Did you watch the BBC Conspiracy Files documentary last night into the theories surrounding the collapse of World Trade Center Building Seven?
Despite the sinister background music throughout it was clear by the end that there are no credible theories about why and how it collapsed other than the official line - reinforced last week by The National Institute of Standards and Technology - that it was caused by fire. I'm satisfied that a controlled explosion can virtually be ruled out on practicality grounds.
There are certainly questions about why a steel structure like that would collapse in the way it did, but the burden of proof lies with the conspiracy theorists. Only about ten seconds of the hour-long programme was devoted to why on earth the government/zionists/neocons would actually want to go through so much trouble to demolish the forty-seven floor WTC7 building.
The reason mooted by a representative from Loose Change - the biggest group that has been promoting these theories (not including al-Qaeda) - was that it housed offices for the CIA and Secret Service and therefore could have been some kind of staging post for the demolition of the North and South towers. Very flimsy - give me a motive, then we can look at the method.
Long-standing intelligence chief Richard Clarke, who incidentally has been critical
of Bush over the war on terror, said that from his thirty years working
in government he knew well that no conspiracy of a scale anything like
this could conceivably be conducted so competently, without any word of
it being leaked to the press. The afore-mentioned Loose Change rep -
who looked every inch the twenty-something, rage-against-the-machine,
cyber conspiracy theorist - reacted thus:"I don't care what kind of f***ing experience he has man. He's part of the establishment. Come on, man".
There are lots of anomalies about the technicalities of 9/11 that I don't understand, but I do have an understanding of politics and every fibre of my instinct finds the underlying premises absurd. It's just more of what Counterknowledge's Damian Thompson calls a "pandemic of credulous thinking". It's more about people finding purpose in their lives than exposing truth.
