The Ground Zero Clean-Up Was Much Faster and Cheaper Than Expected

There are many articles that say this, here is one example.

The article explains that part of the reason the clean-up was cheaper was because the "bath-tub" that had the foundation for the towers, was much less damaged less expected. This is consistent with what Wood and Reynolds are saying here.

I wonder if the clean-up was quicker in part because there was much less steel than expected to haul away.

See Steven Jones Prevaricate About His "Peer-Reviewed" Paper

Here.

Some New Flight 93 Stuff

Up here.

Ground Zero Smoking Cannon: Where Are All the Core Columns and Beams???

The destruction of the WTC left basically four major types of large structural debris visible in photos like this:

(double click to enlarge)(this image was cropped from a larger picture taken September 23rd, 2001)


There was lots of aluminum cladding (the silvery stuff that spread the farthest and was seen on the rooftops of surrounding buildings), there were sections of the outer wall (these have the characteristic "wheat-chex" appearance, which were groups of columns linked by spandrel plates), there were many small beams of unclear origin (the right size for broken-off outer columns but could also be floor beams -- many floors of the WTC were supported by beams and not trusses-- or small core cross-beams), and last, there were the huge core columns and core cross-beams (the largest single separate columns that are strewn about like matchsticks in the photo above).

The core of the WTC was in fact MASSIVE-- in contrast to some conceptions of the core after 9/11, the core structure took up a huge amount of the space inside the tower-- it was roughly 90 feet by 140 feet in cross-section, in the 207 by 207 foot cross-section of the tower, and it left about 60 feet of floor on two sides and about 30 feet of floor on the other two sides.

The core was composed of 46-47 vertical sets of long columns that went the length of the building, and the core was abundantly cross-braced by steel beams. Additional information on the core structures can be seen here and here.

In the picture above, you can see that some of the very large core columns were about 100 feet long. If we assume that the core was made up of these 100 foot long core columns, it turns out there should have been over 600 core columns (at MIMIMUM-- the exact number depending on whether there were 46 or 47 the whole length and if the core had 100 foot columns the whole way).

The numbers of steel beams in the cross-bracings was much, much greater. At a minimum of 14 large cross-beams per floor, we're talking over 1500 more HUGE steel beams. All told, we're talking about, at MINIMUM, 2100 HUGE steel columns and beams in the core.

Note, if anything, I am underestimating the numbers of core columns and core cross-beams.

So this begs the question: how many core columns and core cross-beams are seen in the remnants of a WTC tower, such as in the remains of WTC1 in the photo here:

I have marked with a black line anything that could be considered a core column or beam.

Erring on the side of calling everything remotely close to a large steel beam or column, I only count about 125 core columns/beams.***

That leaves almost 2000 HUGE STEEL columns and beams unaccounted for!

This picture was taken 9/13/01, and shows that the large columns in the picture above were basically left lying in place since 9/11:



Now sure, some core columns and beams are going to be buried under the rubble and not visible. But almost 2000 of these monster pieces of steel are buried in a rubble pile that wasn't more than 20 feet deep in most places?

I don't think so.

Not to mention that the videos showed that much of the core clearly came down last (or at least large sections of it came down at the end), and therefore the core columns and beams should have been at the top of the pile.

And certainly, the core being the heaviest part of the building, core columns and beams were not going to fall very far from the foot-print of the tower.

So what happened to all the core columns?

I really, really, really, really doubt that jet fuel, or even thermite, caused over one thousand massive steel columns and beams to melt into a puddle. Besides, despite the reports of molten steel under ground zero, I have yet to see a picture of large pool of molten steel at ground zero.

What happened to all the core columns and beams then?

My guess is most of them turned to very fine dust and smoke.

Now you may say this "dustification" idea is just silly, that these huge pieces of steel are there and we just can't see them. But in truth, the rubble/debris pile for each tower was NOT THAT DEEP.

I defy anyone to take 2100 long thin objects (say pencils or toothpicks) and dump them into a pile and get a pile as relatively small as seen with the remains of WTC1-- and also only be able to see less than 10% of the objects at the end. Add in some junk to your pile if you wish.

Of course there is the whole issue of how the core structure was dismantled in the first place-- it's impossible for me to imagine that any gravity driven collapse would completely tear apart the core down to its lowest level.


***It's possible that I missed counting a few columns/beams in the picture, but I can't see missing more than 20. It's probably true I missed a few columns/beams that fell further and were off the bottom edge of the picture-- though looking at other shots of ground zero, I can't have missed more than 20 large columns/beams. Even so, we're still talking about hundreds and hundreds of missing columns and beams.

One formal possibility is that I only counted the largest steel pieces that were the core columns and that all the cross-beams were smaller. There are in fact scads of small individual steel pieces scattered in the footprint of WTC1. I really doubt these are the major core cross-beams, as they seem too small. These small beams probably were individual outer wall columns that broke off, or steel beams that made up some of the floors (several floors had heavy steel beams instead of trusses supporting the floor) or the smaller core cross-beams (there should have been thousands of these). But even if we assume all these small pieces were the cross-beams, and the large steel pieces are only the core columns, we are still missing around HUGE 500 core columns!

Seriously, where are they?

Because if they can't be accounted for, it means the beam weapon that disintegrates steel is a reality.

Is the Iraq War Part of the Cover-Up for 9/11?

UPDATED BELOW

This was the interesting idea of an acquaintance, who made the observation that the Vietnam war was very effective in distracting from the ugly reality of the Kennedy assassination.

Both the Kennedy assassination and 9/11 were effectively coups of the US government. The "powers that be" needed to shield the public from this reality at all costs, and in the case of both 9/11 and the Kennedy assassination, the horrible debacles of Vietnam and Iraq were an extremely useful distraction from these coups.

Yes, war is incredibly costly (though it is ordinary folks who have to pay the most). But think how much more costly it would be to the international monetary system if the US government ever had to admit what it did to Kennedy or what it did on 9/11/01.

I'm not saying that Iraq was set-up specifically as a distraction from 9/11-- there no doubt were a few different reasons for invading Iraq. But a cynical use of the chaos in Iraq is that it allows the media to focus on the politics of the Iraq war -- and avoid talking about 9/11 in any depth.

It is also clear that the media storyline, set by the powers-that-be, is that Iraq is getting worse and worse but we must stay there for now so things don't get even worse-- waiting for something magic to happen.

I'm not saying that things aren't horrible in Iraq, I'm sure things are very bad for many Iraqis and I don't mean to minimize the suffering of the Iraqis to any degree. But I am betting that the will media trumpet more and more how bad things are in Iraq, as time goes on.* This will have the effect of causing more anti-war protests, which will again push the idea of how bad Iraq is, without looking at the larger view of things-- how we never would have been in Iraq in the first place without 9/11.

And yes, this whole idea ties in very neatly with phony anti-war groups that ignore the fact that 9/11 was an inside job.



*Interestingly, to a large extent, this idea dovetails with the right-wing complaint that the media is exaggerating how bad Iraq is.

UPDATE, 11/30/06: Just to clarify my thoughts here-- by no means do I think Iraq was invaded to cover-up 9/11. However, I do think that protracting the war at this phase, with the ridiculous inability of the elites to call for withdrawal, very much helps to serve as a cover-up of 9/11. This whole phase of the war right now, with Iraq apparently degenerating and the US unable to do anything meaningful seems very much contrived. Part of it is Bush's psychology-- he does seem to think withdrawal is losing, but I think he's being brainwashed to a certain extent into this mode of thinking.

Why the Military Would Want a Space-Based Beam Weapon that Can Pulverize Concrete and Steel

To attack missile silos:


Some cool pictures of the inside of an OLD concrete-reinforced silo can be seen here.

The Puppet

I like this:

Ground Zero Smoking Gun #3: What the Hell Happened to the North Wall of WTC1?

In comments, a couple of posts back, Shep linked to this picture of ground zero showing the shell of WTC6 (center) and the sad remnants of WTC1 (right)(and the WTC7 pile off to the left):


This picture, for some reason really made me wonder, what happened to the North wall of WTC1?

This is the wall that would have faced WTC6, and is supposedly what fell down and made this huge gaping hole in WTC6:



The problem is that there really wasn't much in the bottom of that hole in WTC6:

Picture from here.

And the bottom of WTC6 didn't cave in because the parking garage under WTC6 was still intact!

Picture from here.

The Northern wall of WTC1 was a rather massive structure:
1360 feet tall
206 feet wide
of 14 inch thick steel box columns.

The only place it realistically could have gone is into WTC6.

But think about it-- if you chopped up this wall of steel into nice 100 foot by 50 foot sections, and then stacked them up, you'd have a 63.5 foot pile.

In an ideal situation.

If you threw this wall down, so that it fell into a jumble, it would easily be twice as tall-- over 100 feet of debris.

WHERE THE HELL DID ALL THAT STEEL GO????????

It is not in the WTC6 hole-- heck there is not even enough debris in there for the collapsed 8 stories of WTC6!

The wall is not in the footprint of WTC1.

It is, for all intents and purposes, the steel of the north wall is GONE.

The only conceivable explanation is that, indeed, some high-energy weapon disintegrated the steel as it fell, at the same time making huge holes in WTC6.

The other reason this makes sense is that the north wall of WTC1 was predicted to fall right ON THE EDGE OF THE BATHTUB surroundong the WTC complex. Thus, whoever planned the demolition was sure to take extra precuation not to have this massive mega-ton wall fall right on the edeg of the bath-tub.

Keep in mind, when they "pulled down" WTC6, they were very careful to do it so it wouldn't damage the bathtub. This was a major concern.

If the 8 story remnants of WTC6 were a worry to damage the bathtub when it fell down, how exactly was it that the mega-ton WTC1 north wall didn't destroy the bathtub when it came down?

The only possible explanation is that the wall was disintegrated as WTC1 came down.

The Horror That Is Iraq

continues unabated.

John Roberts says the news coverage understates how bad it is:


Of course, this horror would not have occurred without the engineered provocation of 9/11.

Sadly, Afghanistan is not a whole lot better.

Great Cover of One of My Favorite Neil Young Songs

WTC5-- Normal Versus Abnormal Building Damage

The side view is informative:


(double click to enlarge images)

Side view pic from here.

The main point here is that there is some strange damage here that is consistent with a beam weapon fired from above, but of course these holes do not prove it.

In my view, overall, the beam weapon hypothesis is the best explanation for the accumulated phenomenon associated with the destruction of the twin towers.

Note, the beam weapon was almost certainly not a "laser" but rather a microwave weapon with particular affinity for concrete and steel. The idea is that the beam (or beams) vibrated at the proper frequency to blow apart steel and concrete and turn them into fine dust.

I've Generally Tried to Avoid Israel-Palestine Issues

because I know it's a very touchy and complicated issue.

(And I am NOT one of those who blames Israel/Jews for 9/11. I have never done that, though there clearly is some evidence for Israeli involvement-- and it was probably a deliberate red herring, IMO.)

But goddamn, what Israel is doing to the Palestinians is completely out of control.

I read a couple of days ago that for the first time a Palestinian GRANDMOTHER became a suicide bomber. How sick do things have to be for Palestinians to be so desperate?

Doesn't Israel see what they are doing is a recipe for a disaster of titanic proportions? What they are doing seems to be the worst sort of short-sightedness-- and frankly it is not unlike the thinking that led the US into the Iraq war.

If nothing else, it is clear that Israel has lost whatever moral authority it once had in the world. And again, this is not unlike what has happened to the US.

Bugs in the Software

Good column from Krugman on the highly suspect Florida 13th district congressional race. And once again, it's amazing how little attention this has gotten.

Ground Zero Smoking Gun #2

The strange circular holes in WTC5:

(double click to enlarge)

(double click to enlarge)
There are some other holes that are also very suspicious, but not as perfectly rounded.

I don't think there is any official explanation for these round holes, although I guess if an official HAD to explain them, they would say probably they were caused by falling debris from either WTC1 or WTC2.

The main problem is that there is NO conceivable way that irregular-shaped clusters of outer columns falling from WTC1 or WTC2 would cause such rounded holes!

So, we are left with the explanations that the holes are:

1) photo-shopped into the photo.

2) caused by shots of the beam weapon that was also used to take down the twin towers from above.

Since explanation number 2 explains things significantly better than explanation number 1, it seems like the logical choice.


Another problem with the holes is that WTC5 was at the corner of the complex and was not in a good position to get heavily pelted by debris from the towers:


(from here)

For instance, note how part of WTC4 was much closer to tower 2, but survived roughly intact.

Some Worthy Hercule Poirot Quotes

from "Thirteen at Dinner", by Agatha Christie, 1933

She knows. And so she answers questions in the light of her knowledge, not by reason of remembered facts. The positive witness should always be treated with suspicion, my friend. The uncertain witness, who doesn't remember, isn't sure, will think a minute-- ah! Yes, that's how it was-- is infinitely more to be depended upon!

Facts that are concealed acquire a suspicious importance. Facts that are frankly revealed tend to be regarded as less important than they really are.

(speaking to Captain Hastings) When the criminal sets out to do a crime, his first effort is to deceive. Whom does he seek to deceive? The image in his mind is that of the normal man.... You show me what the criminal wishes me to believe. It is a great gift.

Time for Another Exciting Edition of

9/11 ODDS

Very little in this world is certain, and therefore it is difficult to be absolutely certain of many aspects of 9/11. Moreover, contrary to what some people seem to think, my ideas for what happened on 9/11 have evolved, as I take in new evidence and/or analyze new evidence.

The following are how I rate various aspects of 9/11, in betting terms (and yes, I would bet real money on these if it were possible):

1) Some officials in the US government had specific foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks: 1,000 to 1

2) Some officials in the US government aided the hijackers at various points before 9/11: 100 to 1

3) Some officials in the US government had a direct hand in carrying out the attacks: 100 to 1

4) Flight 77 did not crash into the Pentagon: 100 to 1

5) No conventional plane hit the Pentagon: 50 to 1

6) Pre-planted explosives and outside means such as exotic weaponry caused the total collapses of the WTC twin towers: 100 to 1

7) WTC7 was brought down by controlled demolition of some form: 100 to 1

8) no plane crashed at all in Shanksville and the crash site was a complete hoax: 50 to 1

9) no conventional plane crashed in Shanksville: 100 to 1

10) flight 11 did not hit WTC1: 100 to 1

11) flight 175 did not hit WTC2 (assuming fllight 175 was a Boeing 767): 1,000 to 1

12) at least some videos and photos of the second hit were faked: 1,000 to 1

13) Bush had some specific foreknowledge about what was going to happen on 9/11: 10 to 1

14) The civil air defense (NORAD) response to the hijackings was distracted and/or disabled by wargames being run on 9/11: 1 to 1 (confusing since it's not clear what kind of planes there were that could have been intercepted)

15) The 9/11 attacks did not involve any conventional planes: 10 to 1

16) The 9/11 attacks did not involve any planes at all and were a hoax facilitated by pre-planted explosives, planted plane parts and video fakery: 1 to 1

17) There is a cover-up/disinfo campaign about 9/11 being maintained by the government: 100 to 1

18) There is a cover-up about 9/11 being maintained at high levels by the media: 100 to 1

Confusing

Why don't Democrats complain about obvious vote-rigging schemes?

Or, if they ARE complaining, at least complain loud enough to get some media attention?

I guess the most likely possible explanations are:

1) the Dems are afraid of being called "conspiracy kooks" without more evidence

2) the Dems don't care about this sort of cheating because they do it themselves (or want to do it in the future)

3) the Dems think there are more important issues they need to deal with


1 and 3 are a bit silly, but 2 is obviously NOT silly... which makes it the right epxlanation???

Unconventional Weapons in Iraq

A five-part series now up on YouTube.

Ground Zero Smoking Gun #1

from here. (double click to enlarge)

I don't know quite how they did this, but somehow they tilted this huge section of WTC1 wall so it fell UP the street rather than fall accross the street and damage the World Financial Center:

(double click to enlarge)

This all goes to the point of how little major collateral damage there was to NON-WTC buildings.

Judy Wood has an amazing picture of this section of wall from the street perspective on this page.

This section was laying right in West Side Highway, ready for trucks to come and haul it away, and was one of the first things they cleaned up-- therefore is not visible in many pics of Ground Zero.

CONTEST

Who will be the first to describe what is in this photo? What structures are we seeing and what direction was this photo taken from?

There is a prize, a $20 gift certificate from Amazon.com.

Leave answers in the comments section, please.

More Cool Videos from Coffinman

The "Hutchison effect"-- possibly related to the technology used to bring down the WTC-- wild stuff!

Scalar weapons at the WTC? (basically pictures from Judy Wood's paper set to Bach's Fugue in D minor (BWV565).

Jim Fetzer on Judy Wood's beam weapon work: part 1 and part 2.

911 Logic

More intense analysis of 9/11 TV coverage-- this time the editing of the CNN Pipeline of the 9/11 morning footage.

It looks like "Still Diggin'" has found something interesting, but frankly, the post is a bit confusing and not easy to follow.

It's probably not so bad if you have quite a bit of time to spend going through it carefully, but unfortunately I don't have that kind of time.

"Mythbusters"-- the TV Show

I never seen the show, but these guys sound like they might be up for re-creating various aspects of 9/11-- whether 110 story buildings can completely collapse from fire and asymmetric damage in the upper stories; whether planes can crash into a steel framed building, make a cut-out shape of themselves in the side then completely disintegrate, etc.

Lessons of Vietnam

Why do we have a president who is tragically incapable of learning them?

There Is a Problem with Steven Jones

Even Jim Fetzer is seeing the light.

CIA Covert Operations

The RFK assassination.

WTC1 Debris

The debris pile in the footprint of WTC1 is absurdly small -- it is 20 feet deep at most. We're talking about a 1360 foot building turning into a 20 foot pile of rubble.

Excluding the core and structural core, if you simply use a very conservative figure of 6 inches of solid compacted material per floor, the fallen floors should have been AT MINIMUM 55 feet of debris.

IN REALITY the debris pile would have been much bigger than 55 feet in height due to the huge core columns that came down along with the floors.

Even if you assume the debris was spread over twice the footprint of WTC1 (though remember, we are talking about the FLOORS here, not the walls that clearly blew outwards-- the floors appeared to have gone straight down)-- we are talking a debris pile of 27 feet AT MINIMUM, just from the floors.

Now-- it is possible that the basement region of WTC1 collapsed-- though I can't find any evidence for that and this clearly didn't happen for WTC2-- and that much of the WTC1 debris went in there. It seems to me that if the basement region collapsed, we would see more of a cratering effect around WTC1, and this clearly is not seen. Nonetheless, the possibility that much debris went below the ground is why this debris pile is merely very suspicious rather than an absolute smoking gun.

Paper-Mache Planes?

Police State Apparatus in Place for a Coming Economic Meltdown?

Hard Times on the Way--Bush's Chernobyl Economy, by Mike Whitney

Interesting Words from an Ex-Pilot

I am an ex AA/TWA pilot and I know for sure that 911 was something other than we've been told. Deep down, I bet most of the other AA and UAL pilots know this also, but for some reason that I can't explain, they just cannot go there, probably from their former brainwashing in the US military or other thought control/ thought protection devices, mental shields, call it whatever you want, emotional protections, etc.

But if you can get them to accept that the US government is not some Devine (sic) force sent from above to provide heavenly justice here on earth, maybe you will open their minds and hearts to further thought and discussion. Good Luck. God Bless.

(shamelessly stolen from a private message board)

The World Trade Center: a Brief Post-Mortem

(double click to enlarge)


WTC1 (the north tower)-- completely annihilated, with amazingly little debris left

WTC2 (the south tower)-- completely annihilated, with somewhat more debris than WTC1, but still amazingly little debris.

WTC3 (the Marriot hotel)-- essentially annihilated, with some debris piled up

WTC4-- half was completely annihilated, half more or less intact

WTC5-- this building had the largest footprint of any of the WTC buildings (lower right side of the complex). It essentially remained upright but had a number of very odd holes punched in its roof

WTC6-- this building had the 2nd largest footprint of the WTC buildings. It is the one with a huge gaping hole in it's center-- though it essentially remained upright. The origin of this huge hole is not really clear; it is not clear that debris from the WTC1 demolition caused the huge straight-sided all-the-way-through-to-the-bottom hole.

WTC7-- a huge building that collapsed into an incredibly neat pile (between two non-WTC buildings on the right side of the complex).

Just as a matter of forensics here, what gets me are:

1) the huge WTC towers are blasted down to their bases-- the massive cores are GONE.

2) for some reason, WTC2 was a little messier than WTC1 and left a larger debris pile.

3) overall the debris piles from WTC1 and WTC2 are much smaller than you would expect for "normal" building collapses.

4) the odd holes in the roofs of WTC5 and WTC6

5) the lack of debris like filing cabinets and doorknobs.

6) how much of the underground structure was left intact.

I really don't think Beam Weapons as an explanation for Ground Zero are crazy at all, when you look at what happened.

Agatha Christie: Literature for Conspiracy Theorists

Awareness of the extent of the 9/11 conspiracy is very troubling and in some ways life-changing.

Most notably I have absolutely no patience for what passes for political discussion on TV. It is all bullshit.

I cannot even watch mainstream news programs at all, they all disgust me with their active denial of the reality of 9/11 and rigged-elections and the extreme lawlessness of the Bush administration.

Mostly I either watch sports (all the major sports except hockey) or Hindu soap operas (my wife watches these).

I am fairly tolerant of movies, as they are pure escapism, but I don't get to watch too many adult movies because of my kids.

In terms of books, I find most history irrelevant or biased, and most non-fiction too trivial. For a while I read a lot of books on 9/11, but I have become bored with those now, as it is mostly stuff I know.

Recently though, I have fallen in love with Agatha Christie mysteries. They are charmingly written and best of all, they completely exonerate the "conspiracy theory" point-of-view.

That is, there is a crime, a murder, which may or may not have an obvious suspect. There is usually some patsy ro someone who is framed. But something is wrong with the "official story". The police just want to go along with the official story, but Hercule Poirot knows that the story doesn't add up. By nothing but cold hard logic, Poirot unravels the case, uncovering an amazing conspiracy and often multiple other smaller crimes along the way.

It's simply wonderful stuff, and the parallels with 9/11 research are striking. That is, the official story just doesn't add up for many many reasons. But the authorities don't want to deal with a complicated conspiracy, they want to close the case on the patsy-- for political reasons.

Thankfully there are a large number of would-be Hercule Poirots to try to REALLY solve 9/11.

More Evidence Dick Cheney Is a Disgrace

to the country.

Making Sure Thousands and Thousands More Die for His Mistake

Bush referring to Iraq: "We'll succeed unless we quit".

He's a bad, bad man.

GOP Vote Rigging Couldn't Stop Democrat Surge?

Interesting.

Engine Trajectory Follow-up

Picture from here-- interestingly, the guy who took the picture didn't SEE the plane, though he was there watching the whole time.

The most noteworthy aspect of this picture is that it shows the smoke trail clearly from the south tower eject, the putative engine of flight 175 that supposedly landed at Church and Murray.

The smoke trail is basically in line with what I projected earlier, though it seems to go a bit further than what I thought and comes closer to where the engine was found. But this may be accounted for by the fact that the smoke took a little bit to develop and has drifted a bit. In the video I looked at, there was nothing close to this smoke trail as the object first ejected from the fireball.

You can also faintly see another eject trail, this fainter one lines up quite well with what I projected.

I will say that IF this picture is legitimate, it is not inconceivable that the engine could have made it out to Church and Murray.

HOWEVER, the main reasons why the engine found at Church and Murray was most likely planted and not from a plane that hit the South tower are:

1) the engine piece was found under a canopy, with no hole in the roof showing how it got there and it seems unlikely someone would have rolled this large piece of flaming hot evidence there

2) the starboard engine of the plane that hit the South tower collided with a floor slab and it seems very likely this would have kept the engine from sailing out the other side of the tower

3) the engine would have had to weave between several tall buildings to get to Church and Murray

4) the distance travelled by the eject is not clearly the right trajectory to land at Church and Murray

5) between the videos and the plane-shaped hole, it is clear that no conventional plane hit the tower

FURTHER-- there are reasons to doubt this authenticity of this picture. If you look at this video or this video, there is no sign of such a strong smoke trail from the eject.

Additionally, the trail doesn't seem quite right-- it starts off on a normal arc, but then straightens out quite a lot between the two large buildings. This is more obvious on a magnification of the picture-- the first part of the trail looks okay, but the the second half as it nears the ground looks a bit fake (between WTC7 and the Woolworth building). It's not unlike someone decided the trail needed to go out further than it really did and artificially extended the trail:



Heck, it's not like this would the FIRST picture or video from 9/11 that was manipulated! (Sometimes it seems as if the majority of them are altered!)

Another odd thing about this picture is that there are no signs of helicopters about the WTC. Several videos showed a helicopter right to the east of the towers during the second hit, but there is no sign of a chopper here.

This is one project I would like to start on when I have time-- look at all the videos of the 2nd hit and try to find which helicopters and other weird things in the sky are consistent from video to video and then make a map of where everything was.

Also, remember this guy did not see the plane (though he says he talked to people who saw it), and there is only one video of the 2nd hit taken from the ground (this one).

So, the bottom line is that I am very suspicious of the too large smoke trail in this picture and I still think it is most likely the engine was planted.

The Elite Media

You've probably seen polls such as this one, that show that up to one-third of Americans believe 9/11 was "an inside job".

Moreover, over 80% of Americans think the Bush administration is hiding something or lying about 9/11.

So, it's safe to say huge swaths of Americans have some doubts about 9/11.

Here's my question: WHERE ARE THESE PEOPLE REPRESENTED IN THE MEDIA???

Isn't it striking that no major media figure has public doubts about the 9/11 attacks?

And it's not like 9/11 was a minor historical footnote-- it has been huge in terms of the direction the politics of the US have gone.

If the media was representative of Americans, we'd have one or two regular columnists of the New York Times openly skeptical of the official 9/11 story and calling for a new investigation!!!

Isn't this curious that there really is no significant figure in the media calling for a new 9/11 investigation?

And the idea that journalists and pundits are so well-informed about everything that they simply know the truth about 9/11 is laughable-- judging by their record with simple things like dealing with the Bush administration's lies about Iraq.

No, the answer is not that journalists know that the official 9/11 story is the absolute truth.

The answer is much more likely that journalists know that 9/11 was an inside job and are keeping it a secret:

...is it normal that members of the press know the answer to a major mystery but they withhold it, as a group, from the public?

Based on my own experience, I'd say the answer to Digby's question is: yes.

I grew up in the Washington area and went to school with lots of children of government and media types. Then I went to Yale, which is also full of such offspring. What I saw was that the corporate media—places like the New York Times, Washington Post, the networks, etc.— and government figures are blatantly, brazenly in bed with each other. And not just metaphorically; it's often literally true. There's Andrea Mitchell & Alan Greenspan; James Rubin & Christiane Amanpour; Judith Miller & a cast of thousands; and so on.

In any case, whoever they're shtupping, they share a mindset: the government and corporate media self-consciously see themselves as a governing elite that runs things hand in hand. That's why Nicholas Kristof is anxious that if hoi polloi keep calling George Bush a liar, it may make America "increasingly difficult to govern." And it's why Katherine Graham famously said this, in a speech at the CIA to new recruits:

"There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets, and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows."

William Greider explained the perspective of people like Graham and Kristof and their political cuddlebunnies in his book Who Will Tell the People:

In many private quarters of Washington, Alexander Hamilton's derisive dictum — "The People! The People is a great beast!" — has become an operating maxim. Survival in office requires a political strategy for herding "the beast" in harmless directions or deflecting it from serious matters it may not understand. Now and then, to the general dismay of political elites, Hamilton's "beast" breaks loose and tramples the civility of the regular order, though this usually occurs on inflammatory marginal issues that have little to do with the real substance of governing.

Weirdly, in fact, the media may be more invested in the status quo, and more concerned about "the people" going berserk, than actual politicians. Officeholders come and go, but the Washington Post is eternal.

(snip)

But the point is the powerhouse media and their politician lovemates truly do feel there are things normal, grubby Americans simply can't handle. Moreover, it has nothing to do with political parties. Everything I've seen in my life confirms that, with few exceptions, they feel this way across the (extremely narrow) political spectrum.

If you're not part of their little charmed circle, believe me, all your worst suspicions about them are true. They do think you're stupid. They do lie to you. They do hate and fear you. Most importantly, they think you can't be trusted with the things they know—because if you did know them, you'd go nuts and break America.

Right-wing extremist---

fake anthrax terrorist.

Somehow it's not so shocking.

If By Some Chance You Think There Is Nothing Seriously Wrong with the US

you really need to read this, on how fundamentally wrong the Military Commissions Act is.

Being "Nosy": Intense Analysis of the Salter Live 2nd Hit Footage and the "Nose-Out" Phenomenon

Here.

They seem to a make a good case for CGI technology being used for the plane.

Plane or No Plane-- Which Is the Fake?

Plane:

No plane:



Plane:

No plane:



Plane:

No plane:



Plane version:

No plane version:


Here is the no-plane version of the "Cheney hit" video.

Here are frames extracted from the complete plane version-- the plane comes in at frame 1362.

One thing that is useful in the Cheney hit video is how the footage has discolorations that come and go. These make it useful to align the frames-- and the two videos do line up fairly well in terms of the smoke puffs and explosion.

If the fakers took the plane OUT of the original, they did a good job!

If the fakers put a plane IN to the original, they didn't do such a good job. The plane certainly LOOKS fake-- I think most people would agree. That doesn't automatically make the plane fake, of course, but it doesn't help.

There are a few interesting things about this no-plane video. One is this strange feeling that I have seen this video before-- though I have no idea where I could have seen it. The other thing, which may relate to the first thing, is that I always imagined if there was video fakery of the 2nd plane, that this is what the towers would have looked like as they were "hit"-- just an explosion exactly like when the plane hit, but with no plane image.

The last thing is that it is fascinating how the building damage starts with the smoke puffs corresponding to the engines on the plane. What is causing this? Beam weapons? Internal explosives? Missiles?

Note: the plane version of the Cheney hit clip can be viewed here.

Just a Reminder

Afghanistan is still a disaster

Iraq is still a horrible bloody mess

Bush and Cheney and their henchmen are still evil and remain unpunished

and still no one has been prosecuted or even held to account for 9/11 being an inside job.

In other words-- THERE IS STILL WORK TO BE DONE!

Excellent Essay on the Illusions of 9/11

from "Ningens".

"Beam weapons almost ready for battle"

MSNBC, Jan 11, 2006:

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. - There is a new breed of weaponry fast approaching — and at the speed of light, no less. They are labeled "directed-energy weapons," and they may well signal a revolution in military hardware — perhaps more so than the atomic bomb.

Directed-energy weapons take the form of lasers, high-powered microwaves and particle beams. Their adoption for ground, air, sea, and space warfare depends not only on using the electromagnetic spectrum, but also upon favorable political and budgetary wavelengths too.

The technology is there, and no doubt it was there in September 2001.

Hunt the Boeing III, WTC2 Edition, Updated

Hunt the Boeing III, WTC2 Edition, version 1.5

The First 2nd Hit Video Showing No Plane?

See here, via here.

Some explanation, not very satisfying, is here.

The big question is where did this video come from????

Evil

-- any engineer who has seen all the evidence of the destruction of WTC1 and WTC2 AND knows how fast they came down, and still maintains airplanes, jet fuel and gravity brought down the buildings.

Evil, I say!

Star Wars Weapon and the Destruction of the WTC

Judy Wood has some cool new additions to page 3, page 4 , and there is an appendix on space based lasers (which I haven't read yet).

The new pictures on pages 3 and 4 are incredible, some of them I've never seen before.

Helicopters

There were lots around the WTC, seen in various 2nd hit videos.

This video shows a chopper coming around the right side of WTC1 (to the west) right after the 2nd hit:


Chris Bornag has compiled a bunch of intriguing video clips on YouTube relating to helicopters and other aircraft around the WTC. According to Bornag:

Choppers that were at the WTC on 9/11 include: NYPD Unit #3: Officers Schub and Kelhetter; #6, Detective Semendinger and Officer Ciccone; #12, Sgt. Rowley, Detective LaGarenne, Officers Diaz and Jordan; and #14, Officers Walsh, Hayes, Gromling, and Maier. While Lt. Glenn A. Daley "helped coordinate the response from the NYPD Aviation Unit Operations Center".

If we make the go with the idea that there really was no 2nd plane, that it was video fakery, a good explanation for the "witnesses" is that they actually saw and/or heard one of the helicopters and thought it was the plane.

Bob and Bri Video

Blog page with video and links here.

Custom CGI Planes

Has anyone ever seen a plane that looks like this?


This is from the movie "Anger Management".

That is one freaky looking plane-- in particular the engines.

Kind of reminds of the freaky planes we see in the 2nd hit videos.

I'm wondering if Hollywood plane artists have signature defects that they build into their plane images.

That would explain the weird plane images from 9/11...

UPDATE: the plane looks roughly like a 737, as the 737 has slightly flat bottomed engines-- though no 737 I can find has engines that squashed on the bottom. It's like the CGI artist grossly exaggerated the normal character of the plane. Much like what happened with the 9/11 planes.

UPDATE 2: This 737 has flat bottomed oblongish engines, but again, this feature is grossly exaggertaed in the plane from the movie-- presumably a CGI model.

Can Anyone Explain How a Gravity-Driven Collapse Caused This?

We see a huge chunk of building just breaking apart as it is falling.

Did Bush and Rove Throw the Election?

I had already speculated that this might have been done to take heat off the government from 9/11 activists-- sort of a bait-and-switch trick.

This article suggests Bush and Rove threw the election in order to take the heat off the GOP for the Iraq war. That is, whatever happens in Iraq can now be equally blamed on the Democrats.

It's an interesting idea, and like any "conspiracy theory", makes some sense and fits some of the evidence.

Another idea is that Bush was NOT benefiting completely from complete GOP control of Congress. He could get his programs through, but his personal approval was taking a beating because he got blamed for everything that went wrong.

In a sense, as I suggested before, you could imagine Rove thinking that the GOP giving up control of Congress would be a GOOD THING for both Bush and the ability of the GOP to win the president in 2008.

"The powers that be" would also want to promote the Democrats in order to maintain an illusion that US democracy was not rigged. And we KNOW the media is in the tank with "the powers that be".

The problem of course is that all this assumes the Democrats wouldn't investigate or prosecute the Bushies.

We already have had Howard Dean saying the Democrats would NOT impeach Bush (presumably he "meant" right away), so it will be VERY interesting to see how much damage the Democrats actually try to inflict on the Bushies.

While of course there is reason to impeach Bush and Cheney many times over, I'll be very surprised if it happens.

If Bush and Cheney are impeached, so much for the conspiracy theory!

If at most only lower Bush men are investigated and prosecuted, the conspiracy is alive and well!

Transponders

This old short article is still interesting and makes an important point about the transponders of the 9/11 planes being turned off.

Any pilot who was good enough to fly a large Boeing would have known that turning off the transponder would:
1) make the plane only somewhat harder to track by radar
2) would have immediately alerted ground control to a serious problem with the plane

So what benefit to the hijacker was gained by turning off the transponder?

There are of course many reasons to be suspicious of the whole hijacking story, but I think this is an interesting angle.

===> If one was a conspiracy theorist, one would immediately realize that turning off the transponder would make it easier for the plane to disappear-- for instance, to land at a secret location and to carry out a plane-swap of some sort.

Winds of Change

Even though 9/11 clearly transcends party politics, it is still very hard not to feel that the Democratic take-over of Congress is a huge sea change that takes the wind out the sails of the 9/11 "movement".

To a large extent, people's fears were not so much about 9/11 and the prospect of another 9/11-like attack, but rather there were real fears about where the US was heading under Bush and the GOP. Fears of overt fascism and a one-party police-state engaged in permanent war appeared reasonable.

All that has changed in a very remarkable and dramatic way.

Thus, for me, it's hard not to feel some sense of relief and some sense that our Democracy works.

Moreover, for me, there is a desire to put 9/11 aside and "get on with my life" and try to accept that there simply are things I cannot meaningfully change.

I am certainly not saying that 9/11 was not an inside job nor am I saying that I trust the Democrats. It will be extremely interesting to see how different the Democrats truly are from the Bushies in terms of promoting war and torture and using terrorism as a political tool and importantly how much of the Bush era abuses the Democrats thoroughly investigate and prosecute. I think in six months we will know for sure whether the Democrats are merely going to put a prettier face on what the Bushies did, versus embark on a new more progressive and humane path for the country.

I suspect things will be mostly business as usual with the Democrats-- with only the worst (perhaps more superficial) aspects of Bushism pushed back.

But still, with such a large change in the political scene, there is room for hope for a radically new direction and perhaps even some meaningful new investigation into 9/11.

Though right now, it sure feels like much of the impetus for the 9/11 movement is severely diminished-- which will make MANY people happy, no doubt.

And perhaps that was the whole point of having the Democrats win anyway, because they knew the Democrats would not cover up 9/11 just as well as Bush and the GOP.

Even though the winds of change are blowing, perhaps they will blow us right back to where we were going anyway.

No One Talks About WTC3

But it was a large building-- a 22 story hotel nestled next to the twin towers.

WTC3 was almost completely obliterated, presumably by debris falling from WTC1 and WTC2. Here are some fascinating pictures of WTC3 during the destruction of WTC2 and after WTC2 was demolished.

Looks to me like two concrete floors slabs broke off and fell here along with large sets of exterior columns. What is strange is much of WTC2 tilted to the east as it went down, but here we have a large chunk of WTC2 falling to the west.


You can see these large sections of building falling AWAY from the tower-- notice the intact tower wall in the background. So what is driving the global collapse if huge amounts of the building are falling to either side?


This is from the same view as above, and what is truly freaky here is the sets of exterior columns from WTC2 that have planted themselves into the ground like a set of lawn darts. If nothing else, this picture illustrates how much structural damage a large tower can absorb without undergoing complete collapse!


It really is absurd to think that a limited amount of asymmetric damage on upper floors of the WTC towers led to COMPLETE decimating collapse of the towers. If you look at the pictures of ground zero, there IS NOTHING LEFT of the tower structure except for some perimeter walls. How the hell could the massive core structures completely disappear without some extremely powerful outside force?

Hunt the Boeing III: WTC2 Edition!

This is a Boeing 767-200. It has a wingspan of 156 feet and is 159 feet long.
According to the official 9/11 story, this plane hit the South (WTC2) tower of the World Trade Center.


This picture shows WTC2 right after a Boeing 767-200 supposedly hit the tower. Is this what you would expect to see if a huge plane going several hundred miles per hour smashed into a massive steel-framed building?


This picture shows WTC2 a fraction of a second after a Boeing 767-200 supposedly hit the tower. The plane supposedly hit on the left side, but notice how there is no fireball developing where the plane hit. The only fireball is forward and to the side of the entry site. Is this what you would expect if a 767-200 with wings full of jet fuel smashed into thick steel columns of a massive steel-framed building? Would you expect the wings to stay intact and then only dump and ignite their fuel once inside the building?


This picture shows the face of WTC2 where the Boeing 767-200 supposedly entered. Do you see any plane wreckage? Do you see how a huge plane could have gone in this hole which is blocked with building debris? Do you see where the huge tail of the plane went into the building? What happened to the tail? There are no signs of it breaking off.



Here is the other side of WTC2 from where the plane officially entered. Do you see where the plane exited the building? Do you see plane wreckage piled up in the windows? Do you know how an aluminum plane can make a cut-out silhouette shape of itself in a massive steel-framed building then completely disappear inside a building only slightly wider than the plane?


Did you find the Boeing 767-200? Can you still defend the official version of events?

Well done! Remember to get in touch with master of illusion, David Copperfield. He'll be glad to hear from you!


If you found the official version lacking in something (like a Boeing 767-200, for example): if you begin to question whether a Boeing 767-200 really did crash into the WTC2 tower then, no doubt, you'll be wondering what happened to the aircraft that disappeared. You will probably ask yourself why the US government even told you this story in the first place and you'll start asking yourself lots of other questions besides. Don't worry! This is perfectly normal!

Please also see "Hunt the Boeing II: Shanksville Edition" for more Boeing hunting fun!

What the New Democratic Congress Should Do

In this order:

1) repeal the atrocious Bush Military Commissions Act and most of the Patriot Act

2) set up a new, thoroughly honest non-bipartisan investigation into 9/11

3) investigate handling of pre-war intelligence on Iraq by the Bush administration

4) expedite the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, as soon as some international stabilizing force can be deployed

5) expedite measures to combat global warming

6) prosecute the torturers at Abu Ghraib, Gauntanamo and elsewhere

7) payment of reparations to the Iraqis

8) launch a full investigation of vote suppression and manipulation in the 2004 election by the GOP

9) investigate who Bush has been spying on with his "terrorist surveillance program"

10) re-investigate the Anthrax attacks and FEMA's handling of Katrina

Well, I can DREAM, can't I?

IMPORTANTLY:

===> LAUNCH IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS and/or INDICT FOR WAR-CRIMES as soon as the evidence points in the direction of law-breaking or war-crimes.

(This shouldn't be too hard)



-------------------
I like how Bush and Rove were so confident they would hold Congress.

They must be PANICKING now.

However, I'm sure Rove's spin is: this is the best thing that could happen to Bush!

Now, he can blame his screw-ups on the Dems!

One Bush Administration War Criminal Down, Many More Still To Go

Breaking: RUMSFELD TO RESIGN!!!

Clearly, the man was getting out before he could be indicted, I mean investigated, by a Democratic Congress.

Rats fleeing from a ship.

It would be funny if it weren't so serious.

Ahh, memories of Rumsfeld:


More here too.

UPDATE: Robert gates the successor? Here are some reasons to oppose him, here is a short version.

Feels Like a New Day

This election is/was a huge repudiation for Bush and the GOP, no two ways about it.

It's nothing short of a huge popular groundswell that changed Congress, and it's close to a miracle that the House could change hands given how many "safe seats" there are throughout the country.


A more conspiratorial view is the "powers that be" rigged up a Democratic win in order to placate the people and send a message to Bush to get in line.

Right now, I prefer to think that this election WAS a true popular uprising.

Fours years ago, when I was an extreme Democratic partisan, I would have been ecstatic at this election result.

Now I just feel relieved to have SOME degree of balance in the country-- though I know the Dems will avoid/cover up 9/11 just as much as the Repugs.

Though I do think it is cool to have a female majority leader in congress-- for the first time!



Lastly, electronic voting machines are still very worrisome, and I hope that Democrats will not feel like these devices are completely safe because they managed to win this election.

The GOP Stranglehold on Federal Power Is Broken

Four years of complete control was enough. Americans have clearly had enough of Republican bullshit.


This is big news, and certainly makes things more interesting in Washington DC.

This most probably doesn't mean much in terms of justice for 9/11, but at least some sense of balance will be restored to the country.

The big question will be what sort of investigations the House Democrats will start and how far will they take their investigations?

This should be very interesting.

Hey, Where'd That Engine Come From?

UPDATED BELOW

I kept waiting and looking for someone else to do this analysis, but I figured I'd go ahead and do it after I noticed Judy Wood alluded to it in her updated beam weapon paper (see Figure 9). She noted that the engine had to go over some fairly tall buildings to land where it was found.

That is why I was looking at this video:

because it has the best angle for seeing the eject from the South tower explosion.

Here is a diagram of where the engine landed:


Here is a diagram of the ejects from the South tower explosion taken from the video above:

I marked conservative trajectories for the ejects that have the chance of going the furthest. By conservative, I mean I actually extended the ejected debris' trajectories as much as possible to maximize the distance (you'll see why in a moment). Eject 2 is larger and more intensely flaming. It goes a shorter distance than eject 1. Eject 1 flames out very early and thus is unlikely to be the engine, but I've included it here because its' trajectory puts it on a further path than eject 2.

On a separate piece of paper (not shown), I extended the towers to ground level and extended the trajectories to surface level. While admittedly this is key analysis I am not showing, you'll have to trust me when I say that eject 1 (which is not even very likely to be the engine) could not have gone further than 4.6 WTC lengths from the North tower.

This is shown here:


Keep in mind, that I am trying to maximize the distance the ejected debris could have traveled, and it still doesn't get there-- again assuming the engine was not the largest most flaming ejected debris.

All in all, it seems rather likely the engine piece was planted, for the following reasons:
1) the engine was not clearly the right type for a 767 and was certainly never identified as a 767 engine by the government
2) the engine piece was found under a construction canopy, without any hole in the top and without any major disruption of the sidewalk
3) I know of no witness describing the flaming engine coming from the south tower
and landing on the sidewalk
4) the engine was much too far from the south tower to be the flaming ejected debris from the tower explosion
5) the engine was most likely too far from the south tower to be the ejected debris from the tower explosion that flamed out early in its path, and moreover the engine would be more likely to be the flaming debris



I welcome anyone's else analysis on this.

UPDATE, 11.7.06-- Here is the diagram to which I alluded:


Here is an updated map showing where the flaming debris came down:


It should be clear that the large flaming debris doesn't come close to where the egnine component was found.

ALSO NOTE: there is a VERY LARGE building between the maximum trajectory distance and where the engine was found. Thus, even if my trajectory distance analysis is too short, there is still the problem that the debris was getting low out at the end of its path and it seems essentially impossible that it could have hopped over the tall building in front of the Church and Murray intersection.

ALSO NOTE AS WELL: where the engine piece was found, at Church and Murray, is really quite off from the trajectory of the official plane path. It is not so noticeable in the cartoon shown above but it is very noticeable in the overhead photo. Thus, it seems even more unlikely that the engine came from a plane impacting the South tower, since it is unlikely an engine going through a building and deflected at an angle would travel so far.

The final killer piece of evidence, as noted by a commenter, is that officially the starboard engine HIT A FLOOR SLAB. Meaning that it is almost impossible that the engine could have flown at high speed out the other side after smashing into outer steel column, a steel spandrel plate and a concrete floor slab.

Since the "UA175" port engine officially had to travel through the dense steel network of the core section of the building, there is no way it could have made it through the building, and there is little sign of anything exiting the north face of the south tower near the core section.

Another 2nd Hit Video with Too Small of a Plane

The length of a 767-200 (160 feet) should be 0.77 the width of the WTC (207 feet). The plane in this video is at most 0.69 the width of the WTC.

I guess I would be more comfortable with the idea that a real plane hit the South tower if the videos showed a little more consistency in the size and shape and approach path of the plane...

Last Minute Boost

Anyone else want to wager that the GOP pulls off a last-second election miracle to keep grip on congress, fueled by the Saddam Hussein verdict-- and reinforced by dirty tricks and voting machine shenanigans?

Was the Fuselage Piece Planted on Top of WTC5?

This one:


Check out the analysis here (go down to Figure 62).

You can actually line up the pieces of cladding in the enlarged picture taken from above, and there is no clear sign of the fuselage piece. The picture of the fuselage piece was definitely taken after the aerial picture of Ground Zero.

P2OG

September 26, 2002

Panel wants $7bn elite counter-terror unit
By Pamela Hess
UPI Pentagon Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 (UPI) -- The United States should create an elite group of counter-terror operatives to make the war on terrorism pre-emptive and proactive, duping al Qaida into undertaking operations it is not prepared for and thereby exposing its personnel, a Pentagon report advocating more than $7 billion in new spending will recommend.

United Press International has exclusively obtained documents summarizing the report of the Defense Science Board, which will be publicly released in late October, after it has been presented to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The report, which reads in parts like a fantastical "spy vs. spy" manual, will also advocate tagging key terrorist figures with special chemicals so they can be tracked by laser anywhere on Earth; creating a special SWAT team to surreptitiously find and destroy chemical, biological and nuclear weapons all over the world; and creating a "red team" of particularly diabolical thinkers to plot imaginary terror attacks on the United States so the government can plan to thwart them.

These recommendations and many more comprise the report by the DSB, a panel of private industry executives that advise the Pentagon on technologies, threats and policies. The report outlines billions in new spending on counter-terror operations and an expanded new role for Joint Forces Command in preparing the military for urban battles. The report is entitled "Special Operations and Joint Forces in Countering Terrorism."

The counter-terror operations group alone would require 100 people and at least $100 million a year. Rather than simply trying to find and foil terrorists' plans -- the approach that characterizes the current strategy -- the "Proactive Pre-emptive Operations Group" -- known as P2OG -- would devise ways to stimulate terrorists into responding or moving operations, possibly by stealing their money or tricking them with fake communications, according to the report.

In retrospect, this basically sounds like a blue-print for 9/11-- assuming somehting like this group was operating prior to 9/11 (and it seems doubtful they created this entity out of nothing!).

Of course, if you read the whole article and believe the official 9/11 story, the P2OG SOUNDS GREAT! Howeever, if you think about it, this sort of group could used by unscrupulous actors very easily to create a major terror attack on the US.

But reall, how else to read something like this?

"P2OG would launch secret operations aimed at "stimulating reactions" among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction, meaning it would prod terrorist cells into action..."

9/11 Was About Star Wars

There has been a lot of suspicion of a connection between the PNAC and 9/11, because they wrote about a new Pearl Harbor-type attack before 9/11 that would required to transform the US military. But some people have tried to discount the significance of PNAC in 9/11 because attacking Iraq was only one of their goals, it wasn't THE MAIN goal.

So what was another major goal of PNAC?

The militarization of space and Star Wars programs.

9/11 was about Star Wars. Among other things, 9/11 was a demonstration of new weaponry.

The Salter Footage Smoking Gun

I see other people are picking up on it, though I believe I was the first to calculate that there should have been a plane in the early wide shots.

Keep in mind, officially, UA175 was coming from the southwest or even west before it turned north towards the WTC. Thus, it is clear, the plane SHOULD HAVE BEEN VERY VISIBLE in the early wide shots.

But nothing is there.

Physics Says That...

an object (A) that is completely destroyed upon impact with another object (B) cannot leave a cut-out shape of itself (object A) in the object (B) that destroys it.

I invite anyone to prove me wrong, using an example not related to 9/11.



But I'm sure it will be easier just to call me a drooling idiot than try to refute a point of basic physics.

There Is Something Weird About This Footage

Doesn't it seem like the birds are moving WAY too fast?

Another thing is the plane is much too small for a 767, in terms of length. The plane is only 6/10ths the width of the WTC, making it roughly 124 feet long-- versus 160 feet for a 767-200!

Another Hole in the Carmen Taylor Story

Look at this photo of the hole in WTC2 taken supposedly at 9:16 am by Carmen Taylor.

The photo is clearly taken either from some elevation or from a distance with an excellent telephoto lens.

Here's the problem. Carmen Taylor had a regular digital camera and was supposed to be on a ferry to the Statue of Liberty at 9:16am.

Once again: WHO REALLY TOOK THE FAMOUS CARMEN TAYLOR PICTURE OF THE 2ND PLANE?

Or perhaps more to the point, who really FAKED the picture?

The Worst Congress Ever!!!!

It's no exaggeration.

Shame on anyone who votes for one of these incumbent GOP clowns.





(Yes, the article is by Matt Taibbi, who I have noted before is a great and funny writer but who sucks when it comes to 9/11. I really wish Taibbi would be as critical of the official 9/11 story as he is of traditional politics.)

The Not-So-Scholarly Scholars for 9/11 Truth

Regarding the Eric Salter article against the no-planers, a commenter on my post about the article, makes some EXCELLENT points about "The Journal of 9/11 Studies" and Steven Jones:

Methinks Mr. Salter doth protest too much about disinformation. Either the issue is worth addressing in a scholarly article, or it is not.

His article is remarkably unscholarly for a publication purporting to be an academic journal. For example, use of such language as "the absurd missile hypothesis." You can refute it and let your reader come to the conclusion that it is absurd, but you can't call it "absurd." And not only is raising such a hypothesis in no way absurd, I really don't see how he has disproved the hypothesis. It could be a missile of some sort, with wings and a tail."

"Finally, Mr. Salter's statement about Dr. Reynold's "long-winded argument" is just plain rude. I as surprised that the editors of what purports to be a scholarly journal would allow such unprofessional, discourteous language.
-----
"I am, however, a little concerned that Dr. Stephen Jones made statements outside his area of expertise, essentially political statements, and sees himself as part of a "movement"

Because it is so obvious that the towers were demolished by some added energy, I wish he would simply say that as a physicist, fundamental physical principles show that it was impossible that some energy was not added. But it's a free country. In his role as editor of this journal that published Salter, however, I think it fair to criticize for not enforced higher standards. The long, paranoid "Commentary" at the end of Salter's articles about "limited hangouts," etc. , which Salter admits is his view as an "activist" -- how does such material belong in a scholarly journal? It doesn't.

Why didn't Salter simply say that certain arguments A, B, and C are being made, and I think they are implausible for reasons X, Y, and Z? I would have taken his arguments more seriously if he did not so overtly show that he is more concerned about how an argument is perceived than whether it has merit.

I also disagree with Salter's false dichotomy between "moderates who treat physical evidence responsibly" and "radicals" that don't. Salter says discussion of physical evidence should be "non-ideological," yet his paper drips with ideological concerns, many of them bizarre and self-referential.

And how is his friend's reaction to an inquiry relevant to whether the inquiry should be made?

Why is this crap being published in what is supposed to be an academic journal?"

No Osama Tape Yet

But who needs Osama when we have the folks at World Net Daily*-- the people who are willing to do the hard work and poll the "terrorists" What a surprise! Yes indeed, the terorrists want the Democrats to win!

But of course, we knew that all along, didn't we?

But DO the terrorists REALLY want Democrats to win? How do we know they are not playing reverse psychology on us, and they really want Bush to win, but are psyching us out? And how do we know they aren't playing double or triple reverse psychology on us?

And the conventional wisdom is that if Osama appears, it will good for Bush, because he doesn't want Bush to win, even though it makes no sense that Osama would overtly pick a political party and expect his opinion to mean anything.

But what if Osama DOESN'T appear? What will that mean? Does that mean he secretly wants Bush to stay in power-- or he really is rooting for the Democrats?

Oh, it's all so confusing...**



*World Net Daily-- the place that makes Pat Buchanan look like an incredibly reasonable moderate by comparison.

**Just kidding, it's all bullshit of course

Two of Three Recently Identified Ground Zero Remains Were From Flight 11

Of the over thousand people whose remains haven't been ideintified yet, what are the odds?

Apparently these new indentifications are not connected to the new remains that were found in the manhole recently. The new IDs were made because relatives brought in new DNA samples for the victims.

Okaaaay...

I have to say that I have always been skeptical about matching remains with DNA with so many thousands of different samples. It's a logistical nightmare. I'm not saying it's impossible, but there are a lot of places the process could be corrupted.

Also, I am rather curious what new samples the relatives brought in for the victims. What samples could they have found five years later that they didn't find right away?

Another version of the story.

The Case for Planes/No Planes at the WTC on 9/11 Made Real Simple

1) the plane-shaped holes and lack of significant plane debris suggest no conventional aircraft struck either tower

2) the many witnesses who claim to have seen one of the two planes on 9/11 suggest some sort of aircraft were used for the attacks

3) the plane images that do not match any known aircraft* in the 1st and 2nd hit videos and that are often contradictory to each other in the 2nd hit videos suggest the planes are digital cartoons

===> since physical evidence trumps eye-witness evidence, and because eyewitnesses were severely manipulated by TV images, I conclude the most likely explanation is that the witnesses were mistaken, no aircraft hit either tower, all the videos were faked and the plane-shaped hole was made by some other means than a plane.


The only other possible explanation is that some non-conventional plane was used for the attacks, which is what the witnesses saw, and that many of the videos of the plane were altered to show a more proper 767.

However, since we cannot fathom a guess at what kind of plane this might be, whereas we can imagine some mechanism for producing plane-shaped building damage (beam weapon or explosives), the simplest explanation is still that the planes were digital cartoons.

*the planes are either too small for 767's, have improper wing and tail angles, have a distended or bent wing or contain huge bulges next to their wingroot.

Olbermann Sets the Record Straight

It's Impossible To Fake a Video of a Plane Crashing Into a Building

whoops.


Plane Into Building. - video powered by Metacafe

How Bad Is Iraq?

Even the mercenaries are bailing out.

Salter No-Plane Critique Revised and Updated

here.

How Conspiracists vs Skeptics Think

Pretty much sums it up!

Science and Planes Versus No-Planes

Eric Salter got his crappy paper on planes being used on 9/11 published in "The Journal of 9/11 Studies".

Apparently there was supposed to be a paper published in the same issue arguing against planes, which was rejected. This is the paper that was rejected. Nothing really new there for me, but still a good summary of the no-plane evidence.

I can't see that Salter's paper is in anyway more scientific than Reynolds and Rajter's paper, and certainly Salter's paper is more severely flawed from my perspective.

"The Journal of 9/11 Studies" is a joke, in terms of being a scientific publication.