Peter McKenna
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Posts posted by Peter McKenna
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The purported \\\"gravitational\\\" collapse (video) of World Trade Center building 7, which was hit by zero aircraft, and which also vertically collapsed in within a second of free-fall-time-in-a-vacuum later that same day, similarly fails this same conservation-of-energy analysis.
The explanation for how and why so many highly-accredited and credentialed people all so miserably failed to check the \\\"pancake collapse\\\" theory, by giving it this basic reality check, is beyond the scope of this simple physics discussion.
I\\\'m no physicist, Jack, but I feel you are pursuing a key point here.
I understand that the collapse of a steel framed tower block at near free-fall velocity has only ever occured under the circumstances of a controlled demoliion.
If anyone disagrees with that and has evidence to the contrary, please post a reference.
If it\\\'s true, that alone is key to disproving the official theory of 9-11.
I wonder if you noticed - as I did - that all the \\\'9-11 conspiracy first responders\\\' - that is, the folk who first blew the whistle about 9-11 and suggested it might be not what it was purported to be - deflected attantion away from that aspect of the case.
I\\\'m thinking of characters such as Mike Ruppert, Jared Israel and Greg Szymanski.
I believe this was part of the conspirators\\\' gameplan.
It helped ensure that those who doubted the official story were directed away from the tower collpase issue. In the weeks and months following 9-11, that was crucial.
They had to get the forensic evidence cleaned up and out of reach ASAP. Any calls - such as those of the NYC firemen who complained bitterly through their in-house journal - that the forensic evidence (eg. the steel from the buildings) NOT be shipped off, would have been an embarrassment. It was crucial that the \\\"9-11 conspiracy movement\\\" looked in other directions for the first few months.
That was achieved, partly through their efforts.
Unless the matter is ultimately dealt with via a \\\'Truth and Reconciliation Commission\\\' (my prefered option), obvious disinfo agents who helped throw us off the trail should, IMO, be put on trial for complicity in crimes against humanity. At the risk of stating the obvious, it\\\'s a most serious crime to help the real perpetrators of mass murder escape justice.
The author of the Popular Mechanics beat-up is a case in point... a certain Mr Ben Chertoff, as I recall.
So are those responsible for the 911myths website.
I remember reading about the design of the World Trade Center Bldgs. A while ago, so I looked it up and it’s corroborated on Wikipedia and several other sites, just Google it; anyway:
The WTC bldgs. Are curtain wall design, which means that the floors are supported by the outside walls instead of interior columns like almost all high rise buildings. This was the method the architects used to provide the great height of the buildings since, what is known as the “radius of inertia”, would be the greatest possible value, that is, the structural supports are the farthest distance possible from the building centerline, making the building strong as possible against side loading, such as from wind.
This also means that the walls would shear off from the floors prior to collapse and fall straight down, different from the collapse of a standard column and pier design, which must be imploded to make way for the inward collapse of the structure. I’m not a demolition expert, but I do know something of structural design.
Provided the walls sheared off from the floors prior to falling, which they would have to, the floors would be (for all intensive purposes) unsupported, and would collapse (just like a stack of pancakes, as someone referred to it). The walls would fall straight downwards quickly, like a dropped knife.
This would explain the timing and mode of the WTC collapses.
The third, 47 story bldg., would be another story, however, like Wallace identified. I don’t know how this Bldg. was designed, but it sounds like a demolition job.
I guess the term \"Curtain Wall design\" can apply to Core supported design also, so I amend my prior post to state that the WTC was \"exterior wall supported\" Vs. core or interior (Column and Pier) supported. This info is available at Wikipedia for reference.
Peter.
I\'ll make three points.
1/ I don\'t want to get into a detailed debate that, in truth, requires architectrual / engineering expertise.
I don\'t have that expertise and I suspect you may not either.
There are \'experts\' on both sides of the debate regarding how THREE WTC towers collapsed, on 9-11, symetrically and in their own footprints, at near free fall velocity.
I don\'t propose to get into evaluating these competing experts with you. It\'s a little like Len Colby and myself discussing the finer points of Farsi. But I do know who I believe is credible (eg. Steven Jones) and who is not.
2/ In my earlier post, I asked a simple minded question.
Perhaps no-one noticed?
This is the question, rephrased: Apart from the THREE collapsing towers on 9-11, have steel-framed tower blocks EVER collapsed in the manner observed on that occasion - in the absence, that is, of controlled demolition.
As there appears to be a defeaning silence on this, I infer the answr is no.
If that\'s the case, what\'s the chance that on 9-11 this remarkable phenomenon occured to THREE buildings - but has never happened on any other day, before or after?
Does that seem a stretch hard to believe to you?
It does to me.
3/ You admit, rather off-hand, that WTC 7 does indeed appear to be a case of controlled demolition.
But that is NOT a minor concession.
It changes the official 9-11 story in a FUNDAMENTAL way - because it indicates foreknoweldge.
I\'ve never seen it claimed that it\'s psossible to rig a building for controlled demolition in a few hours; it simply could not have been done on 9-11 as a reactive measure. Nor do the US Government\'s official reports on 9-11 state that WTC 7 was demolished deliberately (although leaseholder Silverstein seemed to admit it in an extraordinary radio interview soem years ago).
Do Larry Silversteain, Westfied America and the NY Port Authority make a habit of rigging buildings for controlled demolition - just in case they happen to catch fire and it turns out to be convenient to \"pull them\"?
If so, which other buildings are pre-rigged for controlled demolition?
New Yorkers - and other city dwellers - have a right to know!
If not, WHY was WTC 7 rigged in advance of 9-11?
The collapse of the three towers - and especially WTC 7 - point to a HUGE lie at the center of the official account of 9-11.
It cannot be brushed aside and should be faced squarely.
IMO Mr Silverstein and others should face trial for conspiracy to commit mass murder.
If the US Justice Department won\'t press charges, a civil suit is appropriate.
I have over thirty years experience in engineering, of which approximately eight were spent on structural related engineering.
I was pointing out that, based upon the design of WTC 1 and 2, being of a wall supported design, that the building collapse (falling of the walls) must be predicated upon the shearing of the floors from the walls, which would leave the floors unsupported. Columns installed interior to the walls would have been used for local floor loading, to spread the foot print for large local loads (like equipment, which could exceed a ‘per square foot’ local floor load allowable).
Once the floors sheared from the walls, there would be no intrinsic support for the floors. It stands to reason that nothing would be left standing interior to the walls.
Concerning the effect of fir on structural steel; Fire loading for steel beams and columns, especially with jet fuel, can be sufficient to ignite steel, in a building. Combustible loading and fire suppression design assumes that. I have seen photographs of beams which have ignited and spread fire through walls.
My point is, based upon the design of the WTC 1 and 2, the mode of collapse is plausible. This is not only consistent with the structural design of the buildings, but common sense. I am not familiar with the design of the 3rd, 47 story building which collapsed. If it was design via interior, core, loading of floors, then it does appear unlikely that an uncontrolled collapse would result in this building collapsing inside its own footprint. You point out that I made an “off handed” remark to this effect. That is because I am not familiar enough with the specifics of this building’s design to come to any conclusions.
I assume that you would desire theories concerning the 9/11 attack to be founded in plausible argument. Some verbiage has been spent addressing the WTC 1 &2 towers’ ‘strike’ in the attempt to draw out anomalies about the mode of collapse. The mode of collapse can be explained based upon the building design. Typically, following a large building failure or collapse, computer modeling of the failure is performed to verify that no negligence, design errors, or sabotage played any part. I have not heard any results of this type of investigation.
Peter...I am compelled to say that you have not made a thorough study
of the engineering of the three WTC buildings. Such is available in detail
on several websites. DO NOT RELY ON WIKIPEDIA. Go to the sources.
You say the building was supported by the curtain walls. Not so. The steel
center core of massive size was tied to the curtain wall in sturdy fashion.
Even had the floors "pancaked" the center core should have REMAINED
STANDING. And it is fundamental that pancaking floors CANNOT FALL AT
FREEFALL SPEED. A floor cannot fall at freefall speed IF EACH FLOOR
ENCOUNTERS RESISTANCE FROM THE FLOOR BELOW. Each floor turned
to powder, so there was no resistance. How can a floor turn to powder
before an upper floor hits it?
Building Seven was not curtain wall construction, but conventional. Yet
it too, without damage, fell into its own footprint at free fall speed. This
cannot be explained.
Please do your homework and get back to us.
Jack
I wish to add a statement from Minoru Yamasaki's site, the architect of the World Trade Center:
"The structural system, deriving from the I.B.M. Building in Seattle, is impressively simple. The 208-foot wide facade is, in effect, a prefabricated steel lattice, with columns on 39-inch centers acting as wind bracing to resist all overturning forces; the central core takes only the gravity loads of the building. A very light, economical structure results by keeping the wind bracing in the most efficient place, the outside surface of the building, thus not transferring the forces through the floor membrane to the core, as in most curtain-wall structures. Office spaces will have no interior columns. In the upper floors there is as much as 40,000 square feet of office space per floor. The floor construction is of prefabricated trussed steel, only 33 inches in depth, that spans the full 60 feet to the core, and also acts as a diaphragm to stiffen the outside wall against lateral buckling forces from wind-load pressures"
Note that for a very tall bldg., in a zone of fairly high seismic accelerations, as is New York City, the live loads will be many times the dead load (i.e. the gravity load), which is all the core structure was designed to support. Ultimately, if the dead load is exceeded in many of the floors, and the trusses sheared from the exterior supports, the interior would collapse. This is only common sense, if you know anything about structural design.
Once the walls separate from the floors, they would drop like a knife.
-
The purported \\\"gravitational\\\" collapse (video) of World Trade Center building 7, which was hit by zero aircraft, and which also vertically collapsed in within a second of free-fall-time-in-a-vacuum later that same day, similarly fails this same conservation-of-energy analysis.
The explanation for how and why so many highly-accredited and credentialed people all so miserably failed to check the \\\"pancake collapse\\\" theory, by giving it this basic reality check, is beyond the scope of this simple physics discussion.
I\\\'m no physicist, Jack, but I feel you are pursuing a key point here.
I understand that the collapse of a steel framed tower block at near free-fall velocity has only ever occured under the circumstances of a controlled demoliion.
If anyone disagrees with that and has evidence to the contrary, please post a reference.
If it\\\'s true, that alone is key to disproving the official theory of 9-11.
I wonder if you noticed - as I did - that all the \\\'9-11 conspiracy first responders\\\' - that is, the folk who first blew the whistle about 9-11 and suggested it might be not what it was purported to be - deflected attantion away from that aspect of the case.
I\\\'m thinking of characters such as Mike Ruppert, Jared Israel and Greg Szymanski.
I believe this was part of the conspirators\\\' gameplan.
It helped ensure that those who doubted the official story were directed away from the tower collpase issue. In the weeks and months following 9-11, that was crucial.
They had to get the forensic evidence cleaned up and out of reach ASAP. Any calls - such as those of the NYC firemen who complained bitterly through their in-house journal - that the forensic evidence (eg. the steel from the buildings) NOT be shipped off, would have been an embarrassment. It was crucial that the \\\"9-11 conspiracy movement\\\" looked in other directions for the first few months.
That was achieved, partly through their efforts.
Unless the matter is ultimately dealt with via a \\\'Truth and Reconciliation Commission\\\' (my prefered option), obvious disinfo agents who helped throw us off the trail should, IMO, be put on trial for complicity in crimes against humanity. At the risk of stating the obvious, it\\\'s a most serious crime to help the real perpetrators of mass murder escape justice.
The author of the Popular Mechanics beat-up is a case in point... a certain Mr Ben Chertoff, as I recall.
So are those responsible for the 911myths website.
I remember reading about the design of the World Trade Center Bldgs. A while ago, so I looked it up and it’s corroborated on Wikipedia and several other sites, just Google it; anyway:
The WTC bldgs. Are curtain wall design, which means that the floors are supported by the outside walls instead of interior columns like almost all high rise buildings. This was the method the architects used to provide the great height of the buildings since, what is known as the “radius of inertia”, would be the greatest possible value, that is, the structural supports are the farthest distance possible from the building centerline, making the building strong as possible against side loading, such as from wind.
This also means that the walls would shear off from the floors prior to collapse and fall straight down, different from the collapse of a standard column and pier design, which must be imploded to make way for the inward collapse of the structure. I’m not a demolition expert, but I do know something of structural design.
Provided the walls sheared off from the floors prior to falling, which they would have to, the floors would be (for all intensive purposes) unsupported, and would collapse (just like a stack of pancakes, as someone referred to it). The walls would fall straight downwards quickly, like a dropped knife.
This would explain the timing and mode of the WTC collapses.
The third, 47 story bldg., would be another story, however, like Wallace identified. I don’t know how this Bldg. was designed, but it sounds like a demolition job.
I guess the term \"Curtain Wall design\" can apply to Core supported design also, so I amend my prior post to state that the WTC was \"exterior wall supported\" Vs. core or interior (Column and Pier) supported. This info is available at Wikipedia for reference.
Peter.
I\'ll make three points.
1/ I don\'t want to get into a detailed debate that, in truth, requires architectrual / engineering expertise.
I don\'t have that expertise and I suspect you may not either.
There are \'experts\' on both sides of the debate regarding how THREE WTC towers collapsed, on 9-11, symetrically and in their own footprints, at near free fall velocity.
I don\'t propose to get into evaluating these competing experts with you. It\'s a little like Len Colby and myself discussing the finer points of Farsi. But I do know who I believe is credible (eg. Steven Jones) and who is not.
2/ In my earlier post, I asked a simple minded question.
Perhaps no-one noticed?
This is the question, rephrased: Apart from the THREE collapsing towers on 9-11, have steel-framed tower blocks EVER collapsed in the manner observed on that occasion - in the absence, that is, of controlled demolition.
As there appears to be a defeaning silence on this, I infer the answr is no.
If that\'s the case, what\'s the chance that on 9-11 this remarkable phenomenon occured to THREE buildings - but has never happened on any other day, before or after?
Does that seem a stretch hard to believe to you?
It does to me.
3/ You admit, rather off-hand, that WTC 7 does indeed appear to be a case of controlled demolition.
But that is NOT a minor concession.
It changes the official 9-11 story in a FUNDAMENTAL way - because it indicates foreknoweldge.
I\'ve never seen it claimed that it\'s psossible to rig a building for controlled demolition in a few hours; it simply could not have been done on 9-11 as a reactive measure. Nor do the US Government\'s official reports on 9-11 state that WTC 7 was demolished deliberately (although leaseholder Silverstein seemed to admit it in an extraordinary radio interview soem years ago).
Do Larry Silversteain, Westfied America and the NY Port Authority make a habit of rigging buildings for controlled demolition - just in case they happen to catch fire and it turns out to be convenient to \"pull them\"?
If so, which other buildings are pre-rigged for controlled demolition?
New Yorkers - and other city dwellers - have a right to know!
If not, WHY was WTC 7 rigged in advance of 9-11?
The collapse of the three towers - and especially WTC 7 - point to a HUGE lie at the center of the official account of 9-11.
It cannot be brushed aside and should be faced squarely.
IMO Mr Silverstein and others should face trial for conspiracy to commit mass murder.
If the US Justice Department won\'t press charges, a civil suit is appropriate.
I have over thirty years experience in engineering, of which approximately eight were spent on structural related engineering.
I was pointing out that, based upon the design of WTC 1 and 2, being of a wall supported design, that the building collapse (falling of the walls) must be predicated upon the shearing of the floors from the walls, which would leave the floors unsupported. Columns installed interior to the walls would have been used for local floor loading, to spread the foot print for large local loads (like equipment, which could exceed a ‘per square foot’ local floor load allowable).
Once the floors sheared from the walls, there would be no intrinsic support for the floors. It stands to reason that nothing would be left standing interior to the walls.
Concerning the effect of fir on structural steel; Fire loading for steel beams and columns, especially with jet fuel, can be sufficient to ignite steel, in a building. Combustible loading and fire suppression design assumes that. I have seen photographs of beams which have ignited and spread fire through walls.
My point is, based upon the design of the WTC 1 and 2, the mode of collapse is plausible. This is not only consistent with the structural design of the buildings, but common sense. I am not familiar with the design of the 3rd, 47 story building which collapsed. If it was design via interior, core, loading of floors, then it does appear unlikely that an uncontrolled collapse would result in this building collapsing inside its own footprint. You point out that I made an “off handed” remark to this effect. That is because I am not familiar enough with the specifics of this building’s design to come to any conclusions.
I assume that you would desire theories concerning the 9/11 attack to be founded in plausible argument. Some verbiage has been spent addressing the WTC 1 &2 towers’ ‘strike’ in the attempt to draw out anomalies about the mode of collapse. The mode of collapse can be explained based upon the building design. Typically, following a large building failure or collapse, computer modeling of the failure is performed to verify that no negligence, design errors, or sabotage played any part. I have not heard any results of this type of investigation.
Peter...I am compelled to say that you have not made a thorough study
of the engineering of the three WTC buildings. Such is available in detail
on several websites. DO NOT RELY ON WIKIPEDIA. Go to the sources.
You say the building was supported by the curtain walls. Not so. The steel
center core of massive size was tied to the curtain wall in sturdy fashion.
Even had the floors "pancaked" the center core should have REMAINED
STANDING. And it is fundamental that pancaking floors CANNOT FALL AT
FREEFALL SPEED. A floor cannot fall at freefall speed IF EACH FLOOR
ENCOUNTERS RESISTANCE FROM THE FLOOR BELOW. Each floor turned
to powder, so there was no resistance. How can a floor turn to powder
before an upper floor hits it?
Building Seven was not curtain wall construction, but conventional. Yet
it too, without damage, fell into its own footprint at free fall speed. This
cannot be explained.
Please do your homework and get back to us.
Jack
Jack,
The design of the WTC 1 and 2 towers were such that the EXTERIOR WALLS SUPPORTED THE INTERIOR LOADS. I have quoted one of many sources I've found stating this, as follows:
"World Trade Center tower construction
In terms of structural system the twin towers departed completely from other high-rise buildings. Conventional skyscrapers since the 19th century have been built with a skeleton of interior supporting columns that supports the structure. Exterior walls of glass steel or synthetic material do not carry any load. The Twin towers are radically different in structural design as the exterior wall is used as the load-bearing wall. (A load bearing wall supports the weight of the floors.) The only interior columns are located in the core area, which contains the elevators. The outer wall carries the building vertical loads and provides the entire resistance to wind. The wall consists of closely spaced vertical columns (21 columns 10 feet apart) tied together by horizontal spandrel beams that girdle the tower at every floor. On the inside of the structure the floor sections consist of trusses spanning from the core to the outer wall."
Also I did not dispute the 3rd building was not exterior wall supported.
Since the WTC 1 and 2 towers were exterior wall supported, what do you suppose supported the floors once they had sheared from the walls and exterior connecting supports? I wasn't there to observe it but I suppose many of the floors collapsed PRIOR to the walls falling and not in one big simultaneous collapse as you propose.
As for doing my homework (after reading some of your posts) I would suggest same, but that would suppose you would be capable of reaching a sensible conclusion.
-
The purported \\\"gravitational\\\" collapse (video) of World Trade Center building 7, which was hit by zero aircraft, and which also vertically collapsed in within a second of free-fall-time-in-a-vacuum later that same day, similarly fails this same conservation-of-energy analysis.
The explanation for how and why so many highly-accredited and credentialed people all so miserably failed to check the \\\"pancake collapse\\\" theory, by giving it this basic reality check, is beyond the scope of this simple physics discussion.
I\\\'m no physicist, Jack, but I feel you are pursuing a key point here.
I understand that the collapse of a steel framed tower block at near free-fall velocity has only ever occured under the circumstances of a controlled demoliion.
If anyone disagrees with that and has evidence to the contrary, please post a reference.
If it\\\'s true, that alone is key to disproving the official theory of 9-11.
I wonder if you noticed - as I did - that all the \\\'9-11 conspiracy first responders\\\' - that is, the folk who first blew the whistle about 9-11 and suggested it might be not what it was purported to be - deflected attantion away from that aspect of the case.
I\\\'m thinking of characters such as Mike Ruppert, Jared Israel and Greg Szymanski.
I believe this was part of the conspirators\\\' gameplan.
It helped ensure that those who doubted the official story were directed away from the tower collpase issue. In the weeks and months following 9-11, that was crucial.
They had to get the forensic evidence cleaned up and out of reach ASAP. Any calls - such as those of the NYC firemen who complained bitterly through their in-house journal - that the forensic evidence (eg. the steel from the buildings) NOT be shipped off, would have been an embarrassment. It was crucial that the \\\"9-11 conspiracy movement\\\" looked in other directions for the first few months.
That was achieved, partly through their efforts.
Unless the matter is ultimately dealt with via a \\\'Truth and Reconciliation Commission\\\' (my prefered option), obvious disinfo agents who helped throw us off the trail should, IMO, be put on trial for complicity in crimes against humanity. At the risk of stating the obvious, it\\\'s a most serious crime to help the real perpetrators of mass murder escape justice.
The author of the Popular Mechanics beat-up is a case in point... a certain Mr Ben Chertoff, as I recall.
So are those responsible for the 911myths website.
I remember reading about the design of the World Trade Center Bldgs. A while ago, so I looked it up and it’s corroborated on Wikipedia and several other sites, just Google it; anyway:
The WTC bldgs. Are curtain wall design, which means that the floors are supported by the outside walls instead of interior columns like almost all high rise buildings. This was the method the architects used to provide the great height of the buildings since, what is known as the “radius of inertia”, would be the greatest possible value, that is, the structural supports are the farthest distance possible from the building centerline, making the building strong as possible against side loading, such as from wind.
This also means that the walls would shear off from the floors prior to collapse and fall straight down, different from the collapse of a standard column and pier design, which must be imploded to make way for the inward collapse of the structure. I’m not a demolition expert, but I do know something of structural design.
Provided the walls sheared off from the floors prior to falling, which they would have to, the floors would be (for all intensive purposes) unsupported, and would collapse (just like a stack of pancakes, as someone referred to it). The walls would fall straight downwards quickly, like a dropped knife.
This would explain the timing and mode of the WTC collapses.
The third, 47 story bldg., would be another story, however, like Wallace identified. I don’t know how this Bldg. was designed, but it sounds like a demolition job.
I guess the term \"Curtain Wall design\" can apply to Core supported design also, so I amend my prior post to state that the WTC was \"exterior wall supported\" Vs. core or interior (Column and Pier) supported. This info is available at Wikipedia for reference.
Peter.
I\'ll make three points.
1/ I don\'t want to get into a detailed debate that, in truth, requires architectrual / engineering expertise.
I don\'t have that expertise and I suspect you may not either.
There are \'experts\' on both sides of the debate regarding how THREE WTC towers collapsed, on 9-11, symetrically and in their own footprints, at near free fall velocity.
I don\'t propose to get into evaluating these competing experts with you. It\'s a little like Len Colby and myself discussing the finer points of Farsi. But I do know who I believe is credible (eg. Steven Jones) and who is not.
2/ In my earlier post, I asked a simple minded question.
Perhaps no-one noticed?
This is the question, rephrased: Apart from the THREE collapsing towers on 9-11, have steel-framed tower blocks EVER collapsed in the manner observed on that occasion - in the absence, that is, of controlled demolition.
As there appears to be a defeaning silence on this, I infer the answr is no.
If that\'s the case, what\'s the chance that on 9-11 this remarkable phenomenon occured to THREE buildings - but has never happened on any other day, before or after?
Does that seem a stretch hard to believe to you?
It does to me.
3/ You admit, rather off-hand, that WTC 7 does indeed appear to be a case of controlled demolition.
But that is NOT a minor concession.
It changes the official 9-11 story in a FUNDAMENTAL way - because it indicates foreknoweldge.
I\'ve never seen it claimed that it\'s psossible to rig a building for controlled demolition in a few hours; it simply could not have been done on 9-11 as a reactive measure. Nor do the US Government\'s official reports on 9-11 state that WTC 7 was demolished deliberately (although leaseholder Silverstein seemed to admit it in an extraordinary radio interview soem years ago).
Do Larry Silversteain, Westfied America and the NY Port Authority make a habit of rigging buildings for controlled demolition - just in case they happen to catch fire and it turns out to be convenient to \"pull them\"?
If so, which other buildings are pre-rigged for controlled demolition?
New Yorkers - and other city dwellers - have a right to know!
If not, WHY was WTC 7 rigged in advance of 9-11?
The collapse of the three towers - and especially WTC 7 - point to a HUGE lie at the center of the official account of 9-11.
It cannot be brushed aside and should be faced squarely.
IMO Mr Silverstein and others should face trial for conspiracy to commit mass murder.
If the US Justice Department won\'t press charges, a civil suit is appropriate.
I have over thirty years experience in engineering, of which approximately eight were spent on structural related engineering.
I was pointing out that, based upon the design of WTC 1 and 2, being of a wall supported design, that the building collapse (falling of the walls) must be predicated upon the shearing of the floors from the walls, which would leave the floors unsupported. Columns installed interior to the walls would have been used for local floor loading, to spread the foot print for large local loads (like equipment, which could exceed a ‘per square foot’ local floor load allowable).
Once the floors sheared from the walls, there would be no intrinsic support for the floors. It stands to reason that nothing would be left standing interior to the walls.
Concerning the effect of fir on structural steel; Fire loading for steel beams and columns, especially with jet fuel, can be sufficient to ignite steel, in a building. Combustible loading and fire suppression design assumes that. I have seen photographs of beams which have ignited and spread fire through walls.
My point is, based upon the design of the WTC 1 and 2, the mode of collapse is plausible. This is not only consistent with the structural design of the buildings, but common sense. I am not familiar with the design of the 3rd, 47 story building which collapsed. If it was design via interior, core, loading of floors, then it does appear unlikely that an uncontrolled collapse would result in this building collapsing inside its own footprint. You point out that I made an “off handed” remark to this effect. That is because I am not familiar enough with the specifics of this building’s design to come to any conclusions.
I assume that you would desire theories concerning the 9/11 attack to be founded in plausible argument. Some verbiage has been spent addressing the WTC 1 &2 towers’ ‘strike’ in the attempt to draw out anomalies about the mode of collapse. The mode of collapse can be explained based upon the building design. Typically, following a large building failure or collapse, computer modeling of the failure is performed to verify that no negligence, design errors, or sabotage played any part. I have not heard any results of this type of investigation.
-
The purported \"gravitational\" collapse (video) of World Trade Center building 7, which was hit by zero aircraft, and which also vertically collapsed in within a second of free-fall-time-in-a-vacuum later that same day, similarly fails this same conservation-of-energy analysis.
The explanation for how and why so many highly-accredited and credentialed people all so miserably failed to check the \"pancake collapse\" theory, by giving it this basic reality check, is beyond the scope of this simple physics discussion.
I\'m no physicist, Jack, but I feel you are pursuing a key point here.
I understand that the collapse of a steel framed tower block at near free-fall velocity has only ever occured under the circumstances of a controlled demoliion.
If anyone disagrees with that and has evidence to the contrary, please post a reference.
If it\'s true, that alone is key to disproving the official theory of 9-11.
I wonder if you noticed - as I did - that all the \'9-11 conspiracy first responders\' - that is, the folk who first blew the whistle about 9-11 and suggested it might be not what it was purported to be - deflected attantion away from that aspect of the case.
I\'m thinking of characters such as Mike Ruppert, Jared Israel and Greg Szymanski.
I believe this was part of the conspirators\' gameplan.
It helped ensure that those who doubted the official story were directed away from the tower collpase issue. In the weeks and months following 9-11, that was crucial.
They had to get the forensic evidence cleaned up and out of reach ASAP. Any calls - such as those of the NYC firemen who complained bitterly through their in-house journal - that the forensic evidence (eg. the steel from the buildings) NOT be shipped off, would have been an embarrassment. It was crucial that the \"9-11 conspiracy movement\" looked in other directions for the first few months.
That was achieved, partly through their efforts.
Unless the matter is ultimately dealt with via a \'Truth and Reconciliation Commission\' (my prefered option), obvious disinfo agents who helped throw us off the trail should, IMO, be put on trial for complicity in crimes against humanity. At the risk of stating the obvious, it\'s a most serious crime to help the real perpetrators of mass murder escape justice.
The author of the Popular Mechanics beat-up is a case in point... a certain Mr Ben Chertoff, as I recall.
So are those responsible for the 911myths website.
I remember reading about the design of the World Trade Center Bldgs. A while ago, so I looked it up and it’s corroborated on Wikipedia and several other sites, just Google it; anyway:
The WTC bldgs. Are curtain wall design, which means that the floors are supported by the outside walls instead of interior columns like almost all high rise buildings. This was the method the architects used to provide the great height of the buildings since, what is known as the “radius of inertia”, would be the greatest possible value, that is, the structural supports are the farthest distance possible from the building centerline, making the building strong as possible against side loading, such as from wind.
This also means that the walls would shear off from the floors prior to collapse and fall straight down, different from the collapse of a standard column and pier design, which must be imploded to make way for the inward collapse of the structure. I’m not a demolition expert, but I do know something of structural design.
Provided the walls sheared off from the floors prior to falling, which they would have to, the floors would be (for all intensive purposes) unsupported, and would collapse (just like a stack of pancakes, as someone referred to it). The walls would fall straight downwards quickly, like a dropped knife.
This would explain the timing and mode of the WTC collapses.
The third, 47 story bldg., would be another story, however, like Wallace identified. I don’t know how this Bldg. was designed, but it sounds like a demolition job.
I guess the term "Curtain Wall design" can apply to Core supported design also, so I amend my prior post to state that the WTC was "exterior wall supported" Vs. core or interior (Column and Pier) supported. This info is available at Wikipedia for reference.
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The purported \"gravitational\" collapse (video) of World Trade Center building 7, which was hit by zero aircraft, and which also vertically collapsed in within a second of free-fall-time-in-a-vacuum later that same day, similarly fails this same conservation-of-energy analysis.
The explanation for how and why so many highly-accredited and credentialed people all so miserably failed to check the \"pancake collapse\" theory, by giving it this basic reality check, is beyond the scope of this simple physics discussion.
I\'m no physicist, Jack, but I feel you are pursuing a key point here.
I understand that the collapse of a steel framed tower block at near free-fall velocity has only ever occured under the circumstances of a controlled demoliion.
If anyone disagrees with that and has evidence to the contrary, please post a reference.
If it\'s true, that alone is key to disproving the official theory of 9-11.
I wonder if you noticed - as I did - that all the \'9-11 conspiracy first responders\' - that is, the folk who first blew the whistle about 9-11 and suggested it might be not what it was purported to be - deflected attantion away from that aspect of the case.
I\'m thinking of characters such as Mike Ruppert, Jared Israel and Greg Szymanski.
I believe this was part of the conspirators\' gameplan.
It helped ensure that those who doubted the official story were directed away from the tower collpase issue. In the weeks and months following 9-11, that was crucial.
They had to get the forensic evidence cleaned up and out of reach ASAP. Any calls - such as those of the NYC firemen who complained bitterly through their in-house journal - that the forensic evidence (eg. the steel from the buildings) NOT be shipped off, would have been an embarrassment. It was crucial that the \"9-11 conspiracy movement\" looked in other directions for the first few months.
That was achieved, partly through their efforts.
Unless the matter is ultimately dealt with via a \'Truth and Reconciliation Commission\' (my prefered option), obvious disinfo agents who helped throw us off the trail should, IMO, be put on trial for complicity in crimes against humanity. At the risk of stating the obvious, it\'s a most serious crime to help the real perpetrators of mass murder escape justice.
The author of the Popular Mechanics beat-up is a case in point... a certain Mr Ben Chertoff, as I recall.
So are those responsible for the 911myths website.
I remember reading about the design of the World Trade Center Bldgs. A while ago, so I looked it up and it’s corroborated on Wikipedia and several other sites, just Google it; anyway:
The WTC bldgs. Are curtain wall design, which means that the floors are supported by the outside walls instead of interior columns like almost all high rise buildings. This was the method the architects used to provide the great height of the buildings since, what is known as the “radius of inertia”, would be the greatest possible value, that is, the structural supports are the farthest distance possible from the building centerline, making the building strong as possible against side loading, such as from wind.
This also means that the walls would shear off from the floors prior to collapse and fall straight down, different from the collapse of a standard column and pier design, which must be imploded to make way for the inward collapse of the structure. I’m not a demolition expert, but I do know something of structural design.
Provided the walls sheared off from the floors prior to falling, which they would have to, the floors would be (for all intensive purposes) unsupported, and would collapse (just like a stack of pancakes, as someone referred to it). The walls would fall straight downwards quickly, like a dropped knife.
This would explain the timing and mode of the WTC collapses.
The third, 47 story bldg., would be another story, however, like Wallace identified. I don’t know how this Bldg. was designed, but it sounds like a demolition job.
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Norouzi’s article was interesting but doesn’t really prove anything that Cole’s didn’t. No one is disputing that Ahmadinejad didn’t literally say Islam could and should "wipe Israel off the map" but said rather if we were to translate from Farsi word for word said “this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" or something to that effect. Was the former an accurate translation of what he said? I have yet to see convincing evidence it wasn’t. A good translator (and I am a highly paid one by Brazilian standards) translates for meaning. If I would translate the Portugese “puxe saco” to English as “brown noser” (or perhaps a more colorful phrase depending on my target audience) rather than as the literal ‘bag puller’ or even ‘scrotum puller’ as it means in this case because neither makes sense in English and the author’s meaning would be lost on the reader. In a similar vein it wouldn’t be easy for the average English speaker to understand what Ahmadinejad meant by “vanish from the page of time". The relevant questions are, 1) what did he mean by that phrase was he calling for relatively peaceful regime change or far bloodier ethnic cleansing and 2) was “wipe off the map” a fair translation.
There is good reason to think the answer to the second question is yes. According to Norouzi that translation didn’t start with (as Sid would lead us to believe) the “Zionist controlled press”. Sid didn’t see fit to include this part of the article “The inflammatory "wiped off the map" quote was first disseminated not by Iran's enemies, but by Iran itself. The Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran's official propaganda arm, used this phrasing in the English version of some of their news releases covering the World Without Zionism conference. … It should be noted that in other references to the conference, the IRNA's translation changed. For instance, "map" was replaced with "earth". In some articles it was "The Qods occupier regime should be eliminated from the surface of earth", or the similar "The Qods occupying regime must be eliminated from the surface of earth". True he criticized foreign media (including Al-Jazeera) for not “verifying its accuracy” and alleged that “the inconsistency of the IRNA's translation should be evidence enough of the unreliability of the source, particularly when transcribing their news from Farsi into the English language” but I doubt he ever worked as a translator because “eliminated from the surface of the earth” and “wiped off the map essentially mean the same thing. According to the findings Jonathan Steele the Guardian columnist cited by Sid, the NY Times/IRNA translation might not have been as far off the mark in a literal sense as Sid, Cole, Norouzi or even Steele believe
So what did Ahmadinejad mean? Sid said comments have to be understood in context, I agree in the relevant part of his speech he said:The New York Times's Ethan Bronner and Nazila Fathi, one of the paper's Tehran staff, make a more serious case. They consulted several sources in Tehran. "Sohrab Mahdavi, one of Iran's most prominent translators, and Siamak Namazi, managing director of a Tehran consulting firm, who is bilingual, both say 'wipe off' or 'wipe away' is more accurate than 'vanish' because the Persian verb is active and transitive," Bronner writes.”The New York Times goes on: "The second translation issue concerns the word 'map'. Khomeini's words were abstract: 'Sahneh roozgar.' Sahneh means scene or stage, and roozgar means time. The phrase was widely interpreted as 'map', and for years, no one objected. In October, when Mr Ahmadinejad quoted Khomeini, he actually misquoted him, saying not 'Sahneh roozgar' but 'Safheh roozgar', meaning pages of time or history. No one noticed the change, and news agencies used the word 'map' again."
"Imam [Khomeini]said: 'This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history.' This sentence is very wise. The issue of Palestine is not an issue on which we can compromise."'Is it possible that an [islamic] front allows another front [i.e. country] to arise in its [own] heart? This means defeat, and he who accepts the existence of this regime [i.e. Israel] in fact signs the defeat of the Islamic world.
"'In his battle against the World of Arrogance, our dear Imam [Khomeini] set the regime occupying Qods [Jerusalem] as the target of his fight.
"'I do not doubt that the new wave which has begun in our dear Palestine and which today we are also witnessing in the Islamic world is a wave of morality which has spread all over the Islamic world. Very soon, this stain of disgrace [i.e. Israel] will be purged from the center of the Islamic world – and this is attainable.
http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page...amp;ID=SP101305
Even if one doesn’t substitute 'This regime that is occupying Jerusalem must be eliminated from the pages of history.' with “wipe Israel off the map”, “wipe Israel away”, "The Qods occupying regime must be eliminated from the surface of earth" or other translations of the phrase from occicial Iranian sources the meaning seems clear.
Ahmadinejad’s defenders point that he cited the examples of Saddam, the Shan and the Soviet Union as powerful regimes that came to an end, but this doesn’t support their contention he simply meant relatively peaceful regime change. Those regimes were dictatorships which in the latter two cases were overwhelmingly rejected by the populace they collapsed because force was no longer a viable option to suppress the will of the people. Like it or not the existence of the state of Israel is supported by the overwhelming majority of the people living within its boarders, the situations are not analogous. In Saddam’s case regime change was of course not a peaceful process and came about due to invasion by a more powerful army according to Lancer there have been about 600,000 more civilian death than there would have if he had remained in power and IIRC about 2 million Iraqis have fled the country many others have been displaced internally or had their home destroyed etc all this because the balance of power shifted from Sunni to xxxxe Arabs and this was in a country where the ousted regime was probably only supported by a small minority of the population . Presumably if regime change occurred under similar circumstances in Israel the results would be even bloodier as power would be transferred for members of one ethnic group and religion to another. The violence meted out by the two main Palestian factions against each other doesn’t bode well for how well they would treat Jewish Israelis if they came to power especially if Hamas came to dominate i.e. there would be little difference between regime change and ethnic cleansing.
Welcome back Len.
I'll not get into a detailed critique and rebuttal of your latest post in this thread.
You now set out a much more detailed case that accepts much of the previous criticisms made of the simplistic "he said wipe Israel off the map" claim.
In so doing, you make new points some of which may have merit. It appears you now accept that the correct translation of Ahmadinejad's words into English is - at the very least - debatable.
That really is my fundamental point.
In any FAIR appraisal of the President's comments, it is NOT possible to render his words in the simplistic way the western media is doing - not possible that is, without such gross over-simplification that, in this heated context, it amounts to deliberate war mongering.
That's been my point all along.
To claim Iran's President called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" - without a lengthy justification of such an interpretation - amounts to gross intellectual dishonesty. IMO, you were gulity of that before. Now your position is more detailed and accepting of nuance, doubt and ambiguity.
Unfortunately, but predictably, the western media remains stuck in simplistic attack mode. No "lengthy justification" dilutes its alarmist discourse. Joe Public is still being taken for a ride, manipulated into imagining that Iran is calling for war, when the reverse is true.
A similar trick was used against Saddam Hussein prior to the invasion of Iraq.
In that case, the western public was repeatedly told that Saddam had treated the weapons inspectors with contempt and was being evasive.
We now all know that Saddam Hussein was being quite honest about Iraq's lack of WMDs - but that he was faced with the IMPOSSIBLE task of proving a negative to adveraries who had a pre-determined agenda to invade and were using WMDs as a pretext, irrespective of the facts.
Back to the present. Is the Iranian Government calling for war? Is it really trying to raise the temperature?
Writing in Global Research, Arash Norouzi comments:
Iran's U.N. Press Officer, M.A. Mohammadi, complained to The Washington Post in a June 2006 letter:"It is not amazing at all, the pick-and-choose approach of highlighting the misinterpreted remarks of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in October and ignoring this month's remarks by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that "We have no problem with the world. We are not a threat whatsoever to the world, and the world knows it. We will never start a war. We have no intention of going to war with any state."
Not perhaps, the most flawless English - but clear enough in the context.
Iran is not threatening the world.
Others are threatening Iran.
The actual leadership in Iran, despite the rhetoric of its President, however you interpret his phraseology, is currently attempting to lower the tenor of Iran's diplomatic dialogue. This has been pointed out to be a curbing of President Ahmadinejad's belligerent rhetoric with respect to statements questioning Iran's intentions for its nuclear program.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/19/world/mi...amp;oref=slogin
As probably the most powerful individual in theocratic Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in rebuking Ahmadinejad, seems to be attempting to send a message to the West, that he (and other clerical leadership) would like to curtail the fiery rhetoric of their president, also that his performance as president has been less than satisfactory.
This may be an ideal time for European and American Statesmen to open (or graduate) dialogue with Iran, if averting escalation of tensions, reduction of (any) Iranian support for Iraqi insurgents, and/or establishing a framework for non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, may be realized.
This puts into perspective the scale of the president of Iran's political power. Also it may indicate the tone of Iran's clerical leadership.
Ex-president Bani Sadr displeased the clerical leadership in Iran and ended up fleeing the country.
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What evidence is there that Israel made such a threat? One wonders how any country would react if the president of another was developing nuclear weapons and threatened to "wipe it away" and attended military parades where banners calling for its "death" and for it to be "wiped away" were hung from missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads to any point in its territory and other government officials called for its annihilation.
Len - no matter how many times I post detailed, documented material from Juan Cole indicating that the 'wipe off the map' comment was a blatant mistranslation of the Iranian President's words - and despite your apparent inability to rebut Cole on this - you continue repeating the same old scare story.
Oh well, I guess if I too held a 'my country right or wrong' approach to life - and 'my country' was menacing it's neighbours with, among other things, REAL nuclear weapons, I might also be desperate to hang onto this particular lie.
Without it, Israel's threats to Iran are more clearly seen for precisely what they are: outrageous, dangerous, aggressive bullying that attempts to enforce egregious double standards in Israel's favour.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is and always has been a secular spokesman for the true power in Iran, the Clerical leadership, who has spoken for the obliteration of Israel so pervasively that it has become the stuff of slogans and banners.
Juan Cole’s credentials as an expert in Iranian policy are not impeccable.
For example:
http://www.slate.com/id/2140947/
“Cole is a minor nuisance on the fringes of the academic Muslim apologist community.”
It would be better put to say that in the light of international scrutiny over what is obviously Iran’s goal of uranium high enrichment, President Ahmadinejad has been told to lower the tenor of his anti-Israeli rhetoric by his handlers.
The evidence that Iran is in pursuit of nuclear weapons is convincing. Unless Iran is in pursuit of advanced nuclear research (that they are only developing peaceful nuclear power capability for electricity generation is laughable) on their current course (unless the recent stall in enrichment work indicates a more permanent diplomatic shift) they should have a nuclear weapon(s) within two or three years.
Would military action against Iran prevent a limited nuclear war in the Mid-east or could it cause one? The effect of a military strike against Iran could have the effect of polarizing Arabic speaking nations against Israel and possibly the US, resulting in a much more dangerous situation than would otherwise exist, even with Iran having nuclear weapons capability.
The effect of any overt military action against Iran could easily backlash. The war in Iraq and the bombing of the Iraqi Osirak reactor should have taught us that.
Peter
You write:
Why?It would be better put to say that in the light of international scrutiny over what is obviously Iran’s goal of uranium high enrichment, President Ahmadinejad has been told to lower the tenor of his anti-Israeli rhetoric by his handlers.That statement grossly misrepresents the facts.
Ahmadinejad made a statement that was mistranslated. The mistranslation was probably deliberate; certainly, incessant repetition of the mistranslation has been a deliberate act of deception.
As he NEVER threatened to "wipe Israel off the map" in the first place - he can't tone down a statement that he never made.
Is that too hard to grasp?
I checked to see what sage wrote "Cole is a minor nuisance on the fringes of the academic Muslim apologist community.” which you quoted to bolster your case."
Imagine my astonishment when I discovered it was none other than the 'formidable' Zionist shill Chris Hitchens, whom, I suppose, has had it in for the Mullahs ever since they closed down his favourite bars in Tehran.
Hitchens... now I really must look up what Hitchens wrote in the lead up to the Iraq invasion of 2003...
I presume he was urging caution and querying the "intelligence" reports of Iraqi WMDs, LOL.
Anyhow, at least Slate, in this instance, has the decency to publish Cole's response to Hitchens, so here it is for the record:
Mr. Hitchens has quoted my unpublished email without permission, which is bad enough. But worst of all, he has done so incompletely and so given an inaccurate impression of the discussions in which I was engaged. Since he wishes to make that discussion public before I was ready to do so, I am helpfully sending along the final message in the exchange.Mr. Hitchens asks why I did not cite other parts of the Ahmadinejad speech. The answer is that I was only talking about the one phrase in this discussion, and was unfortunately not taking direction from Mr. Hitchens on how to read Persian texts. Perhaps he would do us the honor of subscribing to the private discussion list so that he could make these helpful suggestions in context rather than taking snippets of them and publishing them against the author's will.
The email he leaves out is as follows:
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2006 15:34:18 -0400 From: "Cole, Juan"
The speech in Persian is here:
Sorry that I misremembered the exact phrase Ahmadinejad had used. He made an analogy to Khomeini's determination and success in getting rid of the Shah's government, which Khomeini had said "must go" (az bain bayad berad). Then Ahmadinejad defined Zionism not as an Arabi-Israeli national struggle but as a Western plot to divide the world of Islam with Israel as the pivot of this plan.
The phrase he then used as I read it is "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)."
Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope-- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government.
Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that "Israel must be wiped off the map" with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time.
Again, Ariel Sharon erased the occupation regime over Gaza from the page of time.
I should again underline that I personally despise everything Ahmadinejad stands for, not to mention the odious Khomeini, who had personal friends of mine killed so thoroughly that we have never recovered their bodies. Nor do I agree that the Israelis have no legitimate claim on any part of Jerusalem. And, I am not exactly a pacifist but have a strong preference for peaceful social activism over violence, so needless to say I condemn the sort of terror attacks against innocent civilians (including Arab Israelis) that we saw last week. I have not seen any credible evidence, however, that such attacks are the doing of Ahmadinejad, and in my view they are mainly the result of the expropriation and displacement of the long-suffering Palestinian people.
It is not realistic for Americans to call for Iran to talk directly to the Israeli government (though in the 1980s the Khomeinists did a lot of business with Israel) when the US government won't talk directly to the Iranians about most bilateral issues. In fact, an American willingness to engage in direct talks might well pave the way to an eventual settlement of these outstanding issues.
cheers
Juan Cole
Regarding the question whether Iran is following Israel's lead and is developing nuclear weapons in secret, opinions differ on that. It seems eeriely like a replay of the debate within the US "intelligence" community over Saddam's alleged WMDs.
In late November, the BBC told us: The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has not found conclusive evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, a US magazine has reported.
But I suggest we keep this simple.
You write: "Would military action against Iran prevent a limited nuclear war in the Mid-east or could it cause one?"
Whether or not Iran is developing nuclear weapons, military action against Iran that involved the use of Israeli or US nuclear weapons would, in fact, start a nuclear war - because nuclear war is war in which nuclear weapons are used.
To claim that by attacking Iran (possibly with nuclear weapons) the Israeli-US war machine would be acting to prevent nuclear war is to succumb to - or deliberately perpetrate - uni-directional Zionist spin.
It's the kind of logic that allows Israeli politicians to openly threaten and incite attacks on Iran while claiming to be the victim.
It's 'logic' that rest on foundations of lies.
You seem remarkably determined to uphold those lies.
Sid,
From the IRANIAN PRESS SERVICE, Dec 14, 2001
RAFSANJANI SAYS MUSLIMS SHOULD USE NUCLEAR WEAPON AGAINST ISRAEL
TEHRAN 14 Dec. (IPS) “One of Iran's most influential ruling clerics called Friday on the Muslim states to use nuclear weapons against Israel, assuring them that while such an attack would annihilate Israel, it would cost them "damages only".
"If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world", Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani told the crowd at the traditional Friday prayers in Tehran..."Jews shall expect to be once again scattered and wandering around the globe the day when this appendix is extracted from the region and the Muslim world", Mr. Hashemi-Rafsanjani warned, blaming on the United States and Britain the "creation of the fabricated entity" in the heart of Arab and Muslim world..."
Some critical reviews of Mr. Juan Cole:
http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/007273.php
Dan Darling at August 3, 2005
“I'm with the commenter over at Michael Totten's that the more Juan gets involved in these "blog wars," the more strained and unhinged his personality becomes. When it comes to the war on terrorism, Prof. Cole fluctuates between al-Qaeda being a major threat to US national security that was galvanized by our invasion of Iraq or anything resembling US support for Israel, and it being an insignificant threat on par with the threat posed by violent cults or the nuttier militia movements of the 1990s.
I've always regarded this as a fairly disingenuous approach determined more by what he thinks is most likely to hurt SATAN (err, Bush) on any given day. As I've written about time and time again, my main problem with Cole is not so much the fact “
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/2544
Juan Cole, a professor of Middle East and South Asian studies at the University of Michigan, is at the center of acrimonious and highly personal disputes roiling the worlds of academe, politics and blogging. Reportedly under consideration for a professorship at Yale, Cole has charged prominent journalist and blogger Christopher Hitchens with being drunk and violating his privacy when he wrote a critique of Cole's linguistic apologetics for Mahmound Ahmedinejad, president of Iran.
Critics charge that Professor Cole has forsaken a scholarly approach (his expertise is on nineteenth century issues) in favor of politicized angry writing on the contemporary Middle East. They may have a point.
http://www.mererhetoric.com/archives/11272991.html
“Juan Cole Is So Incoherent That We Have To Believe He's Doing It On Purpose - Global Wave Of Moderate Islam Edition
This guy gives us a headache.
Juan Cole's got an insufferably smug roundup purporting to demonstrate that moderate Muslims are rushing to the front lines in the battle against Islamic extremism. It's very typical Cole stuff on all three typical Cole levels: cherry-picked examples in the service of flawed analysis, with the purpose of providing liberal terrorist apologists ammunition in the form of ostensible erudition. As of this post going into the MT backend, the post is nearing 400 diggs, which reflects tens of thousands of hits for that one post. This is what he's good at - allowing DKos Denizens to talk about how learned scholars are on their side against the ignorant warmongers supporting Bush and Israel.”
These are just a few of the criticisms of Mr. Cole. He has been branded an anti semite by more than a few journalists.
If by “Lies” you mean that consideration given to theories that Iran has been disingenuous about its goals for uranium enrichment or that the evidence that they are manufacturing weapons grade nuclear material are “Lies”, than I would say that you are making statements that are supported by the thinnest of (actually no evidence), and that from disingenuous sources. Investigations by the International Atomic Energy Agency concerning Iran's compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty indicate that Iran has, at the very least, lied, and indicate that they are enriching uranium to levels much higher than peaceful pursuits would necessitate.
I am not upholding any Lies or taking sides, but merely trying to draw conclusions based upon legitimate and unbiased information. Can you make that claim?
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What evidence is there that Israel made such a threat? One wonders how any country would react if the president of another was developing nuclear weapons and threatened to "wipe it away" and attended military parades where banners calling for its "death" and for it to be "wiped away" were hung from missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads to any point in its territory and other government officials called for its annihilation.
Len - no matter how many times I post detailed, documented material from Juan Cole indicating that the 'wipe off the map' comment was a blatant mistranslation of the Iranian President's words - and despite your apparent inability to rebut Cole on this - you continue repeating the same old scare story.
Oh well, I guess if I too held a 'my country right or wrong' approach to life - and 'my country' was menacing it's neighbours with, among other things, REAL nuclear weapons, I might also be desperate to hang onto this particular lie.
Without it, Israel's threats to Iran are more clearly seen for precisely what they are: outrageous, dangerous, aggressive bullying that attempts to enforce egregious double standards in Israel's favour.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is and always has been a secular spokesman for the true power in Iran, the Clerical leadership, who has spoken for the obliteration of Israel so pervasively that it has become the stuff of slogans and banners.
Juan Cole’s credentials as an expert in Iranian policy are not impeccable.
For example:
http://www.slate.com/id/2140947/
“Cole is a minor nuisance on the fringes of the academic Muslim apologist community.”
It would be better put to say that in the light of international scrutiny over what is obviously Iran’s goal of uranium high enrichment, President Ahmadinejad has been told to lower the tenor of his anti-Israeli rhetoric by his handlers.
The evidence that Iran is in pursuit of nuclear weapons is convincing. Unless Iran is in pursuit of advanced nuclear research (that they are only developing peaceful nuclear power capability for electricity generation is laughable) on their current course (unless the recent stall in enrichment work indicates a more permanent diplomatic shift) they should have a nuclear weapon(s) within two or three years.
Would military action against Iran prevent a limited nuclear war in the Mid-east or could it cause one? The effect of a military strike against Iran could have the effect of polarizing Arabic speaking nations against Israel and possibly the US, resulting in a much more dangerous situation than would otherwise exist, even with Iran having nuclear weapons capability.
The effect of any overt military action against Iran could easily backlash. The war in Iraq and the bombing of the Iraqi Osirak reactor should have taught us that.
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A nuclear used for electrical generation would typically use an approximate 2-6% uranium enrichment for light water (nuclear power) reactors, mid-level enrichment (15-30%, nominally, although these enrichment levels can vary greatly) for heavy water (possibly for test, research, commercial byproduct, or medical applications) whereas HEU (HEU could be as high as 95 - 98% enrichment) would be utilized in either military power plants (for driving ships or subs), research facility (possible but not probable; it would be a fairly esoteric pursuit based on Iran’s contemporary medical capability), or dedicated to production of plutonium for spent fuel separation and recovery of plutonium. HEU would be ideal for this application, as the production and separation is very time consuming, the use of HEU in spent fuel production would provide a direct proportion in plutonium yield in fuel reprocessing (Note that I have limited knowledge of fission byproduct production, but for other than fissionable Uranium, which is indigenous to Iran, it would be far less expensive and more cost effective for Iran to purchase commercial fission byproducts/radioisotopes from say, Russia, rather than build a reactor for this sole purpose).
Anyway, the purported finding of HEU particles by the IAEA strongly suggests preparation for the production of nuclear weapons.
Peter McKenna
Correction:
Low to mid level enrichment of Uranium 235 consists of 20% or < U235, not < 30%.
HEU is 30% to 99% enrichment, although weapons grade is approx. 95 - 99% enriched.
Peter McKenna
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Do you remember the Iraqi Osirak Reactor?
The French built Osirak Reactor was, in 1981, destroyed by an Israeli surgical airstrike, which was then, and now, celebrated as an acme of tactical precision. This was termed Operation Opera, and was authorized by Israeli leadership subsequent to Mossad's conclusion that the reactor would be used to accelerate the production of weapons grade nuclear material to use on Israel. A key piece of (purported) evidence was a letter intercepted from Saddam Hussein to Iran's President Bani Sadr stating, in effect, that 'the weapons produced would never be used on you (Iran), our Islamic brothers, and is intended for the Zionists' (I have been looking for documentation of this information, without success, so I'm relying upon memory, sorry).
The attcak was mounted prior to initial fuel loading to preclude the release of contamination and used conventional weapons. As I recollect one or more strikes effectively created a 'window' in the copntainment which the Israelis successfully penetrated and were able to effectively demolish the reactor and its auxiliaries.
Prior to this, in September of 1980, Iran had launched an attack on the Osirak Reactor. This occurred shortly after the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, and was likely due to fears of the Iraqis creating and using a nuclear weapon(s) on Iran (this information is available on many news archives), but the Iranian attack was unsuccessful.
Subsequent to the June 1981 Israeli attack Bani-Sadr was deposed (purportedly over differences between he and clerical leadership over Iranian modernization and consideration of contemporary western cultural mores).
It is noteworthy that one primary reason both Iran and Israel conlcuded that the Osirak Reactor was developed for nuclear weapons, was the fact that Iraq had no need for nuclear power, given their available oil reserves.
The US and the UN Security Council formally condemned the Israeli attack.
What parallels do you think exist between Operation Opera (Osirak Reactor attack) and possible destruction of Iranian plans for nuclear capability Do you think the Iranians learned anything from the Osirak Reactor (like protection from airstrikes)? Would there be UN and/or worldwide condemnation of an attack on Iranian facilities?
Peter
Not sure who your post addressed... but here are a few of my thoughts in response, for what they're worth.
First, if you find the documentation to which you refer, please post it. I don't recall seeing that before.
Do folk learn from history? Mostly they do, I suspect, after a fashion.
I certainly can't imagine the Iranian Government has forgotten the 1981 Israeli attack on Iraq's (perfectly legal and internationally inspected) nuclear reactor.
Why do some nations want to develop nuclear power? I suspect a range of reasons. Preparation for making bombs is an obvious possibility - but by no means the only reason. Industrialising nations need energy. Oil-rich third world countries understandably feel that - unless they develop alternative energy resources and diversify their economies - they are simply going to be used as a mine for as long as their oil reserves last and will be left in the end with no oil and no sound economy.
Personally, I think nuclear power is the wrong answer for every country. I believe what Amory Lovins has called 'soft energy paths' should be taken, worldwide.
However, while I oppose nuclear power and WMDs in general, I don't advocate bombing Three Mile Island or Aldermaston, for that matter. I disagree with even threatening to bomb such places, as a tactic. That sounds like (real) terrorism to me.
To my knowledge, not one of the Arab and Moslem countries that Israel purportly believes are an 'existential threat' has ever threatened to bomb Dimona or Nes Ziona. Unfortunately, Israel and the US ARE holding that threat over the head of the Iranians.
I imagine that if an attack on Iran proceeds, it will be condemned by most countries in the world.
The US, clearly captive to the Zionist lobby to a much greater extent than in 1981, will probably not protest this time (indeed, the US may itself bomb Iran, and would certainly be somewhere in the decision-making loop).
Poodle nations like Australia and Britain under Nu Labour will probably cheer from the sidelines.
Very soon afterwards, I expect, the price of oil would go through the roof.
Despite constant mood-minding and fear-monguering by the mass media, most middle class Americans will eventually figure out they've been had (again) - but that this time, unlike before, their pleasant, consumer-oriented existence within the trappings of a 'free society' is headed for terminal decline.
That's when thjings may really heat up - and when the machinary of a police state, installed by stealth over the last decade or so in all the major Anglo-Saxon democracies, may be widely used, not against (largely) fake terrorists, but against political dissidents.
If there is to be real regime change in Washington DC, it would probably occur around that time - in revolutionary turmoil that would make 1917 seem like a picnic.
I recall an friend of mine, many years ago, telling me his theory of how things might pan out. This guy was a well-read trot - not a Zionist posing as a trot - but the real thing. He truly believed that world revolution would eventually occur to overthrow the exploitation of the great majority by an exploitative ultra-rich elite. Either that - or reversion to barbarism.
He opined that when the USA finally undergoes revolution, it would be very violent indeed, because of high levels of gun owenership and the very high stakes.
Sid,
The following is in response to your request to provide some references. I took the opportunity to elaborate...
As it takes considerably more time to look up references, and I must draw upon memory to a large degree, for information which I recall. but read and reasearched years ago, I do sometimes get into the habit of omitting references....
If the following doesn't include references for a statement I made, lust point it out and I'll try and find it. Most information is readily verifiable...
Iran attacked the Iraqi nuclear power complex in September, 1980:
http://www.cns.miis.edu/research/wmdme/chrono.htm
“30 September 1980 (Iran, Iraq)
During an Iranian attack on Iraqi electrical power plants, two US-supplied F-4 fighter aircraft bomb Iraq's Osirak nuclear research center. According to French embassy officials in Baghdad, the attack damages some auxiliary buildings at the site but does not damage the French-built Tammuz-1 power reactor.” (Reference above, there are other references):
http://www.angelfire.com/art2/narod/opera/
“Iran’s leaders were kept constantly informed about any related development, so much so that Franco-Iranian relations have suffered from this development until recently. Iran didn’t trust Iraq, despite protestations from Baghdad that any such weapons would only be used against Israel.
Needless to say, the Israelis did not want the two French supplied reactors to be completed either. Israeli intelligence had been working on the case since its inception, and shared the information with the Iranian intelligence….”
Stewart Steven, “The Spymasters of Israel”, Ballantine Books:
Also, in the Ballantine Book series “Espionage/Intelligence Library”, a book in that series, “The Spymasters of Israel” by Stewart Steven, includes in the prologue information on the unsuccessful attack on the electrical generation/Reactor complex (which included the Osirak Reactor) by Iran. The book identifies that subsequent to the Iranian attack, a Baghdad newspaper published a statement to the effect that the subsequent Nuclear weapons produced would not be used on Iran, but on the Zionists.
Note that I clearly remember a report of an intercepted message to Bani Sadr stating that Nuclear weapons produced by Iraq would never be used on our “Islamic Brothers, but on our mutual enemy, the Zionists.” Unfortunately I cannot find a current reference to this specific message, although I do remember the message clearly. However, there are sufficient references to communications between Baghdad and Tehran, to this effect.
Information on the history of Iranian President elect Bani Sadr:
http://www.photius.com/countries/iran/gove...all_of~278.html
“Bani Sadr was the first popularly elected president of the Islamic Republic. He assumed office with a decisive electoral vote--75 percent-- and with the blessing of Khomeini. Within seventeen months, however, he had been impeached by the Majlis, and dismissed from office. Bani Sadr was destroyed, at least in part, by the same issue that had brought down Bazargan, that is, the efforts of the government to reestablish its political authority. Ironically, prior to his election as president, Bani Sadr had advocated decentralization of political power and had even helped to undermine the Bazargan government. As president, Bani Sadr became a convert to the principle that centralization of power was necessary; soon, he was embroiled in a bitter political dispute with his former allies. The downfall of Bani Sadr, however, also involved a more fundamental issue, namely, the distribution of power among the new political institutions of the Republic. The fate of Bani Sadr demonstrated that the legislature was independent from and at least equal to the executive, the reverse situation of the Majlis under the Pahlavi shahs.
The conflict between Bani Sadr and the Majlis, which was dominated by the IRP, began when the assembly convened in June 1980. The first issue of controversy concerned the designation of a prime minister. Although the Constitution provides for the president to select the prime minister, it also stipulates that the prime minister must have the approval of the Majlis. After a protracted political struggle, the Majlis forced Bani Sadr to accept its own nominee, Rajai, as prime minister. The president, who had aspired to serve as a strong figure similar to de Gaulle when he was president of France, was unable to reconcile his differences with the prime minister, who preferred to formulate government policies in consultation with the Majlis. As Bani Sadr continued to lose influence over political developments to the Majlis, his own credibility as an effective leader was undermined. The Majlis also frustrated Bani Sadr's attempts to establish the authority of the presidency in both domestic and foreign affairs. For example, the leaders of the IRP in the Majlis manipulated Bani Sadr's efforts to deal with Iran's international crises, the dispute with the United States over the hostages, and the war with Iraq that began in September 1980 in order to discredit him. When Bani Sadr tried to ally himself with the interests of the disaffected, secularized middle class, the IRP mobilized thousands of supporters, who were incited to assault persons and property derisively identified as "liberal," the euphemism used for any Iranian whose values were perceived to be Western. Bani Sadr attempted to defend his actions by writing editorials in his newspaper, Enqelab-e Islami, that criticized IRP policies and denounced the Majlis and other IRP-dominated institutions as being unconstitutional. Eventually, the leaders of the IRP convinced Khomeini that Bani Sadr was a danger to the Revolution. Accordingly, in June 1981 the Majlis initiated impeachment proceedings against the president and found him guilty of incompetence. Bani Sadr went into hiding even before Khomeini issued the decree dismissing him from office. At the end of July, he managed to flee the country in an airplane piloted by sympathetic air force personnel.”
http://www.mises.org/journals/lf/1980/1980_01-02.pdf
“Very quickly, however, it turned out that Bani-Sadr was a "moderate", that he wanted to make a face-saving deal to release the hostages, and in a couple of weeks he was out, consigned to media oblivion. a victim of his own sober moderation.”
There were also reports of Bani Sadr advocating civil rights (although tempered by fundamentalist Islamic standards; attempting to meld human rights and doctrine) later even such things as women’s rights and modernization of certain institutions.
http://www.iran-bulletin.org/interview/BANI_S1.html
For a comparison of the Osirak Reactor attack and a pending attack on the Iranian Nuclear facilities I suggest the following site:
http://web.mit.edu/ssp/Publications/workin...ers/wp_06-1.pdf
The following is an interesting parallel between the Iranian Arak and Natanz Nuclear facility and the Iraqi Osirak Reactor;
It is noteworthy that the Natanz facility consists many thousand (>50,000)
centrifuges which Iran purported was for nuclear fuel for use in nuclear power/electricity generation. The IAEA reported the possible presence of HEU (highly enriched uranium) at the uranium pilot fuel enrichment plant (PFEP) facility later that year, apparently contradicting Iran's claim that it had not yet carried out enrichment procedures. Iran has suggested that the HEU particles that were found must have been on imported centrifuge equipment (i.e. hitchhikers; that would be quite a stretch).
A nuclear used for electrical generation would typically use an approximate 2-6% uranium enrichment for light water (nuclear power) reactors, mid-level enrichment (15-30%, nominally, although these enrichment levels can vary greatly) for heavy water (possibly for test, research, commercial byproduct, or medical applications) whereas HEU (HEU could be as high as 95 - 98% enrichment) would be utilized in either military power plants (for driving ships or subs), research facility (possible but not probable; it would be a fairly esoteric pursuit based on Iran’s contemporary medical capability), or dedicated to production of plutonium for spent fuel separation and recovery of plutonium. HEU would be ideal for this application, as the production and separation is very time consuming, the use of HEU in spent fuel production would provide a direct proportion in plutonium yield in fuel reprocessing (Note that I have limited knowledge of fission byproduct production, but for other than fissionable Uranium, which is indigenous to Iran, it would be far less expensive and more cost effective for Iran to purchase commercial fission byproducts/radioisotopes from say, Russia, rather than build a reactor for this sole purpose).
Anyway, the purported finding of HEU particles by the IAEA strongly suggests preparation for the production of nuclear weapons.
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/040812.htm
Also form the above CNS site: “Arak is the site of two planned heavy water facilities. The first is a heavy water production facility, the existence of which was disclosed by an Iranian opposition group in August 2002. When IAEA inspectors visited the site in February 2003, Iran claimed that it planned to produce heavy water for export to other countries. Three months later, Iran clarified that it intends to use the heavy water to moderate a prospective heavy water research reactor in Arak. The second facility is a 40 MW heavy water reactor, which Iran announced its plans to start building in 2004. This plant may present a serious nonproliferation challenge when completed. The Arak heavy water reactor will use uranium dioxide and enable Iran to produce plutonium suitable for nuclear weapons assembly. Some estimate that this plant will be able to produce 8 to10 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium every year, a sufficient amount to build one to two nuclear weapons annually.
Iran claims the plant is for peaceful purposes only and is intended for medical research and development.”
The construction of the 40 megawatt reactor, at Arak, for electrical generation or commercial fission byproduct production is just not viably cost effective and Iran’s stated intention for the Arak reactor to be used as a research reactor also doesn’t seem plausible, since the technologically disadvantaged Iran could obtain research results or byproducts easier and cheaper from Russia, who has been supporting Iran’s “peaceful” nuclear ambitions.
The 1000 MW facility at Bushehr, however would be a cost effective generation facility for producing electricity.
The mining and fabrication of nuclear fuel in Iran does make sense: “Uranium extracted from mines in the Iranian Yazd Province would allow Iran to be self-sufficient in producing fuel needed to run its nuclear power stations”, a logical pursuit, saving the huge cost of purchasing nuclear fuel from Russia.
For a comparison between a preemptive military attack on Iran’s Nuclear Facilities and the Osirak reactor strike see “Preemptive Attack on Iran Compared to the Osirak Example” at:
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/040812.htm
As far as the Iranian attack on the Osirak reactor:
http://www.iranvision.com/iraniraqwar.html
(These are just a couple of sites found browsing the Web. There were quite a few other sites. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to fully vet these sites for credibility/reliability, and cross checking to corroborate the information. I suggest checking them, if you have the time).
“Iran launched an unsuccessful attack on the Iraqi Osirak nuclear reactor on 30 September 1980. On 07 June 1981 Israel initiated an air attack on the same Iraqi Osirak reactor, destroying it. Iraq launched seven air attacks on the Iranian nuclear reactor at Bushehr between 1984 and 1988 during the Iran-Iraq War, ultimately destroying the facility”.
A Iraqi scientist involved with the design and construction of the Osirak facility, Hussein al-Shahristani, was arrested and imprisoned by Saddam after refusing to work on the construction of a nuclear weapon: “Shahristani was removed from his position as Chief Scientific Advisor at the IAEC and transferred to an Iraqi prison for eleven years on December 3, 1979. The reason for his arrest was his refusal to halt his work on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and begin efforts to build a nuclear bomb.”
The intention of halting Saddam Hussein’s quest for a nuclear weapon had back-lashed.
http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/oct03/wmd.asp
“The destruction of the Osirak reactor greatly affected Iraq's nuclear program. Although the attack took Iraq off the fast track to nuclear weapons, Baghdad responded furiously by doubling its efforts to obtain the bomb. It assigned 20,000 people to work on the nuclear program and accelerated development of gas centrifuges to produce bomb-grade material. Iraq spent over $10 billion on prohibited components and its denial and deception methods to conceal related facilities and technologies
Similarly a preemptive strike on the Iranian facilities could backfire”.
The other major narrative derives from Imad Khadduri, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist who joined the program in 1975. He gave an extended interview to Peter Jensen, published in the Irish Times on Jan. 6. He said that Iraq had no serious nuclear weapons program until *after* the Israeli bombing of Osirak in 1981. It should also be noted that the main impetus to nuclear proliferation in the Middle East was Israel's nuclear weapons program, the first and still the only successful such program in the area, which has produced several hundred nuclear warheads.
Attack on Iranian facilities would also backfire:
http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3001426.html
“ … But a preemptive military strike would instead do just what the hard-liners in Tehran hope for: It would unite their people behind them. Even a precise bombing campaign would kill hundreds if not thousands of innocent Iranians; destroy ancient buildings of historical and religious importance; trigger an Iranian counterstrike, however feeble, against American targets and friends in the region; and spur the mullahs to increase direct support of American enemies in the Shiite part of Iraq. Even more important, an attack would only encourage Tehran to redouble its efforts to build a bomb, just as Saddam Hussein sped up his efforts after the 1981 strike. It would also hurt the democratic opposition movement inside Iran, which is already in retreat and cannot afford another setback. After an attack, Iranians, not unlike Americans, are sure to rally around the flag and their government.”
Further commentary from the Hoover Digest:
“Allowing the Iranians to enrich even some uranium, which they say will be used merely to feed their nuclear power plant, makes it too easy to cheat. To make the deal work, the United States would need to join with Europe, Russia, and China in pledging to guarantee Iran a permanent and continuous supply of enriched uranium. To make the deal even more attractive, the fuel could be offered at reduced prices.
Even under the strictest inspection regime, Iran’s leaders will cheat, as they have often done in the past, and will eventually divert enriched uranium from peaceful to military purposes. But the harder and more transparent the allies can make the process, the longer it will take Iran to begin building bombs.”
- In the light that Iran possesses Uranium, “Uranium extracted from mines in the Iranian Yazd Province would allow Iran to be self-sufficient in producing fuel needed to run its nuclear power stations.”
Provided Iran retains (hidden) enrichment facilities, an attack may only delay nuclear weapon production, if there is a parallel with the Iraqi Osirak reactor.
Peter McKenna
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On the Saddam thread Sid wrote (Note I edited Peter and Sid’s posts to remove portions not related to this topic):
Extract from Wikipedia - January 9th 2007:[/b]
2005 "World Without Zionism" speechPresident Ahmadinejad speaking at "The World without Zionism" conference
In his translation of a speech to the "World Without Zionism" conference held for students in October 2005, Nazila Fathi of The New York Times' Tehran bureau reported Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying, in part:
Our dear Imam (referring to Ayatollah Khomeini) said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement. We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine. Is it possible to create a new front in the heart of an old front. This would be a defeat and whoever accepts the legitimacy of this regime has in fact, signed the defeat of the Islamic world. Our dear Imam targeted the heart of the world oppressor in his struggle, meaning the occupying regime. I have no doubt that the new wave that has started in Palestine, and we witness it in the Islamic world too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain from the Islamic world. But we must be aware of tricks.[1]
Wikinews has news related to:
Iranian president calls Israel ‘disgraceful blot’
Ahmadinejad also claimed in the speech that the issue with Palestine would be over "the day that all refugees return to their homes [and] a democratic government elected by the people comes to power" [2], and denounced attempts to normalise relations with Israel, condemning all Muslim leaders who accept the existence of Israel as "acknowledging a surrender and defeat of the Islamic world."
The speech also indicated that the Iranian President considered Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip to be a trick, designed to gain acknowledgement from Islamic states. In a rally held two days later, Ahmadinejad declared that his words reflected the views of the Iranian people, adding that Westerners are free to comment, but their reactions are invalid. [3]
Translation of phrase "wiped off the map"
Many news sources have presented one of Ahmadinejad's phrases in Persian as a statement that "Israel must be wiped off the map"[4][5][6], an English idiom which means to cause a place to stop existing[7].
Juan Cole, a University of Michigan Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History, translates the Persian phrase as:
The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad).[8]
According to Cole, "Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to wipe Israel off the map because no such idiom exists in Persian" and "He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse."[1]
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translates the phrase similarly:
[T]his regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history.[9]
On 20 February 2006, Iran’s foreign minister denied that Tehran wanted to see Israel “wiped off the map,” saying Ahmadinejad had been misunderstood. "Nobody can remove a country from the map. This is a misunderstanding in Europe of what our president mentioned," Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference, speaking in English, after addressing the European Parliament. "How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognise legally this regime," he said. [10][11][12]
In a June 11, 2006 analysis of the translation controversy, New York Times deputy foreign editor Ethan Bronner concluded that Ahmadinejad had in fact said that Israel was to be wiped off the map. After noting the objections of critics such as Cole and Steele, Bronner said: "But translators in Tehran who work for the president's office and the foreign ministry disagree with them. All official translations of Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement, including a description of it on his Web site (www.president.ir/eng/), refer to wiping Israel away." Bronner stated: "So did Iran's president call for Israel to be wiped off the map? It certainly seems so. Did that amount to a call for war? That remains an open question." [2]
On June 15, 2006 The Guardian columnist and foreign correspondent Jonathan Steele cites several Persian speakers and translators who state that the phrase in question is more accurately translated as "eliminated" or "wiped off" or "wiped away" from "the page of time" or "the pages of history", rather than "wiped off the map". [13]
A synopsis of Mr Ahmadinejad's speech on the Iranian Presidential website states:
He further expressed his firm belief that the new wave of confrontations generated in Palestine and the growing turmoil in the Islamic world would in no time wipe Israel away. [14]
Interpretation of speech as call for genocide
The speech was interpreted by some as a call for genocide. For example, Canada's then Prime Minister Paul Martin said, "this threat to Israel's existence, this call for genocide coupled with Iran's obvious nuclear ambitions is a matter that the world cannot ignore."[15]
Cole interprets the speech as a call for the end of Jewish rule of Israel, but not necessarily for the removal of Jewish people:
His statements were morally outrageous and historically ignorant, but he did not actually call for mass murder (Ariel Sharon made the "occupation regime" in Gaza "vanish" last summer[sic]) or for the expulsion of the Israeli Jews to Europe.[16]
In the speech, Ahmadinejad gave the examples of Iran under the Shah, the Soviet Union and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq as examples of apparently invincible regimes that ceased to exist. Ahmadinejad used these examples to justify his belief that the United States and the State of Israel can also be defeated claiming, "they say it is not possible to have a world without the United States and Zionism. But you know that this is a possible goal and slogan."[1]
In April 2006, Iran's ambassador was asked directly about Ahmadinejad's position towards Israel by CNN correspondent Wolf Blitzer:[17]
BLITZER: But should there be a state of Israel?
SOLTANIEH: I think I've already answered to you. If Israel is a synonym and will give the indication of Zionism mentality, no.
But if you are going to conclude that we have said the people there have to be removed or they have to be massacred or so, this is fabricated, unfortunate selective approach to what the mentality and policy of Islamic Republic of Iran is. I have to correct, and I did so.
Another reason for the interpretation of the speech as a call for genocide using nuclear weapons is because the same statement of Ahmadinejad appeared on a Shahab-3 missile in a national military parade attended by Ahmadinejad. [3]
Interpretation of speech as call for referendum
Iran's stated policy on Israel is to urge a one-state solution through a countrywide referendum. Juan Cole and others interpret Ahmadinejad's statements to be an endorsement of the one-state solution, in which a government would be elected that all Palestinians and all Israelis would jointly vote for; which would normally be an end to the "Zionist state".[18]
In November 2005 Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, rejecting any attack on Israel, called for a referendum in Palestine:
We hold a fair and logical stance on the issue of Palestine. Several decades ago, Egyptian statesman Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was the most popular Arab personality, stated in his slogans that the Egyptians would throw the Jewish usurpers of Palestine into the sea. Some years later, Saddam Hussein, the most hated Arab figure, said that he would put half of the Palestinian land on fire. But we would not approve of either of these two remarks. We believe, according to our Islamic principles, that neither throwing the Jews into the sea nor putting the Palestinian land on fire is logical and reasonable. Our position is that the Palestinian people should regain their rights. Palestine belongs to Palestinians, and the fate of Palestine should also be determined by the Palestinian people. The issue of Palestine is a criterion for judging how truthful those claiming to support democracy and human rights are in their claims. The Islamic Republic of Iran has presented a fair and logical solution to this issue. We have suggested that all native Palestinians, whether they are Muslims, Christians or Jews, should be allowed to take part in a general referendum before the eyes of the world and decide on a Palestinian government. Any government that is the result of this referendum will be a legitimate government. [19]
Ahmadinejad himself has also repeatedly called for such solution.[20][21][22][23] Most recently in an interview with Time magazine:[24]
TIME: You have been quoted as saying Israel should be wiped off the map. Was that merely rhetoric, or do you mean it?
Ahmadinejad: [...] Our suggestion is that the 5 million Palestinian refugees come back to their homes, and then the entire people on those lands hold a referendum and choose their own system of government. This is a democratic and popular way.
To which I replied:
Sid has really only found one expert Cole who disputes the interpretation of the translation. Just as a “no such idiom exists in Persian” for ‘wipe off the map’ no idiom exists for “vanish from the page of time” or “eliminated from the pages of history” did the phrase indicate he wanted a regime change or genocide or expulsion of Israelis? I doubt anyone on this board is qualified to say. OK it seems like he didn’t use the Persian word for map but what exactly did he mean. The column from the Guardian cited by Wikipedia shows that is not entirely clear exactly what he meant (though the author [not a Persian speaker] shares Sid’s take). http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jonath...6/post_155.htmlI’m not sure either way but there is evidence to support a more ominous interpretation of what he said.
According to MEMRI which the author of the Wikipedia article cited Ahmadinejad “emphasized the need to eliminate Israel” http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=arc...amp;ID=SP101305
Even the Iranian president’s web site (according to the Wikipedia article) said he called for Islam to “wipe Israel away” which could have several interpretations but sounds rather ominous.
From Sid’s Wikipedia article “Another reason for the interpretation of the speech as a call for genocide using nuclear weapons is because the same statement of Ahmadinejad appeared on a Shahab-3 missile in a national military parade attended by Ahmadinejad. [3]” accounts of the parade indicate other missiles had banners with the phrase “Death to Israel”
http://web.archive.org/web/20060503212036/...chinese_md.html
According to a senior fellow in the Center for Strategic and International Studies: “Some members of the government have even boasted how they would use them: to destroy Israel. "Islam could survive the retaliation," they insist, "but Israel would be gone forever." ”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jh...01/23/ixop.html
[…]
Do you remember the Iraqi Osirak Reactor?
The French built Osirak Reactor was, in 1981, destroyed by an Israeli surgical airstrike, which was then, and now, celebrated as an acme of tactical precision. This was termed Operation Opera, and was authorized by Israeli leadership subsequent to Mossad's conclusion that the reactor would be used to accelerate the production of weapons grade nuclear material to use on Israel. A key piece of (purported) evidence was a letter intercepted from Saddam Hussein to Iran's President Bani Sadr stating, in effect, that 'the weapons produced would never be used on you (Iran), our Islamic brothers, and is intended for the Zionists' (I have been looking for documentation of this information, without success, so I'm relying upon memory, sorry).
The attcak was mounted prior to initial fuel loading to preclude the release of contamination and used conventional weapons. As I recollect one or more strikes effectively created a 'window' in the copntainment which the Israelis successfully penetrated and were able to effectively demolish the reactor and its auxiliaries.
Prior to this, in September of 1980, Iran had launched an attack on the Osirak Reactor. This occurred shortly after the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, and was likely due to fears of the Iraqis creating and using a nuclear weapon(s) on Iran (this information is available on many news archives), but the Iranian attack was unsuccessful.
Subsequent to the June 1981 Israeli attack Bani-Sadr was deposed (purportedly over differences between he and clerical leadership over Iranian modernization and consideration of contemporary western cultural mores).
It is noteworthy that one primary reason both Iran and Israel conlcuded that the Osirak Reactor was developed for nuclear weapons, was the fact that Iraq had no need for nuclear power, given their available oil reserves.
The US and the UN Security Council formally condemned the Israeli attack.
What parallels do you think exist between Operation Opera (Osirak Reactor attack) and possible destruction of Iranian plans for nuclear capability Do you think the Iranians learned anything from the Osirak Reactor (like protection from airstrikes)? Would there be UN and/or worldwide condemnation of an attack on Iranian facilities?
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I was a bit disappointed in the film. It captured some of the paranoia of Angleton and the corruption of the CIA in general, but was misleading on a number of points. While the film changed the names of its characters it also changed some important facts.
1
Some very good points. I took the story line to be a fictionalized account of the CIA in its infancy. The Angleton character was definitely used to frame Damon's characterization. The "Dulles" character however, at least to me, was just a marginalized fictional character and did not represent Dulles, who was an adept compared to Angleton, in the late fifties early sixties (at least from reading Dulles' writings). How do you parallel the Billy Crudup character with Philby? The timing was approximately right, but Philby was the chief liason from MI6 to Washington. I didn't see this established in the movie. On point about the Castro conspiracy, I didn't give it a second thought in the movie.
I thought the defector business was a sort of aggregate of different characters, as there had been a few change ups on defector credibility through the sixties.
Overall, though, wouldn't you agree that there has really never been a movie, to date, that tried to capture the CIA mentality as well as The Good Shephard?
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Seeing the movie "The Good Shephard", I was mindful of John LeCarre and his realistic accounts of Cold War Espionage. I know that this is not the substance of conspiracy, but I believe this movie deserves praise for its staunch depiction of the cold warrior in the early sixties and the stuff of which he was made.
Directed by Robert DeNiro, the movie offers, what may be the most realistic picture, of a Resident CIA Officer, Matt Damon, beginning from assignment as Resident in London during WWII, to case officer responsible for the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Matt Damon portrays an initially naive, coldly reserved, humorless, buttoned down Fraternity blue blood, drafted into pre-OSS Intelligence, who sacrifices all for the sake of his work, which is his country and the intelligence service.
The movie takes the audience from the polemic of WWII intelligence to the grey and liquid cold war, unveiling the duplicity and paranoia which feeds the services and its high priests, the residents, case officers, and handlers.
The realism is unparalleled. The picture is moralistically ambiguous, offered for the audience to decide for themselves whether there is a moral high ground, a right and wrong, in the protagonist's (Damon's) life and work. From the coldly calculating hawk to the most virulant leftist, the picture is neutral in its offering as a starkly real portait of the cold warrior for the eyes and mind to decide for themselves.
I found the movie fascinating and extremely realistic. Although not having the experience to critisize the realism, but from reading and research into cold war history, the movie appears the genuine article, and faithful to the times, possibly surpassing Mr. LeCarre in its realism. I highly recommend it.
I hope that this post is not taken as a degeneration into movie reviews. I felt that anyone who has read and researched this field would delight in this movie. It is not for everyone. I took my family, who found it boring for the most part, and couldn't understand the tradecraft. But for those who have reasearched and understand the history and tradecraft, the movie provides an object lesson into the psychological trauma which the services faced during the post WWII period and maybe an understanding of the distress they faced in their lives as a result of their decisions and actions.
If you are interested in cold war history and the history of the CIA this fim is a must see.
Thanks.
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John,
The article you wrote for Wikipedia is already deleted. I tried to access a hyperlink in Wikipedia (which had not been deleted) to "spartacus education" but a screen came up saying there was no such topic.
These people must be looking for work in the disinformation industry. I have noted occasions of "severely edited" information in Wikipedia.
After having read the US intelligence community's (Committe report on US Intelligence and WMD) searing self-analysis, that they must depart their iron-fisted bureaucratic thinking and seriously change to enter the 21st century, these Wikky editors may find that autocratic control of information is not an efficient use of time, may lead to wrong conclusions (which will flat out piss some people off) and may no longer provided any favored status to its practitioners.
People and, it seems, the US goevernment, wants their information unskewed.
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By the way I have been reading "The Taking of America, 1, 2, 3" By Richard Sprague. Don't know what to make of this yet. If half of what he says is true this is scary stuff.
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I have been trying to organize my library of books about Intelligence Services around the world, MI5, MI6, the CIA, OSS, Mossad, KGB, GRU, etc. I have accumulated a few books but over the past few years I let them drift apart (actually if I'm not careful, my wife packs them away). I am going to attempt to reread them.
Peter, could you please add a photograph of yourself? Forum rules do not allow joke avatars.
I would also recommend the work of John Parados. I have not read the latest one mention by Michael Hogan but "The Presidents' Secret Wars" (1986) is very good.
The best books are usually written by rebel insiders. For example:
Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (1975)
Philip Agee, Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe (1978)
Philip Agee, On The Run (1987)
Victor Marchetti, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1973)
John Stockwell, CIA: In Search of Enemies (1978)
John Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard: The US Role in the New World Order (1991)
I am in contact with Philip Agee (he lives in Cuba). I have tried to persuade him to join the forum without success. He probably thinks I am working for the CIA. Victor Marchetti has also turned me down (or his daughter has who protects him from people like me).
My favourite book on the CIA is: David C. Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors (1980).
The book that I would love to read has never been published. Cleveland C. Cram, the former Chief of Station in the Western Hemisphere, was asked by George T. Kalaris, Chief of Counterintelligence, to investigate CIA covert operations between 1954 and 1974. Cram accepted the assignment and his study, entitled History of the Counterintelligence Staff 1954-1974, took six years to complete. As David Wise points out in his book Molehunt (1992): "When Cram finally finished it in 1981... he had produced twelve legal-sized volumes, each three hundred to four hundred pages. Cram's approximately four-thousand-page study has never been declassified. It remains locked in the CIA's vaults."
Cram continued to do research for the CIA on counterintelligence matters. In 1993 he completed a study carried out on behalf of the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence (CSI). Of Moles and Molehunters: A Review of Counterintelligence Literature. This document was declassified in 2003. In this work Cram looks at the reliability of information found in books about the American and British intelligence agencies. Cram praises certain authors for writing accurate accounts of these covert activities. He is especially complimentary about David Martin's Wilderness of Mirrors. Cram points out that Martin does “not name his sources, footnote the book, or provide a bibliography and other academic paraphernalia” but is invariably accurate about what he says about the CIA. Cram adds that luckily Martin’s book did not sell well and is now a collectors item. (It has recently been republished).
There are a couple of "limited hangouts" that are worth reading. According Victor Marchetti "limited hangouts is spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting - sometimes even volunteering some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further."
Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets (1979)
Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men: The Early Years of the CIA (1995)
David Corn, Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades (1994)
I would also highly recommend Angus MacKenzie's "Secrets: The CIA's War at Home (1997). It probably cost him his life.
Yes, sorry about the Avatar, I just haven't been able to take a digital picture of myself as yet. I was just fooling with the avatar tools and was going to put something up until I got around to finding a digital camera ( I don't have any current pictures of myself to scan, although I have one maybe fifteen - twenty years old), again sorry for the delay, but I will get around to sending in a picture.
Concerning my search for the book about the OSS and the origins of the Vietnam War, did David Halberstam write a book along those lines? His name seems familiar in that context. The book was lent to me by a Soviet Emigre friend of mine, "Izzy", who came over under the Helsinki agreement. He had a huge library of Intel books and enjoyed a hobby reading about that field (Izzy's hero was Al Haig, which inspired me to read "Caveat", which was just OK, but not very deep considering the posts Secretary Haig has held).
Could it have been Angus Mackenzie? This certainly seems to have been in his vein of writing, although I'm sorry to hear he lost his life (esp. if it was due to the publicizing of past US Intel subject matter, and if it was, from what I have read, his work didn't seem to me to be of a classified nature, embarrassing maybe).
Thanks for the recommendations, I should be able to begin adding some of these to my library.
Great excuse for a trip to Barnes and Noble anyway!
PM
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I have been trying to organize my library of books about Intelligence Services around the world, MI5, MI6, the CIA, OSS, Mossad, KGB, GRU, etc. I have accumulated a few books but over the past few years I let them drift apart (actually if I'm not careful, my wife packs them away). I am going to attempt to reread them.
Peter, could you please add a photograph of yourself? Forum rules do not allow joke avatars.
I would also recommend the work of John Parados. I have not read the latest one mention by Michael Hogan but "The Presidents' Secret Wars" (1986) is very good.
The best books are usually written by rebel insiders. For example:
Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (1975)
Philip Agee, Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe (1978)
Philip Agee, On The Run (1987)
Victor Marchetti, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1973)
John Stockwell, CIA: In Search of Enemies (1978)
John Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard: The US Role in the New World Order (1991)
I am in contact with Philip Agee (he lives in Cuba). I have tried to persuade him to join the forum without success. He probably thinks I am working for the CIA. Victor Marchetti has also turned me down (or his daughter has who protects him from people like me).
My favourite book on the CIA is: David C. Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors (1980).
The book that I would love to read has never been published. Cleveland C. Cram, the former Chief of Station in the Western Hemisphere, was asked by George T. Kalaris, Chief of Counterintelligence, to investigate CIA covert operations between 1954 and 1974. Cram accepted the assignment and his study, entitled History of the Counterintelligence Staff 1954-1974, took six years to complete. As David Wise points out in his book Molehunt (1992): "When Cram finally finished it in 1981... he had produced twelve legal-sized volumes, each three hundred to four hundred pages. Cram's approximately four-thousand-page study has never been declassified. It remains locked in the CIA's vaults."
Cram continued to do research for the CIA on counterintelligence matters. In 1993 he completed a study carried out on behalf of the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence (CSI). Of Moles and Molehunters: A Review of Counterintelligence Literature. This document was declassified in 2003. In this work Cram looks at the reliability of information found in books about the American and British intelligence agencies. Cram praises certain authors for writing accurate accounts of these covert activities. He is especially complimentary about David Martin's Wilderness of Mirrors. Cram points out that Martin does “not name his sources, footnote the book, or provide a bibliography and other academic paraphernalia” but is invariably accurate about what he says about the CIA. Cram adds that luckily Martin’s book did not sell well and is now a collectors item. (It has recently been republished).
There are a couple of "limited hangouts" that are worth reading. According Victor Marchetti "limited hangouts is spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting - sometimes even volunteering some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further."
Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets (1979)
Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men: The Early Years of the CIA (1995)
David Corn, Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades (1994)
I would also highly recommend Angus MacKenzie's "Secrets: The CIA's War at Home (1997). It probably cost him his life.
Yes, sorry about the Avatar, I just haven't been able to take a digital picture of myself as yet. I was just fooling with the avatar tools and was going to put something up until I got around to finding a digital camera ( I don't have any current pictures of myself to scan, although I have one maybe fifteen - twenty years old), again sorry for the delay, but I will get around to sending in a picture.
Concerning my search for the book about the OSS and the origins of the Vietnam War, did David Halberstam write a book along those lines? His name seems familiar in that context. The book was lent to me by a Soviet Emigre friend of mine, "Izzy", who came over under the Helsinki agreement. He had a huge library of Intel books and enjoyed a hobby reading about that field (Izzy's hero was Al Haig, which inspired me to read "Caveat", which was just OK, but not very deep considering the posts Secretary Haig has held).
Could it have been Angus Mackenzie? This certainly seems to have been in his vein of writing, although I'm sorry to hear he lost his life (esp. if it was due to the publicizing of past US Intel subject matter, and if it was, from what I have read, his work didn't seem to me to be of a classified nature, embarrassing maybe).
Thanks for the recommendations, I should be able to begin adding some of these to my library.
Great excuse for a trip to Barnes and Noble anyway!
PM
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I have been trying to organize my library of books about Intelligence Services around the world, MI5, MI6, the CIA, OSS, Mossad, KGB, GRU, etc. I have accumulated a few books but over the past few years I let them drift apart (actually if I'm not careful, my wife packs them away). I am going to attempt to reread them.
Anyway, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to list them, and if you could recommend any additional books, or any editorializing of these, I would appreciate it.
“By Way of Deception”, Victor Ostrovsky
“MI-6”, Nigel West
“Dirty Works”, Phillip Agee
“Reilly, Ace of Spies”, Robin Bruce Lockhart (by the way, I’m told Reilly was Ian Fleming’s inspiration for the James Bond character).
“Intrepid’s Last Case”, William Stevenson
“The Target is Destroyed” Seymour Hersh
“KGB Today: The Hidden hand”, John Barron (Contemporary in the 1970s, but good historically)
“Spy Catcher”, Peter Wright
“Great True Spy Stories”, Allen Dulles
“Her Majesties’ Secret Service”, Christopher Andrew
“The Circus”, Nigel West
“British Military Intelligence; 1870-1914”, Thomas G. Ferguson
“A Matter of Trust; MI5, 1945-1972”, Nigel West
“The Shadow Warriors”, Bradley F. Smith
“A Thread of Deceit”, Nigel West
“Sidney Reilly, Britain’s Master Spy; His Own Story”
“The True Story of the World’s Greatest Spy; Sidney Reilly”, Michael Kettle
“The Spymasters of Israel”, Stewart Steven
I’ve also read several loaned and Library books, the titles of which I cannot remember.
One book however was especially interesting. It concerned the Intelligence Services side of the history of the War in Vietnam, identifying the OSS ties with Ho Chi Minh (known as Dr. Ho), when he was an OSS asset against the Japanese during WWII. It also talked about how the US originally was neutral concerning the French Indochina war until Eisenhower decided we should support the French. One story from this book talks about how the CIA, in an attempt to identify Sampans smuggling Viet Cong arms up the Mekong Delta, paid the local Sampans to “disappear” on a forthcoming specified date, so that the CIA could manage the searches, however each day that approached the specified date (as the CIA continued to pay off the locals to stay away) more and more Sampans kept showing up. When the specified date arrived the Delta was brimming with local Sampans. This book contained this and several other embarrassing stories, but I can’t remember the name or who wrote it. I would like to get a copy for my collection if anyone might know the title.
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The facts so far in the case of Alexandre Litvinenko seem to indicate that his assasination orders probably origiated from within the FSB. Putin has placed ex-FSB agents and officers in at least 70% of leadership positions within the Russian politcal infrastructure. The wealth of Russia has been systematically nationalized and anyone who complains or brings information to the public eye seems to be systematically eliminated.
The amateurish handling of Litvinenko's murder doesn't seem to bear the signature of the security services, once the largest and most elaborate secret service on Earth.
Any ideas?
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The following is an article by David Satter, a fellow of the Hudson Institute. Mr. Satter also has written articles on the Russian FSB and their freewheeling use of terror to consolidate their power base in Russia. Mr. Satter's articles may be viewed at the following website. He contributed to the film "Disbelief", about the bombing of apartments in Moscow, which seem to have been orchestrated by the FSB, and which Litvinenko wrote about in his book "The FSB Explodes Russia”, which was held up in publication by the FSB before being a limited release.
The upshot is that it seems that Russia seems to be returning to a totalitarian regime.
Sorry the webstite copied is as follows:
If I didn't get the entire address, try deleting everything to the right of the last = sign.
http://www.hudson.org/learn/index.cfm?fuse...mp;eid=SattDavi
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The following is an article by David Satter, a fellow of the Hudson Institute. Mr. Satter also has written articles on the Russian FSB and their freewheeling use of terror to consolidate their power base in Russia. Mr. Satter's articles may be viewed at the following website. He contributed to the film "Disbelief", about the bombing of apartments in Moscow, which seem to have been orchestrated by the FSB, and which Litvinenko wrote about in his book "The FSB Explodes Russia”, which was held up in publication by the FSB before being a limited release.
The upshot is that it seems that Russia seems to be returning to a totalitarian regime.
"The Return of the Soviet Union
May 6, 2005
by David Satter
When President Bush ascends the reviewing stand in Red Square on May 9 for ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, he may find that his presence is being used less to mark a historic anniversary than to rehabilitate the Soviet Union.
The anniversary has unleashed a wave of nostalgia for the Soviet Union. A report by the RIA press agency said, "all the veterans agree that the great love that the Soviet people had for their country and their belief in the righteousness of their cause helped the Soviet Union survive the worst war of the twentieth century." Russian President Vladimir Putin in a speech last year at the Victory Day ceremonies said, "We were victorious in the most just war of the twentieth century. May 9 is the pinnacle of our glory." In his state of the nation address, April 25, Putin referred to the breakup of the Soviet Union as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century."
This type of nostalgia, however, is not harmless. Not only does it ignore the fact that the Soviet Union was just as terroristic as Nazi Germany. It also reflects what Hannah Arendt referred to as a "pervasive, public stupidity." This is the failure to understand that the truth about the past is not irrelevant and, in fact, is the best hope for a decent future.
The re-sovietization of Russia is possible because when the Soviet Union fell, the new Russian state did not break irrevocably with its communist heritage. To do this, it needed to define the communist regime as criminal and the Soviet period as illegitimate, open the archives, including the list of informers and find and commemorate all mass burial grounds and execution sites. Unfortunately, none of this was done with consequences that are being felt today.
There is still no legal evaluation of the Soviet regime. The communist regime has never been declared criminal and no Soviet official has ever been tried for crimes committed under communism. The result is that former communist leaders in Russia are viewed as leaders first and criminals second (if at all), no matter how heinous their actions. Under these circumstances, Russians frequently lack the conviction, intrinsic to free men, that an individual answers for his actions no matter what the external conditions.
At the same time, because the Soviet regime was not repudiated, the Russian government became the Soviet regime’s legal successor. This has meant that millions of victims of repression were rehabilitated, usually posthumously, by being cleared of official charges rather than because those charges were the product of a deranged system. The regime therefore continued to judge its victims rather than the other way around.
In addition to not declaring the Soviet regime criminal, the new Russian government did nothing to reveal the identities of KGB informers. In March, 1992, the Russian Supreme Soviet passed a new law on investigative activities that declared the list of the millions of informers to be a state secret. One reason for the vote was believed to be that many of the deputies had themselves been KGB informers. The decision, however, had serious consequences. It established a precedent for concealing the truth about the past that was to become increasingly important as new decisions were made regarding access to vital records, for example, the KGB, Comintern and foreign ministry archives.
Perhaps most important, the Russian authorities made no serious attempt to find and memorialize the mass graves and execution sites that cover the country. The victims of Stalin era terror were executed in secret and the Soviet leaders intended that the bodies would never be found. Nonetheless, some sites have been discovered. This, however, has usually been the achievement of the Memorial social movement operating with little or no help from the outside.
In August 2002, after a five year search, the execution grounds for the majority of the victims of the Great Terror in Leningrad were discovered by Memorial in a firing range near the village of Toksovo. It is estimated that the site holds 30,000 bodies, making it possibly the largest on the territory of the former Soviet Union. Neither the federal nor the local authorities, however, have shown any interest in excavating the site and analyzing the remains let alone memorializing the victims. Instead, they have cautioned the volunteers from Memorial not to interfere with the operations of the firing range.
The result of the indifference of the authorities is that the burial grounds and execution sites that stand in silent witness to the horrors of Russian communism play almost no role in the moral and spiritual life of the country.
Without a concerted effort to memorialize the horrors of communist rule in Russia, the growing nostalgia for Soviet power is a natural tendency. Although communism was the moral nadir of modern Russian history it was also the period when Russia was at the height of its power.
Increasingly, however, nostalgia for the Soviet Union is taking frightening forms. Statues of Stalin have begun appearing in Russian cities and in Orel, the town council has written to Putin, demanding that Stalin’s "honor" be restored to the history books, his statue re-erected and his name given to streets and squares. In mid-April, the communist party leader, Gennady Zyuganov said Russia "should once again render honor to Stalin for his role in building socialism and saving human civilization from the Nazi plague."
In another sign of the time, a group of leading political and cultural figures in St. Petersburg has called for the erection of a monument to Alexei Kuznetsov, a party official who organized Leningrad’s defenses during the Second World War. Kuznetsov was later shot in the postwar "Leningrad Affair" and he is buried in the Levashovo Cemetery along with many of Stalin’s other victims.
Before the war began, however, Kuznetsov himself was a key participant in Stalin’s atrocities as a member of the three man extrajudicial board or "troika" that signed death sentences for the Leningrad oblast during the terror. The troika operated in Leningrad from August, 1937 to November, 1938 issuing almost 40,000 death sentences and from January to June, 1938, Kuznetsov, as the second secretary of the oblast party committee, was a member.
It is too late to decline to go to Moscow as the presidents of Lithuania and Estonia have done, citing Russia’s refusal to admit and apologize for the crimes committed in the Baltics. In any case, for the U.S., such a move would be unjustified. Bush, nonetheless, would be doing a real service to history if, in addition to participating in the celebrations, he would also visit the Butovo firing range south of the city where the bodies of at least 20,000 victims of Stalin’s Great Terror lie in mass graves.
In contrast to the meticulous attention devoted to anything to do with the Second World War, Butovo is neglected. There is no museum or general memorial. The common graves are marked off with ropes. Until recently, the area was choked with weeds and used as a garbage dump. The number of visitors is miniscule, about 4,000 a year, mostly Orthodox believers and relatives of those buried there.
The Soviet Union did indeed achieve a great victory in defeating Nazi Germany. The cost was 27 million Soviet dead, including 8.6 million soldiers. The failure to put the victory in perspective and describe the true nature of the Stalinist regime, however, means that the May 9 events, in addition to a celebration of the victory are also an exercise in propaganda that glorifies the Soviet system. As a result, the visiting heads of state risk endorsing with their presence a view of history that works against the interests of Russia’s democratic future.
A visit by Bush to Butovo during the May 9 celebrations would help to redress this balance and by injecting an element of reality into the event emphasize that for the Western allies the goal of the war was not just the defeat of Germany but the eradication of totalitarianism, in 1945 and in the future as well.
This article originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal on May 6, 2005."
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The “sudden cut-off of communications” solved!!!
I am a fairly new reader of this forum, but can't help but be completely and wholely entertained by the ping pong match filling these 19 pages so prolifically.
After having read Mr. Fetzer's diatribes, I can only comment that there are seldom so many conclusions supported by so little evidence. While the Wellstone crash may indeed be a topic for investigative journalism to tug upon, Mr. Fetzer should spnd more time in investigation and less in reporting. Of particular entertainment value is the claim that the plane was done in by an EMP. The facts to support this particular claim do not appear and this claim sets my regard, at best, as highly skeptical.
Also, so much time is spent in critical review that I wonder to what end does this particular argument lead? I don't spend a fraction of this energy trying to explain things to my kids.
Maybe I'm missing the salient points of this topic, but if there is justification for suspicion of foul play, you may want to start over.
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"........ Alexander Rahr, a leading Russia expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, a Berlin-based think tank, Tuesday told United Press International via telephone from New York.
He added that there were three main theories of who was responsible for Litvinenko's death, the first being that Putin wanted to silence one of his most outspoken critics; the second that conservative forces in Russia wanted to hurt Russia's relations with the West so that Putin would be forced to call back elections and establish a dictatorial regime; the third being that Russian exile oligarchs wanted to destabilize the Kremlin in a way that would allow them to return back home and reclaim their lost wealth. That third theory would include in the range of suspects Boris Berezovsky, the exiled oligarch, in whose house police found traces of the radioactive isotope.
Rahr said all three theories had to be pursued, but called the first one "unrealistic."
"Putin has come out as the big loser of these murders," Rahr told UPI. "If it was indeed the Russian FSB, why would they transport the polonium in a passenger plane and not in a diplomat's suitcase on board of a Russian Aeroflot cargo plane? Why would they leave so many trails?"
While it could be that Putin didn't have control over the entire FSB, Rahr said one of the other two theories appeared more likely to him.
"The killings are like terrorist attacks aimed at destabilizing the power structure in Russia," he said."
The above is from Alexander Rahr, a leading Russia expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, a German think tank. I think he makes alot of sense.
This may be a precursor to a new Cold War. There were always alot of nationalistic Russians who have wanted to return to the "old ways" of the totalitarian government.
I heard Alexander Haig speak at Texas Christian University (I believe it was 1988 or 1989), and he predicted then, that "they (the hard liners) would be back someday".
"........ Alexander Rahr, a leading Russia expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, a Berlin-based think tank, Tuesday told United Press International via telephone from New York.He added that there were three main theories of who was responsible for Litvinenko's death, the first being that Putin wanted to silence one of his most outspoken critics; the second that conservative forces in Russia wanted to hurt Russia's relations with the West so that Putin would be forced to call back elections and establish a dictatorial regime; the third being that Russian exile oligarchs wanted to destabilize the Kremlin in a way that would allow them to return back home and reclaim their lost wealth. That third theory would include in the range of suspects Boris Berezovsky, the exiled oligarch, in whose house police found traces of the radioactive isotope.
Rahr said all three theories had to be pursued, but called the first one "unrealistic."
"Putin has come out as the big loser of these murders," Rahr told UPI. "If it was indeed the Russian FSB, why would they transport the polonium in a passenger plane and not in a diplomat's suitcase on board of a Russian Aeroflot cargo plane? Why would they leave so many trails?"
While it could be that Putin didn't have control over the entire FSB, Rahr said one of the other two theories appeared more likely to him.
"The killings are like terrorist attacks aimed at destabilizing the power structure in Russia," he said."
The above is from Alexander Rahr, a leading Russia expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, a German think tank. I think he makes alot of sense.
This may be a precursor to a new Cold War. There were always alot of nationalistic Russians who have wanted to return to the "old ways" of the totalitarian government.
I heard Alexander Haig speak at Texas Christian University (I believe it was 1988 or 1989), and he predicted then, that "they (the hard liners) would be back someday".
Sorry, I forgot to give the origin of the quote:
It's from UPI, BERLIN, Dec. 5 (UPI)
Peter McKenna
The following from the Hindu Times on availability of Polonium 210,
Very informative:
"Radioactive Polonium 210 widely available: report
New York, Dec. 4 (PTI): Radioactive Polonium 210 used to poison former Russian spy Alexander V Litvinenko may not be as rare as reported after his death.
The deadly substance, once touted to be available only with specialised laboratories, is now available "all over the place" and by estimates, the lethal doze might cost less than 23 dollars, a media report has said.
Experts initially called it quite rare, with some claiming that only the Kremlin had the wherewithal to administer a lethal dose. But public and private inquiries have shown that it proliferated quite widely during the nuclear era and of late as an industrial commodity.
"You can get it all over the place," William Happer, a physicist at Princeton who has advised the United States government on nuclear forensics, said.
Today polonium 210 can show up in everything from atom bombs, to antistatic brushes to cigarette smoke, though in the last case only minute quantities are involved.
Iran, it says, made relatively large amounts of polonium 210 in what some experts call a secret effort to develop nuclear arms, and North Korea probably used it to trigger its recent nuclear blast.
Commercially, Web sites and companies sell many products based on polonium 210, with labels warning of health dangers.
"Radiation from polonium is dangerous if the solid material is ingested or inhaled," warns the label of an antistatic brush.
Peter D Zimmerman, a professor in the war studies department of King's College, London, told the Times that the many industrial uses of polonium 210 threatened to complicate efforts at solving the Litvinenko case.
The debut of nuclear reactors, experts say, let scientists make polonium 210 by the pound. The substance emits swarms of subatomic rays, and the report said that Manhattan Project in 1945 used them to trigger the world's first atom bombs.
President Eisenhower, eager to promote "atoms for peace," had the high heats of polonium 210 turned into electricity for satellites. But the batteries lost power relatively fast because of the material's short half-life, just 138 days.
By the 1960s, researchers worried increasingly about polonium 210's deadly health effects. Harvard researchers found it in cigarette smoke and argued that its concentrations were high enough to make its radioactivity a contributing fact or in lung cancer.
Vilma R Hunt, who helped lead the studies, called polonium 210 a nightmare for health workers, and perhaps sleuths, because it tended to move about in unexpected ways."It crawls the walls," she told the paper in an interview. "It can be lost for a while and then come back." Though dangerous when breathed, injected or ingested, the material is harmless outside the human body.
Industrial companies found polonium 210 to be ideal for making static eliminators that remove dust from film, lenses and laboratory balances, as well as paper and textile plants.
Its rays, the report says, produce an electric charge on nearby air. Bits of dust with static attract the charged air, which neutralizes them. Once free of static, the dust is easy to blow or brush away."
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The plot thickens....Italian academic Mario Scaramella, a friend of Alexander Litvinenko, tested positive for polonium-210 and has been hospitalized. He had a 30-45 min meeting with Litvinenko at a sushi-bar just before Litvinenko took ill. He claims he ate nothing there and only drank water. Both were on a list of persons to be hurt by the Russian security service [according to Scaramella].
This is the British equivalent to the American anthrax episode, it seems.....one thing is for sure, someone had the ability to get one hell of a lot of rare Po-210! Another Italian parlimentarian is also afraid he might be next.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6199464.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6163502.stm
Please note: there may well be a 9-11 connection also: Litvinenko alleged that al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri was trained by the FSB in Dagestan before the 9/11 attacks!
I would comment on the editorial statement made that a “special designer pill” could have been manufactured for the poisoning of Mr. Litvinenko, that this is probably far fetched. This material would best be handled by being placed in a solution of water or other liquid, as this would make it much easier to control, and probably delivered via syringe or similar delivery method. You have to ask yourself, “How would I do it?”
I read many years ago, that it was standard KGB tradecraft to have a syringe loaded with the weapon (a poison of some kind) under a coat or newspaper, and then to deliver it in a crowd, typically at a crowded airport, restaurant, etc. This technique was repeated through many works, Suverov, maybe Grushenko, being quoted by Angleton, or some such (I can't remember, it has been many years). I do remember reading this bit of tradecraft in an old compendium of Intel tradecraft ‘dirty tricks’. The mark wouldn’t suspect anything other than what would probably feel like a pinch or scratch, when delivered by expert hands.
And yes, polonium 210 in solution, in a syringe, would be undetectable as it is a major alpha emitter only.
Polonium 210 is a fairly easily obtained radionuclide used in the manufacture of static eliminators (like in removing static charge from fabric in manufacture). The polonium is atomized and cast into ceramic nodules, such that it is rendered harmless.
Typically a license for use of an isotope must be granted (in the US this wold be the USNRC) to utilize a radionuclide such as polonium 210, however in Russia, or other country with lesser control of such materials (I read where Russia exports about one thousand grams of Polonium 210 per year), obtaining the isotope would probably be fairly easy for anyone in the manufacturing infrastructure.
The delivery mechanism of such a weapon is much more instructional or informational than the weapon itself. The handling, by an expert, would imply a certain regard for "Clean" treatment, i.e., to deliver without spreading about.
The traces should be nothing other than the excretion of Litvinenko's body burden, the traces shouldn't indicate anything of the weapon deliverer, unless handled by a moron, which apparently was the case, or someone attempting to appear amateurish, based upon the current litter of polonium spread about London.
Polonium 210 has a 138 day half life, so the forensics are very important and should tell whether the traces are from the same source as had come from Litvinenko or some other, different, source.
These pieces seem to indicate that this is a conspiracy to place the blame on the FSB or Putin. If the FSB had executed Litvinenko, it should have been handled with a little more finesse. The use of Polonium as a weapon could only be a means of identifying the source as being of a very select few, which would seem to be a set-up. The fact that the polonium was spread about seems to indicate amateur theatrics.
Are you the same Peter McKenna who (with wife) helped me take photos
in Dealey Plaza a number of years ago?
Jack
[Are you the same Peter McKenna who (with wife) helped me take photos
in Dealey Plaza a number of years ago?
Jack
I lived in the Dallas area (Granbury, Texas) from 1988 through 1992. I don't remember taking pictures in Dealey Plaza, but could have. I didn't spend very m uch time in Dallas.
Peter McKenna
Is anyone interested in Apollo missions...
in The Apollo Moon Landings
Posted
I believe you're right Len,
The building's footprint is the perimeter at its base. As far as I know (based upon photos and family's description who live in NYC) the debris of the towers was described as well outside of the tower footprints.
I had never really heard the twin tower collapse described before as falling inside of its own footprint. Where did this originate?
I found a very good site to describe the building collapse:
http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/wtc.shtml