A new report traces the flow -- and funding -- of anti-Muslim ideas

AP/Seth Wenig

People participate in a rally against a proposed mosque and Islamic community center near ground zero in New York, Aug. 22, 2010.

http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/201108261 
Friday, August 26th, 2011

In a new book, “I Heard the Sirens Scream” Pulitzer Prize winner Laurie Garrett gives her account of the World Trade Center attacks ten years ago, and tells how she thinks those events, combined with the anthrax attacks that came shortly after, changed the country’s course.

Laurie Garrett
Senior Fellow for Global Health, Council on Foreign Relations
Pulitzer Prize Winner, 1996
Author, I Heard the Sirens Scream: How Americans Responded to the 9/11 and Anthrax Attacks" (e-book)
Brooklyn, New York

SciFri 082611 Hour 1: I Heard the Sirens Scream, Earthquakes, Video Pick
Audio: http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/sciencefriday...

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/25/303774/newscorp-911-bush-promo/

By Lee Fang on Aug 25, 2011

News Corp. employee Sean Hannity rides along with the former president in his truck on the Bush "ranch"

After spending over a decade promoting President Bush, the PATRIOT Act, and the Iraq War, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation appears to be up to the same tricks, this time with an hour-long promotional video about Bush’s leadership during the 9/11 attacks. Although News Corp. is perhaps best known for its Bush cheerleading through its Fox News subsidiary, the Bush documentary is airing on another News Corp. company with a better brand image, National Geographic.

http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/dick-cheney-betrays-george-bush-new...

By John Amato
August 26, 2011

Dick Cheney is once again telling everyone how much he loves waterboarding and torture. NBC is teasing an in-depth interview about Cheney's new book, In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir, which is being released at the end of August. Other bits and pieces are coming out to help promote the sales of the book like this article in the NY Times today: Cheney Says He Urged Bush to Bomb Syria in ’07

During George Bush's entire presidency the question of how much influence and authority VP Dick Cheney was given was always been part of the discussion. Cheney openly disdained rules, conventions and laws, pushing the concept of the Unitary Executive further than Nixon ever dreamed. Was Cheney making all the important policy decisions? Cheney once believed he was highly qualified to be president and threw out a trial balloon in 1996.

http://gigaom.com/2011/08/24/a-decade-later-the-internet-archive-chronic...

By Bobbie Johnson
Aug. 24, 2011

In a couple of weeks, the world will reach a milestone: the passing of a decade since the September 11, 2001, attacks that hit New York and Washington, left thousands dead and sparked war around the globe. In advance of that sad anniversary, on Wednesday, San Francisco’s Internet Archive — the nonprofit preservation project run by online pioneer Brewster Kahle — is launching a website that captures the events for posterity.

The Understanding 9/11 site — which features a library of footage taken from a broad range of TV news channels on and after September 11, 2001 — is what the organization calls “a resource for scholars, journalists, and the public.” It’s a comprehensive archive of material, much of it available online for the first time.

What the Internet Archive has achieved is astounding. There are more than 3,000 hours of footage taken from news stations in America and around the world, covering the morning of the attacks and the subsequent week. That includes not only CNN and CBS, CNN, NBC, ABC and Fox but also stations from the UK, Mexico, Iraq, China and beyond.

The site has also compiled a list of analysis pieces that examine the coverage and the events and a video summary of the key moments during the day.

It’s a huge volume of information, but the size isn’t overwhelming; the material is presented in an easy-to-navigate visual style, with each block of programming cut into 10-minute and then 30-second chunks. It makes it easy to sift through to see what actually happened and when.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/08/why_is_alec_baldwin_alluding_t.html
8/24/11 at 10:27 AM

Photo: Twitter

The actor and potential mayoral hopeful had a late Twitter session overnight, as he's been known to do, in which he answered questions from followers. At the end, he went on a particularly uncomfortable tangent. "Do you think Bin Laden was behind 9-11?" he wrote, followed by two messages about the counter-terrorist exercise Amalgam Virgo, a favorite talking point of the truther movement. When Baldwin was asked if it was "a little late to make that accusation" by a follower, he replied, "what 'accusation?'" and concluded: "9-11 ........ what have we learned?"

For one, we've learned that people are not generally thrilled when September 11 is invoked with doubt as to its perpetrators, whether it's a joke or not. Baldwin, who's hosting a public forum next month about 9/11, is a noted provocateur and a master with the press, so it's possible that he's poking fun at the truther contingent or just getting himself some attention. But even if that's the case, he's doing so in a way ambiguous enough to raise eyebrows.

NEW YORK -- The first responders are not invited to this year's September 11 memorial ceremony at ground zero, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office confirmed this week.

"Given the space constraints, we're working to find ways to recognize and honor first responders, and other groups, at different places and times," Bloomberg spokesman Andrew Brent said, noting that the commemoration ceremony is for the victim's families.

In addition to the victims' families, several politicians, including two presidents, are expected to be in attendance. Bloomberg's office would not provide specifics on the ceremony's arrangements, but did note that the first responders have not been invited to the preceding nine memorial services, either.

Morris Faitelewicz, vice president of the Auxiliary Police Supervisors Benevolent Association, called that explanation "nonsense." Faitelewicz said first responders have been able to attend all of the previous ceremonies simply by showing up.

Not allowing them to attend this year -- the 10th anniversary of the terror attacks -- is an especially galling affront, he said.

It's a painful insult for many of the approximately 3,000 men and women who risked their lives, limbs and lungs on that monumental day, puncturing another hole in a still searing wound.

Networks are betting that Americans are ready to tackle the enormity of Sept. 11 with a range of dramas and documentaries.
August 14, 2011|By Steven Zeitchik, Los Angeles Times

Every once in a while, a fire truck will pass by Rudolph Giuliani's window, and the former New York mayor will flash back to that dreadful day when he had to drop everything and rush to ground zero. "It's just hard to hear it and not react," he said in an interview. "I don't know if that will ever change — some things will always trigger the memories."

Those memories were formed on Sept. 11, 2001, when the New York mayor was the sure hand steadying a rattled city. This time, though, he's the one doing the triggering: Giuliani is one of several leaders featured in "9/11: Day That Changed the World," a new Smithsonian Channel retrospective that chronicles the day from the point of view of those in power, using both archival footage and recent interviews. (Former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and New York fire chief Thomas von Essen are also interviewed.)

Here's a new video in which The NIST World Trade Center report for the Twin Towers is examined and shown to be false and unscientific.

Uploaded by DK1Ryan on Aug 14, 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8wOXv2gAKg

Bob Coen, who made the film "Anthrax War," has also launched a new site that is in preparation for his new film.
http://www.secretsofthedust.com/launch.html

http://digwithin.net/2011/08/01/the-bbc-to-take-another-shot-at-911-truth/

Three years ago, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) put out another episode in its ongoing “Conspiracy Files” series of programs. This series has covered many issues of public concern about government reports on inexplicable events, including the Lockerbie bombing, the 7/07 London bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the mysterious death of microbiologist David Kelly.  In every single case, the BBC program concludes that there was nothing to worry about, that the official reports are correct, and that citizens should just go about their business and trust the government.

The 2008 episode was a second such program covering the events of 9/11, this one focused specifically on World Trade Center (WTC) building 7.  It was entitled “The Third Tower” and surprised millions of people around the world by stating that the mystery surrounding the collapse of that 47-story building, which fell into its own footprint in 7 seconds, had finally been solved.  The BBC told us that the US government investigators would soon put all our minds to rest regarding this inexplicable event.  That was far from the truth, however, as this earlier blog post makes clear.

In 2008, I had the opportunity to view a re-run of this program on the internet.  After doing so, I wrote to the program’s producer, Mike Rudin, offering suggestions for improvement prior to the revision of the program for world-wide consumption. The letter I wrote is below. Rudin must have been impressed as he asked to speak with me on the phone and we did so later for about 30-minutes. Basically, he is a very nice propagandist who is not willing to address the facts or correct his mistakes.

This year, for the tenth anniversary, the BBC and Mike Rudin are planning another episode on 9/11. Unfortunately, it is not expected to be an apology for the BBC’s promotion of war and societal destruction through promotion of the official conspiracy theories. Instead, word on the street is that BBC will attempt to smear and discredit professor Niels Harrit, whose paper on nanothermite found in the WTC dust has gone unanswered in the mainstream scientific literature for two and a half years. BBC has interviewed at least one known disinformation specialist for the purpose, and has once again declined my offer to help. 

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/08/bush-and-clinton-counter-terroris...

Richard Clarke - the top Bush and Clinton counter-terrorism czar - alleges that there was a high-level decision in the CIA to suppress key information regarding two Al Qaeda hijackers inside the U.S:

Clarke theorizes that top CIA brass tried to recruit the hijackers and turn them to our side, but were unsuccessful. And - when they realized had failed - they covered up their tracks so that the FBI would not investigate their illegal CIA activities , “malfeasance and misfeasance”, on U.S. soil.

It's not just Clarke. Many high-level government counter-terrorism experts doubt the CIA's version of events.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/filmmakers-obama-administration-bin-l...

Filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal responded Wednesday to accusations that their movie on the capture of Osama bin Laden is a ploy to boost the president's re-election campaign. 

Bigelow and Boal hold Oscars for "The Hurt Locker" in Mar. 2010 (Chris Pizzello/AP)

By TAMARA LUSH Associated Press - August 11, 2011 (AP)

WASHINGTON | Wed Aug 3, 2011 3:21pm EDT

(Reuters) - Attorney General Eric Holder will reassure families of September 11 victims when he meets them later this month that the Justice Department is seriously investigating allegations that News Corp reporters tried to hack victims' phones.

"I'll certainly want to hear what they have to say with regard to their concerns and, to the extent that I can share information with them, I will," Holder said on Wednesday.

"I will try to reassure them that this is something we are taking seriously," he told reporters.

Holder will meet with the families on August 24 at their request following a report in Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper that reporters with the rival News of the World had offered to pay a New York police officer for private phone records of some victims of the 2001 attacks.

The Mirror report, citing an unidentified source, has yet to be independently verified but has fueled speculation that the phone hacking scandal that has rocked Rupert Murdoch's News Corp media empire in Britain may spread to the United States.

By Stephen C. Webster
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011

In a new "history" cartoon aimed at children, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, now a Fox News personality, spins an animated, less-than-nuanced retelling of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., with a distinctly pro-Bush, pro-torture spin.

In his "Learn Our History," the former Republican presidential candidate puts forward a version of 9/11 that depicts America "coming together" in the wake of the attacks and rallying behind their leader's plan to "take down al Qaeda."

Workers Stage Walkout at World Trade Center Site

By Joseph De Avila, Andrew Grossman and Eliot Brown

Hundreds of unionized concrete workers walked off the job at the World Trade Center on Monday, setting up for a possible strike in the coming days.

The ruling elite has created social institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance.

by Bob Fitrakis
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2011/4239

July 20, 2011 A new filing in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell case includes a copy of the Ohio Secretary of State election production system configuration that was in use in Ohio's 2004 presidential election when there was a sudden and unexpected shift in votes for George W. Bush.

The filing also includes the revealing deposition of the late Michael Connell. Connell served as the IT guru for the Bush family and Karl Rove. Connell ran the private IT firm GovTech that created the controversial system that transferred Ohio's vote count late on election night 2004 to a partisan Republican server site in Chattanooga, Tennessee owned by SmarTech. That is when the vote shift happened, not predicted by the exit polls, that led to Bush's unexpected victory. Connell died a month and a half after giving this deposition in a suspicious small plane crash.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall is suing the parent company of the Champion sports apparel maker, calling the decision to drop his endorsement deal over his tweets about the death of Osama bin Laden and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks a breach of contract.

Mendenhall's lawyers filed suit Monday in U.S. District Court in North Carolina, seeking roughly $1 million in damages from Hanesbrands, Inc., the Winston-Salem-based corporate parent of Champion.

The complaint says Champion's decision to end its endorsement deal with Mendenhall in May, days after he questioned the public celebration of bin Laden's death, violates a contract extension the two parties signed in 2010, worth more than $1 million. Mendenhall first signed a deal to endorse Champion products when he entered the league in 2008.

"For Rashard, this really is not about the money. This is about whether he can express his opinion," said Steven Thompson, a Chicago-based attorney representing Mendenhall.

A spokesman for Hanesbrands did not return a call seeking comment by early Tuesday afternoon.

Shortly after bin Laden was killed by a team of Navy SEALs, Mendenhall tweeted, in response to scenes of euphoria around the U.S., "What kind of person celebrates death? It's amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We've only heard one side..."

He also tweeted on the Sept. 11 attacks: "We'll never know what really happened. I just have a hard time believing a plane could take a skyscraper down demolition style."

Tuesday, Jul 19, 2011
By Glenn Greenwald 

"President Obama... actually threatened to veto the entire intelligence authorization bill if it included a proposed bipartisan amendment (passed by the House) that would have mandated an independent inquiry into the FBI's anthrax investigation."

Sept. 11 families seek FBI meeting
By: Jennifer Epstein for Politico
July 18, 2011 03:59 PM EDT

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/07/co-chair-of-911-inquiry-american....

It's front page news today that:

Journalists at Rupert Murdoch’s now-shuttered News of the World paper tried to access the mobile phones of 9/11 victims, a former New York City police officer claimed on Monday.

It's also front page news today that the new Secretary of Defense - Leon Panetta - said that American soldiers are in Iraq because of 9/11, even though AFP notes:

That was one of the justifications for the 2003 US-led invasion, but the argument has since been widely dismissed.

(see this for details).

But a more important story - and one which might focus on a more appropriate country
country than Iraq - is that the co-chair of the Congressional Joint 9/11 Inquiry (Bob Graham) today alleged a cover up by the U.S. government of state assistance by Saudi Arabia to the 9/11 hijackers.

Published: 11 July, 2011
http://rt.com/usa/news/reopen-attacks-building-two/

Those who lost loved ones during terrorist attacks at New York’s World Trade Center are asking the US Attorney’s office to reopen a case related to September 11.

The 9/11 Parents and Families of Firefighters & WTC Victims, along with the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, is demanding that all evidence from a Ground Zero high-rise that was damaged as a result of the terrorist attacks be reviewed again in full, citing a lack of accountability in the death of two firefighters.

The former Deutsche Bank building in lower Manhattan was damaged during the 9/11 attacks but remained standing in part for years after. A 2007 blaze in the building, however, left two firefighters dead and activists are saying questions are being left unanswered about the incident.

According to a statement issued by the two groups, numerous violations in the building were never reported. A construction contractor and two supervisors were acquitted of manslaughter, among other charges, in what led to the two 2007 deaths.

NOTW reporters tried to access 9/11 phone data: report
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/11/us-newscorp-hacking-sept-idUST...

LONDON | Mon Jul 11, 2011 2:17am EDT

(Reuters) - Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper reported on Monday that News of the World journalists had offered to pay a New York police officer to retrieve the private phone records of victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Citing an unidentified source, the newspaper said journalists had wanted the phone numbers of the dead as well as details of the calls they had made and received in the days leading to the attacks.

News Corp chief executive Rupert Murdoch last week shut down the News of the World, Britain's top-selling Sunday tabloid, as allegations grew that its journalists had illegally accessed the voicemails of thousands of people, from child murder victims to the families of Britain's war dead.

The police officer, who now works as a private investigator, said at the time that he would turn down the request because of "how bad it would look," the source was quoted as saying.

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

More coverage:

By Agence France-Presse
Monday, July 11th, 2011

Newly appointed US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told American troops in Baghdad on Monday that 9/11 was the reason they were in Iraq, before he was quickly corrected by his spokesman.

"The reason you guys are here is because of 9/11. The US got attacked and 3,000 human beings got killed because of Al-Qaeda," Panetta told about 150 soldiers at the Camp Victory US base.

"We've been fighting as a result of that," he said.

The administration of former US President George W. Bush had hastily linked Saddam Hussein, the ousted Iraqi dictator, to the 9/11 attacks.

That was one of the justifications for the 2003 US-led invasion, but the argument has since been widely dismissed.

Written by AE911Truth

Start your own neighborhood 9/11 Truth awareness campaign with AE911Truth’s new yard signs. Your neighbors need it, visiting relatives need it, the postal carrier needs it, and passersby need it. Now you can take a stand for the truth leading up to the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 – and find out who is going to wake up to the implications of WTC 7 – because YOU took some action! Post them at your tabling events downtown and display them during your actions on the street.

The front of the sign features the second-by-second free-fall of this 47-story skyscraper that NIST explains was caused by “normal office fires.”

Just show the “film strip” photo to people on the street and ask them what could possibly cause 40,000 tons of structural steel to give way in just 6-½ seconds – more than two seconds of that in pure free fall. Then invite them to reconsider what might have happened to the Twin Towers. Now you’ve got a discussion.

The back of the sign features the inspiring three beams of light shining into the evening NY City skyline. Of course the third beam represents the third skyscraper to be destroyed at a rate exceeding many explosive controlled demolitions. “Ask Questions … Demand Answers” is the call to action here. (We’ve changed the wording “fall apart” to “collapse” in the final version.)

The signs come with steel “H” support stands and can be modified for hand-held demonstrations.

We've been told that 9/11 changed everything.

Is it true?

Let's look at the facts:

• The Afghanistan war was planned before 9/11 (see this and this)

• The decision to launch the Iraq war was made before 9/11. Indeed, former CIA director George Tenet said that the White House wanted to invade Iraq long before 9/11, and inserted "crap" in its justifications for invading Iraq. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill - who sat on the National Security Council - also says that Bush planned the Iraq war before 9/11. Top British officials say that the U.S. discussed Iraq regime change even before Bush took office. And in 2000, Cheney said a Bush administration might "have to take military action to forcibly remove Saddam from power.''

• Cheney apparently even made Iraqi's oil fields a national security priority before 9/11. And the Sunday Herald reported: "Five months before September 11, the US advocated using force against Iraq ... to secure control of its oil." (remember that Alan Greenspan, John McCain, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, a high-level National Security Council officer and others all say that the Iraq war was really about oil.)

• The Patriot Act was planned before 9/11. Indeed, former Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke told Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig:
  

  After 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed.

  The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.

  (4:30 into this video).

• Cheney dreamed of giving the White House the powers of a monarch long before 9/11

• Cheney and Rumsfeld actively generated fake intelligence which exaggerated the threat from an enemy in order to justify huge amounts of military spending long before 9/11. And see this

• The government's spying on Americans began before 9/11 (confirmed here and here. And see this)

• The decision to threaten to bomb Iran was made before 9/11

• It was known long before 9/11 that torture doesn't work to produce accurate intelligence ... but is an effective way to terrorize people

• And - sadly - America played dirty games to justify and win wars before 9/11

9/11 didn't change anything. It was simply an excuse to implement existing plans.

It has been almost three years since AE911Truth crossed the Atlantic to share the explosive 9/11 evidence with Europe. Now, founder Richard Gage, AIA, and other activists are making a return visit. The month of June will take Gage across the British Isles and onto the mainland in a new tour of Europe, where numerous audiences will be exposed to the WTC technical analysis that has the backing of more than 1500 architects and engineers.

This tour kicks off on the TV3 news show Ireland: AM on June 9, where Gage will discuss the scientific and forensic evidence behind 9/11 with early morning TV viewers. As the country’s only breakfast news program, Ireland A.M. provides AE911Truth with an opportunity to educate tens of thousands about the controlled demolition of the Twin Towers and WTC Building 7.

Irish audiences will be able to see the 9/11: Blueprint for Truth presentation live in Dublin on June 11, where Gage will join several influential figures for a unique event. WeAreChange founder Luke Rudkowski, geopolitical researcher Alan Watt, Dr. Andrew Wakefield and others will also speak, along with Jim Corr, famed Irish activist from the band The Corrs.

This conference was made possible through the sponsorship of the Sovereign Independent, the leading 9/11 Truth publication in Ireland. Its founder, Ian Crilly, sees great promise in presenting this provocative information at public venues. “I believe that many people know that something is wrong with that 9/11 narrative,” he said, “and events like these will encourage them to mix with others who have also asked themselves the same questions.”

Washington's Blog:

Fire Dog Lake's Jeff Kaye writes today:

The entire 9/11 field of inquiry has been vilified, poisoned over the years by ridicule, sometimes fantastic conspiracy mongering, and fearfulness by journalists of approaching the material, lest they be branded as irresponsible or some kind of conspiracy freak. As a result, little work has been done to investigate, except by a small group of people, some of whom have raised some real questions ...

Similarly, Air Force Colonel and key Pentagon official Karen Kwiatkowski - who blew the whistle on the Bush administration's efforts to concoct false intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - wrote (page 26):

I have been told by reporters that they will not report their own insights or contrary evaluations of the official 9/11 story, because to question the government story about 9/11 is to question the very foundations of our entire modern belief system regarding our government, our country, and our way of life. To be charged with questioning these foundations is far more serious than being labeled a disgruntled conspiracy nut or anti-government traitor, or even being sidelined or marginalized within an academic, government service, or literary career. To question the official 9/11 story is simply and fundamentally revolutionary. In this way, of course, questioning the official story is also simply and fundamentally American.

Former military analyst and famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said that the government has ordered the media not to cover 9/11:

Washington's Blog

A whistleblower using the alias "Iron Man" was the head of a special joint military-intelligence operation called DO5, a branch of the Joint Forces Intelligence Command, alleges that his team knew that the World Trade Centers and Pentagon were likely targets of Al Qaeda, and that he ran this information up the chain of command.

As Truth-out reports:

"I kept the original classifications on the slides, as historical documents, although the fact that al-Qa'ida was likely to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was clearly no longer classified" ...

Iron Man further elaborated on this point by stating that high-level DoD officials held discussions about DO5's intelligence activities between the summer of 2000 and June 2001 revolving around al-Qaeda's interest in striking the Pentagon, the World Trade Center (WTC), and other targets.

In other words, the Bush administration was fully aware the terrorist organization had set its sights on those structures prior to 9/11 and, apparently, government officials failed to act on those warnings.