9/11 and conspiracy theories

[Beto]

Alrighty then... as I suggested in another thread, this one will be just to chat about 9/11 and other conspiracy theories. With so many websites solely devoted to them, I don't think addressing the issue here is "dangerous" to anyone.

So, to get things started I'll mention the "peculiarities" I find in the 9/11 event that I don't feel are sufficiently addressed by the government. I'm particularly interested in some incontrovertible images and sounds, since anything else implies trusting the mainstream media and the accused party.

First off, about the WTC 7. The NIST recently released a report blaming the fires for the collapse of the building. I'm no engineer so I can't really judge. Though looking at how the building falls it seems like a bunch of bs to me. More relevant is Silverstein's statement. During an interview, Silverstein claimed to have decided, in conjunction with the Fire Commander to "pull" the building. Now, it's often claimed he meant pull the firefighters out, but his exact phrase was "pull it". The transcript goes like:

"I said 'you know we've had such terrible loss of life. Maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it. And they made that decision to pull, and then we watched the building collapse."



People say it comes down to what we want to hear. For the life of me, and despite definitely not wanting to hear what I do, I can't see how this could relate to pull people out. Also relevant was the fact that no firefighters were in the building at this time. They were outside walking away from the building, fact caught on amateur video:

"It's blowin' boy." ... "Keep your eye on that building, it'll be coming down soon." ... "The building is about to blow up, move it back." ... "Here we are walking back. There's a building, about to blow up..."



"Blow up"? It's hard to believe the firefighters were expecting a steel framed building to collapse because of internal fires, when later it's considered a "freak accident", and totally unexpected.

OK, that's enough about WTC 7. Now something about Flight 93.



Leaving aside the "feel" of the clip, and whether or not the "scar" was there before 9/11, this is NOT a plane crash site. Scattered debris here and there don't make a plane crash site. The bulk of the fuselage should be right there, where nothing can be seen. Show me another crash site even remotely similar to that one.

That's enough for now, I guess.

[Beto]

On second thought, I don't think I will leave this quite as it is. I've been accused of not rising up to a "purely intellectual challenge" by someone that didn't even bother to read the thread, and admitted it, while still accusing me of being wrong. I admitted not knowing the answers to all questions, and pointed out how that doesn't invalidate the arguments presented. This member chose to ignore that and started mispresenting my position, even though I know he's rational enough to understand it. This was all it took for me to lose respect for this member, a theist that I respected as such, but that apparently lacks the courtesy to extend the same respect to people who are skeptical of powerful world governments and their agendas, even though this position is completely based on observable evidence or speculation based on observable evidence, contrary to certain "mystical experiences" no one else can verify, but to which I personally didn't mock or belittle. This blatantly hypocritical and dishonest behavior denotes great fear of the possibility that one's government is run by nothing more than a criminal organization, bent on the subjugation of its people, brainwashing them into thinking they are actually cared for, and that these obscene amounts of power wielded by some people aren't likely to corrupt them. The same fear that makes some theists lie and misrepresent the opposition because they can't handle the alternative.

I've been accused of holding a double standard even though nothing I presented wasn't either established fact, or speculation based on a subjective interpretation of fact. I argued using images of 9/11 and quotes of people involved, nothing else, and this member has the gall to compare this with fundamentalist theological positions. He could have just disagreed with the inferences I made without resorting to lies, dishonesty, and misrepresentation of my position. He completely refuses to accept that I don't want any of my convictions on this matter to be true, because he simply can't handle how an atheist, skeptical by definition, does not see the rosy world he does, and applies Ockham's razor in way he just doesn't like.

I can even relate to the wish of creating a world government, ensuring everlasting peace, at the expense of some liberties and the sacrifice of a few people. Living in the delusion that powerful people with this mindset don't exist is as unrealistic and wishful thinking, as belief in gods. I already find interesting that some people can concoct all sorts of fairy tales about "God" and the "afterlife", or whatever, but these fairy tales of "caring and honest governments" take "delusion" to a whole new level. I can be wrong about every single inference I made about 9/11, and I hope so, but I wasn't dishonest or misrepresented the feelings and position of people that trust the US government and the official line of events. Furrowed Brow understood this, and made a great case (though personally unconvincing), addressing each point without a priori judgements of character, unlike a member that says he believes his religion is true while not making judgments of other religions, but apparently doesn't recognize someone may be a conspiricist without making judgments of non-conspiracy views. To me, this is hypocrisy and undeserving of respect.

[Furrowed Brow]

(though personally unconvincing),

O dear. Lets take it from the top then . Please list the unconvincing points.

Actually I think the picture evidence is pretty darn clear and shows itself to be consistent with a 757 hitting the Pentagon, and struggle to see how anyone can seriously argue otherwise. What I think you have Beto is identifya loose set of possible motivations, tallied them with a distrust of government, and then tried to see a crime scene in the pictures. And my point is there is no crime scene evident in the pics, or even a real suspicion of one.

To be honest I don't care about the motivations and dark methods of intelligence agencies, military and government when I look at the pictures. This is not to say I don't care about such things, but just not when I'm trying to cleary understand what is really before our eyes or not before our eyes in the pics.

[Goat]

(though personally unconvincing),

O dear. Lets take it from the top then . Please list the unconvincing points.

Actually I think the picture evidence is pretty darn clear and shows itself to be consistent with a 757 hitting the Pentagon, and struggle to see how anyone can seriously argue otherwise. What I think you have Beto is identifya loose set of possible motivations, tallied them with a distrust of government, and then tried to see a crime scene in the pictures. And my point is there is no crime scene evident in the pics, or even a real suspicion of one.

To be honest I don't care about the motivations and dark methods of intelligence agencies, military and government when I look at the pictures. This is not to say I don't care about such things, but just not when I'm trying to cleary understand what is really before our eyes or not before our eyes in the pics.

What I personally have to wonder is we have eye witness accounts seeing a 757 flying very low over DC just minute before the impact. I personally know someone who saw that plane fly low. I have to wonder how we can discount the
multitudes of people who saw the 757, and where it went afterwords if Beto's skepticism has any basis in reality.

[Furrowed Brow]

(though personally unconvincing),

O dear. Lets take it from the top then . Please list the unconvincing points.

Actually I think the picture evidence is pretty darn clear and shows itself to be consistent with a 757 hitting the Pentagon, and struggle to see how anyone can seriously argue otherwise. What I think you have Beto is identifya loose set of possible motivations, tallied them with a distrust of government, and then tried to see a crime scene in the pictures. And my point is there is no crime scene evident in the pics, or even a real suspicion of one.

To be honest I don't care about the motivations and dark methods of intelligence agencies, military and government when I look at the pictures. This is not to say I don't care about such things, but just not when I'm trying to cleary understand what is really before our eyes or not before our eyes in the pics.

What I personally have to wonder is we have eye witness accounts seeing a 757 flying very low over DC just minute before the impact. I personally know someone who saw that plane fly low. I have to wonder how we can discount the
multitudes of people who saw the 757, and where it went afterwords if Beto's skepticism has any basis in reality.

I don't disagree about the eye witnesses. But it is relatively easy for conspiracy theorists to dismiss these as fabrications or mistakes without doing any work to reach that conclusion. The very tangible evidence often presented by the theorists themselves is the pictures, and the point to my methodology is to hopefully get Beto to see the conspiracy theorists are either sloppy in the way they are looking at the pics or even willfully misconceiving them; that any objective view of the pics and only the pics shows no crime scene.

[cnorman18]

To Beto:

Sorry again, dude, but that was a load.

If you want to take a couple of simple, logical and on-point questions for which you clearly have no credible answers, and see those as dishonesty, hypocrisy and an attack on your character, go for it; but that has nothing to do with me.

That you have here attacked my own character in a long and bitter ad hominem that still fails to address those questions says more about you than me, I think.

As I said in my PM, my personal respect for you is (or was, at this point) a given. Now it's not.

If you can answer my questions, let's see you do it. If not, drop it. Dumping on me isn't going to solve your problem here.

[Beto]

O dear. Lets take it from the top then . Please list the unconvincing points.

Your tenacity is commendable. I don't mind doing so, but perhaps we should recognize our intuitions (or your own calculations) regarding the observed damage aren't peer-reviewed either way. I assume you agree the Purdue investigations can hardly be considered independant. Do you think we can add anything substantial to what's been covered already? You may just think I'm stubborn, but you must appreciate how my mind is not likely to be changed by your opinions alone, and vice-versa.

Actually I think the picture evidence is pretty darn clear and shows itself to be consistent with a 757 hitting the Pentagon, and struggle to see how anyone can seriously argue otherwise.

What I think you have Beto is identifya loose set of possible motivations, tallied them with a distrust of government, and then tried to see a crime scene in the pictures. And my point is there is no crime scene evident in the pics, or even a real suspicion of one.

So you're arguing I'm not being objective when I look at the WHOLE picture of 9/11, even though I'm European without the typical anti-American prejudice. How can I demonstrate otherwise?

To be honest I don't care about the motivations and dark methods of intelligence agencies, military and government when I look at the pictures. This is not to say I don't care about such things, but just not when I'm trying to cleary understand what is really before our eyes or not before our eyes in the pics.

If both of us are aware of "motivations and dark methods of intelligence agencies", how is it warranted to factor it out, when looking at the WHOLE picture, and not just the Pentagon event? Again, are you saying I'm incapable of objectivity without factoring it out? You may very well be correct sir, but is that the proper methodology? When ascertaining certain likelihoods and unlikelihoods, the fact that these agencies exist, and they probably use less than pc methods, cannot be ignored. Can you guarantee your factoring out these agencies and their methods isn't a form of bias on its own, that influences your analysis of the pictures?

The very tangible evidence often presented by the theorists themselves is the pictures, and the point to my methodology is to hopefully get Beto to see the conspiracy theorists are either sloppy in the way they are looking at the pics or even willfully misconceiving them; that any objective view of the pics and only the pics shows no crime scene.

Personally, all the circumstantial evidence surrounding the ordeal is more convincing than the actual pictures, and would be suspicious enough despite them. All the "conveniences" are enough to be very wary of patriot acts, without any pictures being required to argue a case. Domestically I don't know, but any foreign citizen is entitled to be sure things are as the US government says they are, when they go around invading other countries. Which is not to say these countries didn't have it coming one way or another, but that's another issue.

[Beto]

Some more considerations, "coincidences", or whatever people want to call them... with 3.3 trillion dollars "missing" from the US Treasury, and I suppose we're all pretty sceptic as to people losing money, 2.6 were "missing" from the Pentagon budget. These figures haven't been challenged yet so I'm assuming they're agreed upon, give or take a few billion. In my mind, if there's something unlikely to be lost, it is money. Even so, all this money became admittedly unaccounted for. Who was in charge of tracking down that money in the Pentagon, after 9/11? In 2001, a certain Dov S. Zakheim, a dual Israeli/American citizen and a Shul Rabbi, became Undersecretary of Defence and Comptroller. Dov S. Zakheim that was, up until 2001, CEO of SPC International, a subsidiary of System Planning Corporation, a company that developed very interesting systems, such as the "Command Transmitter System" and the "Flight Termination System". Now, these are systems designed for "hijack" of airborne vehicles. As far as coincidences go, is this one also supposed to be irrelevant when investigating 9/11, along with all the others? In fact, how many would it take? Furthermore, is anyone aware of substantial evidence that any money was recovered, other than Tina W. Jonas' word for it? With the American people now being asked for 700 billion and all.

[Furrowed Brow]

You may just think I'm stubborn, but you must appreciate how my mind is not likely to be changed by your opinions alone, and vice-versa.

What I think I’ve been mainly offering you is an interpretation of the pictures that is consistent with the pictures, and one that cannot be dismissed. If so, whatever you think about the US government and their motivations, you cannot justify or base the conspiracy theory on the pictures. The picture rather than helping the conspiracy case are actually its worse enemy. And point by point you have neglected to come back at me and instead prefer to point to possible motivations and suspicious behavior. But motivations and suspicious behavior are not what can be seen in the pictures.

So you're arguing I'm not being objective when I look at the WHOLE picture of 9/11, even though I'm European without the typical anti-American prejudice. How can I demonstrate otherwise?

I’m saying it is only possible to look at the pictures and see a crime scene if the energy of the impact and reduced volume explosions are completely underplayed, and there is no objective reason for doing that. So I am also saying that attention to the pictures offers no support to the WHOLE picture put forward by the conspiracy theorists.

If both of us are aware of "motivations and dark methods of intelligence agencies", how is it warranted to factor it out,

Factor it in if you wish but just look at what is in the pictures and factor in all the physical processes that will be at play if a 757 hit the Pentagon...something that is far more relevant to the physics of the event, and if you do the pictures have to be withdrawn as evidence of any conspiracy.

Again, are you saying I'm incapable of objectivity without factoring it out?

I’m saying look at the pictures as a physical event, and factor in all the physical processes that could have gone in to that event, look at the available video, and nothing is inconsistent with a 757. Nothing.

You may very well be correct sir, but is that the proper methodology?

Yes it is the correct methodology because you have to be objective about what the picture evidence can support. And clearly it can support a 757, and does support a plane strike. You then have to be clear as to what you have to factor out to begin to give the pictures a conspiracy theory reading, and it becomes obvious that the conspiracy theory requires an almost willful editing out of the picture of certain physical processes that will be at play.

Also the line of questioning you have pursued to deny the 757 has been shown to be flawed on several points. We can go over them again if you wish.

The method is correct because the limited pictures that there are, are inconsistent with a missile strike. The method is also correct because attention to the pictures shows the planted explosives theory explains no more of the physical evidence in the pictures than a 757. Moreover, it posits way more premises and uncertainties, and is itself vague. Exactly where were the explosives planted, against which pillars, how much and what type of explosives etc. How and where were the plane parts planted? We have not even started to get the conspiracy theorists on the back foot on these points.

Can you guarantee your factoring out these agencies and their methods isn't a form of bias on its own, that influences your analysis of the pictures?

Pretty much yes. I look at the pictures and ask the question can a 757 have done this and come up with the answer yes. A plane - strong yes. I ask can a missile have done this and I get a very strong no. I ask could this have been planted explosives and I get a wobbly yes…….but this explanation offers no better explanation that a plane strike, and is in some ways far more vague as to the details of how it was done. I don’t deny you your doubts Beto, I just deny you can use the pictures to support your doubts. And the most important point: it's been cleary shown how and where the conspiracy theory provides a completely wonky analysis of the pictures when attacking the official line.

Personally, all the circumstantial evidence surrounding the ordeal is more convincing than the actual pictures,

But a major thrust to the conspiracy theory has been the pictures. The actual pictures are clearly evidence the conspiracy theorists have taken as their own. I think it has been clearly demonstrated the pictures are no good as evidence of anything other than a plane hitting the pentagon. And if a plane hit the pentagon….where is it in the pictures…..and of course the answers have already been given.

[Beto]

What I think I’ve been mainly offering you is an interpretation of the pictures that is consistent with the pictures, and one that cannot be dismissed.

"Interpretation" is the operative word. It's as liable to dismissal as any other.

If so, whatever you think about the US government and their motivations, you cannot justify or base the conspiracy theory on the pictures.

I don't. That's the position I'm trying hard to dismiss every time someone pins it on me.

The picture rather than helping the conspiracy case are actually its worse enemy.

Depends on the interpretation.

And point by point you have neglected to come back at me and instead prefer to point to possible motivations and suspicious behavior.

That's not true. You say one piece of physical evidence is likely, I say it isn't, and that's pretty much all we have to show for. I don't think that piece of fuselage in the lawn is consistent with the crash, you think it is. I don't think the exit-hole is consisted with a "plane mash" that hit it, you think it is. But unfortunately, these opinions will remain just that.

But motivations and suspicious behavior are not what can be seen in the pictures.

I never claimed otherwise. But if you're implying bias on my part, because of any type of belief, I can argue the same.

I’m saying it is only possible to look at the pictures and see a crime scene if the energy of the impact and reduced volume explosions are completely underplayed, and there is no objective reason for doing that. So I am also saying that attention to the pictures offers no support to the WHOLE picture put forward by the conspiracy theorists.

Not only is peer-review for your interpretation inexistent, investigations were hampered by the accused party that supports the same interpretation. That gives credibility to the alternative.

Factor it in if you wish but just look at what is in the pictures and factor in all the physical processes that will be at play if a 757 hit the Pentagon...something that is far more relevant to the physics of the event, and if you do the pictures have to be withdrawn as evidence of any conspiracy.

This brings to mind the "evidence" issue of theological discussions. I submit there is no evidence either way, mostly because the process that allows for their gathering wasn't set in motion. All we have are interpretations of the same observation, not "evidence" as we would both like to have and present. Again, I would like to have evidence to prove what you see, but I don't.

Also the line of questioning you have pursued to deny the 757 has been shown to be flawed on several points. We can go over them again if you wish.

You mean arguments for a non-existence of Flight 77, or an actual aircraft?

The method is correct because the limited pictures that there are, are inconsistent with a missile strike.

The indications pointing to the likelihood of a 757 can also be interpreted as detrimental to that case, thus supporting any alternative.

The method is also correct because attention to the pictures shows the planted explosives theory explains no more of the physical evidence in the pictures than a 757.

If some people look at that exit-hole, for instance, and see something too "geometrical" to be caused by a "plane mash", explosives are a likely alternative. But I don't claim this is anything more than intuition, and I doubt you have anything more substantial than your own.

Moreover, it posits way more premises and uncertainties, and is itself vague. Exactly where were the explosives planted, against which pillars, how much and what type of explosives etc. How and where were the plane parts planted? We have not even started to get the conspiracy theorists on the back foot on these points.

Should the difficulty in coming up with the exact scenario influence our intuitive perspective on the damage? That is a form of bias.

I look at the pictures and ask the question can a 757 have done this and come up with the answer yes. A plane - strong yes. I ask can a missile have done this and I get a very strong no. I ask could this have been planted explosives and I get a wobbly yes…….but this explanation offers no better explanation that a plane strike, and is in some ways far more vague as to the details of how it was done.

At this point, I won't deny the only alternative I see to the 757 would have to be both a missile striking the facade, and explosives on the other rings to provide the illusion of penetration, impossible (unlikely?) with a missile. I can't help it if it makes me sound unreasonably sceptic, but I don't think it makes the scenario much more complicated.

I don’t deny you your doubts Beto, I just deny you can use the pictures to support your doubts.

I understand that, but you must also realize I can't agree with using the pictures to support lack of doubts.

And the most important point: it's been clearly shown how and where the conspiracy theory provides a completely wonky analysis of the pictures when attacking the official line.

At this point, I must still disagree.

But a major thrust to the conspiracy theory has been the pictures.

I can't speak for "the" conspiracy theory. I don't base my judgment on the Pentagon event.

[Beto]

I'm waiting for your take on the cable spools. The argument here, suggesting the absense of Flight 77, is how the cable spools remain sitting in the path of a 757's jetwash. Again, intuitively, I don't see these objects having the necessary mass to remain anywhere close to where they were.





A typical response is that the spools aren't as close to the building as some pictures might suggest. Disregarding the fact that there are multiple pictures with better perspectives to reafirm how close they were, I don't see how this is relevant given the alleged distance the plane flew near to the ground.