Psychology101 to Psychology911

Originally posted by dariousg
Isn't it borderline insanity to then completely trust that group of people from that point on simply because they are supposedly our elected officials?

For those who pride themselves as patriots there is a degree of human bondage at play/work, similar to that between a married couple or parent and child. Relationships of such magnitude have common errors in judgment. How often do we hear of loved ones lying, over and over again, to one another about their true affairs/motives. In most cases the desire to believe in those we hold dear is so great that we ignore all signs that would prompt us to question "reality". i.e. drug abuse, child abuse, domestic abuse, infidelity.

Same process takes place for fundamentalists, the mental state of peace/euphoria that one gains from the love one feels for "god" is so great, that the prospect of questioning the church/temple and holy text(s) is seen as work of the devil.

As the proverbial goes "love is blind" and for those who "love" their country, the country can do no wrong. To question the government is looked at as being worst then a traitor... a "terrorist".

It is also important to note the level of investment in identity. Let's say i have my suspicions that my kid is a junkie and/or promiscuous. If i investigate further i may confirm this sense, ... worst yet i would have to admit to myself and the world that i am a bad parent. If i find out that my wife is having an affair, then i assume that i am a bad husband. If i find out that my government has purposely killed and robbed it's own citizenship and other countries, then i am a bad member of the world community. There is always the underlining common thread through all of these shameful acknowledgments, that i must be stupid for being conned.

If i insulate myself from all of these harsh realities, then i can remain feeling good about myself and the world. As the saying goes "Ignorance is Bliss".

[edit on 19-5-2009 by The All Seeing I]

I think there is also something to be said for a script written for a child. The morals are clear cut and spelled out at the beginning of every story. There are good guys and there are bad guys... just like in every action hero comic and disney film. The majority of people grow up with this infantile affinity for simple black and white ways of seeing the world.

A prime example of this, which we have all been well conditioned to embrace... is our prejudice of arabs. Which the Arab hijacker theory plays well into. As illustrated by the documentary The Planet of the Arabs:

Out of 1000 films that have Arab & Muslim characters (from the year 1896 to 2000)
12 were postive depictions, 52 were even handed and the rest of the 90O and so were negative.

A trailer-esque montage spectacle of Hollywood's relentless vilification and dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims. Inspired by the book "Reel Bad Arabs" by Dr. Jack Shaheen

[edit on 27-5-2009 by The All Seeing I]

Originally posted by Swing Dangler
Can you source the PA's list of preferred contractors?

I probably could, but I really don't care enough to look it up. When your defense of your conspiracy stories forces you to argue on such a macro level that you need to demand such esoteric things as the list of the Port Authority's preferred contractors, it's more a sign of desperation than it is anythign else.

But yet strangely enough, a plumbing agency with unlicensed plumber is able to gain access to the WTC. Strike 1 for ya!

You know, I have to admit that story about the plumbing agency was interesting. So interesting, that I looked up more information that what you were telling me, and I found out a LOT of interesting things...

1) the reason this story came to light isn't becuase he had a pass to the WTC complex. The reason it came to light is becuase the Port Authority does all it's own sprinkler work and everyone wanted to know what he was doing there. Thus, the PA really DID do all its own maintenance.

2) The only way he could have had entry to the building is if one of the tenants authorized him to comein, as in ONE of the tenants. He wouldn't have been given full access to the entire building, which is what would have been required to rig a structure with controlled demos.

3) When the article says "they have no records of him" this is the truther's corruption of the PA having lost all their records in the collapse so they can't confirm who brought him in. This means the PA DID keep meticulous track of who was comign in, and where.

4) It turns out he was arrested for likewise having a faked Tennessee driver's license sold by a crooked TN DMV worker. If this guy was some secret agent involved with rigging the building, he wouldn't have been arrested for ANYTHING.

By posting this bit, all you managed to do is prove everything *I* said about it being impossible to sneak into the WTC without being noticed, as well as the truthers deliberately distorting the facts to make it sound the way they want it to sound. Thank you.

If I'm a rational investigator, I would have conducted forensic chemical tests for explosive residue. Did any Federal Agency do that? NO! So with your logic, the investigative agency is irrational.

There is no logical reason whatsoever to test any of the steel for explosives when it showed no signs whatsoever of explosives. When a body is found with a bullet hole in the head the detectives are going to be looking for a gun, not a bottle of arsenic.

As far as wiring the building up, you don't need every floor. See any controlled demolition specialist. After all, the explosives do not bring the building down, they only ASSIST gravity.

You just blew your own conspiracy story out of the water. If you're claiming that even ONE floor could structurally fail solely from the damage caused by the upper floors falling on it, then you're necessarily admitting that they *all* could have structurally failed for the same reason becuase they were all of the exact same design. You'd be admitting all it would take would be one floor to fail to cause a domino effect of structural failure, which is exactly what you DON'T want to believe.

You can't have it both ways.

1. Your first mistake is relying on traditional blast explosives and exempting other cutter type of explosives, ie, thermite.

Nice try. Thermite isn't an explosive. It's a compound that burns very very hot...and very very slowly, plus, you'd need a whole sandbag wall of the stuff to defeat the massive steel supports in the WTC. There's no way there could be a controlled ANYTHING with thermite since it's inherently unpredictable like every other flammable substance is.

You know, the more you attempt to justify your conspiracy stories, the more you only wind up proving how improbable they are. It is thus a textbook example of the REAL psychology of 9/11- whatever the real agenda is of the truther movement, the honest desire to learn the facts definitely ain't it.

Originally posted by GoodOlDave

Originally posted by Swing Dangler
Can you source the PA's list of preferred contractors?

I probably could, but I really don't care enough to look it up.

Something you might find interesting, there was a structural engineer who posted here with the username Griff, and he actually tried to find a list of who had been issued permits to do maintenance at the WTC. He could only find two or three things listed when the WTC was constantly being serviced, and when this information is supposed to be public domain. He knew more about what he was talking about than I do, but for what it's worth, someone has looked for this kind of stuff before and not been able to find squat.

I think it's convenient how much was lost in the collapses. Everything from security videos to records of all the maintenance work apparently, except the structural documentation, but that was taken and locked up anyway.

Originally posted by bsbray11
Something you might find interesting, there was a structural engineer who posted here with the username Griff, and he actually tried to find a list of who had been issued permits to do maintenance at the WTC. He could only find two or three things listed when the WTC was constantly being serviced, and when this information is supposed to be public domain. He knew more about what he was talking about than I do, but for what it's worth, someone has looked for this kind of stuff before and not been able to find squat.

True, it is interesting, but only so far as it confirms that the NYPA did in fact keep track of entry within the building on a permit basis. The way the conspiracy theorists continuously describe it, a 100 piece marching band complete with baton twirlers and midget shriner cars could tromp into the building and all the guards, tenants, custodians, etc would all be drooling on themselves and stumbling into walls completely oblivious to it all.

Call me naive, but if *I* were an inspector for the building and happened to find wierd unexplanable packages strapped to all the support beams overnight, I'd damned well would want to know what the heck they were.

I think it's convenient how much was lost in the collapses. Everything from security videos to records of all the maintenance work apparently, except the structural documentation, but that was taken and locked up anyway.

Ah yes, the innuendo dropping game again. You want to say all the records proving something amiss was happening were deliberately destroyed in a coverup, without actually coming out and saying it. It's the only way the truthers can keep their conspiracy stories alive, in the absence of any real proof.

Nonetheless it's not really surprising. There are companies like Iron Mountain who specialize in off-site document storage that would survive a nuclear blast, but the service is heinously expensive. Such companies would naturally only archive their more important financial and legal records, which explains how the NYPA knows who was renting what floor and for how much, but would no longer know the name of the guy being brought in to paint the walls.

Originally posted by GoodOlDave
True, it is interesting, but only so far as it confirms that the NYPA did in fact keep track of entry within the building on a permit basis.

That still doesn't mean much. The Port Authority's official name is the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, but technically belongs to neiter state. It has very high-up political supervision by a joint board, but its police, inspectors, etc. are apparently all handled no different than if it were a private corporation. The fact that a private individual, Larry Silverstein, leased the WTC buildings reinforces this fact. The whole project ('re-invigorating' that part of Manhattan and the PA) was backed by the start by David and Nelson Rockefeller, David being an extremely wealthy and influential banker to this day (attended the last Bilderberger meeting, probably every one of the last however many years) and Nelson being the governor of NY at the time. I don't want to digress too much but it's fair to say those men come from a very powerful and influential family that have an equal amount of controversy around them for a number of reasons. It is a very politically driven family.

Just for the sake of argument, just to illustrate that it isn't impossible, all that would be required is someone relatively high up the "chain," so to speak, or anyone in between, to allow a front team a permit into the building to do whatever work would be necessary. It wouldn't take much corruption within a security firm, especially one with such an infamous reputation as Stratesec/Securacom, to allow a "trojan horse" like that in. Securacom also happens to be contracted by the DoD and US Army, including Los Alamos during the same period it was contracted at the WTC.

Call me naive, but if *I* were an inspector for the building and happened to find wierd unexplanable packages strapped to all the support beams overnight, I'd damned well would want to know what the heck they were.

Who said anything about packages? What if it looked like fireproofing or "paint chips" instead? Something like that you would probably never think twice about, and certainly never have tested unless you felt so strong an urge to put up the money yourself. Are you going to tell me its impossible? Or are you going to tell me that the perpetrators would only be stupid enough to do something more obvious?

Ah yes, the innuendo dropping game again. You want to say all the records proving something amiss was happening were deliberately destroyed in a coverup, without actually coming out and saying it. It's the only way the truthers can keep their conspiracy stories alive, in the absence of any real proof.

I just said it was convenient. Apparently I can't even say that much without you accusing me of not having proof for anything I say (though I don't think you're going to contradict any of the actual facts I just posted above -- not ALL facts, but still enough of them to get your brain moving around what I'm talking about). It's not like you're going to be able to prove they came down from the impacts and fire, if NIST couldn't even do it and they had all the physical evidence and technical information. The thoroughness of the investigation you would demand for all of this is out of both of our hands.

[edit on 27-5-2009 by bsbray11]

Originally posted by bsbray11
The whole project ('re-invigorating' that part of Manhattan and the PA) was backed by the start by David and Nelson Rockefeller, David being an extremely wealthy and influential banker to this day (attended the last Bilderberger meeting, probably every one of the last however many years) and Nelson being the governor of NY at the time. I don't want to digress too much but it's fair to say those men come from a very powerful and influential family that have an equal amount of controversy around them for a number of reasons. It is a very politically driven family.

I cannot comment either way, but regardless, the statement only adds yet another few thousand or two people to the supposedly "secret" conspiracy the truthers are proposing. Unless David and Nelson Rockefeller went around and planted the explosives themelves, they would necessarily need to rely on the active participation of the layers of personnel between themselves and the NYPA as a support base to do it.

Just for the sake of argument, just to illustrate that it isn't impossible, all that would be required is someone relatively high up the "chain," so to speak, or anyone in between, to allow a front team a permit into the building to do whatever work would be necessary. It wouldn't take much corruption within a security firm, especially one with such an infamous reputation as Securacom

Apples and oranges, anyone? I would hardly put filing thousands of frivolous lawsuits at a competitor to drain them financially in the same class of "being infamous" as deliberately blowing up a buildings and murdering thousands and thousands of innocent people.

...unless you're referring to their "being infamous" solely becuase Marvin Bush used to be on the board, in which case you're simply dropping innuendo of impropriety entirely becuase a Bush family member was connected to it, which only gets back to my "truthers have nothing but innuendo dropping" comment that started it all.

Who said anything about packages? What if it looked like fireproofing or "paint chips" instead?

Excuse me?!? It's you truthers who are bringing controlled demolitions into the mix, not me, so if you're going to bring in controlled demolitions you need to use the real world model of controlled demolitions as a reference or else it's not controlled demolitions. It's simply making crap up off the top of your head.

Therefore, if controlled demolitions were used on such a gigantic building then it would necessarily be in such large quantities, need such large amounts of preparation,and requite large amounts of personnel, that they'd be immediately noticed. The workmen cutting all the support columns with torches like they do with real controlled demolitions would have raised a hell of a lot of eyebrows right away. Unless of course, they didn't do any cuttting, in which case they'd need so much explosives to destroy the battleship armor they made the WTC columns out that the whole building would have blown up like a bomb.

Physics have to apply to secret conspiracies the same way they do to everyone else, you know.

(though I don't think you're going to contradict any of the actual facts I just posted above -- not ALL facts, but still enough of them to get your brain moving around what I'm talking about).

This is the entire point I've been making. You HAVE no facts. Nothing, zilch, nada, except for speculation, innuendo, and outright slander. THESE are the facts...

-Aircraft hit two heavily occupied buildings.

-the collisions caused great structural damage from the impact and ignited fires from the aviation fuel.

-the initial structural failure began at the section where the fires and the impact damage were

-the collapse cascaded downwards through each of the floors like dominoes.

The most obvious scenario that fits these facts is that some combination of impact damage and fire damage cuased a structural failure that the floors below weren't able to withstand. If the truthers had a different scenario that better fit the facts, that would be one thing, but so far, from what I've gathered, they're telling me there's a conspiracy to rig a heavily occupied building with controlled demolitions as well as a conspiracy to stage numerous hijackings as a cover story for a conspiracy to crash the aircraft into the towers to cover up the controlled demolitions conspiracy, and a conspiracy between the NYPA, the NYFD, the NYPD, the FAA, NORAD to allow the conspiracy to proceed and create a gigantic conspiracy to assist a conspiracy Larry Silverstein and the Rockefellers had to murder thousands of innocent people in order to promote some other conspriacy to commit insurance fraud/war for oil/ war profiteering/whatever. This of course means that the plane that hit the Pentagon and the plane that crashed at Shanksville were conspiracies too (though why the conspiracy would want to stage a conspiracy to stage a crash in the middle of nowhere is beyond me). Of course, the conspiracy succeeded becuase of another conspriacy in the media to cover up the conspriacy as well as a conspriacy in the 9/11 commission to create a conspiracy to frame Bin Laden which in turn presumably led to a conspiracy to attack Afghanistan and a conspiracy to invade Iraq. Have I forgotten anything?

If the truthers have to resort to building such a convoluted, outer space chain of conspiracies, secret plots, and coverups in order to justify their take on things, then it's blatantly obvious they're not trying to research anything. They're doing it becuase they WANT their conspiracy stories to be true.

Debunkers aren't what i would call stupid, for lack of a better descriptor, maybe Martha Mitchel Effect is a more proper explanation for what appears to be "willfully ignorant/blind"?:

John Mitchell was the Attorney-General during the Nixon administration.

His wife - Martha Mitchell - told her psychologist that top White House officials were engaged in illegal activities. Her psychologist labeled these claims as caused by mental illness.

Ultimately, however, the relevant facts of the Watergate scandal vindicated her.

In fact, psychologists have now given a label - the "Martha Mitchell Effect" - to "the process by which a psychiatrist, psychologist, or other mental health clinician mistakes the patient's perception of real events as delusional and misdiagnoses accordingly".

The authors of a paper on this phenomenon ( Bell, V., Halligan, P.W., Ellis, H.D. (2003) Beliefs About Delusions. The Psychologist, 6 (8), 418-422) conclude:

Sometimes, improbable reports are erroneously assumed to be symptoms of mental illness [due to a] failure or inability to verify whether the events have actually taken place, no matter how improbable intuitively they might appear to the busy clinician.

In other words, psychologists who haven't taken the time to examine for themselves the claims of their patients will tend to label as delusional anything which they "intuitively" feel is improbable.

source: www.washingtonsblog.com...



[edit on 29-5-2009 by The All Seeing I]

Originally posted by The All Seeing I
Debunkers aren't what i would call stupid, for lack of a better descriptor, maybe Martha Mitchel Effect is a more proper explanation for what appears to be "willfully ignorant/blind"?:

(sigh) whenever I see someone using propaganda like this to bolster their belief system, it tells me that the honest desire to learn the truth is entirely absent. It's meant to advance that belief system and protect it against any opposition, regardless of whether the opposition is a Lie or the truth. This is an agenda, More than it is anything else.

We've all seen it before. Religious zealots protect themselves from inconvenient scientific facts by brushing them off as "Lies planted by Satan", people not wishing to face life threatening ailments will brush it off as "Just a scratch", and now, conspiracy theorists brush off all their critics by declaring them to be "willfully ignorant/blind".

I'm sorry, but using clever sounding slogans like yours to run and hide from things you don't want to hear is a crutch that's starting to get old.

reply to post by GoodOlDave


With all due respect Dave... you are brilliantly blind. To have embraced your blinders to the point that you don't even know that they are there.... to believe in a government that has proven to be a pathological liar prior to 911 and then continues in this tradition layering layer after layer of BS... and yet you still stay loyal to your master... is beyond me to fully comprehend.

If there is room to draw a parallel to religious zealots, you fit the bill. I think you should change your nick to "GoodOlDog" or even more accurately "GoodOlGuardDog" What you are being feed is not kibble and bits... what you're being feed is what comes from cleaning the aftermath of a rodeo... if you skipped lapping up the cool-aid you may just see this.

... but seriously... all kidding and razing aside ... please explain this blind faith of yours ... do you not see one flaw, suspicion, unbelievable coincidence, nonsensical explanation that makes you question, even for a second... any of the OS? ...or is that not part of your job description? ...tell me... what's your benefits package other then telecommuting and having a flexible schedule?

[edit on 30-5-2009 by The All Seeing I]

Originally posted by GoodOlDave
Unless David and Nelson Rockefeller went around and planted the explosives themelves, they would necessarily need to rely on the active participation of the layers of personnel between themselves and the NYPA as a support base to do it.

Until you can come up with a legitimate list of who would have to be involved and prove it, this is just meaningless speculation to me. But the whole question of WHO did it also meaningless to me, because the fact that something physically happened or was done is completely independent of who did it, how, etc. Remember in my post I was just giving the Rockefeller as examples. Remember I was also never paid to do an in-depth investigation. But you know you can still know something happened without knowing who did it, and that's the case here when these buildings were imploded. It still could have been Arabs for all I know or care, but it was definitely a more sophisticated group than al Qaeda.

I would hardly put filing thousands of frivolous lawsuits at a competitor to drain them financially in the same class of "being infamous" as deliberately blowing up a buildings and murdering thousands and thousands of innocent people.

That actually isn't what I was referring to. I would just suggest you learn more about the family's history in general and many of the trivia associated with them, but it isn't my place or even my point to share it. I was just giving a simple example, just for the sake of argument, as to where these influences could come from among obscenely wealthy and powerful people with relations to military leaders, etc. Rockefeller is a Bilderberger so you know he has ties to many very important and powerful people, as if you couldn't already guess from the fact that he's a banker and comes from the family he does, etc.

Who said anything about packages? What if it looked like fireproofing or "paint chips" instead?

Excuse me?!? It's you truthers who are bringing controlled demolitions into the mix, not me, so if you're going to bring in controlled demolitions you need to use the real world model of controlled demolitions as a reference or else it's not controlled demolitions.

It's you and your misconception of "truthers" that are talking about conventional controlled demolitions, not me.

I was never talking about a conventional demolition in any of the 3 cases. You can call the events what you want, any name you please, and the physical events that caused them will have to have been the exact same.

This is the entire point I've been making. You HAVE no facts. Nothing, zilch, nada, except for speculation, innuendo, and outright slander. THESE are the facts...

What were you just saying to AllSeeingEye about rhetoric? Take your own advice.

-the collisions caused great structural damage from the impact and ignited fires from the aviation fuel.

The impacts did NOT cause great structural damage, they severed less than 15% of the columns on the impacted floors in either building. The exact numbers proving that is the case is in the FEMA report, in chapter 2, and according to NIST's own computer simulations of the worst possible scenario. The worst possible scenario for WTC2 happened to even involve changing the impact trajectory of Flight 175. I could provide all the links if you want to read more, and this is from federal sources.

The jet fuel burned up in about 10-15 minutes after the impacts, and NIST has this in their report to. The difference between the heat jet fuel puts off and any other combustibles is going to be pretty negligible in an open atmosphere fire.

-the initial structural failure began at the section where the fires and the impact damage were

They would fail there anyway if the core was destroyed first, just because that's where the most perimeter columns were missing. In WTC1 the antenna (which was supported by the core) fell at the same instant the 4 corners of the perimeter started dropping. So the whole thing went out at once. Notice none of the government reports explain how the core failed, they talk about trusses and perimeter connections but not about what happened within the most structurally meaty part of the building. If it went, it would bring everything else with it, without a doubt, and that's what happened. In WTC2 the whole upper block was about to tilt over until the core was destroyed there and it began falling downwards into itself, and that's where WTC2's fulcrum was and why it lost its initial angular momentum.

-the collapse cascaded downwards through each of the floors like dominoes.

Except not like a "pancake collapse," and the debris was scattered pretty much everywhere BUT the bases of the buildings. 80 or 90% of the buildings' masses were ejected out into the surrounding area, as you can see in the pictures of their footprints where the chaotic debris doesn't reach out of the lobby. That gets rid of almost all of the potential energy you have crushing what's left below, when that much mass is being thrown out of every single floor on the way down.

The rest of what you posted was a rant. So much for facts.

Originally posted by The All Seeing I

With all due respect Dave... you are brilliantly blind. To have embraced your blinders to the point that you don't even know that they are there.... to believe in a government that has proven to be a pathological liar prior to 911 and then continues in this tradition layering layer after layer of BS... and yet you still stay loyal to your master... is beyond me to fully comprehend.

Ah, yes, anyone who doesn't want to believe you truthers just has to be a goose-stepping sycophant to the gov't. It just can't be the case that all these conspiracy stories are coming from lying sacks of [censored] con artists putting out paranoid rubbish to get paranoid people to buy their books, DVDs, T-shirts, baseball caps, hernia cream, etc, etc, etc. Then, you conspiracy people come along and lap it up like ice cream because you've been wallowing in conspiracies for so long that you have conspiracies on the brain and even stubbing your toe on a rock in your back yard has to be some secret gov't plot to take over the world.

Go ahead, prove me wrong. Tell me that the 9/11 conspiracy is the only conspiracy in the whole wide world that you believe in. I'll even believe you.

.

.. but seriously... all kidding and razing aside ... please explain this blind faith of yours ... do you not see one flaw, suspicion, unbelievable coincidence, nonsensical explanation that makes you question, even for a second... any of the OS?

From what I've seen, the problem isn't with your questions not being answered. The problem is with your not wanting to accept the answers you've been given because you truthers don't want to give your conspiracy stories up.

...or is that not part of your job description? ...tell me... what's your benefits package other then telecommuting and having a flexible schedule?

Ah Yes, then there's the omnipresent innuendo games, where you accuse me of being a secret disinformation agent, without coming out and actually saying it. Now, you were telling me how you don't wallow in conspiracies and lap them up like ice cream... ?

reply to post by GoodOlDave

So is al Qaeda the only conspiracy that you believe in Dave?

eta: How about Hamas? Somali Pirates? Enron?

"Conspiracy of Fools"


[edit on 31-5-2009 by rhunter]

Originally posted by GoodOlDave
Ah Yes, then there's the omnipresent innuendo games, where you accuse me of being a secret disinformation agent, without coming out and actually saying it. Now, you were telling me how you don't wallow in conspiracies and lap them up like ice cream... ?

Perhaps one of the most common pseudoskeptic logical fallacies are those of assumption.

A cogent argument makes only warranted assumptions, i.e., its assumptions are not questionable or false. So, fallacies of assumption make up one type of logical fallacy.

Critical Thinking mini-lesson 5

Why do pseudoskeptics spend so much time wondering about implications or what someone else will think or say online and making erroneous assumptions? These imaginary conversations must really take a lot of time and energy. Perhaps it makes them feel important, like some strange kind of "James Bond 007" fantasy to imagine people on discussion forums actually believe they are government agents. It is very strange behavior to worry about things "never actually said" to use Dave's term.

The real irony is when these same pseudoskeptics accuse others of paranoia.

I don't believe that you are a government agent Dave. I would hope that a real agent would be much better at this, but then again, we saw what government agencies couldn't even manage on 9/11 (like even protecting their own DoD Headquarters).

Psychology 911 indeed.

Originally posted by bsbray11
Until you can come up with a legitimate list of who would have to be involved and prove it, this is just meaningless speculation to me.

Let me get this straight...*YOU*, a person who believes there's a web of secret conspiracies behind the 9/11 attack, are requesting that *I*, who believes these claims are all paranoid rubbish, need to supply details on how your web of conspiracies would have to work. Do I really understand you correctly?

Friend, you just proved what I've been saying all along- if you conspiracy proponents would only hold your own ill-thought out conspiracy stories to the same intensive high level of critical analysis that you do the standard account, you wouldn't be conspiracy proponents for very long...BUT, if you really want to know, I will answer your question with another question-

In the 9/11 commission report, it documents how NYPD helicopters flying eye level to the impact area reported seeing the building columns glowing red from the fires and appeared they were about to collapse, and about a half hour later, they did. I will give you the exact page number, if you want. This clearly shoots down your controlled demolitions claims, so please explain to me, how would this report be wrong?

That actually isn't what I was referring to. I would just suggest you learn more about the family's history in general and many of the trivia associated with them, but it isn't my place or even my point to share it.

Why would I want to or even need to do that? Regardless of whatever I would learn about their political ambitions in other arenas, accusing them of being involved in some 9/11 attack will still be speculation, an endeavor that you yourself just admitted is meaningless.

The impacts did NOT cause great structural damage, they severed less than 15% of the columns on the impacted floors in either building.

The percentage of initial damage is really not a good argument. We saw with our own eyes that the collapse was a cascading chain of structural failure, so all it took was one critical domino to fail from the impact damage and the fire damage to cause the rest of the dominoes to fall. Whatever that percentage necessary for that initial structural failure to occur happens to be is still up for debate.

The jet fuel burned up in about 10-15 minutes after the impacts, and NIST has this in their report to. The difference between the heat jet fuel puts off and any other combustibles is going to be pretty negligible in an open atmosphere fire.

I subscribe to the MIT report of materials engineer Thomas Eager, who concluded that all it takes is a 150C temperature difference from one side of the structural steel to the other side to incite thermal stresses sufficient to cause it to buckle. The steel didn't fail becuase the fires melted it. The steel failed becuase the uneven heating from the fires caused the steel to warp.

They would fail there anyway if the core was destroyed first, just because that's where the most perimeter columns were missing. In WTC1 the antenna (which was supported by the core) fell at the same instant the 4 corners of the perimeter started dropping. So the whole thing went out at once. Notice none of the government reports explain how the core failed, they talk about trusses and perimeter connections but not about what happened within the most structurally meaty part of the building.

They didn't need to. The floors and the structural columns supported each other. When the floors failed due to the floor trusses being compromised, the columns being supported by the trusses were pulled down with them and they failed in turn. We know this is what happened becuase the steel recovered from ground zero showed it had been bent at ghastly angles before tearing like paper and/or snapping like twigs.

I strongly recommend the book, "Aftermath", by Joel Meyerowitz. He's a photographer who documented the cleanup at ground zero, and he took many, many photos of the recovered core columns, so we can see right away what caused the steel to fail.

Except not like a "pancake collapse," and the debris was scattered pretty much everywhere BUT the bases of the buildings. 80 or 90% of the buildings' masses were ejected out into the surrounding area, as you can see in the pictures of their footprints where the chaotic debris doesn't reach out of the lobby.

I'm not certain what you're referring to here. Despite the fact they fell more or less straight down it would still cause huge amounts of debris to pile up in every direction for the simple reason that the towers were just plain immense. The wreckage had to go *somewhere*, and even after being destroyed the piles of wreckage were still several stories high.

Besides, we see from every video footage available that the towers did in fact fall more or less straight down, so I don't understand how your conspiracy stories explain the "80%-90% of the building's mass were thrown throughout the surrounding area". Are you claiming the saboteurs only bombed the bottom of the buildings...?

The rest of what you posted was a rant. So much for facts.

I posted nothing except what the truthers themselves have told me. If you're conceding they're just rants, then you're only *agreeing* with me that these conspiracy stories are entirely without merit. Thank you.

Originally posted by rhunter
So is al Qaeda the only conspiracy that you believe in Dave?

eta: How about Hamas? Somali Pirates? Enron?

Are you really sure you want to bring Enron up? It's a prime example how such a stunt can't be concealed for any length of time before it exposes itself, which only proves my point and disproves yours.

BTW may I ask just how the "Somali pirates" is a conspiracy, exactly?

1. An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.
2. A group of conspirators.
3. Law. An agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action.
4. A joining or acting together, as if by sinister design: a conspiracy of wind and tide that devastated coastal areas.

conspiracy

eta:

The act of violence or depredation on the high seas; also, the theft of Intellectual Property, especially in electronic media.

Piracy is a crime with ancient origins. As long as there have been ships at sea, pirates have sought to steal from them. Internationally, laws against piracy have ancient origins, too, but U.S. law developed chiefly in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The power to criminalize piracy originated in the U.S. Constitution, which was followed by the first federal law in 1790 and crucial revisions over the next sixty years. Additionally, the United States and other nations cooperated to combat piracy in the twentieth century. This resulted in a unique shared view of jurisdiction: piracy on the high

seas can be punished by any nation. In the late twentieth century, the term piracy grew to include Copyright violations of intellectual property such as music, films, and computer software.

The Constitution addresses piracy in Article 1, Section 8. It gives Congress "the Power … To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations." Generally, the definition of pirates meant rogue operators at sea—independent criminals who hijacked ships, stole their cargo, or committed violence against their crew. But standards in all areas under the law changed in response to judicial rulings and to historical incidents, forming by the mid-1800s what became the basis for contemporary law.

In 1790 Congress enacted the first substantive antipiracy law, a broad ban on murder and Robbery at sea that carried the death penalty. In 1818, however, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the law was limited to crimes involving U.S. citizens: U.S. jurisdiction did not cover foreigners whose piracy targeted other foreigners (United States v. Palmer, 16 U.S. [3 Wheat.] 610). A year later, in 1819, Congress responded by passing an antipiracy law to extend U.S. jurisdiction over pirates of all nationalities.

piracy

[edit on 1-6-2009 by rhunter]

Originally posted by rhunter
Why do pseudoskeptics spend so much time wondering about implications or what someone else will think or say online and making erroneous assumptions?

Becuase in my case, it isn't an assumption. I've spoken to many, many, *many* 9/11 conspiracy theorists through the years, and almost to a man (and sometimes to a woman) they had subscribed to a wide range of *other* conspiracies I.E. the moon landing was faked, JFK was assassinated by the CIA, FDR knew that Pearl Harbor was going to be bombed, the world is secretly controlled by the Illuminati, or whatever. To such people who've been wallowing in so many conspiracy stories and for so long, the 9/11 attack would naturally be perceived as a web of conspiracies as well. It's a classic case of someone with only a hammer seeing everything as a nail.

I note that despite your flowery sounding bluster, you still did not deny my suggestion that you do this too. "Psychology 9/11, indeed" is damned right.

Originally posted by GoodOlDave
Let me get this straight...*YOU*, a person who believes there's a web of secret conspiracies behind the 9/11 attack, are requesting that *I*, who believes these claims are all paranoid rubbish, need to supply details on how your web of conspiracies would have to work. Do I really understand you correctly?

As long as you're the one who keeps telling me what I believe, yes.

I "believe" in the scientific method and yet until it is fully applied I "believe" nothing else. I believe I do not know everything, but that never takes away from things that I do know.

If you want to say 100,000,000 people were involved and 2 goats, or better yet, if you want to tell me that that's what you think I think, I'm just asking how you came up with it and why. That's all.

If you can't then I guess you'll just have to get all your information about what I believe from me myself, and I just don't know what people you're talking about.

Friend, you just proved what I've been saying all along- if you conspiracy proponents would only hold your own ill-thought out conspiracy stories to the same intensive high level of critical analysis that you do the standard account, you wouldn't be conspiracy proponents for very long...

This is a critical analysis here now and telling me what I believe is stepping off on the wrong foot if you ask me. If you want to talk about critical thinking, let's talk about sound logic and reasoning too. Which specifically precludes logical fallacies, which happen to include putting words in my mouth and ideas in my head. At least when you are talking to me personally. When you are talking to a huge body of unrelated people known only to you as "truthers," then you can talk to them in similarly vague and generalized concepts that you have become attached to. I am very particularly, detail-oriented, very specific in my words and none of them are by accident. If I do not say something, you should not assume I think or believe it. Can you honestly tell me that you thoroughly understand this?

In the 9/11 commission report, it documents how NYPD helicopters flying eye level to the impact area reported seeing the building columns glowing red from the fires and appeared they were about to collapse, and about a half hour later, they did. I will give you the exact page number, if you want. This clearly shoots down your controlled demolitions claims, so please explain to me, how would this report be wrong?

First can you explain to me how exactly that "clearly shoots down...controlled demolitions claims"? Are you saying that because the fires appeared intense to someone around the impact site, that therefore the fires and impact damages were all that brought the buildings down? Because if you are, then frankly I neither understand why you think this is logical or how I can even explain to you that it is not solid reasoning.

If this IS what you consider solid evidence, then I think I'm discussing this with the wrong person, so let me know.

I would just suggest you learn more about the family's history in general and many of the trivia associated with them, but it isn't my place or even my point to share it.

Why would I want to or even need to do that?

Well, generally the reason we learn things is to have a more accurate perception of what is going on constantly around us, and to be able to more appropriately interact with our world. Personally if someone tells me I need to study anything at all, I don't really wonder at it. We are all ignorant of very many things. So this is why I tell you it would help to be more familiar with these influential powers and people, that certainly have more to do with 9/11 at any rate than you do. But this point in particular is not a critical point, just a response to a certain question. I would just as soon avoid those questions altogether until you are not so cynical and condescending about the overall situation, because they are indeed speculative but not as off-base as you would like to think. You can disagree of course but you can't really argue with me in any detail because you don't know what I'm talking about.

The impacts did NOT cause great structural damage, they severed less than 15% of the columns on the impacted floors in either building.

The percentage of initial damage is really not a good argument.

It's not an "argument," it's a fact.

Similarly, the amount of structural integrity and load-bearing capacity they represent is also a fact and a very basic tenet of structural engineering: columns carry loads, eventually to the ground. The more columns you have, the more load-bearing capacity you have. When more than 85% of the columns on the impacted floors are still intact, that speaks for itself. I don't need to tell you what it "means."

We saw with our own eyes that the collapse was a cascading chain of structural failure,

You can't "see" something in real time that required a massive multi-million dollar investigation to try to figure out, when even that investigation failed to yield answers to many questions. I'm talking about engineering principles and physical behaviors as prescribed by formulas; you are obviously talking from a much more simplistic and naive frame of mind. I appreciate the effort but you see, I want the technical details that engineers sought in the aftermath, not what the layman saw on his TV and could tell you the day of.

Whatever that percentage necessary for that initial structural failure to occur happens to be is still up for debate.

Well, a factor of safety rating of at least 2 is legally required, meaning the equivalent of at least 50% of the load bearing capacity would have compromised to reach the yield strength of the columns, which is just the loading at which deformations begin to occur. Technically there is no established mechanism for producing the collapse as we saw. "Pancake collapse" was debunked even by NIST, and I can post the appropriate links. Realize that because NIST has failed to replace the theory with a better one (all NIST tried to explain was initiation, ie the beginning of deformations, not shear failures), it does not mean the problems with the theory can be ignored and we can use it as a model anyway.

I subscribe to the MIT report of materials engineer Thomas Eager, who concluded that all it takes is a 150C temperature difference from one side of the structural steel to the other side to incite thermal stresses sufficient to cause it to buckle. The steel didn't fail becuase the fires melted it. The steel failed becuase the uneven heating from the fires caused the steel to warp.

I'm aware of the theory, but I will be waiting for you to post conclusive evidence establishing that this was indeed the mechanism, or that it's even possible to initiate shear failures in truss connections from this or any similar mechanism. It would be easy to connect a truss to perimeter columns on one end, some other support on the other end, and then heat the truss, watch it sag, and exert stresses onto the perimeter connections. Especially with millions of dollars in resources, this is certainly not difficult. But it was never done. I ask why? This is one reason among many for further investigation, or if you feel we have sufficient evidence of this mechanism nonetheless, I would be happy to read whatever other technical evidence you can find.

The floors and the structural columns supported each other. When the floors failed due to the floor trusses being compromised, the columns being supported by the trusses were pulled down with them

Here is a truss connection to the perimeter:



Here you can see a truss span to the core:




If you exerted a lot of force to pull the truss away from the core, in whatever direction, the connection is obviously going to fail much sooner than you are going to bend those massive core columns by pulling with such relatively thin lengths. I could even calculate it mathematically. This is something any engineer would also tell you and so I don't really feel like arguing about it with anyone, would sooner agree to disagree. At any rate there has never been any specific mechanism provided in the official reports for how the core failed or why it would fail simultaneously with the perimeter as observed.

Despite the fact they fell more or less straight down it would still cause huge amounts of debris to pile up in every direction for the simple reason that the towers were just plain immense.

Once again I fail to see what logic you think you are using here. The fact that the towers are big explains why ~90% of their total masses were thrown radially in all directions? You're going to have to elaborate, sorry. And also elaborate on how this fact doesn't contradict the pancake theory you just espoused. What mass is "pancaking" if not this mass?

Are you claiming the saboteurs only bombed the bottom of the buildings...?

No, I am not, and I don't even know how you could have arrived at this based on what I have said so far. I said it earlier but I will say it again, please do not think you know me or what I am saying better than I do, and please do not try to put words in my mouth or try to "feel out" where I'm going before I go there. If you just like hearing the same things over and over and over you could always just talk to yourself; it would be much more predictable for you.

[edit on 1-6-2009 by bsbray11]

All right, fine. Thank you for the history lesson. It still diesn't explain how the Somali pirates are a conspiracy