Kevin is a chemistry laboratory manager with twenty-two years of professional experience. Through his work as Site Manager for the environmental testing division of Underwriters Laboratories (UL), he began to investigate the tragedy of September 11th, 2001. Ryan was fired by UL, in 2004, for publicly asking questions about UL’s testing of the structural materials used to construct the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings as well as UL’s involvement in the WTC investigation being conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
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
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.”
April 11, 2012
Author: Pete Yost
Source: Associated Press
A lawyer for FBI whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds said Tuesday the bureau’s prepublication review office has adopted overly expansive restrictions that are preventing Edmonds from publishing a book about her life at the FBI.
Edmonds, once a contract linguist at the bureau, was fired a decade ago after complaining to FBI managers about shoddy wiretap translations and alleging that an interpreter with a relative at a foreign embassy might have compromised national security by blocking translations in some cases and notifying targets of FBI surveillance.
Edmonds sued for unlawful termination, but Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped her lawsuit by invoking the state secrets privilege. He said her claims might expose government secrets that could damage national security.
Attorney Stephen Kohn said his client’s book, “Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story,” contains no classified information, yet has been under review by the bureau for the past year. Bureau regulations promise reviews will take only 30 working days. In all, reviews can cover a dozen different factors, which may significantly delay the 30-day limit, said FBI spokesman Paul Bresson.
Kohn said the bureau’s interpretation of its legal responsibility has gone far beyond classified information.
The lawyer cites language in a Feb. 7 FBI letter that says the matters Edmonds writes about involve “many equities, some of which may implicate information that is classified.” Kohn also cites a non-disclosure agreement Edmonds signed that says the agreement is intended to prevent disclosure that would be “contrary to the law, regulation or public policy.”
In response, the bureau’s public affairs office pointed to the FBI website, which says the job of the bureau’s prepublication review office is to ensure that FBI personnel safeguard “sensitive and classified information” from unauthorized disclosure. The website says the obligation to safeguard is based on “statutes, regulations, access and employment agreements, contractual clauses and the fiduciary relationships into which employees or contractor personnel enter.”
Kohn says there are numerous court decisions which have held that prepublication review only can be used for secret and classified information.
“What this says is that Sibel Edmonds — and possibly countless other thousands of FBI employees and contractors — sign an agreement to have documentation censored if the FBI director thinks it’s contrary to public policy,” said Kohn.
The most troubling prerogative of modern government is the ability of the sovereign or head of state to go to war. War means death, debt, and, if the decision is a bad one, the very end of civil society and the prevailing political order. Because war is potentially so terrible, a number of nations have curtailed the ability of the executive authority to make such a decision without first satisfying conditions imposed through constitutional and other political restraints. It is perhaps ironic that the world’s oldest republic, the United States, has ignored its own constitution to grant to the president the authority to enter into armed conflict through the simple expedient of not actually declaring war. America has been de facto at war continuously since 2001 and the recent National Defense Authorization Act has codified an unending conflict in which the whole world is a battlefield and everyone in it is a potential enemy combatant subject to no constitutional or legal protection.
Many critics of the perennially lopsided relationship that the United States enjoys with Israel have noted a disturbing shift in the relationship during the first three years of the Obama Administration. To be sure, Obama appears to genuinely dislike Israel’s arrogant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a sentiment that is fully reciprocated. But Obama is bound hand and foot into an engagement with Israel in which he lacks leverage over what might or might not take place. Even George W. Bush was able to say no to Israel when it was mooted that Tel Aviv might attack Iran, but Obama has painted himself into a corner where the United States has little influence over what might occur. Whether the Obama reticence is due to the control exercised by his Chicago billionaire patrons, the Crown and Pritzker families, both of which are strong supporters of the Middle East status quo, or whether it is just a more generalized fear about what might happen in the upcoming national elections, the result has been paralysis in Washington. Recent war games conducted by the Pentagon have confirmed that a new conflict with Iran started by Israel would quickly draw the United States in and would become regional in nature. The war would not produce a good result for anyone involved and would be particularly bad for the United States, which would again slide into deep recession as energy prices soar.
Former United States president George W Bush issued an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein before bombing and invading Iraq.
Nine years later, US President Barack Obama has issued an ultimatum to the leadership in Tehran before … setting optimal conditions for an “all options on the table” exercise.
Obama has made an offer to Tehran to “negotiate” its nuclear program – ahead of long-delayed talks between the “Iran Six” (P5+1 – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the US, the United Kingdom, China, Russia and France – plus Germany) and Iran scheduled for Istanbul on Saturday.
For starters, it’s not an offer; it’s a list of demands – even before any negotiation takes place. And these “near term” concessions are packaged – according to the president’s own rhetoric – as a “last chance”.
In modern times, this used to be known as an ultimatum. In the post-everything era, it passes for “international diplomacy”.
Obama wants Tehran to shut down and in fact destroy the Fordow enrichment plant, built under a mountain outside the holy city of Qom; he wants Tehran to definitely renounce and “surrender” its entire stockpile of uranium enriched to 20%; to stop any sort of enrichment, even to harmless 5% (which means Iran renouncing its whole civilian nuclear program, to which it has a right according to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty ); to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors full access to all Iranian nuclear sites (they already have it); and to let the inspectors talk to all top Iranian nuclear scientists (that’s not exactly possible; quite a few have been assassinated by Israel’s Mossad).
So welcome to the “roll over and die” school of diplomacy – as perfected by the Obama administration, with vital input from the Israel lobby in Washington. It’s our way of the highway. And the highway is to hell – to the sound of “Bomb Bomb Iran”.
Another war for the 1%
No wonder the proverbial “Israeli officials” are delighted that Iran – via its Foreign Ministry – has rejected all these demands as “irrational”; for Tel Aviv, the Iranian response is “good”.
“Good” means the list of demands spells out the inevitable failure of the talks – which is the core of the Israeli strategy. Afterwards Obama may (will) use the failure as the perfect excuse to apply even harsher sanctions – and who knows what else.
The whole Israeli official apparatus for months have been brainwashing Israeli, American and European public opinion for war on Iran by all means necessary – manipulating everything from a nonsensical “existential threat” to the coming of a “second Holocaust”.
