Well this should be fun
Posted by Joshua Claybourn on 16 December 2004 | 15 responses
Millionaire activist Jimmy Walter is so convinced of a government cover-up about the Septemeber 11 massacres that “he is offering a $100,000 reward to any engineering student who can prove the World Trade Centre buildings crashed the way the government says.” He thinks explosives planted in the twin towers caused them to fall as they did, and also rejects the official explanation for the damage done at the Pentagon. He has spent more than $3 million, close to 30 percent of his net worth, promoting the conspiracy theory.
15 Responses to “Well this should be fun”
Wow, it is true what they say about fools and their money..
That’s 3 million that could have been better spent.
You can’t prove a negative. It doesn’t matter how close anyone gets, I’m sure it won’t be “close enough” for the panel of judges. Every submission will be more “proof” that it didn’t happen the way the government says, but the argument from incredulty (which this basically is) is anything but proof.
Who knows, maybe he really is skeptical about it, and it’s not the product of a tin foil hat worn too tightly. I just have doubts that he would accept it if he were truely proven wrong.
He is certainly entitled to his opinion, but damn were the planes just for show?
Foltz, I assume the idea is that the planes were indeed for show — to make it look like terrorists did it, so that the government could drum up an excuse to invade the middle east.
What a nutjob. (Walter, not Foltz, that is!)
See, I could never be a crackpot of that nature, I just cant make those logic jumps. I’ll just have to stick with normal leveled liberal business crazy.
You have got to be kidding me. Why doesn’t he instead come to his senses and donate the money to protecting our troops out there who are fighting because of what he thinks is a “hoax”.
Philosopher, Foltz…presumably the guy’s a believer of the “Lone Gunman” theory, or something like that.
These conspiracy theories are great…for a laugh. It’s unfortunate people may actually believe them. There is even a short video production going around (someone emailed it too me recently)…taking the slant that the Pentagaon was not hit by a plane on 9/11. Of course no alternative was offered. Just a hodge-podge of supposed evidence.
Who knows…maybe Walters is right…Karl Rove may have planted explosives at the WTC.
Or it could just be plain old Islamic Terrorists taking orders from UBL to kill Americans.
As I understand it, the thrust of the argument centers on the fact that the Towers fell in an orderly fashion, in spite of the unconventional means employed to destroy them. In other words, it takes months to plan and execute a demolition. In the case of the Towers, you’d probably need a year or two. So two 747s crash into them and they implode and crumble vertically into an enormous heap. I’m not paranoid enough to believe it, but one might wonder whether something aided that orderly crumble.
The best explanation I’ve heard is that the Towers were engineered to fall like that because the designers realized if they tipped you’d have one hell of a domino effect on the neighboring architecture.
Nomad, it is indeed the latter, the building and in fact all skyscrapers are designed to collapse straight down. OBL actually knew this because there was a video of his where he was gloating about 9/11 and indicated they thought the towers would only fall down to the point of impact.
In the weeks following the Pearl Harbor Attack, up to 70% of Americans thought that the Germans were the ones who “put the Japs” up to it.
Here in The Matrix, people believe what they want to believe.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter if Dubya planted the explosives himself. Everybody (majority of US Voters) believes Saddam Hussein did it, and that’s all that matters. That’s how History will be written.
Also, the buildings fell “straight down” due to this little phenomenon called Gravity. Skyscrapers actually have very little lateral strength, and most of the structure is built to support the weight from the force of gravity. Any tendencies to push mass off of the “straight down” path, will be very quickly overcome by gravity.
I don’t think it would actually be possible to engineer a large skyscraper to fall over sideways.
One other item regarding the fall of the towers…
There is a book by Dennis Smith (retired NYC firefighter) called Report From Ground Zero. In his book he discusses the steel beam structure within. The beams had a fire retarded coat placed on them during construction…but it was only safe upto “X degrees”…cannot remember exact #. When the jet fuel burned the heat exceeded the max. temp. thus expediting collapse (fuel also sped up the collapse by shooting through multiple elevator shafts).
This heat/fire “vaporized” much debris. According to Smith, what most of us consider huge debris piles at ground zero to be relatively small in comparison (due to the vaporization). Likely this accounted for the pancake effect of the “flat collapse” as well.
I wouldn’t think planted explosives would have been able to do this.
Thunder is getting close. Political correctness and the plaintiff bar ensured that the specified asbestoes girder insulation was not used and a vastly inferior product was. The same causes caused the Challenger diaster, the o-rings had been made from an asbestoes compound but the manufacturer ceased making it due to PC and lawyers, so, inferior products were used.
Those who are so easily dismissive of conspiracy theorists could admit these days that the attack on USS Liberty and the murder of Americans was an LBJ coverup.www.twa800.com offers quite a bit of evidence of a Clinton coverup. I’m sure that the CBS Dan Rather foolishness is being covered up now-but they would have got away with it except for conspiracy theorists who blog.