add up to is an authoritarian prison in every sense of the word.

Granted this prison may not appear as overtly bleak as the soul-destroying gulags described by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his masterpiece The Gulag Archipelago, but that’s just a matter of aesthetics.

Strip away the surface embellishments and you’ll find the core is no less sinister than that of the gulags of the Cold War-era Soviet Union.

Those gulags, according to historian Anne Applebaum, used as a form of “administrative exile—which required no trial and no sentencing procedure—was an ideal punishment not only for troublemakers as such, but also for political opponents of the regime.”

The word “gulag” refers to a labor or concentration camp where prisoners (oftentimes political prisoners or so-called “enemies of the state,” real or imagined) were imprisoned as punishment for their crimes against the state. As Applebaum explains:

Over time, the word “Gulag” has also come to signify not only the administration of the concentration camps but also the system of Soviet slave labor itself, in all its forms and varieties: labor camps, punishment camps, criminal and political camps, women’s camps, children’s camps, transit camps. Even more broadly, “Gulag” has come to mean the Soviet repressive system itself, the set of procedures that prisoners once called the “meat-grinder”: the arrests, the interrogations, the transport in unheated cattle cars, the forced labor, the destruction of families, the years spent in exile, the early and unnecessary deaths.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was such a political prisoner.

For the crime of daring to criticize Stalin in a private letter to a school friend, Solzhenitsyn was arrested and sentenced to eight years in exile in a labor camp.

That was before psychiatry paved the way for totalitarian regimes such as the Soviet Union to declare dissidents mentally ill and consign political prisoners to prisons disguised as psychiatric hospitals, where they could be isolated from the rest of society, their ideas discredited, and subjected to electric shocks, drugs and various medical procedures to break them physically and mentally.

In addition to declaring political dissidents mentally unsound, government officials in the Cold War-era Soviet Union also made use of an administrative process for dealing with individuals who were considered a bad influence on others or troublemakers. Author George Kennan describes a process in which:

The obnoxious person may not be guilty of any crime . . . but if, in the opinion of the local authorities, his presence in a particular place is “prejudicial to public order” or “incompatible with public tranquility,” he may be arrested without warrant, may be held from two weeks to two years in prison, and may then be removed by force to any other place within the limits of the empire and there be put under police surveillance for a period of from one to ten years.

Warrantless seizures, surveillance, indefinite detention, isolation, exile… sound familiar?

It should.

The age-old practice by which despotic regimes eliminate their critics or potential adversaries by making them disappear—or forcing them to flee—or exiling them literally or figuratively or virtually from their fellow citizens—is happening with increasing frequency in America.

We saw it happen with Julian Assange. With Edward Snowden. With Bradley Manning.

They, too, were exiled for daring to challenge the powers-that-be.

It happened to 26-year-old decorated Marine Brandon Raub, who was targeted because of his Facebook posts, interrogated by government agents about his views on government corruption, arrested with no warning, labeled mentally ill for subscribing to so-called “conspiratorial” views about the government, detained against his will in a psych ward for standing by his views, and isolated from his family, friends and attorneys.

Raub’s case exposed the seedy underbelly of a governmental system that is targeting Americans—especially military veterans—for expressing their discontent over America’s rapid transition to a police state.

Now, through the use of red flag laws, behavioral threat assessments, and pre-crime policing prevention programs, the government is laying the groundwork that would allow it to weaponize the label of mental illness as a means of exiling those whistleblowers, dissidents and freedom fighters who refuse to march in lockstep with its dictates.

That the government is using the charge of mental illness as the means by which to immobilize (and disarm) its critics is diabolically brilliant. With one stroke of a magistrate’s pen, these individuals are declared mentally ill, locked away against their will, and stripped of their constitutional rights.

These developments are merely the realization of various U.S. government initiatives dating back to 2009, including one dubbed Operation Vigilant Eagle which calls for surveillance of military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, characterizing them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.”

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE….

Image Credit: Activist Post

Caitlin Johnstone | Waking Times

The Australian Federal Police have conducted two raids on journalists and seized documents in purportedly unrelated incidents in the span of just two days.

Yesterday the AFP raided the home of News Corp Australia journalist Annika Smethurst, seeking information related to her investigative report last year which exposed the fact that the Australian government has been discussing the possibility of giving itself unprecedented powers to spy on its own citizens. Today they raided the Sydney headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corp, seizing information related to a 2017 investigative report on possible war crimes committed by Australian forces in Afghanistan.

In a third, also ostensibly unrelated incident, another Australian reporter disclosed yesterday that the Department of Home Affairs has initiated an investigation of his reporting on a story about asylum seeker boats which could lead to an AFP criminal case, saying he’s being pressured to disclose his source.

AFP: I’m still staggered by the power of this warrant. It allows the AFP to “add, copy, delete or alter” material in the ABC’s computers. All Australians, please think about that: as of this moment, the AFP has the power to delete material in the ABC’s computers. Australia 2019.

— John Lyons (@TheLyonsDen) June 5, 2019

“Why has AFP suddenly decided to carry out these two raids after the election?” tweeted Australian Sky News political editor David Speers during the Sydney raid. “Did new evidence really just emerge in both the Annika Smethurst and ABC stories?!”

Why indeed?

“If these raids unconnected, as AFP reportedly said, it’s an extraordinary coincidence,” tweeted The Conversation chief political correspondent Michelle Grattan. “AFP needs to explain ASAP the timing so long after the stories. It can’t be that inefficient! Must be some explanation – which makes the ‘unconnected’ claim even more odd.”

Odd indeed.

It is true that the AFP has formally denied that there was any connection between the two raids, and it is in fact difficult to imagine how the two could be connected apart from their sharing a common theme of exposing malfeasance that the government wanted kept secret. If it is true that they are unconnected, then what changed? What in the world could have changed to spark this sudden escalation of the Australian government’s assault on the free press?

Well, if as I suggested recently you don’t think in terms of separate, individual nations, it’s not hard to think of at least one thing that’s changed.

The Assange Effect is now taking hold throughout the US-centralized empire. #auspol

Australian Federal Police raid News Corp journalist’s home over alleged national security leak https://t.co/LntOZRpwA1 via @abcnews

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) June 4, 2019

“The criminalization and crack down on national security journalism is spreading like a virus,” WikiLeaks tweeted today in response to the ABC raid. “The Assange precedent is already having effect. Journalists must unite and remember that courage is also contagious.”

“The arrest and espionage charges against Assange was just the beginning, as many in the media, even those who hate Assange, feared,”  tweeted Consortium News editor-in-chief Joe Lauria in response to the News Corp raid. “The home of a mainstream Australian journalist was raided Wed. morning by police because of a story she worked on.”

“Shameful news from Australia as the police raid journalists’ offices and homes,” tweeted legendary Australian journalist John Pilger. “One warrant allows them to ‘add, copy, delete or alter’ computer files at the ABC. The assault on Julian Assange was a clear warning to all of us: it was only the beginning.”

If you think about it, it would have been far less disturbing than the alternative if there were a connection between the two raids, because the alternative is vastly more sinister: that the Australian government’s attitude toward the free press has changed. And that it has perhaps done so, as Australia has been doing for decades, in alignment with the behavior of the rest of the US-centralized empire.

In an article for Consortium News titled “After Assange’s Espionage Act Indictment, Police Move Against More Journalists for Publishing Classified Material”, Joe Lauria reminds us that Australia is not the first nation within the western power alliance to see such an escalation since the paradigm-shifting imprisonment of Julian Assange in the UK.

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE….