MEDIA ROOTS- One of the most bizarre aspects of 9/11 is undoubtedly the mysterious “collapse” of World Trade Center Building Seven, a 47 story steel skyscraper that was never hit by an airplane, yet fell into its own footprint on 5:20 pm that fateful day.

The corporate media, the federal government and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (the arm of the government that eventually investigated the collapse) all maintain that Building Seven fell due to fires alone, despite a plethora of contradictory evidence pointing to controlled demolition.

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth is a non profit organization consisting of over 1500 building professionals who have put their careers on the line to call for a new investigation into the collapse of all three World Trade Center buildings. Solving the Mystery of WTC 7 is a new AE911Truth documentary that decimates the government’s official account of Building Seven’s destruction. The fifteen minute film features excellent interviews from building professionals and AE911Truth signatories. 

Abby Martin

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Solving the Mystery of WTC 7

http://AE911Truth.org

http://RememberBuilding7.org

 

MEDIA ROOTS- Usually the revolving door between politicians and their corporate profiteering is shielded from the public, and takes a bit of investigative digging to expose. Often times, politicians will invest millions in blind trusts to mask their investments in companies that would reveal an obvious conflict of interest tied to their legislative work. However, Congressman Issa has set a new precedent in exploiting a political standing to blatantly racketeer off the system since his election in 2000.

Abby

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NEW YORK TIMES– Even as he has built a reputation as a forceful Congressional advocate for business, Mr. Issa has bought up office buildings, split a holding company into separate multimillion-dollar businesses, started an insurance company, traded hundreds of millions of dollars in securities, invested in overseas funds, retained an interest in his auto-alarm company and built up a family foundation.

As his private wealth and public power have grown, so too has the overlap between his private and business lives, with at least some of the congressman’s government actions helping to make a rich man even richer and raising the potential for conflicts.

He has secured millions of dollars in Congressional earmarks for road work and public works projects that promise improved traffic and other benefits to the many commercial properties he owns here north of San Diego. In one case, more than $800,000 in earmarks he arranged will help widen a busy thoroughfare in front of a medical plaza he bought for $10.3 million.

His constituents cheer the prospect of easing traffic. At the same time, the value of the medical complex and other properties has soared, at least in part because of the government-sponsored road work.

But beyond specific actions that appear to have clearly benefited his businesses, Mr. Issa’s interests are so varied that some of the biggest issues making their way through Congress affect him in some way.

After the forced sale of Merrill Lynch in 2008, for instance, he publicly attacked the Treasury Department’s handling of the deal without mentioning that Merrill had handled hundreds of millions of dollars in investments for him and lent him many millions more.

And in an era when the auto industry’s future has been a big theme of public policy, Mr. Issa has been outspoken on regulatory issues affecting car companies, while maintaining deep ties to the industry through the auto electronics company he founded, DEI Holdings.

He has a seat on its board, and his nonprofit family foundation, which seeks to encourage values like “hard work and selfless philanthropy,” has earned millions from stock in DEI, which bears his initials. Mr. Issa’s fortune, in fact, was built on his car alarm company, and to this day it is his deep voice on Viper alarms that warns potential burglars to “please step away from the car.”

Read more about A Businessman in Congress Helps His District and Himself

© 2011 The New York Times

Photo by Flickr user Congressman Darrell Issa

MEDIA ROOTS- There has been a lot of talk during the election frenzy about how “extreme” and ultra right-wing Rick Perry is. Multiple news pundits are insisting that people of liberal persuasion must, no matter what, vote for Obama, simply because of how terrifying the other options may be: Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann (oddly though never Ron Paul).

What is it about Perry’s history that makes his supposed Republican “extremism” hard to believe? Like other opportunistic politicians before him (Joe Lieberman, Arlen Specter), Perry once ran and won elections as a Democrat. The fact that he used to adhere to Democratic principles early on in his political career makes it hard to believe that he is an extremist of any sort. Instead, it appears more likely that he’s a political tool who has been groomed for the last decade to become a PR pawn for Wall St. and the Presidential office of the US.

Followers of the Bilderberg group might remember that Rick Perry attended the Bilderberg meeting in 2007, which usually signifies picks for presidential hopefuls. The Bilderberg group is an uber elite neo-liberal think-tank that meets annually in different locations worldwide. In previous years, John Kerry and John Edwards both attended Bilderberg not long before Kerry won the primary and Edwards was chosen as his running mate. William Jefferson Clinton also appeared on the attendance roster when he was merely the Governor of Arkansas.

In 2008, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were alleged to have both attended the Bilderberg meeting in Virginia. Right before the meeting took place, there was an infamous incident that involved Obama’s press agent whisking the entire crew of mainline press away on an airplane flight across the country, without telling them that the president had taken a separate flight to meet Clinton “in private” at Diane Feinstein’s summer home. To separate the president from his press corp in such an elusive fashion is completely unprecedented.

In the following article, Alexander Cockburn from Counterpunch makes a compelling case for the political grooming of Rick Perry and details the amazing series of lucky incidents while rising up the political ladder.

Written by Robbie Martin

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COUNTERPUNCH reports:

Inside Texas he’s one of the most successful politicians in the entire history of the state. George Bush lost his first congressional race.  In a lifetime career of ten elections since 1984 Perry has never lost one. He has an acute sense of political timing. His defeated opponents readily attest to Perry’s relentless  self-discipline as a campaigner , skills at raising campaign cash. He already has a huge prospective war chest for his first national foray. They all emphasize the fatal consequences of underestimating him. He has a team of campaign advisors, notably, notably Dave Carney,  whose skills – ruthless in the crunch – have elicited admiration from  professionals across the board. Prior to  Perry the Texas governorship  were a notoriously weak post, with decisive power wielded by the legislature and State Comptroller and state commissioners, Railroad Commission etc. Perry has changed all that across his three stints as  governor, previously contentious posts now inhabited by his compliant appointees.

But above all, Rick Perry is one lucky son of a bitch. Not just once or twice, but at almost every decisive twist fork in the road Fate has given him a benign tap on the shoulder. “Give me lucky generals,” Napoleon once exclaimed. Looking at Perry’s CV he’d have made him Grand Marshall of France  on the spot.

Back at the pre-dawn of Perry’s political career Democrats were still the most powerful political party in Texas, and Perry began as a (an extremely conservative) Democrat. Son of tenant farmers (dryland cotton) in Paint Creek, sixty miles north of Abilene, Perry says he never met a Republican till he was 25.  He was elected first as a Democratic state legislator and in 1988 was the Texas campaign chairman for (the extremely conservative) Democrat Al Gore who ultimately lost in the primaries to Michael Dukakis. Seeing scant future for Democrats in Texas Perry’s  showed his aptitude for timing and shifted to the Republican Party, making straight for its conservative wing.

Read more about Rick Perry, One Lucky SOB here.

Photo by flickr user eschipul

MEDIA ROOTS- The term “conspiracy theory” has been hijacked by the establishment propaganda machine in order to marginalize anyone in the mainstream political discourse who simply questions the official government or media narrative about an event. This ad hominem attack tool is extremely effective at shutting down serious debates about crucial topics, like whether or not the US government was criminally complicity in the attacks of 9/11. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and former editor for the Wall Street Journal, writes for Global Research about the Orwellian redefinition of the term and its prevalent use to blanketly demonize 9/11 truth seekers.

Abby

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GLOBAL RESEARCH– While we were not watching, conspiracy theory has undergone Orwellian redefinition.

A “conspiracy theory” no longer means an event explained by a conspiracy.  Instead, it now means any explanation, or even a fact, that is out of step with the government’s explanation and that of its media pimps.  

For example, online news broadcasts of RT have been equated with conspiracy theories by the New York Times simply because RT reports news and opinions that the New York Times does not report and the US government does not endorse.

In other words, as truth becomes uncomfortable for government and its Ministry of Propaganda, truth is redefined as conspiracy theory, by which is meant an absurd and laughable explanation that we should ignore.

When piles of carefully researched books, released government documents, and testimony of eye witnesses made it clear that Oswald was not President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, the voluminous research, government documents, and verified testimony was dismissed as “conspiracy theory.”  

In other words, the truth of the event was unacceptable to the authorities and to the Ministry of Propaganda that represents the interests of authorities.

The purest example of how Americans are shielded from truth is the media’s (including many Internet sites’) response to the large number of professionals who find the official explanation of September 11, 2001, inconsistent with everything they, as experts, know about physics, chemistry, structural engineering, architecture, fires, structural damage, the piloting of airplanes, the security procedures of the United States, NORAD’s capabilities, air traffic control, airport security, and other matters.  These experts, numbering in the thousands, have been shouted down by know-nothings in the media  who brand the experts as “conspiracy theorists.”  

This despite the fact that the official explanation endorsed by the official media is the most extravagant conspiracy theory in human history.  

Let’s take a minute to re-acquaint ourselves with the official explanation, which is not regarded as a conspiracy theory despite the fact that it comprises an amazing conspiracy.  The official truth is that a handful of young Muslim Arabs who could not fly airplanes, mainly Saudi Arabians who came neither from Iraq nor from Afghanistan, outwitted not only the CIA and the FBI, but also all 16  US intelligence agencies and all intelligence agencies of US allies including Israel’s Mossad, which is believed to have penetrated every terrorist organization and which carries out assassinations of those whom Mossad marks as terrorists.

In addition to outwitting every intelligence agency of the United States and its allies, the handful of young Saudi Arabians outwitted the National Security Council, the State Department, NORAD, airport security four times in the same hour on the same morning,  air traffic control, caused the US Air Force to be unable to launch interceptor aircraft,  and caused three well-built steel-structured buildings, including one not hit by an airplane, to fail suddenly in a few seconds as a result of limited structural damage and small, short-lived, low-temperature fires that burned on a few floors.

The Saudi terrorists were even able to confound the laws of physics and cause WTC building seven to collapse at free fall speed for several seconds, a physical impossibility in the absence of explosives used in controlled demolition.

The story that the government and the media have told us amounts to a gigantic conspiracy, really a script for a James Bond film. Yet, anyone who doubts this improbable conspiracy theory is defined into irrelevance by the obedient media.

Anyone who believes an architect, structural engineer, or demolition expert who says that the videos show that the buildings are blowing up, not falling down, anyone who believes a Ph.D. physicist who says that the official explanation is inconsistent with known laws of physics, anyone who believes expert pilots who testify that non-pilots or poorly-qualified pilots cannot fly airplanes in such maneuvers, anyone who believes the 100 or more first responders who testify that they not only heard explosions in the towers but personally experienced explosions, anyone who believes University of Copenhagen nano-chemist Niels Harrit who reports finding unreacted nano-thermite in dust samples from the WTC towers, anyone who is convinced by experts instead of by propaganda is dismissed as a kook.  

In America today, and increasingly throughout the Western world, actual facts and true explanations have been relegated to the realm of kookiness.  Only people who believe lies are socially approved and accepted as patriotic citizens.

Indeed, a writer or newscaster is not even permitted to report the findings of 9/11 skeptics.  In other words, simply to report Professor Harrit’s findings now means that you endorse them or agree with them.  Everyone in the US print and TV media knows that he/she will be instantly fired if they report Harrit’s findings, even with a laugh. Thus, although Harrit has reported his findings on European television and has lectured widely on his findings in Canadian universities, the fact that he and the international scientific research team that he led found unreacted nano-thermite in the WTC dust and have offered samples to other scientists to examine has to my knowledge never been reported in the American media.

Even Internet sites on which I am among the readers’ favorites will not allow me to report on Harrit’s findings.

As I reported earlier, I myself had experience with a Huffington Post reporter who was keen to interview a Reagan presidential appointee who was in disagreement with the Republican wars in the Middle East.  After he published the interview that I provided at his request, he was terrified to learn that I had reported findings of 9/11 investigators.  To protect his career, he quickly inserted on the online interview that my views on the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions could be dismissed as I had reported unacceptable findings about 9/11.

The unwillingness or inability to entertain any view of 9/11 different from the official view dooms to impotence many Internet sites that are opposed to the wars and to the rise of the domestic US police state.  These sites, for whatever the reasons, accept the government’s explanation of 9/11; yet, they try to oppose the  “war on terror” and the police state which are the consequences of accepting the government’s explanation. Trying to oppose the consequences of an event whose explanation you accept is an impossible task.

If you believe that America was attacked by Muslim terrorists and is susceptible to future attacks, then a “war on terror” and a domestic police state to root out terrorists become necessary to make Americans safe. The idea that a domestic police state and open-ended war might be more dangerous threats to Americans than terrorists is an impermissible thought.  

A country whose population has been trained to accept the government’s word and to shun those who question it is a country without liberty in its future.

Written by Paul Craig Roberts

© 2011 Global Research

Photo by flickr user Cliff1066

RELATED: Check out a special 2 1/2 hour Media Roots Radio broadcast breaking apart the 9/11 coincidence theory, or read 9/11: Do We Know the Truth?

MR: Great, exactly what we need: “Israeli-style screenings” by the TSA. Despite the increased scrutiny against the TSA’s invasive security procedures that involve groping children and humiliating the elderly, a new element of interrogation is being added to the security program in Logan Airport.

BOSTON HERALD– Boston’s TSA screeners — part of a security force whose competency has come under fire nationwide — soon will be carrying out sophisticated behavioral inspections under a first-in-the-nation program that’s already raising concerns of racial profiling, harassment of innocent travelers and longer lines.

The training for the Israeli-style screening — a projected $1 billion national program dubbed Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques — kicks off today at Logan International Airport and will be put to use in Terminal A on Aug. 15. It requires screeners to make quick reads of whether passengers pose a danger or a terror threat based on their reactions to a set of routine questions.

But security experts wonder whether Transportation Safety Administration agents are up to the challenge after an embarrassing string of blunders — including patting down a 95-year-old grandmother in Florida and making her remove her adult diaper and frisking a 3-year-old girl who screamed “stop touching me” at a checkpoint in Tennessee.

Civil libertarians argue the screening is TSA showmanship — coming just weeks before the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — and could quickly devolve into profiling.

Read more about TSA To Put HUB Fliers On The Spot

© 2011 Boston Herald

Photo by Flickr user Lindsmo