9/11 Disinfo Road Trip

In my Charlie Veitch, WTF??? post I wrote:

He also said he spoke to a demolition expert, who I assume was probably someone like Brent Blanchard, and I'm guessing they told him it would be impossible to demolish those buildings.

I called it! The demolition expert they spoke to on the top floor of the new Building 7 was Brent Blanchard. Strangely enough though, WTC7 was not mentioned at all in the Conspiracy Road Trip program.

Instead they showed Charlie asking him why the upper floors of the south tower didn't fully topple over. Brent Blanchard's response was that a slight tilt would drastically lower the support and so there was no way to go but down. Really? What about the conservation of angular momentum? You know, that principle of physics that keeps spinning-tops spinning?! Also, how does a 'pile driver' impacting the lower floors at a 20 degree angle crush them so symmetrically, as observed in this video?



Next we have probably the only good thing about this program. Tony Szamboti shows two of the British truthers the Active Thermitic Material paper and mentions that the red chips react. He also mentions free fall but again no mention of WTC7 is made.

How does the program counter this? The same way Nat Geo did - by supposedly proving thermite can't cut steel. This program was filmed in June - 6 months after Jon Cole demonstrated that thermite-based incendiaries, if used the right way, can cut through steel.

What's interesting though is the demonstration they were given was of ordinary thermite, not nanothermite. When Charlie Veitch explained why he no longer believed in controlled demolition, he said he was given a demonstration of nanothermite.

Also ... that thermite expert ... could he have a more stereotypical geek voice?!

As it turns out, the program didn't mention all the hate Charlie received after changing his mind so that's a plus. This program was more of a documentary about the five British truthers than 9/11 itself. It kind of reminded me of IFC's New World Order film. It was still a hit piece, but more subtle. Like the other BBC pieces, it wasn't so much what was in the program, it's what wasn't in the program that annoys me.

Related Info:

Conspiracy Road Trip Reactions

Read More

Building 7 Explained?

I was recently told about this video by someone on YouTube.



My thoughts:

0:35 "Steel loses half of its strength when heated to just 1200F."

True. But there is no evidence that the fires in WTC7 reached those sorts of temperatures. And scientists on both sides of the argument have shown that the fires could not have reached those temperatures anyway.

"[R]aising those five floor beams to a temperature of 600°C would require an enormous amount of energy, far more than was available from the burning of the office furnishings underneath the floor beams." -Kevin Ryan

"NIST's collapse initiation hypothesis requires that structural steel temperatures on floors 12/13 significantly exceeded 300°C [570°F]--a condition that could never have been realized with NIST's postulated 32 kg/m2 fuel loading." -Dr. Frank Greening

Also, the experiment shown is from the National Geographic documentary, which is addressed here and here.

1:11 "No water to fight the fires."

According to NIST, this apparently was not a "meaningful point of dissimilarity" to other skyscrapers that have been engulfed in fires.

“[I]n each of the other referenced buildings, the fires burned out several floors, even with available water and fire fighting activities (except for WTC 5). Thus, whether the fire fighters fought the WTC 7 fires or not is not a meaningful point of dissimilarity from the other cited fires.” -NIST WTC7 FAQ

1:29 "Firefighters knew the building would collapse."

Addressed here and here.

1:39 "NIST modeled the collapse, and the models are consistent with the videos."

Actually, NIST's models of WTC7’s internal failures are completely inconsistent with videos of the building’s collapse, as pointed out by Dr. Frank Greening.

"According to NIST, the global collapse of WTC 7 began 6.9 seconds after the East Penthouse collapse or about 23 seconds into the simulation. Now consider NIST’s Figures 12-66, 12-67 and 12-69 and in particular the images showing the alleged state of the core 17.5, 19.5, 20.7, 21.8, 24.1, 26.8 and 28.8 seconds into the collapse simulation. These images represent NIST’s view of what the core looked like at ~1-2 second intervals following the collapse of the East Penthouse. What is most significant about these images is that around the time of global collapse initiation NIST’s simulation shows that the eastern half of the core had completely collapsed while the western half of the core remained standing and relatively undamaged. This is quite remarkable since videos of the collapse of WTC 7 show that up to and well beyond the moment that the roofline of WTC 7 exhibited its first downward movement, the exterior of the building revealed absolutely no signs of NIST’s proposed partial collapse of the core even though the core was connected to the exterior walls of Building 7 by dozens of horizontal beams on every floor." [Source] pg. 315

2:11 "Conspiracy sites don't acknowledge the penthouse collapse."

Actually they do. Here's one site that examined it extensively.

2:18 "Free fall speed collapse."

The building DOES fall in complete free fall for eight stories.

2:34 "Steel can fail due to fire, like the collapse of a steel overpass."

Steel can certainly fail due to fire, but the issue is whether or not the fires were severe enough in Building 7 to cause collapse in the first place. And the collapse of the Interstate 580 is hardly comparable to the collapse of any of the WTC buildings.

3:06 "Building 7 is the only skyscraper to burn uncontrollably for seven hours."

As we have already seen, other buildings have burned uncontrollably as well, yet none of them have ever collapsed from fire.

Read More

Answers to Chris Mohr (Parts 8 - 11)

#128 - Pre-collapse molten metal from WTC2 was aluminium from the plane mixed with office furniture, paper, carpet etc.

For the millionth time, Steven Jones has done experiments to rule that out!

#131 - NASA thermal images show only 1400°F, not 2800°F

These were the temperatures at the surface. Underneath, the temperatures would have been higher.

#131 Part Deux - Abundant aluminium in debris to melt at 1200°F

Some of it was definitely iron:



Richard Gage features this in his presentation. Considering Chris Mohr claims to be 'respectfully rebutting' Gage, he sure does ignore alot of the evidence he presents.

#132 - Claw Picture

Better picture:



"Some beams pulled from the wreckage are still red hot more than 7 weeks after the attack, and it is suspected that temperatures beneath the debris pile are well in excess of 1,000°F." ~ LiRo newsletter, November 2001

Possible video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wwbOUR-sxI

John Gross' denial and witnesses:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SLIzSCt_cg

Leslie Robertson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjmHqES_lto

#133 - Regular fires can burn for months



As Andrea Dreger writes:

(2) The persistence of hot-spots at the same locations for days and weeks

If you compare the 25 thermal images by EarthData that are published on their website you can see that the area covered by hot spots becomes smaller over time, but the general location of the hot spots does not change. You have hot spots at the same places for weeks. This seems to be inconsistent with the assumption that the hot spots were due exclusively to underground fires. Any fire at a given location will have consumed all burnable matter at some point and will stop burning at this given spot. Even if you consider that fires might have burnt at different levels at different times under the surface at any given spot, and that a single spot that seems small on the image in fact covered a relatively large area it seems impossible to explain how the heat persisted for weeks at the same spots due solely to burning fires.

#136 - #137 - Vincent Palmieri testimony

No planer logic. The fact that some firefighters etc. didn't witness molten metal or extremely high temperatures doesn't refute the fact that others did!

#138 - Steam Explosions

It turns out they were concerned about such a thing...

Another danger involved the high temperature of twisted steel pulled from the rubble. Underground fires burned at temperatures up to 2,000 degrees. As the huge cranes pulled steel beams from the pile, safety experts worried about the effects of the extreme heat on the crane rigging and the hazards of contact with the hot steel. And they were concerned that applying water to cool the steel could cause a steam explosion that would propel nearby objects with deadly force. Special expertise was needed. OSHA called in structural engineers from its national office to assess the situation. They recommended a special handling procedure, including the use of specialized rigging and instruments to reduce the hazards.

http://www.osha.gov/Publications/WTC/dangerous_worksite.html

#146 - Fly Ash



Typical Concrete Mixture [Source]:

Coarse Aggregate: 1089 kg/m³
Fine Aggregate: 747 kg/m³
Portland Cement: 251 kg/m³
Fly Ash: 84 kg/m³
Total: 2171 kg/m³

Fly Ash, % of cementious: 25%
Fly Ash, % of concrete mix: 84/2171 = 3.87%

Iron Oxide, % of Fly Ash: ~10%
Iron Oxide from Fly Ash, % of Concrete: ~10% of 3.87% = ~0.4%

Concrete, % of WTC dust [Source]: ~25%
Iron Oxide from Fly Ash in Concrete, % of WTC dust: ~0.4% of ~25% = ~0.1%

The RJ Lee report estimates that iron spheres made up 5.87% of the World Trade Center dust. The fly ash from pulverized concrete theory doesn't explain the abundance of the iron spheres.



Spheres in fly ash (cenospheres) are hollow and predominantly alumina and silica. Iron oxide typically makes up only about 5-10% of fly ash used in cement. While the WTC microspheres also contain aluminium and silicon, and while we also find silicon-rich spheres, iron-rich spheres are the most common. Fly ash may be the source of the alumino-silicates also abundant in the WTC dust, but that doesn't explain how they were vapourized to a 'Swiss Cheese' appearance, something which requires temperatures in excess of 5000°F!

Also in the dust are relatively low-oxygen iron microspheres:

The RJ Lee report also provides a micrograph and XEDS data for iron-rich spheres observed in the WTC dust; for example, their figure 21 shows an “SEM image and EDS of spherical iron particle.” We likewise observe high-iron, relatively low oxygen spheres, which we find are unlike spheres gathered from cutting structural steel with an oxyacetylene torch

http://www.journalof911studies.com/articles/WTCHighTemp2.pdf

Many of the microspheres also contain sulfur:

XEDS spectrum for the largest metal-rich spherule found in sample 2. K and L lines for noted elements are labeled after the element symbol. Elemental contents in atomic percent are approximately: Fe (65), O (18), Al (11), S (4), Cu (0.6), Mn (0.6), Ni (0.4); the small C peak is likely from the carbon conductive tab used to hold the sample. The Fe-S-Al-O signature is striking, nothing like the signature of structural steel. Note also: Sulfur peak without a calcium peak, so the sulfur is not from calcium-sulfate contamination (gypsum).

http://www.journalof911studies.com/articles/WTCHighTemp2.pdf

I can't find any references for the presence of sulfur in fly ash. Also, some of the iron microspheres are hollow with sulfur on the inside:

Some of these microspheres are hollow, and Dr. Jones has determined that the inside surface of these spheres contain sulfur. This is consistent with a molten droplet containing some gaseous sulfur. The physics of this situation is the same as for bubbles. The surface tension and the internal gas pressure cause the radius of the bubble to adjust to balance these two forces.

http://911blogger.com/news/2007-06-20/journal-911-studies-some-physical-chemistry-aspects-thermite-thermate-iron-aluminum-rich-microspheres

Steven Jones tested a sample of concrete for iron microspheres and found none:

PS -- some time ago, we crushed a concrete sample obtained from the WTC rubble, used magnetic concentration, and looked for iron-rich spheres. There were NONE found.

http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=3279843&postcount=115

Any ambiguity there may have been regarding the iron microspheres has now been eliminated thanks to the discovery of active thermitic material. The spheres in the WTC dust are identical to spheres produced during the ignition of commercial thermite and the ignition of the red-grey chips.

#146 - #155 - Eutectic Steel/Thermite Cutter BS

See John Coles videos:

The Mysterious Eutectic Steel
The Great Thermate Debate
Eliminate the Impossible

#158 - DSC of red chip ignition doesn't match documented nanothermite ignition

Neils Harrit: "IT IS BETTER - FASTER."

#166 - It's paint!

*Facepalm*

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Maybe with Some Goading Keith Olbermann Will Flirt with 9/11 Truth a Bit More

Send tweets to Keith Olbermann:



@KeithOlbermann -- Richard Gage from Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth AE911Truth.org : in New York around 9/11. PLEASE interview him!!!



Also, Thumbs Up this Current TV request:



http://getsatisfaction.com/currentcom/topics/please_have_olbermann_inteview_richard_gage_from_ae911truth_org_re_9_11



Maybe he will do it now that he's on a smaller network and more in charge.



Spread the word so we get as many people tweeting him and voting for the CTV request.



Then cross your fingers and/or pray.



Source:



http://911blogger.com/news/2011-09-02/get-richard-gage-countdown-keith-olbermann



As Pat Curley of the Screw Loose Change blog has pointed out, Olbermann has flirted with LIHOP.







Olberman has stated that it is the Bush administration's "criminal neglect that allowed the attacks to occur."







And he was the only major U.S. media source to cover the Cheney Iran false flag story.







Olbermann has stated that the idea that the Twin Towers were blown up "may be a lot stronger stuff than most Americans can contemplate," but that was back in 2006. In late 2010, when FOX News host Judge Andrew Napolitano made comments supportive of the demolition hypothesis, Frances Martel of the Mediaite blog noted that Olbermann didn't "take any particular issue" with Napolitano's comments. So maybe with some goading he will flirt with 9/11 truth a bit more!



Related Info:







NEW YORK PREMIERE OF DOCUMENTARY '9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out' By Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth

Read More

Propaganda Wars, Episode 2: The BBC Strikes Back!

9/11: Conspiracy Road Trip - Sept 8, 2011, 21:00 GMT, BBC3

This September marks the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, one of the biggest terrorist atrocities of the 21st Century. Nineteen hijackers, all members of Al Qaeda, crashed four planes on American soil, leading to the deaths of 2,973 innocent people.

This horrific event has generated a multitude of conspiracy theories that contradict the official findings of the US government's investigation into the events of that day.

Andrew Maxwell, a comedian, believes in the findings of the official investigation, which claim the responsibility for the attack lies with Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. He thinks the conspiracies theories are unsubstantiated nonsense. So in this film he offers to take five young Brits, who believe some of these conspiracy theories, on a road-trip from New York to Washington. They visit Ground Zero where two planes hit the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, home of vast American defence HQ and Shanksville in Pennsylvania where United 93 crashed.

Each of them believes different elements of the conspiracy theories. Charlotte, a North London nanny who witnessed the attacks, thinks the American government is responsible. She can't believe the hijackers, barely out of flying school, could have steered jetliners into the Twin Towers with such deadly accuracy. Rodney a health worker who studied biochemistry suspects the collapse of the towers was not caused by the planes that went in to them and he wants to get to the bottom of the science. Student Emily, an active member of the 9/11 Truth Movement, thinks the US government was forewarned of the attacks and yet ignored the intelligence allowing it to happen. Shazin, a qualified surveyor, wants to find out how the passengers on United 93 could have made phone calls to loved ones from a plane. And Charlie, an ex-banker thinks 9/11 was an excuse for the US Government to go to war with Iraq.

Andrew Maxwell thinks all five of them are wrong and wants to change their minds by confronting them with the facts. So as the bus criss-crosses the east coast of America he tries to convert them to his point of view. He wants to prove to them that 9/11 was no conspiracy and that sometimes the truth, whilst not easy to accept, is staring you right in the face. In order to do so, he takes them to meet experts, the chief air traffic controller on the day, demolition specialists, voice morphing engineers and he gets them to conduct scientific experiments and even fly an aeroplane.

Finally they meet a mother who tragically lost her son, to listen to her account of what it was like to live through this monumental tragedy. Andrew believes it is easy to judge world events from the safe distance of a computer screen in your bedroom but not easy when you are brought face to face with the real human stories behind them

Andrew Maxwell fights an exhausting battle for the truth and in his mission to convert his fellow travellers there are rows, falling-outs and tears. But there are also moments of tenderness, empathy and warmth.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b014gpjx

---

This is the documentary that Charlie Veitch took part in and was supposedly converted during the filming of. Apparently, they do an experiment with 'nanothermite', which will be interesting. I've got a feeling though the negative reaction Charlie received is going to feature in the program and they're gonna make the 9/11 truth movement out to be a cult. This one might be a propaganda win for the BBC. All their Conspiracy Files pieces have been so bad they've woke more people up but this one could be very dangerous.

See Also:
Conspiracy Road Trip Reactions
Charlie Veitch, WTF???
Charlie Veitch Parroting Outdated Official Claims Regarding WTC7
My Top 10 Debunker Fails
The Eleventh Fail: The BBC & 9/11 Truth ... Four and a Half Years On

Read More

The Eleventh Fail: The BBC & 9/11 Truth ... Four and a Half Years On

Written by Scootle Royale, with help from John-Michael Talboo.

Shortly before the BBC Conspiracy Files hitpiece aired on Monday, I published a blog listing my top ten debunker fails. After seeing watching the piece, I think the entire program deserves to be considered the eleventh fail.

The program was basically an updated version of their first 9/11 program that aired in 2007. It started the same way, with the shaky-cam walk around Hangar 17 set to sentimental music and shocking images of the day. Once again Alex Jones, Jim Fetzer and Dylan Avery represented 9/11 truth, except this time with Neils Harrit. New footage of AJ and Fetzer was shot, but for Dylan they simply reused footage from the 2007 version. To sum up the program in one word: strawman!

First of all, who in the 9/11 truth movement takes Jim Fetzer seriously anymore?! No one! Why the hell would the BBC interview him for a 2011 documentary on the 9/11 truth movement? They would have been better off interviewing CIT! It seems the BBC still thinks it's 2007.

The alternative theories they investigated were:

1. NORAD standdown claims
2. The demoliton theory for the towers
3. Pentagon no-plane claims
4. Claims that the C-130 was involved in the conspiracy
5. The demolition theory for WTC 7 / Red-Gray Chips
6. Flight 93 no-plane / shootdown claims
7. Speculation that Flight 93 landed in Cleveland
8. The Lone Gumen Pilot
   
9. Skepticism surrounding Bin Laden's Death
10. 9/11 Foreknowledge, Dick Clark, two Hijackers living with an FBI informant etc.

Now regular readers of this blog will know that we only endorse about four or five of these claims. The 9/11 truth movement has abandoned alot of these theories. The sections on the C-130 and Flight 93 were essentially identical to the 2007 version of the program. Footage of interviews with the Dylan, the C-130 pilot, the passenger of Delta 1989, Wally Miller and the former Mayor of Indian Lake was reused for this version. About three minutes were spent on the C-130 claims and almost ten minutes were spent on the Flight 93 claims. The section on WTC7 and the red/gray chips was only 7 minutes. So the program essentially was one hour-long straw man attack.

Unlike their previous 9/11 programs there was no token family member saying we're horrible this time. Although at the very end the narrator did say "The 9/11 conspiracy file seems certain to remain open for a long time to come, however distressing and painful that will be for the families of those who died that day". Once again, the BBC did not interview family members who support 9/11 truth or even acknowledge their existence. Their continued ignorance of these people is probably the most despicable thing about these Conspiracy Files programs.



The stuff about the Pentagon was actually pretty good. They interviewed engineer Allyn Kilsheimer and FBI special agent Jean O'Connor. Allyn discussed how the damage he saw matches the Perdue animation of the Pentagon impact. He also mentioned how he saw dead bodies, including bodies with airline uniforms. Jean discussed how they used large wooden crates that were built specifically to hold the airplane parts. Immediately after she says that the program cuts to a shaky-cam shot of a piece of debris (image above). The narrator says "The FBI retains this section of the plane in its distinctive American Airlines livery". Jean then discussed how she personally collected remains, DNA etc.

Like most of the program, this is a fairly rational critique of a fringe theory that do not endorse, so I agree with this. It's not so much what was in the program, it's what WASN'T in the program that pisses me off!

The stuff about the air defence was basically the same as the 2007 version. Except instead of Davin Coburn telling us the official story, the BBC interviewed Colin Scoggins of the FAA. Scoggins was the source of one of the claims in the Popular Mechanics article.

Scoggins was interviewed at length for David Ray Griffin's book Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory. Both he and former Former FAA Air Traffic Controller Robin Hordon (who believes 9/11 was an inside job) were interviewed, and through their combined testimonies and research it is shown that the FAA's supposed slow response to the hijacked flights is not only inherently unbelievable, but also "in tension with several other reports."

The excuses were the same as the 2007 version:

• The transponders were off and the military were trying to find the plane amongst thousands of blips on the radar.
  

  As stated by the 9/11 Commission, "With its transponder off, it is possible, though more difficult, to track an aircraft by its primary radar returns. But unlike transponder data, primary radar returns do not show the aircraft's identity and altitude."
  
  The commission failed to consider the fact that the US military has more than just ground radar at their disposal.
  
  As defined by the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, AWACS is "a sophisticated detection aircraft, fitted with powerful radar and a computer, capable of simultaneously tracking and plotting large numbers of low-flying aircraft at much greater distances than is possible with ground radar."
  
  On 9/11, an AWACS plane on a training mission in the Washington, DC, area was ordered to return to its base in Oklahoma limiting the communications and surveillance capabilities of NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector.
  
  In 2006 New Scientist magazine reported that "US military radar can track space debris as small as 10 centimetres across, and can sometimes see things as small as 5 cm wide if it is in just the right orbit."
  
  The 35 USAF bases that were within range of the 9/11 flights unquestionably possessed highly-sophisticated radar.
  
  Commercial airliners do not need their transponders turned on in order to be tracked by the US military. If America was being attacked by aircraft belonging to a foreign power, it is ridiculous to think these enemy aircraft would have transponders installed to help the US Air Force shoot them down. It is equally ridiculous to believe the US military lack the technology to track aircraft without a transponder
  signal.

• There was a 'routine exercise' confusing things.
  

  In stating this, the BBC again failed to mention the in fact there were four coincidental drills that were taking place on the morning of 9/11 that were eerily similar to the real events. These wargames seem to have included live-fly simulations of hijackings and NORAD radar screens which displayed false tracks throughout the attacks.
  
  See:
  
  'Let's Get Rid of This Goddamn Sim': How NORAD Radar Screens Displayed False Tracks All Through the 9/11 Attacks

• The scrambled jets didn't know where to go.
  

  Included after the narrator says that is a segment of audio from the Vanity Fair NORAD Tapes article: "I don't know where I'm scrambling these guys to. I need a direction, a destination". Here's the full audio clip:
  
  08:44:59
  FOX: MCC [Mission Crew Commander], I don't know where I'm scrambling these guys to. I need a direction, a destination-
  NASYPANY: OK, I'm gonna give you the Z point [coordinate]. It's just north of-New York City.
  FOX: I got this lat long, 41-15, 74-36, or 73-46.
  NASYPANY: Head 'em in that direction.
  FOX: Copy that.
  
  I think the BBC exaggerated the confusion here by only including the first part of the clip.
  

• The equipment and procedures were designed to intercept planes attempting to enter the US from outside.
  

  However, there is much evidence that looking inward was also one of their responsibilities. When asked about this issue by 9/11 researcher Jeff Hill, NORAD historian Thomas Fuller stated that "if we were alerted we would be able to intercept" anywhere; noting as an example the instance where NORAD intercepted golfer Payne Stewart's runaway Learjet. "Debunkers" use this incident to demonstrate that intercept times are not speedy. This despite the fact that these events are barely comparable. Stewart was flying a 6-8 passenger Learjet 35, not a large commercial airliner, which was not flying over densely populated areas, did not have its transponder turned off, and was on autopilot as opposed to having terrorists at the helm clearly attacking the country.

The program mentions that it is alleged that Dick Cheney ordered a stand down but does not present any of the evidence for why many believe there was a stand down and why people suspect Cheney. For example, ignored was the fact that no shoot-down orders were issued until after the attacks were already over; a timespan of over two hours, and Norman Mineta's testimony possibly indicating the opposite, a stand-down order from Cheney.

For much more info on the lack of air defence stuff, see here.

Their section on the demolition of the towers was also basically the same as 2007 version. The only feature of destruction they point out is the squibs, and Leslie Robertson repeats the old chestnut that they're just puffs of air escaping from the pancaking floors, addressed here. I've always seen the squibs as a distraction from other features of the destruction that are much stronger evidence for demolition. In fact, I suspect they may even have been intentionally mistimed for that purpose. It's worth noting though that measurements by David Chandler and others have shown that even at the begining of the collapses, the speed of the ejections exceeded 100 miles per hour. It is unlikely that the pancaking of floors, especially so early on the collapse, could push out air so fast. We also have video of what appears to be a 'squib', before the collapse even happened.

Robertson also attacks the straw man version of the 'Fire can't melt steel' argument, saying the steel didn't need to melt, only weaken. The problem is, steel did melt! There was molten steel at ground zero, which Leslie Robertson himself confirmed!

Next, the BBC interviews a structural engineer who rejects the demolition theory and thinks it distracts from a debate about the safety of the twin towers. After saying the conspiracy debate tends to go round in circles, he claims the twin towers weren't up to code. Leslie Robertson says this is ridiculous. I'm not sure why this was included in the program. They spent more time on this irrelevant debate than they did on the case for demolition.

The only interesting segment of this hour long program was the seven minutes they spent on WTC7 and the red/grey chips. The program acknowledges that NIST found that WTC7 fell in virtual free fall for two seconds but doesn't make much of a big deal out of it. Neils Harrit then discusses the red-grey chips. He says the red side shows all the characteristics of being thermitic and mentions how they react when heated.

The person interviewing him then asks what sort of reaction his paper has received from the scientific community. Harrit says, "none!". He says it's without a doubt the best peer-reviewed paper he's ever published (of nealy 60 as of 04/10/2009) because its findings have remained unchallenged for over two years.

Next we are introduced to two scientists from Carnegie Mellon University, who the BBC contacted to whitewash Harrit's findings. One of the Carnegie scientists says the chips release less energy per kilogram than paper. I don't know what he's on about here because the paper says they release more energy per unit mass than conventional thermite and conventional explosives. Case in point, blog contributor Adam Taylor recently asked Neils Harrit to address the argument from debunker, er, make that respectful rebuttaler Chris Mohr, that the "sample 1 in figure 29 doesn't match the comparison with the known thermitic reaction," Harrit replied, "IT IS BETTER - FASTER."

The narrator then says something like "USGS studied 38 dust samples, RJ Lee studied thousands, Jones and Harrit studied only four" and essentially accuses them of cherry-picking dust. How can you cherry-pick when you've only collected four samples? It can only be cherry-picking if you collect thousands but only select the four you want for your study.

The scientists collected only four samples. And these chips were present in all four samples. This tells us something about how prevalent these red chips were in the dust.

Imagine a city-sized haystack that has a few needles hidden in it. If you were to take say a random binbag-sized sample of hay from that haystack, the likelihood of one of those small number of needles being in the sample that you collected is extremely small. On the other hand, if you took four random samples of hay from a city-sized haystack, and each of the samples contained several needles. What that would tell you is that the city-sized haystack was most probably full of needles. The fact that red chips are present in the four relatively tiny samples obtained by Jones and his colleagues suggests that these red chips were everywhere.

The other Carnegie scientist repeats the claim that we have heard so many times before from debunkers. That's right, they've once again gone with the primer paint claim.

See:

The Debunking the Debunkers Exploding Paint Archive - 46 posts from our archive that tear to shreds their ludicrous paint claims, hypocritical peer-review arguments and conspiratorial chain of custody suggestions.

When I heard experts would be addressing Neils Harrit's findings I was expecting more than this.

The narrator then acknowledges that Jones and Harrit studied a primer paint sample and found it to be different from the red chips. The program doesn't really respond to this though. The Carnegie scientist just keeps on talking about how there would likely be several coats of paint and the red-chips were likely primer from the structural steel. That's what they studied! It's ironic that as they're talking about paint there's footage of someone painting across the screen with white paint, coz this really is a whitewash!

The program then cuts to a shot of the Manhatten bridge and the narrator says that this type of primer is painted all over it. She then says that the temperature the red-grey chips react at is what we would expect if it was primer paint.

Really? So is the chemical reaction aluminothermic?! Are droplets of molten iron produced in the reaction? Are you gonna do any experiments?!

During a radio interview with chemical engineer Mark Basile (who independently confirmed Harrit's paper and only became a full-fledged truther after doing so), the host George Corrette asked:

Now one of the things that we've heard; these kind of crude critiques of this study is: 'Well all these red and gray chips, well how do you know they're just not paint chips'. What would one expect with Sherman-Williams exterior coat paint if you were to do the exact same thing with this: take those paint chips, put them on this quarter inch resistance heater that you have, and ignite it if you will, heat it up to a point of ignition...

Basile responds:

...If I have a thermite fire and I were to put that rod in there it would melt, be.. you know, if I had sufficient material there to do that, so... it's just the level of energy release, so, yep, there'd be an energy release, but I wouldn't expect say if within that paint chip there was iron oxide as one of the pigments that they put in there, I wouldn't expect to open that paint chip afterwards and find, you know, molten iron has been produced and now there would be iron droplets inside the residue of that chip.

For more on the aluminothermic nano-'paint', see:

Thermitic Pyrotechnics in the WTC Made Simple
WHY THE RED/GRAY CHIPS ARE NOT PRIMER PAINT

Until these 'scientists' publish a peer-reviewed rebuttal, the findings of Harrit, Jones et al are still valid. When asked why no one has attempted to publish a rebuttal, one of the Carnegie scientists laughably claims that, while it would be fairly easy to disprove Harrit's claims, it would be a waste of time. Most scientists are busy doing more interesting things! Apparently the defining moment of the 21st century isn't interesting enough for most scientists!

Once again, the BBC interviewed the X-Files guy who again basically called 9/11 truth a religion. Clips of the pilot episode of The Lone Gunmen are shown and the narrator mentions how people believe that the show was predictive programming for the real thing. It's worth noting that the star of the show, Dean Haglund, believes this to be the case. In 2004, he revealed how the government officials often attend Hollywood parties and submit ideas for film and TV show plots.

As for the foreknowledge stuff at the end, there is much more evidence than what was included in the program. (Again, for more on this, see here). But could it all be due to incompetence? Well, as Sibel Edmonds once said on a radio show:

You know, it is very easy to write off things when you have one or two slip-ups, and you attribute certain things to bureaucratic bungling - but it goes beyond that... Now, what is that? As I said, I wont be able to answer the question, but what I can answer is, yes, we had this 911 Commission that was formed (laughs) and first we had Henry Kissinger appointed to be the Chairman, this tells you what kind of Commission they had in mind, which was going to be cosmetic. It was pretty obvious. Then we had the final Commission, with a bunch of people with conflicts of interest, and we didn't get anything.

As you see, people have been gagged, a lot of things have been classified... And you think 'Why would they go so far to cover up bureaucratic bungling?' Again, that doesn't mean that this was an inside job, but what it tells you is that there are a lot of things that we don't know, there are a lot of things that our government doesn’t want us to know.

All in all this BBC program was perhaps even worse than the 2007 version. Because at least back then we could forgive them for thinking things like the Pentagon, C-130 and Flight 93 stuff were important issues for 9/11 truth. But now after four and a half years of evolution no serious truther really cares that much about these issues anymore. As I said earlier, it's not so much what was in the program, it's what WASN'T in the program that pisses me off!

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A Message of Peace and a Pledge of Tolerance

Earlier today I received this email:

Hello John

In memory of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I would like to offer you and your readers of Debunking The Debunkers a message of peace in a short video and a pledge of tolerance.



If you are able to post or tweet about the video and the pledge, please let me know. I am here if you have any questions.

Thank you so much,

Elizabeth
--
Elizabeth Potter
Unity Productions Foundation
myfellowamerican.us
facebook.com/MyFellowAmericanProject

Thanks for passing along the message Ms. Potter, you have our support.

As I wrote after a debate with a member of former NYC Mayor Giuliani's Economic Development Committee, Subcommittee on Taxation, Finance and the Budget, Andrew G. Benjamin, late last year:

While I was searching around for more info on Mr. Benjamin I found that he had posted two comments supportive of the website islam-watch.org using the email he contacted me from. The website features a permanent picture of the Twin Towers being hit on 9/11 in the right-hand corner and claims that Islam has a "hateful and violent core." So, Islam's violent nature is responsible for 9/11.

Never mind that extensive polling data indicates that the majority of the more than one billion Muslims in the world have an opposite interpretation of the Quran. If they didn't they would be a whole lot scarier than peanuts, but they're not! And never mind that according to professor of political science Robert A. Pape, the first complete database of suicide terrorism around the world from 1980 through early 2004 showed that over half the terrorists were secular and over 95% were trying to compel a modern democracy to withdrawal combat forces from their country.

Really never mind numbers often cited concerning how many people Muslims have killed in the last 1,000 years, because not only are they greatly exaggerated, but completely irrelevant.

The pertinent statistics are ones such as these, which estimate that one million plus Muslims have been killed by the U.S. in the past 30 years, many times arguably without justification, which equates to over 100 Muslim fatalities for every American lost, and those numbers do no not take into consideration many things that would make the figures even more heavily slanted. Furthermore, the larger issue at hand is U.S. empire-building.

As the hip-hop group Dead Prez states:

you wanna stop terrorists?
start with the u.s. imperalists
ain't no track record like america's, see
bin laden was trained by the c.i.a
but I guess if you a terrorist for the u.s
then it's okay

Exact transcript of the onscreen text in the Wonderful World segment.

If the warnings hadn't been ignored, if NORAD had done its job, and if the laws of physics weren't broken, not even Osama's CIA training would have led to those 3,000 people being killed.

After sharing this post with Ms. Potter and wishing her good luck in her efforts she replied:

This is excellent! Thank you so much for deciding to share it with your readers and help us spread the word of this video and initiative. I am sure your support will make a difference and we sincerely apprecite the support and good wishes. Have a great week!

Cheers
Liz

Update: A Message of Peace and a Pledge of Tolerance - 9/11/11 and Beyond

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