Each year I put up a posting related to 9/11. It is perhaps a reflection of the date being burned into my brain. Key moments in history are like that, we often remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we hear about something truly impactful.
In the past I’ve written about the various conspiracy claims related to 9/11 that assert that it was really an inside job and that the WTC towers were brought down by a controlled demolition. The idea is that the fully fuelled aircraft impacting the towers played no role in bringing them down. Like most who look into this, I quite honestly don’t find any credible evidence for these claims. The “evidence” offered is often vague and just over the hill, but if you go look and actually fact check, what you discover is not what is being claimed. Anyway, for this year, the twentieth anniversary, I’m not going there. For completeness I will however offer you a few links to pages that cover the conspiracy claims on Wikipedia …
- 9/11 conspiracy theories
- Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth
- World Trade Center controlled demolition conspiracy theories
- 9/11 truth movement
Recent Developments concerning 9/11
It may surprise you to learn that more than 2,000 family members of victims and first responders issued a statement saying that Biden would not be welcome at any 9/11 commemorative events unless he kept a campaign promise. Here is the opening extract from their official statement…
Six months ago the 9/11 community had great hopes that President Joe Biden would be the long lost champion of those directly affected by this murderous attack on our nation, finally placing the values of truth, justice, and accountability before the interests of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Biden the campaigner, in an October 2020 letter, promised the 9/11 community that, if elected president, “I intend to be a President for all Americans, and will hear all of their voices. The 9/11 Families are right to seek full truth and accountability…I will direct my Attorney General to personally examine the merits of all cases where the invocation of privilege is recommended, and to err on the side of disclosure in cases where, as here, the events in question occurred two decades or longer ago.”
We understand President Biden’s desire to mark the solemn occasion of the 20th anniversary at Ground Zero. However, we cannot in good faith, and with veneration to those lost, sick, and injured, welcome the president to our hallowed grounds until he fulfills his commitment.
On September 3, 2021, the Washington Post confirmed that this has now happened – “Biden signs executive order requiring review, release of some classified 9/11 documents” …
Some 9/11 families immediately praised the executive order Friday. One group, 9/11 Families United, which represents more than 10,000 people affected by the attacks, said in a statement that Biden’s order “looks like a true turning point.”
What has been buried and kept secret?
What is well known is that of the 19 airplane hijackers, 15 were Saudis.
The deep dark secret is this. Saudi officials, within a regime that is our supposed “friend” and “Ally”, not only bankrolled the terrorists, but actively supported some 9/11 hijackers when they entered the United States.
Prior to 2016 it was not possible to even legally explore this until the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act was amended.
Lawyers for the families impacted by 9/11 then subpoenaed the FBI for materials related to Saudi involvement but then hit another brick wall. There was yet another layer of secrecy, a protective order in place silencing the FBI.
“We,” says one of the lawyers, “have never seen this level of secrecy placed on any lawsuit.”
What this new executive order does is to partially unblock that.
Is it Credible that Saudi Arabian Officials were involved?
Saudi Arabia, our supposed “friend” and “ally”, recently hit the news in a big way in 2018 due to the brutal murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. That happened because he dared to criticise them with a very vocal stance for freedom and basic human rights.
What he was saying was fact based and also a deep embarrassment to Saudi Arabia.
Not only is Saudi Arabia not a democracy, but is one of the most repressive and barbaric regimes on the planet. That’s not an opinion, nor is it some left vs right bit of politics. The Saudi track record on human rights is utterly appalling in so many different ways. To be specific …
- Restricted rights for women (Yes, things are getting better, but there is still a very long way to go)
- No political rights
- No freedom of belief
- No LBGT rights
- No freedom of the press
- etc…
But it’s their culture, their belief, it’s what they all want … right?
Let us also be very clear about one thing. This is not about Islam or Muslims in general. At the heart of it all rests a very extreme religious belief – Wahhabism. It illustrates the intolerance and oppression that will take place when a specific extreme belief gains a sufficient degree of power that enables it to dominate.
They don’t like that name “Wahhabism” and instead prefer the word Salafis. The belief is a form of Salafism, and is a religious movement within Sunni Islam that was developed by an eighteenth century mystic called Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (hence the name “Wahhabism”).
So who opposed Wahhabism when Abd al-Whhab first started it all?
Would you believe it was the people who knew his best, his father, and his brother did.
Does anybody oppose it today?
Yep, one or two do … or to be more precise about 96% of the world’s Muslim population do and consider the Wahhabis to be complete nuts, principally because it is so extreme that it rejects traditional Sunni scholars and their interpretation as followed by 96% of the world’s Muslim population.
It might also surprise you to learn that Wahhabism is not the majority belief in Saudi Arabia, only 22.9% are. The rest are Sunni Muslims.
When will we hear other Muslims denouncing the house of Saudi?
Er no, sorry, that is not generally going to happen. You need to also appreciate that anybody within the Islamic universe who wishes to journey on a pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia is not going to be daft enough to scupper that by ticking off the Wahhabis and (correctly) labelling them all as complete kooks.
What has developed in Saudi Arabia is perhaps akin to a group like Westboro Baptist church gaining complete and total control of the US.
Our “Friend” and “Ally”
Officially our elected representatives might indeed deem them to be our “Friend” and “Ally”, but we need to also remember that the Saudis are opposed to the very basic principles we aspire to and cherish – The House of Saudi is not our friend, and never has been.
Least you still doubt that and think that a few arms deals, an airbase or two, all garnished with lots of crude oil, help to sweeten the bitter taste, then you need to also consider the observation that they have spent $100 Billion oil dollars promoting their specific very extreme variation of Islamic belief all around the planet since the 1970s. In many places we have been reaping a harvest from all that – a rise in very extreme radical forms of Islam.
The one rather prominent illustration of this was 9/11
The 9/11 Conspiracy Of Silence – What happens now?
Nothing has been declassified, it is simply a promise to do so. The Washington Post sums it up as follows …
Biden, given more than 2,000 reasons to do so, seems to have opted for transparency. Or — skepticism is always in order — at least a promise to revisit a campaign promise. So, if he follows through on his promise, we are going to learn, among other things, this: National security is not diminished by information that diminishes Saudi Arabia’s good name, which it has already forfeited.
Least you wonder what that last word “forfeited” within the above refers to, it a reference to the orchestration of the brutal murder of the Washington Post reporter, Jamal Khashoggi, by the highest levels of the Saudi regime. That was a step too far, even for the most devoted of western Saudi sycophants.
The families of those impacted by 9/11 deserve the truth, a commodity that has been sadly absent, not through neglect, but via official policy. Hopefully this twenty year anniversary marks a distinct change, a turning point.
In the annual “conversation” Dave and I have on matters relating to 9/11 this year’s installment is a somewhat welcome change. Dave posting links to 9/11 info lets people read for themselves the proofs architects, engineers, physicists find compelling as to why the technical arguments made by government sources on how the twin towers and building 7 failed so spectacularly are scientifically untenable.
Building 7’s straight down failure at an acceleration equal to the free fall acceleration of gravity is a demonstration of a fundamental physical phenomenon. Dave refusing to acknowledge the import of this observable fact, a fact btw NIST has reluctantly acknowledged, isn’t credible enough for him to pique his curiosity. The characteristic by characteristic match seen in side by side comparisons of video of Building 7 with known controlled demolitions of large steel framed buildings apparently isn’t compelling to a mind stuck on political beliefs that maintain no government, or cabal within a government, would or could ever think to stage such an event for political ends. If you can put aside political prejudices I’ve written a great deal on this and other scientific anomalies in Dave’s earlier postings. Please have a look if you are interested.
Dave, as an inside job skeptic, has to frame questions by people like me in a way to try to define the narrative. I submit he’s not qualified to do so if he’s unable to credibly address the questions me and my fellow travelers pose. He offers this: “The idea is that the fully fuelled aircraft impacting the towers played no role in bringing them down.” The framing in this statement is problematic. Dave would have you believe that a fully fueled aircraft must a priori be capable of the destruction witnessed. He might say, “intuitively, it’s obvious, and to say otherwise indicates a lack of common sense.” The project manager for the construction of the twin towers and designers, thinking about the collision of a large aircraft with the Empire State Building many years earlier, designed the towers with this likelihood in mind. The design of the outer framework of the towers addressed this very issue, that is, it was designed to behave in a similar manner to what happens when a pencil is pushed through a screen on a window or door. Damage was meant to be contained to the local area of collision and every indication is it was. A person was photographed in the opening caused by one of the aircraft within minutes after the strike.
Neglecting statistical improbabilities Dave also expects people to accept two very different strike patterns resulted in nearly identical structural building failures. A further problem I have with Dave making the claim, essentially saying, Of course a fully fueled aircraft caused these failures, is that the supposition isn’t borne out in the analysis NIST made during their investigation. The simulations used to estimate fire and physical damage caused by an aircraft strike to the steel structure don’t bear out what Dave wants to think obvious.
As a skeptic of the official version of the narrative I take the details of the simulations of structural damage and fires seriously. The official narrative relies on intense fires distorting the inner structure causing failures that multiply and bring entire buildings, not once but twice, to absolute ruin. The fire simulations, run in multiple modes to try to simulate what is captured in video, still photography and eyewitness tellings, in no case match and present an explanation for what was witnessed. The fires were not as intense or as concentrated in critical areas due to fire migration as needed to initiate the failures witnessed after LESS than an hour and LESS than an hour and a half of fire. The fuel necessary to feed the fires didn’t contain the potential energy needed to rapidly distort internal structural components. Jet fuel alone doesn’t, nor does the plastics, nylon, wood and organics in building construction. Experiments mocking up floor assemblies to mimic the steel components with and without fire retardant applied, a crucial experiment to substantiate the official narrative, required hours more burn time and intensity to cause any deflection in the steel, the characteristic necessary for the official narrative to be proven. The observable facts are immutable: low intensity, migrating fires for less than hour, and less than an hour and a half. Experimental results: high intensity fires needed to burn for 3 or more hours to get necessary deflection in mock ups of steel floor assemblies. The experimental results don’t substantiate the narrative that relies on fire, structural damage and gravity are responsible for the failures to be true, not even close.
Where the simulations of fire and structural damage do match reality is in the estimation of resilience built in to the design. Less than a quarter of the massive core columns in each building were estimated to have been severely damaged or severed in the damage simulations, columns providing a stable but flexible core to which the outer wall steel structure was connected by the floor assemblies. Consistent with the intent of design specifications the estimated damage to the core columns suggest with only 12 of the 50 or so columns damaged, the mass of the buildings above their crash sites settled on the remaining undamaged columns, allowing the structures to remain standing for as long as they did. The buildings apparently behaved exactly as they were designed to behave. In order to force some resemblance to the reality of catastrophic failure the “intense fire” narrative had to be invented. You have to ignore the disconnect between the observed evidence of low intensity fires, supported by the fire simulations and observed in real time, the experimental results of longer intense burns required to distort the steel in floor assemblies, and the stated design specifications to address these issues in order to come to the unlikely conclusion that structural damage and fires caused complete catastrophic failure after one hour and less than one and a half hours. To emphasize a key point, these two buildings came apart after less than ONE HOUR and less than ONE and a HALF HOURS. NEVER in the history of large steel framed building fire has this ever happened, not once, let alone twice.
This is just concerning questions about one facet of the official narrative Dave has consistently waved off as unbelievable. None of the arguments he has traditionally relied upon to support his skepticism have offered credible responses to these questions. Eyewitnesses among fire and police officials both in and outside the buildings prior to failure, some of these personnel with military training and experience in war zones and well acquainted with explosions caused by military ordinance have described scenes that convinced them of facts the 9/11 Commission refused to hear, massive explosions in all parts of the buildings not explained by fires, structural damage and gravity. Some of those testimonies can be read here: http://patriotsquestion911.com.
There are unanswered question for the families of 9/11 victims. I applauded Dave for focusing on that. I expect, however, the scientific cover up to continue because the conspiracy of silence will continue regarding the very real discrepancies in the scientific data NIST has refused to discuss and which ideologues have tried to bury under a tsunami of mis- and disinformation for the past 20 yrs, Dave in his small way included. In a world filled with climate science disinformation meant to prevent real action toward a meaningful response, in a world of growing political destabilization due to nationalist authoritarianism resembling mid 20th century fascist mobilizations, in a world where the response to a global pandemic is met with unconscionable disbelief in the tools that are proven effective in preventing more death and illness from this pandemic, in this world of deliberate dissemination of falsehood meant to confuse and delude the public to what powerful forces are engaged in it is a tough sell encouraging people to consider the facts around the destruction that happened on 9/11 and what it means for the world community. The details of Lincoln’s assassination have remained obscured these many decades in the fog of time and men’s motivations. Better information exists to get at the truth of 9/11. It just takes a curious, honest intellect to sort out the wheat from the chaff, and the courage to go where those facts lead.