No accounting for taste, really

[cryowizard]

I'm all for free speech. I believe people should be able to say what they think without prosecution. Sometimes what they say is wrong and disgusting, but having a mindset is not a crime.

There is, however, no accounting for taste. Columbia University has invited President Ahmadinejad of Iran to speak at their "World Leaders Forum". Why would an American university invite an America-hating, terrorism-supporting, Iraqi guerrilla-training Iranian President to speak, of all places, in New York City? I mean, it's a well-established fact that our universities lean heavily to the left, but is it really necessary to invite our lethal venom-spewing enemies to talk to our students? "Kids, let's give a round of applause to Mr Ahmadinejad, who sponsors people who will kill every one of you infidel pigs". Columbia University President should turn back on his sense of good taste. NYPD had refused Ahmadinejad to visit Ground Zero, although he only wanted to lay a wreath and "pay tribute to the victims". Why did they do that? Because Ahmadinejad represents the people who perpetrated this atrocity, and NYPD seems to see his visit to the grave site as inappropriate. NYC government and Senator McCain are now urging the university to cancel Ahmadinejad's invitation because, well, they also see it as inappropriate. Why doesn't Columbia?

Update: Let me clarify something. I'm not against inviting our ideological enemies in for a speech. However, enemies with our blood on their hands are across the decency line for me. We should use the instruments of foreign policy to deal with them, but we don't have to cozy up to them and pretend they are all nice and fuzzy.

Comments

[cryowizard.livejournal.com]

You are mixing everything in one pot. Yes, our government screws us on a daily basis and has screwed us in the past, and we can talk about it until the cows come home.

However, we are not generalizing here about government acts in general. You are telling me that the government has perpetrated 9/11. This is a topic at hand.

Just because it MAY HAVE happened that way, doesn't mean IT DID happen that way.

Sane people look at hard evidence at hand to confirm or deny things. As of today there is not a shred of hard evidence to support this allegation, but a mountain of evidence to support the allegation that Islamic terrorists planned and carried out the attack on their Great Satan.

To conclude that our government indeed blew up WTC in the absence of any supporting hard evidence is lunacy.

[mhmeln-57.livejournal.com]

Then, i guess, we disagree on what we consider to be hard evidence. Classified materials from the 9/11 commission are not convincing for me. Alleged statements of 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are not convincing either. Have you actually spoken to him? Have you heard him say it to you, or did the government tell you he said it? Have you actually seen any independent source of hard evidence?

i spoke, personally, to one of the leading structural engineers in the country (who works for DeSimone Consulting Engineers) and he told me that he and ALL of his colleagues and peers were DENIED access to the structural steel at WTC site to examine how steel melted. The steel was taken away to a governmental lab where it was examined, then removed to a yard in NJ and melted. Considering that only 3 (THREE) buildings in the history of skyscrapers collapsed as a result of "intense fire", don't you think it would be prudent to have every steel engineer in the country examine the steel and understand how to avoid it in the future?

All of your "hard" evidence comes from one source, the source that has a very clear motive to mislead you and hide the truth. No, there is no hard evidence that US government DID it. But there is plenity of HARD evidence that they withheld that would convince me that they didn't do it. Makes me wonder what happened to that hard evidence. Or whether it even existed.

Btw, photos of Pentagon ARE hard evidence. Show me a single photo with a piece of a 757 plane engine. Plane engines can evaporate? Really? That's a shred sufficient to support an allegation. Unless you are so overwhelmed by that "mountain of evidence"...provided by...ahm...the government? Right. Cause you saw it with your own eyes and heard with your own ears.

[cryowizard.livejournal.com]

http://www.loosechangeguide.com/lcg2.html

Scroll down to where the extensively discuss (with pictures) all the pieces of the engine found at the scene and engine types and all that stuff, including whey the hole was small, and windows in the Pentagon weren't all broken and all that. I'm not going to regurgitate it.

[mhmeln-57.livejournal.com]

Sorry, your debunking source is simply ridiculous. Let's assume, for a second that an honest and responsbile government is faced with such terrible allegations as the conspiracy theorists put on. Wouldn't a responsible government do everything in its power to put together a credible response to give comfort to people who may be concerned about such conspiracy theories? Riiight. Instead we have a bunch of meatheads write obsceneties. Here are my favorites:

1. I don't have a reliable source for this...

2. He is also a conspiracy theorist who does not believe that ANY aircraft hit the Pentagon, which makes him stupid or insane. i mean, who could EVER suspect that Nazional-socialists would set Reichstag on fire themselves? Only a madman!

3. How about a citation to the article and date of publication for the "quote" from AFP? Proper research and copyright laws require that. Could it be that the "debunker" was BSing?

4. If 6 tons of steel and titanium slammed into the Pentagon at 530 MPH, they would bury themselves inside the building, leaving two very distinct imprints. Speculation. One wing hit the ground first. There is visible wing damage on the building. See below. You want a cookie-cutter shape in a reinforced concrete building? Sorry. Convincing.

5. This is what Slobodan Milosevic's residence in Belgrade looked like after a Tomahawk cruise missile had hit it. See any similarities? See any differences? Heard of any? Like the huge amount of 757 debris and the remains of the passengers, all but one of whom were identified? But you're not concerned with victims, are you? WTF? Even more convincing!

6. The government doesn't need to "prove" that. The wreckage and remains were recovered. ALL it would take would be to release a single one of these tapes. Ahm, yeah. Your government is REALLY interested in helping you find the truth.

i am done reading this crap. You believe what you want to believe, and i will believe what i want to believe. But i think it is a duty of any rational human being to QUESTION the versions presented to us, the "official" stories", and the labels of "madmen" that the media and government invites us to put on people. Thinking implies thinking critically, and blindly trusting the ONLY side that could benefit from 9/11 attack doesn't exhibit such thinking from your side.

Since 9/11, i have flown with metal objects, liquids and a KNIFE in my carry-on. Clearly it's not our esteemed security forces that have saved America from other attacks initiated by people who hate us so desperately. If not them, then who saved you and me so far?

Finally, here is one more paragraph that does just enough to raise my eyebrow and not rush to dismiss it. i assume you will have the opposite response:

Recall that when the first airliner was flown into a World Trade Center tower on September 11- before it was known that the "accident" was really part of a deliberate terrorist attack - newscasters were speculating that a small plane had accidentally flown into the side of the tower, because the visible exterior damage didn't seem as extensive as what people thought a large airliner would cause. Even though the two airplanes that hit the World Trade Center towers were travelling faster at the time of impact than the Pentagon plane was (400 MPH vs. 350 MPH), hit aluminum-and-glass buildings rather than reinforced concrete walls, and didn't dissipate much of their energy striking the ground first (as the Pentagon plane did), they still barely penetrated all the way through the WTC towers.
Taken here (http://911review.org/Wiki/snopespentagonrumor.html)
3 rings of old-style concrete buildings? i'd be happy to STAND behind the second ring if you fly a plane into it to prove that it's not possible to penetrate it. What are YOU willing to do to stand up for your "beliefs"?