Some more 9/11 truth

by **OnoI812** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 5:35 pm

quote: ---------------------------------------------------------------- it will need to be done by those who share a similar level of qualifications and expertise as the writers- not by the Peanut Gallery. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Rdr, what do you mean by similar qualifications? I've already pointed out upthread, that Blanchard prefaces his whole explaination with a misrepresentation about his political contributions. Is that type of expertise and qualifications needed to enter the debate? By starting it off with a fib? There's some strange people that haunt these boards...<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/devil.gif ALT=":evil"> Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=onoi812>OnoI812</A> at: 8/21/06 3:40 pm

by **bvonahsen** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 6:45 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>dumbest person in the room twice in one day. i'm on a roll.<hr></blockquote> I feel like tha most of the time here Anna. You get used to it. But I do have a question about controlled demolitions. How do people square the fact that WTC I & II were in free fall? I mean, wouldn't you expect that if it really pancaked it would simply have to be at something less than free fall speed? I mean, really, wouldn't you have resistance at each and every level and that resisitance would have to be over come by the weight of the building above that level? Sure, it wouldn't take long, not very long at all since there was a lot of weight above each level... but it would still take a finite amount of time and that would add up. In "Eyewitness 9/11" the producers line up a ball in free fall with the video of the towers falling. I guess the question to ask here would be "Would that difference be measurable? Would you be able to tell the difference visually?" I don't know. I read the WTC collapse study, they do have good arguments to make, that the buildings start to fall where they were struck. That the puffs you can see are air being blown out as each level is compressed. The other good observation they have is that the building starts moving from the top down. In a CD it goes from bottom up. Irregardless of whether or people heard popping sounds of booming sounds at the base, in a CD you get the entire building moving. That isn't how the WTC collapse looks to me.

by **nomo** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 7:07 pm

Not everyone agrees the towers came down at free fall speed. See <a href="http://911myths.com/html/freefall.html">911myths.com/html/freefall.html</a>

by **HMKGrey** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 8:54 pm

I think 911myths is disinfo.

by **streeb** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 9:13 pm

Can I get some opinions on this guy, Barry Zwicker? I'll paste in his press release. Any info would be appreciated, thanks. <blockquote>Quote:<hr>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE New Book Challenges Media Over September 11th Coverage A recent Zogby poll reveals that more than half of Americans distrust the official story of 9/11 and 42% believe there's been a cover up. The same poll shows 55% of respondents are negative about media performance, including coverage of alternative theories and unanswered questions surrounding 9/11. As the 5th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, media critic and TV producer BARRIE ZWICKER delivers a blistering critique of the official story and its promoters in the media in his new book, Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-Up of 9/11 available in bookstores August 17th. Zwicker takes on newspaper editors, including those at the New York Times, and network news executives, including those at ABC, who have repeatedly stifled elementary questions such as... How would it be possible -- unless there was deliberate paralysis -- that not a single US Air Force interceptor would turn a wheel until it was too late, during a drama in the skies on 9/11, of almost two hours? Sixty-seven times in the previous year fighters were scrambled in minutes for lesser emergencies. Why have media never challenged President Bush's claim that he saw, on ordinary TV, the first plane hit the WTC? Footage of the first plane hitting was not aired until the next day, September 12th, 2001. Why haven't the media asked Bush about his magic TV? Why did Larry Silverstein, the lease holder on the World Trade Center, publicly admit he was involved in a decision to "pull" WTC building 7 late on the afternoon of 9/11, even though the building was not hit by a plane and suffered little damage? Controlled demolitions require weeks of preparation: why have media pointedly ignored this glaring anomaly? In Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-Up of 9/11 Zwicker provides readers with 26 "Exhibits" of evidence proving beyond a reasonable doubt that 9/11 was an inside job, what's known as a "false flag operation." In a false flag operation, an attack is self-inflicted in order to mobilize the public against a designated enemy. Eighteen such operations are described in Towers of Deception. They include the non-existent attack on American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. This "attack" provided justification for the Vietnam War, costing 58,000 US lives and 3-million Vietnamese lives. The phenomenon of denial is also explored and there are 16 profiles of fearless investigators who have exposed the fraud of the official story. Also included with the book is a powerful documentary on DVD, entitled The Great Conspiracy: The 9/11 News Special You Never Saw, produced by the author. <hr></blockquote>

by **FourthBase** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 9:20 pm

I've heard Zwicker talk on WBAI, he's pretty solid. I don't really trust anyone...but I don't distrust him.

by **NewKid** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 9:22 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>But who else would you expect to do it? All this conspiracy "research" passes under the radar of "mainstream" or "real" science, history, political science, etc. These are separate worlds, with hardly any points of contact at all. When academia now and then acknowledges the existence of conspiracy theories, it's always as a subject of study, not as real contributions to a debate. How many of Steven Jones' colleagues do you think bother to read his conspiracy-oriented papers? Let alone peer review them? <hr></blockquote> My main point is that it's simply a problem as far as getting any sort of serious debate going among professionals. I'm not really blaming anyone per se on that, but it's a huge problem for the readers of this stuff because it's much harder to verify the credibility of the author or speaker. I would also say that for most of the smaller conspiracy theories, you're right, many academics don't really know about them or pay any attention to them. That however, says very little about their merit one way or another. The fact that they don't study them says more about academic culture than anything else. What gets studied and analyzed by academics is by no means a true measure of the universe of a field, especially in the social sciences. A lot of it also has to do with what sorts of research and analysis gets rewarded, how to get tenure, get funding, etc. But more than that, I think a lot of academics just basically believe CNN and the mainstream media on major political events. If that's all you're exposed to, it's pretty easy to do. So you have a bunch of barriers to overcome before you're likely to get many relevant professionals aware that there is even any controversy about an event. It's more psychological in a lot of ways than anything else. For major conspiracies, like JFK and 9-11, that isn't really the case though. JFK has had quite a few professionals and academics all over it since the 60s. So I think a lot of it depends on how big the event is, and whether there is anything really strange about the case that would attract your non-conspiracy theorist type professionals. <blockquote>Quote:<hr>To the vast majority of academics, taking part in debates with conspiratologists is seen as futile and pointless. That these theories have no valuable insight to offer is simply taken for granted, and in addition the archetype of a conspiratologist is someone who will believe what he wants to in spite of what evidence and logic would dictate, and who is thus impervious to reasoned discourse.<hr></blockquote> The problem is that the "archetype of a conspiratologist" is largely a public relations phenomenon. Since they never have looked at the stuff, they don't really know what conspiratologists are like. And as you know from visiting boards and websites, conspiracy people are very diverse in their views. The other distinction is between the sort of brand name conspiracy researchers and what I would call the audience. Much of the debate in 9-11 and probably JFK too has come from the audience -- anonymous or semi-anonymous people who've taken up an interest in a case or as a hobby. (Of course, some of it comes from quite prestigious folks too sometimes <a href="http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/the_critics/russell/Sixteen_questions_Russell.html" target="top">karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/the_critics/russell/Sixteen_questions_Russell.html</a>) While there is certainly a lot of crap put out by the audience, there has been some very good research analysis as well. My experience at least has been that a great many of these people are not impervious to reasoned discourse at all. So I really don't think academics have stayed away because they've really looked over the stuff thoroughly and concluded that it's untrue. I think many of them just have never paid any attention to this stuff. (DE posted a very interesting about.com article on SRA by a shrink who was sort of thinking out loud on the subject. I think that's the sort reaction people who seriously look at some of this weird shit may have. Unfortunately, most of them probably keep it to themselves or at least don't write articles about it.) <blockquote>Quote:<hr>To, say, a structural engineer, spending time debunking controlled demolition theories is not going to do anything to advance his career, pay his bills, or win him prestige in his academic field. Alternative thoeries about 9/11 may be getting more media attention lately, but they're always presented as curiosities, and that's how they're seen by the academic world too.<hr></blockquote> Really? One thing I see is that a structural engineer could be a great media darling for doing just that. Gerald Posner types tend to do very well. Eagar, et al, have certainly not had their careers suffer. (We also have plenty of armchair psycho babble about the mental state of conspiracy theorists that's seems to get routinely cited in mainstream media articles. I think there is very much a market for that sort of stuff in the media.) So for 9-11, I don't think that's quite right. For smaller conspiracies that fewer people pay attention to, you're probably right because they're not really a live issue in the political discourse. But I don't think structural engineers or hard science types are usually relevant in those in any event; mostly that deals with your social science type researchers. <blockquote>Quote:<hr>You often hear astronomers complain about the persistent beliefs in astrology even among fairly educated people, but you rarely see them engage the astrologers in debate. <hr></blockquote> That's a bit tendentious don't you think? <blockquote>Quote:<hr>"You will never certifiably "prove" how the towers came down. Instead it, like all of 9-11, has become and will remain a political question. To that extent, belief and perception (or more specifically whether people act on that belief or perception) become reality, oftentimes to the dismay of serious researchers on all sides of the issue." That is certainly true, and given the latest poll which indicated one full third of the American people believe 9/11 was an inside job, this belief - in my opinion, false - may even become the bane of the Republican party in the next presidential election. I haven't seen a demographic analysis, but I'm pretty sure many of those who responded "yes" to that question voted Bush/Cheney in 2000 and even 2004.<hr></blockquote> I haven't seen the data either, but I would actually suspect most of them are probably democrats or people otherwise disgusted with Bush and the Iraq war. While there are certainly some conservatives who've gotten into 9-11, it seems largely populated with grass roots progressive types. I don't see much pro 9-11 conspiracy talk on the conservative blogs. See, e.g., here <a href="http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/2236" target="top">strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/2236</a> Now you always have to distinguish between the institutional right and the grassroots right, just like you do on the left. So who knows. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=newkid@rigorousintuition>NewKid</A> at: 8/21/06 8:07 pm

by **Hugh Manatee Wins** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 9:23 pm

John Judge makes the case that there's no way that the Pentagon wasn't defendable with a long history of surface-to-air missile defenses. Just found his 1/06 article on Area P-56 around the White House- <a href="http://www.ratical.com/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/P56A.html">www.ratical.com/ratville/.../P56A.html</a> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Pentagon and P-56 Preparations and Defenses and the Stand-Down on 9/11 by John Judge 11 January 2006 My father, John Joseph Judge was a WWII Army Air Corps veteran and had been a cryptographer assigned overseas. He worked as a civilian at the Pentagon after his return from the war until his death in 1965. My mother and my aunt both worked there as civilian employees beginning in 1943 until they retired. I grew up visiting the offices of my parents, and spending time at the Pentagon library. When the weather was nice, we would all often arrange to buy some food at the canteen and walk outside into the central courtyard area to sit and eat lunch together. When I was 10 or 11, to the best of my memory, which means 1957 or 58, I recall going outside and sitting down on a silver metal box. My father told me to get off of it. When I asked why he said it was a surface to air missile. (I could be off by 2-3 years on this recollection, but it was certainly before 1961). It only makes sense that the Pentagon, especially in the years after WWII and the rise of the Cold War would have had air defenses built in. There were reports over the years in the local papers about such missiles. One was also reportedly installed on the White House lawn following the incident in 1994 when a small plane crashed just before hitting the building. In 1998, I organized a demonstration for the War Resister's League to march from the National Cemetery to the Pentagon to demand "A Day Without the Pentagon", which was addressing what one-day of the Pentagon's budget could do in the civilian sector. In the course of getting a permit, I met with Col. Robinson, then a 30-year director of security at the Pentagon, who took me for a tour through the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then out to the parade ground beyond those offices where we were to end the march. He told me they were on Delta alert, their highest level of security alert and that they got bomb threats every day from Muslims. (In a larger meeting with security police from Metro, the Cemetery, the Arlington Police, the Pentagon and Washington, DC we were also asked if Muslims planned to join the march.) Col. Robinson then pointed to the roof of the Pentagon, just above us, and said, "And we have cameras and radar up there to make sure they don't try to run a plane into the building." That was a startling and almost non-sense statement to me in 1998, but recall that the method of attack and the target of the Pentagon were mentioned in the Bojinka Plan, retrieved from Ramsi Yusef's computer in the Philippines in 1996. Certainly they did not expect "cameras and radar" to stop the attacking plane, there was some method of defense coordinated with them (SAM's, interceptors, etc.). And recall that in October of 2000, the Pentagon and the Arlington Fire Department ran an exercise for first response simulating a plane crashing into the courtyard. Many other sources confirm that they were anticipating such attacks using planes as weapons and prepared for that possibility (Senate/House Joint Intelligence Committee Report, NORAD's Amalgam Virgo II exercise, Secret Service preparations at the Genoa Summit in 2001, and FBI/CIA memos and conversations on Moussaui pre-9/11 that indicated he might "run a plane into the Twin Towers" or that he was a "potential suicide-hijacker" - see 9/11 Commission Final Report on these). In addition to this I have two post-9/11 stories: I cannot corroborate this, but someone at a public meeting told me that a friend who worked at the Pentagon said that a missile was fired on 9/11 from the Pentagon and that it struck Flight 77. If true, this might explain the FBI's reluctance to release the video footage they confiscated. April Gallop, an enlisted member and survivor who worked at the Pentagon and brought her infant child to work that day, told me that when she was assigned there she got a classified tour of the building introducing her to its defenses, and she was told it was the best defended and safest building in the world. To this day she cannot comprehend why those defenses would have failed on 9/11. And finally, the Pentagon sits inside the P-56-A restricted air space section that extends 17 miles in all directions from the Washington Monument, and that activated air defenses from a joint FAA/Secret Service radar and air traffic control at Langley, VA for many years prior to 9/11. Interceptor fighter jets in that area, which is separate from and more restricted than FAA commercial air space, as well as much better defended, were regularly scrambled when small or commercial planes went off course or were not on scheduled routes within a larger Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) that extends 50 miles out to give time for the response. Andrews Air Force base, within 10 miles of the city as well as the 113th Air Wing of the National Guard at Anacostia NAS have provided consistent scramble-ready defenses for the P-56 sector, which protects the most important government buildings. Having grown up and lived in the area for most of my life, I saw such defensive responses many times, guiding planes away from the restricted area. Commercial pilots have also long complained about the difficult curving maneuvers necessary to land or take off at Washington National Airport (now Reagan) to avoid entering P-56-B, the three-mile inner restricted zone above the White House, Capitol and Pentagon. These multiple layers of defense also inexplicably failed on 9/11 in the midst of a national crisis. Flight 77 was picked up by Langley entering the ADIZ according to the testimony of Mr. Mineta to the 9/11 Commission concerning a plane that was "50 miles out". That could only have been Flight 77, no others got that close, and the timing at 9:24-9:26 AM that he gives for the comment is also consistent with the timing of the impact. Neither was FAA/NORAD out of radar contact with the flight for more than a few minutes, since it was picked up by Indianapolis long before being seen by FAA ATC controllers in the DC area. <hr></blockquote>

by **Rigorous Intuition** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 9:53 pm

I think Zwicker has a good mind and a gentle soul, but he's perhaps too unguarded. He was coordinating the 9/11 conference in Toronto two or three years ago and invited John Gray to deliver the keynote address. Caused a lot of acrimony among some of the more serious participants. (I wasn't involved, but I overheard some of it.) I think his strength is in not in assessing the particulars of the case, but in presenting the intellectual merit of the study of so-called "conspiracy theory."

by **NewKid** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 10:24 pm

Jeff, what was Zwicker's reputation in Canada pre-911? Was he a Bill Moyers type figure or somebody more marginal?

by **smithtalk** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 10:43 pm

Qutb "given the latest poll which indicated one full third of the American people believe 9/11 was an inside job, this belief - in my opinion, false" for the record qutb, do you subscribe to theory that osama bin laden co-ordinated 19 hijackers to fly the planes into the targets and the operation was basically a success

by **Rigorous Intuition** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 10:48 pm

I knew him to be a respected, established journalist, though not of Moyers' stature. Not marginal, because he seemed to be working in the mainstream, even though his perspectives could be described as "alternative."

by **FourthBase** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 10:57 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>for the record qutb, do you subscribe to theory that osama bin laden co-ordinated 19 hijackers to fly the planes into the targets and the operation was basically a success<hr></blockquote> He's talking about CD. He could have made his sentence structure clearer.

by **NewKid** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 1:39 am

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>for the record qutb, do you subscribe to theory that osama bin laden co-ordinated 19 hijackers to fly the planes into the targets and the operation was basically a success <hr></blockquote> This is the last I remember of Qutb's views on the subject. Now maybe they've changed, but his views as of March seem perfectly respectable to me. Qutb, is this still pretty much where you are? <blockquote>Quote:<hr>I like "enabled" better than "let" or "made" too. Or perhaps "facilitated". I resist the sloganeering - I don't feel I have nearly enough evidence to say "inside job". Not to forget that there is plenty of evidence pointing in the direction of well-organized, well-funded militant Islamist networks as well, possibly with the aid of one or more foreign (but US-allied) intelligence agencies. I think there are factions within Saudi and Pakistani intelligence that are strongly anti-American, so their involvement doesn't necessarily imply "outsourcing" on behalf of US intelligence/military. But it could mean that. I don't like the all too common notion that there aren't any bad guys in the world except the US (and/or Israeli) government, or that all other bad guys must necessarily work for them or be on the same "side". I think it's very possible that 9/11 was a real attack mounted by a coalition of anti-American forces with a long-term plan of luring the US into military adventures, and then bleed to death by imperial overreach. If that was indeed the plan, it's working very well. This is how great empires die, historically, why should America be any different. Still, even if the attack was "real" in that sense, the evidence for "enabling" is strong. It's what did and didn't happen on the day itself: The paralysis of the nominal commander-in-chief. The nonchalance of the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The seeming coup d'état by the vice president. The missing air defenses. The wargames. It's also what happened in the months prior: The many unheeded warnings from intelligence agencies around the world (which, in themselves, point to a real attack). The extreme security measures surrounding the G8 meeting in Genoa in July, which indicates that a similar attack was excpected or feared then. The order from the new administration to the FBI to not investigate Saudi funding of terrorism (don't remember the original source of that, but both Joe Trento and Gore Vidal have written that). The seeming protection enjoyed by the hijackers/alleged hijackers. The identification of Mohammed Atta by the Able Danger team. Not least, the anthrax attacks, perhaps the smokiest gun of them all How conclusive is the evidence seen as a whole? What we know isn't really conclusive one way or the other, but I think it points to both a real attack, and that this attack was expected by the military, by the CIA, and by the White House. I'm not sure if the precise time and place was known though. I'm not sure what role Lt. Col. Ahmed played. I'm not sure to what extent Cheney really seized power, and on behalf of whom. I'm not sure who hijacked those planes, but I I'm sure they didn't learn to fly with the Microsoft Flight Simulator. "But bad scenario or good scenario, we shall see very little of the charmingly simian George W. Bush. The military - Cheney, Powell et al. - will be calling the tune, and the whole nation will be on constant alert, for, as James Baker has already warned us, terrorism is everywhere on the march." - Gore Vidal, The Nation, January 2001. <hr></blockquote> <a href="http://p216.ezboard.com/frigorousintuitionfrm40.showMessageRange?topicID=8.topic&start=1&stop=20" target="top">p216.ezboard.com/frigorousintuitionfrm40.showMessageRange?topicID=8.topic&start=1&stop=20</a> The 36% seems to cover both people who think the govt just did nothing as well as more aggressive theories about govt complicity. <blockquote>Quote:<hr>More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll.<hr></blockquote> <a href="http://www.scrippsnews.com/911poll" target="top">www.scrippsnews.com/911poll</a> Qutb, if your views are still the same, you could arguably be considered part of the 36%. (You didn't vote for Bush did you?) <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/roll.gif ALT=":rollin"> Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=newkid@rigorousintuition>NewKid</A> at: 8/21/06 11:48 pm

by **streeb** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 5:42 pm

Fourth Base, Jeff - thanks for the perspective. I'm going to see Zwicker when he speaks in Vancouver next week.

Some more 9/11 truth

Re: 9-11 Myths

Re: Some more 9/11 truth

Free fall

Re: Free fall

Re: Barry Zwicker

Re: Barry Zwicker

Re: Free fall

Re: John Judge on Pentagon defenses, first hand and anecdote

Re: Barry Zwicker

Re: Barry Zwicker

Re: Barry Zwicker

Re: Barry Zwicker

Re:

Re: Re:

Zwicker - thanks!

Who is online