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By Jeff J. Brown
Pictured above: on the left, a map of ground zero for the Beirut bomb attack. On the right is the map for the 2015 Tianjin Port explosion, very likely an attack too. Both had zones of severe damage going out in a radius of 2.5km, which are similar in size to the US atom bombs used to incinerate Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Nagasaki is pictured below.
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Pictured above: ground zero map of Nagasaki after the city and most of its residents were incinerated by the USA atom bomb in 1945. Notice the blast rings go out two kilometers, very similar to Tianjin and Beirut Ports.
Note before starting: I have learned that ammonium nitrate (AN) can explode in open air at only 32% the power of TNT, but needs a starter charge of 1kg or so of TNT or C-4 explosive to get started. For 2,750mt of purported AN in Beirut Port spread all over a wharf, would only 1kg of TNT be enough for a simultaneous explosion? In any case, what happened to Beirut was much more substantial than 880mt of TNT equivalent going off (2,750mt x 32%). I made the correction in the article below, but in the audio/visual podcasts, I was wrong when I said AN needs to be in hardened cases to explode without a substrate. My apologies.
My very thorough and well-researched exposé on the 4 August Beirut bomb attack was posted to a political discussion group (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2020/08/12/expose-netanyahu-announced-to-the-world-in-2018-that-israel-was-going-to-missile-attack-a-supposed-hezbollah-arms-store-next-to-beirut-port-this-week-they-turned-it-into-beirutshima-eerily-simila/). This is on top of my report covering the hauntingly similar port explosion in Tianjin in 2015, which I just updated for the occasion (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2015/08/19/tianjin-port-explosion-shuts-down-chinas-tianhe-1-supercomputer-44-days-radio-sinoland-15-8-19/).
For my Beirut exposé, a discussion group member was given the opportunity to respond. They laid out the current mainstream explanations for how the explosion could not have been an attack. Their arguments gave all the acceptable Big Lie Propaganda Machine (BLPM) stories: it was old ammonium nitrate and fireworks that had been left there for many years; big explosions give off a sound wave, the Lebanese are corrupt and had it coming to them, etc.
Below is my expanded reply, in order to counterpoint this riposte, as is done in the standard rules of debate. I asked the moderator to please post my rebuttal. They never did. Hmm… I wonder why they refused to do so? Was all my evidence too close the obvious truth?
So, to wit, here it is,
I have learned that ammonium nitrate (AN) can explode in open air at only 32% the power of TNT, but needs a starter charge of 1kg or so of TNT or C-4 explosive to get started. For 2,750mt of purported AN in Beirut Port spread all over a wharf, would only 1kg of TNT be enough for a simultaneous explosion? In any case, what happened to Beirut was much more substantial than 880mt of TNT equivalent going off (2,750mt x 32%)
In my above referenced exposé, I republished Kevin Barrett’s history of using AN for controlled explosions. AN can explode when mixed with correct amounts of aluminum powder and water, which is almost never done, due to the difficulty of mixing three ingredients evenly into a slurry. Instead, what is commonly done is AN is mixed with fuel oil (FO), more commonly known as diesel.
For the detonation to work properly, the fuel oil percentage needs to be quite exact (5.7%). With this perfect mixture, ANFO packs 74% the punch of TNT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Relative_effectiveness_factor).
Thus, in Beirut, did someone douse the purported massive quantity of 2,750mt of Beirut Port AN with just the right amount of FO to create an ANFO bomb? If they did, was it sprayed evenly, at 5.7% over all the sacks of AN? Did it soak in properly throughout all the sacks of AN, top to bottom, outside to inside?
How was it fused? That much ANFO would need a number of electronic fuses planted all over the mass, to go off simultaneously, for a single, big explosion.
Or, did an evildoer bring in big water/sewer pipes, weld together bomb casings, fill them with all that AN and then wire each one with simultaneous radio fuses, for a measly 32% TNT equivalent bomb?
The absurdity of all this is derisory.
Furthermore, ANFO bombs, whether to remove a tree stump on a construction site or blow out a mine shaft, are held in receptacles, like a can or barrel, in order to be able to measure and mix the perfect explosive proportions. So, did someone put 2,750,000kg of AN in hundreds of barrels, then pour in just the right amount of the 156,750kg of FO (@5.7%), for a proper detonation to go off? Were the barrels all filled evenly? Were they all the same size? How was the FO measured? With buckets or a scale? Garden hoses? Wait, wait don’t tell me, maybe they were just really lucky guessers, from start to finish? Even in corrupt Lebanon, 10-15 large fuel tankers arriving all at once to spray or pump their contents onto all that supposed AN would have been hard to miss. Mobile phone cameras are everywhere, 24/7. Just ask all the trigger-happy cops in the USA these days.
In other words, the BLPM projective vomit story that such a big explosion could be caused by 2,750mt of old AN laying around in Beirut Port is total bullshit. It is a laughable, psyops-preposterous delusion, 100-fold. No, that’s way too conservative. Make that 1,000-fold.
I am reading Thierry Meyssan’s riveting book, Before Our Very Eyes-Fake Wars and Big Lies (http://progressivepress.com/books), in order to prepare having him as a guest on my show, which I’m really looking forward to. I can highly recommend it to all friends, fans and followers of China Rising Radio Sinoland. Before Our Very Eyes is a helluva read.
In it, he stated that the massive bomb which killed Rafic Hariri in Beirut in 2005 was a new type, using nanotechnology and particles of enriched uranium, developed by the USA, Israel and Germany. It was the equivalent of one metric ton of TNT.
Like Tianjin Port (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2015/08/19/tianjin-port-explosion-shuts-down-chinas-tianhe-1-supercomputer-44-days-radio-sinoland-15-8-19/) and Beirut Port in miniature (albeit, Beirut’s ground zero crater opened into the port waters), the Hariri blast created a crater so deep, pictured below, that it got down to ground water level. Dynamite, ANFO and C-4 plastic explosive cannot do this, except in very large quantities.
Hariri’s motorcade was driving down a popular street, when the bomb went off. Thus, was 1,000kg of TNT or C-4 being carried around in the trunk of his car? Under his seat or in briefcases? Was the road dug up in advance to plant 1,000kg of explosive under the pavement? If they did, it happened in a busy place. Even in corrupt Lebanon, no one questioned 1,000kg of TNT or plastic explosives – one cubic meter – being placed under the street? Again, this is the age of 24/7 mobile phone blogging. Motorcades do have to change routes. Did Hariri’s stick to the pre-determined plan?
Or rather, was it a much smaller, new-generation nano-tech nuke, one that could easily fit inside a car trunk, like Thierry described above?
Thierry also wrote that in May 2015, Saudi Arabia attacked Yemen with several tactical nuclear missiles, which were suspected of being bought from Israel, since the Saudis have never had that kind of technology.
Thus, clearly, the miniaturization of tactical nuclear weapons has been and surely continues to be perfected. It is known that the US, Israel, Russia, apparently Germany and likely China, are developing small tactical, mini- and micro-nukes. The days of postwar “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” (Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively), which needed large quantities of refined, highly radioactive, fissile nuclear fuel are history now. They both needed six kilograms of plutonium, surrounded by 2,500kg of high explosives to start the atomic chain reaction.
In fact, all the psychopath Curtis LeMay’s in NATO have had an atomic erection to nuke their many, many enemies and still do, since the USA incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2019/07/15/dirty-dark-secrets-of-d-day-france-china-rising-radio-sinoland-190715/).
As I demonstrated in my exposé, the preponderance of evidence, meaning the motive, means and modus operandi shows that Beirut Port was a blatant attack. Exhibit #X may get thrown out, like a photograph or a testimony, but more and more information is added, analyzed and confirmed. No surprise then that the only people adding information are ruthlessly censored and they and their evidence vilified by the BLPM. Being a truth teller takes guts, principles and can get you killed if you get too close to the mark.
Therefore, you can bet your sweet bippy that Grayzone’s Beirut Port hot-off-the-press investigation will get buried in the BLPM. In it, they show that as far back as 2012, Israel has repeatedly tried to frame Hezbollah with false flag ammonium nitrate terrorist plots (https://thegrayzone.com/2020/08/26/beirut-blast-israel-hezbollah-ammonium-nitrate-terror-plots/). Sound familiar these days in Lebanon?
As well, geopolitical actors concerned want to play along to get along, because if China, Syria, Russia, Iran, etc. came out forcefully that it was an Israeli-USA act of war, then these countries’ people’s would be baying for Western blood and the push for revenge via a hot war could be too great to resist. Thus, the inertia of the mainstream status quo takes hold and the victims will undoubtedly get even, asymmetrically.
Cui bono the total destruction of Beirut Port and much of its downtown? The USA and Israel. Who was the target? China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Hezbollah, Syria and indirectly, Iran.
Like the Rafic Hariri bombing, Eurangloland will scream that Iran-supported Hezbollah and Syria, the forces that are keeping Lebanon from being overrun and stolen by Israel, are the guilty parties for the Beirut Port explosion.
After 13 years of investigation and $1 billion blown, half paid by the USA and France, to reach a UN Tribunal verdict, only one lowly Hezbollah member was charged with being involved in Hariri’s assassination (https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/19/hari-a19.html). Even the other three bottom rung Hezbollah grunts who were charged, were exonerated. After burning up a cool billion, the poor sap convicted, Salim Jamil Ayyash was surely a sacrificial dog bone to throw to Eurangloland. Yet, critically, all of Hezbollah’s and Syria’s leadership proved to have no involvement or knowledge of the planned assassination.
Therefore, Hariri’s real assassins, the ones with the technology to do it, got away with murder.
When they finish with another billion-dollar UN Tribunal to investigate Beirut Port, say 10-20 years from now, and if done honestly, there will be no credible evidence that Hezbollah and Syria were guilty, and the real criminals will go unnamed again.
After researching my exposé and this rebuttal, I rest my case. The preponderance of evidence proves that the USA and Israel are guilty as charged, for the 2005 and 2020 bomb attacks in Beirut, using new generation, high-tech weapons.
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Why and How China works: With a Mirror to Our Own History
JEFF J. BROWN, Editor, China Rising, and Senior Editor & China Correspondent, Dispatch from Beijing, The Greanville Post
Jeff J. Brown is a geopolitical analyst, journalist, lecturer and the author of The China Trilogy. It consists of 44 Days Backpacking in China – The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass (2013); Punto Press released China Rising – Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations (2016); and BIG Red Book on China (2020). As well, he published a textbook, Doctor WriteRead’s Treasure Trove to Great English (2015). Jeff is a Senior Editor & China Correspondent for The Greanville Post, where he keeps a column, Dispatch from Beijing and is a Global Opinion Leader at 21st Century. He also writes a column for The Saker, called the Moscow-Beijing Express. Jeff writes, interviews and podcasts on his own program, China Rising Radio Sinoland, which is also available on YouTube, Stitcher Radio, iTunes, Ivoox and RUvid. Guests have included Ramsey Clark, James Bradley, Moti Nissani, Godfree Roberts, Hiroyuki Hamada, The Saker and many others. [/su_spoiler]
Jeff can be reached at China Rising, je**@br***********.com, Facebook, Twitter, Wechat (Jeff_Brown-44_Days) and Whatsapp: +86-13823544196.
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In the interest of openness and dialogue, below is a comment that was on The Greanville Post, following the publication of this article there. After this is my response there, which TGP had to put for me, since Disqus has blocked me for years. I would like to thank Russell Bentley for correcting me on the ability of ammonium nitrate to explode without being encased. He rates it at 65% of TNT equivalent, whereas the Wikipedia link I referred to says it’s 32%, or 880mt. To wit,
I like and respect Jeff and TGP, but this article, along with
Meyssen’s and Veterans Today, are among the most far-fetched, baseless
and ill-informed fantasies of what actually happened in Beirut that I
have read. (And as a personal aside, it is my opinion that serious
writers and serious media outlets do not publish works with “Bulldookie”
in the title.
Jeff probably should have read my “Beirut Anti-Disinfo” article on Fort Russ
(https://fort-russ.com/2020/08/texas-beirut-anti-disinfo/) before
falling for VT and Meyssen’s totally baseless conjectures about secret
weapons. Meyssen’s article, a prime example if what “bulldookie” really
is, also contains literally the worst written paragraph I have read in
the 21st century. To wit,
“It is not known what weapon was used. However, it has already been tested in Syria since January2020. It is a missile with a tactical nuclear component in its warhead that causes a smoke mushroom characteristic of nuclear weapons. It is
obviously not an atomic bomb in the strategic sense.”
But I am not writing to criticize Meyssen’s inflamed imaginings or risible
prose again, but rather to correct a few of Jeff’s misconceptions in his
article. And I will say that it is my opinion that every time Jeff
cites VT or Meyssen’s “work” on the Beirut bombing, he diminishes his
own credibility by doing so. And I must say this, and say it in exactly
this way – anyone who thinks a mushroom shaped cloud is credible proof
of a nuclear explosion is an idiot. Anyone who says
it is, is a fucking idiot, or a fucking liar. Or both.
Jeff begins his article with “To my knowledge”, and I will do the same, but
also mention that my knowledge is based in good part
on my being a demolition specialist trained for 3 years by the US Army,
and as such, I have personally detonated Ammonium Nitrate (AN) dozens of
times and hundreds of pounds of it. Of course, during my time as a
combat engineer in the US Amy, I was also trained on, worked with, and
detonated pretty much every other non-nuclear explosive in use at the
time as well. So, when it comes to explosives, and I say I know what I’m
talking about, I really do. Perhaps I have overlooked Jeff’s or
Theirry’s qualifications in this field? If so, I’d like to see them.
First, AN does NOT require either added ingredients nor hard encasing to be
explosive. What it DOES require is a “booster charge” to initiate
detonation. The booster charge we usually used in the US Army to
detonate 15 and 40 pound AN shaped charges was a 1 pound block of TNT or
C-4, or a stick of dynamite. Once the booster charge gets the AN going
(i.e., exploding) sympathetic detonation occurs along the shockwave, and
the entire contiguous amount of AN stored in the warehouse could indeed
have been set off by the explosive power of a single stick of dynamite.
Of course, all intentional explosions rigged by qualified professionals
are “dual primed”, which means they have two (or more) systems in place
capable of detonating the entire charge. Anyone who knows anything
about explosives can tell you that, and anyone who says that AN could
not explode in the form it was in at the warehouse simply doesn’t know
anything about explosives. Period.
As for the mini-nukes and “wonderwaffen” stories, first of all, tactical nukes are
real and are nothing new. The M-388 Davey Crockett tactical nuke
artillery shell was developed in the 1950’s, was small enough to fit in a
suitcase, and had an explosive payload equal to between ten and twenty
tons of TNT. The Beirut explosion was the approximate equivalent of 1.8
THOUSAND TONS of TNT, just about what 2,750 TONS of AN would be. So,
while the Beirut explosion was 100 times bigger than the smallest
tactical nuke, it was almost exactly what would be expected from the
detonation of the 2,750 TONS of AN stored in the warehouse, no
nukes or secret weapons required.
The idea of new mini-nukes used in the Port blast as well as in the Hariri hit
is, to use Jeff’s words, ” total bullshit… laughable,
psyops-preposterous delusion.” Because no one has yet to build a
nuclear bomb or depleted uranium projectile that does not leave
residual radiation as evidence, and no radiation has been detected
in either the warehouse or port blasts, and there can be no
doubt that many different parties have checked for it very closely.
Furthermore, if the Israelis or US had developed a “non-nuclear
nuke” secret weapon that left no radiation, do you think they’d use it
for a hit on a 3rd rate small-time dictator or test it in Syria, where
the RF Aerospace Forces have every square centimeter under constant
surveillance? Or in a war crime attack against civilian infrastructure
where there was already more than enough explosives already stored there
to get the job done? Once you test or use a secret weapon in public, in
another country, in front of the world, it really isn’t secret anymore,
is it?
(As for the specifics of the Hariri hit, 1,000 Kg of TNT would fit easily on a standard shipping pallet. I canvouch for that from personal experience, or you can look at images on the internet and see for yourself. As for Jeff’s question about the
road being dug up, maybe it was placed in a sewer or storm drain under
the street? That’s certainly within the realm of the possible,
isn’t it? And it could be easily done without anyone observing the
placement, couldn’t it?)
Jeff’s graphics of the damage are wildly inaccurate, as far as the actual damage zone and assessmentsgo, and his comparison of the Beirut blast to the real nuclear attack on Nagasaki, is to put it as nicely as possible, absurd.
The Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki had a 21 kiloton payload, over ten
times the power of the Beirut blast. The immediate casualties from the
Nagasaki explosion were from 35,000 to 40,000 killed and 60,000 injured,
as compared to the casualties in Beirut of 190 deaths and 6,500
injured. And while the injury ratio seems to be proportional, the deaths
and destruction are not. The thermal signature of the Beirut blast was
also far below the 16,000 degrees fahrenheit produced by nuclear
explosions, hence no vaporized people or shadows burned into walls, as
seen in the Japan nuke blasts. In fact, these comparisons,
along with the total absence of residual radiation,
actually prove the blast was NOT nuclear.
I am extremely doubtful that the Beirut port blast was an accident, and
it seems probable the usual suspects are to blame for an intentional
attack. They have the weapons, motive and opportunity, and the attack
Dear Patrice,
Russell is a comrade. I read his book, interviewed him, we’ve stayed in touch and I respect him immensely. He is entitled to his point of view.
If ammonium nitrate does not need to be encased to explode, then I stand corrected. But Russell says it still needs a booster explosion of TNT/C-4 to get it to blow up. Does 2,750mt spread over an entire wharf need more than one? If the AN was there, how was the TNT planted and wired around the port?
I still think the chances that 2,750mt of ammonium nitrate sitting there for years, and not getting smuggled out by Hezbollah, the other militias and black marketeers in Lebanon makes no sense. It would be too valuable for using in their war against Israel.
Moore’s Law that miniaturization is happening at a geometric rate still holds true and that would also apply to weapons, not just telephones.
For WTC 9/11, I saw videos of people using Geiger counters showing alpha radiation amongst all the rubble and read research reports of micro-nukes possibly being used to help destroy the huge I-beams and weaken the buildings. But, it was all totally buried by the MSM.
In my first exposé, I showed a graph from another journalist with a radiation spike in the Beirut area and it has been completely censored too.
In my first piece, how to explain the poor guy right in the port reporting on Facebook, saying he heard one or two planes drop two bombs and seconds later was blown away at ground zero? What about all the others who heard and saw jets flying over when the explosion happened? What about the haphazard video clip that shows what sure looks like a F-16 flying low in the sky as Beirut blew up?
How come the couple who recorded the Tianjin explosion were not thrown across their room, but continued filming, whereas all the clips from Beirut end with the people being flung like rag dolls when the blast wave went out?
The important point he maintains is that it was likely not an accident and looked like some new kind of bomb, but he thinks it was not nuclear. So, I do not see that much overall divergence on what happened.
If he doesn’t like VT and Thierry Meyssan, then we differ on that too and I respect his opinion.
He also closes out that it was the usual suspects, which I assume means Israel and the USA. Surely not Russia, China or Iran.
Unfortunately, I cannot comment on Disqus, as they cut me off a long time ago, or I would post this. Could you please do it for me?
Thank you, Jeff