The Freedom Tower

I am posting a posting that starts out as a rant for sure, but if you wade through the unedited look-at-me writing, writing, an idea does begin to emerge.
It was posted by www. rinf.com and reposted in many places. Don’t drag yourself through this if you really can’t do it but a close read might just be worth sorting through the debris.
“Meet Torin Wolf. He has a broad and varied background as a US Army Combat Nurse during Operation Iraqi Freedom, (a) building construction contractor, certified structural welder, certified asbestos and hazardous materials worker, experienced demolitions expert, teacher, radio show host, and well studied 9/11 truth activist. Torin knows how to put a building up, and bring the same building down in its own footprint. Torin’s free presentation, “Taking the Red Pill” was hosted by Brave New Books on 1904 Guadalupe in Austin last Saturday, June 23rd at 7 pm.
Torin is proud of his native Cherokee heritage and his mother is the Band Historian of the White River Band Cherokee from the central United States. Since he received his GED at age 14, saying he is a smart guy is putting it lightly. For over 12 years he worked as a hazardous materials contractor specializing in asbestos abatement and concrete construction sampling. Add to his resume the fact that he designed and implemented well over 100 controlled demolitions. He was not just helping at a lower level in the demolitions - he was the guy responsible for calling the shots. Afterwards, he became a certified structural steel welder and worked in heavy and mega construction for over 5 years in locations around the world including several skyscrapers.
Ironically, Torin signed his papers to join the army on September 11th, 2000. He knew something was wrong with the official 9/11 story when his army handlers took his squad into a room just in time to watch the buildings collapse. With his demolitions experience, he immediately knew those towers could not have fallen like that without explosives. He went on to serve “with honor and distinction” with the 21st Combat Support Hospital in Mosul, Iraq during the first part of Operation Iraqi Freedom and earned the Bronze Star with V device for valor in combat.
While saving over 120 lives, Torin earned the Combat Medical Badge by providing medical care to US, allied, enemy soldiers, and civilians under combat conditions. Torin’s arms display Samoan life saving tattoos, each line and symbol representing a group of lives saved. The army would like you to think he wasn’t in Iraq, but unfortunately for them, Torin appears in a recent documentary filmed there. A true hero helping save lives in the middle east, Torin can be seen in section 4 of a PBS documentary called “Life and Death in the War Zone.”
With Torins impressive list of qualifications, his unwavering voice holds a power that shatters the lies of 9/11 sold to us by the government and mainstream media, “The official story we’ve been told about 9/11 is absolutely, physically impossible.”
Those words are not just backed up with his qualifications because his presentation goes through the hard physics as well. The presentation starts out with a serious warning that reminds us the state our country is in after the false flag attack and ensuing tyrannical hijacking of the government on that September morning. A hijacking not by Bin Laden, not by Al Qeada, but by a group of tyrants that orchestrated and benefited from 9/11. “Unless you want to be charged as a terrorist, I suggest you leave the room now. This is technically seditious material and you can be charged under section 802 of the Patriot Act just for being here.”
This upsets a few people near the front row. Everyone looks around to see if that will scare anyone off but luckily no one leaves and the presentation continues. The bookstore is now filled with former American citizens, now terrorists, simply because they want to learn the truth of what happened on 9/11. If you think the patriot act only applies to foreigners or dehumanized muslims with brown skin, you are very wrong. Torin rubs the effect in even more, “We [American citizens] don’t even have to be charged – foreigners do.” Then tells us that the patriot act was written prior to 9/11, “This is admitted.” Also admitted is the fact that the patriot act has been used to come after American citizens over eight hundred times.
The presentation moves on and goes through some of the just plain crazy theories of why the towers fell, such as space beams, holograms, missiles, orbs, pterodactyls, etc., and easily debunks them. Torin then adds, “There is evidence most of these are put out by the government as disinfo.” Then explains how the White House, in violation of the law, has bought 28 billion, “Billion with a B” in fake news.
“But the craziest, most truly unhinged conspiracy theory for the towers falling on 9/11?” Torin asks rhetorically. “Fire.” The official story cannot be recreated by any experiment. NIST is the government agency involved in attempting to model what happened to the world trade center on 9/11, and they fail horribly. NIST never models what happens after the collapse initiation, and even what they do model before that is easily debunked. NIST created 16 separate physics programs to simulate the WTC 1 & 2 collapses and only got 1 to collapse partially. Torin adds, “When they did, [in the computer model] they removed 40% of the structural support.” The cross trusses that the towers received a significant amount of their strength from had to be removed to have a collapse in the computer simulation. Torin then mocks the official story, “There’s no such thing as a ‘pancake’ collapse, but there is a progressive collapse”A few slides are shown of progressive collapses throughout the world. None of them are anything like what happened to the world trade center with its pulverized concrete 100 microns or smaller just seconds after the start of collapse, and then its complete destruction. Torin uses his expertise to explain to the audience how and why a real progressive collapse occurs and subsequently why the WTC was not a progressive collapse. “The biggest problem with the argument,” Torin explains. “Time.”
Several slides are then presented that show the hard physics and observed time of WTC 2 falling. Worst-case scenario would require 0.5 seconds per floor for collapse. “The absolute minimum amount of time for a progressive collapse would be 43 seconds.” How long did it take for the building to fall in reality? About 8.6 Seconds.
“For the towers to fall at so close to free fall speed, over 110,000 separate and independent structural support points had to fail simultaneously. ‘Pancake theory’ does NOT explain the failure of the cores.” Torin explains passionately, obviously upset with the lies being told to the American people. “Nothing is holding the building up - No resistance. 110,000 structural failures at the same time.”

Torin: “Nothing is holding the building up - No resistance. 110,000 structural failures at the same time.”
Next, we are shown an incredible bit of detective work on Torins part. He shows a sequence of 12 different pictures of the collapse initiation of the North tower, WTC 1. Torin explains that the antenna on the top of the world trade center is a perfect guide of measurement for height, as there is a standard of changing the paint color of antennas once per fifty feet. The part of the antenna on the roof of WTC 1 appears black, then white alternated every fifty feet. There is a guide wire in the bottom left of every picture that shows that the camera does not move. Why is this picture so interesting? It shows the antenna, which is held up by the core columns, fall before the rest of the building while the fire line on the 78th floor doesn’t move. Torin then goes through the hard physics of the scene we’re looking at and explains how it directly contradicts the official story, “This building is not collapsing on the 78th floor. The antenna falls 56 feet before the 78th floor falls.”
Torin then gives his expert analysis on building 7 for about five minutes. For those that are new to this information, building 7 was the third building to collapse on 9/11. After a thirty second countdown was given by firefighters, it collapsed perfectly into its own footprint at 5:20 in the afternoon. It housed the IRS, Department of Defense, CIA, Secret Service, and the Security and Exchange Commission among many others. While I can’t cover all of the hard hitting information Torin brought up about building 7, the highlight was his analysis of the collapse, which played over and over again on the screen behind him, “There is no doubt about it, this is a controlled demolition profile” then Torin directed everyone to view the kink, which is characteristic of a controlled demolition.
Dangerously high levels of asbestos, lead, PCB’s, mercury, radioactive materials, and powdered concrete were in the air after the towers were demolished. Much to the surprise of many audience members, we learned from Torin that by far the most dangerous on the list was the pulverized concrete. The pulverized concrete, which was thick in the air around ground zero after the collapses of WTC 1 and 2, had a pH of 12 which is “about the same as drain cleaner.” This pH level, when breathed in and gets wet in your lungs, will cause chemical burns. “Wet concrete can burn you,” Torin adds. The asbestos is bad, but that will kill you over 20 years - the powdered concrete will kill much faster. So its no surprise to learn that all of the 9/11 rescue and recovery dogs are dead.
Torins report goes on to explain how “emissions from the WTC piles were recorded to be hundreds of times above the legal Permissible Exposure Limit as established by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health for more than 2 weeks after 9/11.” Sheer contempt of Christine Todd Whitman, head of the EPA is expressed next by Torin. Torin is rightly angry at her for saying the air was safe to breathe and that people should return to work, even though they refused to release the data from their testing at that time to substantiate their declaration. Torin uncovers that, “The EPA didn’t begin monitoring for airborne asbestos levels until 8:00pm September 14, 2001 – a day and a half after they told everyone that it was safe to return.” Torin then cites the exact law that the EPA is violating and the number of regulatory duties that are violated as well. Torin has caught the EPA in direct violation of a federal law, punishable by up to 10 years in prison as well as a $250,000 fine for each violation. Before the EPA did the tests, independent tests were done in which the machines that do the air quality testing “were so full of junk that they couldn’t be read.” If that is the case, Torin adds, “You must, by law, throw the sample out.”
What was in the readable air samples? “Sampling of bulk materials and dust found generally low levels of asbestos.” Since Torin has worked with hazardous materials for over 12 years specializing in asbestos abatement, he knows quite a bit about the industry. “There is no such thing as a ‘low level of asbestos’. Bulk samples, by Federal law, either are (>1%) or are not (<1%) asbestos containing materials.” Bottom line, the EPA failed to perform its duties in regards to 9/11 and actively encouraged people to enter an unsafe area containing hazardous materials. As anyone working in the asbestos industry, Torin wanted to land the contract to clean the asbestos in the World Trade Center, “We all wanted the contract – you could clean a small section, sell the contract, and retire.” It was known in the industry as basically a goldmine of an asbestos abatement job, a contract worth over 3 billion dollars. Instead, the owner of the World Trade Center complex, “Lucky” Larry Silverstein actually made billions through insurance purchased before the towers destruction.
A critical slide in the presentation of Rudolph Giuliani is displayed next. It should be noted that Giuliani agreed with Christine Todd Whitman that the air at ground zero was safe. Giuliani was appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in 1983. “So he knew a thing or two about criminal investigation procedures,” Torin adds. Knowing that, one has to wonder why he “sent more than 99% of the steel from the WTC to China and Korea in violation of proper chain of evidence.” Not only that, it was sent overseas at a price undercutting a New Jersey company. A company in New Jersey offered to pay $0.56 per ton, but it was sent out of the country to be smelted before experts could analyze the steel for signs of explosives for $0.50 per ton. Giuliani is clearly one of the perpetrators behind the crimes of 9/11, and he was confronted recently by a truth squad led by Luke Rudkowski. They wanted to know why his story has changed five times about his activities on the morning of 9/11.
So what does Torin think took down the WTC buildings? Different forms of thermite, such as thermate and one called super thermite. “If I was demolishing a building as high as the WTC, I would use thermite. It does what I want, when I want.” Torin then gets into the science of thermite, and what its actual chemical composition is. The same chemical composition found in the previously molten metal microspheres found in the WTC dust, discovered by professor Steven Jones. “The WTC ‘microsphere’ samples showed the presence of aluminum (Al), magnesium (Mg), manganese (Mn), potassium (K), copper (Cu), and sulphur (S).” Torins explanation continues, “The presence of sulphur in steel makes it brittle and lowers its melting point. Sulphur is NOT used in structural steel because of this. Powdered iron oxide (Fe2O4) and aluminum in equal parts make a compound called thermite. Add sulphur to thermite and you have a compound called thermate which is used in heavy demolition.”
Torin then explains super thermite, “Add potassium permanganate (KMnO4) and cupric sulphide (CuSO4) to thermate and you have something called ‘Super Thermite’ which is explosive and used in mega-demolition, such as WTC 1 & 2.” For obviously criminal reasons, “NIST refuses to comment on the presence of Al, Mg, S, K, or Cu in the samples.” Torin finalizes the evidence of explosives with statements made from numerous firefighters and reporters at ground zero such as Capt. Karin DeShore of the New York Fire Department, “Somewhere around the middle of the World Trade Center [WTC 1] there was this orange and red flash. Initially it was just one, then this flash just kept popping all the way around the building and that building had started to explode… These popping sounds and the explosions were getting bigger going both up and down and then all around the building.” Torin explains, “That is a controlled demolition profile she is describing.”

Torin: “Save it why? Because its a demolition angle”
So who isn’t wanted for the crimes of 9/11? Gasps were heard from the audience as information relating to former paid CIA operative Tim Osman having no involvement in the crimes of 9/11. Tim Osman was Osama Bin Ladens CIA codename. New evidence has been released in the past month showing how the federal government allowed planes personally chartered by none other than Osama himself to get friends and family out of the country after 9/11. A quote from Osamas FBI page shows that he is in fact, not wanted for involvement in the crimes of that day. Torin shows a quote from the FBI director at the time, Robert Mueller, saying that there is “no legal proof to prove the identities of the suicidal hijackers.” Well sourced evidence is then shown from multiple mainstream news articles proving that many of the hijackers are still alive. The official story does not add up.
The strongest part of Torins presentation is saved for the end, the aftermath of 9/11. A bleak picture is shown of the results of the false flag attack. An invasion of Afghanistan that was on Bush’s desk two days before 9/11, over 655,000 admitted dead in the spreading war in the middle east, cheap heroin out of Afghanistan that the former Taliban government destroyed, soon to be full scale war in Iran, several thousand dead troops, and an oppressive police state at home being enforced by some of the returning aggravated felons that were doing the same in Iraq. “We are not deprogrammed after battle,” Torin explains when covering the mental aspects of war.
Torins insight as a combat nurse reveals that the actual amount of dead troops numbers around 15,000-17,000, not the 3,500 we have been told. “If you get shot in combat – Bam! Clock goes off. If you die in transit [to a hospital out of Iraq such as Ramstein in Germany] you are not an official Iraq casualty.” The same holds true if the troops out of the country die 24 hours after they were hit in Iraq. The official troop death number is just those that have died in action on the ground.
We are then shown that legally, “terrorist” is a term that can be branded on virtually anyone. “If you have ever thought of spanking your child, running a red light, or made someone angry then, by this definition, you are a terrorist!” And if you are charged as a terrorist, you will be tried in a military court. With the power slanted against you in a military court, the Hamdi v. Rumsfeld case showed us that you do not even have to be released if found not guilty. This is a lot to swallow when you realize that “such persons are subject to indefinite imprisonment without charges, legal representation, or any of the other protections guaranteed by the Constitution,” Torins slide explains. Then the definition of domestic terrorism is shown, and we all learn that by this definition, not wearing your seatbelt, jaywalking, speeding, or spitting on the sidewalk is a terrorist act.
Fliers are shown next that originated out of the Department of Homeland Security and the Phoenix, Arizona FBI office. These are shown to policing agencies around the country. Torin explains how nearly all of the groups encompass normal citizens who have done no wrong such as Torins favorite, “Lone Individuals - If you don’t fit in any group, this is it.”
After a brief question and answer, Torin ends the presentation with a fitting quote from Thomas Jefferson, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” A true patriot and truth activist, Torin is dissenting to expose the lies and crimes of our government in order to get it back from the tyrannical, criminal group sitting in power now and to return to the Constitution and Bill of Rights. If you want to join Torin in this fight or ask him a question, he can be heard every Saturday and Sunday on the We The People Radio Network from 12 to 2 pm central. After his radio show, you can join him in person with an Austin 9/11 truth squad, getting the word out on the south steps of the state capital on Congress avenue every Saturday. “

The center of gravity at Ground Zero has shifted and the mayor of New York is himself a target for again speaking his mind. Michael Bloomberg is a welcomed change in a climate where no one knows the shortest distance between fact and faction is a straight line.
Bloomberg angered folks today when he said a police detective who labored for hundreds of hours at Ground Zero died from unrelated complications, not from the toxic debris at the “work site” at the World Trade Center.
According to press reports, “The family of retired police detective James Zadroga and the city’s police unions called for an apology from the mayor, saying his comment was heartless. They said every member of the police force is a hero for putting their lives on the line, particularly those who worked in the months-long cleanup at ground zero after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Zadroga put in more than 400 hours at ground zero, and his death at 34 made him a symbol of ailing Sept. 11 workers around the country. A New Jersey medical examiner ruled last year that Zadroga died from inhaling the toxic ground zero dust.
Speaking Monday to students at Harvard University, where he was accepting a public health award, Bloomberg was asked about the idea of applying hard science to public policy. In his answer, he brought up Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch’s recent conclusion that Zadroga’s fatal lung disease was not from trade center dust but was from ground-up pills he had been injecting.
Zadroga’s family disputes Hirsch’s findings about drug use. The family has released more than 100 pages of medical records that showed Zadroga developed breathing problems just after the 2001 attacks.”

The family of a fallen New York police detective is seeking a third opinion for the cause of his early death.
The family of Detective James Zadroga want another opinion after receiving conflicting reports on the cause of their son’s death from medical examiners in two states, the New York Daily News reports.
In a first report, Ocean County, N.J., Medical Examiner Gerard Breton tied the death of 34-year-old James Zadroga in January 2006 to the more than 400 hours he spent at Ground Zero.
“A subsequent review of Breton’s findings by Charles Hirsch, New York City’s chief medical examiner, found no link to James Zadroga’s work at the World Trade Center ruins.
In a bid to have their son’s death officially recognized as a casualty of the 9/11 terror attacks, the Zadrogas had asked Hirsch to review Breton’s findings.
As promised to the family, Hirsch has not released his findings.
James Zadroga’s parents have not commented since they met with Hirsch. Before that, Joseph Zadroga said, “We want to find the truth about what happened to our son,” the News reported.

While the family and the New York police union believed a detective who died in 2006, died of disease caused by his exposure to toxic dust at Ground Zero, the city medical examiner says it was a self-inflicted drug problem.
The city medical examiner said Det. James Zadroga died at the age of 34 from lung disease caused by injecting ground up pills, not toxic air inhaled while he worked for a very long time clearing rubble at the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks.
“The lung disease is not due to anything that was inhaled it was because of what was put through his blood stream,”
Ellen Borakove, spokeswoman for the chief medical examiner, said on Thursday. “He ground up drugs and injected them.”
“Talc and cellulose were found. Those two are used as binders when the companies make prescription drugs,” she said.
Those insoluble ingredients of the drugs helped cause the lung disease that killed Zadroga.

This takes flip-flopping to another level. Robert Douglass, the chairman of the Alliance for Downtown New York says Merrill Lynch may be pulling the plug on staying put in the most up and coming business neighborhood in lower Manhattan.
Douglass says reports that Merrill Lynch is seriously considering relocating its headquarters from Lower Manhattan — the business district where it was founded and has flourished for the past 93 years — to Midtown Manhattan are disappointing. Still, Douglass says he is hopeful that further consideration will persuade top management that keeping its headquarters in Lower Manhattan is the most economically prudent and forward-thinking choice, and the one that is in the best interest of the company, its shareholders and its employees.
“Utilizing the many financial incentives available to the company if they choose to locate in the World Trade Center site or another site Downtown — including a PILOT deal that reduces real estate taxes, low cost power, and waiver of sales tax on the building, and the entire tenant fit-out — will save Merrill Lynch $600 million, while constructing a new headquarters in Midtown Manhattan could cost in excess of $600 million more than constructing a new one in Lower Manhattan. These two factors alone bring the additional cost of moving to Midtown to more than $1Billion, a figure that is hard to justify.

Economics aside, a revitalized Lower Manhattan is the logical home for Merrill Lynch in the decades to come. Lower Manhattan is now home to one of the strongest commercial real estate markets in the nation and is a magnet for luxury retailers and up-scale residential and hotel projects. Plans for the World Trade Center site have been finalized and construction has begun in earnest on the 9/11 Memorial, bringing the promise of millions of square feet of state-of-the-art office and retail space to fruition.

Goldman Sachs’ rapid construction of its new Lower Manhattan headquarters and JP Morgan Chase’s commitment to take over development of Tower 5 at the World Trade Center site is further evidence that New York’s Financial District is the premier location for banking and financial services companies, as well as the premier location for Merrill Lynch’s new headquarters.

It is my hope that Merrill Lynch’s top management and board of directors will take all these factors into consideration and wisely elect to keep its headquarters Downtown.”

Roving federal agents randomly raid communities across the nation under the guise of sweeping up dangerous terrorists and deporting them back to their home countries. ICE agents under the Department of Homeland Security have been terrorizing communities in these sweeps of immigrant communities, snatching up unnamed men, arresting them without warrants while the media almost never demands details about these detainees.
This is the newest wave of such activity and the ICE raids are just the latest indication that our freedoms after 9/11are rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

A posting on SWnewshearld.com, an online Chicago resource, offers a more comprehensive portrait of the lengths federal agents have gone to erode basic rights of all Americans.

In this posting, James Bovard reports:
A federal appeals court has concluded that an FBI agent must go to trial on charges he coerced a false confession out of a prime suspect in the 9/11 attacks. But the FBI still insists that its agent did nothing wrong. And the feds swayed the court to suppress that portion of a recent decision detailing how the FBI agent used the threat of torture to break an innocent man.

Abdallah Higazy, a 30-year-old Egyptian student, arrived in New York City to study engineering at the Polytechnic University in Brooklyn on August 27, 2001. A U.S. foreign-aid program reserved and paid for his room at the Millennium Hilton Hotel, next to the World Trade Center. After the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center, Higazy hot-footed it out of the hotel. After the terrorist attack, the hotel was sealed.

Three months later, guests were allowed to retrieve their belongings. When Higazy went to the hotel on December 17, he was arrested and accused of possessing an aviation radio. (A hotel security guard reported finding the radio in a safe in his room.) Higazy denied owning the radio. He was arrested as a material witness and locked up in solitary confinement.

Higazy wanted to clear his name so he agreed to take a polygraph test. FBI agent Michael Templeton wired him up for the test but then proceeded to browbeat him for three hours until he finally admitted to owning the radio. Higazy said the FBI agent warned him, “If you don’t cooperate with us, the FBI will … make sure Egyptian security gives your family hell.” The FBI refused to permit Higazy’s attorney, Robert Dunn, to be in the room while he was given the polygraph. After the interrogation, Higazy was “trembling and sobbing uncontrollably,” according to Dunn.

On January 11, 2002, Higazy was indicted for lying to a federal agent. U.S. Attorney Dan Himmelfarb declaimed that “the crime that was being investigated when the false statements [about the radio] were made is perhaps the most serious in the country’s history. A radio that can be used for air-to-air and air-to-ground communication is a significant part of that investigation.” The Washington Post noted that “federal officials paraded [Higazy] before the media as a terrorist.” The feds never bothered checking with the U.S. foreign-aid program to find out whether Higazy’s story about why he was staying at the hotel next to the World Trade Center was true.

The prosecutorial celebration flopped three days later when an American pilot showed up at the Millennium Hilton Hotel and asked for the aviation radio he had left in his room when the hotel was evacuated on 9/11. It soon became apparent that the hotel security guard (a former cop who had been fired by the Newark Police Department) had lied about finding the radio in Higazy’s room. The case collapsed and, a few days later, Higazy was awarded $3 for subway fare and released from jail. The FBI conducted an internal investigation and absolved Templeton of any wrongdoing.

In late 2002 Higazy sued, asserting that the FBI’s coercive interrogation violated his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Federal judge Naomi Buchwald dismissed his case, declaring, “[Agent] Templeton’s conduct and threats as a matter of law cannot be classified as conscience-shocking or constitutionally oppressive.” Perhaps Buchwald believed that as long as Higazy’s mother and sister were not brutalized in front of him during the interrogation, the FBI had done nothing wrong.

A federal appeals court overturned this decision on October 19, declaring that Higazy’s case deserved to go to trial. The original version of the decision detailed the tactics Templeton purportedly used to get Higazy’s confession. Two hours later, the court removed that portion of the decision from the Internet. The redacted portion of the decision (captured by bloggers before it was taken down) noted that the FBI agent admitted to knowing that Egyptian “laws are different than ours, that they are probably allowed to do things in that country… yeah, probably about torture, sure.” Thus, Templeton was aware that his threat would terrify Higazy.

The revised court decision replaced such key details with the following mundane notice: “For the purposes of the summary judgment motion, Templeton did not contest that Higazy’s statements were coerced.”

The FBI has long taught its agents that subjects of their investigation have “forfeited their right to the truth,” according to the ethics study guide at the FBI Academy. Perhaps, according to federal lawmen, it is a small step from lying to suspects to threatening to have their kinfolk tortured. The agency has done nothing in the nearly six years since this case began to indicate that the methods used in the Higazy case did not receive the full approval of FBI headquarters.

The initial Higazy arrest and release were landmarks showing how far feds would go to gin up evidence and headlines for the war on terror. The fact that the FBI approved of its agent’s methods — and the fact that a federal judge saw no problem with the interrogation — are further warning signs of constitutional decay. Keep your eyes on this case, because it could help determine how far feds can go to destroy innocent people.

No matter what your interests, www.worldsfamousphotos.com is especially worthwhile just to see the Ground Zero spirit photo of three firefighters raising the American flag again high above the rubble of the World Trade Center.

For me, this photo symbolizes more than the American spirit, it illustrates the human spirit. The photo was shot by Thomas E. Franklin of the Bergen (New Jersey) Record, the Hackensack newspaper I have long respected. It was syndicated by the AP and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002.
Take a look. The site captures the Spirit of St. Louis, Pearl Harbor, a great day in Harlem and many other images captured for us by all the photographers like Franklin, who help us keep hope alive.

What’s rented at the Freedom Tower:

Floors 36-46 412,0000 square feet to the New York State office of General Services.

Floors 20-35  653,000 square feet to the U.S. General Services Administration.

Floors 89-90 to the Metropolitan Television Alliance, plus broadcast rights to rooftop antennae.

Possible rental, 35,000 square feet of space currently being negotiated.

Total: 1.1 million square feet or 27 floors

What’s not rented:

108 floors, including sky lobby, restaurant and observation deck  or 1.5 million square feet.

There is a $650 million slush fund stashed to settle claims by people made sick during the clean up of the World Trade Center and their relatives, according to the New York Post.
The newspaper says the PA is just sitting on this liability insurance dough.
“The agency’s coverage, which officials confirmed last week, would be added to the city’s $1 billion insurance fund available to compensate firefighters, cops, construction workers and others who prove they have toxic injuries from Ground Zero,” the newspaper said. “Mayor Bloomberg said last week he’s willing to begin settlement talks to end the city’s legal war with the 9/11 responders. The Port Authority’s release of the insurance money could speed a settlement.”

A new play marking the 25th anniversary of Rinkogun, a Japanese acting company, will center around the days of a darker remembrance – 9/11.
“World Trade Center as in Katakana” is a new play directed by Yoji Sakate, founder of the company.  Like filmmaker Oliver Stone and others, Sakata believes it is time we take a renewed look at those dark days  “although we will probably never come to terms with the tragedy,” says Yukko Kishinama, a writer for the Daily Yomiuri.
As for why he chose the subject for the company’s 25 anniversary, Sakate said: “On creating a new work, the first thing that came to my mind was a friend of mine in Manhattan to whom I spoke on the phone on that very day, and also the fact that people must live as themselves all the time, no matter where they are.
“[With this work] I wanted to reaffirm that we are the ones in charge of our times. I also wanted to combat the idea of giving up because what’s happened has happened and it can’t be changed; and the way that leads to conservative thinking.”