Week Of Shame

Let's begin the beguine...

Before I get to more pressing matters that need ironing out, by which we mean the fact that you can now count us among those who believe the official party line regarding the 9/11 attacks is one big cover-up of epic proportions, whereby the whole thing unravels like a cheap suit if you do the least bit of cursory research, let us first provide some necessary diversion on this waterlogged Monday morning...

Has there been a worse week for the major professional sports than this last one? Don't think so, mis amigos... In no particular order, then, let's recount the public relations nightmares facing the commissioners of the three major sports.

The NBA took a 3-point-like dagger to the heart of its integrity this past week when an investigation into game fixing by one of its referees was made public by the FBI. It involves point shaving, or more accurately point enhancing, on the part of Tim Donaghy, who only weeks ago worked a prominent playoff game in the Phoenix-San Antonio series -- a pivotal game in which a star Sun (Amare Stoudamire) got in immediate foul trouble. Hmmm...

Donaghy is alleged to have been in cahoots with the mob to fix certain games, usually involving the under/over but sometimes the point spread itself, after the wayward zebra became indebted to the bent-nose crew while incurring large gambling debts. Other equally juicy accusations surround David Stern possibly knowing about the sorry situation for over a year, yet still allowing the corrupt whistle-blower to fix, er, work games anyway this past season. Or was Stern told for the investigation's sake to let the damn thing play out to entrap as many mobsters as possible. Either way, we think this just about wipes that smile off the NBA commissioner's smug mug. I'd, ahem, bet that those plans for a Las Vegas franchise are on hold for now. Good idea having the All-Star weekend there, Dave! Hell, even before this revelation, fans of the sport would alternatively chuckle or shake their heads at the mystifyingly inconsistent nature of officiating in the league. Now nobody will ever look at a suspicious or phantom call the same way again.

The NFL has a similar PR nightmare on its hands, what with one of its marquee players, Atlanta Falcons QB Mike Vick, being indicted on federal charges relating to dog fighting on his Virginia property. The indictment goes into specifics of how Vick and his partners in Bad Newz Kennels ran a gambling ring that took bets on the fights and, even more damning, how Vick & Co. would dispose of dogs who failed to show enough fighting instinct: "executing dogs that didn't perform well by methods such as hanging, drowning, electrocuting, shooting and "slamming at least one dog's body to the ground." Vick, even if he manages to elude conviction and subsequent jail time the way he slithers out of the grasp of onrushing defensive linemen, has already been convicted of animal cruelty in the court of public opinion. That's gonna follow him everywhere he goes. Add to that putrid scandal the Pacman Jones and Tank Johnson troubles, and Commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL will have its hands full defending its own off-the-field problems during the upcoming season.

Which brings us to baseball. Barry Bonds clubbed 2 more home runs last week, leaving him just 2 HRs short of tying Hank Aaron's all-time mark of 755. Problem is, nobody can enjoy the chase because of all the steroid allegations overshadowing Bonds. This puts Commissioner Bud Selig in the embarrassing position of having to confront a worst-case scenario of publicly congratulating Bonds for breaking a record that few want to see broken. Good luck with all that, Bud.

And speaking of embarrassing, the Tour de France continues among its own allegations of performance-enhancing drugs . As if life without Lance Armstrong wasn't enough of an obstacle, now nobody can enjoy the Tour because the winner will undoubtedly be wearing a yellow jersey of suspicion and doubt, a la Floyd Landis, last year's winner, still resolutely if not all that successfully defending himself a year later against allegations of cheating. Despite constant testing, large numbers of riders still apparently risk detection rather than face the harsh course sans pharmaceutical or chemical enhancement. If everyone isn't doing it already, they might as well start now because fans of the sport just assume you're doping anyway. Another stage, another rider thrown out. First clean blood sample to the finish line win... , C'est la guerre!

Back on the field, my b'loved New York Yankees continue to cut into the AL East lead of the d'tested Boston Red Sox. This morning's MLB standings indisputably show the Yankees trailing by a mere 7.5 games, which, with just over 60 games remaining on the schedule, is like being behind by about 8 points in the 3rd quarter of an NBA game -- hardly insurmountable.

The Yankees erupted for an astounding 45 runs in the last 3 games of the Tampa Bay series, belting out 53 hits and, in the process, may have found the new Shane Spencer in the process. Shelley Duncan, just called up from Triple-A Columbus, belted 3 HRs over the weekend. Duncan became the first Yank in 60 years to hit 3 HRs in his first 3 major league games, although counting the Devil Rays as a real MLB team takes a giant leap of faith. In one of the all-time head shakers, I heard over the weekend that Tampa Bay won a TOTAL of 3 road games after the All-Star break last year. That' just not getting 'er done.

Duncan is no spring chicken at 27 years old, and like Spencer served a long apprenticeship in the minors. But as the Daily News' Bill Madden put it, "There is a new People's Choice in the Bronx, an effervescent kid, living a dream, who packs a wallop with his bat and a whole lot of welcome fist-pumping energy in the dugout."
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Now back to the cryptic matter at hand. I never wanted or intended to be counted among the swelling ranks of 9/11 conspiracy buffs, but over the last week, mainly through some excellent documentaries on Youtube, I discovered holes in the official story big enough to drive an 18-wheeler through. Then I did some reading on the issues the videos raised, and before you know it, I was through the Looking Glass again.

I first narrowly limited my focus on the bizarre circumstances surrounding the collapse of WTC 7. The more facts came in, the less likely it became that Building 7 just collapsed on its own, among other inconsistencies. (That was true of the rest of the 9/11 story, but let's confine our focus to WTC 7 for the time being.)

Approximately six months before 9/11, Larry Silverstein, who owned WTC 7 as well as the Twin Towers, took out a major insurance policy guarding against damage caused by terrorist attack. So far nothing suspicious. WTC contained a vast array of governmental offices, including the CIA, Secret Service and SEC, as well as the emergency operations center for the City of New York. In fact, because of the destruction that day, some 300 major cases looking into IPO fraud and other corporate malfeasance (including Enron) by the SEC had to be dropped, but that too could safely fall under the banner of coincidence. But there comes a point when coincidence no longer sufficiently explains all the unanswered questions.

It is also a fact that somebody did an awful lot of insider trading, specifically the short selling of major airline and insurance stocks, as well as the stocks of some major WTC tenants, in the days immediately leading up to September 11th. The volume of trading in these key stocks was way above average, so someone stood to make a lot of money if the shares of these companies' stocks plummeted. The only catch? Investors were prevented from cashing in on their, ahem, prescient business acumen because all the major markets were closed for four days following the attacks -- an unseen monkey wrench perhaps.

An investigation into the suspicious trading was allegedly blocked or allowed to fizzle, according to officials at the Chicago Options Board Exchange, despite available information into who conducted the trades. Technology exists that could pinpoint where and by whom the trades took place, but that major piece of the puzzle was conveniently not addressed by the official 9/11 Commission.

Back to WTC 7. As late as 5:00 on the afternoon of 9/11, Building 7 was still standing. Small fires were visible on two of the lower floors of the 47-storey building, resulting from the collapse of the two main towers earlier, but the fire appeared to be under control. The building had been evacuated, and no firemen or emergency personnel were still in the building. Until that day, there had never been a reported case of a steel structure building collapsing, yet a short time later WTC 7 became the third such collapse.

A year later Silverstein made the following quote, which he later refuted:

"I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse."

The part of the quote referring to "pull" is construction shorthand for the controlled collapse of a building. Firemen and other emergency workers also testified that they were told to get away from WTC 7 just before it ultimately collapsed, while demolition experts viewing footage of the building coming down are on record saying it can only be explained by the structure being "pulled."

Now, it would seem that something is definitely amiss with regard to the official story of WTC 7. At the least, there are several inconsistencies that need to be cleared up. What makes the story even more fallacious, however, is the following.

Almost half an hour before WTC is seen coming down, news broadcasts from the site by CNN and the BBC report that Building 7 has collapsed. That's right: two major networks are on record saying the structure has been destroyed, well BEFORE WTC 7 came down. At the least, wouldn't an investigation into the source of the information be warranted? Isn't it at least suspicious that of all the buildings in the area, two different broadcasts are reporting things that had not yet happened, choosing a structure that, astonishingly, is clearly visible from behind both the CNN and BBC reporters as they report live from the scene?

There's more, of course. Despite the BBC's very own in-house mandated instructions to keep at least TWO SOURCES, or two tapes, of every broadcast, the broadcast content of the entire day's reports remain missing. That's right, folks, despite it being one of the major events in the history of mankind, the 9/11 tapes were not deemed worthy of recording and preserving. It boggles the mind and, more to the point, defies all logic.

Remember, this is one aspect of just one facet of 9/11 that doesn't meet the smell test. In fact, it smells like something you wouldn't want to step in. The deeper you go into the story, the more illogical it all becomes.

How anyone can swallow the misinformation dispatched by official media and government is beyond me, and that's after less than a week of my looking into it. If it can all be explained away or dismissed, I'd be willing to hear all about it. But as of now, I plan on following up with more troubling, disturbing aspects of the case.

Speaking of collapse, it seems to me that if enough of the facts upon which the official case rests are proven wrong, the whole house of cards will come crashing down, leaving in its wake outraged calls for a new investigation. We're not there yet, but the ranks of the disbelievers are growing daily.
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One more brain teaser. Were you among those who wondered why the skies were left unprotected that day? After all, why weren't the fighter planes scrambled in time, despite the long gaps between the first and second planes hitting the towers in New York, and before the Pentagon was hit? Was there an order to stand down?

Well. believe it or not, on 9/11 the entire East Coast was engaged in a NORAD air defense drill designed to prevent the hijacking of airliners by terrorists. So in addition to the actual planes commandeered by terrorists, there were similar training exercises being conducted all morning involving dummy planes that showed up on radar, confusing those monitoring the situation.

Also, the planes that were responsible for defensing the air space above New York City were off on another training drill that took them to Canada and Alaska. Thus they were unable to participate in the defense of NYC that day. Did someone have foreknowledge of this exercise?

Interestingly, in June of 2001, two major military changes were made in the chain of command. One, the responsibility for a "seamless coordination" of the nation's air defense system was transferred from the Joint Chiefs to the Office of the Vice President; and two, the protocol for shooting down civilian airliners in an emergency was transferred to the Secretary of Defense. On the morning of 9/11, Rumsfeld was missing for key stretches of time, while Dick Cheney was in a bunker below Washington, where he repeatedly convinced President Bush not to return to Washington until it was "safe" -- at one point even telling Bush of a direct threat to Air Force One that was later found to be a fabrication.

Testifying before the 9/11 Commission, Secretary of Transportation Leon Mineta said the following, which also never made mention of in the final "official" report:

“During the time that the airplane was coming into the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President…the plane is 50 miles out…the plane is 30 miles out….and when it got down to the plane is 10 miles out, the young man also said to the vice president “do the orders still stand?” And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said “Of course the orders still stand, have you heard anything to the contrary!?"