Showing posts with label Empire State Building. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Empire State Building. Show all posts

Sunday, September 30, 2007

Proof Of Controlled Demolition At The WTC

http://www.attackonamerica.net/proofofcontrolleddemolitionatwtc.htm

Proof Of Controlled Demolition At The WTC
by Jerry Russell, Ph.D.

Steel frame towers are built very strongly. They need to withstand the pressure of gale-force winds, the violent rocking motion of earthquakes, and the ravages of time. For this reason, they are almost impossible to destroy.

Airplane strikes do not destroy skyscrapers. A bomber strike to the Empire State Building during World War II did not harm that building. The World Trade Center towers were designed to survive a strike by a Boeing 707. The 767 is more massive, so the building was stressed near its design limits. But if a failure had occurred at that moment, it would have been at the point of highest levered stress, near the base of the tower, and the tower would have fallen over like a giant tree in a forest windstorm. That, of course, did not happen.

Fires do not destroy skyscrapers. Never in the history of steel frame structures has a single one been destroyed by fire.

How to destroy a skyscraper. So, how do you destroy a skyscraper? Suppose you need the vacant land to build another one, for example.

A nuclear bomb is very effective, but it can be difficult to get permits from the city.

An early invention was the wrecking ball. A huge lump of steel and lead is swung from a massive chain at high speed. With the benefit of momentum, it is able to bend or break a few girders at a time. But it would be a hopeless task to destroy a tower the size of the World Trade Center, using a wrecking ball.

The most effective, cleanest, safest way to destroy a skyscraper is known as controlled demolition. The trick is to distribute explosives at key points throughout the structure. The explosives are detonated simultaneously, destroying the integrity of the steel frame at key points, such that no part of the building is supported against the force of gravity. The entire mass is pulled swiftly to earth, where gravity does the work of pounding the structure into tiny fragments of steel and concrete. The gravitational potential energy of the structure is converted smoothly and uniformly into kinetic energy, and then is available very efficiently to pulverize the fragments of the building as they impact against the unyielding earth. Controlled demolitions have a striking and characteristic appearance of smooth, flowing collapse.

As your eyes will tell you, the World Trade Center collapses looked like controlled demolitions. Here's the proof.

The proof. According to the law of gravity, it is possible to calculate the time it takes for an object to fall a given distance. The equation is H=(1/2)at2, where H is the height, a is the acceleration of gravity (10 meters per second squared) and t is time in seconds. Plug in the height of the building at 1350 feet (411 meters) and we get 9 seconds. That is just about the length of time it took for the very top of the World Trade Center to fall to the street below. According to all reports, the whole thing was over in just about ten seconds.

It is as if the entire building were falling straight down through thin air. As if the entire solid structure below, the strong part which had not been burned or sliced or harmed in any significant way, just disappeared into nothingness. Yet this (within a small tolerance) is what we would expect to find if there had been a controlled demolition, because the explosions below really do leave the upper stories completely unsupported. Like the Road Runner after he runs off the edge of the cliff, the entire building pauses a moment, then goes straight down.

Any kind of viscous process or friction process should have slowed the whole thing down. Like dropping a lead ball into a vat of molasses, or dropping a feather into the air, gravitational acceleration cannot achieve its full effect if it is fighting any opposing force. In the case of the World Trade Center, the intact building below should have at least braked the fall of the upper stories. This did not happen. There was no measurable friction at all.

This proves controlled demolition.

We have been lied to. We have been lied to about this, at multiple levels. The first lie was that the load of fuel from the aircraft was the cause of structural failure. No kerosene fire can burn hot enough to melt steel. In point of fact, most of the fuel in the jets was contained in their wing tanks. The thin aluminum of the tanks was pierced or stripped as the airplanes penetrated the walls of the towers, and the result was the huge fireball which was seen on national TV, where most of this fuel was burned.

A hot, vigorous fire would have blown out many windows in the building and would have burned a red or white color. This was not what happened. The fire in the World Trade Center was an ordinary smoldering office fire.

But let's suppose that the fire was hot enough to melt steel. What would have happened in that case? Before it breaks, hot steel begins to bend. This redistributes the forces in the structure and puts elastic stress on those parts that are still cool. The process is asymmetric, so that the structure should visibly bend before breaking. But of course, no steel skyscraper has even bent over in a fire.

Let's suppose the structure were sufficiently weakened that it did fail catastrophically near the point of the airplane strike. In this case, the intact structure below would exert an upward force on the base of the upper story portion of the building (the part that has been broken loose), while any asymmetry would allow the force of gravity to work uninhibited on the tip of the skyscraper. Thus, the top section of the skyscraper would tip and fall sideways.

If it did not tip, it would have ground straight down through the building below. The gravitational potential energy of the upper stories would be coupled into the frame below, beginning to destroy it. The frame below would deflect elastically, absorbing energy in the process of deflecting. At weak points, the metal structure would break, but the elastic energy absorbed into the entire frame would not be available to do more destruction. Instead, it would be dissipated in vibration, acoustic noise and heat. Eventually this process would grind to a halt, because the gravitational potential energy of a skyscraper is nowhere near sufficient to destroy its own frame.

If the World Trade Center towers had been built entirely out of concrete, they might have stood for awhile before toppling in the wind. But in that case, if they had collapsed straight downwards, the energy required to pulverize the concrete would have slowed the downward progress of the upward stories. The gravitational potential energy of the World Trade Center was barely sufficient to convert its concrete into powder, and for that to happen in an accidental collapse would have been impossible, but would have taken a lot longer than 10 seconds in any case.

How it was done. The World Trade Center was leased by Westfield America and Larry Silverstein, on April 26th, 2001. Zim Israeli Shipping moved out of the buildings around that time. With a certain amount of shuffling of tenants from floor to floor, it should have been easy (with all the commotion and noise of remodeling) to plant explosives on several floors; enough for at least a sloppy kind of controlled demolition.

There was more "magic" at work on 9/11, to produce the effects that were seen on the TeeVee.

The events of 9/11, summarized. Taken all together, the evidence suggests very strongly that the attacks of 9/11 were fake terror, and quite possibly were a collaborative venture of the Israeli and US governments.

Student pilots from Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations were enrolled in flight schools in Venice, Florida and other locations. The flight school in Venice is linked to CIA drug running operations, according to one researcher.

A recently leaked document from the US Drug Enforcement Agency indicates that a number of Israeli intelligence operatives describing themselves as art students took up residences in close physical proximity to the Arabs as they moved about the country.

The Arab flight students boarded the flights on 9/11. Did they intend to hijack the airliners, and if so, for what purpose? Had the Israelis played in any way the role of agent provocateur in organizing whatever was planned? It seems reasonable to conjecture that the goals of these Arabs were opposed in some way to some US Middle Eastern policy. It would be very interesting to question the Israelis regarding their knowledge of the Arab flight students.

At any rate, if the Arab flight students had been ordinary hijackers, they might have taken the controls of the airplane, but their plot should have quickly been foiled for two reasons.

First of all, the Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft are probably equipped with remote-controlled flight computers for purposes of hijack recovery. This was stated by a British intelligence operative and was also suggested by a former German secretary of defense. The technology needed for such systems is well known, and its utility is obvious. If these systems had been operative on 9/11, then they should have been used to take control from the hijackers.

Secondly, the US air force has standard operating procedure to send jet fighters to intercept hijacked aircraft within minutes after they are reported. These fighters may be armed and are certainly very maneuverable, and an airliner cannot hope to match them.

For these reasons, the Arab hijackers' mission should have been an ignominious failure. These measures (as well as pre-9/11 airport security measures) have been effective enough that hijacking has rarely been a problem for many years now.

But on 9/11, the remote control systems were not used to bring the planes home, nor did fighters scramble to escort. Instead, the airplanes executed highly skilled aerobatic maneuvers (well beyond any known educational background of the Arab student pilots) and crashed into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. If the remote controls were used, who was operating them?

The World Trade Center towers are designed to withstand aircraft impact, which they did for about an hour. Then they collapsed directly to the ground, with remarkably little collateral damage to surrounding buildings, in a manner strikingly resembling the appearance of controlled demolitions. The US government claims that fire was responsible for the collapse, and this is certainly possible, but many reports have overstated the likely heat of the fire and the amount of fuel from the airplanes which was not consumed in the fireballs outside the towers.

If explosives had been planted in the World Trade Center towers, they could have been used to trigger the collapse of the towers. Building 7 was destroyed later in the afternoon. It was never hit by any airplane, so there is no known reason (besides explosives) for it to have collapsed into rubble. However, a cloud of dust was seen in the area of building 7 immediately before the collapse of the south tower, which has not been explained.

While the whole attack was going on (a period well over an hour) George W. Bush sat in a classroom and listened to a story about goats, and the US military did not respond to the first three attacks. A fourth flight was also "hijacked" that day, but it was apparently struck down by some sort of missile or bomb before crashing in Pennsylvania.

Within hours, a massive media campaign to blame the attacks on Arabs and specifically on Osama Bin Laden was begun, and this campaign has continued to the present day. Our traditional American form of government, unfortunately, may not survive -- the Patriot Act appears poised to supersede the Bill of Rights.

Given the many uncertainties about these events, it certainly seems that there should be more questions, more investigations, and more thoughtfulness about the responsibilities of the various parties involved. A little bit of logic will reveal that the Arabs alone could not have been solely responsible for the entire chain of events. It is equally unlikely that the Israelis could have pulled it off alone. Yet instead the US government is gathering up support for war against Middle Eastern nations, a tragic response to the enigmatic events of that day.

The author has a master's degree in Engineering from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Oregon.

Here are links:

Justin Raimondo http://www.antiwar.com/
Michael Rivero http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/
Eric Hufschmid http://geocities.com/erichufschmid/index.html
Jared Israel http://emperors-clothes.com/news/albu.htm
Mark Elsis http://www.mycountryrightorwrong.net/

Thursday, August 23, 2007

'Queen of mean' hotelier Helmsley dies

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070820/ap_on_re_us/obit_helmsley

'Queen of mean' hotelier Helmsley dies
By RICHARD PYLE, Associated Press Writer
8-20-7

Leona Helmsley, the hotelier who went to prison as a tax cheat and was reviled as the "queen of mean," died Monday at age 87.

Helmsley died of heart failure at her summer home in Greenwich, Conn., said her publicist, Howard Rubenstein.

Already experienced in real estate before her marriage, Helmsley helped her husband run a $5 billion empire that included managing the Empire State Building. She became a household name in 1989 when she was tried for tax evasion. The sensational trial included testimony from disgruntled employees who said she terrorized both the menial and the executive help at her homes and hotels.

That image of Helmsley as the "queen of mean" was sealed when a former housekeeper testified that she heard Helmsley say: "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes."

She denied having said it, but the words followed her for the rest of her life.

Helmsley clearly enjoyed the luxury of their private fortune, flying the globe in the couple's 100-seat jet with a bedroom suite. The couple's residences included a nine-room penthouse with a swimming pool overlooking Central Park atop their own Park Lane Hotel; an $8 million estate in Connecticut; a condo in Palm Beach; and a mountaintop hideaway near Phoenix.

Their money supported charities, including NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and its affiliated Weill Cornell Medical College, which received tens of millions of dollars, including a $25 million gift in 2006 to improve its treatment of digestive diseases.

Yet Helmsley nickel-and-dimed merchants on her personal purchases, stiffed contractors who worked on her Connecticut home and terrorized both menial and executive help at her homes and hotels, detractors say.

When her husband died in 1997 at age 87, Helmsley said in a statement: "My fairy tale is over. I lived a magical life with Harry."

Earlier this year, Forbes magazine ranked her as the 369th richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion.

She was 51, with the good looks of a former model and already a successful seller of residential real estate in a hot New York market, when she married Harry Helmsley in 1972.

He was 63 and one of the richest men in America.

In 1980 he made her president of Helmsley Hotels, a subsidiary which at the time operated more than two dozen hotels in 10 states, including the Park Lane, St. Moritz and Palace in New York and the Harley Hotels. Harley was a contraction of Harry and Leona.

For the better part of a decade, a glamorous Leona Helmsley smiled out of magazine ads dressed in luxurious gowns and tiara, advertising that the Palace was the only hotel in the world "where the Queen stands guard."

The press portrayed them as an adoring couple, with Leona calling Harry "gorgeous one" and "pussycat." Friends and acquaintances described her as generous, charming, playful and having a good sense of humor.

She threw parties on his birthdays at which guests wore buttons that said "I'm Just Wild About Harry" and he wore a button that said "I'm Harry." The couple would dance until dawn.

On July 4, 1976, Harry Helmsley lit the Empire State Building in red, white and blue — a tribute not to the Bicentennial, but to his wife's birthday. It cost $100,000 — "less than a necklace," he said.

But the Helmsleys' charmed life ended in 1988 when they were hit with tax-evasion charges.

Harry's health and memory were so poor that he was judged incompetent to stand trial. His wife, after an eight-week trial, was convicted of evading $1.2 million in federal taxes by billing Helmsley businesses for personal expenses ranging from her underwear to $3 million worth of renovations to the Dunellen Hall estate in Connecticut.

Sentenced to four years in prison, she tried to avoid jail by pleading that Harry might die without her at his side. Her doctor said that prison might kill her because of high blood pressure and other problems. (At a March 1992 hearing, the judge rejected that argument and even ordered her to surrender on April 15 — tax day.)

Helmsley served a total of 21 months and was released in January 1994. She had 150 hours added to her 750 hours of community service because employees had done some of the chores for her.

Several top executives at Helmsley companies said their firings coincided with her release. She maintained she couldn't have fired them because she had given up her management post — as a convicted felon she was barred from running enterprises with liquor licenses, such as hotels. The State Liquor Authority said it had no evidence that she was still in charge.

In 1996, two longtime partners of Harry Helmsley's accused his wife of scheming to loot the main corporation, Helmsley-Spear Inc. They said she was stripping away company assets to avoid paying $11.4 million owed them and to make the company worthless, because Harry Helmsley had given them an option to buy Helmsley-Spear at a bargain price upon his death.

After he died a few months later, the dispute with the partners was eventually settled and control of Helmsley-Spear was turned over to them. The settlement freed Leona Helmsley to sell off other assets.

The Helmsleys' charitable gifts may have run to the tens of millions, but people who dealt with them spoke bitterly of being stiffed.

One of them, a painting contractor, said Leona Helmsley wouldn't pay an $88,000 bill for work on Dunellen Hall because she was entitled to a "commission" for the $800,000 worth of other jobs he got in Helmsley buildings.

After making a sales clerk rewrite a bill for earrings to save $4 in sales tax, she reportedly said: "That's how the rich get richer." Her lawyers suggested that the government came after her to make an example of someone with high visibility.

Helmsley was born Leona Mindy Rosenthal on July 4, 1920, the daughter of a Manhattan hat maker. She left college after two years to become a model.

She married a lawyer, Leo Panzirer, whom she divorced in 1959. Their only child, Jay Panzirer, later ran a Florida-based building supplies company that did extensive business with Helmsley properties. She later was briefly married to a garment industry executive, Joe Lubin.

Before her son's death of a heart attack in 1982, she told interviewers she would not talk about him "because terrible things can happen to people these days."

She evidently was referring to being knifed by robbers at her Palm Beach home in 1973. She was stabbed in the chest and suffered a collapsed lung, and Harry was wounded in the arm.

After her son died, she sued the estate for money and property she said her son had borrowed, and an eviction notice was served on her son's widow, Mimi.

Mimi Panzirer said afterward that the legal costs wiped her out and "to this day I don't know why they did it."

Helmsley is survived by her brother and his wife, four grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced.