Re: [Marxism] Re: WTC collapse

[Les Schaffer <schaffer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Some more replies to Bob:

> And this proves exactly what? You imply that UL has some 'problems'
> that mean that folks shouldn't believe what they wrote.

I was stripping away the aura you gave to UL which it simply doesnt have
in terms of steel testing. They are very good at fire-proofing studies,
and in fact it was NIST that employed UL to do such a study on the WTC
steel. are you aware that it was a NIST-supported study???:

   http://www.ul.com/about/otm/otmv10n4/wtc.html

http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_fire_resistance_data.htm

> You don't mention what the problems are supposed to be or how they
> compare with whatever problems
> that the NIST has as a government agency that the Bush administration
> would simply not allow to contradict the official storyline.


and UL is a manufacturer's/insurers agency but you're cool with that???
come on Bob. everyone knows that stockholders and insurers own the
gummint, not the other way around. the State is in the employ of the
owners, non???

> Instead, we're to believe you because you worked on project that
> needed UL approval?


why not, you believe your man cuz he worked there, you don't offer any
independent analysis of his ideas,and you dont engage in debate when his
ideas are challenged.

but let me clarify something so there is no confusion: i object to Ryan
being dismissed from his job for his remarks and open letter, and i
would join any fight that seeks to re-instate his position. i would be
very interested to communicate with him by email or phone and hear his
side of the story, but that doesn't mean i agree with his analysis or
wouldnt challenge him on specifics.

> Likewise, it appears you think that you can gain access to inside
> information regarding the writer of the UL letter who was subsequently
> fired for whislteblowing. You wrote " i will ask around inside UL and
> see what i can find out about Kevin Ryan" That remark makes me wonder
> what you'd be looking for.


Bob, i know enough about UL to know that they would pull an execrable
stunt like firing a well-meaning engineer for being outspoken,
regardless of the content of his statements. or were you thinking i was
going to make contact with "THEM" and get him assassinated or some such
thing?

> If you choose to believe a government agency that's part of the Bush
> administration and as such clearly is part of the problem not part of
> understanding the problem, that's clearly your choice.


Bob. Bob. Bob. UL is as much a Bush agency as NIST. and NIST employed UL
to make a fireproofing study. your arguments are simply dogmatic and
ill-informed. and worse, you have no interest in expanding your
knowledge base.

> Perhaps you can see that simply stating your agreement with the
> government is not particularly convincing. Nor is your method of
> trying to put down all who disagree with you with rather snide remarks
> of a personal nature.


more vehement than snide. i honestly despise your type of thinking on
this subject.

> Your overall take seems to be that you think that cutting corners on
> codes is the most important aspect of 911 and that it somehow is very
> significant in general. T


that was indeed the aspect i was interested in when posting the article
on the NIST results. WTC collapse via dynamite is something i consider
as a possibility but see little conclusive evidence for in the
engineering domain.

i would love to see more effort put into the "stray jets": but again for
a different reason than yourself perhaps. i continually argue that the
US military's main purpose is force projection, not defense. and i use
the fact that airlines could have been off course for so long without
remedial action as an argument in this direction. we are expendable.
people seem to respond well to this line of argument.

indeed, i find that people sitting on the political fence in the U.S.
seem to do much better with the "chicken's come home to roost" analysis
than any of the "alternate scenarios" for why a gummint would make a
couple tall buildings fall down go boom.

i guess if you are motivating people to join in political battle using
the kind of arguments i've seen you display, i will simply have to hold
my nose and fight over in some other trench, so we stay out of each
other's way.


> he simple fact is that thousands of skyscrapers have been built. They
> don't fall down regardless of what your opinion is about the builders
> cutting corners on codes. Fires happen in skyscrapers. They still
> don't fall down, except for one day when 3 of them fell down.


incredible logic. we really need to stay away from each other.

> People have taken a look at the supposed breakdown of well-established
> procedures, seismic data,


yes, i;ve seen the seismic data. do you want to debate what it shows
here, in detail?

> In addition, Bush seems to have put out an order prohibiting federal
> employees from discussing the details
> of what happened on 911. When the Air traffic controllers wanted to
> listen to a tape recording they had made on 911, the tape mysteriously
> disappeared. (I guess we've come pretty far from the 1970s. Then,
> Nixon just had Rosemary Woods erase the incriminating 11 minutes. Now,
> the whole tape gets 'disappeared'.)


as i said earlier, i think this is a useful avenue to follow.

> On every other day in the last 50 years, off-course planes have been
> intercepted by the air force.  It's not unusual. It happens hundreds
> and sometimes thousands of times each year. On 911, 4 off-course
> planes were not intercepted. [snip] (The Pentagon plane story is even
> harder to believe. In that case an amateur with absolutely no
> experience flying an enormous jet plane was able to fly an expert
> approach maneuver


Jim Craven, a pilot, has written here several years ago on this topic.
check the archives.

> And then we're to believe a Bush regime report that's contradicted by
> the evidence, other official investigators and it seems even the
> previous drafts of the report, because it blames the collapse of 3
> buildings on inadequate fireproofing?



sure, why not?  if the arguments can be judged sound on engineering and
physics grounds, i'll consider it. the "contradicted by the evidence" is
what is open to debate. a debate you are careful to avoid.

> Like we're also to believe that the war on Iraq was due to
> intelligence failures regarding the WMDs and a commission's 600-page
> report that intelligence wasn't politicized and that no one from the
> White House or Pentagon contributed to the mistaken intelligence."?
> With $50-100 billion spent on intelligence systems each year?



historically, isnt it true that internal CIA memorandums are frequently
quite acccurate in their assessments, but then the Chiefs distort or
suppress these findings for political purposes? and no one here believes
-- as far as i can tell anyway -- that the war on Iraq was due to
intelligence failures. so stop insulting OUR intelligence.



les schaffer



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