iOS 9 Reviews

Federico Viticci's iOS 9: The MacStories Review, Created on iPad is both a comprehensive review and kind of a QA plan for iOS 9. 23 pages long!

Rene Ritchie's review is equally long but a bit breezier, iOS 9 review.

If you want something shorter, Jason Snell does a good job pointing out new features on the iPad including, Slide Over, Split View, Picture in Picture, Keyboard shortcuts and my favorite, trackpad support in the software keyboard.

These quick articles have some useful tips:

• The Best Secret Features of iOS 9
• 17 secret iOS 9 tricks everyone should know

Here's a review of the new News app, Apple’s iOS 9 News App Review: Broken News. I tried it for a few minutes and gave up. The review lists alternatives at the bottom and I'm a happy user of Reeder backed by Feedly and I use NYT Now and occasionally I look at Nuzzle

The Dead, the Dollars, the Drones: 9/11 Era by the Numbers

Danger Room writes The Dead, the Dollars, the Drones: 9/11 Era by the Numbers "Ever since the Twin Towers fell, the United States has been at war. The costs of that decade of conflict have been unimaginably high: trillions of dollars spent, hundreds of thousands of lives lost. The numbers are almost too big to grasp, let alone quantify. The graphics below are our incomplete attempt to do so."

Understanding 9/11: A Television News Archive

"The 9/11 Television News Archive is a library of news coverage of the events of 9/11/2001 and their aftermath as presented by U.S. and international broadcasters. A resource for scholars, journalists, and the public, it presents one week of news broadcasts for study, research and analysis.

Television is our pre-eminent medium of information, entertainment and persuasion, but until now it has not been a medium of record. This Archive attempts to address this gap by making TV news coverage of this critical week in September 2001 available to those studying these events and their treatment in the media.

Explore 3,000 hours of international TV News from 20 channels over 7 days, and select analysis by scholars."

The Day of 1000 Iconic Photos

Iconic Photos has two collections for 9/11, The Day of 1000 Iconic Photos and The Day The Twin Towers Fell.

What Was in the World Trade Center Plume?

Scientific American wrote What Was in the World Trade Center Plume? "Asbestos may have been the least of health concerns from the gray smoke and fluffy, pinkish-gray dust created as the two towers collapsed, pulverizing cement, glass and everything else in the buildings. As a result, the EPA's Inspector General concluded in 2003 that the agency "did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement" about air safety and chided the White House Council on Environmental Quality and National Security Council for interfering with the process. And in those dust samples the EPA did collect and analyze in the first week after the attacks, 25 percent showed asbestos levels above the 1 percent threshold that indicates "significant risk," according to the EPA. "Competing considerations, such as national security concerns and the desire to reopen Wall Street, also played a role in EPA's air quality statements," the Inspector General concluded in a 2003 report [pdf].

Plus, inside the two towers were heavy metals, such as lead that helps make electric cables flexible and poisons the human brain, as well as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) used in electrical transformers that are toxic on their own and become even more toxic when burned at high heat, and glass fibers that lodge in the lungs. The levels of dioxin measured in the air near the smoldering pile "were the highest ambient measurements of dioxin ever recorded anywhere in the world," levels at least 100 times higher than those found downwind of a garbage incinerator, according to an analysis published by EPA scientists [pdf] in 2007.

Ten years later, no one knows what was in the cloud of gases released by the combustion of all that jet fuel and building material but science has revealed what was in the dust—cement, steel, gypsum from drywall, building materials, cellulose from paper, synthetic molecules from rugs, glass fibers and human hair from the long decades of the two towers' use, among other items. "The [World Trade Center] dust held everything we consider near and dear to us," wrote Lioy, who carried out the first such analysis, in his book  Dust: The Inside Story of Its Role in the September 11th Aftermath (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010)."

How Did You Hear?

I was walking back to my car after seeing movies today and a police car drove by, the officer had his window down, slowed down by the corner and said "Did you hear the news?" We said what news and he said Osama bin Laden is dead. The marines shot him." I'm still waiting for Obama's speech tonight to hear details.

My second thought was that Obama will now be reelected.

Worst Responders

Jon Stewart on The Daily Show last night really railed into Congress (particularly the Republicans but also the Democrats) and the media for the lack of support for funding medical care for 9/11 first responders (the Zadroga bill). The Republicans are blocking the bill, the Democrats aren't fighting for it (an obvious win) and the media is silent on it. He was more serious than usual, particularly in a second segment on the topic where he had a panel of 9/11 first responders

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Worst Responders
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9/11 First Responders React to the Senate Filibuster
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I thought it was a great point that while Senators are complaining about possibly working between Christmas and New Year's, fire fighters, police and medical workers through the holidays. I note that The Daily Show is beginning a two week vacation. It's well deserved, but imagine if he did a filibusters on this and stayed on their throughout until the Zadroga bill is passed.

I think Republicans are concerned with where the $7.4 billion funds will come from. So under the new CutGo rules would there be no way to raise tax funds for this? If that's right, it's insane.

Never Before Seen Photos of World Trade Center on 9/11

ABC News has Never Before Seen Photos of World Trade Center "Looking at these images never gets any easier. The photos that follow depict the horrible images of the September 11, 2001 attacks and the aftermath of the recovery efforts where some 2800 innocent people died, including those aboard hijacked flights American 11 and United 175. ABC News recently obtained these images after filing a Freedom of Information Act request in 2009 with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which had collected as part of an investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center."

Seven Years Later: Why Is There Still A Hole at Ground Zero?

Paul Rieckhoff writes: "Seven years later...And we should all be embarrassed as a nation for one simple reason more than all the others--there is still a mammoth, gaping hole at Ground Zero."

I did just see a segment on the Pentagon Memorial. It's very nice and it's done. Oh and the damage caused by American Airlines Flight 77 was repaired and people were occupying the space by August 15, 2002. Imagine that, government working faster than the private sector.

NIST Investigation: Building Fires Caused WTC 7 Collapse

NIST WTC 7 Investigation Finds Building Fires Caused Collapse "The fall of the 47-story World Trade Center building 7 (WTC 7) in New York City late in the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001, was primarily due to fires, the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced today following an extensive, three-year scientific and technical building and fire safety investigation. This was the first known instance of fire causing the total collapse of a tall building, the agency stated as it released for public comment its WTC investigation report and 13 recommendations for improving building and fire safety."

Not that the conspiracy theorists will believe this.

The New Attorney General Lies About FISA, Starts 9/11 Controversy

Glenn Greenwald is going to single handedly make this story happen. Why doesn't the 9/11 Commission know about Mukasey's 9/11 story?.

"Last week, during a question-and-answer session following a speech he delivered in San Francisco, Attorney General Michael Mukasey revealed a startling and extremely newsworthy fact. As I wrote last Saturday, Mukasey claimed that, prior to 9/11, the Bush administration was aware of a telephone call being made by an Al Qaeda Terrorist from what he called a "safe house in Afghanistan" into the U.S., but failed to eavesdrop on that call. Some help is needed from readers here to generate the attention for this story that it requires.

In that speech, Mukasey blamed FISA's warrant requirement for the failure to eavesdrop on that call -- an assertion which is, for multiple reasons that I detailed in that post, completely false. He then tearfully claimed that FISA therefore caused the deaths of "three thousand people who went to work that day." For obvious reasons, the Attorney General's FISA falsehoods themselves are extremely newsworthy, but it is the story he told about the pre-9/11-planning call from Afghanistan itself that is truly new, and truly extraordinary.

Critically, the 9/11 Commission Report -- intended to be a comprehensive account of all relevant pre-9/11 activities -- makes no mention whatsoever of the episode Mukasey described. What has been long publicly reported in great detail are multiple calls that were made between a global communications hub in Yemen and the U.S. -- calls which the NSA did intercept without warrants (because, contrary to Mukasey's lie, FISA does not and never did require a warrant for eavesdropping on foreign targets) but which, for some unknown reason, the NSA failed to share with the FBI and other agencies. But the critical pre-9/11 episode Mukasey described last week is nowhere to be found in the 9/11 Report or anywhere else. It just does not exist."

He's followed it up and it made it to Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow but not much further. Either the Atorney General lied and made up a story to change the FISA law or the Bush administration blew it even worse on 9/11 and then (I think illegally) covered it up to the 9/11 Commission.

Greenwald wrote to the DoJ for clarification and got a response from Peter Carr, its Principal Deputy Director of Public Affairs which he then proceeded to rip apart.

Digby wonders if it's worth speculating on the conspiracy theory aspect.

Timelines of 9/11 and More

Here's a Complete Timeline of the Destruction of CIA Interrogation Tapes. It's part of a much larger Complete 911 Timeline from the History Commons.

"The History Commons contains summaries of 9,056 events, which are published on the website in the format of dynamic timelines. These timelines can be filtered by investigative project, topic, or entity (e.g., a person, organization, or corporation). You can even generate a ‘scalable context’ timeline for any event in the History Commons database simply by clicking the date of the timeline entry. You can search for events by using the search box at the top right-hand corner, or by browsing through the list of projects."

Mysterious July 10th 2001 CIA Briefing

Lots more info on the July 10, 2001 briefing.

"One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a "10 on a scale of 1 to 10" that "connected the dots" in earlier intelligence reports"

"Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing" "within a week" of Rice.

However late Sunday Rice didn't remember "the supposed meeting." On Monday, John Ashcroft was disappointed that he never received the briefing. By Monday evening, Rice's spokesman Sean McCormack confirmed that she'd received the briefing and had asked that it be given to Ashcroft and Rumsfeld which is was within a week.

The other part of their "defense" is that the briefing didn't say that al Qaeda was going to attack within the US, just US interests which could be a ship or embassy as had happened before. But it still seems they took absolutely no action as a result of the warning.

Apparently Rice offered to resign after the 2004 election, but instead Bush made her Secretary of State.

In the other part of the mystery, "Former CIA Director George Tenet gave the independent Sept. 11, 2001, commission the same briefing on Jan. 28, 2004, but the commission made no mention of the warning in its 428-page final report." No one seems to know why. Maybe the problem was it a was a PowerPoint presentation.

What Rice Didn't Say

The other current scandal involves Condi Rice. Woodward's new book says she was in a meeting July 10th, 2001 with George Tenet and his counter-terrorism chief, J. Cofer Black where they warned her an al Qaeda attack in the US. Tenet and Black felt Rice brushed them off. Woodward got this from Black. Aside from the obvious, the other problem with this is that she never mentioned the meeting to the 9/11 commission. White House records confirm the meeting (but not the contents).

9/11 Hijackers Video

The (London) Times has the article: Chilling message of the 9/11 pilots. "A video shows two of the world’s most infamous terrorists joking and laughing while filming their ‘death wills’ at Osama Bin Laden’s lair in Afghanistan. The journalist and author Yosri Fouda explains the terrible significance of the new find"

And More Officials Lie

This time Media Matters shreds Wolf Blitzer interviewing White House homeland security adviser Frances Townsend. "[He] claimed that "there's no question that terrorism was a priority" in the Bush administration before 9-11, and that "[t]here had been multiple meetings" to that effect. Townsend also claimed that no one in the Bush administration was familiar with a "comprehensive strategy to proceed with the war on terror," which former President Clinton said he left with the incoming administration. Blitzer failed to challenge Townsend on either of these statements, even though the 9-11 Commission found to the contrary."

Condi Rice Lies

Think Progress reports Rice Falsely Claims Bush's Pre-9/11 Anti-Terror Efforts Were At Least As Aggressive As Clinton's.

I just saw this reported on WHDH (Boston channel 7) news. They quoted Rice, "The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false...I think the 9/11 Commission understood that". Of course, because this was crappy TV news there was no followup as to what the Commission actually said. The state of journalism in this country is pathetic.

Update: There's more: Rice Falsely Claims Clinton Administration Did Not Leave A ‘Strategy To Fight Al Qaeda’.

Cheney Biographer Thoroughly Discredited

The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes will write an official biography of Dick Cheney. Media Matters reports that much of his writings on the Iraq connection to 9/11 are "thoroughly discredited by Senate Intelligence Committee" report.

Path to 9/11 Analyzed

So I'm glad I didn't write up the faults of what I saw of the Path to 9/11, because of course Media Matters would do it, Part two of ABC's 9-11 "docudrama" contained falsified scenes bolstering Bush.

Path to 9/11, Bah

I caught the end of the Path to 9/11 tonight, about the last hour. Bleech. I had issues with just about every scene. Mostly how information was readily available to people. After the first plane hit someone said this has bin Laden all over it. AFter the first plane hit they weren't even sure it was a plane and certainly not sure that it was deliberate. They showed Bush speaking about terrorism on TV before the Pentagon was hit and didn't show him sitting in a classroom reading My Pet Goat. It's inaccurate and wrong.

If you want to see what a docu-drama should be on the topic see United 93. It's an excellent film. Watch it and you'll understand what non-politicized mean. You'll also understand that a docu-drama can be accurate. And you'll understand why the end of the Path to 9/11 was complete crap.