The ceremony at the World Trade Center site marking the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks will be a solemn but stately event that will include former President George W. Bush and a chance for victims' families to view the names of loved ones etched into the memorial, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

President Barack Obama and Bloomberg will be joined by the leaders in charge during the 2001 attacks, including Bush, former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former New York Gov. George Pataki. Current New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will also be there, he said.

Speaking on his weekly radio show Friday on WOR-AM, Bloomberg said the lawmakers will read short poems or quotes. No speeches will be given.

"This cannot be political," he said. "So that's why there's a poem or a quote or something that each of the readers will read. No speeches whatsoever. That's not an appropriate thing."

The mayor also revealed a few more details for the ceremony on Sunday, Sept. 11. It will be held on the highway to the west of the site, and only relatives will be allowed inside the memorial to look for the names of their loved ones, etched into the railings at two huge waterfalls built in the footprint of the World Trade Center. The falls descend from street level down into a void.

New terms mean company will be paid even when production is disrupted, critics claim

BP has been accused of taking a "stranglehold" on the Iraqi economy after the Baghdad government agreed to pay the British firm even when oil is not being produced by the Rumaila field, confidential documents reveal.

The original deal for operating Iraq's largest field - half as big as the entire North Sea - has been rewritten so that BP will be immediately compensated for civil disruption or government decisions to cut production.

This potentially could influence the policy decisions made by Iraq in relation to the Opec oil cartel, and is a major step away from the original terms of an auction deal signed in the summer of 2009, critics claim.

In this new Sott Perspectives podcast, Laura, Anna, Juliana, and Gaby discuss cults, cult accusations, and interview two former membernIf you are the victim of a cult or any other form of psychological abuse, you can learn more about the Éiriú Eolas Stress Control, Healing & Rejuvenation Program at eiriu-eolas.org

Running Time: 01:14:25

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When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood before the US Congress and said Israel -- a regime setup by stealing land and which survives off charity -- is "what's right about Middle East" and received 29 standing ovations from American lawmakers, he neglected the fact that the uprising against autocratic regimes were never meant to be restricted to the Arab world.

Since July 14, people have been gathering across Israel to protest against the rising costs of housing, with "tent cities" being erected in Tel Aviv, al-Quds (Jerusalem), Beersheba, Haifa and Kiryat Shemona.

They are also calling on the regime to curb the high costs of fuel, food and healthcare. The protests have exposed a deep middle-class frustration over the economy, presenting Netanyahu with his biggest domestic challenge yet.

Certain media outlets have tried to downplay the protests arguing that unlike the Islamic Awakening in Arab states, Israelis are not calling for "democracy" or an end to "state oppression" but rather they are protesting against the "high price of housing, food and other goods."

An unsettling pattern in law enforcement interactions has emerged. American citizens, innocent of a crime, filming a public servant performing their duties in public, have been targeted and had their constitutionally protected rights destroyed.

The cases continue to pile up, some more disturbing and egregious than others. One of the most shocking examples is the case of the Las Vegas man, Mitchell Crooks, who was brutally assaulted by an on-duty police officer for filming the officer from his own property.

There is video of the event and while you cannot see the beating, the sound and pictures of Crooks after the fact are unsettling enough.

This represents one aspect of this disturbing trend: some of these innocent people film the police from their own property.

In another instance of individuals being arrested on their property, a young woman named Emily Good was forcibly removed from her property and arrested for filming Rochester, NY police performing a routine traffic stop.

One of the nice things about having a Bill of Rights is that it specifically lays out freedoms given to the people and the press. The U.S. Constitution declares that freedom of speech and freedom of the press can never be infringed upon. Unfortunately, if you live in a nation where this is not clearly stated, you can legally censor media outlets without fear or repercussion.

Like all good stories about political satire, this one involves none other than "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart. In England, if you want to watch the program, you can either catch it online or watch the televised "international edition." This edition of "The Daily Show" airs once a week, and is comprised of the best segments of the previous week's shows. So naturally, when segments were being chosen for this week's installment, one of the highlights was the show's coverage of Rupert Murdoch's testimony before Parliament last week on allegations of phone hacking taking place at News Corp. tabloids.

The Obama administration's unprecedented war on whistleblowers suffered two serious and well-deserved defeats. The first occurred in the prosecution of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, who was accused of multiple acts of espionage, only for the DOJ to drop virtually all of the charges right before the trial was to begin and enter into a plea agreement for one minor misdemeanor. Today, The Washington Post -- under the headline "Judge blasts prosecution of alleged NSA leaker" -- reports that the federal judge presiding over the case "harshly criticized U.S. prosecutors' treatment of a former spy agency official accused of leaking classified material."

As the transcript of Drake's sentencing hearing published by Secrecy News reflects, Judge Richard Bennett of the U.S. District Court for Maryland was infuriated by two aspects of the DOJ's conduct: (1) after the Bush DOJ executed a search warrant of Drake's home in 2007, the Obama DOJ -- 2 1/2 years later -- finally indicted him, meaning he had to live with that cloud of criminal uncertainty over his head for that outrageously lengthy period of time; and (2) despite dropping all of the serious charges right before the trial was about to begin, the DOJ demanded that Drake be forced to pay a $50,000 fine as "a deterrent" (on top of the tens of thousands of dollars he spent in legal fees until he had no money left and had to use public defenders, as well as the fact that he was five years away from earning a federal pension when he was fired and ended up working at an Apple Computer store to support his family); to justify the requested fine, the prosecutor cited a $10,000 whistleblowing prize Drake was awarded earlier this year.

Israeli settlers have set olive trees in the West Bank village of Burin on fire, in another attempt to target a key product of the Palestinian economy.

On Friday, settlers torched the trees and later Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition at the fire trucks attempting to reach the scene, witnesses said.

The Palestinian Authority affairs official Ghassan Doughlas explained that the fire raged throughout the day as firefighters were unable to arrive at the scene, Ma'an News Agency reported.

Witnesses further said that the clashes between Israelis and the villagers erupted as the Israeli soldiers began firing rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas.

A spokesperson for the Israeli military said the soldiers had only used "regular riot dispersal means" to put an end to the clashes, stressing that they had not used live ammunition.

As we look back on the horrors of the dictatorships and autocracies of the past, one particular question consistently arises; how was it possible for the common men of these eras to NOT notice what was happening around them? How could they have stood as statues unaware or uncaring as their cultures were overrun by fascism, communism, collectivism, and elitism? Of course, we have the advantage of hindsight, and are able to research and examine the misdeeds of the past at our leisure. Unfortunately, such hindsight does not necessarily shield us from the long cast shadow of tyranny in our own day. For that, the increasingly uncommon gift of foresight is required...

At bottom, the success of despotic governments and Big Brother societies hinges upon a certain number of political, financial, and cultural developments. The first of which is an unwillingness in the general populace to secure and defend their own freedoms, making them completely reliant on corrupt establishment leadership. For totalitarianism to take hold, the masses must not only neglect the plight of their country, and the plight of others, but also be completely uninformed of the inherent indirect threats to their personal safety. They must abandon all responsibility for their destinies, and lose all respect for their own humanity. They must, indeed, become domesticated and mindless herd animals without regard for anything except their fleeting momentary desires for entertainment and short term survival. For a lumbering bloodthirsty behemoth to actually sneak up on you, you have to be pretty damnably oblivious.

The prevalence of apathy and ignorance sets the stage for the slow and highly deliberate process of centralization. Once dishonest governments accomplish an atmosphere of inaction and condition a sense of frailty within the citizenry, the sky is truly the limit. However, a murderous power-monger's day is never quite done. In my recent article 'The Essential Rules of Liberty' we explored the fundamentally unassailable actions and mental preparations required to ensure the continuance of a free society. In this article, let's examine the frequently wielded tools of tyrants in their invariably insane quests for total control...