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To write about Mike requires the tranquility of recollection but at the moment, all is turmoil.

Mike, you told us, “Evolve or perish.” Yet in Apocalypse Man you merged them, speaking of death as the ultimate evolution. One day we’ll all find out whether that is, in fact, the case but it’s not the message you used to impart!

Among the emails that have tumbled in this evening is a wonderful link which is sorely needed at such a time: Hope and Courage http://www.oilempire.us/hope.html. Accompanying it, the following quote from Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s List:

“Where’s the electric fence?” Clara asked the woman. To her distraught mind, it was a reasonable question to ask, and Clara had no doubt that the friend, if she had any sisterly feeling, would point the exact way to the wires. The answer the woman gave was just as crazed, but it was one that had a fixed point of view, a
balance, a perversely sane core.

“Don’t kill yourself on the fence, Clara,” the woman urged her. “If you do that, you’ll never know what happened to you.”

It has always been the most powerful of answers to give to the intending suicide. Kill yourself and you’ll never find out how the plot ends. Clara did not have any vivid interest in the plot. But somehow the answer was adequate. She turned around. When she got back to her barracks, she felt more troubled than when she’d set out to look for the fence. But her Cracow friend had — by her reply — somehow cut her off from suicide as an option. LINK

****

The hardest part of this, for me, is that everything I did with or for Mike was in an effort to prevent this day from ever happening. CollapseNet was literally formed to provide a means for Mike to make a living. In doing so, he was brought back into a world of despair that he thought he had retired from. He absorbed the pain of the world on a daily basis until he could not take it any longer, and he left CollapseNet when it got to be too much. But that pain kept following him, and there is nothing that anyone could do about it for him.

He told me many times that Jenna saved his life after Venezuela. I reached out to him in 2009 to help resurrect his career and his honor, and help get him back on his feet again. I know his death is not on me, but I still can’t help feeling, unlike his experience with Jenna, that I failed…or that by “helping” him, it merely brought him back on his path of self-destruction.

My grandfather once told me, “Never mourn the death of a fool,” and suicide has always fit into that category to me. But not this time…this time, it just really fucking hurts.

I’m so sorry you’re gone, Mike. I hope you are finally at peace, and one with Gaia.

Wes

The post Michael Ruppert Has Died appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

The material contains much new information about the hunt before and after 9/11 for bin Laden, the development of the drone campaign in AfPak, and al-Qaida’s relationship with America’s ally, Pakistan. Perhaps most damning are the documents showing that the CIA had bin Laden in its cross hairs a full year before 9/11 — but didn’t get the funding from the Bush administration White House to take him out or even continue monitoring him. The CIA materials directly contradict the many claims of Bush officials that it was aggressively pursuing al-Qaida prior to 9/11, and that nobody could have predicted the attacks. “I don’t think the Bush administration would want to see these released, because they paint a picture of the CIA knowing something would happen before 9/11, but they didn’t get the institutional support they needed,” says Barbara Elias-Sanborn, the NSA fellow who edited the materials.

Let’s start there. In 2000 and 2001, the CIA began using Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Afghanistan. “The idea of using UAVs originated in April 2000 as a result of a request from the NSC’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism to the CIA and the Department of Defense to come up with new ideas to go after the terrorists in Afghanistan,” a 2004 document summarizes. The Pentagon approved the plan for surveillance purposes.

And yet, simultaneously, the CIA declared that budget concerns were forcing it to move its Counterterrorism Center/Osama bin Laden Unit from an “offensive” to a “defensive” posture. For the CIA, that meant trying to get Afghan tribal leaders and the Northern Alliance to kill or capture bin Laden, Elias-Sanborn says. “It was forced to be less of a kinetic operation,” she says. “It had to be only for surveillance, which was not what they considered an offensive posture.”

“Budget concerns … CT [counterterrorism] supplemental still at NSC-OMB [National Security Council – Office of Management and Budget] level,” an April 2000 document reads. “Need forward movement on supplemental soonest due to expected early recess due to conventions, campaigning and elections.” In addition, the Air Force told the CIA that if it lost a drone, the CIA would have to pay for it, which made the agency more reluctant to use the technology.

Still, the drone program began in September 2000. One drone swiftly twice observed an individual “most likely to have been Bin Laden.” But since the CIA only had permission to use the drones for intelligence gathering, it had no way to act on its findings. The agency submitted a proposal to the National Security Council staff in December 2000 that would have significantly expanded the program. “It was too late for the departing Clinton Administration to take action on this strategic request,” however. It wasn’t too late for the Bush administration, though. It just never did.

Former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice has taken credit for the drone program that the Bush administration ignored. “Things like working to get an armed Predator that actually turned out to be extraordinarily important, working to get a strategy that would allow us to get better cooperation from Pakistan and from the Central Asians,” she said in 2006. “We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida.” Rice claimed that the Bush administration continued the Clinton administration’s counterterrorism policies, a claim the documents disprove. “If the administration wanted to get it done, I’m sure they could have gotten it done,” says Elias-Sanborn.

Many of the documents publicize for the first time what was first made clear in the 9/11 Commission: The White House received a truly remarkable amount of warnings that al-Qaida was trying to attack the United States. From June to September 2001, a full seven CIA Senior Intelligence Briefs detailed that attacks were imminent, an incredible amount of information from one intelligence agency. One from June called “Bin-Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats” writes that “[redacted] expects Usama Bin Laden to launch multiple attacks over the coming days.” The famous August brief called “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike the US” is included. “Al-Qai’da members, including some US citizens, have resided in or travelled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure here,” it says. During the entire month of August, President Bush was on vacation at his ranch in Texas — which tied with one of Richard Nixon’s as the longest vacation ever taken by a president. CIA Director George Tenet has said he didn’t speak to Bush once that month, describing the president as being “on leave.” Bush did not hold a Principals’ meeting on terrorism until September 4, 2001, having downgraded the meetings to a deputies’ meeting, which then-counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke has repeatedly said slowed down anti-Bin Laden efforts “enormously, by months.”

For all the information the documents reveal, one huge matter is conspicuously absent: torture. There are nearly 50 CIA documents relating to such matters as the interrogation of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the intelligence gleaned from him, and yet “none of them were declassified at all,” notes Elias-Sanborn. “Certainly, the CIA has a stake in revealing what they did,” and they clearly do not want to reveal their complicity in war crimes.

One last thing is worth mentioning from the documents published today: Anyone with any doubt that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dangerous to the United States is contradicting U.S. intelligence. “Violence between Israelis and the Palestinians, moreover is making Sunni extremists more willing to participate in attacks against US or Israeli interests,” the CIA wrote in February 2001. It is not the only piece of information revealed by the new documents that will be deeply uncomfortable for the Bush administration and hawks across the country.

The post New NSA Documents: 9/11 "Attacks Were Imminent" appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

With an uncharacteristic lack of journalistic and historical integrity, Maddow points to the 9/11 Commission Report as fact while making absolutely no mention of the Jersey Girls who were also widows of victims and the primary motivating force behind the creation of the 9/11 Commission Report due to the inadequacy of the official account.

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Cyberspace is the perfect place for this contradiction to thrive, for it is both “the Petri dish for paranoids” and also the home of Snopes and other scam trackers. Wikipedia is a battleground between conspiracy hounds and the thousands of amateur sleuths who aspire to do at least as good a job as the fact-checkers at conventional encyclopedias (whether they do so is a matter of considerable debate, including within Wikipedia itself). The Internet is full of bunkum and debunk ’em. Like matter and anti-matter, they should cancel each other out. But the relationship more aptly resembles that between bacteria and antibiotics. Develop an effective tuberculosis vaccine, and the TB bacterium will develop a stronger resistant strain. The American body politic, weakened by successive waves of government lies, media oversights, and the relentless repetition of demagogues, is susceptible to these highly infectious theories.

Most toxic of all perhaps are the myths generated by 9/11. Over the years, I’ve received lots of letters about 9/11 and why it was an inside job. One recent letter insisted that Osama bin Laden was not behind the 2001 attacks, that an Israeli firm in the Twin Towers “received a fax warning them about the 911 attack that would come in a few hours” (which presumably allowed it to warn Israelis and/or Jews to evacuate the building), and that it was not a plane that struck the Pentagon on that fateful day.

Although bin Laden initially denied responsibility, an overwhelming amount of evidence surfaced that linked al Qaeda to the attacks (including, of course, bin Laden himself eventually claiming responsibility). As for the Israeli firm, Odigo, it did receive such a warning, but it was an instant message, not a fax. The message arrived at its office in Israel, did not identify the location of the attack, and was hostile rather than friendly. It in no way demonstrates that the firm, which didn’t even have offices in the Twin Towers to evacuate, was part of a U.S.-Israeli plot to bring down the buildings. As for Flight 77, there were lots of eyewitness reports of its crash into the Pentagon in addition to calls made by people on board. And where exactly did the flight go if not into the Pentagon? I could go on — about the misrepresentations of the size of the hole in the Pentagon, other hoaxes involving advanced warnings of 9/11, and all the other fanciful theories about who was behind the attacks.

The “9/11 truthers” are as resistant to rebuttal as the right-wing “birthers.” They both draw strength from their deep-seated distrust of government and the mass media. They believe not in Occam’s Razor, which argues for building a case on the fewest new assumptions, but in Occam’s Hairball, a partially digested lump of every new assumption that has stuck in their craw.

Long before the Internet, historian Richard Hofstadter warned of the “paranoid style” that periodically grips the American body politic and directs the crowd’s fury at Masons or Jesuits or Jews or Communists. In his recently updated book on conspiracy theories, legal scholar Mark Fenster takes a more benign view. Such theories reflect populist suspicion about the concentration of economic and political power, a suspicion “that can have violent, racist, and antidemocratic effects (as well as salutary and democracy-enhancing ones) on the political and social order, but a strain that is neither independent from nor necessarily threatening to the country’s political institutions or political culture.”

I agree that conspiracy theories do not threaten the status quo, for they usually distract attention from more serious and systemic problems (for instance, bridges and highways and buildings are collapsing all over the United States because of the defunding of infrastructure, and the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth focus all their energies on explaining how an exploding plane could never make the Twin Towers collapse?). And yes, before you prepare your flaming emails, some conspiracies turn out to have a basis in fact (the Iran-Contra affair, for instance, or the right-wing mobilization to bring down Bill Clinton).

The danger of conspiracy theories lies not so much in whether they are right or wrong but in how they erode our democratic institutions. Instead of democratizing the state, conspiracy theorists tend toward a libertarian downsizing of government; instead of breaking the corporate control of the media, conspiracy theorists create their own dogmatic blogs and websites. Conspiracies sap our will, for who except Jesus or Keanu Reaves can stand up to The Matrix? In fact, conspiracies are the exception to the rule of big institutions, which err on the side of incompetence more often than not. Conspiracies overstate the power of the powerful. As the Iran-Contra affair demonstrated, even authentic conspiracies are fairly inept.

I fear that conspiracies have become the only way for us to organize the unruly flow of information that assaults us daily. We create all-encompassing, quasi-religious explanations to make sense of the supernova of our post-modern experience.

The post The Bunkum of John Feffer appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

Kay’s book is half reportage and half evidence. Both halves demonstrate that mistrust in institutions—which aren’t doing the best job of running things right now—is driving a wave of conspiracy-mongering. To a man, the leading 9/11 Truthers that Kay interviews say that they found their obsession because they didn’t trust the government and they sought out information from some samizdat source. …

Look at the 9/11 conspiracy. Some of Kay’s sources have tenuous connections to reality. Most of them got interested in the conspiracy because something else seemed … wrong. As Kay points out, “Trutherism” didn’t really take off until 2003, when it was clear there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. If you were already inclined to think that George W. Bush had been unfairly put into office in 2000, if you had read the Project for a New American Century’s letters from the end of the Clinton years, well, this was enough to drive you nuts.

The post David Weigel Reviews "Among The Truthers" appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

The indictment charging self-professed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others was unsealed when US Attorney General Eric Holder referred the case to the Defense Department for military trials instead of trials at a US federal court in New York.

Holder said Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali and Mustapha Ahmed al-Hawsawi could have been prosecuted in federal court and blamed Congress for imposing measures blocking civilian trials of Guantanamo Bay inmates.

They will be tried in military courts in the US naval base in southeastern Cuba.

The now-public details show that the United States, nearly 10 years after hijackers flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, reconstructed step by step the logistics of the five accused men.

They compiled bank transactions, flight records, visa applications, and dozens of telephone conversations to create the most comprehensive account of the chain of events before the attacks.

Implementation of the plan began in 1999, when Sheikh Mohammed (referred to as “KSM” by US officials) proposed to Osama bin Laden to use commercial airliners as missiles against US targets.

Until the last minute, according to the indictment, Sheikh Mohammed controlled the entire operation.

“From in or about December 1999, through in or about June 2000, Al-Qaeda selected operatives to pilot the airplanes to be hijacked and dispatched the operatives to the United States to obtain flight training and otherwise carry out the plot,” the indictment said.

Walid bin Attash, born in Saudi Arabia in 1979, traveled in first-class between Bangkok and Hong Kong, with a knife in his pocket “and approached the cockpit to test security measures.” He then took several other international flights, each time with his penknife undetected.

Meanwhile, Ramzi Binalshibh in Hamburg became friends with future hijacker Mohamed Atta. Binalshibh, a 38-year-old Yemeni, applied four times for a visa to the United States in 2000 but was denied each time.

So, at the request of KSM, Binalshibh became and intermediary between KSM and the future hijackers.

At the same time, from Dubai, KSM nephew Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, of Pakistan, provided flight simulation software to the hijackers and began transferring money to US accounts. Between January and June 2000, US investigators pinpointed 35 telephone calls between him and the hijackers.

Mustapha Ahmed al-Hawsawi, a 42-year-old from Saudi Arabia, was accused of being the principal financier of the attacks.

Bank transfers were made in small amounts so as not to arouse suspicion and different names were used each time. Tens of thousands of dollars arrived in US accounts, including for Zacarias Moussaoui, who was involved in the plot but was arrested a month before the attacks.

In the United Arab Emirates, al-Hawsawi monitored the operations and discusses them with KSM.

Between July 9-16, 2001, Ramzi Binalshibh met with Mohamed Atta in Spain. The two men “discussed, among other aspects of the plot, potential targets for the hijacking attacks.”

On July 23, KSM filed a visa application for the United States which was refused. At the end of August, he told bin Laden of the date for the attacks.

Between September 4-10, the men made their way from the UAE to Pakistan.

Walid bin Attash was with bin Laden on September 11, after which the Al-Qaeda leader ordered him to Tora Bora in Afghanistan to prepare for an offensive.

The five men, all of whom were arrested in Pakistan, could face the death penalty if convicted.

One year after the attacks, Pakistani police arrested Binalshibh at a home in a chic Karachi suburb. He was alone and didn’t put up a fight.

In March 2003, al-Hawsawi and Sheikh Mohammed were picked up by Pakistani special forces in a raid in Rawalpindi.

The indictment said the two men were “at a safe house where they possessed false identification and materials related to Al-Qaeda and the planning and execution of the September 11, 2001, attacks.”

Bin Attash and al-Aziz Ali were arrested by Pakistani police in April 2003.

All five men disappeared into secret prisons until September 2006, when they reappeared at Guantanamo.

Sheikh Mohammed is known to have been “waterboarded” or subjected to simulated drowning 183 times during his years in US custody, a method widely recognized as torture.

After his arrest in 2003 he was handed over to American agents who held him in secret prisons before sending him to Guantanamo.

Sheikh Mohammed also claims to have personally beheaded US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 with his “blessed right hand” and to have helped in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six people.

The post US Reveals Evidence Against Alleged 9/11 Plotters appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

The post The 9/11 Omission Hearings appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

I have little doubt that over the years, Bill Moyers and Robert Parry have received a multitude of emails from people demanding they give attention to the cover-up of 9/11. I have little doubt that a large majority of those emails talked about “crazy” theories, or made accusations of them for not covering certain issues. Unfortunately, there are people in the 9/11 Truth Movement who do these things. I, myself, have been known to write a nastygram on occasion.

However, it is well known and said by many that after the 9/11 attacks, the media in this country did not do it’s job. Dan Rather said on May 17, 2002, “there was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around people’s necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions.” On April 25, 2007, Dan Rather told Bill Moyers that “there’s no question that we didn’t do a good job. We weren’t smart enough, we weren’t alert enough, we didn’t dig enough, and, we shouldn’t have been fooled in this way.” Helen Thomas was adamant about the media’s failure after 9/11. “They (the media) rolled over and played dead.”

Here is just one example of too many to mention of the media not doing it’s job.

On January 31st, two acts of civil disobedience for 9/11 Justice were committed in front of the White House and 10 Downing Street respectively. Not one news outlet reported on it. Even a news outlet that promised me they would report on it, did not. The excuse given to me was that Egypt’s revolution was more important.

On that same day, the September Eleventh Advocates released a statement pertaining to 9/11 Whistleblower Berhrooz Sarshar. This statement asked, “that the transcript of Mr. Sarshar’s interview be immediately declassified,” and that they respectfully request, “that the former Chairman, Governor Thomas Kean, Vice-Chairman, Mr. Lee Hamilton and the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, Mr. Philip Zelikow, promptly answer the questions herein.”

Neither Thomas Kean, Lee Hamilton, or Philip Zelikow responded. As a result of their refusal to respond, 9/11 Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds released a transcript of one of the times Berhrooz Sarshar testified. This transcript speaks of foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks, and an order from above to disregard any knowledge of it. Not one news outlet reported on it.

9/11 was the event that created the “Post-9/11 World.” If any information comes out that says we were lied to about that day, then that is essential, newsworthy information. Period. For some reason, our media doesn’t agree with me.

It is the media’s job to make sure citizens’ are aware of what’s going on in their country, and in the world. It is absolutely essential that we are an informed citizenry because if we aren’t, then we pay a huge price.

With that in mind, can you blame advocates for 9/11 Justice for getting angry with the media for not covering the obvious problems with the “official account” of 9/11? Bill Moyers says the facts still matter. I agree, and that’s why I wrote an article entitled The Facts Speak For Themselves. You may agree or disagree with some of the content in that article. However, I challenge you to tell me after reading it that it isn’t absolutely imperative to have a real investigation into the 9/11 attacks, the event that created the “Post-9/11 World.”

Click Here To Read Bill Moyers Attack Against Advocates For 9/11 Justice.

The post Response to Bill Moyers on 9/11 Truth appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

Today, I did exactly that. I went to the White House to chain (handcuff) myself to the White House fence in an act of civil disobedience specifically for 9/11 Justice. Something that has been denied to the families that lost someone that day, and to the people of the world.

In the weeks leading up to the action, several people warned me about what “might” happen to me. One person suggested that because of the Tucson shooter, they may “302” me (put me in a mental institution). Another warned that I had better be prepared to feel sniper lasers on me from those sitting atop the White House. As it turns out, none of that happened. However, I would like to thank those people for all of the unnecessary stress they caused me. 🙂

This morning, I met Erik Larsen at Cosi’s, which is right next to the White House. Thankfully, he agreed to film my action. At around 9:45, we left Cosi’s to go to Lafayette Park. I had already put one cuff on my wrist, and hid the other up my sleeve so the cops couldn’t see it. It didn’t matter as it turned out. Before the action, I decided to have a cigarette. One of the police rode their bike up to where we were sitting, and parked. He stood there for a minute or two, and then said, “are you Mr. Gold?” I responded, “Yes, that’s me.” He asked, “are you still planning on chaining yourself to the fence?” I said, “that is my intention.” He said, “I wish you wouldn’t.” To me, it was clear intimidation, but lucky for me, I am one stubborn individual.

After the conversation with the police officer, I grabbed my sign, and walked to the White House fence. I walked back and forth for a little bit (something you are allowed to do on the White House sidewalk), and then I thought to myself, “now is as good a time as any,” and pulled out the other cuff, and latched it onto the fence.

The police immediately took out their crime scene tape, and set up a perimeter. Here I was, all by myself, in the middle of a “crime scene.” I have to admit, aside from the officer that tried to “intimidate” me, the other officers were extremely friendly. One walked up to me and asked me if I needed a pair of gloves. Another asked if the cuff around my wrist was too tight.

As I was at the fence, two plain clothes individuals walked up to me to ask a few questions. I thought they were from the media, but as it turns out, they were from the Secret Service. The agent asked for my number, my address, and what my intentions were. I said, “we were lied to about 9/11, and I’m trying to bring attention to that fact because the media isn’t doing it.” He again asked about my intentions, and in the back of my mind, it occurred to me that maybe he thought I was someone like the Tucson shooter. I said, “my intentions are what I told you. I am non-violent.” He said, “that’s all I wanted to know,” and left.

It is policy for the police to give you a warning 3x before they arrest you. After the third warning, they took off the handcuffs I had on, and put on another pair. Again, a nice police officer used two sets of handcuffs because I am such a big guy. As they walked me off, I made sure to dedicate my arrest to the “Jersey Girls” (September Eleventh Advocates).

Getting in the back of the police car was an experience in and of itself. Apparently, they never expected to arrest a 6’2″ 300+ lb individual with a size 16 shoe. I tried to get in the car, and my foot got stuck underneath the front seat. Finally, after squirming a bit, I managed to lay down in the back so they could close the door. Then, we drove off to the processing center.

I am amazed at how quickly they let me go. From the time I was put in the car, until the time I was processed, it took no longer than 45 minutes. Compared to my last experience which was 53 hours in jail, this was a breeze.

I am sorry to say that only one other person besides Erik and myself showed up. One of the reasons I chose to do this action was to hopefully show people who care about 9/11 Justice that we need to take it to the next level. That we can’t sit on websites arguing about whose theory is right or wrong until this issue disappears into the ether. We are coming up on 10 years since that horrible event happened, and we need to do everything we can to make sure justice is served.

My sincerest thanks to Erik for coming to film today, and to the multitude of people that supported me from afar. Thank you.

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