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Austin Pastor Fights to Spread 9/11 Truth

Submitted by Somebigguy on Sat, 08/19/2006 - 4:53am. Religious | Video

New Article Regarding Ongoing 9/11 Family Lawsuits.

Sept. 11 plaintiffs wait for answers, resolution - boston.com

Now, nearly five years after the historic disaster, roughly 60 lawsuits are still grinding their way through court. And the families pushing ahead with litigation, including numerous New Englanders, are mired in a massive legal case that has become a complicated behemoth for the federal judge overseeing it.
..
The case pits those who consider the day's events an unpreventable tragedy against others who believe government and aviation officials ignored clear warnings that such an assault was possible. That lapse, in their view, led to the deaths of beloved friends and relatives, and they now want accountability and answers.

For some litigants, their decision to sue was met by public disapproval from skeptics who questioned their motives and dismissed their quest for justice as futile. But in interviews with the Globe, many family members said they are committed to pursuing the case until government, airline, and security officials are held responsible for their roles in the attacks. And they are aware that litigation is a gamble that could produce neither answers nor money, they said.
..
Still, many of the firm's clients say they sued not for financial gain, but because they believe litigation will fully reveal whether government and aviation officials could have anticipated and prevented the events of Sept. 11. Some also sued because life insurance and other "offsets" would have reduced their payments from the compensation fund, which awarded $2 million in death cases and $400,000 in injury cases, on average.

Thanks Revolution Corporation for the heads up!

read more

By noemail@noemail.org (dz). [911Blogger.com - Paying Attention to 9/11 Related Alternative News]

Media Minutes: August 18, 2006. The FCC opens inquiries into television stations caught airing fake news, and more evidence of continued journalistic deception is on the way. The Supreme Court agrees to hear an anti-trust case involving the nation's dominant phone companies. A federal judge strikes down the NSA's warrentless wiretapping program as unconstitutional, while several lawsuits alleging telecom complicity in the scheme are consolidated. [Media Minutes Podcast]

Homeland Security nabs Free Stater. Mark Frauenfelder: Anonymous says:

A member of the Free State Project, Russell Kanning, was arrested recently for attempting to distribute a flyer to IRS agents in his home town asking them to quit their job. The flyers contain anti-war content, criticism the Bush administration for its erosion of civil rights, and a form resignation letter addressed to President Bush, which he is asking IRS agents to sign. Kanning remains in a maximum security and will not be allowed visitors. The Free State Project recently passed 7,250 members more than 1/3 of its 20,000 person goal.

Link

By noemail@noemail.org (Mark Frauenfelder). [Boing Boing]

Swingin' big band song about rejecting surveillance. Cory Doctorow: Rickie Lee Jones and former members of The Squirrel Nut Zippers, a great big-band revival act, have recorded a jumpin' number about rejecting surveillance and voting for a government that won't spy on us and take away our freedom. This is handily the catchiest political song I've ever heard, and certainly the most danceable.

MP3 Link, Link

(Thanks, Cindy!)

Update: Tom Maxwell, author of this song sez, "Ken Mosher and myself are former Squirrel Nut Zippers. The band no longer exists, and its name is owned by a candy company that might not look kindly on political content. We did the song as Maxwell/Mosher and not as the Zips."

By noemail@noemail.org (Cory Doctorow). [Boing Boing]

Houston paper sees the light, wants paper.

Ballot backstop
Houston Chronicle editorial

In in an electronic age haunted by computer viruses and hackers, many people cling to paper security blankets, whether they come in the form of ATM receipts, itemized credit card charges or monthly bank statements.

Yet in the essential civic exercise of choosing our representatives, Texans who use electronic machines are forced to trust a fallible computer program with no way to check the accuracy of the results. Such a system amounts to faith-based voting.

Always happy to see people grasping what we have been saying for slmost four years.

With the knowledge that no computer is tamperproof and a growing list of malfunctions by direct recording electronic machines (DREs) during elections, 27 states have enacted laws requiring voting systems that produce paper ballots that voters can verify (VVPBs). After individuals make their selections and cast their vote electronically, a hard copy of the ballot is printed showing the selections. The voter views the results to make sure their vote is accurate, and then drops the ballot into a sealed box, providing a record independent of the electronic machine that can later be audited.

Texas, unfortunately, has no such requirement, and Harris County, which uses the Hart Intercivic machine and also conducts municipal elections, has no plans to purchase the company's optional printer system to create a paper trail. County Democratic Party officials are clamoring for such a system, as well as increased security and voting machine tests for accuracy.

"If folks can hack the Pentagon," Harris County Democratic Chairman Gerry Birnberg said, "they can certainly hack a machine in Harris County."

Again, I would like to point out that the greatest threat from these machines is the fact that the software is so poorly written, failure is inevitable.

County Clerk Beverly Kaufman, a Republican, says such concerns are unfounded. "There's this kind of cavalier attitude on these folks' part that all you've got to do is just bolt on a printer and there it is," said Kaufman, who estimates that it would cost up to $8 million to buy equipment and reprogram the system with the capability to print ballots in three languages. "We're just not at a point here where we're able to do it if we wanted to, which we don't."

No, the cavalier attitude comes from folks like you who insist on faith in a system that has been repeatedly shown to be unreliable and inaccurate. Also, you were warned about these problems LONG before you bought these systems. You chose to listen to the vendors rather than the voters, so if more money is required, look in the mirror for someone to blame.

Kaufman also contends that the current system has the capability to produce a paper copy of results after the election is concluded. However, whatever would be printed out would simply reflect what the system recorded and would not detect computer malfunctions, erased votes or fraudulent manipulation of programming.

In a report this year on electronic voting machines entitled "Malfunction and Malfeasance," researchers for the nonpartisan group Common Cause concluded that DRE machines "are vulnerable to malfunction and also to tampering in which a computer-savvy hacker with minimal access to the machine could introduce malicious code to the DRE software and change the results of an election."

The report cites an incident during this spring's Texas primary in which voting machines in Tarrant County, which uses the same system as Harris, recorded 100,000 votes that were never cast. Hart Intercivic officials took responsibility for the programming mistake that caused the overcount but discounted the incident because votes for all candidates were boosted equally.

The software FAILED. It failed in a spectacular fashion, which was good. Next time it can fail in a subtle fashion which will be harder to detect, but will thwart the will of the voters all the same.

Last year the Commission on Federal Election Reform led by former Secretary of State James Baker, a Republican, and former President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, issued election reform recommendations that included a call for a federal law requiring all electronic voting systems to be equipped with paper printouts. Legislation died in the last session of Congress but has been reintroduced by Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J. A similar bill, the Voter Integrity and Verification Act, has been introduced in the Senate by Republican John Ensign of Nevada.

Since Texas has yet to approve paper trails that voters can verify, it is not Kaufman's responsibility to make that decision. The Texas Legislature and Congress should pass legislation mandating the installation of paper audits on all electronic voting machines.

They are more expensive and might create more work for election officials, but VVPBs are necessary to boost voter confidence in system and give candidates recourse to recounts.

Again, if you had listened to us in the first place, you wouldn't have wasted money. [Black Box Voting]

Real Threat Or Fake Terror?. 'Attorney Nabih Ayad drove two hours north from the Arab-American enclave of Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit, to tiny Caro, Mich., last Wednesday in hopes of springing three of his clients from the Tuscola County jail.

'The clients, three young Palestinian-Americans from Texas, had been arrested while driving their van from Wal-Mart to Wal-Mart buying cheap cellphones. The county prosecutor had filed state terrorism charges against the trio, believing they were jihadis plotting to blow up the Mackinac Bridge. Though Ayad knew that the terrorism case was already collapsing, and expected his clients would soon be in the clear, he still wanted to get them out of jail on bond in the interim.' (Salon Magazine article). [Disinformation]

The Loose Cannon Of 9/11. 'It took two governors, four congressmen, three former White House officials and two special counsels two years to compile. They reviewed over two and half million pages of classified and declassified documents, consulted 1,200 sources in 10 countries, and spent over $15 million of the taxpayers' money in the process. And on July 22, 2004, the 9/11 Commission issued its final report on the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Is it possible that two twentysomethings from "a small hippie town that time forgot" could undermine that entire effort with $8,000 and a laptop?

'Yes, if you ask ex-Army specialist Korey Rowe. The 23-year-old from Oneonta, New York returned home from two tours -- one to Afghanistan, the other to Iraq -- to help his best friends, Dylan Avery (director) and Jason Bermas (researcher), produce the sensational 80-minute, Web-based documentary "Loose Change," which seeks to establish the government's complicity in the terror attacks by addressing some very tough questions: Why wasn't Ground Zero treated like a crime scene? How did both towers "free-fall" to the ground "in 9.2 seconds" in just under two hours? And where are the black boxes from American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175?' (AlterNet article). [Disinformation]