That is over now.

Mike Gravel has taken money donated to the 9/11 Citizens Commission (9/11CC) and re-distributed those funds elsewhere without permission from either the 9/11CC board or its donors.

The organization he redistributed the donations to is an organization that he founded and chairs – and it has nothing to do with 9/11.

The timeline of discussions can be found and read in whole starting with:

1. On Dec. 26^th, the 9/11CC board wrote a letter to its endorsers, advisors and major donors. That letter was abbreviated and sent out to all donors on Jan 21^st.

2. Mike Gravel wrote a response to the 9/11CC board on February 3^rd

The above details are discussed further below.

(1):

On January 21^st, the 9/11CC board sent an email out to all donors to the organization. That email was posted to a related thread at TruthAction within a week, and after being posted on a FaceBook page. Among many details in the letter from the board, the following is highlighted here:

….. we have a responsibility to relate to you some very serious and unfortunate news: There has come a parting of the ways of Senator Mike Gravel from the rest of the 9-11cc team. Briefly, the pivotal event of that parting came to our attention in mid-December when we found that our bank account, under the sole control of Mike Gravel, was being tapped for large, unauthorized expenditures paid to promote an unrelated campaign of Mike’s – his National Initiative for Democracy (NI4D). When this disturbing item was put on our Campaign Team’s agenda for the next team meeting, Mike Gravel, for the first time, declined to participate, and instead sent a long letter in which he expressed his intention to dissolve the legal entity that our 9-11cc organization had established to enable us to collect funds. Mike Gravel further informed us of his plan to transfer the 9-11cc’s funds to his own, unrelated NI4D campaign. Both of Mike’s proposals were rejected by all other members of the board. Although as a Board we had been in discussion for several months about refinements to our path going forward, these radical, unilateral decisions by Mike Gravel came as a complete shock to us. Shortly thereafter, our treasurer, George Ripley, made an unsuccessful attempt to have our accountant freeze our bank account to prevent further unauthorized and unaccounted-for expenditures. As our Board prepared to meet two nights later to consider our response (a meeting Mike Gravel again chose not to attend), we found that $25,000 more had been withdrawn that same day from our bank account, leaving only about a $6,000 balance (now ~$1000).

We tried in vain up to and throughout the Christmas holidays to use reason and peer pressure to get Mike Gravel back into productive communication with the rest of the Board, and to persuade him to return the donated funds to the Citizen’s Commission Campaign….

The 9/11CC Board obviously made a mistake by allowing the money to be in the sole control of Mike Gravel. That mistake does not excuse Mike Gravel’s actions.

(2):

Two weeks later on February 3rd Mike Gravel responded to the 9/11CC board email. Gravel’s response was posted to the Truth Action forum again. The important points from Gravel’s response are covered below:

In May 2011, Ken Jenkins and George Ripley were pushing me into a leadership role within the 911 movement that I was reluctant to take on…

…The forms creating the California Recipient Committee called the “Citizens 911 Commission” were filed on May 13, 2011 and received by the Secretary of State on May 16th. My name as the “sole principal” is the only name associated with the entity in California. I secured an EIN number from the IRS on that basis and opened an account at Wells Fargo. No other names or persons are legally associated with this California entity or its bank account. As the authorized signer who opened the account at Wells Fargo, I made provisions with the bank for Jenkins, Belitsos and Ripley to access the account only to view its activity in real-time…

…

As a California Recipient Committee, we had no operable bylaws and none were required to be filed by the state. I subsequently drafted Articles and Bylaws in anticipation of creating an IRS C4 corporation, which was the planned next step in our logical growth, going from a working group of volunteers into a legal corporate entity.

Initially, our intent was to file an initiative in California. I visited and worked with the attorneys at the State’s Legislative Council in Sacramento, drafting my concept into a legally acceptable initiative proposal. However, it became obvious that a California initiative campaign was out of the question at this time; it would take several million dollars to qualify an initiative for the ballot and more to wage a viable enactment campaign.

Since we planned no political activity in California and were limited in accepting foreign contributions, it was understood by all those involved (Jenkins, Freeland and Ripley) that we would dissolve the Recipient Committee before the end of the year or face extensive and expensive reporting requirements that were irrelevant to our national and global activity. In the event of dissolution, California law is very clear; whatever monies are in the Committee’s bank account must be donated to a government recognized charity or returned to the donors on a pro rata basis….

A pro rata return to donors would have been expensive accounting-wise and of de minim{i}s impact to all but one donor. I chose to donate all the funds in the account to the Democracy Foundation, a 501 c 3 charity recognized under federal law. The Democracy Foundation, which I founded and chaired, is the educational sponsor of the National Citizens Initiative, an initiative that when enacted into law will empower citizens to make laws in every government jurisdiction. The process to enact the National Citizens Initiative can be undertaking in any country where citizens are allowed to vote. Obviously, if we able to enact the National Citizens Initiative, it would provide an excellent opportunity to enact a federal law creating a new Citizens 911 Commission with federal powers far superior to anything we would expect to secure with a state initiative.

…All told we raised around $85,000 in 2011; and more than half has been spent on travel and overhead…

Mike Gravel simply chose to redistribute the funds to an organization he founded and chairs without permission from the donors.

Maybe Gravel thought people were donating to him and not to the organization of an idea for a citizens 9/11 investigation? That would have been the wrong assumption: Gravel was given donations by 9/11 activists, plain and simple.

The irony of giving stolen money to a “Democracy Foundation” that the thief founded and chairs is not lost here. Is this Gravel’s idea of Citizen Power?

Gravel states further that the process of redistribution to donors would have been “expensive accounting-wise” and “de minimis,” or too insignificant to be worthy of concern “to all but one donor.”

Is Mike Gravel trying to downplay the impact of his actions by stating only one person will be greatly affected? Hogwash!

Before publishing this letter, I contacted a 9/11CC board member to see if I could learn more. A message came back with the following information:

The biggest donor put in nearly $48K. The next biggest donor was $10K. Next was $2.5K. There were several more donors at $1K and up. There were some others at $500 and up. I do not consider any of those amounts “small”.

The economy is in the pits and more than a quarter of the US is out of work. 9/11 activists are up against enough walls without Mike Gravel thinking it’s too insignificant to be worthy of concern that he redistributed their donations, without consent.

Even that discussion becomes a distraction for the sad fact that Mike Gravel could have chosen a much more graceful and respectful way to distance himself from something he was “reluctant to take on” as he says, if that was ever really the case: During personal interactions he always seemed not so reluctant about the 9/11CC.

More to the point and simply put: Mike Gravel is a thief and a liar.

The 9/11CC board confronted Mike Gravel only after noticing that money had been withdrawn in November without permission. After asking Gravel about the missing money, did he take another $25,000 without permission in December and cease contact with the 9/11CC board.

Mike Gravel has not returned the money to the 9/11 CC board or its donors.

I hate to say it, but the one thing that comes to mind is an old Steve Miller song.

Mike Gravel should return the money, plain and simple.

The post What the Hell, Mike Gravel? appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

The hallmark of a Surveillance State is that police agencies secretly monitor and keep dossiers on not only those individuals suspected of lawbreaking, but on the society generally, including those individuals about whom there is no suspicion of wrongdoing. For the past year, the Associated Press has systematically exposed how the New York Police Department, often working in conjunction with the CIA, engaged in a sprawling spying campaign aimed at Muslim individuals, students, institutions and mosques in the United States, all without a whiff of any suspected wrongdoing. Yesterday, the four AP investigative reporters who have exposed this program won a well-deserved Polk Award for their “investigation that showed the NYPD had built one of the largest domestic intelligence agencies in the country.” In particular, the “reporters documented how the NYPD assigned ‘rakers’ and ‘mosque crawlers’ to ethnic neighborhoods, infiltrating everything from booksellers and cafes to Muslim places of worship.”

On Monday, AP detailed how the NYPD spied on numerous Muslim students and their campus organizations. In particular, “police trawled daily through student websites run by Muslim student groups at Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers and 13 other colleges in the Northeast” and “talked with local authorities about professors in Buffalo and even sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip, where he recorded students’ names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed.” The dossiers noted the names of Muslim student leaders and even stored emails sent and received by some of them. All this, even though the “documents mention no wrongdoing by any students.”

Today, AP released a newly obtained report by the NYPD from 2007 about the Muslim community in Newark, New Jersey — both Middle Eastern and African-American in origin — prompting one of the AP reporters, Matt Apuzzo, to ask on Twitter: “If NYPD can write docs like this outside its jurisdiction, where cant they go? Post-9/11, is NYPD a nat’l police force?” As AP reported today about this newly released dossier: “Americans living and working in New Jersey’s largest city were subjected to surveillance as part of the New York Police Department’s effort to build databases of where Muslims work, shop and pray.” The report was produced as part of a surveillance campaign whereby “plainclothes officers from the NYPD’s Demographics Units fanned out across Newark, taking pictures and eavesdropping on conversations inside businesses owned or frequented by Muslims.” Yet again, “the report cited no evidence of terrorism or criminal behavior,” but was meant to instead be “a guide to Newark’s Muslims.” AP continued:

Such surveillance has become commonplace in New York City in the decade since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Police have built databases showing where Muslims live, where they buy groceries, even what Internet cafes they use and where they watch sports. Dozens of mosques and student groups have been infiltrated and police have built detailed profiles of ethnic communities, from Moroccans to Egyptians to Albanians. . . . The effect of the program was that hundreds of American citizens were cataloged — sometimes by name, sometimes simply by their businesses and their ethnicity — in secret police files that spanned hundreds of pages.

It is really worth looking at this document for a sense of how insidious it is when the government spies on and compiles files about innocent citizens. The report contains numerous maps identifying the locations of all mosques in Newark:

It contains photographs of those mosques and other Islamic groups and even schools, including ones in private homes, accompanied by identifying information and other notes suggesting some sort of nefarious intent (“aggressive counter-surveillance observed,” which presumably means that someone from the mosque was watching police agents spy on them):

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The report even includes maps and active surveillance of halal shops, Middle Eastern groceries, and restaurants where Muslims gather:

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AP details that numerous names of individuals suspected of no wrongdoing are often included in these files; here, for instance, is what was contained the dossier compiled by the NYPD about the Muslim community on Long Island:

The effect of the program was that hundreds of American citizens were cataloged — sometimes by name, sometimes simply by their businesses and their ethnicity — in secret police files that spanned hundreds of pages:

— “A Black Muslim male named Mussa was working in the rear of store,” an NYPD detective wrote after a clandestine visit to a dollar store in Shirley, N.Y., on Long Island.

— “The manager of this restaurant is an Indian Muslim male named Vicky Amin” was the report back from an Indian restaurant in Lindenhurst, N.Y., also on Long Island.

— “Owned and operated by an African Muslim (possibly Sudanese) male named Abdullah Ddita” was the summary from another dollar store in Shirley, N.Y., just off the highway on the way to the Hamptons, the wealthy Long Island getaway.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has long claimed — preposterously — that the NYPD does not target communities for survillence based on their religion, but as AP notes: ”In one section of the report, police wrote that the largest immigrant groups in Newark were from Portugal and Brazil. But they did not photograph businesses or churches for those groups.” That’s because “‘No Muslim component within these communities was identified,’ police wrote.” In the wake of this latest evidence, Bloomberg seemed to abandon that denial, shifting instead to justification: “The police department goes where there are allegations. And they look to see whether those allegations are true,” said the Mayor. “That’s what you’d expect them to do. That’s what you’d want them to do. Remind yourself when you turn out the light tonight.”

This government spying on the perfectly innocent activities of innocent Americans and other legal residents is just a tiny though illustrative fraction of the dossiers being regularly compiled by government agencies. The Surveillance State compiles a massive amount of data about even the most innocuous activities of Americans – recall that the Washington Post‘s “Top Secret America” 2010 series reported that ”every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications” – and the scope of what it gathers always expands and never constricts. But there are two odious aspects of the Surveillance State specifically highlighted by the NYPD’s program here.

First, Muslims generally — and, increasingly, American Muslims — are branded with virtually official non-person status under the law. On Monday, I wrote about the way in which core tyrannical powers — arbitrary detention, limitless spying, due-process-free assassinations — have become normalized in the U.S., Israel and its Western allies, but it is almost always Muslims who are the target of these abuses. Every serious episode of civil liberties assaults in American history was driven by the full-scale demonization of one specific group. There are still plenty of groups who perform that function, but there is no question that Muslims are the prime target now.

Second, this perfectly illustrates what I have often described as the one-way mirror dynamic of the American Surveillance State: it isn’t merely that the State knows more and more about the private activities of citizens, but worse, that happens at exactly the same time that citizens know less and less about the activities of the State. At exactly the same time that the Surveillance State has exploded into a sprawling, ubiquitous, unaccountable apparatus, the U.S. Government and its various agencies have erected an increasingly impenetrable wall of secrecy behind which it operates. This imbalance grows inexorably. Note how the NYPD report — which collects all sorts of information about Newark Muslims suspected of no wrongdoing — contains these designations and warnings on its cover:

That’s the essential expression of the American Surveillance State: we can and will know everything about what you do, and you will know virtually nothing about what we do. In a healthy society, that formula would be reversed: the citizenry (with rare exceptions) would know most everything about what their government does, while the government would know nothing about what citizens do in the absence of well-grounded suspicion that they have done something wrong. Yet here we have the NYPD wandering outside of its jurisdiction in order to spy on the innocuous activities of a community of a religious minority (not even the Newark Mayor was informed about this), and the most disturbing part of it all is how common it now is.

* * * * *

Speaking of the one-way mirror of the Surveillance State, a Polk Award was also awarded yesterday to The New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer for her excellent article on the Obama administration’s war on whistleblowers, which I wrote about here. As the Committee awarding the Polk Awards put it: Mayer “ends her masterful tale with the conclusion that America’s bloated ‘national-surveillance state’ poses a greater threat to civil liberties than ever before.”

The post The NYPD Spy Program and the US Surveillance State appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

When OWS first started, I didn’t pay as much attention to it as I do now. It wasn’t until the confrontation on the Brooklyn Bridge that I finally started to really look at what they’re doing. My interpretation of why they are doing what they’re doing is as follows. In a nutshell, they are tired of the bought and paid for politicians making decisions that do not benefit the people, and instead, benefit the corporations.

There might be more to it, but to me, that is it. After seeing how Obama is Bush’s third term and then some, people finally “woke up.”

Finally. As an advocate for 9/11 Justice for the last 9+ years, I have seen spurts of people protest this and that, but for the most part, people have acted as though they just didn’t care. Call it apathy, ignorance, whatever. It seemed like they just didn’t care. For years, people in the 9/11 Truth Movement, and the anti-war movement used to say that people will finally wake up when they start to lose their homes, when they start to lose their jobs, their TVs, their pensions, their cars, etc… and so on. From the majority of signs I see, it seems that we were right. Ok. Whatever works.

I would like to address those signs. Jobs, health care, money out of politics, holding bankers accountable, etc… are all legitimate issues. However, so is the killing and dying we are responsible for around the world. There must be a strong anti-war message (which includes 9/11 Justice) included in the Occupy movements. It is the moral thing to do. It must not be just about material wealth and needs. Unless, of course, you want to be seen as greedy people who want a slice of the pie.

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of going to Occupy Wall Street with my 9/11 sign. Between 500-1000 people took my picture or gave me a “thumbs up.” About 5 people wanted their picture taken with my sign. It was nice to know that people still care.

It has been absolutely fascinating for me to watch the media’s response to OWS. I have seen every “trick of the trade” used against OWS that I have seen used against the 9/11 Truth Movement. It was like watching a re-run. On 10/13/2011, the LATimes ran an article that said, “how do you know when a protest movement is starting to scare the pants off the establishment? One clue is when the protesters are casually dismissed as hippies or rabble, or their principles redefined as class envy or as (that all-purpose insult) “un-American.” If that is the case, then the “establishment” must be SCARED SHITLESS of what advocates for 9/11 Justice have to say. Just look at the different things the media has said over the years. It is because of the media’s campaign that no one wants to associate with anyone that questions the official account of 9/11.

That is what the media seems to be doing now. In fact, I’m seeing the “anti-semitism” card being played a lot now. The 9/11 Truth Movement can relate. They will look for the 5, 10, even 20 people (out of millions) ignorantly saying things about Zionism or Israel, and they will paint EVERYONE with the same brush.

There are also efforts by MoveOn.org, and unions to “co-opt” OWS. The 9/11 Truth Movement was “co-opted” by people in the “Conspiracy Theory Industry,” so again, we can relate. Do not let that happen OWS. The Democrats and the Republicans are two sides of the same exact coin. Also, Fox News can be horrid, but so can MSNBC, CNN, and the rest of the corporate media.

I fully support the efforts of OWS. Last week, I brought $120 worth of supplies to “Occupy Philly.”

Here is what I’m hoping happens. I hope the end result of their effort brings us a system that works for the people, and not the corporations (in Government, media, courts, etc…). I hope the end result of their efforts gives us a system that holds people accountable for their crimes, no matter HOW powerful or rich a person may be. I hope the end result of their effort puts an end to the murder we are taking part in around the world.

Basically, I’m hoping for a Revolution.

So stand your ground OWS, and the rest of the Occupy Movements. Now is the time.

The post My Hopes For The Occupy Movement appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

The key to understanding just how fake this story is can be found in the New York Times report, which informs us:

“For the entire operation, the government’s confidential sources were monitored and guided by federal law enforcement agents, Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District, said in the news conference. ‘So no explosives were actually ever placed anywhere,’ he said, ‘and no one was actually in ever in any danger.’”

Translation: the whole thing is phony from beginning to end.

This is another one of US law enforcement’s manufactured “anti-terrorist” triumphs, where the feds set somebody up, fabricate a “crime” out of thin air, and then proceed to “solve” a case that never really existed to begin with. This has been the general pattern of our “anti-terrorist” operations in the US since the beginning – because finding and catching real terrorists is much too hard, at least for our Keystone Kops. Instead of going out and actually, you know, looking for the Bad Guys, and then apprehending them, they lure some unsuspecting Muslim immigrant into a trap, and spring it when the time is right.

The long narrative spun by the indictment tells us everything but what we really need to know, which is: how is it that these two Iranian “terrorists” just happened to meet up with a Mexican drug cartel assassin who just happened to be a longtime DEA informant? I guess that would be giving too much away: far better to spice up the story with scary details, such as the conversation between one of the alleged plotters and the informant, in the course of which the former says “If you have to blow up the restaurant and kill a hundred Americans, well then f*ck ‘em!”

The credibility rating of this story, taken on its face, is close to zero. Let’s say the Iranians really were plotting to kill the Saudi ambassador on American soil: would they contract it out to the Mexican Mafia, send all kinds of traceable money wires from Iran to the US, and not care if they killed a hundred Americans in the process of achieving their goal? Or would they send some fanatic, who would not only do it for free but also eliminate himself (or herself)? This flimsy cock-eyed tale is so transparently fake that it’s an embarrassment to the United States of America. Can’t our spooks do better than this?

This fabrication marks a new trend in the field of anti-Iranian war propaganda. Previously, the War Party was relying on the same technique they used in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq: the old “weapons of mass destruction” gambit. The big problem with that is it’s old, and tired: no one believes it anymore [.pdf]. Once burned, twice shy, as the saying goes. This latest lie is a fresh angle on a continuing theme, merely substituting Iran for the traditional
bogeyman known as al-Qaeda.

That this story involves the Mexican drug cartels, and Attorney General Eric Holder proclaiming that we’re going to “hold the Iranian government accountable,” has got to be some kind of sick joke: after all, here is a man who stood by and watched while US law enforcement agents let guns travel over the US border to arm those very same cartels. Is this “coup” for the Justice Department the pay-off for that harebrained scheme – and when is Holder going to be held accountable?

That our government would float a narrative like this without any apparent regard for the basic rules
of fiction-writing – create believable characters who do believable things – is Washington’s way of showing contempt for the Iranians, the American people, and anyone else who stands in the way of their war agenda. They don’t care if it’s not believable. They think Americans will swallow anything, that we’re too busy trying to survive day-to-day, these days, to inquire much further than the “official” account. And of course our brain-dead media, which is reduced to a chiefly stenographic role, isn’t going to ask any inconvenient questions.

This story is very scary – not because it’s credible, or believable, because it is neither. However, it’s the most frightening story I’ve heard in quite a while because it shows that the US government is bound and determined to go to war with Iran, no matter what the consequences. Throwing caution to the winds, our rulers have decided to go all out against Tehran – all the better to mask our current economic malaise under the damage done by the tripling and quadrupling of oil prices. This way, Obama can blame our crashing economy on Tehran, rather than his own discredited policies – and sideline the Republicans, who have been criticizing him for being “soft” on Iran.

The making of American foreign policy is all about domestic politics. By preparing the country for war with Iran, Obama will not only defang the GOP, but also appease the all-important Israel lobby, which has been beating the war drums for years.

What Obama and his gang are hoping is that the American people are too tired, too beaten down, and too broke to care enough about this latest exercise in war propaganda to question it. Certainly the “mainstream” media, which is Obama’s loudest cheering section, isn’t about to question it.

Here is where the administration has probably miscalculated: people are just angry enough to wonder “why now?” They’re just broke enough to resent being asked to pay for yet another holy crusade overseas. And they’re just tired enough of the bullsh*t that gets reported as “news” day after day to start asking all kinds of uncomfortable questions about this latest offering by the Washington fable factory.

The Americans are already backing away from the assertion that the Iranian government is directly responsible for the actions of these two individuals, averring that top Iranian officials didn’t “necessarily” know what was going on. As the details of this case become known, Holder’s story is going to start unraveling like a substandard sweater – and you can read all about that unraveling right here, at Antiwar.com….

The post Iranian Terror Plot: Fake, Fake, Fake appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

Last year, the FBI subjected 19-year-old Somali-American Mohamed Osman Mohamud to months of encouragement, support and money and convinced him to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event in Portland, Oregon, only to arrest him at the last moment and then issue a Press Release boasting of its success.  In late 2009, the FBI persuaded and enabled Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year old Jordanian citizen, to place a fake bomb at a Dallas skyscraper and separately convinced Farooque Ahmed, a 34-year-old naturalized American citizen born in Pakistan, to bomb the Washington Metro.  And now, the FBI has yet again saved us all from its own Terrorist plot by arresting 26-year-old American citizen Rezwan Ferdaus after having spent months providing him with the plans and materials to attack the Pentagon, American troops in Iraq, and possibly the Capitol Building using “remote-controlled” model airplanes carrying explosives.

None of these cases entail the FBI’s learning of an actual plot and then infiltrating it to stop it.  They all involve the FBI’s purposely seeking out Muslims (typically young and impressionable ones) whom they think harbor animosity toward the U.S. and who therefore can be induced to launch an attack despite having never taken even a single step toward doing so before the FBI targeted them.  Each time the FBI announces it has disrupted its own plot, press coverage is predictably hysterical (new Homegrown Terrorist caught!), fear levels predictably rise, and new security measures are often implemented in response (the FBI’s Terror plot aimed at the D.C. Metro, for instance, led to the Metro Police announcing a new policy of random searches of passengers’ bags).   I have several observations and questions about these matters:

(1) The bulk of this latest FBI plot entailed attacks on military targets: the Pentagon, U.S. troops in Iraq, and possibly military bases.  The U.S. is — as it has continuously announced to the world — a Nation at War.  The Pentagon is the military headquarters for this war, and its troops abroad are the soldiers fighting it.  In what conceivable sense can attacks on those purely military and war targets be labeled “Terrorism” or even illegitimate?  The U.S. has continuously attacked exactly those kinds of targets in multiple nations around the world; it expressly tried to kill Saddam and Gadaffi in the wars against their countries (it even knowingly blew up an entire suburban apartment building to get Saddam, who wasn’t actually there).   What possible definition of “Terrorism” excludes those attacks by the U.S. while including this proposed one on the Pentagon and other military targets (or, for that matter, Nidal Hasan’s attack on Fort Hood where soldiers deploy to war zones)?

(2) With regard to the targeted building that is not purely a military target — the Capitol Building — is that a legitimate war target under the radically broad standards the U.S. and its allies have promulgated for themselves?  The American “shock and awe” assault on Baghdad destroyed “several government buildings and palaces built by Saddam Hussein”; on just the third day of that war, “U.S. bombs turn[ed] key government buildings in Baghdad into rubble.”  In Libya, NATO repeatedly bombed non-military government buildings.  In Gaza, Israeli war planes targeted a police station filled with police recruits on the stated theory that a valid target “ranges from the strictly military institutions and includes the political institutions that provide the logistical funding and human resources” to Hamas.  

Obviously, there is a wide range of views regarding the justifiability of each war, but isn’t the U.S. Congress — which funds, oversees, and regulates America’s wars — a legitimate war target under the (inadvisedly) broad definitions the U.S. and its allies have imposed when attacking others?  If the political leaders and even functionaries of other countries with which the U.S. is at war are legitimate targets, then doesn’t that necessarily mean that Pentagon officials and, arguably, those in the Congress are as well?

(3) The irony that this plot featured “remote-controlled aircraft filled with plastic explosives” is too glaring to merit comment; the only question worth asking is whether the U.S. Government can sue Ferdaus for infringing its drone patents.  Glaring though that irony is, there is no shortage of expressions of disgust today, pondering what kind of dasterdly Terrorist monster does it take to want to attack buildings with remote-controlled mini-aircraft.

(4) Wouldn’t the FBI’s resources be better spent on detecting and breaking up actual Terrorist plots — if there are any — rather than manufacturing ones so that they can stop those?  Harboring hatred for the U.S. and wanting to harm it (or any country) is not actually a crime; at most, it’s a Thought Crime.  It doesn’t become a crime until steps are taken to attempt to transform that desire into reality.  There are millions and millions of people who at some point harbor a desire to impose violent harm on others who never do so: perhaps that’s true of a majority of human beings.  Many of them will never act in the absence of the type of highly sophisticated, expert push of which the FBI is uniquely capable.  Is manufacturing criminals — as opposed to finding and stopping actual criminals — really a prudent law enforcement activity?

(5) Does the FBI devote any comparable resources to infiltrating non-Muslim communities in order to persuade and induce those extremists to become Terrorists so that they can arrest them?  Are they out in the anti-abortion world, or the world of radical Christianity, or right-wing anti-government radicals, trying to recruit them into manufactured Terrorist plots?

(6) As usual, most media coverage of the FBI’s plots is as uncritical as it is sensationalistic.  The first paragraph of The New York Times article on this story described the plot as one “to blow up the Pentagon and the United States Capitol.”  But the FBI’s charging Affidavit (reproduced below) makes clear that Ferdaus’ plan was to send a single model airplane (at most 1/10 the size of an actual U.S. jet) to the Capitol and two of them to the Pentagon, each packed with “5 pounds” of explosives (para. 70); the Capitol was to be attacked at its dome for “psychological effect” (para 34).  The U.S. routinely drops 500-pound or 1,000-pound bombs from actual fighter jets; this plot — even if it were carried out by someone other than a hapless loner with no experience and it worked perfectly — could not remotely “blow up” the Pentagon or the Capitol.

(7) As is now found in almost every case of would-be Terrorist plots against the U.S. — especially “homegrown Terrorists” — the motive is unbridled fury over (and a desire to avenge) contintuous U.S violence against Muslim civilians.  Infused throughout the charging Affidavit here are such references to Ferdaus’ motives, including his happiness over the prospect of killing U.S. troops in Iraq; his proclamation that he’s “interested in traveling to Afghanistan” to aid insurgents; his statement that “he wanted to ‘decapitate’ the U.S. government’s ‘military center’ and to severely disrupt . . . the head and heart of the snake” (para 12) and to “essentially decapitate the entire empire” (para 34) (compare that language to how the U.S. described what it tried to do in Baghdad).  Using drones to decapitate the leadership and government infrastructure of a nation at war; I wonder where he got that idea.

At least according to the FBI, this is how Feradus replied when expressly asked why he wanted to attack the U.S.:

Cause that would be a huge scare . . . the point is you want to scare them so they know not to mess with you . . . They have . . . . have killed from us, our innocents, our men, women and children, they are all enemies (para 19).

If the FBI’s allegations are accurate, then it’s clear Ferdaus has become hardened in his hatred; he talks about a willingness to kill American civilians because they have become part of the enemy, and claims that he fantasized about such attacks before the FBI informant spoke to him.  

But whatever else is true,  it’s simply unrealistic in the extreme to expect to run around for a full decade screaming WE ARE AT WAR!! — and dropping bombs and attacking with drones and shooting up families in multiple Muslim countries (and occupying, interfering in and killing large numbers before that) — and not produce many Rezwan Ferdauses.  In fact, the only surprising thing is that these seem to be so few of them actually willing and able to attack back that — in order to justify this Endless War on civil liberties (and Terror) — the FBI has to search for ones they can recruit, convert, convince, fund, and direct to carry out plots.

Complaint Affidavit

The post The FBI Again Thwarts Its Own Terror Plot appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

Second, 9/11 is portrayed as acts of unprovoked aggression perpetrated without cause other than wilful violence. In fact Osama bin Laden repeatedly demanded in the 1990s that the US should end its occupation of Saudi Arabia containing the two holy cities of Islam, should stop retaining in power Arab tyrannies in order to preserve Western interests in the Middle East particularly oil, and should cease its indiscriminate support for Israel against the Arab world – all of which demands were ignored by the US. Of course that does not conceivably condone or justify an appalling atrocity like 9/11 which killed nearly 3,000 people, including 67 Britons. But nor does it justify the following decade-long wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan which the US Brown University estimates ‘very conservatively’ cost the deaths of 137,000 civilians (which the Lancet calculated at a million) and created more than 7.8 million refugees.

Third, 9/11 was the pretext to invade Iraq. We know from the memoirs of O’Neill, Bush’s first Treasury secretary, that Bush had been committed from the very outset of his presidency in January 2001 to attack Iraq, only ‘show me a way to do it’. Rumsfeld on the very day of 9/11 repeatedly demanded evidence from the CIA that Iraq was responsible. When none could be produced, Bush was forced to fall back on the WMD excuse, despite knowing that no firm evidence had been produced of that either. However vile was the Saddam Hussein dictatorship, the attack on Iraq was an unprovoked (and illegal) war driven by the US determination to get control of the Iraqi oilfields and to establish a US military platform in the heart of the Middle East.

Fourth, the line is already being spun that in the end the US prevailed. Killing bin Laden is a rhetorical victory, but the reality is quite different. Iraq is slipping under Iranian influence, the pro-Western Kabul government will not survive the US withdrawal in 2014, and with continued drone attacks Pakistan could well implode. It has all cost the US £4 trillions, equal to the cumulative US budget deficits during 2005-10, taken the lives of 6,000 US soldiers, and weakened US power further when it was already haemorrhaging steadily towards Asia on finance, trade and economic grounds. If that is victory, what counts as defeat?

The post The Meaning of 9/11 by Michael Meacher MP appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

Well, according to the masters of propaganda at the BBC/Renegade Productions.

This summer I participated in a BBC hit piece on 9/11, entitled “Conspiracy Roadtrip”. The premise is simple: five non-believers of the official story journey across the east coast of the USA in search of the truth. On the way we meet “experts” and victims of the attacks, guided by “comedian” Andrew Maxwell who believes the 9/11 commission report was the be all and end all of the 9/11 story.

The show aired a few hours ago and I felt compelled to write my version of what happened on that 8 day roadtrip, to give you the perspective you were not shown by BBC 3.

Firstly, I must tip my hat to them. They did a wonderful editing job. Anyone who has ever had a conversation with me or knows me personally will be very much aware of my opinions re: 9/11, and how outspoken I am about them. However, on this show I appear to be pretty much silent the entire way through.

I wasn’t.

Throughout my time on the show I asked question after question. I asked every single person we met whether they believed the official story to be true and the vast majority of them said no. Ask yourselves this question: why has the footage of us meeting Tom Owen, a voice analyst who worked on the Osama Bin Laden “confession” tapes, been cut completely? There is a simple answer. Because he told us not to believe the official report. Why? Because we aren’t in the “need-to-know” category, his words, not mine. Throughout our entire meeting with Tom Owen it was pretty much clear that the director of the show wasn’t happy with his take. Like most of our meetings with “experts” she would try and steer the conversation in a direction that would better fit her hit piece.

I’d also like to ask why footage of [FAA National Operations Manager] Ben Sliney saying that someone needs to be held accountable for 9/11 was cut? Surely that’s something that the TV license paying public should be able to see? But no, it didn’t fit their requirements for the perfect hit piece.

On the journey I was one of the most vocal contributors, consistently asking questions and receiving no answers whatsoever. I wonder why? Is it completely out of this world to assume that the answers to my questions might have made the truth about 9/11 a little too clear to the viewer? Is it a ridiculous conspiracy theory to assume that the reason the BBC turned me into a mute was to create a biased hit-piece? As with most 9/11 “conspiracy” documentaries, they focused on mostly debunkable theories such as no plane hit the Pentagon and fake phone calls. In other words, shit that pushes us further away from real truth and accountability. They also did a great job at making it seem like I believed most of these theories. I’ll freely admit that before I went on the show I was a “9/11 was an inside job” sort of girl. Hell, I even have a t-shirt from infowars.com. Yes that’s right, I knowingly gave money to Alex Jones.

Before I went on the show I had an epiphany of sorts. I realized that all evidence points to a plane hitting a Pentagon, that maybe the twin towers and Building 7 weren’t a controlled demolition and maybe Dick Cheney and co hadn’t plotted the whole thing with fake hijackers. Now I don’t know what is true and what isn’t. I am not 100% convinced about controlled demolition but it is a distinct possibility. I just decided to focus on the other, less spoken about side of 9/11. The fact that with multiple warnings, the US failed to prevent an attack on their own shores. The fact that so many people have been gagged from talking about 9/11 and revealing information they might know. The fact that the 9/11 commission report, by it’s own ADMISSION was set up to fail. These are just a few of the facts that I brought up on the show. Were they shown? No.

I made it very clear, before I went to the US, that I thought these theories can sometimes be harmful to our chances of ever getting a new investigation into 9/11. I asked repeatedly to speak to some sort of government representative, someone who I could ask my questions to. And despite being told I would get to speak to someone, alas that time never came.

So tonight I watched the show and saw no effort on the BBC’s part to differentiate myself from these theories. In fact, they made it look like these theories were actually my own. As you will see if you watch the show, they told me to ask about airport security, yet they cut out clips of me asking why the hijackers weren’t prevented from entering the country. I asked why, with all of the foreknowledge that the US had, were precautions not taken to protect the innocent American people that tragically lost their lives. I didn’t get an answer.

In ten years, not one person has been held accountable for the events of 9/11, when it is now so evident that the attacks could have been prevented. Hell, even Ben Sliney said that the attacks could’ve been prevented. Why are we so comfortable with letting people get away with this? And why, after ten years, are people that dare to question the official story still painted as conspiracy theorists? Hasn’t it been proven, time and time again, that elements of the US administration covered up their criminal involvement in 9/11?

Interestingly, the whole show seemed to be centered around Charlotte, trying to portray her as something she isn’t. The editing was truly phenomenal. Here we have a typical conspiracy theorist, unwilling to listen to anyone else’s point of view and adamant that she is right. That’s not how it was. They also included an argument that Charlotte and I had and took it completely out of context. They failed to include the fact that we made up shortly afterwards, with me apologizing to her. It made me quite angry to see vicious comments about her, considering the fact that she is a friend of mine and one of the people I have stayed in most contact with after the show. Yes, I may disagree with her on some points, but that is the great thing about being able to formulate our own opinions. Charlotte and I are united on the fact that 9/11 desperately needs a new investigation. Please don’t fall for the BBC’s clever editing trick, she is not a bad person and the show misrepresented her entirely.

The same goes for Rodney, the other person I have stayed in contact with since being in the US. Again, we may not agree on everything and we have our differences, but in my experience with him he is a rational and down to earth person. Maybe we should all remember that this was a well-crafted hit piece and the editing was designed to generate ill-feeling towards Rodney and Charlotte, the most head-strong people on the show (along with myself, obviously).

And here we reach Andrew Maxwell, the Irish comedian who consistently ridiculed us and walked away in the middle of debates. See, the BBC don’t want you to know that he complained throughout the entire shoot, laughed about us behind our backs and on more than one occasion said that he wished he’d never signed on to do the show. He’s not a bad person. He was there trying to make some money, we were there trying to get some truth. It’s as simple as that.

Personally, I’m disgusted at the documentary and I think participating in the show will always be one of my biggest regrets. But at the same time, I feel pretty lucky that I got to meet the people I did and ask the questions that I did, even though they weren’t included in the show. It saddens me that I look like a dumb student who doesn’t know a thing about 9/11 and it angers me that I barely have a voice in the entire 60 minutes that the show runs for.

Overall the experience was an interesting one, but one I wouldn’t do again. Imagine intense heat, stuck on a bus all day with cameras shoved in your face, 12 hour filming days, early mornings and emotional breakdowns. It was intense to say the least.

There are a lot more grievances I have with the show but that’s something I will write about another day. Now, it’s time to get some sleep and try to find hope in the fact that I know what happened on the 9/11 Conspiracy Road Trip, I know what I said and I know the answers I got.

The post "9/11 Conspiracy Roadtrip" – A Participant's Perspective appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

I am not going to get into the “some” reasons for this post; although, I have plenty to say on the subject. Instead, for the purpose of this piece, and for those audiences, I am going to answer the “whys.” Why “some” still question and seek answer(s) and accountability on 9/11.

Why 9/11? Because “they” claim that’s what gives them the right to override our Constitution and all other laws guaranteeing our liberties and privacy.

Why 9/11? Because that’s what “they” claim as justification for every one of our many wars.

Why 9/11? Because that’s what “they” say is the reason for us having to be violated, humiliated, groped and fondled for the “privilege” of travel.

Why 9/11? Because that’s when “they” began the illegal eavesdropping of all our communications.

Why 9/11? Because that’s how “they” legitimize excessive secrecy.

Why 9/11? Because that’s the excuse “they” use to implement torture and severe human right violations and escape all liabilities.

Why 9/11? Because that’s the rationalization “they” use to expand ‘their’ size and power.

Why 9/11? Because “they” have successfully made it a means to justify many unjustifiable ends.

Why 9/11? Because that holds answers to many questions “they” don’t want you to ask.

Why 9/11? Because that’s the question “they” don’t want ever answered.

Why 9/11? Because maybe that is what “they” really wanted.

Why 9/11? Because “they” should not get away with it.

With all due respect to those who are still not satisfied with my answers to their “why” question, we’ll be publishing articles, podcast interviews and investigative videos on 9/11 and related topics for the next few weeks… or maybe longer. We hope to have those friends as an open-minded and critical thinking audience during our 9/11 coverage here at Boiling Frogs Post.

The post Answers in Absolute for "Why 9/11?" appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

For much of the day yesterday, the featured headline on The New York Times online front page strongly suggested that Muslims were responsible for the attacks on Oslo; that led to definitive statements on the BBC and elsewhere that Muslims were the culprits.  The Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin wrote a whole column based on the assertion that Muslims were responsible, one that, as James Fallows notes, remains at the Post with no corrections or updates.  The morning statement issued by President Obama — “It’s a reminder that the entire international community holds a stake in preventing this kind of terror from occurring” and “we have to work cooperatively together both on intelligence and in terms of prevention of these kinds of horrible attacks” — appeared to assume, though (to its credit) did not overtly state, that the perpetrator was an international terrorist group. 

But now it turns out that the alleged perpetrator wasn’t from an international Muslim extremist group at all, but was rather a right-wing Norwegian nationalist with a history of anti-Muslim commentary and an affection for Muslim-hating blogs such as Pam Geller’s Atlas Shrugged, Daniel Pipes, and Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch.  Despite that, The New York Times is still working hard to pin some form of blame, even ultimate blame, on Muslim radicals (h/t sysprog):

Terrorism specialists said that even if the authorities ultimately ruled out Islamic terrorism as the cause of Friday’s assaults, other kinds of groups or individuals were mimicking Al Qaeda’s brutality and multiple attacks.

“If it does turn out to be someone with more political motivations, it shows these groups are learning from what they see from Al Qaeda,” said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New America Foundation in Washington.

Al Qaeda is always to blame, even when it isn’t, even when it’s allegedly the work of a Nordic, Muslim-hating, right-wing European nationalist.  Of course, before Al Qaeda, nobody ever thought to detonate bombs in government buildings or go on indiscriminate, politically motivated shooting rampages.  The NYT speculates that amonium nitrate fertilizer may have been used to make the bomb because the suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, owned a farming-related business and thus could have access to that material; of course nobody would have ever thought of using that substance to make a massive bomb had it not been for Al Qaeda.  So all this proves once again what a menacing threat radical Islam is.

Then there’s this extraordinarily revealing passage from the NYT — first noticed by Richard Silverstein — explaining why the paper originally reported what it did:

Initial reports focused on the possibility of Islamic militants, in particular Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami, or Helpers of the Global Jihad, cited by some analysts as claiming responsibility for the attacks. American officials said the group was previously unknown and might not even exist.

There was ample reason for concern that terrorists might be responsible.

In other words, now that we know the alleged perpetrator is not Muslim, we know — by definition — that Terrorists are not responsible; conversely, when we thought Muslims were responsible, that meant — also by definition — that it was an act of Terrorism.  As Silverstein put it: 

How’s that again? Are the only terrorists in the world Muslim? If so, what do we call a right-wing nationalist capable of planting major bombs and mowing down scores of people for the sake of the greater glory of his cause? If even a liberal newspaper like the Times can’t call this guy a terrorist, what does that say about the mindset of the western world?

What it says is what we’ve seen repeatedly: that Terrorism has no objective meaning and, at least in American political discourse, has come functionally to mean: violence committed by Muslims whom the West dislikes, no matter the cause or the target.  Indeed, in many (though not all) media circles, discussion of the Oslo attack quickly morphed from this is Terrorism (when it was believed Muslims did it) to no, this isn’t Terrorism, just extremism (once it became likely that Muslims didn’t).  As Maz Hussain — whose lengthy Twitter commentary on this event yesterday was superb and well worth reading — put it:

That Terrorism means nothing more than violence committed by Muslims whom the West dislikes has been proven repeatedly.  When an airplane was flown into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, it was immediately proclaimed to be Terrorism, until it was revealed that the attacker was a white, non-Muslim, American anti-tax advocate with a series of domestic political grievances.  The U.S. and its allies can, by definition, never commit Terrorism even when it is beyond question that the purpose of their violence is to terrorize civilian populations into submission.  Conversely, Muslims who attack purely military targets  — even if the target is an invading army in their own countries — are, by definition, Terrorists.  That is why, as NYU’s Remi Brulin has extensively documented, Terrorism is the most meaningless, and therefore the most manipulated, word in the English language.  Yesterday provided yet another sterling example.

One last question: if, as preliminary evidence suggests, it turns out that Breivik was “inspired” by the extremist hatemongering rantings of Geller, Pipes and friends, will their groups be deemed Terrorist organizations such that any involvement with them could constitute the criminal offense of material support to Terrorism?  Will those extremist polemicists inspiring Terrorist violence receive the Anwar Awlaki treatment of being put on an assassination hit list without due process?  Will tall, blond, Nordic-looking males now receive extra scrutiny at airports and other locales, and will those having any involvement with those right-wing, Muslim-hating groups be secretly placed on no-fly lists?  Or are those oppressive, extremist, lawless measures — like the word Terrorism — also reserved exclusively for Muslims?

UPDATE:  The original version of the NYT article was even worse in this regard.  As several people noted, here is what the article originally said (papers that carry NYT articles still have the original version):

Terrorism specialists said that even if the authorities ultimately ruled out terrorism as the cause of Friday’s assaults, other kinds of groups or individuals were mimicking al-Qaida’s signature brutality and multiple attacks.

“If it does turn out to be someone with more political motivations, it shows these groups are learning from what they see from al-Qaida,” said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New America Foundation in Washington.

Thus: if it turns out that the perpetrators weren’t Muslim (but rather “someone with more political motivations” — whatever that means: it presumably rests on the inane notion that Islamic radicals are motivated by religion, not political grievances), then it means that Terrorism, by definition, would be “ruled out” (one might think that the more politically-motivated an act of violence is, the more deserving it is of the Terrorism label, but this just proves that the defining feature of the word Terrorism is Muslim violence).  The final version of the NYT article inserted the word “Islamic” before “terrorism” (“even if the authorities ultimately ruled out Islamic terrorism as the cause”), but — as demonstrated above — still preserved the necessary inference that only Muslims can be Terrorists.  Meanwhile, in the world of reality, of 294 Terrorist attacks attempted or executed on European soil in 2009 as counted by the EU, a grand total of one — 1 out of 294 — was perpetrated by “Islamists.” 

The post The Meaninglessness of "Terrorism" appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

First off, does it surprise me that a corporation like News Corp. might try to hack into the information of private citizens for their own financial gain? Nope.

Much like it wouldn’t surprise me if my own government hacked into the private information of its citizens for political gain or… er, I mean, “reasons of national security.” Just ask Dick Cheney and Karl Rove about that.

Of course, any such “accidental netting” on their part would be immediately explained away under the protections of FISA and the Patriot Act, because clearly it would have been necessary “in the ongoing fight against terrorism.”

Too bad, Congress doesn’t want to investigate those types of indiscretions. Sigh.

But truly, I am awestruck when people like Congressman Peter King, Chairman of the House Committee for Homeland Security is so quickly moved to demand an investigation into such vague, seemingly hollow allegations as someone hacking into the cell phones of people like me.

Is this the same Congressman King who when faced with actual hard, incontrovertible facts and figures regarding the vulnerabilities posed by dangerous chemical and water plants across the country remains disinterested? And, I might add firmly on the side of big business. An issue, I might also add, that places a million+ Americans in the bull’s eye everyday. Where’s the outrage there? Or the demand for immediate investigation and action when it comes to that, Congressman King?

Indeed, as someone who has tried to pique the interest of both Congress and the Justice Department to investigate various issues over the course of the past 10 years to no avail, I wonder: what exactly does it take to get Congress and the Department of Justice interested in an issue.

Because with regard to Murdoch-gate and 9/11 victims, ironically, it would seem the bar is pretty low.

According to the Washington Post, “the Mirror’s story remains unsubstantiated and uncorroborated, and it has been reported exclusively by a British tabloid famous for sensational journalism.”

Moreover, the Post reports that “the Mirror names no specific sources in its reporting, and it relies on a single anonymous second-hand source for its account.”

Yet apparently, the US Department of Justice and FBI feel the need to delve into these allegations.

Do they really have that kind of spare time? Especially in light of recent news reports that Bin Laden was planning another large-scale attack on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

More to the point, if all it takes are allegations made in the media to spark a fire in the “seat” of Congress, then I’d like to re-direct their attention along with Director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, Attorney General Eric Holder, and President Obama to this month’s Vanity Fair article written by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, “The Kingdom and the Towers.”

The article details strong, credible allegations directly connecting Saudi financing to the 9/11 attacks. In fact, there are too many alarming, damning bits of information to adequately highlight here. You’ll have to read the article for yourself.

When done reading, I hope that you, too, will question why 10 years later neither Congress nor our Justice Department is interested or willing to investigate the truth about Saudi complicity in the 9/11 attacks.

After all, some might say that Congress’ attempt to go up against a ruthless bastard like Murdoch makes taking on the Saudis look like a proverbial walk in the park. But of course, that’s what we’d all be doing — walking — if DOJ and Congress ever did seriously confront the Saudis, since we’d end up being a little short on oil.

The post Hacking the Saudis appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.