IMPORTANT: WeAreChangeSeattle (WACS) is a loosely organized, independent Peace activist group and is not affiliated with any other WeAreChange or 9/11 Truth group. WACS is 100% committed to peaceful outcomes through peaceful means. We disassociate from any members - past, present or future - who advocate or demonstrate anything other than legal, peaceful, non-violent demonstrations and actions. 

Join us this Fall with serious actions. In this informal 15 minute video clip, Richard Gage, AIA runs through a quick overview for each of our 6 Action Alerts:

Action #1 - We are asking some of our AE911Truth supporters to travel to DC, along with our AE911Truth staff, to meet with your Congress members.

Action #2 - We will hold a major press conference and mock debate at the National Press Club on September 9 while each of you, once again, hold a concurrent press conference at a government location such as outside your legislator’s office in your state - like you did on February 19th.
Action #3 - We are asking all of our AE911Truth supporters to meet with your Congressional representatives in your community – their home turf – by early October.

Action #4 - Help us on Capitol Hill to deliver the AE911Truth petition, with all 1,000 A/E names, our brochure, and our DVD, 9/11: Blueprint for Truth, into the offices of all Congressional representatives on Sept 7 and 8.

Action #5 - Reach 1,000’s in your community by putting “9/11: Blueprint for Truth” on the air with your local public access TV.

Action #6 - Roll-out of AE911Truth Action Groups. Join one or start your own. We already have several in the SF Bay Area. Help the AE911Truth mission succeed in your local area.

The International Center for 9/11 Studies has secured the release of hundreds of hours of video footage and tens of thousands of photographs used by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for its investigation of the collapse of the World Trade Center Twin Towers and Building 7. This material is being released to the Center under the Freedom of Information Act, in response to a lawsuit the Center filed against NIST.

The Center filed a FOIA Request with NIST on January 26, 2009, seeking production of “all of the photographs and videos collected, reviewed, cited or in any other way used by NIST during its investigation of the World Trade Center building collapses.” Following several unsuccessful attempts to get NIST to even acknowledge receipt of the Request, the Center was forced to file a lawsuit on May 28, 2009. Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, the Request was assigned a reference number, and NIST began periodically releasing batches of responsive records. To date, the Center has received over 300 DVDs and several external hard disk drives that contain responsive records - more than 3 terabytes of data so far – and NIST has indicated that additional records will be released in the future.

We are currently looking at the best ways to distribute these materials to interested researchers and journalists around the world. It has taken NIST more than 8 months so far to produce a partial archive of photographs and videos in their possession, but we hope to be more efficient in our efforts. Because of the huge volume of data, we are working on a wiki-style website to facilitate review and discussion of any interesting items that are discovered by researchers.

Justin Keogh, our Chief Technical Officer, is preparing the website and materials for release. The first batch of materials we are releasing is a group of video clips sent to us on an external hard disk drive labeled “NIST WTC Investigation Cumulus Video Clips.” We believe NIST entered these clips into a searchable database called the Cumulus database, and used them as the basis for the investigation and reports. Researchers may be interested to see which video clips NIST determined were important to its investigation, and compare these clips to the raw footage we release at a later date. Justin will be posting more details about the data release in the next week or two. Any questions about the FOIA Request, lawsuit, or data release should be submitted via the Contact Us page at the Center’s website: http://www.ic911studies.org/Contact_Us.html

Although the Center has extremely limited resources with which it can review this mountain of data, several interesting items have already been discovered. Below are five items the Center has uncovered so far. The items below have not been altered from the original provided by NIST, except in three cases where a short section of footage was extracted from a much longer video. Otherwise, no alterations have been made to the video or audio. For the best viewing experience, you should watch all of the videos below in the highest resolution available. We will supplement the list below in the coming days and weeks.
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A series of bomb attacks have badly hit US troops in eastern and southern Afghanistan in the past 48 hours.

The death toll among in the Nato-led coalition has reached 484 this year and is predicted to far surpass 2009’s total of 521.

Deaths have risen consistently each year since 2001. Afghan police and civilians have suffered far higher casualties.

The coalition blames the rise in troop deaths partly on the influx of reinforcements, which is allowing commanders to target previously untouched insurgent safe havens where rebels are mounting stiff resistance.

Gen David Petraeus, senior US and Nato commander in the country, warned last week fighting would “get harder before it gets easier”.

In two of the most deadly recent incidents, three Americans died in eastern Afghanistan on one bomb attack on Tuesday. Five died in a single bomb attack in the south on Monday.

Military spokesmen would not say if the bombs hit vehicles or foot patrols.

Homemade bombs using old shells or homemade explosives and hidden in roads, tracks, walls, streams and buildings have become the Taliban’s favoured weapon.

Their use has sparked an arms race with foreign troops evolving tactics, or relying on more heavily armed vehicles and mine detectors to try and avoid

The secret services must become more transparent if they are to halt the spread of damaging conspiracy theories and increase trust in the Government, claims a leading think tank.

A Demos report published today, The Power of Unreason, argues that secrecy surrounding the investigation of events such as the 9/11 New York attacks and the 7/7 bombings in London merely adds weight to unsubstantiated claims that they were “inside jobs”.

It warns of the dangers posed by conspiracy theories – from hindering counter-terrorism work by reducing public trust in the Government, to encouraging new alliances between extremists based on such theories – and recommends the Government fight back by infiltrating internet sites to dispute these theories.

Jamie Bartlett, the author of the report, said: “Less-secret services could make Britain safer. The more open the Government is, the harder it is for extremist groups to make stories out of silence.”

The Royal United Services Institute warned last week that the UK may soon face a new wave of home-grown terrorists, when criminals who have been targeted by jihadists while in prison are released.

Demos also recommends that the National Security Council publish an annual report of its proceedings and that it makes details of counter-terrorism investigations available to selected individuals.

A Home Office spokesman said: “The Government has prepared the groundwork in being more open by having a review of counter-terrorism powers.”

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant.

It is a dangerous decision — one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle’s underside.

After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA’s actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)

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From Academy Award® nominated filmmaker, Charles Ferguson (”No End In Sight”), comes INSIDE JOB, the first film to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, INSIDE JOB traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia.

Narrated by Academy Award® winner Matt Damon, INSIDE JOB was made on location in the United States, Iceland, England, France, Singapore, and China.

A new report released by a think tank called Demos warns of the hazardous effects of conspiracy theories on society and recommends strategies for governments to mitigate these effects, including the infiltration of websites.

The report, called The Power of Unreason: Conspiracy Theories, Extremism and Counterterrorism, says “most notoriously and influentially, the ‘9/11 truth movement’ has questioned the official accounts of 9/11 and has become a large and growing political force.”

The report notes that the 9/11 truth movement is “peaceful”, but makes no distinction between the legitimate questioning of the official account of 9/11 and any number of unrelated, and often racist, conspiracy theories.

The report acknowledges that “some conspiracies have turned out to be true. Our institutions and governments have deceived the population to advance hidden and unstated interests”, and goes on to cite Operations Northwoods, the Joint Chief of Staff’s unimplemented plan to stage a false flag Cuban terror attack in 1963, as well as the CIA’s involvement in the Chilean coup of 1973.

But the report is only concerned with limiting the effects of conspiracy theories on operations of the state, not with justice or the accuracy of the historical record. It states:

More broadly, conspiracy theories drive a wedge of distrust between governments and particular communities. Conspiracy theories - such as those that claim 7/7 or 9/11 were ‘inside jobs’ - demolish the mutuality and trust that people have in institutions of government, with social and political ramifications that we still don’t fully understand. This can especially hinder community-level efforts to fight violent extremism.

The report cites the writings of Cass Sunstein, an Obama appointee who recently called for the “cognitive infiltration” of 9/11 truth groups. The Demos paper in turn calls for government agents to “openly infiltrate” websites and chatrooms in order offer “alternative information” and “plant seeds of doubt”.

Demos makes a number of recommendations for governments to combat conspiracy theories, including a call for more government openness.

The Demos report can be downloaded here