1000 Architects and Engineers
by BilboThere are now 1,000 architects and engineers who have signed a petition, saying they doubt the official version of events of 9/11, and calling for a new, independent investigation that considers the possibility of controlled demolitions. When I first discovered their site, in September of 2008, they had 470 A&Es. So it's grown a bit. Their two hour length video can be seen here.
They don't have as many as the 31,000 scientists who have signed a petition doubting man-made global warming. But give them 60 years or so, and they'll catch up.
My excuse for posting this thread is that it is relevant because it is rejected by the mainstream establishment and because it attempts design detection without knowing who the designer is. But if you're not interested in it or object to it, just ignore it and it will be buried in a week or so. And I promise not to post about it again until they get to at least to 1250, unless something spectacularly relevant happens.
January 18th, 2010 at 10:34 pm
Hi Bilbo,
I found your last thread on this subject very interesting. I am into competing hypotheses and open debate regardless of the issue.
Comment by William Brookfield — January 18, 2010 @ 10:34 pm
January 19th, 2010 at 12:26 am
So, what, the airplanes flying into the buildings were diversions?
And the Pentagon was similarly taken down by controlled demolition?
And the controleld demolition at the White House just happened not to go off because the plane carrying the detonators landed in a field in Pennsylvania?
What a crock.
Comment by Mung — January 19, 2010 @ 12:26 am
January 19th, 2010 at 3:15 am
How many are named Steve?
Comment by nickmatzke — January 19, 2010 @ 3:15 am
January 19th, 2010 at 8:26 am
Given the nature of the inquiry, and the history with "Steve"s, most likely all of them.
Comment by ID guy — January 19, 2010 @ 8:26 am
January 19th, 2010 at 8:30 am
I love the "sounds of explosions" before the tower fell!
Last year in the Northeast we had a terrible ice-storm.
Tree- full grown trees some up to two feet in diameter- snapped under the weight- "sounds of explosions".
IOW all the people heard were support beams snapping.
Comment by ID guy — January 19, 2010 @ 8:30 am
January 19th, 2010 at 9:23 am
As for design detection and the towers, I was under the impression we knew designers- ie people- caused the problem- both problems.
1- People flew a jet-liner into each building.
2- People did not properly insulate the supporting superstructure.
Comment by ID guy — January 19, 2010 @ 9:23 am
January 19th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
I think this has more to do with Bush-hating than anything. Had Obama been president when the towers fell, would these same people suspect him?
Comment by Daniel Smith — January 19, 2010 @ 1:01 pm
January 19th, 2010 at 3:58 pm
Part diversion, part making us think the terrorists were to blame.
The Pentagon wasn't taken down.
It wouldn't make much sense to blow up the White House without a plane crash first.
Maybe. Maybe not. The evidence looks pretty convincing to me.
Could be. But instead of falling over, these beams fell straight down, meaning they were snapping simultaneously.
That's the official story.
If Obama had delayed an "independent" investigation for over a year, until all the sites had been cleaned up; if he had started two wars, making himself look tough and getting a big Democratic majority in the next election; if his vice president's former company had received billions of dollars contracts because of it; if he and his buddies stood to make billions in extra oil revenue….I would hope you would suspect him.
Have 1,000 architects and engineers signed the petition only because they hate Bush? I don't think so. But watch the video and decide for yourself.
Comment by Bilbo — January 19, 2010 @ 3:58 pm
January 19th, 2010 at 7:38 pm
Bilbo, if Pearl Harbor had been so stonewalled and uninvestigated history would rightfully be considered warmed-over hash. More than 200K residents of NYC who were there that day signed a petition for a new investigation and were pointedly ignored by the new boss (same as the old boss). The truth about 9-11 is not something we're ever likely to know. At least, not historically.
…but then again, I'm one of those who know for a fact (because I was there monitoring the situation) that the truth was never told about TMI. Thirty years later, who still cares? This is what they mean when they say "history is written by the winners." Or at least those who can stonewall the longest.
Comment by Joy — January 19, 2010 @ 7:38 pm
January 19th, 2010 at 8:43 pm
I think you're right, Joy. We'll never know about 9/11. Have you ever told us the whole story about TMI?
Comment by Bilbo — January 19, 2010 @ 8:43 pm
January 19th, 2010 at 9:31 pm
http://www.scientificamerican....
Comment by chunkdz — January 19, 2010 @ 9:31 pm
January 19th, 2010 at 11:52 pm
Yeah no one ever explained the laser beams shooting out of TMI just before the meltdown.
Comment by nickmatzke — January 19, 2010 @ 11:52 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Hi Chunk. From your article:
Since Shermer views ID as a form of creationism, that means he's putting you in the same group with 9/11 truthers and Holocaust deniers.
Jim Hoffman's response to Shermer.
I think Hoffman gets it right, except for the picture of the inner core of the towers. Actually, each inner core was composed of a dense grid of 47 massive steel box columns, with the steel itself being 4-5 inches thick at the bottom, and anchored into bedrock. The inner core was an independent structure that would have remained standing, even if all the floors and outer perimeter collapsed.
Comment by Bilbo — January 20, 2010 @ 12:21 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Picture of inner core during construction.
Comment by Bilbo — January 20, 2010 @ 12:25 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
With respect to intelligent design my position is that conscious intelligence better explains the origin of DNA based on DNA's very unique properites. I would appoach the WTC issue the same way. I would need to see a better explanation. A better explanation is not only debunking the prevailing view although that is legitimate polemics. The better explanation is: here's how I think it went down. My causal trial starts here and here are the details describing what really caused the WTC collapse. Names of individuals involved are crucial as well as the supporting evidence for the alternative POV. I saw the planes crash the towers. Who induced the pilots to do it and what is the evidence for it? I know the mainstream view. What does the alternative have to offer on that specific point?
Comment by Bradford — January 20, 2010 @ 12:36 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 1:00 pm
But your "trial" should start with the question, is the official story causally adequate? The A&Es say it isn't and explain why. And now we have positive evidence of the explosive nanothermite.
That should be enough evidence to re-open the investigation. Then we might be able to answer all your questions.
Comment by Bilbo — January 20, 2010 @ 1:00 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
Based on years of ID debates the real question is what explanations would be acceptable? Is Al Quada dunnit acceptable? If Bush dunnit I want a level of proof that would convict one in court because that is where that would have to go.
Comment by Bradford — January 20, 2010 @ 1:07 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Bilbo,
How many people would it take to pull off this act?
How many would be "in the know"?
I think the number would have to be pretty high.
Thanks for confirming my hypothesis.
Comment by Daniel Smith — January 20, 2010 @ 1:08 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Think about this for a second… You're actually accusing people of murdering 3000+ American citizens – and for what? Money? Power?
Explain the motivation.
I don't see it.
And why did Al Qaeda claim responsibility? Were they paid off too? If so, why aren't they talking?
In fact… why is no one talking?
Comment by Daniel Smith — January 20, 2010 @ 1:14 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
I have watched the first hour of the video Bilbo linked to in the OP.
Very interesting stuff if it can be believed.
How it would work would be to get the bad guys to attack the WTC with jet-liners as missles.
But before the attack there would also be "underground" prep- ie the planting of the thermite devices on key support beams.
The reason for the jet-liner attacks is for cover-up- as the video says you don't just make thermite of that grade in Afghanistan caves.
So the question would be who planted the thermite?
It could have been the bad guys and they ain't talkin' so they don't give up their secret. And if the bad guys knew that we planted the thermite they would have said something- you would think anyway.
Building 7 seems to be key in this investigation.
Either it was very poorly constructed or something is amiss.
One more hour to go…
Comment by ID guy — January 20, 2010 @ 1:32 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
Bilbo:
Only the first if is directly related to the WTC tragedy. The others are basically more conspiracies used to support the first one but really indicate the subjective motives of accusers.
Comment by Bradford — January 20, 2010 @ 1:37 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Hi Daniel, as to how many, Jim Hoffman offers a speculative scenario, which would suggest the number of people needed to carry this out would be rather small.
Motives? Money, power, prestige? Control of oil in the Middle East? Excuse to start a war against Saddam Hussein?
Thanks for taking the time to watch the video, ID Guy. I think Al Qaeda was involved, but I don't think they knew the towers were rigged with
explosives. Well, I don't think the henchman knew.
Comment by Bilbo — January 20, 2010 @ 1:41 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
Some more speculation on motives.
Comment by Bilbo — January 20, 2010 @ 1:47 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
From Bilbo's link:
More evidence of don't get it. Obama has spent much of his life forsaking the wealth he was born into for the killing fields of Afghanistan and then his war against the infidels. His life is well documented. Ideology is his motive. Money is secondary. Some people are motivated by ideological zealotry. History counts who are like this. They include religious and political leaders. Mohatma Ghandi and Marx. But don't let the facts get in the way of your prejudices.
Comment by Bradford — January 20, 2010 @ 2:20 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Yep, pretty weak sauce from Shermer, imho.
This is interesting.
Let's assume the Towers had planted explosives in them that went off after the planes hit. My immediate response would be "man those terrorists really wanted to make sure those towers went down."
But you jump right past that to "rich powerful republicans who wanted to start wars and steal oil".
How about an intermediate conspiracy theory? Like "the owner wanted to collect insurance money on the towers" or "disgruntled employee teams up with terrorists and plants bombs" or something. Why does the partisan political option become your top choice?
Comment by chunkdz — January 20, 2010 @ 2:28 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 2:48 pm
I think the point may be that someone wanted the terrorists to take full blame when they were just the distratction- albeit a mighty powerful and deadly distraction.
Now we would need to figure out who had access to the amount of thermite/ mate devices required, motive, opportunity- who could also dictate to or guide the terrorists along their training- the timing would depend on how well the devices could be and stay hidden.
Fire extinguishers as a guise would work. They could be placed on the beams, looking perfectly normal, just waiting for the "right" distraction.
Comment by ID guy — January 20, 2010 @ 2:48 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Proving that requires inclusion of a conspiracy within a conspiracy. Terrrorists and Bush Inc. would have had to coordinate their efforts. Of course Bush being the evil genius that he was (I thought he was supposed to be a buffoon) would find it easy to pull off history's greatest scam and get Al Qaeda to be dupes in the process.
Comment by Bradford — January 20, 2010 @ 2:53 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
I asked Bilbo about this over a year ago.
He blamed the silence on the threats posed by Li'l Bush and Darth Cheney.
When I asked him if one of the people with knowledge of the mass murder perpetrated on American soil would come forward once Bush and Cheney were removed from power he said "no".
He gave no explanation as to why not.
Comment by Pez — January 20, 2010 @ 2:54 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 2:59 pm
Then you have to account for Bush putting this together in 9 short months while he spent 99% of that time on vacation doing nothing but clearing wood.
Of course the planning and complicity of al Quaida (taking flight lessons for a decade for instance) pushes the conspiracy back to Clinton's administration. The ongoing silence drags it into Obama's. But as I said before, the obvious implication of the conspiracy isn't nearly so fun when it doesn't just indict silly George.
Comment by Pez — January 20, 2010 @ 2:59 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 3:03 pm
Maybe Bush was smarter than we thought.
Comment by Bradford — January 20, 2010 @ 3:03 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Bradford,
Why Bush? As I said in my comment all it would take is to plant the idea- could be via infiltration- and allow them to carry out their training.
Then you could plant the fire extinguishers and wait.
I am with chunkdz on this.
It is one thing to say conspiracy and another to say who.
Comment by ID guy — January 20, 2010 @ 3:06 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
ID guy:
If the Truthers were given truth serum I think they would admit their belief that Bush dunnit. Some do it without the serum. That's a problem because they are as prejudiced going into an impartial investigation as Bush would be in his defense.
Comment by Bradford — January 20, 2010 @ 3:15 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
I undersatnd that and just try to ignore it.
The video, if it can be believed, is intriguing, to say the least.
Comment by ID guy — January 20, 2010 @ 3:47 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 3:49 pm
Pez-
His father had contacts.
Perhaps he had it all set up so that W could go back after Saddam and finish what he couldn't.
Comment by ID guy — January 20, 2010 @ 3:49 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Did sr., who couldn't get himself reelected, somehow know that he could get jr. elected and put this plan into effect years ahead of time? And Clinton played along for 8 years?
On the other hand, if getting Saddam was the goal what was wrong with Clinton's plan and attempts to kill him – spying on him and bombing his homes? Why wouldn't jr. just keep on keeping on with Clinton's massive bombing campaign until they finally got Saddam?
Comment by Pez — January 20, 2010 @ 3:50 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
Hey! I admit I'm prejudice. Pez, last time we talked about this I think I said the conspirators wouldn't talk because the military was probably involved and would make sure that nobody talked.
We can speculate about who the conspirators after we decide there's a conspiracy. I think ae911truth's presentation of the technical evidence is compelling. ID Guy admits that it is at least intriguing. It might be worth a couple hours of your time. Or not. If they can ignore 31,000 scientists about AGW, I don't expect anyone to pay attention to these guys.
Comment by Bilbo — January 20, 2010 @ 4:25 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Hi Bilbo,
It was worth several hours of my time. I don't find it compelling; I find the answers more plausible and I weigh them in a probability context. You admit above that your conspiracy goes at least as far as into the military and that the military would "make sure nobody talked" even after the evil masterminds are defanged. This becomes less and less improbable as you think about how deep it must go and how unlikely this silence from all these layers. I find it highly improbable, almost impossible, that poor minions who were duped into planting explosive fire extinguishers which ended up in mass murder of their fellow citizens would remain silent all these years for fear of their own, guilt-ridden lives. I find it nearly impossible that "the military" is leaving these people out there under threat of death when they can take the whole thing down with one word. "The military", under Bush and Cheney, would have eradicated all those involved rather than risk their loose lips. Any evidence of this having happened?
Any evidence that Obama and the current FBI and CIA are under threat and must remain complicit in this murder?
Comment by Pez — January 20, 2010 @ 4:38 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
This looks like an Operation Northwoods-type endeavor. So I would expect most of the operatives to be black-ops, selected for their flexible ethical views.
Of course we do have the mysterious death of Barry Jennings, just a few days before NIST released their preliminary final report on #7
Comment by Bilbo — January 20, 2010 @ 5:27 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
I think what we have here is just another version of "opposing world views". This time our world views are influencing which conclusion we think the evidence points to.
Wait…
Comment by Daniel Smith — January 20, 2010 @ 6:35 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 6:59 pm
Hmm. I haven't been here for a while. Is this post FYI only or has TT become a site that finds 9/11 conspiracies within the pale of orthodoxy? That's rarely a good sign–so I hope not.
Comment by David Heddle — January 20, 2010 @ 6:59 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 7:12 pm
Hi David. I thought ae911truth.org's reaching their 1,000th a&e petitioner was worthblogging about. I don't expect them to reach 1,250 for at least another 6 months. So I won't be posting about this for a while…unless….
Comment by Bilbo — January 20, 2010 @ 7:12 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 7:24 pm
Watched the entire video, some good points are raised with respect to the temperature gain being caused by thermite explosives. Personally, I am not sure where I stand on the 9/11 issue. IMO, the airplanes themselves are highly suspect; my main concern is whether they were even commercial jetliners.
Comment by computerist — January 20, 2010 @ 7:24 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 8:24 pm
As a person who has done lots of welding, cutting and heating of metal, I can tell you that steel weakens very easily when heated. It does not have to actually melt.
The fact that each plane hit was not at the top, but had several floors of iron and concrete's weight above it, plus the fact that the planes wiped out a portion of the supporting structure on impact, plus the fact that the planes were both full of jet fuel, makes the plane damage more than enough IMO to bring the buildings down.
Also studies estimate that the US is graduating 200,000+ engineers a year. I don't think it's too hard to imagine at least a few thousand of those are politically liberal enough to sign, what amounts to, an "I hate Bush" petition.
I've seen the left make excuses for Islamic terrorism before but this takes the cake!
Comment by Daniel Smith — January 20, 2010 @ 8:24 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
I'm guessing you haven't watched the video, Daniel. And computerist, how do you explain bidg #7?
Comment by Bilbo — January 20, 2010 @ 9:03 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 9:07 pm
Oh wait, by "highly suspect" you mean you suspect there's something fishy about the planes.
Comment by Bilbo — January 20, 2010 @ 9:07 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Anybody interested in seeing the world's largest pig hairball?
Comment by chunkdz — January 20, 2010 @ 9:08 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 9:29 pm
Hi Bilbo,
Yes, this is my main concern. After reviewing all of the released captured videos and images they never appear be of the commercial type. The design is off in many ways not to mention the hue appears to be greyish.
Comment by computerist — January 20, 2010 @ 9:29 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 9:50 pm
Bilbo,
It is all a "mind-freak"- Criss Angel made all 3 buildings disappear.
Comment by ID guy — January 20, 2010 @ 9:50 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 9:54 pm
Wow. Were the passengers, stewardesses and pilots part of the conspiracy too? Are their families aware that they actually flew some passenger wannabe CIA plane? Bush was truly amazing.
Comment by Bradford — January 20, 2010 @ 9:54 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 9:56 pm
computerist,
I feel like I woke up in an Ingmar Bergman movie. What's about the dead people from the plane's manifests? Were they killed elsewhere? Were they taken off the commercial plane and forced to board these non-commercial aircraft? Are they being held captive? What is the prevailing "theory" as to their fate?
Comment by David Heddle — January 20, 2010 @ 9:56 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 9:59 pm
Did you see the size of that hairball?!?
Comment by chunkdz — January 20, 2010 @ 9:59 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 10:13 pm
The plane was a gray plane.
http://zap16.com/images/n612ua...
Also, nearly all aircraft look dark gray or black when viewed from below due to shadow. Hence the "black helicopter" hysteria.
Finally, the whole 9/11 conspiracy thing is way too complicated. You got nanothermite rigged in sync with airplanes and ignorant cave-dwelling camel riders cooperating with BOOOOOOOOSH and Darth Cheney to steal oil that could be obtained by simply doing what France and Germany were doing – ignoring sanctions and buying oil under the table for a bargain. You got architects and engineers pronouncing ugly buildings slapped up in the 1970s (a notorious period for shabby construction) stronger than any building ever erected. And to top it all off you got a whole other administration carrying the water for the evil opposing one it replaced.
This stuff makes Darwinian evolution look logical.
Comment by angryoldfatman — January 20, 2010 @ 10:13 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 10:15 pm
David Heddle:
Oh, were you unaware that these questions will be left to an investigative panel to determine?
How bout some theme accompaniment music from the Twilight Zone?
Comment by Bradford — January 20, 2010 @ 10:15 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 10:19 pm
Angry Old Fat Man:
That's EXACTLY what Dick Cheney wants you to think.
Comment by chunkdz — January 20, 2010 @ 10:19 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 10:29 pm
chunkdz:
Grey or sky blue pink. Don't you see, it's all part of the scheme to divert oil into the coffers of Haliburton. While you're looking at the confusing array of colors the oil is sneaked right through U.S. Customs. That's just too much Tricky Dick.
Comment by Bradford — January 20, 2010 @ 10:29 pm
January 20th, 2010 at 11:08 pm
So those were the droids we were looking for!
DAMN YOU DARTH CHENEY! DAMN YOU TO Hhhhhhhhhhnnnnghk *thud*
Comment by angryoldfatman — January 20, 2010 @ 11:08 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 12:15 am
Note that I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I do believe these planes were hijacked by the terrorists as said and that the victims – specifically the passengers of the airplanes were not passenger manifests. Either way, I try to take all the variables into the equation despite my acknowledgment of the issue -. While the pre-tragedy transpired many of the eye-witness accounts stated that the airplane struck them as not being a commercial type jetliner. Its true that most people in a panic state would tend to ignore details while displacing them with their own, but there are those rare "cold-blooded" few who can process multiple things at once, going beyond "its an airplane". angryoldfatman has responded with the shadow factor which would be dependent on the weather conditions (brightness etc…) and the observer (vision and reference point) (which I believe is an excellent point, btw). However, there are still a few other minor nuisances still troubling me: such as the wing span ratio and other POI's with respect to the airplane angry has linked and the actual images of the 9/11 planes, these can be checked using image editing software which I have done. Given the hypothesis that these airplanes may not have been commercial, conspiracy theorists could predict that a passenger list provided would be low (in fact, very low with 50 out of 200 and 26 out of 200 possible seats were filled), and that there would be very few testimonials of the corresponding family members projecting for their losses on live camera feed or anywhere for that matter and the victims would instead be treated very wholly, referring to them simply as "9/11 victims" through and through. Now I'm going to take off my conspiracy theorist hat off, hopefully you guys can knock some sense into me about this.
Comment by computerist — January 21, 2010 @ 12:15 am
January 21st, 2010 at 1:13 am
Long time lurker, very much enjoy the site, and the civil tone of discussion.
Under Occam's Razor, my inclination is to accept what I saw: 2 planes crashing into 2 buildings, causing death and destruction.
However, in part because of the Intelligent Design/Darwinian evolution debate (or lack thereof), I am willing to entertain alternative theories and give them a fair shake. So, what is the alternative theory?:
1. Some form of sophisticated demolition device was intelligently pre-set in the buildings to destroy them (and kill thousands of unfortunate innocents in the process), and the planes were only a secondary causal factor in such destruction.
True, many of the proponents of (1) are motivated by a great distaste for former President Bush. But, I discount this to give proponents of the alternative theory a fair shake.
So, is there any way to harmonize (a) what I saw with (b) the alternative theory?
I can envision one such scenario.
Back in 1993, Islamic extremists tried to blow up the World Trade Center with a truck bomb, which killed 6 people. I vaguely recall reading snippets that the goal of the extremists was to dislodge the building, so that it toppled over, knocking over several other buildings, causing massive destruction via a "domino effect." (Engineering-wise, I have no idea if this is even plausible).
Nonetheless, after 1993, in response to this potentiality, security experts at the WTC rigged up explosive devices in the interior of the WTC to detonate in the event of future car bomb attack — so as to prevent the catastrophic "domino effect" destruction, as envisioned by the terrorists.
In 2001, when the planes hit, somebody gave the order to push the button. Voila' — a contained pancake demolition, which killed those in the building, but saved many thousands from a domino effect.
I'm not saying I accept this — indeed, I think, less likely than not, it didn't happen. But, it avoids animus towards Bush and wild conspiracy theories, and plausibly corresponds to the scientific objections of the dissenting engineers, without questioning their motives.
Comment by David S — January 21, 2010 @ 1:13 am
January 21st, 2010 at 8:37 am
I read Mike Shermer's article but he doesn't even address the molten steel nor the themite.
What's up with that?
Comment by ID guy — January 21, 2010 @ 8:37 am
January 21st, 2010 at 11:12 am
Thanks for the thoughtful comment David S.
Comment by Bradford — January 21, 2010 @ 11:12 am
January 21st, 2010 at 12:31 pm
A different "ending" to David S version- nicely done BTW- could be that those chages went off accidentally.
Comment by ID guy — January 21, 2010 @ 12:31 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 1:22 pm
I thought I should point out that AE911truth.org does not try to argue that the planes were anything other than what we are told they were — the original commerical airliners.
Thanks David S. for your hypothesis. I should point out that Joy has offered this hypothesis previously a number of times. And if they were set off accidentally, as ID Guy suggests, that would explain why they went off while all the people were still in the building. And perhaps we could extend this explanation to the demolition of building #7 later that day, even though there was evidence that people knew #7 was coming down ahead of time. Of course, #7 was empty, and perhaps they thought it was in danger of collapsing, so decided to bring it down.
There are problems with the hypothesis. I believe that nanothermite wasn't available until well after the 1993 bombing. Further, given the construction of the building — inner core of 47 massive steel box columns — the '93 bombing didn't do any real harm to the structure of the building, and I doubt anyone was seriously worried that a car bomb would do enough damage to cause the towers to topple over. But I don't think we should entirely discount the Joy-David S. hypothesis.
Despite AOF's contention that the buildings were poorly constructed, there's no evidence to that affect.
Comment by Bilbo — January 21, 2010 @ 1:22 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 1:39 pm
Bilbo,
I thought it was a given that the original 1993 bombing was supposed to topple one tower into the other- look it up.
And no one is saying the thermite was placed the next day after that bombing.
First they had to find out what they were trying to do.
Then they had to figure out if it could be done- what could cause such a toppling?
And only after that would they place the charges.
All of that could have taken years.
Heck the video said there was interior elevator work going on.
Comment by ID guy — January 21, 2010 @ 1:39 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Ummmmmm… well, they did fall down….
Comment by DL — January 21, 2010 @ 2:18 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 2:21 pm
More accurately- they fell in…
Comment by ID guy — January 21, 2010 @ 2:21 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Bilbo:
Ignoring the amazing technical garbage passed off as "clean, safe, too cheap to meter," there's not much to tell. They melted it, 20+ tons of core disappeared into thin air (actually, what didn't vaporize simply went out the stack, vent headers, emergency steam dump valves and cooling tower), and tens of millions of curies of nasty radioactive isotopes (including heavy metals) got dumped into the countryside to kill farm animals and pets, cause acute radiation sickness in people, produce alpha specific cancers within 5 years, up the miscarriage and stillborn rate 280% the first year, cause dramatic increases in blood (leukemia), organ and bone cancers, and kill more people over 30 years than the government ever allowed anybody to count. At least 10,000, of which 2,000+ became plaintiffs in a federal class action suit launched less than a decade after the accident, eventually dismissed summarily when the government intervened to disallow all expert witnesses for the plaintiffs. Because nobody was allowed to count the dead…
Matzke:
No laser beams, just shine. During the meltdown. Oh, and a bit of a burst when the containment atmosphere exploded. Shine is gamma, the island was mostly deserted by then (general emergency), control room is separately shielded though the ops had to wear full respirators for a week because contamination was a much bigger issue than shine. Recall that 6 POUNDS of uranium fuel clogging a resin line in the standby demineralizer caused the accident, that lousy core had done an incurable job on the plant well before water got sucked into the stupidly designed instrumentation air supply (tripping both main and emergency feedwater supplies). They'd known for over a week the damn thing was going to melt the moment it tripped. They merely hoped it wouldn't trip.
Bottom line: Once you've seen the government deliberately sentence thousands of innocent citizens to gnarly death just to protect corporate crooks and mafioso contractors, it's pretty hard to take apologists seriously when they insist the government would never deliberately sentence thousands of innocent citizens to gnarly death in order to get a couple of really lucrative wars for their mafioso contractor buddies to make a killing with.
What the truth about 9-11 is I don't know and don't expect ever to know. And no, I personally do not think the Shrub was smart enough or capable enough to be anything more than a pet patsy for the truly evil souls who haunt the halls of power (regardless of who's living at 1600 this year). I do know the government isn't allowing anybody to count the dead. THAT is something I'm quite familiar with.
Comment by Joy — January 21, 2010 @ 2:28 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Distrust and questioning are healthy … especially of government.
But when a conspiracy like this is contemplated you have to look at the necessary ramifications. As I said to Bilbo last time around, and as Joy points out here, if this conspiracy were true then all bets are off.
It doesn't matter for whom you vote and who sits in the Whitehouse, as Joy says, because they are pawns to the powers that be.
Kind of takes the fun out of Truthing, shilling for Hope And Change and Acorning the public, though.
And if government is as evil as all that it doesn't make sense to keep making it bigger and giving it more and more power, does it?
Comment by Pez — January 21, 2010 @ 3:27 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Yes it does. And it makes you wonder if Satan was telling Jesus the truth when he said that all the kingdoms of this world had been given to him (Luke 4:6).
Especially the military branch.
Comment by Bilbo — January 21, 2010 @ 3:53 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Pez:
All bets have been off for a long time, Pez.
Having gone to school back when public schools actually taught the basics and required passing grades, the enigma of big-g 'Government' is something too few people understand these days. While we like to think our general elections every couple of years have real effect on more than just shifting emphasis around a little bit, fact is that big-g 'Government' remains what it is (and was designed to be) no matter who's grandstanding on Capitol Hill or redecorating the Oval Office.
And as big-g U.S. 'Government' is collectively the largest and richest corporate entity on the face of the earth, what it exists to do is perpetuate itself. We were warned very pointedly by a heroic ex-general who served for 8 years after WW-2 about what would come of the "Military-Industrial Complex" created in the wake of the Depression to wage that war, then to boom the peacetime economy with the self-serving declaration of Red Menace (and the good old forever-Cold War). War-weary Americans were too fat and happy in the boom years to care, or to figure out how to dismantle the Great Beast. Or even to think about it hard enough to know it needed dismantling. So it remains still, and mass death is its sole purpose beyond cash flow.
Things are not looking good now that the powers that be have made obvious their intent to dismantle in-house entitlements (SS and Medicare) to "balance the budget" on top of illegal wars to the tune of $40 billion a month of deficit spending financed by China. I've worked hard all my life, paid into those funds honestly and regularly, it's all the retirement I ever had to look forward to. And I'm a mere 6 years away…
It's a crock of you know what. As John Kenneth Galbraith said, "no nation in debt to itself is in any danger of collapse." It's not our social safety net and trust funds that threaten our solvency. Never was, never will be. It's our outstanding debt to the rest of the world (we now hold title to world's biggest debtor nation), the wars started and continually expanded by that Military-Industrial Complex Ike warned us so pointedly about. I do not see any way out at this point sans a mass insurgency that won't be a "revolution" unless it's won.
So I'm investigating expat communities where the little we've got can provide a minimal living, so long as we can still ding cruise ship tourists occasionally…
The big-g Government will always get bigger, never smaller. Now that SCOTUS has declared corporate 'citizens' to be more equal citizens than us mere humans it's going to get much worse much faster. I wish my children's and grandchildren's generations the best of luck. They're going to need it.
Comment by Joy — January 21, 2010 @ 4:09 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 4:09 pm
For the record, I don’t mind conspiracy stuff being posted here. Trying to convert people might be off-topic, but if it’s an actual point about detecting design, it’s worth figuring out how it works — or doesn’t work, of course. (Sure, it’s crazy, but so is the crazy stuff we get here on the other end of the spectrum.)
So what are the design implications? First, yes, the incident clearly indicates purpose… but everyone agrees it was deliberately planned by somebody. Second, the way events unfolded is unlikely; but then unlikely things can and do happen sometimes. If it was supposed to have happened this unlikely way over and over again for 4 billion years, then that’s a bigger problem, but it was a one-time occurrence, so calling it a fluke isn’t so unreasonable.
Can we get more specific? Say, focus on the towers falling kinda straight — we’ve got some complexity, all that mass falling down a certain way; and we’ve got specification, the target being the towers’ footprints. So maybe we can infer design from that, but just as design doesn’t tell us who the designer was, or his motives, it doesn’t even tell us how the design was done. In other words, that can’t get us to thermite in the basement; the fact that the terrorists had designs on bringing down the buildings is sufficient. To get beyond that, we’re back at the (alleged) unlikelihood of the towers collapsing in just that way. Maybe we need someone to investigate the “edge of demolition” to show what is or isn’t possible in such a situation. But that doesn’t seem to be a design issue any more.
I think this is the key to looking for design in conspiracies. Sometimes the conspiracy consists of providing an explanation that ties together separate events that while not problematic on their own, are “too coincidental” when taken together. If you suggested that, say, those planes crashed into the twin towers because of instrument malfunction, then there is an obvious opposing design inference: one malfunction, yes; maybe even two malfunctions at the same time, or at the same place but both together is too contrived. If two planes smash into both towers at the same time, then somebody had to be behind it. But of course, that’s exactly what everyone does suggest. We all agree on the design inference itself; it’s everything else that we disagree about. Unlikeliness about how events may or may not have played out does not by itself amount to a code that implies a coder.
Comment by DL — January 21, 2010 @ 4:09 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 4:23 pm
Hi DL, it sounds like you haven't bothered to watch the video, yet. You might try that first.
But as Mike Gene likes to point out, one of the questions we can ask is, does it still look designed at higher resolution? There's a high school physics teacher, David Chandler, who has been studying the photographic evidence of the WTCs, and keeps finding evidence of design at higher resolution. This for example.
Comment by Bilbo — January 21, 2010 @ 4:23 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 4:35 pm
DL, that was quite an interesting analysis. Yes, we DO know there was human design – and a human conspiracy behind that design – that accomplished the attacks of 9-11. What's harder to figure out is what, exactly, big-g Government was attempting to cover up by stonewalling investigation, then proffering a pile of steaming crap nobody over the age of 12 could buy if they weren't already thoroughly brainwashed.
Maybe they were scared of letting anybody know they had plenty of very specific warning that the attacks were coming. Maybe they were scared of letting it be known they prevented immediate response. Maybe they didn't want people to know there's nothing inside that mountain we call NORAD. Maybe they hoped no one would notice that "My Pet Goat" boy wasn't in charge that day at all, it was the other guy in his handy bunker. Perhaps they were concerned that if the people knew how completely useless big-g Government really is, they might decide to do what the Founding Fathers enshrined as the responsibility of the people when big-g Government stops being useful and becomes positively harmful.
I personally suspect they were mostly opportunistic during and after the attacks. Decisions being made (or not made) with profits and future handy wars in mind, what mileage they could get out of a horror they didn't prevent because they were too inept to even try.
Then again, I'm wondering how a bunch of hopeless barbarians living in caves in the World's Poorest Nation could manage such spectacular aerial acrobatics after 3 weeks in a Cessna flight school in Florida. Looks like God was "on their side," doesn't it?
Comment by Joy — January 21, 2010 @ 4:35 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 5:43 pm
A new sig-along-song:
1000 architects and engineers signed a pact
1000 architecs and engineers
The towers fell down
Thermite was found
1001 architects and engineers singed a pact
Comment by ID guy — January 21, 2010 @ 5:43 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 5:44 pm
Bilbo Says:
January 19th, 2010 at 3:58 pm
And so the terrorists who took credit for it were lying?
It was attacked and damaged by having a jetliner flown into it, as were the towers. How does the "controlled demolition" theory stand up where the Pentagon is concerned?
There was a plane crash, remember? In a field in Pennsylvania.
What, it was just a diversion?
What a crock. Why anyone would think this whole theory even remotely plausible is beyond me. It doesn't stand up to even rudimentary analysis.
Comment by Mung — January 21, 2010 @ 5:44 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 5:52 pm
Mung,
Did you watch the two hour video? How about the last video Bilbo linked to?
To recap- the terrorists think they did it. The attacks really happened.
They had no idea about the charges that brought down the towers.
Comment by ID guy — January 21, 2010 @ 5:52 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 5:54 pm
Mung raised some strong objections. The Pentagon, the PA crash and the confirmed identity of the hijackers. Your move, Bilbo.
Comment by Bradford — January 21, 2010 @ 5:54 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Snatched by aliens.
Comment by Mung — January 21, 2010 @ 5:55 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 6:03 pm
BTW, the PA plane was brought down as a result of passenger resistance. That has been well documented. That was the plane thought to be destined for a Washington target- the White House or Congressional buildings. All this happened on the same day. Where is the larger conspiracy theory explaining all this?
Also the fervor for a conspiracy appears to be as much a product of who was president as anything else. Would the same circumstances have inspired conspiracy theorists if Obama had been president? I have my doubts.
Comment by Bradford — January 21, 2010 @ 6:03 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 6:38 pm
Actually, 'coincidence' often 'conspires' to accomplish the unlikely. But to put that into perspective, there's no such thing as 'coincidence' in hindsight or in spook-world. There is just a series of decisions and/or mistakes made that add up to The Event. Which may then, in the case of 9-11, be used to specific effect by those who knew it was coming and did nothing to stop it.
That's LIHOP rather than MIHOP. "Let It Happen On Purpose" rather than "Make it Happen On Purpose." IOW, intelligence that such an attack using US airliners was in the works, a decision was made to make a futures killing on the dramatic airline stock drops that would result rather than step up security and coordinate with spooks who were watching Atta & cohorts learn to fly Cessnas in Florida.
A decision was made by the owner of the towers to purchase a double indemnity rider on his insurance policy for properties he'd previously planned to demolish (and had already installed the means). When it became obvious no one would be saved from the upper floors, 'pulling' the buildings seemed a good way to up the Shock Doctrine value of The Event, and pulling the command center later was a no-brainer so nobody could look too close. Using The Event as an excuse to finish Poppy's war with Saddam was on the table before Junior's plane was in the air toward Minot. As for bin Laden, he had long been on the CIA payroll. He'd gloat because that is what he loves most to do – could be absolutely counted upon to do so even if he wasn't involved beyond funneling the funds.
I'm simply amazed that Mung has such faith in terrorists/CIA spooks as honest human beings.
That the buildings were pulled is obvious. No steel frame building before or since has ever collapsed (into footprint or not) from fire. Building 7 was stone-face, like the Empire State building, which has been hit more than once (and suffered fires bigger than #7's) and still stands just fine. The answer to that dilemma is in Silverstein's insurance policy, the official pressure (and funding) to honor it, and the pre-set explosives that may have been put there after the first bombing for "safety's sake" and then planned for demolition because Silverstein was losing money on controlled rents.
If it was opportunism, I'd doubt the preceding 'coincident' decisions were intended to lead to that scenario. But I don't think the Pentagon was hit by a jetliner, as there was never any real evidence of an airliner and no believable evidence was ever provided. Black boxes recovered from the Pentagon and Pennsylvania were 'missing' serial numbers, and the FBI testified to the coverup commission that those for the planes that hit the towers were never found. Unfortunately for them, Firefighters at Ground Zero say not so. Who needs a real investigation, anyway? We were told to just "go shopping."
Based on what I saw at TMI about how this sort of thing works, it's usually a coverup of stupidity and criminality and NOT a plot to melt the damned reactor/raze the towers (whatever). Decisions made prior to The Event made it doable in real time, and there was plenty of warning that it was coming. Rather than try to prevent harm to the public, the public was sacrificed to the greed and deadly stealth that *IS* the nuclear industry/Military-Industrial Complex (whatever). It didn't work out well for the nuclear industry. The "War On Terror" outcome of 9-11 shows a good deal more sophistication.
Saddam Hussein has been dead for years, so is Osama bin Laden (last seen in a hospital in Paris undergoing treatment). Why do you think idiot boy said he wasn't concerned about his whereabouts? Why do you think the CIA keeps proffering bad videos with fat black guys pretending to be Osama? It was always about the oil, about hegemony in the ME. Our war on the poorest nation on earth has been going on longer than Vietnam. Now it's expanded to Pakistan, a nation with which we are NOT at war (but which we bomb regularly anyway). They want to turn Iran to glass because Israel is nervous about Persians, despite having a lot of nifty nukes of their own we gave to them on purpose a long time ago. They're moving troops into Columbia to threaten a popular leader next door they don't like because he won't turn his nation over to Chiquita and Monsanto (and MobilCo). And to protect the CIA's cocaine supply, of course. All with a volunteer military so over-stretched and over-stressed that suicide is the #1 cause of troop death, getting worse by the day. They won't launch an honest draft because they learned in Vietnam that making their dirty little wars an immediate concern of Middle America is a sure-fire way of fomenting insurgency.
WWJB – Who Would Jesus Bomb? Using depleted uranium and white phosphorous, of course. Burns the skin off babies very nicely…
Comment by Joy — January 21, 2010 @ 6:38 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 6:39 pm
Hi Folks,
Thanks for the positive feedback on my maiden comment
Small points of clarification:
I have no opinion on the United Flight 93, other than it was a terrible tragedy caused by hijackers, and the passengers were courageous beyond words. I cannot envision an alternative hypothesis for this event, other than what seemed to occur.
I have no opinion on the Pentagon, other than a plane crashed into it, again caused by hijackers, which resulted in death and destruction. I cannot envision an alternative explanation for this event.
My hypothesis above (which the wonderful Joy reached before I did), was limited to World Trade Center, only.
Comment by David S — January 21, 2010 @ 6:39 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 6:48 pm
David S, I like your calm reasoned approach. Feel free to comment more often.
Comment by Bradford — January 21, 2010 @ 6:48 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 9:05 pm
Hi Mung. The A&Es only consider the physical evidence for the 3 WTC buildings. I think the damage at the Pentagon was caused by a jetliner. What's intriguing about the Pentagon are three things: The descent path was a very tricky maneuver, that a number of pilots claim would have been impossible for an inexperienced pilot to accomplish; the side of the Pentagon that was hit was the only side that was obstructed (I think); and they had just finished reinforcing that side to make it more resistant to a missle strike. What does all that mean? I don't know. But it's intriguing.
If the 4th plane was headed for the White House, we know that Bush was safely in Florida and that Cheney was safely in a bunker. Speaking of Cheney, Norm Mineta testified that he was in the bunker with Cheney before the plane hit the Pentagon, and according to Mineta, every so often a young man would enter the room and tell Cheney how far away the plane was: 50 miles, 40 miles, 30 miles. Finally the young man asked Cheney, "Do the orders still stand?" And Cheney replied, "Of course they still stand!" Mineta thought he meant shoot down orders. But could they have been stand down orders?
Comment by Bilbo — January 21, 2010 @ 9:05 pm
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:23 am
Indeed. Frankly, I have no problem accepting that something fishy was going on, because I take it as a prudent rule of thumb that government is always covering something up. Of course, some of it will be boring stuff that we wouldn’t care about if we did find out, but there’s sure to be embarrassment and incompetence that certain people felt like sweeping under the carpet. I’m sure a lot of people would buy a more modest conspiracy like that. As you point out, “opportunism” is the watchword. And although that puts a lot of people a lot farther down the track of evilness that any of us ought to be comfortable with, there’s still a significant difference between letting bad stuff happen and making it happen, both practically and psychologically.
I don’t know if there’s a design inference in all that. That’s the problem once you have (not so) intelligent designers in the picture: is any particular signal that stands out a sign of deliberate cogitation or accidental ineptitude?
Comment by DL — January 22, 2010 @ 1:23 am
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:25 am
These kind of conspiracies oddly combine too much imagination with too little. Me, I’m lazy, so I work things backwards. You know, shoot the arrow first, then draw the target around it. If you had to recreate the exact path that jet took into the side of the Pentagon, sure, it would be nigh impossible. But the terrorists weren’t trying to hit that exact path, any path that managed to hit the building would do. So the question those experienced pilots should be answering, is how hard is it to hit a big building at all? Surely it’s a lot easier when crashing is part of the plan.
Comment by DL — January 22, 2010 @ 1:25 am
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Hi DL, the problem is that it doesn't appear that the hijackers were just trying to take "any" path that would hit the building. It looks like they were going for the only side of the building that had just been renovated in order to resist a terrorist strike, and most of the offices were still vacant. And the hijacker, Hani Hanjour, didn't appear to be skilled enough to carry out such a manuever:
Comment by Bilbo — January 22, 2010 @ 1:41 pm
January 22nd, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Bilbo, the question of unlikelihood on the Pentagon strike that you raise suffers from a post-hoc assumption that the pilot accomplished the trajectory on purpose and chose the target to render the least amount of casualties. i.e., knew in advance to strike the not-finished reinforced wall at ground level rather than just aiming for the complex to take as many as possible. In other words, the questions on this angle presuppose the CT conclusion that it's supposed to support. I don't think that's valid.
IOW, the nukes and NRC would have had to be astounding evil geniuses to have designed a plant like TMI (and like models) on purpose to ensure a major meltdown and mass death from multiple single-point failures all the way down the line. Of course, if you assume a conspiracy of astounding evil geniuses doing it on purpose, you can follow the dots in such a way as to 'prove' that all day long. But it wouldn't be a valid analysis no matter how unbelievably coincidental all the unbelievable coincidences really were.
Comment by Joy — January 22, 2010 @ 3:07 pm
January 22nd, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Because, after taking down 3,000 people in the Twin Towers, avoiding excess casualties by hitting empty offices became a priority.
Comment by Pez — January 22, 2010 @ 3:36 pm
January 22nd, 2010 at 4:49 pm
And just to expand my analogy to personal experience of a Big Event so long ago some of you were still in diapers, there are some who have been keeping track of TMI (and/or involved in the legalities) for all these years who have been prone to propagating conspiracy theories. Up to and including speculations of sabotage and complete with gross disinformation easily enough discredited to be highly suspicious. This sort of thing (like holographic planes and UFOs and such in the 9-11 CTs) is deliberate for the purpose of discrediting everybody who suspects, believes or knows about the coverup and lies. Consider how fine a job they did with selling the Magic Bullet. That was nearly half a century ago!
As for keeping people's mouths shut, there are tried and true ways of limiting each operative's role such that a whole picture is nearly impossible to put together. Organized crime didn't invent the methodology, but they are best known for putting it to good use. A good many of our spooks have a thorough understanding of the craft – it's part of the training. Thus available if political leadership needs it. For those in a position to know or be able to put together some whole segment of the overall plot, there's always those ever-convenient one-car accidents. Check out the death toll on the Minot Nuclear Oops of 2007.
Which is why my brother, health physics site coordinator at the Hatch nuclear plant in Georgia, was killed and my husband critically injured in one of those the day my brother joined us in New Mexico to put the finishing touches on our report to the NRC and Congress. "National Security" is still a twisted world, as well as a designation that can cover a host of sins. They didn't melt TMI on purpose. They just covered it up on purpose, and THAT was enough to kill for.
So I'll still go with LIHOP and pure opportunism on 9-11. I could be wrong, it could be worse. Nobody ever really suspected the Shrub was in charge. But there were definitely some evil geniuses in positions of power in that admin. Many of them brought to you courtesy of Richard Nixon and his stable of organized criminals and killer-spooks. Who was so dangerous it fell to a wig in the FBI to bring him down for "a third-rate burglary" at the Watergate rather than the high crimes of concern to lifers who actually took their oaths to protect and defend seriously. Those seem to be in short supply these days.
* By the way, our TMI 'outing' came in #3 for 2009 Story of the Year at the Institute for Southern Studies. Kewl!
Comment by Joy — January 22, 2010 @ 4:49 pm
January 22nd, 2010 at 6:05 pm
Bilbo wrote:
Then Joy wrote:
Like I said, the 1970s were notorious for slapdash construction and shabby American manufacturing. Anybody like myself who remembers (and drove) the American automobiles and attended public schools built in that era can confirm that with ease.
It's a little better now, but not much. I was watching that Trump show a few years back and was horrifically astonished at the corner-cutting being done on one of his construction projects. And that was what they were showing to a TV audience after editing.
Who knows what kind of things happen when the cameras aren't rolling and some relatively unknown real estate mogul needs to trim $10m off of a project budget.
Bilbo later wrote:
Or you know, maybe as an amatuer pilot the hijacker could have been following the visual path of the road because he couldn't fly by instruments very well, and that happened to be the side that was being renovated.
And thank goodness for those vacant offices. Somebody might have gotten hurt otherwise.
Comment by angryoldfatman — January 22, 2010 @ 6:05 pm
January 22nd, 2010 at 7:06 pm
aofm:
In my experience of nuclear power, you've hit the nail on the head. Somebody who bought up all the farmland soon to become lakebottom's brother-in-law the contractor makes a lot of money. So do the contractors. Then they make more by shorting on specs. It's as endemic in that sort of construction as anywhere else (plus a blank check!). But shortages tend to come on the plant engineering level more than the site building level. Sure, random hatches in a PWR have been known to blow for no apparent reason (even to killing people in the process), to my knowledge a containment structure has never failed. And the explosion at TMI represented more than twice design specs.
And they usually re-design on the spot for this reason or that. They did this with the manual control valves on the main emergency feedwater system, putting stuff around them so thickly that during the TMI accident an operator had to literally hang by his knees from an overhead pipe and attempt to open them (these are hatch-size wheels) sans leverage. It took eight long, long minutes while the primary plant was suffering scram failure and pressure/coolant leak. How terminally stupid is that?
I can buy that the Empire State building is better built than #7. But #7 – completed in 1987, not the '70s – collapsed without getting hit with a plane. AND it was only 47 stories (330') tall. Atop the Conn-Ed substation, and housing Salomon Smith Barney (floors 28-45), ITT Hartford, American Express Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, IRS, Secret Service, INS, DoD/CIA joint office, Securities and Exchange Commission, and the NYC Office of Emergency Management (guiliani's "command center"). If the complex was THAT lousy-built it never would have passed rudimentary inspection. And you'd have long since heard plenty from the unions.
Face it – it was "pulled." That's how the BBC knew it was coming down half an hour before it did.
Comment by Joy — January 22, 2010 @ 7:06 pm
January 22nd, 2010 at 7:31 pm
The BBC was in on it too??
Comment by chunkdz — January 22, 2010 @ 7:31 pm
January 22nd, 2010 at 7:48 pm
They were reported what they were told by officials on the scene. How that got muddied so thoroughly isn't unusual. Do you recall on the scene reports from OKC?
Comment by Joy — January 22, 2010 @ 7:48 pm
January 22nd, 2010 at 9:21 pm
True. Conspiracy theorists are much more reliable.
Comment by Mung — January 22, 2010 @ 9:21 pm
January 22nd, 2010 at 9:26 pm
Of course. The conspiracy theory is much harder to swallow when you employ a wider perspective and consider more facts.
Comment by Mung — January 22, 2010 @ 9:26 pm
January 22nd, 2010 at 9:32 pm
Mung:
Well, you can always just believe whatever the gub'ment's 'blue ribbon commission' tells you. Lord knows not a one of THEM ever lied their tuchus off…
Comment by Joy — January 22, 2010 @ 9:32 pm
January 23rd, 2010 at 1:27 am
Has someone been censoring Joy on her own blog?
Comment by Pez — January 23, 2010 @ 1:27 am
January 23rd, 2010 at 10:53 am
AOF still thinks the towers were defective, although the only evidence he's produced is that they were made in the 70s. Let's see, there was that bombing in '93. Blew a hole through five floors. But the building didn't come down. The engineers inspected it, said there was no significant structural damage and came away thinking the WTCs were pretty solid buildings, after all. That's why I doubt they put explosives in the building "just in case." They knew the only way these buildings would come down is if somebody brought them down with controlled demolitions.
But let's suppose the towers were defective. We still have to explain why it collapsed straight down. That means total failure of all the columns at the same time all the way down. You could say that it was the weight of the upper building crushing it, but there is no photographic evidence of an upper part even existing. It disintegrates. There's nothing there to crush the lower part of the building. And we still have to explain why it was at near free fall speed. We still have to explain the melted iron and extreme heat in the ground for weeks. We still have to explain the unburnt nanothermite.
Mung, the BBC reported that building #7 had collapsed 20 minutes before it collapsed. How did they know the future?
Pez, on the hypothesis that the chiefs of staff had planned 9/11, why would they attack their own building? To deflect suspicion. But they would also want to make sure that their building didn't sustain too much damage, and that not too many of their own, especially those of higher rank would get killed.
Joy, we still have to explain how an incompetent pilot made such an impossible 320 degree descent, and flew the plane at 400mph inches above the ground into the building.
No. Actually, the more facts you consider the more plausible the theory becomes.
Comment by Bilbo — January 23, 2010 @ 10:53 am
January 23rd, 2010 at 11:00 am
123 people killed at the Pentagon, largely because only 800 were working in that area, instead of the usual 4,500.
Comment by Bilbo — January 23, 2010 @ 11:00 am
January 23rd, 2010 at 1:58 pm
I'm going to break this up for readability (translation: I assume everyone has Internet-induced ADD like me
)
Bilbo wrote:
I didn't say they were defective as much as I implied they weren't as well-built as their predecessors and surely weren't built to withstand two jetliners crashing into them.
My point: Two big airplanes hitting those towers most assuredly could bring them crashing to the ground with no need for nanothermite, corrosive blood from masses of xenomorphs, orbital ion cannons, or whatever other wizbang technology the military-industrial complex may have handed over to some pajama-wearing cave-yodelers.
Comment by angryoldfatman — January 23, 2010 @ 1:58 pm
January 23rd, 2010 at 1:59 pm
Bilbo wrote:
Let's pretend for a moment that the building was unsafe after the 1993 blast, but the engineers were just arriving and inspecting the damage.
Considering that all government employed engineers are angelic beings who always have the welfare of others on their minds and hearts, they would declare the building unsafe and bring down the wrath of the aforementioned real estate moguls on their (or their bosses… or their bosses' bosses… etc.) heads when said moguls stood to lose BIG rent money.
Because of their divinity, the engineers in question would never think to glance around at the damage, tell the moguls to put up a support beam here or there, then drive back down to their offices to put their tired feet up on their desks and snag some Dunkin Donuts (glazed – the cops took all the jelly-filled ones) while contemplating which overseas tour to take with their retirement pensions.
This is true of all government workers, except Republicans. I know this firsthand now that I am employed by a municipal government.
Comment by angryoldfatman — January 23, 2010 @ 1:59 pm
January 23rd, 2010 at 2:03 pm
There were no explosives rigged up in the towers. None.
The collapses started on the exact floors that the planes hit in each tower.
You can believe we have people that super-competent and materials that miraculous in government. For me, that's a (collapsed) bridge too far. After working in a government for several months now, I can tell you that the only miracle in such an organization (if it can be called such) is competence.
Comment by angryoldfatman — January 23, 2010 @ 2:03 pm
January 23rd, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Bilbo wrote:
2,000 or so were killed at the towers, when at least 20,000 to 50,000 should have been working there. It looks like America's true dirty secret has been exposed – that nobody shows up for work on time!
Seriously though, you've written elsewhere here that the reason why fewer people were in those sections was because of construction work being performed there to strengthen the building. I believe this to be true.
The only disagreement you and I have in regards to the Pentagon construction is the reasoning behind it.
You (and to be fair, many others including the A&Es you mention) believe the reason to be foreknowledge of the plane/missile/bomb/Great Pumpkin that was flown/planted/sprouted into that side and exploded.
This is an appeal to competence in government that I have observed and firmly believe is simply not there.
My alternate hypothesis is that the U.S. military, as it has done practically since it was formed, was hurriedly (for the gov't, that is) prepping to fight the previous war. Or terrorist attack as it were.
What kind of terrorist attacks had we seen before 9/11? Vehicles loaded with explosives driven near or into buildings and detonated. The Oklahoma attack, the 1993 WTC attack, many overseas embassy attacks, same modus operandi.
The brilliantly slow, unimaginative brass at the Pentagon looked at these attacks and say:
"Hey! It looks like people are driving vehicles into buildings and blowing them up! What should we do about that?"
"Hmmm… think think think… hmmm… Oh, wait, I know, let's form a committee!"
"Yeah, and then we can form another committee to oversee that committee!"
"Wow, we've already got a lot of committees, let's form a committee to look into why we're having to form all these committees!"
"Sweet! This committee meeting is adjourned! Where's the Dunkin Donuts? Dammit, who ate all the jelly-filled ones again? I bet it was the Air Force…"
Once they got done with the budget committee meetings, the planning committee meetings, and the committee-overseeing committee meetings, one of the lackeys finally wrote something along the lines of "Let's reinforce the Pentagon building to make it tougher to drive explosive-laden vehicles into it! And we'll start the construction on a side facing the road because trucks don't drive on the Potomac, silly billy!"
I leave it to the reader to decide whether my hypothesis or Bilbo's is more plausible.
Comment by angryoldfatman — January 23, 2010 @ 2:37 pm
January 23rd, 2010 at 6:32 pm
OK: “luckily” hitting the one side that had been reinforced is specification, but do we have the complexity to pull off a design inference? It’s the Pentagon, not the Chiliagon; hitting one specified side out of a thousand is suspicious, but one out of five? Not such a big deal, really. (Plus, even if you could infer design, we all know that that doesn’t tell us who the designer is. Instead of a conspiracy, maybe it was Providence?)
Back to the pilot’s amazing feat: again, let’s think backwards. Or rather forwards, that is, backwards from tracing backwards through time: ordinary expert pilots are experts at not crashing; maybe part of the reason it would be so hard to follow that exact path is because it goes against every instinct of a good pilot in the first place? Would it be easier for a bad pilot? What about one who doesn’t need to learn all the normal things pilots need because he’s only ever taking one flight, along this exact route, and that’s all he has to train for??
Also, how do we know the exact path he had to have taken? Presumably this comes from the black box info, but to be honest, I don’t know how much room for interpretation that leaves. What if they lied about the details of the black-box trajectory?? There ya go, you can have a conspiracy — I’m not irrationally against conspiracies after all, only the irrational ones — maybe because they thought making the terrorists look dangerous rather than lucky would make them look less incompetent. It’s still bad that the government would lie at all, but exaggerating to cover some ineptitude is still significantly different from mass murder. Here’s another conspiracy: the terrorists really were expert pilots, and their apparent flunking out of flight-school (as in the link you gave) was just a charade to make it look as though not only was America so ill-prepared that a handful of guys could pull of this attack, but in fact so pathetic that Beavis and Butthead could do! Great PR for the bad guys! Plus, if they failed, they have a handy excuse, this was just playing around, wait for the real thing!
Now you may find some of these suggestions kind of silly. So do I, of course… which is why I’m so disinclined to believe a story a hundred times sillier. For any outrageous theory that fits certain facts, there are sure to be many many more less-outrageous theories that fit the same evidence. Especially in a situation like this, where so much evidence is unavailable anyway, and a lot of what is can be understood properly only by experts, none of whom are experts in all the necessary fields at the same time. That’s why I feel that treating such situations under the scope of ID probably won’t help. Even if you can marshal the evidence to point to design, there are countless possible designs that might fit. Science is a lot more amenable to this kind of study, because for something to be science it has to work the same way every time.
Comment by DL — January 23, 2010 @ 6:32 pm
January 23rd, 2010 at 7:06 pm
No: the more plausible some parts of the [conspiracy] theory become. Other parts become less plausible. So much less plausible, in fact, that most people are willing to swallow the official story, even though it’s implausible too — just that it’s only a little bit implausible, at least as far as most of us can see. Frankly, I’m a lot more open to the conspiracy-conspiracy that claims the powers that be are themselves behind these outrageous stories because by giving a push to the wildest claims, the more sober semi-conspiracies get drowned out or swept along, thus making the official account seem like the “least implausible” by comparison.
The problem with this story, like most conspiracies, is that it’s way too much work. If someone really wanted to stage this whole thing, there are much better and easier ways to do it. In particular, there are safer ways that don’t leave all these obvious “clues” supposedly pointing to the fact that the whole thing is a bleeding conspiracy. That is the central problem, where most conspiracy theories fall down: to work, the conspirators have to be brilliant, cunning, and efficient — yet there are always stupid and sloppy holes. Sure, smart people can make mistakes, but either they’re mostly smart and the mistakes will be few and far between; or else they’re mostly dumb, and the clever sneaky bits would be the exception.
Consider the case of the super-student-pilot, who followed this amazing nigh-impossible flight path into the side of the Pentagon. Too impossible to happen? Then what did happen? An expert stunt pilot was flying instead? Well, that’s so silly that not even the conspiracists claim that (I think). The common story seems to be that it was a missile or something instead. So all the black-box evidence pretending that an actual plane took that actual path is fake. Um…. so why are they faking “impossible” evidence? If it’s all made up, why not pick a path that a third-rate terrorist could have achieved?
I dunno, a conspiracy inside the conspiracy? Maybe the guy whose job it was to fake the black box developed a conscience, and plotted to deliberately create this outlandish flight path in order to draw attention and thus reveal the whole conspiracy. It’s another design inference, right?: out of all the made-up paths for the plane to allegedly take, what are the odds of hitting one that’s practically impossible, unless it was chosen on purpose! Except why not just come out and admit it? Oh, maybe this way it bought him time to flee the country! It all fits, right?
The fact is, if you want people to think a plane smashed into a building, the best way to do it is to smash a plane into a building. Or, contrariwise, if you want to blow up a building with nanothermite, then concoct a story about terrorists with nanothermite instead of hijackers. Either way, keep your conspiring to easy, low-level paperwork, like maybe getting your selected terrorists some real passports, or planting a passport that miraculously “survived” impact. What you don’t want to do is create a convoluted mish-mash of different scenarios that will be impossible to keep straight.
Again, to try to keep a little bit on topic, I think this is where ID generally works against conspiracy theories. The clues to ID in science are where things work “too well”, such as evolution just managing to do the right things “by chance”. Conspiracies start out the same way, tying together coincidences and discrepancies that are too suspicious to be accidents. But the more complex the conspiracy becomes, the more it piles up coincidences and discrepancies of its own.
Comment by DL — January 23, 2010 @ 7:06 pm
January 23rd, 2010 at 7:15 pm
You almost had me up until that last line. Actually, given that people conspire to defraud insurance companies all the time, I’m fairly open to something like that, a “passive” sort of conspiracy. (Of course, it also depends on why the insurance wouldn’t cover it anyway, or why the gov’t would suck up to a rich guy who owned a building instead of an even richer insurance company, and so on and so forth.) But the BBC thing is clearly a red herring. Conspiracy or not, it had to be just a mistake. It’s not like the reporter said, “I’ve been told they’re going to blow up the building” and then later they claimed, no, it just fell down. She said — well, actually, she said a lot of nothing, just vague filler consisting of repeated information that was already known, standard platitudes, and deflecting the question. It’s the BBC anchorman who says the building collapsed and asks for details, of which she clearly has none, and just replies “it’s very, very sketchy”. No kidding. So someone an ocean away got his information wrong; all it proves is that the BBC isn’t infallible. It contributes nothing at all to knowing or even suspecting that the tower was deliberately demolished.
You almost had me up until that last line. Gov’t bureaucracy starting on the side with the road sounds suspiciously competent to me. And didn’t you yourself just finish explaining how incompetent government is? Which just goes to show that you yourself must be part of the conspiracy!!! Anyway, after watching a bunch of movies that feature the Pentagon, my research has uncovered that the higher-ups all have nice offices, so clearly they arranged for the construction to start on the side with all the peons’ offices. Wait a minute — what are the odds they’d all have the bad offices stuck next to the highway, while the generals get the offices with the nicer view? There is a conspiracy after all!
Comment by DL — January 23, 2010 @ 7:15 pm
January 23rd, 2010 at 8:07 pm
Corporate conspiracies tend to be as outrageous as governmental ones, but of course the real problem is what happens in front of our faces. Throughout history, giants have always represented threats, danger, evil. Suddenly, we seem oblivious to that. Even Frankenstein made only a man-sized monster, but we create our own giants. Who needs evil skulking in the shadows when it can relax out in the open where we get bored with it and apathetic?
Comment by DL — January 23, 2010 @ 8:07 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 1:32 am
DL:
Teach your children well. Then you get to worry about those grandkids. Of which I have a brand new one today (yesterday now), #8. Of which there are now 7 boys and one lonely girl. THAT might work out to be unworkable down the line, though unlike China nobody in my family chose boys over girls! §;o)
Comment by Joy — January 24, 2010 @ 1:32 am
January 24th, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Let's start with AOF, and then we'll go to DL.
AOF continues to think the buildings fell because they were defective, even though he offers no evidence other than that they were built in the '70s. He does not explain why they didn't collapse from the '93 bombing. He doesn't explain why the didn't collapse from the initial impact of the planes. He doesn't explain why they collapsed straight down, instead of falling over. He doesn't explain why they collapsed at near free fall speed. He doesn't explain the extreme heat from the sites that lasted for weeks. He doesn't explain the molten metal. He denies that nanothermite was in the building, even though there is now a peer-reviewed paper stating there was. He also states that a government agency could never pull something like this off without something going wrong. But terrorists working out of a cave in Afghanistan could pull it off without anything going wrong. Imagine that.
Three things I think went wrong:
1. Molten thermite pouring out of the building. Despite the conspirators depending upon thermite not igniting from the heat of the jet fuel burning, it appears some of it did, and ignited the thermite earlier than expected. So the South Tower had to be brought down sooner than the North Tower, even though it was hit later. This probably explains why the South Tower started its descent by tipping over first, since the thermite was already taking out columns on one side, first.
2. Flight 93. I don't think the conspirators were counting on the passengers storming the cockpit. If the passengers had succeeded, and successfully landed the plane, the conspiracy might have been revealed. So flight 93 had to be shot down.
3. Youtube. It came out in 2005. Suddenly thousands of people could see building #7 come down, obviously brought down by controlled demolitions. So starting in 2005 NIST devoted time to coming up with a bullshit study explaining how #7 could come down without the aid of controlled demolitions. And this meant killing Barry Jennings, so he couldn't contradict whatever they came up with.
So yeah, things went wrong with the conspiracy. But they recovered.
Comment by Bilbo — January 24, 2010 @ 2:33 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
DL, NTSB put together all the data from the flight control centers and figured out the various flight paths. If we're agreed that the path of flight 77 was too difficult for a novice pilot, then how was it done? Your suggestions are that he wasn't really a novice. Could be. We could do an investigation of his history and try to find out.
But there is another option: A computer program that would guide the plane by auto pilot into the Pentagon. That's what Jim Hoffman suggests in attack scenario 404. And it seems plausible enough.
But yes, the more evidence we examine, the more this looks like a false flag operation.
Comment by Bilbo — January 24, 2010 @ 2:42 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
Bilbo wrote:
That's a pretty strong statement to come from someone who barely understands the subject.
Comment by olegt — January 24, 2010 @ 2:56 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 3:30 pm
Joy:
Not having read it, it would be somewhat difficult for me to believe it.
Comment by Mung — January 24, 2010 @ 3:30 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
We talked at lenght about #7 before, olegt. After thinking it through it became obvious that even if NIST's explanation for the collapse of column #79 held water (I still don't think it does, since the process would have had to take place on multiple floors for the column to collapse), it doesn't explain the collapse of all the other columns, which would have had to collapse right afterwards and simultaneously and on mulitple floors in order for the symmetrical, straight down collapse, with 2 seconds of actual free fall time.
Also, I found out that your explanation of why all the molten metal — heat from gravity — was a bunch of baloney.
Comment by Bilbo — January 24, 2010 @ 3:32 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
Bilbo,
I don't think we ever got to other columns. As to bullshit, that word characterizes most, if not all of the objections you put forward.
And if it's not difficult, would you mind linking to my "explanation of why all the molten metal — heat from gravity" I don't recall saying anything of that sort.
Keep up the good work, Bilbo.
Comment by olegt — January 24, 2010 @ 3:46 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 5:24 pm
All right, Olegt! I figured a little trash talk would flush you out! Bring it on, ol' buddy!
Last time we talked about this was at unburnt thermite. Let me see if I can find what I'm referring to.
Comment by Bilbo — January 24, 2010 @ 5:24 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 5:29 pm
Here we go:
OK, that's not about the molten metal. Let me look some more.
Comment by Bilbo — January 24, 2010 @ 5:29 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Keep looking, Bilbo. I'm sure it's somewhere under the couch.
Comment by olegt — January 24, 2010 @ 5:33 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 5:41 pm
OK, that was in your exchange with Stephen Wilson, which I was only 1/2 paying attention to. I assumed you were trying to explain all the molten metal and extreme heat at the sites that lasted for weeks. But now it's not clear what you were trying to explain.
So explain all the molten metal and extreme heat at the sites for weeks.
Comment by Bilbo — January 24, 2010 @ 5:41 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
In case you wonder what I'm talking about: Persistent Heat and Molten Metal
Comment by Bilbo — January 24, 2010 @ 5:45 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 6:15 pm
Ooooh… Peer review… That settles it!
Comment by Daniel Smith — January 24, 2010 @ 6:15 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
Hi Daniel, did you watch the video, yet?
Comment by Bilbo — January 24, 2010 @ 6:29 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
Hi Bilbo,
I watched your video and gave you counter links last year.
Have you checked debunking911.com or any other such debunker for answers to your challenges?
For instance, to find out why iron can still be molten after some time?
Comment by Pez — January 24, 2010 @ 6:32 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
Gee, Pez, why can iron still be molten after some time? And how did it get molten in the first place?
Comment by Bilbo — January 24, 2010 @ 6:33 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 6:34 pm
And since I know Daniel is so eager to read the peer reviewed paper, here it is.
Comment by Bilbo — January 24, 2010 @ 6:34 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
Gee, Bilbo, check the site.
Comment by Pez — January 24, 2010 @ 6:41 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
The paper Bilbo mentioned was published by Steve E. Jones and collaborators in a Bentham open-access journal. We have previously discussed Jones's errors of analysis in a different context and on that basis I wouldn't trust his opinion. Bentham Open does not look like a reputable publisher, either.
Comment by olegt — January 24, 2010 @ 6:58 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
Gee, Pez, I link to all the evidence I cite. Why can't you?
Comment by Bilbo — January 24, 2010 @ 6:58 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
Gee, Bilbo, I thought you could handle it.
Okay, no problem. I'll go to the site I just gave you and then press the button that says "molten steel".
Oof. Okay, done.
Here you go.
http://www.debunking911.com/mo...
Comment by Pez — January 24, 2010 @ 7:03 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 7:04 pm
Niels H. Harrit, Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, is listed first, and the experiments were carried out there, so I'm guessing he was the lead scientist. The chief editor, when questioned about the paper, claimed she didn't know anything about it, and resigned. Interestingly, the paper concerned her area of expertise. Nor did she say anything to discredit the results of the paper.
Comment by Bilbo — January 24, 2010 @ 7:04 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 7:21 pm
Here's the article on the chief editor resigning.
Comment by Bilbo — January 24, 2010 @ 7:21 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 8:23 pm
Thanks for the link, Pez. Here's the reply to Mark Ferran's article.
Comment by Bilbo — January 24, 2010 @ 8:23 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 8:28 pm
Start at page 42.
Comment by Bilbo — January 24, 2010 @ 8:28 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
I also looked at the first part of your link, Pez, that argued that the orange spout was aluminum. Here's Steven Jones' research that challenges the claim.
Comment by Bilbo — January 24, 2010 @ 8:49 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
Your link also discussed the Madrid Windsor Building fire. Jim Hoffman's analysis.
Comment by Bilbo — January 24, 2010 @ 8:53 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 10:53 pm
vs. Jones and the colour of aluminum.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
http://www.drjudywood.com/arti...
Comment by Pez — January 24, 2010 @ 10:53 pm
January 25th, 2010 at 12:23 am
How it actually happened.
Comment by Pez — January 25, 2010 @ 12:23 am
January 25th, 2010 at 4:29 am
Check out the Loose Change truthers debating Popular Mechanics.
Anybody who's spent time watching encounters between ideologues and people with facts on their side will recognize the patterns.
Hint, watch who cries "liar liar" and bobs about in anger.
There are many segments so just keep going after this first one.
Comment by Pez — January 25, 2010 @ 4:29 am
January 25th, 2010 at 4:03 pm
Hi Pez, a few points to cover:
1. As far as the persistent heat and molten iron or steel, if you read A. Dreger's paper, you should now realize that Mark Ferran's article is completely bogus. That leaves debunkers with a problem: how to explain the heat and molten iron without invoking thermite.
2. As far as the orange spout pouring out of the South Tower, even if it were aluminum, this would not hurt the argument of controlled demolition, which has plenty of other evidence for it. However, the videos you offered don't really show that aluminum would have an orange glow that consistently and for that long. Steven Jones response to Judy Woods.
3. As to what "actually happened," that video was made when the pancake theory was still in vogue. It was later given up (probably because Silverstein found out the insurance wouldn't pay, because the fault was in the failed connections), for the theory that the trusses held, and pulled the permiter columns in. Either theory is in terrible trouble.
First, the South Tower: Your video correctly points out that the South Tower started its collapse by tipping over. What the video fails to explain is why it didn't continue to tip over, but instead the whole building fell straight down. And what was really cool about your video was they showed what would happen if the pancake theory were true: the floors would collapse, but the inner core would remain standing. Thanks! Also, if the pancake theory were true, the perimeter columns wouldn't have fallen immediately either.
Your video correctly points out that the North Tower started to fall in the inner core, first. This is what would have to happen to bring down either tower, since the inner cores — the dense grid of 47 massive steel columns anchored in bedrock — were the primary vertical support for the towers. If they didn't fall, and if the trusses remained connected, and perimeter remained connected to the trusses, then the buildings wouldn't fall.
So now, the question becomes a simple one: Would the inner cores have collapsed? And would they have collapsed symmetrically, at near free fall speed all the way down. What's really interesting is that NIST never tries to answer this question in their report. All they try to do is figure out what happened up to the moment of the initiation of collapse. Then they just assume that everything after that was inevitable and not in need of explanation.
But that's just what needs explaining. Even if the upper portions had collapsed (they wouldn't have), would that have resulted in the lower portions collapsing, and at near free fall time? No. At most the upper portions were falling through one story of unsupported space. This is not nearly enough time and distance to create the force necessary to bring down the lower portions. Remember that the lower portions were supporting the upper portions without any trouble before the plane crashes. They would have lost very little strength, since whatever heat they received from the fires would have been wicked away by the massive heat sink. The towers were build with the usual amount of redundancy, so that the columns could support many times more the weight that was above them. The insignificant distance that the upper portions fall would not have been enough to overcome that extra strength.
I'll get to the loose change debate next, when I can.
Comment by Bilbo — January 25, 2010 @ 4:03 pm
January 25th, 2010 at 4:07 pm
I'll let you read Jim Hoffman's reply to Popular Mechanics, while I watch your video.
Comment by Bilbo — January 25, 2010 @ 4:07 pm
January 25th, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Hi Bilbo,
Thanks for Hoffman's ad hom rant.
Luckily he confirms the facts of the PM case, such as 1) there was no pod on the plane, 2) there were windows on the planes, 3) there were not explosions in the lower levels as the planes hit, 4) there was not seismic activity before the collapses (indicating bombs), 5) the fires aren't cited as having melted the steel, etc.
He calls these strawmen, but many of these are the very things the loose changers were charging in the debate I have linked to.
On aluminum we see that it does, indeed, burn and pour with a glowing emission; Jones' pictures of pristine silver aluminum notwithstanding.
We also see as we watch the WTT video that the orange spout turns silver as it travels – as Jones would predict, albeit not as quickly as he insists it would have happened.
Then again, you don't care about the colour anyway and don't need this, or any of the other conspiracy theorist's arguments, which PM debunked and which Hoffman himself said were strawmen, to support your contention.
If the colour doesn't concern you then you are not contending that this is molten steel, I presume, and you are not presenting this flow as evidence of thermite, nanothermite or thermate … right?
No, I did not see where Ferran was shown to be wrong. True, in the desk top experiments filings and wool are used for a greater surface to volume ratio as demonstrating that iron burns. What does that have to say about iron exposed to thousands of degrees of heat, crushed with the friction created by hundreds of floors of steel and concrete, and trapped under debris? Anything?
And what evidence, other than the observations of laymen, are there that there was, indeed, molten steel being exposed? If it was molten how do you know it was not the aluminum? If you are going by the pictures of glowing metal being extracted those pictures do not show it as molten?
And what is the point anyway? You realize that even with normal wood fires that are covered the heat remains trapped for days or weeks and can spring back into flame when exposed to oxygen, right? Why would we not expect heat to be trapped and reactions to continue for a greater amount of time with a disaster of this magnitude?
Knowing only a very little about smoldering fires I was never surprised to find that the heat persisted for weeks … neither was anyone else who found the pockets, even though they didn't have a nanothermite conspiracy theory to explain it.
And what was really cool is that the actual live video showed just this happening, where the floors and the outer columns fell away leaving the inner columns in their wake, which were then pulled down with the rest. You're welcome.
Each building went down in a different fashion. In one, a direct hit took out many inner columns and the collapse started down the center. In another the collapse was started from the sheering of the outside columns and they were the first to give. On #7, with 1/4 of the building scooped out, the collapse started in one upper corner and then spread – for 18 seconds, not 7 or 8. Funny how the demolitions experts rigged that. Very farsighted of them.
It doesn't have to explain why it didn't continue to tip over. It couldn't continue to tip. The tipping portion was severed, tipped, and fell into the remaining building underneath. It had nowhere else to tip to.
Maybe Oleg will correct me on some assumptions about the physics.
Comment by Pez — January 25, 2010 @ 4:47 pm
January 26th, 2010 at 5:49 am
Tsk, tsk: you know very well that “it” refers to two different things there! And really, they hit the Pentagon to deflect suspicion? Have you ever heard of anyone who said, “Well, I’m really suspicious of the whole thing, but I don’t believe it was a conspiracy because they hit the Pentagon!” I don’t believe for a second that it deflected any suspicion from anybody. Heck, I don’t believe in the conspiracy, and it doesn’t even work for me.
Could we really? Hope to find out his true history, that is? Either his history is a CIA fabrication or it lies in a cave halfway around the world; either way, I doubt we could dig up enough solid, unquestionable facts. But I’m glad you think the auto-pilot idea is plausible, because I was going to suggest that myself. The terrorists didn’t need good pilots, just a good program.
Hang on — that’s quite a leap there. Let’s just suppose for a moment that all the anomalies you cite really are anomalous; that is, the official story cannot explain all the observed evidence. Nobody observed a false flag; only some odd physics. If there was thermite, well, maybe the terrorists brought a big bag of thermite with them. It could only have been done by a big established functioning agency, you claim? What about the Chinese? They don’t like America very much, they’re a big gov’t with plenty of access to any materials, plus lots of spies, etc. Maybe they heard the warning signs and decided to spice up some simple hijacking with a little bang of their own? Get the US embroiled in some hopeless war, and it’s only a matter of time before the economy gives in, providing China a much-needed chance to get a leg up! Or maybe it was Iran — not as capable or competent as China, but hey, if it took only a handful of guys disguised as telephone repairmen, I bet they could pull it off, knowing that Bush would go after their hated neighbor Iraq!
The point is, it’s hard enough to establish the alleged anomalies in the first place, let alone point to a definitive story behind them. The only was you can dismiss my stories is by simply eliminating them as “too silly” — which of course is how most people feel about your story. You’ve no direct evidence of any “false flag”, that’s merely your suggested interpretation, but there are a million others. The only hope of getting people to accept one particular version is to tell a story that’s more plausible than the others, which brings me back to my main question: if you want people to believe that someone flew a plan into a building and it fell down, then why not fly a plane into the building and knock it down? (Because it’s impossible? Then why would you try to tell people it did?!? If the only way to knock it down is explosives in the basement, then you make your story that terrorists planted explosives in the basement. Coverups after the fact, yeah, that’s plausible. Coming up with a story that doesn’t match the evidence because they apparently forgot which made-up scenario they were supposed to be faking isn’t.)
Comment by DL — January 26, 2010 @ 5:49 am
January 26th, 2010 at 10:30 am
The heart is desperately wicked, and I don't feel like arguing about it anymore. I'm going to dance with God. Come join me. It's fun.
Comment by Bilbo — January 26, 2010 @ 10:30 am
September 9th, 2011 at 4:11 pm
[...] It'd hardly be worth noting, if not for the fact that the only 9/11 "truther" I've seen pop up on either side of the creationism/evolution blogosphere is Bilbo, formerly of the pro-ID Telic Thoughts blog. Bilbo defended his regular postings about how 9/11 must've been an elaborate plot by whoever, writing: [...]
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