The Freedom Tower

The Associated Press reports that a “German financial institution that was bailed out by its government earlier this year has signed a lease to move its New York headquarters to the rebuilt 7 World Trade Center.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and developer Larry Silverstein said WestLB is moving from midtown Manhattan to the top three floors of the 52-story tower. The original 7 World Trade Center collapsed in the 2001 terrorist attack.

The new building opened in 2006, and is 83 percent occupied, with more than 1.42 million square feet (130,000 million sq. meters) leased. HSBC bank recently pulled out of a deal to lease the top floors.

WestLB was one of several European institutions that lost money on U.S. subprime mortgages, and got a $7.8 billion bailout from Germany.”

Ben Bova writes in the Naplesnews.com:
“On that fateful date, Imperial Japan attacked the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor, in the Hawaiian Islands. Achieving almost complete surprise, Japanese planes sank the moored battleships that were the heart of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. And sealed the doom of Imperial Japan.

Since the Japanese struck before they declared war on the U.S., most Americans regarded it as a sneak attack. President Franklin D. Roosevelt called it “dastardly” in his speech the next day asking Congress for a declaration of war against Japan.

American attention had been focused on Europe, where Hitler’s Nazi war machine had conquered most of the continent and Great Britain was fighting for its life alone, without allies. Roosevelt was determined to give Britain all the help we could, short of actually going to war. But there was powerful anti-war sentiment in America, too powerful for even FDR to buck.

On that fateful Sunday morning, mothers were picketing the White House bearing anti-war signs. The next morning their sons were lining up at recruiting stations all across the nation. We had been attacked. The sense of outrage, the sheer fury at the shedding of American blood, swept the nation.

Pearl Harbor changed everything, so much so that revisionist historians to this day believe Roosevelt deliberately allowed the Japanese to attack us so that we could enter the war. Adolf Hitler — in one of his greatest blunders — foolishly declared war on the U.S. four days after Pearl Harbor.

Less than four years later, Hitler committed suicide in the blazing wreckage of his “thousand-year reich.” Japan’s cities were firebombed into ashes and the Japanese people were starving. The atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the final, crushing blows.

We won World War II. The Nazi and Japanese armies were defeated. The skies were swept clean of their planes. The Imperial Japanese Navy was at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

And then a strange thing happened.

Victorious, the most powerful nation on Earth, the United States, not only financed the rebuilding of Western Europe, but of our former enemies, Germany and Japan, as well. We helped the German and Japanese people to create democratic governments for themselves.

Instead of punishing our former enemies, we helped them to regain prosperity and dignity. Germany and Japan became our political allies and industrial powerhouses that competed with our own industries. We not only won the war. We won the peace that followed it.

Today we are engaged in a hard and bitter war against terrorism, a war with shadowy boundaries and an uncertain future. Like our entry into World War II, the war against terrorism began with a shocking attack on the United States. The terrorist attacks against the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D,C., on Sept. 11, 2001, killed more Americans than the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor.

Americans were outraged once again. But their fury abated as the years went by. We knocked out the Taliban regime in Afghanistan quickly enough, then invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein from his dictatorial reign in Baghdad.

But we have not won a clear-cut victory. Terrorist attacks still rock Baghdad and other parts of Iraq. Many question why we are there in the first place. Islamic jihadists are trying to reassert control of Afghanistan.

There has not been a major terrorist strike in the U.S. since 2001. Many Americans are irked at the security regulations that make life a little more difficult at airports. I myself have complained about post office regulations that make it harder to mail packages, particularly overseas.

Vice President-elect Joe Biden has warned that we can expect a terrorist “test” of our new president soon after Barack Obama is inaugurated. Or perhaps before then. Will that rouse American ire once more?

Be that as it may, our troops are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The terrorists fight a guerrilla-type war, striking where defenses are weakest — usually at innocent civilians — and scurrying away from firefights with armed soldiers.

President-elect Obama has promised to bring our troops home as quickly as possible. How and when will he accomplish this? Will we simply declare victory in Iraq and leave, while the various factions within that nation struggle to form a stable government? Democracy is a new idea in that ancient land; the government in Baghdad is fragile and fractionated. It might not survive without strong American support, both military and financial.

Afghanistan is even more of a collection of tribes rather than a modern nation in the Western sense. Since time immemorial, conquering armies have been baffled by its rugged terrain and tough natives. Alexander the Great couldn’t conquer Afghanistan; he married a local princess instead. The British and the Russians dueled over Afghanistan for generations; neither of them could take firm control.

It’s all well and good to bring our boys (and girls) home from these foreign wars. But the important thing is not merely to win the battles. We must strive to win the peace that follows the fighting.

How can we live in peace with jihadists who want to destroy us? Perhaps the key is to realize that these fanatics make up only a small percentage of the total populations of the Muslim lands.

We need to help the people of those countries build stable governments and, as our own Constitution asserts, help them to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty” for themselves and their children.

That’s an even harder task than fighting a war. But there will be no peace until we can accomplish it.”

The Hindustan Times reports dusk thickened “at the Gateway of India, (as) thousands of quivering points of light lit up the evening. Seven days after Mumbai had been bloodied by terror attacks whose ramifications spread beyond the borders of the country, a ravaged city came together at the very spot where the carnage had been unleashed in a show of support unparalleled in its scale in recent Indian history.

Lights went on in the attacked Taj Mahal Hotel in rooms that faced the Gateway. More than 10,000 had turned up hours even before the scheduled start of the march.What began as a small candlelit vigil at the harbour front on Monday had gained momentum over the next two days through text messages that urged people to turn up at the Gateway for this peaceful protest march. On Wednesday evening, it revealed itself as a tricolour-waving, overwhelming show of solidarity for the victims of 26/11.

Lights went on in the attacked Taj Mahal Hotel in rooms that faced the Gateway. More than 10,000 had turned up hours even before the scheduled start of the march.

There were T-shirts that said ‘Mumbai meri jaan’ or ‘I love Mumbai’; there were ones that said ‘Enough is enough’ or ‘No vote, no taxes, no protection, no security.’ All the T-shirts were white, and every other person seemed to be wearing one.

Aashay Doshi, an 18-year-old student of Jai Hind College, and his friends were sporting T-shirts with printed slogans. His said: ‘Just because we have spirit don’t exploit it’. “We’ll give the money to JJ Hospital,” he said.
Weary of rhetoric, people wanted to be involved in the polity of the country; and they wouldn’t stand for any more ineptitude.

Jehaan Shah from The Flag Corporation, which makes flags for occasions, had turned up with tricolours large enough to be held aloft by 10 people. There were spontaneous singings of the national anthem. People stood on dividers, on tops of cars or buses or vans. And mourners lit candles on the pavement and the road, turning a usually frenetic area of Mumbai into numerous mini-shrines for the dead.

Adman Alyque Padamsee was distributing leaflets that sought suggestions from citizens about how to fight terror. “We’ll meet here again in a month,” he said. “By then, these would have been forwarded to the authorities.”

There were chants: “We want justice.” There were street plays. There was anger: “The politicians need to change,” said Sheetal Parikh, who runs a boutique near the Taj.

But most of all there was the sense of a grieving, seething city having found a way to show the emotions that had been bottled up and building as seven traumatic days — starting at 9.50 pm last Wednesday at Leopold’s café — unfolded.

Mumbai was the focal point, but the roar of change could be heard across India: at Jantar Mantar in Delhi, in Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore.”

“In a significant boost to downtown,” Crain’s New York Business says “German bank WestLB has signed a 15-year lease for the top three floors at 7 World Trade Center.

Asking rent for the 129,000-square-foot deal, which covers floors 50 to 52, was $80 a square foot. The bank, currently located at 1211 Sixth Ave., plans to move into the tower owned by Larry Silverstein in the second quarter of 2009.

The deal comes roughly two months after London-based HSBC pulled out of a deal to lease 300,000 square feet at the tower after bids to sell its own local headquarters at 452 Fifth Ave. came in well below the $600 million asking price.

The building, which opened in 2006, is now 83% occupied. But even after the deal, Mr. Silverstein still needs to lease seven floors. Additionally, there are four floors available for sublet by ABN Amro, a Dutch bank that was purchased by a consortium of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Fortis and Banco Santander in 2007.”

Authentic USS NEW YORK (LPD21) memorabilia are now available from the Ship’s Store section of the official USS NEW YORK Commissioning Committee Web site located at www.USSNY.org. USS NEW YORK is a U.S. Navy ship currently under construction in Louisiana. The ship, containing more than seven tons of steel from the fallen World Trade Center, is expected to be commissioned on November 7, 2009 in New York Harbor.

Visitors to the Ship’s Store section of www.USSNY.org will be able to purchase authentic commemorative items and collectables that make great holiday gifts, such as:
— The official ball caps bearing the ship’s crest that the crew wear:
the blue cap worn by Navy sailors and the red cap worn by the U.S.
Marines;
— A polo shirt with the ship’s crest and a t-shirt with a silhouette
of the ship and icons of New York, including the Statue of Liberty crown
and the World Trade towers;
— A pewter model of the stealth ship, set on a wooden base;
— “USS NEW YORK,” a History Channel show that tells the story of
the building of the new ship as well as the distinguished history of her
predecessor, the battleship USS NEW YORK, which won three battle stars
in World War II at Okinawa, Iwo Jima and North Africa.
— Coffee mugs, a tankard and thermal container with the ships crest; and
— Patches, ties and lapel pins with the ship’s crest.

Proceeds from the purchases made on the Web site will go towards the events surrounding the commissioning, including welcoming crew families, and a USS NEW YORK Foundation which will provide scholarships for children of the ship’s first and future crew members through the USS New York Foundation.

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum is conducting its second annual holiday cobblestone campaign.

Donations of $100 will sponsor one of the granite cobblestones that will line the pathways surrounding memorial pools in Lower Manhattan, Newsday, the Long Island newspaper reports.

“The two pools, set within the original footprints of the twin towers, will include 30-foot waterfalls cascading down the sides.

Inscribed around the waterfalls will be the names of the nearly 3,000 victims killed on Sept. 11, 2001 in New York City, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Penn., as well as in the Feb. 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing.”

Alfred Brociner, a prominent mechanical engineer who helped design an emergency cooling system for the World Trade Center after the 1993 terrorist bombing, died Thursday at his Plainview home after a long illness. He was 80.
Newsday, the Long Island, newspaper says “Brociner was born in Bucharest, Romania, and graduated with a mechanical engineering degree from what is now known as the Polytechnic University of Bucharest.
He emigrated to the United States in 1963 with his wife, Rolanda, and son, Dan.
For nearly three decades before his retirement in 1996, Brociner worked for the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, retiring as chief mechanical engineer in the engineering department. He enjoyed his work and was dedicated to his job, and he appreciated the friendship of his colleagues, his family said.
Brociner’s family provided excerpts from a speech given at a retirement dinner honoring him. “At the core of the [Port Authority’s] mechanical engineering accomplishments for 29 years, he was responsible for designing some of the largest and most complex mechanical systems serving transportation anywhere,” the speaker said.”

The Chicago Tribune says “In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, vice presidential candidate Joe Biden offered an inconvenient prediction: “It will not be six months,” he said, “before the world tests Barack Obama. We’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

History is on Biden’s side. In the first year of each of the last two presidents’ terms, Osama bin Laden has claimed the mantle of “tester in chief,” his Al Qaeda operatives conducting lethal strikes on the American homeland. On Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush and his national security team were caught unaware. This despite a clear trend from the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, bin Laden’s official declaration of war on the U.S. in 1998, the bombings of U.S. Embassies in Africa and an attack on a U.S. warship in 2000. Holdovers from the previous administration were sounding the alarm. Counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke argued repeatedly: “We urgently need a principals [Cabinet] level review of the Al Qaeda threat.” But as the bipartisan commission investigating Sept. 11 found: “No principals committee meeting on Al Qaeda was held until Sept. 4, 2001.”

Similarities between Sept. 11 and the terrorist attack in the first months of President Bill Clinton’s administration are not coincidental. Thirty-seven days after he took office, Al Qaeda operative Ramzi Yousef parked a van filled with explosives in the basement of the World Trade Center. Yousef was the nephew of the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attack, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. His plan was designed to kill 40,000 people by toppling one tower of the center into a second. Fortunately, the driver failed to park the van at a location that would have had maximum effect. Six people were killed and 1,000 injured.
The newly elected president and vice president are acutely conscious of the threat posed by bin Laden. They know that bin Laden has challenged the Al Qaeda movement to trump Sept. 11. During the campaign, Obama recognized that “the single most important national security threat that we face is nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists.” He criticized the Bush administration for taking its eye off the perps who attacked us on Sept. 11 and vowed that he would “find, disrupt and destroy Al Qaeda.”

The Globe and Mail.com says “More than any other place, Mumbai is the centre of the New India: open, dynamic, cosmopolitan - the capital of frothy films, capitalist finance, champagne lifestyles and everything else that extremists despise. In that sense, Wednesday’s attacks recalled the 9/11 attacks on New York, a deliberate assault on the capital of U.S. finance in a city renowned for its go-go pace and relentless materialism.

As such, it was an irresistible target for the attackers who burst into gilded hotel lobbies with guns blazing on Wednesday, killing more than 100 people.

No one can say for sure yet who was responsible for the highly organized attacks, but the choice of Mumbai and the targets there - first-class hotels, a café popular with Western tourists, a Jewish centre - appeared to be a deliberate assault on all that Mumbai represents.

“Mumbai is a symbol of wealthy, modernized, Westernized India; an India that, in the mind of radicalized Muslim youth, has lost it way,” said University of Toronto intelligence expert Wesley Wark.

Prof. Wark said homegrown extremist groups such as the Indian Mujahedeen have been trying to court disadvantaged Muslims who are being left behind in the country’s rush to riches. If those groups are responsible, the attacks “could be the start of a war of poor against the rich, or country against the cities,” he said. “In that respect, Mumbai is a perfect target.”

Mumbai is the Manhattan, Chicago and Hollywood of India rolled into one. Bollywood, India’s film industry, is centred in the city. Almost all the big business dynasties, from the Ambanis to the Birlas, make their homes there. The owner of the glorious Taj Mahal Palace hotel, invaded by the attackers and set ablaze in the fighting, is the Tata Group, headed by India’s best known business mogul, Ratan Tata.

Mumbai’s stature has grown as India has emerged from its inward-looking, protectionist shell in the past two decades, opening up to trade and investment and embracing the free market with a distinctly Indian verve. It is a mandatory stop for any executive hoping to drum up business with booming India and a magnet for tourists keen to see “Indian shining,” the phrase a former government used to tag the country’s rise.

By hitting it, the attackers could achieve several objectives at once. First, they could kill or seize Westerners, who congregate conveniently in the city’s big hotels and night spots with little or no protection.

Second, they could guarantee themselves around-the-world coverage. A string of deadly attacks over the past year in lesser cities such as Ahmedabad and Surat got little coverage internationally, even though they killed more than 200 people.

Third, they could wound India’s $1.2-trillion (U.S.) economy, already faltering from the global economic slowdown. As India’s biggest city, with a population of up to 20 million, Mumbai accounts for 40 per cent of the country’s foreign trade, 40 per cent of its income tax revenue and 10 per cent of its factory employment.”

“As symbolic as the felling of the twin towers in New York, that’s how one expert has described the string of co-ordinated and bloody attacks that have struck India’s financial capital, Mumbai.

Emblems of India’s western orientation .. the Edwardian period Taj Hotel and what was previously known as the Victoria Jubilee Terminus, now the Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus were hit, as well as other key locations, all at the heart of India’s booming capitalist economy. It was a guaranteed way to catch the massive media attention of India’s more than fifty 24-hour news channels …

LINDA MOTTRAM: If the attackers had a message, the clues seemed to be in the targets .. the most prominent and oldest structures at Mumbai’s heart, particularly the Taj Hotel and the train terminus that stand as reminders of India’s long western orientation.

Professor Robin Jeffrey specialises in the modern history, politics and media of India.

ROBIN JEFFREY: The hotel was opened I think in 1903 and the railway station was Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 so they’ve been these funny old Indo-Cyrecenic buildings that have been iconic in Mumbai, as much I guess as the twin towers would have been in New York, only older.

LINDA MOTTRAM: With its long history of links with India, Australia joined the world in emphatic condemnation of the events. Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in the Australian Parliament.

KEVIN RUDD: This cowardly attack on India’s peace and democracy reminds us all that international terrorism is far from defeated and that we must all maintain our vigilance.

LINDA MOTTRAM: And the country’s Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull.

MALCOLM TURNBALL: Let us spare a thought of admiration for India, that vast country of over a Billion people which maintains a rich and vibrant democracy and which is now facing these murderous cowards.

LINDA MOTTRAM: As Australia pledged all relevant assistance to India, particularly with forensics and counter-terrorism the national security cabinet met in Canberra, as did similar security bodies the world over. Evidence of a broadly anti-western attack, but perhaps focussed on those at war against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, came with news that British and American passport holders were singled out by some of the attackers. There were clues but no certain answers though to the questions of who and why. The group claiming responsibility for the series of co-ordinated and ongoing attacks using guns and handgrenades had never been heard of — Deccan Mujahideen. But there are other groups that could have provided the manpower for the onslaught. One of Australia’s pre-eminent terrorism experts, who’s been speaking to other experts in South Asia is Professor Clive Williams.

CLIVE WILLIAMS: It probably includes people from the Students Islamic Movement of India and it may well include elements from Lashkar e Toiba in India as well.

LINDA MOTTRAM: Professor Williams says its possible Deccan Mujahideen may never be heard of again .. though there is another recent arrival among militant groups that appears more persistent.

CLIVE WILLIAMS: The Indian Mujahideen which has come on the field in the lsat 12 months is a more sustained group I think because it does include radical elements from the Students Islamic Movement of India and it also includes people who’ve come back from training in Pakistan so I think the Indian Mujahideen we’ll certainly hear more about, I suspect we probably won’t hear much more about this particular one but clearly I would think its a Muslim group and what its doing is probably related more to external events than necessarily events in India.

LINDA MOTTRAM: And there’s another possible strand to the attacks .. the criminal thread. Professor Robin Jeffrey again.

ROBIN JEFFREY: The Mumbai underworld is almost certainly involved in some ways simply because its easy to I think rent a criminal in Mumbai if you need one or to cut into gangs who will do terrible things on your behalf if you pay them sufficiently so there’s the fact that some of the leading policemen have been murdered in the course of this suggests at least that it could be payback for some of the Bombay underworld to get at some of the top coppers who have made life hard for them.

LINDA MOTTRAM: For 400 years, Mumbai’s Gateway to India has stood as the country’s western access from the Arabian Sea, testament to the city’s cosmopolitan character. This violence, observers seem to agree, is broadly an attack on that identity, and probably also a strike against those fighting against Afghanistan’s militant forces.”