rightfully, righteously, rantiously

* Noise:

" I recently read the book Wake-Up Call, The Political Education of a 9/11 Widow by Kristen Breitweiser. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand why the 9/11 Commission report deserves to be distrusted.

Breitweiser describes an informal meeting at Starbucks with Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission. She was quizzing Zelikow on his glaring conflicts of interest when he spazzed out:

"That's right Kristen. Everything is connected. The hip bone is connected to the thigh bone is connected to the knee bone is connected to the ankle bone. It is all connected!" He stormed out of Starbucks. (pg. 148) "

Thnx Noise. I don't know much about kristen - but she was just perfect on Larry King last week. it's difficult to imagine anyone with more grace. Although i wish she slapped King across the head when he wanted to fondle with her husband's wedding ring rather than handing it over, startled (and if you havent heard how she got the ring, then, ummm, look it up if you are feeling brave)

I've been asked why kristen wasn't in Press For Truth - and I don't know.

Speaking of 911, Damien (rightfully, righteously, rantiously) slapped down Scott:

"Respectfully, I have to disagree with you on this one Scott. There is a social - and in many ways, legal - contract in place between the people and those who govern. There are several aspects to this:

The explanation of the collapse of the buildings on 9/11, for example, occurs in a political setting where, in western democracies at least, there has always been an implied contract between governments and their people that in the official assesment of natural disasters, national tragedies or crime scenes these should be (1) conducted independantly, (2) follow best scientific practices, (3) provide an adequate account for the evidence involved and, (4) wherever possible, provide the public with the means to independantly satisfy themselves not only as to the conclusions obtained but that the features (1) (2) (3) have all occurred. It's what we call accountable government. In a democracy it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that these aspects are fulfilled and it is the absolute right of the public to reject any explanations that it believes do not meet these standards. Clearly, individuals will make different judgement on this. It is a noteworthy social phenomenon in regard to the 911 building failures that while there are critics of the official story who can be denounced as crackpots, there is an entire global scientific community that has either made no comment about the issue or who have appeared to have uncritically accepted features of the official explanation that are in serious conflict with the principles (1) - (4).

Here's an example: the official NIST report on the twin tower collapes was based on a computer simulation where quite severe input values had to be used in order to obtain an outcome where one or more floors started to collapse (their preferred hypothesis). NIST then stopped analysing what happened to the buildings after that. They did not examine the full collapse sequence.

From their final report: "The focus of the Investigation was on the sequence of events from the instant of aircraft impact to the initiation of collapse for each tower. For brevity in this report, this sequence is referred to as the "probable collapse sequence," although it does not actually include the structural behavior of the tower after the conditions for collapse initiation were reached..." (NIST, 2005, p. 80, fn. 12;)

The does not seem adequate, for a supposedly comprehensive scientific investigation, and yet it has not been condemned by the scientific community at large. I mention this to argue the case that 9/11 not only evidences security and building failures but also large-scale social disfunction whereby the agencies and social mechanisms we rely on may have gone 'missing in action' for various reasons. This includes the media. It's not necessary to posit grand conspiracy theories here.

I take the view that it is the government that is failing the people and not the 9/11 conspiracy theorists. What scope would such theorists have if the government had released all the videos of the Pentagon? Or made the WTC building plans available? Or actually published a meaningful assesment of the collapse of WTC7? Or invited reputable scientific bodies to independantly review the NIST findings and share with them all the evidence?

I accept that 9/11 has brought out every looney tunes under the sun (I'm still toying with the idea that the Israeli lizards were operating the hologram machines.) But these people are entitled to their views. And there are many good questions about this government that would never have seen the light of day, if it wasn't for their questioning. However it's sliced and diced, the Bush administration has failed to meet the principles (1)-(4) I mentioned earlier. I am a lot more contemptuous of a bunch of Nazi criminals who have stolen the US government than sincere amateurs struggling to put together the pieces of 9/11. If you can't wear a funny tin hat in a democracy, then where the hell can you?"