Academics fill grassy knoll spot abandoned by Oliver Stone August 8, 2006 BY RICHARD ROEPER SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST The world has turned upside down in the nearly five years since 9/11. In Monday's Sun-Times, there was a story about 9/11 conspiracies. Among those quoted were a retired economics chairman at the University of Illinois, a teacher at the University of Wisconsin and a physicist at Brigham Young University. In Wednesday's Sun-Times, I'll have a review of Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center." Here's the weird part. The academics are the ones spouting the conspiracy theories, and Stone's film is 100 percent conspiracy-free. The article from the Associated Press was headlined, "Conspiracy theorists just aren't buying 9/11 story." We learned about a group called "Scholars for 9/11 Truth," or, as I like to call them, "A Bag of Mixed Nuts." Although they offer no concrete evidence to support their wild theories, they're educated and articulate, and they ask unanswerable questions, thus giving some of their theories a hint of plausibility. But let's not confuse that with credibility. Conspiracy Nation "Our role is to establish what really happened on 9/11," says James Fetzer, a retired philosophy professor from the University of Minnesota-Duluth. Right. A few of the more popular theories: â¢The World Trade Center was felled by explosives planted throughout the towers. The main goal of the terrorists was to steal some $160 billion in gold bars that were in a vault beneath the towers. If that sounds a bit like the plot for "Die Hard 3," so be it! â¢United Airlines Flight 93 was never hijacked, nor did it crash in Pennsylvania. It was diverted to Cleveland. (Either that or it was shot down by our own government.) â¢The Pentagon was not hit by a commercial plane. It was attacked by a cruise missile. And who's responsible for all this? "The first person I'd bring into a court of law would be Dick Cheney," said Dylan Avery, whose so-called documentary "Loose Change" has become something of an underground sensation. Fueled mostly by Internet buzz, "Loose Change" has sold tens of thousands of copies, even though it's an amateurish and maddeningly silly piece of work. Avery gave that quote to Salon.com in an article by Farhad Manjoo that did a brilliant job of dissecting some of the more ludicrous theories posited by the movie. (Unless, of course, the movie itself is an elaborate hoax, mocking conspiracy theorists. In that case, thumbs up!) Last May, when the U.S. military released video of American Airlines Flight 77 crashing into the Pentagon, they did so in part to quiet the rattling of the conspiracy theorists who refuse to believe that a Boeing 757 flew into the building that day. "Where is the plane?" they ask. On Web sites, in books, in chat rooms, on talk radio, they ask: "Where is the plane?" As one debunker noted, these people think a Boeing 757 should have sliced through the walls of the Pentagon intact, leaving behind the kind of "perfect" outline you'd see if a plane crashed through a building in a cartoon. They don't understand that a relatively lightweight plane (it weighed about 100 tons, whereas each wall of the Pentagon weighs more than 100,000 tons) roaring into the steel-and-concrete walls of the Pentagon (which had recently been reinforced) would bust into hundreds of pieces -- and that many of those pieces would be INSIDE the damaged structure, not scattered about the lawn. "Where is the plane?" they ask. You can show them the military video and the photographs, you can cite the accounts of hundreds of eyewitnesses -- and they'll tell you the videos and photos are doctored, and the "witnesses" are part of the conspiracy. "Where is the plane?" they want to know. Well. IT'S IN A THOUSAND PIECES. The plane hit the ground and skidded before striking the Pentagon between the first and second floors. It reached the third ring of the Pentagon as the jet fuel caused a massive explosion, destroying many of the larger pieces of wreckage. (Still, many sizable chunks of the plane were visible outside the Pentagon.) To wonder where the plane "disappeared to" makes about as much sense as visiting Ground Zero and saying, "Where are the buildings?" After the military released the video, Fetzer said, "It's a charade. You can't tell what in the world is hitting the Pentagon, but it's too small to be a Boeing 757." Of course, a former philosophy professor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth would know more about such things than those hacks at the FBI and the DOD. (Besides, those guys are all part of the conspiracy!) Here's a question: Where are the PEOPLE who were on that plane? If Flight 77 didn't crash into the Pentagon and Flight 93 didn't crash-land in a field in Pennsylvania, what happened to the planes and the passengers and crew? Where have they all been for the last half-decade? "Lost" is the name of a fictional series. That's not the way it works in the real world. Lost would also be a good word to describe those who believe this nonsense. Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Copyright © The Sun-Times Company All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
bla bla bla, and the idiot is only able to offend those wo dont buy the lies the bush gov has told us since it took office. i bet my arse he cant argue shit about the facts surroundin' the events. classic ignorant motherfucker.
Ok, I'm coming clean. Like many of you on ET, in the media, military, federal and local governments, and scientific community, I have received compensation from the U.S. Government in exchange for "keeping quiet" about 9/11. Flight 77? Never happened. Ted Olson was tired of his wife's yacking so we concocted the whole flight. Clearly the hole in the Pentagon wasn't big enough even for a disintegrating aircraft. Our engineers "measured" wrong. Happens. The service station owner who says he saw the plane impact into the Pentagon? Let's just say he's charging the highest prices for premium unleaded in all of Virginia without any FTC hindrance. We also gave him a nice tip to buy NYMEX futures last spring. He's doing very well, thank you. Of course many of you know by now that we had to shoot down Flight 93. Actually it wasn't originally part of our "plot" but sometimes Rummie likes to go for the "human angle" and the notion of heroic passengers commandeering a plane from the hijackers was just to good of a hook. Plus it kept media coverage tied up in knots. That's why you see made for TV movies about 93 and NOT about WTC 7. Up in New York things went like clockwork. Ever hear those rumors that the reason so few Jews were killed in the Trade Center was because they were tipped by Israeli intelligence? Not exactly true. Rather Mr. Silverstien did give some well placed hints that 9/11 was the real Yom Kippur and that atonement did NOT include yield curve arbitrage that Tuesday. From Long Island to the Upper West Side that fateful morning it was virtually impossible to get near a Deli that sold a tongue on rye. Nice work Larry! Downtown we had to lay the payola out thicker than thieves. We'd already told the FDNY that demolition of the twin towers would not start until three hours after our jets had made impact. You can imagine how pissed off the brass was when they found out about those 80 WTC elevator mechanics leaving the scene immediately. When we explained how the firefighters union will never have to fight again for another pay raise, they calmed down a bit. The cops were a little harder to appease and now with Kerik's nomination up in flames we'll have to sweeten the pot down the road. Not to worry though. New York's finest are great guys and without them turning a blind eye, publicly at least, we'd never have pulled this off. We got to Hillary early, well before , in 2000. We got Rudy out of the Senate race and gave her a clear win. One problem though is we promised both her AND Rudy the White House in 2008. We'll see if maybe something can't be worked out, after all Rudy's too moderate for the GOP ticket anyway. The media whores of course went snooping. Peter Jennings? Let's just say his lung cancer wasn't from cigarettes if you get my drift. Howard Stern was REALLY getting to be a pain in the ass. FCC fines, nothing would keep that big mouth quiet. He hears things and we worried he'd turn 9/11 into some sort of Lesbian implosion dial a date. Fortunately we were able to get him a divorce and nine figures from Sirius. The King of all Media is stoked! Hillary was a big help getting this shit past the Demo minority in Congress. Thank God she'd had the foresight to shoot that video of Boxer, Feinstein and Pelosi getting it on in front of her after that L.A. fundraiser. No siree, you won't hear a peep from those Dems. I forgot, yes FEMA. Of COURSE the report was a whitewash. But then Brown started acting all high and mighty. When we forced out O'Neill (thanks for the assist Bono) Brown started saying shit like if he wasn't the new Treasury secretary he'd spill the beans. Because of that incompetent ego-maniac we had to spend almost five years working on Katrina. Do you think it's easy diverting a Cat4 to the Big Easy? Hell we had to start a record number of storms before we nailed it. Good thing we slowed down Rita. That one was pure rogue and POTUS would have been real pissed if we accidently took out Houston. Notice how Brown quit on Sept. 12th this year. The Muslims have their "anniversary" dates and we have ours too. Me I used my noggin. Where as the Port authority and FDNY guys took their payoffs in depreciating dollars I asked for and got liquid gold. HAL. Euro denominated to boot. Baby.
you are right.... Doesn't everyone's cell phone work at 30,000ft??? Doesn't everyone call their family and refer to themselves by their first and last names??? I know mine sure does...............lol NOT I mean like come on.... who's cell phone doesn't work at altitude...
You're making many stupid assertions that you don't know the answers to. First off, analog cell phones work perfectly at high altitudes. As do those credit card phones in the back of the seats. Only digital cells have probs. So can you tell me what types of phones passengers were using? For all you know the only calls that made it out were from non-digital phones. Now granted, i know you have the IQ of a thimble but WHY THE FUCK would CELLPHONES be so IMPORTANT TO THE "PLOT" that anyone would GO TO THE TROUBLE of forging them? As if Dick Cheney said"well we better document some calls from the plane to loved ones or else NO IDIOT ON ELITE TRADER WILL BELIEVE THERE WERE PLANE CRASHES!!" Are you really as fucking stupid as you appear?
next... "At 5:22 p.m. on September 11th 2001, the 47 story building number 7 of the World Trade Center Plaza came down in slightly over 8 seconds. The building had not been hit by any plane, nor sustained any significant damage from the "collapse" of the Twin Towers seven hours earlier, nor was there any major fire in the building at the time." Oh...... sorry you lost... but thanks for playing.... we have some lovely parting gifts for you by the exit..... PWNED!!!
i dont think so, an experiment has been conducted and these are the results...i think they tried a urray of different mobiles, i cant find the article where the experiment was described in details but i read it a couple of yrs ago: http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/10/1649996.php by the way have u got any scientific article or somethin' to back up your 'facts'?
How far was the base of Building 7 from the base of the closest WTC main tower (i.e. one of the two that got hit)?
since when one building comin' down bring down in sympathy buildings in the vicinity...and why only t7.