September 11th: The History of 9/11

[balding13]

Couldn't agree with you more, but....

What do you mean exactely by there?

What I mean by there is that whereas Ufology has a plethora of cases on which to call, and pick to death, none of them has any actual conclusive physical back-up, so have acres of wiggle-room. However Conspiracy, almost alone in the Fortean field, often does have indisputable proof of an actual event occurring but generates a wealth of controversy regarding the cause, and in the particular case of 9/11 has spawned an entire industry. In the context of this board we've tended to get "new" evidence about 9/11 in the form of a cited YouTube pundit saying "Look! what about this...?" only to be shot down over the course of a few pages, followed six months and some twenty seven pages later by someone else citing the self-same pundit, which is invariably dismissed by an old lag saying "but we covered this twenty seven pages ago", etc etc. The whole thing has become so mired in its own repetitiveness that TBH I'm surprised anyone is still reading it, let alone contributing - hence my appeal to not leap upon every "new" 'net utterance as a breakthrough.

There is a program on The Business Channel on Sky 547 tonight at 11pm, repeated from the morning. It explains how the SEC investigation into stock 'analysts' promoting stocks in internet companies that their employers had brought to market was interupted by the destruction of the files in the 9/11 disaster. Apparently it has recently resumed. Like most rational people, I cannot believe in the vast majority of conspiracy theories, citing the 'usual suspects', but a conspiracy by actual bankers to protect their money and freedom? It's certainly an amazingly lucky coincidence for them!

 

[WhistlingJack]

...

Erm, the 11th of September surely? This could render all previous theories obsolete. :lol:

Shit.

It's good of you to point out PM's error. Ted - he of course meant to write the 9th of November...

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

...

Erm, the 11th of September surely? This could render all previous theories obsolete. :lol:

Shit.

It's good of you to point out PM's error. Ted - he of course meant to write the 9th of November...

Doesn't the old rhyme go, 'Remember, remember, the ninth of November!'

 

[Analis]

What do you mean exactely by there?

What I mean by there is that whereas Ufology has a plethora of cases on which to call, and pick to death, none of them has any actual conclusive physical back-up, so have acres of wiggle-room. However Conspiracy, almost alone in the Fortean field, often does have indisputable proof of an actual event occurring but generates a wealth of controversy regarding the cause, and in the particular case of 9/11 has spawned an entire industry. In the context of this board we've tended to get "new" evidence about 9/11 in the form of a cited YouTube pundit saying "Look! what about this...?" only to be shot down over the course of a few pages, followed six months and some twenty seven pages later by someone else citing the self-same pundit, which is invariably dismissed by an old lag saying "but we covered this twenty seven pages ago", etc etc. The whole thing has become so mired in its own repetitiveness that TBH I'm surprised anyone is still reading it, let alone contributing - hence my appeal to not leap upon every "new" 'net utterance as a breakthrough.

Did the dissidents (or the truthers if you prefer) prove nothing? The evidence was shot down only if we consider that the science used is valid. But off. ver. supporters have a strong tendency to simply ignore a number of basic objections. You say that those events happened in front of everyone on the beedin' planet from every conceivable angle. Yes, but what did we see? There are not isolated anomalies, but plenty of evidence, visible in plain sight on the videos from that day.
What I meant with my cryptic metaphor re. JFK 's assassination is that, since lone nut theorists (an other name for JFK off. ver. supporters) believe that being shot in the rear end of the head means bouncing backwards and not frontwards, their strange understanding of the physical laws of reaction implies that they are afraid that each time they push a door, it will bounce in their face. The fact that they don't take this into consideration suggests that, consciously or unconciously, they don't believe their own assertions. That they remove this inconvenient fact from their mind, because it is uncomfortable to them.
We have a similar situation when we come to the attacks on the WTC, the Pentagon and Flight 93. There was at least one interesting quote in coldelephant's posts. When he adressed the fact that the collumn "expansion" supposed by the NIST report would ruin whole areas of physics and engineering, with no valid reason. So it is scientifically invalid.
Similarly, off. ver. supporters do not say why, if the towers were brought down the way thay believe, controlled demolition firms still lose time to mine each side of buildings to have a vertical, symetricall collapse, if softening (not even destroying) only one side would do the job. They don't explain why investigators of the recent Madrid crash were so unsure they could identify properly victims via DNA, if it was so easy at the Pentagon, where the fire was certainly stronger.
They ignore that the videos plus the firefighter communications discount the tale of gigantic arsons devastating whole storeys. That the fire could not heat the metals, steel or aluminium, to soften them (ans this is not mere speculation: this is what we see on videos: no melting, no reddish glow, hence no softening of the structure, inner or outer). That the supposed black boxes of Flight AA 77 do not support the off. ver. at all. Some dare to say that a video frame, from where a picture of the plane was obviously erased, is a proof that Flight AA77 hurt the Pentagon!

This is not anymore a matter of lack of evidence. You write that you doubt anyone will turn supergrass. I Don't know if you mean a new incarnation of the old argument that someone would spill the bloods. But if you have a look at a number of former important historical events, you see that no one came to turn supergrass. We still have no tangible evidence that Hitler ordered the Reichstag Fire. Plenty of journalists and historians studied the case. But while there's little doubt that the off. ver. from the time was bullshit, they found no proof, no testimonies of that. The same could be said of the assassination of Archiduke François-Ferdinand at Sarajevo. Most historians doubt that his murderer was a lone nut. But no one knows what happened exactely. No tangible evidence, no witnesses. Those events, at their time, had dire and tremendous consequences. Had the truth been known, maybe they could have been avoided. We do not live in 1914 Austrian-Hungarian Empire or in 1933 Germany. In the age of the Internet and free press (supposedly), I hope we could do better. Or may be we still live in 1914 or 1933?

And if a genuine whistleblower came, would the media welcome him? I am afraid that his testimony would end in the dustbin. What happened recently to Seymour HERSH is an indication. He had uncovered interesting evidence that very high-ranked US officials were planning false flag incidents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slgBrNXrbs

http://www.prisonplanet.com/cheney-neoc ... -iran.html

http://www.prisonplanet.com/media-black ... story.html

Hersh is one of the few relatively honnest today's journalists (although he admits he restrained himself on other occasions). But his work was not welcomed. Not because it was not rigourous, but because some editor (of THe New Yorker) used as an excuse that the attacks had not been implemented ! Had they been, I suppose that the same editor would see more reasons not to publish the files.
I liked Hersh's comment, that an editor is a mouse who wishes to become a rat!

 

[balding13]

The same could be said of the assassination of Archiduke François-Ferdinand at Sarajevo. Most historians doubt that his murderer was a lone nut.

Well, as he was the final assassin in a group of about 6, no!

 

[Analogue Boy]

On another site, I was given a link to a right-wing think tank.
The thrust of its stance on bias was basically, 'we don't need to have a debate on racism anymore because Lincoln spoke up against slavery'. I kid you not.

Just because a subject has been debated, doesn't necessarily mean that the argument has been won. I can understand a war of attrition, using the same facts over and over again is eventually going to take the head off the screw for both sides. I remember someone on the thread continually asking 'but where are the professional dissenters?' Then I sent a link for the architects and engineers who doubted the official version. Of course the debate then shifted to THEIR relative qualifications in the field.
It seemed to me the arguments went - if their speciality was structural engineering, they knew nothing about physics and if they were physicists, they knew nothing about the ramifications of structural engineering.

I still maintain that all discussion on 9/11 ( or 7/11 or whatever) is valid as a fortean discussion as it contains the largest amount of coincidences in one event ever documented.

 

[balding13]

it scares me that there is so much pointless conflict!

It's frightening, but in my naive way I fantasised that we were the 'clever' ones, just on the basis that many people aren't even aware of the concepts that we recognise. However, at its worst I feel like I'm trapped in a Fort version of the 'Moral Maze' crossed with US Politics; the obsession with the purity of any of the 'isms we inhabit is quite wearing. Add to that the freaks who really have a manichean/racist/anti-semitic bias and I feel like just reading the sun instead. There have to be religious forums where their mods and posters get fed up with open-minded, thoughtful members who question blind faith; can't we negotiate an exchange on the web, equivalent to checkpoint charlie, so that we get the good faithers and they get our bad reptile/illuminati/da vinci oafs.

I know that it is an obvious comment, but we live in a world where a plain, poor parent, who believes that the earth is less than 6000 years old, will probably have her finger on the button for the next 4 years from 2009-2011.

 

[Analogue Boy]

There are many clever people out there holding deeply reprehensible views.
it's not all low animal cunning.

 

[balding13]

But no one who is clever believes something that isn't

People who really profess to believe in the fantasy areas are doing it because they have issues or they are gaining something out of it.

 

[Analogue Boy]

So there we have it.
A new competition tie-breaker on What is Behind Forteana. In 30 words or less.

 

[stu neville]

..Just because a subject has been debated, doesn't necessarily mean that the argument has been won. I can understand a war of attrition, using the same facts over and over again is eventually going to take the head off the screw for both sides.

Precisely my point.

I remember someone on the thread continually asking 'but where are the professional dissenters?' Then I sent a link for the architects and engineers who doubted the official version. Of course the debate then shifted to THEIR relative qualifications in the field.
It seemed to me the arguments went - if their speciality was structural engineering, they knew nothing about physics and if they were physicists, they knew nothing about the ramifications of structural engineering.

Conspiracy threads, especially the insanely complicated ones, invariably become a large-scale onion game.

I still maintain that all discussion on 9/11 ( or 7/11 or whatever) is valid as a fortean discussion as it contains the largest amount of coincidences in one event ever documented.

I never said "Don't discuss this any more" (I could easily have just locked all the relevant threads and thrown away the key), I merely observed that perhaps we should have some clear sky for a bit. When I said the subject has become "mired in its own repetitiveness", I meant in the context of this board, and this thread in particular - it's become so dense that a newbie, for instance, if not immediately put off would quite probably give up before even scratching the surface.

Did the dissidents (or the truthers if you prefer) prove nothing? The evidence was shot down only if we consider that the science used is valid.

OK, "shot down" was a bad choice. "Repeatedly shot at" would be closer to the mark.

It's frightening, but in my naive way I fantasised that we were the 'clever' ones, just on the basis that many people aren't even aware of the concepts that we recognise. However, at its worst I feel like I'm trapped in a Fort version of the 'Moral Maze' crossed with US Politics; the obsession with the purity of any of the 'isms we inhabit is quite wearing...

Endemic hazard in any extremely broad church, unfortunately - and it's in Conspiracy that these traits tend to be most pronounced.

..Add to that the freaks who really have a manichean/racist/anti-semitic bias and I feel like just reading the sun instead.

Fortunately relatively rare on here, but most people have at least one blind-spot.

...There have to be religious forums where their mods and posters get fed up with open-minded, thoughtful members who question blind faith; can't we negotiate an exchange on the web, equivalent to checkpoint charlie, so that we get the good faithers and they get our bad reptile/illuminati/da vinci oafs.

In a broad sense, you need healthy diversity to get quality debate, though - again back to my point about the same half-dozen people cyclically having essentially the same discussion. This board has the whole gamut, from arch skeptic to the fluffiest of fluffy woo-woos, but demographically most are somewhere in the middle ground - willingness to tentatively accept tempered with a healthy scepticism. Each case on its own merit.

People who really profess to believe in the fantasy areas are doing it because they have issues or they are gaining something out of it.

In this particular forum (ie Conspiracy), on this board, or in Forteanism generally?

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

This is quite an interesting meta-discussion, at the moment.

I'd just like to point out that the down-side of this particular conspiracy-discourse is that, as in the case of coldelephant, several FTMB members, in good standing, have, for one reason, or another, got fed up with the level of discourse and either left, or severely restricted their visits to the FTMB.

I think that's probably one of the main reasons stu' was suggesting a sort of breathing space. It's not worth falling out over.

I, for one, will miss coldelephant's contribution.

 

[escargot]

Techy's been overtaken by the inevitable. :shock:

He'll be back when the nights are too dark to play golf.

 

[balding13]

Hi Stuneville

I'm slightly inept at using these boards (lack of use) so I've titled it as a reply to Stuneville. Although I genuinely don't want to offend people whose views I don't share, I can't really take seriously any faith-based beliefs, whether they are insisting on the literal truth of certain books, or that the queen is a shape-shifting alien controlling everything. When people tell me they truly believe such things, I oscilate between, 'really?' and 'if you really do believe that, I have 5 magic beans you ought to buy'.

I have a friend who is educated, intelligent and pretty well-balanced. He is a militant anti-moon landing and ufo faither. Unlike many fundamentalists who display hate and fear, if you question their beliefs, he's pretty relaxed about my critiques. My belief is that as his father was imprisoned in Auschwitz, he's lost the abilty to believe in both humanity and organised religion and has replaced his belief system with the concept of wiser, kinder species who can save us. He even accepts this observation, although he feels I'm wrong.

 

[escargot]

About those beans...

 

[balding13]

my 5 magic beans

Well, if you buy them and eat them instead of meat you will save the planet. Too topical?

 

[escargot]

Already vegetarian. :spinning

 

[Analogue Boy]

It would be ludicrous to suggest anyone should attempt to grow a giant beanstalk in this day and age.
Unless you're planning to insure it against having planes deliberately fly into it and then it could prove pretty lucrative.

 

[balding13]

You realise idle jack will be flying the planes....

.......but some will insist it was really the giant?

 

[DougalLongfoot]

For Australian FTMB readers:

4 Corners tonight (Monday 8th September 2008)

9/11: The Third Tower

Reporter: BBC

Broadcast: 08/09/2008

Seven years on, the destruction of New York's Twin Towers, played and replayed thousands of times over, is seared into collective memory.

A third skyscraper also fell that day. Unlike the Twin Towers, the 47-storey building known as Tower Seven was not hit by a fuel-laden plane, yet it collapsed neatly in 6.5 seconds.

The official explanation is that it was destroyed by fire. But in the seven years it has taken to present the final investigation report, suspicion has filled the information vacuum. Tower Seven has fed an industry of conspiracy theories that grew up around 9/11. Claims are pressed – by a phenomenally popular movie on the Internet and by supposedly credible "experts" – that someone in or close to the US Government brought the building down by controlled demolition.

How, among the many questions they ask, could Tower Seven be the first and only steel-framed skyscraper in the world to collapse due to fire? Why did the New York fire department not fight the fires? Why did it fall so symmetrically at freefall speed? Why did TV stations report that Tower Seven had collapsed before it had done so, when it was still clearly visibly behind reporters?

This BBC documentary explores some of these questions. In doing so it demonstrates how, when good information is scarce, or late, many people will believe the worst. "9/11: The Third Tower" – on Four Corners 8.30 pm Monday 8 September and 11.35 pm Tuesday 9 September (also 8am Tuesday on ABC2).

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2008/s2355522.htm

 

[rynner2]

Magnetic forces to blame for 9/11 tower collapse
By Steve Connor
Wednesday, 10 September 2008

Scientists can finally explain why the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11, despite the temperature of the fires being well below the 1,500C melting point of the steel girders holding up the buildings.

The discovery that unusual magnetic forces within the girders made them weak at temperatures of about 500C explains away the conspiracy theories that have spread like wildfire since the disaster.

Sergei Dudarev, of the UK Atomic Energy Agency, found that steel loses its strength above 500C because its molecules undergo a physical transition from one state to another due to magnetic fluctuations. "The steel didn't melt, it just became soft. It is an unusual state and the temperatures in the Twin Towers were high enough to cause it because the thermal insulation was knocked off the girders through the impact with the aircraft," he said.

"Understanding how materials behave means we can find the right 'medicine' to make steel stronger at high temperatures... and if our work can be used for other applications, such as safeguarding tall buildings against disasters, so much the better," he said.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 24509.html

Now why didn't I think of that...?

 

[Zilch5]

Magnetic Forces? Well, let's see... Only three steel framed buildings have ever collapsed due to fire: WTC Tower 1, WTC Tower 2 and Building 7.

And no other fire in a similarly constructed building has ever exceeded 500C and caused a collapse?

Seems a bit hard to swallow.

 

[hokum6]

And no other fire in a similarly constructed building has ever exceeded 500C and caused a collapse?

Seems a bit hard to swallow.

Other buildings weren't hit by planes, though, and the construction of the towers was different to other skyscrapers.

 

[Analogue Boy]

So the steel in building 7 underwent a molecular change due to magnetism?

Could this same magnetic anomaly have also been responsible for the Tom & Jerry plane into the Pentagon effect?

It's really a shame all of this fundamentally-changed steel was carted away and disposed of so quickly. There could have been more conclusive tests.

 

[hokum6]

Metal get hot, metal get bendy.

Not a difficult concept.

 

[ramonmercado]

Study: 70,000 may suffer post-9/11 stress disorder

New data from a public health registry that tracks the health effects of 9/11 suggest that as many as 70,000 people may have developed post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the terrorist attacks.

The estimate, released Wednesday by New York City's Department of Health, is based on an analysis of the health of 71,437 people who enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Registry. They agreed to be tracked for up to 20 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and the study was based on answers they volunteered about their health two and three years after the attack.

Of the estimated 400,000 people believed to have been heavily exposed to pollution from the disaster, data suggests that 35,000 to 70,000 people developed PTSD and 3,800 to 12,600 may have developed asthma, city health officials said.

They include rescue and recovery workers, lower Manhattan residents, area workers, commuters and passers-by.

Overall, half of the respondents said they had been in the dust cloud from the collapsing towers; 70 percent witnessed a traumatic sight, such as a plane hitting the tower or falling bodies; and 13 percent sustained an injury that day.

"The consensus among physicians is that when it comes to physical health, the vast majority of people felt symptoms in the first year," said Lorna Thorpe, the deputy commissioner for epidemiology at the New York City Health Department. "A small proportion of people, however, developed symptoms years later. And in some cases, it's hard to tell whether they're World Trade Center-related or a result of allergies or existing conditions."

The post-traumatic stress disorder rate was highest among injured, low-income and Hispanic study volunteers. In general, minorities and low-income respondents experienced higher rates of mental and physical problems, as did women.

The study was conducted by the city health department and the federal Centers for Disease Control's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. It was released in the Journal of Urban Health.

The city offers free physical and mental health care to eligible people affected by the attacks.

----

On The Web:

World Trade Center Health Registry: http://www.nyc.gov/9-11healthinfo

 

[Zilch5]

Other buildings weren't hit by planes, though, and the construction of the towers was different to other skyscrapers.

Doesn't matter what caused the fire - it's the temperature that matters! The impact of the planes didn't cause them to collapse as they stood for hours after the attacks.

Oh, and Building 7 wasn't hit by a plane, by the way...and from what I understand its construction was utterly conventional.

 

[hokum6]

It does matter what caused the fire when it was a big aluminium tube filled with jet fuel that ripped the fireproofing material off the building and weakened its structure.

And yes, building 7 was conventional and it wasn't hit by a plane, but it was also missing a big chunk out of one side and was on fire. There was no fire fighting going on in it because the fire brigade had decided it was too dangerous.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

You forgot the bit about their, 'unique construction.'

That's the official theory clincher.

All three buildings were kept up by wodges of chewing gum and sprinkles of magic pixie dust.

 

[Analis]

It does matter what caused the fire when it was a big aluminium tube filled with jet fuel that ripped the fireproofing material off the building and weakened its structure.

And yes, building 7 was conventional and it wasn't hit by a plane, but it was also missing a big chunk out of one side and was on fire. There was no fire fighting going on in it because the fire brigade had decided it was too dangerous.

It was missing a big chunk out of one side and was on fire. Or was it ? The info relating to the missing chunk comes from Tiernach CASSIDY, who spoke too of arsons consuming the whole facade, like Harry Meyers. But they claimed that only later. This very day, no firefighters spoke of such fires. On the contrary, they told that there were only minor arsons. As confirmed by radio communications. In any good investigation, the first declarations take precedence. They're corroborated by the fact that no photos or videos confirm the existence of such fires. They show no big smokes coming from the south side of the building, as thare should have been, if huge arsons existed. The likely conclusion is that Cassidy and Meyers made up those fires. And it was probably the same of the big missing chunk, mentionned by noone this day.

An other info, covered in an usually low fashion by the media (could be posted in Terror Alerts, but not off-topic on this thread in my mind) :
http://www.infowars.com/?p=4429
Seems the liquid bomb plot was bogus...