Debate With a 9/11 Truther

The truther is me, John-Michael P. Talboo.

Debate With a 9/11 Truther

RHKINC
rhkinc.blogspot.com
Thursday, February 11, 2010

It lasted in full 7 emails. The first two emails were confirming that we were going to have a debate. This is our full debate (taking out emails and easing the format some):

His first email (my first email was really a post on his blog):
My time is very short as I am making a film at the moment, a film that I hope will answer any questions or objections you have. But I'll think about it though, I'm always up for a phone convo if this is just for your own personal curiosity.

JM

My response:

I was hoping to have this debate via email, a continuous back and forth for years if needed. Along the way some issues will be permanently resolved, and those that are not should be placed publicly demanding answers. I'm hoping through our two side examination we can compile a list of unresolved issues for people with more means than I, possibly even you, have. I understand you have a life and so do I. An email a day, or a week, whenever we get the opportunity would be fine by me.

Besides making this public my intention is to inform as many people as possible of the unresolved issues (supporting or not supporting my side) so the public will be wiser. This is an opportunity to not only cover the truth of the event, but also teach other things such as psychology, religion, engineering, politics, ect. I am not formal in any regard, and hope we can "debate" for the truth.

Truther:

OK, well, kick things off I guess.

Me:

The September 11 attacks were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by al-Qaeda upon the United States on September 11, 2001. (From Wikipedia).

Truther:

Even if we accept that bin Laden and gang were the masterminds of 9/11 it does not negate a slew of evidence indicating that they were allowed to succeed and had their results amplified. 9/11 very well could have been an inside and an outside job.

Me:

Your links lead to more links which lead to even more links following by another link to a source cited in a report I found to have had the citation of a report based on the JFK assassination. So lets go a direct route in bringing the information, the data, to the email. What evidence indicates they were allowed to succeed? What evidence indicated their results were amplified (presumably by a force outside of their own means)? The second link has no derivable questions of specific value as it raises no ambiguous leads only a statement of possibilities which can be found by the first two questions in this "segment". Do you accept the fact of a series of coordinated suicide attacks by Al-Qaeda on the United States on September 11, 2001?

Truther:

I'm sorry, but the more I think about this debate, the more I know I have no interest in it. You are in essence asking me to write a book. I tackle an issue here and there these days, but to tackle every detail in a possible multiple year long debate is frankly more time than I wish to devote to this cause. I have been a member of the 9/11 truth movement since 2004. I am pretty much finished after I complete my movie, absent some big developments. It's the capstone to all the research and activism I have done. Keep an eye out for it and review it if you want. I'll review your review. :)

Take care,
JM

Me:

You, sir, are unwilling to stand up for what you believe in no matter the cost. All I asked for was your time at your pace on a topic you've placed immense efforts in already. I didn't want a book, I wanted the truth. I don't play by your link to a link of a link rules that never finds the real truth and you back down. You are a coward.
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I don't know if he will publish my final response, which I also left in his comments, but here it is...

"A continuous back and forth for years if needed," is a book, at any pace. How can I both be "unwilling to stand up for what I believe in" and have "placed immense efforts" towards what I believe in? I sir, need to learn to say no and that is what I am doing. I spend far too much time spelling out for people what I have already spelled out hundreds of times. Below is something I wrote before as an example, the links back up what I say, AKA citations. I don't appreciate your insult, but it is par for the course. Watch my film when it comes out, it'll be free.

OK, so now we can get the hard evidence, let's start with Building 7. In NIST's 2008 final report on WTC 7 they admitted that the diesel fuel on the premises "played no role in the destruction of WTC 7," that "the damage from the debris from WTC 1 had little effect on initiating the collapse," and that the building fell "almost uniformly as a single unit." These are all points that truthers have been making for years, and that "debunkers" vehemently refuted.

But most importantly they admitted that the building experienced a "freefall drop for approximately 8 stories." Previous to this admission in their final Nov '08 report, their Aug '08 draft report attempted to demonstrate that "there was no freefall."

When lead NIST investigator Dr. Shyam Sunder was fielded a question by high school physics teacher David Chandler regarding the issue at a NIST press conference subsequent to the release of the draft report, Sunder stated that "freefall time would be an object that has no structural components below it." In essence, Sunder admitted that this is impossible absent some external force, i.e., explosives. I submit to you this is why NIST failed to mention their admission of freefall in their list of changes made in the final report.

The fact that WTC 7's facade plunged at a nearly fee-fall rate is also something that we 9/11 truthers have been right about for years, perhaps we are also right about its implications.

It's either that, or as NIST says, fires "similar" to those "experienced in other tall buildings," caused "the first known instance of fire causing the total collapse of a tall building." Again, we truth seekers have often been criticised for saying that fires have never caused skyscrapers to collapse, but the NIST report vindicates us.

Other hard evidence in regard to Building 7 centers around the unexplained phenomenon documented in Appendic C of FEMA's WTC Building Performance Study, which found "intergranular melting capable of turning a solid steel girder into Swiss cheese."

Appendix C states, "The severe corrosion and subsequent erosion of Samples 1 and 2 are a very unusual event. No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified."

NIST never even attempted to explain the melting of this steel or the source of the sulfur, however independent scientists did. What they found was that iron-rich spheres discovered in the WTC dust contained the chemical signature of the incendiary thermate; thermite with sulfur added to lower the steel's melting point. Critics of their findings have argued that a thermate chemical signature would contain barium nitrate, however this is only true if the form thermate-TH-3 was used. This should have been clear since the scientists were comparing the chemical signature of the spheres to a known sample of thermate which did not contain barium nitrate. All that being said, thermate TH-3 may have been in use as WTC dust samples have shown high traces of barium.

In fact the iron-rich spheres are themselves hard evidence of the use of thermate which produces such spheres as a by-product. Thermate also produces molten iron as a by-product, and lo and behold molten metal was found under WTC 7 as well as the Towers, and seen flowing from the South Tower's crash zone. NIST tried to deny the existence of the molten metal underneath the buildings and explain away the flowing metal in the South Tower as molten aluminum. Here is a video I made demonstrating that these claims are beyond dubious.

Combine these evidences with audio of explosions, reports of explosions both from people inside and outside of the building, reports of plans to "take down" the building, and close examination of WTC 7 collapse warnings in the FDNY oral histories and in the press, and I think the case for explosive demolition is very strong.

But the bottom line is that NIST didn't test the steel for explosives or thermite residues. Their excuses for failing to do so included saying that thermite could not have been coupled to the beams sufficiently to inflict the intended damage, however this ignores methods such as shaped charges, sol-gels, and linear thermite cutting devices. They also stated that, "The metal compounds also would have been present in the construction materials making up the WTC towers, and sulfur is present in the gypsum wallboard that was prevalent in the interior partitions."

But just because the chemical elements are there does not mean they would be there in the correct proportions. As mechanical engineer Gordon Ross stated, "If I leave margarine, flour, sugar and fruit in a cupboard, when I next open the cupboard I will not find a fruit crumble. Some mechanism is required to convert the ingredients. Similarly, if I take these same ingredients, set them alight and throw them out the window, I still will not get my fruit crumble."

Furthermore, physicist Steven Jones has pointed out, "Wallboard has calcium and sulfur and they're very tightly bound with oxygen as well as calcium sulfate."

Now chemical signatures are one thing, but unignited explosive residues is quite another, and that is exactly what a team of scientists report to have found in WTC dust in April of this year. Specifically, they claim to have found a nano-engineered variant of thermite, that when heated exerted an energy/volume yield exceeding that of explosives commonly used in demolitions. There has been debate as to how energetic this material was, and exactly how it would have been used for a building demolition, but during these discussions no argument was presented that the material was anything but nanothermite.

Their findings were published in a peer-reviewed journal and have yet to be refuted in any similar fashion. Attacks upon the journal they published in, The Open Chemical Physics Journal, published by Bentham.org, are unfounded. This is especially true considering that the NIST reports have not been independently peer-reviewed. Attacks upon the provenance of the samples are also unfounded.

So not only did the official investigators fail to do the proper forensic tests, but they also failed to independently verify the non-forensic tests that they did do.
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Will he respond? I don't know, and I won't know, because I won't be checking. I do know that his response will not be peer-reviewed. He originally said he wanted to have this debate "to settle this thing once and for all." Our upcoming film will settle this thing for those that are willing to view it without bias.

P.S.

To the readers, please do not take to this to mean that I am giving up on the 9/11 truth movement. I will always be a part of this movement in one way or another. When I said a "possible multiple year long debate is frankly more time than I wish to devote to this cause," I mainly meant the cause of debunking the debunkers. Although, I do need to spend more time on other issues.

I am sick of running in circles; the debunkers have been debunked. As I said in my interview on the Visibilty 9/11 podcast, picking up where David Ray Griffin left off in his book Debunking 9/11 Debunking is important, and we have. We have basically written a sequel! But, for me at least, I feel that I have exhausted this effort, absent some new developments. This doesn't mean that I will completely abandon this blog, but after the film I intend to scale back my participation greatly. I am just ready to pursue other projects both inside and outside of this movement.

So as I said, this upcoming film is my capstone, until then I will keep on building, and even after that, I will decorate the temple.