I have subsribed for the year even though I can't listen. Your commentary is to articulate and important to be missed. Thanks for your efforts for peace
If only we could clone Dennis Kucinich! Nearly every sentence of his essay should be on billboards across he country. Mainstream media drown us in reports of the damage and deaths wrought by Russian weapons, all the while reporting on the exportation of American weapons as if they're magically benign.
I'm guilty - rather than face any inconvenience, I'll pay my taxes even though I know they'll be used for devastating weapons to supposedly protect me and my fellow citizens from manufactured foreign enemies. Dennis makes it clear that America's enemies are within.
"It is time to demand that those who had have led us in this direction be voted out or removed from public office."
Indeed, it is time, past time - and the only way to remove them from office is to vote them out - to do that we need candidates of honesty and integrity - who are not owned by corporate interests - and that leaves out D/Rs - anyone who runs as a D, e.g. may start out with good intentions, but as we have seen, they are soon read the riot act and either conform or get booted - you are the poster child for that ...
So, Dennis, because we need independent folks of honesty and integrity to hold office in this country - will you run again? I would support you, as I did the other 2 times you ran ...
Run again, Dennis - and I hope anyone who reads this post will encourage and support you in that endeavor - we need folks like you and time is running out ...
Dennis, my wife [Jackie Captain says, Hi] and I picked you up at the airport in Madison, Wisconsin sometime around the time neocons — with Hillery Clinton, Biden and the whole bunch of neolibs in tow — decided what a wonderful idea it was to invade Iraq, all in self-defense of course.
You called for peace, civil liberties, human rights and an end to lies at BobFest. Predictably, you became the enemy of the Democrat Party over the last 20 years. Peace, civil liberties, human rights and candor? What the hell country you think we live in?
Nice to read your analyses at Substack.
I think the Democrat Party is irretrievably corrupt, and is the most dangerous enemy facing progressives today.
We keep fighting, but I urge folks to adjust fire dead-center towards the Democrats.
Excellent.. Prodigiously compelling....utterly tragic.. However I fear it's too late for the United States to change its stripes. With the assassination of the President whose platform was peace, the die was cast.. and the Kent State generation that protested in symbol and song on college campuses in the 60s fell silent. But God almighty is listening to the blood crying everywhere from the ground, and the Good Book (Jeremiah 50 and 51) has already described in minute detail the recompense for the United States. Pray to God that you are not here for it.
Well written but dangerously naive. Ukraine was an independent state with a democratically elected government. It was/is being brutally invaded by a dictator with a long agenda to destroy democracy. Read “Road to unfreedom” by Tim Snyder and dozens of other books and lectures. What are we supposed to do, Denis, sit back and watch democracy destroyed? This is not to excuse our tragic and evil behavior toward Iraq which you cover beautifully in your essay. It would have been a good thing if we could have been stopped before we started. Same goes for Russia now.
Indeed, "with a democratically elected government" - whose Pres was ousted by a US sponsored coup in '14 - are you still not aware of that? We the people are the ones who sat back while "democracy was destroyed" in Ukraine - and the "new" government launched a war on its own people in the Eastern Ukraine who opposed the ouster of that Pres they had voted for ...
Indeed "our tragic and evil behavior" in Iraq, remember we went to "liberate them" from an "evil dictator" - now where have i heard that rhetoric before, why just the other day with regard to Ukraine, same rhetoric only the names have changed, but our behavior is the same - US arms, weapons, "advisors" - and we are even sending uranium depleted weapons to the brave troops in Ukraine with which they can poison their country, just as we did in Iraq
"Our tragic and evil behavior" - are you referring to our repeated sabotaging of negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, maybe?
I'm sorry, Abbie, but I don't think it is Dennis who is naive ...
You are perhaps not aware of the “little green men” in Eastern Ukraine, or how that area came to favor Putin? Timothy Snyder explains it in his Yale course on Ukraine history, which would be a good listen for you, I think. Unlike us, he speaks and reads the languages and he’s been there (i suppose it’s possible that you are a very articulate Russian troll, but I doubt it.) I get that recent Republican administrations have been corrupt and unprincipled - well at least since Reagan - but that does not excuse Russia. We are sleepwalking into the death of democracy. Do you want to just roll over and let it happen? Do you want a future where you will be jailed for expressing your views? If not, please learn from the Eastern European experience.
And you are perhaps not aware of the "little Nazi men" (sorry don't know what color they wear) in Western Ukraine who aided and abetted Nuland and co. (or was it vice-versa), in the '14 coup, then attacked and shelled their fellow Ukrainians in the East for 8 years - ethnic Russians, who had objected to the coup, to the banning of Russian language, etc,
As to the "recent Rep. admin. (who) have been corrupt and unprincipled" - as if there were no corrupt, unprincipled Dem admin before, after and in between - or is corruption only bad when a Rep does it?
No one is "excusing Russia", but you seem to be excusing the US for prolonging this war with more and more arms (which now it appears will include uranium depleted ammo - shades of all the Iraqi birth deformities and cancers they brought - what "freedom" are they "defending" for Ukrainians)
Indeed, I am not "a very articulate Russian troll " - not a "troll' at all , but I will thank you for the "articulate" part (smile)
As to a future where one can be jailed for expressing one's views - guess what, it's already here -
SH is right, you know. The blaming Russia is laughable, except it's pretty hideous, what the US is doing in Ukraine, which is basically laundering money. OUR TAX money, that should be working here in the States on our problems. And yes, the '14 coup was the US sponsoring NAZIS. While I don't think of Putin as some kind of angel, he was BEGGED by the people of the Donbas region to come and save them from their own govt bombing them...
This is all well-documented. The US lies, lies, lies, and not just about other countries and to other countries, but about the US, TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. It's hard to get accurate information when there's that First Amendment utterly trashed and on fire, and so many lies coming out of DC, they probably believe them themselves, the Lying Liars... It SUCKS to be a citizen of a hegemonic country that has come to this level of EVIL, but it is the truth and we need to face it and FIX it.
What the hell is the "Jewish Corruption in Ukraine"???????? Racist, and bullshit, that's what that is, and having a PhD doesn't mean shit anymore, if it ever did.
It's true that Russia isn't a threat to Ukraine, and never was. The real threat to Ukraine is and was the Nazis running it, installed by the US and Friends Cabal of Hegemony.
You want the real story, watch Oliver Stone's documentary about what happened in 2014 and beyond. ALL the suffering, all the mayhem, all the KILLING in Ukraine had everything to do the the US of Fuckin' A. We need be ignorant no longer. Here's a link to Stone's doc.
Abby - You read one PYOPS book and suddenly this is good reason to ignore the ad infinitum US War mongering template - and our long historied penchant for nation destruction... Just to say yes, this is finally a good reason to destroy one more country. Besides that you obviously know nothing of the history of this catastrophe...just like so many on the Hill you are dangerously delusional.
Actually more like a dozen books and two courses. You? And I’m hardly ignoring our sordid history. Nor that of Russia, whose psyops are legendary and way surpass ours - except possibly for Fox “News”. Sociopathic oligarchs all have the same agenda no matter where they hail from, and it ain’t democratic in any sense.
Hmm, maybe it's time to get your head out of those books and courses and look around a bit ..
Ah so just as in the arms race, space race, etc., we are behind the Russians and better hurry and catch up, eh? With some help from Israel, ala Pegasus - Israel who we are also arming to "defend them from the Palestinians" who have the nerve to object to the occupation of their land by Israel - so its wrong for Russia to occupy parts of Ukraine, but perfectly all right for Israel to gobble up Palestine ... maybe a few courses would help you there ... Oh I know, we are talking about Ukraine and Russia - don't muddy up the waters by talking about anything else, right - even when that "anything else" helps establish a pattern -
"Sociopathic oligarchs" - uh-huh - so how do you propose to handle the ones in our country (you are in the US, no?)
"Hmm..", SH, maybe it's time for you to read some well-researched information from a knowledgeable historian who speaks both Russian and Ukrainian (as do a large portion of the Ukrainian citizenry--doesn't mean they are pro-Putin), rather than "look[ing] around a bit", whatever that means. Snyder (and other educators horrified by the Russian invasion of Ukraine's burgeoning democracy) deals with all of the talking points including the early neo-Nazi groups supporting Zelensky. Russia is the country "prolonging" their attack on Ukraine and Russia--Putin--could end it immediately.
So here is what happens when you "look around" you discover, e.g.
Zelensky could have prevented the invasion if he had implemented the Minsk accords ... which he had refused to do, upon advice from the West, and which it is now clear from prior Fr and Ger chancellors were only meant to buy time to arm Ukraine
Hmm, that's right, being Russian speakers doesn't mean they are pro-Putin - but maybe, just maybe, some of those Russian speakers were anti-coup
Indeed, all the "talking points" - on both sides?
Have you listened to Scott Ritter on Ukriane? Yeah, the same Scott Ritter who debunked the Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" nonsense ...
SH, you make excellent points in your response here, and in other responses. To what you have stated, the United States of America's Congress had recognized the "Neo-Nazi elements" within Ukraine. But, let me change "Neo-Nazi elements" to the Nazis within Ukraine, who worship at the genocidal maniac Bandera, and the genocide perpetrated by the Banderites against Jews, Roma, Poles, and others.
Furthermore, the Western media had written and done documentaries about the Nazis within Ukraine.
It remains quite disturbing that many refuse to learn from the past. The blinders they have to the world, and the violence perpetrated by the United States remains quite alarming.
Again, SH, thank you for the comment you have here and elsewhere.
SH, from my understanding and remembrance, the Minsk 1 and 2 ceasefires never worked as Russia and Ukraine both kept fighters in areas of the Ukraine, and Putin declared that Minsk "no longer existed" at a later date, deciding instead to send his huge army to attack and annihilate Ukrainian towns. Is this not true? Re: Nazis--these evil people have gathered in parts of Ukraine and have had government influence at times, as they do in the US and in Russia. Their power in Ukraine can be explained to some extent by the history of the country: many Ukrainians fear and hate Russia even more than they did the German Nazis because of the Ukrainian deportations--genocide--at the hands of Stalin. I will look up Scott Ritter's discussion of Ukraine/Russia. Again, I admired his stand against the US military deception in Iraq, especially since he was a soldier at the time of that hideous debacle. Is he an authority on Russia/Ukraine history and relationship?
It's easy to get people who seem to be more likely to be siding with your enemy to say things against them... It's called "payment." The US is the most destructive hegemony since... oh, I dunno, maybe the British Empire, which is actually part of the US cabal, all under the auspices of the City of London, and I don't mean the city of London.
Ms. McMillen, I respectfully say to you that you have all of your facts wrong. It is naive to honestly believe that anything other than nuclear Armageddon or climate-destruction caused Armageddon sits in our near-term future, but it is hardly dangerous to point out that, at least with regard to the first, human agency could make a difference. It is also useful in fending off despair. You have been propagandized successfully. My efforts to deprogram myself began with the release of the Pentagon Papers. It remains an ongoing process. Looking back over 50 years, I think it has been worth the effort, but life would have been a lot easier if I hadn’t bothered. Good luck to you either way you decide to go. Just know that your comment was unfair.
Wonderful description of the criminal policies, practices and political model of the US. The only addition to this is that, extrapolating the formula detailed here, is the same picture that we saw with the promotion of a fearmongering campaign to sell the country on Covid as an invisible enemy with lack of transparency, use of the media to sell this 'war,' destroying all critical voices, never holding the so-called leaders accountable to provide real data on an illness most likely contrived in a lab and let loose, etc, etc. The American people not only need the gruesome details of how the Iraq war was sold and how that political model sold the American contrived Ukraine fiasco with its economic raping of the public's livelihood and food, but is the same process and practice on every other big issue most especially the fear of Covid an illness that actually causes less deaths than the annual flu. And the selling of drugs that are barely tested, have caused most of the deaths, and instead of military equipment there are not drugs that make billions in profit for a very few select people while the public is losing their civil liberties out of fear.
Dear Dennis, I used to work for you, back in 03/04 and would like to speak with you regarding solutions for the sake of all nations of the world 🕊️❤️🙏☘️
Brilliant piece of writing there Mr Kucinich. The only thing I’d like to add is that there also needs to be a reopening of the 9/11 investigation into what really happened that day and who was truly behind those horrific crimes. There is just way too much evidence that’s been suppressed that’s led to many unanswered questions for Americans and citizens of the world to accept the third rate unbelievable claims of the 9/11 Commission, a group that was only appointed because of the insistence of victims’ families.
When you take a deep dive into all of the anomalies that remain unanswered, you cannot help but consider that these deadly attacks were planned and executed not necessarily by Islamic fanatics but by people connected in some way to our own government. Sadly upon such a revelation, the criminal, almost demonic attack on Iraq makes even more sense.
Let's face it. Dennis Kucinich, Dr. Ron Paul, Seymour Hersch, John Mearsheimer, Col MacGregor and others, are voices crying in the wilderness of foolish Americans who think there's any such thing as a conspiracy theory. The term would never hold up in court of law. Something is either true or it isn't. All of the labeling will fall away with a whimper and be forgotten, in the day when the Lord's recompenses for the USA come to pass.
Awesome to have Dennis Kucinich back working to bequeath our children a world at peace, and a nation where democracy and liberty and the rule of law are really respected.
Agreed, they should be held "accountable" whatever that means - but 2 of them are already dead, Rumsfeld and Powell - and holding the others "accountable" won't stop things from getting worse - they will until we kick 'em all out and put in better people - like Kucinich, and for my money, Stein
Also Richard Wolfe for Secretary of Treasury but I can’t figure out what position Chris Hedges should have, perhaps the government prophet, a new position.
I appreciated this piece. It contains the heart and feeling of the man I remember from the early 2000’s.
And yet, the basic premise at the start of the piece retells a version history which is more akin to myth than a critical parsing of what actually transpired. I offer this to you, Dennis, with great respect, for your consideration. There’s much more beyond the myths we tell.
-
The very first tell was visible exactly as the first tower began to fall. I watched it happen on TV, about 45 minutes after the planes hit the buildings. Strangely, the second tower struck collapsed before the first. Weird.
The collapse that unfolded went against every structural engineering principle known and employed to construct buildings of this size. I saw the buildings fall straight down at astonishing speed. Basic physics seemed suspended. I was shocked.
The WTC towers are a Type I structure, which require 3 hours of fire protection. This is because Type I structures don’t have a height limitation. Very tall structures require time to evacuate and deploy firefighters. So while a two story apartment building might only have a 1 hour rating, tall buildings are held to a stricter standard. This is primarily driven by insurance, as most building codes have been since their inception. This doesn’t mean 3 hours to collapse, but 3 hours until a certain level of deformation takes place. The building is still expected to stand, not collapse. In real life, no fire-protected Type I building has ever suffered catastrophic collapse before or since the WTC. This is very important.
We have to remember that these were, at one time, the tallest towers on the planet. They weren’t built to simply *meet* the building codes of the time, but to vastly *exceed* them. These towers were designed with a highly redundant structural system that paired vertical load bearing and shear resistance in its interior and a web-like network of structural steel at its perimeter that lent the towers remarkable stiffness and resiliency (an essential characteristic for tall buildings subjected to hurricane force winds which can come from any direction). In addition to the robust redundancy of the structural design, all of the steel was either encased or covered with fire-protective material, be it concrete, gypsum, or asbestos-containing coatings available at the time.
I have personally worked intimately on the design and construction of these kinds of tall buildings, and when I saw these buildings collapse on that fateful day, I knew immediately it was an Op. And a very large and elaborate one.
On that day, the TV told me to ignore training, education, and experience, and just be afraid. It told us that somehow jetliners crashing into the buildings made them fall, like Luke Skywalker—a single X-Wing taking down the Death Star. That’s fine for a movie plot line, with accompanying special effects; but from a structural engineering perspective, it’s utter fantasy. It would take much more than a single plane, and the collapse wouldn’t have looked like that. What it looked like was controlled demolition. Full stop.
Every structural engineer and architect worth their salt should have jumped out of their seats and exclaimed, “WTF?” Instead, most sat and waited, silent. My team members and peers were curiously silent, hesitant to ask questions. Most said nothing and changed the topic when probed. They were uncertain. Afraid to speak out. Like an unmasked person in a crowd of masked faces, they feared being isolated. Perhaps there was something they didn’t know?
There were so many angles to pick this apart based on basic principles, but almost no one noticed and fewer said anything. No one seemed to see the rate of fall, the way the collapse self-corrected early on at the top third. No one seemed to question how it is that relatively minor damage to one side of a redundant structure played out as a very uniform and organized collapse.
Almost that very day, a blanket of silence spread out over the topic. It was as if a mass suggestion spell had been cast and nearly everyone had bought the ruse. It was as if the TV and headlines had been scripted beforehand, structured to obscure and direct inquiry away from the forensic evidence. Is it any wonder that the overwhelming majority of the steel remains were quickly freighted off to asia for smelting? Forensic examination wasn’t a goal, it was to be avoided.
Many point to the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania crash as big tells, but for me, it was the WTC collapses that spoke volumes. Basic physics, Newtonian Mechanics, high rise design principles, all had been violated; and we’re not talking about particle physics here, but basic principles that have been used to design buildings for centuries. How could this possibly be?
Immediately, within the space of weeks, the industry rags devoted special issues reporting theories of collapse. The theories were all ridiculous, but like the NEJM or the Lancet, does anyone question Architecture or Structure? Never mind that all of a sudden, the normal advertisements changed on a dime to market security bollards, fire-rated glass, and terrorist-resistant building security systems. The people who read these initial theories fell into three camps: skeptics, acceptors, and those who stayed silent. I would estimate around 75% were acceptors, 5% were skeptical, and 20% were afraid to give voice to their questions.
Much like the doctors during the pandemic outbreak, only a few professionals in connected fields spoke out, many were cowed into silence, and a great many went along in blind acceptance. Honest truth: a huge number of architects suck at structural engineering, even on an intuitive level, and outsource even fundamental design to engineers—they like to spend an inordinate amount of effort on prettifying the packaging. People who raised questions were drowned out by official pronouncements via NIST and the media.
What followed reads like a template for now. Computer models were created to cartoon animate a brand-new phenomena: Progressive Collapse. Mathematics professors were called upon to write papers demonstrating the mathematics, proving the theory. Most people couldn’t understand the language or read the papers being written. But those who could, knew the computer model was bullshit and the mathematics made no sense. I waded through the poorly written paper and confirmed it was another part of the Op.
The most oft-cited paper at the time basically tried to argue that through a combination of potential energy and momentum of collapsing floors one could numerically demonstrate that there was adequate energy in the system to demonstrate the feasibility of the collapse. What laypeople didn’t know, and what the reporting in this failed to grok, is that the equations in that paper were based on a fantasy. The analysis failed to account for the total amount of energy required to demonstrate not just the collapse, but the observable evidence: cutting of massive steel beams and columns, the pulverizing of enormous amounts of concrete into dust, along with corrugated steel, truss joists, even connecting bolts, so much reduced to dust and slag. The paper was an exercise in obfuscation—using math to bolster the psyop, invisible to all but the most intrepid.
There is nothing that will cause a steel frame structure to pancake collapse at close to free fall speed without removing vertical support below the falling mass first. This is fundamental. All of the structural connections and supports below the falling mass have to fail at each floor in order without affecting the speed of collapse. If the mechanism cited by the paper had been true, you would have observed slowing collapse, not a uniform one. Further, the pile of rubble at ground level would more likely have been a broken stack of floor plates, and not the overwhelmingly atomized debris sprayed out over many city blocks in all directions.
Eventually this deeply deceptive model was refined and tweaked, with various propositions suggesting failure of poorly-applied fire-proofing and faulty truss joist connections as the culprits behind the failure. Much of this made its way into the 9/11 Commission report even though it is all an elaborate lie. But telling a lie repeatedly to people that don’t understand the basis for the lie has been shown to be a very effective strategy. Eventually, fortified by ‘official’ decree, even the basic laws of physics must bow.
Very few considered that the towers had undergone retrofitting in the years leading up to the collapse, much of the work happening at night to avoid disruptions to public business operations. Funny that.
In the end, not very different from a virus (relatively small fire with poor fuel stock) somehow ripping through the population (the first ever/since examples of catastrophic failure in buildings of this type due to fire), mass dissemination of prepared mathematical manipulation, mixed with copious amounts of fear messaged through the media (Bin Laden, Bin Laden, Bin Laden), followed by governmental mandates (Patriot Act) and actions (War), benefitting the super-rich (war profiteers and the security state).
There’s that old adage about repeating history when we fail to understand it…
Very good synopsis but 2 missing points of significance:
1. There was/is a group of engineers and architects that formed shortly after the Fall to analyze and report on the collapse and they, of course, did not accept the govt mantra.
2. What about Bldg 7 that no one want to discuss--you know the one not hit by a plane but contained very important documents regarding govt planned economic crash as I recall!
What I would add it how so many of the first responders heard explosions on the first floor and below. These did not come from a plane hitting a floor very distant from the basement. So many contradictions betw reality and the narrative. Yes, you are correct, they have a game plan and keep reusing it over and over as it works---fear and lies and forced repressive tactics.
To be frank, there are more than two points missing. One could write several books about this subject. And yes, there has been research into this by groups. This is only my accounting of that day as it applies to the myths repeated by Mr. Kucinich, offered in the hope that he will re-examine his assumptions about to what transpired that day and the stories that still persist in the public consciousness.
Yes, the subject can be very complicated to dissect all its components, especially the political ones. I only mentioned 2 that always stick out for the silence they receive and that strike me.
I am 80, retired on fixed budget so can't upgrade to paid but resonate strongly with your piece, recalling your heroic stands in congress, against war especially. The war beat goes on hyped by acolyte media as fatigued citizen zombies consider it the only possible Normal. Now it's the US vs Russia on steroids (thinly veiled as a Ukraine battle with exit strategy totally decided by Zelensky). Thanks for spelling this out once again.
I have subsribed for the year even though I can't listen. Your commentary is to articulate and important to be missed. Thanks for your efforts for peace
If only we could clone Dennis Kucinich! Nearly every sentence of his essay should be on billboards across he country. Mainstream media drown us in reports of the damage and deaths wrought by Russian weapons, all the while reporting on the exportation of American weapons as if they're magically benign.
I'm guilty - rather than face any inconvenience, I'll pay my taxes even though I know they'll be used for devastating weapons to supposedly protect me and my fellow citizens from manufactured foreign enemies. Dennis makes it clear that America's enemies are within.
"It is time to demand that those who had have led us in this direction be voted out or removed from public office."
Indeed, it is time, past time - and the only way to remove them from office is to vote them out - to do that we need candidates of honesty and integrity - who are not owned by corporate interests - and that leaves out D/Rs - anyone who runs as a D, e.g. may start out with good intentions, but as we have seen, they are soon read the riot act and either conform or get booted - you are the poster child for that ...
So, Dennis, because we need independent folks of honesty and integrity to hold office in this country - will you run again? I would support you, as I did the other 2 times you ran ...
Run again, Dennis - and I hope anyone who reads this post will encourage and support you in that endeavor - we need folks like you and time is running out ...
Gee, a universal war! What a great idea!
That and a few other PACs as well
That's all well and good - no surprise that Big Corps and Banks have been angling to get into a number of countries -
Oh Clarence, please, pedal your anti-semitism somewhere else ....
Dennis, my wife [Jackie Captain says, Hi] and I picked you up at the airport in Madison, Wisconsin sometime around the time neocons — with Hillery Clinton, Biden and the whole bunch of neolibs in tow — decided what a wonderful idea it was to invade Iraq, all in self-defense of course.
You called for peace, civil liberties, human rights and an end to lies at BobFest. Predictably, you became the enemy of the Democrat Party over the last 20 years. Peace, civil liberties, human rights and candor? What the hell country you think we live in?
Nice to read your analyses at Substack.
I think the Democrat Party is irretrievably corrupt, and is the most dangerous enemy facing progressives today.
We keep fighting, but I urge folks to adjust fire dead-center towards the Democrats.
Trite. Uninstructive. Democrats bear no more resemblance to progressives than Republicans do to libertarians and conservatives.
Does anyone know how i can block this Clarence Spangle? Is it possible on this site? thanks
I don't know, but I rather have this sick punk exposed. I have someone on it. Will keep you posted.
Mike, thanks, it looks like mission accomplished
Excellent.. Prodigiously compelling....utterly tragic.. However I fear it's too late for the United States to change its stripes. With the assassination of the President whose platform was peace, the die was cast.. and the Kent State generation that protested in symbol and song on college campuses in the 60s fell silent. But God almighty is listening to the blood crying everywhere from the ground, and the Good Book (Jeremiah 50 and 51) has already described in minute detail the recompense for the United States. Pray to God that you are not here for it.
Well written but dangerously naive. Ukraine was an independent state with a democratically elected government. It was/is being brutally invaded by a dictator with a long agenda to destroy democracy. Read “Road to unfreedom” by Tim Snyder and dozens of other books and lectures. What are we supposed to do, Denis, sit back and watch democracy destroyed? This is not to excuse our tragic and evil behavior toward Iraq which you cover beautifully in your essay. It would have been a good thing if we could have been stopped before we started. Same goes for Russia now.
Indeed, "with a democratically elected government" - whose Pres was ousted by a US sponsored coup in '14 - are you still not aware of that? We the people are the ones who sat back while "democracy was destroyed" in Ukraine - and the "new" government launched a war on its own people in the Eastern Ukraine who opposed the ouster of that Pres they had voted for ...
Indeed "our tragic and evil behavior" in Iraq, remember we went to "liberate them" from an "evil dictator" - now where have i heard that rhetoric before, why just the other day with regard to Ukraine, same rhetoric only the names have changed, but our behavior is the same - US arms, weapons, "advisors" - and we are even sending uranium depleted weapons to the brave troops in Ukraine with which they can poison their country, just as we did in Iraq
"Our tragic and evil behavior" - are you referring to our repeated sabotaging of negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, maybe?
I'm sorry, Abbie, but I don't think it is Dennis who is naive ...
You are perhaps not aware of the “little green men” in Eastern Ukraine, or how that area came to favor Putin? Timothy Snyder explains it in his Yale course on Ukraine history, which would be a good listen for you, I think. Unlike us, he speaks and reads the languages and he’s been there (i suppose it’s possible that you are a very articulate Russian troll, but I doubt it.) I get that recent Republican administrations have been corrupt and unprincipled - well at least since Reagan - but that does not excuse Russia. We are sleepwalking into the death of democracy. Do you want to just roll over and let it happen? Do you want a future where you will be jailed for expressing your views? If not, please learn from the Eastern European experience.
And you are perhaps not aware of the "little Nazi men" (sorry don't know what color they wear) in Western Ukraine who aided and abetted Nuland and co. (or was it vice-versa), in the '14 coup, then attacked and shelled their fellow Ukrainians in the East for 8 years - ethnic Russians, who had objected to the coup, to the banning of Russian language, etc,
As to the "recent Rep. admin. (who) have been corrupt and unprincipled" - as if there were no corrupt, unprincipled Dem admin before, after and in between - or is corruption only bad when a Rep does it?
No one is "excusing Russia", but you seem to be excusing the US for prolonging this war with more and more arms (which now it appears will include uranium depleted ammo - shades of all the Iraqi birth deformities and cancers they brought - what "freedom" are they "defending" for Ukrainians)
Indeed, I am not "a very articulate Russian troll " - not a "troll' at all , but I will thank you for the "articulate" part (smile)
As to a future where one can be jailed for expressing one's views - guess what, it's already here -
Are you listening to MSNBC?
SH is right, you know. The blaming Russia is laughable, except it's pretty hideous, what the US is doing in Ukraine, which is basically laundering money. OUR TAX money, that should be working here in the States on our problems. And yes, the '14 coup was the US sponsoring NAZIS. While I don't think of Putin as some kind of angel, he was BEGGED by the people of the Donbas region to come and save them from their own govt bombing them...
This is all well-documented. The US lies, lies, lies, and not just about other countries and to other countries, but about the US, TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. It's hard to get accurate information when there's that First Amendment utterly trashed and on fire, and so many lies coming out of DC, they probably believe them themselves, the Lying Liars... It SUCKS to be a citizen of a hegemonic country that has come to this level of EVIL, but it is the truth and we need to face it and FIX it.
What the hell is the "Jewish Corruption in Ukraine"???????? Racist, and bullshit, that's what that is, and having a PhD doesn't mean shit anymore, if it ever did.
It's true that Russia isn't a threat to Ukraine, and never was. The real threat to Ukraine is and was the Nazis running it, installed by the US and Friends Cabal of Hegemony.
You want the real story, watch Oliver Stone's documentary about what happened in 2014 and beyond. ALL the suffering, all the mayhem, all the KILLING in Ukraine had everything to do the the US of Fuckin' A. We need be ignorant no longer. Here's a link to Stone's doc.
https://rumble.com/vwxxi8-ukraine-on-fire.html
Abby - You read one PYOPS book and suddenly this is good reason to ignore the ad infinitum US War mongering template - and our long historied penchant for nation destruction... Just to say yes, this is finally a good reason to destroy one more country. Besides that you obviously know nothing of the history of this catastrophe...just like so many on the Hill you are dangerously delusional.
Actually more like a dozen books and two courses. You? And I’m hardly ignoring our sordid history. Nor that of Russia, whose psyops are legendary and way surpass ours - except possibly for Fox “News”. Sociopathic oligarchs all have the same agenda no matter where they hail from, and it ain’t democratic in any sense.
Hmm, maybe it's time to get your head out of those books and courses and look around a bit ..
Ah so just as in the arms race, space race, etc., we are behind the Russians and better hurry and catch up, eh? With some help from Israel, ala Pegasus - Israel who we are also arming to "defend them from the Palestinians" who have the nerve to object to the occupation of their land by Israel - so its wrong for Russia to occupy parts of Ukraine, but perfectly all right for Israel to gobble up Palestine ... maybe a few courses would help you there ... Oh I know, we are talking about Ukraine and Russia - don't muddy up the waters by talking about anything else, right - even when that "anything else" helps establish a pattern -
"Sociopathic oligarchs" - uh-huh - so how do you propose to handle the ones in our country (you are in the US, no?)
"Hmm..", SH, maybe it's time for you to read some well-researched information from a knowledgeable historian who speaks both Russian and Ukrainian (as do a large portion of the Ukrainian citizenry--doesn't mean they are pro-Putin), rather than "look[ing] around a bit", whatever that means. Snyder (and other educators horrified by the Russian invasion of Ukraine's burgeoning democracy) deals with all of the talking points including the early neo-Nazi groups supporting Zelensky. Russia is the country "prolonging" their attack on Ukraine and Russia--Putin--could end it immediately.
So here is what happens when you "look around" you discover, e.g.
Zelensky could have prevented the invasion if he had implemented the Minsk accords ... which he had refused to do, upon advice from the West, and which it is now clear from prior Fr and Ger chancellors were only meant to buy time to arm Ukraine
Hmm, that's right, being Russian speakers doesn't mean they are pro-Putin - but maybe, just maybe, some of those Russian speakers were anti-coup
Indeed, all the "talking points" - on both sides?
Have you listened to Scott Ritter on Ukriane? Yeah, the same Scott Ritter who debunked the Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" nonsense ...
SH, you make excellent points in your response here, and in other responses. To what you have stated, the United States of America's Congress had recognized the "Neo-Nazi elements" within Ukraine. But, let me change "Neo-Nazi elements" to the Nazis within Ukraine, who worship at the genocidal maniac Bandera, and the genocide perpetrated by the Banderites against Jews, Roma, Poles, and others.
Furthermore, the Western media had written and done documentaries about the Nazis within Ukraine.
It remains quite disturbing that many refuse to learn from the past. The blinders they have to the world, and the violence perpetrated by the United States remains quite alarming.
Again, SH, thank you for the comment you have here and elsewhere.
SH, from my understanding and remembrance, the Minsk 1 and 2 ceasefires never worked as Russia and Ukraine both kept fighters in areas of the Ukraine, and Putin declared that Minsk "no longer existed" at a later date, deciding instead to send his huge army to attack and annihilate Ukrainian towns. Is this not true? Re: Nazis--these evil people have gathered in parts of Ukraine and have had government influence at times, as they do in the US and in Russia. Their power in Ukraine can be explained to some extent by the history of the country: many Ukrainians fear and hate Russia even more than they did the German Nazis because of the Ukrainian deportations--genocide--at the hands of Stalin. I will look up Scott Ritter's discussion of Ukraine/Russia. Again, I admired his stand against the US military deception in Iraq, especially since he was a soldier at the time of that hideous debacle. Is he an authority on Russia/Ukraine history and relationship?
I second what SH is saying.
It's easy to get people who seem to be more likely to be siding with your enemy to say things against them... It's called "payment." The US is the most destructive hegemony since... oh, I dunno, maybe the British Empire, which is actually part of the US cabal, all under the auspices of the City of London, and I don't mean the city of London.
'Ukraine's burgeoning democracy'..??? У тебя что?, крыша поехала?
Name one sociopathic oligarch Abbie. Particularly one that has anything at all to do with Russian foreign policy...
Ms. McMillen, I respectfully say to you that you have all of your facts wrong. It is naive to honestly believe that anything other than nuclear Armageddon or climate-destruction caused Armageddon sits in our near-term future, but it is hardly dangerous to point out that, at least with regard to the first, human agency could make a difference. It is also useful in fending off despair. You have been propagandized successfully. My efforts to deprogram myself began with the release of the Pentagon Papers. It remains an ongoing process. Looking back over 50 years, I think it has been worth the effort, but life would have been a lot easier if I hadn’t bothered. Good luck to you either way you decide to go. Just know that your comment was unfair.
Excellent point about the Pentagon Papers. Perhaps one could at the Panama Papers and the Pandora Papers to this.
The most violent element in society is ignorance.
Wonderful description of the criminal policies, practices and political model of the US. The only addition to this is that, extrapolating the formula detailed here, is the same picture that we saw with the promotion of a fearmongering campaign to sell the country on Covid as an invisible enemy with lack of transparency, use of the media to sell this 'war,' destroying all critical voices, never holding the so-called leaders accountable to provide real data on an illness most likely contrived in a lab and let loose, etc, etc. The American people not only need the gruesome details of how the Iraq war was sold and how that political model sold the American contrived Ukraine fiasco with its economic raping of the public's livelihood and food, but is the same process and practice on every other big issue most especially the fear of Covid an illness that actually causes less deaths than the annual flu. And the selling of drugs that are barely tested, have caused most of the deaths, and instead of military equipment there are not drugs that make billions in profit for a very few select people while the public is losing their civil liberties out of fear.
Dear Dennis, I used to work for you, back in 03/04 and would like to speak with you regarding solutions for the sake of all nations of the world 🕊️❤️🙏☘️
Brilliant piece of writing there Mr Kucinich. The only thing I’d like to add is that there also needs to be a reopening of the 9/11 investigation into what really happened that day and who was truly behind those horrific crimes. There is just way too much evidence that’s been suppressed that’s led to many unanswered questions for Americans and citizens of the world to accept the third rate unbelievable claims of the 9/11 Commission, a group that was only appointed because of the insistence of victims’ families.
When you take a deep dive into all of the anomalies that remain unanswered, you cannot help but consider that these deadly attacks were planned and executed not necessarily by Islamic fanatics but by people connected in some way to our own government. Sadly upon such a revelation, the criminal, almost demonic attack on Iraq makes even more sense.
And so many false flags including 9/11 have Mossad’s fingerprints all over them.
Let's face it. Dennis Kucinich, Dr. Ron Paul, Seymour Hersch, John Mearsheimer, Col MacGregor and others, are voices crying in the wilderness of foolish Americans who think there's any such thing as a conspiracy theory. The term would never hold up in court of law. Something is either true or it isn't. All of the labeling will fall away with a whimper and be forgotten, in the day when the Lord's recompenses for the USA come to pass.
Awesome to have Dennis Kucinich back working to bequeath our children a world at peace, and a nation where democracy and liberty and the rule of law are really respected.
I've been sharing Loose Change #2 DVD since 911. Officials in Busch Admin need to be held accountable. Or, like Dennis says, thus just gets worse...
Agreed, they should be held "accountable" whatever that means - but 2 of them are already dead, Rumsfeld and Powell - and holding the others "accountable" won't stop things from getting worse - they will until we kick 'em all out and put in better people - like Kucinich, and for my money, Stein
Dennis Kucinich for President, Kshama Sawant for Vice President, and Medea Benjamin for Secretary of State!
Also Richard Wolfe for Secretary of Treasury but I can’t figure out what position Chris Hedges should have, perhaps the government prophet, a new position.
I appreciated this piece. It contains the heart and feeling of the man I remember from the early 2000’s.
And yet, the basic premise at the start of the piece retells a version history which is more akin to myth than a critical parsing of what actually transpired. I offer this to you, Dennis, with great respect, for your consideration. There’s much more beyond the myths we tell.
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The very first tell was visible exactly as the first tower began to fall. I watched it happen on TV, about 45 minutes after the planes hit the buildings. Strangely, the second tower struck collapsed before the first. Weird.
The collapse that unfolded went against every structural engineering principle known and employed to construct buildings of this size. I saw the buildings fall straight down at astonishing speed. Basic physics seemed suspended. I was shocked.
The WTC towers are a Type I structure, which require 3 hours of fire protection. This is because Type I structures don’t have a height limitation. Very tall structures require time to evacuate and deploy firefighters. So while a two story apartment building might only have a 1 hour rating, tall buildings are held to a stricter standard. This is primarily driven by insurance, as most building codes have been since their inception. This doesn’t mean 3 hours to collapse, but 3 hours until a certain level of deformation takes place. The building is still expected to stand, not collapse. In real life, no fire-protected Type I building has ever suffered catastrophic collapse before or since the WTC. This is very important.
We have to remember that these were, at one time, the tallest towers on the planet. They weren’t built to simply *meet* the building codes of the time, but to vastly *exceed* them. These towers were designed with a highly redundant structural system that paired vertical load bearing and shear resistance in its interior and a web-like network of structural steel at its perimeter that lent the towers remarkable stiffness and resiliency (an essential characteristic for tall buildings subjected to hurricane force winds which can come from any direction). In addition to the robust redundancy of the structural design, all of the steel was either encased or covered with fire-protective material, be it concrete, gypsum, or asbestos-containing coatings available at the time.
I have personally worked intimately on the design and construction of these kinds of tall buildings, and when I saw these buildings collapse on that fateful day, I knew immediately it was an Op. And a very large and elaborate one.
On that day, the TV told me to ignore training, education, and experience, and just be afraid. It told us that somehow jetliners crashing into the buildings made them fall, like Luke Skywalker—a single X-Wing taking down the Death Star. That’s fine for a movie plot line, with accompanying special effects; but from a structural engineering perspective, it’s utter fantasy. It would take much more than a single plane, and the collapse wouldn’t have looked like that. What it looked like was controlled demolition. Full stop.
Every structural engineer and architect worth their salt should have jumped out of their seats and exclaimed, “WTF?” Instead, most sat and waited, silent. My team members and peers were curiously silent, hesitant to ask questions. Most said nothing and changed the topic when probed. They were uncertain. Afraid to speak out. Like an unmasked person in a crowd of masked faces, they feared being isolated. Perhaps there was something they didn’t know?
There were so many angles to pick this apart based on basic principles, but almost no one noticed and fewer said anything. No one seemed to see the rate of fall, the way the collapse self-corrected early on at the top third. No one seemed to question how it is that relatively minor damage to one side of a redundant structure played out as a very uniform and organized collapse.
Almost that very day, a blanket of silence spread out over the topic. It was as if a mass suggestion spell had been cast and nearly everyone had bought the ruse. It was as if the TV and headlines had been scripted beforehand, structured to obscure and direct inquiry away from the forensic evidence. Is it any wonder that the overwhelming majority of the steel remains were quickly freighted off to asia for smelting? Forensic examination wasn’t a goal, it was to be avoided.
Many point to the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania crash as big tells, but for me, it was the WTC collapses that spoke volumes. Basic physics, Newtonian Mechanics, high rise design principles, all had been violated; and we’re not talking about particle physics here, but basic principles that have been used to design buildings for centuries. How could this possibly be?
Immediately, within the space of weeks, the industry rags devoted special issues reporting theories of collapse. The theories were all ridiculous, but like the NEJM or the Lancet, does anyone question Architecture or Structure? Never mind that all of a sudden, the normal advertisements changed on a dime to market security bollards, fire-rated glass, and terrorist-resistant building security systems. The people who read these initial theories fell into three camps: skeptics, acceptors, and those who stayed silent. I would estimate around 75% were acceptors, 5% were skeptical, and 20% were afraid to give voice to their questions.
Much like the doctors during the pandemic outbreak, only a few professionals in connected fields spoke out, many were cowed into silence, and a great many went along in blind acceptance. Honest truth: a huge number of architects suck at structural engineering, even on an intuitive level, and outsource even fundamental design to engineers—they like to spend an inordinate amount of effort on prettifying the packaging. People who raised questions were drowned out by official pronouncements via NIST and the media.
What followed reads like a template for now. Computer models were created to cartoon animate a brand-new phenomena: Progressive Collapse. Mathematics professors were called upon to write papers demonstrating the mathematics, proving the theory. Most people couldn’t understand the language or read the papers being written. But those who could, knew the computer model was bullshit and the mathematics made no sense. I waded through the poorly written paper and confirmed it was another part of the Op.
The most oft-cited paper at the time basically tried to argue that through a combination of potential energy and momentum of collapsing floors one could numerically demonstrate that there was adequate energy in the system to demonstrate the feasibility of the collapse. What laypeople didn’t know, and what the reporting in this failed to grok, is that the equations in that paper were based on a fantasy. The analysis failed to account for the total amount of energy required to demonstrate not just the collapse, but the observable evidence: cutting of massive steel beams and columns, the pulverizing of enormous amounts of concrete into dust, along with corrugated steel, truss joists, even connecting bolts, so much reduced to dust and slag. The paper was an exercise in obfuscation—using math to bolster the psyop, invisible to all but the most intrepid.
There is nothing that will cause a steel frame structure to pancake collapse at close to free fall speed without removing vertical support below the falling mass first. This is fundamental. All of the structural connections and supports below the falling mass have to fail at each floor in order without affecting the speed of collapse. If the mechanism cited by the paper had been true, you would have observed slowing collapse, not a uniform one. Further, the pile of rubble at ground level would more likely have been a broken stack of floor plates, and not the overwhelmingly atomized debris sprayed out over many city blocks in all directions.
Eventually this deeply deceptive model was refined and tweaked, with various propositions suggesting failure of poorly-applied fire-proofing and faulty truss joist connections as the culprits behind the failure. Much of this made its way into the 9/11 Commission report even though it is all an elaborate lie. But telling a lie repeatedly to people that don’t understand the basis for the lie has been shown to be a very effective strategy. Eventually, fortified by ‘official’ decree, even the basic laws of physics must bow.
Very few considered that the towers had undergone retrofitting in the years leading up to the collapse, much of the work happening at night to avoid disruptions to public business operations. Funny that.
In the end, not very different from a virus (relatively small fire with poor fuel stock) somehow ripping through the population (the first ever/since examples of catastrophic failure in buildings of this type due to fire), mass dissemination of prepared mathematical manipulation, mixed with copious amounts of fear messaged through the media (Bin Laden, Bin Laden, Bin Laden), followed by governmental mandates (Patriot Act) and actions (War), benefitting the super-rich (war profiteers and the security state).
There’s that old adage about repeating history when we fail to understand it…
Very good synopsis but 2 missing points of significance:
1. There was/is a group of engineers and architects that formed shortly after the Fall to analyze and report on the collapse and they, of course, did not accept the govt mantra.
2. What about Bldg 7 that no one want to discuss--you know the one not hit by a plane but contained very important documents regarding govt planned economic crash as I recall!
What I would add it how so many of the first responders heard explosions on the first floor and below. These did not come from a plane hitting a floor very distant from the basement. So many contradictions betw reality and the narrative. Yes, you are correct, they have a game plan and keep reusing it over and over as it works---fear and lies and forced repressive tactics.
To be frank, there are more than two points missing. One could write several books about this subject. And yes, there has been research into this by groups. This is only my accounting of that day as it applies to the myths repeated by Mr. Kucinich, offered in the hope that he will re-examine his assumptions about to what transpired that day and the stories that still persist in the public consciousness.
Yes, the subject can be very complicated to dissect all its components, especially the political ones. I only mentioned 2 that always stick out for the silence they receive and that strike me.
Fantastic article.
Now do the Covid-1984 Genetic Bioweapon Injections.
I am 80, retired on fixed budget so can't upgrade to paid but resonate strongly with your piece, recalling your heroic stands in congress, against war especially. The war beat goes on hyped by acolyte media as fatigued citizen zombies consider it the only possible Normal. Now it's the US vs Russia on steroids (thinly veiled as a Ukraine battle with exit strategy totally decided by Zelensky). Thanks for spelling this out once again.