Old Article I Came Across...

I came across this article that I was quoted in from 2007. This meeting of the Franklin Pierce Student Government Association was probably one of the most intense meetings that the SGA has ever had. It was, during my time in the SGA, the most intense meeting I was ever in...

"I wish I had sent out a notice earlier"
Robbie Michaelson and Trent Spiner
Issue date: 4/25/07 Section: News

An alleged rape in Granite Hall over Easter weekend has caused the administration to work on its policies of notification for students when an imminent danger is present on campus.

A 19-year-old female student reported waking up in her dorm room early on Sunday, April 14th to discover an unidentified man on lying on top of her. Ryan E. Smith, a resident of Hamden, Conn, was arrested and charged with rape in connection with the incident, according to police reports. Smith allegedly fled the scene and was later caught by police in Jaffrey, while riding as a passenger in his friend's car. He is being held in the Cheshire County Jail in Westmoreland. Smith is not a student of the college.

At a forum with college officials hosted by the Student Government, many students disagreed with how the situation was handled by the college. Dr. Jim Earle, vice president for student affairs said a lot of different, smaller situations were coming to a head and caused this outpouring of concern over the administration's decision-making process.

"Was not notifying the campus of the rape part of a deliberate policy to avoid negative publicity for the school?" asked sophomore Justin Martell.

Earle said that was not the case. He said there are three reasons the campus would be notified of a violent crime: if there was a "clear and present danger to community members," that people have a right to know and that there is educational value in getting information out to the public.

"In retrospect," said Earle, "I wish I had sent out a notice earlier, and I apologize about that."

Ashley Helie, a student, stood in the campus center handing out a clipping of a Keene Sentinel article that first reported the rape. She asked why the campus community had not been informed by the college administration.

"A culture of silence now exists on our campus," said Professor Donna Decker. She requested that the college change its notification procedures before the start of the new fiscal year to notify the entire campus of every violent crime committed.

"We want timely notification bulletins about all violent crimes," she said. "We want a reform of the college's crime log."

Decker was part of a panel including Earle and Professor Paul Bush that was invited to speak with students about the response and reporting of serious crimes on campus.

"There is nothing Donna said that I disagree with, but the devil is in the details." For example, said Earle, cases of incest or statutory rape would fall under that category, but they do not pose a threat to the campus. He will be referring the policy to Pierce Council, a representative body that makes recommendations to President Hagerty.

Professor Doug Ley responded by saying that Pierce Council is where initiatives go to die, but Provost Michael Bell replied that this is why Ley had been elected to sit on the Council.

"I'm confident that this will move forward and there will be changes," concluded Earle.

Original Article

I do still believe that the school did refrain from sending out a notification in order to try and keep the the situation "hushed" in order to avoid bad publicity and to avoid any attention being called on the school's failure to A. Prevent this from happening and B. Failure to quickly respond and apprehend the rapist.

Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment Concerning 9/11

Here is the portion of the transcript of Kucinich's introduction of the 35 articles of impeachment on the house floor that have to do directly with 9/11:

Article XXXIII

REPEATEDLY IGNORED AND FAILED TO RESPOND TO HIGH LEVEL INTELLIGENCE WARNINGS OF PLANNED TERRORIST ATTACKS IN THE US, PRIOR TO 911

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed", has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the Vice President, failed in his Constitutional duties to take proper steps to protect the nation prior to September 11, 2001.

The White House's top counter-terrorism adviser, Richard A. Clarke, has testified that from the beginning of George W. Bush's presidency until September 11, 2001, Clarke attempted unsuccessfully to persuade President Bush to take steps to protect the nation against terrorism. Clarke sent a memorandum to then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on January 24, 2001, "urgently" but unsuccessfully requesting "a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with the impending al Qaeda attack."

In April 2001, Clarke was finally granted a meeting, but only with second-in-command department representatives, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who made light of Clarke's concerns.

Clarke confirms that in June, July, and August, 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) warned the president in daily briefings of unprecedented indications that a major al Qaeda attack was going to happen against the United States somewhere in the world in the weeks and months ahead. Yet, Clarke was still unable to convene a cabinet-level meeting to address the issue.

Condoleezza Rice has testified that George Tenet met with the president 40 times to warn him that a major al-Qaeda attack was going to take place, and that in response the president did not convene any meetings of top officials. At such meetings, the FBI could have shared information on possible terrorists enrolled at flight schools. Among the many preventive steps that could have been taken, the Federal Aviation Administration, airlines, and airports might have been put on full alert.

According to Condoleezza Rice, the first and only cabinet-level meeting prior to 9/11 to discuss the threat of terrorist attacks took place on September 4, 2001, one week before the attacks in New York and Washington.

On August 6, 2001, President Bush was presented a President's Daily Brief (PDB) article titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." The lead sentence of that PDB article indicated that Bin Laden and his followers wanted to "follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and 'bring the fighting to America.'" The article warned: "Al-Qa'ida members—including some who are US citizens— have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks."

The article cited a "more sensational threat reporting that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a US aircraft," but indicated that the CIA had not been able to corroborate such reporting. The PDB item included information from the FBI indicating "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." The article also noted that the CIA and FBI were investigating "a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives."

The president spent the rest of August 6, and almost all the rest of August 2001 on vacation. There is no evidence that he called any meetings of his advisers to discuss this alarming report. When the title and substance of this PDB article were later reported in the press, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice began a sustained campaign to play down its significance, until the actual text was eventually released by the White House.

New York Times writer Douglas Jehl, put it this way: "In a single 17-sentence document, the intelligence briefing delivered to President Bush in August 2001 spells out the who, hints at the what and points towards the where of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington that followed 36 days later."

Eleanor Hill, Executive Director of the joint congressional committee investigating the performance of the US intelligence community before September 11, 2001, reported in mid-September 2002 that intelligence reports a year earlier "reiterated a consistent and constant theme: Osama bin Laden's intent to launch terrorist attacks inside the United States."

That joint inquiry revealed that just two months before September 11, an intelligence briefing for "senior government officials" predicted a terrorist attack with these words: "The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning."

Given the White House's insistence on secrecy with regard to what intelligence was given to President Bush, the joint-inquiry report does not divulge whether he took part in that briefing. Even if he did not, it strains credulity to suppose that those "senior government officials" would have kept its alarming substance from the president.

Again, there is no evidence that the president held any meetings or took any action to deal with the threats of such attacks.

In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President, and subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.

Article XXXIV
OBSTRUCTION OF INVESTIGATION INTO THE ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed", has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the Vice President, obstructed investigations into the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

Following September 11, 2001, President Bush and Vice President Cheney took strong steps to thwart any and all proposals that the circumstances of the attack be addressed. Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell was forced to renege on his public promise on September 23 that a "White Paper" would be issued to explain the circumstances. Less than two weeks after that promise, Powell apologized for his "unfortunate choice of words," and explained that Americans would have to rely on "information coming out in the press and in other ways."

On Sept. 26, 2001, President Bush drove to Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters in Langley, Virginia, stood with Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet and said: "My report to the nation is, we've got the best intelligence we can possibly have thanks to the men and women of the C.I.A." George Tenet subsequently and falsely claimed not to have visited the president personally between the start of Bush's long Crawford vacation and September 11, 2001.

Testifying before the 9/11 Commission on April 14, 2004, Tenet answered a question from Commission member Timothy Roemer by referring to the president's vacation (July 29-August 30) in Crawford and insisting that he did not see the president at all in August 2001. "You never talked with him?" Roemer asked. "No," Tenet replied, explaining that for much of August he too was "on leave." An Agency spokesman called reporters that same evening to say Tenet had misspoken, and that Tenet had briefed Bush on August 17 and 31. The spokesman explained that the second briefing took place after the president had returned to Washington, and played down the first one, in Crawford, as uneventful.

In his book, At the Center of the Storm, (2007) Tenet, refers to what is almost certainly his August 17 visit to Crawford as a follow-up to the "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US" article in the CIA prepared President's Daily Brief of August 6. That briefing was immortalized in a Time Magazine photo capturing Harriet Myers holding the PDB open for the president, as two CIA officers sit by. It is the same briefing to which the president reportedly reacted by telling the CIA briefer, "All right, you've covered your ass now." (Ron Suskind, The One-Percent Doctrine, p. 2, 2006). In At the Center of the Storm, Tenet writes: "A few weeks after the August 6 PDB was delivered, I followed it to Crawford to make sure that the president stayed current on events."

A White House press release suggests Tenet was also there a week later, on August 24. According to the August 25, 2001, release, President Bush, addressing a group of visitors to Crawford on August 25, told them: "George Tenet and I, yesterday, we piled in the new nominees for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Vice Chairman and their wives and went right up the canyon."

In early February, 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney warned then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle that if Congress went ahead with an investigation, administration officials might not show up to testify. As pressure grew for an investigation, the president and vice president agreed to the establishment of a congressional joint committee to conduct a "Joint Inquiry." Eleanor Hill, Executive Director of the Inquiry, opened the Joint Inquiry's final public hearing in mid-September 2002 with the following disclaimer: "I need to report that, according to the White House and the Director of Central Intelligence, the president's knowledge of intelligence information relevant to this inquiry remains classified, even when the substance of the intelligence information has been declassified."

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was created on November 27, 2002, following the passage of congressional legislation signed into law by President Bush. The President was asked to testify before the Commission. He refused to testify except for one hour in private with only two Commission members, with no oath administered, with no recording or note taking, and with the Vice President at his side. Commission Co-Chair Lee Hamilton has written that he believes the commission was set up to fail, was underfunded, was rushed, and did not receive proper cooperation and access to information.

A December 2007 review of classified documents by former members of the Commission found that the commission had made repeated and detailed requests to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 for documents and other information about the interrogation of operatives of Al Qaeda, and had been told falsely by a top C.I.A. official that the agency had "produced or made available for review" everything that had been requested.

In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President, and subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.

Article XXXV
ENDANGERING THE HEALTH OF 911 FIRST RESPONDERS

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed", has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the Vice President, recklessly endangered the health of first responders, residents, and workers at and near the former location of the World Trade Center in New York City.

The Inspector General of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) August 21, 2003, report numbered 2003-P-00012 and entitled "EPA's Response to the World Trade Center Collapse:

Challenges, Successes, and Areas for Improvement," includes the following findings:

"[W]hen EPA made a September 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, it did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement. At that time, air monitoring data was lacking for several pollutants of concern, including particulate matter and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Furthermore, The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) influenced, through the collaboration process, the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones."

"As a result of the White House CEQ's influence, guidance for cleaning indoor spaces and information about the potential health effects from WTC debris were not included in EPA- issued press releases. In addition, based on CEQ's influence, reassuring information was added to at least one press release and cautionary information was deleted from EPA's draft version of that press release. . . . The White House's role in EPA's public communications about WTC environmental conditions was described in a September 12, 2001, e-mail from the EPA Deputy Administrator's Chief of Staff to senior EPA officials:

"'All statements to the media should be cleared through the NSC [National Security Council] before they are released.'

"According to the EPA Chief of Staff, one particular CEQ official was designated to work with EPA to ensure that clearance was obtained through NSC. The Associate Administrator for the EPA Office of Communications, Education, and Media Relations (OCEMR) said that no press release could be issued for a 3- to 4-week period after September 11 without approval from the CEQ contact."

Acting EPA Administrator Marianne Horinko, who sat in on EPA meetings with the White House has said in an interview that the White House played a coordinating role. The National Security Council played the key role, filtering incoming data on ground zero air and water, Horinko said: "I think that the thinking was, these are experts in WMD (weapons of mass destruction), so they should have the coordinating role."

In the cleanup of the Pentagon following September 11, 2001, Occupational Safety and Health Administration laws were enforced, and no workers became ill. At the World Trade Center site, the same laws were not enforced.

In the years since the release of the EPA Inspector General's above-cited report, the Bush Administration has still not effected a clean-up of the indoor air in apartments and workspaces near the site.

Screenings conducted at the Mount Sinai Medical Center and released in the September 10, 2004, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) of the federal Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), produced the following results:

"Both upper and lower respiratory problems and mental health difficulties are widespread among rescue and recovery workers who dug through the ruins of the World Trade Center in the days following its destruction in the attack of September 11, 2001.

"An analysis of the screenings of 1,138 workers and volunteers who responded to the World Trade Center disaster found that nearly three-quarters of them experienced new or worsened upper respiratory problems at some point while working at Ground Zero. And half of those examined had upper and/or lower respiratory symptoms that persisted up to the time of their examinations, an average of eight months after their WTC efforts ended."

A larger study released in 2006 found that roughly 70 percent of nearly 10,000 workers tested at Mount Sinai from 2002 to 2004 reported that they had new or substantially worsened respiratory problems while or after working at ground zero. This study showed that many of the respiratory ailments, including sinusitis and asthma, and gastrointestinal problems related to them, initially reported by ground zero workers persisted or grew worse over time. Most of the ground zero workers in the study who reported trouble breathing while working there were still having those problems two and a half years later, an indication of chronic illness unlikely to improve over time.

In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President, and subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.

Click here to read all 35 articles.

EDIT:

Here is a video of Kucinich introducing Article 33:


Article 34:


Article 35:

Dennis Kucinich Speaks 9/11 Truth on the House Floor!

Of the 35 articles of impeachment introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D - OH) this evening, 3 had to do with 9/11:

Article 33 - Failure to respond to high level warnings about the attacks.

Article 34 - Obstruction of Justice into the Investigation into the 9/11 Attacks

Article 35 - Willfully endangering the help of 9/11 first responders.

This is incredibly explosive, and Kucinich had it down! Videos to come!

Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth mentioned in Financial Times of London Article

The mention is incredibly brief, but it's still pretty cool to see the name of the organization you founded in the mainstream press...I've bolded the reference...

The truth is out there

By Peter Barber

Published: June 7 2008 01:22 | Last updated: June 7 2008 01:22

When Cynthia McKinney speaks the words of Martin Luther King Jr, they resound through the church with some of King’s cadence. “A time comes,” declares the former US congresswoman from Georgia, “when silence is betrayal.” The congregation answers with whoops and calls of “That’s right!” King was talking about America’s war in Vietnam. More than 40 years later, before the packed pews of the Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, McKinney is speaking of the American government’s war on its own people. The shock and awe phase of this conflict, we had been told earlier, began on September 11 2001, when the Bush administration launched attacks on New York and Washington, or at least waved them through.

According to a show of hands that February afternoon, several hundred people in the immaculate church believe this to be true. Some came in T-shirts bearing the words “9/11 was an inside job”. One wore a badge demanding that you “Examine your assumptions”. Quite a few bought the DVDs on sale in the foyer, most of which bore photographs of the Twin Towers spewing smoke. They had all come to hear the message of Architects, Engineers & Scientists for 9/11 Truth, one of the dozens of groups across the US which campaign to persuade us that everything we think we know about 9/11 is wrong.

Marion Cotillard, actress

“There was a tower in Spain which burnt for 24 hours. It never collapsed”

Last winter, “Investigate 9/11” banners seemed to be popping up all over the place. Bill Clinton was heckled by “truthers” in Denver while campaigning for his wife. Truthers picketed the Academy Awards in LA – despite this year’s winner of the best actress Oscar, Marion Cotillard, reportedly being one of them. But then, she’s French. Literature lovers in that country pushed Thierry Meyssan’s L’Effroyable imposture (The Appalling Fraud) – which asserts that 9/11 was a government plot to justify invading Iraq and Afghanistan and increase military spending – to the top of the bestseller list in 2002.

Country music star Willie Nelson is assuredly not French, but a week or so before the Oscars he described as naive the notion that the “implosion” of the Twin Towers was caused by crashing jets. Meanwhile the European Parliament screened the Italian documentary Zero, in which Gore Vidal, Italian playwright Dario Fo, and Italian MEP Giulietto Chiesa blame the US government, not al-Qaeda, for 9/11. The following month, Japanese MP Yukihisa Fujita raised his own doubts about the official story at a seminar in Sydney. A busy season for the “9/11 Truth” movement.

The events of 9/11 were recorded in many thousands of images, from crisp agency photographs to amateur camcorder footage. Every recorded trail of smoke, every spray of sparks is pored over by an army of sceptics, collectively described as the 9/11 Truth movement. They believe that the key to the mystery is hidden somewhere within the pictures, just as some people think that clues are contained in the Zapruder film which captured the moment of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Allied against them is a smaller group of rival bloggers who have taken it upon themselves to debunk what they claim are dangerous conspiracy theories.

Gore Vidal, writer

“If there ever was great cause for impeachment, it would be over 9/11”

There is some evidence that the truthers are swaying the rest of us. A New York Times/CBS News poll in 2006 revealed that only 16 per cent of Americans polled believed the Bush administration was telling the truth about 9/11. More than half thought it was “hiding something”. This is not the same as believing the government actually launched the attacks, but a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll the same year found that more than a third of those questioned suspected that federal officials assisted in the attacks or took no action to stop them so that the US could go to war.

The truthers certainly believe that they are on a roll. The crowd in the Immanuel Presbyterian Church seemed electrified. As the donated sound system pumped out angry rap, a giant video screen showed images of protesters demanding a new investigation into 9/11. The symbols and the language were borrowed from the civil rights struggle, but the truthers are an eclectic group, including anti-Bush, anti-war liberals and anti-government libertarians. A young man in a “Vote Ron Paul” T-shirt scuttled through the hall, filming us as we took our seats on wooden pews.

First up was Richard Gage, a San Francisco architect who founded Architects, Engineers & Scientists for 9/11 Truth, which now claims to have 379 professional members. Gage told us that the collapse of the Twin Towers could not have been due merely to gravity, the impact of the airliners and the resulting jet fuel fires – which would not have been hot enough to weaken the steel sufficiently. Behind him on the video screen was the south tower of the World Trade Center. Smoke poured from its upper floors. A respectful silence fell over the audience, followed by gasps as the building appeared to dissolve before our eyes.

What happened to building 7?

To the truthers, the third building in the World Trade Center complex to collapse on September 11 is evidence that the mainstream media is in on the plot

While I have seen this footage countless times, it seems that I had clearly never understood what I was seeing. The destruction of the Twin Towers, along with the collapse of the nearby 47-storey World Trade Center 7 building, had all the hallmarks of controlled demolition, according to Gage. They all came straight down, almost at the speed of a free-falling object, right into their own footprints. Steel-framed buildings had never collapsed because of fires before. On this day three did, one of which, “Building 7”, was not even hit by an aircraft.

Gage, who had worked himself into a fever, exhorted the audience to stand up and be counted: “A country is at stake.” Then he welcomed on to the stage the star of the evening, Steven Jones. A softly spoken physicist, Jones is the movement’s designated martyr and seems to promise what the truthers so desperately need: scientific credibility.

Jones entered into truther lore in 2006 when he was put into early retirement by Brigham Young University in Utah after giving public lectures on his paper “Why indeed did the WTC buildings collapse?”, which he published on the website of the university’s physics department. Jones contended that the towers were demolished by cutter charges which had been placed throughout the buildings, probably involving an incendiary called thermite. BYU’s College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and the structural engineering faculty, followed by the university administration, disowned him.

Still, Jones is no fool. He has published more than 50 scholarly papers, including pieces on cold nuclear fusion in journals such as Scientific American and Nature. He invented a cooker which uses solar power and has donated models to poor families in the developing world. Jones tells us he believes laboratory testing of dust from Ground Zero will reveal residue from a thermite reaction.

As soon as the seminar is over, Jones is mobbed by people asking him to pose for photos and offering their own views on the 9/11 plot, as well as others such as the presence above our heads of chemtrails (deadly toxins sprayed by unidentified aircraft, which some believe are part of a secret global depopulation programme). This is the world Jones now inhabits – it seems a long way from a Utah physics department. I ask him later by phone if he has any regrets about publishing that fateful paper: “No regrets. I’ve thought of Galileo a few times. He got a little worse than I did, I suppose.”

Jones is typical of many 9/11 researchers in that the subject has taken over his professional life. Down the coast in Santa Barbara is another of the movement’s luminaries. On the beach at Isla Vista, one of the most expensive real-estate spots in the US, lives David Ray Griffin, a former theology professor. As his dogs scratch excitedly on the sliding door, Griffin explains that America’s primary faith is not Christianity, but nationalism. “Other countries do really terrible things. Our leaders never would. And that [belief] has been the biggest impediment to getting people to look at the evidence, because they just know a priori that that is ridiculous.”

Michael Meacher, UK politician

“It is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11”

Griffin now thinks the evidence to the contrary is incontrovertible. Until 2002, he had busied himself far from the rancour of public controversy writing rather obscure philosophical books and teaching philosophy of religion at the Claremont School of Theology. But the course of his research changed abruptly when he heard a visiting British theologian question the official account of 9/11. Two years later, Griffin’s The New Pearl Harbor, with a foreword by British MP Michael Meacher, became a touchstone in the 9/11 Truth movement. He has since written others, including one detailing the “omissions and distortions” of the 9/11 Commission, the report of which fits the definition of “conspiracy theory” neatly, he says. “They started with the conclusion that al-Qaeda did it and didn’t even consider the alternative that it was an inside job.”

Griffin was a script consultant on Loose Change Final Cut, part of the internet phenomenon that set off the current explosion of low-budget 9/11 DVDs. The previous version was viewed more than 10 million times on Google Video, according to Vanity Fair. In 2002, armed only with a laptop and off-the-shelf video production software, Dylan Avery, an 18-year-old resident of Oneonta, New York, set about making a fictional film about discovering, with his friends, that 9/11 was orchestrated by the US government. At some point in his research, Avery had a “Dude, this shit is real!” moment and Loose Change entered the realm of agit-prop documentary. Final Cut makes a bold new allegation: the Twin Towers were packed with deadly asbestos, which would have cost billions to clean up. “If you bring down the buildings,” says Griffin, “not only do you not have to pay ... to clean them up, somebody is going to make billions of dollars on the insurance.”

September 11 as insurance job? This seems to expand the circle of conspirators somewhat. Griffin ventures another possible explanation: the psychological impact. “You had these massive explosions, which rather looked like a nuclear blast,” he says. “That’s always been the deep fear of America. In the run-up to the Iraq war, that’s what they were talking about – we cannot wait until we have a nuclear cloud.”

Griffin offers one further speculation, this time on a question which is controversial even among 9/11 sceptics: what hit the Pentagon? Thierry Meyssan was the first to claim that it was not Flight 77 – an American Airlines 757 carrying 64 passengers – but a cruise missile that hit the west wall of the Pentagon at 9.37am on September 11. Websites have followed suit, pointing to the apparent lack of plane debris on the Pentagon lawn and the fact that the hole left in the outer ring of the building looks too small to accommodate the wingspan of a 757. Retired US Air Force captain Russ Wittenberg from Pilots for 9/11 Truth asserted that no inexperienced pilot could have performed the manoeuvre the 9/11 Commission concluded that al-Qaeda conspirator Hani Hanjour pulled off that morning: a 330° turn, 2,200ft descent, a full-throttle dive and then a 530 miles per hour plunge at ground level into the Pentagon. Call it “the magic plane theory”: doubters believe that, just as the bullet that killed Kennedy appeared to defy the laws of physics, so the plane that struck the Pentagon was like no other in existence.

And just as Nasa was forced to counter claims the moon landings were faked, these and other claims have forced the US State Department into the debunking business. Its Identifying Misinformation website states that debris from Flight 77 was indeed recovered, as were the remains of passengers and crew. Many witnesses saw the plane come in, and a number of passengers made phone calls to their loved ones telling them their flight had been hijacked.

There is also another obvious problem: if a missile hit the Pentagon, what happened to Flight 77? “There was a rumour that an airliner had gone down on the Ohio/Kentucky border and that was taken very seriously early on by the Federal Aviation Authority,” says Griffin. It later rejected the story. But Griffin claims the only evidence that Flight 77 was aloft after that was an alleged phone call from Barbara Olsen to Ted Olsen, the solicitor-general of the United States.

So how does he explain that phone call? Ted Olsen is a Bush administration insider, he says. Another possible answer, though, is “voice-morphing technology”. This would also explain the flurry of phone calls from United Airlines Flight 93, which, as the official story has it, crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers revolted against their hijackers.

Glossary of doubt

No-planers
People who claim that it wasn’t an aircraft, but a missile, that hit the Pentagon on September 11 2001. Some have taken it a step further and argued that no aircraft hit the twin towers, either. What the world saw that day, these sceptics argue, was either video trickery or cruise missiles disguised through image technology as aircraft.

Mihops
Truthers who believe the US government “Made it happen on purpose”, “it” being the destruction of September 11.

Lihops
A more moderate strain of truther who believe the government “Let it happen on purpose”.

Scholars for 9/11 Truth
Started by James Fetzer, the group advocates looking at all possible explanations of what happened on September 11, no matter how improbable.

Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice
The more moderate splinter group of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, led by Steven Jones. Endorses an “evidence-based approach” to questioning the 9/11 story.

It’s not just supporters of the official story who roll their eyes at these claims. They put Griffin in the camp of the “no-planers”, at least as far as the attack on the Pentagon is concerned. The no-planers enrage the rest of the truthers, who accuse them of sabotaging the credibility of the movement. The claim that no plane hit the Pentagon is a Trojan horse, they say – disinformation that serves the conspirators. Some – such as former MI5 whistleblower David Shayler – have even asserted that no planes, but missiles disguised by “cloaking technology”, hit the Twin Towers. Shayler, incidentally, proclaimed himself the Messiah last year.

If the 9/11 truth movement is fighting a kind of asymmetric war against official sources of knowledge, it is also battling itself. As the movement morphs into an international activist group, it recognises that if it is to convince middle Americans, it must distance itself from its exotic fringe. Once, it was the Mihops versus the Lihops. These factions, who sound like warring species from an H.G. Wells story, are those who believe the government Made It Happen On Purpose and those who think it Let It Happen On Purpose. The Mihops are in the ascendancy.

The genesis of all this can be traced back to a schism that followed the first real attempt to bring scholarly credibility to the 9/11 sceptics. In 2005, Steven Jones was invited to form a group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth by James Fetzer, a professor in the philosophy department at the University of Minnesota and the author of some 20 books on the philosophy of science and artificial intelligence. Fetzer teaches critical thinking, and is nothing if not critical. He has been campaigning for more than a decade to prove that the Zapruder film is a hoax perpetuated by the same government intelligence agencies that orchestrated JFK’s assassination.

But within a year, Jones had written to all members of Scholars announcing that he and others no longer wanted to be associated with Fetzer, who was, in the rebels’ opinion, holding them up to ridicule. Fetzer had backed a theory by Judy Wood, a former assistant professor in mechanical engineering at Clemson University, proposing that the Twin Towers were brought down by a “directed energy” weapon developed as part of the US government’s Star Wars programme. It prompted a stampede to a new group, Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice, headed by Jones. Confusing the two groups would be like mistaking Monty Python’s Judean People’s Front for the People’s Front of Judea: this was a major doctrinal split.

Fetzer’s view is that any serious inquiry into what happened on 9/11 should look at all possibilities. Supporters of the directed energy hypothesis keep popping up at 9/11 Truth lectures to heckle what Python fans might call the “splittist” thermite theorists. Among the advocates of the Star Wars theory is Morgan Reynolds, perhaps the first prominent US government official to claim that 9/11 was an inside job. At the time of the attacks, Reynolds was chief economist at the US Department of Labor.

Some Star Wars supporters, in turn, accuse proponents of the thermite hypothesis of being government shills. One, on CheckTheEvidence.com, alleges that Jones’s public denunciation of Star Wars theories is actually a Trojan horse; he notes that Jones once worked at Los Alamos, where directed energy weapons are researched. This line of conjecture also entangles Norman Mineta, US transportation secretary on September 11 2001. Mineta was the man who grounded all civilian aircraft on that morning. But he was also once vice-president of Lockheed Martin, a founding member of the Directed Energy Professional Society ... In this outer reach of the blogosphere, no one is ever more than six degrees of separation from the heart of the conspiracy.

Jones did, in fact, do post-doctoral research at the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility for the University of Wyoming, but he says it was peaceful and non-weapons-related. He says the more out-there theories, including those of the no-planers, are harming the movement. “First, they discourage others who are trying to do serious work, and they tend to be quite vocal about their heckling,” he says. “More serious is that when we’re really trying to look at an evidence-based approach, we get lumped in with these people and then dismissed as a whole.”

Two days before Jones’s lecture in LA, his erstwhile colleague was taking his own campaign on the road on the other side of the country. After addressing Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth in New Hampshire, Fetzer was off to that seat of academic respectability, Yale University. To prepare for our meeting, I watched a DVD of a 9/11 symposium he held in his new hometown of Madison, Wisconsin last year. The star of this show was Alfred Lambremont Webre, a judge on former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad’s alternative international War Crimes Tribunal in Kuala Lumpur and co-author of the Space Preservation Treaty. He delivers what might be the most momentous opening line in the history of town hall seminars. “Fellow Citizens... 9/11 was a false flag operation by an international war crimes racketeering organisation to provide a pretext to engage in a genocidal and ecocidal depleted uranium bombing of central Asia, Afghanistan and Iraq in order to secure vast oil and uranium reserves; to roll out a terror-based national security state system worldwide and ... to implement the final stages of a world depopulation policy.” There are two more “false flag” operations in the pipeline, he says. The first is the war against asteroids, the second the “war against the evil aliens”.

Hearing this, you either experience the thrill of revelation or the sinking feeling that the person you are listening to is having some kind of breakdown. Within 30 minutes, Webre has folded into the 9/11 plot the Skull & Bones society at Yale University – or the “Brotherhood of Death”, as he calls it – neocon think-thank the Council on Foreign Relations, the Rothschilds, the Queen and the City of London. I wondered how all these conspiracies could be maintained without the whole conceit unravelling.

The answer, of course, is that there is only one conspiracy. Pearl Harbour, the moon landing, JFK, 9/11, the Illuminati, the Black Helicopters, Skull & Bones, chemtrails: all faces of the same demon. The plot goes all the way to the top, and all the way back in time. You could come to believe that it involves everyone except yourself – at which point it’s all over for you. And as I listened, I just waited for him to say the Word. And, inevitably, Webre brought it all back to the “international neo-Zionist organisation”.

I asked Fetzer about this as we sat in a cafe across from Yale, home of the Brotherhood of Death: how did he keep his scholars on message? “It’s obvious to me that you have to consider all the possible alternatives,” he says. “You can’t exclude any, lest, as you proceed in your investigation and eliminate hypotheses, you eliminate the true hypothesis because you’ve never allowed it to be considered.”

Fetzer’s talk later that night does not go well. A Yale student had promoted the lecture on Facebook Events, but fellow students had apparently been unwilling to add their names, which anyone can see, perhaps for fear of ridicule. Only six show up. When it becomes clear that Fetzer is implicating some kind of Star Wars weapon, the two next to me begin scrolling distractedly through their mobile phone messages. Within 10 minutes, they have left.

Lewis Lapham, journalist

“Americans are very good at dreaming up these scenarios”

The conclusion of the 9/11 Commission – the official story – is that the 2001 attacks got through because those charged with protecting America had not truly conceived of the threat: in its author’s evocative phrase, they had suffered a “failure of imagination”. After trawling the internet in search of 9/11 Truth, it seems to me the American imagination is strong. “Americans are very good at dreaming up these scenarios,” says Lewis Lapham, the former Harper’s magazine editor and a prominent critic of the Bush administration post-September 11. “We are open to all kinds of magical theories,” he says, citing the continuing fascination with the assassination of JFK. “We are also good at creating religions.” Lapham thinks the theory that 9/11 was an inside job follows in this long tradition, but also reflects cynicism among Americans towards their government. He does not accept that the Bush administration planned 9/11 or even allowed it to happen. Nonetheless, he thinks a new investigation is warranted. In 2004, Harper’s ran a trenchant piece describing the 9/11 Commission as a “whitewash” and a “cheat and a fraud” for downplaying evidence that warnings of the al-Qaeda threat were ignored. Such flaws allowed space for alternative theories to develop, Lapham says.

In this, there are shades of the Warren Commission into the assassination of President Kennedy, which served merely to deepen popular distrust. But if we have seen the likes of the 9/11 Truth movement before, it also represents something new. “With the Kennedy assassination, pretty soon after the events themselves there were fairly significant questions being raised by people of all types and stripes about what actually happened,” says Mark Fenster, a University of Florida law professor and author of Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture. “But whereas then it was a generalised, amorphous kind of response, the amount of organisation – politically and through alternative media – is far more striking now than it was back then.”

Fenster thinks that the 9/11 Truth movement is in some ways a typical American response to a surprising and traumatic event. But it also represents a step change in its use of telecommunications technology. “One of the interesting things, particularly in the beginning of this movement, was the extent to which there were a lot of local groups in different cities organising protests ... and they could co-ordinate and create a national and international movement,” he says. “Whether that translates into more people actually believing in the conspiracy theory is a completely different question.”

Fenster believes the few published polls on the subject, rather than showing any real depth of suspicion about 9/11, demonstrate declining trust in the Bush administration generally. The author of one of the most rigorous of the websites that aim to debunk the conspiracy theories, Debunking911.com, notes that the most recent Zogby poll on attitudes towards 9/11 found only 4.6 per cent of Americans believe the Bush administration blew up the Twin Towers. “If you follow the website hits, you’ll find that since Debunking911 came into existence, conspiracy sites have been losing readership,” he says via e-mail. “I think all they needed was someone to fill in the parts conspiracy theorists left out of the conspiracy story and their numbers begin to shrink.”

Perhaps the 9/11 Truth movement is what one would expect in the dying days of an unpopular administration, and with no end in sight to a costly war. Whether it can maintain momentum when that government leaves office next year is anyone’s guess. In the meantime, some on the left accuse it of letting the leaders they so vehemently distrust off the hook. “They make a mockery of [civil rights] causes by associating their nonsense with genuinely important issues, and by diverting a large number of people who should know better into a unicorn hunt,” says British writer and activist George Monbiot. Monbiot is regularly heckled by 9/11 truthers at public events after accusing them in The Guardian of undermining genuine political opposition. His first column on the truthers prompted a near-record number of postings on the paper’s Comment Is Free website – 777 – many accusing him of being part of the conspiracy.

“It’s very interesting to see,” he says, “particularly in the United States, how the anti-war movement has been largely co-opted in many places by the 9/11 Truth movement. And we desperately need an active anti-war movement, because there is a lot of reckoning to be done.”

Peter Barber is the FT’s deputy comment editor

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Original Article

Disclaimer: This article was written while I was heading a previous organization, Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth. As of August of 2008, Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth has been replaced by a new organization, www.FormYourOwn.org

Bilderberg 2008

With Bilderberg 2008 coming to a close I was finally able to read up on the details of the conference this year. For those who are unfamiliar, here is an excerpt from the wikipedia entry on the Bilderberg meetings:

The Bilderberg Group, Bilderberg conference, or Bilderberg Club is an unofficial annual invitation-only conference of around 130 guests, most of whom are persons of influence in the fields of business, media and politics.

The elite group meets annually at luxury hotels or resorts throughout the world — normally in Europe — and once every four years in the United States or Canada. It has an office in Leiden, South Holland, Netherlands. The 2007 conference took place from May 31 to June 3 at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Istanbul, Turkey. The 2008 conference is taking place from June 5 to June 8 in Chantilly, Virginia, United States.

Those who participate in the conference are often very secretive about what is discussed in the meetings and often deny attending at all. Below is our confrontation with Hillary Clinton from November 7th, 2007:



As you can see, Clinton first denied knowing what Bilderberg is, but then acknowledged that her husband had attended a meeting. Incidentally, the Associated Press confirmed that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton held their long awaited "talk" in Northern Virginia. In fact, the press caught up with the Obama campaign at Dulles airport, which is only 4.32 miles driving distance from Chantilly, Virginia, the location of the Bilderberg meeting.

Spokespeople for both campaigns declined to comment or share with the press the whereabouts of their candidates. Hmmmm...Clinton and Obama decide to have their "discussion" about "reuniting the party" not in Hillary's mansion in Washington, or any other location, but they conveniently meet in the same area that the Bilderberg Meeting is taking place, and Obama's campaign staff are seen only a few miles from Chantilly, Virginia, without Barack Obama. Verrryyy Interesting.

Regardless, even without speculating as to who is secretly attending the meeting, some of the names on the official guest list are very interesting:

DEU Ackermann, Josef Chairman of the Management Board and the Group Executive Committee, Deutsche Bank AG
CAN Adams, John Associate Deputy Minister of National Defence and Chief of the Communications Security Establishment Canada
USA Ajami, Fouad Director, Middle East Studies Program, The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University
USA Alexander, Keith B. Director, National Security Agency
INT Almunia, Joaquín Commissioner, European Commission
GRC Alogoskoufis, George Minister of Economy and Finance
USA Altman, Roger C. Chairman, Evercore Partners Inc.

TUR Babacan, Ali Minister of Foreign Affairs
NLD Balkenende, Jan Peter Prime Minister
PRT Balsemão, Francisco Pinto Chairman and CEO, IMPRESA, S.G.P.S.; Former Prime Minister
FRA Baverez, Nicolas Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
ITA Bernabè, Franco CEO, Telecom Italia Spa
USA Bernanke, Ben S. Chairman, Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System
SWE Bildt, Carl Minister of Foreign Affairs
FIN Blåfield, Antti Senior Editorial Writer, Helsingin Sanomat
DNK Bosse, Stine CEO, TrygVesta
CAN Brodie, Ian Chief of Staff, Prime Minister’s Office
AUT Bronner, Oscar Publisher and Editor, Der Standard

FRA Castries, Henri de Chairman of the Management Board and CEO, AXA
ESP Cebrián, Juan Luis CEO, PRISA
CAN Clark, Edmund President and CEO, TD Bank Financial Group
GBR Clarke, Kenneth Member of Parliament
NOR Clemet, Kristin Managing Director, Civita
USA Collins, Timothy C. Senior Managing Director and CEO, Ripplewood Holdings, LLC
FRA Collomb, Bertrand Honorary Chairman, Lafarge
PRT Costa, António Mayor of Lisbon
USA Crocker, Chester A. James R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies

USA Daschle, Thomas A. Former US Senator and Senate Majority Leader
CAN Desmarais, Jr., Paul Chairman and co-CEO, Power Corporation of Canada
GRC Diamantopoulou, Anna Member of Parliament
USA Donilon, Thomas E. Partner, O’Melveny & Myers
ITA Draghi, Mario Governor, Banca d’Italia

AUT Ederer, Brigitte CEO, Siemens AG Österreich
CAN Edwards, N. Murray Vice Chairman, Candian Natural Resources Limited
DNK Eldrup, Anders President, DONG A/S
ITA Elkann, John Vice Chairman, Fiat S.p.A.

USA Farah, Martha J. Director, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience; Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the Natural Sciences, University of Pennsylvania
USA Feldstein, Martin S. President and CEO, National Bureau of Economic Research
DEU Fischer, Joschka Former Minister of Foreign Affairs
USA Ford, Jr., Harold E. Vice Chairman, Merill Lynch & Co., Inc.
CHE Forstmoser, Peter Professor for Civil, Corporation and Capital Markets Law, University of Zürich

IRL Gallagher, Paul Attorney General
USA Geithner, Timothy F. President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
USA Gigot, Paul Editorial Page Editor, The Wall Street Journal
IRL Gleeson, Dermot Chairman, AIB Group
NLD Goddijn, Harold CEO, TomTom
TUR Gögüs, Zeynep Journalist; Founder, EurActiv.com.tr
USA Graham, Donald E. Chairman and CEO, The Washington Post Company

NLD Halberstadt, Victor Professor of Economics, Leiden University; Former Honorary Secretary General of Bilderberg Meetings
USA Holbrooke, Richard C. Vice Chairman, Perseus, LLC
FIN Honkapohja, Seppo Member of the Board, Bank of Finland
INT Hoop Scheffer, Jaap G. de Secretary General, NATO
USA Hubbard, Allan B. Chairman, E & A Industries, Inc.
BEL Huyghebaert, Jan Chairman of the Board of Directors, KBC Group

DEU Ischinger, Wolfgang Former Ambassador to the UK and US

USA Jacobs, Kenneth Deputy Chairman, Head of Lazard U.S., Lazard Frères & Co. LLC
USA Johnson, James A. Vice Chairman, Perseus, LLC (Obama’s man tasked with selecting his running mate)
SWE Johnstone, Tom President and CEO, AB SKF
USA Jordan, Jr., Vernon E. Senior Managing Director, Lazard Frères & Co. LLC
FRA Jouyet, Jean-Pierre Minister of European Affairs

GBR Kerr, John Member, House of Lords; Deputy Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell plc.
USA Kissinger, Henry A. Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Inc.
DEU Klaeden, Eckart von Foreign Policy Spokesman, CDU/CSU
USA Kleinfeld, Klaus President and COO, Alcoa
TUR Koç, Mustafa Chairman, Koç Holding A.S.
FRA Kodmani, Bassma Director, Arab Reform Initiative
USA Kravis, Henry R. Founding Partner, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
USA Kravis, Marie-Josée Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, Inc.
INT Kroes, Neelie Commissioner, European Commission
POL Kwasniewski, Aleksander Former President

AUT Leitner, Wolfgang CEO, Andritz AG
ESP León Gross, Bernardino Secretary General, Office of the Prime Minister

INT Mandelson, Peter Commissioner, European Commission
FRA Margerie, Christophe de CEO, Total
CAN Martin, Roger Dean, Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
HUN Martonyi, János Professor of International Trade Law; Partner, Baker & McKenzie; Former Minister of Foreign Affairs
USA Mathews, Jessica T. President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
INT McCreevy, Charlie Commissioner, European Commission
USA McDonough, William J. Vice Chairman and Special Advisor to the Chairman, Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc.
CAN McKenna, Frank Deputy Chair, TD Bank Financial Group
GBR McKillop, Tom Chairman, The Royal Bank of Scotland Group
FRA Montbrial, Thierry de President, French Institute for International Relations
ITA Monti, Mario President, Universita Commerciale Luigi Bocconi
USA Mundie, Craig J. Chief Research and Strategy Officer, Microsoft Corporation
NOR Myklebust, Egil Former Chairman of the Board of Directors SAS, Norsk Hydro ASA

DEU Nass, Matthias Deputy Editor, Die Zeit
NLD Netherlands, H.M. the Queen of the

FRA Ockrent, Christine CEO, French television and radio world service
FIN Ollila, Jorma Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell plc
SWE Olofsson, Maud Minister of Enterprise and Energy; Deputy Prime Minister
NLD Orange, H.R.H. the Prince of
GBR Osborne, George Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer
TUR Öztrak, Faik Member of Parliament

ITA Padoa-Schioppa, Tommaso Former Minister of Finance; President of Notre Europe
GRC Papahelas, Alexis Journalist, Kathimerini
GRC Papalexopoulos, Dimitris CEO, Titan Cement Co. S.A.
USA Paulson, Jr., Henry M. Secretary of the Treasury
USA Pearl, Frank H. Chairman and CEO, Perseus, LLC
USA Perle, Richard N. Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
FRA Pérol, François Deputy General Secretary in charge of Economic Affairs
DEU Perthes, Volker Director, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik
BEL Philippe, H.R.H. Prince
CAN Prichard, J. Robert S. President and CEO, Torstar Corporation

CAN Reisman, Heather M. Chair and CEO, Indigo Books & Music Inc.
USA Rice, Condoleezza Secretary of State
PRT Rio, Rui Mayor of Porto
USA Rockefeller, David Former Chairman, Chase Manhattan Bank
ESP Rodriguez Inciarte, Matias Executive Vice Chairman, Grupo Santander
USA Rose, Charlie Producer, Rose Communications
DNK Rose, Flemming Editor, Jyllands Posten
USA Ross, Dennis B. Counselor and Ziegler Distinguished Fellow, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
USA Rubin, Barnett R. Director of Studies and Senior Fellow, Center for International Cooperation, New York University

TUR Sahenk, Ferit Chairman, Dogus Holding A.S.
USA Sanford, Mark Governor of South Carolina
USA Schmidt, Eric Chairman of the Executive Committee and CEO, Google
AUT Scholten, Rudolf Member of the Board of Executive Directors, Oesterreichische Kontrollbank AG
DNK Schur, Fritz H. Fritz Schur Gruppen
CZE Schwarzenberg, Karel Minister of Foreign Affairs
USA Sebelius, Kathleen Governor of Kansas
USA Shultz, George P. Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
ESP Spain, H.M. the Queen of
CHE Spillmann, Markus Editor-in-Chief and Head Managing Board, Neue Zürcher Zeitung AG
USA Summers, Lawrence H. Charles W. Eliot Professor, Harvard University

GBR Taylor, J. Martin Chairman, Syngenta International AG
USA Thiel, Peter A. President, Clarium Capital Management, LLC
NLD Timmermans, Frans Minister of European Affairs
RUS Trenin, Dmitri V. Deputy Director and Senior Associate, Carnegie Moscow Center
INT Trichet, Jean-Claude President, European Central Bank

USA Vakil, Sanam Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies, The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
FRA Valls, Manuel Member of Parliament
GRC Varvitsiotis, Thomas Co-Founder and President, V + O Communication
CHE Vasella, Daniel L. Chairman and CEO, Novartis AG
FIN Väyrynen, Raimo Director, The Finnish Institute of International Affairs
FRA Védrine, Hubert Hubert Védrine Conseil
NOR Vollebaek, Knut High Commissioner on National Minorities, OSCE

SWE Wallenberg, Jacob Chairman, Investor AB
USA Weber, J. Vin CEO, Clark & Weinstock
USA Wolfensohn, James D. Chairman, Wolfensohn & Company, LLC
USA Wolfowitz, Paul Visiting Scholar, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

INT Zoellick, Robert B. President, The World Bank Group

Rapporteurs

GBR Bredow, Vendeline von Business Correspondent, The Economist
GBR Wooldridge, Adrian D. Foreign Correspondent, The Economist

AUT Austria HUN Hungary
BEL Belgium INT International
CHE Switzerland IRL Ireland
CAN Canada ITA Italy
CZE Czech Republic NOR Norway
DEU Germany NLD Netherlands
DNK Denmark PRT Portugal
ESP Spain POL Poland
FRA France RUS Russia
FIN Finland SWE Sweden
GBR Great Britain TUR Turkey
GRC Greece USA United States of America

Also, according to Infowars.com, an anonymous source from Apple Computers has stated that the U.S. Department of Justice place an order for a large amount of ipods with "Bilderberg 2008" engraved on the back. Really? These people can't afford an ipod? We need to spend American Tax Payer dollars to give these people souvenirs from their secret conference. Reallllyyy niiiice.

The Bilderberg Group, perhaps due to the attention that has been placed on their meetings over the past few years, was kind enough to issue a press release for the first time since its inception in 1954:

CHANTILLY, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The 56th Bilderberg Meeting will be held in Chantilly, Virginia, USA 5 – 8 June 2008. The Conference will deal mainly with a nuclear free world, cyber terrorism, Africa, Russia, finance, protectionism, US-EU relations, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Islam and Iran. Approximately 140 participants will attend, of whom about two-thirds come from Europe and the balance from North America. About one-third is from government and politics, and two-thirds are from finance, industry, labor, education and communications. The meeting is private in order to encourage frank and open discussion.

Read the full press release here.

Unfortunately, there has been virtually no coverage by the mainstream media of the meeting. It seems the only people aware that this is taking place is the independent press and the activists who have gathered outside of the Westfield Marriott Hotel in Chantilly, Virginia to protest the secret meeting of the world's elite and call for the destruction of their desired New World Order. David Icke is not someone I would quote often, however, he summed it up very well when he said, "when you have organizations, which bring together the most influential people in power from around the world, who meet in secret, who try as much as they can to keep knowledge of the event quiet, and then their policies become policy, in fact, in the world, then you start to, surely, ask very serious questions."

I would like thank Alex Jones, We Are Change, and the others who have gathered in opposition to both this meeting as well as the individuals that are attending it.

Recommended viewing:

History Channel Segment on Bilderberg:


Bilderberg segment from Alex Jones's Documentary Endgame:


Daniel Estulin Interviewed on INN World Report:


Disclaimer: This article was written while I was heading a previous organization, Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth. As of August of 2008, Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth has been replaced by a new organization, http://www.blogger.com/www.formyourown.org