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David Ray Griffin and David Shayler London Presentation on 9/11 and more

dh | 13.08.2006 22:19

David Ray Griffin, Professor Emeritus, and author of The New Pearl Harbor and The 9/11 Commission Report, Ommissions and Distortions, will be speaking at Conway Hall on 9th September. Also David Shayler, ex-MI5 whistleblower, recently subject to an additional High Court gagging order. And more......



See www.tonybliar.com/911truth
Until Tuesday, Tickets are £7.50,thereafter £10. Hence early warning

On 10th September,9/11 Truth Campaign, Britain and Ireland, National Conference, venue in London as yet undecided. Watch this space

On 11th September, 5th anniversary, 9/11 Truth demo somewhere near US Embassy, though the Met are dragging their heels on this for some reason!!!

Could be a good long weekend for all us thousands of 'cl's out here

dh
- e-mail: wy911@goowy.com

Comments

Hide the following 21 comments

A bible basher and a spook.

14.08.2006 09:37

David Ray Griffin is a professor of Theology so perfectly qualified to pronounce on the structural collapse of the Twin Towers. And the last job Shayler had was to spy on the likes of us and act to fuck our movements up. Seems like he's still at it taking part in this diversionary bollocks.

Here's an interesting look at Griffin's mad as a bag of spanners book:
 http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/Post911/dubious_claims.html

Godbotherer
- Homepage: http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/conspiracism-911.html


Empty Nothingness, Plant

14.08.2006 16:22

It's interesting how much empty hot air the Plants infesting sites like this spend on Disinformation and Ad Hominem, instead of simply presenting the still-missing, compelling and independently-verifieble evidence which would exist - and be forthcoming - if the Conspiracy Theory told to us by the "Saddam has WMD!!!" guys, in order to usher in the indefensible, were true.

911=PNAC, CIA, Mossad


Godbotherer

14.08.2006 22:39

Your first assumption on meeting an ex-MI5 is that he is still one of them
My experience of Shayler is that he is a total convert to alternative reality - I trust him more than I trust you who are stuck in some old ideological paradigm
Sorry, but goodbye to all that

dh


Stop Belittling the Theories About September 11

14.08.2006 23:20

by Bill Christison
 http://www.dissidentvoice.org/
August 14, 2006

However horrendous the crimes of two of the world’s great liars and terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon, it is imperative that we not let the deeds of Ehud Olmert and George W. Bush distract us from another recent event.

The U.S. alliance with Israel and the power of the lobby that lets Israel so easily influence U.S. foreign policy have been major factors in allowing the monstrous slaughter of innocent civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. What is happening in these lands may also encourage Olmert and Bush to start new hostilities in Syria and heavy, possibly nuclear, bombings in Iran -- and this entire mess of neocon pottage may lead to a new World War and clashes of civilizations and religious fundamentalisms that these two wretched politicians seem quite literally to want to impose on the rest of us. It’s a tough case to make that anything else going on in the world -- anywhere -- could possibly be of equal importance.

But on July 29 and 30, and then again on August 1, something else happened that increasing numbers of people believe is of equal importance. On these dates C-SPAN rebroadcast a panel discussion, held originally in late June, sponsored by an organization called the American Scholars’ Symposium to discuss what really happened on September 11, 2001. Held in Los Angeles, the meeting lasted two days, and the C-SPAN rebroadcast covered one almost two-hour wrap-up session. The meeting was attended by 1,200 people interested in hearing something other than the official story of 9/11. The TV audience was evidently large enough to spur C-SPAN to broadcast the panel discussion five separate times in four days.

Even a month late, this is a lot of airtime for stories that many people call conspiracy theories -- and for which many others use nastier descriptions. It is possible that the head of C-SPAN, Brian Lamb, so strongly disbelieves the conspiracy theories that he felt giving them ample publicity would discredit them further. It is equally possible, however, that Lamb, who seems honestly to believe in presenting various sides of most issues as fairly as he can (although not always giving every side equal time), tried to do exactly that on the many legitimate questions raised about what actually happened on September 11. In any event, C-SPAN has made a major effort to bring information on the principal theories about 9/11 to the mainstream U.S. media. Lamb cannot be blamed for the coincidence that recent heavy military activity in Gaza and Lebanon is nearly drowning out his efforts.

Let’s address the real issues here. Why is it important that we not let the so-called conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 be drowned out? After spending the better part of the last five years treating these theories with utmost skepticism, I have devoted serious time to actually studying them in recent months, and have also carefully watched several videos that are available on the subject. I have come to believe that significant parts of the 9/11 theories are true, and that therefore significant parts of the “official story” put out by the U.S. government and the 9/11 Commission are false. I now think there is persuasive evidence that the events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission would have us believe. The items below highlight the major questions surrounding 9/11 but do not constitute a detailed recounting of the evidence available.

ONE: An airliner almost certainly did not hit The Pentagon. Hard physical evidence supports this conclusion; among other things, the hole in the Pentagon was considerably smaller than an airliner would create. The building was thus presumably hit by something smaller, possibly a missile, or a drone or, less possibly, a smaller manned aircraft. Absolutely no information is available on what happened to the original aircraft (American Airlines Flight 77), the crew, the “hijackers,” and the passengers. The “official story,” as it appeared in The 9/11 Commission Report simply says, “At 9:37:46, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, traveling at approximately 530 miles per hour. All on board, as well as many civilians and military personnel in the building, were killed.” This allows readers to assume that pieces of the aircraft and some bodies of passengers were found in the rubble of the crash, but information so far released by the government does not show that such evidence was in fact found. The story put out by the Pentagon is that the plane and its passengers were incinerated; yet video footage of offices in the Pentagon situated at the edge of the hole clearly shows office furniture undamaged. The size of the hole in the Pentagon wall still remains as valid evidence and so far seems irrefutable.

TWO: The North and South Towers of the World Trade Center almost certainly did not collapse and fall to earth because hijacked aircraft hit them. A plane did not hit Building 7 of the Center, which also collapsed. All three were most probably destroyed by controlled demolition charges placed in the buildings before 9/11. A substantial volume of evidence shows that typical residues and byproducts from such demolition charges were present in the three buildings after they collapsed. The quality of the research done on this subject is quite impressive.

If the judgments made on Points ONE and TWO above are correct, they raise many “Who done it” questions and strongly suggest that some unnamed persons or groups either inside or with ties to the government were actively creating a “Pearl Harbor” event, most likely to gain public support for the aggressive foreign policies that followed -- policies that would, first, “transform” the entire Middle East, and second, expand U.S. global domination.

These first two points provide the strongest evidence available that the “official story” of 9/11 is not true. If the government could prove this evidence false, and its own story on these points correct, all the other data and speculation supporting the conspiracy theories would be undermined. It has provided no such proof and no answers to growing questions.

Other, less important points supporting the theories include the following.

THREE: For at least one hour and 45 minutes after the hijacking of the first aircraft was known, U.S. air defense authorities failed to take meaningful action. This strikes some “conspiracy theorists” as valid evidence that the U.S. Air Force was deliberately restrained from acting. Maybe so, but my own skepticism tells me that the inefficiency of U.S. defense forces is likely to be just as plausible an explanation.

FOUR: Some of the theorists believe that the 19 named hijackers were not actually the hijackers. One claim is that the names of the hijackers were not on the manifests of any of the four aircraft.

FIVE: None of the 19 hijackers’ bodies were ever autopsied (since they were allegedly totally destroyed in the crashes, including even the people in the Pennsylvania crash).

SIX: At least five of the alleged hijackers (or persons with identical names) have since turned up alive in the Middle East. Nonetheless, the FBI has never bothered to re-investigate or revise the list of hijackers. Does this suggest that the FBI knows that no one in the administration is interested in reopening any further investigations?

SEVEN: Numerous pilots have allegedly told the theorists that none of the 19 hijackers could have flown the airliners well enough to hit the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon with as much accuracy as was displayed. The debate on this issue simply raises more doubt about the government’s charge that the people it has named as hijackers are the real hijackers.

EIGHT: No one, except possibly government investigators who are not talking, has seen the plane that went down in Pennsylvania. Some of the conspiracy theorists suggest that it was deliberately destroyed before it hit the ground; others suggest that the plane actually landed in Cleveland and that passengers then were whisked away to some unknown destination. What happened to them at that point is simply a large question mark that makes it more difficult to believe this particular scenario.

NINE: Machinations in the U.S. stock market in the days before 9/11 suggest that some inside players in the market knew or suspected that United and American Airlines stock would soon drop. Two of the four of the aircraft involved in 9/11 were, or course, United planes and the other two were American Airlines planes.

It should be reemphasized that these items do not make up a complete list of all the charges made by the theorists, but they are a good sample. Anyone interested in perhaps the best summary of these charges should watch the video “Loose Change.”

To repeat, points ONE and TWO above are the most important. If something other than an airliner actually did hit the Pentagon on 9/11, and if the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center actually were dropped to the ground by controlled demolitions rather than by anything connected to the hijackings, the untrue stories peddled by The 9/11 Commission Report are clearly susceptible of being turned into major political issues.

A Scripps Howard News Service/Ohio University poll taken from July 6 to 24, 2006 concluded that “more than a third [36 percent] of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them, so that the United States could go to war in the Middle East.” The poll also found that “16 percent of Americans speculate that secretly planted explosives, not burning passenger jets, were the real reason the massive twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed.”

A poll done by the Zogby polling organization two months earlier, between May 12 and 16, 2006, and using questions worded somewhat differently, suggested even more strongly that the issue could become a “big one” if aggressively publicized. This poll concluded that 42 percent of Americans believed there had indeed been a cover-up of the true events of 9/11, and an additional 10 percent of Americans were “unsure.” The co-author of the poll, W. David Kubiak, stated that, “despite years of relentless media promotion, whitewash, and 9/11 Commission propaganda, the official 9/11 story still can’t even muster 50 percent popular support.”

Whichever of these polls is closer to the truth, it would seem that there is considerable support for making a major political issue of the subject.

This should be worked on at two different levels. At the first level, the objective should be long-term, centered on making a maximum effort to find out who the individuals and groups are that carried out the attacks in New York and Washington. Then, these people should be tried in an international court and, if possible, convicted and punished for causing so many deaths. Such a trial, accompanied by actual change in U.S. policies, would show that some people on this globe are at least trying to move closer to more just and decent behavior in human relationships around the world.

At the second level, the short term, the task should be to immediately set to work as hard as is humanly possible to defeat in this year’s congressional election any candidate who refuses to support a no-holds-barred investigation of 9/11 by the Congress or a high-level international court. No more evidence than is now available is needed in order to begin this process.

A manageable volume of carefully collected and analyzed evidence is already at hand on both items ONE and TWO above. Such evidence should be used right now to buttress charges that elements within the Bush administration, as well as possibly other groups foreign or domestic, were involved in a massive fraud against the American people, a fraud that has led to many thousands of deaths.

This charge of fraud, if proven, involves a much greater crime against the American people and people of the world than any other charges of fraud connected to the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It is a charge that we should not sweep under the rug because what is happening in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Syria, and Iran seems more pressing and overwhelming. It is a charge that is more important because it is related to all of the areas just mentioned -- after all, the events of 9/11 have been used by the administration to justify every single aspect of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East since September 11. It is a charge that is more important also because it affects the very core of our entire political system. If proven, it is a conspiracy, so far successful, not only against the people of the United States, but against the entire world. Finally, it is a charge too important to ignore simply because the U.S. government refuses to discuss it. We must force the Bush administration to discuss it.

Discussions aggressively pushed day after day about what really happened on 9/11 will be one of the most important tasks between now and early November. Such discussions can, one hopes, provide progressives with a way to jolt voters out of their apathy and inchoate willingness to support the status quo that they think gives them security -- and encourage more voters to stop supporting Bush, the Republicans, and the wobbly Democratic politicians who might as well be Republicans. A major issue like this, already supported by many voters, may prove particularly important in a congressional election year when new uncertainties in the Middle East, new possibilities of terrorism against the U.S. in retaliation for recent large-scale acts of Israeli/U.S. terrorism in Gaza and Lebanon, and the corrupt almost-single-party U.S. political system combine to make it more likely that supporters of Bush will retain their majority this November.

In terms of electoral impact, it would not matter whether heavy publicity did in fact force the administration to accept a new high-level investigation of the 9/11 events. Initially, the principal goal would be to contribute heavily to the defeat of both Republicans and Democrats who refuse to support wholeheartedly a major new investigation by Congress or an international court. This might result in the defeat of more Republicans than Democrats in November, but ultimately the hoped-for goal should be the end of a system in which Democrats are barely different from Republicans, along with cutbacks in the political power of wealth and the foreign and domestic lobbies paid for by wealth. These are the dominant features of our system today that have practically eliminated meaningful democracy in the U.S. This failure of democracy has happened before in U.S. history, but this time it is likely to last longer -- at least until U.S. policies begin to pay as much attention to the needs of the world as they do to selfish or thoughtless needs of the U.S. and of its military-industrial complex. Attacks on the criminal events surrounding 9/11 might speed this process.

Virtually no members of Congress, Democratic or Republican, will relish calling for a further investigation of 9/11. For right now, in addition to other motives, the issue should be used to go after those political prostitutes among elected office-holders who should also be defeated because they are so easily seduced by money and power to vote for immoral wars against weak enemies.

At the Los Angeles meeting of the American Scholars’ Symposium, one of the main speakers, Webster Tarpley, summarized his own views on the events of 9/11. He emphasized that “neocon fascist madmen” had perpetrated the 9/11 “myth.” He went on to say, “The most important thing is that the 9/11 myth is the premise and the root of the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War and the coming attack on Iran. ... We must ... deprive [the myth’s perpetrators] of the ability to stampede and manipulate hundreds of millions of people [with their] ... cynically planned terrorist events.”

Let’s give Webster Tarpley and other mistakenly labeled conspiracists who have labored in the wilderness for so long three cheers.

Bill Christison is a former senior official of the CIA. He was a National Intelligence Officer and the Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis before his retirement in 1979. Since then he has written numerous articles on U.S. foreign policies. He can be reached at:  kathy.bill@christison-santafe.com.

ex-CIA
- Homepage: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug06/Christison14.htm


Bravo ex-CIA.

14.08.2006 23:55


TIme to start looking at the Facts surrounding 911.

Clearly a controlled demolition. Wake up people, the world was conned and your minds were abused like toys.




Anon


Why don't you link to both sides?

15.08.2006 09:48

I imagine the couple of conspiracists who plague indymedia haven't read the public eye article that's linked to above. I can imagine just starting to read it would give you an uncomfortable woozy feeling as for just a second the world view you so desperately try to remain within disappears and you get what alchololics call a moment of clarity. Just for a second you get a flash of objectivity and see yourselves as the rest of us see you. I can only imagine the sensation you must get going from a hero of our time, upon whose shoulders, along with perhaps a dozen others in the UK, the whole future of the world depends to paranoid fantacist who has been wasting their time.

That's not going to be an easy transition to make and I imagine any countervailing facts or the revealing of logical fallacies in your arguments aren't going to make a dent in that psychological ediface.

However perhaps you might have some sense of fairplay. The authors of the public eye article on Griffin's book contacted him and gave him the right to reply, indeed he comends them for doing so. Instead of presenting your version of the twin towers collapse as "proven" why don't you say in the interests of fairness here's some people who disagree with us, make your own minds up:  http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/conspiracism-911.html

Please don't say Fox news presents the other side, nobody is disputing your claims in the mainstream media because they aren't taken seriously, which leaves you open to claiming to be undisputed. If you are truthseekers you should point to websites that dispute what you are saying and then have faith in your arguments. If you don't then you are just a cult.

Godbotherer
- Homepage: http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/conspiracism-911.html


More important than Lebanon?

15.08.2006 12:36

ex-CIA's comment above that the broadcasting of a 9-11 debate in America by a virtually unkown organisation is more important than coverage of the carnage in Lebanon.

No mate. Not at all. One is a hobby for alienated activists, in the other people are dying.

You're proving the point that the 9-11 conspiracy stuff is a waste of energy and distraction from issues that really matter. Maybe that's why an "ex-"MI5 person is so into it.

Even if you're right and it's all a lie, what difference does it make? Fuck all. They're still in power and we've spent time arguing the toss about thermite while they move on with their next scheme.

AIC-xe


philosophy vs physics

15.08.2006 12:41

The publiceye.org review and it's reply are worth looking at, as is the book:

 http://web.archive.org/web/20041015045053/http://vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2004/06/141355.php

But, the publiceye.org stuff just discredits them -- they are trying to trump physics with logic and their philosophy:

* The collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center was caused by a controlled demolition (bombs planted in the buildings prior to the planes striking the buildings).{Logical Fallacy}

But, in this case, physics comes out on top.

World Trade Centre 7, the 3rd skyscraper to fall down that day (47 stories -- a BIG building the higest in the UK is 50) was not hit by an areoplane.

 http://wtc7.net/

You can watch the videos of it's collapse:

 http://wtc7.net/videos.html

The evidence is fairly overwhelming that this building was brought down with controlled demolition.

And if this building was brought down in this way then you have to question what caused the collapse of the twin towers:

Take the collapse time, between 10 and 15 seconds -- this doesn't fit with collapse from fire:

 http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/BilliardBalls.html

And there are a lot of other unanswered questions about the structural failure of these buildings:

 http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html

Sites like publiceye.org and 911myths and the like don't seriously tackle the collapse time issue or all the 13 points that Steven Jones raises.

But sites like publiceye.org and 911myths do serve a purpose -- they are sites that people who are philosophically opposed to a conspiritorial view of the world and who haven't seriously studied the physics that the truth activists are raising can point to and say "look, this proves everything". But it doesn't.

The comment above from the ex-CIA spook in interesting:

"After spending the better part of the last five years treating these theories with utmost skepticism, I have devoted serious time to actually studying them in recent months, and have also carefully watched several videos that are available on the subject. I have come to believe that significant parts of the 9/11 theories are true, and that therefore significant parts of the “official story” put out by the U.S. government and the 9/11 Commission are false."

If activists like Godbotherer actually spent some time looking at the physics rather than just copy and pasting addresses of sites that confirm their philosophy then perhaps we could start to move on...

If people find the physics hard to get into then start by watching this hour long movie on the structural failure of the 3 skyscrapers:

 http://911revisited.com/

Also if people want to get an idea about where David Ray Griffin is comming from then the easiesr way is to watch one of his lectures:

 http://www.archive.org/details/drgriffin

Interestinglly there is an old article on publiceye.org on COINTELPRO:

"[Government] documents on COINTELPRO, the FBI's grand scheme to annihilate organized dissent, [have forced] major changes in perspectives on America's recent political history. The 53,000 pages in the public domain show a daily mapping of a once secret program which played havoc with any group actively opposing American policy through much of the Post World War II era. They reveal a program which manipulated so many events, political processes, and national institutions, that it must be considered one of capitalism's chief editors over the last two decades which did everything possible to erase Left politics from the historical record."

"...COINTELPRO did not end on April 27, 1971 as the FBI promised. The documents themselves prove it..."

 http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/Feds/ci-ryter.html

shadowplay


Unquestioned Answers

15.08.2006 17:33

Nonconspiracy theorist David Ray Griffin takes aim at the official 9-11 story

About 10 years ago, I was asked to perform comedy at a conference I quickly dubbed "the Paranoids Conference." Each presenter had a dark tale to tell of abductions, drug running, assassinations and other nefarious horrors too terrible to mention. There were whispers of government agents in our midst, so when it was my turn to perform, I said I was with the CIA. I paused while the audience gasped. "That's the Comedians Institute of America." It got a laugh, but no amount of laughter could counterbalance the toxicity of the atmosphere. I couldn't wait to leave.

Fast forward to a sunny Sunday afternoon early last year when I found myself in Santa Rosa's Church of the Rose to hear Dr. David Ray Griffin, author of a book on the 9-11 attacks called The New Pearl Harbor, as well as The 9-11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions. Griffin, a soft-spoken retired professor of theology with sandy, graying hair, proceeded to calmly and quietly dismantle the official 9-11 story. The room was filled to standing with people of all ages, many of whom attended the church. As Griffin made his case for how the official story could never have happened the way they said it did, I looked around me. Everyone was riveted, and yet I could detect no fear, no paranoia in the room.

People were hearing his message--the essentials of which are that our government likely knew about or had something to do with the 9-11 attacks--and yet there was something about his delivery that was reassuring. I've heard David Ray Griffin twice since then, once at a small gathering of world government advocates, the other time at the prestigious Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. Each event had a similar ambiance: a calm, thoughtful, scholarly presentation without the least hint of sensationalism or personal glory.

Whatever one's assumption of what a "conspiracy theorist" is like, David Ray Griffin doesn't fit the mold, perhaps because he's really a nonconspiracy theorist. While he methodically deconstructs the official story, he doesn't spin his own alternative yarn to fill the vacuum. Instead, he allows audience members to draw their own conclusions. As for conspiracy theories, he explains, "the official story is itself a conspiracy theory. As the accepted 'conspiracy theory' goes, a cadre of al Qaida operatives conspired to hijack four jetliners, did so undetected and were able to complete their mission with no interception or even interference from the best-prepared air force on the face of the earth."

Even more unusual, Griffin says, "the crime was solved immediately, and the official story was in place before the day of the attack was over. Within 48 hours, our president stood at the National Cathedral surrounded by Billy Graham, a cardinal, a rabbi and an imam, and used this religious setting to declare a holy war on terror."

If we were to contrast the smoothness of the post-9-11 operation with the aftermath of Katrina, we are left with the question: How can a president so inept in one setting have been so "ept" in another?
False Flags

While Griffin professes no formulated alternative theory of what did happen, he offers a clue in the title of his first book. A New Pearl Harbor refers to a passage in a document called Project for the New American Century--the neocons' blueprint for what they call "pax Americana"--which says that for the American people to accept the overt military mission of creating security through world domination, a "new Pearl Harbor" would be needed. Griffin believes that the 9-11 attacks were just that.

This is a pretty serious--and horrific--assertion to make: that the leaders of our country would see fit to sacrifice some 3,000 civilians so that we could launch a preemptive attack on a perceived enemy. And yet, Griffin is quick to point out, our history is rife with just such incidents, from the "remember the Maine" boosterism preceding the Spanish-American war to the Gulf of Tonkin lie that launched U.S. involvement in Vietnam to the Pearl Harbor attacks themselves. Indeed, recent scholarship on Pearl Harbor suggests that President Roosevelt knew of the attack plan in advance and even purposely provoked the Japanese, because he knew it was the only way we could join the war against Germany. This in itself offers a dicey moral dilemma: Is it justified to sacrifice thousands of lives to save millions of lives?

During the Cold War, two more chilling examples of so-called false flag operations have come to light. (False flag operations are covert situations conducted by governments or other organizations that are designed to appear as if they are being carried out by other entities.) In his recent book, NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, Dr. Daniele Ganser, a senior researcher at the Center for Security Studies, Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, reports that NATO, guided by the CIA, supported terrorist attacks on civilians in various European countries to discredit the left and create fear on the part of the populace.

In Italy, right-wing terrorists, supplied by a secret army (named "Gladio," Latin for "sword"), carried out bomb attacks in public places, blamed them on the Italian left and were thereafter protected from prosecution by the military secret service. As right-wing terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra explains in Ganser's book, "The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security."

In our own country during the early '60s, the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the command of Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer came up with a similar plan to provoke an attack on Cuba. According to NSA myth-buster James Bamford in his 2001 Random House publication Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, the Joint Chiefs called for undercover operation of terror within the United States that included plans for "innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war."

President John F. Kennedy nixed the plan immediately, and it was never put into action. But it did have the approval of top military brass, and with the right president--or the wrong one--it could very well have come about.

In the aftermath of 9-11, Griffin initially dismissed any speculation that the attacks could have been an inside job. "I subscribed to the 'blow-back' theory," Griffin says. "After generations of exploitation and interference by Western powers, these people had such fury that they had to lash out any way they could."

At the time, Griffin, who was close to retirement from his position at Claremont School of Theology, was working on a book on global democracy. In the wake of 9-11, he decided that he needed a special chapter on U.S. imperialism. He worked on that chapter for over a year before he came to the view that 9-11 was an inside job. "As much as I knew about prior false flag operations, as much as I knew or thought I knew about the nefariousness of the current regime, my first take was not even the Bush administration could or would do such a thing."
Three Different Stories

It wasn't until a colleague sent Griffin an e-mail with Paul Thompson's timeline--an exact, minute-by-minute accounting of the events of Sept. 11 based entirely on mainstream media accounts--that he changed his mind. "The most glaring anomaly," Griffin now says, "was that none of the hijacked planes were intercepted, even though all of them would have been, had standard procedure been followed."

According to Gen. Ralph Eberhart, head of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), from the time the FAA senses something is wrong, it takes about a minute to contact NORAD, after which NORAD, Eberhart says, can scramble fighter jets "within a matter of minutes to anywhere in the United States." So what happened on that morning?

The government has given three conflicting answers to this question.

Since a full 32 minutes elapsed between the time the first hijacked airliner was detected and the time it crashed into the World Trade Center, it initially appeared that "stand down" orders must have been issued to suspend standard procedures. Indeed, the first reports from both NORAD and Gen. Richard Myers, the acting chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated that no jets were scrambled until after the Pentagon was hit at 9:38am.

By Sept. 13, however, the original story had morphed into an explanation that "the planes were scrambled but arrived too late." The delays were blamed on the FAA, said to have been slow in notifying NORAD. If that were the case, Griffin points out, it was strange indeed that no FAA personnel were fired or even cited for the breakdown in procedures and the resulting disaster. (Griffin notes, moreover, that the FAA flawlessly handled--on the same day--the unprecedented task of grounding thousands of domestic flights.)

Meanwhile, Griffin reports, transportation secretary Norman Mineta testified that at 9:20am--about 18 minutes before the Pentagon was hit, allegedly by Flight 77--he went down to the shelter conference room under the White House. According to Mineta, a young man walked in and said to the vice president, "The plane is 50 miles out," and later, "The plane is 30 miles out." When the young man reported, "The plane is 10 miles out," he also asked the vice president, "Do the orders still stand?"

"Of course the orders still stand," Cheney is alleged to have replied. "Have you heard anything to the contrary?"

When Mineta was asked by the 9-11 Commission how long after he arrived the conversation occurred, Mineta said, "Probably about five or six minutes," which would have placed it around 9:25 or 9:26am. However, in the final version of the story, The 9/11 Commission Report maintained that no one in our government knew about the approaching aircraft until 9:36am, too late to shoot it down. How did the Commission deal with this apparent contradiction? Like just about every other piece of testimony that conflicted with the official story, Griffin avers, they ignored it.

"With regard to the question 'Do the orders still stand?'" Griffin says, "Mineta seemed to assume those orders were to shoot the plane down. But really, the young man's question makes sense only if the orders were to do something unexpected--that is, not to shoot the plane down."

So what did happen? Whodunnit?

Again, Griffin prefers to focus on the circumstantial framework for examining the evidence. "You have a suspect who changes his story three times. Does this make him more or less suspicious?"
Collective Evil

Of course, the top echelon of leaders in this country aren't exactly your usual run-of-the-lineup perps--which, according to Griffin, is why those who've pointed fingers at the emperor's bare buttocks in this case have been marginalized like a bunch of tinfoil-headed kooks. No argument about this. I've asked a number of savvy authors and commentators why they haven't taken on the unanswered questions and unquestioned answers around 9-11. Their answers have been pretty much the same: It's just too big a stretch for most Americans to believe their own government could have had anything to do with it. However, in an exceedingly underreported Zogby poll done just last month, 42 percent of adults polled believe the U. S. government and the 9-11 Commission "concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence" that contradicts the official explanation of the attacks.

Perhaps what these reluctant commentators really meant is that they would be committing career suicide by questioning the official story. So why and how is David Ray Griffin different? And why is he spending his retirement traveling around the country writing and talking about something that conventional wisdom insists people don't want to hear?

Perhaps it has something to do with Griffin's background in "process theology." Process theology is specifically designed to answer such post-Holocaust questions as, how could a loving God have allowed such a thing to happen? Griffin has written or co-authored a dozen books and articles on the subject, and roughly the answer is this: We, as creations of the Creator, have free will to choose how and what we create in this life. This very often results in what we call "evil." On the other hand, our greatest power as human beings is to bring that loving God to earth by creating good instead.

To those who assert "God is dead," process theology says no, Griffin reasons. The loving God is alive in our thoughts and words and deeds. God doesn't intervene to set things right unilaterally. Rather, that spirit--through us--embodies divine love. In other words, the world changes--if we change it. Divine power, he says, is "persuasive, not controlling."

While Griffin's faith may be deep, it certainly isn't narrow. He recently edited a book called Deep Religious Pluralism.

"I've written two books on the problem of evil, so I've been dealing with the topic for a long time," Griffin says. "Frankly, as soon as I saw the evidence that 9-11 was an inside job, I wasn't surprised. I had studied the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust, the Japanese butchery of the Chinese in Manchuria, our use of nuclear weapons in Japan in spite of their imminent surrender. I've seen the depth of evil in collective situations. It's an old, old story, and this is just the latest chapter. Once the nation-state announces it is threatened, everything else gets pushed to the back burner. That's what we're seeing now."

Griffin's intention just over three years ago was to write an article for Harper's on what he then believed to be "foreknowledge and thwarted intelligence." But the more evidence he saw that the attacks were likely orchestrated by our own government, the more he felt a book was needed. Since none of the American investigators had been able to get a book published at that time, Griffin figured that as a published author he had a better chance.

But it was far from automatic. Richard Falk, a Princeton professor of international law and practice, had personally recommended Griffin's book to several publishers. Every one of them turned it down. "Not for us," said one rejection tersely. At dinner one night, Falk suggested Interlink Books, a tiny publisher that had published a recent book of his. Interlink took the book, but only because of a quirky coincidence. The editor was dubious. But knowing Griffin was a theologian, she asked her father, a minister, if he'd ever heard of the guy. "David Ray Griffin?" said her father. "I have all of his books!"

And so, in 2004, the book got published. But you'd never learn this from mainstream magazines and newspapers, which have yet to publish a review of The New Pearl Harbor, which has sold over 100,000 copies. Nor will you see him on mainstream TV, which has yet to invite him to appear.

Griffin seems unperturbed by this, and points out that each week and each month the alternative account of 9-11 gains wider credence. Is he afraid? Does he feel in danger? "Well," he jokes, "there are two possibilities. Either they leave me alone, or they take me out. If they leave me alone, I get to enjoy my old age and write my systematic theology. If they take me out, my 9-11 books go right to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. So it's a win-win situation."

More seriously, he points to his Christian faith (Disciples of Christ is his own background), and says that Christian history is full of examples of the faithful who stuck their necks out for the truth. "If we who believe in everlasting life fear death," he says, "what does that say about our faith?"
Myth-Informed?

Other than standing for his faith, what does Griffin hope to accomplish by exposing the 9-11 story as a lie? As an advocate for a worldwide democratic order, he sees this story as an example of "governmental lawlessness" so egregious that its exposure could call into question the continuation of the present system with its "anarchical competition between nation states." First, however, people must be willing to think the unthinkable, and to be willing to look at the evidence that it is our own nation that has become the evil empire.

This is a formidable barrier to cross. Ever since the notion of the "Big Lie" was first put forth to describe the tactics of the Third Reich, it has become a cliché that the bigger the lie, the harder it is for people to see the truth. This is especially so when the official version takes on the status of what theologian Griffin calls "sacred myth."

"The 'truth' of the official 9-11 story," explains Griffin, "must be taken on faith. It is not a matter of debate or even discussion. Anyone who brings up anything that contradicts the official story is either ignored or denounced as a conspiracy nut.

"However," he continues, "when the official account of 9-11 is stripped of its halo and treated simply as a theory rather than an unquestionable dogma, it cannot be defended as the best theory to account for the relevant facts. When challenges to it are not treated as blasphemy, it can easily be seen to not correspond with reality."

And so David Ray Griffin continues to make presentations, do interviews and get his version of the truth to "break the soundless barrier." With Falk, John B. Cobb Jr. and Catherine Keller, Griffin co-authored the just-published anthology The American Empire and the Commonwealth of God: A Political, Economic, Religious Statement. His own contribution portrays the 9-11 attacks as orchestrated to promote the American empire. Publishing in July is his newest book, Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action.

His hope? That enough Americans wake up and call for a re-investigation, and that those who know more will feel safe enough to come forward. But first, he says, we Americans must muster the will and courage to face the situation squarely in the face.

As a postscript to my interview with David Ray Griffin, I am reminded of a March 30 article by journalist Doug Thompson published on OpEdNews.com. In it, Thompson recalls a 1981 encounter with the late John Connally, the former governor of Texas who was wounded in the Kennedy assassination. In an unguarded moment, Thompson asked Connally, "Do you think Lee Harvey Oswald fired the gun that killed Kennedy?"

"Absolutely not," Connally said. "I do not, for one second, believe the conclusions of the Warren Commission."

"So why not speak out?" Thompson asked.

"I will never speak out publicly about what I believe," Connally replied, "because I love this country and we needed closure at the time."

Now here we are more than 40 years after that devastating perpetration and we have to wonder, how well did "closure" serve us? As we see daily the fruits of self-serving secrecy and unchecked power, it might be time for some disclosure instead.

Steve Bhaerman
- Homepage: http://bohemian.com/bohemian/06.14.06/david-ray-griffin-0624.html


An Appeal to the Anti-War Movement

15.08.2006 18:05

By [1]David Chen

If there was an achilles heel that would definitely bring down not only the Bush Administration, but every tyrannical mechanism they have constructed in their fraudulent "War on Terror", would you strike at it? As I scour the web and talk to people in the anti-war movement, I have heard disheartening answers ranging from dismissiveness to fear to willful ignorance. I am referring to attitudes regarding the one event used by the neo-cons and their flag waving supporters to justify endless war, government looting, eroding constitutional freedoms, and everything else under the sun, namely 9/11. What is disheartening is that we are missing out on a golden opportunity to unite and bring down the current reign of tyranny.

In light of probable war in Iran, previous scams in history, such as the [2]Nazi Gleiwitz incident and the [3]Iraqi WMD scam, serve as guides as to what we can watch for as the powers that be prepare a staged provocation to lead America to war. It is time for everyone to drop the dismissive attitude towards the rapidly growing 9/11 truth movement. It is time for people to recognize 9/11 truth's vital role in preserving liberty and stopping future wars of aggression. It is high time for people in the mainstream anti-war movement to investigate 9/11 and expose the official story for the fraud that it is.

"But 9/11 is a distraction to the larger fight to end the war in Iraq..."

I often hear this objection from people who are ignorant of the relationship between 9/11 and our current situation.

This world view preceives 9/11 as a separate "distraction" issue, removed from the issues of the Iraq war, the USA PATRIOT Act, NSA spying, etc. Many will acknowledge that Bush benefited from 9/11, and that 9/11 continues to be used as the justification for the above issues, and still serves as a backdrop in the atmosphere of continual fear (created thru [4]fake terror alerts and manufactured terror busts). However, to many in the anti-war movement, to question the events of 9/11 is considered sacreligious. It is odd that some people who are quick to doubt and be skeptical of anything bush says will immediately rush to his defense and unquestioningly accept the official 9/11 story, despite the numerous cover-ups, admitted lies, and back sliding distortions and spin that have been put out.

Such an inconsistent approach treats 9/11 as a coveniently coincidental event. This is in spite of the fact that many anti war activists know about, yet fail to grasp the significance, of the fact that the Iraq and [5]Afghanistan invasions, as well as the freedom eviscerating USA PATRIOT Act were all planned prior to 9/11. Although the roots of our predicament began long before the current administration, the events that have occurred during this war president's reign cannot be looked at in a vacuum. Far from being a distraction, when looked at in conjunction with everything in the so-called "War on Terror", 9/11 forms an essential piece of this Administration's reign of tyranny.

"9/11 will ruin the credibility of the anti-war movement"

In the face of shallow mass media demonization of 9/11 truth, the above objection is understandable, especially in the first few years following 9/11/2001. However, recently the 9/11 truth movement has gained tremendous boosts of attention, spurred on by [6]credible scholars.

As the 9/11 truthers have continually gained credibility, the government has been caught repeatedly lying, covering up, and altering its story. The recently admitted NORAD lies, as [7]reported in the Washington Post, are just the tip of the iceberg. On the other hand, on a regular basis more and more prominent people of all political stripes have come to seriously doubt the official 9/11 fable. The list includes [8]physicists, [9]former fighter pilots, former [10]CIA agents, and even [11]former Reagan officials). At this point, 9/11 truth is exploding in popularity, with poll after poll showing its breakthrough to the mainstream, and media outlets compelled to seriously cover alternative theories of 9/11 government complicity. As Charlie Sheen said, "the worm is turning."

No one is asking anyone to believe every alternative theory to the official theory. To separate truth from fiction, it is best to keep a skeptical eye on every single aspect of 9/11. especially the government's version, Given this government's credibility (or lack thereof), rather than automatically believing the government's 9/11 story, we must closely everything closely. Upon such close inspection, the official 9/11 story unravels into a series of [12]anomalies, indefensible lies, and unlikely coincidences.

"Just don't go there"

This position of fear is taken by many on the left (some call them "left gatekeepers"). Fear of the unthinkable or a head in the sand approach will not save this republic. If America has a deadly cancer, we had best confront it head on.

Things people in the mainstream anti-war movement should see, but don't:

* Historical Precedent: 9/11 truthers are merely anti-war activists who see the big picture. Far from being "conspiracy theorists", we are people who know [13]history and how modern events fit into history. Many on the Left are familiar with false flag operations (terror blamed on someone else) that take place in foreign nations, but have a tough time believing that US intelligence agencies would do the same in America. History and the nature of man would suggest otherwise. Deluded minds need to be reminded that America is not exempt from history.

* Guilty Behavior: The pattern of government cover-ups, lies, and the myriad of inconsistencies with regard to 9/11 suggest a "consciousness of guilt", just as in the case of the Downing Street memos. It demonstrates the intention to deceive on the part of those involved. It suggests possible complicity and a need for a full investigation.

* Overwhelming Evidence: The evidence against the government's official story is overwhelming. Plenty of sites have already covered this in [14]great documented detail.

As the overarching issue of our time, 9/11 truth can and must be used to tear down the entire fraudulent "War on Terror". It is critical that the untouchable mother of all scandals must explode like a supernova if we are to prevent another massive terrorist/biological attack on American soil, which will likely be carried out by the military-industrial complex, but blamed on a Hezbollah/Hamas/Al Qaeda combination in conjunction with Iran/Syria. The attack would likely be used to justify further military action in the middle east, most likely against the nations that are blamed for the terror, Iran or Syria. It would also be used to justify the dismantling of our Constitution. [15]Some say that the confluence of recent events indicate a high probability that such a terrorist incident will come in the next 2 months, leading to the beginning of World War III, which neo-cons such as William Kristol and Newt Gingrich have been agitating for.

As anti-war activists, as defenders of the republic, we have the power to stop all of these horrors. I implore everyone in the anti-war movement, regardless of whether you are on the left, center, or right/libertarian side of the false political spectrum, to use the achilles heel of 9/11 to crush the neo-con tyrannical juggernaut.

"In the beginning, a patriot is a scarce man, hated, feared and scorned, but in time the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."
-Mark Twain

"It's not like the 20th century, where you had time to get warrants."
-Michael Chertoff, Head of Homeland Security
[16]As quoted in the Financial Times

References

1. mailto: david@thedarksidecometh.com
2.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident
3.  http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/6981
4.  http://www.prisonplanet.com/archive_war_on_terror.html#alerts
5.  http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/preplanned.html
6.  http://www.st911.org/
7.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101300.html
8.  http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html
9.  http://www.rmbowman.com/ssn/Secrecy.htm
10.  http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug06/Christison14.htm
11.  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14531.htm
12.  http://911research.wtc7.net/sept11/analysis/anomalies.html
13.  http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ARTICLE5/index.html
14.  http://911research.wtc7.net/
15.  http://prisonplanet.com/articles/August2006/110806_b_Warning.htm
16.  http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0c061c16-2af0-11db-b77c-0000779e2340,dwp_uuid=5aedc804-2f7b-11da-8b51-00000e2511c8,print=yes.html

repost
- Homepage: http://www.thedarksidecometh.com/2006/08/appeal-to-anti-war-movement-by-david.html


Why does no expert in the world agree with the conspiracy theorists?

16.08.2006 12:09

There is a dispute over the science of climate change. The vast majority of climate change scientists are in agreement that human activity is causing the warming of the earth's climate but a tiny minority disagree. Certain political and economic interests have seized on this and exploited it, claiming the science is inconclusive. Now it's hard to judge the issue with out spending a lot of time researching and comparing the claims made by both sides. But of course you don't have to, the fact that the over whelming majority of scientists agree and that you can read the political interests informing and funding the opposition is enough to act on.

Similarly the link between smoking and lung cancer still has small areas of dispute that has been exploited by tobacco companies. Of course there is no doubt about it in the real world.

The collapse of the Twin Towers and WTC 7 isn't like that. There is no disagreement amongst expert opinion at all. There is not one structural engineer in the whole world that thinks the towers couldn't have collapsed because of the impact of the planes, alongside the fires causing the steel trusses to lose their structural integrity (not melt that is a red herring, nobody makes that claim).

Now if I was going to build a skyscraper or investigate its collapse I would call a structural engineer, these are the experts in their fields. Of course tower collapse is a matter of physics as is everything. How computers work is just a matter of physics but if I wanted to fix a computer I wouldn't look up physicists in the phone book.

Now there are some non-experts that disagree with the structural engineers however their political motivations for doing so are pretty transparent. The fact still remains that any alternative explanation has to account for one phenomenon above all others: Why is there not one structural engineer in the whole world that agrees with them?

WTC 7 wasn't struck by a plane but was struck by debris from the twin towers and had fires raging for 7 hours. It got to a stage where the fire service pulled all its officers out and let it burn because it looked like it was going to collapse. They were right it did.
This page provides testimony from fire fighters to this effect:  http://www.debunking911.com/pull.htm

Now these are just theories that best account for the phenomena encountered. Theory that best suit the phenomena we experience is how we live our lives. That the Earth goes around the Sun is just a theory but it seems a pretty adequate one.

What would be an alternative theory for the collapse of WTC 7 than the one I've just outlined? One put forward is that it was blown up in a controlled explosion. There is no evidence for that except that it looks that way to some people from a certain angle with inexpert eyes. This alternative theory though would have to account for the fire fighters evidence. Perhaps they were in on the conspiracy? That is getting to be a pretty huge conspiracy. Why include fire fighters giving false testimony in the conspiracy, surely they aren't needed and the more people in on it the less likely it is to remain secret.

Then there is the question why blow up WTC 7 at all. Surely the Twin Towers collapsing would have been enough. Why wait several hours before blowing it up. There were hundreds of people around after the 2 towers came down who might see the evidence of preparations for those controlled explosion. Also they would have known that the collapse would be filmed and so more evidence of their conspiracy would have been provided.

Can you see how many holes appear in the controlled explosion theory after just a cursory examination? It makes absolutely no sense at all.

There have been false flag operations before and there is continuous corruption and manipulation but these are nothing like what is being proposed here. The 9/11 conspiracy theories are an enormous magnitude more complex and unlikely than the Bologna Train station bombing or the Gulf of Tonkin incident (the latter would just be called spin these days); there is no evidence or phenomena that call forth such a preposterously unlikely theory to account for it. The alternative theories make no sense at all. One last example, once you've crashed the planes into the Twin Towers what is gained by controlled detonation, which would raise the risk of detection exponentially? Why not just let them burn?

Of course none of this will be addressed by the conspiracy theorists because it was not their interpretation of physical evidence that drew them to their theories, it was a predisposition to interpret events as the result of conspiracies that drew them to search for evidence to fit their worldview.

The same way that Bush compelled the "intelligence" services to find evidence of WMD's in Iraq.

Now this wouldn’t matter if it stayed in the anti-Semitic, racist, far right survivalist circles in which it originated but some previously on the “left” have been attracted by the anti-government rhetoric and have made common cause with the far-right over these theories. One result is that Indymedia is plagued by such conspiracy theories, including thinly disguised anti-Semitic rants that Neo-Nazis would happily agree with alongside links back to far right conspiracy sites. I don’t think many people take them seriously but that is part of the problem, there is no other context in which we’d allow Neo-Nazi propaganda and links to be published on our sites or tolerate such right wing activism within our movements. The time has come to put a stop to it.

Anti-bullshit action


Structural Engineers

16.08.2006 18:50

That no Structural Engineers has spoken out on either side of the debate does seem strange (I know you will claim that they all support the official story but I have yet to find one that has, for example, written a critique of the 13 points that Steve Jones has raised:  http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html so as far as I'm concerned they are all actually sitting on the fence).

So I looked up Engineers that are upto 100Km of where I am and who have a specialism in:

High rise structures
Fire engineering
Expert Witness

This search, on  http://www.findanengineer.com/ found 30 firms, so I sent them all this email:

----------

Dear Sir / Madam

I am seeking a Structural Engineer who would be prepared to be interviewed,
via email, for an article on the structural failure of the 3 sky scrapers
at the World Trade Centre on September 11th 2001.

The specific material that I would like to ask questions about consists of
one hour long video and two documents, these 3 items are all available on
the internet (the video required broadband to view it):

1. September 11 Revisited
 http://911revisited.com/

2. A Refutation of the Official Collapse Theory
 http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/BilliardBalls.html

3. Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?
 http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html

If you would be interested in being interviewed please let me know

Your sincerely

----------

If any of them reply I'll write it up as an article for this site...

Journo


Deal!

16.08.2006 21:53

Okay, Journo.....I'm an architect, I work on high buildings - including a biggie in Manchester right now - and I've done expert witness work. I'll do your interview, all the prep, and so on required.

How do you plan to pay me for this chargable time?

Architect


Architect!

16.08.2006 22:12

You expect payment for an interview for an article for Indymedia?!

If you were just kidding on that bit then leave an email address...

Journo


Left-Right Left-Right Left-Right Squad 'Shun We wuz only following orders

17.08.2006 01:36

The Authoritarian left are stamping their little feet.


More from the man with a brain (Anti bullshit action)...
but no ability to USE it!

Dear ABA

Please could you give me a list of all the thoughts I'm allowed to think?

Bullshit

"Certain political and economic interests have seized on this and exploited it"

Now you should know that the Petro-right interest invest heavily in "think tanks" that come up with the ideologies and strategies to disrupt environmental protesters and agreements like the Kyoto accord or the privatisation of public services, water - well everything in-fact.

e.g (and this is only one of very many)

Competitive Enterprise Institute

...It postures as an advocate of "sound science" in
the development of public policy. In fact, it is an
ideologically-driven, well-funded front for
corporations opposed to safety and environmental
regulations that affect the way they do business. (PR
Watch)
========================
 http://www.prwatch.org/improp/cei.html

The petro-right are not reacting to scientists that are "global-warming sceptics" they are actively encouraging and funding their research.

So some bullshit from "anti-bullshit action" to start with is not an encouraging sign.

Let's try and clear up this whole "expert' issue.
Personally I think that depending on "experts" to work out what you think is a dangerous strategy, especially if the "experts" have a vested interest in the subject they are supposed to be "experts" in. You are dependent on the authority of the expert and very often the expert is dependent on the funding authority.

Now I think very few Structural Engineers would be willing to make a judgement without the engineering documents of the structure they are asked to investigate. Unfortunately the engineering drawings of WTC are not in the public domain, requests have been made, but so far the authorities have not been forth coming.

Also it should be pointed out that early on 2 Structural engineers did say that there was evidence to support the controlled demolition hypothesis and one lost his job and the other quickly changed his mind. It doesn't take much to shut someone up especially when their carreer or reputation or life is on the line.

Further-
This is not a structural engineering issue its a Physics issue.
And is based on the video evidence of the 1st 4 seconds of the collapses of WTC 1&2 which are at or very near free-fall speed. (now don't point me to 911mythsdebunkingthingy.com) because even they agree that the 1st 4 seconds of the collapse of both towers was at free-fall speed. Even though the two falling blocks have different masses and so should reflect that massive difference in their collapse. They don't , in-fact the opposite is true the smaller block of tower one appears to have at least the destructive energy of the falling block of tower two.

I have never thought that the truth about climate change depended what some "expert" told me or even how many experts were saying the same thing.

Now if an expert alerts me to have a look at some issue it might actually encourage me to do that - and off I'd go and do some research of my own and try to come up with my own interpretation and insights.

So if you look at paleoclimatology, for example you might discover that the Earths atmosphere 250 million years ago (The Carboniferous [big clue there])had a lot more carbon and the temperatures were much higher than now. and so you might conclude that humans releasing all the carbon. that organic life had trapped through photosynthesis and subsequent burial, back into the atmosphere might take the planets' climate back to the roughly the same conditions as those of 250MYA in other words human activity would very likely lead to Global Warming especially if it involved the release of Carbon.

I would reach that conclusion no matter how many climate experts agreed with me. I'm using my own judgement and I'm prepared to be proved wrong. Its called independent thinking and we used to be taught how to do it.

The silence of the structural engineers cannot only be interpreted as tacit approval of the NIST report.

So saying -
"There is no disagreement amongst expert opinion at all."

proves to me that you have only taken
"just a cursory examination?" of the dissent that is 911truth.

"it was not their interpretation of physical evidence that drew them to their theories, it was a predisposition to interpret events as the result of conspiracies"

Now the same could be said of you your predisposition to reject conspiracies might lead you to interpret physical evidence as the result of cock-ups.

"anti-Semitic, racist, far right survivalist circles in which it originated but some previously on the “left” have been attracted by the anti-government rhetoric and have made common cause with the far-right"

Now this is true a lot of this stuff does originate from these "circles" but not ALL of it does

So here is my explanation of this phenomena.

First you should discriminate between the Libertarian Right and the anti Zionist white race revenge brigade.

The former is up in arms (almost literally) because their civil liberties are seriously threatened (as are yours by the way) and they've been lied to by the Government (which they don't believe in).
Now if I hear the message that our civil liberties are being threatened from the Libertarian right then I would take notice and investigate, and if you do you find all that anti-terror legislation does exactly that, and you see that some of the phrasing of that anti terror legislation is very similar to the legislation pushed through by the Nazi's after their take over of power in 1930, then that would concern me even more.

So the fact that I'm alerted to an issue by the Libertarian right and after my own research I find it to be true - should I then reject the "information" because the messenger was from the right? Obviously not.
I wouldn't then become a individualist gun carrying idiot, but there's little doubt that the Libertarian right are recruiting on this issue.

The Nazi's are also trying to recruit on this issue they have a deliberate policy of hijacking any issue at all e.g. the Palestinian cause is supported by the white race revenge brigade simply because the Palestinians happen to be fighting the Jews in Israel.

It's the information that's important and not the messenger.


See how Authoritarian you are here.

 http://politicalcompass.org
You can't stamp out a law of Physics.

New World Disorder - The War on Lies


Structural engineers are not neutral on this issue.

17.08.2006 18:25

"Journo" (a name chosen to imply objectivity, which is self evidently untrue and so the name is deliberately misleading) said:

"That no Structural Engineers has spoken out on either side of the debate does seem strange". This is of course a straight out lie. The FEMA report was jointly written with the Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers (SEI/ASCE).
It's here:
 http://www.house.gov/science/hot/wtc/wtcreport.htm

Of course this issue has been of immense interest to the structural engineering communtiy. It has been wideely and intensively studied and the reports have been widely read. yet not one structural engineer or expert in that field has disagreed with the findings. So there is complete consensus among expert opinion. Let me repeat not one dissenting voice, not a single one.

Here are links to some other peer reviewed articles from civil, structural and fire engineering journals:

Engineers Explain WTC Collapse
 http://www.architectureweek.com/2002/0529/news_3-1.html

Report Ties WTC Collapses to Column Failures
 http://enr.construction.com/news/buildings/archives/040119.asp

IT WAS THE FIRE, CAUSED THE TWIN TOWER COLLAPSE - icivilengineer.com
 http://www.icivilengineer.com/News/WTC/Fire.html

Simulation for the collapse of WTC after aeroplane impact - Lu XZ., Yang N., Jiang JJ. Structure Engineer, 66(sup.). 2003, 18-22

Bazant, Z.P., & Zhou, Y.
"Addendum to 'Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse? - Simple Analysis" (pdf)
Journal of Engineering Mechanics v. 128, no. 3, (2002): 369-370.

Brannigan, F.L.
"WTC: Lightweight Steel and High-Rise Buildings"
Fire Engineering v.155, no. 4, (2002): 145-150.

Clifton, Charles G.
Elaboration on Aspects of the Postulated Collapse of the World Trade Centre Twin Towers
HERA: Innovation in Metals. 2001. 13 December 2001.

"Construction and Collapse Factors"
Fire Engineering v.155, no. 10, (2002): 106-108.

Corbett, G.P.
"Learning and Applying the Lessons of the WTC Disaster"
Fire Engineering v.155, no. 10, (2002.): 133-135.

"Dissecting the Collapses"
Civil Engineering ASCE v. 72, no. 5, (2002): 36-46.

Eagar, T.W., & Musso, C.
"Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse? Science, Engineering, and Speculation"
JOM v. 53, no. 12, (2001): 8-12.

Federal Emergency Management Agency, Therese McAllister, report editor.
World Trade Center Building Performance Study: Data Collection, Preliminary Observations, and Recommendations
(also available on-line)

Gabrielson, T.B., Poese, M.E., & Atchley, A.A.
"Acoustic and Vibration Background Noise in the Collapsed Structure of the World Trade Center"
The Journal of Acoustical Society of America v. 113, no. 1, (2003): 45-48.

Glover, N.J.
"Collapse Lessons"
Fire Engineering v. 155, no. 10, (2002): 97-103

Marechaux, T.G.
"TMS Hot Topic Symposium Examines WTC Collapse and Building Engineering"
JOM, v. 54, no. 4, (2002): 13-17.

Monahan, B.
"World Trade Center Collapse-Civil Engineering Considerations"
Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction v. 7, no. 3, (2002): 134-135.

Newland, D.E., & Cebon, D.
"Could the World Trade Center Have Been Modified to Prevent Its Collapse?"
Journal of Engineering Mechanics v. 128, no. 7, (2002):795-800.

National Instititue of Stamdards and Technology: Congressional and Legislative Affairs
“Learning from 9/11: Understanding the Collapse of the World Trade Center”
Statement of Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr., before Committee of Science House of Representatives, United States Congress on March 6, 2002.

Pinsker, Lisa, M.
"Applying Geology at the World Trade Center Site"
Geotimes v. 46, no. 11, (2001).
The print copy has 3-D images.

Public Broadcasting Station (PBS)
Why the Towers Fell: A Companion Website to the Television Documentary.
NOVA (Science Programming On Air and Online)

Post, N.M.
"No Code Changes Recommended in World Trade Center Report"
ENR v. 248, no. 14, (2002): 14.

Post, N.M.
"Study Absolves Twin Tower Trusses, Fireproofing"
ENR v. 249, no. 19, (2002): 12-14.

The University of Sydney, Department of Civil Engineering
World Trade Center - Some Engineering Aspects
A resource site.

"WTC Engineers Credit Design in Saving Thousands of Lives"
ENR v. 247, no. 16, (2001): 12.

The Towers Lost and Beyond
 http://web.mit.edu/civenv/wtc/
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Eduardo Kausel, John E. Fernandez, Tomasz Wierzbicki, Liang Xue, Meg Hendry-Brogan, Ahmed F. Ghoniem, Oral Buyukozturk, Franz-Josef Ulm, Yossi Sheffi


anti-bullshit action


Useful Idiots Whose side are they on?

18.08.2006 01:16

Bullshit Action strikes again

 http://www.architectureweek.com/2002/0529/news_3-1.html
Pancake Theory -Diagrams misrepresent the structure of the buildings when compared to the photographs of the construction. This one goes nowhere near WTC7
Basically a regurgitation of the official report. It even uses the graphics from the NIST report. Its a cut and paste job.


 http://enr.construction.com/news/buildings/archives/040119.asp
This one raises more questions than it answers especially about the NIST report.
It also shows that the core columns never reached temperatures above 270 C

 http://www.icivilengineer.com/News/WTC/Fire.html
This guy is not a Civil Engineer he's a batalion chief - a fire man

Eagar, T.W., & Musso, C.
More pancakes!

Bazant, Z.P., & Zhou, Y.

The paper by Bazant in-particular stretches the evidence, speculates, and makes massive assumptions in order to fit evidence into the one and only one hypothesis considered. We then have to stretch, even further, this highly speculative and improbable sequence of events to three buildings collapsing all on the same day.

The US Government report says this and this So we'll show how this collapse mechanism might be plausible. Bazant at no time wonders how the tops of the towers fell and continued to fall with an acceleration close (very close) to that of gravity, because if he did he'd run slap into the Law of Conservation of Energy.
And again Bazant goes nowhere near WTC7.

Sorry I can't be arsed to waste any time searching for the others. I've spent 3 Months researching this and I've come across and read many of these "papers" before. They are mostly part of the dis-information operation that Anti-Bullshit action is helping to propagate.

So If you look through them for us ABS and if any-

1) Don't just parot the official report,
2) Don't misrepresent the structure of the buildings.
3) Actually have an adequate explanation of the collapse WTC7
4) Successfully answer the Physics problem i.e. The Law of the Conservation of Energy and the speed of the collapses.

Then let us know (that would be a useful thing to do and real anti-bullshit action)

If you're not prepared to actually read any of these articles yourself and analyse them yourself and then give us your analysis of the information contained in them then I think you should shut up 'coz you're a fake.

ABS you are so full of BULLSHIT I think you should take some action against your self.

You are a useful idiot, but no use to humanity - only the ruling class.




New World Disorder - The War on Lies


Take it to the structural engineers.

18.08.2006 12:12

The reports posted above prove that structural engineers aren't neutral on the collapse of the Twin Towers. I posted them to puncture a straight out lie that they were. My argument is not based on my analysis of those reports but merely raises the question why no structural engineer thinks they are wrong when so many structural engineers have read them. The answer to this question I was given was that "no Structural Engineers has spoken out on either side of the debate". That claim has now been proved false. It cannot be used again.

That no expert agrees with you doesn't mean you are necessarily wrong but it should give people cause for thought and needs an explanation. You are after all claiming more expertise than the experts.

Now there is a whole history of activists becoming experts on the area they campaign in. I have an activist friend who has become a world renowned expert on climate change but of course this is hard work, takes many years and takes place through post-doctoral research in that area, they become climate change scientists while still remaining activists.

But of course there is a difference between this and a crank with internet access in their bedrooms who watched a couple of films and then made a commitment to a whacked out theory they were already predisposed to believe in. (IE they already believed that every other major event in world history was a result of a secret conspiracy and then went out to find ways to argue this was the case for 9/11 as well.)

The way to judge the difference is to see where people make their arguments. The conspiracy theorists need to get their conspiracy papers published in a peer reviewed structural engineering journal. That is the standard measure of expertise. They should make their arguments to Internet forums for structural engineers and the like and then once they have convinced them we can start to take them seriously. This would be the primary way to advance your cause if you had faith in your arguments. Please go away and do that then come back and post a link to the conversation where you overturn orthodoxy on the most important issue in the history of structural engineering.

Until then please refrain from trolling Indymedia with your shit, there are a couple of weeks coming up when it will be needed for the purpose for which it was set up. The climate action camp taking place outside Leeds can be held up as an example of the complete opposite of the conspiracy bullshit. Scientific opinion is resolutely on our side, it is a systemic problem which calls for systemic change and the problem is open for all to see and doesn't call for preists to search their tea leaves for signs to interpret.

Anti-bullshit action


The new Canute

18.08.2006 18:43



You use Bullshit to fight bullshit! So why not fight war with war?.
Global warming with Global Warming.

You are an authoritarian irrational paranoid ideologue on a mission. You believe in heierarchical power and "Expertise". I don't.

You heard somewhere that there would be a conspiracy by the right to take over
your "movement" whatever that "movement" might be.

You'd better watch out the next time you're having a "movement" in case the right have sent something nasty up your soil pipe.

Now you're quite prepared to accept that the right are conspiring against you.

For the third time
THIS IS NOT A STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING PROBLEM.

IT'S A PHYSICS PROBLEM TO DO WITH
THE LAW OF THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY
AND
THE FREEFALL COLLAPSE OF THREE BUILDINGS.

The most you need to understand this is A-level physics! you don't even need to know what instigated the collapse!

How do two blocks of floors having two significantly different masses fall with an acceleration close to that of gravity through steel and concrete? They are falling with the same acceleration as they would falling through air and yet they are doing the work of pulverising concrete and destroying steel welds as well as throwing thousands of tons of matter away from the building. All this energy must be accounted for which would mean that the acceleration of these blocks would decrease and decrease at different rates due to their different masses.They don't.

No Structural Engineer in their right mind would make a statement without the engineering documents and they are being withheld.

And again I repeat that 2 engineers did put their heads above the parapit and one was fired and the other quickly changed his mind. So I think fear and intimidation are factors that would persuade anyone to keep quiet and not rock the boat. It would take a lot of bravery to stand out from the crowd especially if you were being threatened.

So any independent structural engineer that does put forward a theory without basing it on the engineering documents is not above suspicion and likely to be mistaken. Add to this the fear of reprisal by the ruling class.

YOU HAVE NO UNDERSTANDING OF HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY and the methods used by the ruling class to maintain their position of Power.
You are very naive about the MO of the ruling class. You are ignorant of history and a reactionary.
You're objections to the truth movemant are irrational and based on fear, ignorance, and paranoia.

You don't need anyones permission to think what you think. You don't need some authority to make up your mind for you.

As far as I can see you are the only one who has this irrational fear of conspiracy theories on indymedia.
You think that Conspiracy theorist think that the system is OK it's just a few bad eggs making this shit happen. Well you're wrong this IS the ruling class working as NORMAL - this is precisely how they operate.

A scan of history confirms this

The 1st WW was started by an "intelligence" operation run by the UK & Russia.
in order to destabilise the Balkans and stop the German Empire expanding South and East and accessing the oil wealth of the Ottoman Empire and the oil in Baku Azerbijan.
The plan was to bring Germany to war and so provide the opportunity for UK and Russia to defeat the Ottoman Empire and so control the Middle East for it's Oil wealth.

The 2nd World war

Germany's pretext to invade Poland was a series of 21 self inflicted attacks carried out by German "intelligence" agencies and blamed on Polish Nationalist Movements. The strategic importance of Silesian coal and mineral wealth were central to the German plan for Global domination.

If you want to wait around for an independent enquiry by some structural engineers into the collapse of those buildings then that's up to you.

But to come on here and actually post the bullshit that the ruling class post to decieve us - is either very stupid or you are working for them.

If you're too lazy to look into this yourself or make your own judgement then you have no right to criticise people because who have done the research and Know that.

911 was a false flag opperation to justify

1) The war on Terror and the striping away of your civil rights
2) The illeagal pre-emptive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in order to dominate Global fosil energy supply.
3) Guarantee the continuing dominance of the Industrial-Military-Complex.

All that happened here was a post of an event organised some uktruth activists.
It's you on your irrational personal vendetta that is kicking up a fuss and your irrational paranoid mission to defend the "movement" from The TRUTH.

If you can't come up with a rationale for your "predisposition" to reject the conspiracy that is perpetrated by the ruling class then you really should shut up or at least wake up.


New World Disorder - The War on Lies


No reply from 30 Structural Firms

18.08.2006 20:47

Where is the evidence that any of these structural engineers have looked at any of the souces cited?

They are still on the fence on this issue -- the issue being the papers of Judy Woods and Steven Jones:


 http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/BilliardBalls.html

 http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html

None of the 30 firms have replied, yet...

Jorno


One Structural Engineer

26.08.2006 20:29


Download: Charles Pegelow interviewed by Jim Fetzer - mp3 4.4M

Anti-Bullshit Action, you said:

"There is not one structural engineer in the whole world that thinks the towers couldn't have collapsed because of the impact of the planes, alongside the fires causing the steel trusses to lose their structural integrity"

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/08/347911.html?c=on#c154029

Charles Pegelow is one structural engineer who was interviewed by Jim Fetzer on August 24, 2006, attached is an MP3 is this interview in which he discusses the construction of the towers and just how they were taken down via controlled demolition.

shadowplay