9/11 – A Cheap Magic Trick

The Miami Herald
Posted on Sat, May. 05, 2012
By CAROL ROSENBERG

Accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators put on a show of defiance during a marathon war court arraignment Saturday, sitting mute rather than answering their U.S. military judge’s questions ahead of their trial on charges of planning the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

At no time did the five men enter pleas — dashing hopes that they’d cut short a trial process potentially lasting years by admitting their guilt or confessing to the crime in a bid to get a fast track to martyrdom.

Instead, the military judge struggled to get through the basics of starting the clock toward the capital murder trial, provisionally scheduled for a year from now, by unilaterally assigning Pentagon-paid defense attorneys to the five men accused of orchestrating the worst terror attack on U.S. soil.

“Why is this so hard?” the judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, declared in exasperation.

The five accused men allegedly trained, advised and financed the 19 hijackers who commandeered airliners and then crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, killing 2,976 people. All could get the death penalty, if convicted.

The day began with guards carrying one accused terrorist, alleged 9/11 trainer Walid bin Attash, into the maximum-security courtroom at about 9 a.m. strapped into a restraint chair. The judge said guards chose to put the captive in restraint because of his behavior outside the court. There was no additional explanation.

The long session concluded more than 12 hours later with the chief prosecutor, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, and other prosecutors reciting the 87-page charge sheet in English — and a translator echoing each paragraph in Arabic because the accused refused to don headphones for simultaneous translation. In between the accused slowed the process by not only accepting each of the judge’s offers for three prayer calls that required recesses in the long hearing but by also adding extra prayers in the midst of the proceedings.

At one point, Ramzi bin al Shibh, the alleged organizer of an al Qaida cell in Hamburg, Germany, got up from his defendant’s chair and began to pray. He stood, arms crossed on his chest, then at one point got on his knees. The guards didn’t move and the court watched in silence until he finished.

Saturday’s rare war court session was the first appearance of the five men since Jan. 21, 2009, a day after the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Since then, Obama worked with Congress to provide the men with greater protections. But the Pentagon-paid defense lawyers wouldn’t stick to the script, either, instead peppering the proceedings with a long litany of procedural protests — about a lack of resources, about presumptive classification requirements, and about allegations of abuse of their clients at the hands of the detention center, miles from the war-court compound called Camp Justice.

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Cleveland May Day terrorist plot – another frame-up by the Feds

by Justin Raimondo, May 02, 2012
Antiwar.com

The Obama cult is revving up its motors for the reelection campaign, with Joe Biden declaiming “General Motors is alive and bin Laden is dead”: that’s the signature slogan MSNBC apparently intends to repeat endlessly until we get some relief on election day. It must be the concatenation of the stars in alignment with Mars, but it looks like I actually agree with something Arianna Huffington said: that this campaign slogan is “despicable,” which it surely is. Naturally, Ms. Huffington doesn’t acknowledge the lie at the heart of the first part of that slogan: GM still hasn’t paid back the bailout money shelled out by taxpayers. If they’re making money, why not reimburse the tax slaves? But never mind: what concerns us here is that the Obama administration is taking credit for a long process – finding OBL – that began in the Bush administration and only culminated under this President’s watch.

But never mind that, too, because one has to wonder: who cares that bin Laden is dead when our endless “war on terrorism” continues? As Glenn Greenwald points out, that war hasn’t slowed down a bit, indeed it is escalating – not only abroad, where our “regime change” machine is homing in on Syria and Iran after having devastated Libya and destabilized Pakistan, but also here in this country. Is it just a coincidence that on May Day, the very day the “Occupy” movement chose for nationwide protests against corporate dominance of American politics, the FBI announced the arrest of five “anarchists” who were supposedly plotting to blow up a bridge in Cleveland?

Not that there was ever any danger of the bridge actually being blown up: like all the high-profile “domestic terrorism” cases touted by the feds these days, this was yet another case of the FBI infiltrating a fringy group and instigating its members into participating in a bogus “plot,” which the feds could then hold up as another “success story” in their ongoing domestic “war on terrorism.” It’s a veritable growth industry, one the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have a vested interest in propagating and encouraging: the more “plots” they can uncover, the more tax dollars are poured into their coffers.

Link to the rest of the article

Posted on April 30, 2012
by WashingtonsBlog

Sibel Edmonds’ new book, “Classified Woman,” is like an FBI file on the FBI, only without the incompetence.

The experiences she recounts resemble K.’s trip to the castle, as told by Franz Kafka, only without the pleasantness and humanity.

I’ve read a million reviews of nonfiction books about our government that referred to them as “page-turners” and “gripping dramas,” but I had never read a book that actually fit that description until now.

The F.B.I., the Justice Department, the White House, the Congress, the courts, the media, and the nonprofit industrial complex put Sibel Edmonds through hell. This book is her triumph over it all, and part of her contribution toward fixing the problems she uncovered and lived through.

Edmonds took a job as a translator at the FBI shortly after 9-11. She considered it her duty. Her goal was to prevent any more terrorist attacks. That’s where her thinking was at the time, although it has now changed dramatically. It’s rarely the people who sign up for a paycheck and healthcare who end up resisting or blowing a whistle.

Edmonds found at the FBI translation unit almost entirely two types of people. The first group was corrupt sociopaths, foreign spies, cheats and schemers indifferent to or working against U.S. national security. The second group was fearful bureaucrats unwilling to make waves. The ordinary competent person with good intentions who risks their job to “say something if you see something” is the rarest commodity. Hence the elite category that Edmonds found herself almost alone in: whistleblowers.

Reams of documents and audio files from before 9-11 had never been translated. Many more had never been competently or honestly translated. One afternoon in October 2001, Edmonds was asked to translate verbatim an audio file from July 2001 that had only been translated in summary form. She discovered that it contained a discussion of skyscraper construction, and in a section from September 12th a celebration of a successful mission. There was also discussion of possible future attacks. Edmonds was eager to inform the agents involved, but her supervisor Mike Feghali immediately put a halt to the project.

Two other translators, Behrooz Sarshar and Amin (no last name given), told Edmonds this was typical. They told her about an Iranian informant, a former head of SAVAK, the Iranian “intelligence” agency, who had been hired by the FBI in the early 1990s. He had warned these two interpreters in person in April 2001 of Osama bin Laden planning attacks on U.S. cities with airplanes, and had warned that some of the plotters were already in the United States. Sarshar and Amin had submitted a report marked VERY URGENT to Special Agent in Charge Thomas Frields, to no apparent effect. In the end of June they’d again met with the same informant and interpreted for FBI agents meeting with him. He’d emphatically warned that the attack would come within the next two months and urged them to tell the White House and the CIA. But the FBI agents, when pressed on this, told their interpreters that Frields was obliged to report everything, so the White House and other agencies no doubt already knew.

One has to wonder what U.S. public opinion would make of an Iranian having tried to prevent 9-11.

Next, a French translator named Mariana informed Edmonds that in late June 2001, French intelligence had contacted the FBI with a warning of the upcoming attacks by airplanes. The French even provided names of suspects. The translator had been sent to France, and believed her report had made it to both FBI headquarters and the White House.

Edmonds translated other materials that involved the selling of U.S. nuclear information to foreigners and spotted a connection to a previous case involving the purchase of such information. The FBI, under pressure from the State Department, Edmonds writes, prevented her from notifying the FBI field offices involved. Edmonds has testified in a court deposition, naming as part of a broad criminal conspiracy Representatives Dennis Hastert, Dan Burton, Roy Blunt, Bob Livingston, Stephen Solarz, and Tom Lantos, and the following high-ranking U.S. government officials: Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, and Marc Grossman.

When Edmonds was hired, she was the only fully qualified Turkish translator, and this remained the case. In November 2001, a woman named Melek Can Dickerson (referred to as “Jan”) was hired. She did not score well on the English proficiency test, and so was not qualified to sign off on translations, as Edmonds was. Melek’s husband Doug Dickerson worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency under the procurement logistics division at the Pentagon dealing with Turkey and Central Asia, and for the Office of Special Plans overseeing Central Asian policy. This couple attempted to recruit Edmonds and her husband into the American Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, offering large financial benefits. But these were organizations that the FBI was monitoring. Edmonds reported the Dickersons’ proposal to Feghali, who dismissed it.

Then Edmonds discovered that Jan Dickerson had been forging her (Edmonds’) signature on translations, with Feghali’s approval. Then Edmonds’ colleagues told her about Jan taking files out of other translators’ desks and carrying them out of the building. Dickerson attempted to control the translation of all material from particular individuals. Dennis Saccher, who was above Feghali, discovered that Jan was marking every communication from one important person as being not important for translation. Saccher attempted to address the matter but was shut down by Feghali, by another supervisor named Stephanie Bryan, and by the head of “counterintelligence” for the FBI who said that the Pentagon, White House, State Department, and Congress would not allow an investigation.

Had Edmonds understood the truth of that statement, it might have saved her years of frustration and stress, but it would have denied us the bulk of the revelations in her book. Dickerson threatened Edmonds’ life and those of her family. Edmonds lost her job, her reputation, her friends, and contact with most of her family members. She watched Congress cave in to the President. She watched the government protect the Dickersons by allowing them to flee the country. She listened to Congressman Henry Waxman and others in 2005 and 2006 promise a full investigation if the Democrats won a majority, a promise that was immediately broken when the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007. Edmonds was smeared in the media, and her story widely ignored when media outlets got parts of it right. The Justice Department claimed “States Secrets” and maneuvered for a cooperative judge (Reggie Walton) to have cases filed by Edmonds dismissed. The government classified as secret all materials related to Edmonds’ case including what was already public. The Justice Department issued a gag order to the entire Congress.

And Congress bent over and shouted “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”

As less confrontational approaches failed, Edmonds became increasingly an activist and an independent media participant and creator. Her story and others she was familiar with were rejected and avoided by the 9-11 Commission. She worked with angry 9-11 widows and with other whistleblowers to expose the failures of that commission. Disgusted with whistleblower support groups that only offered to help her when she was in the news and never when she needed help most desperately, Edmonds started her own group, made up of whistleblowers, called the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. She started her own website called Boiling Frogs Post.

When an unclassified version of a report on Edmonds’ case by the Justice Department’s Inspector General was finally released, it vindicated her.

Edmonds has received awards and recognition. Her story has been supported (with rhetoric, not action) by Congress members and backed up by journalists. It appears in this forthcoming film.

Coleen Rowley, another FBI whistleblower, one who was honored as a Time magazine person of the year along with two others, told me: “What I find so remarkable is Sibel’s persistence in trying every avenue and possible outlet in trying to get the truth out. When going up the chain of command in the executive branch and Inspector General internal mechanisms for investigating fraud, waste, and abuse went nowhere, she sought judicial remedy by filing lawsuits only to be improperly gagged by ‘state secrecy privilege’. Along the way she also sought congressional assistance, testified to the 9-11 Commission, and engaged with various media and other non-governmental organizations. It’s somewhat ironic that Sibel herself demonstrated such enormous energy and passion throughout this decade quite the opposite of the ‘boiling frog’ idiom she uses for her website as a warning to others. If her book can inspire readers to summon even 1/100th of the determination and resolve she has modeled, there’s hope for us!”

Yet, thus far, no branch of our government has lifted its little finger to fix the problem of secrecy and the corruption it breeds, which Edmonds argues has grown far worse under President Obama. That’s why this book should be spread far and wide, and read aloud to our misrepresentatives in Congress if necessary. This book is a masterpiece that reveals both the details and the broader pattern of corruption and unaccountability in Washington, D.C. Edmonds has not exposed bad apples, but a rotten barrel of toxic waste that will sooner or later infect us all — not just the whistleblowers like Sibel and the thousands of people in our government who see something and dare not say something for fear that we will not have their back.

Let’s have their back.

Written by Adam Taylor
Wednesday, 25 April 2012 16:07
Collapse Times of the Twin Towers
AE911Truth

Editor’s note: This is Part 3 (see Part 2) of an extensive report by 9/11 researcher Adam Taylor that exposes the fallacies and flaws in the arguments made by the editors of Popular Mechanics (PM) in the latest edition of Debunking 9/11 Myths. We encourage you to submit your own reviews of the book at Amazon.com and other places where it is sold.

(Quotes from Popular Mechanics’ book are shown in red and with page numbers.)

Rapid Destruction of The Twin Towers

In Popular Mechanics’ next section, they discuss the rate at which the Twin Towers were destroyed. PM begins by correctly pointing out that it is difficult to determine exactly how long it took each Tower to collapse, being that much of the destruction was blocked from view by the huge clouds of pulverized debris. However, it is quite evident that PM has again misrepresented the characteristics of the buildings’ destruction.

PM continues by naming off a few people who have said the Twin Towers collapsed too quickly, but they evidently cherry-picked the individuals to quote on this topic. For example, PM quotes talk show host Rosie O’Donnell as saying that the Towers each collapsed in nine seconds. They also quote 9/11 truth advocate Andrew Johnson as saying that the South and North Towers collapsed in eight seconds and ten seconds, respectively. However, neither of these individuals is an engineer or a scientist with relevant expertise who can give an expert opinion. To be sure, PM does quote engineers that say the collapse times of the Towers were not remarkable at all, but omits the opinions of the hundreds of architects and engineers who reviewed the Towers’ destruction and stated the collapses happened too quickly to have been caused by fire. Here are just a few expert opinions that could have been included in PM’s book:

Paul W. Mason is among over 1600 credentialed architects and engineers who have challenged the official explanation for the Twin Towers’ collapse

The collapse of the three WTC buildings would seem to defy the laws of mechanics, conservation of energy and known structural failure behavior. The case for the destruction of the three WTC buildings by means of “controlled demolition” is overwhelming. -Claude Robert Briscoe, civil engineer with 45+ years of experience1

Link to the rest of article

April 25, 2012
Paul Craig Roberts

Andy Worthington is a superb reporter who has specialized in providing the facts of the US government’s illegal abuse of “detainees,” against whom no evidence exists. ( http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/ ) In an effort to create evidence, the US government has illegally resorted to torture. Torture produces false confessions, plea bargains, and false testimony against others in order to escape further torture.

For these reasons, in Anglo-American law self-incrimination secured through torture has been impermissible evidence for centuries. So also has been secret evidence withheld from the accused and his attorney. Secret evidence cannot be confronted. Secret evidence is distrusted as made-up in order to convict the innocent. The evidence is secret because it cannot stand the light of day.

The US government relies on secret evidence in its cases against alleged terrorists, claiming that national security would be threatened if the evidence were revealed. This is abject nonsense. It is an absurd claim that presenting evidence against a terrorist jeopardizes the national security of the United States.

To the contrary, not presenting evidence jeopardizes the security of each and every one of us. Once the government can convict defendants on the basis of secret evidence, even the concept of a fair trial will disappear. Fair trials are already history, but the concept lingers.

Secret evidence murders the concept of a fair trial. It murders justice and the rule of law. Secret evidence means anyone can be convicted of anything. As in Kafka’s The Trial, people will cease to know the crimes for which they are being tried and convicted.

This extraordinary development in Anglo-American law, a development demanded by the unaccountable Bush/Obama Regime, has not resulted in impeachment proceedings; nor has it caused an uproar from Congress, the federal courts, the presstitute media, law schools, constitutional scholars, and bar associations.

Having bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory, Americans just want someone to pay. They don’t care who as long as someone pays. To accommodate this desire, the government has produced some “high value detainees” with Arab or Muslim names.
But instead of bringing these alleged malefactors to trial and presenting evidence against them, the government has kept them in torture dungeons for years trying to create through the application of pain and psychological breakdown guilt by self-incrimination in order to create a case against them.

The government has been unsuccessful and has nothing that it can bring to a real court. So the Bush/Obama Regime created and recreated “military tribunals” to lend “national security” credence to the absolute need that non-existent evidence be kept secret.

Andy Worthington in his numerous reports does a good job in providing the history of the detainees and their treatment. He deserves our commendation and support. But what I want to do is to ask some questions, not of Worthington, but about the idea that the US is under terrorist threat.

By this September, 9/11 will be eleven years ago. Yet despite the War on Terror, the loss of Americans’ privacy and civil liberties, an expenditure of trillions of dollars on numerous wars, violations of US and international laws against torture, and so forth, no one has been held accountable. Neither the perpetrators nor those whom the perpetrators outwitted, assuming that they are different people, have been held accountable. Going on 11 years and no trials of villains or chastisement of negligent public officials. This is remarkable.

The government’s account of 9/11 implies massive failure of all US security and intelligence agencies along with those of our NATO puppets and Israel’s Mossad.
The government’s official line also implies the failure of the National Security Council, NORAD and the US Air Force, Air Traffic Control, Airport Security four times in one hour on the same morning. It implies the failure of the President, the Vice President, the National Security Adviser, the Secretary of Defense.

Many on the left and also libertarians find this apparent failure of the centralized and oppressive government so hopeful that they cling to the official “government failure” explanation of 9/11. However, such massive failure is simply unbelievable. How in the world could the US have survived the cold war with the Soviets if the US government were so totally incompetent?

If we attribute superhero powers to the 19 alleged hijackers, powers in excess of V’s in V for Vendetta or James Bond’s or Captain Marvel’s, and assume that these young terrorists, primarily Saudi Arabians, outwitted Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Tony Blair, along with the CIA, FBI, MI5 and MI6, Mossad, etc., one would have expected for the President, Congress, and the media to call for heads to roll. No more humiliating affront has ever been suffered by a major power than the US suffered on 9/11. Yet, absolutely no one, not even some lowly traffic controller, was scapegoated and held accountable for what is considered to be the most extraordinarily successful terrorist attack in human history, an attack so successful that it implies total negligence across the totality of the US government and that of all its allies.

This just doesn’t smell right. Total failure and no accountability. The most expensively funded security apparatus the world has ever known defeated by a handful of Saudi Arabians. How can anyone in the CIA, FBI, NSA, NORAD, and National Security Council hold up their heads? What a disgraced bunch of jerks and incompetents.

What do we need them for?

Consider the alleged hijackers. Despite allegedly being caught off guard by the 9/11 attacks, the FBI was soon able to identify the 19 hijackers despite the fact that apparently none of the alleged hijackers’ names are on the passenger lists of the airliners that they allegedly hijacked.

How did 19 passengers get on airplanes in the US without being on the passenger lists?

I do not personally know if the alleged hijackers were on the four airliners. Moreover, defenders of the official 9/11 story claim that the passenger lists released to the public were “victims lists,” not passenger lists, because the names of the hijackers were withheld and only released some four years later after 9/11 researchers had had years in which to confuse victims lists with passenger lists. This seems an odd explanation. Why encourage public misinformation for years by withholding the passenger lists and issuing victims lists in their place? It cannot have been to keep the hijackers’ names a secret as the FBI released a list of the hijackers several days after 9/11. Even more puzzling, if the hijackers’ names were on the airline passenger lists, why did it take the FBI several days to confirm the names and numbers of hijackers?

Researchers have found contradictions in the FBI’s accounts of the passenger lists with the FBI adding and subtracting names from its various lists and some names being misspelled, indicating possibly that the FBI doesn’t really know who the person is. The authenticity of the passenger lists that were finally released in 2005 is contested, and the list apparently was not presented as evidence by the FBI in the Moussaoui trial in 2006. David Ray Griffin has extensively researched the 9/11 story. In one of his books, 9/11 Ten Years Later, Griffin writes: “Although the FBI claimed that it had received flight manifests from the airlines by the morning of 9/11, the ‘manifests’ that appeared in 2005 had names that were not known to the FBI until a day or more after 9/11. These 2005 ‘manifests,’ therefore, could not have been the original manifests for the four 9/11 flights.”

The airlines themselves have not been forthcoming. We are left with the mystery of why simple and straightforward evidence, such as a list of passengers, was withheld for years and mired in secrecy and controversy.

We have the additional problem that the BBC and subsequently other news organizations established that 6 or 7 of the alleged hijackers on the FBI’s list are alive and well and have never been part of any terrorist plot.

These points are not even a beginning of the voluminous reasons that the government’s 9/11 story looks very thin.

But the American public, being throughly plugged into the Matrix, are not suspicious of the government’s thin story. Instead, they are suspicious of the facts and of those experts who are suspicious of the government’s story. Architects, engineers, scientists, first responders, pilots, and former public officials who raise objections to the official story are written off as conspiracy theorists. Why does an ignorant American public think it knows more than experts? Why do Americans believe a government that told them the intentional lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction despite the fact that the weapons inspectors reported to President Bush that Hussein had no such weapons? And now we see the same thing all over again with the alleged, but non-existent, Iranian nukes.

As Frantz Fanon wrote, the power of cognitive dissonance is extreme. It keeps people comfortable and safe from threatening information. Most Americans find the government’s lies preferable to the truth. They don’t want to be unplugged from the Matrix. The truth is too uncomfortable for emotionally and mentally weak Americans.

Worthington focuses on the harm being done to detainees. They have been abused for much of their lives. Their innocence or guilt cannot be established because the evidence is compromised by torture, self-incrimination, and coerced testimony against others. They stand convicted by the government’s accusation alone. These are real wrongs, and Worthington is correct to emphasize them.

In contrast, my focus is on the harm to America, on the harm to truth and truth’s power, on the harm to the rule of law and accountability to the people of the government and its agencies, on the harm to the moral fabric of the US government and to liberty in the United States.

As the adage goes, a fish rots from the head. As the government rots, so does the United States of America.

Authors: Maoxin Wu1, Ronald E. Gordon1, Robin Herbert2, Maria Padilla3, Jacqueline Moline2, David Mendelson4, Virginia Litle5*, William D. Travis6, Joan Gil1
Environmental Health Perspectives

1 Department of Pathology, 2 Department of Community and Preventive Medicine, 3 Division of Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine, 4 Department of Radiology, and, 5 Department of Thoracic Surgery, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA, 6 Department of Pathology, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York, USA

Abstract Top

Context: After the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) on 11 September 2001, a dense cloud of dust containing high levels of airborne pollutants covered Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn, New York. Between 60,000 and 70,000 responders were exposed. Many reported adverse health effects.

Case presentation: In this report we describe clinical, pathologic, and mineralogic findings in seven previously healthy responders who were exposed to WTC dust on either 11 September or 12 September 2001, who developed severe respiratory impairment or unexplained radiologic findings and underwent video-assisted thoracoscopic surgical lung biopsy procedures at Mount Sinai Medical Center. WTC dust samples were also examined. We found that three of the seven responders had severe or moderate restrictive disease clinically. Histopathology showed interstitial lung disease consistent with small airways disease, bronchiolocentric parenchymal disease, and nonnecrotizing granulomatous condition. Tissue mineralogic analyses showed variable amounts of sheets of aluminum and magnesium silicates, chrysotile asbestos, calcium phosphate, and calcium sulfate. Small shards of glass containing mostly silica and magnesium were also found. Carbon nanotubes (CNT) of various sizes and lengths were noted. CNT were also identified in four of seven WTC dust samples.

Discussion: These findings confirm the previously reported association between WTC dust exposure and bronchiolar and interstitial lung disease. Long-term monitoring of responders will be needed to elucidate the full extent of this problem. The finding of CNT in both WTC dust and lung tissues is unexpected and requires further study.

On 11 September 2001 (9/11), lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn were engulfed by a dense cloud of toxic and irritant dust and smoke generated by the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers (Landrigan et al. 2004; Levin et al. 2002; Lioy et al. 2002). This cloud comprised a complex mix of pollutants, among them the products of combustion of 91,000 L jet fuel, pulverized building materials, cement dust, asbestos, microscopic shards of glass, silica, heavy metals, and numerous organic compounds [see Supplemental Material, Table 1 (doi:10.1289/ehp.0901159)] (Edelman et al. 2003; McGee et al. 2003; Prezant et al. 2002; Reibman et al. 2005).
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Table 1.

Summary of findings in pathology and minerologic/asbestos fiber burden analyses.

Adverse health effects have developed since 9/11 in workers and volunteers involved in the rescue, relief, and cleanup at the WTC site and at the Staten Island landfill (the major wreckage depository) (Edelman et al. 2003; Herbert et al. 2006; Landrigan et al. 2004; Lioy et al. 2002; Prezant et al. 2002). The health effects most commonly observed involved the upper and lower respiratory tract. Signs, symptoms, and findings include persistent cough, breathlessness, wheezing, asthma, sinusitis, laryngitis, and irritant-induced asthma, also named reactive airways dysfunction syndrome (RADS) (Herbert et al. 2006; Levin et al. 2002; Prezant et al. 2002). Cases of interstitial lung disease have also been reported, including acute eosinophilic pneumonia, granulomatous pneumonitis, sarcoidosis, and bronchiolitis obliterans (Izbicki et al. 2007; Mann et al. 2005; Rom et al. 2002; Safirstein et al. 2003).

The Mount Sinai WTC Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program (MMTP) was established to provide standardized screening and facilitate treatment of eligible responders who worked or volunteered at the WTC site. There is no systemic or comprehensive roster of all responders similar to the existing records of responders from the New York City uniformed services, such as the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) or New York Police Department, which frequently include their previous health condition. Estimates of the number of responders given by different sources range from 50,000 to 90,000 in total; we believe that the total, including FDNY workers, is likely to have been between 60,000 and 70,000 (Moline et al. 2009). In this article, we report on a case series of seven WTC responders enrolled in the Mount Sinai WTC MMTP who underwent video-assisted thoracoscopic (VATS) procedures at the Mount Sinai Medical Center and whose WTC exposures began on either 11 September or 12 September 2001. As of 11 September 2007, a total of 12,891 responders claiming first- and/or second-day exposure to the WTC pile had monitoring examinations at the Mount Sinai MMTP on or before 11 September 2007. Of these responders, one underwent VATS with biopsy in 2005, and six underwent VATS procedures between 1 January and 31 October 2007, because of severe pulmonary symptoms, impairment, or unexplained radiologic findings. We describe here the histopathologic patterns associated with these severe forms of respiratory impairment.

As part of our overall biopsy examination, we performed mineralogic analyses of the tissue from seven individuals believed to have been previously healthy who developed signs of respiratory impairment after sustaining WTC exposures. Additionally, we obtained and analyzed dust specimens collected on the site (DS) and examined old specimens (controls for old cases; COC) unrelated to the WTC disaster that were routinely submitted to our laboratory for asbestos burden analysis (n = 40) or obtained for research purposes from autopsy or surgical specimens (n = 20) of patients without history of WTC exposure.

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article

Saman Mohammadi
Infowars.com
April 22, 2012

“Power positions do not yield to arguments, however rationally and morally valid, but only to superior power.” – Hans J. Morgenthau.

“History is the long, difficult and confused dream of Mankind.” – Arthur Schopenhauer.

“Didn’t I tell you
not to be satisfied with the veil of this world?” – Rumi.

“For historical myths are now commonly perceived as “foundational narratives,” as stories that purport to explain the present in terms of some momentous event that occurred in the past. Stories like these are in many ways historical—though rarely, if ever, do they refer to an actual past. Rather, they refer to a virtual past, to the fact that historical communities, like religions or nations, consist in the beliefs that their members have about them—more concretely, in the stories they tell about them.” – Joseph Mali. (1).

The period of 1992 to 2012 saw the god-like propaganda power of the American empire on full display. Washington’s unbelievable power to distort reality and shape the minds of its global mental subjects was used during this period to sell an aggressive global war on innocent countries. Historians will remember this war as the most evil war in humankind’s history.

Washington, and its allies in Israel and England, conquered the global mind by waging the most sophisticated psychological war against humanity, with the focal point of the war being the 9/11 events. No future superpower will ever rival America in its psychological domination of the planet. It is the first and last empire to even be able to attempt such a grand enterprise.

But all dreams must come to an end at some point – that’s history. The question is, how many innocent people will suffer and die before the myth of 9/11 is completely done away with? Will it be ten million, or twenty? Genocidal-type figures are not out the question. Based on the logic of U.S. and Israeli war propaganda, the American empire has already wiped Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria off the map. Of course, this is an exaggeration.

But if America can kill one million people, why not ten? What’s to stop it? Washington is not governed by a moral conscience, so it literally can kill millions of people and justify its mass murder to the world as an act of liberation. Also, if Israel is allowed to ethnically cleanse Palestinians in broad daylight, then who will stop it from mass murdering other people in the future?

These actions beg the question: Are America and Israel genocidal states?

While Iran is falsely accused of wanting to “wipe Israel off the map,” by U.S. and Israeli propagandists, the U.S. and Israel are actually wiping regimes and nations off the map. Their publicly stated goal is to remake the map of the Middle East, which means reducing the territory of several big states, including Iran, and murdering millions of innocent people.

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March 25, 2012
By Richard Walker
American Free Press

As the war in Afghanistan winds down, the Pentagon’s focus has shifted to Africa and a new kind of warfare, using drone and missile attacks, small Special Forces teams and a mixture of Marines and special advisers to train African national armies to act as proxies in the American global empire.

Much of this warfare is being promoted under the rubrics of humanitarian aid and combating piracy. While those may be two reasons for establishing a bridgehead on the African continent they do not tell the complete story. Secretly, the objective has been to wage war against a range of perceived enemies, with fewer boots on the ground and less accountability to the American electorate.

When Barack Obama sent 100 Special Operations troops to Uganda in 2011, his declared aim was to hunt down leaders of the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army, founded by Joseph Kony. That, however, was a smokescreen. As of Feb. 5, 2012, the U.S. military presence in Uganda has expanded, working to eliminate another group that has never attacked the United States—Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, which operates in nearby Somalia and elsewhere in East Africa.

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April 13, 2012
Joanne Mariner
Justia.com

With last week’s announcement that charges against Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and his four co-defendants had been authorized, the on-again, off-again military commission proceedings in the 9/11 case have now officially begun. The United States is seeking the death penalty against all five men, who are accused of the crimes of terrorism, hijacking, murder, conspiracy, and intentionally causing serious bodily injury.

The case has been called the trial of the century. Sixty-six pages of the 123-page charge sheet are taken up by the long list of victims of the 9/11 attacks, from flight attendant Barbara Jean Arestegui, on American Airlines Flight 11, to passenger Honor Elizabeth Wainio, on United Airlines Flight 93.

The stakes in the case are high; the facts are extremely emotive, and the defendants could hardly be less sympathetic. Khalid Shaikh Mohammad has already claimed responsibility for planning the attacks, and the other defendants are accused of playing key organizational or financial roles in them.

For the verdict in such an important, high-profile case to be recognized as just, the trial needs to be seen as fair. The defendants should be granted basic procedural guarantees in proceedings before an independent and impartial tribunal.

But while US officials have put much recent effort into lauding the fairness of the military commissions at Guantanamo, the government still asserts that defendants before the commissions have no constitutional rights. And though the rules governing military commission proceedings have improved significantly over the years, the commissions’ basic structure is still unconducive to independence and impartiality.

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A photograph taken in Iraq of Specialist Ryan Yurchison (left), who died of a drug overdose on May 23, 2010, after returning home to New Middletown, Ohio.

The New York Times
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: April 14, 2012

HERE’S a window into a tragedy within the American military: For every soldier killed on the battlefield this year, about 25 veterans are dying by their own hands.

An American soldier dies every day and a half, on average, in Iraq or Afghanistan. Veterans kill themselves at a rate of one every 80 minutes. More than 6,500 veteran suicides are logged every year — more than the total number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq combined since those wars began.

These unnoticed killing fields are places like New Middletown, Ohio, where Cheryl DeBow raised two sons, Michael and Ryan Yurchison, and saw them depart for Iraq. Michael, then 22, signed up soon after the 9/11 attacks.

“I can’t just sit back and do nothing,” he told his mom. Two years later, Ryan followed his beloved older brother to the Army.

When Michael was discharged, DeBow picked him up at the airport — and was staggered. “When he got off the plane and I picked him up, it was like he was an empty shell,” she told me. “His body was shaking.” Michael began drinking and abusing drugs, his mother says, and he terrified her by buying the same kind of gun he had carried in Iraq. “He said he slept with his gun over there, and he needed it here,” she recalls.

Then Ryan returned home in 2007, and he too began to show signs of severe strain. He couldn’t sleep, abused drugs and alcohol, and suffered extreme jitters.

“He was so anxious, he couldn’t stand to sit next to you and hear you breathe,” DeBow remembers. A talented filmmaker, Ryan turned the lens on himself to record heartbreaking video of his own sleeplessness, his own irrational behavior — even his own mock suicide.

One reason for veteran suicides (and crimes, which get far more attention) may be post-traumatic stress disorder, along with a related condition, traumatic brain injury. Ryan suffered a concussion in an explosion in Iraq, and Michael finally had traumatic brain injury diagnosed two months ago.

Estimates of post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury vary widely, but a ballpark figure is that the problems afflict at least one in five veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq. One study found that by their third or fourth tours in Iraq or Afghanistan, more than one-quarter of soldiers had such mental health problems.

Preliminary figures suggest that being a veteran now roughly doubles one’s risk of suicide. For young men ages 17 to 24, being a veteran almost quadruples the risk of suicide, according to a study in The American Journal of Public Health.

Michael and Ryan, like so many other veterans, sought help from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Eric Shinseki, the secretary of veterans affairs, declined to speak to me, but the most common view among those I interviewed was that the V.A. has improved but still doesn’t do nearly enough about the suicide problem.

“It’s an epidemic that is not being addressed fully,” said Bob Filner, a Democratic congressman from San Diego and the senior Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee. “We could be doing so much more.”

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