rick reuben, you're demonstrating that you are as selective in what ou choose to believe and what facts you choose to consider as you portray any of your opponents to be.

if you think the walls of the WTC towers are nominally identical to those of the Pentagon, and thus the planes should remain intact or be destroyed or whatnot in the same fashion, then you're not really thinking. the walls of the Pentagon, and in particular that section of the Pentagon, had been reinforced to survive ballistic attck, explosion, impact or whatnot. were the glass walls of the WTC pretty much the same? no? then your last post is nonsense.

galanter wrote:What I meant was I wanted to hear a plausible theory as to how the Jones-camp theory (that the building was brought down by controlled demolition and that's why there was a near free fall collapse) could have actually been accomplished.

galanter wrote:And if a theory isn't possible in principle, there is no need to even ask if it happened in fact.

I have no idea how many charges would need to be set up for either the Jones theory or the suggestion I just made. I know there'd be a lot less with my suggestion and I doubt it beyond the abilities of a covert military team to undertake. I can't imagine the basement would be difficult at all to conceal and higher up is just a case of disguising any such team.
I know if you believe the unprecedented official explanation for three steel structured buildings to collapse in this way - on the same day - then you must accept that there wouldn't need to be charges all the way down.

I agree the suggestion I just put is closer to the standard theory but I would think that a massive detonation in the basement would assist in speeding up the rate of collapse.

I don't see why - in principle - this couldn't have happened.

I should also say, however, that I don't think that explosives need to have been planted for there to be proof of government complicity.

However, two things come together which feeds the conspiracists conviction regarding explosives.

It seems fairly certain (to me) that investigations prior to the event were thwarted, share options were traded and many important folks flights were cancelled which pretty much seals it that someone knew what was going to happen and that the accused hijackers were aided.

After the fact, there is a silly amount of 'evidence' presented (for the official story) that you really must be very gullible to believe was all genuine. Add to that the deliberate obstruction of investigation (including the assistance in flight of primary suspects family members) and you can be fairly certain there has been some kind of cover up.

So powerful people before and after were involved - somehow.

Then you have the day itself. Three steel structured buildings fall down in an unprecedented manner. They fall very like demolished buildings - witnesses describe explosions and, later, the owner of the building says one of the buildings was 'pulled'.

Add this together and it doesn't seem anywhere near impossible - on principle - to me.

Were they brought down by explosives?

I don't know. I've seen the explanations for how two of the buildings fell and have to acknowledge my own inability to counter the conclusions given by 'the experts' - that it was possible.

However - I also believe it perfectly possible that explosives were planted and detonated and also believe (given the lack of precedent for the official story) that it is the most likely explanation.

galanter wrote:yes we can go down your road, but that means the standard theories' account of the rate of fall becomes a strength of that theory not a killing weakness.

As I said above I suggested bombs in the basement so it's not quite the same.

galanter wrote: The standard theory does not depend solely on heat induced steel weakening. There is also the damage done by the physical impact of the jets. .. My reading is that the standard theory does account for the collapse due to that combined effect.

I agree it might be possible.
However, explosive charges tearing through steal is also possible - isn't it?

The logistics of how those explosives might have got there comes after the conclusion that it's possible they were there. You refuse to accept the possibility so what difference do the logistics make?

here's some interesting insight from rigorous intuition, which has followed the various threads of 9/11 truth and conspiracy for awhile..
sorry to interrupt, just read it today and thought it'd fit in this thread well..

from rigint.blogspot.com:

A few brief observations to follow-up Tuesday's post.

1. In my experience, people who describe themselves as apolitical are those most likely to repeat right-wing talking points, and call it "telling it like it is."

2. Binary thinking is a mind cancer that retards insight, and unfortunately flourishes in conspiracy culture. "The beginning of wisdom," said Terrence McKenna, "is our ability to accept an inherent messiness in our explanation of what's going on." But popular conspiratology is a pathological neat freak that abhors disorder and complication, which is why it can never rise above the level of entertainment and become an agent of change and justice. It's not meant to. And so it thrives.

3. Winning the battle for popular opinion might mean something if opinion in America were not so cheap, malleable, and effectless.

4. Embracing a minority position is not an admission of futility or failure. "When great changes occur in history," said this guy, "when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong."

5. "Big government "/"small government" is an unhelpful construct, and I'm sure a great favourite around Lonesome Rhodes' cracker barrel. Rhetoric notwithstanding, the US government is shrinking, withdrawing from many aspects of social spending and corporate oversight and privatizing longstanding public trusts. Even the military is increasingly evermore an umbrella of private contractors and a fist for private interests, though still under the cover of "national security." It's not the size, it's what you do with it. Or, to those who want it drowned and the others who can no longer recognize their own best interest, what you want done to it.

6. With exceptions that probably could be counted on the knuckles of one finger, the Left simply does not exist in Washington. (And I mean a Left that would be recognizably such beyond America's borders.) The Democratic/Republican duopoly is the control system's imitation of representative government and a substitute for ideological choice that rarely rocks the perpetual ruling class and its conspiratocracy. And when it does, they haven't been shy about letting us know.

7. Since I've long held the view that the neocons were intentionally set loose as berserkers to move the goalposts so they could later be scapegoated for 9/11 and Iraq, and the "true conservatives" could return in glory, I'm not particularly surprised that 9/11 Truth's Big Tent has become a conservative circus and a Texas Republican is acclaimed as the anti-war candidate.

8. Initially, and to the credit of its first generation of leadership, the truth in "9/11 Truth" referred to its absence from the official record, and the need for an independent accounting. (A recent echo of this is heard in the title of 9/11: Press for Truth.) Now, it means the Revealed Truths of the vying catechisms of "Inside Job": almost exclusively demolition, missiles and TV fakery. So it isn't enough anymore to say the Official Story is a lie, though it is, since the popular unofficial stories are as well. And perhaps told by the same storyteller.

I have to say up front that I've hardly read any of this thread, so please let me know if this was covered already. It's been going for a while now so I wouldn't be surprised if it was.

Lately I've become interested in the whole 9/11 truth movement and I've been reading a lot about it on different internet sites, listening to a lot of talk radio about it and watching a lot of videos about it on various websites. I'm still not sold and a good amount of it seems like total bullshit to me, but I watched this video last night that kind of has me thinking a little differently.

There is a video available online called September Clues where the maker took footage of the live news coverage from a few major networks of that mornings events and compared them to each other. With most of the topics that were covered it seemed to me that the film maker was really stretching to make his points. One thing really grabbed me though.

He says there was a lot of manipulation of the images that were being aired by Fox News, CNN, NBC & CBS. According to this video, there were several networks sharing the same live video feeds fom helicopters and a side by side comparision of the footage from station to station reveals some significant differences.

For example, an identical shot of the towers broadcast across several networks would show the Empire state building in the foreground to the right of the WTC on one network but the exact same shot shows it to the left in the foreground on another network.

Another thing was the huge differences in the background of the WTC from one station to the next. On one station you could see a clear view of the river and New Jersey in the background of the towers but on another station everything was greyed out like it was smogy or hazy, yet they were the exact same feed coming from the same camera on the same helicopter at the same moment.

These things were just the tip of the iceberg. It doesn't automaticly make me think there was some grand conspiracy but it does make me question why these things, if they are true, were done.

Anybody heard about this? What do you think about it?

“For example, 1,535 contracts of options to sell in the term October 2001, with 30 dollars, were exchanged on American Airlines on September 10, against a daily average of approximately 24 contracts over the three previous weeks "the fact that the market is bear at the time" does not explain enough these surprising volumes. "

Are there any other reasons why there could have been a spike in AA puts on 9/10/01? Were quarterly earning reports coming out in the next couple of days? Were any airline activity reports due in the next couple of days? We tend to forget news before 9/11 and there were normal business stories and reports coming out all the time. Were there any other days with a similar spike in puts during the previous years to 9/11? I just think looking at only the previous three weeks leading up to 9/11 is too small of a sample size and saying that a 6000% increase in puts is significant leading up to 9/11 based on only the information you printed here is disingenuous. I find stuff like this really interesting and I'm curious as to whether you've looked at long term UAL and AA stock buying trends. My bet is that you can look at the market and find similar daily anomalies across all industries. I'm not saying this couldn't be something (I really don't know), I'm just not convinced based on what you have quoted. I think that if you look over the long term and don't see similar puts or call options spikes then, in my opinion, this is something worth investigating. (BTW- I've read most of this thread over the years, so if you've answered this I don't remember.) Thanks.

Any insider trading could just as easily have been Al Qaeda trying to cash in on the event they were causing. Bin Laden has plenty of smart money men to help him out in that regard. And some commentators who believe the standard theory have already said they think this actually happened.

So then it goes back to whether you think Bin Laden is as popularly thought or a CIA frontman (etc.). The insider trading alone, if it happened, proves nothing one way or the other.

galanter wrote:Any insider trading could just as easily have been Al Qaeda trying to cash in on the event they were causing. Bin Laden has plenty of smart money men to help him out in that regard. And some commentators who believe the standard theory have already said they think this actually happened.

So then it goes back to whether you think Bin Laden is as popularly thought or a CIA frontman (etc.). The insider trading alone, if it happened, proves nothing one way or the other.

I've not been keeping up with a lot of this so I may have missed something but as far as I was aware the suspicion is aroused because investigation into the insider trading has not been undertaken or was even stopped.
You might be right about it being someone involved with Al Qaida but you'd think those investigating the greatest crime in American history would want to wrap it up for sure.

My hunch - if they looked - they'd find a whiff of Saudi on the insider trading.

Man, I don't see how these 9/11 truthers can waste so much time on this.

1. Nixon couldn't even break into a hotel without it being leaked, let alone some huge conspiracy like this.

2. If there was something else, why the hell do you care? You're spending hours on a message board when you could learn how to play guitar better or something.

Hope this isn't kerbled... I was thinking about the numerous reports of explosions being heard after the planes hit and I started wondering if the attacks could have been recorded seismically.

Anyway, I found this website that had some interesting things to say about it.

I did find some other shit claiming to debunk this ^ info, but I thought it was interesting anyway.[/url]

dead link, you say? I just posted it this morning, so I must have fucked it up somehow. I'll try to edit it.

Minotaur ain't me, and I ain't he. Minotaur is a friend of mine, P.J. by name, whereas I am named Andrew. Our parents houses ARE less than a mile from each other, hence the location coincidence.

Did you have some other reason to believe that we were one and the same?

edit* I don't know what the deal is with that first link, but here's a new one that I like better anyway