There is an interesting fight brewing over the planned memorial to Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The owner of the land, Svonavec Inc., refuses to sell a critical part of the needed land and the relatives want President Bush to seize the property to allow them to start construction of the memorial so that it can be finished by 2011 — the tenth anniversary of the tragedy.
Patrick White, vice president of the group Families of Flight 93, has asked President Bush to empower the Secretary of the Interior to take the land. They are demanding 2200 acres for the memorial — much of which are owned by Svonavec. The company has refused to negotiate and the National Park Service has indicated that it is retaining an independent appraiser for 275 acres in dispute.
The government has set aside $58 million for the memorial. The company reportedly turned down a $250,000 offer from the Park Service as well as a $750,000 offer from Families of Flight 93. The company reportedly wants $10 million for the land and forced the Park Service to move the temporary memorial off his land, citing security reasons. The difference between $10 million and the price offered is a bit curious. Either the company is profiteering or the group is trying to force an effective corporate donation of the land. Notably, there have been three appraisals including a second appraisal that was never released by the service.
Mike Svonavec of Svonavec Inc. has complained that the National Park Service and Flight 93 groups are “trying to make my company and myself look like the bad guy in this.” They appear to have succeeded.
For the full story, click here.
Mespo,
Quick point for point reply before I venture into the frozen tundra for some rock salt.
—
Quick? Hardly!
This post of yours is the lengthiest of any you’ve proffered since you showed up ‘chumming’ us ‘turlees’ last March…
http://jonathanturley.org/2008/02/26/chumming-for-torts-tourist-killed-by-sharks-after-company-chums-water-with-fish-parts/
Vince:
You are laboring under so many half-truths and false impressions that you need some quiet time alone to find out the facts and not rely on your recollections. Building 7 was addressed by NIST as I mentioned in my earlier post. You can also check out the BBC documentary for more info about that aspect.
What the engineers said about the Towers’ ability to withstand a plane crash was that they were designed to absorb a Boeing 707 impact, the largest commercial airliner of its time 30 years before the attack. Flight 11 & 175 were Boeing 767’s. The Boeing 707 that was considered in the design of the towers was estimated to have a gross weight of 263,000 pounds and a flight speed of 180 mph as it approached an airport since it was assumed it would be lost in fog or other inclement weather; the Boeing 767- 200ER aircraft that were used to attack the towers had an estimated gross weight of 274,000 pounds and flight speeds of 470 to 590 mph upon impact.
The B-25 Mitchell Bomber that hit the Empire State Building weighted considerably less (41,000 lbs takeoff weight) and flew at speeds much less than jet speed (275 mph maximum air speed). You can do the math using F=MV to figure the difference in impact strength.
Wow! I’m amazed I got this conversation started. Didn’t really expect my comment to go anywhere but being it has I Have to make another. As I said I believe 911 was a inside job. To the skeptics I will say this. You are either in a state of total denial, where you believe the gov’t would never attack it’s own citizens, or you just haven’t seen all the evidence. Someone said something about a building not being built for plane crashes and the resulting fire. The engineers of the 2 towers stated they were built for 2 crashes and the Empire state building had a B-%@ bomber crash into it. I don’t recall the date but you can google it. The pilot got lost in the fog and flew right into the building. He died. Lots of fire. Yet the building stands today. You people that believe the gov’t story (which is the real conspiracy story) need to convince people like me the following things. Why was there no plane debris at the Pentagon? Why were countless video recording not released? How is it that about half the hijackers have been proven to be alive? Where are the bodies from the Shanksville crash? The local coroner said he quit being a coroner 10 minutes after he arrived because there were no bodies to look at.
How did building 7 collapse in the exact same manner as the 2 towers with no plane involved? And why did Bush block every attempt made to investigate the event? What I have stated are documented facts. You people that believe the gov’t conspiracy theory must explain these facts along with many others I have not stated. You have not. The 911 truth movement has documents, video footage, science, and physics to back up our claim it was a inside job. What do you have? The word of one of the most corrupt administrations this country has ever seen. I have suspected this as being a inside job since about the 2nd day when they started to blame Al Qeida. When it happened I expected a huge investigation to last for months before they found the guilty party. When they announce the guilty people only 2-3 days after the event I knew something wasn’t right.
I suggest the following films for viewing. 911: In Plane Site, Loose Change, Terrorstorm, and Fabled Enemies. If you take the time to watch these films you will see a whole new picture of 911 and the governments behind it.
Here Mespo, at risk of allowing gyges to feel intellectually and morally superior for my taking two comments to complete a thought instead of one, like he and the obviously “better class of people” do, I’ll conclude my thoughts with this.
One day someones really going to take a look at the events of 911, and some answers will be forthcoming. What those answers will be remains to be seen. In the meantime we have two groups fighting each other each trying to shout the other one down. Not a conducive environment for real answers to occur.
On the one hand we have the conspiracy theorists who believe everything from Bush did it to Aliens did it. And on the other hand we’ve got the anti-conspiracy theorists, who buy the Bush administrations “official story” and label anyone not willing to submit to that story, a conspiracy theorist.
Then, what’s left over, is everyone in between.
Those of us who think neither of you know what you’re talking about, …yet, and will wait for time and real investigations, the kind that only come with time and distance from the events and the sensitive issues involved, by impartial experts and analysts to occur before we conclude judgment on the matter.
Until then we’re satisfied in saying we don’t know, and don’t think any of you do either.
Gyges 1, January 2, 2009 at 4:24 pm
“Wayne,
Actually I believe I said “crash into or near them.”
To be honest I knew that you’d find some reason to ignore what I was saying. I was just trying to see if I could beat mespo’s ratio 2 of your replies:1 post. Since I failed, and I’ve got to fight off a pack of rabbits that are terrorizing my dog, I’m done.
Also I know I’m not being very subtle, but I’m hoping you’ll take the bait anyway”
Nahhh. It sounds like you’re just being a dick.
mespo727272 1, January 2, 2009 at 4:11 pm
“waynebro:
All the conspiracy scenarios you cite”
See? There’s the problem.
I didn’t cite any “conspiracy scenarios”.
I asked questions and offered contrasting information.
You for some reason chose to label that information and those questions as “conspiracy scenarios” in order to discredit the information or the very act of asking questions.
As for the BBC having “dismissed” them, and my need to “watch the show”, I’ve done ample reading over this for the last 8 or 9 years, and I’ve seen every show there is to see on it. I’ve read everything you can possibly locate online about it.
And after reading it all I can honestly say there remains REAL QUESTIONS. Real issues. Issues a BBC special hasn’t and won’t likely answer. Especially since these days there are a few million people like yourself ready to dismiss any questions as “conspiracy theories” while you taut the Bush administrations “official story”.
Your newly found confidence in the credibility of the Bush administration and its “experts” is admirable. Sorry if I cannot share in your confidence.
Wayne,
Actually I believe I said “crash into or near them.”
To be honest I knew that you’d find some reason to ignore what I was saying. I was just trying to see if I could beat mespo’s ratio 2 of your replies:1 post. Since I failed, and I’ve got to fight off a pack of rabbits that are terrorizing my dog, I’m done.
Also I know I’m not being very subtle, but I’m hoping you’ll take the bait anyways.
waynebro:
All the conspiracy scenarios you cite have been discussed in detail by BBC and dismissed as highly improbable. I suggest you watch the show. BTW Bldg 7 collapsed due to its location, design, damage from the falling North Tower (new photos clearly show damage to the Building’s south side which faced the North Tower) and the un-fought fires ignited on various floors of the building which weaken the connections between the steel girders, per the National Institute of Standards and Technology. I know that opinion pales before the options of the “crazies” and that crowd at “Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth” headed by Richard Gage but after two years of exhaustive research that’s NIST’s conclusion.
You certainly don’t have to believe the work of these able men and women at NIST but you must answer these questions if the more sinister scenario is so obvious at Gage says: why would these scientists lie, and what proof is there of any deception?
See for yourself:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/conspiracy_files/
Gyges 1, January 2, 2009 at 3:56 pm
“Waynebro,
Did those buildings also have planes crash into or near them? That sort of impact needs to be factored in. You’re right, fires don’t collapse skyscrapers by themselves. The fire wasn’t by itself was it?”
Bldg 7 nothing hit. No other bldgs collapsed in the area. Why bldg 7? Why the bldg with Cheney’s documents in it? Why that one? Where’d the fire in Bldg 7 come from? Was it teleported from one of the towers?
If it was so hot why didn’t the people and the firemen in the way “melt”?
I’d like to hear more about this over the next decade or so, once the Bush administration is out of office.
mespo727272 1, January 2, 2009 at 3:50 pm
“waynebro:
Questions are fine, but these are more than just questions. They are an attempt to promulgate a point of view. That is exactly what I do on cross-exam, and. as you must know, I am doing that as an advocate attacking a position.”
No they are just questions and examination of data and facts.
When the govt says one thing and someone says, “well, we know this has never happened before” or “the first investigator thought the fire wasn’t hot enough”, those are facts we are using to evaluate a story being sold to us.
What you are doing is supporting the Bush administrations storyline, one that has been carefully put together using computer “modeling” and a lot of speculation and declaring “the jury is in”.
Well, it’s not in. And there’s more than 12 angry men questioning the so called verdict of a jury that’s been pruned until a collective verdict could be read. Bush fired people who wouldn’t sign on to the official story, and that should be enough for ANYONE to question it. That alone is suspicious. Combine that with the fact that they are asking us to believe that something that more than half the experts out there say is impossible, and something that has NEVER HAPPENED EVER in human history, well, I’d say there’s ample room for doubt.
Asking questions means examining information, looking at stories, bringing up conflicting points of view, arguments, ideas, facts, accounts, etc.
But you’d silence all that by saying simply labeling those doing so as conspiracy theorists. Bill Maher does the same thing.
But the fact is there are questions. Real questions and the official story is full of holes. And I’m not saying there’s anything specific that did happen, but what I am saying is what I said earlier.
I just don’t know what happened that morning and I don’t think you do either.
Mespo,
Quick point for point reply before I venture into the frozen tundra for some rock salt.
“I do note that all the hubub died down once PM talked to the actual experts who shared their accounts of the scene.”
I also note from 4 years of high school electronics class, that the PM’s that were always on the benches were aka “Grease Monkey Monthly.” That aside, the crux of any rebuttal of the PM article is founded upon the premise that they failed to do what you just said they did in an intellectually honest manner.
“Most notably the mysterious “White Jet” which of course was asked by the FAA to investigate and was a corporate jet who happened to be in the area of Shanksville,”
Actually that was addressed midway through the article, seeing the editors chose to lead off with the tin foil hat theory of ‘pods’ as being the number one issue. Cute rhetoric.
“and the infamous “missing debris field” scam at the Pentagon attack that was easily disproved by photographs taken of the scene.”
Actually, the official explanation is that the hydrocarbon fuel of Flight 77 (magically) burned at the heat of vaporization for a 757; leaving no debris behind. You wouldn’t happen to know the max temperature of a diffuse hydrocarbon flame, much less the heat of vaporization of a 757 would you?
“That structural engineers cannot explain every nuance of a building collapse of that magnitude should not make you distrust the main thrust of he piece which is that the event unfolded just as most of us believe it did.”
There’s a difference between failing to explain and neglecting to address. Care to tell me how a building collapses upon itself, into its own footprint, while accelerating down through the path of greatest resistance? In lieu of mentioning the 47 steel columns comprising the core structure, PM chose to focus on ‘puffs of dust.’ BTW, I’m not sure what you ‘believe,’ but I know that Q=MC∆T. Accordingly, I ‘believe’ PM and the and the head of NIST itself found it convenient to deny the existence of molten steel at the bases of the building that remained for almost six months. After all, Q=MC∆T would demand an explanation for the source of sustained heat, exceeding 2,000 degrees F for such a long period of time.
“It’s hard to explain a failure when you cannot simulate the exact occurrence even with computer models.”
Karl Popper is rolling in his grave… Furthermore, they did create computer simulations, which had to be tweaked beyond the impossible to make said simulations work.
“That jet fuel doesn’t burn at the melting point of steel “I” beams does not suggest to me that the heat was insufficient to make the metal infrastructure brittle, and hence reduce its efficiency to the point where the concrete caused it to fail.”
You do know that buildings are designed to bear the weight of the entire structure from the top down; don’t you? Like those 47 steel columns and the internal structure holding it up; just like a five year old with blocks, the foundation was stronger and opposing with more newtons as you went down the building. Then again, when you’re talking bolts and floors ‘pancaking’ on themselves, it’s far more convenient to imagine the building as a hollow structure with only trusses over trusses. Interior structure? What’s that?
“I suspect most of these conspiracy folks”
There you go again.
“were glad 9-11 came about to relieve them from their frustrating pursuit of a “live” Elvis based upon the truly revealing misspelling of his middle name, Aron,on his tombstone.”
And how is the foregoing different from a comment by a rabid right winger describing Turley as a pathetic lefty looney?
“If you hear thundering hooves on the prairie, it’s still probably horses and not zebras.”
Ockham’s razor veiled in sarcasm?
FYI, contrary to popular ignorance, Ockham’s razor is not “the simplest explanation is usually correct.” Rather, it is:
“Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora” (“It is pointless to do with more what can be done with less”).
Meaning, one should never postulate the reality of any entity UNLESS IT IS LOGICALLY NECESSARY TO DO SO.
Apparently your zeal for tranquility over the truth seems to have blinded you and many others to the second requirements of the equation; so to speak.
Now, it’s time to find rock salt.
SIYOM (Stay in your own movie,
Bob
Mespo,
Quick point for point reply before I venture into the frozen tundra for some rock salt.
“I do note that all the hubub died down once PM talked to the actual experts who shared their accounts of the scene.”
I also note from 4 years of high school electronics class, that the PM’s that were always on the benches were aka “Grease Monkey Monthly.” That aside, the crux of any rebuttal of the PM article is founded upon the premise that they failed to do what you just said they did in an intellectually honest manner.
“Most notably the mysterious “White Jet” which of course was asked by the FAA to investigate and was a corporate jet who happened to be in the area of Shanksville,”
Actually that was addressed midway through the article, seeing the editors chose to lead off with the tin foil hat theory of ‘pods’ as being the number one issue. Cute rhetoric.
“and the infamous “missing debris field” scam at the Pentagon attack that was easily disproved by photographs taken of the scene.”
Actually, the official explanation is that the hydrocarbon fuel of Flight 77 (magically) burned at the heat of vaporization for a 757; leaving no debris behind. You wouldn’t happen to know the max temperature of a diffuse hydrocarbon flame, much less the heat of vaporization of a 757 would you?
“That structural engineers cannot explain every nuance of a building collapse of that magnitude should not make you distrust the main thrust of he piece which is that the event unfolded just as most of us believe it did.”
There’s a difference between failing to explain and neglecting to address. Care to tell me how a building collapses upon itself, into its own footprint, while accelerating down through the path of greatest resistance? In lieu of mentioning the 47 steel columns comprising the core structure, PM chose to focus on ‘puffs of dust.’ BTW, I’m not sure what you ‘believe,’ but I know that Q=MC∆T. Accordingly, I ‘believe’ PM and the and the head of NIST itself found it convenient to deny the existence of molten steel at the bases of the building that remained for almost six months. After all, Q=MC∆T would demand an explanation for the source of sustained heat, exceeding 2,000 degrees F for such a long period of time.
“It’s hard to explain a failure when you cannot simulate the exact occurrence even with computer models.”
Karl Popper is rolling in his grave… Furthermore, they did create computer simulations, which had to be tweaked beyond the impossible to make said simulations work.
“That jet fuel doesn’t burn at the melting point of steel “I” beams does not suggest to me that the heat was insufficient to make the metal infrastructure brittle, and hence reduce its efficiency to the point where the concrete caused it to fail.”
You do know that buildings are designed to bear the weight of the entire structure from the top down; don’t you? Like those 47 steel columns and the internal structure holding it up; just like a five year old with blocks, the foundation was stronger and opposing with more newtons as you went down the building. Then again, when you’re talking bolts and floors ‘pancaking’ on themselves, it’s far more convenient to imagine the building as a hollow structure with only trusses over trusses. Interior structure? What’s that?
“I suspect most of these conspiracy folks”
There you go again.
“were glad 9-11 came about to relieve them from their frustrating pursuit of a “live” Elvis based upon the truly revealing misspelling of his middle name, Aron,on his tombstone.”
And how is the foregoing different from a comment by a rabid right winger describing Turley as a pathetic lefty looney?
“If you hear thundering hooves on the prairie, it’s still probably horses and not zebras.”
Ockham’s razor veiled in sarcasm?
FYI, contrary to popular ignorance, Ockham’s razor is not “the simplest explanation is usually correct.” Rather, it is:
“Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora” (“It is pointless to do with more what can be done with less”).
Meaning, one should never postulate the reality of any entity UNLESS IT IS LOGICALLY NECESSARY TO DO SO.
Apparently your zeal for tranquility over the truth seems to have blinded you and many others to the second requirements of the equation; so to speak.
Now, it’s time to find rock salt.
SIYOM (Stay in your own movie,
Bob
http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/o.htm
Excuse me:
“Did those buildings you’re talking about also have…” and “the fire on Sept. 11 wasn’t…”
Waynebro,
Did those buildings also have planes crash into or near them? That sort of impact needs to be factored in. You’re right, fires don’t collapse skyscrapers by themselves. The fire wasn’t by itself was it?
waynebro:
Questions are fine, but these are more than just questions. They are an attempt to promulgate a point of view. That is exactly what I do on cross-exam, and. as you must know, I am doing that as an advocate attacking a position. Cross-exam is a method to test another theory of an event. It does that job well. It is not a method of asserting anything except that the theory in the cross hairs in wrong.
Unfortunately, my earnestness in cross-exam does not translate into proof of what actually happened. I have to do that in my case in chief. The “cross-exam” that these websites and some victims engage in is pure attack, without any evidence of what actually occurred. They promote the wild idea that the government is responsible for these events in a sort of “inside job.” Anyone who knows how the government operates knows how unlikely this theory is, especially given that even the top secret domestic telephone surveillance program was leaked to the New York Times.
That goes to my point about probable and improbable beliefs. That one theory cannot explain every question or facet of an event does not make it untrue. That a theory is advocated by the conspiracy crowd and perhaps some of the “victims” but fails miserably to explain the event and is based on, quite frankly, wrong facts should tell us quite a bit about its probability. To rely on wrong facts and expect people to accept what you say is my definition of “crazy.”
In 1991 a fire at One Meridian Plaza, a 38 story office bldg in Philly burned for 18 hours and burned 8 floors completely, yet not one iota of damage to the steel was reported.
In 1998 the First Interstate Bank bldg in Los Angeles burned for hours in a horrific fire that was reported to be much worse than what was on the Trade Towers, yet no damage whatsoever was discovered on the steel supports of the 64 story building.
In fact, in over a century of steel skyscrapers, there has NEVER been an example of steel collapsing from fire. Never. Not once. EVER.
And yet you call people “Crazies” who doubt the Bush administrations (and all its underlings) story about how the trade towers fell?
And how did bldg 7 collapse again? How did the bldg that just “happened” to contain all sorts of documents involving Vice President Cheney just happen to collapse too? The fire got to it?
What fire? The fire on the 90th floor of the world trade center that we couldn’t even see?
You mean that fire?
What did it teleport over to Bldg 7 and burn it down? And why did that bldg collapse again?
No mespo, the Bush administration has controlled this story since day one and if you want me to accept that not one, but THREE bldgs suddenly collapsed from some “invisible” fire that was so hot that it weakened supports 90 stories beneath it, and then magically “jumped” to a bldg a block away without burning anything in its way (or anyone) and then somehow weakened the supports of that bldg so that once more something thats NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE suddenly happened a THIRD time, and dropped a bldg containing papers Dick Cheney didn’t want us to see, well…..you’re gonna have to get me pretty drunk to buy THAT story.
And you’d have to buy me dinner too.
mespo727272 1, January 2, 2009 at 2:27 pm
“waynebro:
On the PM report, most people believe it to be accurate and are satisfied it addresses the problems raised by the crazies. It may not be complete nor comprehensive, but it puts to rest the main fallacies of the conspiracy crowd, who, after all, bear the burden of proof of their extraordinary claims”
And therein lies the problem. Calling anyone challenging the Bush administrations official reports “crazies” is disrespectful and dismissive and doesn’t help illuminate anything. It just shuts the door on any real investigation. Was Bush’s original lead investigator a “crazy” when his report indicated that there just wasn’t enough heat to damage the supports? He said the fire was way too high up, and even combined with the materials in the office could never have impacted the steel so far down as to cause a collapse. If anything the building would have “broken off” near the top. He also pointed out that the 3500 degree tested steel would have had to have been incredibly hot all the way down for it to be “weakened” near the base. And that meant incredible temperatures on the other floors and in the stairwells. Hot enough to melt human skin. Yet no one melted on the way down. He also pointed out that the fire would have to be “stoked” constantly to send the heat 90 stories down the steel supports like that. If you’ve ever tempered a sword you’d know what he meant by that. The fires were according to him not only not hot enough but they would have needed to be on the BOTTOM of the supports, not the top, to have any real impact on them that low. That’s what he said and he was FIRED for saying it.
Was he a “crazy” too?
Are the widows of 911 crazies too? They still don’t buy the official story so they must be nuts, right?
– “Extraordinary claims do require extraordinary proofs, and innuendo, speculation, and the accounts of frantic eyewitnesses neither qualify as such nor persuade me as much as the comments of the professionals in the various fields cited by PM.”
Not everyone is making “extraordinary claims”. Many people are just asking questions. But these questions are silenced by people like you who call them “crazies” and immediately list them as “conspiracy theorists”. Well I know I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I don’t even have a theory. Yet anyone “questioning” the event is immediately told in liberal blogs all over the web that they’re crazy and nuts and that the case is closed.
Well the truth is I just don’t know what happened on that morning.
But I don’t think you do either.
waynebro:
That’s possible too, but, as I explained to Archie in another context, not very likely.
Archie:
25% of the US population still thinks we never landed on the moon and that Bush was a great President. I suspect its the same 25% that believe a missile did in Flight 93 despite the absence of any proof of such an event. Absolute certainty is not for this world, but there are probable beliefs and improbable ones, and the missile theory falls into the latter category. As for closure, that is in the mind of the beholder and for some even a verified film of the actual event would never bring them “closure.” It’s amazing what we can delude ourselves into believing and accepting based on almost nothing except our “feelings” that something is “out there.” Cue Mulder & Scully and creepy “X-files” music.
mespo727272 1, January 2, 2009 at 2:13 pm
“waynebro:
Heck I sound stupid sometimes myself. You are what you habitually do, not what happens on occasion. Maybe vince is a Nobel laureate having a bad day!”
Perhaps.
And maybe Vince is a Nobel Laureate having a good day.