patrick.net

Robert, I like somewhat higher density because I prefer steel-reinforced concrete.

Robert Cote',

You know, it's just criminal. That exact same scenario playing out with banks and their long time clients made me think there has to be a better way!

I've done a little research and there is one legit firm I found that offers to take your total debt and manage it for you. They simply set up a "reserve account" and pay off the things that would be the most impactful. They would say for instance chip away at your store cards, get them paid off and move on to say auto loans and ultimately the house. I've integrated it into my presentation for wealthier clients. As I'm sure you have surmised the impact is two fold in that not only are debts reckoned with more quickly the money that would have gone into filling "the black hole" can now be adjudicated toward savings.

Oh, the "reserve account" is so they can make payments early reducing the amount of int. the client would have to pay. This also translates into lower DTI and ultimately higher FICO scores. It's sad, so many of us have been debt slaves for so long someone comes along and shows us a better way and it just seems far fetched to us?

And for 9/11 the networks should have the entire 9/11 attacks, the cell calls, and the 911 calls playing 24 hours straight on a loop. Helps the folks stay focused.

On the fact that the terrorists won and that we should live in state of terror?

You know what! We should have 2 minutes of hate per day where they show Ossama on TV and we could all boo him.

There are some more great ideas here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

I used to work somewhat near the World Trade Center (actually on Wall St) and this kind of thinking cracks me up: all of the chicken littles (let's tap the phone lines! let's search everyone going into the subways!) are outside of NYC - in the South, in the Midwest, etc.

People in NYC have the right focus and the right priorities: making money and living life.

Terrorists be damned.

FWIW: 42,000 people die a year (14 September 11ths) on our highways.

Since September 11th, 2001 - 210,000 people died on our highways.

Forget the terrorists - we're our own.

Think about even the myth of oil for blood. Without a strong military would our economy be more or lass at the mercy of foriegn interests? Yep, when you look at it that way the minor cost of the military generates great savings in the cost of energy.

There's sort of an infinite loop problem there...

And the alternative is? The carnage on our highways are indeed regretable but they are small and getting smaller every year.

The alternative? I propose aggressively enforcement of traffic laws and speed limits.

The speed limits on many roads are too high and they should be lowered. Also we should have the same speed limit for trucks and auto.

I propose a national 60mph speed limit.

Nope. Sorry. Speed doesn’t kill. Lack of skill kills but we don’t tighten drivers tests.

Lack of skill will not go away. Lowering speed can at least minimize damage.

All other factors being equal, reducing speed can reduce fatality.

60mph is a lot of speed.

I would support raising the legal driving age to 21 though. Teenagers are not mature enough to be trusted with 5000 lb of steel at 80mph.

eburbed,

Those are some sad statistics. I had a client bring that to my attention right after 9/11 and it really is true. Not to lessen or diminish the 9/11 victims sacrifice and pain but if you want something to get angry about start there.

I'm always amazed driving out to the OR coast (where two lane roads are the norm) by the sheer number of people I see drifting into the oncoming lane. It's such a common occurence drivers give me this "what's your problem buddy" look when narrowly averting a head on collision!

What's MY problem? Other than the fact our combined speeds equal about 110 MPH high speed crunch and munch nothing really. I understand that people can become complacent when we're all heading the same direction for extended periods. (Hell I get bored) but when constantly confronted with the very real possibility of a serious head on collision can we pay a little attention here? When emergency responders get the call they just assume it's a "head on". What else could it be?

I’m always amazed driving out to the OR coast (where two lane roads are the norm) by the sheer number of people I see drifting into the oncoming lane. It’s such a common occurence drivers give me this “what’s your problem buddy” look when narrowly averting a head on collision!

This is why I avoid two lane roads at all costs!

55mph is too high for most two lane roads. They should have limits of no higher than 40-45mph. At least the crashes will be more survivable.

Peter P,

I seem to see so many younger drivers that are "one ticket away from walking". They "smarten up" when there's a cop in the vicinity and then trounce on it the minute he goes away! What's the answer? Fewer strikes?

Peter P,

I agree. I try to avoid them where and whenever possible. It's not too much to ask us to do 40mph on the way to the coast. Hell it ain't going anywhere.

I love cops. Especially CHP officers.

I want that electronic toll road system with speed monitoring now!

It’s not too much to ask us to do 40mph on the way to the coast.

Or perhaps they should convert more 2-lane roads to "super-twos" with wider medians.

If we increase the width of the median, the separation between oncoming traffic will increase. At the same time, the lanes will appear to be narrower. This "optical illustion" will cause people to drive slower.

Perhaps a simple median repainting will save lives?

Peter P,

More power to you!

The problem with Oregonians (or "Helenites") as Robert C is fond to say, is that we like to pretend that everything is just that close! Skiing on Mt. Hood? I've made in 46 minutes! Seaside? Pffft. An hour tops! (It helps us deal with the 9 month long depression to think all of these natural wonders are just that close).

And so we go about mangling one another on two lane roads trying to "set the record" getting to our beach house! That's another big part of misguided perceptions. If we told the truth (if only to ourselves) we'd admit that an hour was our BEST time (not the usual time) it takes to get to Hood or the coast. Yet like "a thousand people a day move to FL" and "60% equity" these myths don't go quietly.

If you have a friend in Portland and he tells you he can get to the mountains or the coast in under an hour ask him/her how much a chartered helicopter runs these days? Can we please end this now, please?

RC,

Housing is priced at the margin and the margin call is coming. I mean that in the strict trading desk term that Randy H will do a better job of explaining than I.

Sorry to do this to you (you're on such a roll today) but housing prices aren't really set on the margin, as I described here. But, your point is well taken.

Think about it. Risking life and limb to get to the Oregon Coast (where it will no doubt be cooler with even more rain). Is this stupid or what?

Now I could see if within an hours drive you could find a dry place that's twenty degrees warmer! What a waste.

SFWoman,

Coincidentally, my father was in defense contracting most of his working life also. For a short time (the only time I remember _not_ living in the midwest) we lived in Co Springs and he worked in the mountain. In later life, he was in charge of the other end of things: exporting lots of nifty killing gadgets to needy countries. From what I remember, he spent most of his time focused on 2nd world countries since Israel and Europe were kind of standing orders and didn't require much convincing (this was during the cold war). He has some unsettling stories about what kind of stuff he sold when he worked for a nameless company in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Let's just say their R&D labs were located many levels underground.

But back to the point. I think you may be confusing loss of US mfg jobs with loss of US mfg base. The two are not the same. Our base has grown while the number of jobs has shrunk.

And as to gee whizbang technoweapons: I'm sure we have them. The F111 and B2 are examples of what we had effectively 20 years ago, and they're pretty advanced.

But, what good are EM Weapons, Stealth aircraft, and Emergent Cryptographic Systems against guys hiding in caves who use their own bodies as bombs? I'm not sure how melting all the integrated circuits in Gaza will help Israel? I'm not even sure it would disrupt their radios or TVs, since those are probably powered by tubes & transistors.

Think about it. Risking life and limb to get to the Oregon Coast (where it will no doubt be cooler with even more rain). Is this stupid or what?

Exactly. We should repeal all speed trap laws and make every inch of the highway system a giant "speed trap".

Oh, to add another anecdote to the manufacturing question, my father does machine design. Things like industrial labeling, sorting, and packaging machines, etc, as well as larger equipment. When I last spoke with him, he was working on an automated warehouse system for a distribution center in Europe. Sometime before that it was specialized construction equipment for somewhere in Germany. So, the comments about the state of US manufacturing make sense to me.

I don't even know why they have weather reports on the Oregon Coast. Just look at Portland's weather, subtract 15 degrees and ADD a 1/2" of rain and you'll usually hit it on the money.

If summers are a brief and fleeting thing in the valley the coast is even more depressing. A forecast of "partly cloudy" means there will be about 20 minutes where you'll be able to see the sky (although probably not the sun). When they say "a high for the day of 64 degrees" that means between 3:50 and 4:00pm. After that it starts to plummet (and this is in July?) No thanks.

New thread: Why I hate shower/tub combo

SFWoman,

All of that is true. Some of those systems--at least the automatic eavesdropping & transcription/translation--already exist. I suspect the problems aren't tech-related, but legal, procedural and human-training.

Again, much of that helps when trying to prevent terrorist coordination and plotting on a 9/11 scale. But they don't help in nationbuilding experiments amongst brewing civil war insurgencies.

We *could* easily knock out every cell/satellite service in the whole of Iraq. (Ok, not easily, but practically it could be done). But how does that advance the goal? The insurgents will keep killing each other, just using different triggering mechanisms and different communications mechanisms. Meanwhile we've disrupted the vital infrastructure of the country and prevented any hope of rebuilding an economy. Same with Israel. Saying they should destroy the entire enemy infrastructure is tantamount to saying they should just go ahead and starve them all to death.

SFWoman,

Of course, and I fear that dimension of strategy is not being considered by the current administration. Engagement needs to occur on multiple levels simultaneously.

However, there have been historically, and quite likely there is now, a basic clash of incompatible ideologies battling for hegemony. Such epic moments have never been settled peacefully, and I doubt they will be this time around either.

Greatest force in the country.

Cool... More power to the police!

Terrorists seem to be extremely dependent upon cell phones. They coordinate a great deal of stuff via email and text messaging. Knocking out all cell and satelite phone service would greatly inconvenience them.

that wouldn't piss them off even more, of course... and they plot and plan in all countries of the world. not to mention that iraq was not the known seat of ANY significant 'terrorist' or 'insurgent' activity before they were invaded and occupied. however, they ARE sitting on more than 20% of the world's viably extractable oil resources, by some strange coincidence. now the forces of the historic rival sunni and shia factions of islam have been unleashed. the faction the US govt is courting and favouring in iraq is shia. however, iran is also predominantly shia, but they are being demonised for having nuclear ambitions. there is no doubt the shia in iraq will co-operate with the shia in iran, so you are in the difficult position of supporting and demonising the same faction at the same time. you've stirred up a real hornet's nest this time, solely in the quest for hydrocarbon resources...

there is not a technical fix to every human and social problem, that is the error of judgement that too many in the US make.

there is still a big question in my mind about just how those 3 massive towers, all designed to take large shear forces, came down so easily, especially when no skyscraper in history has ever collapsed with a major fire in the upper storeys. there has been a lot of spin and cover-up in the official structural engineering analyses, not to mention gag orders and ruined careers of anyone who spoke out in the negative -- very interesting. why the need to stifle dissent so ferociously, in a country of supposed 'free speech'? perhaps it really is a closet 1984 Stasi-like society. an oxygen-starved kerosene fire (as witnessed by the black smoke) will only burn at 360 degrees, steel starts to melt at 1500 degrees. as for steel reinforced concrete and the massive central cores of the WTC towers... and what of WTC7? massive skyscrapers that collapse on demand... however, the views (some of the best views in the world) from the towers were crap due to the brutalist 1970s design and narrow windows, the towers always lost money and had to house govt depts on subsidy, $1bn of asbestos rectification work was required imminently, and Westfield America took out new insurance policies with specific anti-terrorism clauses only 6 weeks before 9/11...

DS,

I'm not sure what to say. I start off agreeing with your assessment of techno-solutions; especially being a high tech sort myself and knowing that tech is seldom the real problem or solution, just a tool.

But your 9/11 conspiracy theory stuff is too much to take. 1. The kerosene fire was a massive, widespread trigger to a much hotter fire: the ignition of the internal contents of the building. Those materials would have burned at temperatures upwards of 3000F. 2. Legitimate structural engineers have questioned the data and conclusions without some kind of DDR-Stasi repercussions. They are on the radio all the time. 3. Most structural engineers seem to have consensus that what caused total structural failure was "pancaking"; a chain reaction which gains potential energy with vertical distance due to gravity. 4. No buildings of that scale built worldwide were designed to withstand such forces, which are altogether different than sheer or shaking forces. 5. Visible black smoke does not mean there wasn't a superheated core of fire burning contained within the structure; it merely means that the periphery of the fire was consuming particular materials. I've seen house fires burn pure black smoke, and they were certainly hotter than 360. What's the title of that Bradbury book again??? 6. The steel frame of the building need not have "melted" to fail, only be weakened in key areas to start off the chain reaction.

I guess before going on and on any more I'd ask the simple question: Why? Why the hell would anyone go to all that trouble to "stage" a disaster on such a scale when it could have been done so much more simply, and with so much less scrutiny? A "mysterious truck bomb" in the basement ruse could have had the same effect. Why bother with all the airliner stuff, including the other 2 planes? That's a long way to go to get out of some asbestos cleanup. Geez.

I guess before going on and on any more I’d ask the simple question: Why? Why the hell would anyone go to all that trouble to “stage” a disaster on such a scale when it could have been done so much more simply, and with so much less scrutiny? A “mysterious truck bomb” in the basement ruse could have had the same effect. Why bother with all the airliner stuff, including the other 2 planes? That’s a long way to go to get out of some asbestos cleanup. Geez.

i know what you're saying. despite the fact that a number of similar 'training exercises' around aircraft hijacks just happened to be scheduled that day taking planes away from the area and putting false radar blips on the FAA equipment. and that they therefore had to scramble planes from bases much further away, including an F-16 that wasn't even armed. and that they didn't go there full speed, according to records. (when apparently there any number of flights scrambled every year when planes accidentally drift off course. sounds like the way security was weakened in the JFK assassination to me.) when rudy guiliani early on that day announced that chicago had been attacked, when in fact it had never happened, but someone had been taken off a plane. and the very strange behaviour and later recollections of the president. where ari fleischer had to call a special press conference that day just to cover for the pres. and that nobody was concerned for the pres's security at the time. and that the neocons had written some time earlier that america needed a 'pearl harbor-type event' to galvanise the american people and justify invading the middle east and iraq and afghanistan in particular. and that the taliban had kyboshed unocals's 1999 attempts to get a pipeline thru afghanistan to get at the caspian sea oil and gas resources that the neocons so desperately wanted to obtain according to their own PNAC doco. and that the 'pilot' who ostensibly hit the pentagon 'couldn't even fly a cessna 172'. and the bulgarians from bulgarian intelligence who were caught and arrested celebrating strangely on a rooftop. and that bulgarian intelligence would be interested in starting a conflagration also, and that the WTC was interestingly owned and managed by bulgarians, and there are also a lot of 2nd generation european bulgarians in the neocon administration -- it's called 2 birds with one stone -- you get the pearl harbor incident, and you get rid of some building problems for your friends...

the pancaking is highly unlikely without using thermite explosive shears at set intervals (like the 10m lengths observed), especially when you study the strength of the core structure of that building. at worst, you might have seen a doughnut collapse effect where the central core would have remained standing while a ring of floors collapsed - a little. but you have to study the whole thing in structural detail. as noted, if you claim there were 3000 degree fires, no skyscraper in history which has caught fire with similar building materials available for fuel has ever bent or collapsed.

and the firemen heard regular 'popping' and exploding noises and the small dust explosions caught on film going down the building ahead of the collapse (which occurred at free fall speeds in its own footprint). further, the firemen who attended the initial fire had every confidence they could put it out, it was just in a day's work -- they never for one moment enetertained the thought the structure could actually collapse from all their training...

and where's all the confiscated video footage taken of the pentagon incident? no images of the accident have ever been released, only 5 blurry static shots which show no plane. why not release the confiscated video so we can all allay our suspicions? a pentagon employee in hospital was told by visiting 'men in suits' that she would not be paid medical compensation unless she said she saw a plane...

to answer the question, the 'why' is a pearl harbor event...

if you claim there were 3000 degree fires, no skyscraper in history which has caught fire with similar building materials available for fuel has ever bent or collapsed.

I watched a documentary -- I think it was Megastructures -- probably in 1999 (well before 9/11) in which they showed examples of high rise fires and failing primary steel structures, due to heat induced weakening. The show was about how to coat the joints so as to withstand heat fractures.

Of course, those documentaries could have been planted, ahead of time, by the same forces that have orchestrated your whole evil plot.

A much simpler example for most of your objections exists: we were unprepared, lazy, complacent, and woefully unorganized. Isn't it possible that, after being tooled for a nuclear war with the USSR for some 40 years, the US had the wrong kind of perspective, response systems, training, or even world view to deal with this new reality? In fact, there are plenty of sources that show just how not only the US, but also western European intelligence agencies systematically dismissed and ignored what in hindsight was obvious growing peril.

I'm very aware of PNAC. I'm no fan of the neocon strategy, although it is logically consistent, just unlikely to work. If there is a charge to level at the neocons it's not that they "engineered" a new Pearl Harbor, but that they took a disgustingly opportunistic view towards what could have been a unifying even for the Western world. Instead they manipulated 9/11 into furthering their strategy. Actually, this hasn't worked out all too well. If they were to have "engineered" a new Pearl Harbor, they could have picked something a lot more immediately relevant and incontestable by Americans and our reluctant allies. I mean, why not just frame Iraq directly, and have them attack Europe too?

This is the problem with conspiracy theories. They often require such a suspension of belief that believers don't even realize they're missing a truth much stranger than invented paranoid fiction.

oh, and what happened to WTC7 and WTC6? how could they just 'pull' WTC7 on the same day without planning and pre-mining it first? and why 'pull' WTC7, given that most skyscraper fires are salveageable and cheaper to salvage than demolish (except for ongoing asbestos and harbour view issues)? and what of the mysterious explosion from inside WTC6? was it just an inside insurance job? the buildings were insured mostly with european insurance companies, who had to fork out $7bn only 6 weeks after signing the policy. (europeans who had persecuted the bulgarians for centuries...)

Are you guys talking about the so-called 9/11 "comspiracy"? Come on, it is more ridiculous than the moon landing "conspiracy".

A much simpler example for most of your objections exists: we were unprepared, lazy, complacent, and woefully unorganized.

possibly. altho FBI agents were warning about this for months ahead of time. the departing clinton adminstration had also warned the bush admin of the threat by OBL of some such event. there was a stink about that as well.

the systems are in place to intercept wayward jetliners, i have read that it happens 100 times a year. only this time, they were off doing exercises in another area. so not necessarily disorganised, complacent or lazy.

it also explains why the administration would fail to go after the wrongdoers, via a process of diplomatic investigation, and instead chose to directly invade an oil rich country or two, one of which had no ties to OBL or 'al Qaida', the other of which had thwarted the PNAC's pipeline ambitions. just opportunism?

We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says 'while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'.... it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested. It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with aeroplanes. Then in 1999 a US national intelligence council report noted that 'al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House'... Instructive leads prior to 9/11 were not followed up. French Moroccan flight student Zacarias Moussaoui (now thought to be the 20th hijacker) was arrested in August 2001 after an instructor reported he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners. When US agents learned from French intelligence he had radical Islamist ties, they sought a warrant to search his computer, which contained clues to the September 11 mission (Times, November 3 2001). But they were turned down by the FBI. One agent wrote, a month before 9/11, that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers (Newsweek, May 20 2002). All of this makes it all the more astonishing - on the war on terrorism perspective - that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not? There were standard FAA intercept procedures for hijacked aircraft before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the US military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft (AP, August 13 2002). It is a US legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate. Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority? The former US federal crimes prosecutor, John Loftus, has said: 'The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence.'..... the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into 'tomorrow's dominant force' is likely to be a long one in the absence of 'some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor'. The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the 'go' button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement. The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies. By 2010 the Muslim world will control as much as 60% of the world's oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of remaining global oil export capacity."

This war on terrorism is bogus
The Guardian, 6 September 2003

i guess lee harvey oswald got off 5 good shots from a 6th floor window, including mixing in a dum-dum bullet favoured by professional assassins to make sure of the job, and jack ruby was just pissed off with him...

maybe i just obsess about conspiracy theories to avoid sex with my g/f...

If they were to have “engineered” a new Pearl Harbor, they could have picked something a lot more immediately relevant and incontestable by Americans and our reluctant allies. I mean, why not just frame Iraq directly, and have them attack Europe too?

actually, on this, they did frame iraq - with the alleged WMD. i don't really need to say any more about that one, given all the contrary intelligence supplied... if you think conspiracy theories are implausible, what about beating up intelligence around WMD? (as per Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski and the OSP - LA Weekly - Soldier for the Truth)

regarding attacking europe -- germany and france (and russia) were getting good oil contracts and exploration contracts from iraq under oil-for-food, so things were not too bad. however, you have to ask why a dutch newspaper would suddenly publish insulting cartoons depicting mohammed inside europe - was it to provoke incidents and thus sway public opinion? interestingly, no such incidents occurred inside europe.

but how else would you frame iraq (and afghanistan), including getting them to attack europe? maybe this was good enough...

gore vidal believes 9/11 was an AQ response to the known timeline of invading afghanistan in Oct 2001 - so the conspiracy theories don't always agree... this would controvert the idea that it was an inside job that was either 'let it happen' or 'make it happen'...

enough conspiracies for a while...

alright, one last post:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/reynolds/reynolds12.html

(no relation)

Morgan Reynolds, Ph.D., is professor emeritus at Texas A&M University and former director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis headquartered in Dallas, TX. He served as chief economist for the US Department of Labor during 2001–2, George W. Bush's first term.

Just saw on CNBC a very brief interview with N.A.R. president Tom Stevens, who says "there is no national housing bubble, just pockets of slowing."

Meanwhile, his house has been on the market for over a year, and he just lowered his asking price. The explanation he gave for the difficulty in selling his home - "I've been out of town a lot, and haven't been home."

WTF, he's been too busy to sell his home? Does he really believe his own bullshit? Even the commentator on CNBC laughed and said it's hard to argue against the recent stats regarding housing.

DS,

I like a lot of what you write and enjoy our occasional end of thread debates. The 9/11 conspiracy theory stuff is something you'll regret having given attention to someday when you come to your senses.

Answering your most prescient question directly: Yes, conspiracies do exist. There are plenty of historical examples. Grand conspiracies, however, always prove to be nothing more than paranoid rantings of disturbed people. The references you cite could just as easily read as The Protocols of The Elders of Zion. These grand conspiracy theories aren't just some innocent curiosity. They can end up getting a lot of people hurt or killed.

The 9/11 conspiracy theory stuff is something you’ll regret having given attention to someday when you come to your senses.

As I have said, some people still believe that moon landing was a hoax. I guess if one has his mind set, he is not going to regret because he will never come to his senses.

I seriously think there is something to the 9/11 thing. There are a number of plausible explanations, including the 'official' one. An alternative take is that the neocon Bush administration not only goofed up big time in national defence, but then took advantage of a situation to carry out an agenda. That's the most innocent of all the explanations, and he's currently paying for it in the popularity ratings. The scenarios only go down from there. The evidence won't really shift from here though, the towers were hastily packed away for recycling in China in GPS-monitored trucks before serious metallurgical analyses could be done, rather than storing all the beams somewhere for a while for serious analysis of the reasons for structural failure. (I've done some engineering studies myself and my father is a steel metallurgist who often analyses structural steel failures.) The videos and photos that were taken are what they are. The independent videos of the Pentagon impact remain unreleased for some strange reason. Skyscrapers twist and buckle at worst in fires, they don't just collapse straight down at freefall speeds with little exploding sounds, shearing through massive steel and concrete cores. If you look at the size of the central columns of the WTC while under construction or in blueprint, well... And WTC7 and WTC6 take some explaining, in that WTC7 is officially held to have collapsed from a small fire! There is no implication of a demolition, which would imply malfeasance, altho Silverstein of Westfield America made a recorded remark to that effect. A Secret Service guy was found to have suffocated from inhalation in the building while no-one was in there, possibly stoking the fire -- but he was lauded as a 'hero' supposedly getting people out from an evacuated building...

Under the evidence that has been presented, and the 9/11 Commission report which itself can't 'explain' the collapse of WTC7 and other events, and is full of vague remarks on a lot of engineering impossibilities (just follow the link above for one treatment of some of the issues), I think it will always be indeterminate in my mind about what has happened. The implications for humanity and civilisation are horrendous and unthinkable if the conspiracy is true.

Of course, some of the conspiracy theorists are wacko, and read exaggerated intent and alternative meanings into everything that is said and done... and I don't normally subscribe to these things, someone else put me onto it, and I was quite incredulous at first, but there is definitely some substance to it. I certainly don't believe in illuminati and grand masonic networks, I only see the desire for power and money and control behind most things...

For instance, Jack White's 'expose' of the moon landing is pretty dodgy, he is not a photographic expert at all, and all of his takes can be explained by ordinary geometric photographic illusions, tricks of distance, camera positioning or flares in camera lenses, etc. e.g. his 'alignments' of distant mountain ranges are not aligned at all, they are taken several hundred metres apart, etc.

What's your take on the JFK assassination? :P

oh, and there is not and never has been any mafia activity in america either, j. edgar hoover told me so, and he should know... no mafia activity! it's official...