November 1, 2004
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(Swans - November 1, 2004)
Is anything as it seems?
Illusions or perceptions of actualities? How are we to tell? Recently, we have watched three DVDs about the September 11, 2001 events. Two airplanes smash into New York's World Trade Center twin towers. An airplane, we are told time and time again, also crashes into the Pentagon in Washington DC. A fourth plows into a Pennsylvania field. A French pair of brothers has spent weeks with a young man recently graduated from the New York Fire Department academy. He is assigned to a station near the World Trade Center. On September 11th, the crew is out on a call. With camera in hand, one of the brothers is filming the crew on their routine call when a roar is heard; he pans the camera upward in time to capture an airplane crashing into the North Tower. Other amateurs are also focusing their cameras on the WTC when catastrophe hits. The complete production made by the French brothers is fascinating watching since their NYFD crew is among the first to reach the WTC. We see them as part of the crews assembling there. Burdened with bulky equipment and heavy hanks of fire hose, some begin to climb the stairs attempting to reach the upper floors where the damage is and where fires are raging. The chiefs are trying to make sense of a senseless situation, expressions of impotence cross their faces while radios squawk and whistle with messages without meaning in terms of their training and experience. A second DVD was made to cover the investigations made by structural engineers trying, according to their technologies, to understand what happened to bring the towers down in such orderly fashion when they eventually collapsed unto themselves. Standing amidst huge piles of wreckage sent to a holding yard in New Jersey, these experts speculate about relatively small bolts which fixed the beams to the side structures. They wonder about fireproofing blown off by impacts. They see that three layers of wallboard probably were not enough to contain the blasts and fires. One thing utterly clear is that nothing could withstand the phenomenal heat generated by the heavy loads of aviation fuel ignited instantly. Both productions, we now see, had aspects to which attention has not been called. The airplanes seen in muddied megapixels do not fit the images of commercial airliners we are told to see. There are neither windows in the airplanes nor airline logos on their fuselages. Around the Pentagon, there is no airplane debris scattered on the many shots taken within minutes and then hours after the strike. The hole in the side of the fallen Pentagon is smaller than the airplane alleged to have hit it. Images taken shortly after the strike show that the floors are intact, the roof is yet in place and evidence of fire damage is missing from exposed offices. There is no airplane debris in the foreground under the damaged areas. The third DVD, "9-11 In Plane Site" comes from a tiny site in Versailles, Missouri, of all places to be sure. "The Power Hour" is by Joyce Riley and Dave vonKleist. VonKleist is narrator. All pictures and videos they could find were collected. They have clips from broadcasts of the time in both New York and Washington. With relatively rudimentary equipment, they dissect the images in a dozen ways to show the impacts from many angles. Clips from broadcasts show images and provide voices and sounds of action near the events. Most powerful are the clips from broadcasts in which both images are seen and voices heard while the planes are making the impacts. A Fox channel employee is heard yelling as he watches from a vantage point apparently close enough to notice details about the two planes. He says there are no windows on the planes. He says there is only a blue circle on the nose of a Boeing 757 about to crash into the tower. The images expanded and blown up while taken down to very slow motion confirm his impressions. They also show a strange bulge on the forward area under the wing and a protrusion on the tail. In each instance, immediately before impact, a bright flash shows up. Clips taken from TV broadcasts include statements about the airplanes from witnesses which are later not heard again. No windows, no logos, flash before impact. Probably most dramatic is a shot which shows WTC #7, a nearby smaller building in the overall World Trade Center complex, develop a burgeoning cloud of debris as from an explosion just before one of the two towers plops down floor by floor in a very orderly straight downfall. Why would there be an explosion in WTC #7 which had not been involved in the collisions? Also dumbfounding is coverage taken from TV broadcasts shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing. Announcers and reporters on more than one station are heard talking about second and third bombs found in the north and east sides of the shell left standing from the first explosion. A bomb squad containment truck is shown backing up to the building while an announcer says that they are in the process of dealing with the second bomb found. Later, another clip shows a bomb squad approaching and talks about a third bomb which, like the second, is reported defused. There were no repeats of these local TV commentaries on national TV. Up until watching these clips, I knew nothing about second and third bombs. Timothy McVeigh, acting with perhaps no one else on site, had made his bomb, driven it up in a rental truck, parked and walked away prior to triggering the explosion, the only explosion. So what is going on? Dave vonKleist asks that question frequently. He shows images and commentaries taken near to the events which directly contradict what we have been so carefully led to believe. The images of George W. Bush sitting unmoved and blank faced in a kiddie chair in Florida classroom for seven long minutes are repeated. You probably saw them also in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. There is a sound clip of a voice asking Bush if he is surprised and he says no, he has been expecting this situation. With the immense capabilities and capacities of electronic signal manipulation to produce the images and sounds seen in so many movies, what can we believe? Do we now believe only that which our prejudices condition us to see? Good place to stop, no? · · · · · ·
Resources 9/11 on Swans America the 'beautiful' on Swans Milo Clark on Swans (with bio). Do you wish to share your opinion? We invite your comments. E-mail the Editor. Please include your full name, address and phone number. If we publish your opinion we will only include your name, city, state, and country. Please, feel free to insert a link to this article on your Web site or to disseminate its URL on your favorite lists, quoting the first paragraph or providing a summary. However, please DO NOT steal, scavenge or repost this work without the expressed written authorization of Swans. This material is copyrighted, © Milo G. Clark 2004. All rights reserved. |
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