It is now clear to France that it is in the midst of an all-out war against the threat of terror from both internal and external sources. The assessment by the French of their security situation stems from their concern about additional attacks planned by either terrorist networks or individuals, some of whom are driven by external organized directives, particularly from the Islamic State. There is a fundamental debate underway in France between two schools of thought. One argues that the current wave of terrorist attacks derives from the “Islamization of radicalism,” whereby a minority of nihilistic youth adopt Islamic jihad as a cover for socioeconomic frustration, and stage violent activities under the guise of Salafi jihadism. A second school of thought attributes the threat of terrorist attacks to the “radicalization of Islam,” whereby extremist Islamic leaders exploit frustrated French Muslims to spark a civil war in France. The issue is not merely an intellectual and semantic debate, as each theory dictates different operational responses by the security authorities and demands that the cultural and social problems in France be addressed.
The terrorist attack in Nice in the heart of the Riviera on July 14, 2016, in which a Tunisian immigrant drove a truck into throngs of people celebrating Bastille Day and killed 84 people – citizens and tourists – and severely injured dozens more, traumatized France. Apart from instilling a sense of helplessness and fear in the face of this lethal mode of terrorism, the attack, which was assisted by a local terror cell, exacerbated the public rage over the government’s string of failures, in face of the series of deadly terrorist attacks that France has suffered over the last two years. The brutal murder of Jacques Hamel, a priest from Normandy, by two assailants who identified with the Islamic State – one of whom appeared on the watch list in France – added to the rage, fear, and confusion.
French President François Hollande (c), lanked by the mayor of Saint-Etienne-du- Rouvray and the French Interior Minister, following the terrorist attack at a town church, July 26, 2016. Photo: Charly Triballeau / AFP
It is now clear to France that it is in the midst of an all-out war against the threat of terror from both internal and external sources. The assessment by the French of their security situation stems from their concern about additional terrorist attacks planned by terrorist networks and individuals spurred to violence, sometimes by external organized directives, particularly from the Islamic State. Some of the attacks in France were committed at the personal initiative of second and third-generation immigrants who were raised and educated in France. Following the attacks in January 2015 at the headquarters of the Charlie Hebdo magazine and the Hyper Cacher grocery store, the French government launched a series of measures to prevent and curb terrorist attacks, including increased deployment of security forces throughout the country tasked with protecting symbolic public targets such as airports, religious institutions, and schools. However, the critical conclusions of a parliamentary committee of inquiry that examined the counterterrorism efforts cast doubt on the efficacy of the government’s handling of the threat. Subsequently, in May 2016, the French government presented a comprehensive strategic plan, the first of its kind, to thwart terrorist attacks and radicalization in France.
The plan included a recommendation to institute new measures to heighten prevention, including surveillance of known radicals who are liable to pose a threat to public safety; the establishment of telephone hotlines enabling people to report relatives, neighbors, or others anonymously who are perceived as becoming radicalized; the activation of a system to document airline PNRs (passenger name records); and the formation of intelligence units inside prisons that can monitor signs of radicalization among inmates. Following the terrorist attack in Nice, the government decided to extend the state of emergency declared in France on November 13, 2015 (which was scheduled to expire at the end of July) for another six months. The security deployment has also been adjusted: 12,000 police reservists have been called up to assist in the domestic counterterrorism efforts, and France has coordinated with the United States on a military response to the Islamic State.
Notwithstanding these efforts, French President François Hollande and his government face much public reproach that the past, existing, and future efforts are “too little, too late.” The public pressure to find a response to escalating sources and evidence of home-grown terrorism is intensifying: a survey conducted by the Institut Français d'Opinion Publique (IFOP) and published a day after the terrorist attack in Nice, found that 67 percent of the French public have no faith in the government’s ability to contend with terrorist threats adequately, and that 81 percent were willing to impose particular restrictions on the country’s traditional liberal-democratic lifestyle.
Indeed, the intellectual debate about the threat raises complex dilemmas. Thus, for example, a fundamental public debate is underway between two leading French experts in Islamic studies, Olivier Roy and Gilles Kepel. Roy argues that the current wave of terrorist attacks derives from the “Islamization of radicalism,” whereby a minority of nihilistic youth adopt Islamic jihad as a cover for socioeconomic frustration and sometimes even for mental disorders, and stage violent activities under the guise of Salafi jihadism. In contrast, Kepel attributes the threat of terrorist attacks to the “radicalization of Islam” throughout the world and in France in particular, whereby extremist Islamic leaders are exploiting frustrated French Muslims to spark a civil war in France. The issue is not merely an intellectual and semantic debate, as each theory dictates different operational responses by the security authorities and demands that the cultural and social problems in France be effectively addressed.
Right wing and extreme right wing parties in the opposition have already filed a series of draft bills, proposing the imposition of additional civil rights restrictions. The controversial bills include stripping dual nationals convicted of terrorist activities of their French citizenship and deporting foreigners suspected of incitement or involvement in terrorist attacks; forcing thousands of suspects to wear electronic ankle bracelets so they can be tracked by security forces; incarcerating radicalized people in “deradicalization and reintegration” centers; incarcerating dangerous terrorists in segregated cell blocks; expanding the intelligence tracking of French Muslims already inside prisons; closing extremist mosques; limiting entry into the country by refugees and even closing France’s borders to them; and deliberating the exit from the Schengen Agreement and its replacement with an immigration policy and border controls coordinated with Europe. The Schengen Agreement, which was signed in 1985 and symbolized the vision of a borderless Europe, is now perceived as a security threat, particularly given that since 2015, the influx of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan into Europe has reached more than one million.
Furthermore, the recent terrorist attacks in France have aroused a debate about the extent of the French military’s involvement outside France’s borders; in this context, doubts are raised about the actual effectiveness of these operations. Despite the fact that since 2014 the French government has sent more than 3,000 soldiers to the Sahel and 1,000 soldiers to Iraq, in addition to deploying fighter planes to conduct airstrikes over al-Raqqah and deploying the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier to the Gulf, the right wing opposition has called for intensified French operations in the Sahel, Syria, and Iraq.
In an attempt to restore calm and due to the grave concerns about violent reprisals against Muslims in France – France’s domestic intelligence chief, Patrick Calvar, warned recently that the escalating tensions are liable to bring France to the brink of civil war – the government is attempting to urge the French Muslim population to contend with the phenomenon of radicalization and combat it from within. In 2002, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy formed the French Council of the Muslim Faith, a national body to foster the creation of a unified, tolerant French Muslim community in France. Today, the government, in conjunction with the Muslim Council, is considering giving greater voice to loyal French imams challenging jihadist ideology in physical and virtual spaces, as a means to counter the pervasive impact of foreign Salafi preachers and as part of the attempt to create a counter-narrative to radical Salafi jihadist propaganda.
In its effort to contend with the threat of terrorist attacks, France is also analyzing the experiences of other countries, mainly Belgium, the United States, and Denmark. France borrowed the idea of deradicalization centers from Denmark and is considering setting up deradicalization centers in every French district. The terrorist attack in Nice serves as a reminder of the importance of such efforts, and many argue that the response to Salafi jihadism cannot be limited to reinforced security forces alone and must also include social change.
France considers Israel an important partner in the fight against Salafi jihadist terrorism, and sent a parliamentary delegation to Israel to learn from its experience. Inquiries on behalf of various French mayors, including of Cannes and Nice, have been forwarded to Israeli security experts in order to learn how mayors can reinforce their municipal security systems. Moreover, the recent terrorist attacks in Europe have weakened the earlier prevailing perception among decision makers and opinion-leaders on the European continent in general and in France in particular that the roots of the attacks by Islamic terrorists lie in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that once the conflict is resolved, the attacks in Europe and the terrorist threats from the Islamic State will come to an end.
Israel’s professional, decades-long experience in fighting terrorism and the deep friendship between Israel and France obligate Israel to offer France assistance – to the extent requested – to fight their common enemy. Despite the legitimate disagreements between the two countries about the best way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as reflected in the Israeli reservations to the French initiative for advancing the political process, the grave security situation in France may serve to shift public sentiments in France, and make the French more attentive to Israel’s concerns and security requirements in any future agreement with the Palestinians. For its part, if Israel demonstrates initiative and willingness to promote a political process, it can expect better cooperation and understanding on the part of France and its friends in the European Union.
It's my pleasure to welcome once again the President of
Cyprus, my good friend Nicos. It's wonderful to see you again with your
delegation in Jerusalem.
Cyprus and Israel are two small democracies in the eastern
Mediterranean.We also share common challenges, and also common opportunities:
in security cooperation, in gas, in emergency cooperation, commerce, tourism,
many, many fields.
I will never forget that in 2010, when we faced a ferocious
forest fire in the Carmel Forest, the first country I called was Cyprus. It
offered to send a plane. It did send it, and I was privileged to reciprocate
last month when you faced a ferocious forest fire, and we sent our planes to
extinguish your flames. Back in April, our two nations, along with Greece,
conducted a joint fire-fighting exercise to enhance our regional cooperation in
emergency situations.
And that's exactly the kind of thing that friends do. They
come to each other's help in times of need, but also cooperate in good times or
cooperate to make times better. And that's why I'm particularly proud to have
this opportunity to continue the dialogue we began on a tripartite basis in the
Nicosia summit. We're continuing those discussions, both bilaterally but also
multilaterally, and we continue to send our people.
But of course we know, as leaders, that there's no
substitute for the meeting of the people at the top, so in this spirit, I
welcome you once again.
President Nicos Anastasiades:
Thank you very much, my dear friend, Prime Minister. It is a
pleasure to be back in Jerusalem and to have an opportunity to discuss with you
many of the important developments that have taken place in the past few
months.
But before I say anything else, I want to express to you and
to the people and Government of the State of Israel personally my gratitude and
the gratitude of all Cypriots for the indispensable assistance which you
offered recently during the terrible forest fires in Cyprus. I also want to especially
thank the professional men and women who came to our aid – the pilots, the
ground crew, the support staff and their officers, who so quickly went on
alert, flew to Cyprus and helped us in our time of need.
In the sadness of natural disasters, I have to point out
something that gave me hope for the future: The fact that the level of mutual
cooperation between Cyprus and Israel has reached the point where reaction is
so swift and smooth. We know that we can rely on each other, and this is the
result of a lot of work that we have been doing together during the past few
years in bringing our countries closer.
We are reliable partners that see eye to eye on a wide
agenda of issues, reaching from energy to security to a very sincere, open and
frank political dialogue. We have been tightening our areas of cooperation,
from tourism to education and business, sharpening our joint training, and
through continuous coordination have been forming a common language.
This common language enables us to stand by each other in
these very challenging times, as we are faced with so many attacks against our
common rights. This is true in our immediate region, but also in many parts of
the world.
These frequent meetings – this is actually our fifth meeting
in a year – our regular talks on the telephone (it's another way of
communication) and our transparency are essential for our partnership of
strategic choice and important in understanding each other's needs as peoples
and states.
I cannot but highlight that last week almost 80 flights took
place between Israel and Cyprus. In one week, 80 flights, and today's it was
the 81st flying to Israel.
In this spirit, I look forward to our meeting today to
discuss how to enhance more our bilateral relations in the fields of energy, security,
economy and trade, to exchange views on the regional developments, to brief you
on the negotiations about the Cyprus problem, and of course to prepare for the
next trilateral meeting later this year with our Greek colleague here in
Jerusalem, in order to continue the work which we started in Nicosia last
January.
Once again, thank you my dearest friend for hosting us in
Jerusalem and I look forward to our conversation on the many important subjects
that are of mutual concern. Once again, thank you.
Poor pay, invasive hiring process sees over a third of posts
unfilled.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is struggling to hire
computer scientists, according to a Department of Justice audit of the feeb's
attempts to implement its Next Generation Cyber Initiative.
A 34-page audit report
(PDF) from the DoJ notes that, while making considerable progress, the
FBI has "encountered challenges in attracting external participants to its
established Cyber Task Forces".
Noting that the FBI has not fully met its goals for the
initiative, the DoJ report's foremost complaint is that the feeb's
international public-private alliance – known as the National Cyber
Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF) – does
not have a process to measure the timeliness of information sharing among
members.
The NCIJTF recently made headlines when, alongside its
international colleagues, it took
down the cybercrime forum Darkode. For a few days,
anyway.
The audit also bemoaned how hiring and retaining qualified
white hats remained a challenge for the FBI, especially when competing
private-sector entities pay more and have less invasive recruitment processes.
The FBI reportedly did not hire 52 of the 134 computer
scientists for which it was authorised, meaning 38 per cent of the workforce it
requires (as per budget) is simply not there.
This additionally means that five of the FBI's 56 field
offices do not have even a single computer scientist assigned to their Cyber
Task Force.
Back in 2011, the Office of the Inspector General gave the
FBI a thorough scolding over its inability to address America's cyber-intrusion
threat, for which it has become the responsible national body. The Next
Generation Cyber Initiative was launched in response, essentially as a platform
for funding increases in the face of a swelling number of data breaches and
cyber-attacks in recent years.
This is not the first mention of the FBI's difficulties in
recruiting infosec professionals. Last year, the feeb's director James Comey
said the company was re-examining its drugs policy as too
many applicants seemed to be enjoying a doobie en route to interview.
®
We bribed parties and politicians who have enticed hate
between the nations. Our ultimate goal was to enslave you!
WebTribune publishes their interview with former CIA agent
Robert Baer during his promotion tour in Quebec for upcoming book “Secrets of
the White House” last week.
My boss, who was
formerly a US Senator, stressed repeatedly that some kind of scam would go down
in Bosnia. A month before the alleged genocide in Srebrenica, he told me that
the town would be headline news around the world and ordered us to call the
media.
Robert Baer, a former CIA officer, has authored many books
which disclosed the secrets of both the CIA and the administrations of Bill
Clinton and George W. Bush. He has been arrested and detained several times.
Mitt Waspurh, a personal friend who worked at the Senate and shared information
was killed at gunpoint. As a senior CIA operative, Baer worked in Yugoslavia
during the 1991-94 period and in the Middle East. He has worked on several
documentaries on National Geographic, accusing the Bush administration of
waging war for oil.
The interview was conducted live in Canada, during my trip a
few days ago. Robert Baer is currently promoting his book “The Secrets of the
White House” in Quebec, where we talked. In an interview we spoke of the
background of the war in Yugoslavia.
Where and when was your first job in Yugoslavia?
I arrived by helicopter with three agents. We landed on 12
January 1991 in Sarajevo. Our job was to keep an eye on alleged terrorists of
Serbian nationality, who were expected to attack Sarajevo.
Who were the terrorists in question and why were they
supposed to carry out these attacks?
They gave us files about a group called “Supreme Serbia”
detailing plans to conduct a series of bomb attacks on key buildings in
Sarajevo in opposition to Bosnia’s ambition to leave former Yugoslavia.
Did that group ever exist and what exactly you were doing in
Sarajevo under CIA command?
No such group ever existed! Our headquarters lied to us. Our
mission was to alarm and spread panic among politicians in Bosnia, simply to
fill their heads with the idea that Serbs would attack. To begin with, we
accepted the story, but after a while we started to wonder. Why were we raising
such hysteria when the group clearly did not exist?
How and when did the mission end and did it have a name?
For me it ended after two weeks, I landed a new job in
Slovenia. The operation lasted a month and had the name “Istina” (i.e. “truth”)
although it was anything but!
Why did you go to Slovenia?
I received instructions that Slovenia was ready to declare
independence. We were given money, a few million dollars, to fund various NGOs,
opposition parties and various politicians who have inflamed hatred.
Did you have an opinion about the CIA propaganda and did
your colleagues think?
Of course, no one turns down a CIA mission, especially when
we were all nervous and prone to paranoia! Many CIA agents and senior officers
disappeared simple because they refused to conduct propaganda against the Serbs
in Yugoslavia. Personally I was shocked at the dose of lies being fed from our
agencies and politicians! Many CIA agents were directed propaganda without
being aware of what they are doing. Everyone knew just a fraction of the story
and only the one who create the whole story knew the background – they are
politicians.
So there was only propaganda against the Serbs?
Yes and no. The aim of the propaganda was to divide the republics
so they would break away from the motherland Yugoslavia. We had to choose a
scapegoat who would be blamed for everything. Someone who would be responsible
for the war and violence. Serbia was chosen because in some ways it is a
successor to Yugoslavia.
Can you name the politicians in the former Yugoslavia were
paid by the CIA?
Yes, although it is somewhat delicate. Stipe Mesic, Franjo
Tudjman, Alija Izetbegovic, many counselors and members of the government of
Yugoslavia, were paid as were Serbian generals, journalists and even some
military units. Radovan Karadzic was being paid for a while but stopped
accepting help when he realised he would be sacrificed and charged with war
crimes committed in Bosnia. It was directed by the American administration.
You mentioned that the media was controlled and funded, how
exactly did that happen?
This is already known, some CIA agents were responsible for
writing the official statement that the announcers read on the news. Of course
the news presenters were oblivious to it, they got the news from their boss and
he got it from our man. Everyone had the same mission: to spread hatred,
nationalism and the differences between people through television.
We all know of Srebrenica, can you say about it?
Yes! In 1992 I was in Bosnia again, but this time we were
supposed to train military units to represent Bosnia, a new state that had just
declared independence. Srebrenica is an exaggerated story and unfortunately
many people are being manipulated. The number of victims is the same as the
number of Serbs and others killed but Srebrenica is political marketing. My
boss, who was formerly a US Senator, stressed repeatedly that some kind of scam
would go down in Bosnia. A month before the alleged genocide in Srebrenica, he
told me that the town would be headline news around the world and ordered us to
call the media. When I asked why, he said you’ll see. The new Bosnian army got
the order to attack homes and civilians. These were of course citizens of
Srebrenica. At the same moment, the Serbs attacked from the other side.
Probably someone had paid to incite them!
Then who is guilty of genocide in Srebrenica?
Srebrenica should be blamed on Bosnians, Serbs and Americans
– that is us! But in fact everything has been blamed on the Serbs.
Unfortunately, many of the victims buried as Muslims were Serbs and other
nationalities. A few years ago a friend of mine, a former CIA agent and now at
the IMF, said that Srebrenica is the product of agreement between the US government
and politicians in Bosnia. The town of Srebrenica was sacrificed to give
America a motive to attack the Serbs for their alleged crimes.
Ultimately why do you think Yugoslavia collapsed and why did
your government want to do it?
It is all very clear, the people who incited the war and
dictated the terms of the peace now own the companies that exploit various
mineral resources and the like! They simply made slaves of you, your people
work for nothing and that produce goes to Germany and America…they are the
winners! You will eventually have to purchase and import what you have created
yourself, and since you have no money, you have to borrow, that’s the whole
story with the whole of the Balkans!
You were never in Kosovo as a CIA agent, but did you feel
any pressure from America?
Of course! Kosovo has taken for two reasons, first because
of mineral and natural resources, and secondly, Kosovo is a military base of
NATO! In the heart of Europe is their largest military base.
Do you have a message for the people of the former
Yugoslavia?
I have. Forget the past, it was staged and false. They
manipulated you, they got what they wanted and it is stupid that you still hate
one another, you must show that you are stronger and you realise who has
created this ! I sincerely apologise! That’s why I have for a long time
disclosed the secrets of the CIA and the White House!
I want to express my condolences to the American people for the cowardly attack to San Bernardino (CA) ...
An thought for the victims and their families ...
A thought for the wounded and their relatives ...
A thought to law enforcement that risciano their lives to keep the Liberty of the American people.
A thought because the institutions are able to reacting strongly, but the weighted versus this new way of operating of the terrorists.
An image grab taken from a propaganda video by ISIS militants in Iraq.
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A high Russian official said Tuesday that some 80,000 militants are fighting for the Islamic State, out of which 30,000 are in Iraq and 50,000 in Syria with some 7,000 nationals of former Soviet states fighting for ISIS, the Russian state-controlled TASS news agency reported.
"According to reports, militants now control around 40 percent of Iraqi territory and 50 percent of Syrian territory," TASS quoted Yevgeny Sysoyev, the deputy head of the Russian Federal Security (FSB), the successor agency to the KGB, as saying at a security conference in the Russian city of Sochi Tuesday.
"Among members of the group are citizens of 80 countries, including France, Great Britain, Germany, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the US, Canada, as well as Russia and other [Commonwealth of Independent States] countries," he added. "Among them are about 30,000 foreign terrorists. Most of them come from the Middle East and North Africa."
[ Editor’s
Note:
Sometimes we like to move fast on a breaking story to beat mainstream news with
all their money and manpower. And it other times our sixth sense kicks in,
telling us to lay back a bit, study the early reporting for clues as to what is
NOT being reported, and activate one of our specialty major investigation
teams.
We
unfortunately had more activity on our airline crash team in the last year or
so, where those teams are weighted with senior pilots and crash investigators,
mostly through long time contacts. When we get into mini-nuke investigations
the list grows much shorter as there are fewer of those folks around.
As you will
quickly learn below, if you do not know what to look for and have some depth in
the scary science of what make various things go boom, and the trail left
behind to tell you what it was, have the evidence in front of you is of no
consequence.
We have
added more technical material than usual for a general audience as this piece
had to also be written for weapons and explosive experts around that world, and
they will catch on this game very fast. Fortunately explosives are an
intensively studied field with massive amounts of testing and data collected.
The people who look at this stuff in their profession have to walking
encyclopedias of the past research so they can spot a tiny clue in a photo of massive
destruction.
We have
stepped up to the plate to do this because we have the ability and for the
reason I gave Dr. Jim Walsh of MIT’s Securities Studies Program. On a
recent Press TV The Debate show on the anniversary of the Nagasaki
bombing, I had planned to plug mini-nukes once again as the elephant in the
living room of terror threats that the world now faces.
It is
also one where there is a total security, media and academic institutional
stand down on warning the public about any of this as more than a few countries
have and are using these. That group does not include Veterans Today and it
never will.
We feel we
have a duty to push exposing this threat until the public wakes up that if they
don’t get off their butts and start screaming you are going to see more of
these happening. We have warned that doing nothing would only embolden those
doing this, and we were right
So I
dedicate this article today to “expert” Mr. Walsh who was upset by my
mention of the mini-nuke threat to the point of attacking it saying,
“I think
this idea that there has been testing of mini-nukes around the world is crazy
conspiracy talk. No serious person believes this… there is a test ban treaty
that has monitoring testing posts all around the world designed to detect nuclear
explosions associated with testing, they have never turned up any of this. I
know of no serious person who believes that.”
My context
of course, which I am sure Walsh understood, was not in formal testing, but
“live” testing…as in on people and targets to demonstrate what they can do and
to send a message to someone(s)…and yes…to terrorize people. So Mr. Walsh,
excuse me if we don’t consider you and your buddies “serious people” as with
you protecting us we are in sad shape. And speaking of that, you and your crowd
need to shape up or ship out, sir… Jim W. Dean ]
Two
weeks ago a devastating explosion took place in the port city of Tianjin,
China. Official reports claimed a chemical storage facility had caught fire and
exploded. Mobile phone footage taken by residents showed an enormous blast and
fireball.
Within
days, aerial photos revealed the stunning extent of the damage. A steaming
black crater marks ground zero, while the apocalyptic surrounding landscape is
charred and flattened. Rows of burnt-out cars and twisted shipping containers
stretch into the distance on all sides
The extent of the devastation is such that it must have been a very big bang indeed
La superficie totale bruciata si estende su 20.000 metri
quadrati e continua ad essere pericoloso — più esplosioni sono stati segnalati
dalle autorità cinesi il 15TH di agosto. Sono stati trasferiti i
residenti entro un raggio di 3 miglia; almeno 85 vittime dell'incidente sono
state segnalate morti.
We were
immediately suspicious, such huge explosions have to be viewed with suspicion
these days when tactical nuclear weapons can and are used with alarming
frequency – 9-11, The Khobar Towers, the Haiti Earthquake and most recently,
air dropped on Yemen.
Massive devastation over a wide area.
The
mobile phone as radiation detector
The key
clue that allowed us to identify the use of a nuke in Yemen was the presence of
scintillating pixels – white dots that flashed on and off briefly in the mobile
phone videos of the explosion. The CCD imaging sensor within the camera phone
is being struck by radiation thus causing a pixel to overload and appear white;
in this way a mobile phone can serve double duty as a crude but effective
radiation detector.
When the
Tianjin blast occurred I immediately looked at the mobile phone footage of the
blast and tried to find scintillating pixels; I couldn’t find any, but the huge
white hot fireball and sheer size of the blast effect apparent in the footage
(shaken buildings, breaking windows etc.) certainly didn’t feel like a
conventional explosion to my relatively untrained eyes.
It was
actually VT Contributor and expert on all things nuclear, Jeff Smith who taught
us about scintillating pixels and the use of a mobile phone camera to detect
radiation; therefore I consulted him about the lack of scintillation in the
Tianjin footage:
Scintillation
is based on the distance from the blast. The farther you get away from the
blast the less neutron exposure you get. CCD Cameras will detect scintillation
but only at high levels. They are not sensitive to far field radiation
patterns. All CCD cameras were too far away to be sensitive enough to show
scintillation properly.
So
you have to look at the white out in the centre of the photo. This is where the
brightness is so great that it overloads the ccd pickup chip causing a clipping
effect. The fact that the fireball was whited out or clipped indicates that the
colour temperature was over 4,000 degrees C. Only achievable in a nuclear
blast. The cameras auto gain circuit clips the video level for being too bright
so you get a white out on the screen.
The fireball with white hot centre.
No
scintillation but a clear piece of evidence indicating a nuclear explosion in
the form of the huge white fireball – once again, mobile phone footage proves
useful in deciphering the truth.
The
parking lots full of toasted cars
As
reports and images became available, we studied them carefully for evidence of
the use of a nuclear weapon and sadly, it was not long before we found it – the
first big clue coming with the pictures of the thousands of toasted cars that
looked eerily like those seen on 9-11.
Thousands of burnt out Volkswagen Beetles close to ground zero in Tianjin
While a
layman like myself can recognise the overall similarity, it takes an expert to
fully analyse the evidence contained in the pictures; luckily, at VT we have
such an expert in the erstwhile Jeff Smith who provided the following analysis:
Normal
people are not trained in what to look at so they simply ignore the obvious.
However, once you see enough explosions like this you begin to spot the
artefacts in the photos real fast. Unfortunately all of these people that know
this stuff usually work for the government. Just like I did.
The
big clue is in the ash produced and the exploding radiators on the cars. They
show the radiation and the blast patterns the best. All melted rubber, glass,
and aluminium but no melted steel? This tells you it is from radiation and not
from a gasoline fire. Temps between 1500 degrees C for melting aluminium and
less than 3,000 degrees C for melting steel. Everything organic ashes below 450
degrees C.
This
had a plasma fireball that was over 4,000C! Only a nuke can do that. The clue
is in the white ash leftover from the thermal blast.
White ash caused by the thermal blast covered everything near ground zero
A.
The fuel tanks did not explode.
B.
The rubber tires were ashed not burned see the white powder residue around the
cars.
C.
The radiators are all gone; indicating Freon explosions.
D.
All the glass is ashed or melted; also the the glass was blown out not in.
E.
All new white cars show extreme effects from very high temperature heating. The
paint is badly damaged due to a very high oxidation rate effect.
F.
Silicone rubber tires ash at 500 degrees centigrade. Glass ashes at 1500
degrees centigrade. Gasoline at 250 degrees centigrade. Tires melted but no gas
tank explosions; just like on 911.
G.
Yellow Volkswagen Beetle cars untouched due to location indicating radiation
shielding from a nearby building. Just like on 911….
H.
Finally and most important is all of the nano particle sized ash on the ground
everywhere. Purple haze in photo is an indication of toxic levels of the gases
fluorine, chlorine and sodium.
Conclusion;
The damage to the cars was produced by neutron radiation damage and not by
conventional explosives or a fuel-air explosion. The distance from ground zero
is too great for a standard blast to melt the glass and tires. Also the cars
fuel tanks were shielded from the heat of the ignition source.
Purple haze indicating the presence of toxic levels of the gases fluorine, chlorine and sodium
So
there you have it, the ‘smoking gun’ evidence of a nuke is to be found among
the smoking wreckage of those incinerated cars. However, the pictures of burnt
out cars contain more evidence to be analysed before we move on to the other
evidence.
The
melted radiators and the role of Freon
As
you can clearly see in the picture below, the radiator of this vehicle has been
completely destroyed, incinerated into ash. Only the steel top plate remains,
all of the aluminium and copper of the radiator core have been turned into a
pile of ash. Once again, our resident expert Jeff Smith was able to provide
insight and analysis of what we are seeing:
Incinerated remains of a car close to ground zero.
Incinerated
remains of a car close to ground zero.
All
of the radiators exploded from Freon decomposition into methane, deuterium
fluoride, and phosgene gas; thus causing engine fires – note the melted hoods
and also how overpressure from an air burst explosion has compressed the hoods
of the cars.
The
copper-clad/aluminium automotive radiator is transparent to nuclear radiation.
It acts as a black body hollow-ram neutron reflector and functions just exactly
like its bigger brother the two staged Teller-Ulman H-bomb. What this means is
if you put DT gas or 2HF (Freon) in a vacuum chamber such as a car radiator,
you reduce its density thus it take less energy to either split it or fuse it
when exposed to neutrons, Gamma-rays or even soft x-rays from a nearby nuclear
explosion – if the blast is large enough or close enough.
This
forms the basis of a micro nuclear explosive device, with ignition temperatures
high enough to melt just about anything that comes in contact with it. The key
is in the lower density of the gas making compression of it a lot easier. This
explains all of the melted car air conditioning radiators and follow on fires.
Also the lack of fallout.
Here you can actually see the radiators at the front of the cars are on fire but the
rear of the cars are untouched.
See
Appendix A.
The
Crater at Ground Zero
Once
again, Jeff Smith was able to provide detailed analyses of the available
imagery of the blast crater at ground zero and the damage to the surrounding
area. Jeff along with Jim stone and others stated that:
This
was NOT an accident, the fracture pattern around the crater proves a to be a
shallow sub ground burst. If it was a sub ground burst, then a small nuclear
weapon is the biggest possibility because once a nuke has to push dirt, the
blinding flash will not be seen. A slightly subsurface detonation would explain
why camera sensors did not get strange artefacts. And if it was not a nuke, it
was something else incredibly huge, but not a fuel air bomb because fuel air
bombs will not leave craters. They also leave an oily carbide residue on
everything.
Even
my layman’s eye can immediately tell that the explosion that caused this level
of devastation was far beyond a mere explosion of stored chemicals. Also, there
were no storage buildings at ground zero, just some stacks of shipping
containers. Also, it is obvious to me that immense heat was present – look at
the gray-white ash everywhere. Jeff was able to explain what I was seeing in
these disturbing images:
A
little bit more of a detailed explanation: If the blast happened at ground
level, almost all of the energy would go upwards and the blast would not have
made a large deep crater, especially one large enough and deep enough to make
that lake. If you look to the right hand side of the lake, you can see fracture
patterns in the earth, which were caused by the earth being compressed sideways
and not downwards. This would only be done with a sub surface blast. After the
blast, the earth bounced back towards the centre of the lake, which opened up
the cracks.
Look
closely at the ground around the lake. Those who claimed it was not a nuke
cited the fact that if it was, everything around the crater would be vaporized
and wiped clean. Now that we have the real crater pic from the big blast, YEP,
it matches that perfectly. Take a look at the containers laying in the lower
left corner of this picture – they have no paint or colour, which means they
had the surfaces incinerated by intense heat only a nuke or other super weapon
would reach. If this was a carbide blast, they would be black or have their
original colours to some degree, complete colour change to only gray proves
this explosion was FREAKING HOT.
That
type and size of blast crater will only happen if a massive bomb goes off a few
feet underground, such as a tactical nuke in a drain pipe which leaves scant
few alternative options. No chemical blast did that, PERIOD. The building that
is still standing in the upper right hand side of the frame is a typical
example of what is left after a nuclear test, concrete buildings seldom get
levelled, but they do get gutted by nuclear blasts. Just look through pictures
of the soviet nuclear tests and you will see this. Bottom line? The aftermath
is completely consistent with a nuclear blast.
Even
to the untrained eye, the imagery of the aftermath of this awful event cannot
be mistaken as anything other than horriffic; when you also have expert
testimony that explains the true nature of what you are seeing the imagery
becomes even more shocking and disturbing. Destruction on this scale will
become commonplace if the perpetrators are allowed to get away with this as it
will signal to all parties possessed of tactical nuclear weapons that it is
possible to put them to use without disclosure of that fact by the media.
Perhaps more concerning is China’s silence on the nuclear aspect of this great
crime – they are still sticking to their story of fire setting off explosions
of stored chemicals. As we have shown, this story is about as credible as the one
about hijacking airliners with boxcutters; given state control of the media in
China, it might be a while before people learn the truth.
Identifying
the type of weapon and Seismology of the event
Now
we have established that a nuclear explosion took place, let us examine more
closely the nature of that explosion. One important question is the delivery
method – was it a strike by a cruise missile or was it a bomb hidden inside a
shipping container? Or is there another answer to this question? The crater
strongly indicates the explosion was sub-surface which appears to rule out the
bomb having been smuggled into Tianjin in a shipping container. It does not
rule out a cruise missile strike however – the ground in this area is very
soft, alluvial deposits of soft silts and clays deposited over time by the
nearby river. A cruise missile impacting this soft ground at over 500mph would
surely penetrate to some depth; if a delayed action fuse was fitted to the
warhead, this would create an shallow underground explosion. Jeff Smith
provides further analysis:
Note
the crater is about 400 feet wide as measured by comparison to the standard
shipping container sizes of 40 feet. The crater is a complex crater with a
cardioid shape indicating a very low altitude or surface contact blast. Side
ways compression of the soil indicates some ground penetration. Penetration
depth of ground is based on soil type and burst height. Horizontal crater size
is roughly equal to ( for every 100 feet, 1 Kiloton in size) see charts. This
would put the blast size depending on air burst altitude to be between 3 and 5
kilotons of explosive power.
Satellite image of Tianjin with overlay of blast radius
See
Appendix B.
If it
was a low altitude air burst, ground coupling will be less showing a smaller
Richter scale reading than usual. The only question is the fallout issue. Was
there any and of what type. Since it rained after the blast most of the fallout
went out to sea proven by the massive fish kill in the bay. The safety zone was
set at 3 kilometres. This is a correct value for small tactical nuke fallout
range. 1 KM per KT. The only other question was it a uranium weapon a plutonium
based weapon or other i.e. a fusion weapon? Uranium cannot be traced very
well but a PU based weapon can be traced down to the reactor that made it and
the chemical separation process that was used. Firemen were shown carrying
radiation and poisonous gas detectors.
Given
the 3km evacuation zone we can assume an explosive yield of around 3 kilotons.
A typical cruise missile nuclear warhead such as the Israeli ‘Popeye’
carries 6 kilograms of plutonium; using the rule of thumb of 1 kiloton yield
per kilogram of plutonium, the size of the explosion correlates with the yield
of a typical cruise missile warhead.
Jeff
also noticed that a secondary blast took place; this is another indicator of
the nuclear nature of this event, as Jeff explains:
Well
it looks like there were two major blasts not just one. There are two sections
of the video where the blast whites out the entire camera. This is the original
neutron burst going off; everything else is a secondary or the atmosphere
heating up and burning.
Note:
The reaction caused, a sustained glowing in the sky which is a well known
indicator of a nuclear explosion. Non-nuclear weapons do not provide a
sustained “Sun-like” illumination because they do not have enough energy to
ignite the oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere.
Another
aspect that requires study is the seismology readings of the event.. Once
again, Jeff provides some insight:
The
first blast registered 2.3 on the Richter scale and the second 2.9.
Eyewitnesses described what felt like a quake. USGS geophysicist John Bellini
says seismographs detect man-made explosions in quarries all the time, but
usually surface explosions are not detected very well because most of their
energy dissipates upward into the air. The fact is that the Tianjin explosions
registered a seismographic event that had as much energy as a small earthquake.
One can reasonably conclude that unlike a surface explosion of chemicals, this
kinetic energy released underground was caused by a powerful penetration of the
surface.
In
this article we have tried to provide a thorough but clear and concise analysis
of the available evidence and show that it is clear that this was no simple
fire in a chemical storage depot that resulted in an explosion but rather it
was the detonation of a nuclear weapon of unknown type by an unknown
party. We will examine the who and why in a follow-up article.
This
is a very significant event that will undoubtedly prove to be of great
importance in subsequent world events. In many ways, this is China’s 9-11.
Let
us all hope that unlike 9-11, the Nuking of Tianjin does not become the cassus
belli for a whole series of unjustified, brutal and bloody conflicts.
One
thing is already very clearly illustrated by this tragic event – the gloves are
most definitely off when it comes to the use of tactical nuclear weapons; we
are living in an new nuclear age where a great number of countries possess the
means to create and deploy tactical nukes and most worrying of all, these low
yield weapons can be used and have already been used without fear of
mutually assured destruction; the doctrine that prevented the Cold War from
going nuclear. This makes the world a much more dangerous place and undoubtedly
means we will see many more nuclear explosions in future.
There
is an old Chinese curse – “may you live in interesting times”; these are
certainly ‘interesting’ times for anyone who is paying attention to events in
China.
See
Appendix C for further reading and reference materials.
Appendix
A:
An
introduction to the physical principles of thermonuclear explosive devices
would be incomplete did it not give at least a cursory overview of the
different approaches to igniting thermonuclear
micro-explosions.
A
thermonuclear micro-explosion is an explosive release of thermonuclear energy
many orders of magnitude smaller than from a thermonuclear weapon. To achieve
this goal, the fission trigger must be replaced by some other means of
producing the required ignition temperature, but in a much smaller volume and without
the large energy release.
The
possibility of thermonuclear micro-explosions is itself a consequence of two
facts: first, the fact that the minimum volume to make a thermonuclear
explosion is given by the range of the charged
fusion
products \ 0 , and, second, scaling. At solid densities and thermonuclear
temperatures the range is of the order of a few centimeters and, is inversely
proportional to the density p of the thermonuclear explosive. We can therefore
write for this range.
X0 =
a/p, a — const.
For
the DT reaction we easily find that the minimum ignition energy is about 108
Joules. To obtain a useful gain the output energy should be at least ~ 100
times larger, that is, 1010 Joules = 10 n erg, which corresponds to the
explosive power of approximately 2 tons of TNT.
The
ignition energy can be substantially reduced by increasing the density of the
thermonuclear explosive. However, since for p > p, the compression to higher
densities also requires energy, the input energy is in reality larger than the
value given by Eq. (132).
The
time r to deposit the energy in the target is given by r ^ r/v, where v is the
thermal expansion velocity of the thermonuclear plasma of radius r, which is a
function only of the temperature.
