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This site is interesting, but I was surprised to see some 9/11 conspiracy theory elements in the News Ticker. Specifically, the "Janitor Hears Explosion from W

This site is interesting, but I was surprised to see some 9/11 conspiracy theory elements in the News Ticker. Specifically, the "Janitor Hears Explosion from WTC Basement" in the news ticker includes claims that an explosion occurred in the basement 40 seconds before the first plane impact. Some quick Googling shows that this janitor and another associate went on to try to build a careers on top of these conspiracy theories. One of them even tried to sue President Bush and 155 others over 9/11 with a rambling lawsuit that alleges everything from controlled demolition of the towers to sex trafficking by the defendents. Not a credible source, to say the least. I have no idea why this site thought to include his claims, but I suspect they're trying to seed doubt about the official timelines. Cool site, but take some of the editorialized content with a huge grain of salt.

tommymachine 5y ago
I'm not sure how those things discredit the janitor. Are you as critical of the politicians, who have built their livelihoods off of going around speaking to corporate interests? What about the government officials who put out the 9/11 commission report, and were paid for it. Are they similarly implicated by the act of self promotion? Or does that distinction only apply to the janitors of the world?
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > I'm not sure how those things discredit the janitor. He claims there was a massive explosion that shook the walls, caused part of the ceiling to cave in, and other significant effects. The obvious source is the plane impact. If there were multiple explosions of the magnitude he claims, surely other people would have noted them. And of course, the standard conspiracy theory caveats apply: Do you really believe that their was a massive conspiracy perpetrated by experts who can coordinate such things at scale, yet are also simultaneously so incompetent that they forgot to wait until the plane impact to start demolishing the building? It's nonsense. I highlighted the speaking tour to explain how he has perverse incentives to be continue spreading the conspiracy theory. EDIT: I removed a comment about common sense because it seems to be distracting people from the actual comment
  - tommymachine 5y ago
    "Common sense" isn't that common. Do you also acknowledge the perverse incentives of government bureaucrats to promote their story?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - fighterpilot 5y ago
    > Do you really believe that their was a massive conspiracy perpetrated by experts The conspiracy theory about explosives is even more idiotic than that. It's not merely that the conspiracy would needed to have been extremely complicated and involve 10s or 100s of silent accomplices, which is true. It's also that it would have been completely unnecessary and redundant, and is therefore a violation of Occam's Razor. Whatever the purported political objectives behind a conspiracy to put explosives in the towers, the planes themselves should have been sufficient to achieve those objectives, and so what motivation would there be to tack on yet another entirely different conspiracy (different in terms of operational details, skills required, additional headcount, etc)? You're multiplying the difficulty and complexity of the operation and increasing the chances of getting caught by a good 2-10x, for little benefit due to that redundancy. > Common sense discredits the story. They say things like "jet fuel can't melt steel", when nobody even makes that claim. The claim is that the burning jet fuel made the steel weaker. So don't expect them to exercise common sense when they're insisting on these strawmen.
  - mannanj 5y ago
    Common sense is a weak argument. common sense is only common sense when it’s in the favor of your narrative. In the other direction, it’s not. Right? “Everyone knows the towers collapsed cause we studied it for 10 years. Everyone still asking questions is a conspiracy theorist. Common sense” vs “everyone knows that jet fuel doesn’t burn hot enough to melt structural steel cause we studied it for 10 years. Everyone still believing otherwise is … common sense.” See my point here with your logic?
curtis3389 5y ago
Other conspiracy theory stuff in the ticker: thermite conspiracy & something about ELTs going off before explosions. Surprised the creator didn't cram a remote control box mention in the ticker. I hadn't seen the ELT stuff before, and a quick and lazy google didn't turn up a good debunking. Anyone have anything about ELTs being picked up @ 8:44 AM and ~8:59 AM? I don't buy any of the conspiracies, just curious. The site is really awesome, regardless.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > I hadn't seen the ELT stuff before, and a quick and lazy google didn't turn up a good debunking. Anyone have anything about ELTs being picked up @ 8:44 AM and ~8:59 AM? I only did a quick search. Found this transcript where someone mentions they saw a brief ELT blip on 121.5MHz: http://web.archive.org/web/20210718083443/https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/16/national/transcript-of-united-airlines-flight-175.html http://web.archive.org/web/20210718083443/https://www.nytime... A quick read of the ELT description ( https://www.aopa.org/advocacy/aircraft/aircraft-operations/emergency-locator-transmitters https://www.aopa.org/advocacy/aircraft/aircraft-operations/e... ) shows that the 121.5MHz ELTs are associated with a high number of false triggers: > In 2009, the international COSPAS-SARSAT satellite system discontinued satellite-based monitoring of the 121.5/243 MHz frequencies, in part because of a high number of false signals attributed with these frequencies. Apparently the earliest 121.5MHz ELTs had a ridiculously high false trigger rate of 97 percent, which explains why they were deprecated: > Historically, these ELT’s have experienced an activation rate of less than 25 percent in actual crashes and a 97 percent false-alarm rate. So if false triggers were a known issue and the ELT signal was only seen extremely briefly, it's more likely someone taking a common occurrence out of context.
  - IAmGraydon 5y ago
    An ELT signal was detected a couple of minutes before the first impact and another was detected a couple of minutes before the second impact. Both were detected from Lower Manhattan. Furthermore, nothing was detected from either plane at the moment of impact. This is a bit too much coincidence for me. I have no idea what could have caused this, but you have to blatantly ignore a number of red flags to swallow the official explanation.
mkr-hn 5y ago
Acoustics are weird. Memory is weird. It's possible he heard something of the explosion up top, mistook a reflected sound for something closer, then had it change on him as he retold it to himself and others until it was 40 seconds before and obviously close to the basement.
l33tbro 5y ago
There were definitely a few curious anomolies that day. I wouldn't say it's a conspiracy, because I'm not sure I undertand the motive. But certainly the Israeli nationals that were caught celebrating as the first planes hit [1] is very, very strange. Especially considering that at least two of them had ties back to Israeli intelligence [2]. I try to be charitable, but the logic is all screwy. • So there's a Mossad operation, as Israel claimed when sprung by NYPD/FBI, looking for terror cells in greater NYC at the time? Fine. • This Mossad operation took the form of setting up removalist companies that were a front? Okay, weird, but sure. • On the morning of the attacks, these removalists/agents are positioned on top of a building in Jersey to see the first plane hit and are witnessed celebrating, taking footage of it. Right. • The agents are busted with passports and plane tickets leaving the country that day. The guy running the company 'Urban Moving Systems', ditches flees the country back to Israel [3]. Draw your own conclusions. This is the aspect of this tragedy that always seemed under-reported and also hints that there was likely a far larger narrative at play. [1] https://www.scribd.com/document/409691150/FOIA-Release-of-9-11-Dancing-Israelis-thru-the-FBI https://www.scribd.com/document/409691150/FOIA-Release-of-9-... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20030413184526/http://www.forward.com/issues/2002/02.03.15/news2.html https://web.archive.org/web/20030413184526/http://www.forwar... [3] https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/08/321316.html https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/08/321316.html

tommymachine 5y ago

I'm not sure how those things discredit the janitor. Are you as critical of the politicians, who have built their livelihoods off of going around speaking to corporate interests? What about the government officials who put out the 9/11 commission report, and were paid for it. Are they similarly implicated by the act of self promotion? Or does that distinction only apply to the janitors of the world?

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> I'm not sure how those things discredit the janitor. He claims there was a massive explosion that shook the walls, caused part of the ceiling to cave in, and other significant effects. The obvious source is the plane impact. If there were multiple explosions of the magnitude he claims, surely other people would have noted them. And of course, the standard conspiracy theory caveats apply: Do you really believe that their was a massive conspiracy perpetrated by experts who can coordinate such things at scale, yet are also simultaneously so incompetent that they forgot to wait until the plane impact to start demolishing the building? It's nonsense. I highlighted the speaking tour to explain how he has perverse incentives to be continue spreading the conspiracy theory. EDIT: I removed a comment about common sense because it seems to be distracting people from the actual comment
- tommymachine 5y ago
  "Common sense" isn't that common. Do you also acknowledge the perverse incentives of government bureaucrats to promote their story?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  > Do you really believe that their was a massive conspiracy perpetrated by experts The conspiracy theory about explosives is even more idiotic than that. It's not merely that the conspiracy would needed to have been extremely complicated and involve 10s or 100s of silent accomplices, which is true. It's also that it would have been completely unnecessary and redundant, and is therefore a violation of Occam's Razor. Whatever the purported political objectives behind a conspiracy to put explosives in the towers, the planes themselves should have been sufficient to achieve those objectives, and so what motivation would there be to tack on yet another entirely different conspiracy (different in terms of operational details, skills required, additional headcount, etc)? You're multiplying the difficulty and complexity of the operation and increasing the chances of getting caught by a good 2-10x, for little benefit due to that redundancy. > Common sense discredits the story. They say things like "jet fuel can't melt steel", when nobody even makes that claim. The claim is that the burning jet fuel made the steel weaker. So don't expect them to exercise common sense when they're insisting on these strawmen.
- mannanj 5y ago
  Common sense is a weak argument. common sense is only common sense when it’s in the favor of your narrative. In the other direction, it’s not. Right? “Everyone knows the towers collapsed cause we studied it for 10 years. Everyone still asking questions is a conspiracy theorist. Common sense” vs “everyone knows that jet fuel doesn’t burn hot enough to melt structural steel cause we studied it for 10 years. Everyone still believing otherwise is … common sense.” See my point here with your logic?

curtis3389 5y ago

Other conspiracy theory stuff in the ticker: thermite conspiracy & something about ELTs going off before explosions. Surprised the creator didn't cram a remote control box mention in the ticker. I hadn't seen the ELT stuff before, and a quick and lazy google didn't turn up a good debunking. Anyone have anything about ELTs being picked up @ 8:44 AM and ~8:59 AM? I don't buy any of the conspiracies, just curious. The site is really awesome, regardless.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> I hadn't seen the ELT stuff before, and a quick and lazy google didn't turn up a good debunking. Anyone have anything about ELTs being picked up @ 8:44 AM and ~8:59 AM? I only did a quick search. Found this transcript where someone mentions they saw a brief ELT blip on 121.5MHz: http://web.archive.org/web/20210718083443/https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/16/national/transcript-of-united-airlines-flight-175.html http://web.archive.org/web/20210718083443/https://www.nytime... A quick read of the ELT description ( https://www.aopa.org/advocacy/aircraft/aircraft-operations/emergency-locator-transmitters https://www.aopa.org/advocacy/aircraft/aircraft-operations/e... ) shows that the 121.5MHz ELTs are associated with a high number of false triggers: > In 2009, the international COSPAS-SARSAT satellite system discontinued satellite-based monitoring of the 121.5/243 MHz frequencies, in part because of a high number of false signals attributed with these frequencies. Apparently the earliest 121.5MHz ELTs had a ridiculously high false trigger rate of 97 percent, which explains why they were deprecated: > Historically, these ELT’s have experienced an activation rate of less than 25 percent in actual crashes and a 97 percent false-alarm rate. So if false triggers were a known issue and the ELT signal was only seen extremely briefly, it's more likely someone taking a common occurrence out of context.
- IAmGraydon 5y ago
  An ELT signal was detected a couple of minutes before the first impact and another was detected a couple of minutes before the second impact. Both were detected from Lower Manhattan. Furthermore, nothing was detected from either plane at the moment of impact. This is a bit too much coincidence for me. I have no idea what could have caused this, but you have to blatantly ignore a number of red flags to swallow the official explanation.

mkr-hn 5y ago

Acoustics are weird. Memory is weird. It's possible he heard something of the explosion up top, mistook a reflected sound for something closer, then had it change on him as he retold it to himself and others until it was 40 seconds before and obviously close to the basement.

l33tbro 5y ago

There were definitely a few curious anomolies that day. I wouldn't say it's a conspiracy, because I'm not sure I undertand the motive. But certainly the Israeli nationals that were caught celebrating as the first planes hit [1] is very, very strange. Especially considering that at least two of them had ties back to Israeli intelligence [2]. I try to be charitable, but the logic is all screwy. • So there's a Mossad operation, as Israel claimed when sprung by NYPD/FBI, looking for terror cells in greater NYC at the time? Fine. • This Mossad operation took the form of setting up removalist companies that were a front? Okay, weird, but sure. • On the morning of the attacks, these removalists/agents are positioned on top of a building in Jersey to see the first plane hit and are witnessed celebrating, taking footage of it. Right. • The agents are busted with passports and plane tickets leaving the country that day. The guy running the company 'Urban Moving Systems', ditches flees the country back to Israel [3]. Draw your own conclusions. This is the aspect of this tragedy that always seemed under-reported and also hints that there was likely a far larger narrative at play. [1] https://www.scribd.com/document/409691150/FOIA-Release-of-9-11-Dancing-Israelis-thru-the-FBI https://www.scribd.com/document/409691150/FOIA-Release-of-9-... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20030413184526/http://www.forward.com/issues/2002/02.03.15/news2.html https://web.archive.org/web/20030413184526/http://www.forwar... [3] https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/08/321316.html https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/08/321316.html