You are browsing the archive for 2010.
by Brett Michael Dykes
July 30, 2010
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.
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 persons 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.
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.
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.
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.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDZcRiRGRWE
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.
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.
by Elaine Brower
July 18, 2010
WorldCantWait.net
Editors 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 Lynnes 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 FBIs 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 prosecutions argument, and he couldnt 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 shouldnt 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.
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. …
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.
