"Reason is to Religion, as the Sun is to Vampires"
Current mood: amused
Category: Religion and Philosophy
Cute Title eh?
I know a certain blonde English professor friend of mine might be thinking as she reads this, "Give credit to your sources and cite them, but don't plagiarize!"
This is about where I got this blog title quote from.
A man named patcondell said it. He has a wonderful video blog on YouTube.com
I normally rely on my own reason and intelligence to make others think about what they do or say. Some may see me as a self rightous ass for that, but they are entitled to their opinion.
I normally would not include a video of someone elese's thoughts in my own blog, but I find this man to be so elequent about what I believe, and what I stand for, that I think it is worth putting this out there for discussion. Some of the things he says here, I don't think I could put into words for myself. After seeing his work, now maybe I can.
Below are a few samples of Pat's highly intelligent and humerous look at Religion, and how it impacts our lives.
Just to let you know what inspired this, I recently have been SCREAMING about an Oxy-Moron here on MySpace named of all ironies, PROTHINK. He is trying to frame the "JEWS" for 9/11. If you follow this person, maybe this will make you think twice about what you are doing.
If you want me to listen to you, then put your arguments in a context that is similar to Pat's below. Don't try and brand a religion with your hate. Oh and in doing so, don't shove your hate or religion down my throat.(Wait till you see what Pat says about hate and where it gets you.)
To give credit where it is due, I was made aware of Pat and his work in a bulletin today by: InnerMysteries It follows below.
There will be coffee and enhanced biscuts for the discussion after the movies.
Death by Dust: the Frightening Link Between the 9-11 Toxic Cloud and Cancer
Current mood: angry
Category: News and Politics
This is VERY long, but worth every word. If you care about the fact that people are getting sick from working at and around ground zero, or just LIVING in the downtown area of New York during the events of 9/11, please read this. Read all of it. Get angry and talk to your congressman about it!
Craig 9/11 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Death by Dust: the Frightening Link Between the 9-11 Toxic Cloud and Cancer
By Kristen Lombardi Village Voice November 28, 2006
It was October 6, 2004, three years after Ernie Vallebuona's three-month stint as a rescue and recovery worker at ground zero in the wake of the 9-11 terrorist attacks, and he was hunched over and trembling, racked by a pain like nothing he had experienced in his 40 years of sound health. He had just returned to his Rockland County home after finishing the midnight-to-8 a.m. shift in the NYPD vice unit, where he'd reported to work for the last six years. Vallebuona had bought some fish from a street vendor near his office, on the Lower East Side. And as he drove the 35 miles from Manhattan to New City, he chalked up a searing stomachache to food poisoning. Maybe the vendor had filleted that fish with a dirty machete?
By the time he pulled into his driveway, the pain had grown excruciating, too horrible for him to even lie in bed that day. The chills swept over his body; so did the shakes. He called his doctor, who suggested ulcer medication. His mother advised him to forget that diagnosis and consult a specialist instead, but like a lot of young, healthy men, he didn't listen right away.
Vallebuona isn't much for complaining; what ailing cop is? But for six months, he had noticed his body betraying him. His toes had reddened; his joints had stiffened. They throbbed in prickly pangs, as if glass shards were wedged underneath his skin. When his own heartbeat began to hurt, he had visited the family doctor, who diagnosed him with gout. He was told to drink cherry juice and take anti-inflammatory medicine. Neither worked.
Now as his stomach convulsed, Vallebuona listened to his mother at last. Later that day, he found himself at a gastroenterologist's office in Pomona, lying on a table, watching a nurse poke at his abdomen. She felt a lump and ordered tests. It would take a month to reach a definitive diagnosis of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphoid tissue. Evidently, Vallebuona had developed a golf-ball-sized mass in his abdomen that had grown so fast and so quick that pieces of it were dying and depositing into his blood, causing gout-like symptoms.
One week after that, he was at a Manhattan hospital, meeting his oncologist, hearing about the heavy-duty chemotherapy he would have to undergo over the next four months. At the visit, a nurse explained he had an aggressive cancer—a rare stage-three—and asked a battery of questions.
Did he ever do modeling with glue?
Did he ever handle insecticides?
Did he ever work with chemicals like benzene?
Vallebuona answered no to all the questions. He had led a clean life; before becoming a cop, he'd worked in a bank.
Sitting in the examining room with him, Vallebuona's wife, Amy, finally spoke up.
"What about 9-11?" she asked. "What about all that smoke and dust?"
Only then did Ernie Vallebuona first consider the possibility that the events of September 11 could be the cause of his cancer.
This is not the story of rescue and recovery workers at ground zero getting sick with respiratory illnesses from their exposure; you have read those stories, and you have heard those cases.
This is the story of 9-11 and cancer.
To date, 75 recovery workers on or around what is now known as "the Pile"—the rubble that remained after the World Trade Center towers collapsed on the morning of September 11, 2001—have been diagnosed with blood cell cancers that a half-dozen top doctors and epidemiologists have confirmed as having been likely caused by that exposure.
Those 75 cases have come to light in joint-action lawsuits filed against New York City on behalf of at least 8,500 recovery workers who suffer from various forms of lung illnesses and respiratory diseases—and suggest a pattern too distinct to ignore. While some cancers take years, if not decades, to develop, the blood cancers in otherwise healthy and young individuals represent a pattern that experts believe will likely prove to be more than circumstantial. The suits seek to prove that these 8,500 workers—approximately 20 percent of the total estimated recovery force that cleared the rubble from ground zero—all suffer from the debilitating effects of those events.
The basis for the suits stems from the plaintiffs' argument that the government—in a desperate attempt to revive downtown in the wake of the catastrophic events on 9-11—failed to protect workers from cancer-causing benzene, dioxin, and other hazardous chemicals that permeated the air for months. Officials made these failures worse by falsely reassuring New Yorkers that they faced no long-term dangers from exposure to the air lingering over ground zero.
"We are very encouraged that the results from our monitoring of air-quality and drinking-water conditions in both New York and near the Pentagon show that the public in these areas is not being exposed to excessive levels of asbestos or other harmful substances," Christine Todd Whitman, the then administrator of the EPA, told the citizens of New York City in a press release on September 18—only seven days after the attacks. "Given the scope of the tragedy from last week, I am glad to reassure the people of New York . . . that their air is safe to breathe and the water is safe to drink."
Those statements were not only false and misleading, but may even play into the basis for the city's liability for millions of dollars in the recovery workers' lawsuits. Last February, U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts cited Whitman's false statements as the basis for allowing a different class-action lawsuit to proceed—this one, against the EPA and Whitman, is on behalf of residents, office workers, and students from Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, many of whom suffer from respiratory illnesses as a result of 9-11.
"No reasonable person would have thought that telling thousands of people that it was safe to return to Lower Manhattan, while knowing that such return could pose long-term health risks and other dire consequences, was conduct sanctioned by our laws," Batts wrote in her February 2 ruling. "Whitman's deliberate and misleading statements made to the press, where she reassured the public that the air was safe to breathe around Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, and that there would be no health risk presented to those returning to the areas, shocks the conscience."
And that was before anyone knew of the apparent cancer link, first reported in the New York news media in the spring of 2004. Even more shocking is the incidence of cancer and other life-threatening illnesses that have developed among those participating in the recovery workers' lawsuits. Given the fact that some cancers are slower to develop than others, it seems likely to several doctors and epidemiologists that many more reports of cancer and serious lung illnesses will surface in the months and years to come. The fact that 8,500 recovery workers have already banded together to sue, only five years later—with 400 total cancer patients among their number—leads many experts to predict that these figures are likely to grow, meaning a possible death toll in the thousands.
In many ways, these illnesses suggest the slow but deteriorating health issues that faced the atomic-bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where thousands died in the years and decades that followed the United States' use of nuclear weapons. And that similarity has not been lost on David Worby, the 53-year-old attorney leading the joint-action suits on behalf of those workers who are already sick, and even dying.
"In the end," Worby declares, "our officials might be responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden on 9-11."
In the five years since the attacks, much of the focus on the 9-11 health crisis has missed a broader question, the one that every ground zero worker fears most and the one that Ernie Vallebuona has already had to ponder: What about cancer? What if all that pulverized concrete and ground glass and caustic mist that Vallebuona inhaled while on the Pile didn't attack his lungs but instead went straight for his lymph nodes? Could this noxious mix have caused his lymphoma?
No one has done a comprehensive study of the health consequences on the estimated 40,000 rescue and recovery workers who raced to ground zero after the attacks. A study by Mount Sinai Medical Center—one that received widespread media attention two months ago—released statistics on the five-year anniversary of 9-11 that focused almost exclusively on respiratory problems and bypassed any mention of cancer today.
But David Worby has tracked the cancer patients among his growing client base for the last two years. Here are the latest tallies: Of the 8,500 people now suing the city, 400, or about 5 percent, have cancer. The biggest group by far consists of people like Vallebuona, who have blood cell cancers. Seventy-five clients suffer from lymphoma, leukemia, multiple myeloma, and other blood cell cancers; most are men, aged 30 to 60, who appeared in perfect health just five years ago.
The field of cancer research is not known for consensus. But six prominent specialists on cancer and the link to toxins—on the faculty of the nation's top medical schools and public health institutions—all come to the same conclusions when told these statistics. They are Richard Clapp and David Ozonoff, professors of environmental health at Boston University School of Public Health; Michael Thun, director of epidemiological research at the American Cancer Society; Francine Laden, assistant professor of environmental epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health; Jonathan Samet, chairman of the epidemiology department at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; and Charles Hesdorffer, associate professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. These doctors and epidemiologists agree that the incidence of cancer among this subset of workers sounds shockingly high, that they cannot and should not be dismissed as coincidence, and that the toxic dust cloud that hung over downtown Manhattan, and particularly the Pile, likely caused or promoted the diseases. Some even went so far as to say that the blood cancer cases, especially, indicate what could become a wave of cancer cases stemming from 9-11 over the next decades.
"Those numbers seem quite outrageous," is how Hesdorffer puts it. Now at Johns Hopkins, Hesdorffer directed until last year the tumor immunotherapy program at Columbia University Medical Center, where he treated two recovery workers who got cancer post–9-11. He notes that the average healthy adult person has a 20 percent risk of having cancer over a lifetime. Calculate that risk over five years—the time frame from the events of 9-11 until today—and it drops to about 1 percent. Yet 5 percent of the suits' workers—1 percent of the overall worker population—have already been diagnosed with malignancies. And these patients don't include the thousands whose illnesses have yet to be recorded because they aren't participating in the lawsuits or in the World Trade Center medical-monitoring programs.
What the experts find most telling are the types of cancer now emerging. They say the blood cancer cases seem too disproportionate to be random. Two percent of these workers have been diagnosed with what amounts to related diseases, none of which fall into the "high-frequency" category, which includes prostate cancer. One out of 9,000 people nationwide gets lymphoma a year; for myeloma, it's one out of 30,000. By contrast, the 75 blood cancer patients translate into several dozen new cases a year.
"That's not just a fluke," says Ozonoff, who studies cancer clusters and toxic waste sites.
Samet, a worldwide expert on smoking and cancer, notes that when so many cases of related cancers emerge, it can signal a forming cluster. "It sounds like an impressive cluster of cancer cases, and I would want to study it," he says.
To be sure, the experts advise caution until more evidence is collected. They acknowledge that the data needed to draw a definite link between 9-11 and cancer don't exist. None of the cancers emerging now are the kinds that come only from toxic exposures—like, say, asbestosis, which is caused by asbestos and can take two decades to grow. This sentinel cancer would go a long way toward proving a 9-11 connection. Absent that, scientists would want to determine whether a higher proportion of cancer patients exists among the workers than in the general public. But because there are no independent data on the 40,000-strong group, they can't make this calculation yet. Meanwhile, the latency periods for most cancers from the time of a full-blown carcinogenic exposure to a full-blown malignancy can take years, if not decades. Says Thun, of the American Cancer Society: "It is the exception rather than the rule to have cancers develop this quickly."
Despite the lack of definitive data, we may still be in the midst of a cancer epidemic. Indeed, according to these experts, traditional data don't help much here because 9-11 represents such a singular exposure. No one can deny that the workers were exposed to a blend of pulverized and aerosolized toxins that had never existed in any occupational setting before. And this mix of toxins alone is enough to cause more aggressive cancers.
"It's also enough to throw out prescriptions on timing," Hesdorffer adds.
Back in May 2004, before most doctors even contemplated a 9-11 link to cancer, Hesdorffer provided testimony to the federal government's September 11 Victim Compensation Fund on behalf of one police officer who had developed pancreatic cancer within a year after his recovery stint. Hesdorffer finds it odd that two of his patients had been diagnosed with the rare cancer after working on the Pile. "It's strange to have two people who were subjected to the same exposure," he says, "developing the same cancer in the same time frame." Now that he has learned of Worby's statistics, he is convinced that "there is definitely more than a likely link between the 9-11 exposures and cancer."
Francine Laden, who specializes in air pollution and cancer, agrees. Because so many of Worby's clients have blood cancers—which have faster incubation periods than tumor cancers, forming in as little as five years—Laden confirms that it's not a stretch to attribute their diseases to the dust cloud. "Blood cancers are different," she says, noting the tie between benzene and leukemia, as well as dioxin and lymphoma. "It's not beyond the realm of feasibility that these chemicals caused these cancers."
Ozonoff puts it more firmly: "For an acute episode like this, it's definitely possible these blood cancers were caused by 9-11."
Ozonoff echoes all five of his colleagues when he draws parallels between the aftermath of 9-11 and that of another massive exposure: the atomic-bombs dropped on Japan. Bomb survivors experienced excessive spikes in leukemia rates within the first five years, a surprising discovery for epidemiologists in the mid 20th century. While this outbreak resulted from radiation, both it and 9-11 involved a sudden and intense blast of carcinogens. For bomb survivors, leukemia appeared first, followed by breast and lung cancer. "That could happen with 9-11," says Samet, the Johns Hopkins epidemiology department chair. "It might be what we're seeing today."
It's also possible that the carcinogens in the Trade Center dust accelerated cancers already dormant or developing in the recovery workers, epidemiologists say. According to Richard Clapp, who directed the Massachusetts Cancer Registry from 1980 to 1989, toxins can not only instigate the genes that cause cancerous cells to divide, but also hasten their dividing. That means that a person with an undetected cancer will develop it faster and in a more virulent manner. He calls this the "promotional effect" and says some toxins associated with 9-11 have been known to speed up lymphomas and leukemias. "The promotional effect could have happened already," he says.
Either way, Clapp adds, "It's hard not to attribute these cancers to 9-11." His gut, he says, is telling him one thing: "We'll be seeing a cancer explosion from 9-11, and we're starting to see it today."
At 8:30 on the morning of the terrorist attacks, Ernie Vallebuona was driving with his three-year-old son, also named Ernie, to a nearby Home Depot in search of the perfect paint color for the family bathroom. Vallebuona always listens to 1010 WINS in the car, so he turned on the radio. He soon heard the incredible news that a plane had crashed into one of the twin towers. Instantly, he got the call to respond.
"We're all mobilizing," his NYPD supervisor told him via cell phone. "Get to work as fast as you can."
Over in Pomona, some 36 miles away from Manhattan, 37-year-old NYPD detective John Walcott was at his suburban home, killing time before a midnight tour on the narcotics unit, where he'd worked for a dozen years. He was relaxing on the couch when a friend from St. Louis called.
"What the hell is going on in New York?" the friend asked, incredulously. Walcott had no idea what his friend meant. He flipped on the TV, only to see flames raging from the twin towers. Minutes later, he was behind the wheel of his minivan, speeding down the highway toward the World Trade Center.
Some 200 miles southeast of the Trade Center site, 49-year-old Gary Acker was working in a bomb shelter dubbed the "earth station," an undisclosed location where AT&T keeps its large satellite dishes. At the time, Acker was managing the company's disaster recovery team, which restores critical communications after catastrophes. He had long viewed the post as the crowning achievement in his 31-year career, one that suited his desire to make a difference.
When the first plane hit the north tower, he was sitting in an equipment room, four floors below ground, running emergency drills. No one had turned on the TV, so he remained oblivious to the events unfolding in Manhattan. His wife, Alison, called him.
"Look at the TV," she said, just as the second plane hit the south tower. Acker knew that New York City officials would be calling AT&T for help. "Pack up your equipment," he heard his wife say, "and get ready to ride."
Back in Manhattan, Jessy McCarthy was not about to roll anywhere. The Verizon field technician was sitting in his office on East 91st Street, listening to the news on the radio, when he heard about the planes hitting the towers. He froze in place, unable to pull himself away from the broadcast for hours that day. Only that afternoon did he manage to go to a nearby work site to repair phone lines. Sitting in his truck, he stared in disbelief at all the people doused in gray dust walking up Third Avenue from downtown. His eyes locked on the caravan of people who'd been caught in that cloud.
By the time McCarthy was taking in this ghostly scene, Vallebuona and Walcott had joined thousands of first responders at the World Trade Center. Both arrived at the site shortly after the 110-story twin towers came crashing down, and they spent the next 15 hours sifting through the wreckage. Racing to the scene from the Seventh Precinct, on Pitt Street, Vallebuona encountered a giant cloud of dust and smoke so hazy and dense, he couldn't see his hand in front of his face. He circled the periphery of what he thought was the scene, following the blaring sirens and running past pumper trucks and police cruisers twisted up like discarded tin cans. The dust caked his eyes and coated his lips. It filled his nostrils with a horrible smell, like burned plastic and flesh. Vallebuona happened to have a bandanna in his pants pocket, which he wrapped across his face. It did little to ward off the rancid odor.
Walcott was also experiencing the noxious effects of the chemical brew. While the massive cloud had dissipated, the crystalline particles hung in the air like speckles in a snow globe. He waded though mounds of pulverized dust, knee-deep, tasting it on his lips, spitting it out of his mouth. Without a mask, he was coughing immediately. First came the black mucus and ashen chunks, then the dry heaves and blood. For hours, he wiped away dark gunk dripping from his eyes. He couldn't help but think that something was wrong. But he focused on the mission at hand, on the faint hope of discovering survivors. That day, he stepped over the only human body that he would find intact—a female, burned beyond recognition, a charred bra over her face.
Acker arrived on the scene 24 hours later, after driving with 11 team members up the East Coast in a company trailer equipped with satellite transmission consoles and multiplex cables. He would spend the next 33 days in and around ground zero—first setting up a satellite at 1 Police Plaza, then manning phone lines across the street from what came to be known as the Pile. The plume enveloped the area from the moment he set foot there until he left. Many nights, he'd oversee the satellite atop 1 Police Plaza, just east of ground zero, and watch as the prevailing winds subsided and the bright-blue smoke settled in. It hung so heavily on the city that he couldn't see the guards stationed across the street.
In these early days, Acker, Vallebuona, and Walcott all struggled to protect themselves from the toxic dust. The foul odor clogged the air for the three months that Vallebuona ended up working at the site—first on the Pile, hauling rubble with buckets, then around the perimeter, providing security and escorting residents to their dust-laden homes. When he and Walcott searched the rubble as part of the initial bucket brigade, they wore nothing over their faces but surgical masks. Respirator masks came weeks into their months-long recovery work; sometimes they came with the wrong filters.
Because Walcott was a detective, he ended up spending his five-month stint not just at ground zero, but also at Fresh Kills. As much as he choked on the Lower Manhattan air, he dreaded the Staten Island landfill. Walcott knew everything in the towers had fallen—desks, lights, computers. But apart from the occasional steel beam, the detritus that he sifted through there consisted of tiny grains of dust—no furniture pieces, no light fixtures, not even a computer mouse.
At times, the detectives would take shelter in wooden sheds, in an attempt to get away from what Walcott likes to call "all that freaking bad air." One day, he was sitting in the shed with his colleagues, eating candy bars and drinking sodas, when some FBI agents entered. They were dressed in full haz-mat suits, complete with head masks, which they had sealed shut with duct tape to ward off the fumes. As Walcott took in the scene, contrasting the well-protected FBI agents with the New York cops wearing respirator masks, one thought entered his mind: What is wrong with this picture?
The same thought would cross Acker's mind only fleetingly, and only after weeks of working near ground zero, while he was hacking so hard he vomited something akin to chewed-up licorice. During his first days at the site, he wore the painter's mask that an NYPD lieutenant had given him, but it soon became too filthy from debris. By October, he was spitting up so much gunk that he called his doctor for an antibiotics prescription. But he wouldn't leave the site; when the fumes got bad, he'd sit in the company trailer and flip on the air conditioner. That had a filter, at least. AT&T had stocked its disaster trailers with almost everything—rubber boots, hard hats, rope, a first aid kit.
Funny, Acker thought, staring at the shelves. All this stuff, yet no one had ever considered respirators.
Around this time, McCarthy was just beginning to report for recovery duty. When Verizon asked for volunteers to restore phone lines near ground zero, he didn't hesitate. He arrived for his first assignment in early October and wound up staying downtown for the next 13 months, going from basement to basement, moving from Wall Street skyscrapers to Chinatown walk-ups. The first thing he saw in the company terminals was the Trade Center dust, piled on top of consoles, crammed into corners. He had to wipe down the equipment with his bare hands to see the wires. The dust had an orange hue; at times, it twinkled. And it always stunk, an unforgettable smell he struggled to get past every time. Invariably, he'd find it in his hair, on his eyelashes, in his tool belt, even under his fingernails. Sometimes, he'd gaze at the ceiling and get the sense of standing in the middle of a meadow thick with pollen. He could see the soot and dust floating in the air.
When it occurred to these responders that they might be sacrificing their health for the sake of the cleanup—as it did to anyone who came in contact with the foul-smelling smoke and dust—they took comfort in the official word at the time. In the immediate aftermath of 9-11, the EPA issued multiple statements on the air quality downtown. All were reassuring in nature. On September 18, the day after the New York Stock Exchange reopened for business, the EPA's Whitman said the air was safe to breathe.
It has turned out those words were, in fact, false. In August 2003, the EPA inspector general issued a scathing 155-page report concluding that the agency hadn't had the data to make such blanket declarations at that time. By then, more than a quarter of EPA samples showed unsafe levels of asbestos, and the agency had yet to complete tests for mercury, cadmium, lead, dioxin, and PCBs. The inspector general's report went on to disclose another disconcerting fact—that the White House had pressured the EPA to sanitize its warnings about ground zero. The inspector general revealed that the White House Council on Environmental Quality had taken a red pen to the agency's press releases, adding reassuring statements and deleting cautionary ones, creating the overly rosy picture that the air was clean.
In reality, the 9-11 fallout was like nothing anyone had been exposed to before. Everything in the towers had been ground into dust—concrete, steel, glass, insulation, plastic, and computers. Dust analyses would detect glass shards, cement particles, cellulose fibers, asbestos, and a mixture of harmful components, including lead, titanium, barium, and gypsum. In all, the dust contained more than 100 different compounds, some of which have never been identified. And then there were the fires that smoldered for three months. They gave off not only the putrid plume, but also a blast of carcinogens—asbestos, dioxin, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. They also emitted benzene.
In one disturbing analysis done by the U.S. Geological Survey, the dust had such high alkalinity levels it rivaled liquid Drano.
Thomas Cahill, a physicist who sent a team to analyze the plume from a rooftop a mile away from ground zero, says he got worried once he noticed the color of the smoke had turned a fluorescent blue. That's a sure sign that ultra-fine particles (which can go deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream) were coming off the Pile and permeating the air. When his team tested the plume, the scientists found higher levels of sulfuric acid, heavy metals, and other insoluble materials than anywhere else in the world, even in the Kuwaiti oil fields. "Not nice stuff," says Cahill, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of California at Davis, who has published three papers on the 9-11 plume, "and it was all being liberated by that smoldering pile, so those people got the full force of it."
Today, Cahill is trying to identify what exactly the recovery workers were inhaling, but the data are incomplete. He does know one thing for certain: "You'd have to stand by a busy highway for eight years to get what these people on the site got in just four weeks." He then adds, "These poor people are part of an enormous experiment, I think."
In May 2003, John Walcott was 39 years old. He had just become a first-time father—of his daughter, Colleen—and had proudly coached a Bedford high school hockey team to the state regionals. That spring, he had noticed his energy fade. But he figured his 16-hour days juggling the narcotics beat, hockey practice, and parenthood were finally catching up to him. Still, the fatigue would consume him for weeks. He'd fall asleep at his desk or behind the wheel. Often he'd nod off in the middle of a conversation.
Then he got the diagnosis: acute myelogenous leukemia, a white-blood-cell cancer. He was ordered straight to the hospital, where he underwent chemotherapy for the next 28 days.
Eventually, a nurse would ask Walcott questions similar to those put to Valle-buona, the ones meant to pinpoint the possible causes for his cancer. Like Vallebuona, Walcott answered no to all the questions. And like Vallebuona, he didn't connect the dots between his time at ground zero and the cancer growing in his body.
Visiting him in the hospital later, his sister, Debbie, did.
"John," she said, "what the hell do you think you were around at ground zero?"
It was a question that Gary Acker would also have to confront that summer, in a visit to his own doctor's office. The AT&T manager had never shaken that World Trade Center cough, struggling with sore throats and lung infections for 18 months after completing his recovery work, suffering through all kinds of inhalers and antibiotic regimens. At one point, his doctor diagnosed him with sleep apnea and ordered him to wear a pilot-like mask strapped over his face at night, so as to reduce his roaring snores. It didn't work.
A perennial optimist, Acker ignored any hint that his health problems were 9-11 related. In September 2002, he got the first warning that his health was deteriorating from exposure to the dust cloud when he underwent a pulmonary test for the company. He was stunned by the doctor's response.
"How many packs of cigarettes do you smoke a day?" the doctor asked Acker.
"I don't smoke. I never have in my life."
"Well, you have a real breathing problem," the doctor informed him.
His second warning came in the summer of 2003, as Walcott was getting chemotherapy. In August, Acker was landscaping the backyard at his home, in Columbus, New Jersey, carrying two 50-pound buckets of stones, when his body buckled under a jolt of pain. It felt as if somebody had jabbed a fishhook into his rib cage and was slowly gutting him. He allowed for the possibility of a kidney stone and paid a trip to the doctor. Days later, he got a diagnosis that would stop his heart cold: multiple myeloma, a plasma cell cancer. Already, the super- advanced cancer had eaten its way through the bone marrow in his ribs, as well as many other bones in his body.
For a fleeting moment, Acker thought about that thick and foul plume hanging over the Pile; could it have caused his cancer? But his optimism flooded back and he focused on his treatment instead—on the chemotherapy pills that he would take twice a day for the next 28 days. Only days later, after his oncologist confirmed that his myeloma likely formed in the last two years, did he finally make the tie-in to 9-11.
By the spring of 2004, Acker and Walcott had endured not only months of chemotherapy, but also stem cell transplants. They experienced a series of life-threatening infections and trips in and out of the hospital before beating their cancers into remission.
Meanwhile, Vallebuona had just begun noticing gout-like symptoms. They started in his big toes, which doubled in size and became hot to the touch, and then moved to his knees, joints, and chest. For six months, he went back and forth to the doctor, getting more medicine, seeking more remedies. He wouldn't doubt that diagnosis until October 2004, when the searing stomachache tipped him off to what had really been causing pain in his abdomen.
When he got the cancer diagnosis, Valle-buona was relieved about one thing. His doctor had been wrong about the gout. If nothing else, at least he wouldn't have to live with that excruciating pain for the rest of his life.
As Vallebuona was coming to grips with his cancer in the fall of 2004, Jessy McCarthy was still feeling healthy. The Verizon technician had managed to evade the kinds of respiratory problems that have afflicted so many ground zero workers—the cough, the sinusitis, the asthma—in the two years since his recovery assignment had ended. He would experience nothing to suggest the grave disease that would sneak up on him.
At least not until one day in October 2004, while taking a shower, when he saw a swelling around the glands under his arm, about the size of a marble. He thought: This is not right.
But McCarthy didn't feel sick; there were no dizzy spells or nausea. A trip to the family doctor to ask about the lump yielded little information, just something questionable about his blood. So McCarthy plodded on with his life, holding down his full-time job, taking care of his teenage son.
Suddenly, within weeks, he noticed the lump had grown, and more had developed. His lymph nodes swelled all over his body, underneath his arms, in his groin, around his neck and chest. The lumps just seemed to sprout; they grew so big that they looked like mini-baseballs. Suddenly, McCarthy found himself undergoing a battery of medical exams—CAT scans, PET scans, blood tests, and anything else that would help narrow down the possibilities. It took six months to rule out every type of lymphatic infection. In March 2005, after a biopsy of one of his lymph nodes, McCarthy finally was given the definitive diagnosis of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
By then, the recovery workers' lawsuits had been more than a year in the making. Back in the winter of 2004, Walcott had just survived the worst of his hospital stays, a 17-day stretch of 106-degree fevers, and was confined to his home. Months had passed since he learned that his leukemia likely resulted from his exposure to benzene while on the Pile, but he went in search of legal advice. He started with a lawyer friend, who encouraged him to keep looking. One attorney offered to take Walcott's case, as long as he put up his modest house to cover the fees. "Forget it," he said.
Eventually, parents of the kids on his high school hockey team heard about his plight. During a visit, Walcott told some parents about his fruitless search. They had an idea. They could contact a trial lawyer whose son went to the same high school; his name was David Worby.
"I took the case as a favor," the lead attorney in the recovery workers' lawsuits says, sitting in his spacious penthouse office in White Plains. A trim man whose brown hair is graying at the temples, David Worby exudes confidence as he reclines in his chair and recalls the early days of what has become his greatest legal crusade. Long before the 9-11 suits, he had built a reputation as a gladiator lawyer on personal-injury cases; in 1989, he set a Westchester record by winning $18 million for a construction worker run down by a car. Fifteen years later, he was settling into early retirement when one of the Bedford parents told him about the ailing Walcott.
"What was I supposed to do?" Worby asks.
What started out as a case for one sick recovery worker quickly snowballed. Today, a team of 20 attorneys at his firm of Worby Groner Edelman Napoli & Bern is handling the suits, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, for the thousands of workers associated with the Trade Center cleanup—police officers, firefighters, sanitation workers, iron workers, and Latino day workers. Last month, Federal District Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected the city's claim for immunity in the Worby lawsuits and recently capped its liability at $1 billion. The judge is expected to appoint a special master to settle the workers' claims.
Worby's client list continues to grow. It now includes Vallebuona, Acker, and McCarthy, all of whom came to him after he filed the first suits in September 2004. They found out about him as most of his clients do—by word of mouth, one sick recovery worker to another, one worried spouse to another. Others have called him after hearing about the cases on TV or the radio or in the papers. Most of the clients have grown ill from respiratory problems like asthma, sinusitis, and bronchitis. But some have kidney failure, and 400 people have developed cancer. So far, 83 clients have died.
The number of cancer patients has multiplied at a rate that Worby says he never anticipated. Back in 2004, he represented only 20 workers who had cancer. But by last March, he had watched that number soar to 200, and within six months after that, it had doubled. Now he gets at least several calls a week from clients who have just been diagnosed with some cancer. Or from new clients who have had the cancer for weeks or months.
Like many trial lawyers, Worby has a penchant for talking in fervent, breathless tones, as though his words were writ large, in bright, blinking letters. Convinced that the 9-11 fallout has made for a cancer explosion, he doesn't hesitate to say so. "There is going to be a cancer catastrophe the likes of which we've never seen in this country," he says. "The numbers are going to be staggering."
Perhaps it'd be easy to dismiss him as another hot-aired plaintiffs' attorney were it not for his own command of numbers. He has become something of a gumshoe epidemiologist, compiling the data on his cancer patients that are lacking in the larger worker population, tracking their diseases, ages, diagnosis dates, and their 9-11 exposures. "Look at the cancers my clients have," he says, flipping through a dozen pages of a document entitled "Seriously Ill Clients." It's updated every month; this one is dated September 13, 2006. The document outlines what he calls his "cancer clusters" and lists rare cancers often associated with the 9-11 toxins, such as thyroid (30 people), tongue and throat (25), testicular (16), and brain (10). He keeps a separate document on the 75 people with blood cancers. Two dozen of them have various forms of leukemia; the remaining four dozen have various forms of lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and other blood cell cancers.
"If I had two blood cancers, it'd be a strong coincidence," Worby argues. "But 70? That defies coincidence. The word coincidence should not be in anyone's vocabulary."
Worby contends that it wasn't just the unprecedented amount of toxins in the air that caused his clients to develop cancer; it was that the toxins worked together. Worby calls it a "synergistic effect," and cancer specialists say there is such a thing as toxic synergy, which occurs when chemicals combine. They can enhance the damage that the other ones would cause. Think of it this way: The benzene at ground zero may have caused Walcott's acute leukemia; the dioxin probably sped up its development.
"This amount of toxicological exposure is going to speed up normal latency periods," Worby argues. He makes this assertion with the same zeal that he exhibits in the courtroom, citing medical studies on animals, rattling off the findings as if they were second nature. Why would the doctors monitoring the effects of 9-11 on people's health not understand this connection, he wonders. "Why would people not make this link?"
Five years after September 11, there's no doubt that the toxic dust cloud has devastated the lungs of those who participated in the Trade Center cleanup. In September, the Mount Sinai Medical Center released data from its WTC Worker and Volunteer Medical Screening Program, which has tested 17,500 recovery workers to date. In that analysis, doctors found that nearly 70 percent of the 9,500 subjects they surveyed experienced new or worsened respiratory symptoms at ground zero; close to 60 percent saw those symptoms persist for years. Doctors have seen chronic sinusitis, laryngitis, asthma, gastroesophageal reflux disorder, and disabling musculoskeletal conditions. Even the famous World Trade Center cough has lasted much longer than anticipated.
"All of us have been badly surprised by the persistence and the chronicity of the World Trade Center diseases," says Robin Herbert, the director of the screening program.
But at the Mount Sinai program (and at the WTC program of the FDNY, which declined to comment for this article), the link between the dust cloud and cancer is discussed more as a possibility than a reality. It's not that doctors aren't extremely concerned about the connection, Herbert says, given the cancer-causing agents and other toxins in the mix. While individual cancer cases may be attributed to 9-11 toxins, she says, the doctors, so far, lack full epidemiological proof linking the two.
"We don't know if we're seeing a spike in cancer rates," Herbert says, as they have in the rates of respiratory illnesses. Herbert confirms that the Mount Sinai doctors have seen some workers with cancer, including unusual cancers, but says they'd expect some workers to develop malignancies over the last five years anyway. Is there more incidence of cancer among Pile workers than among those who didn't toil on the Pile? "That's the key question," she says. The Mount Sinai epidemiologists have just begun to try to answer that by launching an initiative to update medical records, document new diagnoses, and track less-com mon diseases like cancer. It's a slow process, with no timeline. Still, she says, "We are now aggressively investigating every case of cancer that has been reported to us."
But the WTC programs—funded by the federal government—have their share of critics, who wonder how interested the doctors are in the 9-11 and cancer issue. Al O'Leary, the spokesperson for the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, says that many of its members feel as if the doctors are ignoring the signs of a growing cancer cluster. "It was our impression that no one in the medical-monitoring programs believed the cancers could be happening this early," he explains.
Over the past year, the police union has fielded a steady increase in calls from members who have developed cancer since working at ground zero. Last July, the PBA started its own World Trade Center health registry for its members, listing seven cancer cases at the time. Today, there are 20 cases; they include the 35-year-old who worked on the Pile and at Fresh Kills and now has multiple myeloma, the 45-year-old who surveyed the Trade Center site for two years and now has leukemia, and the 41-year-old who manned the landfill morgue for three weeks and now has myeloma.
"Now, don't you think this is all very suspicious?" O'Leary asks. "The medical community needs to be more open-minded about what diseases can be caused by 9-11."
Some cancer specialists agree. Hesdorffer, of Johns Hopkins, still remembers the reaction to his testimony before the Victim Compensation Fund, back in 2004. He was called back about a half-dozen times to explain why he would attribute the pancreatic cancer in his two patients to the dust cloud so soon after 9-11. It was as if no one wanted to make the connection; one patient lost his claim despite the doctor's opinion.
"We're in this period where no one wants to accept the link," Hesdorffer observes. Maybe the official denial stems from economics, from a desire to limit the amount of money owed to the thousands who have lost their health. Or maybe it has to do with politics. Admitting a link, as he points out, "would mean that the fallout from 9-11 was a lot bigger than we'd thought."
What it would mean is that people got cancer from government decisions. From the decision of Whitman to lie about the air quality in Lower Manhattan, which gave the recovery workers and many other New Yorkers a false sense of security. From the decision of the White House to put Wall Street ahead of public health, which the EPA inspector general found had influenced all those rosy statements. And from the decision to let workers toil without proper respirators for weeks, or without any respirators at all.
For Gary Acker, now 54 and still undergoing monthly chemical drips to heal his bones, gone are the annual trips hunting for caribou in Canada and fishing for trout in the Adirondacks. Those years in the late '90s when he threw the javelin and shot put in the New York version of the Olympics seem like an adolescent memory. No longer working at AT&T, he devotes his time to trying to relax, watching mindless sitcoms on TV, anything to make himself laugh. "If I'm laughing, I'm not stressed," he says. His doctors tell him that no stress means less chance of a cancer relapse.
Last year, Jessy McCarthy, now 48, had to work through his chemotherapy treatment, juggling the 72-hour drips with his job and his son for six months. He didn't have much choice; otherwise he'd lose his medical benefits. He could never afford the medical bills on his $65,000 salary; some of his medications cost $5,000 a dose. Now in remission, he continues to fix phone lines, though he knows the day will come when he can't anymore. Already, he has had to call for help on assignments he used to do alone. He also knows, in the back of his mind, that his cancer is the kind that will likely return, and possibly kill him.
Walcott and Vallebuona, both retired from the force because of their cancer, continue to live with the side effects of their treatments—the lost feeling in their hands and feet and the extreme fatigue. While Vallebuona has undergone chemotherapy, radiation, and a stem cell transplant, he still hasn't been able to beat his lymphoma into remission. They also grapple with what they both like to call "chemo brain." The drugs left Walcott, now 42, too incoherent to witness or recall the first time his daughter learned to walk or talk. For Vallebuona, now 41, the littler things seem to escape him, like the weekend plans his wife mentioned earlier in the day. But even their foggy minds have not erased the memories of two planes hitting the World Trade Center on that sunny September morning, when they had woken up healthy and happy to be alive.
Editor's note: Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written a powerful, must-read document.
It is Pat's birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we get out.
Much has happened since we handed over our voice: Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can't be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.
Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.
Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few "bad apples" in the military.
Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It's interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.
Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.
Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.
Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.
Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.
Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.
Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.
Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.
Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.
Somehow torture is tolerated.
Somehow lying is tolerated.
Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.
Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.
Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.
Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.
Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.
Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.
Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.
Somehow this is tolerated.
Somehow nobody is accountable for this.
In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don't be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that "somehow" was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.
Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat's birthday.
Why is this personal, and Am I an A$$hole?
Current mood: drained
So, there I was lying in bed. I was really trying to fall asleep, but I just could not get a question out of my head.
Is this so personal to me that I sometimes act like an asshole when it comes to trying to convey how I feel to people about 9/11? It really upsets me when I get angry at other people. Why? Because I LIKE people. I don't care if you like me, but I don't want to have to lower myself to be MEAN to you. That bothers me. Being "ugly" bothers me. I can really beat myself up about it sometimes.
So I thought about it, and I've decided to give myself a break. Here's why.
I can not escape the fact that no matter how much longer I live, my reactions to 9/11 will always be visceral. Every single time I respond to a comment someone makes, or post in a blog, or whenever I "insert" myself into a conversation I overhear, I am going to do so in an emotional way. I can't escape that.
When I think that I watched as a building that I had a post in, was struck by a plane. Imagine that. A place where I would sometimes help residents of the WTC area feel safer in the Subway, cross a street, or direct some traffic, or help a person find their way, or helped someone with their bags, or placed my hat on their child's head, or denied a persons freedom because they broke the law, ......... to think that I watched a building fall on those people.
To think that I literally watched in horror as a part of my world was literally destroyed. One of the buildings that I sometimes ate my lunch in, or used as a portal to take a train to my home state of New Jersey to visit relatives, actually just collapsed before my eyes and killed so many people.
How many children went to school in the area? How many small eyes watched from classrooms as a nightmare unfolded before their eyes to shatter the core of their naiveté. Wondering how many people watched in horror knowing full well that their loved one was in one of those buildings is one matter. Knowing that you KNOW these people, that you are connected to them, all of them, each person who is having this horror unfolding before their eyes, visited upon them by force, is another matter to bear. People that I cared about, sometimes deeply are suffering in those memories. Some still are to this day. People that I worked with. People that I relied on to bring me home ALIVE every single day that I wore my uniform were now dead, under that collapse. That very same collapse is one that I can now watch on so many movie clips, let alone relive in my dreams weekly, for the past five years.
Now a day, every time I take a breath I get to be reminded of my emotional pain by the physical pain of a partially collapsed lung that is a direct result of this event.
My Name is Craig Bartmer. Some of you may not have heard of me. Some of you might know me from the new internet phenomenon called MySpace, and on there I go by the nickname Craig 9/11. I'm an ex NYC police officer. I joined the NYPD in 1995 and served until I left the job after 9/11, in Feb of 2002.
Like so many others I melted 5 pairs of work boots working the pile at Ground Zero for over a month, until I collapsed one morning in October 2001 on my way into work. I spent a nearly month in Saint.Vincent's hospital recovering from respiratory complications directly related to working in the air at ground zero. Recently I was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis due to the collapse of part of my upper left frontal lung lobe and scar tissue in both of my lungs. I also suffer from severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and this debilitating condition has kept me from even leaving my home for long periods of time. I am in therapy every two weeks for this and I struggle with it daily. To this day it keeps me from holding any form of gainful employment. I have tried with limited success to find a job since I left the department, and those that I have found I have lost due largely due in part to my PTSD, and the difficulty I have socializing with others based on my need to speak out about 9/11 issues and my inability to hold my tongue when I see dishonesty about the issue. That is what brings me here before you.
I don't want to bore anyone with more details of my background, but I just wanted to outline some of my experience and let you know who I am and where I am coming from.
The real reason I am up here speaking before you is as a member of the growing 9/11 truth movement, I am concerned that we are not being told the truth by the government and media about the events of 9/11.
That being said I'd like to address some important issues that relate directly to the 9/11 Truth movement. I do not want to offend anyone here, but I have a feeling I may with my next statements. That is not my intention.
Nearly all of us in the Truth movement love our country enough to demand answers about what we see as lies and cover-ups by our own government, so much so that we are willing to do whatever it takes to get our message heard.
For me, that is part of the big picture problem facing this truth movement.
I'd like to address the word "truth" as it relates to our movement and activism.
The truth can "set us free". Or it can keep us in the dark.
I'd like to make it clear, that I believe many members of the "Truth" movement are in fact helping to keep us in the dark, and indeed are not setting us free. You see, we do not yet know that the TRUTH is."
As we draw closer to the fifth anniversary on Monday 9/11/06 the media is once again generating all sorts of attention on 9/11 issues. As usual they seem to focus on the government's official story, and they also lambaste and brand any dissent and challenge that refutes the accepted story of the day. As you all know media and almost everyone I know brands any dissent of the official story as "Conspiracy theory". Indeed even some members of the truth movement revel in the fact that they are "conspiracy theorists". I'm here to attack that term, and to tell each and every one of you that you should not stand for being called a conspiracy theorist, if your arguments are backed by checkable facts.
I am not, nor have I ever been a conspiracy theorist.
Labeling yourself as such, or being labeled by anyone else as a conspiracy theorist is doing our entire movement a great disservice. Calling alternate theories "Conspiracy Theories" is doing no one any good, and in the interest of real debate is something called an ad homenim attack. An ad homenim attack is a logical fallacy that automatically discredits the disseminator of the information at question, based on a pre conceived bias.
I don't want to loose anyone here with a high brow concept, so let me explain in other terms for people unfamiliar with the definition of an ad homenim attack. Keep in mind I'm stating this next bit here as an example to make a point. I don't want to be labeled as a bigot or anti Semite, this is just a good way you set this definition in terms easily understandable by all.
You can say:
Einstein was Jewish. you can BELIEVE that All Jews are Evil Therefore, the conclusion you may draw based on that belief that "jews are evil" is that the theory of relativity is also evil.
We all know that is complete nonsense, but I hope you can now see clearly what I am talking about. That is the exact thing that is done when we allow ourselves to be labeled, and debated as "conspiracy theorists" in regards to 9/11 issues. We can not open a clear and honest discussion on the topic when we base the context of that discussion with the conspiracy theory label. Ad Homenim attacks are everywhere, on the news, on the internet, in the papers, you hear it when Ann Coultier speaks about liberals, or Sean Hannity calls you crazy. It is the perfect method to create an automatic bias. It is a way to sway an argument to one side making one side making the opposition either impotent or irrelevant before a word is spoken. Before a word is even mentioned about our cause, the term Conspiracy Theory is abused, and the average reader or listener will say "here we go" before even a word is heard or read. That is wrong. 3000 dead, and thousands still suffering from that day deserve better. If we are going to do those dead and suffering justice, then we must fight this battle as well, and see to it that we are taken seriously.
People also cite experts with far greater academic acumen than I have, who use information based on scientific method, applied physics, and years of study in the given field that directly relates to the observed events of 9/11. In the interest of addressing the official story outlined in the 9/11 commission report, we encounter another logical fallacy on the other side of the debate coin that is called an appeal to authority. This second logical fallacy supposes that because of true or reported credentials, that the "expert" making an argument and disseminating "accepted' information, is automatically correct. I site people's faith in the government's "official" explanations just because they support our president or country, as an example of this type of second type of logical fallacy.
If we are to be taken seriously, and are to be respected in our search for truth, we can not allow ourselves to fall prey to either of these logical fallacies. We have no need to do so either.
We have as a treasure trove of demonstrably false information, and easily confirmed evidence that is ignored because of the "conspiracy theory" label.
Condi Rice DID warn the mayor of San Francisco not to fly on 9/11, but claimed on tape behind a government podium that no one in our government saw this coming. At the same time, why were war games being practiced in the pentagon and the DICK Cheney himself on that day, and in formulation weeks before the event if no one knew? Have you ever seen the photo of the plane wreck on a table top model of the pentagon, taken in the year 2000? Where is the legit and grounded fury over that? Dick Cheney himself was IN FACT in charge of NORAD on that day! That can be proven, but it is ignored. Since NORAD's inception, no civilian member of our government has ever been given the type of control over its command. Where is the media inquiry? Stock market records do indeed show large amounts of money being pulled out of American Airlines stock in "put options", days before the event. Why has that not been investigated more fully? Why are the hundreds of eyewitness's accounts of explosions preceding and during the collapse of all three buildings on 9/11 ignored? I myself ran from building 7 as it fell, and I heard with my own ears a rapid succession of explosions while running. We can rebuild plan crashes completely with debris recovered by divers from the ocean, but we can not even produce some steel from the World Trade Center that is not already melted and fabricated into something else, to examine it because the stuff was shipped out of the public eye so quickly and some of it is IN CHINA for god's sake, and there is no mention of those facts in open debate in any major media source. We have the bold faced lies by the EPA, the city of New York, and the CDC that said the air quality at ground zero was perfectly safe and no worse than second hand smoke, yet 20 something first responders have DIED in the last year due to respiratory illness directly related to that safe air. Where is the outrage and the highlight of that? Where you see one lie, there are usually others.
Bombs in the building and demolition theories are fine, and worth noting, but that truth can only be produced through honest and impartial investigation. I say again HONEST AND IMPARTIAL investigation. Investigation devoid of bias. Those truths can come out in the wash, AFTER we point to demonstrably false claims.
We already know that we went to war on a lie, and you're telling me this government is to be afforded credibility in matter pertaining to 9/11? Hog wash!
I am aware that some theories labeled as "conspiracy" have gaping holes in them. I am also very much aware that the government's theories have holes in them as well. With those two facts, it obvious a new investigation is needed, but that need is ignored and swept under the rug. That need is ignored when we in this movement separate ourselves into camps full of what "we believe". Belief is not important here. Investigation and illumination of ignored information is important.
Again I will say I am not crazy, nor am I a conspiracy theorist. Nor are many of you here listening to me today, or many members of the Truth movement across the country and globe. I am a trained ex law enforcement person who does his homework and who wants a real investigation done, because what we have now, "The 9/11 OMISSION Report" is not real investigative work, and is loaded with bias written by people with definite conflicts of interest. (for the record in regards to the official 9/11 Ommission report, why haven't many of the "recommendations" made by it for our security implemented even 5 years after the fact?) I'll tell you why. It is because there is an apparent agenda not yet uncovered in a real investigation.
3000 dead deserve better. There absolutely IS something up about the events of 9/11 that we are not being told, and that truth is inalienable and needs to be uncovered by a new and impartial investigation.
Each month we are exposed to new theories. Some of them are INDEED crazy and irrational, but not all of them are. Now is not the time to be claiming there were not planes, because I saw with my own eyes parts of those planes that in some cases killed real people. I am not a member of actor's equity either. I'm a guy who is still suffering from the events of 9/11 who is fed up with this being turned into a circus, and who just wants justice.
We see injustice everywhere we look in this fight, and since this administration which I AM GUILTY of supporting at one point, came into office.
We spend 1.5 billion a month in a war overseas started on a lie, and we can not fund our own citizen's health care? We can't even help first responders to the attack on 9/11, 70% of which are seriously ill, myself included? What does that tell you? I know what it tells me, that war and killing people overseas is worth investing in, and our own people, even ones hailed "heroes," are not.
In closing I am going to give you a quote from one of my hero's.
""We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it."
Conversations with a 9/11 "Truth' Bigot
Current mood: angry
Category: News and Politics
Recently, I have been noticing a lot of hate here on MySpace. I wondered if it was prominent in the 9/11 truth movement. What I have sadly discovered is that MANY bigoted people use any political agenda they can get their claws into to spew their filth, because they too have an agenda. I say claws, because I despise bigotry, and bigots are monsters.
It is absolutely frightening that people like this guy http://www.myspace.com/mrreelbigfish> Severus, are allowed to have a forum here. Dont preach to me about free speech either please, because if you tolerate a bigot like this, then you are no better than him. If I have to tolerate this kind of bullshit under the guise of free speech then I will rebut them using the same methods, and not tolerate their ignorance as acceptable in our supposedly civilized society. These people ERODE our freedoms with hate and violence, as badly if not worse than our governments do. The only problem is we can not expose these people in other forums in life, because we do not have an appropriate podium that will listen to our calls for reason in debates like this.
Well here, for all of you to read, is a conversation with an UGLY, and small minded bigot. Please feel free to engage in your own discourse with him.
If I get any letters from other bigots defending his position, be warned you will get the same earful for from me, and the same public exposure.
For all of you in the 9/11 Truth movement, be aware that our quest for the truth will slowly be eroded by small minded bigots like this. Some of the hateful Zionist speech on here is absolutely disgusting, and I have almost fallen into the trap of it myself. There is a difference in arguing the point of anti Zionism and hating Jewish people because they are Jewish. I think this conversation will serve to outline that clearly, and serve as a perfect example warning to those of you seriously interested in the truth.
Let me tell you one Truth. In our quest for Truth, we must realize that we can not be so arrogant to think that we KNOW the truth here without evidence. We do not, and we are searching for it every day, because GOOD PEOPLE have been killed in what is quite possibly the worst crime in history. Be careful who you associate yourself with on here, on MySpace. Your voice for truth may be immediately silenced by the rhetoric of an obviously mentally ill person, or your good old every day fucking BIGOT like the one illustrated below.
I charge all of you with the task of not putting up with small minded bigots as well, lest they ruin all of our hard work trying to get to the TRUTH of 9/11.
It all started with the BULLETIN you see below. It is DISGUSTING, and I do not in any way shape or form condone it. It is only outlined here to show how this conversation started.
This is a long read, but please get through it because the message is worth it and vital to our Truth Movement --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------- Bulletin Message ----------------- From: Severus Date: Sep 1, 2006 10:59 PM
Pay attention and read, read closely.
I was just watching MTV's show called Next because I am drunk, don't give a fuck, and I like to know my enemy. So, it figures, the first part of the show was a guy-on-guy dating scenario. You know, where there are 5 guy bottoms (the guy who takes it in the ass) vying for one psuedo-lumberjack "tough guy" (the top). The most appaling part of it was when the one faggot proclaimed "I am looking for the guy who will be my baby's daddy." Also, showing the typification of nigger culture. The very fact that these sissy boys could put on acting like a woman, nowadays, shows how un-natural and soulless the woman of American culture has become. The very fact that some shitpusher can act like he can raise a family with another buttfucker shows how sick and fucking de-natured our culture has become.
Now, not only is this nasty, filthy, and disgusting; but it proves a greater point. Only a network owned by some Zionist kikenvermin (Sumner Redstone, a.k.a. Murray Rothstein, the CEO of Viacom who is the parent company of MTV) would allow such foul programming be tolerated. This is the culture that the Jewish owned MSM (mainstream media) constantly pushes upon us. Honestly, is it any wonder that the Jew has been kicked out of almost every country they have lived in? The very fact is that every country they go to they undermine the morals, they promote degeneracy, and foist upon the goyim sickness and perversion.
My first appalled letter to him. I could not bear to let this bigotry go uncheckedCraig 9/11 Date: Sep 2, 2006 8:00 AM
I can not believe I just read this hateful rant. You are a fucking bigot, and are exactly what is wrong with some of this country.
I guarantee you KNOW some gay people and they are either your friends, or family. The only reason you don't know about them, is because of your own hateful mouth.
Your bulletin is being reported to MySpace as inappropriate.
We need more love in this world, and less hateful bigots like yourself. You should be ashamed of yourself.
The only thing I apologize for is that you're too blind to see that I'm on your side. God, who the fuck do you think's responsible for 911? You know it's the fucking Zionists. They destroy our country not only physically through wars that kill our infrastructure, spend absurd amounts of taxpayer dollars, set our economy on the downturn via outsourcing/offshoring/free trade agreements/illegal alien amnesty/etc., but they also destroy our country mentally/spritually by pushing sex/drugs/mindless programming (reality TV, sports, sports, sports!) and aboslute filth like the said programming on MTV. The very fact that you are unable to see these things is a weakness, my friend. You have the right mentality, but you must drop the "I must remain politically correct" attitude if you want to get anything done. You have to realize that unfortunately gays, blacks, and hispanics are generally a detriment to this society (the Jews realize this which is why they exploit them and push their culture upon us to be socially acceptable). The only way we can ever have a prosperous America again is for the White people to wake up and see what's going on, and take a fucking stand against their heritage that is being exploited in the name of multiculturalism--- once again, brought to us by the Zionists. Why do you think the Jew has been kicked out of every country they go to? It's because of all this shit I just mentioned, man, isn't it obvious? I respect the hell out of you because of what you've been through on 9/11, but I really wish that you'd look a litte deeper into what's really going on and stop worrying about offending people. I'm sick and tired of being civil, "p.c.", and having to be nice everytime I disagree with people on here. With the shitstorm going on in America right now, there's honestly no time for that anymore. Take care.
If you dislike a people for their race, religion, or sexual orientation, I have news for you. YOU ARE NOT ON MY SIDE.
You spew the word "Zionist" with such hate that you are no better than a Nazi. You should take those views, and look at someone bleeding to death, and than see if it matters one bit.
The only detriment to society that I can see here, is your bigotry.
Keep it up, and you will soon find yourself alone in your "fight". You are to young to hate as much as you do. You are to young to be spewing the racial filth that youn are. No one race or religion is better than another, and all people make mistakes. Just like you are in spewing the nonsense that you are. Keep it up and you will find yourself very much alone, and very much on the wrong side of "my fight".
Quite the intelligent reply. I completely expected that from a small minded bigot too.
Do everyone in your life a favor and either get a better education, or fall on that gladius you carry in that photo.**(NOTE: HE Changed the Photo)** I doubt it is you too. While youre at it, shove that pilum up your ass too, because I doubt you have the stones to get better educated, or the brains to muster the gut to do so.
So write again if you can come up with anything other than a two monosyllabic word rebuttal.
You're the one who started the name calling, Mr. Scholar. Impeach Bush? That won't solve shit. The only way to prove any point these days is to hang the basturd in the middle of the Capitol. Man, living in Jew York has really got you brainwashed. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My Reply
Keep proving your bigotry. I enjoy your small mind. It is quite amusing.
That is NEW YORK. Living there didnt brain wash me, it made me more tolerant of others which is an experience you quite obviously need, bigot.
Thinking that impeaching Bush won't "solve anything" is a real example of conservative brainwashing, which is completely transparent on your part. It will serve to FIRE the head of the executive branch of government who is responsible for enforcing the law of our land, and will serve as notice to future president's that they will not get away with the bullshit that we are allowing Bush to get away with yearly, monthly, and daily.
His Best Diatribe yet, which gets to the core of his hate: From: Severus Date: Sep 3, 2006 7:37 PM
Yeah, right, the next guy would just find a way to be more manipulative and secretive in what he does so that his wrongdoings wouldn't be as obvious to the American public. Fuck it though, man. There's no time for that. Shit's hitting the fan in this country, so it's either put up or shutup. No more corrupt bureaucratic bull shit.
I find it ironic that the very things you disapprove of (our President, the War, Zionism, etc.) are a direct result of the lifestyle you've been led to believe is "socially acceptable". Honestly, are you that mad at me over my distaste for gays? Think about it, why is it okay for two pansy asses to make out on TV? This is a time where real men are needed to step up and fulfill their duty to protect this country that our ancestors made a prosperous nation. We don't need fairy faggots prancing around worrying about if their shirts match their shoes. Ca'mon man, get with it. This is exactly the goal of "Big Brother" a.k.a. the Zionist agenda. They want to push homosexuality to be socially acceptable so more and more people will see it not as a sin, but as an acceptable lifestyle. Once gay marriage becomes a reality (which it probably will), I guarantee you you'll see more and more gays than ever before. It's already a huge phenomenon (hello, EMO!) that I've personally notice get worse and worse over the years. Of course, we're led to believe that some gay guys can hold their own in a fight and actually revolt when needed (i.e. made up "Let's Roll" Flight 93 story... think that was just a conincidence that he happened to be gay?), but in reality most every gay that I know is your typical sissified little bitch. Sure, there are exceptions, but they are few and far between. Also, showing gays to be socially acceptable ruins the institution that is The Family. How can two men be expected to raise a child? They just simply can't. The thought of having little Jimmy go to the ball game with little Mikey's two buttfucker parents is honestly disgusting to me. In addition, the lifestyle most gay guys tend to live is excessively feminine and full of sin. Definitely not your role model parental figures. With that said, I do have a gay uncle. Do I love him? Hell yes. Do I approve of his lifestyle? Hell no, which means I accept the fact that he could go to hell (not my decision, for all I know, I could go... yes, I'll admit that). Also, just because I don't particularly care for gays doesn't mean I'm out there kicking their ass everytime I see them. In fact, I usually just ignore them, but it's a little much when you have to see them makeout on TV. Don't feed me that "change the channel" bull shit, because if one guy does it, whose to stop the rest of the guys from doing it? Seeing those two guys make out on MTV proved to me that the Zionist Jews have direct control of the joke that is the FCC. Kind of funny that a great movie like "The Passion of the Christ" that I'll probably allow my kids to watch by the time they're, say 12, would be a) too violent and b) too controversial (due to "anti-semitism") for TV, but having two queers makeout is perfectly acceptable. Of course, the kikenvermin in control wants our kids to be care free, sinful, little fuckers and not good Christians who respect and idolize the fact that Christ died for our sins. You're probably so ignorant that you think that would be "Christian brainwashing". Keep on telling yourself that.
Honestly, the only thing you're proving to me is that no matter what, most cops are still dicks. I always tell people I'd have no problem joining the military or police force if it wasn't designed to promote the interests of our ZOG. I am trying to join a small militia out this way, but from what I here old kike-owned and operated-"Big Brother" cracks down on those all the time.
I have no desire to continue conversation with you unless you wise up and make serious lifestyle changes. I do wish you to get healthy though. So, I'll pray for that. Take care.
My reply to him, which Im not sure if he got it because he seems to have blocked me. The message does not appear in my sent folder, so that is an indication that he did block me. I can still see his page, but Im wondering if he even received this. He certainly will now if one of you forwards this to him. :) **HINT!**
It amazes me that you were raised to be such a bigot.
You are an obviously disgusting, hateful, and small man threatened by other's sexuality. Why do homosexuals bother you so much? Do you fantasize about them so often that the images you do not find acceptable bombard you constantly? Two men can not raise a child? I have news for you. MANY homosexual couples, both male and female, are raising very well adjusted children. In fact the evidence shows that the tolerant atmosphere in which they grow up, makes those children far more well adjusted to live in peace with others than you.
Count how many time's you've used derogatory terms in your last letter and tell me you are not a hate filled little man, who overcompensates for his inadequacies by idolizing former symbols of long dead, long outdated warriors.
For the record, homosexuality was not only mostly accepted in Greco- Roman times, it was sometimes encouraged because two men loving one another fought better for one another and in turn made them fight for their country better. The Spartans are a perfect example of this. Look it up you ignorant little fool. Im guessing that your views probably come from discussions amongst your little reenactment society and others who claim homosexuality was part of the decline of the Roman Empire, when many scholars refute that and claim. But how would you know? That requires reading. Homosexuality was in fact mostly accepted in parts of the long dead time you so venerate. You not only are a hateful bigot, I see you are a blind emotionally charged hypocrite as well. Your fantasy doctrine has been used time and time again by other hate filled Nazi's like yourself. I'll bet in your closet or lonely little room somewhere in conservative PA, that you have some form of explicit Nazi regalia, which you fantasize about. You just don't have the balls to show it here on MySpace because you know your little hate forum would come to an end. So you hide behind even older symbols of oppression and express that symbology by displaying roman regalia. You obviously need to go play with your nerds a little more. I have no problem with nerds either, I just like the ones that can sift fact from fantasy better than the ones who fantasize about the reality of what they are doing.
You're disgusting. Plain and simple. You wish harm on people that you know absolutely nothing about. You spout small town, small minded, and grossly bigoted rhetoric as if it were acceptable. I have news for you. It isn't acceptable; by most civilized standards you imagine you are a part of. In any major forum of political discussion in this country, and I say MAJOR forum, you'd be laughed at and mocked off the platform given to you for predictably short, and hate filled 5 minute diatribe.
I have only proven to you that I was a good police officer to my core, who understands other people who I don't have much in common with. You wouldnt know anything about that obviously, so I completely reject your characterization of police because you have no moral backbone to make that assumption. My experience as a cop has brought me to understand how fragile we are as human beings, and that other human beings beliefs can harm people both mentally and physically. My own blood has been shed for this country, and in turn I have shed blood for it defending good people. I do not wear costumes and pretend to be something that I am not, and certainly do not understand. I earned my uniform.
You bought yours.
I hope to heaven that you do not join a police force or the military in any way shape or form. We would not be protected by you, we'd be harmed by you in some way. It is hate filled little men like you that rape women in the Middle East, and then kill their families. It is hate filled little men like you that start wars, beat people in alleys because of their sexuality, and who end up either incarcerated or dead at the end of a barrel of a law abiding police officer's gun. Please, do go join a little militia, so one day you'll be arrested for being a gun toting Nazi. At least there you will mature in an environment that will make or break you. You'll ripen, and be discarded as a rotten fruit which will sicken the tree it sprouts from.
Don't kid yourself, kid. You are not interested in any truth, let alone 9/11 truth. I've met your kind so many times on here, it scares the living shit out of me that your kind actually exists and is allowed to breed its hate like a cancer in and amongst good people, under the protection of "free speech". You are only trying to support your own hate filled agenda in a forum here like MySpace. The second your ilk is forced into the real world, you only harm other people with your hate. I have more respect for members of the clan, or Nazi skinheads than you, because at least they have the balls to come out and try and make their message known. For the record, I have zero respect for them, so let that be a gauge on where I put you on the respect scale.
Once again, I say you'd benefit highly by living in a place like NYC for a few years instead of your small minded PA town JAMIE, and you might grow beyond your hateful and secluded upbringing. I'm right about your upbringing too aren't I? I wonder how many times have you heard the word "nigger" or "faggot' amongst your family and friends? A lot I'll bet, because I'm sure those words have been a part of your bigoted vocabulary since you were mistakenly taught to speak.
In closing please save your healing prayers for yourself. I hope that I never enter your small mind again so that there is no need for further contact between us.(I doubt that, because if you read this your little brain will again try to further convince me of your disgusting rhetoric in another ill thought, and sophomoric, hate filled rebuttal.) What I do hope remains in that small brain of yours, is a note of guilt put there by me, which makes you look in a mirror and see the hate filled monster that you are.
In closing, please realize that I try and respect everyone in life. I really do. However I am starting to learn that some people do not deserve our respect, especially a bigot like this one. I hope he learns, but it is doubtful. Please be aware of these people and do the same. Please remove them from your lists, and stop giving them a platform to hate in.
amused
angry
drained