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All very interesting, Farhad Manjoo, but the facts speak for themselves. There's nothing arcane in any of it. These kinds of operations have been carried out before, 9/11 is simply the most brazen,the biggest and the most spectacular, as it was intended to be. You want facts? Here are some facts, you can check them and you'll find they're completely accurate. This is a list of some of the US TV stations that announced the collapse of WTC building number 7, in one case, almost an hour before the building came down. No one has ever been able to explain it and let's fact another fact: no one has really been asked to explain any of it.
NBC4 Washington, ABC7 Washington, the BBC in Britain announced the collapse in circumstances that can only be described as scandalous, or what would be scandalous if the media wasn't obsessed with keeping the lid on the whole story. The BBC's presenter Jane Standley did a report to camera a full 23 minutes before the building came down, announcing its collapse, with the building still standing behind her in the window of the skyscraper she was reporting from. And yes, I've seen the video. BBC 24 also helpfully had a timecode on the bottom of the footage which shows they announced it more than half an hour before it collapsed. Fox 5 Washington also announced it, CNN announced the collapse, CBS9 Washington announced it- all did it long before it happened. Larry Silverstein (purchaser of the WTC) admitted that building number 7 had been demolished (on national TV) a process that would have taken at least two weeks to set up,and would have to have been carried out prior to 9/11. The Twin Towers and building number 7 were all designed to withstand a hurricane, being hit by a plane and fire and yet all three collapsed in exactly the same way at freefall speed - a scientific impossibility, unless they were demolished. The World Trade Centre belonged to the NY Port Authority (in other words to Rudy Giuliani) until six weeks before 9/11. The steel columns that held up the Twin Towers had been heavily sprayed with asbestos in the seventies when the WTC was built (another reason why they couldn't have burned)but the law had changed and the Port Authority was on notice that the asbestos had to come out. It was going to cost billions. The WTC was a white elephant that already cost the Port Authority a packet, as it was. Larry Silverstein stepped forward and bought the whole WTC, he already owned building number 7, and insured it for $3.5 billion for terrorist attack. This cost him $100 million. After 9/11 he claimed that the two planes meant it was two attacks and took the insurance company to court. For his 100 million dollar investment he made $7 billion dollars. He became a billionaire, Rudy Giuliani got rid of the white elephant, and the CIA,the neo cons and the Pentagon got their wars, their surveillance laws, and a huge boost in funding and Bush got to be the 'war President' and the 'Decider' and land on an aircraft carrier as if he was Tom Cruise to announce the war in Iraq had been won. Just like the announcement of building number 7's collapse this was a bit premature. The only people who can't see what happened on 9/11 are people who don't want to see because they're in denial. The evidence is overwhelming and is the elephant in the room for the world's media. Until they all stop saying, 'Elephant? What elephant?' articles like Manjoo's will continue to be written. I also find it incredibly interesting, not to mention a mind boggling coincidence that the security company in charge of security for both the WTC and United Airlines had George W.Bush's cousin Wirt Walker III as its CEO until 2002 and also had Marvin Bush, George's brother on its board of directors. Inspector Poirot would make short work of all this, believe me, but the 9/11 Commission was more like Inspector Clouseau.
