Showing posts with label Shermer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shermer. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Why People Believe the Official Conspiracy Theory of 911 and Other Weird Crap!

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Author Michael Shermer wrote a book that Amazon.com now says is out of print. The title is intriguing: Why People Believe Weird Things. Though Shermer deals with UFO's, allegations that NASA faked the moon landing, and the flat earth, reviewers have said his best chapter was about Holocaust Denial.

More recently and sadly, though, Shermer has ceased to be a skeptic. Last time I checked, Shermer was still touting the weirdest of many 'weird things' --the official conspiracy of 911! It is as if when the numbers nine, one and one are mentioned switches are turned 'off' inside the brains of millions: skeptics become devout followers of officialdom; scientists subscribe to voodoo; hard-nose lawyers forget the meaning of 'probable cause'! These people, and Shermer the one-time skeptic, have this much in common: they are victims of trauma and official blackmail! In a phrase: millions 'believe' the official conspiracy for the same reason Christians believe the scriptures: there is hell to pay if they don't!

The Official Conspiracy Theory is Weird

It is weird and completely unbelievable on its face, unsupported by physics and happenstance. The only explanation is that Shermer fell for it because it was official. Perhaps Shermer succumbed to the blackmail that was put on all of us! Perhaps the official conspiracy theory just made him 'feel good about himself' just as Ronald Reagan's 'economic policies' made Republicans feel good about being greedy, untruthful and self-absorbed. Indeed, it was at the GOP national convention in Houston in the earlly 90s that a Republican was recorded swooning of Reagan: "He made us feel good about ourselves!" But republicans ought never to feel good about themselves. And we have a responsibility to make sure they never do!

A mixed bag, Shermer managed to explore dark psychological reasons that people adhere to claptrap: prejudice. Holocaust Deniers are comparatively easy to spot. David Irving, a British Holocaust denier, sued American professor Deborah Lipstadt and her British publisher, Penguin Books, for libel in a 2000 London trial that made headlines around the world. A reading of the transcript of the court proceedings is clear enough it would seem: Irving was completely discredited.

Irving's long running campaign to exonerate Hitler and the Nazi regime consisted of fabrications, misrepresentations of fact, convenient omissions of evidence, and a consistent and convenient pattern of discounting as liars any eyewitness to any atrocity associated with the Holocaust. I predict that apologists for George W. Bush and the GOP as a whole will continue to wage a similar campaign of lies and propaganda on behalf of the utterly failed and wrong GOP!

Allow me to add a personal note. I have spoken in depth with a survivor of Auschwitz. There is no room to doubt this moving, personal history confirmed as it is by reams of documentary evidence, available independently of my source and in no way influenced by it.

What is conveniently forgotten is that Hitler's theory about Jews was, likewise, 'official'. The conclusion is inescapable: like Hitler's 'theory' re: the Jews of Europe, the official version of 911 is still widely believed because it makes people feel good about being prejudiced against Muslims. It makes people 'feel good' about being ignorant and/or stupid. Like Hitler's racial claptrap and GOP economic crap, the official theory of 911 makes people feel good about being rich and self-absorbed.

'Terrorists' just hate us, it is believed, because we are 'free'. Are we? Are we free when we are lied to? Are we free when we are so easily manipulated into 'believing' a load of clap trap for which there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever? Are we free when we are clearly trained not to question authority? Are we free when lies become the basis for foreign and domestic policies? Are we free when as a result of right wing policy just one percent of the U.S. populations owns more than the rest of us combined? No!

We are not free until we accept responsibility for our own beliefs!

There is, for example, absolutely no credible or verifiable evidence to support any part of the official conspiracy theory of 911. It is not my purpose here to repeat the numerous refutations of every part of the official theory. It has been thoroughly refuted and debunked and ridiculed and only idiots have not gotten the message: no part of it is true, no part of it is supported by either fact, logic, or admissible evidence. It is thoroughly refuted.

Most recently the very existence of the alleged flights had been debunked with the government's own data! There is no wreckage traceable to Flights 93 or 77; the government's own data --BTS --indicates that Flights 11 and 77 had been mothballed! There was no wreckage traceable to any airliner found at the Pentagon. No hijackers appeared on the official autopsy report of Pentagon victims --the only official shred of evidence relative to the Pentagon. There were no airline passengers or 'hijackers' buried at Arlington National Cemetery. There is absolutely nothing to support anything said by Bush, the 911 Report or the many media minions who parroted this outrageous and absurd conspiracy theory.

Yet --it is believed but only because it was 'official' and espoused by a sitting 'President'. But it was a 'president' who stole his office. We believed it because we were blackmailed not because it was either true or support by facts. Bush's 'warning' was an overt threat! We were told that 'outrageous conspiracy theories' would not be tolerated! We were told that anyone daring to question the official conspiracy theory was a traitor, was un-American, or, less belligerently, they were just stupid!

It was the common 'argument from authority' fallacy turned into a decree. Anyone daring to question the Bush version of events was called a 'traitor'. Bush himself said: “If you are not with us you are for the terrorists” --a fallacy and a threat! Skepticism was made a crime by decree. This is --in fact --a defining characteristic of the police state.

As the trial of David Irving makes abundantly clear: people are prepared to believe anything that makes them "feel good about themselves," and the illogic that this leads to is not confined to the poorly educated. Consider the following from a distinguished economist, Milton Friedman, who became the "conservative's" intellectual when that movement was desperately in need of one:
The 1980s have been no kinder to the earlier Keynesian models. In the U.S., inflation was brought down drastically, accompanied by a temporary increase in unemployment to a peak of nearly 11 percent—-a short-term reaction to unanticipated disinflation along Phillips curve lines.

--Milton Friedman
Has Friedman forgotten that Reagan's policies were not premised on Keynesian principles? Moreover, Keynesian economics worked just fine for Kennedy and Carter when job and economic growth is clearly documented to have exceeded the same figures under Reagan, Bush and Bush. The truth is that any Democratic president since World War II has presided over greater growth of both GDP and jobs than has any Republican president! There must be a psychological explanation for the fact that millions will look at the documented statistics and refuse to believe them.

The rising unemployment rate throughout the 1980's is a good example. It is similarly documented at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It is puzzling to me that an esteemed economist would cite this as evidence refuting the Keynesian model. That job creation fell and unemployment rose during the Reagan years does not indict Keynes--but Friedman.

Reagan's policies were not based upon the Keynesian model; they were based rather on Friedman himself and Arthur Laffer of "trickle down" fame. It was Laffer who, legend has it, drew a curve on a napkin and called it 'economics'. It was, rather, a convenient but plausible rationalization for the GOPs desire to enrich its base with tax cuts, a payoff for their support. It was not only the nation's tax revenues which paid them --it was the jobs and futures of everyone else not benefiting.

In fact, unemployment began to rise almost immediately upon Reagan's tax cut--not a "Keynesian" expenditure aimed at stimulating the economy but, rather, a "Laffer-curve tax-cut" premised upon the discredited notion that by cutting taxes for the upper classes, the wealth would "trickle down." It never has but GOP-types would feel good about it! It was intended to make GOP-types feel good about being greedy and dishonest with themselves. Friedman's passage glosses over the realities of that period:
  • First, Laffer's supply-side ideas are premised upon the idea that tax revenues at various tax rates may be graphed as a "curve." At some point on that curve, a lower tax rate may actually increase tax revenues. The problem with that is simply this: no one knows what that point is. The curve--on paper--is theoretical and depends on how you draw the curve. What, in fact, happened is that Reagan ran up huge deficits and tripled the national debt by budgeting monies that the theoretical curve had predicted but which never materialized. I hardly call this "conservative." The Bush budget has done the same thing.
  • Secondly, Laffer's tax curve was cited to justify supply-side economics--a goose that never laid the golden egg. It laid an 'egg' but only in the 'Vaudeville/Show biz' sense of the temr. It was Reagan and the supply-siders who laid an egg and it was not golden. As with the projected increased tax revenues, the new jobs that were to be the mechanism by which wealth would trickle down just did not happen. Rather --the reverse! Jobs declined and Reagan's administration is forever associated with a depression of some two years.
  • Finally, even if the tax base had increased, it does not follow from that wealth would in any way be redistributed downward; the public record clearly shows that it did not. One does not need an MBA or a PhD in economics in order to understand Census Bureau Statistics which clearly indicate that throughout the Reagan years, the upper 20 percent of income earners grew richer by a yearly average of some 20% while the lower 20 percent lost wealth at a similar rate. Friedman makes absolutely no mention of any of those facts in his paper on John Maynard Keynes. Several issues not addressed by Laffer's curve include how much wealth trickled, to whom, how, and when? The questions are moot, however. Nothing trickled down.
It is not merely that Friedman cites the 80's as an indictment of the wrong economists; it is his off-hand characterization as "temporary" the unemployment rate of some 11 percent that he calls a peak. Unemployment was high throughout the Reagan administration as was homelessness. In fact, half of the total number of jobs created under Reagan were in the public sector. Otherwise, his record--poor compared to any Democratic president and especially those who practiced Keynesian economics--would have been even worse. Finally, I submit to Mr. Friedman that a diminishing inflation rate is of similarly diminishing interest to someone who doesn't have a job.

How are we to account for the fact that Republicans still adhere to a policy that even a cursory reading of real world stats thoroughly discredits? Shermer posits that false beliefs are based on prejudice, but that just puts a label on it; it does not explain prejudice itself. More to the point, I think, is a common refrain heard among preppies throughout the Reagan years: He (Reagan) made us feel good about ourselves. The same could have been said of Hitler who is indicted by his own words: "Against the Jews I fought open-eyed and in view of the whole world...I made it plain that they, this parasitic vermin in Europe, will be finally exterminated."

Thanks to Herr Hitler, millions began to 'feel better' about being bigots, psychopaths, i.e. Nazis and/or right wingers! Thanks to Ronald Reagan millions began to 'feel better' about being bigots, self-absorbed elites, and psychopaths! Under Hitler, millions felt felt better about themselves because they could blame Jews for their miserable, desperate lives in pre-war Germany. Under Reagan, millions felt better about living in suburbs that destroy the spirit of urban life, deplete the inner cities of revenues and consign all but the very, very rich to poor and declining schools and educational opportunities. Reagan made them feel good! He jerked off the right wing and screwed everyone else!

Bush and Perry have more recently jerked-off Texas. Millions of Texans clearly feel good enough about their state that they re-elected Bush Jr's successor --Rick Perry. Millions of Texans got hooked on the jerks who jerked them. As a result, Texas now trails the nation in high school graduations even as corporate owned prisons swell to over-flowing! But millions in Texas feel good about it! The corporate prisons are located where their presence is not obvious. The rich can pretend they don't exist. Likewise, the ultra-posh neighborhoods where the increasingly rich elite are housed are hidden away among pines, behind the moats, behind the security guards' little houses, behind the walls, the trees, and, symbolically, the 'bushes'. Under Bush/Perry, they could escape responsibility for the hell-hole Texas has become. They could escape a real world. They need never see it and Texas need never see them!

Hitler told the German people, in effect, you no longer have to be responsible for your own idiocy, your own prejudices! That message was repeated by Herrs Reagan, Bush and Bush and the entire GOP. In fact, there are no excuses for believing a lie and no reason to believe that good will come of it. It was Jacob Bronowski, a logical positivist, a scientist, a philosopher, who said: 'Behave in such a way that what is true may be verified to be so!” It was Jean-Paul Sartre, an existentialist, who said: "A man is nothing else but what he makes of himself!" It was Bertolt Brecht who said: "A man who does not know the truth is just an idiot but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook!" And it was a fashion photographer, Richard Avedon, who said: "you cannot expect another man to carry your shit!" He was right and in my opinion all of us have carried the GOP/right wing shit for too long now! Enough is enough!

Sunday, August 22, 2010

911 Inside Job Chronicles

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes said: "When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains however implausible must be the truth!" This must be too easy. The significance of this single sentence is apparently lost on several generations of Americans who will believe all kinds of weird stuff for which there is no evidence whatsoever.

Michael Shermer, for example, has made a living as a career 'skeptic' but on the topic of 911, his record is no better than that of the most gullible Americans who defend Bush's official conspiracy theory with more lies and violations of Occam's Razor. Like the average American, Shermer bought into at least two bald-faced lies advanced by the Bush administration. Shermer failed to apply the 'burden of proof''; he did not bother to question fatal contradictions that discredit the Bush administration as they, in fact, disprove the 'official conspiracy theory' of 911.

Only the guilty are sufficiently motivated to cover up a crime. By contrast, the innocent have nothing to cover up! In some cases, the innocent may be motivated to discover the truth even as guilty criminals work to subvert their efforts. The guilty, by contrast, are motivated to work covertly and/or overtly to cover up, hide evidence and/or lie! The innocent have nothing to hide but nothing to gain and, often much to lose, with lies and cover ups. Simply, the innocent have no motive to cover up anything.

Bush ordered physical evidence of mass murder and/or high treason destroyed. Bush opposed the creation of the 911 Commission and worked to subvert it when it was created. It was Bush who warned against 'outrageous conspiracy theories' when, in fact, it was his administration that offered up the most outrageous conspiracy theory of them all: a ludicrous story that reads like a re-write of Ala Baba and his 40 thieves. It is the pernicious legacy of 911 that it was exploited by Bush, the GOP, the U.S. right wing to silence dissent, to silence America.

If Bush covered up and/or obstructed the investigation of the crime of 911 in any way, then he is guilty of acts of obstruction of justice intended to hide the truth in ways that would protect him or his 'friends' or both. 'Obstruction of justice' was one of several serious allegations against Richard Nixon, leading to articles of impeachment, eventually his ignominious resignation.

Certainly, the crime of 911 should have been investigated while the trail was still warm; a legitimate President would have ordered it, insisted upon it. The trail has grown cold, an outcome desired by an administration that opposed the creation of a 911 commission and put limits on it as a condition of its creation!
The evidence includes the unprecedented nature of what happened that day, the eyewitness testimonies of people present at the site, and the physical evidence demonstrated by photographs and videos. 1, 2 Evidence for explosives is also given through proof by contradiction in that seven years of ever-changing government reports could not provide a non-explosive story for destruction of the WTC buildings. 3, 4, 5 More recently, peer-reviewed scientific papers show that energetic materials were present at the WTC, as indicated by the environmental data and the dust from Ground Zero. 6, 7, 8

The forensic investigation of explosions typically aims to determine who had the means, opportunity and motive to accomplish the explosive event. 9 When that approach is taken with the WTC, we can see that those who had the greatest means and opportunity also had the greatest motive. For example, we've seen that certain tenant companies that occupied the WTC towers not only had the opportunity, but they also had the means in terms of access and expertise, to place explosives in the buildings. 10 We also know that the security companies that were responsible for planning and implementing the security plan for the towers, after the 1993 bombing, appeared to have benefited from the attacks. 11 Additionally, the companies reviewed were connected to each other through certain powerful people and organizations, and had all done major work for the Saudi Arabian government.

--KEVIN RYAN, Demolition Access to the WTC Towers: Part Four - Cleanup
In the days and weeks following 911, Bush ordered the destruction of 911 evidence --on its face obstruction of justice!
Other than subsection 1512(c), there are three federal statutes which expressly outlaw the destruction of evidence in order to obstruct justice: 18 U.S.C. 1519 prohibits destruction of evidence in connection with federal investigation or bankruptcy proceedings, 18 U.S.C. 1520 prohibits destruction of corporate audit records, and 18 U.S.C. 2232(a) prohibits the destruction of property to prevent the government from searching or seizing it.

None of the three are RICO or money laundering predicate offenses.334 There are no explicit statements of extraterritorial jurisdiction for any of them, but the courts are likely to conclude that overseas violation of their provisions are subject to prosecution in this country. None of them feature an individual conspiracy component, but all of them are subject to general federal law governing conspiracy, principals, accessories after the fact, and misprision.335 Obstruction of Investigations by Destruction of Evidence (18 U.S.C. 1519). Where subsection 1512(c) condemns obstruction of federal proceedings by destruction of evidence, Section 1519 outlaws obstruction of federal investigations or bankruptcy proceedings by such means. Section 1519’s language suggests that it reaches only executive branch investigations and does not extend to Congressional investigations or judicial investigations such as those conducted by a federal grand jury. It declares:
    Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
Although its “relation to or contemplation of” clause may admit to more than one construction, the section’s elements might be displayed as follows:
I. Whoever II. knowingly III. A. alters, B.destroys, C. Mutilates

-- Obstruction of Justice: an Overview of Some of the Federal Statutes that Prohibit Interference with Judicial, Executive, or Legislative Activities
The Bush conspiracy theory of 911 is shot-through with holes, unexplained anomalies and outright lies. Certainly, a definitive list of every falsehood, every distortion, every misstatement is beyond the scope of any article I might put on this blog. What may be done, however, is to categorize them --the three most obvious and fatal holes, the three legs without which the tripod will not stand.

A 757 did NOT crash into the Pentagon!

Johnny Cochran said: "If it does not fit, you must acquit!" Likewise, if there is no wreckage, the Bush cover story falls apart. Similarly, if there is no wreckage traceable to a 757, then you must discard the Bush official conspiracy theory. The house of cards has already collapsed.

If a 757 had crashed the Pentagon, the wings would have been found on the Pentagon lawn. They were never found!

If a 757 had crashed the Pentagon, two huge titanium/steel alloy engine rotors, each about 12-15 ft in diameter, would have been recovered; they were, after all, designed to withstand the intense heat inside jet engines. Those rotors were never found.

If a 757 had crashed the Pentagon, wreckage totaling about 60 to 80 tons would have been recovered, and, as was the case at Lockerbie and every other airliner crash, re-assembled as a part of a real investigation. Upon orders from George W. Bush no such investigation was ever undertaken.

Only one engine compressor rotor was found. It is about one third the size of each of two rotors that would have been found had a 757 crashed the Pent. High rez photos of this single rotor are available on the intenet.

It is --however --just about the right size to have been left behind by a U.S. Global Hawk, a payload carrying missile that was, in fact, flown from the west coast to Australia (where it was landed) all completely by remote control. [The U.S. Global Hawk, at right, painted to look like an AA airliner]

If Arab hijackers were known by name and additionally 'known' to have been on board Flt 77, it is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that they were autopsied as were other victims. In fact, there are no Arab names whatsoever on the only official, admissible document relating to the crash of Flt 77: the official autopsy report.

What about a passenger list? It proves nothing; anyone can type up a list of names at any time, even after the fact. If, as the Washington Post reported, Hani Hanjour did not have a ticket, how did he get on board? What evidence is there that any hijacker at any time ever boarded any aircraft that was said to have been connected with 911.

Bottom line: there is absolutely no evidence that Hani Hanjour or any alleged 911 hijacker ever got on board Flight 77. None! No wonder Bushco was reluctant to press this case. No wonder Bushco overtly obstructed justice! No wonder Bushco seemed overly eager to shut everyone up! They succeeded in doing so because the GOP has a horrible record with respect to public education and because the U.S. media is concentrated in very, very few hands. Last time I checked, American mass media was concentrated in the hands of about six or seven huge corporations. These corporations are not likely to expose the murderous hoax that was 911.

The wings and tail are huge surfaces areas --certainly bigger than the tiny hole said by official conspiracy theorists to have been the impact point! The hole would not have accommodated the fuselage, let alone the wings and tail which might have broken off to be found on the lawn. Nor was there any significant damage that might have been attributed to either wings or tail section or both. Neither was there evidence of wings or tail section!

There was a 'punch out' hole in the inner ring but could not have been made by a 757! Oddly, there is apparently no debris remaining of whatever it was that made the punch-out hole in the inner ring. I am quite sure that whatever it was, Bush ordered that it be carted off and destroyed.

Even if the plane had 'shredded' --as some have claimed --'80 tons of plane is still 80 tons of debris'.
"Wings that should have been sheared off by the impact are entirely absent. There is also substantial evidence of debris from a much smaller jet-powered aircraft inside the building. We conclude with a high degree of certainty that no Boeing 757 struck the building. We also conclude with a substantial degree of certainty that a smaller, single-engined aircraft, roughly the size and shape of an F-16, did, in fact, strike the building."

(Source)

Detailed analysis of the debris field, physical damage, and other factors in the alleged impact of a Boeing 757 on the Pentagon building on the morning of September 11, 2001 reveals an almost complete absence of debris expected from such an event. (Elliott 2003) The initial (pre-collapse) hole made by the alleged impact on the ground floor of Wedge One of the building is too small to admit an entire Boeing 757. In order to decide whether or not a Boeing 757 (or aircraft of comparable size) struck the Pentagon on the morning in question, a comprehensive review of all the debris and other physical evidence is hardly necessary. It turns out that a study of the wings alone suffices for the purpose.

...

The analysis presented here is based entirely on standard and/or official sources, such as the engineering report issued under the auspices of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), as directed by an army engineering officer as chair. (ASCE 2003)

--The Missing Wings, A Comparison of actual and expected wing debris resulting from the impact of a Boeing 757 on the Pentagon building (revised Dec 19, 2004), A. K. Dewdney, G. W. Longspaugh

We are lead to believe that not only did the 757 penetrate the outer wall, but continued on to penetrate separate internal walls totaling 9 feet of reinforced concrete. The final breach of concrete was a nearly perfectly cut circular hole (see left) in a reinforced concrete wall, with no subsequent damage to the rest of the wall. (If we are to believe that somehow this aluminum aircraft did in fact reach this sixth final wall.)

--A Boeing 757 did not hit the Pentagon, Michael Meyer, Mechanical Engineer

No wreckage traceable to a 757 was ever recovered at the Pentagon. Something was carted off surreptitiously under a blue tarpaulin but I doubt seriously that the four or five white-shirted wimps were toting some 60 to 80 tons of wreckage that would have been left behind by a crashed 757. Whatever they were carrying 1) it's origin would not be revealed; 2) it was light enough to carried aloft by several skinny guys in pristine white shirts; 3) it could not possibly have come from a 757.

Bushco efforts to confront and/or confound critics of the Pentagon crash are increasingly ludicrous. The fuselage of Flt 77, they say, vaporized. Any reputable engineering department and any reputable engineering website will confirm the fact that the Aluminum will not vaporize at temperatures less than 11000 degrees F. NASA is on record stating that 11000 degrees F is 1000 degrees hotter than the surface of the Sun! At the same time, Bushco defenders say that both passengers and hijackers were DNA identified. But DNA literally 'melts' (the term used in the scientific literature) at various temps between about 400 to 500 degrees F.

Now --if the temperatures were sufficient to vaporize the airliner fuselage, no DNA tests would have been possible. Simply, either the fuselage vaporized or the DNA tests were made. Bushco advocates cannot have it both ways. I only cite this as an example of the ludicrous extremes to which defenders of the official conspiracy theory have devolved, what extremes and contradictions they are willing to embrace to defend what is clearly several acts of high treason and mass murder that any reasonable, intelligent person will conclude was ordered and supervised by Bush, his administration and his co-conspirators in private industry, the Military-Industrial Complex and, quite possibly, the so-called 'Jewish Lobby'.

Aluminum Does Not Penetrate Hardened Steel

The criminals who perpetrated 911 exploit GOP subversions of education, especially the Bush/Perry regimes in Texas. When crimes of the magnitude of 911 are committed, it is only the GOP which benefits from its neglect of education, especially science, physics, logic, skepticism.

Only a controlled demolition looks like a controlled demolition. And WTC 7 looks like a controlled demolition because it was 'pulled' just as Silverstein himself said it was. And if it was 'pullled', it had to have been 'prepped', that is, explosives planted and wired perhaps weeks in advance of the so-called 'terrorist attacks'.

There is --in fact --not a shred of evidence to support the ludicrous theory that it fell as a result of piddly random fires that might have been pissed out!
For those who are not yet ready to make the commitment to obtain and read a book on 9/11, but who wish to learn more, a ten-minute solution is available. It only takes a few minutes to view video on the Internet of the collapse of Building 7, the 47 story skyscraper located immediately north of the WTC complex about 300 feet from the North Tower. Viewers will note the almost vertical collapse of the building. Only controlled demolitions have achieved vertical collapses of upright steel structures.

After viewing the video, many will agree with Dan Rather who said on CBS News that very evening that the collapse of Building 7 was “reminiscent of those pictures we’ve all seen too much on television before when a building was destroyed by well placed dynamite to knock it down.”

--Ronald Bleier, WTC Building 7 – The 911 Smoking Gun?
I deny that there is any credible evidence to support the theory that an airliner with a soft aluminum body could or can penetrate the dense steel outer 'cladding' of the WTC. And --if by a miracle it did --it most certainly could not have penetrated the dense inner core conveniently omitted from 'official theories'! This 'omission' is not competent if by accident; it is a crime if the omission is deliberate! In any case, it's existence disproves the official lies.

Purdue University 'Forgot' About a Dense Core at WTC

The most notorious instance of omission of this core is a You Tube video which claims to have been produced by Purdue University. The 'copy' on You Tube claims to be 'realistic' and 'factual' but, in fact, is neither! It depicts a soft-bodied aluminum airliner slicing through the dense steel cladding. In the version I watched, the CORE had been omitted entirely, a case of 'truth by animation'. I deny that this 'toon is realistic or factual. I challenge Purdue to cite a single peer-reviewed paper in which soft aluminum has penetrated hardened steel at any speed. Show me the science and spare me the 'toons.

I carry a Swiss army knife. The blades are made of hardened steel --not Aluminum. That's because Aluminum is not likely to penetrate anything that I might want to cut. Soft Aluminum airliner bodies, likewise, were never designed to penetrate hard, dense steel and 911 is most certainly not the test case that proves it does, will or ever has. Since the Wright brothers aircraft of any sort have been made of lighter weight and softer materials. Airliners are not made of hard, dense steel but aluminum --lighter, less dense, softer. Wenger and Victorinox are not likely to begin the manufacture of aluminum bladed Swiss Army knives any time soon.

Defenders of Bush's ludicrous weird, witch doctor science, however, have an 'explanation'. They say that 'kinetic energy' allows soft aluminum to penetrate hard steel!

Nonsense!

They have watched too many roadrunner cartoons in which the wily coyote falls off a cliff, penetrates the hard ground leaving a hole in the shape of his silhouette! The real world is not a Road Runner 'toon nor is it a fantasy of Purdue under-graduates.

The truth is that gains in kinetic energy are absorbed by the softer body. In this case, a real airliner striking a tough steel cladding would have been shredded, those parts striking the hard steel would absorb the increased kinetic energy due to velocity and would literally fold up; those pieces striking spaces between the steel columns would penetrate only the empty spaces. Were the building solid steel, the soft Al body would simply fold up and fall down to street level.

Try hurling a ball of modeling clay at a metal garage door. If you are Mickey Mantle reincarnated you might knock down the door if it is merely propped up or poorly attached. But you will never, ever penetrate the door itself. Try it! There is no record of anyone penetrating a metal garage door with a ball of non-hardening modeling clay.

Another experiment. Replace the lead slug of a 30 caliber round with one of aluminum. Fire that round at a steel beam comparable to those at the WTC. Let me know if it ever penetrates the steel! Lotsa luck! I don't expect to hear from anyone performing this experiment nor will I ever read a 'peer-reviewed' paper validating such an experiment.

Soft aluminum fuselages, likewise, will never slice through the girders themselves as the official conspiracy suggests or states.


Condo LIES to Congress

If the official conspiracy theory of 911 were true, then Condo Rice would have had no motive to lie to Congress.

By the time I saw 'ground zero' for myself, every scrap had been carted off! I peered into a deep and pristine hole! An individual cannot cover up his/her crimes on this scale. But Bushco --his administration of fellow crooks like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld --covered up the crime of 911 in 'full view of the world'. The American 'sheeple' bought it!

Instead, Shermer has discounted Bush critics as 'conspiracy theorists' despite the fact that the official theory puts forward a weird and highly unlikely conspiracy involving 19 Arab hijackers who were, we are told, coordinated from deep inside a cave in Tora Bora. It was a bad re-write of the old Popeye cartoon: 'Ali Baba and his 40 Thieves'.

The official conspiracy theory thus meets Conan Doyle's standard by which bunkum and bullshit is exposed and assessed. Every key point in the theory is utterly impossible. Nothing in the official story is possible or plausible. It could not and did not happen. It is a lie, a cruel and tragic hoax. It was, in fact, an act of high treason in which officials of 'our' government conspired to wage war upon and murder citizens of the United States.

In summary: to believe the official conspiracy theory, you must discount or ignore numerous laws of elementary, high school physics:
  1. You must believe that kerosene fires will melt steel though this has never happened or been duplicated in a lab.
  2. You must believe that Hani Hanjour can duplicate for real Criss Angel's most famous 'trick' --that of walking through solid glass or, better, David Copperfield who walked through the Great Wall of China.
I know how Copperfield pulled it off but --you have to admit --there were more witnesses to his feat than there were witnesses to Bush's 911. And when Copperfield walked through the Great Wall no life was sacrificed for the sake of mere illusion or worse --control of world oil supplies!

Let's consider a few of these anomalies that render the official theory not only impossible but ludicrous. The belief in it should embarrass anyone claiming to be a skeptic, humiliate any 'scientist' failing to point out the astronomically improbable succession of miracles that are required for such a thing to happen.

To believe Bushco's 'not ready for Vegas' routine:
  1. You must believe that a 757 can crash into the Pentagon and disappear without a trace.
  2. You must believe that soft aluminum can penetrate hard steel despite the fact that if that were so Wenger would make the blades of its Swiss Army knives of Aluminum.
  3. You must believe that for some weird and un-recorded reason airlines decided to press into service flights that had not been scheduled to fly (mothballed) for some six months.
  4. You must believe that Arab hijackers were either 'raptured' or jumped out of Flt 77; there are absolutely no Arab names on the official autopsy report.
  5. You must believe the aluminum body of a 757 vaporized as no scrap traceable to an airliner of any sort was ever found at the Pentagon.
  6. You must believe that Hani Hanjour got on board without a ticket and without creating any kind of suspicion prior to his boarding. Perhaps he made himself invisible!
  7. You must believe that Hani Hanjour, like David Copperfield, walked through a closed door! NTSB data released via an FOIA proves that the cabin door was never opened during the flight. How did Hani get in? For that matter --how did he get on board? There is, in fact, no evidence whatsoever that he did! Nor is his name or the names of any other 'terrorist/Arab' to be found on the only official list of passengers --the OFFICIAL autopsy report.
  8. You must believe that Flt 77 managed to manifest itself in two places at the same instant: NTSB puts Flt 77 at some 200 ft above the Pentagon at the time of impact.
  9. You must believe that because no fuselage traceable to a 757 was ever found at the Pentagon, it must have 'vaporized' in the heat.
  10. You must believe that the source of that heat was greater than that on the surface of the sun itself --some 10000 degrees F.
And while believing that the fuselage vaporized, you must also believe that victims were DNA identified. But --how is that possible? DNA literally melts at varying temps between about 400 to 500 degrees F.

So --which is it? Were they DNA ID'd? Or did the Aluminum fuselage vaporize?

Which is it?


It cannot be both ways! In fact, it is neither! This merely proves how utterly ludicrous is this theory and more so because seemingly 'intelligent' people believe this utter crap!

Silverstein had Method, Motive and Opportunity.

About New York --WTC 7 was not struck by airliners; yet its collapse was reported by the BBC before it occurred. But why did it collapse? It was prepared well in advance as any CD expert will tell you is required. Who else but Silverstein could have taken out the insurance policy on this property?

If WTC 7 Was a Controlled Demolition, so were the Twins!

Silverstein is even on video saying that he gave the order to pull it! Indeed --it was pulled immediately upon his order. That means that the building had been prepped, perhaps, for weeks. I would like to have read his policy. What, precisely, was covered? Was the building ensured against deliberate controlled demolition. If so, he could have ordered it 'pulled' at any time at his convenience. I doubt any company would write such a blank check. The policy, I am quite sure, covered 'acts of God' --but 'terrorism'? Perhaps! It most certainly would not have covered a fraudulent act of deliberate demolition for the purpose of collecting the insurance money. There is a term for that: INSURANCE FRAUD! As I recall, his insurance policy was worth $billions$ which have by now, I am sure, been paid.
I consider the many falsehoods of the official report. I disregard the official theory and start from scratch. At the end, I make a number of conclusions, most notably the assertion that no hijackers participated.

I rely upon Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) records, which indicate clearly that two of the flights associated with 9/11, United 175 and United 93, were scheduled to fly that day and that the other two flights, American 11 and American 77, were not scheduled.

The BTS records are half of the key to determining where the planes went. The other half is the proof that none of the targets (World Trade Centers One and Two, the Pentagon and Shanksville) were struck by any planes resembling the ones allegedly used for these four flights. The following are a series of if-then propositions that I constructed as to the planes and passengers and my reasoning for using the assumptions that I made: IF Flights 11 and 77 were not scheduled, then neither 11 nor 77 flew

It would be unlikely for plotters to use planes that were not scheduled to be used on September 11th. Of course the plotters could have arranged to use unscheduled flights, but how would the passengers have learned of them without being suspicious or without being involved?

Plotters could have had the idea that controlling two planes was much easier than controlling four. They may then have decided to pretend that two other flights were used by using false ³ blips´ on the Federal Aviation Administration computer screens, by taking advantage of simulations going on throughout the east coast (including Delta 89, now widely thought to be a simulated flight used to distract from others) and by faking phone calls from planes that did not fly.

IF passengers actually went on flights, then the passengers may be accounted for I have yet to see any proof of tickets bought by the alleged passengers, boarding passes or videotape from surveillance of any of the airports where the alleged passengers left from. Furthermore, no independent expert has ever verified any remains of any of the alleged passengers at any of the ³crash sites.´

And, the phone calls associated with the flights could have been handled by a few passengers, or even by voice ³morphing.´ A low number of passengers are on the Social Security Death Index. The best evidence of passengers actually flying on any of the planes in question, interestingly, comes from eyewitness accounts of passengers at the Cleveland Airport that morning.

My First Conclusion: The Official Theory Is False

Like most people, I did not question whether planes were used in the events of 9/11 when I heard the news. I doubt the idea crossed my mind for a long time. In all of the news, much was made of the flight numbers, specific passengers and the constant image on television screens of a plane striking the south tower.
But after researching the matter, I discovered that official story simply had too many holes in it to be accurate. The following contains a partial list of problems

-- Misdirection: Following the Plot, Execution and Cover-up of 9/11 Crimes
By Dean T. Hartwell
Back to Michael Shermer.

The above outline of absurdities re: 911 should have been taken up by real skeptics. That Michael Shermer took up the task of defending myth, lies, absurdities and anti-science, speaks volumes.

Shermer built his career upon the conflict between creationism and evolution, light work for anyone with a normal IQ. Making fools of people like Sarah Palin is hardly a challenge for anyone capable of graduating 9th grade. Shermer tripped up with regard to 911 because he failed to abide by the only dictum which defines true skepticism: those who assert must prove! Shermer failed the very first task of the skeptic and that is: demand proof! At the very least --evidence!

A review charged that Shermer 'offers very little in the way of direct evidence against creationism'! It is not the job of a skeptic to offer evidence against anything! It is the job of the skeptic to doubt, question and challenge. It is the job of the skeptic to demand proof and evidence for the absurd, outlandish, outrageous conspiracy theory that was promoted by the Bush administration. It is also the job of the skeptic to ask of those who peddle theories: who benefits if we buy this crap? Why and how do they benefit?

Those who assert must prove

I challenge Bush's supporters to prove their assertions. Those peddling or putting forward theories must be prepared to prove and/or support them with demonstrable fact. Bushco has never proven anything with regard to 911. Ergo: there is no reason to support or believe him or anything said by anyone in his administration. Bush supporters not only cannot prove, they have no evidence that supports the official theory. It's utter bunkum from the get go.

Again --Doyle's character --Sherlock Holmes --said:

"When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains however implausible must be the truth!"
Sadly, millions of Americans believe a pack of lies because they just 'can't handle the truth!"


Saturday, February 02, 2008

Official Conspiracy Theorists Suckered a Gullible Michael Shermer

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Skeptic Michael Shermer has fallen for the most outlandish conspiracy theory of them all: the official conspiracy theory for which there is not a shred of evidence.

Shermer has bought into an official lie. Fallaciously, Shermer simply discounts as untrue anything that contradicts his pre-conceived notion, an elementary breach of logic. Shermer should know better. If he knows better and persists in spite of it, he is dishonest.

Jean-Paul Sartre termed this behavior -- "bad faith". Bertolt Brecht was more blunt: "A man who does not know the truth is just an idiot but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook!" Shermer, which one are you?

Shermer's recent attempt to "debunk the 911" truth movement is flawed at the outset. His very headline on the Huffington Post is an ad hominem --the 911 movement, he says, are "liars". The bulk of his article is a strawman. Shermer chooses to zero in on Alex Jones, hardly the founder and most certainly not the "leader" of what is, in fact, a world-wide grassroots movement, a fact that must be terribly inconvenient for top-down, authoritarians who insist upon attacking a symbol or a figure-head. The pursuit of pure truth has no need of either. Shermer, I suspect, wanted an easy target, a fuhrer and finding none settled for a strawman.

Why Jones? Many folk dislike Jones and/or his style. Would Shermer have chosen Jones in order to inject personality and emotion into an issue that is difficult enough to discuss rationally? Certainly --Shermer's tactic does not illuminate but obscures with personality and emotion. Until the events of 911 are discussed critically and dispassionately, there is little hope that the truth about this crime against the American people will ever be attained. If I wished to demagogue an issue, I might be tempted to choose the most visible, the easiest target. I had hoped Shermer would not have taken this low road.

If I wished to advance a fallacious argument, I might wish to choose someone upon which I might pin a strawman. Is this what Shermer has done? I leave that to you. If I were going to "debunk" a bogus campaign of pure propaganda, I would certainly not choose an easy target, as Shermer has done.

The official theory is a fire theory. If the "fires" did not bring about the collapse, then the official theory is bunkum! I challenge Michael Shermer to cite a single case in which fire has been determined decisively, authoritatively to have been the cause of the collapse of a large steel-frame building. Cite it! There are no such cases --until 911 that is. Cite it, Michael, or shut up!

As David Ray Griffin accurately pointed out: Steel does not even begin to melt until it reaches almost 2800° Fahrenheit. Nor did the towers collapse because the fire had weakened the steel because the fires could not have burned long enough or hot enough for even that to have happened.

I have covered many fires in my day. A fire is considered spent when the smoke turns black. On 911 --the jet fuel, as to be expected, burned up quickly in enormous fireballs, coughing up black smoke very quickly. Any firefighter, any one who has 'covered' a fire, knows that black smoke indicates a 'spent' fire, a relatively 'cool' or cooling fire.

/p>The 911 fires --like all fires --cooled rapidly as the fuel was consumed rapidly. That was the case on 911. The fires cooled as fuel is spent. most certainly did not and could not have burned hot enough or long enough to have melted or weakened the steel! It is highly doubtful that even aluminum ( melting point 1220.666 °F)) would have utterly melted under 911 conditions and even if it had, it would not have affected the core known to have been made of steel --not aluminum. The very existence of the core was omitted from officialdom's earliest versions, namely, the idiotic 'pancaking' theory.

Shermer thinks melted (molten) alumininum had been mistaken for molten steel. So what? Even if melted aluminum had been found, it does not explain the utter collapse of a steel core. It does not explain why steel --in fact --melted!

Additionally --if the steel core did not melt the towers would not have collapsed? Kerosene fires are about a thousand degrees too cool to melt steel. How, then, does Shermer account for the fact that a dense, steel core melted and collapse on 911!

Shermer needs to get a clue: kerosene will not melt steel and did not melt steel on 911! Neither Muslims nor the NIST have changed the laws of physics. Shermer's reference to aluminum is utterly irrelevant!

The implication that molten aluminum had been mistaken for aluminum is baseless and begs the question. It's a cover story proposed ex post facto as a result of 911 movement criticism, an attempt to paper over the glaring inadequacies of the official conspiracy theory. Additionally, it is put forward disingenuously by those who understand that the mere presence of molten steel, by itself, utterly discredits Bush's official conspiracy theory of 911.

In a nutshell: the towers collapsed because both core and frame-work melted. Secondly, both core and frame were made of steel. Third, kerosene fires caused by the airliner crash were about a thousand degrees too cool to have melted steel. Fourth: both kerosene fires began to cool almost immediately as evidenced by the fact that the smoke turned black within minutes if not seconds of impact.

Conclusion: the airliners DID NOT cause the collapses of the towers. If the airliners were not the cause, what was?

I submit that the falls looked like 'controlled demolitions' because they were controlled demolitions.

Lesser known "debunkers" than Shermer have claimed that emergency responders mistook molten aluminum for steel. There is simply no compelling reason, and certainly no evidence to suspect that that is the case. See the papers by Professor Steven Jones that I have cited in this post. The truth of all this might have been known if only there had been an investigation. Only a tiny portion of the steel columns were available for scrutiny; government officials --most certainly under orders from the Bush administration --ordered the steel sold and shipped off to China, as I recall. The willful concealment or destruction of evidence from a crime scene is a felony!

"We start with the fact that large quantities of molten steel were observed in basement areas under rubble piles in all three building: the Twin Towers and WTC7. ...The photographs ...by Frank Silecchia show chunks of the hotel metal being removed from the North Tower on September 27, 2001 (according to the photographer's aid). Notice the color of the lower portion of the extracted metal --this tells us much about the temperature of the metal and provides important clues regarding its composition, as we shall see." ..."On the basis of photographic and video evidence as well as related data and analyses, I have provide thirteen reasons for rejecting the official hypothesis, according to which fire and impact damage caused the collapse of the Twin Tower and WTC7, in favor of the controlled-demolition hypothesis. The goal of this paper is to promote further scrutiny of the official government-sponsored reports as well as serious investigation of the controlled-demotion hypothesis. (No rebuttal of my arguments for an in-depth investigation can be complete, of course, unless it addresses all of these points.)"

--Dr, Steven E. Jones, Physicist and Archeometrist. [Prof. Jones' peer-reviewed paper is available as a PDF file here.]

Shermer's "rebuttal" of Jones consists of quoting Jones and contradicting him. But Shermer never touches the science. Shermer's practiced fallacies are not confined to Jones. For those who believe that Building 7 fell due to controlled demolition, some of the most powerful “evidence” seemingly comes from WTC leaseholder Larry Silverstein’s alleged “confession” that he authorized the tower’s destruction. The quote in question comes from a September, 2002 PBS Special called America Rebuilds, in which Silverstein says:
    I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, “We’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.” And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse.

    --Larry Silverstein, 911 Quotes [my link, LH]

To conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones at prisonplanet.com, this quote seems to be a “smoking gun” because they interpret the phrase “pull it” to be “industry jargon for taking a building down with explosives.”15 Silverstein seems to be saying that he and the firefighters decided to pull (destroy) Building 7, and watched it fall after authorizing the demolition. No building could be controllably demolished so quickly, the conspiracy theorists go onto argue, so WTC 7 must have been prepared for demolition long in advance.

On closer inspection, this supposedly devastating evidence does not seem to mean what the 9/11 Truth Movement thinks it means. There is far from unanimous industry agreement that the phrase “pull it” always signifies a controlled demolition with explosives — more specific phrases such as “pull away” would be used to designate the specific operation to be performed.16 And of course, “pull” has many common language uses quite separate from demolition lingo. But if Silverstein wasn’t describing a decision to destroy WTC 7, what could the words “pull it” mean?

--Michael Shermer

If I may address this reply to Shermer: well, Michael, apply Occam's Razor. Did it ever occur to you that that is, in fact, precisely what Silverstein meant? The term 'pull' is, in fact, industry jargon for"controlled demolition".

I submit that the word "pull" means precisely what it means to those who "pull" buildings for a living and I would suggest that Shermer conduct some field research to include interviews of people who make a living doing this kind of thing. Shermer posits that the word "pull" was used to mean "pull out" as in "pulling out the firefighters" still at work on Building 7. That is an illogical and unnecessary complication of a simple, straight forward explanation to be found in the very meaning of the word "pull" as it is, in fact, used by experts. Besides --why would firefighters have pulled out? What was the sudden urgency? The 'Twin Towers' had already collapsed and the fires in Building 7 were certainly insignificant by comparison if not already under control. There was simply no compelling reason to conclude anything other than Silverstein authorized the "controlled demolition" of the building, ordering it pulled just as he had said he did.
"I remember getting a call from the Fire Department commander, telling me they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, you know, 'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is just pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and then we watched the building collapse."

--Larry Silverstein, 911 Quotes

If Silverstein had been referring to the "firefighters" themselves, he might have said "pull them" or "pull them out! But he didn't! He said "pull it" and, in the jargon of the trade "it" was Building 7. Since when do even callous people begin referring to other people (plural) as "it"? Not even Silverstein would have done that! People are a "them". A building is an "it"!

According to Debunking911, Silverstein's spokesperson, Mr. McQuillan, later clarified:
"In the afternoon of September 11, Mr. Silverstein spoke to the Fire Department Commander on site at Seven World Trade Center. The Commander told Mr. Silverstein that there were several firefighters in the building working to contain the fires. Mr. Silverstein expressed his view that the most important thing was to protect the safety of those firefighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the building."
Compare the "clarification" with Silverstin's actual words! The "clarification" hardly supports either the Debunking site or Shermer. It is the work of a PR flack. In other respects, Shermer's argument in this respect is not really Shermer's. It belongs to 911 Research.net, what Shermer would fallaciously "label" a conspiracy site, who plays a better "devil's advocate" than Shermer plays the devil himself. In other words, Michael, we've heard all your stuff before and are even less than impressed with it now.
However, there are several problems with this explanation.

  • According to Chapter 5 of FEMA's Building Performance Study , firefighters were never in the building: "Preliminary indications were that, due to lack of water, no manual firefighting actions were taken by FDNY."
  • Silverstein's statement implies a close temporal proximity between "that decision to pull" and "watch[ing] the building collapse," giving no time for the fires to become more severe and do what fires have never before done: cause the total collapse of a steel-frame high-rise.
Of course there are even greater problems with the implication that Silverstein
and the FDNY decided to demolish the building only after the attack on the Twin
Towers.
  • Rigging a building for controlled demolition normally takes weeks of preparation -- far longer than the at most a few hours between the determination that "they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire," and the 5:20 PM collapse of the building.

  • The building had several areas of fire -- hardly conditions under which a demolitions team could be expected to lay high explosives.
However, if we imagine that the "decision to pull" had been made before 9/11/01, Silverstein's comment makes more sense as an admission that there had been a deliberate decision to demolish the building.

--911 Research

Shermer's conclusion sounds remarkably similar:
There’s also the problem that, as even the 9/11 Truth Movement admits, prepping a building for demolition takes considerable time and effort. Usually a building targeted for demolition has been abandoned for considerable time and partially gutted to allow explosives intimate contact with the structure of the building. But since all of the WTC buildings were occupied right up to 9/11, how did the government gain access to wire 3 towers for complete demolition without anyone noticing? Imagine trying to sneak wires and bombs into buildings while thousands of people are working in offices, riding the elevators and milling about in the halls — that scenario is unlikely in the extreme.
The fact is: someone did do the "wiring" and getting in and out was not a problem. There numerous witnesses to the comings and goings. Had this crime been investigated all that testimony might have made its way into an official record. But --not! Bush has covered this crime up! Unless, of course, you subscribe to the "theory" that concrete-coated steel girders can be melted in minutes with cool burning kerosene fires! Absurd!

If one wishes to be logical, one simply must be prepared to follow facts to logical conclusions --even if you don't like the consequences, even if the conclusions run counter to your prejudices and pre-conceived notions. No one wanted to believe what the evidence points to. No one wanted to accept the logical consequences of the facts, the multitudinous Bush lies, the laws of physics.

The Twin Towers were largely "un-occupied" at the time of the attacks. Access prior to the attacks was not the problem. Entire floors were unoccupied and were the "site" of extensive and even "mysterious" renovations. A recently published chart proves that the offending airliners seemed to "target" precisely those floors where "renovations" were known to have been going on in the months preceding 911.
NIST report NCSTAR1-6A, page xxxvii (Via 911 Blogger): in WTC 1, floors 92 through 100 and 102 were upgraded; and in WTC 2, floors 77, 78, 88, 89, 92, 96 and 97 were upgraded. [See: Chart I, Chari II, Chart III, ] a number of the floors affected by the fires on September 11, 2001. Specifically, In the years between 1995 and 2001, thermal protection was upgraded in These renovations covered the almost exact same floors as where the "planes" hit-- particularly they spanned the "plane-hit" floors perfectly for WTC1 (94-98), and covered the lowest floor of the "plane-hit" floors (78-84) for WTC2.

Simply put, this is too much of a coincidence to be mere chance: that the same regions of both towers where the demolition started following the "plane hits" were the same regions that were recently "upgraded".

Renovations would have been perfect times to plant explosives and other devices that could mimic plane hits and subsequent fires. [See: Chart I, Chart II, Chart III]

At 610 feet, 47 stories, Building 7 would have been the tallest building in 33 states. It was not hit by an airplane and there is absolutely no mention of it in the report of the 911 Commission, lately disowned by the committe co-chairs. Watch the collapse video here. Six years on, our government has not seen fit to publish a complete explanation of its fall.

Conan Doyle's creation, Sherlock Holmes, said:
"When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." -Sherlock Holmes.
When the "official conspiracy theory" is, thus, eliminated, that leaves the only logical and scientific explanation that makes sense and explains the observable facts consistent with the laws of science and logic.

It is interesting to note that Bush himself may have given the game away, implying that the airliner fires alone did not bring down the towers.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed described the design of planned attacks of buildings inside the U.S. and how operatives were directed to carry them out. That is valuable information for those of us who have the responsibility to protect the American people. He told us the operatives had been instructed to ensure that the explosives went off at a high -- a point that was high enough to prevent people trapped above from escaping.

--Bush, Press Conference of the President, The Rose Garden, September 2006

Conspiracy theorists say World Trade Center 7 is the best proof for controlled demolition because it wasn't hit by airliners and only had a few fires. They also claim that there was a confession from the building owner who said he "pulled" it. But this is deceptive because while building 7 wasn't hit by an airliner, it was hit by the large perimeter columns of the Tower collapse. It was 400 ft away but the towers were more than 1300 ft tall. As the tower peeled open, it easily tilted over to reach building 7. Below is evidence showing that conspiracy theorists are wrong.

--Debunking911

Check the bolded part. The bolded assertion is ludicrous and would be hilarious if the event had not been so tragic. That is not what happened. The towers did not tip over onto Building 7. Worth repeating: the towers did not tip over onto Buliding 7.

Nor did they "peel open". Who comes up with this stuff? What cold blooded liar is paid to put this utter shit into print?

Any cursory examination of any video of the Twin Towers collapse disproves it; you don't have to take my word for it. Just open your eyes. Certainly, the damage done by debris from the Twin Towers was relatively minor; it would not have necessitated that the building be pulled, nor would it have caused its collapse. Statements by "Debunking911" are evidence striking writers are moonlighting.

bombing of the Murrah building in OK City. Both buildings were constructed using the same bridge beam system that, in WTC 7's case, allegedly contributed to its demise. But more importantly WTC 7, like the Murrah building, housed high-level government offices including the FBI, CIA and the Secret Service. WTC 7 was also the storage facility for millions of files pertaining to active cases involving international drug dealing, organized crime, terrorism and money laundering.

There's also disturbing correlations between the collapse of WTC 7 and the Murrah Bldg

--Owner of WTC admits explosives were used!

Method and opportunity can be demonstrated. But what of motive? Why would Silverstein want to blow up his own buildings?
Six months before the attacks on the World Trade Center, the World Trade Center was "privatized" by being leased to a private sector developer. The lease was purchased by the Silverstein Group for $3.2 billion 6 weeks before 911. But the World Trade Towers were not the real estate prize the Silverstein Group might have been led to believe. The towers required some $200 million in renovations and improvements, most of which related to removal and replacement of building materials declared to be health hazards in the years since the towers were built. Other New York developers had been driven into bankruptcy by the costly mandated renovations, and $200 million represented an entire year's worth of revenues from the World Trade Towers.

The attacks on 9/11 changed the picture. Instead of renovation, Silverstein is rebuilding, funded by the insurance coverage on the property which 'fortuitously' covered acts of terrorism. Even better, Silverstein filed TWO insurance claims for the maximum amount of the policy, based on the two, in Silverstein's view, separate attacks. The total potential payout is $7.1 billion, more than enough to build a fabulous new complex and leave a hefty profit for the Silverstein Group, including Larry Silverstein himself.

As reported in The Washington Post, the insurance company, Swiss Re, has gone to court to argue that the 9/11 disaster was only one attack, not two and that therefore the insurance payout should be limited to $3.55 billion, still enough to rebuild the complex. The destruction of the World Trade Towers may make Silverstein one of the wealthiest men alive.

Giuliani Was Warned About The Demolitions

Before either of the Twin Towers had collapsed, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his associates were told to leave the headquarters that they had set up within Building 7.

" We were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was gonna collapse," Rudolph Giuliani told Peter Jennings of ABC News that morning, "and it did collapse before we could get out of the building."

Mind you, no steel building had ever collapsed because of a fire in the world's
history. So, how did they know that the Twin Towers were going to collapse if
it was such an unprecedented occurrence?

--Portland Indymedia

Much is said about the how the towers collapsed, or more properly, were collapsed. Most violate Occam's Razor with unnecessary complications, rationalizations after the fact. There is no reason to come up with crazy explanations about how they might look like controlled demolitions but are not really. Simply: the collapse of the Twin Towers looked like controlled demolitions because they were controlled demotions.
The basic idea of explosive demolition is quite simple: If you remove the support structure of a building at a certain point, the section of the building above that point will fall down on the part of the building below that point. If this upper section is heavy enough, it will collide with the lower part with sufficient force to cause significant damage. The explosives are just the trigger for the demolition. It's gravity that brings the building down.

--The Bigger They Come, the Harder They Fall

At last, some straight talk about "controlled demolitions", the only process which can explain what was witnessed and what happened on 911.
You can demolish a stone wall with a sledgehammer, and it's fairly easy to level a five-story building using excavators and wrecking balls. But when you need to bring down a massive structure, say a 20-story skyscraper, you have to haul out the big guns. Explosive demolition is the preferred method for safely and efficiently demolishing larger structures. When a building is surrounded by other buildings, it may be necessary to "implode" the building, that is, make it collapse down into its footprint.

--How Building Implosions Work

My conclusion: if airliners had merely crashed into the Twin Tower of the WTC that day, there would have been fires and loss of life. The fires would have burned out as rapidly as they, in fact, did that very day. In the absence of "help", that would have been the beginning and the end of it. The towers would not have fallen and there would have been no need to "pull" Building 7.

There would have been no need for the vast propaganda and strong-arm machine that this crooked administration marshaled to cover up its crimes that day and its criminal complicity in a cover up. The destruction of evidence in and of itself should have been sufficient to send this administration up the river on felony charges of obstruction of justice.

Power corrupts and absolute power has corrupted absolutely this most corrupt, the most evil administration that the United States, possibly the world, has ever seen.

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Michael Shermer, the Self-Described Skeptic Turns Gullible on 911

Michael Shermer, of Skeptic Magazine, claims to have debunked the 911 Truth Movement. In fact, he doesn't understand it. Shermer tars the movement with a broad and fallacious brush, absurdly comparing the 911 truth movement with Holocaust denial, a fallacious smear that misstates the 911 position. Holocaust deniers, in fact, have more in common with Bush and his defenders: both deny the nature and the scope of the crime of 911.

Bush asked us to believe numerous 'conspiracies' --conspiracies that Shermer, his ilk, et al would deny exist. At the same time --incredibly --Bush asked us to believe Saddam had WMD, possibly a nuke. Condo raised the specter of a mushroom cloud. Saddam, we were led to believe, was conspiring with Bin Laden to wage war on Americans. It was bullshit! But no one told Bush that 'conspiracies do not exist!" Nor was Bush held to critical or skeptical standards. Bush got away with it because the nation was in a state of shock. Americans, it would seem, are conditioned from birth to give greater weight to right wing theories of all sorts --economic, judicial, and conspiracy.
No holes, no Holocaust. No melted steel, no Al-Qaeda attack. The parallels are equal, and equally flawed. And just as I never imagined that Holocaust denial would wend its way into the mainstream press (Irving's trial was front page news for months), after my above conversation with the filmmaker I never imagined that 9/11 denial would get media legs. But now it has legs for days, and so we have been forced to provide a public response. To read our complete analysis of the claims of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists, go here.

--Michael Shermer, 9/11 "Truthers" a Pack of Liars
At the very outset, Shermer's misstatement of fact discredits his article. Knowledgeable "truthers" do not deny the existence of "molten steel". In fact, the existence of 'molten steel' is the strongest evidence against the guilty bastards who pulled off 911. Perhaps, Shermer is ignorant of the fact that airliner fuel --common kerosene --has not and will never bring steel to the point of melting. How does Shermer explain the free-fall of the towers? How does Shermer explain the fall of WTC7 which was not hit by an aircraft whatsoever? How does he do it without embracing the most absurd conspiracy theory to have come down the pike? He doesn't. He --in fact --embraces the most absurd conspiracy to have ever come down the pike!
Numerous videos of molten steel (see YouTube) utterly disproves the official conspiracy theory of George W. Bush. Steel melts at much higher temperatures than could possibly have been reached in the brief and relatively cool fires in all of the towers that fell that day. This is not a matter of either conjecture or propaganda.

It's a matter of physics.

Shermer's analogy, likewise, collapses. Bush himself, the architect of what will ultimately prove to be the biggest cover up in history, is better compared with holocaust deniers than are the growing legion who demand that the 911 white wash be ended now! 'Deniers' are, in fact, 'deniers of truth' and they are found among the devotees of Popular Mechanics, a magazine that foolishly gambled its credibility and lost.

Bush defenders likewise persist in a common fallacy: labeling those who demand an investigation as "conspiracy theorists". Rather, the only theory that has been put forward is the outlandish and absurdly improbable "official conspiracy" theory put forward by George W. Bush and his gang to include 'Condo' Rice. Rice called up the mayor of San Francisco and warned him not to be flying on 911. The other tip-off was Donald Rumsfeld who referred to "...the missile that struck this building [Pentagon]".

Congress and the Supreme Court have together, in fact, defined and recognized the existence of criminal conspiracies of almost every kind --from a simple 'stop-n-rob' to a extensive criminal conspiracies to include notorious drug lords. If conspiracies do not exist, the huge amounts of tax payer monies that is --for the most part wasted on the often ludicrous war on drugs --is a huge fraud upon the American people. If conspiracies did not exist, why has FINDLAW and Cornell University Law Library referenced so many court decisions and federal laws defining 'conspiracies'?  If conspiracies did not exist, why were nineteen Arab 'conspirators in terror' sought in connection with 911?

The "new" slogan --911 denier --has the stench of a right wing focus group hanging over it like fart in a phone box. 911 denier is intended to mislead. No one comes up with stuff like that spontaneously. I suspect Shermer's article is a road test. I would not be surprised to learn that Shermer was selected to roll out the term because of his now ill-deserved reputation as a "skeptic".

The tactic is pure propaganda, most certainly the work of a GOP focus group, a deliberate attempt to connect Bush critics with Holocaust deniers. Clearly --they believe that if they can do this, they can discredit the entire "movement" with only two well-chosen words: conspiracy theorist!

Consider this tactic exposed. It's typical GOP bullshit and propaganda.Until recently, Shermer had played the role of the great skeptic. No longer. No one who buys into the official 911 conspiracy theory could possibly be a skeptic. The better word is gullible. The dictum of a true skeptic is this:

THOSE WHO ASSERT MUST PROVE.
Shermer would have us ignore this important and prudent dictum. He calls himself a "skeptic". I call him, at best, naive. At worst --disingenuous. The fact of the matter is this: Bush and company asserted a theory! Not only did Bushco fail to prove the theory, the administration failed to even support it. Instead, the Bush administration THREATENED those who did not believe it! That is the tactic of a tyrant.

Bush, meanwhile, opposed a Congressional investigation and when the 911 commission was created Bush tried to interfere with it.
(CBS) President Bush took a few minutes during his trip to Europe Thursday to voice his opposition to establishing a special commission to probe how the government dealt with terror warnings before Sept. 11.
Mr. Bush said the matter should be dealt with by congressional intelligence committees.
CBS News Correspondent Bill Plante reports that Mr. Bush said the investigation should be confined to Congress because it deals with sensitive information that could reveal sources and methods of intelligence. Therefore, he said, the congressional investigation is "the best place" to probe the events leading up to the terrorist attacks.
--CBS News: Bush Opposes 9/11 Query Panel
It was later that former 9/11 Commission executive director Philip Zelikow interfered with the 9/11 report, now eschewed by the co-chairs of the committee.
According to the book, Zelikow had failed to inform the commission at the time he was hired that he was instrumental in helping Condoleezza Rice set up Bush’s National Security Council in 2001. Some panel staffers believe Zelikow stopped them from submitting a report depicting Rice’s performance prior to 9/11 as “amount[ing] to incompetence.”
...
In his book, Shenon also says that while working for the panel, Zelikow appears to have had private conversations with former White House political director Karl Rove, despite a ban on such communication, according to Holland. Shenon reports that Zelikow later ordered his assistant to stop keeping a log of his calls, although the commission’s general counsel overruled him, Holland wrote.
--Key 9/11 Commission Staffer Held Secret Meetings With Rove, Scaled Back Criticisms of White House
Earlier, evidence from the crime scenes in New York and the Pentagon was hauled off and disposed of. Last time I checked --the destruction of evidence was a felony. It still is.
Steel was the structural material of the buildings. As such it was the most important evidence to preserve in order to puzzle out how the structures held up to the impacts and fires, but then disintegrated into rubble. Since no steel-framed buildings had ever collapsed due to fires, the steel should have been subjected to detailed analysis. So what did the authorities do with this key evidence of the vast crime and unprecedented engineering failure? They recycled it!
Some 185,101 tons of structural steel have been hauled away from Ground Zero. Most of the steel has been recycled as per the city's decision to swiftly send the wreckage to salvage yards in New Jersey. The city's hasty move has outraged many victims' families who believe the steel should have been examined more thoroughly. Last month, fire experts told Congress that about 80% of the steel was scrapped without being examined because investigators did not have the authority to preserve the wreckage.
The bulk of the steel was apparently shipped to China and India. The Chinese firm Baosteel purchased 50,000 tons at a rate of $120 per ton, compared to an average price of $160 paid by local mills in the previous year.
--The Expeditious Destruction of the Evidence at Ground Zero
A real investigation would have admitted this testimony in evidence. Real skeptics believe in the "burden of proof" and the burden of proof has always been on the Bush administration. A true skeptic would demand that this evidence be released immediately. A true skeptic would have insisted upon this evidence being examined publicly by experts in a way that would allow its public verification. Buying into propaganda is not skepticism.

True skeptics are suspicious of officialdom. Officialdom has a stake in a slanted version; officialdom depends for its existence upon looking good, innocent, wise or authoritative. A real skeptic knows that that is rarely the case in fact. There are, in fact, New York fire fighters --on video tape --stating: 1) molten steel was found at the base of the collapsed towers; 2) they heard rapid explosions as the towers collapsed in a free fall. The 'rapid' explosions is a characteristic of controlled demolitions.

Even as forensic evidence was being destroyed, Bush seized the initiative, exploiting the shock to ram through congress measures that flout the separation of powers, measures that rescind Due Process of Law, habeas corpus, the presumption of innocence, measures that violate US Constitutional obligations to the Geneva Conventions, Nuremberg and other principles of International Law.
Our reporters were initially avoided by Moore, but he subsequently decided to approach We Are Change.org/ Infowars.com reporters for a discussion.
Moore brought up his lingering questions on 9/11, which are a clear departure from the 'government negligence' picture he painted in his film Fahrenheit 9/11, released some three years ago.
Moore told reporters, "I've had a number of firefighters tell me over the years and since Fahrenheit 9/11 that they heard these explosions-- that they believe there's MUCH more to the story than we've been told. I don't think the official investigations have told us the complete truth-- they haven't even told us half the truth."
--Michael Moore: 9/11 Could Be Inside Job
Moore's interest in 911 may have been peaked by the established fact that no identifiable airliner wreckage was ever found in the Pentagon debris. Moreover, as I detailed in a previous article, the "official" account of the burials at Arlington National Cemetery is shot through with inaccuracies, internal inconsistencies and inconsistencies with forensic accounts. While Pentagon victims were buried at Arlington National Cemetery, there is absolutely no record of any airline passenger nor any 'alleged terrorist' ever having been interred anywhere at any time in any manner whatsoever!

At last, some 184 unidentified remains were buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
A five-sided granite marker bearing the 184 names will be placed over a shared grave at Arlington National Cemetery — the nation's most prestigious burial ground — holding the unidentified remains.[emphasis mine, LH]

--Arlington National Cemetery
Of the 184, sixty-four were said to have been passengers of Flight 77, the flight which is said to have crashed into the Pentagon. But where were they buried?
A list of names on a piece of paper is not evidence, but an autopsy by a pathologist, is. I undertook by FOIA request, to obtain that autopsy list and you are invited to view it below. Guess what? Still no Arabs on the list. In my opinion the monsters who planned this crime made a mistake by not including Arabic names on the original list to make the ruse seem more believable. 
When airline disasters occur, airlines will routinely provide a manifest list for anxious families. You may have noticed that even before Sep 11th, airlines are pretty meticulous about getting an accurate headcount before takeoff. It seems very unlikely to me, that five Arabs sneaked onto a flight with weapons. This is the list provided by American of the 56 passengers. On September 27th, the FBI published photos of the “hijackers” of Flight 77.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), does a miraculous job and identifies nearly all the bodies on November 16th 2001
The AFIP suggest these numbers; 189 killed, 125 worked at the Pentagon and 64 were “passengers” on the plane. The AA list only had 56 and the list just obtained has 58. They did not explain how they were able to tell “victims” bodies from “hijacker” bodies. In fact, from the beginning NO explanation has been given for the extra five suggested in news reports except that the FBI showed us the pictures to make up the difference, and that makes it so.
--Thomas R. Olmsted, M.D, Autopsy: No Arabs on Flight 77
The numbers will never add up. Arlington National Cemetary says it interred 184 Pentagon employes. But AFIP says there were a total of 189 bodies --125 worked at the Pentagon and 64 were “passengers” on flight 77. Arlington claims that the unidentified remains of 184 victims share a grave at Arlington National Cemetery.
A five-sided granite marker bearing the 184 names will be placed over a shared grave at Arlington National Cemetery — the nation's most prestigious burial ground — holding the unidentified remains.
--Arlington National Cemetary
I interpret that to mean that this "shared grave" is the final resting place for unidentified victims from both the Pentagon and Flight 77.

Five are unaccounted for --presumably the "terrorist" hijackers. But that does not account for the discrepancy for several reasons. Both Arlington and AFIP claim that there were 64 Pentagon workers. AFIP provided a list of 56 passengers of Flight 77. That''s only 120! If you exclude 5 terrorists from the AFIP's total of 189, you are still left with 64 "people" completely unaccounted for. Who the hell are they? To be clear --no Arab names (i.e. no terrorists) were autopsied; no terrorists were interred at Arlington National Cemetery. There is, therefore, no evidence (let along proof) that there were ever at any time on any flight so much as ONE Arab --terrorist or no!
No Arabs wound up on the morgue slab; however, three ADDITIONAL people not listed by American Airlines sneaked in. I have seen no explanation for these extras. I did American [Airlines] the opportunity to “revise” their original list, but they have not responded. The new names are: Robert Ploger, Zandra Ploger, and Sandra Teague. The AFIP claims that the only “passenger” body that they were not able to identify is the toddler, Dana Falkenberg, whose parents and young sister are on the list of those identified.
--Thomas R. Olmsted, M.D, Autopsy: No Arabs on Flight 77
These are just a tiny few of the myriad of facts that Bush loyalists cannot explain away or rationalize with the official conspiracy theory. The silver bullet is this: there were no arabs on the flight manifests when "officialdom" maintains that all the said hijackers were Arab. Johnny Cochran won a famous murder trial with a single phrase which summed up his defense: "If it does not fit, you must acquit!" I rather think that a guilty party might be indicted just as simply: "No arabs on flight! You must indict!"

Indict Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell et al

I submit that if Bush and his guilty minions truly want to put this issue to rest they need only release all of the footage from all of the cameras that had been trained on the Pentagon and, in fact, photographed whatever it was that crashed and disappeared into the tiny little hole!

I challenge the current administration to order the release of all footage relating to the Pentagon. Let us resolve at last the question: what struck the Pentagon. That's a crucial issue due to the fact that NO airliner record was ever recovered at any time from the Pentagon. The most obvious 'scrap' is the single engine rotor that was photographed among debris. No other rotor of any size or type was recovered. The rotors that was found is about 1/3 the diameter of each of two much larger rotors (some 15 feet in diameter) that would have been recovered had a 757 crashed into the Pentagon.

I challenge the Bush administration to release all of that footage! Let us find out --once and for all time --what it was that crashed into the Pentagon. Let us find out if the Bush administration is innocent of mass murder and high treason --capital crimes!

If the Bush administration were innocent, it would release every photograph.

If the Bush administration were innocent of the capital crimes for which there is probable cause now to try them, it would respond positively to my challenge.

If the Bush administration were innocent, it would release all of the footage. It would --if it were innocent --put this issue to rest.

The following remarks, I address directly to Mr. Shermer. Mr. Shermer, your analogy is transparently fallacious! You deny the crimes of 911, as both Holocaust deniers and minions of the Third Reich denied the crimes of Adolph Hitler.
It is against such a background that these defendants now ask this Tribunal to say that they are not guilty of planning, executing, or conspiring to commit this long list of crimes and wrongs. They stand before the record of this Trial as bloodstained Gloucester stood by the body of his slain king. He begged of the widow, as they beg of you: "Say I slew them not." And the Queen replied, "Then say they were not slain. But dead they are..." If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime.
--Justice Robert Jackson, Summation for the Prosecution by Justice Robert Jackson
To paraphrase Justice Jackson --Bush, his administration, his co-conspirators stand by the many bodies of 911 victims. They beg of you to say, to believe that this crooked administration '...slew them not'. But, in fact, there were slain and they are guilty as plainly as was the blood-stain Gloucester!

Mr. Shermer, if you subscribe to the official story, if you support Bush's decision not to investigate, if you dare compare those demanding truth with those who historically sought to cover it up, you become the new Gloucester! You would have us say: there have been no official lies, there are no slain, there has been no crime!

A self-described "debunker" ought to be debunking the most outlandish theory that ever came down the pike. A real skeptic could drive Mack trucks through the holes in the official conspiracy theory. Instead, Shermer wastes considerable talent defending an official "myth" if not the crime of obstruction of justice. In doing so, he violates his own principles --those of logic and evidence.

Shermer has forgotten a basic principle: those who assert must prove! Shermer has bought the official lie and simply discounts as untrue anything that contradicts it. This is an elementary breach of logic and Shermer should know better. If he knows better and persists in spite of it, he is dishonest. Jean-Paul Sartre said of this type that they live in "bad faith". Bertolt Brecht was more blunt: "A man who does not know the truth is just an idiot but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook!" Shermer, which one are you?