Tuesday, March 15 2011   -   In the Media

Was David Williams IV a terrorist? Or was he just out to make an easy score by scamming the government's informant?

By Graham Rayman
March 2 2011
VillageVoice.com

On March 24, David Williams IV and three other Newburgh, New York, men face possible life prison sentences for plotting to blow up two synagogues in the Riverdale section of the Bronx and to shoot down military airplanes at Stewart Airport.

The Newburgh 4--ringleader James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams, and Laguerre Payen--were found guilty in a six-week trial based largely on the work of an FBI informant, Shahed Hussain, who posed as a wealthy Pakistani businessman with ties to an overseas terror group as part of an elaborate government sting operation.

The trial showed that Cromitie had made anti-Semitic and anti-American statements, that he concocted attack plans with Hussain, that the four defendants met to view an anti-aircraft missile, and that they planted what they had been told were bombs at two Riverdale synagogues on May 20, 2009.

The evidence, which included secretly taped conversations, painted a picture of four men who wanted to strike a blow for radical Islam. After the verdict, one juror told reporters, "We considered what they did a serious crime."

Defense lawyers tried unsuccessfully to convince the jury that the government had actually entrapped the four, but none of the defendants testified on their own or gave interviews.

Photographs by J.B. Nicholas, Christopher Sadowski Splash news/News.com
From left: James Cromitie, David Williams, Laguerre Payen, and Onta Williams.

 

Saturday, March 12 2011   -   Get Involved



March 11, 2011
InvestigateBuilding7.org

An urgent call to action
For one day, 9/11 family members, political leaders, prominent academics, journalists, lawyers, architects, engineers and scientists who have studied the events of 9/11 extensively, will gather to call upon elected officials in New York and upon the media to reexamine the most important event of our time. The day will be highlighted by a presentation of key evidence that overwhelmingly warrants opening a local investigation into the collapse of Building 7.

Sponsored By
BuildingWhat? & University of Hartford's WWUH 91.3

Speakers:

 

Thursday, March 10 2011   -   Other Important News

March 7, 2011
by Ralph Lopez
War Is A Crime.org

As Obama's crime of the destruction of Bradley Manning continues to unfold before our very eyes, Manning friend David House now tells us that over 8 months in isolation with movement and sleep restrictions placed on him have been having their intended effect. House has told MSNBC that by the end of January Manning appeared "catatonic" and that he had "severe problems communicating," with it having taken House nearly 45 minutes on a recent visit to engage in any meaningful way (video below.) House said Manning's demeanor was as "if he had just woken up and didn't know what was going on around him." Manning was "utterly exhausted physically and mentally...it was difficult to have any kind of social engagement."

Also, a full month after Congressman Dennis Kucinich formally requested a visit, the Army has stalled on the request.

All for the crime of reporting war crimes and criminal behavior even among the highest-ranking military officials in Iraq.

 

Thursday, March 10 2011   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 8, 2011; A02
Washingtonpost.com

It was another important moment in the education of Barack Obama.

He began his presidency with a pledge to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay within a year. Within months, he realized that was impossible. And now he has essentially formalized George W. Bush's detention policy.

With Monday's announcement that the Obama administration will resume military tribunals at Gitmo, conservatives rushed out triumphant I-told-you-sos. Liberal supporters were again feeling betrayed. Administration officials had some 'splainin' to do.

And so they assembled some top-notch lawyers from across the executive branch and held a conference call Monday afternoon with reporters. The ground rules required that the officials not be identified, which is appropriate given their Orwellian assignment. They were to argue that Obama's new detention policy is perfectly consistent with his old detention policy.

Not only had he revoked his pledge to close Gitmo within a year, but he also had contradicted his claim that the policy "can't be based simply on what I or the executive branch decide alone." His executive order did exactly what he said must not be done, in a style pioneered by Obama's immediate predecessor in the Oval Office.

 

Monday, March 7 2011   -   Civil Liberties-Police State

March 7, 2011
By REUTERS
NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama lifted a two-year freeze on new military trials at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and suggested on Monday Congress was hurting national security by blocking his attempts to move some trials into U.S. civilian courts.

In an apparent acknowledgment that the Guantanamo detention camp won't be shut down any time soon, Obama also outlined procedures for reviews to be held at least every four years for prisoners held indefinitely without charge or trial.

Obama suspended new trials at the Guantanamo tribunals, which had been heavily criticized as unfair, when he announced his review of detainee policy in early 2009 and vowed just after becoming president that he would close the camp.

Administration officials said Obama still wants to close the prison, which they have called a recruiting tool for anti-American militants, but gave no timeframe.

Obama had tried, and failed, to overcome objections by Republicans and some of his fellow Democrats in Congress to transferring some detainees to U.S. prisons and trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the September 11 attacks, and others in federal courts.

 

Monday, March 7 2011   -   In the Media

by Jeremy R. Hammond
March 7, 2011
Foreignpolicyjournal.com

Face to Face with Dr. Niels Harrit: "There is no doubt that this building was taken down in a controlled demolition..." from I.C.T.V. Victoria on Vimeo.

Dr. Niels Harrit is a retired associate professor of chemistry at the University of Copenhagen and one among an international team of scientists who published a paper in The Open Chemical Physics Journal on the discovery of nano-thermite in the dust from the World Trade Center collapses on September 11, 2001. He has recently finished a lecture tour of Canadian universities, where he spoke on the subject.

In this interview on the cable program Face to Face with Jack Etkin, Dr. Harrit discusses this finding and its implications. Dr. Harrit notes that World Trade Center building 7 (WTC 7), a 47-story steel-framed skyscraper that was not hit by one of the planes on 9/11, collapsed symmetrically into its own footprint, and that the official explanation for this is that it was due to fire. However, the finding of nano-thermite in the dust, along with other available evidence, leads inescapably to another conclusion. "There is no doubt that this building was taken down in a controlled demolition," says Dr. Harrit. "I consider this to be [a] mainstream scientific conclusion. There's no way around this conclusion. There are so many observations that are only compatible with a controlled demolition."

"Science is based on observation and experience," says Dr. Harrit in the interview. Point out that it had never occurred before 9/11, he says, "A steel framed high rise simply does not collapse due to fire."

Among the other evidence is the observation that WTC 7 fell at the acceleration of gravity, or free-fall acceleration. Fire, says Dr. Harrit, cannot do that to a building. "All of these columns had to be cut at the same time for this phenomenon to happen," he says.

 

Saturday, February 26 2011   -   Other Important News

February 26, 2011
by Carol Brouillet
Communitycurrency.org

Janette MacKinlay

Let us remember Janette and think of her especially on her birthday, which is on Saturday, February 26th, by synchronicity a day in 2011 which might go down in history as "the day Americans woke up," following the example of numerous other countries, rallies and demonstrations have been called for throughout the US to challenge the policies which enrich the few and impoverish the many. We will gather together the following day, on Sunday, February 27, 2011 to celebrate Janette's life-- some of us in New York, and some in California--to share mementos, memories, food, drink, and stories about our dear friend, her life, her wake up call, which merits our attention, love, and appreciation.

The Celebrations will be webcast on Sunday-
We will start off the Celebration at 12:00 Noon PST (3:00pm EST) with a Skype call with James Lecce. This will be between him and the California crowd (If Ed has a second computer, NY may be able to see it) and will only last a few minutes. Then we will interact with NY for about 1.5 - 2 hours. Then we will continue to broadcast our respective local events.

The Celebrations will be webcast on Sunday-
We will start off the Celebration at 12:00 Noon PST (3:00pm EST) with a Skype call with James Lecce. This will be between him and the California crowd (If Ed has a second computer, NY may be able to see it) and will only last a few minutes. Then we will interact with NY for about 1.5 - 2 hours. Then we will continue to broadcast our respective local events.

IMPORTANT: When starting the Ustream Broadcast, also hit the Record button. If you do not do this, there will be no video archive available later.

The California Celebration will be broadcast from this link
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/janette-s-memorial-celebration

The New York Celebration will be broadcast from this link
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nyc-mackinlay-cronin-helaki-memorial

(Kudos to the amazing Ed Ellsworth for the technological magic that makes this possible. Ed also streamed and recorded other important 9/11 truth events which can be found on his website- mystereproductions.com)

Janette MacKinlay was born on February 26, 1948, and raised in Montana. She was drawn to the arts in high school and became involved in the San Francisco art scene when she relocated to the Bay Area in the late '60s. She married, and had two sons, but her passion for art continued to grow. She attended the California College of Arts and Crafts and received a certificate in Gallery Management in 1981. She worked as the gallery director at Gregory Ghent Fine Arts for several years before running two of her own galleries, G'nette Gardens Gallery in Montclair and the Art Club in Oakland. She also served as Cultural Affairs Commissioner for the City of Oakland. It was during this time that she began a long-term relationship with Jim Lecce, a renaissance man who had retired from a distinguished career in science to follow his dream to be a sculptor.

 

Saturday, February 26 2011   -   Resources and Materials

February 26, 2011
Vic Sadot--Courage To Resist (5:21)

Courage To Resist, by Vic Sadot, is a tribute to GI Resistance and whistle-blowers in 2011. The title is taken from the name of the civilian organization called "Courage To Resist" that supports troops in service who become anti-war. The songwriter says "The song was inspired especially by Private Bradley Manning and Wikileaks for exposing the lies, war crimes, and cover-ups of the corporate empire".

The song has two verses about Bradley Manning, Wikileaks, and the release of a video showing US helicopter pilots joking about killing 11 unarmed Iraqi civilians. Two of the murdered civilians were Reuters reporters. Two small children were maimed in the bullet spraying. Nichol Mitchell was in Iraq when she became a conscientious objector and refused to serve in the occupation. Marc Hall had already served his enlistment time when the US Army ordered him to continue in combat operations in Iraq by using "stop loss" legislation that attempts to rescind the contract that an enlisted soldier made at the time of enlistment in order to force him or her to remain in military service. The Courage To Resist organization states, "According to the Pentagon, more than 120,000 soldiers have been affected by stop-loss since 2001". Hall wrote an angry hip hop song and posted it on the internet. The song made people all over the world aware of the little known and reported use of the "stop loss draft" to keep enlisted service men and women in the military beyond the time that they had agreed to serve in the military.

Listen at last.fm: http://www.last.fm/music/Vic+Sadot/Berkeley+Calling/Courage+To+Resist

 

Friday, February 25 2011   -   Civil Liberties-Police State

February 22, 2011
by Shan Li
Los Angeles Times

The FBI violated the 1st Amendment rights of hundreds of Muslims by using a paid informant to target and monitor several Southern California mosques based solely on religion, according to a federal class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Filed on behalf of three Muslim plaintiffs, the suit accuses the FBI and seven of its employees, including Director Robert Mueller, of paying Irvine resident Craig Monteilh to go undercover, infiltrate mosques and record conversations in order to root out potential terrorists.

Over the course of 14 months beginning in 2006, the FBI used Monteilh to "indiscriminately collect" personal information on hundreds or even thousands of Muslim Americans, the lawsuit alleges.

Through this "dragnet" operation, the agency "gathered hundreds of phone numbers, thousands of e-mail addresses, hundreds of hours of video recordings that captured the interiors of mosques, homes and businesses, and ... thousands of hours of audio recordings," the lawsuit alleges.

 

Thursday, February 24 2011   -   Other Important News

Colorado 9/11 Visibility is pleased to announce a live debate addressing the collapse of the three World Trade Center buildings on September 11, 2001.

Sunday afternoon, March 6th, at the Boulder campus of the University of Colorado, Colorado 9/11 Visibility will host a debate between Richard Gage, AIA (American Institute of Architects), and Chris Mohr, Denver investigative journalist and nondenominational minister.

The question: What brought down the three World Trade Center skyscrapers?

Richard Gage, AIA, is a San Francisco Bay Area architect and a member of the American Institute of Architects. He has been an architect for over 23 years and has worked on most types of building construction, including numerous fire-proofed, steel-framed buildings. His quest for the truth about 9/11 began in 2006, and he subsequently founded Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

Chris Mohr, investigative journalist and advocate of the "natural collapse" theory, is a sincere seeker of the truth who has extensively researched the collapses of the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings, consulted with independent physicists and engineers, and passionately argues that the buildings collapsed due to the plane impacts and fires.

 

Wednesday, February 23 2011   -   Resources and Materials

by Kevin Ryan
February 12, 2011
Published on his blog at 911blogger.com

Having read a few of Peter Dale Scott's earlier books, I was looking forward to his new work, American War Machine. I was not disappointed. Published by Roman & Littlefield in late 2010, this book examines a wide-ranging number of covert US operations since World War II, and, among other things, demonstrates that many of these operations were intimately connected with, and dependent on, illicit drug trafficking. Although my background and experience do not qualify me to write an authoritative review of this important book, I hope that my impressions will compel others to read it.

Scott previously defined concepts such as deep events, deep politics and the deep state, to refer to covert mechanisms that facilitate the strategies of the politically minded rich, a group otherwise referred to as the overworld. Deep events, which Scott defines as those which are "systematically ignored or falsified in the mainstream media and public consciousness," can be seen as sharing certain features, such as cover-up of evidence and irresoluble controversy over what happened. These features contribute to a suppressed memory of the event among the general public. Deep events are often associated with illegally sanctioned violence, and involve little known, but historically evident, cooperation between leaders of the state and organized crime.

In American War Machine, Scott sets out to write the first "deep history" of such events, politics and state entities. As he writes: "In my experience, deep events are better understood collectively than in isolation. When looked at together, they constitute a large pattern, that of deep history."

Some of the more well known deep events are briefly reviewed, such as the JFK assassination and Tonkin Gulf incident, as well as the plans known as Operation Northwoods. Scott also makes clear that he now sees 9/11 as not only a deep event, but a "constitutional deep event" in that the implementation of continuity of government (COG) plans, as a result of 9/11, means that the US constitution has been circumvented in favor of what former assistant attorney general, Jack Goldsmith, called the "Terror Presidency." The latter office has been exploited by an influential power group, among whose major operatives are Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, to pursue long-standing goals of US global domination at the expense of citizen protections as has been done with warrantless surveillance, warrantless detention and suspension of habeas corpus.

 

Monday, February 21 2011   -   Other Important News

By Glenn Greenwald
February 18, 2011
Salon.com

In March, 2002, American citizen Jose Padilla was arrested in Chicago and publicly accused by then-Attorney-General John Ashcroft of being "The Dirty Bomber." Shortly thereafter, he was transferred to a military brig in South Carolina, where he was held for almost two years completely incommunicado (charged with no crime and denied all access to the outside world, including even a lawyer) and was brutally tortured, both physically and psychologically. All of this -- including the torture -- was carried out pursuant to orders from President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld and other high-ranking officials. Just as the Supreme Court was about to hear Padilla's plea to be charged or released -- and thus finally decide if the President has the power to imprison American citizens on U.S. soil with no charges of any kind -- the Government indicted him in a federal court on charges far less serious than Ashcroft had touted years earlier, causing the Supreme Court to dismiss Padilla's arguments as "moot"; Padilla was then convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison.

Padilla -- like so many other War on Terror detainees -- has spent years in American courts trying unsuccessfully to hold accountable the high-level government officials responsible for his abuse and lawless imprisonment (which occurred for years prior to his indictment). Not only has Padilla (and all other detainees) failed to obtain redress for what was done to them, but worse, they have been entirely denied even the right to have their cases heard in court. That's because the U.S. Government has invented -- and federal courts have dutifully accepted -- a whole slew of legal doctrines which have only one purpose: to insulate the country's most powerful political officials from legal accountability even when they commit the most egregious crimes, such as imprisoning incommunicado and torturing an American citizen arrested and detained on U.S. soil.

 

Monday, February 21 2011   -   Anthrax

By Scott Shane
Published: February 15, 2011 at

NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON -- A review of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's scientific work on the investigation of the anthrax letters of 2001 concludes that the bureau overstated the strength of genetic analysis linking the mailed anthrax to a supply kept by Bruce E. Ivins, the Army microbiologist whom the investigators blamed for the attacks.

The review, by a panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences, says the genetic analysis "did not definitively demonstrate" that the mailed anthrax spores were grown from a sample taken from Dr. Ivins's laboratory at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md. It does add, however, that the evidence is "consistent with and supports an association" between Dr. Ivins's flask and the attack anthrax.

The academy's report faults the F.B.I. as failing to take advantage of scientific methods developed between the mailings in 2001 and its conclusion after Dr. Ivins's suicide in 2008 that he was the sole perpetrator.

 

Sunday, February 20 2011   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

February 19, 2011

Dr. Niels Harrit, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, will be lecturing across Canada in six recognized locations. He will offer a critique of the official account of the destruction of the World Trade Center, focusing on Building 7. Widely published, he is the lead author of a 2009 article on the discovery of nano-thermite (an incendiary and explosive) in the WTC dust.

Tour Schedule:

 

Sunday, February 20 2011   -   Research/Evidence

by Kevin Ryan
February 17, 2011
Posted at Ryan's blog at 911blogger.com

Two new papers have been published at the Journal of 9/11 Studies.

The first is called "Why Australia's Presence in Afghanistan is Untenable," by James O'Neill. Here is an excerpt: [click read more...]

The second paper is by Aidan Monaghan. It is called "Review of Analysis of Observed and Measured In-Flight Turns Suggests Superior Control of 9/11 Aircraft." Here is an excerpt: [click read more...]