The Freedom Tower

The America’s highest court has thwarted the single-most effective way the United States had planned to try terrorists — by putting them on trial using secret court-systems.

In Washington, press reports said the Supreme Court dealt the Bush administration a stunning setback yesterday, ruling that terrorist suspects imprisoned at Guantanamo can fight for their rights in U.S. courts and likely sounding a death knell for the controversial offshore war-crimes trials.

The ruling “stripped Guantanamo of its reason for being, a law-free zone where prisoners can’t challenge their detention,” said Kenneth Roth, executive-director at Human Rights Watch.

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy delivered a harsh rebuke of the Bush administration’s efforts to craft war-crimes trials beyond the reach of American justice. “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times,” he wrote.

Yesterday’s ruling was the third straight judgment against the Bush administration concerning the rights of Guantanamo prisoners.

It cast a cloud over the entire process. Not only do Guantanamo detainees have the explicit right to challenge, in U.S. federal courts, their continued imprisonment, but the court also ruled that the process by which detainees are classified as “enemy combatants” may also be challenged.

The sweeping ruling, certain to set off a blizzard of court filings, seems likely to derail the handful of trials under way, including that of Omar Khadr, the Canadian accused of murdering a U.S. soldier, and may finish President George W. Bush’s hope of putting al-Qaeda leaders on trial before he leaves office in January.

With only few months remaining in the term of a deeply unpopular, lame-duck President and with Democrats controlling both houses of Congress, the prospects for new laws to create, for the third time, another Bush administration war-crimes tribunal seem remote.

Mr. Khadr’s case, scheduled to resume next week before a new military judge after the last one was removed or retired, may be the first affected by yesterday’s ruling.

But the full scope of the court’s decision may take months of litigation and perhaps new legislation before the fate of the war-crimes trials is concluded.

Mr. Bush decried the 5-4 split decision in which the court’s liberal members prevailed.

“We’ll abide by the court’s decision,” the President said in Rome. “That doesn’t mean I have to agree with it.”

The President said he wanted Congress to write new laws to restore the controversial military war-crimes tribunals currently held in a makeshift courtroom on a disused airport at a U.S. naval base in Cuba, a set-up designed from its inception to be beyond the reach of U.S. law and the Constitution.

Dissenting judges, including Chief Justice John Roberts, stridently denounced the majority ruling. The Guantanamo process offers “the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants,” Chief Justice Roberts said.

Another conservative, Justice Antonin Scalia darkly warned that America “will live to regret what the court has done today,” adding that al-Qaeda will strike. Giving Guantanamo’s 280 terrorist suspects access to U.S. courts to challenge their incarceration and the legitimacy of the tribunals “will almost certainly cause more Americans to get killed.”

Universal Coin and Bullion recognizes that building a lasting memorial at the World Trade Center site is about contributing to our nation’s history. After the events of September 11th shook America, a group was started to design and build a fitting memorial to all of those who lost their lives. Universal Coin & Bullion is proud to be a part of such an endeavor.In the spring of 2005, former Chairman of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, John Whitehead and current Chairman, New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg began the task of raising the necessary funds to complete this historic project. Of the many companies that were asked to support this huge undertaking, Universal Coin and Bullion was one of the first to answer the call.

Headed by Mike Fuljenz, Universal Coin & Bullion, Ltd. was pleased to donate $100,000 to the memorial effort.
This donation, along with the support of businesses and individuals from across the country, has made the dream of a fitting memorial a reality. The memorial is expected to open in 2011.

In early April, the Foundation announced that it had raised over $350 million. To date, the Foundation has received support from over 60,000 corporations and individuals in every state and in 31 other countries.

The World Trade Centers Association (WTCA), a leading international, non-political, not-for-profit business organization, announces the launch of World Trade Center- Television (WTC-TV) to offer trade-focused news and programming.”WTC-TV is a new media platform covering global trade and international business. This is what World Trade Centers do; we help companies to expand internationally and trade more efficiently. This is a great way for the World Trade Centers around the globe to educate and inform the world about global commerce and the people and organizations that make it happen.” said Guy Tozzoli, President of the World Trade Centers Association. “Our programming will attract business leaders and anyone interested in world trade.”

WTC-TV was developed by World Trade Center Koeln under license by the WTCA. It will be available as a web-based media channel and through private cable television systems. WTC-TV with its extensive range of information aims at raising awareness of the “World Trade Center” brand, serving the community of World Trade Centers and the more than one million companies they serve and reaching out to general audience viewers with an interest in trade and international business. The WTCA and WTC Koeln unveiled WTC-TV at a recent WTCA meeting 2008 in Pescara, Italy. WTC TV is now accessible online at www.wtc-tv.com.

Newsday, the Long Island, New York newspaper says emergency responders and volunteers who are enduring lasting health effects from their work at Ground Zero after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center gathered there Saturday for an event billed as the “First Annual WTC Responder Day.”

“It’s almost seven years. The responders are tired of hearing about press conferences. They’re tired of hearing about hearings, and they’re tired,” said Marvin Bethea, 48, a former paramedic originally from Huntington who was a first responder working in lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He said he recently suffered a stroke.

The event, organized by Mount Sinai Medical Center’s World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program, drew about 100 people, not as many as some had hoped. It was meant to honor those first responders who face increasing medical expenses following their work on Ground Zero.

The New York Daily News called him Limbo-loving con man Mario Mastellone.
The News reports that Mastellone “walked out of court Friday after getting 2-1/2 years in jail for stealing $1.1 million from a fund for 9/11 victims and defiantly announced: “I am a victim.”

Asked if he had any regrets about ripping off a fund designed to help those hurt in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack - or the families of the dead - the illiterate, unemployed painter replied: “None.”

Mastellone, 41, escaped the collapse of the north tower of the World Trade Center where he was a contract painter for the Port Authority.

He told officials of the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund he was permanently disabled with a back injury and was incapable of performing even menial chores like mowing the lawn.

A month later, surveillance cameras caught him toting gallons of paint and hoisting them into the back of his minivan.

At a 2002 wedding reception, he was caught on tape ducking under a limbo pole and dancing to ’70s hits like “Stayin’ Alive.”

A video camera attached to a utility pole across from his East Windsor, N.J., home caught Mastellone shoveling snow off his silver Mercedes and red Mini Cooper after a 2005 snowstorm.”
His new home will be the joint where it takes a con to get inside.

The New York Power Authority (NYPA) recently announced that it has reached an agreement that will make the redeveloped World Trade Center the site of one of the largest fuel cell installations in the world.The agreement, valued at $10.6M, was reached with UTC Power of South Windsor, Conn., for equipment purchases to provide heat and power for the new towers.

The fuel cells, totaling 4.8 megawatts (mw) of generating capacity, will provide an on-site supplement to the renewable power and other clean energy the rebuilt World Trade Center will receive via power lines from off-site sources. Together with design measures to minimize energy use, the “green” power arrangements will make the Freedom Tower and three other towers that are part of the Trade Center a model for environmentally friendly energy and for energy efficiency. The Freedom Tower is being developed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the other towers by Silverstein Properties.

“One of the most important building projects in the nation will be equipped with space-age energy technology that uses an electrochemical process to produce clean on-site power,” Gov. David A. Paterson said. “The fuel cells and other measures will help make the new World Trade Center towers an exemplar of environmental sustainability and will signal to the world New York State’s commitment to greater energy security and reduced dependence on foreign oil. I can think of few sites in the country where the symbolism of this is more important.”

“We are committed to helping make clean energy initiatives at the new World Trade Center site a reality,” said Roger B. Kelley, NYPA president and chief executive officer. “Fuel cells are one of the environmentally beneficial technologies that the Power Authority is investing in under Governor Paterson’s leadership to combat greenhouse gas emissions and diversify the state’s energy mix. To date, we’ve installed 15 fuel cells in New York City and other locations, and expect to add to this total in support of the Governor’s ambitious goals for significant increases in the state’s renewable power.”

Fuel cells generate electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen in a chemical reaction. They require few moving parts, making them a quiet, reliable and safe source of power suitable for around-the-clock operation.

The buildings at the World Trade Center site will also benefit from wind power-purchase agreements that NYPA reached in late 2006 with two renewable power developers in upstate New York on behalf of various governmental customers in New York City. They include the Port Authority, which is responsible for building several projects at the World Trade Center site, including the Freedom Tower and Tower 5.

“With construction and real estate accounting for more than half of the region’s carbon footprint, making our buildings green is one of the most important steps we can take to preserve our environment—a message we’re driving home at every stage of the World Trade Center project,” said Christopher Ward, executive director of the Port Authority.

UTC Power, a unit of United Technologies Corp., was the successful bidder among the qualified firms responding to a Request for Proposals that NYPA issued in October 2007 for four 1.2 mw fuel-cell systems for the World Trade Center. (One megawatt is enough power to serve approximately 800 to 1,000 homes.)

The first of the fuel cells will be delivered to the Freedom Tower in January 2009. It will be owned and operated by the Port Authority, the owner of the building. The fuel cells at the three towers being developed by Silverstein Properties, at 150, 175 and 200 Greenwich St., will be owned and operated by World Trade Center Properties, LLC, an affiliate.

“When 7 World Trade Center opened in 2006, it was the first office tower in city history to achieve official LEED certification as a green building,” said Larry A. Silverstein, president and CEO of Silverstein Properties, citing the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Program. “We vowed then that each successive World Trade Center tower would also be cutting edge in terms of environmental sustainable design, construction and operation. More broadly, however, these buildings will be part of a new downtown neighborhood that is fast becoming the greenest community in the city with both commercial and residential buildings that are sustainable, as well as new parks and waterfront access, and generous open spaces.” The Port Authority will receive financing for the Freedom Tower fuel cell from NYPA’s energy services program for governmental customers, with the Power Authority recovering its costs over a period of up to 20 years. Funding for the fuel cells slated for 150, 175 and 200 Greenwich will come from the Lower Manhattan Energy Independence Initiative established by the State of New York.

New York’s Renewable Portfolio Standard Program seeks to increase to 25 percent the amount of the state’s total electricity generated from renewable technologies such as fuel cells by 2013. This is part of a broad range of efforts under Governor Paterson to bring about transformative changes in the state’s energy supplies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enhance fuel diversity and energy security and create new industries and jobs.

SOURCE: NYPA

The governor of News York is concerned over too little progress being made in rebuilding the World Trade Center.
Governor David Paterson asked the Port Authority today to determine whether the latest deadlines and budgets for the redevelopment project are feasible, according to NY1.

He said he wants an answer by the end of the month.

The site is supposed to have five office towers, including the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, as well as a September 11th memorial, and a transit hub.

The Port Authority said today it would miss a deadline to turn over land that developer Larry Sliverstein needs to begin building a planned office tower. The agency will pay over $ 9.6 million in late fees for not finishing the foundation at the site by June 30th.

Pakistan Daily says “the mind of David Ray Griffin is refreshingly clear and logical. With his exceptional gift for discerning significant distinctions he has, once again, produced a meticulous critical analysis of documentary evidence that is astute and compelling. In “9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press,”Dr. Griffin presents a sequence of irrefutable facts drawn from documents and testimony that demonstrate twenty five internal contradictions in the official 9/11 story. As each contradiction is presented, the author juxtaposes documented timelines and official memos, eye-witness testimony, television broadcasts and news articles that are logically inconsistent with the narrative contrived by the 9/11 Commission.

Griffin objectively questions these contradictory narratives, some of them inherent within individual alibis, and observes that the Commission avoided confronting these inconsistencies by eliminating all mention of them in its report. Facts that could not be logically refuted were strategically omitted, thereby erasing from the historical record all evidence of possible perjury and complicity. Each chapter is devoted to one category of contradictions and ends with the request that Congress and the press investigate this inconsistency.

One of the most fascinating contradictions involves the whereabouts of principals on the morning of 9/11 during the critical hours between 9:00 -10:00 am. Public and internal records suggest that the timeline of events was adjusted by the Commission to place the principals at their command posts too late to protect the nation, too late to orchestrate a military response, too late to give stand-down orders, too late to give shootdown orders or to be otherwise guilty of collusion. The conflicting testimony of eye-witnesses such as Richard Clarke, Norman Mineta and FAA officials, who placed the principals and military liaisons at their command posts well before the Commission’s timeline did, was simply omitted from the 9/11 Commission Report. The Commission’s systematic timeline alteration and omission of incriminating evidence thereby suggest that its mission was damage control, a deliberate cover-up of government complicity in the crime. Griffin, however, does not make this charge; he simply presents the contradictions.

The Commission claimed that Vice President Cheney did not arrive in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center until 9:58. That claim was contradicted by the testimony of Norman Mineta, Secretary of Transportation, who arrived at the PEOC around 9:20 where shortly thereafter he witnessed Cheney confirm an order that is most logically interpreted as an order not to shoot down an incoming object shortly before the Pentagon was struck. Richard Clarke’s account in his book, “Against All Enemies,” corroborates Mineta’s timeline, which was evidently so threatening to the official story that Mineta’s testimony was deleted from the 9/11 Commission video archives.

General Richard Myers contradicted his own story in several incarnations of his alibi as did Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, both of whom claimed to be unaware of unfolding events when, according to Richard Clarke, they were both participating in a live video teleconference initiated by Clarke at about 9:10. Griffin skillfully analyzes these contradictory versions of events.

The Commission’s claim that the FAA did not notify the military early enough to scramble jets was contradicted by the FAA’s assertion that not only was a military liaison present throughout its nationwide alert but “within minutes after the first aircraft hit the World Trade Center it immediately established several phone bridges that included.DOD, the Secret Service, and other government agencies.” NORAD’s original (September 18, 2001) timeline corroborated FAA statements as did military officers, such as the National Military Command Center’s Brigadier General Montague Winfield and NORAD’s Captain Michael Jellinek. One also learns from Richard Clarke that the “Secret Service had a system that allowed them to see what FAA’s radar was seeing.” The 9/11 Commission’s claim, therefore, would be laughable had the consequences of this lie not been so tragic.

Griffin presents extensive eye-witness accounts by firefighters, police officers, journalists and building workers who gave vivid reports of hearing and seeing powerful sequential explosions within all three of the World Trade Center skyscrapers prior to their collapse. Building 7, which was not hit by a plane, also collapsed symmetrically into its own footprint around 5:20 pm - an event that was anticipated and communicated to firefighters by Mayor Giuliani’s Office of Emergency Management around noon. Griffin poses the question to NIST, the agency tasked by the Commission with explaining the destruction of the Twin Towers and WTC7, how OEM could have known so many hours in advance that the building would collapse.

Further evidence of controlled demolition is suggested by three professors at Worcester Polytechnic Institute who noted the peculiar characteristics of oxidation and sulfidation on salvaged WTC steel beams. NIST admitted that the temperature of the fires was insufficient (by at least 1000°F) to melt steel. However, if thermate cutter charges (thermite plus sulfur) were used to slice the steel framework, that would explain the molten steel. How did NIST and the 9/11 Commission explain the eyewitness testimony that steel had melted? By not mentioning it.

Several chapters are devoted to exposing contradictions concerning the alleged hijackers. The assertion that Hani Hanjour could have flown American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon after making a spectacular 330° turn over prohibited airspace is demonstrably preposterous given his record of total incompetence as a pilot. The profile of Mohamed Atta as a devout Muslim on a sacred suicide mission is contradicted by numerous eye-witnesses who described his unholy lifestyle in vivid detail. The FBI’s assertion that Atta’s personal belongings provided a treasure trove of incriminating evidence (a Koran, his Will and a list of the 19 hijackers) is dubious, given the FBI’s inconsistent versions of where this miraculous proof was found. It was first reportedly found in a white Mitsubishi at Logan airport in Boston. That story was changed when a subsequent tale proved to be false. After the FBI claimed that two hijackers named Bukhari had driven a blue Nissan to Portland, Maine, and then taken a commuter flight back to Boston on the morning of 9/11, it was discovered that one Bukhari had died the previous year and the other was still alive. The FBI clumsily merged these stories by claiming that Atta drove the blue Nissan to Portland and then took the commuter flight back. In this new story, the incriminating evidence was “found” in his luggage, which failed to get transferred to Flight 11.

The public belief that Middle Eastern men hijacked the planes was based heavily on media reports of over 15 cell phone calls from passengers to relatives, although high-altitude cell phone calls were not possible in 2001. One source of the hijacker tale came from the Justice Department’s Solicitor General, Ted Olson, who told CNN that his wife (Barbara) had called him twice from American Flight 77. That claim was contradicted at the Zacarias Moussaoui trial in 2006 when the FBI reported that only two cell phone calls were made from all four planes, and that both calls originated from United Flight 93 (after it had descended to 5,000 feet). How did the Commission reconcile FBI records with reports from family members who recognized Caller IDs made from cell phones? It omitted the FBI records.

Why do these contradictions matter?

The Tribute WTC Visitor Center in Lower Manhattan welcomed its
500,000th visitor last month.  LT Jeremy E. Vellón, USN, 31,
is an Assistant Air Officer on the USS Kearsarge.  Stationed in Virginia
but originally from Brooklyn, Vellón along with five of his family
members came to the Tribute center to pay their respects.

“I have no words to properly describe what this opportunity to visit meant
for me and my family,” said LT Vellón.  “From losing my friend and
classmate Darin Pontell at the Pentagon to deploying that week onboard
USS BATAAN for Operation Enduring Freedom to leaving my
wife Jeanie behind to wait patiently, I was affected.  Thankfully, I was
able to participate last November in Operation Sea Angel II
providing humanitarian assistance to the Bangladeshi victims of Cyclone
Sidr along with the ‘Mighty Kearsarge.’  Thanks for this honor on behalf
of the sailors, marines and coastguardsmen visiting for Fleet Week 2008.
I hope to serve my country as long as she’ll let me.”

The Arizona Republic reports:
Blair Gadsby, the 45-year-old former owner of an adult-care home and an adjunct professor of religious studies at a community college, never figured he would be the type of person to stage a hunger strike outside the Phoenix office of U.S. Sen. John McCain.

But about a year ago, Gadsby convinced himself that the U.S. government, not terrorists, demolished the World Trade Center buildings in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. And that belief has turned him into a fasting activist.

“I’ve never been politically active until the 9/11 subject came up,” he said, sitting on a fabric folding chair last week along 16th Street, outside the complex that houses McCain’s Phoenix office.
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Gadsby’s vigil on the sidewalk goes from sunrise to sunset. He holds up a sign that features a Canadian tabloid’s front-page photo of a jet hitting one of the towers. Underneath is his count of the days he has been fasting. Today, it will be Day 15.

He has dropped 15 pounds. He feels weak by the end of the day. He has had eggs thrown at him by taunting motorists. His wife is not happy with him. He worries whether he’ll lose his teaching job.

Still, once he locked in on the idea that the government planned the murder of thousands of its citizens, it became his overriding priority. He wondered why it wasn’t getting more attention, so he got the idea to sacrifice himself for some attention.

“I felt we needed the coverage,” Gadsby said. “We’ve just been ignored, if not downright suppressed.”

In May 2007, Gadsby, who was already skeptical that terrorists caused the attacks, found a video online that showed the collapse of World Trade Center 7. He believes the government has ordered media outlets not to show the footage, which shows the building falling in on itself, much like a building does when it implodes.

The footage clinched it for Gadsby. He had to rethink all he had accepted about the terrorist attacks. He spent sleepless nights thinking about how the government planted explosions in Building 7 and then, most likely, the twin towers. Then, how they must have hired men to pilot the planes. And then ordered the media to cover it all up. And so on, and so on.