There is a balanced article on 9/11 (as opposed to a hit piece) currently appearing in this week's (Sept17-24) Santa Barbara Independent, a free weekly with an audited readership of about 120,000. (Authors: Jay Levin and Tom McKenzie).

[extracted]:

***

One of the crucial technical disputes in American history, perhaps second only to global warming, is underway. It pits hundreds of government technicians who say the World Trade Center buildings were brought down by airplane impact against hundreds of professional architects and building engineers who insist that the Twin Towers could never have collapsed solely due to the planes and are calling for a new independent investigation. It is a fight that is not going away and is likely to get louder as more building trade professionals sign on to one side or the other.

http://www.metroactive.com/metro/09.09.09/cover-0936.html
Explosive Theory

Eight years after 9/11, a growing organization of building trades professionals suspect that there was more to the event than the government will admit
By Jay Levin and Tom McKenzie

JUST A FEW YEARS ago Ed Munyak, a fire protection engineer for the city of San Jose, seemed like a lonely, out-there figure, a sometimes-target because of his outspoken position on the events of Sept. 11, 2001. These days, hundreds of other building trade professionals have joined him in challenging the official narrative about the collapse of three buildings at New York's World Trade Center (WTC) on that fateful, traumatic day.

Munyak, of Los Altos Hills, is a mechanical and fire engineer whose job is to review building plans to ensure they comply with the California Building and Fire Code. In 2007, after speaking out on his own for a few years, Munyak signed on with a then-fledging organization called Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth (AE911 Truth), founded by Bay Area architect Richard Gage.

FEMA photographer Kurt Sonnenfeld (recently interviewed by Voltairenet) has released a new set of World Trade Center disaster site images. Some were previously available, but the majority are new and high quality.

(So how did I do? Heavy constructive criticism is most welcome!)

This is the first of three YouTube videos of the June 30, 2009 PowerPoint presentation I gave for my CHEM 1411 class at South Texas College (STC). The subject was on thermite and thermate and how each of their respective nano-sized variants may have contributed to the collapse of World Trade Centers 1, 2, and most especially, 7.

Part II:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztb0BXn8IRc

Part III:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb4Zkawt8Jg

http://www.timesargus.com/article/20090620/OPINION02/906200304

The truth about 9/11

Published: June 20, 2009

I read with interest the letter from William Rice about 9/11 and the subsequent response from a reader to Rice's observations that discount all the facts that he presented. 9/11 discussions on op-ed pages rarely go well. One writer will offer an observation and then another will claim that observation to be absurd. This was exactly the case last week. No matter what fact you may present that shows the official version of events to be dubious, you will almost certainly be called a conspiracy theorist, or worse. TV personality and Fox News commentator Glenn Beck recently lumped those of us who claim to be part of the 9/11 Truth Movement in the same category as James W. Von Brunn, the man accused of murdering a guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. It's a strange leap of logic, but 9/11 discussions rarely elicit logical thinking.

Direct link to smear job- leave a comment: http://www.opednews.com/articles/911-NanoTech-Thermite-Publ-by-John-R-Moffett-090616-456.html

See this link for hyperlinks in my post:

Dr. Moffett Smears ‘Active Thermitic’ Paper by Association- Again
http://www.opednews.com/populum/diarypage.php?did=13504

In another headlined article at OpEdNews.com, Sr. Editor Dr. Moffett has again smeared the peer-reviewed paper, Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe published in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, published by Bentham.org. A different Bentham.org journal, The Open Information Science Journal, recently published a hoax paper, and 2 editors resigned: Open Access Publisher Accepts Nonsense Manuscript for Dollars. See Dr. Moffett’s previous smear job rebutted by Dr. Michael Green, here: Pardon Our Dust, or, Why the World Trade Center Dust Matters. See Dr. Moffett’s current smear job here: 911 NanoTech Thermite Publisher Accepts Fake Paper, Editors quit

I find some areas of agreement with Dr. Moffet; for instance, he says: "The only way to find out what really happened [on 9/11] is to have a large panel of independent researchers reopen the case, with access to the classified documents that would be needed to make a valid assessment of all the data."

I was going back through the NEADS tapes we released in 2007 and discovered something a little strange ...

DRM1 DAT2 Channel 4 ID Op

08:46:15: New York told me to hold on, you heard that, right?

08:46:36: Come on New York. (Dooley again) You know what, you know what, let's
get a tail number off of for American 11. (Roundtree) Call Boston, American 11 tail
number. (Dooley) Tell them we need the tail number of the aircraft, (male voice)
American one one. (Roundtree to New York) Yes it is, (right now he's primary only.)
Do you have Mode 3 or anything? Or a location? (Fm not showing anything, no.) Lat
Ion? (Hold on, I'll get a lat lon.) Good.

NORTH TOWER IS STRUCK AT 8:46:48.

08:47:05: (Dooley?) We're going to get an updated lat Ion now. (to background
question) We called Boston his filed one [Mode 3] was 1443, but he's not working that,
he's primary only, we're getting an updated lat Ion position. (I'm showing 40 39 North.)
40 39 North. (74 03 West) 74 03 West.

08:47:35: End of HUNTRESS call to NY AMIS

---

If you input that Lat/Long into Google Maps ...

Editors Note: This appears to be a new release of blueprints. It's 585 images. Some of them have the same date (02/09/84) as the previous release of 261 WTC1 drawings. -jkeogh

Pack1.zip
Pack2.zip
Pack3-1.zip
Pack3-2.zip
Pack3-3.zip
Pack3-4.zip
Pack3-5.zip
Pack3-6.zip
Pack4.zip

http://www.911getstarted.com/wtc_blueprints/

This is always essential info. The more that get it the merrier.

Regards,

Gangster

The scientific paper Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe provides, quite simply, proof that explosives were used in the destruction of the Twin Towers. Specifically, the paper positively identifies an advanced engineered pyrotechnic material in each of several samples of dust from the destroyed skyscrapers, in the form of tiny chips having red and gray sides and sharing a very specific three-dimensional structure, chemical composition, and ignition behavior.

The basis and validity of this identification can grasped quickly by anyone with a working knowledge of physics and chemistry. They need only read the paper's one-page conlusion, and perhaps its section describing the provenance of the dust samples.

But what of the reader whose strong suit isn't the hard sciences? Does one have to be an expert to understand the findings and evaluate the many claims thrown up by "debunkers" to dismiss those findings?

Small Chips in World Trade Center dust identified as unexploded Thermite

By Peter Duveen

PETER'S NEW YORK, April 4, 2009--A group of researchers says it has positively identified residues of undetonated explosives in dust samples collected soon after the collapses of three World Trade Center buildings on September 11, 2001. The positive outcome of tests carried out in painstaking detail appears to contradict the assertions by U.S. government experts that explosives were not used to take the buildings down.

The local tabloids in New York were huffing and puffing on Friday over a decision by the Port Authority to call the eventual tower at the World Trade Center site simply '1 World Trade Center' rather than the 'Freedom Tower.' In relating reactions to the decision, the article in the NY Post made sure to quote Charles Burlingame's sister, Debra:

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03272009/news/regionalnews/this_is_not_the_freedom_tower_161568.htm

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/03/26/2009-03-26_freedom_out_at_wtc_port_authority_says_t.html

And in other news, a funding bill for the Americorps national service program passed by the Senate has designated September 11 as a "National Day of Service and Remembrance":

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/03/27/2009-03-27_senate_oks_911_as_day_of_service.html

So let's all 'serve' on the anniversary with healthy servings of truth!

Click Here To Listen -- http://noliesradio.org
Coming up Saturday, March 28th at 7pm Pacific - 10pm Eastern - 02:00 GMT
Will be archived HERE after the broadcasts.

Live Broadcast from Berkeley, Calif. --- Richard Gage, AIA
9/11: Blueprint for Truth -- The Architecture of Destruction

LIVE BROADCAST -- Hear Richard Gage's lastest presentation on the controlled demolition of the towers in front of a lively Berkeley audience. This should be exciting. Please visit his website and sign the petition for a new 911 investigation.

SF Bay Area Residents: Support AE911truth.org by attending this event in person. 7pm Pacific, Saturday, March 28th. Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St., Berkeley, California (corner of Bonita in North Berkeley).

http://www.javno.com/en-world/al-qaeda-tried-to-destroy-wtc-with-help-of-fbi_237816
THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Al-Qaeda Tried To Destroy WTC With Help Of FBI? Two terrorists parked a van filled with explosives in an underground garage, but failed to destroy the Twins. By Mladen Starčević. Translated by Karmen Horvat

Ramzi Yousef and Eyad Ismoli parked their red van in an underground garage of the World Trade Centre North Tower on February 26, 1993. They stepped outside, gazed at each other, lit a 60-metre fuse and walked away.

Twenty minutes later, at 12:17 hours, the bomb made a 30 mete hole through four underground concrete stories, killing six and injuring 1,042 people.

Smoke of the explosion went up the stairs all the way to the 93 rd floor, but the Twins were left standing, probably to Yousef and Eyad`s disappointment.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/ny-nywtc246047551feb24,0,7221698.story
Pols, advocates urge rehiring of WTC health czar
The Associated Press
February 24, 2009
New York lawmakers and Sept. 11 health advocates urged President Barack Obama yesterday to rehire a World Trade Center health czar who was let go last year by the Bush administration.

John Howard's six-year term as director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health expired last July and he was not asked to stay on. Since 2006 he was the government's point person for post-9/11 illness. He often found himself at odds with the Bush administration in his advocacy for a federal program to monitor and treat thousands who said they were sickened by exposure to toxic dust.

Sept. 11 health advocates had said his departure could jeopardize future funding.

"The Bush administration made a good decision in appointing Dr. Howard and a typically bad move in letting him go," Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan) said.

The White House didn't immediately comment.

Revisiting the 9-11 newspaper archives in light of seven years of research: Part II

by Peter Duveen

PETER'S NEW YORK, December 31, 2008--There's a tremendous amount of material to be gleaned from the newspaper editions that were published in the days immediately following the events of September 1, 2001. Only seven years have passed since that human tragedy was visited upon us, yet already an aura of history has surrounded it. There is a certain forgetfulness that makes revisiting the moment all that much more of a discovery, even though, with the advent of the electronic media, there is unprecedented access to the written word in all its forms.

Below are some cogent passages from The New York Times and the New York Post that I found among a personal stack of archived newspapers, dating from the days immediately following 9-11. These passages are made all the more relevant by research conducted over much of the decade. They supplement others I have already brought to the attention of readers in "Early 9-11 Reportage Reveals Surprises" (see below, also here and here).