"9/11The Falling Man" Now on Channel 4

[J70]

Did anyone ever see the film/docu about the two French guys making the docu on new recruits to the FDNY and were based with a ladder beside the Twin towers.

They were filming and caught the planes hitting the towers and ended up with the Firefighters in the towers and caught all the mayhem of the day from the lobby and one of them was actually in one of towers as it collapsed. They had some unreal footage. Brillant show.

Anyway, they caught on camera the impact of the jumpers as they hit the ground and lobby area. The noise was like a bomb going off as they hit the ground. Scary stuff.

The Naudet brothers. The sounds of the bodies hitting the Plaza was unbelievable!

[Balboa]

[The windows were so narrow because the architect that designed it was scared of heights and the narrow windows alleviated it a bit for him./i] Balboa do you make this stuff up in your spare time. The windows were narrow because of the height of the buildings. When you get up to them heights window width's have to be kept as narrow as possible for structural reasons.

Source - Wikepedia

Yamasaki's design for the World Trade Center was unveiled to the public on January 18, 1964, with an eight-foot model.[31] The towers had a square plan, approximately 207 feet (63 m) in dimension on each side.[36] The buildings were designed with narrow office windows, only 18 inches (45 cm) wide, which reflected on Yamasaki's fear of heights and desire to make building occupants feel secure.

Pipe that put in smoke.....

[corn02]

Wikipedia does not represent fact.

[J70]

Is Yamasaki's alleged motivation sourced on Wikipedia?

[clarshack]

This idea of defending  liberty and freedom  is a joke, attacking Iraq was always about oil and only oil.The beauty of it all for the big men in charge is its easy to get support by telling the public through the media that the threat level is orange or pink or whatever.The americans are a very gullible people,they believe anything and the media are totally biased to influence them.

mannix, i finally agree with you on something!

[Balboa]

Is Yamasaki's alleged motivation sourced on Wikipedia?

Yamasaki, Minoru (1912-1986), Seattle-born architect of New York's World Trade Center
HistoryLink.org Essay 5352
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Withering Heights

The firm's first major high-rise office building, the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company headquarters in Detroit (1963), displayed Yamasaki's delicate hand in creating light, harmonious buildings that seemed almost to float. Ironically, the architect actually feared heights, which explains his preference for narrow windows spaced between numerous columns to admit light without subjecting tenants and office workers to vertiginous views.

Do you still think its "alleged" ?

[J70]

I couldn't give a bollocks either way. I was just wondering if the Wikipedia article was sourced so that people could confirm that his fear of heights influenced the design of the windows, given that a couple of you were arguing about it! Wikipedia articles are open to editing by anyone and parts of them are often unsourced, so what you read there is not necessarily the truth. Now that is not to say that Wikipedia isn't broadly accurate, particularly in the case of an iconic structure such as the twin towers, where numerous people would be interested in the article and ensure a high standard of quality control.

Anyway, regarding the windows, were their narrow width not a byproduct of the fact that the exterior steel structure was supporting the building? Most other skyscrapers in NY are built on a framework of interior and exterior steel columns. The twin towers were basically tubes with the floors suspended from the exterior walls, which carried all of the load. Could you build a 110 storey building with load bearing walls only on the exterior and still have large windows?

[J70]

As far as I am aware, Bush Jnr has never downplayed this bogey man. What he has done, and has duped much of the American public into believing since 2001, is that Iraq, Saddam, OBL and the rest are all inextricably linked to 9/11.

I missed your statement about Saddam and 9/11 the first time I read this. There is no question that Bush/Cheney tried to link Saddam with 9/11 (and that much of a cowed public didn't object) but it was so controversial that they have spent the past several years denying it! Cheney has gone on tv and categorically denied ever saying that Saddam was linked to 9/11, but the tapes were there to prove otherwise. They are now reduced to saying that AlQaida had some contacts with people in Iraq under Saddam, and that they are now in the country in force! So no, the American media hasn't just sat by and meekly accepted what Bush says. They were certainly weak in the months after 9/11 and the lead-up to Iraq, when the Republican attack machine just screamed and labeled any questioning of anything that Bush was doing about terrorism as unAmerican and unpatriotic and even treasonous! The NY Times actually apologized to its readers for not asking harder questions of the "commander in chief" during that period! But since 2003, Bush has been pounded. His approval ratings are down in the 20s and have been for the past year, while you hardly see Cheney at all anymore. His administration has lurched from one scandal to another, mainly due to incompetent political appointees and cronies. He has lost the confidence of even the right wing over a number of initiatives, but mainly the immigration bill. Even Karl Rove has left, while none of the Republican presidential candidates are too eager to be connected to the Iraq mess, instead all are trying to harness the "spirit" of and be seen as the idealogical successor to Ronald Reagan!

[FL/MAYO]

As someone said on the radio recently " the only way the democrats can lose the next election is for them to talk themselves out of it....and they are certainly capable of that", I believe it was James Carvelle.
The Bush Whitehouse is like a sinking ship, everyone is jumping ship. Lame duck President already and he has over a year left. Lets hope he cannot cause anymore damage.

[J70]

I don't see it as any sure thing yet, especially if Hillary Clinton gets nominated. There is a huge swathe of America who absolutely detest the Clintons.

[FL/MAYO]

Yes I agree but they are mostly republican leaning anyway.

[Fiodoir Ard Mhacha]

You listen to and read the US version of the news, I totally understand that.

I don't.

The implication of course being that you are therefore better informed!

I don't quite see how you could have a better command of what goes on in the states if you don't read or listen to US-based news. And just what is the "US version" of the news? The US new media doesn't begin and end with Fox News. The news and analysis available over here covers the entire political spectrum and is freely available to anyone. I like to be informed of what all sides of an issue are, so I listen to some of the right-wing talk shows, National Public Radio and the NY Times (which are fairly moderate and, excepting the NY Times opinion page, neutral), the likes of Keith Oberman on MSNBC (the nemesis of Bush, O'Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh etc), the hilarious Bill Maher (I can't believe someone in Britain hasn't picked up his show yet), and various other papers, tv shows and websites (I even, gasp, get to read the likes of Robert Fisk on the London Independent's website!). There is a hell of lot more variety in the range of opinion and the criticism and analysis of the respective parties and the government in the US media than there is in Ireland. If you think Bush (or any other politician) gets a free ride or doesn't undergo merciless criticism in the US media, then you don't know what the hell you are talking about.

My point about Bush's trying to sideline the importance of the personal capture of Bin Laden stands.

But I'd like to know what the voice of America thinks the US army are doing in Iraq, 6 years after 9/11.

You want my opinion, or you are assuming that because I don't automatically agree with the reflex negative analysis of everything US, that I must be a Bush supporter?

For what its worth, they are obviously bogged down in a quagmire, although I'm sure the upcoming and eagerly anticipated Petreaus interim report will be full of "hope" about the effectiveness of the "surge", if not the prospects of the Iraqi government and armed forces.  I didn't support them going in there, but now that they're there and they've made an almighty mess of things, I think the US has a duty to do whatever they can to clean it up and get the fcuk out of there as quickly as possible. If that means splitting the country to avoid civil war or whatever, so be it, if that is what the Iraqis want. I can see them being there for many years though.

Now I didn't say I was better informed. I just said I don't read the US press. Yes, of course, however, I'd like to think that some of the more liberal, or left-leaning elements of the US press/media would have a much more objective view of events beyond 9/11. Perhaps it's a pity Bush and his gung-ho administration didn't read them in the days after the Twin Towers. They were determind to invade Iraq regardless of the remnants of intelligence in the US after 9/11 screaming at them that Iraq had nothing to do with the attack.

I don't think I intimated you're a Bush supporter. As the US election of 2004 unfortunately proved, it's middle America that elected your president, the eastern and western seaboard states voted Democrat and fair play to them. But I don't know what the US troops can do in Iraq to 'clean it up' - what duty have they? 'Iraq' as a country never existed and if it means leaving this place to a three-way partition (like India?) then so be it. But, of course, Bush says the Iraqis are his friends and they crave that precious western gift of democracy, which must be enforced, oh sorry, I'm sure that's not the word, by a heavy US military presence.

Final thought on 9/11. Tragic event, of course, with 3,000 people dying live on tv. What is the death toll in Iraq since the US invasion in March 2003?

[The Real Laoislad]

I missed flight 93 on Network 2 now