Army officers at the Pentagon were planning a training exercise that would take place less than a week after 9/11 and that would, extraordinarily, be based around the scenario of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. Preparations for the exercise were being made about a week before September 11.

The existence of the planned exercise was revealed by Major General Peter Chiarelli, who on September 11, 2001, was the Army's director of operations, readiness, and mobilization. In that position, which he had moved into about a month before 9/11, Chiarelli was in charge of current operations in the Army Operations Center (AOC) at the Pentagon.

Chiarelli recalled in a February 2002 interview that, after beginning his new position, he had "planned to do an exercise for the Crisis Action Team, the CAT." He said, "In some of my pre-briefings, in learning about the job, it was briefed to me that the Crisis Action Team had not stood up, except for an exercise, in about 10 years in any great role." He therefore had members of his staff design a CAT exercise that, he said, he planned to run on September 17. [1]

THEY are the government, corporate, and financial powers that wage war, ravage the environment and the economy and trample on our democratic rights and liberties.

WHO ARE THE PEACEMAKERS?

WE are the vast majority of humanity who want peace, a healthy planet and a society that prioritizes human needs, democracy and civil liberties for all.

The Warmakers spend trillions of dollars yearly on endless wars in pursuit of global domination and profit while murdering millions of innocent people, installing corrupt and hated governments and funding occupations that displace millions from their homelands -- trampling on the right of oppressed people to self-determination.

THEY send our youth -- victims of the economic draft -- to fight over the very fossil fuels whose unrestrained use threatens the future of the planet while corrupt and virtually unregulated oil giants dump billions of gallons of death into our rivers and oceans.

THEY wage a fake "war on terrorism" at home -- the new McCarthyism -- that promotes racism and Islamophobia aimed at destroying civil liberties and democratic rights.

THEY grant repeated and untold trillions in bailouts to banks, corporations and financial institutions while breaking unions, robbing pensions, destroying jobs, foreclosing homes, de-funding education and vital social services and are once again threatening Social Security and Medicare.

THEY offer no solutions to the current crises other than more of the same.

THE PEACEMAKERS DEMAND a better world. Only a massive, united, inclusive and independent movement has the power to bring it into being. ...

New rules allow investigators to hold domestic-terror suspects longer than others without giving them a Miranda warning, significantly expanding exceptions to the instructions that have governed the handling of criminal suspects for more than four decades.

The move is one of the Obama administration's most significant revisions to rules governing the investigation of terror suspects in the U.S. And it potentially opens a new political tussle over national security policy, as the administration marks another step back from pre-election criticism of unorthodox counterterror methods.

The Supreme Court's 1966 Miranda ruling obligates law-enforcement officials to advise suspects of their rights to remain silent and to have an attorney present for questioning. A 1984 decision amended that by allowing the questioning of suspects for a limited time before issuing the warning in cases where public safety was at issue.

That exception was seen as a limited device to be used only in cases of an imminent safety threat, but the new rules give interrogators more latitude and flexibility to define what counts as an appropriate circumstance to waive Miranda rights.

A controversial congressional hearing Thursday on the radicalization of Muslim Americans touched on sensitive questions involving terrorism and tolerance a decade after the 9/11 attacks. At times emotional and theatrical, the four-hour session of the House Homeland Security Committee included calls from moderate Muslims for support in overcoming extremists seeking to indoctrinate their children, as well as protests from Democratic legislators who complained the hearing unfairly implicated all Muslims for the criminal acts of a small minority. In the end, committee Chairman Peter King (left), R-New York, said the hearing that generated widespread media coverage "actually went a lot easier than it could have." He ... promised additional hearings in coming months, with the next perhaps focusing on the radicalization of Muslims in U.S. prisons. -- CNN

Dominant Social Theme: Don't trust the Muslims.

Free-Market Analysis: Yesterday's hearing on radicalization of Muslim Americans brings up a larger perspective regarding what is going on in America and a close look into Western-style democracy. The incessant harping on "terrorist Islam" as presented in these US congressional hearings (see above article excerpt) does seem to indicate a trend regarding America's -- in fact the entire West's -- descent into authoritarianism, driven by hysteria over a religion that many of its worshipers (ironically) conflate with "peace."

Peter King is promising more hearings on Islamic terror and one has no reason to doubt they will occur. King has come under attack for these hearings, which some believe are deliberately whipping up hysteria against Muslims, but he has branded such accusations as false and baseless. In fact, ever since 9/11, King has been voicing concerns about Muslim fundamentalism and even wrote a novel about an Al Qaeda penetration in Long Island that resulted in a string of bombings. The protagonist of the book, a blunt, Irish congressman, investigates and eventually exposes the plot.

An Indiana prosecutor and Republican activist has resigned after emails show he suggested Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker stage a fake attack on himself to discredit unions protesting his budget repair bill.

The Republican governor signed a bill on March 11 that eliminates most union rights for public employees.

In an email from February 19, Indiana deputy prosecutor Carlos F. Lam told Walker the situation presented "a good opportunity for what's called a 'false flag' operation."

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism discovered the email among tens of thousands released to the public last week following a lawsuit by the Isthmus and the Associated Press.

"If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions' cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the unions," Lam said in his email.

"Currently, the media is painting the union protest as a democratic uprising and failing to mention the role of the DNC and umbrella union organizations in the protest," he continued. "Employing a false flag operation would assist in undercutting any support that the media may be creating in favor of the unions."

NEW YORK, March 23, 2011 --

/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A December 2010 poll conducted by the prestigious Emnid Institute, and reported in the German magazine "Welt der Wunder," revealed that 89.5% of German respondents do not believe the official story of 9/11.

The issue is heating up in America as well, and will soon be heard in court.

Top Secret Military Specialist April Gallop saw disturbing things up close that have not been reported in the media.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, she was ordered by her supervisor to go directly to work at the Pentagon, before dropping off her ten-week-old son Elisha at day care.

Amazingly, the infant was given immediate security clearance upon arrival.

The instant Gallop turned on her computer an enormous explosion blew her out of her chair, knocking her momentarily unconscious.

Dear Mr. Moyers:

We note the wide publication of a speech you gave on January 27, 2011 titled "Is This a Private Fight or Can Anyone Get In It?" In it you described "truthers" (your designation) -- people seeking the truth about the attack of 9/11 -- as guilty of disinformation, of sophistry and of cherry-picking anomalies in order to perpetrate what you claim to be a "Big Lie." You also stated that the central claim of "truthers", that the Government has lied about the attacks, has not taken hold in the public mind.

Regarding public opinion, that a sizable proportion of people throughout the world believe there was federal involvement of some form in the attack has been mainstream news for years, and there is now a Wikipedia page devoted to global opinion polls about 9/11. As well, you know that the Commission was established only after more than a year of entreating by families of victims, that it was severely limited in both time and funding, that it was under the absolute control of a director with ties to the Administration, and that abundant information inconsistent with an official story was excluded.

What has become known as the "9/11Truth Movement" includes a great diversity of people, many with impeccable credentials and reputations, who have in common an understanding that the official governmental story of 9/11 is filled with obvious fabrications and who feel impelled to pursue the truth. The collective that you have painted with the "liar" brush includes us, many of our esteemed colleagues and a multitude of fine and prominent people the world over. We the undersigned have come together to state unequivocally that we have not cherry picked information or lied. We believe that by any reasonable standard we are owed a public apology.

The two main players in releasing the Pentagon Papers were Daniel Ellsberg and United States Senator Mike Gravel.

Senator Gravel is the person who read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record. This act made the papers public record, so that they could not be censored by the government. He was the only member of Congress courageous enough to do so.

Both Ellsberg and Gravel - like many other high-level former officials in the government and intelligence services (including many well-known whistleblowers) - support a new 9/11 investigation. Ellsberg says that the case of a certain 9/11 whistleblower is "far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers". (Here's some of what that whistleblower says.) He also said that the government is ordering the media to cover up her allegations about 9/11.

And he said that some of the claims concerning government involvement in 9/11 are credible, that "very serious questions have been raised about what they [U.S. government officials] knew beforehand and how much involvement there might have been", that engineering 9/11 would not be humanly or psychologically beyond the scope of those in office, and that there's enough evidence to justify a new, "hard-hitting" investigation into 9/11 with subpoenas and testimony taken under oath (see this and this).

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.