Zeitgeist, the movie [Google Video link embedded] - An interesthing, if bizarre, mix of buffed-up comparative mythology, 9/11 conspiracy theories and New world order rambling about banks, loans, debts and war. Is paranoia the spirit of our times?
posted on Jul 26, 2007 - View this thread

"Every man for himself. I was irrationally convinced that if one particle of that sinister cloud managed to touch me I would die."
posted on Sep 11, 2006 - View this thread

"It's Al-Qaida!" I yelled. "We had a heads-up!" In an exclusive AlterNet interview, Judith Miller says (and her then-editor Steve Engelberg corroborates) that in July 2001 an intelligence source (maybe Richard Clarke?) told her about an intercepted communication between two Al Qaida operatives that were disappointed that the US hadn't responded more seriously to the October 2000 attack against the USS Cole. "And one Al Qaida operative was overheard saying to the other, 'Don't worry; we're planning something so big now that the U.S. will have to respond.'"
posted on May 18, 2006 - View this thread

Oliver Stone has begun shooting a movie about the September 11 attacks. Despite promising to tread carefully on what is surely sensitive ground, one cannot be worried about Stone's possible interpretation of the events of that day. Furthermore, is it too soon, or does this movie come at just the right time? And finally, will it be more, or less, historically 'accurate' as his last film, Alexander?
posted on Nov 11, 2005 - View this thread

9-11 I've never posted a link before and don't mean to create any debate or make any statement. I just thought that before the day was out we do the obvious and remember.
posted on Sep 11, 2005 - View this thread

Who caught Zacarias Moussaoui? Clancy Prevost smiles at the absurdity of his story. We are just a few miles down the road from the Eagan flight school where, one month before the September 11th attacks, he tried to teach Zacarias Moussaoui how to fly a Boeing 747.
posted on May 24, 2005 - View this thread

Someone finally gets around to lodging an attempt to prove to the standards of a court of law that Bush Knew about 9/11 in advance, among other evil deeds. Now what?
posted on Oct 25, 2004 - View this thread

Walking to the Sky (more)
posted on Sep 13, 2004 - View this thread

The Likudization of the World "....he has cast the United States in the very same role in which Israel casts itself, facing the very same threat. In this narrative, the U.S. is fighting a never ending battle for its very survival against utterly irrational forces that seek nothing less than its total extermination. "
posted on Sep 12, 2004 - View this thread

Factfilter: Sen. Bob Graham's new book shows coverup.on Saudi's behalf Bush had concluded that ''a nation-state that had aided the terrorists should not be held publicly to account,'' Graham wrote. "It was as if the president's loyalty lay more with Saudi Arabia than with America's safety.'' And there's stuff about Iraq, too. After wearing 9/11 like a tiara during the convention, will the facts finally be aired?
posted on Sep 6, 2004 - View this thread

Half of New Yorkers Believe US Leaders Had Foreknowledge of Impending 9-11 Attacks and “Consciously Failed” To Act; 66% Call For New Probe of Unanswered Questions by Congress or New York’s Attorney General, New Zogby International Poll Reveals On the eve of a Republican National Convention invoking 9/11 symbols, sound bytes and imagery, half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of New York citizens overall say that some of our leaders "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act," according to the poll conducted by Zogby International. The poll of New York residents was conducted from Tuesday August 24 through Thursday August 26, 2004. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of +/-3.5. This is probably bad news for Rudy Giuliani.
posted on Aug 31, 2004 - View this thread

F.A.A. Official Scrapped Tape of 9/11 Controllers' Statements Shit happens? Or does it? " At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording that day describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said today."
posted on May 6, 2004 - View this thread

CIA Warned of Attack 6 Years Before 9-11 Six years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA warned in a classified report that Islamic extremists likely would strike on U.S. soil at landmarks in Washington or New York, or through the airline industry, according to intelligence officials.
posted on Apr 16, 2004 - View this thread

Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US - The Presidential Daily Briefing

Kevin Drum: Aside from that, what really struck me was that the whole thing was so short — considerably shorter than your average op-ed column, in fact — and written at about a high school level. This is an intelligence briefing prepared at the request of the president of the United States and he was apparently satisfied with it? Eleven paragraphs of pabulum considerably less authoritative than an average article in Foreign Affairs ? Sheesh.
posted on Apr 10, 2004 - View this thread

Bush Was Warned of Possible Attack in U.S., Official Says "President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday. The warning came in a secret briefing that Mr. Bush received at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, 2001. A report by a joint Congressional committee last year alluded to a "closely held intelligence report" that month about the threat of an attack by Al Qaeda, and the official confirmed an account by The Associated Press on Friday saying that the report was in fact part of the president's briefing in Crawford." Then again, he had more important things to deal with that Summer.
posted on Apr 10, 2004 - View this thread

9/11 Panel: Bush White House Withheld Papers The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks announced yesterday that it has identified 69 documents from the Clinton era that the Bush White House withheld from investigators and which include references to al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and other issues relevant to the panel's work.
posted on Apr 8, 2004 - View this thread

The danger is less that a state will sponsor a terror group and more that a terror group will sponsor a state—as happened in Afghanistan Zakaria: Stepping away from the partisan screaming going on these days, the 9/11 commission hearings and—far more revealing—the panel's staff reports paint a fascinating picture of the rise of a new phenomenon in global politics: terrorism that is not state-sponsored but society-sponsored. Few in the American government fully grasped that a group of people without a state's support could pose a mortal threat. The mistake looks obvious in hindsight, but was, sadly, understandable at the time of 9/11. What is less understandable is that this same error persists even today.
posted on Mar 28, 2004 - View this thread

Kerry Calls on Rice to Testify "John Kerry said Saturday the White House is committing character assassination with its treatment of former counterterror chief Richard Clarke to avoid responding to questions about national security. Kerry also said Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, should testify in public before the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. "If Condoleezza Rice can find time to do '60 Minutes' on television before the American people, she ought to find 60 minutes to speak to the commission under oath," Kerry told reporters. "We're talking about the security of our country."...
posted on Mar 28, 2004 - View this thread

DOJ Asked FBI Translator To Change Pre 9-11 Intercepts --- FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, was offered a substantial raise and a full time job in order to not go public that she had been asked by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to retranslate and adjust the translations of [terrorist] subject intercepts that had been received before September 11, 2001 by the FBI and CIA.  "My translations of the pre 9-11 intercepts included [terrorist] money laundering, detailed and date specific information enough to alert the American people, and other issues dating back to 1999 which I won't go into right now." Incredibly, Edmonds said "The senate Judiciary Committee, and the 911 Commission have heard me  testify for  lengthy periods of time time (3 hours) about very specific plots, dates, airplanes used as weopons, and specific idividuals and activities." Is this true? and OMFG
posted on Mar 24, 2004 - View this thread

Why is C-Span downplaying the 9/11 Hearings? I don't even get C-Span 3 with my cable company. Is this a pattern?
posted on Mar 24, 2004 - View this thread

Osama bin Laden: missed opportunities The question for the 9/11 commission: If the CIA was able to get that close to bin Laden before 9/11, why wasn’t he captured or killed? The videotape has remained secret until now.
posted on Mar 16, 2004 - View this thread

Howard Dean reamed by RNC chairman after his 911 comment on the Diane Rehm show "Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie blasted Democratic presidential frontrunner Howard Dean on Friday for suggesting that President Bush may have been warned in advance about the 9/11 attacks." Perhaps Mr.Gillespie didn't take the time to read the Newsweek article suggesting the same thing or perhaps he hasn't read of these predominately major media stories that call into question the administration's no prior knowledge claim. Just wondering?
posted on Dec 6, 2003 - View this thread

Two Years After 9/11: Ashcroft’s Assault on the Constitution. "Under the direction of Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Department of Justice has undermined the constitutional rights of all Americans as it has prosecuted a war on terrorism since the September 11, 2001 attacks, according to a new report released today by People For the American Way Foundation" [via TalkLeft.] On the bright side, I hear the Patriot Act Summer Tour rocked [flash.]
posted on Sep 9, 2003 - View this thread

A Rare View of 9/11, Overlooked From the NY Times: "They did not even see the pale fleck of the airplane streak across the corner of the video camera's field of view at 8:46 a.m. But the camera, pointed at the twin towers from the passenger seat of an S.U.V. in Brooklyn near the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, kept rolling when the plane disappeared for an instant and then a silent, billowing cloud of smoke and dust slowly emerged from the north tower, as if it had sprung a mysterious kind of leak." I can't even look at the pictures, just too painful for me, but this will probably be a major development in the next week.
posted on Sep 6, 2003 - View this thread

Met by "howls of outrage" and questions about his sanity, Michael Meacher, the ex-Environment Minister for the UK, known mostly for his opposition to GMOs, and revelations about the less than honest and upright behaviour surrounding the issue, has spent some time thinking, free from the constraints of Ministerial duties. "the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into "tomorrow's dominant force" is likely to be a long one in the absence of "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor". The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the "go" button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement."
- Commentary - Commentary - Commentary
posted on Sep 6, 2003 - View this thread

WHO were you on September 11th? To paraphrase the political cliche, are you really different now from what you were two years ago? A collective blog project taking place in one week (of course) will try and answer that question.
posted on Sep 4, 2003 - View this thread

EPA misled public on 9/11 pollution
"In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, the White House instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available."
posted on Aug 23, 2003 - View this thread

Report on 9/11 Suggests a Role by Saudi Spies If this article in the NY Times is accurate, then The Saudi request that the classified pages be made public, and the Bush refusal to do so, is a cooperative effort to keep the public from knowing the Saudi involvement rather than an attempt to protect intelligence methods etc as had been claimed by Bush. Ot, Bush is right (we won't know) and the Times wrong. Take your choice.
posted on Aug 2, 2003 - View this thread

Sept. 11, 2003: Photoblog your life

"I've been thinking about September 11th. I've been thinking about the United States response - The Patriot Act. Invading Afganastan & Iraq. Death. Fear. Oppression. It seems to me that this is NOT the America I want the world to know. So I propose a blogwide Photoblog your Life day on September 11th. Take your camera with you. Take pictures. Show the world your life. Show the world your daily delights. Show the world that we choose life, happiness and freedom."

What is happening in America? This recent article written by Eliot Weinberger originally appeared in Vorworts the magazine German Social Democratic Party. I believe Mr. Weinberger is this same author of the eloquent September 11th anniversary essay entitled New York: One Year After
posted on Jun 18, 2003 - View this thread

Graham Alleges a 9/11 'Coverup' Long a favorite issue of alternative (and tinfoil-hat-oriented) media, now this is getting picked up by a prominent Democrat. It would appear that Graham is the only moderate Democratic candidate to even approach topics that reflect negatively on the Bush administration. Certainly, when even the US military speculates that yesterday's attacks in Saudi Arabia were started by Al Qeada, and people in Chicago and Seattle are reminded of the reality of ongoing threats, it is reasonable to ask if the "War on Terror" is indeed being won. Is Graham someone with the power and place in the spotlight to make that a serious issue for voters?
posted on May 13, 2003 - View this thread

Judge, citing al-Qaida-Iraq link, awards $104 million to Sept. 11 families A judge ruled yesterday that lack of evidence should be no barrier to suing people who cannot be found. "The judge wrote that lawyers relied heavily on 'classically hearsay' evidence, including reports that a Sept. 11 hijacker met an Iraqi consul to Prague, Secretary of State Colin Powell's remarks to the United Nations about connections between Iraq and terrorism, and defectors' descriptions of the use of an Iraq camp to train terrorists." --This would hardly be the first documented example of a court being overtly political, but the judge himself has no problem commenting on how shoddy the case was. "The judge noted that the experts provided few actual facts that Iraq provided support to the terrorists." --Apparently, the judge had just been waiting for Saddam to cease to be a diplomatically immune head of state before ruling against him. Is the low standard of evidence needed for civil rulings allowing the courts to begin establishing something that the military and intelligence can't? [more inside]
posted on May 8, 2003 - View this thread

“There has been a cover-up of this.” Ah, well, why should we be surprised. The Republicans already have decided to co-opt September 11 to their political advantage by rescheduling their convention in New York so close to the anniversary of that day, so why not keep the report on the actual events of September 11 secret - to avoid any sort of embarassing political fallout?
posted on May 1, 2003 - View this thread

I've written before about the myth of the heartland--roughly speaking, the "red states," which voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 election, as opposed to the "blue states," which voted for Al Gore. The nation's interior is supposedly a place of rugged individualists, unlike the spongers and whiners along the coasts. In reality, of course, rural states are heavily subsidized by urban states. New Jersey pays about $1.50 in federal taxes for every dollar it gets in return; Montana receives about $1.75 in federal spending for every dollar it pays in taxes.

Any sensible program of spending on homeland security would at least partly redress this balance. The most natural targets for terrorism lie in or near great metropolitan areas; surely protecting those areas is the highest priority, right?

Apparently not. Even in the first months after Sept. 11, Republican lawmakers made it clear that they would not support any major effort to rebuild or even secure New York. And now that anti-urban prejudice has taken statistical form: under the formula the Department of Homeland Security has adopted for handing out money, it spends 7 times as much protecting each resident of Wyoming as it does protecting each resident of New York.

Paul Krugman, cited by Eric Alterman in regards to Jonathan Chait's The 9/10 President, a story we all seemed to have missed. Not long ago, the Washington Post carried Begging, Borrowing for Security.
Welcome to Trickle Down Homeland Security.
posted on Apr 21, 2003 - View this thread

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia hires a huge U.S. legal team to defend them against the landmark $1 trillion lawsuit on behalf of the victims of 9-11 (msnbc link)

Baker Botts is the lawfirm representing the Saudis.
I find it interesting that this lawfirm boasts former secretary of State James Baker as one of its senior partners. Its recent alumni included Robert Jordan (Jordan, a corporate lawyer in the Dallas office of Houston-based Baker Botts, defended Bush in a probe of insider trading allegations in 1990. Bush was cleared of wrongdoing), the former personal lawyer for President Bush who is now U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
posted on Apr 21, 2003 - View this thread

The Iraq-September 11th smoking gun? Finally, near proof that Iraq was involved in the September 11th attacks on America: a mural in the Iraqi military headquarters in Nasiriya depicts a plane crashing into a building complex similar to New York's twin towers! (Okay, seriously, are some folks so desperate to make the connection that this might become an actual story?)
posted on Mar 27, 2003 - View this thread

German in court over 'ironic' message board comment. I think we should talk about this. Very... carefully...
posted on Jan 7, 2003 - View this thread

If you're already familiar with the work of Jack Chick, the creator of those amusingly offensive evangelist comic books, you probably know not to take him too seriously -- after all, the threat of being thrown into a giant lake of fire by an angel isn't particularly frightening. Still, when his new tract starts with an image of the smoldering twin towers, and ends with the words, "Bob, now I know that Allah doesn't really love me or even care about any Muslim. But Jesus, the Son of God, does," it's difficult not to worry that this time he's bitten off more than he can chew.
posted on Jan 2, 2003 - View this thread

Protest Lord Of The Rings "The Two Towers"!!! "We believe that Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema's actions are in fact hate speech. The movie is intentionally being named The Two Towers in order to capitalize on the tragedy of September 11." Satire?....please.
posted on Oct 24, 2002 - View this thread

Bush Doubted on 9/11 Panel Angry lawmakers accused the White House yesterday of secretly trying to derail creation of an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks while professing to support the idea. The White House responded by renewing its pledge of support for the proposal and suggesting an agreement was near.
posted on Oct 15, 2002 - View this thread

Meet Edgar Sanchez

He's 'Helmet Man' at Kansas City Chiefs football games.
He runs a store that sells 'George Foreman grills.'
He sells hot dogs in downtown.
He appears on the radio.

And he was in the Witness Protection Program for testifying against Sheik Omar Rahman, the man behind the bombing of the World Trade Centers.
posted on Sep 28, 2002 - View this thread

Did Lenient Fire Codes Make 9/11 Worse? Tony Fitzpatrick, the designer of the London Millennium Bridge, developed computer simulations with the help of an engineering consulting firm, in order to generate new suggestions for safeguarding buildings from terrorist attack. Fitzpatrick's conclusion: In the end, ordinary fire codes might have saved the World Trade Center victims.
posted on Sep 26, 2002 - View this thread

Germany slips on its jack boots to keep in step with the USA In the wake of september 11th Most supposedly enlightened "western" countries have curtailed or outright forbidden free speech to groups suspected to be sympathetic to "terror". The question in my mind is how long until just being part of a political organization that opposes first use of violence and criticizes government policy (libertarians, Greens, CUSPA) will get you on the FBI "hit" list here at home?
posted on Sep 19, 2002 - View this thread

I guess the media does have some good qualities after all. Yesterday was 9/11. Much of the media spend the day remembering what took place a year ago. A local pop radio station here in Pittsburgh B94 did something a little different. Yes they did the remembering but they also did something that went along the lines of "going about our business". They organized a little something called Operation Jumpstart Pittsburgh. They collected faxed and emailed resumes and hooked people up with companies that were hiring on the spot. It's nice to see the media doing something constructive for a change. I just wonder if anyone else might have some information about things that media outlets in other cities might have done like this.
posted on Sep 12, 2002 - View this thread

The Voice of the Prophet. Rick Rescorla was Head of Security for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in New York. A vet of three wars and a survivor of the 1993 WTC bombing. He saved many lives that day, but lost his own on Nine Eleven, no doubt again attempting to save lives as he had eight years before. If this is what Shrub means by a Patriot, he should listen to patriots instead of try to name Nine Eleven after them. Rescorla's words echo now in a startling matter-of-fact yet poignant way. I'll copypaste a partial transcript into the body of the thread for those who can't stream video.
posted on Sep 12, 2002 - View this thread

Telemarketers to take tomorrow off. According to the story, telemarketing companies will instruct most of their employees to not come into work for September 11, "recognizing that many Americans won't be in the mood for getting sales calls that day." Umm... we all pretty much have the same reponse in our heads to that line, don't we?
posted on Sep 10, 2002 - View this thread

From Richard Wilbur: "Dear Bill, The only thing I can say right now is this. There is no excuse for the cold inhumanity of 11 September, and there is no excuse for those Americans, whether of the left or the religious right, who say that we had it coming to us. Dick"
posted on Sep 9, 2002 - View this thread

NPR's Lost & Found Sound brought together radio producers, artists, historians, archivists, and the public broadcasting community came together to collect and preserve audio traces of the World Trade Center, its neighborhood and the events of 9/11.

What they came up with is sonicmemorial.org. [more inside]
posted on Sep 8, 2002 - View this thread

"Thank goodness they got those buildings. I've always hated them! They're so ugly." This article goes to show it's not just extremists who have (or initially had) inappropriate feelings about 9/11.
posted on Sep 8, 2002 - View this thread

London Muslims to CELEBRATE 911 Is it cool to be angry? Do I care? I'm VERY angry about this. Maybe someone will celebrate 911 by flying an aircraft into Finsbury Park Mosque. There must be a limit to the progressive tolerance of other cultures and religious nuts. I think Londoners might reach it very soon. We seem to have our own Taliban. The time might be right for a radical secularism. What do you think?
posted on Sep 8, 2002 - View this thread