Friday, October 09, 2015

This letter was sent to the Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE. It doesn't look like the ~`368 are going to publish it so at least it get some circulation here. Robert Halfhill 625 West 31st Street, Room 334 Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55408-2922 Phone: 612-203-4845 Email: rhalfhill@juno.com Contrary to Dr. Ben Carson's claim that a Muslim cannot be President of the United States, article 6, section 3 of the U.S. Constitution states that "no religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." The First Amendment declares that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." As George Washington stated in 1790 in his letter to the Jewish community of Newport Rhode Island, the government of the United States "requires only that those who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens." The Treaty with Tripoli, negotiated under George Washington and John Adams, stated that the United States was not based on the Christian religion and would have no reason for hostility towards Muslims. The lack of any mention of God or Christianity in the Constitution was complained of by Christians during the debates over ratification but the Constitution was ratified anyway, showing that the founders knew what they were doing. Because of presidential candidates like Donald Trump, I suppose it should not be too surprising that candidates for President should be so ignorant of the provisions of the Constitution or the founding principles of this country. What is truly mind boggling however is that Ben Carson, who managed not only to graduate from high school but also college and continue on to obtain an M.D. degree should be so ignorant about this country's founding document. I learned about the Treaty with Tripoli and the U.S. not being based on the Christian religion in my American history course when I was a Junior in high school! Robert Halfhill

Saturday, April 09, 2011

DEFENSE OF NAMBLA: REPLY TO LYDIA HOWELL

Duncan:
I spent all morning looking for the article on NAMBLA and it turned up on the 19th page of my SENT file. Even though I told Lydia Howell I was only getting my thoughts together for a possible future publication, I went ahead and published it on the Green Party of Minnesota discussion list. I thought I had put in either my Web page or blog but I was unable to locate it there.

I hope you get this article. As you can see in the addenda at the end, aol has placed a block on my email address so the I could not send email to aol addresses. They told me the block depends oon the number of complaints they receive so I guess a large number of complainants found my political views objectionable. I notice you have an aol address so I hope this doesn't keep this article from reaching you.

I'm sorry that I was unable to answer your question about whether the bounds of discussion allowed in our community had shrunk in the last thirty years. But the main thing I have noticed in the Minneapolis GLBTI communities is that there has been virtually no political discussion in its publications in recent years, not that the bounds of allowable discussion had shrunk. There may be an even broader range of siscussion on the Internet and facebook since it is harder to exclude unpopular groups from these media.

Robert Halfhill


AUGUST 13, 2006

On August 8, 2006, Lydia Howell posted David Thorstad's
article, "Marriage, Marketing, Tailending: The U.S. Left and Same Sex
Marriage," stating that "I adamantly oppose the aims of NAMBLA but, I

do think Thorstad raises some interesting critiques and points that
are food for thought."
I do not know what Lydia Howell thinks the aims of NAMBLA (North
American Man-Boy Love Association) are. However, NAMBLA only
supports CONSENSUAL sexual relations between people of any age, no
matter how old or how young and no matter how wide the difference in
age between the consensual partners is. NAMBLA does not support rape
and tales about NAMBLA owning a Lear Jet to fly children from any
area of the country to its members are not true.
D.J. West in his HOMOSEXUALITY pointed out that the sublime
discussions of love by Socrates in Plato's SYMPOSIUM were about
what "we would call perversion." For those Gays who condemn NAMBLA
and sex with people under whatever is the magic age of consent in the
particular jurisdiction in question, that is also precisely what
Socrates was expounding on in the SYMPOSIUM. Although not all Gays
are attracted to males under the arbitrary age of consent, those Gays
who dismiss sex with underage persons as criminal are saying that
Socrates, Plato, Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo, and Walt Whitman
should have been put in jail!
Wainwright Churchill in HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR AMONG MALES pointed
out that Western Culture is one of the most erotophobic cultures
known. Conservatives view sex as evil. But even liberals and
radicals, although they claim they view sex as good, also conceive
sex as good but also dangerous, just as electricity is good but can
also kill you if your are not careful, and also view sex as good only
if it can be justified by marriage or love. Very few people believe
that sex can be enjoyed for its own sake. Recreational sex is good
in itself and needs no additional justification, although it is even
better if it is conjoined with love.
We need to ask ourselves why people get so upset over CONSENSUAL
sex between an adult and a child and assume that somehow the child
has been damaged. If the sex is consensual and enjoyed by both
partners, then, once we have got beyond the erotophobia of our
culture, is is obvious that no harm has been done but, in fact, only
good if both partners enjoyed the encounter. Research has shown that
no harm is done to the child if the people around him or her to not
get so upset. I remember reading in popular magazine articles
about child rearing in the 1950 that the child was unlikely to be
irrevocably damaged by a sexual encounter with an adult if the adults
around the child did not indicate that they now believed he or she
was irreparable damaged or, even worse, that they now thought he or
she was "bad."
I have thought that I should write something for the various Green
discussion lists about my views on this subject but, so far, the
occasion to do so has not come up. I am writing this to you off
list in order to organize my thoughts for a response to your post on
list. The nearest I have come to writing about this on list was to
forward a post about the hysteria and witch hunts around the country
about child adult sex to the Minnesota and 5th district Green
discussion lists. Even this provoked an email from Mark Snyder
asking why I had posted the article and adding, gratuitously, that
the posts must always be in the context of respect for others. I do
not know what his remark about respect for others had to do with
anything since my forwarding the post was not even in reply to anyone
else. I replied, saying that the hysteria and witch hunting over
child adult sex was likely to have a negative effect on GLBTI'S. He
replied, saying that I should post an explanation of the relevance of
my post but, in the press of other work, I never got around to it.
And this witch hunt about child adult sex has had a negative
effect on many people, not just GLBTI'S. The California scandal over
the Little Rascals day care center, operated by Peggy MacMartin-
Buckley, one of her children, and her grandson, Raymond Buckley,
continued for a decade and cost millions of dollars in legal expenses
before it was established that the state had no case and the case was
dismissed. By that time, Peggy MacMartin-Buckley and Raymond Buckley
has been in prison for years and Peggy MacMartin-Buckley had been
assaulted by other inmates who knocked out all her teeth. Peggy
MacMartin-Buckley tried to sue the state but the judge dismissed her
suit, saying that as long as state officials had acted in good faith,
they were immune from suit. That may be the way the law IS but it is
not the way it SHOULD BE. The law should provide that if a person
has been imprisoned for years unjustly, there should be a law
providing them with enough monetary compensation to make them wealthy
for the rest of their life.
But there are some additional comments Thorstad made in his attack
on the demand for same sex marriage and equal marital rights for Gays
and Lesbians that require a reply. He attacks the demand for same
sex marriage as an attempt by Gays and Lesbians to assimilate to
heterosexuals and achieve middle class respectability and says it
only became popular after the numbers of Gays and Lesbians who poured
out of the closet in response to Anita Bryant's Save Our Children
campaign made it safe for more conservative Gays and Lesbians to come
out. He claims that the recent decisions against same sex marriage
in five state courts "may have sounded the death knell for this issue
in the United States, even if it did not drive a stake through its
heart."
It no more "sounded the death knell" than the Hardwick
decision "sounded the death knell" for the fight against sodomy
laws. And no more than the Hawaii Supreme Court's deliberately
delaying its final decision until the voters had time to amend their
state constitution to allow marital discrimination against Gays and
Lesbians "sounded the death knell" for same sex marriage in the
1990's. It no more sounded "the death knell" than Plessey v.
Fergerson sounded "the death knell" for the fight against separate
but equal in the 1890's. And it cannot "sound the death knell" as
the United States becomes more and more unique among the advanced
industrial democracies in not guaranteeing the right of same sex
marriage with the nearest counter example being in Canada, right over
our northern border.
Thorstad also denounced hate crimes legislation as a manifestation
of identity politics and as "thought crimes legislation." Hate
crimes legislation is not thought crimes legislation. Intent
or "thoughts" have long been legitimate considerations in the law.
An example is intent being considered in distinguishing between
first, second and third degree murder and distinguishing those from
first and second degree manslaughter. Intent is necessary in
determining which of these five crimes have been committed and
therefore, the severity of the sentence imposed.
Furthermore, a hate crime against a member of a particular
minority group heightens fear among other members of that group than
a generic crime against a member of the general public can heighten
fear among members of the general population.
Also, hate crimes against a member of a minority increase the
probability of crimes, i.e. acts, against other members of that
group. Prosecutors are likely to assign a higher probability to
prosecuting crimes that have a higher sentence. And the successful
prosecution of a hate crime can undercut the general impression that
people have carte blanche to attack members of unpopular minorities
and therefore lower the probability of further crimes, I.E. ACTS,
against that unpopular minority.
Thorstad argues that "there is no such thing as'gay people' --
only homosexual acts -- that this was an abstract concept that erased
fluidity and ambiguity and discovery, that diverted attention from
decriminalizing consensual sexual acts that everyone had the
potential to engage in, regardless of their sexual identity, and that
turned freedom from sexual oppression into a question of mere
identity politics."
Thorstad is defending the position popular in much
contemporary "modern thought," that Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals,
Transgender and Intersexed People have no existence as objectively
existing groups and are mere "socially constructed" categories which
are not even present in most cultures.
It is true that the less GLBTI's are singled out and persecuted in
some societies, the less Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transgender
People and Intersexed People are less likely to think of themselves
as
distinct groups and if there were a society that lacked any such
singling out, Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals in that society might not
think of themselves as separate groups at all, that society's view
being only that some people liked only sex with the opposite sex,
other people liked only sex with their own sex, and that others liked
both.
However, even in that hypothetical society, it would still be an
objective fact about people that they desired sex with the same,
opposite or both genders. And if that hypothetical society did not
consider it important whether a person identified as being the same
as or the opposite of their bodily gender, maybe Transgender Persons
would not think of themselves as separate groups but it would still
be an objective fact about them whether they identified as the same
or opposite of their bodily gender. And if that hypothetical society
did not consider it important whether people were born with ambiguous
and not distinct male or female genitalia, maybe Intersexed People
would not think of themselves as a distinct group either, the general
impression in that society being only that some people were born with
distinct male or female genitalia and that some were born with
ambiguous genitalia. However, it would still be an objective fact
about Intersexed People in that hypothetical society that their
genitalia were not definitely either male or female.
Jonathan Katz abandoned his earlier view in GAY AMERICAN HISTORY
that Gayness and Lesbianism were objective traits for the view that
Gays and Lesbians were "socially constructed" categories with no
objective existence in his later GAY AND LESBIAN ALMANAC. He went
from, for instance, the true statement that the early puritans
thought in terms of specific people who committed the specific crimes
of engaging in sex with members of their own gender, sex with
children, sex with animals, etc and not in terms of groups such as
homosexuals, pedophiles and pederasts, zoophiliacs, etc to the false
statement that the puritans apparently had an undifferentiated sexual
attraction to both sexes, adults and children, animals, etc. An
example that will make this clear is skin color. It means different
things in other societies and is categorized differently than it is
in contemporary
American society. It has even been categorized differently at
earlier times in American society. In the early twentieth century,
Finns were not considered white. I suppose if there were a society
that had gotten beyond racial prejudice, different skin colors might
not mean any more than different hair colors do today. But the
actual color of the skin remains the same, no matter how it is
categorized in different societies. An analogous error to the error
Katz made in the case of sexual orientation would be as if he said
with respect to our hypothetical society that had gotten beyond
racial prejudice that the people in that society apparently had skins
of an indeterminate color instead of skins that were white, black,
brown, yellow or red!
This modern attempt to consider Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals,
Transgender People and Intersexed People as mere "socially
constructed" categories instead of separate peoples with a proud
history erases our proud history and ties in with the wimpy tendency
of "modern," middle class, thought to avoid taking a definite
position on anything. It also ties in with the tendency that
Thorstad
decries of less proud and militant Gays and Lesbians to want to blend
in and assimilate with the heterosexual majority. After all, as so
many post Stonewall Gays and Lesbians are fond of saying, "I'm just a
human being."!!!! To paraphrase Jesse Jackson, we were born Gay or
Lesbian among the heterosexuals, not heterosexual in Gay or Lesbian!!!
Thorstad argues that identity politics and considering GLBTI's
to be actual real groups instead of socially constructed categories
relegates "gay liberation to a nearly weightless interest group."
However, 10% of the population can in no sense be considered "nearly
weightless." Thorstad says supporting equal rights for "gay
people"
is "something any liberal capitalist could support," ignoring the
fact that capitalism has certainly dug in its heels against even
tolerating GLBTI'S, let along granting us equal rights. Thorstad
says identity politics has degenerated into the reductio ad absurdum
of an "alphabet soup" of acronyms, "GLBT, LGBT, GLBTQIA,
etc." I too
considered it absurd to go beyond GLBT until I realized that people
born with indeterminate genitalia are an objectively existing group
and conceded that ONE more group had to be added. However, I
consider
it absurd to divide the groups into subgroups, such as Transgender
People into Tsub 1, Tsub2, etc. And Q for Questioning People is
unnecessary since all the questioning people will fit into one or the
other five categories. And I forget what A stands for. It seems as
if people have gotten caught up in a contest to prove how politically
correct they are by thinking up a new category to add.
However, Gays and Lesbians are separate communities in that many,
though not all, Gays and Lesbians have the majority of their social
network among others Gays or Lesbians. The old bromide "speak for
yourself" is irrelevant here since the statement is based on my
observation of other Gays and Lesbians. And Bisexuals are subject to
bigotry from both the heterosexual and Gay and Lesbian communities,
so they will qualify as a separate group also. And whether people
identify as the same gender as their bodily gender or whether they
were botn with indeterminate genitalia are objectively true facts
about them so Transgender and Intersexed People will also qualify as
separate groups. The majority heterosexual society until recently
thought of us as all one group and lumped us all together so we
tended to
think of ourselves as one group also. But we are not one community
but a coalition of five separate communities, each with its own
distinctive set of overlapping, through similar, oppressions and each
with a distinct need for our own separate organizations as well as a
need to act in coalition with one another.
Thorstad argues that " in all the ink spilled over gay marriage,
other forms of marriage are not even countenanced, such as polygamy
or between men and boys, as in the Siwa Oasis." He says "The State
should get out of the marriage business. Society should extend
recognition to all kinds of civil union arrangements between
consenting individuals, whether man and woman, , man and man, woman
and woman, man and boy, grandparent and grandchild, communal
arrangements, and so on. Marriage should be relegated to the purely
private and religious domain. Every citizen should be treated
equally before the state and be guaranteed the same rights and
privileges, without regard to conjugal or marital status. Separate
church and state!"
Thorstad dismisses the demand for Gay marriage as part of " the
gay assimilationist agenda" -- incidentally, Thorstad's consistent
refusal to capitalize Gay demonstrates the extent to which HE has
been sucked into the Gay assimilationist agenda -- and states
that "Oddly, left groups that uncritically support gay marriage are
silent about the way marriage is treated in Cuba." He quotes Vilma
Espin, birth name Mariela Castro, Raul Castro's daughter and Fidel
Castro's niece, who when asked if Cuban Gays are going to demand a
right to marriage, "pointed to Cuba's casual approach to marriage and
its no-fault divorce." "Marriage is not as important in Cuba as in
other more Catholic countries," she said. "Here consensual pairing
is more important. What matters is love." Thorstad concluded: "So
far, Cuban Gays have not demanded marriage. If they use their head,
they won't."
First, the fact that I want to affirm any relationship I succeed
in
establishing in a ceremony before the community does not mean I want
to ape straights or assimilate to them.
Second is is disingenious and avoiding the issue for Vilma Espin
to assert that marriage is not as important in Cuba as in other
Catholic countries as long as Cuba still legally recognizes opposite
sex but not same sex marriage.
And third, while Thorstad is right in arguing that the concept of
marriage should be expanded to include man-boy relationships (as well
as women-girl relationships -- Linda Frankel was one of the few woman
members of NAMBLA), one husband and multiple wives and one wife and
multiple husbands, and group marriage or polyamory, and that the
concept of civil marriage or consensual contracts should be firmly
delineated from the concept of religious marriage which will be the
sole business of the particular religions involved, it is
unnecessary to replace the words "civil marriage" with "civil
contracts" once all that has been achieved. Civil marriage has
always had the meaning of a variety of marriage. My parents were
married in a civil ceremony before a Justice of the Peace in 1939 and
they, I and everybody else always considered them as MARRIED in the
usual sense, even if it was performed by a Justice of the Peace
instead of a minister, priest or rabbi. So a terminological change
is definitely not needed. But if that change is made, I want Gays
and Lesbians to win the right to civil marriage in the generally
accepted sense BEFORE we start calling it something else. Otherwise
it will look like the heterosexual majority has gotten away with
saying: "We don't want to admit Gays and Lesbians to MARRIAGE, which
only a man and a woman are good enough for. So we will abolish
marriage so we will only have to give them the inferior substitute of
consensual pairings and civil contracts. The only way we can stop
marriage from being sullied by Gays and Lesbians is to abolish it for
everybody!"
This seems to me very similar to the tactic of some public schools
in Utah which decided that if recognizing other student extra
cirricular clubs meant that they would be legally required to
recognize Gay Straight Alliances, then they just wouldn't recognize
ANY student extra cirricular clubs.
Finally, Thorstad concludes: "In the 1970's, much of the
left seemed to discover that the proletariat was unlikely to play the
historic and revolutionary role assigned to it by orthodox Marxism.
Leftists began to look around for 'new mass vanguards' and 'new
social movements' such as students, women, gays, third world
peoples. None of the groups have proven viable alternatives to the
proletariat that, in the West at least, shows no sign of acquiring a
revolutionary consciousness, or even of acting in its own self-
interest. And none have proven more easily coopted by the capitalist
system than homosexuals. This is the meaning of the marriage
campaign."
However, the remark about "homosexuals" being the most easily
coopted is probably just a case of Thorstad assuming that the grass
is always greener on the other side of the fence. And it wasn't just
the left looking for new vanguard
groups. The growth and expanding influence of the GLBTI, the
Women's, etc movements forced the left to recognize them. All of
these groups will once more play a revolutionary role when the
political climate shifts back to the left.
And I hope that Thorstad still recognizes that as capitalism goes
deeper into crisis, it will be forced to attack the gains of the
workers, which will force the proletariat to act in its own self
interest, acquire a revolutionary consciousness and act once more in
a revolutionary manner.
Robert Halfhill rhalfhill@juno.com


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Wednesday, February 02, 2011

TOO MANY SUSPICIOUS ANOMALIES ABOUT 9/11 (FOURTH REVISION, 12/12/10)

Sunday, December 12, 2010
TOO MANY SUSPICIOUS ANOMALIES ABOUT 9/11 (FOURTH REVISION, 12/12/10)
By Robert Halfhill
There are many unanswered questions about the official conspiracy theory that an Islamic terrorist organization, headquartered in Afghanistan, sent 19 men with box cutters to infiltrate the United states to hijack four planes and wreak appalling destruction by crashing them into buildings. The first question about the official story is that since the World Trade Center had already been attacked by terrorists once before in 1993, and it remained the one place where a successful terrorist act would make the greatest impression, why was there no attempt to guard the WTC or prepare defenses? I remember thinking in 1993 that the
terrorists had to only be successful once while we had to be successful every time.

Second, the U.S. government received at least eleven warnings from foreign intelligence services about Al Qaida's plan for a big attack on the United States before they struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Again, why were no counter measures prepared?

Third, the Minneapolis FBI tried to obtain approval from the FISA Court to look at Zacarias Moussaoui's computer after he was arrested for being in the country illegally. But as Minneapolis FBI agent Coleen Rowley testified to a Senate hearing, the National FBI Office even rewrote the Minneapolis Office's request to FISA so it failed to be approved. The Minneapolis-St. Paul STAR TRIBUNE later wrote about how it became a running joke in the Minneapolis FBI Office about the National Office being on the side of the terrorists. And still later, the STAR TRIBUNE reported that plans for the attack on the World Trade Center were found on Moussaoui's computer.

Fourth, the Phoenix FBI Office had noticed the large number of Middle Eastern men enrolling for flight training. Someone from the Phoenix Office pointed out to the National Office that a plane could be used as a weapon.

Fifth, there is the mind boggling incompetence of both the civilian air traffic control systems and the military North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). The civilian air traffic control system's radar can detect a plane going off course immediately, as soon as it deviates from its flight plan, and the protocol calls for it to notify NORAD within ten minutes. Boston Air Traffic Control detected American Airlines Flight 11 going off course as soon as it deviated from its flight plan at 8:14 A.M. on September 11, 2001. But it did not notify several other air traffic control centers until 8:25 A.M., eleven minutes later. And it did not notify NORAD until 8:40 A.M. The two F-15 Eagles that were eventually scrambled from Otis Air National Guard Base in Falmouth, Massachusetts, which was 153 miles northwest of the World Trade Center and which had a top speed of over 1875 miles per hour, could have reached the WTC in seven minutes with more than enough time to intercept AA 11 if the F-15's had been in the air soon after 8:14 A.M or even 8:25 A.M. However, AA 11 hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 A.M.

If NORAD had been informed and had the F-15's in the air soon after AA 11 was detected going off course at 8:14 A.M., there would have been far more than enough time to intercept it. At 8:41:32 A.M., there was a suspicious radio transmission from United Airlines Flight 175 which sounded something like "everyone stay in your seats." Boston Air Traffic Control informed NORAD that UA 175 had been hijacked at 8:43 and there would have been more than enough time for the two F-15"s, which were air borne by 8:52 A.M. to intercept UA 175 before it hit the South Tower at 9:02:54 A.M. That is there would have been more than enough time if the two F-15's had not been flying at only 23.9% of their top speed!

AA 77 hit the Pentagon at 9:37 A.M. At their top speed, the two F-15's could have intercepted AA 77 twenty-four minutes before it hit the Pentagon.At 9:55 A.M., United Airlines Flight 93 went of course near Cleveland and began a 135 degree turn over Ohio and Northern Kentucky. It crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania at 10:06:05 A.M.
If a police officer pursuing fleeing criminals drove her or his squad car at only 23.9 percent of the car's top speed, the most probable conclusion would be that the officer intended to let the criminals escape. Human stupidity can account for a lot and even mount to civil or even criminal negligence. But when there is a series of one incredible, mind boggling stupidity after another, there has to be a malign intent to bring about the
opposite of what officials are supposedly trying to achieve, in this case to ensure that the hijackers succeed. But there's more!

Six, why did the government officials ship most of the steel from the World Trade Center out of the country, even though it is a felony to remove evidence from a crime scene. In the October 6, 2005 issue of NEW CIVIL ENGINEER, Dave Parker writes in "WTC Investigators Resist Call For Collapse Visualization" that nearly all the WTC steel was shipped out to Asia and melted down for recycling.

Seven, Why did the Bush Administration fight against having public hearings on 9/11 for nearly 18 months although public hearings on Pearl Harbor were held within weeks after the event? 9/11 hearings were not held until the relatives of those killed at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon exerted enough lobbying pressure to force the hearings to be held, and even then, only one-tenth of the questions they submitted were
answered.

And eight, why did the government not even allow the visitors to the site of the World Trade Center to take photographs of the ruins and why did the government confiscate photos and videos of the attack on the Pentagon? Could both seven and eight be part of an attempt to hide evidence of government complicity?

In his editorial, "Selling out the Investigation," in the January, 2002 FIRE ENGINEERING, William Manning wrote that "Fire Engineering has good reason to believe that the 'official investigation' blessed by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) ... is a half baked farce that may already have been commandeered by political forces whose primary interests, to put it mildly, lie far afield of full disclosure." Manning also criticized the investigation in another editorial, "The Twisted Brush of 9/11 Politics" in the September, 2004 FIRE ENGINEERING.

Robert Berhinig, P.E. states in "Protecting the Foundation of Fire-Safety," in the July/August, 2002 IAEI (International Association of Electrical Inspectors, the definitive magazine for electrical inspectors) that "the FEMA report states further that until the attack on the WTC, no protected steel framed buildings had been known to collapse as a result of a fire." Yet on 9/11, after steel framed buildings had been around for over a hundred years, since the late 1800's, three protected steel framed buildings, WTC 1, 2, and 7, had collapsed, supposedly because of fire.

Three of the experts who testified before the House Committee On Science May 1, 2002 Hearing On the Collapse of the World Trade Center said the there had NEVER BEFORE been a collapse of a protected, steel framed building because of fire. Dr. W. Gene Corley, American Society of Civil Engineers and Chair of the Building Performance Assesment Team reviewing the WTC disaster said on page 76 of the hearing record that "prior to these events, no protected steel frame structure, the most common form of large
commercial construction in the United States, has ever experienced a fire-induced collapse." Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr., Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology said on page 103, "The Twin Towers and WTC 7 are the only known cases of total structural collapse where fire played a significant role." So we have here an admission by a spokesperson for NIST that allegedly accounted for the collapses that fire had never before brought about such a collapse of a protected, steel framed building. And Dr. Jonathan Barnett, Professor of Fire Safety Studies at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute said on page 133, "Up until 9/11, we never had a collapse of a protected steel building." On page 163 he said, "This was the
first time we had the collapse of a protected steel structure." Dr. Bement said on page 169, "... there have been instances where buildings have had major fires that have burned to completion without the buildings collapsing." And on page 172, Dr. Barnett said of the partial collapse of WTC 5, "But building 5 was a normal building and it had a fire and it had a major collapse. This has never happened before."

The August 25, 2007 issue of SCIENCE NEWS had an article about the collapse of the World Trade Center on pages 122 - 24 entitled FIRE INSIDE: STRUCTURAL DESIGN WITH FIRE SAFETY IN MIND by Carolyn Berry. The paragraph in the first column on page 124 is particularly significant in evaluating the NIST computer simulation of the collapse of WTC 7:"The NIST simulation, like all models of building failures to date, couldn't follow the 9/11 collapses through to the end. No computer is yet powerful
enough to follow the chaotic sequence of events that ensues when components break apart and a building falls, but this is where research is headed."In other words, the much vaunted NIST simulation which purported to dispose of the arguments of we conspiracy theorists didn't actually demonstrate how fire caused the buildings to collapse; they just waved their hands when the computing power currently
available had took them as far as it could and said: "This is far enough; the
buildings collapsed somewhere about here." Of course we all know we have accounted for how the buildings probably collapsed once we have gone this far. It HAS to be the probable explanation because the only alternative explanation is those NUTTY, WACKO CONSPIRACY THEORIES! We know a priori that that CAN'T be true!

I might as well add the statement in the same SCIENCE NEWS article of Allen Hay, chief fire safety officer of the New York City Fire Department, about WTC 7. "We just expected it to burn out -- we didn't expect it to fall down." "It's the only building I know in New York City to ever collapse (strictly) from fire."

The enclosed article from the COLUMBIA ENCYLOPEDIA makes it clear that the only way to demolish buildings so that they collapse onto their footprint, or the area they were standing on, is by controlled demolition, or imploding buuildings with explosives.

COLUMBIA ENCYLOPEDIA
Next Page How Building Implosions Work
by Tom Harris
Please copy/paste the following text to properly cite this HowStuffWorks article:

You can demolish a stone wall with a sledgehammer, and it's fairly easy to level a five-story building using excavators and wrecking balls. But when you need to bring down a massive structure, say a 20-story skyscraper, you have to haul out the big guns. Explosive demolition is the preferred method for safely and efficiently demolishing larger structures. When a building is surrounded by other buildings, it may be necessary to "implode" the building, that is, make it collapse down into its footprint.In other words, planting explosives within a building at carefully preselected locations is the ONLY way to bring down a building on to its footprint. Conversely, if a building falls on to its footprint, we can be certain that explosives were planted within it.

But terrorist from Afghanistan would not be able to sneak past building security and preplant explosives at carefully preselected locations. Even a domestic terrorist group would not be able to do this. Only the U.S. government or rogue elements within it would be able to pull this off, a task made especially easy since the FBI and CIA both had their offices in Building 7 of the World Trade Center. The similarity of the destruction of World Trade Center 7 to controlled demolition was pointed out by Dan Rather when he said on the September 11, 2001 CBS News: "it's reminiscent of those pictures we've all seen too much on television where a building was deliberately destroyed by well-placed dynamite to knock it down."

Many of the firefighters, whose testimony is recorded in the oral histories that were made available to the public after an Appeals Court order reported on hearing and seeing the explosions that would occur in controlled demolitions. Assistant New York Fire Commissioner Stephen Gregory said: "I thought that when I looked in the direction of the Trade Center before it came down, before Number Two came down, that I saw low-level flashes. In my conversation with Lieutenant Evangelista, never mentioning this to him, he
questioned me and asked if I saw low-level flashes in front of the building, and I agreed with him ... I saw a flash-flash-flash, and then it looked like the building came down. ... No, the lower level of the building. You know like when they demolish a building, how they blow up a building, when it falls down? That's what I thought I saw."

Chemist Kevin Ryan said in "Environmental Anomalies at the World Trade Center: Evidence for Energetic Materials," in the March, 2009 The Environmentalist: "The characteristics of these un-extinguishable fires have not been adequately explained as the results of a normal structure fire, even one accelerated by jet fuel.
Conversely, such fires are better explained given the presence of chemical energetic materials, which provide their own fuel and oxidant and are not deterred by water, dust, and chemical suppressants." The necessity of preserving the evidence of thermites is emphasized in the 2001 Edition of the National Fire Protection Association NFPA 921 Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations. "Thermite mixtures also produce esceedingly hot fires. Such accelerants generally leave residues that may be visually or chemically identifiable. ... As a result, the entire fire scene should be considered physical evidence and should be protected and preserved." But, as we have seen, the majority of the remains of the World Trade Center were shipped out to be melted down in Asia as soon as possible.

But I want to return to the repeated Congressional testimony that a protected, steel framed building has NEVER BEFORE collapsed because of fire. And never afterwards either. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, we have a purported fact about the behavior of protected, steel framed buildings in fire that dare not be true again!

There are many other suspicious anomalies about 9/11. Only a few are, nine, all three World Trade Center buildings collapsed at nearly free fall speed,i.e. almost as fast as it would take an object dropped from one of the WTC building's roof to reach the ground. The resistance of the massive steel columns and concrete would have slowed the fall considerably if it had been a matter of the floors pancaking and falling on the floors below.

And ten, fire would have unlikely to have been equally intense at every point in the buildings so that every point failed simultaneously and they fell onto the surface area they stood on, i.e. on to their footprint.

Eleventh, fire has never caused the girders in protected steel framed buildings to become ductile or loose sufficient strength to result in a building collapse. The 17th edition, published in 1992, of the National Fire Protection Association's Fire Protection Handbook says that structural steel does not even begin to soften until it reaches a temperature of 425 degrees centigrade, or 837 degrees fahrenheit and doesn't loose half its strength until 650 degrees centigrade, or 1202 degrees fahrenheit. W. I. Edgar and C. Musse in their 2001 article "Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse? Science, Engineering, and Speculation," in the Journal of the Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society, (53/12:8-11) state that even with its strength halved, the steel in the World Trade Center could still support two or three times the stresses imposed by a 650 degrees centigrade or 1202 degrees fahrenheit fire.

But even though fire cannot melt steel, pools of molten steel remained at the bottom of the wreckage for 100 days. Although molten metal at ground zero was a constant feature of media accounts in the days following 9/11, there have since been widespread denials of the presence of molten metal in the ruins of the
World Trade Center. Or if the presence of molten metal is admitted, it is claimed that the metal was molten aluminium from the planes, although the press accounts at the time specifically said it was molten steel and pictures of the WTC ruins show the metal as bright red, characteristic of molten steel, whereas molten
aluminium has a silvery color. Some have even proclaimed that the TV pictures of ground zero were taken in different wave lengths of light to explain away why the molten aluminium looked like molten steel. However since the television pictures we normally see all show objects as being the same color we normally see them, i.e trees are shown as green and people did not have purple complexions, it is difficult to understand why the
video photos of the World Trade Center alone were photographed at a different wave length than the wave length normally used by TV cameras. This seems particularly difficult since all the other objects we see in photos of ground zero have the same colors we normally see such objects as having. The extent to which ad hoc hypotheses are resorted to to explain away pictures of molten steel is mind boggling! And when what was widely reported in the press and accepted as true is denied a few months later by seemingly intelligent people as well as by self professed experts, it reminds us of George Orwell's 1984 in which once the official news accounts changed, people would forget the previous news accounts!
So it is instructive to consider an official report of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which has otherwise consistently claimed there was no evidence for molten metal at ground zero, in which they cite numerous first hand reports of molten steel in the ruins of the World Trade Center while resorting to irrelevancy after irrelevancy and ad hominem after ad hominem in an attempt to discredit these first hand reports. The NIST report is in ordinary type while my interpolated comments are in capital letters for ease of distinguishing fron the text of the NIST report.

Molten Metal
Workers Reported Molten Metal in Ground Zero Rubble Reports of molten metal in the foundations of the three World Trade Center skyscrapers are frequently noted in literature of proponents of theories that the buildings were destroyed through controlled demolition. The most widely publicized report is one by American Free Press reporter Christopher Bollyn citing principals of two of the companies contracted to clean up Ground Zero. The president of Tully Construction of Flushing, NY, said he saw pools of "literally molten steel" at Ground Zero. Bollyn also cites Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition Inc.(CDI) of Phoenix, MD, as having seen molten steel in the bottoms of elevator shafts "three, four, and five weeks" after the attack. Although reports of molten steel are consistent with the persistent heat at Ground Zero in the months following the attack, we find the American Free Press report suspect for two reasons. First, Tully Construction was one of four companies awarded contracts by New York City's Department of Design and Construction to dispose of the rubble at Ground Zero, and CDI was subcontracted by Tully and was instrumental in devising a plan to recycle the steel. The involvement of Steve Tully and Mark Loizeaux in the destruction of the evidence of the unprecedented collapses would seem to disqualify them as objective
reporters of evidence.

RH - WHEN THE FEMA REPORT SAYS STEVE TULLY AND MARK LOIZEAUX WERE INVOLVED "IN THE DESTRUCTION OF THE EVIDENCE," IT IGNORES THE FACT THAT IT SAID IN THE IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING SENTENCE THAT TULLY WAS HIRED BY THE CITY OF NEW YORK TO DISPOSE OF THE EVIDENCE. (TULLY HIRED LOIZEAUX AS A SUBCONTRACTOR.) ALTHOUGH NEW YORK HIRING THEM TO DISPOSE OF THE EVIDENCE CASTS SUSPICION ON THE NEW YORK CITY GOVERNMENT, AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FOR ALLOWING NEW YORK TO DISPOSE OF THE EVIDENCE, HOW COULD THIS BE USED TO DISCREDIT TULLY AND LOIZEAUX WHEN THE VERY GOVERNMENT OF WHICH FEMA IS A PART ALLOWED A SUBORDINATE GOVERNMENT, THAT OF NEW YORK CITY, TO HIRE THEM TO DISPOSE OF THE EVIDENCE?

SECONDLY, WE HAVE AN ADMISSION BY FEMA THAT THE EVIDENCE WAS DISPOSED OF AND THAT THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG IN DISPOSING THE EVIDENCE.

THIRD, THE ONLY WAY THEY HAVE OF DISCREDITING TULLY AND LOIZEAUX'S FIRST HAND REPORT IS NOT TO PRODUCE EVIDENCE THAT THEIR REPORT WAS MISTAKEN BUT TO RESORT TO AN AD HOMINEM. EVEN IF THEY HAD DISPOSED OF THE EVIDENCE WITHOUT BEING HIRED BY NEW YORK, THAT IS NO REASON TO ASSUME THEY WERE NOT TELLING THE TRUTH IN THEIR FIRST HAND REPORT. INSTEAD OF TRYING TO DECIDE WHETHER PREVIOUS WRONG BEHAVIOR INFLUENCES THE TRUTH OF
FACTUAL TESTIMONY, OR WHETHER ALLEGATIONS THAT THEY MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE, FALSIFIED THEIR FACTUAL TESTIMONY AND THUS INVALIDATED THEIR ARGUMENTS, WHY NOT JUST CUT TO THE CHASE AND CONCENTRATE ON THE CREDIBILITY OF THE FACTUAL TESTIMONY OR THE VALIDITY OF THE ARGUMENTS?

Interestingly, CDI was also hired to bury the rubble of the Murrah Building in the wake of the Oklahoma City Bombing. That Loizeaux stood trial on charges of illegal campaign contributions casts further doubt on his credibility. 1

R.H. - WHAT IS THE RELEVANCE OF LOIZEAUX'S COMPANY, CDI, BEING HIRED TO DISPOSE OF THE RUBBLE OF THE MURRAH BUILDING IN OKLAHOMA CITY TO WHETHER HIS TESTIMONY ABOUT THE WORLD TRADE CENTER WAS TRUTHFUL? POINTING OUT LOIZEAUX'S STANDING TRIAL ON CHARGES OF ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS IS ANOTHER AD HOMINEM. THE FEMA REPORT DOESN'T EVEN SAY WHETHER HE WAS CONVICTED, BUT EVEN IF HE HAD BEEN, IT WOULD NOT PROVE HE WAS NOT BEING TRUTHFUL IN HIS TESTIMONY ABOUT MOLTEN STEEL AT THE WORLD TRADE CENTER. FEMA'S STOOPING TO THESE SHODDY AD HOMINEM TACTICS, A FALLACY THAT WAS DISCUSSED IN THE ELEMENTARY LOGIC COURSE I TOOK AS A COLLEGE SOPHOMORE, RAISES ADDITIONAL SUSPICIONS ABOUT FEMA'S REPORT. WHAT ARE THEY TRYING TO HIDE IF THEY HAVE TO RESORT TO SUCH DESPICABLE AD HOMINEMS?

A second reason to doubt this molten steel report is the fact that it has been used by Bollyn and others to support the dubious theory that the collapses were caused by bombs in the Towers' basements.

R.H. - YOU DO NOT ASSUME THE THEORY IS WRONG, I.E.. "DUBIOUS," AND THEN ARGUE
THAT THE FACTUAL REPORTS ARE THEREFORE FALSE. YOU FIRST HAVE TO PRODUCE INDEPENDENT EVIDENCE THAT THE FACTUAL REPORTS ARE FALSE. THE TRUTH OF A THEORY IS DETERMINED BY THE TRUTH OF THE FACTUAL STATEMENTS CITED AS EVIDENCE FOR IT; YOU CAN'T USE THE ASSUMPTION THAT THE THEORY IS TRUE OR FALSE TO DEDUCE THE TRUTH OR FALSITY OF THE STATEMENTS OF FACT CITED AS PART OF THE EVIDENCE FOR IT.

Corroborating Reports
There are reports of molten steel beyond those cited by American Free Press. Most of these have come to light as a result of a research paper by Professor Steven E Jones, which has stimulated interest in the subject of molten steel at Ground Zero. *
A report by Waste Age describes New York Sanitation Department workers moving
"everything from molten steel beams to human remains." 2
A report on the Government Computer News website quotes Greg Fuchek, vice president of sales for LinksPoint Inc. as stating: In the first few weeks, sometimes when a worker would pull a steel beam from the wreckage, the end of the beam would be dripping molten steel 3
A Messenger-Inquirer report recounts the experiences of Bronx firefighter "Toolie" O'Toole, who stated that some of the beams lifted from deep within the catacombs of Ground Zero by cranes were "dripping from the molten steel." 4
A transcription of an audio interview of Ground Zero chaplain Herb Trimpe contains the following passage: When I was there, of course, the remnants of the towers were still standing. It looked like an enormous junkyard. A scrap metal yard, very similar to that. Except this was still burning. There was still fire. On the cold days, even in January, there was a noticeable difference between the temperature in the middle of the site than there was when you walked two blocks over on Broadway. You could actually feel the heat.
It took me a long time to realize it and I found myself actually one day wanting to get back. Why? Because I felt more comfortable. I realized it was actually warmer on site.
The fires burned, up to 2,000 degrees, underground for quite awhile before they actually got down to those areas and they cooled off. I talked to many contractors and they said they actually saw molten metal trapped, beams had just totally had been melted because of the heat. So this was the kind of heat that was going on when those airplanes hit the upper floors. It was just demolishing heat.

A report in the Johns Hopkins Public Health Magazine about recovery work in late October quotes Alison Geyh, Ph.D., as stating: Fires are still actively burning and the smoke is very intense. In some pockets now being uncovered, they are finding molten steel. 6

A publication by the National Environmental Health Association quotes Ron Burger, a public health advisor at the National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who arrived at Ground Zero on the evening of September 12th. Burger stated: Feeling the heat, seeing the molten steel, the layers upon layers of ash, like lava, it reminded me of Mt. St. Helen’s and the thousands who fled that
disaster. 7

An article in The Newsletter of the Structural Engineers Association of Utah describing a speaking appearance by Leslie Robertson(structural engineer responsible for the design of the World Trade Center) contains this passage: As of 21 days after the attack, the fires were still burning and molten steel was still running. 8

A member of the New York Air National Guard's 109th Air Wing was at Ground Zero from September 22 to October 6. He kept a journal on which an article containing the following passage is based. Smoke constantly poured from the peaks. One fireman told us that there was still molten steel at the heart of the towers' remains. Firemen sprayed water to cool the debris down but the heat remained intense enough at the surface to melt their boots. 9
The book American Ground, which contains detailed descriptions of conditions at Ground Zero, contains this passage: ... or, in the early days, the streams of molten metal that leaked from the hot cores and flowed down broken walls inside the foundation hole. 10

A review of of the documentary Collateral Damage in the New York Post describes firemen at Ground Zero recalling "heat so intense they encountered rivers of molten steel." 11

This construction photograph shows the foundation of South Tower in the foreground, with the foundation of the North Tower in the left background. The foundations were seven stories deep.

R.H. - HERE WE HAVE 11 INDEPENDENT REPORTS CITED BY FEMA OF MOLTEN STEEL IN THE RUINS OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER, EVEN IF THE AD HOMINEMS FEMA RESORTED TO IN AN ATTEMPT TO DISCREDIT TULLY AND LOIZEAUX'S TESTIMONY WERE VALID ARGUMENTS, THIS WOULD DO NOTHING TO DISCREDIT THESE ELEVEN INDEPENDENT TESTIMONIES ABOUT MOLTEN STEEL AT GROUND ZERO.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Most of the press reports compiled here were gathered by other researchers, including Matthew Everett, the author of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and 9/11: A Scandal Beyond What Has Been Seen Before; David Ray Griffin; and the author of posts such as this on georgewashington.blogspot.com.

R.H. - AGAIN IT IS AN AD HOMINEM TO ASSUME THAT SINCE THESE FACTUAL REPORTS ARE CITED BY PEOPLE THAT THE FEMA REPORT CLAIMS TO BE DISCREDIBLE, IT PROVES THE FACTUAL REPORTS ARE NOT CREDIBLE, EVEN IF FEMA HAD PROVED THAT THE CITERS ARE DISCREDIBLE, WHICH IT HAS NOT. I HAVE PREVIOUSLY EXPLAINED WHY YOU CANNOT ASSUME A THEORY IS FALSE AND USE THAT ASSUMED FALSITY TO ASSUME THE FACTUAL REPORTS CITED AS PART OF THE THEORY'S EVIDENCE ARE FALSE AND THAT THE ARGUMENTS CITED TO SUPPORT THE THEORY ARE INVALID.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
References
1. Fire Power: It Took Three Lawyers to Stop the Destruction of CDI Inc., The Daily Record, 10/7/00
2. D-Day: NY Sanitation Workers' Challenge of a Lifetime, WasteAge.com, 4/1/02 [cached]
3. Handheld app eased recovery tasks, GCN.com, 9/11/02 [cached]
4. Recovery worker reflects on months spent at Ground Zero, Messenger-Inquirer.com, 6/29/02 [cached]
5. The Chaplain's Tale, RecordOnline.com, [cached]
6. Mobilizing Public Health, Johns Hopkins Public Health Magazine, [cached]
7. The scene at Ground Zero, NEHA.org, [cached]
8. WTC a Structural Success, SEAU News, , page 3
9. Ground Zero, 12/01 [cached]
10. American Ground, , page 32
11. Unflinching Look Among the Ruins, NYPost.com, 3/3/04
page last modified: 2006-12-28
END OF NIST REPORT

And twelve, although an ordinary building collapse would produce chunks of broken concrete, the steel, concrete and asbestos in the three World Trade Center buildings was mostly converted to a fine dust which flowed out from the WTC through the streets of Manhattan in the manner of the pyroclastic flows produced from volcanoes.

And thirteen, although the buildings were not even observed to move at all when the planes crashed into them, nearby geological observatories detected seismic tremblors as if there had been massive explosions at ground level when the buildings collapsed. And while WTC 7 had not
even been struck by a plane, all the phenomena previously mentioned accompanied its collapse also.

And fourteen, while the Environmental Protection Agency said that the air around the World Trade Center was safe to breathe after 9/11, we now know that our government lied yet again because of all the deaths from asbestosis and other respiratory diseases among both the humans and dogs who were involved in the WTC cleanup.

And fifteen, while it is standard procedure for the secret service to hustle the President away from the scene immediately whenever there is a hint of danger, George Bush remained in the Florida elementary school reading "The Pet Goat" for nearly half an hour, even though there was supposedly no assurance that there would not be an attempt to crash a plane into the school.

And although the Bush Administration attempted to ship all the steel from the World Trade Center to China and Korea, even though it is a felony to remove the evidence from a crime scene until the criminal investigation has been completed, some of the steel girders were saved by 9/11 investigators. And the massive amounts of metal in the dust which surged out from the WTC collapse provided additional metal for investigators to study. Brigham Young University Professor of Physics, Steven E. Jones obtained some of the metal containing dust after he had published his first paper about 9/11 online in November, 2005. Janette Mackinlay had returned to her apartment on the fourth floor of 113 Cedar Street, which was about 100 meters, or 328 feet, away from the South Tower, about a week after her apartment had been flooded with dust, to clean up. She had saved some of the dust in a plastic bag and mailed some of it to Jones after he published his first paper online. Later, he traveled to MacKinlay's new residence in California and obtained a second sample of WTC dust in the presence of other scientists. (Latest reports are that MacKinlay is now gravely ill because of even this brief exposure to ground zero dust, although the government had claimed that the air was safe to breathe by the workers working on the site of 9/11 who had far more exposure to the toxic dust than Mackinlay had had in her brief clean ups of her apartment.) [I learned that Janette Mackinlay has died after I finished this article.]

In his subsequent online paper, "Revisiting 9/11, 2001 -- Applying the Scientific Method," Professor Jones reported that the dust contained clear traces of thermate. Thermate is an incendiary used to melt and cut steel in controlled building demolitions. It is a well mixed powder of iron, aluminum and sulfur. The sulfur lowers the melting point of iron, or steel, and cuts right through it. Sometimes other metallic powders are mixed in to fine tune the characteristics of the incendiary. Doctor Jones found all of these substances in the dust.
And recently, Jones and others reported in their artcle "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe" in the January, 2009 issue of The Open Chemical Physics Journal that they have found nanoscopic particles of unignited thermate in the World Trade Center dust. Ordinary thermate is only an incendiary which burns at a temparature hot enough to burn through steel girders. Nano is a prefix meaning billionths of a meter and the smaller size of the nano particles of iron oxide (rust), aluminum, and sulfur enable nanothermate to burn so much faster that it is an explosive as well as an incendiary. Grain millers are familiar with an analogous process when grain, which will burn when exposed to fire, becomes an explosive when it is ground into a fine dust. Even a random spark can set off a catastrophic explosion when enough of it builds up in the air inside a grain mill.

David Heller, who has degrees in physics and engineering, makes many of the same points Dr. Jones made in Heller's article, "TAKING A CLOSE LOOK; HARD SCIENCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER," in the June 18, 2007 GARLIC AND GRASS. After he states that the collapse of all three World Trade Center buildings was a controlled demolition brought about by pre-planted thermate explosives, he states that it would seem impossible for Al Qaida to preplant the explosives, especially since WTC 7 housed the offices of the FBI, CIA, and OEM(Office of Emergency Management). But he says that recently he learned that President George Bush's brother, Marvin Bush, is a part owner of the company that provided security for not only the World Trade Center buildings but also both United and American Airlines, the two airlines whose planes were hijacked on 9/11. He also pointed out that the owner of the World Trade Center, Larry Silverstein, had received a $3.55 billion insurance settlement after 9/11 and was suing for an additional $3.55 billion on the grounds that the airplane crashes into the Twin Towers constituted two separate incidents.

However, regardless of Silverstein's motives, it is unlikely that he could have played a major role in planting the explosives in the building containing the offices of the FBI, CIA and OEM. Only the United States government could have carried that off and Silverstein, at most, could have played no more than a subsidiary role.

The final step in a criminal investigation is asking who had the motive to do the crime. Whose poll numbers shot up into the stratosphere after 9/11 and who gained the popular support to enable him to the invade Afghanistan and Iraq, abolish habaeus corpus and, at least, seize the de jure power to lock anyone up for life without a trial or even telling them why they were being imprisoned? Only the neo cons and the Bush
Administration, although Bush may be only a front man and Dick Cheney the real power behind the throne. It was the neo con Project for a New American Century who proposed that the U.S. seize the lands where the world's dwindling supply of oil is located and who were quoted in NEWSWEEK as saying that the American people may need a new Pearl Harbor to wake them up.

But if enough people realize in time just how bad our government is, we can counter them
before it is too late.

http://halfhillviews.greatnow.com/ (SITE NOW BANNED ON AOL)
*Write AOL to complain, here: aolaccessibility@aol.comaolaccessibility@aol.com, or call
1-888-212-5537.
http://redlavenderinsurgent.blogspot.com/

OBAMA'S FAILURE TO KEEP HIS PROMISES PROVES YET AGAIN THE NECESSITY OF A THIRD PARTY

OBAMA'S FAILURE TO KEEP HIS PROMISES PROVES YET AGAIN THE NECESSITY OF A THIRD PARTY
By Robert Halfhill
There has been a lot of discussion among liberals and people further to the left about
how the Republicans swept back into a majority in both houses of Congress after only two
years of the Obama Administration and Democratic Party control. Actually, this happened
before with the Clinton Administration.
With both Obama and Clinton, the Democrats came back to power with a lot of hope and
promise and, within two years, lost control of Congress after having disappointed their
base after not delivering on most of their promises. Their disappointed supporters were
too discouraged to make the effort to vote during the off year elections and simply
stayed home on election day. Analyses of the votes after both elections showed that the
Democrats lost not because of more people voting against them but because of the number
of their past supporters who didn't vote for them.
Clinton promised to admit the Haitian boat people fleeing Haiti to the United States but
instead detained the refugees in camps outside the United States. That subset of the
boat people who had AIDS were also detained. Some of the refugees with AIDS had only
three t-cells left and would die unless a medical parole allowed them entry into the
United States and access to U.S. medical care. Clinton's denying them refugee status
meant he would be as guilty of their murder as he would be if her personally had pulled
the trigger and shot them. Finally, some of the Haitian boat people were allowed into
the United States.
Clinton also promised to issue an executive order to repeal the ban on Gays and Lesbians
serving in the military. Instead, he gave us Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which lead to a
steady increase of Gays and Lesbians expelled from the military in each successive year
of the Clinton Administration. The military brass apparently decided that any indication
of being Gay or Lesbian, even unfounded rumor or an anonymous accusation, constituted
"telling", stepped up their investigations, and in each successive year,
expelled an ever greater number of Gays and Lesbians.
Even though there are provisions in International patent law allowing governments to take
over the manufacture of medical drugs if that is the only way their citizens can obtain
access, Vice President Al Gore, who would be the Democrat's liberal standard bearer in
the 1992 elections, served as the hit man for Clinton in bring U.S. pressure on poorer
third world countries, such as South Africa and India, to intimidate them into stopping
the manufacture of their own AIDS medicines. Never mind the millions and tens of
millions of third worlders who would die because they could not afford the expensive AIDS
drugs; the patent prerogatives of wealthy 1st world drug corporations much be preserved!
Obama promised to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. Instead, he has delayed withdrawal
from Iraq well beyond the date he originally promised and escalated the war in
Afghanistan -- and in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
Obama also promised a government health plan. This was compromised down to a government
option to compete with private health plans. But even this disappeared in the final
bill. The final version however provides private health insurance companies with many
new captive customers who are legally required to buy health insurance. I asked two
women acquaintances whether this new health care bill was any improvement and both said
yes. One woman told me that the new plan would pay for her preventive mammograms and the
other, a DFL office holder, said it was an improvement over what we had. So whether the
good of the larger number of people who will have access to medical care will outweigh
the harm of the larger number of captive customers who may be legally required to pay an
increasingly inflated price is a matter still to be determined.
Obama also promised to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the Defense Of Marriage Act, but
to date, neither promise has been enacted into law, even though the Democrats had a
supposed filibuster proof majority in the Senate.
These events, as well as the record of how past Democratic Administrations failed to
carry out their promises, provide the evidence for what, at first glance, is a new
argument against those who advocate voting for Democrats on the grounds that Democrats
are the lesser evil. And that argument is: Even if you were right in arguing that
Democrats are the lesser evil to Republicans, and even if you elect them, they will
alienate their supporters by not fulfilling their promises and thus loose control of
Congress before they have a chance to do anything. So the tactic of voting for
Democrats, even if your others assertions were true, is still futile.
I can already hear the chorus of counter arguments. "You can't say that the
Democrats won't carry out their promises just because they haven't in the past. Human
behavior is not as regular and determined as that of objects in physics or astronomy.
Someday in the future, they may have learned their lesson and actually carry out their
promises!"
We can make short work of that argument if we merely remind ourselves that the just
completed off year elections are estimated to end up costing about a half billion dollars
and the last Presidential election of 2008 is estimated to have cost about a billion
dollars. The wealthy special interests who have such enormous amounts of money are not
just contributing to political campaigns as a hobby or for their health. They expect
something in return from the candidates they contribute to and any elected official who
is too naive to realize that will soon find out when they don't receive any large
contributions for their reelection campaign!
This is why neither the Democrats nor the Republicans will fulfill the campaign promises
that will deliver any substantive improvements to the majority of people. They cannot,
if they want to receive the contributions they need to stay in politics. Unlike under
feudalism or slavery, the capitalist ruling class does not have a formal legal
designation as a ruling aristocracy. They maintain their power as a ruling class because
they are the only ones who have the large sums needed by politicians who want to get
elected to the government. (There are other mechanisms, such as their owning the major
media, etc.) And the ruling class in this country has quite cleverly set up two ruling
class parties; one, the allegedly lesser evil Democrats to serve as the good cop, while
the allegedly greater evil Republicans fulfill the role of bad cop. While the Democrats
could not maintain their image as the lesser evil or good cop unless they were slightly
less evil than the Republicans on some issues, they will never be substantively less evil
on any issues that can endanger the hegemony of their ruling class contributors, or on
any issues that will result in any substantive improvement in the lives of the majority
of people. And while in one sense, the Democrats are the lesser evil, in their good
cop/bad cop charade, they are both equally necessary for the survival of a bad system,
and in that sense, equally evil.
This is why the new argument from the last two Presidential elections against the lesser
evil tactic is only seemingly a new argument. There were people who figured out before
any of were born why the Democrats would inevitably renege on their promises because of
the source of their funding.
The modern history of America reminds me of the situation during the pre-Empire Roman
Republic. Through the history of the Republic, the plebeians fought for more and more
rights against the patricians. By the time of the Empire, the plebeians had won their
struggle for equal legal rights. But this was only in formal legal terms. By the time
of the Empire, most of the rural freeholders had been dispossessed by large landed
estates and had fallen into slavery or become part of the large urban proletariat in
Rome. Most of the population were poorer and had a lower quality of life than they had
under the Republic. And the Republic was a Republic in name only, although there was a
Roman Senate up until the fall of the Empire. But in reality, the government was an
Empire with the Emperors as absolute monarchs.
Will the history of the American Republic be similar, with an expansion of rights for
African Americans and other non whites, Women, GLBTI's (Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and
Transgender and Intersexed Persons), and other groups while economic inequality, which is
now greater than it was during the Gilded Age just prior to the Depression, continues to
increase and our Republic become a Republic in name only under post 9/11 repression.
There is an alternative that has a chance of succeeding, at least an alternative that has
a greater chance of success than continuing to support the Democrats as the lesser evil,
which is sure to fail. There are far, far more people who are not members of the ruling
class than those who are, people who have to work for a living instead of the bulk of
their income coming from investments. If these over three hundred million people break
free of the siren song of the two party duopoly and make many small contributions of the
money, time and effort needed to build a viable third party that can fight the system,
there is a good chance of success because we are the overwhelming majority! Meanwhile,
those of us who are now in the minority that realizes the necessity of breaking from the
two party duopoly can keep plugging away at the task of building that third party now
until we convince a majority.
That is the only alternative. There is no get rich quick road to freedom!


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HOW BUSH STOLE THE 2004 ELECTION

HOW BUSH STOLE THE 2004 ELECTION
After Bush stole the 2000 Presidential election and the Supreme Court appointed him President, this December, 2004 article from the AMERICAN FREE PRESS exposes the many opportunities for fraud and vote theft in Bush's second stolen Presidential election in 2004.

(A note of explanation: I have extensive prior posts on my blog, RedLavenderInsurgent. After RedLavenderInsurgent disappeared, I started posting on RedLavenderInsurgent2. But then I got RedLavenderInsurgent restored and could continue posting on it for a few months. But now, I can't post on RedLavenderInsurgent so I have started posting on RedLavenderInsurgent2. But the problem is that anyone who stumbles on RedLavenderInsurgent has no way of knowing about the subsequent posts on RedLavenderInsurgent2 while readers of RedLavenderInsurgent2 have no way of knowing about the extensive past posts on RedLavenderInsurgent. A least the readers of RedLavenderInsurgent2 can read this explanatory note and Know about one but there is no way for readers of one to know about two until I can get this mailto:%60~!@#$%^&*()_+-= problem cleared up by the company that hosts this blog!)


PICO SEARCH:
Updated December 12, 2004

Private Company Still ‘Controls’ Election Outcome
Secretive company administers almost every last aspect of ‘democratic’ election process
By Christopher Bollyn
CHICAGO, Illinois—The morning after Election Day, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and the vice presidential candidate John Edwards promised the nation that the Democrats would make sure that every vote counts, and that every vote is counted. Later in the day, Kerry and Edwards, however, conceded defeat before some 170,000 to 250,000 provisional ballots from Ohio, which could have changed the outcome of the election, had been counted.

But how were the votes actually counted across the nation on Nov. 2? On Election Day, voters in Cook County, Ill., were among the 60 million Americans who voted with machines made by Election Systems & Software, a secretive company based in Omaha. ES&S, as it is known, calls itself “the world’s largest and most experienced provider of total election management solutions.” According to the company’s own figures, 42 percent of all registered voters in the United States voted on ES&S equipment on Election Day. ES&S sells its “end-to-end election management suite of solutions” to replace traditional voting methods and election officials with what it calls “‘one-stop-shop,’ full service election coordination from start to finish.”

What this means on Election Day is that ES&S, a private company, manages everything about the voting, from voter registration, the printing of ballots, the programming of the voting machines, the counting and tabulation of the votes and the final reporting of the results—for 60 million Americans in 47 states. Four years after first revealing the flaws inherent in the insecure ES&S electronic voting machines used in Cook County, American Free Press went to the county clerk’s office to observe how ES&S manages the counting of the votes for America’s third largest city, Chicago, and the suburban area around it.

Scott Burnham, spokesman for the county clerk, had informed me that the vote count is open to the public and that press credentials would not be required. Shortly after arriving, I ran into Burnham and David Orr, the county clerk, in the hallway. Although I had arrived just shortly before the polls closed at 7 p.m., I was the only member of the public or the press around except for a couple of Associated Press (AP) reporters in the far corner of the room. They were busy setting up their laptop to the ES&S computer in the backroom, which provided them with “direct feed” of the results. I was surprised to see so few people attending such an important event. In France, scores of citizens watch the vote count in each polling station. While the results were coming in, the AP reporter read a novel while her laptop did the communicating.

PLEASE LEAVE
When I went to talk to the AP reporter, Burnham quickly appeared and told me to leave. “You should talk to AP,” he said.
“She is AP,”I replied.
“She just works for AP,” he said.

Clearly the subject of AP having direct data feed from the mainframe computer was something Burnham did not want me to discuss.
Dane Placko, a local reporter for the Fox News network, told AFP that “Fox gets direct feed.”

Any actual counting of the votes by citizens is very rare in the United States except for a few counties in Montana and other states where paper ballots are still hand-counted. In most counties the ballots are treated as input data to be processed through computer systems controlled by private companies like ES&S.
In Cook County the ballot is inevitably a cluttered punch card with nearly 100 votes. After voting for the president and vice president, a senator and a congressman, the voter has to wade through pages of choices to vote for some 80 local officials from the sanitation board to the state’s general assembly. Every voter had to vote on nearly 80 judges.

LONG & COMPLICATED
Rather than holding separate elections for national and local officials, as is done in most countries, the Cook County ballot is extremely long and complicated. Officials who support electronic voting systems give the complexity of the ballot as the main reason why voting machines are necessary—because it would take too much time to count the votes manually.

After calling and personally visiting ES&S headquarters in Omaha and Chicago, I can say it is a highly secretive company. In August, I visited ES&S company headquarters on John Galt Blvd. in Omaha.
Although the company says it is the largest voting machine company in the United States, they were unable to provide any information about their company or their products. The ownership of the company is a closely guarded secret.

I asked to meet with Todd Urosevich, one of the two brothers that founded the company. Bob and Todd Urosevich started ES&S as a company called Data Mark in the early 1980s. Today, Bob Urosevich heads Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, a competitor of ES&S and the second largest U.S. manufacturer of electronic voting machines. Together, the computerized ballot scanners and touch-screen voting machines systems made by ES&S and Diebold recorded some 80 percent of all votes cast in the recent U.S. presidential election.

As ES&S had no media relations person available, and Todd Urosevich was not willing to be interviewed, the company’s chief financial officer Tom O’Brien finally appeared. Clearly displeased with my visit and questions, O’Brien refused to provide any information about the company.

MORE NAUSEOUS
Although I was ill on Election Day, I knew I had to go to the county clerk’s office to observe “counting” of the vote. It is, after all, the only “counting” open to the public. What I saw in Chicago, however, only made me more nauseous. The only “vote count” the press or public can observe in Chicago is what is projected on screens. The opening screen read: ES&S Automatic Election Returns, Release 35, Under License to the City of Chicago, Serial No. 0004, Copyright 1987. Carl Zimmerman, technical supervisor for the clerk’s office, said that the computer that ran the system was in the back—“in the ES&S room,” he said.

At 7 p.m., Jonathan Lin, a worker on the county clerk’s computer staff, came out and turned on the monitors on the 6th floor, where the City of Chicago votes were tallied and displayed. Behind him was Rick Thurman, an ES&S technician, checking the first results. Thurman seemed surprised when I asked him if he worked for ES&S. He said that the company had about six engineers running the computer in the back room. He then checked himself, saying he had said too much.

Later I asked Lin who was actually operating the computer that was generating the results being shown on the monitors. “ES&S is running the mainframe for all of this,” Lin said, pointing to the television displays.
In the press room in the back I noticed stacks of boxes containing “Votamatic” voting machines and “prepunched” ballots printed by ES&S of Addison, Texas, for the different precincts in Cook County. In the rear hallway behind the pressroom was the ES&S room. Only ES&S personnel were allowed into the room.
When I poked around in the hallway and peeked into the ES&S room, an armed marshal and ES&S employee quickly appeared. In no condition for a confrontation, I made myself scarce.

I met a couple reporters from CLTV, a local cable channel of WGN. One of the reporters asked about my interest in the Chicago tallies. I said I was interested to see how a private company runs the elections in Chicago. Seemingly unaware of how ES&S operates elections in Cook County, I explained the basics. “I’ve observed elections across Europe,” I added, “from France and Germany to Serbia and Holland. Everywhere in Europe, voting is done on paper ballots that are counted by the citizens, except Holland.”
Obviously uncomfortable with this discussion, the reporter responded: “I’m glad I’m not in Serbia. I don’t mind if a machine counts the votes.”


Not Copyrighted. Readers can reprint and are free to redistribute - as long as full credit is given to American Free Press - 645 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Suite 100 Washington, D.C. 20003



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SOCIETIES WORSE OFF 'WHEN THEY HAVE GOD ON THEIR SIDE'

Subject : SOCIETIES WORSE OFF 'WHEN THEY HAVE GOD ON THEIR SIDE'.

Date : Sun, Sep 26, 2010 02:22 AM


THE TIMESTHE SUNDAY TIMESTIMES+ The TimesThe Sunday TimesArchive ArticlePlease enjoy
this article from The Times & The Sunday Times archives. For full access to our content,
please subscribe here MY PROFILE From The Times September 27, 2005
Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'By Ruth Gledhill, Religion
Correspondent RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high
murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published
today.

According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems. The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society. It compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution.
Many conservative evangelicals in the US consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that it inspires atheism and amorality. Many liberal Christians and believers of other faiths hold that religious belief is
socially beneficial, believing that it helps to lower rates of violent crime, murder, suicide, sexual promiscuity and abortion. The benefits of religious belief to a society have been described as its “spiritual capital”. But the study claims that the devotion of many in the US may actually contribute to its ills.

The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports: “Many
Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world.

“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.
“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.” Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data from the
International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to reach his conclusions.
He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy. The study concluded that the US was the world’s only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhoea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from “ uniquely high” adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent abortion rates, the study suggested.

Mr Paul said: “The study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than America.”
He said that the disparity was even greater when the US was compared with other countries, including France, Japan and the Scandinavian countries. These nations had been the most successful in reducing murder rates, early mortality, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion, he added.

Mr Paul delayed releasing the study until now because of Hurricane Katrina. He said that the evidence accumulated by a number of different studies suggested that religion might actually contribute to social ills. “I suspect that Europeans are increasingly repelled by the poor societal performance of the Christian states,” he added.
He said that most Western nations would become more religious only if the theory of evolution could be overturned and the existence of God scientifically proven. Likewise, the theory of evolution would not enjoy majority support in the US unless there was a marked decline in religious belief, Mr Paul said. “The non-religious, proevolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator. “The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is
therefore refuted.”

HOW BUSH STOLE THE 2004 ELECTION

After Bush stole the 2000 Presidential election and the Supreme Court appointed him President, this December, 2004 article from the AMERICAN FREE PRESS exposes the many opportunities for fraud and vote theft in Bush's second stolen Presidential election in 2004.

(A note of explanation: I have extensive prior posts on my blog, RedLavenderInsurgent. After RedLavenderInsurgent disappeared, I started posting on RedLavenderInsurgent2. But then I got RedLavenderInsurgent restored and could continue posting on it for a few months. But now, I can't post on RedLavenderInsurgent so I have started posting on RedLavenderInsurgent2. But the problem is that anyone who stumbles on RedLavenderInsurgent has no way of knowing about the subsequent posts on RedLavenderInsurgent2 while readers of RedLavenderInsurgent2 have no way of knowing about the extensive past posts on RedLavenderInsurgent. A least the readers of RedLavenderInsurgent2 can read this explanatory note and Know about one but there is no way for readers of one to know about two until I can get this mailto:%60~!@#$%^&*()_+-= problem cleared up by the company that hosts this blog!)


PICO SEARCH:
Updated December 12, 2004

Private Company Still ‘Controls’ Election Outcome
Secretive company administers almost every last aspect of ‘democratic’ election process
By Christopher Bollyn
CHICAGO, Illinois—The morning after Election Day, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and the vice presidential candidate John Edwards promised the nation that the Democrats would make sure that every vote counts, and that every vote is counted. Later in the day, Kerry and Edwards, however, conceded defeat before some 170,000 to 250,000 provisional ballots from Ohio, which could have changed the outcome of the election, had been counted.

But how were the votes actually counted across the nation on Nov. 2? On Election Day, voters in Cook County, Ill., were among the 60 million Americans who voted with machines made by Election Systems & Software, a secretive company based in Omaha. ES&S, as it is known, calls itself “the world’s largest and most experienced provider of total election management solutions.” According to the company’s own figures, 42 percent of all registered voters in the United States voted on ES&S equipment on Election Day. ES&S sells its “end-to-end election management suite of solutions” to replace traditional voting methods and election officials with what it calls “‘one-stop-shop,’ full service election coordination from start to finish.”

What this means on Election Day is that ES&S, a private company, manages everything about the voting, from voter registration, the printing of ballots, the programming of the voting machines, the counting and tabulation of the votes and the final reporting of the results—for 60 million Americans in 47 states. Four years after first revealing the flaws inherent in the insecure ES&S electronic voting machines used in Cook County, American Free Press went to the county clerk’s office to observe how ES&S manages the counting of the votes for America’s third largest city, Chicago, and the suburban area around it.

Scott Burnham, spokesman for the county clerk, had informed me that the vote count is open to the public and that press credentials would not be required. Shortly after arriving, I ran into Burnham and David Orr, the county clerk, in the hallway. Although I had arrived just shortly before the polls closed at 7 p.m., I was the only member of the public or the press around except for a couple of Associated Press (AP) reporters in the far corner of the room. They were busy setting up their laptop to the ES&S computer in the backroom, which provided them with “direct feed” of the results. I was surprised to see so few people attending such an important event. In France, scores of citizens watch the vote count in each polling station. While the results were coming in, the AP reporter read a novel while her laptop did the communicating.

PLEASE LEAVE
When I went to talk to the AP reporter, Burnham quickly appeared and told me to leave. “You should talk to AP,” he said.
“She is AP,”I replied.
“She just works for AP,” he said.

Clearly the subject of AP having direct data feed from the mainframe computer was something Burnham did not want me to discuss.
Dane Placko, a local reporter for the Fox News network, told AFP that “Fox gets direct feed.”

Any actual counting of the votes by citizens is very rare in the United States except for a few counties in Montana and other states where paper ballots are still hand-counted. In most counties the ballots are treated as input data to be processed through computer systems controlled by private companies like ES&S.
In Cook County the ballot is inevitably a cluttered punch card with nearly 100 votes. After voting for the president and vice president, a senator and a congressman, the voter has to wade through pages of choices to vote for some 80 local officials from the sanitation board to the state’s general assembly. Every voter had to vote on nearly 80 judges.

LONG & COMPLICATED
Rather than holding separate elections for national and local officials, as is done in most countries, the Cook County ballot is extremely long and complicated. Officials who support electronic voting systems give the complexity of the ballot as the main reason why voting machines are necessary—because it would take too much time to count the votes manually.

After calling and personally visiting ES&S headquarters in Omaha and Chicago, I can say it is a highly secretive company. In August, I visited ES&S company headquarters on John Galt Blvd. in Omaha.
Although the company says it is the largest voting machine company in the United States, they were unable to provide any information about their company or their products. The ownership of the company is a closely guarded secret.

I asked to meet with Todd Urosevich, one of the two brothers that founded the company. Bob and Todd Urosevich started ES&S as a company called Data Mark in the early 1980s. Today, Bob Urosevich heads Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, a competitor of ES&S and the second largest U.S. manufacturer of electronic voting machines. Together, the computerized ballot scanners and touch-screen voting machines systems made by ES&S and Diebold recorded some 80 percent of all votes cast in the recent U.S. presidential election.

As ES&S had no media relations person available, and Todd Urosevich was not willing to be interviewed, the company’s chief financial officer Tom O’Brien finally appeared. Clearly displeased with my visit and questions, O’Brien refused to provide any information about the company.

MORE NAUSEOUS
Although I was ill on Election Day, I knew I had to go to the county clerk’s office to observe “counting” of the vote. It is, after all, the only “counting” open to the public. What I saw in Chicago, however, only made me more nauseous. The only “vote count” the press or public can observe in Chicago is what is projected on screens. The opening screen read: ES&S Automatic Election Returns, Release 35, Under License to the City of Chicago, Serial No. 0004, Copyright 1987. Carl Zimmerman, technical supervisor for the clerk’s office, said that the computer that ran the system was in the back—“in the ES&S room,” he said.

At 7 p.m., Jonathan Lin, a worker on the county clerk’s computer staff, came out and turned on the monitors on the 6th floor, where the City of Chicago votes were tallied and displayed. Behind him was Rick Thurman, an ES&S technician, checking the first results. Thurman seemed surprised when I asked him if he worked for ES&S. He said that the company had about six engineers running the computer in the back room. He then checked himself, saying he had said too much.

Later I asked Lin who was actually operating the computer that was generating the results being shown on the monitors. “ES&S is running the mainframe for all of this,” Lin said, pointing to the television displays.
In the press room in the back I noticed stacks of boxes containing “Votamatic” voting machines and “prepunched” ballots printed by ES&S of Addison, Texas, for the different precincts in Cook County. In the rear hallway behind the pressroom was the ES&S room. Only ES&S personnel were allowed into the room.
When I poked around in the hallway and peeked into the ES&S room, an armed marshal and ES&S employee quickly appeared. In no condition for a confrontation, I made myself scarce.

I met a couple reporters from CLTV, a local cable channel of WGN. One of the reporters asked about my interest in the Chicago tallies. I said I was interested to see how a private company runs the elections in Chicago. Seemingly unaware of how ES&S operates elections in Cook County, I explained the basics. “I’ve observed elections across Europe,” I added, “from France and Germany to Serbia and Holland. Everywhere in Europe, voting is done on paper ballots that are counted by the citizens, except Holland.”
Obviously uncomfortable with this discussion, the reporter responded: “I’m glad I’m not in Serbia. I don’t mind if a machine counts the votes.”


Not Copyrighted. Readers can reprint and are free to redistribute - as long as full credit is given to American Free Press - 645 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Suite 100 Washington, D.C. 20003



http://halfhillviews.greatnow.com/ (SITE NOW BANNED ON AOL)
*Write AOL to complain, here: aolaccessibility@aol.com, or call 1-888-212-5537.
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Monday, January 31, 2011

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Thursday, September 02, 2010

DESPICABLE TO WHIP UP BIGOTRY OVER MOSQUE

The people who started the furor over the "Mosque" (actually an Islamic cultural center with a Mosque inside it) are either incredibly stupid or so morally despicable that they don't care whether they spark off mob action and a witchhunt against the Muslim minority in this country. The majority of Muslims still don't support, in fact deplore, the terroristic actions of the 19 Al Qaida members who allegedly crashed planes into buildings on 9/11. (It is unclear how the U.S. government was able to identify the hijackers within hours of 9/11 and a number of the alleged hijackers have since turned up alive.) But leaving all that aside, there were 19 alleged hijackers, Osama bin Laden, and a few other Al Qaida leaders who knew about the planned action in advance and helped organize it. That adds up to 25 to 50 people. It is a no brainer that you cannot conclude that all of the estimated one billion to one and a half billion Muslims in the world are responsible for the actions of 25 to 50.

Some who would inflict authoritarian restrictions on all Muslims, and even a few Uncle Tom Muslims, argue that because of the crisis brought about by 9/11, the Muslim community should understand the need for heightened security measures and restrictions on them. We should only need to remind ourselves of the numbers involved to reject that argument. Consider -- if an individual security officer, or an entire government agency, is watching out for terrorists, is singling out a person solely because he or she is a Muslim really the best stategy for success when the probability of catching a terrorist is only 25 to 50 divided by one to one and a half billion?

The actual number of Muslims supporting Al Qaida is probably in the thousands or tens of thousands. (The numbers are likely to become considerably larger if demogogues of the ilk of Palin and Gingrich continue to whip up anti Muslim bigotry!) So the probability of an individual Muslim being a terrorist is still only ten thousand divided by a billion, or one in one hundred thousand -- a target that is hardly the most productive for law enforcement or security attention.

And since the Constitution of the United States guarantees freedom of religion to its citizens, Americans are prohibited by the constitution that they profess to hallow from singling out a particular religion for heightened discrimination because of something done by one one hundred thousandth of their members.

When those who are opposing the Mosque near Ground Zero are told all this, many retreat one step back and protest that while Muslims have the right to build a Mosque near Ground Zero, one should not necessarily do something merely because they have a right to do so, and that Muslims should be "sensitive" to the feelings of those victimized by 9/11. Excuse me! As we have seen, the majority of Muslims are no more responsible for or guilty of 9/11 than the rest of us. Hence they have no special obligation to be extra "sensitive" to the feelings of the victims of 9/11. And the most rational course for the victims of 9/11 is to find out who is actually responsible for what they suffered from 9/11 before directing their retaliation against them and not strike out blindly against any target that bears the most superficial resemblance to the perpetrators of 9/11. If they want to strike out against those who did 9/11 to them, they had best find out who actually did it to them before striking out.

And demagogues such as Palin and Gingrich are either incredibly stupid or so morally despicable that there are literally no words to convey the depth of their despicability for playing with fire when they whip up anti Muslim bigotry over the location of a Mosque!









al Qaida

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