You're never bored when you're paranoid- the truth behind 9/11, part 4

Originally published September 18, 2008

This is the fourth part of a four-part series: for the other parts, click here: 1st part, 2nd part, 3rd part

Those amongst who courageaously put up with me all along – and presumably that's not saying a lot – must be getting a splitting headache trying to figure out who did what where to whom and who got paid. To be perfectly honest, you are not alone. So I will attempt to resume the whole deal with a detailed timeline of the September 11 conspiracy.

• ? – four Boeings painted with the colors of the two airline companies take off from a strip of which the exact whereabouts are still unknown; they will be the duplicates of four of the to-be-hijacked planes; three of them are fitted with missiles; a fifth plane, an A-10 Thunderbolt specially modified for air-to-air combat and repainted in white to simulate a private corporate jet, also takes off; it will become the duplicate of flight 93
• 07:00 to 07:45 – At Logan airport in Boston, three of the five pirates from flight 11 are selected for a security check-up; at Newark airport in New Jersey, one of the pirate from flight 93 is selected; at Dulles airport in Washington, two of the pirates from flight 77 are selected after setting the metal detector's alarm off.
• 07:59 – American Airlines flight 11 take off from Boston
• 08:14 – beginning of the hijacking of flight 11
• 08:14 – United Airlines flight 175 take off from Boston
• 08:19 to 08:44 – the conspirators call American Airline impersonating Betty Ong, a flight attendant aboard flight 11
• 08:20 – American Airlines flight 77 take off from Washington
• 08:20 to 08:44 – the conspirators call American Airlines' flight services impersonating Amy Sweeney, an attendant aboard flight 11
• 08:24 – Flight 11 changes course and heads towards New York; the conspirators send two radio messages pretending to be Mohammad Atta, one of the "hijackers"
• 08:26 – American Airlines flight manager Michael Woodward identifies three of the hijackers on flight 11 with the help of the seat numbers provided by the false Amy Sweeney
• 08:30 – flight 11 and its double meet and exchange their radar signatures
• 08:34 – the conspirators send a third message pretending to be Atta
• 08:37 – the conspirators contact an air controller pretending to be the crew of flight 175 and "confirm" visual contact
• 08:37 – NORAD scrambles fighters to intercept flight 11
• 08:42 – flight 93 takes off from Newark
• 08:42 – beginning of the hijacking of flight 175
• 08:44 – the pilot of US Airlines flight 853 receives a brief signal from an emergency locating transmitter (ELT), possibly from either flight 175 or flight 11
• 08:46 – flight 77 and its double meet and exchange their radar signatures
• 08:46 – flight 11's double crashes in the World Trade Center's north tower a fraction of a second after firing its missile
• 08:48 – CNN interrupt their broadcasting and begin live coverage
• 08:51 appr. – beginning of the hijacking of flight 77
• 08:52 appr. – the conspirators leave the practically intact passport of Satam al Suqami, one of the flight 11 "hijackers", on a sidewalk in the WTC vicinity
• 08:52 – two F-15 scramble from Otis base to intercept the phoney flight 11 unawares that it already crashed
• 08:52 – the conspirators call the United Airlines maintenance center in San Francisco impersonating a flight attendant aboard flight 175 of an uncertain identity, possibly Robert Fangman
• 08:52 – the conspirators call the father of one of the passengers of flight 175, Robert Hanson, impersonating him
• 08:53 – flight 11 lands in Harrisburgh
• 08:53 – flight 175 and its double meet and exchange their radar signatures
• 08:54 – flight 77's double changes course and heads towards Washington
• 08:55 – Delta Airlines flight 2315 narrowly avoids a collision with flight 175; another collision is avoided with flight 542 from US Airways
• 08:56 – air controllers lose track of flight 77's double's signal
• 08:57 to 09:32 – the Global Hawk catches up with flight 77 and starts following it
• 08:58 – flight 175's double changes course and heads towards New York
• 08:58 – the conspirators call the wife of a flight 175 passenger, Brian Sweeney, impersonating him; they also call his mother a couple of minutes later
• 09:00 approx. – three F-16 cut short an ongoing exercise and return to Andrews air base
• 09:00 – the conspirators call Peter Hanson's father a second time
• 09:00 and thereafter – Shafig bin Laden, Ossama's brother, attends a conference held by the Carlyle Group at the Washington Ritz Carlton
• 09:00 and thereafter – Mike Ballinger, a United Airlines dispatcher, proceeds to send a warning one by one to all the company's planes
• 09:01 – United Airlines flight 23 cancels its departure from John F. Kennedy airport in New York; the pirates on board start to protest loudly but eventually cancel their plans and flee; flight 23's double goes get lost God knows where
• 09:02 – flight 175 lands in Harrisburgh
• 09:02 – flight 93 and its double meet and exchange their radar signatures
• 09:03 – flight 175's double crashes in the World's Trade Center' south tower a fraction of a second after launching its missile
• 09:03 – NYPD chief Joseph Esposito puts the city of New-York on maximum alert status
• 09:04 – the FAA cancels departures from all airports in New York state and all the states of New England
• 09:06 – President Bush is informed of the crash of flight 175
• 09:07 – flight 93 lands in Harrisburgh, and the passengers of flights 175 and 11 are transferred aboard
• 09:08 – the FAA extends its flight prohibition to the entire US east coast
• 09:08 to 09:13 – the two F-15 from Otis base take an holding flight path east of Long Island
• 09:09 – flight 77 lands in Harrisburgh; the passengers are transferred aboard flight 93
• 09:09 and hereafter – the conspirators flood the airwaves with bogus hijacking reports to confuse air control
• 09:12 to 09:15 – the conspirators call the parents of Renee May, flight attendant aboard fight 77 and impersonate her; they intoxicate them with numerous contradictory informations
• 09:15 to 10:28 – two employees stuck on the 8th floor of WTC7 hear several explosions
• 09:20 – the conspirators call the husband of a passenger aboard flight 77, Barbara Olson and impersonate her; the husband is Theodore Olson, the Dept. of Justice general sollicitor
• 09:21 – the New York Port Authority closes all bridges and tunnels in the city
• 09:24 – the crew of flight 93 receives Mike Ballinger's warning
• 09:24 – Langley air base scrambles their jets
• 09:25 – the two F-15 from Otis air base finally arrive over Manhattan and commence air patrol
• 09:26 – the FAA grounds all departures across the nation, and orders all planes (commercial, private and even military) already in the air to land at the first reasonnable opportunity
• 09:26 – US Air Force raises its alert level to Delta
• 09:28 – beginning of the fake hijacking of flight 93; the pirates' entry in the cockpit is heard by Cleveland air controllers
• 09:29 – President Bush emits his first televised comments
• 09:30 to 09:45 – the conspirators call three times the wife of Tom Burnett, passenger aboard flight 93 and impersonate him
• 09:30 – United Airlines orders all of its airliners to land immediately; American Airlines will follow suit at 09:35
• 09:30 – three F-16 scrambles from Langley base and heads east towards the Atlantic ocean
• 09:31 to 10:06 – a private flight, ExecuJet 956, spots flight 93 and confirms both visual and radio contact, and even has to maneuver to avoid a collision; it will follow it until it crashes
• 09:32 – the controllers at Dulles airport find flight 77's signal back, unawares that both its double and the Global Hawk are flying right in its wake
• 09:32 – the conspirators send a radio message pretending to be the hijackers of flight 93
• 09:34 to 11:45 – the conspirators jam the radio signal emitted by Air Force One, interfering with President Bush's attempts to contact the White House
• 09:35 – flight 93's double changes course and heads towards Washington
• 09:35 – recordings recovered from flight 93's black box begin now
• 09:35 to 09:41 – the conspirators call United Airlines' maintenance center in San Francisco impersonating a flight attendant aboard flight 93, Sandy Bradshaw
• 09:36 – a E-4B from the US Strategic Command take off from an unspecified base in the vicinity of Washington and fly over the Pentagon to guide to Global Hawk's trajectory
• 09:36 – a C-130 who just took off from Langley air base approaches flight 77 to provide a false confirmation of its presence; it provides a visual distraction as well; after the crash, it will head for Shanksville
• 09:37 – The Global crashes in the western wall of the Pentagon while flight 77's double continues on its course over the complex and towards Ronald Reagan airport a kilometer further ahead
• 09:37 to 10:03 – the conspirators call several friends and relatives of passengers aboard flight 93 and impersonate them all, most notably Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick and Mark Bingham
• 09:38 – the conspirators knock over a couple of streetlights on Washington Blvd
• 09:38 – a fire squad from Ronald Reagan airport who was helping on the scene of an auto accident near the airport is redirected to the Pentagon
• 09:38 and hereafter – FBI agents seize the recordings from the security camera in commercial buildings nearby the Pentagon
• 09:38 or 09:45 – anti-terrorist agency director Richard Clarke ask for air patrols over all major cities in the United States; however it's not certain if that order was transmitted to everyone
• 09:39 approx. – flight 77's double discreetly lands on Ronald Reagan airport, where it is hacked to pieces
• 09:39 – the conspirators transmit a radio message impersonating Ziad Jarrah, one of the "pirates" of flight 93
• 09:41 –unit 105 from Arlington County Fire Department arrives at the Pentagon
• 09:42 approx. – the E-4B comes back over the Pentagon and circles it a couple of times
• 09:45 – flight 93 takes off from Harrisburgh
• 09:45 – the american airspace is shut off; all incoming international flights are diverted
• 09:47 – the conspirators initiates the controlled demolition of the south tower by causing the collapse of some floors around the 90th
• 09:47 – the conspirators impersonating Jeremy Glick announce to his wife that the passengers are voting to decide whether to revolt
• 09:49 approx. – after a lengthy detour over the Atlantic, the F-16 from Langley air base finally reach Washington
• 09:50 to 10:15 approx. – the conspirators scatter parts of flight 77's double all over the crash scene at the Pentagon; they cross the security perimeter and sneak between "B" and "C" rings to deposit pieces of the Boeing's nose cone and landing gear; they leave some charred bodies still attached to their seat inside the building; they also attempt to make all traces of the Global hawk disappear
• 09:52 – two firemen reach the 78th floor on the south tower and only report two minor fires by radio
• 09:55 – President Bush takes off from Sarasota aboard Air Force One without any precise destination; he circles around Florida
• 09:58 – the conspirators impersonating Todd Beamer announce the beginning of the passenger "revolt" aboard flight 93 to a GTE consumer service supervisor ("let's roll")
• 09:58 – flight 93 is shot down by its double, who continues its course to God knows where
• 09:58 to 10:06 – the conspirators simulates the struggle between the hijackers and the passengers on the controllers radio as well as on the phones of several relatives and acquaintances of the passengers, using a adroitly orchestrated scenario
• 09:59 – the conspirators set off a bomb on the ground floor of the WTC south tower; the 82nd floor falls down, triggering the collapse of the tower
• 10:03 – flight 93 crashes in an abandonned open-quarry mine
  in Pennsylvania
• 10:05 and herafter – the conspirators collect the remains of the passengers from flight 77, 11 and 175 on the site of flight 93's crash and bring them back to the Pentagon and the WTC
• 10:06 approx. – CIA director George Tenet finally receives the passenger manifests after numerous bureaucratic delays
• 10:08 – the C-130 from the Pentagon arrives at the flight 93 crash site to confound again any eyewitness
• 10:10 approx. – Vice-President Cheney authorizes the shooting of flight 93, apparently unawares that it already crashed
• 10:10 – The military level of alert is raised to Defcon 3
• 10:15 – the front wall of the Pentagon's damaged section collapses
• 10:20 – aboard Air Force One, President Bush tells Vice-President Cheney that he has greenlighted the shooting down of any suspect plane if necessary
• 10:28 – the conspirators cause a local earthquake at the base of the WTC north tower, and then set off a bomb on the ground floor; the 98th floor falls down, causing the collapse of the tower
• 10:31 – the FAA authorizes back military and police flights
• 10:35 – Air Force One finally decides on a destination and sets course to Barksdale base
• 10:38 – Andrews air base's F-16 are redeployed after their return from their exercise
• 10:42 – two F-16 take off from Hancock air base
• 10:45 – Major Gibney, who is in fact a lieutenant-colonel take off from Fargo, N.D. heading for Bozman, Mont., to be used as a patsy for the shooting down of flight 93
• 11:45 – Air Force One land on Barksdale base in Louisiana
• 10:50 – a local farmer flies over flight 93's crash site in a Cessna
• 12:00 approx. and herafter – Senator John McCain (R) multiplies tv interviews; he invariably states the necessity of retaliating not only in Afghanistan, but also in Irak, Iran and Syria as well; he will declare during an interview on CNN a couple of days later: «it is evident that Irak is on top on the list»
• 12:15 approx. – the entire american air space is at last empty of all commercial or private traffic
• 17:20 – collapse of World Trade Center 7
• 20:00 and hereafter – flights 175 and 11 take off from Harrisburgh by remote control and are sent towards the Atlantic Ocean to be sunk

Well, this is not working, it's even more fucked up as it is. This is worse than the Gordian knot.

Anyways, that doesn't change anything. Of course, it's all highly speculative, and there are a lot of details that could be different: we could very well for example switch the Global Hawk with an AGM-86D in our scenario, which would have the merit of being more consistent with the size of the hole as a Global Hawk is about as wide as a Boeing. Or we could imagine that the passengers and crews of the planes have in fact never even existed, that their identities were made up out of the blue and that amateur actors have been hired to play the role of the grieving families.

But regardless of all the variations, the working principle remains the same: never in the history of mankind a group of conspirators have spent so much energy and ressources, involved, bought off or duped so many people, conceived a plan so hairbrained and so complex in its conception as well as in its execution. The number of official agencies that they had to let in the plot, the staggering amount of money that they had to invest (you have any idea how much a Boeing jumbo jet costs?), the thousands, even the millions of man-hours of preparation (picture yourself filing away all the serial numbers on the two million parts that make up a Boeing), the sheer Mount Everest of governmental paperwork that they had to glean and get rid off, not to mention all of the authorizations, clearances and permits that they had to obtain to access them.... never a plot will have necessitate so much to in the end amount to so little.

And I stress "so little". You may think that I'm coming apart at the seams by referencing to 2700 dead and a dozen destroyed buildings as "so little", but I'd like to remind you that three farmers, operating under a five figure budget, managed to kill 168 people and razed a 10-story building in Oklahoma City in 1995; if Tim McVeigh could have afforded the retail price of a single 757 Boeing airliner, there's no doubt in my mind that he would have succeeded in leveling the entire city.

As for the Reichstag conspiracy... yeah right, you want to talk about the Reichstag, by all means, let us: a handful of nazi conspirators led by Hermann Goering come in contact with a communist political activist fallen on hard times, pretend to befriend him and eventually end up putting up in his somewhat confused mind that you know what it would be a swell idea to set fire to the Parliament; they open the doors for him and while he runs around the Commons they spill gasoline in the basement. And that's about it. Total cost of the operation... well, how much was worth a jerrycan full of gasoline in 1933?

Six days later, the Nazi Party won the election, and thanks to the dismantling of the Communist Party got hold of the majority. The next month, Hitler assumed absolute power by suspending the constitution. If the original intent of the september 11 conspirators was to establish a fascist state, the least we can say is that the nazis could teach them a thing or two: in a totalitarian regime the Democrat Party would have been dissolved a long time ago and all its leaders arrested as well as the entire staff of the Washington Times, not to mention all those smart-alecky wiseguys a la Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert who would have been sent hammering rocks in a concentration camp ages ago.

I won't budge on this one: the intention of the conspirators, their modus operandi have conformed to the letter to the motto why make it simple when you can make it complicated. It is obvious that the whole ordeal had never constituted a means, but in fact an end in itself. No force on earth will ever convince me that an underground organization who had enough leverage to be able to embezzle 1.3 trillion (that's right, 1 300 billions) dollars from the most powerful organization on the planet could have even for one second thought that they needed to blow it all in such a boondogled plan to take a power that in the end they in effect already possessed.

Only Rube Goldberg and his disciples conform to the psychological make-up that would satisfactorily explain the behavior and actions of the conspirators. As far as I'm concerned the final conclusion is inevitable: the 9/11 conspiracy was a Rube Goldberg device.

P.S.: I've just been told that Rube Goldberg died in 1970, or 31 years before the events. Well, well, how convenient, an ironclad alibi! When I said they thought of everything... if you thought you would get me with that one, think again, in your face: as far as I'm concerned, it only strenghtens my convictions. Besides, how do you know he's not alive somewhere on a deserted island? Heads you lose, tails I win: welcome to the wonderful world of conspiracy theorism.

You're never bored when you're paranoid- the truth behind 9/11, part 3

Originally published September 13, 2008

This is the third part of a four-part series: for the other parts, click here: 1st part, 2nd part, 4th part

A favorite theme of Rube Goldberg in his drawings of combobulated machines was the introduction of an animal's action in tyhe mechanism, for example a parrot jerking up upon receiving a kick in the butt, or a hamster starting to gallop in his wheel after a stimulation of some sort. The idea was of course to take the complexity and uncertainty factor up a notch. Needless to say, people who build rube goldberg devices as a hobby or for contests hardly ever use animals in their machines, if at all.

Well, not only the 9/11 conspirators introduced the animal factor in their plan, but they went all out and selected the most unpredictable, the most random of them all: the human, namely the passengers of flight 93.

The plan was at first put in motion once again with the hijacking of an airliner, this one from United Airlines. But this time, and contrary to the three other flights, this one was hijacked by genuine kamikazis, actually determined to crash on the Capitol (or the White House, nobody's certain). We could see in this a concession to simplicity, but as you no doubt understand by now that suicide crash didn't represent the real intent of the conspirators; at best it constituted a contingency plan.

The central element in this plan was the strict instructions given the pirates to hold their attack until absolutely sure that the other targets had already been hit; if those orders haven't been followed to the letter, they nevertheless successfully accomplished their purpose. By the time they started setting things in motion, their plane was flying almost over Cleveland, and would need a minimum of thirty minutes to make the way back to Washington.

This delay then allowed the passengers to learn about the attacks on the WTC from phonecalls lodged to their relatives, to understand the situation and so hence to form plans for a revolt. We know the rest: the heroic epic of average american joe against the forces of evil and the famous "let's roll" still to this day co-opted to death by untold numbers of heroe wannabes and venal demagogues. In this baroque machinery, the passengers were the hamsters, the plane the wheel and the hijacking the prod poked in the hamster's ass.

All there remained to do was to sent flight 93 crashing somewhere in a field in Pennsylvania. The conspirators dispatched a US Air Force fighter plane which had been sneaked away beforehand and (did you notice that I use the word "beforehand" quite a lot? Like I said, they thought of everything), and sent it to simply shoot down the Boeing, while sending a private jet to fly around the scene to confound any eyewitness. The fighter then casually returned to its base.

You certainly imagine that all those preparations left traces: minutes from secret meetings, blueprints, recordings... they had to get rid of it all. Obviously if you followed carefully so far and got the general idea well, you probably already figured that simply gathering all this stuff and burn it away in a discreet area certainly wasn't part of their plan. Far from it, they still needed a money shot, the cherry on the top, the grand finale that would conclude the whole affair in an apotheosis of extreme intricateness (I'm really running out of synonyms here).

For their secret planning sessions, the conspirators had... that's right, beforehand elected to rent offices in nothing less than the 7 World Trade Center, which is to say right across the street from the Twin Towers. You remember the controlled demolitions of those towers? Well, hang on to your lugnuts, those explosions were carefully and expertly calculated to make the towers damage WTC7 on their way down so as to cause it to collapse as well, a couple of well placed charges completing the process with a third controlled demolition. The entire scheme then resulted in the disappearing of any and all evidence of the plot. A domino chain!

What would be a good rube goldberg without its domino chain? Our conspirators understood that well and went to the point of using whole skyscrapers in lieu of dominoes. I've said it before and I'll say it again, why make it simple when you can make it complicated?

Tomorrow, the conclusion

You're never bored when you're paranoid- the truth behind 9/11, part 2

Originally published September 12, 2008

This is the second part of a four-part series: for the other parts, click here: 1st part, 3rd part, 4th part

That was for the World Trade Center (actually there's more but I'll get back to it later); we'd think that our conspirators would be satisfied with it and leave it at that, but that's misunderstanding the philosophy of Rube Goldberg's disciples: when they want to indulge in the convoluted they mean business. For the Pentagon they would elevate elaborateness to a whole new level.

The original idea was of course to send another plane, but once again, why not flesh it out some? Hijacking an airliner and crashing it on the Pentagon may be more sophisticated than just planting bombs, but there's still room for improvement. So instead of an airplane, the conspirators decided to send a missile. They sneaked out that missile right under the nose of the Dept. of Defense – either a AGM-86D, or a Global Hawk spy plane which had beforehand been fitted with a charge specially designed with "BROACH" technology – camouflaged it with American Airlines colors, and discreetly brought it on a strip on Ronald Reagan Airport from where they fired it on the Pentagon. Meanwhile, flight 77 was hijacked and then just like flights 175 and 11 it proceeded towards the rendez-vous point with the missile, where they exchanged their radar signals by crossing paths so as to once again counfound air controllers.

Meanwhile, a C-130 was following the Boeing, in order firstly to guide by radio the UAV-converted-to-Cruise-missile, and secondly to provide a visual distraction to the hundreds of eyewitnesses to keep them from realising that a 757 Boeing jumbo jet looks like a Cruise missile the way a fluffy rhubarb and quark clafoutis looks like an ass – which nevertheless wasn't enough to keep them from confusing one with the other.

Even as the missile/spy plane was en route to the Pentagon, flight 77 was landing on an out-of-way strip and the scenario just repeated itself: slaughtering of the passengers, chopping off of the plane and returning to the crash site to place the pieces just in time for investigator Allyn Kilsheimer to find pieces of the tail, fuselage debris, flight recorder, shreds of uniforms and even body parts. Truely, they thought of every detail, down to the macabre.

There still remained dozens of little details to take care of: knock down a couple of streetlights while everyone's back was turned to make it look like a Boeing went throught them; widen the impact crater on the wall to prevent any observer to wonder how a drone the width of a Boeing 757 would be able to leave a hole barely 25 meter wide; knock over an outside generator to create the illusion it was hit by an engine, get rid of all incriminating evidence left on surveillance video records where a missile would be visible... Regarding the hole, I'll concede they botched the job some, but hey, nobody's perfect. In falling dominoes competitions, sometimes it happens so that a piece refuses to tip over and necessitates a little nudge to keep the chain going. Let us deduct them 1 point and move on.

One more important detail: they still had to make all traces from the missile disappear, on the crash site as well as in the army's inventory, who you no doubt imagine would certainly wonder how come they're missing a hundred million dollar drone, especially a modified prototype specially equipped with a technology that was still experimental back then – in other words, classified. Observe the remarkable efficiency with which they managed to cut through the DoD's legendary red tape, where as legend has it 7 forms and four weeks are required just to change a light bulb. The swiftness they showed in corralling all concerned personnel and ammassing all the relevant paperwork without leaving a trace is absolutely amazing, even supposing they had inside help.

Okay, Shanksville's is still up; to be continued tomorrow.

By the way here's a link that isn't particularly relevant, but is certainly ironic given the circumstances (look at the date)

You're never bored when you're paranoid- the truth behind 9/11

Originally published September 11, 2008

This is the first part of a four-part series: for the other parts, click here: 2nd part, 3rd part, 4th part

I found out who perpetrated the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or more precisely who was behind it: Rube Goldberg. If you dont know who that is, you can always check WikiPedia, but to make it short, Rube Goldberg is a cartoonist famous for having invented in his drawings an astounding array of hairbrained contraptions each more ludicrous than the preceding, so famous that his name is now used to designate the genre: if you played Mousetrap when you were a kid, you've seen a classic example of a "rube goldberg machine".

So what has any of this to do with September 11? Well, nothing, if you believe the official story, namely the one that says that Osama Bin Laden, at the head of an international terrorist ring, has selected amongst a seemingly unending source of brainwashed loonies 19 of the best (including a half-dozen who have some experience as airplane pilots), and sent them on a suicide raid against three landmarks representing the three pillars of America's power (government, banks, army). Simple, straightforward, efficient, badabing badaboom, no useless complications, no horsing around. Even if the operation hasn't turned out to be a complete success, the beauty in the plan lays in its simplicity, by implicating about thirty people at most. Keep it simple, stupid.

But as you may havew figured out, the real story is far more complicated. The Twin Towers to begin with: you'd think crashing two Boeing at full speed would be enough to draw some attention, but the towers were built to withstand this sort of event, meaning the buildings' collapse wasn't guaranteed. To make sure they fall down, it was then necessary to plant bombs in them. It sort of make the planes somewhat redundant, if not a show of outright overkill, but why keep it simple when you can make it complicated.

While we're at it, instead of sending jumbo jets, why not flesh it out some and use military planes? So the conspirators have painted military cargo planes with American Airlines and United Airlines liveries, then hid a missile in each of them, in specially prepared bulges fitted under the fuselage. The two planes then crashed in the towers while each firing its missile a fraction of a second before impact, like a kamikaze barreling down on a house with a semi but still taking care of shooting a .45 bullet from a magnum that he took the precaution of hiding behing the fender. We really have to tip our hat to our conspirators' commitment to the cause of useless complexity.

But they certainly didn't stop there: au contraire. They could have happily planted their bombs in a haphazard way, but once again why make it simple when you can make it complicated. So they carefully placed the charges in such a way as to provoke a controlled demolition. Instead of crashing down more or less chaotically, both towers collapsed in a predictable fashion, each floor falling squarely on the lower one in a graceful manner that was almost elegant in its eeriness. You have to admit you don't get to see that every day, terrorists who take the time and pain to methodically deconstruct their target instead of just blowing shit up as they're usually wont, all the more so considering the fact that they successfully managed to trick the National Institute of Standards and Technology who to this day still holds that fire was the only cause of the towers' collapse.

Now there remained the tricky matter of the passengers. Just creating fictive identities wouldn't have sufficed, because there still was the problem of two commercial airliners who would normally show as missing in their respective companies' inventories. So they hijacked the two flights in question towards New-York, and there made them crossed paths with the two disguised military planes at a pre-determined point. They then shut down all transmitters, activated some sort of radar scrambling device that has been previously installed in secrecy, and then casually went their merry way undetected while taking the precaution of seizing all cellular phones from the passengers, while all this time air controllers who being none the wiser kept following the fake airliners on their radar screens.

Finally, they discreetly landed on an out-of-way strip, where they killed all the passengers and staff in cold blood, then hacked both planes to bits and brought pieces back to the WTC surroundings, including the flight recordings, and up to – man, those guys are good! – a piece of fuselage that they carried all the way to the top of WTC5 right under the nose of all bystanders, including NYPD officers who had cordoned off the entire area. And all this while they could just been happy with loading four or five trucks full of explosives, pulled over in the parking lot under the towers and just stroll out whistling innocently. I said it and will say it again, why make it simple when you can make it complicated.

And when I say complicated, I'm really understating. If you thought it was over, think again, the fun has just begun. But this is beginning to get tiresome, so I'll take a break. To be continued tomorrow.

We didn't start the fire

Originally published January 10, 2009

A major hit in 1989 was "We didn't start the fire" from Billy Joel. The concept was to resume 40 years of events in one song, from the end of WW2 up to 89. So I thought to myself, why not remake it and turn up an updated version, from 1989 to today?

One damn good reason why not is that is was one of those things that I figured would be done in an afternoon and would wind up taking me a month and a half, but as usual I had no clue and by the time I realised it it was too late to stop. It was worth it though: it has been a great opportunity to take a stroll through the past; sure is a lot that happened last twenty years.

You can find the original lyrics on Billy Joel's official site; Teacher Oz's site also has them, with relevant links to various sites.

I tried as much as I could to keep the original meter to facilitate the transition, while respecting the concept of staying in chronological order. That was anything but a walk in the park, but I suppose I had it easy compared to the original: if Billy had twice as much years to work with, he didn't have access to Wikipedia. I think he must have spent weeks perusing old newspapers in the local libray; in any case I tip my hat to him.

"We didn't start the fire", Billy Joel; revisited by moi.

Exxon Valdez, Botha falls, Field of Dreams, Berlin wall
Salman Rushdie, Bush and cocaine, riots in Tiananmen

Lech Walesa, Noriega, Trafalgar Square, free Mandela
East Germany, West Germany, Leonard Bernstein

Rodney King, Ötzi, Desert Storm, Mercury
Hussein, Terminator, and the Silence of the Lambs

EuroDisney, Clinton, Europe's got a union
Randy Weaver, LA riots, Soviet Union goodbye

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Stephen Hawking, Escobar, NAFTA and Bosnian war
don't ask don't tell, David Korech, Jurassic Park

Rwanda, Kurt Cobain, Ayrton Senna, sarin
baseball on strike, Woodstock 94

Listyev, Sampoong, O.J. Simpson's on the run
Unabomber, Carl Sagan, Kevin Mitnick, Cal Ripken

Deep Blue, Tim Leary, Colalympics, Dolly
Larry Flynt, JonBenét, Oklahoma City

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Lady Di, Applewhite, cartoon seizures, Phoenix lights
Gingrich, oil-for-food, gunfight in North Hollywood

Lewinsky, Stephen Glass, Aryan Nations' anthrax
McLibel, Ken McDuff, US versus Microsoft

dot-com bubble, Kenya, Columbine, Viagra
Kosovo, Matrix, Y2K is all fixed

Euro, Melissa, Dubya in Florida
Milosevic, Putin, Rage Against The Machine

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Pakistan, Chavez, Elian Gonzalez
Napster, Potter, AOL Time Warner

spy plane stuck in China, talibans and Al-Qaeda
iPod, Google, monolith in Seattle

Enron, Barry Bonds, Roy Moore and the Commandments
Twin Towers blown away, what else do I have to say

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Daniel Pearl, Tama-chan, Saddam Hussein back again
Hans Blix, Idol, East Timor, Jintao

Powell, Limbaugh, Abu Ghraib, shock and awe in Baghdad
Michael Jackson's Neverland, Chechen terror in Beslan

global warming, Kim Jong-Il, Al Jazeera, human shields
Lance Armstrong, Superdome, SARS, meth, Colbert bump

ethanol and food riots, banks are pleading for bailout
Barackobamania, I can't take it anymore

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
But when we are gone
It will still burn on, and on and on and on...

You try this in your next karaoke party.

To whom it may concern

Originally published October 7, 2004

You are stupid

You are incredibly stupid. Completely stupid. Extremely stupid. Resolutely stupid. Irremediably stupid. Undeniably stupid. Uncompromisingly stupid. Abysmally stupid. Unbelievably stupid. Fantastically stupid. Perfectly stupid. Amazingly stupid. Profoundly stupid. Indubitably stupid. You are stupid beyond measure, stupid beyond belief, stupid beyond mortal comprehension. The definitive, ultimate stupid. You're so fucking stupid it blows the mind.

Saying you are stupid is not childish name-calling: it is an inevitable, inescapable conclusion supported by all logical, empirical and physical evidence. Calling you stupid is nothing but the realisation of a self-evident truth. Your stupidity is stupefying, astounding, flabbergasting. Your stupidity is enormous, gigantic, gargantuan, titanic, cosmic.

You are so stupid that you need an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes. You are so stupid you couldn't find your asshole even if you had a map. So stupid you put curtains on your computer screen cause you heard it runs on Windows. You are so stupid you couldn't outsmart your way out of a nosepick.

If there was a company named Stupid inc., you'd be the CoB. If there was a town called Stupidville, you'd be mayor. Stupidland? You'd be president, of course. And the Stupidsons consider you their patriarch. The National Stupidity League named you MVP. The Stupidity Hall of Fame bears your name. You invented virtual stupidity, the autostupid, the stupidomatic, stupidware, the stupidorama.

Your stupidity defies all accepted logic; it violates all physical laws of the universe. It transcends all cultures, all languages. You bring stupidity to a whole new dimension. Astrophysicians try to express your stupidity in numbers and fail. The Unified Theory of the universe will have to take your stupidity into account.

You are a mass of raw, primal stupidity so incredibly compressed no intelligent thought can escape. You are the proof that stupidity is an elemental force, stronger than light, gravity and even the nuclear forces. You are the largest single emitting source of stupidons in the Universe. The thinnest vacuum is not found in intergalactic space but in your interaural space. The relativistic universe deals with the infinitely big, the quantic universe deals with the infinitely small: your universe deals with the infinitely stupid. You are stupid squared and cubed, stupid to the nth power, exponiental, logarithmical, factorized stupid. You are the quintessence of stupidity.

You were born where men are men and sheep are nervous. You were conceived during a power failure that followed a drinking binge. Your conception was an abomination, and your birth a crime against nature. When they realized the magnitude of the heinous crime they just perpetrated, your parents slashed their wrists with rusty razor blades in the vain hope of atoning for the irreparable damage they had caused this world; visitors now line up in the cemetary to piss on their graves. On their tombstones, this epitaph: "If only we'd made a stain on the sheets instead of a stain in society!".

You are mega-stupid, trans-stupid, arch-stupid, super-stupid, hyper-stupid, giga-stupid, supra-stupid, ultra-stupid, pan-stupid, omni-stupid, stupidissimus, überstupid, stupidologist, stupidographist, stupidocrat, stupidician, stupidophile, your motto is 'stupidum ad stupidem', your philosophy is stupidism, your ethnic grouping is stupidian, your native speech is stupidese, your heritage is stupidarchy. You are stupid extraordinaire, stupid emeritus, Sir Stupid, Lord Stupid, His Stupidity, Stupidex Maximux, il Stupido de tutti stupidi, le Stupide, das Stupid, le Stupidos, International Grand Master of Stupid, Ultima Stupide.

You are Stupidity Incarnate. The Son of Stupid, sent in the world by Stupid Himself to stupidify the human race. Stupid people all over the world look to you as their Lord and Saviour. You are Stupid's warrior, Commander in Chief of the Stupid Army, Defender of Stupidity, Guardian of the Word of Stupid, Archdeacon of the Church of Stupid, Supreme Hochmeister of the Stupid Crusade, Holy Knight of the Order of the Stupid Table, Grand Wizard of the Secret Conclave of Stupid, Cosmoplanetarian Messiah of the Children of Stupid. You are the Elected, the Chosen One prophecized by the Book of Stupid.

You are an apology of stupidity. An elogy of stupidity. A symphony of stupidity. A rhapsody of stupidity. A resume of stupidity. A revelation of stupidity. An encyclopedia of stupidity. You are an idiot, a dimwit, a shit-for-brains, a turd, an imbecile, a nincompoop, a twit, a twat, a moron, a fool, an asshole, an asswipe, a spam-brain, a bimbo, a dumbbell, a mushhead, a redneck, a dickwad, a vegetable, a retard, a fucktard, a homie, a hoodie, a lamer, a poser, a loser, an ignoramus, a pseudo-intellectual, a jughead, a birdbrain, a zombie, a neocon, a thumper, a target audience, a consumer, a minus, a simpleton, a clown, a buffoon, a newfie, a newbie, a mongolian, an okie, a dope, a screwball. You are dumb, foolish, silly, thick, sheepish, brainless, simple-minded, inbred, colonial, corny, bigoted, narrow-minded, illiterate, incompetent, ignorant, dull-witted, remedial, pathetic, you're not the brightest penny in the foutain, the light's on but nobody's home, you can't count to twenty with your shoes on, you're a sorry excuse for a human being, you're fugly, you're dirty and you stink. You are an epiphany of stupidity.

For centuries, philosophers have asked the question "How stupid can one get?"; but looking at you one wonders if we really want an answer to that. Such stupidity bears not thinking too much about.

I could go on like that for hours, but I've had enough. I'm sorry, you are just too stupid. You are so stupid in fact you're probably thinking I'm not talking about you.

The Vietnam Memorial

Originally published March 3, 2009

The Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, one of a three-part monument, is a wall upon which are inscribed the names of all the US soldiers killed and missing in action in the Vietnam war. Measuring 150 meters long, the monument is formed of two triangular sections leaning on each other back-to-back, each measuring 3 meters high at their apex and tapering to 20 cm at their extremities; by joining them alongside their hypothenuses, we would obtain a 75 x 3.2 meters rectangle, or 240 m2.

58 260 names were engraved on it as of february 2009; divided by 240 m2, we have 1 name per 41 cm2, or a little less than 243 names per square meter.

If we were to add the 220 357 south-vietnamese, 4960 korean and other american allied soldiers, we'd have a total of 285 831 names: we would then need 1176 m2, or keeping the same height, a 735 meters long wall, and it would have been necessary to move the Lincoln Memorial to give it room. If their north-vietnamese opponents would get the idea of building their own memorial to put their 1 176 000 losses, they would get a 4839 m2 wall, or 3.02 kilometers long.

At the other end of the scale, a monument dedicated to the 4251 GI killed in the Irak war would be 17 meters square, or 11 meters long and would easily fit in a shipping container; as for the 390 Coalition casualties of the Gulf war, they give us a 1,6m2 wall or 50cm long, or rather should we say wide as this monument wouldn't look so much like a wall than a stick actually.

The 417 american soldiers killed in Afghanistan would fill 1,8m2; the 107 canadians, a 12 cm wide post.

The 45 300 canadian soldiers fallen during WW2 would give us a 116 meters wall; meanwhile, with 416 800 killed in action the americans would fill a monument 1,07 kilometers long.

The french wall with its 215 000 names would measure 552 meters; or by keeping the original length, a 11,39 meters high monument which could perhaps suffice to outshade another wall, of shame this one, where would be inscribed on 102 meters the 40 000 french that fell under german or Vichy flags.

Speaking of walls of shame, the names of the 5 533 000 fallen germans would have covered 6,23 kilometers of the Berlin Wall, or a little less than 5% of its length.

The exact length of the soviet monument more than any other is open to debate, but it is certain that with somewhere along the lines of 10 and a half million casualties, the Red Army would deserve the Mother of all Walls, of which the 4,3 hectares of names would fill a monument as long as 27 kilometers; one extremity would be situated in the middle of Capitol Heights, and the other would end in Arlington, somewhere between Mason District Park and Barcroft Lake; its construction would have taken 10 years. If it was built with the original length, its summit would culminate at 288 meters, twice the height of the Washington Monument. For every meter separating Moscow from Berlin, six soldiers of the Red Army gave their lives.

Concerning World War I however, the Russian Empire yields the top step to Germany, with a 4,7 km wall compared to 5,2 km. France's wall measures 3,6 km, England and Ireland's 2,3 km, the U.S. 300 meters and Canada 167 meters.

667 000 americans were killed in action in the course of all the wars of the 20th and 21st centuries; a 1,7 km wall, compared to 2,7 km for all the americans victim of homicide during the same period. In total, about 34 000 000 soldiers have fallen in the 20th century, a wall nearly 85 km running between Manassas and the Chesapeake Bay; 14 hectares of names which would end up costing over 2 billion dollars upon its completion slated for 2035.

As for the civilians... you know what, I don't even want to talk about it.

WikiPedia (Vietnam Veterans Memorial, World War I casualties, World War II casualties, Iraq War, Coalition casualties in Afghanistan, Gulf War)
Google Maps
Twentieth Century Atlas.