> 9-11 researchers gather facts, speculate and raise questions about
> what happened and point out the many holes in the official story. They
> also proffer many facts, but apparently these facts are not to your
> liking, which is your right, but don't pretend the facts are not >
> there.
It looks as though their "facts" tend to be rumors, passed around from one web-site to another. Nearly a hundred witnesses saw the plane hit the Pentagon, but that's not a "fact." At least it's not a fact to the liking of the conspiracy theorists.
> I see you agree that people do meet and plan things in boardrooms and
> we also agree that the capitalist system is complex. So, as I have
> patiently tried to explain, going after one specific group of actors
> such as the Enron gang does not mean one ceases ones' analysis of
> systemwide corruption. Both approaches are not mutually exclusive.
You really don't understand economics, do you? The capitalist economy is not just "corruption."
> As far as I can tell, you have no substantive counterpoint to make to
> my position, relying instead on elaborate obfuscations.
Well, I tried to make my last post as easy to understand as possible -- relatively short sentences, simple sentence structures, no abstruse vocabulary. What didn't you understand in it?
> What websites are you claiming I refer people to? be specific. You
> refer to Sy Hersh. Name some websites I have 'referred people to' and
> let's debate their merits.
OK, I'll give a few specific examples. David Ray Griffin is not an investigative journalist; he's a theologian. You referred to the Physics 911 site; I don't see any investigative journalists there. You referred to the "Xymphora" blog; there's no indication on that site at all, as far as I can see, about who this "Xymphora" character is. Totally anonymous; very trustyworthy, that is. You mentioned the "911research" site; I tried to get there, but couldn't. I'll try again.
The "Serendipity" guy, Peter Meyer, seems to be one of the leaders of this movement. To mention one of his interesting "facts": he refers to Thomas Eager, the MIT professor of engineering, on the probable temperature of the fires caused by the collision of the planes with the buildings:
"Eager pointed out that steel melts at 1500 degrees C (2700 degrees F) but that 'jet fuel produces a maximum termperature of 1000°C (1500°F) when mixed with air in perfect proportions but this only causes steel to glow a bright red. ... It is virtually impossible for an airplane crash to coincidentally mix the fuel and air in such perfect proportions that the maximum possible temperature is achieved. Therefore the temperature of the steel was significantly less than the maximum of 1000°C,' probably (he says) no more than 700°C (1300°F)."
He quotes this in support of his theory that there must have been explosives or something planted in the building, in addition to the plane collisions, in order to cause them to collapse. The problem is that Eager in fact gives a very plausible explanation for the plane collisions *alone* causing the collapses, in his interview on the PBS Nova program <www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc/collapse.html> as well as his more technical paper <www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Eagar-0112.html>. Apparently Meyer can't understand a theory as complicated as Eager's, so he completely misunderstands what Eager is driving at. That's typical of these 9/11 buffs -- not the best and the brightest, by a long shot.
What I see them doing, essentially, is constructing a very elaborate, very imaginative fictional narrative, as a collaborative project, in the same way the Kennedy assassination buffs did, based, in both cases, on various curious little aspects of the events which, when looked at in a certain way, seem rather odd. Every large historical event like this has such little untied threads hanging out of it, which folks with a penchant to write spy fiction like to grab onto, but this is hardly what one would call "research."
When someone of the caliber of a Hersh takes this wool-gathering seriously, so will I. But that hasn't happened yet.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax