Wtc @ MindSay

What a lot of people don't seem to realise it that the events of 9-11 was not just an American tragedy. Yes, it may have happened within the borders of your country, but its effects were felt worldwide. Not only the USA mourns for this horrible tragedy. At least another 40 countries suffered losses of its citizens. It affected every single country in the world. Six years ago, the whole world was at a standstill as the horrific reports flooded every channel of our televisions. Six years ago, we all shed tears trying to understand what was happening. The whole world still mourns for the losses of the victims. The whole world is still trying to understand what happened. You do not mourn as a nation. We mourn as a human race.

To the victims of this fateful day six years ago, may you all rest in peace. May the families and friends of the victims find comfort and happiness through their heartbreak. To the brave souls of the fire department and the emergency services, we will never know how to thank you enough. You will all be in our thoughts, always.

I wanted to put together another tribute for this year, but I simply have not found time. And I don't think it would turn out as good as the video I did last time. So I will post it again. Another year has gone on, but we still feel the same.

By Paul Craig Roberts

09/14/07 "ICH" -- - -The anti-war movement has proven impotent to stop the war in Iraq despite the fact that the war was initiated on the basis of lies and deception. The anti-war movement stands helpless to prevent President Bush from attacking Iran or any other country that he might demonize for harboring a future 9/11 threat.

September 11 enabled Bush to take America to war and to keep America at war even though the government’s explanation of the events of September 11 is mired in controversy and disbelieved by a large percentage of the population.

Although the news media’s investigative arm has withered, other entities and individuals continue to struggle with unanswered questions. In the six years since 9/11, numerous distinguished scientists, engineers, architects, intelligence officers, pilots, military officers, air traffic controllers, and foreign dignitaries have raised serious and unanswered questions about the official story line.

Recognition of the inadequacy of the official account of the collapse of the twin towers is widespread in the scientific and technical community. One of the most glaring failures in the official account is the lack of an explanation of the near free-fall speed at which the buildings failed once the process began. Some scientists and engineers have attempted to bolster the official account with explanations of how this might happen in the absence of explosives used in controlled demolitions.

One recent example is the work of Cambridge University engineer, Dr. Keith Seffen, published in the Journal of Engineering Mechanics and reported by the BBC on September 11, 2007. Dr. Seffen constructed a mathematical model that concludes that once initiation of failure had begun, progressive collapse of the structures would be rapid.

Another example is the work of retired government scientist Dr. Manuel Garcia, commissioned by CounterPunch to fill the gaping void in the official report. Garcia concludes, as does Seffen, that explosives are not necessary to explain the near free-fall speed at which the WTC buildings collapsed.

Seffen and Garcia each offer a speculative hypothesis about what could have happened. Their accounts are not definitive explanations based on evidence of what did happen. Thus, Seffen and Garcia bring us to the crux of the matter: To understand the buildings’ failures, we must rely on theoretical speculative models, because the forensic evidence was not examined. Their explanations thus have no more validity than a speculative hypothesis that explains the failure of the buildings as a result of explosives.

To rationally choose between the hypotheses, we would need to see how well each fits with the evidence, but most of the evidence was quickly dispersed and destroyed by federal authorities. Most of the evidence that remains consists largely of human testimony: the hundred witnesses who were inside the two towers and who report hearing and experiencing explosions and the televised statement of Larry Silverstein, the leaseholder of the WTC properties, who clearly said that the decision was made “to pull” WTC 7.

Today, six years after 9/11, money, ideologies, accumulated resentments, and political careers are all allied with the official story line on 9/11. Anyone on a Republican mailing list or a conservative activist list, such as Young Americans for Freedom, knows that fundraising appeals seldom fail to evoke the 9/11 attack on America. The 9/11 attacks gave neoconservatives their “new Pearl Harbor” that enabled them to implement their hegemonic agenda in the Middle East. The 9/11 attacks gave Americans boiling with accumulated frustrations a foe upon whom to vent their rage. Politicians, even Democrats, could show that they stood tall for America. George W. Bush has invested two presidential terms in “fighting terror” by invading countries in the Middle East.

September 11 doubters are a threat to the legitimacy of these massive material and emotional interests. That is why they are shouted down as “conspiracy theorists.” But if the government’s story has to be improved by outside experts in order to be plausible, then it is not irrational or kooky to doubt the official explanation.

Elements of the American left-wing are also frustrated by 9/11 doubters. CounterPunch, for example, views 9/11 as blowback from an immoral US foreign policy and as retribution for America’s past sins in the Middle East. Manuel Garcia shares this viewpoint. In the September 12, 2007, CounterPunch, Garcia writes that “rationalists and realists” are people who see 9/11 “as blowback from decades of inhuman US foreign policy.” Viewing 9/11 as a government conspiracy lets US foreign policy off the hook.

This is a legitimate point of view. But it has a downside. September 11 was the excuse for committing yet more inhuman deeds by initiating open-ended wars on both Muslims and US civil liberties. Defending the government’s account, instead of pressing the government for accountability, was liberating for the Bush administration.

Even in the official account, the story is one of massive failures: the failures of US intelligence services, the failures of airport security, the failures to intercept the hijacked airliners, the failures to preserve evidence. If a common front had taken the Bush administration to task both for failing to prevent the 9/11 attacks and for an explanation of 9/11 so inadequate that its plausibility depends on outside experts, Bush could not have so easily shifted the blame to Afghanistan and Iraq. Most 9/11 doubters do not insist on the US government’s complicity in the deed. Failure to protect, or incompetence, is a sufficient charge to deter an administration from war by turning it against itself with demands for accountability.

But no one was held accountable for 9/11 except Muslim countries. This is the reason the anti-war movement is impotent.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.

A New York City firefighter describes what happened inside the WTC on 9/11. His story easily destroys the "fireball down the elevator" myth. Please watch this video and try to share it with as many people as possible.

Let's get this on top blogs.

From: Williams, Derek
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 1:14 PM
Subject: WTC - Derek Williams

Hello,

I am a Texan and I now live in New Jersey. I have been up a couple of times before I moved up here, looking for housing. I use to get goose bumps every time I went up the turnpike because as we neared the Newark Airport, I use to look to the east and out of haze, clear weather, rain, or snow, see the World Trade Center (WTC).

It "loomed" over the city - because it was soooo tall. Two giant silver blocks - kinda like when as a kid you work with legos (tm) and you ran out of the small pieces and were forced to use the big ones.

The buildings were so big that they almost looked out-of-place. I still marveled at the bravado that the architects had to build such large structures. Most days, I bet, the tops of the WTC were in the clouds.

Anyway, I've visited the Empire State building. On the ground floor is a directory of occupants. It's got to be 20 feet long 6 feet high - small print. Neat! I visited the top. Three elevators - first to like floor 12 (long time ago), second one to floor 86 - outside observatory, and the third one to the top - 102 stories - inside observatory. Neat!

Think about this: The Empire State building is shorter, more cone shaped and - there is only one of them!

I've never actually been higher than the ground floor at the WTC. But even there, it was massive. Wanted to go to the top observation - the line was too long for me. There was a restaurant on the top. Wanted to go there also. Never made it.

Now, here are some things that non-NY'ers probably didn't know. In between the building was a large plaza. People would hang out there, eating their lunch, talking on cell phones, and listening to live concerts - everyday. There were tons of people selling stuff all around towers - candy, hot dogs, pretzels, clothes, watches, etc. There were also other things there - newsstands, shoe shine, taxi cabs, etc. There were banks, atm's, pizza parlors, etc.

Also, the WTC was a subway stop. Now, when I mean subway stop, I don't mean the train stopped and you climbed the stairs to the street. No, I mean UNDER the WTC was a FULL subway system - a small Penn Station. Cars came from Uptown NY and New Jersey - both an endpoint and a starting point. You never entered the weather. The WTC was also on the waterfront, so there were ferries that also placed people in the towers and immediate area.

The biggest surprise for me was that there was a FULL shopping mall underneath the WTC also. Not fancy, up scaled furriers and business suit stores, but your regular drug stores, ice cream parlors, sandwich shops, etc. You could actually take the trains from New Jersey and never actually have to leave the building.

I have never worked in the WTC. The closest I've been was across the water in NJ - Jersey City. From the windows of my building, I could see both the Statue of Liberty and the WTC. I took the PATH train to come to work - the same one that went to the WTC. Except I got off two stops prior. I have visited it looking for work - to no avail. I figured, I'd take the first job, and then get use to the hustle and bustle, and then expand my wings.

Now, that day, I was going to work here in NJ (don't work in Jersey City anymore), and the people on the radio said that something strange was happening - I didn't think twice about it. Then the information started to flow in slowly, but surely. I HATE it when the news people don't know what exactly is happening, and they feel free to sprout the first thing that they hear hoping that they are right.

• a plane had crashed into the WTC (I'm thinking Cessna)
• a big plane had crashed (I'm now thinking commuter plane)
• a Boeing plane had crashed (I'm thinking 737?!?! Wow, that's news!)
• No, a BIG plane had crashed - Boeing 757/767! D&$#@! Boy, what in the world happened? Pilot fainted? Malfunction of the equipment?
• More information: ANOTHER PLANE crashed? Was it trying to avoid the first plane? Did it get caught in the wake turbulence?
• Two BIG planes hit EACH tower. Each tower is ablaze! OK, something weird is happenning.

I had a 10 am meeting that morning with staff in my manager's office. His email kept binging, but he continued the meeting. I thought I heard my cell phone go off (it was in my office), but we continued (I have a pager if it's important). After the meeting, I return to my office to see that we are closing for the rest of the day. Hmm.

• ANOTHER PLANE HIT THE PENTAGON!! Ok, we are under attack. It is a good thing that I live in NJ, and not NY.

Then, the unthinkable happened. Just like I heard on the news, I had the same conversation on the phone:

• Derek, the WTC has collapsed.
• The part where the plane crashed?
• No, the WHOLE building.

Nah, I thought. I wasn't here when the WTC was bombed, but the bomb was placed at the bottom of the building - the MAIN structure, and it still didn't come down.

• Are you talking about the one that the bomb hurt a couple of years ago?
• No, BOTH towers have come down.

OK, I thought. Maybe they broke off at the point of impact. Well, they will be shorter, until they can fix it.

Then I arrived home and saw the footage on the TV:

- TWO BIG PLANES - FULL OF PEOPLE - TWO LARGE FIREBALLS - PEOPLE JUMPING FROM THE BUILDINGS - FIRST BUILDING COLLAPSING FROM TOP TO BOTTOM - SECOND BUILDING COLLAPSING FROM TOP TO BOTTOM - PART OF THE PENTAGON COLLAPSED - LARGE HOLE IN THE GROUND WHERE #4 PLANE FULL OF PEOPLE HIT THE GROUND - Knowledge about everything I said above. 

Forward if you want.