As some of you may know by now, our fundraiser for Mark Basile´s upcoming paper has reached our stated goal of $5000! A heartfelt "thank you" to all those that pitched in, and especially Mr. John O´Donnell!
It is too early to publish any schedule for the study since the plan is being formulated, but we will post updates as they become available.
Refuting the Hollow Arguments of the So-called 9/11 Debunkers & Truthers
Monday, January 27, 2014
BBC caught fabricating Dr. Greening´s support for the official 9/11 narrative
John-Michael Talboo recently commented on the deceptive December 2013 article by the BBC, called "Canadians wary of 9/11 explanations - and of US officials." Talboo points out that the BBC relies on the recycling of thoroughly debunked sources to falsely portray Dr. Frank Greening as a scientist that has researched and confirmed the official WTC collapse explanations on his own, and given up on "truthers" that refuse to accept the truth. In this update I demonstrate that the BBC also flat-out lies about Dr. Greening´s stance on 9/11: In reality, Dr. Greening is openly skeptical about the official reports after ridiculing and giving up on the so-called debunkers of the truth movement.
Dr. Greening started out as one of the few scientists that actually defended the official WTC collapse explanations in public, and then became one of the co-authors of a 2007 paper (revised in 2008) that backed the official explanation of the collapse of the Twin Towers. This former champion of the JREF 9/11truth debunking forum destroyed the credibility of the forum when he denounced it in 2007 for "smothering scientific debate," and ridiculing the forum members for treating the official narrative (including his own paper) as the word of God.
Dr. Greening followed up on his condemnation of the "debunkers" in 2008 by lambasting the official collapse report on the third tower (Building7), and by collaborating with one of the best known 9/11truthers on a book in 2009. The JREF forum sunk to a new low in 2009 as its members tried to discredit the Harrit et al. nanothermite study by slandering the Bentham publisher of the paper. In 2011, Dr. Greening co-authored a new paper that indirectly refutes his previous 2008 paper regarding the collapse of the Twin Towers - and to add insult to injury this former champion of the JREF´ers chose Bentham to publish the paper.
A recent interview by Kevin Barret reveals that Dr. Greening does not support the official WTC7 report, and that he is increasingly skeptical about the Twin Towers report and the official 9/11 narrative in general. Dr. Greening also confirms that he is aware of BBC´s blatant misrepresentation in its December 2013 propaganda article.
Dr. Greening started out as one of the few scientists that actually defended the official WTC collapse explanations in public, and then became one of the co-authors of a 2007 paper (revised in 2008) that backed the official explanation of the collapse of the Twin Towers. This former champion of the JREF 9/11truth debunking forum destroyed the credibility of the forum when he denounced it in 2007 for "smothering scientific debate," and ridiculing the forum members for treating the official narrative (including his own paper) as the word of God.
Dr. Greening followed up on his condemnation of the "debunkers" in 2008 by lambasting the official collapse report on the third tower (Building7), and by collaborating with one of the best known 9/11truthers on a book in 2009. The JREF forum sunk to a new low in 2009 as its members tried to discredit the Harrit et al. nanothermite study by slandering the Bentham publisher of the paper. In 2011, Dr. Greening co-authored a new paper that indirectly refutes his previous 2008 paper regarding the collapse of the Twin Towers - and to add insult to injury this former champion of the JREF´ers chose Bentham to publish the paper.
A recent interview by Kevin Barret reveals that Dr. Greening does not support the official WTC7 report, and that he is increasingly skeptical about the Twin Towers report and the official 9/11 narrative in general. Dr. Greening also confirms that he is aware of BBC´s blatant misrepresentation in its December 2013 propaganda article.
Monday, January 13, 2014
Constructive criticism of sharpprintinginc
When it comes to analysing the destruction of the WTCs, one of the best websites to date has been the sharpprintinginc website. It does not show favoritism to either the debunker or truther stances, instead examining both sides solely on their scientific merit. Many claims are shown to be either exaggerations or outright falsehoods, and it is concluded that out of all the academic attempts to explain how the towers fell, there is not a single account that is consistent with all (or even most) of the relevant data points. This is a surprising revelation indeed, but its obviousness is hammered in again and again, through countless paragraphs that attack both NIST and AE911T.
Independents like professor bazant also get a lions share of the criticism, for good reason. Aside from the facile use of block mechanics, a major shortcoming of his 'piledriver' hypothesis is that he envisions a uniform crush front propagated by an intact 'upper block', which pulverises floors and columns at an equal rate. We now know that this is untrue, and that bazants specification of a two phase collapse (crush down followed by crush up, rather than both occurring simultaneously) may well violate newtons 3rd law of motion. These errors have escaped the notice of the public, and most attempts to understand the towers collapse are still dominated by these 1D concepts.
So, in place of these fragmented and often spurious allegation of how the towers fell, the author of sharpprintinginc attempts to provide an accurate collapse history of the three towers. Relying mostly on direct observation (and not on abstract mathematical models which use random assumptions to come to conclusions about factor x or y), he does an admirable job at establishing a causal chain of events for the twin towers, which are addressed here and here. Both provide an adequate description of where various instabilitys and failures took place, and other pages also explain how they led to a massive progressive floor collapse.
The problem with this compilation, however, is with the arrangement of the details. The account for WTC 2 is nothing like the account for WTC 1: It almost looks like a completely different process is being explained. For the earliest detected movement, we have a sagging roof vs a flexing of the perimiter columns. With WTC 1, we have ejections followed by descent of the upper block, then tilting. With WTC 2, we have ejections followed by more perimiter column flexing, then tilting of the upper block that precedes its descent! One wonders why the process of instability leading to collapse is so different for each building.
Such contrasting accounts give off the aura of incompetence: If you are attempting to sell a theory for how the towers fell to the public, there should be as much commonality as possible in the features of both collapses, otherwise they will not be convinced. If the characterisation for how WTC 1 fell is completely different from how WTC 2 fell, your explanation will rightly be looked upon with suspicion. Thats something that needs work. Another shortcoming of his compilation is that it still doesn't provide an answer to the key questions about the twin towers collapse, a list of inquires that might go like this:
-Were gravity loads redistributed after the plane impacts (and if so, where, when, how)?
-When did the downward acceleration of the twin towers peak, and what was the key factor in determining its fall rate?
-What kind of structural damage was being done inside the buildings after collapse initiation?
-How does the debris flow accumulate during collapse? When a floor system is destroyed, how much of the resultant debris is ejected from the building?
-Why did the perimiter walls peel away in large sections, and why were lone spandrel plates ejected at high velocity?
-How should we categorise each section of the twin towers, based on the role they played in the collapse? Is professor bazants a, b, and c designation adequate?
For any comments or questions, please use this e-mail address: jrphilps (delete this anti-spam text) @live.com
Independents like professor bazant also get a lions share of the criticism, for good reason. Aside from the facile use of block mechanics, a major shortcoming of his 'piledriver' hypothesis is that he envisions a uniform crush front propagated by an intact 'upper block', which pulverises floors and columns at an equal rate. We now know that this is untrue, and that bazants specification of a two phase collapse (crush down followed by crush up, rather than both occurring simultaneously) may well violate newtons 3rd law of motion. These errors have escaped the notice of the public, and most attempts to understand the towers collapse are still dominated by these 1D concepts.
So, in place of these fragmented and often spurious allegation of how the towers fell, the author of sharpprintinginc attempts to provide an accurate collapse history of the three towers. Relying mostly on direct observation (and not on abstract mathematical models which use random assumptions to come to conclusions about factor x or y), he does an admirable job at establishing a causal chain of events for the twin towers, which are addressed here and here. Both provide an adequate description of where various instabilitys and failures took place, and other pages also explain how they led to a massive progressive floor collapse.
The problem with this compilation, however, is with the arrangement of the details. The account for WTC 2 is nothing like the account for WTC 1: It almost looks like a completely different process is being explained. For the earliest detected movement, we have a sagging roof vs a flexing of the perimiter columns. With WTC 1, we have ejections followed by descent of the upper block, then tilting. With WTC 2, we have ejections followed by more perimiter column flexing, then tilting of the upper block that precedes its descent! One wonders why the process of instability leading to collapse is so different for each building.
Such contrasting accounts give off the aura of incompetence: If you are attempting to sell a theory for how the towers fell to the public, there should be as much commonality as possible in the features of both collapses, otherwise they will not be convinced. If the characterisation for how WTC 1 fell is completely different from how WTC 2 fell, your explanation will rightly be looked upon with suspicion. Thats something that needs work. Another shortcoming of his compilation is that it still doesn't provide an answer to the key questions about the twin towers collapse, a list of inquires that might go like this:
-Were gravity loads redistributed after the plane impacts (and if so, where, when, how)?
-When did the downward acceleration of the twin towers peak, and what was the key factor in determining its fall rate?
-What kind of structural damage was being done inside the buildings after collapse initiation?
-How does the debris flow accumulate during collapse? When a floor system is destroyed, how much of the resultant debris is ejected from the building?
-Why did the perimiter walls peel away in large sections, and why were lone spandrel plates ejected at high velocity?
-How should we categorise each section of the twin towers, based on the role they played in the collapse? Is professor bazants a, b, and c designation adequate?
Monday, January 6, 2014
Best take down of the no-planers... Ever!
(Humorous excerpt from an earlier version of this paper):
... With the backgrounds to all three scenarios suitably explained, we can now get to work on choosing which of them is the most suitable. Immediately, we see an application for occams razor, which is the principle that commands: 'We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true, and sufficient to explain their appearances.' What this means, in effect, is that when we are confronted with a multitude of theorys that account equally well for the relevant facts, you can discard any and all hypothesis' which contain unnecessary extra elements. One example of this would be a cosmologist, ruling out the involvement of a deity in the birth of the universe. This was indeed the spirit in which it was used by its namesake (William of Occam) to demonstrate why a belief in god requires pure faith. However, the law of parsimony contains an overlooked caveat in that, it can only discriminate between those theorys which predict a similar result for all conceivable experiments. [22] Obviously, the implications of the no plane hypothesis diverge from both electronic hijacking and drone swap. Its essential premise, that there were no commercial plane crashes on the day of 9/11, puts a much larger emphasis on crisis actors and tv fakery, rather than on the military precision and logistical complexity required for the other two. If we were to use this as a pre-text to isolate NPT from its peers, it then becomes a simple matter of abstraction to rule it out of the equation entirely.
For instance, one of the key attributes that must be possessed by a scientific theory is a methodology through which phenomenon can be scrutinised, quantified, and assembled into a coherent framework. Startlingly, we see that the 'no plane theory' lacks this feature altogether. The bloviating that occurs with regard to self healing buildings and nose out impacts are only surface phenomenon that distract from NPTs foundation. By all accounts, this stance is founded on an extreme form of pyrrhonism, whose reductionist ways were best summed up by William James' adage: 'In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.' What this essentially says is that, because of the problem of induction [23], truth seekers are perpetually at risk of having their entire framework of knowledge upended by the discovery of an unknown unknown. Likewise, the very fact that an observer cannot prove (to an arbitrary degree) the authenticity of the videos and photographs taken at the WTC complex or Pentagon is, by itself, considered sufficient grounds for NPT to dismiss any and all data collected during the September 11th attacks. This is an anti-foundationalist approach which denys the objective standards of rational enquiry, putting it at odds with competing hypothesis' by its absence of predictive power. A humorous example of this is demonstrated in the spoof film, Spare Parts - The Truh About 9/11.
This mocumentary brilliantly satires the host of allegations about tv fakery, by claiming that not only were there no plane impacts into the twin towers, there were no September 11th attacks at all. This outrageous charge is 'proven' by showing a home video recording of German tourists visiting Manhattan, who pan over the iconic twin towers in the backdrop of New Yorks skyline. The time stamp indicates a recording time of December 14, 2001, more than three months after the events of 9/11. Through this framing narrative, the narrator posits that the WTCs were never destroyed at all, making the subtle joke that no plane advocates had not gone far enough in their claims. If the sole premise of NPT is accepted -that all documentation regarding the September 11th attacks are subject to tampering- then how would anyone be able to prove spare parts wrong? They are unfalsifiable by their very definition! That is because, if massive world events with thousands of fake victims can be simulated with impunity, then who is to say that reality itself (as projected through any number of multi-media devices) isn't being faked on a regular basis by the powers that be? [24] A solipsistic worldview such as this leaves the practitioner with a pathetic inability to verify information; hence, it can be discarded from further consideration...
[22] http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/Page3.htm Argument # 3: The Occam’s Razor rule
[23] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/ The Problem of Induction
[24] www.philosophy-index.com/putnam/brain-vat/ Brain in a Vat
... With the backgrounds to all three scenarios suitably explained, we can now get to work on choosing which of them is the most suitable. Immediately, we see an application for occams razor, which is the principle that commands: 'We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true, and sufficient to explain their appearances.' What this means, in effect, is that when we are confronted with a multitude of theorys that account equally well for the relevant facts, you can discard any and all hypothesis' which contain unnecessary extra elements. One example of this would be a cosmologist, ruling out the involvement of a deity in the birth of the universe. This was indeed the spirit in which it was used by its namesake (William of Occam) to demonstrate why a belief in god requires pure faith. However, the law of parsimony contains an overlooked caveat in that, it can only discriminate between those theorys which predict a similar result for all conceivable experiments. [22] Obviously, the implications of the no plane hypothesis diverge from both electronic hijacking and drone swap. Its essential premise, that there were no commercial plane crashes on the day of 9/11, puts a much larger emphasis on crisis actors and tv fakery, rather than on the military precision and logistical complexity required for the other two. If we were to use this as a pre-text to isolate NPT from its peers, it then becomes a simple matter of abstraction to rule it out of the equation entirely.
For instance, one of the key attributes that must be possessed by a scientific theory is a methodology through which phenomenon can be scrutinised, quantified, and assembled into a coherent framework. Startlingly, we see that the 'no plane theory' lacks this feature altogether. The bloviating that occurs with regard to self healing buildings and nose out impacts are only surface phenomenon that distract from NPTs foundation. By all accounts, this stance is founded on an extreme form of pyrrhonism, whose reductionist ways were best summed up by William James' adage: 'In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.' What this essentially says is that, because of the problem of induction [23], truth seekers are perpetually at risk of having their entire framework of knowledge upended by the discovery of an unknown unknown. Likewise, the very fact that an observer cannot prove (to an arbitrary degree) the authenticity of the videos and photographs taken at the WTC complex or Pentagon is, by itself, considered sufficient grounds for NPT to dismiss any and all data collected during the September 11th attacks. This is an anti-foundationalist approach which denys the objective standards of rational enquiry, putting it at odds with competing hypothesis' by its absence of predictive power. A humorous example of this is demonstrated in the spoof film, Spare Parts - The Truh About 9/11.
This mocumentary brilliantly satires the host of allegations about tv fakery, by claiming that not only were there no plane impacts into the twin towers, there were no September 11th attacks at all. This outrageous charge is 'proven' by showing a home video recording of German tourists visiting Manhattan, who pan over the iconic twin towers in the backdrop of New Yorks skyline. The time stamp indicates a recording time of December 14, 2001, more than three months after the events of 9/11. Through this framing narrative, the narrator posits that the WTCs were never destroyed at all, making the subtle joke that no plane advocates had not gone far enough in their claims. If the sole premise of NPT is accepted -that all documentation regarding the September 11th attacks are subject to tampering- then how would anyone be able to prove spare parts wrong? They are unfalsifiable by their very definition! That is because, if massive world events with thousands of fake victims can be simulated with impunity, then who is to say that reality itself (as projected through any number of multi-media devices) isn't being faked on a regular basis by the powers that be? [24] A solipsistic worldview such as this leaves the practitioner with a pathetic inability to verify information; hence, it can be discarded from further consideration...
[22] http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/Page3.htm Argument # 3: The Occam’s Razor rule
[23] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/ The Problem of Induction
[24] www.philosophy-index.com/putnam/brain-vat/ Brain in a Vat