Sid Walker

Not sure if I understand you correctly, Peter. Are you suggesting that the: - attacks on the twin towers were unexpected assaults by an external enemy (Al Qaida?) - twin towers collapsed only because of the impacts of the planes (i.e. no controlled demolition) - reason for the collapse of WTC-7 was that it was rigged up for controlled demolition, between the time of the unexpected attacks in the morning and time of its collapse in the afternoon?

Exactly right. In 'normal' circumstances, Carter would be the obvious first choice. But nothing's normal about these times. In all the chatter I've heard about Blair and the envoy job, yours is the first mention I've heard of Carter as a better candidate. A sad reflection on the general standard (and bias) of mass media chatter.

Always a moment to relish, Jack. Happened to me once or twice as well. The exception that proves the rule.

Fascinating stuff John. How did you learn these things?

Interesting article Mark. Russia has cold feet about Blair... right on! While most of Europe will probably go along with this farce, it's sad so observe that the UN is effectively voiceless. It's the UN that should be running the whole show. In reality, it is utterly marginalized. Another very long-term consequence of the coup of November 1963.

I think Gary and Bill make a very persuasive case on the framing of RFK, which continues to the present day. Good work!

Innocently imagining that it would now be safe to turn on BBC World, I flicked on my telly... to witness Blair fielding 'question time' to a House seemingly overflowing with sycophants. Just how long can a resignation take? The BBC seemed to be running a script written several years ago, when Blair was a genuinely popular PM. Smiling faces and awed respect all round. Clearly enthusiasm for Tony didn't wane at the BBC when the British public turned its back on this lying war monger. It just kept growing, like a tumor. A case of hanging together lest they hang separately?

Gordon Brown reviewed Austen Morgan's undistinguished biography of Harold Wilson for the Independent on Sunday in the paper's edition of 14 June 1992. "Nye, Clem, Jim, Michael and the other one" contains the following: "But he does not, despite his promise to do so, explain the sudden resignation in 1976. Nor does he get to the bottom of Wilson's obsession with the security services." Somehow I don't think Brown will be pursuing that line of enquiry now he's in No.10. I think Benn's wife, an American, boasted the genuine distinction of joining the "Who Killed Kennedy?" committee in '64. Another reason for the CIA's gimps in British intel not to trust him. You do have a great filing cabinet Paul. I think you're right about Mrs Benn - I recall reading the same at one time, but had the info incorrectly filed under 'forgotten'.

I think that's substantially correct. The foundations of US spookdom were largely British. It is an achievement, IMO, on a par with the invention of the thumbscrew. Not the high point of Britain's contribution to global culture. The low point.

British intelligence? Not an oxymoron, I think. Just an accolade stolen by a bunch of charlatans and criminals. I prefer to call that bunch British Stupidity on Dexedrine. BSOD for short. If I was Gordon Brown, I'd smash them into a thousand pieces, to coin a phrase. Unfortunately, occupants of No 10 seem to go through a grooming process prior to occupancy, to make sure nothing so inconvenient is ever really on the cards. Tony Benn, I suspect, was considered ungroomable - hence the panic in the early 1980s when it appeared he might succeed in becoming even deputy leader of a major party.

Rumours come and rumours go - but the prospect that Blair may become the "quartet's" Middle Eastern envoy seems to be growing. Blair's skills in compiling accurate dossiers - and his most impressive track record while British PM of spreading peace and democracy throughout the middle eastern region - have clearly served him well. I notice he recently dropped in to see the Pope and is contemplating becoming the 21st century's answer to Michael Muggeridge. The conversation between them must have been inspiring. Unfortunately, since the Vatican mafia took care of Paul John 1st, the Vicar of Christ has been rather muffled in his approach to middle eastern peace. Perhaps this was the occasion for a new start? I hope the Pontiff advised Bliar that if he intends to make a real difference in that bedevilled part of the world, he must take public service to its ultimate limits. The way to make a lasting impact is to be scourged and taunted while taking a stroll through occupied East Jeruslem, then affixed to a cross on the Mount of Olives. I, for one, would purchase the DVD - a world-first collaborative venture between Spielberg and Mel Gibson?

Nicely put, Michael.

Did anyone catch this? I missed it. Part 2 is on Friday June 29 at 8pm. It will be interesting to see if the Liberty is mentioned and what angle the doco takes. Well worth watching Mark French made documentary, some very interesting footage from the era. The first part traced the road to war. Dayan was shown as the main protagonist of war; Eshkol as a reluctant war-leader. Nasser's terrible miscalculation was also covered (very poor advice from his military commanders). It also came through clearly how widespread the perceptions were that Israel was in mortal peril. Most westerners, Arabs - even ordinary Israelis - held that view. The Israeli military command knew otherwise. If the USS Liberty incident is covered, it must be in Part 2.

I'm coming to agree with Mark, Len. You are bump crazy. Anyhow, thanks for directing us back to Steve Rymer's post about the feasibility of 'hijacking' airliners by electronic means. Well worth re-reading after all these months... I notice Steve's succinct analysis stands unrefuted.

This is written from the same perspective as Dr Stangelove. Len, you seem to have no awareness at all that the tens of millions of Germans, Russians and other eastern Europeans who perished in the cataclysm resulting from this clash of giants were HUMAN BEINGS. Yes of course I am aware of that Sid but the path to a cataclysmic war with millions of deaths had already been set in place by the German Fuehrer. In May 1941 the options facing Britain were bleak either: Accept a world were Hitler and his allies controlled most of Continental Europe and large chunks of Asia and Africa. A scenario in which the USSR probably would have eventually been invaded anyway and the few remaining independent countries in Europe invaded and/or forced to accept puppet regimes. OR Continue to fight a war they were unlikely to win in the near future, if ever. Face the regular bombing of her cities and possibly even face invasion and occupation. In this scenario as well Hitler probably would have invaded the USSR though perhaps later than 1941 (if indeed he was induced to do so then by the British). I don’t think any serious historians believe Hitler’s Germany would have existed peacefully side by side with Stalin’s Soviet Union indefinitely and war between the two the two nations was inevitable it was only a question of when. Len, Please explain how "the path to a cataclysmic war with millions of deaths had already been set in place by the German Fuehrer"? I don't mean waffle such as "the Nazis caused WW2". I'd like you to explain why you hold that view. As I suspect it may be one of those things you think is 'obvious' to anyone other than an 'extremist', please help us all to see the light by providing enough of a case so a reasonable person might actually believe you are correct. If you can. As for the possibility of long-term co-existence between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, it's an interesting hypothetical. I doubt if Stalin would have declared war on Germany unless he'd been sure of western support and involvement on another front. Would Hitler have attacked the USSR, not immediately but within a few years? Perhaps. I don't think it's obvious. But if the western leadership had been concerned to maintain peace - as opposed to achieving the utter destruction of the German system government and the inevitable death of millions of Russians - the remedy lay in its own hands. To guard against an expansionist Germany, it could have announced that an attack on the USSR would be a casus belli.

Dewney’s cellphone research is crap. He didn’t carryout his tests anywhere near the flight routes of the planes not even in the same country but rather over London, Ontatio. He didn’t perform them at the cruising altitudes of the involved planes but rather at much lower elevations and extrapolated lower success rates higher up. For reasons never explained he never went over 8000 feet though the plane he used could reach 13,000. He also made some assumptions that seem to be false 1) He assumed that the newer cell phones and systems in use at the time of his ‘experiment’ would have longer range than ones in use in 2001 but evidence inicates the contrary. 2) He assumed coverage would be better in urban areas (like London) than rural ones but once again the opposite seems to be the case bases stations can only handle a set amount of traffic, in urban areas the radius in which that amount would be reach would obviously be much less than in a rural one. Also many of the calls were made on AirPhones rather than cellphones and some where made while the planes were at well below cursing altitude. For more: http://911myths.com/html/the_9_11_calls_weren_t_real.html His "Operation Pearl" is equally without merit. The possibility of remote controlled planes was already discussed in a another thread. The breadth of your expertise never ceases to amaze, Len. You offer (almost) instant opinion about practically anything and everything. Quite remarkable really. Anyhow, people can make their own judgments. We don't have to take your opinions on trust, do we Len? (or did I miss a recent change in the law?) See: Project Achilles Report Parts One, Two and Three The Cellphone and Airfone Calls from Flight UA93 Operation Pearl Note that if the WTC buildings were brought down by controlled demolition, the Pentagon attack falsified, the cellphone calls falsified etc... then as I said previously, the mass media (at the highest levels) must have colluded in this mass murder. They uncritically promulgated a false narrative from the initial moments of these atrocities. That's more than folly or laziness. It's a clear case of complicity. We might therefore expect, over time, to notice occasional cracks in the media facade... anomalous stories that point to conspiracy, even if they can't be taken as proof without further bona fide investigation. That has happened. The most blatant example was the recent discovery that the BBC reported the WTC-7's collapse before it took place. True to form, the journalists directly responsible have gone to ground. Like so much else concerning 9-11, the issue rests unresolved, an unbelievable official narrative bolstered only by a stonewall of condescension and silence. In 1963, an evil cryptocracy killed a popular US President, selecting a lone patsy to take the rap. In 2001, an evil cryptocracy killed some 3,000 people, mainly Americans, selecting an entire religion (Islam) and an entire cultural group (Arabs) as patsies. I guess it goes to show that successful criminals get greedier over time.

I should have said, John, after your latest post in this thread, that I think you are telling a ripping yarn in the true Yorkshire sense of the term. I am curious about some of the archival material referenced in the text. Did you ferret them out yourself? (Example: Doc. FO 898/14 – Public Records Office, Kew) May we see them? Anyhow, do keep rolling it out. It's a great read, dealing with a very interesting topic, IMO.

Sid, From the video footage on WTC 7, I only could observe the upper floors during the collapse, maybe the top two thirds of the building. The visible outline of the building showed no collapse of the roof periphery during the descent of the building. Does this agree with your impressions? I do not have the plans of WTC 7, they were not availble nor as accessible as the twin towers. However, since the twin towers were curtain wall design (as per a Discovery Channel special on the building construction) which facilitated their tremendous height and the ratio of the towers' height over their cross section (again allowing the construction of these buildings, which were tall and not tapered, e.g. Empire State Bldg. along the height of the towers), I would assume that the WTC 7, at 47 stories tall, was constructed as a simple steel frame design. Modeling a steel frame design would include connecting elements between the columns (trusses), forming a 47 section box frame. This is of course oversimplified to a great degree. In weakening various structural members (peripheral columns and trusses in various combinations), the WTC 7 collapse would require some amount of folding inwards upon itself (at best - to contain the collapse within the smallest footprint area), a gross simplification being a house of cards. In any model manipulation, the building should not fall straight down. The only way to model this effect is to cause a complete buckling of all (or almost all) of the columns, on several of the bottom floors, SIMULTANEOUSLY. In that case the building would fall straight down (basically the legs have been kicked out from under it), and the inertia results in the subsequent buckling of the upper columns, which would act as something like battering rams experiencing loading in excess of their allowable compressive strength (which for a standard 'W' or 'I' beam section would be at least 60,000 PSI (assuming that the slenderness ratio, the L/D is not totally wrong, which would be an extremely remote possibility). Also basically all of the peripheral columns would have to fail almost simultaneously. Therefore for the upper floors to remain intact, falling in a symetrical and dimensionally stable monolithic structure, as shown in the video I saw, it would stand to reason that the lower columns were either cut, or pulled out, simultaneously. The modeling assumes that the upper part of the building did not fold inwards (I didn't see it fold inwards, did you?) before collapsing, that a portion or portions of the WTC 7 did not fail in succession instead of simultaneously. A cascading or successive failure wold have caused a structural failure in some smaller portion (a part of WTC 7 fails, the remaining loads exceed the yield strength of the remaining parts/sections of the building), and eventually lead to insufficient strength to prop up the remaining parts of the building. The video images which I viewed show the building falling as a whole, not in stages. Is that what you observed? Lastly, the building remained oriented vertically and horizontally during the first part of the fall, in the same orientation as when it was standing before the collapse. This should only happen if the lower columns were removed or simultaneously cut, such that the upper portion was quickly in an unsupported state, and subject to gravity, the building could only fall directly downwards. This is the building behavior which I observed from the video footage available. If anyone knows the type/style of building design for WTC 7, I would appreciate this information. Also if anyone had any other views of the collapse. The modeling was rudimentary, but I am fairly confident that more advanced modeling would yield very similar results. With the exception of the lower columns, demolitions would not have been necessary to produce the observed effect. High temperature exothermics, such as phosphorus, would have been very effective at significantly damaging the columns, but explosions would not have been necessary. This is a theory, based upon several unverified assumptions, so take it with a grain of salt. If I understand you correctly, Peter, then I believe what you say of WTC-7 is true of all three buildings that collpased on the fateful day. Whether the word 'explosions' is appropriate is another matter. The key point is that some form of controlled demolition techniques must have been employed. Exactly what devices, which technology etc... I leave to others, better informed than I, to debate. Controlled demolition for such large buildings takes a considerable time to set up. If some form of controlled demolition was applied, the official story collapses. 9-11 must have been some manner of 'inside job'. Mass media collusion at the highest levels must also be inferred... there's no other explanation for how the official line has been spun so vigorously from the first few hours, IMO.

Mr Fetzer, I don't think Sid said what you said he said. Thanks Michael. You (and Jack) are correct. I hadn't commented on Judy Woods paper. I wasn't familiar with it. Having had a quick read, it looks like good stuff to me, FWIW.

This is written from the same perspective as Dr Stangelove. Len, you seem to have no awareness at all that the tens of millions of Germans, Russians and other eastern Europeans who perished in the cataclysm resulting from this clash of giants were HUMAN BEINGS.

Peter Today I find myself very short of time. Apologies for that. FWIW, I recommend the website physics911.net, especially articles therein by contributed by by its founder and leading inspiration, Kew Dewdney. The website separates articles about 'What Did Not Happen' from articles speculating on 'What May Have Happened'. That's elementary - as Holmes might have said to Watson - but it's amazing how much these two approaches get mixed up in popular debate about 9-11. Proving (or refuting) the proposition that 9-11 did not happen as per the official story is the first logical step. If one then takes the view that the official story doesn't stack up, it would nevertheless be hard to argue that case persuasively without at least one plausible alternative scenario. That's the value of the speculative section. I could make the list you request - not today, but perhaps another time. However, I don't consider myself an expert on 9-11. But if your interest is truly to consider the 9-11 critique in its strongest manifestation (as opposed to the intellectual dishonesty of those such as George Monbiot who chase only straw men), then I applaud you - and believe that Dewdney's articles will not disappoint. When the story is eventually pieced together of the evolution of the '9-11 truth movement', the pivotal role of that brilliant man will become more evident. Before Dewdney's work on cellphone calls, for example, one of the main (and seemingly irrefutable) pieces of 'evidence' in favour of the official story were the phone calls to ground allegedly made by Barbara Olsen and others. These were widely publicized in the mass media. They made it seem certain that Arab hijackers were responsible for what happened to the planes. Dewdney punctured that bubble. Although there has never been an official retraction, babble about the cellphone calls (and Barbara Olsen) has greatly diminished since 2003. Dewdney had exposed the narrative's Achilles Heel. Dewdney also showed how it was possible to account for the events of 9-11 without any 'real' hijackers at all. His scenario - written up in Operation Pearl - may not be correct, but it is, IMO, plausible. These articles are several years old. They have stood the test of time. Much 9-11 disinformation and many false trails have come and gone since they were written. Dewdney's work remains, as far as I can see, unscathed.

Your diligence in maintaining these detailed debates with Len is admirable, Mark. I say that without any irony. You have the endurance to play our resident South American sophist at his own game. In my opinion, of course, you win. I have less patience for this kind of grueling duel and it seems to have decreased over time. In a curious kind of way, I also have developed greater empathy, over time, for the ideological enemy. Len has to dispute survivors' accounts of the attack on the USS Liberty. He has to dispute the rather obvious fact that it was a deliberate attack (deliberate, that is, on the part of those who ordered the assault - I doubt they told Eshkol!) He has to dispute these things, like Sisyphus has to keep rolling the boulder up the hill. He has to do it, that is, until he uncouples the chain that fastens him to the boulder and walks away a free man.

Notwithstanding my earlier comments on this thread - and cognizant also of the high level of cynicism on this Forum - I just watched extracts of Gordon Brown's first speech as incoming PM (apparently the hand-over is not until Wednesday). What I saw was impressive. I had the feeling of listening to someone on the left of politics, articulately arguing the case for a progressive social agenda with conviction and style. Doubtless I'll have disappointments from Brown's administration. A change of occupancy at No 10 does not a revolution make. But should Brown actually turn out to be a lying war monger and sneaky ally of the cryptocracy on a par with Blair, I would be surprised and very alarmed. A more credible war salesman than Bliar would be dangerous indeed.

Arguably the question could be applied to a wide variety of topics, all very pertinent to events very timely, wink, wink.....The point should be made that if a child reaches his hand into the cookie jar and knows he doesent face any risk of disciplinarian action, grins then there is nothing to worry about, what is there to be afraid of. Conversely........ That is a very perceptive remark, IMO. Has anyone ever being charged in a major western jurisdiction with falsifying archives or withholding material by incorrec classification or other means to obstruct its timely release? It may have happened, but I can't recall a case. How can we possibly trust that due process is followed with archival releases in the USA, Britain etc - given the deep sickness in our political cultures through infection by unaccountable and out of control 'state security' networks? That's not to discount all the new information that becomes available over time, but the national archives must be read, as others have pointed out, with eyes wide open. Perhaps a Government Health warning should be on each page? Warning: This material may expose you to 'limited hangouts' and other blind alleys. Weeding archives (even planting a few deliberate deceits) is, I imagine, relatively easy for those in control of 'national security'. After all, they have plenty of time to do it.

At 83, Jimmy Carter evinces the freedom of wise elders with nothing to lose except their self-respect. Bravo!