The remarkable convenience of the Quran-burning preacher

[Ron Ecker]

On Thursday, September 9, while the whole world was watching a religious fanatic in Gainesville, Florida, who wants to burn some Qurans, a press conference was held in Washington DC at the National Press Club in which a former senator and a group representing over 1200 architects and engineers presented evidence for controlled demolition of the WTC on 9/11.

One could almost believe that the religious nut Terry Jones was a CIA plant to saturate the news in the U.S. on Thursday. Not that the mainstream media would have covered the press conference anyway. It of course didn't.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/senator-engineers-911-controlled-demolitions/

[Jack White]

What ever happened to the word KORAN, which was used for at least 70 years of my life?

Jack

[Len Colby]

On Thursday, September 9, while the whole world was watching a religious fanatic in Gainesville, Florida, who wants to burn some Qurans, a press conference was held in Washington DC at the National Press Club in which a former senator and a group representing over 1200 architects and engineers presented evidence for controlled demolition of the WTC on 9/11.

One could almost believe that the religious nut Terry Jones was a CIA plant to saturate the news in the U.S. on Thursday. Not that the mainstream media would have covered the press conference anyway. It of course didn't.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/senator-engineers-911-controlled-demolitions/

Exactly the "story" would have been ignored anyway, just as Gage’s press conference to announce his 1000th engineer was ignored. This was not because the media is controlled but rather because neither event was newsworthy. Only a small percentage of Gage’s group are structural engineers and as of last time I checked (a month or so ago) only one or two had experience with buildings more than a few stories tall (Gage doesn’t) and only a similar number gave any sign of having read the NIST report. None so far have released a detail analysis of why the impacts and resulting fires can not explain the collapses. IIRC there are about 1.5 million professional architects and engineers in the US, well under one in a 1000 have joined AE911T. The number of those profesionals from other countries backing his ideas are even smaller. The truth movement is a fringe one; the media also ignores the press conferences of, flat earthers, creationists and Holocaust deniers.

[Ron Ecker]

Exactly the "story" would have been ignored anyway, just as Gage’s press conference to announce his 1000th engineer was ignored. This was not because the media is controlled but rather because neither event was newsworthy. Only a small percentage of Gage’s group are structural engineers and as of last time I checked (a month or so ago) only one or two had experience with buildings more than a few stories tall (Gage doesn’t) and only a similar number gave any sign of having read the NIST report. None so far have released a detail analysis of why the impacts and resulting fires can not explain the collapses. IIRC there are about 1.5 million professional architects and engineers in the US, well under one in a 1000 have joined AE911T. The number of those profesionals from other countries backing his ideas are even smaller. The truth movement is a fringe one; the media also ignores the press conferences of, flat earthers, creationists and Holocaust deniers.

Do you think the media ignored this press conference because the group talked about evidence of controlled demolition? Of course not. It ignored it because the group is among those calling for a real investigation of 9/11 to try to answer all the unanswered questions. Unspeakable! Better to cover a religious nut in Gainesville, Florida, or anything else under the sun.

Now today there will be 9/11 anniversary memorial services, with some of our "leaders" mouthing more platitudes about honoring the dead and about Ground Zero being "sacred" ground.

I would wager that the dead of 9/11 do not want to be honored, and see nothing sacred about the place where they were slaughtered. Their souls cry out for justice. They will never get it. They don't want to hear solemn prayers, they want to hear calls for a real investigation of their mass murder (like the call on Thursday that nobody heard). They will never get it. What must they think of us?

[Len Colby]

Do you think the media ignored this press conference because the group talked about evidence of controlled demolition? Of course not. It ignored it because the group is among those calling for a real investigation of 9/11 to try to answer all the unanswered questions. Unspeakable! Better to cover a religious nut in Gainesville, Florida, or anything else under the sun.

I don’t understand the distinction you are making between these two positions especially regarding AE911T whose focus is on the collapses of the towers. They would have been ignored with or without your loony “neighbor” or even the “Ground Zero Mosque” brouhaha, not because the MSM is dominated by the NWO/MIC/MIBH but rather because it is a fringe group that failed to produce evidence in support of its claims.

I would wager that the dead of 9/11 do not want to be honored, and see nothing sacred about the place where they were slaughtered. Their souls cry out for justice. They will never get it. They don't want to hear solemn prayers, they want to hear calls for a real investigation of their mass murder (like the call on Thursday that nobody heard).

I doubt it only 3 or 4 of the tens of thousands of survivors have joined the “truth movement”, the most prominent of whom (Rodriguez) is a fabulist whose version of events changed years after the fact. None of the 20 people who were rescued from the wreckage question the “official story” one of them was a structural engineer who had worked for the PANYNJ and at the towers for many years. The complex’s construction manager saw signs of structural failure in the North Tower’s core a few minutes before it came crashing down.

EDIT: Formatting error fixed

Edited September 11, 2010 by Len Colby

[Ron Ecker]

I doubt it only 3 or 4 of the tens of thousands of survivors have joined the “truth movement”

Do you really believe that only 3 or 4 question the official story? Before the 9/11 hearings even started, one of the survivors appeared before the commission and gave them a litany of legitimate, troubling questions regarding 9/11 that the witnesses should be asked. The commission, in true cover-up fashion, doggedly refused to ask most of those questions.

Do you believe, along with 42 percent of Americans (according to a 2006 Zogby poll), that there should be a real investigation of 9/11 to try to answer all such unanswered questions? And if not, why not?

[Douglas Caddy]

Len,

In simple terms, the government claimed that Osama bin Laden

and al Qaeda committed all of the crimes on 9/11.

Since that time, the government has:

1) produced no evidence to substantiate these claims

2) held no trials to convict OBL or AQ (as we did with the first WTC incident)

3) continually ignored OBL (and much of AQ) while pursuing Iraq and the projection of power in Central Asia

Thus, if you think the call for a reinvestigation is not warranted,

then are you happy with the government's progress so far in pursuing

justice? How do you reconcile our invasion of Iraq given that there

was no connection between SH/Iraq and 9/11?

9/11 Cover-Up Remains While Questions Mount

by Eric Margolis

www.lewrockwell.com

September 11, 2010

"America’s strategic and economic interests in the Mideast and Muslim world are being threatened by the agony in Palestine, which inevitably invites terrorist attacks against US citizens and property."

Ever since 9/11, readers keep asking me my views on these attacks. I have been barraged with emails until my head spins with engineering studies about melting steel, controlled explosions, claims about nefarious plots, and wreckage analysis.

One of the most colorful theories comes from Gen. Hamid Gul, former director of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI. He insists that 9/11 was staged by Israel’s Mossad and a cabal of rightwing US Air Force generals.

I inspected the ruins of the New York’s Twin Towers, atop which I often dined, right after the attack. Downtown Manhattan was enveloped by a hideous, stinking miasma from the attack. I have never smelled anything so awful. It took me days to scrub the foul odor off my body. As a native New Yorker, I was shaken to the core by 9/11 – but hardly surprised, as I had predicted a major attack on the US nine days earlier.

While visiting the Pentagon to consult on the Mideast, I also inspected its outside wall hit by the third hijacked aircraft.

I saw photos of the impact site and could not understand what had happened to all the aircraft wreckage. There was almost none.

In 1993, I was hijacked over Germany on a Lufthansa flight bound for Cairo. The Ethiopian hijacker took us all the way back to New York City. The hijacker was threatening to crash our A310 jumbo jet into Wall Street.

Our flight was shadowed by US F-15 fighters that had orders to shoot, if necessary. Where, then, was US air defense on 11 Sept. 2001?

A day after 9/11, I was asked on CNN if Osama bin Laden was behind the attack. "We have yet to see the evidence," I replied. I maintain this position today.

Bin Laden denied he or al-Qaida was behind 9/11 and the death’s of nearly 3,000 people. The plot was hatched in Hamburg, Germany and Madrid, Spain, not in Afghanistan. A Pakistani, Khaled Sheik Mohammed, claimed he was the mastermind – after being tortured by near-drowning 183 times by the CIA.

While denying involvement, Osama bin Laden did say he believed the attack on New York was in part motivated by Israel’s destruction of downtown Beirut during its 1982 invasion of Lebanon that inflicted some 18,000 civilian deaths.

Tapes that appeared to confirm bin Laden’s guilt were clumsy fakes. They were supposedly "found" in Afghanistan by the anti-Taliban Afghan Northern Alliance, which was created and funded by Russian intelligence.

I had met Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and told CNN viewers that he was not the man in the tapes.

After 9/11, Secretary of State Colin Powell promised Americans the State Department would issue a White Paper detailing bin Laden’s guilt. Afghanistan’s Taliban government asked for this document before it would extradite bin Laden, as the US was demanding. The White Paper was never produced, and the US ignored proper legal procedure and invaded Afghanistan. We still wait for evidence.

I remain uncertain that Osama bin Laden was really behind the attacks. Much circumstantial evidence points to him and al-Qaida, but conclusive proof still lacks. One thing is certain: the attacks were planned and mounted from Germany, not Afghanistan. Of the 19 hijackers, 15 were Saudis, two from the United Arab Emirates, one an Egyptian and a Lebanese.

By the way, I’ve said ever since 9/11 that the danger and size of al-Qaida has been vastly exaggerated – as an explosive report this week by the London’s esteemed International Institute for Strategic Studies has just confirmed. Al-Qaida, dedicated to fighting the Afghan Communists, never had more than 300 members at its peak.

Today, according to CIA chief Leon Panetta, there are no more than 50 al-Qaida men in Afghanistan. Yet President Barack Obama has tripled the number of US troops in Afghanistan to 120,000 because of what to calls the al-Qaida threat. What is going on?

Many people abroad believe al-Qaida is an American invention used to justify foreign military operations. I do not share this view. Osama bin Laden was never a US agent, though his group indirectly received funds from CIA to fight the Communists.

Back to 9/11. I still cannot understand how amateur pilots could manage to maneuver in low to hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon. As a Pakistani intelligence agent told me, "if they were really amateur Arab pilots, they would have crashed into one another, not the World Trade Center!"

The arrest of Israeli "movers" filming the attack and dancing with joy, and the subsequent arrest of groups of Israeli "students" supposedly tracking the would-be hijackers remains a deep mystery. So does the immobilization of US air defenses.

The US 9/11 Commission was a whitewash, as are all such government commissions. They are designed to obscure, not reveal, the truth.

A 2006, a Scripps Howard/Washington Post poll found that 36% of the 1,000 Americans sampled believed the US government was behind 9/11. Many Americans still do not believe the official version of 9/11.

Neither do many Europeans. The entire Muslim world believes 9/11 was the work of Israel and far right American neocons, led by Dick Cheney.

If the official story about 9/11 is true, the attacks caught the Bush administration asleep on guard duty. Bush’s incompetent national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, brushed off serious warnings of the impending attack and actually cut spending on anti-terrorism just before 9/11.

The White House and media were quick to blame Muslims who hated America’s lifestyle and values, launching the concept of "Islamic terrorism" – i.e. that the Muslim faith, not political issues, prompted the attacks.

This dangerous canard has infected America, leading to a rising tide of Islamophobia. This week’s continued uproar over a Muslim community center in downtown New York, and a Florida preacher’s threat to burn Korans, are the latest doleful example of cultivated religious hatred.

The suicide team that attacked New York and Washington made clear its aim was: a. to punish the US for backing Israel’s repression of Palestinians; and b. what they called US "occupation" of Saudi Arabia. Though they were all Muslims, religion was not the motivating factor.

As the CIA’s former bin Laden expert Michael Scheuer rightly observed, the Muslim world was furious at the US for what it was doing in their region, not because of America’s values, liberties or religion.

These motives for the 9/11 attack have been largely obscured by the whipping up hysteria over "Islamic terrorism." The planting of anthrax in New York, Florida and Washington soon after 9/11 was clearly designed to promote further anti-Muslim furor. The perpetrators of this red herring remain unknown. But the anthrax attack hastened passage of the semi-totalitarian Patriot Act that sharply limited the personal freedoms of Americans and imposed draconian new laws.

Faked bin Laden videos and audio tapes. Planted anthrax. An intact Koran implausibly found at ground zero. Evidence in a hijacker’s bag that had somehow failed to make his ill-fated flight. Immediate claims that al-Qaida was behind the attacks. Those amateur kamikaze pilots and collapsing towers.

Perhaps most damning, tapes taken in London of meetings between President George Bush and PM Tony Blair revealed a sinister proposal by the US president to provoke war with Iraq by painting US aircraft in UN colors, then buzzing Iraqi air defenses until they fired on them, thus providing a "casus belli." Bush also reportedly told Blair that after Iraq, he would "go on" to attack Saudi Arabia, Syria and Pakistan.

In 1939, Nazi Germany dressed up soldiers in Polish uniforms to provoke a border fire-fight to justify Berlin’s ensuing invasion of Poland. Bush’s plan was of the same ilk. A president who would contemplate such a criminal operation might go a lot further to achieve his imperial dreams.

As a veteran journalist, to me, all this smells to high heaven. There are just too many unanswered questions, too many suspicions, and that old Roman legal question, "cui bono" – "to whose benefit?"

On 28 February, 1933, fire, set by a Dutch Jew, ravaged the Germany’s parliament, the Reichstag. While the Reichstag’s ruins were still smoking, Adolf Hitler’s government declared a war against "terrorism." A "Decree for the Protection of People and State" was promulgated suspending all legal protections of speech, assembly, property, and personal liberties. The Reichstag fire allowed the government to round up "terrorism" suspects without due process of law and made police powers near absolute.

Sound familiar? Here’s another startling coincidence. Two years before 9/11, a series of mysterious apartment building bombings in Russia killed over 200 people. "Islamic terrorists" from Chechnya were blamed.

Panic swept Russia and boosted former KGB agent Vladimir Putin into full power. Russian security agents of FSB were caught red-handed planting explosives in another building, but the story was hushed up. A former FSB agent, Alexander Litvinenko, who tried to reveal this story, was murdered in London by radioactive polonium.

Similarly, the Bush administration’s neocons shamelessly used 9/11 to promote the invasion of Iraq. Just before the attack, polls showed 80% of Americans erroneously believed Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. Dr. Goebbels would have been proud.

So what, in the end, can we conclude? 1. We still do not know the real story about 9/11. 2. The official version is not credible. 3. 9/11 was used to justify invading strategic Afghanistan and oil-rich Iraq. 4. The attacks plunged America into wars against the Muslim world and enriched the US arms industry. 5. 9/11 boosted pro-Israel neoconservatives, formerly a fringe group, into power, and with them America’s totalitarian far right. 6. Bush’s unprovoked war against Iraq destroyed one of Israel’s two main enemies. 7. 9/11 put America in what may turn out to be a permanent state of war with the Muslim world – a key goal of the neoconservatives .

But I’ve seen no hard evidence to date that 9/11 was a plot by America’s far right or by Israel or a giant cover-up. Just, perhaps, the Mother of All Coincidences. In the end, it may just have been 19 angry Arabs and a bumbling Bush administration looking for someone else to blame.

September 11, 2010

Eric Margolis is the author of War at the Top of the World and the new book, American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World. See his website.

[Len Colby]

I doubt it only 3 or 4 of the tens of thousands of survivors have joined the “truth movement”

Do you really believe that only 3 or 4 question the official story? Before the 9/11 hearings even started, one of the survivors appeared before the commission and gave them a litany of legitimate, troubling questions regarding 9/11 that the witnesses should be asked. The commission, in true cover-up fashion, doggedly refused to ask most of those questions.

Do you believe, along with 42 percent of Americans (according to a 2006 Zogby poll), that there should be a real investigation of 9/11 to try to answer all such unanswered questions? And if not, why not?

Sorry Ron I was unclear by “survivors” I meant the people who were in or near the WTC between the 1st plane strike (8:46) and the 2nd collapse (10:28) or people who were in or around 7 WTC up to the time it collapsed. NIST estimated there were 16,220 – 18,580* just in the Twin Towers, IIRC ASCE/FEMA estimated about 23,000 in the complex, neither included the hundreds of first responders who showed up. Roughly 0.05% of them have backed the claims of the “truth movement”, the number who believe Elvis is alive or that a monster lives in Loch Ness is probably greater than the number who believe explosives, thermite, mini-nukes, space beams or some combination of the “above” collapsed the towers. And these 3 – 5 have given contradictory or indefinite accounts of what they witnessed.

Even family members have underwhelming supported the controlled demolition fantasy (CDF). Just over 2600 people died in the collapses if we guesstimate 4 immediate** and 10 extended relatives per victim that’s 10,000 – 26,000 people. While some seem to back LIHOP only a small handful publicly backed the CDF.

As for the Zogby poll it has been discussed a few times a leading question was asked and there was an inverse relationship between educational level and giving the truther answer. In any case supporting a new investigation does NOT equal believing the towers were CDed a 2006 poll showed only 16% of Americans believed it was “somewhat likely” or “very likely” explosives were used***.

* http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201-7.pdf pg 35

** i.e. parents, siblings, spouses and children

*** http://www.newspolls.org/articles/19604

Tom:

I don’t think 9/11 can productively be discussed in catch all thread, the subject is too complicated. The points you raised have already been discussed elsewhere. Ron started this thread lamenting that AE911T’s press conference which only focused on the CDF was ignored. IMO then this is what this thread should focus on.

Edited September 11, 2010 by Len Colby

[Len Colby]

In spite of what I said to Tom above one of Eric Margolis’ many fallacies was too absurd to go unresponded

9/11 Cover-Up Remains While Questions Mount

by Eric Margolis

www.lewrockwell.com

September 11, 2010

[...]

In 1993, I was hijacked over Germany on a Lufthansa flight bound for Cairo. The Ethiopian hijacker took us all the way back to New York City. The hijacker was threatening to crash our A310 jumbo jet into Wall Street.

Our flight was shadowed by US F-15 fighters that had orders to shoot, if necessary. Where, then, was US air defense on 11 Sept. 2001?

The flight time from Germany to New York is about 7 hours according to something Margolis wrote in 2000 the plane landed in Hannover “and sat on the ground for some hours” before flying to the US, the Guardian reported it was there for “two or three hours” thus there was far more lead time than was available on 9/11. I not seen it stated elsewhere even by Margolis that the fighters had shootdown orders.

http://web.archive.org/web/20040823013910/http://www.ericmargolis.com/archives/2000/02/nothing_to_fear.php

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/feb/08/stansted.theairlineindustry1

Also though it has nothing to do with 9/11 but Marinus van der Lubbe was not Jewish and his role in the Reichstag fire is disputed

Edited September 11, 2010 by Len Colby

[Len Colby]

I previously mentioned the 20 people who were trapped in the wreckage of the Twin Towers, Tom Canavan and another man climbed out of the basement concourse near the south tower the rest were in the other building. 16 were in stairway B of the North Tower between the 3rd and 22nd (or 13th) floors, the other two, the PAPD cops depicted Oliver Stone’s movie, were in the basement near a freight elevator of the same building. Several of them have gotten a lot of media attention none of them has so even has hinted they believe the towers were brought down via controlled demolition. Three of those people are especially well qualified to have noticed the signs of anything untoward.

Pasquale Buzzelli, a structural engineer, was the project manager in charge of the renovations to the George Washington Bridge, “had won a scholarship to Cooper Union [the #5 civil engineering college in the US], and had immediately been hired by the Port Authority”. Since he was born in 1969 and was part of a fraternity pledge class in 1987 he presumably graduated in 1991 thus had worked in the WTC just over 10 years. When the first plane hit he was on a elevator between the 44th floor sky lobby and his office on the 64th floor. He continued to his office and stayed with his coworkers until they evacuated via stairway B shortly after the south tower collapsed, according to some accounts they left at 10:08. Buzzelli and Genelle Guzman, a secretary, were the only survivors from the office. He thinks he was on the 22nd floor when the tower collapsed she recalled being on the 13 and said he was ahead of her. Since he was found higher up in the pile she might have been mistaken about his location.

16 people who were in the stairwell managed to climb out on their own, 14 were firefighters, Josephine Harris was a PA bookkeeper and Dave Lim was a PAPD cop. Two of the fire fighters were high ranking officers with decades of experience, Captain (soon promoted to Battalion Chief) Jay Jonas of Ladder 6 and 11th Battalion Chief Rich Picciotto. Jonas and most of the other denounced Picciotto for his self-glorifying book but so far neither Picciotto nor Jonas nor any of the others said they heard bombs go off or anything of the sort.

http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/spec-civil

http://nymag.com/print/?/nymetro/news/sept11/2003/n_9189/

http://911research.wtc7.net/sept11/victims/wtcsurvivors.html

http://www.firerescue1.com/fire-products/press-releases/110947-The-History-Channel-to-showcase-the-story-of-12-firefighters-that-survived-9-11/

http://www.amazon.com/102-Minutes-Untold-Survive-Inside/dp/0805076824#reader_0805076824