Take five minutes to learn all you need in order to know that a Boeing 757 did not hit the Pentagon on September 11th 2001.

©Department of Defense

After the release of the QFG Pentagon Strike Flash Animation on August 23rd, 2004, a veritable onslaught of new articles were published that sought to dismiss the "no plane at the Pentagon" theory. One such article, that is frequently referenced by certain '9/11 researchers' was authored by a member of the forum at the "Above Top Secret" (ATS) website. Interestingly, the article was written just a few weeks after the release of the Pentagon Strike Flash animation, which by then, was winging its way around the world and into the inboxes of millions of ordinary citizens. Perhaps you were one of them...

Flight 77 took off at 8:20 a.m.

The pilot had his last routine communication with the control tower at 8:50 a.m. "At 9:09 a.m., being unable to reach the plane by radar, the Indianapolis air controllers warned of a possible crash," the Washington Post reported. Vice-President Dick Cheney would later explain that the terrorists had "turned off the transponder, which led to a later report that a plane had gone down over Ohio, but it really hadn't." [Meet the Press, NBC, 16 Sept 2001]

On 12 September it was learned that the transponder had been cut off at about 8:55 a.m., rendering the plane invisible to civilian air controllers. During this period of invisibility, the plane was said to have made a U turn back to Washington. This is, of course, an assumption. The information that the plane turned around has no known source.

The problem is: turning off the transponder, under the conditions that prevailed that day, would have been the best way of raising an alert.

US diplomatic cables reveal a coordinated assault against Latin America's left-wing governments. Earlier this summer, the world watched Greece try to resist a disastrous neoliberal diktat and get a painful thrashing in the process.

When Greece's left government decided to hold a national referendum on the troika-imposed austerity program, the European Central Bank retaliated by restricting liquidity for Greek banks. This triggered a prolonged bank closure and plunged Greece further into recession.

Though Greek voters ended up massively rejecting austerity, Germany and the European creditor cartel were able to subvert democracy and get exactly what they wanted: complete submission to their neoliberal agenda.

In the last decade and a half, a similar fight against neoliberalism has been waged across the breadth of an entire continent, and mostly outside of the public eye. Although Washington initially sought to quash all dissent, often employing even fiercer tactics than those used against Greece, Latin America's resistance to the neoliberal agenda has in large part been successful. It's an epic tale that's gradually coming to light thanks to continued exploration of the massive trove of US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.

Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday he does not view recent U.S. missile strikes on ally Syria as a message for Iran, which he called a "powerful country" that the U.S. cannot harm. The controversial former president made the remarks to The Associated Press on Saturday in his office in northern Tehran, three days after he stunned Iranians by registering to run for president again. His surprise candidacy must still be approved by authorities but has already upended a race that was widely expected to be won by incumbent moderate Hassan Rouhani.

Ahmadinejad dismissed suggestions that the U.S. strike on Syria might also be a warning for his country. "I do not think it has a message for Iran. Iran is a powerful country and people like Mr. Trump or the United States administration cannot hurt Iran," he said.

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration earlier this year announced it was putting Iran "on notice" in part over its ballistic missile tests, and last week pounded a Syrian air base with cruise missiles in response to a chemical weapons attack. Iran is the main regional backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad and is involved militarily on the ground in that country's civil war.

Ahmadinejad struck a mostly conciliatory tone during the interview, taking care to not stir up controversy that could alienate voters or clerical authorities. He avoided repeating inflammatory statements that made him infamous in the West, such as those predicting Israel's demise or questioning the scale of the Holocaust. He dodged questions about issues such as Iran's missile program and the possible reaction by the U.S. and Israel to another Ahmadinejad presidency.

Like all candidates, the 60-year-old must be vetted and approved by a powerful constitutional watchdog known as the Guardian Council before he can ultimately run. It will announce its list of approved candidates by April 27. The council, which is made up of clerics and Islamic jurists, normally disqualifies dissidents, women, and many reformists.

Ahmadinejad said the strike on Syria could have happened even if Hillary Clinton had won the U.S. election. He added that the decision to attack Syria was made by people behind the scenes in the U.S., strongly implying that the U.S. presidency is decided behind closed doors. "Those who are the directors must give the role (of president) to a person who can pull it off best. A woman cannot put up a good war face," he said. "A man can do that better. They need to come up with a figure and say he is very dangerous."

The 9/11 attacks 'changed the world' because they were used to justify the 'projection of American military power' around the world, a desperate last push by the self-styled 'reality creators' in Washington to maintain their global dominance. But people are always the architects of their own fortune, and by launching an imperial war of aggression thinly disguised as a 'war on global terror', the USA provoked Russia and China to take the steps necessary to usher in the downfall of the inglorious Empire.

The 9/11 attacks themselves bear all the hallmarks of a self-inflicted wound, which makes complete sense from a pathological military strategy point of view. The real authors of the 9/11 attacks broadcast their intentions one year in advance when in September 2000, PNAC published a 90-page report entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources For a New Century, a blueprint for US foreign policy in the near-future. In referring to the Middle East, and citing particularly Iraq and Iran, the report stated:

"While the unresolved conflict in Iraq provides the immediate justification [for US military presence], the need for a substantial American force presence in the [Persian] Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein," and "Over the long term, Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests in the [Persian] Gulf as Iraq has. Even if US-Iranian relations should improve, retaining forward-based forces in the region would still be an essential element in US security strategy given the long-standing American interests in the region"

Others could be seen as putting to rest a popular theory American Airlines Flight 77 never actually smashed into the Pentagon.

But, given the stony silence from the U.S. government toward families of victims of the attacks, even the meager disclosure is a welcome morsel of information with the potential to provide answers.

Indeed, in the very first image, labeled plainly, "9-11 Pentagon Debris 1," a single piece of wreckage sits isolated on a parcel of lawn — bearing the American Airlines logo and marked with letters and numbers.
Mangled metal in the second image appears obviously to have come from a plane, but — like the entire release — no description accompanies to explain when, where, or how the wreckage was discovered by investigators.

Royal Dutch Shell's Nigeria subsidiary "fiercely opposed" environmental testing and is concealing data showing thousands of Nigerians are exposed to health hazards from a stalled cleanup of the worst oil spills in the West African nation's history, according to a German geologist contracted by the Dutch-British multinational.

An environmental study found "astonishingly high" pollution levels with soil "literally soaked with hydrocarbons," geologist Kay Holtzmann wrote in a letter to the Bodo Mediation Initiative.

The people of Bodo in the oil-producing southern Niger Delta should get urgent medical tests, Holtzmann wrote in the letter dated Jan. 26 and seen by The Associated Press.

Shell did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

For the first time, scientists have been able to model the physical structure of mammalian genomes from individual cells, giving us a unique 3D perspective on how DNA packages itself inside our cells.

Through the new technique, scientists can see how the arrangement of cell chromosomes (DNA strands) are designed to keep some cells active or inactive at any one time.

The procedure, which so far has been conducted on mice cells, could help us understand more about how animals grow, as well as how cell malfunction can lead to disease.

"Knowing where all the genes and control elements are at a given moment will help us understand the molecular mechanisms that control and maintain their expression," says one of the researchers, Ernest Laue from the University of Cambridge in the UK.

Former CIA Director John Brennan has denied he is the source of intelligence leaks about the Trump administration, and stressed the importance of a bipartisan investigation into reports of Trump's ties to Russia.

Speaking on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday, Brennan was asked about House intelligence chairman Devin Nunes' claims that leaks about General Michael Flynn's phone calls could only have come from the "very highest levels of the previous administration."

Flynn resigned as Trump's national security adviser after he was exposed as having misinformed senior administration officials over the content of his phone calls with Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, in late December.

"I think it's very unhelpful to make allegations about who is responsible for these leaks," Brennan said, stressing the importance of distinguishing between leaking "classified information, which is against the law and leaks of discussions that might be taking place within the administration."

Brennan, who left the CIA in January, said classified leaks are "appalling" and need to be stopped, but the information "could be coming from any number of quarters, whether it be the intelligence community, White House, Congress, because a lot of people have access to this information."