New: theory of conspiracy theories:

Originally posted by twhitehead
Except those aren't 'the findings' of NIST. They just stated it without much thought as it was largely irrelevant to what they were actually tasked to do. And no, I do not need to 'do a little better'. I can dismiss the claim as unfounded as there is zero evidence or reason to think it is based on fact.

No, you can't it is up to you to find evidence of a tall building which completely collapsed due to fire. Amazing as it may seem these organisations are careful about the documents they produce and are careful, even about single sentences. If NIST says that no tall buildings have undergone complete collapses due to fire (or even partial ones as the other collapses were after NIST published their report in 2005, the Madrid fire was in August 2005 and the Delft fire in 2008) then you cannot credibly dismiss the sentence without providing some evidence.

Originally posted by Metal Brain
The Tuskegee syphilis experiment, in which the cure for syphilis (penicillin) was purposefully withheld from African-American patients.

The experiment may have involved up to 6,700 people, and Dr Peter Buxtun blew the whistle after about 25 years.

Quickly? Not always.

One could say the main difference between these real conspiracies (Tuskegee, Prism, etc.) and obviously untrue ones (WTC) is that the people involved in the conspiracy had some kind of justification (in their view) for the existence of the conspiracy. In the case of Tuskegee, perhaps it was medical research, in the case of Prism national security. For WTC conspiracies this becomes problematic because it is difficult to find people who find killing thousands of civilians - especially when they are fellow citizens - for no reason justifiable.

Originally posted by DeepThought
No, you can't it is up to you to find evidence of a tall building which completely collapsed due to fire.

Yes I can, and no, it isn't. I am under no such obligation.

Amazing as it may seem these organisations are careful about the documents they produce and are careful, even about single sentences.
Obviously not.

If NIST says that no tall buildings have undergone complete collapses due to fire (or even partial ones as the other collapses were after NIST published their report in 2005, the Madrid fire was in August 2005 and the Delft fire in 2008) then you cannot credibly dismiss the sentence without providing some evidence.
Yes, I can credibly dismiss it. If they are as careful as you say, they would have included a reference to the source of the claim. They did not. I guess they might get away with the fact that they said 'the first known instance' and then claim that 'known' implies what they know.

Have a look at this document referenced earlier:
http://www.civil.northwestern.edu/people/bazant/PDFs/Backup%20of%20Papers/466.pdf
would you say that the writers of it too were also careful about the documents they produce?

Would you say they were careful about this sentence:

No experienced structural engineer watching the attack expected the WTC towers to collapse.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Yes I can, and no, it isn't. I am under no such obligation.

[b]Amazing as it may seem these organisations are careful about the documents they produce and are careful, even about single sentences.
Obviously not.

If NIST says that no tall buildings have undergone complete collapses due to fire (or even partial ones as the other collapses were ...[text shortened]... xperienced structural engineer watching the attack expected the WTC towers to collapse. [/quote]

We have provided evidence that there was no such collapse prior to the World Trade Centre attacks. NIST were clearly not aware of any and neither were the writers of the paper I cited above. The people who wrote that study are experts in their field and might just be expected to know of such things. The collapse of a tall building is a noteworthy event and would generate considerable interest in the field as the various parties to the construction of such buildings have a clear vested interest in their structures not collapsing. You are not an expert in this field and so if you want to retain credibility you need to either back down or provide some evidence.

So yes, I do think they took adequate care over that sentence. It expresses the fact that such a collapse was an unprecedented event and any experience structural engineer would have known that.

Originally posted by joe shmo
It has been considered and there is documented evidence in the NIST report of NanoThermite ( A Military grade Incendiary).

Yeah. Saw that coming.

Thermite is basically Iron oxide [rust] + Aluminium. [both powdered]

Heat that up and the oxygen preferentially bonds to the aluminium and emits
a huge load of heat. [strongly exothermic]

Take a giant steel skyscraper. Hit it with aluminium aircraft. Set on fire, then collapse.

Result, pile of debris containing trace amounts of just about any and every chemical
compound you can name, including powdered aluminium and rust [aka Thermite].

As trace amounts of Thermite are predicted by such an incident absent people using it
as an explosive/incendiary its presence is not diagnostic of it being used.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
One could say the main difference between these real conspiracies (Tuskegee, Prism, etc.) and obviously untrue ones (WTC) is that the people involved in the conspiracy had some kind of justification (in their view) for the existence of the conspiracy. In the case of Tuskegee, perhaps it was medical research, in the case of Prism national security. For W ...[text shortened]... g thousands of civilians - especially when they are fellow citizens - for no reason justifiable.

"For WTC conspiracies this becomes problematic because it is difficult to find people who find killing thousands of civilians - especially when they are fellow citizens - for no reason justifiable."

This wouldn't be the first instance where information (or action was held) by top levels of government that sacrificed a large number of people in order to save many. Have you seen the Imitation Game? Imagine a joeshmo ( if you will) that had uncovered only the fact that information was known that could have saved the lives of many people, but no action was then to save them? Alan Turing and Britian were forced to conclude that many would need to be sacraficed in order to win the war. The decoding of the enigma must remain unknown, and it took conspiracy to do it. Historians estimated this decision to shorten the war by over 2 years, and save an estimated 14 million lives. However, would I (joeshmo) see the inaction in that way? Without knowing the full truth I might only see conspiracy, not the greater good. That was kept secret for over 50 years, so it's not impossible that a similar thing is playing out right under our own noses.

The post that was quoted here has been removed

It should be added that the evidence that Churchill sacrificed Coventry to keep Enigma secret is pretty sketchy. Winterbotham made that claim in The Ultra Secret but was not in a position to make that assessment. The Germans did not entirely trust their magic machine and used codewords for British cities. Churchill was travelling when he received the message and turned the car round to stay in London because they thought that that was going to be the target, and he regarded it as his duty to be where the bombs were falling. Also there was a technical failure which meant they did not manage to jam the German radio navigation system, they were jamming on the wrong frequency. So it's not at all clear that they sacrificed anyone in order to keep Ultra secret from the Germans.

The Germans would just have changed the enigma settings, and maybe added extra dials, as they didn't realise the efficiency of the British code breaking set up. The Germans had had success against the Royal Navy (I think it was) cipher but had multiple different competing agencies attempting to crack ciphers so they would tend to underestimate the effectiveness of Bletchley Park. The real danger was that they'd start being more careful about their code discipline as there was, for example, an Afrika Korps tank commander who would send the same message "Keine besonderer ergebnisse" (no unusual happenings) on a daily basis, which gave the code breakers a plain text attack and reduced their workload for Africa no end. I think that that commander inadvertently guaranteed himself a quiet war, as it was distinctly not in Britain's interests to give him anything to report.

The post that was quoted here has been removed

"That was kept secret for over 50 years ..."
--Joe Shmo

"FALSE. _The Ultra Secret_ was published in 1974 (long before 50 years after the war).
As a historian, I don't propose to cover all of Joe Shmo's factual inaccuracies or his
apparent ignorance of what the Poles contributed to breaking the German codes."
--Duchess64

Thank you, as I mentioned I just watched the movie. I must have mixed that fact up with the time until he was granted a Royal Pardon. Still, 30 ish years is still a long time. Whether or not you believe I represented the story well, you should take that up with the writers and directors ( they often cut the detail out, which may be important in this case), because that is basically how it was portrayed. Is that my fault? I never claimed to be an expert on the subject matter, just making a blanket analogy. Some of us don't have the luxury of reading books all day long to ensure historical precision in every statement we make to get across a point.

Originally posted by joe shmo
"That was kept secret for over 50 years ..."
--Joe Shmo

"FALSE. _The Ultra Secret_ was published in 1974 (long before 50 years after the war).
As a historian, I don't propose to cover all of Joe Shmo's factual inaccuracies or his
apparent ignorance of what the Poles contributed to breaking the German codes."
--Duchess64

Thank you, as I mentioned I ...[text shortened]... ks all day long to ensure historical precision in every statement we make to get across a point.

The thing with films is that what they want to do is produce drama. They are not interested in historical accuracy unless it is dramatic. Sacrificing thousands to win the war is dramatic and the producers of the film don't care that it didn't happen. The point of the enigma decrypts was to produce information that could be used to gain advantage. There is no point in the decrypts if they are not used and using them involves the risk that the Germans would work out that enigma was being deciphered.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
One could say the main difference between these real conspiracies (Tuskegee, Prism, etc.) and obviously untrue ones (WTC) is that the people involved in the conspiracy had some kind of justification (in their view) for the existence of the conspiracy. In the case of Tuskegee, perhaps it was medical research, in the case of Prism national security. For W ...[text shortened]... g thousands of civilians - especially when they are fellow citizens - for no reason justifiable.

"it is difficult to find people who find killing thousands of civilians - especially when they are fellow citizens - for no reason justifiable."

You have heard of war. It has to start somehow. That requires disregard for human life in general. Do you find it hard to believe that Hitler and many others decided to sacrifice many Germans for selfish reasons?

WTC 7 may have been set up for the jet that did not make it to the target. They could not leave the explosives there to be found. That would be sloppy. There may have been a homing beacon in WTC 7 to guide the jets. There are many things you have not considered. You have a clear bias against anything that challenges the media. That is why you make points that fail your own criteria.

Originally posted by Metal Brain
"it is difficult to find people who find killing thousands of civilians - especially when they are fellow citizens - for no reason justifiable."

You have heard of war. It has to start somehow. That requires disregard for human life in general. Do you find it hard to believe that Hitler and many others decided to sacrifice many Germans for selfish reas ...[text shortened]... nst anything that challenges the media. That is why you make points that fail your own criteria.

Why was the completely unremarkable building 7 targeted? How did those who planted the explosives know beforehand that the building would be damaged by the attacks on the two main towers, and that the building would subsequently catch fire? Why was no trace of explosives found? How did the evil masterminds manage to rig a building with explosives and then not have the explosives explode even with fires raging out of control?

Each of these questions' answers, if the conspiracy is true, involves another contrived, complicated and unlikely conspiracy.

Unless, of course, there was no conspiracy. A bunch of idiots hijacked some planes and flew them into buildings after which they collapsed. Nothing in this alternative story (as it happens, the one that actually occurred in real life) is particularly unlikely or involves the cooperation of many high-level government officials as well as thousands of other civilians.

Originally posted by Metal Brain
"it is difficult to find people who find killing thousands of civilians - especially when they are fellow citizens - for no reason justifiable."

You have heard of war. It has to start somehow. That requires disregard for human life in general. Do you find it hard to believe that Hitler and many others decided to sacrifice many Germans for selfish reas ...[text shortened]... nst anything that challenges the media. That is why you make points that fail your own criteria.

But in the second world war there was a reason. Admittedly rather strange ones. For the British by 1941 it had become a war of survival, so the strategic bombing campaign was for a reason, although this is the reason of Ares rather than Athena (see Wikipedia on the two gods to see what I'm saying). But in order to do it one must either be desperate or regard the victims as the other. The US administration at the time was neither desperate (GW spent much of his time practising golf swings) nor could it regard the inhabitants of the World Trade Centre as the other.

Originally posted by Metal Brain

....There may have been a homing beacon in WTC 7 to guide the jets. ....

even by your loony standards, that is a pretty absurd suggestion.
There is just so much wrong with that that I won't ever bother to try and explain.