dre

I wouldn't put it past the US government to do this kind of thing. But I don't think they could pull it off even if they tried. This is the same government that loses control of hundreds of thousands of classified documents every year. Intelligence work is farmed out to thousands of private subcontractors. They leak like a sieve though and are terrible at controlling their data. They MAY have quietly ignored intelligence signals... They HAD been warned that terrorists were trying to fly airliners into US buildings before 911, and they were quite possibly stupid and negligent. But as for being the actual perps and planners, I don't find that believable. The Bush Administration could not plan a bake sale, never mind a massive attack against their own citizens.

That maybe have been their public position, but its not very believable. They appointed Unical's point man on the pipeline project as special envoy to Afghanistan AFTER 911, and made him Ambassador in 2003.

Sure but most skyscrapers are supported by large steel columns encased in thick layers of concrete. The WTC buildings were built super light to save costs, and did not even conform to local building codes. I don't find any of this stuff compelling at all.

Well I dont buy your theory about the WTC, but you definately hit THAT nail right on the head.

Its hard to get through a conversation with you when you don't bother to read. I never said they invaded "just for a pipeline". That's a blatant straw man. And I already explained how the assertion that just because they didn't build a pipeline must mean they never planned to. Remember... the morons that planned the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were outrageously optimistic and drastically underestimated the challenge that bringing stability to these countries post invasion posed. Its quite possible that they WERE interested in building a pipeline but ditched the idea once they realized what an utter failure the mission was, and that would be neither stability or security in post-invasion Afghanistan. If they had been able to stabilize the situation there like the chirpy, gerbil faced optimists behind the invasion thought they easily would, then maybe there WOULD be a pipeline there today. I guess that's what happens when foreign policy is formulated by a guy that's too stupid to go duck hunting without shooting his friends in the face.

The activity Im talking about happened after 911 not before.

Why on earth would people be fleeing a small government, low tax, conservative libertarian utopia like Somalia!!!???

I think the two factors were these... 1. A show of force after 911. The worlds superpower could not be seen doing nothing after the biggest attack on it since Pearl Harbor. 2. The liquidation of military equipment for the purpose of certain corporations close to the government making a shitload of profit replacing it.

Civilian leaders around the world today don't seem to understand geopolitics very well. There is a number of poor decisions made on all sides that have lead to renewing the adversarial relationship with Russia, and potentially starting another cold war. I don't think Reagan would have dissolved the ABM treaty or allowed Nato to start courting former USSR states with large populations of ethnic Russians. And I don't think Yeltsin would have risked renewed hostilities by annexing territory outside Russia. NATO action in the Baltic sea is a geo-political blunder, and on the other side Russia naval build up there is also a geo-political blunder that risks pushing Sweden closer to Nato. The signal Sweden is sending now is also a geo-political blunder, and one that the Swedish Military itself is opposed to. Jan Björklund risks compromising the perception of Swedish neutrality which is vital to their safety, and the military and Armed Forces Supreme Commander Sverker Göransson are worried that this idiot is going to get them into trouble. There are no adults in the room on either side any more - just a bunch of saber rattling loud mouths. And its people in both the east and west that will suffer as a result.

That was probably aluminum not steel. The airliner was made of hundreds of tons of aluminum that that has a melting point of 630.3 degrees.

Right back at you...

I dont think thermal energy is at question here. Conspiracy theorists point out that burning jet fuel should not have burned hot enough to melt the steel columns... under normal circumstances it will only burn at about 800 degrees. However, the NIST did test burns and found that burning computers and office furniture could easy causes temperatures to reach 1100 degrees. While that isn't enough to MELT steal it is enough to distort and weaken it, and the buildings were already poorly engineered and under-built. The "molten metal" that is visible in the photos and videos is mostly the aluminum from the chassis of the aircraft itself which would melt at a much lower 630 degrees.

The pipeline plan had nothing to do with minerals in Afghanistan. It had to do with getting natural gas from the Dauletabad Field Turkmenistan to existing pipelines in Malta. The US took the plan seriously enough to appoint Zalmay Khalilzad (an oil company adviser for Unical who had been trying to negotiate a pipeline deal with the Taliban since 1997) as special envoy to Afghanistan and special adviser to Donal Rumsfeld. I think they would have loved to build that pipeline but they just gave up on the idea once it became apparent that the mission was a colossal failure and it would be impossible to provide security for a 16km pipeline across western Afghanistan. Before you declare that your opinion is "reality" it might behoove you to do at least a tiny bit of research on the subject. And I never said I was convinced... I think the pipeline maybe have been a factor but I dont really know. I think profiteering and sheer stupidity and misplaced optimism were probably bigger factors. Remember these are the retards that said the Iraq project would "pay for itself" and take "a few months". And like I said, the US wanted to put on a show of force after 911, and they had a huge conventional military that they had spent trillions on. When the only tool you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. The US wasnt going to be satisfied with only covert counter terrorism action as a response to 911... They wanted fireworks and saw dirt poor Afghanistan as an easy target to set an example for everyone else.

No matter what there was SOME slowing. The laws of physics dictate that. But based on the kinetic energy that would have been built up during a 1.1 second 5 meter fall, it would not even be close to enough for the human eye to notice.

You would not expect them. The structure below was engineered to hold the weight of the floors above at rest. However when an object falls its potential gravitational energy is converted to kinetic energy. For example... 1 kg of matter at rest puts marginal force on the structure below it. Effectively maybe .01 joules. However if that object falls from 5 meters (roughly the high of each floor in the WTC) it falls for 1.1 seconds building up kinetic energy the entire time. By the time impacts the floor below it, it will exert 49 joules of force on the structure below it. In other words that 5 meter fall results in about 500 times as much force as the structure below is designed to withstand. Its like dropping a brick on a frame made of match sticks. You would not expect to see any visible resistance to the falling object at all. From a physics standpoint you would expect to see exactly what you did see. Heres some math to play with... And here's a splat calculator you can use if you don't want to do the math yourself.

LOL Crap, sorry! http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/0112/eagar/eagar-0112.html

Sorry I misspoke those are from JOM (Journal of Metals and Materials). And they are quotes. http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/aboutJOM.aspx

It more likely reflects the fact that our relationship with the US is stable, highly beneficial to both sides, and continues smoothly without needing much attention. You dont need a lot of meeting when things are working well. You need them to fix things that are broken.

I think the building were just built by shitty tradesman, working for shitty contractors, using shitty steel, with shitty engineering. From popular mechanics... In other words their crappy ass buildings fell down because they were not built properly, and a lot of people died because of the developers being cheap.

Also you might have mentioned that in return for the 42 million in grants Honda will invest 408 million in the Canadian economy and manufacturing capacity. If that money is spent purchasing goods and services from Canadian contracts and suppliers, and those entities are taxed at 25%, then about 100 million dollars will be collected in taxes as a result of this nearly 1/2 billion dollar investment and the government will generate substantial gains for the tax payer not to mention providing a bunch of good jobs for people which will also help grow the tax base and increase the size of the non-services sector (which is exactly what we need to do).

Uhhhhh.... Link?

There is no more turmoil in the world, just more cameras everywhere, and an insane level of media saturation. Compare today with just under a century ago... The entire world was at war and dozens of millions of people were dying in various conflicts between major powers and their surrogates. The world is a relatively peaceful place now, and we are safer than we ever have been in history.

The fact that there's no pipelines doesn't mean pipelines were not part of the original plan. The morons that dreamed up that mission thought they would easily be able to install a puppet government and secure the country relatively quickly. What they didn't understand is the tribal nature of regions in Afghanistan, and the fact that no revenue stream exists in the country to fund a central government capable of providing security to the whole country and its remote regions. Not to mention they put organized criminals in charge that had no intention of getting rid of the Taliban or wrestling control away from the regional warlords that really run the place. So it makes sense that under those conditions, and given the colossal and epic failure of the mission, any pipeline plans that may have existed would have been abandoned. I'm not saying pipelines were a major motivator... Just saying your logic for dismissing them is nonsensical. My feeling is that the US just wanted a big show of force after 911. They weren't equipped for real counter terrorism operations, and had very little real human intelligence there. What they WERE equipped to do is explode a lot of things and blow a lot of big holes in the ground, so that's what they did. Its interesting that after the Oklahoma bombing and before Timothy Mcvey was identified as the perp, the US government was already talking about attacking Afghanistan THEN too. So it would seem that 911 was just a justification to do something that they had already wanted to do for a while. And as I said before profiteering was also a major motive. If you could put a miniature tracking device on each of the trillions of dollars wasted on the war on Terror to see who has all that money now, I think you would be surprised. My guess is that most of that money went directly to government lobbying US contractors, and never even left the US. The mother of all pork barrels. You can call me a conspiracy theorist, but you will have to call President and Army General Dwight Eisenhower a conspiracy theorist too... The reality is that selling a false sense of security to fear-dumb Americans is the most lucrative and profitable endeavor in the history of the world.

In her defense, its hard to make a really stupid idea present well. Still overall its an astute political move by her.

Why would we be pouting? Who cares if we are on the sidelines instead of wasting lives and treasure in poorly thought out and counter productive attempts to police the world. You assume that the US would spend less if Canada spent more. Ridiculous. The US has a huge military budget because it is a major industry in many US states, and theres a massive amount of pork barreling and profiteering going on. If you honest think what Canada spends has anything whatsoever to do with what the US spends you are completely kidding yourself. The US wants other countries to spend more because they are the worlds biggest supplier of those things. And NATO is the gift that keeps on taking. We have spent billions and wasted a lot of lives, and have never, and will never get anything in return. If Canadian sovereignty is challenged do you really believe that Albania, or Belgium, or Bulgaria, or Crotia, or Latvia, or Lithuania or Portugal are gonna rescue us? No... it will be the US simply because they would view a military trespass on this continent as being counter to their self interests, and maybe the UK. Military spending wont do jack shit to help that. Those people need social services. And I have your backs... if I was in charge no Canadian troops wouldn't commit suicide because they wouldn't be sent on fools errands that are planned by idiots. Non-interventionalist foreign policy is the very best thing for soldiers, thats why Ron Paul won the military vote when he ran for president. Our troops would have been at home with their families for the last 50 years, and acting a corps of engineers, building low income housing, and Canadian infrastructure when they aren't training to make sure they are ready if our sovereignty is challenged.