Kim Kardashian Hot 2011

Source URL: https://0832zy.blogspot.com/2011/
Visit The People Blog for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

"McClatchey ready to put disputed photograph in the past" - Daily American

Comments about this article below.


McClatchey ready to put disputed photograph in the past

September 9, 2011



Val McClatchey stands with Phyllis Musser, left, while holding McClatchey's photo titled, "End of Serenity." Musser owns the red barn captured in the photo.

Life changed in a single camera click on Sept. 11, 2001, for Somerset County resident Val McClatchey.

McClatchey’s infamous photo captured a mushroom cloud from the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 rising above a red barn and the rural Western Pennsylvania landscape. For nearly 10 years McClatchey’s photo, which she titled “End of Serenity,” was the earliest known image captured following the crash, until a video surfaced earlier this week.

The video, taken by the late Dave Berkebile, of Berlin, shows a cloud of smoke rising from the crash site. McClatchey herself had known about the video, and even had a copy, since the 5th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001.

“I had a message from my husband saying, ‘you’re not going to believe this,’” McClatchey said.  She said Berkebile gave her the video when he heard the authenticity of her photo was being criticized.

“He said, here’s your proof,” McClatchey said. The video was kept private until McClatchey  gave it to the National Park Service for an oral history leading into the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11. She donated it on behalf of Berkebile who died in February.

For McClatchey, the video lends further credibility to her photo. The photo, time stamped at 10:05 a.m. Sept. 11, 2001, and shot on her Hewlett-Packard 315 point-and-shoot, has been a subject of controversy since it was taken.

During the years, conspiracy theorists and bloggers have shown up on her doorstep harassing her, and bloggers have smeared her name on the Internet.

“Google my name and I’m a fraud,” she said.

McClatchey holds a copyright on the photo, prohibiting its use. She’s written complaints to Google asking that they remove her photo from Internet sites, but those complaints have come to no avail.

“I provided documentation and proof that (Internet sites) violated the terms of use of the copyright,” she said. “But who am I to take on Google?”

McClatchey was also involved in a lengthy lawsuit with the Associated Press over their use of the photo. The lawsuit resulted in a settlement.

“The result of the lawsuit was anything but a success,” she said. “When all was said and done, we were in the red.”

McClatchey describes the photo as a mixed blessing. She admitted that there have been times when she wishes she hadn’t taken it.

“I was meant to do it for a reason, even if I don’t know that reason yet,” she said. “I’ve had some great experiences.”

Her photo hangs in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., and will soon hang at the Flight 93 National Memorial. After the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, this weekend, McClatchey said she’s looking forward to moving on.

“Everything’s going to be packed up and put away,” she said. “It’ll be pretty much over.”

She does plan to make one more public appearance, however, in 2012. Her photo will be displayed at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City.

http://www.dailyamerican.com/da-ot-mcclatchey-ready-to-put-disputed-photograph-in-the-past-20110909,0,3182174.story


First, notice the vast difference in quality of the photo taken by the DailyAmerican reporter versus Val's photo taken with a 10 yr old HP 315 point-and-shoot digital camera.


See here about the suspicions of the newly released Dave Berkebile video that supposedly vindicates Val's photo.


It says the timestamp on her photo is at 10:05 am.  Officials are saying Val took her photo approx 5 seconds after the alleged Flight 93 impact.  I wouldn't make too much of this since times on a camera are input manually, so a camera's internal time could easily be off due to human error.


Now here's where it gets into some very misleading statements.  No one I've heard has "shown up on her doorstep" regarding her photo controversy.  The only people I know who meet her in person were Victor Thorn and Lisa Guliani, who called and made arrangements with Val to meet with her at her business, in which they said Val was all to willing to meet and discuss her photo with them.  At the time of this arranged meeting, Victor and Lisa assumed the photo was real, but thought Val had accidentally taken a photo of an ordnance blast  instead and that's what they wanted to discuss with her.  They said Val's demeanor turned sour and hostile after this.


About "smearing her name on the internet," is questioning someone's photo smearing the photographer's name?  As to Val saying google her name and it says she's a fraud, go ahead and do that and decide for yourself if it says that. In the first mainstream article by the PostGazette that reported about her photo controversy, the yellow journalist reporter made it look like I was calling her a fraud by saying the following in the article: "On a simple Google search, Mrs. McClatchey's name now pops up in the same sentence as 'total fraud.'" Let me remind everyone what the title of my original photo controversy blogpost said: "Val McClatchey Photo: More Smoking Guns, or Total Fraud?"  They all seem to forget the word "photo" was in my title.


The thing about Val claiming she was in the red after her AP lawsuit, just like her claim that all her profits from her photo sales were forwarded to the now-defunct Todd Beamer Foundation via the honor system, we only have Val's word to go by because there has never been a paper trail. Open your books, Val!
Source URL: https://0832zy.blogspot.com/2011/
Visit The People Blog for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

'Vindication' smoke cloud video finally surfaces

Back in 2007, Val McClatchey had reportedly showed an amateur video taken from Berlin, PA to a group at the 2007 Shanksville memorial reunion that supposedly showed the aftermath of the alleged Flight 93 crash explosion and, thereby, "vindicating" her infamous "End of Serenity" smoke cloud photo.

Ten years after 9/11, this video has finally surfaced:




Flight 93 crash site video surfaces
September 3, 2011
SHANKSVILLE — As the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaches, a video shot just minutes after the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 has surfaced.
While the video does not show the moment of impact, it clearly shows a mushroom cloud rising from the site of the crash at an abandoned strip mine near Shanksville.
The voice of Berlin resident Dave Berkebile, now deceased, can be heard speaking calmly in the background.
“This is the remains of an airplane crash over on Lambertsville Road,” he said. “Probably a terrorist bomb on board that blew up.”


Dave Berkebile, now deceased, who shot video of the Flight 93 crash scene, is shown with his wife, Cathy.
Berkebile said the crash “shook the heck out of the house ... A great, big, black cloud just mushroomed right up into the air.”
Then he added: “I wonder if there is anything left of Lambertsville.”



Val McClatchy of Indian Lake, who took the first known photo of the Flight 93 crash, watches a video shot moments after the crash.
Donna Glessner, who is collecting oral histories for the National Park Service, saw the video and said she believes it is the earliest known video of the crash.
“I thought it was just a very important historic piece,” she said.
“No one else has a video of that smoke cloud.”At the time of the crash, Berkebile and his wife, Cathy, lived on Blue Bird Road.
Although he passed away in February, his wife, who has since moved out of the state, spoke about events that day.She said a video camera was kept at easy access to shoot vistas from their home, which was situated on 40 acres.
“My family lives in the city,” she said. “They had never seen the mountains. Up there on my mountain are the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets. Also snowstorms.
“So I kept the video camera all charged up so I could go out and shoot anything gorgeous to show my family.”
Berkebile said their initial thought when they heard the explosion was that it was dynamite.
Although the distance between their home and the crash site is 8 miles by road, it is just 2 1/2 miles by air and Berkebile said they had an unobstructed view of the skies above the crash site.
“Everything was totally visible and he had the presence of mind to grab (the video camera) and go running out the door with it.”

http://tribune-democrat.com/local/x1095936052/Flight-93-crash-site-video-surfaces


Note that a comment left by Dave's sister in the article's comment section says the actually street location that the footage was taken at in Berlin, PA was Bluebird Lane, not Blue Bird Road:
Diane Deist wrote:
Hello, I am Dave Berkebile's sister. Our two homes are the only ones on Bluebird Lane. I saw it was listed as Blue Bird Road in my morning paper. Yes, that was an exciting morning, When my home shook from the impact, I immediately called Dave and asked him if his house shook, He said yes, 'What was that?' I said it must have been an earthquake! Then he saw the smoke to the NW and said'Look out your big window!' I turned on my scanner and heard a large plane went down in Lambertsville, when he heard this he said'I'm going to see.' I left right after for the Shanksville School where I had two grandchildren enrolled. When Dave returned, he said all he saw was a big hole in the ground. Thank you .
September 4, 2011, 7:43 PM

The article also says that the distance between the Berkebile's house and the crater is 2 1/2 miles by air, but according to Google Earth, the distance is about 5.8 miles.





Let's analyze the Dave Berkebile video.  It shows the following:

- a large trailing grey-colored smoke cloud
- looks to be originating where the crash supposedly happened
- smoke trail looks to be drifting east toward Bedford



On the surface, the video does look consistent with Val's photo and the official story, so this should be enough to vindicate Val McClatchey's mushroom cloud photo, right? 


Well not so fast.



I think everyone's first and immediate question about this video is why did it take 10 years for this video to surface?  Well get this:


“No one else has a video of that smoke cloud,” said Glessner. “As far as I know it has not been shown or broadcast anywhere.”
~
The video will be available at the crash scene’s Flight 93 National Memorial, which is being dedicated Saturday as part of the 10th anniversary remembrance of 9/11.

Berkebile’s wife, Cathy, said her husband initially offered to show the video to news outlets covering the Flight 93 story, but no one was interested in looking at it.


What? The media back then weren't interested in looking at a video of major historically significance???  Now that one is just a little too hard to swallow.

Reminds me of another::


Val McClatchey snapped the single picture with her new digital camera.
~
"I didn't even aim. I was just like, 'Oh, my God,' " she said. She dropped the camera, jolting the battery loose, then tried in vain to call her husband, son and daughter.




Next, you would think that this video was released by Mr. Berkebile’s wife, or other family member.  Nope.  Guess who of all people?


Five years ago, [Mr. Berkebile] gave the 1 minute, 38-second video to Val McClatchey, the woman who shot the only still photograph of Flight 93’s haunting, skyward aftermath.

McClatchey recently donated the video to the National Park Service for an oral history of 9/11.

The reason Mr. Berkebile allegedly gave it to Val was . . . because of me:


McClatchey recently donated the video to the National Park Service for an oral history of 9/11. She had endured years of harassment from conspiracy theorists who believe Flight 93 was shot down by U.S. military jets and that her photo was a fake.
~
So, she added, he kept it to himself until he read in the Johnstown, Pa., Tribune-Democrat about the conspiracy controversy surrounding McClatchey’s photo. That’s when he decided to give her the video to validate her mushroom cloud picture, dubbed “End of Serenity.”

“We never considered it might be important (until then),” said Mrs. Berkebile.

They never considered it might be important until then???  Did they not know they had the only alleged video of the smoke cloud? Apparently they did when earlier in the article Mrs. Berkebile said her husband initially tried to bring it to the attention of the media.



(Correcting the article, "we" don't think Flight 93 was shoot down.  We think it didn't crash and the scene was staged.)



There are some points about this video that are suspicious:


- Mr. Berkebile supposedly filmed this about 6 miles away.  The large smoke trail should have been able to be seen from at least double that distance, yet Val McClatchey and Dave Berkebile were supposedly the only ones who filmed the smoke cloud within a 12-mile radius.


- The Berkebile's supposedly went to the "crash" scene immediately after Mr. Berkebile shot the video.  He forgot the take his camcorder with him???


- We can't question Mr. Berkebile about his video because he "died suddenly" earlier this year in February and it doesn't help that he was a lifetime member of a Mason lodge.




We also must question how could a large smoke cloud even form at all and I'm not talking about because I think no plane crashed there, but even according to the official Flight 93 crash story?!


The way Flight 93 supposedly crashed was when it was on its side, or upside down (which ever official version you choose to believe), its wingtip hit first causing the 757 to begin to cartwheel.  The plane's front end slammed down on the ground next causing the cockpit section to "break off" and shatter into the woods and field.  The rest of the plane on back (one quote claiming 80%) then buried deep into the ground.

The ground was reportedly still "loose and uncompacted" and immediately fell back in on itself, affectively self-sealing the hole and plane:


- "The plane had pierced the earth like a spoon in a cup of coffee: the spoon forced the coffee back, and then the coffee immediately closed around the spoon as though nothing had troubled the surface. Anything that remained of Flight 93 was buried deep in the ground." - Lisa Beamer

- The cockpit and first class shattered like the point of a pencil, and remnants sprayed into a line of hemlock pine trees. The fuselage accordioned on itself more than thirty feet into the porous, backfilled ground. It was as if a marble had been dropped into water. - Author Jere Longman

- Veteran FBI agent Michael Soohy had been to airplane crash scenes before, and he thought he knew what to expect: chaos, bodies, a hulking wreck of a jet.
"I don't think anyone expected to see what they didn't see," said the 50-year-old who grew up near Johnstown. "It's almost like a dart hitting a pile of flour. ... The plane went in, and the stuff back-filled right over it."

And the 757 supposedly went in the ground so fast it didn’t have a chance to burn.


And never mind that the grassy field that hardly shows any signs of fire damage:



(See more "crash" scene photos here.)

And as that small section of forest that got fire damaged, the part of the plane that would have caused this was the snapped off cockpit section and I don't know what's in a 757's front end that would even cause an explosion.



There are also witnesses who seem to contradict that there was a large smoke cloud:

- Larry Williams, a retired Pa. State Trooper, was playing golf about 9 miles away from the crater when he saw a commercial airliner fly by and bank on its side until it dipped below the skyline.  In his interview, he never mentions hearing an explosion, seeing a fireball or even a smoke trail.

- Paula Long: “I never saw that smoke,” Paula Long, an eyewitness, told AFP. Long ran “immediately” after hearing the crash but did not see the cloud of smoke caught in the now-famous photograph by Valencia McClatchey, she said.

- Unidentified female witness: "...and it was fairly low.  It wasn't treetop low, but it was lower than it should have been.  And like I said it was cocked like it had been turning to the left.  And, just in a nose dive position once it cleared the tree tops I couldn't see it no more.  And then when I got out to [Hwy] 30 is when I seen the big puff of smoke, and-- I even had thought to myself that there should have been more smoke than that whenever it crashed cause the jet was extremely big."


And don't forgot the explosive phone call to witness Kelly Leverknight:


Jeff: Val McClatchey... she has a famous photo.
Ms. Leverknight: It was a fake photo, because it didn't have a mushroom cloud.
Jeff: It what?
Ms. Leverknight: There was no mushroom cloud.
Jeff: So it was a fake photo?
Ms. Leverknight: Yeah.
Jeff: Her photo's faked?
Ms. Leverknight: Yeah.
Jeff: For what? For money?
Ms. Leverknight: Yeah.
Jeff: Why, do you know that for sure?
Ms. Leverknight: Yeah!

And lastly, the color of the smoke plumes in both the Val McClatchey photo and Dave Berkebile video are reminiscent of grey-colored ordnance blasts, not black-colored jet fuel fires.



I don't know about you, but I'm declaring shenanigans on this video.


More links to this video story:

• Video shows Flight 93 aftermath
• Home Video Shows Flight 93 Crash Site
• Ten Years Later: New Video Of Flight 93 Aftermath Surfaces
• Ten years after 9/11, Flight 93 gets due attention
Source URL: https://0832zy.blogspot.com/2011/
Visit The People Blog for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

Retired trooper saw 'Flight 93' fall, never mentions explosion or smoke trail

This is an eyewitness account by retired Pa. State Trooper, Larry Williams.  He was playing golf the morning of 9/11 at the Oakbrook Golf Course in Jenners, PA, about 9.25 miles NW of the crater according to GoogleEarth.


He talks about how he heard and saw a commercial plane, being able to see the windows on the side, then seeing the plane nose-up, then bank on to its side before he lost it over the skyline.


After, he and his golf buddies speculated if it was in trouble and wondered if it had landed at the small airport in Indian Lake.  Finishing his round, he saw police emergency vehicles going East on Rt 30, then saw a state police helicopter fly by.


When he was back at the parking lot, his friends came out of the Club House and told him that plane had crashed in Shanksville.


At no time in the interview did Mr. Williams mention hearing an explosion, seeing a fireball, or any resulting smoke trail.




Source URL: https://0832zy.blogspot.com/2011/
Visit The People Blog for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

The BBC's Instrument of 9/11 Misinformation

The BBC's Instrument of 9/11 Misinformation

Jim Fetzer (with Joshua Blakeney)



The BBC's "Instrument"

For a second time, the BBC television network has produced a documentary about 9/11 featuring Dylan Avery, the producer of “Loose Change”’; Alex Jones, the talk show host; and me, the Founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth—this time accompanied by Neils Harrit, a chemistry professor from Denmark. The program is part of the BBC’s “Conspiracy Files” series. The first installment is available here. This one, now entitled, “The Conspiracy Files: '9/11: Ten Years On'”, was initially accessible at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oV_R70Qo8Zc&feature=share Interestingly, not long after it had been posted, the “user” had it removed from YouTube, which is not an effective method for disseminating your message. Presumably, it will soon be up and running again, which we will archive and then link to this column.

The inclusion of Neils Harrit is especially striking, since he was the lead author on the nanothermite study published in the Bentham Science Open Chemical Physics Journal, which T. Mark Hightower and I have discussed in several articles here at VT, including "Is '9/11 Truth' based upon a false theory?" and “Nanothermite: If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit”. Since I believe there are real problems with (what Mark Hightower and I have called) “the myth of explosive nanothermite”, the BBC may have missed an opportunity to pit us against one another. Neil's statements about the use of nanothermite, however, have actually been more responsible than those that have come from and been supported by the "hard science" group. So the focus of this discussion will be on some of the more blatant problems with “9/11: Ten Years On”.

Here I (and Joshua Blakeney) will offer several striking illustrations of the BBC’s "sleight-of-hand" in misrepresenting key points that I explained to Guy Smith and to Mike Rudin, which they cannot possibly have misunderstood, where cases like these leave no doubt of that the BBC in its “Conspiracy Files” series functions as an instrument of disinformation. We will also cite examples that exemplify other especially notable demonstrations that the BBC’s duplicity is not limited to its presentation of ersatz documentaries like these but extends into its reporting of news as it happens, which we illustrate with Jane Standley’s premature reporting of the collapse of WTC-7 on 9/11 and the introduction of Richard Clarke’s efforts to revive the indefensible theory that “9/11 was due to incompetence”.



With the BBC for a 2nd round

[NOTE: I use the first-person pronoun to accent that “I was there” and know these things based upon my “up close and personal” experience, but I am grateful to Joshua Blakeney for his contributions here, especially relative to the so-called “Global War on Terror”. Joshua recently drew to my attention a seminal text edited by Benjamin Netanyahu entitled Terrorism: How the West Can Win (1986), which we discussed during our two-hour interview on my 31 August 2011 radio show (and will be archived at http://radiofetzer.blogspot.com/). I agree with Joshua that this book appears to be offering a blueprint for the “Global War on Terror” already in 1986, which should quality as a central piece of evidence about the true origins of that war and a hint of whom it most benefits. (A version of this article with active links can be found here.)]

BBC’s “Conspiracy Files”

This was my second encounter with the BBC, whose director, Guy Smith, came to Madison and interviewed me for eight hours for its previous segment on 9/11, which also featured Dylan, Alex, and me. This segment has also been archived at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMyKhVwj6GI&feature=related, where there can be little doubt that the BBC is attempting to trade in stereotypes and that Dylan is supposed to be the obnoxious kid, Alex a messianic preacher, and me the kooky professor. While some may even agree, especially about me, this is an obvious attempt to suggest the only possible reasons that anyone would dissent from the “official account” of 9/11 are emotional needs or cognitive impairments. The 9/11 movement is actually highly eclectic with members of varied backgrounds and qualifications. That we might actually be right and the official account wrong was tacitly denied.

During both interviews, I presented literally dozens and dozens of arguments about why the “official account” of 9/11 is not only indefensible but actually violates laws of physics, engineering and aerodynamics. The fires burned neither hot enough nor long enough to have caused the steel to weaken, much less melt. WTC-7 displays all the features of a classic “controlled demolition”. There is no evidence that a Boeing 757 crashed in Pennsylvania and clear and convincing proof that the Pentagon “hit” was a fabrication, which appears to include the flyover by a plane simulating Flight 77 at the same time as the detonation of explosions. Later in the day, the Hollywood-style production of billowing black smoke from fires deliberately set in a series of dumpsters was deployed in order to intimidate the members of Congress. (See “Seven Questions about 9/11”, Veterans Today.)



Michael Shermer at Lethbridge

For the first show, the BBC extracted about 7.5 minutes they wanted to use from my interview, which it combined with about 4 minutes of Alex and 3.5 minutes of Dylan. The rest of the program was used to misrepresent and undermine what we had told them, where logic and evidence were not their concern. By offering psychoanalyses of 9/11 skeptics, rather than engaging the evidence that refutes the official story of 9/11, the makers of the BBC’s 9/11 documentary harnessed the same tactics employed by journalist Jonathan Kay, author of Among the Truthers (2011), and by Michael Shermer, an ersatz-professor, who was exposed for having mischaracterized his credentials by Anthony Hall and Joshua Blakeney. Their focus was upon the psychology of beliefs that are, according to their point of view, not merely weird but even bizarre—which is certainly true, unless you take a serious look at the evidence. (See “Why doubt 9/11?” for 20 counter-examples.)

The Ground Floor “Hit”

The Pentagon is an especially nice example, where I explained in both interviews that the alleged “hit” point is on the ground floor and not the second as has often been alleged. Both programs, nevertheless, misrepresented its location by using photos of the second floor, which has to have been intentional, given that I had explained this point to Guy Smith and to Mike Rudin during their separate visits. They even use animations of this inaccurate location in their animations of its occurrence, which is inconsistent with the photos that are presented correctly in both “What didn’t happen at the Pentagon” and in “Seven Questions about 9/11”.



The second floor "hit point"

It makes an enormous difference to understanding what happened there, since, at the ground-floor location, we find a chain-link fence, two huge spools of cable, two somewhat damaged cars and unbroken windows beside and above the entry hole, which is only about 10’ high and 16-17’ wide—far too small for a 100-ton airliner that is 155’ long with a 125’ wingspan, and a tail that stands 44’ above the ground. There is no debris: no wings, no tail, no fuselage, no bodies, seats or luggage. Neither of the virtually indestructible engines was recovered. But the fact that this mass of debris is missing is obfuscated by the simple but effective technique of presenting the wrong photos. You have to admire the elegance of the plan.



The ground floor "hit point"

It has been said that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, which is true—except in those cases where it is false. If you were to inspect the living room of your home, for example, the absence of evidence of the presence of an elephant would properly qualify as evidence of the absence of an elephant from your living room. Similarly, the absence of evidence that a plane—in particular, a Boeing 757—crashed at the Pentagon is evidence that no Boeing 757 crashed there. So one of the most important indications of BBC duplicity is that, although I had explained to Guy Smith and to Mike Rudin that the actual “hit point” was on the ground floor, they continued to use images of the second floor in their work.

The clear, green lawn



The unblemished lawn

Think of the simplicity of the deception involved here. Have your target speak about the hit point (where he is talking about the ground floor “hit”) but present images of another location (as if that were what he was actually discussing). And it is a technique that can be used again and again. During both interviews, I also emphasized a photo that was taken even as the civilian lime-green fire trucks were extinguishing the very modest fires, which shows a completely clear, green, unblemished lawn, entirely free from debris of any kind. You can see that the upper portion of the building has not yet collapsed, which means it was not the effect of the alleged impact. This collapse appears to have been contrived to enhance the apparent damage to resemble more like what a hit might have caused.



Debris begins to appear

In this case, the BBC contracted the time line and claimed that the upper floors had collapsed “within minutes” of the hit, showing images of building AFTER the collapse. Since 25-30 minutes is “within minutes”, there was a flimsy pretext to justify using that phrase. But there is now considerable debris in the foreground and the lawn is no longer pristine. The effect, once again, was to use my voice explaining what is visible in the photo that I was discussing but juxtaposed with film from the subsequent collapse of the upper floors that I was not discussing, which was clearly intended to convey the impression that I did not know what I was talking about—a simple but effective technique, which they employed repeatedly.



Inadvertent confirmation

Ironically, some of the BBC's own footage substantiated my observations about the completely clear, green, unblemished lawn, entirely free from debris of any kind. But it would have taken a discerning viewer to overcome the emphasis imparted by the soothing, confident voice of the BBC's commentator, who conveyed the impression of objectivity and impartiality while nevertheless debunking what I had said in nuanced and subtle ways. That this footage actually appeared in this documentary came as a surprise to me, once I had sorted out their technique of implicitly contradicting what I had to say by the presentation of images other than those that I was addressing, since this one actually confirmed what I had explained.

Lt. Col. O'Brien and the C-130



More debris shows up later

The difference between the originally clear, green and unblemished lawn, which was free from debris, and the subsequent appearance of debris across a broad swath of the Pentagon lawn led me to speculate as to its origins. It would have been awkward and obvious to have enlisted men and officers carry debris out onto the lawn. It had to have been done in a more subtle fashion. A C-130 had been circling the building, which led me to consider the possibility that perhaps the debris had been dropped from the plane, where its settling down from above would be something that many observers might regard as an effect from the hit, where it would not be unexpected for at least some debris to have been airborne.

So the BBC featured Lt. Col. O’Brien, USAF, who was presented as the captain of the C-130, who feigned to be disgusted with the implication that he could have been involved in the cover-up by having debris dropped from his plane. Since it was circling as the allegedly hijacked plane approached the building, it appears to be a good question why the Pentagon was surprised by the hit. Surely the Lt. Colonel could have warned them, insofar as he reported that he had watched its approach. Apparently, the evidential value of his claiming to have seen the plane outweighed the implied admission that he had failed to warn his superiors, since all sides alleged that the Pentagon had no idea it was going to be hit—when the plane would most certainly have been shot down, had such a warning occurred.



The pilot of the C-130

If there is a better explanation of the source of the debris, what could it possibly be? Those who harbor lingering doubts about the role of the BBC as a purveyor of disinformation should study these photographs and compare them to “What didn’t happen at the Pentagon?” and “Seven Questions about 9/11”. Then watch the show, when it is accessible again—perhaps in a new version in response to the public’s reaction to the original, which I am discussing here. We all have to appreciate the role of the mass media in distorting 9/11, where the phrase “info wars” has been used by Alex Jones to convey exactly the right impression. And this is not the first time that the BBC has been "caught with its pants down”, since an earlier and possibly even more spectacular illustration occurred on 9/11 itself.

Jane Standley on WTC-7



Jane Standley with WTC-7

One of the most remarkable events of the day of 9/11 was the premature report by Jane Standley of the BBC that “the Solomon Brothers Building”—another name for WTC-7—had collapsed, which of course did happen that day, but she claimed it had happened at 4:57 PM/ET, when in fact that did not occur until 5:20 PM/ET, 23 minutes later! This has to be one of the most stunning illustrations of the dual role of the mass media in presenting news as it happens but with a spin dictated by the intelligence assets and the government agencies who control access to what the public is going to see and hear. Since WTC-7 can actually be seen over her left shoulder (to the right as a viewer watches her presentation), there can be no doubt that the BBC got “ahead of the script”, which may even be the single most glaring example of complicity between MI-5 and the BBC in the nation’s history.



A most unusual "collapse"

Another example of the spin that the BBC was offering in its “Conspiracy Files: '9/11: Ten Years On'” program, is that, toward its conclusion, Richard Clarke, the Bush/Cheney administration’s “anti-terrorism” expert, attempts to revive the long-discounted theory that these attacks occurred only because of incompetence by the agencies who were responsible for protecting the country from terrorist attacks like these, including communication and cooperation failures by the CIA and the FBI. But this theory cannot account for the physical impossibility of the Twin Towers to have been destroyed by the purported plane crashes, the resulting (very modest) fires, and the weakening of the steel, none of which—even had they happened as the official account proclaims—could have brought about the complete, total, and abrupt demolition sequence that would occur, which can be viewed relative to the North Tower in “New 9/11 Photos Released”, for example, on my blog.



Three "Dancers" on TV

9/11 was clearly cleverly planned, including a variety of false leads, some of which were discernible in the original broadcasts from the networks that day. As Preston James and I explain in “Peeling the 9/11 Onion: Layers of Plots within Plots”, the first suggestions presented by the media were intended to lay blame on Palestinians, of which we have three major indications: the image of cheering Palestinians broadcast as these events were unfolding; anchors reporting that “The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine” was claiming credit; and the statements to the officers arresting the “Dancing Israelis” in their white van from Urban Moving Systems, a Mossad asset, whose driver said, “We are Israelis. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are your problem.” That was hokum then and remains hokum now, where three of the five would return to Israel and explain on TV that they were there “to document” the destruction of the Twin Towers, which obviously implies prior knowledge that it was going to occur.

The “Global War on Terrorism”

The BBC’s propaganda for the 9/11 wars largely rests on the empirically flawed-assumption that there is a disproportionate threat posed to citizens of the U.S., Britain, Canada and elsewhere by Islamist terrorists. Yet, data posted on the FBI’s official website demonstrates that actual cases of Islamic terrorism are rare, making it a virtually negligible phenomenon. According to FBI statistics, between 1980 and 2005, for example, only 6% of reported terrorist acts in the U.S. were committed by Muslims, compared to 7% by Jewish extremists, 42% by Latino extremists, and 24% by extreme right-wing groups (sometimes misidentified as “left wing”, but including local and state-wide militias). The BBC has been highly instrumental in reinforcing the falsehood that Islamists were responsible for the events of 9/11, which in turn justifies their scrutinizing of Muslims at home and abroad. Bear in mind that, if there were no planes to hijack, there would have been no hijackers, and if there were no Islamic hijackers, then 9/11 could not have been used to justify the “War on Terror” and a “clash of civilizations” pitting the Judeo-Christian West against radical Islam.

Elias Davidsson has demonstrated that the American government has not been able to prove that any of the alleged hijackers were aboard any of these planes, where Flight 11 and Flight 77 were not even scheduled to fly that day. The BBC has done its part by persistently covering-up evidence demonstrating that those alleged hijackers engaged in egregiously un-Islamic activities in the months prior to 9/11, including snorting cocaine, attending strip clubs, eating pork and drinking Vodka. These activities imply that either they were not Muslim at all or, at least, if they were, they were not devote Muslims and therefore most unlikely to engage in fanatical acts on behalf of their religion. Suicidal hijackings are not the kind of actions we would expect from Muslims who take pleasure in strip shows, eating pork and snorting coke! As the phrase has it, “What’s wrong with this picture?”



Blueprint for the "War on Terror"

Wayne Madsen has released British intelligence documents purporting to prove that “the Israeli Mossad ran the Arab hijacker cells that were later blamed by the U.S. government’s 9/11 Commission for carrying out the aerial attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon”, which is very plausible, given what we know about the motives that appear to have contributed to its planning and execution, which involve oil, Israel, and ideology, which were interrelated. Reconfiguring the Middle East through the implementation of the Sharon Doctrine could then result in the construction of a pipeline through Israel to the Mediterranean Sea —which it could tap to solve its energy needs—and facilitate the despoliation of Iraqi oil. Taking out Saddam Hussein and converting Iraq into smaller states (or "statelets") based on ethnic and religious sectarianism, moreover, appears to be part and parcel of a master plan for the destabilization of the Middle East to create a new reign of Israeli supremacy and domination.

What does it mean?

Reluctance to report well-documented Israeli involvement in 9/11 may explain the metamorphosis of the once highly respected BBC into a propaganda organ of the Likudnik right and its allies. The network, officially an agency of the British state, lost many of its best reporters as a consequence of the BBC’s role in dealing with reports about and the subsequent death of Dr. David Kelley. Its erstwhile Director General (DG), Greg Dyke, appears to have been ousted and replaced in 2004 by the highly pro-Israel Mark Thompson, who, upon assuming office, made a trip to Israel with his Jewish wife to work out with Ariel Sharon the “softening” of the BBC’s editorial line about the State of Israel. A nice indication of the BBC’s pro-Israel bias, by the way, was its refusal to allow a “Gaza Appeal” phone-line number to be broadcast during the 2008-2009 massacre in Gaza. With 9/11 being used primarily to facilitate the epochal process identified by sociologist James Petras as “The Globalization of Zionist Power”, the BBC’s infiltration by likely Mossad affiliates makes perfect sense. Thompson is now the highest paid public servant in Britain—and he influences the BBC to support the “Global War on Terror”.



Explosions and dead bodies in WTC-7

In doing research about the BBC and its “Conspiracy Files” series, I discovered a web page devoted to “Conspiracy Theories”, in which five familiar arguments are presented and then “debunked”. To offer one instructive example, it dismisses concerns about WTC-7 arising from Larry Silverstein’s use of the phrase, “pull it”, and the alleged ground that he was actually requesting that firemen be “pulled” from the building. Not only were there no firemen in the building at the time, but “pull it” is a term of art in the construction business. Barry Jennings was actually in the building that morning and witnessed explosions taking place to prime it for demolition. It appears to me that any source that promotes falsehoods as blatant as these about 9/11 is unworthy of belief—which we now know includes the BBC!

The BBC’s own attempt to debunk “conspiracy theories” has had an unexpected and mildly encouraging effect. More than 700 comments were posted before the comments were closed, where I found many reflecting genuine understanding of the role of the BBC in promoting false information about 9/11. As we have found, in its biased documentaries about 9/11, its live reporting at the time, and even on a web page it has published to debunk those who are speaking the truth, the BBC has abandoned its commitment to objective and independent journalism and has become a shill for false theories and government ops. More is the pity, because it once stood as a beacon of truth that was widely admired around the world, which, as we have seen, can no longer be said on behalf of this once-great UK institution.

Jim Fetzer, McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth, is a former Marine Corps officer and the founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth.

Joshua Blakeney is a Staff Writer at VT, a 9/11 activist, and a graduate student at the University of Lethbridge working on a thesis entitled, “The Origins of the Global War on Terror.”Source URL: https://0832zy.blogspot.com/2011/
Visit The People Blog for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

"The road from 9/11: Shanksville, Pa.: The serenity we lost" - StarTribune

(Snippet.  Emphasis mine.  Commentary below.)


The road from 9/11: Shanksville, Pa.: The serenity we lost

Article by: CURT BROWN , Star Tribune | Updated: August 31, 2011 - 10:56 PM

A twist of fate ends the serenity in rolling Pennsylvania hills.







Val McClatchey, a real estate agent who lives about 1.6 miles from the Shanksville crash site, held a photo she took from her front porch 10 years ago.


STOYSTOWN, PA. -- "Right here is where she went over," says Maluchnick, 55, a retired cop in Stoystown, population 385. "It was going so fast, all I caught was the tail. It was flying way too low and I told Ralph: If he doesn't elevate and get his nose up. ... Then we heard the boom and seen the smoke about three seconds later."

~

'End of serenity'

McClatchey is president of the Keystone Camaro Club, so she usually has her Hewlett-Packard 315 point-and-shoot camera handy for car shows. It was sitting on her coffee table at 10:05 a.m. that morning 10 years ago, as she watched the "Today Show" at her house on Indian Lake, a filled-in strip mine.

"Then I heard a surge of an engine and, man, was it loud," she says.

The explosion a couple miles west nearly knocked her off the couch. She instinctively stepped out on the porch and took one shot of a massive plume of gray smoke filling the sky next to her neighbor's red barn. Then she dropped the camera and the battery fell out.

Her photo instantly popped up in newspapers, websites and magazines around the world. She hired a lawyer to copyright her image, which she titled "End of Serenity."

"Another blink of an eye and it would have hit the Shanksville school and all those kids would be gone," she says. "After a while, it gets overwhelming just to think about it."

Ten years later, as grandchildren play in the driveway and an American flag flutters on her porch, McClatchey says she's had enough. She's trying to sell her acre on Indian Lake after 25 years. It's not going well. With the economy sputtering, McClatchey says the market "stinks."

Her famous photo, which sells for $20 at a nearby general store, "has been a blessing and a cure," she says.

Conspiracy theorists hound her on the Internet and even come to her door, claiming she faked the shot. She's burned through five lawyers, trying to protect her copyright. The FBI confiscated her camera immediately and she had to leap through all kinds of hoops to get it back. She keeps the memory card in a safe deposit box.

http://www.startribune.com/local/128842558.html


This article confirms that Val's digital camera was an HP 315 that we had identified back in Oct '06.  We also showed that this camera has four AA batteries, not one battery which this article and the Post-Gazette article before it implies it did when describing how Val supposedly dropped her camera after the single shot and the "battery" dislodged. Notice the article also says she usually had this camera handy for her car shows, which seems to suggest this camera wasn't that new, though it could mean she just had her new month-old camera handy for upcoming car shows.  


Note that the article says she burned through "five lawyers" trying to protect her copyright.  Sounds expensive for someone who was supposedly donating all the proceeds from her photo to charity.  It's also the first time we've heard that Val supposedly had trouble getting her confiscated camera's memory card back from the FBI.
Source URL: https://0832zy.blogspot.com/2011/
Visit The People Blog for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

ARABIAN SUMMER OR NATO'S FALL?

ARABIAN SUMMER OR NATO'S FALL?

Editor's note: NATO's intervention in Libya has caused me profound concern on multiple levels, since it entails attacking a sovereign nation that has not attacked us and demonizing a leader who, so far as I can tell, has done well by his people. I recommend this blog, by Christof Lehmann, a psychologist from Denmark, and another by Michel Chossudovsky, the editor of Global Research, who also discusses the role of the Western media as "an instrument of war", where NATO's crimes are obfuscated, "killing the truth" is an integral part of the military agenda, reality is turned upside down and the lie becomes the truth--which, alas, becomes more and more difficult to discern. And now, without any doubt, we have another war, this time thanks to Barack Obama.



Christof Lehmann

The sudden onset of what the corporate media and NATO want to brand as “The Arab Spring” has turned into a bloody Arab Summer, rapidly approaching Fall and global conflict. What is the reality behind the massive psychological and kinetic warfare operation that is turning the Middle East upside down? Approaching fall, even mainstream corporate media begin to report what reliable sources have reported since the onset of the Arab Spring. NATO special forces have been on the ground in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, even before the uprisings began and gained momentum. Reports from our source in Damascus confirm that NATO Special Forces are also on the ground in Turkey and Syria, preparing for yet another invasion of a sovereign country.

Turkey's Erdogan government has made a 180 degree turn, and is now training Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda fighters for combat in Syria, while its military is preparing air and ground campaigns under NATO Command. NATO backed terror units and death squads are on a wild rampage in Syria. The first victim of war is the truth, yet the truth has absolute primacy in attempting to achieve peace and justice. NATO is preparing the invasion of Syria and campaigns against Iran. The point where NATO´s aggressions will elicit serious political, economic, and eventually military responses from Iran, Russia and China is about to be reached. The world is heading towards global war, while corporate media in NATO countries sale the confused public narratives of Arab Summers and Singing Tomorrows.

Muammar Gadaffi


Reliable sources have reported about strong CIA and MI6 activities related to the so called Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt, where neither the Tunisian nor the Egyptian change could have been brought about by disgruntled, disenfranchised youth, intellectuals and workers alone, without the presence of massive pressure from within the USA and EU. The uprisings are best analyzed by their results. With regard to Tunisia, the product is a new government that is an even more reliable proxy for US and EU interests. With regards to Egypt it is a military government, sharia law, and the dismantling of women's rights. This is hardly the singing tomorrows of democracy loving idealists.

Reliable, independent sources have reported about the presence of NATO Special Operations Units as well as mercenaries with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qa´eda since the onset of the Libyan conflict. Latest since the Libyan pendant to “Black Hawk Down”, it was obvious for the observer who didn´t get his news from NATO PR-machines like Al Jazeera, CNN, and National Radio / TV in the “Free West”. Reports from independent journalists on the ground, like historian Dr. Webster Griffin Tarpley, Thierry Meyssan, and well-connected journalists, such as the life-long peace activist, journalist, and former CIA asset, Susan Lindauer, offer proof beyond reasonable doubt that the armed gangs that were sold as "democracy hungry" youth were in fact NATO-lead Al Qa´eda and Muslim Brotherhood Mercenaries.

This truth was vividly omitted by the free western press, which has sold the narrative of singing tomorrows, and neglected to report how peaceful citizens, who protested for democracy and freedom, were mercilessly butchered by “Gadaffi Forces”, so that a UN Resolution for the implementation of a “No Fly Zone” could be passed and implemented by “NATO” forces. Reliable sources within the US Army at Ft. Bragg and Pope Air Base in North Carolina have reported that preparations for Libya and Syria had been on the way months--long before the onset of the so called Arab Summer. So what is the truth about the situation in Libya and what exactly is being prepared with respect to Syria?

The Military Situation in Libya. NATO Psy Ops, Hollywood in Qatar, NATO War Crimes, and Changes in Strategy. Western Corporate Media reported that the “rebels” had approached and then conquered Tripoli, fighting down the resistance of Loyalist Troops, where viewers and readers are meant to believe that the "Transitional National Counsel" has taken control over Tripoli and most of the country. TV images show celebrating masses on Tripoli's Green Square, now re-branded as "Martryrs Square".



Green Square, now "Martyrs Square"

Reports that Islam al Ghadaffi had been captured have been propagated in the media together with equally false reports that the garrisons in Tripoli had surrendered or its troops fled. What happened in the real world, however, has been an entirely different story all along.

The night prior to the invasion of Tripoli, NATO air forces carpet bombed military installations, TV and radio Stations, and a considerable amount of other infrastructure. Then NATO-lead mercenary forces disembarked from NATO War Ships, making an amphibian assault on Tripoli, while Apache Helicopters were straeffing civilians to open a way into the old city and central Tripoli. British fighter bombers assisted with Brimstone Rockets. Sleeper cells within Tripoli used the loudspeakers on minarets to give a signal for the death squads, which had infiltrated Tripoli, to conduct massacres on hundreds of key figures as well as random victims.

Hospitals in Tripoli reported 1,800 death and over 5,000 severely wounded. Most of them were civilians. What according to Al Jazeera has seemed to be a disintegration of government forces was a carefully planned change in strategy. Given NATO's overwhelming air superiority, it would have been suicidal for government forces to stay in their barracks or to engage in open front-line combat. This change in strategy, which was a necessary adaption to asymmetric warfare, does not mean that an end to the conflict is anywhere near in time. On the contrary, this move guaranties that so-called "rebel" and probably also NATO forces will be engaged in a protracted conflict that could last years, where it is by no means certain that the military outcome will be what would be desired by NATO generals.

The true looser of the conflict is the Libyan population. The only front where NATO can declare a victory is in the field of Psychological Warfare, but this front and victory is also being deconstructed. A closer look at the celebrating masses in the renamed "Martryrs Square" shows that these videos were shot in Doha, Qatar, and not in Tripoli. It was a staged celebration in the best Hollywood style. During the initial chock of the aerial and amphibious assault, such images could pass and have had their desired effect on the population of Tripoli. The outrage over being conned by NATO Psychological Operations Teams, however, will probably backfire with regards to pacifying the citizens of Tripoli.

The NATO/Al Qa´eda Commander of Tripoli is no other than Abdel Hakim Belhadj, also known as Abdel Hakim al-Hasidi, former PoW of the USA.



Abdel Hakim al-Hasidi

Regardless how many aliases he uses, this man is known for being a personal friend of Osama Bin Laden. Abdel Hakim Belhadj has made himself a name for murdering US and NATO Soldiers in Afghanistan, a fact which he reportedly brags about. Knowing history and that Al Qa´eda is in reality a creature of US Intelligence, al-Hasidi is an ideal ally. Very much living up to his reputation, we are receiving reports about wide-spread massacres of civilians in Tripoli, summary executions of all black people who are unlucky enough not to hide from the "freedom fighters", widespread abuse of women who don´t cover their heads, and other assaults and crimes against humanity, which provide ample evidence suggesting that Libya, until recently a modern nation, is about to regress back into its former state--during the dark ages before the revolution led by Ghadaffi and ousting of the Libyan Monarchy and King Idris.

How much these rag-tag mercenaries would be worth in combat with loyalist troops without having massive NATO air support remains to be seen. What is certain is that a Tripoli under the yoke of known terrorists, mass murderers, and Islamic extremists is anything but the singing tomorrows of pluralistic, democracy and freedom loving youths. Tripoli and Libya will regress into bloody, protracted conflict that could last many years. It is this protracted conflict that probably will be used as the context for establishing a permanent US/NATO military bases in Libya within the framework of the U.S. African Command. A protracted conflict will also increase scarcity on the global energy market and thereby promote the interests of "Big Oil".

Libya and the International Terror Threat. These developments in Libya and in the wider Middle East, open cooperation between known terrorist organizations and NATO, with the global financial crisis, increase the likelihood that disenfranchised European and American populations will respond with violence: when you have nothing left to loose, you loose your self-control. It will be tempting for rogue, deep-state elements to plan and perform new false flag terror attacks. U.S. American and European populations, therefore, should be on the outlook for police or military exercises, "anti-terror drills", and similar activities that usually precede false flag operations. Any attacks may well be blamed on Gadaffi, Syria, Iran, or any of the organizations that are supported by them. The scripting in the corporate western media, including the discussion of chemical weapons in Libya, indicates that this is a threat that must be taken serious.

Syria, Turkey, NATO and the E.U. While NATO Special Operations Forces already were training and arming Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qa´eda mercenaries in Syria as well as on Turkish territory, the Erdogan government was until recently strongly opposed to open war with Syria. Meanwhile, however, there have been meetings between Turkey, Germany and France, and the official stance of Turkey has changed, now agreeing with an open war with Syria. Like the Greek economy few months ago, the economy of Turkey is not invulnerable either. This sudden change in politics suggests that Turkey´s decades-long ambitions to join the European Union may have been utilized for high-jacking the population of Turkey as pawns in a new imperial project that could have disastrous national, and potentially global, consequences.




Our US Army source within Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, confirms that preparations for an invasion of Syria and for air raids against Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as attacks on Iran have been in preparation for months. Taking the Mediterranean climate into account, any ground attack on Syria would have to begin and probably be concluded--or at least stabilized--no later than October. This implies that the Libyan campaign must be stabilized by October, too. Our source in Damascus is reporting honest attempts of the Syrian government to bring about reforms. In fact, it has proposed reforms that are far more far reaching than the original demands of the “honest” Syrian protesters, whose own political process has been high-jacked by imperial forces and mercenaries, where we will bring a special report from Syria soon.

According to our own analysis and that of other independent analysts, an imperial NATO adventure that involves Syria will have enormous ramifications. Russia has her only navy base with direct access to the Mediterranean situated in Syria. Iran can not stand idly by while its main Arab ally is attacked by NATO is almost certainly preparing itself militarily. This preparation will most likely involve Hezbollah. Besides making military preparations, Iran is also preparing itself economically by privatizing at least seven of its eleven oil refineries. This will lead to massive Russian and Chinese investments in Iran and thus to greater interest in protecting Iran economically and, if necessary, indirectly or directly by means of military interventions.

Indirect conflict could manifest in the opening of a Hezbollah front and others incursions. Direct conflict would result in open global war, which is the final goal of "Zbig" Brzezniski and his school of politics, which is currently dominating thinking at the White House. On a wider perspective, it must be noticed that Iran has strategic and economic alliances with Pakistan, China and Russia. Pakistan has now asked the entire staff employed at the US Embassy to leave the country and, in the case of open NATO aggression against Syria or Iran, a Pakistani government would experience extreme internal pressure to respond in hostile ways against the USA.

Is NATO about to commit the classic mistake of “Empire Overreach”? If so, history provides us with countless examples that the collapse of an empire invariably produces widespread conflicts. The Arab Summer could develop into NATO´s Fall.


Christof Lehmann, a Danish psychologist and political advisor to the nation's leaders, posted the original version of this blog at nsnbc.Source URL: https://0832zy.blogspot.com/2011/
Visit The People Blog for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

Nanothermite: If It Doesn't Fit, You Must Acquit!

Nanothermite: If It Doesn’t Fit, You Must Acquit!

T. Mark Hightower (with Jim Fetzer)



Those who remember the 1995 O.J. Simpson trial will recall the gloves that turned out to be "too small" for O.J.’s hands when the long-awaited day of trying them on in the courtroom finally arrived. The blood-soaked gloves (one found at the crime scene and the other outside O.J.’s house in Brentwood the morning after his former wife was murdered) were gloated over as “hard evidence” by the prosecution and the media, very comparable to how the discovery of unignited nanothermite chips in the WTC dust is considered to be "hard evidence" of the explosive demolition of the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001.

Although some have expressed skepticism about what is often called the “smoking gun” of 9/11, the great majority of 9/11 Truthers have accepted – and many have celebrated – this discovery, confident that it will lead to “a new, independent investigation” of the event and bring the perpetrators to justice. But precisely how did the resulting "nanothermite theory" of destruction of the Twin Towers come about – and how well does it stand up to critical scrutiny?

Why Nanothermite?

Observations by first responders of apparent molten metal – thought to be molten iron – could be explained by thermite reactions, which, in turn, could possibly explain the severing of steel columns through a process of melting. However, the explosive effects observed in the destruction call for some further explanation. Nanothermite has been identified as a candidate, being faster-reacting and alleged to be "an explosive form" of thermite.



In a paper titled “Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Completely Collapse?” (2006), physicist Dr. Steven E. Jones cited thermite to explain the molten metal and first started raising the possibility that nanothermite could explain the additional explosive effects observed. Then four dust samples collected in the aftermath of the towers’ collapse by different individuals were sent to Dr. Jones, and upon testing, they were found to contain unreacted red chips of a nanothermitic material.

Those results were reported in a later paper titled “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in the Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe” by Niels Harrit, et al. (April, 2009), and because of this many assumed that nanothermite had been definitively identified as the prime candidate destructive agent. The paper, said to have been peer-reviewed, came out in the Open Chemical Physics Journal (Bentham Science Publishers), causing 9/11 Truthers to run with the news that explosive nanothermite blew up the Twin Towers, proclaiming what soon became a form of gospel in the 9/11 community. The Gospel of Nanothermite has given the incendiary properties of thermite a set of new miraculous powers: in its nano-state it becomes “Super Thermite” – a high-explosive that pulverized hundreds of thousands of tons of building materials in no more than 10 seconds.

A Literature Search

A scientific person, or one who prefers to use logic, might wonder about such claims and proceed by examining the scientific literature on nanothermite as well as the principle of how explosives achieve destructive force through generating shock waves that produce fragmentation. This might be a good time to note that the Rock Creek Free Press made a very important point in its May 2009 article on nanothermite: “To be a high explosive, the reaction speed must exceed the speed of sound in the material, which is unlikely in the case of thermitic materials, but nano-thermitic material may act as a low explosive in a manner similar to gunpowder.”




Few who have carefully watched video footage of the Twin Towers coming down could fail to notice what might appropriately be called “explosive effects” in the nature of the destruction. The question then would be: Were conventional explosives or some other kind of destructive energy source employed? If nanothermite is indeed a high explosive, then was it also necessary to use conventional explosives to achieve the demolition of the towers? The more sophisticated believer might agree that conventional explosives also could have been employed, but for the scientifically less sophisticated 9/11 Truther, the "Thermite/Nanothermite Gospel" says it all – and has been "conclusively proven" by the nine authors of the 2009 published and peer-reviewed paper.

But what does other peer-reviewed scientific literature actually have to say about nanothermite? “Nanoscale Aluminum-Metal Oxide (Thermite) Reactions for Application in Energetic Materials,” Central European Journal of Energetic Materials (2010), authored by Davin G. Piercey and Thomas M. Klapötke,




identifies the fastest known combustion velocity for a mixture of metal oxide and aluminum: 2,400 meters per second (m/s), in a type of nanothermite made of copper oxide and aluminum. Remember that what Steven Jones found in the dust was iron-oxide/aluminum nanothermite. The authors of this paper make it clear that copper-oxide/aluminum nanothermite is significantly more reactive than the iron-oxide version, and cite a combustion velocity of 895 m/s for an iron-oxide/aluminum nanothermite aerogel. So 895 m/s is the highest velocity yet to be found for an iron-oxide/aluminum nanothermite in the scientific literature, where this velocity is far too low to have played a significant role in the destruction of the Twin Towers by means of its shock waves.

Not Powerful Enough

Let’s examine the reason for that important last statement. The “destructive fragmentation effect” of an explosive is its detonation velocity, or the speed of the shock wave through the substance it is traveling in. To significantly fragment a substance, the detonation velocity of the explosive must equal or exceed the sonic velocity (the speed of sound) in the material. For example, the speed of sound in concrete is 3,200 m/s. In steel, the speed of sound is 6,100 m/s. Conventional high explosives such as TNT and RDX have detonation velocities of 6,900 and 8,750 m/s respectively, and are therefore capable of fragmenting concrete and steel, because both 6,900 and 8,750 exceed the sonic velocities of 3,200 m/s required to shatter concrete and 6,100 m/s required to shatter steel. As Dwain Deets has diagrammed, at only 895 m/s, iron-oxide/aluminum nanothermite does not come close to TNT and RDX.




However, prominent 9/11 researchers have

nonetheless termed nanothermite to be a powerful explosive. The very highly respected David Ray Griffin, Ph.D. calls nanothermite a "high explosive" in his July 6, 2010 article entitled “Left-Leaning Despisers of the 9/11 Truth Movement: Do You Really Believe in Miracles?”, which was published in the online journal, Global Research. “High explosives, such as RDX or nanothermite,” wrote Griffin, “could explain these horizontal ejections.”

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, the most revered of 9/11 research groups, published a piece called “Exotic High Tech Explosives Positively Identified in World Trade Center Dust” on April 5, 2009. In this they stated, “Ordinary thermite burns quickly and can melt through steel, but it is not explosive. Nanothermite, however, can be formulated as a high explosive.”

A "Secret" Technology?

While searching the open scientific literature on nanothermite and establishing the low detonation velocity of its iron-oxide/aluminum variety, chemical engineer T. Mark Hightower has been in contact and shared his findings with Dr. Steven Jones and the authors of the highly regarded April 2009 nanothermite paper, as well as with several other well-known 9/11 Truth leaders. The most recent responses to his challenges fall into two general categories. One response is that the combustion velocity of 895 m/s is enough to explain the Twin Towers' destruction. The other is the rather persistent claim that nanothermite can indeed be a high explosive, where this formulation is a military secret that is not discussed in the open literature.

Alright. It is true that military explosives' research employs nanotechnology and that applications involving nanothermite are a subset of this research. (The military even connects nanotechnology with mini-nukes, stating that a mini-nuke device the size of a suitcase could destroy an entire building.) But to suggest that the American military has a "secret recipe" that converts iron-oxide/aluminum nanothermite into a high explosive when this claim is contradicted by the open literature doesn’t make any sense.

Easily found in the open literature is that copper-oxide/aluminum nanothermite can have a combustion velocity of 2,400 m/s, compared to 895 m/s for an iron-oxide/aluminum nanothermite. If the 2,400 m/s number is not a military secret, why would a velocity greater than 895 m/s (for the iron-oxide variety of nanothermite) have to be kept secret? It is far more likely that the highest reported value of 895 m/s is due to physical property limitations of iron-oxide/aluminum nanothermite rather than a need to keep higher values secret.

"Combined" with Explosives?

Additionally – just to be safe, perhaps – 9/11 nanothermite advocates also maintain the fall-back position that, even if nanothermite by itself is not a high explosive, when combined with an organic substance (also asserted to not be itself a high explosive), a high-explosive is created. To that T. Mark Hightower responds: “There is only one sure way to make nanothermite a high explosive. If you combine enough high explosives with nanothermite, you can get a mixture that is a high explosive. But the same can be said for my breakfast cereal.”

Hightower has further calculated that if conventional explosives (such as TNT or RDX) acting alone were used to bring down the Twin Towers, the quantity necessary would have been hundreds of tons of explosives per tower. On July 27, 2011, Niels Harrit

(chief author of the 2009 nanothermite paper)presented a calculation for how much thermitic material would have been necessary to explain the presence of the many tiny iron-rich spheres in the dust (assuming that a thermite reaction was the source of the spheres).

He gave a range of numbers, based on lower and higher concentrations of the thermite formulation. His lowest figure amounted to 29,000 metric tons of thermitic explosive per tower – a value hundreds of times greater than the calculation for conventional explosives. His “conservative” estimate (based on 10% iron-oxide in the thermitic material) was 143,000 metric tons of thermitic material that would have been placed in each tower. But let’s be realistic: How could the perpetrators drag in and plant over 100,000 tons of explosive without being seen? Even 29,000 tons is hard to imagine and would have been rather difficult to put in place unnoticed.

The Missing Element

A side note from the many technical papers on nanothermite studied by Hightower: nanothermite produces a blinding flash of light when it goes off. If such immense quantities of nanothermite were used to blow up the Twin Towers, then why didn’t we see tremendous bursts of blinding light all over two those buildings as they were destroyed and largely converted into millions of cubic yards of very fine dust?





The Dangers of a False Theory

Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which is led by Richard Gage, has been ceaselessly promoting the nanothermite discovery as the “smoking gun” of 9/11, and calling the substance a "high explosive". If there is ever a

proper investigation and a lawsuit is filed in a court of law on the “strength” of nanothermite as “hard evidence” of controlled demolition by explosives at the World Trade Center and it is revealed to the court by the opposing side that nanothermite is at best a very weak "explosive" and could not possibly have destroyed the Twin Towers in seconds, the entire case would almost certainly be dismissed and a legal precedent set against future efforts by others.

The danger of promoting a false theory or of overselling a weak hypothesis to millions of people is that it may someday be a convenient way to close the book on the entire issue. That 9/11 nanothermite advocates insist on their position in the face of significant refutations is disturbing. They are clearly unwilling to change their minds or even to discuss facts that expose weaknesses in their statements. What do these refusals really mean? Are some leaders deliberately pushing a flimsy theory with the intent that it will ultimately be shot down? Or is nanothermite a red herring or limited hangout to keep us from looking into what was really used?

The 9/11 Truth community can be confident in its refutations of the official account of 9/11 without having to present a "bullet-proof" alternate theory. It may well be that thermite/thermate/nanothermite was used in its familiar role as an incendiary (or "cutter charge") in destroying the Twin Towers. But that is very different than to claim that it is a "high explosive" that could have destroyed those buildings. The 9/11 Truth movement must not commit itself to a feeble alternative, especially when an honest assessment of the empirical data for that theory does not support its applicability and actually refutes it.




T. Mark Hightower is a chemical engineer with more than two decades of experience in the industry, who currently works for NASA. His views are an exercise of his freedom of speech and in no way represent the positions of his employer.Source URL: https://0832zy.blogspot.com/2011/
Visit The People Blog for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection