Tuesday, November 24 2009   -   Editorials

by Janice Matthews
November 23, 2009

For this Midwestern U.S. chicken-farming Director, I would feel quite ungrateful if I did not share a few of the other personal highlights of this trip. We were given a day of relaxation in the midst of all the event preparations, for which I will honestly be forever grateful. I would surely never have been able to experience this beauty and personal renewal had it not been for the two generous individuals who sponsored my travel and the incredible kindred spirits who pulled this all together. ...

 

Monday, November 23 2009   -   Other Important News

by Steven Aftergood
November 23rd, 2009
Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy's Secrecy News

Development of a new executive order on classification of national security information is now proceeding at an accelerated pace in order to preempt a deadline that would require the declassification of millions of pages of historical records next month.

A revised draft executive order was circulated to executive branch agencies by the Office of Management and Budget on November 16, with agency comments due back today, November 23. A final order is likely to be issued by the end of this year.

There is an incentive to complete the development of the executive order before December 31, 2009 because of a deadline for declassification of historical records that falls on that date. Under the current Bush executive order, classified records that are at least 25 years old and that have been referred from one agency to another because they involve multiple agency interests are supposed to be automatically declassified at the end of this year. (See E.O. 13292, section 3.3(e)(3)).

 

Monday, November 23 2009   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

By Peter Phillips
November 22, 2009

Police are arresting and attacking student protesters on University of California (UC) campuses again. “Why did he beat me I wasn’t doing anything,” screamed a young Cal Berkeley women student over KPFA radio on Friday evening November 20. Students are protesting the 32% increase in tuition imposed by the UC regents in a time of severe state deficits. The Board of Regents claims that they have no choice. Students will now have to pay over $10,000 in tuition annually for a public university education that was free only a few decades ago.

The corporate media spins the tuition protests as if we are all suffering during the recession. For example, the San Diego Union Tribune November 20 writes, “These students need a course in Reality 101. And the reality is that there is virtually no segment of American society that is not straining with the economic recession. With UC facing a $535 million budget gap due to state cuts, the regents have to confront reality and make tough choices. So should students.”

Yet, the reality is something quite different. Our current budget crisis in California and the rest of the country has been artificially created by cutting taxes on the wealthiest people and corporations. The corporate elites in the US, the top 1% who own close to half the wealth, are the beneficiaries of massive tax cuts over the past few decades. While at the same time working people are paying more through increased sales and use taxes and higher public college tuition.

 

Sunday, November 22 2009   -   Research/Evidence

By Ray McGovern
November 17, 2009
Consortium News

As Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other alleged 9/11 conspirators go to trial, the corporate media's embargo on the truth about the Bush years will be under great strain.

Media commentary on the upcoming 9/11 trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has raised concern that state secrets may be divulged, including details about how the Bush administration used torture to extract evidence about al-Qaeda.

"I think that we're going to shine a light on something that a lot of people don't want to look at" is how American Civil Liberties Union attorney Denney LeBoeuf put it, according to The New York Times on Saturday.

No problem, says Attorney General Eric Holder, who claims to have "great confidence" that other evidence -- apart from what may have been gleaned from the 183 times Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded, for example -- will suffice to convict him.

Maybe so, But what the Fawning Corporate Media (or FCM) have so far neglected is the likelihood that the testimony will be so public that they will have to break their studied silence about why Sheikh Mohammed and his associates say they orchestrated the attacks of 9/11.

For reasons that are painfully obvious, the FCM have done their best to ignore or bury the role that Israel's repression of the Palestinians has played in motivating the 9/11 attacks and other anti-Western terrorism.

It is not like there is no evidence on this key issue. Rather, it appears that the Israel-Palestine connection is pretty much kept off limits for discussion.

 

Friday, November 20 2009   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

More great news from The Hard Evidence Tour Down Under
November 19, 2009

Wow!! Finally a proper interview in Sydney! Listen here: http://www.911truth.org/911truthmedia/Audio/Richard_Gage_WSFM_11-2009.mp3

Go to WSFM and vote here on the question of whether "Gage makes sense" www.wsfm.com.au

Please thank them by e-mail asap.....

Email Jonesy - brendanjones [at] wsfm.com.au
Email Amanda - amanda [at] wsfm.com.au

This is a testament to the work you're all doing. Thank you all!

Kind regards,

John Bursill

 

Friday, November 20 2009   -   Other Important News

November 10th, 2009
By David DeGraw
AmpedStatus

As most of you have noticed, we are primarily focused on covering the economic coup. We strongly feel that the theft of Trillions of taxpayer dollars by a small group of men on Wall Street is the biggest story of our time. We understand that these are very difficult times for most people and there are many pressing and vitally important issues confronting us. However, the theft of Trillions of dollars has to be the lead story every day until there are investigations and prosecutions to resolve it.

Many of the news sites that we link to on a daily basis have been covering this issue. However, these sites are not covering the issue sufficiently. There should be blazing headlines on a daily basis: ECONOMIC COUP IN THE US! TRILLIONS OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS STOLEN!

Think about all the vital issues you care about and then think about the Trillions of dollars that were stolen. How could a small fraction of that money directly affect the issues you care about most? We need to make this connection, and we need to make the theft of Trillions of dollars THE LEAD ISSUE RIGHT NOW!

 

Friday, November 20 2009   -   Other Important News

By Cain Burdeau (AP)
November 18, 2009
Google news

NEW ORLEANS -- A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers' failure to properly maintain a navigation channel led to massive flooding in Hurricane Katrina.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval sided with five residents and one business who argued the Army Corps' shoddy oversight of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet led to the flooding of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward and neighboring St. Bernard Parish. He said, however, the corps couldn't be held liable for the flooding of eastern New Orleans, where one of the plaintiffs lived.

Duval awarded the plaintiffs $720,000, or about $170,000 each, but the decision could eventually make the government vulnerable to a much larger payout. The ruling should give more than 100,000 other individuals, businesses and government entities a better shot at claiming billions of dollars in damages.

 

Friday, November 20 2009   -   Endorsements & Support

On October 21st at the University of San Diego, Mr. Dwain Deets, former Director of NASA Aerospace Projects, gave a multimedia presentation on behalf of nearly one thousand architects and engineers who cite evidence of explosive demolition in all three World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11 and are calling for a new, independent investigation into their destruction. These architects and engineers are listed on their website at ae911Truth.org.

Mr. Deets was an engineering executive with NASA Dryden Flight Research Center for more than 37 years and formerly served as Director, Research Engineering Division at Dryden. He received the Presidential Meritorious Rank Award in the federal government's Senior Executive Service (1988). In 1986, Deets was awarded the Wright Brothers Lectureship in Aeronautics, a distinguished speaking engagement sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).
Resolutely empirical, non-political, and non-finger-pointing, ae911Truth only asks for a new investigation of the towers’ collapse that does justice to the forensic evidence it presents. The concerns presented by Mr. Deets and the conclusions of Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth are shared by hundreds of scientists; senior-level military, intelligence, and government officials; firefighters; pilots and aviation professionals; scholars and university professors; 9/11 survivors and family members; and media professionals around the world.

 

Wednesday, November 18 2009   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

Richard Gage AIA, of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, talks to architect Jan Utzon, son of Joern Utzon, the architect of the Sydney Opera House.

 

Wednesday, November 18 2009   -   Legal Response to 9/11

by Kristen Breitweiser,
9/11 widow and activist
November 16, 2009
HuffingtonPost.com

Even after witnessing the horrors of 9/11 that included me helplessly watching the murder of my husband on live television, I still believe that we are a civilized nation of laws. And like the Nuremberg trials that brought the murderers of millions to justice, now more than ever, Americans need to trust our own judicial system to fully and openly prosecute the mass murderers of 9/11 while the rest of the world bears witness.

Because while the terrorists were successful in bringing down the Twin Towers and hijacking airplanes on 9/11, our Constitution should never be hijacked or brought down as a result of anything--let alone the potential adversity faced in prosecuting modern day monsters like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Indeed, in the fight against Islamist extremism, we should never bow to the terrorists by compromising, manipulating, re-writing or flat-out ignoring the core, bedrock principles of our Constitution that speak to the very heart of who we are as a nation--a democracy.

Yet, quite alarmingly, Republicans seem to be exhibiting just this sort of crisis of confidence in our Constitution's ability to prosecute these horrible men. Republicans argue that men like KSM are war criminals who can only be convicted in military commissions where they won't receive the protections of our laws. Republicans seem to lack a certain faith in our Constitution's ability and adaptability in meting out the demands of modern day justice.

 

Tuesday, November 17 2009   -   Other Important News

IANS 16 November 2009
Times of India

Ed. Note: The LA Times article mentioned is available here:

CIA says it gets its money's worth from Pakistani spy agency: It has given hundreds of millions to the ISI, for operations as well as rewards for the capture or death of terrorist suspects. Despite fears of corruption, it is money well-spent, ex-officials say.

And for more reading on the ISI connection to 9/11 (and utter failure by the 9/11 Commission to investigate that connection) see History Commons' 9/11 Timeline, here.

LOS ANGELES: The CIA has paid millions of dollars to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) since 9/11, accounting for as much as one-third of the foreign spy agency's annual budget, says a media report.

The ISI also collected "tens of millions of dollars through a classified CIA programme", which pays for the capture or killing of wanted militants, the Los Angeles Times reported on Monday citing current and former US officials.