INCONTROVERTIBLE is the first and only feature length documentary we have which portrays the frank and candid views of Police Officers, Firefighters and Soldiers as they express their grave concerns about the official explanation for the events of 9/11. The film is intended to act as a practical aid in combating the mainstream media's propaganda and outright lies concerning the attacks on September 11th 2001.
This film is intended to be viewed by Police Officers, Firefighters and all those serving in the Armed Forces as they are the among the best placed members of our society to have the ability to change things for the better. If you have friends or family who are serving then please pass this film onto them. Killing Auntie Films
I haven't watched this below as yet, but it comes recommended in the film above.
9-11 Ripple Effect
Posted by BridgeStoneMediaGroup.com This is a special edit from director William Lewis including the integration of two previously deleted scenes. Keep watching after the credit roll... there's a couple of trailers that you'll definitely find of interest and value. Learn more about how you can make a difference. http://www.911rippleeffect.com/ (German)
For your contemplation, another thought provoking hypothesis from the pen of Martin Roberts.
How near the mark it is I couldn't say, but it would go a awful long way in explaining the anomalous behaviour of successive governments in relation to two hitherto unknown chav medics from the boonies.
It might also go some distance in explaining the totally unbefitting arrogance of the last persons to see Madeleine alive and in whose care she "disappeared", the parents, Kate and Gerry McCann.
METAPHORIC COMPREHENSION REVISITED
By Dr Martin Roberts
18 September 2015
Attention switching
Pitiful though it may appear to some, I cannot help but notice certain similarities between ostensibly unrelated events. I mean, whatever can the tragedy of 9/11 have in common with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann?
One notable aspect, for me at least, is the common purpose shared by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST for short), whose report into the collapse of the ‘Twin Towers’ was commissioned by the US administration, and Operation Grange, funded, open-endedly it seems, by the UK government. Both are indisputably endeavours to impose upon the general public an official account of what happened in each case – to the World Trade Centre buildings on the one hand, Madeleine McCann on the other. Both are gratuitously disingenuous. So much so that it hardly takes a leap of logic to infer that the truth must still be ‘out there’, since it is nowhere represented by either of these officially sanctioned undertakings.
However, for the sake of parsimony if nothing else, we should confine discussion to the McCann affair and the misdirection inherent in it.
To quote briefly from a recent facebook/forum comment:
“There is no way on this earth that two insignificant doctors and their holiday companions would be protected by the full might of the British government. Some other event was happening in Praia de Luz that week and that some of those in attendance were powerful movers and shakers who needed to be protected at all costs.
“…some seeking the answer to Madeleine's disappearance will be disappointed if the reason for the protection does not lead to a high level paedophile gang. But it won’t because it isn't the reason.”
Of course there are those who adhere to the notion that the McCanns have accomplished all they have by virtue of their being no more than sharp opportunists, who happened to have had their hands on a few useful professional levers and have gone onto greater things inside the signal box since. The battleground for argument here is usually the explicit exemplars of officialdom’s having taken the couple’s part so readily. ‘Extraordinary!’ cry the conspiracy theorists. ‘Par for the course,’ claim the debunkers. But what of a smaller skirmish about which very little has so far been said?
However influential the McCanns and their T7 allies may or may not have been, it is difficult to see how they might have convinced two Police investigators into the McCann disappearance, one of them a senior and well respected officer in the field of missing persons enquiries, that their future careers lay elsewhere – outside the UK even. I refer of course to Martin Grime (now working with the FBI) and Mark Harrison (now a Police Commander in Australia). How did Team McCann accomplish that?
Our anonymous commentator is of the opinion that some powerful entity outside the McCann circle required protection, but not on account of their association with any paedophile ring. That wasn’t the reason. Which begs the obvious question: ‘What was the reason’?
Apparently, “Some other event was happening in Praia de Luz that week and some of those in attendance were powerful movers and shakers who needed to be protected at all costs.”
For ‘abduction by paedophiles’ one might read ‘destroyed by hijacked aircraft’, since both propositions share the same degree of verisimilitude. Operation Grange have of course adopted the fallback position of ‘body snatching by burglars’, in an attempt to incorporate the small detail of Madeleine McCann’s being dead at the time of departure - about as credible as NIST’s computer modelling of the collapse of WTC7, or indeed any of the hundreds of pages that make up the 9/11 Commission Report, for which countless trees were needlessly sacrificed. (Ed see below)
The inevitable lure here, and the one which has engaged so many for so long, is the urge to get to the bottom of what really happened to Madeleine McCann. And this, with the added frisson of possible misdemeanour involving high status individuals, has, for nearly a decade, successfully steered all our gazes away from the true fulcrum of the drama being played out in the Portuguese Algarve. As per the comment above: “Some other event was happening in Praia de Luz that week.” A ‘tomato fest’ it was not.
Keeping secrets
Certain students of the McCann case, as seen through the eyes of the media for the most part, have derided Goncalo Amaral’s repeated assertions that secret service activities lay behind the ruinous political intervention into the police investigation of which he was co-ordinator. Such a view establishes him as a ‘totem’ for conspiracy theorists, who, according to these learned others, lack a firm grasp of reality. Far too many people (‘three score and ten’?) would have to have been involved for it to work, and they couldn’t all keep a secret could they? Not like the thousands employed at Bletchley Park during the Second World War, or the hundred thousand engaged on the Manhattan Project in the USA, where President Truman was over a week in office before he knew anything about it (http://jpaulson.blogspot.nl/2015/09/911-decade-of-deception-full-film-new.html). (Ed see below) Then of course we have that inglorious September date in 2001. Has anyone from the directorate ‘squealed’ about that one yet? (And don’t, for goodness’ sake, imagine that’s because there’s nothing to reveal).
Of all those whose opinions concerning the McCann case might be taken seriously, Goncalo Amaral is out in front by a country mile. He was slap bang in the middle of proceedings at the time. So if he reports that a UK police officer (Mark Harrison as it happens) was intercepted by MI5 at Faro Airport then it’s ‘odds on’ the event occurred. So we might ask ourselves, were MI5 tagging along with the diplomatic invasion, like so many opportunist refugees, just in case the people thought by Kate McCann to have been ‘spying’ on her family that week should have absconded with some living embodiment of a state secret or two? Or were they already there?
It’s safe to say that a lot of people were in the Algarve at the time of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance, no doubt representing a variety of nationalities. The T7 were known to each other, but not to fellow diners at the Tapas Restaurant. Even newly-arrived Robert Murat, whose mother’s house was just a short walk from the Ocean Club, was a complete stranger to some, whilst Martin Smith had only seen him on a couple of occasions.
A small township populated by all sorts and frequented by strangers then. Perhaps we should not be surprised therefore at the McCann appeal for holiday-makers at the time to submit to CEOP (led of course by Jim Gamble) any photos that featured unfamiliar faces – you know, the sort of family snap you happen to take just as someone else wanders into view.
Despite Gerry McCann’s personal mantra about the importance of ‘getting information into the investigation’, no photographs trawled in this manner were ever passed onto the PJ, who were conducting it. Furthermore, according to Kate McCann (Crimewatch, June 2007), "Probably about 60% of tourists to this area are British, but following that are the Germans and then the Dutch.” But then we have Gerry’s ‘blog’ of 9 June, 2007, in which he tells us:
“After returning from the beach we did the Irish version of Crimewatch -'Crimecall'. There are a lot of Irish tourists in and around Praia da Luz and although the awareness of Madeleine's disappearance in Ireland is extremely high, we want to ensure that everyone is aware of the appeal and we want the Irish public to come forward with photographs of people who they do not know who were in and around Praia da Luz in the 2 weeks leading up to the 3rd May.”
The Smith family members, whose ‘sighting’ seems to have been of some significance, are of course Irish. Maybe friends of theirs had inadvertently secured an image of the same ‘abductor’ during daylight hours? More generally, and much more likely, such an Irish photographic ‘accident’ might have involved another Irish individual, most probably at a venue frequented by Irish ‘tourists’.
The McCanns and their ‘Tapas’ friends arrived in Praia da Luz over the weekend 28/29 April. Madeleine McCann was publicly reported missing on May 3, whereafter Kate McCann was quite sure ‘They’d been watching us for days’ (well it couldn’t have been a week!). And yet the McCanns, CEOP, and in all likelihood Jim Gamble, who had rather more than one string to his professional bow at the time, were interested in photographs featuring people ‘in and around Praia da Luz in the 2 weeks leading up to the 3rd May’. That’s over a week before the McCanns even arrived.
What surreptitious activity might the suspected abductor(s) have been up to prior to watching the McCanns for a few days? Did they know the McCanns were coming? Had they access to their booking arrangements? Did they take time to reconnoitre likely vantage points for surveillance perhaps? Of course not. Yet someone of interest must have been there, otherwise there would have been no chance of their being captured on film, and concomitantly no point to the appeal for photographs.
The first rule of survival
‘Take care of no. 1’. It follows that, on a national scale, the first priority of a state is to see to matters of state. And what might matter to the state is not the domestic fate of a young child abroad, nor the criminality, if such it be, of that child’s parents. Thus, faced with the rejection of FOI requests on the grounds that to respond could jeopardize international relations, are we not bound to infer that what was actually being safeguarded was not the good names of a rag-tag bunch of middle-class medics? (See: “A Magical Mystery Tour” and “‘Mad Cow’ Legislation” – McCannfiles, October/November 2009).
So what was happening that spring, in Praia da Luz particularly or the Portuguese Algarve in general, that was neither a tomato fest nor a child abduction? Whatever it was, it was of international significance. Did it have something to do with the Lisbon Treaty perhaps? Nope. That was not signed until December. The Freeport scandal coming to a head? Well that certainly had an international dimension, but it’s difficult to see any immediate connection with the very immediate steps taken to submerge the McCann affair. What say we look at another chain of ‘incidents’ altogether, working backward from 2012?
“The trial of five men accused of trafficking weapons to supply a dissident faction of the IRA – the Real IRA (RIRA) – began in the Algarve last week under a blanket of tight security.
“Three men from Northern Ireland and two Portuguese nationals are implicated in the case, which dates back to July 2011, when a PJ counter-terrorism unit swooped on a campsite in Olhão and dismantled the set-up.
“Three of the suspects are being held in Portugal, one remains free and the fifth suspect is in Ireland where he is facing extradition.”
“It is not the first time RIRA activity has been exposed in the Algarve. In 2009 two men believed to belong to the Real IRA were found to be using a restaurant in the small fishing village of Alvor as a main European base.
“It was at the Panda Grill on the fringe of the village that Paul Anthony McCaugherty and Michael Gregory allegedly negotiated the buying and selling of weapons for the Real IRA, between 2005 and 2006.”
The Telegraph (30.6.2010) explained that these 2009 arrests had proceeded to trial and that
Fully five years ago yet another ‘anonymous donor’ left a comment on a popular blog to the following effect:
“Anonymous 23 April 2010 20:34:00
“In my opinion, Jim Gamble was not looking for photos of possible abductors. He was looking for photos that could have identified MI5 operatives. There is a trial scheduled to take place this month (April 2010) in regard to the Real IRA activities in the Algarve. It may not have to do with that case….”
On the other hand it just might.
Given these suspects were only arrested in 2009, in relation to criminal activities conducted between 2005 and 2006, what were they doing in the intervening period – and where were they doing it? A quick look at the map reveals that the ‘small fishing village of Alvor’, otherwise a European base of operations for illegal arms trafficking, is just beyond the headland from Luz, to the other side of Lagos.
And that ‘agent’ the accused was supposed to have met? The Telegraph (30.6.2010) again explains:
“Paul McCaugherty, 43, was caught trying to buy an arsenal of weapons from an undercover agent posing as a Middle Eastern arms dealer.
“The Security Service agent, known as Ali, spent two years meeting McCaugherty and bugging 90 hours of conversations which became the cornerstone of the prosecution’s case at Belfast Crown Court.”
No one was arrested until 2009 remember, which means that this operation was on-going during 2007, the year the McCanns decided to visit the Algarve. And let’s not overlook the headline afterwards carried by the Telegraph (30.6.2010):
Real IRA commander caught in MI5 arms dealing sting
A Real IRA commander has been convicted of attempting to smuggle weapons and explosives into Northern Ireland after being snared by a daring MI5 sting operation.
From which it is abundantly clear that MI5 didn’t just wander into the Algarve in the wake of the McCanns. They were already there, and had been for some considerable time.
A stitch in time
Picking up on the earlier perspicacity of ‘Anonymous’, as demonstrated on 23 April that year (2010), if there is one thing about which the security services are undeniably scrupulous it is protection of their assets’ identities, and for very good reason.
Examples of this concern (or lack thereof) are to be found in the furore following members of the Bush administration’s deliberately, and maliciously, ‘outing’ CIA field agent Valerie Plame Wilson, simply to spite her husband, a diplomat who had taken a very public moral stand against US foreign policy in the Middle-East. (Ed. Joe Wilson husband of Valerie Plame revues Bush's memoir link) On the home front, MI5’s eventual willingness to share CCTV images of two of the alleged 7/7 bombers was counterbalanced by their ‘cropping’ the pictures in such a way as to make reliable identification of the individuals nigh-on impossible.
But that’s just for context. What we have for more immediate consideration is an on-going MI5 operation in the Portuguese Algarve, where suddenly, and without prior warning, Police activity is about to go into overdrive, possibly giving locally based targets entirely the wrong impression that they are on the point of being ‘rumbled’ (a moment that was still two years hence), and jeopardizing years of investment in under-cover infiltration in the process. Not to mention the risk of ‘Ali’s being recognised in a context other than that of his role as a putative arms dealer.
Such would have been the situation had the PJ acted without media or other intrusion on the occasion of Madeleine McCann’s ‘disappearance’.
But isn’t that what they did?
Not really. It’s what they did on the night of May 3rd.
Now consider a UK government and its security services appraised of the possibility of such imminent turmoil before it actually kicked off. Say, a few days before. Time in which to delay ‘abduction’ (in lieu of a death) and instruct ‘Ali’, for example, to adopt a low profile elsewhere for the time being. Police spot checks throughout the Algarve would be inevitable, but significant others would at least be out of the firing line. Had the Portuguese been called to action stations without prior reference to MI5 they would have taken everyone unawares, not just Madeleine McCann’s abductor, had there been one that is.
So Madeleine, instead of dying on the Monday, is abducted, as planned, on the Thursday, giving MI5 the breathing space it needed to manage its own activities in readiness. The very prompt (and loud) international media revelation of Madeleine McCann’s abduction ensured that television watchers everywhere would then know why the PJ, the GNR, and all those helicopters, were suddenly so busy, even those who might have been watching in Alvora, and who obviously hadn’t kidnapped anyone.
I know, I know, ‘if this weren’t so pitiful it would be funny’. But there is a paradox attaching to Madeleine’s disappearance which has yet to be addressed by anyone as far as I am aware, and it is this:
If Madeleine McCann was ‘abducted’ in a hurry on the Thursday night, there was not enough time for her to have lain dead beforehand. And if she died earlier that week, then why would Gerry McCann have waited several days before removing the evidence, only to snatch her corpse out bed at the last minute, just before his wife raised the alarm. The reason for the delay, I suggest, was someone else’s.
And let us not overlook the very significant role in proceedings played by Jim Gamble of CEOP, both at the time and since. Who really conjured up the notion of an extreme paedophile operating in Portugal (Madeleine McCann was barely four years old don’t forget), and who, not long previously, had been steeped in the dark practices of the security services in Northern Ireland?
MI5 eventually secured their targets. The McCanns have their ‘hush money’. And Operation Grange is probably just this current financial year away from ‘capping’ the entire episode like a toxic well (they would have done so sooner had a credible reconciliation been available - remember DCI Redwood’s admission that ‘solution’ was not on the menu?). Oh, and in the wake of the ‘St Andrews Agreement’, the Northern Ireland Assembly was restored and a new Northern Ireland Executive formed - on 8 May 2007.
The chances of the McCanns ever appearing in court as accused parties are exactly those of their daughter being returned to them by an abductor – NIL. Otherwise they would be standing before the judge as accomplices to a deception perpetrated by the very government on whose behalf they were being prosecuted! Or are we also to believe that NORAD could be blind-sided, the Pentagon attacked, and some of Manhattan’s premier real estate flattened by a bunch of dissident Saudis squatting in an Afghan cave?
Martin Roberts
~
Ed: If after all these years you are still of the opinion that the Twin Towers were knocked down by a bunch of Arabs who couldn't even fly a Cessna, then I suggest you watch this.
If after watching it you are still of that opinion, then I suggest you hand in that part of your cerebral cortex that is redundant.
Well sweetheart, there are those that come in tins . .
and there are those that don't.
And there are some that come all singing, all dancing.
And it is of the all singing, all dancing, that we are going to take a little look at today.
Now unless you have been living in a MSM newsroom (BBC included) for the last fourteen years, you may have come to your own conclusion, that there is something not quite kosher with the official narrative as to what happened on that world changing day, the day of America's new Pearl Harbour, September 11 2001.
Far beit for me to set before you examples gleaned from the terabytes of data already writ on the subject, your tent is already pitched in the reality camp, or it is pitched in the official camp,the camp where our two featured hacks are firmly ensconced. What ever you may believe, it is not my purpose here today, to try and convince you otherwise. Rather it is to look at some of research claims, and integrity if you wish, of our chosen hacks, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan.
The Truth is Out There
Saturday, September 10, 2011
By Jonathan deBurca Butler
Pile upon pile of files are laid out on the floor or hastily stacked up on the writing desk.
The only dash of colour is the pink and yellow post-it-notes that peek out from the heaving folders. Some carry obscure reference numbers, others recognisable words like ‘Taliban’, ‘Clinton’, and ‘Al Qaeda’.
Stuck to the frame of a large, light-giving window is a pleasant, black-and-white photo of the couple smiling. Below it is the cover of their latest book, The Eleventh Day, with the dramatic picture of the vomiting explosion that followed the crashing of American Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower of The World Trade Center at 9.03am on September 11, 2001.
Their study-library is the type of room for which an anxious parent might scold an obsessively studious teenage child. In the case of Summers and Swan, it is the other way around.
“Every night, we come back into the house, sit down at the dinner table [with their three teenage children] and start talking about September 11,” says Swan. “And then Tony looks up at me and says to the children, ‘We’re not going to talk about the book now.’ And they don’t believe us.”
For the last five years, from their base and home near Cappoquin in Co Waterford, Summers and Swan have been investigating and writing about the most infamous day in modern history.
It has been a tough slog. Summers, who was born in London and whose father was from Kerry, has lived in the area since 1973. Having worked for the BBC in war zones, he was offered the opportunity to write a book on the Romanovs in the early 1970s, which he thought “might earn enough to get me a new car.” It topped the bestsellers list and afforded him the choice of his own work. Several successful books followed; later, while researching a book on J Edgar Hoover, in Washington, Summers met Swan, who was then working for The London Independent.
“Well, Tony hired me to be his researcher,” says Swan. “He claimed it was going to be two weeks’ worth of work. And it ended up being two years. And when he could no longer afford to pay me, he offered to marry me.”
Swan, who was born and raised in Connecticut, says that moving from the capital of the USA to the somewhat more easygoing and sleepy Waterford countryside was a culture shock.
“Moving from a big city, where everything was happening, to the back-of-nowhere was hard,” she says. “But now I treasure the back-of-nowhere and I wouldn’t change it. I’m never, ever sorry that I did it.”
The couple’s home is situated opposite an early 19th century castle, on the River Blackwater. In this somewhat idyllic setting, they have worked on numerous books and biographies, including Official and Confidential: The Secret Lives of J Edgar Hoover and The Arrogance of Power: The Secret Life of Richard Nixon.
In the era of 24-hour-news, quick-fix facts and panting, speculative conclusions, Summers and Swan stand out as champions of old-school journalism based on diligence and digging around.
Really? champions of old-school journalism based on diligence and digging around.
“It’s no longer feasible to spend the amount of time that we would typically spend on a book anymore,” says Swan. “This book we turned out more quickly [than usual], although it still took the guts of five years. But, you can’t have it both ways. And this is a product of the internet. The problem with the internet is that they expect you to turn out beautiful copy that’s new, and breaks news while sitting in your house doing nothing except reading other stories on the internet.
Quite.
“But that’s not how good journalism is done. We go down the road, we interview people, we read thousands of documents and spend a lot of time on the phone, but at the end of the day we have to think, we produce the goods.”
Ah so! That's how it's done is it?. But that’s not how good journalism is done. We go down the road, we interview people*
We go down the road, we interview people* Do you really? I'm glad you've cleared that one up. But pray forgive me if I mark this lesson in good journalism with a small * Should I forget.
As for producing the goods, might you afford me the question; for whom?
In the case of The Eleventh Day, they most certainly do. It is a compelling (and often harrowing) read from start to finish and with 116 pages of notes and sources listed at the end, it is clear that this tome was a labour of love for both writers.
“We saw that all sorts of sane people were actually confused,” says 68-year-old Summers. “And what we do for a living is take controversial cases or people, and as an old friend of mine used to say, pick them up by their ankles and shake them to see what change comes out. So it sounds like a cliché, but we were trying to get at that elusive thing called ‘something like the truth’.”
Confused are they? Poor souls. ‘something like the truth’ But the actual truth?
One of the strongest aspects of this investigation is how it debunks the conspiracy theorists; people and academics who believe that the Bush administration was involved with the attacks. “We thought we’d poke around and see what we got,” says Summers. “And, in the end, we found nothing. And, really, the conspiracy theorists’ theories do not stand up, they’re not backed by the evidence. And it has blurred a whole lot of it that is serious.”
By academics, am I to assume that includes Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth? One of the strongest aspects of this investigation is how it debunks the conspiracy theorists; people and academics But you are probably right, there being only 2,343 of them and two of you. “And, in the end, we found nothing. Fancy! And, really, the conspiracy theorists’ theories do not stand up, they’re not backed by the evidence. No? But then that's the trouble with conspiracy theorists (and haters) all the trouble they go to, when all they have to do is read one of your books. Aren't they silly?
“We felt that we owed it to these people who were looking at the internet and reading these [conspiracy] books to turn the whole thing upside down and subject it to hard treatment,” says Swan.
We felt that we owed it to these people who were looking at the internet and reading Your altruism knows no bounds.
That hard treatment does not in any way let the Bush administration off the hook. The administration comes across as incompetent, hot-headed, and, in the case of facing down Iraq but never asking questions of other more-economically powerful Arab states, frightened.
Within hours of the attacks, the administration, much to the disbelief of high-ranking intelligence agents, was targeting Iraq. It was later proved that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the attacks on September 11. Indeed, Osama bin Laden despised the Iraqi leader.
The chapters dealing with bin Laden show him to be a complex character; at one moment intelligent and charismatic, at others a childish bully, but always a religious zealot. The book also reveals that the intelligence agencies knew of the arrival of one, if not two, of the terrorists before the attacks, but failed to act.
There are insights into chief terrorist Mohamed Atta and the other 18 self-proclaimed martyrs and it becomes abundantly clear that their motive was Palestine — something Summers says “people in the States need to understand.”
“We want people to read this book because, to be quite honest, this was a cataclysmic event for the world,” says Swan.
We want people to read this book You don't say? You wanted people to read another of your books quite recently, how did that work out for you?
“It has shaped all of our lives. It has shaped the lives of our children and it will continue to do so. And they should have their lives shaped by the truth, as far as we can know it. People should know what to be afraid of and what not to be afraid of, and know what the lessons are from this and not have them peddled by an administration or by fantasists.”
The Eleventh Day by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan is published by Random House Irish Examiner
And now a little look at what set the ball rolling. The audio clip I had listened to previously, but it wasn't until my colleague and researcher, Maren, a lady from the Netherlands, came up with the article, did the whole thing come together.
Answers on a postage stamp please.
Sometimes it's what you don't do that speaks volumes. Or in this particular instance, it's not what's there that's telling, rather it's what isn't there that screams from the rooftops.
Perhaps by stating that when I opined about the rubbish some people write, it was at the time, without association to our chosen subjects, Summers and Swan.
Let me set the tone.
Further our discussion on the properties of aircraft aluminium.
People do write some shite.
In the case of the 757 that hit the Pentagon, one wing hit the building and the other was forced off by the impact with the building’s load-bearing columns. The remains of the plane then entered into the building in a state “closer to a liquid than a solid mass.”
Close to a liquid than a solid mass. Utter shite in fact. It's not a pie tin from the corner shop we are talking about, it's aircraft Aluminium. For want of a better but less technical description, it's as hard as fuckin' iron.
To cut a long story short, the scribbler of said merde, non other than establishment shills for 9/11, Popular Mechanics.
Debunking Popular Mechanics: Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth link
Popular Mechanics' Assault on 9/11: Truth 9/11 Research.net link
Although at the end of the piece, I did utter this tongue-in-cheek remark:
Can’t help but wonder how much of the content of Summers and Swan book is attributable to Popular Mechanics?
So dear reader, if you have managed to guess what's coming and think there may be a prize for doing such? Sorry, we don't give out prizes for easy peasy.
Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report - The Pentagon
Mete Sozen: Why wasn't the hole as wide as a 757's 124-ft.-10-in. wingspan? A crashing jet doesn't punch a cartoon-like outline of itself into a reinforced concrete building, says ASCE team member Mete Sozen, a professor of structural engineering at Purdue University. In this case, one wing hit the ground; the other was sheared off by the force of the impact with the Pentagon's load-bearing columns, explains Sozen, who specializes in the behavior of concrete buildings. What was left of the plane flowed into the structure in a state closer to a liquid than a solid mass. "If you expected the entire wing to cut into the building," Sozen tells PM, "it didn't happen." Popular Mechanics
No, but you might expect a few broken widows in the area of impact. Which of course, there were none.
Truthers and Consequences: The Trouble with Dean Hartwell’s “Perspective”
Turning to the crash of American Airlines flight 77 into the Pentagon, Hartwell complains that we do not say at what time the mangled debris – some with AA markings – “arrived” on the Pentagon lawn. The Eleventh Day, however, contains several eyewitness accounts of an American Airlines plane crashing into the Pentagon, as well as a detailed explanation of the disintegration of the plane on impact by the respected engineering professor Mete Sozen. Even a casual reading of this information makes it obvious that it was after this impact that the debris arrived – to use Hartwell’s word – on the Pentagon lawn. Anthony Summers & Robbyn Swan
Nice quote. Nice research.
And you wonder why your work of fiction on Madeleine McCann was pulled to pieces?
Try being less of a hack.
As well as.
A sweeping flourish of the bonnet to Maren. Research.
Without comment, posted and preserved for posterity. You will however, find a clip or two below, where Summers and Swan opine on other subjects.
Atrocious representation of a problematic narrative, fraudulently disguised as 'objective investigative journalism.',
12 Sep 2014 By Vten "Vten"
This review is from: Looking For Madeleine (Kindle Edition)
This is a genuinely troubling work.
Much of Anthony Summers 'kudos' stems from his work debunking government narratives and 'official' accounts of controversial events, not least in his work on the Kennedy Assassination, which is effectively what made his 'name' in this kind of field of research. His volume on that subject is considered a staple of speculative 'research' and earned him some degree of respect.
It was on that basis that Summers allowed himself to be regarded as an 'investigative journalist' or an 'investigative reporter' (whichever he prefers) and indeed he certainly epitomised the altruistic skeptic, cutting through the 'official story' to dig through the nuggets of inconvenient, irrepressible, undeniable facts which defied the attempts at establishment whitewash, refused to go away, the testimonies and evidences which called loudly to be heard above the white noise of government narratives.
Sadly, and inexplicably, Summers has taken recently to becoming an apologist for incredulous 'official' narratives - for writing volumes which reassure the reader that it is safe to overlook the inconvenient, irrepressible, undeniable facts which defy attempts at whitewashing, to disregard them. He did so lazily with the subject of 911, a topic which would certainly have lent itself to requiring far more pages even to debunk the circulating theories and claimed misinformations. An investigative journalist should not merely form a narrative, but should investigate. With depth. Thoroughly. And one claiming to be 'impartial' or 'independent' or 'objective' should do so affording equal opportunity to the troublesome points of issue or debate.
This volume is no exception. It is nothing short of an emotionally sickly rehash of a tired and unconvincing narrative in which the author(s) (and I suspect that this is more of her work than his) has managed entirely to avoid objectively investigating troublesome points of issue or debate in this case. Indeed, the author appears to be inexpllcably proud of the very minimal amount of contact and interview that has been conducted, which shows in the content of the book.
I've actually had to resort to skim reading the book, because there's literally nothing new in it, and I'm shocked and appalled by the sheer amount of foregone conclusion and logical fallacy involved in glossing over a very small number of the glaring problems in the Tapas Group's narrative and the 'official story.'
Once upon a time, as with the JFK controversy, the very inconsistensies and incriminating evidences (sniffer dogs alerting positively to McCann apartment, hire car and clothing) would have a serious investigative journalist straining for a pen in order to get to the bottom of those very damning details. Summers, however, clearly past his prime, is doing little more than giving (if at all) a fleeting reference to these inconveniences and offering a reassurance on the basis of his own claimed authority and acumen, that there is 'nothing to see here.'
For certain, his is an utterly unique work in this field.
But not for the reasons he'd like you to think. Not because his work is definitive. Not because his work is so cutting edge and accurate. Not because he's gotten to the truth.
Rather, his work is unique because it is so utterly redundant, and pointlessly benign.
You see, he's offered nothing that isn't already being pushed by the McCann family and their agents including PR guru Clarence Mitchell. He's offering nothing that hasn't already been published, ad nauseum, by the apologists.
But that's the point. You cannot declare yourself an 'investigative journalist' or an 'objective reporter' on a subject where critical or contradictory analysis CANNOT be legally published. In the UK the texts which take a dim view of what should be, in any case like this anywhere in the world, the prime suspects and the smoking gun evidence, have been banned by request of the people who have the most to lose from the eye of critical assessment.
In short, the ONLY narrative that can be printed in book form in the UK and sold for profit is a narrative which affirms the 'official' story. Yet that 'official story' is not supported by any independent, testable, credible evidence whatsoever. Rather, it exists only in the testimony of the people who were claimed as being present at the time - testimony which, the official PJ files show, has changed a disturbing number of times. From the outset, it was never possible for this book to exist and to deliver anything other than this very same affirmative narrative irrespective of the facts, the evidence and the wealth of contradictory opinion - all of which are available freely in the public domain.
On this basis the author makes several false statements and perpetuates several fallacies which are repetitions of staple claims and insistences made by the McCann Organisation, but which bear no resemblance to the statements made by the appropriate investigative authorities in Portugal or the UK. Similarly, the author's work is already out of date. The authors, like the McCann organisation, make frequent insinuations about the mysterious figure allegedly seen carrying a limp girl through the chilly streets during the mere moments of incredulous 'windows of opportunity' presented by the Tapas Group in their numerous contradictory statements, as identified by one of the Tapas Group as an 'afterthought', when in October 2013 Scotland Yard and the BBC Crimewatch team began a comprehensive dismissal of this 'mystery' figure by identifying and eliminating from enquiries the individual in question. The authors also make reference to optimistic claims by senior detectives at Scotland Yard that the missing child is probably still alive, while the reality is that the lead detective at Scotland Yard has lent a disproportionate support to the 'consensus' that the child did not leave her family's holiday apartment alive.
This work cannot be considered a credible, independent, objective evaluation of this mysterious and controversial case while it is so clearly formed from the outset around drawing and reinforcing foregone conclusions without any kind of credible examination of inconvenient facts, critical assessment of incriminating evidence, or fully revelatory examinations of the case against the only universally recognised prime suspects in the case.
In actual fact, you would learn more about the statistical probabilities, tried and tested likelihoods, and investigative due process in 'missing child' cases by watching some old episodes of 'Without A Trace' than you will from reading this book, because here the authors immediately dismiss what patterns and profiles police departments have established internationally from examining such cases, and declared - solely on their own testimony - the prime suspects to be free of culpability and above scrutiny and suspicion.
Even more incredulously, the authors have become apologists for the controversial actions of parents who left their own children for multiple nights in a row home alone in a strange, unlocked holiday apartment while they ate and drank in a holiday resort in which, it seems, the bulk of their holiday was spent sending their children off to organised activities to be looked after by holiday resort staff.
An apologetic is not an objective assessment. It is a pre-determined agenda. Informational sleight of hand.
This volume is strong on regurgitated narrative, and bereft of actual, critical, objective factual examination.
Similarly, it is premature. Summers previous work has been on 'cold case', biographies and investigations into past and concluded matters. This is an ongoing, unsolved investigation which has been the subject of significant political and media interference and is as yet unconcluded and leaves a significant population of the UK, and a sizeable majority of the US, Australia and Europe strongly questioning the carefully screened and deliberately spun narrative presented via the mainstream media where this matter is concerned. This cannot, by nature, be a post-mortem of a case, which begs the question as to why Summers and Co felt the need to wade in with such selective partiality. In the UK no books can be sold which offer a contradictory or controversial analysis of the case and the 'official story', although in Europe the media market is free enough to allow citizens to purchase and read the work of unconstrained investigators and journalists who yield a very different conclusion to that presented in UK media. So this volume is, as a supposedly 'critically objective' work, utterly redundant. It instead appears to be an unnecessary contribution to the steering of public opinion in favour of the mainstream media, regurgitating and reinforcing the already well-established 'consensus' account of the case.
There is, literally, nothing here for readers that has not been heard ad nauseam and without challenge, for seven years - great sections of the book are simply lifted from case files, media interviews and so on. There is naught original here, nothing brave or challenging about this writing, and the curious reader would be far more enlightened and intrigued by referencing the PJ Police Files directly or in their translated form, or reading the commentary from investigating officers in Portugal.
In view of the informational and misinformational mess that this case has become with too many parties with vested interests dipping a stirring spoon into the pot, particularly in recent months, it almost seems like this book comes along to lift the Tapas Group's carefully contrived and harmonised narrative out of the noise of the active investigation and to reinforce it with the illusion of a safe, impartial, academic authority.
As a work, this isn't worth the paper or the pixels that its printed with, because it has no academic or informational value that could not be better served elsewhere for free.
In Reply
M. Goldberg says:
Excellent appraisal. Put into words thoughts I could never articulate so succinctly. It is, in essence, a eulogy for the McCanns. The authors knew that straying from the official narrative would have them carpeted at Carter Ruck and that Amazon would never stock it. We are inured to the Mitchell driven spin surrounding the McCanns and this has his rank scent rising from it from cover to cover. Summers and Swan have literary, sorry, literally sold out. Oxfam and remainder fodder.
Response
Vten says:
I think so.
It's a shame.
Truth is truth. Even in a sea of misinformation, even in a flood of speculation and negative comment, truth will prevail and those telling the truth can maintain a quiet dignity in knowing what they know. They have no need to hire a Carter Ruck and they have no need of a PR expert. Indeed, this is one of the details that has done this family the most damage. Many rational human beings the world over cannot even fathom that the parents of a missing child would engage in anything other than upping sticks and spending every last penny and every last breath doing everything they can to help the police and to make the search their own. Many rational human beings immediately sense the hairs on the back of their neck bristling when they hear about parties, however unfairly scandalised, who bother giving gossip and unkindness the legitimacy of a PR campaign to counter, or a law firm to sue, or superinjunctions to silence. It immediately sends a message which speaks of anything other than the conviction of innocence and a commitment to stay on track and on topic in the relentless, ceaseless, tireless quest for a missing child.
The establishment of a media-savvy organisation which gives new jobs to family and friends, the crusade of searching four star hotels and chat show sofas across the Western world, the endless fundraising activities, the lack of cooperation with the primary investigating police force and the bypassing of due process in order to steer attention and information toward a privately owned (and ultimately predictably corrupt and useless) investigation team - all these have done this family far more damage than any word uttered by any skeptic anywhere in the world. Even the mainstream media (Channel 5) recently recognised this, and began - as much as the injunctions would allow - to explore the theme of where this did tremendous damage.
I was personally disappointed, not because I have a dog in this hunt. I have very clear opinions about this case, based on the objective analysis of all the available (freely available - thank you Policia Judicia) evidence, and arrived at conclusions (if not complete theories) which I believe no rational, reasonable thinking adult could fail to reach, even with the greatest desire to believe the best. More than that, however, I'm fascinated with the extensive government and organised media interference, and again, it is this abundantly evident exceptional involvement which prompts the suspicion of a cover-up and a dark truth waiting to be revealed, seemingly of the scale of Watergate and in the spirit of every great conspiracy to cover-up the dastardly.
Summers should have been a researcher capable of handling this subject intelligently and objectively. And he didn't. As you rightly say, this content and conclusion was predictable for whichever author produced it, and makes me wonder if it wasn't the publisher that commissioned the content. After all, this is literally the only book on this subject which could sell. If a publisher could crack the injunctions and conspiracy against free press that is currently suppressing Goncalo Amaral's 'The Truth of The Lie', then that is certainly a volume which will spin straw into gold, and should this case ever crack in that direction, and the power of Carter Ruck be rendered null and void, I can't imagine a media organisation on the planet that wouldn't kill to sign the rights.
With this, the incredible absence of speculative, albeit controversial texts, is evidence of the suppressive nature of whatever legal threat is in place. And in those circumstances the publisher - who is almost certainly ambivalent to the conclusions which can be drawn, impartial in opinion, is simply seeking the opportunity to make money. Whether Summers and Co were chosen by the publisher, commissioned by an outsider, or have succumbed to some kind of intellectual dementia or the dulling effect of greed, the publisher makes money on the sale of a title which I suspect they grossly overestimated a demand for. I doubt Summers and Co will be overly excited about their earnings on this one. And let's face it, News Corporation would serialise the inventory of a grocer's shop, if they thought it would sell copy. These people are morally ambivalent by nature, and no publicity is bad publicity. All of it has plausible deniability built in. The duped can turn hero. The sued and censured can be vindicated. The fence straddle can come down on the right side.
I wanted this to be a good, intelligent, investigative read - a comprehensive study of the wealth of evidence and the inconvenient conclusions they lead to. It wasn't anything even close.
Reply
M. Goldberg says: Thank you for your reply. Once again hammered down into a succinct precis of my thoughts this past seven years. Having followed the Soham Murders and their parents machinations and demeanour it was immediately evident that, with the McCanns, something was rotten in Rothley. Where are Summers and Swan's analysis of the plethora of footage of Gerry shutting Kate up in interviews? Their true colours shining incandescently outside the Lisbon Court? The ridiculous implausibility of a part time GP visiting 6 corpses two weeks before her holiday taking her child's soft toy with her? The reversal of Gerry's initial statement regarding his choice of entrance to 5A? The risible "Ask the dogs, Sandra?" His less that empathetic comment, quote, "Gerry: "And if Madeleine had hurt herself inside the apartment - why would that be our fault?" end quote. Have they established what time it was Dr Payne visited 5A the "last day", a person Crimewatch managed to omit completely in their "reconstruction"? Do they not question the McCann prescience of arranging forthcoming anniversaries of 100 days missing weeks in advance when she could so easily walk right back in through the Villa door? The monumental and unprecedented protection of the McCanns, ranging from Gordon Brown and Special Branch to the mainstream media's luvvies. The UK media, when held up against any other country, smacks of Government gagging. The banning of a book here takes me back to a Totalitarian Fascist-like state akin to 1930's Germany. None of this has reached us via the TV and pulp media here, all filtered out after the media found themselves successfully sued by serial wannabe litigators, the McCanns. What of the crooks they hired, Metodo3, Halligan (whichever way he spells it these days)? Of Edgar and Cowley's jury rigged ramshackle little unregistered outfit? And Summers and Swan don't spot a theme, here? It is, of course, another pro McCann ditty, a guarantee (they thought) of making money, possibly part of the publisher's requirements to fulfil their output quota deal. Having seen Swan on Sky calling Eddie and Keela "so-called cadaver dogs" was sufficient for me to know the ostensible purpose of this cozy little literary genuflect to the media lionised McCanns. I'm not sure what category this "book" could be nominated for. I don't think Pulitzer give prizes for obsequious potboiling.
Response
Vten says:
Not at all...
You don't need a work of fiction to serve a purpose or carry potency. You don't need poetry to serve a purpose or carry potency. You don't even need a shameless apologetic or even a biography to serve a purpose or carry potency.
But when a piece of writing claiming to be investigative journalism, claiming to be the result of years of objective analytical study, which presents itself as having the authority of riding on the coat-tails of critically acclaimed pieces of writing where materially implausible 'official stories' were debunked by precisely focusing on the mass of detail found in the evidence which has formally been overlooked, ignored, childishly explained away, suppressed, or by consideration of the glaring inconsistensies and contradictions, then I maintain my view that without purpose and without potency in doing so, the work is utterly pointless and shamelessly commercial.
In musical terms Summers has stepped beyond the artistic concept album, he's left behind the cutting edge punk explosion, and he's settled squarely in the field of middle-of-the-road geriatric pop. He has the right to do so, but to feel any obligation to accept where he's at as having in any way been the result of a process of maturing, improving and advancing would be nothing short of madness.
In terms of prematurity, this work is as ill-placed as if he had written, four years ago, an 'expose' of Hillsborough in which overlooked the majority of available testimony, glossed over the pertinent details which court controversy, and simply affirmed that everything the British police had already said was entirely true, regardless of the fact that experts from across the world were screaming that something was stinking.
Heck, for the sake of journalistic integrity in the field (Summers' former field) of conspiracy theory alone, you would be compelled to at least devote a chapter to how tried and tested it is to recognise extraordinary government intervention and the extraordinary and exceptional behaviour of nationally controlled police and secret service agencies which was neither precedented nor has ever been repeated in this case, as bearing the hallmarks of something extremely suspicious, even if only by the absolute abstractness from form of those actions and interventions.
These are the premises under which Summers worked when he penned earlier titles. When American police forces (FBI or otherwise) ignored information, destroyed vital notices that rang alarm bells. When police gave right of access and even right of control to non-police individuals or agencies, that rang alarm bells. When the authority of a sailor shut down the investigation which should be led by a pathologist, that rang alarm bells. When tried and tested forensic science was declared irrelevant, because it produced a result which to all intents and purposes was valid but inconvenient, that rang alarm bells. When witnesses were omitted from official investigation, and untraceable but convenient witnesses were conjured up to affirm the official story, that rang alarm bells. When government departments with much better things to do stepped into situations that were outside their remit and enacted measures which were not their usual way of dealing with similar matters, that rang alarm bells. When timelines were changed, when conclusions and divergences were being publicised before even the dust had settled, before a forensic examiners briefcase had even been opened, that rang alarm bells. And Summers, like others including those whose shoulders he stood on to pen his unoriginal but comprehensive work, was writing in response to the very valid alarm bells.
With this work he's doing nothing short but muffling them.
I can tell you this... As a journalist if I got used to seeing my local police force night after night picking up abusive drunken wifebeaters, bouncing them down the garden path, tossing them head first into a black Mariah, dragging them out again dripping in the urine they excreted against the side of the van, endured the spitting and the verbal abuse before booking them in and tossing them in a cell to cool off until a court appearance in the morning, if I was hearing that on one such occasion the police escorted a man away from the scene while referring to him as 'sir', refused to handcuff him in case he felt insulted, said 'thank you' when he urinated and laughed heartily at ever curse and insult, offered him the front seat in the van and asked if he was comfortable enough and what radio station he'd like playing, covered his head and refused to book him in under any name other than 'Mickey Mouse' before escorting him to an unsecured lounge so he could sleep it off with the assurance 'don't worry sir, this will never go to court' then as an 'investigative journalist' I think I'd be utterly failing in my job if I was not all over that exceptional, extraordinary case with the fully correct suspicion that this wasn't merely a 'generous day' down at central, but that - in fact - the subject who had been removed from the arrest-worthy situation was someone extremely important, who was in the process of escaping justice. I think my sense of indignance would be heightened if I then heard that back at the crime scene it was a body that had been discovered, and the police were busy inside staging a sham of an investigation and were even then engaged in attempting to find a drunk or degenerate mentally ill person in the neighbourhood who they could frame.
Whatever this work is, there's one thing it is not. It is not a piece of investigative journalism. To be that, it would have to be objective, it would have to be investigative. Instead it is part biography, part apologetic, and appears in whole to be simply an attempt to catalogue in one 'definitive' volume only the information and the conclusions that certain vested interest parties would like to be known for, published by someone other than themselves in order to create the illusion of verified authenticity.
Reply
M. Goldberg says: I was drawn to, quote, "When witnesses were omitted from official investigation, and untraceable but convenient witnesses were conjured up to affirm the official story, that rang alarm bells." end quote. As an author who investigated JFK, Summers will not have failed to notice that that is exactly what the Warren Commission did. The Government cover up demands a narrative from which anyone straying is labelled a "conspiraloon", "nutter" "fantasist and so on. Summers and Swan's reactions to criticism of their book has echoed that, talking of alarms bells. Their book is like a "Fanzine" compendium, a Christmas bumper collation of all the disinformation supplied by Mitchell and the McCanns this past seven years. It is ostensibly designed as the definitive McCann manual, which, in the extant days of the Internet, would be laughable were it not inherently a very serious subject. If anyone wishes to read the antithesis to the McCann "official" fable they should read the PJ files online and/or Amaral's book instead, as all you have here is nothing more than yet another feeble endorsement of, or rather attempt at, the McCann's exoneration.Customer Reviews Amazon
Summers & Swan "A plane absolutely did hit the Pentagon"
Mais oui.
9/11 - NO PLANE HIT THE PENTAGON - only once aired report
The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of September 11 and Osama bin Laden (Summers & Swan)
Summers and Swan: Building 7 fell down due to "damage by falling debris"
But of course.
Come, take my hand.
Footnote: Should "Vten" wish to avail himself of a platform, for this or any other subject, I would be delighted to offer a spot as a guest writer. Your input, as your eloquence, is not without appreciation. Thank you.
No hype required, for what I must assume, is the definitive 9/11 investigative documentary.
All I will say, apart from mentioning the sheer hubris and audacity of the scheme, is that the "Debunkers" come across as extremely fervent and extremely well funded. But of their arguments? I shall leave you to draw your own conclusions.
And lastly, but still staying with the debunkers, Popular Mechanics is owned by the Hearst Corporation, if you get to wondering.
eta My original title was to be: "September 11 - The New Pearl Harbor" Facts Over Fiction But the term Fact leaves itself open to interpretation and to argument. But not so with our old friend Physics. Physics is fact, undeniable and unarguable.
View here, or view at source, where you will find an index of the film's contents.
The thing is lengthy, five hours in total, but in truth, the time flew by, it didn't seem five minutes, such was the quality of both research and content.
"September 11 - The New Pearl Harbor" is a 5 hour documentary that summarizes 12 years of public debate on 9/11. While aimed primarily at a general, uninformed audience, the film also contains some new findings that may be of interest to advanced researchers.
This film is intended as an educational, non-profit operation, and must remain so in order to fulfill all the requirements for the usage of copyrighted material. As such, the entire film is made available online for free from day one. Any purchase of the actual DVD will be considered as a form of donation to the author, in recognition of the time spent to put together this material. Free duplication and distribution of all DVDs is encouraged.
You can also purchase the 5-hour film in a 3 DVD set. Free duplication and distribution of all DVDs by Massimo Mazzucco is encouraged. Italian and French versions also available.To see the fully indexed film in one page go to luogocomune.net
I can't even begin to parse this twenty minute Democracy Now interview with author Kurt Eichenwald, I would be typing forever. Suffice to say, it's just one jaw dropping revelation after the other.
As I said in a tweet yesterday: Essential viewing, a must watch.
Enough said, drive on!
"500 Days": Author Kurt Eichenwald’s New Account of How Bush Admin Ignored Warnings Before 9/11
Newly disclosed documents provide further evidence the administration of George W. Bush ignored repeated warnings about Osama bin Laden’s plans to attack the United States. In "500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars,” author and journalist Kurt Eichenwald fleshes out how the Bush administration dismissed a number of warnings of an al-Qaeda attack against the United States beginning in the spring of 2001, instead focusing on alleged threats from Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Transcript
This from No More Mister Nice Blog:
Why did the administration do nothing? It sure looks as if it's because a key faction in the administration had a theory and didn't want anyone confused by the facts:
An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat.
And we know, of course, these folks didn't change their minds even after it was clear that Al Qaeda was responsible for 9/11. They still thought Saddam was the main threat. They just couldn't let that idea go. more
Perhaps not perfect irony, but it's as good as it gets as far as a graphic is concerned.
And I haven't ended the article where I have for no reason. Again, perhaps not perfect irony, but it's as good as it gets as far as language is concerned. J'adore ironie!
Insiders voice doubts about CIA’s 9/11 story
Former FBI agents say the agency's bin Laden unit misled them about two hijackers By Rory O'Connor and Ray Nowosielski October 14, 2011
A growing number of former government insiders — all responsible officials who served in a number of federal posts — are now on record as doubting ex-CIA director George Tenet’s account of events leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Among them are several special agents of the FBI, the former counterterrorism head in the Clinton and Bush administrations, and the chairman of the 9/11 Commission, who told us the CIA chief had been “obviously not forthcoming” in his testimony and had misled the commissioners.
These doubts about the CIA first emerged among a group of 9/11 victims’ families whose struggle to force the government to investigate the causes of the attacks, we chronicled in our 2006 documentary film “Press for Truth.” At that time, we thought we were done with the subject. But tantalizing information unearthed by the 9/11 Commission’s final report and spotted by the families (Chapter 6, footnote 44) raised a question too important to be put aside:
Did Tenet fail to share intelligence with the White House and the FBI in 2000 and 2001 that could have prevented the attacks? Specifically, did a group in the CIA’s al-Qaida office engage in a domestic covert action operation involving two of the 9/11 hijackers, that — however legitimate the agency’s goals may have been — hindered the type of intelligence-sharing that could have prevented the attacks? And if not, then what would explain seemingly inexplicable actions by CIA employees?
As we sought to clarify how the CIA had handled information about the hijackers before 9/11, we found a half dozen former government insiders who came away from the Sept. 11 tragedy feeling burned by the CIA, particularly by a small group of employees within the agency’s bin Laden unit in 2000 and 2001, then known as Alec Station.
Among them was Gov. Thomas Kean, co-chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, which was responsible for investigating 9/11. He agreed to an on-camera interview for our documentary in 2008. He surprised us by voicing many doubts and questions about the CIA’s actions preceding Sept. 11 — and especially about former CIA director George Tenet.
Four years after Tenet testified to the commission, Kean said the CIA director had been “obviously not forthcoming” in some of his testimony. Tenet said under oath that he had not met with President Bush in the month of August 2001, Kean recalled. It was later learned he had done so twice.
Did Tenet misspeak? we asked the New Jersey Republican.
“No, I don’t think he misspoke,” Kean responded. “I think he misled.”
Is the Saudi Royal Family Connected to 9/11 Hijackers?
New evidence links the Saudi royal family to Saudis in South Florida, who reportedly had contact with the 9/11 hijackers before fleeing the US prior to the attacks. By Russ Baker September 22, 2011
WhoWhatWhy has found evidence linking the Saudi royal family to Saudis in South Florida who reportedly had direct contact with the 9/11 hijackers before fleeing the United States just prior to the attacks. Our report connects some of the dots first laid out by investigative author Anthony Summers and Florida-based journalist Dan Christensen in articles jointly published in the Miami Herald and on the nonprofit news site BrowardBulldog.org.
In early September of this year, Summers and Christensen reported that a secret FBI probe, never shared with Congressional investigators or the presidential 9/11 commission, had uncovered information indicating the possibility of support for the hijackers from previously unknown confederates in the United States during 2001.
Now WhoWhatWhy reveals that those alleged confederates were closely tied to influential members of the Saudi ruling elite.
As reported in the Herald, phone records documented communication, dating back more than a year, that connected a Saudi family then living in a house near Sarasota, Florida, with the alleged plot leader, Mohammed Atta, and his hijack pilots—as well as to eleven of the other hijackers. In addition, records from the guard house at the gated community tied Atta’s vehicle and his accomplice Ziad Jarrah to actual visits to the house. Although requiring further investigation, this information suggests that the house may have functioned as an operational base for the hijackers.
According to interviews and records examined by The Herald, Anoud and Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii and their young twins abruptly departed their home in Sarasota only days before September 11, 2001 and traveled to Arlington, Virginia, where they stayed briefly at another house owned by Anoud’s father, Esam Ghazzawi.
Then, still well before 9/11, the entire group, now including the father, flew to London and on to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The Sarasota house was sold in 2003, as was apenthouse apartment in another DC, suburb, Rosslyn, Virginia. The Ghazzawis do not seem to have set foot again in the United States.
New Revelations
Building on these revelations, WhoWhatWhy has found documents laying out the Ghazzawis’ royal connections through a nest of Saudi corporations that share the name EIRAD. Esam Ghazzawi is director of EIRAD Management Company, the UK division of EIRAD Trading and Contracting Co. Ltd., which among other things holds the Saudi franchise for many multinational brands, including UPS. Esam’s brother Mamdouh, whose name shows up on public records associated with family properties in the U.S., is the Executive Managing Director of the parent firm, EIRAD Holding Co. Ltd. EIRAD has connections to the US government via contracts. In 2008, records show, the State Department paid EIRAD $11,733 for rental of facilities, presumably in Saudi Arabia.
There is no indication that the company itself, or any of its officers or employees, have any connection to the 9/11 incident, or knowledge of anything regarding Mr. Ghazzawi’s activities in the United States. Calls for comment to the company’s main switchboard went unanswered during normal business hours; its website was not functioning properly and Saudi trade officials in the United States had not furnished alternative contact information at publication time.
But the now-revealed link between the Ghazzawis and the highest ranks of the Saudi establishment reopens questions about the White House’s controversial approval for multiple charter flights allowing Saudi nationals to depart the U.S., beginning about 48 hours after the attacks, without the passengers being interviewed by law enforcement—despite the identification of the majority of the hijackers as Saudis.
In addition, the new revelations draw further attention to a web of relationships that include the long and close business, personal and political ties between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family.
Saudi money is woven throughout business ventures connected to the Bushes. Saudi funds even helped bail out George W. Bush’s failing oil company early in his life. Jim Bath, a close friend of Bush in the Texas Air National Guard, went on to start a business in conjunction with two sons of powerful Saudi families—Khalid bin Mahfouz, whose the family provides banking services to the Saudi royals, and Salem bin Laden, heir to the bin Laden family’s global construction empire and a half brother to Osama bin Laden. (For a detailed probe of the Bush family’s dealings with the Saudis, including substantial previously unreported material, see my book, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years.)
Details of The Herald’s Revelations
The Ghazzawi presence in the Sunshine State predated 9/11 by at least six years. In 1995 a young Saudi woman named Anoud Ghazzawi living in South Florida married a fellow Saudi native, Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii (English spellings of his first name and surname vary, as is typical of Arabic names.) Anoud’s father, Esam, and his American-born wife Deborah bought the couple a stylish, three-bedroom house in a gated community in Sarasota. The house remained in the elder Ghazzawis’ names while the young couple lived there and began a family.
Six years later, less than two weeks before the 9/11 attacks, Anoud, Abdulazzi and their children left their home on or about August 30, 2001 in great haste, taking off in a white van. This was about the same time that the hijackers were purchasing their tickets for the targeted flights.
The family apparently left with no advance planning, leaving behind almost all their possessions, abandoning three recently registered vehicles, including a brand-new Chrysler PT Cruiser, in the garage and driveway. As the Herald article explained:
“there was mail on the table, dirty diapers in one of the bathrooms … all the toiletries still in place … all their clothes hanging in the closet … opulent furniture, equal or greater in value than the house … the pool running, with toys in it….The beds were made … fruit on the counter … the refrigerator full of food. … It was like they went grocery shopping. Like they went out to a movie … [But] the safe was open in the master bedroom, with nothing in it, not a paper clip. … A computer was still there. A computer plug in another room, and the line still there. Looked like they’d taken [another] computer and left the cord.”
After public disclosure of Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks, people in the gated community took note of the rushed departure and disappearance of the Ghazzawi-al-Hiijjiis. After all, the attackers were not just overwhelmingly of Saudi nationality, but three out of four of the future hijackers had lived and trained to fly in Venice, Florida, just 10 miles away from the house.
The complex’s security officer alerted the FBI, which began an investigation into the house at 4224 Escondito Circle. (In addition, a suspicious neighbor alerted the FBI by email on the day of the attacks.)
The Justice Department declined to give the Herald a statement, but, according to an unnamed senior counterterrorism officer who was one of two people who got into the house first and served as a key source for the paper, the investigation bore stunning fruit.
Phone records showed communication, dating back more than a year, that connected those in the house with the alleged plot leader, Mohammed Atta and his accomplices, including eleven of the other hijackers. Other records, kept by guards at the gated community, documented numerousvisits to the house by a vehicle known to have been used by Atta, and indicated the physical presence in the car of Atta’s purported accomplice Ziad Jarrah. It appeared as if the Ghazzawi house was some kind of nerve center for the entire operation. Go to page 3 of 9
The Critics of 9/11 Truth: Do They Have A Case?Click for article. By Paul Craig Roberts September 13, 2011
I have updated my previous post, Two Tales of 9/11 because I carried both Paul Roberts' initial article, Does 9/11 Truth Have A Chance? and the article by Ted Rall, The Truth About 9/11 Truthers Why Does the US Government Create Paranoia? to which Roberts addresses (debunks) in his response.
I shall leave a few pics as food for thought, and why not? a little video at the end.
Regarding the core columns, I shall borrow a bit from Roberts' article, but for myself; these columns were incredibly strong even in tension, but in compression? well I reckon you could have sat the Moon on top of that building without too many adverse effects.
Alex’s other evidence that 9/11 truthers are kooks is a letter that Herman Soifer, who claims to be a retired structural engineer, wrote to him summarizing “the collapse of Buildings 1 and 2 succinctly.” This is what Soifer, who “had followed the plans and engineering of the Towers during construction” wrote to Alex: “The towers were basically tubes, essentially hollow.” This canard was disposed of years ago. If Alex had merely googled the plans of the buildings, he would have discovered that there were no thin-walled hollow tubes, but a very large number of massively thick steel beams.
Demolition workers placing a (angled) cutting charge.
Updated below with a second article by Paul Craig Roberts responding to the article written by Ted Rall.
Firstly we have the Paul Craig Roberts tale.
Does 9/11 Truth Have A Chance?
By Paul Craig Roberts
September 11, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- -- In the US on September 11, 2011, the tenth anniversary of 9/11, politicians and their presstitute media presented Americans with “A Day of Remembrance,” a propaganda exercise that hardened the 9/11 lies into dogma. Meanwhile, in Toronto, Canada, at Ryerson University the four-day International Hearings on the Events of September 11, 2001, came to a close at 5pm.
During the four days of hearings, distinguished scientists and scholars and professional architects and engineers presented the results of years of their independent research into all aspects of 9/11 to a distinguished panel consisting of the honorary president of the Italian Supreme Court who was an investigative judge who presided over terrorism cases and three distinguished scholars of high renown and judgment. The distinguished panel’s task is to produce a report with their judgment of the evidence presented by the expert witnesses.
The Toronto Hearings were streamed live over the Internet. I was able to watch many of the presentations over the four days. I was impressed that the extremely high level of intelligence and scientific competence of the witnesses was matched by a high level of integrity, a quality rare in US politics and totally absent in the American media.
As I stressed in my recent interview about 9/11 with Jim Corbett and Global Research, I am a reporter, not an independent researcher into 9/11. I pay attention when the fact-based community finds problems with the official propaganda. Perhaps this reflects my age. My generation was raised to believe in evidence and the scientific method. George Orwell and other writers warned us of the consequence of succumbing to government propaganda as a result of disinterest in the truth or government manipulation of one’s patriotism.
My ability to serve as a reporter of scientific evidence is enhanced by my having a Bachelor of Science from Georgia Tech, a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, and post-graduate education at the University of California, Berkeley, and Oxford University, where my professor was the distinguished physical chemist and philosopher, Michael Polanyi. In the 1960s, I was appointed Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, in order to provide together with Polanyi to the science students at Berkeley a course in Polanyi’s unique contributions to knowledge. Polanyi’s illness prevented the course from happening and condemned me to being a mere economist.
This does not mean that I am infallible or that my reporting is correct. If my reporting stimulates you, go to the presentations, which I believe will continue to be available online, and if not, some edited CD will be available. Try http://www.ustream.tv/channel/thetorontohearings
As one whose own contributions to economics, now belatedly recognized, are “outside the box,” I am responsive to those who can escape peer pressure in order to advance truth. Here are some of the important things I learned from the Toronto Hearings.
The NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology, a government agency) reports on the twin towers and building 7 are fraudulent. Witnesses at the Toronto Hearings proved that building 7 was a standard controlled demolition and that incendiaries and explosives brought down the twin towers. There is no doubt whatsoever about this. Anyone who declares the contrary has no scientific basis upon which to stand. Those who defend the official story believe in miracles that defy the laws of physics.
A nano-chemist from the University of Copenhagen, who together with a scientific team spent 18 months investigating the chemical and physical properties of dust from the towers, found evidence of nano-termite in the dust and quantities of particles not naturally formed by office or normal building fires that indicate another explosive was also present.
These findings explain the extreme high temperatures that produced the molten steel for which indisputable evidence exists. In the orchestrated cover-up, NIST denies that molten steel is present as its presence is inconsistent with the low temperatures that NIST acknowledges building fires can produce.
Physicist David Chandler proved beyond all doubt that building 7 fell over its visible part (other buildings obscure the bottom floors) at free fall speed, an unambiguous indication that explosives had removed all supporting columns simultaneously. There is no possibility whatsoever according to the laws of physics that building 7 fell for the reasons NIST provides. The NIST account is a total denial of known laws of physics.
Many other powerful points were made at the conference that I will not report, at least not at this time, because the revelation of malevolence is so powerful that most readers will find it a challenge to their emotional and mental strength.
Psychologists explained that there are two kinds of authority to which people submit. One is to the authority of people in high positions in the government. The belief that “our government wouldn’t lie to us” is pervasive, especially among patriots. The other source of authority is experts. However, to believe experts a person has to be educated and open-minded and to trust scientific, professional, and scholarly integrity.
In recent years in America, scientific and scholarly authority has come into disrepute among Christian evangelicals who object to evolution and among anti-intellectual Tea Party adherents who object to “elitists,” that is, objection to knowledge-based persons whose knowledge does not support Tea Party emotions.
In other words, qualified, knowledgeable people who tell people what they do not want to hear are dismissed as “the enemy.” Much of the American population is set up to believe government propaganda. Without an independent media, which the US no longer has, people are taught that only “conspiracy kooks” challenge the government’s story. Even on the Internet, this is a main theme on Antiwar.com and on CounterPunch.org, two sites that protest America’s wars but accept the 9/11 propaganda that justifies the wars.
This is the reason that I think that the US is moving into an era where the emotional needs of the population produced by government propaganda overwhelms science, evidence, and facts. It means the abolition of accountable government and the rule of law, because protection from terrorists is more important.
The fact-based world in which “we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead” is being displaced by dogma. Anyone who doubts “our government” is an anti-American, Muslim-loving, pinko-liberal commie, who should be arrested and waterboarded until the culprit confesses that he is a terrorist.
The event of 9/11 is now outside the realm of fact, science, and evidence. It is a dogma that justifies the Bush/Cheney/Obama war crimes against Muslims and their countries.
Obama regime appointee Cass Sunstein, a Chicago and Harvard Law School professor, thinks the 9/11 movement, for challenging the official “truth”, should be infiltrated by US intelligence agents in order to shut down the fact-based doubters of government propaganda.
When a law professor at our two most prestigious law schools wants to suppress scientific evidence that challenges government veracity, we know that in America respect for truth is dead.
The notion that a country in which truth is dead is a “light unto the world” is an absurdity. ICH
And then we have the Ted Rall tale.
The Truth About 9/11 Truthers Why Does the US Government Create Paranoia? By Ted Rall "Truthers expect something from you," an interviewer told me last week.
Indeed they do. I rarely get through a public appearance or talk-radio interview without being asked about 9/11 by a "Truther"—a person who believes that the attacks were planned and/or carried out by the U.S. government.
The 9/11 Truth movement is diverse. Some adherents think the Twin Towers and especially the Pentagon were struck by remote-controlled missiles or drone planes, not hijacked jets. Others accept the involvement of four commercial airliners in the official account but think the Twin Towers, and especially 7 World Trade Center, an office building across the street from the Twin Towers that collapsed hours later, were brought down in a staged, controlled demolition. Then there's the "stand down" theory, which posits that the Bushies knew what was coming and ordered the military not to respond.
Theories about the execution of the 9/11 conspiracy vary. Its purpose is broadly believed to have been to cow the public into relinquishing long-cherished freedoms and liberties, opening the door to a post-9/11 police state.
As a critic of U.S. government policy, I get a lot of email from Truthers. They ask me to support their cause.
Truthers are passionate and energetic. They send links to websites, books and DVDs questioning the series of events laid out in the 9/11 Commission Report and mainstream media accounts. They remind me that the Bush and Obama Administrations have gotten caught lying about the post-9/11 war on terror. Why, then, am I not open to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job? Am I lazy? Or some government shill? (If so I wish they'd pay me.)
I am open-minded. And I don't trust our political leaders. So I read everything that people send me. I watched films like "Loose Change" and "In Plane Sight," a professionally edited documentary that relies on insinuation to argue that nefarious government somebodies fired something other than hijacked jets into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Example: "How can a Boeing 757, which is over 44 feet in height and 124 feet in width, simply disappear without a trace into a hole that is only 16 feet in diameter? Also, why is there no external damage to the Pentagon where the wings and the tail section would have impacted with the outer wall?"
Answer: The plane hit the lawn, not the building. The Pentagon is made of reinforced WPA-era concrete. The plane's wings were thin, light and full of jet fuel. They disintegrated upon impact.
Everything I've read and watched on Truther sites is like that: easily dismissed by anyone with a basic knowledge of physics and architecture. (I spent three years in engineering school.) Therefore, with one exception, I believe the official story.
The exception is United Flight 93, which crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
I think there's a possibility it was shot down by a USAF fighter jet. According to the 9/11 Commission Report a shootdown order was issued to the Air Force, which had at least one jet close enough to intercept the airliner before the crash. In addition, local media reported that the plane's engine was found miles away from the crash site. Engines don't bounce that far.
There was almost certainly a revolt aboard the flight. But the 9/11 Commission Report never confirms that the passengers gained access to the cockpit: "The cockpit voice recorder captured the sounds of the passenger assault muffled by the intervening cockpit door…The hijackers remained at the controls but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them. The airplane headed down…"
Sounds strange to me. As far as we know, the cockpit door remained locked. The hijackers knew they were going to die. Why would they give up their mission before they were forced to do so?
Of course, I don't know what happened aboard Flight 93. I'm no expert.
I do know that most 9/11 Truther narratives don't make sense. For example, how could workers rig up the World Trade Center for a controlled demolition—a months-long project that would require miles of cable, tens of thousands of pounds of explosives, hundreds of workers—without being noticed by the 50,000 people who worked there?
What I really don't understand is the movement's motivations. What do Truthers want?
For the sake of argument let's assume that the four 9/11 planes were found at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, confirming that they never hit their targets. Like in the TV show "Lost." Are Truthers naïve enough to think there would be a revolution?
"Our government has lied to us about the events of 9/11," Truther Frank Agamemnon said last year on Russia Today TV. "And if the truth came out about it, maybe the wars would stop."
I don't think so. Americans didn't rise up when Bush stole the 2000 election. They didn't care when WMDs failed to turn up in Iraq. We did nothing about Abu Ghraib or legalized torture or a president who says he has the right to assassinate each and every one of us, even if we're innocent of any crime. Even if 9/11 did prove to be an inside job, I predict the national reaction would be:
"Huh."
Truthers aren't crazy. Not most of them, anyway. They've glommed on to the simple (crazy) fact that there has never been a real investigation of the September 11th attacks—a query led not by a politician like former New Jersey governor Tom Kean but by incorruptible scholars and respected experts independent of the world of politics, including those from other nations. And even Kean reported that the Bush Administration dragged their feet and failed to cooperate.
Since 9/11 the media has ignored Truthers or dismissed them as wild-eyed lunatics. As we saw with the Obama birth certificate issue, however, brushing people off merely raises more questions and prolongs the discussion.
On a number of pressing issues in recent years, the federal government has refused transparency, much less a real investigation that would have enabled people to move past 9/11. After Obama took office, for instance, he announced that there would be no prosecutions or investigations of torture in Iraq or at Guantánamo under Bush.
The evolving accounts of Osama bin Laden's death seemed ideally tailored to create the suspicion that big secrets were being covered up. First we heard that Osama came out guns blazing, then he merely had a gun, then he was unarmed, finally he was executed after he had been handcuffed. As for disposing of the body at sea, well, a certain amount of skepticism naturally follows the lack of a corpse.
The Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch narratives followed similar trajectories.
Why does the federal government feed the conspiracy theorists? Maybe it's unintentional, but probably not. I think the U.S. has become like a Third World dictatorship: the more they keep us guessing, the smarter they seem, and the more we'll fear them. ICH
Once again, there is as much in the comments as in the article.
The Critics of 9/11 Truth: Do They Have A Case? By Paul Craig Roberts September 13, 2011
The short answer to the question in the title is no.
The 9/11 truth critics have nothing but ad hominem arguments.
Let’s examine the case against the truthers presented by Ted Rall, Ann Barnhardt, and Alexander Cockburn.
But first let’s define who the truthers are.
The Internet has made it possible for anyone to have a web site and to rant and speculate to their heart’s content. There are a large number of 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Many on both sides of the issue are equally ignorant. Neither side has any shame about demonstrating ignorance.
Both sides of the issue have conspiracy theories. 9/11 was a conspiracy whether a person believes that it was an inside job or that a handful of Arabs outwitted the entire intelligence apparatus of the Western world and the operational response of NORAD and the US Air Force.
For one side to call the other conspiracy theorists is the pot calling the kettle black.
The question turns not on name-calling but on evidence.
The 9/11 Truth movement was not created by bloggers ranting on their web sites. It was created by professional architects and engineers some of whom are known for having designed steel high rise buildings. It was created by distinguished scientists, such as University of Copenhagen nano-Chemist Niels Harrit who has 60 scientific papers to his credit and physicist Steven Jones. It was created by US Air Force pilots and commercial airline pilots who are expert at flying airplanes. It was created by firefighters who were in the twin towers and who personally heard and experienced numerous explosions including explosions in the sub-basements. It was created by members of 9/11 families who desire to know how such an improbable event as 9/11 could possibly occur.
The professionals and the scientists are speaking from the basis of years of experience and expert knowledge. Moreover, the scientists are speaking from the basis of careful research into the evidence that exists. When an international research team of scientists spends 18 months studying the components in the dust from the towers and the fused pieces of concrete and steel, they know what they are doing. When they announce that they have definite evidence of incendiaries and explosives, you can bet your life that that have the evidence.
When a physicist proves that Building 7 (the stories not obscured by other buildings) fell at free fall speed and NIST has to acknowledge that he is correct, you can bet your life that the physicist is correct.
When fire department captains and clean-up teams report molten steel--and their testimony is backed up with photographs--in the debris of the ruins weeks and months after the buildings’ destruction, you can bet your life the molten steel was there. When the same authorities report pumping fire suppressants and huge quantities of water with no effect on the molten steel, you can bet your life that the temperature long after the buildings’ destruction remained extremely high, far higher than any building fire can reach.
When the architects, engineers, and scientists speak, they offer no theory of who is responsible for 9/11. They state that the known evidence supports neither the NIST reports nor the 9/11 Commission Report. They say that the explanation that the government has provided is demonstrably wrong and that an investigation is required if we are to discover the truth about the event.
It is not a conspiracy theory to examine the evidence and to state that the evidence does not support the explanation that has been given.
That is the position of the 9/11 Truth movement.
What is the position of the movement’s critics? Ted Rall says: “Everything I’ve read and watched on Truther sites is easily dismissed by anyone with a basic knowledge of physics and architecture. (I spent three years in engineering school.) http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29113.htm
Wow! What powerful credentials. Has Rall ever designed a high rise steel building? Could Rall engage in a debate with a professor of nano-chemistry? Could he refute Newton’s laws in a debate with university physicists? Does Rall know anything about maneuvering airplanes? Does he have an explanation why 100 firefighters, janitors, and police report hearing and experiencing explosions that they did not hear or experience?
Clearly, Ted Rall has no qualifications whatsoever to make any judgment about the judgments of experts whose knowledge exceeds his meager understanding by a large amount.
Ann Barnhardt writes: “I gotta tell you, I’ve just about had it with these 9/11 truthers. If there is one phenomenon in our sick, sick culture that sums up how far gone and utterly damaged we are as a people, it is 9/11 trutherism. It pretty much covers everything: self-loathing, antisemitism, zero knowledge of rudimentary physics and a general inability to think logically.” She goes down hill from here. http://barnhardt.biz/
Amazing, isn’t she? Physics professors have “zero knowledge of rudimentary physics.” Internationally recognized logicians have “a general inability to think logically.” People trained in the scientific method who use it to seek truth are “self-loathing.” If you doubt the government’s account you are antisemitic. Barnhardt then provides her readers with a lesson in physics, structural architecture and engineering, and the behavior of steel under heat and stress that is the most absolute nonsense imaginable.
Obviously, Barnhardt knows nothing whatsoever about what she is talking about, but overflowing with hubris she dismisses real scientists and professionals with ad hominem arguments. She adds to her luster with a video of herself tearing out pages of the Koran, which she has marked with slices of bacon, and burning the pages.
Now we come to Alex Cockburn. He is certainly not stupid. I know him. He is pleasant company. He provides interesting intellectual conversation. I like him. Yet, he also arrogantly dismisses highly qualified experts who provide evidence contrary to the official government story of 9/11.
Alex avoids evidence presented by credentialed experts and relies on parody. He writes that the conspiracists claim that the twin towers “pancaked because Dick Cheney’s agents--scores of them--methodically planted demolition charges.” http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/02/the-911-conspiracists-vindicated-after-all-these-years/
Little doubt but there are bloggers somewhere in the vast Internet world who say this. But this is not what the professionals are saying who have provided evidence that the official account is not correct. The experts are simply saying that the evidence does not support the official explanation. More recently, an international team of scientists has reported finding unequivocal evidence of incendiaries and explosives. They have not said anything about who planted them. Indeed, they have said that other scientists should test their conclusions by repeating the research. After calling experts “conspiracy kooks,” Alex then damns them for not putting forward “a scenario of the alleged conspiracy.”
Moreover, not a single one of the experts believes the towers “pancaked.” This was an early explanation that, I believe, was tentatively put forward by NIST, but it had to be abandoned because of the speed with which the buildings came down and due to other problems.
Unlike Rall and Barnhardt, Alex does refer to evidence, but it is second or third-hand hearsay evidence that is nonsensical on its face. For example, Alex writes that Chuck Spinney “tells me that ‘there ARE pictures taken of the 757 plane hitting Pentagon--they were taken by the surveillance cameras at Pentagon’s heliport, which was right next to impact point. I have seen them both--stills and moving pictures. I just missed seeing it personally, but the driver of the van I just got out of in South Parking saw it so closely that he could see the terrified faces of passengers in windows.’”
If there were pictures or videos of an airliner hitting the Pentagon, they would have been released years ago. They would have been supplied to the 9/11 Commission. Why would the government refuse for 10 years to release pictures that prove its case? The FBI confiscated all film from all surveillance cameras. No one has seen them, much less a Pentagon critic such as Spinney.
I have to say that the van driver must have better eyes than an eagle if he could see expressions on passenger faces through those small airliner portholes in a plane traveling around 500 mph. Try it sometimes. Sit on your front steps and try to discern the expressions of automobile passengers through much larger and clearer windows traveling down your street in a vehicle moving 30 mph. Then kick the speed up 16.7 times to 500 mph and report if you see anything but a blur.
Alex’s other evidence that 9/11 truthers are kooks is a letter that Herman Soifer, who claims to be a retired structural engineer, wrote to him summarizing “the collapse of Buildings 1 and 2 succinctly.” This is what Soifer, who “had followed the plans and engineering of the Towers during construction” wrote to Alex: “The towers were basically tubes, essentially hollow.” This canard was disposed of years ago. If Alex had merely googled the plans of the buildings, he would have discovered that there were no thin-walled hollow tubes, but a very large number of massively thick steel beams.
Alex’s willingness to dismiss as kooks numerous acknowledged experts on the basis of a claim that a van driver saw terrified faces of passengers moving at 500 mph and a totally erroneous description in a letter from a person who knew nothing whatsoever about the structural integrity of the buildings means that he is a much braver person than I.
Before I call architects kooks whose careers were spent building steel high rises, I would want to know a lot more about the subject than I do. Before I poke fun at nano-chemists and physicists, I would want to at least be able to read their papers and find the scientific flaws in their arguments.
Yet, none of the people who ridicule 9/11 skeptics are capable of this. How, for example, can Rall, Barnhardt, or Cockburn pass judgment on a nano-chemist with 40 years of experience and 60 scientific publications to his credit?
They cannot, but nevertheless do. They don’t hesitate to pass judgment on issues about which they have no knowledge or understanding. This is an interesting psychological phenomenon worthy of study and analysis.
Another interesting phenomenon is the strong emotional reactions that many have to 9/11, an event about which they have little information. Even the lead members of the 9/11 Commission itself have said that information was withheld from them and the commission was set up to fail. People who rush to the defense of NIST do not even know what they are defending as NIST refuses to release the details of the simulation upon which NIST bases its conclusion.
There is no 9/11 debate. On the one hand there are credentialed experts who demonstrate problems in the official account, and on the other hand there are non-experts who denounce the experts as conspiracy kooks. The experts are cautious and careful about what they say, and their detractors have thrown caution and care to the wind. That is the state of the debate. ICH
