Loose Change

[JPK]

Just parrot someone else who has actually watched the film and decided to debunk it. What difference would it make, given that you've absolutely no pretense of objectivity? But then, "skeptics" don't need objectivity, they just need copious amounts of doubt, right?

I haven't read the book, but given the Hegelian dialectic and its historical employment plus Roosevelt's status as a traitor, I have little doubt it is true.

Oh I see, personal experience.
JPK

 

[Alek]

I know I should watch this, if only so I can respond if somebody was to bring it up in conversation, but I do have a bit of a temper and this is an event I'm still trying to deal with. I fear if I watch it I will have a very unhealthy reaction.

Everyone with a conscience was and is angry over what transpired on 9/11. It represented a major paradigm shift in this country, and the world. It has created the pretext for an Orwellian police state here in the US, and an unprecedented US policy of pre-emptive war.

That's why it's crucial that we know the truth about exactly what happend. 9/11 research which contradicts the official conspiracy theory cannot rightfully be construed as disrespectful, because the fate of the nation and perhaps the world hangs in the balance.

 

[Luke T.]

Okay. One word to debunk all the 9/11 conspiracy theories:


Moussaoui

 

[Alek]

I don't understand the "free fall" problem.

But I do have some ideas about the "secondary explosions".

The film makes a big deal out of free fall, saying it would take 10 seconds for something to free fall that distance.

It's a big deal because if we are to accept the pancake theory as offered by the 9/11 commission, we must believe that there would be virtually no resistance offered by either the floors below, or the 47 load bearing steel columns. This contradicts the laws of physics. In essence, the building should have fallen in a much slower and less symmetrical manner than it did.

Later, they start to discuss the secondary explosions in the WTC. And they play a tape recorded on the 36th floor where you hear two explosions, 9 seconds apart.

They then talk about marble panels blown off the lobby by a raging fireball which travelled down the elevator shaft.

The film then says there was no way the fireball was able to burn since the elevator shaft was airtight and therefore had no air for the fire.

But what about the air that was already in the shaft?

The marble panels along with the other lobby evidence and the eyewitness testimony of the firemen who were present are strong evidence of pre-planted explosives. It is infeasible that a raging fireball would travel 80 stories down to inflict the damage seen in the lobby, whether or not the elevator shafts were hermetically sealed.

As for the janitor, when he heard the first explosion, he thought it came from the basement. He said the second explosion came from directly overhead.

I would say that when he heard the first explosion, he was not in any state of awareness of something unusual going on and made a guess where the sound originated. Trying to guess at what could make such a noise, he says he thought it was a generator exploding. Since the generators were in the basement that is where he thought the sound came from.

By the time of the second explosion, he was more aware and was able to make a better estimate of the direction of the source.

That would be pure speculation on your part. Rodriguez's testimony was lucid, and he expressed no confusion about the origin of what he heard.

 

[delphi_ote]

Try this link:

janedoe0911.tripod.com/BilliardBalls.html

Try this link:

janedoe0911.tripod.com/BilliardBalls.html

Umm... that site supports the BS. And it a horribe analysis. The planes hit the buildings at the 77th and 93rd floor, so both towers would have started to collapse at or below those floors. The towers both collapsed in just under 10 seconds. The building was 417 meters tall. Free fall under gravity takes:
t=(2h/g)^(1/2)

They assume the building fell from the very top when they derive their 9.22 figure. If you calculate from the point where the plane hit the building (i.e. where the collapse actually started) WTC2 would have taken 7.7 seconds to collapse and WTC1 would have taken 8.5 seconds.

Their understanding of momentum is also way off.

If all of the momentum is transferred from Block-A to Block-B, the next 10-floor block, Block-A will stop moving, even if there is no resistance for the next block to start moving. If Block-A stops moving, after triggering the next sequence, the mass of Block-A will not arrive in time to transfer momentum to the next "pancaking" between Block-B and Block-C. In other words, the momentum will not be increased as the "collapse" progresses.

All of the momentum would not have been transferred in the collapsing towers scenario, and gravity would have continued to act on both bodies. Think about their example for a couple seconds. If you fall on top of your friend, do you stop at any point in mid-air while your friend falls to the ground? No. You both collapse in a heap.

Welcome to the forum. I hope you posted this link by accident. These people clearly did not pass college physics.

 

[JPK]

It's a big deal because if we are to accept the pancake theory as offered by the 9/11 commission, we must believe that there would be virtually no resistance offered by either the floors below, or the 47 load bearing steel columns. This contradicts the laws of physics. In essence, the building should have fallen in a much slower and less symmetrical manner than it did.

Would you be kind enough to show your math here? I'm having a problem understanding which physical laws have been violated here?
JPK

 

[delphi_ote]

I find it rather unlikely that you or several others in this thread are anything but selective skeptics. Perhaps if you applied the same degree of skepticism towards the 9/11 Commission's official conspiracy theory as you do to bigfoot sightings, spooky ghost stories, and psychics, then you may discover that their story doesn't quite add up.

Did you treat these conspiracy theory videos with any skepticism? Obviously not. Almost none of their claims hold up to any kind of scrutiny.

 

[delphi_ote]

It's a big deal because if we are to accept the pancake theory as offered by the 9/11 commission, we must believe that there would be virtually no resistance offered by either the floors below, or the 47 load bearing steel columns.

Come again? You'd have me believe that ANY kind of steel would slow several 10's of thousands of tons of building (i.e. the top 20-40 floors) traveling at even 5m/s (i.e after the first half second of falling?) Are you familiar by any chance with the equation for momentum?

(in case you've forgotten, it's p=m*v. In this case, 136,077,711 m kg /s. What were you saying again about slowing that down? Maybe you should take some physics courses and get back to us before we continue this discussion.)

ETA While I'm at it, the kenetic energy of the falling floors would be roughly 340 M joules, or roughly the amount of energy released from one ton of TNT.

 

[WildCat]

I spent last week arguing this nonsense on another board. The True Believers will never be convinced. They will hold up the word of physicists as the gospel truth over structural engineers. It's really, really astounding. Oh, I was called a Nazi supporter for not believing the conspiracy, which includes the 9/11 Commission, Bill Clinton, and John Kerry BTW. Really, truly, unbelievably nuts. And it's very disturbing to find so many people so bereft of the ability to think critically about this issue, if you've ever needed proof of the failure of public education in this country, here it is.

 

[WildCat]

BTW, the Popular Mechanics story (already linked to) on this is very good, but this site is one I found even better as it is far more complete in debunking many of the nonsense theories that came about after the Popular Mechanics story was printed. It's a treasure trove of info!

 

[delphi_ote]

I spent last week arguing this nonsense on another board. The True Believers will never be convinced. They will hold up the word of physicists as the gospel truth over structural engineers. It's really, really astounding. Oh, I was called a Nazi supporter for not believing the conspiracy, which includes the 9/11 Commission, Bill Clinton, and John Kerry BTW. Really, truly, unbelievably nuts. And it's very disturbing to find so many people so bereft of the ability to think critically about this issue, if you've ever needed proof of the failure of public education in this country, here it is.

First off, thanks for arguing. The die hard believers may not be convinced, but I know I've changed at least one person's mind.

I couldn't agree with you more on the failure of our public education system. Maybe showing my work will help some people along with their physics.

 

[chipmunk stew]

Just parrot someone else who has actually watched the film and decided to debunk it. What difference would it make, given that you've absolutely no pretense of objectivity?

It's true that I prejudged this video before watching it. But I didn't prejudge my assessment of the story behind 9/11 before looking into it and arguing about it. My bias against this video is based on the high likelihood that it repackages assertions and insinuations that I've already heard many times.

I find it rather unlikely that you or several others in this thread are anything but selective skeptics. Perhaps if you applied the same degree of skepticism towards the 9/11 Commission's official conspiracy theory as you do to bigfoot sightings, spooky ghost stories, and psychics, then you may discover that their story doesn't quite add up.

I have no doubt that there are gaps and errors in the 9/11 Commission's official version of events. I have deep doubts about how large these gaps and errors are, and about many of the assertions and implications produced by all these 9/11 Truth groups and websites and amateur documentary producers.

 

[Alek]

One of the first claims in the video is that people used their advanced knowledge of the attacks to profit on United. Looks like that claim is false.

Looks like we can add snopes.com to the short list including the 9/11 commission for which we can suspend our "skepticism".

First of all, I personally recall watching this news being reported on CNBC, and then waiting for a follow-up which never occurred. It's as if the story just completely vanished. One of the premises behind the accusations of people like me is that the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the "9/11 Commission") is full of lies, so snopes.com quoting from their "report" doesn't exactly constitute a debunking of the original claim. Specifically, I'd like to know more details about the invididuals involved and their identities. I'd like details of the trades themselves including dates and times cross-referenced with other trades they may have made within the period. The original reports indicated that these anomalous trades weren't cashed out. Why would these supposedly innocent investors not realize their good fortune? I would also be curious to see a statistical analysis regarding the frequency of such trades at such high multiples of their average daily volume. As an interesting aside, the trades were made through broker Alex Brown, a subsidary of Deutsche Bank, formerly chaired by Buzzy Krongard. You may have heard of Krongard, he was until fairly recently the third ranking CIA executive who thinks we should let boogeyman Osama Bin Laden stay free:

www-timesonline-co-uk/article/0,,2089-1431539,00.html

Second, I think this issue is a red herring, from my point of view. Arab Terrorists complicit in the official 9/11 conspiracy are just as capable of making option trades and profiting by their prescience as any would-be US government conspirator.

I apologize for the broken links, the editor restricts new users from sharing URLs (apparently I can't even quote them).

 

[Alek]

I don't get how anyone gets past that argument. With the moon landing, a true CTer can at least say, "yeah, but all those people worked for the government or its contractors-- they were in on it, too!" Here, we're talking about hundreds or thousands of people who didn't work for the government (or if they did, not for the conspirators -- the worked for the city government, for example). And many of them died. How could one sneak explosive charges, say, past the building staff who subsequently died because they stayed in the buildings after the attacks to help people escape?

The argument is irrelevant in the context of the evidence. Researchers, scientists, skeptics, and reasonable people in general should attempt to fit the theory to the evidence, not the other way around. The physical and other evidence indicate a controlled demolition. Speculation on whether or not X number of people can keep a secret, whether or not they were compartmentalized, or whether they would even be believed should they attempt to blow the whistle isn't warranted.

 

[Alek]

And does this look like a 16 foot hole to anyone? That's what Loose Changes says is all that was created in the Pentagon by the attack.

No, that certainly does not look like a 16 foot hole at all, I agree. It looks like a completely different photo, one taken after the roof of the pentagon collapsed by most accounts about a half-hour after the impact.

 

[delphi_ote]

Alek.

Are you just trying to keep this ball of BS rolling, or are you actually going to respond to my previous posts? Your physics is absolutely wrong. Be a man and admit it.

 

[chipmunk stew]

Researchers, scientists, skeptics, and reasonable people in general should attempt to fit the theory to the evidence, not the other way around. The physical and other evidence indicate a controlled demolition.

This evidence you speak of is highly questionable, to say the least. Not to mention the contra-evidence that suggests otherwise. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. In the face of such dubious assertions, it's appropriate to apply Occam's Razor and conclude that the more obvious explanation--the damage caused by the planes' impact--was responsible for the collapses.

 

[WildCat]

The argument is irrelevant in the context of the evidence. Researchers, scientists, skeptics, and reasonable people in general should attempt to fit the theory to the evidence, not the other way around. The physical and other evidence indicate a controlled demolition. Speculation on whether or not X number of people can keep a secret, whether or not they were compartmentalized, or whether they would even be believed should they attempt to blow the whistle isn't warranted.

Your conspiracy theory has a very big problem, and until you address it there's no point in even getting to the other stuff. There have been many articles written in engineering journals (by engineers who are not working for the US gov't, and in fact many are foreigners) more than adequately explaining how the WTC towers failed and collapsed. None required anything more than the planes hitting them and the fires they caused. Every single person who claims the planes and resulting fires could not have brought down the towers is not a structural engineer, and have not submitted any articles to engineering journals. Instead, they write books and produce movies hoping to turn a profit on this calamity.

Do you see the problem here?

 

[delphi_ote]

One of the premises behind the accusations of people like me is that the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the "9/11 Commission") is full of lies...

I guess if you're going to accuse people of thousands of murders with no evidence, calling people liars with no evidence isn't really a big deal.

Why would these supposedly innocent investors not realize their good fortune?

Better question: why would someone who knew it was all going to happen not cash out their investment immediately, especially knowing the markets would be closed soon for several days? Or would that be too obvious? If that's too obvious, why wouldn't this whole scam be too obvious?

 

[delphi_ote]

Researchers, scientists, skeptics, and reasonable people in general should attempt to fit the theory to the evidence, not the other way around.

Yet clearly that is what you're doing with this conspiracy theory. You're not skeptical at all. You've swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

"Free-fall" Get real.