Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
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.
Thanks for correcting me: WTC7 was indeed on fire before collapsing. At freefall speeds. Into it's own footprint.
The thing is, Brian, to accept the official account (aside from the issue of intellectual laziness) is to accept far too many coincidences that involve the intersection of far too many extraordinary preconditions.
For al-Quaeda to build their plan around the one day when defenses would be on standby because of wargame exercises, using methods that would play perfectly into exactly the specific scenaria laid out in the exercises, executed by men whose most distinguishing commonality was a notable lack of flying skill, men who would fly some of the largest and most complex planes into three astonishingly small targets at high speeds...
If you can believe all that in one package, then you're a better person than I.
I can't believe that the home turf of the most powerful military force on the planet is watched by one video camera.
I can't believe that a fully-laden passenger jet can hit the side of said building and leave a hole smaller than the diameter of the fuselage.
I can't believe another passenger jet can hit the countryside and not leave at least a decent amount of luggage strewn about.
I can't believe that after the collision of plane and tower, after the fireball, and out of a half-million tons of rubble, out pops one of the hijacker's passports in pristine condition.
There are many more things I can't believe. Character flaw, I suppose.
Unless you wanted a discussion about 9/11 :)
Pictures are a terrible way to convey information. People have a tendency to think they are infallible, when nothing could be further from the truth. We've known for a long, long time that by altering or removing the context of a picture we can make something appear to be what we want, because our brains are hard wired to identify everything we see as fast as possible. You don't have to have a picture of a thing, you just have to have a picture of something that most people will identify as that thing.
People don't see what they want to see, they see what they expect to see because that's the fastest possible connection they can make. It's a survival trait. Comes in pretty handy when that large shape flying out of the underbrush is a saber toothed tiger, but it can be problematic when looking at 3/4 of a second of a jetliner in flight. Works with auditory stimulus as well.
So sadly, even leaving out the issues around digital enhancement and modification of pictures and sound, words really are the best way to convey information, because we have to think about them. Doesn't stop people from trying to make them say what they wanted them to say, but at least they have to work at it a little.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
