The Freedom Tower

A Star is born. Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night.

If the debilitating politics that drives this country these days had not stalled the reconstruction of Ground Zero, Tom Bevan says the Iranian leader who has taken command of the American media this week wouldn’t have been able to find himself a prayer manuel at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.
Bevan, writing in the Real Clear Politics in Time says: “Lost in all the hullabaloo over Ahmadinejad’s request last week to visit Ground Zero is a question I haven’t heard anyone ask: Would Mahmoud have been so keen to visit the site if it sported fresh, gleaming skyscrapers and represented a resurgence of New York’s vibrant business community instead of a open wound we’re still slowly struggling to heal? I doubt it.
But even if Ahmadinejad had still wanted to visit Ground Zero, that would have been the kind of photo op America could live with. Indeed, it might even have been one we wanted the world to see: a small, evil man surrounded by the backdrop of America’s resilient spirit.
Part of the reason Ahmadinejad’s request was so offensive is because more than six years after 9/11 it is shameful there is still a gaping hole in the center of Manhattan for the terror-supporting leader to try and exploit.”

From: Jeanne ( JeanneIris@earthlink.net )Ms. Marion Eggleton (posted from the Camden Courier Post) states the fearful message with vigor. Common? Yes. Sensible? I wonder.

Does she realize that her words support the very fear tactics of the generals whom she fervently admonishes, who are sworn to uphold the decisions made by their Commander in Chief?

The United States has intelligence operations in place at this very moment. It was our intelligence that assisted the capture of those involved with the recent terrorist activity in Europe. We should all pray that young women and men with high ingenuity and resourcefulness will continue to choose to enter the professions dedicated to preserving our peace. They work with intensity and intention 24/7, 365.

Our country is strong. We have intelligent, creative leaders who are ‘chafing at the bit’ to receive the winning number of votes of educated citizenry in the next election. Right now, the duty of every U.S. citizen is to analyze the evidence before us. Read, listen and, most of all, question those who wish to be the leaders in the upcoming years. Accept only logical answers. Encourage discussion.

Inventing fearful scenarios will only perpetuate ignorance. We have had enough ignorance!

We attract into our lives those conditions, which dominate our consciousness. I don’t know about you, but I intend to live a fulfilled, productive life, and I wish the same for my children along with those of my relatives and friends.

As long as there is breath in me, I will be the United States citizen who concentrates on and contributes to the advancement of this nation, illustrating to the world its strength of character, altruism, creativity, intelligence and stewardship. That is the only way to maintain a secure future for our loved ones.

The largest firefighter’s union in America will launch a video tomorrow attacking former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s reputation as a strong leader before and after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Television and print reports covering this 13-minute video – say it is set for distribution to firefighters and the general public by the International Association of Fire Fighters. It uses interviews with New York City firefighters and families of 9/11 victims to argue that Giuliani has exaggerated his record as mayor.
“He’s running on his 9/11 leadership and it was lacking — and there was none,” Jim Riches, a deputy chief in the New York Fire Department and a father of one of the 9/11 victims, says on the video, according to a transcript obtained by ABC News. “I blame Giuliani. He was the leader that day. And he was the leader for the eight years leading up to that.”Newsweek recently reported, “As Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign rolls along, there are more and more voices protesting that he’s not the 9/11 hero America considers him to be. First among them: some firefighters.”
That’s an understatement, say writers of a blog called The Carpetbagger Report. “First, it’s not just “some”; it’s the nation’s largest firefighters’ union. Second, they’re doing more than just protesting.
The documentary-style video — titled “Rudy Giuliani: Urban Legend” — specifically criticizes Giuliani for failing to ensure “interoperability” of communications devices; placing the city emergency command center in the World Trade Center even after the 1993 terrorist attack at the Twin Towers; and Giuliani’s decision to abandon efforts to recover remains of dead firefighters as he sought a quick clean-up of Ground Zero.

The Queens Gazette in New York reports that people from all 50 states and the District of Columbia have enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Registry. This comes from Congress woman Carolyn Maloney. The newspaper says Malone is waging her own campaign to acquire federal funds to treat New Yorkers who have become seriously ill after cleaning up at Ground Zero.
Maloney and Congressman Vito Fossella of Staten Island issued a report which found that thousands of Americans throughout the country were in the immediate vicinity of Ground Zero in the months following 9/11.
So the point here is that people who were once within striking distance of Ground Zero have moved and now live in all fifty states. The geography, of course, isn’t an issue.
The 9/11 health crisis is therefore a national problem. So Maloney seeks federal funds to monitor Americans throughout the country.

The Queens Gazette in New York reports that people from all 50 states and the District of Columbia have enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Registry. This comes from Congress woman Carolyn Maloney. The newspaper says Malone is waging her own campaign to acquire federal funds to treat New Yorkers who have become seriously ill after cleaning up at Ground Zero.
Maloney and Congressman Vito Fossella of Staten Island issued a report which found that thousands of Americans throughout the country were in the immediate vicinity of Ground Zero in the months following 9/11.
So the point here is that people who were once within striking distance of Ground Zero have moved and now live in all fifty states. The geography, of course, isn’t an issue.
The 9/11 health crisis is therefore a national problem. So Maloney seeks federal funds to monitor Americans throughout the country.

Work is progressing at Ground Zero, whether the media is reporting every detail or not.

A building on Church Street across the street from Ground Zero, for example, offers a panoramic view of the original World Trade Centre Towers. The buildings are gone now, for sure, but the work rebuilding the New Jersey bound Port Authority Trans Hudson (PATH) Terminal below destroyed in the collapse of the twin towers is amazing progress considering the tons of steel, engineering and lost life about this site that too place just a few years ago. Today it’s a bustling terminus that connects underground to the New York subway system, with thousands of commuters once more using it to come and go from Manhattan. Only in New York, only in this city where I learned how to make my way in the world, only in New York would an ordinary kid like me live most of his professional life amazed at the many things a city like New York, Montreal, Paris or Tokyo can grow from nothings like us.. New Yorkers, Montrealers. Parisians… In this picture of sections of lower Manhattan underground, you can see the route the PATH trains take, emerging from below the World Finance Center just below the building that will become the new Freedom Tower and a green plaza with reflecting pools, office towers and retail space.

A former Air Traffic Controller says the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks had to have been seen and tracked by the North American Aerospace Defense Command monitors on the morning of September 11th.
Within three hours of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Robin Hordon knew it was an inside job. He made these comments on Robert.blogspirit.com.
He had been an Air Traffic Controller (ATC) for eleven years before Reagan fired him and hundreds of his colleagues after they went on strike in the eighties. Having handled in-flight emergencies and two actual hijackings in his career, he is well qualified to comment on what NORAD should have been able to achieve in its response to the near simultaneous hijacking of four domestic passenger carriers on the morning of September 11th, 2001.
“There had to be something huge to explain why those aircraft weren’t shot down out of the sky. We have fighters on the ready to handle these situations twenty-four-seven. We have NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) monitors monitoring our skies twenty-four-seven. We have a lot of human beings, civilian and military, who care about doing their jobs.”
Well, one plane might have slipped through but not several planes off course, all heading towards key targets.


Freedom Tower designer David Childs has a new commission. Consulting Design Partner David Childs will team up with roger Duffy to design a Lake Placid branch of the Adirondack Museum. The branch will include an 8,000 square foot space for permanent and changing exhibits, educational programs, office space and storage.

The writers at “Webmerica.org” have a complaint.
“The name Freedom Tower is kind of dumb,” they say. The “World Trade Center” had global meaning,” according to the site’s bloggers.
The World Trade Center was a crossroad for world commerce, a place where world-size problems were pondered if not solved. Agreed. But Freedom Tower, they say “just evokes that same, stupid naming streak that’s been going on ever since the creation of the “Department of Homeland Security.”
I can’t say I agree 100% but I must say they’ve got something if we’re talking about that God awful Homeland Security Department. An investigation of the blunders it has hatched in the short time its been around would reveal more than a troubled nation like ours could stand right now.
Was Homeland was really the best word they could’ve come up with? Webmerica asks. “How about the Department of National Security, or Domestic Security… just something to give it a little FBI or CIA feel. Homeland is pretty much the dumbest word they could’ve used … makes the whole organization seem like kind of a joke next to something like the Defense Intelligence Agency, or the National Security Agency.
So, now they’re doing it again, with the Freedom Tower… Do we really need the word “Freedom” in the title to know what it stands for? So, I will put forth this notion: We are not all morons! These names seem almost “Kid Friendly,” when they should strike fear in the hearts of our enemies, or at the very least, command a modicum of respect.”
Lets be clear about this business of striking fear in our enemies, no one with an ounce of integrity is afraid of that big bad wolf America. And no American has a dog in that fight either. That approach has already cost of more then we can afford to squander.