My dear friends,
In a mere eight sleeps, it will be the politically interested Melbourne Uni student's version of Christmas Day: the United States elections. All of the House of Representatives and one third of the Senate is up for the grabs, and George W Bush's Republican Party is bracing itself for disaster. After Wednesday week, the Democratic Party may have the capacity to block Bush administration legislation and to launch investigations into Iraq, Katrina, and so on.
The Political Interest Society is offering election coverage on Foxtel, good company, alcohol, and food all in the one place…
The PIS Watches The American Elections
When: Wednesday, November 8th, from 12 midday onwards
Where: James Squire Brewhouse, Cnr Little Collins and 115 Russell Street, CBD
Now, I realise that it is the official beginning of exam season for most people in a tad less than ten sleeps (not me, however: I am on "working vacation" at my Eltham ranch, clearing brush, playing catch with my two-headed dog, Fala, and enjoying being deferred). But invariably, you will all need a break at some point: Wednesday week is as good a day as any. And from an educational standpoint, I guarantee you'll learn more from watching BBC World than you will studying for some bloody Derek McDougall subject.
Hope to see you there,
Yours not-up-for-re-election-this-November,
President Dave M Fettling
Tuesday 31 October 2006
Thursday 12 October 2006
How did the towers collapse?
I did something probably considered to be politically incorrect, which might happen easier during the after hours of club meetings.
I aired my some questions about 911, and was thus very fast classified as conspiracy nut. Stephen had at least the fairness to refer me to wikipedia to find out why how the WTC tower collapse, and why and how WTC 7 collapsed.
In fact, there is a wikipedia entry for the Collapse of the World Trade Center, but it doesn't answer the question I raised.
According to the NIST report, which is part of the 9/11 commission report, it took WTC 1 and 2 ten resp. eleven seconds to collapse. This is about the time it takes for an object to drop from the top of each tower to the ground, obstructed in its path just by the resistance of air.
Physically seen, this implies that about 70 floors, which carried uninterfered the same load they used to carry since the buildings were constructed, had effectively the same resistance like thin air.
One of the basic laws of thermodynamics is called conservation of energy. You need energy to transform a physical object, this means energy is transformed while the WTC is obliterated to bits.
The only energy source available, however is gravity. Given just air resistance, it'll take 11 seconds for the top of the tower to hit the ground. The destruction of the lower floors requires energy, and would therefore transform the gravitational energy. The collapse would have to be slowed down.
However, we know that the more than 70 floors build by steel, filled with desks, chairs, computers, cabinets, maybe even safes, posed no resistance at all to the collapse of the building.
The account given by NIST offers no explanation for the speed in which the Twin Towers collapsed, and it avoids offering any theory at all when it comes to WTC7.
WTC7 collapsed on the afternoon of 911, and too smaller fires and no apparent impact from debris were visible. This 47 storey building collapsed in less than 7 seconds, without any plane hitting it.
Today a plane hit a NY building, and even though you had 50 storey building, hit by a plane and with raging fires, it didn't collapse. WTC7, not hit by a plane, with less raging fires, fell neatly in its footprint, in less than 7 seconds.
I'm not too sure about the amount of science students in the PIS, but anyone with sufficient background knowledge can earn 1 Million US$ by proving the feasability of the theories in the NIST report.
However, the only conclusion I draw from the knowledge that the 911 commission report told some bold lies is that a more thorough investigation about this event is required.
It took the Bush regime more than a year to start any investigation of 911, and before the report was published two wars were already waged. I could make up a nice conspiracy theory up for you, but I'm only interested how the building collapsed.
The available evidence, as for example scrutinized by Scholars for truth, suggests strongly the use of explosives to bring down the building. This surely raises a bunch of other questions, and none of them offers to many reassuring answers.
However, I don't mind if you prefer labelling me as a conspiracy nut rather than trying to convince me (or make up your mind). Yet, the last tyranny on German soil ended just in 1989, and a way too familiar stench is wafting over from the US.
But I'm really curious if you manage to come up with an explanation, how the buildings collapsed so fast without the use of explosives.
I aired my some questions about 911, and was thus very fast classified as conspiracy nut. Stephen had at least the fairness to refer me to wikipedia to find out why how the WTC tower collapse, and why and how WTC 7 collapsed.
In fact, there is a wikipedia entry for the Collapse of the World Trade Center, but it doesn't answer the question I raised.
According to the NIST report, which is part of the 9/11 commission report, it took WTC 1 and 2 ten resp. eleven seconds to collapse. This is about the time it takes for an object to drop from the top of each tower to the ground, obstructed in its path just by the resistance of air.
Physically seen, this implies that about 70 floors, which carried uninterfered the same load they used to carry since the buildings were constructed, had effectively the same resistance like thin air.
One of the basic laws of thermodynamics is called conservation of energy. You need energy to transform a physical object, this means energy is transformed while the WTC is obliterated to bits.
The only energy source available, however is gravity. Given just air resistance, it'll take 11 seconds for the top of the tower to hit the ground. The destruction of the lower floors requires energy, and would therefore transform the gravitational energy. The collapse would have to be slowed down.
However, we know that the more than 70 floors build by steel, filled with desks, chairs, computers, cabinets, maybe even safes, posed no resistance at all to the collapse of the building.
The account given by NIST offers no explanation for the speed in which the Twin Towers collapsed, and it avoids offering any theory at all when it comes to WTC7.
WTC7 collapsed on the afternoon of 911, and too smaller fires and no apparent impact from debris were visible. This 47 storey building collapsed in less than 7 seconds, without any plane hitting it.
Today a plane hit a NY building, and even though you had 50 storey building, hit by a plane and with raging fires, it didn't collapse. WTC7, not hit by a plane, with less raging fires, fell neatly in its footprint, in less than 7 seconds.
I'm not too sure about the amount of science students in the PIS, but anyone with sufficient background knowledge can earn 1 Million US$ by proving the feasability of the theories in the NIST report.
However, the only conclusion I draw from the knowledge that the 911 commission report told some bold lies is that a more thorough investigation about this event is required.
It took the Bush regime more than a year to start any investigation of 911, and before the report was published two wars were already waged. I could make up a nice conspiracy theory up for you, but I'm only interested how the building collapsed.
The available evidence, as for example scrutinized by Scholars for truth, suggests strongly the use of explosives to bring down the building. This surely raises a bunch of other questions, and none of them offers to many reassuring answers.
However, I don't mind if you prefer labelling me as a conspiracy nut rather than trying to convince me (or make up your mind). Yet, the last tyranny on German soil ended just in 1989, and a way too familiar stench is wafting over from the US.
But I'm really curious if you manage to come up with an explanation, how the buildings collapsed so fast without the use of explosives.
Monday 2 October 2006
Enemy at the Woodward-Gate
Cross-posted.
______________________________
It's a rare journalist who can claim credit for two national scandals, the second of which carries his name. Five weeks out from Mid-Terms and with the ink on the leaked NIE barely dry, Hurricane Woodward is shaking the administration to its roots, despite the Bush PR team's best efforts to look blase and spin furiously at the same time. The book has already sold a million copies on the promise of insider gossip, some of it old meat (George believes in himself more than good advice), some red (everyone from the generals to Laura wanted Rumsfeld fired). With Baghdad under lockdown and Condi asking the Saudis for help, Bush needs some inspiration from the last successful Republican war president, or at least a stoic quip - 'if there is a place worse than Hell, I am in it'.
The difference between Bush and Lincoln in hell, of course, is that Bush put himself there. As far as one can tell from media blitz on a yet-unpublished book, State of Denial confirms what I've suggested is Bush's flaw as president -
It's bad enough that the US is being run by a man convinced his job is to lead and not think, at least not when things start going wrong. But when he creates an institutional culture in which no one else wants to think, you end up with self-muzzling, dysfunctional government. No one in this 'MBA presidency' seems to do anything under delegation, whether managing hurricane relief or the War On Terror. Perhaps the most disturbing of Woodward's insights is into how the generals running the mightiest military machine in history ended up too cowed to do their jobs -
Put these tidbits with a raft of other anectodal evidence - like Eric Shinseki's treatment - and you're left with an eerie image of Stalin purging independent-minded generals from the Red Army before June 1941. Stalin took about six months to recognise his errors, twelve to put his house in order and another thirty or so to win the war. Bush is approaching the same length of time and hasn't yet resolved to sack the guy whom everyone in the know seems to blame for Iraq.
Inevitably, a book that shows Bush improvising war and dissembling to the public has brought out the lynch mob. When Woodward wrote nice things about the White House, he was feted by everyone right of Ted Kennedy and Atrios. Now he has an 'agenda', just like the 'agenda' to leak the NIE and the 'agenda' of the ex-Bush officials whom Woodward interviewed. At the next press conference, someone should ask Tony Snow how many ex-Clinton officials have come forward to denounce their administration's incompetence. Not that it would make much difference. By this point, I doubt the Bush cheersquad will ever accept that smoke means fire and not just a reason to close your eyes.
After all, the administration has been coming clean over Iraq, albeit by lowering the bar for communication -
______________________________
It's a rare journalist who can claim credit for two national scandals, the second of which carries his name. Five weeks out from Mid-Terms and with the ink on the leaked NIE barely dry, Hurricane Woodward is shaking the administration to its roots, despite the Bush PR team's best efforts to look blase and spin furiously at the same time. The book has already sold a million copies on the promise of insider gossip, some of it old meat (George believes in himself more than good advice), some red (everyone from the generals to Laura wanted Rumsfeld fired). With Baghdad under lockdown and Condi asking the Saudis for help, Bush needs some inspiration from the last successful Republican war president, or at least a stoic quip - 'if there is a place worse than Hell, I am in it'.
The difference between Bush and Lincoln in hell, of course, is that Bush put himself there. As far as one can tell from media blitz on a yet-unpublished book, State of Denial confirms what I've suggested is Bush's flaw as president -
John McCain was asked whether Mr Bush had ever asked him for his views on Iraq. "No, no, he hasn't... As a matter of fact, he's not intellectually curious.'
It's bad enough that the US is being run by a man convinced his job is to lead and not think, at least not when things start going wrong. But when he creates an institutional culture in which no one else wants to think, you end up with self-muzzling, dysfunctional government. No one in this 'MBA presidency' seems to do anything under delegation, whether managing hurricane relief or the War On Terror. Perhaps the most disturbing of Woodward's insights is into how the generals running the mightiest military machine in history ended up too cowed to do their jobs -
Abizaid's old friends were worried sick that another Vietnam or anything that looked like Vietnam would be the end of the volunteer army. What's the strategy for winning? they pressed him.
"That's not my job," Abizaid said.
No, it is part of your job, they insisted.
No, Abizaid said. Articulating strategy belonged to others.
Put these tidbits with a raft of other anectodal evidence - like Eric Shinseki's treatment - and you're left with an eerie image of Stalin purging independent-minded generals from the Red Army before June 1941. Stalin took about six months to recognise his errors, twelve to put his house in order and another thirty or so to win the war. Bush is approaching the same length of time and hasn't yet resolved to sack the guy whom everyone in the know seems to blame for Iraq.
Inevitably, a book that shows Bush improvising war and dissembling to the public has brought out the lynch mob. When Woodward wrote nice things about the White House, he was feted by everyone right of Ted Kennedy and Atrios. Now he has an 'agenda', just like the 'agenda' to leak the NIE and the 'agenda' of the ex-Bush officials whom Woodward interviewed. At the next press conference, someone should ask Tony Snow how many ex-Clinton officials have come forward to denounce their administration's incompetence. Not that it would make much difference. By this point, I doubt the Bush cheersquad will ever accept that smoke means fire and not just a reason to close your eyes.
After all, the administration has been coming clean over Iraq, albeit by lowering the bar for communication -
Since late last year, Bush has spoken more openly and directly about the nature of the enemy in Iraq and the scale of the challenge in building a peaceful and democratic nation. Snow himself quoted Bush at length at a press conference in Chicago in July saying, “We’ve lost obviously a lot of lives here in the homeland, and we lost lives overseas.” Snow added that Bush had been telling the American people that “it’s a war that’s going to outlive his presidency.”
Well, that makes it all better.
Down under, the Cole Inquiry's final day was another victory for truth in government, with our new Trade Minister leaping into his portfolio and contracting an instant case of AWB-related amnesia. In fairness to Warren Truss, a bribe-greased trade policy review was the least of the day's misdemeanours, if you thought concentration-camp jokes were reserved for South Park -
the extent of the scandal was revealed in the email by executive Daryl Borlase, who said Iraq wanted to build 2000 concrete bunkers, ostensibly to store grain, but "the bunkers will have cement walls and floors so they are actually designed for burying the Kurds -- under the cement?"
"They intend to build them with fumigation capability so the mind boggles as to whether they are fumigating insects or any other pest that pisses them off," the email says.
It continued: "On a serious note, they will have cement flooring ..."
Saddam is currently on trial in Iraq for the genocide of 182,000 people in a 1987-88 campaign against the Kurds.
And if you remained an optimist through that choice revelation, you would have been treated to the sight of AWB's (ex)MD crying in the witness box.
As they say, the truth ain't pretty...
Addendum
Tim Dunlop has an interesting take on the media' cognitive dissonance over politicians.
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