Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

THE SOROS-IZATION OF GROUND ZERO
Michelle Malkin ^ | June 7, 2005 | Michelle Malkin

Posted on 06/07/2005 7:50:48 AM PDT by Velveeta

Must-read. Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines fight 77, which terrorists crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, has blown the whistle on George Soros and other human rights zealots who are trying to turn Ground Zero into a blame-America monument. Her piece is up at the WSJ.com site (subscription required...also try here). Here are a few blood-boiling excerpts:

The World Trade Center Memorial Cultural Complex will be an imposing edifice wedged in the place where the Twin Towers once stood. It will serve as the primary "gateway" to the underground area where the names of the lost are chiseled into concrete. The organizers of its principal tenant, the International Freedom Center (IFC), have stated that they intend to take us on "a journey through the history of freedom..."

...While the IFC is getting 300,000 square feet of space to teach us how to think about liberty, the actual Memorial Center on the opposite corner of the site will get a meager 50,000 square feet to exhibit its 9/11 artifacts, all out of sight and underground.

Meanwhile, generous space will be allotted to the International Freedom Center for exhibits on Chinese dissidents and Chilean refugees.

Burlingame reports further:

More disturbing, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is handing over millions of federal dollars and the keys to that building to some of the very same people who consider the post-9/11 provisions of the Patriot Act more dangerous than the terrorists that they were enacted to apprehend -- people whose inflammatory claims of a deliberate torture policy at Guantanamo Bay are undermining this country's efforts to foster freedom elsewhere in the world.

Who's behind this sacrilege at Ground Zero? Burlingame continues:

The driving force behind the IFC is Tom Bernstein, the dynamic co-founder of the Chelsea Piers Sports and Entertainment Complex who made a fortune financing Hollywood movies. But his capital ventures appear to have funded his true calling, the pro bono work he has done his entire adult life -- as an activist lawyer in the human rights movement. He has been a proud member of Human Rights First since it was founded -- as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights -- 27 years ago, and has served as its president for the last 12. The public has a right to know that it was Mr. Bernstein's organization, joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, that filed a lawsuit three months ago against Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was Human Rights First that filed an amicus brief on behalf of alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla, an American citizen who the Justice Department believes is an al Qaeda recruit. It was Human Rights First that has called for a 9/11-style commission to investigate the alleged torture of detainees, complete with budget authority, subpoena power and the ability to demand that witnesses testify under oath.

In fact, the IFC's list of those who are shaping or influencing the content and programming for their Ground Zero exhibit includes a Who's Who of the human rights, Guantanamo-obsessed world:

• Michael Posner, executive director at Human Rights First who is leading the world-wide "Stop Torture Now" campaign focused entirely on the U.S. military. He has stated that Mr. Rumsfeld's refusal to resign in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal is "irresponsible and dishonorable."

• Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, who is pushing IFC organizers for exhibits that showcase how civil liberties in this country have been curtailed since September 11.

• Eric Foner, radical-left history professor at Columbia University who, even as the bodies were being pulled out of a smoldering Ground Zero, wrote, "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." This is the same man who participated in a "teach-in" at Columbia to protest the Iraq war, during which a colleague exhorted students with, "The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military," and called for "a million Mogadishus." The IFC website has posted Mr. Foner's statement warning that future discussions should not be "overwhelmed" by the IFC's location at the World Trade Center site itself.

• George Soros, billionaire founder of Open Society Institute, the nonprofit foundation that helps fund Human Rights First and is an early contributor to the IFC. Mr. Soros has stated that the pictures of Abu Ghraib "hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself."

Concludes Burlingame: "Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?"

Start by contacting NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Then Gov. George Pataki.

Learn more about Human Rights First here.

This abomination needs to be nipped in the bud. Now.

***


TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: aclu; burlingame; groundzero; humanrightsfirst; ifc; justputupabuilding; soros; tombernstein; wtc; wtcmemorial
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 141-160161-180181-200 ... 221-223 next last
To: retrokitten

I just saw your ping on the Tony Snow thread too.

Thanks so much for the pings!

Contact information will be great as I know many of us here will not let this drop off the radar. :-)


161 posted on 06/08/2005 9:06:19 AM PDT by Velveeta
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 160 | View Replies]

To: Velveeta; retrokitten
We can only hope that Bloomberg, Pataki-among other public officials who've completely bungled this process from its inception-won't be around to preside over the unveiling of any future memorial.

Pataki will probably have the foresight not to run for another term, and hopefully Bloomberg will lose this upcoming mayoral primary.

162 posted on 06/08/2005 9:08:28 AM PDT by Do not dub me shapka broham ("What in the world happened to Gerard's tag-line?")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 153 | View Replies]

To: Do not dub me shapka broham

I hope you're right!


163 posted on 06/08/2005 10:36:45 AM PDT by Velveeta
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 162 | View Replies]

To: Velveeta

BTTT


164 posted on 06/08/2005 10:49:46 AM PDT by tertiary01
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 163 | View Replies]

To: Velveeta
Me too.

Our elected officials have-once again-let us down.

165 posted on 06/08/2005 12:30:02 PM PDT by Do not dub me shapka broham ("What in the world happened to Gerard's tag-line?")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 163 | View Replies]

To: Tree of Liberty
(from that website)

"I am convinced that Ground Zero must first and foremost be a memorial. All other decisions should flow from that goal. A soaring structure should dominate the site. There should be a museum and a library. People should be able to grasp the enormity of this attack by visiting this sacred ground. [The memorial] should symbolize our survival and our triumph." - Rudy Giuliani

The sad thing is: the general population is so deficient that in a few years the "enormity of [the] attack" will be reduced to the same kinds of plastic, "made in china" trinkets that are sold which resemble the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building - just another place to visit.

166 posted on 06/08/2005 7:59:11 PM PDT by solitas (So what if I support an OS that has fewer flaws than yours? 'Mystic' dual 500 G4's, OSX.3.7)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: All; Do not dub me shapka broham; solitas; tertiary01; retrokitten; nutmeg; Diana in Wisconsin; ...

Update at Michelle Malin's site:
http://www.michellemalkin.com/


BATTLE AT GROUND ZERO: THE IFC RESPONDS
By Michelle Malkin · June 09, 2005 09:31 AM

Dick Tofel, president of the International Freedom Center, has a smooth piece in the WSJ today attempting to counter Debra Burlingame's devastating op-ed on the hijacking of Ground Zero. He fails. At least he abandoned the tactic he used with me of trying to minimize the amount of opposition in this country to the blame-America tenets of the IFC's patrons. Instead, Tofel uses all the right code words and spins a calming, "nothing to see here, move along" tale. (snip)


167 posted on 06/09/2005 10:36:19 AM PDT by Velveeta
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 165 | View Replies]

To: All

Copy of Tofel's response article in the WSJ:
(Fluff piece - barf alert)


A Fitting Place at Ground Zero
The International Freedom Center will respect the victims of 9/11.

BY RICHARD J. TOFEL
Thursday, June 9, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006795


168 posted on 06/09/2005 10:41:15 AM PDT by Velveeta
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 167 | View Replies]

To: All
From Debra Burlingames' website

http://www.911familiesforamerica.org/
Thursday, June 9, 2005, 6:23 a.m. EDT

Have you forgotten? What is Ground Zero to you?
And what should visitors see there on 9/11/2101?

This was 9/11/2001 at the World Trade Center:

With over a thousand already dead and trapped in the North Tower, the South Tower is attacked seventeen minutes later.

Looking to escape, a survivor looks down at the Globe from the South Tower and hopes to get out alive

While many were rescued

So many were not

So tell me, at Ground Zero, should we carve in cement and bury in an underground 50,000 square foot museum the names of the nearly 3,000 people that Islamic terrorists murdered that day? Should visitors to the World Trade Center's memorial be left to wonder what happened that day and where the artifacts of 9/11 are? Above ground, should we build a park with reflecting pools, a cultural center, and a 300,000 square foot International Freedom Center where visitors can hear lectures and discussions on why they all hated us, what we did to bring 9/11 upon ourselves, and the correct world-view future generations must choose so they won't hate us and attack us anymore? Why not also discuss all of man's inhumanities to man, especially those by Americans on Americans and all the other people in the world, since time immortal while we are at it in order to promote our own political agenda?

Does this all sound like a good idea to you?

Apparently, the president of the Internation Freedom Center thinks it is. Please read the following and the entire op-ed by Richard J. Tofel for he says the IFC and WTC memorial will be "roughly equal." How is something six times as large, above ground, and what visitors will pass through to get the "world's view on it" while on the way to the WTC memorial, roughly equal? And please, after you've read this, scan down to yesterday's entry and reread Debra Burlingame's op-ed and the links provided for some other comments on this issue:

"To be sure, the International Freedom Center will host debates and note points of view with which you--and I--will disagree. But that is the point, the proof of our society's enduring self-confidence and humanity. Moreover, the International Freedom Center will rise above the politics of the moment. It will not exist to precisely define "freedom" or to tell people what to think, but to get them to think--and to act in the service of freedom as they see it. And it will always do so in a manner respectful of the victims of September 11."

169 posted on 06/09/2005 10:50:09 AM PDT by Velveeta
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 168 | View Replies]

To: Howlin; Mr. Silverback; RaceBannon; Yehuda; Jay777

FYI...Updates beginning at post #167


170 posted on 06/09/2005 10:56:33 AM PDT by Velveeta
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 167 | View Replies]

To: Calpernia; nw_arizona_granny

Ping to updates beginning at post #167


171 posted on 06/09/2005 10:57:17 AM PDT by Velveeta
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 167 | View Replies]

To: All

How the Left Hijacked the September 11th Memorial

By Jacob Laksin
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 9, 2005

Imagine the following scenario. A gaggle of leftist ideologues, most of them vocally hostile to the U.S.-led War on Terror and some of them inclined to believe that the U.S. itself poses the greatest threat to world peace, is tasked with creating a memorial to the victims of 9-11 terrorism and a tribute to freedom. This, in essence, is what has happened with International Freedom Center in New York. (snipped)
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18360


172 posted on 06/09/2005 11:01:44 AM PDT by Velveeta
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 171 | View Replies]

To: Velveeta

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1419599/posts?page=31#31


173 posted on 06/09/2005 11:02:54 AM PDT by Calpernia (Breederville.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 171 | View Replies]

To: All

New York Post

NO PLACE FOR POLITICS
Thu Jun 9, 5:53 AM ET


Seemingly terminal reconstruction gridlock may not be the only scandal plaguing the site of the destroyed Twin Towers. Now serious concerns are being raised about the nature of the principal Ground Zero memorial.

The International Freedom Center is to be a 250,000-square-foot museum with a self-professed mission to "harness the power of history and use it a a springboard for contemporary dialogue and debate" on the meaning of freedom.


"Dialogue and debate," huh?


Time to reach for the revolver.


Because odds are that, at the end of the day, this center won't focus on freedom's triumphs, so much as on its failures — particularly those in which America can be painted as the culprit. (snipped)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nypost/20050609/cm_nypost/noplaceforpolitics/nc:742


174 posted on 06/09/2005 11:03:58 AM PDT by Velveeta
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 172 | View Replies]

To: Velveeta
Thanks for the ping.

I have choice words and hand gestures for Mr. Richard Tofel and all would get me at least suspended. So I will just say this- I wonder how DICK can possibly sit with his head so far up his a$$.

I just imagine him writing that whole thing with a little smirk on his face searching for quotes from Bush and Lincoln. I'm surprised he didn't find any Regan ones to use to REALLY get us going. Maybe even he knows that would be too far.

The only thing this "freedom" center will respect are the TERRORISTS who sought to DESTROY our nation. These MURDERS did not stop and ask people who they voted for in the last election. They did not ask if they were for or against war or their opinions on Islam. They did not care that there were Brits, Aussies, Mexicans, and every other nation represented by the people working in those buildings. They STILL DO NOT CARE if you sympathize with them or not. YOU are American and you are infidel and infidels must be destroyed.

Mr. Tofel thinks we Americans are stupid and will not see through his little article and the happy face and Lincoln quotes he has tried to spin. Well, DICK, we will NOT let this die. We will NOT sit idly by and let you turn hallowed ground into your Hate America Disneyland!

Try a little harder next time, DICK.

175 posted on 06/09/2005 11:20:39 AM PDT by retrokitten
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 168 | View Replies]

To: retrokitten

Well said!


176 posted on 06/09/2005 11:25:39 AM PDT by Velveeta
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 175 | View Replies]

To: Velveeta
Thank you.

Check this out. It give the names of the board of directors, staff, creative team, planning committee, scholars and advisors, and service advisory board members.

I found the service advisory board and scholars and advisors sections to be the most interesting. Cokie Roberts? The president of MTV? Oh, yes, you can't build a museum with out having Cokie and MTV involved! WTF? Then the alleged scholars have little quotes about freedom.

177 posted on 06/09/2005 11:40:02 AM PDT by retrokitten
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 176 | View Replies]

To: retrokitten

I saw that.

You do know who Cokie's father was, don't you?


178 posted on 06/09/2005 12:05:53 PM PDT by Velveeta
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 177 | View Replies]

To: Velveeta

This is a DISGRACE!


179 posted on 06/09/2005 12:07:48 PM PDT by veronica
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Velveeta

No, who?


180 posted on 06/09/2005 12:14:03 PM PDT by retrokitten
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 178 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 141-160161-180181-200 ... 221-223 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson