The discovery of molten steel at ground zero does not by itself contradict the official collapse hypothesis: Obviously, fire CAN melt steel - blacksmiths have been doing it for hundreds of years! In fact, they don't even need high temperature fuel like kerosene to do it - simple coal will suffice!
This is a double pronged claim, which alleges that not only can ordinary fires generate temperatures hot enough to melt steel, but that such temperatures were present at the WTC complex. For this, we need to draw a distinction between open air fires and a blast furnace. Melting large quantitys of steel requires a fire pit with excellent thermal insulation, a gigantic fuel supply, and massive amounts of forced air (three pre-requisites that the WTCs simply did not have). Even then, heating the material to the necessary temperature can take hours! Anyone with a basic understanding of metallurgy knows this. Although with that being said, what matters most in this triangle is the sum total of BTUs your fire generates, which can be satisfied without having all three conditions in perfect balance... Every couple of decades or so, some part of the world is unfortunate enough to experience something called a firestorm: When very high densitys of combustible materials are present, and many seperate fires are able to feed on them across a wide area, they may eventually merge together and generate a wind vortex, which sucks up huge amounts of air and leads to a towering inferno.
We saw this happen in the chicago fire of 1871, the hinckley fire of 1894, the fires that followed the 1906 san francisco earthquake and the 1945 air raid on tokyo, as well as the 1991 oakland fire. Of course, burning down an entire neighbourhood just to melt a few pounds of steel is a lousy trade off, and in no way comparable to the conditions of ground zero, where many tons of molten steel were being found in the days, weeks, and even months following the 911 attacks. It is inconceivable that the fires in the twin towers somehow managed to reach an intensity well beyond these historical examples, especially given the poor air supply and combustible loads.* Even if they could, steel does not have a thermal inertia high enough to remain molten for more than a few hours after the initial heat was supplied! Hence, the persistent flow at ground zero is a question which goes even beyond the ability of a controlled demolition to explain: We are talking about energy output on the scale of a nuclear reactor. While further experiment is required to determine exactly what caused this staggering heat, we can safely rule out the notion that it was solely the result of smoldering hydrocarbons! [1]
*This is because, at the fires peak, average temperatures in the impact zones hovered around 120 celsius, and even the hot spots did not exceed 260 celsius. These figures were predicted in two seperate papers [2] [3], and later confirmed by thermograms taken of the twin towers after the plane crashs. 260 celcius isn't even sufficient to melt lead, let alone the aluminum which debunkers insist was systematically identified as steel! More damaging yet, temperatures of 260 celsius are totally unable to bring about a creep failure of the twin towers columns, even given the most pessimistic interpretations of the plane impacts. Theory manages to connect firmly with reality for once, which is more than we can say for our debunker friends.
We saw this happen in the chicago fire of 1871, the hinckley fire of 1894, the fires that followed the 1906 san francisco earthquake and the 1945 air raid on tokyo, as well as the 1991 oakland fire. Of course, burning down an entire neighbourhood just to melt a few pounds of steel is a lousy trade off, and in no way comparable to the conditions of ground zero, where many tons of molten steel were being found in the days, weeks, and even months following the 911 attacks. It is inconceivable that the fires in the twin towers somehow managed to reach an intensity well beyond these historical examples, especially given the poor air supply and combustible loads.* Even if they could, steel does not have a thermal inertia high enough to remain molten for more than a few hours after the initial heat was supplied! Hence, the persistent flow at ground zero is a question which goes even beyond the ability of a controlled demolition to explain: We are talking about energy output on the scale of a nuclear reactor. While further experiment is required to determine exactly what caused this staggering heat, we can safely rule out the notion that it was solely the result of smoldering hydrocarbons! [1]
*This is because, at the fires peak, average temperatures in the impact zones hovered around 120 celsius, and even the hot spots did not exceed 260 celsius. These figures were predicted in two seperate papers [2] [3], and later confirmed by thermograms taken of the twin towers after the plane crashs. 260 celcius isn't even sufficient to melt lead, let alone the aluminum which debunkers insist was systematically identified as steel! More damaging yet, temperatures of 260 celsius are totally unable to bring about a creep failure of the twin towers columns, even given the most pessimistic interpretations of the plane impacts. Theory manages to connect firmly with reality for once, which is more than we can say for our debunker friends.
Explosives are not needed to explain the twin towers collapse. Even if the upper block had fallen by just half a meter, it would have generated enough kinetic energy to result in a global collapse.
The validity of this claim is dependant on a number of unspecified factors. Assuming a piledriver mass of 45,000 tons for WTC 1 and 86,000 tons for WTC 2, this motion would yield a KE of only 220.43 and 421.26 megajoules, respectively. This is a stress level well below what is needed to buckle the buildings supports. Thus, a typical column on column collision would result in only minor damage to the towers. In order to get something more destructive, the debunker must specify one of two conditions: Either the upper block fell from a greater height than half a meter, or the columns of the two opposing structures somehow missed each other. The former would require suddenly voiding an entire floors worth of beams and columns from existence, which simply can't be done by an asymmetric process like office fires. The latter would require the presence of some angular motion which would tilt the upper block before (not after) its impact with the lower structure, so that the load is redistributed onto the towers flimsy floors. But other than having the entire north or south face of the building blown out with explosives (thus clearing a path for the piledriver to descend through), no one knows how the block could be made to tip over like that. Suffice to say, collapse initiation is a major problem for the official story of 911. So despite the predictions made in professor bazants work, global collapse resulting from office fires is far from inevitable. It needs to be kept in mind that many falsitys have been inserted into this discussion via his papers. For example, because the core columns were ten times less stiff than bazant estimated, dynamic loads would be absorbed by the structure over a longer period of time, leading to less damage. This, when combined with the buildings high reserve capacity, would make a 31 G load amplification very unlikely. Even with an intact block exerting its full weight on the lower structure, the resulting collapse (for WTC 1) would take 31.29 seconds to reach ground level.
There is no need to get into the specifics of the alleged 911 conspiracy. The simple fact that truthers have not managed to get even one scientific paper published in a mainstream, peer reviewed journal is enough to fatally undermine the credibility of such fantasys.
Yeah, this is complete nonsense. Such statements attempt to create a fictional criterion, wherein the only way that government complicity in scenario x can be firmly established, is through the scientific method. This ignores the fact that such atrocitys were politically and ideologically motivated, and that the case could conceivably be proven through paper trails and death bed confessions alone. Thus, the privilege of passing final judgement on the issue should not be relinquished to those whose expertise lies only in the scientific medium: The burden of proof can span across numerous parameters. Moreover, even if we were to agree with the flawed premise of the debunker argument, it is still completely false! There are a half dozen such papers discussing physical evidence which have managed to gain entry into mainstream scientific journals, and even more entrys which have been published in open access mediums (even if we ignore those which focus on political and social science). A full listing of the most credentialed articles will be posted below.
-Some Misunderstandings Related to WTC Collapse Analysis, by Tony Szamboti. / International Journal of Protective Structures.
-Temporal Considerations in Collapse of WTC Towers, by Gregory Szuladzinski. / International Journal of Structural Engineering.
-Discussion of "Why the Observed Motion History of World Trade Center Towers is Smooth", by Crockett Grabbe. / Journal of Engineering Mechanics.
-Environmental Anomalies at the World Trade Center: Evidence for Energetic Materials, by K. Ryan, J. Gourley and S.E. Jones. / The Environmentalist.
-Discussion of “What Did and Did Not Cause Collapse of World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York?”, by Anders Bjorkman. / Journal of Engineering Mechanics.
-What Accounts for the Molten Metal Observed on 9/11/2001?, by Steven E. Jones. / Journal of the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.
-Discussion of "Progressive Collapse of the World Trade Center: A Simple Analysis", by Crockett Grabbe. / Journal of Engineering Mechanics.
-Collapse Time Analysis of Multi-Story Structural Steel Buildings, by Robert Korol. / Open Journal of Civil Engineering (Bentham Open).
-Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction. / Open Journal of Chemical Physics.
-Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe. / Open Journal of Civil Engineering (Bentham Open).
-Calculations on the Possible Use of Thermite to Melt Sections of the WTC Core Columns,
by Derrick Grimmer. / Department of Mathematics, Washington University in St. Louis.
-The Impossibility of Flying Heavy Aircraft Without Training, by Nila Sagadevan. / School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh.
The reason why conspiracy theorys like this surface is because some people simply don't have what it takes to face up with hard reality. It is too frightening for them to believe that there are people on the other side of the world who will kill americans out of religious fervour.
Actually, the 'reality' broadcast to us by mass media outlets after the September 11th attacks is far less frightening than the reality which is more than merely hinted at by the existing evidence base. Instead of bearded time lords hiding in a cave, we have the daunting prospect of a government which can engage in outrageous crimes against humanity, and get away with them almost scott-free. Instead of wild-eyed terrorists hiding in our closets at night, we have an anti-human regime which exercises near absolute power over the world, and can literally rewrite history at the drop of a hat. Many facets of the state apparatus previously unknown to citizen dissidents made their debut on 911, including the existence of a domestic murder program. Humanitys greatest fear has never been of the distant other, but the distorted evil revealed in his own mirror-reflection.
"The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind simply has not come to a realisation of the evil which has been introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent." -J. Edgar Hoover
"Most people prefer to believe their leaders are just and fair even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which they live is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of a corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one’s self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all." -Michael Rivero
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear." -Marcus Tulius Cicero
Secrets this big can't be kept! Someone would have talked!
If giant secrets are impossible to keep, then why does virtually every nation in the world happen to employ at least one intelligence organisation? Why would leaders waste their countrys budget on funding such enterprises, when they can instead use it to line the pockets of their corporate backers? Obviously, organisations like the CIA and FBI do serve some integral purpose, one that goes beyond simple intelligence collection and analysis. In fact, covert action is their main selling point, the feature which guarantees continued funding from washington. This mission role takes on a broad spectrum, and can range from mere errand running for individuals (I.E, launching a sting operation against a VIPs critics), statewide operations involving the trafficking of drugs and dirty money, to massive works of deception like ultra, the manhattan project, and operation fortitude. So saying that 'big secrets can't be kept' isn't just bullshit, its dangerous bullshit. Out of these three categorys, the 3rd is by far the most pertinent to the questions surrounding 911, and the one which is conveniently never addressed by the debunkers. The only reason we even know about these intelligence operations today is because of their declassification in the years which followed their completion.
Let us never forget that in the realm of espionage,
the greatest spys are not those you read about in the
newspaper, but those whose existence is never known
If an insider did not have the courtesy to do this, these campaigns would still remain in the realm of 'conspiracy theory.' One cannot rely on the perpetrators having the conscience to confess to their actions, especially if it was a pre-meditated crime with a built in cover-up phase: Such operations effectively have an indefinite shelf life, and are meant to permanently stay out of the history books. Thus, when it comes to verifying the existence of a large scale intelligence operation, plausibility judgements which rely on the suspected partys admission of guilt is a logically insurmountable catch-22 complex. Using this metric, how would law enforcement agencys be able to convict anyone? All the suspects have to do is claim their innocence, and unless they have an accomplice who says otherwise, no amount of eyewitness testimony or physical evidence would be able to put them behind bars. The debunkers are no doubt aware of this contrived no win scenario, since they don't hesitate to use it again and again in their debates with truth advocates. But the entire argument is a faith based assumption which has no relevance beyond bolstering egos.
There is no way that people could be so evil as to stage such an attack, or be so arrogant as to think they could get away with it.
Newsflash: Not all psychopaths wind up in jail. Some of them are crafty enough to slip under the radar, find the company of like minded people, and get into positions of power. We need to accept the reality that such characters will make daring power grabs when the opportunity arises, and will attempt to dramatically expand their legal authority using clearly illegal methods. Even a cursory glance at the watergate scandal, iran contra, and the patriot act will confirm these transitional episodes in government. The powers that be are constantly testing the boundarys of what the public will tolerate. Unfortunately, the false lesson that some gullible individuals have drawn from this lineup of petty crimes is that, because many small conspiracys have been exposed to the public, so too will any conceivable SCAD (regardless of whether they were executed in the past or present tense). This is a wholly invalid conclusion to bring to the table. In the sphere of intelligence, we should never limit the boundarys of discussion to those conspiracys which have been wholly confirmed, while ignoring incidents which are merely suspected. This would be like an espionage agency basing its doctrine solely around the biographys of nikolai kuznetsov and richard sorge. Any conclusions drawn would contain deep and inherent flaws, because the only operatives judged are those who eventually had their cover blown.
As nassim haramein stated: "Unless we have come to know what is correct, we cannot perceive what is incorrect." Whether we like it or not, acquiring broad knowledge on a subject requires looking at the winners as well as the losers. Measuring real spying finesse is difficult because in espionage, the winner is elusive. Thats not because success is rarely obtained, but because keeping ones identity secret is a key component of success. This is something our celebrity obsessed culture seems unable to comprehend. We must also be cognisant of the fact that, even if a SCAD could not be covered up in the classic sense, there is a specific strategy whereby most of the nations top officials can get involved, and exposure of the official story will engender irreparable social chaos, repulsing any would-be whistle blower. This could be termed as a 'too big to fail,' since it effectively holds the entire nations socio-economic stability as collateral, allowing the perpetrators to get away with egregious offenses without fear of exposure from insiders. One of the more famous (some would say cliched) examples of this is the holocaust: The removal of nazi germanys racial and ideological nemesis' saw the close involvement of many top officials from the government. Why would they risk getting caught red handed in such a deplorable act? Because complete secrecy for such a large scale operation is utterly impossible (even in the age before cellphone cameras), and also because the greatest threat of exposure always lies within ones own borders.
A small scale incident like kristallnacht would be reported by domestic journalists, and the storys veracity would be accepted -if only reluctantly- by their fellow citizens. But this is not true of the vast crimes against humanity that are implied by postwar historians. Domestic whistle blowers would be faced with the terrible knowledge that if their report were to gain widespread acceptance among the german people, it would result in catastrophic social upheaval that would change the lives of even more people than were then being chewed up in the concentration camps. These individuals would understandably be reluctant to drop the guillotine on the fatherland. No man works tirelessly to destroy his own career! Even more disturbingly, some ordinary germans who accidentally found out about the mass murder program are known to have helped cover up its existence, in the deluded belief that they were somehow protecting the nation. Here we see the cruel genius of the holocaust, and other crimes against humanity: By immersing themselves so deeply into the extreme and the obscene, the ruling government creates an environment which is effectively impenetrable to the ordinary citizen. Even if joe average could break through the layers of secrecy surrounding the event, their minds would never be able to comprehend the sheer scale and savagery of the crime, leading them to engage in self gas lighting. This is, in essence, how the big lie principle works.
it anymore. Not when you see the bodies up close..
If the US invaded afghanistan to build an oil pipeline, why has there been almost no construction on it in 10 years?
One possible answer has been provided by ryan dawson. / The wars in the middle east were for separate reasons, afghanistan was about a few pipelines as noted but more so about controlling large quantities of un-tapped uranium (a reason for both the russian and US invasions), and secondly for controlling opium as the CIA uses drug money to fund its off the book black operations. Like the now known massive secret prison systems, torture camps, and the human medical and scientific testing. Location-wise, afghanistan is coupled with other color coded revolutions to circle china and russia with US bases and puppets, add to that the lesser known negotiations with japan to allow nuclear subs into the japanese sea (pointed at china) in exchange for moving troops from okinawa to guam. The main goal however, which the PNAC think tank states, is to keep the eye on the pie: Iran, which afghanistan and iraq both boarder. The invasion of iraq was to solve israels oil crisis and stop the threat of a secular middle east, which would become a true economic player and threat to the aggressive state of israel. / While true, it needs to be kept in mind that military bases in afghanistan were not so much about ensuring a safe path for the pipeline to run through, as it was about guaranteeing control over the area. This includes the option of delaying or blocking construction if the plans didn't unfold according to the US' precise needs: Denying the safe flow of oil through this region was as powerful an incentive as any other.
Claiming that iraq was invaded for oil is nonsense, since the money we spent fighting it (and the WOT in general) could have been used to purchase all their oil fields 100x over.
Jeremy rys has this to say on the matter. / It is now public knowledge that cia director george tenet falsified the case for WMDs, and that the real reason for the invasion of iraq was oil. This is duly confirmed by the invasion strategy, and the construction of permanent US military bases positioned directly on the oil fields. Buts its not really that simple. You see, in late 2000 saddam hussein threatened to switch for the euro for trading oil, and was pushing to convert iraqs ten billion dollar reserve fund at the UN to euros. This information about iraqs oil currency has been censored by the US media for the interest of the white house, federal reserve, and most importantly, the international bankers. Heres why: A country cannot produce an economy without energy. If countrys are forced to trade in their money for US dollars in order to buy energy, the value of the US dollar is increased proportional to the price of oil. So by then increasing the price of oil, you increase the amount each person has to now exchange for the same gallon of energy through the petrodollar, and the transaction balances out the deficit in the currency. This gives the currency its intrinsic value: Moneys just paper otherwise. Meanwhile, the central and international bankers who without this artificial bubble in are all reality bankrupt can keep their currency from crashing. Now combine this with the fact that iran and north korea, the two other axis' of evil, were also planning to switch off the US dollar to the euro...
Economic warfare is half of why the WOT
is being waged with such persistence.
The picture starts to become clearer. The banking systems of the western world and most of the globe rely on the commodotisation of finite raw resources that are forcefully traded through the US dollar in order to keep their currency and economic frameworks afloat. Dishonest and corrupt banking practises around the world create an unnatural dependency on oil and other forms of energy. This is why economic hit men like john perkens say that their first job was to construct a power plant, and loan third world countrys the money at interest to pay for it, thereby enslaving them through debt and dependence on the energy and its infrastructure. / In short, saying that the US invaded simply out of a desire to suck iraqs oil fields dry is a retarded straw man argument. But lets return to the question of oil. Iraqs pre-war oil reserves were estimated at roughly 190 billion barrels. With the new millennium price of oil fluctuating around 85 dollars per barrel, this represents an absolute minimum of 16 trillion dollars at stake. Some estimate the oil fields may be worth closer to 30 trillion! Thats not including all the petroleum hidden underneath the caspian seabed. The war on terror (which accomplished many other objectives both foreign and domestic) allowed america to gain control of this critical resource for a cost of just 1.5-2 trillion dollars, a comparative bargain when considering the overall package deal.
[1] http://www.takeourworldback.com/911demolished.htm Ground Zero fires could have heated the steel by up to 4 °F
[2] http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/guardian2/wtc/how-hot.htm THE JET FUEL; HOW HOT DID IT HEAT THE WORLD TRADE CENTER?
[3] http://911research.wtc7.net/papers/trumpman/CoreAnalysisFinal.htm WTC 1 COLLAPSE - THE FIRST MOMENTS
Two other excellent articles on this subject are:
Here's another reason the 9/11 fire-mediated collapse theory has to be wrong, by Joseph Smith.
Simple calculations showing that the official story of 911 is false, by James Madison.
Simple calculations showing that the official story of 911 is false, by James Madison.
*edit made feb 8, 2014.
