11 DAYS OF CONSPIRACY: DAY ELEVEN - THE RECAP

We've finally come to the end of 11 Days of Conspiracy here at the Insane Asylum.  As I said in the beginning, I'm not trying to tell you what to believe.  I'm merely telling you what so many others believe and why.

Let's go over what was discussed.  


On Day One, we talked about Flight 93.  This was the plane that was said to have crashed in Shanksville, PA.  There was a report out of Cincinnati that Flight 93 actually landed in Cleveland and evacuated, but that was later changed.  There was no evidence of an airplane crashing in that field in PA. No bodies, 757 parts or luggage could be found.  Just pieces of "scrap metal" small enough to be held in one's hand. Reporters on the scene in Shanksville confirmed that.

On Day Two, the collapse of the Twin Towers was the topic of discussion.  We highlighted skyscraper fires of the past and their end result.  We went over the specs of the Twin Towers and how improbable is was for those buildings to fall the way a controlled demo would allow...without a controlled demolition.

Day Three was Flight 77 and the Pentagon. We discussed the holes the 757 allegedly left and how they were actually too small for plane of that size.  We also discussed the fact that there were no 757 parts, people or luggage, just like in Shanksville.  A reporter on the scene at the Pentagon literally repeated what the reporter in Shanksville said.  Except the reporter at the Pentagon said flat out that there was no evidence of a plane hitting it.



Day Four covered the wargames that were being played on September 11th.  One included moving fighter jets to the Canadian/Russian border to monitor a fleet of imaginary Russian jets.  Others included scenarios where hijacked airliners were being used to to crash into the Pentagon, World Trade Center and other targets of interest.  When the call for help came through, military controllers didn't know if this was "part of the game" or the real deal.

Day Five took us back to Twin Towers.  Almost all of the "Conspiracy Theorists" believe that the Towers were brought down in a controlled demo.  With all of the security and bomb-sniffing dogs, it must have been a task to get explosives in the buildings.  Not if President Bush's brother, Marvin is head of WTC security.  Also in the weeks prior to 9/11, there were building evacs and blackouts, long enough for explosives to be planted.

On Day Six, we found out how insider trading took place leading up to the events of 9/11.

Day Seven talked about the phone calls people said they received from their loved ones on 9/11.  The hard pill to swallow is understanding how a cell phone made a call from thousands of feet in the air when no such technology existed in 2001.

Day Eight introduced you to Larry Silverstein, the leaseholder of the World Trade Center complex.  Months prior to 9/11, he purchased a 99-year lease with insurance that specifically covered acts of terrorism.  After building 7 fell the way the Towers did, Silverstein went on television and said he had the building "pulled" because firemen said it was too dangerous to go in.

Day Nine covered the gold that was stored for banks and countries from around the world underneath the complex.

Day Ten reminded us all what the USA PATRIOT Act is, and what it has done to our rights and liberties.

Like I said, I'm not trying to convert you.  If you haven't formed an opinion after 10 years, you probably don't care....and that's cool.  All I wanted was for you to read and hopefully learn something about what people are saying about 9/11.

You'll never see another article from me about 9/11.  They will always be in the archives, but I'm officially blue in face and fingers from all the talking and typing.

Thank you for your patience and tolerance, and I know you're ready to get back to the current events.



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11 DAYS OF CONSPIRACY: DAY TEN - REDUCTION OF FREEDOMS AND LIBERTIES

The 9/11 terror spectacle played out as a deadly drama live on television. The images of the planes hitting the towers and their collapse were played repeatedly. The spectacle conveyed the message that the U.S. was vulnerable to terror attack, that terrorists could create great harm, and that anyone at anytime could be subject to a violent terror attack, even in America.

The suffering, fear, and death that many people endure on a daily basis in violent and insecure situations in other parts of the world was brought home  to U.S. citizens. The terror attacks had material effects, attempting to harm the U.S. and global economy, and psychic effects, traumatizing a nation with fear.

For days, U.S. television suspended broadcasting of advertising and TV entertainment and focused solely on the events of September 11. The images and discourses of the television networks framed the terrorist attacks to whip up war hysteria, while failing to provide a coherent account of what happened, why it happened, and what would count as responsible responses.

The media whipped up hysteria in its post-9/11 coverage of anthrax attacks and frequent reports of terrorist threats, and since September 11 the Bush administration used fear tactics to advance its political agenda, including tax breaks for the rich, curtailment of social programs, military build-up, and the most draconian assaults on U.S. rights and freedoms in the contemporary era.

The USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) was submitted two weeks later and signed a month after 9/11, ushering in a "new way of life" in the best interest for our safety and well-being. Two of the Senators who attempted to slow passage of the bill, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, were targeted with letters containing weaponized anthrax delivered to their offices on October 9.  

A lot of people don't fully understand what the USA PATRIOT Act entails, and most of them probably don't care, but I'll break it down anyway.
 

• Government Surveillance: The USA PATRIOT Act minimizes the power of the courts to prevent law enforcement authorities from illegally abusing certain types of telephone and Internet surveillance in both anti-terrorism investigations and run-of-the-mill criminal investigations of American citizens. Law enforcement officials have the power to investigate American citizens for criminal matters without establishing probable cause if they designate that the investigation is for "intelligence purposes." The Director of Central Intelligence also has broad authority to identify individuals as targets for intelligence surveillance, placing the CIA firmly back in the business of spying on Americans.
• Secret Searches: The USA PATRIOT Act expands the ability of the government to use so called "sneak and peek" and "black bag" secret searches. These searches, depending on the target, require either no notification at all of the person being searched, or delay notification until after the search has occurred. This means that physical searches of our homes, cars, computers, workplaces and reading materials can be conducted without our knowledge. These provisions apply both in anti-terrorism investigations and routine criminal investigations. 
• Privacy: The USA PATRIOT Act granted the FBI -- and, under new information sharing provisions, many other law enforcement and intelligence agencies -- broad access to highly personal medical, financial, mental health, library and student records with only the most minimal judicial oversight. The court must issue a subpoena whenever the FBI states that it is for an investigation to protect against international terrorism. The recipient of the subpoena is prohibited from telling anyone that the FBI has asked for the information. Now the FBI can get the entire database of a credit card company or the records of everyone who has used a certain public library. It can obtain information on everyone registered at a particular hotel, hospital, or university. It does not need to show probable cause that a crime is, has been, or will be committed.
• Dissent/Free Speech: The USA PATRIOT Act has the very real potential to greatly chill constitutionally protected speech in its overbroad redefinition of "domestic terrorism." The new definition is so vague that it could allow the government to designate lawful advocacy groups, like Greenpeace and Operation Rescue, as terrorist groups and subject them to invasive surveillance, wiretapping, harassment and then criminally penalize them for protected political advocacy. By questioning 9/11, I very well could be committing domestic terrorism.
• Bill of Rights for Non-Citizens: The USA PATRIOT Act permits the Attorney General to incarcerate or detain non-citizens based on mere suspicion and to deny re-admission to the US of non-citizens (including legal, long-term permanent residents) for engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment.

So there you have it.  9/11 sparked a lot of "change" in how we do things.  Not only did it "wrangle" the citizens to make us more "obedient", it took our freedom from us and we're thanking 'em for it.

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11 DAYS OF CONSPIRACY: DAY NINE - WHERE'S THE GOLD?

The basement of WTC4 housed vaults used to store gold and silver bullion. Articles written about what was recovered mention less than $300 million worth of gold.  On Nov. 1, Mayor Giuliani announced that "more than $230 million" worth of gold and silver bars that had been stored in a bomb-proof vault had been recovered.

I first heard about the missing gold when rescue workers looking for survivors found all the vault doors open and empty. I knew then that it was an inside job, because terrorists couldn't move that much gold prior to the buildings collapse.

Even the most straight and narrow believer of the official story can't say what happened to the tons of gold and silver that was stored in the lower vaults of the World Trade Center.  Bin Laden didn't take it, so lets go ahead and agree on that.  Who ever took the gold knows about the events of 9/11 and they're Americans.

With more people talking about the missing gold, Giuliani reported on 11/1 that some of the gold was recovered. Still over a billion dollars worth was still unaccounted for. Those who still believe that bin Laden did it, how did he get away with the gold unseen?

There appears to be no reports of precious metals discovered between November of 2001 and the completion of excavation several months later. Assuming that the reports described the value of precious metals in the vaults before the attack, and that the $230 million mentioned by Giuliani represented the approxmiate value of metals recovered, it would seem that at least the better part of a billion dollars worth of precious metals went missing.

Why is there this huge discrepancy between the value of gold and silver reported recovered, and the value reported to have been stored in the vaults? There are a number of possible explanations, from outright theft using the attack as cover, to insurance fraud. Until there is a genuine investigation that probes all the relevant facts and circumstances surrounding the attack, we can only speculate.

An article in The Sierra Times suggests that gold was recovered from two trucks in a tunnel under 5 World Trade Center, raising suspicions that the trucks were being used to remove the gold from the vaults before the South Tower fell. However, this report may have been based on erroneous reading of other reports that describe the removal of crushed vehicles from a tunnel under 5 WTC in order to gain access to the vaults under WTC4 to remove their contents.

I do realize that 9/11 was not about gold. It was just a part of it.  I'm not even surprised that so few people know what went on in the World Trade Towers and why there would be so much gold and silver there.




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11 DAYS OF CONSPIRACY: DAY EIGHT - LARRY SILVERSTEIN AND WTC7

In July 2001, Larry Silverstein signed a 99-year deal to operate the World Trade Complex. What Silverstein actually owns is an 11 percent share of that lease for which he paid about $14 million. Using cash from other investors (owners of the other 89 percent) and hundreds of millions of borrowed money, he bought the lease from the Port Authority.

When he and his family survived 9/11, he got paid. Hella paid. With signing the 99-year lease, Mr. Silverstein included insurance that specifically covered terrorist attacks. A lessee turned developer, he's  developing 3 of the 5 new towers to be completed in 2012.

Remember building 7 and how "debris from the Twin Towers" fell onto it and made it catch fire making it fall to the ground? What if I told you that the leaseholder said from his own mouth that he had firefighters demolish that building?



The fires in WTC 7 were supposedly started by the collapse of WTC 1, so there wouldn't have been any time the rig the building for demolition on 9/11.

Suggesting that it was demolished by the FDNY provides an alternative to the only logical explanation - that it was rigged for demolition before the attack. The absurdity of the FDNY setting to "pull" Building 7 on 9/11 will escape most people, those who neither grasp the engineering of the controlled demolition of a skyscraper, nor its contradiction with FEMA's account of the collapse. So the idea that officials decided to "pull" Building 7 after the attack serves as a distraction from the logic that the building's demolition was planned in advance of the attack, and was therefore part of an inside job to destroy the entire WTC complex.

The plot only gets thicker...


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11 DAYS OF CONSPIRACY: DAY SEVEN - THE PHONE CALLS

Remember the phone calls made from the passengers on those planes?  Going by the technology available in 2001, cell phone calls from airliners could only be made at altitudes of more than a few thousand feet. These calls however, some of which reportedly lasted a minute or more, reportedly occurred when the planes were above 30,000 or even 40,000 feet.

Although we were told by the FBI that Flight 93 was the source of about a dozen cell phone calls when the plane was above 40,000 feet, the FBI said something totally different at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the "20th hijacker". The FBI guy said, "13 of the terrified passengers and crew members made 35 air phone calls and two cell phone calls." Instead of there having been about a dozen cell phone calls from Flight 93 like the FBI declared in 2005, there were really only two.

Let's say the new story is the truth.  How can one explain the fact that so many people reported receiving cell phone calls?  In most cases these people specifically mentioned that the callers were using cell phones.  A Newsweek story about United 93 said, "Elizabeth Wainio, 27, was speaking to her stepmother in Maryland.  She said that another passenger had loaned her a cell phone and told her to call her family."

Deena Burnett said that she had received three to five calls from her husband, Tom Burnett. She said she knew that he was using his cell phone.  She told the FBI that day and then to the press and then mentioned it in a book that was being written, that she had recognized his number on her Caller ID.

Other Conspiracy Theorists contend that the 9/11 passengers voices were copied and calls using voice-morphing technology were made to their loved ones.  I won't go that far, and I won't rule it out, but the Mark Bingham call from the airphone was weird.  Who calls their mom and says "hi this is (enter first and last name)?




 Then CNN interviews him Mom, and she's reading the transcript of the call like she can't remember the last thing her son said to her.  Although the Mark Bingham call was from an airphone, I just can't wrap my finger around how weird it seemed.



Alexa Graf, a spokesman of AT&T, interviewed on 9/11, said it was "a fluke that the [9/11] cell phone calls reached their destinations".  Electronic Warfare specialist Steve Moser said that he has "severe doubt that ordinary cell phone calls were ever made from the aircraft (Flight 93)".  "When you make a cell phone call, the first thing that happens is your cell phone needs to contact a transponder and complete a digital handshake. If an aircraft is going five hundred miles an hour, your cell phone will not be able to contact a tower, tell the tower who you are and who your provider is, tell the tower what mode it wants to communicate with, and establish that it is in a roaming area, before it passes out of range. It takes 30-45 seconds to do that. Though it is sometimes possible to connect during takeoff and landing, under the situation that was claimed the calls were impossible."

So where did the cell calls come from? What about the airphone calls?  Does "hi Mom, this is Mark Bingham" sound normal?  All we can do is continue to ask questions and wait for the answers.



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11 DAYS OF CONSPIRACY: DAY SIX - PUT OPTIONS

Someone who knew that the attacks were coming could have profited in a number of ways. One would be to sell stocks short - borrowing shares and then selling them, hoping they could be bought back after a price drop. Another would be to buy put options, which give the owner the right to sell at a certain price for a limited time. It's classic insider trading.

American Airlines, United Airlines, Continental Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Southwest Airlines, US Airways airlines, Martin, Boeing, Lockheed Martin Corp., AIG, American Express Corp, American International Group, AMR Corporation, AXA SA, Bank of America Corp, Bank of New York Corp, and Bank One Corp, just to name a few profited from 9/11.

Put and call options are contracts that allow their holders to sell and buy assets at specified prices by a certain date. Put options allow their holders to profit from declines in stock values because they allow stocks to be bought at market price and sold for the higher option price. The ratio of the volume of put option contracts to call option contracts is called the put/call ratio. Basically a put option is a bet that a stock will fall. A call option is bet that a stock will rise.

From the 9/11 Commission:

"Financial transactions in the days before the attack suggest that certain individuals used foreknowledge of the attack to reap huge profits. 1 The evidence of insider trading includes:

-Huge surges in purchases of put options on stocks of the two airlines used in the attack -- United Airlines and American Airlines

-Surges in purchases of put options on stocks of reinsurance companies expected to pay out billions to cover losses from the attack -- Munich Re and the AXA Group

-Surges in purchases of put options on stocks of financial services companies hurt by the attack -- Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley and Bank of America

-Huge surge in purchases of call options of stock of a weapons manufacturer expected to gain from the attack -- Raytheon

-Huge surges in purchases of 5-Year US Treasury Notes

American Airlines and United Airlines, and several insurance companies and banks posted huge loses in stock values when the markets opened on September 17. These put options - instruments which allow investors to profit from the decline in value of stocks - were purchased on the stocks of these companies in great volume in the week before the attack.
United Airlines and American Airlines

Two of the corporations most damaged by the attack were American Airlines (AMR), the operator of Flight 11 and Flight 77, and United Airlines (UAL), the operator of Flight 175 and Flight 93. According to CBS News, in the week before the attack, the put/call ratio for American Airlines was four. The put/call ratio for United Airlines was 25 times above normal on September 6.

Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley were both headquartered in lower Manhattan at the time of the attack. Morgan Stanley occupied 22 floors of the North Tower and Merrill Lynch had headquarters near the Twin Towers. Morgan Stanley, which sees an average of 27 put options on its stock daily saw 2,157 put options bought in the three trading days before the attack. Merrill Lynch, which sees an average of 252 put options on its stock daily saw 12,215 put options bought in the four trading days before the attack. Morgan Stanley's stock dropped 13% and Merrill Lynch's stock dropped 11.5% when the market reopened.

When you put the different pieces together, you get a larger picture. It's starting to see that people all across the board benefited from the events of 9/11. Especially monetarily. Wait until you hear about the gold...



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11 DAYS OF CONSPIRACY: DAY FIVE - WHAT ABOUT THE BOMBS?

Let's go back to the towers for a minute. If bombs were used to bring them down, how did they get in the building? Thousands of pounds of explosives would have had to have been planted in and around the buildings' core columns and throughout its restricted internal framework.

Let's take this question of how the explosives were planted. How could the security of the World Trade Center Complex, which has to be pretty sophisticated since the 1993 bombing, not notice people attaching explosives to the buildings? We need to ask Marvin P. Bush, W’s brother.  He was on the board in a company called Securacom (now named Stratesec) that provided security for the World Trade Center and United Airlines.

In the weeks leading up to 9/11, there were power outages and whole floor shutdowns and evacuations. Those were perfect opportunities to carry up and plant necessary explosives under the guise of 'maintenance' and/or 'retrofitting' work.  Bomb-sniffing dogs were also removed from the buildings decreasing the chance of the explosions being detected.

The more we see evidence that suggests an inside job, the more these revelations about uncovered information strengthens the suspicions about 9/11 being a well-orchestrated conspiracy.


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11 DAYS OF CONSPIRACY: DAY FOUR - REAL WORLD OR EXERCISE?

Ever wondered why all these planes were able to fly around the country's most precious targets without any military intervention?  Just like the Brits did on 7/7/05 where "exercises" were identical to the actual tragedy, on September 11, at least five different "war games" were being conducted by the military and intelligence agencies. These exercises included simulations of 9/11 type events, a plane into building scenario near Dulles Airport in Virginia, and deployment of fighters to northern Canada and Alaska (which reduced the number of fighters that were available to protect the US?). It seems that these exercises were the means used to paralyze the air defenses, thereby ensuring the success of the "attacks." The British Navy was conducting exercises in the Indian ocean near the Middle East. A biowar exercise was also about to start in New York City.


It's hard to believe that the military and CIA were conducting war games similar to 9/11 on September 11, 2001. While it seems likely, if not blatantly obvious, that these war games were one of the means used to confuse the air defense system for sufficient time to allow the World Trade Center to be attacked, the war games do not answer the question of how the air defenses were suppressed for another half hour after the second tower was hit (at which time everyone knew that an attack was in progress). The Air Force had another half hour after the second tower to scramble interceptors to defend the Capitol (the plane that is alleged to have hit the Pentagon made its 180 degree turn over Ohio to head back toward D.C. about the time that the second tower was struck). When they tried to scramble fighter jets, controllers didn't know what was real and what was exercise.



Perhaps a complete investigation would reveal if the national order to ground all aviation (an unprecedented directive from the Transportation Department) also included military airplanes as well -- especially given the chaos and confusion that morning, a stand down of key fighter interceptors would have been easily concealed. But the information about the wargames suggests that a "stand down" order was NOT issued that morning -- the confusion from the war games was how the defenses of New York and Washington were interfered with sufficiently to ensure the success of the attacks. 

It is unlikely that the "inside job" conspirators would have risked the success of the operation on whether fighter plane pilots would have obeyed orders to do nothing as American cities were burning. It would be like asking a firefighter who had trained their entire adult life to "stand down" when their neighbor's house was burning and the inhabitants trapped inside (or worse, asking that firefighter to "stand down" from protecting the next house on the block from catching fire from the first burning house). In this analogy, the firefighter would probably ignore orders from his or her boss to stand down, and would seek to rescue the neighbors without worrying about the consequences until later. The wargames provide a much better explanation for why there was an apparent stand down and failure to respond in time.


If a genuine investigation with subpeona power is ever held, the full details of the 9/11 wargames would need to be declassified and discussed in public -- who scheduled them, who set up the scenarios, the full communications records from the participants, the radar tapes (if they still exist) that were used as part of the simulations, and the identities of those officials who deployed part of the fighter defense fleet to northern Canada and Alaska at the very time that warnings were being sounded that a terrorist attack was imminent.



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11 DAYS OF CONSPIRACY: DAY THREE - FLIGHT 77 AND THE PENTAGON

Along with Flight 93 and the Twin Towers, the Pentagon has it's own set of questions to be answered.

Some Conspiracy Theorists contend that Flight 77 didn't hit the Pentagon, and that the damage done came from another source. The main statements in supporting this theory are:

1. The hole created by the crash is too small for a 757 and its parts.

2. The damage done in and around the Pentagon doesn't amount to the damage a 757 would cause.

3. No evidence of Boeing 757 debris having been recovered from the site.

4. Of all the people who died on the planes, none of them were Hani Hanour or the names of other suspected terrorists.

The hole created by the crash is too small for a 757 and its parts.

The entrance hole before the roof fell was about 16 ft. around. The 125 feet wingspan of the Boeing 757 would have made a hole about 177 feet wide, in the Pentagon wall. I think it is safe to say that although the hole in the Pentagon wall appears to have been made by something that was airborne, it is in fact, too small, to have been made by a Boeing 757.

The damage done in and around the Pentagon doesn't amount to the damage a 757 would cause.

So, a 757 clipped 5 light poles and left a hole in the bottom of the Pentagon without damaging the landscape.  And this hole is supposedly from the nose of the plane, the part of the plane that's paper compared to the rest.  That went through, but the same reinforced wall prevented wings and engines from doing damage.

No evidence of Boeing 757 debris having been recovered from the site.

A thinking person would expect to see engines, a tail section, fuselage and people in there somewhere lying on the ground. Where were they?

Of all the people who died on the planes, none of them were Hani Hanour or the names of other suspected terrorists. 

Hani was the guy they said went to the training school in Florida then piloted Flight 77 into the Pentagon.  When interviewed, his former chief instructor basically said Hani sucked at flying.  Hani allegedly executed a maneuver described as "highly skillful" in the 757 before slamming it into the building.

I know I went all around the world to make a point, but I care too much.  I want this to be educational and fun. I could've just shown you this video at the beginning and avoided going through all the motions.






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11 DAYS OF CONSPIRACY: DAY TWO - COLLAPSE OF THE TWIN TOWERS

The collapse of the Twin Towers played a huge psychological role in how the American people perceived 9/11.  What really had me confused over the years is how the towers just crumbled to the ground like sandcastles.

The official explanation given said the burning jet fuel caused the building to weaken all over.  Even in places where no jet fuel was present.  Firefighters in and around the buildings say they heard explosions right before the buildings collapsed.




What is someone supposed to think when you see how fast the buildings came down, along with these firefighters saying what they experienced? Thanks to the makers of Loose Change, the following information only helps the theory that the towers were brought down in a controlled manner:

In February of 1991, a 38-story skyscraper in Philadelphia caught fire and burned for 18 hours across eight floors. It was once known as the fire of the century.  It did not collapse.  It burned until firefighters put it out.

In October, 2004, a 56-story skyscraper in Venezuela, built in 1976, burned for over 17 hours spreading across 26 floors. It did not collapse. It burned until firefighters put it out.

In February of 1975, a fire that started in an electrical closet on the 11th floor broke out between the ninth and the 14th floors of the North Tower. The fire then spread to six other floors. Even without a sprinkler system, fire department officials and building officials said there was no chance the World Trade Center would ever become a type of Towering Inferno. The fire was so bad, however, it eventually led to the installation of sprinkler systems. Still it did not collapse. it burned until firefighters put it out.

In May of 1975, 7 fires struck the twin towers. The South Tower had garbage fires between the 25th and 36th floor, and the North Tower had a fire on the 11th floor. They did not collapse. They burned until firefighters put them out.

The Twin Towers, 2 110-story skyscrapers burned for 56 minutes over eight floors and 103 minutes over five floors, before falling completely to the ground. The Twin Towers were made of 200,000 tons of steel and 425,000 cubic yards of concrete. The core of each tower was a rectangular pillar, 87 x 133 feet, comprised of 47 steel box columns ranging from 36 x 16 to 52 x 22 inches. The North Tower was completed in 1970, standing at 1368 feet tall, and the South Tower was completed in 1973, reaching 1362 feet tall, making them the tallest buildings in the world at the time. They were designed to withstand multiple impacts from a Boeing 707. A collision like this would result in only local damage which could not cause collapse or substantial damage.

Take a look at this. You mean to tell me that a plane hitting the top of these buildings caused them to collapse from underneath?



In September, 2001, the south tower of the World Trade Center collapses to the ground in approximately 10 seconds. 29 minutes later, the North Tower collapses in approximately 10 seconds. Later that evening, World Trade Center building 7, 47 stories tall, collapses to the ground in under seven seconds. The official explanation is that falling debris from the North Tower created a series of fires inside the building. According to history, if this is true, it would be the third steel frame skyscraper in history to completely collapse because of damage and fire. The first two would be the Twin Towers.

Were airplanes the cause of those buildings collapsing?




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11 DAYS OF CONSPIRACY: DAY ONE - FLIGHT 93

For 11 days I'll be highlighting 11 topics within the overall story of 9/11 that are still being discussed. Lots of people died, and many were injured. It was a horrible thing, and it was done to incite fear and chaos.

For something that's supposed to be so cut and dry, there are still a lot of people including myself with questions about 9/11. We're called Conspiracy Theorists. Whether or not Bin Laden was behind it is your belief. I believe that if you take a closer look with me during these 11 days, you might learn something new. Even if you don't, at least you would have heard my piece, and that's all I want.

OK, lets talk about the scene. Do you remember what the field looked like? Let's look at what was being said about it that day.



Reporters on the scene only call it like they see it. There were no wing sections, no engines (which are made partially of titanium), no luggage, no DNA and no people, yet this plane went down there? I don't care if you believe the story about it being shot down or the one that said it crashed, Mr. Chap says Flight 93 was not in Pennsylvania.

So what happened to flight 93?

I don't know. I do know that a TV station in Cincinnati said that United Flight 93 landed at Cleveland International Airport. I remember on our news in Detroit, they were talking about WCPO Channel 9 who was quoting Cleveland Mayor Michael White saying a Boeing 767 out of Boston made an emergency landing due to a bomb threat, and that the airport was evacuated because of this. The airplane was moved to a secure location and the people on board were taken to the John Glenn NASA research center. I couldn't find the original article because it had been deleted, but I went to the Way Back Machine and found a copy.

The report says United Airlines verified the plane as Flight 93, but was also deeply concerned about Flight 175, which was flying from Boston to L.A. Also included was a comment from United CEO, James Goodwin. Later is was said that a mistake had been made. Instead of United Flight 93 landing, it was said that Delta 1989 actually landed.

Aircraft have serial numbers like cars have vin numbers. If a car is totaled, scrapped or burned up, you'll never see another vehicle with that vin number. The same with airplanes. If a plane is in service or crashes or is too old to fly or whatever the case may be, it's listed with the FAA along with it's status. So if Flight 93 went down over Pennsylvania, why did United identify it as their plane that landed in Cleveland? Confusing your United plane with a Delta plane seems unlikely. Each aircraft is a blip on the screen with it's number attached to it. How else do control towers know who they're speaking to?

After doing some homework, I found that FAA records showed that Flight 93 was identified as N591UA and Flight 175 as N612UA. Four years later, those numbers were still listed as "active". FAA records shows the two other American Airline flights, Flight 11 and 77, both were 'deregistered' and classified as 'destroyed' just months after 9/11. I don't know what it means, but it means something. Do your own search at the FAA registry.

Things didn't add up then, and they don't add up now. We can only keep searching until something makes sense.



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DIRTY JOBS, 9/11 AND 7/7

[editor's note: Seven years ago today, the UK govt. 9/11'd its capital the exact same way the U.S. attempted to do to it's capital. This is your yearly reminder.]

It's no secret now that 9/11 was an inside job. The controlled implosions on towers one, two, and seven should have triggered some type of suspicion in your minds. I just can't believe how much trouble the "powers that be" went through to carry out their plan. Scheduling Military drills that entailled hi-jacked airliners crashing into the WTC, Pentagon, and the White House the day it actually happened. Surely you know this. I mean come on, you spend your lives on your computers, right?  I'm merely refreshing your memory.

It was almost the perfect crime. Our military was so confused on that day, they didn't know what to do. All of our leadership and organization was out the door. Here is audio of the call to send air support to the WTC. They didn't know if this was part of the exercise or the real deal.  Listen:



I gotta admit, it was very clever for us to attack ourselves. It was sloppy nonetheless, but clever. Events like this increases the dependency on the Government and when we're scared, we stick together.  That's going to be the story of our lives until we get blasted off this rock.

Enough about 9/11...

Now, let's talk about the 7/7/05 bombings of London.

On 7/7/2005, four coordinated bombs rocked the Capital the same time the first plane hit the WTC in 2001. Surely you keep up with these events...I'm merely refreshing your memory. You may recall the images of the guy in the gray suit with the bandage wrapped around his head and the blanket covering him. I remember saying to myself while watching the live news coverage, "Something ain't right. This dude looks way fake".



Look at the bandage around his head. You see how it's tied around like a bandanna? What kind of emergency officials apply gauze like that? At the moment I was focused on that. Then I see on another news station footage of the SAME DUDE being moved from Russell Square, one of the locations that was targeted. What's wrong with him being moved from Russel Square? Nothing, except I was originally watching the bombing at Tavistock Square, where the guy was lying on the ground covered with the same blanket and fake-ass headdress. Now, in Tavistock Square, a bus exploded, blowing the back outward.  Dude was lying on the ground approximately 30 feet in FRONT of the bus. That was a bit wierd for me, so I left it alone until I stumbled upon a witness' account of what happened on that bus.




Daniel Obachike, native of London, described that bus ride vividly on the Alex Jones show, a show dedicated to bringing to light Government conspiracies, cover-ups, the Illuminati and the New World Order.  He says approximately 12 seconds after the bus exploded, he was off the bus.  Survivors got off and were either on the side of the bus or behind the bus, where the explosion happened.  Mr. Obachike says he noticed the bandanna dude just chilling there on the ground, approximately 40 feet in FRONT of the bus with the blanket and the fake gauze on, minutes before emergency officials arrived. How did this happen?  I'm guessing he was a member of MI-5 the equivalence to our FBI.  Listen to how his bus was redirected before it exploded. Oh...did I mention that the British Government scheduled drills involving mock explosions where bombs actually went off? Sounds 9/11-y doesn't it?

Alex brings you up to speed on the matter up to the 4:35 mark. That's when Obachike comes in.



I'm no expert, but I strongly believe that 9/11 and 7/7 were not only inside jobs, but dirty ones also.

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Why 9/11 Couldn't Have Been a Government Conspiracy, Part III

In the first two installments of this series (here and here) we looked at the nature of conspiracy theory, and the specific charge that the 9/11 attacks were deliberately staged by the U.S. Government. In this installment, we’ll take a look at some of the more persistent, but minor, misapprehensions that still linger about the attacks and why they don’t necessarily indicate an organized conspiracy, per se, and perhaps represent rumor, innuendo, and uninformed opinion masquerading as reasoned discourse.

In no particular order:

1) The ‘Fire Can’t Melt Steel’ Theory: this is a theory, promulgated by such noted scholars, construction experts, and Nobel Laureates such as Rosie O’Donnell, Janeane Garofalo, and Michael Moore. In this theory it is assumed that no flame, no matter how intense or uncontrolled, has the ability to burn or melt steel girders in such a way as to compromise the structural integrity of the Twin Towers. Proponents of this fallacy then make the great leap of logic that since the fires could not have caused the ultimate collapse of the towers, then it must have been some form of controlled demolition that did.

The first response to this suggestion is to call bullshit, and remind those who espouse it of the Laws of Chemistry.
Everything in the Universe burns, changes its state, or has its chemical composition broken down by exposure to extreme heat. Even steel. Solids become liquids, liquids become gases, and gases flash into plasma when exposed to intense heat. This is elementary science at work, and it requires a certain, special species of retard to believe otherwise.

Part of the confusion over whether or not fire burns/melts steel probably originates in the term ‘fireproof’, and a misunderstanding of what this word really means. Technically speaking, nothing is ever fireproof. As we’ve discovered, after all, everything burns if you apply enough heat. ‘Fireproof’ in the sense of the building trade does not mean ‘incapable of burning’, but rather it refers to some sort of chemical agent which is applied to structures in order to prevent open flames from reaching bare steel. A fireproofing agent is simply a layered barrier to flame, and works mostly by burning away itself over time, layer-by-layer, thus delaying the direct contact between fire source and steel girder beneath, and so giving firefighters and fire-fighting systems the time they need to control a fire before it compromises structural integrity.

Eventually, when the fireproofing burns away, or is shaken off (like in the case of an impact which jars the entire building) the steel beneath is compromised by exposure to heat, burning or becoming warped and losing its structural integrity. The fireproofing material used on the WTC was called Monokote, and it was rated for, at best, 2-3 hours of fire protection according to a Port Authority Engineer of my acquaintance.
Take a fuel-laden 757, smash it into an office building loaded with paper, wood, plastics, rubber, fabrics of a hundred kinds, painted walls, and human bodies, and you’ll get a fire so severe as to stagger the imagination. Give that fire the ability to draw in outside air through a 10-story hole in the façade, like a forge, and you get yourself a fire of Biblical Proportions. Allow that fire to burn uncontrolled because the fire suppression system is compromised, and because firefighters can’t get to the fire on the 87th or so floor, and the resulting disaster is all but a foregone conclusion.

A second aspect of this theory which is commonly overlooked (purposely, because admitting it would expose the propagator of the Great Myth to ridicule as a fucking dumbass) is the process by which steel is created in the first place. Which is, to say, in fire; metals and minerals are melted at extreme temperatures in order to combine into an amalgam which then becomes harder than its component parts as it cools. One cannot make steel without fire. Steel is also being recycled every day in almost every country on this planet, and this process, too, requires melting the steel by exposure to intense heat, which makes a total nonsense of the ‘Fire Cannot Burn/Melt Steel’ meme.

2) WTC 7 was Demolished Deliberately; this myth, too, is false. The only building that was deliberately demolished on 9/11 was 6 WTC, and that was by order of the FDNY which was concerned that the burning building would collapse, and thus black the plaza between both towers , preventing the ingress of fire and rescue equipment and crews, and block an escape route being used by victims and evacuees.

This deliberate demolition of 6 WTC was accomplished by the simple expedient of cutting into exposed, external support columns, wrapping great heavy chains about them, and then attaching the chains to super-heavy construction equipment. The building was pulled down, in situ.

7 WTC, and I can attest to this because I actually saw it happen, was showered with flaming debris from 1 WTC, and severely damaged by falling girders knocked out of the tower by impact. Several of these girders, mostly intact, then fell the 80 or 90 stories to the ground, and some of them actually struck 7 WTC and tore gaping holes in it. The fires at 7 WTC then raged out of control because the water supply that should have been available to fight them originated in 1 WTC, now compromised by having a 757 embedded within it's walls.

The secondary systems were insufficient to fight the flames, and by 2 pm, or so, one could actually hear – even above the din of wailing sirens and utter chaos -- 7 WTC groaning under it’s own weight, see it bulging at it’s eastern side, and burning like a Roman Candle. The FDNY ordered it evacuated (leaving the fires to take their course) sometime around 3 pm when the building actually began to shift, and by 5:30 or so, 7 WTC collapsed under its own weight.

3) Planted Explosives: of all the myths of 9/11, this is perhaps the easiest to dispel. Proponents of this Conspiracy Theory insist that 1 WTC could not have collapsed the way it did (in a telescoping fashion) without some kind of controlled implosion.

The best defense against this theory is simple logic. Contrary to popular belief, neither tower was ever completed in the conventional sense. Both towers were in a constant state of construction and reconstruction, as tenants moved in and out, and subject to intense programs of maintenance, inspections, and upgrades. On any given day the Twin Towers would have been crawling with thousands of construction workers from a variety of trades, and hundreds of engineers of all stripes.

These are New York City construction workers and engineers, mind you, the best in the business. These guys eat, sleep, and shit ultra-high rise construction. They’re also highly skilled in the arts of high-rise demolition, too. They also form a close-knit community, and it’s not uncommon for men of differing trades and unions to know each other from a long history of working on common projects, or to pick up knowledge of other people's job or specialty.

These guys know everything and everyone there is to know when it comes to building and destroying tall buildings, and most would have worked at the Towers quite often at some point in their careers, becoming very familiar with the buildings, their structure, and the routine of operating and maintaining them.

It is highly doubtful that someone deliberately planting explosives in any of those buildings in the complex could get away with keeping their activities a secret. At all times, their handiwork would be under the inspection of thousands of pairs of experienced eyeballs, or eventually exposed by complete accident as someone inspected this or that structural thingamabob.
Preparing for a controlled implosion is a delicate and precise operation that requires extraordinary skill, is labor intensive, and often requires multiple explosive charges. In the case of a building as large as one of the Towers, this means literally, hundreds, if not thousands, of charges be set, very precisely, on critical supports, all of this done under the every eyes of thousands of other people intimately familiar with the buildings, the skills and circumstances of constructions/demolition, and working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, attaching bombs to structures that were in a constant state of inspection, maintenance, or repair/upgrade.

That 1 WTC telescoped as it collapsed is probably just a bit of dumb (but fortunate) luck; the floor slabs were connected to the external exoskeleton by a system of steel trusses and connecting rods. Once these began to warp in the intense heat, it was only a matter of time before they went. Especially in the case where a truss system that was designed to distribute its load along four sets of vertical columns has to deal with the added stress of only having three intact ones to do the same job.

2 WTC, on the other hand, actually snapped, practically in half, when it was struck at an oblique angle upon a corner, which compromised two column-support structures instead of only one. Each floor of the World Trade Center towers constituted roughly one full acre of floor space, with very little in the way of internal walls or supports. I know this from having worked there for many years.

Explosives were not needed. And from my vantage point of the collapse (from the corner of West and North Moore Streets) no additional explosions were evident.

The scientific, logical, and eyewitness accounts of just what happened on 9/11 would seem, therefore, to argue against some vast, secret conspiracy undertaken by the American Government for whatever motivation most ideological opponents of George W. Bush or the most wild-eyed anti-Government-camoflage-wearin’-gun-lovin’-Black-Helicopter-dodgin’ Redneck might contrive. The truth of the matter is that so much happened, in so short a span of time, and under such confusing circumstances that no single question regarding the event will ever be explained in such a way as to satisfy everyone.

The psychological impact of the attack is such as to perhaps preclude any possibility of ever getting a full accounting of circumstances and events. The full story of 9/11 will, sadly, never be known and cannot possibly be told with the certainty of absolute fact.

In exploring this subject myself, in my own unscientific and superficial way, I have come to some startling realizations. Those Towers were an important part of my personal Life, tied to memories of growing up, pride in my hometown, and my personal history. I could watch from my schoolhouse window as the finishing touches were being put on those Towers as a child. I remember clamoring to be taken to the Observation Deck atop Tower 1 and being thrilled by the high winds and visible curvature of the Earth. The School Trip to the Observation Deck was almost an annual event. My Senior Prom was held at Windows on the World; my first job was as an 18-year-old computer programmer working the night shift in 2 WTC. In the wake of the 1993 attacks, I was sent by employer to help our WTC clients recover from the damage caused to systems and communications infrastructure. In later years, I would pass through the WTC just about every day of my life on the Subway, or by stopping by the Concourse to buy a coffee or newspaper, or to get myself a new pair of shoes or some emergency dry cleaning or tailoring.

I guess, for my part, the idea that someone (and my own government, to boot) would deliberately conspire to destroy a visible and near-constant of My Life, is perhaps too much to bear. To believe that evil men , foreigners, with murder in their hearts, concocted a devious plan to initiate a Holy War against the West in general, and the United States in particular, is only slightly somewhat more palatable and easier to believe, given the evidence we have. This does not mean that the Conspiracy Theorists are wrong, only that they haven’t proven their case, and that most of the evidence they have presented thus far is otherwise perfectly explainable by reasonable means.

The Process of History often works in this way.

This process has reopened some old wounds for me. I had thought that I was beyond the horror of 9/11, but it appears that I am, after all, still a human being, much to my surprise and consternation. For many of us who were there and experienced it first-hand, I suppose none of it will ever go away. We’ll just have to find ways to deal as best we can. Maybe for some, this means engaging their penchant for fantasy and infusing it with their politics or predisposition towards cloak-and-dagger, or in by living in a state of denial. I don’t know. I only know how I feel, what I believe, and what I can prove or rationalize.

I haven’t covered every aspect of the more popular and persistent 9/11 Conspiracy Theories, I know, but then again, I didn’t really start this with that intention.

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Why 9/11 Couldn’t Have Been A Government Conspiracy, Part II

In the first installment of this series, we looked at the Origin of Conspiracy Theories, and came to the tentative conclusion that such things are typically generated in a swirl of misinformation, or from a lack of credible facts, and propagated for various, political, or deep-seeded psychological reasons.

The specific question of "Was 9/11 a Government Conspiracy and Cover up?" was left unanswered. Personally, I do not believe that the U.S. Government was the perpetrator of the September 11th Attacks, but then again, I'm not in possession of all the facts, either. I don't believe that anyone ever will be in possession of absolute truth regarding 9/11; the scope of the event is vast, the underlying causes too varied, the waters made murky by emotions, politics, and war, to believe that a full reckoning of 9/11 will ever be possible.

The saddest part of the entire "Conspiracy or No?" debate is that has become politicized, and often personalized, to such a large extent; we all, in our own ways, have projected motivations, phobias, and emotions, against the backdrop of September 11 in such a way as to make an effort to ever get a day-by-day, minute-by-minute historical accounting of the event an impossible endeavor.

There will always be those -- even if the Absolute Truth should be sent from Heaven above, carried on the Wings of Angels -- who would never believe it, in any case. Some are preternaturally stupid, some obstinate, others contrarian for the sake of being so, a great many others simply have some axe to grind -- political, intellectual -- that makes accepting the truth problematic for them. My intent here is not to dissuade those people from these beliefs, only to suggest that they just might have it all wrong.

In this post, we'll be looking at a few popular aspects of the "The Government Did it" school of thought, and poke some holes in them.

The first argument against 9/11 having been a government conspiracy for the purposes of (pick one or more) get us into decade-long-super expensive wars, steal Middle Eastern oil, serve as a casus belli for George W. Bush's warmongering-phallocentric fantasies, avenging the death threats against Poppa Bush, or to provide the fig leaf behind which a new Western Imperialist Age would begin, is simply....the nature of the attack, itself, as it is often envisioned by the Conspiracy Theorists!

Assuming some nefarious plot, one must imagine that it was something which involved a great number of people, working from some well-organized and well-thought-out plan of attack. One must assume that the greater mass of people involved are simply too stupid to question authority and will do whatever they are told without giving it any thought. You must also assume that the same dumb-as-a-sack-of-hammers people were able to maintain a level of operational security so airtight that to this day, not a single whisper of such a grand scheme has ever reached anyone's ears. You must believe that this secret has been kept in the midst of the Information Age, where data has often become something like a pile of dogshit: it's just laying around everywhere, just waiting for someone to step in it accidentally. And all that with a government that leaks information like an incontinent leaks after a bowl of fiber and a six-pack breakfast.

No Wikileaks. No intrepid newspaper reporters tenaciously digging. No lost or stolen government laptops. No loose threads to threaten to unravel the entire plot. Not a single doofus advertising his/her involvement on AOL, Facebook, or a blog. The security on this thing is so good that one imagines that it's entirely possible that one part of the conspiracy was completely in the dark about what another was up to, and that by some neat trick, both ends managed to stay out of each other's way and avoid working at cross-purposes.

You need to believe that a variety of government agencies -- the FAA, CIA, FBI, Pentagon Types, just to begin with -- are all in on it, to one extent or another. There will, by necessity, be other elements involved to deal with public relations and press matters, communications, funding, training, and finally, there must be another conspiracy within the conspiracy, the real Masterstroke of the entire operation:

Someone, somehow, convinced 19 Al Qaeda doofuses to undertake a suicide mission on behalf of the United States Government, in such a way as to make their organization the patsies for 9/11, while still maintaining the fantasy that the Jihadis are acting on behalf of Al Qaeda and the Worldwide Jihad, striking a blow for Muslims everywhere. And even better; leaving them convinced that it was all their own idea in the first place, and eager to put Usama Bin Laden in front of a television camera to claim credit for it all.

Oh, somehow also leaving Al Qaeda to pick up the tab for the whole shebang -- the training, the flight schools, the airline tickets, hotels, rental cars, walking around money, and even Mohammed Atta's last Las Vegas bachelor-party-like fling -- too.

Seriously?

Secondly, if you were to assume that the evil cabal of Bushhitler and Darth Cheney put this thing together for their own, questionable ends, one must marvel at the speed with which this flawless operation came together. George Bush is inaugurated on January 20, 2001, the attacks take place in a little under 9 months. It would probably have been the single most efficient endeavor ever undertaken by the American Government, surpassing the Apollo Program or the Manhattan Project. It would have been the most-perfectly planned and executed clandestine plan in history, a series of independent, secret, and complex operations coming together in so short a time as to astound.

Can you imagine just how many people would, by necessity, be involved in such a thing? How many moving parts, as it were, there are to the entire operation? This, in itself, is the most effective argument against 9/11 having been a U.S. government conspiracy. To paraphrase Tom Clancy, the percentage chance of a secret operation being blown or discovered is equal to the square of the number of people involved in it.

Think about this: airport security personnel need to look the other way while 19 guys -- most on a terrorist watch list -- are allowed to board airliners. Any law enforcement types who might be on to Atta and his confederates need to lay off, and leave them un-arrested long enough for them to do their worst. If the World Trade Center, as has been alleged, has been rigged with explosives (to initiate a controlled explosion), then this requires the activities of scores of people, with specialized training, planting at least hundreds of charges in strategic places, often in broad daylight and in front of thousands of witnesses, over a prolonged period of time (that kind of work cannot be rushed if it isn't to detonate prematurely or fail altogether).

All this requires the activities, connivance, or convenient stupidity of, literally, hundreds of people. That's hundreds that one must assume never, ever questioned a single thing, never noticed anything untoward; if they were directly involved, you must believe that they were so single-minded of purpose (obeying their orders) that even while placing boxcutters in a Halal meal pak, or planting explosives on strategic steel girders within an office building containing tens of thousands, that the reason why they should do these things never once aroused anything like suspicion, guilt, confusion, or triggered anyone's conscience. There's not one dedicated cop, not a single airport security screener, an FBI agent, who raised an eyebrow at being told that Atta and Company must be allowed access to an airport, or that planting explosives was just a routine thing?

No one, not a single supposed operative, not a solitary disgruntled government employee (sorry, that's redundant), no hero whistleblowers, no Air Force officer who questions his order to (allegedly) shoot down unarmed airliners, no Air Traffic Controller who was there the day the Mysterious Man in the Dark Suit from Whoknowswhere instructed everyone to go braindead at exactly such-and-such a time, on such-and-such a date. Not one person, of the hundreds we must assume were involved, has ever stepped forward or leaked information. There's not even the hint of water-cooler gossip or pillow talk between perpetrator/facilitator and the Missus.

Here is where 9/11 Conspiracy Theory falls flat on it's face: the bigger the conspiracy, the more people who must be involved. The more people involved, the greater the chance that the conspiracy will quickly unravel. The faster the thing unravels, the more information that becomes available. It is virtually impossible for any organization, even the richest, most powerful and technologically-advanced government on Planet Earth, to undertake a project of this scale and with this level of precision, with that sort of Fort Knox-like security. American Intelligence is good, BUT NOT THAT GOOD. Then again, if American Intelligence was that good, there may never have been a September 11th in the first place!

Another reason why the government could not be the mastermind of 9/11: in the normal course of dally life, when the average citizen interacts with agents of his government --the woefully-misinformed agent on the IRS helpline. The clerk at the Passport Office that gave you the impression of being unable to find her own ass with both hands and a flashlight. When you've filed a Change of Address package with the Post Office, but somehow your mail is still being delivered to your old address, or your local newspaper runs a story of how the Department of Education bought 200 times more paperclips than it needed, and paid 15 time the going rate for them, and no one noticed for eight years. How is it that the same government which routinely fucks up by the numbers, an organization which employs complete boobs for mostly political reasons, how is it possible that that inept and inefficient system suddenly morphs into the most calculating, sinister, and deadly efficient organization in human history, just when (according to Conspiracy Theorists) it needs to?

The greater mass of the American Government consists of an amorphous blob of lowest-common-denominator-clock-watcher types, who's main talent is an ability to learn their jobs through sheer, mindless, repetition and an uncanny ability to fill-in forms in triplicate, rubber-stamp, and then pass on little bits of paper (this is the 21st Century, you know) to higher authority for future misfiling and/or eventual loss.

Yes, there are, indeed, some very bright and highly-motivated people working in government employ, but these are few and far between. And if we accept this extraordinarily low level of realistic expectation from the typical bureaucratic type, then we must also accept that the same model is genuinely incapable of pulling something like 9/11 off. The people with the talent to have perpetrated this crime, kept it all quiet and managed public perceptions about it (we must assume) would probably be working in the private sector and getting stinking rich.

The government simply could not have idiot-proofed an operation this big when the when the Federal, Unionized, Bureaucracy has dedicated itself to evolving a species of new-and-improved idiots on a daily basis, and which recruits it's breeding stock from those whose career prospects were either "Do you want fries with that?", or determined by their ability to guess correctly on a multiple-choice examination mostly written by illiterates, for illiterates (take a civil service exam, and see for yourself).

The explanation that 9/11 was the result of 19 or so committed jihadists, training within the borders of a country mired in the Mud Age, utilizing flight simulator software and laptops, perhaps finagling a few actual flying lessons in Western Schools, and operating, for the most part, in the open, beneath a screen of Political Correctness and Civil Liberties, all of it directed via satellite phone from a cave in Tora Bora, is a far more likely -- and far more believable -- explanation for 9/11 than the alternate theory of a U.S. Government plot against it's own citizens.

To sum up this government conspiracy theory, you must believe that hundreds of mindless robots from a dizzying array of government agencies undertook a program of often-questionable activities, that they did so without asking why they should do what they have done, or what the ultimate purpose is, with the assumption that the very few who might not be completely braindead would deliberately be derelict in their duty, that criminal investigations and intelligence operations were deliberately interfered with or engineered so as to allow the hijackers freedom of movement and action, that the hijackers were somehow coerced or seduced into turning themselves into kamikazes on behalf of their enemy, and that all of this was done by people who were "just following orders" -- with no curiosity or conscience at all -- for the purposes of killing thousands, for...

...I guess whatever your political outlook or mental state requires you to believe. Because there's certainly no logic behind it all, other than Al Qaeda hates us and wants us all dead.

A government that could pull of the sort of precision operation that the Conspiracy Theorists insist 9/11 was, would, one would think, also be able to solve the problems of poverty and World Hunger, cure AIDS, genetically engineer a unicorn that craps jellybeans and rainbows, and perhaps answer the Eternal Question of how is it that someone shot John Lennon five times, but didn't even bother to aim at Yoko Ono.

A government that good, that smart, and that efficient, also would have avoided saddling it's taxpayers with a $14 trillion debt. Right?

Next time, we'll look at some of the more-persistent 'facts' of most 9/11 Conspiracy Theories, and how what some say is Bible Truth is nothing of the sort.

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Why 9/11 Wasn't a Government Conspiracy, Part I.

Two weeks ago, my good friend Mr. Chap presented on these pages his belief that the September 11th attacks were the result of some great, government-inspired conspiracy. For the purposes of this discussion, the question of why the government should conspire to murder 3,000 of its own citizens and cause such devastating damage is irrelevant; I'm not interested in what has become a mostly political discussion in the War between Right and Left, or the nexus between Big Government and Big Business, or even why one political system should be more amenable to conflict and dishonesty than any other.

Mostly because this is because I have learned that, in many instances, people will tend to believe that which they want to believe and no exposition of truth will shift those cherished beliefs. I also don't pretend to have all the answers to all of the nagging questions of 9/11, and to say otherwise would be arrogant and dishonest.

I don't think any less of Chap for holding these beliefs, or for giving them a good, public airing. It's simply one of those areas where we will have to agree to disagree. I can't, and won't, answer many of the questions his posts have raised, if only because we don't have forever to argue over this or that obscure point. My intention here is to state some opinions and maybe dispel a few myths from the standpoint of an actual eyewitness to the tragedy that was 9//11, and to maybe to give some reasons as to why many commonly-held beliefs just might be wrong.

The best way to begin this process is probably with an examination of just what a Conspiracy Theory is, why they exist, how they evolve, and then finally become part of the National Folklore and historical record. Let's face it: a decade after the events, we still haven't, physically and psychically healed after 9/11 and probably will not for the foreseeable future. This discussion will continue for a very long time to come and we're compelled to continue having it. Personally, I would have gotten to this sooner, only it appears that my own wounds are still, ten years on, extremely raw. Much to my surprise.

What is a Conspiracy Theory?

Strictly speaking, a Conspiracy Theory is just what it says it is; a theory, and one often postulated for the purposes of providing some alternate point of view, usually with just a hint of malice, intrigue, menace, or libel added to spice it all up. Typically, the theory begins as a means of explanation for some great occurrence that does not, at first blush, appear to have a discernible motivation or cause. Human beings, for all of our other failings, are still insanely logical creatures; we need information, we like to have the surety of knowledge, but events sometimes unfold in such a way as to leave us bereft of facts and logic. We simply cannot abide a convention wherein a provable, linear progression from Premise A to Conclusion B, a straight line from This Fact to That Fact, simply doesn't exist.

In the absence of concrete proof, of ready explanations, and in the presence of a vacuum in knowledge, it is rather common for people to speculate as a means of filling in the gaps in our database. This is not always a bad thing; speculation is the bastard child of truth, after all, and if it weren't for the process of speculation and experimentation we'd probably still be living in trees, eating low-hanging fruit, and dodging sabre-toothed cats. Speculation and experimentation are the nursemaids of facts and ideas.

In the case of great events the actions and activities we witness often leave the mind reeling, and never moreso then when they are connected to tragedy and disaster. Some of the more enduring myths of American History often rotate about an axis of tragedy, disaster, mass killing or military defeat and national embarrassment. September 11th contains all of these elements -- in spades.

Throughout history we have seen people view great, cataclysmic events through the lens of conspiracy. The true reasons behind tragedy and defeat cannot always be recognized in some cold, clinical light, or chalked up to simple human error and stupidity, mainly because the enormity of those events and the real explanations of what caused them are simply too difficult or painful to fully comprehend. In some cases, the constructed alternate explanation becomes a substitute for unattractive truth about the Nature of Man and his limitations and failings. An external force must be responsible, one that is always invisible and beyond the ability of John Sixpack to see, understand, or defend against.

Whatever the proximate cause of the theory, the event itself is typically such as to leave us extremely puzzled, saddened, disappointed, disillusioned, and angry. Someone...anyone...must be blamed and held responsible immediately, regardless of actual guilt. It is human nature to demand a head in the direct aftermath of a great disaster, to identify the person or forces at work even before we get to the business of figuring out just what has transpired and how it happened. The first question people usually ask is "Who?", and often this is not immediately apparent. To assuage that anger, to apply guilt and responsibility to someone, it is not unusual for people to concoct a theory that is, on the whole, pure speculation, with a dash of recrimination, a pinch of excuses, and a spoonful of ulterior motive. We construct something which protects us, psychologically, from the unpleasant realization that we're not perfect and that we may not be in complete control of our own destinies.

September 11th lends itself quite readily to this process. Within minutes, millions were experiencing a thing, either as eyewitness, victim or distant bystander, to something so enormous, so mind-numbingly impossible, that it literally defies belief. And they were all experiencing it simultaneously through being there or vicariously through the media as wasn't possible with many events previously. 9/11 had it's own play-by-play commentary and analysis, as the thing was happening, as if it were some deadly and disgusting sporting event. Few events in history can boast of the media coverage, the real-time pictures, the small armies of correspondents and experts scraped up with great haste and broadcast all over the world to an information-hungry public riveted to their TV screens, radios, and web pages.

Answering even fundamental questions, especially as the events attendant to them are still unfolding, is difficult, to say the least, perhaps impossible if the goal is to simply report everything as quickly as possible. It is in this initial confusion, with contradictory 'facts' and unconfirmed reports and 'enlightened' speculation flying furiously, that the seeds of conspiracy theory may be planted. Our need for facts outweighs our ability to sift them properly. Reports that later turn out to be false or misleading stick in the brain. I'll give you an actual example from 9/11 itself:

I was there when the first plane hit 1 WTC. In fact, I was directly under that aircraft, and I'm only alive today -- and emerged unscathed -- because of pure, dumb luck. I had not seen or heard the 757 that hit 1 WTC coming, I only noticed the passing shadow a split second before the scream of the engines at full power could be heard. I heard and felt the crash rather than saw it, but there was no mistaking this fact; an airliner had just rammed the North Tower, and the streets below were immediately showered in twisted metal, broken glass, and flaming debris falling from some 90 stories.

After about 30 seconds of extreme shock, I ran the four blocks to my office on Greenwich Street, and upon arrival, heard one of my coworkers telling everyone who would listen that a small plane had just hit the World Trade Center. "They" said so on television. When I told him that it wasn't a Cessna, but a great, big, bloody Boeing Widebody, and that I was actually there and saw and was almost killed by it, he didn't believe me.

Within 5 minutes of the event a local television station was reporting that a small plane had hit the North Tower, and it had become accepted truth, unshakable even in the face of eyewitness testimony. Within 5 minutes the legend that a small aircraft hit 1 WTC before the arrival of the first airliner, was already being believed by thousands, perhaps tens of thousands -- or at least One Guy -- and some of them, even ten years later, will tell you this is Bible Truth whether they witnessed it or not. Mostly because it was on television, and they figure no one would have bothered to report that if it wasn't true.

In the rush of adrenaline, in the fog of confusion and shock, objective truth is usually the first casualty; unconfirmed information is taken as Gospel, rumor substitutes for fact, and although the unconfirmed report may later be corrected, or the rumor later dispelled, they remain in the minds of the people who initially believed them and become part of their official history of the event, often without our realizing it.

All the other events of that day are for another post. Suffice to say that after my brush with instant, crushing, flaming death that morning I then had myself a ringside seat to everything else that unfolded, including being covered in that thick, grey, gritty, greasy dust that was a mixture of pulverized concrete, atomized glass, toxic residues and the ash of everything your worst nightmares might imagine. I was there when both towers collapsed; I saw it happen. I bore the evidence of it all the way home and spent hours scrubbing it off my body, and then spent more hours repeating the process every day for a year afterwards. That dust never went away, and somehow always found it's way inside your clothing and into the folds of your skin beneath.

That, too, is for another post. We must return to our original topic of why 9/11 probably wasn't a government conspiracy. But, the preceding passage was an illustration of just how it is that a conspiracy theory can be formed so quickly and persist for so long.

Primarily, the conspiracy theory, then, can be said to be born of a lack of information. Many other theories, like the Cessna crashing first theory, were probably already germinating in the fear and horror of the first few hours and minutes of 9/11 because of the lack of solid information and confusion. In some deep, psychological sense that I'm not qualified to explain, this is probably unavoidable. Our initial views, formed in such a crucible, are likely to be skewed, disjointed by shock, ignorance and consternation.

By itself this is the perfect soil for the planting of conspiracy theory seeds. What followed is mostly the fertilizer, if you will, that enabled some of those seeds to grow so rapidly into hardy specimens. The official investigation into the events of 9/11,too, leaves much to be desired, primarily because some of the people involved leave much to be desired, and have had ulterior motives of their own ascribed to them, fairly or not. I won't trouble you with a roll call of the rouges gallery that begins with Jamie Gorelick and Sandy Berger and their supposed responsibility or (alleged) criminal activity with regards to the proximate causes of 9/11. Suffice to say that their involvement in the post-disaster examination struck some as leaving the foxes to guard the hen house, and much has been made of their supposed motives and ability to skew the official report. Those accusations, true or not, have also been fodder for conspiracy theorists, and we'll not cover them here.

But if you begin to think about some of the things which the 9/11 Commission uncovered, you begin to see just why it is that some conspiracy theories about government involvement are so damned persistent. We found out that Mohammed Atta (the alleged ringleader of the attack) was sent a letter by the Immigration and Naturalization Service stating that his request for an entry visa had been declined -- because he was on a Terrorist Watch List! -- six weeks after his kamikaze death on 9/11. It would later turn out that CIA, FBI and a host of other alphabet-soup agencies had reams of material on Al Qaeda, Usama Bin Laden, Atta and his confederates, flight schools, Zacharias Moussaoui, and potential plots, but had no effective way to make use of this information, or were prevented by acting by policy, judges, or the inactions of bureaucrats.

Much of the information that did reach the 9/11 Commission was in redacted form, a process in which information is deliberately blacked-out, cut out, or omitted so as to protect secrets, means, or individual witnesses and informants. That this data was presented in this form at a time when an angry public was demanding information and heads is also problematic, and lends itself to conspiracy theory intimating that 'someone' doesn't want us to know 'something', a convention which fairly screams 'Conspiracy!'.

Think about it: a confused accounting of events and causes, contradictory eyewitness testimony, high emotions, political axes to grind, an impatient public thirsty for information which is doled out in heavily-redacted thimbles, a government commission full of the very people who may have been directly responsible charged with exposing their own errors and incompetence, great gaps deliberately torn in the historical record, records lost, stolen or destroyed, and above it all, the retroactive defense of individuals and institutions. The wonder of 9/11 Conspiracy Theory isn't that there's a theory at all, it's that so few theories seem to have been spawned!

It has been said that Conspiracy Theory is simply history for stupid people. Technically, this is not strictly true; while some conspiracy theorists may not be after absolute truth, more concerned with assigning blame, approbation, or devious motives to an opponent, it doesn't necessarily follow that they're all stupid, nor does it follow that they all have sinister motivations. In some cases, it can be said that Conspiracy Theory does serve some useful purpose. Even Jesus had his Doubting Thomas, after all.

The problems arise, however, when the (unproven) Theory evolves into a matter of unquestioned Faith, despite the verdicts of Reason, and becomes a wedge with which to separate people or prevent honest debate. It may indeed turn out one day to be true that 9/11 was a conspiracy of the American government for any reason we like to attach to it, but for the time being, we can only say with some certainty that it was, at least, an Al Qaeda conspiracy, perhaps aided and abetted unintentionally by government ineptitude. In any case, to believe the U.S. government perpetrated the murder of it's own citizens and destruction of billions of dollars in property is to believe that the government which pays $400 for a hammer, $16 for a corn muffin and can't find illegal aliens when they show up for work or attend public schools, is to believe it suddenly capable of performing amazing feats of cloak-and-dagger without anyone spilling the beans, fucking up by the numbers, or taking credit. This is a stretch of the imagination that one can probably only make under the influence of some strong narcotics.

It's the same government whose own Immigration and Postal services knew where to find Mohammed Atta, but whose law enforcement and intelligence services didn't, presumably for lack of an address. When someone needs to be blamed or identified as the Mastermind, and individuals are not available for this duty, we naturally assume that it simply 'must' be the work of some evil cabal, hiding in the shadows of public life, operating above the law and beyond the standards of decent behavior. The same has been said of the Knights Templar, the Illuminati, Freemasons, Opus Dei, and who knows how many other organizations. In the absence of a guilty individual, it must be the fault of the secret collective.

The truth, that your government is run and operated by complete retards,most of whom only have a job because they could pass a multiple choice examination designed for 3rd grade reading level, and that those people make mistakes, is too terrible to contemplate. The truth that there are forces in this world who have dedicated themselves to causes which require the deaths of others on a massive scale is somehow also beyond comprehension. Hovering above it all, the Conspiracy Theory, something often woven out of whole cloth, or from incomplete facts, preserved by it's abilities to resist truth, often hiding behind the ridiculous belief that because this or that point cannot be proven or disproved, that this inability constitutes proof positive that the conspiracy exists! The Conspiracy Exists because it cannot be identified or explained; the Conspiracy is always wrapped in yet another Conspiracy.

I do not say that all Conspiracy Theory is bunk, and I do concede that some Conspiracy Theory does, indeed, serve a useful purpose in at the very least providing an alternate or temporary explanation that serves to continually breathe life into questions that remain unanswered, and may, with the passage of time, possibly never be asked or answered again. There may be many more secrets to 9/11 that will not be exposed to the light of day for some years to come, if ever, but it is still important that someone continue asking the questions and that someone continually re-examine the record if only because authority needs to be audited and held accountable if it isn't to grow into tyranny.

Next time, we'll look at some specific reasons why the 9/11 Conspiracy might not have been one formulated and perpetrated by the U.S. Government against it's own citizens.

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