The Freedom Tower

“Imagine standing on an empty street corner when you hear the rumble of a bus coming around the corner,” Newsweek reports. “The breaks squeal as the vehicle stops in front of you. Its doors open; passengers begin to step off. A moment later, the bus explodes into flames, temporarily blinding you with light, and showering the street with shards of glass and burning shrapnel. The ground shakes. Body parts lie on the pavement around you. You hear screaming and the sound of sirens. And then you take off your headset—safe and sound in your therapist’s office.

Survivors of suicide-bomber attacks in Israel are using this virtual-reality simulation as part of their treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. In case after case, ongoing studies—which began in the 1990s with Vietnam veterans—show that virtual reality holds exciting potential for enhancing the use of “exposure therapy,” in which patients are encouraged to actively and repeatedly engage difficult memories, or “hot spots.” Although the research is not yet ready for widespread clinical use, the technology is proving to be a valuable tool. By establishing a context for patients to tell their stories and uncover suppressed details, it can help kick-start the therapeutic process.

Israel is a logical place to start. Dr. Tamar Weiss at the University of Haifa was a pioneer of virtual-reality therapy during the second intifada, when buses were common targets for suicide bombers who killed and injured thousands of Israelis and Palestinians. “Some have suggested that our whole country is walking around with subliminal PTSD,” says Weiss. After the attacks on the World Trade Center, Dr. JoAnn Difede recognized the need to find effective treatment for survivors with PTSD, and only months later she had a simulation up and running at the Weill Medical College at Cornell University. “It was a pretty serious public-health problem,” says Difede. The technique is also being tested in U.S. military medical centers, where many veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have combat-related mental-health problems. It is especially important in work with soldiers who find therapy embarrassing but are less self-conscious when wearing a virtual-reality headset.”

“There must be more to life than this, figured Ulrich Schmid-Maybach, great-grandson and heir of legendary luxury-car designer Wilhelm Maybach, as he sat in a Cannes hotel room four years ago,” Bloomberg News Service reports.

“That’s when the urge hit him to use some of his family’s millions to help others less fortunate, Schmid-Maybach, 47, said during a recent interview in New York.

In 2006, he launched the Wilhelm & Karl Maybach Foundation in San Francisco, where he was born and raised, and started a mentoring program for young adults interested in careers ranging from the arts to science and medicine.

This fall, he extended the charity’s reach to help young photographers from disadvantaged backgrounds document the rebuilding of the World Trade Center in New York.

“We looked particularly for those who had faced adversity of some kind who need to be connected to people who can help them,'’ Schmid-Maybach said. “Poverty and talent aren’t mutually exclusive.'’

Clyde Novitz tells this story on www.opednews.com:
“The 911 terrorist attacks came at a politically sensitive time for our leadership in Washington, especially for George Bush and his father, and actually their friends in Saudi Arabia as well. It’s a story you’ve likely never heard because the war on terror has distracted our news media who were looking for an excuse to not report on it when the war on terror started. It was so convenient with all the players, even Osama bin Laden, being intimately connected to this one issue that none of them want the story of to come out. At least I assume Osama is on their team since it fits so well with a secret agenda to use the war on terror as camouflage to keep this story from coming out.

I’ve told the story related to what I believe is behind the attacks many times. But I don’t often refer directly to the attacks being connected to it because I don’t think many people would believe it even if they were looking at convincing arguments that there are questions that still have to be answered surrounding evidence we all witnessed first hand but no one else has ever questioned, perhaps because they never noticed what was missing from the big picture. What I’m referring to is the people falling or jumping off the World Trade Centers as the building burned before it collapsed. There was reported to be hundreds of them falling to their deaths within a half hour period. The burning question in my mind is what happened to the footage of their last moments alive.”

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.”