Tuesday
Jan292013
Forging his way through the predictable UK media censorship: Dr Andrew Wakefield Responds to Measles Outbreak in Swansea
Entries in 911 (36)
Tuesday
May292012
Gloria Goodale - Memorial Day: Among post-9/11 veterans, deepening antiwar sentiment
May 29, 2012 Despite the end of the Iraq war and the scheduled drawdown in Afghanistan, this Memorial Day arrives against a backdrop of deepening – and some say more troublesome – antiwar sentiment among military veterans.
One of the most vivid and replayed images of protesters at the NATO summit last weekend in Chicago was a group of some 40 vets lined up to toss their war medals over the chain link fence to protest what former naval officer Leah Bolger calls “the illegal wars of both NATO and America.”
According to a recent Pew Research Center study, 33 percent of post-9/11 veterans say that neither the war in Iraq nor in Afghanistan “were worth the cost,” and this among a highly motivated cohort who chose to serve.
What this means, says retired US Army Col. Ann Wright, who resigned from a State Department post in 2006 over US policies in Iraq, is that there is a widening gap between the government, military policies, and the soldiers that carry them out.
“Military personnel know America will always have a military, but there is growing concern over the way it is being used,” says the 29-year veteran, adding that an increasing list of concerns include “the use of torture, illegal detentions, and both soldiers and the public being lied to about the actual reasons for going into combat.”
But in contrast to the extremely vocal and visible antiwar movements of the Vietnam War era, many veterans in the all-volunteer military have found it harder to mobilize effective actions, says Cameron White, a former Marine who served two tours in Iraq before joining “Iraq Veterans Against the War.”
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Thursday
May032012
Gary Younge - Osama bin Laden's death has had zero impact on America's security
May 3, 2012 Last week, Afghanistan; two coalition troops were injured and one killed by Afghan soldiers; the US reached an agreement with the Afghan governmentto maintain a presence in the country until 2024; and the US failed to break a diplomatic deadlock with Pakistan after the US refused to apologise for killing 25 Pakistani soldiers in November.
This week, the White House will celebrate the anniversary of the assassination of Osama bin Laden as though it were the crowning achievement of its foreign policy. On Wednesday, Obama will hold a rare televised interview in the situation room to discuss the raid in Abbottabad. His campaign has released of a web video in which Bill Clinton says President Obama "took the harder and the more honorable path, and the one that produced, in my opinion, the best result". The video then asks, "Which path would Mitt Romney have taken?"
The man who entered the White House with the message of "hope" and "change" wants to hold on to it with a record of "shoot to kill".
Republicans are right to criticise the president for the crass manner in which he is "dancing around the end zone". Unfortunately, those criticisms ring hollow from a party whose leader played dress up on the USS Abraham Lincoln to announce the end of a war that is still not over, and whosepresidential candidate claims Obama should stop travelling the globe "apologising for" America. Moreover, the problem is not that Obama is exploiting a moment of national unity for partisan gain – though he most certainly is – but that this extra-judicial execution of an unmourned man has proved the only event capable of uniting the country since 9/11.
Read More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/01/osama-bin-laden-death-zero-impact
Wednesday
May022012
Michel Chossudovsky - The 9/11 Attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC): Unspoken Financial Bonanza
May 2, 2012 On October 17, 2000, eleven months before 9/11,
Blackstone Real Estate Advisors, of The Blackstone Group, L.P, purchased, from Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association, the participating mortgage secured by World Trade Center, Building Seven.1
April 26, 2001
The Port Authority leased the WTC for 99 years to Silverstein Properties and Westfield America Inc,
The transaction was authorised by Port Authority Chairman Lewis M. Eisenberg.
This transfer from the New York and New Jersey Port Authority was tantamount to the privatisation of the WTC Complex. The official press release described it as "the richest real estate prize in New York City history". The retail space underneath the complex was leased to Westfield America Inc.2
On 24 July 2001, 6 weeks prior to 9/11
Silverstein took control of the lease of the WTC following the Port Authority decision on April 26.
Silverstein and Frank Lowy, CEO of Westefield Inc. took control of the 10.6 million-square-foot WTC complex. "Lowy leased the shopping concourse called the Mall at the WTC, which comprised about 427,000 square feet of retail space."3
Explicitly included in the agreement was that Silverstein and Westfield "were given the right to rebuild the structures if they were destroyed". 4
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Wednesday
May022012
Lars Schall - Insider Trading 9/11: Allegations that informed circles made substantial profits in financial markets in connection to 9/11
May 2, 2012 Is there any truth in the allegations that informed circles made substantial profits in the financial markets in connection to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, on the United States?
Arguably, the best place to start is by examining put options, which occurred around Tuesday, September 11, 2001, to an abnormal extent, and at the beginning via software that played a key role: the Prosecutor's Management Information System, abbreviated as PROMIS. [i]
PROMIS is a software program that seems to be fitted with almost "magical" abilities. Furthermore, it is the subject of a decades-long dispute between its inventor, Bill Hamilton, and various people/institutions associated with intelligence agencies, military and security consultancy firms. [1]
One of the "magical" capabilities of PROMIS, one has to assume, is that it is equipped with artificial intelligence and was apparently from the outset “able to simultaneously read and integrate any number of different computer programs or databases, regardless of the language in which the original programs had been written or the operating systems and platforms on which that database was then currently installed." [2]
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Monday
Apr162012
Chris Hedges - First They Come For the Muslims
April 16, 2012 Tarek Mehanna, a U.S. citizen, was sentenced Thursday in Worcester, Mass., to 17½ years in prison. It was another of the tawdry show trials held against Muslim activists since 9/11 as a result of the government’s criminalization of what people say and believe. These trials, where secrecy rules permit federal lawyers to prosecute people on “evidence” the defendants are not allowed to examine, are the harbinger of a corporate totalitarian state in which any form of dissent can be declared illegal. What the government did to Mehanna, and what it has done to hundreds of other innocent Muslims in this country over the last decade, it will eventually do to the rest of us.
Mehanna, a teacher at Alhuda Academy in Worcester, was convicted after an eight-week jury trial of conspiring to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq and providing material support to al-Qaida, as well as making false statements to officials investigating terrorism. His real “crime,” however, seems to be viewing and translating jihadi videos online, speaking out against U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and refusing to become a government informant.
Read More:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/first_they_come_for_the_muslims_20120416/
Tuesday
Mar272012
Kevin Ryan - SEPTEMBER 11, 2001: Failures of the US Secret Service on the Morning of 9/11: A Call for Transparency
March 27, 2012 Guest Post by Kevin Ryan, former Site Manager for Environmental Health Laboratories, a division of Underwriters Laboratories (UL). Mr. Ryan, a Chemist and laboratory manager, was fired by UL in 2004 for publicly questioning the report being drafted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on their World Trade Center investigation. In the intervening period, Ryan has completed additional research while his original questions, which have become increasingly important over time, remain unanswered by UL or NIST.
The U.S. Secret Service failed to do its job on September 11, 2001 in several important ways. These failures could be explained if the Secret Service had foreknowledge of the 9/11 events as they were proceeding. That possibility leads to difficult questions about how the behavior of Secret Service employees might have contributed to the success of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Answering those questions will require the release of existing interview transcripts as well as follow-up questioning, under oath, of a few key people within the agency.
The most glaring example of Secret Service failure on 9/11 was the lack of protection for the President of the United States after it was well known that the country was facing terrorist attacks on multiple fronts.The interesting thing about this was that it was not a consistent approach. That is, the president was protected by the Secret Service in many ways that day but he was not protected from the most obvious, and apparently the most imminent, danger.
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Wednesday
Mar212012
TSA Pats Down 3-Year-Old In Leg Cast And Wheelchair (VIDEO)
March 21, 2012 A three-year-old boy in a cast and wheelchair on his way to a Disney vacation with his family was stopped by TSA agents at Chicago's O'Hare airport. He was traveling with his parents, two siblings and two grandparents.
The video, which appears to be shot by the boy's father, shows him visibly confused, nervous and squirming to get out of his chair. Holding back tears, he says he just wants to go by mom. But, according to comments in the video, nobody was allowed to touch the child or come near him during the process. His dad was asked to come over to lift the boy's shirt.
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Friday
Dec302011
Gareth Porter - Are Crackpot Liars Being Used to Tie Iran to 9/11?
December 30, 2011 By Gareth Porter, TruthOut.org
Printed on December 30, 2011
Behind a mysterious December 22 Associated Press story about "finding of fact" by a District judge in Manhattan Friday that Iran assisted al Qaeda in the planning of the 9/11 attacks is a tapestry of recycled fabrications and distortions of fact from a bizarre cast of characters.
The AP story offers no indication of the nature of the evidence in the case except that former members of the 9/11 Commission and three Iranian defectors provided testimony. What it didn't say was that at least two of the Iranian defectors have long been dismissed by US intelligence as "fabricators" and that the two "expert witnesses" who were supposed to determine the credibility of those defectors' claims are both avowed advocates of crackpot conspiracy theories about Muslims and Shariah law who believe the United States is at war with Islam.
The ostensible purpose of the case brought by families of 9/11 terror attack victims was to win damages from those responsible for 9/11. Dozens of such cases involving different terrorist attacks have been brought to US courts over the years, in which "default judgments" have been made against Iran over various attacks in which Iran was allegedly involved, but there is no chance of getting any money for the families.
The only real effect of the case is to promote right-wing political myths about Iran. One of the peculiarities of such cases is that the witnesses are not subject to cross examination in court. The witnesses have every incentive, therefore to indulge in false testimony, knowing that there will be no one to challenge them.
"A Fabricator of Monumental Proportions"
Monday
Dec122011
Washington's Blog - Joe Biden Drafted the Core of the Patriot Act in 1995 … Before the Oklahoma City Bombing
December 12, 2011 |
By Washington's Blog
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Global Research, December 11, 2011
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The Core of the Patriot Act Was Drafted in 1995 … By Joe BidenEveryone knows that the Patriot Act was drafted before 9/11. But few know that it was Joe Biden who drafted the core provisions which were included in that bill … in 1995. CNET reported in 2008:
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