Preliminary reply to “nanothermite”

In reply to my post Back from a long hiatus, “nanothermite” wrote:

Now, Diane, I thought you claimed in the past to be scientific or that using a scientific approach was the way forward. How can you claim to be a 9/11 truth activist for a few years and thoroughly familiarize yourself with the scientific evidence of controlled demolition

I’ve pointed out for a long time that a lot of the more popular presentations of this evidence, including Richard Gage’s, are either mistaken or incomplete on various points. See, for example, my post Demolition of WTC: Let’s not overstate the case, please, written back in November 2007.

At the time I wrote that post, I nevertheless believed that a few of the popular arguments for WTC demolition were very strong, including: (1) the almost straight-down nature of the collapse of WTC 7, and (2) the iron-rich spherules as evidence of thermite.

In early 2008 I concluded that the close-to straight-down collapse wasn’t valid evidence for demolition after all, for reasons that can be found in relevant posts and comment threads elsewhere on this blog, and which I plan to explain in a more coherent fashion in a future post. As for the spherules, there are other possible sources of those, including torches used by iron-workers who arrived on the scene almost immediately after the towers came down, to assist rescue workers by moving debris.

More recently, Dr. Steven Jones has come out with papers about the red and grey chips. Right now I’m taking a wait-and-see attitude on those. I don’t feel qualified to evaluate his evidence myself. (I took only one semester of chemistry in college, whereas I had two years of physics and subsequently tutored students in basic physics.) So, I’m going to wait and see if Jones manages to convince any significant number of chemists, fire experts, etc.

An objection to the explosive demolition hypothesis that I find convincing is that the collapses were not accompanied by explosive sounds loud enough to be demolition charges. Witnesses did hear explosions. However, were any of these explosions loud enough to be demolition charges going off? I would expect demolition charges to make unmistakably loud sounds in the videos. Instead, all we hear in the videos I’ve seen is the roar of the collapse.

On that basis I’m inclined to rule out explosive demolition. Note that this does not rule out the possible use of thermite as an incendiary. So, as far as I’m concerned, the only question is how strong the evidence for the latter is. On that question, the jury is out.

In my opinion, the 9/11 Truth movement should not be emphasizing demolition. There’s plenty of other kinds of evidence of coverups — evidence which truly can be evaluated based just on common sense, not requiring any specialized knowledge.

and then suddenly claim that you no longer see any evidence of controlled demolition

This isn’t sudden at all. My opinion has shifted only slightly since early 2008.

because you are now pushing the Pakistan/Saudi Arabia angle on 9/11?

Unfortunately, as I’ll explain in future posts, the “Pakistan/Saudi Arabia angle” happens to be where some of the strongest evidence can be found, especially when coupled with the 9/11 Commission’s ridiculous excuse for non-curiosity about the sources of funding of the attacks. Of course, this evidence may well be a limited hangout. But it’s an obvious smoking gun that needs to be investigated thoroughly, without necessarily assuming that it’s the end of the story. I think it’s important to emphasize the history of U.S. and NATO support for Islamist terrorism, not just in Afghanistan back in the 1980’s, but subsequently in Eastern Europe as well.

More about this in a future blog post.

Another thing that needs further investigation is what happened with the FAA and NORAD, and why did they lie. I don’t regard this whole area as quite as much of a smoking gun as some people in the 9/11 Truth movement think it is, but it is an area where it has been officially admitted that there were lies and coverups. Hence we clearly need an independent investigation of why all these lies and coverups. I don’t think we should just let the relevant inspector generals have the last word.

Also, any truly independent investigation should listen to the testimonies of the various whistleblowers who approached the Jersey Girls, but who were ignored by the 9/11 Commission. Of course, we don’t know who all these whistleblowers are, and we don’t know how credible they all are, but they should at least be listened to.

So, Diane, you now cover your eyes and don’t see all the hundreds of explosives in the videos

“Explosions,” yes. Explosives, no. The question is, what caused those “explosions”?

Perhaps you have allowed JREFers and other phony sophists to bamboozle you with talk about “buckling columns” and “failing welded connections” and “horizontal members becoming unshored” and blah blah blah…when none of that can explain why the LOWER portions of the towers that were UNDAMAGED and built to hold up 20 times the weight of the tops of the buildings stood for almost 30 years before 9/11 and held up not only the top of the buildings just fine, but held up just fine in the face of hurricane force windstorms that had put way more stress on the buildings than anything on 9/11

The towers were designed to withstand hurricane winds. They weren’t designed to withstand an avalanche being dropped on them from above.