The issue of the Park51 community center is about more than just this one religious affiliated building. It would be one thing if it were just at this one place, where there is some heartfelt if misguided feelings about the site of a national tragedy a few blocks away. Sadly this is just the most visible of fights about the construction of Islamic religious buildings, whether they be mosques (which in the Islamic faith must be reserved for prayer alone) or community centers there is a push nation wide to prevent them from being built. Take a look at what they are saying in Temecula CA or in Tennessee.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

Gov. Dean has taken a lot of heat from the Left for his idea that there can be come kind of dialog with the families of the 9/11 victims who object to the Park51 community center. He is making a stand on ideals, though not the ideals that many of us would like. It is a good idea to reach out and find common ground, but we can not do so with those who want it all their own way. This is exactly the same kind of situation the Democrats in Congress find themselves in. They want to find common ground with Congressional Republicans, but the Republicans insist on it being all there own way or nothing. There is no way to compromises with those who won’t bend.

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While the Obama administration has fended off comparisons between its response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, the president is not averse to making comparisons with the worst terrorist attack on American soil.

In an interview with Politico.com's Roger Simon on Friday, Mr. Obama likened the effect upon the national psyche of what may become the largest oil spill in history with that of 9/11.

"In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11 . . . I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come," Mr. Obama said in an Oval Office interview Friday.

The president said he would make a "bold" push for a new energy law, directing the United States on a course away from its current dependence on fossil fuels. He told Politico that while he couldn't predict whether such a transition would be achieved within his lifetime, the disaster in the Gulf indicated that now is the time to begin the transition and invest in what he called "a new way of doing business when it comes to energy."

More from CBS News by David S Morgan, June 14, 2010 8:54 AM

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After calling in to Diane G's Blog Talk Radio program last Friday evening, which dealt with 9/11 conspiracy hypotheses, I decided to revive my own show for a special continuing discussion on the subject since I wasn't able to fully discuss my own interpretation of that day's events. The show will last two hours and will air at eight o'clock Eastern Daylight Time this coming Friday.

I'll be debunking some of the wilder beliefs about what actually happened on September 11, 2001 and offering my own hypothesis about the government's refusal to take action in the months leading up to the attacks. (I want the truth to come out too, but I think the search for it has veered way off course and taken us places that can only lead to continued frustration.) I'll also be taking calls so people can discuss the Democrats' Republican health insurance bill and what the consequences are both for Americans and for the Democrats in November. And if time allows, the final portion of the show will deal with this week's latest mining disaster, how deregulation helped it happen, and what must be done to ensure that something like this doesn't happen again.

Here's the link to the show.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/progressive-independence

The call-in number is 1 (347) 884-9121

I hope to hear from Diane G. and all other interested listeners out there. Thanks for reading!

Wild Wild Left Radio is proud to announce that we will be interviewing Richard Gage, AIA on our BTR show tomorrow at 6pm EDT.

Richard Gage, AIA, is a San Francisco Bay Area architect and a member of the American Institute of Architects. He is the founding member of AE911Truth.org. He has been a practicing architect for over 20 years and has worked on most types of building construction, including numerous fire-proofed steel-framed buildings.

Mr. Gage became interested in researching the destruction of the WTC high-rises after hearing the startling conclusions of a reluctant 9/11 researcher, David Ray Griffin, on the radio in 2006, which launched his own unyielding quest for the truth about 9/11.

This will be your opportunity to hear from the leading expert on the subject of why from a scientific standpoint the "official" story is not only improbable, but IMPOSSIBLE. He has compiled the evidence from every leading architect and engineer in the field.

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Originally published at TomDispatch.com

Hold Onto Your Underwear
This Is Not a National Emergency

Let me put American life in the Age of Terror into some kind of context, and then tell me you’re not ready to get on the nearest plane heading anywhere, even toward Yemen.

In 2008, 14,180 Americans were murdered, according to the FBI.  In that year, there were 34,017 fatal vehicle crashes in the U.S. and, so the U.S. Fire Administration tells us, 3,320 deaths by fire.  More than 11,000 Americans died of the swine flu between April and mid-December 2009, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; on average, a staggering 443,600 Americans die yearly of illnesses related to tobacco use, reports the American Cancer Society; 5,000 Americans die annually from food-borne diseases; an estimated 1,760 children died from abuse or neglect in 2007; and the next year, 560 Americans died of weather-related conditions, according to the National Weather Service, including 126 from tornadoes, 67 from rip tides, 58 from flash floods, 27 from lightning, 27 from avalanches, and 1 from a dust devil.

As for airplane fatalities, no American died in a crash of a U.S. carrier in either 2007 or 2008, despite 1.5 billion passengers transported.  In 2009, planes certainly went down and people died.  In June, for instance, a French flight on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris disappeared in bad weather over the Atlantic, killing 226.  Continental Connection Flight 3407, a regional commuter flight, crashed into a house near Buffalo, New York, that February killing 50, the first fatal crash of a U.S. commercial flight since August 2006.  And in January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549, assaulted by a flock of birds, managed a brilliant landing in New York’s Hudson River when disaster might have ensued.  In none of these years did an airplane go down anywhere due to terrorism, though in 2007 two terrorists smashed a Jeep Cherokee loaded with propane tanks into the terminal of Glasgow International Airport.  (No one was killed.)    

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"It is nowhere written that the American empire goes on forever."
--Eugene Jarecki
Is American foreign policy dominated by the idea of military supremacy? Has the military become too important in American life? Jarecki's shrewd and intelligent polemic would seem to give an affirmative answer to each of these questions.

He may have been the ultimate icon of 1950s conformity and postwar complacency, but Dwight D. Eisenhower was an iconoclast, visionary, and the Cassandra of the New World Order. Upon departing his presidency, Eisenhower issued a stern, cogent warning about the burgeoning "military industrial complex," foretelling with ominous clarity the state of the world in 2004 with its incestuous entanglement of political, corporate, and Defense Department interests.

"Why We Fight"
99 minutes

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After months of deliberations, President Barack Obama finally outlined his revised strategy for the Afghanistan war in a nationally televised address Tuesday night. The commander-in-chief repeatedly invoked 9/11, attempting to justify his plan to escalate the eight-year-old war, which calls for the rapid deployment of 30,000 additional US troops to the region by next summer.

Obama's decision to step-up the war effort in Afghanistan comes two weeks before he heads to Oslo, Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

Speaking at the US Military Academy at West Point to thousands of uniformed cadets, many of whom will likely be shipped off to Afghanistan when they graduate, Obama appeared somewhat subdued when he began his speech by saying that it is "important to recall why America and our allies were compelled to fight a war in Afghanistan in the first place.

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On September 11, 2001, my office building, the World Trade Center, was attacked by al Qaeda, a murder cult of Saudi Arabians, funded by Saudi Arabians. And so, in response to the Saudis’ attack, America invaded … Afghanistan.

And here we go again. The New York Times (print edition) headline last Friday was: “Pakistani Army, In Its Campaign In Taliban Stronghold, Finds A Hint Of 9/11.”

Google it and you’ll find the Times report repeated and amplified 5,785 times more.

Taliban = 9/11. Taliban = 9/11. Taliban = 9/11.

Your eyelids are getting heavy. Taliban = 9/11. Taliban = 9/11.

It’s the latest hit from the same crew that brought you Saddam = 9/11 and its twin chant, Saddam = WMD, Dick Cheney’s chimerical tropes which the New York Times’ Judith Miller happily channeled to the paper’s front page.

And they’re at it again.

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Part 3 of Real News Network Paul Jay's interview of former FBI agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley about the leadup investigations to the September 11, 2001 WTC attacks.


Part 2 of the interview is here.
Part 1 of the interview is here.

Part 2 of Real News Network Paul Jay's interview of former FBI agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley about the leadup investigations to the September 11, 2001 WTC attacks.


Part 1 of the interview is here.