The 9/11 Post 11807


Having complained of people posting off topic, it seems a reasonable solution to give an opportunity for people to discuss the topics I am banning from other threads – of which 9/11 seems the most popular.

I do not believe that the US government, or any of its agencies, were responsible for 9/11. It would just need too many people to be involved. Someone would have objected. There are some strange and dangerous people in America, but not in sufficient concentration for this one. They couldn’t even keep Watergate quiet, and that was a small group. Any group I can think of – even Blackwater – would contain operatives with scruples about blowing up New York. They may be sadly ready to kill people in poor countries, but Americans en masse? Somebody would say it wasn’t a good idea.

I asked a friend in the construction industry what it would take to demolish the twin towers. He replied nine months, 80 men, and 12 miles of cabling. The notion that a small team at night could plant sufficient explosives embedded at key points, is laughable.

The forces of the aircraft impacts must have been amazingly high. I have no difficulty imagining they would bring down the building. As for WTC 7, again the kinetic energy of the collapse of the twin towers must be immense.

I admit to a private speculation about WTC7. Unfortunately in construction it is extremely common for contractors not to fix or install properly all the expensive girders, ties and rebar that are supposed to be enclosed in the concrete. Supervising contractors and municipal inspectors can be corrupt. I recall vividly that in London some years ago a tragedy occurred when a simple gas oven explosion brought down the whole side of a tower block.

The inquiry found that the building contractor had simply omitted the ties that bound the girders at the corners, all encased in concrete. If a gas oven had not blown up, nobody would have found out. Buildings I strongly suspect are very often not as strong as they are supposed to be, with contractors skimping on apparently redundant protection. The sort of sordid thing you might not want too deeply investigated in the event of a national tragedy.

Precisely what happened at the Pentagon I am less sure. There is not the conclusive film and photographic evidence that there is for New York. I am particularly puzzled by the much more skilled feat of flying that would be required to hit a building virtually at ground level, in an urban area, after a lamppost clipping route – very hard to see how a non-professional pilot did that. But I can think of a number of possible scenarios where the official explanation is not quite the whole truth on the Pentagon, but which do not necessitate a belief that the US government or Dick Cheney was behind the attack.

In my view the real scandal of 9/11 was that it was blowback – the product of a malignant terrorist agency whose origins lay in CIA funding and provision. Also blowback in a more general sense that it was spawned in the nasty theocratic dictatorship of Saudi Arabia which is so close to the US and to the Bush dynasty in particular. As with almost all terrorist activity, I do not rule out any point on the whole spectrum of surveillance, penetration and agent provocateur activity by any number of possible actors.

But was 9/11 false flag and controlled demolition? No, I think not.

(Now I have given full opportunity to discuss 9/11 here, any further references on other threads will be instantly deleted).


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11,807 thoughts on “The 9/11 Post

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  • Paul Barbara

    I haven’t read the book (I will when the price drops a bit), but it’s praised by Erin Brocavich, which strongly suggests it’s good:
    ‘Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science’:
    https://www.amazon.com/Whitewash-Killer-Cancer-Corruption-Science/dp/1610918320/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1507645160&sr=1-1&keywords=whitewash

    “Whitewash reads like a mystery novel, as Gillam skillfully uncovers Monsanto’s secretive strategies to convince countries around the world that its Roundup products are safe. The book unravels a tapestry of pesticide industry tricks to manipulate the scientific truths about their products while placing profits above human health and the environment. As someone who has experienced similar actions by corporations firsthand in my work far too often, I am hopeful that Carey’s book will be a wake-up call for more transparency about the dangers surrounding many chemicals in the marketplace.”

    – Erin Brockovich, consumer advocate.

    I’m sure everyone would agree that Corporations like Monsanto have huge influence on Congressmen and Senators, far far more than the health of the voting public has. Proof should be that they are given blanket immunity from liability for their Frankenstein products:
    ‘USDA Offers the Biotech Industry Blanket Immunity for Contaminating Organic Crops’:
    https://healthimpactnews.com/2012/usda-offers-the-biotech-industry-blanket-immunity-for-contaminating-organic-crops/

    They do the same with vaccine producers: ‘VICP; Blanket Immunity for Vaccine Manufacturers’:
    https://avvi.info/vicp-blanket-immunity-for-vaccine-manufacturers/

    • Paul Barbara

      @ SA December 17, 2017 at 20:48
      Yes, it’s a very good article. If we had a really ‘Free Press’, our MSM would be all over it, but of course, we don’t.
      I have previously put up links reporting two British planes being shot down over Iraq whilst airdropping arms to IS, and at least one US helicopter also while delivering arms to IS. The great majority of ‘Coalition’ airstrikes target Syrian and Iraqi infrastructure, and civilians, though needless to say they would deny it, just as they said the Deir Ezzor attack was a ‘mistake’ (it was as much a ‘mistake’ as Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty).

  • Peter Beswick

    Blown up before the towers came down!

    “This article is a lightly modified version of a piece I just wrote for Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which you can read here. I thank the staff at AE911Truth for making it possible for me to speak with Bob McIlvaine and write this article.—CM
    By Craig McKee

    Bob McIlvaine and his family are not alone in having suffered a devastating personal loss on September 11, 2001. The loved ones of the nearly 3,000 victims of the destruction at the World Trade Center know what he has endured for the past 15 years.

    But McIlvaine is different from most of these families in important ways. In addition to his unwavering and often lonely fight to expose the complicity of the U.S. government in this false flag attack, he has strong forensic evidence that his 26-year-old son, Bobby, was killed by a powerful explosion as he was about to enter the lobby of the North Tower. That evidence is corroborated by the accounts of many FDNY members, police officers, and workers who reported explosions in the lower parts of the towers before the buildings were destroyed—some of them even before the first airplane struck.

    In a recent interview, McIlvaine said his son’s body was one of the first to be recovered and taken to the New York City morgue on that day. He explained that he has been able to reach more definitive conclusions about the details of his son’s death only since conferring with the doctor who had examined his body at the morgue.

    The meeting, which McIlvaine recalls happening in 2006 or 2007, provided evidence that a huge explosion — and not the North Tower’s eventual demise — was responsible for killing his son. According to McIlvaine, the wounds described by the doctor indicated that his son had been hit by flying glass from some kind of massive blast. Bobby’s face was damaged beyond recognition, he had lacerations all over his chest from flying glass, and he had post-mortem burns. In fact, the blast was strong enough to literally blow Bobby out of his laced shoes (they were not on the body when it was brought to the morgue).

    “My final summation is that he was walking into the building, and before he got into the building there was a huge explosion, and of course the force of it just threw him back into the open area,” McIlvaine says. “That’s why he was picked up so quickly, because the EMTs came down there so quickly. Someone had gotten him out of there and to the morgue before the towers came down.”

    It is the nature of Bobby’s injuries that convinces the elder McIlvaine that the explosion had nothing to do with the airplane hitting the tower. That conclusion is at odds with the explanation put forth by the 9/11 Commission, which attributed explosions in the Twin Towers’ lower floors and basements to fireballs of exploding jet fuel coming down the elevator shafts and blowing out.

    “He wasn’t hit by a fireball, he was hit by a detonation,” McIlvaine contends. “In a detonation, the blast is first and then followed by the heat.”

    He points out that the official account credits the supposed fireball with blowing out floors in different parts of the building — leaving many untouched floors in between the damaged ones.

    “It blew out the 72nd floor, it blew out the 23rd floor, it blew out the lobby, it blew out all sorts of floors in the basement, and it even destroyed parts of the PATH [rail] station more than 200 feet away. For one fireball to do all that — well, that’s one powerful fireball.”

    This becomes even more impossible, he argues, when you consider that the tower was divided into three vertical sections. Each elevator (except for the basement-to-penthouse maintenance elevator) serviced only one section. Thus, someone travelling from top to bottom would have had to take three different elevators. This configuration would have prevented fuel from pouring down elevator shafts and causing the destruction.

    “It’s impossible for a fireball to come down that far and create that kind of damage.”

    What made the horror of September 11 even worse for the McIlvaine family initially was that they had no information about their son and didn’t know if he was alive or dead. Adding to their uncertainty was that he didn’t actually work in the towers; instead, he worked for Merrill Lynch in an office building across the street from the World Trade Center. So McIlvaine thinks it’s possible that his son was either on his way to a Merrill Lynch seminar that was being held on the 106th floor of the North Tower or was cutting through to get to his own office.

    A Canadian who worked for Merrill Lynch in 2001 and who was at the World Trade Center that day contacted McIlvaine two years ago. The man explained that he was heading to the same conference on the 106th floor about the same time that Bobby would have been approaching the building. But he had stopped for a coffee on the way — a decision that he thinks might have saved his life. While ordering his coffee, he heard a massive explosion in the North Tower lobby.

    McIlvaine says he doesn’t tell his son’s story that often anymore because most people just don’t want to hear it. Even the 9/11 families don’t want anything to do with the idea that the event was, as he claims, perpetrated by their own government.

    “People look at the United States as a father figure, and they just can’t believe their father could do something that evil.””

      • Peter Beswick

        For the same reason that Dr David Kelly’s Cause of Death has never been confirmed by a Coroner. (A legal requirement then as it is now)

        • Peter Beswick

          For pity’s sake the man dies was buried then dug up, goodness knows where the body is now and his death has never been formally registered.

    • John Goss

      “People look at the United States as a father figure, and they just can’t believe their father could do something that evil.”

      That must be how many people think about it. I guess they would rather turn off their minds and ignore the event than accept what increasingly seems to be the truth.

      • Clark

        And where does someone like me fit into that suspiciously neat little picture?

        That’s a question to you, John. Please answer it.

      • Macky

        Thanks both Peter & John, as I was unaware of the Bob McIlvaine situation; powerful & moving testimony from his Father, recounting other eye-witnesses; you would have thought so compelling as to make even the strongest believers in the Official Narrative stop to think.

        • Clark

          “…so compelling as to make even the strongest believers in the Official Narrative stop to think.”

          Please stop writing things like this. It is divisive and derogatory. It is divisive because it divides all the variety of humanity into those who push pre-rigged demolition – ie. you and your in-group – and “believers in the Official Narrative”. It is derogatory because it says that those not of your in-group neither “stop” nor “think”.

          I have stopped and thought, for so long and so hard that I am extremely weary with the effort, yet the fireball explanation remains reasonable, and the pre-rigged demolition meme pushed by the video remains untenable.

          • Node

            … and if Macky had said “… so compelling as to make even the strongest believers in Conspiracy Theory stop to think,” that wouldn’t have been divisive and derogatory for the same reasons?

          • Node

            Clark (16.49) … But if you can put yourself in my position …

            OK, I’ve done that, and I can see why you might feel insulted if your opinions were belittled merely on the grounds that you were a believer in the Official Narrative. What I can’t see is how somebody who uses the term “Conspiracy Theorist” in exactly the same manner has got the hard neck to complain about it.

          • Clark

            Node, you seem to have misunderstood my objection. It’s the polarity itself which upsets me; I think it’s divisive and entirely unrealistic.

            Yes, there is a comfort in believing official or mainstream accounts. There is also an emotional motivation to support and amplify marginal accounts. Both sides belittle each other, so there is ideological warfare.

            I have been using the term “so-called conspiracy theories”, to try to improve matters. But it remains true that there is a “conspirology” mindset, just as there is a “sheeple” mindset. These mindsets are only partly identified with individuals; any given person can be a sheeple about some matters, and a so-called conspiracy theorist about others, and they might change their minds about some matters and not others, too.

            Every one of us has both tendencies. Both tendencies have dangers; one of conformity etc., the other of sensationalism etc.. I need some way to refer to each way of thinking that doesn’t upset anyone. And others should find a way of being less insulting to me, especially since I’m very much in the minority here; a little bit from everyone adds up to a lot.

          • Node

            Node, you seem to have misunderstood my objection. It’s the polarity itself which upsets me; I think it’s divisive and entirely unrealistic.

            No, I don’t think I’ve misunderstood anything … unless you can explain why the term “Believer in the Official Narrative” is polarising and devisive but “Believer in Conspiracy Theory” isn’t.

          • Clark

            Generally, they are both divisive. But we don’t have any “believers in official narratives” on this thread; the way it’s used here is to mean “someone who applies scepticism to conspiracy theories (other than the ones in the mainstream media)”. As such, it’s an aspect of the conspirological argument technique, a put-down, a “those who criticise are our common enemy” reaffirmation.

            Really, we need to revise all our language around this issue. It is simply not fit for purpose as it stands.

          • Node

            Generally, they are both divisive.

            So why do you use one and complain when others use the other?

          • Clark

            I kept asking for a replacement term, but all anyone came up with was something like “fearless truth-seeker not blinded by mainstream propaganda”, or something similarly self-serving.

            We need a term for the incessant myth amplification and propagation; the “in-group” phenomenon like when a whole bunch keep patting each other on the back, and then together all round on Kempe as fair game; the practice of non-criticism no matter how outlandish; the resort to dismissing arguments by hinting or claiming the person is a secret agent; the constant repetition that anyone challenging a “protected matter” must have a childish need for comfort from authority – the whole thing I’ve been calling conspirology.

            It is a recognisable phenomena, but calling it “conspiracy theorising” (which is the term in common language) just results in the predictable defence mechanisms; “what about conspiracies that have been proven true?”; “the term was weaponised by the CIA so you’re (either knowingly or unwittingly) working for them”, and “you must have an infantile need for comfort from authority”.

            Consequently the problem is never addressed, the theories propagate out of hand, nonsense fill the Internet and eventually Google and Facebook started restricting freedom of speech – which is the worst of all worlds, because it leaves the somewhat more plausible mainstream versions untouched, the groupthink problem which applies to both sides never having been addressed.

          • Node

            So correct me if I’m wrong in any particular: You admit you are knowingly divisive and insulting to others but you believe it is not your fault, the English language is to blame.

          • Clark

            Ignoring and thereby misrepresenting are classic features of passive aggression.

            Passive aggression is still aggression, just a bit sneakier. But maybe the moderators don’t understand that.

          • SA

            What I have discovered on this Blog is that the ‘truthers’ for they prefer to be called that, are understandably extremely allergic to be called conspiracy theorists. My understanding is that Clark is saying, let us move away from labels, because there is a spectrum of conspiracies, some true some not and some unverifiable. Any one person may perhaps believe that some aspects of 911 cannot be explained by the official narrative, and maybe most if not all of us agree on that, but at the other end of the spectrum there are those who believe that no planes were involved, maybe 20-30% (I am guessing).

            Now for a rational way to handle this we must say, OK let us agree on some facts and let us subject the rest to scientific scrutiny. The problem then becomes whom do you trust. I still feel that there are sufficient checks in the system to come to the bottom of some truths even where there was a conspiracy or a cover up initially. Examples include some of the controversies about vaccines which quote hunches backed by no science, and these follow a true story where an error is made. So what is needed is an open mind and examination of the ‘primary’ evidence and this applies to 911 as well as vaccines or Iraq or Syria. This really should not be confrontational and there is no room for beliefs here just hard evidence calmly debated.

          • Clark

            SA, there is a parallel here. Ss a child I was indoctrinated by the jehovah’s Witlesses. There is no name for their ideology. Catholics believe in Catholicism, Protestants in Protestantism, so I suppose JWs presumably believe in Jehovah’s Witnessism – but I suspect that term will never become widespread.

            As a JW, one therefore has no name for what one believes in, but within the JWs their religion is referred to just as “the truth”. One is said to be “in the truth”, “out of the truth”, or might have “left the truth”. It is pernicious; it presupposes that the JWs are right.

            I think the same may be said of 9/11 Trutherism.

            “My understanding is that Clark is saying, let us move away from labels, because there is a spectrum of conspiracies, some true some not and some unverifiable”

            Partly. There is also an crowd dynamic of enthusiasm and encouragement for myth-amplification and propagation, which defends itself against exposure by a set of tactics which I outlined above:

            https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/01/the_911_post/comment-page-130/#comment-712185

            We need a name for that crowd behaviour. The commonly used term is “conspiracy theory”. The “conspiracy” bit is appropriate, because anyone testing any of its ideas will likely be maligned as operating on behalf of some conspiracy. But the “theory” bit is a problem, because it makes the whole term sound like making a theory which involves a conspiracy, which of course is a completely valid thing to do.

      • Clark

        Paul, I am not a “guru”. I have a lifetime’s experience with mechanical systems, just like you have zero experience with vaccines.

        • Clark

          And Paul, I am not arguing that explosives were definitely not involved. What I am arguing, specifically, is that:

          (1) – the progression of cascade collapses were inherent in the design of the Twin Towers, and could have been started in other ways,

          (2) – the popular “Truther” argument that collapse progression in the Twin Towers was impossible and defied Newton’s laws is a travesty of physics and engineering, and is therefore alienating the peace movement from the academic, scientific and engineering communities,

          (3) – the collapses of the Twin Towers are scientifically consistent with progressive collapse, and attempting to simulate this effect with explosives or other destructive technologies would be nigh-on impossible, and fraught with the danger of exposure,

          (4) – if anyone had started designing a scheme for destroying the buildings as witnessed, they would have had to use computer simulation, but doing so would have revealed explosives to be entirely unnecessary, since buildings of that design were prone to such collapse anyway, given enough initial damage in the right place.

  • Peter Beswick

    Update on CHILCOT INQUIRY – ANSWER FOR IRAQ

    Dear Friends and Supporters,
    You may have seen yesterday the news reported in the Mail on Sunday that, despite our and our legal team’s very best efforts, we will not be able to commence civil proceedings against those state officials criticised by the Iraq Inquiry Report.
    If so, it was not our intention for you to learn this news from the media. Regrettably, its publication yesterday was unexpected and premature. We had hoped to be able to tell you in advance.
    It has taken a very long time to reach this point in our quest to see if any legal action can be taken against those responsible for sending our loved ones to fight and die in an unjust and unnecessary war.
    After a long and arduous process, our legal team have now completed their work. Regrettably, they have been obliged to conclude that the combination of the UK’s underlying constitutional arrangements, and recent significant judgments of the higher courts, have closed off any possibility of civil proceedings being commenced.
    In short, for reasons set out below, our legal team have reached the following conclusions:
    • In reaching the decision to commit the UK to the invasion of Iraq, the Inquiry Report’s findings show that various state officials arguably breached Constitutional conventions.
    • The Report contains sufficient evidence on which a court could find that Mr. Blair, and other state officials acted with reckless indifference to the legality of their actions. It would be legitimate to argue that they deliberately and consciously closed their minds to that risk.
    • Nonetheless, recent significant judgments of the Higher Courts have closed off any possibility of making these arguments before the courts.
    • Prior to R (Miller) v. Secretary of State for Exiting the EU [2017] it might have been arguable that breaches of Constitutional conventions could be the subject of court proceedings. However, in Miller, the Supreme Court settled the issue in holding that these are political not legal matters, over which Parliament, not the courts, have sanctioning power.
    • In the same month as Miller, in Rahmatullah (No 2) v Ministry of Defence, the Supreme Court explicitly and definitively updated a line of previous authority which means that (in the absence of legislative authority to do so) the English courts will not pass judgment on the decision to go to war in Iraq.
    • It was recently affirmed by the Administrative Court in R (Al Rabbat) v. Westminster Magistrate’s Court [2017] that the English courts may not adjudicate upon the use of prerogative powers concerning foreign policy and the deployment of military forces.
    • As a result, the current state of English law is that, even if state officials knew they were acting in violation of their constitutional duties and were therefore reckless as to the damage that would cause and regardless of the level of damage ultimately inflicted, such breaches are not actionable in a court of law and can only be punished by Parliament.
    • As regards the Inquiry’s conclusion that the legality of the war “can only be resolved by a properly constituted and internationally recognised Court”, the question of whether an English court could pass judgment was definitively settled by the Supreme Court in Rahmatullah (No.2), which held that the decision to invade Iraq could not be adjudicated on by the English courts. This is despite there now being both a significant body of evidence and eminent opinion that supports the conclusion that the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was unlawful.
    In October 2002, five months before the invasion of Iraq, Sir Michael Wood, the FCO’s most Senior Legal Adviser, warned state officials that such action might amount to a breach of constitutional conventions and risk possible civil litigation, as well as the launching of a private prosecution for the crime of aggression.
    As you know, following publication of the Inquiry’s Report, there was much speculation whether such action could and would be taken. We instructed our legal team to advise whether any such actions could and should be pursued because we needed to rest in the knowledge that no stone was left unturned in pursuit of justice on behalf of our loved ones.
    Quite rightly, given the importance of this matter, not only to us but to the country, we were advised not to proceed until a rigorous assessment had been carried out. Our legal team has spent the last year conducting a forensic review of the law and the Report’s 2.6 million words to determine what opportunities are available. We could not have done this without your support and generosity and we are eternally grateful to you. Without your support and the donations you have made it would not have been possible to do what has been done and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for being on our side.
    Should you wish to do so, the definitive legal Opinion produced by some of the country’s foremost experts can be read and downloaded here: https://view.publitas.com/iraq-war-families-campaign-group/legal-opinion-re-iraq-inquiry-report/
    In short, the current state of English law is that, even if state officials were recklessly indifferent as to whether they were acting in violation of their constitutional duties, and regardless of their consequences, such breaches are not actionable in a court of law, and can only be punished by Parliament.
    We are grateful to our legal team for their diligence and tirelessness, but most of all we are grateful to you for your incredible support in our long search for the truth. However, It would seem that our journey is finally at an end.
    While we are, of course, disappointed that, as the law stands, those responsible for the wrongdoing that led to an unlawful war and the deaths of their loved ones will not face a tribunal, we know that, thanks to you, we have done all we can in their memories.
    We hope now that the Opinion may not only serve to promote a greater understanding of the Inquiry’s momentous examination of the failures of UK executive conduct, but also perhaps that Britain, as a country, may now seek to examine and challenge the fact that the decision whether to punish such breaches of our constitution by our Government, even those that result in the most dire and tragic of consequences for the British people, is left solely to Parliament. Can the British people trust the very politicians responsible to police themselves?
    Responsibility for what we believe is much need constitutional review and reform now lies with Parliament.
    We are forever grateful to you.
    Roger Bacon and Reg Keys, on behalf of the Iraq War Families Campaign Group

    • Dave

      I’ve heard apologists for the Iraq war say, he must have hidden the WMDs in the sand, somewhere!

        • glenn_uk

          People actually said that at the time. SH must have given all the weapons to someone else, possibly Syria, because …. erm, well – they don’t really complete the thought, do they?

          If SH really had all these weapons, why wouldn’t he use them to repel the invading army? What possible gain would he have, when he’d already been declared the next Hitler, worst person in the world, effectively sentenced to death.

          My old man pointed something out at the time, for which no defender of our Iraq invasion has ever had an answer: If we really thought SH had all these mighty weapons, why would we station 1/4 million of our troops on his boarders?

          • Clark

            Yes, obviously, any thug will give their weapons to their rival next door, instead of using them against incoming attackers – NOT!

            This again is “conspiracy theory” thinking – any available argument to patch up the holes in an untenable theory. The fact that it’s “conspiracy theorist’s” thinking in the mainstream media and targeted at the “sheeple” reinforces my point that the two are the same; the only differences are the sizes of the megaphones.

      • Peter Beswick

        Both US and US intelligence assessments gauged there to be no WMD threat, I believe Craig Murray has first hand knowledge of this.

        Gaddafi on the other hand had managed to obtain a fully functioning nuclear weapon capability his problems however were two fold 1) No delivery apparatus and 2) If he did use them the US, Russia and China would have turned his sands into glass.

        So he gave them up voluntarily. His reward … the US and UK destroyed him and his country.

        In 1998 Saddam had let the weapon inspectors into Iraq, he had nothing to hide, the inspectors confirmed that so the US withdrew the inspectors and the US and UK bombed the country. Saddam said that if he knew what the response would be he would never have let the inspectors in.

        The excuse given for bombing Iraq was that Saddam had expelled the inspectors, this was not true, it was a lie. The US instructed the inspectors to leave on health on safety grounds because they were about to drop bombs. The bombing was planned so as not to interfere with Ramadan.

        “out of respect for their faith, we can’t hit them during Ramadan”

        Page 256 https://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/files/original/5aa4876f138a60330e869d23b372880d.pdf

        Clinton played Blair like a trout.

        Come 2003 the old record was being replayed but this time Blair was taking a more proactive role, he had told parliament that Saddam’s brother in law, after he had defected, had revealed during debriefing the full extent of Iraq’s WMD capability. What Bliar failed to tell parliament was during that same debriefing the defector had said the whole programme had been scrapped, nothing was left. There was no WMD!

        Bush had been busy getting Mobile Weapon Labs made to ship to Iraq so they could be found. Steven Hatfill was tasked to make them but when he realised what they were actually going to be used for he said no. Hatfill was set up with the Anthrax letters scam and later paedophilia.

        But fate was on the side of Bush, some mobile lab looking stuff was found in Iraq, it was equipment for generating hydrogen for weather balloons. Bush went on the telly and said the smoking gun had been found (so did Blair) WMD mobile labs had been found in the sand.

        They even sent Dr David Kelly to go and have a look and confirm the lie. Kelly went and had a look and immediately telephoned Judith Miller on the NYT and said the President was lying, the equipment that had been found was precisely what the Iraq’s had said it was, hydrogen producing kit.

        The NYT published the story the following day, The US revoked Kelly’s security clearance and 4 weeks later he was dead.

        • Peter Beswick

          What Blair said

          “Then, a week later, Saddam’s son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, defected to Jordan. He disclosed a far more extensive BW (biological weapons) programme and for the first time said Iraq had weaponised the programme; something Saddam had always strenuously denied. All this had been happening whilst the inspectors were in Iraq. Kamal also revealed Iraq’s crash programme to produce a nuclear weapon in 1990.”

          https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/mar/18/foreignpolicy.iraq1

          What Kamal actually said

          http://www.casi.org.uk/info/unscom950822.pdf

          “nothing remained” !

          • Clark

            Peter, thank you for this.

            What the Western – sorry, words fail me. I don’t even know what to call these people.

            What they did to Libya is one of the worst things, the biggest assault to disarmament and peace that has ever been done.

            The message to the other governments of the world is impossible to mistake: “Might is right”. Any country that voluntarily gives up weapons could be smashed by Western firepower just like Libya was. And the personal message to the leader is unmistakable too: “When your country loses, we will feed you to the jihadis”.

            Peter, thank you also for the account of David Kelly. The points you have raised here are, I believe, the most important that have ever been raised on this thread.

          • Clark

            And yes, Craig knew that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction because he had worked on the arms embargo until 1992 and knew how effective it was:

            “From late 1989 to 1992 I was the Head of the Maritime Section of the FCO and No 2 in the Aviation and Maritime Department (for those into FCO arcana, the Maritime Section was headed by a Grade 5 First Secretary and the Aviation Section by a Grade 6 First Secretary). This was the period of the invasion of Kuwait and first Gulf War, in which the Maritime Section, including me, mostly got picked up and deposited in an underground bunker as the FCO part of the Embargo Surveillance Centre. We did intelligence analysis on Iraqi attempts at weapons procurement and organised interdiction worldwide”

            https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/06/lockerbie/

            That article is about Lockerbie and al-Magrahi, but it establishes that Craig was a very senior worker in the Embargo Surveillance Centre. Other articles have more detail specifically about Iraq, but this is the problem with blogs and their format; it can be difficult to find the specific article from which you learned something.

          • Clark

            SA, yes. I can barely handle the emotions, simultaneously verging on tears and uncontrollable rage.

            But the people who made these decisions are just humans, just like the rest of us. It would be very easy for me to develop a sense of superiority, of purity. But can I say for certain that, had I followed their life paths and been in their circumstances, that I would have acted differently? I can believe that I would, but I cannot KNOW.

          • Peter Beswick

            Wing Commander JohnClark at the Hutton Inquiry 27th Aug 2003 pm
            https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20041115120000/http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/transcripts/hearing-trans21.htm

            Q. We know that Dr Kelly flew again to Iraq on 5th June. Do you know what the purpose of that visit was?
            A. Yes, that was really a rerun of the visit which I had been tasked by Dr Wells to (a) organise and (b) accompany Dr Kelly.
            Q. So you went on that trip as well?
            A. Yes, I did.
            Q. You went to Qatar first?
            A. Yes, we went to Qatar in the first instance because the Iraqi Survey Group was just forming. It was just approaching its operational status and the largest element of the Iraqi Survey Group was actually still in Qatar. We arrived on the 5th, which I think was a Thursday, and they were moving forward the following Sunday to Baghdad. So the largest element was still in Qatar.
            Q. Did Dr Kelly receive any calls from the press while he was in Qatar?
            A. He received one, to the best of my knowledge. That was on the evening of the 6th in a restaurant in Doha and he received — that was from Nick Rufford.
            Q. That was 6th June?
            A. Absolutely.
            Q. And he presumably told you it was from Nick Rufford, is that right?
            A. Well, we were sat at the dinner table and he took the call, it was a very short call. I was sat next to David Kelly and the only recollection I have of the call is he said he had no comment and then he said: oh, that was a call from Nick Rufford from the Sunday Times and hat was the end of it.
            Q. What was the accommodation Dr Kelly had when he was in Kuwait?
            A. Dr Kelly, he lived in what was known — in Kuwait,
            or…?
            Q. In Qatar.
            A. In Qatar Dr Kelly lived in what was known as DV accommodation, “distinguished visitor”. We would call it VIP. So he had a suite of rooms with absolutely first class facilities.
            Q. After going to Qatar, where did you go next?
            A. When we finished in Qatar we then flew to Kuwait. Our reason for flying to Kuwait was to be briefed by the Senior British Land Adviser, because up until the establishment of the ISG, SBLA in Kuwait had played an integral role in the hunt for weapons of mass destruction.
            Q. Did Dr Kelly have similar accommodation in Kuwait?
            A. No, unfortunately we were put up by the British Army and we were put into transit accommodation which was basically six beds in one air conditioned room; and we all shared the same facilities.
            Q. After Kuwait you went to?
            A. We went to Baghdad International Airport which was then the forward operating area for the Iraqi Survey Group.
            Q. Were you briefed on anything there?
            A. Yes, we were briefed on — having been briefed on the proposed plans in Qatar, we saw the plans coming to fruition of how the ISG was going to be established, how it was going to take shape, to move forward on the work.
            Q. Were any briefings given on mobile laboratories?
            A. Yes, we were allowed to view the mobile laboratories. In fact Dr Kelly was given the opportunity to take pictures or photographs of the mobile labs. And we were briefed — and I do not have a recollection of his name but we were briefed by an American naval captain on his perspective of what he believed these mobile facilities were.
            Q. And Dr Kelly actually took some photographs?
            A. Yes, he did.
            Q. And while you were in Baghdad was Dr Kelly given VIP accommodation again?
            A. No, he was not actually. We cannot blame the British Army on this occasion but we were in a vermin infested bungalow that had half a roof, three walls and we literally shared this room. We had two cots and that was it. No running water, no nothing. It was real field conditions.
            Q. After Baghdad where did you then go?
            A. After Baghdad we returned to Kuwait. That was merely because we had booked our flights back from Kuwait.
            Q. Then you flew back to London?
            A. Flew back to England.

            Kelly’s diary page 7 0f 12
            https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20041115120000/http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/tvp/tvp_3_0131to0142.pdf

            Judith Miller NYT
            http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/07/world/some-analysts-of-iraq-trailers-reject-germ-use.html

          • Peter Beswick

            Kelly wrote his own death warrant

            ”Everyone has wanted to find the ‘smoking gun’ so much that they may have wanted to have reached this conclusion,” said one intelligence expert who has seen the trailers and, like some others, spoke on condition that he not be identified. He added, ”I am very upset with the process.”

  • Clark

    Right John Goss. I do understand Newton’s third in practice. You keep insisting that I don’t, so let’s go through this simple matter until we get it straight. What I suggest we do is to post examples back and forth until we are convinced of each other’s understanding. I already started a week ago but you did not respond, so I’ll repost that first example here for convenience, and you tell me where you think I got it wrong:

    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/01/the_911_post/comment-page-125/#comment-706138

    “Say you push against a partition wall. You exert a force on the wall, and it exerts an equal and opposite reaction back; you and the wall come into equilibrium – you are leaning against the wall. But if you push hard enough, or many of you push, the wall cannot provide enough reaction force. It breaks, and the reaction force drops to zero, and you suddenly accelerate through the space vacated”

  • Node

    This comment refers to Clark and Nikko’s long discussion above, but I’m posting this here rather than introduce another distraction into an already complicated debate.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Clark has introduced the ‘inclined collapse’ scenario to remove a perceived problem with ‘impact points’. However in removing one problem he has created two more for the progressive collapse theory.

    (1) The ‘inclined collapse’ scenario much reduces the jolt effect. All the mass of the falling floors impacting instantaneously on the joints supporting the floor below would be much more effective in breaking them than a progressive application of force. Otherwise we wouldn’t need hammers. This scenario makes it even more difficult to explain the speed of collapse.

    (2) Ignoring (1) for a minute, the floors collapsing asymetrically is impossible to reconcile with the straight-down collapse of the building. By stretching improbability to its limits, one can just about conceive of a mass of compacted floors falling horizontally onto the floor below, breaking all the joints simultaneously, then doing the same to the next floor and so on. However with the joints on each single floor breaking at different times, it is impossible that asymetry wouldn’t build up till the collapse developed into a topple.

    • Clark

      (1) isn’t going to matter. Leaving aside considerations of impact, there’s enough falling mass in total to break the highest intact floor just by its weight. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t arrive all at once because it’ll get there eventually.

      (2) The internal collapse won’t cause the tower to topple because it’s constrained by the perimeter. I also strongly suspect there’s a terminal velocity for the collapse, which I think will tend to even things up (slower parts will speed up, faster parts would be slowed down). And if Bazant is partly right (he can’t be wholly right), and the upper section maintains some integrity, that would keep the collapse progression plane roughly horizontal during descent – though some parts did race ahead.

    • Clark

      Remember also that inclination of incidence doesn’t have to imply an overall inclination of the top section; there are other possibilities. For instance, the top section of core could drop first (as seems to have happened in WTC1). Then, all the floor slabs in the top section would be inclined downwards from the outer perimeter to the inner core, a shallow funnel shape.

    • Clark

      Node:

      “with the joints on each single floor breaking at different times, it is impossible that asymetry wouldn’t build up till the collapse developed into a topple”

      That’s a very strong assertion, especially considering the bounding effect of the lower section of perimeter, and the stabilising effect of the lower section of core. Do you have a physical mechanism to support it?

      • Node

        Leaving aside considerations of impact …

        The whole point of (1) was to consider the impact. You haven’t, therefore you’ve avoided the point.

        Do you have a physical mechanism to support it?

        If the mass of floors isn’t falling horizontally, it will first impact on just one side/corner of the next floor below. The joint(s) on that side will give way first so that the remainder of the falling mass has a route of less resistance to follow. Thus by the time the next floor is impacted, some extra mass has shifted to that side, which will break the joints on that side even faster, exaggerating the shifting effect on the succeeding floor …. bash … shift … bash … shift … topple!

        • Node

          …and I ask you to DESIST with such aggressive tactics.

          … and I ask you to consider what you’ve done there. You’ve ‘shouted’ at me for making a reasonable observation. The point under discussion was solely concerned with the differing impacts of a jolt vs more gradual application of force. “Leaving aside considerations of impact” is indisputably avoiding the point. I’ve had too many of my comments deleted because of someone else’s aggression. If you do that again, I’ll stop talking to you again.

          I wasn’t actually suggesting that the material was falling at an angle (or much of one)

          If the material is falling at even a slight angle, that angle will be magnified by the mechanism I described until topple occurs.

        • Clark

          Maybe you don’t notice your own aggression. You don’t seem to notice the gang dynamic.

          If there are relevant points of physics, I wish to understand them, so please don’t accuse me of avoidance. I’m the only regular voice on this thread supporting progressive collapse with physics, and I am continually and unfairly insulted (by others. not you) with ignorance of Newton’s laws, and of running off.

          I am not avoiding the point. A more gradual transfer of momentum can still increase the local load, even though the spreading over time and elasticity in the frame etc. are enough to prevent a clear jolt in the global measurement of the descent of the roof-line, which is what Chandler measured.

          “If the material is falling at even a slight angle, that angle will be magnified by the mechanism I described until topple occurs”

          I find that extremely unlikely, due to increasingly chaotic conditions in the crush zone overwhelming the effect; due to the constraining effect of the perimeter; due to floor slabs being obstructed by the core; due to sagging of floor slabs under overload producing a bias towards a roughly rectangular ring midway between perimeter and core; due to residual cohesion of floor assemblies like a doughnut around the core; due to there simply being insufficient time for much lateral drift in such a fast collapse, and maybe other reasons too.

        • Clark

          To expound a bit on my own point:

          “due to sagging of floor slabs under overload producing a bias towards a roughly rectangular ring midway between perimeter and core”

          Two things can happen to a floor slab; it can become disconnected at its truss seats (its connection to the frame), or it can break. The most likely place for it to break is furthest from the truss seats, ie. midway in its span between perimeter and core. This would tend to repeatedly funnel the falling material back toward the ring between perimeter and core.

        • Clark

          Some points were removed here as collateral damage when personal argument was deleted; I still have them on other open tabs and I shall sanitise and repost them.
          – – – – –
          Clark, December 19, 2017 at 16:42:

          “If the mass of floors isn’t falling horizontally”

          I wasn’t actually suggesting that the material was falling at an angle (or much of one) to the perpendicular, but at different downward rates at different places.
          – – – – –

          Node, December 19, 2017 at 17:30:

          I wasn’t actually suggesting that the material was falling at an angle (or much of one)

          If the material is falling at even a slight angle, that angle will be magnified by the mechanism I described until topple occurs.
          – – – – –

          Clark, December 19, 2017 at 17:53:

          A more gradual transfer of momentum can still increase the local load, even though the spreading over time and elasticity in the frame etc. are enough to prevent a clear jolt in the global measurement of the descent of the roof-line, which is what Chandler measured.

          “If the material is falling at even a slight angle, that angle will be magnified by the mechanism I described until topple occurs”

          I find that extremely unlikely, due to increasingly chaotic conditions in the crush zone overwhelming the effect; due to the constraining effect of the perimeter; due to floor slabs being obstructed by the core; due to sagging of floor slabs under overload producing a bias towards a roughly rectangular ring midway between perimeter and core; due to residual cohesion of floor assemblies like a doughnut around the core; due to there simply being insufficient time for much lateral drift in such a fast collapse, and maybe other reasons too.
          – – – – –

          Clark, December 19, 2017 at 18:03:

          To expound a bit on my own point:

          “due to sagging of floor slabs under overload producing a bias towards a roughly rectangular ring midway between perimeter and core”

          Two things can happen to a floor slab; it can become disconnected at its truss seats (its connection to the frame), or it can break. The most likely place for it to break is furthest from the truss seats, ie. midway in its span between perimeter and core. This would tend to repeatedly funnel the falling material back toward the ring between perimeter and core.

    • Nikko

      Very good questions, Node. Some more can be added:
      3) how does a vertical collapse (inclined or otherwise) produce sufficient energies to break up the vertical structures and eject them laterally with great force

    • Paul Barbara

      @ Node December 19, 2017 at 14:10
      Here’s a picture showing the top portion of the South Tower does indeed begin a quite dramatic topple to the side; it then ‘magically’ explodes into dust. I know this is not new, but it seems to be relevant to the current discussion:
      https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=south+tower+tilts,+then+explodes+into+dust&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiboZDLrZfYAhXBIcAKHd-PDx4QsAQIKA&biw=1600&bih=769#imgrc=2dI7YPH284nhzM:

      I know it is shown in videos as well, but this is a very clear picture, clearer than I’ve seen on the videos.

      • Peter Beswick

        It seems a tilting collapse can be corrected or transformed into a vertical one by completely removing the supporting structure.

        I can’t see anyway to do this other than with explosives. Once the tilt begins the horizontal and vertical vectors will continue in their direction of motion until the uneven resistance is removed.

        The core has to be removed completely and simultaneously, with no resistance there is only one way to go ……. straight down.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRInUgsvvAM

        • Clark

          It’s always good to see some real demolitions to illustrate the obvious difference from the Twin Towers – in actual demolitions, you always see the charges going off immediately before collapse ensues, whereas in the Twin Towers, all ejections occur after collapse initiation.

          • John Goss

            Yes, that is because the main explosion was 75 feet below ground level. Although Peter’s video link was an animation it showed pretty well what would happen. I keep posting this video which you keep ignoring. It is a real steel framed building deliberately weakened to be brought down by toppling. It is nowhere near as integrally rigid as the twin towers were.

            Why do you think they needed to weaken it?
            Why did they not bring it straight down?
            Why, despite being deliberately weakened, did it not disintegrate? (See the last two seconds)

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAR8H5WaNS0

            Now model, if you can, the lightweight top of the twin towers brought down the progressively stronger structures below through the path of most resistance. It cannot be done Clark and it is why people here, me in particular, do not believe you understand how Newton’s third law operates in practice.

          • Clark

            Ah, the smear campaign continues:

            “It cannot be done Clark and it is why people here, me in particular, do not believe you understand how Newton’s third law operates in practice”

            I do understand Newton’s third in practice. I have frequently asked you to engage on this matter; I see that my latest, most explicit attempt remains unanswered:

            https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/01/the_911_post/comment-page-130/#comment-712033

            Yet the only person ever accused of ignoring arguments on this thread is me.

            Time and time and time again, I have pointed out that down through the floors was the path of second least resistance. This is repeatedly ignored. The path of second greatest resistance was the perimeter, which constrained the internal collapse and prevented it from spreading. This will probably be ignored yet again. The dishonest misrepresentation of “progressively stronger structures below” will be repeated.

            The whole Twin Tower indestructibility myth is merely based upon continuous parroting of falsities. These falsities can be pointed out ad infinitum, but will never be addressed by the demolition theorists, because without them they have nothing.

          • John Goss

            I didn’t respond because it is a joke and proves you do not understand Newton in practice. Pushing against a wall, heavy engine on a coffee table, model trains coming off the rails and other nonsense! why would you expect anyone to respond to something that is the total opposite to the twin towers where the object impacting is heavier than the object being impacted upon? Nobody’s got time to go down a road of nonsense and Killickian physics Clark.

            Start at the beginning. Answer these questions. They actually relate to what we’re talking about.

            Why do you think they needed to weaken it?
            Why did they not bring it straight down?
            Why, despite being deliberately weakened, did it not disintegrate? (See the last two seconds)

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAR8H5WaNS0

            These are realistic! Your examples are not.

          • Clark

            “why would you expect anyone to respond to something that is the total opposite to the twin towers where the object impacting is heavier than the object being impacted upon”

            Because Newton’s third law is a general principle, which you claim I don’t understand in practice. So rather than discuss the locally contentious subject of the Twin Towers, I chose a neutral subject. I suggest a series of such short discussions about general, non-9/11 related subjects to test my (and your) practical understanding of Newton’s third. That’s reasonable, isn’t it?

            So what do you make of the example of pushing on the wall?

          • Clark

            To answer your questions about that smallish building: they probably weakened it to save explosives, and they probably toppled it because they could – there was plenty of open space around it, and again it saves explosives. Note also that the building was already leaning in the direction that they brought it down, making it far more practical to tip it over than to attempt a vertical fall. Also it looks pretty lightweight, so it would have had little gravitational potential energy to break up the structure in a vertical fall.

            By disintegrate I suppose you mean “break to pieces”. I mention this because Dave uses the term differently, and I wish matters to be clear. Well look at the structure; a grid of evenly spaced vertical columns, absolutely nothing like the Twin Towers, completely lacking the 18 metre and 22 metre spans of concrete floor slabs and their additional weight. Again, it looks pretty lightweight, so it would have had little gravitational potential energy to break up the structure.

            But ultimately, tipping it rather than dropping it was just a decision someone made. Plenty of demolitions do drop a building straight down; this one is just an exception.

          • Clark

            Further, probably most of what little weight that building had was in concrete floors, which clearly impacted edge-ways to the ground. Concrete is strong in compression, so there wasn’t the hail of concrete rubble falling and accumulating that there was in the Twin Towers. Upon hitting the ground, each concrete floor will have effectively stressed itself, but would not have been brought into impact with anything else. The ground arrested the concrete, leaving the steel relatively unstressed.

      • Clark

        Paul, I really think you should judge from videos. I must have watched hundreds, and I have looked for this “exploding into dust” effect. All I have ever seen is the top section descending into the dust ejected from the crush zone below.

        It’s also a very silly theory; there’s no point blowing up a falling section of building.

        • Paul Barbara

          @ Clark December 20, 2017 at 12:28
          ‘..It’s also a very silly theory; there’s no point blowing up a falling section of building.’
          No point? How could they say the top part of the building crushed the lower parts, if the top part had fallen off?
          I believe it was the top dog at ‘Controlled Demolition Inc. who explained how they could make a building ‘dance’ as it came down.

          • Clark

            Paul, you’re starting near your conclusion and working backwards. The lower sections were destroyed, therefore you assume there was a plan to destroy the lower sections.

            Actually, for your ultimate conclusion, the top “falling off” (ie. somehow miraculously moving over 60 metre sideways) – “falling off” would have done just as well. The trapped people were all in the top sections, and would have been killed no matter which way the top went, or even if the buildings hadn’t collapsed at all and they’d burned to death or jumped (even more drama!). There would have been just as many victims, to justify the wars which you claim were the ultimate objective.

            Blanchard? Not glorifying his own company by any chance?

          • Paul Barbara

            @ Clark December 20, 2017 at 16:13
            They wanted the buildings destroyed; if most of the building was still standing, and only the top portion was missing, they would have still had to demolish the rest of the building, which would have been extremely expensive.
            That is why they would have left explosives in the top part, for just such eventualities as occurred, the tipping to one side.

          • Paul Barbara

            @ Clark December 21, 2017 at 00:39
            That was only a very limited time the top section was visible. One thing that it does show is that for a period it does not continue tipping, which strongly suggests it is not contacting lower floors, doubtless because they had been blown out.
            If it had been crashing through lower floors, it would have continued tipping and fallen off the building.

          • Clark

            They didn’t blow up the top section. There would never have been any need, because as can be predicted with physics, the centre of mass remained roughly over the centre of the building, which is a lot easier to see if you look at it a bit differently:

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFZU3ClJkvY

            And I’m not sure it would have cost a lot more. The clean-up and rebuild was highly expensive anyway, and the whole site had been ruined, so the remaining stumps could have been destroyed without risk of damaging other buildings. But it really doesn’t look like anyone was trying to save money anyway.

          • Clark

            What it shows is that the lower floor assemblies offered very little resistance to the frame members of the falling section. That’s because they were designed only to support their own weight, plus contents, plus margin, to keep them light, so the buildings could be so tall. All the vertical strength was in the vertical steel frame.

      • Node

        Thanks, Paul. I haven’t seen such a dramatic view of the ‘lean angle’ before either.

        Let’s consider the interface between the toppling upper section and the (supposedly) still intact remainder of the building.

        Whether that interface is angled, or roughly horizontal, or chaotically fractured, the forces on the intact remainder are massively unsymmetrical – the centre of gravity of the top section has moved from the centre of the building towards its edge. The supporting structure on that side of the remaining building will receive a disproportionately large share of the available forces and fail faster.

        As the falling mass impacts successive floors, the material will be forced to “choose” whether to expend its energy overcoming the as yet unfailed joints, or to take the path of least resistance where the joints have already failed. Inevitably, at each impact, some mass will be diverted ‘leanwards’ thus moving the centre of gravity further and further to the side, and thus making the interface angle steeper and steeper, until the falling mass finds the route of minimal resistance, ie it topples off the side of the building.

        Only the operation of demolition techniques could have prevented this.

        • Clark

          “the centre of gravity of the top section has moved from the centre of the building towards its edge”

          Actually not much:

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2I1UMuBWRE

          This was also proven by Bazant’s free body calculation. The core and perimeter had insufficient lateral strength to supply sufficient reaction force to prevent the bottom of the falling section from moving inward.

          “The supporting structure on that side of the remaining building will receive a disproportionately large share of the available forces and fail faster”

          On the video linked above, you can see that the left section of perimeter was actually pushed outward by the top section. But overall during collapse progression, failure of the supporting structure was effect rather than cause. It was the floor assemblies being stripped out that led global collapse progression.

          The idea that certain demolition charges were reserved for somehow steering the collapse is fanciful in the extreme. How pointless!

        • Clark

          “As the falling mass impacts successive floors, the material will be forced to “choose” whether to expend its energy overcoming the as yet unfailed joints, or to take the path of least resistance where the joints have already failed”

          Scale error. The towers were sixty metre across! It only looks a short hop on the screen, but the map is not the territory.

  • Clark

    And we have another complication. It is a natural failing to automatically visualise an empty building, but it wasn’t, especially at the crush zone which had recently had most of an airliner added to it. Another likely place for floor slabs to first break is where there was already the greatest concentration of contents, like how it hurts your foot when you tread on a pebble while wearing plimsolls. The intrusion of the aircraft swept office contents up into big mounds.

    • Node

      Clark,

      I will only ask once, because you will probably ignore my request, and it will be deleted soon anyway, but please don’t respond to anything I post. Twice yesterday you deliberately tried to have entire conversations of mine deleted for no fault on my part. I’m not going to invest the time in someone who does that so your interventions will just detract from the flow. For the overall good of this 911 post, please leave me alone.

      And no, I don’t hate you, this isn’t some form of persecution, I’ve just lost patience with you.

      • Clark

        “Twice yesterday you deliberately tried to have entire conversations of mine deleted…”

        That’s your assumption. You’re imputing my motive. I didn’t want any of it deleted.

        “…for no fault on my part”

        You accused me of avoiding a point. I try to not do that because I wish to understand, though it can be very difficult to keep up when it’s half a dozen against little old me. Lots of commenters falsely accuse me of ignoring points (despite members of their own team doing it routinely), so to me it seemed like you adding your voice to a chorus, most of whom would readily agree.

        But the problems of humanity seem to be caused by everyone’s blindness to their own wrongdoing.

  • Paul Barbara

    Is ‘Russiagate’ tailing off? Far from it. They’re now going after Jill Stein!
    ‘Jill Stein Denounces Probe over ‘Collusion with Russians’:
    http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=20750%27%20style=%27color:#pop1

    ‘…As a third party presidential candidate in a two-party system, Dr. Jill Stein was marginalized during the 2016 election. But, over a year later, the ever growing Russiagate controversy has pushed her into the spotlight. The Senate Intelligence Committee is now investigating Stein for, yes, possible “collusion with the Russians.” Stein’s campaign says it will comply with the Senate request for all relevant documents. Stein is likely being scrutinized for attending the 2015 RT Gala in Moscow, where she sat at the same table as Russian President Vladimir Putin, and former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Despite numerous interviews explaining the nature of her trip to Russia, Stein has remained the target of a smear campaign, and this Senate move only adds fuel to that fire.

    Dr. Jill Stein joins me now, physician, activist, and the Green Party’s presidential nominee in 2016. Dr. Stein, let’s start with the Senate request. What have they asked you for?
    JILL STEIN: They’ve basically asked us for all relevant documents, and in truth, we have been very transparent throughout, from the get-go, when we first contemplated going to Russia as a part of the 10-year anniversary conference being held by RT. I was asked to participate in a panel addressing foreign relations, a subject that was at the top of our agenda during the presidential election, and we really welcomed the opportunity to lift up those ideas, calling, essentially, for a peace offensive in Syria and in the Middle East, looking really to do a 180 in our warmongering, not only with Russia but in the Middle East, and to put our foreign policy on a footing of international law, human rights, and diplomacy.
    So, we welcomed the opportunity to go. We had to raise money to get there, because we were not going to accept money from a foreign government and violate campaign finance laws and ethics and so on, and create a conflict of interest, so we were raising money to get there from before the time that we went. We thanked our donors afterwards. We put out press releases about exactly who we were meeting with, and what the subject of discussion was. That was it……’

    • Clark

      The second image shows quite clearly that the top section was rotating roughly around its centre of mass, as would be expected due to the inability of the lower section to provide much lateral force. All rather nicely illustrated in this video:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2I1UMuBWRE

      The centre of mass hadn’t displaced much; it was still roughly over the vertical centre-line of the building, so straight-down collapse presents no mystery.

      • Peter Beswick

        The only possibility of falling straight down is if there is zero structural resistance to the falling edifice.

        That is only possible if the core has been removed.

        • Clark

          Sorry, clarity:

          “The only possibility of falling straight down is if there is zero structural resistance to the falling edifice”

          False. You can drop an engine straight down onto a coffee table; the engine will continue straight down, and not divert around the coffee table.

          • Clark

            The coffee table still won’t make much difference; the engine certainly won’t divert to the horizontal until it skates off the edge.

            But the top section wasn’t moving sideways much anyway. It was mostly just rotating around its centre of mass (see “wedge action” video). It couldn’t move sideways much because the standing section below was incapable of supplying sufficient lateral reaction force to stop the bottom of the falling section from moving sideways.

          • Peter Beswick

            The building fell in free fall

            Putting a graphic next to a non calibrated video proves only that some people can be fooled.

            The top of the building was moving sideways, only zero resistance would permit it to drop vertically.

            This is basic O level stuff

            Gravity exeeded the original sideways shift. Initially there was x & y vector movement then y was added to by 9.81m/sec sqd. The x shift became far less significant

          • Clark

            Watch the video again. There are pieces of debris falling around the outside of the tower, impeded only by air. They clearly outpace the collapse, and keep pace with the simulation.

          • Clark

            It may be basic O level stuff, but you clearly got it wrong. Who has been fooled?

            Your final paragraph requires clarification, and should also be expressed in simpler language for the benefit of lay readers.

          • John Goss

            “The building fell in free fall”

            Yes, I tend to agree. It only appears to have fallen in slightly less than G because – and this is a theory – the central column was removed. As it fell it dragged the floors down with it which in turn dragged the outer walls inwards which slowed them from falling precisely at G. We cannot see the internal free fall because it is obscured through the outer walls which are falling slightly slower. However to have enabled the outer walls’ collapses I can only think that explosives were used. I have no explanation why the inner core would fall at free fall other than some kind of nuclear device underground, This would account for the pyroclastic clouds that covered the city.

            Before you were regularly posting Clark was shown some science regarding Newton’s Third presented by Dr Judy Wood, a qualified engineer in her Billiard Ball paper. He could not get his head round there being an equal and opposite reaction which would have caused delay in the collapse although she presented a number of theoretical scenarios. He is the only person in the world who has challenged Newton over this.

          • Clark

            Peter Beswick, 17:50:

            “The debris outpaces the graphic”

            Watching very carefully, some bits of it do seem to, slightly. I wouldn’t put money on it. Rotation could have put leading edges of pieces ahead of free fall. Rotating pieces could have batted other pieces ahead of free fall, and probably did. There’s definitely an incident on the right, where a descending piece of grey seems to suddenly race ahead; I don’t know what happened there.

            What is very clear though, from that video and dozens of others, is that the falling debris far outpaces the descending ejections caused by the internal collapse. Therefore the collapse was slower than gravity descent through air.

          • Clark

            Judy Wood’s Billiard Ball Example (BBE) blatantly contradicts Newton!

            Judy’s idea of equal and opposite reaction goes like this. When two nearly identical floor slabs collide, one floor slab instantly turns to dust which all turns at right-angles to the direction of motion (and presumably becomes mostly invisible), and the other floor slab’s motion is unaffected.

            John, don’t expect any Truther to point this out; that’s against the rules of the Truther game.

            Judy Wood is highly qualified, but unsurprisingly she has never submitted her BBE as a scientific paper. She’s having some kind of a laugh and she must know it.

            John, by supporting BBE, you’ve proved that you have no clue about Newton’s laws! BBE declares the following impossible:

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwFHEoiUZ7o

            …and don’t go on about steel versus concrete, because BBE makes no mention of materials and Newton is entirely agnostic about them, of course.

          • Clark

            Wood’s BBE is here:

            http://www.drjudywood.com/articles/BBE/BilliardBalls.html

            Node, Peter Beswick, Nikko, I think you have enough physics. Would you please tell John Goss that Wood’s BBE contradicts Newton. I know it’s against Truther rules and all that, but Nikko has done those momentum calcs properly, and it’s just embarrassing to be repeatedly told I don’t know Newton by someone who keeps recommending BBE which blatantly contradicts him. Really, it’s face-palm stuff, cringe-worthy.

          • Clark

            John Goss, 18:05: – you mean little g, John. Big G is the universal gravitational constant, as in

            F = (G x M1x M2) / d squared

            That’s Newton’s equation that unified Earthly gravity (things falling to the ground) and universal gravity (things in space orbiting their common centre of mass). That was Newton’s incredible act of genius , and one of the great unifications of science.

            Incidentally, it’s old Sir Isaac’s birthday on December 25, so if you hate Christmas as much as I do, you might like to celebrate Grav-mas instead:

            https://stallman.org/grav-mass.html

          • Nikko

            Sorry to disappoint Clark, but Judy Wood does not contradict Newton. In her paper she calculates collapse times under various scenarios and makes assumptions. One of the assumptions is that a falling floor hits the one below and the energy so released pulverizes it as well as breaks the connecting joints of the floor below to set it falling. It is a hypothetical scenario and she is free to make whatever assumptions she wants. This is a perfectly valid approach because she is trying to show what could not have happened.

            On the other hand you have a theory describing what happened and that precludes you from making hypothetical assumptions which are unrealistic and cannot be proven.

            John G’s understanding of Newton is solid but your understanding of science is not if you cannot understand the point of Judy Wood’s paper.

          • Clark

            Nikko, that’s like saying that if Citroen C5 moving at 70 mph collides head on with a parked Citroen C5, the moving one gets crushed into two cubes which fly off at right angles, while the parked one is completely unharmed apart from a broken handbrake cable. It’s mad.

            Newton says the forces will be equal and opposite. The near identicality of the floor slabs says that they should be affected much the same as each other. What’s the point of Newton’s third if you just make up different effects on nearly identical objects?

            You’re doing John no favours like this.

          • Clark

            Imagine playing billiards under Judy’s Billiard Ball Example physics. The cue ball turns to dust every time it hits a colour, and the colours never go anywhere!

            She’s taking the piss.

          • Clark

            She is definitely taking the piss, because the behaviour of billiard balls is cited as the archetypical example of Newton’s laws of motion. I’ve often heard it said that the perpetrators of 9/11 demolished WTC7 just to have a laugh at the sheeple. Well Judy’s obviously having a laugh, choosing a name like that for her fantasy physics.

          • Nikko

            “Imagine playing billiards under Judy’s Billiard Ball Example physics. The cue ball turns to dust every time it hits a colour, and the colours never go anywhere!”

            Well, the concrete turned to dust while still hundred’s of meters above Manhattan. That’s what she was modelling.

          • John Goss

            Judy Wood said:

            “If there was enough kinetic energy for pulverization, there will be pancaking or pulverization, but not both.” Which is true. “For one thing, that energy can only be spent once.” Also true.

            There was not enough kinetic energy from the relatively light and damaged structure above to pulverise the undamaged floors below any more than banging one’s head against a brick wall to try and instruct Clark. His equal and opposite reaction stops the head in its tracks. Enough. Nobody can say I did not try!

          • Clark

            John, if you do the momentum calculations (properly, based on equal opposing forces, not like Judy Woods’ strange assumption of asymmetric damage), you find that the collapse accelerates. Nikko already discovered this. This is why the dust is produced at the end of the collapse. It wasn’t the falling mass hitting stationary floors that did most of the pulverisation; the floor slabs didn’t put up enough resistance for that. It was when the accumulated falling mass crushed itself against the ground, which was when all the spare kinetic energy was dissipated. That’s why the big dust cloud was produced at the end.

          • glenn_nl

            The point about the billiard balls is very valid. Sorry, Nikko, I feel you’re sincere here. Looking at what you quoted earlier:

            N: “One of the assumptions is that a falling floor hits the one below and the energy so released pulverizes it as well as breaks the connecting joints of the floor below to set it falling. It is a hypothetical scenario and she is free to make whatever assumptions she wants. This is a perfectly valid approach because she is trying to show what could not have happened.”

            The assumption described above could very well explain the behaviour observed.

            It troubled me for a long time that powdered matter would allow for a _near_ free-fall progression. Would the dust not disperse, slowing it very substantially and then lessening the impact on the floor below, arresting if not stopping the progression?

            The answer (it seems to me) is – how much would it hurt, if someone emptied a bag of sand and/or cement above your head, 10 feet up, and let the entire sack’s contents fall on you? A fair bit, I imagine. Now imagine 1000, 10,000, 100,000,000 of them – all much more course than a bag of cement or sand.

            The air isn’t going to hold them up that much, is it? What happens to the massive pressure of the air displaced? Squibs.

          • Clark

            Glenn, I’m confused about what your comment means; please rephrase it.

            I can’t see any validity to Wood’s assumptions. Two very similar objects collide; it seems unreasonable that they’d be affected completely differently from each other. Extensive pulverisation seems unlikely because, assuming inelastic collision, the loss of kinetic energy into energy of deformation isn’t anywhere near enough. And why assume pulverisation from impacts on floor slabs when the great dust cloud didn’t happen until the collapse hit bottom?

          • Clark

            Even in known explosive demolitions, the dust cloud doesn’t happen until the collapse hits bottom. That’s because pulverisation and energy from explosives is pretty minor, and the big energy release is when the falling material is forced to suddenly stop, crush and compact.

          • Nikko

            Clark @01.33
            John, if you do the momentum calculations (properly, based on equal opposing forces, not like Judy Woods’ strange assumption of asymmetric damage), you find that the collapse accelerates. Nikko already discovered this.

            Absolutely not! Nikko’s calculations confirm that a pancaking collapse slows down the descent. When (any degree of) pulverisation is included, the descent is slowed down further because the momentum available for transfer to the next slab is reduced due to reducing mass.

            Clark, please stop spreading incorrect information!

          • Clark

            I believe your figures showed the collapse to accelerate, but the rate of acceleration to diminish – which is consistent with Bazant and other mainstream estimates. Whatever, your simulated collapse completed in under twenty seconds or so, with an arbitrary braking effect from mass ejection (not pulverisation) – you refused to post the limiting case.

            I can’t be sure of what your figures showed because you didn’t post most of them. They’d be rather long for a comment, but you could e-mail them to me and I could post them to my web-space, where they could be linked to.

          • Nikko

            Glenn_nl @02.04
            I do not see how powdered matter could be created in a gravity only scenario.

            The floors were a composite of corrugated steel sheeting with poured concrete on top binding the two layers together. For the concrete to crumble to small pieces and fall down requires that the supporting steel sheet layer also disintegrates into small pieces and that I cannot imagine happening.

            As regards the whole floor falling down in one piece smoothly as a piston in a cylinder is also most unlikely, particularly where expanded by heat. I can imagine some supports breaking and others not, such that the whole floor assembly bends, stretches and twists but basically remains jammed in place.

            As for the squibs I think it most unlikely that they were caused by overpressure due to the floors falling. First of all the building was not air tight around the core, so even if the floors descended piston like, pressure would not increase because air could dissipate through the core. And if I am wrong about this and there was a piston like action from the floor slabs to increase the pressure, then it is necessary to consider the slowing down effect from the pressure build up on the rate of descent.

            Assuming that the building starts collapsing from level 100 (WTC 1) and that there is pancaking, then assuming NO resistance whatsoever to the collapse, it would take nearly 13 seconds to make it to the ground. That is about the time, give or take, the real collapse took so we can be pretty sure that pancaking was not going on because in the real world there is resistance.

          • Nikko

            Clark @ 14.14
            Pulverisation = mass ejection

            OK, now I agree with your wording. We were looking at an object falling freely in space so obviously it will pick up speed but pancaking and mass ejection will act to reduce that.

            We do not for how long the actual measured acceleration of 63% of g lasted, but it is easy to show that the real collapse overtakes the idealised, zero resistance collapse after 3 seconds, if the mass ejection rate is 50%. Longer if the ejection rate is less.

            I do not know/can’t remember what you mean by “limiting case”.

            I am not going to post the spreadsheet but I have offered many times for you to do your own so that we can compare and check. That way will be better for both of us.

          • Clark

            Nikko, 14:31 to Glenn:

            I agree with all of your first three paragraphs, except: “but basically remains jammed in place” – there’s a lot of falling mass heading for the first fully supported intact floor slab; easily enough to get it moving at some point. And take a look at the truss seats; they were pretty minimal:

            https://cryptome.org/info/wtc-punch/pict55.jpg

            I use the neutral word ‘ejections’ because ‘squibs’ suggests demolition charges. I find overpressure an acceptable explanation. There was some 13,000 cubic metre of air in each storey, and it had to be expelled in a fraction of a second. It can’t go down through an intact floor assembly. I really don’t see it going up through the mass of falling debris, which is moving air along with itself – we don’t need intact falling floor slabs to get a piston effect. That leaves: out through the perimeter and in towards the core, but air pressure in the core is going to rise with each failed floor. Plus there is more area that air can escape through at the perimeter than at the core.

            Thanks for posting the limiting case of 13 seconds with no resistance. Even that can be shaved somewhat if we assume a lower starting floor and account for the final debris pile standing somewhat above ground level.

            Nikko, 14:51 to Clark:

            I agree, pulverisation and mass ejection will slow the collapse.

            I think mass ejection of 50% is far too high, since the big dust cloud visibly wells outward near the ground right at the end of the collapse; all dust ejection preceding that is really rather minor in comparison. The “limiting case” was no mass ejection; see above.

            Thank you very much for both of these comments.

          • Nikko

            Clark, without pancaking and with zero mass ejection, the time to fall 100 floors is 8.8 secs. With pancaking but w/o mass ejections 12.5 seconds.

            As for the truss seats – they are small but there are lots of them. In this case I’d say that strength depends more on the strength of the bolt or weld and less on the size of the seat

          • Clark

            Nikko, those figures sound about right; thanks for posting them.

            I won’t bother running calcs myself, but thank you for doing yours. I did a momentum transfer guestimate back on about page 101, I think, and decided that it supported rapid collapse. I knew that even if I learned the engineering to estimate mechanical resistance, the wreckage was no longer available so I could never show that the structure at collapse was as-designed, so nothing could be proven down that road.

            And I worked out early on that I couldn’t prove that the buildings weren’t overloaded – the reinforcement records revealing Uninterruptable Power Supplies looked particularly alarming in such tall, lightweight buildings. I thought about “theatrical demolition” and decided it would be crazy to try it without a full-scale rehearsal, on account of Murphy’s law. And then it occurred to me that if I wanted to ensure collapse that looked like collapse, the easiest and most reliable way would be to gradually add weight at the top of the buildings – daily deliveries of boxes of fishing weights or car batteries, moved to storage in the top mechanical floor; so mundane probably no one would question it, and far less obtrusive than trying to wire the whole building with demolition charges. Hell, one person with the right job working alone could probably get away with it!

            Having come up with what seemed to me like much a better plan, I abandoned pre-rigged explosive theatrical destruction as a non-starter.

    • Clark

      The concept of “slipping over the edge of the building” is very fanciful. All the vertical support was in the perimeter and core; the floor assemblies were entirely incapable of supporting the sections that fell. As soon as either falling section moved at all sideways, its vertical frame members must have dug into and destroyed floor assemblies, and carried on falling.

    • Clark

      But whatever, the core wasn’t “instantaneously removed”, because the videos record the core remnants after the internal collapse stripped out the floor assemblies and the perimeter fell away outward. Try a YouTube search on “core remnant” or “WTC1 spire”. The cores clearly outlived the rest of the collapses.

    • Nikko

      The Twin Towers were a continuous perimeter tube with 60 odd core columns in the middle. The light weight floors linked the outside tube to the core for lateral stability and support for the perimeter.

      The core structure occupied some 30% of the total floor area and the core columns were not individually free standing but were connected to each, so already having lateral stability. They did not need the perimeter for additional support and would have stood without it.

      A long thin tube like the perimeter becomes laterally and torsionally unstable without the support of the core. I can envisage the walls bending once perfect vertical alignement is lost, but long way down from the top, so that sufficient bending forces can develop. The perimeter would lean sideways until stopped by the core.

      I cannot think of a single natural scenario whereby the destruction (i.e. disintegration or falling apart) of the perimeter and the core starts from the top, even if all the floors were lost.

        • Nikko

          Well yes, the tonnes of concrete and steel will fill the gaps between the perimeter and core imparting some lateral stability up to the level of the rubble. What they will not do is generate lateral forces to break the building structures apart and eject large junks with great force sideways.

  • John Goss

    I’m starting a new comment because the previous one was getting difficult to answer without much scrolling. John Goss said:

    “Start at the beginning. Answer these questions. They actually relate to what we’re talking about.

    Why do you think they needed to weaken it?
    Why did they not bring it straight down?
    Why, despite being deliberately weakened, did it not disintegrate? (See the last two seconds)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAR8H5WaNS0

    These are realistic! Your examples are not.”

    To which Clark responded
    December 20, 2017 at 15:14
    “To answer your questions about that smallish building: they probably weakened it to save explosives, and they probably toppled it because they could – there was plenty of open space around it, and again it saves explosives. Note also that the building was already leaning in the direction that they brought it down, making it far more practical to tip it over than to attempt a vertical fall. Also it looks pretty lightweight, so it would have had little gravitational potential energy to break up the structure in a vertical fall.

    By disintegrate I suppose you mean “break to pieces”. I mention this because Dave uses the term differently, and I wish matters to be clear. Well look at the structure; a grid of evenly spaced vertical columns, absolutely nothing like the Twin Towers, completely lacking the 18 metre and 22 metre spans of concrete floor slabs and their additional weight. Again, it looks pretty lightweight, so it would have had little gravitational potential energy to break up the structure.

    But ultimately, tipping it rather than dropping it was just a decision someone made. Plenty of demolitions do drop a building straight down; this one is just an exception.

    Further, probably most of what little weight that building had was in concrete floors, which clearly impacted edge-ways to the ground. Concrete is strong in compression, so there wasn’t the hail of concrete rubble falling and accumulating that there was in the Twin Towers. Upon hitting the ground, each concrete floor will have effectively stressed itself, but would not have been brought into impact with anything else. The ground arrested the concrete, leaving the steel relatively unstressed.”

    Thank you for your response.

    No completed steel-structured building has fallen into itself from the top down. The only ones I have read about was L’Ambiance Plaza which was still under construction and it is thought collapsed due to weakened temporary structures.

    http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/compare/lambiance.html

    There were no central cores to these towers.

    This deals with other collapses that have been cited as being comparable to the twin towers and building 7 and there is nothing to be gained by repeating the arguments.

    http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/compare/collapses.html

    What I am looking for is support for your theory that a small section containing the damaged 1.4% of the total steel in one of the twin towers could bring down the stronger undamaged structure beneath it. Over to you.

    • Dave

      Clark’s role is to act as a brake on any discussion beyond WHAT caused the collapse of the towers, and then to denounce as anti-Semitic any discussion of the WHO.

      • Clark

        You recommended a book that accuses Judaism itself as the cause of 9/11. Sorry, that’s just blatant anti-Semitism. The same author publishes Holocaust denial. Shrug?

        I’m no fan of Israel. It’s a rogue state that uses the Palestinians in a manner akin to slavery. Ask John Goss where he first met me. But making stuff up, and blaming a religion rather than people is just bigotry.

        • Clark

          Dave, you’ve got hung up on this single issue of “controlled demolition”, and it is obscuring your vision.

          “If they can get you asking thee wrong questions, they don’t need to worry about answers”

          I’m here to save you from barking up a wrong tree – in fact, it isn’t even a tree because it doesn’t exist.

          I want to see Israel’s abuse of the Palestinians stopped, and its undue influence stopped. I want to see its military aid cut off, I want to see it brought into line with international law and UN resolutions, and I want to see it stop warping Western foreign policy to and destabilise and balkanise the Middle East. I’m very proud to have worked with Craig to expose Atlantic Bridge, Werritty’s covert foreign policy, and at least two plots to foment war with Iran. These successes are some of the most rewarding things I have been involved in in all my life.

          But I do physics and the Twin Towers just fell down. It is counter-productive to blame Israel for something which it didn’t just not do, but which actually never happened. The so-called Truth Movement is just alienating the peace movement from the academic and engineering communities. It’s helping to divide and conquer Israel’s opposition.

          You think this one thing is a critical point, but it isn’t, it’s a distraction, and it makes us all look foolish.

          • SA

            “ I’m very proud to have worked with Craig to expose Atlantic Bridge, Werritty’s covert foreign policy, and at least two plots to foment war with Iran. These successes are some of the most rewarding things I have been involved in in all my life.”

            Indeed you should be very proud of this Clark.

            Talking of this, how come Fox is back? It is also of interest that he was wEast at the time she was recalled back to be sacked. Watch that axis. In fact there is probably more to the PP story because May did not only sack her as a damage limiting exercise, but also immediately started the big diversion story on Russia meddling, and of course the whole media circus then moved on. I wish someone would throw more light on this.

          • Clark

            It’s one of the better levers we have, though not as good as it should be. It feels very pointless because most MPs will send a dismissive reply (if any), but we never get to know how many similar letters our own MP received, and then all the MPs receive some letters each, so there’s a ‘funnel’ effect – it raises awareness in the Commons, gets them talking about it among themselves, and raises their awareness of our awareness, an effect which should not be discounted.

            We can also write to the ‘news’papers, MEPs, and Lords:

            https://www.writetothem.com/

      • John Goss

        Dave my view is that a proper inquiry is necessary to try and find out the truth. The culprits and criminals may then be brought to task. I understand what you are saying and I have had many comments removed.

        An example is with links to Veterans Today. When I posted a VT article postulating on the use of an underground nuclear device to bring the twin towers down the VT link was taken down. Apparently the publication was anti-Semitic. But now nuclear physicist Heinz Pommer’s work suggests that the VT article was right. Unfortunately the magazine was accused of being anti-Semitic which is always a good reason to take a comment down.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt2QszBb5Vw

        Do you know I have never seen an anti-Palestian article removed.

        • Clark

          John, you might have mentioned to Dave where it was that you met me.

          Veterans Today has and does publish Holocaust denial. Sites linking to VT lay themselves open to accusations of endorsing anti-Semitism. The search engines associate sites by the links they carry, so the mods are protecting the credibility of Craig’s pro-Palestinian activism by keeping this site clean of such rubbish, and you know Craig won’t tolerate it.

          If VT carries any genuine evidence, you can always find it at a better site. Other sites will always copy genuine leaks. I’ve never seen anything verifiable that only appeared at VT.

          Look John, if you’re keen on Holocaust denial and want to link to sites like that, and you feel this site is part of a conspiracy, why don’t you just stop commenting here? You know the rules here, and they include no racism, which includes anti-Semitism, and no Holocaust denial.

    • Clark

      John, I could put in a lot of effort writing out my description of the collapse sequence yet again. Experience has proven this to be futile; you’ll just accuse me of “not understanding Newton”, when your own support of Wood’s BBE proves you have no idea about Newton’s laws yourself.

      Sorry, I’m interested in science and engineering. Such discussions are not possible here, because you lot long since decided upon your preferred conclusion, and since then have worked backwards from it to formulate your arguments. That’s as anti-science as things get.

      • Clark

        John, I’ll take that back. I’ll go hunting in previous pages for my description of the collapse sequence, but only if you’ll promise me beforehand that you will read it with a positive outlook, trying to see each step as possible rather then reflexively rejecting it as impossible. Once you have an idea of how it could happen, then we could go into details and sticking-points.

  • Clark

    I really don’t know whether I should laugh or cry. By never criticising each other, by never giving each other the benefit of superior knowledge, you’re all sinking deeper and deeper into a morass of illogic. You will never be taken seriously by anyone with a smidgen of scientific literacy unless you clean up your act.

    Buried nukes and Judy’s BBE. I don’t know. You say that everyone but Truthers accepts things merely on authority, but Judy Wood’s BBE is accepted merely on authority, and none of you even have the decency to point out Wood’s contradiction of Newton to prevent your colleagues from making utter fools of themselves.

    • Clark

      John, what I suggest you do is find an engineer or physicist you trust, and show them Judy Wood’s BBE, and ask them if it’s in accordance with Newton.

      OK; I’ll recap. Newton says: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”. So when two objects A and B come into collision, A exerts a force on B, and B exerts precisely as much force in precisely the opposite direction back on A.

      OK, applying that to floor slabs. Two floor slabs A and B are nearly identical, so they should be affected pretty similarly by identical forces. When A hits B and exerts a force on it, B exerts an exactly equal force back on A. Being similar, you’d expect them to behave the same as each other.

      But Judy says that A turns to dust, whereas B remains whole and just breaks free of its truss seats!

      You posted an example yourself; two cars colliding head on, and they were affected pretty similarly. But Judy Wood contradicts that. But don’t take my word; ask someone qualified that you trust.

      The reason no scientists have ever complained is because Judy Wood never submitted BBE as a scientific paper. They don’t criticise her shopping list, either; only stuff she submits as part of her work. That’s how the academic world works; academics don’t need to make sense in their free time.

      • Clark

        I wrote; “You posted an example yourself; two cars colliding head on, and they were affected pretty similarly. But Judy Wood contradicts that”

        One car stops dead and turns to dust. The just other keeps going, but all the doors fall off or something. Completely different effects. She’s having a laugh.

      • John Goss

        “The reason no scientists have ever complained is because Judy Wood never submitted BBE as a scientific paper. They don’t criticise her shopping list, either; only stuff she submits as part of her work. That’s how the academic world works; academics don’t need to make sense in their free time.”

        Ridiculous. I have submitted quite a few academic articles and many more that were not. Something is either right or wrong whether or not it is a scientific paper, or whether it is submitted for peer review. Admit it Clark. You did not understand what she was trying to explain.

        • Clark

          She didn’t submit it! That’s what I’m saying. You did submit work. Judy Wood submits work, but she never submitted BBE!

      • Clark

        Sorry, our comments crossed.

        OK, Newton’s cradle (and billiard balls) illustrates elastic collisions, in which kinetic energy is preserved. But concrete isn’t very elastic, so it undergoes inelastic collisions. That’s when the colliding objects end up moving together, like two pieces of putty colliding and sticking together. Inelastic collisions dissipate kinetic energy into deforming the colliding objects.

        So in an inelastic collision, if object A moving south at 2m/s hits stationary object B, they end up moving south together at 1m/s. Momentum is preserved, but some kinetic energy is dissipated.

        That’s what we should expect with colliding floor slabs, and that’s how Nikko got the results from the following link onward:

        https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/01/the_911_post/comment-page-131/#comment-712482

        • Clark

          See the equality of the action and the reaction? Sorry, I forgot to say that A has the same mass as B. A’s force speeds up B by 1m/s, and the reaction on A slows it down by 1m/s. Equal and opposite.

      • John Goss

        “But Judy says that A turns to dust, whereas B remains whole and just breaks free of its truss seats!”

        No she does not. She says:

        “In other words, when one floor impacts another, the small amount of kinetic energy from the falling floor is consumed (a) by pulverizing the floor and (b) by breaking free the next floor. In reality, there isn’t enough kinetic energy to do either.[Trumpman][Hoffman]”

        You do not read these theories. You have done the same to Judy Wood as you do to so many of us on here. Nikko had to pull you up about it again yesterday.

        Her understanding of Newton is correct. You keep saying it is not and try to call others to your defence.

        I have to go now.

        • Clark

          OK. Yes, but she’s bamboozling people. The following two quotes say the same thing:

          “But Judy says that A turns to dust, whereas B remains whole and just breaks free of its truss seats”

          “In other words, when one floor impacts another, the small amount of kinetic energy from the falling floor is consumed (a) by pulverizing the floor and (b) by breaking free the next floor”

          That contradicts Newton in spirit, but not in letter. The two objects are the same, so we’d expect the equal forces on them (Newton”s third law) to affect them similarly. So that’s one bamboozle. The next is a double bamboozle:

          “In reality, there isn’t enough kinetic energy to do either”

          That’s true, but it means that the rest of BBE including the ten floor and 100 floor examples are utterly meaningless; they tell us nothing about the possibility of collapse, nor the time it would take.

          It also gives the impression that pulverising the floor slab takes as much energy as breaking a floor free, but that’s far from true. Pulverising a floor slab takes much, much more energy than breaking a floor free. It takes so much more that the truss seats would go long before we got anywhere close to pulverising a floor slab.

          In fact, dropping two floor slabs together is enough to break another floor free – and we’d still be nowhere near the energy required for pulverisation. But there was far more falling material than two floor slabs in the top section of WTC1, and most of those floor slabs are falling from much higher; there’s going to be loads more than enough to break the next floor free, and plenty left over so it starts its descent really fast.

        • Nikko

          I think it is important keep in mind that for this particular hypothetical example she calculates a collapse time of about 85seconds and concludes that that is not what happened.

        • John Goss

          ” – “In reality, there isn’t enough kinetic energy to do either”

          That’s true, but it means that the rest of BBE including the ten floor and 100 floor examples are utterly meaningless; they tell us nothing about the possibility of collapse, nor the time it would take.”

          The whole purpose of the billiard ball example was not to try and prove what happened. It was the opposite. The theories were put forward to show why what was observed and assumed to have happened on 9/11 could not have happened and Newton still be correct.

          You keep saying according to Judy Wood as though she was saying that is what did happen. This is a gross misrepresentation of her work.

          Similarly with pulverisation, I am pretty sure she would not have mentioned pulverisation but for the fact that this was observed and a fine powder covered a huge area – much bigger than might be expected from a collapse. In practice any concrete would be unlikely to disintegrate.

          http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/compare/lambiance.html

          You can see from the photograph in the above link that the concrete was largely intact in a partially-constructed steel-framed building collapse. Steven E. Jones with a clearer photograph states:

          “L’Ambiance Plaza collapse (right) shows how pancaked concrete floor slabs are largely intact and clearly reveal stacking effects with minimal fine dust, as expected from random progressive collapse. By contrast, concrete floors in the Twin Towers and WTC 7 were pulverized to dust — as is common in controlled demolitions using explosives.”

          http://blog.lege.net/content/20060721_htm7.html

          You can see that from two partially-constructed 16 storey buildings what a large amount of debris there was which is why many of us questioned the relatively small amount of debris seen at ground zero.

          I believe Judy Wood’s doctorate is in Mechanical Engineering. She is a credit to the discipline because she stood up alone against the establishment which buys the loyalty of universities with a cashbook. She could, and can, see that the official explanation was not in line with engineering science. In that respect she was like Craig Murray (a whistleblower).

          Although I am not convinced by her direct weapons technology theory I applaud her efforts which are based in Newtonian physics.

        • John Goss

          “In fact, dropping two floor slabs together is enough to break another floor free – and we’d still be nowhere near the energy required for pulverisation. But there was far more falling material than two floor slabs in the top section of WTC1, and most of those floor slabs are falling from much higher; there’s going to be loads more than enough to break the next floor free, and plenty left over so it starts its descent really fast.”

          To make a statement of fact you need proof. You have not proved that dropping two floor slabs together would break another one free.

          One of the reasons I suspect Judy Wood used the 10 floors analogy was because when the top part of the tower started to fall it appeared to come down as a unit. In Newtonian physics when that unit of floors hit the 11th floor down what should have happened I suggest is that the ninth floor should have had an equal and opposite effect on the eighth floor above it, the two floor on the seventh floor and so on. But there was none. The whole lot disappeared into a cavernous hole as though there was no support below when in fact the strongest support was below.

        • Clark

          Nikko, anyone can make up something that couldn’t happen, and then point out that it didn’t. So what? As science, the exercise is pointless; it proves nothing at all.

          But because she made it sciency by plotting some irrelevant graphs and quoting the valid, completely standard momentum formulae at the bottom of the page, she managed to convince some people such as John Goss that there’s some validity to her “85s for collapse” figure, when in fact there is none.

        • John Goss

          You still do not get it Clark.

          “But because she made it sciency by plotting some irrelevant graphs and quoting the valid, completely standard momentum formulae at the bottom of the page, she managed to convince some people such as John Goss that there’s some validity to her “85s for collapse” figure, when in fact there is none.”

          Although you are no longer, after years of not understanding Judy Wood’s Billiard Ball theories, claiming her physics is wrong, imputing to her beliefs she did not hold, instead of thanking me for explaining why you did not understand what she was saying, you have imputed to me some belief I do not hold.

          Her Newtonian physics’ calcs are correct though hypothetical and yet you went on and on swearing it was not, challenging me, calling me a liar and generally wasting my time over something for which you had a bee in your bonnet. Now you know you were wrong all along you still want to try and belittle me and make out it was me who did not understand. Have you no shame?

        • Clark

          I don’t need shame. Ask an engineer you trust about Wood’s BBE. Ask yourself if two identical objects behave completely differently in a collision with each other. Watch the collapse videos and note when and where the enormous dust cloud appears. Wood is taking the piss; she never submitted BBE, it’s not part of her academic output. She kept it separate because it’s just a joke of some sort.

        • Clark

          John, BBE is not at all representative of what NIST (or rather Bazant) proposed for the physics of the Twin Tower collapses. No one proposed BBE except Wood; it’s a sort of straw man argument. Wood set it up so she could knock it down herself, but it isn’t remotely similar to anything that NIST or Bazant set up. It doesn’t attempt to represent anything in the real world, nor any serious theory about the collapses. It is irrelevant.

        • Clark

          …and no engineer would take it seriously for longer than it took to read, not even as a negative example, because of its proposal of completely different effects of equal forces on identical objects upon which it relies. You just read it and go “no, that’s not engineering; dismiss”.

        • Clark

          John, you asked what it would take to break a floor slab free. I can’t give you a precise answer, but first take a look at the truss seats, where the floor trusses were attached to the perimeter; there was just one per two perimeter columns, and presumably a similar arrangement at the core:

          https://cryptome.org/info/wtc-punch/pict55.jpg

          Ages ago I asked you how many times its own weight a floor assembly could support, and you said about eleven, which seems reasonable. But that’s static load, like resting a hammer-head on a partly inserted nail. Something falling on a floor slab from above is like hitting the nail with the hammer; that’s a dynamic load.

          How much greater is a dynamic load due to a collision from a given mass, than the static weight of the same mass? This is a complicated matter involving the speed of collision, whether the impacting mass is parallel to the stationary one when it collides, the elasticity and strength of the colliding objects, whether the blow is cushioned by intervening materials such as office contents, and probably a load of other things as well. That’s why I can’t give a precise answer.

          I read (NIST, I think) that an impact load is reckoned at ten times the static weight – but with no mention of collision speed. Here’s Asif Usmani:

          “Inertial forces exerted by moving masses can be orders of magnitude greater than their static weight, which is primarily what building structures are designed to resist”.

          Here’s Charles Clifton:

          “From a momentum point of view, if one floor collapses on another in a building, the force that that floor invokes on the floor below is slightly greater than what the floor below is designed to withstand. So if one floor fell into another floor the chances of the first floor causing the second floor to collapse are possible but not particularly likely. But if the second floor is almost on the point of failure when the first falls on it they will both collapse. If you have two floors falling on a third one the ability of the third floor to hold the top two is very low. By the time you have three floors falling on a fourth is just not physically possible for the fourth floor to hold three. So by the time you have twenty floors falling on the intact floors below they will just go straight through”.

          Now, you wrote:

          “In Newtonian physics when that unit of [ten] floors hit the 11th floor down what should have happened I suggest is that the ninth floor should have had an equal and opposite effect on the eighth floor above it, the two floor on the seventh floor and so on. But there was none. The whole lot disappeared into a cavernous hole as though there was no support below when in fact the strongest support was below”

          All the floor slabs were attached to the frame by the truss seats pictured in my earlier link. Look how much more substantial the perimeter frame is than those truss seats. So when the lowest falling floor assembly came into collision with the highest standing floor assembly, it was those truss seats (or their bolts to the floor slabs) that were trying to stop the descent of the entire upper section of frame, plus all the concrete floors, winches, hat truss and contents it carried.

          Sorry. No chance.

          It slowed it down a bit (by Newton’s reaction), but inevitably, one floor assembly or both must have stripped away from frame, and the frame just kept coming, until the next collision of floors.

          There was no stronger support below, because although the box columns got stronger below, the falling and standing columns were no longer in line, so support was left to the truss seats, and they were never intended to carry the top section, let alone arrest it from falling.

        • John Goss

          Clark, I hope one day you can grasp how Newton works in practice.

          As to theory you have shown yourself to be inept. You have called me a liar, you have called Judy Wood a liar, you have indirectly called Nikko a liar, and no doubt more. I had a fear that if in independent professor would have had time to act as arbiter in whether Judy Wood’s billiard ball article and Jonathan H. Cole’s practical experiments found against your non-acceptance that you would call him or her a liar.

          Whenever it has come to calculations you have always tried to get someone else to do them for you. You wanted to waste my time in your challenge against Judy Wood and Jonathan Cole’s understanding of Newtonian physics. You talked about doing joint experiments which I have wisely, it would seem, avoided even though it is true that I have no time for them. You claimed I never did calculations. In respect to beer-can scaling I did them to prove you wrong. At almost the same time Nikko provided similar scaling figures independently.

          But you! You have never shown any of the physics you claim to be so good at. I recall you asking Nikko for a spreadsheet to see if the results coincided with your own calculations. Your own calsulations never seem to appear.

          I think you have a basic understanding of physics (the kind that is trotted out in exam formulae) but you certainly have little understanding of physics in the real world. Otherwise you would not believe the utter tripe you spout and waffle on about.

          Not for the first time I spent time I can ill afford last night trying to get you to understand Judy Wood’s billiard ball representations and I think the penny finally dropped for you. No thanks for my efforts. Well that’s all right. People don’t always thank you for work on their behalf. But what I got was just more insults. I think that is out of order. This single page is full of such insults towards me.

          “Judy Wood’s Billiard Ball Example (BBE) blatantly contradicts Newton!

          Judy’s idea of equal and opposite reaction goes like this. When two nearly identical floor slabs collide, one floor slab instantly turns to dust which all turns at right-angles to the direction of motion (and presumably becomes mostly invisible), and the other floor slab’s motion is unaffected.

          John, don’t expect any Truther to point this out; that’s against the rules of the Truther game.”

          and

          “Node, Peter Beswick, Nikko, I think you have enough physics. Would you please tell John Goss that Wood’s BBE contradicts Newton. I know it’s against Truther rules and all that, but Nikko has done those momentum calcs properly, and it’s just embarrassing to be repeatedly told I don’t know Newton by someone who keeps recommending BBE which blatantly contradicts him.”

          and

          “Nikko, that’s like saying that if Citroen C5 moving at 70 mph collides head on with a parked Citroen C5, the moving one gets crushed into two cubes which fly off at right angles, while the parked one is completely unharmed apart from a broken handbrake cable. It’s mad.

          Newton says the forces will be equal and opposite. The near identicality of the floor slabs says that they should be affected much the same as each other. What’s the point of Newton’s third if you just make up different effects on nearly identical objects?

          You’re doing John no favours like this.”

          and

          “John, if you do the momentum calculations (properly, based on equal opposing forces, not like Judy Woods’ strange assumption of asymmetric damage), you find that the collapse accelerates. Nikko already discovered this.”

          and

          “John, you seem to be just taunting me with the “Newton’s law” thing; do you even realise that yourself? I offered to go over some neutral examples to check each other’s understanding of Newton’s laws, but so far you haven’t seemed keen on the idea:”

          and

          “If VT carries any genuine evidence, you can always find it at a better site. Other sites will always copy genuine leaks. I’ve never seen anything verifiable that only appeared at VT.

          Look John, if you’re keen on Holocaust denial and want to link to sites like that, and you feel this site is part of a conspiracy, why don’t you just stop commenting here? You know the rules here, and they include no racism, which includes anti-Semitism, and no Holocaust denial.”

          and so many more like here

          https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/01/the_911_post/comment-page-131/#comment-712356

          and here

          https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/01/the_911_post/comment-page-131/#comment-712358

          and here

          https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/01/the_911_post/comment-page-131/#comment-712554

          and

          “But because she made it sciency by plotting some irrelevant graphs and quoting the valid, completely standard momentum formulae at the bottom of the page, she managed to convince some people such as John Goss that there’s some validity to her “85s for collapse” figure, when in fact there is none.”

          To use the title of a Dale Carnegie book you are hardly going “. . . to win friends and influence people” by continually insulting them. However in the spirit of the one whose birthday some of us celebrate at this time of year I forgive you. And if that is not for you I wish you a Happy Grav-Mas, whatever that is, I’m sure you don’t understand. 😀

        • Nikko

          Clark @ 19.36
          Nikko, anyone can make up something that couldn’t happen…

          You are absolutely correct as Bazant, NIST and Clark made up collapse scenarios that could not happen.

          No matter which version of gravity led progressive collapse you take, there is no getting away from the fact that floors would have been impacting each other and that is what Wood is modelling. It is not her idea. And despite what you say about the dust, again there is no getting away from the fact that huge amounts were ejected as the collapse was progressing. So she included that in the model.

          You seem to be completely fixated on the asymmetry of her hypothesis whereby two identical objects collide but only one gets pulverised. I agree that in reality that is not going to happen and Wood would have done better had she assumed that on collision 50% of the mass of each is pulverised. The mass loss would remain exactly the same, so would the collapse time of 85 seconds and nobody’s sense of symmetry would be challenged. I am surprised that this needs pointing out to you and that you are prepared to waste so much time on this inconsequential point.

          Now we have cleared the point of asymmetric damage, let’s consider whether the assumption of pulverisation equivalent to the whole mass of one floor at each impact is realistic. I’d say that probably not but it really does not matter what we assume, because even if it is 0%, the absolutely minimum time to make it 100 floors down is 12.5 seconds. As you know that is assuming zero resistance and is about the time the real collapse took.

          You watched enough videos to know that the building disintegrated as it collapsed which needs energy (lots of) and also time. The energy must be subtracted from that available to propel the building downwards and the time for structures to physically break must be added to the collapse time.

          And we are back to where we were many moons ago when I asked you where this energy came from and how come the destruction was accomplished in virtually no time over the theoretical minimum. I am all for novel ideas but they must be tested against reality and so far nobody has come even close.

        • Clark

          John, I suppose I should be flattered that you bothered writing so much about me, but I’d really rather you tried to answer what I wrote about static and dynamic loads, truss seats, and floor assemblies.

        • Clark

          “Wood would have done better had she assumed that on collision 50% of the mass of each is pulverised”

          No she wouldn’t, because those collisions don’t have nearly enough energy for that, and anyway, it wouldn’t have been such a fun piss-take. She should have chosen the lowest energy that could cause failure, which probably is pulling out the truss seat bolts.

          “the building disintegrated as it collapsed which needs energy (lots of) and also time. The energy must be subtracted from that available to propel the building downwards and the time for structures to physically break must be added to the collapse time”

          We can’t see the completion of the collapses because the dust cloud wells up as the internal collapse terminates, so we don’t know how long the peeling of the perimeter took. But we can see that the perimeter falling outward lagged behind the descending front of ejections, so we must not subtract perimeter-destruction energy from internal collapse energy.

          Do me a favour, Nikko. If we secure a section of perimeter horizontally, can we bolt another perimeter section onto it, box-column end to box-column end? Will the bolts hold the second section out horizontally like that, or will they strip? If they hold, what about a third or a forth? The first set of bolts will go at some point.

        • Clark

          Oh and NIST didn’t present a collapse progression scenario at all, so you can’t have read their report.

          And collapse initiation height of WTC1 was lower than 100 storeys, the pile was higher than ground level, so the limiting case of momentum-transfer only is less than 12.5 seconds. AS you know (and really should tell John), momentum transfer releases energy of deformation which goes into destruction of materials, so that’s some more energy you don’t need to convert to extra collapse time. And I think the overall internal collapse time was nearer 16 seconds.

          Still, if you really want to believe in hidden agency, there are always ways to do so.

        • Nikko

          We can’t see the completion of the collapses because the dust cloud wells up as the internal collapse terminates, so we don’t know how long the peeling of the perimeter took. But we can see that the perimeter falling outward lagged behind the descending front of ejections, so we must not subtract perimeter-destruction energy from internal collapse energy.

          Well, if we do not subtract perimeter-destruction energy from the energy of the internal collapse, then there is no other source of energy to destroy the perimeter

          Do me a favour, Nikko. If we secure a section of perimeter horizontally, can we bolt another perimeter section onto it, box-column end to box-column end? Will the bolts hold the second section out horizontally like that, or will they strip? If they hold, what about a third or a forth? The first set of bolts will go at some point. .

          If they were not supported then at some point they would give, which would take a finite amount of time. This is a hypothetical assumption because they WERE SUPPORTED from below. Had the support been broken then energy would have been needed.

        • Clark

          OK, so if they were supported from below…

          So say you have two sections of perimeter, stood vertically, one on the other, bolted together at the box-columns ends. Leaning the bottom one away from the vertical, can it get to the horizontal without the bolts breaking? At what angle do the bolts fail?

          What about three sections? Four?

          The more sections high we start at, the less lean is needed before we break the lowest bolts, right?

          This is the destruction mechanism of the perimeter. Very little energy needs to be taken from the internal collapse; just a nudge to get the perimeter leaning outward.

        • Nikko

          Clark, you are flying off at tangents again. I am done with this topic but for the following points

          When bodies collide energy is released as momentum is conserved but acts internally on the bodies, such as to deform them or pulverize them. It is not able to do external work such as destruction of the supporting structure. That can only happen if the falling floors impact the structure and are slowed down by it.

          The WTC 1 collapse had to be around 100 levels. There could not have been a pile of rubble underneath the falling front.

          Your description of the destruction at 23.59 is irrelevant waffle.

          Waffling is not physics unless you can support it with numbers. Is it the case you do not do numbers because you know they will not support your theory?

        • Clark

          I can see a complication to this bolt-breaking scenario. The connections between perimeter sections were staggered, like the bricks in a wall, but with the whole wall rotated 90 degrees so the long axis of the bricks is vertical. That reduces the stresses on the bolts by some sizeable factor. But conversely, the perimeter walls were immensely wide. I can’t do these calcs without doing a load of homework, but I still can’t see the perimeter holding together, especially after its been stressed by the passing of the internal collapse.

        • Clark

          Nikko, no I haven’t done numbers for various reasons. First and foremost, I’m lazy. I’m also the complete opposite of what John Goss says I am; I have a great feel for dynamics and can visualise well, but looking at formulae makes my head spin – I can do it if I must. I’m also working with Truhers, and I assume none of them will accept my numbers – they don’t accept anything from me. And I’ve been arguing against almost everyone at once, which is lots of typing and composition. And everyone else but you just copies stuff of Truther websites which takes no creative effort at all, so I let myself off the hook with the numbers. And I don’t see why it’s my business anyway, because I accept progressive collapse; it’s the demolition theorists that have something to prove, not me.

          Re: the deformation energy, we can’t see whether the bolts pulled out of the truss seats, or whether concrete broke through. But it seems to be splitting hairs, the truss attachments being right next to the concrete.

          Re: the 12.5 seconds, it’d go a bit quicker if there was more mass at the top, and we’ve assumed a minimal ten floor assemblies. We can add two more floor assemblies (failure at floor 98 a la NIST), the hat truss, mechanical equipment, the roof, the heavier construction of the top mechanical floor. Again; splitting hairs; the end of the collapse gets obscured by dust, so we might have an extra second or four. But who cares? Anyone working out how to demolish the building would have to run the calcs anyway, and what would be the point of lacing a building with explosives just to make it collapse four seconds faster? If a fast collapse is suspicious, why not rig the explosive timers a bit slower to be more convincing? Just to make you and me argue?

          Re: the 100 storey drop; I think NIST took the collapse floor as floor 98. But you’re right about the rubble; silly me, the rubble pile wasn’t there until it fell there. Sorry.

        • Clark

          And Nikko, before you drop this subject, where were you hoping to get by saying Chandler got a perfectly straight acceleration plot?

          I’ve thought and thought about this, and about the smoothest way I can think that the top section could have descended is by buckling of columns. That’s about the only thing that might let the top section down smoothly. The use of any explosives, thermite cutters, or energy weapons involves cutting of columns, so we’d see brief periods of free-fall followed by sudden decrease in acceleration; ie. more jolty than Chandler’s graph.

          So what were you hoping to prove?

        • Clark

          Nikko, we may congratulate each other on having got past the solstice, and are now on the upturn to Spring.

          I can’t abide Christmas myself; just the great feast of Mammon and the twelve bin-bags of Christmas in my opinion, but have a good one and try not to feel too bloated.

  • Peter Beswick

    On first seeing the photo of the tilting top of the building I prefaced my opinion (of explosives correcting the angle of travel of the building) by “if the photographs has not been doctored” (or something like that).

    Then I found this

    http://cluesforum.info/viewtopic.php?p=2364903

    I am well aware that evidence is available that a whole host of photos and video from 9/11 were faked (some of them in action replays on live news reports as events unfolded)

    The news was being managed that day (the BBC report of WTC7 having collapsed when it fact the tit hadn’t been pressed at that point)

    As I have mentioned before there are certain rules that are applied to cover ups;

    The first being don’t investigate properly, all major cover ups have to have token investigation(s) these should be carried out in a blatant slipshod manner leaving opportunities for ……….

    The second rule, creation of conspiracy theories. These are then promulgated by dishonest media until they take hold then the same dishonest media round on people repeating the “crackpot” theories”. This is then supported by ………

    The third rule, create confusion, fake news, fake evidence fake science.

    No one (except for possibly one on here) is going to deny that 9/11 wasn’t investigated properly, that evidence was faked, news managed, conspiracy theorists blamed and confusion sown.

    It was / true for the Dr David Kelly cover up but in that one as 9/11 the truth trickled out.

    And that truth is the US government were complicit in allowing 9/11 to happen, they have prevented proper investigation, they have put out fake evidence, sown confusion and blamed the conspiracy theorists. And the US government is continuing the cover up after the truth is out

    That is the forth and final rule of cover up. Maintain the Lie!

    • Clark

      “No one (except for possibly one on here) is going to deny that 9/11 wasn’t investigated properly”

      Congratulations, Peter; that was very carefully phrased, and should escape the “imputing motive” rule, while gratifying your fellow conspiracy theorists.

      As it goes, I am one of the vast numbers of people who regard the top-level reports as deeply flawed. But unlike the conspiracy theorists, I do not assume that I already know what is being covered up. Nor do I indulge in the illogic of “demanding a proper investigation”; the investigations already performed produced a vast amount of material that conspiracy theorists almost completely ignore, so I really don’t see how one more government-approved investigation is supposed to help.

      All the conspiracy theorists really seem to want is an admission of two demolitions which as far as I can tell never happened, conspiracy theorists apparently being more concerned with the fate of a couple of cheap, ugly, hubristic office blocks than with the human consequences.
      – – – – – – –

      You are now in a quandary. You use photographic and video evidence to, for instance, “prove” that the top of WTC2 had to be blown apart mid-fall, but as soon as that evidence is shown not to support that, you dismiss it as fake! But the same argument can be applied to absolutely all evidence; witness testimony, audio recordings, documentary evidence. You now have absolutely no evidence you can trust, and your purported conspiracy is growing without limit; eventually you’ll find that you must have played some role in the cover-up yourself!

      And indeed you have. Conspiracy theorists, by their behaviour as seen on this thread, strive relentlessly to silence sceptical voices such as my own, so that their myths may spiral without restriction. This is the major contributor to what you perceive as “the government disinformation campaign” – are you working for the CIA, Peter? 😀

      As I keep trying to warn you:

      If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers”

  • Paul Barbara

    I put this up previously, with an excerpt, but for some reason it was removed. It shows that at least two countries, Russia and France, are concerned with microwave damage to children, and have laws regulating Wi-Fi and routers in classrooms:
    ‘France: New National Law Bans WIFI In Nursery School!’:
    https://Ehtrust.Org/France-New-National-Law-Bans-Wifi-Nursery-School/

    ‘Why Are Some Countries Removing Wi-Fi In Schools And Others Not?’:
    https://Www.Wirelesseducation.Org/1073-2/

    Russia also banned micrwave ovens, but the ban was lifted with ‘Perestroika’, as was much of Russia’s wealth.

    • Clark

      Paul, thanks for reminding me to turn my wifi off. Again. I had another visitor who wanted to use it, and I forgot to turn it off afterwards. I generally prefer a simple LAN cable. But there is probably more HF coming through the walls than from my single router; my neighbours are mad for gadgets.

      I knew there were studies indicating there could be risk, and I’d read that the industry were playing them down. I even remembered the ban in France after you mentioned it. But at least there are studies.

      But I do regard this as just one aspect of a much wider problem, which is that companies have too much control over how things are researched, and whether findings get released. This affects all sorts of research, and HF RFI is just one aspect.

      • Clark

        I had a friend whose husband had a decidedly hostile attitude; towards her, and towards just about any kind of precaution. He was critical of her vegetarianism and made a point of insisting that she provide him with meat meals. He’d deliberately scorch sausages and then insist she clean up the grill pan – that sort of thing. He insisted on having a very unhealthy diet himself; refused to eat vegetables etc. Just one of the millions of dick-head idiots, and a vocal member of the Peniel Church cult that tried to take over Brentwood council just down the road from me.

        Anyway, when my friend got pregnant she expressed concern about having so many wifi devices etc. in the house. So apparently just to spite her he got a booster and a massive aerial, installed it right next to her bed and insisted it was essential for his work and had to stay on 24/7.

        He decided to divorce her after a bit and moved out; went to live with a Peniel woman he took up with. I went and removed all the unnecessary wifi kit, and ran cables instead. He’s dead now; we think his diet got him in the end.

      • Clark

        Seriously; does this look sinister to you? They haven’t marked anything on the columns, like explosive charges to be rigged. They even seem to have omitted some of the core columns. They do seem obsessed with timing things to the minute. I can’t read all the notes, but they’ve marked the “club house” made of cardboard boxes. It really does look like their plan for their balcony stunt, even marking the time their associate would be coming past in his helicopter.

  • Peter Beswick

    Thanks fro the Geletin B plan thing Paul, it jus gets weirder

    http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/18/nyregion/balcony-scene-unseen-atop-world-episode-trade-center-assumes-mythic-qualities.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

    Two points stood out from this article, the first a point of detail that someone might be able to help with;

    “That is true, said Cherrie Nanninga, the director of real estate for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which until recently ran the World Trade Center.”

    Anyone know who took over?

    And secondly;

    “Window removal is considered so dangerous that when it is done the streets below are cordoned off, she said. ”It was really a stupid and irrational act that in my view borders on the criminal,” she said, adding that the stunt had jeopardized the studio program, whose space is donated by the Trade Center. “

    Is there any info around on who space was donated to? What was the Studio Program? Who else was gaining access?

    If a bunch of artists had free rein to mess about then who else?

  • SA

    In answer to
    Paul Barbara
    December 17, 2017 at 13:29
    @ Clark December 17, 2017 at 09:59

    I am starting a new thread because of the time since this was last discussed. This is a very important public health matter and neither a coverup nor sensationalization without evidence will help. So I took some time to research this. My own feeling is based on this, but I could post other links also:

    http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/cancer-controversies/mobile-phones-wifi-and-power-lines

    This is a pretty thorough explanation of the background and the assessment of studies and explanation of these studies. I trust this source because these are the people you go to when you have cancer which is at least half of us.
    The gist of what is said is:
    1. There is no mechanistic way of explaining why microwaves should be damaging to human DNA because microwaves act only through generating heat, which if sufficient would kill cells but not alter the genetic makeup of the cells to render them cancerous or to lead to birth defects. This is also confirmed by laboratory tests on cells as well as in experimental animals.
    2. There is currently no robust epidemiological study that is properly controlled in an accepted fashion that can answer this question and there is a proper need for such a study which has to be long term because cancers take a long time to develop.
    3. Cancer statistics have not shown any appreciable statistically significant rise in the tumours of the brain said to be associated with the use of mobile phones.
    4. Most published studies are flawed or incomplete or subject to bias because of the design of the studies.
    5. The absence of direct evidence however does not exclude a subtle or long term effect of microwaves that may become apparent in say 20 years or more, as widespread use of mobile phones is a recent phenomenon.
    6. Because of 5 above, it is a commonsense precaution for individuals to take some precautions to reduce exposure.
    7. Some governments have taken the prudent and common sense approach to limit the use of these devices in areas where the most vulnerable may be exposed to radiation, these include very young children and pregnant women.

    Interestingly the ban on use of Wifi in this context of 7 above seems a bit paradoxical, because most people agree that the radiation from mobile phones is much higher than that due to Wifi because of the closer proximity to the body and it is a proximity effect. The ban should therefore be on mobile phones not Wifi

    So I feel Clark that you really do not need to worry about switching your Wifi off but you would be advised not to use your phone too often and not to keep it in your top pocket pending further information.

    Going back to Barry Trower. OK he might be an expert in microwaves circa 1970s but he is neither a medical or a genetic expert. His sensationalized presentation you posted a link to does not adhere to scientific methodology. He has a series of diagrams starting with a figure of 57% risk to all girls using mobile phones. He then claims that this damage goes on endlessly again without giving reference. The derivation of this figure is unknown but is referenced to quite a long complex scientific study by Goldstone et al 1997. Even Goldstones group in that paper make no such wild claims but advise caution.
    The use of the title of the ‘New Thalidomide’ is a cheap sensational way of using a past tragedy in the wrong way. The reasons why the thalidomide tragedy occured is now well known and has led to much more rigorous testing of new drugs and the banning of the use of new drugs during early pregnancy. As an aside it may be of interest to mention that thalidomide has now had a comeback in the treatment of a cancer of the bone marrow, called multiple myeloma whereby the survival of patients has been increase from a mean of 2-3 years, to more than 5-7 years and has led to the development of new similar drugs with less side effects and new concepts in treatment of cancer. Also completely off topic, but arsenic is also now used in treating some leukaemias, but I digress.

    As we have seen with the MMR vaccine episode which led to real harm, sensationalised scaremongering does not benefit anyone. A calm approach is needed. Mobile phones have transformed our society, sometimes for the worse, but we just need to use them wisely, and not just because of the possible medical side effects.

    • Paul Barbara

      @ SA December 22, 2017 at 09:46
      I suggest you produce a thorough refutation of Barrie Trower’s work, then send it to him.
      He is not on the internet, but I can supply his address, or you can find it yourself if you like.
      If Barrie is right about the damage to young girl’s eggs, then he is perfectly correct in labelling it as a ‘New Thalidomide’. The diagrams are mainly aimed at Joe Public; he can give scientific explanations to doctors or others able to understand his detailed information.
      Fancy outfits like Cancer Research UK are not necessarily any better than the CDC, EPA, FDA or DEA.
      I trust Barrie Trower rather than Cancer Research. I know I have read some bad reports about Cancer Research, but I can’t put my hand on them at present.
      Here’s another site:
      ‘How EMF Radiation from Electronics Affect Children’: https://www.defendershield.com/radiation-electronics-affect-children/
      ‘….Studies have indicated that the risk of brain tumor is significantly elevated for those who have used cell phones for over a decade. Swedish studies indicate that those who began using cordless or mobile phones regularly before age 20 have a greater than 400% increase risk for developing ipsilateral glioma or cancer on the side of the brain where there was cell phone radiation exposure. An additional Swedish study corroborated these findings, showing an increased risk for developing two types of brain cancer corresponding to over a decade use of cell phones. In the US, class action lawsuits are even forming. Whether or not these lawsuits will succeed still remains to be seen…..’

      It boils down to which side you believe – the mobile manufacturers, government regulatory agencies and the majority of the MSM, who class the devices as harmless, or at least ‘harm not proven’ (what happened to the ‘precautionary principal’?) or people including doctors, nurses and researchers with no horse in the race, raising serious doubts about their safety.

      • Clark

        “those who began using cordless or mobile phones regularly before age 20 have a greater than 400% increase risk…”

        Paul, could you find out and post how many actual people are actually affected please? 400% seems like a big number, but using ‘relative risk’ in that manner tends to sensationalise the matter.

        • Clark

          “It boils down to which side you believe”

          No. Science boils down to evidence and reasoning.

          “or people including doctors, nurses and researchers with no horse in the race

          From the site you linked to:

          – DefenderPad® Laptop EMF Radiation & Heat Shield $139.99 $99.99
          – Tablet and iPad EMF Radiation Shielding Protection Case $65.99 – $91.99
          – iPhone 6/6S EMF Radiation Shield – SlimFlip Case $94.99 $69.99

          etc.

          https://www.defendershield.com/shop

        • Paul Barbara

          @ Clark December 22, 2017 at 14:05
          Is not 400% ‘statistically significant’ enough for you?
          Here is the site’s ‘contact form’; if you are interested in the 400% figure, please feel free to contact them.
          ‘…‘….Studies have indicated that the risk of brain tumor is significantly elevated for those who have used cell phones for over a decade. Swedish studies indicate that those who began using cordless or mobile phones regularly before age 20 have a greater than 400% increase risk for developing ipsilateral glioma or cancer on the side of the brain where there was cell phone radiation exposure. An additional Swedish study corroborated these findings, showing an increased risk for developing two types of brain cancer corresponding to over a decade use of cell phones. In the US, class action lawsuits are even forming. Whether or not these lawsuits will succeed still remains to be seen…..’ – what is ‘relative’ about that risk?

          • SA

            Paul
            Sadly this does not make sense..
            ‘Studies have indicated that the risk of brain tumor is significantly elevated for those who have used cell phones for over a decade. Swedish studies indicate that those who began using cordless or mobile phones regularly before age 20 have a greater than 400% increase risk for developing ipsilateral glioma or cancer on the side of the brain where there was cell phone radiation exposure’. There is no reference and no base to this statement. Anyone can make this sort of allegation and make 2 plus 2 equal 94. PLease be more discrimimating in your reading.
            The conclusion of this article was:

            “Caution is Advisable

            Research is still on-going. Cell phones have only become popular and mainstream in the past decade. Therefore, only now are the long-term effects of radiation from electronics beginning to come to light. Erstwhile, high resolution computerized models, based on imaging data, show that children are more susceptible to the effects of EMFs. Many governments, phone manufacturers, and public health advocates have continued to advise consumers that precautions be taken to avoid undue Electromagnetic Radiation exposure. Users are advised to minimize the exposure of electronic devices to the body by maintaining a safe distance from them, such as by not holding them up close to their body or ear. One might also try a radiation shielding device to prevent touching their electronic devices with bare skin. As children’s bodies are developing, it makes sense to especially minimize their exposure to EMF”.

            Their conclusion is really not far from what I suggested but without the sensationalization.
            Would they giving this advice if the first statement is true? I think the person who wrote this does not understand risks or statistics.

          • Clark

            Paul Barbara 15:19:

            “Is not 400% ‘statistically significant’ enough for you?”

            That shows that you don’t know what statistical significance means. It’s impossible to tell from the 400% figure whether there is any statistical significance or not. That’s why I asked for the raw figures. 400% is ‘relative’ because it means “four times as much as something we haven’t told you”.

            You need to read Bad Science by Ben Goldacre.

      • SA

        Paul
        This is the sort of ‘faith versus science’ argument. Of course you are entitled to believe that Barry Trower is more trustworthy than Cancer Research whilst trying to insinuate that you read somewhere something bad about Cancer Research but cannot lay hands on it. Without proper evidence this is pure hearsay. All I can add here is I hope that if any of us develop any cancer, god forbid, that we would trust someone doing actual cancer research than someone who is completely out of his depth in medicine and genetics and who has himself not done any proper primary research on the subject.

        • Paul Barbara

          @ SA December 22, 2017 at 15:11
          I’m sure you have not read and watched much of Barrie Trower’s articles and videos – had you done so you would not dismiss Barrie’s competence.
          For your information, he was offered the chance by a multi-millionaire to approach Universities with the request to set up a University department, totally funded by the millionaire, to further research the issue of microwave dangers.
          His own University (Exeter, if I remember rightly) ignored his request; when he reminded them, they told him ‘never to contact them again’. He was knocked back by about half a dozen others, with no reason given. Eventually he tried the ‘Open University’, which said the topic was ‘too political’.
          He was totally qualified to lead a University department in the subject.

          • SA

            “For your information, he was offered the chance by a multi-millionaire to approach Universities with the request to set up a University department, totally funded by the millionaire, to further research the issue of microwave dangers.
            His own University (Exeter, if I remember rightly) ignored his request; when he reminded them, they told him ‘never to contact then again”.

            I am not surprised. Universities welcome funds but the projects submitted are subjected to rigorous scientific appraisal and if the science is weak the university would refuse the money. Of course your interpretation is that the university is part of the grand conspiracy to hide the truth, but in fact the truth is much more mundane, the theory does not stand up to scrutiny. We really don’t want to go back to alchemy and witchcraft do we?

          • Clark

            Paul, you say that academics and universities just churn out whatever they’re paid to churn out. But then you write of a multi-millionaire offering to set up an entire department, and it being refused.

            So money talks, and money fails – but whichever way it falls, it always supports your argument. At some point, you should be able to work out that you’re just cherry-picking stories to support what you want to believe.

            If the world really worked as you say, we would still have cars with no seatbelts or anti-lock braking systems, there would be no emissions regulations, tobacco would have pretty packets with no health warnings, US hormone-bearing meat and milk would be saleable in the EU, alcoholic drinks would contain methanol, there would be no ingredients or allergens marked on food products, fridges and aerosol cans would still use CFCs, there would be no thermal fuses in electrical devices, and anyone would be permitted to fit gas appliances.

          • Clark

            Read Bad Science.

            For some reason, Ben Goldacre hasn’t been murdered.

            Going to apply a witch trial? ie. “he’s still alive so his book can’t be any good”. Read it. Then judge.

    • Clark

      SA, thank you for that balanced and logical summary.

      I will leave my wifi switched off since there is simply no reason for it to be on; it just wastes a trivial amount of power while thermally stressing its own components for no purpose. I already practised caution with mobile ‘phones’ – we should call them ‘trackers’ or something, since most people’s achieve more corporate surveillance than they do communication.

      • Paul Barbara

        @ Clark December 22, 2017 at 14:01
        Not just ‘trackers’, but listening posts to all conversations nearby, even while the mobile is switched off (if the ‘Security Service’ remotely set them to that function). That is something Barrie Trower also claims, as does an ex-Mi5 person of my acquaintance, and as various other sources have claimed (and also as Craig Murray claimed, in ‘Murder in Samakand’).

        • Clark

          The remote activation of audio and camera surveillance by government agencies has been suspected for a long time, and was confirmed by Edward Snowden’s documents. Personally, I don’t really bother about it much, and neither does Craig.

          What people don’t generally realise is that they routinely give companies the legal right to spy on them, and their friends, when they click “I AGREE” to terms and conditions to use software and ‘services’:

          – “Spotify now officially even worse than the NSA”:

          https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/21/spotify_worse_than_the_nsa/

          • glenn_nl

            Why aren’t people more worked up about the tens of thousands of words of legalese they agree to all the time?

            Instead want to talk about nefarious plots that have apparently been rumbled by brave truth-seekers. Which the Powers That Be allow to be splattered all over the Intertubes, freely discussed and only dark agents of the state try to counter (such as the tag-team here, no doubt).

            I looked at the “agreement” with WhatsApp the other day. Not only are you giving up all privacy to communications using the App, but it (the App) should be free – at all times – to access a smart-phone’s microphone, cameras, your address list, all media contents, and all other mobile ‘phone usage. Doubtless this data will be sold, used by its owner (Facebook) and passed onto the government. But that’s fine of course – no worries there.

            But that’s not what we’re supposed to worry about – it’s anyone who disagrees with the BS and misinformation, conspiracy theories and utter crap that we post here – that’s the real enemy!

            And Paul – I haven’t forgotten how you posted that Barack Obama is really a woman, and Michelle Obama is really a man. How you can expect to be taken seriously on anything else, while letting that stand, is a mystery to me.

          • Clark

            “Doubtless this data will be sold, used by its owner (Facebook) and passed onto the government

            Nearly, Glenn. Bought, with our own taxes, which also pay for the apparently mostly redundant GCHQ.

            I think it should be the other way around. That data belongs to us, the people that produce it. It’s public property. Facebook should have to buy it off our government. Then the government could charge us less tax, and be in control of our data for us.

    • SA

      Paul
      Something we can agree on is that Al Madar news is more trustworthy concerning news from Syria, than the BBC and The Guardian. This piece of news also explains why Israel conducted several bombing raids on Syrian positions around this area in the last month or so. Wouldn’t it be nice if this became a clear proof of complicity. Talking of which, it was also said that during the siege of Aleppo there were many secret agents from allied forces and some deal was finally struck, but it also explains the extreme response of the Western governments and media to the siege.

      • Paul Barbara

        @ SA December 22, 2017 at 15:17
        ‘…Talking of which, it was also said that during the siege of Aleppo there were many secret agents from allied forces and some deal was finally struck, but it also explains the extreme response of the Western governments and media to the siege.’
        Indeed; and also explains the lack of reporting by the MSM of the thousands of Syrians celebrating the Ist anniversary of the liberation in Aleppo’s streets; only the Daily Mail mentioned it, to my knowledge.
        It’s been an ‘open secret’ amongst Truthers that Is**el has been up to it’s neck supporting the terrorist headchoppers.
        Also, I believe it was in Aleppo that a command post was targeted by Russian planes in rebel-held territory, killing US, UK and Is**eli personnel.

      • Paul Barbara

        @ SA December 22, 2017 at 15:17
        I forgot to mention, there has been no MSM reporting of Is**eli agents assisting the ‘rebels’, who refuse to hand them over to the Syrians.

      • Clark

        Yes. Mainstream reporting of foreign conflict and foreign policy are areas where there is veritably massive distortion.

        Note, however, that most such distortion is achieved by the simple tactics of omission, playing down the facts, or giving prominence to government statements – a very different proposition from the sensationalist conspiracy theories surrounding, for instance, 9/11 or the Sandy Hook shootings.

        Mainstream distortion of foreign conflict is a matter that really needs to be tackled. So it is counter-productive to mash it all in with a load of sexed-up rumours, because doing so causes the valid claims of distortion to be dismissed by association.

  • Paul Barbara

    Re microwave deaths, Mark Purdey is a case in point. He was a West Country farmer, and was entangled in the BSE business. He was certain the government and it’s ‘scientists’ and the Corporations had it wrong, and researched the matter thoroughly. He got to be a REAL thorn in the side of the Establishment. A two people closely associated with him had ‘one car’ crashes, one fatal, the other not. Another guy involved with the BSE also had a fatal ‘one car crash’. He was ferociously harassed, including having a strange guy move into an adjoining farm shortly after he moved (because of harassment), who had a pack of ferocious dogs, and also who literally used to shoot up Mark’s milking shed while he was milking the cows; police said they could do nothing about it.
    He wrote a book (finished by his brother after Mark’s death from a rapid onset aggressive brain cancer):
    ‘Animal Pharm: One Man’s Struggle to Discover the Truth About Mad Cow Disease and Variant CJD’ 1 Nov 2007
    by Mark Purdey and Nigel Purdey. I strongly recommend it.
    Also, a friend of mine had made a 36 minute video interview with him (unbeknown to me at the time):
    ‘What causes BSE, CJD & MS? Organic Farmer Mark Purdey on Organophosphates (2001)’:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MheeiX2w8JU

    Another of the things that occurred was a microwave tower transmitter was also erected in a nearby property; as Barrie Trower explains, these CAN be used to target individuals with very powerful focused beams.

    • SA

      Paul
      I agree that the BSE was a major blot as a botched attempted cover up by the establishment. I immediately thought at the time that it was obvious that it was no longer safe to eat beef and has not eaten any beef since then.

      • Paul Barbara

        @ SA December 22, 2017 at 16:41
        He believed that meat and bone meal were NOT responsible, and he researched (and travelled) over many countries researching.

        • SA

          Now it is very well known that BSE is a prion disease associated with the mutation of scrapie, a neurological disease of sheep, into BSE and hence jumping the species barriere and eventually affecting humans. Now I hadn’t realised that there is yet another ‘conspiracy theory’ implicating organophosphates. As far as I am concerned this last hypothesis is not true and it is well documented that BSE (mad cow disease) is a prion disease. So please Paul, will you up your game.

      • Clark

        SA: = “I immediately thought at the time that it was obvious that it was no longer safe to eat beef…”

        Do you remember your process of realisation?

        • SA

          Clark
          You ask a very good question which has made me reflect. I know that this realisation came before the eventual declaration by the government. I also remember Selwyn Gummer feeding a hamburger to his daughter on TV and thought, how low can a politician sink?
          You may by now have guessed my background. It was just a process of deduction from all the facts that became available. One of the associated memories was sitting with friends in the London Apprentice on the Thames in Isleworth and someone ordered a juicy and rather bloody steak, and me commenting on it and thier regretting eating it later.

          You see the whole thing about conspiracies is that it is the way of the world. Some of it is purely guided by greed but some of it is caution. I think you are right in proposing a new naming system, but a propose a grading system from 0 to 10, everything is a conspiracy would be 10 and believe everything the officials say is 0. I would probably put myself at 6 slightly more than average and maybe you more like 4. I would put some others participating as 9 or 10 on the scale. Please take this in the fun way it was meant to be.

          • Clark

            SA, I’m susceptible to ‘conspirological’ thinking myself. Suspicion of hidden agency is an important human faculty; there is hidden agency; humans do conspire all the time. I used to moderate this website, and that faculty was essential. The comments pour in, but some identities are sock puppets; there isn’t time to compare every IP address against every other, so you develop a healthy suspicion when some comments seem to be reinforcing others a bit too conveniently. But I also got it wrong more than once and saw connections that were not real, and that provoked caution.

            Suspicion of hidden agency is older and deeper than rational thought. It happens spontaneously like an emotion, and as with emotions our thinking minds tend to rationalise around the suspicions it produces. But as M Scott Peck points out, we have to balance our different aspects against each other.

            Conspirological thinking has to be recognised for what it is; partly instinctual, partly a function of mind, and incomplete and misleading on its own. We all have it, we need it, but we also need to apply scepticism to the ideas which emerge from it. We mustn’t go fitting the suspicions together into a huge web that we believe to be there but which can’t actually be shown to exist. As in Scottish law, along with true and false, we need to tag some ideas as not proven.

            Gummer. That’s him, the slime ball. Gummed up good and proper there, didn’t he?

    • Clark

      Paul, do you see what you’ve done here. Your argument goes:

      “Re microwave deaths, whatabout BSE?
      – BSE proves conspiracy, therefore wifi is dangerous”.

      This is how conspiracy theorists argue, and it is why I and others like me don’t take conspiracy theorists seriously. It isn’t that conspiracy theories are necessarily false. It’s that it’s a crap way to make a case. It can be applied to absolutely anything. Saxophonists could start a rumour that listening to violins causes deafness. When the Violinists’ Union says that’s rubbish, we can just shout “but whatabout BSE?” That’s why it’s called “whataboutery”.

      You get the same thing with Twin Tower demolition theory; anyone pointing out the nonsense gets accused of “supporting the official narrative” followed by a gish gallop of other alleged “anomalies” about cellphones, airport security, lampposts at the Pentagon, flight recorders, Arabs in caves, the USS Liberty, the Kennedy assassination etc., as if these made any difference to the dynamics of skyscraper collapse. They don’t. And all the other “anomalies” when questioned will likewise be defended by referring to a similar list, including the allegedly irrefutable Twin Tower demolitions, so it’s all circular and in the end there’s no argument at all.

      The only real message of whataboutery is “you’re a credulous fool. Shut up and let us tell everyone what’s true”.

      • Paul Barbara

        @ Clark December 22, 2017 at 17:41
        ‘…– “Re microwave deaths, whatabout BSE?
        – BSE proves conspiracy, therefore wifi is dangerous”…..’
        Er, not exactly. Let me help you to understand my post.
        I linked in Mark Purdey because it was a clear case of covering up the danger of massive claims against the government if they admitted it was largely due to compulsory organophosphate dipping (no longer compulsory). Mark Purdey’s research led him to other causes as well, but that was the central issue.
        Then, after very heavy (criminal) harassment, and demonisation or ignoring by the MSM, and after a microwave tower was erected on a nearby property, he ‘contracted’ a very aggressive brain cancer, from which he died shortly after.
        I explained the Barrie Trower, a microwave expert who has been requested by governments, at least one African King, a Police Federation, the US military, Parliamentarians and many others to advise them on microwave matters, has stated that very powerful microwaves can be beamed at target individuals from these towers.
        Assassination is one of the ways governments (and Corporations) can, and have in the past, deal with persistent heavy-weight ‘pains in the butt’.
        As I have stated before, I started campaigning for Human Rights in the early 1970’s; this has taught me of just what successive US and British (and other) governments have inflicted on innocent civilians world-wide, including their own citizens. I also have a pretty highly tuned intuition. Together, this gives me the ability to connect dots pretty rapidly; I’m sometimes wrong, but most of the time I turn out to be right, just as I will with controlled demolition of WTC’s 1,2 & 7.

        • Clark

          There was no point killing Purdey because the authorities had to incinerate millions of farm animals all over the UK. There’s no way it could have been covered up; the UK was going to lose its beef export market anyway.

          You’re seeing things that aren’t there, which causes people to ignore other important matters which are there.

        • SA

          The question of erecting a tower to specially assassinate one individual makes a very good base for a novel Paul. Sorry, couldn’t resist this one.
          Seriously though, surely there were others living in the vicinity or did this purpose built assassination tower have no other victims and is it still there? Were the death rays focused to just this one person? Do you think there would have been simpler ways of assassination?

    • Maxter

      @paul. Holy shmoly! I did not know about a BSE cover up! thanks for that youtube link. I am utterly disgusted yet again. Why am i surprised!

      • Paul Barbara

        @ Clark December 22, 2017 at 17:45
        Which makes it very relevant indeed, in my book.
        The official story is totally at variance with the survivors’ reports. And a ‘Mass Casualty Drill’ around the same time! Obviously purely coincidental.

      • Paul Barbara

        @ Clark December 22, 2017 at 18:54
        I don’t know why you keep on repeating ‘..TRUTH, Justice, Peace.’
        I’m sure most of us on this blog agree with you. Are you implying we don’t support those noble aspirations? Surely not.

      • glenn_nl

        Are you, Paul, suggesting that anyone not going along with your rather fanciful notions are against truth, justice, and peace? Yes – actually you are. Because we’re accused of being part of some “tag-team”, agents of the state, “sheeple”, believers in all Official Accounts, and so on.

      • Clark

        Paul, I keep stressing TRUTH by writing it in capitals. What I’m saying is that truth isn’t just whatever you decide it to be. You have to verify evidence and ensure logical consistency; sorting truth from falsity is hard work, far more than just visiting a website and thinking “yeah, that seems right”, which seems to be all so-called Truthers ever do. Determining what’s true is what scientists do as their day job, but you for one are entirely dismissive of that, and prefer to believe things that fit what you’ve already decided.

        Please read Bad Science.

      • Clark

        What I’m saying is that you’re falling at the first hurdle. You can’t get to justice and peace with such a lax attitude to determining what’s true.

      • Paul Barbara

        @ Clark December 23, 2017 at 01:46
        Ah, I got the point at last. It’s only ‘us’ that has to verify and prove stuff, whereas you are exempt.
        You state categorically that the Towers weren’t brought down by controlled demolition; you ignore the spherules of iron (only possible if the iron was molten and thrown out to cool as it travelled through the air – yet no reasonable person claims the ‘fuel and office fires’ were hot enough to melt steel); you ignore unignited nanothermite found in the dust; you ignore ‘squibs’, multiple reports of explosions, multiple flashes just ahead of the collapse line – because they don’t fit your ‘no controlled demolition’ mind-set.

      • Clark

        Here we go with the Whataboutery again – “nanothermite chips” and “iron spherules”.

        There is a widespread myth among so-called Truthers that progressive collapse of the Twin Towers would contradict Newton’s laws. That is a LIE, so I have been debunking it.

        I am SICK of all the LIES. LIES are not compatible with

        TRUTH, Justice, Peace.

        Comprende?

      • Clark

        Arguing the way you do, Paul, is CHEATING, and cheating is incompatible with

        Truth, JUSTICE, Peace.

        It is cheating because you just accumulate a hoard of ‘anomalies’, and then throw half a dozen or so against any argument that looks vaguely related – and that is good enough to convince the credulous, so it’s propaganda, too. It’s an attempt to force the other party to address half a dozen irrelevant things, thus overwhelming them by wasting their time, leaving you ‘victorious’ – which you think is good, because you’re convinced of your own purity.

        Iron spherules – produced during the extensive welding in the construction process.
        “Nanothermite chips” – look irregular and nothing like a precision military technology, ignite at the wrong temperature and produce utterly inadequate energy, very likely chips of primer paint, which is exactly what they look and behave like.
        “Squibs” – air ejections, inevitable during progressive collapse; expected.
        Multiple reports of explosions – at random times, to be expected during fire.
        Multiple flashes just ahead of the collapse line – just not true.

        To be convincing a case has to be coherent, not a random collection of what amount to no more than ammunition.

      • Paul Barbara

        @ Clark December 23, 2017 at 15:11
        ‘Iron spherules – produced during the extensive welding in the construction process.’
        But why are they in the dust in huge quantities?
        “Nanothermite chips” – look irregular and nothing like a precision military technology, ignite at the wrong temperature and produce utterly inadequate energy, very likely chips of primer paint, which is exactly what they look and behave like.’ the nanothermate was painted onto the beams.
        Tests prove that is what the material was.
        “Squibs” – air ejections, inevitable during progressive collapse; expected.’
        No, squibs, as most demolition people will tell you.
        ‘Multiple reports of explosions – at random times, to be expected during fire.’
        Not at all. People who know what explosions sound like, describe them as just that, explosions. Which is why it took over a year, and a Freedom Of Information request, to get the First Responders taped radio messages – over a hundred talking off ‘explosions’.
        ‘Multiple flashes just ahead of the collapse line – just not true.’
        Just not true? So is the following photoshopped?
        ‘9/11 Strong-Case Demolition Charges (Luminous-Flashes of Light) Detonated In WTC 2’:
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HBWJlBgt3E

        ‘To be convincing a case has to be coherent, not a random collection of what amount to no more than ammunition.’
        What is exactly ‘incoherent’ in my argument? I gave a set of facts which suggest that controlled demolition was used upon the Twin Towers (as well as WTC 7), to counter your unproven statements that the Twins came down because of collapses due to planes and fires. What you call ‘ammunition’, I call evidence.

      • Clark

        One minutes fifty seconds into the video you linked and still no evidence – but a lot of dramatic music, and suggestive titles. This generally indicates propaganda; they’re trying to evoke an emotional response.

        OK, at 01:56 we see a flash, well below the crush interface. But the collapse had already started at 01:51! What is this little flash supposed to have achieved? The whole top of the building is already in motion, and I’ve already done the maths which shows that the structure was incapable of stopping it. And clearly, the flash was a result of the collapse, not a cause; probably caused by an electrical short circuit.

        OK, so you’ve attempted to mislead me, and what with writing this up wasted a quarter hour of my life. Just as well I’m already committed to the peace movement, because otherwise you might have just put me off, treating me like an idiot this way. OK, I’ll roll some more YouTube…

        02:42. An arrow indicates an ejection from the falling section, again, after initiation. Again, this can’t have made any contribution to collapse initiation, and must have been effect rather than cause. OK, roll more YouTube…

        03:02, another flash, again in the top section, again after initiation. The same arguments as before apply. Roll YouTube…

        03:17, ejection after initiation. No news there… Roll film… No, hang on. There seems to be a flash a bit earlier, but it’s impossible to pause YouTube accurately enough to check the timing. OK, I’ll download. How long have I been at this now?… So now, working from VLC, it looks like some frames have been removed, because the top of the building suddenly jerks left at initiation. But the flash is definitely after initiation, so it was effect, not cause. Good trumpet section.

        03:30, hang on, what’s going on here? The flash is far clearer this time than on the last bit, of which this is a repeat. Enhanced? “Photoshopped”? Whatever, it is after initiation, so it is irrelevant. Time… Time…

        04:00 – the “Illuminatus” choir has joined in; that always happens eventually. Now we have an actual demolition, so we can see the difference. And what do you know? Flashes are just before the start of collapse. Cause

        04:28, back to the Twin Towers just so there’s no doubt, and yes! A flash after collapse initiation. Effect.

        Enough already! You’ve been sold a dud, Paul. And this happens time after time after time. Twin Tower demolition theory is a false case. It’s disinformation. I’ve checked and checked and checked, claim after claim after claim, and they’re all false.

        It does not matter how many false but suggestive anomalies you collect; ten, a hundred, a thousand falsities do not add up to truth.

      • Clark

        Paul, I’m not going to go through the other points; they’ve all been refuted before. I didn’t dismiss that out of hand; I spent the best part of an hour on it, studying it carefully, and it offers zero evidence for demolition.

        You will piss off critical thinkers by serving up tripe like this. They will think your other claims are false too. You will tarnish our reputation, and when we tell people our government is funding jihadis, they will think “yeah but that lot will believe anything”.

    • Paul Barbara

      @ Macky December 22, 2017 at 17:05
      Quite possible he didn’t have a motive, as he may have been a Patsy set up believing he was helping the FBI or CIA to snare arms traffickers.

  • SA

    Paul
    I
    Still can’t get over what you stated earlier. You believe Barry Trower more than you believe Cancer Research? And on the basis of Pseudoscience on the part of Barry.
    Elsewhere you seem to think that most scientists and doctors and their organisations are part of a big conspiracy. I think this is very dangerous and my feeling is that you should read Bad Science as suggested by Clark and Glenn. It really is an interesting book.

    • Paul Barbara

      @ SA December 23, 2017 at 05:58
      Would you like to illustrate some of Barrie Trower’s ‘pseudoscience’?
      Re Cancer Research, for openers, Harpal Kumar ‘earns’ £4,800 a week – nice work if you can get it.
      I don’t need to read Bad Science, I used to read his column in the Guardian way back in the day when the Guardian was a paper to be reckoned with.
      No, never most scientists and doctors are not ‘part of a great conspiracy’, but most of their organisations are led by conspirators.
      That is the nature of the conspiracy – THEY put their ‘people’ in places where they can use them for their own agenda (where ‘THEY’ can be a number of groups, but working roughly to the same agenda, controlling and profiting off the general public).
      Doctors are faced with a difficult dilemma – they may well have serious doubts about giving poisonous adjuvant-laden injections, but they may get struck off if they caution their patients. And it is a balance – they know that the injections may conceivably save the patients life.I have no responsibility that way – I don’t take vaccinations (since I woke up to the scam), and caution others to do the same, but I’m not a doctor, so they make up their own mind.
      I believe I read somewhere that a quarter of India’s nurses refuse vaccinations, but of course the other side of that is that three quarters of the nurses do.

        • Paul Barbara

          @ Clark December 23, 2017 at 14:16
          Let me put it this way – i read enough of his articles to have an idea where he was at.
          What do you think he would make of 9/11 being an ‘Inside Job’, JFK being the work of the US ‘Deep State’, of Princess Di being bumped off by our ‘Deep State’?
          Exactly, so I won’t waste my time on him.

          • Clark

            Right. So at some point you decided upon your conclusion, and now you craft both your ‘research’ and the messages you publicise to suit it.

            In other words, you are a propagandist, and uninterested in the truth. Since you have no use for the truth, you do NOT support

            TRUTH, Justice, Peace.

          • Paul Barbara

            @ Clark December 23, 2017 at 14:36
            Well, ‘…What do you think he would make of 9/11 being an ‘Inside Job’, JFK being the work of the US ‘Deep State’, of Princess Di being bumped off by our ‘Deep State’?…’

          • Clark

            This is more whataboutery, which is cheating, contradicting “Justice” in “Truth, Justice, Peace”.

            I have no idea what Ben Goldacre thinks about those things because I have seen nothing from him about those subjects. He’s highly critical of Blair, objects to lies and concealment, and seems none too impressed with the Iraq war. He’s highly critical of the corporate media. You’d discover all that about Goldacre if you read Bad Science.

          • SA

            Paul
            Cancer research is a charity and Harpal Kumar was the chief executive and yes he was estimated to earn that much. But that proves only that the pay structures in our society are unbalanced and why single out cancer research? If you want to assess cancer research then I suggest that you look at thier programme which is scientifically driven and thoroughly vetted and peer reviewed, and by the successes of thier research and the impact on the progress of treatment of cancer in the last 20 years in which the research they fund is in the foremost of this progress. Now it is illogical to criticise the CR whilst quoting another example of how an unnamed millionaire wanted to fund an unscientific project which was rejected by several universities. We don’t know who this millionaire is but it is OK for him to be a millionaire because he is funding someone who says something that rhymes with your beliefs.

            “Doctors are faced with a difficult dilemma – they may well have serious doubts about giving poisonous adjuvant-laden injections, but they may get struck off if they caution their patients. ”

            Paul, I am not really sure you really know how medicine, doctors and nurses work if you make that statement. You are basically ignoring all the medical advances of the last 100 years or so, because there have been a few high profile mistakes, but millions of lives have been by advances in medicine and vaccinations. Have you heard of smallpox? It was a devastating disease that either killed the patients or left them badly scarred and has been completely eradicated by vaccination. Another one is polio which caused muscular paralysis, now almost eradicated. And the major effects vaccination had on TB which was a killer just to name three.

            “What do you think he would make of 9/11 being an ‘Inside Job’, JFK being the work of the US ‘Deep State’, of Princess Di being bumped off by our ‘Deep State’?
            Exactly, so I won’t waste my time on him.”

            Paul the above declaration from you, I am afraid is somewhat grand. You mean to say you will only read or discuss things with those who agree with you?

          • Paul Barbara

            @ SA December 23, 2017 at 16:56
            Er, no, not exactly. But anyone who blithely would get away saying 9/11 wasn’t an ‘Inside Job’, or JFK wasn’t assassinated by the US ‘Deep State’, or Princess Di wasn’t assassinated courtesy of the UK ‘Deep State’ is, in my book, not worth bothering with.
            NGO’s, Human Rights Organisations and ‘Charities’ have, in large, but not totally, been taken over be the ‘PTB’.
            IF you want me to present some examples, I will. But please don’t waste my time.

      • Clark

        “Re Cancer Research, for openers, Harpal Kumar ‘earns’ £4,800 a week – nice work if you can get it.”

        It’s worth putting that in perspective:

        Bearing in mind what we know about boardroom pay, what would you expect to be the annual salary for the chief executive officer of an organisation with a famous brand name, about 4,000 paid employees and an annual turnover of about half a billion pounds?

        – Let’s assume, for good measure, that this chief executive has a first-class degree in chemical engineering from Cambridge and an MBA from Harvard. What is she or he worth? Are you thinking half a million? A million? More?

        – In fact the details above describe Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, who earns less than £220,000 per year. I will be the first to agree that this is a far from a miserly sum. It is what is commonly known as shitloads of dosh. On the other hand, it is less than the take-home pay of at least 40 local authority chief executives, and about a 20th of the pay of the equivalent boss in the private sector.

        – This week, Sir Stephen Bubb, head of Acevo, which represents chief executives from the charity and non-profit sector, was subjected to a ritual grilling by the parliamentary select committee on public administration over the issue of charity executive pay. He was in bullish mood, telling journalists: “There are all sorts of inequities in pay, but while nobody gets worked up about footballers, the chief executive of the Red Cross is pilloried.”

        https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/19/problems-charity-sector-executive-pay-bosses

        It seems to me that the real issue here is the neoliberal culture and the huge inequality of wealth that it sustains.

        • Paul Barbara

          @ Clark December 23, 2017 at 14:31
          The figure I found was £240,000, from which I came up with approx. £4,800 a week.
          So the guy’s got degrees – how does he use them? Do you think the CEO is going to be found in the lab, or in his gentleman’s club or the Boardroom?
          The Red Cross is a right rip-off. They collected about half a billion dollars, and built just 6 permanent homes (but they did build a luxury hotel there, got to give them their due):
          ‘Red Cross Built Exactly 6 Homes For Haiti With Nearly Half A Billion Dollars In Donations’:
          https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/04/red-cross-haiti-report_n_7511080.html

          Haiti was one of George HW Bush’s first targets for depopulation, as overheard by Cathy O’Brien and quoted verbatim in ‘Access Denied’.

          • Clark

            But I see the CEO of the US Red Cross is called Gail McGovern, which is the same surname as Ray McGovern. So by your own argument that an artist called Urban must have rigged explosives in the Twin Towers because his name matches that of Urban Moving Systems who were a Mossad front organisation, US Red Cross must be the good guys…

            All you presented was more whataboutery. Mashing everything up like this does NOT constitute valid argument, as I illustrated above.

            Raise your game.

          • SA

            Clark wrote

            “Raise your game”.

            Hear hear.

            Please paul, you do a lot of reading, a lot of activism and a lot of writing. Please make it more effectiuve by being selective in which conspiracy you want to promote. There are some very much worth writing about, like western interference in the ME but I would be more careful where science and medicine are involved because the facts are very much there for you to seek if the truth is what you are after.

          • Node

            Paul Barbara,

            You have my genuine admiration and thanks for continuing to present your case in a polite and reasoned manner despite the continuous barrage of insults directed at you. I interpret the abuse as a sign of weakness on the part of your detractors – they are hoping to drag you into a slagging match which will result in either the deletion of your posts or at least a distraction from them. If they could produce convincing refutations, they surely would.

            I don’t agree with everything you say, but I believe most of it is pretty near the mark and that your general world view is similar to my own, so I’m grateful for your patience and determination to spread the word. Keep on doing what you’re doing.

          • John Goss

            Paul Barbara, I want to echo Node’s comment.

            While I do not think Haiti and the fact that the Red Cross squandered all that money given generously belongs on this thread it is true. I have a Haitian colleague who tells me too that following the eathquake the Clintons moved their people in until by 1910 they got their own president in the body of singer Michel Josef Martelly (elections overseen by the OAS – Organisation of American States) in a very shady election in which many did not have a voice. Before the earthquake the democratically elected people’s president Aristide had been deposed in 2004 and a creeping change in electoral procedures took place. Add to that MINUSTAH forces introduced cholera which had not been seen in Haiti for more than 100 years.

            People seem to want to recommend books to you. You should recommend “We Have Dared to be Free” by Dady Chery on the struggle of Haitians against occupation.

            The attacks on you are vicious. When somebody takes a bite out at you all the pirhanas in the shoal are round to have their share. The way they treat you is abominable and ungentlemanly. I have had to pull Clark up about this at least twice before. With his record he has absolutely no right to ask you to raise your game. But as Node says you have the patience of a saint not to bite back. Independent readers of these comments can see where the personal attacks come from. They will make up their minds who the decent person is. Have a good Christmas.

          • Clark

            So, we should:

            * Encourage people to not get vaccinated,
            * Judge who is trustworthy on the basis of their ethnicity,
            * Reject critical thinking in favour of our intuition,
            * Deploy whataboutery to confound logical discussion,
            * Refuse to consider countervailing evidence,
            * Refuse to consider preponderance of evidence,
            * Give serious consideration to the ex US president’s wife’s genitals, and
            * Encourage the spread of fake news.

            Yeah; then the world would be a much better place.

          • John Goss

            Well, the Michael Obama stuff’s been around for years, you know a bit like the Jimmy Savile stuffg was.

            http://newsbeat.co.ke/gossip/irrefutable-scientific-proof-michelle-obama-is-indeed-a-man/

            For me this post is about 9/11 so I rarely engage Paul on other issues. Have you ever thought of doing the same? I mentioned before that you do not need to engage with Paul if you do not like what he’s saying. You should not think it is your God-given right to try to correct everybody on everything. You’re struggling enough with your waffle on 9/11 so why don’t you consider concentrating onraising your game on that subject?

          • Paul Barbara

            @ Node December 23, 2017 at 19:08
            CXheers, Node. A lot of folks just don’t seem to get it.
            No sweat about not agreeing with everything I write – who the heck would!
            Even I ain’t ‘peifect’.

          • glenn_nl

            God’s sake, could you self-congratulationists form a circle-jerk somewhere in private, pleeezze!

            Paul has put forward every last conspiracy dredged off the ‘net, and never bothered to defend any of them – despite demanding hours of time from anyone doubting this nonsense.

            Look at this 2-hour video, and counter the arguments! Look at this next one!

            *
            Barack Obama is a woman. His wife Michelle is really a man. Hillary Clinton is dying of Parkinsons. There are just so many ludicrous assertions as to make it baffling that anyone would take this seriously, yet you’re willing to salute his bravery?

            FFS – this place is festooned with the self-congratulatory disillusioned, all patting themselves on the backs for standing strong against any sort of appeals to rationality!

            But does Paul respond to anyone who bothers to take the effort to look at the references he makes? Of course not.

            However, that’s taken as bravery by you, Node! It’s brave to continually assert unsupported slurs against doctors, nurses, scientists, and everyone on the public payroll, basically, in your book?

            Seems like it’s a pretty low bar to winning approval. Just as long as it’s anti-government, that’s good enough. Kind of gives a lie to the idea that government sceptics are a discerning bunch.

          • Paul Barbara

            @ glenn_nl December 24, 2017 at 01:32
            You really are a little, lets just say. ‘mistaken’.
            ‘…Barack Obama is a woman. His wife Michelle is really a man. Hillary Clinton is dying of Parkinsons. There are just so many ludicrous assertions as to make it baffling that anyone would take this seriously, yet you’re willing to salute his bravery?…’
            Of those three accusations, only one is true, that ‘Michelle’ Obama is a transvestite.
            And I have put up supporting evidence.
            What do you say to that?

          • Node

            Glenn_uk,

            Serious offer :

            I’ll give a tenner to your favourite charity if you can demonstrate that even one single sentence of what you wrote is relevant to anything I said.

      • SA

        Paul
        I guess you are asking me to try and write a point by point refutation of what Barrie Trower ever wrote. I am afraid that is asking too much.
        As someone trained in science, used to research methodology and used to scientific publishing, I can see if an argument is made in a scientific , rational way in order to make a closer assessment of whether the claims are correct. Sensationalised claims using emotional language do not fall under the name of scientific research.
        I notice that your approach is totally different, and therefore forgive me if I say, alien to the scientific method. You categorise what you feel you want to read with those who agree with your theories, you have stated that clearly.
        On the subject of microwaves I spent some time looking at this because it is an important issue, and you immediately started diverting the topic by trying to denigrate Cancer Research in an irrelevant way. You then say that professionals are duped by governments and therefore we really can’t trust any official organisation.
        Now Paul if you are an anarchist who does not believe in government with a small g, then that is OK, that is a political belief system that one may agree with, but I don’t believe you are.
        I as you know from my other posts is a firm believer that the current state of the world political system is a continuation in a sanitised way, of colonialism. The lies of Blair and Bush about Iraq were so obvious. I left the Labour Party in 1990 because I could see then the party then was not a socialist one.
        I have sort of digressed here but what I mean is that we cannot treat science in the same way we treat politics, they are completely opposed. Yes governments sometimes misuse science, and those in power in the dark ages used torture and murder to prevent people realising that the earth is not flat but your approach seems to be to throw out the baby with the bath water.
        Sorry I am unable to reply by spending several hours trying a point by point refutation if everything that Trower wrote it is sort of like asking me to write a scientific treatise on witchcraft.
        And one of the biggest health conspiracies staring us in the eyes is how tobacco and alcohol have been promoted by successive governments because it gets big revenue. We know that millions have died because of smoking and many continue to die and yet no country has banned smoking. Is that not a major conspiracy worth writing about? And alcohol?
        On this note I wish you best seasonal greetings.

        • Paul Barbara

          @ SA December 24, 2017 at 05:27
          ‘..I guess you are asking me to try and write a point by point refutation of what Barrie Trower ever wrote….’
          Er, not exactly. You accused Barrie Trower of ‘pseudoscience’, so surely you can come up with a few examples?
          Otherwise, how did you come up with that assessment?

          • SA

            No, you have to convince me that Barrie Trower is a recognised geneticist, he is not. You also have to tell me how much scientific output he has produced and also why you suspect Cancer research before I will spend any time trying to refute something that is self evident.

  • Clark

    So this is how it seems to me:

    Conspiracy theorists are people who fail to balance their natural suspicion of hidden agency with rationality. They disdain verification and avoid counter-arguments, and rarely apply rational scepticism to that which they believe.

    Conspiracy theorists bolster their own self-image by believing that they have found hidden or suppressed knowledge. They look down on others as lesser people who are too conformist and too frightened to consider this supposed knowledge.

    Conspiracy theorists bolster each other’s self image by never criticising others’ conspiracy theories, even when contradicting their own, and by giving each other nice ego massages when any conspiracy theories are criticised.

    The majority-belief conspiracy theorists are regarded as “sheeple” by most of the minority-belief groups. Many 9/11 conspiracy theorists are anti-Semitic, but apparently all 9/11 conspiracy theorists act as if this were not so.

    There is little point attempting rational discussion with conspiracy theorists, because their beliefs are not rational but ego-driven.
    – – – – –

    But each person has choice, and with practice, each person can change their habits of mind. Being a conspiracy theorist is therefore voluntary, a personal choice rather like choosing a religion.

    • Clark

      Corollary:

      “Deep State” affiliated Google, the most powerful corporation in the world, and its subsidiary YouTube, have been encouraging the proliferation of conspiracy theories for many years, possibly because conspiracy theories are inherently anti-rational, divisive and disempowering, and thus serve as a powerful means to undermine independent media, drawing attention and activism away from genuine crimes of the corpocracy.

      Note and warning, the above is a conspiracy theory. 😀

    • SA

      Clark
      “But each person has choice, and with practice, each person can change their habits of mind. Being a conspiracy theorist is therefore voluntary, a personal choice rather like choosing a religion.”

      But isn’t politics also a system of beliefs that is often unprovable? The closeness and interactions between politics and religion is clear and as in a different discussion on this site, often resented in being discussed. So is believing in conspiracy theories a religion or a political movement?

  • Peter Beswick

    A bunch of people at NIST got together and came up with an unproven explaination of how the buildings came down.

    =

    Conspiracy Theorists

  • Peter Beswick

    Anybody know what caused the explosions witnessed before, during and after the aircraft strikes?

  • Peter Beswick

    I heard a crazy conspiacy theory that WTC7 was rigged with explosives after it caught on fire and started to collapse.

    Some crazy people out there

    • Paul Barbara

      @ Clark December 23, 2017 at 23:01
      And you’re that man who will save us from perdition, and show us the errors of our ways?

      • glenn_nl

        Clark’s pretty good at showing errors in your reasoning.

        You are not that good at defending any points that you ever raise. Dump and run appears to be your game, which is pretty much the same game that all propagandists use. They don’t defend their lies, they just put them forward and let them do their evil work.

        There’s not a single point which you have ever raised, that you’re willing to see to it’s conclusion, and then admit you’re wrong or prove you’re right. You won’t admit that either, of course.

        Far easier to move on to the next point.

        I don’t think you are of bad faith, Paul, but I do believe you are incredibly lazy, in thinking that a shed-full of half-baked assertions and half truths make evidence. The plural of anecdote is not evidence.

  • Paul Barbara

    Como no? as they used to say in Nicaragua during the US-organised ‘Contra’ attacks (and I’m sure they still do, because it is a delightful expression) – (not at all dissimilar to their poxy (sorry, Proxy) attacks nowadays in the Middle East (re Contra).
    Bit of a kerfuffle, but I’m sure well-intentioned readers will figure out what I’m trying to put across.

  • John Goss

    Stop misrepresenting me and others. I gave Trump a chance. I gave Poroshenko a chance. I gave Obama a chance. They, MSM, those you perpetually support, have engineered all the western elections.I hoped Trump would have 9/11 investigated and had to give him that chance. When he committed an impeachable offence I was the first to call for his impeachment and I linked you to my FB page doing exactly that.

    The video about him claiming the towers were strong, though obviously genuine, so upset those I assume were behind the demolition, they told him to shut up. My understanding was a week later he had shut up. I did not know that at the time. When those people tell you to shut up you shut up. They are not nice people like you. They may even have offered him the Presidency to shut up.

    Nevertheless what he said was true. Ask him? Ask a journalist to ask him. You should guess. Nobody will ask him. He is just another puppet. He was bought. He pretended, as they all do, to draw in all the people. I bet nobody ever gets to ask that question.

    But you, with your pretensions to science, cannot see how strong all those buildings were. Thankfully others can.

  • Paul Barbara

    Clark answered one of my post with total denial. The most illogical one one was that he denied the existence of light flashes just ahead of the collapse sequence.
    I put a very clear video link up, proving that this was in fact the case.
    I can only assume that Clark went haywire, and posted some BS that got the whole argument removed, although I had not infringed any guidelines.
    The evidence was there to see.
    I will resurect it, in good time.
    Hope Clark is happy in getting his shown to be wrong statement, and my evidence, removed.
    This Cat is long in the tooth, and hangs in for the long haul.

    • glenn_nl

      Paul – why bother pretending you’re interested in actual facts?

      Your truth is whatever suits you, at any given moment.

      Why bother anyone else with your notions? It’s clear you’re not doing the scientific thing – testing a theory – because you ignore anything you don’t want to hear.

      What I’m getting at is why all this bother, pretending to be serious and scientific, when you’re everything but?

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