Dec. 21, 2008
60 Minutes

Since 9/11, $40 billion has been spent to beef up airport security, with most of it going to hire 50,000 screeners who enforce rules often considered annoying and arbitrary.

...When correspondent Lesley Stahl asked Kip Hawley, the outgoing head of TSA, if all this is really necessary, he wanted us to know that the terrorist threat has not gone away.

"This is war. These people are trying to kill us. They got on the planes in September 11th, 2001, killed 3,000 people. And they will do it again as many times as they can," Hawley said.

By Jordy Yager
December 17, 2008

A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay.

Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.

"As lawmakers make a big show of forcing auto executives to accept just $1 a year in salary, they are quietly raiding the vault for their own personal gain," said Daniel O'Connell, chairman of The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), a non-partisan group. "This money would be much better spent helping the millions of seniors who are living below the poverty line and struggling to keep their heat on this winter."

It's not about them--it's about us

December 15, 2008
by Mike Ferner
MikeFerner.org

During the rush to get the Nuremberg Tribunals underway, the Soviet delegation wanted the tribunal’s historic decisions to have legitimacy only for the Nazis. U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Robert Jackson, serving as the chief prosecutor for the Allies, strong-armed the Soviets until the very beginning of the tribunal before changing their minds.

In his opening statement Jackson very purposely stipulated, “…Let me make clear that while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment.”

Can there be a better reason for prosecuting George Bush and his administration for war crimes than those words from the chief prosecutor of the Nazis, a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, with the full support of the U.S. government? Robert Jackson’s words and the values this nation claims to stand for provide sufficient moral basis for putting Bush and Cheney, their underlings who implemented their policies and the perverted legal minds who justified them all in the dock. If those are not sufficient reasons, there is a long list of binding law and treaties – written in black and white in surprisingly plain English.

December 20, 2008
VelvetRevolution.us

Michael Connell, the Bush IT expert who has been directly implicated in the rigging of George Bush's 2000 and 2004 elections, was killed last night when his single engine plane crashed three miles short of the Akron airport. Velvet Revolution ("VR"), a non-profit that has been investigating Mr. Connell's activities for the past two years, can now reveal that a person close to Mr. Connell has recently been discussing with a VR investigator how to tell all about his work for George Bush. Mr. Connell told a close associate that he was afraid that the George Bush and Dick Cheney would "throw [him] under the bus."

A tipster close to the McCain campaign disclosed to VR in July that Mr. Connell's life was in jeopardy and that Karl Rove had threatened him and his wife, Heather. VR's attorney, Cliff Arnebeck, notified the United States Attorney General, Ohio law enforcement and the federal court about these threats and insisted that Mr. Connell be placed in protective custody. VR also told a close associate of Mr. Connell's not to fly his plane because of another tip that the plane could be sabotaged. Mr. Connell, a very experienced pilot, has had to abandon at least two flights in the past two months because of suspicious problems with his plane. On December 18, 2008, Mr. Connell flew to a small airport outside of Washington DC to meet some people. It was on his return flight the next day that he crashed.

As the departing Bush administration frantically attempts to shore up its place in history, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann stands ready to kick the props out from under it again. A renewed claim that "no one could have anticipated" the attacks of 9/11 attracted his scorn in particular on Thursday's Countdown.

"This is a White House talking point still, even though your average three-year-old could disprove it using an etch-a-sketch." Olbermann sneered on Thursday, over the heading, "Insult the Dead-gate."

Olbermann's specific target was White House press spokesman Tony Fratto, who responded to a Fox News interviewer's suggestion on Wednesday that before 9/11, "nobody was thinking that there'd be terrorists flying 767s into buildings" by agreeing, "No one could have anticipated that kind of attack -- or very few people."

MLK- A Time to Break Silence

Text follows.

We can make this happen if we spread this email. Imagine a scientist heading NIST!
Donna

Hey Donna ,

We wanted to let you know that there are only 2 weeks left in the first round of the "Ideas for Change in America" competition, and your idea is in 7th place in the Other category.

The top 3 rated ideas for each category will make it to the second round, which will be held in early January so we can announce the winners of the competition just before the Presidential Inauguration. You need 552 votes to move up to third place in Other.

Stephen C. Webster
December 17, 2008
RawStory.com

A career Army officer who survived the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, claims that no evacuation was ordered inside the Pentagon, despite flight controllers calling in warnings of approaching hijacked aircraft nearly 20 minutes before the building was struck.

According to a time-line of the attacks, the Federal Aviation Administration notified NORAD that American Airlines Flight 77 had been hijacked at 9:24 a.m. The Pentagon was not struck until 9:43 a.m.

On behalf of retired Army officer April Gallop, California attorney William Veale has filed a civil suit against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and former US Air Force General Richard Myers, who was acting chairman of the joint chiefs on 9/11. It alleges they engaged in conspiracy to facilitate the terrorist attacks and purposefully failed to warn those inside the Pentagon, contributing to injuries she and her two-month-old son incurred.

Organic Consumers Association
November 12, 2008

* Former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack's support of genetically engineered pharmaceutical crops, especially pharmaceutical corn:
http://www.gene.ch/genet/2002/Oct/msg00057.html, http://www.organicconsumers.org/gefood/drugsincorn102302.cfm

* The biggest biotechnology industry group, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, named Vilsack Governor of the Year. He was also the founder and former chair of the Governor's Biotechnology Partnership. http://www.bio.org/news/pressreleases/newsitem.asp?id=200... (Continued)

The Organic Consumers Association is calling on organic consumers and all concerned citizens to join our call to action and block Vilsack's confirmation as the next Secretary of Agriculture. Please help us reach our goal of 100,000 petition signatures against Vilsack' nomination. Sign today!

Court Rules Patriot Act's "National Security Letter" Gag Provisions Unconstitutional (12/15/2008)

ACLU Hails Victory In Challenge To Government's Power To Silence NSL Recipients

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

NEW YORK -- A federal appeals court today upheld, in part, a decision striking down provisions of the Patriot Act that prevent national security letter (NSL) recipients from speaking out about the secret records demands. The decision comes in an American Civil Liberties Union and New York Civil Liberties Union lawsuit challenging the FBI's authority to use NSLs to demand sensitive and private customer records from Internet Service Providers and then forbid them from discussing the requests. Siding with the ACLU, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that the statute's gag provisions violate the First Amendment.

By Joe Dwinell
Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Three families who have vowed to hold the airlines and Massport responsible for failing to stop the Sept. 11 terrorists have to wait until March to find whether they'll get their day in court.

Manhattan federal Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein yesterday delayed his decision on setting a trial date, saying he must decide first on a defendant motion to have FBI and CIA agents testify about the increased terror threat in the weeks before the attacks.

Plaintiff attorney Donald A. Migliori called the motion a ploy to "politicize" the case.

December 14, 2008
Associated Press

An Iraqi journalist threw two shoes at President Bush during a news conference Sunday with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The president was not hurt in the incident.

Muntadar al-Zaidi Did What We Journalists Should Have Done Long Ago

When Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi heaved his two shoes at the head of President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad, he did something that the White House press corps should have done years ago.

Al-Zaidi listened to Bush blather that the half-decade of war he had initiated with the illegal invasion of Iraq had been "necessary for US security, Iraqi stability (sic) and world peace" and something just snapped. The television correspondent, who had been kidnapped and held for a while last year by Shiite militants, pulled off a shoe and threw it at Bush--a serious insult in Iraqi culture--and shouted "This is a farewell kiss, you dog!" When the first shoe missed its target, he grabbed a second shoe and heaved it too, causing the president to duck a second time as al-Zaidi shouted, "This is from the widows, the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq!"

Marie Colvin
December 14, 2008
The Sunday Times

As a convoy of blue-and-white United Nations trucks loaded with food waited last night for Israeli permission to enter Gaza, Jindiya Abu Amra and her 12-year-old daughter went scrounging for the wild grass their family now lives on.

"We had one meal today - khobbeizeh," said Abu Amra, 43, showing the leaves of a plant that grows along the streets of Gaza. "Every day, I wake up and start looking for wood and plastic to burn for fuel and I beg. When I find nothing, we eat this grass."

Abu Amra and her unemployed husband have seven daughters and a son. Their tiny breeze-block house has had no furniture since they burnt the last cupboard for heat.

Visibility 9-11 welcomes David Chandler, American Association of Physics Teachers and member of Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth.

David has a BS from Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA (IPS major–independent program of studies with emphasis in physics and engineering); MA in education from Claremont Graduate University; MS in mathematics from Cal Poly, Pomona and has taught Physics/Mathematics/Astronomy at K-12 and Jr. college levels. He is also an author and served formerly on the editorial board of The Physics Teacher, an AAPT journal. David is also an active designer and inventor of educational materials emphasizing quantitative visualization.

David’s recent article, WTC7: NIST Admits Freefall focuses on some of the significant errors and discrepancies in the final NIST report on the collapse of tower 7 and includes excerpts from a technical briefing held by NIST on August 26, 2008. During this briefing, questions were put to the panel by David Chandler as well as Dr. Steven Jones.

Intermission music by Libra Project.

Ending music by Prymal Rhythm.

Direct download: visibility911_chandler.mp3

Source URL: http://911blogger.com/blog/106

December 13, 2008
by Arundhati Roy
The Guardian and OutlookIndia.com

The Mumbai attacks have been dubbed 'India's 9/11', and there are calls for a 9/11-style response, including an attack on Pakistan. Instead, the country must fight terrorism with justice, or face civil war

... How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of all of this view the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them? There are those who point out that US strategy has been successful inasmuch as the United States has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11. However, some would say that what America is suffering now is far worse. If the idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing its true colors, what greater success could the terrorists have asked for? The US army is bogged down in two unwinnable wars, which have made the United States the most hated country in the world. Those wars have contributed greatly to the unraveling of the American economy and who knows, perhaps eventually the American empire. (Could it be that battered, bombed Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will be the undoing of this one too?) Hundreds of thousands people including thousands of American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The frequency of terrorist strikes on U.S allies/agents (including India) and U.S interests in the rest of the world has increased dramatically since 9/11. George Bush, the man who led the US response to 9/11 is a despised figure not just internationally, but also by his own people. Who can possibly claim that the United States is winning the war on terror?

RELATED: Ms. Roy provided a fascinating interview on some of the historical aspects and political analysis realting to the Mumbai attacks this morning on Democracy Now! - Listen or read here.