World Trade Center

54th Anniversary Of Sputnik: The Need For National Purpose As We Had In 1957!

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Today is the 54th Anniversary of the Space Age, as the Soviet Union shocked the United States and the world by orbiting a space satellite, Sputnik I, in space, taking everyone by surprise!

It was the most shocking moment in America since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which brought us into World War II.

And in both cases, the United States reacted with a massive effort to overcome the disadvantages they faced!

Much like they did in fighting Al Qaeda after the horrific attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001!

This nation MUST look at the economic disaster we are in now as a result of the Great Recession, and stop the politics, and do what is right for America: the creation of jobs, the promotion of fairness in taxation, and the need to invest in education and infrastructure, as well as promote innovation in technology!

The nation cries for the end of the divisiveness which has developed, particularly since the Clinton years, and to stop having the government interfere in our personal lives due to the crusades of religious zealots, and instead call for government intervention economically to stop the stratification of society, which has made us the nation with the most inequities of any democratic society on earth!

The Five Greatest American Tragedies of the Past Half Century!

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In the adult life of the author, if one were to judge what the five greatest American tragedies have been, whether man made or natural disasters, they would be the following in ranked order:

1. September 11, 2001–The worst tragedy in American history as 3,000 Americans were killed at the World Trade Center in New York City, along with deaths at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and the bringing down of United Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, preventing the possible attack on and destruction of the US Capitol Building or the White House in Washington, DC by Muslim terrorists.

2. Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005 and the days after, which caused the flooding of New Orleans, coastal Mississippi, and the death of more than 1,300 people , with a very slow response by federal, state and local officials.

3. The truck bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building by Timothy McVeigh on April 19, 1995, causing the death of about 168 people, and the wounding of 680 other victims, the greatest terrorist act on American soil until September 11, 2001.

4. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.

5. The killing of seven astronauts in the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster on January 28, 1986, including the first teacher to go into space, Christa McAuliffe.

This list could be much longer, as we have experienced other disasters, but these five will always be remembered as the top of the list of tragedies!

September 11 Ten Years Later: Its Long Range Impact!

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Tomorrow will mark ten years since the greatest tragedy in American history–the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City; the Pentagon in suburban Virginia outside Washington, DC; and the heroism of the passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 who prevented that plane’s hijackers from attacking the US Capitol Building or the White House by rebelling, and forcing the plane into a crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania!

Over 3,000 people died as a result of September 11, most in the Trade Center, but some in the Pentagon, and also on the the four planes involved in the terrorist plot.

Additionally, about 5,000 soldiers have been killed in the wars In Iraq and Afghanistan, and about 45,000 wounded, including a few thousand severely wounded, making more than 50,000 killed or wounded as a result of September 11.

It has been very difficult to conceptualize and cope with the tragedy of that day, and ever since in the never ending involvement in the wars against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Words cannot describe the torment that most Americans feel about this greatest of all human tragedies in American history, other than the tragic battles of Antietam and Gettysburg in the Civil War, along with the losses of our troops at Pearl Harbor which led us into World War II.

September 11 changed the American Presidency forever, making it that all Presidents in the future will have to be prepared to deal with a terrorist attack that could come at any time, no matter how much preparation and alertness Americans have. This is a never ending war that will cost us plenty in national treasure, and already has put us into economic straits worse than any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Socially, September 11 has made the country fearful of the religion of Islam, and made Americans suspicious of immigrants in general, an ugly revival of religious intolerance and of nativism, which is a massive problem for the long term, and could subject us to more danger because of hate mongers who can incite reactions by people who have no connection to September 11, and yet feel victimized.

September 11 united us briefly, but now it has led to political divisions that endanger the future of the country both domestically and in foreign policy dealings.

September 11 has also made us realize, like at the time of Pearl Harbor but then forgotten, that we are vulnerable to attack, and have been too self assured and cocky about the greatness of our nation, leading to the wrong headed attitude that we are superior and cannot be touched or threatened internally. We have learned the hard way the folly of our self proclaimed “exceptionalism”, a super nationalism which endangers our relations with other nations and makes us feel that we are best in every way, which is far from the truth!

September 11 has also endangered our Bill of Rights and civil liberties, some of it understandable, but much of it dangerous and unacceptable violations in the name of security. It has created an intrusive government which can spy on us with cameras, phones, internet and other forms of technology, and has caused the growth of so many intelligence and spy agencies that the Washington Post has published about secret governments and expenditures that we have no concept of, or ability to gain awareness of in detail!

In many ways, while we have fought the terrorism successfully, we have also become the victims, in the sense of losing our freedoms, security, contentment in being Americans, and sense of well being.

So September 11 has done great harm to us, and its impact will never dissipate, sadly!

Bin Laden Award Money: Who Deserves It Now That Bin Laden Is Gone?

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The US government offered $25 million after September 11 for the capture or death of Osama Bin Laden, and now that Bin Laden has been assassinated, the question is what should happen to the money.

Since no individual directly brought about the end of the Bin Laden hegemony, and since people in the military cannot be awarded the money ethically, since they were doing their duty as Navy SEALS, it seems appropriate that the money go to the September 11 responders, those firefighters and police officers and others who helped rescue survivors at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and who, in so many cases, suffered grievous injuries or illnesses.

It does not seem appropriate for the relatives of those who died to receive payments, as they have already been awarded financial damages.

It is proper that those who gambled their lives and health to help retrieve live victims and clean up the struck sites in New York City and Arlington, Virginia, over a period of months be thanked by financial payments that honor what they did, in the name of patriotism and nationalism!

Two Events To Commemorate On May 1: Holocaust Remembrance (Yom HaShoah) And The Death Of Mass Murderer Osama Bin Laden!

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As we come to the end of the first day of May, we have two developments to commemorate–both Holocausts of different sizes!

Today is the day we commemorate the Nazi Holocaust of World War II, which killed 6 million Jews and 7 million other victims! It is called Yom HaShoah, and it is a day to remember the sacrifices of these millions of victims!

Ironic that on Yom HaShoah that we learn that Osama Bin Laden, the most sought man in the world, responsible for 3,000 deaths at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, has been killed by the United States through the CIA, with a statement due soon by President Obama as we near midnight!

Bin Laden also hated the Jews, so this is a double day of remembrance for those people who support Israel and Jewish survival through the thick and thin of world history!

This is a great moment, and it unites Americans like nothing since September 11!

It is thrilling to witness tourists outside the White House singing the National Anthem, and it is a time for all of us to rejoice that justice has been done!

It also makes President Obama look great, that this happened on his watch, and it strengthens him in his re-election contest in the fall of 2012! What can the Republican Party say in opposition to Obama, considering that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were unable to resolve this matter in seven years after September 11?

This will make Obama look strong on defense matters, and overcome the old myth that Democrats are weak on defense!

It will give some solace to the families of the 3,000 victims of September 11, and will make May 1 a special day in the history of the United States, to be commemorated every year as one of the major events of American history for all time!

It, however, also makes us need to be more cautious and on alert, as the odds are that Al Qaeda will want to strike back at the United States in retaliation for Bin Laden’s death!

As John King of CNN just stated, this is an HISTORIC day in capital letters, and we will applaud this as one of the major successes of Barack Obama’s great leadership in the War On Terror!

The Ignorance Crisis In America: Belief In Conspiracy Theories Runs Amuck, Danger Sign For America’s Future!

Ronald 6 Comments

America is in deep trouble for the future in so many ways, but it is likely that the greatest crisis the country faces is the Ignorance Crisis, in which Conspiracy Theories run amuck!

It is shocking how many people, and we mean adults over the age of 18 but working its way up to include even the elderly, display such ignorance and lack of a sense of reality, that they truly believe in conspiracy theories, accepting false evidence as factually true. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but millions of citizens seem to be unwilling to face reality and accept factual details, choosing to believe what they want to believe, no matter how crazy or loony it is!

Among the Conspiracy theories widely believed are the following:

1. President Franklin D. Roosevelt engineered the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, crippling our naval fleet, in order to get us into World War II!

2. Aliens landed in Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947, and our Defense Department has covered it up ever since, keeping the aliens under lock and key!

3. The assassination of John F. Kennedy was engineered by elements within the government, and involved multiple gunmen who made Lee Harvey Oswald the patsy!

4. American astronauts did not land on the moon in July 1969, but were instead part of a great coverup by the news media and government officials, and they actually were landing in the deserts of Arizona!

5. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld engineered the attacks of September 11 on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, in order to increase Presidential power and put us into a world wide war against Islamic civilization!

6. Barack Obama was born in an Islamic country, either Kenya or Indonesia, not the United States, and there was a great conspiracy to plant a birth announcement in Hawaii newspapers in 1961, so as to allow us to elect him the first black President, and allow him to promote Sharia law and Socialism in America fifty years later!

7. In a more generalized way, the Masonic Order has been involved in a conspiracy to control the government and economy of the United States from George Washington to the present!

8. The Federal Reserve Banking System, created under Woodrow Wilson in 1913, is part of a great conspiracy by powerful capitalists and bankers, many of them foreigners, to control and manipulate the American economy, so as to exploit the average American citizen, and enrich the international conspiracy against America’s interests!

9. There is a great conspiracy by people from Latin America, particularly Mexico, to take over the American nation, and dilute it with the “inferior” racial stock that Hispanics and Latinos represent!

10. The United States is threatened by “old Europe”, the “inferior” nations and laws of nations such as Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and other countries all over Europe, who are trying to undermine our laws and traditions! Also, all international organizations, including NATO and the United Nations, are working to undermine American “exceptionalism” and values!

When one examines all of these conspiracy theories and how many Americans truly believe them, despite lack of evidence and facts, one must mourn for the long term future of this great nation, which has allowed the development of an inferior education system and poor family values to undermine what was once a great nation, but is now in great danger and under great threat of collapse over the next few generations!

All good, educated, sensible people want our nation back to what it once was, and mourn the serious mental illness we are now suffering through!

America’s Mistreatment Of Veterans Continues, While Military Industrial Complex Prospers!

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It is well known that we live in the midst of a Military Industrial Complex that has seen swelling budgets in the past decade, supposedly due to the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

However, even Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has admitted that there is waste in defense, and that any further introduction of ground troops in other nations would be crazy in the future, both strategically and budget wise!

But while there is always a major push for MORE defense spending while cutting education and health care and other human needs, we fail to see equivalent concern for America’s veterans who have fought courageously in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The reality is that large percentages of veterans of those two wars have suffered PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and that suicides have occurred on military bases and in private life in alarming rates, plus murders of wives and children by veterans.

This is in addition to the horrific physical injuries visited upon our courageous troops by improvised explosive devices, and yet little attention is paid to this in the news media. Since Americans are not paying taxes for the wars, most are unaffected, since there is no draft, so it is easy for the average American to wave the flag, claim they are patriotic, and yet go about their business undisturbed!

We do not see a ground swell of support for INCREASED funding for veterans programs, and many Republicans, who love to claim they are patriots, have never served in the military, and have no interest in dealing with the reality of the lives of veterans after they return from war!

Better treatment of veterans, and efforts to cut the murder and suicide rate, MUST become a priority of our government, at the same time that major cuts in defense projects that enrich corporations must be implemented!

An Amazing, Historic Day: Triple Victory And Culmination Of Brilliant Lame Duck Session, One Of Greatest Performing In American History! :)

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December 22, 2010, will go down in history as an extremely rare day in American history, as THREE major accomplishments came to fruition in just a few hours! 🙂

The signing of the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” for the military in a morning ceremony was a great civil rights victory, the greatest since 1965.

The ratification of the START Treaty with Russia was President Obama’s greatest foreign policy accomplishment in office, and won 13 Senate Republican supporters, winning 71-26 in the afternoon. This was an important step forward in gaining Russian support for dealing with the growing threat presented by Iran.

And then, in an ultimate vote of conscience, the Congress gave justice to September 11 First Responders by passing medical care legislation for those heroes who worked so hard under difficult conditions after the tragic attack on the World Trade Center.

This day just culminates a fantastic Lame Duck Session, in which unemployment compensation extension was accomplished, along with continuation of tax cuts that already existed (but unfortunately with continued tax cuts to the top two percent, which will add nearly a trillion to the national debt, but a necessary compromise under the circumstances), and a food safety bill which gives the Food and Drug Administration more authority over the subject than at any time since 1938 under the New Deal.

The only major failure and loss was the DREAM Act, which Obama made clear, at a triumphant, confident, press conference, was still a major goal to be accomplished in the 112th Congress, which seems doubtful.

But Obama certainly revived from the major defeat in the midterm elections just six weeks ago, and is seen as having made a “comeback”, which means no one should underestimate his ability to get things done, and to accomplish his goals, because as he said, when he feels strongly about some issue, he is “persistent”!

So we should all congratulate Obama and his party for having done what seemed to be the impossible–REAL accomplishments in a Lame Duck session, which many Republicans thought was a useless waste of time! HOW WRONG THEY WERE !

Does The Republican Party Have No Shame? The 9/11 Responders Health Legislation Rejected In The Senate! :(

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One always likes to think that the Republican Party of 2010 has SOME conscience and decency, but it is obvious that this party, which is soon to gain control of the House of Representatives, and six more seats in the Senate, has ABSOLUTELY no shame or sense of dignity! 🙁

The “Party Of NO” has just filibustered, and prevented the passage of 9/11 Responders Health legislation in the US Senate, declaring they cannot back it because of its COST! 🙁

The fact that these “first responders” sacrificed their health, and many sacrificed their lives, to help the victims of the attack on the World Trade Center, does not seem to be enough of a reason to support any and all health coverage that these heroes need. 🙁

The fact that the tax agreement reached with President Obama by the GOP will add tremendously to the national debt does not perturb Republicans, as the super wealthy MUST have their outrageous tax cut, but the first responders are simply not that important, even though the GOP is quick to support action in Afghanistan and Iraq, costing more than a trillion dollars added to the national debt over the past nine years.

But, apparently, anything involving health care for ANYONE is not the business of the American government, and veterans in our military should keep that in mind, as they apparently do not do, assuming that the GOP will support veterans AFTER their service, which historically they have NOT done. 🙁

When, oh when, are military people, and the American people at large, finally going to realize that the Republican Party is ONLY concerned about the wealthy among us, and give not a damn about those who sacrifice for our country, whether on September 11, 2001, or on the battlefields far from home? 🙁

Flight 93 And Shanksville, Pennsylvania Heroism And Unity: Why Can’t We Emulate Them Nine Years Later?

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Today, September 11, is not only the 9th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but also the heroic action of strangers who united together in courage and conviction to overcome terrorists on Flight 93, who intended to crash into the White House or Capitol Hill!

These people–heroes and heroines–came from different parts of the nation, different backgrounds, different traditions–but they all united in a cause they knew they would not survive, the overcoming of the terrorists on board!

Their plane smashed into the ground at Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing all aboard, but saving the country from an even worse tragedy, and an appropriate memorial is being planned to honor these decent people who sacrificed themselves for the betterment of their nation!

Why, oh why, can we not today, as a nation, show the same level of sacrifice and commitment to our nation, that these courageous passengers on Flight 93 demonstrated nine years ago today? 🙁

A true honoring of these courageous, brave citizens would be to rededicate ourselves to emulate their behavior, as that would be for the benefit of ALL of us, rather than the self serving, selfish, narrow minded exploitation of September 11, that has become endemic as the years have gone by! 🙁

We owe it to them to reconsider whether making September 11 something to politicize is moral and ethical, and rather to see it as something to be respected and honored and to unite us!