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).
Suhayl Saadi: A very good brew indeed – thank you. And what better place to have one than here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvDoDaCYrEY
Oh yeah, that’s one of my favourite ten songs of all time, Glenn: ‘Waterloo Sunset’ – a perfect song. Heaven. Thanks!
I’m so pleased that someone around here appreciates the value of a good cuppa!
“The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.”
– Edward R. Murrow
“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”
– George Orwell
“The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity.”
– Sam Harris (Atheist Manifesto)
Sure, but Sam Harris is not remotely on your side. He understands the nature of illusion and conspiracy theory.
Do you understand how hilarious it is that you would quote him?
Also, it’s highly unlikely that Murrow and Orwell would last more than 30 seconds in conversation with you before realizing that you’re a pseudo-religious brainwashed nut.
Who are you, Larry?
Suhayl,
Why this badgering?
Are you one of the sad commenters at this blog who thinks I’m a secret agent man and/or an Israeli operative?
Vronsky, what do you think those quotes actually do? Are they appeals to authority?
Truthers do this all the time using quotes from Martin Luther King, Einstein, Gandhi and Eisenhower to give “authoritativeness” to their ideas yet all of them are long dead and had no opinion on 9/11.
Now you’ve added Orwell and Ed Murrow for conscription to Deceased Thinkers for 9/11 Truth.
It’s also question-begging as you haven’t explained what the obvious is. For most people the obvious is that 19 Arabs hijacked aircraft and flew them into buildings. How is it that the convoluted and counter-intuitive plots that the Truthers conjure up are more obvious especially given the fact that most Truthers don’t even agree on the same plot.
If we are going to play the game of quote the authority then let me choose that ardent defender of “official stories” Noam Chomsky who says, relating to the claims of controlled demolition:
“There are submissions to the Journal of 9/11 Studies, but that’s about as convincing as submissions to the Journal of Intelligent Design Studies.”
Vronsky, what do you think those quotes actually do? Are they appeals to authority?
Truthers do this all the time using quotes from Martin Luther King, Einstein, Gandhi and Eisenhower to give “authoritativeness” to their ideas yet all of them are long dead and had no opinion on 9/11.
Now you’ve added Orwell and Ed Murrow for conscription to Deceased Thinkers for 9/11 Truth.
It’s also question-begging as you haven’t explained what the obvious is. For most people the obvious is that 19 Arabs hijacked aircraft and flew them into buildings. How is it that the convoluted and counter-intuitive plots that the Truthers conjure up are more obvious especially given the fact that most Truthers don’t even agree on the same plot.
If we are going to play the game of quote the authority then let me choose that ardent defender of “official stories” Noam Chomsky who says, relating to the claims of controlled demolition:
“There are submissions to the Journal of 9/11 Studies, but that’s about as convincing as submissions to the Journal of Intelligent Design Studies.”
Suhayl Saadi: Strangely enough, that is also in my top 10 favourites of all time. I’d also include this one, and now we’re down to only 8 for consideration:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h1oRP7FfBw
Do you think that some soya milk works better than having it black for vegans? I find the Tesco brand works pretty well for me, when making a really good cup of tea. Unless I tell them, nobody can tell the difference between that and milk while providing them with a mug of tea.
Larry, only you know who you are. I have no idea who you are.
You do not engage in discourse, conversation or any of the other manifestations of communication which would allow anyone to understand who/ what you are and who/ what you are not. That is your prerogative, but it ought not to surprise you that people come to ask such questions of you.
I have attempted very politely and amicably to engage you in discussion and have explained in considerable detail the reasons why. You have not responded. You seem obsessed with a single topic and seem to attempt to relate almost everything to that topic. I have no idea of the reasons for this dynamic because you never explain the reasons.
If you are seen to be merely disruptive then it ought not to surprise you when others reciprocate with subversive humour – or with badgers, cups of tea, buses and anything else that comes to hand. Including the ocean.
Suhayl,
You’re going to have to get used to the fact that people whom you accuse of being Men in Black might not want to be your good buddy.
I wouldn’t want a neo-con teabagger to be my good buddy. Nor does Suhayl, I’d hazzard. But Suhayl didn’t ask you to be his good buddy, if you read his post immediately above your non sequitur, he asked to engage you in conversation. AngrySoba can manage it, even while holding disagreements. Only you seem totally unwilling or unable to do so.
Glenn:
To restate:
1. My belief that secret Jew American agents did not in fact do 911 does not make me a teabagger.
2. You have far more in common with the teabaggers than me. 911 nuts like you started the latest round of tea party nonsense.
Also, shouldn’t you be digging a hole somewhere, as the end of the world is near?
This merely exemplifies the points I made on another thread about the repeated use of particular phrases and the motivation for such usage.
That’s right, Suhayl, I’m a secret agent man, and I’m doing everything I can to get this website on a super-duper-secret “blacklist” – in other words, you used your tremendous skills of logic and reason to ferret me out.
Well, Larry, if you’re inentions are not of this nature, then it would have been far easier for you to have explained that a long time ago.
As I’ve been attempting to explain to you for many weeks/ several months now, it’s emphatically not that you may hold differing opinions that is the issue – this blog is all about debate and discourse and as you no doubt will have read, I have disagreed with many people herein on a variety of matters.
It is, rather, your seeming unwillingness to engage in any kind of real communication that marks you out as qualitatively different. That may be something which you relish, I have no way of knowing.
I am entirely willing to accept that my suggestion with regards to your posible provenance has been way off the mark, but to-date you have done little to allow me or others to re-evaluate this analysis.
Suhayl, I give you the attention that I would give to any religious nut. Christian, Muslim, 911 Truther or otherwise.
This is exactly the sort of thing which merely reinforces my point, Larry. You’re not interested in engaging in discussion. Sad, I think, but there it is.
AngrySoba: Continuing the discussion started on the “voting tree” thread (since that wasn’t the place for it)…
—start quote
My crazy, whacked-out “loon” conspiracy theory is that I don’t know what happened. I’ve heard plenty of theories, all of which sound rather implausible and lack the required proof, sounding rather too convenient and serving the agenda of those promoting the explanation. A proper inquiry, impartially and openly conducted would be the best way forward, rather than in secret by establishment stooges.
Why you get so ticked off at someone holding that position is not that clear.
—end quote
Would you be kind enough to comment? (Tea-bagging freaks need not reply. Larry – you’ll just have to wait until your turn comes around again in June.)
AngrySoba: Btw, perhaps you have me confused with someone else, because you say:
—start quote
Again, you feel that you know where you can draw the line and tell people who believe in those things that they are loons but tell me that I cannot call people loons for their beliefs.
—end quote
I don’t recalling labeling anyone a “loon” here, or anything similar. Would you be kind enough to refresh my memory? I don’t like to think of myself as one who holds double standards, as you say I do, so please let me know – I would like to put myself straight on such points.
My suggesting that one might be a True Believer for insisting that every last word they are officially told on a subject is true, as you do for instance, is not the same thing. I’m sure you wouldn’t suggest otherwise.
1) Do you hold neoconservative beliefs, Larry?
2)Would you describe yourself politically as a neoconservative?
3)What is your definition of ‘neoconservatism’?
4)What do you think of paleoconservatism?
5) a) What do you think of the current coup overcoming the Republican Party and where will it end?
b) Is the Tea Party related to the Religious Right, a unification personified in defeated Vice-Presidential candidate and former Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin?
c) Who, or what, is behind the phenomenon of the Tea Party?
d)Do you think it likely that Sarah Palin will be the next President of the USA?
6) Do you think President Obama is doing a good job?
7)What are your views on the US Administration’s current domestic policies?
8)What do you think about New York City? Does it appeal to you, or do you prefer small towns?
9)Were you once a left-winger, Larry?
Did you believe in world revolution?
10) What do you think will happen to the world, and to the USA, in the next 100 years?
?A proper inquiry, impartially and openly conducted would be the best way forward, rather than in secret by establishment stooges.?
I don?t really care whether or not they waste their time reconvening a new investigation into 9/11. The result will be the same ?” at least the basics. They?ll conclude that 19 Muslims hijacked planes and flew them into buildings. They?ll conclude as they did before that this was down to grievances real and imagined against the US and that the planners were Khalid Sheikh Mohammad with backing from Osama bin Laden.
The 9/11 Commission was a bipartisan group which does seem to have fudged things in order to prevent certain people in the Clinton and Bush administrations from being pilloried for their incompetence and other things. That?s why they made political deals. And it also looks like, I think from what John Farmer says, that Bush and Cheney were nowhere near the men of action that they are portrayed as in the 9/11 Commission Report.
Any investigation you conduct will conclude the same thing because those aspects of it are beyond dispute to anyone who has looked at the broader evidence (and this goes for John Farmer, Max Cleland, Thomas Kean and anyone else you might like to quote to undermine the Commission report if your purpose is to crowbar a gap for the conspiracy theories) rather than manipulated conspiracy narratives which tend to ignore all the evidence that conflicts with their ?theories?.
I?ve looked at countless conspiracy sites and watched the conspiracy videos and even been to listen to conspiracy theorists at their conventions so I know what their arguments are. I know that they are almost always simply pulling a cheap trick. Or they are regurgitating stuff that they have heard before.
?Why you get so ticked off at someone holding that position is not that clear.?
I get ticked off with those who find a quote such as ?There was this big explosion? and use it to support the idea that there were bombs in the buildings. But when you track down the quote find that someone says, immediately after, ?A big plane had slammed into the World Trade Center!? There are countless numbers of these and when I see people, especially those with a supercilious air explaining that I have my head in the sand, telling me that I am ignoring their evidence and yet churning out five, ten then twenty of these dishonest quotes I get annoyed. I especially get annoyed when I track down the original sources of these quotes and show them that the original source directly contradicts their claims and that person waves it away and says, ?What about this then?? and sends me to a link that is a mishmash of many of the same pieces of ?evidence? reassembled.
For Truthers, nothing stays dead. No factoid is incapable of getting back up and staggering around zombie-like and jabbering, ?No Arabs on the flight manifests!? ?No steel building destroyed by fire!? ?Fifteen stories of concrete and steel can?t smash through the floors of 90-stories!?
So do I believe ?every word of the 9/11 Commission Report?? No, I don?t.
Do I think it was right about the culprits? Yes, I do.
Do I think that George Bush/Dick Cheney/the Illuminati/The NWO or the Israelis destroyed the Twin Towers/WTC7/The Pentagon? No, I don?t.
?I don’t recalling labeling anyone a “loon” here, or anything similar. Would you be kind enough to refresh my memory? I don’t like to think of myself as one who holds double standards, as you say I do, so please let me know – I would like to put myself straight on such points.?
What you said was that you know certain things are so obviously silly as the Protocols and Lizards etc? and you more than imply there is something a bit cracked about the tea-baggers (I agree with you on that. And many of the Truthers claim they began the teabagger movement, too) and that you didn?t want to be lumped in with them. It seems every one has a different threshold for where certain ideas become simply mental. I?m just saying if you can recognize that such ideas do exist then why should you be able to say that those ideas are silly but not allow me to say the same.
But fair enough, if you think there is something that you consider particularly egregious about the term ?loon? and it is not in your vocabulary then I?ll accept you don?t use it.
9.11 Teabaggers!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHhQ71I_fwI
Absolute silence.
Or rather, the sound of someone who has been well and truly rumbled.
People – those who haven’t already done so – will draw their own conclusions.
Suhayl, do you think it’s possible that the WTC was wired with explosives, and there was some form of controlled demolition on September 11?
Hello AngrySoba,
Thanks for replying. Remarkable that you can conclude in advance the results of a genuinely independent enquiry. It must take a wonderfully open mind to be able to do that.
You assume, as always, that the default position must be the official one. You’ve said so in many more words, and your faith in the establishment is rather touching.
I’m not doing the leg-work you clearly are trying to set me up for, because there are examples aplenty even on this thread about bombs going off which have absolutely nothing to do with the planes crashing into the building. Your assertion that _every_ witness statement about bombs was actually followed by “a big plane crashed” etc. is risible.
You can go on about theories you don’t believe in as long as you like, and illustrate nutty positions all day long, but it bolsters your Official Theory not one scintilla. Just as I could illustrate how entirely improbable it is for the passport of an alleged hijacker to have floated down, not singed in the least, thus supposedly proving the guy in question must have done it. Did you believe that? I’m surprised they didn’t turn up a note that fell from his pocket, signed by Bin Laden himself, wishing the hijackers good luck.
Logically, you should be aware of this.
You should also be aware of the ludicrous position you support, whereby a rag-tag team of non-practicing Muslims plotting from a cave in Afghanistan (or a flat in Hamburg, as you prefer) quite obviously pulled this off, whereas a crack team carrying out an inside job could never, never, ever have possibly managed it.
As ever, your default position is to have child-like trust in officials. Mine is to say I’m waiting for a really convincing theory.
Why does that make me the idiot in your view, Soba, logically speaking?
Hello Soba (again)… for some reason you seem delighted about Larry’s teabagging mates purportedly going on about 9.11 in the youtube video.
And this video’s relevance to what actually happened that day is …? Why are you so pleased with it?
Suhay: Your post of May 12, 2010 7:28 AM was met with another thundering non sequitur. I think you have rumbled him/them indeed, and consistency across replies would be too difficult should _any_ personal discussion take place at all. Nicely done.
?Your assertion that _every_ witness statement about bombs was actually followed by “a big plane crashed” etc. is risible.?
That wasn?t my assertion, Glenn. I asserted that almost all witness statements were quote-mined. The context is often deliberately taken out to leave the unassuming reader believing there is evidence for a controlled demolition.
?Just as I could illustrate how entirely improbable it is for the passport of an alleged hijacker to have floated down, not singed in the least, thus supposedly proving the guy in question must have done it.?
I?ve not seen the condition his passport was in. Do you have a picture? Anyway, I don?t find it hard to believe. The hijacker in question wasn?t identified purely by his passport, as I am sure you must know.
?I’m surprised they didn’t turn up a note that fell from his pocket, signed by Bin Laden himself, wishing the hijackers good luck.?
This type of thing has happened before.
?You should also be aware of the ludicrous position you support, whereby a rag-tag team of non-practicing Muslims plotting from a cave in Afghanistan (or a flat in Hamburg, as you prefer) quite obviously pulled this off, whereas a crack team carrying out an inside job could never, never, ever have possibly managed it.?
How you portray my beliefs sounds ludicrous. But they aren?t my beliefs. You start again with your ?rag-tags? but the hijackers were very well-educated. In fact Mohammed Atta was far better qualified than any member of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. I suggest you read Perfect Soldiers.
?Why does that make me the idiot in your view, Soba, logically speaking??
I wish you would stop misusing the word ?logically?. There is nothing illogical in finding one view far more convincing through better evidence than another.