New studies of media coverage of the attacks on the Twin Towers have raised serious questions about the integrity of television broadcasts over CNN, CBS and FOX NEWS, according to Scholars for 9/11 Truth, a non-partisan society of students, experts, and scholars. “I used to think that the very idea of faking ‘live’ broadcasts was at least faintly absurd,” observed James Fetzer, the society’s founder.
New proof has appeared in “September Clues,” a series of studies of these broadcasts. “These six studies, each of which is less than ten minutes in length, make it very difficult to deny that something was amuck on 9/11,” Fetzer added, "We have also linked to them from our web site, 911scholars.org".
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Mounting Evidence of 9/11 Video Fakery: New proof of media duplicity
Friday, July 27, 2007
Proper or Propaganda...you be the judge.
The tragic consequences of the September 11, 2001, attacks were directly attributable to the fact that terrorists flew large jet-fuel laden commercial airliners into the WTC towers. Buildings for use by the general population are not designed to withstand attacks of such severity; building codes do not require building designs to consider aircraft impact(?). In our cities, there has been no experience with a disaster of such magnitude, nor has there been any in which the total collapse of a high-rise building occurred so rapidly and with little warning.
While there were unique aspects to the design of the WTC towers and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, NIST has compiled a list of recommendations to improve the safety of tall buildings, occupants, and emergency responders based on its investigation of the procedures and practices that were used for the WTC towers; these procedures and practices are commonly used in the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of buildings under normal conditions.
UPDATE:
Scholars and Family Members Submit Request for Correction to 9/11 NIST Report
Gaps and inconsistencies reveal fundamental flaws in NIST's building collapse analyses!
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Twin Tower Twins...
Thanks and a tip of the Shoes 4 Industry Hat to "Anonymous" for sharing this very interesting video with us...although we seem to have seen it somewhere before...
Why the Towers Fell: Two Theories . . . . Bush vs. Newton
— William Rice, P.E. - Civil/Structural Engineer
Having worked on structural steel buildings as a civil engineer in the era when the Twin Towers were designed and constructed, I found some disturbing discrepancies and omissions concerning their collapse on 9/11.
I was particularly interested in the two PBS documentaries that explained the prevailing theories as determined by two government agencies, FEMA and NIST (National Institute of Science and Technology). The first (2002) PBS documentary, Why the Towers Fell, discussed how the floor truss connectors failed and caused a “progressive pancake collapse.”
The subsequent 2006 repackaged documentary Building on Ground Zero explained that the connectors held, but that the columns failed, which is also unlikely. The collapse of a concrete-framed building cannot be compared with that of a structural steel-framed building.
Since neither documentary addressed many of the pertinent facts, I took the time to review available material, combine it with scientific and historic facts, and submit the following two theories for consideration.
The prevailing theory
The prevailing theory for the collapse of the 110-story, award-winning Twin Towers is that when jetliners flew into the 95th and 80th floors of the North and South Towers respectively, they severed several of each building’s columns and weakened other columns with the burning of jet fuel/kerosene (and office combustibles).
However, unlike concrete buildings, structural steel buildings redistribute the stress when several columns are removed and the undamaged structural framework acts as a truss network to bridge over the missing columns.
After the 1993 car bomb explosion destroyed columns in the North Tower, John Skilling, the head structural engineer for the Twin Towers, was asked about an airplane strike. He explained that the Twin Towers were originally designed to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707 (similar in size to the Boeing 767). He went on to say that there would be a horrendous fire from the jet fuel, but “the building structure would still be there.”
The 10,000 gallons of jet fuel (half capacity) in each jetliner did cause horrendous fires over several floors, but it would not cause the steel members to melt or even lose sufficient strength to cause a collapse. This is because the short-duration jet fuel fires and office combustible fires cannot create (or transmit to the steel) temperatures hot enough. If a structural steel building could collapse because of fire, it would do so slowly as the various steel members gradually relinquished their structural strength. However, in the 100-year history of structural steel framed buildings, there is no evidence of any structural steel framed building having collapsed because of fire.
Let’s assume the unlikelihood that these fires could weaken all of the columns to the same degree of heat intensity and thus remove their structural strength equally over the entire floor, or floors, in order to cause the top 30-floor building segment (South Tower WTC #2) to drop vertically and evenly onto the supporting 79th floor. The 30 floors from above would then combine with the 79th floor and fall onto the next level down (78th floor) crushing its columns evenly and so on down into the seven levels below the street level.
The interesting fact is that each of these 110-story Twin Towers fell upon itself in about ten seconds at nearly free-fall speed. This violates Newton ’s Law of Conservation of Momentum that would require that as the stationary inertia of each floor is overcome by being hit, the mass (weight) increases and the free-fall speed decreases.
Even if Newton ’s Law is ignored, the prevailing theory would have us believe that each of the Twin Towers inexplicably collapsed upon itself crushing all 287 massive columns on each floor while maintaining a free-fall speed as if the 100,000, or more, tons of supporting structural-steel framework underneath didn’t exist.
The politically unthinkable theory
Controlled demolition is so politically unthinkable that the media not only demeans the messenger but also ridicules and “debunks” the message rather than provide investigative reporting. Curiously, it took 441 days for the president’s 9/11 Commission to start an “investigation” into a tragedy where more than 2,500 WTC lives were taken. The Commission’s investigation also didn’t include the possibility of controlled-demolition, nor did it include an investigation into the “unusual and unprecedented” manner in which WTC Building #7 collapsed.
Perhaps it is time for these and other unanswered questions surrounding 9/11 to be thoroughly investigated. Let’s start by contacting our congressional delegation!
William Rice, P.E., is a registered professional civil engineer who worked on structural steel (and concrete) buildings in Boston , New York , and Philadelphia . He was also a professor at Vermont Technical College where he taught engineering materials, structures lab, and other building related courses.
Having worked on structural steel buildings as a civil engineer in the era when the Twin Towers were designed and constructed, I found some disturbing discrepancies and omissions concerning their collapse on 9/11.
I was particularly interested in the two PBS documentaries that explained the prevailing theories as determined by two government agencies, FEMA and NIST (National Institute of Science and Technology). The first (2002) PBS documentary, Why the Towers Fell, discussed how the floor truss connectors failed and caused a “progressive pancake collapse.”
The subsequent 2006 repackaged documentary Building on Ground Zero explained that the connectors held, but that the columns failed, which is also unlikely. The collapse of a concrete-framed building cannot be compared with that of a structural steel-framed building.
Since neither documentary addressed many of the pertinent facts, I took the time to review available material, combine it with scientific and historic facts, and submit the following two theories for consideration.
The prevailing theory
The prevailing theory for the collapse of the 110-story, award-winning Twin Towers is that when jetliners flew into the 95th and 80th floors of the North and South Towers respectively, they severed several of each building’s columns and weakened other columns with the burning of jet fuel/kerosene (and office combustibles).
However, unlike concrete buildings, structural steel buildings redistribute the stress when several columns are removed and the undamaged structural framework acts as a truss network to bridge over the missing columns.
After the 1993 car bomb explosion destroyed columns in the North Tower, John Skilling, the head structural engineer for the Twin Towers, was asked about an airplane strike. He explained that the Twin Towers were originally designed to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707 (similar in size to the Boeing 767). He went on to say that there would be a horrendous fire from the jet fuel, but “the building structure would still be there.”
The 10,000 gallons of jet fuel (half capacity) in each jetliner did cause horrendous fires over several floors, but it would not cause the steel members to melt or even lose sufficient strength to cause a collapse. This is because the short-duration jet fuel fires and office combustible fires cannot create (or transmit to the steel) temperatures hot enough. If a structural steel building could collapse because of fire, it would do so slowly as the various steel members gradually relinquished their structural strength. However, in the 100-year history of structural steel framed buildings, there is no evidence of any structural steel framed building having collapsed because of fire.
Let’s assume the unlikelihood that these fires could weaken all of the columns to the same degree of heat intensity and thus remove their structural strength equally over the entire floor, or floors, in order to cause the top 30-floor building segment (South Tower WTC #2) to drop vertically and evenly onto the supporting 79th floor. The 30 floors from above would then combine with the 79th floor and fall onto the next level down (78th floor) crushing its columns evenly and so on down into the seven levels below the street level.
The interesting fact is that each of these 110-story Twin Towers fell upon itself in about ten seconds at nearly free-fall speed. This violates Newton ’s Law of Conservation of Momentum that would require that as the stationary inertia of each floor is overcome by being hit, the mass (weight) increases and the free-fall speed decreases.
Even if Newton ’s Law is ignored, the prevailing theory would have us believe that each of the Twin Towers inexplicably collapsed upon itself crushing all 287 massive columns on each floor while maintaining a free-fall speed as if the 100,000, or more, tons of supporting structural-steel framework underneath didn’t exist.
The politically unthinkable theory
Controlled demolition is so politically unthinkable that the media not only demeans the messenger but also ridicules and “debunks” the message rather than provide investigative reporting. Curiously, it took 441 days for the president’s 9/11 Commission to start an “investigation” into a tragedy where more than 2,500 WTC lives were taken. The Commission’s investigation also didn’t include the possibility of controlled-demolition, nor did it include an investigation into the “unusual and unprecedented” manner in which WTC Building #7 collapsed.
Perhaps it is time for these and other unanswered questions surrounding 9/11 to be thoroughly investigated. Let’s start by contacting our congressional delegation!
William Rice, P.E., is a registered professional civil engineer who worked on structural steel (and concrete) buildings in Boston , New York , and Philadelphia . He was also a professor at Vermont Technical College where he taught engineering materials, structures lab, and other building related courses.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Hollywood Goes to War
The documentary "No End in Sight" (mentioned in the previous post) has plenty of company. Hollywood is releasing a number of high-profile feature films dealing with the war in Iraq, says the New York Times, and without exception, the focus is on the downsides -- devastated families, stressed-out troops, horrendous "collateral damage" to Iraqis. Oscar-winning writer/director Paul Haggis ("Crash"), for example is completing work on In the Valley of Elah, based on the true story of an American soldier, Richard R. Davis, who was murdered by members of his unit. “This is not one of our brighter moments in America,” Oscar-winning writer-director Paul Haggis told the Times. “We should not have gotten involved.”
Now Playing at a theatre near you...
The first film of its kind to chronicle the reasons behind Iraq’s descent into guerilla war, warlord rule, criminality and anarchy, NO END IN SIGHT is a jaw-dropping, insider’s tale of wholesale incompetence, recklessness and venality.The film provides a candid retelling of the events following the fall of Baghdad in 2003 by high ranking officials such as Richard Armitage, Ambassador Barbara Bodine (in charge of Baghdad during the Spring of 2003), Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, and General Jay Garner as well as Iraqi civilians, American soldiers, and prominent analysts. NO END IN SIGHT examines the manner in which the principal errors of U.S. policy – the use of insufficient troop levels, allowing the looting of Baghdad, the purging of professionals from the Iraqi government, and the disbanding of the Iraqi military – largely created the insurgency and chaos that engulf Iraq today. How did a group of men with little or no military experience, knowledge of the Arab world or personal experience in Iraq come to make such flagrantly debilitating decisions? NO END IN SIGHT dissects the people, issues and facts behind the Bush Administration’s decisions and their consequences on the ground to provide a powerful look into how arrogance and ignorance turned a military victory into a seemingly endless and deepening nightmare of a war.
UPDATE: 8/9/07 "No End In Sight" Has White House Running Scared... Will The REAL Colin Powell Please Stand Up.
From Sindney Blumenthal via salon.com
The West Wing is seized with anxiety. Any rustle in the brush, any sudden noise, upsets the president's aides. As they try to regain their composure and confidence, recalling the glory days when they constituted themselves as the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, a P.R. juggernaut before the invasion, they know who and what they have buried along the way and fear their return.
Powell is the White House's ticking-time-bomb scenario. He was Petraeus before Petraeus, the good soldier before the good soldier, window-dressing before window-dressing. The White House aides' fear of Powell reflects their guilt, if not their stricken consciences, over his disposal. Powell was used, ruined and tossed overboard. His warnings were ignored, his loyalty was abused, and when he no longer served Bush's purposes he was unceremoniously discarded.
Tick, tick, tick...
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
"Facts are facts..." The 7WTC NIST Report - What are they waiting for?
National Institute of Standards and Technology released a progress report in June 2004, outlining its working hypothesis, which was that a local failure in a critical column, caused by damage from either fire or falling debris from the collapses of the two towers, progressed first vertically and then horizontally to result in "a disproportionate collapse of the entire structure". In a magazine interview in March 2006, Dr S. Shyam Sunder, (PICTURED BELOW) NIST's lead WTC disaster investigator, said, of 7 World Trade Center, "We are studying the horizontal movement east to west, internal to the structure, on the fifth to seventh floors”; he added "But truthfully, I don’t really know. We’ve had trouble getting a handle on Building No. 7".
Despite FEMA's preliminary finding that fire caused the collapse, some believe the building seven collapse was the result of a controlled-demolition. Because this would imply that a vast number of involved people had, and continue to have, almost no regard for human life whatsoever, (we don't know anyone like that now, do we?) such claims are widely disputed. When asked about controlled demolition theories, Dr. Sunder said, "We consulted 80 public-sector experts and 125 private-sector experts. It is a Who’s Who of experts. People look for other solutio
ns. As scientists, we can’t worry about that. Facts are facts." In answer to the question of whether "a controlled-demolition hypothesis is being considered to explain the collapse", NIST said that, "while NIST has found no evidence of a blast or controlled demolition event, it would like to determine the magnitude of hypothetical blast scenarios that could have led to the structural failure of one or more critical elements."
The New 7WTC
NIST anticipates the release of a draft report of 7 WTC by the end of 2007. What could possibly be taking so long? The replacement building has already been built!
Here is a good summary of the problems with the report, or lack thereof.
Despite FEMA's preliminary finding that fire caused the collapse, some believe the building seven collapse was the result of a controlled-demolition. Because this would imply that a vast number of involved people had, and continue to have, almost no regard for human life whatsoever, (we don't know anyone like that now, do we?) such claims are widely disputed. When asked about controlled demolition theories, Dr. Sunder said, "We consulted 80 public-sector experts and 125 private-sector experts. It is a Who’s Who of experts. People look for other solutio
ns. As scientists, we can’t worry about that. Facts are facts." In answer to the question of whether "a controlled-demolition hypothesis is being considered to explain the collapse", NIST said that, "while NIST has found no evidence of a blast or controlled demolition event, it would like to determine the magnitude of hypothetical blast scenarios that could have led to the structural failure of one or more critical elements."The New 7WTC
NIST anticipates the release of a draft report of 7 WTC by the end of 2007. What could possibly be taking so long? The replacement building has already been built!
Here is a good summary of the problems with the report, or lack thereof.
Monday, July 23, 2007
To be "Fair and Balanced"...
Here is a link to the PBS slide show that lays out the Government's "theory" about what happened in NYC on Sept 11, 2001.
You be the judge...
You be the judge...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
