The Freedom Tower

This might have sounded off key some years ago but during the current election, it might just be prudent to listen to other voices. One might be a blog called Consent of the Governed:

“The destruction of the dollar is what Osama Bin Laden and his cohorts have been waiting for. He knows war is expensive. Why did they choose the World Trade Center to attack? Because it was our financial center… it was symbolic of what was really to come.

That “kook” Ron Paul knows too. Pity no one has been listening to him and his prescription for monetary recovery. (and yes - he is STILL a Republican running for president despite the media saying that McCain has no competition).

Signs are popping up in New York City which now say “Euros accepted”

some shops in New York City have begun accepting euros and other foreign currency as payment for merchandise.

“We had decided that money is money and we’ll take it and just do the exchange whenever we can with our bank,” Robert Chu, owner of East Village Wines, told Reuters television.

The increasingly weak U.S. dollar, once considered the king among currencies, has brought waves of European tourists to New York with money to burn and looking to take advantage of hugely favorable exchange rates…..

While shops in many U.S. towns on the Canadian border have long accepted Canadian currency and some stores on the Texas-Mexico border take pesos, the acceptance of foreign money in Manhattan was unheard of until recently.

If “money is money” - perhaps they would also take actual gold and silver backed Liberty dollars?? (I know I’d rather have those - and in fact I do own some)

When the dollar, which is fiat money and backed by nothing, becomes as worthless as the paper it is printed on we will probably see the emergence of the Amero (although that will be no different). People in the U.S. are going to be hit hard. Whoever is at the helm of this country will argue that we have to form a North American Union to compete with the Euro.

In truth this is what will happen when the dollar collapses.”

This is a vast wasteland — things I don’t know. I wrote a book more than ten years ago called Rubouts. It was a book about mobster hits.

A recent look at seven New York City murders dating back to the 1970s has been outlined in a sweeping indictment filed by federal prosecutors against alleged members of the Gambino crime family:
Authorities contend five murders are linked to Charles Carneglia, a reputed mafia soldier since the 1970s.
On March 11, 1976: New York state court officer Albert Gelb was gunned down days before he was to testify against Carneglia in a gun possession case. Previous attempts to prosecute Gambino associates for the killing, including Carneglia’s brother, failed.
On Nov. 6, 1977: Michael Cotillo, a Gambino associate, was stabbed at a diner following a fight with Carneglia.
On July 29, 1983: Salvatore Puma, a Gambino associate, was stabbed on a streetcorner after arguing with Carneglia about money.
On Oct. 4, 1990: Reputed Gambino member Louis DiBono was shot in a parking garage at the World Trade Center. Gambino boss John Gotti and several underlings were convicted of orchestrating the hit, which was related to DiBono’s contract to install fireproofing at the World Trade Center.
Well, imagine that … corruption involved in a New York city construction project.

The campaign of Rudy Giuliani refuses to anwer questions about 9/11 and have attacked the families of slain 9/11 first responders, according to a blog called Put It Above Ground.
The 9/11 families and firefighters traveled to New Hampshire and Florida to set the record straight on Rudy’s failures before,during and after 9/11. We were seen in newspapers, local radio, and Television news shows. At every turn, Rudy’s paid surrogates, under his direction attacked us with vicious and hateful accusations. They made some statements about 9/11 which were in direct contrast to all investigations of 9/11,(the 9/11 Commission, NIST and McKinsey reports.) Since 9/11/01, Giuliani and his cronies have done nothing except politicize and profit handsomely from the worst day in US history, a national tragedy.

THE MUD SLINGING INSULTS:
1. Howard Safir said “Chief Riches and his group denigrated the heroism of all the heroic firefighters and police officers who died on 9/11.- It is unconscionable that families are politicizing 9/11.”
2. It is a disgrace that the 9/11 families are politicizing 9/11!!! - Joe Lhota

UNTRUE STATEMENTS BY THE RUDY GIULIANI CAMPAIGN:
1. The radios worked on 9/11.
2. Required respirators were distributed.
3. We are a front group for the Democratic unions. UFA and UFOA both had backed Bush and Giuliani. I voted for Bush and three times for Giuliani.

Rudy, your quest for the presidency was rejected by America. You tried to stop the 9/11 commission from being formed. Now , lets’s set the record straight about 9/11 for all to see. History deserves to be recorded correctly.

RUDY GIULIANI MUST ANSWER OUR QUESTIONS ABOUT HIS FAILURES OF 9/11 !!!

Rudy, stop the name calling and other excuses and answer our questions. Don’t tell us : the terrorists are responsible- we are Democrats- we are angry- It was greatest rescue effort ever- it is a union conspiracy- or that we are unpatriotic to question Rudy about 9/11 failures.

America and the 9/11 families deserve answers to these questions:

1. Why did firefighters have precisely the same radios in 2001 which had also failed in 1993?? Why weren’t they interoperable (agencies would be able to communicate with each other). Ignored Chief of Dept FDNY, Anthony Fusco’s recommendations of 1993 WTC attacks about communication failures.
**** ” Preponderance of evidence indicates emergency responders lives lost at WTC on 9/11 resulted from lack of timely information sharing and inadequate communication capabilities.” National Institute of Standards and Technology. Go to the videotape of 9/11/01 of French filmmakers Jules and Gedeon Naudet and there is no communication from units that proceed up the stairs to the Lobby Command Post in the North Tower. The chiefs receive no response from units. Also you have said technology for interoperable radios (PD-FD) was impossible, yet 70% of 192 major cities had interoperable radios.

2. Why did your administration buy untested Digital Radios with no bid contract with politically connected company,Motorola which failed in 1 week of use in early 2001??
*** Someone decided to buy 3,818 individually higher priced, digital radios, without any competitive bidding, radios that had never been field tested. see “Radio Silence FDNY” page 178

3. Why were there no COORDINATED,HANDS ON and COMPREHENSIVE interagency drills at WTC similar to 1993 attack as was recommended in 1993 recommendations of Chief Fusco,FDNY Chief of Dept??
*** Pd and FD operated autonomously and were not comprehensively prepared to coordinate efforts. Information that was critical to informed decision making was not shared among agencies.- 9/11 commission

4. Why were 911 dispatchers telling people in towers to Remain in Place ? (FD command called for self evacuation of both towers at 8:57 AM. Dispatchers also said to go to roof (No roof Rescue would be attempted ) right up until the collapse of both towers? Self evacuation also recommended in 1993 by Chief Fusco
On 9/11 at 9:20 AM Giuliani arrived at FDNY Command Post and spoke to Chief of Dept. Pete Ganci.Ganci told Rudy ,”The message has to be” Get in a stairway and come down. DO NOT STAY there.”the mayor recalled Ganci saying, Of course, the emergency operators NEVER stopped giving precisely the opposite advice.” Grand Ilusion” pg 340- I guess Rudy forgot to relay this critical information to 911 dispatchers.

5 What happened to Office of Emergency Management,the hallmark of your tenure, on 9/11?? Totally useless and invisible on 9/11, with no hi rise plan????
***.It is a startling and undisputed fact that OEM failed to fully establish the most basic aspect of emergency response:determining who was in charge. NY Times by Al Baker.

The Israeli press is reporting that the remains of an Israeli woman killed in the September 11 attacks were  brought for burial in Israel this week, an Israeli paper reported Friday.

The remains of Alona Avraham, a 30-year-old Israeli on vacation in the U.S. were recovered last month. Avraham was a passenger on United Airlines Flight 175 when the hijacked plane was flown into the south tower of the World Trade Center in New York.

DNA tests a month ago showed that human remains found at ground zero belonged to Avraham, according to the report in the daily Maariv.

The New York City medical examiner’s office, which has been engaged in a renewed effort to find and identify Sept. 11 victims’ remains at ground zero in the last two years, had no immediate response to the news. At least seven victims have been identified through the recent initiative, but many of their names have not been released.

The Israeli press did not say specific how the remains were discovered and identified.

Preschoolers who saw the collapse of the World Trade Center or other high-intensity events on Sept. 11, 2001 were at increased risk of behavioral problems long afterwards, especially if they’d experienced other traumatic events, researchers found.
The study was done by Claude Chemtob, Ph.D., of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and his colleagues.

The language of this report is dense but worth reading.
Those who directly witnessed the collapse of the towers, injured people, dead bodies, or people jumping out of the buildings and had a history of other trauma were 21 times more likely to be emotionally reactive (adjusted odds ratio 21.8, P=0.003), than area preschoolers with neither exposure, said Claude Chemtob, Ph.D., of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine here, and colleagues.

They were also 26 times more likely to be anxious or depressed (AOR 26.8, P=0.006), and 18 times more likely to have attention problems (AOR 18.6, P=0.01), the researchers reported in the February issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

The results are consistent with the McEwen allostatic load hypothesis, which states that the effects of trauma exposure are amplified by the presence of other traumatic events, the researchers said.

“These data suggest that preschool children are a vulnerable group and argue for more vigorous post-disaster outreach to very young children, especially those with exposure to other trauma,” they wrote.

Little is known about the effects of terrorism on young children, the researchers said, so they retrospectively analyzed a cohort of 116 children who lived or attended preschool or day care in lower Manhattan and were five or younger on Sept. 11, 2001.

Almost half (49.1%) were female and the mean age was 3.9.

The study was conducted from March 1, 2003 through Dec. 31, 2005, a mean of 35 months (range 18 to 54) from the attacks.

Parents or caregivers filled out questionnaires detailing their child’s exposure to the attacks or other traumatic events and emotional and behavioral information.

All participants were exposed to the attacks and were divided into two groups — high- or low-intensity — depending on level of exposure. Nearly a quarter of the children (24.1%) were classified as having experienced high-intensity exposure.

More than half the participants (53.4%) had exposure to at least one other traumatic event, as assessed by the Traumatic Events Screening Inventory. Those included natural disasters, interpersonal losses, serious accidents, severe illnesses or injuries, animal attacks, and exposure to war or terrorism, suicide, or attempted suicide.

Items on the inventory asking about physical and sexual abuse and domestic violence were excluded because they were deemed to be highly intrusive and distressing to the families.

Behavioral symptoms were categorized in seven clusters: emotionally reactive, anxious/depressed, somatic complaints, withdrawn behavior, sleep problems, attention problems, and aggressive behavior.

When compared with children who were exposed only to low-intensity attack-related events, those exposed to high-intensity events were nearly three times more likely to be depressed/anxious (odds ratio 2.5, 95% confidence interval 1.7 to 20.5, P=0.002) and nearly five times more likely to have sleep problems (OR 4.9, 95% CI 1.6 to 15.3, P=0.003).

When compared with children who experienced only high-intensity attack-related events, those with such an exposure and a history of other trauma were at increased risk for emotional reactivity (OR 3.8), withdrawn behavior (OR 6.3), sleep problems (OR 5.9), and being anxious/depressed (OR 8.3).

In children with a history of other trauma, the risk of clinically significant behavioral problems for the emotionally reactive (adjusted OR 4.7, P=0.06), anxious/depressed (adjusted OR 7.5, P=0.02), withdrawn behavior (adjusted OR 7.0, P=0.05), and sleep problem (adjusted OR 10.2, P<0.001) clusters was higher for those who experienced a high-intensity attack-related event compared with those who did not, after adjusting for age and time between the attacks and assessment.

The study was limited by the fact that the cohort cannot be assumed to be representative of lower Manhattan preschool children and that the researchers did not extensively survey the use of services to help the children cope with the attacks.

Additionally, the researchers said, leaving out information on domestic violence likely made the estimates of exposure to other trauma conservative.

Finally, they said, causality cannot be established because of the cross-sectional and retrospective nature of the analysis.

Dr. Chemtob and colleagues suggested that pediatricians could be used to assess a child’s behavior following a disaster. “The likelihood that pediatricians may be key resources in early identification of very young children at greater developmental risk by virtue of terrorism and trauma exposure adds support to calls for additional investment to increase the capacity of pediatric practices to participate in national terrorism and disaster preparedness,” they concluded.

The study was partially supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, New York Times Foundation’s September 11th Children’s Fund, United Philanthropic Trust/Sept. 11th Children’s Fund, United Jewish Communities, UJA Federation of New York, UBS September 11 Fund, Robin Hood Foundation, Picower Foundation, an anonymous donor, the American Red Cross, Andor Capital Management, and Strook, Strook, and Lavan LLP.

The authors reported no financial disclosures.

Even when the folks who are in charge of keeping residents at 7 World Trade Center safe, try to shut the lights off in the joint, the many, redundant back up safety features built into this new building at the World Trade Center won’t let it happen, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

In a story published today by the Monitor says “Architects around the world are erecting skyscrapers that use a hollow concrete core surrounded by bomb-resistant glass and other security innovations.”
It leads with this story: “When a documentary crew wanted to film the emergency glow-strips that line the expansive stairwells in 7 World Trade Center, Dara McQuillan called down to the security desk and asked them to flick off the lights. Moments after the stairwell went dark, however, a backup power system switched on and ruined the shot.
“Mr. McQuillan, vice president of communications for the building, called again, but when the security desk shut down the backup system, this time a battery-powered generator flooded the stairs with light. The crew never got its dramatic glow-in-the-dark shot.
“It has been hailed as the safest building in the world, its 52-stories of glass elegance belying a concrete core built to be a bunker in the sky. It is the first skyscraper to be completed at the World Trade Center site, and as it approaches its second anniversary, its innovative architecture and endlessly redundant security features – most of them designed from the lessons of the Twin Towers catastrophic collapse – offer a template for high-rise buildings in a post-9/11 world.

“The biggest change in high-rise construction now is this sealed, hardened core,” says Dr. Herb Hauser, president of New York-based Midtown Technologies, who worked with the architects of the skyscrapers that will ring the new World Trade Center. “This means that the structure around the core can go down, or be on fire, or be invested with a biological or chemical problem, but the actual core itself will be protected.”

At least three skyscrapers under construction that will surpass the height of the world’s tallest building, Taipei 101 in Taiwan, are using the concrete-core technique (as well as a number of others under proposal in Russia and Korea). Indeed, the 1,776-foot high Freedom Tower, the anchor of the World Trade Center site, will in many ways simply be a larger version of the adjacent 7 WTC. The Chicago Spire, at 2,000 feet high, and Burj Dubai, soon to be the tallest building in the world at a staggering 2,700 feet, will also each have hollow concrete spines anchoring floors that will cascade and twist around them.”

Resdents of lower Manhattan call them by various names and some people in New York have decided to clean up the streets around Ground Zero of these activists.

A story in the New York newspapers by Steve Cuozzo prompted heated debate over the removal of the vendors around the site. Cuozzo’s story said their presence was “Pure Obscenity.
“As a lower Manhattan resident living near Ground Zero for over 16 years,” writes Elizabeth Williams, “I completely agree with the removal of illegal and non-permitted vendors around Ground Zero and other areas
But Williams said the bigger issue is the $50 fine and community-service penalty imposed for illegal vending. She said the illegal vendors consider the fine to be the price of doing business. So, the laws have little deterrent effect. If the city commits to enforcing illegal-vendor laws that have minimal penalties and minimal effect, will it have enough resources elsewhere?”

An increase in the penalty might be the way to go. Now, if that’s really what residents want, I know a former mayor who is currently unemployed (a presidential dropout)
Michael Burke calls the vendors the 9/11 “truth lunatics but says there are bigger issues at stake at the downtown site. He says the memorial planned by Mayor Bloomberg, dedicated solely to our “healing,” will remake the site so that it does not acknowledge the attacks. “As per the handful of oblivious intellectuals and government appointees who dictated the concept, all history of 9/11 must be banished from the site “in order to preserve the integrity of the memorial. None of the authentic artifacts of 9/11 may be returned to the site. Who is the real lunatic?”

Very  good question Michael

The New York papers are reporting that an appeals court has ruled that a doctor who had been missing before September 11, 2001 died during the World Trade Center attacks. The family of Dr. Sneha Anne Philip, last seen at Century 21 on September 10, has been in courts for years seeking this declaration.Previously, a court-appointed guardian implied the 31-year-old doctor led a dangerous lifestyle because New York newspapers said she “frequented bars (including several bars that cater to women customers) and spent the night with individuals she met there [who] tended to be strangers.” The guardian, who was appointed during a court case about Philip’s estate, also referred to a police report that suggested she “[abused] drugs and alcohol” and “[conducted] bisexual acts.” Police investigators had theorized Philip was murdered by someone she picked up.

However, after the surveillance video from Century 21, Philip was never seen from, nor were her credit cards used. Her husband testified that on nights she stayed out (and he wasn’t happy about those nights), she would come back to their Battery Park City apartment in the morning. And her family said that since she was a doctor, she could have been helping people at the WTC.

The Appellate Court decision said “The evidence shows it to be highly probable that she died that morning and at that site, whereas only the rankest speculation leads to any other conclusion.”