| Center for Constitutional Rights | :

10 years on from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the president has claimed more power than ever and the people have conceded more power than ever.

In response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, George W. Bush shredded the U.S. Constitution, trampled on the Bill of Rights, discarded the Geneva Conventions, and heaped scorn on the domestic torture statute and the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

As we mark the 10th anniversary of the terrible events of September 11, 2001, none of us has any desire to play down the horrors of that day, but two wrongs do not make a right, and, in response to the attacks, the Bush administration engineered and presided over the most sustained period of constitutional decay in our history.

Moreover, although George W. Bush entered the first decade of the 21st century by dismantling the rights that are fundamental to the identity of the United States and the security of its people, Barack Obama ended the decade by failing to fully reinstate those rights. Through his own indecision, or through ferocious opposition in Congress, he has been unable to close the infamous prison at Guantánamo Bay, as promised, and has also refused to even contemplate holding anyone in the Bush administration accountable for their crimes

Full Story Here: The 9/11 Decade and the Decline of U.S. Democracy | Center for Constitutional Rights.

The protests attracted more than 2,000 people to a march from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago to Grant Park, which had been the site of anti-war protests during the 1968 Democratic convention.

The protesters were arrested for allegedly violating a city ordinance by being in the park after it closed and ignoring repeated warnings from police to leave, police said.

Full Story Here: UPDATE 1-About 175 arrested overnight in Chicago protest | Reuters.

A growing number of former government insiders — all responsible officials who served in a number of federal posts — are now on record as doubting ex-CIA director George Tenet’s account of events leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Among them are several special agents of the FBI, the former counterterrorism head in the Clinton and Bush administrations, and the chairman of the 9/11 Commission, who told us the CIA chief had been “obviously not forthcoming” in his testimony and had misled the commissioners.

These doubts about the CIA first emerged among a group of 9/11 victims’ families whose struggle to force the government to investigate the causes of the attacks, we chronicled in our 2006 documentary film “Press for Truth.” At that time, we thought we were done with the subject. But tantalizing information unearthed by the 9/11 Commission’s final report and spotted by the families (Chapter 6, footnote 44) raised a question too important to be put aside:

Did Tenet fail to share intelligence with the White House and the FBI in 2000 and 2001 that could have prevented the attacks? Specifically, did a group in the CIA’s al-Qaida office engage in a domestic covert action operation involving two of the 9/11 hijackers, that — however legitimate the agency’s goals may have been — hindered the type of intelligence-sharing that could have prevented the attacks? And if not, then what would explain seemingly inexplicable actions by CIA employees?

Full Story Here: Did Tenet Fail to Share Information That Could Have Prevented the 9/11 Attacks? Insiders Voice Doubts About the CIA’s 9/11 story | World | AlterNet.

The answer is no.

Did the Trade Towers fall because they were badly built as a consequence of corruption, incompetence, regulatory evasions by the Port Authority, and because they were struck by huge planes loaded with jet fuel. No, shout the conspiracists, they “pancaked” because Dick Cheney’s agents–scores of them–methodically planted demolition charges in the preceding days inserting the explosives in the relevant floors of three vast buildings, (moving day after day among the unsuspecting office workers), then on 9/11 activating the detonators. It was a conspiracy of thousands, all of whom–party to mass murder–have held their tongues ever since.

What has been the goal of the 9/11 conspiracists? They ask questions, yes, but they never answer them. They never put forward an overall scenario of the alleged conspiracy. They say that’s not up to them. So who is it up to? Whom do they expect to answer their questions? When answers are put forward, they are dismissed as fabrications or they simply rebound with another question. Like most cultic persuasions they excitedly invoke important converts to their faith and the “1500 architects and engineers in the USA” who say the NIST official report is not thorough and needs another investigation. It’s a tiny proportion of the overall members of their profession. At least 80 per cent of faculty economists in the US believe stoutly in long-discredited theories that have blighted the lives of millions around the world for decades. Their numbers don’t equate with intelligence, let along conclusive analysis.

Full Story Here: The 9/11 Conspiracists: Vindicated After All These Years? » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.

Check out O’Leary’s mutual funds if you really want to see what a loser is. See this Time article from 2009: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1921635,00.html

Full Story Here: Chris Hedges Slaps Down Kevin O’Leary on Occupy Wall Street – YouTube.

New evidence links the Saudi royal family to Saudis in South Florida, who reportedly had contact with the 9/11 hijackers before fleeing the US prior to the attacks.

WhoWhatWhy has found evidence linking the Saudi royal family to Saudis in South Florida who reportedly had direct contact with the 9/11 hijackers before fleeing the United States just prior to the attacks. Our report connects some of the dots first laid out by investigative author Anthony Summers and Florida-based journalist Dan Christensen in articles jointly published in the Miami Herald and on the nonprofit news site BrowardBulldog.org.

In early September of this year, Summers and Christensen reported that a secret FBI probe, never shared with Congressional investigators or the presidential 9/11 commission, had uncovered information indicating the possibility of support for the hijackers from previously unknown confederates in the United States during 2001.

Now WhoWhatWhy reveals that those alleged confederates were closely tied to influential members of the Saudi ruling elite.

Full Story Here: Is the Saudi Royal Family Connected to 9/11 Hijackers? | | AlterNet.

By the Rev. Howard Bess

I too looked at the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2011, with horror. No one needs to remind me of what happened on that day.

We received a phone call from our daughter about the plane that crashed into the first tower of the Trade Center. Quickly I turned on the television in time to watch in live time another plane assaulting the second tower. I could not believe what my eyes were reporting.

Over the next few hours the magnitude of the terrorist attack unfolded. The Pentagon! Yet another plane, apparently headed for the White House, crashed in Pennsylvania. The estimates of the people killed kept climbing, taking several days for the count to become accurate.

Full Story Here: A Christian Reflection on 9/11 | Consortiumnews.

Former Florida governor and senator Bob Graham is calling on President Obama to reopen the investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks after new information has emerged about the possible role of prominent Saudis in the 9/11 plot. According to recent news reports, a wealthy young Saudi couple fled their home in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida, just a week or so before Sept. 11, 2001, leaving behind three cars and nearly all of their possessions. The FBI was tipped off about the couple but never passed the information on to the 9/11 Commission investigating the attacks, even though phone records showed the couple had ties to Mohamed Atta and at least 10 other al-Qaeda suspects. Graham joins us to discuss the news he’s called “the most important thing about 9/11 to surface in the last seven or eight years.” As the former chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a post he held on September 11, 2001, Graham chaired the Congressional Joint Inquiry into the attacks. He’s just written a novel called “Keys to the Kingdom,” which follows a fictitious former senator and co-chair of the 9/11 congressional inquiry who is murdered near his Florida home after he uncovers an international conspiracy linking the Saudi Kingdom to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Graham says he chose to write the novel after his 2004 non-fiction book, “Intelligence Matters,” was heavily censored.

Full Story Here: Former Senator Bob Graham Urges Obama to Reopen Investigation into Saudi Role in 9/11 Attacks.

I watched the massive November 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) from my computer, a high school student with a budding interest in social justice eagerly clicking “refresh” on the brand new Indymedia web site: Teamsters and Turtles, steelworkers and socialists shutting down streets and anarchists smashing Starbucks’ windows. The police conducted mass arrests and unleashed tear gas, but a shocked elite was forced to hunker down in hotel rooms: the summit failed and the march of global capitalism stumbled.

We had no idea it would come to such a quick and sudden end. A rapid-fire series of mass demonstrations forced secretive financial institutions, corporations (and political parties) to make their case to the American people for the first time in a very long time, and there was a sense of incredible optimism and power. Older activists were amazed to see people back in the streets and I felt like it was an incredible time to be a young activist. We expected major social change and so did everyone else.

Full Story Here: A Political Casualty of 9/11: The Anti-Corporate Globalization Movement | Truthout.

A former FBI agent who worked at the heart of America’s battle against al-Qaeda has told the BBC he is being prevented from telling the truth as he challenges the back story of 9/11 and what has happened since.

Mr Soufan also argues against the effectiveness of interrogation techniques used by the CIA, such as water boarding.

Ali Soufan has not appeared on camera before, but he has now decided to speak out to counter what he sees as a misleading narrative about the last 10 years.

Mr Soufan has direct, first-hand experience of some of the most heated controversies of the past decade: whether 9/11 could have been prevented and whether tactics like the water boarding of al-Qaeda suspects were effective and justified.

Full Story Here: BBC News – Ex-FBI interrogator ‘gagged’ over 9/11 backstory.

I’m talking about the tenth anniversary ceremonies for 9/11, and everything that goes with them: the solemn reading of the names of the dead, the tolling of bells, the honoring of first responders, the gathering of presidents, the dedication of the new memorial, the moments of silence.  The works.

Let’s just can it all.  Shut down Ground Zero.  Lock out the tourists.  Close “Reflecting Absence,” the memorial built in the “footprints” of the former towers with its grove of trees, giant pools, and multiple waterfalls before it can be unveiled this Sunday.  Discontinue work on the underground National September 11 Museum due to open in 2012.  Tear down the Freedom Tower (redubbed 1 World Trade Center after our “freedom” wars went awry), 102 stories of “the most expensive skyscraper ever constructed in the United States.” (Estimated price tag: $3.3 billion.)  Eliminate that still-being-constructed, hubris-filled 1,776 feet of building, planned in the heyday of George W. Bush and soaring into the Manhattan sky like a nyaah-nyaah invitation to future terrorists.  Dismantle the other three office towers being built there as part of an $11 billion government-sponsored construction program.  Let’s get rid of it all.   If we had wanted a memorial to 9/11, it would have been more appropriate to leave one of the giant shards of broken tower there untouched.

Full Story Here: Let’s Put 9/11 Behind Us and End the Blank Check it Has Become for America’s Endless Wars | News & Politics | AlterNet.

We’ve wallowed too long in our victimhood

9-11 was indeed a devastating loss of personal life. Those who died were mostly US citizens, but included people of all nations, such as the wait staff and bus boys at the sky high restaurant in the Twin Towers. It was a “shared” loss, indicative of the international inclusiveness of America.

But having never experienced a significant mainland attack since the War of 1812 — as Noam Chomsky points out in his remarkable book, “9-11: Was There an Alternative?” — we feel ourselves invulnerable as a country. I recall reading an observation of Kurt Vonnegut many years ago — who survived the allied fire bombing of Dresden in WW II in an underground slaughterhouse for prisoners of war — commenting that America was distinct among Western allies in never knowing the devastation of cities under siege by bombers, rockets, tanks and mortar attack.

Then there is our national hubris, that American Exceptionalism itself was under attack on September 11, 2001. Like all powerful empires, we feel invulnerable and crush anyone perceived to have pierced through our bubble of “invincibility.”

Full Story Here: It’s Long Past Time to Get Over 9-11 | BuzzFlash.org.

As it turned out, homeland insecurity was the perfect foil for the hegemony of Homeland Security. Now the architects of Total Information Awareness can legally be in our phone calls, our emails, our bank accounts, our library cards, our internet browsers, our peace groups, our medical records, our gonads, our heads, and our hearts. We’ve been hornswoggled, hoodwinked, and hijacked into accepting pervasive incursions into every vestige of individual liberty and political democracy — all done quite ingeniously in the name of protecting liberty and preserving democracy.

The mathematics are Machiavellian and their logic is inescapable. For the mere price of 3000 souls, the return on investment has been exponential: tens of thousands tortured, hundreds of thousands killed, millions relentlessly survived, billions frightened lest they be next. It is the dream of real numbers, the holy grail of realpolitik, a down payment on the permanent war economy, a blank check for purchasing the dreams of future generations. It is, in short, the emperor’s handcrafted new clothes in full regalia.

Full Story Here: Millennial Math: 9+11=1984 | Common Dreams.

In the name of fighting terrorism, the government has institutionalized a massive response based on fear more than anything else. In the name of defending our freedoms, our government has fractured them as thoroughly as the WTC towers and Pentagon. In the name of enhancing security, it has damaged the authentic security and future of the nation.

Propagandistically “selling” the new security institutions and technologies to Americans has served the selfish interests of demagogic politicians, a conflict-loving mainstream media, and the wealthy contractors from the military-industrial-surveillance complex. But this has come at the expense of everyone else in the nation, now and in the future. Terrorists and criminals can easily evade most of these technologies; ordinary citizens won’t.

Full Story Here: The Legacy of 9/11: An Institutionalization of Terror at Home and Abroad | Common Dreams.

The terror attacks of 2001 ushered in a decade of wars that shattered Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving the world’s only superpower robbed of its confidence and stripped of its illusions

In America they speak of the “lost decade”. The moment it began is obvious: the morning of 11 September 2001, when the world’s lone superpower fell victim to the most devastating terrorist attack of modern times. Its end, however, is harder to date.

One answer is 1 May this year, when a team of Navy Seals tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden at his hideaway in Pakistan. A circle was complete; after almost 10 years of frustration, false leads and continuous war, the master planner of 9/11 had finally paid for his crime. But look at it another way and the answer is not so obvious.

In these 10 years America has lost much, in terms of lives, treasure and reputation. Most of all, perhaps, it has lost its illusions. One, that its home territory was invulnerable, beyond the reach of hostile foreigners, vanished on that terrible Tuesday morning. But a decade on, another no less cherished illusion has disappeared as well: the certainty that whatever happened in the world beyond, America was a place of infinite opportunity and ever-growing prosperity.

Full Story Here: 9/11 lost decade: The American dream, and the missing years – Americas, World – The Independent.

“I am a New Yorker. I smelled the smoke for days after,” he says, and asks whether the media are doing what they’re doing “because fear sells” and because “wallowing in the deep pool of 9/11 pain is good for business”.

Then comes the most interesting moment in the clip. Ratigan, who had just done an hour-long special about 9/11, is left virtually speechless. It’s rare to see one person provoke another person to actually think more about a topic on live TV. Generally it seems as if the purpose of televised political discussions is, in fact, the opposite.

Watch the video,

Full Story Here: Ratigan guest: Is media’s ’9/11 nostalgia’ about selling fear? | Raw Replay.

In an interview with ThinkProgress yesterday, Kurzman told us that “evidence so far over the last decade” is that the threat of terrorism committed by Muslims “has not been growing.” Kurzman’s comprehensive analysis of terrorist plots since 9/11 finds that 186 individuals of the Muslim faith had become radicalized towards violence. Thus, he finds that while “Muslim Americans are participating in terrorist plots at a proportion greater than their proportion to the population,” the overall threat of Muslim terrorism is “very, very low”:

Muslim American terrorist plots have killed since 9/11 — since the 3,000 killed on 9/11 — have killed 33 individuals in the United States since that time. Over that same period of time, there have been more than 150,000 murders in the United States, or 14 or 15,000 murders every year. Muslim American terrorism, then, has been a very small, very low percentage of the overall violence in the United States.

Full Story Here: Terrorism Expert: Since 9/11, Only 33 Deaths From Muslim Terrorism Vs. 150,000 Deaths From Murders | ThinkProgress.

Nearly ten years after the United States sent our military forces into Afghanistan, our country has spent $1.2 trillion engaging in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the National Priorities Project (NPP). The wars are expected to cost much more than that by their conclusion, with some estimates ranging up to $3 trillion for the Iraq war alone.

By spending this much money on wars that ended up being America’s longest in history, the United States in some ways fell into Bin Laden’s trap. This money could’ve been used in ways that would’ve invested in America — securing access to health care, a decent education, and infrastructure for alternative energy. Using NPP metrics, ThinkProgress has assembled ten alternative policies that the United States could’ve pursued instead with this money that has been spent on the wars so far:

Full Story Here: The $1.2 Trillion Trap: What America Gave Up For 10 Years Of War Since 9/11 | ThinkProgress.

War, torture, “extraordinary rendition” — this is what defines their post-9/11 legacy.

We can be proud of our post-9/11 legacy of activism against war, torture and rollbacks of civil liberties. Undoubtedly things could have been much worse if not for these collective efforts. Most poignant and symbolic of all, perhaps, was the work of 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, who grieved and demanded peace together with Afghan war mothers and widows.

The so-called “war on terror” was proclaimed in Washington, D.C., but its tropes were taken up by Moscow for use against Chechens, Tel Aviv against Palestinians, Beijing against the Uyghurs and Tibetans.

And so on, as every repressive and aggressive state exploited the tragedy to legitimize its systematic policies of domination — the Canadian government no exception.

Full Story Here: Cheney, Harper and the misuses of 9/11 | rabble.ca.

The events made my mind reel. The angry plumes of smoke, office paper raining like confetti, tumbling windows flashing in the sunlight. I could make out jumpers and watched a jet fighter whoosh by the burning towers, bank and disappear. I thought, “This is like a movie.”

It upset me that my only way to comprehend the events was to reference the Hollywood imaginarium. But it was understandable. Where else would I have seen images resembling the war in my backyard – collapsing skyscrapers, gigantic fireballs and thousands of dead?

The need to make sense of the events of Sept. 11 – the plot by al-Qaeda, four hijacked airliners, the demolished twin towers and nearly 3,000 dead – is universal. It is why the state’s first task after 9/11 – before one bomb dropped, one soldier deployed – was to imprint the “war on terror” on the collective American mindset.

Full Story Here: Empire of Chaos: How 9/11 Shaped the Politics of a Failing State | | AlterNet.

In the weeks to follow, law enforcement agents not only discovered the home was visited by vehicles used by the hijackers, but phone calls were linked between the home and those who carried out the death flights — including leader Mohamed Atta — in discoveries never before revealed to the public.

Ten years after the deadliest attack of terrorism on U.S. soil, new information has emerged that shows the FBI found troubling ties between the hijackers and residents in the upscale community in southwest Florida, but the investigation wasn’t reported to Congress or mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who cochaired the bipartisan congressional Joint Inquiry into the attacks, said he should have been told about the findings, saying it “opens the door to a new chapter of investigation as to the depth of the Saudi role in 9/11. … No information relative to the named people in Sarasota was disclosed.”

Full Story Here: FBI found direct ties between 9/11 hijackers and Saudis living in Florida; Congress kept in dark | Broward Bulldog.

Citing a similar case in California, former Florida Sen. Bob Graham said the previously undisclosed Sarasota case may be part of a pattern of families who were close to terrorists and fled the country before Sept. 11.

Graham called on President Barack Obama to conduct a full accounting of the “Saudi involvement” in supporting 9/11 hijackers and an explanation of why the U.S. government withheld information on the Sarasota family and others with ties to the hijackers from Congressional investigators.

Full Story Here: Sarasota-9/11 link spurs call for new look into Saudis | HeraldTribune.com.

OPS: And the Bush Crime Family allowed the Saudis to fly out of the country – WHEN ALL AIRPLANES WERE GROUNDED.  The 9-11/Bush link gets stronger.

Kids must learn the complex truths about the attacks to combat the Islamophobic myths they’ve grown up with

Ten years ago this week, I, like many living in Washington at the time, was fleeing my office building. In those minutes of mayhem, I knew only what the police were screaming: Get out fast, because we’re being attacked by terrorists.

In the years since 9/11, we’ve learned a lot about that awful day — and about ourselves.

We’ve learned, for instance, about the attack’s mechanics — we know which particular terrorists orchestrated it and how many lives those mass murderers tragically destroyed. We also know about 9/11′s long-term legacy — we have healthcare data showing that it created a kind of mass post-traumatic stress disorder, and we have evidence that it generated a significant rise in anti-Muslim bigotry. And, of course, we’ve learned that our government can turn catastrophes like 9/11 into political weapons that successfully coerce America into supporting wars and relinquishing civil liberties.

Full Story Here: Why schools need to teach 9/11 – David Sirota – Salon.com.

Within hours after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it was clear that political leaders were going to use the attacks to justify war in Central Asia and the Middle East. And within hours, those of us critical of that policy began to offer principled and practical arguments against aggressive war as a response to the crimes.

It didn’t matter because neither the public nor policymakers were interested in principled or practical arguments. People wanted revenge, and the policymakers seized the opportunity to use U.S. military power. Critical thinking became a mark not of conscientious citizenship but of dangerous disloyalty.

We were right, but the wars came.

Full Story Here: Imperial Delusions: Ignoring the Lessons of 9/11 | Common Dreams.

That appears to be the strong consensus of the foreign-policy elite which, with only a few exceptions, believes that the administration of President George W. Bush badly “over-reacted” to the attacks and that that over-reaction continues to this day.

That over-reaction was driven in major part by a close-knit group of neo-conservatives and other hawks who seized control of Bush’s foreign policy even before the dust had settled over Lower Manhattan and set it on a radical course designed to consolidate Washington’s dominance of the Greater Middle East and “shock and awe” any aspiring global or regional rival powers into acquiescing to a “unipolar” world.

Full Story Here: 9/11: Al Qaeda’s Project for Ending the American Century Succeeded | Common Dreams.

Some measures, such as the establishment of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, had been a mistake, Cameron told Al Jazeera television in an interview to mark the 10th anniversary of the Al Qaeda attacks on the United States.

“We can certainly see with hindsight and in some ways at the time, mistakes were made in that we lost some of our moral authority, which is vital to keep when you’re trying to make your case in the world,” Cameron said.

As he spoke, fresh allegations were emerging about the complicity of British intelligence agents in the illegal transfer of terror suspects following 9/11 to countries where they faced torture.

Full Story Here: British PM: Britain, U.S. ‘lost some’ moral authority after 9/11 | The Raw Story.

Once hailed as heroes, thousands now say they have fallen victim to a host of ailments — from asthma to cancer — due to their exposure to the toxic debris pile left by the Twin Towers’ collapse on September 11, 2001.

Compensation funds set up by the US government do not recognize cancer as a condition caused by exposure to the World Trade Center clean-up operation, and a political battle is brewing.

Full Story Here: Cancer among 9/11 workers sparks political storm | The Raw Story.

Once hailed as heroes, thousands now say they have fallen victim to a host of ailments — from asthma to cancer — due to their exposure to the toxic debris pile left by the Twin Towers’ collapse on September 11, 2001.

Compensation funds set up by the US government do not recognize cancer as a condition caused by exposure to the World Trade Center clean-up operation, and a political battle is brewing.

Full Story Here: Cancer among 9/11 workers sparks political storm | The Raw Story.

Unsurprisingly, firefighters who responded to the 9/11 terrorist attacks are 19% more likely to develop cancer than their unexposed colleagues, says a new study by New York’s Fire Department published in The Lancet. Appallingly, cancer is not on the list of illnessess covered by the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. What the?! Shame, unending, on those in power here.

Full Story Here: Toxic Soup Takes Its Toll on 9/11 Firefighters | Common Dreams.

I’m talking about the volumes, the libraries – nay, the very halls of literature – which the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001 have spawned. Many are spavined with pseudo-patriotism and self-regard, others rotten with the hopeless mythology of CIA/Mossad culprits, a few (from the Muslim world, alas) even referring to the killers as “boys”, almost all avoiding the one thing which any cop looks for after a street crime: the motive.

Why so, I ask myself, after 10 years of war, hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths, lies and hypocrisy and betrayal and sadistic torture by the Americans – our MI5 chaps just heard, understood, maybe looked, of course no touchy-touchy nonsense – and the Taliban? Have we managed to silence ourselves as well as the world with our own fears? Are we still not able to say those three sentences: The 19 murderers of 9/11 claimed they were Muslims. They came from a place called the Middle East. Is there a problem out there?

American publishers first went to war in 2001 with massive photo-memorial volumes. Their titles spoke for themselves: Above Hallowed Ground, So Others Might Live, Strong of Heart, What We Saw, The Final Frontier, A Fury for God, The Shadow of Swords… Seeing this stuff piled on newsstands across America, who could doubt that the US was going to go to war? And long before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, another pile of tomes arrived to justify the war after the war. Most prominent among them was ex-CIA spook Kenneth Pollack’s The Threatening Storm – and didn’t we all remember Churchill’s The Gathering Storm? – which, needless to say, compared the forthcoming battle against Saddam with the crisis faced by Britain and France in 1938.

Full Story Here: Robert Fisk: For 10 years, we’ve lied to ourselves to avoid asking the one real question – Robert Fisk, Commentators – The Independent.

The answer is no.

Did the Trade Towers fall because they were badly built as a consequence of corruption, incompetence, regulatory evasions by the Port Authority, and because they were struck by huge planes loaded with jet fuel. No, shout the conspiracists, they “pancaked” because Dick Cheney’s agents–scores of them–methodically planted demolition charges in the preceding days inserting the explosives in the relevant floors of three vast buildings, (moving day after day among the unsuspecting office workers), then on 9/11 activating the detonators. It was a conspiracy of thousands, all of whom–party to mass murder–have held their tongues ever since.

What has been the goal of the 9/11 conspiracists? They ask questions, yes, but they never answer them. They never put forward an overall scenario of the alleged conspiracy. They say that’s not up to them. So who is it up to? Whom do they expect to answer their questions? When answers are put forward, they are dismissed as fabrications or they simply rebound with another question. Like most cultic persuasions they excitedly invoke important converts to their faith and the “1500 architects and engineers in the USA” who say the NIST official report is not thorough and needs another investigation. It’s a tiny proportion of the overall members of their profession. At least 80 per cent of faculty economists in the US believe stoutly in long-discredited theories that have blighted the lives of millions around the world for decades. Their numbers don’t equate with intelligence, let along conclusive analysis.

Full Story Here: The 9/11 Conspiracists: Vindicated After All These Years? » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.

During the past 10 years I have not met a single individual who, after doing research on the subjectpen, switched from questioning the official narrative of the events of 9/11/2001 to believing the official narrative of those events..  It is always the other way around. Why do you think that is? There are good reasons for this, and I will try to explain this phenomenon right now.

The term “conspiracy theorist“, perhaps the most misapplied description in our vernacular, is often used to describe 9/11 truthers. Perhaps that term does apply to a segment of the 9/11 truth movement. But in most cases a more accurate description of 9/11 truthers is probably “expert”, or “scholar“, or “researcher.” You see, much of the doubt cast on the official narrative of the events of 9/11 has not come in the form of speculated accusations, or “theories.” In fact, it has come in the form of questions that have been raised after a careful study of the official and undisputed events and details.

Ten years have passed since the infamous events of September 11th, 2001 took place, and the majority of people still don’t know a damn thing about the actual details of that event. They don’t know what was going on in the country with regard to our military that day. They don’t know the history or the activities of key members of our government, defense establishment or intelligence community, on, or during the weeks, and in some cases the years leading up to that day. They don’t know what took place during or immediately following the events of that day. And they don’t know what actions were taken by those key people following that event.

Full Story Here: You Only Believe the Official 9/11 Story Because You Don’t Know the Official 9/11 Story.

The court files of more than 1,700 pages shed new light on the U.S. government’s reliance on private contractors for flights between Washington, foreign capitals, the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and, at times, landing points near once-secret, CIA-run overseas prisons. The companies included DynCorp, a leading government contractor that secretly oversaw a fleet of luxury jets, and caterers that unwittingly stocked the planes with fruit platters and bottles of wine for the transoceanic routes, according to the court files and testimony.

Story: Petraeus retires, warns against budget cuts

The business dispute stems from an obscure four-year fight between a New York-based charter company, Richmor Aviation Inc., which supplied corporate jets and crews to the government, and a private aviation broker, SportsFlight Air, which organized flights for DynCorp. Both sides cited the government’s program of forced transport of detainees, or “extraordinary rendition,” in testimony, evidence and legal arguments. The companies are fighting over $874,000 awarded to Richmor by a New York state appeals court to cover unpaid costs for the secret flights.

Full Story Here: Court case lifts lid on secret post 9/11 flights – US news – Security – msnbc.com.

Olbermann noted that while Bush refers to 9/11 as a “monumental” and “significant” event but he never uses word like “tragic” or “sad.” Moulitsas suggested that the reason Bush did not describe the attacks as “tragic” is because he and his party did not view the attack as a tragedy but rather as an opportunity to install a more authoritarian regime inside the government.

The Bush interview and the release of Dick Cheney’s memoir were strategically timed to come out around the tenth anniversary of the terror attacks next month.

Full Story Here: National Geographic Trashes Its Brand with Bush ‘Infomercial’ on 9/11.

The Obama administration has issued formal guidelines identifying the messages government agencies are to communicate as part of the commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attack. The New York Times obtained a copy of these guidelines and notes one significant omission:

The guidelines say the absence of Al Qaeda playing any significant role in the “Arab Spring” uprisings against longtime autocrats in the Middle East and North Africa should be cited as evidence that Bin Laden’s organization “represents the past,” while peaceful street protesters in Egypt and Tunisia “represent the future.” Left unsaid was that many of the deposed leaders were close American allies and partners in counterterrorism operations.

That little fact is not only “left unsaid” in the administration’s 9/11 messaging guidelines but in almost all media and political discussions of the Arab Spring (kudos to the NYT for its rare inclusion here). That is why, at the risk of invoking an Internet cliche, I literally laughed aloud when I read Roger Cohen’s giddy self-celebration in this morning’s NYT over the glorious American “victory” in Libya. Leaving aside how obviously premature and information-deprived his victory dance is, Cohen’s concluding passage struck me as so delusional as to be darkly humorous:

Full Story Here: Omitted facts from the 9/11 commemoration – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.

Not very well. The chairman, vice chairman, and senior legal counsel of the 9/11 Commission wrote books partially disassociating themselves from the commission’s report. They said that the Bush administration put obstacles in their path, that information was withheld from them, that President Bush agreed to testify only if he was chaperoned by Vice President Cheney and neither were put under oath, that Pentagon and FAA officials lied to the commission and that the commission considered referring the false testimony for investigation for obstruction of justice.

In their book, the chairman and vice chairman, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, wrote that the 9/11 Commission was “set up to fail.” Senior counsel John Farmer, Jr., wrote that the US government made “a decision not to tell the truth about what happened,” and that the NORAD “tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public.” Kean said, “We to this day don’t know why NORAD told us what they told us, it was just so far from the truth.”

Most of the questions from the 9/11 families were not answered. Important witnesses were not called. The commission only heard from those who supported the government’s account. The commission was a controlled political operation, not an investigation of events and evidence. Its membership consisted of former politicians. No knowledgeable experts were appointed to the commission.

Full Story Here: 9/11 After A Decade: Have We Learned Anything?.

Democrats are slamming the GOP candidate trying to replace ex-New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, criticizing the Queens-bred businessman as an “embarrassment” for suggesting rescue and recovery volunteers should not be included in the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act.

“I probably couldn’t go home if I didn’t support the Zadroga bill. I have firemen in my family, but is that bill beyond criticism? No,” Republican Bob Turner told the New York Daily News, just two weeks before the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

“I think it is a little too broad,” Turner said of the bill. “My call would be to protect police, fire, emergency workers, construction workers, etc… If someone said, ‘I volunteered’ or walked through there, it’s just not the type.”

Full Story Here: Bob Turner, Weiner Seat Candidate, Questioned 9/11 Health Bill.

Commemorative Public Conference

Date: Thursday, September 8, 2011 | 6pm

Location: Cinema du Parc

3575 av. du Parc, Montreal, QC H2X 3P9

(Metro Sherbrooke), MAP

The tragic events of September 11, 2001, which claimed many lives in the United States, have since given rise to an era of endless US/NATO-sponsored wars accompanied by economic chaos, rising poverty and financial manipulation. We have seen a marked shift towards authoritarianism, the criminalization of justice and the development of a police state. At this special 10 year commemorative event, we invite the public to an evening exploring the truth behind 9/11 and its implications for the future of society.

Speakers:

Cynthia McKinney

9/11 Truth: The War at Home and Abroad

Cynthia McKinney is a former Member of the US Congress and the Green Party Candidate in the US presidential elections. She has recently returned from a fact-finding mission to Libya.

Wayne Madsen

Media Manipulation and the Fear of Terrorism

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, bestselling author and syndicated columnist. He has over 20 years’ experience in security issues.

Michel Chossudovsky

9/11 and the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT)

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya:

Today’s 9/11 War Machine: Report from the Middle East War Theatre

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya has been reporting from Tripoli during the NATO assault. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

The event will be launched with the Première Screening of Global Research’s short documentary film:

“Remembering the Tragic Events of September 11, 2001″, produced and directed by James Corbett

Full Story Here: AFTER 9/11: TEN YEARS OF WAR.

By Ray McGovern

Bulletin for those of you who get your information only from the New York Times, the Washington Post and other outlets of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM): Former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke has accused ex-CIA Director George Tenet of denying him and others access to intelligence that could have thwarted the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11.

Deliberately withholding critical intelligence from those who need it, and can act on it, is — at the least — gross dereliction of duty.

The more so if keeping the White House promptly and fully informed is at the top of your job jar, as it was for Director of Central Intelligence Tenet. And yet that is precisely the charge Clarke has leveled at the former DCI.

In an interview aired on Aug. 11 on a local PBS affiliate in Colorado, Clarke charges that Tenet and two other senior CIA officials, Cofer Black and Richard Blee, deliberately withheld information about two of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77 — al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar. The two had entered the United States more than a year before the 9/11 attacks.

Full Story Here: Did Tenet Hide Key 9/11 Info? | Consortiumnews.

In a new documentary, former national-security aide Richard Clarke suggests the CIA tried to recruit 9/11 hijackers—then covered it up. Philip Shenon on George Tenet’s denial.

Full Story Here: September 11th Anniversary: Richard Clarke’s Explosive CIA Cover-up Charge – The Daily Beast.

David Sirota -

Nearly 10 years later, new studies point to lasting effects on the nation’s mental, physical and political health

Like most Americans, I can still remember it as if it were yesterday: The images of the burning building on the screen, the murmurings of bewildered morning TV anchors, the burst of “holy shit!” subject lines in my email box and then, shattering the slow-mo dreamlike quality of it all, the bark of a police officer telling me to get out of the Capitol complex as quickly as possible because a plane-turned-missile was headed our way.

This was my particular 9/11 experience — a Washington of complete chaos where chest-thumping tough-on-terror congresspeople were instantly transformed into cowering child-trampling George Costanzas as they fled for the door. I’m sure everyone fortunate enough to survive that day has their own unique flashback — it was, after all, a generation’s “where were you when” moment a la the JFK assassination. Only now, approaching the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, a trio of new studies show the post-traumatic stress of the attacks resulted in deep cultural shifts that go way beyond mere haunting mental images and bouts of insomnia.

As probably the single most politicized event in modern American history, 9/11′s most obvious long-term impact can be seen in the electoral arena — and not merely in individual election cycles or races.

Full Story Here: The long-term legacy of 9/11 – David Sirota – Salon.com.

Len Hart, :-:

Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, perhaps the most famous fictional detective of all time. Doyle, himself expert in the science of criminology, wrote: “When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains however implausible must be the truth!” With respect to the crime of 911, it is past time to eliminate the impossible, i.,e the Bush ‘theory’ of 911, often called the ‘official conspiracy theory of 911′.

Following is my short list –not of mere improbabilities –but fatal impossibilities any one of which utterly destroys the Bush ‘official conspiracy theory of 911′! All the impossibilities listed may be verified against the always of physics, logic and empirical observation.

Some are obvious but somehow were ignored by the media. For example, Hani Hanjour is said to have boarded and high jacked Flight 77. But the Washington Post reported that Hani Hanjour could not have gotten on baord because he did not have a ticket. Nor is his name on the only admissible, official shred of evidence to have survived the Bush orders to destroy evidence –the official autopsy report released to Dr. Olmsted in response to his FOIA request. More recently, NTSB records revealed that the cockpit door on Flight 77 was never opened during the fight. Ergo: the Bush official conspiracy theory of 911 cannot even explain how it was possible to have hijacked a flight on which 1) there is no record, no evidence, no autopsy report than any alleged hijacker ever got on board to begin with.

Bushco cannot place the ‘suspects’ at the scene of the crime.

Full Story Here: The Existentialist Cowboy: Road Trip to Ground Zero: Get on Board.

The recommendations, which must still be approved by a military tribunal official, set the stage for the high-profile Al-Qaeda suspects to finally face justice almost a decade after the attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

President Barack Obama’s administration last month abandoned plans to try the five in a civilian court just blocks from the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, felled by Al-Qaeda hijackers on September 11, 2001.

Full Story Here: U.S. announces charges against five 9/11 terror suspects | The Raw Story.

While the government says he betrayed his country, Drake, facing 35 years in prison if convicted, says he only pointed out government mismanagement. Drake was imprisoned under the Espionage Act of 1917.

“The entire national security establishment – it was a failure, a fundamental systemic breakdown,” Drake told “60 Minutes”‘ Scott Pelley in his first televised interview.

Full Story Here: NSA whistleblower Tom Drake talks Espionage Act, 9/11, intelligence with 60 Minutes | Raw Replay.

Top US government insider Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a man who held numerous different influential positions under three different Presidents and still works with the Defense Department, shockingly told The Alex Jones Show yesterday that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001 and that he was prepared to testify in front of a grand jury how a top general told him directly that 9/11 was a false flag inside job.

Pieczenik cannot be dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist”. He served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under three different administrations, Nixon, Ford and Carter, while also working under Reagan and Bush senior, and still works as a consultant for the Department of Defense. A former US Navy Captain, Pieczenik achieved two prestigious Harry C. Solomon Awards at the Harvard Medical School as he simultaneously completed a PhD at MIT.

Recruited by Lawrence Eagleburger as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Management, Pieczenik went on to develop, “the basic tenets for psychological warfare, counter terrorism, strategy and tactics for transcultural negotiations for the US State Department, military and intelligence communities and other agencies of the US Government,” while also developing foundational strategies for hostage rescue that were later employed around the world.

Full Story Here: » Top Government Insider: Bin Laden Died In 2001, 9/11 A False Flag Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!.

This past weekend, a thought provoking e-mail circulated through Internet news groups, and was sent to the Muckraker Report by Mr. Paul V. Sheridan (Winner of the 2005 Civil Justice Foundation Award), bringing attention to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist web page for Usama Bin Laden.[1] In the e-mail, the question is asked, “Why doesn’t Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster make any direct connection with the events of September 11, 2001?” The FBI says on its Bin Laden web page that Usama Bin Laden is wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998 bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. According to the FBI, these attacks killed over 200 people. The FBI concludes its reason for “wanting” Bin Laden by saying, “In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorists attacks throughout the world.”

On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, (202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI. When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”

Surprised by the ease in which this FBI spokesman made such an astonishing statement, I asked, “How this was possible?” Tomb continued, “Bin Laden has not been formally charged in connection to 9/11.” I asked, “How does that work?” Tomb continued, “The FBI gathers evidence. Once evidence is gathered, it is turned over to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice than decides whether it has enough evidence to present to a federal grand jury. In the case of the 1998 United States Embassies being bombed, Bin Laden has been formally indicted and charged by a grand jury. He has not been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connected Bin Laden to 9/11.”

Full Story Here: FBI says, it has “No hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11”.

This little treasure just takes my breath away. In order for 9/11 Responders to receive needed medical care and treatment, they have to be screened against the Department of Homeland Security Terrorism Watch List. It’s the law.

Apparently, true patriot Florida Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns, attached an amendment to the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Law that was passed by Congress last May. This amendment bars any and all 9/11 Responders from treatment if they have not been cleared by DHS. Obviously rushing into burning and crumbling skyscrapers to save lives is a suspicious activity that indicates possible ties and sympathy to – terrorists.

Pardon my French, but — are you fucking kidding me!

And Democrats let this piece of manure pass? The smell didn’t bother them?

And where is that grand old “I want my country back-proud to be an American” Tea Party? Did they get lost at a “birther” convention in the Trump Towers?

Honest to God, I don’t know what to say about this – this miserly, mean-spirited little Republican representative and his cohorts who seem to enjoy inflicting cruelty and pain on the men and women who risked life and limb to save lives on that horrible day and the days and weeks afterward. This is how we honor their heroism and sacrifice? Really?

This odious piece of excrement stinks to high heaven.

Full Story Here: 9/11 Responders Are Terrorists?.

The problem was that the new James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act — passed in a bitter fight last December — included no way to pay for administration of the compensation fund, a cost likely to run to tens of millions of dollars.

That’s because the measure was modeled on the old 9/11 Victims’ Compensation Fund law that helped people in the years right after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Full Story Here: Budget Bill Helps 9/11 Responders.

The indictment charging self-professed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others was unsealed when US Attorney General Eric Holder referred the case to the Defense Department for military trials instead of trials at a US federal court in New York.

Holder said Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali and Mustapha Ahmed al-Hawsawi could have been prosecuted in federal court and blamed Congress for imposing measures blocking civilian trials of Guantanamo Bay inmates.

They will be tried in military courts in the US naval base in southeastern Cuba.

Full Story Here: Evidence against 9/11 plotters revealed | The Raw Story.

OPS: Hmmm… and what about the hundreds of other little issues like:

• Who shorted those particular airlines on the market that day and how much did they make on their advanced knowledge?
• Building 7?
• What really happened at the Pentagon and why can’t we see any of the dozens of surveillance videos that captured what happened.

Video obtained by FOIA to NIST by an anonymous person who directed it be sent to Cryptome. Excerpt of the NIST letter.

Quote: These electronic files image were provided to NIST by the New York Police Department. The City of New York has provided NIST with the following notice:

“Please take notice that the City of New York (“City”) has asserted that the contents of the enclosed DVD-ROM is protected under tbe Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. sections 101 et seq. Tbe City expressly reserves its rights in these materials, and requires that you obtain the City’s permission prior to any reproduction, modification, adaptation, recompilation, or other derivative use of each DVD-ROM or portion thereof, including any still image extracted or derived therefrom, and that the City’s permission be obtained prior to the commercial distribution of any video footage and of still or moving images extracted or derived therefrom in any medium, by sale, rental, lease, lending or other means. The City requires that the instant notice accompany any moving or still images that you disseminate for any reason, including dissemination that complies with the fair use authorized by section 107 of the Copyright Act, and requires that each recipient of these materials comply with the instant Notice. Moreover, the City requires that a summary statement of its copyright be embedded in any moving or still images extracted from the enclosed DVD-ROM that are broadcast in any medium for any purpose. This summary statement shall read as follows: “Copyright (c) NYPD.” Please write to the New York City Police Department, Legal Bureau, 1 Police Plaza, Room 1406, New York, N. Y. 10038, for information about obtaining an appropriate license.” Unquote

The video has been uploaded as provided by NIST without modification. Original in VOB format, 700MB.

A related collection of 153 still photos from another NYPD helicopter:

Full Story Here: Worker Solidarity Rallies Planned | Jobs with Justice Blog.

We read: US fury over UN expert’s 9/11 ‘cover-up’ claims 25 Jan 2011 The United States on Tuesday demanded the sacking of a UN human rights expert for “noxious” [?] comments claiming there had been a US cover-up over the September 11 attacks… The US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, called Falk’s views “despicable and deeply offensive” and said she had registered a protest and called for his dismissal. Falk wrote in his personal blog on January 11 that there are “awkward gaps and contradictions in the official explanations” given for the attacks when hijacked [sic] jets crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. He said there was “an apparent cover-up” by the US government over its knowledge of the attacks masterminded by Osama bin Laden. Falk said mainstream US media had been “unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events: an Al-Qaeda operation with no foreknowledge by government officials.”

Except that the events of September 11th were not a ‘bin Laden’ operation.

They were a Cheney/Neo-con operation, six ways to Sunday.

Full Story Here: 9/11: ‘Awkward gaps and contradictions in official explanations’ – You betcha! | Citizens for Legitimate Government.

Several contentious issues still plague the US government and their version of the events of September 11, 2001. Those in political power along with media elites would like to see the ongoing grassroots debates surrounding unanswered 9/11 questions and discrepancies disappear, despite the mountains of evidence that suggest that American citizens were told little about the truth of the biggest single-day attack on their homeland in history. Nearly ten years after the events, many unanswered questions still exist: How did Building 7 fall? What caused the destruction of the twin towers? Where is Osama bin Laden? Are people that question the official story of 9/11 dangerous conspiracy theorists?

The academics and intellectuals who have tried to answer these questions have been ignored or derided by corporate mainstream (and even some progressive leftist) media, political pundits, and government officials who clearly intend to silence the so-called 9/11 Truth Movement, or anyone who questions the officially sanctioned government stance on the matter. However, the questions will not go away and increasingly beg for answers.

As of spring 2010, over 1,200 architects and engineers are calling for a new investigation into the events of 9/11. These building professionals and academics are motivated by the fact that the 9/11 Commission Report has been proven erroneous on multiple counts, scientific explanations have been flawed and contradictory, and the American people deserve a more fact-based explanation.

Full Story Here: 14. Increased Tensions with Unresolved 9/11 Issues | Project Censored.

The Chamber’s aim was to keep open a tax loophole benefiting foreign corporations that the $7.4 billion bill would have closed to provide funding for the American emergency workers.

In a letter opposing the 9/11 bill, R. Bruce Josten, the Chamber’s executive vice president for Government Affairs, cautioned that closing the tax loophole would harm US trade relationships and financial markets.

Full Story Here: Revealed: Chamber lobbied against 9/11 health bill to save foreign members on taxes | Raw Story.

OPS: The Republicans are out in the open once again.  Be sure and forward this article to your Republicans friends

There have been many criticisms of, even accusatory attacks on the official government storyline over the past few years, but it seems that for every attack there is a counterattack that doesn’t really resemble any dialectical process, but rather trench warfare from World War I, replete with Howitzer bombardments on the critic plus withering rifle fire, as well as smoke grenades and shells that fill the “battle scene” with the fog of propaganda war.

The beauty of Episode 8 is that it lays out the main criticisms of the official storyline in a comprehensive, straightforward manner with powerful interviews and strong rebuttals of key tenets of the “Hani Hanjour slammed the Pentagon” theory of what happened that fateful day of September 11th, 2001. This is not wild-eyed speculation, but information grounded in reality.

Full Story Here: OpEdNews – Article: JESSE VENTURA HAMMERS THE 9/11 OFFICIAL PENTAGON ATTACK SCENARIO.

FORMER VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY ACCUSED OF ENGINEERING PENTAGON ATTACK

DONALD RUMSFELD CITED AS POSSIBLE ACCOMPLICE

Confirmed sources in the Nigerian government tell us, in order to keep former Vice President Cheney out of prison for crimes involving Nigeria, $500,000,000 in bribes have been promised, negotiated by former President George H.W. Bush. Now, only a day later, Cheney faces possible charges, so many charges they can only be imagined, for planning the Pentagon attack on 9/11.

TV host, Jesse Ventura, former Navy Seal, former Governor of Minnesota, on a one hour documentary on prime-time American television, makes an open and shut criminal case tying Cheney, Rumsfeld and officials throughout the US government with complicity in the planning, execution and subsequent cover-up of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon.

Full Story Here: GORDON DUFF: GOV. JESSE VENTURA PROVES 9/11 COVER-UP, WILL AMERICA’S GOVERNMENT FALL? : Veterans Today.

These days, Bush’s only defenders with respect to 911 are 1) paid liars and hard cases left over from his utterly criminal and illegitimate administration; and 2) idiots whose only source of ‘news’ is Fox. Fox ‘news’, however, is an oxymoron, appropriate I suppose for a network of morons in service to morons.

Bush, it is said, could not have pulled off 911 alone. Of course not! A total tool, it most certainly was not even his idea. He was the ‘titular’ head of a loosely organized gang of power brokers and the motley crew of wing nuts who support them. God knows why!

Bush was and probably still is a puppet but not a good one. When the real history is known, we may find ourselves eternally grateful to Bush whose utter incompetence, his palpable stupidity, his painful, hardly bearable inarticulateness revealed however inadvertently the truth about how our nation was usurped by an ever smaller ruling elite. Last time I checked this ‘elite’ was only 1 percent of the total population and most surely diminishing. One day, they will have put themselves out of business. In theory, at least!

Full Story: The Existentialist Cowboy: Why 80 Percent of Americans Don’t Believe the Official Theory of 911.

Fox Business host Andrew Napolitano revealed on Tuesday that he does not believe the government’s account of the 9/11 attacks. Napolitano, who hosts “Freedom Watch” on Fox Business and is frequently seen on Fox News as a legal analyst, told radio host Alex Jones — who is a prominent 9/11 conspiracy theorist —that the attacks “couldn’t possibly have been done the way the government told us.”

The subject came about when Jones noted that Geraldo Rivera had recently raised questions about the collapse of World Trade Center 7 on Napolitano’s Fox Business Show. 9/11 conspiracy theorists have centered on that building’s collapse, contending that it was blown up by government forces. Jones asked Napolitano what his opinion about the issue was.

Napolitano replied:

Full Story: Andrew Napolitano, Fox Business Host, Reveals He Is A 9/11 Truther.

Len Hart,

Author Michael Shermer wrote a book that Amazon.com now says is out of print. The title is intriguing: Why People Believe Weird Things. Though Shermer deals with UFO’s, allegations that NASA faked the moon landing, and the flat earth, reviewers have said his best chapter was about Holocaust Denial.

More recently and sadly, though, Shermer has ceased to be a skeptic. Last time I checked, Shermer was still touting the weirdest of many ‘weird things’ –the official conspiracy of 911! It is as if when the numbers nine, one and one are mentioned switches are turned ‘off’ inside the brains of millions: skeptics become devout followers of officialdom; scientists subscribe to voodoo; hard-nose lawyers forget the meaning of ‘probable cause’! These people, and Shermer the one-time skeptic, have this much in common: they are victims of trauma and official blackmail! In a phrase: millions ‘believe’ the official conspiracy for the same reason Christians believe the scriptures: there is hell to pay if they don’t!

The Official Conspiracy Theory is Weird

Full Story: The Existentialist Cowboy: Why People Believe the Official Conspiracy Theory of 911 and Other Weird Crap!.

Granted, that media was Fox News host Geraldo Rivera, who in a former iteration ran a Jerry Springer-like daytime talk show. That and, the last time Rupert Murdoch’s conservative-tilted television channel seriously talked about issues pertaining to 9/11, they were calling for a public official’s resignation over a signature on one of the “9/11 truth” petitions.

Still, at the end of his serious-yet-brief treatment of questions surrounding the collapse of World Trade Center 7 (WTC 7, pictured), Rivera admitted that the activists had made him “much more open minded” about questions surrounding 9/11.

Full Story: Geraldo ‘much more open minded’ about 9/11 thanks to NYC television ads | Raw Story.

Leading liberal intellectual Noam Chomsky just told Press TV:

“The explicit and declared motive of the [Afghanistan] war was to compel the Taliban to turn over to the United States, the people who they accused of having been involved in World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist acts. The Taliban…they requested evidence…and the Bush administration refused to provide any,” the 81-year-old senior academic made the remarks on Press TV’s program a Simple Question.

“We later discovered one of the reasons why they did not bring evidence: they did not have any.”

The political analyst also said that nonexistence of such evidence was confirmed by FBI eight months later.

“The head of FBI, after the most intense international investigation in history, informed the press that the FBI believed that the plot may have been hatched in Afghanistan, but was probably implemented in the United Arab Emirates and Germany.”

Chomsky added that three weeks into the war, “a British officer announced that the US and Britain would continue bombing, until the people of Afghanistan overthrew the Taliban… That was later turned into the official justification for the war.”

“All of this was totally illegal. It was more, criminal,” Chomsky said.

Full Story: Noam Chomsky: No Evidence that Al-Qaeda Carried Out the 9/11 Attacks | zero hedge.

The first details about former President George W. Bush’s new book have begun to leak out.

According to a report at Matt Drudge’s website, The Drudge Report, the new book Decision Points talks about topics including alcoholism, his order to shoot down planes on 9/11, Katrina and the financial crisis.

According to Drudge, the book begins, “It was a simple question, ‘Can you remember the last day you didn’t have a drink?’”

The book also discusses the events of Sept. 11, 2001. That morning, Bush says he made the order to shoot down hijacked planes.

Full Story: Report: Bush thought United Flight 93 was shot down on 9/11 | Raw Story.

The author, Anthony A. Shaffer, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, reportedly repeats his declaration, first made in 2005, that US intelligence agencies had identified the leader of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Mohammed Atta, and three other suicide hijackers well in advance of September 11, 2001.

The extraordinary effort to suppress Shaffer’s book, Operation Dark Heart, comes despite initial clearance given to the manuscript by the US Army in January, when Shaffer agreed to unspecified changes and redactions and obtained a statement that the Army had “no objection on legal or operational security grounds.”

Full Story: Pentagon seeks to suppress book by 9/11 whistleblower.

The judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein of Federal District Court in Manhattan, disallowed the charges at a hearing after rejecting lawyers’ justifications for the expenses, which involved interest paid on loans that helped finance about $30 million in litigation costs. Those loans had been at interest rates of 14 percent to 18 percent, and would have reduced the workers’ individual settlement amounts by from $78.23 to $2,300, on average.

Paul J. Napoli of Worby Groner Edelman and Napoli Bern Ripka, the law partnership representing the bulk of the more than 10,000 workers, argued that without the borrowed money, “it would not have been possible to litigate this case.” But Judge Hellerstein said that while he did not question the appropriateness or ethics of borrowing the money, he was concerned about the fairness of making the clients pay for it.

“The clients are entitled to the maximum return possible,” he said.

Full Story: Judge Rejects Legal Fees in Ground Zero Settlement – NYTimes.com.

How can a nation like the United States be duped into two wars and total bankruptcy? It would be one thing if the “truth” about 9/11 was internet conspiracy theory. This isn’t the case. It was all right there in everyone’s living room. They fooled us once and then fooled us again and again. Yes, America has some tail to kick but this time, maybe we should make sure our boot goes up the right rear end for a change.

The real hole in the Pentagon, before construction equipment enlarged it was so small a man had to duck his head to enter. For 9 years, this photograph was captioned “Second Floor.” This photograph has a firefighter in the foreground and, unless gravity was suspended on 9/11, he is standing on the Pentagon’s lawn. Listen to CNN describe a crash site with no aircraft parts of any kind, seats, bodies, wings, engines, tail section….none of it. Can it be this simple?

Full Story: GORDON DUFF: 9/11 PLANNERS CONFESS ON NETWORK TELEVISION : Veterans Today.

Len Hart, :

Conan Doyle’s character Sherlock Holmes said: “When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains however implausible must be the truth!” This must be too easy. The significance of this single sentence is apparently lost on several generations of Americans who will believe all kinds of weird stuff for which there is no evidence whatsoever.

Michael Shermer, for example, has made a living as a career ‘skeptic’ but on the topic of 911, his record is no better than that of the most gullible Americans who defend Bush’s official conspiracy theory with more lies and violations of Occam’s Razor. Like the average American, Shermer bought into at least two bald-faced lies advanced by the Bush administration. Shermer failed to apply the ‘burden of proof”; he did not bother to question fatal self-contradictions that discredit the Bush administration as they, in fact, disprove the ‘official conspiracy theory’ of 911.

Only the guilty are sufficiently motivated to cover up a crime. By contrast, the innocent have nothing to cover up! In some cases, the innocent may be motivated to discover the truth even as guilty criminals work to subvert their efforts. The guilty, by contrast, are motivated to work covertly and/or overtly to cover up, hide evidence and/or lie! The innocent have nothing to hide but nothing to gain and, often much to lose, with lies and cover ups. Simply, the innocent have no motive to cover up anything.

Full Story: The Existentialist Cowboy: 911 Inside Job Chronicles.

Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market.

An extraordinary number of trades were betting that American Airlines stock price would fall.

The trades are called “puts” and they involved at least 450,000 shares of American. But what raised the red flag is more than 80 percent of the orders were “puts”, far outnumbering “call” options, those betting the stock would rise.

Sources say they have never seen that kind of imbalance before, reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. Normally the numbers are fairly even.

After the terrorist attacks, American Airline stock price did fall obviously by 39 percent, and according to sources, that translated into well over $5 million total profit for the person or persons who bet the stock would fall.

***

At least one Wall Street firm reported their suspicions about this activity to the SEC shortly after the attack.

Full Story: SEC: Government Destroyed Documents Regarding Pre-9/11 Put Options « Wake-up Call.

additional source: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/06/sec-government-destroyed-documents.html

A federal judge who held up an effort to settle thousands of lawsuits filed by 9/11 responders exposed to World Trade Center dust dropped his opposition Thursday after the deal was redrafted to give more money to sick workers and less to their lawyers.

U.S. District Judge Hellerstein gave his enthusiastic endorsement to a new settlement that could pay as much as $713 million to about 10,000 police, firefighters and construction workers.

He implored them to take the money, saying it was time to end an ugly and complicated case that has pitted New York City officials against thousands of men and women hailed as heroes for their service at the trade center.

Full Story: $713 Million WTC Health Settlement A ‘Very Good’ Deal: Judge.

A right-wing neocon organization called the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD)1 — which devotes itself to attacking religiously and socially progressive churches while supporting US imperial policies (going back to the Nicaraguan Contras funded illegally by the Reagan administration2 ) — has recently put out a press release attacking my next book, which is scheduled to be published this coming fall. Saying that I am “back with another outrageous book” in which I allege “new absurdities,” the IRD claims that I am “this time alleging that the Obama administration is attempting to undermine 9/11 conspiracy theorists.”3

False Assumptions about My Forthcoming Book

However, if members of the IRD staff could have waited until my book had been published, so they could have read it before attacking it, they could have seen that it does no such thing. They could have seen that it simply deals with an article, entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” co-authored in 2008 by Cass Sunstein and another professor at Harvard Law School.4 Using the “9/11 conspiracy theory” as their primary example of conspiracy theories, Sunstein and his co-author argued that the government should try to undermine it and that the best way to do this would be through a method they called “cognitive infiltration.” In 2009, President Obama appointed Sunstein as the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.5 My forthcoming book is entitled Cognitive Infiltration: An Obama Appointee's Plan to Undermine the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory. Neither the title nor the book itself suggests that Obama will have Sunstein actually carry out this plan.

The IRD's premature criticism of my book is also wrong on another point. By speaking of what I will be “alleging,” the IRD was supporting its press release's title, “9/11 Conspiracy Theorist Dreaming Up New Absurdities.” The IRD's suggestion, in other words, is that I simply “dreamed up” the “absurdity” that someone connected to the Obama administration had a proposal for undermining 9/11 conspiracy theorists. However, the proposal made by Sunstein has been extensively discussed on the Internet.6 With a little research, therefore, the IRD could have learned that I had not simply made something up.

Full Story: The IRD’s Attack on My ”Silly” 9/11 Theories – 911truth.org.

AN INVITATION FROM

After Downing Street, Arab American Union Members Council, Black Agenda Report, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, Campus Antiwar Network, Code Pink, Iraq Veterans Against the War, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations, Peace of the Action, Progressive Democrats of America, U.S. Labor Against the War, The Fellowship of Reconciliation, Veterans for Peace, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

Announcing…
A NATIONAL CONFERENCE
TO BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!

July 23-25, 2010, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Albany, New York
The purpose of this conference is to bring together antiwar and social justice activists from across the country to discuss and decide what we can do together to end the wars, occupations, bombing attacks, threats and interventions that are taking place in the Middle East and beyond, which the U.S. government is conducting and promoting. Attend and voice your opinion on where the antiwar movement is today and where we go from here.
In these deeply troubled times, Washington’s two wars and occupations rage on, resulting in an ever increasing number of dead and wounded; more and more civilians killed in drone bombing attacks; misery, deprivation, dislocation and shattered lives for millions; and a suicide rate for U.S. service members soaring to unprecedented heights. At the same time, trillions are spent on these seemingly endless Pentagon conflicts waged in pursuit of profits and global domination while trillions more are lost by working people in the value of their homes, in the loss of their jobs, pensions and health care, and in cuts for public services and vitally needed social programs.

We are witness to the massive bailout of banks and corporations while union contracts are shredded, work is outsourced, jobs are shipped off-shore, workers are evicted from their homes, and our youth and students face a bleak future of rising tuition costs, an ever-declining quality of education, and diminishing employment opportunities. They are offered instead the opportunity to become cannon fodder as the military serves as the employer of last resort while prison awaits many others.

Full Story: National Peace Conference – Home.

Rescue workers who responded to the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001, continued to have diminished lung capacity seven years after the attack, researchers reported on Wednesday.

Breathing problems among New York Fire Department employees, caused by dust, smoke and other toxic chemicals, became apparent one year after the twin towers collapsed. Their lung capacity typically diminished as if they had aged 12 years.

Doctors had hoped their lungs would gradually rebound, as they often do from routine smoke exposure.

But over the next six years, their lungs continued to worsen, Dr. David Prezant of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

Full Story: Breathing problems persist in September 11 rescuers — Signs of the Times News.

Conspiracies are as American as apple pie. All they require are two or more individuals acting together to bring about an illegal end. When a couple of guys knock off a 7/11, they are engaged in a conspiracy, even if they are subsequently charged with armed robbery instead. Most America conspiracies are economic, like Enron, WorldCom, and Halliburtion. Bernie Madoff comes to mind, since he can’t possibly have done it alone. Since the “official account” maintains that 19 Islamic fundamentalists hijacked four commercial carriers, outfoxed the most sophisticated air defense system in the world, and perpetrated these atrocities under the control of a guy in a cave in Afghanistan, the “official account” is a conspiracy theory, too.

Full Story: james fetzer: Policing thought in America: Why can’t we discuss the events of 9/11?.

In the recent Angus Reid Public Opinion survey of a representative national sample of American adults, 62 per cent of respondents disagree with the view that the “Sept. 11 incident was a big fabrication as a pretext for the campaign against terrorism and a prelude for staging an invasion against Afghanistan.” Far more Republicans disagree at 80 percent, compared to 66 percent of Independents and 55 percent of Democrats.

Consistent with this is that two-thirds of Americans (67 percent) agree with the government commission that investigated the events of Sept. 11, 2001, which concluded that an attack was carried out by 19 hijackers who were members of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization, led by Osama bin Laden. Though 12 per cent of respondents reject the commission’s findings, one-in-five Americans (21 percent) are undecided. In particular, 35 percent of Independents and 34 percent of Democrats do not accept the official version, compared to just 20 percent of Republicans.

Full Story: 100 million Americans question or find fault with the official 9/11 story.

About 844 cubic yards (645 cubic meters) of material recovered from the reconstruction site at Ground Zero will be combed for bones and other remains of the 2,752 people killed when hijacked airliners slammed into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.

“That material is going to be sifted to see if there are any human remains,” said Jason Post, a spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “We’re taking every step we can to recover the remains of 9/11 victims.”

Experts, including anthropologists, will hand check the material in the 1.4-million-dollar operation, which could go on as long as three months at a closed location at a landfill on Staten Island.

Full Story: Forensic experts to reexamine WTC rubble | Raw Story.

The two part video interview, which lasts a little over 20 minutes, was produced by Paul Wittenberger and conducted by Mike Murphy. [Watch part 1 and part 2].

The refreshingly anti-establishment candidate Nightingale also touched on topics ranging from ending the fed, opposing Schwarzenegger’s global warming bill, securing the borders, as well as the “North American Union”, “new world order” and an elitist population control agenda. She discussed her support of Ron Paul, as well as those with opposing agendas such as George Soros; secretive groups such as the Bilderberg and CFR, and chemtrails.

In response to the interviewer’s initial questions regarding 9/11, Nightingale replied

Full Story: California governor candidate Chelene Nightingale: “Why can’t we question what happened with 9/11?”.

In anticipation of a final announcement as to the trial venue for the 9/11 plotters, the group September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows is warning the president against “buckling to political pressure,” calling the use of military tribunals the “wrong thing to do.”

In a nearly four-minute long video, Donna Marsh O’Connor — a Peaceful Tomorrows member who lost her pregnant daughter when the Twin Towers collapsed — speaks both to the broad notion that America has a “historic commitment to justice” and, more narrowly, to the horse-trading politics that now surround terrorist trials. Reflecting disappointment with recent signals from the White House, O’Connor calls specifically for the president to reject a reported compromise proposal with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in which the administration would drop plans for civilian trials in exchange for Republican support for the closure of Gitmo.

Full Story: 9/11 Mother Demands Obama Try Terrorist Plotters In Civilian Court (VIDEO).

The Gay Terrorist

It’s been more than eight years since 9/11, but the fallout continues to reverberate throughout today’s New York. The Obama administration’s waffling over how to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the attack’s mastermind, and the continuous, embarrassing delay in rebuilding the towers downtown have kept 9/11 more in the headlines than usual.

Now, as those political battles roll on, a new story about the run-up to 9/11 has emerged—a previously undisclosed, covert C.I.A. effort to recruit a spy to penetrate Al Qaeda a year and a half before the planes crashed into the towers.

The development is intriguing in part because the informant they were after was thought to be secretly gay—a fact that gave intelligence agents leverage in their efforts to turn him against his conservative Islamist circle. But the case may also help answer one of the long-standing mysteries of the 9/11 narrative: why a terrorist known to one part of the U.S. government wasn’t captured by other parts before he boarded a plane and helped carry out the most devastating attacks on the country.

Full Story: The Gay Terrorist | The New York Observer.

The notification came in a letter dated January 6, 2004, addressed by Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and CIA Director George J. Tenet. The ACLU described it as a fax sent by David Addington, then-counsel to former vice president Dick Cheney.

In the message, the officials denied the bipartisan commission’s request to question terrorist detainees, informing its two senior-most members that doing so would “cross” a “line” and obstruct the administration’s ability to protect the nation.

Full Story: Revealed: Ashcroft, Tenet, Rumsfeld warned 9/11 Commission about ‘line’ it ’should not cross’ | Raw Story.

The Reichstag fire, a key event in German history, and the steps that followed en suite leading to the Nazi dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, provide remarkable precedents for what occurred in the United States on 9-11 – and since. The fire that consumed the German parliament building on the night of February 27, 1933, is “widely believed,” according to Encyclopedia Britannica, to have been contrived by the newly formed Nazi government to turn public opinion against its opponents and allow it to assume emergency powers. The day after the burning of the Reichstag, the government headed by Adolf Hitler enacted a decree “for the Protection of the People and the State.” Hitler’s emergency decree dispensed with all constitutional protection of political, personal, and property rights. Within a month of the Reichstag fire, on March 23, 1933, the parliament passed the Enabling Act, whereby its legislative powers were transferred to Hitler’s Reich Cabinet. This act, passed by a vote of 444 to 94, legally sanctioned the Nazi dictatorship.

Likewise, a month after 9-11 the U.S. Congress passed, without even reading, similar emergency legislation: the Bush administration’s USA PATRIOT Act of 2001. The pre-prepared massive security act’s unabbreviated title is “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.”

Full Story: The Hidden Role of the CIA at Popular Mechanics.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED ON SEPTEMBER 11TH?

You didn’t see anything about it in the mainstream media, but two weeks ago at a conference in San Francisco, more than one thousand architects and engineers signed a petition demanding that Congress begin a new investigation into the destruction of the three World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11.

That’s right, these people put their reputations in potential jeopardy – because they don’t buy the government’s version of events. They want to know how 200,000 tons of steel disintegrated and fell to the ground in 11 seconds. They question whether the hijacked planes were responsible – or whether it could have been a controlled demolition from inside that brought down the Twin Towers and Building 7.

Richard Gage, a member of the American Institute of Architects and the founder of Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth, put it like this: “The official Federal Emergency Management [Agency] and National Institute of Standards and Technology reports provide insufficient, contradictory and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers’ destruction.” He’s especially disturbed by Building 7, whose 47 stories came down in “pure free-fall acceleration” that afternoon – even though it was never hit by an aircraft.

Full Story: Jesse Ventura’s piece on 9/11–KILLED BY HUFFPOST! « News From Underground.

OPS NOTE:  Ventura is scheduled to be on the Thom Hartmann Show Monday 3.15.10. Check your local listings or http://www.thomhartmann.com/

“I can’t believe the Huffington Post today will practice censorship,” Ventura says in astonishment. “I’ve got news for them. … I won’t ever write for ‘em again.”

Ventura had posted an item on Tuesday which took note of a recent conference at which “more than one thousand architects and engineers signed a petition demanding that Congress begin a new investigation into the destruction of the World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11.” He also quoted a few paragraphs from his new book, American Conspiracies, to explain why some of those experts see signs of controlled demolition.

Full Story: Ventura: ‘You’re not allowed to ask’ about 9/11 | Raw Story.

Some number of people in Generation Y (the Millenials, who are now 28 and younger) can say, “I went to college, and what I learned was that 9/11 was an inside job.” Several influences are contending for the attention of that generation: the 9/11 Truth movement; the pro-Constitution and end-the-Fed movements (call it the Ron Paul movement); and the Tea Party movement. And, GenY is making its own movement against budget cuts to higher education.

Most of the matters above are outside the scope of this article, but when the 9/11 Truth movement holds sway, there is need to correct the national narrative. That national narrative has been hijacked by the faces of “Old Media,” rendering stories that are bought, paid for, and/or dictated by those who hold undue sway in the public discourse.

Brass tacks about 9/11

The 9/11 truth movement, if not conclusive, is at least persuasive. Most readers should be aware that they are out there, with evidence that “9/11 was an inside job,” or as I prefer to phrase it, 9/11 had inside help.

Full Story: Revisiting 9/11 « COTO Report.

The settlement was announced Thursday evening by the WTC Captive Insurance Co., a special entity established to indemnify the city and its contractors against potential legal action as they moved to clean up the site after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

The deal, which still must be approved by a judge and the workers themselves, would make the city and other companies represented by the insurer liable for a minimum of $575 million, with more money available to the sick if certain conditions are met.

Full Story: New York City settles with 9/11 heroes for up to $657.5 million | Raw Story.

Below is a list of people who question what our Government has said about 9/11.

The list proves – once and for all – that people who question 9/11 are dangerous.

Email this list to everyone you know, to prove to them that 9/11 truthers are all dangerous nut cases.

Senior intelligence officers:

Former military analyst and famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said that the case of a certain 9/11 whistleblower is “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers”. He also said that the government is ordering the media to cover up her allegations about 9/11. And he said that some of the claims concerning government involvement in 9/11 are credible, that “very serious questions have been raised about what they [U.S. government officials] knew beforehand and how much involvement there might have been”, that engineering 9/11 would not be humanly or psychologically beyond the scope of the current administration, and that there’s enough evidence to justify a new, “hard-hitting” investigation into 9/11 with subpoenas and testimony taken under oath (see this and this).

A 27-year CIA veteran, who chaired National Intelligence Estimates and personally delivered intelligence briefings to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, their Vice Presidents, Secretaries of State, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many other senior government officials (Raymond McGovern) said “I think at simplest terms, there’s a cover-up. The 9/11 Report is a joke”, and is open to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job.

A 29-year CIA veteran, former National Intelligence Officer (NIO) and former Director of the CIA’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis (William Bill Christison) said “I now think there is persuasive evidence that the events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission would have us believe. … All three [buildings that were destroyed in the World Trade Center] were most probably destroyed by controlled demolition charges placed in the buildings before 9/11.” (and seethis).
Full Story: Proof that 9/11 Truthers Are Dangerous.

Fujita, the editorial added, is a member of “the lunatic fringe” who “have spawned a thriving subculture of conspiracy theorists at home and abroad”, and “his views, rooted as they are in profound distrust of the United States, seem to reflect a strain of anti-American thought”. The piece closes by suggesting that the “fact-averse” Fujita should be removed from office.

Among Fujita’s “bizarre” views are “that shadowy forces with advance knowledge of the plot played the stock market to profit from it”, “the fantastic idea that eight of the 19 hijackers are alive and well”, and “that controlled demolition rather than fire or debris may be a more likely explanation for at least the collapse of the building at 7 World Trade Center”.

Full Story: The Washington Post on ‘lunatic’ 9/11 ‘conspiracy theorists’ | Foreign Policy Journal.

“At some level of government, at some point in time, there was an agreement not to tell the people the truth about what happened.”
- John Farmer, Senior Counsel to the 9-11 Commission in his book The Ground Truth (Page 4)

Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth founder, Richard Gage, AIA,   began the conference quoting Mark Twain who said, “If you don’t read the newspapers you’re uninformed. If you do read them you’re misinformed.” Gage said he hoped the assembled press would help to rectify that situation. “Today I’m quite pleased to announce that now we have more than one thousand architects and engineers signed on to the A&E911Truth petition demanding of Congress a new and truly independent, unimpeachable investigation into the destruction of the three World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9-11,” Gage said to a cheering audience.

Full Story: Over 1000 architects and engineers have signed petition to reinvestigate 9-11 destruction.

ATTACK ON 911 TRUTH REPELLED

I have to hand it to Alex Jones – he did a great job asking the real question: Why are they so afraid of 911 truth?

Since when has asking questions become such a dangerous practice in a supposedly free country? Why so many clueless talking heads on TV who lack the ability to see that which is right before their eyes? Why so many omissions, selective reporting of facts, scapegoating and name-calling directed at those examining the evidence- always with one intention – to silence those who have, not theories about 911, but questions based on hard facts?

Methinks they protest too much.

Why do the talking heads continue to call those calling for 911 Truth “conspiracy theorists” – when their only “crime” has been an examination of evidence the U.S. Government has done backflips to pretend doesn’t exist? Like any proper crime investigation the 911 Truth movement withholds judgement until all the evidence is in – while the U.S. Government has published a book with the most unlikely “conspiracy theory” of them all? (19 hijackers means they must have talked)

Full Story: American’s Journey: Attack on 911 Truth repelled: Alex Jones Destroys the Faux News Duo.

Last night a California man read more…opened fire outside the Pentagon in Washington DC. Today he has been linked to the 9/11 truth group that rejects the official explanation of 9/11.

Full Story: EclippTV :: Video :: Smear campaign against 9/11 truthers?.

For 50 years the American Behavioral Scientist has been a leading source of behavioral research for the academic world. Its influence is shown by the fact that it is indexed by an extraordinary 67 major database services, causing its papers to be widely exposed on the international scene.

The publisher, Sage, is headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in London, New Delhi, Singapore, and Washington DC.

Each issue offers comprehensive analysis of a single topic.

The six papers in the February 2010 issue are devoted to the recent concept of “State Crimes Against Democracy (SCAD’s),” with emphasis on 9/11 and on how human behavior has failed to recognize its reality. [Ref. abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6]

What are SCAD’s?

SCADs differ from earlier forms of political corruption in that they frequently involve political, military, and/or economic elites at the very highest levels of the social and political order,” explains one essay.

Full Story: Info Item.

A lingering technical question about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks still haunts some, and it has political implications: How did 200,000 tons of steel disintegrate and drop in 11 seconds? A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center.

“In order to bring down this kind of mass in such a short period of time, the material must have been artificially, exploded outwards,” says Richard Gage, a San Francisco architect and founder of the nonprofit Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

Mr. Gage, who is a member of the American Institute of Architects, managed to persuade more than 1,000 of his peers to sign a new petition requesting a formal inquiry.

Full Story: Inside the Beltway – Washington Times.

Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth founder, Richard Gage, AIA,   began the conference quoting Mark Twain who said, “If you don’t read the newspapers you’re uninformed. If you do read them you’re misinformed.” Gage said he hoped the assembled press would help to rectify that situation. “Today I’m quite pleased to announce that now we have more than one thousand architects and engineers signed on to the A&E911Truth petition demanding of Congress a new and truly independent, unimpeachable investigation into the destruction of the three World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9-11,” Gage said to a cheering audience.

Full Story: Over 1000 architects and engineers have signed petition to reinvestigate 9-11 destruction.

A nutjob, right?

Maybe.

But he joins quite a few other Congressmen:

According to the Co-Chair of the Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 and former Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, an FBI informant had hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House(confirmed here)

Current Democratic U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy said “The two questions that the congress will not ask . . . is why did 9/11 happen on George Bush’s watch when he had clear warnings that it was going to happen? Why did they allow it to happen?”

Current Republican Congressman Ron Paul calls for a new 9/11 investigation and states that “we see the [9/11] investigations that have been done so far as more or less cover-up and no real explanation of what went on”

Current Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich hints that we aren’t being told the truth about 9/11

Former Democratic Senator Mike Gravel states that he supports a new 9/11 investigation and that we don’t know the truth about 9/11

Former Republican Senator Lincoln Chaffee endorses a new 9/11 investigation

Former U.S. Democratic Congressman Dan Hamburg says that the U.S. government “assisted” in the 9/11 attacks, stating that “I think there was a lot of help from the inside”

Former U.S. Republican Congressman and senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, and who served six years as the Chairman of the Military Research and Development Subcommittee Curt Weldon has shown that the U.S. tracked hijackers before 9/11, is open to hearing information about explosives in the Twin Towers, and is open to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job

And 9/11 Commissioners:

via Yet Another Congressman Questions 9/11.

Reflections on a Recent Evaluation of Dr. David Ray Griffin

The cover story of the September 24, 2009, issue of The New Statesman, the venerable left-leaning British magazine, was entitled “The 50 People who Matter Today.”(1) Any such list, necessarily reflecting the bias and limited awareness of the editors, would surely contain choices that readers would find surprising.

That is true of this list – which includes families as well as individuals. A good number of names are, to be sure, ones that would be contained in most such lists created by British, Canadian, or American political commentators, such as the Obamas, the Murdochs, Vladimir Putin, Osama bin Laden, Angela Merkel, Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett, Pope Benedict XVI, and Gordon Brown. But about half of the names reflected choices that I, and probably most other readers, found surprising. One of these choices, however, is beyond surprising – it is astounding.

I refer to the person in the 41st position: David Ray Griffin, a retired professor of philosophy of religion and theology who, in 2003, started writing and lecturing about 9/11, pointing out problems in the official account of the events of that day. By the time the New Statesman article appeared, he had published 8 books, 50 articles, and several DVDs. Because of both the quantity and quality of his work, he became widely regarded as the chief spokesperson of what came to be called “the 9/11 Truth Movement.” It was because of this role that the New Statesman included him in its list, calling him the “top truther” (the “conspiracy theorist” title went to Dan Brown, who was placed in the 50th slot).

Full Story The Media Response to the Growing Influence of the 9 /11 Truth Movement.

This essay presents these media analyses in the form of 18 case studies.

Eight countries – Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Russia – have allowed their publicly-owned broadcasting stations to air the full spectrum of evidence challenging the truth of the official account of 9/11.

This more open approach taken in the international media – I could also have included the Japanese media – might be a sign that worldwide public and corporate media organizations are positioning themselves, and preparing their audiences, for a possible revelation of the truth of the claim that forces within the US government were complicit in the attacks – a revelation that would call into question the publicly given rationale for the military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

The evidence now being explored in the international media may pave the way for the US media to take an in-depth look at the implications of what is now known about 9/11, and to re-examine the country’s foreign and domestic policies in the light of this knowledge.

Full Story Media Response to the Growing Influence of the 9/11 Truth Movement, Part II « COTO Report.

Why then, MSNBC’s liberal host Keith Olbermann asked on Friday night, is it “taboo” to blame the Bush administration for allowing the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on their watch?

His conclusion: For their lack of vigilance and because they “did not prioritize,” President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are to be faulted for the attacks.

Full Story Keith Olbermann blames Bush, Cheney for 9/11 attacks | Raw Story.

Of course, the workers were not racking up triple- to four-digit hourly fees plus expenses. They did get to inhale for some period of time Ground Zero’s toxic brew straight from Pandora’s open box. That would be . . .

* Over 400 tons of asbestos, which inhaled in any quantity, cannot be expelled by the lungs.

* 90,000 liters of jet fuel containing benzene, a carcinogen that suppresses the immune system and causes leukemia.

* Mercury from over 500,000 fluorescent lights that is toxic to the nervous system, and damaging especially to the kidneys.

* 200,000 pounds of lead and cadmium from personal computers toxic to the respiratory tract, especially damaging to kidneys.

* Polycystic aromatic hydrocarbons that cause lung, laryngeal and throat cancers.

* 130,000 gallons of transformer oil, which contains PCBs ad causes serious skin rashes and liver damage.

* Crystalline Silica from 420,000 tons of concrete, sheetrock and glass (tiny particulates that lodge in the heart, causing ischemic heart disease).

The above facts come from filmmaker Heidi Dehncke’s amazing documentary, Dust to Dust: the health effects of 9/11. I reviewed this film in my article 9/11’s Second Round of Slaughter. In fact, some 2,500 contaminants erupted from the explosions of the World Trade Center that felled Towers One, Two and Seven, plus the two, fuel-laden jetliners, turning into a toxic gray dust that hung in the air as well as settled in people’s lungs, including first responders, and on area streets, vehicles, buildings, residences, both outside and inside the city for months.

You can add to the list of deadly pollutants the red dust of nanothermite, an explosive discovered in the pile by physicist Steven Jones and his team of scientists. The red dust, aerosolized from the military explosive thermite by nanotechnology, was likely sprayed on walls and girders within the Towers. Ironically, Tower 7, the third tower to go down, was not hit by an airliner to ignite the heat-sensitive thermite. Actually, T-7 came down at 5:20 PM at the request of the building owner, WTC lessee, Larry Silverstein. He claimed at 3 PM on 9/11 that there was so much pain and suffering that “we decided to pull it,” the term for a planned internal demolition by explosives. Yet, two hours and 20 minutes was not enough time to set up an internal demolition for that building. It had to be done well in advance. Not so surprisingly, the red nanothermite dust was found in the Tower 7 ruins as well.

Full Story The battle of 9/11’s ailing first responders.