Saturday, July 31 2010   -   First Responders/Health Effects

by Brett Michael Dykes
July 30, 2010

New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner is plainly fired up and ready to go. In a losing battle to secure passage of a bill to fund health care and compensation for ill 9/11 rescue workers, he unleashed a tirade against what he called unprincipled GOP opponents of the measure. Watch his outburst, which concluded in him smashing down the House rostrum microphone:

The House voted down the bill, which would have provided $3.2 billion over the next 10 years to fund free health care for 9/11 rescue and recovery workers who have fallen ill from toxic smoke and debris they breathed at the World Trade Center site. The bill would have also provided $4.2 billion in compensation over that same span. The legislation proposed to pay for the benefits by closing a tax loophole on foreign subsidiaries that do business in the United States.

 

Thursday, July 29 2010   -   First Responders/Health Effects

BY Michael Mcauliff
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
July 28, 2010
NewYorkDailyNews.com"

WASHINGTON - The House votes Wednesday or Thursday for the first time ever on a bill to care for the heroes and victims of Sept. 11, 2001 - and it's likely to fail.

That's because Democratic House leaders decided Tuesday to push ahead with the Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act under a rule that requires two-thirds approval to pass.

Many Republicans are concerned about the $10.5 billion price tag, and many don't like the way it's paid for.

News of the scheme immediately alarmed 9/11 responders.

"Whoever votes 'No' tomorrow should go to jail for manslaughter," said John Feal, who lost half his foot at Ground Zero in the cleanup.

 

Wednesday, July 28 2010   -   Open Letters

by Stephen Dinan, former Board member of 911truth.org (Fall of 2004)
July 27, 2010

In early September of 2009, Van Jones contacted the current board of 911truth.org asking to be removed from the 911 Truth Statement, which was created in the Fall of 2004. Since the current members were not working with 911truth.org in 2004, former Board members researched the situation and were unable to produce electronic or written evidence that Van agreed to sign the Statement. Based on what we were able to ascertain from memories, it is plausible he was asked verbally through an intermediary without reviewing the full text, as he has stated. Because we do not have a written signature and his view is that he does not agree with the Statement, the current Board removed his signature as requested on Sept. 9, 2009, for the organization respects each person’s right to have their views accurately represented.

Of the original signatories, 97 out of the 100 and all of the family members remain behind this important call for an independent investigation into unanswered questions around 9/11, a group that includes respected academics, former government officials, journalists, and political leaders. 911truth.org invites media and government officials to take this Statement from a range of notable Americans seriously while respecting that Jones should not be seen as part of this group.

There is nothing more fundamental to being American than our right to question and seek the full truth. For that call, no one should receive vilification or persecution, or we erode the foundations of our democracy. That is what distinguishes us from countries in which citizens fear to question their government or speak their conscience.

911truth.org sees this as a closed matter and will issue no further statement.

 

Tuesday, July 27 2010   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

By Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff
July 26, 2010
Media Freedom Foundation/ProjectCensored.org

In his recent essay "Toxic to Democracy," Political Research Associates (PRA) Senior Analyst Chip Berlet uses the very same methods of demonization by association that he so strongly opposes. Berlet convolutes historical context, ideological differences, and progressives vis-à-vis extreme conservative/neo-con/libertarians in a diatribe of meaninglessness.

Berlet lumps valid academic research on State Crimes Against Democracy (SCADs) in with anti-Semitic jingoism and far right wing extremism. He suggests that any research that even implies some sort of conspiracy is dangerous and suspect, seemingly forgetting a long list of proven US and other government conspiracies (SCADs) including: Operation Mockingbird, COINTELPRO, Gulf of Tonkin "Incident," October Surprise, CIA-Contra Dark Alliance, Iran-Contra, WMDs and Iraq Invasion, and the overthrow of governments in Iran, Guatemala, Haiti, Chile, Greece, Indonesia, Panama, and many others.

Outrageously, Berlet categorizes progressive intellectuals such as Peter Dale Scott, Michael Parenti, David Ray Griffin, Michel Chossudovsky, and by innuendo the two of us, as dangerous conspiracists. He uses a straw person technique by positing former LaRouche analyst Webster Tarpley, and the Church of God Evangelistic Association founder David J. Smith in the same category as the progressive intellectuals listed above.

 

Saturday, July 24 2010   -   Other Important News

From Voters for Peace
July 22, 2010

We'll be offering live and recorded video coverage of the National Conference to Bring the Troops Home Now! taking place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in downtown Albany this weekend (7/23-7/25).

The conference will bring together antiwar and social justice activists from across the country to consider what can be done to end the U.S. wars, occupations, bombing attacks, threats and interventions that are taking place in the Middle East and beyond. See where the antiwar movement is today and where it is headed!

Our audio and video coverage starts Friday evening at 7 PM with the opening panel called "Strategies and Tactics in the Struggle to End the Empire's Wars and Occupations," featuring Medea Benjamin (CODE PINK), Glen Ford (Black Agenda Report), Teresa Gutierrez (International Action Center), Kathy Kelly (Creative Voices for Nonviolence), Kevin Martin (Peace Action), David Swanson (WarIsACrime.org), Deborah Sweet (World Can't Wait) and more.

 

Thursday, July 22 2010   -   In the Media

Story by John Bursill
22nd of July, 2010

Australia's number one talk back Radio Station 2GB, has reported on the Prof. Niels Harritt Lecture on the 17th of July, 2010 at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts during their late night show with Brian Wilshire. Sydney's most popular late night show's regular guest, Prof. Keith Suter, who attended the Harritt Lecture, has expressed his fascination with the issue of the World Trade Center 7 collapse on the afternoon of September 11, 2001.

Audio sourced by Hereward Fenton, Editor www.truthnews.com.au and www.911oz.com

Prof. Suter, a highly regarded Australian media personality and internationally recognised academic and expert on foreign affairs, clearly expressed his satisfaction with the event and the evidence supporting an apparent "implosion" of WTC 7. "I commend the organisers. They kept emphasizing it was a scientific gathering, although it was open to the general public... they were treating it in a scientific way. They were looking simply at the scientific aspects of 'how' the building came down not 'why' or 'who'. There were questions from the floor, naturally, sort of saying who would be behind this and the scientists they had there...(Harritt, et. al)...they kept saying no, no, no it's our job to simply identify the process by which the buildings came down". Suter, while talking to popular host Brian Wilshire who is already on the record as having many doubts about the official "9/11 conspiracy theory", went on to mention that WTC 7's collapse was missing from the 9/11 Commission Report.

 

Wednesday, July 21 2010   -   Other Important News

Story by John Bursill
July 19, 2010

On Saturday the 17th of July Professor Niels Harrit of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark gave a lecture called "Did Explosives Bring Down the Towers on 9/11?" to a capacity crowd of concerned citizens. This Sydney audience was generated purely from fliers handed out by diligent activists and one radio interview.

Although a handful of independent journalists did attend and a small press conference was held, not one Australian mainstream media outlet was represented. It is now more clear than ever that a culture of silence surrounds the science of 9/11 which proves beyond any reasonable doubt that the Twin Towers and Building 7 were brought down using explosives and incendiary devices.

 

Wednesday, July 21 2010   -   9/11 Consequences

by Elaine Brower
July 18, 2010
WorldCantWait.net

Editor’s Note – on July 15, radical lawyer and War Criminals Watch Advisory Board member Lynne Stewart was sentenced to 10 years in prison. In February 2005, Lynne had been convicted on 7 counts of “conspiracy, providing material support to terrorists, and defrauding the U.S. government”.

The government had alleged that Lynne had facilitated communication between a man she was defending in court, fundamentalist Islamic cleric Omar Abdel Rahman, and people in Egypt. The judge in Lynne’s trial sentenced her to 28 months in prison. An appeal to the conviction and sentencing resulted in a different judge upholding the conviction, while ordering a re-sentencing that was not “trivial”, since Lynne had “indicated a lack of remorse”. After her sentencing, her prosecutor praised the work of the FBI’s New York Joint Terrorism Task Force for its role in the persecution of Lynne Stewart, and thanked U.S. Bureau of Prisons for its assistance. ...

Then the US Attorney stood up and for 30 minutes recounted the details of the entire trial, repeating hundreds of times “we were attacked on 9/11”, and “Ms. Stewart gave comfort to Islamic terrorists.” These references were the cornerstone of the prosecution’s argument, and he couldn’t say it enough. In every way, he connected Lynne with the terrorist “murder groups”, and in reality made her the real terrorist. He said “the government trusted her as a lawyer, and she shouldn’t have been trusted.” He referred endless times to the DVD of her press conference prior to her remand to prison in 2009, and referenced her statements that she had “no remorse.”

 

Tuesday, July 20 2010   -   9/11 Consequences

By Philip Giraldi
July 19, 2010
Campaign For Liberty

The Ministry of Truth

The Ministry of Truth was how George Orwell described the mechanism used by government to control information in his seminal novel 1984. A recent trip to Europe has convinced me that the governments of the world have been rocked by the power of the internet and are seeking to gain control of it so that they will have a virtual monopoly on information that the public is able to access. In Italy, Germany, and Britain the anonymous internet that most Americans are still familiar with is slowly being modified. If one goes into an internet café it is now legally required in most countries in the European Union to present a government issued form of identification. When I used an internet connection at a Venice hotel, my passport was demanded as a precondition and the inner page, containing all my personal information, was scanned and a copy made for the Ministry of the Interior -- which controls the police force. The copy is retained and linked to the transaction. For home computers, the IP address of the service used is similarly recorded for identification purposes. All records of each and every internet usage, to include credit information and keystrokes that register everything that is written or sent, is accessible to the government authorities on demand, not through the action of a court or an independent authority. That means that there is de facto no right to privacy and a government bureaucrat decides what can and cannot be "reviewed" by the authorities. Currently, the records are maintained for a period of six months but there is a drive to make the retention period even longer.

The excuses being given for the increasing government intervention into the internet are essentially two: first, that the anonymity of the internet has permitted criminal behavior, fraud, pornography, and libel. Second is the security argument, that managing the internet is an integral part of the "global war on terror" in that it is used by terrorists to plan their attacks requiring governments to control those who use it. The United States government takes the latter argument one step farther, claiming that the internet itself is a vulnerable "natural asset" that could be seized or damaged by terrorists and must be protected, making the case for a massive $100 billion program of cyberwarfare. Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) argues that "violent Islamist extremists" rely on the internet to communicate and recruit and he has introduced a bill in the Senate that will empower the president to "kill" the internet in case of a national emergency.

But all of the arguments for intervention are essentially themselves fraudulent and are in reality being exploited by those who favor big government and state control. ...

 

Monday, July 19 2010   -   9/11 Consequences

By The Associated Press
July 19th, 2010
RawStory.com

Since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, top-secret intelligence gathering by the government has grown so unwieldy and expensive that no one really knows what it cost and how many people are involved, The Washington Post reported Monday.

A two-year investigation by the newspaper uncovered what it termed a "Top Secret America" that's mostly hidden from public view and largely lacking in oversight.

In its first installment of a series of reports, the Post said there are now more than 1,200 government organizations and more than 1,900 private companies working on counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in some 10,000 locations across the U.S.

Some 854,000 people -- or nearly 1 1/2 times the number of people who live in Washington -- have top-secret security clearance, the paper said.

 

Friday, July 16 2010   -   Other Important News

By Jon Gold
July 12, 2010
http://peaceoftheaction.org/2010/07/12/free-at-last/

They tried and tried to put the glove on, but it just didn't fit. I kid, I kid.

On March 20th 2010, I was arrested for crossing a police line. Today, I was acquitted for the crime, along with Cindy Sheehan, and Jim Veeder. Sadly, Matthis Chiroux, Elaine Brower, and Lafloria Walsh were found guilty of failing to obey.

This was my first arrest and trial so all of this was new to me. Before the trial began, our lawyers and the prosecutor tried to work things out so there wouldn't be a trial. The prosecutor offered a "pay and forfeit" without any conviction, and all of us declined. We stood our ground, and wanted the chance to clear our names. We felt strongly that our arrests were unjust, and wanted our day in court.

Cindy told me a couple of times before the trial that it was going to be boring, and it was. The only "excitement" came when Elaine, Laflora, and Cindy were allowed to testify. Everyone did great. When Casey was brought up, Cindy started to cry. I leaned over to Ann Wilcox (one of our attorneys, Mark Goldstone was the other), and said I want to testify. ...