World Architecture News: Explosives and Thermitic Material Brought Down Buildings on 9/11
September 11th, 2009Via: World Architecture News:
Conspiracy theory or hidden truth? The 9/11 enigmas…
Richard Gage, AIA, Gregg Roberts, and David Chandler
Richard Gage, AIA has been a practicing San Francisco Bay Area architect for more than 20 years, and is a registered member of the American Institute of Architects. Most recently he worked on a $400M mixed-use facility in Las Vegas NV. But he is also the founder and CEO of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, now numbering over 800 A/E’s, calling for a new investigation into the destruction of all 3 WTC high-rises on 9/11. Gage has spoken at over 100 events, reaching 20 U.S. states and 8 countries. He has been invited to present in 14 cities Australia, New Zealand, and Japan before the end of this year. As the anniversary of the events approaches, Gage tells WAN why he thinks there are hidden depths to the destruction of the World Trade Centre…
In all likelihood, you are unaware of the most important facts involving the destructions of the World Trade Center buildings. Nearly all the mainstream information sources and government officials have kept crucial information hidden from the public. This brief article will provide a clear explanation as to what actually happened to the Twin Towers and Building 7 (WTC 7) on September 11, 2001.
Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth) is a non-partisan, non-profit organization now numbering over 800 technical professionals and thousands of other supporters dedicated to exposing the facts that point to the explosive destruction of all three World Trade Center (WTC) high-rises.
We are calling for a new independent investigation empowered to subpoena and question witnesses under oath. Well-documented facts prove the WTC high-rises were destroyed by explosives. The implications are grave, but we ask that you look at the facts. AE911Truth is also concerned that evidence has been distorted and covered up by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the federal agency assigned to investigate the building collapses.
WTC 7 was a 47-story steel-framed high-rise 100 yards from the North Tower. Even though no airplane hit it, it collapsed rapidly and totally on 9/11, in the manner of a controlled demolition. Despite its suspicious collapse, the 9/11 Commission report does not even mention WTC 7. NIST left its analysis of the WTC 7 collapse until 2008, seven years after the events, long after all the rubble was destroyed. NIST claims WTC 7 collapsed due to “normal office fires” which created a “new phenomenon” in high-rise catastrophes: collapse caused by thermal expansion of beams. NIST claims this caused the failure of a single column – the rest just followed.
NIST Forced to Acknowledge Free-Fall of WTC 7
In August 2008, NIST released the draft of its final report on Building 7. In that draft NIST claims that the building took 40% longer than “free-fall time” to collapse the first 18 stories. In a technical briefing that followed the release of the draft report Shyam Sunder, NIST’s lead investigator, denied that free-fall had occurred and stated that free-fall was incompatible with their analysis. He said, “… a free fall time would be an object that has no … structural components below it…And that is not at all unusual because there was [emphasis in original] structural resistance that was provided in this particular case. And you had … a sequence of structural failures that had to take place and everything was not instantaneous.”
However, one of this article’s co-authors, David Chandler, used video analysis to show conclusively that for 2.5 seconds (about 100 feet) WTC 7 was in complete free-fall. He publicly challenged NIST’s claims at the technical briefing and he, along with others, filed formal requests for corrections.
NIST were forced to reverse themselves in their Final Report and acknowledged 2.25 seconds of absolute free-fall. Yet they did not reconsider how this was compatible with their analysis. A network of heavy steel girders had to be forcibly removed suddenly across the width of the building for eight floors. However, a free-falling object cannot exert force on anything in its path without slowing its own fall, so the structural support had to be removed by something else—explosives. The free-fall of Building 7 is a smoking gun.
World Trade Center – Commonalities in all Three Building Destructions
Complete Destruction Through the Path of Greatest Resistance
NIST claims that the Twin Towers collapsed due to the plane impacts and fire, and that WTC 7 collapsed due to fire alone. However, note that the Twin Towers survived the plane impacts and the jet fuel burned off in the first 10 minutes. Beyond that, all we have are not very large office fires. Over 100 steel framed buildings have suffered major fires, many much worse, yet none have collapsed. All three buildings on 9/11 fell through what should have been the path of greatest resistance – thousands of tons of steel – resulting in total dismemberment. This would require precisely timed removal of critical columns, which office fires cannot accomplish. Furthermore, a small falling top section would destroy itself before it could destroy a larger, stronger, undamaged lower section of the building. The impossible collapse is a smoking gun.
Molten Iron
The temperatures of the fires present a problem for NIST’s claim that fire alone was involved. The melting point of steel is about 2800° F. According to NIST’s own documents, hydrocarbon fires (e.g., jet fuel and office furnishings) generate temperatures only up to about 2,000° F under ideal conditions. NIST recognizes these fires could not melt steel, so they had to postulate elaborate mechanisms that might trigger collapse due to weakened columns and sagging girders.
Yet there is widespread evidence of molten iron in the rubble piles. Photos and numerous witnesses — including fire fighters, cleanup crews, and structural engineers — confirm the existence of several tons of molten metal under the debris. Some fire fighters described molten steel flowing like lava. Photos clearly reveal molten metal dripping as material is being lifted by excavation equipment.
A video of the South Tower shows molten metal pouring out, glowing a radiant orange-yellow. Some have claimed this is molten aluminum, which melts at a lower temperature, but molten aluminum would be silvery in these conditions. This is molten iron or steel.
At least three independent laboratory analyses of the dust that blanketed Lower Manhattan after the destruction of the Twin Towers reveal the presence of iron-rich “microspheres.” These spheres are formed when molten iron is sprayed into the air and forms droplets that cool before hitting the ground. The iron droplets indicate temperatures during the collapses much higher than hydrocarbon fires, in an explosive environment that could spray many tons of these droplets into the air.
In April 2002, the RJ Lee Company was hired to investigate environmental contaminants in the Deutsche Bank, across the street from the World Trade Center. It reports, “Many of the materials, such as lead, cadmium, mercury and various organic compounds, vaporized and then condensed during the WTC Event.” The problem here is that lead vaporizes at 3200° F, some 1200° F hotter than is possible in hydrocarbon fires. A study of the WTC dust by the USGS for the EPA observed molybdenum-rich spheres that can form only above 4750° F. The high temperatures are another smoking gun.
Unignited Nano-Thermite in the WTC Dust
NIST did not even look for physical evidence of explosives. In fact NIST did not look at the physical evidence at all, apart from a few selected samples of the steel. The rest was destroyed. However, physical evidence did remain: the dust. NIST did not look at the dust, but independent investigators did. They discovered, along with the microspheres, tiny red-grey chips. They examined samples of WTC dust from different parts of Manhattan. All contained the red-gray chips. They found that the red layer consisted of unignited nano-thermite. Ordinary thermite is an incendiary: it can burn through heavy steel in seconds. The tiny particles in nano-thermite (1/1000 the thickness of a human hair) causes a much faster reaction so it can be used as a high explosive. The discovery of nano-thermite in the WTC dust was published in The Open Chemical Physics Journal in April 2009.
These scientists found not just a smoking gun, but a loaded gun.
Independent lines of evidence prove the official government claims are impossible. We see our role at AE911Truth as exposing the evidence official agencies and the corporate media are covering up. Following up on the implications is the responsibility of every citizen. Every citizen must face his or her own conscience when confronting these difficult facts — especially when we consider that 9/11 is the foundation for two wars, the launching of an endless “war on terror,” and the loss of our freedoms due to legislation pushed through amid the fog of war.
Following Up on the Evidence
Here are some starting points for action:
a) Send the AE911Truth.org link to your personal mailing list and every architect and engineer that you can find.
b) Sign the petition and demand a new, independent investigation. Volunteer. Become a sustaining donor.
c) Write your local news media and representatives. Tell them to address the evidence. Send them the DVD, “9/11: Blueprint for Truth.”
A video of initiation of explosive destruction is here for WTC 1 (North Tower) and here for WTC 2 (South Tower).
COAST GUARD INCIDENT IN POTOMAC RIVER SECURITY ZONE
September 11th, 2009Update3: Coast Guard to review exercise after Potomac security scare
CNN:
The U.S. Coast Guard said Friday it will review a training incident along the Potomac River that triggered security concerns about President Obama on the eighth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
“We are still gathering information of how this training event might have been misconstrued as an actual incident. We will conduct a thorough review of this incident,” the Coast Guard said in a statement.
It added, “The best way that we in the Coast Guard can remember Sept. 11, and our security obligations to the nation is to be always ready and this requires constant training and exercise. To ensure the appropriate readiness posture we conduct training scenarios across the nation on a daily basis.”
Minutes after Obama crossed the Memorial Bridge following an event at the Pentagon, word broke that a Coast Guard vessel apparently was trying to prevent a suspicious boat from entering a security zone.
There were reports on police scanners that the Coast Guard fired 10 rounds of ammunition. But a Department of Homeland Security representative later said no shots had been fired.
The Secret Service said the president was back at the White House by the time of the reports of shots being fired.
Federal agency emergency operations centers were not aware of the Coast Guard training exercise and began making contingency plans when word broke of what seemed to be a security incident, a federal source said.
—End Update—
UPDATE2: Coast Guard reports Potomac incident as a drill
The Associated Press cited Coast Guard Chief Keith Moore as saying the Coast Guard was conducting a training exercise in the Potomac moments before President Barack Obama and his motorcade crossed a nearby bridge. He also said that no shots were fired as part of the exercise, according to The AP.
Amid high security, the U.S. Coast Guard confronted a boat on restricted waters on the Potomac River outside Washington, D.C., according to CNN.
CNN initially reported 10 round being fired, but on reported its website shortly afterward that police scanner reports of shots being fired could not be immediately confirmed.
Departures from Reagan National Airport were halted shortly after 10 a.m. as a precaution, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Diane Spitaliere said. The airport borders the Potomac River near where shots were reported fired.
President Obama had been taking part in a September 11th ceremony at the Pentagon.
—End Update—
UPDATE1: Training Exercise?
AP: Coast Guard conducts training exercise on Potomac
(AP) – 12 minutes ago
WASHINGTON — The Coast Guard was conducting a training exercise in the Potomac River moments before President Barack Obama and his motorcade crossed a nearby bridge.
Coast Guard Chief Keith Moore said Friday no shots were fired as part of the exercise. Media reports suggested shots had been fired in the river.
Obama had traveled to the Pentagon for a ceremony commemorating the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
—End Update—
Via: CNN:
The U.S. Coast Guard tried Friday to prevent a boat from entering a security zone on the Potomac River not far from the Pentagon, where President Obama was at an event commemorating the September 11 attacks.
There were reports on police scanners that the Coast Guard fired 10 rounds of ammunition, but those reports could not immediately be confirmed. It was not immediately clear from the reports whether they referred to warning shots.
The incident took place between the Memorial and 14th Street bridges, in a zone that had been blocked off because of the ceremonies.
Obama had departed the Pentagon shortly after 10 a.m. ET. Reports of the incident came in shortly after 10 a.m. ET.
Fifty Questions on 9/11
September 11th, 2009Via: Asia Times:
It’s September 11 all over again – eight years on. The George W Bush administration is out. The “global war on terror” is still on, renamed “overseas contingency operations” by the Barack Obama administration. Obama’s “new strategy” – a war escalation – is in play in AfPak. Osama bin Laden may be dead or not. “Al-Qaeda” remains a catch-all ghost entity. September 11 – the neo-cons’ “new Pearl Harbor” – remains the darkest jigsaw puzzle of the young 21st century.
It’s useless to expect US corporate media and the ruling elites’ political operatives to call for a true, in-depth investigation into the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001. Whitewash has been the norm. But even establishment highlight Dr Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski, a former national security advisor, has admitted to the US Senate that the post-9/11 “war on terror” is a “mythical historical narrative”.
The following questions, some multi-part – and most totally ignored by the 9/11 Commission – are just the tip of the immense 9/11 iceberg.
…
None of these questions has been convincingly answered – according to the official narrative. It’s up to US civil society to keep up the pressure. Eight years after the fact, one fundamental conclusion is imperative. The official narrative edifice of 9/11 is simply not acceptable.
FBI Informant Says Agents Missed Chance to Stop 9/11 Ringleader Mohammed Atta
September 11th, 2009Via: ABC News:
On the eve of the eight year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, an FBI informant who infiltrated alleged terrorist cells in the U.S. tells ABC News the FBI missed a chance to stop the al Qaeda plot because they focused more on undercover stings than on the man who would later become known as 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta.
In an exclusive interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC World News with Charles Gibson and Nightline, former undercover operative Elie Assaad says he spotted and became suspicious of Atta in early 2001, when he was sent by the FBI to infiltrate a small mosque outside Miami. Atta was there with Adnan Shukrujuman, an al Qaeda fugitive who now has a $5 million U.S. reward on his head.
“There was something wrong with these guys,” Assaad, a 36-year-old Catholic native of Lebanon who pretended to be an Islamic extremist, says.
The FBI initially declined to comment but released a statement following the ABC News report, saying: “The 9/11 investigation, the most extensive ever conducted by the FBI, has been reviewed in its totality by the 9/11 Commission, Congress and others. The claims made in the news report and the factual conclusions contained in the story are not supported by the evidence.”
The FBI did not specify which claims or conclusions it referred to.
…
Assaad, who posed as “Mohammed” a personal representative of Osama bin Laden, says he’s a “million percent positive” the 9/11 attacks could have been stopped if the FBI had gone after Atta and Shukrujumah. But because Atta and his men were suspicious of the FBI undercover operative, and secretive, Assaad says his FBI agent handlers sent him after the easier target two wannabe terrorists whose cases were easy to crack and who were both eventually convicted and sent to prison.
Mice Levitated in Lab Using Magnetic Fields
September 11th, 2009Via: Live Science:
Scientists have now levitated mice using magnetic fields.
Other researchers have made live frogs and grasshoppers float in mid-air before, but such research with mice, being closer biologically to humans, could help in studies to counteract bone loss due to reduced gravity over long spans of time, as might be expected in deep space missions or on the surfaces of other planets.
Scientists working on behalf of NASA built a device to simulate variable levels of gravity. It consists of a superconducting magnet that generates a field powerful enough to levitate the water inside living animals, with a space inside warm enough at room temperature and large enough at 2.6 inches wide (6.6 cm) for tiny creatures to float comfortably in during experiments.
Disoriented
The researchers first levitated a young mouse, just three-week-old and weighing 10 grams. It appeared agitated and disoriented, seemingly trying to hold on to something.
“It actually kicked around and started to spin, and without friction, it could spin faster and faster, and we think that made it even more disoriented,” said researcher Yuanming Liu, a physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. They decided to mildly sedate the next mouse they levitated, which seemed content with floating.
A plastic cage was also designed by physicist Da-Ming Zhu at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, to keep the mice in during levitation. Its top remained open to let in air, food, water and video surveillance, and its bottom was filled with small holes to allow waste removal.
From time to time, mice would kick the walls of the cage, causing it to briefly drop off from the levitation zone before re-entering it and floating again.
Although the researchers could levitate mice with or without the cage, “it’s easier to house a mouse in a cage when you bring it to the levitation zone,” Liu explained. Also, if you want to run an experiment comparing mice living inside and outside the levitator, you want to set up exactly the same living conditions to match results up as best as possible.
Results
Repeated levitation tests showed the mice, even when not sedated, could quickly acclimate to levitation inside the cage. After three or four hours, the mice acted normally, including eating and drinking. The strong magnetic fields did not seem to have any negative impacts on the mice in the short term, and past studies have shown that rats did not suffer from adverse effects after 10 weeks of strong, non-levitating magnetic fields.
“We’re trying to see what kind of physiological impact is due to prolonged microgravity, and also what kind of countermeasures might work against it for astronauts,” Liu said. “If we can contribute to the future human exploration of space, that would be very exciting.” They are now applying for funding for such research with their levitator.
The researchers also levitated water drops up to 2 inches wide (5 cm). This suggests the variable gravity simulator could be used to study how liquids behave under reduced gravity, such as how heat is transferred or how bubbles behave.
Liu, Zhu and their colleagues detailed their findings online Sept. 6 in the journal Advances in Space Research.
Research Credit: dilinger
Kucinich Responds to Obama’s Address to Congress: Windfall for Insurance and Pharmaceutical Companies
September 10th, 2009Broadband South African Style: 4GB USB Drive Attached to a Pigeon
September 10th, 2009Wow. You’ve seen the end of my bitching about my Internet connection.
Via: BBC:
Broadband promised to unite the world with super-fast data delivery – but in South Africa it seems the web is still no faster than a humble pigeon.
A Durban IT company pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country’s biggest web firm, Telkom.
Winston the pigeon took two hours to carry the data 60 miles – in the same time the ADSL had sent 4% of the data.
Telkom said it was not responsible for the firm’s slow internet speeds.
The idea for the race came when a member of staff at Unlimited IT complained about the speed of data transmission on ADSL.
He said it would be faster by carrier pigeon.
“We renown ourselves on being innovative, so we decided to test that statement,” Unlimited’s Kevin Rolfe told the Beeld newspaper.
Foreclosures Keep Coming
September 10th, 2009Via: Reuters:
U.S. mortgage foreclosure filings in August hovered near July’s record high despite broad efforts to keep borrowers in their homes and will probably rise for another year, according to a report released on Thursday.
Filings — including notices of default, auction and bank repossession — dipped 1 percent last month from July’s all-time high and were up 18 percent in August from the same month a year earlier, real estate data firm RealtyTrac said.
“The pipeline of early stage foreclosures and delinquent loans is still probably going to overwhelm the system’s ability to quickly modify” terms so struggling homeowners can make their monthly mortgage payments, said Rick Sharga, senior vice president at the Irvine, California-based company.
One in every 357 U.S. households with loans got a foreclosure filing in August.
Though lenders are moving in the right direction, Sharga said, RealtyTrac is revising up its estimate for filings this year and now expects a more prolonged foreclosure crisis.
Some 3.4 million households will get a filing this year, up from the prior estimate of 3 million to 3.2 million, and sharply higher than 2.3 million filings last year.
If the forecast is realized, it will be more than four times the filings in 2005, before the deepest housing crash since the Great Depression began.
“We had been thinking that this year would be the peak, but at the rate things are going right now, it’s appearing more likely that late 2010 might be the peak year before things start to moderate,” Sharga said.
A quick recovery is not in the cards, either.
“I don’t expect it to be that 2010 will peak and 2011 will be the wonderful land of Oz,” Sharga added.”
Australia: Sleep-Deprived Doctors Told to Drink Coffee
September 10th, 2009Via: Reuters:
Exhausted Australian doctors have been told to drink up to six cups of coffee a day to stay awake during extended shifts, building pressure on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to seize control of state-run hospitals.
A document on fatigue management released by health officials in Queensland state recommended doctors ingest 400 milligrams of caffeine to stay awake on the job, or the equivalent of six cups of coffee, after warnings that patients were dying.
“For management to just say go and have a cup of coffee and get over tiredness, it cheapens the whole issue,” Australian Medical Association Vice President Steven Hambleton told Reuters.
“We are talking about serious issues here, and this is not just a serious suggestion at all. It can’t be a weakness to say you’re dog tired,” he said.
The recommendation followed warnings from a union representing Queensland doctors this week that public hospital patients were dying because dangerously tired medics were being forced to work up to 80 hours without a break.
…
In advocating the use of caffeine by doctors, the health department document said that compared with other psychoactive drugs, such as the prescription-only stimulant modafinil, caffeine was more readily available and less expensive.
Dr Pepper’s Wet Dream: Water, Government Subsidies and Transfer of Wealth in the Middle of the Desert
September 10th, 2009Via: Alternet:
On a sun-baked afternoon in October 2008, a group of soft-drink executives and city officials gathered for a groundbreaking ceremony at an old Air Force base on the outskirts of the city, 100 miles east of Los Angeles.
They were standing on the edge of the Mojave Desert, one of the driest, most inhospitable terrains in America. Yet there they were, posing for photographs, gold-plated shovels in hand, to mark the construction of a massive new bottling plant and distribution hub for the Dr Pepper Snapple Group, a facility that will to suck up hundreds of millions of gallons of water a year from this water-scarce area to supply soft drinks to 20 percent of its domestic market.
A bottling plant in the middle of the desert? It sounds too absurd to be real. But in the warped “pro-growth, pro-business” logic of a city on the frontier of Southern California’s urban sprawl, the plan made perfect economic sense.
If the scheme is pulled off without a hitch, Dr Pepper will fire up one of its biggest production nodes in America sometime near the end of 2010.
The $120 million plant will occupy 57 acres, with 200 low-skilled workers manning almost 1 million square feet of warehouse space. Using 250 million gallons of water a year, six production lines will crank out 350,000 gallons worth of liquid refreshments a day, shipping perennial soft-drink favorites like Dr Pepper, Snapple, 7UP, A&W, Hawaiian Punch and 50 other brands all across the West Coast and Southwest.
The Victorville plant was a steal for the beverage manufacturer, receiving tens of millions of dollars in subsidies from the city. Local officials have painted it as a win-win situation, talking up the jobs and tax revenue it will bring to a community hard-hit by the recession and housing market collapse.
Yet, no one has seriously addressed the big wet elephant in the room: water. Where will it come from, and at what cost to the local population?
Research Credit: ltcolonelnemo
