Jeffrey Orling Wrote:Chomsky argues that terrorism is the inevitable consequence of imperial policies of the West (US) and 9/11 can be understood as blow back. I don't think this is an unreasonable position. Conpiracists then call leftists such as Chomsky gate keepers and diverting the public from the real culprits of world events. It may make sense, but the evidence for this sort of collaboration has not been demonstrated (no dot connecting).

Peter Presland Wrote:I hesitate to jump in on this given my prolonged posting absence and its antecedents in an an earlier thread of similar complexity and ad-hominem nastiness to another concurrent 9/11 one but, since I have read Kevin Ryan's latest book, from which the articles linked at the start of this thread derive and have never lost interest in the 9/11 geo-political game-changer, here goes.

First: Having arrived at a working hypothesis, which until disproved will suffice for me whilst I focus attention on more productive lines of inquiry and evidence, I have all but lost interest in the minutiae of the 3 x WTC towers collapses. That said, my understanding of Jeffrey's position on the twin towers collapses (from that infamous thread a couple of years ago) was that the impacts and fires were insufficient in and of themselves, to be the 'collapse initiating event' and that a quite separate 'initiating event' - presumably involving explosives - must therefore have been employed. I wonder if that understanding was correct and/or I was wrong/he has changed his position since.

Second: Jeffrey's 'connecting the dots' post is fair enough but, as Magda points out, he is as susceptible to the mechanisms described as anyone else; they are pretty much a universal psychological given. However, I found no particular evidence of confirmation bias in Ryan's book. He does not argue or present evidence for any propositions other than:

1. The existing official narrative is riddled with absurdities,
2. A less absurd (ie closer to the truth of the matter) narrative would result from the 19 people he majors on - together with a good few others - being required to submit to rigorous cross examination under oath and on pain of full legal sanction should they either decline or tell demonstrable porkies, and
3. The masses of withheld evidence with no conceivable detriment to so called 'national security interests' (other than the obvious one of damaging the official narrative) should be released to to public scrutiny.

I would have thought there was more or less universal agreement on all of those.

In support of them he has collated a vast amount of startling information about all manner of 9/11 related things, things that cannot be explained by mere coincidence and the existence of an old-boy network for career insiders. He does not say 'look at this as evidence for x's involvement in an inside job'; he simply says 'look at this as demonstrable, verifiable fact' and suggests that it is clearly relevant to ANY genuine investigation aimed a discovering what really happened.

He does indeed go on to say that failure to question these people or reveal these facts or release withheld evidence (like the suppression of all the Pentagon video tapes and the refusal of the Washington DC authorities to release recordings of telephoned info provided by real-time eye-witnesses when the NYC authorities did release theirs + masses of other obstructive actions) is indeed prima-facie evidence of an official determination to hide evidence damaging to the official narrative. But he does so in a forensic manner consistent with genuine investigation, with no 'confirmation bias' that I (with my own recognised propensity to confirmations bias ) can see.

I regard the book as a breath of fresh air in an otherwise moribund and self-absorbed 'Truth Movement' and hope that it may spur further work. My only minor criticism is that it does not do much digging into Israeli connections per se, although several intriguing ones are mentioned. In that respect I personally find Christopher Bollyn's work to be invaluable.

Jeffrey Orling Wrote:Peter,
My position of fires and impact is and always was:

No single factor is responsible for the destruction we saw. it was a cascading series of runaway progressive (factors/failures/causes) which in the aggregate facilitated the collapse... among those factors was a key one - the designs themselves. Plane strike mechanical damage alone wouldn't do it, fires alone would take lots of time to do it (as in 7), loss of fire protection would not do it, burning fuel alone would not do it, loss of sprinklers alone would not do it. All of them together could and did do it. Could the kick off be accomplished by some devices in lieu of heat weakening? Why not if they technology exists to engineer and *detonate* them. But there is no evidence in support of such devices. Ryan and others offers the idea that it was possible and who may have made it possible. Food for thought... speculation but not evidence.

Quote:I do believe that Ryan does not accept the fact that the collapses could manifest as they did IF there was sufficient heat present in the critical weak locations in the structure to kick off a progressive cascading series of failures leading to global collapse. In the recently closed thread it became clear that this critical data can not be derived by debate and accordingly more date (accurate) would be required to rule in or rule out heat as the energy which tipped the structures toward global collapse.

Quote:I don't know that Ryan addresses whether he believes there is a basis to accept the notion that radical Islamists could pull of the 9/11 attacks.

Peter Presland Wrote:[quote=Jeffrey Orling]

Then I did misunderstand your position.

For a whole raft of evidence-based reasons, I cannot accept that ".... all of them together can and did do it". My own working hypothesis is that, at the very least, an external event additional to all those factors would have been required to initiate a possible progressive collapse, but that additional 'insurance charges' were probably also placed at strategic positions well below the impact zones. I accept that the evidence for this is open to different interpretations, but it is evidence nonetheless. Unless and until I come across something new that renders my 'working hypothesis' untenable, I really am not interested in exploring the existing public domain minutiae of the collapses any further, if only because I find the Kevin Ryan approach more challenging and potentially productive.

I have not listened to the Ryan interviews you mentioned. I do however accept that he is in the 'conspiracy' camp. He may well have been making the case you describe, but his book certainly does not set out to make that case. It simply marshals masses of factual information about people and their positions, responsibilities, actions etc, prior to and during the 9/11 events - and pretty startling stuff it is too.

Quote:I do believe that Ryan does not accept the fact that the collapses could manifest as they did IF there was sufficient heat present in the critical weak locations in the structure to kick off a progressive cascading series of failures leading to global collapse. In the recently closed thread it became clear that this critical data can not be derived by debate and accordingly more date (accurate) would be required to rule in or rule out heat as the energy which tipped the structures toward global collapse.

And that 'IF' is the crucial condition. I accept that your ROOSD is a well-grounded theoretical possibility were the above impact-zone sections to suddenly free-fall 10-15 stories onto the relatively undamaged floors below but, well-grounded or not, it has no bearing on the evidence Ryan has set out in his book. He says nothing about his belief (if he has one) about the post initiation collapse process.

Quote:I don't know that Ryan addresses whether he believes there is a basis to accept the notion that radical Islamists could pull of the 9/11 attacks.

He doesn't put it quite like that. Like myself, I think he would agree that a bunch of hard-drinking, whoring, 'Islamist' misfits were deeply involved in the events of 9/11. The questions he seeks to illuminate are 'who exactly protected, steered, facilitated, financed and controlled them?' and if they were indeed killed in those aeroplanes, 'did they know that was to be their fate?'. Also who traded foreknowledge of the events?' and who authorised the destruction of the remaining records that would have identified them

Collectively, the people Ryan identifies certainly did have motive means and opportunity. The Islamic misfits, as I would prefer to describe them, may well have been angry and disaffected enough to WANT to hurt 'The Great Satan', but they could not have pulled it off without either the sustained gross dereliction of duty of the entire US Military, Security, Intelligence apparatus, or the deliberate and determined facilitation of their dreams by elements of that same apparatus. My money remains on the latter.

Jeffrey Orling Wrote:And No... it does not take 10-15 floor masses to initiate ROOSD in THOSE structures.

Tony Szamboti Wrote:

Jeffrey Orling Wrote:And No... it does not take 10-15 floor masses to initiate ROOSD in THOSE structures.

You have admitted it would take about five floor masses to cause a self-propagating ROOSD. So what happened in the first five stories where no deceleration is observed in the North Tower?

I have Kevin Ryan's book also and he does a pretty good job laying out the facts concerning others (domestic players), besides the hijackers, who had the means, motive, and opportunity to be involved in 911. In addition to all of the illuminating intrigue Kevin shows in that book, there are also recent discoveries about the structural reports on the buildings. The NIST WTC 7 report has now been shown to have omitted specific structural features which would cause their hypothesis to be impossible.

There has clearly been a lot of covering-up done and a new investigation is highly warranted.

Jeffrey Orling Wrote:I do not want to steer this to another technical thread. Suffice it to say we witness buildings collapse and in the case of 7 the collapse is compared to a CD so obviously CDs collapse. The issue is what gets them to collapse. CDs typically rely on stored and then released gravity PE for something like 95% of the energy for the collapse/destruction. I don't know how this figure is derived but the take away is that it's a straw that breaks the camel's back concept or the weakest link can cause a mighty failure such as one 1" diameter corroded pin in the Miamus River Bridge which led to a massive section of the bridge to plunge into the river. How much energy did it take to corrode that pin? As I've maintained for years the issue to understand the collapses is how and which forces came together to overwhelm the capacity of the columns and permit tops to drop. And No... it does not take 10-15 floor masses to initiate ROOSD in THOSE structures.

Quote:...I am convinced that hitting buildings as wide as almost a city block was not as difficult as one might imagine and probably simpler.

Quote:I do find it hard to believe and am pissed off that the air defenses was so unresponsive.

Quote:The coincidence of the war games is quite curious. This seems to be a convenient cover for the attack... literally do what was being gamed and the gamers would easily be confused. How could they not be? This seems to have been in play in London on 7/7 if I recall.

Quote:Then there's the insider trading

Quote:So at best I can see perhaps a LIHOP or LIHOI...

Quote:because I do accept that Islamic fundies hated the US (with ample justification) and realized that only insurgency and asymmetrical warfare - terrorism would work for them....

Quote:Would these hawks conceive and carry out the false flag? Conceive yes? Would they or could they carry it out? Who knows? I don't believe they planted bombs or even needed the the WTC to be destroyed... 4 hijacked planes would have been a casus belli. Several struck towers even better... but destroying building 7 late in the afternoon? Hardly makes sense as a motive for anyone.