Timewaster's Guide Archive
General => Everything Else => Topic started by: Firemeboy on March 22, 2006, 06:48:52 PM
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A group of scholars apparently think that 9/11 didn't quite happen like was reported. Looks like we've got another JFK conspiracy type event on our hands.
http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholars_for_9/11_Truth
There is a professor from BYU who has written a paper on the subject, and who is a member of the group.
Apologies if this has been posted before.
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I've read that paper. It seems long on conjecture and short on proof. The main thrust of it is basically, "We see some odd things in the films of the event and in verbal accounts of conditions at the site afterward, therefore we should be allowed to investigate further." As far as that goes, I agree. There are some wierd things and there should be no harm in investigating further. The "Government's" reticence to allow outside experts to examine the physical evidence, frankly, is more disturbing than any of the "evidence" he brings up in his paper.
The "wierdest" thing he points out is the collapse of building 7 (?) The one that wasn't one of the 2. In footage of its collapse you can clearly see what look like squibs going off down one side of the building in advance of the collapse. Very odd.
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I looked at that video of building 7 a while back, and I'm pretty sure those aren't squibs. What Prof. Jones sees as puffs of smoke don't act like puffs of smoke. For example, they move downwards at the exact same rate as the building wall as it collapses.
I was rather annoyed when I first heard that Prof. Jones would be speaking about this at Life, the Universe and Everything, but then I realized that what he's proposing is pure fantasy, so it would fit right in at a science fiction and fantasy symposium.
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Yeah, but now Charlie Sheen is on the list, and he's like the son of the president...
http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_27264270.shtml
:)
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The "Government's" reticence to allow outside experts to examine the physical evidence, frankly, is more disturbing than any of the "evidence" he brings up in his paper.
You know how much a public enquiry costs? Here the government avoids them like the plague, because they cost tens of millions of pounds usually.
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thats only because someone has to spring for lunch.
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I don't mind further investigation. I would invite it. If the government has given a true account, then there should be *no* problem with further investigation. This is also how I felt about the whole UAE ports deal. I think it sends a horrible message to our allies that Congress would stonewall a deal simply because of nationality of the other partner happens to be geographically close to an enemy. However, if they're so squeeky clean, what did Bush have against a Congressional investigation? Sometimes I wonder if the rest of the world is retarded and I'm the only one with a brain.
Anyway, so yeah, something like the September 11 attacks is exceedingly difficult to account for completely. We will never be certain about everything, but that's all the more reason to look at it closer. As a current trial in Alexandria is showing, there was a god-awful amount of governmental incompetence regarding things that went on. One FBI agent sent a report to 17 major FBI officials outlining exactly the scenario that occurred, 2 months before the attacks. Nothing was done. Why? I suppose it *could* be a conspiracy, but Occam's razor, to me, seems to indicate fat lazy bastards in positions of authority.
So, further investigation is warranted. However, it pisses me off that because there are unclear facets people automatically assume this means the president got several people to engineer dark deeds against our own people, and somehow managed to remove any trace of a paper trail, and that you could get everyone who worked on the Pentagon after the attack to be absolutely silent about the fact that they never saw Airplane fuselage. I mean, what? How is any of that *possible?* let alone more likely than government incompetance (which we know is rampant) and some resourceful attacks from terrorists (who we *know* hate us).
meh. Sorry. Bad mood today.
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You know how much a public enquiry costs? Here the government avoids them like the plague, because they cost tens of millions of pounds usually.
Yeah. Expensive. But people like Prof. Jones are just asking for access to the material. That can't be too expensive.
I agree with SE.
As for the ports deal... I have an interesting factoid. When I was in Afghanistan we had a team from the UAE living next to us for a few months at Kandahar Airfield. They did the same thing everyone else was doing...go out and hunt down the Taliban.
It's amazing to me that the Democrats could keep a straight face when they claimed that the ports deal was a threat to national security. It flew in the face of everything they've been saying about national security for the past 4 years, and their reasoning boiled down to "they're arabs so we can't trust them" I mean honestly, they could have at least come up with something credible.
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Here's an article from Popular Mechanics that refutes most of the 9/11 conspiracy theories.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html
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That's an amazingly sane, logical, and common sense article.
So it must not be true!
(see, the second sentence of this post is called "sarcasm")
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How refreshing to see an article written that actually quotes eye-witnesses and shows unclipped data.
Thanks HoM.
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http://edition.cnn.com/POLLSERVER/results/23968.exclude.html
Looks like most people agree with Sheen...
I guess if you can act, then people think you know what you're talking about...
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well... don't you?
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Skar how can you blame just the Democrats for torpedoing the port deal when the majority of the republican party did the exact same thing? You should expect the party not in power to do everything to press a percived advantage, If the tables were reversed, like under Clinton the Republicans would have been howling for blood and an impeachment preceeding. What stunned me was how willing the republicans were to cut and run from the president over it.
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ARGH!
I'm totally going to lock this if it goes any furhter. I deliberately ignored that so we wouldn't have a fight. Now I'm expecting one.
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Im not trying to fight... I was just curious.
Forget I said it.
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Skar how can you blame just the Democrats for torpedoing the port deal when the majority of the republican party did the exact same thing?
I'm not blaming only the democrats for torpedoing the ports deal. Perhaps I was less than clear (heaven knows that's been a problem of mine in the past) but what I was pointing out was that the democrats reversed their position on national security over the issue because (as far as I could tell) it was a chance to politically hurt the republicans. They have been claiming that the Republicans simply hate all arabs, lied to get into the war because they hate all arabs, and are racist in their attitudes towards arabs. Now, suddenly they have an opportunity to jab a Republican president over a percieved national security issue and they reverse themselves. Suddenly the ports deal was bad for no better reason than "arabs would be controlling our ports." As I said, the democrats had nothing credible to say, they just screamed ARAB and made hay. I didn't blame the democrats for torpedoing the ports deal, I blamed them for engaging in mindless fearmongering, which very thing they have been accusing the Republicans of for years now. It doesn't even matter whether they were right to accuse the Republicans of that, that discussion has been had more than once too many times on this forum. I was merely pointing out that their behavior was internally inconsistent.
You should expect the party not in power to do everything to press a percived advantage, If the tables were reversed, like under Clinton the Republicans would have been howling for blood and an impeachment preceeding. What stunned me was how willing the republicans were to cut and run from the president over it.
On the contrary I expect any party to at least behave in a consistent manner, rather than reversing themselves in order to ride on every passing zephyr of political advantage. One is now left to wonder whether the democratic party thinks we should treat arabs as real people (which is the stand they take to oppose the war and accuse the Republicans of NOT doing) or whether we should treat them as an untrustworthy racial whole (which is the stand they took over the ports deal). The Democrats are/were being false in at least one of those mutually exclusive stands. That leads one to wonder if they are ever true since they play the crowd so casually.
I don't think the Republicans who broke with the Pres. had any more credible reason for objecting to the ports deal than the democrats, they certainly didn't present a more compelling case. But they at least weren't reversing themselves on the national security issue.
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Incidentally, you're in the Coast Guard yes? (forgive me if I have that totally wrong...) If you have any insights into how ports operate and whether the Dubai Ports deal would or would not have given terrorists easier access I'd like to hear your thoughts. I have nearly no knowledge on the matter and would appreciate some insight.
And, incidentally, I'm honestly not trying to start a fight. If my remarks seem needlessly inflammatory know that I'm not doing it on purpose.
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The Coast Guard assessment presented to congress concluded that "there are many intelligence gaps, concerning the potential for DPW or P&O assets to support terrorist operations, that precludes an overall threat assessment of the potential DWP and P&O ports merger. The breadth of the intelligence gaps also infer potential unknown threats against a large number of potential vulnerabilities."
While its true that the port owner has little control or influence over most port operations, they have just enough to be truely dangerous especially when you take into account that we are only able to inspect 35% of containers that come into our ports. Its probably true that ownership by DWP would make no difference, they do have an excellect record, from a nationalistic point of veiw Im of the opinion that foreigners who want to own our infrastructure can get stuffed and bugger off. They can trade with us, not own us. I feel like every foreign operated port in the US ought to be run by us. I would also like to point out that 35% of containers inspected is a terrifying number. That means that in a batch of 100 containers all carrying a nuke, only 35 might get caught. Im not comfortable with that figure. Im also not comfortable with the just trust us excuse from the white house. Trade and security are important enough to warrant an investigation even if the buyers seem to be or even are our allies.
That bits just my opinion though.
I'll tell you more about port ops in 3 months when Im inspecting cargos in Norfolk.
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Its probably true that ownership by DPW would make no difference, they do have an excellect record.
That makes good sense. The ports are already so wide open that ownership by one foreign ally over another is a moot point. So I have to echo E here, how embarrassing that the ports deal got killed "because they're arabs."
Makes one wonder why a container bomb hasn't already been detonated here.
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Not that embarassing. For a few reasons. No ones really gone out of their way in this country or around the world making the face of the arab world look sane. Just look at the riots about cartoons. You and I can intellectualize that most Arabs are people, with feelings, and reverence toward life, with ambitions and dreams, but I tend to think of us as the intellecual elite of the coutry too. We use computers, we vote, we keep up on current affairs, we read etc...
The average joe, going to work from 9-5 doesnt know a lot about arabs. Heck half of them think Iranians are Arabs, they dont know the words Arab, and Islam arent synonymous. If they can find Iraq on a map its only because we fought 2 wars with them. Most folks know nothing of Dubai, or the UAE.
Heres an article worth reading from the Washington times (yes I read conservative papers too) http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060308-122910-3253r.htm
This is from the post from a few years ago
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22303-2002Feb16?language=printer
and shudder fox news.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,185725,00.html
the Pakistani nuclear connection in itself is troublesome, and UAE is on the list of 20 nations involved in the Nuclear black market.
and yeah, we're scared of Arabs. People have been scaring us about arabs for 2 decades now. It finally took. Who knew?
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Not that embarassing. For a few reasons.
But you have to admit the opponents of the ports deal could at least have said something along the lines of "The UAE intelligence service is riddled with AlQaeda operatives." or "DPW has absolutely no controls in place capable of ensuring that their middle to upper management (those who could easily ensure that a particular container was part of the 65%) are NOT AlQaeda operatives." It's not embarrassing that the ports deal failed but that it failed on such a weak argument when so many better ones were available. I hope to read those articles tomorrow. Buenos Noches.
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many of them were made, they just got soundbited into racist little 30 second clips from both sides.
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Thank you to the media.