“9/11 Truth Movement” is mostly a sham; excellent antidote at Counterpunch
A sad event featuring 9/11 conspiracy theory sponsored by kpfa and broadcast by C-SPAN 2 over Thanksgiving weekend–and I normally admire both Pacifica and Ray McGovern; David Ray Griffin should be ashamed of his misuse of evidence.
I spend a good bit of time each week teaching introductory physics. Every semester–in the impulse and momentum chapter–I pay special attention to dynamic forces generated by impacts of moving bodies. These are the forces that break things when they fall, contrasted with static conditions where the same objects happily remain intact under the reletively mellow forces due to their own weights. The example I always bring up is how the collapse of the WTC twin towers in New York on 9/11/2001 happened because of the enormous dynamic forces generated once the upper sections began to fall.
Partly I bring up the WTC collapse to counter a load of nonsense on this topic that lives mainly on the Internet, and sometimes on C-SPAN. On many facets of 9/11, a conspiracy industry has emerged to promulgate alternative explanations, calling itself by the misnomer “9/11 Truth Movement”. It is led by a strange cast of characters also known by the misnomer “Scholars for 9/11 truth”.
Of the voluminous silliness promulgated by these people, perhaps their lowest appeal to ignorance is their notion that the airplane impacts and subsequent structural weakening did not initiate collapse and bring down the towers. Rather, explosives planted in a government conspiracy did it.
The evidence? None really. There exists no document, no whistle-blower, no witness who has come forward from a diabolical conspiracy that must have involved hundreds of workers to pull off. Oh yes, they have a physicist from BYU, Steve Jones, who has made some unconvincing claims about chemicals that were in the wreckage that suggest explosives were used. But they really go astray when they claim that it is impossible that the towers fell without the help of explosives. Why? Because they fell at “close to the free-fall time in a vacuum”. Without explosives “undamaged floors below the impact zone would have offered resistance that is thousands of times greater than air.” That’s the “proof” offered.
Now the article at that last link (supplied by Scholars for 9/11 Truth) totally misstates the physics involved in the collapse. Air resistance produces a continuous upward force upon a falling object that increases with velocity until it balances the gravitational force. This is not analogous to what happened during the collapse of the twin towers.
A Tuesday article in Counterpunch by physicist Manuel Garcia supplies the facts to counter this asinine rubbish in a slightly technical but totally coherent explanation of the fall times of the towers. It includes discussion of the disastrous effect of dynamic loading on the structures resulting from rapid momentum changes and stress waves–essential discussion completely left out of ignorant conspiracy literature.
Certainly there are mysteries about 9/11. The relationship of US intelligence and the shadowy networks that are referred to as “al-QÄ`ida” deserve much more investigation. I would like to be able to appreciate the writing of some of the “9/11 Scholars” on these issues. But their embrace of asinine silliness and misuse of physics really taints their work.
I support Alexander Cockburn, Matt Taibbi, Noam Chomsky, and Matt Rothschild in their efforts to expose the intellectual bankruptcy of the “9/11 Truth Movement”. This bankruptcy is no more well illustrated than in the rabid accusations flung by conspiracy adherents when faced with skepticism about their wild, unsupportable claims. They scream incoherently about “left gatekeepers” surpressing their version of the truth.
Like Chomsky has written, “One of the major consequences of the 9/11 movement has been to draw enormous amounts of energy and effort away from activism directed to real and ongoing crimes of state, and their institutional background, crimes that are far more serious than blowing up the WTC would be.” It’s time to focus our attention away from conspiracy mongering and towards building a movement to stop the continuing crimes of state that are costing the lives of tens of thousands of people every week.
Certainly, there are quite a few non-sensical & seemingly-diversionary conspiracy theories floating around out there. I never did understand the narrow-focused vitriol that many of these conspiracy-theoreticians put forward.
Indeed, there are quite a number of postulations put forth, and many of them are really stuck in the hypothesis stage, masquerading as outright-truth using pablum data, or overjumping to conclusions.
Scientifically, though, just because one seemingly-disproves a number of the hypothesis, doesn’t automatically mean that there is a complete lack of evidence to not sift through. I’ve forced myself to watch nearly every documentary on the subject, among others. Amidst allot of vitriolic theoretical pablum, there actually are various video footage that actually do give some reason to investigate.
An immediate example that comes to mind, among several others, is Larry Silverstein, the owner of WTC building 7, said “pull it” which is usually a phrase people use when talking about demolitions; or at least that’s how the theory goes. WTC Building 7 being a building that was not hit by a plane, yet still managed to find a way to collapse. Silverstein claims he was referring to the firefighters. I guess I would ask, is it customary to call a group of firefighters, “it?” It is very easy to look at allot of the seeming-nonsense and then vaguely assert that all of it is nonsense.
However, I do agree with the Chomsky quote at the end. There is allot of narrow-minded vitriol that inadvertently draws enormous energy away from real change, and focuses on narrow “truth agendas,” that in the long run accomplishes practically nothing worthwhile
I’d also argue, however, that allot of mainstream activism is rather narrowly-focused, as well as quite narrow-minded, in regards to the effectiveness of communication, tactics & strategies.
For example, in the Chomsky quote, it says “It’s time to focus our attention away from conspiracy mongering and towards building a movement to stop the continuing crimes of state that are costing the lives of tens of thousands of people every week.”
That’s certainly very true, and I don’t want to denude the terrible emotional weight that occurs from reckoning with that perspective. I would attach to the end of that, however, that the frame that Chomsky used is almost as equally narrow-focused as the 9-11 truth movement, in so-far as it doesn’t hold a vision of what is possible.
What we really need is something akin, in the words of Derrick Jensen, to transforming to a “sane and sustainable way of living.” That means integrating into the picture, integral aspects of a movement that dismantles global problems, while at the same time renewing & improving local-communities.
I’ve noticed a sort of frame of reference that allot of anti-war activists hold that if we can just end this war, then we can get around to all of the other problems; but for right now we’re going to be vigilant by making the main thrust of our efforts to oppose the current war & occupation.
While I agree with much of the reasoning behind that, I disagree with the conclusion for tactics. The argument is that so much money is spent on this war, that we can’t make many changes until we end the current war & occupation because that’s where much of our tax dollars are going. While I’d argue that its the military industrial complex that consumes ~80% of the subsidies that is the basis of the issue, and the Iraq war is merely the current occupation. We can end this war, but the complex still exists.
Tony Benn put together a pretty good documentary that ties allot of loose-ends together. I put it on dailymotion to be viewed for free. I’d say more, but I’d rather not clog this comments thread with too much to say, like I’ve done already, lol. Anyway, here’s the link to the documentary: Big Ideas That Changed The World, and here’s a recent WERU talk Derrick Jensen did a couple months back that goes more in-depth to some of what I’m saying.
I did not see the program referenced. But how did building 7 come down at free fall speed. Alledgedly, there were not firefighers in the building that day because they were dealing with the twin towers. I found Silverstein’s comments courious. As a landlord I would not want the legal liability, or potential defense from my insurance company, which might arise by apparently having some control and agreeing to blow up my tenants stuff–particularily if those tenants were government agencies. My experience with fire departments is that they do what they have to do and don’t ask for permission.
On WTC 7 coming down, the video certainly is provocative. But what you don’t see is how badly the building was damaged.
According to Garcia, “The southwest corner and central third of the south face had been ripped open by the cascading debris from the collapse of WTC 1. Fires burned in sections of Floors 6 through 30 at different times, and they migrated along their floors independently, seeking new sources of fuel. From the street the fires on Floors 11 and 12 appeared most intense….The debris fall ripping into the southwest corner ruptured the oil pipes of the SSB pressurized fuel distribution system. Operating as intended — the lack of utility power triggering the “need”, and the lack of pressure due to a severed pipe signaling the “demand”, the SSB system pumped oil up from its 12,000 gallon basement reservoir, maximally with a pressure of 50 psi (pounds per square inch) and flow rate of 75 gpm (gallons per minute), onto Floor 5.”
Read the rest here.
…
No evidence for explosives in the WTC?
There are dozens of eyewitness accounts from first responders that confirm secondary explosions in the towers. See David Ray Griffin’s paper, “Explosive Testimony.” Mainstream media also reported several huge explosions leading up to collapse. Visit 911revisited.com and watch the free movie, which includes these media clips.
Or how about the pyroclastic flow that emanated from the collapses, something indicative of explosives not a gravitational collapse?
How about visible squibs in all of the videos, often dozens of floors below the collapse wave (suggesting the idea that these are just puffs of compressed air is ridiculous)?
How about the near-freefall speed of the collapse?
How about the perfect symmetry with which WTC 1, 2, and 7 all collapsed, despite the fact they were affected by random causes (WTC7 wasn’t even hit by a plane)?
How about the explosive force with which heavy steel beams were hurled from the collapsing towers, some landing several hundred feet away?
How about the fact that the towers were pulverized into dust in mid-air? Or the fact that the 47 steel columns that formed the cores of the towers were shredded, leaving no massive chunks of the towers intact, and no visible sign of where the steel columns stood?
How about the fact that ownership of towers became private just two months before 9/11?
Most of all, how about the FACT that both FEMA and NIST reports were ultimately inconclusive in their studies of the collapses. FEMA concluded it did not have the time or resources to reach a definitive conclusion. NIST claims its black box computer simulations proved the gravity theory to be true, but it also says in the report itself that the fires were not hot enough to cause collapse, and that the steel should have held for over 2 hours under even worse conditions than those of 9/11. NIST could not replicate the collapses using actual models. In fact, NIST does not even try to understand the collapses; it offers a pre-collapse theory (trying to explain collapse initiation), and then simply says, the rest is obvious.
No, it’s not.
Simuvac, sorry, yours is a serious misstatement of the NIST report. Go read the Garcia piece. I address the “freefall” speed of collapse in this post. Read it. If you have, I regret that you still hold the absurd notion that the observed speed of collapse was not possible w/o aid of explosives. Use of physics concepts in the “911 Truth” movement is sorely short in the validity department.
Owl, what does terminal velocity have to do with the question of why the lower part of the buildings did not offer much more resistance than air? The argument is that the towers fell at close to free -fall-in-vacuum speed, not that they fell at exactly that speed. If that argument was made, it is wrong, but you still beg the question of how the towers fell so fast. This has not been explained.
Garcia’s assumption that the impact floor and all floors under that fell at free-fall speed, with only slight delay by the mass of each floor, is obviously spurious. Is he saying that the columns offered no resistance at all? That’s what he seems to be saying, since he talks of 3-meter free-fall increments between the floors, delayed only by the floors. He also has the stress waves going up into the upper block and disintegrating the upper block, in an attempt to explain the videos. This means that the lower block was offering resistance, and also contradicts his argument that the upper block was an ever-growing hammer . Garcia does not even attempt to explain the steel beams and other debris thrown far out to the sides, which if not caused by explosives, must have been caused by resistance.
You should stop being such a pedant and teach. Words like “asinine” and “intellectual bankruptcy” suggest lack of sound argument. Why are you so angry about people’s questions?
About Chomsky, who I generally like:
What are the real and ongoing crimes of state that would be worse than blowing up the towers and murdering thousands of people? If it is the Iraq war, that would not have happened without 9/11. This is how I choose to address the problem, though I of course marched against the war and have written my congressman against it. What else should I do? What are you doing? What is Chomsky doing? Keep doing it, and ask me to join, but quit being such an ass about my questions. If you can answer them, great. You have not.
Thanks, Ningen, I take your point. Let me explain. I’m quite animated about how I treat 9/11 conspiracy arguments because I’ve seen what the proponents have been doing for a long time now. I see them as harmful. They need to be addressed because the knowledge sets people are using are so far off the mark in ways that are getting too important to ignore. Perhaps in responding to the kind of bullying guys like Fetzer (Griffin’s not as bad) engage in, I’ve become a little like him. But I really don’t see myself as angry about questions, I don’t mean to come off that way. But, I have decided it is time for me to argue my case forcefully. Maybe it makes me seem a bit of an ass. That’s the way it is, I guess.
Now, on to the specific area I address in this post–the near-freefall speed of the collapse. Garcia’s calculations are not “obviously spurious”. He computes with very reasonable assumptions the time of fall, taking into consideration the catestrophic response of the building to dynamic loading and stress waves:
“free fall for 3 m, impact delays transit for 0.01 s and decreases descent velocity by 0.5 m/s, free fall for 3 m, transit delay and velocity decrement as before, and so on. The block reaches the ground in 10 s with a total of 87 floor impacts. The collapse of 344 m (1128 feet) accelerates from -7.2 m/s (-16 mph) after the initial impact, to -46 m/s (-104 mph) at the ground.”
The notion that there must be some sort of terminal velocity delaying the collapse–unless explosives were there to help–is a wrong, wrong, wrong assumption made throughout conspiracy literature. (This is not what I say, it’s what they say. I took those quotes directly from a smart-looking “physics” discussion on a conspiracy website–referenced by the “Scholars for Truth”.)
What I do say is that there was no terminal velocity but rather something very close to freefall, and that this is perfectly consistent with collapse initiated by the aircraft strikes and subsequent fires.
The notion of terminal velocity arises in the solution of the differential equation relating to the balance of the force of gravity and the velocity-proportional drag force on an object falling in a fluid medium. These are continuous forces, not like the discreet, extremely large, very short duration floor-by-floor impacts on the building components on the way down. Terminal velocity has very little relevance to the gross collapse of the buildings. They were way too massive to get anywhere near a terminal velocity.
I’m not entirely clear which argument you think is “wrong” here. I have provided a good direction for a substantial inquiry into the rate of fall of the towers. If you need more explanation, I suggest you pursue study of these concepts–thermodynamics of fire, strength of materials under high temperatures, dynamic loading, and stress waves–including all the much fuller presentations by Manuel Garcia.
What Chomsky is saying about “ongoing crimes of the state” really do constitute scales of death far exceeding 9/11. For example, Vietnam, East Timor, Guatemala, and on and on. Not to mention the grinding crush of authoritarian agents of global capital that dominate over a billion people and kill uncounted numbers every day. These crimes extend deeply in time. History did not begin on 9/11.
If you want to address the problems, the answer is to get organized. Here in eastern Maine, we have vigorous groups, a Peace Center, and thousands of members. We’re in the face of our Congress people and the public, and the media all the time. How do you think public opinion has changed against the war? How did people get the idea in the last election that they could vote for change?
Look around you. There’s bound to be a dozen ways you join in with good people and sound analysis–on a regular basis. Regular basis. Sound analysis. Those are the keys. 9/11 conspiracy is a distraction.
OWL You are correct about what we don’t see about the damage to WTC 7. One of the fellows from Popular Mechanics claimed photos exist and that he saw them. Why not release them? Buildings not owned by Silverman and closer to WTC 1 and 2 did not collapse. Furthermore, if the implied huge chunk was missing and caused the building to fall, it seems it would have fallen backwards–like when you chop a tree down. Falling straight down could suggest the alledged damage was not significant enough to affect the trajectory. I read the Garcia stuff. I found the details confusing rather than clarifying the issue. He does not explain Silerman’s statement which would have been unnecessary had the buildings fallen from their own volition backwards. Also, I have not hear a good explanation as to how these collapses could have caused steel and concrete to vaporize and pulverize substantially into micron size particles.
It’s “Silverstein,” right? He’s the real estate mogul who owned the buildings and said something about “pulling” Building 7? I don’t know what he meant, and he denies he meant intentional demolition, didn’t he? So this is not proof of the demolition theory. On the other hand, I agree there is confusion and much is unknown. But what Garcia writes is clearly plausible. Think Occam’s razor.
Yup, if I remember correctly, it was a video of him on network television and he said “pull it.” I can get a full quote if you want. However, I got the information that he was referring to firefighters, from wikipedia, so I’m not sure of the validity of that. Here’s the link
Also, here’s what I was going to post just now, but added this bit just before:
I’ll use a little story that I heard through Dawkins, in attempt to show the metaphorical relation:
As you look up at the sun, seeing it move, would you believe that the sun is spinning around the earth, or the earth spinning around the sun. Since the earth visibly & kinesthetically “seems” stationary & motionless, it obviously looks like the sun is spinning around the earth. The question that Dawkins asked was, what would it look like, if the earth were spinning around the sun? *everyone chuckles
The point, if there is a point, is that even if physicists show mathematical formulas that explain even the most intricate details of how the collapses happened, it doesn’t necessarily disprove, to the 100th percent, that there were no controlled demolitions on one or more of the wtc-buildings.
What this means for us, then, I think the point that should be hammered home, and its a rather simplistic philosophical case to make, is that of the following:
9/11 = death of many humans
conspiracy of 9/11 = yearning to hold a “percieved” perpetrator accountable for aiding/abiding the perpetrated death of many humans.
The same exact equation can be made about hundreds/thousands of agendas, and the point is they should be included in our daily push for justice just as much as our current urges & intentions; for even if one problem of society/culture/government is solved, another can rise up that equals or dwarfs the original problem that was initially solved; and indeed there are many.
However, sometimes people throw out a disregarding point, that we’ll just deal with the visible problems as they visibly come up. What that doesn’t take into account, however, is that what we do, or don’t do, each day, could be “invisibly,” whatever that means, allowing us to traverse a course in time that will just as equally bring us to the destruction of an equal, or greater, amount of people.
This is, in fact, the exact argument held by many neo-conservatives in relation to their percieved, or pretend-percieved, moral case in the “war on terror.” However, it’s the same exact argument with climate change, environmental destruction, peak-oil, future draughts, future famines, future …whatever, name it (even abortion); and one or more of them may already be happening with or without our knowing, yet we’re complicite &/or complacent.
The outcome of this argument is that someone who is trying to hold accountable various perpetrators, yet ignores all of the other problems that could very well be taken into account, …the outcome that the argument for justice that’s being used, with narrow-focused agendas based on morality, begins to break down. Which means, the inaction for justice for other problems of society/culture/government, invalidates one’s own morality. I wouldn’t be the first to admit that I’m guilty of it too; I’m pretty sure we’re all guilty of it, to some degree.
As Derrick Jensen would say, paraphrasing: I think there is only one measure with which we will be judged by the people who come after; and that’s the health of the land-base. Because they’re not gonna give a **** as to whether we were nice people, voted green, or democrat, or didn’t vote at all, whether we were violent or non-violent, whether we recycle. They’re not gonna give a **** how hard we try. What they’re going to care about is whether they can breathe the air, whether they can drink the water, and whether the land can support them. Because we can have all the fantasies we want about some groovy eco-socialist utopia with free-love; if they can’t drink the water, it doesn’t ****ing matter.
The other side of that, of course, is the visible injustices that are happening now, such as wars, famines, sweatshops, slavery, toxification of environment (we’re part of environment), unaccountable fascism, loss of freedom, etc.
FS–Re: Dawkins; how would WTC 1, 2, and 3 look if explosives were used?
OWL: You are correct, it was Silverstein. You are clearly a very bright fellow. I recently read Steve Jones paper, peer reviewed. I compeled by his arguments. He too mentions “Occam’s razor” which if my memory serves me correctly, was first applied to science. It has been misintpreted, for example, by police, and applied to non-scientific events. Often in science it does not work. If it did, we might say on first look, that the praying mantis which might look like a leaf or an iris or any other plant they mimic are in fact plants and not insects. Man, cunning fellow that he is, invented the “frame up, patsies,false flag operations,false suicides, etc.” Hitler used the Reichstag fire and the fake attack by Poland on Sept. 1, 1939 to in the immortal words of Lyndon Johnson to make “chicken shit look like chicken salad.” There are those who would put us in chains would like us to argue, as we did, about Oswald’s cupability and miss the big picture. This 9/11 stinks. Consider, for a moment that the whole matter was designed and sprinkled with “plants” that a sincere fellow like you could pick up and defend. If I was in charge, that is how I would do it.
Sure, okay, it’s all true. The whole thing was hatched in Cheney’s office, including the successful plan to dupe physicists and engineers into skeptical assessments just to make the Conspiracy Theorists for the Truth look bad. So, what do we do with that now? Maybe if we shout it loud enough, the jingoes will all stand down, the Terror War will end, and we’ll all live in a world of peace & justice.
Ouch. The big question, “What to do?” Wake up the people. Follow the money and be informed. U of Chgo economist Miltion Freeman said on c-span that the Federal Reserve System created the Oct. ‘29 stock market crash after they promised to protect us from such things.Private bankers control our money and doggedly pursued government until they got control. There’s a conspiracy if you want one. Resist “globalization” which is about money. Try starting a business and competing with a megafirm. Resist control of the Internet. Expose disinformation specialists–the Pentagon announced they will treat the Internet as a weapon in the hands of an adversary and even attack sites. Bush alledgedly spent over $1B to influence media. Some truth in naming bills would be nice. Get rid of lobbyists. Protect the vote. Start by getting rid of machines which have no paper trail. Still, we are in a box because the elite have been working their agenda for a long time, hoodwinking the people. They could care less about exposing the truth of 9/11.
Yes, good, let’s work on all that stuff. And let’s even put 9/11 conspirators in jail–that is if any hard evidence, documents, witnesses, etc. ever emerges. Meanwhile, there is plenty of current hoodwinking going on–in fact with respect to large-scale, ongoing death and destruction–for which there already exists plenty of hard documentation. Let’s work on that first.
Why the narrow focus on the collapse of WTC Towers 1 and 2? (I assume WTC 7 is excluded because its collapse is less easily explained.)Why not take a step back and take a more macro view? If one does this, it is not difficult to conclude that the 9/11/01 attacks are esily one of the most anomalous events of our lifetime. Consider the following statisitcs: on any given day in the United States there are 80,000 flights, 30,000 of which are commercial passenger aircraft. (I got these numbers off of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association’s web-site, however, to date, this information is no longer accessible on the site.) That’s a pretty tight logistical ship to maintain, to ensure that all of these flights depart and arrive safely. (i.e. There’s plenty of FAA and NORAD protocol to make things go right, as well as in the unlikely scenario when they go wrong.) On 9/11/01, four flights in the course of two hours somehow miraculously beat this system, three allegedly reaching their targets, the fourth, in all probability, being shot-down in Pennslyvania. (The probable shootdown of United Flight 93 has much evidence: the large debris field, the long silence and sound of rushing air on the Cockpit Voice Recorder prior to impact, eye witness reports of an unmarked, low flying military aircraft near the crash site, and seismic data that suggests a sonic boom prior to the crash of flight 93. Do you want more? Has anyone forgotten Rumsfeld’s Freudian slip?[http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/12/27/rumsfeld.flt93/])
Keeping with the theme as 9/11/01 as one giant aberration, consider that on the day of that very date, NORAD, just COINCIDENTALLY, was conducting “war games” (code name: “Vigilant Guardian”, among others) that just happened to simulate the hijacking of commercial aircraft. Some coincidence, huh? And does anyone recall that NORAD had intercepting aircraft aloft within a matter of minutes of professional golfer’s Payne Stewart’s private aircraft deviating from its flight path?
So why all the vitriol on the left that seeks to patronizingly dismiss the serious questions raised by 9/11 skeptics? Isn’t it clear to those who hold such hostile feelings that 9/11 is the linchpin of the Bush Jr. administration? 9/11 goes beyond being repeatedly cited, ad nauseam, as justification for policy both foreign and domestic alike. No, 9/11 is the Bush administration’s raison d’etre; without it, the entire house of cards falls. Helping to facilitate attacks on one’s own country is high treason. Forget the launching of wars of aggression, though they are tightly related to the 9/11 attacks. If you want to learn more about where this shit pile (a.k.a. the Bush administration) is taking us, I strongly recommend Crossing the Rubicon by Mike Ruppert. I’ll leave it at that.
I agree. WT 7 is harder to explain, but not impossible. We do have some discussion here about WT 7. See the 2nd & 3rd comments, and read the lengthy piece by Garcia (ref. in 3rd comment).
Coincidence does not constitute evidence. Speculation is not evidence. I focus on the speculation that “freefall” proves intentional demolition with explosives because the appeal to physics on this is so obviously fallacious to almost everyone with a background in physics. (Ever wonder why Jones has just about zero support in the physics community?)
What really bugs me is the tendency in conspiracy theory to take speculative, fallacious arguments and hammer with them as if they were some kind of proof. Ruppert, though very provocative, has this tendency. And, like Fetzer, he’s an extremely unpleasant fellow to deal with when he is challenged to prove some of his more outrageous assertions.