Would you accept this?

Since when do I have to pay for somebody elses bets?

This morning our government guaranteed $ 1.5 billion to a privately owned fund to cover for its losses.
That is some $ 375 for every man woman and child living in this country. This means that my husband and I have to cough up $ 750 to pay for bets we did not make.

I don’t know but I watch TV and sometimes I see these adds telling me that the people who gambled lost their home, jobs and dreams. Does paying big international investors for taking risks over here mean that we are going to reward every Tom, Dick and Harry who go to the pokies and loose everything too?

Only 3000 victims on 9/11? Think again; it’s more like half a million.

That’s right. More than 500.000 will at some stage in their life suffer from the after effects of what happened on that day. And I mean not just a nightmare or a moment of hyper vigilance but suffering from a possible fatal disease they would not have had if 9/11 had not happened. In other words the massacre of 9/11 did not stop at the end of that day. It is still on going.

9/11′s forgotten victims: ‘We’re living in a toxic time bomb’

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on

11 September 2001 are seared on our collective consciousness. But few people know that the tragedy

left a toxic legacy that will claim more lives than those lost on the day itself. Lorien Haynes reports on the fight for health and justice by rescue workers who were engulfed by the deadly dust cloud

Ground Zero

Firefighters at Ground Zero after the terrorist attack

11 September nine years ago, 2,975 people died in the worst-ever terrorist attack on US soil. The body count was shocking, and the trauma suffered by victims’ families hard to contemplate. But the danger to New York citizens was far from over. In addition to those who perished in and around the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon and on United Flight 93, there are thousands of ‘shadow’ victims: people who inhaled the toxic dust cloud that enveloped Ground Zero and who are now suffering serious – in some cases fatal – illnesses as a direct result. Indeed, far more people are likely to die from the effects of the dust than in the attack itself.

These victims include office workers, shopkeepers, students and local residents – but the worst-affected are the ‘responders’: emergency service, recovery and volunteer aid workers who were exposed to the site at close quarters. These people went to help – and are paying with their lives. The New York City Department of Health has already recorded 817 deaths of World Trade Center (WTC) responders from illnesses generated by working on the site. But as well as the official figures, there are currently another 20,000 recorded sick by the WTC Medical Monitoring Treatment and Environmental programmes.

And this is only the tip of the iceberg. According to the World Trade Center Health Registry, 410,000 people were heavily exposed to WTC toxins causing restrictive respiratory illnesses and cancers, which changes 11 September from a terrorist attack into a full-blown environmental disaster on the scale of Chernobyl, where the initial toll was overshadowed by deaths and illnesses that were still occurring up to 20 years later.

On 9/11 the dust from the pulverised towers was so thick and far-reaching that you could write your name in it on cars in Brooklyn. It contained chemicals including asbestos, lead, dioxin and deadly PVCs (the WTC buildings were the most heavily computerised in the world), mercury from 500,000 shattered fluorescent fixtures, plus emissions from more than 200,000 gallons of diesel fuel smouldering underneath the site. Robin Herbert, co-director of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring Program, has expressed his concern about the number and combination of cancer-causing elements and other chemicals released, and observers have noticed a tendency for fast-developing and multiple cancers among emergency workers.

New York,

Office workers were caked in toxic dust from the collapsed buildings

In the urgency of rescuing survivors from the rubble, crucial safety procedures seem to have been overlooked and conflicting instructions given by the authorities. People were operating without the correct protective clothing. Rescue teams were provided with paper masks that became clogged within seconds. Families who lived in the vicinity were told that they could clean up the contaminated dust with wet rags. A week after the attacks, in a bid to restore the collective morale of New York’s population and kick-start Lower Manhattan’s financial district, local workers, students and residents were told it was safe to return to their jobs, schools and homes. It was business as usual. Wall Street was open. New York had moved on.

But the shadow victims haven’t been able to move on – 70 per cent of emergency service workers have been diagnosed with serious respiratory problems as a result of their involvement with Ground Zero. And the real scandal is that post-disaster healthcare (mental and physical) has been so badly neglected that there is barely any provision for them.

David Miller, 41, is one example of a Ground Zero hero now seriously sick. Fit and robust before 11 September, he served on the day with the New York Army Guard. Nine years on, he is suffering from head, neck and skin cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and mesothelioma, an incurable asbestos-related lung cancer that normally takes decades to develop. In David’s case it was full blown just three and a half years after spending two weeks on the Ground Zero site, known as the Pile.

David is a powerful public speaker at 9/11 memorial rallies where, usually carrying his own oxygen tank, he details the lack of support offered to 9/11 workers by the government. ‘There are tens of thousands of us who are sick from World Trade Center toxins. We’ve got respiratory disease, PTSD, gastro-intestinal disease, all types of cancer. The politicians and the general public need to know this. We need help, and we need it now. We need to get funding and research, and to raise public awareness.’

In response to the situation, David formed the lobbying charity 9/11 Health Now with farmer, model and writer turned activist Claire Calladine. They have come across thousands of individuals whose health has been destroyed by exposure to the toxic dust. Individuals who have been financially, as well as physically, crippled by medical costs that aren’t covered by their insurance policies.

Scroll through their website (911healthnow.com) and you’ll find the emergency services mother-of-two who returned from a five-week stint at Ground Zero to be diagnosed the following year with an aero-digestive cancer, and has had multiple lesions removed from her airways and mouth. There’s another mother – and former lawyer – whose three-month volunteer stint helping with missing persons at the Ground Zero Salvation Army tent resulted in a degenerative connective tissue disease requiring injections and round-the-clock medication to keep it at bay. She was initially told by doctors that nothing was wrong with her: it took three years of court proceedings to have her disease officially recognised as WTC-related and covered by health insurance. She continues to fight for compensation to help support herself and her children now that she can no longer work.

police

Police officers Christopher Castro and Judith Hernandez were part of the first team to arrive at the scene after the first plane hit the World Trade Center

Then there’s the stockbroker caught in the dust cloud during the collapse of the towers, who, at 32, has chronic myelogenous leukaemia, a cancerous mutation of the bone marrow. And the policeman’s wife whose exposure to 9/11 dust through laundering her husband’s uniform over eight months resulted in nerve damage and fibromyalgia – and who, pregnant at the time, has had a child born with an extra set of ribs, a long torso, and a connective tissue disease. She too is currently fighting for financial aid.

All this is shockingly hard to take in. Many victims are so seriously ill that it is difficult for them to fight their own cases, and very few are prepared to talk publicly for fear of jeopardising their chance of compensation. (None of the people mentioned here wanted to be identified by name.) It remains a largely untold story in the US, let alone in the UK.

The events of 9/11 were unprecedented, and the ensuing confusion reflects this. There is no existing legislation to support the emergency service workers. The fact that many responders were unpaid volunteers means that they are not covered by their medical insurance policies because they were not technically ‘at work’. Moreover, the link between exposure and illness has been incredibly complicated to prove.

‘It was like we’d walked into hell… We were treating firefighters who were coughing up the most horrible stuff’

Trying to quantify the effects of a toxic dust cloud and argue that multiple sicknesses have developed as a result of inhalation through the skin and mouth has been new territory for lawyers. Some 62 per cent of claims to date have been rejected, which has resulted in lengthy litigation and appeals. It’s increasingly clear that new legislation is needed to facilitate aid for what is arguably becoming the greatest workplace disaster in American history.

In March this year the government offered a $657 million (£412 million) settlement, which has risen to $712 million (£448 million) to date, to 10,000 responders, who were given 90 days to vote to approve the offer. But under the settlement criteria, someone with severe asthma would stand to receive more money than someone with terminal cancer, because medical evidence regards asthma as a more plausible result of exposure to the dust. Given that the offer has to be approved by 95 per cent of the plaintiffs, many of whom have cancer themselves – and that they have to approve it before knowing what their individual settlement might be – negotiations seem certain to continue. The vote is now due on 30 September, and the hope is that, if the potential settlement is passed as a government bill, the supporting charities and victims’ groups now forming will be just the start of a full-scale aid network.

Meanwhile, a 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, drafted as a government bill to provide funding for the World Trade Center health clinics and the ever-expanding number of victims, was rejected by Congress in July. Named after James Zadroga (a New York Police Department officer who died in 2006 of a respiratory disease attributed to his service at Ground Zero), the Zadroga Act would have set up a fund to spend $3.2 billion (£2 billion) on healthcare over ten years, and up to $8.4 billion (£5.3 billion) on compensation. Voting it down, opponents called the measure a ‘slush fund’, which they claimed would have been open to abuse, but the general consensus is that it would have been a springboard to national recognition of the crisis. Another attempt to push the bill through may be made in September.

The focus of 9/11 has always been on the victims in the towers: those who died on the day. But this secondary tragedy is even bigger in terms of numbers – and just as tragic, if less dramatic in its photo-news impact. The ‘shadow victims’ have had to go to extraordinary lengths to be seen or heard or treated, and their story deserves to be more widely told.

Reggie Cervantes

‘Our only option is to lobby. We won’t go quietly’

Reggie Cervantes (left), 49, a volunteer emergency medical technician (providing paramedic care), was part of one of the first teams on site at Ground Zero. A single mother of Lia, 13, and Aiden, 11, she now suffers from pulmonary fibrosis — a terminal lung disease found in heavy smokers and construction workers who have come into contact with asbestos. In her case, the diagnosis was confirmed by doctors as being a direct result of 9/11.

Nine years later, approaching the anniversary of the attack, Reggie is one of the few dust victims prepared to tell us her story. ‘I got there as the second tower was collapsing. We could see people running out. The first thing I encountered was an aeroplane engine. Charred. Smoking. Surreal. There was dust flying everywhere. It was hard to see. I tripped over something and fell, breaking my glasses. Then I realised it was a dismembered arm. A man’s arm, with a wristwatch and a wedding ring. My impulse was to say a prayer. We were close to St Peter’s Church, and inside I saw the body of Father Judge, who I knew. Later I found out he had been killed by a falling body while giving a firefighter the last rites.

‘It was like we’d walked into hell. We were treating people who had been injured in the collapse of the second tower: firefighters whose eyes were burning, who couldn’t breathe and who were coughing up the most horrible stuff. We were there when the third building came down. It felt like an earthquake. Everything was collapsing around us. ‘Eventually, we were ordered to move back to the Staten Island Ferry terminal, where they tried to gather all responders together to see who was missing. We stood there, covered in thick, grey dust and debris, to hear we were missing a young volunteer crew of college students.

‘The police lieutenant knew I had small children, so he sent me home. I arrived back in the Queens district where I live at 10pm and I remember undressing in the street. I was so caked in dust I didn’t want to bring it indoors to the children; I put everything into the bin by the front door — boots, uniform — until I was standing in the street in my bra and pants.

Reggie with college sweetheart Dennis (right) and their extended family

Reggie with college sweetheart Dennis (right) and their extended family

‘When I got inside I showered for 20 minutes. I couldn’t get the dust out of my hair or my ears. As I washed, I could feel that my eyebrows had been singed.

‘Then I went next door to my neighbours, who had been looking after the kids. They thought I’d died. They’d been looking for me on the television for hours, and my son, who was then two, didn’t talk for five months after that night. I felt a semblance of his anxiety myself the following week trying to locate missing friends, colleagues and family. I lost seven friends and my cousin on 9/11.

‘I volunteered for 33 hours that week. I was there on 9/11, for ten and a half hours, spent the next day at home, and then returned on Thursday and Friday. On the Friday I realised my health had been affected. My throat was raw, I was having trouble breathing — it felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest. And on the Saturday I went to the emergency room. The doctor gave me antibiotics and told me to ‘make the best of it. You’re not dead.’

‘We survivors felt we were the lucky ones and I, like many others, retreated into shocked isolation. No one was counselled, no one debriefed. But two months later I was still wheezing and I knew something was seriously wrong. I had been a runner,

a swimmer and a cyclist my whole life. Now I suffered an asthma attack while running: suddenly my lungs couldn’t keep up with my body.

‘My health has deteriorated rapidly ever since. I have been unable to continue my paid job as a foster care administrator. And for myself and many other 9/11 volunteers there has been an almighty battle for compensation. Volunteers were not covered by their medical insurance policies, so I now have medical bills of $43,000 [approx £27,000] which can’t be paid because, as a single-parent family, we currently live on $1,100 [£690] a month social security disability allowance. And although, initially, we had some hope that the settlement offer would help us, the fact that you have to agree to it before knowing what your own amount might be means I cannot vote for it. It’s a gamble I’m not willing to take.

Many of the victims are so seriously ill that it is difficult for them to fight their own cases, and very few are prepared to talk publicly

‘I’ve been active in advocating support for the 9/11 emergency service workers. I spoke

up because some politicians walked their friends to the front of the compensation line and left other really sick and dying responders to fend for themselves and lose their homes. And I know my compensation claims were stalled in retaliation for my speaking out, as well as for my role in Sicko — Michael Moore’s documentary about corruption in the North American Health Service, which highlighted how volunteer workers serving on 9/11 were not covered by their insurance policies and were left untreated. As part of the film, I was sent to Cuba for treatment. It was there that

I learned my illness was incurable. I do not regret my involvement; the film was too important. It was the first time that our sickness was exposed.

‘Our only option is to lobby to raise awareness. We’re not going to go quietly. And because I know that trying to cope with this alone is heartbreaking, I help the FealGood Foundation, which was set up [by Ground Zero demolition expert John Feal] to help sick responders. And I coordinate an anonymous group for emergency service workers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

‘There has been a personal benefit to my campaigning. Seven months ago, when I was lobbying in Washington DC, I heard from my college sweetheart Dennis, now divorced with two children aged 15 and 13. I hadn’t seen or spoken to him for 25 years. He had heard about me and knew I was sick, and he rang and said: ‘I want to raise your children when you are gone.’

‘I visited him in California last Christmas to check his parenting skills. I remembered him as an incurable flirt, a handsome marine who turned heads (he still does), but he was great with his own kids and mine. My 13-year-old daughter and his 13-year-old son are like twins. We have just moved out to live with him on the West Coast and it feels like a tremendous blessing to renew our friendship. He has said he’ll care for me to my last breath.

‘Until then, I will continue to quote Martin Luther King: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”’

Read more:

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on
11 September 2001 are seared on our collective consciousness. But few people know that the tragedy
left a toxic legacy that will claim more lives than those lost on the day itself. Lorien Haynes reports on the fight for health and justice by rescue workers who were engulfed by the deadly dust cloud

Firefighters at Ground Zero after the terrorist attack

11 September nine years ago, 2,975 people died in the worst-ever terrorist attack on US soil. The body count was shocking, and the trauma suffered by victims’ families hard to contemplate. But the danger to New York citizens was far from over. In addition to those who perished in and around the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon and on United Flight 93, there are thousands of ‘shadow’ victims: people who inhaled the toxic dust cloud that enveloped Ground Zero and who are now suffering serious – in some cases fatal – illnesses as a direct result. Indeed, far more people are likely to die from the effects of the dust than in the attack itself.
These victims include office workers, shopkeepers, students and local residents – but the worst-affected are the ‘responders’: emergency service, recovery and volunteer aid workers who were exposed to the site at close quarters. These people went to help – and are paying with their lives. The New York City Department of Health has already recorded 817 deaths of World Trade Center (WTC) responders from illnesses generated by working on the site. But as well as the official figures, there are currently another 20,000 recorded sick by the WTC Medical Monitoring Treatment and Environmental programmes.

And this is only the tip of the iceberg. According to the World Trade Center Health Registry, 410,000 people were heavily exposed to WTC toxins causing restrictive respiratory illnesses and cancers, which changes 11 September from a terrorist attack into a full-blown environmental disaster on the scale of Chernobyl, where the initial toll was overshadowed by deaths and illnesses that were still occurring up to 20 years later.

On 9/11 the dust from the pulverised towers was so thick and far-reaching that you could write your name in it on cars in Brooklyn. It contained chemicals including asbestos, lead, dioxin and deadly PVCs (the WTC buildings were the most heavily computerised in the world), mercury from 500,000 shattered fluorescent fixtures, plus emissions from more than 200,000 gallons of diesel fuel smouldering underneath the site. Robin Herbert, co-director of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring Program, has expressed his concern about the number and combination of cancer-causing elements and other chemicals released, and observers have noticed a tendency for fast-developing and multiple cancers among emergency workers.

Office workers were caked in toxic dust from the collapsed buildings

In the urgency of rescuing survivors from the rubble, crucial safety procedures seem to have been overlooked and conflicting instructions given by the authorities. People were operating without the correct protective clothing. Rescue teams were provided with paper masks that became clogged within seconds. Families who lived in the vicinity were told that they could clean up the contaminated dust with wet rags. A week after the attacks, in a bid to restore the collective morale of New York’s population and kick-start Lower Manhattan’s financial district, local workers, students and residents were told it was safe to return to their jobs, schools and homes. It was business as usual. Wall Street was open. New York had moved on.

But the shadow victims haven’t been able to move on – 70 per cent of emergency service workers have been diagnosed with serious respiratory problems as a result of their involvement with Ground Zero. And the real scandal is that post-disaster healthcare (mental and physical) has been so badly neglected that there is barely any provision for them.

David Miller, 41, is one example of a Ground Zero hero now seriously sick. Fit and robust before 11 September, he served on the day with the New York Army Guard. Nine years on, he is suffering from head, neck and skin cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and mesothelioma, an incurable asbestos-related lung cancer that normally takes decades to develop. In David’s case it was full blown just three and a half years after spending two weeks on the Ground Zero site, known as the Pile.

David is a powerful public speaker at 9/11 memorial rallies where, usually carrying his own oxygen tank, he details the lack of support offered to 9/11 workers by the government. ‘There are tens of thousands of us who are sick from World Trade Center toxins. We’ve got respiratory disease, PTSD, gastro-intestinal disease, all types of cancer. The politicians and the general public need to know this. We need help, and we need it now. We need to get funding and research, and to raise public awareness.’
In response to the situation, David formed the lobbying charity 9/11 Health Now with farmer, model and writer turned activist Claire Calladine. They have come across thousands of individuals whose health has been destroyed by exposure to the toxic dust. Individuals who have been financially, as well as physically, crippled by medical costs that aren’t covered by their insurance policies.

Scroll through their website (911healthnow.com) and you’ll find the emergency services mother-of-two who returned from a five-week stint at Ground Zero to be diagnosed the following year with an aero-digestive cancer, and has had multiple lesions removed from her airways and mouth. There’s another mother – and former lawyer – whose three-month volunteer stint helping with missing persons at the Ground Zero Salvation Army tent resulted in a degenerative connective tissue disease requiring injections and round-the-clock medication to keep it at bay. She was initially told by doctors that nothing was wrong with her: it took three years of court proceedings to have her disease officially recognised as WTC-related and covered by health insurance. She continues to fight for compensation to help support herself and her children now that she can no longer work.

Police officers Christopher Castro and Judith Hernandez were part of the first team to arrive at the scene after the first plane hit the World Trade Center

Then there’s the stockbroker caught in the dust cloud during the collapse of the towers, who, at 32, has chronic myelogenous leukaemia, a cancerous mutation of the bone marrow. And the policeman’s wife whose exposure to 9/11 dust through laundering her husband’s uniform over eight months resulted in nerve damage and fibromyalgia – and who, pregnant at the time, has had a child born with an extra set of ribs, a long torso, and a connective tissue disease. She too is currently fighting for financial aid.

All this is shockingly hard to take in. Many victims are so seriously ill that it is difficult for them to fight their own cases, and very few are prepared to talk publicly for fear of jeopardising their chance of compensation. (None of the people mentioned here wanted to be identified by name.) It remains a largely untold story in the US, let alone in the UK.

The events of 9/11 were unprecedented, and the ensuing confusion reflects this. There is no existing legislation to support the emergency service workers. The fact that many responders were unpaid volunteers means that they are not covered by their medical insurance policies because they were not technically ‘at work’. Moreover, the link between exposure and illness has been incredibly complicated to prove.

‘It was like we’d walked into hell… We were treating firefighters who were coughing up the most horrible stuff’

Trying to quantify the effects of a toxic dust cloud and argue that multiple sicknesses have developed as a result of inhalation through the skin and mouth has been new territory for lawyers. Some 62 per cent of claims to date have been rejected, which has resulted in lengthy litigation and appeals. It’s increasingly clear that new legislation is needed to facilitate aid for what is arguably becoming the greatest workplace disaster in American history.

In March this year the government offered a $657 million (£412 million) settlement, which has risen to $712 million (£448 million) to date, to 10,000 responders, who were given 90 days to vote to approve the offer. But under the settlement criteria, someone with severe asthma would stand to receive more money than someone with terminal cancer, because medical evidence regards asthma as a more plausible result of exposure to the dust. Given that the offer has to be approved by 95 per cent of the plaintiffs, many of whom have cancer themselves – and that they have to approve it before knowing what their individual settlement might be – negotiations seem certain to continue. The vote is now due on 30 September, and the hope is that, if the potential settlement is passed as a government bill, the supporting charities and victims’ groups now forming will be just the start of a full-scale aid network.

Meanwhile, a 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, drafted as a government bill to provide funding for the World Trade Center health clinics and the ever-expanding number of victims, was rejected by Congress in July. Named after James Zadroga (a New York Police Department officer who died in 2006 of a respiratory disease attributed to his service at Ground Zero), the Zadroga Act would have set up a fund to spend $3.2 billion (£2 billion) on healthcare over ten years, and up to $8.4 billion (£5.3 billion) on compensation. Voting it down, opponents called the measure a ‘slush fund’, which they claimed would have been open to abuse, but the general consensus is that it would have been a springboard to national recognition of the crisis. Another attempt to push the bill through may be made in September.

The focus of 9/11 has always been on the victims in the towers: those who died on the day. But this secondary tragedy is even bigger in terms of numbers – and just as tragic, if less dramatic in its photo-news impact. The ‘shadow victims’ have had to go to extraordinary lengths to be seen or heard or treated, and their story deserves to be more widely told.

‘Our only option is to lobby. We won’t go quietly’

Reggie Cervantes (left), 49, a volunteer emergency medical technician (providing paramedic care), was part of one of the first teams on site at Ground Zero. A single mother of Lia, 13, and Aiden, 11, she now suffers from pulmonary fibrosis — a terminal lung disease found in heavy smokers and construction workers who have come into contact with asbestos. In her case, the diagnosis was confirmed by doctors as being a direct result of 9/11.

Nine years later, approaching the anniversary of the attack, Reggie is one of the few dust victims prepared to tell us her story. ‘I got there as the second tower was collapsing. We could see people running out. The first thing I encountered was an aeroplane engine. Charred. Smoking. Surreal. There was dust flying everywhere. It was hard to see. I tripped over something and fell, breaking my glasses. Then I realised it was a dismembered arm. A man’s arm, with a wristwatch and a wedding ring. My impulse was to say a prayer. We were close to St Peter’s Church, and inside I saw the body of Father Judge, who I knew. Later I found out he had been killed by a falling body while giving a firefighter the last rites.

‘It was like we’d walked into hell. We were treating people who had been injured in the collapse of the second tower: firefighters whose eyes were burning, who couldn’t breathe and who were coughing up the most horrible stuff. We were there when the third building came down. It felt like an earthquake. Everything was collapsing around us. ‘Eventually, we were ordered to move back to the Staten Island Ferry terminal, where they tried to gather all responders together to see who was missing. We stood there, covered in thick, grey dust and debris, to hear we were missing a young volunteer crew of college students.

‘The police lieutenant knew I had small children, so he sent me home. I arrived back in the Queens district where I live at 10pm and I remember undressing in the street. I was so caked in dust I didn’t want to bring it indoors to the children; I put everything into the bin by the front door — boots, uniform — until I was standing in the street in my bra and pants.

Reggie with college sweetheart Dennis (right) and their extended family

‘When I got inside I showered for 20 minutes. I couldn’t get the dust out of my hair or my ears. As I washed, I could feel that my eyebrows had been singed.
‘Then I went next door to my neighbours, who had been looking after the kids. They thought I’d died. They’d been looking for me on the television for hours, and my son, who was then two, didn’t talk for five months after that night. I felt a semblance of his anxiety myself the following week trying to locate missing friends, colleagues and family. I lost seven friends and my cousin on 9/11.

‘I volunteered for 33 hours that week. I was there on 9/11, for ten and a half hours, spent the next day at home, and then returned on Thursday and Friday. On the Friday I realised my health had been affected. My throat was raw, I was having trouble breathing — it felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest. And on the Saturday I went to the emergency room. The doctor gave me antibiotics and told me to ‘make the best of it. You’re not dead.’

‘We survivors felt we were the lucky ones and I, like many others, retreated into shocked isolation. No one was counselled, no one debriefed. But two months later I was still wheezing and I knew something was seriously wrong. I had been a runner,
a swimmer and a cyclist my whole life. Now I suffered an asthma attack while running: suddenly my lungs couldn’t keep up with my body.

‘My health has deteriorated rapidly ever since. I have been unable to continue my paid job as a foster care administrator. And for myself and many other 9/11 volunteers there has been an almighty battle for compensation. Volunteers were not covered by their medical insurance policies, so I now have medical bills of $43,000 [approx £27,000] which can’t be paid because, as a single-parent family, we currently live on $1,100 [£690] a month social security disability allowance. And although, initially, we had some hope that the settlement offer would help us, the fact that you have to agree to it before knowing what your own amount might be means I cannot vote for it. It’s a gamble I’m not willing to take.

Many of the victims are so seriously ill that it is difficult for them to fight their own cases, and very few are prepared to talk publicly

‘I’ve been active in advocating support for the 9/11 emergency service workers. I spoke
up because some politicians walked their friends to the front of the compensation line and left other really sick and dying responders to fend for themselves and lose their homes. And I know my compensation claims were stalled in retaliation for my speaking out, as well as for my role in Sicko — Michael Moore’s documentary about corruption in the North American Health Service, which highlighted how volunteer workers serving on 9/11 were not covered by their insurance policies and were left untreated. As part of the film, I was sent to Cuba for treatment. It was there that
I learned my illness was incurable. I do not regret my involvement; the film was too important. It was the first time that our sickness was exposed.

‘Our only option is to lobby to raise awareness. We’re not going to go quietly. And because I know that trying to cope with this alone is heartbreaking, I help the FealGood Foundation, which was set up [by Ground Zero demolition expert John Feal] to help sick responders. And I coordinate an anonymous group for emergency service workers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

‘There has been a personal benefit to my campaigning. Seven months ago, when I was lobbying in Washington DC, I heard from my college sweetheart Dennis, now divorced with two children aged 15 and 13. I hadn’t seen or spoken to him for 25 years. He had heard about me and knew I was sick, and he rang and said: ‘I want to raise your children when you are gone.’

‘I visited him in California last Christmas to check his parenting skills. I remembered him as an incurable flirt, a handsome marine who turned heads (he still does), but he was great with his own kids and mine. My 13-year-old daughter and his 13-year-old son are like twins. We have just moved out to live with him on the West Coast and it feels like a tremendous blessing to renew our friendship. He has said he’ll care for me to my last breath.

‘Until then, I will continue to quote Martin Luther King: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-1306032/9-11s-Toxic-time-bomb.html#ixzz0y33Mj6Qq

So when will it happen?

When I tell people that the American empire will collapse and that we will witness the end of Western civilisation as we know it a lot of them ask me, “So when do you think it will happen?”

And that of course is a legitimate question.

All empires come to an end and so do all civilisations. That is a given. So predicting the end of both is not a real eye opener and anyone with a bit of sense can see the writing in the sky. So indeed when will it happen?

I don’t know the exact date but let me give you some hints.

1. Scientists are predicting a massive solar storm hitting the planet in either 2012 or 2013.
   This means the disruption of the all things electrical. I don’t know how much of this is true but I do know that they are trying to gain control over the internet like they did over the radio and TV networks. So if you want to download stuff? Now would be a good time.
2. China is unloading it’s US $ treasury bonds.
   China holds the biggest treasury bond stock in the world. They are a smart people and if they see the writing on the wall then you can bet they act on it. According to a spokesperson this is just so they can spread their risk a little bit. My ass, the ships going down and China will go with it but they want some money to start over with and it ain’t coming from the US.
3. The house market in the US is not recovering, in fact the worst sales figures in 15 years have just been published. Million of people have lost their homes due to the worsening economy and many more will loose their homes in the very near future. More than 30 million people are depending on food stamps and million are past the 99 weeks which means no more social welfare support.
4. The American economy is based on service and not on fabrication of goods which it has to import from abroad (Due to the very good idea of outsourcing. Well, good for big Corporations anyway). This means that while the economy is contracting the jobs are disappearing and no jobs are created.
5. 80% of all people in the US are living in cities and don’t have access to food production so unless the have a way to get back to the land in order to grow their own they will starve if a crisis were to happen. This is the opposite of what was the case during the great recession when 80% of the US population was rural and able to produce their own food.
6. The US population is buried under a mountain of debt and unable to pay it back, In fact the US National debt is so big it can never be paid off.

So to get back to the question of when I would be so bold as to predict that when the solar storms hit and the electrical grid goes down (If that was to happen) this will be the final nail in the coffin of the US economy and hence the end of the American empire. No communication with it’s bases, no transport of food, no local food production and the end of the dollar hegemony will be the end of the world as we know it.

All this means that I predict that the economic collapse of the US is going to happen over the next two to three years. In fact it is happening already and all that will happen is that it will speed up more and more until it will seem the collapse happened overnight.

How will that look this is how Paul Craig Roberts, a man who was the editor of the Wall street journal and an assistant of the US treasury under Reagan pictured it. Be warned, it’s ugly.

The Guillotine award of the week goes to: Naomi Campbell for her acceptance of those “dirty pebbles”

At best I always thought of Naomi Campbell as an “anger management” handicapped person who worked her way up from the gutter to become one of the world most celebrated models and who frustrated by real or imagined racism had a tendency to to take her anger out on unlucky assistents or hotel personnel. Not very nice but hey there you have it.

At worst I thought of her as a somewhat narcissistic person who thought that just because she has a nice body it was OK for her to abuse those around her who enabled her to make her shine but with her appearance at the international court of justice in the Hague I think I have to adjust my opinion of her once again.

Now I think of her as a shallow, greedy and mind-numbingly callous woman who not only thought nothing of accepting diamonds from a monster who used those diamonds to fund wars in which he used children as soldiers after killing their parents and who on the whole is a sadistic monster without a conscience but who was insulted for not delivering them nice and shiny and ready to wear but instead as “dirty little pebbles” she told they were when she was finally forced to appear as a witness before the court.

I wonder what made the pebbles dirtier: the fact that they had not been polished to shine or the fact that they had the blood of so many innocent people on them.

I’m sure Naomi doesn’t give a toss about the latter which is why she deserves my Guillotine award of the week.

False flag alert: “Attack” on Japanese tanker in straight of Hormus claimed by al Qaeda group

According to New Zealand newspaper the New Zealand Herald, the “attack” on the M. Star supertanker in the straight of Hormuz is claimed by a group known Abdullah Azzam Brigades on Wednesday.
The newspaper quoted the group as saying it had carried
out a suicide attack against the tanker to avenge the plunder of Muslim wealth and to destabilise international markets.

The statement was issued by al-Qaida’s communications wing, the al-Fajr Media Centre and posted on militant websites.

Excellent interview with Webster Tarpley

Listen to this interview with historian Webster Tarpley . The man is just brimming with detailed geopolitical knowledge.

We’re back to defending women again… oh, wait were punishing terrorists. Confused?

Want to know why we are involved in the two wars raging in Iraq and Afghanistan and why lieutenant Tim O’Donnell? Let me give you a hint. No it’s not protecting women, catching Bin Laden or punishing terrorists or even about “rebuilding” Afghanistan.

This movie which alas I could not embed in my blog is called “the  New American Century” and is well worth watching. (Scroll to bottom of page and rip it if you can to share with friends and family)

Haiti: Manipulating the Electoral Process. Putting a Smiley Face on a Murderous Military Occupation

For anybody wanting to know a little more about the politics of Haiti now that Wyclef Jean has entered the political fray here is an article from Charlie Hinton. Interesting reading indeed.

To cut to the chase, no election in Haiti, and no candidate in those elections, will be considered legitimate by the majority of Haiti’s population, unless it includes the full and fair participation of the Fanmi Lavalas Party of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Fanmi Lavalas is unquestionably the most popular party in the country, yet the “international community,” led by the United States, France and Canada, has done everything possible to undermine Aristide and Lavalas, overthrowing him twice by military coups in 1991 and 2004 and banishing Aristide, who now lives in South Africa with his family, from the Americas.

A United Nations army, led by Brazil, still occupies Haiti six years after the coup. Their unstated mission, under the name of “peacekeeping,” is to suppress the popular movement and prevent the return to power of Aristide’s Lavalas Party. One must understand a Wyclef Jean candidacy, first of all, in this context.

Every election since a 67 percent majority first brought Aristide to power in 1990 has demonstrated the enormous popularity of the Lavalas movement. When Lavalas could run, they won overwhelmingly. In 2006, when security conditions did not permit them to run candidates, they voted and demonstrated to make sure Rene Preval, a former Lavalas president, was re-elected.

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And this weeks Guillotine award goes to? Chelsey Clinton!!!

Apart from the fact that in a just world the Clinton’s as a family on the whole would have their heads chopped off under the resurrected  weapon of elimination for the next revolution for war crimes, Fraud on a monumental scale and the enabling of the international bankster elite for the most massive financial fraud ever perpetrated in human history, Chelsea Clinton made the grade for this weeks Guillotine award with her callous disregards for the plight of millions of Americans in her choice of display of wealth and decadent opulence while marrying the son of a corrupt fraudster jailed for being a one man crime wave and flaunting her disregard for honest hard working people and her father in laws victims with a wedding costing almost $ 6 million of with almost three million will have to be paid by the taxpayer because that was the cost of protecting the scum gathering to celebrate her nuptials.

‘He was a bloody good bugger’.

What a sad day. Today the news reached us that a NZ soldier has lost his life in the illegal war in Afghanistan and I predict that his funeral will be made into a massive propaganda event. I grief for him his family and friends because he was used in an illegal war of aggression based on a lie and his family and friends will have to miss a young man who was prepared to give his life for them and his country. By definition the sort of people we can not have enough of.

And his death will be used to extend New Zealand’s presence in Afghanistan at the risk of losing more courageous young people in this god forsaken war.

The first headlines indicating as much are already appearing; Top Kiwi soldier died in Afghanistan.

Afghan attack not reason to withdraw to name a few.

Yeiks, Cloned meat in our foodchain

Two days ago the news broke that milk from cloned cows had secretly been inserted into our food chain now it turns out that meat from cloned cows has been sold too.

Beef from a clone farm bull has illegally entered the food chain, ending up on family dinner tables.

The animal, the offspring of a cloned cow, was slaughtered last summer and the meat put on sale to the public.

A second bull was killed last week and would also have been sold for meat until the Food Standards Agency (FSA) intervened and stopped the sale.

Illegal meat trade: A bull, born to a cloned cow, was slaughtered last summer and sold for meat that will have been sold to humans to eat

The FSA decided to investigate after revelations in the Daily Mail about the emergence of clone farming, despite deep unease among consumers and safety regulators.

It is illegal for the meat and milk of the offspring of a clone to enter the human food chain in Britain or the rest of Europe under the so-called Novel Food regulations.

The mother of the two bulls was a clone created from cells taken from the ear of a prize-winning milking cow in the United States.

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