Explosions reported as the plane hit the North Tower (WTC 1). A quick look at the elevator system makes the official story laughable.

AIG Bankers Caught On Tape Complaining About The Bailout And 'Idiot Americans': "To be honest with you, I really hope it blows up. I think the U.S. taxpayer deserves to lose a trillion dollars over this thing for the way they have behaved. Frankly, if a trillion dollars gets lost, fine.”

Iraqis have begun voting in their second full parliamentary elections since the 2003 US-led invasion against a backdrop of deadly attacks. Around 19 million eligible voters will choose from over 6,000 candidates from 86 political groups looking to gain seats in the 325-member assembly. But even as polls opened on Sunday, attacks across the country left at least 24 people dead and 50 more wounded. The bloodiest toll was from an explosion that destroyed a residential building in the Shaab district of northern Baghdad, killing 12 people and wounding eight more.

[Editor's Comment:] There's no reason to believe that this election will be more honest than the travesty of an election that took place in Afghanistan recently. Iraq still is under US occupation and the #1 priority for the Iraqis ought to be to unite and chase the US army out. As things stand, the US wants a government of collaborators. America's man in Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, will see to it that corruption remains high (not difficult, Iraq being an unstable and well-nigh destroyed country), and certainly high enough for Iraq to be manageable to the US as a client state. Parliamentary elections will change nothing. The US will certainly not honor the "agreement" to leave in 2011. It will stay in Iraq for the foreseeable future, or for as long as it takes for the international corporations to steal every single drop of oil from this godforsaken territory. -For this is what "Iraq" now has become. A territory. It's not a country anymore. Parliamentary elections can not change this. They're window dressing, a show put up to justify the illegal occupation ex post facto. Or, in the words of Max Steiner: "You can dress up a corpse but you can't bring it back to life."

Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday called the official version of the Sept. 11 attacks a “big lie” used by the U.S. as an excuse for the war on terror, state media reported. Ahmadinejad’s comments, made during an address to Intelligence Ministry staff, come amid escalating tensions between the West and Tehran over its disputed nuclear program. They show that Iran has no intention of toning itself down even with tighter sanctions looming because of its refusal to halt uranium enrichment. AWIP: Iran's Ahmadinejad calls Sept 11 "big fabrication". PressTV: 'Myth of imperialism will soon be shattered'.

You’ve accepted the idea that TV makes you dumber. You know there are lots of more edifying things you could be doing with your time than cheering on the contestants on "Survivor." And unless you’re working out to an exercise video, you know those hours sprawled out in front of the screen are going to make you fatter — not to mention the impact of all that junk food you’ve been tempted to scarf down during the commercial breaks. But you’ll be surprised to learn the host of other bad things TV can do to you. AWIP/L. Wolfe: How Television Controls And Programs Minds.

[What can we say, eh? -Indeed, Another World IS Possible!] Iceland overwhelmingly rejected a referendum on Saturday to compensate Britain and the Netherlands for money lost when an Icelandic bank collapsed in 2008. Projections showed 93.1 per cent voted against the proposal, with just 1.6 per cent voting in favour. At issue is paying $5.4 billion back to the Governments in London and Amsterdam who compensated their own national savers when they lost money when the Icesave bank collapsed amid the financial turmoil of 2008. The Atlantic: Plucky Little Iceland. HuffPo: Iceland's Referendum -- At Last the People Can Choose. AWIP/Birgitta Jónsdóttir: A Call to the People of the World to Support Iceland Against the Financial Blackmail of the British and Dutch Governments and the IMF. Iceland Banking Crisis News and More: Iceland says "NO" in the referendum today: According to the first numbers coming out, after the referendum today. No is the final answer. First numbers in Reykajvik are, Yes - 399 and No - 19.515. 90 % said no, and it is similar in every other part of Iceland. Here below are some photos from the protest today in Reykjavik. Many of the foreign press was in Iceland today,to follow the Referendum. NYT/DealBook: Iceland’s voters expressed their outrage on Saturday against bankers. CanadaEast: Icelanders reject $5.3 billion debt deal over collapsed bank.

Greece may be in its own particular class of basket case, but it is also just a harbinger of things to come for all fiscally stretched advanced economies. What Greece is being obliged to do is no more than what the IMF would impose if called on to provide support. NYT: “More And More There Is The Feeling That French Farmers, Polish Farmers, Spanish Infrastructure, That Europe Is Not a Community But Something Held Together... By a German Paycheck.” Webster Tarpley: Financial Warfare Exposed: Soros, Goldman Sachs, Hedge Funds Attack Greece to Smash Euro.

"Did Bush lie us into war? Absolutely not," Karl Rove wrote in his new book, CNN reported on Saturday. In 2003, the US attacked Iraq under the pretext that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, but an official CIA report in 2005 confirmed that there were no such weapons in the country. Rove also made the extraordinary claim that Washington would 'not' have gone to war with Iraq if the administration knew that weapons of mass destruction would not be found. "Would the Iraq War have occurred without WMD? I doubt it," he wrote.

A federal judge refused Friday to dismiss a civil lawsuit accusing former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of responsibility for the alleged torture by U.S. forces of two Americans who worked for an Iraqi contracting firm. U.S. District Judge Wayne R. Andersen's ruling did not say the two contractors had proven their claims, including that they were tortured after reporting alleged illegal activities by their company. But it did say they had alleged enough specific mistreatment to warrant hearing evidence of exactly what happened. Andersen said his decision "represents a recognition that federal officials may not strip citizens of well settled constitutional protections against mistreatment simply because they are located in a tumultuous foreign setting."

Prince Bernhard, the father of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, was a member of the Nazi party, a new book has claimed, contracting the German-born Dutch war hero's life-long denials. "Bernhard, a secret history" has revealed that the prince was a member of the German Nazi party until 1934, three years before he married Princess Juliana, the future queen of the Netherlands. Annejet van der Zijl, a Dutch historian, has found membership documents in Berlin's Humboldt University that prove Prince Bernhard, who studied there, had joined Deutsche Studentenschaft, a National Socialist student fraternity, as well as the Nazi NSDAP and its paramilitary wing, the Sturmabteilung. He left all the groups on leaving university in December 1934, when he went to work for the German chemical giant, IG Farben.

Quality photos across Israeli Gaza divide that tell a story. -One of Palestinian misery and dispossession.

Shocked by growing reports about Ultra-Orthodox Jews spitting at Christians in Jerusalem's Old City, a group of Anglo residents is now mobilizing against this ugly practice. Although such incidents reportedly have decreased since a council of Haredi rabbis issued an official condemnation in January in response to the public outcry, Christian and Jewish activists agree the problem is unlikely to disappear anytime soon.