Urban Renewal - Lower Manhattan

Of White Elephants and Demolition: Jesse Ventura on the Howard Stern Show Kurt Nimmo Infowars May 21, 2008 Listen to Ventura describe the WTC buildings as "white elephants." Howard Stern was incredulous. “It was an insurance job?” he asked when Jesse Ventura postulated that the WTC buildings were brought down because WTC 1 and 2 were “white elephants,” that is to say the cost of the buildings exceeded their usefulness. “They were losing money, they had asbestos in them, and they were required by law to do over a billion dollars worth of asbestos removal.” “It was an insurance job?” asked Stern. Ventura continued. Larry Silverstein had insured the buildings against terrorist attacks for $7 billion dollars, “of which he settled for four.” Again, Stern and crew were incredulous, although Stern said he would have to read Ventura’s book, Don’t Start the Revolution Without Me. Jesse urged him to do so. It may have been a near perfect crime, at least in the beginning, so perfect Allianz Group, the company that carried a significant portion of the insurance coverage on the WTC, didn’t put two and two together. However, one company stockholder, publisher John Leonard, did put two and two together, suggesting demolition. Allianz, however, would have nothing of it, as the insurer relied on the official 9/11 fairy tale as an explanation. It apparently did not occur to the German company that Silverstein had over-insured the buildings. “The WTC catastrophe was doubtless one of the biggest insurance incidents in history. A significant portion of the multi-billion dollar loss is expected to be borne by Allianz,” Leonard wrote in a letter to shareholders. “Numerous observers and researchers find the WTC case very suspicious.” Noting that a staggering 49.3% of respondents to a survey conducted in New York City “agreed that ’some of our leaders knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act,’” Leonard was taken aback that Allianz had not “asked whether perhaps the US Government instead of the insurers is responsible for the damages, or whether the possibility of insurance fraud has been investigated.” Allianz eventually balked at paying out and in stepped Brooklyn-Queens Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner, who threatened to punish the insurer with fines or operating restrictions if they did not cough up the cash. “Silverstein is determined to rake in every last penny possible from 9/11 and has already secured billions from other insurers without a blink of an eye over the fact that he leased the property just six weeks before the attacks and has since been caught in an admission that he ordered at least one of the buildings, WTC 7, ‘pulled’ on 9/11,” writes Steve Watson. It is indeed strange, Watson notes, that any “building that was not owned by Silverstein Properties that day strangely remained upright, despite being a lot closer to the two towers that collapsed onto them,” leading no shortage of people to smell something rotten in Brooklyn – or rather on Manhattan. Considering the amount of insurance fraud, corruption, and rampant malfeasance in the corporate world, the possibility that Silverstein was involved in a plot to bring down the buildings — as they were excessively expensive “white elephants,” as Ventura notes – it is a possibility that cannot be discounted out of hand, although Howard Stern and his crew, like millions of other gullible Americans, are incapable of believing ruthless business interests would do such a thing. Of course, insurance fraud alone cannot explain the events of September 11, 2001. In fact, such an event would be impossible without the complicity of government and — as Ventura recently stated on the Alex Jones Show — the government had reason enough to plan and orchestrate such an event, from scheming a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq to providing an excuse to erect a military police state at home. Unfortunately, far too many people naively believe the government — and for that matter, ruthless business interests — would not do such a thing, and that includes Howard Stern. http://www.infowars.com/?p=2284