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.

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Len. Nice article. Here is a piece of speculation that I read as a comment to an article on www.informationclearinghouse.info by someone called, I think, Rabbit: perhaps the plan was that the plane downed in Shanksville was supposed to fly into WTC 7, but when something went wrong and it didn't make it to WTC 7 that the people running the show decided to demolish the building anyway.

What do you think of that one? It is wild speculation!

Ed Encho said...

I have had that thought as well, whatever happened it was Flight 93 that was the odd one out - why?

Unknown said...

Lamarr said...

perhaps the plan was that the plane downed in Shanksville was supposed to fly into WTC 7, but when something went wrong and it didn't make it to WTC 7 that the people running the show decided to demolish the building anyway.

Ed encho said...

I have had that thought as well, whatever happened it was Flight 93 that was the odd one out - why?

That is consistent with Rummies comments. Rummie is on tape referring to the "missile that shot down flight 93"

I am beginning to believe that one day, the truth will come out.

Anonymous said...

Maybe in 50 years the turth will come out but not now. No one will risk their lives to rat on the who done its. The media and our government knows who done it. They are not stupid. None of them will expose the Zionists.If that happens,there won't be enough lamp posts to hang the Chosen ones.
try this--one missing nuke from 6,still has not been found.14 military personnal exposed the delivery and missing unit. As of today,7 of the informers have died due to road accidents.Now,this should have been big news--not a peep. Just shows you that the Zionist media and AIPAC politicians ain't going to do dick squat.CIA/MOSSAD did 911 you Fools!

9-11: DISPLAY OF POLICE GUNS FOUND WITH MELTED CONCRETE IN THE RUINS OF THE WTC

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/9-11guns/

Anonymous said...

I interviewed the fellas who produced and directed the documentary in which Silverstein makes his "confession" (it was an unrelated story that prompted my interview) ... they are normal 30-something year olds with an office in Garrison, NY. I asked them about "pull it" and they said they were skeptical it meant anything criminal because Silverstein had a chance to review the film before it went to air. So it wasn't just a slip of the tongue, he also viewed himself saying it!!

It is odd, you have to ask yourself, why did he say this? Is he just stupid and senile? You would think he is not stupid and senile, he is still running a billion dollar empire. It is quite strange.

Also, do you believe the government used directed beam weapons to blow up the Twin Towers. Every other controlled demolition I've ever seen has had far more explosions going off than just the few squibs you see in WTC. This was a unique collapse indeed.

Cheers,
GWONTONOMO SERVIVAH

Anonymous said...

Schermer hasn't been taken in by anything. He's a Jewish agent whose job is to control the sceptical community by making sure they don't apply any of that scepticism to events perpetrated by the Jews for the Jews.

Anonymous said...

What I could never get about Silverstein's remark was the "we had a terrible loss of life" part. Seems to me, pulling WTC7, pulling "it", would only create more danger in an already chaotic scene. What has the fire chief said. Who exactly were the men in the building when it was decided to pull "it", meaning the firemen, from the building. Who was pulled, who got that message.

Unknown said...

With any luck, we'll know the truth a lot sooner.

If I sometimes sound angry it's because I am ---and so should every American who has been betrayed and hoaxed by the White House gang of crooks, felons, liars, and traitors!

I look forward to the day when they are all rounded up and frog marched off to spend their days sitting in the dock listening to various and authoritative recitations of every shred of evidence against their sorry asses!

There is, already, probable cause to try George W. Bush for capital crimes in connection with the wars of naked aggression that he ordered upon yet another hoax, another pack of lies.

Anonymous said...

Hi Len,

Do you know if George Bush's brother was involved with the property management of the World Trade Center? If so there would be plenty of opportunity.

Unknown said...

Anonymous said...

It is odd, you have to ask yourself, why did he say this? Is he just stupid and senile? You would think he is not stupid and senile, he is still running a billion dollar empire. It is quite strange.

You're right --why DID Silverstein say it? It is consistent with what most certainly happened. I am confident that there is NO WAY WTC7 was anything other than a controlled demolition, wired, perhaps months, in advance! My impression is that Silverstein was not nearly as coached as people like Giuliani and other practiced liars. Having literally grown up in the broadcast biz, I have even monitored sessions in which executives, politicians et al are literally taught how to "spin" if not lie outright. It's not an art; it is a science. One of the firms that pioneered this is, I believe, still operating out of a base in Houston, TX --the very heart of the most dishonest industry in world history: THE OIL INDUSTRY!

Unknown said...

diane b said...

Do you know if George Bush's brother was involved with the property management of the World Trade Center? If so there would be plenty of opportunity.

Absolutely --he was in a perfect position to supervise the mysterious 'renovatoins?' that could be heard making all kinds of noise in all those unocuppied spaces.

Method, motive, opportunity!

We all know who pulled this off. I am just waiting for the smoking gun.

BTW ---welcome back : )

Unknown said...

Sorry about the comment moderation, folk. Some troll was wasting bandwidth with irrelevant nonsense and personal attacks, the least offensive was "ass". I've been called much worse by people I respected. I don't have to put up with it from people I don't!

Anonymous said...

Good article - a piece that I think shows the impossibility of the OCT - a '911 Thought Experiment' - http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/911-thoughtex.html . Keep fighting! Dave Patterson, On Green Island - http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/ogi-home.html

Unknown said...

I don't believe in coincidences...

Anonymous said...

hi Len! sorry, english isn't my native language, yet i hope i can make it clear. here's one aspect of this fire/steel issue that's not really covered so far i think. i mean – steel works great in sense of "heat conductivity". i.e. – while one heats up a part of steel structure – this heat will be absorbed by the whole structure in timely manner. the more complex and bigger the structure is – the faster the heat will be absorbed. so... while the argument that temperatures well below the melting point can weaken the structure is completely valid (in general) – it actually means an extraordinary amount of excess heat to overdo the "cooling" effect of the whole enormously huge structure (the core, to say the least). amount of heat that hardly can come from a choking fire (black smoke as the signal of serious lack of oxygen and "poor" heat produced therefore)? i guess this explains why no high-rises have collapsed before 9/11 so far due to fire?
on the other hand – these pools of molten metal down there?...

Anonymous said...

Good article. One thing to say to the Michael Shermers who ridicule 911 truthers is to point out that wires to rig explosives are completely unnecessary, as radio signals are routinely used to detonate explosives. You see it sometimes when driving through a road construction site and there's a sign posted to refrain from using cellphones while in the area so that excavation explosives are not prematurely detonated.

I used to work in a medium sized office building, and there were work crews going into the utility rooms all the time to do maintenance work on the electrical, heating and air-conditioning, and plumbing systems. What notice did I take of these men while they did their work? NOTHING! And no one else took notice of it as well, as far as I knew. You're in the World Trade Center in NYC, where English is almost a foreign language, and if you saw workmen who are moving large pieces of equipment into utility rooms, the natural response is to do nothing and pay attention to your own work at your desk. Remember Kitty Genovese? She was the New Yorker who was murdered in 1964 and dozens of people heard her cry for help and DID NOTHING! New York is that kind of place. So what are the chances that ANYONE who even raise an eyebrow when men in coveralls are moving large bombs disguised as regular equipment in the utility rooms of the WTC?

I believe that flight 93 in Shanksville was meant to crash into WTC 7, to give it the cover for that building to collapse. The plan didn't quite work out as perfectly as for the twin towers, so they had to grin and pull it, (pardon the pun) and hope that no one would notice. Thanks to Existentialist Cowboy and other great blogs that are blowing the lid off of the crime of the century. Keep up the good work!

Anonymous said...

Why did cars burn from the inside out on 9/11? Why did an ambulance melt? Why was an entire parking lot of vehicles burned out? (link)

Unknown said...

In a revision to the current article, I added the "Final Cut" of "Loose Change".

It's worth going back to this article, scroll down toward the bottom and click on the player. It's long. Runs about two hours...but worth it.

If you are not yet convinced that the Bush admin is illegitimate and itself the perpetrator of the crimes of 911, you will be after seeing this.

A MUST WATCH.

And, everyone, thanks for your comments. And don't worty about not having perfect English. We are all citizens of the world now.

Anonymous said...

It is very easy to put explosives in any high-rise building-just wait for everyone to go home! What goes on in a skyscraper in the middle of the night? NO ONE KNOWS AND NO ONE CARES.
I think the Truthers shouldn't let themselves get bogged down on the collapsing buildings;there is so much more to the attacks than them.
Here's one: Silverstein himself would have normally been at the WTC - except on 9/11 he had a "dermatologist's appointment",and his wife "insisted" he not skip it like he mormally would.OK...
...now add in Silverstien's SON and DAUGHTER,who were working for him in temporary offices in the towers...THEY WERE RUNNING LATE ON 9/11,and that's how THEY avoided being there when the attacks started.
Three members of the same family,including the man who owns the complex, not where they would normally be in the complex on the day the complex is attacked?
Hmmmm.....

Anonymous said...

Len - Have loved your site ever since discovering it. You've posted many excellent pieces. I'm glad to see Michael Shermer taken to task for such piss-poor "skeptical" analysis.

For further laughs I suggest checking out his arguments for "proof" of Nazi gas chambers at Auschwitz - ( http://www.geniebusters.org/915/04g_jumping.html ) Regardless of one's own position on this aspect of Nazi crimes against humanity, and the fact that it should be a slam dunk, his ability to craft a solid argument is abyssmal. He gives true skeptics a bad name.

Thank you for very strong arguments in favor of those regularly mocked as "troofers." On a side note, I went to a lecture a long time ago by a lawyer from the Cristic Institute about the aftermath of Iran/Contra. He said that prior to Eugene Hausenfus (sp?) being shot down, they had about 80% of the story right through journalistic detective work, but were dismissed and ridiculed using the 20% that turned out not to be accurate. After cataloging a long list of government crimes and lies, he said, "I'm sorry to disillusion you, but would you rather be illusioned?"

---2nd try---

Unknown said...

LanceThruster said...

I'm glad to see Michael Shermer taken to task for such piss-poor "skeptical" analysis.

Indeed, Shermer is no skeptic. He is, rather, a promoter of orthodoxy. I will give him credit for presenting both sides of the JFK controsversey in "Skeptic" of a few years back.

Skeptic magazine represented the orthodox view with Posner's absurd "jet effect" --a violation of "Occam" put forward post hoc to explain the glaring holes in the Warren Commission conclusions that Oswald acted alone.

I can't recall who wrote the opposing view debunking the Warren Commission --but, in my opinion, that article carried the day. It not only took the "jet effect" apart with experimental results, it published excellent still frames that are undeniable: the fatal shot came from the front.

My opinion: Lee Harvey Oswald could not have gotten off the fatal shot. It's doubtful he got off any shot at all. The Warren Commission was, as Mark Lane called it, a "Rush to Judgement". And the best expose of the "magic bullet" is found in Kevin Costner's JFK. It is thoroughly researched and well presented.

Tragically, the 911 Commission Report is even more flawed than Warren. The US government cannot continue to claim legitimacy unless it faces up to the truth about numerous atrocities not the least of which is the genocide against Native Americans.

Anonymous said...

Hi, Len,

As Always, nice work. I did notice one thing that's not perfectly clear in your text, you write: "The implication that molten aluminum had been mistaken for aluminum is baseless and begs the question."

I think you might mean to say "The implication that molten aluminum is mistaken for _MOLTEN_STEEL_ is baseless and begs the question."

What you've written should be looked at by many people, so I hope the molten steel pouring from the sides of the building clip that is mentioned is not inadvertently clouded by a typo.

Personally, I see both molten steel and molten aluminum nearly every day, and I can categorically state that molten aluminum is silver in daylight, on video or by normal eyesight, while molten steel is bright, bright orange, like in the video. Also, aluminium that is hot enough to be _burning_ in air makes dense clouds of white smoke, while molten steel won't really burn in air at all. Also, any aluminium that got _that_ improbably hot in that building would likely form large amounts of oxide slag and stay in place, rather than 'pouring' from the side of the building. Not so steel in a molten state. And another thing worth mentioning, is that thermite/thermate is composed substantially of aluminum, but it takes part in the thermite reaction producing an unearthly bright flame, so it's never molten as such. What you see in thermite reactions is substantially flowing molten steel, as was observed.

Anyway, keep up the good stuff!

LanceThruster said...

An attorney friend pointed out what he considers the smoking guns of both JFK and 9/11. With JFK it was easily the pristine bullet on Connelly's gurney. I'd love to see "Mythbusters" try to get a round through all that tissue and redirect against dense bone and not come out deformed. This could be followed by firing a round into cotton wadding and comparing.

He noted that the clear smoking guns in 9/11 were the short-selling of airline stocks and the dancing Israelis. Both indicate foreknowledge.

One of the most interesting elements to me has been the potential for deception from 5th columnists. Pretend to be something you're not and use that "credibility" to misdirect and obscure.

Well, at least we still have the watchdog press. What? Oh...never mind.

Unknown said...

sleat said...

I think you might mean to say "The implication that molten aluminum is mistaken for _MOLTEN_STEEL_ is baseless and begs the question."

You are absolutely correct, sleat and thanks. I will make the correction immediatement. I confess --I cannot proof read my own stuff and am lately breaking in a new keyboard. For a progressive, I sometimes hate new things

Anonymous said...

One thing to say to the Michael Shermers who ridicule 911 truthers is to point out that wires to rig explosives are completely unnecessary, as radio signals are routinely used to detonate explosives

Indeed! I believe the Mission Impossible "force" had done that back in the sixties --even!

I believe that flight 93 in Shanksville was meant to crash into WTC 7, to give it the cover for that building to collapse.

I just watched "Loose Change: Final Cut". It's very dense, covers a lot of material. As recall, that was their conclusion as well. Clearly, it was "missiled" when things went awry on board.

I will say this much from experience: of the crash sites, I've "covered" NONE looked like Shanksville. I recall the scene of the very high speed crash of a jet trainer in West Texas. Only two were on board --an experienced pilot/instuctor and the student. There was lots of wreckages and, of course, utterly charred, incinerated bodies. FL 93, by contrast, seems to have been absolutely obliterated in mid-air, consistent with what Rummie said about it. "...the missile that shot down flight 93."

LanceThruster said...

An attorney friend pointed out what he considers the smoking guns of both JFK and 9/11. With JFK it was easily the pristine bullet on Connelly's gurney.

Having shot a few rounds in my day --I agree completely. For the same reason, I can ridicule Posner's "jet effect" for the post hoc nonsense that it is! Even Shermer's rag published an article that rips Posner's thesis, clearly intended to paper over --after the fact --the many flaws in the lone gunman thesis. BTW--I met a witness the JFK murder --Rosemary Willis, whose reaction, clearly visible in Zapruder footage, was an extremely rapid westward headsnap ending with her facing directly towards the grassy knoll. Moreover, Rosemary showed me the original slides that her father took that day and we compared them to a double page spread in, as I recall, Look Magazine which published before the FBI could seize the slides. When the FBI returned the slides, they had been altered. It was that fact that convinced me that the FBI would not have "messed" with those photos if it had not been covering something up. And --there is no explaining away the FACT that the fatal shot came from the front, namely, the grassy knoll.

He noted that the clear smoking guns in 9/11 were the short-selling of airline stocks and the dancing Israelis. Both indicate foreknowledge.

I learned of the short selling early on. It was a definite tipoff and anyone who knows anything about the stock market will know that short selling sounds easy but "ain't". Foreknowledge of some sort is almost essential. I didn't learn about the dancing Israelis (not a Broadway Show) until much later.

After all these years, I am still in "Phase I", consisting of finding sources that absolutely destroy the official cover story. At some point, identifying the culprits will consist of naming the only folk who had the motive, the method and the opportunity.

BUSHCO.

It's hard not to conclude that the "exercises" that day WERE, in fact, the attack itself. And it was all supervised by Cheney. MMO!

Unknown said...

Damien, I had seen pix of those melted cars and thanks for posting the link here. It is certainly like nothing I have ever seen and it is certainly something that is not and CANNOT be explained by the official bullshit theory!