Fanatics

Mark Crispin Miller, in "Fooled Again", does a good job in laying out the extreme fanaticism, paranoia, projectionism and delusion of the modern American right-wing.

In the context of his book, this paranoid and delusional fanaticism explains the motivation for the lengths they would go to steal the 2004 election for Bush.

But their paranoid and delusional fanaticism can also explain many other things, such as the invasion of Iraq, 9/11 and the many other mind-numbing outrages they have perpetrated over the past five years.

Thus, the Bush administration is very likely delusional about the threat posed by "the bad guys" (Al Qaeda and Iraq), and the extreme paranoia of the Bush administration can explain their "attack them before they get us" mentality.

Interestingly, this paranoid and delusional fanaticism may even explain why they might actually stage a false-flag terror attack on US citizens.

The idea is that 9/11 was set-up as a pre-emptive terror strike on America-- specifically to shock Americans into the same sort of paranoid and delusional thinking about the enemy as the mentality held by the right-wing (and to a large degree it worked!). Thus, the most extreme elements of the right-wing who were behind 9/11 could rationalize killing Americans as a necessary evil if it furthered their global goals.

Although Miller doesn't talk about 9/11 per se, the key point that he drives home is that the Bush administration is run by extreme fanatics who will stop at nothing to achieve the manifestation of their (apocalyptic) worldview.

Was Bush Set-Up to Take the Fall in the NSA Spying Scandal?

Previously I went over some possible reasons why Bush would break the law to spy on Americans without a warrant.

But there is yet another reason I didn't list for why he did this: he was SET-UP.

The idea is this-- the NSA spying by itself is worthless, it is not an effective way to catch terrorists or stop terror plots.

Yet Bush was told that the spying was essential to prevent another 9/11, presumably by the real power brokers in the government. They knew Bush would go for it, knowing his reckless nature.

Thus, he was set-up, as yet another way of gaining control over him.

A weakened Bush is a more easily manipulated Bush.

Is this what happened for sure?

I don't know.

But it makes some sense.

Of course, the White House could have been using the system in the worst way-- to target political opponents. But there is no evidence for this yet. Moreover, it is not obvious that career NSA officials would go for outright politically-oriented spying and remain silent about it. But newer revelations could well change that.

Excellent Essay on ECHELON and the Bush Spying Scandal

Here.

It's a long piece that goes over the extreme recklessness of this administration and why they must be stopped if at all possible.

This piece also brings up the important question of what Echelon was doing prior to 9/11 (hint: gathering a lot of information) and what the Bush administration was doing with the information (hint: nothing).

Chinese Demolition

(Click on pic to enlarge)

In case you thought buildings could only fall straight down into their "footprint".

Inset shows the start of the demolition.

(photo scanned from "Maxim" magazine, Sept. 2005 issue; accompanying story)

Casting for Osama

Funny.

The SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 TREASON INDEPENDENT PROSECUTOR ACT

For what it is worth.

The Recent Dearth of Posts

Sorry.

I went away and was unable to post as much as I expected. Regular posts will resume shortly.

Some articles of interest:

1) Taibbi on Bush and Iraq: a must-read. (Great line: "Bush in person always strikes me as the kind of guy who would ask a woman for a hand job at the end of a first date. He has days where he looks like she said yes, and days where the answer was no. Today was one of his no days.")

2) An article on Bush's special CIA covert "GST" team created to go after Al Qaeda. So why is it that if these guys have so many powers, they can't find bin Laden or his right hand-man al Zawahiri?

3) What a surprise-- the former CIA man in charge of going after bin Laden, Michael Scheuer, has a bit of a credibility problem.

Does This Really Look Like a Simple Pancaking of Cement Floors?

A Determined Enemy????

If we assume as many Bushbots seem to, that Al Qaeda is an existential threat to the US, and that thousands of Al Qaeda sympathizers and operatives are within the US and so deserve to be spied on, the question becomes: WHERE'S THE FUCKING BEEF?

If Al Qaeda is so deadly, and our intelligence services are so inept, where are the successful attacks since 9/11?

Or if our people have gotten their act together, where are the the reports of hundreds of foiled attacks and the hundreds of arrests and hundreds of prosecutions made?

What are the plots we've heard busted up? An Al Qaeda-linked mentally disturbed truck driver who wanted to destroy the Brooklyn bridge with a blowtorch. Anything else?

What exactly have we gotten for these grave assaults on our constitutional freedoms?



In truth-- it's kind of hard to escape the conclusion that the war on terror is bogus.

Big Brudder

But it's in the name of 9/11, so it's okay. (/snark)

However, it seems as though not everyone is so happy about being a soldier in Big Brother's army.

There's A Whole Lotta Bush Hatin' Goin' On

http://impeachthesonofabitch.com/

http://theworstpresidentever.blogspot.com/

Weird Second Hit Video

A long level shot from the east.

Questions:

1) why is the plane so dark when the sun should be shining right on it from that side?

2) when the camera pans to the right after the beginning of the explosion, what is that odd thing floating in the air?

3) is the plane path shown here the same one as shown here?
In the side view, the plane seems to be fairly level before it slowly rolls to the left and then hits. In the frontal view one here, the plane descends quite dramatically, and then immediately rolls to the left and then hits.

Update: I think the two videos are more-or-less in agreement, since the "blue plane" video is about three-times faster than the dark plane one. The long low dark plane one perhaps shows the last five seconds or so of the "blue plane" video before the plane hits.

The questions still remain about the coloring and the weird floating object though.

Also very convenient how the spire covers the entry site in the dark plane video.

Finally, there is the strange camera point-of-view in the "blue-plane" video, where the camera seems to move alongside the plane, and the plane hardly is affect by perspective.

Why Was WTC7 Pulled So Late in the Day on 9/11?

An excellent essay addressing this question. The main theory is that the initial attempt to bring down the building along with the WTC towers, failed.

Pentagon Facade Damage

Great analysis by Killtown here.

What really gets me is the upper square hole with the piece dangling down:




This is where the fuselage of flight 77 is supposed to have gone through!

The FBI is Hiding the WTC Black Boxes???

According to this article.

Hard to know what to make of this. I tend to doubt there were black boxes found there, since I don't think normal planes hit the WTC. But if the boxes were there, then I am certain they were not of the right planes.

Letter to Barbara Boxer from "George Washington"

Dear Senator Boxer,

I am writing to thank you for stating that you will investigate 9/11 "wherever it leads". As someone who has researched 9/11 for several years, I can assure you that the Able Danger program is only the tip of the iceberg. Please have your staff review the evidence provided at www.911Proof.com to justify this assertion.

You also, apparently, stated that ending the war in Iraq is a higher priority for you. While I respect your intention -- and also think we should extricate ourselves from Iraq -- I would respectfully argue that waiting on your efforts regarding 9/11 would be a grave tactical mistake.

Specifically, the administration's false claims linking Iraq and 9/11 helped convince a large portion of the American public to invade Iraq. While the focus now may be on false WMD claims, it is important to remember that, at the time, the Iraq-911 link was at least as important in many people's minds as a reason to invade Iraq.

Moreover, the trauma of September 11, 2001 is what galvanized many Americans to rally around the Bush administration in general, to close ranks in time of peril, and to give Bush his "mandate" (putting questions of election fraud to the side). Ever since 9/11, the American people have been terrified -- and thus irrational -- based upon the trauma of the vicious attacks. Since most Americans believe that the bad guys are "out there" and are about to get us unless we have a strong leader to fight them, they will not and CANNOT make any logical decisions about any other foreign or domestic issues -- including withdrawl from Iraq -- until "we get the bad guys".

Indeed, the WMD hoax probably would not have worked if it wasn't for the anti-Arab hysteria after September 11th. And the government policy of torture would not have been tolerated if we weren't misled into thinking that Saddam and Al-Qaeda had formed an unholy, all-powerful alliance on 9/11, and had to be stopped at any costs. Thus, I would argue that the Saddam-911 deception was necessary a precursor to the administration's WMD lies and torture policies. (truncated)

Good stuff, I only hope her people are open-minded enough to check this out.

Here's the Crux of the Matter in the Bush Wiretapping Case

In essence, Bush is saying "trust me, I won't abuse this special secret power".

The problem is that at this point, there is no reason to trust Bush.

He has lied about almost everything, from Iraq's WMD to the use of wiretaps to the status of social security. On top of that, as shown by 9/11 and Katrina, his administration is probably at best incompetent, and more likely purely malicious to people who don't share its stunted worldview.

There is no way we should trust this administration under these circumstances.

They broke the law, they can't be trusted-- they time is up.

Why 9/11 Truth Is Important Now, More Than Ever

Because we have a president who has admitted to circumventing the constitution and our laws-- all in the name of 9/11. This is an outrageous attack on our government and our democracy, but Bush thinks he can get away with as long as he plays the "terror card".

And if the terror card was REAL, than maybe there would be a better rationale for what Bush has done than the rationale that they have offered so far.

But the terror card is bogus-- 9/11 was an inside job-- and therefore we have a president who has knowingly behaved illegally, without good cause.

But as long as Bush plays the 9/11 terror card, the media and the Republican party will let him get away with almost anything.

This IS NOT a healthy situation for our country.

The only way to stop this madness is to push 9/11 truth. Now, more than ever, people must wake up to the fact that 9/11 was synthetic terror, manufactured by extreme ideologues in the government.

A Clear Case of Bush Lying:

Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.

(via Atrios)

Did Bush even know what he was saying?

Newsweek Gets Some Balls

Bush’s Snoopgate
The president was so desperate to kill The New York Times’ eavesdropping story, he summoned the paper’s editor and publisher to the Oval Office. But it wasn’t just out of concern about national security.Dec. 19, 2005 - Finally we have a Washington scandal that goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power. President Bush came out swinging on Snoopgate—he made it seem as if those who didn’t agree with him wanted to leave us vulnerable to Al Qaeda—but it will not work. We’re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

There's more at the link...

WHY?

It still doesn't make sense that the Bush administraiton would do this wiretapping activity around the FISA court when there really is no impediment to getting these warrants.

The best I can figure there are five reasons for the Bush admin to do these wiretaps secretly and illegally:

1) they just wanted to flout their wartime powers-- an exercise of raw power and perhaps test how people would respond

2) they really were targeting political opponents, under the cover of going after terrorists, and wanted to keep this secret because it is extremely illegal

3) interestingly, is it possible that he's tipping off that the terrorists are in the government itself, and therefore the court system can't be trusted?

4) as I mentioned earlier, they were probing to see who knew what about 9/11, and didn't want to tell the court what they were up to

5) were they targeting journalists?

Any other possibilities? What makes the most sense?

Probably a combination of number one, two and four, I would guess.

So--- How Exactly Does It Help Terrorists to Know that Bush is Doing Illegal Wiretaps?

I really want to know.

Bush Admitting He Authorized These Wiretaps

reminds me of Clinton going on national TV admitting he had an affair. He is 'fessing up, but he still broke the law-- and he knows it.

Watching him answering questions: what a fucking asshole. He's wagging the finger of national security in our face. Helping the enemy, indeed. He's the enemy.

"Secret Prisons - Where People Have Been Tortured - That's Unacceptable"

What an asshole.

Apologists:

Come on. The government is not just repeating the targeting of political opponents a la J. Edgar Hoover or Richard Nixon. It is not picking out a Seymour Hersh or a Cindy Sheehan to find their links to foreign influences nor seeking to ruin their lives by developing incriminating evidence on them.

How the fuck do we even KNOW this? I bet dollars to donuts the Bush administration IS targeting political opponents under cover of this secret "program". What a bunch of criminals.

Just Making Up Laws

Gotta give the Bush administration points for creativity:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this morning defended the administration's domestic eavesdropping operation, saying it derived its legality from the congressional resolution permitting the use of force to fight terrorism as well as from the "inherent powers" of the president as commander-in-chief.

He acknowledged that such eavesdropping would be illegal under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But that act, he said, makes an exception for eavesdropping when "otherwise authorized" by statute. That authorizing statute, he argued, was the 2001 resolution, known as the "Authorization to use Military Force."

These guys are really quite amazing.

Feingold:

"Nobody, nobody, thought when we passed a resolution to invade Afghanistan and to fight the war on terror, including myself who voted for it, thought that this was an authorization to allow a wiretapping against the law of the United States."

Commentary Round-up

On the Spying Scandal:
The long term consequnces of Bush and his ten-step plan to destroy America.

The Coronation of King George.

How the Media "Authorize" the Abuse of Government Power (by Bush).


Even Lindsay Graham thinks Bush overstepped.

The Clear and Present Danger of Bush.

Voting Machine Fraud
Even Jeb Bush seems worried about Diebold machines after it is shown how easily they can be hacked. (hard to know what is going on here, considering the conservative grip on voting machines.)

9/11
Is Professor Jones a Hack? (the answer would seem to be "yes".)

A "Charm" Offensive?

Does the Bush administration really think they can turn Bush's numbers around just by having him give lots of speeches about Iraq and having him admitting his mistakes?

Somehow, I have a feeling it won't work-- though the press sure eats it up.

I Know, I Know-- It's a Darn Shame President Bush Had His Golden Iraq Election Story Hijacked by this Illegal Spying Story

First, let us pause a moment to castigate the incredible liberal bias of the NY Times, who were traitors to the country for reporting the spying story.

But onto Iraq and its elections.

I have noticed that few if any liberal blogs have commented on the historic Iraq elections-- and that is just WRONG, since we spent so much effort establishing these elections, at least 2200 US dead, at least 17,000 US wounded and over 200,000,000,000 dollars (and at least 30,000 Iraqi dead-- but who is counting?).

The point is, we PAID for these elections DAMMIT, and we don't want it spoiled by treasonous liberals like the NYTimes.

I do wonder though-- what if we had just tried to coerce Saddam Hussein into holding fair elections? Maybe even insert election monitors into Iraq under threat of force. Perhaps we could have even paid the Iraqi government several billion dollars for this effort. I just wonder-- if we really wanted to bring democracy and elections to Iraq, why didn't we even TRY diplomacy? Wasn't it worth the effort? We could have possibly saved a lot of lives and a lot of money.

Nonetheless, elections in Iraq are a good thing, as far as it goes.

But one thing I can predict confidently: these elections won't stop Iraqis from killing US soldiers. That won't end until we leave.

Whatever the Motivations Behind Its Reporting---

this NYTimes editorial gets it about right:

Let's be clear about this: illegal government spying on Americans is a violation of individual liberties, whether conditions are troubled or not. Nobody with a real regard for the rule of law and the Constitution would have difficulty seeing that. The law governing the National Security Agency was written after the Vietnam War because the government had made lists of people it considered national security threats and spied on them. All the same empty points about effective intelligence gathering were offered then, just as they are now, and the Congress, the courts and the American people rejected them.

This particular end run around civil liberties is also unnecessary. The intelligence agency already had the capacity to read your mail and your e-mail and listen to your telephone conversations. All it had to do was obtain a warrant from a special court created for this purpose. The burden of proof for obtaining a warrant was relaxed a bit after 9/11, but even before the attacks the court hardly ever rejected requests.

The special court can act in hours, but administration officials say that they sometimes need to start monitoring large batches of telephone numbers even faster than that, and that those numbers might include some of American citizens. That is supposed to justify Mr. Bush's order, and that is nonsense. The existing law already recognizes that American citizens' communications may be intercepted by chance. It says that those records may be retained and used if they amount to actual foreign intelligence or counterintelligence material. Otherwise, they must be thrown out.

President Bush defended the program yesterday, saying it was saving lives, hotly insisting that he was working within the Constitution and the law, and denouncing The Times for disclosing the program's existence. We don't know if he was right on the first count; this White House has cried wolf so many times on the urgency of national security threats that it has lost all credibility. But we have learned the hard way that Mr. Bush's team cannot be trusted to find the boundaries of the law, much less respect them.

Mr. Bush said he would not retract his secret directive or halt the illegal spying, so Congress should find a way to force him to do it. Perhaps the Congressional leaders who were told about the program could get the ball rolling.

The NSA Has Been Indirectly Spying on Americans for Year Via the Echelon Network

So it makes me wonder what this new revelation about Bush authorizing warrantless spying is really all about* (see here for more about Echelon).

Sadly, I suspect some game is being played here by "the powers that be" (US Gov't and NYTimes):

Acknowledgment + Confirmation - Outrage = Normalization

They are now dismantling the whole Constitution right in front of us-- making the whole thing seem "natural"-- once the shock and outrage goes away.

Today we had the spectacle of Bush admitting the whole thing and essentially bragging about it. Shoving it in our faces.

This whole thing stinks.

But... still, I think this will push a lot of people over the edge. Not very many people know about Echelon. And the idea that Bush knowingly ordered this spying will be very chilling to millions of Americans. It could well lead to his impeachment if Democrats get back in power-- or if Republicans somehow regain their sense of honor.

One weird thing about Bush is the way he glorifies in all this abhorrent behaviour on the part of the US-- the stuff that we hid in our closet (torture, illegal spying, etc), he now comes out and shoves in our face and essentially dares us to do something about it-- like he's picking a fight. I don't quite get his game.

Because he could lose VERY badly over this. And I hope he does. Because otherwise our country is a sick mockery of itself.

*I think there is much more to this than just the NYTimes reporter wanting to sell his book.

UPDATE: One reason the Echelon program doesn't raise so much outcry, as far as I can tell, is that it essentially spies on EVERYONE (in theory). Whereas clearly what Bush was doing was specifically targetted at certain people.

Kucinich!

I like the fact he seems to be truly upset about the Bush outrages.

Just Because the Bush Administration Says Something Is Legal, It Does Not Mean It Is Legal

The last I read, the court system has the final word in interpreting the law.

Unless the Bush administration secretly changed that, too.

A Few Must Read Eschaton Posts

Here (Feingold's statement).

Here.

Make the List Public Indeed. All of these people have had their clear constitutional and legal rights violated under direct order from the president of the United States. Who knows, some of them may be bad guys....

...thousands of people in the US who have been determined to have "a clear link" to al Qaeda. If true that's pretty damn scary. Of course, it's just bullshit, but the administration has been lying to us about this stuff for years.

Here.

Lying Criminals

Yesterday they said they couldn't confirm the story because it would compromise national security. Today they decided it was necessary to do the opposite and have Bush admit he was a criminal.

Weird.

Here (Bolton and spying on Americans).


Here.

Shorter Conservatarian Blogosphere

We are very concerned by the fact that people are exposing illegal acts by the government to the press.

What the Illegal Bush Wiretaps Were Likely All About:

seeing what people in the US knew about who was really behind 9/11. These weren't terrorists they were spying on, I bet these were people who may have had info about the Bush administration being involved in 9/11. This is why they wanted to keep the wiretaps secret.

Remember, torture isn't used to obtain information-- it's used to elicit false testimony that supports the "official" story (whatever that may be).

So very likely, these wiretaps weren't used to obtain information-- they were used to find out who had info that didn't support the "official" 9/11 story.

Note: I doubt Bush knew this was the reason. They probably just told him they had to do this to get the "bad guys".

Update: there's absolutely no doubt this illegal spying occurred, Bush has admitted it. And, even if he didn't know what the purpose was, he's still a giant asshole.

Further update: I agree with this Kos posting-- this is a serious moment of truth for this country. I hope to god we are up to the challenge of this most unlawful of administrations.

Another Thought About the Bush Illegal Spying Story

does anyone really NOT think that there are much much worse things that still haven't come out about this administration?

If Anyone Can Explain Why the Explosions Start Several Stories Above Where the Plane Goes In

in this video, I'd love to hear it.

Note, you might also check out this as well.

Condi Rice Lies Again

Rice said Bush has "acted lawfully in every step that he has taken."

Does this woman have ANY credibility?

If Bush Isn't Impeached, We Might As Well Just Burn the Consitution

It is time to be truly outraged.

Note, this wasn't about terrorism, because if there was a real threat, they could have easily gotten warrants-- particularly after 9/11. This was nothing more than a blatant and disgusting power grab.


Remember something called the rule of law?


Fuck you, John Yoo.

And oh yeah-- FUCK YOU, New York Times.

Finally, FUCK YOU, Tom Brokaw.

God help us.

More Proof of Video Fakery?

Previously I found an anomaly in the 2nd hit videos that "Webfairy" has collected. The anomaly is in terms of the timing of when the explosion in the building occurs compared to when the plane goes in. I think this is due to inexact splicing of the plane footage into the explosion footage, timing wise. However, it is possible that the speed of the video is irregular, and that this anomaly is just an artefact, though different times were seen in three different videos.

But now I think I see something even more glaring and conclusive of video forgery. Right after the 2nd hit "plane" goes in, there are some dust pimples that appear on the east face of the tower that then turn into a fiery explosion. I was trying to figure out what floor of the tower these pimples occur on by looking at different videos, and I noticed that in some videos, the plane goes in at a level right near where the pimples start, and in other videos, the plane goes in at a level significantly lower than where the pimples start.

Check it out:
a) pimples on east face appear higher than where plane goes in here and here.

b) pimples on east face appear on same level as where plane goes in here and here.

I think again, this discrepency is due to inexact splicing of the computer generated image plane onto the tower at different angles-- and it probably was hard to line the plane up exactly on the tower, since there are almost no distinguishing marks on the tower. Thus, there is some "play" in where the plane goes in with regard to exactly where the explosion begins.

Another interesting fact is that the pimples start at floor 83-- which coincidentally was an unoccupied floor. Yet officially the body of the plane, including the starboard engine, hit between floors 81 and 82. So floor 83 would seem to be the perfect place to plant the explosives. Indeed, the explosion appears to start on floor 83, then shoots out at floor 81-82.

So, who going to believe? Me, saying that videos showing a plane hitting the WTC south tower are fake? Or this guy?

NIST's Evasion

Critiques on the NIST report for the collapses of the WTC towers.

Very Strange Amount of Confusion About How Many Passengers

were on the 9/11 planes-- as reported live on 9/11. Also, there is amazing amount of confusion over which planes from which airline hit where. Really astounding info in this article, but one gets the impression not so much that there was real confusion over what happened to various planes (how hard is it really for an airline to know which flight crashed?), but rather that someone was just making up the info about the flights as they went along.

9/11 Passenger Manifests

I talked to Greg Szymanski last night about investigating the passenger manifests for the 9/11 planes. He basically said it was a mess and too difficult to get involved with. He expressed interested in talking to the Shanksville coroner, Wallace Miller, though.

The interesting thing about the passenger manifests is how each media outlet has a slightly different manifest. I always assumed that this was because each media outlet had relatives contact them separately to keep names off the list. But Szymanski said that the media outlets published original manifests obtained from the airlines, and that the original manifests obtained from the airlines by different media outlets were each different.

Now, how on earth could this be, right? The airline must have had a final manifest of who was on the flight. That has to be standard procedure. So why would they have different final lists?

Conceivably, the airlines did have final lists, but wanted to contact relatives themselves before they released the names to the media, and so crossed out some names on lists that they released to the media. Thus, the media outlets might have gotten different lists depending on when exactly they got the list from the airlines. This makes some sense, however--
1) it is not as though some media lists have short lists with lots of names missing (as if they got the list early) and other media lists have longer lists as the airlines notified more relatives. Rather, the lists are generally the same size, with most passengers the same, but with some unique passengers on one list and other unique passengers on another list.
2) why wasn't a final list ever published? For instance, the flight 11 USA Today list hasn't been updated since 9/25/01 and is still missing two names from the flight 11 CNN list -- Jude Larson and Natalie Larson.

Even more oddly, CNN has Robin Caplin while USA Today has Robin Kaplan, which makes no sense if real lists were obtained from the airlines. Moreover, the USA Today list, as pointed out by Gerard Holmgren:

the following statement by "USA Today" in relation to its published passenger lists is of some concern.

"Partial lists of passengers and crew killed in Tuesday's terrorist attacks, according to family members, friends, co-workers and local law enforcement."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/11/victims-list.htm

This is a very strange way to source such information. Why not get it from American Airlines or the FBI? If neither of these were consulted, how did USAT know who's "family members, friends, co-workers" to go looking for? Or if AA and the FBI were the first source of inquiry, why a partial list from hearsay sources?
Why "local law enforcement" rather than the feds, who would surely have any complete database of the victims? This statement appears to make no sense at all, except to confirm that the obvious sources where any media outlet should be looking - American Airlines and the FBI - seem to have been left out of the process. And it gets more ridiculous.
At http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/12/victim-capsule-flight11.htm
USAT gives the following bio of one of the alleged victims.

"Tom McGuinness, of Portsmouth, N.H., was co-pilot of American Airlines Flight 11, an official at his church confirmed...He said church pastors were with his wife when she was notified Tuesday morning. "

Surely American Airlines, the FAA or the FBI would be the most reliable sources of who was co-piloting the plane. A family member, who's ID can be verified would be a reasonably good unofficial source, but first one needs to find out which family one is looking for. In the process of ascertaining that, one should have already received official confirmation. This source is someone who claims to know such a family member - a second hand attribution to a source which is not official anyway, and should be subject to confirmation from AA, The FAA or the FBI.

Why does USAT cite the church administrator as the source, indeed the confirmation of the information, when they can't have found out anything about how to find the church administrator without first consulting the official source, which could comfirm it far more authoritively ? The indications are that the church administrator contacted USAT with this claim, and USAT accepted this hearsay at face value. If so, this is very poor journalism.

So none of this makes a lot of sense.

The only thing I can figure is that the airlines DIDN'T HAVE real final manifests. This would be a strong indication the flights were bogus. Possibly, the lists were obtained by the airlines from the federal government, since they were government flights of some sort (terror drill flights?), and the government was confused over who they should say were on the flights, and simply made up the list as it went along-- perhaps reading the names to the airlines over the phone?

CONCEIVABLY, one explanation is that each media got the real final passenger manifests from the airlines, but were told they could only publish names after the each media outlet contacted the relatives, but this would be an extremely inefficient way of dealing with the situation that would put the relatives through much unneeded trauma and thus makes no sense. This scenario also doesn't explain:
1) typos in the names
2) Szymanski's contention that each media outlet got different official manifests from the airlines (i.e. NOT the same one)

So I have to conclude the flight lists were bogus, manufactured by the government, and the airlines were given different manifests as the government edited the list over time (checked out aliases perhaps?).

Government control over the manifests also explains the curious feature of how none of the lists ever mention the supposed hijacker names. This would indicate the government was holding back this info and perhaps deciding exactly who would be the right patsy for a particular flight.

There Really Is Something Wrong with Anyone Who Still Supports the Bush Administration in Any Way, Shape or Form

How can any one with any shred of morality justify this?

These psychopaths obviously want to push the definition of torture to the limit. They want to say "oh, we don't torture, we treat our prisoners humanely" but at the same time, give a wink and a nod to the use of cruel techniques.

Why is it so hard for these people to err on the side of human decency?

And pleeeze don't give me bullshit about terrorists out to get us.

The Conservative Culture of Corruption

Kind of rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

This is looking like some big-time corruption.

Did Flight 93 Crash Near New Baltimore?

From Shanksville, the official crash site for flight 93...

"The village of New Baltimore is a dozen or more miles by automobile but eight as the wind blows, which it was doing a year ago. Melanie Hankinson was at the church next to her home, transfixed before a television that showed the World Trade Center ablaze, when the man who sprays her lawn stopped by to tell her he was finding odd things in the weeds.

"He said there was a loud bang and smoke and then these papers started blowing through your yard," she said. "I said, 'Oh.' Then I went back to the TV." Then the parish priest, the Rev. Allen Zeth, told her an airplane had crashed in Shanksville.

For the next few hours, Hankinson gathered charred pages of in-flight magazines, papers from a pilot's manual -- she remembers a map showing the Guadalajara, Mexico, airport -- and copies of stock portfolio monthly earnings reports.

"And there was some black webbing -- a lot of people found that," she said. The webbing, flexible where it hadn't burned, crisp where it had, was from insulation lining the belly of the jetliner."

(emphasis added)

This story would seem to support the idea that the plane crashed in New Baltimore or was damaged very close to New Baltimore. There is no way that so much debris blew eight miles specifically into her yard. EIGHT MILES is a long way on the weak wind that day.

This fellow says that Flight 93 was going the opposite way from the official story before it crashed, after the passengers regained control, and that it was shot by air force interceptors initially over New Baltimore. His scenario fits the debris field (another major debris field was Indian Lake, three miles from the official crash site), but I don't buy his "semi-official" interpretation of the flight 93 story (with the evil hijackers and heroic passengers), as the phone calls of flight 93 are just too bizarre, and the Shanskville crater still doesn't add up. Nonetheless, it is worth considering that the plane was going the other way and was shot by fighters.

But to make things more confusing, this article places plane debris half a mile to one mile north of the official crash site. So, what direction WAS the wind blowing that day?

It is hard for me to figure out what really happened, if there were two planes, if fake debris was scattered or something even stranger.

I Don't Want to Come Across as Anti-Semitic, But...

It seems to me there are more than a few strands that point to Israeli connections in 9/11:

1) the Israeli art student ring (probable Mossad spies)

2) the "dancing Israelis" on 9/11

3) the Israeli moving company and the van with traces of explosives

Killtown has a good rundown on all this here.


But there's also

4) the Odigo (Israeli telecommunications company) warning about 9/11 and the WTC attack

5) Larry Silverstein and his connections to Israeli/Jewish causes

6) possible connections between Rupert Murdoch, Silverstein and "The Lone Gunmen" foreshadowing of 9/11

7) the strong Neocon link to Israel and the links between Neocons and 9/11

8) Daniel Lewin (an apparent Israeli commando) on flight 11

9) 9/11 obviously benefited Israel policies-- particularly the subjugation of Palestinians and the creation of a greater israeli state.

So what are we to make of all this? This is more than just a smoke-screen, it seems to me. On one hand, it is not clear that Israel had a major hand in the 9/11 plot, but on the other hand there is a plausible case that can be made that they were involved in the WTC demolition (means-- moving company planting explosives, motive-- Silverstein connection, and opportunity-- access to WTC site).

I guess there are three main questions here:
1) were Israelis involved in bombing the WTC? If not, who is a better suspect and why?
2) did Israelis play a key role in setting up the hijacker myth or play key roles in the 9/11 terror drills?
3) has the pro-Israel US media suppressed (further) evidence that 9/11 was an inside job BECAUSE of the role of Israelis?

An acquaintance has some interesting and pertinent words:

I do however, think we have to be a little bit conscious of the way that
PNAC and the "neo-cons" are being thrown as the media heavies in the whole Orwellian "global war on terror" psy-op. Larger forces are operating to direct developments, like the G-8, Bilderbergers, Trilateralists, CFR... all the alphabet soup of NGOs and
corporate/foundation cut-outs. In recognizing the specialized role assigned to American (Jewish) neo-cons, and to Israel (with its 900-lb. gorilla army of mercs and specialists), let us not make the mistake of neglecting the forest for the trees.

Much larger globalist forces directed 9/11, acting through the agency of their flunkies and bagmen in government, military, corporate and media. But certainly, the Jews and Israelis get to take the onus (and the immediate cash pay-offs) up front, right out in the open. Ariel Sharon has openly suggested that a rise in global anti-semitism would be good for the State of Israel, by boosting it with new immigrant flesh, forced out of Europe and Russia, especially. So some people advance their agendas by willingly fronting for the policies of war and police state.

I think this makes sense. Israel was important for 9/11 but a willing player in a much larger game. I'm just curious if this Israeli angle to 9/11 will always bubble just below the surface of US consciousness, or whether it will someday break out into a major scandal. The latter is probably not very likely in the current state of affairs, but politics is always somewhat unpredictable.

What Is NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg Covering-up About 9/11?

Good article on this in the Village Voice.

What Was the Israeli Involvement in 9/11?

This is a huge question, and one I will get into more later, but mostly I wanted to link to this great rundown by Killtown of the dancing Israelis-white van with explosives-Urban Moving Systems story.

On a somewhat related note: if there is a loss of support for Israel and Jewish causes from the conservative right-wing, I wonder if we'll hear more about Israeli involvement in 9/11. Fox News of course, famously ran the Israeli art student spy ring story, that seemed to implicate Israel in 9/11. Of course there has always been some tension between the right-wing and Israel/Jews. (Yes, the extreme left-wing also has distaste for Israeli policies.)

Way Creepy

This happened yesterday:

US to hold 'bird flu' simulation
- -
Washington: Senior US officials will huddle out of sight at the White House on Saturday for a four-hour crisis exercise aimed at testing plans for a possible outbreak of deadly "bird flu," aides said. White House spokesman Trent Duffy declined to say whether the drill would be based on a hypothetical natural spread of the illness or a terrorist attack using the virus, the human strain of which has killed nearly 70 people across Asia since 2003.

"But it's an exercise that the government does just to prepare in the event of emergency. It's a drill," Duffy said aboard Air Force One as US President George W. Bush made a political fundraising trip to Minnesota.

"I've got to underscore again that we have no evidence that a threat is imminent. But the President said that we have been given time to prepare, and we must prepare," the spokesman said on Friday.

The highlighted sections are especially ominous.

Two New Sites

9/11 Truth Emergence, is a wiki activist site, and looks like an interesting project.

9/11 True Story, focuses on controlled demolition.

Both are linked at the side for easy access. :)

International Human Rights Day-- TODAY

I've heard surprisingly little about this.

Gee, I wonder if it has something to do with the theme:

"Torture and Global Efforts to Combat It"

HUMAN RIGHTS DAY
10 DECEMBER 2005

"Let us be clear: torture can never be an instrument to fight terror, for torture is an instrument of terror. [...]

Today, on Human Rights Day, let us recommit ourselves to the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and let us rededicate ourselves to wiping the scourge of torture from the face of the earth."

Kofi Annan,
United Nations Secretary-General

It is just so sad that I had to read about this in an Indian newspaper.

Just when you thought the presstitution couldn't get any worse...

They outdo themselves.

Possibly the Most Insidious Aspect of 9/11 Is the Way Americans Have Excused the Use of Torture

What kind of nation have we become?

In twenty years when we look back at this, how proud or ashamed will we be of what we did in the name of "fighting terror"?

Yawn, yet another forewarning of 9/11

US officials knew bin Laden might target civilain aircraft.

Actually, more interesting than this story itself is the background. Who sent it and why? Is it just to help prop up the official story or were the Saudis trying to send some message to us-- or something even more obscure?

Miami Was Ruuning a Terror Alertness Campaign Shortly Before the Alpizar Killing

From the Miami Herald:

Posted on Fri, Dec. 02, 2005

Miami takes on an anti-terror campaign
OUR OPINION: BEING PREPARED, ALERT A GOOD DEFENSE AGAINST TERROR

File this one under the heading, No good turn goes unpunished. On Monday, Miami Police Chief John Timoney announced an anti-terrorism campaign that would randomly send police officers -- in uniform and plainclothes -- to sites throughout the city to distribute brochures on preparedness and anti-terror tactics.

The next day, the program was being described in wire-service stories and on radio talk shows as a violation of basic rights, with police demanding that people in malls, banks and sports arenas produce identification or risk arrest. For the record, the program does nothing of the sort. In fact, the program outlined by Chief Timoney is a well-conceived plan to get police and ordinary people to be more alert about the threat of terrorism.

Spontaneous police visits

The idea is to do something about anti-terror complacency -- by both the authorities and the community in general. Officers armed with brochures and months of training in anti-terror tactics make unannounced, spontaneous visits to public venues, sometimes in small groups, at other times in large force. The brochures in three languages -- Spanish, English and Creole -- encourage alertness and reporting of unusual activities. The officers tell owners and managers how to build defenses against terror and harden facilities against attacks.

And, the folks at Prison Planet are naturally very suspicious of this incident and compare it to the outrageous London killing of Charles De Menezes last summer.

This Is Really What Torture Is All About, Isn't It?

Getting the "answer" we "want":

The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.

The officials said the captive, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, provided his most specific and elaborate accounts about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002, in a process known as rendition.

Does anyone want to bet Khalid Sheikh Mohammed strongly agreed to the official 9/11 story after he was "interrogated"?

What Exactly Happened on AA924?

Was this some sort of set-up? It certainly is weird, if nothing else.

At least one passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 924 maintains the federal air marshals were a little too quick on the draw when they shot and killed Rigoberto Alpizar as he frantically attempted to run off the airplane shortly before take-off.

"I don't think they needed to use deadly force with the guy," says John McAlhany, a 44-year-old construction worker from Sebastian, Fla. "He was getting off the plane." McAlhany also maintains that Alpizar never mentioned having a bomb.

"I never heard the word 'bomb' on the plane," McAlhany told TIME in a telephone interview. "I never heard the word bomb until the FBI asked me did you hear the word bomb. That is ridiculous." Even the authorities didn't come out and say bomb, McAlhany says. "They asked, 'Did you hear anything about the b-word?'" he says. "That's what they called it."

Was this simply a stunt of some kind, or Air Marshals with itchy triggers, or something deeper?

"Mama D" Rocks the House!!!!!!!

This sounds awesome: "Mama D gives Chris Shays Holy Hell for Accusing Katrina Victims of Lying About Racism, Levee Bomb and Ethnic Cleansing"....This was the most amazing hearing. If you didn't see it yesterday look for it to repeat. The Congressmen tried to get Mama D to not go overtime and she scolded them, saying she came up from N'awlins with a list of complaints from fellow victims and she is going to read ALL of them.

Then she accused Chris Shays of accusing the victims of lying about police pointing M-16s at 5 year olds, of perfectly fine housing projects that Bush had steel-plated and closed, of a LEVEE BOMB (and she went "BA-BOOOOOM! right in the hearing room), of concentration camp tactics on the I-10 Causeway, of outright Ethnic Cleansing. Thank god someone is speaking truth to power, since the media sure the hell isn't doing much of it.

The Full-Length Version of the Putative Security Video Showing the Flight 77 Hijackers Getting Screened

Here.

A few oddities:
1) no time or date stamp (if it was there, why would they cut it off?)
2) there are at least two different camera angles here, the footage is spliced together
3) the hijackers get what seems to be a thorough screening, but nothing is found
4) there is no one dressed as a pilot, so we can rule out the idea that they got into the cockpit that way (it seems unlikely they would change into the uniform right before boarding)
5) one "hijacker" has a backpack and a carry-on bag. Why does he need so much luggage? What was in there?

So How Is It That the Thin Wingtips of "Flight 175" Boeing 767

simply slice through the large steel beams of the WTC (see here)?

(A good picture of how massive the WTC exterior steel beams were, is shown in the previous post.)

It's funny how Iranian plane wings actually BREAK OFF when they hit a building:



Is Iranian concrete stronger than US steel? Or are Iranian C-130's just much more flimsy than Boeing 767s?

(Here is more snark comparing 9/11 and the recent Iranian plane crash.)

A Good Picture Showing Just How Massive the Outer WTC Columns Were

from "9/11 Revealed":





Seeing them cutting through this steel with a torch, it's quite hard for me seeing how the outer wings of an airplane cut through these, even if the plane was going very fast.

Old Pearl Harbor Day

Dec. 7th, 1941-- the original day of infamy.

In contrast to 9/11, the original Pearl Harbor would seem to be a classic case of "let it happen on purpose".

9/11, of course, was "make it happen on purpose".

Boxer!

Senator Barbara Boxer says she would like the complete truth about 9/11.

I knew there was a reason I always liked her.

Why It Should Be Obvious by Now That the WTC Towers Were Brought Down by Controlled Demolition

See here.

Refighting the Vietnam War --

this time to "win" and show how tough America is. This now clearly seems to be a major motivation for the Iraq war, both for Bush and the neocons.

Refighting the Vietnam war is yet another reason for the Iraq conflict.

That makes three official, and 12 unofficial (more likely reasons).

I think these are the top five reasons:
1) help conservative domestic agenda-- helping Bush get re-elected and helping Republican take-over of congress
2) Bush wanting to "make history" by being a famous war president
3) Re-fight the Vietnam war to show how tough America is
4) oil
5) imperialism

The Ground Effect: Why a 757 Going 500 mph Could Not Have Hit the Pentagon A Few Feet Off the Ground (revisited)

Nila Sgadevan explains it to Greg Szymanski.

So What Is the REAL Reason for Building an Underground Tunnel

between Alaska and Russia????

Village Voice FINALLY Questions Pertinent Aspects of 9/11

Ten Big Questions-- including why did the twin towers collapse and why did WTC7 collapse?

Lots of 9/11-Related Stuff Today

1) This amazing story of the failed controlled demolition. You HAVE to see it to believe it. Basically, it gives the lie to the idea that a tower will simply collapse when it drops.

2) The Iranian C-130 plane crash into an apartment building. It's hard to figure exactly what happened here, but clearly there are plane parts outside the building. Imagine that, a plane hitting a building and parts breaking off!

I Quite Liked "9.11 Revealed"

Sure seems like Jim Hoffman and Vicotria Ashley didn't. Worse, they seem to think it is disinformation.

I just don't think so. And I think Hoffman's "debunking" of some of the stranger aspects of 9/11 can be thought of as disinfo.

Note, the book was far from perfect, but no 9/11 skeptic book is. Annoyingly, Hoffman and Ashley can't seem to find one good thing about the book.

So Whatever Happened to Osama's Super Secret Underground James Bond-like Cave Complex, Anyway?

Hey! Maybe that's where he's still hiding!

I better call the preznit!


Wait.... the government didn't lie about this thing, did they?

How to Stop Terrorism

Here (scroll down to the proposal for a 911 memorial).

Surprisingly Few Airplane Parts Recovered from the WTC

...according to "9.11 Revealed".

The book goes into a good deal of detail I'd hadn't seen before about how the WTC clean-up was treated-- how everything was shipped to the Fresh Kills land-fill and how they carefully sifted through the WTC debris to obtain human remains.

Surprisingly, the people sifting through the WTC wreckage found very few plane parts, most surprisingly of course, was not being able to recover the black boxes. The book had one photo I hadn't seen before, of a jet engine part recovered from at Fresh Kills site, although the authors remarked how the part disappeared and no one knows what happened to it.

So, it is quite odd. It seems for ALL FOUR plane wrecks on 9/11, there were almost no plane parts recovered. Almost as if there were NO PLANES involved at all in the crashes that day!

MUST SEE: Part Two of the WICZ-TV, FOX-40 (Binghamton, NY) 9/11 (Loose Change) Report

Their web story here has a link to their video report.

This report focuses on the Pentagon hit and the fake Osama tape. Good stuff, and amazingly the station aired the story completely UNCRITICALLY*! It is simply unbelievable! It almost brought tears to my eyes to see them giving this info a fair presentation. They ended the story not by having some government flack rebut the claims but by giving the web address for the Loose Change video!


*I certainly hope the station is truly open-minded and that this isn't some sort of set-up.

P.S. kudos for 9/11 blogger for doing a great job on reporting this story.

UPDATE! The article and video is deleted from the FOX news website! I saved the text (if anyone wants it let me know), the video is gone, but I'm sure someone has saved. I will post another copy of the video once found!

Rick Siegel's 9/11 Eyewitness Story

So, for the first time I started to look again at what I had done. Henrik gave me a few websites to look at and I perused them. Wow, this is great! People were seeing there was a reason to be disturbed about 911! I saw that my video I shot and put on the Internet was used on almost all the sites examining the conspiracy that surrounded those events. Hell, I didn’t know I had anything important.

So, I told Henrik, no problem, I would be happy to let anyone have it. My interest in freedom and liberty for everyone was well served in that. One problem, the tapes were stored with 6000 others in my archives in New York City and I had no intention of returning to a police state where my views of freedom were quite different than those with the guns.

OH oh, Feb 2004 and the hosting company, Stealth Communications, turns off my computers and steals them. The DOD had just heavily invested stealth by the way. The files that the world had used to show the problems with 911 were wiped off the net by Stealth. They had no due process to confiscate and dispose of my property; they were a law unto themselves. I sent people to get them who were turned back. I told them to go again with police, and that did not help. I sent a lawyer and they told them they were gone. Someone should help sue these guys for that! Bastards! This JUST as email for Henrik and I to get the tapes to the researchers.

Well, I am very poor now as my income was from the web servers that were confiscated. I can’t leave anywhere now even to get them. Henrik gets a mysterious eastern connection who wants to make a DVD with the researchers using the original footage. As we all noted the old files on the Internet were not showing all the details in their compressed format. The original was from a Sony 900 with 3ccd and 16bit stereo mounted on a tripod with a shotgun microphone on the pier in Hoboken, New Jersey. The detail would be important.

Hmmm, now why would the Dept. of Defense want to wipe away 9/11 footage?

Greg Szymanski's Latest

Quite interesting-- a mysterious suicide of a widow of an obscure flight 11 passenger.

Not only was this 9/11 suicide shocking and difficult to understand, but the alleged victim's husband, Pendyala Vamsikrishna of India, was never even listed on the original Flight 11 manifest, only appearing later as a passenger on a couple of conflicting unofficial lists.

Due to the numerous inconsistencies and irregularities on all four 9/11 flight manifests, critics of the official government story contend many of the passengers probably never existed at all or were concocted as the result of carefully constructed aliases, essentially faking their deaths.

Further, critics contend if the passenger lists were suspect then so were the planes, calling the 9/11 jetliners ‘phantom flights,’ paving the way for military drones to be used to attack the WTC and Pentagon.

Others who disagree with the official story for the most part buy into the drone theory, but theorize the unlucky passengers actually were killed by being transferred onto a single airliner and then either dumped into the Atlantic or taken to one of the many hidden underground government bases.

Of course, both theories have their skeptics, but the irregularity of the passenger lists, the evidence refuting the existence of the flights, eye-witness accounts of seeing a cargo plane without windows slam into the towers and the strange silence among the airline family members makes it imperative to pursue a full scale investigation into the whereabouts and real identities of each and every passenger listed by the government as dead.

I agree!

THE PENTAGON BUILDING PERFORMANCE REPORT

Here.

Key sections are conveniently highlighted by Killtown.

Big Moment for 9/11 Awareness

A local FOX station (WICZ-TV, FOX-40 Binghamton, NY) showed WTC "collapse" video from 9/11 on their evening news, last night.

Here is the link.

They said they would show a report on the Pentagon, tonight.

The report was centered on the release of "Loose Change 2".

Hmmm, if this kind of 9/11 exposure keeps up, maybe I won't have to fund my own investigation after all (see previous post).

DEVELOPING!!!!

A Private 9/11 Investigation

Okay, this is the first time I have ever asked for money here. But I have decided that I would like to hire a private investigator to look into some 9/11 matters. I have a significant amount of money that I could spend, but I don't think it is enough for much of an investigation by itself. Therefore I am wondering if anyone would like to chip in to help this effort.

The first thing I would like to have investigated is if the original flight manifests for the 9/11 flights can be obtained in any way from the airlines.

Another thing I am interested in investigating is if former CIA director Jim Woolsey, who apparently was hired as a security consultant by the NYFD after 9/11, is really threatening NYFD members with termination or severance of pensions if they discuss bombs in the WTCs.

Lastly, I am very interested in the Shanksville coroner, Wallace Miller, who officially dealt with the flight 93 crash victims. Does he have any suspicions about the flight? Was he coerced or threatened by the FBI at all?

I think these are reasonably achievable investigations that could shed some much needed light onto some important areas of 9/11.

Please e-mail me if you are interested or would like any more information:
spooked911@hotmail.com

Cool Analysis of the Flight Paths for Flight 11 and Flight 175

Here.

It's quite hard to know what to make of these flight paths though there are clearly some strange patterns.

"9.11 Revealed" says the military was involved in reconstructing the flight paths from the primary radar data. Thus, it is far from clear how trustworthy these "official" flight paths are.