Eleven years ago today, I was on sabbatical at the University of Arizona and listening to NPR when I heard the shocking news that the United States had been attacked by terrorists. Most of us quickly suspected Muslim religious extremists were the perpetrators, and we weren't wrong. My colleagues and I speculated that, despite the evidence, conspiracy theorists would quickly find some other group to blame: the CIA, Mossad, Bush, etc., and we weren't wrong either. Soon there were dozens of false claims circulating: that hundreds of Jews had been warned before the attack; that Larry Silverstein, owner of WTC 7, had given the order for controlled demolition of the building; and so forth. Only crackpots, we thought, would subscribe to these nutty claims.
But we were wrong. Many formerly respected academics, and some not so respected, signed on, and some spun elaborate and preposterous scenarios.
Nowadays, with extensive documentation of the role of Osama bin Laden and his henchmen in the attack, such as Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower, few rational people doubt the generally-accepted account of 9/11. Yet the truther movement lives on, although it has become more and more marginalized. They are reduced to creating self-appointed "expert panels" consisting of physical therapists, actors, and religious studies professors, that do "investigations" whose loony conclusions are pre-ordained.
The really sad thing is that these folks, with their zeal, could have actually done something useful about the real abuses of Bush and Obama: Guantanamo Bay, illegal dententions, the expansion of the surveillance state, and so forth. Instead, they advance lies, sow discord, damage the reputation of the United States, and discredit themselves.
Showing posts with label 9/11. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 9/11. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Monday, July 09, 2012
The Death of Nano-Thermite
Did 9-11 "truthers" mistakenly identify ordinary epoxy, clay, and steel as "nano-thermite"?
That's what a new study concludes.
Gee whiz, it looks like the conspiracy crackpots got something wrong again. Who's surprised?
That's what a new study concludes.
Gee whiz, it looks like the conspiracy crackpots got something wrong again. Who's surprised?
Monday, September 05, 2011
9/11 Deniers Ride Again
There's good news and bad news on the 9/11 denier front.
The good news is that Jonathan Kay has a new book, Among the Truthers, containing a perceptive analysis of the commonalities among 9/11 "Truthers", Obama "birthers", and other fringe conspiracists.
The bad news is that the 9/11 deniers are soon to host yet another laughable truther meeting, which they pompously call the Toronto Hearings, September 8-11, at Ryerson. Here's an article in the Canadian Press that mentions it.
Many of the usual Canadian 9/11 crowd will be there, including Michael Keefer, Graeme MacQueen, and Adnan Zuberi.
I hope some of our local skeptics can attend and report on it.
The good news is that Jonathan Kay has a new book, Among the Truthers, containing a perceptive analysis of the commonalities among 9/11 "Truthers", Obama "birthers", and other fringe conspiracists.
The bad news is that the 9/11 deniers are soon to host yet another laughable truther meeting, which they pompously call the Toronto Hearings, September 8-11, at Ryerson. Here's an article in the Canadian Press that mentions it.
Many of the usual Canadian 9/11 crowd will be there, including Michael Keefer, Graeme MacQueen, and Adnan Zuberi.
I hope some of our local skeptics can attend and report on it.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Harun Yahya Blames 9/11 on "Darwinists"
Just when you thought he couldn't get any weirder, here is the crackpot Turkish creationist Harun Yahya (pseudonym of Adnan Oktar) blaming 9/11 on the CIA, and "deviant Arab communists, Darwinists, and materialists".
Of course, anyone who has studied the incident knows that in fact the 9/11 attackers were pious Muslims who worshipped at mosques like al Quds in Hamburg and spent much of their time talking about religion. There is simply no indication at all that they knew a damn thing about evolutionary biology or Darwin.
Yahya isn't much different from the theocrats at the Discovery Institute, who want to link Darwin to both fascism and communism.
Of course, anyone who has studied the incident knows that in fact the 9/11 attackers were pious Muslims who worshipped at mosques like al Quds in Hamburg and spent much of their time talking about religion. There is simply no indication at all that they knew a damn thing about evolutionary biology or Darwin.
Yahya isn't much different from the theocrats at the Discovery Institute, who want to link Darwin to both fascism and communism.
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Irony
Here's a commentary from the Asian Tribune by Habib Siddiqui, decrying the backlash again the proposed Cordoba Islamic Center in New York City. Shame on those bigots!, he concludes, and rightly so.
So it's rather ironic that he subscribes to three discredited claims about the World Trade Center, which undermine his argument.
First, he claims that "while the number of Jews working in the WTC numbered a few thousands, less than a dozen Jews died there." This is false. "...the number of Jews who died in the attacks is variously estimated at between 270 to 400. The lower figure tracks closely with the percentage of Jews living in the New York area and partial surveys of the victims' listed religion. The U.S. State Department has published a partial list of 76 in response to claims that fewer Jews/Israelis died in the WTC attacks than should have been present at the time."
Second, he claims that "As a matter of fact more Muslims died there that day than Jews". There is no evidence in support of this claim. For example, this page of Muslim victims lists only 60, less than the partial list of 76 Jews mentioned above.
Third, he claims that Jews "were forewarned of the impending attack by an intelligence monitoring service, operating out of Israel". This is a nasty smear that cannot survive even the most cursory examination, and is debunked in the 9/11 commission report.
Yes, the backlash against the Cordoba Center is bigotry and every right-thinking person should condemn it. But publishing discredited anti-Semitic claims is also bigotry. Siddiqui should be ashamed.
Postscript: Habib Saddiqui is even worse than I thought. Compare his piece, as published in the Asian Tribune with what is apparently the the original version as published on his blog.
In the blog version, he's got the following lines: Steve Beckow is one such noble Jew who was a former Member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. He wrote an article “To Muslims of America, I Apologize." He believes that “9/11 was truly, as has been said, an "inside job." It was an engineered false-flag operation in which some Muslims played a role, but in the employ of primarily American agencies like the CIA and FBI. It featured not only some Muslims, but also some Israelis as well as nationals from many other countries.”
This looniness was apparently too much even for the Asian Tribune.
It's really pathetic that some Muslims can't own up to the fact that the WTC terrorists were Muslims organized and directed by Osama bin Laden. Crazed accusations about "false-flag operation[s]" take away every shred of credibility Siddiqui aspires to. Siddiqui should read The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright. It leaves no doubt about who was responsible for 9/11.
Post-Postscript
I wondered what kind of person Siddiqui's source for his 9/11 allegations, Steve Beckow, was. So I wondered over to his blog, only to discover a huge fountain of woo. Beckow apparently thinks that "At an early but unknown date, we can expect a world leader (probably President Obama) to disclose the fact that human beings from other star systems are here, in spacecraft around our planet – some cloaked, some in other dimensions – and that evolved life exists in many places in the universe." Yeah, he's a real credible source. Siddiqui should be ashamed to cite this psychoceramic.
So it's rather ironic that he subscribes to three discredited claims about the World Trade Center, which undermine his argument.
First, he claims that "while the number of Jews working in the WTC numbered a few thousands, less than a dozen Jews died there." This is false. "...the number of Jews who died in the attacks is variously estimated at between 270 to 400. The lower figure tracks closely with the percentage of Jews living in the New York area and partial surveys of the victims' listed religion. The U.S. State Department has published a partial list of 76 in response to claims that fewer Jews/Israelis died in the WTC attacks than should have been present at the time."
Second, he claims that "As a matter of fact more Muslims died there that day than Jews". There is no evidence in support of this claim. For example, this page of Muslim victims lists only 60, less than the partial list of 76 Jews mentioned above.
Third, he claims that Jews "were forewarned of the impending attack by an intelligence monitoring service, operating out of Israel". This is a nasty smear that cannot survive even the most cursory examination, and is debunked in the 9/11 commission report.
Yes, the backlash against the Cordoba Center is bigotry and every right-thinking person should condemn it. But publishing discredited anti-Semitic claims is also bigotry. Siddiqui should be ashamed.
Postscript: Habib Saddiqui is even worse than I thought. Compare his piece, as published in the Asian Tribune with what is apparently the the original version as published on his blog.
In the blog version, he's got the following lines: Steve Beckow is one such noble Jew who was a former Member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. He wrote an article “To Muslims of America, I Apologize." He believes that “9/11 was truly, as has been said, an "inside job." It was an engineered false-flag operation in which some Muslims played a role, but in the employ of primarily American agencies like the CIA and FBI. It featured not only some Muslims, but also some Israelis as well as nationals from many other countries.”
This looniness was apparently too much even for the Asian Tribune.
It's really pathetic that some Muslims can't own up to the fact that the WTC terrorists were Muslims organized and directed by Osama bin Laden. Crazed accusations about "false-flag operation[s]" take away every shred of credibility Siddiqui aspires to. Siddiqui should read The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright. It leaves no doubt about who was responsible for 9/11.
Post-Postscript
I wondered what kind of person Siddiqui's source for his 9/11 allegations, Steve Beckow, was. So I wondered over to his blog, only to discover a huge fountain of woo. Beckow apparently thinks that "At an early but unknown date, we can expect a world leader (probably President Obama) to disclose the fact that human beings from other star systems are here, in spacecraft around our planet – some cloaked, some in other dimensions – and that evolved life exists in many places in the universe." Yeah, he's a real credible source. Siddiqui should be ashamed to cite this psychoceramic.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
9/11 "Truthers" Meet their Waterloo - The Ron Craig Talk
The UW 9/11 Research Group, which previously sponsored two presentations by truthers, has finally gotten around to hearing the other side.
Ron Craig, a professor at Ryerson University with extensive training and experience in explosives, gave a talk Friday night in the Arts Lecture Hall at the University of Waterloo. Here's a brief summary:
He started by asking, "How many people here believe the WTC buildings were brought down by explosives?" Sadly, about half the people in the audience of approximately 100 raised their hands.
He then showed clips of the WTC buildings collapsing, some eyewitness testimony, and excerpts of last year's appalling presentations by A. K. Dewdney and Graeme MacQueen. He then asked rhetorically, "After seeing all this, how could you not believe the towers were brought down by explosives?"
Briefly, his answer was "expectation bias": investigators reach a premature conclusion without examining all the relevant data.
9/11 "Truthers" start with a presupposition, then look for data to support it. By contrast, real fire investigators start with documents such as NFPA 921, which outlines a scientific basis for investigating these incidents.
Craig pointed out that the WTC buildings used an innovative design for lightweight construction. They were the first super-high buildings to use this kind of construction, without heavy girders. The buildings weighed only 1/2 of what a conventional building would have weighed.
When demolition experts want to bring down a building, he said, they drill into columns and place the explosives. But no cement columns were used in the WTC. Furthermore, maintenance at the buildings reports that core beams above the 84th floor were inaccessible.
He then examined one claimed scenario for controlled demolition: in this scenario, explosives were placed on every floor. He then estimated how much explosive would be needed in this scenario, and came up with 1300 pounds of TNT-equivalent per floor, for a total of 143,000 pounds. Clearly this would be infeasible to set up without someone noticing.
Furthermore, such a large amount of explosive would have blown out windows in other buildings for blocks around. But this did not occur. In an explosive detonation, the typical inury is from flying glass, but there is no evidence that this occurred, nor evidence of other kinds of projectile injuries.
Explosives create heat of as much as 7000 degrees. Thermal injuries will be accompanied by primary blast injuries caused by pressure when the shockwave progesses through the body (e.g., middle ear injuries). "Blast lung" can occur at 50 to 150 psi. But not a single person in NY exhibited any symptoms of PBI.
Claims that thermite was used is undermined by the fact that no barium nitrate was found in the debris. He estimated that 61,000 pounds of thermite would have been needed. Again, it would have been impossible to set this up without someone noticing. Claims that sulfur was a signature of thermite/thermate are silly, because both the elevator shafts and stairwells were constructed with drywall, which is gypsum (calcium sulfate with 18% sulfur content).
Claims that molten steel was still flowing 21 days after the attacks are implausible. He showed one slide that supposedly depicted white-hot metal being observed by workers; it was actually just a worklight, as a video showed.
There is no good evidence that there were pools of molten steel. Many metals were at WTC, and low-temperature alloys could easily have formed. NFPA 921 says "if this occurs it is not an indication that accelerants were used or were present in the fire."
He then addressed the claim that "no other steel frame building has ever collapsed because of fire". He addressed other fires, such as this one at Delft. During the fire there was a partial collapse with "squibs" visible just as in the WTC.
He compared the WTC fire to other fires, such as the one in Madrid and One Meridian Plaza in Philadelphia. Both of these buildings had designs quite different from WTC.
Overall, I'd rate this part of the presentation as an A-. I think his points were very effective, although he could have also referenced the 1967 McCormick Center fire in Chicago, and he could have pointed to the lack of seismic evidence for explosions.
After the talk, there were some questions from the audience. One questioner asked him if he considered the "geo-political context" for 9/11. To his credit, Craig said that this was not his area of expertise; he is a fire and explosives expert, and his job is to look at the hard evidence, not speculations about motives.
Another questioner suggested that the Towers were brought down by some high-tech explosive invented by the government but unknown to everyone else. Craig found this suggestion (and a similar suggestion that "lasers" were used) ridiculous, saying that he regularly attends explosives conferences and such a thing could not be kept secret from experts.
Another questioner brought up the collapse of WTC 7. Craig said that he did not know for sure the cause of the collapse of that building, because not enough evidence was gathered yet. He said that he expects we will eventually know, because there is a strong motivation by architects, engineers, and insurance companies to understand the reasons behind the collapse, and many people are working on it.
I'd rate the question-answering portion as B+. Sometimes he simply reiterated previous points, instead of attempting to address the question from another angle, but overall he was generally effective.
Overall, I thought Ron Craig did a good job of demolishing the bizarre and unsupported claims by truthers that explosives brought down the World Trade Center buildings. Regrettably, it is unlikely to have much impact on truthers, who typically hold their beliefs with a religious fervor.
Ron Craig, a professor at Ryerson University with extensive training and experience in explosives, gave a talk Friday night in the Arts Lecture Hall at the University of Waterloo. Here's a brief summary:
He started by asking, "How many people here believe the WTC buildings were brought down by explosives?" Sadly, about half the people in the audience of approximately 100 raised their hands.
He then showed clips of the WTC buildings collapsing, some eyewitness testimony, and excerpts of last year's appalling presentations by A. K. Dewdney and Graeme MacQueen. He then asked rhetorically, "After seeing all this, how could you not believe the towers were brought down by explosives?"
Briefly, his answer was "expectation bias": investigators reach a premature conclusion without examining all the relevant data.
9/11 "Truthers" start with a presupposition, then look for data to support it. By contrast, real fire investigators start with documents such as NFPA 921, which outlines a scientific basis for investigating these incidents.
Craig pointed out that the WTC buildings used an innovative design for lightweight construction. They were the first super-high buildings to use this kind of construction, without heavy girders. The buildings weighed only 1/2 of what a conventional building would have weighed.
When demolition experts want to bring down a building, he said, they drill into columns and place the explosives. But no cement columns were used in the WTC. Furthermore, maintenance at the buildings reports that core beams above the 84th floor were inaccessible.
He then examined one claimed scenario for controlled demolition: in this scenario, explosives were placed on every floor. He then estimated how much explosive would be needed in this scenario, and came up with 1300 pounds of TNT-equivalent per floor, for a total of 143,000 pounds. Clearly this would be infeasible to set up without someone noticing.
Furthermore, such a large amount of explosive would have blown out windows in other buildings for blocks around. But this did not occur. In an explosive detonation, the typical inury is from flying glass, but there is no evidence that this occurred, nor evidence of other kinds of projectile injuries.
Explosives create heat of as much as 7000 degrees. Thermal injuries will be accompanied by primary blast injuries caused by pressure when the shockwave progesses through the body (e.g., middle ear injuries). "Blast lung" can occur at 50 to 150 psi. But not a single person in NY exhibited any symptoms of PBI.
Claims that thermite was used is undermined by the fact that no barium nitrate was found in the debris. He estimated that 61,000 pounds of thermite would have been needed. Again, it would have been impossible to set this up without someone noticing. Claims that sulfur was a signature of thermite/thermate are silly, because both the elevator shafts and stairwells were constructed with drywall, which is gypsum (calcium sulfate with 18% sulfur content).
Claims that molten steel was still flowing 21 days after the attacks are implausible. He showed one slide that supposedly depicted white-hot metal being observed by workers; it was actually just a worklight, as a video showed.
There is no good evidence that there were pools of molten steel. Many metals were at WTC, and low-temperature alloys could easily have formed. NFPA 921 says "if this occurs it is not an indication that accelerants were used or were present in the fire."
He then addressed the claim that "no other steel frame building has ever collapsed because of fire". He addressed other fires, such as this one at Delft. During the fire there was a partial collapse with "squibs" visible just as in the WTC.
He compared the WTC fire to other fires, such as the one in Madrid and One Meridian Plaza in Philadelphia. Both of these buildings had designs quite different from WTC.
Overall, I'd rate this part of the presentation as an A-. I think his points were very effective, although he could have also referenced the 1967 McCormick Center fire in Chicago, and he could have pointed to the lack of seismic evidence for explosions.
After the talk, there were some questions from the audience. One questioner asked him if he considered the "geo-political context" for 9/11. To his credit, Craig said that this was not his area of expertise; he is a fire and explosives expert, and his job is to look at the hard evidence, not speculations about motives.
Another questioner suggested that the Towers were brought down by some high-tech explosive invented by the government but unknown to everyone else. Craig found this suggestion (and a similar suggestion that "lasers" were used) ridiculous, saying that he regularly attends explosives conferences and such a thing could not be kept secret from experts.
Another questioner brought up the collapse of WTC 7. Craig said that he did not know for sure the cause of the collapse of that building, because not enough evidence was gathered yet. He said that he expects we will eventually know, because there is a strong motivation by architects, engineers, and insurance companies to understand the reasons behind the collapse, and many people are working on it.
I'd rate the question-answering portion as B+. Sometimes he simply reiterated previous points, instead of attempting to address the question from another angle, but overall he was generally effective.
Overall, I thought Ron Craig did a good job of demolishing the bizarre and unsupported claims by truthers that explosives brought down the World Trade Center buildings. Regrettably, it is unlikely to have much impact on truthers, who typically hold their beliefs with a religious fervor.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Local 9/11 Crackpots at it Again!
Not satisfied with their truly ignoble performance the last time around, our local 9/11 crackpots are holding another event this Thursday:
The misnamed "9/11 Truth" movement seems to be dying out almost everywhere, except in Canada, where it has a very strong strain of US-hatred to draw on. In the US, it seems the crackpots have moved on to "Obama is a Muslim Manchurian candidate, the secret love child of Malcolm X, who will become a dictator, take away everyone's rights, and turn the US into a socialist paradise."
As John Ray points out, "Today, the 9/11 conspiracy movement is a shell of what it once was. The website masquerading as an academic journal, Journal of 9/11 Studies, has dropped from a high of six articles in its August 2006 issue to one in March and its two most recent editions (it's supposed to be updated monthly) were simply skipped over, evidently for lack of a single article."
In case you can't read the poster, you can see a better version here. Global Outlook, the group sponsoring the Waterloo event, is also hosting a lecture series at the University of Toronto that looks just chock-full of all sorts of woo, including a bizarre focus on "natural medicine" and "out-of-place artifacts".
The misnamed "9/11 Truth" movement seems to be dying out almost everywhere, except in Canada, where it has a very strong strain of US-hatred to draw on. In the US, it seems the crackpots have moved on to "Obama is a Muslim Manchurian candidate, the secret love child of Malcolm X, who will become a dictator, take away everyone's rights, and turn the US into a socialist paradise."
As John Ray points out, "Today, the 9/11 conspiracy movement is a shell of what it once was. The website masquerading as an academic journal, Journal of 9/11 Studies, has dropped from a high of six articles in its August 2006 issue to one in March and its two most recent editions (it's supposed to be updated monthly) were simply skipped over, evidently for lack of a single article."
In case you can't read the poster, you can see a better version here. Global Outlook, the group sponsoring the Waterloo event, is also hosting a lecture series at the University of Toronto that looks just chock-full of all sorts of woo, including a bizarre focus on "natural medicine" and "out-of-place artifacts".
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Note to "9/11 Truth" Advocates
No, it is not appropriate to use the comments section of my blog to arrange "meetups" for your loony conspiracy theories.
(Yes, believe it or not, somebody tried to do this. For friggin' St. Louis.)
(Yes, believe it or not, somebody tried to do this. For friggin' St. Louis.)
Saturday, March 22, 2008
The Question-and-Answer Period at the 9/11 Deniers Evening
After the introduction by Richard B. Lee, the presentation by A. K. Dewdney, and the presentation by Graeme MacQueen, there was a brief intermission, followed by a question-and-answer period.
After the deniers spoke for about two hours, the organizers allowed only about 30 minutes for questions. The question period was moderated by Michael Keefer, a professor in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. Keefer is the author of this criticism of Alexander Cockburn for not buying the theories of 9/11 deniers, and as such, is placed firmly in the "9/11 Truth" camp. (For Cockburn's columns, go here and here; for more "9/11" material by Keefer, go here.)
The first question was, "What evidence would be required to disprove the theories presented here tonight?" The responses ranged from "We are not at a position to say" (paraphrased) to Graeme MacQueen's claim that he read 9/11 firefighters' testimonies looking for evidence for and against his hypothesis of an explosion.
The next question was, "Popular Mechanics says cell phone calls can be made from planes. If they cannot, does this mean that the US government's analysis is flawed, or was their a conspiracy?" (paraphrased). In response, Dewdney says it's up to people who claim the calls can be made to explain them, not up to him.
The third question asked, "Do you think the initial 9/11 Commission report was a deliberate attempt to mislead people, or was it just mistaken conclusions due to time pressure?" Graeme MacQueen thinks it was deliberate, and as evidence, said that Philip Zelikow (executive director of the 9/11 commission) was a friend of Condoleezza Rice, so the 9/11 Commission wasn't independent.
The fourth question asked, "Who benefits?" The response was that the US benefits by seizing Iraqi oil supplies. The Iraqi people will never regain control of their own oil. The reasons for the invasion of Afghanistan are similar, and the goal is complete hegemony by the US empire.
The fifth question asked, "Was there any attempt by NIST to model the airplane crashes?" Answer: no, there was not. The University of Waterloo should model these events. Dewdney agreed.
Finally, I had a chance to ask a question. Earlier in the evening, I had argued with the moderator Michael Keefer, and he was doing his best to avoid seeing my raised hand. In the classiest event of the evening, A. K. Dewdney intervened and said, "Can we have a question from my friend?" I think he deserves a lot of credit for this gesture, particularly because he knows I am a fierce critic of his position. I listed 3 falsehoods in Dewdney's presentation (Keefer tried to cut me off after 2) and asked for their reply: the wrong number of Airfone calls from UAL 93, the use of the word "pull" does not mean controlled demolition, and the debris in Shanksville. Dewdney acknowledged that there was debris, but again used the opportunity to cast doubt on the crash by saying that inflight magazines were found 15 miles away, suggesting that UAL 93 was shot down.
Afterwards, I had the opportunity to chat briefly with some of the attendees. One person thanked me for offering the only rational voice of the night, but others thought I was misguided. I made the analogy of 9/11 denial to creationism, to which one attendee responded, "I don't believe in evolution -- I'm a Christian".
Conclusion: the speakers presented a case for conspiracy that was superficially persuasive, but only if one has not read any rebuttals to their bogus claims. In general, the speakers did not have the professional qualifications to comment on the events, and as academics, behaved irresponsibly in so doing. They also failed to acknowledge that experts who do have the relevant qualifications take issue with their theories. The U of W Debate Club should be ashamed of its role in the event, allowing the deniers to speak so long and unopposed, and allowing a "moderator" and question-taker that were not neutral.
At the beginning, "moderator" Richard B. Lee asked, "Why have the floodgates not opened? Why is the media not filled with page after page of penetrating investigative journalism?" The answer is clear: because the claims of the "9/11 Truth" movement are sheer crackpottery, no matter how many scholars subscribe to them.
If the organizers of this event think they will make political hay out of it, I think they are sorely mistaken. As Chip Berlet has pointed out, no successful political movement in North America has ever been based on allegations of conspiracy. By focussing on bogus claims of controlled demolition, we lose focus on what really matters: how the US was led to war by a dishonest administration, and how the US can now repair the damage it has wrought and its reputation in the world. And how the civilized world can best counter the genuine threat posed by fundamentalist religions of all stripes, including the violent and radical Islam that caused 19 young men to take the lives of thousands of others on September 11, 2001.
After the deniers spoke for about two hours, the organizers allowed only about 30 minutes for questions. The question period was moderated by Michael Keefer, a professor in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. Keefer is the author of this criticism of Alexander Cockburn for not buying the theories of 9/11 deniers, and as such, is placed firmly in the "9/11 Truth" camp. (For Cockburn's columns, go here and here; for more "9/11" material by Keefer, go here.)
The first question was, "What evidence would be required to disprove the theories presented here tonight?" The responses ranged from "We are not at a position to say" (paraphrased) to Graeme MacQueen's claim that he read 9/11 firefighters' testimonies looking for evidence for and against his hypothesis of an explosion.
The next question was, "Popular Mechanics says cell phone calls can be made from planes. If they cannot, does this mean that the US government's analysis is flawed, or was their a conspiracy?" (paraphrased). In response, Dewdney says it's up to people who claim the calls can be made to explain them, not up to him.
The third question asked, "Do you think the initial 9/11 Commission report was a deliberate attempt to mislead people, or was it just mistaken conclusions due to time pressure?" Graeme MacQueen thinks it was deliberate, and as evidence, said that Philip Zelikow (executive director of the 9/11 commission) was a friend of Condoleezza Rice, so the 9/11 Commission wasn't independent.
The fourth question asked, "Who benefits?" The response was that the US benefits by seizing Iraqi oil supplies. The Iraqi people will never regain control of their own oil. The reasons for the invasion of Afghanistan are similar, and the goal is complete hegemony by the US empire.
The fifth question asked, "Was there any attempt by NIST to model the airplane crashes?" Answer: no, there was not. The University of Waterloo should model these events. Dewdney agreed.
Finally, I had a chance to ask a question. Earlier in the evening, I had argued with the moderator Michael Keefer, and he was doing his best to avoid seeing my raised hand. In the classiest event of the evening, A. K. Dewdney intervened and said, "Can we have a question from my friend?" I think he deserves a lot of credit for this gesture, particularly because he knows I am a fierce critic of his position. I listed 3 falsehoods in Dewdney's presentation (Keefer tried to cut me off after 2) and asked for their reply: the wrong number of Airfone calls from UAL 93, the use of the word "pull" does not mean controlled demolition, and the debris in Shanksville. Dewdney acknowledged that there was debris, but again used the opportunity to cast doubt on the crash by saying that inflight magazines were found 15 miles away, suggesting that UAL 93 was shot down.
Afterwards, I had the opportunity to chat briefly with some of the attendees. One person thanked me for offering the only rational voice of the night, but others thought I was misguided. I made the analogy of 9/11 denial to creationism, to which one attendee responded, "I don't believe in evolution -- I'm a Christian".
Conclusion: the speakers presented a case for conspiracy that was superficially persuasive, but only if one has not read any rebuttals to their bogus claims. In general, the speakers did not have the professional qualifications to comment on the events, and as academics, behaved irresponsibly in so doing. They also failed to acknowledge that experts who do have the relevant qualifications take issue with their theories. The U of W Debate Club should be ashamed of its role in the event, allowing the deniers to speak so long and unopposed, and allowing a "moderator" and question-taker that were not neutral.
At the beginning, "moderator" Richard B. Lee asked, "Why have the floodgates not opened? Why is the media not filled with page after page of penetrating investigative journalism?" The answer is clear: because the claims of the "9/11 Truth" movement are sheer crackpottery, no matter how many scholars subscribe to them.
If the organizers of this event think they will make political hay out of it, I think they are sorely mistaken. As Chip Berlet has pointed out, no successful political movement in North America has ever been based on allegations of conspiracy. By focussing on bogus claims of controlled demolition, we lose focus on what really matters: how the US was led to war by a dishonest administration, and how the US can now repair the damage it has wrought and its reputation in the world. And how the civilized world can best counter the genuine threat posed by fundamentalist religions of all stripes, including the violent and radical Islam that caused 19 young men to take the lives of thousands of others on September 11, 2001.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Graeme MacQueen at the 9/11 Denier Evening
For other parts of this series, go here, here, here, here, and here.
The last speaker of the evening was Graeme MacQueen, who was introduced as a retired professor of Religious Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. His specialties include Buddhist studies. Like the other speakers, MacQueen has no professional background to discuss the physics and engineering aspects of the World Trade towers' collapse, but that didn't stop him from pontificating on the subject.
He started by thanking Adnan Zuberi and Adam Parrott for organizing the evening. (As an aside, I note that when I asked a member of the UW Debate Club who Adam Parrott was, he had no idea. I find it strange that an organizer of the evening's events would be unknown to members of the club that sponsored the presentation. Both Parrott and Zuberi are listed on this page as "grassroots organizers" for the misnamed "9/11 Truth" movement.)
He started by saying, "I have two modest aims: why a reasonable person might have serious doubts about the official explanation about why the two World Trade Centre towers came down the way they did... why a reasonable person might want to explore another theory: controlled demolition." This indeed, sounds very modest. But soon the veneer of reasonableness was stripped away, as he described the generally-accepted model of the Towers' collapse and then said, "A rather obvious fraud, in my view." This kind of behavior is typical of the "9/11 Truth" movement. Their claims are outlandish and unsupported; yet if you do not agree, you are in league with fraud. By using the word "fraud", MacQueen denigrates the dozens of structural engineers, fire engineers, and civil engineers who have looked into the buildings' collapse and have paintstakingly devised the generally-accepted theory. There is no legitimate reason to believe that all these researchers have engaged in fraudulent activity, and it is a gross calumny to say so.
Much of MacQueen's argument was devoted to the principle that since, if you looked at the video of the World Trade towers' collapse, you would describe what happened as an "explosion", therefore there must have been an explosion that caused the collapse. He consistently denigrated the idea that to understand exactly what happened, you would need to understand anything substantial about physics, civil engineering, or building construction: "You don't need a Ph. D. to look at these photographs".
He plotted the position of the top of one tower through time, and was astonished to discover that the resulting graph formed a parabola similar to free fall. (I imagine professors of religious studies don't have much time to study equations based on gravity.) This "grade-school physics" exercise, he claims, is enough to rebut the thousands of hours of study by civil engineers on the World Trade Center collapse, and the report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
The only alternative to the NIST theory, according to MacQueen, is controlled demolition, brought about by explosives, incendiaries, or both, through a covert operation.
"Controlled demolition" of the WTC, of course, is one of the favorite assertions of 9/11 deniers. But they offer no plausible rationale why anyone would want to carry out both a plane attack and a controlled demolition. Why not just the demolition? Wouldn't it be much more sensible to plant bombs in the WTC and then blame those on terrorists? After all, terrorists already bombed the WTC back in 1993. 9/11 deniers consistently fail to address this.
Further, if the government carried out the plane attack, why would they bother with setting bombs, too? The destruction wrought by the planes alone seriously damaged the buildings, and repairs would have cost hundreds of millions, if not more. Why wouldn't that be enough as a pretext for war, if that were the government's plan? 9/11 deniers have no answer.
Furthermore, seismic data offer no support at all for the contention that there was an explosion before the collapse of the buildings. How do 9/11 deniers explain this? Silence.
During his presentation, MacQueen referred several times to the Journal of 9/11 Studies for support for his claims. The editors of this "journal" are Kevin Ryan, Frank Legge, and Steven Jones -- three men heavily involved in the "9/11 Truth" movement. No one taking issue with "9/11 Truth" claims is involved. This is not a scholarly journal in any sense of the word; it is a propaganda outfit for deniers.
The latter part of MacQueen's presentation was devoted to his analysis of the testimony of firefighters. He said, "I decided to read it and look for evidence of explosions". Sounds to me like looking for evidence to support one's preconceptions (although later he backtracked and said he also looked for evidence against the idea of explosions). MacQueen seems to think that one can get at the truth of whether or not there were bombs planted in the building by analyzing the testimony of people who were there.
The problem is that the WTC collapse involved fire, structural damage, and probably small explosions as pockets of fire encountered volatile chemicals. Furthermore, we lack the vocabulary to describe what happens when a building collapses from the top down; it is not a phenomenon we encounter very often. Lacking such a vocabulary, anyone might have called what happened an "explosion" without meaning that a bomb was involved.
To illustrate this, consider the 1945 crash of a military plane into the Empire State Building. Witnesses described the sounds of gunshots (but were in fact the sound of elevator cables snapping). By the MacQueen principle of witness reliability, if witnesses heard gunshots, then there must have been gunshots inside the Empire State Building.
In summary, I heard a discussion of building collapse by a man not professionally qualified to do so, a foolish reliance on the use of the word "explosion" to imply the existence of a bomb, and a lack of any explanation why both a plane crash and a bomb would be used by the government to bring down the World Trade towers.
The last speaker of the evening was Graeme MacQueen, who was introduced as a retired professor of Religious Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. His specialties include Buddhist studies. Like the other speakers, MacQueen has no professional background to discuss the physics and engineering aspects of the World Trade towers' collapse, but that didn't stop him from pontificating on the subject.
He started by thanking Adnan Zuberi and Adam Parrott for organizing the evening. (As an aside, I note that when I asked a member of the UW Debate Club who Adam Parrott was, he had no idea. I find it strange that an organizer of the evening's events would be unknown to members of the club that sponsored the presentation. Both Parrott and Zuberi are listed on this page as "grassroots organizers" for the misnamed "9/11 Truth" movement.)
He started by saying, "I have two modest aims: why a reasonable person might have serious doubts about the official explanation about why the two World Trade Centre towers came down the way they did... why a reasonable person might want to explore another theory: controlled demolition." This indeed, sounds very modest. But soon the veneer of reasonableness was stripped away, as he described the generally-accepted model of the Towers' collapse and then said, "A rather obvious fraud, in my view." This kind of behavior is typical of the "9/11 Truth" movement. Their claims are outlandish and unsupported; yet if you do not agree, you are in league with fraud. By using the word "fraud", MacQueen denigrates the dozens of structural engineers, fire engineers, and civil engineers who have looked into the buildings' collapse and have paintstakingly devised the generally-accepted theory. There is no legitimate reason to believe that all these researchers have engaged in fraudulent activity, and it is a gross calumny to say so.
Much of MacQueen's argument was devoted to the principle that since, if you looked at the video of the World Trade towers' collapse, you would describe what happened as an "explosion", therefore there must have been an explosion that caused the collapse. He consistently denigrated the idea that to understand exactly what happened, you would need to understand anything substantial about physics, civil engineering, or building construction: "You don't need a Ph. D. to look at these photographs".
He plotted the position of the top of one tower through time, and was astonished to discover that the resulting graph formed a parabola similar to free fall. (I imagine professors of religious studies don't have much time to study equations based on gravity.) This "grade-school physics" exercise, he claims, is enough to rebut the thousands of hours of study by civil engineers on the World Trade Center collapse, and the report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
The only alternative to the NIST theory, according to MacQueen, is controlled demolition, brought about by explosives, incendiaries, or both, through a covert operation.
"Controlled demolition" of the WTC, of course, is one of the favorite assertions of 9/11 deniers. But they offer no plausible rationale why anyone would want to carry out both a plane attack and a controlled demolition. Why not just the demolition? Wouldn't it be much more sensible to plant bombs in the WTC and then blame those on terrorists? After all, terrorists already bombed the WTC back in 1993. 9/11 deniers consistently fail to address this.
Further, if the government carried out the plane attack, why would they bother with setting bombs, too? The destruction wrought by the planes alone seriously damaged the buildings, and repairs would have cost hundreds of millions, if not more. Why wouldn't that be enough as a pretext for war, if that were the government's plan? 9/11 deniers have no answer.
Furthermore, seismic data offer no support at all for the contention that there was an explosion before the collapse of the buildings. How do 9/11 deniers explain this? Silence.
During his presentation, MacQueen referred several times to the Journal of 9/11 Studies for support for his claims. The editors of this "journal" are Kevin Ryan, Frank Legge, and Steven Jones -- three men heavily involved in the "9/11 Truth" movement. No one taking issue with "9/11 Truth" claims is involved. This is not a scholarly journal in any sense of the word; it is a propaganda outfit for deniers.
The latter part of MacQueen's presentation was devoted to his analysis of the testimony of firefighters. He said, "I decided to read it and look for evidence of explosions". Sounds to me like looking for evidence to support one's preconceptions (although later he backtracked and said he also looked for evidence against the idea of explosions). MacQueen seems to think that one can get at the truth of whether or not there were bombs planted in the building by analyzing the testimony of people who were there.
The problem is that the WTC collapse involved fire, structural damage, and probably small explosions as pockets of fire encountered volatile chemicals. Furthermore, we lack the vocabulary to describe what happens when a building collapses from the top down; it is not a phenomenon we encounter very often. Lacking such a vocabulary, anyone might have called what happened an "explosion" without meaning that a bomb was involved.
To illustrate this, consider the 1945 crash of a military plane into the Empire State Building. Witnesses described the sounds of gunshots (but were in fact the sound of elevator cables snapping). By the MacQueen principle of witness reliability, if witnesses heard gunshots, then there must have been gunshots inside the Empire State Building.
In summary, I heard a discussion of building collapse by a man not professionally qualified to do so, a foolish reliance on the use of the word "explosion" to imply the existence of a bomb, and a lack of any explanation why both a plane crash and a bomb would be used by the government to bring down the World Trade towers.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
An Open Letter to Richard Borshay Lee
Richard Borshay Lee is an anthropologist of some renown who is currently Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. He is sympathetic with the misnamed "9/11 Truth" movement, having authored a paper entitled "The Elephant in the Living Room: What really happened on 9-11?" (scroll down on that link). Last night, he was the "moderator" (as described on flyers for the event) for the debate-that-was-not-a-debate hosted at the University of Waterloo.
The role of a moderator is not to take sides. Lee didn't observe this rule, however, as he launched an attack against the "official version" of 9/11 in his introduction.
Lee claimed that "Serious scholarship will be presented to you tonight". In fact, what we heard were the standard falsehoods of the 9/11 Truth movement, and discussion of the fine points of building collapse by a man not even remotely qualified to discuss the issue. Lee claimed that he would present "a forum in an atmosphere of open-minded scholarly challenge". But there was no challenge, since no one from the opposing side was permitted to speak. The question period was extremely limited.
Here is my open letter to Prof. Lee. If he responds, and agrees to let me post his response, I will post it below.
Dear Prof. Lee:
Last night, I witnessed your performance as "moderator" of the event "A Forensic Analysis of September 11, 2001: Questioning the Official Theory" that took place at the University of Waterloo.
The role of a "moderator" is not to take sides, and yet you did. In your opening, you repeated several falsehoods of the misnamed "9/11 Truth" movement. You sneered at the idea that the 9/11 hijackers could "expertly" pilot the planes and crash them into their targets.
However, your objections are not based on any rational evidence. The hardest part of flying a plane is taking off and landing, and the hijackers didn't have to do either one. In each plane, one hijacker received significant flight training; all 4 were certified pilots. Hanjour, for example, had extensive simulator training on small commercial jets. The others "had all logged a minimum of 250 cumulative flight hours" (Dunbar and Reagan, 2006). Hanjour and Jarrah had "training flights down the Hudson Corridor, a busy low-altitude path along the Hudson River that passes by the World Trade Center" (Dunbar and Reagan). Furthermore, there is good evidence that the hijackers didn't "expertly" pilot their planes. "The planes made sharp turns of up to 330 degrees and at times dropped precipitously. Passengers and flight attendants on all four planes reported erratic flying." (Dunbar and Reagan)
You also claimed that "No steel frame building in history ever collapsed before." This is not true. I would advise you to look into the 1967 collapse of the McCormick Center in Chicago, a steel-frame building that was left in rubble after a fire. The New York Times article of January 17, 1967 said "Heat from the blaze twisted and curled massive steel girders."
I see that you have had a distinguished career as an anthropologist at the University of Toronto. When you repeat falsehoods that are so easily refuted, you sully your own reputation, and you bring ridicule to your institution. You should be ashamed.
Should you choose to reply, please let me know if I can post your reply on my blog, recursed.blogspot.com.
Citation: Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts, Dunbar and Reagan, eds., Hearst Books, 2006.
The role of a moderator is not to take sides. Lee didn't observe this rule, however, as he launched an attack against the "official version" of 9/11 in his introduction.
Lee claimed that "Serious scholarship will be presented to you tonight". In fact, what we heard were the standard falsehoods of the 9/11 Truth movement, and discussion of the fine points of building collapse by a man not even remotely qualified to discuss the issue. Lee claimed that he would present "a forum in an atmosphere of open-minded scholarly challenge". But there was no challenge, since no one from the opposing side was permitted to speak. The question period was extremely limited.
Here is my open letter to Prof. Lee. If he responds, and agrees to let me post his response, I will post it below.
Dear Prof. Lee:
Last night, I witnessed your performance as "moderator" of the event "A Forensic Analysis of September 11, 2001: Questioning the Official Theory" that took place at the University of Waterloo.
The role of a "moderator" is not to take sides, and yet you did. In your opening, you repeated several falsehoods of the misnamed "9/11 Truth" movement. You sneered at the idea that the 9/11 hijackers could "expertly" pilot the planes and crash them into their targets.
However, your objections are not based on any rational evidence. The hardest part of flying a plane is taking off and landing, and the hijackers didn't have to do either one. In each plane, one hijacker received significant flight training; all 4 were certified pilots. Hanjour, for example, had extensive simulator training on small commercial jets. The others "had all logged a minimum of 250 cumulative flight hours" (Dunbar and Reagan, 2006). Hanjour and Jarrah had "training flights down the Hudson Corridor, a busy low-altitude path along the Hudson River that passes by the World Trade Center" (Dunbar and Reagan). Furthermore, there is good evidence that the hijackers didn't "expertly" pilot their planes. "The planes made sharp turns of up to 330 degrees and at times dropped precipitously. Passengers and flight attendants on all four planes reported erratic flying." (Dunbar and Reagan)
You also claimed that "No steel frame building in history ever collapsed before." This is not true. I would advise you to look into the 1967 collapse of the McCormick Center in Chicago, a steel-frame building that was left in rubble after a fire. The New York Times article of January 17, 1967 said "Heat from the blaze twisted and curled massive steel girders."
I see that you have had a distinguished career as an anthropologist at the University of Toronto. When you repeat falsehoods that are so easily refuted, you sully your own reputation, and you bring ridicule to your institution. You should be ashamed.
Should you choose to reply, please let me know if I can post your reply on my blog, recursed.blogspot.com.
Citation: Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts, Dunbar and Reagan, eds., Hearst Books, 2006.
An Evening with 9-11 Deniers
Last night I attended a presentation hosted by the University of Waterloo Debate Society entitled "A Forensic Analysis of September 11, 2001: Questioning the Official Theory". It was a truly shameful event, and there was plenty of shame to go around.
Let's allocate the shame:
A large portion of the shame goes to the Debate Society, which plastered the campus with misleading flyers that suggested to many that a genuine debate would take place. I met students in the hall who expected to hear both sides presented, and were surprised when I told them that the presentation would be completely one-sided. The student organizer of the debate, Adnan Zuberi, refused to answer my e-mail questions about why there would not be a speaker presenting the other side; when I asked him again at the debate, he claimed he never received my e-mail (although I sent it multiple times to two different addresses, including the one on the event flyer). I asked Mr. Zuberi if he was part of a "9/11 Truth Group", and he refused to answer. (I was told by other members of the Debate Society that Mr. Zuberi is, indeed, a member of a "9/11 Truth" group.) Casting even more shame on the Debate Society, everybody involved in the public presentation, including Richard B. Lee, the "moderator", and Michael Keefer, the man who selected questioners at the end, was part of the "9/11 Truth" movement.
Why didn't the Debate Society present someone on the other side? I was told they tried, but couldn't find anyone. But they are a "debate society", not a "one-sided presentation" society, and they had an obligation to find someone to respond to the falsehoods that were presented.
Next, there's an ample portion of shame to be allocated to the four academics who participated in this event. As academics, they should have ensured that contentious issues are treated fairly and that valid opposing views are noted. As academics, they had an obligation not to speak outside their areas of expertise (at least, not while relying on their credentials as professors, which were prominently featured on the flyers and in the introductions). Instead, what did we get?
At the opening, we got an admonition by Richard B. Lee (a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto) about how his views deserve respect, an admonition that included long-debunked false claims about the piloting abilities of the 9/11 hijackers.
We got a presentation by Alexander Dewdney, my former colleague in the Computer Science department at Waterloo, filled with distortions, non sequiturs, and falsehoods (more later).
We got another presentation by Graeme MacQueen, a retired professor of Religious Studies at McMaster, that prominently featured an analysis of the physics of 9/11 building collapse (although MacQueen has no formal training in the subject).
And we got questions chosen by Michael Keefer, who was a professor of English and Theatre at the University of Guelph.
To my knowledge, none of the four men had any formal training in civil engineering, telephone networks, or building contruction; yet these subjects featured prominently in the presentation.
I'll have more to say about the arguments presented and the psychology of denialism in future posts.
And here are some of them:
Dewdney, Part 1
Dewdney, Part 2
Graeme Macqueen
Questions and answers
Let's allocate the shame:
A large portion of the shame goes to the Debate Society, which plastered the campus with misleading flyers that suggested to many that a genuine debate would take place. I met students in the hall who expected to hear both sides presented, and were surprised when I told them that the presentation would be completely one-sided. The student organizer of the debate, Adnan Zuberi, refused to answer my e-mail questions about why there would not be a speaker presenting the other side; when I asked him again at the debate, he claimed he never received my e-mail (although I sent it multiple times to two different addresses, including the one on the event flyer). I asked Mr. Zuberi if he was part of a "9/11 Truth Group", and he refused to answer. (I was told by other members of the Debate Society that Mr. Zuberi is, indeed, a member of a "9/11 Truth" group.) Casting even more shame on the Debate Society, everybody involved in the public presentation, including Richard B. Lee, the "moderator", and Michael Keefer, the man who selected questioners at the end, was part of the "9/11 Truth" movement.
Why didn't the Debate Society present someone on the other side? I was told they tried, but couldn't find anyone. But they are a "debate society", not a "one-sided presentation" society, and they had an obligation to find someone to respond to the falsehoods that were presented.
Next, there's an ample portion of shame to be allocated to the four academics who participated in this event. As academics, they should have ensured that contentious issues are treated fairly and that valid opposing views are noted. As academics, they had an obligation not to speak outside their areas of expertise (at least, not while relying on their credentials as professors, which were prominently featured on the flyers and in the introductions). Instead, what did we get?
At the opening, we got an admonition by Richard B. Lee (a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto) about how his views deserve respect, an admonition that included long-debunked false claims about the piloting abilities of the 9/11 hijackers.
We got a presentation by Alexander Dewdney, my former colleague in the Computer Science department at Waterloo, filled with distortions, non sequiturs, and falsehoods (more later).
We got another presentation by Graeme MacQueen, a retired professor of Religious Studies at McMaster, that prominently featured an analysis of the physics of 9/11 building collapse (although MacQueen has no formal training in the subject).
And we got questions chosen by Michael Keefer, who was a professor of English and Theatre at the University of Guelph.
To my knowledge, none of the four men had any formal training in civil engineering, telephone networks, or building contruction; yet these subjects featured prominently in the presentation.
I'll have more to say about the arguments presented and the psychology of denialism in future posts.
And here are some of them:
Dewdney, Part 1
Dewdney, Part 2
Graeme Macqueen
Questions and answers
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