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Node, sorry if I’ve gained an inaccurate impression, but I have been asking you, for a few years. Please clarify. Change my mind.
When did I say or imply “virologists, epidemiologists, statisticians and climate scientists all know what to say to advance their careers”?
Please stop putting false words in my mouth. If I have to start my every response to you by correcting what you have said about me I just won’t reply at all.
Pooh, the calculations are scattered around the latter part of comments on Craig’s original 9/11 Post, liberally diluted by the usual familiar Truther memes, plus ad hominem upon me by up to a dozen other commenters, one of whom suggested I be shot – an excellent peace activist, that one. I think the momentum calculations were performed by Nikko’s spreadsheet, which Nikko wouldn’t disclose but which I had to correct. It’s probably easier to go through it again; it’s very easy, barely an O Level exercise.
First we need to consider the Twin Towers’ structure and collapse progression, because many Twin Tower demolition theorists misunderstand these thanks to widespread Truther disinformation. I’m a bit busy at present and I haven’t even had my dinner, but I’ll try to get back to you by tomorrow evening. Thanks for a question about simple physics.
Node, 19:26 – ‘When did I say or imply “virologists, epidemiologists, statisticians and climate scientists all know what to say to advance their careers”?’
Here, above :
– “It does not need 1000s of people to be in on the conspiracy, just an elite setting the scene while those below realise (to a greater or lesser extent) what side their bread’s buttered on, not to rock the boat, and a sly few noticing: hey, promoting the elite’s agenda actually leads to career advancement.”
“Impossible” building collapses, fabricated global warming, and a harmless virus blown up into a killer pandemic, all by these grovelling lickspittles whose colleagues provide the very technology you use to post.
Dear Clark, what are you having for dinner?
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[ Mod: Dear Dave – post another facetious comment like this and you’ll find you won’t be able to post on this blog any more.Regards. ]
Clark
Thanks very much for your reply. I confess my ignorance: I’ve no idea where Craig’s 911 post is, nor do you know of Nikko and his undisclosed spreadsheet. If you would point me to Craig’s post, it would keep me busy for now. There’s no urgency with your replying to my question, especially if the answer can be found within the comments on Craig’s 911 post.
Thank you once again
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[ Mod: The controversial issues were discussed at length on the 9/11 thread.Regards. ]
—Clark.
I made a reasonable point (which <i>you yourself</i> would agree with) that “a sly few” will take advantage of the situation I described, and you change this to “Node tells us that all engineers, virologists, epidemiologists, statisticians and climate scientists know what to say to advance their careers” (which is intended to make me sound unreasonable).
Please stop repeatedly lying about me.
The other aspect of 9/11 is what did UK know? Blair must have been in on it, which makes his support for Iraq war, far worse as it wasn’t simply the case of having to go along with it as a loyal ally, but as a 9/11 co-conspirator.
“Blair must have been in on it, ….”
We can only speculate, but I doubt Blair was in on it. Too low level. In my estimation politicians are just the hired help. Long before they reach high office they are picked out as promising material, taken aside, perhaps after being invited to a Bilderberg meeting, and offered rapid advancement and rich rewards if they promise to follow orders when the time comes. At most Blair was probably warned something big was going to happen and to be ready to take instructions when it kicks off.
Blair proved a loyal servant to the puppet masters and so now he is allowed to swan around the world doing odd jobs for the elite, visibly demonstrating the rewards of compliance, a counterpoint to the likes of Gaddafi, who died on camera with a bayonet up his arse to teach other national leaders the rewards of defiance.
Node, well over 95% of climate scientists support anthropogenic global warming. Structural failure causing progressive collapse of the Twin Towers is completely mainstream among mechanical engineers. Here are some references you can look up:
The World Trade Center 9/11 Disaster and Progressive Collapse of Tall Buildings, Edinburgh University
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10694-012-0283-8
Asif Usmani, Y. C. Chung, Jose L Torero, Graeme Flint, Allan Jowsey, Charlotte Roben, Dr Luke Bisby, Mark Lamster, Guillermo Rein…
https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/1216
https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/http://edinburghfireresearch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/inexcusable-omission.html
Kajima Corporation, G Charles Clifton, Dr Frank Greening…
Honored members of our Professional Advisory Panel of nationally renowned experts include:
Chief Andrew Casper (Ret.) former Fire Commissioner of San Francisco, CA
Prof. Glenn Corbett, Fire Protection Engineer & Asst. Prof. of Fire Science, John Jay College, NYC
Deputy Chief Vincent Dunn (FDNY Ret.) Acclaimed expert in fire safety & high rise building collapse
Roger Morse, AIA, Architect & Forensic Building Investigator
Jack Murphy of The Fire Safety Directors Association of Greater New York
Jake Pauls, CPE, High-Rise Evacuations Specialist
Dr. Jim Quintiere, Professor of Fire Protection Engineering, University of Maryland
Norman Siegel, eminent civil rights attorney
Michael Trencher, RA, Prof. of Architecture, Pratt Institute, NYC
and many other valued professionals.http://www.skyscrapersafety.org/
Why the World Trade Center Buildings Collapsed
A Fire Chief ’s Assessmenthttp://vincentdunn.com/wtc.html
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –These, and and their departments and graduate students, and all the references those papers lead to, and all the papers that cite them; these are the “sly few” you referred to, are they? This lot work for “the elite”, and all the other engineers just play “follow the leader”, right?
Node, if you’d bothered reading anything I posted on the 9/11 Post, you’d already know all this. I posted that lot over three years ago. Also, in 2011 the American Institute of Architects had a vote on whether to support A&E9/11Truth’s motion for a new investigation of WTC7’s collapse. 160 for versus 3,892 against.
160 brave truthseekers versus 3892 lickspittles I suppose. With such “experts” who just say whatever they’re told, it’s amazing that any buildings stay up, isn’t it? Except the Twin Towers of course; it was impossible that they fell down. Er…
A ten minute video by Professor John Ioannidis, who is described by Ben Goldacre as “a godlike figure in the field of research about research”
These, and and their departments and graduate students, and all the references those papers lead to, and all the papers that cite them; these are the “sly few” you referred to, are they?
Clark. Do you think that Luke Harding and David Aaronovitch believe everything they write? Craig Murray and I believe they do it for their own advancement. They are clear examples of “the sly few” I refer to.
Right, I’m not arguing about it any more, I believe I’ve sufficiently proved you are misrepresenting my straightforward statement. You’ll only further harm your credibility if you continue to insist otherwise.
Node
“Clark. Do you think that Luke Harding and David Aaronovitch believe everything they write?”
With due respect node, This is a complete red herring. Clark never said that hacks are included in this trust, he was talking about scientists. I am sure Clark can answer for himself but I have noticed this tendency to divert pretending to answer one question with another.Node
2nd April 2020 was 15 days ago. Since then the curve has taken off in the states. Here is what I wrote in another thread about this interviewReply ↓
SA
April 3, 2020 at 20:10
Its a very interesting interview of course and Dr Ioannidis is a very respectable figure. But it is also very complex and has its limitations in a quickly moving situation. He has an important message in the start which is that the data is not solid and then starts to explain why it is so. He does not deny the gravity of the infection and the way it has spread but advises caution about jumping to conclusions. I am sort of paraphrasing what he said. Early on in an epidemic, he says you should attempt to slow down the spread by diagnosis of all cases, isolation and contact tracing, something which seems to have happened only in South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. Widespread testing has not been carried out much in Europe and USA for not very well reasons and in some way if the two months lead that we had, had been better utilised, we might have nipped it in the bud, but now prolonged agony will probably not suppress the disease enough to control it and the economic cost in terms of destroyed economies and poverty will probably kill more people than the disease. He discussed some data from one of the cruise ships which suggests that 20% of passengers were infected and a death rate of 1%. But this was a very well defined group which is easy to monitor. He claims that the data from Italy shows such high mortality because of the increased proportion of elderly patients in North Italy and that the infection rates and the deaths were fairly delimited to certain small geographic areas.
Be that as it may I found some of the things he said not entirely convincing. He described the presence of ARDS in some patients with Covid-19 as an anecdotal finding, which is not true as the Chinese have documented this well and in fact it was this that lead them to look for something other than flu, especially with the fairly recent SARS epidemic of 2003. He also seems to not mention the high multiplication rate. In fact one of his greatest commissions was that he never mentioned China at all. China is the only example of a country where the virus took hold and multiplied rapidly before being suppressed and almost eliminated. This omission I found strange.
Anyway when the picture evolves, as it is now rapidly, he may need to review his ideas.@ Clark
“Also, in 2011 the American Institute of Architects had a vote on whether to support A&E9/11Truth’s motion for a new investigation of WTC7’s collapse. 160 for versus 3,892 against. 160 brave truthseekers versus 3892 lickspittles I suppose”.
A bit slippery as usual, as the question was a political question on whether there should be a de facto new enquiry into 9/11, not whether they agreed with the NIST cover-up and now Prof Leroy Hulsey’s investigation.
However beyond zero, how many of them support your “spontaneous combustion due to shock and sympathy collapse” theory?
It is very interesting to look at the political alignment of the Covid-19 deniers. So far the predominant majority have been of the right and extreme right, with some exceptions. This reaction of the right and far right is discussed here by Jason Wilson from the Guardian Australia. For example Steve Bannon appears to take it seriously but only as an instrument to attack China. The extreme right wing governments in UK and USA have tried from the outset to underplay the effects of the virus and managed to delay the response to the crisis and to twist the scientific advice that is offered by tempering it with practical economic and sociological considerations. There is no doubt that cracks are now appearing in this attempt to use science for political purposes. Recently Professor Helen Ward wrote a scathing expose of how the advice given By Professor Ferguson has been twisted by the government.
When I say that politicians “refused to listen”, I am referring to the advice and recommendations coming from the World Health Organization, from China and from Italy. The WHO advice, based on decades of experience and widely accepted by public health leaders and scientists around the world was clear – use every possible tool to suppress transmission. That meant testing and isolating cases, tracing and quarantining contacts, and ramping up hygiene efforts.
The UK did well in the early phase, but then, on 12 March, the government alarmed many public health experts by abruptly abandoning containment and announcing that community case-finding and contact-tracing would stop. The aim was no longer to stop people getting it, but to slow it down while protecting the vulnerable.
There have been some disagreements between what Whitty has said, against that of Vallance in some of the daily updates, including the differences in death toll between Germany and UK.Asked about the differences with Germany, where the number of deaths appears to be increasing less rapidly than in the UK, Prof Chris Whitty told the daily government press briefing on Tuesday: “We all know that Germany got ahead in terms of its ability to do testing for the virus, and there’s a lot to learn from that.” Germany is already able to test 500,000 patients a week and is under pressure to increase this further.Whitty had interjected after the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, gave a more circumspect reply, saying: “The German curve looks as though it’s lower at the moment, and that is important, and I don’t have a clear answer to exactly what is the reason for that.”
More recently in Question time on BBC1 on 16th April, Dr Rachel Clarke, a palliative care consultant, exposed the deficiencies of the policies surrounding care homes, which have been ignored, and of the current shortage of PPE for NHS and other frontline staff, as well as a slow and defective overall policy.
So where does the left stand in all this? The left should be united in recognising the gravity of this situation and point out the mishandling of the situation that arose from ideology. The episode has illustrated how poorly the current western capitalist materialism has failed to see the essence of how to deal with such a massive humanitarian crisis affecting their own populations.
Mods
I meant to post the above in the other thread on Corona virus, the government takes the St Augustine approach. I also copied and pasted it there but it came out without the block quotes and links. Could that be rectified please? ThanksSA: “Here is what I wrote in another thread about this interview “
Here’s my synopsis:
Ben Goldacre calls him “a godlike figure in the field of research about research.” He more modestly introduces himself as a professor of medicine, epidemiology and population health, interested in “appraising evidence, in trying to understand data, strength of data, weaknesses of data, and trying to make sure we have the most useful information to make decisions that matter.”
[He begins …]
“Unfortunately much of the information that we have collected so far [….] is not reliable. We have increasing evidence that many of the key features that pertain to what this pandemic is about – how lethal is that virus, how many people it has infected or will infect, what is likely to be the eventual impact, and how effective are the different measures that we are applying – we have major gaps in practically all of those fronts.”[He explains flaws in data collection methods and “sensationalism” in the media, then summarises ….]
“I think that there is a very high chance that we are exaggerating. As we discussed, many of the features of this pandemic are serious but I think that the estimates are exaggerated, and I think that there is really a risk of making some fundamental decisions about the structure of our society, of our people’s future that may not be appropriate.”[He concludes ….]
“We need to learn. I think there is a risk that in this situation there may be other conflicts and other interests that get interspersed and they kind of take over the entire agenda. That should not become a political debate, that should not become a debate between people who may have different financial conflicts or other conflicts.”“With due respect node, This is a complete red herring. Clark never said that hacks are included in this trust, he was talking about scientists. I am sure Clark can answer for himself but I have noticed this tendency to divert pretending to answer one question with another. “
Sigh… I made a reasonable point (which Clark would agree with) that “a sly few” will take advantage of the situation I described, and Clark changed it to “Node tells us that all engineers, virologists, epidemiologists, statisticians and climate scientists know what to say to advance their careers” (which is intended to make me sound unreasonable).
SA, honestly, which of us is guilty of diversion?
The old socialist Left has shrunk, and been superseded by the new progressive identity politics left who support the Pan-Panic fear-mongering to shape society on the old mantra the end justifies the means. Its now the Right that’s wary of the State and wants to put people before profit.
Node, I think that Luke Harding is a useful idiot, scared out of his wits about Russia and Russians by his secret service contacts. I think that David Aaronovitch is so wedded to the opinions he shares with neoconservatives, neoliberals and the Israeli Right that he can’t see past the end of his nose. I think the structure of the corporate media elevates them, thereby inflating their egos, amplifying their feelings of being correct. So yes I think they’re probably sincere. Sincerely wrong. But I don’t know, and I can’t read their thoughts to find out.
But as SA said, this is corporate media journalism, not science. Unless they actually libel someone (and the organisations they work for have legal staff protecting them from that), they never have to retract, so their egos are never subjected to the correctional influence of having to admit wrongness and say sorry.
Science is far from perfect, and I very much support those including Ioannidis and Goldacre who work to improve it. But every paper published has to pass peer review, and once published it will receive critical scrutiny in the literature. If significant flaws are found it will be retracted, and scientists caught faking data are discredited. This is a level of scrutiny and professional integrity way beyond anything in the corporate media. And then, the work has to integrate with the rest of science into a unified whole.
The corporate media structure and its influence on large audiences work to inflate egos thereby amplifying claims regardless of accuracy, whereas the scientific community and its system of publication work to train egos to subjugate themselves to evidence.
We’ve seen this play out with the arrival of Wikipedia, which provided a publicly sourced check on both science and the corporate media. The pro-war propagandists were forced to develop covert systems like “Philip Cross” and the Integrity Initiative, because corporate media propaganda was seen to be increasingly at odds with Wikipedia. The opposite happened with global warming denial; scientific sources were cited, correcting the bullshit that was accumulating from the FUD industry. One of my actions at Wikipedia actually figured in this process; it was me that flagged up the Alisher Usmanov page, which subsequently led to a review of practices in the PR industry, and increased vigilance at Wikipedia. I’d be grateful if you’d apologise for your earlier accusation that I’m useless and know nothing about the world.
Clark: I apologise for my earlier accusation that you’re useless and know nothing about the world.
What do you make of Ioannidis’s take on the pandemic?
I think in science, there is no ‘godlike figure’ neither is any one scientist the arbiter of truth. I think Goldacre should know better than to make such a statement.
I grant you Ioannides is a giant figure in the analysis of research and data. He is of course right that there is insufficient data. But in a pandemic which is fast growing (very few had heard of this virus in December 2019) it is impossible to get mature data of the nature that Ioannidis would like. His interview after all was also short of presenting any data and was an opinion piece, not peer reviewed or indeed peer reviewable. All of the points he made and you quite rightly summarise are valid and of course it is important to get accurate data. But sometimes this is not possible when people are dying in large numbers.
It is important not to make a fetish of getting data before acting. Sufficient information was known about the virus by mid to late January to know that there was cause for concern, and we have also experienced the exponential rise of infections with major differences of infected individuals.
Figures for 17th March 2020 Total world cases 197 K US 6.1 K U.K. 2 K Italy 31.5 K
and for 17April 2020 Total world cases 2.2 million US 700 U.K. 110 K Italy 172 K
And so on for other countries. This is a massive increase and there is simply no way of knowing at this stage whether this exponential rise will continue or will flatten out with or without the measures taken.
The death rates also followed. Notice that some of the glaring deficiencies here that Ioannides has referred to are actually due to the limited testing, a policy that has been decided upon at least in UK and USA against the advice of the WHO. Testing, contact tracing and isolation are three key areas of dealing with pandemics but the west ignored these, because the leaders thought it was ‘just another flu’.
Also Ioannides was not saying that this is ‘just another flu’ he was advocating caution with regards to the solution advocated which may have worse effects than the epidemic. This is also true because the half hearted measures, the ignoring of basic ways of dealing with epidemics, the poor data has all hampered effective dealing with this virus. A short sharp suppression is attainable at the beginning of an outbreak, not when you have millions of contacts. And China showed that this can be done, whilst South Korea, HK and Taiwan and Singapore, showed that the infection can be slowed using these measures. It would be interesting to see what Ioannides has to say now that there is more data.Node, April 17 at 17:15, #51952, at first quoting my April 16, 16:10 comment #51914
– 1) Silverstein’s “pull it” interview,
– 2) [removed to separate category below]
– 3) Firefighters on video moving people away from WTC7 saying it’s about to “blow up”,
– 4) Multiple firefighters saying that WTC7 would either fall down, or would be taken down,
– 5) News crews and spectators seem to have been told to watch WTC7 because it would collapse,
– 6) John Kerry said he thought so.”– All of your evidence can equally well be evidence of pre-planned demolition.
Naah. Not credible. You seem to be saying that after successfully pulling off the two secret, unfeasibly technically demanding demolitions of the Twin Towers, mass murdering nearly 3000 people, the conspiracy suddenly reversed tactic by revealing part of the plot to the firefighters, the very worst group to reveal it to seeing as ~300 of them had just been murdered supposedly by the demolition of WTC2. They also revealed it to the world’s publicists, the news crews, but subsequently instructed the “MSM” to give WTC7’s collapse minimal coverage, reverting back to Plan A, “keep it secret”. Subsequently two of the presumed perpetrators re-reverted to Plan B, “admit to demolition of WTC7”; Silverstein and Kerry, heedless of their own safety, revealed their own knowledge of part of the mass murder plot.Surely, either a natural collapse that happened to be symmetrical, or a covert emergency demolition that was never explicitly admitted to; either makes far more sense than this hodge-podge.
Node again:
– except “A news story of Silverstein desperately making ‘phone calls to arrange a demolition”; I’ve never heard of this Silverstein interview. Can you provide a link?Here you go; Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, Fox News:
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/shame-on-jesse-ventura
– “Shortly before the building collapsed, several NYPD officers and Con-Edison workers told me that Larry Silverstein, the property developer of One World Financial Center was on the phone with his insurance carrier to see if they would authorize the controlled demolition of the building – since its foundation was already unstable and expected to fall.”
You missed out my last point. What would you do if you were in command of emergency operations? The tallest remaining building is seriously ablaze and unstable; it could topple randomly, spreading fire to adjacent burning buildings. Nearly 300 of your firefighters have been killed in a collapse, there’s fire everywhere already, you have inadequate water pressure due to ruptured water mains, and your teams wish to resume rescue operations for potential trapped comrades in this building’s vicinity. Silverstein offers to have the problem building dropped approximately into its own footprint. Do you accept or reject? I know what I’d do; “pull it”.
SA, I expect Goldacre is atheist; so “godlike” isn’t quite such a compliment…
