Commentary
The 911 movement is alive, well and kicking in New York and beyond!
By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Associate Editor


Sep 18, 2008, 00:14

On Thursday, 9/11/08, WeAreChange.org and the ncy911 Ballot Initiative group joined forces at Ground Zero. Read all about them at the above links. I joined them about 11:30 a.m. for the march and speeches that would begin around noon. The young WeAreChange leader Luke Rudkowski (a force unto himself) and the indefatigable Ballot Initiative leader Les Jamieson were there to kick off events.

If I had apprehensions about the march, they were eased by the people I met. Optimistic, well informed, open, they were ready to face a harassing lunatic fringe and/or provocateurs with a healthy dose of humor or equal edge. Believe it or not, the legion of cops seemed bent on protecting us as well. Perhaps after seven years of listening to 9/11 Truth some had sunk in. Also, WeAreChange’s special fund-raising effort, “First Responders First,” made friends on the blue side as well with firemen and EMTs.

In fact in February, when our beloved President Bush reneged on health care funding, he cut 77 percent of it for 9/11 first responders, from $108 million to $25 million. These were the men he grandstanded with on 9/11, praising them for their courage and service to America. On March 16, Senator Hillary Clinton helped passed the 2009 budget resolution to restore these and other severe cuts to 9/11 healthcare.

Whether or not these resolutions will hold in November after the election is another story. But on this day, “First Responders first” was part of the agenda. In fact, I wrote about their plight in 9/11’s second round of slaughter, a review of Heidi Dehncke-Fisher’s film documentary, Dust to Dust: the health effects of 9/11. It will give you a good idea of what these people are dealing with.

In addition, WeAreChange gathered a greater diversity of participants, black, Latino, Asian, a rainbow of people to march. Also, WeAreChange young people had come from various chapters around the country, and they were gaining international followers as well.

The first person I talked to that morning was a man named John. He held a placard with a photo of his nephew who was lost in the North Tower while on his first job at a brokerage house. John seemed to be in his early 50s, and had come all the way from a Chicago suburb to be here. We started talking about events. I told him I wrote for Online Journal and supplied some pieces of information on 9/11 he hadn’t heard before.

Others overheard and asked questions. There was a man from Houston, Texas, who had brought his 16-year old daughter, her boyfriend, and another friend to experience the events and the March on 9/11. His daughter was interested in journalism and he wanted her to experience this. He wasn’t sure what had happened at Ground Zero but he knew that his America had changed and that we were losing our civil liberties at an alarming rate.

That’s why he and the kids were here. He was an accountant and knew about money and the market and we had a talk about the puts and calls debacle which earned hundreds of millions of dollars for traders who obviously had foreknowledge of what was about to happen on 9/11. He reminded me how Arthur Anderson had walked from the Enron debacle clean.

I pointed out the black-screened Deutsche Bank building where a good share of that trading took place. It was still not razed after seven years. It could not be taken down by internal demolition ironically because of all the pollutants detected in it. It had recently suffered a fire while being disassembled manually. Two firemen died because someone had removed the standpipe and started a fire, consciously or not.

The deconstruction had been done originally by the John Galt Company, a shell company with mob ties, like many of the construction companies now working in the former pit. They seemed to suck up billions while nothing but a partial foundation for “something” stood. My Texas friend just shook his head, and not in disbelief. What amazed him, he said, was the ceaseless greed that had overcome our country, the criminality in high and low places. How the takers never seemed to have enough.

He added that people back home were drilling private oil wells and refining enough crude to sell for less than market prices. The profits being made, even at low-ball prices, left these entrepreneurs with lots of cash. As he described it, they had bought every luxury item they could find, and were running out of places to bury more cash.

This was a problem most Americans would not have these days -- including Lehman Brothers going bankrupt (with nearly 28,000 employees world-wide); and Fannie and Freddy on the Fed dole; and even AIG, looking for a multi-billion dollar bridge loan because it’s portfolio was downgraded with too much collateralized debt paper (not originally stated). As the teenagers joined us, and our new friend John, it was after noon, and we were told we were ready to move out and march.

And who would imagine that the Fed six days later on Sept. 17, as reported in the New York Times, would change its collective mind, “Fearing a financial crisis worldwide, the Federal Reserve reversed course on Tuesday and agreed to an $85 billion bailout that would give the government control of the troubled insurance giant American International Group.”

“The decision, only two weeks after the Treasury took over the federally chartered mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is the most radical intervention in private business in the central bank’s history.” It seems the privatizing government of Bush would be nationalizing still another bleeding, mismanaged financial giant. Maybe I should ask, with all the other common and preferred stock holders of Fannie Mae, and bondholders of Lehman brothers, for the return of our money lost from our shrinking retirement funds.

The first stop

As we began to march, suddenly I realized that literally several thousand people had gathered, most of them young people. Appropriately, WeAreChange had invited hip-hop artists as well for a benefit the next night for the first responders. We formed a column that stretched out of sight. The police closed their ranks and we moved forward.

Our first stop was Larry Silverstein’s new Tower Seven on Vesey Street, across from where Tower One once proudly stood. Larry had used his $500 million profit in insurance to build a taller, wider, slicker version of the old T-7. This was the old smoking gun, the building he actually owned not leased. He had said at 3:20 p,m, on 9/11 that it would be “pulled.” After all, the illogic went, there was so much pain and suffering, “they” decided to pull it.

The fact that no plane hit T-7 is still little-known to many or that it was only hit by some flying girders from T-1 and that there were two fires on the north side of it, which were put out in two hours. Nevertheless, after an explosion heard by many who were near T-7 at 5 p.m., it fell neatly into its footprint within six seconds. The irony is that the collapse was announced on the BBC 20 minutes earlier, so somebody there must have had a copy of the 9/11 script.

Another marcher had David Griffin’s new book 911 Contradictions – An Open Letter to Congress and the Press, in which Griffin details reports that Michael Hess, New York City’s corporation counsel, had arrived at the 23rd floor Emergency Management Center of WTC 7 not long after the first hit. So had Barry Jennings arrived there then, as originally reported. He was deputy director of the Emergency Services Dept for the New York City Housing Authority. Both men experienced explosions on the 8th floor as they were walking down the steps from the abandoned EMC. They were rescued by firemen within an hour and a half. Read their full story in Griffin’s gripping book for something else that smells rotten in T-7 . . .

P.S. Who could have realized at that moment that Barry Jennings would be reported dead on 9/16/08 and that Alex Jones office would not even be able to contact the deceased’s family. Linked is this brave man’s testimony from infowars.com. Jennings was only 53 years old. His death came only days before the release of NIST’s whitewash report on WTC, “and shortly after a firestorm erupted over his testimony that he heard explosions inside the building prior to collapse of either tower and that there were dead bodies in the building’s blown-out lobby. I wonder if Michael Hess is next.

Next Stop Broadway

Returning to the chanting crowd, serving up “Truth now, 911,” and “9/11 was an inside job,” and back to “Pull it, Larry,” we invited Silverstein to join us on the streets, at least from wherever he was in his new building. Perhaps he wasn’t there at all as he wasn’t on the morning of 9/11/2001 -- luckily at his doctor for a checkup. That’s Lucky Larry Silverstein.

But the fire of the marchers had been lit and the column spilled east towards Broadway among the afternoon crowds returning from lunch, on their way to business appointments, peering from cars, trucks and tourist buses. The protest line seemed to uncoil endlessly, stopping at various points, and then moving like a Chinatown New Year’s dragon. The sound of the chants, echoing through the narrow streets of skyscrapers had an amazing effect. It echoed through the caverns of Broadway and narrow side streets, ringing with our voices. It energized you to give up your “barbaric yawp,” as Whitman would say.

People opened their eyes to see what was going on. What was this endless line of people with the black t-shirts that said, “Investigate 911,” or “Ask questions, demand answers.” Who are these protestors rattling the cage of order. And what was this sensation of joy we were experiencing, getting it all off our chests and sending this cleansing vibe into still-polluted air.

If this was a movement of hard facts, scientific evidence and logic, it was also a movement of emotion, pain, suffering, for victims’ families, for all those who took up the torch, so often derided by the unknowing as conspiracy nuts, crazy, anti-American, etc. The fuel of mainstream ignorance was fed daily by the mainstream media, no mean competition even for the most potent truth. But here we were at the crossroads, not only of Broadway and Liberty, but of knowledge challenging ignorance, creating fear for some, liberation for others who thrust thumbs up. There was confusion for others trying to fathom if “9/11 was an inside job” could possibly be true. For these folks it was, “Oh my god, the sky is falling again.”

But if you looked at the market indicators -- passing electronic stock quotations in brokerage house windows -- the sky was falling again like the Dow Jones average, the economy itself seemed to be imploding by set charges of fraudulent debt, exploding up and down the colossus of the Stock Market’s columns, about to bring the financial roof down in a cloud of debt dust, fortunes, retirement plans, companies, wiped out in no time.

And here I stood, six days from my 70th year, among thousands of brave young people, some 90 percent of the marchers. I was proud to be there, alive and kicking with them. If there was a fountain of youth, it was talking back to power. Throwing off oppression took away the depression I saw on those onlookers’ faces, the depression that was internal and potentially, literally, external at any moment, despite what our billionaire Mayor Mike said about our “financial health.” They also said the air was fine to breathe after 9/11/01. Wrong.

These elements were all connected and stretched back like the line of marchers to Ground Zero and 9/11/01, to the inciting incident of a false-flag operation designed to initiate “The War on Terror” and the alternative March for World Hegemony which was bankrupting us, financially, morally, and in the eyes of the whole world.

This was the terrifying New World Order we were trying to disrupt, which was no order at all but rampant chaos, unleashed greed, violence and hatred, an insatiable appetite for oil and power, and taking them by force of arms. This is what our march was protesting, what these brave young people put themselves at peril to resist and fight against. This was the march to bring down the elites, the illuminati, the Bush crime family, and all their Bilderberg friends, attempting to cut up the world into pieces like lions for their prides.

The difference was the lions could be satiated after a kill and fill-up. The elite hunger was endless and would engulf entire populations, reduce them to skulls and bones for their purposes, pillaging “failed states” resources at will. That’s why they could so easily sacrifice the lives of nearly 3,000 people here and in DC and Pennsylvania at will.

The number was curiously close to that of Pearl Harbor, where the innocent were once again called on to spark the reason for war. Only that incident laid claim to protecting the world from Hitler who had recently devoured Europe for lunch. Nine-eleven and the War on Terror was sheer invention, to gobble cheap oil, to avoid drilling for our own and facing the more arduous task of seeking alternative energy sources. That was clear even on this overcast day.

This painful TWOT and its dire consequences were the idiots’ easy way out. And the idiots were all gathered at the White House, the Pentagon, and the intelligence agencies. But these young people swarming alongside me knew they could be called on as the other march’s fodder. And they wouldn’t have any of it.

And so the cannon fire of the march’s chant was liberating, a sound that approximated taking down barricades, allying a police force, even the military one day to this purpose, of returning “power to the people,” as Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney would say at press conferences later in the day. This was an ongoing struggle, seven years old, and part of an age-old struggle to rattle open the cage of disorder and let the people out, let freedom out.

Towards One Police Plaza

As we moved past City Hall barricaded to the hilt, my Texas friend asked what said building was. When I told him, he laughed and said, boy, they’re not taking any chances are they. Oh no, they weren’t. All “the dignitaries” in fact, like Giuliani (that death mask face), and Bloomberg, the liberal/Republican billionaire mayor; McCain the mad hatter presidential candidate; and Obama the well-meaning “change candidate” with Zbigniew Brzezinski his foreign policy adviser, the author of so much of this havoc . . . all “the dignitaries” were back at “the pit,” addressing those grieving families for the loss, addressing all those decent people who may or may not have figured out yet that “9/11 was an inside job.” They were surrounded by a number of the participants as well as an army of “security.”

And for all 96 of those victim families that had originally asked for a trial to find out who the real culprits were, none so far were given a trial. Some 7 billion dollars in hush money was handed out from 2001 to date. The stipulation to get the cash was not to sue the administration or even the airlines, who at the same time had received a 15 billion dollar bailout via the Air Traffic Safety Act of 2001.

And so the sound of that chanting crowd, the echoing back and forth of its imperatives was a balm in Gilead, an indescribable rhythm to shake these buildings and those inside them to listen: the people were an earthquake waiting to happen. And behind us, millions from around the world were reminding the world what happened on 9/11. And we would be returning until everyone knew. Until justice delayed was not justice denied -- until it was given to all who yearned for it.

And there we were, filling the courtyard of One Police Plaza, surrounded by police, friends or enemies or a share of both. There was young Luke speaking without a bullhorn, a slender young man with a mighty passion for truth. He raised his voice above the crowd and brought cheers, inside and out from the gathered as he gave an impassioned speech.

I thought here was a kid who had faced down Bzrezinsky at the Council on Foreign Relations and told him what a skunk Zbig was for organizing the Mujihadeen to fight the Russians in Afghanistan in 1979. Luke and his group continue to challenge many others bigwigs, pinning their sins to their reputations at great risk to themselves. For Luke and his colleagues it was a mission. They had to do what they were doing. Luke had lost a close friend who was a first responder. For him, like so many of these young people, the middle-aged and others who had come and would gather over the weekend, this was a deep, very personal affair.

And for my friend John from Illinois, my friend from Texas, who even as he came to a Central Park gathering on the sweltering Sunday after, had found out that his mother lost her house to hurricane Ike on a beach in Galveston; he learned too that his own home closer to Houston was only a few feet above water.

Yet as he was talking, he was thinking of how he could help not just his family, but others. He could use his accounting office to help the poor file for FEMA assistance; help them get through the forms for the starter money that would be just that and barely enough. So here was the best impulse in the American character, to work for the “common good,” not just one’s own enrichment. This was special. This was the march. This would be the 9/11 March as long as there were Americans to defend their country, and not let it languish in dust. For now, my faith in what America could be was healed. Tomorrow was another story.