Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Who Needs Debunking When Insults Are So Easy


Scootle's post thanking the Screw Loose Change blog for their lack of debunking and promotion of 9/11 truth has inspired me to expand on his thoughts and answer a question for my rebunking ally.

First off Scootle, one of their commenters recently stated, "We're at the mocking stage now, well past any debunking."

I have seen comments from Pat Curley before that basically state the same thing, so yes, as you thought might be the case, they are getting lazy. Dr. Frank Greening, while sometimes doing good work, can be just as lazy, as was recently demonstrated when he did some calculations regarding the recent paper on the nano-thermite discovery, Pat reprinted the following "key points.":
I've already done a calculation of how much heat energy a layer of nano-thermite (such as the one allegedly found by Jones et al) could generate. My conclusion was that Jones' chips would do no more than slightly warm a WTC column!

So when I bounced my calculations and conclusions off Jones et al, all he could come up with was the suggestion that there were probably other explosives used in the WTC and the nanothermite chips were maybe just fuses! Thus, after all the fuss about high-tech nano-thermites, we are back to good-old 'bombs in the buildings' as the answer to how the buildings were destroyed."
First off, that wasn't all Jones could come up with. In a recent post regarding this debate on 911blogger.com Jones highlighted how he informed Greening that during the ignition of the material iron-rich spheres were formed, such as would be expected during a thermite reaction. He pointed out that the device the chips were heated to only reaches 700°C, but that "the melting points of iron and of iron oxide are both above 1200 C." This is evidence of a high temperature chemical reaction and was basically already addressed in the paper, which notes that the samples ignited at about 430ยบC.

Greening also argued that, "The microspheres reported in the Harrit paper could at best be described as 'iron-rich', with Al, Si and O always present. But let me remind you, this is also true for the magnetically separated microspheres found in incinerator ashes – they contain mostly Fe, Al, Si, and O."

Jones replied with more information from the paper, "Dr. Farrer and Danny and I have looked at many of these post-DSC spheres, many do NOT contain Al. See for example Fig 21 in our paper."

Greening then admitted to some error on that point. He also seemed to agree that the materials could not be primer paint used on the WTC.

Jones next pointed out that he never stated thermate alone could bring down the Towers, he states:
During the discussion, I briefly expressed my hypothesis that nanothermite served as an igniting agent, as in the "super-thermite matches" described in our paper, to ignite more conventional explosives such as C4 or HMX, in the destruction of the WTC buildings. Thermate (sulfur plus thermite and possibly the form thermate-TH-3) was ALSO in evidence and probably intended to weaken critical steel members (e.g., residue/ material flowing with orange glow from the So. Tower just minutes before its collapse and the sulfidation of WTC steel reported in the FEMA report but ignored by NIST). Thermite incendiary without sulfur is not in evidence at the WTC to date.

But sulfur is NOT needed for the function of explosive nanothermite and would not be expected to appear in the red/gray chips. Reliable and robust super- or nano-thermite ignitors would each be ignited by an electrical pulse generated by a radio-receiver, in turn igniting shaped charges to cut steel, the sequence beginning near where the planes went in for the Towers and computer-controlled, so that the destruction wave would proceed via explosives in top-down sequence. Thus, this was no conventional (bottom first) controlled demolition, agreeing on this with B. Blanchard, but I never claimed it was! (For the Towers; the demolition of WTC7 appears to be bottom-first and more conventional.) The top-down destruction of the Towers in this model would doubtless require more explosives than would a conventional controlled demolition. Thermate (an incendiary, not an explosive) is not the 'be all and end all' explanation (FG’s terminology), nor did I ever claim it was – I have consistently pointed to evidence that explosives were used in bringing down the Towers.

The "working hypothesis" above is a scientific hypothesis, that is, subject to change as further research data emerge. It is also possible (for example) that explosive nanothermite (not an incendiary) could have been used in SHAPED CHARGES, to cut through steel explosively (a use suggested in Fig. 1 of Miziolek AW, "Nanoenergetics: an emerging technology area of national importance." Amptiac Spring 2002; 6(1): 43-48. Available from: http://www.p2pays.org/ref/34/33115.pdf ."
As the Rock Creek Free Press pointed out in their bombshell article Scientists Find Explosives in World Trade Center Dust:

The authors avoided describing the material as 'explosive' because the flakes studied are too small to assess the bulk properties of the material.

To test the power of this thermitic material, small samples were heated in a Differential Scanning Calorimeter, a very sensitive device for detecting the heat generated by a chemical reaction. The samples ignited at about 430ยบC and generated as much or more heat than an equal mass of high explosive such as TNT.
When Kevin Ryan was asked if the materials were explosive, he stated, "They can be made quite explosive, in fact they have been referred to as high explosives."

This is a fact...

Aluminothermic Technology - Existence of High-Tech Metal-Based Explosives

Dr. Greening also tried to argue that the materials didn't have the correct physical structure for nano-thermite, but Steven Jones corrected him, "The iron-oxide grains are approximately 100 nm across, which fits the requirement for nano-thermite as defined in the literature, despite Greening's obfuscation of this point."

The literature that Jones refers to is once again something that can be found in the paper itself, at footnote 19 the authors quote a report by Gash et al. dated April 2000 which states, "Nanostructured composites are multicomponent materials in which at least one of the component phases has one or more dimensions (length, width, or thickness) in the nanometer size range, defined as 1 to 100 nm."

The chips also have the correct chemical composition. As Jim Hoffman recently pointed out regarding the structure and composition of the chips:
The particles are very small: the plates being only about 40 nanometers thick, and the grains are only about 100 nanometers in diameter. The particles are highly uniform in size and shape. The particles are intimately mixed in a highly consistent composition throughout the material.

These are all features of a nano-engineered material. It is not possible that such a material was formed as a by-product of the destruction of the Twin Towers.

Although these elements -- aluminum, iron, oxygen, and silicon -- were all abundant in building materials used in the Twin Towers, it is not possible that such materials milled themselves into fine powder and assembled themselves into a chemically optimized aluminothermic composite as a by-product of the destruction of the Twin Towers.
Dr. Greening has in fact used ridiculous explanations akin to this in the past when he claimed that there could have been natural thermite reactions within the tower fires!

Dr. Jones brings us the bottom line:
So how do you, as a non-scientist, discern whether the arguments are valid or not? You should first ask, 'is the objection PUBLISHED in an ESTABLISHED PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL?' If not, you can and should say -- "I will wait to see this formally published in a refereed scientific journal. Until then, the published peer-reviewed work by Harrit et al. stands."
Might I add, if this happens, then wait for the response!

So yes Scootle, the debunking is quite lax these days, but our foes claim it's because there's "not much out there," except Dr. Greening kicking so much butt in his exchange with Jones, that "Jones shouldn't be sitting down anytime soon." Did I mention this guy hypothesized that there could have been natural thermite reactions within the tower fires?!

Related info and some of the stuff that is going on out there:

Frank Greening versus Isaac Newton

NYC CAN Update: Now 40,000 signatures

9/11 Survivor Janette MacKinlay Makes an Appeal for a New Investigation Into 9/11

41 U.S. Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence Agency Veterans Challenge the Official Account of 9/11

General Richard Myers Asked About Nanothermite Explosives Found in WTC Dust

Monday, May 18, 2009

Thanks ScrewLooseChange!

Just looking at SLC's recent posts and there's not really a whole lot of debunking going on.

In the the last week they've:
They're tracking what we do and sharing our videos but they're not really debunking them. What's the matter guys? Getting lazy? Or are you closet truthers now? ;)

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Wikipedia's 9/11 controlled demolition hitpiece not "neutral" enough!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center_controlled_demolition_conspiracy_theories

At the top of the page it says:

"An editor has expressed a concern that this article lends undue weight to certain ideas relative to the article as a whole. Please help to discuss and resolve the dispute before removing this message. (May 2009)"

When I first read that I thought it was referring to the users that were complaining about the article being too weighted towards the debunkers. Then I read this on the talk page:

"Lack of weight given to criticism of controlled demolition

This article has bothered me since I first read about it in Talk:Wikiproject New York. I haven't been able to put my finger on it until I began to see the forest as well as the trees: lack of weight is given to criticism of controlled demolition. Yes, criticism is raised, but it is just "flicked" at briefly. Look down far enough, for instance, and you see a teeny tiny reference to a Popular Mechanics article that ripped apart the controlled demolition theory.

Given that this is indeed a conspiracy theory that has been debunked by the engineering community, I think that lack of proper weight given to criticism and debunking is a serious issue under WP:NPOV Thoughts? --JohnnyB256(talk) 14:48, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

You're right, it's a glaring weakness of this article. It's making the case for controlled demolition rather than explaning the issue. 24.74.139.34(talk) 14:52, 3 May 2009 (UTC)"


Making a case for controlled demolition? They don't mention the recent paper, the don't mention the fact that huge steel beam were flung hundreds of feet laterally at speeds of around 60mph, they don't mention the fact that the top fifteen-story block of the north tower crushed itself in only 4 seconds at constant acceleration, they don't even mention the fact that WTC7 collapsed at the rate of freefall for two and quarter seconds - which even NIST now admit, they call the controlled demolition hypothesis a "conspiracy theory", they refute all our weakest arguments and they still think they're being TOO FAIR on us?!

Related Info...

Wikipedia renames 9/11 controlled demolition page to a “conspiracy theory”

Guide to Wikipedia on 9/11

Wikipedia blocks William Rodriguez's Page

Rampant Un-American Censorship of the 9/11 Truth Movement

Friday, May 15, 2009

9/11 Survivor Janette MacKinlay Makes an Appeal for a New Investigation Into 9/11

JanetteGardens
YouTube.com
May 11, 2009

Janette MacKinlay makes an appeal to join NYC CAN (NYC Coalition for Accountability Now) in calling for a new investigation into September 11, 2001.

General Richard Myers Asked About Nano-thermite Explosives Found in WTC Dust

Source: c-spanarchives.org 05/14/2009

Thanks to my friend Mark over at WeAreChange Indiana for bringing this to my attention.

At 35:27 Myers is asked by a caller about the new scientific paper "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe."




Notice how the host immediately mentions that "for the past 8 years" they "have been getting calls from people who still believe there was a conspiracy on 9/11." Apparently she didn't listen to what the caller said, who had just informed her that nano-thermite has demolished 9/11 conspiracy theories!

Meyers then immediately says that he doesn't believe in the 9/11 conspiracy theories because he "saw the plane parts around the Pentagon." As I have often done, I again point to the words of Jim Hoffman of the website 911Research:

The Pentagon Attack:The No-Jetliner Claims

Are they based on rational evaluation of evidence?

Or are they an enormous hoax?

Do they expand the Truth Movement?

Or do they marginalize it by reinforcing the Conspiracy Theorist stereotype?
Meyers then states that "people saw the planes actually crash into World Trade Centers," this was in reference to another marginalizing force in the 9/11 truth movement: the no-planers, or people that believe no planes were used in any of the strikes that day. This small faction of the movement was used to demonize 9/11 truthers earlier this year in an FBI drama on the AE television network.

As Paul Joseph Watson of the website PrisonPlanet.com reported:

The plot of the show, which stars Patrick Swayze, centers around an attempt to infiltrate a group who are suspected of smuggling Rocket Propelled Grenade launchers into Iraq. In one scene, a member of the group talks with an FBI agent who is operating undercover.

'Are you a truther or a sheep?' the man asks the FBI agent.

He continues, '9/11 was a false flag operation man, wake up, a self-inflicted wound to control the masses, you know there was no planes, all of them were holograms and CGI.'

The man then takes a drag on a marijuana spliff and gives the FBI agent a crazed look.

The insertion of the 9/11 truther caveat in the episode serves no purpose except seemingly to convince the viewer that the man is unstable and dangerous. The mention of CGI and holograms, an obsessive tenet of an extreme fringe that attempted to hijack the 9/11 truth movement a few years ago, also serves only to detract more credibility from the subject.
Then in regard to the nano-thermite, and to his credit, Meyers states that "if there's new evidence it should be examined." Now if he would just convince the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), who were charged with investigating the collapses of the WTC Twin Towers and Building 7, to do their job, we might be in business.

In a recent report about the nano-thermite discovery, by national Emmy nominee and regional Emmy-award-winning investigative journalist Linda Moulton Howe, she stated that upon informing an official with NIST about the paper he replied, “Oh, we have just received a copy of this ourselves and don’t want to comment.”

Sharing my sentiments she concluded her report by stating:

If the United States under President Barack Obama is trying for a new, more honest transparency in government, shouldn’t the nanothermitic research presented by Professors Harrit, Jones and others be at least discussed and commented upon by our taxpayer-funded U. S. Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards and Technology?

As of this date, I still have no other response from NIST beyond their Q & A papers that say NIST did not test for the residue of thermitic compounds in the WTC steel and that "NIST has looked at the application and use of thermite and has determined that its use to sever columns in WTC7 on 9/11/01 was unlikely."
In regard to another topic brought up by the caller: war game exercises on 9/11, Meyers stated that "there was an air defence exercise going on at the time, but it was very small scale," in reality there were several different war games, and other exercises, taking place on 9/11 that closely mimicked many of the days events. Meyers was well aware that more than one exercise was taking place on 9/11, as he has admitted this in the past himself when questioned about the subject by Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney in 2006. Meyers suggested now, as he did then, that the exercises actually enhanced their response, however, this is contradicted by much evidence, as detailed by the following clip from the documentary film Loose Change Final Cut.



Update:

Regarding this section of the film, Pat Curley of the Screw Loose Change blog is obviously not able to refute any of the stronger points raised, as he only focuses in on one small piece of supporting evidence, he argues:

They show an Air Force officer saying that "We battled many phantoms that day," but they don't mention that he was not talking about the bogus "insertions" that the CT nuts talk about. He was referring to phantom Flight 11, which the government thought for awhile had not hit the World Trade Center and instead was flying south to Washington, as well as Delta 1989 and other planes which were feared as possible hijacking targets.
While I agree that Pat is right about what Meyers was referring to, he is not right about the false radar blips being bogus. This is proven beyond any shadow of a doubt in the article "'Let's Get Rid of This Goddamn Sim': How NORAD Radar Screens Displayed False Tracks All Through the 9/11 Attacks" on 911blogger.com, which notes that:

...In the middle of it all, at 9:30 a.m. that morning a member of staff on the NEADS operations floor complained about simulated material that was appearing on the NEADS radar screens. He said: "You know what, let's get rid of this goddamn sim. Turn your sim switches off. Let's get rid of that crap." Four minutes later, Technical Sergeant Jeffrey Richmond gave an instruction to the NEADS surveillance technicians, "All surveillance, turn off your sim switches." (A "sim switch" presumably allows a technician to either display or turn off any simulated material on their radar screen.)
Furthermore, there is circumstantial evidence that Delta 1989 was part of a live-fly hijacking exercise on 9/11.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

DO NOT FEED THE DEBUNKERS!

I've been looking at the comments on some of the videos about the red chips and I've found that a lot of truthers are having the same old pointless arguments about freefall speed, modest fires, bombs in the buildings, etc. What is this 2006? You're commenting on a video that PROVES there was high-tech explosive nano-thermite in those buildings and you still consider those things important?

We have proof people. We don't need to keep rehashing speculative topics anymore. It just feeds the debunkers and distract people from the stronger evidence.

Even now I still read YouTube comments saying the Twin Towers came down in only 10 seconds. They didn't. It was more like 15 - which is possible. When you say 15 floors crushed 95 in only 15 seconds it does sound a bit far-fetched but in truth it wouldn't have been 15 floors crushing 95. It would have been 15 floors crushing the 16th, then 16 floors crushing the 17th, then 17 floors crushing the 18 etc. - in a kind of domino effect. As the collapse progresses, the mass and velocity of the so-called "piledriver" would have increased and the kinetic energy would have increased exponentially. And half way down when 55 floors of the building are crashing down at 50mph, the lower floors wouldn't slow it down much. Meaning that as long as the piledriver breaks through the first floor, a global collapse in under 15 seconds is inevitable.

There are alternative explanations for almost everything, take William Rodriguez's story for example. The release of the 9/11 Commission documents vindicated him from claims of debunkers that his story has changed over the years, but there is a simpler explanation for his story. The speed of sound in air is about 340 meters per second. The height of the 95th floor of the north tower was about 360 meters. That means that it would have taken a whole second for people on the ground to hear the enormous explosion of the fireball. But since vibrations travel much faster in solids, the impact of the plane would have been felt instantly. Down in the low levels of the building, the plane crash would have probably seemed like two different events because of the time delays. And when you consider the fact that elevators, debris and even bodies were falling, it's not surprising that people would hear multiple sounds.

Then there's all the witness testimony of explosions and bombs which seems convincing on the surface but in actual fact most of them were being interviewed after the south tower's collapse and before the North Tower's collapse. Debunkers will argue that at the time they simply thought the collapse of the South Tower was just one huge explosion. Now of course there are some more interesting quotes such as I, uh, got a witness who said there was an explosion on floors 7-8, 7-8" and It sounded like gunfire - bang, bang, bang, bang - and then three big explosionsalong with talk of a strange van with a bomb and the testimonies of McPadden, Shroeder, Bartmer and Jennings, but let's be honest, it was a chaotic and traumatic day and none of this is really relevant to the demolitions anyway.

James Meigs has said many times that "conspiracy theorists love a vacuum". In truth, it's the debunkers that love a vacuum because we speculate too much. In the BBC hitpiece Richard Gage speculates that WTC7 was rigged for demolition when it was built and they immediately cut to Mark Loizeux patronizing him. This is what happens when we speculate.

Certain things about that day such as the Pentagon attack and the Flight 93 crash were deliberately left vague to promote speculation about missiles and things. Have you ever wondered why they even bothered attacking the Pentagon and crashing Flight 93? I mean, what happened in New York would have been enough to justify war on its own, right? So why bother going through the trouble of crashing two more planes? I believe they did it to promote speculation. These are the same people that killed John F Kennedy and Princess Diana and carried out the 1993 bombing, OKC and loads of other false flags. Because of the "conspiracy theories" surrounding those events they must have known some people would see through the illusion. So they attacked the Pentagon and withheld the evidence to promote "no-plane" theories. The Pentagon and Flight 93 attacks are psy-ops. And I'm starting to think this whole CIT/Pentacon/northern approach stuff is more disinfo. The mainstream media are more than willing to focus on those events, but they ignore the hard science.

We humans seem to have this mental illness where we love speculation and hearsay but ignore the proof. Alex Jones was talking about this a little while ago when Glenn Beck was "debunking" FEMA camps and when a video went viral on YouTube about DHS supposedly transporting bird flu. People seem to love watching videos of someone running up to a stationary train panting heavily or some woman saying "We have some actual proof that a trucker may actually be transporting bird flu" but when it comes to the real proof (often their own documents) no one seems to be interested. Back in February, truthers went crazy over the Beijing fire which "proves" WTC7 was demolished. Paul Watson of PrisonPlanet dedicated 4 front page articles to it. But now that we actually do have proof, the silence is deafening.

So please people, don't feed the debunkers! We have proof! This is all we should be talking about now. Post links to these videos and the paper everywhere, burn them to disc, get this bombshell proof out. If debunkers attack the journal or the peer-review process, tell them to write their own paper. If they say it's just paint and show you a paint spectrum that looks similar to the red chip spectrums, tell them four words: "nanosized particles, extremely explosive!"

Don't get distracted and start talking about things like bombs, squibs, freefall, "pull it" or whatever coz it's completely unnecessary now and you'll just be setting yourself up. Stick to what we can prove.

Addendum: Apparently some have misinterpreted this as me saying "ignore all the other evidence". That's not what I'm saying. The other evidence is still important and should certainly be brought up when we get a real investigation. But when debating debunkers or trying to convince people that the towers were demolished, this is really all we should be talking about.

Monday, May 11, 2009

5 photos 9/11 thermite deniers hate.

The ScrewLooseChange blog just posted a link to this year old article called "10 photos 9/11 conspiracy nuts hate". The piece is filled with strawman arguments (when have we EVER claimed WTC6 was undamaged?) and other attacks.

One of the photos we apparently hate is actually my personal favourite photo.



Yes it proves WTC7 was hit but it also proves a huge ten tonne plus chunk of steel was hurled 107 meters laterally with several tonnes of powdered concrete trailing behind it in an upward arching motion.

So here's my response: "5 photos 9/11 thermite deniers* hate."

*My new name for debunkers!

5) The thermographic image of the South Tower taken by Carol Ciemiengo 15 minutes after it was hit by Flight 175, which shows temperatures of around a mere 90 to 100 degrees Celsius! But, only 40 minutes later, the fires were supposedly hot enough to not only melt "aluminium" but make it glow orange-yellow.


4) Piledriver? What piledriver? the debunker theory for how the buildings collapsed in only 15 seconds relies on an ever increasing piledriver mass. But look at this picture - where's the piledriver?


3) Explosive ejections of steel during the North Tower's destruction.


"Any fool can look at those films and see the buildings aren't falling down, they're blowing up!" - Paul Craig Roberts

2) Negative pressure. Remember the BBC WTC7 hitpiece? Remember when Richard Gage attempted to explain the large amount of smoke around the south side of Building 7 by saying it was negative pressure - which he has been thoroughly mocked for? Well it's not as ridiculous as it sounds. In this picture you could be forgiven for mistakenly believing that every single floor of the north tower was on fire as smoke clings onto a whole side of the building due to negative pressure.


1) MOLTEN CONCRETE! Talk about hidden in plain site. This is a photo of a "meteorite" at the New York Police Museum that shows firearms from WTC6 fused with concrete!


The label in the background reads as follows:

"Gun Encased in Concrete and Gun-Casing Remains

The U.S. Customs House stored a large arsenal of firearms at its Six World Trade Center office. During recovery efforts, several handguns were found at Ground Zero, including these two cylindrical gun-casing remains and a revolver embedded in concrete. Fire temperatures were so intense that concrete melted like lava around anything in its path."

Friday, May 8, 2009

Master Debaters: A tribute to Joseph Welch

For those of you who have been following the heated debate between myself and the British lecturer who uses the pen name Joseph Welch:
http://911debunkers.blogspot.com/2009/04/conflicting-sources-another-final-note.html

Mr Welch has posted his rebuttal to my "Conflicting Sources" installment in the comments section of his "Final Response" to me:
http://counterknowledge.com/2009/03/15-questions-for-truthers-a-final-response-to-stewart-bradley/

You may find it unusual that I would be advertising the work of my ideological opponent, but I am an advocate of Sun Tzu's "Art of War" adage about knowing ones enemy, and I believe Mr Welch's reply to be a case study in debunker "confirmation bias" as an ego defense mechanism.

Mr Welch's smug presumption of superiority and infallibility stems from two major ideas that Mr Welch and many other debunkers religiously promote as empirical fact despite evidence to the contrary:

1. That there could not possibly be any covert collaboration between Bush administration or US intelligence officials and those who planned, financed, and carried out the 9/11 attack.

2. That Bush administration or US intelligence officials could not use deception to cover up such a covert collaboration.

The active word here being "covert" which obviously implies they would not willingly divulge such information. Yet debunkers like Mr Welch regularly site statements from these "official" sources as proof that there was no collaboration. I don't have to point out the absurdity of accepting on blind faith the word of an administration that has demonstrated a nearly pathological aversion to telling the truth and a cavalier willingness to manipulate scientific research to serve it's political agenda:
http://www.iraqwar.org/adminlies.htm
http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/reports-scientific-integrity.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/23/bush.iraq/

But the prima facie acceptance of Bush administration innocence in regards to 9/11 has become the basis of many circular arguments which follow this basic pattern:

a) If Bush administration and intelligence officials had foreknowledge or involvement in the 9/11 attack then there would be testimony, documents, or physical evidence confirming this fact.

b) We know Bush administration and intelligence officials had no foreknowledge or involvement in the 9/11 attack.

c) Therefore any testimony, documents, or physical evidence which imply Bush administration and intelligence officials had foreknowledge or involvement in the 9/11 attack must be exposed as either a mere coincidence or a diabolical deception.

This then defines the job of the debunker; to take every claim made by 9/11 researchers and try to find a reason, any reason at all, to discredit the claim. This can be something as elaborate as computer model of the World Trade Center towers that collapse when the test parameters are "tweaked", or something as banal as claiming Steven E. Jones has no scientific credibility because he is a Mormon. Regardless, a flaw must be found, or invented, for every claim if they are to continue their steadfast belief in the Bush administrations innocence, and their own inability to be wrong.

In that spirit I respectfully dedicate my latest short film to Mr Joseph Welch, who is a true "Master Debater."



Warm regards to all...... Stewart Bradley

Related Info:

15 Answers: An open response to Joseph Welch

Beyond 15 Questions; Historical Context of 9/11

Conflicting Sources: Another Final Note to Joseph Welch

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Debunking the Rebunking

"If we start debunking rebunking 9-11 debunking, where will it all end?" - Pat Curley

Pat Curley over at the Screw Loose Change blog had a listen to our recent interview with Michael Woolsey of 9-11 Visibility and has attempted rebunking our debunking.

Pat states, "They say that they are not interested in hearing debunking of Steven Jones' latest paper (Active Thermitic Material...). Nope, if we are going to debunk that laughable attempt to claim that bits of red paint and rust amount to Thermite we have to do it with a peer-reviewed paper."

Yes, if you are claiming that highly credentialed scientists have been fooled by paint, after two years of research, when paint was one of the very first considerations, then you should back that claim up in the way they have backed up theirs. When the lead author of the paper, associate professor of chemistry at Copenhagen University in Denmark, Dr. Niels H. Harrit, was asked during an interview on Denmark television if he was in any doubt that the material was present, he replied unambiguously, "You cannot fudge this kind of science. We have found it: unreacted thermite."

If you think this author/or co-author of nearly 60 peer reviewed scientific papers is fudging, or was fooled by paint, someone on your side should demonstrate this beyond the blogosphere. I think physics professor Dr. Steven E. Jones put it best when he noted that:
Debunkers may raise all sorts of objections on forums, such as "Oh, it's just paint" or "the aluminum is bound up in kaolin." We have answered those questions in the paper, and shown them to be nonsense, but you have to read to find the answers. Here's what you need to know (especially if you are not a scientist): UNLESS AN OBJECTOR ACTUALLY PUBLISHES HIS OR HER OBJECTION IN A PEER-REVIEWED ESTABLISHED JOURNAL (yes that would include Bentham Scientific journals), THEN THE OBJECTION IS NOT CONSIDERED SERIOUS IN THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY. YOU SHOULD NOT WORRY ABOUT NON-PUBLISHED OBJECTIONS EITHER.
Getting back to paint being one of the very first considerations, it's worthy to note that one of the first things indicating the materials were not paint chips was their explosiveness! At the Boston 9/11 Conference on 12/15/07 Steven Jones first reported his findings, stating:
Many red chips I found in the WTC dust, last June I started noticing these. Their attracted by a magnet, a thought came, well maybe it's just paint. It's hard to get thermite to ignite, and I finally thought, how can we tell if this is thermite or not?... It has the right chemical signature.

A friend of mine has an oxyacetylene torch with a very fine tip, he uses it for repairing eyeglasses, and so I had him pass it over one of these red chips... And it flamed, it flashed, as he passed over it.

He went on to state that this, in conjunction with the chemical signature and the red color, was a strong indication that this was indeed a form of thermite.

During a debate with architect Richard Gage 9/11 "debunker" Mark Roberts also suggested the red chips were paint, after Gage replied, "That's why they're extremely explosive I suppose," Roberts conveniently ignored him, stating, "These chips... One thing that should ring a bell, is that they look exactly like all the primer paint that's on the structural steel."

Of course Robert's assumption has nothing on empirical evidence. In a recent interview with Dr. Harriet conducted by national Emmy nominee and regional Emmy award-winning investigative journalist Linda Moulton Howe, he notes that, "In the primer paint, which was used on the steel beams at the original World Trade Center – we looked up the original recipes for those paints. The paints contained as an anti-corrosive: chromium and zinc, which we do not find. And magnesium, which we do not see either. These are negative indications why the red-gray chips are not paint."

More detailed analysis can be found in Harrit's article "WHY THE RED/GRAY CHIPS ARE NOT PRIMER PAINT."

Also of note is the fact that, as Jim Hoffman of the website 9/11 Research points out, "Soaking the chips in methyl ethyl ketone, a solvent that dissolves paint, with periodic agitation for 55 hours, the red layers swelled up but remained intact and attached to their respective gray layers, and the thin plates tended to migrate and aggregate."

The next part of Pat's supposed rebunking involved my mentioning of the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) of August 6, 2001, which he pointed out I did misspeak of and call a PDF. Here's a PDF of the PDB! Speaking of nitpicking masquerading as debunking, I also spoke of "outward" bowing columns instead of "inward," and I called a reviewer of the nano-thermite paper an author. Just like with the PDB, I knew it was inward, and I knew he wasn't an author.

Pat states, "Note in particular that the two paragraphs which do not appear historical in nature are also not very accurate in predicting 9-11; federal buildings in New York were not attacked and the attacks were not done with explosives."

One commenter by the name of Brian Good on Pat's blog thanked him for his candor, "Thanks, Pat, for confirming that the 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US' memo actually did warn of new attacks, though Condi claimed under oath in the presence of the 9/11 widows that it did not."

Condi's bio on Wikipedia also contains this tidbit:

Rice characterized the August 6, 2001 President's Daily Brief Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US as historical information. Rice indicated "It was information based on old reporting."[45] Sean Wilentz of Salon magazine suggested that the PDB contained current information based on continuing investigations, including that Bin Laden wanted to "bring the fighting to America."[46]
Yes, there was a section that mentions "bin Laden supporters in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives," and no, "the attacks were not done with explosives," meaning of course that it wasn't a bombing attack akin to the 1993 WTC bombing, but the memo also mentioned "suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks..." It then mentions that this included "recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York," to which Pat points out that the Towers were not federal buildings, but the "recent surveillance" would be in addition to the "most attractive terrorist target" at the WTC as detailed by several reports dating back to the 1980s.

Bottom line is, bin Laden, NYC, and hijackings are mentioned. And as OilEmpire.us points out:
In 1995, the US stopped plans for "Project Bojinka," a planned terror attack on commercial airliners (12 planes were to be hijacked simultaneously, and the plotters also envisioned driving a jet into CIA headquarters in Virginia). Bojinka was thwarted when a group of Islamic terrorists were apprehended in the Philippines. This proves that the Cheney administration lied after 9/11 when they claimed they didn't forsee the possibility of hijacked planes being used as weapons.
Of course this brought up the issue of how this all corresponds with the idea of 9/11 being an inside job. As I have pointed out before, many people make the mistake of only seeing the issues concerning 9/11 in black and white, as opposed to shades of grey.

In a post from today entitled "Was Popular Mechanics Fair?" Pat tries to make the case that Popular Mechanics did not set up straw men in the way I suggested, he states, "Overall, I'd say that Popular Mechanics did a pretty good job. Most of the theories they discussed are quite common in the movement, and the less common ones were mostly at the end."

I suggest Jim Hoffman's essay "Popular Mechanics Attacks Its "9/11 LIES" Straw Man" written in 2005.

Related Info:

Debunking Popular Mechanics' 9/11 Lies

Viewers See History Channel 9/11 Special As Straw Man Hit Piece

Nano-thermite Demolishes 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

Sibel Edmonds: In Congress We Trust...NOT

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Visibility 9-11 Welcomes John-Michael Talboo and Stewart Bradley of Debunking the Debunkers

This episode of Visibility 9-11 welcomes John-Michael Talboo and Stewart Bradley of the blog Debunking the Debunkers.

John-Michael is the creator and administrator of 911debunkers.blogspot.com where he and Bradley debunk the "debunkers" of the 9/11 truth movement. He has been a 9/11 activist since late 2004, is a grassroots organizer listed on 911truth.org for the state of Indiana, a member of the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth video team, and a founding member of the central Indiana chapter of the activist organization We Are Change.

Stewart Bradley is an artist, documentary journalist, and political activist living in Lancaster Pennsylvania who runs an independent mulit-media studio. Stewart was already investigating covert government operations before 9/11 and since 9/11 has re-dedicated himself to exposing the public misconceptions behind the attack. In 2004 he wrote and produced a 9/11 docudrama titled "The Proof" and has been actively promoting 9/11 research through his website, blogs, videos, and internet debates. More at: http://bradleyinfotainment.com

Topics discussed include the "debunkers" take on the new scientific paper, "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe," and defence thereof.

The MO and possible motives of defenders of the official story is also spoke of and put into a larger historical context. Mentioned is a declassified CIA memo from April 1967 entitled, "Countering Criticism of the Warren Report." which states that one way to achieve this goal is to:

Employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passage to assets. Our play should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (i) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (ii) politically interested, (iii) financially interested, (iv) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (v) infatuated with their own theories.
Direct download: visibility911_debunkers.mp3

Slight Correction:

I misspoke when speaking of the gentleman from the American Physical Society who was involved in the recent paper, he was a reviewer, not an author.

Related Info:

Debunking the Rebunking

Popular Mechanics Attacks Its "9/11 LIES" Straw Man

Viewers See History Channel 9/11 Special As Straw Man Hit Piece

Daniel Sunjata: Intellectual Dishonesty In The Age Of Universal Deceit...

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Obama and the War Criminals

PuppetGovCom
YouTube.com
May 02, 2009

Five Things You Should Know About the Torture Memos

No. 1. I have read the 175 pages of legal memoranda (the memos) that the Department of Justice (DoJ) released last week. They consist of letters written by Bush DoJ officials to the Deputy General Counsel of the CIA concerning the techniques that may be used by American intelligence agents when interrogating high value detainees at facilities outside the U.S. The memos describe in vivid, gut-wrenching detail the procedures that the CIA apparently inquired about. The memos then proceed to authorize every procedure asked about, and to commend the CIA for taking the time to ask.

No. 2. In the process of explaining to the CIA Deputy General Counsel just what his folks could do in order to extract information from uncooperative detainees, it is immediately apparent that the writers of the memos are attempting to find snippets of language from other memoranda that they or their colleagues have prepared and from unrelated judicial opinions that justify everything that the CIA wants to do. "This is not rocket science and it is not art. Everyone knows torture when they see it."

The bias in favor of permitting torture may easily be concluded from a footnote in one of the memos. In that footnote, the author, now-federal judge Jay Bybee, declines to characterize such notorious medieval torture techniques as the thumbscrew and the rack as torture. With that incredible mindset, he proceeds to do his Orwellian best to define away such terms as pain, suffering, and inhumane in such a way as to require that the interrogators produce near death experiences in order to have their behavior come under the proscriptions of the federal statute prohibiting torture, and the Convention (treaty) Against Torture, which was negotiated by and signed in behalf of the U.S. by President George H.W. Bush.

No. 3. The logic in the memos is simple: The government may utilize the ten procedures inquired about (all of which were publicly known except confinement on a coffin, bound and gagged, and in the presence of insects), so long as no one dies or comes close to death. This conclusion is startling in the case of walling (banging a detainees head against a solid but moveable wall) and waterboarding (near drowning) since the federal governments own physicians, cited in the memos themselves, have concluded that both techniques are always a near occasion of death. The conclusion is also startling since it fails to account for numerous federal and state prosecutions, and prosecutions in Thailand — where these torture sessions apparently occurred — that have defined torture according to its generally accepted meaning:

Any intentionally inflicted cruel or inhumane or degrading treatment, unauthorized by a court of law, perpetrated for the punishment of the victim, to extract statements from the victim, or to gratify the perpetrator.

This universally-accepted definition makes no reference and has no condition that anything goes short of a near occasion of death.

No. 4. The memos also fail to account for the Geneva Conventions, which the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled govern American treatment of all foreign detainees, lawful or unlawful. The third of those conventions PROHIBITS TOUCHING the detainee in any way, other than for the purpose of moving him from place to place, if he refuses to go voluntarily and when told to do so.

No. 5. The memos place Attorney General Holder, who argued for their release, in an untenable situation. He has stated under oath, at his confirmation hearings, that waterboarding is torture and torture is prohibited by numerous federal laws. He has also taken an oath to uphold all federal laws, not just those that are politically expedient from time to time. He is correct and he must do his moral and legal duty to reject any Nuremberg defense. This is not rocket science and it is not art. Everyone knows torture when they see it; and no amount of twisted logic can detract from its illegal horror, its moral antipathy, and its attack at core American values.
By Judge Andrew Napolitano

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