https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/ida-updates-08-30-21/index.html
Monday, August 30, 2021
Hurricane Ida and Other Information.
Everyone is talking about the Hurricane Ida. It is the most powerful hurricane hitting Louisiana since Hurricane Laura in 2020. Thousands of people have fled the Gulf Coast region in order to try to survive literally. Over 1 million people have lost power in the Gulf Coast region. FEMA, the state governments, and the local governments have shown great preparedness in contrast to the response to Hurricane Katrina which happened 16 years ago. In fact, this year is the 16th anniversary of the Katrina natural disaster. The concern is about many issues from flooding, power outages, and other matters. The levees being about 18 feet in New Orleans have given New Orleans added protection. With new technologies from I Phones to social media, communication is quicker and more widespread. Throughout the week, the storm will travel up the Delta into West Virginia, Virginia, and other places of America by the end of the week. This storm was as fast as 150 mph now with wind gusts of 185 mph. Ida making landfall is a reality. It is a tropical storm now moving quickly. People are waiting to see if the pumping prevented more damage to New Orleans. The devastation has been horrendous in Houma, Louisiana. Charities and other organizations are helping the victims of Ida constantly. President Biden has given Louisiana federal aid after the Governor of Louisiana has requested it.
To understand 9/11 is also to know that 9/11 is much more complex than many people realize. There is information about the ownership, access, and security of the World Trade Center complex that must be explained. As we know, David Rockefeller and his brother Nelson Rockefeller promoted the World Trade Center Complex back in the 1960's. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was the manager of the WTC complex. The Port Authority chairman on 9/11 was Lewis Eisenberg (who was appointed by Governor of New Jersey Christine Todd Whitman and with the support of Governor George Pataki of New York state). By July 2001, Larry Silverstein with Frank Lowy as a minor partner, leased the World Trade Center from the Port Authority. We know that Peter Peterson's Blackstone Group bought the debt on World Trade Center 7 from the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association. Peter Peterson was a Pilgrim Society member and one of the most powerful Americans during his lifetime. Kroll was the WTC's primary security consultant. Joseph Kasputys was a tenant in the impact zone of the World Trade Center.
William Henry Harrison (1773-1841) was one of the most unique Presidents in American history. He was a military officer and President for only 31 days in 1841. He had the shortest serving time as U.S. President in history. His death caused a brief constitutional crisis regardless to the President. The reason was that back then, the U.S. Constitution didn't make it clear on what should be done in the event of a President's death. He was born in Charles City County, Virginia. He was the son of the Framer Benjamin Harrison V and the paternal grandfather of Benjamin Harrison or the 23rd President of the United States of America. Harrison was the last President born as a British subject in the Thirteen Colonies. He was a member of a prominent political family of English descent whose ancestors had been in Virginia since the 1630s. Benjamin Harrison became the last American President not born as an American citizen. His father was a Virginian planter, who served as a delegate to the Continental Congress (1774–1777) and who signed the Declaration of Independence. His father also served in the Virginia legislature and as the fifth governor of Virginia (1781–1784) in the years during and after the American Revolutionary War. Harrison's older brother Carter Bassett Harrison represented Virginia in the House of Representatives (1793–1799). Harrison was tutored at home until age 14 when he began attending Hampden–Sydney College, a Presbyterian college in Virginia. He studied there for three years, receiving a classical education which included Latin, Greek, French, logic, and debate. His Episcopalian father removed him from the college, possibly for religious reasons, and after brief stays at an academy in Southampton County, Virginia, and with his elder brother Benjamin in Richmond. Later, he went to Philadelphia in 1790.
He was involved in the 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers that caused the end of the Northwest Native American War. It was an American military victory. He led a military force against Tecumseh's troops at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. That is why his nickname was "Old Tippecanoe." He was a major General during the War of 1812 in the Army. He was led infantry and cavalry at the Battle of the Thames in Upper Canada. Harrison became the Secretary of the Northwest Territory in 1798 and by 1799, he was elected as the territory's delegate in the House of Representatives. In 1801, he was the Governor of the new Indiana Territory. Harrison held that position until 1812. During that time, he supervised 11 treaties with Native American leaders. The federal government got more than 60 million acres of land. The 1804 Treaty of St. Louis with Quashquame required the Sauk and Meskwaki tribes to cede much of western Illinois and parts of Missouri to the federal government. Many of the Sauk greatly resented this treaty and the loss of lands, especially Black Hawk, and this was a primary reason that they sided with the British during the War of 1812. Harrison thought that the Treaty of Grouseland (1805) appeased some of the Native Americans, but tensions remained high along the frontier. The Treaty of Fort Wayne (1809) raised new tensions when Harrison purchased more than 2.5 million acres (10,000 km2) inhabited by the Shawnee, Kickapoo, Wea, and Piankeshaw tribes; he purchased the land from the Miami tribe, who claimed ownership. He rushed the treaty process by offering large subsidies to the tribes and their leaders so that it would be in force before Jefferson left office and the administration changed. He was pro-slavery too. He wanted Congress to allow slavery in the Indiana by repelling Article VI of the Northwest Ordinance. Congress rejected the idea. Jefferson was the primary author of the Northwest Ordinance, and he had made a secret compact with James Lemen to defeat the nascent pro-slavery movement eventually led by Harrison. Even though he was a slaveholder himself. Jefferson did not want slavery to expand into the Northwest Territory, as he believed that the institution should end. He donated $100 to encourage Lemen, who donated those funds to other good works, and later another $20 to help fund the planting of the church later known as Bethel Baptist Church. Lemen planted churches in Illinois and Indiana to stop the pro-slavery movement. In Indiana, the planting of an anti-slavery church led to citizens signing a petition and organizing politically to defeat Harrison's efforts to legalize slavery in the territory. Jefferson and Lemen were instrumental in defeating Harrison's attempts in 1805 and 1807 to expand slavery in the territory. After the War of 1812, he moved into Ohio where he was elected to represent the state's 1st district in the House in 1816. In 1824, he was elected to the U.S. Senate.
Harrison lost the Presidential election in 1836. He faced the incumbent Van Buren during the 1840 election. The economy was weakened by the Panic of 1837. William Henry Harrison won in a landslide victory in 1840. He had 234 electoral votes to Van Buren's 60. He got 53 percent of the popular vote to Van Buren's 47 percent, with a margin of less than 150,000 votes. He set up the first Whig cabinet. He married a woman named Anna Tuthill Symmes of North Bend, Ohio, and they had 10 children together. He took the oath office on Thursday, March 4, 1841 on a cold, wet day. He didn't wear an overcoat or hat. He gave the longest inaugural address in American history at 8,445 words taking him nearly two hours to read. Harrison wanted to rebuild the Bank of the United States via Henry Clay's American system. He intended to defer to the judgment of Congress on legislative matters, with sparing use of his veto power, and to reverse Jackson's spoils system of executive patronage. He promised to use patronage to create a qualified staff, not to enhance his own standing in government. Harrison had disputes with Clay on governing.
On March 26, 1841, Harrison became ill with cold-like symptoms. His doctor, Thomas Miller, prescribed rest; Harrison was unable to rest during the day for the crowds in the White House, and that night chose instead to host a party with his army friends. The next day, he was seized with chills during a cabinet meeting and was put to bed. By the morning of March 28, Harrison had a high fever, at which time a team of doctors was called in to treat him. The prevailing theory at the time was that his illness had been caused by the bad weather at his inauguration three weeks earlier. Others noted that in his first few days in office, Harrison had personally walked in the mornings to purchase groceries (and a dairy cow for the White House) at Washington's markets, with the weather still cold and the markets in the midst of marshlands. (He ended the morning walks after the office-seekers began following him to the markets). As soon as the doctors placed him in bed and undressed him, they diagnosed him with right lower lobe pneumonia, and placed heated suction cups on his bare body and administered a series of bloodlettings to draw out the disease. Those procedures failed to bring about improvement, so the doctors treated him with ipecac, castor oil, calomel, mustard plasters, and finally with a boiled mixture of crude petroleum and Virginia snakeroot. All this only weakened Harrison further and the doctors came to the conclusion that he would not recover. Some believed that unsanitary water contributed to his death. Harrison died on April 4, 1841, nine days after becoming ill and exactly one month after taking the oath of office; he was the first president to die in office. A 30-day period of mourning commenced following the president's death. The White House hosted various public ceremonies, modeled after European royal funeral practices. An invitation-only funeral service was also held on April 7 in the East Room of the White House, after which Harrison's coffin was brought to Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. where it was placed in the Public Vault.Solomon Northup gave an account of the procession in Twelve Years a Slave. That June, Harrison's body was transported by train and river barge to North Bend, Ohio, and he was buried on July 7 in a family tomb at the summit of Mt. Nebo overlooking the Ohio River which is now the William Henry Harrison Tomb State Memorial.
There was a dispute on who would replace Harrison and Vice President Tyler took control of the President. Back then, Article I, Section 1, Clause 6 of the Constitution was ambiguous on the succession to the Presidency. Tyler was sworn as the new President on April 6, 1841. Congress passed a resolution making Tyler President for the rest of Harrison's term. The Constitution made the Vice President as the successor if the President died by the 1967 25th Amendment in Section One. Tyler would reject Whig views. Harrison's grandson Benjamin Harrison would be President later on. His wife, Anna, was given by pension after Harrison died almost penniless. America saw more expansion of land in creating controversial treaties with Native Americans during his time as President.
John Tyler (1790-1862) was a President like Andrew Jackson. He served one term, he was a conservative, and he was an overt reactionary. He was the 10th President of the United States of America serving from 1841 to 1845. He was born to a slave owning family. He came from Charles City County, Virginia. He is descendants of the First Families of Virginia.The Tyler family traced its lineage to English emigrants and 17th century colonial Williamsburg. His father, John Tyler Sr., commonly known as Judge Tyler, was a friend and college roommate of Thomas Jefferson and served in the Virginia House of Delegates alongside Benjamin Harrison V, William's father. The elder Tyler served four years as Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates before becoming a state court judge and later Governor of Virginia and a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia at Richmond. His wife, Mary Marot (Armistead), was the daughter of prominent New Kent County plantation owner and one-term delegate, Robert Booth Armistead. She died of a stroke in 1797 when her son John was seven years old.
John Tyler's family owned slaves. He studied legal matters, and John Tyler was a state judge. He was a person who also owned slaves people in numbering 24 people. John Tyler supported states' rights and he opposed a national bank like conservatives did back in the day. He joined fellow legislator Benjamin W. Leigh in supporting the censure of U.S. senators William Branch Giles and Richard Brent of Virginia who had, against the Virginia legislature's instructions, voted for the recharter of the First Bank of the United States. He wanted America to fight back against the British after the British captured Hampton, Virginia during the War of 1812. Tyler organized a militia company called the Charles City Rifles to defend Richmond. He was a captain. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. John Tyler was in the U.S. Senate. During his life, he didn't want the expansion of the power of the federal government. Tyler was an ally with Andrew Jackson at first, then he disagree with Jackson's spoils system. He agreed with Jackson on opposition to the Second Bank of the United States. Tyler was so extreme, that he supported South Carolina in the Nullification crisis over tariffs. South Carolina threatened secession back in the 1830's. He lost the 1836 Presidential election. John Tyler's opponents never saw him as President. Mississippi Senator Robert J. Walker, in opposition, stated that the idea that Tyler was still vice president and could preside over the Senate was absurd. Tyler disagreed with the Whigs on the tariff issue. Tyler wanted to expand America to the Pacific and have free trade. His foreign policies helped America to annex Hawaii to the United States. President Tyler wanted to annex Texas. Texas was already independence after the Texas Revolution of 1836.
The people of Texas actively pursued joining the Union, but Jackson and Van Buren had been reluctant to inflame tensions over slavery by annexing another Southern state. Though Tyler intended annexation to be the focal point of his administration. Secretary Webster was opposed, and convinced Tyler to concentrate on Pacific initiatives until later in his term. Texas was part of the Union by December 29, 1845. Tyler owned slaves, knew slavery was wrong, and he still owned them anyway. He was part of the states' rights movement. He lived to recognize the John Brown raid on Harpers Ferry. Tyler's community organized a cavalry troop and a home guard company; Tyler was chosen to command the home guard troops with the rank of captain. Tyler was a traitor for joining the Confederacy during the American Civil War. On April 17, 1861, after the attack on Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for troops, Tyler voted with the new majority for secession. He headed a committee that negotiated the terms for Virginia's entry into the Confederate States of America and helped set the pay rate for military officers. On June 14, Tyler signed the Ordinance of Secession, and one week later the convention unanimously elected him to the Provisional Confederate Congress. Tyler was seated in the Confederate Congress on August 1, 1861, and he served until just before his death in 1862. In November 1861, he was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives but he died of a stroke in his room at the Ballard Hotel in Richmond before the first session could open in February 1862. He had poor health all over his life. He had the most children (having 15 children) of any American President. He was buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia being only 71 years old. John Tyler decided to be a traitor to America by joining the Confederacy.
There was my late 1st cousin called Florence Brickhouse. She is a descendant of Benjamin Brickhouse II (1791-1878). Benjamin's son was Johnson Brickhouse (b. 1826). Johnson's daughter was my great grand mother Esther Brickhouse Bailey (1862-1955). Florence Brickhouse's parents are Benjamn Brickhouse III (b. 1838) and Mary Perkins. Florence Brickhouse married George Johnson (b. 1866) on February 23, 1891 at Northampton County, Virginia. That is located at the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Their children are Amos Johnson (b. 1889), George Johnson (b. 1893), and Lenwood Johnson (1896-1972). Amos Johnson married Catherine Ames (b. 1892) on May 18, 1910 at Northampton County, Virginia. Their children are: Donzella Johnson (1910-1978) and Edward Johnson (1916-1979).
I am hugely disappointed in Sha'Cari Richardson in her recent actions. Many of us were rooting for her, but she did many terrible things that have literally no justification at any circumstance. To start, she was caught with marijuana. Richardson accepted responsibility and wanted to move on. Many of us were on her side and wished her the best. Later, she lost a race at the Prefontaine in Oregon during August of 2021. During the interview, she said that she wasn't going to give up, and she said a cursed word. People still supported her. After that track and field race, she went too far by once liking a post making misogynoir statements about the black Jamaican track and field athletes. First, our Jamaican Sisters are part of the black family and the human family. They are owed dignity and respect as black human beings. Shelly Ann Fraser Pryce, Elaine Thompson, and Shericka Jackson earned their medals by hardwork and courage. They worked diligently in their lives without complaining, without whining, and without excuses. Each of these athletes lost races before, but they continued to later win Olympic medals and other awards. They are definitely role models in our time. Also, Sha'Cari Richardson mocked Allyson Felix, when Allyson Felix said that people should support Sha'Cari Richardson. Allyson Felix has always been humble, she is the most decorated American track and field athlete in Olympic history. For Sha'Cari to do that, she needs to apologize to Allyson Felix in private or in public period. Sha'Cari is in her early 20's, so she has time to improve herself, but she has to learn that she's grown. Once you're grown, you have to show maturity, character, and improvement in our lives. So, we want people around Sha'Cari Richardson to direct her into the right direction.
By Timothy
Saturday, August 28, 2021
9/11: 20 Years Later.
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9/11: 20 Year Later
20 Years after 9/11 came about so fast. A lot of changes have happened in the world socially, technologically, politically, and economically over the span of two decades. We have witnessed new musicians arise and the existence of advanced laptops including smartphones. One thing remains the same. It is that we believe in the same commitment to human justice for all. Still, after 20 years, I still believe in black liberation, in environmental justice, in voting rights, in economic justice, in reparations, and in social justice. 9/11 started a new era of the 21st century that we still live in currently. Constantly, I contemplate about 9/11 a great deal. The vicious attacks on 9/11 were one of the most horrendous attacks on Americans in American history when almost 3,000 human beings (of many colors, creeds, sexes, and backgrounds) were unjustly murdered by terrorists. The pain of the victims' families is unfathomable. To this very day, the victims of 9/11 and their families continuously fight for health aide given to those who ingested the smoke from the debris. To this day, many heroic activists have endorsed the protections of our civil liberties and our democratic institutions. The irony is that now in 2021, the biggest terrorist threat domestically are not terrorists who claim to be Muslims (but they are not), but the biggest domestic threat are white racist nationalists who seek to destroy America. The terrorist insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 document that reality. 9/11 harmed human beings in three states during the morning of Tuesday on September 11, 2001. After 20 years, we know more of truth. Since that time, the haters of truth try to intimidate those who want independent investigations and further research. I don't believe in the view of these haters. The First Amendment dictates the freedom of speech, and there is no shame to expose the fact that the neo-conservatives exploited the evil events of 9/11 as an excuse for them to establish a war in Iraq, allow the increased militarization of American society, and permit certain imperial policies in the War on Terror. It is right to condemn Osama bin Laden as an evil, disgraceful person who used terrorism against innocent human life. He lived wickedly, and he deserves no sympathy.
On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda affiliated hijackers flew two Boeing 767 jets into the World Trade Centers. The hijackers used a plane to hit the Pentagon, and heroes stopped the hijackers from sending one plane into the U.S. Capitol. That plane was crashed in Pennsylvania. Also, it is important to be clear about the evil committed by Western imperialism too from secret torture centers to the cruel acts at Abu Ghraib. I still remember when the former Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during the George W. Bush administration and former Governor Christine Whitman said that the air in New York City was safe to breathe immediately after 9/11. She was wrong. Investigations about 9/11 have existed. We know that many Western corporate interests were overt in trying to gain oil, gas, water, and mineral resources in the Middle East and Asia as a means for them to compete against Russian including Chinese geo-political hegemonic powerbases. We know about the warnings of terrorist attacks in American soil before 9/11 existed (as documented by mainstream news reports). Recently, the 2021 fall of Kabul and the start of the end of the American major military operations in Afghanistan are upon us. The wild thing now is that some want to rehabilitate the bad legacy of the George W. Bush administration, because of the huge failures of the previous Trump administration.
The reality is that the George W. Bush Presidency promoted torture memos, made a terrible response to Hurricane Katrina, advanced a NSA warrantlesss wiretap program, and caused the Iraq War (which ended in sectarian violence and divisions that hasn't stabilize Iraq in great measure. It is only recently when Iraq is in a better state than during the initial aftermath of the invasion of Iraq). So, Bush-era policies aren't things that should be greatly glorified. We know about the FBI agents trying to reveal to the public about these warnings before 9/11. Back then and today, multinational corporations, NGOs, and other organizations have huge international power. After 9/11, controversial anti-democratic laws existed like the Patriot Act and the USA Military Commissions Act. Therefore the truth about 9/11 is very real. The truth is that 9/11 was a product of many terrorists, and 9/11 was used by the Western imperialists to permit wars for control over the world's resources. We will never forget 9/11, because it was a traumatic event that taught us that unjust violence is evil. Also, joining a cause for justice via constructive means makes sense too.
The image on the left showed New York City during the early 20th century, and the image on the left showed the One World Trade Center Tower by the modern times.
The History of the World Trade Center
The World Trade Center was originally created by 1973, and it exists today in 2021 in a completely different format. The World Trade Center is made up of a complex of buildings in Lower Manhattan at New York City. The original 7 buildings were destroyed during the September 11 attacks. Today in 2021, the World Trade Center complex is rebuilt with 6 new skyscrapers. Four of them have been completed. There is a memorial and a museum to those who were murdered in the attacks. The elevated Liberty Park is adjacent to the site having the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and Vehicular Security Center and a transportation hub. People know of the new 104 story One World Trade Center building, and the One World Trade Center is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. The new complex includes: One World Trade Center, 3 World Trade Center, 4 World Trade Center, 7 World Trade Center, and one other high-rise office building being planned at 2 World Trade Center.
The original World Trade Center was opened on April 4, 1973. The old complex had the the Marriott World Trade Center (3 WTC), as well as 4 WTC, 5 WTC, 6 WTC, and 7 WTC. Construction of the first World Trade Center started in August 6, 1968 after the groundbreaking ceremony took place on August 5, 1966. The complex contained 13,400,000 square feet (1,240,000 m2) of office space. The core complex was built between 1966 and 1975, at a cost of $400 million (equivalent to $2.27 billion in 2018). During its existence, the World Trade Center experienced several major incidents, including a fire on February 13, 1975, a bombing on February 26, 1993, and a bank robbery on January 14, 1998. In 1998, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey decided to privatize it by leasing the buildings to a private company to manage. It awarded the lease to Silverstein Properties in July 2001. The World Trade Center was first proposed in 1943. The New York State Legislature passed a bill to authorize New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey to start developing plans for the projects. Plans were stopped in 1949. Later, David Rockefeller wanted the Port Authority to build a World Trade Center to promote urban renewal in Midtown, Manhattan. On September 20, 1962, the Port Authority announced the selection of Minoru Yamasaki as lead architect and Emery Roth and Sons as associate architects. Yamasaki devised the plan to incorporate twin towers. His original plan called for the towers to be 80 stories tall, but to meet the Port Authority's requirement for 10,000,000 square feet (930,000 m2) of office space, the buildings would each have to be 110 stories tall. Yamasaki's design for the World Trade Center, unveiled to the public on January 18, 1964, called for a square plan approximately 208 feet (63 m) in dimension on each side.
The architect Yamasaki wanted narrow office windows and elements of Arabic architecture in the construction of the building. The structural engineering firm Worthington, Skilling, Helle and Jackson worked to implement Yamasaki's design, developing the framed-tube structural system used in the twin towers. The core of the towers housed the elevator and utility shafts, restrooms, three stairwells, and other support spaces. The core of each tower was a rectangular area 87 by 135 feet (27 by 41 m) and contained 47 steel columns running from the bedrock to the top of the tower. The large, column-free space between the perimeter and core was bridged by prefabricated floor trusses. The floors supported their own weight as well as live loads, providing lateral stability to the exterior walls and distributing wind loads among the exterior walls. The floors consisted of 4-inch (10 cm) thick lightweight concrete slabs laid on a fluted steel deck. A grid of lightweight bridging trusses and main trusses supported the floors. The trusses connected to the perimeter at alternate columns and were on 6 foot 8 inch (2.03 m) centers. The top chords of the trusses were bolted to seats welded to the spandrels on the exterior side and a channel welded to the core columns on the interior side. The floors were connected to the perimeter spandrel plates with viscoelastic dampers that helped reduce the amount of sway felt by building occupants. By March 1965, the Port Authority started acquiring property at the World Trade Center site. The World Trade Center 1 and 2 were controversial, because of the location and other reasons. Many businesses, industrial tenants, and property openly didn't like re-location. The original World Trade Center housed more than 430 companies. On a weekday, about 50,000 people worked in the complex along with 140,000 people being visitors. It had its own zipcode and had 13,400,000 square feet.
*To understand 9/11 is also to know that 9/11 is much more complex than many people realize. There is information about the ownership, access, and security of the World Trade Center complex that must be explained. As we know, David Rockefeller and his brother Nelson Rockefeller promoted the World Trade Center Complex back in the 1960's. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was the manager of the WTC complex. The Port Authority chairman on 9/11 was Lewis Eisenberg (who was appointed by Governor of New Jersey Christine Todd Whitman and with the support of Governor George Pataki of New York state). By July 2001, Larry Silverstein with Frank Lowy as a minor partner, leased the World Trade Center from the Port Authority. We know that Peter Peterson's Blackstone Group bought the debt on World Trade Center 7 from the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association. Peter Peterson was a Pilgrim Society member and one of the most powerful Americans during his lifetime. Kroll was the WTC's primary security consultant. Joseph Kasputys was a tenant in the impact zone of the World Trade Center.
The new World Trade Center existed years after 2001. After years of delay and controversy, reconstruction at the World Trade Center site started. The new complex includes One World Trade Center, 3 World Trade Center, 4 World Trade Center, 7 World Trade Center, and one other high-rise office building being planned at 2 World Trade Center. The new World Trade Center complex also includes a museum and memorial, and a transportation hub building that is similar in size to Grand Central Terminal. In 2006, the Port Authority took over One World Trade Center's ownership from Silverstein Properties. 7 World Trade Center opened on May 23, 2006, making it the first of five skyscrapers to have been completed in the World Trade Center complex. In May 2006, architects Richard Rogers and Fumihiko Maki were announced as the architects for 3 and 4 WTC, respectively. The final designs for 2, 3, and 4 WTC were unveiled on September 7, 2006. 4 World Trade Center, the first building completed as part of the site's master plan, opened on November 12, 2013. The National September 11 Memorial opened on September 11, 2011, while the Museum opened on May 21, 2014. One World Trade Center was opened on November 3, 2014. The World Trade Center Transportation Hub opened to the public on March 4, 2016, and 3 World Trade Center opened on June 11, 2018. 2 World Trade Center's full construction was placed on hold in 2009, with a new design announced in 2015. The Freedom Tower was designed to be 1,368 feet (417 m) tall, the height of the original World Trade Center north tower, and its spire rises to the symbolic height of 1,776 feet (541 m), a reference to the year in which the United States Declaration of Independence was signed. Today, many stories are in the World Trade Center area, and a transportation hub does exist in the vicinity too.
The 1993 Bombing
The first Bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 is key in understanding 9/11. The events of the past relate to the present and future. This major terrorist attack took place on February 26, 1993. I was in the fourth grade of elementary school when it happened. I remembered it before. The bomb was a 1,336 pound urea nitrate-hydrogen gas enhanced device. The people involved in the evil action wanted both Twin Towers to all. It failed. 6 people were murdered, and more than 1,000 people were injured in the blast. The attack was planned by a group of terrorists including Ramzi Yousef, Mahmud Abouhalima, Mohammad Salameh, Nidal A. Ayyad, Abdul Rahman Yasin, and Ahmed Ajaj. They received financing from Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, Yousef's uncle. In March 1994, four men were convicted of carrying out the bombing: Abouhalima, Ajaj, Ayyay, and Salameh. The charges included conspiracy, explosive destruction of property, and interstate transportation of explosives. In November 1997, two more were convicted: Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the bombings, and Eyad Ismoil, who drove the truck carrying the bomb. Ramzi Yousef was born in Kuwait, and he spent time in an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Khalid Sheikh Muhammad Ali gave Yousef advice and tips over the phone. He funded the co-conspirator Mohammed Salameh with a US$660 wire transfer. Yousef came into America illegally on September 1, 1992. Yousef would live in Jersey City, New Jersey, and he traveled around New York plus New Jersey. Yousef assembled the gas enhanced device to deliver it to the WTC. As early as 1991, Ramzi Yousef spent time at an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan to plan a bombing attack within the United States.
On Friday, February 26, 1993, Ramzi Yousef and a Jordanian friend, Eyad Ismoil, drove a yellow Ryder van into Lower Manhattan, and pulled into the public parking garage beneath the World Trade Center around noon. They parked on the underground B-2 level. Yousef ignited the 20-foot fuse, and fled. Twelve minutes later, at 12:17:37 pm, the bomb exploded in the underground garage, generating an estimated pressure of 150,000 psi. The bomb exploded in the basement. The World Trade Center’s main electrical power line was knocked out. Smoke rose up to the 93rd floor of both towers. 6 people died in the blast along with over 1,000 people being injured. In the course of the trial it was revealed that the FBI had an informant, a former Egyptian army officer named Emad Salem. Salem claims to have informed the FBI of the plot to build a bomb that would eventually be used in the World Trade Center towers as early as February 6, 1992. Salem's role as informant allowed the FBI to quickly pinpoint the conspirators out of hundreds of possible suspects. The transcripts do not make clear the extent to which Federal Authorities knew that there was a plan to bomb the World Trade Center, merely that a bombing of some sort was being discussed. Salem said that the FBI plan was for Salem to give the conspirators with a harmless powder instead of an actual explosive. The FBI allowed him to do other actions. Also, the Salem secretly recorded hundreds of hours of telephone conversations with his FBI handlers. So, the FBI knew about such terrorism. It is no secret that the FBI has been involved in dubious conduct for decades from illegal spying to other actions. J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO came from the FBI.
A granite memorial fountain honoring the victims of the bombing was designed by Elyn Zimmerman and dedicated in 1995 on Austin J. Tobin Plaza, directly above the site of the explosion. It contained the names of the six adults who were killed in the attack as well as an inscription.
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Osama was taught judo as a younger person.
The Bin Laden Family and the Bush Family
For years, there has been business relationships between the Bush and Bin Laden families. Back then, few people knew of this fact. Now, we do. Obama bin Laden's brother was Salem. The English media has shown a photograph from 1971. It displayed Osama when he was 14 and Saleem when he was 19. They were in a summer holiday at the Astoria Hotel in Falun, Sweden. The Bin Laden family had immense wealth. According to the Daily Mail’s Peter Allen, “…Salem went on to become a business partner of the man who is leading the hunt for his brother…" In June of 1977, George W. Bush formed his own drilling company called Arbusto Energy (Arbusto means bush in Spanish). This was based at Midland, Texas. Like his father's business, George W. Bush's oil business was backed by businessmen like Houston businessman James R. Bath. Bath had links to Saudi Arabian sheiks. Time reporters Beaty and Gwynne suggest in their book that the $50,000 Bath invested in Dubya's Arbusto Energy drilling company may have belonged to Bath's Saudi clients since the Houston businessman "had no substantial money of his own at the time." At the time of the investment, Bath was a representative for Saudi businessman Salem bin Laden, the oldest son of Mohammed bin Laden, founder of the Saudi Binladin Group, the largest old construction company in Saudi Arabia. Salem was the head of the bin Laden family business by 1977. George W. Bush knew of the Texas businessman James Bath. Salem Bin Laden was one of the investors in the Arbusto oil company. Salem bin Laden and banker and BCCI member Halid bin Mahfouz wanted to go into the oil business. Bath's business partner Charles White later became involved in a legal dispute with Bath, during which he claimed that Bath had actually invested in the company on behalf of bin Laden and other Saudi businessmen.
Both Bath and Bush have denied this, and according to journalist Craig Unger, who examined the relationship between the Bushes and Saudi financiers in his 2004 book House of Bush, House of Saud. Journalist Steve Coll, whose book The Bin Ladens examines the family's history, mentioned that there is no evidence to support the claim. In 1984, his company merged with the larger Spectrum 7, and Bush became chairman. The company was hurt by decreased oil prices, and it folded into HKN, Inc. Saleem died in a plane crash in 1988 near San Antonio, Texas. Salem was a close friend of Saudi King Fahd. During the 1980’s, the controversial BCCI banking institution grew as well.
Education in Afghanistan in the years preceding the Soviet-Afghan war was largely secular. With religious textbooks produced in Nebraska, the number of CIA sponsored religious schools (madrasahs) increased from 2,500 in 1980 to over 39,000. The following sources reveal this information on how the West funded the mujahadeen in Afghanistan:
“Advertisements, paid for from CIA funds, were placed in newspapers and newsletters around the world offering inducements and motivations to join the [Islamic] Jihad.” (Pervez Hoodbhoy, Peace Research, 1 May 2005)
“The United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings….The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books,..”, (Washington Post, 23 March 2002)
“According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.” (Former National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, 15-21 January 1998)
What more evidence do people need to witness the fact that these elitists wanted to control the resources of the Middle East and Central Asia.
The BCCI was the Bank of Credit and Commercial International. It was a crooked offshore bank that the CIA used to run guns to Hussein, finance Osama bin Laden, move money in the illegal Iran-Contra operation, and carry out other secret agency “ops.” BCCI was created in 1972 by a Pakistani banker, Agha Hasan Abedi, with the support of Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan, ruler of Abu Dhabi and head of the United Arab Emirates. Its corporate strategy was money laundering. It became the banker for drug and arms traffickers, corrupt officials, financial fraudsters, dictators and terrorists. The CIA used BCCI Islamabad and other branches in Pakistan to funnel some of the two billion dollars that Washington sent to Osama bin Laden's Mujahadeen to help fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. It moved the cash the Pakistani military and government officials skimmed from U.S. aid to the Mujahadeen. It also moved money as required by the Saudi intelligence services. Both Syed A. Hussain (b. 1960 or 1961) and Amjad Awan, (b. 1946 or 1947) a Pakistani banker that headed the Panamanian branch of BCCI in the early 1980s, assisted Noriega with Noriega's accounts at BCCI. William von Raab, a former U.S. Commissioner of Customs, also told the Kerry Committee that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency held "several" accounts at BCCI. According to a 1991 article in Time magazine, the National Security Council also had accounts at BCCI, which were used for a variety of covert operations, including transfers of money and weapons during the Iran–Contra affair.
The BCCI was so corrupt that it ended in 1991. The Washington Post reported that the Carlyle Group (which supported investments globally) met at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C. on the day of 9/11. In that meeting were former President George H. W. Bush, James Baker, and Shafiq bin Laden or the brother of Osama bin Laden. Shafig bin Laden is an investor. George H. W. Bush would make many speeches years ago on behalf of the Carlyle Group. No commercial planes, including chartered flights, were permitted to fly into, out of, or within the United States until Sept. 13, 2001. After the air space reopened, six chartered flights with 142 people, mostly Saudi Arabian nationals, departed from the United States between Sept. 14 and 24. One flight, the so-called bin Ladin flight, departed the United States on Sept. 20 with 26 passengers, most of them relatives of Osama Bin Laden. This is further documented in the article entitled, "Bush ties to bin Laden haunt grim anniversary" written by Cindy Rodriguez from the Denver Post (on September 11, 2006). The Bin Laden family liquidated its holdings in Carlyle's funds in October 2001, just after the September 11 attacks, when the connection of their family name to the Carlyle Group's name became impolitic.
Warnings of Attacks on America.
It is a historical fact that the United States government received warnings from even foreign countries that terrorist attacks were coming in America (even in the realm of planes) for years. This reality has been documented for years. Immediately following the attacks, President George W. Bush stated that: "Nobody in our government at least, and I don't think the prior government, could envisage flying air planes into buildings" and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice claimed: "no-one could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile." An Air Force general called the attack: "something we had never seen before, something we had never even thought of.” A few days after the attacks, FBI Director Robert Mueller announced: "There were no warning signs that I'm aware of that would indicate this type of operation in the country.” We know that these comments are outright falsehoods and lies. Even Mueller noted that an FBI agent in Minneapolis said Moussaoui might be "that type of person that could fly something into the World Trade Center.” Mueller said this warning should have been followed more vigorously. Here are many examples of the U.S. government receiving warnings of various attacks against America (including attacks using planes as weapons):
1. Chris Whipple from Politico wrote about how the Bush administration ignored a warning of an attack from the CIA months before 9/11 along with others that were far more detailed that previous revealed. There was the “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” CIA Presidential daily brief. It was given to President George W. Bush on August 6, 2001. Months earlier during the spring of 2001, the CIA repeatedly warned the White House that an attack was coming. On May of 2001, Cofer Black (then chief of the CIA’s counterterrorism center) mentioned that: “it was very evidence that we were going to be struck, we were gonna be struck hard and lots of Americans were going to die.” Gorge Tenet told Cofer that: “There were real plots being manifested.” July 10, 2001 was a meeting where the CIA talked about these things. It was first reported by Bob Woodward in 2006 and Tenet wrote about it in general terms in his 2007 memoir “At the Center of the Storm.” Tenet and Black during the Spring of 2001 sent the Blue sky paper to Bush’s new national security team. They wanted to strike at Al-Qaeda.
2. A top NSA whistleblower said that the NSA had all of the information it needed prior to 9/11 to stop the attacks. The only reason NSA didn’t share that information with other agencies is because of corruption … in an effort to consolidate power. There was widespread spying by the U.S. government on Americans long before 9/11. Ryan Singel wrote an article for Wired on 10/11/2007 entitled, “NSA Domestic Surveillance Began 7 Months Before 9/11, Convicted Qwest CEO claims.” This shows that NSA surveillance was more extensive than some perceive. An FBI informant hosted and rented a room to Mihdhar and another 9/11 hijacker in 2000.
3. The Bojinka Plot was a foiled large-scale al-Qaeda terrorist attack to blow up eleven airliners and their passengers as they flew from Asia to America, due to take place in January 1995. In September 2002, one year after the 9/11 attacks, The Chicago Sun-Times reported that:
"The FBI had advance indications of plans to hijack U.S. airliners and use them as weapons, but neither acted on them nor distributed the intelligence to local police agencies. From the moment of the September 11 attacks, all high-ranking federal officials insisted that the terrorists’ method of operation surprised them. Many continue to stick to that story. Actually, elements of the suicide hijacking plan were known to the FBI as early as 1995 and, if coupled with current information, might have uncovered the plot."
4. In April 2001, NORAD ran a war game in which the Pentagon was to become incapacitated; a NORAD planner proposed the simulated crash of a hijacked foreign commercial airliner into the Pentagon, but the Joints Chiefs of Staff rejected that scenario as "too unrealistic.”
5. On the morning of September 11, 2001, the National Reconnaissance Office, which is responsible for operating U.S. reconnaissance satellites, had scheduled an exercise simulating the crashing of an aircraft into their building, 4 miles (6 km) from Washington Dulles International Airport.
6. The US administration, CIA and FBI received multiple prior warnings from foreign governments and intelligence services, including France, Germany, the UK, Israel, Jordan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Morocco and Russia. The warnings varied in their level of detail, but all stated that they believed an Al-Qaeda attack inside the United States was imminent. British Member of Parliament Michael Meacher cites these warnings, suggesting that some of them must have been deliberately ignored. Some of these warnings include the following: On March of 2001, Italian intelligence warns of an al Qaeda plot in the United States involving a massive strike involving aircraft, based on their wiretap of al-Qaeda cell in Milan. On July of 2001, Jordanian intelligence told US officials that al-Qaeda was planning an attack on American soil, and Egyptian intelligence warned the CIA that 20 al-Qaeda Jihadists were in the United States, and that four of them were receiving flight training. August 2001– The Israeli Mossad gives the CIA a list of 19 terrorists living in the US and say that they appear to be planning to carry out an attack in the near future. August 2001 – The United Kingdom is warned three times of an imminent al-Qaeda attack in the United States, the third specifying multiple airplane hijackings. According to the Sunday Herald, the report is passed on to President Bush a short time later. September 2001 – Egyptian intelligence warns American officials that al-Qaeda is in the advanced stages of executing a significant operation against an American target, probably within the US.
7. FBI agent and Al-Qaeda expert John P. O'Neill warned of an al-Qaeda threat to the United States in 2000. He retired from his position in mid-2001, citing repeated blocking of his investigations of al Qaeda by FBI officials. After his retirement from the FBI, the World Trade Center hired him as its chief of security. He started work on August 23, 2001; 9/11 rescue workers found his body in a staircase inside the south tower rubble.
8. According to Senator Bob Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from June 2001 through the buildup to the Iraq war, "Two of the September 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship," as reported by the Miami Herald. In Graham's book, Intelligence Matters, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees." In March 2012, as part of a lawsuit by 9/11 victims’ families, Graham and another former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey said in affidavits that they were certain that there were direct links between the Saudi government and the attacks.
My Memory of 9/11
I always remember the events of 9/11 like yesterday. It started on a Tuesday being a very sunny day. During that time, I was 17 years old and my 18th birthday was coming up in a few months later. The start of the day was normal and without controversy. It was during the late Summer near Fall. I was a freshman in college back then. First, I woke up to go to a college level Algebra class. I was in the university early in the morning. It was on a Tuesday, so classes readily end early. After the class was over, I came into the University's library to relax. There was a Yahoo chat that was very popular back then. On that Yahoo Chat, people talked about hijacked planes hitting a building in New York City. I didn't believe that at that time, because I couldn't fathomed such a horrible event occurring like that. So, I had great skepticism. I came home early, and I turned on the television at my house. Immediately, I saw the TV screen from the news showing the fires from the crash and massive damage. I saw the emotion of reporters and other journalists.
An immediate shock certainly was in my consciousness. I knew that this time represented a new era of human history, and nothing will ever be the same again. It was so serious and bad that schools in Virginia came home early. I ate lunch, and tons of people asked questions about the whole nefarious attacks in the United States of America. The whole atmosphere of the day was filled with sadness and shock. Other people unfortunately did evil by vandalizing mosques and Muslim centers across America. Yet, we believe in religious freedom, not religious bigotry. No one of any creed should have his or her houses of worship harmed or desecrated. Networks like ABC, NBC, MSNBC, FOX, CNN, etc. have shown non stop coverage of 9/11 throughout the whole day including the night. I witness the collapse of both Twin Towers live on television. The collapse of Building Number Seven transpired during the afternoon. Many people fought the hijackers on Flight 93, and the airplane crashed as Shanskville, Pennsylvania. Even during the early morning of 9/12, reporters were still on the scene talking about the tragic news. People were in a daze in their faces for weeks after 9/11 too. It took a long time for society in general to break out of the emotional malaise. It took a long time for many human beings to adjust to this new reality.
Back then, many Americans didn't know about Operation Cyclone which was a CIA program to aid, finance, and arm the Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989 in trying to stop the Soviets from being in Afghanistan. Sources show how the CIA funded Haqqani and Hekmatyar (who were key allies of Osama bin Laden. Many CIA agents, journalists, and U.S. government officials deny any direct CIA funding of Osama bin Laden. You have the right to believe them or not). Haqqani had direct cash payments from CIA agents without the mediation of the ISI. Haqqani and his network were involved in the formation and growth of Al-Qaeda. The US worked with the Pakistani ISI to aid the Afghan Mujahideen too. The victims of this horrendous tragedy suffer pain every day. Afterwards, many voices were suppressed if they spoke out against the most egregious policies of the War on Terror. One example was when MSNBC's Phil Donahue show was on, his show was immediately cut after Phil spoke out publicly against the Iraq War in 2003. Another example was when Jeremy Glick, the son of a 9/11 victim, was cursed out and disrespected by Bill O'Reilly (who was on FOX News. He was later fired). Jeremy Glick spoke out against the invasion of Afghanistan. The Bush administration reached massive popularity during the immediate aftermath of 9/11 until the events of the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina existed. Also, the news coverage have shown the heroic firefighters and other rescues who saved lives. They risked their lives for others. Many of them passed away, so their memories of almsgiving and courage will always be remembered by all of us.
After the events of September 11, 2001, I did embrace the love of civil liberties more thoroughly. After the Great Recession of the late 2000's, I certainly became more progressive on economic issues. Every day of my life, I will always remember 9/11 completely.
The Events of September 11th, 2001
The events of September 11, 2001 involving the terrorist attacks must be understood fully in a chronological fashion. The terrorists involved in the attacks were influenced by extremists like Sayyid Qutb. From 1976 to 1980, Osama Bin Laden was radicalized by Qutb while attending King Abdulaziz University for business administration. In 1979, Osama Bin Laden came into Afghanistan to assist the Sunni Mujahideen in the Afghan-Soviet War. In 1981, Bin Laden's future deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of Jama At al-Jihad, was arrested for his role in the assassination of Anwar Sadat and imprisoned for three years. By October 1984, Osama bin Laden co-founded the network of Maktab al-Khidamat, with Adullah Yusuf Azzam in Afganistan plus Pakistan. They wanted to recruit extremists to promote the Afghan resistance. Al-Qaeda forms its first training camps in Afghanistan by February of 1987. Bin Laden also survives a Soviet attack during the Battle of Jaji on May 25, 1987. His reputation grows. The Persian Gulf War further made Osama bin Laden more strict in his call for jihad against the West. On September 1990, Bin Laden makes an offer to Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud to defend Saudi Arabia from Ba'athist Iraq with 100,000 fighters after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. He is turned down, and becomes embittered by the intervention of non-Islamic troops from the U.S.-led international coalition in the Gulf War. Al-Qaeda bombs Yemen hotels in Aden filled with U.S. military forces on December 29, 1992. Bin Laden's Saudi citizenship was revoked on April 9, 1994. The Taliban was forced by Mohammed Omar at Kandahar. Bin Laden issued a fatwa declaring war on America on August 23, 1996. On August 7, 1998, the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania are carried out by Al-Qaeda. The USS Cole was bombed in Yemen by Al-Qaeda on October 12, 2000.
The following are the events found on 9/11/2001. At 6:45am. on September 11, 2001, Atta and al-Omari arrived at Logan International Airport. 7:15 am. was when Khalid al-Mihdhar and Majed Moqed arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport and check in for American Airlines Flight 77. By 7:59 am. on 9/11, the American Airlines Flight 11 takes off from Boston Logan International Airport, bound for Los Angeles International Airport. Flight 11 was hijacked on 8:14 am. On that same time, the United Airlines Flight 175 took off from Boston Logan and also bound for Los Angeles. At 8:20 am., American Airlines Flight 77 takes off from Washington Dulles International Airport, also bound for Los Angeles. United Airlines Flight 93 took off from Newark International Airport, bound for San Francisco International Airport on 8:42 am. Flight 175 was hijacked on 8:42-46 am. Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center between the 93rd and 99th floors on 8:46:20 am. Flight 77 was hijacked on 8:50-54 am. By 9:03 am, President Bush entered a classroom as part of his school visit. On 9:03:02 am., Flight 175 crashes into the South Tower of the World Trade Center between the 77th and 85th floors. On 9:05 am.: After brief introductions to the Booker elementary students, President Bush is about to begin reading The Pet Goat with the students when Chief of Staff Andrew Card interrupts to whisper to the president, "A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack." The President stated later that he decided to continue the lesson rather than alarm the students. By 9:14 am: President Bush returns to an adjacent classroom commandeered by the U.S. Secret Service. The classroom contains a telephone, a television showing the news coverage, and several senior staff members. The President speaks to Vice President Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, New York Governor George Pataki, and FBI Director Robert Mueller, and prepares brief remarks.
On 9:37:46 am., Flight 77 crashes into the western side of The Pentagon and starts a violent fire. On 9:45, United States airspace is shut down; all operating aircraft are ordered to land at the nearest airport. Flight 93 was hijacked on 9:28 am. On 9:59 am, the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed, 56 minutes after the impact of Flight 175. The South Tower collapsed on 9:59:00 am. Flight 93 crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on 10:03:11 am. The North Tower collapsed on 10:28:22 am. On that time, the Marriott Hotel, located at the base of the two towers, is also destroyed. Five stories of part of the Pentagon collapse due to the fire on 10:50:19 am. By 1:04 pm.: President Bush puts the U.S. military on high alert worldwide (known as Force Protection Condition Delta). Taped remarks from the President were aired from Barksdale Air Force Base, stating that "freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward and freedom will be defended." He also said that the "United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts." He then leaves for a U.S. Strategic Command bunker located at Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue, Nebraska
On 5:20:33 pm., World Trade Center 7 (which was a 47 story building) collapsed. By 8:30 pm: U.S. President George W. Bush addresses the country from the White House in Washington, D.C. On 11:30 pm: Before sleeping, President Bush enters into his journal: "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today...We think it's Osama bin Laden."
NORAD
NORAD is the North American Aerospace Defense Command. It is run by USNORTHCOM. It was created by the late 1950's. NORAD's purpose is combined organization of America and Canada that provides aerospace warning, air sovereignty, and defense for North America. Its headquarters is found in Peterson Air Force Base in El Paso County, near Colorado Springs, Colorado. There are many questions and investigations about NORAD's and the military's response during the September 11 attacks on 2001. Standing orders on September 11 dictated that, upon receiving a request for assistance from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) would normally order escort aircraft to approach and follow an aircraft that was confirmed to be hijacked in order to assure positive flight following, report unusual observances, and aid search and rescue in the event of an emergency. The 9/11 Commission determined that on the morning of September 11, the FAA did not adequately notify NORAD of the hijackings of Flights 11, 77, 93, or 175 in time for escort aircraft to reach the hijacked flights. Notification of the hijacking of Flight 11 prompted the scrambling of two fighter jets from Otis Air National Guard Base, but they were not in the air until after Flight 11 had hit the North Tower. An erroneous FAA report of a hijacked plane heading towards Washington ("phantom Flight 11") prompted the scrambling of three more fighters from the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base, which due to "poor communications", ended up flying eastward, out to sea, instead of heading toward Washington, significantly delaying their arrival on the scene.
What we know now is that the hijackers of the four planes witched off the transponders or changed their codes upon taking control. That made it difficult for authorities to track them on radar. Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) /NORAD personnel stated they had difficulty identifying and tracking the aircraft, though they were at times able to locate them. For example, NEADS technicians spotted Flight 11 twenty miles north of Manhattan, just two or three minutes before it crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center: "Looking at the general capitol area, one of the [NEADS] tracker techs thinks he spots the plane on radar." The 9/11 Commission Report said that, " "Radar techs at NEADS/Rome are tracking Flight 77 near Washington, D.C."
At 08:24, the controller heard what he believed was the voice of a hijacker (believed to be Mohamed Atta) in a radio transmission from Flight 11. Two minutes later, the plane veered off course and turned south near Albany, NY. The Boston Center called the FAA Command Center at Herndon at 08:28 to report the hijacking. At 08:32, Herndon called FAA Headquarters in Washington. At 08:34, Boston Center contacted Otis Air National Guard (ANG) base to notify them of the hijacking. The controller at Otis directed Boston to contact NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS), and then informed the Otis Operations Center to expect a call from NEADS ordering a scramble. At this time two pilots began to suit up and drove to their waiting F-15 fighter jets. At 08:37, Boston Center contacted NEADS in Rome, New York. This was the first report of a hijacking that reached NORAD.
Flying supersonically, the F-15s were just south of Long Island when United Airlines Flight 175 smashed into the World Trade Center's south tower. NEADS wanted to direct the fighters over Manhattan, but FAA air controllers, fearing collisions with civilian aircraft, told NEADS to hold off. According to the FAA, there is an average of 200 flights per 24 hours over the Hudson River in the vicinity of NYC. The fighters were then ordered in a holding pattern off the coast of Long Island (in military-controlled airspace), where they remained from 09:09 to 09:13. After the airspace was cleared, the Otis fighters were directed towards Manhattan, where they arrived at 09:25 and established a combat air patrol (CAP). At 09:49, the decision about whether to call the military had still not been made, and no one from the FAA called NEADS until 10:07, four minutes after Flight 93 had crashed near Shanksville, PA. Had Flight 93 made it to Washington, D.C., Air National Guard pilots Lieutenant Colonel Marc H. Sasseville and Lieutenant Heather "Lucky" Penney were prepared to ram their unarmed F-16 fighters into it, perhaps giving their lives in the process. On September 18, 2001, NORAD issued a press release containing a timeline of the events of the September 11, including when they were contacted by the FAA. This page has been removed, but a copy can be found at archive.org. However, in 2004, the 9/11 Commission, after listening to tapes of communications, found that portions of this timeline were inaccurate. That is why after 9/11, NORAD and other agencies used new policies to help intercept aircraft if that situation occurred again.
On September 11, 2001, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) was involved in an ongoing operation which involved deploying fighter aircraft to northwestern North America. The U.S. Military and NORAD had also planned to conduct several military exercises and a drill was being held by the National Reconnaissance Office, a Department of Defense agency. The operations, exercises and drills were all canceled following the September 11 attacks. The military exercises or war games planned for 9/11 were Global Guardian and Vigilant Guardian. Aside from military exercises, a National Reconnaissance Office drill was being conducted on September 11, 2001. In a simulated event, a small aircraft would crash into one of the towers of the agency's headquarters after experiencing a mechanical failure. The NRO is the branch of the Department of Defense in charge of spy satellites. According to its spokesman Art Haubold: "No actual plane was to be involved -- to simulate the damage from the crash, some stairwells and exits were to be closed off, forcing employees to find other ways to evacuate the building." He further explained: "It was just an incredible coincidence that this happened to involve an aircraft crashing into our facility, as soon as the real world events began, we canceled the exercise." Most of the agency's personnel were sent home after the attacks.
On September 12, 2001, there was due to take place the second part of an exercise known as Operation Tripod, set up to "test the plan to distribute antibiotics to the entire city population during a bioterrorism attack". Richard Sheirer, director of the New York City Mayor's Office of Emergency Management (NYC OEM), had hired "over 1,000 Police Academy cadets and Fire Department trainees to play terrified civilians afflicted with various medical conditions, allergies, and panic attacks." Various individuals were invited to watch, including Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the police and fire commissioners, and representatives of the FBI and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Pier 92 was set up as a model distribution station where the "victims" of the mock attack who needed to receive antibiotics would be treated. The reality is that the existing system at the time was not designed to respond to suicide hijackings inside the Continental USA, making a successful intercept near to impossible.
General Arnold also stated "In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 we had to hook up to FAA radars throughout the country, install compatible radios for nationwide coverage between our command and control agencies and our airborne assets, and purchase a new command and control computer system to integrate radar and communications. The initial investment was for $75 million, and this number has grown to nearly $200 million." Organizations outside the FAA (e.g., the airlines, Department of Defense, NASA, and international sites) also have access to the FAA's Enhanced Traffic Management System (ETMS) software and/or data for purposes of flight management and tracking.
A Summary of the Pentagon's History
The Pentagon is located at Arlington County, Virginia. It is the famous headquarters of the United States Department of Defense. It is one large symbol of the U.S. military. Its architect was the American George Bergstrom. It was built by the contractor John McShain. September 11, 1941 was when ground was broken to build the location. It was dedicated on January 15, 1943. It has 7 floors and 6,636,360 square feet. Its parking has 67 acres. Colonel Leslie Groves was responsible for overseeing the project for the U.S. Army. It is the world's largest office building with 150 acres of floor space where military people and civilian employees work at. On September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 was hijacked and flown into the western side of the building, killing 189 people. Of those killed, 64 were on the hijacked airplane, and 125 were in the Pentagon. It was the first significant foreign attack on Washington's governmental facilities since the city was burned by the British during the War of 1812. Before the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Department of War was the headquarters of the Munitions Building. It was build during World War along Constitution Avenue on the National Mall at Washington, D.C. Now, the Pentagon building has 2 basement levels and five ring corridors per floor with a total of 17.5 miles of corridors. The Pentagon includes a five-acre (20,000 m2) central plaza, which is shaped like a pentagon and informally known as "ground zero", a nickname originating during the Cold War on the presumption that it would be targeted by the Soviet Union at the outbreak of nuclear war.
Stimson told U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in May 1941 that the War Department needed additional space. On July 17, 1941, a congressional hearing took place, organized by Virginia congressman Clifton Woodrum, regarding proposals for new War Department buildings. Woodrum pressed Brigadier General Eugene Reybold, who was representing the War Department at the hearing, for an "overall solution" to the department's "space problem" rather than building yet more temporary buildings. Reybold agreed to report back to the congressman within five days. The War Department called upon its construction chief, General Brehon Somervell, to come up with a plan. Governmental officials agreed to have the Federal Office Building Number 1 to be where the Pentagon would exist across the Potomac River in Arlington, County, Virginia. Contracts cost totally 31.1 million dollars (or $423 million in 2019). The building has the Hall of Heroes since 1968 to celebrate the Armed Forces. The Pentagon is not without controversy. Many people in the Pentagon have legitimately defended democratic values. Yet, other people in the Pentagon have been involved in nefarious actions including promoting unjust wars for decades (as part of the military industrial complex). We know that the CIA is complicit in Operation Phoenix, agreement with the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, and other disgraceful acts since 1947. There was a massive protest of the Vietnam War on October 21, 1967 including a sit in. These ca. 30,000 protesters were part of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (or MOBE). 2,500 armed soldiers protected the Pentagon. The Weather Underground Organization bombed a fourth floor women's restroom to disagree with the Nixon administration's bombing of Hanoi during the end of the Vietnam War (which was a war crime). You know howI feel about the Weathermen Undergound. Fred Hampton said it best that the Weathermen put people in a position where lives are lost which has nothing to do with enacting revolutionary change. Revolutionary change is done by building structures of change not nihilistic violence. By March 17, 2007, 4,000 to 15,000 people (estimates vary significantly) protested the Iraq War by marching from the Lincoln Memorial to the Pentagon's north parking lot.
September 11, 2001, coincidentally the 60th anniversary of the Pentagon's groundbreaking, was when five al-Qaeda affiliated hijackers took control of American Airlines Flight 77, en route from Washington Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport. These hijackers deliberately crashed the Boeing 757 airliner into the western side of the Pentagon at 9:37 am EDT as part of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The impact of the plane severely damaged the outer ring of one wing of the building and caused its partial collapse. The area of impact had renovations, so fewer people were injured.
One myth is that view that no plane hit the Pentagon on 9/11. This myth is common among many people who are sincere and others who are outright disinformationists. One such person is Steve Pieczenik. He was an assistant and chief anti-terrorist hostage negotiator at the State Department to Rockefeller allied members Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, George Shultz, and James Baker. He listed himself as member of the AFIO and the National Military Intelligence Association. He was a member of the CFR too, which is an establishment organization. He was an ally of the Reagan administration and is a reactionary person. Joel Skousen promotes the no-757 hit the Pentagon myth too. Joel is the nephew of the Mormon Cleon Skousen (he wrote the 1970 conspiracy best-seller 'The Naked Capitalist' (largely a review of Carroll Quigley's book 'Tragedy and Hope'). The Skousens have ties to the Council for National Policy. The CNP is a far right organization (who abhor the separation of church and state, many human rights, and other legitimate progressive views) with establishment ties. Oliver North and the Blackwater founder Erik Prince are members of the CNP. Many witnesses have said that they saw an airplane crash into the Pentagon. Images show debris of an airplane surrounding the Pentagon area. Quotes from the aftermath of the crash site offer no proof that something other a 757 hit the building. So, a 757 plane hit the Pentagon.
The Collapses of the Twin Towers and Building Number 7
The destruction of the New York City World Trade Center Towers existed by many events. First, 2 hijacked commercial airlines struck both towers. World Trade Center One or the North Tower was hit first at 8:46 am. EST, and it collapsed at 10:28 am. World Trade Center Two or the South Tower was hit at 9:03 am. and collapsed at 9:59 am. The resulting debris severely damaged or destroyed more than a dozen other adjacent and nearly structures. In September 2005, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published the results of its investigation into the collapse. The investigators did not find anything substandard in the design of the twin towers, noting that the severity of the attacks was beyond anything experienced in buildings in the past. They determined the fires to be the main cause of the collapses, finding that sagging floors pulled inward on the perimeter columns, causing them to bow and then to buckle. Once the upper section of the building began to move downwards, a total progressive collapse was unavoidable. The cleanup of the World Trade Center site involved round-the-clock operations and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Some surrounding structures that were not hit by the airplanes still sustained significant damage, requiring them to be torn down. Demolition of the surrounding damaged buildings continued even as new construction proceeded on the Twin Towers' replacement, the new One World Trade Center, which was opened in November 2014. The World Trade Center towers were designed with a framed tub structures. It had a floor truss system and a concrete floor over steel pans.
The buildings were square and 207 ft (63 m) on each side but had chamfered 6 feet 11 inches (2.11 metres) corners making the exterior of each building roughly 210 ft (64 m) wide. Numerous, closely spaced perimeter columns provided much of the strength to the structure, along with gravity load shared with the steel box columns of the core. Above the tenth floor, there were 59 perimeter columns along each face of the building spaced 3 feet 4 inches (1.02 metres) on center. While the towers were square, the interior cores were rectangular and were supported with 47 columns that ran the full height of each tower. All of the elevators and stairwells were located in the core, leaving a large column-free space between it and the perimeter that was bridged by prefabricated floor trusses. As the core was rectangular, this created a long and short span distance to the perimeter columns. The floor has a 4 inch thick lightweight concrete slabs laid on a fluted steel deck. Even an analysis of the impacts of low speed jet aircraft impacts had been undertaken prior to their completion, the full scope of those studies no longer exists. Nevertheless, since fire had never before caused a skyscraper to collapse and aircraft impacts had been considered in their design, their destruction initially came as a surprise to some in the engineering community.
Leslie Robertson, one of the chief engineers working on the design of the World Trade Center, stated that he considered the scenario of the impact of a Boeing 707, which might be lost in the fog and flying at relatively low speeds while seeking to land at either JFK or Newark Airports. In an interview with the BBC two months after the building collapses, Robertson claimed that, "with the 707, the fuel load was not considered in the design, I don't know how it could have been considered." In the interview, Robertson stated that the main difference between the design studies and the event that ultimately caused the towers to collapse was due to the velocity of the impact, which greatly increased the absorbed energy, and was never considered during the construction process.
During their investigation into the collapse, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) obtained a three-page white paper that stated the buildings would survive an aircraft-impact of a Boeing 707 or DC 8 flying at 600 miles per hour (970 km/h). In 1993, John Skilling, lead structural engineer for the WTC, during an interview conducted after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing remarked, "Our analysis indicated the biggest problem would be the fact that all the fuel (from the airplane) would dump into the building. There would be a horrendous fire. A lot of people would be killed", he said. "The building structure would still be there." In its report, NIST stated that the technical ability to perform a rigorous simulation of aircraft impact and ensuing fires is a recent development, and that the technical capability for such analysis would have been quite limited in the 1960s. In their final report on the collapses, the NIST stated that they could find no documentation that examined the impact of a high speed jet nor that of a large scale fire fueled by aviation fuel. Fireproofing was deficient by 2001. The aircraft removed a large part of the fireproofing contributing to the buildings' collapse. In WTC 1 the impact stripped the insulation off 43 of 47 core columns on more than one floor as well as floor trusses over a space of 60,000 square feet (5,600 m2). In WTC 2 the impact removed insulation from 39 of the 47 columns on multiple floors and from floor trusses spanning an area of 80,000 sq ft (7,400 m2). The collapse of the Twin was a progressive collapse. Structural components fell apart. So, the collapse of the Twin Towers existed by jet fuel, weakening floors, and the buildings never experiencing such a power from large airplanes before in a massive impact. These factors caused both buildings to come down.
Building Number 7 collapsed in a symmetrical fashion. As the North Tower collapsed, heavy debris hit the 7 World Trade Center. This caused damage to the south face of the building. Fires burn all afternoon. Structural damage occurred to the southwest corner between Floors 7 and 17 and on the south facade between Floor 44 and the roof; other possible structural damage includes a large vertical gash near the center of the south facade between Floors 24 and 41. The building was equipped with a sprinkler system, but had many single-point vulnerabilities for failure: the sprinkler system required manual initiation of the electrical fire pumps, rather than being a fully automatic system; the floor-level controls had a single connection to the sprinkler water riser; and the sprinkler system required some power for the fire pump to deliver water. Also, water pressure was low, with little or no water to feed sprinklers. Firefighters tried to stop the fires in WTC, but low water pressure hindered their efforts. Around 3:30 pm FDNY Chief Daniel A. Nigro decided to halt rescue operations, surface removal, and searches along the surface of the debris near 7 World Trade Center and evacuate the area due to concerns for the safety of personnel. There was a cuts in the building. It collapsed by 5:21:10 pm. EST. One issue with the NIST final report was that much of the steel was eliminated from the scene. Indeed, when NIST published its final report, it noted "the scarcity of physical evidence" that it had had at its disposal to investigate the collapses. Only a fraction of a percent of the buildings remained for analysis after the cleanup was completed: some 236 individual pieces of steel, although 95% of structural beams and plates and 50% of the reinforcement bars were recovered. The NIST and FEMA reports said that the jet fuel causing fires among many floors of the buildings caused a large heat output which caused the collapse of both Twin Towers. NIST's report said that fires from debris caused the WTC to collapse. Larry Silverstein said a comment about "pull it." A PBS documentary about the 9/11/01 attack, America Rebuilds, features an interview with the leaseholder of the destroyed WTC complex, Larry Silverstein. In it, the elderly developer makes the following statement:
"I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, "We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it." And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse." There are many views on what he meant by that, but it's a bizarre statement to make during a crisis. There are scholars and researchers who disagree with the official stories on the collapse of the buildings. They have the right to their views. Pull it doesn't necessary mean demolish as it could mean to pull the firefighters away from the location as the fires in the WTC 7 were too dangerous (after people were evacuated from the building). It is also important that to this very day, we don't know everything pertaining to 9/11. We have the right to research information.
Aftermath (including Our Civil Liberties and the War on Terror)
After the crime of 9/11 existed, a new era of world history commenced. Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda once again showed their cowardice. The neo-conservatives and other extremists used the 9/11 attacks as the pretext for them to promote the war on terror including passing new laws that violate our civil liberties (including the rest of our democratic rights). After 20 years, more people know of the truth. While this is going on, the elitists and the one percent has expanded their wealth resulting in an increase of economic inequality. The Project for a New American Century document, which was made by neo-conservatives, wanted American hegemony to spread worldwide, especially if a Pearl Harbor like event happened. By 9/11 on 8:30 pm., President George W. Bush gave his speech about the attacks. Soon, his approval rating soared into 90%. Rescues happened. The world sent humanitarian aid to help the victims. By September 20, 2001, President George W. Bush wanted to have a war against terrorism to defend freedom in my mind. New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani's prominence increased, but people had to fight to prevent all of the steel from the Twin Towers to leave NYC. Relief efforts helped the victim and their families. The government was under a continuity of government status until February of 2002. Also, the government was restructured to create Homeland Security in 2002, and the USA Patriot Act was passed in 2001. The Patriot Act had an ambiguous definition of terrorism and increase the power of law enforcement to deal with privacy issues. The NSA increased its powers. Not to mention that militarized police grew nationwide.
New York City, to this day, has witnessed have local police with automatic weapons patrolling the streets. Hate crimes against Muslims, Sikhs, South Asian Americans, and other human beings came shortly after the attacks in America. To his credit, President George W. Bush said that Muslims are not to be blamed, Muslims should be treated with respect, and that Muslims made many contributions to American society. I am not going to blame one religion for 9/11. 9/11 is a product of evil people who pervert principles of morality in seeking murder of innocent human beings. There is not justification for the murder of innocent people period. Muslim Americans condemned the 9/11 attacks in uncompromising terms. These organizations included the Islamic Society of North America, American Muslim Alliance, American Muslim Council, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Islamic Circle of North America, and the Shari'a Scholars Association of North America. Along with monetary donations, many Islamic organizations launched blood drives and provided medical assistance, food, and shelter for victims.
From September 11, 2001, White House officials like Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wanted his aides to find evidence of Iraqi involvement. There was known. By September 15, 2001, the Bush administration didn't attack Iraq in response to 9/11. U.S. and NATO forces came into Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda by October of 2001. Bush and his team said that they wanted to bring bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network to justice. On the following morning, September 12, 2001, NATO’s Atlantic Council meeting in Brussels, endorsed the Bush administration’s declaration of war on Afghanistan, invoking Article 5 of the Washington Treaty. On September 14, 2001, the U.S. Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists. Still in effect, it grants the President the authority to use all "necessary and appropriate force" against those whom he determined "planned, authorized, committed or aided" the September 11 attacks, or who harbored said persons or groups. Meanwhile, on two occasions in the course of September 2001, the Afghan government –through diplomatic channels– offered to hand over Osama Bin Laden to US Justice. These overtures were turned down by President Bush, on the grounds that America “does not negotiate with terrorists." The war on Afghanistan was launched 26 days later on the morning of October 7, 2001. U.S. military forces invaded Afghanistan along with British forces. Special Forces were on the ground. The Taliban ended their total control of Afghanistan with the Fall of Kandahar on December 7, 2001. The Afghanistan war continues to this very day until the start of the Fall of Kabul on August 2021. Thousands of people were sick from the toxic debris having 2,500 contaminants including carcinogens in Lower Manhattan. Many people died. Christine Todd Whitman, administrator of the EPA in the aftermath of the attacks, was heavily criticized by a U.S. District Judge for incorrectly saying that the area was environmentally safe. Mayor Giuliani was criticized for urging financial industry personnel to return quickly to the greater Wall Street area.
On December 22, 2010, the United States Congress passed the James L. Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which President Barack Obama signed into law on January 2, 2011. It allocated $4.2 billion to create the World Trade Center Health Program, which provides testing and treatment for people suffering from long-term health problems related to the 9/11 attacks. The WTC Health Program replaced preexisting 9/11-related health programs such as the Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program and the WTC Environmental Health Center program. Massive job loss happened as a result of the attacks too. There was an increase of more church attendance, public expression of patriotism, and shows reflecting this patriot fervor during the initial aftermath of 9/11 too. The unjust Iraq War came about by the Bush administration who promoted the myth that Saddam Huseein (who was once aided by America during the 1980's. Hussein shook Donald Rumsfeld's hand in 1983. Google has a picture of this image too) had massive quantities of weapons of mass destruction. That was not true. The war on terror caused massive wars, destruction of infrastructure, the refugee crisis, the growth of imperialism (Pentagon's Northern Command is highly powerful. We know of NATO's bombings of Libya including black Libyans being murdered by racists), Big Brother's expansion (with the NDAA, the NSA being caught having warrantless wiretapping, etc.), and other foreign policy crises.
The members of the 9/11 Commission were Chair Thomas H. Kean, Vice Chair Lee H. Hamilton, Richard Ben-Veniste, Max Cleland (replaced when he started asking questions), Fred F. Fielding, Jamie S. Gorelick, Slade Gorton, John F. Lehman, Timothy J. Roemer, and James R. Thompson
The 9/11 Commission
The 9/11 Commission report was a very important part of our history as human beings. The report is formally named the Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. This is a governmental report whose purpose is to find the events leading up to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. It was prepared by the Kean/Hamilton Commission at the request of then President George W. Bush and Congress. People can download the whole report for free. The commission was established on November 27, 2002 (442 days after the attack) and their final report was issued on July 22, 2004. The report was originally scheduled for release on May 27, 2004, but a compromise agreed to by then Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert allowed a sixty-day extension through July 26. The commission interviewed over 1,200 people in 10 countries. It reviewed a half million pages of documents including closely guarded classified national security documents. It used the FBI's PENTTBOM investigation. After releasing the report, commission chair Thomas Kean declared that both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were "not well served" by the FBI and CIA. The 9/11 Commission was a middle of the road report. It denied that the Saudi government conspired the attacks or funded attacks, but even the report admitted that Saudi Arabia was the primary source of Al-Qaeda funding. That is a contradiction. We can all agree that the hijackers came from all over the world, and they were members of al-Qaeda (which is a terrorist organization led by Osama bin Laden). The Commission is right to say that Saddam Hussein never assisted Al-Qaeda to carry out 9/11 attacks. The commission report chose to place blame for failure to notify the military squarely upon the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Ben Sliney, FAA operations manager at Herndon, Virginia, and Monte Belger, FAA Acting Deputy Administrator on 9/11, both stated to the commission that military liaisons were present and participating in Herndon's response as the events of 9/11 unfolded. Sliney stated that everyone who needed to be notified, including the military, was. The Commission wanted a creation of a National Intelligence Director over the CIA and the FBI and changes to security and immigration policy. As time went on, we know that parts of the 9/11 Commission report was a whitewash with blatant omissions and conflicts of interests.
One of the biggest whitewashes of the 9/11 Commission report is that it omitted the whole story about warnings of terrorism against 9/11 prior to the attacks. While the report did describe that "the system was blinking red" and that an al Qaeda attack was imminent, it did not include the testimony of former CIA director George Tenet to the commission in January 2004, in which he claimed to have given a specific warning to the Administration in a July 2001 meeting with Condoleezza Rice. Commission members Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton stated that they had not been told about the meeting. But the Boston Globe reported that "it turns out that the panel was, in fact, told about the meeting, according to the interview transcript and Democratic commission member Richard Ben-Veniste, who sat in on the interview with Tenet." George W. Bush waited until 2002 to form the Commission. Henry Kissinger was head of the Commission. So much outcry came about this that he resigned over conflicts of interests as Henry Kissinger is totally in league with the establishment. The members of the 9/11 Commission are Chairman Thomas Kean (He was the former Republican Governor of New Jersey). Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton (a former Democratic House Representative of Indiana), Richard Ben-Veniste (Democratic attorney part of the Watergate investigation), Max Cleland (a Democrat from Georgia and a former Senator), Fred F. Fielding a (Republican), Jamie Gorelick (a Democrat and former U.S. Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton administration), Slade Goton, Bob Kerrey, John F. Lehman, Timothy J. Roemer, and James R. Thompson. Other people on staff are Philip D. Zelikow, Christopher Kojm, Daniel Marcus, John J. Farmer, Dieter Snell, Janice Kephart, and Alvin S. Felzenberg. Some have compared this Commission to the Warren Commission. Former NJ Governor Thomas Kean was on the board of Amerada Hess petroleum company and had dealings with Saudi interests.
The irony was that Senator Max Cleland was expelled from the 9/11 Commission when he asked too many important questions. He said that, "As each day goes by, we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before September 11 than it has ever admitted.'" (Senator Max Cleland, member of the official National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Against the United States quoted in the New York Times, October 27, 2003). Max Cleland also said that, "If this decision stands, I, as a member of the commission, cannot look any American in the eye, especially family members of victims, and say the commission had full access. This investigation is now compromised." Max Cleland accused the Bush administration of delaying access to vital documents in an effort to run out the clock on its investigation. The 9/11 Commission refused to investigate Cheney's energy task force documents, all of the warnings of attacks using planes as weapons, the CIA/National Reconnaissance war games that took place on 9/11, and the radar tapes and tapes of air traffic controllers in the FAA on 9/11. Philip Zelikow co-authored a book with Condoleeza Rice before 9/11. The 9/11 Commission omitted Osama bin Laden's ties to U.S. Intelligence when Bin Laden fought the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980's. Kean is a director of petroleum giant Amerada Hess, which in 1998 formed a joint venture--known as Delta Hess--with Delta Oil, a Saudi Arabian company, to develop oil fields in Azerbaijan. One of Delta's backers is Khalid bin Mahfouz, a shadowy Saudi patriarch married to one of Osama bin Laden's sisters. According to a 1998 Senate testimony of former CIA director James Woolsey, powerful financier Khalid bin Mahfouz’s younger sister is married to Osama bin Laden. (US Senate, Senate Judiciary Committee, Federal News Service, 3 Sept. 1998, See also Wayne Madsen, Questionable Ties, In These Times,12 Nov. 2001). The 9/11 Commission allowed Bush and Cheney to give their testimonies together instead of separately.
Philip Shenon, a reporter for The New York Times, in a book released in February 2008, entitled, "The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation" claims that Zelikow had closer ties with the White House than he publicly disclosed and that he tried to influence the final report in ways that the staff often perceived as limiting the Bush administration’s responsibility and furthering its anti-Iraq agenda. According to the book, Zelikow had at least four private conversations with former White House political director Karl Rove, and appears to have had many frequent telephone conversations with people in the White House. The Commission staff kept a record only of calls Zelikow received, but Government Accountability Office records show his frequent calls to the 456 telephone exchanges in the 202 area code used exclusively by the White House. Also, the book states that Zelikow ordered his assistant to stop keeping a log of his calls, although the Commission's general counsel overruled him. Zelikow had pledged to have no contact with Rove and Condoleezza Rice during his work for the 9/11 Commission.
Commission chairmen Lee H. Hamilton and Thomas H. Kean accused the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of making a conscious decision to impede the commission’s inquiry after the agency received a memorandum prepared by Philip D. Zelikow, the panel's former executive director. Zelikow prepared this memorandum after former commission members reviewed thousands of classified documents following the disclosure that the CIA in November 2005 destroyed videotapes documenting the interrogations of two al-Qaeda operatives. In January 2008, NBC News released an investigative report on the 9/11 Commission's use of information acquired by torture of detainees. The 9/11 Commission omitted Able Danger. Former Senator Bob Graham, the co-chair of an earlier congressional report into the 9/11 attacks, has called for re-opening an investigation into Saudi funding of the attack and the declassification of documents discussing the subject, including 28 pages from that report. Lee Hamilton is a member of the CFR along with Jamie Gorelick. Timothy Roemer and other people in the Commission complained about access issues in forming the results of their investigations.
Former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel gave a National Press Club speech on 9/9/10 saying: "The [9/11 Commission's] investigation was not what we call an investigation. It was to develop a storyline of what happened to be fed to the American people and to receive their acquiescence. Victims' family members ... have said that only a fourth of their well researched questions were answered."
The 9/11 Truth Movement (The Elephant in the Room)
You can't mention anything about 9/11 with analyzing the elephant in the room. We know what that elephant is, and it's the 9/11 Truth Movement. That movement has been praised and criticized by people throughout the world. One of the strongest critics of 9/11 Truth have been members of the corporate media (as found in networks, mainstream newspapers, etc.). What is necessary to do now is to fairly talk about 9/11 Truth without outlining biased, without hysteria, or displaying the typical demonization of people. That is what I'm born to do. The 9/11 Truth movement is a diverse amount of people in America and in the world who don't believe in the official story of 9/11. They are unified on that point. They don't believe that 9/11 was a surprise attack. Some believe that 9/11 was allowed to happened, and some believe that the government orchestrated 9/11. The peak of the popularity of the 9/11 Truth movement was from 2001 to 2009. The first decade of the 21st century saw such a rapid advance of 9/11 Truth that then President George W. Bush condemned it as promoting "outrageous conspiracy theories." Ironically, the 9/11 Truth Movement has did some good in getting more people interested in researching the war on terror and questioning authority. They have done a great job in organizing people to promote human civil liberties and peace in the world. We all know about the imperfections found in the Patriot Act and in the USA Military Commissions Act. We know of the high level of surveillance technology in the world that came after 9/11 too. Many 9/11 Truth members unfortunately have promoted overt hoaxes that only advance falsehoods and not the truth. There are two major factions of the 9/11 Truth Movement. One faction are made up of sincere human beings who try to document information. They want serious research to be presented to the public. The other faction of this movement are made up of people who advance disinformation, falsehoods (like the myth that no plane hit the Pentagon which only distracts from real issues), and don't advance serious, documented information.
Back in March of 2004, the 9/11 Truth movement members met in March 2004 at the International inquiry into 9/11 being held at San Francisco, California. There is the intersectionality of 9/11 Truth members working in peace, environmental, and anti-imperialist movements too. It is not unusual to find that governments throughout human history organize terror to advance fear and control over the people. For example, Operation Gleiwitz was done by the Nazis in order to provoke the Nazi Germany invasion of Poland. We know about Operation Northwoods when some in the government wanted to bomb places in America to provoke an invasion of Cuba. President John F. Kennedy rejected that plan outright. We know about President LBJ exploiting the Gulf on Tonkin situation to advance the Vietnam War in another level. Operation Ajax was when British and American intelligence used a false flag operation to overthrow a democratically elected leader Muhammad Mossadeq from power in Iran (so, Western forces can get the oil resources in Iran. The Shah was installed, and the Shah was a dictator in Iran for decades). Operation Gladio was involved by NATO. Many 9/11 related questions still remain. By the end of this prose, you will know where I agree and disagree with 9/11 Truth. We know that just before 9/11, George W. Bush was ready to sign papers to involved the U.S. in Afghanistan (as sited by the British Jane's International Security magazine, the magazine of India Reacts from June 26, 2001, and from an article from Julian Boger as cited in The Guardian). Also, many of the same folks who claim to be against governmental corruption are allied with the far right movements of extremists (and excuse neoliberal capitalism).
Some far right extremists even falsely equate neoliberalism with socialism when socialists defended labor rights, civil rights, and human rights for decades and centuries. Some of the fake "patriots" even equate any kind of government intervention with communists. These folks are the paleoconservative, anti-governmental individuals who dismiss any health care programs and have a fetish of gun rights (there is nothing wrong with an innocent person owning a gun, but criminals should never own a gun. A gun is a tool not a god). In our time, we have many of these paleoconservative, info-entertainers who want to sell products and are multimillionaires at the expense of promoting paranoia, xenophobia, and other problems. We know which info-entertainer that I'm talking about. He's from Austin, Texas. His name is Alex Jones.
On February 12, 2016, Alex Jones praised Barry Goldwater. Goldwater was the man who disgracefully opposed the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and didn’t rule out using nuclear weapons in Vietnam. His friend was General Curtis LeMay (he executed firebombing of even Japanese civilians during World War II) who tried to provoke war with the Russians during the 1950’s and the 1960’s. Alex Jones is silent on the American Security Council, the World Anti-Communist League, the Council for National Policy, the Western Goals Foundation, and Le Cercle. Alex Jones is also the friend of the notorious racist and sexist Ted Nugent. Birds of a feather do flock together.
This image showed the events of Operation Ajax.
It is true that many political elites have done evil against many people and the Third World people, but I reject anti-progressive lies that are meant to advance xenophobia, sexism, and racism. Now, it is very important to expose government corruption. We know that the oligarchy have done illegal actions. I have noticed that these paleaoconservatives only attack the so-called “liberal” Eastern Establishment. They never attack the conservative establishment groups like the Council for National Policy, the American Security Council, Le Cercle, the Pilgrim Society, the John Birch Society, etc. because many of these groups have links to the far right movements that they endorse. One leading Skulls & Bones author is Kris Millegan. He published the works of Sutton, Iserbyt, and others. His father is Lloyd Millegan, who was a ranking OSS, Army G2, and CIA officer. Lloyd Millegan Sr. was acquainted with John Foster Dulles from a very young age. A few years later Millegan, Sr. was recruited into the OSS and kept tabs on the notoriously reactionary and stubborn General Douglas MacArthur as one of the general's staffers. A full decade later, in 1956, years before the massive American troop involvement in the Vietnam War broke out, he was partying with General Edward Lansdale and even a few North Vietnamese leaders in Saigon. The common lie and myth was that JFK started American military involvement in the Vietnam War. The truth is that Eisenhower had military advisors in Vietnam long before JFK was President. Dulles, along with his brother, later belonged to the Pilgrim Society. MacArthur and Lansdale were favorites of the American Security Council. Even author Alexandra Robbins was a member of the Scroll & Key.
Gordon Duff is senior editor of Veterans Today, has promoted the missile into the Pentagon myth. Dick Eastman is not only a person who believes in the light that no 757 hit the Pentagon. He is an evil anti-Semite who believes in the slander of Holocaust denial. Jewish people, Roma, black people, etc. died in the Holocaust by the murderous actions of the evil Nazis. I’m glad that the Allied forces defeated the Nazis by 1945. Many of the disinformation agents are racist Holocaust deniers like Ryan Dawson. Dr. Richard Falk is a CFR member, a proponent of the no plane hit the Pentagon myth, and he was a vocal support of the radical Ayatollah Khomeini back in the day. The CNP have members with links Oliver North and Jack Abramoff. The son of CNP board member Elsa Prince, Erik Prince, later founded and chaired Total Intelligence Solutions and Blackwater USA (with links to the Knights of Malta), the private CIA and Bush White House nexus of the JSOC assassination programs in the post 9/11 world. Blackwater later changed its name to Academi, with the new chairman being a long-time key shareholder in Coast to Coast AM. Top-level neocon, former CIA director and known CNP speaker James Woolsey chairs the advisory board of Executive Action, LLC, a firm named after the CIA's term for assassination. Also, these palaeconservatives who talk about conservativism readily believe in unrestrained corporate fascism by opposing any kind of involvement of the state in the market. Some want a ban on taxes and a powerless government. There is a huge difference between moderate socialism and communism. Even socialism is a reality in the world and has helped many people.
The corporations that treats its personnel the worst - the lowest wages, the least amount of benefits, the longest hours, the harshest spy and enforcement measures against unionists, etc. are abysmally unjust. Even the good parts of FDR's New Deal program (with similar programs appearing in Western Europe) had progressive parts to it. It established a minimum wage, a maximum number of working hours, abolished child labor, provided pensions, and set up watchdog agencies for banks and corporations. To a large extent it ended the age of the robber barons and is one of the cornerstones of the modern social democracy. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with exposing real conspiracies, yet we must use accurate information and inspiration to call for justice.
The official story is accurate to mention that many Islamist extremists wanted to attack America, and these extremists did attack America. Yet, it ignores how that anger is a product of U.S. and Western intervention in the Middle East. Also, the official story definitely ignores how governments have exploited terrorist attacks for their own aims of expanding the power of the oligarchy. The official story ignores how U.S. allies provided specific warnings about terrorist threats to America. Many FBI agents who tried to stop the attacks were blocked by headquarters. That was obstruction not incompetence. The official story ignores the CIA’s “plane into building exercise” and NORAD war games (which were conducted by Western forces) during that morning. Around noon on 9/11, air traffic controllers who handled some of the hijacked flights made a recording recalling their experiences of the events from a few hours earlier. The tape was later destroyed by an unidentified FAA supervisor without any transcripts taken.
The 9/11 Truth Movement correctly says that there was a deliberate conspiracy to use the attacks as an excuse to promote the war on terror, an invasion in Middle Eastern and Central Asian nations, and for the West to get resources throughout the Earth. The 9/11 Truth movement is right that the 9/11 Commission is a complete whitewash of the facts. Some 9/11 truth people unfortunately mix true conclusions with myths and falsehoods (like the no plane hit the Pentagon myth, only explosives alone caused the Twin Towers to fall, and the pod myth). So, the 9/11 Truth Movement has been praised, reviled, and slandered. One thing is true. The 9/11 Truth Movement is here to stay. The 9/11 Truth movement has been courageous to show their views whether people agree with them or not. I agree with 9/11 Truth on some issues and not on others. I want to make that point known.
Other Stories
9/11 existed because of many complex reasons. A conspiracy is an event organized by more than one person with a plan, and people carrying it out. By that definition alone, 9/11 was a product of a conspiracy as Osama bin Laden and other people planned it out and executed terrorism against America. The Western establishment exploited the 9/11 attacks as an excuse for some to try to reshape the Middle East and Central Asia (in growing markets, competing against Russia plus China, and gain more oil, gas, mineral resources). President George W. Bush already long before 9/11 wanted to go after Saddam Hussein in part to finish what his father started. There was the 1993 attempt to assassinate his father too. Iraqi oil reserves were huge, so private contractors worked heavily in Iraq for the purpose of gaining profit. George W. Bush's Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill in his 2004 book of The Price of Loyalty mentioned a January 30, 2001 meeting. This meeting, he claimed had Bush, National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, CIA Director George Tenet), Donald Rumsfeld, and others to prepare for a possible invasion of Iraq. Bush disputes the claim from O'Neill. Yet, we know of a memo dated January 23, 2001 outlining the "Origins of the Iraq Regime Change Policy." This was requested by Vice President-elect Dick Cheney before taking office, presumably as a way to justify policy formation around aggressive US efforts for "regime change" in Iraq. Bush calling Iraq, Iran, and Syria an Axis of Evil is pretty much saying that he wanted those nations to be pro-American puppets of the West via war if necessary. Domestically, the corporate police state system that we see now was built greater since 9/11. NSA programs like PRISM, Boundless Informant, and Stellar Wind grew.
There is the story of Port Authority Secretary Genelle Guzman-McMillan. She was rescued 27 hours after the collapse of the North Tower. She came to work on the 64th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. She grabbed a bagel. Out of the window, she saw debris and a gall of fire falling from the sky above. Then, she felt an earthquake. The walls burst open and rubble came falling down. She couldn't move for 27 hours. Later, she heard voices calling for help, radios going in and out. She drifted in and out of consciousness. She prayed to God and hoped for a miracle. A person grabbed her, and this person was a man named Paul. Later, many rescuers retrieved her out of the rubble. Her book is entitled, "Angel in the Rubble: The Miraculous Rescue of 9/11's Last Survivor." It's found online and at Amazon.com. We should always be thankful to live on this Earth, because our ancestors sacrificed so much for us to be in this generation to live.
New York City's first woman firefighter is Brenda Berkman. She fought discrimination and was one of the many first responders who saved lives during the terrible events of September 11. She commenced her firefighting career in 1982. Then, she retired as a captain by 2006. She became an artist which was a life long dream of hers. She created many lithograph drawings of the events on that day and other drawings of New York City in general.
One of the many heroes on 9/11 also includes another firefighter. Her name is Regina Wilson. Her life was filled with amazing developments. She worked at a corporate job in real estate. She didn't find fulfillment. Later, she became an African American New York City firefighter. It was a move that would change her life forever. By September 11, 2001, she was 32 years old. It was her 3rd year on the job. She was a first responder along with others who assisted in the search, rescue, and recovery efforts at the World Trade Center location. Her firehouse lost 7 members on that day. Its name is Engine 219 at Park Slope, Brooklyn, NYC. A fellow firefighter, who was part of her team, passed away later on that day. Regina Wilson has been a member of FDNY for over 10 years. To this day, she is dedicated for equity and opportunity for all people. She refutes the old lie that a firefighting is just a "man's jobs." Firefighters can and should exist among every color and every background period without any exception. Judith Castro worked to help save lives on 9/11 too.
The picture of the left showed American National Guard troops protecting the U.S. Capitol after the evil, treasonous, and terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Over 117,000 human beings have been evacuated from Afghanistan since August of 2021 (as shown in the image of the right).
A New Political Reality in 2021
20 years after 9/11, we still have massive political polarization. Nothing would be the same again after 20 years. You have some people who believe in truth and justice by defending voting rights (the protests on August 28, 2021 in Washington, D.C. and across America document how we must strengthen voting rights federally without delay), promoting living wages, and believing in environmental justice. Then, you have other people who believe in the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, who believe in sugarcoating real American history (under the guise of disagreeing with critical race theory. Critical race theory is not offensive. It is about exposing systematic racism in the legal system and desiring racial justice to exist. Not to mention that CRT is not taught officially in public schools), and promote their attacks on democracy with puppets like the bigot plus far right extremist Tucker Carlson. So, we are in an ideological crisis point in American history. Donald Trump is no longer President, but the Republican Party is headed by him. We already know that Trump is a sexist, a racist, a xenophobe, and a habitual liar. The most important thing to do is to do the right thing. Doing the right thing means to build in our communities, promoting our rights, working with organizations dedicated to results, build people up, and advancing real progressive values that our ancestors fought and died for. Many of my ancestors and late relatives fought in the Civil War and in World War II. The Republican Party now is so extreme that Abraham Lincoln, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ulysses S. Grant, and other Republicans back then would be considered Marxists by the far right. It's that serious. Now, people are discussing about the 2022 elections. People want to see what the future composition of Congress will be by 2022 (and after the 2020 Census has been fully completed). People want the social safety net protected and strengthened not weakened as many GOP extremists desire. Human beings want real change in our world. We have work to do, and we should constantly work to make justice exist for all indeed.
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Conclusion
In conclusion, 9/11 was plotted an executed by Osama bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda network. The attacks were evil, unjust, and wicked. The murderers, who murdered almost 3,000 people in America, followed a reactionary, ultranationalist ideology. Also, it is important to note that Western imperialism have blood on its hands for decades too. For example, the CIA and the MI6 worked together (via Operation Ajax) to overthrow the democratically elected President or Iran Mohammed Mossadegh. We know about the CIA's Operation Phoenix where Vietnamese people were assassinated and murdered constantly beyond a war strategy. Drone strikes, imperialist wars, and other bombings by the West have occurred in Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, etc. Once upon a time, America wanted fundamentalist extremists to defeat Soviet forces in Afghanistan. America was once an ally of the Taliban because of its anti-Communist views during the 1980's. That has changed years later.
The war on terror existed after the attack. There were many Saudi and Pakistani elites that worked with Western elites for many reasons (as Iran and Syria are heavily Shia states). The CIA promoted the Iraq War and advanced many actions of secret prison camps that included waterboarding. The desire of the neo-cons and their supporters was to restructure the Middle East into the image of a Pax Americana. Also, the Bush administration used the lie of Iraq having massive quantities of weapons of mass destruction as an excuse for them to invade Iraq, to gain resources in Iraq, etc. Now, we are still fighting the Delta variant of the pandemic virus. Many lives have been lost as a product of the virus, and we are certainly serious in respecting the sanctity of human life (as the value of life is priceless and advancing a real health care culture is our aim. Obviously, health care is never a privilege but a human right unequivocally). Our ancestors shed blood for the nation of the United States of America (which is now a multiracial democracy and whose democracy is constantly under threat), and we are entitled to black liberation. I am still human, and I'm growing. I have a lot of living to do, and I will be a better person than the past. Likewise, I will still maintain my core convictions of believing in God, of following the Golden Rule, of wanting environmental justice, of loving Blackness, of believing in justice, and discovering more truth. Today, President Biden is the current President in 2021. He has to deal with many issues. We will make sure that he is rightfully evaluated in his policies from an independent progressive perspective. Additionally, we want federal voting rights legislation to be passed and D.C. statehood. The attacks in America on September 11th, 2001 represented the start in essence of the 21st century.
By Timothy
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We will never Forget September 11, 2001. I think about that date and the tragic events on that day every day of my life.
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