Posts
You just must watch this film. A genuine research on 9/11, you just cannot still believe the official version after watching this. If you don't have time, watch at least the first bloc, which deals with the Twin Towers.
A version doubled to Spanish (single video, duration: 1 hour 45 min.) can be found at Vimeo.
World Trade Center (Twin Towers)
How three huge buildings collapsed in free fall in what cannot be but controlled demolitions with military grade explosives.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
The Pentagon
How the best defended military zone on Earth was breached, how an amateur pilot made impossible acrobatics with a huge passenger plane and how the airplane made a tiny hole and was nowhere to be found. How the defense protocols were changed right before and after 9/11 by Donald Rumsfeld himself and how all the relevant command chain was altered for the event and how all these ad hoc commanders got promoted and not punished for their failure.
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
The terrorists
Who are they? Who are Mohammed Atta, Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda? Who pays them? Did they do anything other than serve as decoy?
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
The investigation
Or lack of it thereof. And the frustration of the victims about this big lie.
Part 10
Part 11
Italian production. Credits in the last video.
Appendix: complementary information
1. Thermal camera film of the Twin Towers before they were demolished ("collapsed"). The scale at the left margin, allows us to estimate temperatures as not higher than 100 degrees Celsius, which is way too low to melt steel. While there are fires in the impact areas, the rest of the buildings are at ambient temperature, so much that they can't be seen when no fire is in the frame:
2. A new video from Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth explaining some important details on the demolition of Tower 1:
1. Thermal camera film of the Twin Towers before they were demolished ("collapsed"). The scale at the left margin, allows us to estimate temperatures as not higher than 100 degrees Celsius, which is way too low to melt steel. While there are fires in the impact areas, the rest of the buildings are at ambient temperature, so much that they can't be seen when no fire is in the frame:
2. A new video from Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth explaining some important details on the demolition of Tower 1:
3. Interview with Kurt Sonnefeld, former high ranking FEMA official who filmed Ground Zero after the attacks and who is now exiled in Argentina. Text format at Voltaire Net.
Update (Sep 12): Press conference by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
Full press conference available at Archive.org.
Key part with detailed scientific exposition of why they find the official hypothesis clearly false and the demolition hypothesis absolutely confirmed and also announces the formation of Scientists for 9/11 Truth and Military Officers for 9/11 Truth:
Full press conference available at Archive.org.
Key part with detailed scientific exposition of why they find the official hypothesis clearly false and the demolition hypothesis absolutely confirmed and also announces the formation of Scientists for 9/11 Truth and Military Officers for 9/11 Truth:
69 comments:
I must say I am embarrased for you, Maju. I would not have thought that someone with your critical thinking skills could buy into such absurdities. I patiently watched the first three episodes and a bit of the fourth, but I'm sorry, I was bored to tears, and tired of having my intelligence insulted. I refuse to take any more of my valuable time with the rest of this drivel.
If you go to the following website, you will see reproductions of photos that convinced a very intelligent but also very naive man, none other than Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator Sherlock Holmes, of the existence of fairies: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/doyle.htm
Here is an excerpt from the description of these photos:
"Photographic experts who were consulted declared that none of the negatives had been tampered with, there was no evidence of double exposures, and that a slight blurring of one of the fairies in photo number one indicated that the fairy was moving during the exposure of 1/50 or 1/100 second. They seemed not to even entertain the simpler explanation that the fairies were simple paper cut-outs fastened on the bush, jiggling slightly in the breeze. Doyle and other believers were also not troubled by the fact that the fairy's wings never showed blurred movement, even in the picture of the fairy calmly posed suspended in mid-air. Apparently fairy wings don't work like hummingbird's wings."
If this very sad but instructive tale doesn't impress you then I invite you to check out any one of the many websites promoting all sorts of crackpot theories. Here's a good place to begin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93McyHuSqhc&feature=related
You might also want to check out this website on controlled implosions, which discusses the theories you seem to believe in so strongly and why they are clearly wrong. The video of controlled explosion on this site shows the building collapsing from the bottom up, whereas the twin towers collapsed from the top down.
"I must say I am embarrased for you, Maju".
Guess then I should reciprocate: I will feel embarrassed for you too.
"I would not have thought that someone with your critical thinking skills could buy into such absurdities".
Critical skills... precisely.
Have you even watched the documentary and/or paid any attention to all the scientific data. There's a long list of personalities who are more and more bringing to question the official version. Why? Because, even if they may feel social and political pressure for not conforming to the propaganda, they have looked at the evidence and the evidence is simply overwhelming.
"I patiently watched the first three episodes and a bit of the fourth, but I'm sorry, I was bored to tears, and tired of having my intelligence insulted".
Are you kidding me? What's "insulting to intelligence" in that?
"... the existence of fairies"...
This sounds meaningless and mocking. What I am interested in discussing is the overwhelming evidence against the official version, very specially, as I think it's the most solid one: against the impossible free fall collapse of the Twin Towers and the mysterious building 7.
When people instead of discussing the matter turn to disqualification it may be for two reasons: either they are very angry and have lost control or they lack of any sort of counter-argument.
So please let's discuss the facts, which I understand that are very much overwhelming. Thanks.
For some reason, my original comment seems to have been lost. I will reproduce it here and in the next comment respond to you. Here's what I wrote yesterday:
I must say I am embarrased for you, Maju. I would not have thought that someone with your critical thinking skills could buy into such absurdities. I patiently watched the first three episodes and a bit of the fourth, but I'm sorry, I was bored to tears, and tired of having my intelligence offended. I refuse to take any more of my valuable time with the rest of this drivel.
If you go to the following website, you will see reproductions of photos that convinced a very intelligent but also very naive man, none other than Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator Sherlock Holmes, of the existence of fairies: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/doyle.htm
Here is an excerpt from the description of these photos:
"Photographic experts who were consulted declared that none of the negatives had been tampered with, there was no evidence of double exposures, and that a slight blurring of one of the fairies in photo number one indicated that the fairy was moving during the exposure of 1/50 or 1/100 second. They seemed not to even entertain the simpler explanation that the fairies were simple paper cut-outs fastened on the bush, jiggling slightly in the breeze. Doyle and other believers were also not troubled by the fact that the fairy's wings never showed blurred movement, even in the picture of the fairy calmly posed suspended in mid-air. Apparently fairy wings don't work like hummingbird's wings."
If this very sad but instructive tale doesn't impress you then I invite you to check out any one of the many websites promoting all sorts of crackpot theories. Here's a good place to begin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93McyHuSqhc&feature=related
You might also want to check out this website on controlled implosions, which discusses the theories you seem to believe in so strongly and why they are clearly wrong. The video of controlled explosion on this site shows the building collapsing from the bottom up, whereas the twin towers collapsed from the top down.
It seems as though my comments are not coming through on this page for some reason, though obviously you read my last one. I'll withhold further comment until you've had a chance to fix the problem.
OK, I see that my last comment came through (what happened to the first two?). I will once again attempt to reproduce my first comment here and then continue with a followup comment in response to yours.
Here's what I wrote initially:
I must say I am embarrased for you, Maju. I would not have thought that someone with your critical thinking skills could buy into such absurdities. I patiently watched the first three episodes and a bit of the fourth, but I'm sorry, I was bored to tears, and tired of having my intelligence offended. I refuse to take any more of my valuable time with the rest of this drivel.
If you go to the following website, you will see reproductions of photos that convinced a very intelligent but also very naive man, none other than Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator Sherlock Holmes, of the existence of fairies: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/doyle.htm
Here is an excerpt from the description of these photos:
"Photographic experts who were consulted declared that none of the negatives had been tampered with, there was no evidence of double exposures, and that a slight blurring of one of the fairies in photo number one indicated that the fairy was moving during the exposure of 1/50 or 1/100 second. They seemed not to even entertain the simpler explanation that the fairies were simple paper cut-outs fastened on the bush, jiggling slightly in the breeze. Doyle and other believers were also not troubled by the fact that the fairy's wings never showed blurred movement, even in the picture of the fairy calmly posed suspended in mid-air. Apparently fairy wings don't work like hummingbird's wings."
If this very sad but instructive tale doesn't impress you then I invite you to check out any one of the many websites promoting all sorts of crackpot theories. Here's a good place to begin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93McyHuSqhc&feature=related
You might also want to check out this website on controlled implosions, which discusses the theories you seem to believe in so strongly and why they are clearly wrong. The video of controlled explosion on this site shows the building collapsing from the bottom up, whereas the twin towers collapsed from the top down.
(Sorry, I forgot to include the link in the first comment. Here it is: http://forgetomori.com/2007/skepticism/controlled-implosion-on-911/)
Here again is another attempt to reproduce my original comment. For some reason this and two subsequent comments did not appear. This is what I wrote initially:
I must say I am embarrased for you, Maju. I would not have thought that someone with your critical thinking skills could buy into such absurdities. I patiently watched the first three episodes and a bit of the fourth, but I'm sorry, I was bored to tears, and tired of having my intelligence offended. I refuse to take any more of my valuable time with the rest of this drivel.
If you go to the following website, you will see reproductions of photos that convinced a very intelligent but also very naive man, none other than Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator Sherlock Holmes, of the existence of fairies: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/doyle.htm
Here is an excerpt from the description of these photos:
"Photographic experts who were consulted declared that none of the negatives had been tampered with, there was no evidence of double exposures, and that a slight blurring of one of the fairies in photo number one indicated that the fairy was moving during the exposure of 1/50 or 1/100 second. They seemed not to even entertain the simpler explanation that the fairies were simple paper cut-outs fastened on the bush, jiggling slightly in the breeze. Doyle and other believers were also not troubled by the fact that the fairy's wings never showed blurred movement, even in the picture of the fairy calmly posed suspended in mid-air. Apparently fairy wings don't work like hummingbird's wings."
If this very sad but instructive tale doesn't impress you then I invite you to check out any one of the many websites promoting all sorts of crackpot theories. Here's a good place to begin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93McyHuSqhc&feature=related
You might also want to check out this website on controlled implosions, which discusses the theories you seem to believe in so strongly and why they are clearly wrong. The video of controlled explosion on this site shows the building collapsing from the bottom up, whereas the twin towers collapsed from the top down.
And here is the link I inadvertantly omitted: http://forgetomori.com/2007/skepticism/controlled-implosion-on-911/
Here again is yet another attempt to reproduce my original comment. For some reason this and several subsequent comments did not appear. This is what I wrote initially:
I must say I am embarrased for you, Maju. I would not have thought that someone with your critical thinking skills could buy into such absurdities. I patiently watched the first three episodes and a bit of the fourth, but I'm sorry, I was bored to tears, and tired of having my intelligence offended. I refuse to take any more of my valuable time with the rest of this drivel.
If you go to the following website, you will see reproductions of photos that convinced a very intelligent but also very naive man, none other than Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator Sherlock Holmes, of the existence of fairies: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/doyle.htm
Here is an excerpt from the description of these photos:
"Photographic experts who were consulted declared that none of the negatives had been tampered with, there was no evidence of double exposures, and that a slight blurring of one of the fairies in photo number one indicated that the fairy was moving during the exposure of 1/50 or 1/100 second. They seemed not to even entertain the simpler explanation that the fairies were simple paper cut-outs fastened on the bush, jiggling slightly in the breeze. Doyle and other believers were also not troubled by the fact that the fairy's wings never showed blurred movement, even in the picture of the fairy calmly posed suspended in mid-air. Apparently fairy wings don't work like hummingbird's wings."
If this very sad but instructive tale doesn't impress you then I invite you to check out any one of the many websites promoting all sorts of crackpot theories. Here's a good place to begin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93McyHuSqhc&feature=related
You might also want to check out this website on controlled implosions, which discusses the theories you seem to believe in so strongly and why they are clearly wrong. The video of controlled explosion on this site shows the building collapsing from the bottom up, whereas the twin towers collapsed from the top down.
And here is the link I inadvertantly omitted: http://forgetomori.com/2007/skepticism/controlled-implosion-on-911/
Here again is yet another attempt to reproduce my original comment. For some reason this and several subsequent comments did not appear. This is what I wrote initially:
I must say I am embarrased for you, Maju. I would not have thought that someone with your critical thinking skills could buy into such absurdities. I patiently watched the first three episodes and a bit of the fourth, but I'm sorry, I was bored to tears, and tired of having my intelligence offended. I refuse to take any more of my valuable time with the rest of this drivel.
If you go to the following website, you will see reproductions of photos that convinced a very intelligent but also very naive man, none other than Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator Sherlock Holmes, of the existence of fairies: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/doyle.htm
Here is an excerpt from the description of these photos:
"Photographic experts who were consulted declared that none of the negatives had been tampered with, there was no evidence of double exposures, and that a slight blurring of one of the fairies in photo number one indicated that the fairy was moving during the exposure of 1/50 or 1/100 second. They seemed not to even entertain the simpler explanation that the fairies were simple paper cut-outs fastened on the bush, jiggling slightly in the breeze. Doyle and other believers were also not troubled by the fact that the fairy's wings never showed blurred movement, even in the picture of the fairy calmly posed suspended in mid-air. Apparently fairy wings don't work like hummingbird's wings."
If this very sad but instructive tale doesn't impress you then I invite you to check out any one of the many websites promoting all sorts of crackpot theories. Here's a good place to begin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93McyHuSqhc&feature=related
You might also want to check out this website on controlled implosions, which discusses the theories you seem to believe in so strongly and why they are clearly wrong. The video of controlled explosion on this site shows the building collapsing from the bottom up, whereas the twin towers collapsed from the top down.
And here is the link I inadvertantly omitted: http://forgetomori.com/2007/skepticism/controlled-implosion-on-911/
Here again is yet another attempt to reproduce my original comment. For some reason this and several subsequent comments did not appear. This is what I wrote initially:
I must say I am embarrased for you, Maju. I would not have thought that someone with your critical thinking skills could buy into such absurdities. I patiently watched the first three episodes and a bit of the fourth, but I'm sorry, I was bored to tears, and tired of having my intelligence offended. I refuse to take any more of my valuable time with the rest of this drivel.
If you go to the following website, you will see reproductions of photos that convinced a very intelligent but also very naive man, none other than Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator Sherlock Holmes, of the existence of fairies: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/doyle.htm
Here is an excerpt from the description of these photos:
"Photographic experts who were consulted declared that none of the negatives had been tampered with, there was no evidence of double exposures, and that a slight blurring of one of the fairies in photo number one indicated that the fairy was moving during the exposure of 1/50 or 1/100 second. They seemed not to even entertain the simpler explanation that the fairies were simple paper cut-outs fastened on the bush, jiggling slightly in the breeze. Doyle and other believers were also not troubled by the fact that the fairy's wings never showed blurred movement, even in the picture of the fairy calmly posed suspended in mid-air. Apparently fairy wings don't work like hummingbird's wings."
If this very sad but instructive tale doesn't impress you then I invite you to check out any one of the many websites promoting all sorts of crackpot theories. Here's a good place to begin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93McyHuSqhc&feature=related
You might also want to check out this website on controlled implosions, which discusses the theories you seem to believe in so strongly and why they are clearly wrong. The video of controlled explosion on this site shows the building collapsing from the bottom up, whereas the twin towers collapsed from the top down.
And here is the link I inadvertantly omitted: http://forgetomori.com/2007/skepticism/controlled-implosion-on-911/
I'm thinking that perhaps my first comment didn't get through because it was too long, so I'll break my comments into brief segments.
First, I suggest you visit the following websites and read very carefully what they have to say, because they do "discuss the facts" and the facts do NOT support the conspiracy theory.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/1227842
http://www.debunking911.com/index.html
Second, the theory is on its face patently absurd. I've read a lot of crackpot theories in my day, but this one is in a class by itself. It is truly what could be called a case of mass hysteria, encouraged no doubt by all the movies we've seen in which paranoid fantasies are presented as conspiracies by those "in power" and individuals experiencing psychotic symptoms are presented as heros bravely fighting "the system."
The theory is so complicated that it's difficult to know where to begin. Let's start by asking the question: who, exactly, do you think would have concocted such a convuluted scheme and who, exactly, would have had anything to gain by implementing it?
Another question for you: how many people do you think would have to have been involved in the conspiracy?
More: how do you think the buildings could have been prepared for demolition in secret, with no one noticing anything suspicious? Who could have done this work, and why haven't any of them ever come forward? WHY would the conspirators want to bother with such a complicated and dangerous scheme, which could so easily backfire, especially if they had already concocted an equally convoluted plot to fake terrorist hijackings and have planes slam into the twin towers. Wouldn't that have been enough?
It is very strange because I read your comment, albeit probably in email format. I don't think it happened before. I have it in my inbox. It said literally:
I must say I am embarrased for you, Maju. I would not have thought that someone with your critical thinking skills could buy into such absurdities. I patiently watched the first three episodes and a bit of the fourth, but I'm sorry, I was bored to tears, and tired of having my intelligence insulted. I refuse to take any more of my valuable time with the rest of this drivel.
If you go to the following website, you will see reproductions of photos that convinced a very intelligent but also very naive man, none other than Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator Sherlock Holmes, of the existence of fairies: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/doyle.htm
Here is an excerpt from the description of these photos:
"Photographic experts who were consulted declared that none of the negatives had been tampered with, there was no evidence of double exposures, and that a slight blurring of one of the fairies in photo number one indicated that the fairy was moving during the exposure of 1/50 or 1/100 second. They seemed not to even entertain the simpler explanation that the fairies were simple paper cut-outs fastened on the bush, jiggling slightly in the breeze. Doyle and other believers were also not troubled by the fact that the fairy's wings never showed blurred movement, even in the picture of the fairy calmly posed suspended in mid-air. Apparently fairy wings don't work like hummingbird's wings."
If this very sad but instructive tale doesn't impress you then I invite you to check out any one of the many websites promoting all sorts of crackpot theories. Here's a good place to begin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93McyHuSqhc&feature=related
You might also want to check out this website on controlled implosions, which discusses the theories you seem to believe in so strongly and why they are clearly wrong. The video of controlled explosion on this site shows the building collapsing from the bottom up, whereas the twin towers collapsed from the top down.
It's not something done by me. It must be some random error from Blogger. When I censor (very rarely), I say it openly (specially because I want others to know why I do such "authoritarian" thing).
"The theory is so complicated that it's difficult to know where to begin".
Think it not as a theory but as (arguably) scientific conclusions based on facts. Facts that do not support but actually falsify the official version.
In synthesis:
1. New York:
No skyscrapper has ever collapsed form a fire, and they had much worse fires (Madrid, Shanghai) than the Twin Towers. Also buildings do not collapse that way unless it is a controlled demolition.
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth have found evidence in form of remnants of military grade nano-thermite and they find that the video sequences and testimonies agree with a controlled demolition.
2. Arlington:
There is no evidence for a plane at the Pentagon. Actually there's evidence against (too small hole,for the plane supposed to have hit it, no remains, no hit for the wings, engines nor tail) and no images of the plane at all. No commercial airplane, much less piloted by an aficionado, could do what is said that plane did (acrobatic maneouvre, flying extremely low but still very fast).
In addition Washington D.C. area, including Arlington, is the most protected on Earth. But incidentally Donald Rumsfeld changed the protocols of interception a few days before the attack and made sure all relevant officials were not the usual ones that day. All these ad-hoc officials, in spite of failing to intercept the attack, were then promoted (and the protocol restored to the previous efficient one).
3. The "terrorists".
This is a less clear, more fuzzy, area. But still there is some stuff that makes to think. I won't go into it because it's not the key evidence anyhow.
Going through your links now:
Popular Mechanics (who are they? No "about us" page or anything)
"the WTC's structural integrity was destroyed by intense fire"
At the addendum of this post I included a brief infra-red film from the towers: the fire is clearly restricted. In the previous post I included one image of the Mandarin Hotel, a Beijing (not Shanghai, as I said before) hotel that burnt violently whole... and did not collapse. The video, as you probably saw, also includes references to a similarly violent skyscraper fire in Madrid with no collapse.
The WTC were burning only in some upper floors (and temperatures appear very mild), there's no way it could have collapsed. This is just the official version, an ad hoc version to hide the facts and, that way, use 9/11 attacks as pretext to launch total war in West Asia and, importantly, restrict human and civil rights in the USA and its area of influence (NATO, etc.)
More on this issue: if the building would have collapsed for what they say, only the top floors would have been affected. The rest should have resisted well. The impact may have damaged the structure but certainly not to the extent of causing a free vertical fall, exactly as in a controlled demolition, exactly as we all know and agree it happened.
For more technical details I'd suggest discussing with the engineers and architects because they are the most qualified ones.
Same site: on the Pentagon:
"The tidy hole in Ring C was 12 ft. wide—not 16 ft. ASCE concludes it was made by the jet's landing gear, not by the fuselage".
This is not understandable. According to the official data and released images, the plane hit directly the building (I know it's impossible but that's the official version).
"Blast expert Allyn E. Kilsheimer was the first structural engineer to arrive at the Pentagon after the crash and helped coordinate the emergency response. "It was absolutely a plane, and I'll tell you why," says Kilsheimer, CEO of KCE Structural Engineers PC, Washington, D.C. "I saw the marks of the plane wing on the face of the building"...
Nobody else has seen them. And that is precisely part of the negative evidence debunking the official myth of a plane hitting the Pentagon.
"Kilsheimer's eyewitness account is backed up by photos of plane wreckage inside and outside the building".
Where are those photos. We see only one and is totally inconclusive. Or rather supportive of the skeptic approach: no clear plane remains anywhere, no tail, no engines, no wings impact... Have you seen those alleged photos?
The other site doesn't seem to have much stuff not in the first one.
"The video of controlled explosion on this site shows the building collapsing from the bottom up, whereas the twin towers collapsed from the top down".
That is a good point I did never think about, however I've been watching now many controlled demolitions and there are all kind of possibilities, even if blowing the lower floor seems the most common (and simple?) method.
In any case, the WTC towers should have fallen irregularly if the collapse was caused by mere bent steel in some columns, not on itself. It should have bent and fell at least partly on nearby streets and buildings. It did not: both towers fell perfectly on themselves.
For what I'm seeing now, WTC 7 "collapsed" in a more typical controlled demolition style, blown at the bottom.
Watch for instance this video (a collection of controlled demolitions, including WTC) to find all kind of possibilities for a controlled demolition (most interesting ones are near the end).
Do you fully understand the implications of the theory you are defending, Maju? Do you have any idea of the resources that would have been necessary to plant explosives throughout both of these buildings, among the tallest anywhere in the world? And why? For what reason? Even if such an insane plot could be taken seriously in the first place, why would the conspirators want explosives to be planted throughout the building, all the way to the top (remember, the building collapsed from the top down)? All that would have been necessary was to plant explosives on the first floor. Once the first floor gives way the entire structure comes down. But that's clearly not what happened. So to defend this theory you need to presume that not only were they incredibly evil but also incredibly stupid, stupid enough to order huge teams of workers (all sworn to secrecy) to plant explosives all over the building to the topmost floors where they weren't needed.
As I understand it, it looks as though the jet fuel fire produced enough heat to seriously weaken the steel beams on at least one floor, which is all that would have been necessary. You have to realize that there were several floors above the floor where each plane hit.
Once that floor collapsed, then the weight of all the floors above it would have been enormous and could easily have overcome the steel beams under the floor below. As each succesive floor was reached, the weight coming down on the floor below it would have been greater, creating a kind of "chain reaction" in which the total force increases systematically from floor to floor.
This is the explanation that makes the most sense to me. And if you look carefully at the videos it looks very much as though this is what happened. While a controlled implosion might seem very similar, it would actually play out very differently, bottom to top rather than top to bottom. And as I mentioned in the previous post, there would have been no reason to create a controlled implosion since enough explosives placed in the first floor would have been more than adequate.
There are many things that may seem inexplicable in any complex and violent event. And it is certainly legitimate to question the official version if it glosses over some of these mysteries. But to jump from the questioning of a questionable explanation to the CERTAINTY that a vast conspiracy MUST have taken place, simply because you can't think of any other explanation is, to put it as mildly as I can, lazy thinking.
Such certainties are the mark of the crackpot, Maju, the same sort of people who insist that the ONLY explanation for things like the heart or the eye or the human brain MUST be some form of "intelligent design," because they lack the imagination and/or knowledge to understand that other possbilities exist and are in fact far more likely.
The explanations provided on the web sites I referred you to are perfectly rational, and just about every issue raised in any of the 9/11 conspiracy theories I've ever seen is covered.
And by the way, this includes a photo of part of an airplane at the site of the Pentagon attack. So why do the conspiracy theorists continue to deny that any such photo exists?
"Where are those photos. We see only one and is totally inconclusive"
One ought to be enough. How can it be inconclusive? You've been lied to, Maju, and you've bought into that lie. So for you NO amount of photos will be "conclusive."
No amount of eye witness testimony either.
Eyewitness: "I saw the marks of the plane wing on the face of the building"...
Maju: "Nobody else has seen them."
And you know that how? You've been told that no one saw any trace of a plane and now you learn that in fact someone did. You were lied to and now you are shown evidence of that but you refuse to take it seriously. Again, the mark of the crackpot.
"Do you fully understand the implications of the theory you are defending, Maju?"
While the understanding of likely controlled demolition is relatively new to me, I have been considering that 9/11 is probably an "inside job" since 9/12 or so. There were already facts not making any sense in the very day and aftermath of the attacks. For example, why would Mohammed Atta's father claim he spoke by phone with his son AFTER the attacks? Why did the BND, a serious secret service, think that Atta was linked to the Northern Alliance (enemies of the Taliban and hence Al Qaeda too)? Why was the leader of this Northern Alliance murdered precisely two days before the 9/11 attacks?
Or how could such a crazy attack be done at all on one of the best protected airspaces in the World.
And specially: 'qui bono?'
As time has passed a lot of evidence has been put forward, strengthening the suspicions and alternative theories. No evidence that I know has appeared that supports the official theory. Only a clearly fake video of Bin Laden which, by being insultingly fake is precisely evidence of the opposite, if anything.
"Do you have any idea of the resources that would have been necessary to plant explosives throughout both of these buildings, among the tallest anywhere in the world? And why? For what reason?"
That's something I have pondered a bit. I think there are two reasons for the demolition:
1. Hide evidence.
2. Make money: obviously in all this crazy plot some people are making good money and not just with oil and weapons. You don't easily get such a prime real state for building, much less 10 billion of federal subsidies. But this is just a branch of the plot, not the core of it.
"All that would have been necessary was to plant explosives on the first floor".
I don't know. It would not have supported the official version as well and maybe there was a risk that the skyscrapers would have fallen to their sides. Obviously, if this is a controlled demolition (and I think it is), it is a very good one.
"So to defend this theory you need to presume that not only were they incredibly evil but also incredibly stupid, stupid enough to order huge teams of workers (all sworn to secrecy) to plant explosives all over the building to the topmost floors where they weren't needed".
They certainly have enough personnel. These were not workers in the usual sense but secret agents. This is a military demolition with military explosives. A well trained and directed commando should suffice.
The explosives on top may have been needed for the building to fall correctly and not to the sides. Unless they were willing to risk a widespread destruction of many many buildings of Low Manhattan (and the people in them), they needed to do a very precise demolition. These were among the highest buildings ever, not your usual tower, and there was no empty terrain around them.
But I do understand the difficulty in believing that so many people was involved and has remained silent. Someone should have spoken out already, right? Well, maybe not if the implicated know they risk death or worse, they have no access to evidence and, specially, they know the media and institutions will pay no (or minimal) attention to their claims.
When the Pentagon papers were released in the 1970s, or when the Watergate scandal broke out in the same period, both the public and, very specially, the media were open to consider that the government may conspire and act anti-constitutionally.
But today the media is way too concentrated in few overly powerful hands, and investigative journalism in mainstream media is clearly dead. Nowadays investigative journalism is almost totally restricted to the Internet.
There are people and organizations that certainly do not mind breaking the law "for a good cause". This cause can be mere money/power or can be an ideology such as Zionism, classical Fascism or Christian Fundamentalism. There's no 'faith' anymore among the powerful on stuff like 'democracy', 'truth' or 'government responsability' - if there ever was.
The system is morally bankrupt and it's not only in 9/11 that you see that but also in other stuff like the Louisiana catastrophe. Millions affected, poisoned, a whole sea almost destroyed and almost no coverage in the media. If you want to know you have to read "conspiration theory" sites or what is a better name: research journalism sites (blogs and other).
"And it is certainly legitimate to question the official version if it glosses over some of these mysteries".
Good we agree on this.
"But to jump from the questioning of a questionable explanation to the CERTAINTY that a vast conspiracy MUST have taken place, simply because you can't think of any other explanation is, to put it as mildly as I can, lazy thinking".
If you read the articles I never use the term "conspiracy". I just think it was an inside job within the real power structure of the Empire, which is not really anything transparent (much less democratic or having "checks and balances"). There's a global Capitalist power network (some say a real world government but for me is more like world governance - unsure anyhow). The USA is key to it (as only global superpower and leader of the Capitalist bloc for almost a whole century) but it's not its residual democratic structures which rule the play, rather it is Big Capital along with some administrators, formally elected or merely appointed.
This kind of stuff happened sometimes, specially in Italy, in the 'lead years' (or the Reichstag fire by the Nazis, blamed on the KPD). But when the Cold War was over, the concept generalized. One of the leaders in this kind of "conspiracies" was Putin, who has several times used false flag attacks to strengthen his power grip in Russia and demonize Chechens.
Also after the fall of the USSR, there was less need to keep the populace content with candy like "democracy" and "freedom of speech". In fact the whole Cold War "welfare Capitalism" system is being demolished as we speak. And they can try to do stuff like this in order to rally people around an official cause such as the "war on terror".
It's been argued that other Al Qaeda attacks were also this kind of false flag attacks (many believe Al Qaeda is just a US secret services' branch, in collaboration with Israel, Saudia and Pakistan). But they did not muster enough support. A "Pearl Harbor" of sorts would do. It did in fact, at least for some time.
The whole discourse of "war on terror", meaning loss of liberties, increased police control and new military fronts in the strategic West and Central Asian region (Greater Middle East in official discourse) is still in full swing (in spite of promises Obama has only reinforced the Bush legal doctrine and praxis). Additionally the Islamist puppet-foe is sort of the perfect enemy, which cannot expand nor raise many sympathies outside the Muslim "ghetto" areas. And even if they could win (impossible but for the record anyhow), nothing would change in Capitalism as such. Much better than those sharing commies, don't you think?
Overall we are talking of a de facto coup, specially in the USA but, by extension, in all its area of influence: the Empire. A coup that increases police/secret service control, drastically cuts human rights and civil freedoms and creates the "right" atmosphere of irrational fear for a police state to grow.
It's been probably Cheney's and Rumsfeld's dream all their lives. These people after all were already active politicians in the 70s. They have been surely pondering this kind of mad plot since then. But the 70s were less merciful with such kind of coupists, them being exposed and losing power as result.
So they had to wait to the post-Cold War era.
"Such certainties are the mark of the crackpot"...
This is what I do not accept. The insulting remarks such as "crackpot". It implies that there are two categories: naive media-swallowing sheep and crackpot conspiration theorists. I don't think humankind can be split so easily in two. Much less in a case like this one with so much evidence against the official account.
"The explanations provided on the web sites I referred you to are perfectly rational"...
No. They are mere parroting of the official version. They do not really address the issues in most cases.
"And by the way, this includes a photo of part of an airplane at the site of the Pentagon attack".
Do you really think that is part of an airplane? It could be anything.
Just Google "airplane crash" for images. There's always clear remains.
Airplanes do not "vaporize" as is the case in the official theory of the Pentagon impact.
"One ought to be enough. How can it be inconclusive?"
I see nothing resembling a plane or part of a plane in that photo. We are talking of a huge airliner, which should be clearly visible. Nobody has seen it either before or after the impact.
It is clearly not enough. It should be not enough even for the convinced like you, as long as you keep some critical ability.
"So for you NO amount of photos will be "conclusive"."
I've been more or less following this matter for years and I am still waiting for a single clear photo.
"Eyewitness: "I saw the marks of the plane wing on the face of the building"..."
But nobody else has seen them. All what we have seen is a small hole, too small for an airplane of that size. No wing marks. Where are the photos?
You are clearly being naive here.
"You've been told that no one saw any trace of a plane and now you learn that in fact someone did".
Someone CLAIMS he did. Either he is saying the truth and key evidence proving him right is being hidden so we go paranoid and distrust the US government and its international connections... or he is just part of the "conspiracy" (I would not be surprised).
He's no random firefighter anyhow but a Pentagon official or something like that, right? The Pentagon was (is) totally surrounded by cameras. If there is visual evidence, it must be there. The fact that no such evidence has been made public in all this time is pretty much evidence that there is no such evidence as claimed.
I need to see to believe. The available evidence is clearly contradictory with the official version.
I am of the opinion that it was either a missile (something flying and maneuvering like a jet fighter was spotted in radars - but never intercepted, as the airforce remained on the ground and the anti-air batteries were never activated) or an explosive.
We all have been lied to... by the institutions. The difference is that I can see the contradictions, maybe because I was born under Fascism and hence I am trained by my more liberal relatives to spot such hidden info in media that otherwise tends to hide the truth. Reading between lines, they called it.
Instead you are sheepingly believing everything they tell you acritically. You even go to the extremes to defend that a meaningless photo with some piece of metal junk (from a bus? from the missile?) is "evidence".
I want clear evidence and is the least I could ask.
Maju, you are doing exactly what I've seen you time after time criticize others for doing: seeing what you want to see and ignoring everything else.
I provided you with the evidence. You've made no effort to refute it but simply dismiss it. Why? You claim it's because it's simply parroting the "official version" of what happened. But clearly any evidence in support of the so-called "official version" is going to be seen by you as "parroting," so in fact what you are saying is that the evidence is irrelevant. You "knew" from day one that this was an inside job and so any "evidence" that reinforces your certainty is accepted by you -- uncritically.
What is most disturbing in all this is the way it undermines the credibility of the left. When I listen to the ravings of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and dismiss them as either evil manipulators or lunatics, I am forced to remind myself that many of my colleagues on the left are eagerly falling for equally nonsensical theories.
I agree that we are living in a time when power has been taken from the people and handed to the oligarchs. I agree that Bush and Cheney are evil and deserve to be put on trial for crimes against humanity. But anyone attempting to prosecute them on the basis of this "9/11 Truth" theory would be laughed out of court and all their real crimes would go unpunished.
What a sad time it is for the US and in fact the whole world, when the only ones in a position to resist the forces of tyranny are wasting their time and energy on a delusion.
Please do a search on "flying saucers" and you'll find many websites where equally "compelling" and "irrefutable" ideas about aliens from outer space are being produced. And, of course, just as with 9/11, it is the "federal government" that is hiding the truth from the people.
"I provided you with the evidence".
What evidence?
I could see two attempts of discussing facts in this brief discussion:
1. The suggesting of whether controlled demolitions must start from bottom, which I believe is easy to refute and I have refuted it.
2. The poor attempt to present some alleged witness who claims to have seen things in the Pentagon's attack that we cannot see with our eyes. And we have not been able to see in seven years now! If there's evidence of any sort in this case, the government (and supporters of the official version too) are making a huge effort to hide it.
I say: I want to see that evidence before I can take such claims seriously. The available photos have nothing that would support such claims.
"But clearly any evidence in support of the so-called "official version" is going to be seen by you as "parroting".
You are not presenting any real evidence: you are just repeating the official discourse and presenting the LACK OF EVIDENCE that accompanies it usually. If the official theory had any evidence to back it up, we'd have seen it by now.
We have not. And that alone would feed all sorts of conspiration theories, right or wrong, because it is the lack of evidence supporting the extraordinary claims of the official version which are shocking to the intelligent critical mind.
It is only after you realize that the official account doesn't match not one but many facts, when you start thinking on alternative theories. If you are familiar with the scientific method, this is absolutely normal.
What is not normal is to receive a strange and inconsistent account of events, supported by very weak evidence at best and not raise an eyebrow. This is worrying, very much.
It is this lack of critical thought what I'd expect from someone who may believe in the creation per the Genesis or some other wacko non-scientific idea as that one.
"You "knew" from day one that this was an inside job and so any "evidence" that reinforces your certainty is accepted by you -- uncritically".
I needed first to digest the info a bit. Day two or day one by evening at least - but I would not expect most people to be so fast in spotting the inconsistencies.
I did not know yet it was an inside job but I began suspecting very early. This kind of attack and the way it happened is totally unprecedented and surely will never happen again.
Kidnapping a plane was already something very difficult, go figure kidnapping four and doing it in the very noses of the secret services and defense forces of the most powerful state in the World.
Let's assume this was done as said. They then had to cross some of the most defended airspaces on Earth to crash the planes.
Let's assume that NYC attack was done that way. They still took 50 minutes (almost a whole hour) to attack the Pentagon, the best defended airspace ever (in theory at least). Not an interceptor took off, not a single defense battery shot at the plane, the heart of US military was struck by some aficionado coke-addict kidnappers they sell us as Islamist militants, after doing impossible acrobatics with a huge airliner.
Should I continue? All or nearly all in the official version is absolutely incredible. Literally incredible (=not credible, not believable).
"I agree that we are living in a time when power has been taken from the people and handed to the oligarchs. I agree that Bush and Cheney are evil and deserve to be put on trial for crimes against humanity. But anyone attempting to prosecute them on the basis of this "9/11 Truth" theory would be laughed out of court and all their real crimes would go unpunished".
That would depend on the judges (who are certainly not unbiased). What matters to me is not judges' opinions, as it'd be nearly impossible to have a fair trial in a case like this, what matters is that people realizes how inconsistent is the account they are selling us.
What matters to me is to realize the lie because when you are living in a lie of such central dimensions, it has many consequences. Not the less important the suppression of human and civil rights.
"Please do a search on "flying saucers""...
Not my interest. I have read on many wacko theories and I'm not in any hurry to dismiss them. But many happen to be dismissable after all.
This is not at all the case with 9/11. We are before one of the biggest propaganda actions ever. Goebbels would be really proud.
In a sense, the more I know the more my admiration for whoever was the brain of this plot grows. But it's not any moral admiration, just admiration of Machiavellism. False flag attacks are relatively common and the USA has used them too (well known is the USS Maine case, for instance) but the megalomania and faith in getting away with such a huge criminal manipulation in this case really gets beats all records.
It's impressive but for that same reason very frightening. And it is this frightening, excessive nature of the manipulation what becomes, it seems, an obstacle for accepting even the possibility that the official account could make no sense. It's easier not to even think about it.
But truth is obstinate.
Just please, I'd ask to get focused on the issue at hand and not to raise other themes, like your attempt with UFOs, which are nothing but diversions.
DocG: "I provided you with the evidence".
Maju: "What evidence?"
My oh my oh my. What evidence, indeed. I sent you to two web sites containing very detailed explanations of literally every question raised by 9/11 "truthists," and you ask "what evidence?" The evidence presented on these websites, obviously.
Do you want to discuss it? Fine, I'll discuss it with you, piece by piece. Let's break it down and see if we can evaluate it. Since neither of us is an expert on such matters, our results won't be definitive, but I think there would be a great deal that could be learned if we did this. (As far as the "experts" are concerned, there are experts on both sides of the argument, so appealing to "expertise" alone won't get us very far.)
Here is another website, with more evidence that you will choose, no doubt, to ignore or dismiss: http://www.rense.com/general32/phot.htm
It contains the testimony of many eye witnesses regarding evidence of a passenger plane in the debris. There are also several photos. Admittedly some of these are difficult to evaluate, since, as explained on the website, the plane for the most part disintegrated in the explosion and fire. But there are some very clear photos as well.
There are other things to consider with regard to the Pentagon attack. For example, what happened to the plane that was alleged to have crashed into the building? Where could it be? What happened to the passengers in that plane? Are they still alive, do you think, hidden away somewhere? What about their relatives? What do you suppose they think about this. Are they too "in on the plot"?
Finally, what would the plotters have had to gain by aiming a guided missle at the Pentagon? What could have been their motive? Since the Twin Towers had already been attacked, wouldn't that have been enough?
"1. The suggesting of whether controlled demolitions must start from bottom, which I believe is easy to refute and I have refuted it."
How? If your intent is simply to demolish a building, then all you need is explosives on the first floor. Explosives on the upper floors make it easier to clean up the mess later. And also make it easier, I suppose, to make sure the buidling collapses straight down. But why would the plotters care about the cleanup, or whether or not other buidings in the area would be damaged if the towers toppled on their sides?
I've already presented a very simple and logical explanation of how the buildings could have collapsed as they did, from the top down, but you have chosen to ignore it.
"2. The poor attempt to present some alleged witness who claims to have seen things in the Pentagon's attack that we cannot see with our eyes."
See the additional evidence in the link presented in my previous comment.
What you are ignoring, Maju, is an issue of the greatest importance in this debate: burden of proof. I'm sure that even you would agree that, on its face, for someone unaware of the evidence, the "9/11 Truth" theory sounds extremely implausible, if not outright paranoid. While the "offical explanation" sounds, to most people, reasonable.
Therefore, if you wish to convince people that your theory MUST be the correct one, representing the one and only possibility, the burden of proof falls on YOU.
Yet, you act as though somehow it is up to the goverment to prove that a huge, highly unlikely and indeed very bizarre sounding plot did not take place. Why should they want to bother?
The burden of proof is on those who insist on a plot by government insiders and there is nothing even approaching such a proof anywhere to be found. There are certainly some very interesting and in some cases possibly unanswered questions that have been raised. And these should certainly be investigated. But questions are NOT the same as proofs, sorry.
"Kidnapping a plane was already something very difficult, go figure kidnapping four and doing it in the very noses of the secret services and defense forces of the most powerful state in the World."
So what you are saying is that a band of ignorant Arabs could not possibly have pulled off such a sophisticated, carefully coordinated attack, challenging a powerful military machine, controlled by the most advanced technologies of the West? Sounds like racist (and colonialist) thinking to me.
And I could easily paraphrase the above as follows:
Plotting a phony attack by Islamic "terrorists" using multiple airplanes to bring down major buildings in NY and Washington was already something difficult, go figure all the planning and effort that would have to go into the execution of a planned demolition of two of the largest buildings in the world.
"The evidence presented on these websites, obviously".
This is beginning to be circular. There is no "evidence" in these sites I can see. So please be more explicit.
"Here is another website"...
Rense is, I think, a "conspirationist" or at least highly sensationalist web site. The homepage right now is full of notices like "2012 horrific predictions", "buy silver before all goes down" and what seems to be a prank "Zionist Magazine (we rule you)" "telling" of 60 Israel-Jews arrested after 9/11 and other seemingly fake pseudo-antizionist-conspirationist material.
I'm not sure what the site is about but I'd take it with a spoonful of salt.
I tried to follow the links (to no avail in many cases) of your linked article. But the interesting stuff is in the photos.
Most just show general destruction but these some show engine or landing gear remnants and look good, specially as some of the gear is near the hole. Guess we can agree that there was some 757 gear at the place. But where is the impact crater or hole.
The only hole we see is one that officialists claim is made by the landing gear because it's too small for a whole plane, which is one of the main lines of criticism. However, if this is correct, then where's the main hole? Nobody has seen it.
The evidence is hence contradictory: on one side there are some remains consistent with the airplane hypothesis, on the other there is no hole consistent with that hypothesis. Not only that, there is no plane anywhere except in some debris which could (hypothetically) have been placed ad hoc.
The impact records released by the Pentagon (remember it's surrounded by videocameras) show frame by frame: 1. nothing, 2. explosion. The plane was not recorded (at least in these films) or was cut off from the film. The official version is that the plane went through two frames, what sounds far fetched, also even at the explosion frame there's not a sign of a plane: no tail, no wings, not anything. Yet it's clear that the only explosion happens at ground level where the only know impact is. The explosion could be some meters long along the ground level (no sign of 45 degrees collision) but hardly the length of a full Boeing 757 which is nothing less than 47 meters!
What to think? Missile? Explosives? The landing gear might have been placed there in any case. Alone is not enough evidence, as other key evidence is clearly against.
"What happened to the passengers in that plane? Are they still alive, do you think, hidden away somewhere? What about their relatives? What do you suppose they think about this. Are they too "in on the plot"?"
According to Italian journalist Pino Cabras, he could track some of those passengers (flight 77) and a surprising high number were miltary officers, spies or military industry engineers or their spouses. At least 27-36% were in that category, which can optionally include also politically-connected people like Barbara Olson.
Similar apportions are found in the other four flights. Meissan adds that Iranian journalist Hussein Shariatmadari (Director of the Kheyan press agency and spokesperson for the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution) told him that 75% of all passengers had high profile contacts with the Pentagon.
It's hard to know what happened to them or to the other 25% unrelated(?) victims exactly. They may have been murdered or as Cabras suggests only those likely to blow the whistle would have suffered that destiny and the rest are now living their lives under new identities.
Whatever the case I still do not think that the plane supposed to hit the Pentagon actually did it. It was brought elsewhere and done something with it. Other evidence is that flight 77's cockpit was never opened (so it could not be hijacked at all). The FBI also denies that was possible to make phone calls from the height of the airplane.
Some relatives may be on the plot indeed, as they were very well connected with the Bush administration. Others maybe not. It's a most intriguing question and I do not have the data needed to reply in further detail.
See also:
Japanese MP Fujita asking questions to the Japanese government on the 9/11 attacks.
Many other high profile people, specially in the USA, including members of the 9/11 commission and the CIA, have expressed serious doubts about the official version.
The "conspiracy theory" is pretty much "mainstream" today but it seems it has not yet reached the critical mass for the media to allow open debate.
"Many other high profile people, specially in the USA, including members of the 9/11 commission and the CIA, have expressed serious doubts about the official version."
I went to this site, read much of it, and have no problem with most of these statements. The 9/11 attacks were a huge embarrassment to the Bush Administration, the Pentagon, the FBI, CIA, etc. so it's not surprising that some of these officials might have wanted to hide certain things they know. There were very serious lapses in security and also very serious intelligence lapses.
It's also possible (though I seriously doubt it) that someone in the administration, possibly even Bush or Cheney, might have learned something ahead of time about the terrorist's plans and failed to report it, either out of sheer incompetence and laziness or possibly some other, more devious, motive.
So it's understandable that many people involved in the investigation might show some degree of skepticism regarding the official version of what happened.
It's even possible that there was a conspiracy of some sort within the administration, though I very much doubt that as well. And if this was the sort of conspiracy theory you were supporting, involving the suspicion that someone did something or failed to do something or was aware of something, I would politely disagree but would nevertheless respect your right to voice an opinion and have a theory.
But the notion that such a conspiracy could have entailed the full range of actions asserted by the 9/11"Truth" theorists, from phony terrorist hijackings to planned implosions of huge buildings to a missle attack on the Pentagon and a huge plot to cover it all up by threatening literally hundreds if not thousands of people with death . . .
Sorry, Maju, but you and your fellow "theoreticians" have seen too many spy thrillers and are letting your vivid imaginations carry you much too far into lala land. And for this sort of "thinking" I have no respect at all.
I understand that the plot is "excessive" and therefore hard to believe but that is what there is if we contrast the evidence.
Is it easier to believe that some not dead coke-addict "fundamentalists" who barely knew the rudiments of flying a plane with no idea of how to land, hijacked four planes and managed to crash three of them against strategic US targets including the Pentagon?
Is it easier to believe that this latter plane made impossible fly maneuvers for its type and made a "tiny" hole with no wing marks or anything? That no camera recorded it?
Is it easier to believe that the towers miraculously collapsed like in a controlled demolition instead of naturally bending to the sides and destroying a good deal of downtown Manhattan?
Is it easier to believe that the obviously fake Osama (right handed, with un-Islamic rings, very different face and specially nose) who "admitted" guilt in a video is the real Osama?
Sooner or later someone will leak some document for some reason and then the truth will become obvious.
I do not know all extremes of the truth but I am pretty sure that many aspects of the official version are not the truth at all and that it all stinks to an inside job.
I also think that while the obvious target was Afghanistan and taking positions in the Greater Middle East, there was another as important reason which was to make a legal and psychological coup in the USA and even worldwide. A coup to give more power to the already powerful (oligarchs and politicians) and take it from common citizens.
I cannot easily explain the organization of the plot though it's obviously linked to the Pentagon and the Bush camarilla of radical conservatives. This includes the Big Oil conglomerate, the Military-Industrial complex, the Republican Party, components of the FBI and maybe other intelligence agencies. Almost for sure a meaningful fraction if not all of the Zionist political direction, including probably Israel leaders and the Mossad. I am unsure about the role of Saudi Arabia and have no info that could support European or other non-US agencies.
I think that Democrats were not involved (or mostly not) but they are tied by their necessary loyalty to the system, many of its key sectors being involved to some extent.
Not sure if I'm expressing myself with sufficient or excessive precision in this because not much is really known of all this. But somehow a network of power centers was formed for this operation. Probably that network had already worked before in other comparable but less impressive episodes, so they felt safe enough to go ahead.
I feel the need to consider the Gladio case in Europe, which was (is still probably) a denounce supported by tribunals of a spies in quasi coups and real terror activities in Italy and all the rest of NATO. In most cases nothing of this was even allowed to be researched by the media. I remember that the director of Spanish magazine Interviú was fired for backing his subordinate journalist exposing the network. In Spain and most countries research was effectively silenced but not everywhere the consensus was so effective. It still haunts Europe (and Turkey where it's known as Ergenekon).
Gladio is relevant because the network existed in all Europe as far as we could discern and that may mean that Gladio exists also in the USA. The Cold War's ghosts are probably still lurking. 9/11 may be the result of "the American Gladio". There's no reason why such an organization would not exist at the center of "the Empire", the same as it exists in the periphery.
Some of the more obvious contradictions, problems and absurdities of the "9/11 Truth" theory, as I understand it:
1. If the plotters went to all the trouble of perpetrating a phoney terrorist hijacking and air attack on the World Trade Center, it makes no sense for them to ALSO go to all the additional trouble, and risk, of planting explosives throughout both WTC buildings.
2. Contrariwise, if their initial plot involved planting explosives to engineer a controlled demolition, it's absurd to assume they would then also carry out the equally risky phony terrorist hijacking. Why? To what purpose?
3. If their intent was to destroy one or both WTC buildings, then why not simply plant explosives on the first floor? Why would they have either wanted or needed to engineer a planned demolition, involving explosives planted throughout the buildings -- a monumental task in any case.
4. What possible purpose could have been served by an additional planned demolition of building 7? The fact that this building also collapsed strikes me as very dramatic evidence against the 9/11 Truth theories, since there is no possible motive for the plotters to have gone to all the additional trouble to demolish that building as well. The ONLY explanation for the collapse of building 7 is that the ultimate cause was due to the same factors that caused the other buildings to collapse: the air attacks and the resulting fires. Building 7 was clearly damaged as a result of the collapse of the WTC buildings (see explanation on the Popular Mechanics website). No other explanation makes any sense at all, since it's impossible to see any motive for the plotters to have wanted to destroy this building in addition to the others.
5. It also makes no sense for them to plan yet another attack on the Pentagon, not to mention a missle attack. If their motive was to stir up grass roots resentment against Al Qaeda, and justify an attack on Iraq, the WTC attacks would certainly have been more than enough. In fact an attack on a single building would have been more than enough. So why aim a missle at the Pentagon?
6. Assuming they did launch a missle at the Pentagon, why would they have felt the need to disguise the attack as if coming from an airplane? And go to all the trouble of setting up yet another (redundant) air hijacking, then hiding the supposedly hijacked airplane and relocating all the passengers reported to have been on that plane, swearing them and their families to secrecy? Why wouldn't they have simply blamed the missle attack on Al Qaeda as well? It's known that missle launchers have come into the hands of terrorist groups.
7. If the ultimate goal was to justify an attack on Iraq, then why not set up a plot pointing directly to Saddam? Why not make representatives of his Republican Guard the patsies?
8. High level officials of the United States government do not need to stage a coup in order to take control of the country. They are already in control. It's not that unusual for the US President to order attacks on other countries without getting the approval of either the Congress or the people. And if such approval is desired, it's not difficult to trump up some excuse, as for example with the Bay of Tonkin incident that justified Johnson's actions in Vietnam. If Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld wanted to justify an attack on Iraq they could certainly come up with an excuse based on something far simpler and far less risky then the plot dreamed up by the 9/11 Truth movement. This is in fact exactly what they did, when Colin Powell was conned into reporting to the UN that Iraq was importing steel rods that could ONLY be designed for use in a nuclear device. If they could justify their actions in such a relatively simple manner, simply by concocting a few lies and half truths, then there would clearly have been no need for them to plan and implement such a convoluted and dangerous plot, involving so many people, all of them sworn to secrecy? Why???
I just now took a look at the last video in the series, the report by the head of the architects group. He raises some very interesting issues that certainly deserve to be investigaged. But his conclusion that this evidence can ONLY be explained by planned demolition is seriously flawed.
One of the basic principles of science is Occam's razor, i.e., when confronted with a series of different theories equally consistent with the evidence, the simplest is to be preferred. Occam's razor is the basis for the rejection of an Earth centered universe and the overwhelming acceptance of the Sun centered Solar system as advocated by Copernicus, Kepler and Newton. Occam's razor is necessary because the earlier, Ptolemaic theory of epicycles can also be made to fit the evidence equally well. We accept the sun centered view simply because it too accounts for all the evidence and is a far simpler, and thus far more likely, explanation, especially since the epicycle theory must become extremely complex and convoluted in order to make it fit the evidence.
The gentleman making this presentation is an architect, not a scientist, so perhaps it's not so surprising that he makes the fundamental error of opting for the most complex and indeed convoluted explanation before considering even the possibility of much simpler explanations that might fit the evidence equally well, and would thus be far more likely.
(continued from my previous comment): I don't pretend to have all the answers to every issue this architect has raised, but I do see alternative explanations of at least some, which leads me to believe the others can also be explained in a similar manner.
Why, for example, is it necessary to assume that the residue of high explosives must be due to a planned demolition, designed by US govt officials as part of some devious internal plot? Why not consider the possibility that the explosives could have been stored in one of the WTC buildings, either legitimately or even, possibly, by terrorists who had not yet gotten around to exploding them.
Why not consider the possibility that the airplane hijackers might have carried such explosives with them, hidden in their clothing, as did the notorious shoe bomber? Since high explosives are frequently used by terrorists, this is clearly a much simpler explanation than planned demolition.
Why not consider the possibility that other terrorists, working in coordination with the hijackers, might have planted explosives at various places in the WTC buildings, and building 7 as well?
After all, we do know of an earlier plot involving explosives hidden in a truck placed in the parking lot of one of these buildings. Several people were killed and if the explosives had been more powerful they could have brought the entire building down --which was in fact the intention.
The unlikelhood of the scenario promoted by this gentleman and his colleagues, is far greater than they might realize. A planned demolition of the two huge WTC towers plus building 7 is extremely unlikely for the same reason that the Ptolemaic epicycles are unlikely.
In order to make such a theory fit the evidence, it's necessary to imagine an extraordinarily complex and convoluted series of events: a long period of careful plotting and planning, the recruiting of hundreds if not thousands of "operatives," all sworn to secrecy, the actual planting of thousands of high explosives througout all three buildings, which in itself would have been a gigantic task that would have taken either a vast force or a great deal of time. It would also have been an incredibly stupid plan, because given its complexity and the huge numbers of people involved, the chances of something going wrong or someone spilling the beans would have been enormous.
And I'm referring only to this one segment of the plot. What about the other segments, all the planning that would have gone into arranging the phoney hijackings of not one but FOUR separate aircraft, the recruiting of the operatives needed to make this happen and do it in such a manner as to deceive the world into accepting a genuine terrorist attack, etc., etc.
Sorry, but I must say that a sun centered solar system makes far more sense than an earth centered one, justified by absurdly complicated epicycles. And I reject the 9/11 "Truth" theory for exactly the same reason.
Good points. Let me address them:
"... it makes no sense for them to ALSO go to all the additional trouble, and risk, of planting explosives throughout both WTC buildings".
It makes sense if:
1. They want to clear all evidence. This also applies for WTC-7, which was, as you probably know a major intelligence headquarter, surely implicated.
2. They wanted to cause greater psychological impact. Not sure but certainly, while the planes' socio-emotional impact was already big, the fall of these symbols of US civilization was much more impressive without doubt.
3. A real state business was in the sidelines.
"Contrariwise, if their initial plot involved planting explosives to engineer a controlled demolition, it's absurd to assume they would then also carry out the equally risky phony terrorist hijacking. Why? To what purpose?"
Well, I don't know for sure. But the whole plot is "grand design" to the point of megalomania. I can agree with that and I'm the first one surprised of their bluntness.
"If their intent was to destroy one or both WTC buildings, then why not simply plant explosives on the first floor?"
I don't know for sure either. Maybe it was not technically possible because of the buildings' size and location. For sure that this demolition from top to bottom fits better with the "pancake" official theory, so maybe it's part of the original design also for this reason.
"... a monumental task in any case".
While the whole plot is indeed a monumental task, I don't see why planting explosives in the WTC buildings should be that difficult. I presume that a small highly profficient engineer team plus a special explosives unit is all needed. Surely less than a dozen people - with due security clearances, of course.
"What possible purpose could have been served by an additional planned demolition of building 7?"
I suspect you are not aware that the United States Secret Service, one of many "lesser" or rather less known US intelligence agencies, had and used part of the building. The Department of Defense and the CIA also had infrastructure in that building, along with less relevant (revenue, finance, immigration), other US federal agencies.
It's part of the "conspiracy theory" that WTC-7 was the place from where the conspirators managed the NYC operation, specially the controlled demolition.
Hence demolishing it, possibly an unplanned decision, was meant to hide evidence, maybe on fears that some could surface in the emergency intervention, after the building was damaged by debris.
Maybe this one truly collapsed (bottom is said to have been badly damaged by debris). I don't think so but it's not a central point.
Another mysterious building is WTC-6 (mostly owned by the federal government), also damaged but not collapsed, which shows what seems to be a huge void under it. Not sure what this means if anything but it's speculated that something is odd with that.
...
...
"It also makes no sense for them to plan yet another attack on the Pentagon, not to mention a missle attack. If their motive was to stir up grass roots resentment against Al Qaeda, and justify an attack on Iraq, the WTC attacks would certainly have been more than enough. In fact an attack on a single building would have been more than enough. So why aim a missle at the Pentagon?"
Ask Donald Rumsfeld, honestly. Many of your questions deal with the grand design of the operative and I nor anybody not directly in it can tell you about these details.
My hunch is that in the planning meetings they somehow decided that only attacking the WTC might not be enough (the WTC had been attacked before with not too big impact). The attack on the Pentagon would underline the fantastic power of the super-villain, able to scar (but not destroy) nothing less that the heart of US military.
The whole concept seems taken from Marvel comics or Bond films. They just had to put a turban and beard on the face of the super-villain. I have absolutely no idea how the meetings were but I can imagine them, somewhat high, "brainstorming" and then some efficient secretary-role character putting the pieces together and then the big bosses polishing some details and getting the plot to work.
"Assuming they did launch a missle at the Pentagon, why would they have felt the need to disguise the attack as if coming from an airplane?"
The plot demands it. How could Al Qaeda get their hands on a missile and, if they did, why not use them in the other attacks? However they knew that a real plane could not do the trick, so they used something else.
This is "Hollywood": special effects, a good story and some real gory blood. I wouldn't be surprised if some film director or special effects specialist was involved but the point here is that the spirit is that one: to create the most realistic illusion. As they say in Hollywood: 'our scenes are more real than reality'.
"It's known that missle launchers have come into the hands of terrorist groups".
But this was surely an air-ground missile, not the kind of missile you are thinking of. Not sure but I would think this to be the case.
Armed groups have sometimes obtained ground based missiles but I still have to learn of a guerrilla or terrorist group with an air force.
...
...
"If the ultimate goal was to justify an attack on Iraq, then why not set up a plot pointing directly to Saddam?"
This was not the ultimate goal. It seems obvious to me. The direct geostrategic goal was to take over Afghanistan and set a solid foot in the strategic region of Central Asia, bothering Russia, China, Iran and possibly even India.
It also opened the wide gate for military or other intervention anywhere in the Muslim World but Iraq was not yet the central objective.
As I said before anyhow, the main goal may have been internal, causing a panic that allowed the demolition of civil and human rights and further concentration of power.
Iraq anyhow came as an afterthought. I have read that it was Rumsfeld who first asked for it in the wake of 9-11 but, whatever the case, it was not clearly in the main plan.
"If Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld wanted to justify an attack on Iraq they could certainly come up with an excuse based on something far simpler and far less risky then the plot dreamed up by the 9/11 Truth movement".
Actually that was the case. They made up all that story about WMD and Al Qaeda links that was all lies.
I insist that Iraq was not the objective here but Central Asia and internal (and 'imperial') legal reform in the sense of a police state.
"High level officials of the United States government do not need to stage a coup in order to take control of the country. They are already in control".
Obviously they want even more power. Power to allow the corporations to run the show unopposed, power to arrest without the right of habeas corpus and a fair trial, power to spy private communications, etc. That would have been much more seriously opposed without the "threat of terror".
What they did was to create a mostly imaginary "terrorist" threat by some totally unacceptable fanatics (the perfect foe, even if it's a sockpuppet foe). This was not being achieved with the "normal" attacks (embassies, the other WTC attack) so they engineered something so grand and terrible that the public could not ignore it anymore.
First and foremost it is a psy-op. A psy-op directed against the people in the USA, the whole "West" and even the whole World.
Additionally to the panic created, which could justify almost anything, the compassion element was also important in rallying foreign peoples around the USA. Nobody dared to challenge in 2001 (or largely even today) the "right" of the USA to invade Afghanistan after 9/11 and the (unproven) association of Al Qaeda to it. Even NATO could be legitimately mobilized on the grounds of this being an attack against a member country.
"One of the basic principles of science is Occam's razor"...
But Occam's razor alone does not disprove the more complex theory. Occam is to be applied when the evidence is neutral (the evidence is not neutral in our case, take for instance the remains of nano-thermite) and the different options have clearly different likelihoods. Occam is no excuse not to do your homework, in other words.
Occam alone will not prove anything in any case, it's just a logical method of preferring the path of lesser resistance when in doubt.
Also my razor and your razor may not be the same. As I said above, it's important to understand stuff like Gladio. I suspect people in the USA (and many people in Europe too) have never heard of Gladio. However it's for real.
Gladio is indirect evidence in support of other such conspiracies, which are probably all part of the same network, broadly understood, of secret "governance" of NATO-plus.
Gladio is my Occam's razor and it allows me to see the conspiracy theory as at least possible and not just unbelievable by default.
"... when confronted with a series of different theories equally consistent with the evidence, the simplest is to be preferred".
The problem here is that the evidence supporting the official version is weak or null, while the evidence supporting the conspiracy is becoming overwhelming.
"We accept the sun centered view"...
Because it's easier to understand for kids. The reality is that Sun-Earth are a dual system with a barycenter that falls inside the Sun (because of the huge disproportion of masses) but this is not the case with Jupiter for instance, where Sun and Jupiter rotate around a barycenter above the Solar surface.
The reality is also that all movement is relative to the observer, hence the geocentric system is a valid solution in General Relativity. When you travel you move in relation to others but from your viewpoint it's the rest of the world that moves, not you. Your science seems to me slightly old-fashioned, proper of the Newtonian era. :P
"The gentleman making this presentation is an architect, not a scientist"...
WTF! Architects are scientists: they work with physics and maths (the purest types of science) all the time. They are not "pure scientists" but who is? Mathematicians? Philosophers maybe?
And who is going to know best about buildings, collapses and demolitions but architects and engineers?!
"... before considering even the possibility of much simpler explanations that might fit the evidence equally well"...
What can fit "equally well" with the fact of nano-thermite, specifically a type only used by the military, being found in the 9/11 dust? I would think that any other explanation would be rather forced but you tell me...
There's other quite direct evidence of the demolition. You may have noticed photos of steel pillars cut in 45 degrees inwards (towards the interior of the building). This is the kind of signature of a controlled demolition and something that neither the collapse nor the supposedly high temperatures could cause. Sadly it's not emphasized in these videos.
...
...
"Why not consider the possibility that the explosives could have been stored in one of the WTC buildings, either legitimately or even, possibly, by terrorists who had not yet gotten around to exploding them".
Because it's not only this piece of evidence. This adds to other evidence like the pillar cut shape, the free fall, the almost perfect demolition-style collapse, the explosions and flashes reported by witnesses, the video evidence of pillar pieces being exploded outwards, the lack of a proper explanation by the authorities, etc. All adds up towards the unacceptable conclusion of having the authorities not as benevolent guardians but as potentially dangerous enemies who care little, if at all, about the common people.
This for many people, I understand, is unacceptable: an extreme challenge of deep beliefs.
"Why not consider the possibility that the airplane hijackers might have carried such explosives with them, hidden in their clothing, as did the notorious shoe bomber?"
That would not have caused the demolition. And how would they get their hands on explosive with a military patent?
"Since high explosives are frequently used by terrorists"...
Not sure Al Qaeda but the "terrorists" here made their own explosives with aluminum dust and other stuff (ammonal). As they could not get their hands on TNT anymore, they began using a variant with even more hand-made ingredients (ammosal).
What you say it's not impossible but raises the kind of questions you'd ask yourself, what's the purpose of carrying those specialized demolition explosives (and not something easier to obtain like dynamite) in such a suicidal attack?
"Why not consider the possibility that other terrorists, working in coordination with the hijackers, might have planted explosives at various places in the WTC buildings, and building 7 as well?"
Might be but then why does the government insist in the false story (structural damage to pillars by fire)?
...
"In order to make such a theory fit the evidence, it's necessary to imagine an extraordinarily complex and convoluted series of events: a long period of careful plotting and planning, the recruiting of hundreds if not thousands of "operatives," all sworn to secrecy, the actual planting of thousands of high explosives througout all three buildings, which in itself would have been a gigantic task that would have taken either a vast force or a great deal of time. It would also have been an incredibly stupid plan, because given its complexity and the huge numbers of people involved, the chances of something going wrong or someone spilling the beans would have been enormous".
More or less yes. But why do I see no such a problem within Gladio or something like that? The whole structure was available before it was done, even if, as in any coup, some deal of conspiration is needed.
I'd say that the whole in-the-plot people could be less than 100, some half of them high officials, military or civilian, with command ability.
The rest is the plane operatives and the demolition squads, all highly specialized personnel.
I'm not counting here the airplane victims, but we don't know what happened to them. Some may have been chosen for elimination for whatever reasons (political for instance, likelihood of whistle-blowing) and others instead for new secret identities. Some may be random passengers, who were surely killed.
The overall preparation of the network was surely just the normal functioning of the military and secret services, including whatever Gladio-like structures they have. Some political clout like key members of "lobbies" (sometimes true political forces) could have been needed but guess that with the Oil, Military Industry an Zionist lobbies they had more than enough oligarchic clout.
This professional familiarity with the routines of secret operations also guarantees secrecy because those people had been working with each other before in less dramatic but perfectly comparable circumstances. Of course they all know that the price of speaking out is death or worse, it's all part of their careers as successful politicians, spies and military officers. Naturally only people of certain views were invited.
Anyhow, for the record, the Pentagon had been planning stuff like this since at least the 60s. So it's like they were waiting for such an opportunity, leadership (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, who else?) and "grand design" to be persuaded to go ahead.
I don't think I can add much clarity to your many doubts beyond what I say. A lot of more or less relevant details can be found in counter-info sites like Voltaire.net and Global Research. The information and (more or less valid) speculation available is overwhelming even for me.
What seems clear is that the "Truth" movement is gaining momentum, as key evidence like the nano-thermite is being known.
It's also clear that you have psychological or emotional barriers to weighting both sides with even scales. However it honors you that you have been going through all those videos and assimilating what the "conspirationists" think, say and what they know too.
I don't expect you to change your position overnight, maybe never. But I'm very satisfied already that you have looked at the matter in such depth. It's all I can really ask and I appreciate it, really.
Maju, in an earlier comment I presented a scenario that as I see it is a very simple and also very logical explanation of how the buildings could have collapsed the way they did, from the top down. In the Popular Mechanics website this is called "pancaking." You haven't yet addressed that scenario and I'm hoping you will, because it makes a lot more sense to me than planned demolition.
While many of the so-called "experts" who support the "Truth" theory have claimed that the collapses were "obviously" the result of planned demolition, I don't see it that way at all. To me it looks very different from a planned demolition, because the collapse is a gradual one, from the top down. A planned demolition would involve explosives going off very close to one another in time, on various floors, and at each of these points there would be a separate collapse. I don't see that.
And as I said earlier, the usual method is from the bottom up, not the top down. In any case I see no problem with the "pancaking" explanation and wonder why it's a problem for you.
DocG: "Why not consider the possibility that the explosives could have been stored in one of the WTC buildings, either legitimately or even, possibly, by terrorists who had not yet gotten around to exploding them".
Maju: "Because it's not only this piece of evidence. This adds to other evidence like the pillar cut shape, the free fall, the almost perfect demolition-style collapse, the explosions and flashes reported by witnesses, the video evidence of pillar pieces being exploded outwards, the lack of a proper explanation by the authorities, etc."
This is not a meaningful response. I asked you about the evidence of explosive residue. We can't assess evidence until we do it one piece at a time.
I agree that explosives the terrorists may have carried onto the planes are unlikely in themselves to have caused the demolition. But they could certainly account for the explosive residues that were found.
And I see no reason to assume that terrorists could not have gotten hold of US-made explosives, why not? We sell military ordinance to the whole world.
And if, as you say, building 7 contained US military offices, then it's not hard to assume they might have been storing such explosives there. And in the twin towers as well, why not?
The "almost perfect demolition style collapse" is far from perfect, since the collapses look to me nothing like controlled demolition. And why wouldn't we expect to see flashes and hear explosions in a huge building filled with all sorts of things for all sorts of purposes? Military ordinance may have been stored there, also propane tanks, gasoline, kerosene, rifles, guns, grenades, tear gas, all sorts of explosive items. There is nothing in any of these allegations that can't be explained as consistent with a terrorist attack, exactly as reported in the mainstram media.
And you know me well enough to know I'm NOT a dupe of the US gov't. I was born a skeptic and will remain so to the end.
"I presented a scenario that as I see it is a very simple and also very logical explanation of how the buildings could have collapsed the way they did, from the top down. In the Popular Mechanics website this is called "pancaking." You haven't yet addressed that scenario and I'm hoping you will, because it makes a lot more sense to me than planned demolition".
Some of the questions you ask I am not in good condition to answer. This for instance is surely best addressed by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (list of technical papers and articles, including a defense against your support site Popular Mechanics).
Mechanical Engineer Frank Legge argues HERE that the "pancaking" (sudden collapse initiation) was impossible.
HERE there is another one (MacQueen and Szamboti) that states that the "pancaking" was impossible.
There may be others (I can't read everything) but essentially the "pancaking" conjecture seems to be a fairy tale made up ad hoc to explain the collapse without the use of explosives, as was already being suggested in 2001 by explosive experts themselves.
"A planned demolition would involve explosives going off very close to one another in time, on various floors, and at each of these points there would be a separate collapse. I don't see that".
You can time them to very few seconds of difference. Whatever the case, what I nor many experts see is a normal collapse: that would have indeed have been slower and much more chaotic. These two "collapses" are too ordered to be a product of a mere accident. What the "pancaking" theorists are saying is that there was no delay, no resistance from the very solid bottom structure of the towers to the collapse. This can only be if it was damaged (sabotaged) in good synchrony (controlled demolition).
"We can't assess evidence until we do it one piece at a time".
The evidence is that there is military patent nano-thermite residue. You can't say more from the 'pure science' viewpoint about that.
Fit it in the reconstruction the way you best can. After you have confirmed the presence of the explosive, the separate section comes to an end and you go back to "joining the dots", to reconstructing the likely scenarios, for what you need all available evidence and not just isolated pieces.
"And I see no reason to assume that terrorists could not have gotten hold of US-made explosives, why not?"
In theory is not absolutely impossible (difficult but almost nothing is really impossible, right?) but this 'plan B' conjecture of you just goes very directly against Occam's razor, not just because of the difficulty to get them but the meaningless point of using these explosives in the plane attack (not to mention getting them in the plane).
Occam's razor suggest us that the lesser resistance path is to consider a demolition, what is supported by other evidence. Occam's razor also concludes that it is much more likely that such military explosives were in the hands of the military or associated branch rather than in those of some rag tag terrorists.
But in the end you have to consider all the evidence together and not just instances of it. Otherwise it's just the proverbial tree that hides the forest.
"And if, as you say, building 7 contained US military offices, then it's not hard to assume they might have been storing such explosives there. And in the twin towers as well, why not?"
In urban offices and not in regular facilities? It could be of course but in the whole context, where the evidence for a controlled demolition is strong for other reasons too, it's not what Occam's razor would deem best fit.
"And why wouldn't we expect to see flashes and hear explosions in a huge building filled with all sorts of things for all sorts of purposes?"
Reminds me of the relation of the building's janitor. When he told of explosions, they said it'd be kitchens' gas and he said that all kitchens were electric.
They were office buildings, not a military depot, and there was no gas infrastructure. I understand that you're grabbing the proverbial burning nail with those late objections.
"And you know me well enough to know I'm NOT a dupe of the US gov't. I was born a skeptic and will remain so to the end".
That's good. :)
Maju, you have no idea what Occam's Razor means:
"Occam's razor suggest us that the lesser resistance path is to consider a demolition, what is supported by other evidence."
If a theory can explain everything on the basis of a limited body of evidence, it is simpler, and therefore more likely, than one that requires "other evidence" to bolster it. If there is a reasonable theory explaining the collapse based on the consequences of the collision with the airplane and nothing more than that, such a theory will in all likelihood satisfy Occam's razor. A theory based on a plot involving at the very least hundreds of people, systematically planting explosives throughout three huge structures, without anyone suspecting anything, supplemented by another plot involving phony hijackings is NOT simple. In fact it is one of the most complex, convoluted theories one could ever imagine.
I read the response to the Popular Science article that you cited (http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/gopm/index.html) and saw nothing in it to change my mind. For one thing there is little to no evidence of technical expertise, mostly ad hominem attacks and a good deal of rhetoric, supplemented by high dudgeon and rage. When he leaves the rhetoric behind, his explanations seem simplistic at best.
Another of the sites you recommended (http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200703/Sudden_collapse_initiation_impossible.pdf) is emotionally detached and exhibits some degree of expertise, so this interests me more. They claim the "pancake" collapse could not have happened as it did and they make what looks like a convincing case.
But as you know from your readings in the genetic and archaeology literature, experts frequently contradict one another, and for that reason it's important for each individual to exercise his or her own critical judgement. We cannot rely only on the experts.
For example, here is a website filled with references to expert opinions supporting the "pancake" scenario: http://www.debunking911.com/paper.htm. In my next comment I'll offer some quotes from what these experts have to say.
From Structure Magazine:
"Previous studies have tended to focus on the initial stages of collapse, showing that there was an initial, localized failure around the aircraft impact zones, and that this probably led to the progressive collapse of both structures.
In other words, the damaged parts of the tower were bound to fall down, but it was not clear why the undamaged building should have offered little resistance to these falling parts.
'The initiation part has been quantified by many people; but no one had put numbers on the progressive collapse,' Dr Seffen told the BBC News website.
Dr Seffen was able to calculate the 'residual capacity' of the undamaged building: that is, simply speaking, the ability of the undamaged structure to resist or comply with collapse.
His calculations suggest the residual capacity of the north and south towers was limited, and that once the collapse was set in motion, it would take only nine seconds for the building to go down.
He added that his calculations showed this was a 'very ordinary thing to happen' and that no other intervention, such as explosive charges laid inside the building, was needed to explain the behavior of the buildings."
From a peer reviewed paper (http://www-math.mit.edu/~bazant/WTC/WTC-asce.pdf) from the JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING MECHANICS, by Zdenˇek P. Baˇzant, and Yong Zhou:
"This paper presents a simplified approximate analysis of the overall collapse of
the towers of World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. The analysis shows
that if prolonged heating caused the majority of columns of a single floor to lose their load
carrying capacity, the whole tower was doomed. The structural resistance is found to be an
order of magnitude less than necessary for survival, even though the most optimistic simplifying
assumptions are introduced."
This is a highly detailed treatment of the problem, filled with math that I can't follow. But if you insist on an "expert" analysis this one is a good example.
A detailed, non-technical explanation can be found at the following site: http://www.debunking911.com/towers.htm
In view of the many experts who have supported the "pancake" theory, it seems pointless to claim that planned demolition is the ONLY POSSIBLE explanation, whether such a view is propounded by "experts" or not.
When we forget about the experts and simply exercise our critical judgement, the extremely convoluted and on its face highly unlikely planned demolition theory has little to recommend it -- unless of course you are looking only for what you WANT to see and what you WANT to see is evidence of some elaborate plot involving hundreds of "operatives," sworn to secrecy.
It seems clear from the overheated rhetoric, powerful passions and expressions of righteous indignation characteristic of so many of the 9/11 "Truth" websites that most of the Truthers are more interested in self-vindication than truth. This theory has spread like a virus, and far too many have come down with what looks to me like a very serious illness indeed.
Take two teaspoons of common sense and call me in the morning, folks. :-)
It's not that I do not know what Occam's razor mean. It is that you think there is some evidence supporting the official version, which essentially is not the case.
In fact that is the core of the matter: an illusion of certainty cast by institutional and media manipulation is not evidence of anything: it is a religion.
"For example, here is a website filled with references to expert opinions supporting the "pancake" scenario: http://www.debunking911.com/paper.htm".
It's an interesting balanced article. It mentions the original author of the pancake theory and his calculations (no experimental evidence whatsoever). He said that "very ordinary thing to happen" however nobody knows of another such case ever.
But the article concludes explaining the alternative theory:
"The controlled detonation idea, espoused on several internet websites, asserts that the manner of collapse is consistent with synchronized rows of explosives going off inside the World Trade Center.
This would have generated a demolition wave that explained the speed, uniformity and similarity between the collapses of both towers.
Conspiracy theorists assert that these explosive "squibs" can actually be seen going off in photos and video footage of the collapse. These appear as ejections of gas and debris from the sides of the building, well below the descending rubble".
So it's not anything conclusive, nor it deals with all the details, as the pillars cut in 45 degrees or the explosions heard by witnesses and explained as impossible to be from gas.
Now, three years later, key evidence has been found supporting even further the demolition theory.
As Lincoln said: you cannot fool everybody forever. Eventually the case will be established as a false flag attack and as treasonous scandal of huge dimensions. However that this happens in the upcoming years in the tribunals and congress or happens one or several decades from now in the history books alone may make a great difference.
A comment of mine seems to have gotten lost. In it I mention going to the websites recommended by Maju and not being very impressed by the first, which is mostly rhetoric, but being more impressed by another, which treats the problem more technically and seems, at first, glance, convincing.
I then make the point that if we rely on the experts we won't get very far because there are experts on both sides and as we know the experts ofen disagree. So there is no point in appealing only to expertise. We must also exercise our own critical judgement.
I also made the point that Occam's razor favors those theories which require the least amount of evidence to support them, so when Maju claims that the planned demolition theory is supported by Occam because of "additional evidence" he is wrong. The "pancake" theory explains everything without the need for additional evidence. The opposing theory requires huge mounds of supporting evidence, until we are left with one of the most complex and convoluted theories anyone has ever seen. Occam would NOT approve.
"Take two teaspoons of common sense and call me in the morning"...
The jury is out. The key evidence of the accusation, considering that "it's the first time in history buildings constructed like this collapsed", so we have no idea of what to expect, is the nano-thermite.
Yes, this comment of you did not make it through:
Maju, you have no idea what Occam's Razor means:
"Occam's razor suggest us that the lesser resistance path is to consider a demolition, what is supported by other evidence."
If a theory can explain everything on the basis of a limited body of evidence, it is simpler, and therefore more likely, than one that requires "other evidence" to bolster it. If there is a reasonable theory explaining the collapse based on the consequences of the collision with the airplane and nothing more than that, such a theory will in all likelihood satisfy Occam's razor. A theory based on a plot involving at the very least hundreds of people, systematically planting explosives throughout three huge structures, without anyone suspecting anything, supplemented by another plot involving phony hijackings is NOT simple. In fact it is one of the most complex, convoluted theories one could ever imagine.
I read the response to the Popular Science article that you cited (http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/gopm/index.html) and saw nothing in it to change my mind. For one thing there is little to no evidence of technical expertise, mostly ad hominem attacks and a good deal of rhetoric, supplemented by high dudgeon and rage. When he leaves the rhetoric behind, his explanations seem simplistic at best.
Another of the sites you recommended (http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200703/Sudden_collapse_initiation_impossible.pdf) is emotionally detached and exhibits some degree of expertise, so this interests me more. They claim the "pancake" collapse could not have happened as it did and they make what looks like a convincing case.
But as you know from your readings in the genetic and archaeology literature, experts frequently contradict one another, and for that reason it's important for each individual to exercise his or her own critical judgement. We cannot rely only on the experts.
For example, here is a website filled with references to expert opinions supporting the "pancake" scenario: http://www.debunking911.com/paper.htm. In my next comment I'll offer some quotes from what these experts have to say.
Blogger comments suck these days. It's going to worse. :(
Maju: "In fact that is the core of the matter: an illusion of certainty cast by institutional and media manipulation is not evidence of anything: it is a religion."
It amazes me that, being aware of what so many qualified experts have said regarding the collapse, you still insist on seeing this as "media manipulation." To dismiss such analyses as "a religion" is pure rhetoric. Arguing in this manner, you lose all credibility.
I'd like to present excerpts from one more analysis, in response to some of Maju's claims. See http://www.jnani.org/mrking/writings/911/king911.htm#_Toc144445987:
"the web site How Stuff Works (http://science.howstuffworks.com) has a short section on explosive demolition that is informative, and begins with this description:
'The basic idea of explosive demolition is quite simple: If you remove the support structure of a building at a certain point, the section of the building above that point will fall down on the part of the building below that point. If this upper section is heavy enough, it will collide with the lower part with sufficient force to cause significant damage. The explosives are just the trigger for the demolition. It's gravity that brings the building down.'
It is the near-symmetrical collapse of the Twin Tower and WTC 7 that has drawn many lay observers to the belief that they were brought down by controlled explosive demolition – ‘implosions’ that could only be achieved by very skilled operators. Unfortunately for the CD theorists the skilled operators – those in the business of carrying out implosions on contracts worth millions of dollars – don’t share this belief."
There are many other bits in this very detailed and thorough rebuttal that I'd like to quote, but it's late and I'm getting tired. PLEASE read this, Maju. Not because it's written by an "expert" but because it is authoritative and makes sense.
"aware of what so many qualified experts have said regarding the collapse"
Only one! There are many others who think otherwise.
"To dismiss such analyses as "a religion" is pure rhetoric".
What I dismiss is the "certainty" when so many doubts have been expressed and so strong counter-evidence is available.
This is exactly what the media bias does: it casts one as the default version (article of faith) and the other as "conspiracy theory" or worse (heressy). That's how Gallileo was put on trial, remember? That's how the establishment of his time tried to silence inconvenient facts and opinions.
From the "Good Science" site:
"Aviation fuel, spilling through the building and building up pockets of fuel-air mixtures in confined spaces, would detonate as a stray spark reached them from the fires above".
This claim is inconsistent with the reports from many witnesses, as you may have seen in the videos that the towers were "normal" except in the affected floors. No oil would have spilled to the bottom of the building where the explosions were heard.
Your other links do not work (404) or lead to generic publication main pages.
"To many people the apparent collapse of the buildings at ‘near free-fall-speed’ is one of the most compelling arguments in favour of the CD theory. However it is also the most easily dealt with on scientific grounds. The fact is that the near free-fall-speed of collapse of buildings in controlled demolition is entirely due to gravity, and not to explosives".
This is misleading: it's due to gravity and lack of resistance. The lack of resistance is achieved by severing the main resistance elements such a pillars and columns by means of explosives. WTC 1 and 2 pillars were intact at least a few floors under the impact areas, they should have blocked the fall at least to some extent.
The symmetry of the fall is also illogical if caused by a chaotic factor such as the one defended by the official version, instead makes perfect sense in the case of a controlled demolition.
Additionally, and this could not be known by the Bad Science guys, nano-thermite signature has now been found in the WTC disaster dust, so the evidence is in fact accumulating in one side of the scales, the one of the skeptics.
"Jones imagines that explosive detonations were carried out low in the Tower buildings, severing the support columns, which then somehow ‘slid’ through the building while the outer structure remained in place, but achieving the initial drop of the North Tower antenna. He imagines that severed columns in the base of the building would somehow cause a collapse at floors 80 to 90 with no movement of the building in between. Any examination of the videos of collapse in conventional demolition show that once the lower columns are severed, collapse begins at the bottom of the building".
It may depend on which columns were cut. Obviously if there was a demolition squad, they have very good idea of what they were doing. But anyhow, these are very technical matters that we cannot solve. Best would be the architects involved to have a debate or several on TV or the parliament, so the most knowledgeable ones can discern who, if any, has the best arguments.
However I think that the confirmation of the presence of nano-thermite (which is explosive and not merely igniting) in the dust makes a very strong case for a controlled demolition by a military squad in at least one of the three buildings.
...
...
"But the key mistake however, is the idea that any building is demolished by a progressive wave of explosions either working its way up or down a building".
It is indeed a possible way of demolishing a building and surely the one that gives best control of the demolition if done properly. I have seen demolitions that are similar and the simplified demolitions that do not include this method, usually have good safety margins by the sides, so they can allow some errors, as long as they are not too large.
I'm tired too. I'm glad that you paid attention to the other side but it's obvious that you are not going to be persuaded. I don't think you can persuade me either: I have been noticing inconsistencies in the whole affair since "day one" and one should always ask in these obscure cases, "qui bono"?
"However I think that the confirmation of the presence of nano-thermite (which is explosive and not merely igniting) in the dust makes a very strong case for a controlled demolition by a military squad in at least one of the three buildings."
Here's a link to a refutation of the nano-thermite theory, written by Scott Creighton, who has described himself as a "9/11 Truth advocate": http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/more-bad-science-surrounding-the-nano-thermite-red-herring/
He's bothered by the thermite theory because he thinks it's giving the movement a bad name. Here's a sample of what he's written:
"Jones, Harrit, and Roberts [chief advocates of the thermite theory] have not submitted their paper, with samples, to independent labs for verification. They have not completed the discovery process by scheduling a presentation of their findings to a group of qualified scientists and allowing for educated debate and evaluation of their findings in the public sphere. Their paper was published in a journal that has questionable academic credentials, and was even cited as offering publication of a non-sense paper written by a computer. . .
The editor in chief of the publishing house quit after she was told about the paper saying that the paper had no merit and shouldn’t have been published by her journal. She also said that the paper was published without her knowledge and seems to have been published for purely 'political reasons'."
It seems that he has his own theory of how the demolition was done and the thermite theory is a problem for him. What this and all the other articles I have read tell me is that there are serious problems with many if not all the technical issues being raised by the "Truth" movement. Doesn't mean they are necessarily wrong. But it does take us very far from the "certainties" they continue to preach.
When we remove ourselves from the sphere of technical analysis, continually being debated by all sorts of "experts" and pseudo "experts," and examine the big picture, then extremely serious problems also emerge from the seriously fractured logic of the "Truth" theory (or should I say theories).
I've already described many of them, but for the benefit of those who, like Maju, are motivated by the conviction that 9/11 was part of an insidious plot or "coup" on the part of right wing extremists to extend and solidify their power, we need to take a careful look at yet another important factor: the aftermath.
First of all, if the intention was to stage the sort of "coup" that would give them complete power over the US, where are the signs that they ever took advantage of that power? Sure, they created a confused and inept "Homeland Security" force, but its efforts to intrude on the lives of Americans have been half hearted at best. Hardly anyone has been arrested or even accused of "sedition." There has been nothing remotely comparable to the House Unamerican Activities Committee of the 50's.
And yes, they have tortured prisoners suspected of involvement in terrorism (suspected usually for very good reasons). So have many other countries.
However: 1. There has been no attempt to declare martial law, which is the sort of thing one would expect in the aftermath of a power grab; 2. they permitted the next elections to proceed in a normal fashion -- martial law could have forestalled such elections indefinitely; 3. their party lost those elections, big time, and the opposition is now in control of the Presidency, with sizeable majorities in both Houses of Congress; 4. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have faded into the background and are rarely heard from -- their policies have been roundly criticized not only by Democrats but many conservatives as well.
So, if the 9/11 attacks represented a successful bid for power, what have they done with that power? Very little, it seems to me.
When the Democrats won the last elections so decisively I really thought that would be the end of the "9/11 Truth" movement. And I did have the impression, until recently, that the momentum had died down considerably. Why wouldn't it, when clearly their suspicions proved unfounded? But with the production of the film we can now view on Maju's blog, it seems clear that there are diehards in this movement that refuse to give up. These people seem to actually WANT to see a power grab when in fact there was none. Which takes us into the realm of sheer paranoia, I'm afraid. Paranoia for its own sake, which is very disturbing, since so many appear to be suffering from this very dangerous malady.
There are certainly many reasons to be upset and indignant over many things now happening in the political and financial realms and I myself have a blog in which such issues are considered -- from what I regard as a highly progressive, if not sometimes radical, position.
But clearly there was no power grab by any of those accused of a 9/11 plot. They are gone from the scene and others are now dealing, in their own way, with the consequences of their disastrous actions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I'm having trouble connecting to blogger's comments' gadget in particular but earlier had also problems connecting to Google in general. So I will reply fragmentarily and will try to be brief and synthetic (also because I'm a little bit tired of the discussion, whose complexity and technicality really overwhelms me past some point).
Wasn't in one of your best previous links mention of a device (thermite lance?) which allowed to use the nano-thermite as an explosive? I understood it that way.
I think the figures of 10 tons of explosive just cannot be correct in any case.
"on the part of right wing extremists"
I'm not sure we can call them that because ideology does not seem to matter much for many of them: they are essentially power-mongers, with a megalomaniac touch (somewhat justified admittedly, as they are on top of the global and imperial pyramid). There are surely some who are more "idealist" (in the Nazi sense of the term) but they are mostly pragmatics ('gone mad' if you wish).
But pragmatics of power, not pragmatic of popular policies. Ultra-pragmatics in a sense, as considering the people something better than a tool implies certain idealism (of the 'human' kind) already.
"if the intention was to stage the sort of "coup" that would give them complete power over the US"
As you said before, they already had the power but this allowed them to go one big step further, to consolidate it by means of consolidating a police state. It's the police state, the generalized fear, the powerlessness of the people, the greater absence of rights, what they want and to a large extent have already achieved.
If this were a comic or a movie, I would include here a shadowy figure with a super-evil mwahahaha! But it's no cartoon: it's real life.
And don't forget the global ramifications: Greater Middle East first of all but then also Europe, where nearly all what the US does is mimicked somehow. And other countries as well.
Would not be nice to have under your control a shadowy network of fanatic assassins, which you can use to destabilize China, Russia, India, Europe, Africa... but are nearly absent in your "island fortress". Then declare war to them (some of them) and force all those powers and smaller countries to align with you against this shadowy and marginalized enemy of all?
I understand that this is what 9/11 enables in fact. And this is regardless of how the exact details of the attacks were. It's clear in any case that the USA allowed the attackers to stay and operate freely and ignored Cuban warnings. This was no error, or rather a calculated, intentional "error".
What 9/11 does is to constitute The Empire, at least in a way (militarist, imperialist and totalitarian) that did not exist before clearly. This is the New World Order predicted by Reagan, this is nothing but the culmination of the Reaganist dream (rather nightmare for most).
Consider the Clinton administration a parenthesis. Parenthesis in Reaganization but continuing largely the same policies, just less strenuously and with a friendlier face. All the rest is Reaganism. And Reaganism/Thatcherism is not "extremist" in the old sense: it's pragmatic ultra-capitalism. The only idealism here is in the sense of idealizing capitalism. "Greed is good", violent power and social control seems also to be good for them.
In the end the real enemy is the same: the people, the left, collectivization, workers' unity... the loss of their extreme privileges as power actors. They are the global oligarchy and will do what they think best to stay that way. Establishing The Empire is a decision they took and could implement thanks to the Bush Jr. administration (though Reagan and Bush Sr. set the pillars).
It's an aggressive neoconservative middle class militancy what provides their "mass movement" (now it'd be the Tea Party, I guess). This kind of more "idealistic" movement may eventually derive to some sort of fascism but today we live in a different sub-age (we are much less disciplined and much better communicated) from that of classical fascism, so we are more likely to see something "new" in a sense. Not sure what but I don't like it already.
So far it's more like a semi-programmed degeneration of the conditions that the Cold War (the risk of revolution) imposed to the Capitalist bloc at its center (and even its periphery often too). Welfare, civil rights, quasi-full-employment, generalized affluence is being dismantled with limited reaction. It's a 'thridworldization' of the "First World" and some of it has been planned ahead and implemented. The "war on terror" is clearly so.
The reason is globalization, the tendency to push the popular classes further down so they keep up the profits even in face of competency from China and other less important powers.
And beating the Left to death is certainly their main goal. For that the fascist Islamist pseudo-foe has been, largely, forged. This began in the Cold War, of course. They can't win but are a convenient distraction and even if they won it would not matter, because they are "neocons" too.
"There has been no attempt to declare martial law, which is the sort of thing one would expect in the aftermath of a power grab"...
You are not thinking in the terms of these pragmatics. Martial law is a bad word, the diffuse but widely usable "anti-terror" laws is what they want. In this sense they have largely copied Spain, which has such laws since... almost since after Franco died. It's permanent "martial law" but looks much better on TV.
Yes, so far the political persecution has not been 'too heavy'. But it has been. I cannot accept your minimization of Guantanamo (which is the closest thing to a Nazi camp) nor the "rendition" network. I cannot accept your diffuse support of torture. Torture is not just absolutely unacceptable (it's worse than murder in my opinion, similar to rape or abusing children in any way) but it's also a useless way to gather information. Tortured people will just (in most cases) tell you what you want to hear. They'd declare themselves guilty of whatever and denounce their own mothers falsely.
Anyhow, you just have to wait till Palin wins the next election or (with luck?) whatever other Republican white elephant reaches power in six years, to see the worst of it. Maybe we don't have to wait so much and it's right now being expanded under the Democrats. I can't judge properly yet but the news I read as of late in relation specially to the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster are very much unsettling. Other stuff I read related to the Internet or the listing of "conspiracy theorists" in general as national security threat (go figure!) makes me shiver. However it may be too early to judge.
It's not a one day coup, it's a process of power accumulation. Creating that panic was part of the process, a key moment surely, but not the whole process. That's why you almost don't feel it.
In Spanish they say "ojos que no ven, corazón que no siente": eyes that don't see, heart that does not feel. You are not to see the "martial law" unless or until you or someone close to you becomes a victim. Or unless you actively dig for such information or someone throws it onto you, what you surely find uncomfortable and disturbing.
So far they don't seem to have felt the need to enforce it actively so much, though spying on 'everyone' is certainly a common practice. A practice that was not tolerated before for a good reason and now is however.
"they permitted the next elections to proceed in a normal fashion -- martial law could have forestalled such elections indefinitely"
They rigged them anyhow (again). What need for an old-fashioned coup?, this is The Empire, not any backwater country like Honduras. It's going that way but not yet.
"their party lost those elections, big time"
They won! Have you forgotten of the second Bush' term?! They rigged Ohio I think and won again. Bush popularity rose massively ("all with the President, it's an emergency, the country is at war with some Mideastern super-villain"). It gradually fell thereafter but he could face elections in good enough shape anyhow.
But do you really think Kerry, buddy of Bush in the Skull & Bones oligarchic youth association, the one that allegedly keeps the skull of Jeronimo, would have made any difference other than cosmetic ones. Do you think that Obama makes any difference? He is implementing the same anti-terror laws and has not even dismantled Guantanamo! He has even managed to suddenly get along with Israel again, in spite of some heavy offenses from Tel Aviv that the USA would not tolerate to anybody else.
After all Obama is media product: a smart and charming black "leader" co-opted by the liberal sectors of the Israel Lobby who had such impact with his "novel" discourse (he told you what you wanted to hear, what you needed to hear from someone) that he even commenced a 'facebook' "grassroots movement" of sorts. Sadly this honest "grassroots movement" has no autonomous organization and is not really able to demand from their "leader" (nor congress) the application of the campaign promises. Anyhow he watered down a lot his discourse after he was nominated already - I would not have voted for him probably, he became a pretty obvious Tweedledee already.
What is frustrating, surely for the grassroots supporters also, is that the "movement" does not retain any sort of organization and is not able to keep up any fight therefore, nor make any demands nor promote other candidates that could be honest brokers and defend the rights and needs of the people.
Otherwise swinging from Rep to Dem or viceversa is part of the political dynamics. This they are not yet in conditions to change and probably they do not need to do at all: they just control both parties and co-opt (spelled "corrupt") all new stars they can (or ostracize the ones they can't buy as happened with Cynthia McKinney and probably many others I don't know about).
"Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have faded into the background and are rarely heard from -- their policies have been roundly criticized not only by Democrats but many conservatives as well".
They are rich, they are powerful in the shadows (you don't need to be the President to be powerful, oil companies are powerful and they are not the President, for instance). Their goals as politicians have been achieved, many of their men are still around in strong positions, specially in the Pentagon, they organized the "war on terror" and can relaunch it maybe later if need be.
Also they cannot afford to be less "democrat" than Russia or China because that would affect the loyalty of their subjects, including potentially full vassal countries. I don't think they ever wanted to simply make an old-school military coup. They did not need that, just an important increase in police control and government powers, as well as an international scenario in which to play with some extra advantage and justification in spite of acting imperialist.
They rallied "the patriots", they forced nearly everybody to become "a patriot", even foreigners. In such optimal conditions you don't need a military coup, you just need to use the favorable situation created to increase the power of the state and the backdoors for whatever authoritarian intervention they wish. Even for a military coup maybe at a later moment but there was no need for such an extreme military intervention: the country was prosperous and content and it was strong and powerful internationally.
Maybe in the future but only when need be (risk of socialism).
I think we are both tired of this long discussion, so I'll conclude my end of it here. You can have the last word if you like, Maju.
Obviously I'm not convinced. But it's more than that, because we've disagreed before and it's never been a serious problem. This time it IS serious I'm afraid. Because the theory you are promoting, and treating as though it is not a theory but a proven fact, is an absurdity. Actually a series of absurdities, each more ridiculous than the last.
And in promoting such theories as some sort of "Truth," you have lost your credibility with me.
Your last few posts are an incoherent ramble, with no bearing at all on the matter at hand. Because nothing you claim is now happening can even remotely be connected with the plot that's become so important to you -- for what reason I have no idea, aside from sheer paranoia.
I also don't like being accused of condoning torture. You misunderstood what I said. I fully agree that torture is morally wrong, is a crime and also that it is, as you say, ineffective. On that we can agree. All I meant is that I don't see any connection between the torture of prisoners in Guantanamo or anywhere else and the alleged 9/11 plot. Heads of state have condoned and/or promoted torture for thousands of years and today is no different from the past. They don't need to stage a "coup" to justify such actions.
I'll add that you have NOT lost credibility with me when the topic is archaeology, anthropology or genetics, because on such topics I sincerely believe you can reason dispassionately, without letting your emotions, and prejudices (as in pre-judgements) get the best of you. On political matters, however, you HAVE lost credibility with me. And for me this is a serious loss because up until now I have agreed with or at least been sympathetic to almost everything you've written.
Enough.
Well, ok. Whatever.
Not sure if you are still following but, regarding my previous "ranting" about the motives of the coup (or whatever you want to call it):
- AP: unsupervised wiretapping was already sought by Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush Sr. three decades ago.
- Bloomberg: NSA sought phone call records (without judiciary supervision) months BEFORE 9/11. Bush Jr. would later claim the laws of exception were "required" by 9/11 attacks.
- Wired: Same story but adds that the only company that (allegedly) rejected to give such records (Qwest) went then into many troubles.
This is the kind of coup that was implemented (part of it) and that is still going on.
More:
This single-post blog documents with White House press releases and such, that an State of Emergency exists in the USA legally since 9-11 2001 until at least 2007. Technically (and at least occasionally in practice) those provisions allow the President of the USA to implement censorship and martial law, seize property, deploy military forces abroad, restrict travel, etc. This is the kind of legal backdoor that Hitler used to reach total power. Many "National Security directives" issued (signed, not conceived) by Bush Jr. under these extraordinary powers are still unknown to the public even by title and most are totally unknown in their content.
Many months after 9/11 the Washington Post confirmed that the shadow government emergency policy was still active. However in the same date CBS reported that the existence of these emergency measures was "unknown" to Congress.
I could confirm (source: the White House) that Obama extended the State of Emergency for yet another year in September 10 2010. The excuse is again "the terrorist threat".
The author agues that this has allowed the government to suspend Habeas Corpus, spy on US citizens without judicial authorization, not enforcing some laws at convenience, deputized corporations to act as sheriffs, trained religious leaders (pastors) to preach obedience to government. I understand that at least some of these anti-constitutional measures are still in practice.
Importantly the directives approved under Bush and ratified by Obama (notably NSPD-51 and HSPD-20) seem to allow the President of the USA to use military force inside the country by merely declaring an emergency (any pretext could do).
US Congress Homeland Security Committee was at least up to 2007 denied access to the contingency plans under these decrees. The USA is in practice being ruled by presidential decree and secret services since 9-11-2001.
But for you it is just a "rant".
Post a Comment