NIST Notes the Oddity of the "Port Wing" Fuel

In one section of this large post, I noted an apparent lack of fuel spraying out from the putative second plane's port wing as the wing disintegrated.

Turns out, NIST noted the same oddity:

Given the likelihood that a large amount of aviation fuel from the aircraft's port fuel tank was spread across the 79th floor during the impact, perhaps the most noteworthy observation on the east face was the absence of large fires on the 79th (with the exception of the debris pile on the north face) and the 80th floors for the initial 25 minutes of the fires.

(page 85)

Link here (warning, LARGE PDF file).

Look at the fire maps on pages 76, 78, 81, 83 and the integrated map on page 85. There is far less fire on floor 79, where the port wing officially went in, then on the 81-83 floors, where the starboard wing officially went in. And this large number of fires on the east side of floors 81-83 were all AFTER a great deal of fuel was used in the huge fireball that came out of that side of the building!

I'm not saying this proves "no plane", but it is odd. ALL the fuel seems to have gone on the east side of the building, though the plane hit only slightly off-center.

Even more odd, is that I cannot find a reference to fuel going down south tower elevator shafts-- though this was well-documented for the north tower. If anyone knows a reference to fuel going down a south tower elevator, please let me know.

The bottom line is: where did all the fuel from the port wing tank go? It certainly could not have gone into the fireball, since the fireball erupted from the north-east corner of the building, from floors 81-83. This is a significant distance from where the port wing officially went in: mostly on the center of the 79th floor, on the south side.

Neither Bush Nor the Press Can Handle the Truth

You MUST watch Colbert's performance (video available at Crooks and Liars). It is truly both amazingly funny and horrifically biting.

I agree with what Peter Daou says.

The Unconstitutional President

Oy:

Bush challenges hundreds of laws
President cites powers of his office

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | April 30, 2006

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Yes, Bush may feel like he is free to disregard the constitution, but he would NEVER do anything really illegal like approve a false-flag terror attack on the US... right?

A Critique of the Complete Official Version of the South Tower Hit

Everyone knows a hijacked jet slammed into the south tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11, resulting in a spectacular fireball.

We ALL saw it on TV, right?

But what if the airplane never existed? What if the story of a hijacked airplane was a giant hoax, used as a linch-pin to sell the official 9/11 story?

What follows is a multi-point presentation of the complete South WTC tower attack-- and a critique of this story.

I think that there is no doubt that the official story of this central event of 9/11 simply doesn't hold up to serious scrutiny.

O.S. = official story (in some cases the official story has not been fleshed out completely, and in these instances, I try to make the best case for the official story).

O.S. 1) Terrorists hijacked a 767 and a hijacker pilot on a suicide mission took over controls of the plane.

Critique: It is unclear how this was accomplished given the hijackers were only armed with knives, boxcutters, and possibly pepper spray and fake bombs. In particular, it is unclear how the hijackers got the pilots out of their seats without ground control being alerted of a hijacking. It seems unlikely the pilots would give up their seats without a struggle, and the pilots were large armed services veterans. It is not clear how the hijackers took the cockpit by surprise, given that at least two of the 9/11 hijackings had fights/struggles in the passenger compartment as the hijackers tried to move to the cockpit.

O.S. 2) The hijacker pilot navigated to New York City and approached the WTC complex from Southern manhattan at a speed between 500 and 600 mph. The plane was seen approaching Manhattan by several video cameras.

Critique: Given that the hijacker pilot had never flown a large jet before, this feat seems highly unlikely-- particularly given the extreme speed, which was at the operational limit for the aircraft. Near sea level, such a speed could even damage the plane. It is hard to imagine someone who had never flown this type of craft before steering and descending the plane effectively at this speed. For an unknown reason, some shots show the plane approaching directly from the south, while other videos show the plane coming from the southwest. Different videos show different rates of descent. It is hard to understand how one plane could take markedly different approach paths, unless one or more videos were faked.

O.S. 3) The hijacker pilot needed to make a last second course alteration, and so banked the plane to the left for the last few hundred feet of approach. This event was captured by a few video cameras.

Critique: One video ("Park Foreman") shows the plane making an extremely rapid and smooth roll to the left (though oddly the plane's course does not obviously change). Given the extreme speed, this maneuver is not trivial, and it seems to occur too fast and smoothly for a huge jet being flown by a first-time pilot. Moreover, for a suicide pilot in the last incredible intense seconds of a massive and long-anticipated attack, it is hard to believe that the pilot wouldn't OVER-compensate, and jerk the plane even farther to the left, as opposed to the seemingly controlled piloting that is observed in the videos. Remember again, officially the plane was flying at near maximum speed, making any maneuver very tricky. Interestingly though, this apparent last-second course-correction would tend to rule out remote control guidance of the plane, since guidance systems should have made the plane come in straight on target. The idea that someone was using a joystick from a remote location to control the plane would seem to have some technical problems. However, if the plane were a computer-generated image (CGI), this last-second maneuver would be no problem to add to the video, and would basically add extra drama to the imagery.

O.S. 4) The plane smashed into the south WTC tower full speed, and this event was captured by multiple video cameras. The plane hit the building almost perfectly straight on, such that both wings and wing-mounted engines impacted at about the same time.

Critique: Four of the 29 known videos of the second plane showed the plane directly impact the building, and all four showed the plane enter the building smoothly, without slowing, without any part breaking off. This will be discussed more below. However, there are other odd things about the second hit videos: 1) the plane enters the building at slightly different places in different videos, and 2) the timing of the fireball appearance after the plane goes in is different between different videos. Although live video shots of this event were shown on TV, there are serious anomalies/oddities in the initial presentation of this event. More the suspiciousness of this "live" footage here and here and here.

O.S. 5) Because the plane was banked when it hit, the plane impacted 7 different floors (see Figure 1). The fuselage impacted two different floors and the 150 foot long wings struck several more floors. Specifically, the port wing struck across two floors while the starboard wing struck across four floors.
Figure 1:


Critique: One HAS to wonder why the plane doesn't really line up with the hole very well. How can the engines get in when there are columns blocking it? Moreover, the plane should have made a BIGGER hole in the wall than its profile, not a smaller hole, if it truly smashed through the wall without anything breaking off. Next, take a good look at that large chunk of wall laying right in the bottom of the center hole where the fuselage is supposed to have entered. The only possible explanation is that the plane pushed aside this large section of wall as it went in, much like a kitty-door folds up as the kitty walks through, and that after the plane "passed" through, the folded section of wall broke off and fell down to the bottom of the hole. However, this explanation strains credulity. A plane that smashes through the wall full-speed, if we even assume that is possible, is not going to fold up a broken-off section of wall and leave it right next to the entry hole. This large section of steel columns should be pushed farther inside, particularly considering that according to the videos, the tail of the plane passed into the building without breaking off, and the tail should have caught on this chunk of columns and carried it inwards.

O.S. 6) The plane went into the building, smashing though multiple thick steel columns of the outer wall, without slowing, showing signs of break-up, or any immediate explosion. The extreme mass and speed of the plane was no match for the outer columns, and they gave way to the plane.

Critique:Watch the flash video of the plane entering the building. Does this look real? Does a real plane behave this way? I have no problem with the fact of the fuselage entering, but the lack of immediate explosion, lack of crumpling and lack of deceleration defy belief. Remember, this impact was centered at the 80th floor of a 110 story building. The outer walls were supporting much of the weight of the 30 floors above, and these outer walls were constructed of 13/16 inch steel columns. Then there were also the multiple floor slabs that dissect that plane's path. Floor slabs include heavy steel spandrels where the floor meets the outer wall, 3 inch concrete and steel support trusses. Moreover, the 160 foot plane impacted at least one extremely strong core column after penetrating only 30 feet into the building. If not the outer columns and floor slabs, this impact should have slowed the plane-- but according to the videos, it didn't! Of course, a digital plane can pass easily through steel and concrete without slowing.


O.S. 7) The wings of the plane, on video, were seen to smoothly pass into the building (see Figures 2 and 3), also here; post-impact photos of the entry hole showed several columns near the central hole were sliced through. Less clear is what happened to the thinner, outer sections of the wings; they did not seem to sever columns but still damaged them. The outer sections of wings must have disintegrated upon impacting these distant columns, with some sections of wings breaking through, and some sections shredding upon impact. Little to no fuel was kept in the outer sections of wings and so no significant fuel was spilled to spark an immediate explosion.
Figure 2:

Figure 3:


Critique: there is no good explanation for what happened to the wings; their behavior defies physics. The behaviour of the wings is discussed here and here. I think wings on a real plane would have broken off and exploded upon impacting the steel columns of the outer wall. Wings are semi-hollow segmented constructs of aluminum, they are not stronger than steel. Wings frequently break off in other plane crashes. In a slow speed impact, is there any doubt that a thick steel column would rip apart a wing? At high speed, this would only have happened QUICKER. Of course, digital wings can easily pass through steel columns. In reality, the wing-like damage to the outer columns must have been mimicked by precision pre-planted explosives.

O.S. 8) The fuselage of the plane, once inside, impacted a core column of the WTC tower (see Figure 4). This column was substantially larger than the outer wall columns. This column was only aout 30 feet in from the outer wall. There is no data on what happened to this column. We can hypothesize that this column, and the one to the north of it (in line with the plane's path) were minimally damaged by the plane due to their massive strength. Since the plane did not slow upon impact, the plane must have shredded around this column and the one north of it, causing almost complete destruction of the fuselage. Momentum carried the rest of the plane, including the huge tail structure, full-speed into the building as the fuselage shredded against the columns.
Figure 4:


Critique: the lower superstructure of the fuselage that supported much of the weight of the plane and held it together, was a continuous rigid structure. Impact of the fuselage superstructure on a massive core column should have slowed the plane significantly, since the force of the impact would have been transmitted through the plane's framework. The core columns were massive, thick steel entities and would not be expected to be severed by a impact with a light-weight aluminum plane. If we assume there was a plane, the only explanation is that the plane broke up after impacting the core column, since the plane officially disintegrated AFTER entering the building. But if this is the case, then why didn't the plane slow? We can see in the video that the tail of the plane smoothly passed into the building following the same initial course of the plane. The idea that the huge 30 foot tail of the 767 passed into the building at full-speed and without deviation in its angle SIGNIFICANTLY AFTER the plane impacted a core column defies common sense. Overall, in the larger sense, we have a huge problem with what officially happened. The 160 foot long plane enters the 208 foot wide building, seemingly indestructible as it passes completely into the building. Yet somehow, in the last 48 feet, the plane disintegrates. This simply defies physics. On the other hand, a computer image of a plane, would certainly be able to pass into the building in the manner seen in the 9/11 videos.

O.S. 9) The starboard wing was torn off from the plane by the corner core column (Figure 4) and was also shredded by the various floor slabs it impacted.

Critique: Again we have the problem with the wing entering the building seemingly in an indestructible fashion, then getting sliced into pieces and spilling fuel.

O.S. 10) Much of the plane's fuel was coincidentally carried in the starboard wing, such that when this wing was torn and shredded, the fuel spilled out with a large amount of momentum.

Critique: if the fuel tanks were as full as is always claimed in the official story, it seems highly unlikely that little to no fuel would be in the port wing.

O.S. 11) A few sections of the fuselage and starboard wing had enough momentum to break all the way through the building. The fuel exited the northeast corner of the building with this debris in a large mass about the size of the fuselage, but this mass quickly erupted into a massive fireball (Figure 5).
Figure 5:


Critique: this large object that initially appears out the north face of the south tower is very odd. It is large enough to be the fuselage, yet a fuselage should not explode massively and essentially evaporate as this object does. The flash movies on this page show this odd phenomenon in good detail. If this object that bursts out of the corner is not the fuselage, what is it? And what causes the object to explode the way it does?

O.S. 12) In particular, a section of the starboard wing that traversed the 83rd floor had a large amount of fuel and scraped across the east wall of the tower, starting the east wall fireball (Figure 5, panel 2).

Critique: the explosive pimples that appear on the side of the building at floor 83 are odd. The only official explanation can be that they are generated by a shredded portion of the starboard wing. Even if we assume a shredded section of wing exploded against the wall, it is hard to believe so much fuel was carried in this thin outer section of wing. Further, the explosions occur outwards from the wall but also travel along the wall. It is hard to imagine how a section of wing can hit against the inside wall, start an explosion, but keep traveling, hit against the wall again, start another explosion, and hit against the wall AGAIN, and start another explosion. Watch the video. How can one section of wing do this?

O.S. 13) The port wing of the plane carried little fuel and was completely destroyed by the core columns and thus did not produce significant damage, explosion or fire on the west side of the building.

Critique: a true oddity is that where the rest of the plane impacted the core, there were few if any fires reported or seen in pictures and videos . Further, in contrast to the North tower hit, I could not find reports of fuel going down the elevator shafts in the South tower. How can this be? The bulk of the plane clearly impacted the core structure (Figure 4), and officially a great deal of fuel should have been in the port wing and fuselage.

O.S. 14) Damage to the core columns from the fuselage, plus fires started by the remaining plane fuel, significantly weakened the tower structural columns at the point of impact, causing the top 30 floors of the building to tip.

Critique: the top 30 floors clearly started to tip, as seen in several videos. (No, I don't think these videos were faked; I think only the plane image was manipulated). If we assume a plane attack, there is no reason to think the core columns that supported much of the weight of the building were damaged. If core columns were damaged by a plane, the plane should have broken through the other side of the building, since not even core columns could stop it. If we assume significant numbers of core columns WERE damaged by a plane, the building should have started tipping immediately after the crash. But ultimately, the idea that jet fuel-induced hydrocarbon fires could weaken the massive thick steel core columns enough on just one side to cause the whole top of the building to topple, simply doesn't hold up. The outer columns of the building were not even particularly damaged on the side where the top started to tip (to the east).

15) The tipping upper tower reached the point of no return, and the top 30 floors of the tower broke off and fell down, starting a global collapse of the complete tower.

It is not clear how the top 30 floors of the tower, which were undamaged, disintegrated in a matter of two seconds. Also not clear is why black jets of smoke were seen shooting out of the upper 30 floors as the top of the tower started to tilt. In the absence of demolition, there is no explanation for what caused the tipping top of the tower to stop falling over on its side and instead to disintegrate.

16) The collapse of the towers released so much energy that the black boxes of the plane were destroyed (officially).

The idea that both black boxes were completely destroyed (as well as the black boxes from the North tower plane) is hard to believe, given the strength of the boxes and that human remains were found in the rubble. Unofficially, it was reported the black boxes WERE found but were kept secret for some unknown reason. My interpretation is that there were never any black boxes to find, because no plane ever struck the tower!

Okay, perhaps you're onto something-- but what about all those videos and photographs of the plane? There are indeed a lot of videos, perhaps even TOO many. I have found 29 different videos that capture the 2nd plane before it hit the WTC. These show the plane for varying lengths of time, for less than a second to almost ten seconds in one case. 29 videos of such an extremely transient event that could only be seen from very select angles seems like a lot to me. A careful scrutiny of the videos reveals a number of abnormalities, most strikingly the fact that different videos show different approach paths for the plane (as indicated above). The more one analyzes these videos, the more one should be struck with their obvious peculiarities in many different regards. I have discussed the large number of videos in more depth here. Overall, the background story is far too hazy on all these videos for us to have confidence in their veracity. The photos that exist of the putative second plane before it hit the tower are also similarly odd. Some of the photos are simply laughable fakes. Other photos show the plane coming in too low for where it impacted. Other photos have oddities, such as the famous Carmen Taylor photo of the plane right before it hit, which shows a plane with a clearly abnormal bulge under the starboard wing root. Many of the anomalies of the second plane images are covered in this fine article by Marcus Icke. The bottom line is that I believe all plane images in photos and videos were added in using computer graphics and computer animation.

But what about all the eye-witnesses?
In fact, some witnesses said they saw a plane, some eye-witnesses said there were missiles being shot at the building (this is even written in police reports and a CNN reporter says people told him missiles were being shot at the building) and some eye-witnesses saw the building explode but saw no plane at all (also here). Some people may have seen a plane that flew by after the North tower was hit and before the second building exploded. The bottom line is that the original eye-witness testimony is conflicted, and eye-witness testimony is notoriously unreliable anyway. Moreover, the TV images of the second plane have been so embedded in people's minds by now we can't take seriously anyone who might currently come forward and say they were an eye-witness to the plane. In the absence of reliable eye-witness evidence, the physical evidence must rule.

An Alternative Theory
So what did happen at the south WTC tower on 9/11? I think the story of a hijacked 767 hitting the tower is a carefully orchestrated media hoax. I do not know what happened to UA175. But the point is that the official story of this flight hitting the South tower makes little sense. My best guess is that teams of photographers and videographers in on the plot were in carefully pre-positioned places waiting for the second tower to explode. See this article for more on the generation of the plane images. I think that the power down of the top half of the South tower described by Scott Forbes was when the explosives and incendiaries were planted. Interestingly, if we assume there was no plane, and the South tower attack was all done with bombs, it gives a entirely different perspective from which to view the collapse of the South tower.

Summary: we have been lied to about this central event of 9/11. It is a perfect example of the "big lie" technique, where the lie is so enormous, no one can believe it actually is a lie. But viewed from a distance, it makes perfect sense that a televised hoax, using media outlets such as CNN, was the perfect vehicle for selling the whole story of Arab terrorists hijacking planes and attacking the US (not unlike a modernized version of Orson Well's "Martian Invasion" radio hoax). Afterall, there had to be some reason why US Army psy-ops personnel were working at CNN. And it has long been known that the US media is heavily infiltrated by the CIA.

How much do you truly trust the US news media?

Moreover, do you enjoy being LIED to about something so enormous?

George Allen

What a sadistic freak.

Of course, he sounds perfect as the next GOP nominee for president.

"Let's Impeach the President for Lying"....... "Let's Impeach the President for Spying"

Neil.

Gotta love it.

Scandals from Heaven

Let us all pray.

Even On the Off-Chance that the Iraq War Successfully Turns Out a Viable Democratic State

We really need to ask if it was the best use of American resources.

I really can't see how it could be: think of all the other things the country could do with 1-2 trillion dollars.

Iraq War News

"Today in Iraq" continues to be the best round-up of Iraq coverage in the blogosphere. It's depressing-as-hell reading, but it's still an invaluable resource.

US deaths are up to 2392, with an average of 2.6 per day this month, after a relatively low rate of 1.1 per day last month.

For some reason, of late, I have become numb to the horrors of Iraq. I guess because it is too sad to think about, and there really is nothing I can do about it.

What Exactly Are They Still Investigating?

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema's April 7 order requires prosecutors to provide copies of all unclassified aviation security documents to attorneys representing September 11 families in a civil lawsuit pending in New York.

Prosecutors called the order "unprecedented" and urged Brinkema to withdraw it. The motion was filed by Chuck Rosenberg, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Brinkema's order would allow the families' attorneys access to "highly sensitive" law enforcement documents and could compromise the continuing investigation into the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The inquiry is "the largest criminal investigation in our nation's history, which is still ongoing," the motion says.

But at least it's very nice to know that there is still an ongoing lawsuit against the airlines for 9/11:

Among the 65 plaintiffs in the civil case is Mike Low, whose daughter, Sara, was a flight attendant on the first plane to strike the World Trade Center. He testified as a government witness in the criminal case.

The plaintiffs sued the airlines for wrongful death in 2002, rather than accept compensation from a federal fund that gave $7 billion to families. Brinkema agreed with their attorneys that legislation creating the victims compensation fund protected the rights of nonparticipating families to bring a negligence claim.

In their motion, prosecutors argued that the aviation security documents are specially selected materials provided to a small group of attorneys cleared to handle sensitive evidence in the Moussaoui case.

"The government never contemplated this material would be disclosed more widely for use in private civil litigation," the motion says.

So what is exactly in these "aviation security documents" that needs to be kept secret, anyway?

Hey "Conspiracy Smasher"

Have you found the Boeing yet?

Let me know when you do, okay?

Police State?

I have to say that I always thought Alex Jones' calls of alarm about an imminent police state to be extreme hyperbole.

However, this is really creepy.

I'm not one of those who say we live in a police state right now (though a case can be made for us living in a low-grade form of police state).

But without a doubt, the stage is set for a serious crack down on all sorts of people who "threaten the government" or even try to "defend the constitution".

Osama bin Laden's Desperate Plea for Relevancy

What a joke he has become.


The fact that he is still out there*, making these tapes, makes a mockery of the official 9/11 story.


*Whether or not the "real" bin Laden is alive or dead doesn't matter. The important point is that the bin Laden character, probably at this point played by an actor, is being kept specifically alive by Al-CIA-duh-- for whatever nefarious reason.

"There was actually a deliberate search for an enemy..."

--Francis Fukuyama on the neocons.

And then 9/11 just happened to come along...

"Silly" Conspiracy Theories

Somehow I have to think that these same people*, who sneeringly dismiss any 9/11 conspiracy, would sing a diferent tune if Clinton were still president when 9/11 happened.

Certainly, right-wingers ate up all kinds of wild conspiracy theories about Bill and Hillary Clinton pre-9/11. And of course, many of these same people actually still blame Clinton for 9/11!

I'm not here to defend Clinton by any means-- and if he bears some responsibility for 9/11 (or for other acts of synthetic terror), so be it.

But please, let's take off our political blinders and not have a partisan double-standard for conspiracy theories.

Deep politics transcends partisanship, by and large.**

*Interestingly, while the right and some mainstream media went out of their way to ridicule Sheen, the left basically ignored Sheen. Not clear if lefties were afraid to say anything for fear of ridicule, or if they thought silence was the best way to squash 9/11 conspiracy theories.

**Of course, Democrats have a great deal invested in the official bin Laden-9/11 myth, perhaps even more than Republicans, since the latter have a very vague and malleable definition of terrorists.

Dear "Conspiracy Smasher"--

I do not think a "hologram" hit the south WTC on 9/11.

What I think is that videos showing a plane hitting the south tower were faked.

I don't think a real airplane would pass into the steel-columned wall of the tower the way the video showed.

I think the building was set with pre-planted explosives that were set off to mimic a plane crash.

If you want to mock me or criticize me, at least get your facts straight.

Thank you,

Spooked

Planes as Patsies?

A few months back I was reading about the assassinations of political leaders in the 60's and even Reagan's assassination attempt in 1980, and I wrote:

The major political assassinations in the US that took place between 1963 and 1980 (JFK, RFK, MLK, Wallace (failed), Reagan (failed)) all had strong indications that they were covert operations that used a designated "patsy". In these cases, the patsy was someone who plausibly could have committed the crime, had some motive for the crime, and was typically at the scene of the crime with a gun (i.e. Oswald, Sirhan, Ray, Bremer, Hinckley). Importantly, the real killing bullets came from nearby professional hitmen (professional killers). The patsies take the blame and the real killers escape unnoticed.

Thus, the use of a patsy is the perfect way to control the operation and deflect blame at the same time.

At the time, I was thinking simply along the lines of the 19 hijackers being patsies, and I was wondering how they would have used the hijackers in an analogous way to the assassinations.

But yesterday, I had the idea: what if the WTC and the Pentagon were the targets for "assassinations" or hits? Indeed, this may be a more appropriate way to think about 9/11-- how did they design the operation to deflect attention away from what really happened?

In fact, the hijackers piloting hijacked planes into buildings was always a ruse-- there was no way the 9/11 planners would ever trust these guys with planes and passengers; such an operation was too unpredictable, even if there were some highly reliable remote control piloting system (and it isn't clear there was one).

Thus, we can think of the four 9/11 planes themselves as patsies; apparent fall guys for the attacks, that on live TV and several videos appeared to attack the south WTC tower. But what really happened was the WTC and Pentagon were not hit by planes at all, but by carefully crafted operations that mimicked plane crashes, much like secret hitmen mimicked the gunfire of the patsy.

Conceivably, the 9/11 operation could have been done with substitute planes, but I believe this was far too risky for exposure.

Much, much better was to fake the crashes, plant a few plane-like debris pieces, and create the story that the planes were obliterated in each crash.

After all, if real (substitute) planes were used, there is no guarantee the planes would be completely demolished in such a way as to leave no incriminating evidence.

Definitely, there was no guarantee that real planes would disappear into the buildings, which was necessary for the story to work. Planes blowing up outside the buildings would leave far too much debris for random people to see. Plus, the disappearance of the planes into the WTC was also necessary to sell the story that the planes caused the total collapses of the towers.

Wings and the South Tower Entry Hole

Somewhat ironic: the WTC1 hit had only one crappy video of the attack but has lots of good high-res pictures of the hole, whereas the WTC2 hit has lots of "good" videos of the attack and only a couple of pictures of the hole.

This makes some sense, though. If we assume, as I do, that the South tower hit was fake, it stands to reason that the planners and cover-up operatives wouldn't want people looking too closely at the south tower entry hole.

As it is, even FEMA couldn't do a very good job of lining up a 767 with the hole:

(double click to enlarge)(labels on photo are mine; yellow numbers are floors, "engine" refers to putative engine entry holes)

As you can see, it is not at all clear how the starboard engine entered, and even the port engine is partially blocked. You might try to move the plane over to the left to fit the engines better, yet this presents severe problems with getting the fuselage in. The port wing root is also blocked, and there is a HUGE mass of debris blocking where the starboard wing root and fuselage entered-- one would think this debris would be shoved out of the way as the plane rammed into the building at 500-600 mph.

So even what we can see presents problems.

(There is also the problem that in general, a large powerful object smashing into a wall is not going to leave a perfect silhouette of itself behind, ala cartoon such as Roadrunner. The object will tend to create a BIGGER hole than itself-- but NOT a perfect outline, unless it is so powerful that it rips right through the entire building intact. So the fact that the fuselage and engines don't fit in the hole seen in the south tower presents REAL problems.)

But let's concentrate on the wings.

In the north tower hit, according to the video, the plane went in and seemed to explode upon impact, and even the wings seemingly exploded*-- quite a bit different than what happened with the south tower.

Thus according to multiple videos, the south tower plane glided into the tower without slowing or exploding upon impact. If the videos are to be believed (and as the "official record" they at least need to be explained), the plane's wings smoothly entered the wall without breaking off, without exploding and without even any distortion.

It is hard to see what exactly the wings did to the columns because of the lack of resolution in the pictures. However, according to the videos, the wings did not explode, despite having full fuel tanks in them that should have broken open if the wings were damaged upon impacting the array of 13/16th inch steel columns AND several floor slabs (each made of concrete slabs, steel trusses and thick steel spandrels.

This only leaves two possibilities:
1) the wings cut through the array of 13/16th inch steel columns without being damaged
2) the videos are faked

Now, who out there believes that aluminum wings cut through a couple dozen 13/16th inch steel columns without breaking?



REALLY, WHO OUT THERE BELIEVES THIS???

(and how much does anyone want to bet Pinch will run away from this question?)


*Curiously, one might expect the south tower columns, made of thicker steel (as they were further down on the building and had to support more weight), to cause the second plane's wings to explode. However, seemingly the north tower's thinner steel columns caused the plane's wings to explode.

So-- What Produced This Damage?

It sure as hell wasn't an aluminum plane wing, IMHO:

(double-click to enlarge)

I don't see how a wing would impact so many columns. The wing should have bent/broken off or the plane should have come to a stop before those outer columns were hit.

Remember, the leading edge of a 767's wings do not jut out at a 90 degree angle from the fuselage, but are swept back at about a 40 degree angle:


This swept back angle would have greatly decreased the force of their impact.

Also:

What caused that one column (144) to buckle out the way it did?

What caused the odd splaying of the column sides at 145 and 146?

Stronger Wings

I repeated the experiment I described in the previous post, but this time I made a plane with stronger wings than the first time.

The wings did not break, but I COULD NOT RAM THE PLANE THROUGH THE WALL of columns, even using all my strength. Only after repeated ramming attempts was I able to get the plane inside, and even then it went in sort of sideways, without the wings breaking any extra columns.

Funny-- wings simply will not break columns.

Conclusion: same as before-- no planes (at least no normal planes) hit the WTC towers.

Wings Break Off

I set up an experiment testing how a plane might break up upon impacting arrayed steel columns like the WTC wall. The plane and the columns were both constructed of similar pieces of wood (which here favors the plane, since in real life, aluminum is weaker than steel). The dimensions of the models were not perfect, but they were a rough match for the WTC and a 767. I did not put floors into the model, so this also favors the plane.

I pushed the plane forcefully into the "wall", and while the fuselage penetrated the wall after reasonably strong force was applied, the wings broke off at the root where the wings met the plane. The wings actually bent backwards and slid into the hole alongside the fuselage. The wood of the wings actually broke. A few "columns" broke where the fuselage went in, and a couple broke on either side of the fuselage hole, where the wings broke off-- but basically the array of columns were much stronger than the long wings.

This actually makes sense in terms of physics. The fuselage had a concentrated impact force on a relatively small front area, and thus could break the columns inward. However, a wing has a much wider impact area, which dissipates the impact force, thus favoring the columns' strength. If I were an engineer, I'm sure I could find an equation that could describe this phenomenon. Basically, of course, it is the same principle why a pointed object has more penetrating power than a long straight edge-- even if both are equally sharp.

Note that in real-life, the aluminum wings should break off even more readily when they impact heavy steel columns than in this experiment.

This finding that the wings break off also fits with what is observed in other plane crashes: the wings break off.

This means of course, that no 767 hit either WTC tower.

The plane-shaped hole was merely a ruse, to trick people into thinking a large plane had impacted the WTC. Unfortunately this trick defied physics.


Further: in theory, wings could break through the columns if they had enough mass and momentum. The key point though is that on a plane, the wings are far from the center of mass, they cannot carry enough force to break through the columns and thus their response is to break and fold back. The analogy would be like having your arms stretched straight out and trying to knock down two strong wooden posts on either side of you with your fists. With your whole body behind your hands, you could knock down one post, but your body's force is too diffuse to knock down both posts when your arms are stretched out to the side.

And yes, Holmgren was right. If the wings and plane were strong to slice cleanly into the wall, the plane should have sliced all the way through the building!

This piece from Holmgren is worth a re-read.

Actually, It Isn't Easy Going from a Conventional View of Politics to a More Conspiratorial View

It is not an overnight conversion, and I guess we should give some slack to people who have a hard time believing in "conspiracies". It took me quite a while to come to the far-out conclusions I have come to, starting from a fairly conventional liberal position (and politically, I guess I am still a "liberal", though I have no illusions about the current Democratic Party or even past Democrats for that matter).

In any case, the book that is a must-read is "Into the Buzzsaw", a collection of articles from different American journalists who tell of the censorship they received when they challenged the rich, the powerful and the US government. It is a collection of fascinating and chilling tales.

This book does not deal with 9/11, it is basically non-ideological, and it is not about conspiracy theories, but nonetheless was key in transforming my political outlook.

Something you'll might want to check out, if you haven't previously.

Watch UA 175 Emerge Out of Thin Air!

Good highlight job here.

Bush and Cheney

Worst president ever.

Scariest vice-president ever.

Though I think Mike Ruppert got a lot of the details wrong, I still have to wonder if Cheney was one of the key people behind 9/11. There is little doubt Cheney is one sneaky, evil dude.

In terms of Bush and 9/11, most people seem to think he wasn't involved at all, and that would make some sense, given his apparent level of intellect and the typical way presidents are sheltered/protected. On the other hand, I tend to think Bush is not nearly as dumb as he seems to be. Moreover, he seems to be a tricky fellow, given his disposition to lying through his teeth and the fact that he actually has been known to be a proponent of false-flag attacks.

Hunt the Boeing: Shanksville Edition

This is awesome!!!

I love how they recovered the red bandana supposedly worn by a hijacker. Nice touch.

I Would Take the Media's Protestations That There Was No 9/11 Conspiracy More Seriously If

it wasn't clear they are shills for the official story and obviously complicit in the cover-up (and probably complicit in the plane hoax aspect of 9/11).

And this sort of thing really doesn't make them look too good.

What IS clear is that the media (as a whole) simply won't address the serious issues researchers have raised about 9/11. How many stories have been written about David Ray Griffin in the mainstream media, for instance? How many pundits have written columns about the mysterious lack of air defenses on 9/11, for instance? How many articles in the mainstream media have covered the perfect free-fall collapse on 9/11 of the 47 story tall WTC7 into its own footprint?

For chrissakes, the media took several years to admit that Bush was mangling the truth, when this was blatantly obvious from the beginning!

Please don't tell me the media has given us the full and accurate story of 9/11.

Is It Possible to Reconcile These Two Plane Paths???

1) What looks like a straight approach from the south (this is the Japanese video shot from a few miles west of the WTC).

2) What looks like an approach straight from the southwest (a video from Detroit Public TV shot a few miles to the north of the WTC). (Final part of video is here.)

I don't think they can be reconciled.

I think this is the clearest discrepency in plane paths I've found so far.

There is actually no doubt they show different paths-- in the Japanese video, the plane gets lost in the smoke cloud early on and in the second video, shot from the north, the plane avoids the smoke cloud completely!

A 767 Crashing Into the 80th Floor of WTC2...

is analogous to a 767 crashing into the BASE of a 30 story tower similarly structured to the WTC, with 208 foot by 208 foot outer walls made up of similar-sized steel columns-- since there were 30 stories on top of where WTC2 was hit.

Think how strong the support columns at the base of a 30 story steel-framed building would be. They have to be strong to support thirty stories of steel, concrete and office contents; tens of thousands of tons of weight.

Do you really think an airplane would glide into the base of a 30 story tower without slowing or exploding on impact?

Witness: "No second plane, it was a bomb"

The guy is very insistent.

The View of the Second Hit From the West

Four videos:

1) The Japanese video, shot from several miles out.

2) The ABC network "live shot" from a helicopter, also used by CNN and Fox, where the south tower isn't even visible behind the north tower, and the plane simply disappears behind the north tower.

3) This WNYW network video also shot from a helicopter. This may be the video that was the 2nd view of the 2nd hit shown by CNN, where the logo cut off any view of the plane, and only the explosion was visible on the screen. This WNYW video also has an extremely delayed explosion after the entry of the plane, compared to other videos of the 2nd hit, casting much doubt on the authenticity of this video.

4) This extremely fake-looking video that appeared later on Fox.

So, there are over a dozen views of the 2nd hit from the east of the WTC, but from the west, we get: two helicopter feeds including the highly dubious live shot and a shot with a clearly mistimed explosion, a shot from far away showing only a smudge, and what looks like a cheap fake.

Nope, nothing strange about that at all...

"Rigorous Intuition" Slams 9/11 Research

Over the past year, I have developed increasing unease with Jeff Wells and his cryptic postings about UFOs, "magick" and metaphysics on "Rigorous Intuition". I used to visit the site regularly, but lately I hardly even want to look at the site.

Jeff is a talented writer, and his "Coincidence Theorists Guide to 9/11" was one of the things that helped convince me 9/11 was an inside job, but his latest post "Conspiracature" cements his current irrelevance to 9/11 research:

Or how, suddenly, the loudest voices for "9/11 Truth" are those of former Bush aides and lifelong Republicans, beating the drum for - dig it - no passenger aircraft having struck the World Trade Center.

(snip)

Who profits by the You're with us or you're against us essentialism of the advocates for the most contentious and spurious speculations on 9/11, and how far does it carry us from the scene of the crime and its high criminals? The pods, the holograms, the missiles, the demolitions: how did we arrive at this familiar position of irrelevance, and who do you think means to keep us here? Popular Mechanics, CNN and the great Anglo-American dailies don't shy from drawing strawman caricatures of conspiracy and then delight in setting them ablaze with all of us supposedly inside like some springtime wickerman sacrifice, yet the meat of the case for criminal intent rots on the offering plate. Why do you think that is, and who do you think might like it like that? The conspirators, who create both a false opposition and a false conspiracy, remain invisible and free to deal more death.

Why is it that people who essentially support the official 9/11 story (LIHOP with Islamic hijackers and hijacked aircraft; avoid all physical evidence) are always the ones who scream most loudly about dividing the movement?

Moreover, who ever said Morgan Renolds* was the loudest voice for 9/11 truth, except people like Wells?

And now even the strong evidence for demolition is disinfo, according to Wells?

Why IS IT that Wells REFUSES to comtemplate the strange 9/11 physical evidence?**

But what really gets me is the hypocrisy of Wells, who writes murky, bordering on incomprehensible, bullshit at least two-thirds of the time, casting aspersions on 9/11 researchers who are honest enough to look at ALL of the evidence.

Give me a break.

The fact that Wells plays the "hologram" card, shows that he is either deliberately spreading misinformation or that he is really out of touch with 9/11 research. No 9/11 researcher currently promotes holograms in any serious way. Another thing that is curious is how seemingly disinterested Wells is in what ACTUALLY HAPPENED ON 9/11, as opposed to his one-dimensional focus on foreknowledge.


What exactly is Wells trying to do, anyway? He always paints an interesting if bizarre picture with his writing, but it is a picture that never goes anywhere, it is a picture that is always frustrating in its vagueness, and it is a picture that ultimately (for me anyway) saps the urge for any action because the forces he describes are so all-powerful. You might even say Wells' work is very clever misinformation/disinformation. I have strongly resisted calling Wells a disinfo agent (and in general I dislike name-calling of this sort), but increasingly I find no other way to explain what he does.

*Apparently he is referring to Reynolds, since he links to his article-- but Reynolds was not a Bush aide (though he was a secondary-level appointee), and is more of a Libertarian than a Republican.

**Wells is clearly a plane-hugger in the truest sense of the term.

Spook Corners

and the WTC magical mystery debris tour.

My favorite: I like how the engine turbine landed on its end under a canopy without any entry hole. This debris should have been smoking hot, so it's hard to see how or why someone would move it.

Awards for Fakest 2nd Hit Videos

The good.

The bad.

The ugly.

The weird.

Why I Don't Fear Iran with Nuclear Weapons

Because Pakistan already has the bomb, and the Pakstani intelligence service ISI is closely linked to "Al Qaeda" and the Taliban.

The Pakistan bomb (which actually exists) is much more of a threat than Iran and its nuclear weapons program (which is years from being able to produce a weapon).

Of course, this fact won't change the fact that the media will try to scare us to death about the Iranian bomb in the next several months-- and the fact that a critical midterm election is coming up has NOTHING to do with it, I'm sure.

29 Videos of the 2nd Hit

or at least 29 basic cuts.

Previously I said there were 28 videos, but I had missed one from Terrorize.dk, so I have now found 29.

In the near future, time permitting, I will put together an annotated, linked list of all the videos.

For now, what I have done is made a rough map of where the different videos were shot from:



(click for an enlargment; I apologize for the crudeness of the map, but as it was, this map took some time to make, and I wasn't willing to spend much more time on it for now. I think it serves its purpose anyway.)

The distances the videos were shot from and the direction of the shot are approximated. This is all simply to flesh out a general feel for the situation. The useful thing is how easy it is to obtain the direction of the shot from the orientation of the towers, since they were so large and were at a distinctive angle.

Of the 29, 5 appear to be shot from the air, probably helicopters. Most shots appear to be from unique angles, though some long shots could be wide angles of close-ups, such as the Japanese and WNYW shots I linked with an orange line (they are from the west). 15 of the shots are from on Manhattan, and 10-12 are from within a mile of the WTC.

I think the MOST STRIKING thing is how NOT ONE video was taken from the area where the plane flew over (New Jersey)-- NOTHING from Southwest of the towers. This is a densely populated area, and considering how many videos came from the east and southeast, it is very odd that nothing was taken from the southwest. This angle would have captured the plane approach the best, but also would have been the trickiest to animate-- as the plane would be getting smaller and smaller as it went towards the towers. As I have noted before, the videos of the second hit are all very short and tend not to show any change in the size of the plane.

Ironically, the one video that shows the plane getting smaller is the Ghostplane footage, which has its own weird issues.

Thinking About 9/11

There are really four basic questions a person should ask themself about 9/11:

1) who benefited?

2) could someone besides muslim terrorists have been duplicitous and evil enough to kill so many people?

3) did US officials have forewarnings of the attacks?

4) is incompetence truly enough to account for everything that happened on and before 9/11?

Finally-- be honest with yourself. Don't have preconceptions about good guys and bad guys, and don't let the emotions of that terrible day cloud your thinking.

Finally, the idea that 9/11 was a secret conspiracy, a false-flag operation by portions of the US govt does not rest on ONE PIECE of evidence. Rather it is a cumulative argument. The more suspicious evidence one finds, the more that argument is strengthened. There are many many strands of evidence pointing to 9/11 being an inside job, it is an odds argument. Even if some or even many of the pieces of evidence are wrong or severely misconstrued, what are the chances of ALL evidence being debunked? Particularly this is the case when so many aspects of 9/11 have no satisfying explanations.

There are lots and lots of good sites and books out there that can walk someone through the evidence, many are linked at the side.

This list of frequently asked questions is useful in explaining how 9/11 could be a false-flag govt covert operation.

Flight 93 Crash-- Why Were the Tops of the Trees Burned But Not the Ground?

See here.

Seems like the NEW flight 93 evidence raises as many questions as the OLD.

Official 9/11 Flight Passenger Manifests?

Supposedly here.

I looked at the files a little. These certainly aren't originals, more like 3rd or 4th generation photocopies, and who knows how real they are. They have Arabic/official hijacker names on them. I haven't carefully assessed all the names though.

Flying Heavy Aircraft Without Proper Training

Excellent article from Nila Sagadevan.

Some good comments on the article from purported pilots here.

Green Primer

Remember these famous pieces of debris that supposedly showed a Boeing 757 crashed at the Pentagon because they had green primer on the inside?



Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe flight 93 was also a Boeing 757.

But check out this debris piece supposedly from flight 93, that was shown at the Moussaoui trial:



Hey, what happened to the green primer?

I see a small patch of green, is that the remnants of green primer? Looks more like some mold. But let's say it was a bit of green primer left.

Are you telling me the fire that stripped this piece of debris of everything including primer was more severe than the fire at the Pentagon??

Yet this same fire didn't even singe the plants on which the part landed???

Is something just a tad bit strange here?

Atrios Finally Seems to Question 9/11

and blames the media for not questioning 9/11 enough.

Blaming the media is certainly appropriate, but NOTHING STOPPED ATRIOS FROM SERIOUSLY QUESTIONING 9/11 before-- which is a minor tragedy, given his stature in the liberal blogosphere.

This critique on media failures in covering 9/11 is kind of lame, since I have read Atrios every day since 2003 and never saw him question media coverage of 9/11 before-- which is odd, since one of Atrios' main gigs is questioning the media!

How to Frame the Iran Debate Away from War

I agree with Bill Scher here.

Weird Stuff Happened to the WTC Steel

Yet metallurgical studies on WTC steel brought back to WPI reveal that a novel phenomenon--called a eutectic reaction--occurred at the surface, causing intergranular melting capable of turning a solid steel girder into Swiss cheese.

Materials science professors Ronald R. Biederman and Richard D. Sisson Jr. confirmed the presence of eutectic formations by examining steel samples under optical and scanning electron microscopes. A preliminary report was published in JOM, the journal of the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society. A more detailed analysis comprises Appendix C of the FEMA report. The New York Times called these findings "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation." The significance of the work on a sample from Building 7 and a structural column from one of the twin towers becomes apparent only when one sees these heavy chunks of damaged metal.

A one-inch column has been reduced to half-inch thickness. Its edges--which are curled like a paper scroll--have been thinned to almost razor sharpness. Gaping holes--some larger than a silver dollar--let light shine through a formerly solid steel flange. This Swiss cheese appearance shocked all of the fire-wise professors, who expected to see distortion and bending--but not holes.

I suppose it's good to see that they are saying something unusual happened to the WTC steel-- because it really shouldn't have given way in those fires-- but as usual, they ignore the idea that there was intentional demolition which caused this abberrant steel deformation.

Highly Suspicious Flight 93 Debris

Note the rather pristine grass and foliage underneath this piece. You would think that if there were enough fire/heat to strip every bit of insulation and facing and windows and their seals, there would be enough residual heat to singe/kill the grass and foliage where this fragment landed.



Challenge: to anyone, please explain how the fiery explosion that separated this chunk of debris from the rest of the plane and completely stripped the piece of fuselage of everything except the aluminum base structure didn't burn the plants on which this piece landed.

Or if you think they moved the piece from where it landed, why didn't they take a picture of it where it originally landed?

Flight 93 Found!

At least some new fragments of it.

I'm very curious how the govt explained how 93 crashed to produce so little visible debris, and I wonder why they showed new pictures of debris that have never been seen before:

Of course, this is always the problem for 9/11 researchers: the govt has confiscated so much evidence and not shown much of anything, so now they literally can pull out anything and say it proves the official story-- and we are hard put to refute it.

What I will say is that the official flight 93 crash story still makes no sense.

The new pictures of debris could easily have come from some other spot where the plane crashed or the parts were planted, of course. Or maybe even flight 93 crashed where they say it did, and the media/govt has done a crappy job of explaining the crash/showing the evidence.

What I will also say is these few new pieces of debris are a still only a tiny fraction of what a huge Boeing 757 would produce.

What is amusing/interesting is comparing the new pictures of flight 93 debris to the sad little collection of parts that were shown in this article (scroll down for slideshow link). E.g.











Much like the other three plane crashes on 9/11, we have a few recognizable plane parts, no attempt at matching the exact parts to the plane that crashed, and nowhere near enough pieces of debris to account for the huge planes that crashed.

I will analyze the flight 93 cockpit transcript that was released here.

The Moussaoui Trial-- Milking 9/11 for All It Is Worth

Clearly, the govt used the Moussaoui trial as a way to prop up the official 9/11 story as much as possible; I even wonder if the trial was a planned "psy-op". My local red-state paper has been reveling in the chance to relive the emotional moments of 9/11 every day with the Moussaoui trial coverage.


But this seems over the top to me:

The government rested its case just before 11:30 a.m. EDT after the judge rejected prosecutors' request to display a running presentation of the names and photos of all of the nearly 3,000 victims of Sept. 11. Prosecutors were instead allowed to show one large poster with the pictures of all but 92 of the victims.

Does the jury really need this at this point in time? Isn't it drummed into every Americans' head how terrible/horrible/unspeakably tragic 9/11 was?

At least the judge had some sense to reject this defense motion. But clearly, the govt has no shame at all in milking 9/11, which is incredibly galling considering
the abundant evidence of govt complicity.

Bush and Iran

It appears to be an even more alarming situation than I first thought.

Doesn't this sound EXACTLY like Bush?

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was "absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb' if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do," and "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy."

And I completely agree with Josh Marshall here:

...the biggest folly would be to engage the administration on the particulars of their fantasies and delusions about foreign policy in the Middle East.

They appear to have learned almost nothing from the last three years in Iraq. The only sensible expenditure of energy is to find ways to hem these guys in or constrain them before they do even more damage to this country.

Since the Republicans run DC and are apparently completely subservient to Bush, it looks like we are SO FUCKED.

Even My Mechanical Engineering Professor Friend

thinks the the wing scars on the WTC walls violate the laws of physics.

I just thought I'd point out that science supports the idea that something besides 767s hit the WTC.

That, and the fake videos...

Pre-Planted Plane Debris in Manhattan?

Interesting scenario.

Wild Speculation, Eh?

Rep. Murtha confirmed during the meeting in NYC that they have been asked to consider the possibility of "strategic, surgical strikes with nuclear weapons" so it is clear that it's being talked about on Capitol Hill.

So, once again, more lies.

Must-read piece: Billmon writes about the mass lunacy that has taken hold of this country and envisions the response to a nuclear attack on Iran.

Thermite

Professor Jones says thermite brought down the towers.

Videos of an apparent thermite reaction in the south tower right before it collapsed here, here and here (warning, this last page takes awhile to load).

I don't think thermite explains everything about the tower collapses (for instance the pulverization of concrete), but thermite was probably used.

I like Webfairy's idea that the demolition of the WTC was sort of like the JFK assassination, where they brought in every shooter from all over the country to be in the area. The demolition of the WTC may well have involved multiple different technologies, from conventional explosives, to thermite, to microwave weaponry.

Conventional demolition simply doesn't explain how all the filing cabinets and elevator doors and doorknobs that existed in the WTC were apparently vaporized.

Pulling Out All the Emotional Stops on the Moussaoui 9/11 Trial Psy-Op

This is ridiculous:

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- Jurors weighing the fate of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui were shown gruesome photographs Tuesday of bodies burned inside the Pentagon and heard from two determined military officers who crawled almost blindly through falling debris, choking smoke and searing heat to safety.

Despite Judge Leonie Brinkema's warning on Monday that too much highly emotional evidence could imperil a death sentence on appeal, prosecutors showed the most gut-wrenching evidence yet in a trial studded with horrific images. (snip)

After a three-minute bench conference to argue with the defense over what could be shown, prosecutors displayed photos of a charred body on a blue stretcher, another charred body sitting upright inside a wrecked Pentagon office, several charred bodies piled together inside another destroyed office and a small torso covered with ash on a blue stretcher. The mostly intact bodies had barely discernible facial features. (snip)
Late in the day, the jury heard brief calls to air traffic control from the cockpit of United Flight 93, which ultimately crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers attempted to retake the plane. During the two calls, which came as the hijacking began at 9:28 a.m., a voice was heard saying: "Mayday! Mayday! ... Get out of here!"

Yesterday (article in my local paper, I can't find it online) the jury heard from Peter Hanson's father, C. Lee Hanson, who described his son's phone call from the doomed flight 175-- how there were screams and then he "saw the plane fly into the building".

I analyzed Peter Hanson's call previously. It's a weird one.

I'm Haunted by the Fact That 9/11 Was an Inside Job

and that the media refuses to contemplate this horrible, mind-numbing, gut-wrenching fact.

WHY won't the media seriously confront 9/11?

I like DU commentator Hamden Rice's analysis of 9/11, our culture and the media:

I don't think that the current system could survive the widespread disclosure and acceptance by the majority of the American public that there was government complicity in 9/11 at either the LIHOP or MIHOP levels. If you were not alive and at least old enough to be a cognizant child or pre-teen in the late 1960s to early 1970s, it is difficult to imagine just what American society looks like when there has been a huge deligitimizing event. In the 1960s to mid 1970s, this happened as a result of a number of devastating public events: the resistance in the south to the widely accepted, morally superior claims of the civil rights movement; the Vietnam war, the widespread recognition that the US was both morally wrong and losing; Watergate and the revelation of a vast array of crimes committed at the highest levels of government.

Sometime later, I when I was in college, working in a library, I was given an assignment to help a professor with a research project. I was asked to printout the first page of the New York Times for almost every day of some year, I think it was 1970. It was sobering. The US Army deteriorated in Vietnam to the point that soldiers simply would not go out on patrol or follow orders. There was a violent riot somewhere in America almost every day from around 1969 to about 1972. And that was just the surface issue. There were small violent underground organizations, such as the Panthers, the Weathermen and the FALN, setting off bombs around the country. And those were the semi-rational underground organizations; bizarre, violent offshoot organizations like the Symbionese Liberation Army or Charles Manson's "family" terrorized cities.

This was all the result of the fact that the US government had been completely deligitimized. The elites decided that they would never let that happen again and through the media launched this campaign that it was unacceptable to criticize the basic premises of our society and that the media would not probe beneath the surface of events.

If 9/11 were demonstrated to have happened as a result of government complicity, the results would be a lot like the late 1960s-1970s. The difference would be that while the 60s divided the country on left right grounds, 9/11 fits into the pre-existing rational paranoia of both the left and the far right. Bush-Cheney would be thrown overboard, but so would a substantial chunk of the political system.

I don't believe that the media would necessarily be able to contain the information coming out about 9/11, but I don't know where this leads. This would be uncharted territory.

What is stunning is the way so many aspects of the 60's are popping back: the Iraq war and "the widespread recognition that the US was both morally wrong and losing"; Bush's scandals and the revelation of a vast array of crimes committed at the highest levels of government-- and of course much of this is being perpetrated by the same fools who were around back in the 70's: namely Cheney and Rumsfeld.

I'm not saying the 60's are repeating, but one cannot miss the parallels. I am thinking that 9/11 will soon be an extremely strong delegitimizing event for the US government (although the Bush administration have done a pretty good job of delegitimizing the government even without the crimes of 9/11 being exposed) and probably for the corporate US media as well-- certainly among young people. Why so many grown-up hippies from the 60's, the people who never used to trust the government, have apparently been taken in by the 9/11 myth is beyond me.

Fake Planes on Parade

I don't think this was their intention at all, but this montage of second hit images that was shown at the end of a WingTV show, really highlights just how damn FAKE the second hit plane images are.

Note the conflicting approach paths and conflicting colorations of the "plane".

File Under "Al-CIA-Duh"

The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program. The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Those Outer WTC Columns and Plane Wings

Previously I have wondered how plane wings could slice through the outer columns of the WTC (for instance, see here, here, here and here.

I was under the impression that the columns where the "plane" impacted the south tower were constructed of 1/4 inch steel, which is fairly strong.

However, in this article, I found that the outer columns at the base of the WTC were much thicker steel than at the top, which makes a lot of sense:



These columns not only had to support much of the floor weight, but also the outer walls themselves. So naturally, they would be graded in weight, with much heavier and stronger columns (thicker steel) on the bottom and lighter columns towards the top. The columns on the bottom had 2.5 inch thick steel sides. That is SERIOUS steel.

Then I found this article on analysis of the WTC steel which says that for the south tower, the outer columns at the impact area were 1/4 inch by 13/16 inch.

I assume this means the sides of the box columns were 13/16 inch, and the front and backs of the columns were 1/4 inch. The columns were a little over three feet apart, with about two feet between columns. 13/16 inch of steel is pretty damn strong, and no wonder-- because at the 80th floor, where the south tower was hit, there was still 30 more stories of building to hold up!

This means, the 767 wings had to slice at least ten times per wing through 14 inches of 13/16 inch thick high-strength steel column plates as the plane slid smoothly, without slowing, into the tower. This apparently happened, because the videos of the second hit show this-- and we know the videos don't lie do they?

And surely the wings didn't shred as they went in, because then fuel in the wings should have spilled out and immediately ignited. But that didn't happen because the fuel only exploded on the far side of the building.

So somehow, the magical 9/11 aluminum plane wings passed through large strong steel columns.

Funny how wings typically aren't that strong in collisions.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Plane-Hugging

but were afraid to ask.

Excellent piece here.

On Hijackings With Boxcutters

It's not that they can't be done; I'm sure airline personnel were trained to not resist too much to normal hijackings.

The problem is, I don't see how a terrorist armed with a small knive/boxcutter gets large air force veterans to get out of their pilots' seats.

I just can't see that any pilot would give up the controls of their ship without a fight. And I don't see how terrorists armed with small knives/boxcutters takes out 8 out of 8 pilots in a fight.

The only other option is that the terrorists take the two pilots by surprise, sneak into the cockpit and cut their throats. Even if this works perfectly, this means blood all over the controls and also that the terrorists have to lug the bodies out of the seats and are prone to counter-attack during this time.

But again, how likely is it that this strategy will work on three out of three planes (*officially* there was a struggle in the flight 93 cockpit)? More importantly, would real terrorists count on this working perfectly?

The surprise attack counts on that not one flight attendant will phone the cockpit and warn them of an intrusion, not to mention the fact that the hijackers have to get lucky and find the cockpit door unlocked (not the case on flight 93 we know) OR they take the cockpit key from the lead flight attendant by force without the cockpit being alerted OR they smash down the locked cockpit door, which surely should alert the pilots to the intrusion and negate the surprise attack.

But *officially*, on four out of four planes, terrorists armed only with knives and box cutters took over the cockpit without one pilot or flight attendant turning on the hijack alarm.

I don't buy it and neither should anyone else.

How the US Military Will Be Able To Do Anything It Wants To

It will simply control all avenues of mass communication, including the internet.

When the Pentagon has a budget of over 500 billion, how can lowly bloggers hope to get out the truth?

Nuke Iran?

Bush would never do anything irresponsible, would he?

Updated 9/11 Odds

Looking back at this post, I thought it would be a good time to re-assess my odds of various 9/11 scenarios.

To repeat: nothing in this world is for certain, of course, and thus I cannot say I am 100% convinced of much about 9/11. But, there are many aspects of 9/11 of which I am fairly confident than other aspects.

The following are my current updated chances for various theories and stories about 9/11 (I note where I have significantly changed my odds for a particular occurrance):

1) Some officials in the US government had specific foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks: 100%

2) Some officials in the US government aided the hijackers at various points before 9/11: 99%

3) Some officials in the US government had a direct hand in carrying out the attacks: 90%

4) Flight 77 really crashed into the Pentagon: 2%

5) A Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon: 2%

6) There were extra explosives/incendiaries planted at the WTC twin towers that helped bring down the towers: 95% (LARGE INCREASE: new understanding of theories of demolition)

7) WTC7 was brought down by controlled demolition: 99% (NEW)

8) Explosives were planted at the Pentagon to mimic a plane crash: 90% (LARGE INCREASE: pre-planted explosives explain what happened better)

9) no plane crashed in Shanksville: 95% (NEW)

10) flight 11 did not hit WTC1: 60% (NEW)

11) flight 175 did not hit WTC2: 95% (NEW)

12) at least some videos of the second hit were faked: 95% (NEW)

13) Bush had some specific foreknowledge about what was going to happen on 9/11: 75%

14) The civil air defense (NORAD) response to the hijackings was distracted and/or disbaled by wargames being run on 9/11: 5% (LARGE DECREASE: I don't think there were planes for NORAD to go after)

15) The 9/11 attacks did not involve any planes hitting buildings and were a massive deception perpetrated by the government: 75% (LARGE INCREASE: this theory explains what happened better)

16) There is a large cover-up about the 9/11 being maintained by the government: 100%

17) There is a large cover-up about the 9/11 being maintained by the media: 99%

P.S. I decided to start a separate blog to keep track of the odds I calculate for different 9/11 scenarios over time, here.

Charges in the Zebuhr Killing

For nearly three weeks, investigators handling the killing of Michael Zebuhr in the Uptown area of Minneapolis combined skill with a little luck to put together their case against two 17-year-old boys charged Thursday with first-degree murder. What they still don't know is why one of the teenagers allegedly shot Zebuhr in the head during a street robbery for his mother's purse. (snip) Johnson was arrested Tuesday a few blocks from his home in north Minneapolis, but Jacobs hasn't been caught.

"Our main focus was to get these guys off the street," said Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar. "We're not as much concerned about why they did this."

Johnson and Jacobs don't have extensive criminal histories. It's unclear where they attended high school. Nobody was home Thursday at the addresses listed in the criminal complaints for the teens.

The killing shocked residents and city and community leaders because the Uptown area doesn't have much violent crime.

(emphases added)

How can they NOT know where these guys attended high school? Nobody was home? One suspect is still at large? Why don't they care about why the crime was committed?

Weird.

A "No-Plane" Witness

I was just leaving my apartment when my neighbour stopped me and said "Have you heard about the WTC? It's been hit by a plane. You can watch it from the roof". I went upstairs and I saw that surreal image: a hole spanning for five floors in the centre top of Tower 1, and a huge cloud of black smoke. I live in the East Village, and the view from there was perfect. I went back to get my camera. When I was back in the roof I saw just before my eyes the explosion on Tower 2. I didn't see the plane, nor did any of the other guys on the roof. We speculated for a few minutes. The only thing we could imagine was on of the wings of the first plane hitting the other tower and provoking the explosion, but that was very unlikely. Finally one of the people on the roof said: "The radio is saying that there was a second plane." We suddenly got scared, and I could see tears on the eyes of my neighbour: his friend worked at the WTC. You can see original footage at http://www.cruzate.org/nyhell/
Victor Cruzate, New York, NY

LINK

I looked at his video. It is a good example of what I was talking about where someone sees the south tower explosion and THEN starts filming. He missed the initial fireball, unfortunately, so we cannot look for the plane.

I find it striking that several people around him missed seeing the plane-- their view from the northeast of the south tower was not bad at all, they could have seen the plane approach from the south.