The Freedom Tower

AmericanChronicle.com says that “Ever since that terrible day on September 11, 2001 many questions have been raised like: Who, what and why? Unfortunately, because of our limited technology, we have never been able to look inside the cockpit of flight 175 to obtain a better idea of what was happening just before the plane crashed into the WTC tower, until now!
According to the official reports, United Airlines Flight 175 was a scheduled U.S. domestic passenger flight from Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts to Los Angeles International Airport. The flight was (allegedly) hijacked by five al-Qaeda-associated Islamist terrorists, and flown into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City as part of the September 11 attacks. Over thirty minutes into the flight, the hijackers forcefully breached the cockpit and overpowered the pilot and first officer. The aircraft crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center at 09:03, killing all 65 people aboard, including the hijackers.

There has been much speculation on how a group of terrorists with very limited flying experience could carry out such an attack and it has even been suggested that the plane was actually flown by remote control. However, the images presented on our special webpage may dispel that theory and show that there were people in the cockpit, and the plane was in the control of a pilot.
Even though we have our own opinions on what took place during the flight (based on the images), we have chosen not to speculate too much on this area because of the sensitive nature of this subject. It is not our wish to add to the distress of the families and friends of those who lost their lives on flight 175, but simply present the images that have been obtained, in the hope that it will help make one part of the 9/11 attack a little clearer. We would like to apologize in advance if you find any of the images disturbing, but felt it was our duty to present these as seen and let you form your own opinions. Unfortunately, it was necessary to explain certain aspects of the images in order to understand the views presented more accurately.”

1010WINS radio in New York reports that a “company that tested concrete for construction projects around New York City, including Yankee Stadium and the Freedom Tower skyscraper at ground zero, has been indicted along with its president and about a dozen other officials, a law enforcement official and attorneys Wednesday told the Associated Press.

“The main charges are said to be enterprise corruption, New York’s version of racketerring.

Testwell Laboratories was advised of the indictment seeking corruption charges, attorney Martin Adelman said. The company’s president, V. Reddy Kancharla, and other company officials are also named, he said.

Manhattan prosecutors have been investigating charges for months that Testwell falsified test results for projects or billed companies for tests it never did, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because the indictment had not been released publicly.

The owners of the Freedom Tower and the Yankees said that concrete at their projects passed strength tests; the city has begun retesting concrete at various construction sites but has not announced its results.

“Testwell is disapointed that the district attorney’s office has decided to bring these charges,'’ Adelman said. “While we can not comment on the indictment because we haven’t seen it yet, the company intends to vigorously defend itself. The company looks forward to restoring its reputation and vindicating itself.'’

The Associated Press says that “Navy tradition suggests that the spirit of a ship’s sponsor goes to sea with its crew, and the new USS New Hampshire attack submarine joined the fleet Saturday with its sponsor urging its crews to endure and persevere.

Cheryl McGuinness, whose husband was a co-pilot of one of the airliners that crashed into the World Trade Center, said that as a former Navy wife she understands what’ll be asked of the ship’s crew - and their families - as New Hampshire heads to sea.

“These sailors are standing up for our country, standing up for freedom and standing up for our protection,” she said. Veterans organizations lobbied the Navy to appoint McGuinness, of Portsmouth, N.H., to serve as sponsor for the launch of this new ship. Her husband Tom, a former Navy fighter pilot, was co-pilot of American Airlines Flight 11, which was flown into the World Trade Center North Tower on Sept. 11, 2001.”

“While some in both parties and both campaigns may say otherwise, terrorism is not a partisan issue,” The Baltimore Sun reports. “The first World Trade Center attack happened during the first days of the Bill Clinton presidency but was planned during the closing months of the administration of George H.W. Bush. While the second World Trade Center attack happened less than eight months into the George W. Bush administration, it was planned during the waning months of the Clinton administration. Intelligence experts who study al-Qaida and its offshoots will tell you that these terrorists don’t care if you are liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat. If you are an American, you are the enemy.

During Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s first major interview as Senator McCain’s running mate, Charles Gibson of ABC News raised a topic that has been brought to my attention repeatedly by some Pentagon officials and some of my former Pentagon colleagues. They wonder and worry about what happens to the much-maligned “Bush Doctrine” - which basically amounts to (in conjunction with our allies) destroying these terrorists and their cells where they eat, sleep and plan - should Senator Obama win in November. These officials - a number of whom are not fond of Mr. Bush - worry that if a President Obama drastically scales back or seeks to repeal the Patriot Act, outlaws electronic eavesdropping, extends habeas corpus rights to terrorism suspects and deems aspects of the Bush Doctrine to be criminal, how long before the terrorists reconstitute themselves and hit the U.S. homeland again? It’s a legitimate concern that has been all but ignored by debate moderators, the candidates and the media.”

The new GI Bill passed by Congress over the summer, the Boston Globe says dramatically expands veterans benefits. It “was lauded as a sign that the country was looking after this generation of warriors. But don’t extol its virtues to Grey Adkins, who served two tours with the Navy off the coast of Iraq, is $10,000 in debt, and won’t see a dime of the new benefits.
Even though it is called the Post-9/11 GI Bill, the new legislation won’t take effect until Aug. 1, 2009 - eight years after jets felled the twin towers and other planes crashed into the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. By then, Adkins will have graduated from Towson University. And because the bill is not retroactive, it won’t help him at all.

The difference it would make is stark. Currently, he receives $1,600 a month during the school year, or about $15,000. Under the new bill, he would be eligible for up to twice that amount each school year.

So far, more than 410,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have used the current GI Bill, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs - and many, like Adkins, will finish school before the new benefits start.

Many advocates for veterans say it took too long to update a GI Bill that has not kept pace with the escalating price of college tuition. But now there is also concern that the VA won’t be able to meet the August deadline after it abruptly abandoned its plan to hire a private contractor this month and instead will implement the new program itself.”

The New York Times reports that “after the twin towers fell, they grieved together: the firefighter’s parents, his fiancée and his best friend.

Last week, seven years later, the mourners were together again, but separated — by courtroom furniture, and by one of the more bitter legal disputes the World Trade Center attack has produced.

Firefighter Kevin Prior’s fiancée, Doreen Noone, is seeking to collect $37,600 a year in his pension benefits. Firefighter Prior’s parents, Gerard and Marian Prior, say that she is not entitled to the money and that it should go to them.

Firefighter Prior’s childhood best friend, Sgt. Edward Wheeler of the New York Police Department, who was to have been the best man at the firefighter’s wedding, ended up marrying Ms. Noone three years after 9/11. On Thursday, he testified that the rift with the Priors had compounded his grief.

“Me and Doreen were the two closest people in the world to Kevin besides his family,” Sergeant Wheeler, who works in a Brooklyn precinct, said in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn. “Now we don’t talk. It’s the most surreal thing I’ve ever experienced.”

The determination of who will get the pension turns on the definition of “domestic partner” in a state law passed in 2003 to allow companions, and not just spouses, of police officers and firefighters killed on 9/11 to collect their pensions.”

The Economist says the “Saudi kingdom has long been a fountainhead of jihadist radicalism, with martyrdom-seekers going on one-way tickets to such places as Chechnya, Iraq and the Twin Towers in America. At first rather complacent about Islamist terror, the Saudi rulers rumbled into active opposition only after their own cities came under fire, starting with a series of bombings in their capital, Riyadh, in May 2003. Now, in a move that suggests growing confidence in thwarting jihadist violence, Saudi courts have begun procedures to try 991 prisoners held on terrorism charges, in the most sweeping legal action yet taken in the global campaign against the extremists.

Aside from its scale, the mass prosecution is notable because the trials will take place under Islamic law before a panel of judges who are, like all those in the arch-conservative kingdom, schooled in the strict Wahhabist interpretation that has helped to inspire the ideology of groups such as al-Qaeda itself. Saudi officials are quick to assert that sharia sentences should therefore carry greater legitimacy than those handed down by the military tribunals favoured by other countries, which many Muslims, and not just jihadist sympathisers, dismiss as suspect.”

Investor’s Business Daily says a “nation as powerful and capable as the U.S. should have finished the rebuilding by now. Instead, according to the timetables announced recently, only the 9/11 memorial will be open by the 10th anniversary of the attacks, and even it will not be fully finished.

The centerpiece of the reconstruction, the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower skyscraper, is not expected to open at least until 2013. A $3.2 billion transit hub, now $700 million over budget, will open at the site no earlier than 2014. This glaring display of can’t-do spirit may prove in the long run to be just a local scandal. But we’re not so sure it has left the nation’s confidence unscathed.

You would think (to use an old line) that a country able to put a man on the moon could get a couple of office buildings, even big ones, rebuilt in less than a decade, along with a suitable memorial. The unfinished work at Ground Zero may make the world wonder — may even make Americans wonder — if this nation could put a man on the moon again, if it can’t even do this.

Perhaps (Mayor) Mike Bloomberg is thinking that, now that he is in line to get just one more term, he can be there to cut the ribbon at the Freedom Tower in 2013. We certainly hope that some New York mayor, whoever he or she is, will get to do that before the next term is up.

But if things had gone as they should, Bloomberg would have cut all the ribbons by now and would be leaving office with his job well done.”

The STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE says “Sept. 11, 2001, is a date that lives in infamy.
Nowhere, of course, more so than on Staten Island, where the impact of the World Trade Center tragedy remains a fact of daily life for many people. Though it’s at least 5 miles from us, what goes on at Ground Zero is still close to our heart.
This is why we deplore the public hawking there of death and destruction: Illicit mementos being sold by street vendors in a circus-like way.
There ought to be a law, as the saying goes.
In fact, there is — but it doesn’t work.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly says the department’s Peddler Task Force and 1st Precinct officers have repeatedly arrested illegal vendors at the site of the World Trade Center, only to have them come back over and over.
“Peddlers treat the relatively small fines as a cost of doing business and return to their illegal activity immediately,” Mr. Kelly pointed out.
Not only 9/11 hats and T-shirts are for sale. Illegal profits are being made on photos of flames and exploding debris from the deadly jetliner attacks by terrorists on the Twin Towers.
Over 2,700 innocent people were killed there on Sept. 11, including more than 200 Staten Islanders.”

ecorazzi … “the latest in green gossip says Chrissie Hynde of the rock group The Pretenders is making plans to expand her vegan-restaurant empire with potential interest in NY’s new Freedom Tower. The development, currently under construction on the site of the World Trade Center, is looking for interested restaurant owners. In an interview with PETA, Hynde said how the success of her vegan hotspot Vegeterrannean is causing her to eye new locations. Here’s a highlight (emphasis in bold is mine):

“I’d like to expand to Las Vegas so tourists from all over the world can see how great vegan food can be,” she said, “and of course in LA I’ve read that Freedom Tower in New York City, the new development where the World Trade Center once stood, is looking for a notable restaurateur. I’d like to throw my hat into the ring. There’s been so much horrific blood and guts and violence there that it’d be fitting to open a cool restaurant where no mangled, burnt bodies are on the menu.”

Um, yea. Look, I’m all for more vegan restaurants, but comments like that are not going to win points. I don’t know if she intended it to come across that way, but talk about poor taste.”