patrick.net

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...

DS

Crime and political opportunism have and will continue to spawn bona fide "conspiracies". No one contends that. A well planned bank robbery is a conspiracy, by definition. A well planned military action is as well, depending upon whether you're the bomber or the bombee. But all that junk about the WTC is so complex, involving so many people and so much clandestine, cross-boarder cooperation, that it's just practically implausible.

Planning stuff is hard.

Planning stuff and keeping it secret is very hard.

Planning stuff and keeping it secret amongst lots of people is extremely hard.

Planning stuff and keeping it secret amongst lots of people despite obvious moral, ethical and often spiritual personal conflicts for many involved is impossible.

But the X Files was a cool series.

It's difficult to maintain the "911 conspiracy" when theorists require the usage of CIA "voice morphing" to explain the cell phone calls. With that said my pilot friend says that only an advanced test pilot could have flown into the WTC at that speed and embankment. I listen to UK radio and the acceptance of a conspiracy is near universal.

Might as well add in a very plausible explanation I've heard regarding the classification of Pentagon-related photos & video. What I've heard from some former defence intelligence (retired) guys is that it's very likely that videos and some photos of the Pentagon attack capture the facility's automatic air defence measures in action. And, that those measures proved faulty, inadequate, or simply ineffective. This evidence would be immediately classified as a threat to national security just as fast as someone discovering maps of secret steam tunnels into NORAD. The DoD doesn't really want functional videos of "how to destroy the pentagon" posted on every anti american website, after all.

these are all post hoc explanations (about file footage, etc). and the explanations certainly haven't come from the defence establishment themselves. there are plenty of photos of the pentagon out there -- that explanation sounds particularly unlikely to me -- they could even edit out or blur superficial details they wanted to hide... i really can't see that footage realistically becoming a primer to so-called 'terrorists' at any time in the future -- besides which , you can see the pentagon up close just driving past to DC... plus all the photos taken of the actual fire and damage. what protections are there, anyhow? thickened and reinforced walls, which is the work that was being done at the time -- and the late-scrambling fighter planes are meant to be the protection...

i take your point that it's hard to plan something like 9/11 -- it seems implausible -- and yet... there are Black Ops teams in the CIA, and we don't know what they get up to. Clearly they are expert in using explosives, also. plus a willing Mossad with divided loyalties getting involved to precipitate a middle-eastern crisis. There seem to be a lot of threats of people losing their jobs and gags being applied too... a metallurgist working for the labs that did some of the steel analyses lost his job for writing a letter saying he didn't see how it was possible... the firefighters were gagged...

it's reached the point where Zoo! magazine just published 3 or 4 pages reiterating all the 9/11 conspiracy points in their last issue, by a coincidence...

a friend of mine who lived in the states for a while said that most of the people they met there thought the X-files was a documentary... ;)