pancaking theory and emotional weakness

by **darkbeforedawn** » Sun Aug 20, 2006 1:51 pm

What we know and don't know about 9/11 "Holding the Bush regime accountable for its obvious & documented lies" by Paul Craig Roberts August 18, 2006 Information Clearing House - 2006-08-16 I received a number of intelligent responses from readers of my August 14 column, "Gullible Americans," The letters deserve a reply. Moreover, some contain important points that should be shared with a wider audience. Pundits such as myself are not the only people who have interesting things to say. Considering the number of letters and the time it would require to respond individually, I am replying instead in this column. Most readers from whom I heard understand the difference between loyalty to country and loyalty to a government. They understand that to support a political party or a government that is destroying the US Constitution and America's reputation in the world is, in fact, an act of treason. Therefore, I did not have to read the usual drivel about how doubting "our government" is un-American. Among the issues raised are: How could the complicity of the US government, or some part of it, in the events of 9/11 be kept a secret? For the most part, this question comes from Americans who believe the government must have been, to some extent, complicit in the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. How can we differentiate between the real facts, the 9/11 Commission's reporting of the facts, and "conspiracy theories"? What about the role of suicide flyers led by M. Atta? What about the Popular Mechanics article and the TV documentary that debunk the skeptics and support the official explanation of 9/11? What about the role of the US media in propagandizing Americans with the official explanation instead of examining the explanation, especially with regard to such truncated hatchet-job interviews with 9/11 skeptics such as the hatchet jobs presided over by Donny Deutsch on CNBC and by neocon Tucker Carlson on MSNBC? Why are so many Americans hostile to holding the Bush regime accountable for its obvious and documented lies, lies that have misled America to war and gratuitously slaughtered and maimed tens of thousands of people, including our own troops? I will begin by stating what we know to be a solid incontrovertible scientific fact. We know that it is strictly impossible for any building, much less steel columned buildings, to "pancake" at free fall speed. Therefore, it is a non-controversial fact that the official explanation of the collapse of the WTC buildings is false. We also know for a fact that the Air Force somehow inexplicably failed to intercept the alleged hijacked airliners despite the fact that the Air Force can launch jet fighters to 29,000 feet in 2.5 minutes. We also know that the two co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission have just written a book that reveals that the US military lied to the Commission about its failure to intercept the hijacked airliners. There are various explanations for this second fact. The military could have lied to cover up complicity or to cover-up its incompetence. However, no investigation has been made to ascertain the true explanation for the failure. This leaves us with the incontrovertible fact that buildings cannot "pancake" at free fall speeds. The only explanation known to science for the free fall collapse of a building, especially into its own footprint, is engineered demolition, which removes the supports for each floor of the building at split second intervals so that the debris from above meets no resistance on its fall. To call this explanation a "conspiracy theory" is to display the utmost total ignorance. Any physicist or engineer who maintains that buildings can "pancake" at free fall speed has obviously been bought and paid for or is a total incompetent fool. The WTC buildings are known to have collapsed at free fall speed into their own footprints. This fact does not tell us who is responsible or what purpose was served. Since the damning incontrovertible fact has not been investigated, speculation and "conspiracy theories" have filled the void. Some of the speculation is based on circumstantial evidence and is plausible. Other of the speculation is untenable, and it is used to protect the official explanation by branding all skeptics "conspiracy theorists." I would not be surprised if some of the most far-out "conspiracy theories" consist, in fact, of disinformation put out by elements in the government to discredit all skeptics. But I do not know this to be the case. How could government complicity be kept a secret? It can be kept a secret, because so many Americans are scientifically ignorant and emotionally weak. They are incapable of realizing the contradiction in the government's claim that the WTC buildings "pancaked" at free fall speed, and they are emotionally incapable of confronting the evil of the Bush regime. Many Christians think that Bush is "a man of God" who is protecting American morality from homosexuals and abortionists. Others who wear their patriotism on their sleeves think Bush is standing up for America and innocent Israel, and that they must not let anti-American anti-war protesters cause America to lose another war and repeat the Vietnam experience. Americans are both ignorant and full of resentments against the left. This makes them easily manipulated by the neoconservatives who dominate the Bush regime and the media. Also, many anti-war and anti-Bush online sites are scared of being called "crazy conspiracy kooks." They protect their sites by staying away from the 9/11 issue, just as so many Americans are scared to death of being called "anti-semitic" and thereby do not dare criticize Israel no matter the heinous war crimes that state routinely commits. Of all the online subscribers to my column, only vdare.com and NewsMax had the courage to post my column. Realizing that even antiwar sites would serve as de facto gatekeepers for the neocons, I offered the column to ICH, whose editor cannot be intimidated. The Popular Mechanics article and the TV documentary are obviously false since they both endorse the official explanation that the WTC buildings "pancaked" at free fall speed, an obvious scientific impossibility. Whether the false reporting by Popular Mechanics and television are due to incompetence or to complicity in a government cover-up, I do not know. We know nothing about alleged suicide flyers led by M. Atta except what the government has told us, a government that has lied to us about everything else, such as Iraq's alleged WMD and alleged links to Osama bin Laden, and Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program, a program for which the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors cannot find evidence. According to reports, the BBC has found 6 of the alleged suicide hijackers alive and well in their home countries. I do not know if the report is true, but I do know that the report has been ignored and there has been no investigation. Both the US government and the US media have turned a blind eye. We have no way of knowing if Atta and his named accomplices hijacked the planes, or, if they did, whether they were dupes of intelligent services that pretended to be a terrorist cell and organized the cover for the engineered demolition. The fact that we do not know any of these things, and the fact that the 9/11 Commission co-chairmen now tell us that their report is flawed, are good indications that we have no documented information of who was behind the plot, why it occurred, or how it operated. With regard to the role of the US media, if it is indeed a media rather than a propaganda ministry, one reader cited remarks by the distinguished investigative reporter, John Pilger, made in an address at Columbia University on 14 April 2006: "During the Cold War, a group of Russian journalists toured the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by their hosts for their impressions. 'I have to tell you,' said their spokesman, 'that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV, that all the opinions on all the vital issues were by and large, the same. To get that result in our country, we imprison people, we tear out their fingernails. Here, you don't have that. What's the secret? How do you do it?'" This quote is probably apocryphal, but it is well used to make a valid point. The answer to the Russian's question is that during the cold war the American public viewed the Soviet Union as a dangerous adversary and were amenable to reports to that effect. The fact that the Soviets were a potentially dangerous adversary made Americans blind to the roles of the US military-industrial complex, which benefited financially from cultivating the adversary relationship, and the US government, which benefited politically from cultivating the adversary relationship, in keeping the adversarial relationship alive. The uniformity of the US media has become much more complete since the days of the cold war. During the 1990s, the US government permitted an unconscionable concentration of print and broadcast media that terminated the independence of the media. Today the US media is owned by 5 giant companies in which pro-Zionist Jews have disproportionate influence. More importantly, the values of the conglomerates reside in the broadcast licenses, which are granted by the government, and the corporations are run by corporate executives--not by journalists--whose eyes are on advertising revenues and the avoidance of controversy that might produce boycotts or upset advertisers and subscribers. Americans who rely on the totally corrupt corporate media have no idea what is happening anywhere on earth, much less at home. Despite the dark days in which we live, some readers find optimism in recent polls that show more than one-third of the US public now disbelieve the official account of 9/11 despite the Bush regime's propaganda faithfully trumpeted by the US media. Bush's own rock-bottom polls show that Americans, like the Russians of the Soviet era, can read between the lines of the propagandistic US media. Many Americans can still spot a liar and a cheat when they see one. Key Ronald Reagan advisor Hon. Paul Craig Roberts: "Gullible Americans have been duped by the 9/11 Hoax... Wise up -- the World is laughing at you." Gullible Americans By Paul Craig Roberts Information Clearing House 08/14/06 I was in China when a July Harris Poll reported that 50 percent of Americans still believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when Bush invaded that country, and that 64 percent of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein had strong links with Al Qaeda. The Chinese leaders and intellectuals with whom I was meeting were incredulous. How could a majority of the population in an allegedly free country with an allegedly free press be so totally misinformed? The only answer I could give the Chinese is that Americans would have been the perfect population for Mao and the Gang of Four, because Americans believe anything their government tells them. Americans never check any facts. Who do you know, for example, who has even read the Report of the 9/11 Commission, much less checked the alleged facts reported in that document. I can answer for you. You don't know anyone who has read the report or checked the facts. The two co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission Report, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, have just released a new book, "Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission." Kean and Hamilton reveal that the commission suppressed the fact that Muslim ire toward the US is due to US support for Israel's persecution and dispossession of the Palestinians, not to our "freedom and democracy" as Bush propagandistically claims. Kean and Hamilton also reveal that the US military committed perjury and lied about its failure to intercept the hijacked airliners. The commission even debated referring the military's lies to the Justice Department for criminal investigation. Why should we assume that these admissions are the only coverups and lies in the 9/11 Commission Report? How do you know that 9/11 was a Muslim terrorist plot? How do you know that THREE World Trade Center buildings collapsed because TWO were hit by airliners? You only "know" because the government gave you the explanation of what you saw on TV. (Did you even know that three WTC buildings collapsed?) I still remember the enlightenment I experienced as a student in Russian Studies when I learned that the Czarist secret police would set off bombs and then blame those whom they wanted to arrest. When Hitler seized dictatorial power in 1933, he told the Germans that his new powers were made necessary by a communist terrorist attack on the Reichstag. When Hitler started World War II by invading Poland, he told the Germans that Poland had crossed the frontier and attacked Germany. Governments lie all the time--especially governments staffed by neoconservatives whose intellectual godfather, Leo Strauss, taught them that it is permissible to deceive the public in order to achieve their agenda. Some readers will write to me to say that they saw a TV documentary or read a magazine article verifying the government's explanation of 9/11. But, of course, these Americans did not check the facts either--and neither did the people who made the documentary and wrote the magazine article. Scientists and engineers, such as Clemson University Professor of Engineering Dr. Judy Woods and BYU Professor of Physics Dr. Steven Jones, have raised compelling questions about the official account of the collapse of the three WTC buildings. The basic problem for the government's account is that the buildings are known to have fallen at freefall speed, a fact that is inconsistent with the government's "pancaking" theory in which debris from above collapsed the floors below. If the buildings actually "pancaked," then each floor below would have offered resistance to the floors above, and the elapsed time would have been much longer. These experts have also calculated that the buildings did not have sufficient gravitational energy to accommodate the government's theory of the collapse. It is certainly a known and non-controversial fact among physicists and engineers that the only way buildings can collapse at freefall speed into their own footprints is by engineered demolition. Explosives are used to remove the support of floors below before the debris from above arrives. Otherwise, resistance is encountered and the time required for fall increases. Engineered demolition also explains the symmetrical collapse of the buildings into their own foot prints. As it is otherwise improbable for every point in floors below to weaken uniformly, "pancaking" would result in asymmetrical collapse as some elements of the floor would give sooner than others. Scientific evidence is a tough thing for the American public to handle, and the government knows it. The government can rely on people dismissing things that they cannot understand as "conspiracy theory." But if you are inclined to try to make up your own mind, you can find Dr. Jones' and Dr. Woods' papers, which have been formally presented to their peers at scientific meetings, on line at <a href="http://www.st911.org/">www.st911.org/</a> Experts have also pointed out that the buildings' massive steel skeletons comprised a massive heat sink that wicked away the heat from the limited, short-lived fires, thus preventing a heat buildup. Experts also point out that the short-lived, scattered, low-intensity fires could barely reach half the melting point of steel even if they burned all day instead of merely an hour. Don't ask me to tell you what happened on 9/11. All I know is that the official account of the buildings' collapse is improbable. Now we are being told another improbable tale. Muslim terrorists in London and Pakistan were caught plotting to commit mass murder by smuggling bottles of explosive liquids on board airliners in hand luggage. Baby formula, shampoo and water bottles allegedly contained the tools of suicide bombers. How do we know about this plot? Well, the police learned it from an "Islamic militant arrested near the Afghan-Pakistan border several weeks ago." And how did someone so far away know what British-born people in London were plotting? Do you really believe that Western and Israeli intelligence services, which were too incompetent to prevent the 9/11 attack, can uncover a London plot by capturing a person on the Afghan border in Pakistan? Why would "an Islamic militant" rat on such a plot even if he knew of it? More probable explanations of the "plot" are readily available. According to the August 11 Wayne Madsen Report, informed sources in the UK report that "the Tony Blair government, under siege by a Labor Party revolt, cleverly cooked up a new 'terror' scare to avert the public's eyes away from Blair's increasing political woes. British law enforcement, neocon and intelligence operatives in the US, Israel, and Britain, and Rupert Murdoch's global media empire cooked up the terrorist plot, liberally borrowing from the failed 1995 'Oplan Bjinka' plot by Pakistan- and Philippines-based terrorist Ramzi Ahmad Yousef to crash 11 trans-Pacific airliners bound from Asia to the US." There are other plausible explanations. For example, our puppet in Pakistan decided to arrest some people who were a threat to him. With Bush's commitment to "building democracy in the Middle East," our puppet can't arrest his political enemies without cause, so he lays the blame on a plot. Any testimony against Muslim plotters by "an Islamic militant" is certain to have been bought and paid for. Or consider this explanation. Under the Nuremberg standard, Bush and Blair are war criminals. Bush is so worried that he will be held accountable that he has sent his attorney general to consult with the Republican Congress to work out legislation to protect Bush retroactively from his violations of the Geneva Conventions. Tony Blair is in more danger of finding himself in the dock. Britain is signatory to a treaty that, if justice is done, will place Blair before the International Criminal Court in the Hague. What better justification for the two war criminals' illegal actions than the need to foil dastardly plots by Muslims recruited in sting operations by Western intelligence services? The more Bush and Blair can convince their publics that terrorist danger abounds, the less likely Bush and Blair are ever to be held accountable for their crimes. But surely, some readers might object, our great moral leaders wouldn't do something political like that! They most certainly would. As Joshua Micah Marshall wrote in the July 7 issue of Time magazine, the suspicion is "quite reasonable" that "the Bush Administration orchestrates its terror alerts and arrests to goose the GOP's poll numbers." Joshua Micah Marshall proves his conclusion by examining the barrage of color-coded terror alerts, none of which were real, and, yes, it all fits with political needs. And don't forget the plot unearthed in Miami to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago. Described by Vice President Cheney as a "very real threat," the plot turned out to be nothing more than a few harmless whackos recruited by an FBI agent sent out to organize a sting. There was also the "foiled plot" to blow up the Holland Tunnel and flood downtown New York City with sea water. Thinking New Orleans, the FBI invented this plot without realizing that New York City is above sea level. Of course, most Americans didn't realize it either. For six years the Bush regime has been able to count on the ignorant and naive American public to believe whatever tale that is told them. American gullibility has yet to fail the Bush regime. The government has an endless number of conspiracy theories, but only people who question the government's conspiracies are derided for "having a conspiracy theory." The implication is even worse if we assume that the explosive bottle plot is genuine. It means that America and Britain by their own aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, and by enabling Israel's war crimes in Palestine and Lebanon, have created such hatred that Muslims, who identify with Bush's, Blair's, and Israel's victims, are plotting retaliation. But Bush is prepared. He has taught his untutored public that "they hate us for our freedom and democracy." Gentle reader, wise up. The entire world is laughing at you. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

by **bvonahsen** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 2:10 am

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>This leaves us with the incontrovertible fact that buildings cannot "pancake" at free fall speeds.<hr></blockquote> This was what it has taken about five years for people to really see. The rest of the time people have been focused on the pentagon. The five frames from a crappy camera that the 9-11 movement poured over was classic sleight of hand. "Look over here! See this? We even refused to release the video from all the other cameras that would prove once and for all our position about what happened. But we didn't. We wanted your eyes here, not there. Because it was so obvious what our other hand was doing over there."

by **wintler** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 8:50 am

Good point, bvonahsen, the sheer impossibility of freefall collapse now seems self evident as the biggest jawbone in the pile. I like it (and Roberts approach above) because it can be posed as questions rather than 'x did y'.

by **bvonahsen** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 1:12 pm

When I was younger I would watch a magician or sleight of hand artist's other hand. The one that went to his pocket or sleeve. For the good ones you never saw what that hand picked up but you saw it go to his pocket and then briefly to his other hand. So you coupld piece together an explaination for the trick. Which on the surface seemed to defy rational explaination. This related to how things are presented to us from political magicians and how they say: "You can't prove that my right hand got a card from my pocket and then passed it on unseen to my right. You can't prove that in a court of law and therefore you must be crazy." But that is a lie. The "truth" is not subject the courts. Besides, it really is a perfectly valid rational argument that: "His left hand got something from his pocket and passed it on to his right. It's the only explaination that accounts for all the facts." That is a valid form of reasoning that scientists use everyday. For instance, we know for a fact what goes on in the interior of the sun, we know what has gone on in the past through the fossil record, even though we cannot directly observe either. To claim that we cannot know a fact that we have not first seen with our own eyes is a fallacy. Kant tried to make this argument and I think the phrase "rose colored glasses" come from him. He argued that if our eyes subtly colored everything we sqw we could not prove it one way or another. He was wrong and was basically trying to defend certain parts of his philosophy.

by **darkbeforedawn** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 2:13 pm

I have to admit that I think a lot less of human nature now than I did before 9-11. This one fact--that "pancaking" could not have occured is enough to alert the entire population of government complicity--yet even at this late date too few have picked up and run with this ball. I now am forced to adopt the much more damning conclusion of American complicity. We know darn well our government commited this crime and killed thousands of our compatriots for profit and in order to foment war and we really could care less....other much more important stuff to attend to like football games and reality shows. Where does that leave the rest of us few who actually cared?

by **havanagilla** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 3:06 pm

dbd, perhaps it is too scary for people to really know what they only speculate as being the truth and even more scary to fight it. and yes, from outside the US, is looks as if people know and agree, basically. how can one account for the differences in national responses to atrocities/scams of this sort ? the german agreed, and the danish people stood up to the nazis, with less force. its a context-historical situation, and also structure of society.

by **bvonahsen** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 7:07 pm

I am a little unsure now that I read the "WTC COLLAPSE STUDY BBlanchard 8-8-06" PDF from the other thread. They seem to have some good arguments. Crap I don't know.... we'll never know. -- Turn it around, consider the Reichstag fire. Could we prove the Nazi's did it? Yet it is accepted by everyone that they did. Is it merely an article of faith or is there real substance to the accusation? What about pre-nuremberg? Could a Reichstag truth commission have brought sufficent evidence to take their claims of government involvement before a court in Germany? Or is our knowledge of the facts around it dependant on the nuremberg trials? Frankly, I dont know much about that issue and will probably read up on it now but for the moment it seems to be debatable...... were the Nazi's really to blame for the Reichstag fire and could one prove that today or with the information available at the time? Would looking at the issue this way shed any light on the 9-11 question. I'm not try to be a revisionist here, good God don't think that, just questioning conventional wisdom. I like taking ideas and flipping them around to what what's on the other side.

by **darkbeforedawn** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 7:23 pm

Simple Math demonstrate that the Official 9/11 Account is a Fabrication by Elias Davidsson www.globalresearch.ca 29 April 2005 The URL of this article is: <a href="http://globalresearch.ca/articles/DAV504A.html">globalresearch.ca/articles/DAV504A.html</a> The term “official 9/11 account” refers to the account of the events of Sept. 11, 2001, as presented in June 2004 by the Commission of Inquiry appointed by President George W. Bush, and complemented by other official documents issued by US government agencies. This account includes various details, such as identities of the alleged hijackers, identities of aircraft, timelines and other data used to prove that the crime of 9/11 was perpetrated by the named individuals under the orders or the inspiration of Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders. It can be demonstrated by two straightforward mathematical techniques that the official acccount on 9/11 is simply not true. The first method uses boolean algebra. The other method is based on probability theory. Boolean algebra used to invalidate the official 9/11 account Boolean algebra deals not with numbers but with truth values. In Boolean mathematics we have only two values: True and false. One of the primary operations in boolean algebra is the operator AND. In the equation A AND B we have: Given A = true and B = true, then A AND B = true Given A = true and B = false, then A AND B = false Given A = false and B = true, then A AND B = false Given A = false and B = false, then A AND B = false The AND relationship can be illustrated by three bulbs connected in series. The truth value for each bulb is ON or OFF. In order for bulb C to be ON, both A and B must be ON. If either A or B or both are OFF, C will not obtain electrical current and be OFF. The same would apply to a longer series of bulbs connected in series. Applying the AND relationship to the official 9/11 account, we posit that in order for the official account to be true, a number N of fundamental allegations must be proved as true. If any one of these fundamental allegations are false, the entire official account is false. Thus, it is only necessary to demonstrate that a single fundamental allegation in the official account is false for the entire account to be deemed false. Fundamental allegations include the following (a non-exhaustive list), all of which are part of the official version on 9/11: 1. No plans existed prior to 9/11 to protect the Pentagon and the White House against approaching aircraft (if such plans actually existed, questions would arise why they were not implemented and who prevented their implementation). 2. The idea that the World Trade Center could be attacked from air, did not occur to any US government agency before 9/11 (if it is shown that the idea actually was discussed by US military agencies, the question would arise why it was not taken into consideration to protect these assets). 3. All persons named by the FBI as hijackers actually boarded the four aircraft which crashed on 11 Sep. 2001 (if they did not board the aircraft, the hijackings could not have taken place). 4. The planes which crashed on 11 Sep. 2001 were flight number AA11 (tail number N334AA), flight number AA77 (tail number N644AA), flight number UA93 (tail number N591UA) and flight number UA175 (tail number N612UA) (if the flight and tail number are not those listed here, the question arises whether the planes that allegedly crashed at the known locations were the same ones which departed from the listed airports). 5. Flight AA11, a Boeing 767, left from Logan Airport, Boston, and crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York (some critical assumptions made in the official story rely on the identity of this flight number, the airport of departure and on the type of aircraft). 6. Flight AA77, a Boeing 757, left from Dulles Airport, Washington, D.C., and crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. (some critical assumptions made in the official story rely on the identity of this flight number, the airport of departure, the type of aircraft and the claim that this aircraft crashed on the Pengaton). 7. Flight UA175, a Boeing 767, left from Logan Airport, Boston, and crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York (some critical assumptions made in the official story rely on the identity of this flight number, the airport of departure and on the type of aircraft. 8. Flight UA93, a Boeing 757, left from Newark Airport and crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania (some critical assumptions made in the official story rely on the identity of this flight number, the airport of departure and on the type of aircraft). 9. The US military were not notified in time to scramble military jets and prevent the crashes of the hijacked aircraft (had they been notified in time, questions would arise why they did not scramble military jets in time and who was negligent). 10. President George W. Bush did not know that “America was under attack” before entering the primary school in Florida on the morning of 9/11 (should it transpire that President Bush actually knew what was going on in New York as he entered the school, questions would arise as to his foreknowledge of the crime). 11. The South and North towers of the World Trade Center as well as WTC no. 7 collapsed due to fire (if evidence can be produced that steel buildings cannot be made to collapse by fire, it would suggest that they were made to collapse by explosives, as actually suggested by a number of witnesses). 12. Numerous calls from hijacked passengers were made to family members and airline personnel with cell phones (if it can be shown that at the particular moment of the phone calls the planes were flying above 8,000 feet and/or at the speed of 500 miles per hour or more, it would suggest that the cellphone stories are a fabrication, because of the technical high improbability of succeeding such calls from high altitude and/or high speed). If any one of the above allegations is found to be false, the official account must be put in doubt or rejected and the suggestion of official deception or criminal complicity must be considered as justified. Probability theory used to invalidate the official 9/11 account It is also possible to “disprove” the official 9/11 account by using probability theory. If it is shown that the probability of the official account is so low as to approach zero, it can be safely maintained that the official account is untrue. The probability of a compound event to have occurred is the product of all sub-events necessary to accomplish the compound event. The underlying assumption is that the probability of each sub-event is independent of the probability of another sub-event. The following sub-events appear independent of each other. All of them have a low to extremly low probability. In order to simplify the demonstration, we arbitrarily assigned a probability of 0.1 (or 10 percent) to each of the following selected propositions which underpin the official account. Skeptics may try other combinations of probabilities, higher or lower, in order to test the methodology. 1. Four young, healthy and educated Muslims who possess large chunks of cash and like to party, can be expected to prepare for many months to sacrifice their lives in a murderous hijacking operation. 2. Four groups of Muslims can be expected to board four different aircraft in the United States on the same day without raising suspicion. 3. Young muslim men, known to have been in Afghanistan, would be expected to receive a visa to the United States in order to learn to fly. 4. Foreign Muslims who plan to hijack planes in the United States, can be expected to choose to train in US, rather than Arab, flight schools in order to prepare their hijackings. 5. A person planning a hijack operation in the US could be expected to tell an official US employee about his criminal motives, as Mohamed Atta had reportedly done in his encounter with Johnelle Bryant of the Agricultural Department in Florida. 6. Muslims who meticulously plan a hijacking operation in the United States, could be expected to "forget" a Kor’an on a bar stool on the eve of their operation and a flight manual in Arabic on the morning of their operation, in a rented car left near the airport from which they intended to hijack a plane. 7. Hijackers can be expected to fly from another town to the airport from which they intend to commit the hijacking operation merely two hours before their intended hijacking should start. 8. US military authorities can be expected to schedule, for exactly the date of the murderous events, war games and exercises including simulated plane hijackings and planes crashing on government buildings. 9. Conversations from cell phones made from passenger aircraft can be expected to function at any altitude and speed. 10. Passports of hijackers could be expected to be found on the crash sites, regardless of the lack of bodies and wreckage. 11. The US air force could be expected to bungle its attempts to intercept the hijacked planes. 12. No plans could have existed at the Pentagon to protect US government buildings against the risk of an accidental or malicious plane crash. 13. Neither the CIA nor the FBI could have any prior knowledge of the identities and whereabouts of the alleged hijackers before 9/11. 14. A law enforcement authority, such as the FBI, could be expected to show little interest in investigating mass murder. 15. A government would be expected to oppose an investigation of a terrorist attack against its own country. 16. Terrorists can be expected to commit mass murder without making any demands. 17. Five individuals with only packing knives can be expected to overwhelm fifty adults in a plane. 18. Hijackers in three different planes can be expected to successfully enter the pilot cabin without raising alarm. 19. A person who had never flown a Boeing passanger jet could be expected after a little simulator training to plunge the aircraft successfully between the first and second floor of the side of the Pentagon, even under conditions of extreme stress. 20. A crashed plane can be expected to leave any visible trace. 21. A high rise steel building can be expected to collapse on its own footprint after a raging fire. 22. Debris from a crashed plane can be expected to be found many miles from the crash site. The compound probability of the above events is the product of the individual probabilities or 0.1**22 (0.1 in the 22 exponential). The actual figure is so small that it practically nears zero. If one accepts the above propositions (even by increasing their probability of occurrence to 0,5), it follows that their compound probability is near zero. In fact, it suffices that a subset of the above propositions be shown to have a compound probability of near zero, to invalidate the official account on 9/11. While both methods demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that the U.S. authorities have fabricated the official account, the question arises why they have done so, what are they covering up, who perpetrated the mass murder of 9/11 and how was it accomplished. These questions are not pursued further here. As long as the above statements of fact are not fully investigated, the U.S. administration must be considered as covering up the crime and thus as the prime suspect in this crime against humanity. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Email this article to a friend To become a Member of Global Research The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at www.globalresearch.ca grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles in their entirety, or any portions thereof, on community internet sites, as long as the text & title are not modified. The source must be acknowledged and an active URL hyperlink address of the original CRG article must be indicated. The author's copyright note must be displayed. 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by **bvonahsen** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 8:48 pm

"Simple" math is never simple. It really hangs on what your assumptions are and those can be very hard to see if you don't want to see them. That is true for both sides. Whenever someone says something is "simple" I get suspicious, even if I'm the one saying it, especially if it's me.

by **darkbeforedawn** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 12:40 pm

You're right Bvon...maybe that example is not quite what I meant. It's not simple when we all have so many prejudices already in what we WANT to believe. I never wanted to believe that this was a false terror attack. But for me the evidence is simply overwhelming. Especially when you look at how the ptb continue to try to manipulate us using the fear and terror card. Now, even a simple election which doesn't go their way will bring on the "terrists". For them, Arabs using box cutters to bring down the WTC is just too good to be true. They have gained immeasurably in power AND money. Just look at the profits of EXXON and Haliburton. This alone along with their reluctance to fund an investigation into 9-11 is truly damning.

by **darkbeforedawn** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 6:00 pm

< Stop Belittling the Theories About September 11 by Bill Christison www.dissidentvoice.org August 14, 2006 However horrendous the crimes of two of the world’s great liars and terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon, it is imperative that we not let the deeds of Ehud Olmert and George W. Bush distract us from another recent event. The U.S. alliance with Israel and the power of the lobby that lets Israel so easily influence U.S. foreign policy have been major factors in allowing the monstrous slaughter of innocent civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. What is happening in these lands may also encourage Olmert and Bush to start new hostilities in Syria and heavy, possibly nuclear, bombings in Iran -- and this entire mess of neocon pottage may lead to a new World War and clashes of civilizations and religious fundamentalisms that these two wretched politicians seem quite literally to want to impose on the rest of us. It’s a tough case to make that anything else going on in the world -- anywhere -- could possibly be of equal importance. But on July 29 and 30, and then again on August 1, something else happened that increasing numbers of people believe is of equal importance. On these dates C-SPAN rebroadcast a panel discussion, held originally in late June, sponsored by an organization called the American Scholars’ Symposium to discuss what really happened on September 11, 2001. Held in Los Angeles, the meeting lasted two days, and the C-SPAN rebroadcast covered one almost two-hour wrap-up session. The meeting was attended by 1,200 people interested in hearing something other than the official story of 9/11. The TV audience was evidently large enough to spur C-SPAN to broadcast the panel discussion five separate times in four days. Even a month late, this is a lot of airtime for stories that many people call conspiracy theories -- and for which many others use nastier descriptions. It is possible that the head of C-SPAN, Brian Lamb, so strongly disbelieves the conspiracy theories that he felt giving them ample publicity would discredit them further. It is equally possible, however, that Lamb, who seems honestly to believe in presenting various sides of most issues as fairly as he can (although not always giving every side equal time), tried to do exactly that on the many legitimate questions raised about what actually happened on September 11. In any event, C-SPAN has made a major effort to bring information on the principal theories about 9/11 to the mainstream U.S. media. Lamb cannot be blamed for the coincidence that recent heavy military activity in Gaza and Lebanon is nearly drowning out his efforts. Let’s address the real issues here. Why is it important that we not let the so-called conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 be drowned out? After spending the better part of the last five years treating these theories with utmost skepticism, I have devoted serious time to actually studying them in recent months, and have also carefully watched several videos that are available on the subject. I have come to believe that significant parts of the 9/11 theories are true, and that therefore significant parts of the “official story” put out by the U.S. government and the 9/11 Commission are false. I now think there is persuasive evidence that the events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission would have us believe. The items below highlight the major questions surrounding 9/11 but do not constitute a detailed recounting of the evidence available. ONE: An airliner almost certainly did not hit The Pentagon. Hard physical evidence supports this conclusion; among other things, the hole in the Pentagon was considerably smaller than an airliner would create. The building was thus presumably hit by something smaller, possibly a missile, or a drone or, less possibly, a smaller manned aircraft. Absolutely no information is available on what happened to the original aircraft (American Airlines Flight 77), the crew, the “hijackers,” and the passengers. The “official story,” as it appeared in The 9/11 Commission Report simply says, “At 9:37:46, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, traveling at approximately 530 miles per hour. All on board, as well as many civilians and military personnel in the building, were killed.” This allows readers to assume that pieces of the aircraft and some bodies of passengers were found in the rubble of the crash, but information so far released by the government does not show that such evidence was in fact found. The story put out by the Pentagon is that the plane and its passengers were incinerated; yet video footage of offices in the Pentagon situated at the edge of the hole clearly shows office furniture undamaged. The size of the hole in the Pentagon wall still remains as valid evidence and so far seems irrefutable. TWO: The North and South Towers of the World Trade Center almost certainly did not collapse and fall to earth because hijacked aircraft hit them. A plane did not hit Building 7 of the Center, which also collapsed. All three were most probably destroyed by controlled demolition charges placed in the buildings before 9/11. A substantial volume of evidence shows that typical residues and byproducts from such demolition charges were present in the three buildings after they collapsed. The quality of the research done on this subject is quite impressive. If the judgments made on Points ONE and TWO above are correct, they raise many “Who done it” questions and strongly suggest that some unnamed persons or groups either inside or with ties to the government were actively creating a “Pearl Harbor” event, most likely to gain public support for the aggressive foreign policies that followed -- policies that would, first, “transform” the entire Middle East, and second, expand U.S. global domination. These first two points provide the strongest evidence available that the “official story” of 9/11 is not true. If the government could prove this evidence false, and its own story on these points correct, all the other data and speculation supporting the conspiracy theories would be undermined. It has provided no such proof and no answers to growing questions. Other, less important points supporting the theories include the following. THREE: For at least one hour and 45 minutes after the hijacking of the first aircraft was known, U.S. air defense authorities failed to take meaningful action. This strikes some “conspiracy theorists” as valid evidence that the U.S. Air Force was deliberately restrained from acting. Maybe so, but my own skepticism tells me that the inefficiency of U.S. defense forces is likely to be just as plausible an explanation. FOUR: Some of the theorists believe that the 19 named hijackers were not actually the hijackers. One claim is that the names of the hijackers were not on the manifests of any of the four aircraft. FIVE: None of the 19 hijackers’ bodies were ever autopsied (since they were allegedly totally destroyed in the crashes, including even the people in the Pennsylvania crash). SIX: At least five of the alleged hijackers (or persons with identical names) have since turned up alive in the Middle East. Nonetheless, the FBI has never bothered to re-investigate or revise the list of hijackers. Does this suggest that the FBI knows that no one in the administration is interested in reopening any further investigations? SEVEN: Numerous pilots have allegedly told the theorists that none of the 19 hijackers could have flown the airliners well enough to hit the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon with as much accuracy as was displayed. The debate on this issue simply raises more doubt about the government’s charge that the people it has named as hijackers are the real hijackers. EIGHT: No one, except possibly government investigators who are not talking, has seen the plane that went down in Pennsylvania. Some of the conspiracy theorists suggest that it was deliberately destroyed before it hit the ground; others suggest that the plane actually landed in Cleveland and that passengers then were whisked away to some unknown destination. What happened to them at that point is simply a large question mark that makes it more difficult to believe this particular scenario. NINE: Machinations in the U.S. stock market in the days before 9/11 suggest that some inside players in the market knew or suspected that United and American Airlines stock would soon drop. Two of the four of the aircraft involved in 9/11 were, or course, United planes and the other two were American Airlines planes. It should be reemphasized that these items do not make up a complete list of all the charges made by the theorists, but they are a good sample. Anyone interested in perhaps the best summary of these charges should watch the video “Loose Change.” To repeat, points ONE and TWO above are the most important. If something other than an airliner actually did hit the Pentagon on 9/11, and if the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center actually were dropped to the ground by controlled demolitions rather than by anything connected to the hijackings, the untrue stories peddled by The 9/11 Commission Report are clearly susceptible of being turned into major political issues. A Scripps Howard News Service/Ohio University poll taken from July 6 to 24, 2006 concluded that “more than a third [36 percent] of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them, so that the United States could go to war in the Middle East.” The poll also found that “16 percent of Americans speculate that secretly planted explosives, not burning passenger jets, were the real reason the massive twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed.” A poll done by the Zogby polling organization two months earlier, between May 12 and 16, 2006, and using questions worded somewhat differently, suggested even more strongly that the issue could become a “big one” if aggressively publicized. This poll concluded that 42 percent of Americans believed there had indeed been a cover-up of the true events of 9/11, and an additional 10 percent of Americans were “unsure.” The co-author of the poll, W. David Kubiak, stated that, “despite years of relentless media promotion, whitewash, and 9/11 Commission propaganda, the official 9/11 story still can’t even muster 50 percent popular support.” Whichever of these polls is closer to the truth, it would seem that there is considerable support for making a major political issue of the subject. This should be worked on at two different levels. At the first level, the objective should be long-term, centered on making a maximum effort to find out who the individuals and groups are that carried out the attacks in New York and Washington. Then, these people should be tried in an international court and, if possible, convicted and punished for causing so many deaths. Such a trial, accompanied by actual change in U.S. policies, would show that some people on this globe are at least trying to move closer to more just and decent behavior in human relationships around the world. At the second level, the short term, the task should be to immediately set to work as hard as is humanly possible to defeat in this year’s congressional election any candidate who refuses to support a no-holds-barred investigation of 9/11 by the Congress or a high-level international court. No more evidence than is now available is needed in order to begin this process. A manageable volume of carefully collected and analyzed evidence is already at hand on both items ONE and TWO above. Such evidence should be used right now to buttress charges that elements within the Bush administration, as well as possibly other groups foreign or domestic, were involved in a massive fraud against the American people, a fraud that has led to many thousands of deaths. This charge of fraud, if proven, involves a much greater crime against the American people and people of the world than any other charges of fraud connected to the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It is a charge that we should not sweep under the rug because what is happening in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Syria, and Iran seems more pressing and overwhelming. It is a charge that is more important because it is related to all of the areas just mentioned -- after all, the events of 9/11 have been used by the administration to justify every single aspect of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East since September 11. It is a charge that is more important also because it affects the very core of our entire political system. If proven, it is a conspiracy, so far successful, not only against the people of the United States, but against the entire world. Finally, it is a charge too important to ignore simply because the U.S. government refuses to discuss it. We must force the Bush administration to discuss it. Discussions aggressively pushed day after day about what really happened on 9/11 will be one of the most important tasks between now and early November. Such discussions can, one hopes, provide progressives with a way to jolt voters out of their apathy and inchoate willingness to support the status quo that they think gives them security -- and encourage more voters to stop supporting Bush, the Republicans, and the wobbly Democratic politicians who might as well be Republicans. A major issue like this, already supported by many voters, may prove particularly important in a congressional election year when new uncertainties in the Middle East, new possibilities of terrorism against the U.S. in retaliation for recent large-scale acts of Israeli/U.S. terrorism in Gaza and Lebanon, and the corrupt almost-single-party U.S. political system combine to make it more likely that supporters of Bush will retain their majority this November. In terms of electoral impact, it would not matter whether heavy publicity did in fact force the administration to accept a new high-level investigation of the 9/11 events. Initially, the principal goal would be to contribute heavily to the defeat of both Republicans and Democrats who refuse to support wholeheartedly a major new investigation by Congress or an international court. This might result in the defeat of more Republicans than Democrats in November, but ultimately the hoped-for goal should be the end of a system in which Democrats are barely different from Republicans, along with cutbacks in the political power of wealth and the foreign and domestic lobbies paid for by wealth. These are the dominant features of our system today that have practically eliminated meaningful democracy in the U.S. This failure of democracy has happened before in U.S. history, but this time it is likely to last longer -- at least until U.S. policies begin to pay as much attention to the needs of the world as they do to selfish or thoughtless needs of the U.S. and of its military-industrial complex. Attacks on the criminal events surrounding 9/11 might speed this process. Virtually no members of Congress, Democratic or Republican, will relish calling for a further investigation of 9/11. For right now, in addition to other motives, the issue should be used to go after those political prostitutes among elected office-holders who should also be defeated because they are so easily seduced by money and power to vote for immoral wars against weak enemies. At the Los Angeles meeting of the American Scholars’ Symposium, one of the main speakers, Webster Tarpley, summarized his own views on the events of 9/11. He emphasized that “neocon fascist madmen” had perpetrated the 9/11 “myth.” He went on to say, “The most important thing is that the 9/11 myth is the premise and the root of the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War and the coming attack on Iran. ... We must ... deprive [the myth’s perpetrators] of the ability to stampede and manipulate hundreds of millions of people [with their] ... cynically planned terrorist events.” Let’s give Webster Tarpley and other mistakenly labeled conspiracists who have labored in the wilderness for so long three cheers. Bill Christison is a former senior official of the CIA. He was a National Intelligence Officer and the Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis before his retirement in 1979. Since then he has written numerous articles on U.S. foreign policies. He can be reached at: kathy.bill@christison-santafe.com. HOME

by **trachys** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 2:30 pm

IF ONLY CounterPunch, which is usually happy to publish Richards' analyses of neocon antics, would publish a piece like this ... meh, just me yearning for more avenues to a critical mass, out loud. These avenues won't be found in classrooms: teachers are a cowed, cynical lot. And people no longer talk to strangers in public spaces. We must take aim at the gatekeepers on the left, even those who wear as many stars as Cockburn. meh, just me, preaching to the converted. but if you have a minute: counterpunch@counterpunch.org

by **darkbeforedawn** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 7:30 pm

They print most of Paul Craig Roberts stuff, but not this recent piece that was posted at Gobal Research. Shame that. Instead they did some gatekeeper jive (which I put on another thread) to back up the official 9-11 story by taking the fake tape of the "fatty Osama" confessing seriously. ARRRG. ONE glance at comparative photos and you can SEE it is NOT HIM! I wish someone who could post pictures would put those up.....(hint hint)

pancaking theory and emotional weakness

pancaking theory and emotional weakness

Re: pancaking theory and emotional weakness

Re: pancaking theory and emotional weakness

Re: pancaking theory and emotional weakness

human capacity for self delusion

Re: human capacity for self delusion

Re: human capacity for self delusion

perhaps this will help clear your mind?

Re: perhaps this will help clear your mind?

Re: perhaps this will help clear your mind?

Bill Christison thinks tide may be turning on 9-11 truth

on gatekeepers

sent 'em my two cents

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