New York City has released more than 170,000 pages of previously undisclosed records about air quality following the September 11, 2001, attacks, showing city officials at the time knew conditions around Ground Zero were unsafe to breathe despite repeated assurances to the public.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the release at a news conference Tuesday.
“As the years pass and the human toll grows, we reckon with the cost of September 11th whenever another New Yorker is stolen from us too soon,” Mamdani said. “Now, close to 25 years later, more people have died from 9/11-related illnesses than were killed on the day itself.”
At least 140,000 people from all 50 states have enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program, and 49,000 have been diagnosed with certified WTC-related cancers, according to the 9/11 Memorial. Mamdani said Tuesday that more people are eligible for assistance than are currently enrolled, including residents who lived near the site but have not received outreach and those who live outside of New York.
My dad’s best friend just died of 9/11-related COPD. He worked in an office building around the corner from the WTC and was told to keep coming to work. He suffered greatly for many years.
Thanks for the comment. This really provided some needed framing. My initial reaction to this was, “oh well, what was there to be done? Those first few days and weeks were utter chaos. There were an unknown number of people still alive under the rubble with limited time to get them out. Immediate deaths vs long term deaths, what could have really been done? Ultimately the people are responsible are the ones that took down the towers.”
But your comment really reframed things for me. I was thinking of this only from the perspective of rescue workers. And I imagine if they had told the actual first responders about the risk and air quality, most of them would have shrugged, said, “I don’t care, I’m here to save lives,” and took the risk willingly. But there are two issues with this. First, even if the first responders would still willingly take the risk, more efforts could have been taken to provide more and better PPE for the rescuers. Second, a lot of people didn’t actually need to be anywhere near ground zero. All of the office buildings within a dangerous distance should have been evacuated. Companies still need to keep operating, but alternate arrangements could have been made. This was before the era that WFH was really possible for most office workers, but we still could have found a way. For example, we could have set up cubicles on the floors of sports arenas, using them as temporary offices like we use them as temporary shelters during natural disasters. Hell, with all of the money flying around post 9/11, simply writing checks to cover the salaries of everyone under a mandatory office evacuation for a few months would have been a rounding error compared to the hundreds of billions dedicated to defense and military expansion.
Wikipedia suggests 400,000 people were exposed to the dust of 9/11. Let’s say this is an underestimate and let’s make it a clean million. Let’s make a generous assumption and assume those million people were earning on average $50,000 in 2001 dollars, slightly less than the equivalent of $100k today. Let’s say we would need to evacuate them for three months while things settle out of the air, the rain washes every surface, and we cleaned, decontaminated, and contained the pollutants. That comes to $12,500 per person, and a total of $12.5 billion. We spent trillions in the post-9/11 years.
Sounds like there needs to be a lawsuit.
Not that it will bring any peace to your dad’s friend/family, but to hold these people accountable. If they aren’t held responsible it’ll just happen again to the next shmuck.
I cannot imagine any DNC Approved™ mayor doing this. Instead they’d continue to protect their GOP counterparts exactly as the last two Democratic mayors have done.
The best part is that’s the end of Guiliani’s criticism of Mamdani. I bet his ears are ringing from that smackdown.
I’m surprised Giuliani even gets mentioned any more. The last vestiges of his credibility ran down his face at the whole Four Seasons Total Landscaping debacle, and the least said about the Borat thing the better…
Thank you for mentioning the Borat thing between Rudy and the girl he was told was underage. I can’t believe that wasn’t a bigger deal.
Anyone who cared, already hates him and and anyone who likes him, doesn’t care.
“There was poison in the air, and on the ground, and in the window sills, and in your air conditioners and covering your pets and your clothes, and it stayed there for months. Everyone knew. Now it’s very clear that the city knew as well,” Stewart said.
Wait wait wait… no… so it ain’t so Jon. Rudy Gulliani, Americas Mayor… is a lying piece of shit?!?
Rudy recently got sick and decided to claim ‘9/11 disease’ benefits.
Rudy hasn’t been to one funeral for any of the Ground Zero heroes and rescuers who got sick working the Pit.
Holy crap, that’s fucked up.
I just say that Trump is now claiming he was directing operations at Ground Zero on the day.
This is what he was actually doing on the day, calling into a radio show. No mention of being there.
News conference at the 4 Seasons, at 5!
I’ll bring my shovel!
Speaking of NYC and releasing files, Epstein lived there, they should release the NYC Epstein files and dare the feds to charge them with a crime for it.
And any damn criminal files on Trump
This guy is such a pro political operator… In one action of exposing this lie he increases the trust in his gov, his own trustworthiness and he puts a lot of fuel in the Medicare-for-All fight which his comrades are fighting in his state and around the country.
This guy is such a pro political operator
That is such an incredibly cynical way of spinning it, even if it was meant to be a compliment.
Edit: Folks, “political operator” is what you call people who are particularly manipulative, conniving, and in it only for themselves. People who “operate” the political machine, with all the bribery, corruption, retaliation, and other dirty tricks that implies. I don’t care what the ignorant replies say; it is not a good thing!
Or maybe you’re extremely naïve.
If you look at anyone who has actually made a change in the world, they did it by knowing the rules and knowing how to play the game.
Getting mad at calling Mamdani a smart politician is like getting mad at MLK for choosing Rosa Parks for the bus boycott symbol instead of the first woman who refused to give up her seat.
He didn’t say “smart politician.” He said “political operator” which has a distinctly more negative connotation.
Now you’re just splitting hairs.
Well fuck me for understanding language, I guess!
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Since when does it have a negative connotation?
Since forever. Search for it if you don’t believe me, and count how many negative instances vs. positive instances you find in the results.
I did and the results showed it as just a basic term to describe an occupation in politics.
None of the examples here have it as a pejorative:
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/political-operative
Here’s an Atlantic article about political operatives and what they do, nothing negative about the term per se:
Here’s a blurb on Georgetown’s site referring to a political operative as a regular job stream in politics:
https://politics.georgetown.edu/get-involved2/advance-team/
Here’s a guy who’s calling himself a political operative just fine:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2t2sxk/iama_political_operative_ama/
So where did you get the idea that being called a political operative is a negative thing?
None of the examples here have it as a pejorative:
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/political-operative
WTF? Since when are these not negative?
As well as ending his party’s decade in the political wilderness, it cemented his reputation as a no-holds-barred political operative. — Globe and Mail
Are you going to argue that “no-holds-barred” – as in, fighting dirty – isn’t negative?
But when a police chief crosses that line and becomes a political operative, the system provides little control and no remedy. — Times, Sunday Times
Are you going to argue that the system providing little control and no remedy isn’t a bad thing?
The other three examples are too out-of-context to know if they were complimentary or derogatory.
Here’s an Atlantic article about political operatives and what they do, nothing negative about the term per se:
The article is mostly paywalled, but here’s a salient sentence from the first paragraph where it admits I’m right:
It’s good for a chuckle, although it’s wishful thinking to believe the public imagines political operatives and staffers to be like The West Wing. They’ve probably got a bleaker impression than that…
The other two things you cited are from self-described “political operatives” themselves, and of course nobody believes themself to be the villain!
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Mamdani is a relatively left-wing Muslim and non-white politician in America. It’s not cynical to say that he needs to be a smooth political operator, because if he isn’t he won’t survive.
And if he does fail, he’ll be replaced with a candidate who is almost certainly worse, and leave left-wing politics and colleagues in a worse position.
It’s not fair that the president is a rapist, while Mamdani can’t make even the slightest misstep (or something that can be portrayed as such), but that’s American politics. The deck is stacked.
Yeah, this is quite the opposite to cynical. Progressives cannot deliver material good for people unless they gain and maintain power.
It’s not cynical to say that he needs to be a smooth political operator,
It is always cynical to describe someone as a “political operator,” because that phrase is inherently negative. It describes someone who is manipulative in a selfishly power-seeking way.
Being good at politics is not the same thing as being a “political operator.” I totally agree Mamdani is the former, but I vehemently disagree that this act is evidence of the latter!
It describes someone who is manipulative in a selfishly power-seeking way.
Not necessarily:
It describes how you achieve your aims, not necessarily what your aims are. Of course, given this is politics we’re talking about, it’s understandable you took it to be necessarily negative.
A “smooth operator” isn’t the same thing as a “political operator” either. The original commenter didn’t say “smooth;” you added that yourself.
You’re right about the smooth bit. Don’t know how that happened.
In any case, operator isn’t necessarily negative, neither is political operator. It can be and often is, but not necessarily. I often see it being used as a compliment.
I did a google, here’s an example from NPR, which is clearly complimentary:
Street — who calls Obama “one of the biggest celebrities on the planet at the moment” — notes that he is “always able to put a distance between himself and whatever performance he’s giving. He knows he’s playing a game. He knows this is a bit of light relief, a bit of entertainment, but he keeps his dignity … and that seems to me a very clever trick. It speaks to him as a very sharp political operator.”
In any case, operator isn’t necessarily negative, neither is political operator. It can be and often is [negative], but not necessarily.
It usually is, as in, more often than not.
Pretty much the only times I see it used as a compliment are from political wonks (e.g. the article you cited) or other politicians… in other words, people so deep in it they don’t understand how much contempt normal people have for politicians, on average. To a normal person, “political operator” (not just “operator;” “political operator” specifically) is negative.
Yeah, better words could have been chosen for sure 😄
He IS really good at his two jobs (governing to benefit the people and winning over hearts and minds), though, which is fucking GREAT!
Usually only far right ghouls, ideology-challenged “centrists” and other people on the wrong side of history are extremely skilled at the strategic parts.
It’s fucking great to have a politician with progressive goals and policies who’s not just skilled enough to avoid the duopoly propaganda machine burying him (which is already better than 99% of progressive politicians), but actually succeeds in dominating the narrative himself WITHOUT having to stoop to their level by feeding the people lies and convenient omissions of important information!
I’d like to vote for amending the Constitution so that non-US-born citizens can become president so he can run for office.
I get it, but i honestly think that a big reason the establishment didn’t come at him harder was that he wasn’t a threat to most establishment careers.
If he’d have been US-born, i think they’d have put more effort into coming for his reputation.
The DNC running a whole ass 3rd party spoiler candidate wasn’t coming for him?
Replace First-past-the-post voting, let the people vote how they want. Tired of these cowards gatekeeping us from having real options.
“More effort” isn’t “didn’t come for him”
Think about how much airtime national news outlets have been giving to El Sayed being friends with Hasan Piker, vs those dumb placards that Nepo baby running against Mamdani had (i forget the name).
Probably tens of millions of dollars in just anchor-person salary spent on talking nonsense on El Sayed and his ethnicity, vs making a poster with skin and beard darkening (of Zohran).
Honestly i thought they’d just be waiting, sharpening their knives so they could just tie up everything he tried to do as Mayor and then use him as an example of the failures of socialism.
But yeah all quiet on that front so far.
Then you’d get Musk and the rest running, too.
Then you’d get Musk and the rest running, too.
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Renames country and everything in it to “X”
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Entire world’s missiles target the country by default. 😬
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Musk already ran the country for a while. He doesn’t worry about minor things like laws.
He doesn’t worry about minor things like laws.
Or law things about minors.
Mamdani/Mangione 2032
We can’t even get a woman elected you think an immigrant would ever have a chance?
Arnold Schwarzenegger could probably win
Yes.
If we’ve learned anything from Trump, it’s that a president doesn’t need to fit a specific mould. He’s a billionaire from NYC, yet look at his core supporters. If a wealthy orange pedo from NYC can get the rural Alabama vote, Mamdani could get any vote
Hillary and Kamala both ran dogshit campaigns. They didn’t lose because Americans are sexist (not that that helped). They lost because they wasted their money on tv adds and had fuck all ground game, they had a shitty platform that appealed to no one, and because the DNC sabotaged better candidates.
So yes, I do think an immigrant with charisma and a platform and a modern campaign strategy would win.
They also lost because they are corporate Democrats and people are seeing the game.
No real punishments issued to any Republicans from Democrats
No “fight” in them, they always lose on some technicality
Kamala will laugh and joke and touch elbows with the lowest of pedophile protectors when she thinks she is not on camera.
Every chance they get to fight MAGA with the progressive left, they choose to attack the LEFT
Hakeem Jeffries just had a secret meeting with Jared Kushner to discuss, in Hakeem’s “view”, affordability.
Biden appointed a pedophile party member to “punish” the alpha pedophile for a COUP, AND THEY WOULDNT DO IT
HOW MANY SPECIAL PROSECUTORS HAVE WE HAD THAT LED TO NOTHING?
HOW MANY CORPORATE DEMOCRATS ARE ACTUALLY JUST PAID FOREIGN AGENTS OF THE GOVERNMENT THAT IS OCCUPYING US?
THIS MAKES THEM PEDOPHILE PROTECTONG TRAITORS AND WE ALL KNOW WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN TO PEDOPHILIC TRAITORS
NOTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE WITH THE ISRAELIS AND CORPORATIONS IN CHARGE OF EVERYTHING.
Just say you support Republicans already and fuck off
Are you afraid that if people were free to transfer their vote if their first choice didn’t win, that the democrats wouldnt be able to compete on a even playing field?
Try checking my comment history, numbnuts.
Just say you are an Israeli shill
I second this, if Trump can wipe his ass with the constitution then fuck it throw it out it worthless. He runs for president I donate, knock doors get as many signatures required to get him elected as president.
Regardless of Trump, I don’t see the big deal with being born in the US. Mamdani is doing amazing things for NYC. Why is that okay but not the nation itself?
It all boils down to a paranoia that happened early on that a prez might give USA back to the British
But what about our precious and unassailable “checks and balances”?
You misspelled cheques and balance books, and those are still just as much a core part of American politics as ever, I’ve heard America is for sale, and you can get a good deal on it.
Honestly, probably just security clearance. We already don’t let people who are a citizen of another nation have access to certain info or industry.
Yeah that only applies to non-oligarchs. Elon Musk has and has direct control of vital US military assets for which he can turn on and off at a whim which he did to AID RUSSIA…during Biden’s administration. I remember some reporter asked about revoking his clearance and nationalising those assets and they were just like “naaah we ain’t doing that.” They acted as if Musk was exercising his sacred god given rights when he cut those drones of and how dare we puny creatures question those rights.
And Netanyahu, a foreign head of state can apparently just come and go as he pleases when it comes to “top secret” war rooms.
So yeah it’s a joke. Security clearances, treason charges, those are for little people.
So… Are we arresting Rudy Guiliani or are we not? Come on already put that walking corpse in the tombs before liver failure does it for us.
Be serious, the whole pedophile clan is still up and ready for another binge, even after tons of evidence have mounted up.
It makes me so incredibly happy that he released this info, but I can totally understand why every single administration before him continued the coverup on this. The legal shitstorm that this will unleash…
Its one of the worst parts of electing dodgy officials, if later admins tidy up their mess they end up taking the rap themselves while the culprits have no consequences. Imagine the mountain of litigation from abuse of power by the trump admin, but they won’t be accountable for it themselves
Yeah, exactly. It takes real courage to do what Mamdani did; despite the fact that he’s the one who pulled back the veil on this thing, he’s going to be remembered as the mayor who cost NYC a shit load of money. It’s very likely that no negative consequences are going to befall anybody who covered this shit up (well, maybe for Giuliani, but it’ll probably be post-mortem, or at least too late to make any difference). But every other mayor and elected official between then and now is going to skate. But Mamdani will be tarnished by it. It’s so fucked up and backwards. All of the previous admin officials will essentially be rewarded for being cowards.
I think he’s able to take this hit thanks to the goodwill he has built up already, and this choice will be rewarded by his electorate. Political capital is made to be spent.
The only people who will mentally put this down as ‘cost NYC a lot of money’ are already lost causes who are only looking for ways to harm him. If it wasn’t this, they would invent something else a la tan suit.
A friend broke this story to me saying “Mamdani just revealed a 25 year old 9/11 government conspiracy!” which is wildly misleading, lol.
But I’m happy there’s finally a mayor willing to tackle this; I’ve been aware of Jon Stewart’s work on this issue regarding first responders for decades because of his show, but it’s nice that with acknowledgement, there might be some help for the families suffering.
You know, it was a really horrible day, but in the end it was what it was. The air was poison, and I don’t think the first responders would have not gone in, they’re heros. But the fact that so many of them had some form of cancer or some varient after that, you couldn’t even not lie so they can get free medical treatment they more than deserve is fucking garbage.
They need to jail every single person who touched that report. Period.
The fact that Jon Stewart of all people has been the one to advocate for first responders on 9/11 to get the care they need is an absolute abomination to whoever was in charge during the events.
A TV personality should not be standing in front of Congress to tell them to help firefighters who assisted during 9/11 that they should get healthcare.
People think the USA is a joke because of Trump. It’s been a fucking clown show for well over two decades. If not more. Your country is an international embarrassment on unprecedented levels.
Superpower my ass.
Jon Stewart is a hero. We got the wrong “TV personality” promoted. :(
I’m not sure if the first responders comment is specifically around firefighters, but unfortunately their cancer rates are horrendous in that job.
Considering that Rudy Giuliani was the mayor at the time, this does not surprise me at all.
Funny, transparent government at the CITY level, semi-transparent government at the STATE level, and no-transparent government at the FEDERAL level.
The more power they have, the less they want you to know what they are doing.
Deeper water where the bigger fish live
Sharks don’t “infest” waters, they LIVE there.
Counterpoint: Trumps absolutely infest mar a lago.
I think your counterpoint is actually a point.
- To trouble greatly by frequency of presence; to annoy; to frequent and molest or harass.
Fuck. I was right. Fuck.
I mean, how could you not draw that conclusion? An uncontrolled demolition of a 30+ year old building that most likely contained materials that would not be allowed now, coupled with all the items stored in them as well as the jet itself.
To think that “things are fine” right after would be just plain delusional.
Keeping people away from the Financial District would have hurt a lot of big companies.
Letting people work the pile without respirators wouldn’t cost them for decades.
“That’s someone else’s problem” way of thinking from the government at the time
All we needed to know is that the twin towers were built using asbestos. It was standard in construction materials at the time they were erected.
I was a preteen living near (but not in) NYC on 9/11/01. I remember the fine layer of dust that covered everything for days after.
You know how your car gets covered in pollen every spring? It was like that every morning, except instead of yellow pollen, it was white/gray mystery ash.
Now I’m wondering if this is something I should mention to a medical professional.
Yeah I was kind of implying the asbestos but wasn’t entirely sure. That just makes it that much more of a point.
I lived down the street from the WTC pit for a few years in college, I remember that high-up surfaces like ledges above subway stairs and awnings above storefronts that were protected from rains often still had a thick layer of white-ish dust on them and it was always so eerie to realize that probably a majority of it was from 9/11, probably a certain amount of pulverized human bone in there…
People have stumbled upon undisturbed remnants of 9/11 in NYC as recently as 2013.
But Rudy Ghoulani said it was ok…
being correct sucks, let’s fantasize!
Have to change screen names now that you are sure.
I suggest “Secretary Uncomfortably Aware”
My thought was to go to “nowsure” as that required minimal change. Yours is good too!
I’m sure the city hid this so they wouldn’t have to deal with the costs, but this is the right thing to do and I’m impressed Mamdani did it.
That’s what you get for posturing like a jackass about not inviting a Muslim city official to 9-11 remembrance events. Good for NYC they finally have someone with balls.
