THE FURSHLUGGINER HEADLINE SCREAMS in huge 30-point type: “Metalworker Debunks One of the Big Theories Held by 9/11 Truthers.” The article was written by David Edwards for Raw Story but I received it in my morning’s email newsletter from Alternet. It includes a sub-title: “The idea that jet fuel can’t melt steel beams’ is bullsh*t, he demonstrates.” 1
The metalworker is quoted as saying, “If [9/11] was a conspiracy, I do not care. What I am upset about is the ridiculous metallurgical things that you guys are saying. If you hold this up as reason for conspiracy, you are an idiot.”
We then are treated to a video of his proof that some of us are idiots. But here’s the kicker—the final paragraph in the article quotes Popular Mechanics on the metalworker’s demonstration:
“He openly admits that the forge he was using heated the steel beam several hundred degrees above the temperature at which jet fuel burns. That, and he doesn’t say how long the beam has been in the forge, or offer any evidence of the forge’s actual temperature. His little experiment here is more party trick than perfect simulation.”
If this is so, then not only has the metalworker NOT debunked ANY thing about ANY conspiracy, he has actually given credence to several of those conspiracies.
What is this article then about?
Did Mr Edwards realize that his quoting Popular Mechanics debunked his “debunking” article?
Or maybe Edwards is part of some bigger, deeper, more sinister conspiracy . . .
Finally, please note that with “son of grandson of cognitive dissonance” I have not made an argument for nor against any theory regarding the truth or untruth behind the official 9/11 conspiracy theory proffered by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. 2
So there, Mr. Dealy-Buddy, sir!
HEADER IMAGE: One of many photographs of New York City on September 11, 2001, after two of the World Trade Center skyscrapers were struck by two jet aircraft and in a sympathetic response to their sister building, four other buildings in the WTC apparently suffered simultaneous bouts of spontaneous combustion. 3
[hr]
FOOTNOTES:
1 I have no idea why there is an apostrophe after “beams.”
2 The 9/11 Commission Report is notable not only for the volume of data it presents to back its conspiracy theory, but also for the volume of data that it ignores that flies in the face of its official conspiracy theory.
3 Prior to 9/11, plumes of black smoke in a fire of this kind was usually interpreted as the fact that the source was oxygen starved and hence burning low and out. Of course, that would undermine the official conspiracy theory, so now we have years of debate as to what black smoke means post-9/11. And since spontaneous combustion is a damn near paranormal phenomenon, where the hell were Mulder and Scully on this one?
Mystically liberal Virgo enjoys long walks alone in the city at night in the rain with an umbrella and a flask of 10-year-old Laphroaig who strives to live by the maxim, “It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble; it’s what you know that just ain’t so.
I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a college dropout (twice!). Occupationally, I have been a bartender, jewelry engraver, bouncer, landscape artist, and FEMA crew chief following the Great Flood of ’72 (and that was a job that I should never, ever have left).
I am also the final author of the original O’Sullivan Woodside price guides for record collectors and the original author of the Goldmine price guides for record collectors. As such, I was often referred to as the Price Guide Guru, and—as everyone should know—it behooves one to heed the words of a guru. (Unless, of course, you’re the Beatles.)
Footnote #3 : I think it means that the College of Cardinals elected a new Pope, or not...
It gives the theorists a whole new group to blame the last 14 years on!!!
Crank Up The Bubble Machine, Myron.
Hah! A Catlick allusion! Hadn’t thought of that . . .