9/11 Truthers
Well, recently I have had negative encounters with both 9/11 conspiracy believers, and 9/11 conspiracy skeptics. It’s kinda what I do I guess. By negative encounters, I mean encounters that frustrated and annoyed me, I’m not casting aspersions. Not yet at least. On the plus side, it cleared up my thinking on a number of issues, and inspired speculation along several lines. Even better, it engendered a lot of passionate discourse, so it’s a perfect blog topic.
OK, I will do this systematically. To start with, my current opinion on 9/11 conspiracy theories involving controlled demolition of the three World Trade Center (WTC) buildings that collapsed on 9/11. Let us call them 9/11 Truthers, they are pretty much the mainstream 9/11 conspiracy movement now. To wit:
I am extremely skeptical for one general reason, and because of a number of “logical bottlenecks” that are difficult or impossible to explain. The general reason is that 9/11 conspiracy theories are based on zero evidence. By that I mean they are based entirely on interpretation of public records. More specifically there are as yet no computer files, memos, recordings, conspirators, etc. that have been found that directly speak of any sort of conspiracy to blow up these buildings. It’s a purely circumstantial case at this point, and hell, until there is real information, who are we going to indict?
Secondly, there are a number of questions raised by the controlled demolition hypothesis that are very hard to answer. Or the answers raise new questions, so they aren’t really answers at all. I won’t bother to list all of them, just some of what I think are the more salient ones:
1. Why? This is the question that would come up the first time the conspirators met. “Why, exactly, are we going to do this Mr Bush?” Bush looks blank. They were already in power, a few backpack bombs in subways would give them all the casus beli they needed for the War on Terror. Why such an elaborate complicated plot involving mass death and damage?
2. Why WTC 7? The plot already involves four hijacked airliners and blowing up two buildings, why complicate an already complicated plot by blowing up a building that no one has ever heard of?
3. Lastly, and thanks to the keen human insight of my august father, how, exactly, would one recruit people into this plot? This isn’t like ordering cops and soldiers to attack rioters or demonstrators or other sub-groups that can be dehumanized. “Psst, want to get in on a plot two blow up some national landmarks and kill thousands of Americans?” I don’t think that would work very well.
So, moving right along, first my annoyance with the skeptics. I have always found skeptics somewhat annoying. They often go beyond skepticism to outright disdain and ridicule. I’m sorry, but if you are claiming to be the voice of reason, then you should make your case with reason. I don’t see how it can be any other way, but I have been ridiculed and called names for even suggesting that.
In this specific recent case, it was very politic, I just got kind of bored with the group. I like to approach things from original principles. I’ve read all the evidence surrounding 9/11 conspiracies, I’m still a skeptic, but I enjoy attacking the problem logically. “If 9-11 Truthers are correct, does this lead us to any testable questions?” is a very interesting question to me. Alas, I’ve done a poor job of expressing it apparently.
On the plus side, I left the group without any snarkiness on my part, since none was warranted. I hope. The old Doug could never have done that. Heck, I really shouldn’t even have left the group, but that part of me is changing too. Still, as my friends know, under my charming exterior, I am more than part misanthrope. Since I see it’s now possible for me to find out how much Neanderthal DNA I have, maybe I’ll get to the bottom of this.
Last but not least, the 9/11 Truthers. Well, they seems to have achieved almost a cult like status. I could be wrong, but it appears to me that many Truthers are absolutely convinced that their explanation of the events of 9/11 is the only possible explanation. And that anyone who disagrees is either deluded, or an agent of the government. They can’t seem to accept even the possibility that they might be wrong.
So debate is kind of pointless, and ends up being endless argument over interpretation of the data. The particular example that got my goat is the videos showing the collapse of WTC 7. In one video there is a piece of building facing apparently falling at free fall speed, as if there was nothing underneath it. Truthers insist that this means it must have been a controlled demolition. Um, yeah. I’m not an expert at building collapse. I do know that if a lay person tells me that this tiny fragment of debris in a videotape is proof positive of their theory, I say bullshit. If they claim an expert said it, I check with the other experts. And in this case I did, a few dizzying pages of math I didn’t understand and comments I could barely parse, and one thing was clear. The experts weren’t exactly sure what accounted for this piece of debris’ apparent motion for that second or so, but there are all sorts of possibilities. Which ends the probative value of this particular snippent of film in any rational sense.
This does highlight a feature that seems common to, well, cult like beliefs. They assiduously look for evidence that supports their theory. The problem with this what some would call a “logical” approach is that with sufficient enthusiasm it can be used to “prove” any theory. In the nineteen fifties Velikovsky “proved” that Mars and Venus were comets that sprung from Jupiter in historic times. Some people still believe him. Some people believe the Moon Landings were a hoax. Some people believe Nostradamus predicted the future. I’m sure others have said it before me, but they are all falling into the same logical trap. Confirmation bias is the bane of mankind. Science is looking at all the pieces and seeing how they best fit together to make a picture. Cultists, r whatever ne wants to call them, start with the picture … and find pieces that fit.
I will conclude with this though. Some of the above beliefs are lot crazier than others. Whatever people believe, they are all normal people. The 9/11 Truther I recently met is also a vegan activist. Vegan activists are trying to make the world a better place for people and animals, what’s not to admire? And I will gladly admit that I think it’s entirely possible, if extremely unlikely, that I will get a call at 5am from the East Coast tomorrow telling me to turn on my TV. And when I do, it will turn out that a 9/11 co-conspirator came forward, and had provided to wikileaks hundreds of audio and video recordings that incontrovertibly showed that the 9/11 attacks and the entire War on Terror had been plotted by a small cabal in the White House and the CIA. And that the other conspirators had already fled or had been captured and were frantically confessing, naming names, and begging for mercy and protection … because millions of Americans were gathering on the Washington Mall demanding their heads.
Wouldn’t that be something?
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit, it’s from Wired Magazine. It’s a cave man, a Neanderthal man to be exact. I used it to illustrate my Neanderthal nature. So I don’t need to explain myself, since that explains it. Right?)
Doug's Darkworld 
It’s true that there’s a lot of reason to be skeptical about any theory that involves a high-level, far-reaching conspiracy to do something like 9/11; even if you postulate, for instance, war profiteers, or some such thing, there must be a simpler way to get us into a war than 9/11 was. I’ve had some discussion with a peripheral acquaintance who’s just kind of generally a crackpot; he does not put forth any particular theory as to what did happen, but insists that certain aspects of the disaster—in particular, one building that fell from standing to flat on the ground in some seven seconds flat, that was _not_ hit by a plane—are not explicable by the mainstream theory. I try to keep an open mind, and the usual emotionally charged arguments and blind side-following really rather piss me off.
Tom Dickson-Hunt
January 16, 2012 at 3:10 pm
When I read this:
“The general reason is that 9/11 conspiracy theories are based on zero evidence.”
I felt as if the lights went out.
There is a lot of physical evidence, which is
– come on let’s be honest about this –
the ONLY evidence that matters.
Physical evidence that both disproves the OFFICIAL conspiracy theory,
and substantiates alternative conspiracy theories.
Yes, when you give it a moment, they are ALL conspiracy theories.
And, I don’t understand how you could miss all of this…
jeff
January 16, 2012 at 7:32 pm
I’m wondering if you stopped reading at that point? There is a lot of physical evidence that Truthers interpret as supporting their case, but nothing that is actual direct evidence of a conspiracy. No White House tapes, no Deep Throat, no damning documents or meeting minutes, no security video of Cheney laying primacord in the WTC lobby, nothing. If something like that shows up, great, glad to revisit my opinion. Good answers to my questions would help too. Thanks for commenting! —Doug
unitedcats
January 16, 2012 at 8:05 pm
Well, I did not stop reading at that point.
I kept reading, looking for some rationale for the closed drapes.
I mean, there was military grade thermite found in the dust from the collapsed towers,
towers which left behind some of the strongest steel ever produced for a building,
steel framed towers which would have been the first of their kind ever to collapse due to fire,
fire caused by two airplanes crushing three buildings at the speed of gravity,
and that military grade thermite dust had to come from somewhere.
Now, in cases such as this, “cui bono” is the phrase that comes to mind.
I can’t think of a Muslim man, woman or child who has benefitted from the collapse of those three buildings,
let alone who would have had access to that grade of demolition-specific explosive…
Let alone who could/would have been able to schedule the stand-down of the finest domestic airforce on the planet,
an airforce specifically tasked with tracking and tailing and disposing of hijacked airliners and such as that…
Let alone who could/would have sent a team of celebratory Mossad agents (yes, they admitted as much on an Israeli talk show after being conveniently freed, almost immediately, to Israel) to film the event BEFORE said event should have ever been known to them (if it were Muslims, indeed!)…
Let alone who could/would have been a known cocaine abuser and alcoholic who entered the US on CIA endorsed visas and who not only left their baggage in an airport to be discovered replete with incriminating documents, but whose passport was miraculously discovered on the streets of New York, undamaged…
Let alone who could/would have had the technology to permit passengers on the hijacked planes to use their cell-phones at altitude (not available at that time, to anyone)…
Let alone who could/would have called for, in print, a “Pearl Harbor” (also not what it seemed) style event to catalyze a string of invasions and occupations, a plan originating from the think tanks and private interest groups that pull the strings of this, yes, foreign occupied usurped government that we like to think of as the American democracy…
Let alone who could/would have had access to the asbestos-ridden walls behind the walls where the discovered thermite would have had to have been placed, as the Towers had been closed a few floors at a time during the months prior for just such a reason (fiberoptic cables were supposedly placed there, if I remember correctly)…
Let alone who could/would have had the leverage to do that level of work without the required city permits and paperwork…
Let alone who could/would have fortuitously taken a huge insurance policy against just such a “terrorist” attack on a set of buildings which required so much updated in order to pass modern inspections as to have qualified as the greatest money-pits on the planet at the time…
Let alone who could/would have scheduled practice operations and meetings which not only tied up aircraft and surveillance, but took the teams of federal and local agents whose duties were specifically to investigate such events to the other side of the country on exactly the day that they should have been in New York, where they typically were…
Let alone who could/would have had the evidence from one of the largest crime scenes in history (I think that Dresden counts, here, for example, so I am saying “one of”) almost immediately removed and shipped away to the other side of the world to be sold as SCRAP, rather than, say, examine the physical evidence, and even employ the remains in some sort of artful memorial, if not in the construction of the new buildings themselves, than elsewhere…
Let alone who could/would have announced the loss of 2.3 trillion dollars from the Pentagon the night before, only to have the very team of civilians who were responsible for finding that money murdered as they worked in the very section of the Pentagon destroyed, somehow, the very next morning…
Let alone who would have benefitted by the loss of the Enron, and Worldcom, and who knows how much evidence of further thievery when building 7 was “pulled”…
I mean, come on.
Connect the dots.
We don’t need to know who exactly did what, not right now, not right away, to see that something other than what we have been told happened, happened.
So-called “truthers” just want the truth.
What is wrong with that?
Skeptics, well, people who go with the official flow, frankly they display what is common to everyone, an aversion to things that make them feel uncomfortable. This is confirmed, lately, in the cognitive neurosciences, but is well-known as simple cognitive dissonance.
People don’t want to face facts, that they have been lied to, that they in fact have perhaps killed people on the basis of lies.
This is why so many young people from the Armed Forces are suicides, lately…
I mean, who wants to go through that?
So, people, well, hide…
Behind closed drapes.
Sad.
jeff
January 17, 2012 at 2:25 am
Uhhhhh! the debate will never end, 9-11 is the new JFK….Most people do not even understand basic physics, If you can’t see something funny with the fall of those buildings after it has been pointed out, why bother trying to explain further? I’m with jeff “We don’t need to know who exactly did what, not right now, not right away, to see that something other than what we have been told happened, happened.” I’ll wait for the movie 30-50 years from now after everyone involved has died or is about too….LOL
Pyrodin
January 17, 2012 at 9:50 am
http://www2.ae911truth.org/downloads/Full_Thermite_paper.pdf , seems like evidence to me
Pyrodin
January 17, 2012 at 10:03 am
The WTC Building 7 collapse is far to sudden and symmetrical in my humble professional engineer opinion.
Just sayin !
And as for evidence, its sealed for years… even the official investigation was denied access to it.
So sayin there is no evidence is really not an argument against a ‘un-natural’ collapse of WTC7.
Some ‘investigation’ huh?
If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, chances are its a duck.
John Galt
January 17, 2012 at 12:31 pm
NCSTAR 1A and 1-9 aren’t “sealed for years,” so why don’t you start by reading them, John? If you’re looking for evidence that explosives were involved, it would have been very clear on the ends of the W14 X 500 and W14 X 730 columns in WTC 7, and there simply wasn’t any, nor was there any plausible motive for them, and secretly demolishing NYC hi-rises is impossible. Gravity makes sure that any collapsing building both walks and quacks like a duck:
http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/911NutPhysics.HTM
albury
January 18, 2012 at 6:13 am
ridiculous.
gravity does not ensure that a building
falls at maximal velocity
or
falls directly into its own footprint, straight down.
moreover, there is plenty of evidence for explosives in building 7.
most importantly, eyewitness testimony.
but, do not neglect the photos of I-beams sheered and molten at 40-60degree angles
jutting out of the debris piles
only hours after the collapses.
airplanes can’t do that to steel construction columns, albury…
quack.
jeff
January 18, 2012 at 8:40 am
Tightly-spaced exterior columns that are 100% moment connected, along with a collapse that begins inside will ensure that a building collapses straight down, and timing one to determine its cause is like reading tea leaves. Maximal velocity for a 610′ building would have resulted in an ET of ~6.15 seconds, and the actual time was ~8.5 seconds, regardless of lies from the 9/11 “truth movement” of 6.5 or 6.6 seconds. Ever wonder what video they found that shows the lower floors clearly enough to time it to the nearest 1/10 second? Probably not…
No one said planes did anything to Building 7, and there was no evidence at all of demolition explosives, although shorted transformers in a ConEd substation make a pretty loud bang, and plenty of small explosions are common in major office fires. The sounds of demolition explosives are heard immediately preceding collapses, carry for miles, and come from the collapse initiation areas; they’re not randomly timed and coming from all over the place. When your only debris “evidence” is columns that were very obviously cut with oxyacetylene torches, gray slag and all, you’re really hard up.
albury
January 18, 2012 at 11:05 am
I think it’s time to investigate some of the bizarre and absurd claims made by Richard Gage, not the three WTC hi-rise collapses on 9/11, since they’ve already been thoroughly investigated by much more qualified, competent, and honest people. The NIST scientists and engineers were only able to time the top 18 stories, or 242′, of the collapse of WTC 7’s facade, and determined that it took 5.4 seconds, yet Gage and others in the 9/11 “truth movement” claim that the entire 610′ collapse only took ~6.5 seconds. Did the other 368′ fall in just over 1 second? How is he even able to give us a time to the nearest 1/10 of a second for the entire collapse when NIST couldn’t because buildings in the foreground blocked the view of video cameras?
How can he claim that the towers nearly free fell when the loose, airborne debris from their upper stories was obviously falling much faster than the collapse zones, and began hitting the ground while at least 40 stories in each one were still intact? The North Tower was only down to the height of WTC 7 when debris from the upper stories first hit the ground. Was g miraculously increased on 9/11? They fell in ~15 and ~22 seconds respectively, nowhere near the ~9.25 seconds that free fall would have taken:
http://www.youtube.com/user/RKOwens4#p/u/40/qLShZOvxVe4
yet he begins every presentation with his near free-fall claim. He’s also claimed that the dust clouds from the collapses were “pyroclastic,” but there are no reports of anyone’s skin being instantly peeled off, and he’s claimed that the fires in WTC 7 were minor, totally contradicting these NYC eyewitnesses:
http://sites.google.com/site/wtc7lies/eyewitnessaccountsofwtc7fires
http://sites.google.com/site/wtc7lies/accountsofwtc7damage
http://sites.google.com/site/wtc7lies/eyewitnessaccountsofthewithdrawalfromwtc
How could his claim that 400,000 yards of concrete were turned to fine powder be true, when there was less than 100,000 yards of concrete above grade in both towers combined? Does he know how to turn 400,000 yards of concrete to fine powder with explosives without leveling NYC?
Has he ever seen a controlled demolition that left molten metal in the debris for months? Has he ever seen one that didn’t leave even one explosively-cut column in the debris? Since he claims that explosives were planted in the core columns to start the collapses, and that it was done from elevator shafts, has he even looked a floor plan of the cores above the 78th floor sky lobby? There were only 6 regular elevators above there, plus a freight and 2 express elevators, and they were only near 6 of the 47 core columns. Several of those were in the paths of the planes, and the perimeter columns collapsed first, so he’s not even making sense, especially considering the fact that 30 or more stories of core framing stood 15-25 seconds after each tower’s main collapse was over.
We should investigate the nonsense coming from Richard Gage, as well as his “engineers.”
http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=3834688&postcount=12
albury
January 18, 2012 at 11:25 am
OK.
Here is my final response.
There is no way for those buildings to have collapsed into their own footprints
WITHOUT planned demolition.
None.
You can say that it is “logically possible” for three buildings to do so,
on the same day,
due to asymmetrical stresses,
fall perfectly symmetrically downward at NEAR to free-fall speed,
that is with ALMOST no resistance from the lower support structures,
AND
you can say that –
what videos clearly show to be coordinated explosions
on ONLY the same floors simultaneously,
from around the buildings
in a cascade downward
as the buildings collapsed –
to be “random” office fire explosions
BUT
that only makes you sound like a zealot in denial.
Proving one last thing.
This 9/11 issue has divided the world into two camps:
willing servant to authority
and
anyone courageous enough to voice his disposition otherwise.
Should anyone wich to strip me of my citizenship,
as is within the recently considered powers of the present tyranny,
because I am no willing servant to myths fed from plutocrats for their own enrichment,
then fine.
I am no member of such a State, never was, and never would be.
9/11 was an inside job.
Planned.
Organized.
Orchestrated by factions of the US government in tandem with the Israeli Zionists.
This is the truth.
jeff
January 18, 2012 at 5:51 pm
People who know a LOT more about structural engineering than you do have clearly explained why all 3 WTC collapses occurred, Jeff, and you’re confusing courage with ignorance. I’m sure your citizenship is safe and sound, and no one really cares what you think, so get off your soap box and learn something:
http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/wtc/wtc_finalreports.cfm
btw, “pull it” is not a term for explosive demolition, and 12 different insurance companies, at least 4 of which are foreign-based (Copenhagen, Zurich-2, London), paid the man you’re libeling a total of $4.68 BILLION, so rethinking your nonsense may be in order.
albury
January 18, 2012 at 6:43 pm
No confusion here.
You focus on technical reports at the exclusion of everything else in the world…
Most importantly in this context, you privilege authority too much.
Insurance company executives are as easily manipulated as as any other spineless wealth addict.
And the NIST is an agency under the same umbrella as that subject to the very coup that 9/11 represents.
Finally, you missed the point about the citizenship.
NOT ONLY do I NOT trust your assuredness,
to be a citizen of empire
dutifully lockstepping leadership guilty of the very same offenses that sent so many Germans to the gallows – pursuing a war of aggression –
– to which in the present case we can add for personal enrichment and involving the poisoning of generations of foreign and natural born human beings, including those courageous people who responded to the destruction of those buildings in September –
and who now
– with myself and so many others
– so vocally doubt the swill and the swine who sling it
– is NOT the aspiration of any just man in pursuit of any life worth living.
Impugn me for sacrilege, failing to bow to your gods of authority,
I do not believe you,
or your NIST report.
And neither does the rest of the thinking world.
jeff
January 18, 2012 at 9:06 pm
The thinking world realizes that secretly blowing up hi-rises in NYC is impossible, Jeff, and that you don’t have any evidence or even a plausible motive for your absurd malarkey. You also were not among “those courageous people who responded to the destruction of those buildings in September,” nor does it take any courage to be ignorant, but since you mentioned them, would you care to list the FDNY in your “truth movement,” or were they all “easily manipulated” like those insurance company execs, legal departments, investigators, claims people, shareholders, etc. who all went along with paying a guy $4.68 BILLION after he publicly admitted to bombing his own property?
Here’s the link to Erik Lawyer’s “firefighters” for 9/11 “truth” petition:
http://firefightersfor911truth.org/?page_id=469
Please feel free to count the signatories to it who even CLAIM to be FDNY. Aren’t NYC firefighters as smart and courageous as you are, or don’t they care how 300+ of their colleagues, relatives, and close friends were killed?
albury
January 19, 2012 at 5:40 am
[…] come to pass after all. However, whatever excuse I may use, I decided the comments on my last 9/11 conspiracy post were … fascinating. I was going to write a comment in response, but realized I could squeeze […]
9/11 Conspiracy Theory Redux « Doug’s Darkworld
January 19, 2012 at 6:43 am
I have responded to this comment thread here: 9/11 Conspiracy Theory Redux. —Doug
unitedcats
January 19, 2012 at 6:45 am
Regarding item 2 in the article above, the 9/11 “truth movement” unwittingly undermines any plausible motive for the alleged explosive demolition of WTC 7 every time they remind us that a third building came down on 9/11, which they feel obligated to do constantly. If no one’s ever heard of WTC 7, why secretly bomb it in the first place? :-)
albury
January 19, 2012 at 7:59 am
” If no one’s ever heard of WTC 7, why secretly bomb it in the first place? :-)”
Because of the evidence of ongoing investigations housed within it,
better that no one had heard of it…
Albury, you sound like a man who gets paid to troll the net,
spooking suspicious posters with your ‘tow-the-line’ intimidation tactics.
All that doesn’t change the fact that you are wrong.
jeff
January 19, 2012 at 1:34 pm
Albury,
As a licensed professional engineer (Civil), it is my professional opinion that WTC 7 collapsed in a manner that suggests controlled demolition.
Your opinion would matter if you had the same credentials.. If you lack the professional license, yours is a laymans opinion and will carry no weight in a court of law.
John Galt
January 19, 2012 at 3:00 pm
Do these people have any credentials, John?
http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/wtc/team_members.cfm
How would the visible portion of the WTC 7 collapse have looked if their NCSTAR 1A hypothesis had occurred? Please give us your “professional opinion” on secretly cutting 24 of these W14 X 730s multiple times with explosives:
plus 57 more that only weighed 500#/lineal foot, and had flanges that were less than 4.9″ thick.
albury
January 19, 2012 at 3:18 pm
It’s “toe” the line, Jeff, and I hope you’ll avoid being so intimidated that you don’t answer any of my questions about Gage’s bunk, posted January 18, 2012 at 11:25 am. I’ve now learned that insurance execs and their companies are “easily manipulated” to part with billions to guys who commit blatant fraud and then publicly admit to it in PBS interviews, and that WTC 7 had unique tenants who used no electronic backup. For extra credit, why were Silverstein and the FDNY discussing at ~2:30 PM WHETHER to blow up WTC 7 if Barry Jennings heard the first charges ~10:00 AM, and was ConEd “easily manipulated” too, since their substation was fubar after the collapse, and their insurers didn’t sue Silverstein Properties for doing it? See if you can find one C/D contractor’s web site where “pull it” or “pull” are used to refer to explosive demolition too, and give us a count of all of the other buildings, on fire or not, that the FDNY has explosively demolished. Thanks in advance.
albury
January 19, 2012 at 3:08 pm
Albury, My point is you do not have any credentials, and you have made my point.
Your is a layman’s opinion, mine is not.
John Galt
January 19, 2012 at 3:57 pm
Please feel free to give me your “professional opinion” on my specific objections to Gage’s bunk, which I posted yesterday at 11:25 am, John. You also didn’t answer my questions in the last comment. When are you and AE911″truth’s” alleged “800 engineers” going to model the WTC 7 collapse yourselves, since you don’t think the NIST people with doctorates and PEs know how to do it?
This whole conversation would be over very quickly if you ever had to demonstrate how to sever W14 X 730 and W14 X 500 columns with explosives, so enjoy your fantasy. On the Internet, you can be whatever you want.
albury
January 19, 2012 at 4:55 pm
Hmm….ehh thats a bit of a trick question, I read “pull it” is an old term they don’t use anymore because they don’t use cables to “pull” the buildings down. Only an old fart like silverstien would use it to refer to a demolition. lol
Pyrodin
January 19, 2012 at 3:57 pm
They still use cables to pull down structures, but “pull” or “pull it” have never been used in the C/D industry to refer to explosive demolition. Considering that “THEY [the FDNY] made that decision” because of the “terrible loss of life [in the tower collapses],” it clearly had nothing to do with demolition anyway.
albury
January 19, 2012 at 5:02 pm
Albury, you’re not an engineer, so enjoy yourself and your personal opinions.
The 800 engineers, should they actually be licensed as registered professional engineers, are qualified to not only question other engineers, but enter testimony in court as an opinion. You on the other hand cannot offer such professional opinion. You can and do have your own opinion, but are not competent to have a professional one.. its a personal one. That is the difference. You are practicing without a license, try it commercially for profit and its called ‘fraud’.
Have a nice day.
John Galt
January 19, 2012 at 5:36 pm
The “I’m a PE” gag’s gone far enough, John, or whoever you are, so please feel free to try answering some of the questions I’ve posted here. No real engineer in his right mind would ever claim to know what caused a building to come down simply by watching video of it, but what would the visible part of WTC 7’s collapse have looked like if the NIST hypothesis had occurred? My January 18, 11:25 am questions about Box Boy’s crap are still here also. Go for it, Mr. “Engineer.”
albury
January 19, 2012 at 6:06 pm
You are trying to drag us into a discussion about fine points in Richard Gage’s account,
but in the end any single story is not the issue.
The main issue is – frankly – that so few people actually believe your story.
Regardless of what the actual story is, the “official” story is not believable.
Now, I am not that well educated,
but I do have a graduate degree in chemistry,
and a PhD,
while my professional work is in the cognitive sciences, philosophy and psychology, mostly,
– in fact, I just had published a peer reviewed book chapter on psychopathy –
so, I understand physical chemistry and physics
– the motivations of the material world –
and more importantly
I understand human motivation pretty well,
from the deep standpoint of history,
especially the deviant human motivation that no doubt drives the sub-class of power-brokers pulling the strings of government and industry,
and
there are a LOT of stories more believable than the story that you are selling, Albury.
Anyways, when confronted with such a case as myself, the typical response from on high is to
keep kids from getting an education
and to replace history books with propaganda books.
THAT is what your cherished NIST report is all about.
Putting something on record for the history books,
something that future generations will (hopefully, from the psychopath’s standpoint) overlook.
And, if they don’t overlook it?
Well, pass some further laws making it illegal to overlook it…
Same as “the” holocaust.
I mean, works for Zionist psychopaths.
Why not work for Neo-Con psychopaths?
jeff
January 19, 2012 at 7:21 pm
There are no fine points in Box Boy’s account, Jeff; there’s only a gross mangling of facts and science, so I can understand why “yourself” would rather not be “dragged” into a discussion of it. Building collapse investigations also have nothing to do with the Holocaust, Zionists, or Neo-Cons, and the scientists and engineers who work for NIST, either directly or as civilian contractors, are not “psychopaths.” “Yourself” would understand this topic much better if “yourself” would read the NIST reports, so I’d recommend doing that as soon as possible, since no one’s keeping you from that education. Attacking NIST provides no evidence for your malarkey, and attacking them from ignorance does nothing at all for your credibility.
The NIST “story” was so believable to the ASCE, code-enforcement agencies, and others who actually know what they’re talking about that 40 code revision were adopted into the 2009 and 2012 I-Codes, solely because of the NIST WTC investigations and the recommendations in their reports:
http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/about.cfm
Get back to me when your “researchers” even begin to investigate the 9/11 collapses, let alone get a code revision through. Maybe John The PE can explain why they’ve never even started ANSYS and LS-DYNA modeling, since the structural and fire spread data are readily available. With all of those alleged engineers clamoring for the “truth,” it’s a wonder that they haven’t run their own fire tests too.
albury
January 20, 2012 at 6:18 am
I’m not an engineer or scientist. Nor do to I hold credential in psychology…making me in expert in the great “Zionist” or is it, “Zeo-con” conspiracy? ,,,but I do know something about explosives, shaped charges, blasting caps, and fusing mechanisms. How is it possible that such a grand conspiracy secretly place 1000’s of pounds of explosives in the World Trade Center without anybody taking notice? Moreover, an operation of this scale would have to be executed with extreme safety protocol. I mean, you would want to spoil the great conspiracy by having it blow up before the big event…..that would spoil everything. You would also want to design your fusing mechanisms to be triggered by radio remote, the timing would have to be perfect. Have any of you highly esteemed credentialed folks ever been to a blasting site? The first thing you’ll see are warning signs posted throughout the site that say: “NO CELL PHONES”. How many functional cell phones do you think where operating in or around the WTC on any given day? For such a well planned conspiracy, that was a huge risk to take….not even getting into accidents with blasting caps or crimping in the dark. I would also think that since the WTC had been attacked before the building’s security would be on the look out for bombs, which would include explosive sniffing dogs. I forgot….minimum waged security officers must of been part of the conspiracy too. I must be suffering from cognitive dissonance, can I treat that with Prozac?
Gadfly
January 20, 2012 at 6:46 am
You haven’t heard about nanothermite though, Gadfly. It secretly collapses huge hi-rises and then keeps metal molten in the debris for months. All we know about it is that it works great in raging fires, even in towers with cell phone repeaters on top, is simply painted right on the vertical column surfaces, and amazingly migrates on command to a straight diagonal line, severing the steel and leaving gray slag that looks just like an acetylene torch cut.
There’s word that it’s eco-friendly, low-cal, and makes a tasty dessert topping too, but I’ll defer to our engineer and PhD chemist on that, although they haven’t been too forthcoming with details lately…
albury
January 20, 2012 at 7:46 am
Nonothermite? Geez, what’s that? To pull something like this off I would think they would have to at least use Ammonium Nitrate, which is just common commercial fertilizer. Very common and nasty, it worked in Oklahoma City. Here’s a couple links to what real explosives can do…..and
these were just accidents:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Disaster
….and this one with common WWI munitions and materials:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion
Nanothermite must be an uber successor! Does it split atoms too? These highly credentialed folks are engineers, psychologists, and demolition/explosives experts. Amazing what you can learn on the internet!
I’m impressed!
Gadfly
January 20, 2012 at 8:49 am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nano-thermite
Pyrodin
January 20, 2012 at 9:57 am
I’m wondering why John and Jeff aren’t developing nanothermite for commercial use, Gadfly, since you just paint it on and it cuts right through heavy steel columns like the one in the video I posted. It must be very safe in storage too, since even major fires don’t faze it, so I’m thinking handy brush-top cans or something, but I’m not a “professional engineer” or “PhD chemist.” The heavy band saw, 7+ minutes, and loads of water in the video can all be replaced by this product, and hack saws, shears, torches, mag drills, plasma cutters, cut-off wheels, and other conventional means of cutting steel could soon become obsolete. If it keeps steel molten for months, our energy problems are as good as solved too.
albury
January 20, 2012 at 10:07 am
Oklahoma City was “false-flag” terrorism too.
Wow, Albury and Gadfly, you two share such similarities in style and thought…
Must be the same person/agent/troll or perhaps deskmates?
Sounding like paid disinformants to me.
Worshipping agencies and authorities and code revisions,
the thought processes of self-congratulatory learned psychopaths.
Ick.
I think that Doug’s Darkworld is infested with militant maggots.
Time to unsubscribe…
jeff
January 20, 2012 at 10:12 am
Don’t do that, Jeff, they’re just getting off cause your getting pissed man. Who cares, I think he just wants to be right and gloat anyway, not actually find out anything. I think Doug’s stuff is good and worth reading personally, even if he is wrong about 9-11 ;) lol
Pyrodin
January 20, 2012 at 10:28 am
yeah, i like doug’s stuff, feels homey.
kind of hangin with your buddy’s older brother on sunday sort of homey…
just, when his older brother’s jackbooted friends are over, too,
well,
time to play at someone else’s house.
frankly, i don’t mind that someone wants to nitpick on a single report about a single incident to the exclusion of anything else, relying on authority (a well-known fallacious means to “fix” one’s beliefs) overly much in the process.
just, i didn’t expect to see that doug’s darkworld was,
well,
so damned dark.
to each his own albury.
troll away…
jeff
January 20, 2012 at 10:38 am
You “PhD chemists” are hard to fool, Jeff. I’d be blocked on any “forum” run by the 9/11 “truth movement” and have my comments removed, but the old “paid shill” thing works great too.
Two thumbs up for those astute observations.
albury
January 20, 2012 at 10:30 am
Thanks for allowing me to “troll away,” Jeff. Since you refuse to discuss anything intelligently, it probably is “time to play at someone else’s house.” Relying on Box Boy as an authority hasn’t served you too well, but as you said, to each his own. I’ll take the SEs with doctorates who’ve actually researched the topic, and you stick with the crackpots you can’t even defend from a “troll” like me.
albury
January 20, 2012 at 12:00 pm
“Oklahoma City was false flag terrorism too”? False flag for what purpose? To distract the world from Bill Clinton’s soon to to be announced executive blow job?
Gadfly
January 20, 2012 at 2:27 pm
Id bet a Big Mac that ‘Albury’ is a Turing algorithm.. just sayin !
John Galt
January 20, 2012 at 4:42 pm
Not terribly original, John, but I’d bet that you’d resort to just about anything to avoid answering my questions here. Just stick to “forums” run by your 9/11 “truth movement” and you won’t have that problem; they simply ban everyone who doesn’t drink the Kool-Aid.
albury
January 20, 2012 at 5:52 pm
My vote goes to the claims of the Truthers.
Lillian Finley
January 20, 2012 at 6:34 pm
That Big Mac sure tastes good.
John Galt
January 21, 2012 at 9:28 am
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John Galt
January 21, 2012 at 9:33 am
My Box Boy questions are still here, John. Search “January 18, 2012 at 11:25 am”
albury
January 21, 2012 at 3:16 pm
Did our newest “licensed professional engineer” suddenly get lockjaw or something? :-)
albury
January 22, 2012 at 7:09 am
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John Galt
January 22, 2012 at 7:46 am
Its in your native tounge
John Galt
January 22, 2012 at 7:50 am
Not sure what a “tounge” is, but the Box Boy questions were posted January 18, 2012 at 11:25 am, and are still here. A “licensed professional engineer” should be eager to address them.
albury
January 22, 2012 at 9:26 am
It appears this discussion has entered the realm of infinite circular regression. Prove positive that the 9/11 “Truth” movement is a tremendous waste of time and energy.
Gadfly
January 22, 2012 at 10:11 am
Albury, if you are prepared to pay for my time, I will give you my professional engineer opinion. My rate is $175/hr.
Then you can ask all of the questions you want. But since you are a Turing bait-bot, I dont expect you to take me up on that offer.
In summary, my professional engineering opinion is that the ‘collapse’ WTC7 was a planned event.
A demolition company would be proud to bring down the building with such little collateral damage and drop it into its own footprint.
Im sure you have your own personal opinion, but its just that… personal. You cannot provide testimony in a court of law about these events… I can, thats the difference between us Albury. Albury, you are a layman.. look up the term.
John Galt
January 24, 2012 at 8:37 am
You have a personal opinion too, John, and it’s not even mentioned at the ASCE web site, nor are you. Legitimate SEs like Matthys Levy, Les Robertson, Irwin Cantor, Gene Corley, Abolhassan Astaneh-asl, John Gross, Shyam Sunder, and others are well represented there, but the site has nothing to say about anyone named John Galt, or any “professional engineering opinion” based on what someone thinks a collapse looks like and how long it took. They’re also fresh out of references to Box Boy, Chandler, Harrit, Steven Jones, the Loose Change creeps, or anyone else in your 9/11 “truth movement,” as are the RIBA and AIA sites, so your opinions aren’t worth much to real professionals. You have managed to find a fairly novel way to duck honest discussion, however.
Watch out for those room-temperature “pyroclastic dust clouds,” and congratulations on that new way to calculate concrete yardage. My layman’s method would hold up a lot better in a court of law.
albury
January 24, 2012 at 12:04 pm
“My layman’s method would hold up a lot better in a court of law.”
the point is a judge would not let you even testify as a layman.. so have your own opinion. Only you could care about your own opinion.. which is fine, but its in-admissible in a court, sorry Albury… I guess you could go back to school though, get a degree, get experience, and take a two day engineering exam. Only then could we really have a conversation.
John Galt
January 24, 2012 at 1:21 pm
@ John…..are you telling me that the ability to convince a jury or a judge is the ultimate test of truth? Which is really more about acting than arguing. I’m relieved. I must live in a country with a legal system that never makes mistakes. I’m glad a few police departments rely on psychics to gather evidence when there is none…..they must feel comfortable that they can get it past a jury.
Gadfly
January 25, 2012 at 8:35 am
What about this guy- James Quintiere, Ph.D.Former Chief of NIST’s Fire Science Division?
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_070820_former_chief_of_nist.htm
Pyrodin
January 24, 2012 at 1:41 pm
Yes Pyrodin, there is much to be investigated, as so much has been hidden. Now even the NIST insiders are calling for a real investigation.
Eventually the truth may get out, in the meantime expect a lot of whining and bluster from laymen. Enough real engineers see the problems with the ‘official’ story.
John Galt
January 24, 2012 at 2:22 pm
Real engineers wouldn’t spam this forum a dozen times with irrelevant crap and nothing substantive, John; they’d actually discuss the topic. Not only is Box Boy’s claim that any concrete was secretly turned to dust by demolition explosives totally absurd, his 400,000 yard above-grade concrete quantity figure for the towers is off by a factor of 4+. I took the number of floors (220), multiplied by the square footage in each, allowing for penetrations, chamfered corners, etc. (~40,000), multiplied by the thickness in feet, allowing for corrugations (.30), and divided by 27. How does someone who just discovered ~10 days ago that he’s a “licensed professional engineer” do simple arithmetic like that? I hope it’s better than the way your “truth movement” times collapses.
As for James Quintiere, even assuming that the twoofer who reported his comments for OpEd”News” did so accurately, he’s not suggesting that explosives were used on 9/11, only that the fire tests be done with 60+ foot bar joists, and that the NIST hypothesis may have been different depending on SFRM thickness on them. Considering the NYPD/FDNY documentation of exterior column deformation caused by sagging of the longer spanning bar joists, and the impossibility of determining after the collapses how much SFRM had been on the steel, his suggestions aren’t very practical, but other engineers have also called for fire testing of longer spans since the 2000 Cardington reports came out. His citing of the delay in NCSTAR 1A is also rather irrelevant.
Since you’re now a “licensed professional engineer,” why don’t you and Box Boy’s “800 engineers” do some of your own testing? I’m also wondering why you haven’t even STARTED any ANSYS or LS-DYNA modeling, since you’ve had years, and all of the input data you need is either in NCSTAR 1A, 1-9, or other accessible sources. NIST also responds to RFIs if you need help.
Time’s a-wastin’.
albury
January 25, 2012 at 7:42 am
Albury, you are short on facts, and NOT and engineer… do all of the layman math you want.
Better yet, follow my suggestions posted January 24, 2012 at 1:21 pm and get a formal education. Its called becoming competent Albury, something you are not, as you are not an engineer, wah!
John Galt
January 25, 2012 at 9:03 am
Enlighten us instead of just wasting bandwidth, John. You’ve posted nothing substantive yet, and have taken 13 posts to do it.
albury
January 25, 2012 at 9:13 am
Your entire blog post, “9/11 Truthers
Doug’s Darkworld” was indeed worthy of commenting on! Just simply wanted to state you really did a terrific job. Thanks for your effort ,Dolores
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