This blows a large hole in Twitter's credibility -such as it now, following repeated questionable suspensions of leading users critical of the official media and government narratives.
Britain's 77 Army Brigade was set up just 4 years ago in 2015 to conduct psychological warfare operations. It's emphasis is conducting psywar ops against ordinary mugs like us on social media sites.
Just off to the soup-kitchen for a game of tennis --- because I want to have a "healthy corporate social" 'responsibility' to remain "open, neutral and rigorously independent platform" guy.
See ya later!
Quote:
Twitter Suspends Accounts For Propaganda, Has Literal Propagandist As High-Level Executive
Middle East Eyes Ian Cobain has published an exclusive titled "Twitter executive for Middle East is British Army psyops' soldier", exposing the fact that Twitter's senior editorial executive for Europe, the Middle East and Africa also works for an actual, literal propaganda unit in the British military called the 77th Brigade. Which is mighty interesting, considering the fact that Twitter constantly suspends accounts from non-empire-aligned nations based on the allegation that they are engaging in propaganda. "The senior Twitter executive with editorial responsibility for the Middle East is also a part-time officer in the British Army's psychological warfare unit," Cobain writes. "Gordon MacMillan, who joined the social media company's UK office six years ago, has for several years also served with the 77th Brigade, a unit formed in 2015 in order to develop non-lethal' ways of waging war. The 77th Brigade uses social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, as well as podcasts, data analysis and audience research to wage what the head of the UK military, General Nick Carter, describes as information warfare'."
EXCLUSIVE: Twitter executive for Middle East is British Army 'psyops' soldier
Head of editorial for MENA is part-time officer in the 77th Brigade, an 'information warfare' unit which has worked on 'behavioural change' projects in the region middleeasteye.net
MacMillan's presence in a government psyops unit was not a secret; until Middle East Eye began raising questions on the matter, it was right there on his LinkedIn profile. This is not something that anyone considering him for promotion was likely to have been unaware of. According to his (now-edited) LinkedIn page, MacMillan has been in his current position as Head of Editorial EMEA since July 2016. According to Middle East Eye, MacMillan was already a captain in the 77th Brigade by the end of 2016. His current rank there is being hidden behind a wall of government secrecy. When questioned by Middle East Eye about MacMillan's work in the British Army's online propaganda program, Twitter hilariously responded, "Twitter is an open, neutral and rigorously independent platform. We actively encourage all our employees to pursue external interests in line with our commitment to healthy corporate social responsibility, and we will continue to do so." That's very nice of Twitter, isn't it? They encourage their employees to pursue wholesome external interests, whether that be tennis, volunteering at a soup kitchen, or moonlighting at a military program explicitly devoted to online psychological warfare. You know, just everyday socially responsible pastime stuff. The fact that Twitter not only employs known propagandists but actively promotes them to executive positions is a very large and inconvenient plot hole in their "open, neutral and rigorously independent platform" story. Especially since, as I documented recently, the mass purges of foreign Twitter accounts we've been seeing more and more of lately always exclusively target governments and groups which are not in alignment with the interests of the US-centralized power alliance of which the UK is a part. We've seen mass suspensions of accounts from Cuba, China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and the Catalan independence movement on allegations of "coordinated influence operations" and "covert, manipulative behaviors", yet Twitter currently employs a high-level executive for whom coordinated influence operations and covert, manipulative behaviors on behalf of the British government are a known vocation. "On September 20 Twitter deleted a large number of accounts, including in MacMillan's area of responsibility. How many of those were designated by the British state?" asks Moon of Alabama of this new report. How many indeed?
This is just one more item on the ever-growing mountain of evidence that these giant, immensely influential social media platforms we've all been herded into are nothing other than state propaganda for the digital age. True, they operate in a way which disregards the official lines that are drawn between government power and corporate power and the lines that are drawn between nations, but then, so do our rulers. We are living in a globe-spanning corporate oligarchic empire, and these government-aligned Silicon Valley giants are a major part of that empire's propaganda engine. The real power of that empire and that oligarchy lies in their invisibile and unacknowledged nature. Officially we all live in separate, sovereign nations run by democratically elected officials; unofficially we live in a massive transnational empire ruled by a loose alliance of plutocrats and opaque government agencies where military propagandists are employed by social media monopolies to manipulate public narratives. The official mask exists only on the level of narrative, while the unofficial reality is what's actually happening. Yet whenever you try to publicly discuss the threat that is being posed by oligarchic narrative control online, you get told by establishment loyalists and libertarians that Twitter is just a simple private business running things in a way that is entirely separate from government censorship and state propaganda. All we clear-eyed rebels can do is keep documenting the evidence of what's going on and pointing to it as loudly as we can. So once again for the people in the back: Twitter employs literal government propagandists as high-level executives while purging accounts from unabsorbed governments for circulating unauthorized narratives. This is a fact. Remember it.
The below is, imo, an outstanding and imortant article full of critical observations.
As the author says, psychedelics - meaning psychoactive substances like Shrooms, Ayahuasca, DMT etc., are the fast route to experiencing the inner world of reality.
However, a surer method (that if used under with consideration and attention - and preferably under guidance where possible) is the cultivation of the vehicle of imagination, which is the Saturn V thuster of thrusters.
Yes, it takes longer. Quite a bit, in fact. But once gained it is not lost (much like cycling) and is thereafter repeatable. Significantly it is not subject to so called "bad trips".
Besides this, "journeying in the spirit vision", as this used to be called at the turn of the last century, is always under conscious control and if one experiences something one is not familiar with (well, nothing there is familiar - and yet all of it is - hello paradox) or happy with, one will have a means to consciously exit and close the experience down without causing problems, as being shocked out of that state of mind can have bad side effects.
For me personally, that element of conscious control is the significant benefit of taking the slow road rather than the fast road; the results are safe and equally spectacular.
In this article, Brian C. Muraresku outlines his theory of the world's oldest surviving religion.
"The man of a traditional culture sees himself as real only to the extent that he ceases to be himself. Plato could be regarded as the outstanding philosopher of primitive mentality' the thinker who succeeded in giving philosophic currency and validity to the modes of life and behavior of archaic humanity."[SUP]1[/SUP] Mircea Eliade
The Real Hippies
What's become of religion these days? Seriously. More than a billion people across the planet are religiously unaffiliated. That includes one in every five Americans and Europeans, and believe it or not almost half of the British public. Impressive as those numbers are today, just imagine the future of the Western world. Fueling the growth of this segment, after all, is a younger generation that is either uninterested in or entirely fed up with the organized religions of their parents and grandparents. Despite being four months older than the statistically oldest Millennial (born in the distant past of 1980), I can still report the cohort's emerging preference: 32% of Americans aged 18 to 34 choose not to identify with a particular faith. This is far more than any previous generation, including those groovy Boomers, whose comparative figure in the 1970s was an underwhelming 13%. The below graph gives due credit to the real hippies.
At the end of his brilliant career, mythologist Joseph Campbell concluded that what we're all seeking is not the meaning of life, but an "experience of being alive". Across the 200,000-year history of our species, the triggering of "powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting" states of mind has been the essential function of bona fide religion.[SUP]2[/SUP]Recently, our fields, stages and screens the altars of the 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century have assumed that sacred responsibility, making organized religion obsolete in a world where the full range of human emotion is available at the tap of a thumb. A half century ago, this is really all John Lennon was trying to say. When people are willing to wait in line for days (yes, days!) to get the latest iPhone or audition for American Idol, what the hell isn't "more popular than Jesus"? But fear not. There is nothing particularly new or disturbing about that 72% of my "spiritual but not religious" generation intent on reclaiming ownership of its heart and mind. Before the rise of Churchianity, in the long-forgotten cradle of Western Civilization, our ancestors were also drawn to a spiritually independent lifestyle free from any doctrine or dogma. What united them, however, was not just an "experience of being alive", but something they thought was the single most important event a human being could ever experience. Its participants, without fail, left permanently transformed. Before religion goes the way of the fax machine, we owe this phenomenon some serious consideration for the sake of our ancestors, and ourselves.
The Place Where Science Was Born
At the tender age of 14, I began eight years of intensive training in Latin and Greek. Accounting as they do for 60% of the English language, I was told the mandatory Jesuit curriculum would bump my SAT scores. An appeal was also made to the Founding Fathers, who were themselves fairly obsessed with the Classics. James Madison's opinion that Athens and Rome had "done more honor to our species (humanity) than all the rest" was by no means unique in the late 18[SUP]th[/SUP] century. The principal drafter of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, looked to classical literature as "the ultimate source of both delight and instruction"[SUP]3[/SUP] admiration that hearkens back 700 years to the Renaissance, when the key feature of the new humanism that came to shape our Western world "was an educational and cultural program based on the study of classical Greek and Latin authors".[SUP]4[/SUP] It is no coincidence the National Mall near my home in Washington DC is flanked on either end by rather explicit tributes to the Athenian Parthenon (Lincoln Memorial) and the Roman Pantheon (Capitol Building).[SUP]5[/SUP] Back in the day, I was particularly attracted to Greek, at once so alien and familiar. The process of learning an exotic alphabet was a little weird, especially for a language credited with seeding not only English, but so many of the institutions and disciplines we take for granted today: democracy, law, medicine, architecture and economics; not to mention philosophy, history, ethics or the very concept of a university. Our love of entertainment, sports and music goes directly back to the theaters and stadia of Ancient Greece. And it was from scratch, let's not forget, that a handful of enterprising minds created the sciences we hold so dear: from cosmology and physics, to biology and mathematics. No one articulates this more lyrically than Carl Sagan: "And so it was here [in the Greek isles of the eastern Mediterranean between 600 and 400 BC] that the great idea arose that there might be principles, forces, laws of nature through which the world might be understood without attributing the fall of every sparrow to the direct intervention of Zeus. This is the place where science was born!"
A rare edition of Plutarch's Lives from Thomas Jefferson's personal library, complete with a scrap of paper showing his handwritten notes.
Photo by: Joe Angeles/WUSTL Photos
From the very beginning, therefore, I understood Greek as a kind of initiation into ancient systems of thought that had somehow influenced everything, then inexplicably went missing. But in a country that was so unambiguously created as the extension of classical insights and achievements, why did almost nobody learn this stuff anymore? Why had this branch of knowledge become the eccentric province of a privileged few? These questions hounded me into college, where I was given a generous scholarship to exhaust my curiosity as a full-time Classics geek.
Ancient Greek Gurus and the "Secret Doctrine"
Having already invested my high school years in two dead languages, the exploration of yet another seemed in order. My budding interest in religion was kind of leading in the same direction as other disaffected youth before me a path if not pioneered then certainly popularized by the Beatles and my hero, George Harrison, specifically.[SUP]6[/SUP]His celebrity peaking just as the first wave of Eastern wisdom hit Western shores, George's enormous impact on global spirituality is nowhere better depicted than Martin Scorsese's 2011 documentary: Living in the Material World. My own linguistic and spiritual longings therefore coincided in an obvious next step Sanskrit which would open the door to millennia of Hindu and Buddhist teachings. Freshmen mornings found me chanting the great Indian epic, the Mahabharata. My introduction to Theravada meditation came over lunch. Afternoons were reserved for my old pals, Homer and Plato. Most evenings carried me into the wee hours, deciphering hundreds of lines of ancient text. It pretty much stayed this way for four years impossible almost anywhere else but the rather liberal Brown University. For my senior thesis, I translated a poem from an ascetic order called Jainism, which likely predates both Hinduism and Buddhism. The only appropriate way to bid farewell to these mystical, sitar-heavy years before selling out to a Wall Street law firm was to hike through India with my best buddy, who has since fled Delhi to run a yoga retreatin Goa. The point being, at a time when I really should have been attending more naked parties, something was urging me head first into a distant and dusty past.
I will never forget the moment in sophomore year when the line between East and West began to blur, sparking a whole new appreciation for those often-overlooked ancestors who birthed our civilization into being. Up to that point, my afternoon seminar on Homer's Odyssey seemed out of place for a day otherwise dedicated to obscure breathing exercises and reading about karma, reincarnation and the chakras. One fateful day, I had happened upon a passage from the 5[SUP]th[/SUP]-century AD philosopher, Proclus, where he makes reference to a "secret doctrine" (απποÏητον θεωÏίαν) hidden away in the Iliad and Odyssey.[SUP]7[/SUP] I was mesmerized! What a crazy idea to associate with the foundation of all Western literature. Why, rather than speaking plainly, would our very first attempt at the written word transmit a covert agenda? And what on earth could that agenda possibly be? Bizarre as it sounds, Proclus was not alone in thinking a surface reading of Homer's epics would completely miss the point. His tradition, Neoplatonism, arose in the 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] century AD as an effort to preserve the purest teachings of the godfathers of Western thought, Pythagoras and Plato.[SUP]8[/SUP]One of the early stars of this school was Porphyry, who wrote a long and complicated commentary on just a few lines of Book 13 of the Odyssey that, at first glance, are very pretty but easily forgettable. Classicists label this passage the "Cave of the Nymphs". The wily hero, Odysseus, after a 10-year journey through a million obstacles in the wake of the Trojan War, is finally homebound to his native Ithaca. Just before his ship touches down on Greek soil, Homer pauses to describe the extraordinary harbor that will, at long last, welcome back its native son. It houses a sacred olive tree and a miraculous cavern populated by nymphs. The hero's patron goddess, Athena, selects this cave as a hiding place for the gold and bronze valuables Odysseus has just inherited from the friendly Phaeacians, a mysterious but hospitable sea-faring people.[SUP]9[/SUP] In a blatant omission that has perplexed scholars for centuries, however, Homer never fully resolves the ultimate fate of this meticulously buried treasure. Mentioned just once more in passing, it seems like a rather superfluous detail, as does the cave itself. Following this strange episode, Athena magically transforms Odysseus into a withered, old vagabond. It makes the ambush and graphic execution of his wife's suitors a little easier. Under the leaves of the holy tree in that curious harbor, Odysseus assumes a new identity and spends basically half the book in disguise. Reflecting on this scene almost a thousand years after its creation, Porphyry says something that should forever change how we think about the origin and purpose of Western Civilization. The translation from Robert Lamberton's Homer the Theologianis worth reproducing:
"Homer says that all outward possessions must be deposited in this cave and that one must be stripped naked and take on the persona of a beggar and, having withered the body away and cast aside all that is superficial and turned away from the senses, take counsel with Athena, sitting with her beneath the roots of the olive, how he might cut away all the destructive passions of his soul."[SUP]10[/SUP]
What the hell? That sounded almost monastic, and much closer to the Eastern religious tradition than anything I had heard about the Ancient Greeks. In fact, the essence of the Buddha's so-called Four Noble Truths were right there, staring me in the face. To summarize: (1) nothing lasts forever in this disjointed life; (2) by clinging to the ups and downs of such an existence the good as well as the bad we suffer and are continuously reborn; (3) this cycle of reincarnation can only be stopped by stripping away the unhealthy attention we place on all things impermanent; and (4) it is through right conduct and self-examination in disciplines like meditation that we can train the mind to see beyond the illusions of the phenomenal world and our physical body, thereby achieving liberation.
This head of Odysseus was discovered in 1957 on the west coast of Italy between Rome and Naples, on the grounds of the former villa of the Roman Emperor Tiberius at Sperlonga. The original sculpture likely dates to the 1st century BC.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
In the absence of any competing explanation for why Homer would waste his time introducing a Phaeacian treasure that in no way affects the plot, Porphyry's metaphor of abandoning life's pleasures and comforts in exchange for true peace and happiness seems fair just as Odysseus must shed his riches, and play the beggar, prior to his homecoming. But what the Neoplatonists are suggesting is something altogether more radical. This is a philosophy in which the senses are interpreted as obscuring, rather than revealing, the truth. Porphyry's warning to "turn away from the senses" (τἀς αἰσθήσεις ἀποστÏαφÎντα) is pretty clear in the Greek. In fact, it could even be translated "dissuade the senses". The apparent authority of our sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell while great for keeping us focused on "all that is superficial" so we don't walk into each other should nonetheless be challenged once in a while. Wonderful as they are, the senses don't deserve 100% control over how we perceive the world. Likewise, the "passions" or "emotions" (πάθη) that accompany everyday life are described as "destructive" or, perhaps better, "plotting against" us (á¼Ï€Î¯Î²Î¿Ï…λα). Intent on distracting us from what is essential, Porphyry gives the okay to "cut down" or "trim" (επικοψη)that annoying mental chatter. For these quasi-Buddhists who could spot Homer's "secret doctrine", the Odyssey is an 8[SUP]th[/SUP] century BC invitation to a worldview in which things are not always what they seem where the reality of everything around us must be questioned.[SUP]11[/SUP] Like the hero, Odysseus, we are called to reassess the mere surface of things both the outer, sensory world and our innermost being. Underneath the illusion (what the Hindu or Buddhist literature would term "maya"), the real world our true home waits to be discovered. For explicit instructions on how to "dissuade" those overbearing senses and "trim" the unruly passions, we need look no further than Porphyry's guru, Plotinus. Born in Egypt in 205 AD, this virtually unknown genius is where all Neoplatonism begins. Over the last 17 years of his life, Plotinus wrote a massive, six-part treatise in Greek entitled the Enneads (available here for free). In a passage that acknowledges the entire Odyssey as a parable of spiritual liberation, Plotinus is quick to distinguish our journey home as an inner, rather than outer, adventure: "We must not look, but must, as it were, close our eyes and exchange our faculty of vision for another. We must awaken this faculty which everyone possesses, but few people ever use."[SUP]12[/SUP] This seems like a recipe for Western meditation, in very plain and unmistakable language. And much like the Hindus or Buddhists who believe such exercises can penetrate the illusions that surround us, both inside and out, Plotinus taught his students to "awaken" (ἀνεγεῖÏαι)this underused "other sight" (ὄψιν ἄλλην) in order to reach "that other world", where "everything is color and beauty" not on the surface but "right from its very depths".[SUP]13[/SUP] This might resemble the world more likely encountered in dreams, where everything is experienced keep in mind without the aid of those alert, problem-solving senses. But Plotinus' realm is different. His gives shape and meaning to the universe as we know it the magical source, in fact, of reality across all times and dimensions. In a final surprise twist, Plotinus cautions that access to this elusive kingdom cannot be "acquired by calculations" or "constructed out of theorems".[SUP]14[/SUP] Logic, reason or conscious reflection will have zero impact on our ability to explore it, which can only occur through what Classicist Pierre Hadot referred to as "privileged experience"[SUP]15[/SUP] "eyes closed" (μÏσαντα ὄψιν)in contemplation. The covert agenda attributed to Homer had now made itself known. What Proclus had only hinted at became crystal clear with Plotinus, as the barrier between East and West crumbled away. It occurred to me, of course, that these guys were getting carried away with their Homer inventing a "secret doctrine" where none existed in the nostalgia for a bygone era. Was it really possible for "the place where science was born", as Carl Sagan pointed out, to have also birthed a completely contradictory worldview? Where matter is just a byproduct of something much more fundamental. Where the senses and everything we think we know about the world are not to be trusted. And where each of us possesses a latent ability, which "few people ever use", to explore the ultimate nature of reality. Imagine the implications if, for the entire history of Western Civilization, we've had it all upside down.
Ten Thousand Eyes
As it turns out, the Neoplatonists weren't just making this stuff up. The idea of a non-physical world that creates and sustains the one we inhabit accessible only by some kind of extrasensory power, some non-ordinary state of consciousness was introduced to Western philosophy over 600 years before Plotinus' Enneads by the godfather himself: Plato. My chance run-in with Neoplatonism had me totally reevaluating how it all began. Sure enough, scattered across a number of Plato's 4[SUP]th[/SUP]century BC masterpieces, the "secret doctrine" shines apparent for all to see. "That other world" mentioned by Plotinus is trademark Plato, familiar to many as the Theory of Forms. In perhaps his most famous passage from the Republic, the so-called Allegory of the Cave, Plato establishes our physical world as the mere shadow of a more genuine reality lying just beyond our conventional awareness. This retro, three-minute Claymation video is an excellent refresher. Later in his Timaeus, Plato again refers to the sensory universe as a "copy" (εἰκόνος) or "model" (παÏαδείγματος) of something much more permanent and absolute.[SUP]16[/SUP] This perspective is not necessarily the most intuitive. It flies in the face of our everyday experience, where things seem real enough just the way they are. Plato calls "uninitiated" (ἀμυήτων) however, those who would object to his theory of everything. In the Theaetetus, he scorns those poor folks "who believe that nothing is real save what they can grasp with hands and do not admit … anything invisible can count as real". Funnily enough, there is a term to describe this "uninitiated" philosophy, which seems to have conquered much of the Western world today: naïve realism. It is important to remember that this worldview is a choice and not a fact. It puts a lot of faith in the images formed by the brain a gullibility that keeps magicians in business. But this kind of blind acceptance is certainly not how our civilization hit the ground running. Anticipating his Neoplatonic disciples by hundreds of years, Plato likewise doubts the reliability of our senses. The entire body, as a matter of fact, is suspect. A memorable line from the Phaedrus compares our condition in this world to "an oyster imprisoned in its shell".[SUP]17[/SUP] It is only by avoiding the "follies of the body" that we can "gain direct knowledge of all that is pure and uncontaminated," declares the Phaedo.[SUP]18[/SUP] Not surprisingly, Plato insists that the same untapped ability identified by Plotinus is our sole means of achieving spiritual release from this confused, temporary moment we call life. Just like Plotinus' "other sight" (ὄψιν ἄλλην), Plato testifies in the Republic that "there is in every soul an organ or instrument of knowledge" which is "blinded by ordinary pursuits". Though relatively few of us seem to take advantage of this amazing faculty, once activated, it can perceive more than "ten thousand [ordinary] eyes". Translated by some as the "eye of the soul",[SUP]19[/SUP] Plato with no hesitation declares that it is our "exclusive means of beholding the ultimate truth" (μόνῳ Î³á½°Ï Î±á½Ï„á¿· ἀλήθεια á½Ïᾶται)[SUP]20[/SUP] an obvious allusion to the so-called "third eye" or ajna chakra of Hindu mysticism, considered the visionary portal to domains unseen.
To dispel any doubt that Plato was the George Harrison of the 4[SUP]th[/SUP] century BC, deftly packaging Eastern spirituality for a Western audience, note the concept of karma embedded in the Phaedrus. Plato makes "some ancient guilt" or "wrath" (παλαιῶν á¼Îº μηνιμάτων) responsible for families passing misfortune from one generation to another. Not exactly what you'd expect from the people who gave us logic and rationality! Finally, no guru would be complete without a shameless advertisement for reincarnation. Plato's other well-known episode from the Republic, the Myth of Er, features a fallen solider who comes back from the dead to share his incredibly vivid account of the afterlife. The resurrected Er speaks about the process of reincarnation at length, for which there are no less than three ludicrous words in Greek: metempsychosis, metensomatosis and palingenesis. As Plato concludes in the Timaeus, the only escape from this wheel of death and rebirth is to conquer the same "destructive passions" that Porphyry warned against the ups and downs, the "pleasure and pain" (ἡδονῇ καὶ λÏπῃ), inherent in all "desire" (á¼”Ïωτα).[SUP]21[/SUP]
Ancient Cultural Internet
If Plato had written in Sanskrit instead of Greek, first off the "secret doctrine" would be indistinguishable from esoteric Hindu or Buddhist scripture. And second, you would never guess this was the father of all Western thought talking. We live in a make-believe world, imprisoned by the body, and the only way out is a hidden power we all have but never learn about? The ultimate reality the stuff that really counts is invisible? Karma, reincarnation and the chakras are all credible? By the time I finished college, that old line between East and West made absolutely no sense whatsoever. What made even less sense was the fact that mainstream, Western academia never addressed what I thought was a mind-blowing realization. I was never taught to read Homer in the manner of Proclus, Porphyry or Plotinus. And while the Allegory of the Cave and the Myth of Er certainly came up in my Plato seminars, the focus was always honing our grammar and vocabulary skills, and never the totally neglected but amusing fact that Western Civilization was evidently founded by a bunch of hippies. It was in the years following, while I was supposed to be practicing law, that I realized Plato wasn't just making this stuff up either. By the 4[SUP]th[/SUP] century BC, in fact, he was simply the latest in a long line of mystical philosophers alluded to in a 2[SUP]nd[/SUP]-century AD fragment by Numenius, who informs us that the "initiations [emphasis mine] and doctrines and cults … established by the Brahmins, the Jews, the Magi, and the Egyptians" were indeed "harmonious with Plato".[SUP]22[/SUP] Given all the above similarities, the case for an Indian influence on Ancient Greek thought seems beyond dispute.[SUP]23[/SUP] For our connection to North Africa and the Near East, groundbreaking scholarship by just a few Classicists has amassed the evidence for what a recent article in The Guardiandubbed an "ancient cultural internet" connecting "a series of networked cultures in multi-voiced conversation". A quick glance at the titles alone offers a great snapshot of this exciting line of research: Martin Bernal's Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization; M.L. West's The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth; Walter Burkert's Bablyon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture and The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age; and most recently, Tim Whitmarsh's The Romance Between Greece and the East. Rather than a "Greek Miracle" where Western Civilization springs fully-formed out of nowhere, Burkert sets the prevailing view: "we can agree that it was there [Asia Minor, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Palestine and Egypt] that the first high cultures developed and spread their achievements to neighboring regions."[SUP]24[/SUP] While it might seem obvious for younger nations to have learned from those who came before, like any good offspring, this is actually a long-overdue concession in the study of Classics. Either way, a much more accurate picture of our classical past is finally emerging from all these "tangled roots". And it's a picture that sets the stage (with all due respect to Dan Brown) for solving the greatest riddle of our civilization: where the hell do we come from?
"Phryne in Eleusis" (1889) by Polish painter, Henryk Siemiradzki
Source: Wikimedia Commons
A Psychedelic Sacrament
We can rest assured that the our Ancient Greek ancestors the very same ones who laid the foundations for almost every critical aspect of our society today were not entirely off the mark when it came to tackling life's biggest questions. They were a diligent and practical people in all respects, whether physical or metaphysical. They faithfully preserved an enormous wealth of ancient wisdom it was their unique position, in the Mediterranean of the first millennium BC, to inherit and then pass along to Western Civilization. The "secret doctrine" traced from the Neoplatonists to Plato himself, back further through Pythagoras and a number of other pre-Socratic philosophers to Homer in the 8[SUP]th[/SUP] century BC, brings us face to face with those "high cultures" in the Fertile Crescent and India whose pivotal role in our story is only now gaining appreciation. This was a world with far less distinction between East and West, or religion and science, than exists today. Way before any of our modern religions including Hinduism and Buddhism, or Judaism, Christianity and Islam a common initiation rite culminating in an ecstatic visionary experience linked many of the Bronze Age cultures that flourished after 3,000 BC: from Ancient Egypt to Sumeria, from Crete to the Indus Valley Civilization. Over the succeeding two thousand years, these were the civilizations that eventually gave rise to the "ancient cultural internet" from which Homer and Plato were able to download, in the words of Graham Hancock, "a science of the soul' developed through thousands of years of inquiry and experimentation and applied with high precision to the fundamental questions of life and death."[SUP]25[/SUP] In the end, this explains Plato's preferred definition for his trade: "true philosophers make dying their profession."[SUP]26[/SUP] What could be more fundamental? It was not from piles of books or heated debates that Plato came to his conclusion about the need to awaken the "eye of the soul" in order to see clearly through this, our carnival world of smoke and mirrors.[SUP]27[/SUP] It was from an experience! As a matter of fact, it was a highly ritualized and carefully programmed experience which brought the initiate to death's door and back, complete with unshakeable knowledge of exactly what happens when we die and renewed appetite for making the most of our precious, fleeting moment under the sun. They saw something! And whatever it was, it changed them forever and made naïve realism a complete joke.[SUP]28[/SUP] They were reborn into a new vision of who we are and what life is all about. This should come as no surprise. The Greek word for "doctrine" in the "secret doctrine" (απποÏητον θεωÏίαν) has nothing to do with an actual, written teaching. Derived from a Greek root meaning to "see" or "behold" (θεωÏίαν) Lamberton clarifies: "rather than a fixed and unchanging doctrine', [the secret doctrine] seems to refer to a mystical and privileged contemplation' or mode of seeing". To awaken Plotinus' "other sight" or Plato's "eye of the soul" our "exclusive means of beholding the ultimate truth" many intriguing signs point to our hippy ancestors engaging the unrivaled technology of the natural kingdom. We will of course never know for sure, but the psychoactive properties of the many plants and fungi at the Greeks' disposal is unlikely to have escaped the investigation of these early scientists.[SUP]29[/SUP] While Hadot's "privileged experience" can be cultivated in any number of ways, including meditation, the most reliably fast-acting across the ages has been through psychedelics (a beautiful Greek word meaning "that which makes visible the contents of the psyche"), the significance of which will have to be explored in future discussion.[SUP]30[/SUP]
Prior to the celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries in the Fall, the enigmatic Lenaia festival took place in January. Rosemarie Taylor-Perry theorizes that the purpose of this ceremony was to add herbs and psychotropic plants to fermenting wine which would later be imbibed during various rituals in the Greek religious calendar. Likely additives are thought to have included: "absinthe, belladonna berries, cannabis, datura flowers, mandrake root, [or] poppy sap or straw". The above shows an artist's rendering of a vase currently housed in the Louvre Museum in Paris, where women are clearly depicted adding some kind of herb, plant and/or fungus to the pithoi (storage containers) of sacred wine. source: "Lenäenvasen" by August Frickenhaus, Zum Winckelmannsfeste der Archäeologischen Gesellschaft Zu Berlin (1912), p. 12, available here
But by the time they made their way to our Greek ancestors from lands south and east, the sacred rites consisted of seven months of detailed instruction, followed by nine days of elaborate procession and fasting. A recreational activity this was not. Only then were Plato and the rest of Athens' greatest minds like Sophocles and Aristotle "initiated into that which is rightly named the holiest of mysteries" and allowed "the blessed sight and vision" as a grand finale to all their effort (as attested in the Phaedrus).[SUP]31[/SUP] For nearly two millennia, these so-called Eleusinian Mysteries were the most popular initiation rites in Ancient Greece. They welcomed not just the elite but any Greek-speaking pilgrim, male or female, to participate in its secret rites. The great initiation hall at Eleusis, 11 miles northwest of Athens, was officially administered by the state for a time, testifying to the centrality of this experience in the society we have come to idolize and imitate in so many other ways. This was not a fringe movement by any means.
An Unknown Upper Paleolithic Ancestor
But how far back does this confrontation with death reach? With the authenticity of my feminism in deservedly serious jeopardy, I am relieved to finally highlight the scholarship of the first woman to appear here, Mary Settegast. It is frankly embarrassing how men, both ancient and modern, have cornered the market on these topics. It seems only appropriate that as we examine our pre-literate roots (before writing came on the scene in Egypt and Mesopotamia around 3200 BC), Settegast should lead the way with her phenomenal Plato Prehistorian: 10,000 to 5,000 BC Myth, Religion, Archaeology. In a remote and nearly forgotten episode of our archaic past, just as the Paleolithic was giving way to the Neolithic, something extraordinary has been tucked away, awaiting inspection. An "Upper Paleolithic culture, probably Anatolian, of which hardly anything is known"[SUP]32[/SUP] seems to have been in possession of the "secret doctrine". Exclusively by word of mouth, they managed against all odds to convey the sacred rites by which it was communicated past the boundary of the last Ice Age 11,500 years ago where they suddenly show up at the Catalhoyuk site in modern-day Turkey in 7,500 BC.
Map taken from Karageorghis, V. 2000. Ancient Art from Cyprus. The Cesnola Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, p xiv.
Source: http://www.brynmawr.edu/collections/nehi...usmap.html
For the obvious reason that there are no records of this event, where linguists must concede their specialty to archaeologists, the unbelievable antiquity of the spiritual roots of Western Civilization has never been properly considered part of the Classics curriculum (nor part of our history in general). This is prehistory, after all. As a result, few aside from Settegast have ever explored the possibility that the initiations of Ancient Greece trace back in an unbroken, continuous line to the hunters and gatherers of the Paleolithic eastern Mediterranean. The evidence is certainly there, however, for "a thriving center of cult life, one whose shrines were enriched by decorations and statuary which recall the later mystery religions of Iran and Egypt, as well as the Aegean and Anatolia". Indeed, the findings at Catalhoyuk are seen by Settegast to "suggest that the freeing of the soul in life, the rebirth of the living individual onto a higher plane of being, was the goal toward which the Catal[hoyuk] rites were aimed".[SUP]33[/SUP] We seem to have a match! Rather than scrapping together a miserable existence, our uncivilized forebears in Asia Minor may have been busy perfecting a ritual that would somehow survive 7,000 years, to be assimilated by a huge swathe of the Ancient Greek world. Only slightly east of the place where democracy and the sciences first came to light, Catalhoyuk the land of Homer and the Trojan War couldn't be better situated. But if a smoking gun is going to emerge anywhere to prove the merits of this theory, my bet is the on-going dig at another site due east named Gobekli Tepe (90% of which remains unexcavated). First opened in 1995, the presence of a ritual complex in the 10[SUP]th[/SUP]millennium BC has already been confirmed making this, per the Smithsonian, "the world's first temple". Topographic scans have indicated that additional structures waiting to be unearthed could date even further back to 13,000 BC! Was Gobekli Tepe the brainchild of the same unknown "Upper Paleolithic culture" behind Catalhoyuk? Are these the true spiritual ancestors of Western Civilization? If a Stone Age people really did manage to transmit those secret rites in the absence of written language for thousands of years, then the visionary experience that was their core can properly be termed the longest-surviving religion the world has ever known. Ironically, no one's ever heard of it. It does not have a name, and perhaps it never did. But if any religion is going to recapture the hearts and minds of a spiritually thirsty generation, this is the one! When the mysteries finally showed up in Ancient Greece across the most improbable expanse of time Plato and his disciples were keen to seek admission and initiation. Amazed and transformed by their glimpse of immortality, the creators of Western thought ensured that the tireless efforts of our Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic ancestors did not go to waste. Under penalty of death for exposing the big secret, they nonetheless committed their visions to a language which almost nobody understands today. It was worth the risk for our species to retain memory of the single most unique event a human being could ever experience. This was a serious and cherished experience that worked for their world, and no doubt works for ours the spitting image as we are of so many Ancient Greek institutions and disciplines. Our society can no longer afford its unexplained ignorance of the "secret doctrine", something so integral to our founders' worldview. To dismiss this religion is to deny our birthright, and to totally misinterpret the whole point of Western Civilization. Unlike any other in the history of our planet, this religion has stood the test of time. It is our collective responsibility to acknowledge its influence in our past, to reincorporate it into the 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century and in continuing imitation of our ancestors to carry it forward to those new worlds being birthed in this solar system and beyond.
5[SUP][/SUP] William C. Allen's History of the United States Capitol, p. 19:"The dome and portico were both reminiscent of the great Roman temple known as the Pantheon built in the second century A.D. by the emperor Hadrian. Thornton's adaptation of the Pantheon for his United States Capitol linked the new republic to the classical world and to its ideas of civic virtue and self-government." See also "Lincoln Memorial Design and Symbolism" on the National Park Service website: "The individual responsible for this design was architect Henry Bacon who modeled the memorial after the Greek temple known as the Parthenon. Bacon felt that a memorial to a man who defended democracy, should be based on a structure found in the birthplace of democracy."
6[SUP][/SUP] Their 1967 meeting with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the Transcendental Meditation movement, marks a turning point in Eastern philosophies becoming more widely available to a Western audience.
27[SUP][/SUP] Algis Uzdavinys, The Golden Chain: Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy, at p. xi: "The task of the ancient philosophers was in fact to contemplate the cosmic order and its beauty; to live in harmony with it and to transcend the limitations imposed by sense experience and discursive reasoning … and it was through this noetic vision (noesis) that the ancient philosophers tried to awaken the divine light within, and to touch the divine Intellect in the cosmos. For them, to reach apotheosis was the ultimate human end."
31[SUP][/SUP] Phaedrus 250b. In addition, Plato's Symposium 209e uses the word "epoptes", confirming Plato's knowledge of and admission into the Eleusinian Mysteries.
This is really kind of stunning for someone like me. With all the disclosures of the ARRB and how authors have built upon them e.g. Goldstein and Blight, for anyone to say that somehow JFK was trying to enlarge the Vietnam War in 1962 or 1963 is a non starter.
And then to top that off by saying that Halberstam and Sheehan were somehow journalistic heroes of that conflict? When, in fact, they were both huge fans of Jean Paul Vann who understood the war could not be won by the ARVN, but unlike Kennedy wanted America to directly intervene in that conflict? Well, after Kennedy was killed, Vann, Sheehan and Halberstam got their wish. Sheehan and Halberstam spent their careers trying to disguise what they had done. And somehow blaming Kennedy for the war. Talk about BS.
And now, Tom Herman comes along and gives them a great big wet kiss as he steps on Kennedy's corpse.
Let me start by saying I do appreciate the real research Harold Weisberg did. One example: interviewing the printer of Oswald's FPCC leaflets and showing the man a photo-spread. The man identified four photos of KERRY THORNLEY as having been the individual who he said picked up Oswald's leaflets. Weisberg wrote that he showed this man about 40 photographs. I guess it is fortuitous that he included four pictures of Thornley. It's also important that Weisberg tape recorded the interview, as Bill Boxley, the former CIA agent and Clay Shaw defense asset on Jim Garrison's staff, attended this interview and later claimed the man made no identification of Thornley. Weisberg was able to produce his tape recording which proved the man did ID Thornley. This is but one small example of his real research efforts which bore fruit.
Now, to the downside. Harold Weisberg produces what can be accurately described as the worst prose you will ever find. His sentence structure is regularly overly convoluted. He makes his points with zero economy of language. He has no skill in making non-fiction even close to enjoyable to read. I think that he would have benefited from a co-author on his works with Harold serving as a primary researcher and producing an outline of what he wants to write and his co-author rendering the fine points using language that is precise and easy to parse. 'If only' ...
Having said all of that and given credit where it is due, there are some additional downsides on display in Harold Weisberg's unpublished manuscript "Inside the Assassination Industry." This manuscript is a semi-autobiographical account of his research career where Weisberg spends a lot of time both self-aggrandizing his own works while bashing all the critics other than himself (deserved or not.) Weisberg's material on Jim Garrison in the book is particularly inflammatory.
Weisberg does have some restraint as he does not 'name names' in some of the things he writes about. Or, I wonder, was Harold merely being careful to avoid a defamation suit (had the book been published)? I am thinking particularly about a passage where he accuses a researcher of stealing original copies of some of Weisberg's research materials (presumably FBI documents or other official 'JFK records').
However, I am now curious, having been sucked into this volume of trash talk. Does anyone happen to know who Weisberg is referring to vis-a-vis the document-theft he describes below? Is it Lifton?
Excerpt:
Some have used this freedom to steal only copies of my own work rather than make copies because when my only copies are stolen I lack that information and cannot use it or cite it. Of what without question was stolen, one theoretician in particular had a great interest in no copies existing, they embarrassed him that much. In the case of other thievery of again only copies, the obvious result was to prevent others writing on those aspects from competing with one of these successful exploiters of theories when he had an announced book on subject matter of these records"
The reason I suspect Weisberg is referring to Lifton here is that he's clearly referring to documents relating to one very specific thing where the document in question is central to a primary thesis of a book. My guess is 'autopsy or medical related documents-- this being one area where a single document (say, relating to the throat wound) would directly relate to the central thesis. Whereas had it been a document about anything else...say, Cuban exiles, or say, a document about E. Howard Hunt. In either of those two cases a single document on that wouldn't necessarily correlate directly to the central thesis of the work. With Lifton, pretty much any medical-related document can be said to relate directly to his central thesis.
I suppose its not really important but I admit I'm curious who Weisberg was writing about and afraid to name directly for fear of a libel or defamation suit.
If anyone is interested in this Weisberg pissing contest book it's available on hood.edu, and while it has some good information in it there is also a lot of aggressive and sometimes unwarranted derogatory remarks about others. I believe this field does have a lot of infighting, toxic venom, camps and cliques, provocateurs and turncoats like Gary Mack and Gus Russo, you have factions---all that is there as with any social community. This book just happens to be Harold Weisberg's view of all that. A view in which apparently he's the only researcher and writer to have produced anything that is either accurate or a result of good intentions.
In this thread I will put page by page a draft of a childrens book about September 11. It could also be a piece of theatre or a film or an installation, or a Comic or basically any art form.
It could also with the same right be called Jonathan, Loise and the Moonshine or any other combination of words. Dont judge a book by the title!
This specific childrens book is written as a kind of birthday present for my parents and it is dedicated to My Parents, My Kids and all seekers of truth.
It could have been dedicated to anybody and anything, but I as the author chose this combination of my inner family and friends.
I intend to read parts of the book at the birthday party to my parents, maybe some family member can provide a quality german translation, or I do it on the fly, sentence by sentence, as I speak both languages.
I chose the English language for several reasons, the most important is that on the topic of 9/11 my brain works in English, even if I am a German native speaker. The other advantage is that I can publish it here without translating anything. And since 9/11 mostly happened in the United States of America, most of the Names and Places and original texts are in English anyway.
Also the parts of the internet, which I frequent, are 95% English, that may be the reason for my English brain on this topic.
Some people, after hearing the title only, said to me that it would be a bad idea to write a childrens book about 9/11. I just responded, that they had seen just the title and knew nothing of the content.
Think about that long and deep.
9/11 is so ingrained into the conscience (and the unconscious), that just mentioning the word September and the number 11 makes all of us cringe.
What happened here?
One friend of mine, a woman who I know since 1984 (coincidence?) and who at one point in our common lives I wanted to marry, showed more or less the above reaction, after I read the title to her, telling her it should be the title for a book for all children of the world, including mine, recommended me to seek professional help immediately.
I am grateful to her, but first of all I was in good professional hands, and second, is trying to write a book in which September and 11 appear, a crazy enterprise?
At that point only two people in the world had seen the manuscript. Myself, the author, and an Indian engineer collegue, whom I had asked if he could imagine that this manuscript could be published in India and Pakistan at the same time. He said, he knows nothing about publishing, but was willing to read the manuscript.
Then I managed to get the manuscript to David Guyatt and got feedback from him, which is very valuable to me.
That is the current state of affairs.
This story alone could be made into a Hollywood Blockbuster, and I am sure Sean Connery would work for free to play Grandpa.
Am I crazy or is there a certain tension in the world?
Would the New York Times publish a critique of a manuscript called Me and Hitler, or My Family and the Holocaust? I do think so.
But Jonathan, Louise and September 11 is tasteless, conspiracy drivel, without even having read the content?
I asked my female friend to imagine the following situation:
You walk with your mother through the streets of Vienna, Austria.
In a window you see an English childrens book with the title Jonathan, Louise and September 11.
Would you want to open the book?
Can you guess the answer?
She said no, and the conversation was interrupted.
Think about that long and deep.
What happened?
At a later conversation I asked her, and her mother, to imagine how the cover of the book looked like, because I gave them just the title, nothing else.
They did not yet get back to me, but they certainly will.
All this has nothing to do with me, or my kids or my family.
All this has nothing to do with Osama bin Laden or Mohammed Atta.
But it has everything to do with mainstream media. All of them.
In my view it must be the symptom of a global Post Traumatic Stress disorder in combination with Cognitive Dissonance.
7 Billion cases of psychological warfare.
Think about that long and deep.
Who comitted that horrendous crime? Al Quaida? I doubt that.
If you still can sleep well, please join the discussion.
I will soon set up discussion groups on this forum, or you can share your reactions and experiences on every street of this wonderful planet, which is in grave danger.
I have to get to bed now to keep well grounded, and leave you with a question for your homework research.
It was always a fake story perpetuated by a crook (imo) to cover his ass and get control of Russian assets he didn't deserve. And the adoption of the Act by the US was, therefore, a political decision knowingly based on a false narrative.
16 Sep, 2019 in Uncategorized by craig The conscientious judges of the European Court of Human Rights published a judgement a fortnight ago which utterly exploded the version of events promulgated by Western governments and media in the case of the late Mr Magnitskiy. Yet I can find no truthful report of the judgement in the mainstream media at all.
The myth is that Magnitskiy was an honest rights campaigner and accountant who discovered corruption by Russian officials and threatened to expose it, and was consequently imprisoned on false charges and then tortured and killed. A campaign over his death was led by his former business partner, hedge fund manager Bill Browder, who wanted massive compensation for Russian assets allegedly swindled from their venture. The campaign led to the passing of the Magnitskiy Act in the United States, providing powers for sanctioning individuals responsible for human rights abuses, and also led to matching sanctions being developed by the EU.
However the European Court of Human Rights has found, in judging a case brought against Russia by the Magnitskiy family, that }]the very essence of this story is untrue. They find that there was credible evidence that Magnitskiy was indeed engaged in tax fraud, in conspiracy with Browder, and he was rightfully charged. The ECHR also found there was credible evidence that Magnitskiy was indeed a flight risk so he was rightfully detained. And most crucially of all, they find that there was credible evidence of tax fraud by Magnitskiy and action by the authorities "years" before he started to make counter-accusations of corruption against officials investigating his case.
This judgement utterly explodes the accepted narrative, and does it very succinctly:
The applicants argued that Mr Magnitskiy's arrest had not been based on a reasonable suspicion of a
crime and that the authorities had lacked impartiality as they had actually wanted to force him to
retract his allegations of corruption by State officials. The Government argued that there had been
ample evidence of tax evasion and that Mr Magnitskiy had been a flight risk.
The Court reiterated the general principles on arbitrary detention, which could arise if the
authorities had complied with the letter of the law but had acted with bad faith or deception. It
found no such elements in this case: the enquiry into alleged tax evasion which had led to
Mr Magnitskiy's arrest had begun long before he had complained of fraud by officials. The decision
to arrest him had only been made after investigators had learned that he had previously applied for
a UK visa, had booked tickets to Kyiv, and had not been residing at his registered address.
Furthermore, the evidence against him, including witness testimony, had been enough to satisfy an
objective observer that he might have committed the offence in question. The list of reasons given
by the domestic court to justify his subsequent detention had been specific and sufficiently detailed.
The Court thus rejected the applicants' complaint about Mr Magnitskiy's arrest and subsequent
detention as being manifestly ill-founded.
"Manifestly ill founded". The mainstream media ran reams of reporting about the Magnitskiy case at the time of the passing of the Magnitskiy Act. I am offering a bottle of Lagavulin to anybody who can find me an honest and fair MSM report of this judgement reflecting that the whole story was built on lies.
Magnitskiy did not uncover corruption then get arrested on false charges of tax evasion. He was arrested on credible charges of tax evasion, and subsequently started alleging corruption. That does not mean his accusations were unfounded. It does however cast his arrest in a very different light.
Where the Court did find in favour of Magnitskiy's family is that he had been deprived of sufficient medical attention and subject to brutality while in jail. I have no doubt this is true. Conditions in Russian jails are a disgrace, as is the entire Russian criminal justice system. There are few fair trials and conviction rates remain well over 90% the judges assume that if you are being prosecuted, the state wants you locked up, and they comply. This is one of many areas where the Putin era will be seen in retrospect as lacking in meaningful and needed domestic reform. Sadly what happened to Magnitskiy on remand was not special mistreatment. It is what happens in Russian prisons. The Court also found Magnitskiy's subsequent conviction for tax evasion was unsafe, but only on the (excellent) grounds that it was wrong to convict him posthumously.
The first use of the Magnitsky Act was to sanction those subject to Browder's vendetta in his attempts to regain control of vast fortunes in Russian assets. But you may be surprised to hear I do not object to the legislation, which in principle is a good thing although the chances of Western governments bringing sanctions to bear on the worst human rights abusers are of course minimal. Do not expect it to be used against Saudi Arabia, Bahrain or Israel any time soon.
The usual suspects - Mike Pompeo, the UK's Malcom Rifkind (Chairman of the intelligence and security commission) are lining up to blame this attack on Iran and ignoring the Houthis claim that they were responsible. The purpose is to pressure Trump to unleash military action on Iran, which would suit Bibi Netanyahu's deep desire down to the ground.
Saudi released photos of what they say are cruise missiles (below) parts recovered from this attack. Nowhere can be seen the destruction, damage and burning of the oil installation - that is still ongoing. One can be forgiven for thinking that these aircraft remnants were carried to a fairly pristine spot in the Saudi desert and gently placed on the ground ------ in the manner of many posed pictures taken by the fabricators-of-fame, the Syrian White Helmets?
If these are posed pictures - and it certainly looks to be the case to me - then this is pretty clear evidence in and of itself that either the real culprit is being concealed and the Iran blame game is in full swing, or that it was a home made false flag.
Frankly, I don't buy them as evidence. And it is evidence that is required, not the finger pointing by the usual suspects.
This is the point made by Elijah Magnier, one of the more respected writers on Middle Eastern affairs.
Intel assessments should be solid proof!!! These people are making fun of the world.Saudi Oil Attack Photos Implicate Iran, U.S. (citing intelligence assessments to support the accusation) Says; Trump Hints at Military Action 7:57 pm - 15 Sep 2019
Meanwhile, the Moon of Alabama points at 17 points of impact pointing to a "swarm" attack and wonders if the attack was a home made false flag by Saudi itself as they seem to precise to be the work of the Houthi's. Time will tell.
Quote:Damage At Saudi Oil Plant Points To Well Targeted Swarm Attack
The stabilization process is a form of partial distillation which sweetens "sour" crude oil (removes the hydrogen sulfide) and reduces vapor pressure, thereby making the crude oil safe for shipment in tankers. Stabilizers maximize production of valuable hydrocarbon liquids, while making the liquids safe for storage and transport, as well as reduce the atmospheric emissions of volatile hydrocarbons. Stabilizer plants are used to reduce the volatility of stored crude oil and condensate.
Soon after the attack U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went into full 'blame Iran' mode:
Secretary Pompeo @SecPompeo - 21:59 UTC · Sep 14, 2019
Tehran is behind nearly 100 attacks on Saudi Arabia while Rouhani and Zarif pretend to engage in diplomacy. Amid all the calls for de-escalation, Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world's energy supply. There is no evidence the attacks came from Yemen.
We call on all nations to publicly and unequivocally condemn Iran's attacks. The United States will work with our partners and allies to ensure that energy markets remain well supplied and Iran is held accountable for its aggression
Abqaiq lies at the heart of the Saudi oil infrastructure. It processes more than half of the Saudi oil output. biggerThe U.S. government published two detailed pictures of the attack's result. bigger biggerThe pictures show some 17 points of impact. There are cars visible in the second more detailed picture that demonstrate the gigantic size of the place. The targets were carefully selected. At least 11 of those were egg shaped tanks with a diameter of some 30 meter (100 foot). These are likely tanks for pressurized (liquidized) gas that receive the condensate vapor from the stabilization process. They all have now quite neat holes in their upper shells. The piping to and from the egg shaped tanks shows that these were configured in groups with double redundancy. Two tanks beside each other share one piping system. Two of such twin tanks are next to each other with lines to their processing train. There are a total of three such groups. Damage to any one tank or group would not stop the production process. The products would be routed to another similar tank or group. But with all tanks of this one special type taken out the production chain is now interrupted. Two processing areas were hit and show fire damage. At least the control equipment of both was likely completely destroyed:
Consultancy Rapidan Energy Group said images of the Abqaiq facility after the attack showed about five of its stabilization towers appeared to have been destroyed, and would take months to rebuild - something that could curtail output for a prolonged period."However Saudi Aramco keeps some redundancy in the system to maintain production during maintenance," Rapidan added, meaning operations could return to pre-attack levels sooner.
The targeting for this attack was done with detailed knowledge of the process and its dependencies. The north arrow in those pictures points to the left. The visible shadows confirm the direction. The holes in the tanks are on the western side. They were attacked from the west. The hits were extremely precise. The Yemeni armed forces claimed it attacked the facility with 10 drones (or cruise missiles). But the hits on these targets look like neither. A total of 17 hits with such precise targeting lets me assume that these were some kind of drones or missiles with man-in-the-loop control. They may have been launched from within Saudi Arabia. There is no information yet on the damage in Khurais, the second target of the attacks. The U.S. and Israel are able to commit such attacks. Iran probably too. Yemen seems unlikely to have this capability without drawing on extensive support from elsewhere. The planing for this operation must have taken months. A Middle-East BBC producer remarks:
Riam Dalati @Dalatrm - 22:44 UTC · Sep 15, 2019
17 points of impact. No Drones or missiles were detected/intercepted. Saudis & Americans still at loss as to where the attack was launched from. #KSA seriously needs to shop elsewhere & replace the Patriot or reinforce it with a web of radar operated AA guns like the Oerlikon.
A source familiar with #Aramco situation told us earlier today that it was a "swarm attack", a mix of > 20 drones and missiles, at least half of which were "suicide" drones. #USA & #KSA, he said, are 'certain' that attack was launched from #Iraq but 'smoking gun still missing'
They are also 'fairly certain' that #IRGC was behind the operation because, even though the missiles used were identical to those of the #Houthis, an inspection of the debris found in the desert revealed a 'couple of new updates' and a 'distinctly better craftsmanship'
The strikes knocked out 5.7 million barrels of daily production, and the officials said they still believe they can fully replace it in coming days. That would require tapping oil inventories and using other facilities to process crude. One of the main targets of the attack was a large crude-processing plant in Abqaiq.
...
"It is definitely worse than what we expected in the early hours after the attack, but we are making sure that the market won't experience any shortages until we're fully back online," said a Saudi official.
...
Even if Saudi officials were successful in restoring all or most of the lost production, the attack demonstrates a new vulnerability to supply lines across the oil-rich Gulf.
Tankers have been paying sharply higher insurance premiums, while shipping rates have soared in the region after a series of maritime attacks on oil-laden vessels, which the U.S. has blamed on Iran.
...
Khurais produces about 1.5 million barrels a day and Abqaiq, the world's biggest crude-stabilization facility, processes seven million barrels of Saudi oil a day, turning crude into specific grades, such as Arabian Extra Light.
The repairs at Abqaiq will likely take weeks, no days. Brent crude futures rose by 19.5 percent to $71.95 per barrel, the biggest jump since 14 January, 1991:
Aramco gave no timeline for output resumption. A source close to the matter told Reuters the return to full oil capacity could take "weeks, not days".Riyadh said it would compensate for the damage at its facilities by drawing on its stocks, which stood at 188 million barrels in June, according to official data.
U.S. President Donald Trump was way more careful in attributing the strike than his Secretary of State.
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump - 0:50 UTC · Sep 16, 2019
Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked. There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!
Any direct attack on Iran would result in swarms of missiles hitting U.S. military installations in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Saudi water desalination plants, refineries and ports would also be targets. It is doubtful that Trump or the Saudis are ready to risk such a response. The attack on Abqaiq was not the last one and all Saudi installations are extremely vulnerable:
Yemen's Houthi rebels said oil installations in Saudi Arabia remain among their targets after attacks against two major sites slashed the kingdom's output by half and triggered a surge in crude prices.The Iranian-backed rebel group, cited by the Houthi's television station, said its weapons can reach anywhere in Saudi Arabia. Saturday's attacks were carried out by "planes" using new engines, the group said, likely referring to drones.
Middle East Eye, a Qatari financed outlet, reported yesterday that the attack was launched from Iraq by Iran aligned forces in revenge for Israeli attacks in Syria. The author, David Hearst, is known for slandered reporting. The report is based on a single anonymous Iraqi intelligence source. Qatar, which is struggling with Saudi Arabia and the UAE over its support for the Muslim Brotherhood, would like to see a larger conflict involving its rivals east and west of the Persian Gulf. The report should therefore be disregarded. Saudi Arabia has no defenses against this kind of attacks. The U.S. has no system that could be used for that purpose. Russia is the only country that can provide the necessary equipment. It would be extremely costly, and still insufficient, to protect all of the Saudi's vital facilities from similar swarm attacks. Attacks of this kind will only end when Saudi Arabia makes peace with Yemen and when the U.S. ends its sanctions of oil exports from Iran. It is high time for hawks like Pompeo to recognize that.
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