Today it was my pleasure to interview the freelance writer Jerry Mazza for my YouTube channel JamesFetzerNews. Jerry is particularly knowledgeable about domenstic politics and foreign affairs, having written hundreds of articles on politics and government for onlinejournal.com where he is an associate editor.
Jerry received his Bachelor’s and Masters Degrees at Brooklyn College in English Literature, focusing on modern American poetry. His Masters’ thesis was a book of his own poems. Subsequent poems have also been published in various literary magazines: Rattle, Atlanta Review, Brooklyn Review, Voices in Italian Americana, Prairie Schooner, Poetry New York, Hudson Valley Literary Review, to mention a few, and online at VoicesInWartime.org. The VIW work inspired his new collection, “State Of Shock: Poems from 9/11 on,” (2008).
Choosing articles of Jerry for reposting here is not an easy task–his knowledge and depth of analysis never cease to amaze me. He is passionate about exposing corruption by our government on issues such as 9/11, foreign policy, the war on terror, the economy and more. He consistently delivers ground-breaking investigative journalism for Online Journal. (See this Google search.) He also maintains a personal blog at 911Blogger.com.
“Ramping up Afghanistan war to Control Caspian oil and gas transport routes,” http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5354.shtml
The 800-pound gorilla standing in the auditorium at West Point is still waiting for an answer to why Obama made his surge-speech for 30,000 more troops and $30 billion to pay for them. That gorilla wonders “why” Obama pitched so hard for the US to stay and surge through Afghanistan and Pakistan. The reasons given were that the Afghanistan Taliban and Al Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden were the people that attacked us on 9/11, which was an iteration of George W. Bush’s reasons for the War on Terror. They are as phony now as the day Bush promised to smoke out Bin Laden.
But, here are Obama’s actual words, pointed out by Christopher Bollyn on page 2 of his article, Why Afghanistan?
“1. I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by al-Qaeda. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak.
“2. It is important to recall why America and our allies were compelled to fight a war in Afghanistan in the first place. We did not ask for this fight. On September 11, 2001, 19 men hijacked four airplanes and used them murder nearly 3,000 people.
“3: If I did not think that the security of the United States and the safety of the American people were at stake in Afghanistan, I would gladly order every single one of our troops home tomorrow.”
Also, as early as Oct. 14, 2001, a month and three days after 9/11, Bollyn wrote in The Great Game – The War For Caspian Oil And Gas: “President Bush’s ‘crusade’ against the Taliban of Afghanistan has more to do with control of the immense oil and gas resources of the Caspian Basin than it does with ‘rooting out terrorism.’
“Once again an American president from the Bush family is leading Americans down an oil-rich Middle Eastern warpath against ‘enemies of freedom and democracy.’
“President George W. Bush, whose family is well connected to oil and energy companies, has called for an international crusade against Islamic terrorists, who he says hate Americans simply because we are ‘the brightest beacon of freedom.’
“The focus on religion-based terrorism serves to conceal important aspects of the Central Asian conflict. President Bush’s noble rhetoric about fighting for justice and democracy is masking a less noble struggle for control of an estimated $5 trillion of oil and gas resources from the Caspian Basin.
Bollyn goes on to explain that the elder Bush’s Desert Storm military campaign in 1991 yielded secure access to the huge Rumaila oil field of southern Iraq. It was made to happen by expanding the boundaries of Kuwait after the war. This enabled Kuwait, the former British protectorate and home to American and British oil companies’ investments, to double its prewar oil output . . .” Bollyn got it down cold even then.
. . . .
“Thoughts about 9/11 on Pearl Harbor Day”
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5370.shtml
Monday, December 7, Pearl Harbor Day, 2009: I am thinking of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. It only took two hours. The attacks on the World Trade Center occurred on a cool blue Tuesday morning within several hours, though Tower 7 fell into its footprint at 5 p.m. About 2,400 Americans were killed at Pearl. About 2,800 on 9/11.
On December 8, 1941, FDR declared war on Japan, who had declared war on us the day before. A few days after 9/11, Bush declared the War on Terror on Afghanistan, surrogate for the Muslim World. 9/11 had 19 Muslim scapegoats and Osama bin Laden. Pearle Harbor had military scapegoats: Commanders Army General Walter Short and Navy Admiral Husband Kimmel. For more information, see ‘Exonerating Pearl Harbor’s Scapegoats’ by John Weir. The racial scapegoats were first Japanese Americans, and later the Japanese people. More about that later.
There was massive damage at Pearl: eight battleships, nine cruisers, 30 destroyers, four subs, 49 other ships, 390 aircraft. There was massive damage at WTC: World Trade Center destroyed, Towers 1, 2, hit by kamikaze airliners yet did not go down due to fire but internal explosions; Tower 7 not hit by plane but ordered internally demolished by owner, Larry Silverstein. Balance of buildings were destroyed or severely damaged. Pentagon hit most likely by Global Hawk remote-controlled, missile-firing drone. F 93 was shot out of the air by two military F-16’s, the fireball raining debris in an eight-mile radius.
After Pearl, war with Japan led to the internment of Japanese-Americans in ‘War Relocation Camps.” Nearly 150,000 men, women and children were interned. Two of them were the parents of my wife’s best friend, Fran Yoshioka. Her parents, as she is, were lovely people, who after their internment relocated to Cleveland, Ohio, to work the better part of their lives for General Motors. I dearly miss them.
After 9/11, Muslims in the US continue to be harassed. 9/11 hijackers’ photos were subsequently said not to be necessarily correct by FBI Director Mueller in 2002. They why were they presented? Khalid Shaik Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in 2004 and will now “reconfess” to being the mastermind of the 9/11 event in a show trial in a York City courtroom. Before that, Zacarias Moussaoui was given a kangaroo trial with a stun-belt under his clothing controlled by US marshals.
. . . .
“9/11’s smoking gun still smoking,”
http://www.onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4967.shtml
Consolidated Edison or Con Ed, along with five of its insurers, filed a “$314.5 million lawsuit against the Port of Authority of New York and New Jersey, asserting that huge diesel tanks in 7 World Trade Center, an office building that collapsed late in the day last September 11, were improperly designed and maintained. The suit charges that fires by the fuel in those tanks played a major role in the collapse.” Of course, this story was written by James Glanz and published on September 11, 2002, by the New York Times.
Wednesday, several months short of eight years later, Judge Alvin Hellerstein, in his courtroom in the Southern District US Court on 500 Pearl Street, the same Judge Hellerstein who also rules on the right of 9/11 victims’ families to pursue lawsuits [none yet] or hush money [over 7 billion so far], also ruled on Con Ed’s case and award.
To Con Ed, he granted $17,580,750, the remaining balance due after the Port Authority’s initial advance of $20 million of insurance proceeds, which is some $277 million less than the amount originally sued for. He dismissed counts one and two, the tort complaints of the second amended complaint, and count four, the reimbursement claims. To read his opinion, click here.
The original 9/11/02 story also claimed “The tanks contained more than 40,000 gallons of fuel to provide backup power for the city’s emergency command center, a Secret Service office and other tenants. A 6,000-gallon tank for the command center, which was on the 23rd floor, was mounted 15 feet off the ground near an elevator bank. It was cited as unsafe by Fire Department officials in 1998 and 1999, but the Port Authority has asserted that the tank and the structure met the city’s fire code and posed no special danger.”
‘‘The Port Authority has a longstanding policy that all of our buildings meet or exceed code,’’ said the Port Authority’s general counsel, Jeffrey Green, in a prepared statement. ‘‘In this case, the design of the diesel fuel tanks in 7 W.T.C. had the approval of the city’’–and, ultimately, of the Fire Department, he said.”
The Times also added this key piece of information, “When 7 World Trade Center crumbled at 5:28 p.m. last Sept. 11 it became the only modern, steel-reinforced high-rise in the United States ever to fall because of a fire alone. The precise cause of the collapse has remained elusive, but fiery debris from the towers struck 7 World Trade. And in a study released last spring, federal engineers suggested that fires fed by the diesel fuel damaged structural steel in the building and led to its destruction.” But NIST’s mythic plot thickens.
. . . .
Dust to Dust: the health effects of 9/11
Jerry has written about poisonous brew of materials that fell on Ground Zero and the surrounding neighbourhoods, and how 9/11 first responders are struggling to stay alive and sane, combating cancers, pulmonary diseases, every conceivable kind of breathing disorder, and the psychic shock of being misled, flat-out lied to by the US and New York City governments as to the risk they were taking continuing to work, returning home or going to school in the area. Jerry, who reviewed Heidi Dehncke-Fisher’s film “Dust to Dust: the health effects of 9/11” in January 2008 exposes what hit the victims:
“Dust to Dust” boldly supers on the screen some of the 2,500 contaminants that erupted from the explosions of the World Trade Center towers, Tower Seven and the two, fuel-laden jetliners, turning into a toxic gray dust that hung in the air as well as settled in people’s lungs and on area streets, vehicles, buildings, residences, both outside and inside the city for months . . .
Over 400 tons of asbestos, which once inhaled in any quantity cannot be expelled by the lungs 90,000 liters of jet fuel containing benzene, a carcinogen that suppresses the immune system and causes leukemia Mercury from over 500,000 fluorescent lights that is toxic to the nervous system, and damaging especially to the kidneys 200,000 pounds of lead and cadmium from personal computers, toxic to the respiratory track, especially damaging to kidneys Polycystic aromatic hydrocarbons that cause lung, laryngeal and throat cancers 130,000 gallons of transformer oil with PCBs, causing serious skin rashes and liver damage Crystalline Silica from 420,000 tons of concrete, sheetrock and glass (tiny particulates that lodge in heart, causing ischemic heart disease) . . . and so on and on and on . . .
In October 2009, Jerry reviewed “Just Say No To NIST”, David Griffin’s latest book on the mysterious collapse of World Trade Center 7. This will shock you:
Lastly, Griffin’s analysis of the recently uncovered story of Barry Jennings, liaison for the Housing Authority to Giuliani’s Office of Emergency Management, and Michael Hess, Giuliani’s Chief Counsel for New York City, and a head partner in Giuliani & Partners, a private financing firm, is amazing. Both Jennings and Hess were caught in an explosion on the sixth floor of Tower 7 that occurred about 9:30 A.M. on 9/11/2001.
After the explosive collapses of Towers 1 and 2, the two men were rescued from Tower 7, finally led by firefighters through a hole in the wall of what was its bombed-out lobby. Jennings said that he could tell that he was walking over dead bodies. This cast an entirely new light on the Tower 7 history. Subsequently, Mr. Hess redacted or changed most of his testimony to fit the timeline of a book Giuliani wrote in 2002 about the events. Griffin impeccably documents the time of events and the redacting of information.
He points out that Jennings stuck to his story. Amazingly, he became ill and entered a hospital in August, 2008, and died several days later on August 19, 2008. This was strangely several days before NIST’s first WTC 7 Report’s release. Dylan Avery, lead producer of Loose Change, hired a private investigator to gather information about what happened. Not too long after, the P. I. called Avery and told him she would be crediting his card for her fee (returning his money), and would like it “if he never called her again regarding Mr. Jennings.”
Griffin’s investigatory detailing of this story is both interesting and illuminating. Parenthetically, since the book’s release, Dylan Avery made a visit to the Jennings family, and found them disappeared from their home, gone, just gone.
Jerry Mazza, who is among our nation’s most incisive investigative journalists, offered his reflections on Obama, 9/11, and Afghanistan. In a second interview, Jerry read several poems from his new book “State Of Shock: Poems from 9/11 on,” which is available via jerrymazza.com, amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com. Here is Amazon’s product description:
STATE OF SHOCK (SOS) by Jerry Mazza is the first book by an American poet to deal solely with 9/11 and the resulting Iraq and Afghanistan wars and their effect on the American psyche. These startling narrative and lyrical poems are an S O S to all to be aware of the dangers we presently face. With poems of bold imagery and rhythmic intensity, poet and journalist Mazza confronts the dangers head-on.
His poems suggest that an operation with the magnitude of 9/11 was not the work of 19 Islamic “terrorists” but members of our own ruling elite to start “The War on Terror” in a grasp for Mid-Eastern oil and power. Additionally, Mazza believes the Towers were not toppled by fires caused by the “hijacked airliners,” but rather by powerful internal explosions from within the Towers that preceeded the 10- second, free-fall crumbling of the buildings, literally at the speed of gravity. Beyond that, Mazza concludes that 9/11 constituted a form of coup d’etat by the Bush administration, the purpose to gain unprecedented powers for war-making and appropriations as well as for controlling civil dissent.
As Daniel Estulin, author of the international best-seller, “The True Story of the Bilderberg Group”, writes in his foreward to Mazza’s “State Of Shock”, “…I keep reminding myself that the pages of this book are a re-vindication of decency at the expense of cruelty and chance. For me, the main theme is not political nor is it an outspoken criticism of totalitarianism but rather the beating of a Man’s loving heart-and it is for the sake of this theme that it should be read…” Anyone interested in the future of America and the world–anyone interested in the power of poetry for political activism and personal expression–should read Jerry Mazza’s “State Of Shock”.
Jerry has also sent me two news poems, for publication in this blog, one shorter called “The Blessings of Snow,” one longer, “Happy Valentine’s Day, America,” which I am reproducing here.
The Blessings of Snow
by Jerry Mazza
Gray skies turned to snow
a blessing for the children
and depressives like me,
a fresh white page of day
soon to be sullied by carbon
footprints, shoveled aside
into the sewers’ yawn.
For now though, here it is,
the nun’s bib, spotless, sinless
as a holy conscience,
pious without penance,
calling you to play,
to walk in the cathedral
of the frosted trees
and take a breath of clean
to wipe sad news away,
oh father, son and brother
of the huddled masses
sitting at their desks,
subwaying to their jobs,
fighting the distant wars,
forgetting the miracle flakes
of singularity,
a remedy for the common
thoughts, the herd’s footprints
leading to the salted
wounds of pastness, dust
to dust, and all that must
be done in the name of money,
the American Way,
and the unspeakable darkness
of a drowning Haiti.
Happy Valentine’s Day, America
by Jerry Mazza
America, you’re beautiful
but your lipstick is smeared with blood,
too many kisses of foreign death.
I would love to love you more
for giving more, but you take more,
taxes, frauds, more than I can bear.
And caring scares you like a treason.
You’d prefer the dark side kept down,
false-flag ops and 9/11,
torture, habeas corpus hidden
in my soul and not disturb
the murder: men, women, children,
disappeared beneath your Statue
of Liberty, green caste of iron.
Put the spears down where you are.
Raise your torch again to love
the poorest and the richest as one.
Shed a tear for heartlessness
this Valentine’s Day, the many broken
hearts of love and lovers cut
to ribbons in war, a chocolate kiss
more bitter than sweet and filled with mines.
I send you my card writ on my sleeve
next to my heart, a burning heart
that yearns for justice not PATRIOT ACTS.
I huddle the masses in my arms
to shield them from the blows of Bahrain
GITMO, Fox News, crashing dollars,
broken vows of politicians
pitching on the airwaves night
and day, you are the one, the one
and only under the sun, and blown it
big-time in your mail of Empire,
knight in darkened X/E armor.
America, who are you these days?
I’ve forgotten seeing you, my boyhood
hero, hideous now as Kissinger,
killer of Chile’s revolution.
Make amends. Be kind again.
Oh give me something to remember
you by, besides the oil-soaked tide
of grief. Give me your shining hour
in a bay of Liberty, head high,
ocean of stars falling like July
4th firecrackers, shocking,
awing us back to life again,
taking our places on assembly lines,
and riveting the world together
that we’ve shattered. Semper fi
for this, the healing of the union,
spacious skies with eyes of children
peering over our horizon,
looking for gifts your Santa left
and not burnt corpses, embers, smoke.
Step back, embrace the tree of life
and climb it to see another way.
