September 13, 2021

Long-Secret FBI Report Reveals New Connections Between 9/11 Hijackers and Saudi Religious Officials

Long-Secret FBI Report Reveals New Connections Between 9/11 Hijackers and Saudi Religious Officials in U.S.
“This validates what we have been saying,” says an attorney for families of 9/11 victims who are suing the Saudi government over alleged support of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
by Tim Golden and Sebastian Rotella
Sept. 12, 6:50 p.m. EDT
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.


A long-suppressed FBI report on Saudi Arabia’s connections to the 9/11 plot has revealed that Saudi religious officials stationed in the United States had more significant connections to two of the hijackers than has been previously known.

The 2016 report was released late Saturday night under an executive order from President Joe Biden, who promised to make it public no later than the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks that killed 2,977 people and injured more than 6,000 others. The 16-page document was a final inventory of circumstantial evidence and leads from the FBI’s investigation of Saudi ties to the plot; it was heavily redacted.

Nonetheless, lawyers for families of the 9/11 victims, who are suing the Saudi kingdom in federal court, said the document provided important support to their theory that a handful of Saudis connected to their government worked in concert to assist the first two Qaida hijackers sent to the United States in January 2000.



more...

https://www.propublica.org/article/long-secret-fbi-report-reveals-new-connections-between-9-11-hijackers-and-saudi-religious-officials-in-u-s

September 13, 2021

Eric Boehlert: Fox News brainwashes anti-vaxxers -- and the press blames Biden

Fox News brainwashes anti-vaxxers — and the press blames Biden
Stop whitewashing
Eric Boehlert
59 min ago


Busy extending the list of “crises” that President Joe Biden must face, the Beltway media are busy adding Covid vaccinations as a looming failure for the Democrat, as the nation readies a national mandate for the inoculations.

By putting the onus on Biden for the millions of defiant Trump voters who refuse to take the free, safe, and effective shot even as their neighbors become sick and die around them, the press is boosting the GOP — and missing a huge story.

We’re witnessing one of the great mass brainwashings in American political history, as millions of Fox News Covid zombies eagerly swallow an ocean of lies, distortions, and misinformation. Yet the press blames Biden for not being able to convince them otherwise. Worse, the press blames the president without ever acknowledging the large-scale brainwashing that is happening.

Uncomfortable with reporting on a conservative movement that has lost touch with reality, the Beltway media are much more comfortable treating the vaccine story as one about a Democratic president who’s failing to properly communicate and persuade. And one who’s being outmaneuvered by Republicans.

snip//

Virtually every reporter is working from the same script: Covid is surging and deaths are up because of Biden’s “inability” to persuade vaccine “skeptics.” What the Times report never addressed, and virtually none of them ever do, is that the reason millions of Americans still won’t get vaccinated is because there is a choreographed, deep-pocketed political and media campaign designed to make sure millions of people don’t get vaccinated. Period.

The press wants us to believe this is all just happening, by chance. It’s not. Biden is battling powerful forces that reject science and are committed to prolonging the pandemic. That’s essential to understand our continued health crisis, yet the press refuses to address it. Holding vaccine dead enders responsible for their actions is just not something they want to do.


more...

https://pressrun.media/p/fox-news-brainwashed-millions-of

September 12, 2021

Trump's 9/11 Statement is a Disgusting Display of Narcissism and an Insult to America

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/9/11/2051662/-Trump-s-9-11-Statement-is-a-Disgusting-Display-of-Narcissism-and-an-Insult-to-America

Trump's 9/11 Statement is a Disgusting Display of Narcissism and an Insult to America
News Corpse
Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)
Saturday September 11, 2021 · 2:11 PM EDT


It's been twenty years since the United States was struck in a tragic act of terrorism. On September 11, 2001, the nation was changed in ways it could not have previously imagined. It was a day of unthinkable loss. But it was also a day that was followed by weeks and months and years of inspiring expressions of heroism, hope, and unity.

On this day of remembrance, four American presidents of both political parties - Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden - came together to pay tribute to those who were lost and those who worked tirelessly and selflessly to save lives and rebuild.

Unfortunately, there is another former president who simply doesn't have the compassion to participate in such displays of empathy and patriotism. On this day Donald Trump released a statement that affirmed his utter absence of the basic human decency that defines America in times of hardship.

Trump's offensive "tribute" to the victims and heroes of 9/11 lasted for about 24 seconds of the video that ran 1:44. He then spent the remainder of his remarks attacking President Biden. He began by blaming Biden for how the war in Afghanistan ended, despite the fact that it was Trump's plan that led to the Taliban's victory. He released 5,000 of their fighters and lifted all of the financial sanctions in what his own National Security Advisor lambasted as a “surrender agreement”.

Here's a taste of Trump's self-serving and anti-American ranting on a day that should be a solemn occasion (posted here by his spokes-shill, if you have the stomach for it):



So Trump thought it would be appropriate on this somber occasion to call our President a fool. He soiled the seriousness of the day with his jealousy and bitterness because Biden was able to accomplish goals that he could only whine about. And he abandoned any effort to uplift the nation, instead fixating on the "embarrassment" and "incompetence" that he caused, but which he is impotently projecting onto Biden.

Also on this day, Trump thought it would be appropriate to "honor" its memory by partying with his boxing pals as he serves as the featured commentator for an exhibition match at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida. For fifty bucks a pop Trump is turning this anniversary into another opportunity to fleece his cult disciples.

By contrast, President Biden is visiting all three sites that were struck on 9/11. He is paying his respects to the fallen, their families, and those who sacrificed in rescue, recovery and rebuilding efforts. Biden also released a statement that should put Trump to shame (if he were capable of it). Biden said in part that...



The differences between Biden's respectful and hopeful message, and Trump's selfish, envious, and hate-filled harangue, could not be more distinct. But it is also no more than we expect from a lying, unpatriotic, greedy, sociopathic, narcissist, who couldn't care less about this country or its people.

September 12, 2021

9/11 and the birth of the Big Lie

https://luciantruscott.substack.com/p/911-and-the-birth-of-the-big-lie

9/11 and the birth of the Big Lie
The attacks that day loosened the ties that bind us as a nation.
Lucian K. Truscott IV
Sep 11

snip//


"I'll tell you another war we lost, maybe even a bigger and more important war than the war on terror. We lost the war on truth. And we were warned. Oh yes, we were warned. Take Donald Trump's first Big Lie right after 9/11 as just one example. He claimed — I hope you're sitting down for this — that he could see from his office window in Trump Tower crowds of Muslims across the Hudson River, several miles away, on the roofs of buildings in Jersey City, cheering as the World Trade Center fell.

"Remember that one? It was such a patently outrageous lie that it zoomed right past without anyone noticing as the rest of the Big Lies hit one after another.

"But Trump got away with it, and he learned from it. Oh, yes. He learned how the Big Lie worked. He learned from watching Bush get away with lying about WMDs, and he learned from the Big Lies that we were winning in Iraq and Afghanistan. So he started trying out other Big Lies of his own, like the one about how Barack Obama wasn't a citizen of the United States, that he had a fake birth certificate, that he was a "secret Muslim." Remember when Trump was all over the TV for days and days claiming that he had sent detectives to Hawaii? All we had to do was wait and he was going to reveal the "truth" about Obama.

"He got away with his "birther" Big Lie, and he learned something that he has used ever since, something that helped him drive us into the ditch of the pandemic he lied about for a year, something that has helped him transform an entire political party, the Republican Party, from one of two normal political parties in this country into an authoritarian cult.

"He learned that if he told Big Lies that were big enough, and if he repeated them enough times, that he could get away with it, just like Bush got away with lying about WMDs to get us into Iraq. And his party, the Republican Party, learned right along with him. Look at what they are doing right this minute about the insurrection he incited against the Congress of the United States in his naked attempt to overturn the election he lost. Donald Trump and the Republican Party are on a campaign to deny that it happened. They are trying to make a case that it wasn't Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol, it was somebody else, and those who were arrested are political prisoners facing false charges … and on and on and on.

"The legacy 9/11 has left us is that there is no common set of facts we can agree on about anything: Not about the COVID pandemic and masks and vaccines; not about the climate change that has killed hundreds and left town after town burned to the ground or under water and destroyed by tornadoes and hurricanes. We cannot agree that votes counted amount to elections won or lost. We cannot even agree on the common good of vaccines that will save us, that science is worth studying, that learned experts are worth listening to.
"The lies that followed 9/11 have torn us apart as a nation and put our democracy in peril. That's our legacy: Lies are now considered by an entire political party to be legitimate political currency. A man who has told so many lies we have lost count of them is now a legitimate political figure supported for the highest office of the land by one of our two political parties.

"Lies began tearing us apart after the attacks on 9/11, and we have not regained our footing as a nation. The question hanging over us now is whether we ever will."

September 12, 2021

The Rude Pundit: 9/11 Knows America Lies to Itself

https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2021/09/911-knows-america-lies-to-itself.html

The Rude Pundit
Proudly lowering the level of political discourse
9/10/2021
9/11 Knows America Lies to Itself


9/11 hates these years the most. Every half-decade, the annual commemoration is amped up, as if some magic exists in numbers that end in 5 or 0. Every time, the same speeches, the same images, the same patriotic fervor in some places, the same performative sense of loss in others, the same, the same. The only part she feels still has any power is the reading of names. It has an incantatory quality, like a Buddhist prayer, with the timed striking of a sonorous bell. She feels something then. 9/11 is accustomed to feeling nothing anymore. She has been used and brutalized and caressed and beaten and loved and raped and paraded on high and dragged through the streets.

She was degraded regularly by George W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani and the monsters and ogres of that time, forced on her knees to choke as they forced their anxious pricks into her mouth, desperate to steal her power for themselves. She was told to get out and perform for the Obama administration, to dance a whore's dance, to masturbate for the masses in order to justify the unending war done in her name. And through it all, every ceremony, every time she's been dragged out to take her defiled part in, she has appreciated the reading of names. Because then it isn't about them. It isn't about Bush or Cheney or Osama or, ludicrously, Saddam. It isn't about every TV demagogue trying to force finger her or every candidate for office slapping her ass. No. It's not about them. It's not even really about her. It's about heart-wrenching loss and soul-breaking hurt, which is all it really should be. The rest is worthless.

9/11 hates the lie that Americans desperately need to believe. She wants to scream at her TV or her iPad whenever a report comes on that talks about how the country "came together," how there was "unity," how we "cared about each other." 9/11 knows the purpose of this lie, to cover up the instant divisions in the nation, to bury the hatred that welled up in the streets and in the police precincts, to spackle over the holes in the American conscience that could justify everything that came after. They say, "Never forget" over and over, like a mantra of the deluded inside a rubber room, as if a country that is devoted to forgetting its real past, its evil and its racism and its violence and its cruelty, has to cling to this illusion of a moment in time, a fantasy of togetherness across party, across identities, across the world.

9/11 doesn't remember it the way the overheated politicians and the frothing media figures remember it. She remembers how Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld got harder than they had in years at the chance to blow shit up. She remembers how completely a spell was cast over the American people, with anyone opposing blowing shit up being labeled a traitor. She remembers how many other lies were told, about who was responsible, about what bombing the shit out of them would do, about how people had too much freedom in their lives and that it needed to be limited. She watched, even from the pied-a-terre near smoldering Ground Zero where Karl Rove had stashed her in so she could be conveniently and roughly sodomized by him whenever it seemed the public was straying from walking the War on Terror line, and she saw how immigrants were mistreated and stigmatized by the Bush administration, even as so much lip service was paid to not blaming those immigrants. Or Americans. 9/11 has felt all the savagery done in her name, every drone strike in Yemen, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in Sudan, all under the banner of fighting them there so they don't come here when, really, almost none of them want to come here. She has heard every civilian scream. She knows the faces of the tens of thousands upon tens of thousands who were killed, the payback for the almost three thousand killed on her birthdate, when she emerged, whole and adult, from the burning rubble that was made of poison.

It all disgusts her, but, she has to admit, seeing her reflection in the glass on the outside of the museum that bears her name, the nausea from her disgust has kept her in pretty good shape. It's more than she can say for some of the ghouls from back in that time. Sean Hannity looks like someone put two wax dummies of him together. Kellyanne Conway looks like she was washed in a filthy river and balled up in a corner. And Giuliani? 9/11 doesn't even know how he's still alive. But she figures the Devil he made a deal with is just enjoying watching Rudy crash and burn. And so does 9/11.

9/11 does appreciate the memorial in Lower Manhattan. She can stare at the water falling into the void for hours at a time, allowing herself to feel as if she is falling into it, too. She can turn and smile at the giant One World Trade Center building. Goddamn, she's relieved they stopped calling it "the Freedom Tower." What a crass, awful name. It's not as bad as "Patriot Day," as some like to call her. That just reeks of flop sweat, like explaining a joke that no one laughed at. Which, really, that name kind of is.

Fewer and fewer people notice her now in the plaza. That's the one nice thing about the years going by. She's not something real to so many now. And those who do notice her are startled when they see her, but they don't approach her. They don't want to know the real her. They need the illusion.

9/11 can't give that to them anymore. If nothing else, the end of the war in Afghanistan has made plain that she was never the gal they thought she was. And that's hard for most of them to deal with.

She does want to hear the names again. But that list should keep being read with everyone killed in the name of those names, victims as sure as those who died here in Manhattan or over at the Pentagon or in a field in Pennsylvania. 9/11 believes that's the only way to tell the truth: since that day 20 years ago, it has never not been 9/11.

September 12, 2021

Bruce Springsteen performs at the 9/11 memorial in New York City

"I'll See You In My Dreams"

September 11, 2021

Tea Party Patriots Are Funding 'Demon Sperm' Anti-vax Doctors Group

https://crooksandliars.com/2021/09/tea-party-patriots-are-funding-demon-sperm

9/11/21 5:00am
Tea Party Patriots Are Funding ‘Demon Sperm’ Anti-vax Doctors Group
Some very serious right-wing money and muscle are behind the group of pro-Trump doctors pushing fake COVID cures. You have to wonder why.
By NewsHound Ellen


It’s shocking that anyone would take America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLD) seriously. It's a group that includes Dr. Stella “Demon Sperm” Immanuel. But the right-wing megadonors behind the Tea Party Patriots has helped funnel some serious money their way.

The Center for Media and Democracy obtained documents showing that the Tea Party Patriots Foundation was the fiscal sponsor of the group behind AFLD, meaning that it was able to accept tax-deductible contributions on AFLD’s behalf while the group had not yet received IRS approval to accept tax-deductible donations itself. The group behind AFLD more than doubled its forecast budget from $400,000 in 2020 to $900,000, in 2021.

Yet the Tea Party Patriots are a political group that has nothing to do with medicine or public health. CMD describes them as “an extremist group founded in 2009 that helped organize the rally and march to the Capitol just before the violent insurrection.” Its donors include shipping-supply magnate Richard Uihlein, Gore-Tex heir David Gore (the biggest donors in 2020 and 2021, respectively) as well as the Freedom Works Foundation.

It’s hard to believe that even radical right-wingers would get behind this group. In July, they tried to get an injunction against the three U.S.-approved COVID vaccines claiming they did not limit the virus’ spread and that the pandemic is not really a public health emergency.

Are the Tea Party Patriots true believers or out to make a buck on quack cures? CMD notes that in 2020, the Tea Party Patriots hosted and funded an event in front of the U.S. Capitol where the AFLD criticized lockdowns, social distancing and face masks but promoted the unproven hydroxychloroquine as a COVID treatment. Since then, the doctors have joined right-wing politicians and media pundits in promoting ivermectin as a COVID treatment.

There’s little doubt AFLD are grifters. More from CMD:



There’s also the ReAwaken America tour, featuring the likes of ex-general Michael Flynn, MyPillow guy Mike Lindell, Immanuel and Dr. Simone Gold, AFLD’s leader who was also charged for her role in the January 6th insurrection. Gold could not be more intertwined with extreme right-wing notables. She’s on the National Leadership Council of the Save Our Country coalition, a collection of extremists that includes Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, among others.

So are these wingnut politicos making money off the grift? Do they really think the grifting doctors help their political cause? Are they spending the money to please Donald Trump? All of the above?

September 11, 2021

'It Took Her So Fast': 4-Year-Old Texas Preschooler Dies of COVID Within Hours of First Symptoms

‘It Took Her So Fast’: 4-Year-Old Texas Preschooler Dies of COVID Within Hours of First Symptoms
GUT-WRENCHING
“Kali was perfectly fine, and then she was gone,” her mother said.
Kana Ruhalter
Breaking News Intern
Published Sep. 10, 2021 9:45PM ET



A Texas preschooler died of COVID-19 this week within hours of a fever first coming on, her family says. Kali Cook, 4, died in her sleep early Tuesday morning, about five hours after she was found to have a fever, her mother Karra Harwood told the Houston Chronicle.

“Kali was perfectly fine, and then she was gone,” her mother was quoted saying. “It took her so fast.”

The preschooler at Bacliff’s Kenneth E. Little Elementary School had enjoyed a pleasant evening with her family less than 12 hours before becoming the youngest child to die of the virus in Galveston County.

Kali had just started preschool last month—and she loved it, telling her mother that she “can’t wait to go to school.”

The rambunctious 4-year-old passed away just one day after her mother, brother, and 5-month-old sister learned they were infected. The family is currently quarantined at home.

more...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/4-year-old-texas-preschooler-kali-cook-dies-of-covid-within-hours-of-first-symptoms?ref=home

September 10, 2021

Biden's Bold COVID Plan Is the Prescription America Needs

https://www.thedailybeast.com/bidens-bold-covid-plan-is-the-prescription-america-needs?ref=home


Biden’s Bold COVID Plan Is the Prescription America Needs
ROADMAP
Facing a tide of misinformation, the president is using the powers of his office to take a crucial public health stand.
Lawrence O. Gostin
Scott C. Ratzan
Kenneth H. Rabin
Updated Sep. 09, 2021 10:21PM ET / Published Sep. 09, 2021 9:52PM ET


President Biden’s six-point plan to fight the Delta variant, including executive orders that will mandate COVID-19 vaccines for most workers in America, is bold, audacious, and unprecedented.

For months, the president used his bully pulpit to urge mandates. Many businesses and universities did so, but in eleven states, governors blocked mandates. He pleaded for healthcare professionals – pediatricians, and family physicians – to strive to get all their patients vaccinated in the next two weeks. He had to act decisively.

And now he has, with the most important public health stand of his administration. Even more important, it will boost vaccine coverage so high that we may finally be able to contain this virus. And he has the full legal power to do it.

Here’s what’s new. His plan will push 80 million currently reluctant Americans to vaccinate. The US Department of Labor will issue new rules to require employees in all businesses that employ more than 100 persons to either get vaccinated or subject themselves to weekly SARS-CoV-2 tests. All workers in healthcare settings that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding must be vaccinated, without exception. All federal employees and contractors must be vaccinated, with weekly antibody tests no longer an acceptable substitute. Employers will also be required to grant paid leaves for everyone who takes time off to get vaccinated.

The president has undoubted power to require vaccines for federal workers and contractors. He can also withhold Medicare and Medicaid funding if hospitals and clinics refuse to mandate vaccines. Most importantly, he has the power to reach deep into the private sector and require businesses to vaccinate their employees. Congress passed the Occupational Health and Safety Act in 1970 to address the patchwork of state worker safety laws, giving the Department of Labor ample power to set workplace health and safety standards. And preventing a potentially deadly infectious disease is just as important to worker safety as preventing workplace injuries.

snip//

Biden has delivered a roadmap that could lead us out of the woods and finally put us on the right path to a safer, more normal life. Only time will tell if it is sufficient to turn the misinformation tide that has made it so difficult to get ahead of this pandemic but his executive orders could be a turning point in America.

September 10, 2021

Eric Boehlert: The press fawned over Trump voters in diners. Now they're Covid zombies

The press fawned over Trump voters in diners. Now they're Covid zombies
Brainwashed
Eric Boehlert
3 hr ago


snip//

Committed to the idea that Trump's white voters were the most important, and most authentic, voices in American politics, the media spent years celebrating them, marveling at their loyalty in the face of Trump's erratic behavior.

It was relentless. Over the span of just four days in early 2017, the New York Times published a long profile on women who voted for Trump, a piece on Trump fans who traveled to the inauguration, and an adoring profile of a Trump voter who lied about Hillary Clinton during the campaign and profited from his fake news business. Later, even a Trump supporter who had nice things to say about Nazis received a gentle Times profile. (Actual Trump voter Times headlines: "These Guys Really Like Trump"; “Trump’s Fights Are Their Fights. They Have His Back Unapologetically&quot

Today, those Trump voters have mobilized as Covid zombies and gone from insisting the pandemic was a hoax in 2020, to embracing every illogical anti-vaccine trope that Tucker Carlson regurgitates. And they still think the vaccine is more dangerous than the virus.

Trump voters have collectively lost their minds as the virus runs wild in red states. Even as some prominent anti-vaccine zealots kill themselves off, the close-minded hysteria intensifies as fanatics now physically assault local school board members, lodge countless death threats, and cause chaos for teachers and students. This is a kind of cult-like mania rarely seen in modern American history.

There have been unhinged right-wing political mobs before — think back to the Tea Party movement, which flourished as soon as America elected its first Black president. That however, was fueled by a willful misreading of Obama’s economic policy and bailout strategy. The current day right-wing madness is more akin to the Salem witch trials, where hysterical, organized mobs conjure up imaginary demons and then set out to administer vigilante justice.

Yet the press is still normalizing the insanity. After documenting several instances of Trump voters storming school board meetings and comparing mask mandates to sex trafficking and to Hitler’s rise to power (“This is what Hitler wants. Hitler wants everybody divided. If we all stay divided, who wins? Hitler wins”), the New York Times’ Michelle Cottle insisted that what the Covid Zombies are doing “is nothing new.” In reality, it’s unprecedented.


more...

https://pressrun.media/p/the-press-fawned-over-trump-voters