The Freedom Tower

USA Today Reports:

The completion of a permanent 9/11 memorial in New York is at least two years away, and the Tribute Center is the sole space near Ground Zero where a visitor can hear the anxious radio transmissions of a firefighter inside the south tower; see a twisted steel beam from the Trade Center’s core; study the ID card of a husband who never made it home.

It has become a destination in its own right, and on Monday, less than a year and a half after it opened, the center welcomed its 400,000th visitor, a man from Kent, England, and his wife.

“I said if I ever came to New York, this would be one of the first places I would come,” said John O’Neill, 23, a personal trainer from Galway, Ireland, who visited the center the day after it reached the milestone. “It’s overwhelming.”

The $3.4-million center, opened in September 2006, was to be an interim space for remembrance and education while the permanent memorial, complete with a museum and Freedom Tower spiraling 1,776 feet high, was built at the World Trade Center site.

Now, some segments of the memorial complex will open at least a year later than originally planned. The tree-lined plaza, featuring waterfall-filled pools where the towers once stood, will not open until 2010, and the visitor’s center and museum will be unveiled in 2011. Freedom Tower is scheduled to open in 2012.

“The new timeline reflected a more realistic schedule that became clear after construction began,” says Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site. “We’ll work as aggressively as possible to complete the project as soon as possible.”

The Sept. 11th Families Association created the Tribute Center. “The memorial will be built,” says Jennifer Adams, the center’s co-founder. “It will be beautiful when it’s built, but we need something from now until then.”

The Associated Press reports that “Ahmad Mohammed Ajaj, who remains in extreme isolation in the nation’s most secure prison, filed a lawsuit last year in U.S. District Court in Manhattan against more than a dozen judges, federal court employees, Bureau of Prisons officials and his former defense lawyer Maranda Fritz.

Fifteen years after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the Palestinian was sentenced to more than 100 years in prison in the attack. In court papers revealed this week, he now claims that a vengeful U.S. government has blocked him from appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.

He said they failed to notify him of appeals court rulings and blocked his access to what he would need for a Supreme Court appeal of his conviction on conspiracy charges in the Feb. 26, 1993, bombing, which killed six people and injured more than 1,000 others.

In court documents filed last week, government lawyers said Ajaj has no right to bring the claims against court personnel.

Fritz, the defense lawyer, said in an interview that she worked on the case for seven years, collected evidence from around the globe and has not worked on the case in five or six years.

“I was terribly disappointed when the Supreme Court would not accept the case,” she said. “I believe the results were wrong. I argued it in every way that I knew how. I think the issues were substantial and novel enough.”

In his lawsuit, Ajaj claimed the U.S. judicial system denied him access to the courts in retaliation against him and Arab and Muslim prisoners for the “9-11-2001 tragedy” and for his complaints about the government’s conduct.

The government said the defendants were protected from Ajaj’s claims by “absolute immunity,” provided by law for actions undertaken in their official capacity.”

The Virginia Pilot reports:

The World Trade Center may have come down, but some of the steel that was once part of its backbone will soon serve in the nation’s defense.

On Saturday, the Navy’s newest San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship, the New York, is to be christened in ceremonies at the Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding facilities in Avondale, La., near New Orleans.

It is named in honor of the city and state New York, as well as the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that leveled the Trade Center. And within its hull is 7 1/2 tons of steel salvaged from the wreckage of the Twin Towers.

That steel was melted and given new life in fashioning the ship’s “stem bar.” That is the most forward portion of a vessel.

“After the keel, the stem is the most important structural part of a ship,” Drew Demboski, assistant design manager for the San Antonion Class program, told MarineLink.com.

“Use of this steel symbolizes the spirit and resiliency of the people of New York,” the Navy said in a press release this evening. The official motto of New York is: “Never Forget.” The ship will call Norfork, Va. its homeport.

February 26, 2008

Amanda Farinacci of NY1 Remembers:

In the shadow of September 11th, 2001, February 26th, 1993 is not a date that immediately registers with most. But it was 15 years ago today that the World Trade Center first came under attack, and as NY1’s Amanda Farinacci explains in the following report, it is a day that has not been forgotten.

It’s been 15 years since terrorists detonated about 1,500 pounds of explosives in a rental car parked in the garage of the World Trade Center. Six people were killed, more than a thousand were hurt in the bombing.

Tuesday morning a memorial service was held to remember those lost.

“Days like today are always about loss and about hope and remembering, as today we did,” said Port Authority Director Anthony Shorris.

A moment of silence at 12:18 p.m. marked the exact time of the bombing. And while the memorial service was relatively low-key, mostly family and friends of the six victims, Shorris says the intimacy of the event has nothing to do with the anniversary being forgotten.

“Sure, time changes our perspective on things, and certainly 9/11 cast a shadow, and we’re all still living here, so we understand that,” said Shorris. “But nothing takes away from what the six people who lost their families, whose families lost somebody that day felt, and that’s why every day, every year, around this day, we gather, and try to remember.”

Six men were later convicted in connection with the bombing, including Islamic Cleric Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and Ramzi Yousef who are serving life sentences.

For those who survived the bombing, the anniversary is a day of quiet reflection. Michael Hurley was working for the Port Authority back in 1993 on the 107th-floor observation deck of the South Tower.

“I can remember some of the details like it was yesterday, I really can,” said Hurley. “In fact, today, when you look outside, it’s the same kind of day. It’s not quite as cold today, but it’s that overcast kind of grey skies, very similar to how it was then.”

Hurley also survived the 9/11 attacks, working as the Trade Center fire safety director at the time. He’s now the World Trade Center site manager, a job he says he’s embraced because he feels lucky to have survived two times.

“I look at it besides an interesting and huge project to be involved with,” he said. “There’s sort of a personal aspect of it, as something was taken away from us, and it’s nice to be a part of putting it back together.”

A federal judge says the New York-New Jersey Port Authority can collect on insurance related to the 9/11 attacks but only for damage done to one World Trade Center building and the PATH train station The ruling which was issued Monday in U.S. District Court, restricts claims that the PA could have collected insurance claims for the entire complex that was destroyed on September 11, 2001.Robert Skinner, a lawyer for Ropes & Gray in Boston who represented the insurance firm, Lloyds of London, said that the Port Authority still wants as much as $3 billion for the damage done to Building Number 6 and the train system.

A blog called Lawhawk.blogspot.com says that law enforcement officials are concerned about the construction of Towers 2, 3, and 4 along Greenwich Street at Ground Zero. They’re worried that they are covered with too much glass, or are located too close to the street.

Law enforcement counterterrorism specialists have pinpointed serious flaws in key components of the Trade Center site, including three of the signature office towers projected to open by 2012.

Towers 2, 3 and 4 - which will rise between Greenwich and Church Streets. to 79, 71 and 64 stories, respectively - contain too much glass, sources familiar with the issues said.

They also are not set back far enough from the two streets - where uninspected trucks will whiz by - to meet the most rigorous security standards, the sources said.

“The reimposition of the street grid is an integral part of the plan to bring vibrancy to lower Manhattan,” said Avi Schick, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.

“The administration understands the need to balance that goal with legitimate security concerns.”

The events of September 11th, 2001 claimed not just the lives of those who were on the planes and within the World Trade Center, it also claimed the souls of those who lost loved ones on that day. ReThe events of September 11th, 2001 claimed not just the lives of those who were on the planes and within the World Trade Center, it also claimed the souls of those who lost loved ones on that day. Reign Over Me is a movie about one such man. His name is Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler), and up until almost six years ago, Charlie was a loving husband and family man practicing dentistry. His wife and daughters were on one of the flights that would become a part of world history that day. Although Charlie still exists amongst normal people, he has been living in a world of his own ever since that day. He has completely isolated himself both externally and emotionally. He is constantly disheveled in appearance, as if he doesn’t even care anymore how the world sees him. He has wiped all pain, and just about every other emotion, from his consciousness and lives an existence built around isolation, classic rock, movies and video games. Reign Over Me is not so much about the most tragic day in US history, but more about what can happen when emotional agony causes what makes us human to completely collapse.

OpEdNews.com Reports:

September 11th 2001 was so shocking that most people didn’t notice how the Manhattan murders were instantly framed as an ‘attack on America’, i.e. something from outside requiring a military response, not good domestic policework.

However thanks to the 911 truth movement more and more people have wised up to another sort of ‘framing’ that day as well, the framing up of Muslims from Oil-land as so-called ‘hijackers’, despite a complete lack of evidence (except from entirely unreliable sources: “Ye who are conscious of God - If a fasiq comes with alarming news, make sure to verify their word, lest you afflict people out of your ignorance, and regret your action.” Holy Qur’an, Surah 49:6)

In October 2006 a CBS/New York Times poll found that only 16 percent of Americans continue to believe that their government has told the truth. Unfortunately the mainstream media blockade continues, so the official mythology is just about holding up, ocasionally bolstered by fake ‘Bin Laden’ videotapes and occasional show trials based on ‘confessions’ extracted under torture.

Avoiding the swamp of ‘fasiq’ allegations about a supposed entity called ‘Al-Qaeda’, most 9/11 truth activists have increasingly homed in on unarguable physical phenomena from the day in question, such as the absence of any plane-sized hole at the Pentagon.

Of all the 911 events, few have spoken more powerfully than the neat ‘collapse’ (controlled demolition) in free-fall time of the 47 storey steel-framed World Trade Centre Building 7 at 5.20 in the afternoon, unhit by any alleged plane and pre-announced by the BBC twenty five minutes early (oops!).

If one, why not the twin towers also?, which were also destroyed in the time equivalent to that which the top floor of these towers would have taken to reach the ground if they had been falling through air, and not through 109 other stories of steel-framed building!

For those whose heads begin to swim, at this point, let me just add: None of us need worry about our lack of degrees in Physics and Engineering! By the age of ten we had already figured out that apples dropped through a pile of apples would take longer to reach the floor than when dropped through air, likewise sticks through a pile of sticks, books through a pile of books, etc.

So demolition it is then - but have we looked carefully enough?

After two years when most truth-activists accepted the Prof Steven Jones theory of the towers being demolished using thermate-enhanced military explosives, many of us are now realizing just how many weird physical phenomena can’t be captured in Jones’ hypothesis, not just in the towers but across the whole World Trade Centre site as a whole and even up to seven blocks away!

The last time Americans could daydream in the safe world of television characters like “Ozzie and Harriet,” or “Leave It to Beaver” was almost 15 years ago when bombs rocked the foundation of the World Trade Center and left a giant crater in the basement of the Twin Towers.
The AP reminds us that the 15th anniversary of the 1993 World Trade Bombing is approaching.  Days before the bomb blast “appear to mark the last time when millions of Americans went about their business, unaware of the dangers posed by international terrorism.

“Not an awful lot of people thought about how vulnerable we were,” recalled Joseph Guccione, the U.S. marshal for New York. “It was a terrible lesson that was learned.”

For the next decade and a half, lower Manhattan tried to armor itself _ only to learn the limits of protection just eight years later.

All the steel barriers, restricted access, closed streets, security gates and gun-toting security guards that tens of millions of dollars could buy could not stop the two hijacked airliners that brought down the trade center.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, security has been ramped up to an even greater degree across the base of Manhattan. More guards. More barriers. Higher fences. More video cameras.

Yet millions of Americans live in fear of another terrorist attack, with the anxiety particularly strong in Washington and New York, the two cities hit on Sept. 11.”

The feds have levied fines against a Ground Zero contractor too.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has cited Bovis Lend Lease and John Galt Corp. for 44 safety and health violations at the former Deutsche Bank tower. The site is where firefighters Joseph Graffagnino and Robert Beddia were killed at an Aug. 18 fire at the partially dismantled, contaminated tower.
The contractors, which were hired to clean the building of toxic debris and take it down, were charged with failing to inspect a standpipe that was broken on the day of the fire, blocking emergency stairwells with construction materials and allowing smoking in work areas.