Having complained of people posting off topic, it seems a reasonable solution to give an opportunity for people to discuss the topics I am banning from other threads – of which 9/11 seems the most popular.
I do not believe that the US government, or any of its agencies, were responsible for 9/11. It would just need too many people to be involved. Someone would have objected. There are some strange and dangerous people in America, but not in sufficient concentration for this one. They couldn’t even keep Watergate quiet, and that was a small group. Any group I can think of – even Blackwater – would contain operatives with scruples about blowing up New York. They may be sadly ready to kill people in poor countries, but Americans en masse? Somebody would say it wasn’t a good idea.
I asked a friend in the construction industry what it would take to demolish the twin towers. He replied nine months, 80 men, and 12 miles of cabling. The notion that a small team at night could plant sufficient explosives embedded at key points, is laughable.
The forces of the aircraft impacts must have been amazingly high. I have no difficulty imagining they would bring down the building. As for WTC 7, again the kinetic energy of the collapse of the twin towers must be immense.
I admit to a private speculation about WTC7. Unfortunately in construction it is extremely common for contractors not to fix or install properly all the expensive girders, ties and rebar that are supposed to be enclosed in the concrete. Supervising contractors and municipal inspectors can be corrupt. I recall vividly that in London some years ago a tragedy occurred when a simple gas oven explosion brought down the whole side of a tower block.
The inquiry found that the building contractor had simply omitted the ties that bound the girders at the corners, all encased in concrete. If a gas oven had not blown up, nobody would have found out. Buildings I strongly suspect are very often not as strong as they are supposed to be, with contractors skimping on apparently redundant protection. The sort of sordid thing you might not want too deeply investigated in the event of a national tragedy.
Precisely what happened at the Pentagon I am less sure. There is not the conclusive film and photographic evidence that there is for New York. I am particularly puzzled by the much more skilled feat of flying that would be required to hit a building virtually at ground level, in an urban area, after a lamppost clipping route – very hard to see how a non-professional pilot did that. But I can think of a number of possible scenarios where the official explanation is not quite the whole truth on the Pentagon, but which do not necessitate a belief that the US government or Dick Cheney was behind the attack.
In my view the real scandal of 9/11 was that it was blowback – the product of a malignant terrorist agency whose origins lay in CIA funding and provision. Also blowback in a more general sense that it was spawned in the nasty theocratic dictatorship of Saudi Arabia which is so close to the US and to the Bush dynasty in particular. As with almost all terrorist activity, I do not rule out any point on the whole spectrum of surveillance, penetration and agent provocateur activity by any number of possible actors.
But was 9/11 false flag and controlled demolition? No, I think not.
(Now I have given full opportunity to discuss 9/11 here, any further references on other threads will be instantly deleted).
That pretty much draws this chapter to an end. Soba – and you other True believers – you said you’d already posted some strong stuff for your case, but nobody replied to it in other threads. Very possibly, because the “debate” got drawn out a long time over many posts.
But we’re here now.
I take it you concede the – modesty aside – concluding point about inertia. You’ve had all day and made dozens of posts but done nothing to even suggest a flaw in my argument of January 28, 2010 11:05 PM. That means your favoured theory (i.e. believing the government 100%) cannot hold. Squealing about my lack of published papers does not counter that fact.
What it comes down to at the end of the day, is that you really believe that 19 Magic Arabs managed to pull off this tremendous feat, even suspending the laws of physics for a day, getting every law of man and nature on their side, and bring the mightiest nation in history to its knees. And you’re very angry with anyone who doesn’t share your rather staggering credulity.
Yes indeed, 19 Magic Arabs can do such a thing. But secret services? Some dark, stealthy group operating on behalf of the monied interests, the Powers That Be, a rogue squad? Why, how absolutely preposterous! Such a thing could never happen. Magic Arabs can do _anything_, as we know full well. But how could any internal arm of the real power of society be even conceived as having done _the exact same thing_ ? Of course our agencies couldn’t have done it – we don’t have caves in Afghanistan from whence such fiendishly diabolical plots can be forged, just for starters.
I mean… these vast interests wanted a new Pearl Harbour (viz, PNAC), wanted an excuse for war, wanted a shift towards control through fear, even wrote and published their requirements, but – nah! – that’s just impossible in sobaworld. Only crazed non- practicing Muslims could do that. Because they are Magic, you see.
Couple of hundred thousand bucks, and Magic Arabs can fly like angels, fight like daemons, navigate like homing pigeons, and die like hero warriors. Even if they can’t stay off the sleaze, booze, pork and women, and keep their heads down just before their most important mission ever just days before.
But the idea that _we_ could engineer the same… don’t make me laugh! Not at any price!
*
This is the thread for 9/11, so please – Soba etc. – bring your strongest stuff on here if you feel aggrieved that something dead good went unanswered. If you ever have a killer point, I’d concede it. The rest of you ask “what would it take to convince you [that the government is telling the whole truth]”. I might ask in return, since you bring it up, what would give you pause before believing every last word the government tells you like the Good Germans that you obviously are?
Suhayl – “[working for peace] may sound woolly, but as has been proven, it is the most difficult path of all”
Did you ever hear of General Rondon, of Brazil ? Rhetorical question, I want to tell it even if you do.
Story seems to be (I don’t know a whole lot about it, but so far as I can make out …), 100-ish years ago, Brazil was using its army to build communications infrastructure, telegraph lines etc, and they sent him off into the unknown Amazon headwaters to do that. Full of unknown numbers of people of an unknown number of unknown tribes of unknown locals. So they gave him an army, to do it with. And he gave them a standing order, to the effect of “these people won’t have a clue who you are, or what to do about it. And we don’t know what they might do about that. You may *not* kill them. If necessary, you must allow them to kill you, before you hurt them”.
I think, over a hundred of his people did get killed, in the course of their getting to know each other.
And it made him a national hero, and the Brazilian state invented the post of Marshal in order to award it to him, and that area is now called Rondonia.
(I rather fear that not everybody that came afterwards shared such attitudes).
I can’t find a whole lot about it. I guess there could be a lot more if I read Portuguese.
Clark – “you just can’t do that.”
Agree. He says something real, and this reaction isn’t going to encourage him to do it again, or make him glad he gave the other stuff a rest.
This is an unexpectedly interesting thread. But it’s still got a way to go to catch up with “What We Did On Craig’s Holidays”.
Suhayl – “Steelback’s irruption is unwarranted and strikes me as being motivated by someone who wants to bring down the site. I have no idea what the link s/he posts is about”
But, hey, if it tells other likeminded people not to come here, that doesn’t sound bad to me.
“Even if they can’t
stay off the sleaze, booze, pork and women, and keep their heads down just before
their most important mission ever just days before.”
Glenn, OK, so you believe that lie as well.
You’ll believe any lie as long as it fits with your conclusion.
“19 Magic Arabs”
Prior to Sept. 11, standard practice was for airline crews and hostages to stay quiet. There’s all sorts of evidence of that. However, we know how passengers changed their minds when they found out the planes were to be used as missiles rather than negotiating tools. The passengers rammed the cockpit.
Glenn,
PNAC discussed a “new Pearl Harbor” within the context of rebuilding America’s defenses. It had nothing to do with invading other countries. And they released that document, didn’t they? They weren’t hiding it, so it wasn’t some super-secret plot that only you, James Bond 007, could find out.
Glenn, I’m starting to believe that you can’t read. You’ve had years and years to read that PNAC document. Are you able to understand what it says by reading the words? It should be easy.
Three star “larry” alert! Interesting post made recently!
Glenn:
1. The silly 911 truth movement has failed. The very vibrant anti-war movement wants nothing to do with you; they find you’re quite silly fantasists, and that you distract from the anti-war message. Even Craig Murray doesn’t back you up. Noam Chomsky is sick of your silliness.
2. Every single one of your claims was invented and pushed by the American right wing. Is this something you’re proud of?
Glenn, look at this picture of the ValuJet crash – WHERE IS THE PLANE! OH NO! CONSPIRACY!
http://www.cnn.com/EVENTS/1996/year.in.review/us/valujet/valujet.html
Angrysoba,
Going out getting drunk on a Friday evening and then crawling back to the keyboard in the small hours to talk dirty to strangers on the internet ?” aren’t you ashamed?
I stopped arguing with you before because I couldn’t put up with the spite that all to often weaves its way into you comments. You say it comes from frustration and you excuse it on those grounds. I implore you to get it under control while you are still young because if you go on like this it will come dominate your character in time.
“Except they don’t appear to be controlled demolitions because we didn’t hear any detonations of explosives. Or see any flashes of explosives. Nor has any controlled demolition I have ever seen look like the Twin Towers collapses.”
Have you considered that there has never been any controlled demolition like what took place at the Twin Towers? They were singular structures and they may have been knocked down by a unique method. IF IT WAS A DEMOLITION, then most of the big explosives and incendiaries would have gone off in the central core area in and around the elevator shafts, which is why they wouldn’t have been visible from outside.
You are quite wrong to say that “‘we’ didn’t hear any detonations of explosives” unless you are referring to the royal ‘we’ of you and Larry. I saw and heard some on video, and quite a lot of eye-witnesses reported seeing and hearing them. There’s a big difference between “not many” and “none at all”. Even a dozen flashes low down the towers in the seconds before and at the onset of the collapse is a dozen more than your hypothesis calls for.
“As far as I know this is the scientific method in operation. You find some initial facts. Develop a hypothesis and then test it. The hypothesis must be capable of being falsified. If not it is impossible to test because testing can only confirm the hypothesis making it meaningless.
NIST only gave the explanation for collapse initiation, which was all it was tasked to do.
It seems clear that the top stories were no longer connected to the perimeter columns meaning that it was now falling through the floor which, as Leslie Robertson said, couldn’t possibly hold the weight of so many stories.
Once the first floor gave way it fell to the next story, which was unsurprisingly no more able to support the weight of the descending upper stories and so on, down to the ground.”
Unsurprising for you, perhaps, but shocking for almost everyone who watched it live including Peter Jennings and Dan Rather, if I remember correctly. So why didn’t the collapse end with the descending upper stories sitting on a pile of rubble? Please go on. This is fascinating.
“The verinage demolition technique…”
The term is new to me but the principle is straightforward. You linked to a video that shows how it can be used to bring down a building by disloging all the columns on one floor in uinson to initiate a collapse and let gravity do the rest. I linked to another video that shows how even when the basic technique of dislodging all the columns is employed (in the Hackney case they removed all the columns on a two-storey section simultaneously) it doesn’t necessarily work.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is htat the verinage technique is not applied to tall steel-frame structures because it would not work on them. Even with intrisically weaker and less robust reinforced concrete structures, verinage collapses slow down after the first jolt as the resistance of the lower structure absorbs the momentum of the decending block faster than gravity can add to it, slowing its progress and eventually bringing it to a stop.
I think that bringing up “verinage” in the context of the WTC collapses is a bit of an own goal for your non-demolition theory because such a collapse would result in an initial jolt (not observed at the WTC) and because such strong steel-framed structures would resist the collapse sufficiently to stop it from proceeding all the way to the bottom.
So in the spirit of chivalry, like helping an adversary get up during a duel when he’s been tripped over by his own shoelaces, I’m going to offer you Ryan Mackey, who knows a thing or two about tension, compression, shear, torque and torsion, not to mention why things fall down and why they don’t.
Tony’s considered opinion is that the WTCs came down without the use of explosives and I think that anyone who wants to argue against that is going to have their work cut out in debunking his ideas. I’m not saying he’s correct, but he is challenging. Sadly, he’s a bit of a JREFeree too, which makes him insufferable and obnoxious at times. But he definitely isn’t boring and he just might be right.
http://www.911myths.com/images/c/c6/Rm_hardfire_szamboti_ann.pdf
Ryan is known for his debunking of Debunking 9/11 Debunking. But he himself has been debunked by another debunking Ryan ?” Kevin Ryan.
ww.journalof911studies.com/letters/b/MackeyLetter.pdf –
And so it goes.
A five-star “larry” alert!
Larry – be useful for a moment, before your function is replaced by someone more competent. Reference a public document referring to a decapitated head being found and identified in the wreckage of the Twin Towers.
Perhaps you’re going to tell me that that sort of thing isn’t going to get a mention even in a local paper, given how much you detest anything suggesting salacious detail in the US an’ all?
Yet this really happened – a head was found, and it happened it belong to your personal mate.
Gosh, given your record, why should anyone doubt that for a moment?
Soba: This is the personal you tie yourself to, who just lies, and lies, and lies.
Right. Kevin Ryan. The water tester.
“Reference a public document referring to a decapitated
head being found and identified in the wreckage of the Twin Towers.”
Why would I? It wouldn’t change your mind about anything.
Larry on proof; ” Why would I? It wouldn’t change your mind about anything.”
But Larry… possibly it might make the casual reader think that maybe, just this one time, that you weren’t completely full of it?
Oh, drat that you always have the perfect excuse to never providing even a shred of proof! Huh… guess we’ll have to take you at your word then.
Larry,
I too have lost “loved ones” in violent circumstances, but I don’t like to talk about it. We English learn young to keep a stiff upper lip. We don’t show our feelings as freely as you Yanks ?” it’s not the done thing ?” but we do have them. Apart from Angrysoba, that is, but then again he’s got a few pints of Scottish highlander blood in him.
Interesting link to the ValueJet crash.
But I fail to see what precisely is your point?
The plane crashed into a swamp in the Everglades. After several months of effort, 75% of the plane was recovered, and despite the presence of aligators 36 bodies were recovered too.
How does this compare with the UA-93 case? How much of that plane was recovered? How many bodies? How many aligators hindered the search?
Everyone can have hours of fun reading about UA-93, here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125×37066
“I too have lost “loved ones” in violent circumstances, but I don’t like to talk about it. We English learn young to keep a stiff upper lip. We don’t show our feelings as freely as you Yanks ?” it’s not the done thing ?” but we do have them.”
As if I didn’t see that coming. In a previous thread, Clark wondered whether or not I lost someone on Sept. 11. I didn’t respond. Above, Glenn asked angrysoba why he was so angry. I threw in my two cents with a very quick statement. Otherwise, on no thread have I mentioned losing a friend. At another time I did mention it in the company of truthers, but that was also a situation of me being pressed to state why I’m so concerned with 911.
And then I hear the same boring British anti-Americanism. Of course, it’s of the lighter variety, but it’s still ethnic stupidity on your part.
“Why would I? It wouldn’t change your mind about anything.”
Why would you want to change Glenn’s mind about anything?
You brought up the subject of the head, and now you won’t give us a little bit of head info. You’re such a tease.
My point about the ValuJet crash was that anyone can point to pictures of it and say “Where is the plane?” and build a naive conspiracy merely on the lack of pictures. That was in response to Glenn’s anomaly hunting (but then, they’re not anomalies).
Much was recovered of Flight 93. Not as much as the ValuJet crash, but the terrain was entirely different, so it would be quite odd for the recoveries to match exactly.
Tim Groves:
“now you won’t give us a little bit of head info.”
Tim, I think there’s something a bit sick about you.
“And then I hear the same boring British anti-Americanism. Of course, it’s of the lighter variety, but it’s still ethnic stupidity on your part.”
Now you’ve cut me to the quick and wounded my vanity. (Sob!) We bigots have feelings too, you know. “Ethnic stupidity”: That’s a new one for the PC lexicon. I’ll have to remember that and find out under what circumstances I am allowed to use it. Not against Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims or the Irish, obviously, but it should come in very handy for flagellating my fellow non-hyphenated Snow Whiteys.
“That’s a new one for the PC lexicon”
I rather think that, when I describe British anti-Americanism as “ethnic stupidity”, that I’m the one undermining any PC lexicon.
“Tim, I think there’s something a bit sick about you.”
I tend to play “tit for tat”. When people gross me out, I do my best to reciprocate. But if they make nice, I can make nice too.
I see and accept as valid your point about the Valuejet and UA flight 93 crashes. Although I haven’t seen very much of what was recovered of Flight 93 and I would have liked to see what could be picked up of the fuselage put together in a hanger so that the plane could have been indentified clearly enough for all to see, as is usually the case. But in any case I’ve never tried to look deeply at Flight 93.
Now, isn’t it refression to hear somebody say “I accept your point.” You know, in all my years crossing swords with Angrysoba, I don’t think he’s ever done me such a courtesy. Of course, it could be because he’s never been wrong, or more likely because he’s never noticed that he’s been wrong. On the other hand, I could be wrong abut him.
“When people gross me out,”
but I thought you were English and kept a stiff upper lip about such matters.
“I rather think that, when I describe British anti-Americanism as “ethnic stupidity”, that I’m the one undermining any PC lexicon.”
I rather think that part of the problem is that you are playing by a set of culturally constructed and subliminally absorbed and internalized rules that you are assuming to be universals, so that you are apt to get judgemental when people a different culture fail to conform to your rules, which they couldn’t expect to be aware of in the first place by virtue of never having learned them.
But no need to apologize. I do the same thing myself all the time.
That blank one above was me.
“but I thought you were English and kept a stiff upper lip about such matters.”
That’s the big issue, isn’t it? Whether to swallow or spit, or in Angrysoba’s case, barf it out.
“I rather think that part of the problem is that you are playing by a set of culturally constructed and subliminally absorbed and internalized rules that you are assuming to be universals,”
Certain rules are universals. It’s immensely predictable that some people from every tribe will condescend to individuals of other tribes on the basis of perceived tribal superiority. I believe there is ethical value in destroying this impulse; in fact, if all humans gave up on this and other manifestations of early tribalism, we’d all experience greater peace and prosperity.
Tim Groves writes: “[Ryan Mackey] just might be right.”
I accept your point.
Actually, I made a friend request to Tony Szamboti about two or three months ago on JREF and he accepted.
I have watched Mackey and Szamboti on Hardfire and I have to say Ryan Mackey won that exchange.
The point that I keep trying to make and which no Truther seems to accept is that the Towers didn’t simply crush down like a coke can “through the path of least resistance”. The top of the towers had been observed to tilt. This means the mass was not being supported by the supporting columns but going through he floor itself.
They appear on Hardfire, the New York Libertarian TV channel with the rockin’ soundtrack and the fashion guru Ronald Weick!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1u3KO9kUdE
When I heard about 9/11, I picked an argument with a couple of policemen by overtaking them dangerously before swinging in front of them through the gates of the mosque.
A debate ensued. I said, the twin towers couldn’t have been done by Muslims. It wasn’t the mindset of a Muslim to cast aside the fear that Allah might count such an attack as murder.
I was in cloud cuckoo land, was the conclusion of the local bobbies, who were going round in an old LDV checking the local mosques, as it happened. The elder from the mosque agreed with them, firmly.
I do believe that government agencies, including foreign government agencies operating in Western countries, infiltrate groups and incite them to questionable acts. I remain exhilarated by the sheer defiance of 9/11.
I haven’t been on the bad end of the local police as a Muslim in Birmingham, because they are trained to conceal the comprehensive surveillance systems of MI6 in a fog of surface respect.
I try not to speculate about things about which I have no knowledge. Those who know US culture seem to be saying that the 9/11 plot would have unravelled if it had been an inside job. They are assuming that all policemen are the same. In the UK this is not the case.
In our Metropolitan areas, prejudice is strictly concealed and there is a strong liaison between the spooks and the bobbies on the beat. They know where we are coming from and we know where they are coming from. If anybody wants to do something heroic for Islam, they are ready to change it into something heroic for the police and security services.
The rest of the time we carry on taking not notice. Except when they try and fool us they aren’t using technology. They are, and there is absolutely no doubt at all that they knew about 9/11 in the US, if Birmingham is anything to go by. But of course that’s cloud cuckoo land .wink wink.
Yeah, Alex Jones occasionally has someone from his message board start shooting people. I imagine anno will crack when some poor female kafir looks at him the wrong way.
The new Axis of Evil: the British Left / the Muslim Right / the American Right