[asedra] Ed Asner on 9/11 - Building 7

[Justforfun000]

I tried to search for threads on this...I've had many friends try to feed me the idea that 9/11 is an inside job. I've seen and read some very interesting things..and I honestly don't know what to believe. Particularly the very recent things where a group of over 1500 engineers and architects have banded together and are about to even put out a documentary proposing their point of view.

Conspiracy theories abound with EVERYTHING and i am always extremely skeptical of them...but I'm truly unsure about this only because of the many weird things surrounding it..particularly this specific building.

I'd like some opinion if you don't mind giving it a glance.

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

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I tried to search for threads on this...I've had many friends try to feed me the idea that 9/11 is an inside job. I've seen and read some very interesting things..and I honestly don't know what to believe. Particularly the very recent things where a group of over 1500 engineers and architects have banded together and are about to even put out a documentary proposing their point of view.

Conspiracy theories abound with EVERYTHING and i am always extremely skeptical of them...but I'm truly unsure about this only because of the many weird things surrounding it..particularly this specific building.

I'd like some opinion if you don't mind giving it a glance.

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

I suppose it's fitting that the conspiracy nutcases are coming out of the woodwork with their nutjob theories on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Here's the skinny on 9/11 conspiracy theories. Ready?

They are all bullshit!

There are only weird things about WTC 7 if all you read are conspiracy theories. In the first few minutes of fucknuttery in that video, all they ever show is side of the building that happened to face away from the two towers. If you look at this image, you will notice that one side (and one corner) especially were subject to having a fucking building fall on them. Also, the building was on fucking fire. So a corner of the building sustained severe damage, and the interior was being weakened by fire.

The fruitbats then proceed to take emergency responder and eyewitness testimony completely out of context. At the time you hear the recordings in the video, the fire department had already decided that WTC 7 was badly damaged enough that it was very likely to come down. In fact, they'd just ordered their crews back from trying to save the neighboring Verizon building, due to the danger posed by WTC 7.

Also, pause the fruitbat video at 2:44. See how the building is starting to collapse? Notice how the building is taking on a notably crumpled and uneven appearance like one corner has let go first? Of course, they try to distract you by interviews by random jack-offs babbling "controlled demolition." We've established that it is completely plausible for a giant skyscraper to come down in what looks like a controlled manner to the untrained eye. It's called "pancaking." The floors of a skyscraper aren't designed to withstand all the floors above them being dropped upon them from a story in height. Especially not when their supporting structures are badly weakened by fire.

More evidence for the building being brought down due to impact damage from the fall of WTC's 1 and 2. This picture here, which you will also find if you pause the fruitbat video, shows the north face of the building lying atop the wreckage. The only way that could happen is if it came down starting from the opposite side . . . you know, the side that had a giant fucking building fall on it?

Notice, also, how they repeat "controlled demolition" over and over and over. It's a classic propaganda tool. Repeat something enough, and it has a habit of sinking in.

They also deride "a few small office fires," by showing fires burning on the north side of the building. Again, I refer you to the image above depicting what was going on on the south side of the building. WTC 7 had been evacuated, and the NYFD wisely decided not to risk the lives of its firefighters fighting fires in an empty building. Therefore, when you see those "little" fires on the north side, that means they'd burned all the way across the building from the south side!

The only thing "weird" about WTC 7 is the fucked-up narrative the conspiracy theorists are trying to sell you.

[cosmicalstorm]

I tried to search for threads on this...I've had many friends try to feed me the idea that 9/11 is an inside job. I've seen and read some very interesting things..and I honestly don't know what to believe. Particularly the very recent things where a group of over 1500 engineers and architects have banded together and are about to even put out a documentary proposing their point of view.

Conspiracy theories abound with EVERYTHING and i am always extremely skeptical of them...but I'm truly unsure about this only because of the many weird things surrounding it..particularly this specific building.

I'd like some opinion if you don't mind giving it a glance.

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

If the people running the show where such excellent planners that they managed to pull off such a masterplan, then why did they fail in all other endeavors? (Iraq, Afghanistan, Financial meltdowns)
It would seem reasonable to believe that they would rule the world by now, if they were that skilled at handling large complex operations, if they were that cold blooded.

[Serafina]

Just contemplate how impossible a controlled demolition would be.
When professional demolition companies want to demolish a building, they need weeks or months of extensive preparation. They strip interior walls from the building, drill holes into support pillars, place precisely calculated amounts of explosives and wire them with a complicated network of detonation cables.
How are you going to do that in a busy office building? The answer is very simple - you won't.

They'll throw all sorts of bullshit at you to distract you from that fact. The most ludicrous one must be that the building was supposedly wired with explosives since it was built - which was in 1987. Here's a hint - explosives decay over time. Sure, they might still work, but not in a manner fitting controlled demolition.

Oh, and as for the supposed "free-fall speeds" they always bicker about - just measure the time the building takes to collapse, and keep in mind that it is a) big and b) you won't see the lower floors due to obstructed sight.


Well, other than that, 9/11 WAS a conspiracy - of muslim terrorists

[Simon_Jester]

Also, why the heck would they do a controlled demolition of Building Seven, when the Twin Towers themselves were knocked down by crashing huge jet airplanes into them?

There's a coherency issue here.

In the... call it the 'known story' of 9/11, we know many things. We know who did it (they took credit for it, openly, on international TV). We know why they did it (they explained it, at length). We know who they tasked with specific parts of the operation (detective work plus waterboarding). We know how they did it (well-documented training in flight school and airline tickets). We have massive amounts of footage of the attacks themselves taking place (airport radar detecting the planes going off course, video of planes hitting buildings). We have eye witness testimony of practically every step of the process it was possible for human beings to survive, and so on.

This is a lot of evidence, and it basically all fits together into an interlocking picture. Which is important, because when you have such an interlocking picture, to break the picture it is not enough to cast doubt on one thing and have it all come down like a house of cards. No, the burden of proof is higher than that.

You must be able to replace the interlocking structure of evidence with one of your own, that fits the facts at least roughly as well. This is where 9/11 conspiracy theories (like Pearl Harbor conspiracy theories) fall flat on their faces.

A 9/11 conspiracy theory has to deal with the following realities:

-Instead of having a well defined motive for the attack, they must settle for vaguely defined motives: the Bush administration was planning that all this, somehow, would translate into public support for their foreign policy agenda. That there would be no inconvenient blowback, that nothing would go wrong, that none of the legions of people in on the conspiracy would spill the beans and leave the administration facing trials for mass murder.

If I had the kind of luck it would take to pull this conspiracy off, I wouldn't need to do it at all- because I'd be able to get away with invading whoever I wanted without anyone getting upset, given my ability to practically mind-control huge numbers of people into not telling the truth about my actions.

-Instead of having a well defined entity responsible for the attack, they have to wave their hands and say "the CIA did it!" or some such. So far as I know, no one tries to address at all seriously the question of who within the CIA was responsible, why they didn't deep-six the plan, or anything else. They have nothing like the detailed information that has come to light about the chain of contacts and networks Al Qaeda used to plan and execute the attacks. Without such evidence, it is hard to believe that all this detailed information just suddenly becomes irrelevant because it wasn't 'really' Al Qaeda doing it.

-Instead of having a clear explanation for how each phase of the attack was accomplished, they have vague explanations. "It was a controlled demolition!" they say. Well, who set the charges? And when? Who sold them the explosives? Why was this not noticed by people who weren't in on the conspiracy? Why blow both towers plus Building Seven when the attack would have been just about as effective if only one of the Twin Towers had gone down? Why not adopt a minimalist approach to the amount of property damage the conspiracy committed on its own soil? Even if they didn't care about lives, the cost in wealth of losing the World Trade Center was enormous, enough to easily swamp one hell of a lot of oil profits and cushy defense contracts.

And when we adopt the conspiracy theory, every one of those bits of evidence which supports the generally known explanation of what happened becomes a little dagger pointed at the conspiracy theorist. Why did the US work in such a roundabout way through Islamic terrorist groups with no reason to be loyal to the US? Why did the federal government react so much as if it were under a surprise attack, with follow-up strikes due to come in at any moment? Why does Al-Qaeda to this day behave for all the world as if it wanted those attacks to happen, and not even try to convince anyone that they were puppets?

Ultimately I am reminded of this Onion parody- pointing out that conspiracy theorists seem unwilling to believe that the attacks even could be organized by this group of foreign terrorists, which puts a very low estimate on their competence.

[Surlethe]

We've established that it is completely plausible for a giant skyscraper to come down in what looks like a controlled manner to the untrained eye. It's called "pancaking." The floors of a skyscraper aren't designed to withstand all the floors above them being dropped upon them from a story in height. Especially not when their supporting structures are badly weakened by fire.

Just to add to this -- other similarities between uncontrolled building collapses and controlled building collapses can be explained by gravity. There is pretty much only one way for a very complicated, heavy structure to fall down, and that is more or less in its footprint. The difference, I gather, between "controlled" and "uncontrolled" lies in "more" versus "less."

[Ritterin Sophia]

One wonders how if 9-11 was a government inside job, why they couldn't scrounge up a really crude nuclear weapon to 'plant' on Saddam.

[Justforfun000]

Thanks guys. I really can't see how it'd be remotely plausible for there to even be a working theory to implicate the government ALONG with the terrorists without the most outlandish explanation..like players playing the players...and them unknowingly being used..and cripes..it could go into absolute absurdity.

But imagine how misleading this is to the average Joe. That video is disturbingly well presented, and as a total laymen in regards to architecture and all that relates to these subjects..it looks very compelling when all of these "experts" are banding together like this and someone notable like Asner is spearheading it. It gets so damn hard to detect whats bullshit from reality. No wonder so many Americans are fucked up in regard to their beliefs of all stripes when the media is playing with their minds constantly..

[blahface]

Just contemplate how impossible a controlled demolition would be.
When professional demolition companies want to demolish a building, they need weeks or months of extensive preparation. They strip interior walls from the building, drill holes into support pillars, place precisely calculated amounts of explosives and wire them with a complicated network of detonation cables.
How are you going to do that in a busy office building? The answer is very simple - you won't.

To be fair, when demolition companies demolish a building, they have to go through a process to avoid collateral damage. If the premise is that it was done by a secret wing of the government, I doubt that they'd be interested in avoiding collateral damage.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes. But if the demo charges are supposed to bring the structure down on its own, then you still have to do a lot of the same things- run around wiring charges all over the place, weaken structural supports so it will collapse as planned, and so forth. You may have to be less careful but it's still a lot of work.

What I don't get is that given how blatantly there were jets crashing into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, why anyone even thinks it makes sense for the hypothetical conspirators to use demo charges. Wouldn't that just make their plan more complex and difficult and easier to detect? If your plan already involves crashing a goddamn Boeing 767 into the building, why do you need to spend weeks rigging the place for demolitions?

[DPDarkPrimus]

No, they got Eddie Asner!

Does being a celebrity also mean they have some sort of predisposition to pick up bullshit? No, more likely it's just that because they're a celebrity, it's more high-profile when they talk about the bullshit than if they were some average person. Still...

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

I've always said that if 9-11 was an inside job, the target was probably intended to be Toronto, because that fits the level of incompetence displayed by the Bush administration.

That's a joke, btw.

[PainRack]

If the people running the show where such excellent planners that they managed to pull off such a masterplan, then why did they fail in all other endeavors? (Iraq, Afghanistan, Financial meltdowns)
It would seem reasonable to believe that they would rule the world by now, if they were that skilled at handling large complex operations, if they were that cold blooded.

Its ALL in the plans brothers! Soon, the Illuminati will take over the UNITED states of Amerika, forcing the whole world under one nation in a world government as the US falls due to 9/11, Iraq and the finanicial crisis. Big government will take over your banks, the cars.... and then, the ANTI_CHRIST!!!!!!

[Isolder74]

By the logic of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth the fire in the McCormick Center in Chicago in 1967 must have been a controlled demolition. What makes that fire even more fun is the roof of the building was a steel truss span of nearly the same specs and dimensions as the floors of the world trade center, in fact if you stacked 110 of the center up and added in the central core of the WTC you would have the WTC! The fire was discovered at 2:00 AM and only burned on the convention floor for 25 mins before the TRUSS ROOF FAILED ONTO THE FIREFIGHTERS FIGHTING THE FIRE!!! This was with an undamaged roof and the only thing that was burning was the wood, paper and plastic temp structures on the convention floor.

To spell it out for the idiots in the audience a completely mundane fire brought down an undamaged roof. Something that the Truthers constantly say wasn't possible in a damaged building!

Fire time in history my eye!

[K. A. Pital]

9/11 conspiracists are fucking stupid (which was well covered by posters above).

A smarter conspiracy theorist would at least care to make his theory look more plausible. To that end, he would ignore the towers and planes and all that crap and concentrate on building links between CIA and Al-Quaeda and speculate that the drills ran in NORAD that day were a deliberate ADS shutdown to allow the hijacked planes to reach their target.

That would much more plausible and much easier to spread around, and it would be a truly devious tool of anti-American propaganda - indeed, how devious it is to use Islamist terrorists like pawns to unleash a wave of war and violence across the world in the "War on Terrorism"? How believable that sounds? We know that rogue intelligence agencies are well capable of false flag operations, so why not extend the logic a little more? If the ISI can do it, why not the CIA? That would be a lot more believable and would allow the conspiracy theory to gain far more legitimacy *laughs*

Too bad they're so fucking stupid. Sometimes I play the devil's advocate, but I don't like stupidity.

[weemadando]

http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2 ... conspiracy

Salon excelled themselves with this piece. Read it.

[Broomstick]

Also, pause the fruitbat video at 2:44. See how the building is starting to collapse? Notice how the building is taking on a notably crumpled and uneven appearance like one corner has let go first? Of course, they try to distract you by interviews by random jack-offs babbling "controlled demolition." We've established that it is completely plausible for a giant skyscraper to come down in what looks like a controlled manner to the untrained eye. It's called "pancaking." The floors of a skyscraper aren't designed to withstand all the floors above them being dropped upon them from a story in height. Especially not when their supporting structures are badly weakened by fire.

It's my understanding that it's not so much that "pancake collapse" resembles controlled demolition as that controlled demolition is an artificially induced pancake collapse. There's nothing magical about it, it's just gravity at work on a massive object. In the case of the WTC the collapse occurred because fire and colliding jets weakened key points of the structure. In controlled demolition support structures are deliberately weakened to steer the timing and direction of collapse.

Fact is, most stuff that falls down does so pretty much straight down. Buildings aren't in motion relative to the ground in any significant degree, so when gravity takes over you don't get much horizontal travel. However, while controlled demolition usually (though not always - nothing is perfect) result in the debris field being contained almost wholly within the footprint of the building that is NOT what happened at the WTC. In fact, the collapse of WTC 7 is part of the proof that the WTC 1 and 2 did NOT collapse neatly, that in fact it was UNcontrolled, with a significant amount of debris falling on neighboring buildings and streets. That's not always easy to see in photos because the height of the surrounding buildings tends to obscure how deep the debris on nearby, but ground level photos show sizable piles of such around the Ground Zero site.

There is also the issue that controlled demotion of a large building requires weeks, if not months of study and site preparation. There is no way a crew could do the necessary preparatory work, or even just set the required charges, needed to bring such a building down without the building occupants noticing something odd was going on. Remember, in 1993 a truck bomb blew a 30 meter wide hole through four levels of the building. The building didn't have any problem remaining standing despite such damage. The WTC had sufficient structural toughness to withstand substantial damage. Bringing down something like a major skyscraper deliberately requires more than just randomly blowing shit up - or else requires a really big explosive object, like a 757 full of fuel. And, in fact, the initial impact, even as great as it was (figure out the force involved when a 115,660 kilogram object moving at 900 kph hits a building, it's a pretty simple equation) did NOT destroy the building sufficiently to cause a collapse. You need a LOT of strategically placed explosives (or a really, really hot fire burning for awhile) to bring down a modern skyscraper, just knocking out a few floors or beams won't caused a catastrophic collapse. Too many people would have to do too much work over too much time not to be noticed.

[Justforfun000]

I honestly had no leanings towards this line of thought personally...it just seems like an incredibly complex leap of unbelievable proportions to suggest even COMPLICITY from the American Government. From personal talks with this friend of mine...I know that she's influenced by many similar style online things like "Zeitgeist"..."a video called "Loose Change"...she believes that it's at heart being controlled by a very, very select few in the world (maybe hundreds...thousands...but percentage wise...extremely small compared to the human population) that control our Global economy.

I simply do not know enough about economy in general to even BEGIN to comment or opine something...so I will pass on a couple of her general points and see if I can answer her. This is a good example of someone who is far from stupid...but can be easily misled by what looks to be factual info. I wish there was a better method out there for people to sift all the bullshittery through before they swallow it hook, line and sinker..the fact that celebrities get caught up in it AND endorse it just makes it worse and undeservedly adds legitimacy to it. *sigh*

Let me see what I can mine as simple things she is asserting....Will post something shortly.

[Justforfun000]

Selective points from my friend:

"I am only responding to your forum’s replies because I want you to keep an open mind towards people who are truly looking for the TRUTH of 911. Why else would all of these professionals put their names and careers on the line? What is to be gained? It’s easier for some to take the road less travelled…

I have to say that <specific poster...unmentioned by my choice..don't want a pissing match...>style does not reflect intelligence to me at all; it comes off as narrow minded and egotistical. The classic false dichotomy; unable to accept that there are grey areas….If you don’t have the whole story, then the rest of what you are saying must be misguided and false. This is not the approach of Architects and Engineers take at all, they focus on the FACTS that they believe to be true.

I have seen debates for the pancake effect many times and here is the gist of what I have learned…

Even if you entertain the pancake theory, many engineers estimate that it would have taken tower 7 at least another 40 seconds or more to collapse. The only way the building came down as quickly as it did is that the bottom floors were removed by use of some type of incendiary/controlled demolition. Engineers also agree that an office fire has NEVER been proven to melt steel. Under optimal conditions the highest temp you will get from an office fire is about 900 -1000 degrees and structural steel doesn’t even begin to melt until a min. of 1800 degrees is reached (How did it get so hot to melt the steel support columns of building 7??) Steel in building 7 also had fire proofing when it was originally built). Very strange indeed!!

Building 5 & 6 were the towers that were mostly damaged by the original collapsing tower and Building 7 only sustained minor debris falling on it, it is ludicrous to suggest that building 7 collapsed because it had a “giant fucking building fall on it”. I actually laughed out loud over that one!!!

Of course the Ed Asner is a promo piece for a longer documentary; that is the style for anything of that nature and I would hope that any of your forum friends are not basing their opinions solely on that. Good Grief!!!"

"I would only ask of someone who deems themselves a professional who can be called on to lend information to those of us laypeople who look to them for sound judgment to take a serious look at ALL of the basic factors around the events of Sept 11, not just what they remember of that day, but to revisit it before dismissing it as just a whacked out Conspiracy Theory.

It has to be revisited and revisited and the more you look the more you realize that nothing seems to add up. There are WAAAAYYY too many suspicious events that some people just refuse to hear because they fear being called a Nutcase. It’s so obvious that the official story of 911 and the explanation for the collapse of the towers as outlined by NIST are not the truth. How could anybody in their right mind not see that??"

My thoughts: I'm unsure what she's referring to in the main..but I did watch Loose Change and other similarly themed videos and my first reaction whenever I personally run into this line of thought is I remember HIV denialism. I was caught up back in the day thanks to Duesberg and many other prominent scientists, doctors, celebrities...etc.. etc..and they ultimately proved to be nothing more then a fringe group. They were justified to have an open mind and question the theory before enough facts came to light..but eventually they simply became RELIGIOUS about their belief and denialism and instead of proving THEIR claims...(which didn't add up evidentially)...they switched all of their tactics to asking more and more questions and attacking the other side. VERY similar to Creationist tactics. So I'm sympathetic to her being misled...and also very much reminded how easy it is to be sucked in...

"If you ignored the towers and looked only at the Pentagon, there is just too much to dismiss. Even if so called "conspiracy theorists" are wrong about half of what they are saying, there is still the other 50% that is still completely suspicious, to say the least. It’s only human nature to want to know the how/why? That is where it can get to be too much for people, but just because you don’t have your ready made, canned response for the how and why’s, does not erase that you are expected to believe that certain laws of physics were suspended on September 11th. There are pilots, engineers, scientists, firemen, policemen, first responders (interesting that they were not allowed to attend 911 Memorial in New York) etc, etc., who all give opposite accounts and testimony to the events of 911. Why!?! Because something smells, that’s why!!! I admire the bravery of those who refuse to led by the nose when something smells."

Edit: Forgot to quote last paragraph...wasn't my words..

[K. A. Pital]

Suggesting complicity is actually not hard, it doesn't take a huge leap of "unbelievable proportions", like I said above. What takes a huge leap is the totally unrealistic core claims of the conspiracy theory. Which makes it, well... crazy.

As for people being influenced by conspiracy theories, that is... well, lamentable but it happens.

I simply do not know enough about economy in general to even BEGIN to comment or opine something...

Advise her to read something critical of the current economy, but without the conspiracy theories. Usually a viewpoint that is close to your own, except MORE solid and rational, is easier to cling to than something that would be a complete refutation of your prior ideas. It is psychologically easier.

[CJvR]

Wasn't Loose Change that silly film where they asked "where is the wreckage" from the Pentagon plane - after deliberatly cutting all sequences that showed such wreckage from the Pentagon film material?

Also I don't get all this stupidity about melting steel. You don't have to melt metal to make it weaker, all you need to do is heat it up. That secret have been known by blacksmiths for several thousands of years! How is it even possible not to notice it?

[Justforfun000]

Suggesting complicity is actually not hard, it doesn't take a huge leap of "unbelievable proportions", like I said above. What takes a huge leap is the totally unrealistic core claims of the conspiracy theory. Which makes it, well... crazy.

As for people being influenced by conspiracy theories, that is... well, lamentable but it happens.

What IS she actually believing? Do you have a general idea? Other then what I said about these select few that control the world economy...how seriously would she be taking the idea that the US itself would actually do things like

A) Directly set up something that LOOKS like a terrorist attack for (X) benefit...and blame it on evil (muslim - bad religion) people.

B) Take advantage of the attack before it happened by intelligence means...discovering it was coordinated....facilitating it and doing other personally beneficial acts in the grand scheme of things...even though the actual attack was done (honestly and blithely enough) by radical terrorists.

<Quick side tangent...I remember one of the things from that Loose Change video that DID raise many interesting questions..but as you demonstrate above...it's not the question itself that makes a mystery..it's whether the facts are known or twisted...

Supposedly on that day...there were flight exercises that screwed up the alert transmissions? To sum it up as easy as I can...it was something like all airspace is monitered, reported and patrolled and ANY aircraft in motion is marked..signalled and challenged if necessary. My friend's contributory argument would undoubtedly bring this up...I remember myself being a little shocked how coincidental this was...they said there were air exercises going on PRETENDING that there was a terrorist attack and the people on the ground were confused and kept asking..."is this part of the test...? is this actually real or are you fucking with us?".

Essentially anyway..I'm paraphrasing of course..

In any event..the point the video made was that NO aircraft...especially multiple ones that were commercial passenger planes could just veer off for minutes...hours in some cases without a huge red flag going up saying "WTF?? Where are you going Flight number XXX"

That much alone if factual is the one thing I can understand why she would be thinking something is up...but I'm throwing it out here in the ring...I'm sure there is an explanation..maybe it's the wrong question..like what does pink smell like...

One of my more recent evolutions of thought was finally understanding the fact that a question phrased grammatically correct..does not necessarily deserve or warrant an answer.

I think that's a huge diversion tactic for most religous/fantactical/dogmatic techniques. Probably unintentional by most..but ultimately distracting and worthless.

[K. A. Pital]

My friend's contributory argument would undoubtedly bring this up...I remember myself being a little shocked how coincidental this was...they said there were air exercises going on PRETENDING that there was a terrorist attack and the people on the ground were confused and kept asking..."is this part of the test...? is this actually real or are you fucking with us?".

Yeah, the coincidence with Vigilant Guardian kinda makes you wonder, who and how gave the information to the pilots. To see this as mere coincidence would be too much wishful thinking.

Nonetheless the basis of conspiracy arguments is bunk. Demonstrate that which is rational; concentrate on what is completely ridiculous in the conspiracy.

I had many talks with creationists, and I usually selected Noah's Flood and Noah's Ark as strongpoints for a discussion. It was easy to show that the idea of such an Ark and such a Flood is bunk to people, even to people subjected to YEC brainwashing. So perhaps you should do the same.

Ignore the weaker arguments (e.g. "somehow, somewhere the government may have had a hand, in unknown ways!! WOW!!!" - that is vague claims which are designed to be irrefutable!), concentrate on the factual claims about the buildings. Which are bullshit.

[Simon_Jester]

I honestly had no leanings towards this line of thought personally...it just seems like an incredibly complex leap of unbelievable proportions to suggest even COMPLICITY from the American Government. From personal talks with this friend of mine...I know that she's influenced by many similar style online things like "Zeitgeist"..."a video called "Loose Change"...she believes that it's at heart being controlled by a very, very select few in the world (maybe hundreds...thousands...but percentage wise...extremely small compared to the human population) that control our Global economy.

I simply do not know enough about economy in general to even BEGIN to comment or opine something...so I will pass on a couple of her general points and see if I can answer her. This is a good example of someone who is far from stupid...but can be easily misled by what looks to be factual info. I wish there was a better method out there for people to sift all the bullshittery through before they swallow it hook, line and sinker..the fact that celebrities get caught up in it AND endorse it just makes it worse and undeservedly adds legitimacy to it. *sigh*

Let me see what I can mine as simple things she is asserting....Will post something shortly.

Well.

The simple fact is that if you could get a like-minded group of a few thousand of the right people to make self-consistent decisions, and they were all very rich, they could probably get a lot of their agenda through in the world economy. But a lot of that power would come from manipulating others who were themselves powerful, or might become powerful- the people who founded Google now have a surprising amount of power given that they were a random dotcom startup ten years or so ago. Likewise, Barack Obama was probably not part of any strong "power elite" before he won the 2008 election

The question is just what level of power and control she thinks the economic conspiracy has. Does she think they have detailed control, or the ability to make sure that no random events screw up their plans? Does she acknowledge that the actual membership of this global elite would change over time, as new power blocs rose and old ones fell?

A 'realistic' conspiracy that dominated the world economy would consist of a few thousand billionaires and their hangers-on. It would be unofficial (no giant conventions where the League of Rich Evil People meet, no network of hotlines by which they all coordinate their plans). It would just be a collection of like-minded people with similar drives and interests, who just happen to have tremendous power to shape world events. Not every rich, powerful, or influential person in the world would have any ties to this conspiracy; members of the conspiracy might not even know they were members. Large sectors of society would be effectively outside their control or even influence, but they would still have enough power to protect their own continued power.

One thing they wouldn't have much incentive to do is quash the public's awareness of the conspiracy, because everything they do would happen "above the clouds" in any case- they're not actually getting involved in the details, or deciding who wins presidential elections or anything. They're just suborning as many important people as they can to prevent anything adverse to their interests from happening.

Selective points from my friend:

"I am only responding to your forum’s replies because I want you to keep an open mind towards people who are truly looking for the TRUTH of 911. Why else would all of these professionals put their names and careers on the line? What is to be gained? It’s easier for some to take the road less travelled…

"All these professionals" is a list of a few thousand people out of a few million. If 0.1% of people in a given group decide to endorse a position rejected by the other 99.9%, it's more likely that the 0.1% has simply gone mad, if you ask me.

I have to say that <specific poster...unmentioned by my choice..don't want a pissing match...>style does not reflect intelligence to me at all; it comes off as narrow minded and egotistical. The classic false dichotomy; unable to accept that there are grey areas….If you don’t have the whole story, then the rest of what you are saying must be misguided and false. This is not the approach of Architects and Engineers take at all, they focus on the FACTS that they believe to be true.

Speaking for myself, I'm quite happy with gray areas. The problem comes when someone looks at a gray area.

"Hey, the damage to this steel beam out of many in the World Trade Center wreckage is hard to identify!"

...and draws a very, very sweeping conclusion:

"CLEARLY, we know exactly what a broken steel beam looks like after falling several hundred feet and getting buried under a small mountain of broken-up concrete, so CLEARLY this isn't it, and CLEARLY this thing was cut by cunningly placed demolition charges, which were CLEARLY placed by teams of evil ninjas at the behest of some malevolent figure within the US government who CLEARLY wanted to make sure his existing plan to hit the building with a Boeing 767 would work, because CLEARLY merely hitting the building with a Boeing 767 wouldn't be enough to bring it down."

That's what bugs me. Any ambiguity in the generally known story is interpreted as evidence for an extremely complex alternate story. But any ambiguity or questionable spot in the alternate story is not being interpreted as evidence for the generally known story.

Occam's Razor applies: which is more likely, that:
1a) WTC buildings 1, 2, and 7 collapsed because two Boeing 767s crashed into the Twin Towers, and
2a) Some of our models of how huge buildings collapse when struck by airplanes, which doesn't exactly happen every other week, are buggy enough that what we predict to happen isn't exactly like what did happen. Therefore, buildings struck by giant airplanes may collapse a bit faster or slower than our models predict, because we don't have that much experimental data to describe them.

OR

1b) WTC buildings 1, 2, and 7 would have survived the airplane crash damage, and
2b) Cunning teams of demolition specialists rigged the buildings to collapse, without providing any unambiguous evidence of their presence, and with none of them coming forth, even though numerous members of the demolition profession have stepped forward to say that it would have been impossible to do the job without leaving evidence of their presence.

It seems to me that (1a) is more probable than (1b), and that (2a) is vastly more probable than (2b).

Even if you entertain the pancake theory, many engineers estimate that it would have taken tower 7 at least another 40 seconds or more to collapse. The only way the building came down as quickly as it did is that the bottom floors were removed by use of some type of incendiary/controlled demolition. Engineers also agree that an office fire has NEVER been proven to melt steel. Under optimal conditions the highest temp you will get from an office fire is about 900 -1000 degrees and structural steel doesn’t even begin to melt until a min. of 1800 degrees is reached (How did it get so hot to melt the steel support columns of building 7??) Steel in building 7 also had fire proofing when it was originally built). Very strange indeed!!

Not at all. You don't need to melt steel to weaken it structurally. Ever seen medieval-style blacksmithing? They use a forge to heat metal until it's red hot for a reason: the metal is softer and easier to work when you beat it into shape with a hammer that way. Stresses that the metal could ignore all day at room temperature (like being hit with a hammer) cause permanent deformation when the metal is hot.

For a large building which has already had chunks of the structure physically demolished by ramming about a hundred tons of airplane into it, anything that weakens the metal is a Very Bad Thing.

Building 5 & 6 were the towers that were mostly damaged by the original collapsing tower and Building 7 only sustained minor debris falling on it, it is ludicrous to suggest that building 7 collapsed because it had a “giant fucking building fall on it”. I actually laughed out loud over that one!!!

Citation requested about which buildings took the most damage.

"I would only ask of someone who deems themselves a professional who can be called on to lend information to those of us laypeople who look to them for sound judgment to take a serious look at ALL of the basic factors around the events of Sept 11, not just what they remember of that day, but to revisit it before dismissing it as just a whacked out Conspiracy Theory.

It has to be revisited and revisited and the more you look the more you realize that nothing seems to add up. There are WAAAAYYY too many suspicious events that some people just refuse to hear because they fear being called a Nutcase. It’s so obvious that the official story of 911 and the explanation for the collapse of the towers as outlined by NIST are not the truth. How could anybody in their right mind not see that??"

I am in no fear of being called a nutcase. My objection is that the procedure here is missing the forest for the trees. Any real or imagined way in which the publicly known story is imperfect becomes evidence for one of a host of other explanations, many of them mutually exclusive and all of them demanding very complicated, very airtight conspiracies to commit mass murder. Any way in which these other explanations are imperfect is ignored, in favor of continuing to pick at the imperfections in the publicly known story.

This is not how we normally go about coming up with explanations for how something happened. It's too self-reinforcing to be a reliable way of finding truth, because it's a ratchet- every piece of evidence for my explanation counts, every piece of evidence against it is a fake, and any awkward questions about how, in theory, my explanation could work at all are the signs of a closed mind.

Let us by all means keep our minds open, but not so open that our brains fall out.

My thoughts: I'm unsure what she's referring to in the main..but I did watch Loose Change and other similarly themed videos and my first reaction whenever I personally run into this line of thought is I remember HIV denialism. I was caught up back in the day thanks to Duesberg and many other prominent scientists, doctors, celebrities...etc.. etc..and they ultimately proved to be nothing more then a fringe group. They were justified to have an open mind and question the theory before enough facts came to light..but eventually they simply became RELIGIOUS about their belief and denialism and instead of proving THEIR claims...(which didn't add up evidentially)...they switched all of their tactics to asking more and more questions and attacking the other side. VERY similar to Creationist tactics. So I'm sympathetic to her being misled...and also very much reminded how easy it is to be sucked in...

HIV denialism stopped making sense, oh, probably some time in the 1990s. Possibly in the 1980s.

"If you ignored the towers and looked only at the Pentagon, there is just too much to dismiss. Even if so called "conspiracy theorists" are wrong about half of what they are saying, there is still the other 50% that is still completely suspicious, to say the least. It’s only human nature to want to know the how/why?

I love knowing the how/why. But I don't see nearly as much "suspicion" as the truthers.

Remember, it is very easy to assert that something is fishy. It takes a good deal more work to answer a question than to ask it. This leads into a well known creationist tactic, for instance, of barraging a scientist with a large number of very trivial, often very badly misinformed questions... and then saying he can't answer them all, and that if even half of them are relevant, evolution is bunk, and he can't answer half of them, so evolution is bunk.

Trouble is, he could answer half, or 90%, or even all of them... but it would take a lot of time and possibly demand a high level of scientific literacy from the audience. If that's not there, then we're left with an awkward situation where the truth is very much not on the side of the person asking all the questions, their own claims to the contrary notwithstanding.

That is where it can get to be too much for people, but just because you don’t have your ready made, canned response for the how and why’s, does not erase that you are expected to believe that certain laws of physics were suspended on September 11th.

Which ones?

[Flagg]

Ask your dumb cunt friend if she's actually read the 9/11 Commission report, because it answers alot of those "unanswered questions" about the aircraft and supposed exercises.