They've Got Models....

The video starts off with about 3:40 of JREF forum member and NASA engineer Ryan Mackey describing a possible model that could be used to analyze the collapse of the towers.  So far so good.  But what follows shows the flaw in casting pearls before swine.  Truther psikeyhacker builds a model that has metal washers for the floors and paper loops.  Right off the bat, he completely misses the point about scaling that Ryan was very careful to note in his discussion.

Over at Truth Action, psikeyhacker has a thread where he discusses his beliefs:

Why can't the "Academics" address a grade school physics problem?


But here we are ten years later and most of the "Academics" can't think to demand accurate data about the distributions of steel and concrete down the towers. High school physics students should have known to ask that in 2001. The "Academics" should have made the Truth Movement unnecessary.

See, he thinks that somehow the "distributions" (sic) of steel and concrete in the towers is crucial to determining whether they would actually collapse and do the damage shown.  Never mind that very good approximations can be made for the actual distributions and that when those approximations are made it has been demonstrated that the gravitational potential energy stored in the towers was quite sufficient to do the damage shown.  Note also the usual blather about how grade school or high school physics should be sufficient to prove that the towers did not come down the way we were told.  And later:

 I say this is GRADE SCHOOL PHYSICS. 7th and 8th graders should be able to understand why it is ridiculous to think that an airliners weighing less than 200 tons could totally obliterate skyscrapers more than 400,000 tons each.

What difference does the weight make?  By the "logic" he's using here, a small match, which can't weigh more than a gram at best, could never totally obliterate a large wooden house.  Note that when others mention that if this were truly the case, then physics professors would have raised a ruckus, he uses the conspiracy theorist's favorite card:

Look at it from another perspective. Suppose most physicists could figure out within days that there was no way airliners could destroy those buildings. But the buildings were destroyed. That means something other than airliners did it and some organisation that has A LOT of power does not care who they kill or how many.

So is a physicists with a career and a family going to stick his neck out?

 Yep, the physicists kept quiet because they knew the plotters would chop their necks off.  Of course, Steven Jones and David Chandler have somehow remained in the land of the living, but that's probably because they haven't pursued the "distributions" issue.  And no, psikeyhacker is not a physicist himself (which his probably why he thinks it should be obvious to 7th graders); he's apparently involved in computers somehow, although he isn't very knowledgeable about his own field:

I worked for IBM for years. I never heard the term von Neumann machine or saw it in any documentation. I soldered together my first computer while there so that is how I really learned how they actually worked despite being sent to numerous IBM courses. It wasn't until after I left IBM that I learned that IBM hired John von Neumann as a consultant in 1952 and that nearly all computers are von Neumann machines.

 Entertaining thread.

Two JREFers Join Truth Action Forums...

And chaos starts erupting.  It appears that somebody invited Orphia Nay and Oystein to join the debate over there.  Oystein is strong on the technical aspects regarding the Millette study which debunked nanothermite, while Orphia Nay has excellent overall knowledge of the general Truther claims.

What I find amusing about the thread is how quickly the CT nonsense comes out.  It is easy to forget that while the Truth Action folks recognize the transparent nuttery of Kevin Barrett and Kevin Ryan, they completely miss their own areas of confirmation bias.

For instance, Snowcrash is just a tad hyperbolic:

Sorry Orphia Nay, applicable as my quote may have been to the sorry state of a "truth" movement full of liars, kooks, frauds, con men, idiots and nitwits, I have no love for JREF either. Humankind is on the brink of collapse, on the cusp of irreversible environmental decline, we have lost all our civil rights, our privacy, our freedoms, and our children's children will live in a totalitarian dystopia, thanks to 9/11.

All our civil rights?

Jon Gold is going to hate that I compare him to David Ray Griffin, but that's deserved when he writes nonsense like this:

One thing I've noticed that "debunkers" do is look at everything as if it exists in a vacuum. I look at everything in an accumulative light. SO MANY problems with the official account, SO MANY warnings that were coming in, SO MANY efforts to obfuscate, cover-up, hinder investigations, etc...

 Remember, Griffin loves to talk about his "cumulative" argument being like strands on a rope and not links in a chain, so that if one breaks, the whole thing doesn't fail.  One wonders why anybody would bother making a rope out of weak strands, but the answer is quite simply that's all they have. Gold takes Grifter's argument a step further.  Even if you debunk all his points, he still believes he has a case just because there are so many strands.

It's not hard to see that things will end pretty badly over there; if asked to guess I would say the over/under on the JREFers being banned is Thursday.  There's already quite a bit of grumbling about them being allowed to post.  Gold:

I love how ignored and censored whistleblowers don't concern you at all, or the fact that the 9/11 Commission was a farce. You would rather spend your time arguing with those fighting for justice and accountability. I do not understand that mentality at all.

Why are these people here?

 The "ignored and censored whistleblowers" include Patty Cassazza's mysterious roadside informant who claimed that the US government knew everything about the attacks including the date and method.  Gold bitterly notes that I "debunked" that claim by saying that Patty was duped by a conman.  But note the oddball response from the Truthers to that particular claim.  Sibel Edmonds comes up with the LIHOP faction's dream witness and what happens?  Complete and utter lack of curiosity about him or her.  If I were a Truther, I'd be asking Patty about this person--was it a man or a woman?  How old?  Did he say what branch or agency of the government he was in?  Can we get him on tape?

Note that when the credibility of the whistleblowers is brought up, Jon endorses the credibility of Patty:

Patty Casazza is both valid and relevant, and so is her claim.

But nobody questions her claim.  It's the whistleblower's claim that has to be assessed, and that's why the Truthers should be asking more questions, to establish his credibility as a witness.

An Investigative Lead for the Truthers

(Watch starting about 17:00 in)

If you're a famous, conspiracy theory talk show host interviewing a "civil rights icon" like Dick Gregory, and he tells you that he was warned on 9-10-01 to get out of New York:

“You’re not, your friend called me and told me to tell you don’t spend the night in New York tonight,” Gregory said his wife told him.

 What would be your next question?  I know that mine would be "Who was your friend?"  But Alex shows no curiosity on  this point, even though he's happy to point out that this proves that "they" knew the attacks were coming.  Gregory and Jones go on to talk about the supposed warning that then-San Francisco mayor Willie Brown received not to fly to New York on 9-11.  But again, this makes no sense in the context of the conspiracy theory.  Let's suppose for a moment that elements inside the government knew of the upcoming attacks, even to the point of knowing the date.  Wouldn't they also know the flights?  No planes were hijacked from SF to NY; instead it was a Newark to SF flight.

But if you are a Truther, I would certainly suggest that you start grilling Dick Gregory on the identity of his mysterious friend, who apparently had inside information.  This could be the clue that brings down the whole conspiracy!

Box Boy: 9-11 Was an Inside Job

No surprise, Gage lets the mask slip a bit:

We were also honored to speak to many times that many live streaming on the internet and who knows how that message will reverberate throughout the Nation of Islam and into the Black community where we’re hoping to receive more support than we’ve received in the White community. The support I’m referring to is breaking through into the public’s consciousness so that people can understand if the World Trade Center Towers were indeed destroyed with controlled demolition, then this is obviously some sort of an inside job and people here really get that.

(Bolding added for emphasis)

Gage has usually been coy about admitting that he's a conspiracy theorist, preferring to leave open the question of who was behind the attacks. This is the first I can recall him using the term "inside job". Of course, on Chinese TV, he did state that Muslims didn't have anything to do with 9-11, so it's not like he's fooling anybody but his donors.

Waterboy Continues His "No True Muslim" Fallacy

At his blog:

The most obvious reason that the Commission was off-track is that Muslims do not murder innocent people.  Some people find this statement outrageous.  Of course Muslims murder innocent people, they say, that’s what al Qaeda does.

The problem is that, as a society, many of us have been trained to accept religion as a noncommittal affiliation or label.  For example, many of the current U.S. leaders have engaged in mass murder around the world over the last ten years yet they still call themselves Christians.  Anyone can see that they are not. Those who truly believe in God live by the laws of the religion they proclaim and Christians do not engage in wars of aggression or the torture and killing of other human beings.

But this of course ignores the fact that many people struggle to live up to the tenets of their religion.  That does not mean they are not religious; it just means they are fallible.

 Ryan goes on to mention a lot of the Hopsicker nonsense:

 Atta’s stripper girlfriend, Amanda Keller, said that Atta and al Shehhi “had massive supplies of cocaine” which they restocked whenever needed at one of the flight schools run by Dutch nationals in Florida.  Keller said that during the time she dated him, she saw Atta do cocaine himself on multiple occasions. And, of course, Muslims don’t do cocaine or other illicit drugs.

If the Truthers want to know why nobody takes them seriously, this is a pretty good reason.  Amanda Keller didn't date Atta; she dated another man named Mohamed.  But if you bring this up with Ryan, he wouldn't bother rebutting it; he'd just gallop onto another talking point.  And an hour later, he'd again be talking about Atta's stripper girlfriend.

Something Left Unsaid

The yahoos at Architects and Engineers finally reply, somewhat, to the recent tests of World Trade Center dust.  Any guesses what point they intentionally leave out?

Editor’s note: The preliminary results of a new study of the red-gray chips, commissioned by Chris Mohr, a supporter of the official NIST reports about the destruction of the WTC skyscraper, and authored by Dr. James Millette, have recently been released. They seem to confirm that the composition of the red-gray chips does not match the formula for the primer paint used on the WTC steel structure. Look for a critique of Millette’s study in next month’s Blueprint newsletter.


Uhh yeah, let's just avoid mentioning that it did not find thermite in any form.

Update by Pat: Oystein responds:

Claims that Niels Harrit proved that some red-gray chips in the WTC dust are not WTC primer are basing this claim on the FALSE assumption that Tnemec was the only primer used. In fact, I will show that the chips that Harrit proved to not be Tnemec look very much like LaClede Standard Primer.

As I often say, I don't do the best debunking out there.  I just link to it.  Great job, Oystein!

Bits and Pieces

Uncle Fetzer, Kevin Barrett and Joshua Blakeney are hosting a Truther confab in Vancouver:

The Vancouver Hearings is designed to expand the range of inquiry in relation to the issues addressed at The Toronto Hearings. Those hearings limited themselves to presenting what the organizers considered the “best evidence” against the official version of 9/11, without considering questions of who actually perpetrated the attacks and why.  Only limited attention was given to the Pentagon charade, for example, while problems related to the planes and the passengers were not confronted.  It was not intended to address the more controversial aspects of 9/11 research.

 The Vancouver Hearings, by contrast, will present the worst evidence, such as Directed Energy Weapons, North of Citgo, No Planes, etc.  And yes, Blakeney will present his "Israel's fingerprints are all over 9-11" evidence:

Joshua Blakeney, “The Likudnik Origins of 9/11” (One hour)

The 9-11 Citizen's Commission website is back up, sans any mention of Mike Gravel, or what happened to the approximately $25,000 that was donated to the old website and which Gravel transferred to another campaign.  They are now talking about a Massachusetts ballot initiative for the 2014 (!) elections.  Should give them plenty of time to raise the dough.

Speaking of an effort that's going to require a little time to gather the loot, consider this $1.5 billion proposal:

Personally, I think it's brilliant. And I suggest to make it an even more powerful testament to the TRUTH, Richard Gage and his gaggle of clowns should be stationed, say, on the fiftieth floor of the rebuilt building, to demonstrate their confidence that the building could not collapse from the fire.

Red-Gray Chips Tested and Determined Not to Be Thermite

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.  Here's the report; there is active discussion going on at JREF. Main point:

The red/gray chips found in the WTC dust at four sites in New York City are consistent with a carbon steel coated with an epoxy resin that contains primarily iron oxide and kaolin clay pigments.

There is no evidence of individual elemental aluminum particles of any size in the red/gray chips, therefore the red layer of the red/gray chips is not thermite or nano-thermite.

 (Bolding added for emphasis).  Kudos to Chris Mohr for pursuing this matter and to all the folks who contributed funds to the effort.  So far no response from the supermagiconanothermite team of Jones, Ryan or Harritt.