Bombshell: Silverstein Wanted To Demolish Building 7 On 9/11

[Canadian_watcher]

"For the time being, I choose to believe this."

dude that is totally like... profound.
(I mean it, it is.)

[kenoma]

That is often the final word in these threads. Whatever - it was cd.

That might be the last thing said but there is plenty of "whatever.....it wasn't CD" attitudes as well and in the end they are two sides to the 9/11 coin.

The metal that makes up that coin is the devil in the details. Find out the composition of such and you have your circumstantial evidence and a case for CD.

I think that's a false equivalency. I'd say instead that the 9/11 gold has been tin-plated.

What then is the 9/11 gold, or what was it, or what might it have been? Remind us.

Everyone knows these CD threads are boring and unproductive, and usually it is the alleged pigheaded dogmatism of 'CDers' that gets the blame for this: the repetitive posting of images and articles that everyone has seen a thousand times before, allegations of obfuscation or worse etc.

But it's not really all that which makes these threads so stiflingly familiar. It's these repeated allusions to a golden age of what Jeff once dubiously called "Classic Truth", delivered with a world-weary nostalgie de la boue, not only by Jeff (who may have a right to feel some degree of weariness with this subject), but by many others who have never contributed an iota of research to the history of 9/11.

What's intolerable about this is that those who denounce "CDers" by gesturing vaguely to the Real Thing of Deep Politics have been living off the same capital for about five years now. They are rarely asked - and still more rarely do they offer - to articulate the substance of the supposedly profound Classic Truth. That truth, substantially collated about midway through the Bush era, has rarely been revised or revisited. Its proponents have rarely sought to relate their accumulated data on the "deep" politics of the 9/11 period to subsequent events in Pakistan, India, Iraq, Grant Park or Wall Street to see whether they might cast a different light on that narrative.

When any attempt is made to articulate the truth of Classic Truth, we usually end up with the 8bit-esque tourette's posting: you know, that PTech-ISI-Atta-Indira Singh-Saudis-Frankfurt-Sibel Edmonds-Khashoggi-Taliban-Frankfurt-Florida flight schools-occult numerology-Osama thing.

Everything but the kitchen sink and Mossad.

The problem here isn't with the complexity of this thing; complexity's fine. The problem is with its incoherence. And what's worse, what coherence it has is supplied by nothing more than our shared vocabulary of bog-standard Hollywood cliches: the Rosetta-stone technology, the brave but vulnerable whistleblowers, the late night rendezvous at backwater airports, clandestine wire transfers - and of course the big-nosed brown guy scheming in the shadows. (The sudden emergence of the sinister Arab from the thicket of acronyms and seemingly disconnected wire stories is an absolutely crucial narrative device of the post 9/11 'deep politics' genre. The moment when it is revealed that such-and-such company is owned by a guy with an Arab name is the moment when everything is clarified, when we know we're through the looking glass. That's how the genre works, those are the buttons it pushes).

The 'depth' of deep politics is all affectation, then, but it is quite singleminded in its constant insinuation that contemporary power is decentered, diffuse, unknowable, and that its analysis is incompatible with those dusty old histories of colonialism, uneven development, client states, racism...

It's a kind of bargain basement postmodernism, presenting the crudest old political paradigms as the Latest Thing (hence the constant references in the genre to the 19th century Octopus metaphor, still refusing to sing its swan song).

This fetish of the nexus is becoming tiresome, where a deliberately cultivated complexity is loved for its own sake and anyone who points the finger at the USG as the sole significant perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks is dismissed as 'crude' or 'simplistic'. One can certainly see the political usefulness of this attitude, though I think many who hold to it do so for aesthetic reasons, which is somehow even more depressing than the more cynical motive.

Anyway, I'm not so convinced the proponents of deep politics are so immune from the kind of dogmatism of which they accuse the "CDers". A good while ago, in this thread, I raised what I think were very serious questions about the sources and plausibility of the claim that the ISI director wired $100,000 to Atta before 9/11. It's a well-known and fairly indispensable part of deep political lore regarding the hijackers and the multinational nature of the conspiracy. It's also single-sourced to Indian intelligence, who had a certain interest in implicating Pakistan.*
Jeff, you responded:

Anyway, like I've said, I think there's a there there to the ISI connection, but that doesn't mean there isn't also an Indian deep politics

Which sounds a lot like whatever.


*Loose ends: I never responded to bks in that thread, but he suggested the Pakistani journalist Amir Mir independently corroborated the wire transfer story. Not true, he used the same sources as everyone else, which all go back to the same source in Indian intel.

[chump]

Alright. I had a feeling that Christopher Bollyn might be frowned upon here. I read those links but I still don't know why. Is it because he blames it all on the Israelis? I personally don't think the "Mossad" is the sole genius behind 9/11, but he does a sound job of illustrating the links that could/must have made it happen. Is there any dispute about that? Attacking the messenger doesn't cut it! In fact, and I'll very likely insert my size 12's into my oral orifice, but has he ever been proven wrong?

As far as Alex Jones is concerned, he has been wrong about lots of things; but even The National Enquirer can break a story (that's true) now and then. I notice also that amongst the prominant 9/11 storybreakers, such as Tom Flocco, Sander Hicks, Mike Ruppert, Webster Tarpley, Huffschmidt, etc. there is always a gaff that almost discredits the gem that was reported before. Alex Jones is still right most of the time. In fact, if you put NBC news next to the Alex Jones Show, who would you believe more? Tough Choice, huh?

I'm in the middle of reading Jacques Vallee's book, Revelations"(because the author was mentioned by Mr. Wells), in which he documents his investigations into the UFO phenonmenon. I think it is relevant to this discussion.

... It takes a very critical balance between open-minded acceptance of new facts - an attitude without which there would be no progress in science - and a refusal to swayed by any authority or faith. And it takes training in that elusive discipline; being able to distinquish clearly between that which is real and that which we wuld like to real.

In my professional work with high technology companies, I have seen many otherwise good scientists and good businessmen among my colleagues fail because of that last weakness, and I have fallen into that trap myself once or twice. Unless you deliberatelly seek out people with critical minds able to debate a particular belief or fact with you, it is very easy to miss some important facts.

Sometimes the best recipe for sanity is to turn away from your friends and seek out your own critics, even your opponents, to listen calmly to what they have to say, and to reconsider your own facts and beliefs based on everything you've heard. That is tough medicine to swallow for the kind of ego driven people who make it into the higher ranks of science, technology and business; they tend to stay within the very narrow circle of associates and colleagues, constantly reinforcing, rather than questioning, each others prejudices. Such biases are exacerbated when the topic is classified because the date can only be shared between a small groups of initiates. This explains the high failure rates of many secret technology projects. In the domain of UFO research, where even the most basic facts are subject to critical reappraisal, it is not surprising should delusion be rampant. And the opportunity for intelligent debate is sorely lacking because every group of believers has it's own narrow parochial view of the phenomenon and simply lashes out at the mere suggestion of any alternative view. The appearance of validation is seized upon and accepted as proof for the wildest theories, because the facts are often so fantastic that it is easier to accept the theory than to check the data.

The possibility has occurred to me that, perhaps, Mr. Bollyn, et al, could be a part of the show, flooding the Internet with disinformation; perhaps even part of an effort to identify the potential troublemakers who won't go along? People do pick and choose the information they accept to fit into the paradigm they have preconceived about the world. I am no exception. FWIW.

Nice post Nordic. It was a magic trick, a psyop, a controlled demolition. Whatever... More importantly, it was a solvable crime and the authorities aren't interested.

[nathan28]

Kenoma, little you say is sustained, especially considering that not all of us agitate for a "nexus" theory.

Take, for example, the theory that Atta & other hijackers were involved in drug trafficking. Hey, that's funny, Karzai's brother is the largest opium producer in the world. It's like there's a vested interest in drugs and US policy, or something. That seems to be a clear trajectory to me. To go any further into the past on that you start to run into Bo Gritzisms but none the less it's there. To suggest that a high-level state crime involving numerous international elements can take place without international elements is incoherent.

Or, consider the actual existence of continuities, like Riggs Bank, which was BCCI 2K1. You are right to point out that there's a sneering Arab hiding behind it and this is a vaguely racist sentiment, but not one that actual review would sustain because EVERY ASSHOLE FROM BOB DOLE TO THE PRESIDENT OF EQUATORIAL GUINEA TO EXXON AND EVERY USELESS FIRST-WORLD AGENT AND THIRD-WORLD ADVENTURER USED RIGGS BANK. I don't know how many times I have to say that. It's hardly "the" nexus--it was one among many, and less the "nexus" of a nefarious plan than the preferred clearinghouse for people up to no good.

My suggestion is simple. Multiple elements were involved. Some protected others. Law enforcement had assets it protected and some of these assets were involved.

And again, I'll say it again, CD would be fine if motherfuckers would try to show not *what* but WHO THE FUCK DID IT, WHEN AND HOW.

Nobody said this octopus has a head--not me, at least.

[DrVolin]

I would consider myself agnostic on CD. The reason I resent the 9/11 truth CD advocacy is because of their certainty. Skepticism is not allowed. You simply MUST believe.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. You must be one of those "intellectuals" "too intelligent" to believe WHAT YOU SAW WITH YOUR OWN EYES..

I think agnosticism is the only reasonable position on CD, precisely because of what I saw/see with my own eyes. The alleged smoking guns are not terribly smokey. The freefall: All the videos I've seen show me collapses that last a minimum of about 15 seconds. The horizontal ejection of material: That means the straight down path was not that of least resistance. Does this mean there was no CD? Certainly not. The circumstancial case is appealing. It does mean that I don't have any clear evidence one way or the other.

[17breezes]

I would consider myself agnostic on CD. The reason I resent the 9/11 truth CD advocacy is because of their certainty. Skepticism is not allowed. You simply MUST believe.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. You must be one of those "intellectuals" "too intelligent" to believe WHAT YOU SAW WITH YOUR OWN EYES..

I think agnosticism is the only reasonable position on CD, precisely because of what I saw/see with my own eyes. The alleged smoking guns are not terribly smokey. The freefall: All the videos I've seen show me collapses that last a minimum of about 15 seconds. The horizontal ejection of material: That means the straight down path was not that of least resistance. Does this mean there was no CD? Certainly not. The circumstancial case is appealing. It does mean that I don't have any clear evidence one way or the other.

The fact that the alleged CD resembles no other CD ever recorded means that some new magical CD had to happen. Magical anythings usually mean bullshit is involved; even more so when the free fall (or "close to freefall,") myth falls apart.

[MacCruiskeen]

√

That is often the final word in these threads. Whatever - it was cd.

That might be the last thing said but there is plenty of "whatever.....it wasn't CD" attitudes as well and in the end they are two sides to the 9/11 coin.

The metal that makes up that coin is the devil in the details. Find out the composition of such and you have your circumstantial evidence and a case for CD.

I think that's a false equivalency. I'd say instead that the 9/11 gold has been tin-plated.

What then is the 9/11 gold, or what was it, or what might it have been? Remind us.

Everyone knows these CD threads are boring and unproductive, and usually it is the alleged pigheaded dogmatism of 'CDers' that gets the blame for this: the repetitive posting of images and articles that everyone has seen a thousand times before, allegations of obfuscation or worse etc.

But it's not really all that which makes these threads so stiflingly familiar. It's these repeated allusions to a golden age of what Jeff once dubiously called "Classic Truth", delivered with a world-weary nostalgie de la boue, not only by Jeff (who may have a right to feel some degree of weariness with this subject), but by many others who have never contributed an iota of research to the history of 9/11.

What's intolerable about this is that those who denounce "CDers" by gesturing vaguely to the Real Thing of Deep Politics have been living off the same capital for about five years now. They are rarely asked - and still more rarely do they offer - to articulate the substance of the supposedly profound Classic Truth. That truth, substantially collated about midway through the Bush era, has rarely been revised or revisited. Its proponents have rarely sought to relate their accumulated data on the "deep" politics of the 9/11 period to subsequent events in Pakistan, India, Iraq, Grant Park or Wall Street to see whether they might cast a different light on that narrative.

When any attempt is made to articulate the truth of Classic Truth, we usually end up with the 8bit-esque tourette's posting: you know, that PTech-ISI-Atta-Indira Singh-Saudis-Frankfurt-Sibel Edmonds-Khashoggi-Taliban-Frankfurt-Florida flight schools-occult numerology-Osama thing.

Everything but the kitchen sink and Mossad.

The problem here isn't with the complexity of this thing; complexity's fine. The problem is with its incoherence. And what's worse, what coherence it has is supplied by nothing more than our shared vocabulary of bog-standard Hollywood cliches: the Rosetta-stone technology, the brave but vulnerable whistleblowers, the late night rendezvous at backwater airports, clandestine wire transfers - and of course the big-nosed brown guy scheming in the shadows. (The sudden emergence of the sinister Arab from the thicket of acronyms and seemingly disconnected wire stories is an absolutely crucial narrative device of the post 9/11 'deep politics' genre. The moment when it is revealed that such-and-such company is owned by a guy with an Arab name is the moment when everything is clarified, when we know we're through the looking glass. That's how the genre works, those are the buttons it pushes).

The 'depth' of deep politics is all affectation, then, but it is quite singleminded in its constant insinuation that contemporary power is decentered, diffuse, unknowable, and that its analysis is incompatible with those dusty old histories of colonialism, uneven development, client states, racism...

It's a kind of bargain basement postmodernism, presenting the crudest old political paradigms as the Latest Thing (hence the constant references in the genre to the 19th century Octopus metaphor, still refusing to sing its swan song).

This fetish of the nexus is becoming tiresome, where a deliberately cultivated complexity is loved for its own sake and anyone who points the finger at the USG as the sole significant perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks is dismissed as 'crude' or 'simplistic'. One can certainly see the political usefulness of this attitude, though I think many who hold to it do so for aesthetic reasons, which is somehow even more depressing than the more cynical motive.

Anyway, I'm not so convinced the proponents of deep politics are so immune from the kind of dogmatism of which they accuse the "CDers". A good while ago, in this thread, I raised what I think were very serious questions about the sources and plausibility of the claim that the ISI director wired $100,000 to Atta before 9/11. It's a well-known and fairly indispensable part of deep political lore regarding the hijackers and the multinational nature of the conspiracy. It's also single-sourced to Indian intelligence, who had a certain interest in implicating Pakistan.*
Jeff, you responded:

Anyway, like I've said, I think there's a there there to the ISI connection, but that doesn't mean there isn't also an Indian deep politics

Which sounds a lot like whatever.


*Loose ends: I never responded to bks in that thread, but he suggested the Pakistani journalist Amir Mir independently corroborated the wire transfer story. Not true, he used the same sources as everyone else, which all go back to the same source in Indian intel.

Thank you, kenoma. That is one of the single best posts I have ever seen on this board.

I doubt very much that you will see a rational or honest reply, though. You'll certainly see some evasive one-liners. but they won't be remotely relevant or even slightly witty.

Mister 17Breezes is the shape of RI to come. (You doubt this? Test it. )

[smiths]

its strange that this subject has essentially devolved into a discussion of belief systems

is it possible to disbelieve something that is plainly obvious?
is something really that obvious at all if so many people disbelieve it?

[Simulist]

is it possible to disbelieve something that is plainly obvious?

Apparently so. It's plainly obvious to me that different people are bound to arrive at different conclusions even over the exact same event, given their different backgrounds and varying points of view. The more complex the event, the greater the likelihood for differences.

And yet, someone is going to disbelieve even that. It's natural.

If everyone actually agreed — even over something that might seem "plainly obvious" to me — then I might get a little suspicious.

It might even be a little creepy.

[geogeo]

RigInt has been taken over by grad students! Good thing since they'll never get jobs anyway...

How about, God did it? Simple enough? I always thought CD had some validity, but mostly it was used to get people's focus away from the Who.

Comment on deep politics--all politics are 'deep.' Any institution you can name, any society, any community. It just depends how well enmeshed you are-and graduate students are famously 'un-meshed' from 'real life.' As for the cut on 'occult numerology', I'm still waiting for a satisfying explanation on all those 11s.

Pretty words...I loves them!

[kenoma]

Thanks mac.

geogeo, I'm not a grad student, I've got a job and so can snigger at the unemployed just like you! I'm totally enmeshed, it's a fab feeling!!

all politics are 'deep.' Any institution you can name, any society, any community. It just depends how well enmeshed you are-and graduate students are famously 'un-meshed' from 'real life.'

I'll need to get back to you on that (maybe this needs its own thread??!). Must ponder further.

[Jeff]

:shock: RigInt has been taken over by grad students!

No, but it was started by an underemployed former grad student looking to discuss a cluster of marginalized topics with a measure of academic rigour. It's a thrill when it happens. Members lashing out because their orthodoxies are threatened remind me more of Bible School. That's less thrilling.

[nathan28]

I doubt very much that you will see a rational or honest reply, though. You'll certainly see some evasive one-liners. but they won't be remotely relevant or even slightly witty.

Thanks Mac, I'll be sure to disregard the next thing you post, too.

[barracuda]

kenoma, are you saying that the removal of Ahmed from the picture is a step toward the removal of the hijackers themselves? Because in the context of this thread that's pretty much what I'm hearing.

If we're talking about belief systems, I'm sure we could poll the readership of the forum and find that an extreme preponderance of members would affirm a belief that the US government acted as the prime instigator of the 911 attacks. I know I'd vote yes. Such an opinion is probably one of the few over-arching understandings we have of each other here. But it's possible to ask the right questions for the wrong reasons and wind up with an answer rather completely colored by those reasons.

In these terms, the notion that the Mahmood Ahmed never gave a hundred gees to Atta can become the gateway to an entire staircase of suppositions - no money equals no hijackers equals cave dwellers equals remote control equals controlled demolition... It's a familiarly traveled pathway around here, and where it leads to is a political rampart I have simply don't have any interest in defending. In fact, it's uncertain wherther the good fight can even be fought from within that realm, requiring as it does a hodgepodge of repugnant, usually racist, polemical underpinnings and a quasi-religious fervor that blinds a more measured outloook. I'll admit, there is an aesthetic reason I tend to avoid that place: I don't look good in Confederate Grey. Though that's not the only reason. So I think it's valid to ask what exactly the endgame looks like, and what someone is trying to say when they say that "the USG is the sole significant perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks." Because I don't disagree with that statement, but I might "not-disagree" with it in a very different way than you.

Added to that is the singularly America-centric focus of dedication to the principle - that's what it is, a principle, a policy plank - of controlled demolition. The ultimate resolution of every CD argument is that if only the thing were proved to be true, it would be the keystone for a revolution in US politics, an event which might presumably domino globally, bringing about a new age of justice, responsibility and fairness from newly baptised governing entities and contrite but nebulous elites that currently play us like puppets with their psyche-concussive abilities to fly planes without pilots and disintegrate several gigantic structures like magicians. The Twin Towers!

While we were waiting for that resolution, of course, the entire city of Fallujah, a town of some six-hundred thousand individuals, was leveled under the auspices of the same actors who I believe deliberately caused 911. 35,000 structures destroyed. The number of innocent dead, we'll never know, maybe a hundred thousand or more. What was the reason for this atrocity? Really, it comes down to this - some of the locals refused to obey curfew. No one argues about who did that. Everyone knows.

So as the sophistry goes on, on all sides - and I'm as guilty of it as anyone - so goes the dying. There are probably those who'd put forth the idea that the resolution of the crime of 911 would cause the reasons put forth for the wars to evaporate. But it wouldn't. There is no single polemical point of truth or proof which can be put forward which will accomplish that, now or ever. That's going to rtequire an economic impetus. I feel guilt, here, for the mere ability to sit around at a computer accessing an information network to discuss the issue, and all of it - the computer components, the net, the electricity, all of it - secured by the military for my enjoyment with the blood of hundreds of thousands of dead and exploited citizens of the world villiage. Upthread, isachar came at me with the point that this was "probably the most important conversation anyone or group of people could be having at the present time." There was a time when I thought the only important question was whether or not to kill yourself. Then at some point I realised that for most people in the world, the only important question was how to keep themselves and their families from dying at the hands of someone who was usually threatening to kill them to fill an order put forth by me as some trivial part of my day which I took completely for granted, or worse, something that I resented entirely: my fill up at the gas station, my trip to my fancy computer job, my ringing celphone.

Nowadays, I just worry about what I'm gonna do as this whole site becomes some kind of coded right wing franchise. I don't think 17breezes is the future of this forum, Mac, as annoying as he can be. His hyper-sensitivity to "the Jewish Question" has a somewhat quaint ring to it these days. Oddly enough he seems poised at the opposite extreme of the political forces that will probably put the cabosh to our discussions: the extreme right-wing non-thought process that is sweeping across this country and mainstreaming hidden racisms and uber-jingoism and making concessions that allow hatred to take hold and fester in even the most unlikely of erstwhile sanctuaries. Even here.

So, anyway, I'm interested to know if the abscence of the ISI from the equation is seen here as a logical step towards a conclusion of CD on 911. Sorry about the meandering.

[stickdog99]

Why would Silverstein do anything if he had any knowledge of CD? Why would he incriminate himself?

LOL. Rich elite don't incriminate themselves by discussing their options with their connections.