Hi. I'm a highschool student, and I just got interested in the 9/11 truth movement a couple months back after browsing the internet. In my history class, we're doing a series of research projects based on issues in our world today... and I picked - you guessed it - the 9/11 conspiracy theory. Now, I'm not allowed to firmly stand by the evidence conceived by the numerous websites on the internet, only present them to the class with an unbiased viewpoint and allow them to ponder about it. Because of this, I'm finding it a little hard to organize all of my evidence so that they're convincing. don't get me wrong - I have quite a bit of it, but I just don't know what's best to present in a 10-minute powerpoint to a sophomore class. I might've overlooked some things, so some advice and/or suggestions would be great.
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9/11 conspiracy project (14 posts)
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Posted 15 years ago #
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When I was in High School I did a few of these projects myself, so I have a pretty good idea of the pros and cons when presenting such information to high school students. It's really not all too different from how you should react when discussing the subject with adults, but it's a bit easier with teenagers since they're at that age where their minds are still forming and they can be better influenced by external forces.
I advise to try and stick predominantly to indisputable evidence. Analysis is good, such as the mysterious details of the WTC collapse, but I've found, particularly in street activism, that people are easier to persuade or get interested when presented with evidence that is simply not up for debate. Things like the many promotions of those who were in charge of defending 9/11, or the war games that took place that day, and other such things. I would start out with that and then move on into the analysis to make it easier for your peers to not write you off as some nut. With the analysis, I'd focus mostly on the World Trade Center complex, since that's much less peripheral than the anomalies at the Pentagon and Flight 93.
I'd also try and throw in some information about the recent paper about Active Thermitic Material Discovered in the WTC Dust Samples. Interpretive analysis can be convincing to certain eyes, but scientific evidence is far more compelling.
One more thing, try and avoid the term "conspiracy theory". It's technically correct, but it throws people off. It instantly makes people think of moon-landing hoaxes and UFO theories and such. If you do insist on the term "conspiracy theory", I would at least mention that the term is equally applicable to the official story. That might help to avoid having people write it off. Still, I'd recommend using other terminology, like "inside job" or some other direct reference to government complicity.
Posted 15 years ago # -
well - i hardly think controlled demolition should be the centerpiece of your presentation. it is just one theory among an ocean of evidence of foreknowledge, motive and direct evidence of complicity. Focusing on the collapse of the towers is perhaps one element you can touch on - but you would be really handicapping yourself by presenting it as your central thesis.
I think the strength of your arguement will hinge on presenting a DIVERSE set of facts:
- Insider trading on American and United Airlines stocks.
- There were wargames on the morning of 9/11 that mimicked the attacks themselves, and sent our defenses in the wrong direct.
- no fighter jets were scrambled to protect Washington DC - 90 minutes after the towers were hit and we KNEW a plane was headed to the Capital. Why?
- Decorated Pentagon officers involved in Able Danger knew the terrorists were in Florida training - and were blocked from arresting them.
- Money wires to the lead hijacker from the head of Pakistan ISI who was later in DC on 9/11 with government officials - watching the attacks unfold.
- Keane - the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission stated to the Washington Post that everything NORAD told them was "so far from the truth" regarding why our air defenses failed.
- PNAC called for a 'catalyzing event' like a new Pearl Harbor, to achieve US dominance in Eurasia and Iraq - as well as an excuse to increase the military budget. Within months of PNAC members taking office - they got their new Pearl harbor.
- Ignored warnings and presidential briefs that indicated that an attack was imminent. no counter-terrorism meetings were even held to address the threat. Not one.
- Known terrorists were allowed to enter the US, in some cases with the help of the US Government in the Visa Express Program.
- FBI agents were BLOCKED from investigating the hijackers.
- Billions of dollars in profits companies like Halliburton with direct ties to government officials
- Anthrax CONFIRMED to have originated in US military weapons labs was sent to liberal democrats in congress who attempted to block the Patriot Act.
and - despite TRILLIONS spent to defend this nation - one man in a cave in Afghanistan was able to launch a complex conspiracy to train terrorists to fly planes on USA soil - and defeated the CIA, NSA, DIA, FBI, DEA, Immigration, NORAD, Airport Security, and every other element of security apparatus designed to track and prevent such attacks. They just tip-toed thru the raindrops.
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Posted 15 years ago # -
Hi ladvoid, welcome to the TruthMove forum. We're glad you found us. There are many sites about 9/11 truth on the internet, but we pride ourselves on taking a broad approach and trying to be as responsible as possible.
I suggest that along with the evidence, you cover a little bit on the social and psychological resistance to considering alternative views. I had the opportunity to do a presentation to high school students once, and I think they are usually mature enough to consider these issues. You might extend the idea of "peer pressure" to the wider society--how certain ideas are deemed simply wrong or unacceptable without much consideration and how you can be alienated if you have a different perspective. Remind them that in a democracy, all ideas are supposed to be considered and evaluated on their merits (i.e. the evidence).
You should definitely take as "unbiased" an approach as you can. You might cover some of the arguments of supposed "debunkers"--and show how they are mostly deceptive and without substance.
Here are a couple quotes that you might find helpful:
"All great truth begins as blasphemy."
George Bernard Shaw"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Upton SinclairPosted 15 years ago # -
Sorry that I don't find alleged analysis of a bag of dust that lacks any "chain of custody" to qualify as science.
There are a lot of solid pieces of evidence that have nothing to do with the collapses of the towers after a large plane shattered their structures (or even WTC 7 after parts of the towers fell onto it).
www.cooperativeresearch.org The Complete 9/11 Timeline
best research guide to the facts
www.oilempire.us/media-strategy.html Media coverage of 9/11 highlights the no plane hoaxes and demolition theories, ignores best evidence proved beyond reasonable doubt
9/11 research is a rabbit-hole of Byzantine complexity full of snares and delusions and peopled with false friends, lunatics, earnest lost souls and a few heroes. It's not necessary to understand all the nuances of science and bureaucracy that allowed the government to get away with mass murder, blame it on swarthy foreigners (of whom many are eager accomplices) and use the incident as (in the words of the Cheney, Jeb Bush et al cabal, the Project for a New American Century) "a new Pearl Harbor." At this critical juncture in human history, it's only necessary to understand why they did it. The motive was Peak Oil, a disaster which will affect everyone on the planet, about which all must enlighten themselves and for which all must prepare. -- Jenna Orkin, World Trade Center Environmental Organization http://mikeruppert.blogspot.com/2007/05/epa-whistl...
Crossing the Rubicon: Simplifying the case against Dick Cheney by Michael Kane www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011805_simplify...
Means - Dick Cheney and the Secret Service: Dick Cheney was running a completely separate chain of Command & Control via the Secret Service, assuring the paralysis of Air Force response on 9/11. The Secret Service has the technology to see the same radar screens the FAA sees in real time. They also have the legal authority and technological capability to take supreme command in cases of national emergency. Dick Cheney was the acting Commander in Chief on 9/11.
Motive - Peak Oil: At some point between 2000 and 2007, world oil production reaches its peak; from that point on, every barrel of oil is going to be harder to find, more expensive to recover, and more valuable to those who recover and control it. Dick Cheney was well aware of the coming Peak Oil crisis at least as early as 1999, and 9/11 provided the pretext for the series of energy wars that Cheney stated, "will not end in our lifetime."
Opportunity - 9/11 War Games: The Air Force was running multiple war games on the morning of 9/11 simulating hijackings over the continental United States that included (at least) one "live-fly" exercise as well as simulations that placed "false blips" on FAA radar screens. These war games eerily mirrored the real events of 9/11 to the point of the Air Force running drills involving hijacked aircraft as the 9/11 plot actually unfolded. The war games & terror drills played a critical role in ensuring no Air Force fighter jocks - who had trained their entire lives for this moment - would be able to prevent the attacks from succeeding. These exercises were under Dick Cheney's management.
Jamey Hecht
http://poetrypoliticscollapse.blogspot.com/2008/09...
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2008 Seeking to Hire Ignorant Ghostwriter for Book That Already Exists
Beginning on the day of the attack, the 9/11 Truth Movement ran the same inevitable course repeated by domestic dissent and political critique so many times: formation, momentum, growth, penetration by unidentified representatives of the critiqued; disinformation campaigns; factionalization, and fizzle. It is always possible, however, to rebuild and extend the work of social repair that such movements represent. Apart from that utopian ambition, it’s inherently valuable just to make sense of the attacks and assassinations, the engineered coups des etats and the falsely triggered wars. That sense-making happens in paperback-and-podium argumentation pitched at various levels of sophistication for various audiences; it happens in documentaries; and it can happens in the arts. It cannot happen in the courts: published in September 2004, Mike Ruppert’s Crossing the Rubicon was a solidly documented, robustly argued legal case against Dick Cheney and others, constructed strictly around means, motive, and opportunity. Though it remains the 2nd or 3rd best-selling book on 9/11 after the Kean Report itself, Rubicon has been resolutely ignored by the mainstream media and gone unchallenged by any legal (or other) representative of those it accuses. The way to get media attention is to publish – wittingly or unwittingly – a true story mixed with a poison pill of disinformation.
Posted 15 years ago # -
well - i hardly think controlled demolition should be the centerpiece of your presentation. it is just one theory among an ocean of evidence of foreknowledge, motive and direct evidence of complicity.
Agreed. JohnA has a good list there, so I'd definitely fit as much into that as possible.
To address the implication, I didn't say CD should be the centerpiece of his overall presentation, only to focus on it as far as analysis of the physical evidence goes.
Sorry that I don't find alleged analysis of a bag of dust that lacks any "chain of custody" to qualify as science.
I'm pretty certain they gave the names and locations of where the dust samples were collected, along with the times(roughly speaking) when they were collected. I see no reason to doubt the documentation. It can be confirmed by simply asking the names given.
As for "alleged" analysis, there were microscopic pictures taken of the study. I'm a filmmaker, so I've done plenty of work in video editing, and see no signs of digital recreation in these pictures. Again, I see no reason to doubt the documentation.
Posted 15 years ago # -
Mark here has a point. By very strict legal terms determining provenance of evidence by sworn testimony is fairly weak. And none of the samples were collected by people trained to do so suggesting the potential for contamination.
But how could these samples have all been contaminated with a compound unavailable to the public? And how likely is it that all four people who submitted samples were plants?
The only way I can see that these finding are seriously called into question, other than the limitations of the study itself, is by assuming that the compound was added to the samples after they were submitted. And that would be to assume that someone involved was working for the government.
I don't consider that likely. Then again I've never really found any of the physical evidence, nor much of the work of "9/11 scholars" all that compelling.
Posted 15 years ago # -
Which is precisely my point. You can make major leaps of faith to speculate that the documentation and testimony of the gatherers is false, but there's no actual reason thus far beyond cynicism to think that.
As for legal terms, "chain of custody" is used to refer to any paper trail or chronological documentation of the gathering and analysis of said evidence. Documentation should include the conditions under which the evidence is gathered, the identity of all evidence handlers, duration of evidence custody, security conditions while handling or storing the evidence, and the manner in which evidence is transferred to subsequent custodians each time such a transfer occurs (along with the signatures of persons involved at each step).
Some of those are addressed in the report, others are not, so we'd have to get more in-depth knowledge to confirm just how valid the chain of custody is, particularly the latter two conditions. An adequate paper trail of such a thing would, however, give it a very strong legal standing. It's all about documentation, really.
Posted 15 years ago # -
Finding aluminum in the dust is hardly surprising given that the towers were coated in that metal. Many of the debunkers have suggested that claims of "molten metal" in the rubble were from the aluminum cladding, which is a lot more reasonable to assume than nearly all of the demolition claims.
When the media WANT the "truth" movement to focus on demolition, that should be a clue that the best evidence lies elsewhere.
Posted 15 years ago # -
these articles are a good place to start:
THE TOP 40: REASONS TO DOUBT THE OFFICIAL STORY OF SEPTEMBER 11th, 2001 ... An outline in simple talking points ... http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20041221...
Welcome Truth Seeker - to a quick course on the shortest paths to 9/11 truth... http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20050204...
And as noted above, for sources and additional context: The Complete 9/11 Timeline http://cooperativeresearch.org/project.jsp?project...
Also see the History Commons Groups Blog on 9/11 Commission Records released at the National Archives: 9/11 Commission Documents Masterlist http://hcgroups.wordpress.com/2009/04/12/911-commi...
And as far as controlled demolition goes, NIST and FEMA's own statements and findings do a pretty good job of disproving their own conclusions:
April 19, 2008. “Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destructionâ€. The Open Civil Engineering Journal. http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCI...
"The stated goal of the WTC Report, in its Executive Summary was "To investigate the building construction, materials used, and the technical conditions that contributed to the outcome of the WTC disaster after terrorists flew large jet-fuel laden commercial airliners into the WTC Towers." (NCSTAR 1, p. xxxv) One of the more specific goals was to "Determine why and how WTC 1 and WTC 2 collapsed following the initial impacts of the aircraft." (Id.) However, the NIST's mandate was made clear in the NCST Act: to "establish the likely technical cause or causes of the building failure." See 15 U.S.C. § 7301(b)(2)(A). Implicit in the foregoing section of the NCST Act is that the failure of the entire building must be explained. Thus, the WTC Report's stated goal and objective should simply read: "To establish the likely technical cause or causes of the total failure of WTC 1 and WTC 2."
Instead, NIST shirked its responsibilities under the NCST Act, by stating in a footnote that "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 includes little analysis of the structural behavior of the tower after the conditions for collapse initiation were reached and collapse became inevitable." (NCSTAR 1, p. xxxvii, fn 2)
In Short: NIST Mandate: "establish the likely technical cause or causes of the building failure." See 15 U.S.C. § 7301(b)(2)(A)
NIST response to RFC: "we are unable to provide a full explanation of the total collapse"
NIST Request for Correction filed by Bob McIlvaine, Bill Doyle, Steve Jones, Kevin Ryan, Richard Gage, Frank Legge http://911blogger.com/files/NIST_DQA_Petition%28re...
Also according to the NIST report, the structures that provided "minimal resistance" were "a bottom section below the impact floors that could be thought of as a strong, rigid box, structurally undamaged and at almost normal temperature." (29)
The NIST explanation of the "global collapse", as outlined in Section 6.14.4 is, essentially, that after the 15-30 stories of building mass started moving downward, it overcame the 80-95 stories of redundantly-reinforced steel structure below. In fact, NIST admits in Section 6.14.4, that these stories provided "minimal resistance", and the buildings came down "essentially in free fall".
NIST omits mention of the size of the core columns, and provides no calculations for the energy released by the descending upper 15-30 stories, or for the energy that would be required to overcome the lower 80-95 stories of steel and concrete structure.
Building a Better Mirage: NIST's 3-Year $20,000,000 Cover-Up of the Crime of the Century by Jim Hoffman http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/nist/
Posted 15 years ago # -
No building anywhere is designed to withstand the impact of 20 to 30 stories of acre sized floors falling onto the lower structures.
The towers were strong, but probably not strong enough to resist THAT force. The idea that the lower, undamaged floors should have resisted the downward motion of the collapsing tops doesn't make sense to me. And the towers had no structural concrete in them, unlike the most modern super tall skyscrapers such as Taiwan 101, Petronas and the Burj Dubai.
I've never seen any demolition theories that examine the impact on the structure of the collisions, which were substantial.
THAT is why the media wants 9/11 "truth" to be focused on the collapses, instead of evidence that puts the perpetrators and enablers on the defensive.
Posted 15 years ago # -
well... everyone here knows i am somewhat agnostic on the subject and i often caution people on making it the centerpiece of their 9/11 argument.
but - you appear to present the flipside to that idea in that you appear to summarily dismiss a little too much too quickly.
your response does not even come close to presenting a thorough examination of the physics involved. it just 'seems' right to you - which is fine. we all have opinions and hunches and 'feelings.'
but - we DO have to hold each other to the same standards.
these were 3 steel framed buildings that collapsed. it matters not that the idea that "the undamaged floors should have resisted the downward motion" does not make sense to you - or me. neither of our opinions are scientifically qualified.
without math and peer reviewed analysis based on the REAL RESEARCH and hard work of structural engineers and physicists, our opinions are no different than the pro-CD layman who adamantly claims the opposite. our opinions may be full of sound and fury - but in the scientific world they signify nothing.
and this is why i do not debate this issue. i am unqualified.
i say - let this research be challenged - scientifically - and let the chips fall where they may.
Posted 15 years ago # -
I agree with mark when he says this: "When the media WANT the "truth" movement to focus on demolition, that should be a clue that the best evidence lies elsewhere."
But that's also why I believe they demolished the buildings--to distract us from the evidence that might in fact win a legal case.
Emanuel
Posted 15 years ago # -
but - we DO have to hold each other to the same standards.
I agree with John here. I think controlled demolition should be generally de-emphasized within the movement. But I don't think those of us who might be skeptical should be making speculative, layman's arguments for why the buildings supposedly did come down due to the airliner impacts and fires.
I'm not a structural engineer, explosives expert, or architect.
I think it makes for a more effective case to remain agnostic on demolition or to honestly acknowledge one's own doubts about the official collapse theory, while pushing for the promotion of solid documentary evidence over physical evidence. I do not think that proclaiming "THE BUILDINGS WERE DESTROYED BY EXPLOSIVES" is a helpful approach.
But that's also why I believe they demolished the buildings--to distract us from the evidence that might in fact win a legal case.
This has been my suspicion for years. The idea that "they" blew up the buildings is so preposterous to the mainstream public, that this contention severely isolates our movement--even if it is true.
Posted 15 years ago #
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