Quote from: birr on August 09, 2014, 12:17:36 AM

Quote from: rpietila on August 08, 2014, 04:36:03 PM

The U.S. demolished WTC 1, 2 and 7, blaming it on ragheads

This nutty conspiracy theory that the fall of the WTC was an inside job doesn't wash, Risto.
Passenger airliners flying out of Boston hit the towers. Those buildings were 110 storeys tall. The entire mass of those buildings pancaked straight down. It's kind of surprising they only took one other building with them.
You remind me of an Egyptian friend I knew many years. He came up to me and said, you know they warned all the Jews before the buildings fell down, right?
Abysmal.
I've been living in New York City since 1981. I've heard enough ridiculous statements from ignorant people.

Quote from: kireinaha on August 09, 2014, 05:00:22 AM

I respected Risto's intellect until I realized on this page that he's another of the 9/11 "truther" idiots.

To believe that conspiracies don't happen is to fall prey to what I call the Great Conspiracy.

"Conspiracy theorist" has become the universal derogatory term with which to label anyone unwilling to line up behind the official cultural narrative without the need to actually engage him/her in meaningful discussion or to present facts which contradict his/her theory. Exactly like the term "communist" some decades ago.

To believe any one conspiracy theory to be 100% false, especially without consulting the evidence, is as insane as believing any one of them to be 100% true. This is outdated artistotelian either/or thinking which just doesn't cut it when thinking about complex phenomena.

The fact that people are routinely dismissing conspiracy theories from a position of arrogant superiority without feeling the need to engage the evidence (because they KNOW what is true and what is not...) seems extremely worrying to me as it indicates a captured population which has been trained to unquestioningly trust authority and even attack anyone who dares suggest that the authorities are not benevolent and wise.

Shame on you, people! Go read Robert Anton Wilsons work on conspiracy theories and learn how think about them in a sane manner - namely by assigning probabilities to various parts of presented theories according to your best effort at interpretin g the currently available facts. HURR DURR you are stupid because conspiracies makes you just look like a pathetic lemming.

EDIT: just to give you guys an example of what I'm talking about, let's consider the 9/11 case.

The theory here is that the US government (or parts of it) knew about the attacks before they happened or maybe even partly or completely organized them. If true, this would not present anything unprecedented as far as actions of governments go. Oppressive regimes routinely stage false flag operations in order to consolidate public opinion against a presented enemy, or pass legislation deemed unacceptable under regular conditions. So the most important part of the theory - the motive of the actor, can be deemed plausible for it has precedents. This is further supported by the speed with which the US gov responded with the PATRIOT act - it looks like they were prepared.

As for the actual logistics of the attack, whether steel beams can collapse from the heat generated by burning fuel, whether towers will collapse with such speed as they have when not destroyed by controlled demolition, where the plane that supposedly hit the Pentagon went, what about building 7...I am not sure about these things for I don't consider myself an expert in any areas of knowledge needed to form an expert opinion here. I do consider the circumstances highly suspicious though and the official story seems to have holes in it. Overall, considering the possible motives of the US gov, I am assigning a probability of 50 - 70% that the US gov was at least partly aware and participating in the attacks. In other words I consider it more likely than not, that they had something to do with it. After all, when I consider incidents which prompted the US to go to war in the past (sinking of Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin) it would be the exception, not the rule if this was not a false flag operation.