Ted Rall for December 31, 2010

  1. Skullonly
    bikerusl  over 13 years ago

    First!

    It’s not yet 10 years until September.

    Where is Allende? 37 years.

     •  Reply
  2. Phil b r
    pbarnrob  over 13 years ago

    If we had a real investigative agency in this country, it might have found out how it happened.

    As it is, FBI and CIA have been too busy fighting over turf, and covering up these crimes, to bother finding evidence. This stuff has to go to the very top (well, the bunker under) the White House.

    Unbelievable incompetence at all levels, including Air Force, or a carefully orchestrated misdirection, at work.

    Many of us care; but if the rot is in the roots of the tree, it may be too late for the Empire.

    I’m generally in favor of the ancient and gentle practice of shunning.

     •  Reply
  3. Avatar201803 salty
    Jaedabee Premium Member over 13 years ago

    It appears to be snot.

     •  Reply
  4. Flynsage1.5 6
    Pjbflyn  over 13 years ago

    Thanks for the links Rikoshay. As they say, truth is the first casualty of war. And it’s still on its deathbed thanks in large part to corporate control of what passes for the news media these days.

     •  Reply
  5. Raccoon1
    sirrom567  over 13 years ago

    Don’t get too nostalgic for some imagined golden age. Was the news media ever really that great? Depending on how old you are, think back to the decades you can remember and ask yourself whether you were ever really told the whole truth about anything important.

     •  Reply
  6. Missing large
    easilydissolved  over 13 years ago

    Jade & Clark: At first I thought it might have been snot, but considering that it’s supposed to be Bush, I think its cocaine.

     •  Reply
  7. Missing large
    kreole  over 13 years ago

    Controlled demolition? Both towers? Come on…….

     •  Reply
  8. 100 1176
    Lavocat  over 13 years ago

    We live in Shakespearean times, giving even the Bard pause. But is it tragedy or comedy or too much of both?

     •  Reply
  9. Missing large
    donschneider44  over 13 years ago

    enjoyed the cartoon, but the responses…HOLYSHIT MUST WE START WITH THE HATE SO SOON ?

     •  Reply
  10. Thrill
    fritzoid Premium Member over 13 years ago

    Do you mean “Shakespearean times” as in Elizabethan/Jacobean England? It’s true, the Tea Party has much in common with the Puritans. Is another Cromwell, and another Civil War, on the horizon?

    Or do you mean “Shakespearean times” as in “an era in which Shakespeare might have set a play”? That could be any era, of course, from Legendary Troy (“Troilus and Cressida”) to Medieval Scandanavia (“Hamlet”) to the recent (for him) past (“Henry VIII”).

    As far as whether it would be a tragedy or a comedy, I think it was Walpole who first said “Life is a comedy to those who think, and a tragedy to those who feel.”

    I suspect that, if Will WERE to dramatize contemporary America, it’s have to be one of the “problem plays”, like “Measure for Measure” (a “comedy” that’s REALLY dark) or “Timon of Athens” (a “tragedy” that reads as farce).

     •  Reply
  11. Cat7
    rockngolfer  over 13 years ago

    There was a lot of aluminum from the decoration of the towers and the structure of the planes.

    http://www.911myths.com/WTCTHERM.pdf

    The alloys of aluminum get harder with the higher numbers, like 6061 is hard and brittle, while the 2000 series is much softer and can flex. But it all burns.

     •  Reply
  12. Raccoon1
    sirrom567  over 13 years ago

    Stuff built in the 1960s has proven to be notoriously shoddy in general. I don’t pretend to know anything about engineering, but there is anecdotal evidence all over New York of the inferiority of construction from that period.

     •  Reply
  13. Skullonly
    bikerusl  over 13 years ago

    No takers on my Allende comment? Americans are so self centered!

    I thought that was pretty funny jmattadams. Mean, but funny.

    Comments like this: “Even if the beams were made from Aluminum ,which they in all likelihood were not” Don’t exactly boost credibility.

    The problem with the “conspiracy” people is they want a simplistic answer. There are no easy answers! There is no malevolent devil hiding away somewhere that we can just lobby or assainate and all will be right in the world. We are our own worst enemy and until we can see that we won’t be able to be constructive in improving things. We need to work together and not be so deluded by the capitalist individualist ethic. We are social creatures. 9/11 theories even though their advocates claim to be self sufficient islands of reason are just part of another social phenomenon. (Speaking as a “self sufficient” DIY metalworker it’s pretty common knowledge the basic properties of steel, iron and various aluminums - you folks don’t sound convincing when you spout “facts” about how impossible it is for metal to do what you think based on obviously never ever dealt with hot metal before)

     •  Reply
  14. Cat7
    rockngolfer  over 13 years ago

    Human Aluminum doessn’t burn? What is the solid fuel in the Space Shuttle engines? 70% aluminum perchlorate.

    You did not read enough of the article. The temperature easily could have risen to 1800 degrees C, high enough to melt steel.

    “Steel often melts at around 1370 degrees C (2500°F).” To quote Jefferson Lab.

     •  Reply
  15. Thrill
    fritzoid Premium Member over 13 years ago

    The problem I have with the “9/11 was an Inside Job” theories has nothing to do with metallurgy but much to do with psychology. The conspirators would have to be smarter than the evidence suggests in order to pull it off as well as they did, but dumber than the evidence suggests not to have done it better.

    If the guys who actually flew the planes were NOT motivated by Islamic extremism, what WAS their motive? If they were plants or dummy identities, why were there so many Saudis and no Iraqis? If it was a set-up, the planning must have been deep and long-term, and there were so many warning signs which, in retrospect, were completely overlooked that the conspirators would have to have been complete boneheads not to have covered their tracks better.

    There’s much evidence to suggest that the Bush/Cheney gang cynically and shamelessly exploited the WTC attacks for their own ends, and the levels of “evil genius” required to have planned and sold just that much is commensurate with my understanding of the individuals involved.

     •  Reply
  16. Cat7
    rockngolfer  over 13 years ago

    ^ Like!

     •  Reply
  17. Cat7
    rockngolfer  over 13 years ago

    The English Teacher will correct your “moot” point.

    Think of Occam’s Razor, the explanation most likely is the simpleist one.

    These 19 people, with help, planned and executed something that even Hollywood would not have imagined. It worked almost perfectly, except for the jet that crashed in the field. Documentaries have been on TV, I get so many HD channels I can’t tell you where I saw the TV show, Overwhelming evidence of how it happened. But on other subjects i agree with you, human, and rikoshay. You need to lay this one to rest.

     •  Reply
  18. 8863814b f9b6 46ec 9f21 294d3e529c09
    mattro65  over 13 years ago

    Although I wouldn’t put it past the Bush Administration to want to pull off something like that, I don’t think the competence existed for them to accomplish it. It is obvious they seized on it and exploited it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they knew something big was going to happen, didn’t know what and just let it happen. Physics suggests shoddy construction as being as likely as demolition. Nobody commented on 9/11/73 because most people have no clue what happened that day.

     •  Reply
  19. Thrill
    fritzoid Premium Member over 13 years ago

    These same criminal masterminds couldn’t even fake a cache of WMD’s to “find” after the invasion of Iraq?

     •  Reply
  20. Thrill
    fritzoid Premium Member over 13 years ago

    If they did not care what we think, they need not have engineered the attack in the first place, either as a pretext for war or to have “disappeared” whatever documents they wished. They would simply have done it. So you’re faced with the contradictions that they have the foresight and capabilities (not to mention the resolve) to kill thousands of American civilians in order to justify a war, but lack either the will or capability of falsifying a chemical weapons plant during years of unobserved activity in a desert, in order to vindicate that decision.

    While the “Big Lie” theory has some validity, if you start treating it as an axiom then you’re in a position where the MORE preposterous a story is, the MORE likely it is to be true. The Big Lie may be easy to sell initially, but once it’s called into question it’s difficult to maintain; a conspiracy of this nature would have involved SO many people for such a LONG period of time that it approaches impossibility for a cover-up to have been as effective as it presumably has been. Like I said, we’re talking Lex Luthor/Ozymandias levels of genius. Believe me, there are MANY people who would LOVE to have something definite to pin on Dick Cheney; their failure to find anything more to incriminate him other than untestable (without recreating the actual event) ideas of how/whether aluminum combusts in an explosion of jet fuel is, to me, reasonable argument that there’s no “there” there. To quote from the trailer of the upcoming Anthony Hopkins exorcism movie, “We’re on dangerous ground when ‘No proof of the Devil’ somehow becomes proof of the Devil.”

     •  Reply
  21. Cat7
    rockngolfer  over 13 years ago

    I don’t know what question I didn’t answer.

    When you weld aluminum, what do you need? Inert gas, usually argon. Why? ‘Cause you burn large holes instead of adding welds. You probably think I am wrong about the space shuttle booster fuel being mostly aluminum, but look it up?

    Look up iron as a catalyst to Al reactions?

    The lime in concrete makes the Al burn like thermite.

    ^ fritzoid has some good ideas.

     •  Reply
  22. Georg von rosen   oden som vandringsman  1886  odin  the wanderer
    runar  over 13 years ago

    fritzoid said:

    MANY people who would LOVE to have something definite to pin on Dick Cheney

    How about just being a rotten excuse for a human being?

     •  Reply
  23. Cat7
    rockngolfer  over 13 years ago

    I know that the structure was 30 plus year old steel. Some of the steel was rusting. What you don’t understand is the affect of catylysts. Molten aluminum, plus concrete, plus water, plus thousands of gallons of jet fuel would cause explosions and get hot enough to melt steel.

    The towers werea tually built to withstand a plane crash in 1970, but no one figured the size of the jumbo jet at that time.

     •  Reply
Sign in to comment

More From Ted Rall