Re: [Marxism] Marxism and Conspiracy

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Tony Lawless:
> Louis wrote: "Well, the controversy is not over there was 
> foreknowledge. It is whether the American government, or some cabal 
> within it, orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. If we can get past the 
> idiocy of the "controlled demolitions" crowd and agree that our 
> differences are over that, we would be making progress as the 
> psychiatrists say."
>
> Why are you trying to set yourself up as a psychiatrist and other 
> people in this debate as patients? What credentials do you have for 
> this type of work? What inside information do you have about 9/11?

I don't think the "Loose Change" people are literally crazy. They are 
just foolish.

> At any rate, I think the problem with what you are saying is that in 
> trying to debunk certain kinds of conspiracy theories about 9/11, 
> you tend to give the impression that you endorse the official 
> version. But the official version is just another story of what 
> might have taken place on that day, in many respects a rather 
> implausible one. (If you read the Report, you will note that it 
> begins with the day of the attack itself -- it does not attempt to 
> contextualize the attack in the history of US imperialist 
> intervention in the Middle East in the twentieth century, for 
> example, the way I suspect most of us on this list would.

It depends on what you mean by the official version. As David Dunbar, 
co-editor of "Debunking 9/11 Myths, on how the conspiracists are 
wrong", told Doug Henwood, there is some cover-your-ass material in 
it. But, yes, I accept the evidence that jet planes commandeered by 
Jihadists flew into the WTC and the Pentagon on 9/11.

> At any rate, Louis is now on record as saying that the collapse of 
> three buildings into their own footprints on a single day, two of 
> which were hit by planes and one of which WAS NOT, is not 
> remarkable. Fair enough.
>
> For others, I would suggest that they check out the YouTube video of 
> Building 7 collapsing. The parallel with the similar collapse of the 
> Twin Towers will be obvious enough, I should think.  I would also 
> suggest that they read over the peculiar testimony of Larry 
> Silverstein, the man who bought the Twin Towers from the New York 
> and New Jersey Port Authority in June 2001, which is contained in 
> Paul Craig Roberts's useful discussion below.

I recommend David Dunbar's answers to such questions at: 
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html.

In Doug's interview, he points out that 25 percent of WTC 7 was 
demolished as "collateral damage" before it went down, which was 
visible in photos that are conspicuous by their absence from 
conspiracists' websites. Here's Dunbar's explanation from the article 
cited above:

Many conspiracy theorists point to FEMA's preliminary report, which 
said there was relatively light damage to WTC 7 prior to its 
collapse. With the benefit of more time and resources, NIST 
researchers now support the working hypothesis that WTC 7 was far 
more compromised by falling debris than the FEMA report indicated. 
"The most important thing we found was that there was, in fact, 
physical damage to the south face of building 7," NIST's Sunder tells 
PM. "On about a third of the face to the center and to the 
bottom--approximately 10 stories--about 25 percent of the depth of 
the building was scooped out." NIST also discovered previously 
undocumented damage to WTC 7's upper stories and its southwest corner.

NIST investigators believe a combination of intense fire and severe 
structural damage contributed to the collapse, though assigning the 
exact proportion requires more research. But NIST's analysis suggests 
the fall of WTC 7 was an example of "progressive collapse," a process 
in which the failure of parts of a structure ultimately creates 
strains that cause the entire building to come down. Videos of the 
fall of WTC 7 show cracks, or "kinks," in the building's facade just 
before the two penthouses disappeared into the structure, one after 
the other. The entire building fell in on itself, with the slumping 
east side of the structure pulling down the west side in a diagonal collapse.

According to NIST, there was one primary reason for the building's 
failure: In an unusual design, the columns near the visible kinks 
were carrying exceptionally large loads, roughly 2000 sq. ft. of 
floor area for each floor. "What our preliminary analysis has shown 
is that if you take out just one column on one of the lower floors," 
Sunder notes, "it could cause a vertical progression of collapse so 
that the entire section comes down."

There are two other possible contributing factors still under 
investigation: First, trusses on the fifth and seventh floors were 
designed to transfer loads from one set of columns to another. With 
columns on the south face apparently damaged, high stresses would 
likely have been communicated to columns on the building's other 
faces, thereby exceeding their load-bearing capacities.

Second, a fifth-floor fire burned for up to 7 hours. "There was no 
firefighting in WTC 7," Sunder says. Investigators believe the fire 
was fed by tanks of diesel fuel that many tenants used to run 
emergency generators. Most tanks throughout the building were fairly 
small, but a generator on the fifth floor was connected to a large 
tank in the basement via a pressurized line. Says Sunder: "Our 
current working hypothesis is that this pressurized line was 
supplying fuel [to the fire] for a long period of time."

WTC 7 might have withstood the physical damage it received, or the 
fire that burned for hours, but those combined factors--along with 
the building's unusual construction--were enough to set off the 
chain-reaction collapse.

> Like Roberts, I think we will probably never know what happened that 
> day. But there are enough peculiarities that we should not attack 
> those who want to investigate them. Many of those who question the 
> official version of 9/11 agree with us that the event was used as a 
> pretext to launch new wars in the Middle East. They are not our 
> enemies; they are not wrong to question strongly the possible hidden 
> motives of the US government.

I would not call a film like "Loose Change" 'investigation'. It is a 
stoopid mess.



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