The Freedom Tower

The London Times says a “surviving section of a staircase used by people escaping from the World Trade Centre after the 9/11 terrorist attack is moved to the site of a museum. The 37 concrete steps, left, are one of the most emotional reminders of the twin towers, which were destroyed with the loss of almost 3,000 lives in 2001. The stairs, supported by a specially constructed metal frame, were moved a short distance from Ground Zero to their place outside a future museum. After years of delay, construction of a building named Freedom Tower and a memorial is now taking shape.”

The Associated Press reports that “Two dozen family members of Sept. 11 victims signed a letter Wednesday saying they don’t believe in the fairness of the military trials of five men charged with orchestrating the terrorist attacks, and some suggested their opinions cost them attendance at the proceedings.
While the family members who attended this week’s proceedings at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba expressed support for the tribunals, they also said “that many of us do not believe these military commissions to be fair, in accordance with American values, or capable of achieving the justice that 9/11 family members and all Americans deserve,” according to the letter released by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Robin Theurkauf, whose husband was killed at the World Trade Center, said she wanted to attend the proceedings but was denied a spot in a lottery for family members.
“I testified for the defense in the (Zacarias) Moussaoui trial,” Theurkauf said, referring to the convicted Sept. 11 conspirator. “I think I was skipped over because of that.”
Lorie Van Auken, whose husband Kenneth was killed at the trade center, also wanted to attend the hearings. She has been a prominent critic of the Guantanamo proceedings, accusing the government of using torture to coerce confessions.”

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey today began providing the public with a front-row seat to the activity behind the World Trade Center fence, and outside of it, to those who register to receive e-mail or text message updates about rebuilding issues. The “WTC Updates” will provide notification via text message about progress happening at the site, as well as important community, commuter and traffic information, new construction photos and videos, Web site features, and press releases.

The Port Authority also announced that it has launched the second “Ask the Port Authority” feature on its World Trade Center Web site - www.wtcprogress.com.

The public is invited to submit questions about the World Trade Center Transportation Hub to Mark Pagliettini, the head of construction for the project. Questions will be taken through December 9, and answers will be provided on the Web site. Those who sign up for the WTC updates system will be alerted via e-mail or text message that their questions have been answered.

The World Trade Center electronic updates are the most recent customer-service initiative launched by the Port Authority to provide real-time information to those who use its airports, tunnels, bridges and PATH system. The agency now allows customers to receive real-time information about delays and incidents that would impact their travel plans. Since the PATH alerts system was activated in 2006, approximately 36,000 customers have subscribed.

Those who wish to subscribe to the World Trade Center updates service should go to the Web site. The site was launched this fall to provide up-to-date information about the rebuilding as part of the agency’s efforts to improve transparency and accountability.

The Port Authority designed the WTC alerts system with the assistance of MIS Sciences Corporation of Burbank, California.

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.”

The New York Observer reports the “Port Authority of New York and New Jersey failed today in an attempt to sell $300 million in bonds, a large offering that was met with zero bids. The failure seems to speak more to the continued glacial freeze of the credit markets than it does to the economic stability of the Port Authority, as the credit agencies still gave the agency high ratings.
Regardless of the reason, the fact that the authority was unable to sell bonds could mean big trouble down the road if the agency continues to have such problems. The $30 billion capital plan requires that the agency continually sell bonds to finance the construction of its major projects, including the Freedom Tower and other projects at the World Trade Center.

The agency, in a statement, said the bond offering was done in advance of when the money is needed.

Full statement below:

The Port Authority today tested the financial markets by offering a competitive sale of $300 million in short-term notes, and received no bids. The transaction was held well in advance of the need for capital funds, as is the Port Authority’s standard practice, and the lack of bids will have no impact on any current Port Authority capital projects. Our credit ratings and our financial health remain strong, with Standard and Poor’s and Fitch Ratings Inc. just in the last week reaffirming AA- ratings, and Moody’s just reaffirming Aa3 ratings, and we are confident that the markets will recover in the upcoming year when we plan to return with another sale.”

The New York Observer reports the “Port Authority of New York and New Jersey failed today in an attempt to sell $300 million in bonds, a large offering that was met with zero bids. The failure seems to speak more to the continued glacial freeze of the credit markets than it does to the economic stability of the Port Authority, as the credit agencies still gave the agency high ratings.
Regardless of the reason, the fact that the authority was unable to sell bonds could mean big trouble down the road if the agency continues to have such problems. The $30 billion capital plan requires that the agency continually sell bonds to finance the construction of its major projects, including the Freedom Tower and other projects at the World Trade Center.

The agency, in a statement, said the bond offering was done in advance of when the money is needed.

Full statement below:

The Port Authority today tested the financial markets by offering a competitive sale of $300 million in short-term notes, and received no bids. The transaction was held well in advance of the need for capital funds, as is the Port Authority’s standard practice, and the lack of bids will have no impact on any current Port Authority capital projects. Our credit ratings and our financial health remain strong, with Standard and Poor’s and Fitch Ratings Inc. just in the last week reaffirming AA- ratings, and Moody’s just reaffirming Aa3 ratings, and we are confident that the markets will recover in the upcoming year when we plan to return with another sale.”

“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.