Today, I read a story that raised the hair on the back of my neck. That lead to reading some older posts on Michelle Malkin's blog (www.michellemalkin.com) about the same issue. What's the issue?
Harassment.
Mohammed Abu Hannoud, a regular at a Tempe mosque, claimed a hate crime was committed at the mosque on the 6th anniversary on the 9/11 attacks. What was the crime? Three men, all wearing shirts from the same plumbing company (and apparently driving a vehicle emblazoned with the company's logo) walked into the mosque and "insulted" him. He asked the three men to remove their shoes before entering the prayer hall, but they continued to "insult" him, asking him "what [he] hid in the room" while they laughed and made "profane hand gestures." They also "made negative comments about muslim children passing by."
Ahmed Squeirat--the imam at the mosque--took photos of the three men and their vehicle, and the mosque security camera got shots as well. But apart from "obscene language and hand gestures" as described, nothing was done. No physical damage, no outright threats, not even a veiled threat. Three Americans came into a mosque looking for trouble, and without finding any, they left without causing any damage.
But the imam and other mosque leaders are claiming that a hate crime has been committed. They called not only the Tempe PD but also the FBI.
Okay...I'm getting tired of this crap. Hate crime? Three guys come in, verbally insult someone, maybe offer the one-fingered salute, and it's a hate crime? What was damaged? What property was defaced? Who was threatened? Who was assaulted?
Nobody.
Not even one verbal threat was made--not even a veiled one. The three men basically just walked in and made fun of these people. This happens regularly in some churches of other religions; they call the police, make a report and let it go. They don't call it a hate crime, call the FBI and the media, and bitch about it!!!
Remember the six imams removed from a flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix? They later sued not only US Airways, but also three of the so-called "John Does" who complained about their behavior. The imams were reportedly speaking to each other in Arabic, praying loudly, and chanting "Allahu Akbar!" (god is great) after prayers in the terminal. They continued their strange behavior once on the plane, first by continuing to speak to each other in Arabic, then to insist on different seating arrangements (putting them in pairs at various positions in the plane from the front to the back, just as the 9/11 hijackers did), then asking for seat belt extensions--even though not one of them was overweight. One of the "John Does" who complained was another Arabic-speaking Muslim who understood what they were saying and to this day contends that they were talking about how great the hijackers were. They were first asked to leave the plane, then upon refusing, were met by security who escorted them off the plane (no handcuffs) and they were promptly arrested by police (who still didn't handcuff the men).
Note, there were no handcuffs involved--but the imams claimed later that they were handcuffed and "dragged" off the plane. A blatant and outright lie.
CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) represented the imams in several civil suits, one of which named the regular citizens (including the one who understood the Arabic rantings) who told flight attendants they were extremely uncomfortable with the actions of the men. After much public outrage, they dropped the suit against the "John Does;" but they won against the airline, only because the airline settled as it was cheaper than fighting it in court.
That was on 20 Nov 2006. In March of this year, Spc. Craig Perkins, a National Guarsdsman who'd spent a significant amount of time in Iraq, found himself being insulted by young muslim men who lived in the apartment complex where he lived with his girlfriend in Clarkston, just outside Atlanta. He recognized spitting noises, hand gestures, and the showing and waving of the bottom of shoes (all of which are serious insults to infidels in Iraq and other parts of the Mideast) that the young muslim men were doing when he walked by; he was easily recognizable as he lived there while he served in the Guard and was frequently seen in uniform. Then one day in March, two of these young muslims attacked him in the doorway of his apartment; he fired a warning shot to keep them away, then had to shoot one, but shot him in the leg.
The muslims who instigated the attack ran out to the parking lot and told police that's where the shooting took place. Perkins spent 15 hours in jail while police investigated and found blood spatter all over the doorway and down the sidewalk outside Perkins' apartment. The judge, on police advice, released Perkins and police arrested the muslims involved. I still can't find out what the outcome was, but I'd sure as hell like to know. CAIR was planning a lawsuit before the punk who'd been shot had even gotten out of the hospital.
(And the brat walked out of the hospital.)
Our enemies know perfectly well how to get to us, and they're doing it well. They're doing it right under our noses and the news that would alert us to the silent war they're waging isn't even making it to our front lawn. Why? It's politically incorrect to commit the horrid act of "racial profiling."
Someone please tell me...who else is trying to blow us to kingdom come? 80-year-old ladies? Kids on field trips? FBI agents with credentials? No. It's MUSLIMS. I'm sure there are plenty of people who are muslim and don't want America destroyed. But having read both the Qur'an and the Hadith, I'm more inclined to believe that the majority of Mideast muslims support jihad against America.
The three men who walked into the Tempe mosque and openly insulted the imam were wrong for what they did. I don't condone looking for trouble with someone who really hasn't done anything. But the more noise those people make about this, the more they insist that what happened was a "hate crime" punishable by jail time and fines, the more I'm going to believe they're just in it for jihad. Jihad can be fought a lot of different ways, and like it or not, this is one of them.
I'm a lesbian; I get flipped off, cussed out, flashed (often by guys who have nothing to show, believe me), and have even been threatened and assaulted outside gay bars. I know when it's time to call the cops and when it's time to just leave. If these guys were causing such a problem, the thing to do would have been to call the police, ignore the twits, and wait for the police to arrive. Don't cry about it after the fact when a crime has not been committed.
What I like is the FBI's response: "Someone seen as rude does not rise to the level of a federal hate crime unless there was some kind of threat involved." (Deborah McCarley, special agent, FBI)
EXACTLY.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Monday, September 10, 2007
Adding Insult to Injury: Final Arguments Against Loose Change
Sorry, I just couldn't resist...But those are just the major points. Dylan Avery and his tin-foil hat brigade also claim that all of the 9/11 hijackers are still alive and well; this is a blatant lie. This stems from an issue in the days directly after the attacks when several families with sons who had the same names complained loudly (with the help of Al Jazeera) that their sons were not involved but were, in fact, still alive. These were all cases of mistaken identity. In fact, Mohammed Atta's father praised the 9/11 attacks and said there would be "more to come."
So, Dylan...if the government was involved in making 9/11 happen and was capable of making hundreds of innocent civilians disappear, don't you think they'd make short work of making the 19 "hijackers" disappear just as efficiently? You say that the government attacked the Pentagon with a cruise missile, the Towers were brought down by controlled demolition, and Flight 93 actually landed in Cleveland, but that all of the passengers on these flights are now dead at the hands of a government that plotted the whole thing in order to bring about some kind of revolution? So it goes without saying that they should be able to dispose of the scapegoats, right?
Riiiiight.
As for the tape Dylan supposedly debunked of Osama bin Laden's confession, he claims that because the video is of poor quality and the man claiming to be Osama eats with his right hand--Osama being left-handed and all--it can't be him. But Osama is eating in accordance with Muslim teachings, which state that Satan eats and drinks with his left hand, so believers should eat with their right. The same video, if watched in its entirety, shows the man's face perfectly clearly--it is Osama bin Laden.
Hey, Dylan, I learned about Muslim culture from the Qur'an. Ever read that book? Didn't think so.
What about the claim that billions in insurance for investors had gone unclaimed? That claim was as of 9/27/2001. Dylan didn't check after that. By December of that year, the insurance money had been claimed.
Oopsie!
He also claims that more than $900 million in gold was believed to be in the WTC on 9/11, and that it was found "inside a 10-wheel truck accompanied by several cars." Wrong again. All of the gold stored in WTC 4 was recovered by emergency crews, watched by heavily armed federal agents, and it was dug from underneath a 10-wheel truck and several cars that had been crushed by falling debris. Another case of taking a truth and twisting it.
Aaaaand, there was only $230 million, every bit of it accounted for. Where'd Dylan get that $900 million figure? He must've pulled it out of his ass. The cars were empty...because the people who owned them were all in the building!
Uh-oh! 'Nother oopsie!
And he keeps spewing these billion-dollar figures as if it's fact, but he's not revealing where he got these figures. Truth is, all of the gold was accounted for. Period. The logs matched what they found. And yes, I'd say it's pretty normal to have a heavily-armed guard when you're digging more than two million bucks' worth of gold out of a vault beneath a massive crime scene.
And thermite? Ha...one of Dylan's favorite fellow twoofers, Steven Jones of Brigham Young University, wrote a paper claiming that thermite was used by the military as the "explosive" material that brought the buildings down. Surely he jests...thermite is not an explosive material. It's an incendiary, yes, but not an explosive. It is NEVER used in demolition. Oh, yeah--BYU wants absolutely nothing to do with Jones' paper, nor his claims. Not one expert on construction engineering or demolition and chemistry reviewed his paper before it went public. And the twoofers herald it with great fanfare.
So why does a group of people do something like this? Dylan Avery isn't alone. He's the one everyone knows best. His two cohorts, Jason Bermas and Korey Rowe, are just like him: they eat it all up. They love the exposure. Korey Rowe, in fact, was arrested on July 25 of this year for desertion of the US Army. If you go to Dylan's MySpace page, you find hundreds of pictures of him and his buddies in their many public appearances.
They "dedicate" their film to "the lives we lost on September 11, 2001," and they claim to be supporting the living victims. But have you ever seen these goons in action? I've seen video footage (not hard to find--you can get it on YouTube) of these little pricks openly insulting firefighters and police officers at Ground Zero. Why? Because the people they're arguing with won't buy their slipshod theories. Anybody who doesn't immediately and without question follow their insanity is ignored, or worse. One one occasion, a poster on Dylan's blog openly and vividly threatened the life of a 9/11 survivor, mentioning "if I find you..." To which Dylan promptly responds by telling the poster that his subject is at Ground Zero every weekday, and the hours he works there.
Sure...they care about the victims. They care so much that they accuse Bernard Brown, father of Bernard Brown II, of "sending his son to die"--Bernard Sr. was a chief petty officer in the US Navy and worked in the Pentagon, and his 11-year-old son was on Flight 77 when it was flown into the building.
So, I guess Dylan is offering yet another scenario--maybe a plane did hit the Pentagon, but the military set the whole thing up, including CPO Brown, who supposedly "sent his son to die." That is a claim that I find not only disgusting, but deeply disturbing. Only a group of complete lunatics could be so desperate to prove their wacknut ideas that they would go as far as to attack the victims.
I have learned an important lesson in watching these people: it's all about emotion. I've watched lone, intelligent people stand up to them and nearly get lynched by groups of these fanatics. They protest and shout and scream until they're hoarse, and they don't put up with anyone attempting to debate with them. The very instant a sane, rational person attempts to do what they're demanding ("ask questions, demand answers" is their war cry), they gang up and shout them all down. They don't want to hear the truth. They want to believe that the "official story" as they call it is a big lie; it's what they live for. And they get very personal and very emotional when you try to have an intelligent conversation with them.
This all goes back to a post I wrote last year, "Everybody Loves a Train Wreck." We love drama. We live for it. And we will go to great lengths to make something simple into something more complex, just for the entertainment value. Then, when someone comes along and tries to burst our proverbial bubble, we become openly outraged and intensely defensive. It's the same thing here.
Loose Change isn't the only group of wingnuts out there. The best I've heard so far--you'll love this--is from Sophia Shafquat, a batty twoofer whose theory is so outrageous it's funny. Her argument against the "pancaking collapse" theory about the Towers is to tell you to say "clunkety-clunk" 110 times and see how long it takes you. That, to her, proves that it had to be controlled demolition.
Conspiracy Theory radio talk show host Alex Jones compares himself to Galileo (major points in the kook index for that one), saying, "...they put him in jail for saying the world was round. Here we are saying, 'the world is round,' and we're being persecuted for it." No...you're being laughed at because you're hysterically stupid.
It gets even more hilarious when Sophia says, "I know I'm not crazy, and I know there are other people out there who know I'm not crazy..."
Hehehehe...you folks just keep tellin' yourselves that. As long as it helps you sleep at night.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Shutting Down The Tin-Foil Hat Brigade: Flight 93 DID Crash in Shanksville
This is the issue raised by Loose Change that I find particularly disgusting. While this blog will be shorter than the others, I will also be far less forgiving.
Loose Change starts its portion on Flight 93 by claiming that, in reality, Flight 93 landed in Cleveland. It quotes a news report from WCPO, released around 11:45 a.m. on 9/11/2001, that United Airlines Flight 93--which had been reported as hijacked--had safely landed.
I suppose the very first reports about an incident are always correct, right, Dylan? I love how you can quote this stuff when it suits you, but you turn right around and blast the media in the same breath. To add insult to injury, the AP discovered their flub in a matter of minutes and pulled the link quickly--the Twoofers picked up on it because the story wasn't taken down as quickly.
Avery goes on to quote the coroner, Wally Miller, who said, "I stopped being a coroner after about 20 minutes, because there were no bodies there...I have not, to this day, seen a single drop of blood. Not a drop." This is yet another case of Dylan Avery and company taking the words of an investigator and completely twisting them to suit their agenda. Wally Miller is mortified (pardon the pun) that his words have been used by the 9/11 Truthers ("Twoofers"); in his words (yes, I do quote):
"What I was saying was I stopped being a coroner after 20 minutes because it was already clear what the cause and manner of death was going to be. It was a plane crash, but it was a homicide because the hijackers crashed the plane and killed the people...(off-camera: "so it was a misquote?")...yes, it was a misquote, because the point I was trying to make was after that, it became a large funeral service."
In essence, he wasn't a coroner anymore because he didn't have to identify the cause of death. He was just recovering and identifying remains (and more than 1500 were found). No wonder Dylan wasn't accepted to college.
Then, the General of the tin-foilies claims, "it's the second time in history, on one day, that an airplane and its passengers disappears upon impact." Ooooo-kay. Tell that to the people who had to clean up the crash of Pan Am 103, after it was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland. Sure, they recovered the nose...it crashed separately from the rest of the craft, which almost completely disappeared into the crash site.
Holy shit, Batman!
He goes on to expound on his Cleveland landing theory, and is right about one thing: the Cleveland airport was evacuated, but nobody was allowed to drive because an airplane believed to be hijacked was about to land. Unfortunately for the Twoofers, it was Delta flight 1989. Dylan's claim that a second plane was evacuated and searched comes from--get this--an internet message board.
Wow. Way to use that journalistic talent there, Dylan. Dan Rather would love you.
And I just love how he claims that 200 people were evacuated from Flight 93. The passenger list, the actual list of people who boarded that flight, the manifest from the originating airport, was only 44. (Luk, ma, I kan kownt!)
It gets better, ladies and gentlemen. Now comes the shoot-down scenario. This is the part where you all cock your head to the side and go, "whatdafuck???" Didn't I just get through detailing Dylan's strong belief that Flight 93 didn't crash, but landed safely?
Well, he espouses the notion that a white jet, seen flying over the area after the crash, was a fighter jet sent to shoot the plane down. Nnnnnope. The FAA, getting reports that 93 had crashed, asked the closest craft still in the air on the way to follow grounding orders to turn around and fly over the area and pinpoint the location. It happened to be a small, private jet--and yes, it was white. So Avery took something with a tiny grain of truth in it and "twooferized" it--he blew it up to be something it never was.
What makes me howl is how Avery rounds the whole thing out by quoting Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden had claimed to Al-Jazeera that the leaders of Afghanistan wouldn't allow him to execute such attacks, and thus, he had nothing to do with it.
Okay...okay...lemme regain my composure...damn, that's funny. What Avery's sayin' here is that the experts, so far, are liars, but the world's most wanted terrorist is telling the truth? Holy flyin' sheep shit. That's just about the funniest thing I've heard so far.
He claims that cockpit voice recorders can't be destroyed, but that's false; it's happened before. At least two of the black boxes were destroyed on 9/11, but other voice recorders were recovered and yielded a great deal of evidence, all of which is available to the public. He quips that flight 11's black box was destroyed, but a passport belonging to one of the hijackers was found. He jokes, "a voice recorder, made of the most resilient materials known to man, is destroyed, yet a passport, made of a material known as paper, managed to survive? Who writes this stuff?" (Resilient? That's an awfully big word for you, Dylan. Keep that dictionary handy, buddy!)
What about the other items that survived--like the hundreds of bones found atop the Deutsche Bank building, seat cushions, life jackets, and other documents believed to be aboard flight 11? It was a plane crash, Dylan. I'm pretty sure the loose materials on the plane moved. DUH.
Now comes the part I despise the most: Dylan's claim about the cell phone calls from the flights, mainly Flight 93. This is the part of Loose Change that actually physically churns my stomach. He says that what catches his attention is the "fact" that most callers call, say a few words, then hang up and call back later. Okay...what's his point? His attention span is about that of a fruit fly, because he moves on to Betty Ong, an attendant on Flight 11.
Dylan has the balls to mock the recording they have of the call: "does this sound like a woman on a hijacked plane who has seen people murdered in front of her? Why is no one screaming?"
The nerve of this asshole...
It has actually been reported that Ong, who'd been assigned to the coach section (away from the melee), as well as the passengers and crew with her believed there was a routine medical emergency in business class. Then Dylan starts nitpicking; he claims that Madeline Sweeney, another attendant on Flight 11, "allegedly" called her ground manager and gave a false report of how many hijackers there were and where they were seated.
Why don't we argue about the number of rocks in my front yard? This shit is just about as stupid!
I'm fairly certain that under stressful circumstances, a mistake can be made on how many people are attacking you and where they came from. I've made that mistake myself before, even in controlled scenarios. But it's also believed that Sweeney may have been in coach with Ong, thus relying on secondhand information from colleagues who were just as confused.
He goes even further into the hole he's digging. He jokes about Mark Bingham's call to his mother, saying, "when was the last time you called your mother and used your full name?" (Mark did do that.) What's his mother's response? It wasn't the first time Mark had used his full name with her; he was a businessman, and he was used to introducing himself on the phone with his full name. "...He was trying to be strong and level-headed and--strictly business." Alice Hogland, Mark Bingham's mother, knows that it was her son who called her.
It floors me just how brazen Dylan Avery and his ilk are when discussing this issue. He even states, as if it were true, that the calls were never released to the public. Once again, I call bullshit. This is another flagrant lie. They have been released.
His final gesture in this fiasco is to claim that the cell phone calls couldn't have taken place. Here, though, is where he shoots himself in the foot: all but one of the calls were made on airfones, the little handsets you sometimes see in the seatbacks on airplanes. What's more is that Dylan even points out that Mark Bingham's call was on an airfone. (Are we lost yet?)
He quotes "Project Achilles," performed by Key Dudney (writer of yet another Twoofer site), claimed that at 32,000 feet, cell phones couldn't have worked. Here's the problem: Dudney used two dinosaur-age Motorola cell phones on board a Diamond DA-20 Katana--a little two-seater plane--and did so over London, Ontario, a much larger area than Shanksville with more cell traffic. The airfones used by the passengers on board the Boeing 757 over Shanksville were made to make clear calls from 40,000 feet.
Oops. 'Nother boo-boo.
Then there's the passenger aboard Delta 1989 (forced to land in Cleveland...remember?) who testified that there was suspicious activity in the cabin: a passenger was talking urgently on his cell phone despite repeated orders from the crew to shut the thing off.
THEN, Dylan the Genius points out the military's work on voice-morphing technology. What he claims is "real time" actually isn't; the morpher could only work for recordings. But even Dylan Avery points out that the technology requires a 10-minute recording of a person's voice in order to work.
I suppose his next brilliant theory is going to be that every single one of the passengers on board the hijacked planes were part of the conspiracy and voluntarily gave recordings of their voices to be used.
Dylan's way beyond being too big for his britches here. Now he's into territory he has no business being in. What is still playing in the back of my brain is one of the very first screenshots: "Dedicated to the lives we lost on September 11, 2001." What a crock.
Here's another humdinger for ya, buddy: if Flight 93 didn't crash in that field in Shanksville, then what, pray tell, created the smoldering wreckage hauled away? And a repeat of a previous question: what happened to all the people?!?
Wait, I already said it--they're part of the conspiracy, too.
I'm irritated. I need my naptime.
Loose Change starts its portion on Flight 93 by claiming that, in reality, Flight 93 landed in Cleveland. It quotes a news report from WCPO, released around 11:45 a.m. on 9/11/2001, that United Airlines Flight 93--which had been reported as hijacked--had safely landed.
I suppose the very first reports about an incident are always correct, right, Dylan? I love how you can quote this stuff when it suits you, but you turn right around and blast the media in the same breath. To add insult to injury, the AP discovered their flub in a matter of minutes and pulled the link quickly--the Twoofers picked up on it because the story wasn't taken down as quickly.
Avery goes on to quote the coroner, Wally Miller, who said, "I stopped being a coroner after about 20 minutes, because there were no bodies there...I have not, to this day, seen a single drop of blood. Not a drop." This is yet another case of Dylan Avery and company taking the words of an investigator and completely twisting them to suit their agenda. Wally Miller is mortified (pardon the pun) that his words have been used by the 9/11 Truthers ("Twoofers"); in his words (yes, I do quote):
"What I was saying was I stopped being a coroner after 20 minutes because it was already clear what the cause and manner of death was going to be. It was a plane crash, but it was a homicide because the hijackers crashed the plane and killed the people...(off-camera: "so it was a misquote?")...yes, it was a misquote, because the point I was trying to make was after that, it became a large funeral service."
In essence, he wasn't a coroner anymore because he didn't have to identify the cause of death. He was just recovering and identifying remains (and more than 1500 were found). No wonder Dylan wasn't accepted to college.
Then, the General of the tin-foilies claims, "it's the second time in history, on one day, that an airplane and its passengers disappears upon impact." Ooooo-kay. Tell that to the people who had to clean up the crash of Pan Am 103, after it was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland. Sure, they recovered the nose...it crashed separately from the rest of the craft, which almost completely disappeared into the crash site.
Holy shit, Batman!
He goes on to expound on his Cleveland landing theory, and is right about one thing: the Cleveland airport was evacuated, but nobody was allowed to drive because an airplane believed to be hijacked was about to land. Unfortunately for the Twoofers, it was Delta flight 1989. Dylan's claim that a second plane was evacuated and searched comes from--get this--an internet message board.
Wow. Way to use that journalistic talent there, Dylan. Dan Rather would love you.
And I just love how he claims that 200 people were evacuated from Flight 93. The passenger list, the actual list of people who boarded that flight, the manifest from the originating airport, was only 44. (Luk, ma, I kan kownt!)
It gets better, ladies and gentlemen. Now comes the shoot-down scenario. This is the part where you all cock your head to the side and go, "whatdafuck???" Didn't I just get through detailing Dylan's strong belief that Flight 93 didn't crash, but landed safely?
Well, he espouses the notion that a white jet, seen flying over the area after the crash, was a fighter jet sent to shoot the plane down. Nnnnnope. The FAA, getting reports that 93 had crashed, asked the closest craft still in the air on the way to follow grounding orders to turn around and fly over the area and pinpoint the location. It happened to be a small, private jet--and yes, it was white. So Avery took something with a tiny grain of truth in it and "twooferized" it--he blew it up to be something it never was.
What makes me howl is how Avery rounds the whole thing out by quoting Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden had claimed to Al-Jazeera that the leaders of Afghanistan wouldn't allow him to execute such attacks, and thus, he had nothing to do with it.
Okay...okay...lemme regain my composure...damn, that's funny. What Avery's sayin' here is that the experts, so far, are liars, but the world's most wanted terrorist is telling the truth? Holy flyin' sheep shit. That's just about the funniest thing I've heard so far.
He claims that cockpit voice recorders can't be destroyed, but that's false; it's happened before. At least two of the black boxes were destroyed on 9/11, but other voice recorders were recovered and yielded a great deal of evidence, all of which is available to the public. He quips that flight 11's black box was destroyed, but a passport belonging to one of the hijackers was found. He jokes, "a voice recorder, made of the most resilient materials known to man, is destroyed, yet a passport, made of a material known as paper, managed to survive? Who writes this stuff?" (Resilient? That's an awfully big word for you, Dylan. Keep that dictionary handy, buddy!)
What about the other items that survived--like the hundreds of bones found atop the Deutsche Bank building, seat cushions, life jackets, and other documents believed to be aboard flight 11? It was a plane crash, Dylan. I'm pretty sure the loose materials on the plane moved. DUH.
Now comes the part I despise the most: Dylan's claim about the cell phone calls from the flights, mainly Flight 93. This is the part of Loose Change that actually physically churns my stomach. He says that what catches his attention is the "fact" that most callers call, say a few words, then hang up and call back later. Okay...what's his point? His attention span is about that of a fruit fly, because he moves on to Betty Ong, an attendant on Flight 11.
Dylan has the balls to mock the recording they have of the call: "does this sound like a woman on a hijacked plane who has seen people murdered in front of her? Why is no one screaming?"
The nerve of this asshole...
It has actually been reported that Ong, who'd been assigned to the coach section (away from the melee), as well as the passengers and crew with her believed there was a routine medical emergency in business class. Then Dylan starts nitpicking; he claims that Madeline Sweeney, another attendant on Flight 11, "allegedly" called her ground manager and gave a false report of how many hijackers there were and where they were seated.
Why don't we argue about the number of rocks in my front yard? This shit is just about as stupid!
I'm fairly certain that under stressful circumstances, a mistake can be made on how many people are attacking you and where they came from. I've made that mistake myself before, even in controlled scenarios. But it's also believed that Sweeney may have been in coach with Ong, thus relying on secondhand information from colleagues who were just as confused.
He goes even further into the hole he's digging. He jokes about Mark Bingham's call to his mother, saying, "when was the last time you called your mother and used your full name?" (Mark did do that.) What's his mother's response? It wasn't the first time Mark had used his full name with her; he was a businessman, and he was used to introducing himself on the phone with his full name. "...He was trying to be strong and level-headed and--strictly business." Alice Hogland, Mark Bingham's mother, knows that it was her son who called her.
It floors me just how brazen Dylan Avery and his ilk are when discussing this issue. He even states, as if it were true, that the calls were never released to the public. Once again, I call bullshit. This is another flagrant lie. They have been released.
His final gesture in this fiasco is to claim that the cell phone calls couldn't have taken place. Here, though, is where he shoots himself in the foot: all but one of the calls were made on airfones, the little handsets you sometimes see in the seatbacks on airplanes. What's more is that Dylan even points out that Mark Bingham's call was on an airfone. (Are we lost yet?)
He quotes "Project Achilles," performed by Key Dudney (writer of yet another Twoofer site), claimed that at 32,000 feet, cell phones couldn't have worked. Here's the problem: Dudney used two dinosaur-age Motorola cell phones on board a Diamond DA-20 Katana--a little two-seater plane--and did so over London, Ontario, a much larger area than Shanksville with more cell traffic. The airfones used by the passengers on board the Boeing 757 over Shanksville were made to make clear calls from 40,000 feet.
Oops. 'Nother boo-boo.
Then there's the passenger aboard Delta 1989 (forced to land in Cleveland...remember?) who testified that there was suspicious activity in the cabin: a passenger was talking urgently on his cell phone despite repeated orders from the crew to shut the thing off.
THEN, Dylan the Genius points out the military's work on voice-morphing technology. What he claims is "real time" actually isn't; the morpher could only work for recordings. But even Dylan Avery points out that the technology requires a 10-minute recording of a person's voice in order to work.
I suppose his next brilliant theory is going to be that every single one of the passengers on board the hijacked planes were part of the conspiracy and voluntarily gave recordings of their voices to be used.
Dylan's way beyond being too big for his britches here. Now he's into territory he has no business being in. What is still playing in the back of my brain is one of the very first screenshots: "Dedicated to the lives we lost on September 11, 2001." What a crock.
Here's another humdinger for ya, buddy: if Flight 93 didn't crash in that field in Shanksville, then what, pray tell, created the smoldering wreckage hauled away? And a repeat of a previous question: what happened to all the people?!?
Wait, I already said it--they're part of the conspiracy, too.
I'm irritated. I need my naptime.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
"Mexico Does Not End at the Border."
Wanna know who said that? Felipe Calderon, the new president of Mexico. I hate to get off-subject for two blogs in a row, but this pissed me off so bad I had to blog about it.
Why would such a statement piss me off? Apparently, Calderon doesn't care that it's not just workers coming across that border. He hasn't read the news reports about Mexican nationals committing robbery, rape and murder in America. I know he doesn't care, because when Mexican nationals are brought to justice for those crimes here, he and others running the government demand that we give those people "human rights."
You mean the same human rights they took from their victims?
Calderon blasted the US government for its crackdown on undocumented workers, but failed to address the bigger problem: the criminals that are coming across the border disguised as workers. They all say they're just working. Walk into any jail or prison, and every dumb shit in there will swear up and down that they're innocent. EVERYONE who commits a crime says they didn't do it. But the one thing they all miss is one pure truth that nobody seems willing to voice:
If a man can kill, steal, and rape...he can lie!
Holy shit! What a concept!
Calderon said, "wherever there is a Mexican, Mexico will be there." No, you will NOT. This is AMERICA, motherfucker. Not Mexico. You wanna provide legal counsel for your people when they are caught committing crimes here? Fine! It'll save us the time and expense! But Mexico ENDS where America BEGINS. You will NOT take over any part of my country. I will die before I see America turn into Mexico.
You're pandering to your people, Mr. Calderon; they want to hear you talk smack to the big, bad USA. Americans, however, are bigger, stronger, and bitchier than you, and the majority of Americans don't like your people taking our country over. So take a lesson, sir--don't push your luck. Push us hard enough and we'll do more than push back. We'll knock you on your self-righteous ass.
America may occasionally forget who she is, but it doesn't take long to remember. Respect our laws and our sovereignty. If you truly want us as an ally, respect us as a people. Until then, I absolutely refuse to do business with any restaurant, store, gas station or any other moneymaking venture that knowingly hires illegal immigrants. I will wash my own damn truck, cook my own damn food, and will even help my friends with their landscaping just to make sure Mexicans aren't supported by any of my business or money. Anyone who feels the way I do can join me. (Yes, I will help you do any sort of work just to make sure that none of my friends hire illegal workers!)
Some people will read this and think it a joke; I'm not joking. I'm just one person, but it's gotta start somewhere.
(Want more news on illegals? Go to www.immigrationwatchdog.com for more than what I can post here!)
Why would such a statement piss me off? Apparently, Calderon doesn't care that it's not just workers coming across that border. He hasn't read the news reports about Mexican nationals committing robbery, rape and murder in America. I know he doesn't care, because when Mexican nationals are brought to justice for those crimes here, he and others running the government demand that we give those people "human rights."
You mean the same human rights they took from their victims?
Calderon blasted the US government for its crackdown on undocumented workers, but failed to address the bigger problem: the criminals that are coming across the border disguised as workers. They all say they're just working. Walk into any jail or prison, and every dumb shit in there will swear up and down that they're innocent. EVERYONE who commits a crime says they didn't do it. But the one thing they all miss is one pure truth that nobody seems willing to voice:
If a man can kill, steal, and rape...he can lie!
Holy shit! What a concept!
Calderon said, "wherever there is a Mexican, Mexico will be there." No, you will NOT. This is AMERICA, motherfucker. Not Mexico. You wanna provide legal counsel for your people when they are caught committing crimes here? Fine! It'll save us the time and expense! But Mexico ENDS where America BEGINS. You will NOT take over any part of my country. I will die before I see America turn into Mexico.
You're pandering to your people, Mr. Calderon; they want to hear you talk smack to the big, bad USA. Americans, however, are bigger, stronger, and bitchier than you, and the majority of Americans don't like your people taking our country over. So take a lesson, sir--don't push your luck. Push us hard enough and we'll do more than push back. We'll knock you on your self-righteous ass.
America may occasionally forget who she is, but it doesn't take long to remember. Respect our laws and our sovereignty. If you truly want us as an ally, respect us as a people. Until then, I absolutely refuse to do business with any restaurant, store, gas station or any other moneymaking venture that knowingly hires illegal immigrants. I will wash my own damn truck, cook my own damn food, and will even help my friends with their landscaping just to make sure Mexicans aren't supported by any of my business or money. Anyone who feels the way I do can join me. (Yes, I will help you do any sort of work just to make sure that none of my friends hire illegal workers!)
Some people will read this and think it a joke; I'm not joking. I'm just one person, but it's gotta start somewhere.
(Want more news on illegals? Go to www.immigrationwatchdog.com for more than what I can post here!)
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Shutting Down The Tin-Foil Hat Brigade: Controlled Demolition Did NOT Bring Down the Towers
The section of Loose Change dealing with the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center begins with this quote:
"There were explosions going off everywhere. I was convinced that there were bombs going off all over the place and someone was sitting at a control panel pushing detonator buttons." --Theresa Veliz, working on the 47th floor of the North tower when flight 11 hit.
The running theory, in regards to the towers, is that even though we know they were hit by planes (the video footage is a little hard to ignore, especially coming from so many non-governmental sources), they didn't collapse due to the damage. 9/11 Truthers claim it was controlled demolition that brought down the buildings, including WTC 7, which didn't collapse until around 5 p.m.
The very first claim is that they are "the first steel buildings in history to collapse due to fire." As proof, they point out that in 1945, a B-25 bomber crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State building. Then, they point out that in 1975, a fire broke out in the North tower that ended up consuming six floors of the WTC. And they point out that in 1988, several floors of an LA skyscraper burned for three hours. All of these buildings are still standing, yet the twin towers and WTC 7 all "conveniently fell into little piles." Never, in any of this, has anyone claimed that it was merely the fires that caused the collapse of the twin towers.
Dylan Avery goes on to point out a few more, including the Windsor building in Madrid, which burned for nearly 24 hours. He tries to say that none of these buildings, all steel-framed, collapsed; unfortunately, he is wrong. The top 10 floors of the Windsor building DID collapse, largely onto itself. Then, after pointing to all of these other fires and baying that none of them completely collapsed, he proudly points out that the twin towers only burned for under 100 minutes--and demands to know how a fire could have made these buildings collapse.
*Sigh* Do I have to go there?
"And to think...the government would have us believe that these buildings were brought down by 10,000 pounds of jet fuel." --Dylan Avery, narrating Loose Change
No, Dylan, common sense does not refute the official story. He quotes Van Romero, the VP for research at the New Mexico Institue of Mining & Technology, who says that based on the tapes, he believed explosives caused the collapse. That's right...the tapes. That statement was not based on actually seeing the wreckage and locating evidence of explosives, it was based on seeing the collapse on TV. Two days later, the same man, likely after seeing more than just the TV footage, said, "certainly the fire is what caused the building to fail."
Avery's response? He asks what would make Romero change his mind so fast. Spoken like a true nitwit.
Then Avery quotes Himan Brown, a civil engineer and the WTC's construction manager. Himan was quoted as saying that the fire didn't melt the steel--it just weakened it, and that was enough to cause the collapse. Then he quotes Kevin Ryan, from Underwriters Laboratories, who contradicts Himan; he says that the steel has to be exposed to temperatures of 2000F for several hours in order to be weakened enough to collapse. He says that Brown's assertion that a short fire melted the steel "makes no sense." Unfortunately, Brown never said the fires melted the steel. He said the fires weakened it. This is just one fine example of Avery and co. taking several quotes completely out of context.
But, hey...anything to prove their point.
Avery shows several news clips of many, many people talking about hearing explosions. Nobody says anything about bombs--trained firefighters, who know the difference between a bomb blast and an explosion caused by a very large fire moving in a very large building, talk about explosions, not bombs. One eyewitness even talks about seeing brief light sources emitting from the towers and a crackling noise before the collapse.
This is the part where picking the brains of my firefighter buddies and borrowing their textbooks comes in real handy.
Fire is a funny thing. Especially when let loose in a large structure made of concrete and steel that's full of all manner of simple fuels (paper, dry fiber, et cetera), a fire can do a lot of strange things. There are a number of things that can sound like an explosion. The major ones are called flashovers and backdrafts. A flashover is what happens when a fire emits a high layer of smoke, causing pyrolysis--the heating of all flammable objects/surfaces in a room--causing them to give off flammable gases. The temperature then reaches a point where those gases ignite suddenly, igniting everything else in the room. When this happens, it sounds like an explosion. There are varying types of flashovers that all have this general effect.
A backdraft (for those who never saw the movie) is similar to a flashover; it's what happens when a compartment (room) is on fire and the fire depletes all of the oxygen feeding it. Any sudden exposure to oxygen--an open door, a broken window, a collapsing portion of a wall--creates a sudden and very violent ignition of all of the flammable gases in the compartment. In other words, an explosion.
I promise you that these things were happening in those towers. A fire large enough creates these events. As for the crackling? The towers were 110 stories high, with a lot of glass between the steel frames. Gee. I wonder what might've crackled while the structures were beginning to collapse.
I really love how Avery quotes people who have absolutely no knowledge of construction, engineering, and demolition about what happened. He taped the account of "Willie," a janitor at the WTC on 9/11 (yep, a janitor), who swears it was explosives because the fires came down through the elevator shafts. Avery plays the recordings of a group of financial analysts (people who spent all their time crunching numbers in college and had no time to study physics or chemistry) that recorded two explosions when the first plane hit. Avery is even ballsy enough to claim that the elevator shafts were sealed, thus couldn't have had enough oxygen to allow a raging fireball to travel down them. Okay...you say it was impossible, but what expertise is that based on? Being sealed didn't keep oxygen out, and I promise you the sealing was compromised by a Boeing 757 hitting the building. (I'd like to know how he goes from accepting Willie's account of the fire exploding down the elevator shaft and burning several people to claiming that it couldn't have happened!)
Avery points out that the collapse was picked up as a "seismic event" by an observatory. I wonder...would the collapse of a 110-story steel-and-concrete building make the ground shake?
What about the "hot spots" of "molten steel" found in the basement under the rubble? It wasn't steel. The metal found was tested, and engineers and chemists discovered that it was a mix of different metals, including aluminum and lead, all of which were present in the structures and would have melted in the fires. And since they're claiming that the fires never got hot enough to melt steel (and a controlled demolition wouldn't have created a fire hot enough to melt steel), I'm struggling to understand if he even knows what his point was in bringing it up.
Unless he's just trying to stir up more doubt. I think at this point he's just chasing his tail. (If you know what the guy looks like, and you can get a good visual in your head, it's actually pretty damn funny.)
I'm curious: how many pounds of explosives would be required to bring down a 110-story skyscraper? I'm guessing it's a hell of a lot. How would they get thousands of pounds of explosives into the towers without anyone noticing? How would they wire the buildings for this sort of thing without one of the thirty-thousand-plus people who worked there noticing? Hmmm...an evacuation for a bomb threat, maybe? Nope. That wouldn't have given even the most experienced military EOD teams enough time to even start rigging those massive buildings for demolition.
And I'm sorry, Dylan...the fact that bomb-sniffing dogs were "abruptly removed" from the buildings on 9/6/01 doesn't rouse suspicion for me. That tells me the dogs were needed elsewhere.
"I think what happened to the WTC is simple enough. It was brought down in a carefully-planned, controlled demolition. It was a psychological attack on the American people, and it was pulled off with military precision." --Dylan Avery, narrating Loose Change
Windows didn't blow out because of explosives; as the buildings collapsed, an accordion effect was created. Air trapped in the buildings was being compressed; it had to go somewhere, and the windows were eventually the weakest point. And no, the fires didn't get hot enough to melt the steel frame. Nobody has ever claimed such a thing.
The planes that hit the towers, just as the plane that hit the Pentagon, tore massive holes in the buildings. Several steel support beams were ripped from their moorings on impact. The crashes themselves, putting massive holes in the towers, significantly compromised the stability of the structures. Thousands of pounds of burning jet fuel created raging infernos that further weakened steel beams that had already been badly damaged by the crashes. On top of the crash sites, thousands of pounds of steel, glass, and office materials perched precariously--until the gaping holes in the buildings finally gave way. All of that weight was too much for the crippled buildings to handle.
They also did not "conveniently fall into neat little piles." The collapse of the twin towers destroyed most of the WTC complex, beginning with the Marriott WTC. WTC 7, set on fire by falling debris, a building that didn't have the kind of reinforced foundation that the towers had, collapsed later in the evening. Even St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church was damaged beyond repair and had to be demolished.
And Avery's claim that Rudy Giuliani refused to allow investigators into the site to inspect the tons upon tons of rubble? Horseshit. Massive teams of experts examined the rubble. The amount of paper generated by these experts on what they found (and didn't find) could keep my fireplace lit for years. A piss-ant like Giuliani could never have had enough clout to order investigators to stay away while the rubble was hauled off to recycling plants.
There were no blasting caps, no detonation cord, no residue from TNT or ammonium nitrate. Since Avery likes to present doubt based on nothing but a lack of evidence, I'd like him to chew on that one.
Hey...what about that B-25 bomber that hit the Empire State building? Why didn't that building collapse? I'll tell you. A B-25 Mitchell, the plane that hit the ESB, is thus: it has a wingspan of 67 feet, 6.7 inches, a length of 53 feet, 5.7 inches, stands about 16 feet high, weighs 33,000 lbs. loaded and carries only 975 lbs. of fuel. Its maximum speed is 245 mph.
A Boeing 757-200, on the other hand, is a much different aircraft. It has a wingspan of 124 feet, 10 inches, a length of 155 feet 3 inches, stands 44 feet, 6 inches high, weighs 255,000 lbs. when loaded with passengers, and carries 11,489 lbs. of fuel. Its maximum speed is 540 mph.
Oops! Bit of a difference! Start backpedaling now, buddy, 'cause you're gonna have a hard time 'splainin' that one!
I'd like to ask another very good question: since you say that the collapse of the towers and WTC 7 looks so much like controlled demolition, and that alone must prove that only controlled demolition could have done it...where, pray tell, have you stashed the footage of the last skyscraper knocked down by a commercial jetliner, the footage you're apparently comparing this to?
Thaaaaat's right. You have none. This is the first time it's ever happened. I'd be laughing right now at the stupidity of all of this if it weren't for the fact that I have a headache the size of Lower Manhattan.
"There were explosions going off everywhere. I was convinced that there were bombs going off all over the place and someone was sitting at a control panel pushing detonator buttons." --Theresa Veliz, working on the 47th floor of the North tower when flight 11 hit.
The running theory, in regards to the towers, is that even though we know they were hit by planes (the video footage is a little hard to ignore, especially coming from so many non-governmental sources), they didn't collapse due to the damage. 9/11 Truthers claim it was controlled demolition that brought down the buildings, including WTC 7, which didn't collapse until around 5 p.m.
The very first claim is that they are "the first steel buildings in history to collapse due to fire." As proof, they point out that in 1945, a B-25 bomber crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State building. Then, they point out that in 1975, a fire broke out in the North tower that ended up consuming six floors of the WTC. And they point out that in 1988, several floors of an LA skyscraper burned for three hours. All of these buildings are still standing, yet the twin towers and WTC 7 all "conveniently fell into little piles." Never, in any of this, has anyone claimed that it was merely the fires that caused the collapse of the twin towers.
Dylan Avery goes on to point out a few more, including the Windsor building in Madrid, which burned for nearly 24 hours. He tries to say that none of these buildings, all steel-framed, collapsed; unfortunately, he is wrong. The top 10 floors of the Windsor building DID collapse, largely onto itself. Then, after pointing to all of these other fires and baying that none of them completely collapsed, he proudly points out that the twin towers only burned for under 100 minutes--and demands to know how a fire could have made these buildings collapse.
*Sigh* Do I have to go there?
"And to think...the government would have us believe that these buildings were brought down by 10,000 pounds of jet fuel." --Dylan Avery, narrating Loose Change
No, Dylan, common sense does not refute the official story. He quotes Van Romero, the VP for research at the New Mexico Institue of Mining & Technology, who says that based on the tapes, he believed explosives caused the collapse. That's right...the tapes. That statement was not based on actually seeing the wreckage and locating evidence of explosives, it was based on seeing the collapse on TV. Two days later, the same man, likely after seeing more than just the TV footage, said, "certainly the fire is what caused the building to fail."
Avery's response? He asks what would make Romero change his mind so fast. Spoken like a true nitwit.
Then Avery quotes Himan Brown, a civil engineer and the WTC's construction manager. Himan was quoted as saying that the fire didn't melt the steel--it just weakened it, and that was enough to cause the collapse. Then he quotes Kevin Ryan, from Underwriters Laboratories, who contradicts Himan; he says that the steel has to be exposed to temperatures of 2000F for several hours in order to be weakened enough to collapse. He says that Brown's assertion that a short fire melted the steel "makes no sense." Unfortunately, Brown never said the fires melted the steel. He said the fires weakened it. This is just one fine example of Avery and co. taking several quotes completely out of context.
But, hey...anything to prove their point.
Avery shows several news clips of many, many people talking about hearing explosions. Nobody says anything about bombs--trained firefighters, who know the difference between a bomb blast and an explosion caused by a very large fire moving in a very large building, talk about explosions, not bombs. One eyewitness even talks about seeing brief light sources emitting from the towers and a crackling noise before the collapse.
This is the part where picking the brains of my firefighter buddies and borrowing their textbooks comes in real handy.
Fire is a funny thing. Especially when let loose in a large structure made of concrete and steel that's full of all manner of simple fuels (paper, dry fiber, et cetera), a fire can do a lot of strange things. There are a number of things that can sound like an explosion. The major ones are called flashovers and backdrafts. A flashover is what happens when a fire emits a high layer of smoke, causing pyrolysis--the heating of all flammable objects/surfaces in a room--causing them to give off flammable gases. The temperature then reaches a point where those gases ignite suddenly, igniting everything else in the room. When this happens, it sounds like an explosion. There are varying types of flashovers that all have this general effect.
A backdraft (for those who never saw the movie) is similar to a flashover; it's what happens when a compartment (room) is on fire and the fire depletes all of the oxygen feeding it. Any sudden exposure to oxygen--an open door, a broken window, a collapsing portion of a wall--creates a sudden and very violent ignition of all of the flammable gases in the compartment. In other words, an explosion.
I promise you that these things were happening in those towers. A fire large enough creates these events. As for the crackling? The towers were 110 stories high, with a lot of glass between the steel frames. Gee. I wonder what might've crackled while the structures were beginning to collapse.
I really love how Avery quotes people who have absolutely no knowledge of construction, engineering, and demolition about what happened. He taped the account of "Willie," a janitor at the WTC on 9/11 (yep, a janitor), who swears it was explosives because the fires came down through the elevator shafts. Avery plays the recordings of a group of financial analysts (people who spent all their time crunching numbers in college and had no time to study physics or chemistry) that recorded two explosions when the first plane hit. Avery is even ballsy enough to claim that the elevator shafts were sealed, thus couldn't have had enough oxygen to allow a raging fireball to travel down them. Okay...you say it was impossible, but what expertise is that based on? Being sealed didn't keep oxygen out, and I promise you the sealing was compromised by a Boeing 757 hitting the building. (I'd like to know how he goes from accepting Willie's account of the fire exploding down the elevator shaft and burning several people to claiming that it couldn't have happened!)
Avery points out that the collapse was picked up as a "seismic event" by an observatory. I wonder...would the collapse of a 110-story steel-and-concrete building make the ground shake?
What about the "hot spots" of "molten steel" found in the basement under the rubble? It wasn't steel. The metal found was tested, and engineers and chemists discovered that it was a mix of different metals, including aluminum and lead, all of which were present in the structures and would have melted in the fires. And since they're claiming that the fires never got hot enough to melt steel (and a controlled demolition wouldn't have created a fire hot enough to melt steel), I'm struggling to understand if he even knows what his point was in bringing it up.
Unless he's just trying to stir up more doubt. I think at this point he's just chasing his tail. (If you know what the guy looks like, and you can get a good visual in your head, it's actually pretty damn funny.)
I'm curious: how many pounds of explosives would be required to bring down a 110-story skyscraper? I'm guessing it's a hell of a lot. How would they get thousands of pounds of explosives into the towers without anyone noticing? How would they wire the buildings for this sort of thing without one of the thirty-thousand-plus people who worked there noticing? Hmmm...an evacuation for a bomb threat, maybe? Nope. That wouldn't have given even the most experienced military EOD teams enough time to even start rigging those massive buildings for demolition.
And I'm sorry, Dylan...the fact that bomb-sniffing dogs were "abruptly removed" from the buildings on 9/6/01 doesn't rouse suspicion for me. That tells me the dogs were needed elsewhere.
"I think what happened to the WTC is simple enough. It was brought down in a carefully-planned, controlled demolition. It was a psychological attack on the American people, and it was pulled off with military precision." --Dylan Avery, narrating Loose Change
Windows didn't blow out because of explosives; as the buildings collapsed, an accordion effect was created. Air trapped in the buildings was being compressed; it had to go somewhere, and the windows were eventually the weakest point. And no, the fires didn't get hot enough to melt the steel frame. Nobody has ever claimed such a thing.
The planes that hit the towers, just as the plane that hit the Pentagon, tore massive holes in the buildings. Several steel support beams were ripped from their moorings on impact. The crashes themselves, putting massive holes in the towers, significantly compromised the stability of the structures. Thousands of pounds of burning jet fuel created raging infernos that further weakened steel beams that had already been badly damaged by the crashes. On top of the crash sites, thousands of pounds of steel, glass, and office materials perched precariously--until the gaping holes in the buildings finally gave way. All of that weight was too much for the crippled buildings to handle.
They also did not "conveniently fall into neat little piles." The collapse of the twin towers destroyed most of the WTC complex, beginning with the Marriott WTC. WTC 7, set on fire by falling debris, a building that didn't have the kind of reinforced foundation that the towers had, collapsed later in the evening. Even St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church was damaged beyond repair and had to be demolished.
And Avery's claim that Rudy Giuliani refused to allow investigators into the site to inspect the tons upon tons of rubble? Horseshit. Massive teams of experts examined the rubble. The amount of paper generated by these experts on what they found (and didn't find) could keep my fireplace lit for years. A piss-ant like Giuliani could never have had enough clout to order investigators to stay away while the rubble was hauled off to recycling plants.
There were no blasting caps, no detonation cord, no residue from TNT or ammonium nitrate. Since Avery likes to present doubt based on nothing but a lack of evidence, I'd like him to chew on that one.
Hey...what about that B-25 bomber that hit the Empire State building? Why didn't that building collapse? I'll tell you. A B-25 Mitchell, the plane that hit the ESB, is thus: it has a wingspan of 67 feet, 6.7 inches, a length of 53 feet, 5.7 inches, stands about 16 feet high, weighs 33,000 lbs. loaded and carries only 975 lbs. of fuel. Its maximum speed is 245 mph.
A Boeing 757-200, on the other hand, is a much different aircraft. It has a wingspan of 124 feet, 10 inches, a length of 155 feet 3 inches, stands 44 feet, 6 inches high, weighs 255,000 lbs. when loaded with passengers, and carries 11,489 lbs. of fuel. Its maximum speed is 540 mph.
Oops! Bit of a difference! Start backpedaling now, buddy, 'cause you're gonna have a hard time 'splainin' that one!
I'd like to ask another very good question: since you say that the collapse of the towers and WTC 7 looks so much like controlled demolition, and that alone must prove that only controlled demolition could have done it...where, pray tell, have you stashed the footage of the last skyscraper knocked down by a commercial jetliner, the footage you're apparently comparing this to?
Thaaaaat's right. You have none. This is the first time it's ever happened. I'd be laughing right now at the stupidity of all of this if it weren't for the fact that I have a headache the size of Lower Manhattan.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Shutting Down the Tin-Foil Hat Brigade: American Airlines Flight 77 DID Crash Into the Pentagon
What do you call THIS???Some friends of mine a while ago suggested that I watch a video called Loose Change. I did, and every moment I wasted on it churned my stomach. I can see how it would seem plausible to the average American; it is presented in what appears to be a logical approach. The problem is you can do that with any argument. Any idea, no matter how farfetched, when given just the right twist, can be convincing. The next few blogs are going to be devoted to giving simple solutions to the "questions" raised by the 9/11 conspiracy theorists who have convinced themselves and thousands of others that there's no way it was a terrorist act.
If you know more about it and dig a little deeper, though, you find that nearly every shred of "evidence" presented by Dylan Avery and his tin-foil hat brigade has been twisted and contorted beyond recognition. For example, they start out by describing a flight maneuver that pilot Hani Hanjour couldn't possibly have executed: a sharp u-turn that, according to a retired Air Force pilot, would have stalled the engines. What they didn't mention was that the pilot they spoke to hadn't flown any of the more modern aircraft with the types of engines that were on the planes flown that day. That maneuver, done correctly, was perfectly possible. Nobody knows what speed the plane was really travelling at when the turn was made because by then, Hanjour had shut off the plane's transponder.
They then move on to point out a plane crash in Houston, in which a private jet clipped a light pole, tearing off the wing and causing a fatal crash. According to their logic, American Airlines flight 77 couldn't have crashed into the Pentagon; its wing clipped five light poles and maintained enough forward energy to crash into the Pentagon? That can't work, can it? Yes, it can. The Houston crash involved a much smaller, private jet--far smaller and less bulky than a Boeing 757. Uh-oh. There's a hole in the theory.
Then they move on to the complete and utter destruction of the plane in the crash. According to Avery, the nine-foot-wide engines should have been found "relatively intact" inside the building, and pieces of the plane should have been seen all over the place, because the titanium skin couldn't possibly have been incinerated in a fire that, according to theory, never could have reached more than 1400 degrees (titanium melts at 1668 degrees). Maybe so...but a terrorist hijacked a commercial jetliner, flew along the ground, and reached the plane's top speed of 540 m.p.h. before crashing nose-first into a building made of reinforced concrete. The fire didn't have to destroy it; the energy of the crash itself tore the plane to bits. And, despite Avery's assertion that a perfect hole wouldn't have been made by a plane with such a massive wingspan, another simple fact shoots his theory (again) to hell: the wings came off. Duh. The engines would NOT have been found intact. The engine that was found was the auxilliary from the tail section, and its position was the only thing that left it barely recognizable.
What about the perfect hole in the C ring of the Pentagon? Well, we've already established that the plane was torn to pieces by the impact of the crash. But do you really think that the destruction ends when the cause of the destruction stops moving? Especially when said cause is loaded with jet fuel? Now think about this for a moment...the plane may have stopped because the rebar and concrete ate it whole, but do you think the fuel was going to stop? Simple physics should tell you that the total destruction of the plane would have allowed the fuel to create a massive torch effect, exploding in the same forward motion that the plane had been headed in.
Oops...someone forgot to finish their homework.
Avery goes on to show video footage of a witness who says he saw a small commuter plane; how far away was this witness? Who was he, and why weren't there more? Another witness claims it was a military helicopter--he says he saw a military helicopter disappear behind the wall where the helipad was, and not long after saw a fireball rise into the air. Where's the evidence? He didn't see the helicopter crash. He saw all of this from a distance, and again, was the only person who claims to believe it was a military chopper.
Avery himself happens to believe that it was a cruise missile. He shows pictures of war criminal Slobodan Milosevic's house after being hit by a cruise missile, but while the damage looks similar, the building is much smaller, and the damage is more localized. Once again, Avery is trying to establish truth on two incidents that are only vaguely similar. He also tries to claim that people inside the Pentagon felt a shock wave, and that people in buildings a mile away felt the same shock, and that couldn't have been an airplane, then quotes people who said they heard an explosion.
Well, it's real simple, kiddo...a Boeing 757, big enough to carry nearly 200 people, laden with a type of gasoline that has a high-temp flash point (not to mention the other flammable liquids in the engines), crashes at top speed into a massive building. I'm pretty sure that's gonna create a shock wave and sound a bit like an explosion.
It gets even better! Avery goes on to report that the FBI showed up at a gas station across the street and quickly confiscated videos. I suppose he considers this his smoking gun, especially when he says, "if the government wanted us to know what really happened, all they'd have to do is give us the tapes."
He goes on to point out that the section of the Pentagon that had been hit had recently been renovated to withstand "such an attack." Actually, it had been fitted with blast-proof windows to withstand an Oklahoma City-style bomb, not a plane being flown into it. Then he points out that Donald Rumsfeld "was safe in his office," putting emphasis on the fact that it's "on the other side of the building." The simplicity of this is astounding: the side that was hit was the closest to Hani Hanjour's flight path.
Just because you don't have videos in hand of the plane hitting the Pentagon doesn't mean it didn't happen. The absence of such evidence does not mean that it didn't happen exactly the way it was described by hundreds upon hundreds of witnesses who saw it more up-close and personal than they ever wanted.
I have a great question...if it wasn't American Airlines flight 77, then what happened to that plane and the people on it? Oh, wait, I know--they were abducted by aliens.
I need a break. My tin-foil helmet is starting to chafe.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Here's Some REAL Insults:
Here's a snippet from the latest hate mail I've received from our good buddy "Aztec Al-Qaeda":
"YA'LL less than subhumanoid bottom pit wallowing in excrement outhouse loving double dildo maggot dykes (Maggots are white too Elly Mae!) are my least worries! Damn Butch! You already sound like one of those German SS camp guards of yore! Ooooooo...!"
Ooooo? Did you think that was witty? Or did someone tell you it was? I guess I'm supposed to be hurt, but something's missing (quick...someone cover his left ear, I'll blow in his right ear so he can have a refill). Here's another one:
"In the meantime bitch, why don't YOU go impale yourself atop your nearest City Hall flagpole and pretend your sharing a double Dildo Laura Bush! (Sorry, Vaseline NOT provided!) Ooooooo....! Ouch! Did that hoit Butch?!"
*Shaking my head and giggling at the stupidity*
Ummmmm...no. That did not "hoit." In fact, I find it mildly amusing, but if you injected a little more intelligence into it, maybe, just maybe, I'd feel a twinge. Just a little one. I'm guessing a mouth-breather like you needs a schooling in insults, so I'll give you one.
Are you always this retarded, or are you making a special effort right now? I mean, you say you don't know the meaning of the word "fear," but then again, you don't know the meaning of most words. Any similarity between you and a human is purely coincidental; and anyone who told you to "just be yourself" couldn't have given you worse advice.
I've gotta ask...were your parents also siblings? Did they ever ask you to run away from home? Do you ever wonder what life would be like if you'd had enough oxygen at birth? Do you still love nature, despite what it did to you? It's okay, buddy...if ignorance is bliss, you must be the happiest person alive.
By all means, keep talking. I'm sure someday you'll say something remotely intelligent. And I'm sure someday you'll find yourself, but you'll immediately wish you hadn't. I have to say, though, it really is hard to see the big picture when you have such a tiny screen. Now that I've spoken at length with you, I've decided I'm in favor of abortion in cases of incest.
All of your ancestors must number in the millions--although it's so hard to believe that so many people are to blame for producing you. You're as useless as rooster shit on a pump handle, and you're as welcome here as a rattlesnake at a square dance. But I promise, if you invest in a good wig and learn to control that drooling, nobody will ever know you had a lobotomy.
I'd love to see your point of view. I really would. But I just can't seem to get my head that far up my ass.
(Next time, please don't enter a battle of wits unarmed. Calling you stupid would be an insult to stupid people everywhere.)
"YA'LL less than subhumanoid bottom pit wallowing in excrement outhouse loving double dildo maggot dykes (Maggots are white too Elly Mae!) are my least worries! Damn Butch! You already sound like one of those German SS camp guards of yore! Ooooooo...!"
Ooooo? Did you think that was witty? Or did someone tell you it was? I guess I'm supposed to be hurt, but something's missing (quick...someone cover his left ear, I'll blow in his right ear so he can have a refill). Here's another one:
"In the meantime bitch, why don't YOU go impale yourself atop your nearest City Hall flagpole and pretend your sharing a double Dildo Laura Bush! (Sorry, Vaseline NOT provided!) Ooooooo....! Ouch! Did that hoit Butch?!"
*Shaking my head and giggling at the stupidity*
Ummmmm...no. That did not "hoit." In fact, I find it mildly amusing, but if you injected a little more intelligence into it, maybe, just maybe, I'd feel a twinge. Just a little one. I'm guessing a mouth-breather like you needs a schooling in insults, so I'll give you one.
Are you always this retarded, or are you making a special effort right now? I mean, you say you don't know the meaning of the word "fear," but then again, you don't know the meaning of most words. Any similarity between you and a human is purely coincidental; and anyone who told you to "just be yourself" couldn't have given you worse advice.
I've gotta ask...were your parents also siblings? Did they ever ask you to run away from home? Do you ever wonder what life would be like if you'd had enough oxygen at birth? Do you still love nature, despite what it did to you? It's okay, buddy...if ignorance is bliss, you must be the happiest person alive.
By all means, keep talking. I'm sure someday you'll say something remotely intelligent. And I'm sure someday you'll find yourself, but you'll immediately wish you hadn't. I have to say, though, it really is hard to see the big picture when you have such a tiny screen. Now that I've spoken at length with you, I've decided I'm in favor of abortion in cases of incest.
All of your ancestors must number in the millions--although it's so hard to believe that so many people are to blame for producing you. You're as useless as rooster shit on a pump handle, and you're as welcome here as a rattlesnake at a square dance. But I promise, if you invest in a good wig and learn to control that drooling, nobody will ever know you had a lobotomy.
I'd love to see your point of view. I really would. But I just can't seem to get my head that far up my ass.
(Next time, please don't enter a battle of wits unarmed. Calling you stupid would be an insult to stupid people everywhere.)
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