Concerning the WTC attacks

Turley

Poisonwood wrote:

...If you have real substantial evidence that something different happened let's have it and stop sh***ing around...

It is a common technique to require anyone questioning the official "truth" to solve the crime. I do not claim to know who is responsible for the mass murders of Septmeber 11, 2001. I know that the official conspiracy theory is not supported by evidence.

The "generally accepted" and popular official solution to this crime is not supported by evidence proving the 19 "hijackers" are guilty.

You do not defend the popular dogma with evidence to support the official "truth." Instead you demand that I provide evidence something else happened.

I don't claim to have a solution to the crime. You do. You have the burden to provide evidence to support the "generally accepted" conspiracy theory. YOU have the solution to the crime, where is your evidence?

Zombrex

Turley wrote:

The remains identified did not include any hijackers. We might wonder why?

You might wonder. And you might assess this as meaning the hi-jackers were not[/i] at the crash site or not even on the plane. But that would be a guess on your part, a guess that goes against other evidence, an assumption that is not supported by any actual evidence.

Turley wrote:

While the DNA of a toddler was not identified. I would not find that remarkable because no one has claimed the toddler hijacked the plane.

Firstl, why not? Don't the police have to follow every possiblity? You have suggested the plane could have been flown by remote control and the entire thing staged, and that should be investigated. I find that as plausable as the toddler hijacking the plane.

Secondly, the fact the DNA of the toddler was not identified proves that the list produced by the AFIP is not a complete list. You can no more logically assume from this evidence that the terrorists were not on the plane than you can logically assume the kid was not on the plane.

Turley wrote:

I don't see any evidence of the hijackers DNA.

Or evidence of the baby. Does that show, or even suggest, they weren't on the plane? No, it doesn't.

Turley wrote:

If you find any evidence the hijackers were there. Let me know. I am
interested in evidence.

You mean other than the fact they checked in for the flight ..

At 7:15, a pair of them, Khalid al Mihdhar and Majed Moqed, checked in at the American Airlines ticket counter for Flight 77, bound for Los Angeles. Within the next 20 minutes, they would be followed by Hani Hanjour and two brothers, Nawaf al Hazmi and Salem al Hazmi

...the fact that they were signalled out at check in by the airlines Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-screening System (CAPPS)...

Hani Hanjour, Khalid al Mihdhar, and Majed Moqed were flagged by CAPPS. The Hazmi brothers were also selected for extra scrutiny by the air-line's customer service representative at the check-in counter.

... passed through airport security ...

The checkpoint featured closed-circuit television that recorded all passengers, including the hijackers, as they were screened.

... and then boarded the planes ...

At 7:50, Majed Moqed and Khalid al Mihdhar boarded the flight and were seated in 12A and 12B in coach. Hani Hanjour, assigned to seat 1B (first class), soon followed.The Hazmi brothers, sitting in 5E and 5F, joined Hanjour in the first-class cabin.

Yeah, you are right ... looks like they didn't even turn up at the airport :rolleyes:

Turley

Wicknight wrote:

...a guess that goes against other evidence, an assumption that is not supported by any actual evidence.

What actual evidence?

"At 7:50, Majed Moqed and Khalid al Mihdhar boarded the flight and were seated in 12A and 12B in coach. Hani Hanjour, assigned to seat 1B (first class), soon followed.The Hazmi brothers, sitting in 5E and 5F, joined Hanjour in the first-class cabin."

Where did you get this quote? Is it testimony? From who?

Zombrex

Turley wrote:

What actual evidence?

"At 7:50, Majed Moqed and Khalid al Mihdhar boarded the flight and were seated in 12A and 12B in coach. Hani Hanjour, assigned to seat 1B (first class), soon followed.The Hazmi brothers, sitting in 5E and 5F, joined Hanjour in the first-class cabin."

Where did you get this quote? Is it testimony? From who?

It is from the 9/11 commission report, which I thought you had read.

As for the sources, there are a number, from the SABRE Airline booking system which show the hi-jackers sitting plan and which would have recorded they boarded the plane, to the Dulles internal CCTV cameras and interviews with the Dulles staff.

...
14. Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority videotape, Dulles main terminal checkpoints, Sept. 11, 2001; see also Tim Jackson interview (Apr. 12, 2004).

15. Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority videotape, Dulles main terminal checkpoints, Sept. 11, 2001; see also Tim Jackson interview (Apr. 12, 2004).

16. For investigation findings, see FAA report, "American Airlines Flight #77: Hijacking and Crash into the Pentagon, Sept. 11, 2001," undated. For screener evaluations, see Tim Jackson interview (Apr. 12, 2004).

17. See AAL record, SABRE information for Flight 77, Sept. 11, 2001;AAL response to the Commission's February 3, 2004, requests, Mar. 15, 2004.
...

Poisonwood

I don't claim to have a solution to the crime. You do.

Really? Where did I say this ... or are you blowing bubbles again??

Zombrex

Turley wrote:

I don't claim to have a solution to the crime. You do.

No the independent commission does, a commission that had as much access as anyone to all the information. You have yet to put forward any real evidence that the commission got it wrong, or that they lied.

Turley

Wicknight wrote:

It is from the 9/11 commission report, which I thought you had read.

As for the sources, there are a number, from the SABRE Airline booking system which show the hi-jackers sitting plan and which would have recorded they boarded the plane, to the Dulles internal CCTV cameras and interviews with the Dulles staff.

Good. You have found some notes in the 9/11 Report.

15. Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority videotape, Dulles main terminal checkpoints, Sept. 11, 2001; see also Tim Jackson interview (Apr. 12, 2004).

16. For investigation findings, see FAA report, "American Airlines Flight #77: Hijacking and Crash into the Pentagon, Sept. 11, 2001," undated. For screener evaluations, see Tim Jackson interview (Apr. 12, 2004).

Footnotes and endnotes are not evidence but you are getting closer. Where is the Tim Jackson interview? Can you produce the supporting document? It will tell us who Jackson is and who interviewed him, if he was under oath, what he said, etc. We can learn if it is a deposition that would be transcribed by a court reporter or an FBI 302 which is a typed report by an FBI agent, written later, based on notes taken of an interview. Did someone else conduct the interview, or was it grand jury testimony which is secret? Where is this evidence?

Turley

"I don't claim to have a solution to the crime. You do."

Poisonwood wrote:

Really? Where did I say this ... or are you blowing bubbles again??

I am sorry. I thought you believed the "generally accepted" solution to the crime. Do you not believe the conspiracy theory that 19 terrorist hijackers committed mass murder on September 11, 2001?

Turley

Wicknight wrote:

No the independent commission does, a commission that had as much access as anyone to all the information. You have yet to put forward any real evidence that the commission got it wrong, or that they lied.

I see. These are the people that do your thinking for you, the people who do not have "to put forward any real evidence" because they have access to "the information." Why can't we have access to the information?

Zombrex

Turley wrote:

Where is the Tim Jackson interview? Can you produce the supporting document?

I could if I could be arse flying to the states and getting an American citizen to fill out a freedom of information form and then waiting a month for it to arrive.

But I couldn't be arse. As I have stated before I am not a professional historian.

I have no reason to believe that an independent professional commission would lie about both what Jackson said (which the report says isn't actually very much, none of the screeners remember anything about the terrorist appart from screening them) or more importantly the Dullas security cameras.

And by the way, if this was all faked then so would the "evidence" presented by the FOI requests, including your DNA report. That isn't the actuall DNA report, someone has just written down th names and posted it out. It could have as easily been faked as anything else.

Zombrex

Turley wrote:

I see. These are the people that do your thinking for you, the people who do not have "to put forward any real evidence" because they have access to "the information." Why can't we have access to the information?

Well on the one had there is the crack pots on the net who claim it was a conspiricy even though they have no evidence for this, and on the other hand there is the commission who claim there wasn't because they have all the evidence.

Who do you believe?

Also where do you get the idea none of this evidence is avalable to the public? Just because something isn't on the Internet doesn't mean it isn't avaiable to the public :rolleyes:

Poisonwood

Turley wrote:

I am sorry. I thought you believed the "generally accepted" solution to the crime. Do you not believe the conspiracy theory that 19 terrorist hijackers committed mass murder on September 11, 2001?

Don't make assumptions is my point. You do that a lot for someone always crying for evidence. If you've been reading my posts then you know that what I said was that I don't know personally who did but I find the generally accepted accounts plausible. Probably because they are plausible.

Until someone comes up with evidence to the contrary I have no good reason to think otherwise.

Your "if it's generally accepted its questionable" approach is a sort of twisted paranoid sort of cynical skepticism; Your patch-work paranoid alternatives are so unbelievable as to be laughable (you've a lot in common with creationists there, who have to mangle the subtleties of life to fit their unflinching world view).

But I'm sure I'm just a naive, unthinking puppet of the evil, conspiratorial federal forces governing my matrix-like mirage of a life.

Turley

Poisonwood wrote:

Your "if it's generally accepted its questionable" approach...

Really? Where did I say this ... or are you blowing bubbles now??

Turley

Wicknight wrote:

Well on the one had there is the crack pots on the net who claim it was a conspiricy even though they have no evidence for this, and on the other hand there is the commission who claim there wasn't because they have all the evidence.

I think you have reality backwards. It is the commission that claims there was a conspiracy (the conspiracy of 19 men who conspired with al Queda's terrorist network and Osama). And it is the commission that is lacking evidence (unless you consider secret evidence, evidence not available to the public, the same as actual publicly available evidence).

Calling skeptics names like "crackpots" is technique used to characterize those that you do not agree with and it is not useful in finding truth.

Zombrex

Turley wrote:

unless you consider secret evidence, evidence not available to the public, the same as actual publicly available evidence

Have you actually tried to get any of this evidence you claim is "secret?"

Zombrex

Turley wrote:

Calling skeptics names like "crackpots" is technique used to characterize those that you do not agree with and it is not useful in finding truth.

No I define crackpots as those make wild assumptions about things they actually know nothing about or who assume there must be a government coverup even though there is not actual evidence of a government cover up.

A classic example would be the idea that flight 77 didn't hit the pentegon. If you read the crack pot website they are full of assumptions of what should have happened, what a plane crash should look like, when most of these people have no clue what a plane crash should look like.

Poisonwood

Turley wrote:

Really? Where did I say this ... or are you blowing bubbles now??

I didn't quote you directly ... I said it was your 'approach' ... you know ... your paranoid one?

Turley

Wicknight wrote:

I could if I could be arse flying to the states and getting an American citizen to fill out a freedom of information form and then waiting a month for it to arrive.

If it were only that easy. All FOIA requests do not produce desired documents. You may get a response in a month and it may be "no." Then you can start the costly legal process through the federal courts with no guarantee of success.

Wicknight wrote:

As I have stated before I am not a professional historian.

We have something in common.

Wicknight wrote:

I have no reason to believe that an independent professional commission would lie...

I think your position is reasonable and understandable. It is a logical position. And it is the "generally accepted" position. I once shared your point of view with confidence.

I also think we would agree that it is practical to use probability. I think we would agree that it would be totally impractical to doubt everything and test everything independently. We do not need to go to Egypt to see if the river Nile is really there. It is practical to accept the probability that the river Nile is in Egypt.

If we have no reason to doubt the independent professional commission why would we? It would not make any sense.

One document such as the Armed Forces Pathology Report not finding any DNA of hijackers at the Pentagon should not cause us to doubt the commission. Even if the independent commission made a number of provable errors, some errors would expected in a large investigation. No one is perfect.

Consider what would be necessary to shake your confidence in the independent commission. Your view of reality would experience a tremor on the magnitude of an earthquake and it would be disturbing.

Changing human minds is a long, slow, and arduous process. Consider if it is possible that some thing "generally accepted" by the masses might be provably false, the independent commission for example. If so, how could we know? Even more important if some thing "generally accepted" was demonstrably false how would it become "generally accepted" to be false? Consider what has caused the independent commission to be "generally accepted" to be true.

Most people are taught by parents and teachers to be honest and therefore most are not truly skilled at deception. Magicians can fool the minds of the masses. A skilled performer can defeat our best deductive reasoning. There is one universal principle common to all magician's tricks, without exception. Do you know what it is?

Turley

Poisonwood wrote:

I didn't quote you directly ... I said it was your 'approach' ... you know ... your paranoid one?

I didn't quote you directly either. What is the purpose in calling me names?

Turley

Wicknight wrote:

No I define crackpots as those make wild assumptions about things they actually know nothing about or who assume there must be a government coverup even though there is not actual evidence of a government cover up.

A classic example would be the idea that flight 77 didn't hit the pentegon. If you read the crack pot website they are full of assumptions of what should have happened, what a plane crash should look like, when most of these people have no clue what a plane crash should look like.

Perhaps you are the one who has made wild assumptions about things that you actually know nothing about. Even if you did make incorrect assumptions I would never call you a "crackpot." We are all subject to errors.

How do you know, "there is not actual evidence of a government cover up"? Do you have any experience or knowledge of a government cover-up? Do you know what a government cover-up would look like?

Turley

Wicknight wrote:

Have you actually tried to get any of this evidence you claim is "secret?"

It is not my "claim" that the evidence is "secret." It is self-evident that it has not been made public. Only the 9/11 Report was made public and not the supporting documents. This is not my claim, it is the reality.

You asked if I have requested these documents. I have not formally requested this particular evidence per se through FOIA. I did check at the National Archives recently and I was told none of the 9/11 documents have been sent there as of April 9th. They will be there eventually but not all of them will be available, grand jury testimony, for example, if there is any, will not be available. And anything else the goverment decides is secret will remain secret. It would be a very big task for a single citizen to review what will surely be a very large collection of documents. I have done this before. I do not intend to retrace my steps to learn what I already know.

I have experience with FOIA requests and I have obtained documents in the past. Some come easily with only a letter request. Some documents are never released. I have participated in FOIA cases in the courts.

Perhaps more than 1/2 of the endnotes to the 9/11 Report may be to documents the public may never be allowed to see. What do you think of a government Report that is supported by "evidence" we cannot see? I think it requires a faith, similar to a religious dogma.

Zombrex

Turley wrote:

Do you have any experience or knowledge of a government cover-up? Do you know what a government cover-up would look like?

Watergate ... and that was just a burlgery of a hotel room.

Could you imagine the coverup involved in faking a hi-jacking (4 actually). Thousands of people would have had to be involved, everyone from the airline to the families of the victims to the crash investigators to the 9/11 commission.

Zombrex

Turley wrote:

It is not my "claim" that the evidence is "secret." It is self-evident that it has not been made public. Only the 9/11 Report was made public and not the supporting documents. This is not my claim, it is the reality.

You asked if I have requested these documents. I have not formally requested this particular evidence per se through FOIA. I did check at the National Archives recently and I was told none of the 9/11 documents have been sent there as of April 9th. They will be there eventually but not all of them will be available, grand jury testimony, for example, if there is any, will not be available. And anything else the goverment decides is secret will remain secret. It would be a very big task for a single citizen to review what will surely be a very large collection of documents. I have done this before. I do not intend to retrace my steps to learn what I already know.

I have experience with FOIA requests and I have obtained documents in the past. Some come easily with only a letter request. Some documents are never released. I have participated in FOIA cases in the courts.

Perhaps more than 1/2 of the endnotes to the 9/11 Report may be to documents the public may never be allowed to see. What do you think of a government Report that is supported by "evidence" we cannot see? I think it requires a faith, similar to a religious dogma.

So you actually have no idea what parts of the evidence are "secret" ... all the evidence that shows the hi-jackers borded the plane and hi-jacked it might be available, you haven't looked.

Turley

Wicknight wrote:

So you actually have no idea what parts of the evidence are "secret" ... all the evidence that shows the hi-jackers borded the plane and hi-jacked it might be available, you haven't looked.

Of course we know. We know that the supporting documentation was not made public with the report. Does anyone have a copy of the intereview of Tim Jackson? The 9/11 Commission says it has the evidence. You can believe them, if this is your religion. They might produce all of it later. They might not.

This year is the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. The English still have not produced evidence those executed were guilty beyond some tortured confessions. Thomas Wintour's confession was signed in a different hand with his name misspelled. The lack of evidence does change the public's "genererally accepted" view that Guy Fawkes and his conpirators were all as guilty as the 9/11 hijackers.

Turley

Wicknight wrote:

Watergate ... and that was just a burlgery of a hotel room.

I knew you would use the Watergate example. Everyone does. People use Wategate or the more recent, and also popular "Monica Lewinsky."

I asked:
"Do you have any experience or knowledge of a government cover-up? Do you know what a government cover-up would look like?"

Watergate is not a government cover-up. A cover-up, by definition is not known, it is a, cover-up. A successful cover-up is not known to the public, though it may be known to a few. Give me an example of an on-going government cover-up. Surley we are not so naive to believe there are no actual government cover-ups fooling the public?

Watergate is an example of what professional and amateur magician's call a sucker trick. I believe you to be an honest person, so I would not fault you for not studying the art of deception. Most people know very little about professional deception. Search "sucker trick" on google. All such deception involves gaining the public's confidence. Magician's use deception for amusement only, others use it to conceal crimes like murder.

Watergate is "generally accepted" to be what a government cover-up looks like. A lot of effort was expended to sell this to the masses. And it has been so effective, citizens routinely invoke Watergate as an example that government cover-ups cannot succeed. They reason if Nixon could not keep his secret or Clinton could not hide his Monica scandal, other scandals can't be kept from the public. This logic suffers from a false premise. What is the false premise?

Turley

Turley wrote:

Most people are taught by parents and teachers to be honest and therefore most are not truly skilled at deception. Magicians can fool the minds of the masses. A skilled performer can defeat our best deductive reasoning. There is one universal principle common to all magician's tricks, without exception. Do you know what it is?

A good question remains unanswered.

ISAW

As regard the thread topic. I think it would be useful to have a "What is evidence? / what is a source?/ what is acceptable?" FAQ.

The examples I give are from revisionists/holocaust deniers because that is when I arrived but they could apply to Lunar Hoaxes , astrology etc.

Many non academics are not really conversant with the peer reviewed journal. so when they see a "journal" like a revisionist one or a web site for an "institute" like the institute for historical revision they judge it as acceptable as other institutes or journals.

Something like this:
http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/research/skill26.htm

some simple pointers could be considered like

how widely the journal is quoted as a valid source?

Who is it quoted by?
In reference to what sublects i.e. it may be quoted a lot as a bad source. e.g IHR or reports like gansfield is it ? into ESP.

As to web references pointers like .ac.uk which show it is a valid third level institute in the UK.

But persona pages which begin with a tilda ~ e.g. www.tcd.ie/maths/undergrad_students/~johndoe/myholocaustdenialhomepageare are personal opinion and may not reflect the institute. one should not confuse someone with access to a valid institute with the professional weight of the institute they work for. such pages usually carry a disclaimer

The number quality variety and independence of sources are important.
Then there are web pages. How to look up who owns the web page is important. Do a who is on the page samspade.org contains a number of tools. any search on "IP identifiers and locator" will yield a load of sources and tools.

here is one
http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm

Now say someone recommends this book
http://www.vho.org/GB/Books/dth/fndCarto.html

The page is headed : International and Independent Scientific Historical Research

How do you check that out?
Look at the base address with the rest stripped off:
www.vho.org



samspade.org gives you:www.vho.org = [ 67.19.136.164 ]
and Germar Rudolf , Castle Hill Publishers
geobytes IP locator above gives
67.19.136.164 is in Virginia Beach Virginia.

Now Germer is a holocaust denier who claimed forensic chemistry shows that the holocaust story is wrong. Is he an independent source for recommending books on holocaust revision?

Germers report was debunked by Green and Mc Carthy.
http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/chemistry/not-the-science/

One might ask if they are independent?
Their bona Fides are listed in their paper under About the Authors

The references are independent and varied and not only traceable back to other people who have only their point of view.

http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/chemistry/not-the-science/notes.shtml


Anyway our members could benefit with a short primer or FAQ on what is evidence and what is acceptable.

Turley

ISAW wrote:

As regard the thread topic. I think it would be useful to have a "What is evidence? / what is a source?/ what is acceptable?" FAQ.

I think you make a good point. I think discussion should begin with defining terms in order to agree what we are talking about. It could change with the subject and people.

The source and evidence may vary but it is a good for people to agree on what is an acceptable source for their discussion.

Turley

Early in April Myksyk wrote:

Myksyk wrote:

I submit to you that 'generally accepted' within science means that there has been the accumulation of convincing (often overwhelming) evidence in favour of a particular idea or theory.

I agreed.

I added that some things also become "generally accepted" without the accumulation of convincing (often overwhelming) evidence in favour of the idea or theory.

From the very beginnning it was "generally accepted" that hijackers were blamed for the mass murders of September 11th before any evidence was available. Now 3 1/2 years later, even after a 9/11 Commission issued a Report, without the supporting evidence being made available to the public, the conspiracy theory remains "generally accepted" and will remain the "truth" for the foreseeable future.

What then, if not actual evidence, is the cause of something to be "generally accepted?"

ISAW

Turley wrote:

There is one universal principle common to all magician's tricks, without exception. Do you know what it is?

I do and I could tell you. I may well do so by analogy. But first tell me Turley if you can keep a secret. Can you?