Earlier in this series, I speculated that the World Trade Center towers had very likely outlived their usefulness, if in fact they ever had any. As it turns out, Business Week Online covered that same ground shortly after the attacks, on October 5, 2001, when the editors ran an excerpt from a 1999 book by Eric Darton (Divided We Stand, Basic Books):

Is it possible to imagine the World Trade Center as a ruin? …

A structure begins to fall into a state of ruin when it is no longer supported by the productive relations that created it. But its transformation is complete when it is no longer physically viable and the social imagination that gave it purpose has fled or been banished. Once a building is abandoned at the level of meaning, it is only a matter of time before physical decay upholds its end of the bargain.

In this sense, the World Trade Center came prepackaged as a ruin … From an economic standpoint, the trade center — subsidized since its inception — has never functioned, nor was it intended to function, unprotected in the rough-and-tumble real estate marketplace. And in the thirty years since it was built, the social forces of which it remains so highly visible an artifact have definitively realigned.

Relationships among banks and developers, public corporations, the city government, the statehouses of New York and New Jersey, and even the federal government have all been transformed to a point where it is inconceivable that the World Trade Center could be built today — or even for a moment considered a workable or desirable project … Viewed as a crowning ruin, the towers take on a new symbolic power — they become eloquent in transmitting the drama of their own vanished moment.

[…]

When the World Trade Center was bombed in February, 1993, at the age of twenty, it had finally begun generating profits to offset the chronic losses the PA [Port Authority] sustained running the PATH commuter line. But it was already passing its prime as office space, overtaken by a generation of more recent, cybernetically “smart” buildings with higher ceilings and greater built-in electrical capacity. To maintain the trade center as class-A office space commanding top rents, the PA would have had to spend $800 million rebuilding its electrical, electronic communications, and cooling systems.

 […]

The adversary faced by the PA was not a cabal of terrorists. The threat originated in a realignment of social powers represented by a triumvirate of officials elected in the early 1990s: George Pataki, Christie Todd Whitman, and Rudolph Giuliani [Editor’s note: if that’s not “a cabal of terrorists,” then I don’t know what is], respectively the governors of New York and New Jersey and the mayor of New York City. Although differing on many issues, all three vigorously pursued policies of cutting social services while consolidating and privatizing public agencies. At its most ideologically distilled, their shared doctrine — popularly associated with Republican conservatives but espoused by many Democrats — sought to re-create the public sector as a function of the marketplace …

Viewed from this perspective, the Port Authority ceases to exist as a public institution created to address the New York region’s economic and social needs and becomes instead an assemblage of assets, to be broken up according to the dictates of the market. But “capturing” the value of such assets, of course, is predicated upon the dismemberment of the whole.

(BW Online | October 5, 2001 | “The Process of Creating a Ruin”)

As will be recalled, a major “dismemberment of the whole” just happened to occur – purely by chance, I’m sure – in July 2001, when ownership of the World Trade Center transferred from the Port Authority to Silverstein Properties and Westfield America, as reported by the Financial Times (September 14, 2001):

The owners of the demolished World Trade Center in lower Manhattan acquired the buildings just two months ago under a 99-year lease allowing them to walk away from their investment in the event of “an act of terrorism.” The owners, Silverstein Properties and Westfield America – a shopping mall specialist – purchased the buildings from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for $3.2bn in July and completed the financing just two weeks ago … It is understood that the buildings are insured for more than $3bn, enough to cover rebuilding costs.

Apparently the best way to capture the value of these particular assets, after separating them from the whole, was to destroy them.

While revisiting Darton’s book, Business Week Online also posted a short Q&A session with the author. Some of the more intriguing dialogue from that interview is reproduced here:

A: Whoever did this thing really got us where we live: [The World Trade Center] was a tremendous psychic landmark, as well as a physical landmark. [The attack] really undermined our sense of even what Newtonian physics is. It’s hard for most of us to imagine that something so solid could be pulverized so quickly and so completely. I think it’s spooky for people, on a deep level.

A: When I was looking around for its emblematic content, I realized by itself it didn’t have emblematic content. It was, in a sense, empty. The Trade Center really appeared, if anything, to be a gateway, a gateway through which we passed as a culture from an Industrial Age into the Information Age, this New World we live in.

So I came to see it as a gateway, for New York specifically because it coincided with the eclipse of New York’s port. New York, prior to the WTC moment, was a city that could finance, make, and transport things. Now, it’s largely a symbolic economy, based on real estate and finance. My feeling is that, now that [the towers] are physically gone…we have crossed another threshold.

A: There has been, for years, pressure from different sources to decentralize the major cites. There was kind of a war going on between the various factions of the ruling class in this country over whether to get out of cities or to concentrate in cities … There has been a large-scale movement to decentralize, and I can’t but imagine that [the terrorist attacks] won’t help but fuel that somehow.

 (BW Online | October 5, 2001 | What the Twin Towers Stood For)

Two years before Darton published his book, and four years before the events of September 11, 2001, Scientific American pondered whether all skyscrapers had become obsolete (William Mitchell “Do We Still Need Skyscrapers?,” December 1997). The magazine’s expressed opinion was that the need for centralization of the workforce was quickly becoming a thing of the past: “The burgeoning Digital Revolution has been reducing the need to bring office workers together, face-to-face, in expensive downtown locations,” wrote Mitchell. “Efficient telecommunications have diminished the importance of centrality and correspondingly increased the attractiveness of less expensive suburban sites that are more convenient to the labor force.”

Not to mention the even more attractive option (from the point of view of our corporate masters) of bypassing the suburbs in favor of ‘outsourcing’ office work to ‘Third World’ labor markets …

Could the era of towering downtown skylines be headed the way of the horse-and-buggy? And if so, could hastening the decentralization of major cities be yet another hidden motive for carrying out the attacks of September 11? As has been frequently noted on this website, one of the overriding goals of our fearless leaders is the complete atomization of society — the shredding of all social, cultural and familial bonds. The reason for that, of course, is that a population set adrift, each individual in his or her own little cybersphere of existence, is much easier to deceive, much easier to control, and, lest we forget, much easier to thin. It certainly makes sense then that there would be, at this time, a covert push to decentralize large population centers.

By the way, I should probably add here that decentralization seems to be – coincidentally, I’m sure – the very same agenda that the ‘Peak Oil’ crowd is pitching. Hmmm …

* * * * * * * * * *

If we are now bearing witness to the early stages of the death of the modern era of centralization, then it seems only fitting that we pause here to take a fond look back at the events surrounding the birth of that era.

It all began, as is so frequently the case with major re-weavings of the social fabric, with an unnatural disaster that traumatized the nation. On the night of October 8, 1871, a fire began to sweep through the very heart of Chicago’s financial district. By the time it burned out, on the morning of October 10, it had blazed a path some 4 miles long and 3/4 of a mile wide through the city.

Fully 1/3 of Chicago’s buildings were destroyed in the blaze, including virtually all of those in the city’s financial district. Hundreds of businesses were reduced to smoldering heaps, including some of the Windy City’s top hotels, restaurants, stores, banks, museums, and theaters. There was a human cost as well; three hundred people lost their lives and tens of thousands more were left homeless. In the aftermath, amid wildly exaggerated reports of violence and looting, martial law was declared; quicker than you can say “USA PATRIOT Act,” federal troops were dispatched.

To the American people, it was a national tragedy roughly on par with the World Trade Center disaster. But to the ruling elite, it was, by any honest analysis, a very conveniently timed gift.

Chicago, you see, had a bit of a problem. Due to it’s central location and its rail and waterway connections, it was a natural hub of commerce for the North American continent. As such, it was one of America’s fastest growing cities, and all indications were that it was going to continue its rapid growth. Indeed, it would ultimately grow up to become the nation’s third largest city. But before that could happen, Chicago needed a fresh start.

It was a young city – incorporated just 34 years before the Great Fire – and it had, by necessity, grown up quickly. Much of the city was, therefore, quite shabbily constructed. Even the city’s most prestigious buildings were in need of constant maintenance and renovation; some had been deemed unsafe by the local press. And space for new buildings was quickly running out.

Virtually all buildings in those days were, at most, four or five stories tall, owing both to the limitations of brick, mortar and wood construction, and to the reluctance of most people to climb endless flights of stairs. But by the time of the Great Fire in 1871, all of that was about to change, thanks in no small part to the development and refinement of the elevator by various members of the Otis family. The invention of the elevator, combined with a revolutionary new steel-framed building design that would be dubbed the “Chicago Skeleton,” was about to render all of Chicago’s business district obsolete. And all of those obsolete buildings were sitting on prime real estate.

The problem, in a nutshell, was that the only direction to build in Chicago was straight up. And the only way to do that was to clear away all the shoddily constructed brick-and-mortar buildings standing in the way. But that, of course, was going to be a tough-sell with the people of Chicago, just as demolishing a section of Lower Manhattan would have been a tough-sell with the people of New York.

Luckily then, the Great Chicago Fire roared through town at just about the right time. Just as a forest can be cleansed and rejuvenated through fire, so too was the city of Chicago. Soon, great buildings began to grow from the ashes of what had come before. The first was the ten-story Home Insurance Building, considered to be the world’s first “skyscraper.” It was soon eclipsed by much taller edifices, including the imposing, 302-foot-tall Masonic Temple that stood, for a time, as the world’s tallest building.

By the early 1990s, Chicago’s downtown was littered with skyscrapers. From 1880 to 1890, the city’s population had more than doubled and land value had increased by some 700%. Like a Phoenix, Chicago had risen from the ashes, and it would continue to rise, although its skyscrapers would soon be eclipsed by the even more ostentatious monoliths that began to grow in New York City.

As with the September 11 attacks, the primary beneficiaries of the Chicago Fire were the moneyed elite. But who were the perpetrators? Who was to blame for the cost paid by the American people?

According to the authoritative sources that I have consulted, the fire was started by … (uhmm, wait a minute here, this doesn’t sound quite right … let me just check my notes real quickly and … yeah, that’s what I have down here, so I’ll guess I’ll go with it) … so, like I was saying, the Great Chicago Fire was started by, uhh, Mrs. O’ Leary’s cow.

Whew! I can’t believe I got through that one with a straight face.

So, what have we learned here today? Perhaps it is that the lies sold to the American people became more sophisticated in the 130 years between the Great Chicago Fire and the 9-11 attacks. Or maybe not. It may be tempting to conclude that only a less sophisticated generation of Americans could be sold an absurd tale about a cow and a lantern. But could that earlier generation have been sold a story about some guy named Osama sending his merry band of terr’ists into town to start the fire by using themselves as human torches — after, of course, killing some time in one of Chicago’s finest tittie bars, and after thoughtfully leaving behind a passport, a copy of the Koran, and a gas can?

* * * * * * * * * *

And now it is time once again to dip into the mailbag to see what is on the minds of readers. This first query comes from Dylan:

The one question I have from my initial quick read is this: Doesn’t it seem incongruous that the perpetrators would be concerned about minimizing the loss of life from the towers’ collapse, as you suggest they may have taken steps to do? Wouldn’t the nation as a whole be more traumatized if more people had been killed?

While a higher death toll would obviously be more traumatizing for the American people, I think that part of the answer to Dylan’s question, in the immortal words of the real estate industry, is “location, location, location.” If this operation had been carried out in, say, Harlem, or South-Central Los Angeles, then minimizing loss of life would probably not have been a high priority. But this operation was aimed specifically at bringing down the World Trade Center towers, which resided in the very heart of the corporate beast.

The other part of the answer is that, in the days immediately following the attacks, the actual casualty figures were irrelevant, since the American people were initially sold much higher figures. In those early days of wall-to-wall coverage, when maximum trauma was being inflicted, our trusted media mouthpieces spoke in hushed tones of tens of thousands of yet-to-be recovered bodies. We probably all remember Rudy Giuliani, suddenly revered as “America’s Mayor,” ominously ordering up enough body bags to accommodate those bloated estimates. It took time for those early estimates to slowly creep down to the currently accepted figures, and by then the damage had been done to the American psyche.

And what was the nature of that damage? I recently stumbled across the writings of some guy named Tim Boucher, who has penned an accurate and concise appraisal of the nature and purpose of the trauma inflicted upon the American people:

Do you remember watching it all unfold on television and feeling somehow like it “wasn’t real”? That’s a crucial symptom of traumatic dissociation. Your mind splits, blinks off for a moment, creating a critical space which can be filled with a new story, a new mythos. Before that, almost none of us gave a shit about terrorism or national security. But as a result of this trauma-based rite of passage, we were suddenly conditioned to a completely new value system – one in which everything we held dear before was turned upside-down: personal freedom, the Bill of Rights, etc. It’s virtually identical to what happens to a child in a traditional culture who is re-aligned to adulthood through ritual circumcision and the supporting transformative mythos. Maybe the World Trade Center tumbling down was the ritual circumcision of the American psyche. We are now adults. We are now warriors.

I don’t think I have much to add to that.

* * * * * * * * * *

Next is a question from an anonymous reader:

Now let me say here that I have never been satisfied with the official story, and that my opinion has always been that this is an inside job. However, there is something that I don’t understand… maybe you can comment on this. If the towers were detonated from within, then why would the bombers detonate the explosives according to a standard demolition procedure? If the bombers had wanted it to appear that the buildings had collapsed due to the impact of planes, then why not set up the explosives in a more random fashion? … Of course, it’s probably a moot point given that the official story was swallowed by the public so easily.

As far as I know, there wasn’t any other option. For the handful of companies specializing in the controlled implosion of tall structures, building demolition is a relatively exact science. The goal is to bring the building down with a minimum of collateral damage, and accomplishing that requires that the explosive charges be very precisely placed and then detonated in a very specific sequence. There is no way to do that and make it look random.

It is certainly possible that, on a subconscious level at least, the perpetrators wanted the public to know that the towers were not brought down by airplane crashes. That sort of cloaked revelation seems to be, in many cases, a component of the traumatization process. What better way, after all, to disempower and demoralize the American people than through an unspoken acknowledgment that the enemy is within, and can act with impunity?

My hunch is that the official story of the collapse of the towers wasn’t necessarily swallowed all that easily. I suspect that what was sold to the public was, as Eric Darton suggested, “spooky for people, on a deep level.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Next up is some feedback from researcher Jeff Strahl:

Just a couple of things re the generally excellent Newsletter 69. In a couple of sections, the text is mangled by graphics when I print it, esp. the part about WTC 7 next to the map of the area, and the part with two adjacent graphics about the core. And the last couple of paragraphs seem confused, a strange way to end the thing, just seems to trail off. I don’t understand your contention about the South Tower being damaged more significantly when just a corner was damaged, it was much much easier for the load to be transferred given the core was pretty intact and fewer perimeter columns were damaged, in addition to which most of the fuel was consumed in the external fireball, the fires were much less intense. The lower elevation is made up for by thicker beams, as the beams were tapered.

As for the problems when printing the post, the only response I really have is to suggest that it is probably best not to try to print it. That should alleviate the problem. The other option would be for me to attempt to fix it, but that would probably require that I actually be able to read and edit HTML, or possess some other rudimentary level of computer expertise – which might be the case in a perfect world, but this isn’t a perfect world, as evidenced by the fact that George Bush is still my illegitimate president, Arnold Schwarzenegger is still my illegitimate governor, and “Dr. Phil” is still on the air.

As for the lame ending to the series, that was primarily due to the fact that it was actually a fake ending to buy me some time until I finished all the Addenda. When I get to the real ending, it’s going to be a really good one. You’ll see. I’m thinking of calling it, “Act IV: Revenge of the Sith.” I probably shouldn’t mention it yet though because now someone will likely steal that title. If that should happen, remember that you read it here first.

As for my contention about the damage to the South Tower, I think it is pretty obvious that I was talking out of my ass when I wrote that, but I still think it is a little rude of you to bring it up. Yes, the core suffered less damage in the South Tower strike; and yes, fewer perimeter columns were damaged; and yes, the fires were indeed less intense; and yes, the columns were tapered, with the bases being absolutely massive and the tops being considerably less so. But even so, I still contend that, with all the strife in the world today, it is an inappropriate time to dwell on the flaws in my work.

As near as I can tell, my comments indicating that the South Tower suffered more damage and was therefore brought down first, before the upper stories could topple over, were a holdover from my previous post on the collapse of the towers, and they really should have been edited out.

My initial belief was that the beginnings of an actual partial collapse of the South Tower necessitated the instigation of the planned controlled collapse. But after discovering a photograph of the same phenomenon occurring immediately before the collapse of the North Tower, and after realizing that if the South Tower were to have suffered a partial collapse due to the initial impact damage, it would have occurred almost immediately after the impact, I came to a different conclusion.

I now believe that the initial toppling of the upper floors of the towers was not a condition that dictated the sequence of the collapses, but was rather an indication that the controlled demolitions had already begun. Even as those massive blocks began to topple above the impact points, as depicted in photos, their structural integrity had already been thoroughly undermined from within, and they were beginning to come apart even as they appeared to topple.

The only reasonable explanation for this phenomenon, visible in the collapse of both towers, is that all of the central core columns of both towers were instantaneously dropped and cut into sections, thus pulling the floors and the outer shells of the buildings down towards the center of each tower’s footprint. And the only way that that could happen is through the elaborately choreographed detonation of very carefully placed explosive charges.

My belief now is that the South Tower was brought down first not to preempt a potentially disastrous partial collapse, but because it was the tower that was cleared of occupants first (as much as was possible). I hope this clears up any confusion.

* * * * * * * * * *

Of the feedback that I have received on Act III, the most popular topic (or perhaps I should say the most unpopular topic) is my commentary on the infamous quote from Larry Silverstein. “Why would you let Silverstein off the hook for his incriminating comment?” ask incredulous readers. According to some readers, I may have gone so far as to have “provided him with an alibi.” Some respondents have even noted my obvious affiliation with the MOSSAD (an organization within which, as we all know, I head the secretive and powerful Irish Catholic division).

*Sigh* I guess I’m going to have to run through this again.

When confronted with any new piece of evidence, no matter how tempting it may appear to be, it is essential that that evidence be rigorously examined to determine whether it does indeed have merit. In fact, the more tempting the evidence is – the more it is touted as a ‘smoking gun’ – the more skeptical one should be. The danger, you see, is that if you let that piece of evidence become the centerpiece of your case, and then the bottom unexpectedly falls out of that centerpiece, then your case no longer has any credibility, no matter how strong your other evidence may be.

With that in mind, let’s take another look now at the Silverstein quote (view the video clip here):

I remember getting a call from the, uhh, Fire Department Commander, telling me that they were not sure they were going to be able to contain the fire. I said, “You know, we’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is, is pull it.” Uhh, and they made that decision to pull, and then we watched the building collapse.

As a disembodied quote, stripped of context, Silverstein’s words could very easily be interpreted as a candid admission that the building was deliberately brought down. It is, to be sure, a rather ambiguously worded statement. Context, therefore, is all important.

The first thing that must be considered is the context in which Silverstein made the statement. Overlooked by many 9-11 skeptics is that this was not a spontaneous, off-the-cuff remark by the WTC’s new leaseholder. It was not uttered during a live press conference or during a live appearance on a cable ‘news’ shout-a-thon. It was not, in other words, an unscripted response to an unexpected question, nor was it a statement that, once uttered, could not be expunged from the public record.

To the contrary, the Silverstein quote comes from a friendly interview that was taped and edited for inclusion in a documentary film that was later aired on the public airwaves, for all the world to see, just over a year after the events of September 11, 2001. The purpose of the film, as with all televised documentaries concerning the events of that day, was to further sell the American people on the sanctity of the official 9-11 story. It was, in essence, a state-sponsored propaganda film.

Larry Silverstein certainly had ample time to consider his statement both before and after making it. If he had inadvertently incriminated himself, he would surely have immediately recognized that fact, as would the filmmakers, whose goal doesn’t seem to have been to bring the truth about 9-11 to the American people. Why then would a supposed ‘smoking gun’ admission have made it into the final version of the film? Was everyone involved with this production asleep at the wheel during the editing process? Or has PBS suddenly become the voice of truth – but only in this one specific instance?

Also to be considered is the context in which Silverstein’s notorious segment appears in the film. Here is the narration that immediately precedes Silverstein’s statement: “[WTC] Seven had been cleared faster than the rest of the site, and there had been no bodies to recover. Pelted by debris when the North Tower collapsed, Seven burned until late afternoon, allowing occupants to evacuate to safety.”

I doubt that PBS has set any records here, but that’s a fairly impressive pack of lies they managed to bundle into that second sentence. WTC7 was not, in reality, “pelted by debris” from the North Tower, but was in fact quite intact right up until the moment that it spontaneously collapsed. It also did not burn all day, at least not with fires of any significance. And the building’s occupants, including the helpful folks staffing the emergency command center, were evacuated very early in the day — long before “late afternoon.”

There is a more important issue here, however, than the fact that the statement is a series of outright lies. Take another look at how those lies have been strung together: “Seven burned until late afternoon, allowing occupants to evacuate to safety.” The PBSgang is not telling us that in spite of the fact that the building was allegedly ablaze all day, occupants were nevertheless able to evacuate to safety. No, they are saying that it is precisely because the building burned all day that all the occupants were able to evacuate.

I think most readers will agree that it is not often that you hear someone say: “You know what? It’s a damned good thing that that building burned all day like that so that all those people could get out of there.” But September 11, as we all know, was a day like no other. Employing the peculiar logic and physics of September 11, we can easily determine that the message that the narrator wished to convey was that it was fortunate for all concerned that WTC7 didn’t collapse fairly quickly, as was the case with the Pentagon and both WTC towers, but rather held out for most of the day before its inevitable collapse. Because that is, as we all know, what buildings did on that particular day – even buildings that were not directly involved in the attacks.

Having planted in the viewer’s mind the absurd notion that the collapse of WTC7 was not a matter of “if,” but “when,” the filmmakers then segue directly into Silverstein’s statement, which, in case anyone has forgotten, goes something like this:

I remember getting a call from the, uhh, Fire Department Commander, telling me that they were not sure they were going to be able to contain the fire. I said, “You know, we’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is, is pull it.” Uhh, and they made that decision to pull, and then we watched the building collapse.

There are at least two possible interpretations of that statement. The first one, offered on numerous 9-11 skeptics’ websites, is that the phrase “pull it” refers to performing a controlled demolition. The problem with that interpretation, however, is that the statement then makes no sense. As we have already seen, the “terrible loss of life” in Manhattan that day was directly attributable to the collapse of the Twin Towers. If Silverstein was feigning concern for the loss of life that day, and expressing an interest in avoiding any further loss of life, then why would he recommend instigating the collapse of yet another building?

Another possible interpretation of Silverstein’s statement, as I noted previously, is that the phrase “pull it” refers to suspending firefighting operations – ‘pulling’ firefighters out of the supposedly burning building. Using that interpretation, Silverstein’s statement begins to make sense, because the best way to avoid the further loss of life – particularly among firefighters, who took heavy casualties in both tower collapses – would have been to cease firefighting operations in WTC7 (if it had actually been ablaze and in danger of collapse, and if there had been any actual firefighting operations in progress). And it makes perfect sense that Silverstein, as the leaseholder, would make such a recommendation to a Fire Department Commander, thus relieving the FDNY of liability for failing to work diligently to save his building. It makes no sense, on the other hand, that Silverstein would recommend to a representative of the Fire Department that his building be immediately brought down in a controlled manner. As far as I know, the FDNY is not qualified to stage such a spectacle.

If we look at Silverstein’s statement in conjunction with the narration that immediately precedes it, there doesn’t appear to be any great mystery about what was said. The narrator first informs us that there were no bodies to recover in the rubble of WTC7, and then he begins to explain why: all the building’s occupants had been able to safely evacuate before the collapse. Silverstein then jumps in to add that there were also no firefighters in the building at the time of the collapse because he and a Fire Department official had made a timely decision to pull them out.

There are, unfortunately, a couple of problems with the benign interpretation of Silverstein’s statement. The first is that the peculiar wording of Silverstein’s final comment is difficult to explain away, since he seems to be saying that the building collapsed as a direct result of the decision to “pull it”: “they made that decision to pull, and then we watched the building collapse.” It is possible, however, though perhaps not plausible to many, that Silverstein was saying something entirely different. It is possible that he intended his comment to be interpreted as having a silent “and it’s a damned good thing they did” inserted into it, as in “they made that decision to pull and it’s a damned good thing they did, because those men barely had time to get out of there before we watched the building collapse.”

It is possible, in fact, that the qualifying clause wasn’t actually silent at all. It occurred to me, after repeated viewings of the video clip, that Silverstein is no longer on camera when he makes that final comment, but is instead speaking in voiceover. There is therefore no way to determine if his statement has been edited. It seems to me that it is entirely possible that Silverstein’s words were carefully scripted and edited to deliberately create ambiguity.

The other problem with a benign interpretation is that the word “pull” is clearly used elsewhere in the film to refer to the controlled demolition of WTC6. (As will be recalled, I previously stated that such a reference couldn’t be to a controlled collapse since WTC6 didn’t collapse on September 11. However, after viewing the clip, it is clear that the collapse referred to was part of the clean-up operation, not the events of 9-11-01, and the word “pull” clearly is used to refer to a controlled demolition. Oops. My bad.)

The chances of a relatively obscure phrase like “pull it” appearing twice in the same documentary film, with entirely different meanings for each occurrence, would seem to be pretty slim, to say the least. And yet, in the case of WTC6, the phrase clearly refers to a controlled demolition, while in the case of WTC7, such an interpretation renders Silverstein’s statement incomprehensible.

So what are we to make of all this? It seems that there are at least three possible interpretations of Silverstein’s statement: the benign one, in which Silverstein was essentially giving his consent to suspend firefighting activities; the nefarious one, in which Silverstein was ordering the (impossible to spontaneously engineer) controlled demolition of one of his buildings; and the possibly even more nefarious one, in which Silverstein was essentially planting a red herring in the 9-11 skeptics movement by delivering a very carefully crafted bit of deliberate ambiguity.

I previously subscribed to the first interpretation, but after reconsidering the issue, I am now leaning heavily towards the third possibility. It wouldn’t surprise me, in fact, if the original interview tapes were to reveal that Silverstein actually made a much less ambiguous statement. But what do I know? After all, I obviously draw my paycheck from the MOSSAD. And as we all know, the MOSSAD, and Israeli Zionists in general, control the weak, pathetic little country that we call America.

There is one thing about that that puzzles me, however – one thing that I can’t seem to get a handle on. I’ve given this some thought, you see, and this is what I have deduced: if the nation of Israel were to suddenly cease to exist (and this is just a hypothetical situation to make a point, not an endorsement of the destruction of the nation of Israel, so calm the fuck down already), the United States would suffer at least a temporary loss of influence in the oil-soaked Middle East, but would otherwise carry on with business as usual, forcibly exerting its influence over much of the rest of the world; but if the United States were to suddenly cease to exist, then Israel would, I would think, either quickly learn to live peacefully with its neighbors or quickly find itself living on borrowed time.

It has always been my understanding that it is the puppet that is dependent upon the puppeteer. But maybe like everything else since September 11, that has changed as well.