In a ferocious legal battle pitting government lawyers against victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the Justice Department is fighting to block thousands of individuals and businesses from taking $6.6 million in frozen al-Qaeda assets seized from an alleged terrorism financier.

Frozen by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2007, the money is sought by the attorneys for 6,000 individual victims and insurers who suffered billions in losses from the attacks on the World Trade Center.

The money, in a Chicago brokerage account controlled by senior al-Qaeda operative Abu al-Tayyeb until his arrest in Saudi Arabia in 2006, drew little public notice until lawyers for 9/11 victims moved in June to collect on a 2007 default judgment.

A short time later, the Justice Department initiated legal proceedings to claim the money for itself - and keep it out of the hands of the 9/11 victims and insurers.

That triggered a fierce response from the victims' lawyers, among them the Center City law firm Cozen O'Connor, who accuse the Justice Department of duplicity in seeking to prevent them from getting access to the money.

A former CIA official who publicly confirmed the waterboarding of top Al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah was charged Monday with leaking classified information to journalists, including the identities of two CIA officers.

John Kiriakou, who served with the CIA between 1990 and 2004, was charged with violating a law that makes it illegal to disclose the identity of a covert officer, leaking classified information and lying to a CIA publications review board, the department said.

He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted on all charges.

INTRODUCTION

When major shocks occur at the Earth's surface or at depth, waves of different types, magnitudes and speeds may move out from the source location. Such waves can be detected by seismometers located at recording stations, and the data from the recordings can be analyzed to learn many details of the source events. Seismic signals were recorded at stations in New York and four neighboring states on September 11, 2001 during the period when the North and South Towers (WTC1 and WTC2, respectively) were struck by airliners and collapsed, as well as during the collapse of Building 7 of the WTC, which had not been hit by a plane.

Data from the Palisades, NY recording station, located 34 km north-north-east of Manhattan, published by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University (LDEO), provide the most detailed seismic waveforms for analysis, particularly for the determination of the locations (aerial, surface, or subsurface) and timing of the events that created the seismic waves.

Seismologists have been puzzled in their analysis of signals recorded for the events at the World Trade Center, as the contradictions are significant. They are particularly intrigued by the presence of seismic "peaks" before the collapses. This text focuses on the study of the seismic signals from Palisades. The new interpretation presented here renders the assertions of the seismic analysis of the events at the WTC, presented by the government, null and void.

Huff, Mickey and Project Censored, Eds. Censored 2012: The Top Censored Stories and Media Analysis of 2012. New York: Seven Stories Press, September 2011. $19.95.

Even more than its predecessors, Censored 2012 makes for highly engaging and informative reading. This collection is a well mixed bag containing much that we need to know but too often don't.

This deficit occurs because many Americans are, in Neil Postman's memorable phrase, "amusing ourselves to death" and in part because many exhibit an aversion to discussing issues. But above all the deficit results from increased media malpractice and censorship. When a study shows that regular viewers of Fox News are less informed--and likely more misinformed--than those who don't follow the news, something is seriously amiss.

According to editor Mickey Huff, the corporate media are serving up a diet of "junk-food news to avoid telling the public what is really going on at home and abroad" (p. 12). If this strikes many readers as obvious, fewer seem fully aware of just how pervasive this censorship has become--how very little coverage many significant issues receive.

Washington Post

Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.

Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own -- the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?

While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don't operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of "free," but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.

These countries also have constitutions that purport to guarantee freedoms and rights. But their governments have broad discretion in denying those rights and few real avenues for challenges by citizens -- precisely the problem with the new laws in this country.

The list of powers acquired by the U.S. government since 9/11 puts us in rather troubling company.

Most of the recent big, commonly noticeable and objectionable changes in our controllable circumstances in America -- including many downright atrocities -- have happened since September 11, 2001. And a goodly number of them have developed as a direct consequence. Although that day still seems, in many ways, very recent, it appears to have marked not only a beginning of our current and accumulating woes, but also the end of a long age of relative bliss, freedom, and a degree of personal opportunity that we haven't experienced since.

My supposition, which I've voiced here before, is that 9/11 wasn't just an "inside job", but rather was done at the bequest of an international elite firmly in control of our (government + corporate) establishment, as well as those in other countries, the main trunk of the giant controlling octopus being international central banking.

Within a year or two after 9/11/01, at least a small segment of the populace was beginning to note that a credible (and routine) investigation of the background and modus operandi of 9/11 still hadn't been conducted by the criminal justice system. The lack of initiative in this case seemed puzzling due to nearly all Americans' faith at the time in the strength and reliability of the constitutional machinery of due process. The ensuing insistence by many that such routine procedures be carried out and criminal accountability be exacted stemmed from a shocked observation that such was not already completed, as one would have supposed, nor even yet underway. And thus, the 9/11 Truth movement in its present form was conceived to compel or urge that tardy process.

A growing body of evidence points to a concerted campaign to prepare Americans and the world for war against Iran. This is not idle speculation. It fits a pattern that repeatedly preceded previous hostilities.

Here are the recent examples on Iran:

-The claim that Iran is a WMD threat. Pretty much everyone is familiar with the long-term, continuing efforts to paint Iran as some kind of nuclear threat. This ignores the possibility that Iran is telling the truth in contending it is embarked on solely non-military nuclear research (debatable), and serious doubts among many experts that Iran is preparing nuclear weapons. Perhaps most important, it discounts the fact that many countries (including Iran's arch-enemy Israel) have nuclear weapons, and disregards the undoubted truth that if a country like Iran ever did launch nuclear weapons, it would be wiped out in a nanosecond, creating a very strong disincentive for offensive use. At the same time, by encouraging other countries and internal foes to believe that it has nuclear weapons, Iran creates an inexpensive protective shield for its regime. A dangerous game, to be sure, but without further evidence of Iranian nukes, hardly a reason to launch a war that would surely cause even more death and destruction than the misguided Iraq invasion. [Continues...]

Also below: "Crackpot Anti-Islam Activists, 'Serial Fabricators' and the Tale of Iran and 9/11" from Truth-Out.org.

And from the archives, "Iran Gave U.S. Help On Al Qaeda After 9/11" (CBS News).

December 29, 2011
Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF.org

San Francisco - The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today blocked the government's attempt to bury the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's) lawsuit against the government's illegal mass surveillance program, returning Jewel v. NSA to the District Court for the next step.

The court found that Jewel had alleged sufficient specifics about the warrantless wiretapping program to proceed. Justices rejected the government's argument that the allegations about the well-known spying program and the evidence of the Folsom Street facility in San Francisco were too speculative.

"Since the dragnet spying program first came to light, we have been fighting for the chance to have a court determine whether it is legal," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "Today, the Ninth Circuit has given us that chance, and we look forward to proving the program is an unconstitutional and illegal violation of the rights of millions of ordinary Americans."