Sunday, August 28, 2005

Nanny 9/11: Potty-training America to not ask questions about the WTC

Yesterday I was trying to throw out most of the useless memorabilia that clutters up my house, using my famous sure-fire fail-safe penny-tossing junk-elimination method (You flip a coin over each item. Lands on heads? Toss it. Lands on tails? Keep it. You can exchange stuff between the two piles but only items of equal size) when I came across an old issue of the Oakland Tribune published on September 12, 2001. It had the following photo on the front page:

http://bousculade.free.fr/img/index/world-trade-center-pictures-3.jpg

As I looked at this photo, it became instantly obvious even to me that the freaking plane had hit the South Tower only at the very top of the building. Wha? I stared at the photo. It was hard to believe that disabling just the top twenty-odd stories had caused the WHOLE building to come down.

What in the world would have caused a whole 110-floor building to collapse? Could it have been the weight of the plane? Maybe. But experts have authoritatively stated again and again that it was the HEAT melting the girders that brought the building down. Heat? Girders? On the top floors? Somebody please explain this to me?

From what I can see, except for the top floors, the South Tower was basically untouched. I can understand why the other tower collapsed but why this one? So I Googled.

The South Tower was hit at 9:03 am. It crashed at 10:05 am. The North Tower, however, was hit 18 minutes earlier -- and at a more vulnerable location -- but didn't crash until 10:28.

According to the University of Sydney Department of Engineering, "While the ways the two towers fell were slightly different, the basic cause is similar for both -- a large number of columns were destroyed on impact and the remaining structure was gradually weakened by the heat of the fire. Not much significance should be taken from the fact that one tower fell in 45 minutes and the other in 90 minutes."

Still not happy, I consulted my internet friends about what they think happened. "I saw a four-hour National Geographic Channel documentary on 9/11 recently," said Jim. "One possible explanation for the collapse is that it reported that fuel went down the elevator shaft and caused explosions, perhaps as many as three further down. This may have weakened structures below so the pancaking effect could be a problem." Oh. Okay.

Then Greg told me, "If fire weakened the steel at that point it would cause the floors above to collapse. The inertia of the floors falling would cause each floor below to fall from the top down. I was watching it on TV and that's what it looked like to me."

What Joe Thompson said made sense. "Jane, structures do strange things when compromised. But I would be interested in photos taken at the base of the building just as it collapsed. All I have seen so far is the domino effect that the planes hitting the buildings seem to have created. An impact like what we saw can very well do what we all witnessed. Until I see more visual proof, the planes hitting the towers caused them to collapse."

Frank agreed with the University of Sydney. "The Twin Towers construction was not of the traditional "I" beam construction like, say, the Empire State building. There was no internal vertical and horizontal girder construction in the new concept of the Twin Towers. The rigid strength was in the outside walls only. Each floor was held in place by the outside walls. There was no other additional support."

Les sent me his answer in all capital letters. "THE BEAMS WERE SPRAY-COATED WITH FIRE RESISTANT MATERIALS; THE SHOCK OF THE EXPLOSION WEAKENED THEM. THE BUILD-UP OF HEAT AT THE UPPER LEVELS CAUSED THE UPPER SUPPORTS TO GIVE WITH EACH FLOOR, ADDING ITS WEIGHT TO THE LOWER CLIPS. THE WEIGHT OF THE FLOORS BECAME UNSUSTAINABLE AND THE ENTIRE STRUCTURE PANCAKED. THAT'S THE EASIEST WAY TO EXPLAIN IT."

Rich had this to say: "The WTC towers were only supported at the outside walls. There were no supports anywhere else to save room. The very design doomed the towers."

Here's a reply from Puma Claw, who seemed to be conflicted about how the towers came down: "You're right, they can't collapse unless there were bombs planted somewhere near the bottom. As for the heat melting STEEL girders, excuse me but heat was only above the flames and not below them (Physics 101, light a candle, run your finger through the flame, it's cool, hold your finger above the flame, it's hot). Besides, jet fuel doesn't burn all that hot anyway or it would damage the engines in the aircraft. Heck, I was an electro-mechanical engineer in the US Army and know my way around a turbine engine, fercryinoutloud.

"Incidentally, a similar highrise caught on fire in Caracas last year and it certainly didn't implode. I might also point out that when the WTC was built, it was guaranteed that it would withstand the impact of an airplane."

Jan, however, had questions like mine. "The only way the towers could have been brought down, is by demolition. The towers did not come down by plane attacks alone. See project we've been working on at http://www.youcanhandlethetruth.org/"

And Juli said, "Shortly after 9/11, on the contractor sites and architect-engineering trades sites, the guys were all talking about the cover-up. Most of us were Govcon Subs and the Primes were even talking about the 'stench'."

And Puma Claw added, "Cascading effect? No way. There's no way they'd be allowed to erect a building flimsy enough that when a top floor caves in it winds up with a domino effect like that. Besides, if a melt-down of the girders had occurred, the towers would have fallen over to the side and not collapsed within themselves. After all, unless all four experience the same blast of heat, there's no way the whole thing would come down as evenly as those towers. That's why taking down skyscrapers -- so they implode and don't fall over to the side and on top of other buildings -- requires expert technique."

John also had something to say about the cascading effect. "In order to get pancaking, whereby the floors demolish floors below, a single floor must be destroyed SYMMETRICALLY...and no floor was struck or agitated symmetrically.....Isaac Newton still prevails......for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Then he added some other interesting information. "As the [WTC] buildings were not upgradeable to fiber optics -- and that needed to be done -- the insurance money was a good bet...."

And Jude added that if there WAS some kind of hanky-panky, then "TREASON charges need to be made like yesterday. Time to move toward that end -- not arguing about it any longer." Bush in jail? Works for me.

Michael had another outlook on the 9/11 massacre. "I take it that you are going by the theory that our government may have secretly taken down the towers after the attacks? I am not a believer. They really didn't need to. The attacks themselves were enough to propel their real agenda."

So. On that fateful day, what really DID happen? And why doesn't anybody KNOW for sure? And how can we conclusively find this stuff out? The Bush Republicans are not a good source of information because they have lied to us so often on the WMD thing -- and about the circumstances surrounding the destruction of Building 7 -- that we no longer trust ANYTHING they say. And much of the hard evidence has magically disappeared off to Japan.

But I have learned one important thing from all this questioning: That not all American minds have been successfully potty-trained by the various fairy tales we are being constantly spoon-fed. People all across America are STILL searching for answers to some very compelling questions. I got all of these replies within an HOUR after sending out my inquiry, proving that some of us are still coherent enough to occasionally ask, "Nanny 9/11, what REALLY happened on September 11, 2001?"

PS: And what about Building 7? Although we didn't find this out until about a year later, Giuliani ordered it to be demolished and it was taken down at 5:20 pm. Boy, would I love to talk to a few of the members of the demolition crew that allegedly set the charges that day. How did they DO it so quickly? Especially with the building supposedly on fire? Did about a hundred or so construction guys go running through the smoking building and up and down the stairs carrying dynamite, flashlights and extension cords? Were the lights and elevators in the building still working? I would love to have one of these demolition experts explain to me about how (and when) the charges were set. How did they lock and load an entire building so fast? Or was it locked and loaded already?