A Conspiracy So Intense . . .
429Truth.com dares to ask how come steel melts when somewhere on the internet it says steel doesn’t melt. Best comment so far:
Dan Says:
May 1st, 2007 at 3:08 pmSteels undergo a solid-solid phase transformation @ 720 C, roughly. Though it’s not melted, it loses most of it’s strength.
However, I’m a jew, and I knew this, so here’s another vote for the jews.
Comment by Thoreau —
May 1, 2007 @ 9:38 pm
What I don’t get is why so many Jews stayed home that Sunday morning rather than going to work. And Hispanics. Hell, I even heard a rumor that a lot of blacks, whites, and Asians stayed home from work that morning. It’s almost as if they all knew something was going to happen…
Also, if the authorities have nothing to hide then why have they closed off roads leading to the site of the disaster?
Comment by michael holloway —
May 1, 2007 @ 11:27 pm
A Conspiracy So Intense…
The thought occurred to me that this Blog could be a “Cover, cover-up”. A Dark-Black Operation.
In the minutes after a breach in operational security has occurred a “Hot Room†of writers, psychologists, behavioral scientists and communications experts assemble. They are connected to the puppet masters at Centcom. The Hot Room generate a conspiracy theory out the facts that have leaked into the public domain.
In real time, ideas are fashioned that are very near the leading edge of informed dissent; thus they are able to tweak the story and even lead the dissent in the wrong direction.
Depending on the size of the leak they could with a truth, a crumb left for future considerations; perhaps to take command of the direction a story is taking at a critical moment.
They could become sources for the press, like in the Libby/NYT example. They could mortally wound the gullible hacks at the end.
Like the great sources 60 Minutes thought they had on Bush; They were real, just faked.
The London Times, who printed photo’s of British soldiers, from a trusted source that turned out to be excellent fakes.
Hmm..
That kind of makes sense…
I’m launching a site.
I’ll get back to you.
Comment by Dave W. —
May 2, 2007 @ 5:56 am
A better question to ask is why most steel skyscrapers maintain sufficient strength to substantially hold themselves up in a fire, but WTC7 did not.
There has not been a scientific report on this yet, but a report is due this year. I’ll try to remember to drop you a line when the report drops, Jim.
This is one of those situations where it may be tough for the scientists to maintain their integrity, because I think the public has already decided why WTC7 fell, and they are looking merely for the scientists to merely confirm the received wisdom. That puts the scientists in a difficult position, of course.
Anyway, even if some Israelis knew that the s**t was coming down on 9/11, I don’t see why everybody assumes they would have been Jewish. There are people from all religions from Israel, after all. Besides, it has never been proven that any Israelis did have knowledge. We wouldn’t know either way because this point has never been scientifically investigated and reported on. Until that happens you just can’t say.
Comment by Barry —
May 2, 2007 @ 8:38 am
F*ck off, Dave. This was intensively studied in the months afterwards.
Comment by BruceR —
May 2, 2007 @ 9:43 am
Speaking as the son of a scientist who has spent most of his adult life working with scientists and engineers, I can say pretty categorically that Dave W. here doesn’t know any real ones. I have never met one who wouldn’t cheerfully f*ck with the “received wisdom” of crowds every chance he/she got, and twice on Sundays.
Don’t worry about the poor scientists, Dave. They’ll “maintain their integrity” just fine without your help. Tool.
Comment by Dave W. —
May 2, 2007 @ 9:54 am
I have never met one who wouldn’t cheerfully f*ck with the “received wisdom†of crowds every chance he/she got, and twice on Sundays.
You should meet my friend Alex, then.
Comment by Jon H —
May 2, 2007 @ 10:10 am
A design for the memorial was proposed, but quickly attracted the ire of wingnuts, who insisted it was shaped like a YIELD sign.
Comment by Thoreau —
May 2, 2007 @ 10:13 am
A design for the memorial was proposed, but quickly attracted the ire of wingnuts, who insisted it was shaped like a YIELD sign.
Perhaps if they made some bright signs with blinking LEDs…
Comment by Dave W. —
May 2, 2007 @ 10:34 am
On a more serious note, the freeway section that collapsed in Emeryville was concrete with embedded rebar. Some skyscrapers are indeed made in this way. Here is what they look like when they collapse:
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/compare/windsor.html
Doesn’t have much to do with 9/11 or Jewish people, but I think the pictures are interesting nonetheless.
Comment by The Editors —
May 2, 2007 @ 11:22 am
Speaking as a sad excuse for an engineer whose more-ambitious engineer wife put your tax dollars to work on the NIST WTC1&2 report, and is currently getting Paid In Full by the taxpayer to do the same for WTC7, let me say this to the conspiracy-minded:
1. The Truth Is Out There
2. I have steak for dinner every. damn. night.
I, for one, salute your brave efforts.
Comment by Dave W. —
May 2, 2007 @ 11:39 am
I have never met one who wouldn’t cheerfully f*ck with the “received wisdom†of crowds every chance he/she got, and twice on Sundays.
You may also want to become acquainted with Mr. & Mrs. “The Editors.” They eat steak and enjoy it.
Comment by The Editors —
May 2, 2007 @ 12:07 pm
It is generally believed that the received wisdom of the crowds who clamour to pay your bills is never, ever to be fucked with, except in the most oblique ways. That said: steel? At a thousand degrees plus? Gets kinda melty. Arbitrarily expensive explanations of this obscure physical phenomenon available on request.
Comment by Thoreau —
May 2, 2007 @ 12:09 pm
Editors, please don’t feed the troll.
Comment by The Editors —
May 2, 2007 @ 12:27 pm
But he feeds me. Steak!
Comment by Dave W. —
May 2, 2007 @ 12:40 pm
That said: steel? At a thousand degrees plus? Gets kinda melty.
1. Why was WTC7 burning at a thousand degrees plus.
2. Actually, steel loses strength commensaurate with its architectural safety between 550 degrees C and 1000 degrees C. Which is why they typically thermally insulate the steel used to make load bearing members in skyscrapers. The thermal insulation is what prevents a steel skyscraper from toppling every time there is a fire of typical duration and intensity (large burning jets or thermite fires excluded, of course).
3. Which brings us back to the question, as posed upthd: “[W]hy [do] most steel skyscrapers maintain sufficient strength to substantially hold themselves up in a fire, but WTC7 did not[?]” What does wifey say about that question “The Editors?” More importantly, where do I send her steaks to get a decent answer on that?
Comment by Dave W. —
May 2, 2007 @ 12:41 pm
“architectural safety between”
should have been:
–architectural safety factors between–
Comment by Dave W. —
May 2, 2007 @ 12:56 pm
1. Why was WTC7 burning at a thousand degrees plus?
To expand on this point a bit: building fires typically burn at 600 to 900 degrees celsius. the pictures of WTC7 would seem to indicate that it was burning at less than this range even, as there was a lot more smoke than fire. That is why it is so hard to believe that the WTC7 fire compromised the thermal insulation to the extent required to cause catastrophic failure.
I think this is one reason that there is some speculation that the collapse was more due to vibration or physical impacts from pieces of WTC1 and 2. The problem there is that WTC7 was substantially intact, even in its facings, after WTC1 and 2 fell. That would seem to indicate a relative lack of vibration and physical impacts. I mean, there was obviously enough trauma to cause some moderate size fires in WTC7, but it is not like the masonry fell off or was knocked off.
Comment by Jon H —
May 2, 2007 @ 1:09 pm
Um, Dave, the obvious problem here is that, even if there *was* a conspiracy to take down WTC 7, surely there was an easier way to accomplish that.
Comment by Jim Henley —
May 2, 2007 @ 1:09 pm
I don’t have a lot of time to read scientific and pseudoscientific metallurgical factoids on the internet. So I try to save myself some time, as follows:
1. I saw great big planes hit Towers 1 and 2 on TV.
2. I saw Towers 1 and 2 collapse after getting hit by these planes.
3. Tower 7 crashed during the same atrocity, after planes hit Towers 1 and 2.
4. “We’re going to set off explosions in Towers 1 and 2 AND hit them with planes at about the same time” is a pretty stupid plan. It’s overcomplex and hard to time. And Bin Laden’s candid video from late 2001 suggests that AQ themselves were surprised that T1 and 2 collapsed. The idea that AQ was actually trying to combine a plane-and-bombs attack on T1 and T2 is rococo and dismissable in the absence of so-far undiscovered compelling evidence to the contrary.
5. So, Towers 1 and 2 collapsed because they were hit by jet-fuel-laden planes and only because they were hit by jet-fuel-laden planes.
6. There’s nothing special about Tower 7. This is important. Nobody feels worse because Tower 7 also collapsed. AQ gains no marginal recruits from the collapse of Tower 7. Tower 7 is not cooler than Towers 3-6. Tower 7 on no level of symbolism or materiality distinguishes itself from the non-T1-2 rest of the WTC complex. If you were an evil terrorist, you’d have no reason to make a special additional effort on T7. If you were an evil government agency, you’d have no discernable reason to bring T7 of all buildings down while everyone was distracted by the pyrotechnics of T1 and T2 collapsing.
7. So anything some nefarious organization did to blow up Tower 7, they would also have done to the other “little towers,” since otherwise, what’s the fucking point? But whatever they did to Tower 7 clearly didn’t work on the other towers. Which would suggest that there would have been a lot of physical evidence left behind in those other towers pointing to what actually happened to Tower 7. And, you know, nothing like that has turned up. And Rosie O’Donnell isn’t going on TV to ask how come they didn’t successfully collapse the other little towers when they got T7 right.
8. So, in conclusion, this is all very much not worth my worrying about. I suspect that there are things to learn here about metallurgy and architecture, which is great But I’m neither a metallurgist nor an architect so I don’t personally give a shit. My grandfather was a metallurgist and I loved him dearly, but he’s dead, so he doesn’t care either.
Comment by solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short —
May 2, 2007 @ 1:19 pm
Dave’s right. 9/11 was an inside job. George W. Bush looking like a cowardly imbecile for the first 12 hours of the crisis was an integral part of the master plan. Oh, and not planting evidence to incriminate the country we wanted to invade? That part was even integaler. The integralest, in fact.
Occam’s Razor: not just for cheese slicing.
Comment by solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short —
May 2, 2007 @ 1:22 pm
Sorry–I woulda let the proprietor have the last word but I was too busy being a wiseass to hit refresh.
Comment by Dave W. —
May 2, 2007 @ 1:51 pm
So anything some nefarious organization did to blow up Tower 7, they would also have done to the other “little towers,†since otherwise, what’s the fucking point? But whatever they did to Tower 7 clearly didn’t work on the other towers. Which would suggest that there would have been a lot of physical evidence left behind in those other towers pointing to what actually happened to Tower 7. And, you know, nothing like that has turned up. And Rosie O’Donnell isn’t going on TV to ask how come they didn’t successfully collapse the other little towers when they got T7 right.
Good analysis, Jim. This point 7, in particular, is worth responding to.
No nefarious organization blew up WTC7. WTC7 was demolished for the same reasons that the wreck of the Murrah Building was demolished, and by the same type of people who demolished the wreck of the Murrah Building.
Nor was the fact that WTC7 was demolished hidden at first. Landlord d00d gave the order to pull it on teevee. Nobody went on teevee at 5.20 pm on 9/11 and said that the building was NOT purposely demolished. they just showed it fall and let viewers judge for themselves. Viewers developed a distinct preference that the building came down as a direct result of the hi-jackings, and so, over time, that became the informal official story, although the true status is that this official story has neither been confirmed nor denied. That is what NIST is working on now: the first dedicated official explanation of what happened at WTC7. It is, of course, about time.
Since there was nobody was nefariously trying to pin this on Osama and Atta and the Taliban and Saddam, one might wonder why me and Rosie care so much. In fact, an extraordinarily astute observer might wonder why people like “Barry” (see above) are so passionate about defending the “official story.” It is true that the truth about WTC7 does not change the fact that there was a very serious and deadly radical Islamic terrorist attack on 9/11/01, after all.
The reason that me and Rosie care is that there are important things decides the threat of radical Islamic terrorism. there is the problem of government manipulation of information generally. And by “manipulation” I don’t always mean lies. There are misleading omissions in true information. There are informational campaigns designed to mislead the public into wrong conclusions without resorting to actual lies. There may even be control of information by the government just for the sake of controlling information. Are these things as evil and important as Osama? Arguably not, but they are still important.
The government never said that Saddam had a hand in 9/11, but you understand, Jim, that the Bush administration tailored its rhetoric so that people would believe this and people did come to believe this. That was not an accident.
Likewise, the Bush administration never said that Saddam definitely had WMDs. Rather, they truthfully stuck to the line that this was a possibility, and the public did the rest of the work, many of them becoming convinced that Saddam had these weapons.
The government has never said that the air defense response was as fast as it could have been on 9/11. We assume that it was, but we have not been directly told that the response would have been just as slow if Cuba had sent some bomb laden passenger jets into US airspace to make some farewell fireworks for Fidel. There is no lie about the air defenses. Simply an information vacuum, like there is about WTC7.
We don’t get civilian bodycounts from Iraq. Which is to say that the US government does not lie about the civilian (and insurgent) bodycounts. rather, Tommy Franks informs Us that the US military is simply not in the business of bodycounts. no lie. Just a simple information vacuum, strategically exercised to sustain support for the debacle in Iraq thru the 2004 election and beyond.
This is what the non-story of WTC7 symbolizes. It was not considered strategically advantageous to say that the landlord was plenty ready a disaster in WTC7, and had professionals with thermite standing by. It was better to let the pictures of the collapsing buildings speak for themselves and let the viewers hear whatever message they wanted to get out of those images. Maybe you, Jim, really did and do not have an emotional investment in that footage — I don’t know, I wasn’t watching you look sideways back in Oct ‘01. However, I can tell from this thread that people like Barry and BruceR and Jon H and The Editors and even T. do have an emotional investment in the narrative that they created for themselves, even at the margin of WTC7.
The problem is that it is an unhealthy emotional investment. It is a margin of trust that is not deserved. I am hoping NIST will show them the error of their misplaced trust, but it is sort of late in the day on WTC7. The people willing to buy the scientists the most steaks at this point in time, may have a stake in the phenomenom where people like Barry read radio silence in a manner most favorable to those in power. This may be where the silence ends and the lies begin on WTC7.
Comment by The Editors —
May 2, 2007 @ 2:12 pm
My guess is that is wasn’t. Don’t know why it fell, but I’m guessing the 2 enormous airplanes smashing into the enormous skyscrapers which subsequently collapsed in flames may – MAY! – hold a subtle clue for those with the courage to see through the official lies. But, even if I did know, as NIST is still funding my household for a few months to answer this question, so telling you now would be taking food out of my cats’ mouths. Yes, my friend, they get steak, too.
As for your other 600 billion bullet points, I’m sure they are as incisive as shit, but seeing as dozens to hundreds of scientific professionals with advanced degrees and long experience – some of whom I share a bank account with – have wasted God knows how many man-months reconstructing the events of that day to entirely unneccessary precision and have concluded that buildings like WTC 1 & 2 hit with big airplanes like those on 9/11 will collapse just like WTC 1 & 2 appeared to do on those videotapes doctored by the Illuminati and fed to the sheeple by the vast media-industrial complex who were all in on it; and that building hit by airplanes and then destroyed by any of the alternate expanations floated by independent, free-thinking, too-cool-to-be-credentialled maverick researchers at the National Institute of These Dudes On The Internets Who Sound Pretty Sure Of Themselves, won’t; I am – in a shocking display of intellectual cowardice and unseriousness – not actually going to address them. What a very bad man I am! I will, however, re-direct you to NIST, where you can A) read the study the aforementioned folks wrote on your dime, all 400+ pages of it; B) read the thousands of pages of supporting documents which they compiled, while on the clock, including a handy FAQ which answers every possible variant of “how come the bildings fell if steel don’t melt?” and C) find the names of these so-called “experts” with their fancy degrees and physical theories WHICH AER ONLY THOERIES!!!!11!!, call them up, and ask them why they continue to perpetuate these lies which fly in the face of all established facts which some guy told you online this one time. And, if that charge number is still active, they may even answer your questions. Or they may leave the phone off the hook and go out for steak. For they are – as you know from the sophistication of the WTC conspiracy – a devious and cunning lot.
And the moral is: if you are going to live in a society which funnels insane amounts of money in service of pointless endeavors, it is far more profitable to live where these funnels end than to complain about their existence. Do not h8 the player.
Comment by The Editors —
May 2, 2007 @ 2:35 pm
I should note that all spelling and/or grammar “errors” in the above comment are coded messages to my CIA handlers. Airwolf is en route.
Comment by Uncle Kvetch —
May 2, 2007 @ 3:16 pm
Speaking of errors, ceci n’est pas une phrase grammaticale:
L’Homme Qui N’A Aucun D’Argent.
An A for effort, though.
Comment by Dave W. —
May 2, 2007 @ 3:32 pm
have concluded that buildings like WTC 1 & 2 hit with big airplanes like those on 9/11 will collapse just like WTC 1 & 2 appeared to do on those videotapes
I briefly toyed with the idea that WTC1 and 2 had been brought down by explosives. I was initially pretty skeptical about use of explosives in WTC 1 & 2 because those buildings till had people in them, and you usually try to avoid a controlled demolition when there are people in the buildings.
However, what really convinced me and extinguished all doubt in my mind on WTC 1 and 2 was that some person on the Internet (at HnR, IIRC) pointed out that WTC 1 and 2 started crumbling from their respective points of impact. Which means that any bombs that were planted would have had to be planted and denotated at the respective floors of impact. Which means that it was the jets and not the bombs.
Hopefully the NIST reports on WTC 1 & 2 will help them build better skyscrapers in the future, though. The bodycounts would be somewhat lower if the towers had not come down as quickly as they did.
Comment by Avram —
May 2, 2007 @ 3:57 pm
The problem there is that WTC7 was substantially intact, even in its facings, after WTC1 and 2 fell.
Not according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Interim Report on WTC7 (PDF), which says that after WTC1 fell, the middle quarter or third of the south face of the building was gone from the ground to the 10th floor, a large hole could be seen in the south face at the 14th floor, and on the 8th or 9th floor someone saw that a couple of elevators had been knocked out of their shafts and were in the hallway. That all sounds like pretty substantial damage to me.
Comment by Sifu Tweety —
May 2, 2007 @ 5:31 pm
Ha ha, Jim got a troll and I din’t.
On the other hand why can’t The Editors make people look foolish on his own damn blog. Dave: The Poor Man, check it out.
Comment by The Editors —
May 2, 2007 @ 5:52 pm
OK, I guess I’m not getting my point across. Everybody here is talking about shit they heard on the internet; I’m talking about London Broil. I don’t give a shit about what ideas you briefly toyed with and I have no fucking clue what HnR is, and I seriously, seriously, seriously don’t care. All I care about is how much more money I can get to analyze the physical plausibility of various not-especially-plausible conspiracy theories about why various structures did various things when planes crashed and buildings fell and all that. (If you think I’m in love with my narrative about why some building fell down, you should see how much I love money. Because I totally love that shit!) I’m not saying me personally, but for a nominal fee I could put you in touch with people who can answer your questions to the absolute limit of certainty which modern science and funding can provide. And instead of being beholden to the sheeple and their preferred spoon-fed MSM narrative, they would instead be beholden to YOU and your ability to provide the necessary resources and billable hours. Because, again, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to pay rent with a comforting narrative, but I usually find money works better in these situations.
I’m not saying you, personally would have to pay for all of it. I’m sure Rosie would have a few million to throw down. Gore Vidal might have some spare change rolling around the Italian villa he fucks off to everytime someone points out what a demented old Bircher he’s become. Probably if all the people who toyed with ideas online and all the interested 2nd- and 3rd-tier celebrities pooled all their money you could put together a pretty sweet study, (in fact, you could probably piggyback off the NIST study if you hired the same people, so you wouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel) all of which you could then audit and direct and micromanage and narrativize to your heart’s content, ensuring that your unique resistance to the Siren’s narrative of “building fall down when smashed” would innoculate the entire enterprise against its pernicious influence. And, for going around the same damn mullberry bush for the two billionth time, everybody would get paid. Would people feel bad that their talents were being wasted on rehashing the same stupid questions they already answered nine billion times instead of, you know, something actually useful? Perhaps, but hurt feelings ain’t nothing some tasty steak couldn’t cure. Mmmmm. Steak.
Comment by Glaivester —
May 2, 2007 @ 6:30 pm
I always asssumed that if for any reason it turned out that WTC had been brought down by explosives, it was because the tower had been so badly damaged that it was going to fall and they just wanted to control when it fell in order to minimize damage.
If this were true, it wouldn’t really change much in a practical sense about 9/11, so I have never bothered to explore whether this would be a plausible scenario. The main effect is to point out that even if somehow one could show that WTC7 was demolished by explosives, it still wouldn’t necessarily amount to a conspiracy.
Comment by Dave W. —
May 2, 2007 @ 6:47 pm
If this were true, it wouldn’t really change much in a practical sense about 9/11, so I have never bothered to explore whether this would be a plausible scenario. The main effect is to point out that even if somehow one could show that WTC7 was demolished by explosives, it still wouldn’t necessarily amount to a conspiracy.
This is part of what I said in my long response to Jim. When I told him that this building was demolished for the same reason that the wrecked Murrah building was demolished, this is exactly what I meant.
Despite that, my long response to Jim says why I think it matters anyway, despite the obvious absence of a nefarious conspiracy.
What I don’t get about “The Editors” is his apparent resistance to studying the WTC7 collapse. I mean one way to make better skyscrapers in the future is to study why the ones that went down went down. Even if we completely remove the possibility of demolition from our minds, the curious architectural engineer is going to want to know about WTC7: why did the fires start? could the fires have been prevented? what role did seismic vibration play? why did the thermal insulation not protect the beams? would different insulation have protected the beams better? were diesel fuel tanks placed to close to load bearing members? Could an explosion like the one McVeigh did with the Ryder in Oklahoma City have collapsed this entire WTC7 building instantly? Is there any way to avoid that in the future?
I hope Mrs. “The Editors” is thinking about some of these things as she studies WTC7 and is not so fixated on the steaks as her husband.
Fortunately for the people in WTC7, the fires were not so severe such that they could be safely evacuated. Imagine a worse fire on the lower floors of a building like WTC7. Do we really want that whole building coming down in 8 seconds when it is full of people on the upper floors waiting for the fire to be put out?
Comment by Thoreau —
May 2, 2007 @ 6:52 pm
Jim said everything that needs to be said, but I think it would be more fun to do it in the form of an “If I were an evil overlord…” comment. So that’s what I’ll do.
Say I’m an evil overlord, living in my lair and cackling maniacally as my evil schemes unfold. Being an evil overlord, I have arranged for 2 airplanes to crash into 2 skyscrapers. I have a crew of hijackers to do it, and the passengers are given ample time to get on their cell phones and call people, so that there can be no doubt whatsoever that it was indeed a hijacking, and not some sort of remote control device (which is the sort of ridiculous scheme that only happens on TV shows like “The Lone Gunmen”).
I am confident that this hijacking and the resulting damage to the skyscrapers will be sufficient to whip the world up into a frenzy. If I’m a religious evil overlord (lord over all but The Lord), I do this so that my co-religionists might rally around the successful slaughter of infidels in their mightiest towers, and begin a holy war that will change the world (and propel me to power)! If I’m the sort of evil overlord who doesn’t care about religion, I do it to create a pretext for a war that will bring more wealth and power to me and my chosen henchmen (but mostly me).
And now, having arranged this spectacle of carnage, with supposedly secure airplanes breached, mighty towers destroyed, and numerous people slaughtered, a henchman offers a proposal: “Let us also rig a much smaller and less symbolically significant building with explosives. Far fewer people will die, and the images will be far less impressive, but it will at least up the carnage a bit. And it will complete our sweep of targets on that site.”
“Nonsense!” I scream. “You would change the modus operandi, casting doubt on the narrative that we wish the world to see? You would distract them from images of jihadists plunging into towers like swords of religious wrath, and show them something that raises the possibility of multiple layers to this scheme! They might question the story that I want them to believe!”
So then I push a button that opens a trap door, and the henchman plummets into a pool of liquid hot magma.
In other words, Dave W. lacks the ability to put himself in the mindset of an evil overlord, making it impossible for him to reach any reliable conclusions on what actual evil conspirators might do.
Comment by Jon H —
May 2, 2007 @ 7:06 pm
thoreau – Actually, Dave W. appears to think that WTC 7 was brought down in an act of government-facilitated insurance fraud.
Comment by Dave W. —
May 2, 2007 @ 7:32 pm
thoreau – Actually, Dave W. appears to think that WTC 7 was brought down in an act of government-facilitated insurance fraud.
Not exactly. I don’t think the insurance companies particularly care whether the landlord chose to bring down the building on 9/11, or waited til later. Building had to come down. Why would the insurers care about the day? I mean the actuaries insuring other skyscrapers might care for technical reasons of actuarial risk calculation, but let’s not overplay that as some huge important thing. It should drive something like the NIST study now being undertaken, but it should not be the deciding factor in deciding what day to pull the building.
Nor do I think the government is “facilitating” this, except perhaps in a passive sense of the world. Silverstein and the insurers have decided to be mum. That is their prerogative. Government has decided to be mum. That is their prerogative. The people who are “facilitating” the lie here are people who are interpreting silence to mean that the building could not have been demolished. In other words, Jim and T. and “The Editors” are the facilitators here. The government (thus far) is standing back and letting them do the believing.
Now that may change with the NIST report. The government may have decided that they have let the delusion go on so long that T. would feel tricked if he were suddenly told that WTC7 was demolished. But that only really comes into play now that there is a report on the horizon. From ‘01 to ‘06 it was T. doing the heavy lifting on this WTC7 delusion, rather than the government or the landlord.
I thought the funniest thing was when Bush wanted to put Henry Kissinger in charge of the 9/11 commission. That didn’t wash even in the mania of ‘02-’03. Not that Kissinger would have lied, mind you. I am sure he would have been scrupulously honest in a sense.
Comment by Thoreau —
May 2, 2007 @ 7:47 pm
OK…
So, there are two scenarios here:
1) On 9/11, the owner of WTC7 sends crews into the building, on a site full of cops and rescuers and reporters, with explosives, and orders them to rig the building to fall ASAP.
This was of course one of his top priorities, he didn’t order them to demolish any of the other buildings on the site (there must have been at least 4 others if it was WTC7), and on short notice he found people who didn’t mind doing it.
2) The owner had previously rigged the building to explode, so that if he ever needed it to blow he’d be able to do it on short notice. He didn’t worry about what might happen if the building ever caught on fire and the fire got to the explosives somehow, or the embarassing questions that might arise in that case. And he either didn’t rig any of the other buildings on the site (there must have been at least 4 others, if it was WTC7) or he didn’t order any of the others to blow.
Yes, this all makes perfect sense, and it makes perfect sense that nobody involved in the most outrageous insurance fraud ever would be willing to come forward and blow the whistle on their boss, in exchange for immunity (from the feds) and some sort of deal (perhaps indirect) from insurers who stand to gain quite a bit from the testimony of the demolition crew.
Finally, it all makes sense.
Comment by Thoreau —
May 2, 2007 @ 7:49 pm
And all of this makes far more sense than a combination of fire, a barrage of wreckage from two adjacent towers as they fall, and seismic damage from the collapse of two adjacent towers.
(Didn’t a geology station in the northeast pick up seismic vibrations from the collapse of the towers?)
And of course the insurers aren’t interested in blowing the whistle on this fraud that could cost them a bundle. Nope, not at all.
Comment by Jon H —
May 2, 2007 @ 8:16 pm
Thoreau, I think he’s getting at a 3rd option: For some reason, the government forewarned the owners of WTC7, who, rather than taking the rational step of blowing the whistle so as to avoid having their real estate destroyed, instead hired demolition experts to plant charges in WTC7, which could then be used, after the planes hit, to bring down the building.
Why would they want to bring down WTC7? I dunno. Maybe they thought Geraldo was going to be there.
Comment by Dave W. —
May 2, 2007 @ 8:16 pm
1) On 9/11, the owner of WTC7 sends crews into the building, on a site full of cops and rescuers and reporters, with explosives, and orders them to rig the building to fall ASAP.
Maybe firefighters themselves rigged the buildings as a safety measure. More fundamentally, sure, buildings in jeopardy of falling piecemeal or spreading a conflagration in a dense area quickly get rigged for demolition in the middle of an emergency. This is nothing new. Furthermore, I don’t think they were letting reporters anywhere near the WTC7 building entrances. That is a big part of the reason all the pictures are from far away.
This was of course one of his top priorities, he didn’t order them to demolish any of the other buildings on the site (there must have been at least 4 others if it was WTC7), and on short notice he found people who didn’t mind doing it.
Are those other buildings still there today. If not, then they have been demolished. If so, it probably means the damage wasn’t viewed as being so grave that they needed pulling. Either way, there is nothing sinister about demolishing some buildings but not others. at least in the olden days fire departments sometimes got sued because they chose to demolish building X (as a fire break) instead of building y. These choices are nothing new, although fewer buildings are generally demolished in the heat of a fire now that so many of the buildings in dense areas are steel framed and generally don’t spread fire that well during normal fires. But, of course, 9/11 was something beyond the normal modern fire, and we observed some old fashioned fire dept heroics and some old fashioned tough choices.
2) The owner had previously rigged the building to explode, so that if he ever needed it to blow he’d be able to do it on short notice. He didn’t worry about what might happen if the building ever caught on fire and the fire got to the explosives somehow, or the embarassing questions that might arise in that case. And he either didn’t rig any of the other buildings on the site (there must have been at least 4 others, if it was WTC7) or he didn’t order any of the others to blow.
I don’t think he had them pre-rigged because there would probably to much danger of accidental detonation. What he probably did have was a contingency plan where he had enough thermite and brave men standing by, under NDA, in case there ever was a problem. If his predecessor landlord didn’t have this contingency plan in place prior to 1993 (and he probably did), then he certainly did after. What embarrassment? The landlord announced his decision to pull it on teevee, and he did not appear embarrassed in the least when he said it. He seemed a little embarrassed later when he got called to explain that he wasn’t really giving the order to pull it then and there on teevee on 9/11, but, generally speaking, demolishing an empty building in jeopardy of shedding chunks of flaming debris is nothing to be ashamed of. The only thing a modern landlord needs to be ashamed of is discussing such things in public, rather than in confidence pursuant to NDA.
Yes, this all makes perfect sense, and it makes perfect sense that nobody involved in the most outrageous insurance fraud ever would be willing to come forward and blow the whistle on their boss, in exchange for immunity (from the feds) and some sort of deal (perhaps indirect) from insurers who stand to gain quite a bit from the testimony of the demolition crew.
What outrageous fraud? Why violate your NDA unless someone is offering a LOT of money? And who would be offering a lot of money about WTC7 anyway? I mean, the whole thing has a certain subtle importance, as I explained above, but it is not a crime of the century. Heavens, it is not even a crime at all. It was an acceptable thing to do, and maybe even the optimal thing to do safteywise.
I mean, if NIST whitewashes this, then there MIGHT be an incentive for some renegade media organ to offer a bounty, but, generally speaking, renegade media organs don’t have that much money. Maybe the National Enquirer, but they got their envelope full of anthrax quite soon after 9/11 and have been very inclined to be well behaved as far as hard hitting investigative reporting on 9/11 goes.
You don’t think the Truther sites can compete with Silverstein’s wages, do you, T.? as you know from your recent job interviewing experience, it is hard to find the hand that feeds, and after you find it, you don’t bite it, at least absent a really, really good reason. And there ain’t nothing wrong with that.
Comment by Thoreau —
May 2, 2007 @ 8:20 pm
You know, I have to admit that after this experience I can finally understand why every single university that I interviewed at wanted to know how I’d feel about blowing up laboratories or classrooms for insurance purposes. Wait, um, I mean, every university except the one that I accepted a job from. I can neither confirm nor deny whether they said anything about that, in keeping with my contractual obligations and the desire to protect that hand that feeds me.
Comment by Dave W. —
May 2, 2007 @ 8:24 pm
Why would they want to bring down WTC7?
- falling debris
- falling flaming debris
- get clean up going faster
- was going to need to be demolished anyway because there could no longer be sufficient confidence to allow normal use of the building
They didn’t do it to delude T. and people like T. That just turned out to be a silver lining. A serendipity.
Comment by Dave W. —
May 2, 2007 @ 8:29 pm
why every single university that I interviewed at wanted to know how I’d feel about blowing up laboratories or classrooms for insurance purposes.
The people who handled the thermite in WTC7 were not associate professors of physics. Of that you can be sure.
However, if you had regaled your interviewers with stories of how you find some of Duesberg’s theories interest . . . wait a second . . . is THAT what happened in Denver!?
Comment by Thoreau —
May 2, 2007 @ 9:32 pm
I regret allowing myself to respond.
Comment by Dave W. —
May 3, 2007 @ 8:49 am
S’touchy. Lighten up, T. Everyone needs to keep their employer’s secrets and keep their employer happy. Even me. I think we can both be thankful that we have good jobs and that our jobs don’t put us in the uncomfortable positions that the WTC7 (and 3 and 4 and 5 and 6) thermite guys are gradually finding themselves in over time.
When that NIST report comes out later this year and says that 7 was a one in a million combination of slightly thermally compromised steel, a pancake sized patch of missing insulation, two 3.0 Richter scale shock waves, a Nixon era architectual s.f. and a wayward hummingbird, then they will probably start to see “that” van always parked in front of their houses. Like in the movies.
Occupational risk for them, but not us, thankfully.
Comment by Jon H —
May 3, 2007 @ 9:49 am
Dave W., I’m frankly not sure why you *care*, if you think it was just brought down intentionally by charges placed after the crash for safety reasons.
That’s what you call *mundane*. No big deal.
Do you get freaked out at the idea of firemen using the ‘jaws of life’ to cut a crashed automobile open? Or that vehicles mangled that way are not thereafter labeled “This car was opened with a tool, not by the impact.”
Comment by Dave W. —
May 3, 2007 @ 9:58 am
not sure why you *care*
That was the main point of my 1.51 pm post yesterday. As explained at length there, I don’t care *that* much, but somewhat.
Similar to the shootdown of Flt 93. It was the right thing to do, which limits how much I really care about the issue. (Although Flt 93 came to involve actual lying, rather than mere silence, but that was not til a considerable time after 10.06 am on 9/11/01.)
Comment by Louis —
May 3, 2007 @ 12:53 pm
i lived in nyc, i still do
All three were detonated, it’s not really controversial at this point and hasn’t been for years. I appreciate honest argument but we can move on now to whether that was the right thing to do. If you think people are dumb, which is very fashionable and sophisticated point of view to hold i guess, and that those dumb people need to be led with tricks, then just say that. We need the oil, etc. just say it. It’ll feel better.
Comment by Dave W. —
May 4, 2007 @ 1:54 pm
that nobody involved in the most outrageous insurance fraud ever would be willing to come forward and blow the whistle on their boss, in exchange for immunity (from the feds) and some sort of deal (perhaps indirect) from insurers who stand to gain quite a bit from the testimony of the demolition crew.
http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/roberts/index.html
Comment by michael holloway —
May 12, 2007 @ 5:23 pm
Here’s my take on how I feel about the troll:
Jim’s base line approach was interesting; and I agree with The Editor, the science is in.
What disturbs me is this fascination with spectacle that has trapped the troll in minutia. The focus on the spectacular videos is blinding seekers to a much more simple point.
“Where was the Air Force?
9/11 must have been orchestrated by people at the highest levels of responsibility; there must have been a stand down order, as David Ray Griffin (GOOGLE VIDEO)keeps coming back to in his book, 9/11 Commission Report; Omissions and Distortions.”
From MICHAEL HOLLOWAY’S FILTER BLOGS