Friday, August 14 2009   -   Get Involved

August 13, 2009

Nearly one year ago, on August 19, 2008, 53 year old Barry Jennings died, two days before the release of the NIST Final Report on the collapse of WTC7. Jennings had bee serving as Deputy Director of Emergency Services Department for New York City, including on September 11th, 2001, when he saw and heard explosions BEFORE the Twin Towers fell, while attempting to evacuate the WTC7 Command Center with NY Corporation Counsel Michael Hess. Jennings publicly shared his experiences with reporters on the day of 9/11/01, as well as in a lengthy 2007 video interview with Dylan Avery, a small clip of which was the released; subsequently his job was repeatedly threatened and he asked that the taped interview not be released. However, after an interview with Jennings was broadcast by the BBC in their program The Third Tower ostensibly refuting what he had previously stated to Avery, Avery felt compelled to release the full original video interview to show the distortions made by the BBC. The cause of Jennings' death has not been made public, and a private investigator hired by Avery to discover the cause and circumstances surrounding his death abruptly ended his investigation. (More detail on all of this is available at jenningsmystery.com.) In spite of the significance of Jennings' position with NYC on 9/11 and his controversial eyewitness testimony regarding the collapse of WTC7, the media has not investigated or reported on his death, nor reported on his statements.

Widespread public action of this nature can bring this unreported story to their attention of courageous investigative journalists and lessen the dangers for those who do attempt to investigate this case. The bannering assumes that working journalists know how little their power is compared to those who run the paper or station. We are appealing to the best part of those who work in media. We appeal to the human curiosity of the everyday reporters. The fact that American mainstream media has not covered how hero Barry Jennings died is more suspicious than what he said when he was alive. It suggests that what he said was very damaging. If we lead real journalists to realize on their own the level of suppression they work in, we lessen the loyalty of workers in very powerful institutions.

 

Friday, August 14 2009   -   Other Important News

by Prof. Peter Dale Scott

by Prof. Peter Dale Scott
August 11, 2009
Global Research

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together." Dwight David Eisenhower, "Military-Industrial Complex Speech," 1961,¹

"My observation is that the impact of national elections on the business climate for SAIC has been minimal. The emphasis on where federal spending occurs usually shifts, but total federal spending never decreases. SAIC has always continued to grow despite changes in the political leadership in Washington." Former SAIC manager, quoted in Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, "Washington''s $8 Billion Shadow." Vanity Fair, March 2007²

"We make American military doctrine" Ed Soyster, MPRI³

The Myth of the Grand Chessboard: Geopolitics and Imperial Folie de Grandeur

In The Road to 9/11 I summarized the dialectic of open societies: how from their energy they expand, leading to a higher level of more secretive corporations and agencies, which eventually weaken the home country through needless and crushing wars.⁴ I am not alone in seeing America in the final stages of this process, which since the Renaissance has brought down Spain, the Netherlands, and Great Britain.

Much of what I wrote summarized the thoughts of writers before me like Paul Kennedy and Kevin Phillips. But there is one aspect of the curse of expansion that I underemphasized: how dominance creates megalomanic illusions of insuperable control, and how this illusion in turn is crystallized into a prevailing ideology of dominance. I am surprised that so few, heretofore, have pointed out that from a public point of view these ideologies are delusional, indeed perhaps insane. In this essay I will argue however that what looks demented from a public viewpoint makes sense from the narrower perspective of those profiting from the provision of private entrepreneurial violence and intelligence.

 

Friday, August 14 2009   -   In the Media

From Colorado911visibility.org

DENVER Saturday, August 15, 2009 at 7:00 p.m.
Denver, KBDI-12, Colorado Public Television
TV airing of "9/11: Blueprint for Truth"
with in-studio appearance by Richard Gage, AIA

KBDI Colorado Public Television to Air '9/11: Blueprint for Truth
Saturday, August 15, 2009 - 7:00 - 9:00 pm MDT

KBDI, Channel 12 will be featuring '9/11: Blueprint for Truth' as a pledge drive fundraiser. Richard Gage, AIA, will be at the studio for on-air interviews during this historic broadcast.

We are thrilled with this development!

ALSO - Boulder, Sunday, August 16, 2009 at 2:00 p.m.

Live presentation by Richard Gage, AIA

"9/11: Blueprint for Truth," Re-examining the Destruction of the Three World Trade Center High Rise Buildings

Internationally acclaimed 9/11 speaker and San Francisco Bay Area architect Richard Gage, AIA, will present the evidence of the destruction of the three World Trade Center high-rises at the University of Colorado at Boulder on Sunday, August 16, 2009, at 2pm in the Mathematics auditorium. Gage will give a live multimedia presentation on behalf of more than 750 architects and engineers questioning the official story of what happened to these buildings on 9/11/01. After careful examination of the forensic data omitted from the official account, these professionals are calling for a new independent investigation into these catastrophic events.

 

Friday, August 14 2009   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

August 12, 2009
by Jeremy R. Hammond
Shahid R. Siddiqi contributed to this report
Foreignpolicyjournal.com

Then Maj. Gen. Hamid Gul, Director General of the ISI (far left), with William Webster, Director of Central Intelligence, Clair George, Deputy Director for Operations, and Milt Bearden, CIA station chief, at a training camp for the mujahedeen in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province in 1987 (RAWA.org)

In an exclusive interview with Foreign Policy Journal, retired Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul responds to charges that he supports terrorism, discusses 9/11 and ulterior motives for the war on Afghanistan, claims that the U.S., Israel, and India are behind efforts to destabilize Pakistan, and charges the U.S. and its allies with responsibility for the lucrative Afghan drug trade.

 

Thursday, August 13 2009   -   Research/Evidence

by Kevin R. Ryan
August 13, 2009
Scoop Independent News
See also... Kevin R. Ryan: Demolition access to the WTC Towers

Who could have placed explosives in the World Trade Center (WTC) towers? This is the second essay in a series that attempts to answer that question. The first installment began by considering the tenants that occupied the impact zones and the other floors that might have played a useful role in the demolition of the WTC towers. ^[1] The result was a picture of connections to organizations that had access to explosive materials and to the expertise required to use explosives. Additionally it was seen that, in the years preceding 9/11, the impact zone tenants had all made structural modifications to the areas where the airliners struck the buildings.

The management representatives of these tenant companies were seen to be secretive and powerful. Through these powerful people, the tenants were connected to organizations that benefited greatly from the 9/11 attacks, including the defense contractors Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Halliburton, and Science Applications International Corp (SAIC). The tenants also had strong connections to the Bush family and their corporate network, including Dresser Industries (now Halliburton) and UBS, and to Deutsche Bank and its subsidiaries, reported to have brokered the insider trading deals. There were also links between these tenant companies and the terrorist-financing Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).

Throughout this review we should keep in mind that, according to 2009 estimates, the membership of Al Qaeda's conspiracy network is estimated to be "as low as 200 or 300." ^[2] Other reports suggest the group numbers in several thousands, and that Al Qaeda maintains a presence in at least forty different countries, not including the western countries that fear it the most. Including those western countries, however, it was reported in 1996 that Al Qaeda had an economic and financial establishment spanning more than thirteen countries. ^[3] It is clear, therefore, that Al Qaeda is typically described as a "vast conspiracy". , ^[4,5]

 

Tuesday, August 11 2009   -   Legal Response to 9/11

August 10, 2009
PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY

Today we began the signature review, and with much promise! The first step: to do a recount of the signatures the Board of Elections did validate. And, after counting only 5 out of 52 volumes, we have found the Board of Elections reported 229 signatures fewer than what they actually validated inside the volumes. If their count continues to be off at the same rate, we will gain some 2,300 signatures - SIMPLY BY RECOUNTING THE ONES THAT WERE ALREADY VALIDATED. And we have already identified one petitioner who collected hundreds of signatures and was wrongly invalidated, along with all the signatures he gathered! And there are thousands of invalidated signatures ripe for challenging because the signer is on the voter roll but put their wrong address - these signatures will also be deemed valid if the signature on the petition matches the signature on their voter registration form.

In short, we have every reason to be optimistic that we will eclipse the 30,000 requirement, and that we will have our day in court to argue our right to establish a new commission to investigate 9/11.

We need help. We have 9 more business days to finish our review, and we have no more than 8 volunteers signed up to help on any day. We can use 20 volunteers per day, and we will need that many to get the job done. If you live in or around NYC, please give just one or two business days between now and next Friday, August 21. Whether you can give one day or five days, please email us at volunteer@nyccan.org with your name, phone number and schedule of availability, and please put VOLUNTEER in the subject field. Come get a free lunch and be part of this historic recount!

 

Tuesday, August 11 2009   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

 

Tuesday, August 11 2009   -   Civil Liberties-Police State

By Reid Wilson
August 10, 2009
TheHill.com A bipartisan pair of governors is opposing a new Defense Department proposal to handle natural and terrorism-related disasters, contending that a murky chain of command could lead to more problems than solutions.

Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas (R), chairman of the National Governors Association, and Vice Chairman Gov. Joe Manchin (D) of West Virginia penned a letter opposing the Pentagon proposal, which they said would hinder a state's effort to respond to a disaster.

Current law gives governors control over National Guard forces in their own states as well as any Guard units and Defense Department personnel imported from other states.

The letter comes as the Pentagon proposes a legislative fix that would give the secretary of Defense the authority to assist in response to domestic disasters and, consequently, control over units stationed in an affected state.

 

Monday, August 10 2009   -   Accountability

9/11 survivors call for renewed probe as 8th anniversary approaches
Posted by Bob Braun/Star-Ledger Columnist August 09, 2009
NJ.com: Blog.nj.com

The eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is a month away and some survivors of those lost believe it's a good time to renew an investigation into the events of that disastrous day. New York City disagrees.

"We know we never have learned the truth, it's as simple as that,'' says Lorie Van Auken of East Brunswick, one of the most ardent supporters of the creation of the 9/11 commission in 2002. It was headed by former New Jersey governor Thomas H. Kean.

"Members and staff of the 9/11 commission have said many of the questions raised by the attacks have never been answered."

Van Auken was a founding member of Sept. 11 Advocates, originally a group of four New Jersey widows whose husbands were killed that day. The group, informally called "the Jersey girls," successfully lobbied for the creation of the commission.

 

Monday, August 10 2009   -   Other Important News

Sibel Edmonds Deposition: Deep Corruption Beneath the Surface', 'Larson', 'Erik', 'By Erik Larson

Aug 8, 2009, Sibel Edmonds gave a sworn deposition in which she testified to her knowledge of treasonous crimes and corruption involving current and former members of Congress and State and Defense Dept. officials. Given the nature of the deposition, the lines of questioning focused on Turkish espionage and services obtained through bribery and blackmail by Turkish officials and proxies. However, Edmonds has previously disclosed that the corruption involving U.S. officials also includes money laundering, trafficking in drugs, arms and nuclear secrets, U.S. support for Bin Laden/Al Qaeda, and obstruction of FBI investigations related to 9/11, before and after the attacks; she said these things came up “briefly” during the deposition. Edmonds learned of these things from wiretaps she listened to while working as a translator for the FBI in 2001-2002.

 

Wednesday, August 5 2009   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

New York City--On Monday, August 3, 2009, the New York Supreme Court appointed an independent referee to oversee a line-by-line review of the NYC CAN petition signatures that were declared invalid by the New York City Clerk and Board of Elections. Dennis P. McMahon, a volunteer attorney assisting the petitioners and NYC CAN at this stage of the process, appeared before Supreme Court Justice Edward H. Lehner who issued the ruling in accordance with the petitioners' request.

A hearing is scheduled for Thursday, August 6 to set a schedule and outline logistics of the signature recount and review process. NYC CAN will assemble staff to review each of 24,664 signatures against an April 2009 Board of Elections database of registered voters. All disputed signatures will be assembled into a Bill of Particulars and presented to the referee for review.

The review is the next step in challenging the City Clerk's rejection of the NYC CAN petition for a new investigation in New York City and comes after the group filed a Verified Petition/Order to Show Cause with the Supreme Court of the State of New York last week. 52,000 signatures were filed (http://www.nyccan.org/nyccanfilespetition.php) with the City Clerk's office by NYC CAN on June 24th, 2009.

 

Monday, August 3 2009   -   Anthrax

By Tom Burghardt
August 2, 2009
Antifascist Calling

The 2001 anthrax attacks underscore the dangers posed to our health and safety by the Bioweapons-Industrial Complex.

The killer(s) employed a military-grade version of the deadly pathogen, a four-mutation blend of anthrax prepared at the government's test site at the remote Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. Based on available evidence it's a near certainty that the weapon came from stockpiles at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Ft. Detrick, Maryland.

Before the dust cleared prominent opposition politicians had been attacked, five people were murdered, 10,000 more were exposed and representative government ground to a halt as panic set in.

According to multiple media reports, federal investigators concluded that the anthrax spores in the letters addressed to former Senate leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) and Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) could only have been produced in a state-run lab. The weaponized version of the pathogen contained as many as one trillion spores per gram, a concentration sufficient enough to kill half the American population if widely distributed.

But rather than giving pause to Pentagon weaponeers, Big Pharma who profit handsomely from vaccine production, the $100 billion agribusiness empire that drives research and the politicians who do their bidding, decades-long U.S. biowar programs have miraculously morphed overnight into a new growth industry: "biodefense."

What had once been Washington's dirty little secret has now blossomed into a $50 billion cash-cow for academic and corporate grifters, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists pointed out last year, "massive U.S. biodefense spending and a buildup of high-containment laboratories throughout the country might have created an internal security risk that no outside terrorist group could ever duplicate. Nearly two dozen new federal and many more new private biosafety level 3 and 4 laboratories have been built in recent years, meaning a large cadre of scientists has access to extraordinarily lethal material."

 

Monday, August 3 2009   -   Accountability

By Stephen C. Webster
August 2, 2009
RawStory.com

CIA director and Democratic appointee Leon Panetta, in an article published Sunday, said Democrats must recognize the "reality" of 9/11 is what drove the conduct of George W. Bush administration in the months following September 11, 2001, which somehow justifies not looking into suspected crimes.

He added, in an apparent warning to the House Intelligence Committee, that that "focusing on the past" could hurt the CIA's core mission amid a climate of recriminations over its practices.

"I've become increasingly concerned that the focus on the past, especially in Congress, threatens to distract the CIA from its crucial core missions: intelligence collection, analysis and covert action," Panetta opined in the online edition of The Washington Post.

"In our democracy, effective congressional oversight of intelligence is important, but it depends as much on consensus as it does on secrecy," he continued. "We need broad agreement between the executive and legislative branches on what our intelligence organizations do and why. For much of our history, we have had that. Over the past eight years, on specific issues -- including the detention and interrogation of terrorists -- the consensus deteriorated. That contributed to an atmosphere of declining trust, growing frustration and more frequent leaks of properly classified information."

Several paragraphs later, he appears to offer a blanket excuse for torture, CIA black sites, kidnapping, indefinite detention, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and warrantless spying, among a litany of other notable scandals.

 

Sunday, August 2 2009   -   Anthrax

By Daniel Tencer
August 1, 2009
RawStory.com

Until the US holds a "broader inquiry" into the investigation of the 2001 anthrax mailings, US House Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) won't be satisfied that there isn't a mass killer on the loose in his home town.

Holt -- whose 12th Congressional district of New Jersey includes a postal facility from which some of the anthrax letters were mailed during the 2001 biological terrorism scare -- says that the FBI "suffers from a credibility gap" because of the many mistakes made by the bureau during its long investigation into the first serious case of biological terrorism on American soil.

"If the technical and scientific procedures [used by the FBI] are as flawed as the non-technical procedures, they certainly deserve a look," the Frederick, Md., News-Post quoted Holt as saying.

At the FBI's request, the National Academy of Sciences has convened a 15-member panel to review the scientific soundness of the FBI's eight-year-long investigation into the anthrax mailings. According to Elie Dolgin at Nature magazine, the FBI believes the scientific review of its own investigation to be "unprecedented."

 

Sunday, August 2 2009   -   In the Media

By Peter Phillips
8/1/09

The corporate media in the United States are ignoring valid news stories, based on university quality research. It appears that certain topics are simply forbidden inside the mainstream corporate media today. To openly cover these news stories would stir up questions regarding "inconvenient truths" that many in the US power structure want to avoid.

For example, current research indicates that public schools in the United States are more segregated today than they have been in more than four decades. According to a new Civil Rights report, published at the University of California, Los Angeles, schools in the US are 44 percent non-white, and minorities are rapidly emerging as the majority of public school students in the US. Latinos and blacks, the two largest minority groups, attend schools more segregated today than during the civil rights movement forty years ago. Millions of non-white students are locked into "dropout factory" high schools, where huge percentages do not graduate. The most severe segregation in public schools occurs in the Western states, including California--not in the South, as many people believe. Most non-white schools are segregated by poverty as well as race. Schools in low-income communities remain highly unequal in terms of funding, qualified teachers, and curriculum.

Other taboo stories include civilian death rates in Iraq and questions on 9/11. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and a professional survey company in Great Britain, Opinion Research Business (ORB) report that the United States is directly responsible for over one million Iraqi deaths since our invasion six and half years ago. In a January 2008 report, ORB reported that, "survey work confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003 ... . We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been of the order of 1,033,000." A 2006 Johns Hopkins study confirmed that US aerial bombing in civilian neighborhoods caused over a third of these deaths and that over half the deaths are directly attributable to US forces. Iraqi civilian death levels in the summer of 2009 likely now exceed 1.2 million.