Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Jason Bermas has the NORAD TAPES

=== 911 conspiracy related ORIGINAL SOURCE MATERIAL ===

The tapes obtained by Loose Change consist of 18 audio files of 399 minutes or more per file, allegedly detailing all NORAD communications during 9/11.

DOWNLOAD:

via Rapishare (use winzip11 to unpack!)

http://rapidshare.com/files/53275102/DRM1_DAT2_Channel_10_TT_TK.wav.zip
http://rapidshare.com/files/53277199/DRM3_DAT2_Channel_24_Emerg-AICC.wav_1.zip
http://rapidshare.com/files/53479835/DRM1_DAT2_Channel_2_MCC_Op.zip
http://rapidshare.com/files/53483303/DRM1_DAT2_Channel_4_ID_Op.zip
http://rapidshare.com/files/53275102/DRM1_DAT2_Channel_10_TT_TK.wav.zip
http://rapidshare.com/files/53277199/DRM3_DAT2_Channel_24_Emerg-AICC.wav_1.zip

DRM1_DAT2_Channel_10_TT_TK.wav.zip
http://myfreefilehosting.com/f/89f4c5739c_70.66MB

File name: DRM3_DAT2_Channel_24_Emerg-AICC.wav_1.zip File size: 70.57MB
http://myfreefilehosting.com/f/0ae3067676_70.57MB

LET ME KNOW if this download works. I can get the other 14 there, too.


COMPLETE DOWNLOAD:

Run OPERA 9.x browser and click This:
http://www.loosechange911.com/download/NORAD/NORAD.torrent

OR THIS (with comments and you can see how many people are seeding):

http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3791805




-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Release Notes
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Audio Format.........: WAV
Bitrate..............: 64 kbit
Hz...................: 8,000
Channels.............: Mono

About 120 hours worth of recordings of various NORAD radio channels from 9/11/2001. Released by NORAD to Jason Berman (of the Loose Change production staff), and then released by Bermas onto the Internet.

Did Flight 11 ever hit the World Trade Center? According to these tapes, no, no it didn't.

Did Flight 93 explode in mid-air northeast of Camp David? According to these tapes, yes, yes it did.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Partial (shoddy) transcript:

I was listening to them online!! 22:19 GMT 20aug2007 on
http://metro.phaylon.com:8105/ *carries crap radio now*
(use winamp an press CTRL-L or VLC (Open network stream)...
Stream Status:  Stream is up at 16 kbps with 7 of 25 listeners (7 unique)
Listener Peak: 9 Average Listen Time: 2h 58m 46s
Stream Title: Revere Radio Network ~ Freedom of Speech 8K stream


At 8:37:52 Boston ATC broke standard protocols and directly contacted NEADS in Rome, New York about the hijacking of Flight 11. This was the moment that the now infamous exchange between Boston ATC and NEADS occurred...

Quote:
Boston ATC: Hi. Boston Center TMU [Traffic Management Unit], we have a problem here. We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York, and we need you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out.
NEADS: Is this real-world or exercise?
Boston ATC: No, this is not an exercise, not a test.



The sound files are good quality and they just said:
a 737 (!) just hit the world trade center, this is real world"

22:22gmt You think we should stop the exercise? LAUGHTER LAUGHTER.

Whiskey 105, Delta up there 5 3? I've got they guy calling McGuire. Is he on the way home? 401 kc10 possible Hijack No Squawk .. unconfirmed second hit. Keep calling them! team 23 New York Center. Two KC10s a lot of fuel. team 23 and team 24 airborne. Tanker is on its way back.

Second unconfirmed is United Airlines 175

Battle station is only Langley.

FAA wants to hold them in Whiskey 105.

On battle station! 2526 on battle station, Langley

I want those fighters closer in.

22:47 american 11 the original guy is still airborne
We do have a tail number... N334AA
He is kinda smart, he knew exactly what he wanted us to do.

Unbelievable. JESUS Christ!

changing the symboligy, just going to be whatever.
25 is headed into Whiskey 106

Boston center team. We did the one home in 105, they were on a training mission.
Everybody in training send them home.

We want (Baltimore) center to maintain primary control.
I have an aircraft 6 miles east from the whitehouse!

Radar ONLY! Bravo 032 no alitude, I got em.
I don't care how many windows you break.
Syracuse stand by.

Sqawking 777! Traffic at 22000.

Delta 89 south south east of Toledo
Special track on that guy.

I talk to them, we do that homeland defence thing.
only 140 knots only 100 knots

This aircraft is coming from Canada.
No callsign, heading towards Washington.
Pentagon got whacked? unconfirmed? Unconfirmed information forget it!
I need callsigns from the Toledo Selfridge and Alpino guys,
Son of a bitch.
That looks like a small aircraft.. I mean small!
Trying to get an E3 over Chicago, I have no radar.
Fu** he's got it! Give me callsign, give me whole 9 yards.
United 93, got a bomb? Going from where to where.
Bomb on board, United 93, out of Boston?
Intercept! and divert that aircraft away from there.

AIRCRAFT OVER THE WHITEHOUSE


What is it? .. FIFTH AEROPLANE!! .. Cleveland!
negative clearance to fire. ID TYPE TAIL.

93 is down north east of Camp David confirmed.
He exploded, he exploded.


If we have to take anyone out, I recommend we use AIM-9's in the face

"I've got Cheyenne Mountain on the line...terminating all exercise inputs."


CONTROLLER 1: "These guys are smart"
CONTROLLER 2: "Yea, they knew exactly what they wanted to do"

At 52:56 of tape DRM1 DAT2 Channel 2 MCC Op.wav

This is ~100 minutes after the attacks started at 8:46.

BTW- Much on most of the tapes is just dead air. You won't need to listen to anything nearing 120 hours. Even so, there's still a lot to listen to.

You do have to wonder about the exercise that was supposed to be going on that day. I'd be interested to know if they had actual PLANES that were involved in the exercise about Russian movements, or if it was just mock radar tracks in the NORAD tracking area. Not to mention, who's to say, even if they had planes, that the planes would have been armed? In an exercise, as far as I know, that's HIGHLY unlikely.

exercises are pretty common - especially for the NORAD guys - i mean prior to 9/11 it was a monotonus job - be they with real planes or just mock tracks -
It seems through listening so far that there was a mixture between mock tracks (possibly the hostiles) and real fighters -And I agree 100% planes within the exercise were Almost 100% not armed - as they had to be landed to arm with 2X2 and ammo in one case i have heard on the NORAD tapes

MCC Op - Mission Crew Commander
MCC TK - Mission Crew Commander
TT Op (x2) - (Tactical Trackers?)
TT TK (x3) - (Tactical Trackers?)
ACWO TK
AST Op
AST TK
SD2 Op
SD2 TK
AICC
Emerg-AICC
ID Op - ID Techs
ID TK - ID Techs
ID2 Op - ID Techs
ID2 TK - ID Techs


ACWO - AirCraft Weapons Officer?
SD - Senior Director
AICC - Air Intercept Control Console?

Can anybody tell me what the terms "Huntress" and "Giant Killer" refer to?


Huntress was NEADS. Giant Killer was the Navy ATC facility controlling the area over the Atlantic. That entire area up and down the coast has numerous Warning Areas and MOA's all owned by the Navy.



The crux of my question is who was talking to the fighters when they were out over the Atlantic, and who directed them there. It is clear that at that moment, a Navy controller was talking to them, but NEADS wasn't. The "I'm gonna choke that guy" conversation with Huckabone demonstrates that:

Quote:
Along with Master Sergeant Steve Citino, another controller who is sitting next to him, Huckabone orders a Navy air traffic controller who is handling the fighters to get them turned around. The Navy controller appears not to understand the urgency of the situation. He responds, “You’ve got [the fighters] moving east in airspace. Now you want ‘em to go to Baltimore?” Huckabone replies yes, and says, “Have him contact us on auxiliary frequency 2-3-4 decimal 6. Instead of taking handoffs to us and us handing ‘em back, just tell Center they’ve got to go to Baltimore.” The Navy controller says, “Stand by. We’ll get back to you.” Citino retorts, “What do you mean, ‘We’ll get back to you’? Just do it!” Huckabone jokes, “I’m gonna choke that guy!”
The Navy controller clearly is talking to the fighters, but he believes it is NEADS who have sent them out east. NEADS is not talking to the fighters, that's why Huckabone gives them the freq to contact them.



Originally Posted by NTSB Report
8:51:42 - United one seventy five recycle your transponder and squawk code of one four seven zero.
8:51:53 - United one seventy five New York.
8:52:09 - United one seventy five do you read New York?
8:52:20 - United, United one seventy five do you read New York?
8:53:52 - United one seventy five New York.
8:54:33 - United one seventy five do you read New York?

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB196/doc03.pdf


t 8:13:47, Boston Center instructed the pilots of Flight 11 to ascend to a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, they never responded to this request. Remember at this point it was just another ordinary day, in fact this was the first indication that something hand happened on board that flight. Boston center then tried repeatedly to contact the aircraft (I've highlighted the voice of Mohammed Atta in bold)…

Originally Posted by NTSB Report
8:13:47 - American eleven climb maintain flight level three five zero.
8:13:57 - American eleven climb maintain flight level three five zero.
8:14:08 - American eleven Boston.
8:14:23 - American eleven Boston.
8:14:33 - American one one uh the American on the frequency how do you hear me?
8:15:15 - American eleven Boston.
8:15:22 - American eleven if you hear Boston center ident.
8:15:49 - American eleven if you hear Boston center ident please or acknowledge.
8:16:32 - American eleven if you hear Boston center ah re-contact Boston Center on one two seven point eight two, that's American eleven on two seven eight two.
8:17:05 - American eleven, American one one Boston.
8:17:56 - American eleven if you hear Boston center ident please.
8:18:56 - American eleven Boston.
8:20:08 - American eleven American one one how do you hear the center?
8:22:27 - American eleven Boston.
8:24:33 - is that American eleven trying to call?.
8:24:36 - **.
8:24:38 - we have some planes. just stay quiet and you'll be okay we are returning to the airport.
8:24:46 - and uh who's trying to call me here?
8:24:53 - American eleven are you trying to call?
8:24:56 - nobody move. everything will be okay. if you try to make and moves, you'll endanger yourself and the airplane. just stay quiet.
8:33:59 - nobody move please we are going back to the airport don't try to make any stupid moves.

FAIRY TALE: *atta is an inject, too!*

After Mohammed Atta accidentally broadcast the message he thought was being aimed at the passengers between 8:24 and 8:25 the Boston center controller realized this was indeed a hijacking.







Airforce Traffic Control = ATC
F16 Figther = F16

ATC = What? A second Hi-jack?
F16 = Thats affermative however not base confirmed
ATC = Now....where did you get that info??
F16 = *Says something I cant hear*
ATC = Is it another airline?
F16 = No sir. Also American Airlines
ATC = Thats does it. I am not flying with them again.



PEOPLE ARE DISCUSSING THE TAPES HERE:
Above Top Secret
godlikeproductions.com
rigorousintuition.ca
politics.be
Democratic Underground
geistig-frei.com
jackbloodforum.com
proxywhore.com
Pilots_For_Truth (subscription only)
seven-forums.com
911movement.org
progressiveindependent.com
conspiracycentral.info
911 LetRoll
offtopic (subscription only)
radioreference.com
illskillz
vigilantguardian.gnn.tv
kaomaris.com
Wingmakers.co.uk
craigslist.org
seven-forums.com







From: Loose Change Forum->General Information->The Lounge

UPDATE: dylan avery Aug 30 2007, 02:44 PM = 19:44 GMT
I'm not sure to be honest. The torrent will be available tonight
...and you can start dling the actual tapes.

UPDATE: dylan avery Aug 30 2007, 02:00 PM = 19:00 GMT
Bonus...if you want to hear the first two hours...tune into Revere Radio Network tonight at 5 PM EST. http://revereradio.net/SITE/Thursday.html

UPDATE 30 August 2007 18:25 GMT (2:25pm New York Time)

18 WAV files, ~180MB each. They're already compressed.

I tried making mp3s out of them and the filesize was exactly the same.
dylan avery Aug 30 2007, 12:50 PM = 17:50 GMT
My seeders are getting set up. The torrent is tracked and ready to go. Give us a few hours and it'll be public.




After Jason talked about 911 conspiracytheories on BBC world-service "haveyoursay" on worldwide (!) shortwave radio (download mp3) , no he now made this announcement:


Bermas: "Today we actually got the NORAD tapes" that no-one has listened to, other than the 911 commission!

According to Bermas, Loose Change has obtained over 100 hours of tapes -- significantly more than the 30 hours that Bronner said he used in writing his article. The tapes obtained by Loose Change consist of 21 audio files of 399 minutes or more per file, allegedly detailing all NORAD communications during 9/11. Bermas said that Loose Change has downloaded the files to another server and will torrent them starting tomorrow--stay tuned to 911blogger and the forum at http://loosechange911.com

TRANSCRIPT of the interview:

Jason: "... Michael Bronner who did that Vanity fair piece ... (Barrett: do you have a national security clearance?) We just kept pushing, they are supposedly public domain, it took us about two months, and finally we received 60 (?) -- 3.76 gigabytes of information -- I think its basically from everybody's phone. I only ave gone through the first hour and a half of one of them. There is literally a 140 hours of material. So what we are doing right now: uploading it to a server, putting it into a torrent and people should watch out for blogger (911blogger.com?) and other places, really serious researchers who can go through that stuff, because I've got through it already and they are already talking about the drills, they are talking about how flight 11, ah, you know, is still around, 20, 40 minutes after it hits the building, you know this is one of te phantom flights. I have Richard Myers before the 911 Commission on the final day saying, yeah they fought many many phantoms that day, and he is sitting next to Eberhardt, and their big claim, its so funny, (?) how Arnold and Myers are all sitting there, their big claim is "oh well, before 9-11 we were looking at outward threats, we weren't looking at anything inward" Now, on June first and second of 2001, they ran a drill called Amalgam Virgo, where a hijacked aircraft from Alaska comes in and hits the Capitol Building, suicide hijacking, and Eberhardt is in this document and his face is in it and there is a message to all those running the drill, so he knows damn well that he is a liar. And the funnier thing is, on the cover is Osama Bin Laden. So they are running a drill with a hijack scenario with Ben Ladin on the cover of the thing, you know, I can't wait to show the final cut to people, because it has so much information that even the movement doesn't talk about.

It's happening."

"I think this is a damn input, to be honest."


Download the Audio Files:

only just over 1mB each!

http://files-upload.com/files/468251/Jason-Bermas_1---1848-1-20070829-20070828_Tue_Barrett2_51m51s.mp3

http://files-upload.com/files/468260/Jason-Bermas_2---1848-1-20070829-20070828_Tue_Barrett2_51m51s.mp3


After I posted the message above on the Loose Change forum, (deadLink) it started to make the rounds but was deleted from LC forums in under 5 minutes flat. My IP and one public-proxy-IP is now banned, my message and my account deleted.
What zealotry! I wonder what their problem is. Maybe they think I am a "disinfo agent".

Anyway, lets forget the children's attitudes, let's have some more facts:

WTC7 : two people that were on TV that day, they said that they were blown up inside Building 7. They were in the stairwell and when they reached the 8th floor suddenly the landing gave way from an explosion underneath them. They were trapped on the 8th floor. One of them was Michael Hess the other Barry Jennings. (CONTINUED further BELOW)

John Schroeder (see below) who was basically the guy who called in the first plan, he went into the first tower that was hit. He says he was in there 5 minutes and all of a sudden the elevators exploded. He said they found a dead body that appeared to be someone that was murdered in the closet. He said they witnessed explosions that threw them around like ping-pong balls after they heard another plane was coming in .. opposite tower... we know the subway blew up, William Rodriguez' testimony is backed up by people like Marlene Cruz and others:

YouTube - Carpenter Marlene Cruz Proves Explosives in ...

On 9/12/2001, Peter Jennings interviews Marlene Cruz, a ...
[Image]Watch video - 5 min - Rated 4.6 out of 5.0
www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6539gNHXTU


Overwhelming evidence exists that the collapses of the Twin Towers and
Building 7 were instances of controlled demolition, and/or of the
application of exotic weapons such as land-based, air-based or possible
space-based Directed Energy Weapons (DEW). But al-Qaeda operatives
could not have obtained the needed access to the buildings to plant the
explosives and would not have ensured that the buildings come straight
down. Nor could al-Qaeda operatives have obtained command and control
of advanced Directed Energy Weapons, Microfusion devices (4th
generation mini-nuclear weapons), bunker-busters, or other exotic
weapons alternatives that are known to be in the deployment or testing
phase in the US Defense arsenal...

Exercise Vigilant Shield '08 slated for October




YouTube - WTC Basement Explosions (Part 2)

Carpenter Marlene Cruz Survives Explosions in WTC Basement 05 ...
[Image]Watch video - 2 min 2 sec - Rated 4.1 out of 5.0
www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Lhq02g3UU

more: http://www.google.com/search?q=marlene+%22william+rodriguez%22+wtc

.. we know the lobby was blown up, Brian Reeves ... the parking garage was completely destroyed. They found molten metal in Bulding 6.





Download the Audio Files:
only just over 1mB each!

http://files-upload.com/files/468251/Jason-Bermas_1---1848-1-20070829-20070828_Tue_Barrett2_51m51s.mp3

http://files-upload.com/files/468260/Jason-Bermas_2---1848-1-20070829-20070828_Tue_Barrett2_51m51s.mp3

Jason Bermas from LosseChange911.com got a 20 minute interview with Barry Jennings.
Barry does not want Loose Change to use the interview now. Barry has seen Loose Change and he showed it to people in his office. He know it was bombs, he went to the 911 commission, but he is only 2 years away from retirement and is afraid to loose his pension.
Kevin Ryan was fired, too.

We are Change events New York City 6th

Loose Change Final Cut will premiere in New York City

Big demonstration on the 6. anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities? Not sure if actually AT Ground Zero or a Block away.
Alex Jones ENDGAME where is the download?
First Responders Feelgood Foundation Become the media! Student Scholar for 911 truth get press credentials - Justin Martell - Campus Activism back in fashion




MICHAEL HESS and BARRY JENNINGS (Continued)

In Barry's own voice, Audio Clip
http://prisonplanet.com/audio/190607clips2.mp3

http://noonehastodie.blogspot.com/2007/06/jason-bermas-reveals-his-own-wtc-7.html
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=barry_jennings_1

With the collapse of the two towers, a New York City employee and a WTC 7 building staff person became trapped inside of WTC 7. The two had gone to the OEM center on the 23rd floor and found no one there. As they went to get into an elevator to go downstairs the lights inside of WTC 7 flickered as WTC 2 collapsed. At this point, the elevator they were attempting to catch no longer worked, so the started down the staircase. When they got to the 6th floor, WTC 1 collapsed, the lights wen out in the staircase, the sprinklers came on briefly, and the staircase filled with smoke and debris. The two men went back to the 8th floor, broke out a window, and called for help. Firefighters on the ground saw them and went up the stairs. In addition, a security guard for one of the businesses in the building was also trapped on the 7th floor by the smoke in the stairway. As the firefighters went up, they vented the staircase and cleared some of the smoke. They first met the security officer on the 7th floor and firefighters escorted him down the stairs. Other firefighters from the group continued up the stairs, shined their flashlight through the staircase smoke, and called out. The two trapped men on the 8th floor saw the flashlight beam and heard the firefighters calling and went down the stairs. The firefighters took the men outside and directed them away from the building.


... they are both credible witnesses, in that they would have no reason to lie. There were definitely explosions prior to the demolition.

"After the initial blast, Housing Authority worker Barry Jennings, 46, reported to a command center on the 23rd floor of 7 World Trade Center. He was with Michael Hess, the city's corporation counsel, when they felt and heard another explosion. First calling for help, they scrambled downstairs to the lobby, or what was left of it. "I looked around, the lobby was gone. It looked like hell," Jennings said."
http://www.record-eagle.com/2001/sep/11scene.htm


this must have been what caused the damaged seen on the lower floors
From 911 research:

Michael Hess, the senior managing director of Giuliani Partners,
Age 46 on 9-11-1, Housing authority worker, reported in to the command center on 23rd floor of WTC building 7 on 9-11-1.
Note: WTC building 7 was evacuated at around 9:00 a.m. on 9-11-1 (while the tower 2 occupants were being told to return to their desks),

911research.wtc7.net/wtc/attack/wtc7.html
Thus, Barry Jennings’ observation of „another explosion” that devastated the lobby of building was occurred after the 8:46 a.m. initial explosion (impact of the flying object into north wall of north tower) and the evacuation of building 7 around 9:00 a.m.

www.poconorecord.com/report/wtc/1.htm

Barry Jennings, a city employee on the 23rd floor told WABC-TV, "We're dead. I thought I was going to die. I was thinking about my sons, my wife. I started praying."

and this was in building 7!

An unidentified eyewitness told WABC-TV, "I was in the building waiting for an elevator. I felt the explosion. A few seconds later the elevator door opened and the person inside was on fire."
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200109\NAT20010911q.html&PHPSESSID=252b38c2d740adf2258d4fff02862b06]

After the initial blast, Housing Authority worker Barry Jennings, 46, reported to a command center on the 23rd floor of 7 World Trade Center. He was with Michael Hess, the city's corporation counsel, when they felt and heard another explosion. First calling for help, they scrambled downstairs to the lobby, or what was left of it. "I looked around, the lobby was gone. It looked like hell," Jennings said.

http://www.jacksonsun.com/news.....cene.shtml
original at:
http://www.lifegoeson.net/InTruth/towr01.htm


http://www.nineeleven.co.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=9933&view=previous&sid=e0b2d1bb89945d08f3633f357d94f548

During their GCN show yesterday
http://69.80.230.7/Archives2/Jun2007/gwrpt1erT/0619071.mp3
Loose Change crew Dylan Avery and Jason Burmas talked about the city official who has told them that he saw explosions inside the WTC 7 long before either of the two towers collapsed. As these explosions could not have resulted from any damage to the building (none had yet been damaged because neither the South Tower nor the North Tower had yet collapsed - indeed, the second plane had not even hit the South Tower when the official witnessed the explosions in WTC 7), they must have been due to bombs, thus proving conspiracy and disproving the official story of 9/11. He also claims to have seen some bodies in the building guarded by police when he arrived there with a city official, who was looking for Mayor Rudy Giuliani (he had already left).

They have agreed with him to keep his name secret until his testimony appears on their new film Loose Change - the Final Cut. But Jason let slip his Christian name during his response to a caller to the show. This enabled his identification as Barry Jennings at the Screw Loose Change website blog
http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/
As a result, some 9/11 forums are now discussing the issues surrounding Jennings' explosive claims. The cat is out of the bag.
Details about this City Housing Authority worker are at:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=barry_jennings_1
The man was named at Alex Jones' PrisonPlanet website on April 30 this year:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2007/300407wtc7explosions.ht m
So Jennings has already 'gone public', so to speak, being quoted in the following press article:
"After the initial blast, Housing Authority worker Barry Jennings, 46, reported to a command center on the 23rd floor of 7 World Trade Center. He was with Michael Hess, the city's corporation counsel, when they felt and heard another explosion. First calling for help, they scrambled downstairs to the lobby, or what was left of it. "I looked around, the lobby was gone. It looked like hell," Jennings said."
http://www.record-eagle.com/2001/sep/11scene.htm

Furthermore, Jennings is interviewed on TV on 9/11 about the explosions in WTC 7, starting about 3m15s into the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IqSsTmWv7k&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fscrewloos echange%2Eblogspot%2Ecom%2F

If Jennings has anything to worry about, it is not that he is fearing the possible repercussions of whistleblowing for the first time, for he has already spoken publicly about his experiences, which contradict the official story of 9/11 (in particular what happened to WTC 7). It is that he has agreed to be included in Avery's film among the witnesses to explosions prior to the collapse of the twin towers.

http://noonehastodie.blogspot.com/2007/06/jason-bermas-reveals-his-own -wtc-7.html

Watch the first video clip...this is huge news!

6.21.2007
Barry Jennings: World Trade Center 7

Yesterday, The Alex Jones Radio Show had Jason Bermas back on to go over the latest news about World Trade Center Tower 7. Although Bermas slipped and said his first name on national radio, (with an international Internet audience) he is still refusing to confirm the identity of his source, or release the full 20 minute interview (until the unscheduled release of the Final Cut). Some people do not believe a movie release date is the proper timetable for truth. It is clear that the man on the tape is Barry Jennings, Deputy Director, Emergency Services Department, New York City Housing Authority. Mr. Jennings has already gone on the record. On 911 he was on the news covered with debris, like many survivors seen on television that day. Barry Jennings has put his full story on the record with Loose Change, and wanted to remain anonymous until the movie is released. If Jason Bermas had not said his name, that may have been possible, but that is no longer the case.

On the morning of 911 Barry Jennings with Mr. Hess, one of Rudy Giuliani's highest ranking appointed officials, New York city's corporation counsel, (Hess is a Yale and Harvard graduate, a lawyer who has represented the United States in numerous major cases).

It was just after the first attack on the North tower, but before the second plane hit the South Tower, when Barry Jennings escorted Michael Hess to the World Trade Center Tower 7. Mr. Jennings recalls a large number of police officers in the lobby of WTC 7 when they arrived. The two men went up to the 23rd floor, but could not get in, so they went back to the lobby and the police took them up in the freight elevator for a second try. When they arrived on level 23, at the Office of Emergency Management they found it had been recently deserted, "coffee that was on the desk, smoke was still coming off the coffee, I saw half eaten sandwiches".
At that point he made some phone calls, and an un-named individual told them to "leave, and leave right away". Jennings and Hess then proceeded to the stairs, and made it to level 6, when there was an explosion, and the stairwell collapsed from under their feet, Mr. Jennings was actually hanging, and had to climb back up. They made it back up to level 8, where Barry Jennings had a view of the twin towers, both buildings were still standing. This is an important detail, as many debunkers have used Mr. Jennings statements out of context to claim the damage came to WTC 7 from the towers collapsing, not the case according, to Mr. Jennings.

The interview has been cut off where they say how they made it to the lobby, but when they did make it down, Mr. Jennings found it destroyed and littered with dead bodies. He said it looked like, "King Kong had came through it and stepped on it, so destroyed, I didn't know where I was. So destroyed that they had to take me out through a hole in the wall, that I believe the fire department made to get me out." Shortly after he made it out, he was seen on several news channels telling his story.

Mr. Jennings is still confused as to why Building 7 had to come down at all, and does not accept the official reason that the noises he heard were from a fuel oil tank, "I know what I heard, I heard explosions". Michael Hess has not made any public statements about that morning with Barry Jennings, perhaps we can call on wearechange.org to document Michael Hess's account of the events on 911.

Since September 12 2001, there has been growing controversy surrounding World Trade Center 7. In the past few months more people are questioning the governments explanation, and the Main Stream Media's failure to ask important questions. In February the BBC's live report from 911 saying that WTC 7 collapsed a half an hour before the collapse had occurred was completely ignored by the MSM. Around the same time Rosie O'Donnell pushed her 30 million viewers to Google WTC 7. Now Loose Change has captured a 20 minute long interview with a completely credible source, this is huge news, and hopefully they will feel compelled to release some more of the interview. Alex Jones is the executive producer of the latest edition of Loose Change, thus disabling his ability to speak freely about the issue. Hopefully this and other reports will help get Barry Jennings to come out to the public as soon as possible.


Interview with John Schroeder

Interview with John Schroeder. 47 min - Aug 7, 2007. video ...
[Image]Watch video - 47 min - Rated 4.8 out of 5.0
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=53815767687186956

9/11 Firefighter Sets the Historical Record Straight

By Manny Badillo, Victim’s Family Member, August 7th, 2007

BROOKLYN, N.Y. - Firefighter John Schroeder, assigned to Engine Company 10 directly across the street from the World Trade Center complex, holds back tears and describes his first-hand experience on Sept. 11th. His story directly contradicts many aspect of the National Commission on Terrorist attacks though corroborates many other eyewitness testimony.

“Standing outside the firehouse with my buddies, we were talking about how beautiful the day was. Then just like that, our lives changed forever. Some of those guys I would never see again.”

In this exclusive interview, Firefighter Schroeder recollects in great detail how he was one of the first firefighters to rush to the complex. “We first assembled on West Street, where we saw someone burnt beyond recognition. We were like ‘What is going on here?’ and then went straight into the Marriot building” From there, Firefighter Schroeder made his way to the lobby of the North Tower. “It looked like a bomb went off, and we started making our way up the stairs to rescue as many people as we could.”

As they were making there way up the floors, Firefighter Schroeder heard a huge explosion. “The elevators just blew right out. We couldn’t believe it. The plane hits 80 floors up but the elevators explode at least five minutes later? It was unreal.”

Firefighter Schroeder made it all the way up to the 23rd floor before barely hearing on the failing radios that another plane was coming in. That plane would hit the South Tower though for some reason “We were tossed like a rag doll by another explosion in our building. People were making there way down the stairwells burnt like you couldn’t believe. We were all shocked because it seemed as if there was fire everywhere, on so many floors. It just didn’t make sense”.

The stairwells were black, and at that point, firefighters were making the decision to head back down stairs. In making there way down to the third floor, they were not able to find an exit. “The lobby was like a war zone. We could not find our way out. Then, all of a sudden, one of the maintenance workers had a key that opened a back door that got us out of there. He saved my life.” That worker was Willie Rodriguez. “I want to thank him from the bottom of my heart.

Firefighter Schroeder today has lost 40% of his lung capacity. “We haven’t been treated properly at all. From the day of the attack, our physical and mental health has deteriorated and it seems as if no one cares. To lose friends, to have to recover their bodies in the days after, to be offered no protections against that horrific-smelling dust that was everywhere even though the government said the air was OK to breathe is just not right.” Some of Firefighter’s Schroeder’s best friends have gotten out of the FDNY altogether while others accepted money and trips to help. “I stayed right here and did the right thing and now it feels as if I’m suffering the most. Where is our government to help the one’s with the toughest jobs on that day and the days after?”

John Schroeder, we want to thank you for being as brave as your job requires in speaking out about your experiences on Sept/ 11th. You have set the historical record straight by explaining your story. This Nation is forever greatful to you as your account will help to save and protect many more lives.

Today, tens of thousands of such 9/11 first responders are in dire need of medical care due to the environmental conditions after the 3 towers imploded at Ground Zero. Diagnosed with cancers and debilitating respiratory illnesses, these true American heroes have been denied the financial benefits required to save their lives. While suffering and deteriorating, their health crisis has been ignored by state and federal policy. Many have already died.

Composed of family members, friends and fellow Americans of individuals who perished on that fateful day, We are Change will fight to raise awareness and consciousness to the first responder's illnesses and hardships. We are determined to put a face to the thousands of forgotten victims of the 9/11 attacks 6 years later.

We Are CHANGE version




http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7471885217846396761


Loose Change Version


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=53815767687186956&hl=en


RSVP Today for the 9/11 First Responder Fundraiser in NYC on 09/11/2007.
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posted by u2r2h at 2:35 PM 2 comments

Monday, August 27, 2007

Download mp3 of 911 conspiracy talk on BBC World

(My comment posted to BBC worldhaveyoursay WHYS website:)

The rabbit hole is much deeper than most of you can even begin to imagine.

State Terror is a historical universal, and yes, the 7. July 2005 London bombings were another atrocity for political gain, committed by the "state within the state". (google peter power bbc and disillusion yourself).

The 911 attacks were far more sophisticated state-terror, many years in the planning. The use of covert weaponry was central to the deception (think laser).

The magnitude of the crime was part of the psychological operation in two respects: First, people will simply not believe their government would do this, and second, the effect will be long-lasting enough for the angel to ride the whirlwind and direct the storm (google it! Bush inaugural address!).

Of course everyone wants to know how exactly it was done. There are scruffy 911 truth researchers who have narrowed it down (google NICO HAUPT).

The most startling statement that I can do here will catapult me firmly into the loony-bin, but it is true:

No 767 boeing aircraft flew into the towers. That's right, it was a TV trick. Remember that jetliner melting into the tower? (google Hezarkhani CNN) Aluminium vs Steel, but no deformation, no bursting, just melting? (for more, watch SEPTEMBER CLUES).

I wish you luck and logic


On Monday 27 August 2007, 13:30 - 14:00 EDT
(and repeated
Jason Bermas and Dave von Kleist on aired 911 truth to an audience of millions!
BBC World Service Radio world wide shortwave broadcast and is rebroadcast by many stations!

Download the mp3 audio!!

http://u2r2h.files-upload.com/ 6 megabytes
or
http://files-upload.com/files/463119/bbc27aug2007--14hEDT--911-conspiracy-theories.mp3
*same file, direct link*
or
the BBC podcast (skip the talk about greek forest burnings):
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/whys/whys_20070827-1930.mp3



BBC worldhaveyoursay web pages with load of comments is HERE.
and HERE is another with only a few comments.


BBC World service is listened to by millions around the globe. Today they all were exposed to the debate about WHAT HAPPENED on 11. September 2001 in New York. Listen for yourself, download the 6mB mp3 file.

Loose Change

Loose Change 2nd Edition Recut

Loose Change 2nd Edition. Full length video by Dylan Avery ...
89 min - Rated 4.6 out of 5.0
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7866929448192753501

Jason Bermas is a graphic designer and producer of Loose Change located in Oneonta, New York. Jason Bermas also hosts his own Talk Radio Program on the GCN network Tuesday and Wednesday evenings from 8-10 pm Eastern. Aside from film making he is an activist who has demanded a new independent investigation into 9/11


YouTube - 9/11 ripple effect

9/11 was an inside job. ... Add Video to QuickList. 911 ...
10 min - Rated 4.8 out of 5.0
www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7WWgnQ-9iU


YouTube - 911 Ripple Effect - Part 7 of 9 - Dave von ...

This is a video response to 911 Ripple Effect - Part 6 of 9 ...
10 min - Rated 5.0 out of 5.0
www.youtube.com/watch?v=F93OL5vRVwY


More (better!) Dave vonKleist video links:
9/11 Ripples - The follow-up of In Plane Site
In Plane Site Director's Cut


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posted by u2r2h at 11:11 AM 2 comments

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

911 conspiracy theories challenge "america"

Americans love a good conspiracy theory. JFK, Roswell and CIA "black ops" have become a unique part of our culture, spawning countless movies and books that straddle various degrees of reality. They are the guilty pleasures of our country; dust gathering in the corner of the room that, for several reasons, we refuse to sweep.

However, there is one theory that is not so innocuous. It has become so controversial and taboo that we have created a new cliché to deal with it.

There are now three things you don't speak about at the dinner table: religion, politics and 9/11.

One can scarcely find a subject that causes more screaming matches than "direct-to-Internet" movies like "9/11 Mysteries", "Loose Change" and "Painful Deceptions". The directors of these films are occasionally spotlighted on major news networks, and often find themselves under intense scrutiny or denounced as unpatriotic fools. President Bush, himself, accused conspiracy theorists of creating "malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorist themselves; away from the guilty."

So what keeps these "nut jobs" going? How do these independent documentaries continue to appear?

Quite simply, because they are speaking to a rather large audience. According to a Zogby poll from last May, 42 percent of Americans believe the government took part in some kind of cover up involving the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Considering the president's dramatically low job approval rating, and the previously mentioned documentary "Loose Change" having been downloaded more than 10 million times, it's clear whom the U.S. is listening to.

How, then, are we to interpret this? What cultural and political factors have led to nearly half of us believing the federal government is sponsoring acts of terrorism against its own citizens? The answers are, just as anything else in this world, incredibly complex.

And that is what has been forgotten. We have been too quick to our individual conclusions, ignoring what we know to be true: theories about 9/11 and other tragedies occur because of one, and every reason conceivable.

Are Americans who believe or make these films searching for a fantasy to escape this reality? Of course they are.

Has the government ever planned an attack against U.S. citizens in order to bolster support for a war? Yes. A 1962 proposal from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was presented to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and President John F. Kennedy suggesting the CIA, in order to blame Cuban nationalists and initiate conflict, start "terror campaigns" in Washington D.C. and Miami.

Will conspiracy theorists ever be completely satisfied with any explanation of Sept. 11? No, but when such a large percentage of Americans believe internet banter over their government, it is needless to say we have bigger problems to worry about. Particularly the lack of faith in our elected representatives, and their blatant incompetence - factors that largely contribute to a national mood that nurtures conspiracy theories against its own government.

The late John Roberts, an Oxford historian, suggested that during periods of rapid social and economic change, it is comforting to ascribe complicated issues to hidden forces bent on disrupting the status quo. To an extent, this is completely and disturbingly true.

However, with so many Americans unsure about their government's involvement in 9/11, it is not healthy for us to ignore millions of people who believe these heavy allegations
http://media.www.siude.com/media/storage/paper1096/news/2007/08/22/Columns/911-Documentaries.Challenge.America-2933692.shtml

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posted by u2r2h at 11:28 PM 0 comments

IRAQ history repeating

22 August, 1920
A Report on Mesopotamia by T.E. Lawrence


Ex.-Lieut.-Col. T.E. Lawrence,
The Sunday Times, 22 August 1920

[Mr. Lawrence, whose organization and direction of the Hedjaz against the Turks was one of the outstanding romances of the war, has written this article at our request in order that the public may be fully informed of our Mesopotamian commitments.]

The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster.

The sins of commission are those of the British civil authorities in Mesopotamia (especially of three 'colonels') who were given a free hand by London. They are controlled from no Department of State, but from the empty space which divides the Foreign Office from te India Office. They availed themselves of the necessary discretion of war-time to carry over their dangerous independence into times of peace. They contest every suggestion of real self- government sent them from home. A recent proclamation about autonomy circulated with unction from Baghdad was drafted and published out there in a hurry, to forestall a more liberal statement in preparation in London, 'Self-determination papers' favourable to England were extorted in Mesopotamia in 1919 by official pressure, by aeroplane demonstrations, by deportations to India.

The Cabinet cannot disclaim all responsibility. They receive little more news than the public: they should have insisted on more, and better. they have sent draft after draft of reinforcements, without enquiry. When conditions became too bad to endure longer, they decided to send out as High commissioner the original author of the present system, with a conciliatory message to the Arabs that his heart and policy have completely changed.*

Yet our published policy has not changed, and does not need changing. It is that there has been a deplorable contrast between our profession and our practice. We said we went to Mesopotamia to defeat Turkey. We said we stayed to deliver the Arabs from the oppression of the Turkish Government, and to make available for the world its resources of corn and oil. We spent nearly a million men and nearly a thousand million of money to these ends. This year we are spending ninety-two thousand men and fifty millions of money on the same objects.

Our government is worse than the old Turkish system. They kept fourteen thousand local conscripts embodied, and killed a yearly average of two hundred Arabs in maintaining peace. We keep ninety thousand men, with aeroplanes, armoured cars, gunboats, and armoured trains. We have killed about ten thousand Arabs in this rising this summer. We cannot hope to maintain such an average: it is a poor country, sparsely peopled; but Abd el Hamid would applaud his masters, if he saw us working. We are told the object of the rising was political, we are not told what the local people want. It may be what the Cabinet has promised them. A Minister in the House of Lords said that we must have so many troops because the local people will not enlist. On Friday the Government announce the death of some local levies defending their British officers, and say that the services of these men have not yet been sufficiently recognized because they are too few (adding the characteristic Baghdad touch that they are men of bad character). There are seven thousand of them, just half the old Turkish force of occupation. Properly officered and distributed, they would relieve half our army there. Cromer controlled Egypt's six million people with five thousand British troops; Colonel Wilson fails to control Mesopotamia's three million people with ninety thousand troops.

We have not reached the limit of our military commitments. Four weeks ago the staff in Mesopotamia drew up a memorandum asking for four more divisions. I believe it was forwarded to the War Office, which has now sent three brigades from India. If the North-West Frontier cannot be further denuded, where is the balance to come from? Meanwhile, our unfortunate troops, Indian and British, under hard conditions of climate and supply, are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the wilfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad. General Dyer was relieved of his command in India for a much smaller error, but the responsibility in this case is not on the Army, which has acted only at the request of the civil authorities. The War Office has made every effort to reduce our forces, but the decisions of the Cabinet have been against them.

The Government in Baghdad have been hanging Arabs in that town for political offences, which they call rebellion. The Arabs are not at war with us. Are these illegal executions to provoke the Arabs to reprisals on the three hundred British prisoners they hold? And, if so, is it that their punishment may be more severe, or is it to persuade our other troops to fight to the last?

We say we are in Mesopotamia to develop it for the benefit of the world. all experts say that the labour supply is the ruling factor in its development. How far will the killing of ten thousand villagers and townspeople this summer hinder the production of wheat, cotton, and oil? How long will we permit millions of pounds, thousands of Imperial troops, and tens of thousands of Arabs to be sacrificed on behalf of colonial administration which can benefit nobody but its administrators?


*Sir Percy Cox was to return as High Commissioner in October, 1920 to form a provisional Government.


Return to World War I Document Archive

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posted by u2r2h at 5:26 PM 0 comments

Monday, August 20, 2007

Michael Parenti - Lies, War, and Empire (video, youtube, MUST SEE)

To jump to the Harold Pinter Speech, CLICK HERE



Download video with KeepVid.com or install the DOWNLOAD HELPER in Firefox browser (Tools - add-ons - Get Extensions - search: "download helper" - install - restart - reload this page - play the video - click on the little triangle next to the roating three-ball-nucleus - save - enjoy!)



Lies, War, and Empire - Part I
http://www.youtube.com/v/CZTrY3TQpzw



Lies, War, and Empire - Part II
http://www.youtube.com/v/oaTPDFsDdIk
talk by Dr. Michael Parenti on "Lies, War, and Empire" given May 12, 2007 at Antioch University in Seattle (more)


He puts it rather bluntly:
Watch it you morons in the US, it's good for you to know what kinda of shit you are being fed orally and rectally by your elected government.
Permalink Dan Denman August 17th, 2007 9:03pm
from: http://www.crazyontap.com/topic.php?TopicId=21890







US americans have been so misinformed about the EU, it's not funny.

Quickly a few points:
  • The EU started from a steel-merger between france and germany. The purpose was to prevent any future war. If you have the enemy sittiing in your steel-companies you cannot have a secret armament programme. War is prevented.
  • The EU is wonderful for its citizens. It regulates the private-undemocratic corporations and fines them.
  • Having socialists in parliament often stops state-crimes.
The phantasmorgic North American Union is nothing of the sort. There will be no parliament. USA will not provide Mexico with information about its secret operations, there will be no laws controlling the companies ...

Countries are not independent. sovereignty is a myth anyway.

US/UK foreign policy is a criminal racket, the EU has laws that are enforced.
Tony Blair will be indicted, you'll see.

If you haven't yet, listen to the Harold Pinter Nobel Speech...
Download it here: http://www.greylodge.org/gpc/?p=306
This speech is the truth. US-americans have a hard time facing it. You'll know what I mean when you hear it.
You will be like the Russian Friends of Parenti in the video above!!

Nobel Lecture

Art, Truth & Politics

In 1958 I wrote the following:

'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.'

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.

Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word or an image. The given word is often shortly followed by the image. I shall give two examples of two lines which came right out of the blue into my head, followed by an image, followed by me.

The plays are The Homecoming and Old Times. The first line of The Homecoming is 'What have you done with the scissors?' The first line of Old Times is 'Dark.'

In each case I had no further information.

In the first case someone was obviously looking for a pair of scissors and was demanding their whereabouts of someone else he suspected had probably stolen them. But I somehow knew that the person addressed didn't give a damn about the scissors or about the questioner either, for that matter.

'Dark' I took to be a description of someone's hair, the hair of a woman, and was the answer to a question. In each case I found myself compelled to pursue the matter. This happened visually, a very slow fade, through shadow into light.

I always start a play by calling the characters A, B and C.

In the play that became The Homecoming I saw a man enter a stark room and ask his question of a younger man sitting on an ugly sofa reading a racing paper. I somehow suspected that A was a father and that B was his son, but I had no proof. This was however confirmed a short time later when B (later to become Lenny) says to A (later to become Max), 'Dad, do you mind if I change the subject? I want to ask you something. The dinner we had before, what was the name of it? What do you call it? Why don't you buy a dog? You're a dog cook. Honest. You think you're cooking for a lot of dogs.' So since B calls A 'Dad' it seemed to me reasonable to assume that they were father and son. A was also clearly the cook and his cooking did not seem to be held in high regard. Did this mean that there was no mother? I didn't know. But, as I told myself at the time, our beginnings never know our ends.

'Dark.' A large window. Evening sky. A man, A (later to become Deeley), and a woman, B (later to become Kate), sitting with drinks. 'Fat or thin?' the man asks. Who are they talking about? But I then see, standing at the window, a woman, C (later to become Anna), in another condition of light, her back to them, her hair dark.

It's a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche. The author's position is an odd one. In a sense he is not welcomed by the characters. The characters resist him, they are not easy to live with, they are impossible to define. You certainly can't dictate to them. To a certain extent you play a never-ending game with them, cat and mouse, blind man's buff, hide and seek. But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort.

So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time.

But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot.

Political theatre presents an entirely different set of problems. Sermonising has to be avoided at all cost. Objectivity is essential. The characters must be allowed to breathe their own air. The author cannot confine and constrict them to satisfy his own taste or disposition or prejudice. He must be prepared to approach them from a variety of angles, from a full and uninhibited range of perspectives, take them by surprise, perhaps, occasionally, but nevertheless give them the freedom to go which way they will. This does not always work. And political satire, of course, adheres to none of these precepts, in fact does precisely the opposite, which is its proper function.

In my play The Birthday Party I think I allow a whole range of options to operate in a dense forest of possibility before finally focussing on an act of subjugation.

Mountain Language pretends to no such range of operation. It remains brutal, short and ugly. But the soldiers in the play do get some fun out of it. One sometimes forgets that torturers become easily bored. They need a bit of a laugh to keep their spirits up. This has been confirmed of course by the events at Abu Ghraib in Baghdad. Mountain Language lasts only 20 minutes, but it could go on for hour after hour, on and on and on, the same pattern repeated over and over again, on and on, hour after hour.

Ashes to Ashes, on the other hand, seems to me to be taking place under water. A drowning woman, her hand reaching up through the waves, dropping down out of sight, reaching for others, but finding nobody there, either above or under the water, finding only shadows, reflections, floating; the woman a lost figure in a drowning landscape, a woman unable to escape the doom that seemed to belong only to others.

But as they died, she must die too.

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past, by which I mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. I believe it is obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some kind of even limited scrutiny, which is all that time will allow here.

Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.

The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a potent example of America's view of its role in the world, both then and now.

I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s.

The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: 'Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity.'

Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravity. 'Father,' he said, 'let me tell you something. In war, innocent people always suffer.' There was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did not flinch.

Innocent people, indeed, always suffer.

Finally somebody said: 'But in this case "innocent people" were the victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidised by your government, one among many. If Congress allows the Contras more money further atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the case? Is your government not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign state?'

Seitz was imperturbable. 'I don't agree that the facts as presented support your assertions,' he said.

As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he enjoyed my plays. I did not reply.

I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the following statement: 'The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.'

The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.

The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilised. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.

The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighbouring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.

I spoke earlier about 'a tapestry of lies' which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a 'totalitarian dungeon'. This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships.

Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. 'Democracy' had prevailed.

But this 'policy' was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.

The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.'

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.

The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.

What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days - conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the 'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally - a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anaesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticise our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You're either with us or against us. So Blair shuts up.

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading - as a last resort - all other justifications having failed to justify themselves - as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'.

How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if they're interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London.

Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don't exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. 'We don't do body counts,' said the American general Tommy Franks.

Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. 'A grateful child,' said the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the only survivor. 'When do I get my arms back?' he asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn't holding him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when you're making a sincere speech on television.

The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm's way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves.

Here is an extract from a poem by Pablo Neruda, 'I'm Explaining a Few Things':

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate.

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives.

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land.

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets!*

Let me make it quite clear that in quoting from Neruda's poem I am in no way comparing Republican Spain to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. I quote Neruda because nowhere in contemporary poetry have I read such a powerful visceral description of the bombing of civilians.

I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.

The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they got there but they are there all right.

The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity - the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons - is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.

Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government's actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force - yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.

I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man's man.

'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'

A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection - unless you lie - in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.

I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I shall now quote a poem of my own called 'Death'.

Where was the dead body found?
Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?

Who was the dead body?

Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?

Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?

Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?

What made you declare the dead body dead?
Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the dead body was dead?

Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror - for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man.


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posted by u2r2h at 5:34 PM 0 comments