Response to a Detractor
I recently received a comment denouncing the observations and interpretations I made in my article, "Forensic Observation," as well as the excellent documentary I recommended, "American Moon."
At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. [….] Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals. —George Orwell, 1945
He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers. —Charles Pierre Péguy (1873–1914)
It is far better to have questions without answers, than answers that cannot be questioned. —Carl Sagan
“Forensic Observation” - Response to a Detractor
Recently, I received a lengthy comment elsewhere on Substack dismissing the observations in my article “Forensic Observation” and denigrating the superb documentary film, American Moon, a 3.5-hour documentary discussing the many contradictions in the Apollo moon missions with extraordinary intelligence and objectivity.
The commenter opened with his bottom line:
“Everything in that article is garbage. None of that is rational”
The rationalizations, credulity, and evasions resorted to in the rest of the lengthy comment suggested that there would be no useful purpose in replying; but for the benefit of any open-minded reader who might be interested in any of these topics, the following is the reply I would have made.
Index to Topics below:
Preliminary
1. BREAKS IN “CONTRAILS.”
2. VAN ALLEN BELTS and APOLLO
3. ASTROLOGY’S PREDICTABILITY IS INDEED INCONTROVERTIBLE.
4. THE MOON AND SUN ARE THE SAME SIZE
5. WTC 7 (and 9/11)
AN ASIDE: The Testimony and Death of Demolition Expert, Danny Jowenko …
6. “FINAL NOTE ON AMERICAN MOON”
Final stuff
MY RESPONSE
Everything in that article is garbage. None of that is rational.
Given the non-objectivity with which you addressed the points in my article, “Forensic Observation,” and the excellent documentary, American Moon, it’s clear that any reply would have been unproductive; however, for the benefit of others, I’d like to correct the problems I found in your statements. None of my claims were honestly considered or even remotely rebutted. I’m replying to each of your dismissals below — again, not to convince you individually, but only to keep my silence from suggesting to others that I agree with a single word you said.
What masquerades as open-minded questioning in conspiracy circles is often just a poorly disguised rejection of empiricism. The Substack article "The Unexpected World" and the film American Moon serve as case studies in this mode of thought. They do not uncover hidden truths. They generate confusion by misrepresenting facts, quote-mining experts, and playing sleight-of-hand with statistical intuition. Below is a methodical, evidence-based rebuttal of each major point.
For “generate confusion,” read “present facts that conflict with scientific dogma.”
For “quote-mining experts,” read “bringing up the actual and inconvenient words and actions not only of multiple modern spokesmen for the establishment, but also of the scientists and chiefs of NASA before and during the Apollo program.”
For “playing sleight-of-hand with statistical intuition,” read “pointing out solid, valid, and easy-to-comprehend statistical proofs that are difficult if not impossible for establishment adherents to prove wrong.”
Establishment watchdogs almost always have personal interests at stake.
Establishment warrior-apologists almost always have a personal attachment to the narratives of the sphere they’re connected to. At stake are reputations among peers and colleagues, financial interests in profit-making corporations whether of investment or work income, preservation of career and advancement opportunities, feelings of importance and worth granted by association with respected institutions, and a common human disinclination to look at anything that might reveal the error of long-held beliefs. In other words, they have a personal attachment to the beliefs they hold, which is the opposite of the disinterested and objective mindset demanded by real science.
In some cases, there are darker motivations.
Personal attachment to outcomes incentivizes the judging of facts according to the conclusions they would lead to rather than the judging of conclusions according to all the facts.
I acknowledge that none of these things may apply to you, but they certainly apply to many who come across as you do.
The more strident among the watchdogs pose as knighted protectors of truth and reason, but then betray that facade by resorting to an array of non-objective and anti-scientific tactics when faced with contrary evidence. These tactics include ridicule and mockery, misrepresentation, misdirection, evasion, rationalization, the making of careless assumptions, desperate reaches for face-saving explanations that test credibility, the dodging of facts and questions via strawman responses and flurries of verbiage, etc. All of it spoken with the arrogant confidence of a side that is used to having the upper hand.
Almost never do such people ask sincere questions, or treat the outsider with basic respect. If you’re an honest man of knowledge and you find yourself hearing an honest but mistaken person who’s announcing obviously silly, half-baked ideas (like mine, of course), the honorable road is either to ignore that person or to try to help him see where he went wrong in some civilized fashion, the poor fool warranting pity rather than treatment as a hooligan or a villain.
Attack — and especially attack using dishonest tactics — is a reasonable indicator of lack of confidence and fear of finding oneself in the wrong. It is a kind of bluff used to scare away an opponent and head off at the pass any honest debate in which difficult facts might assert themselves.
In modern times still, but especially in older times, I suspect, there are and were men of authentic intellectual honesty who nobly followed facts wherever they led, and who didn’t pretend they didn’t see those facts in order to save a career or a reputation or to please a boss or to flatter their own sense of superiority. Those who derisively brush off inconvenient facts demonstrate none of the openness, curiosity, and intellectual humility of these more authentic and noble practitioners of reason and investigation.
Rebutting the Rebuttals
1. BREAKS IN “CONTRAILS.”
[Paraphrasing and condensing:] There is no such thing as “chemtrails.” What many refer to as chemtrails are due solely to temperature and humidity changes, which phenomena also explain breaks in jet trails.]
No, no. I should have foreseen this confusion and been more specific. The kind of breaks in “contrails” that I referred to is not merely a momentary absence of trail per se, it is a particular kind of break, one that exhibits a sputtering out of the trail in diminishing bits – consistent with an emptying of the last remnants of some physical substance -- and then a sputtering back in – again, in discrete bits, small to large -- until a full trail has recommenced.
This “sputtering break” is not the same thing as an evanescent fading out and fading in due to temp and humidity changes such as you thought I was referring to.
Maybe this is hard to describe in words, but you’ll know it when you see it. If I get time I’ll photograph an example next time I see it, or I’ll draw a picture to give a better idea what I’m talking about.
[EXAMPLE ADDED: ] Compare this to drinking water through a straw. When the cup is full, the flow of water through the straw is full and continuous. But when the water is almost completely gone, and you keep trying to suck up the remainder in the bottom, the straw starts making noise. It’s making noise because the straw is now sucking up not just water, but air. There’s not enough water left to fill the straw, so it comes out staccato, in bits, until there’s no water left at all, and then nothing comes out but air. This should illustrate better the principle I’m talking about and what I mean above by a “sputtering break.”
Incidentally, I have never seen regular contrails break for any reason, though I have seen planes with shorter trails and longer trails and often no trails at all, these things surely having to do with temperature and humidity as you mentioned.
Chemtrails admitted. There is a recorded phone call originally posted online in 2013 with a (kind and accommodating) NASA scientist, Douglas E. Rowland, who openly admitted to a civilian woman that NASA rockets release or often release lithium chemtrails (his own repeated term) in order to study the wind patterns at high altitudes. He also refers to there being “many kinds of chemtrails.”
[The link to the web page containing an audio file of that phone conversation worked perfectly fine earlier this week but now returns an error and cannot be seen, nor the conversation played. Hopefully, it can be found on YouTube or some other streaming platform. The audio and accompanying article used to be at this page: https://stillnessinthestorm.com/explosive-nasa-scientists-admits-chemtrails-must-read-and-share/]. Mr. Rowland’s bio page at NASA is here: https://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/sci/bio/douglas.e.rowland
Although Rowland seems to have been referring only to releases during rocket launches, I hear there is now talk by RFK, Jr., and the Trump administration and officials in Florida, that they believe chemtrails are a real thing that they claim to want to stop. See current events.
Bizarrely unlikely patterns: There is another aspect of the never-evaporating jet trails that suggests something different at work. I’m referring to the occasional deliberate creation of geometric patterns in the sky. In addition to the enormous X pattern (not as conclusive as other patterns), there are the perfect tic-tac-toe boards that I’m sure many have seen, as well as the particularly bizarre instances of overlapping complete circles, like the rings from the Olympic logo. These and other bizarre patterns, pictures of which can be found online no doubt, give their own indication of weirdness going on.
And no, these are not the random flight paths of real passenger jets. For one thing, I’ve seen overlapping circles whose trails do not continue off in any direction once the circles are completed. It may be the case that these unlikely patterns – assuming they’re not there simply to mock our collective obliviousness – are perhaps being used for some scientific purpose, such as seeing how winds affect this, that, or some other thing.
Speculation as to the purpose of chemtrails:
These chemtrails could indeed be introducing some substance upon the population, though that would presumably also affect “the bad guys” and their families and compatriots, so this seems unlikely.
Chemtrails could be playing some part in weather manipulation.
The most likely purpose, to my mind, is chemtrails as atmospheric “dye.” My best guess as to the purpose of chemtrails is as a way to give scientists visible indications of the effects on the atmosphere of technologies like the HAARP arrays, etc. This would be an atmospheric version of the lab practice of adding dye to water so you can see its movement as you introduce motion or some other kind of perturbation. Likewise, when scientists direct massive electromagnetic energy into the atmosphere, chemtrails could be the thing that allows them to see exactly where this energy is terminating and what particular effect it’s having over how large an area.
[ADDED ON AUGUST 14, 2025]
NEW LINK. I just found a post that presents some unusually good information on this general topic. It contains a series of short, simple, easy-to-understand, and thought-provoking observations about chemtrails. “Chemtrails The unfortunate conversation that spurred me to create my Substack,” by Maladaptor (who has no connection to me whatsoever).
2. VAN ALLEN BELTS and APOLLO
[Paraphrasing and condensing:] Engineer Smith was talking about something else, and Apollo went through the narrowest part of the belts, and besides, the belts aren’t dangerous anyway, since the Apollo astronauts were said to receive no dangerous dose even after two hours travel therethrough.
There are indeed multiple assertions online (on Reddit, for example) that try to explain away the statement made by Smith and the ISS astronauts. It would be useful for all objective and interested persons to watch American Moon’s entire 14-minute segment on the Van Allen belts, from 59:15 to 1:14:40, in which the original words of Smith and the astronauts can be heard directly for oneself and in which the filmmaker gives excellent scientific and historical context and comment.
You say there’s no issue here because, for one thing, NASA claims that the Apollo astronauts received less than 2 rads of radiation when they passed through the Van Allen belts. That claim itself is part of the problem here because it contradicts what NASA itself has had to say about the belts from the very beginning to the present day. It also contradicts what Engineer Smith had to say about the “dangerous radiation” of the belts — dangerous to humans and to electronics, and what the ISS astronauts also had to say about them. Again, listen to the American Moon segment (link above) which includes the scientific history of the belts.
Here on Earth, doctors know to caution us about our lifetime exposures to medical x-rays due to the cumulative effect of even momentary exposures. If this is the case, then what really is the effect we should expect on astronauts who spend two or more hours of exposure while travelling through the radiation belts? Do the belts expose a person to only minute fractions of a percent of what x-ray machines expose us to? And if so, why does everyone, from the 1950s to the present day speak of the belts as areas of dangerous radiation?
The 3.5-hour documentary, American Moon, which you ridicule, dis-recommend, and eventually slander without even having watched it, by all appearances, addresses the entire topic of the Van Allen Belts in full context and is an honest voice pointing out the direct contradiction involved in this and dozens of other cracks in the Apollo veneer, all visible and plainly comprehensible to any human being of modest intelligence and honesty.
The passel of professional Apollo hoax “debunkers” are very apparently there to run interference and keep the truth of the hoax from gaining any more traction than it already has. They are resistant to contrary facts, even sometimes making up their own facts as they need them. You can see instances of this in the documentary. (For one example, the claim that the Apollo missions “went through the narrowest part of the Van Allen belts to reduce radiation exposure” was shown to be an invention for explanatory convenience.
The Apollo hoax debunkers’ job is not to protect the truth, but to protect the real truth from being known.
3. ASTROLOGY’S PREDICTABILITY IS INDEED INCONTROVERTIBLE.
This is classic confirmation bias mixed with post hoc rationalization. The plural of anecdote is not data. No controlled, blinded studies show statistically significant accuracy by astrologers beyond chance.
It is very silly and disingenuous, the things that establishment apologists and defenders will say to avoid addressing hard facts that go against the beliefs they hold dear.
The most used tactic — and it is a tactic — is this line of denial: “There are no peer-reviewed, double-blind studies which show such-and-such to be true.” What this really means is: “We didn’t study it, and we will ignore any observations that you didn’t pay us a million dollars to have done in our laboratories.”
And, yet, history is full of historical figures who helped build scientific knowledge based on their own direct, personal observations, long before social controls like the peer review scheme were invented, and before industry journals became a thing, both of which exist as a kind of gatekeeper of new ideas, either advancing or retarding or altering new ideas in accordance with their political acceptability.
What I said about astrology in my original article is this (and I’m paraphrasing): “Assuming you’re able to successfully predict the sun signs of strangers merely by observing their behavior, or assuming you know someone you trust who can do this, then you can scientifically conclude, for yourself, that the positions of celestial bodies at one’s birth does indeed influence human personality, no matter how unlikely that may seem to be.
I did not include such vague and easily abused concepts as tabloid horoscopes or event prediction which I have no understanding of. I limited my subject specifically to the connection between astrology and human personality.
Moreover, astrology suffers from a fundamental flaw known as precessional drift. Due to the axial precession of Earth — a slow wobble over ~26,000 years — the constellations have shifted by nearly a full sign over the past 2,000 years. This means that when astrology says someone is a “Pisces,” the sun was likely in Aquarius at the time of birth. So horoscopes aren’t even using the correct constellations anymore.
This is not relevant because the phenomenon of predictability exists anyway. Pointing to precessional drift is an attempt to say that “astrology really, really shouldn’t work; therefore, astrological influence on personality has to be impossible; therefore you have to be wrong.” But astrological-sign predictability continues to work despite precessional drift, so drift has no significance as evidence.
It goes without saying, of course, that such certainty belongs only to the individual who has witnessed the thing himself. It would be ridiculous for me to claim that my own personal observations should count as proof for others who haven’t had the opportunity to see the same thing. People can lie and some people can even lie to themselves, so one person’s direct observation of a thing has no evidential obligation on anyone else.
Cold reading, Barnum statements, and retrospective fitting explain the illusion. The fact that people can guess birthdays with above-average accuracy (often by asking questions or observing age) is not proof of cosmic influence. If astrology had predictive power, its practitioners would win lotteries, avoid misfortune, and dominate actuarial science. They don't.
This dodges the original claim I made and is not a horribly bad example of a strawman argument. Age has nothing to do with guessing astrological signs, and asking the subject leading questions would invalidate the entire experiment from the get-go. What I’ve seen and what I claimed is that there are people who know enough about astrology to be able to successfully guess the signs of strangers to a degree that significantly breaks the statistical odds based only on observance of behavior, not on requests for “clues.”
As I pointed out in my original post, proving the truth of astrological influence on personality is based purely on simple, direct, straightfoward, and foundationally complete scientific principle – in this case, probability analysis – and it’s something no scientist can argue against without also denying the validity of the scientific method itself.
This should be fascinating news. If it were acknowledged, it could lead to greater and more profound insight into the human being and why things are the way they are. It would almost certainly help us all understand and treat and work with each other better than we often do. Fighting against this kind of truth is no different from fighting against human progress itself.
4. THE MOON AND SUN ARE THE SAME SIZE
Claim: The odds of the Moon appearing the same size as the Sun during an eclipse are too improbable for chance.
Reality: This is an anthropic fallacy. The Moon used to appear larger; it is slowly receding from Earth. We live at a time when its apparent size overlaps with the Sun’s — an observational coincidence, not a design signature.
“Coincidence.” Of course.
For alleged seekers of truth, many modern “scientists” do a lot of selective dismissing of inconvenient facts as “coincidence.” You can bet that, in the field of crime investigation, “coincidences” of much lesser significance than the ones we’re talking about here are leapt upon with zeal as prime leads to be followed. And so is this the case in science too, actually, but only as long as the implications don’t screw with certain protected agendae.
The Moon used to appear larger; it is slowly receding from Earth.
How much larger are you talking about?
I said the Moon and the Sun were like two U.S. quarters in the sky. Are you saying that a long time ago, the moon was the size of a half-dollar compared to the Sun? Or did you mean something more like the Moon was still the size of a quarter but with a strip of tape wrapped around the edge? Moreover, claiming that the Moon is going to detach from its orbit in a million years and fly away is an attempt to remove the debate into postulated infinite pasts and futures where nothing can be proved. These kinds of claims are the only way for deniers to try to dodge the issue.
Come the next solar eclipse, just look up. That’s what I’m talking about. It’s the same eclipse described by mankind as far back as human have been writing.
Fractional differences imperceptible to the human eye are the same as nothing, as I said in my post. What is pertinent for my point is the size of the Sun and the Moon to the naked human eye, the primary tool of observation of Man for most of human history. Modern scopes and technological advances that allow scientists to measure distances to ten decimal places, to tenths, hundredths, thousandths, and millionths of a unit don’t change the essence of the straightforward equivalence of these spheres to the human eye.
No, the Moon and the Sun are exactly the same size. There’s no fooling honest people with flimsy statements like “Actually, the Moon’s gonna change size someday.” This is desperation hair-splitting. It’s like watching two competitors in a 50-yard dash break through the winner’s tape at the same moment — a perfect tie — and then claiming that you had an automated zoom camera that saw Runner One’s toe was an eighth of an inch ahead of Runner Two’s. Sorry, but if the competition is to have any real meaning, this is a tie.
In fact, eclipses are not always perfect matches. The apparent size of the Moon varies because its orbit is elliptical — sometimes it's closer (perigee), sometimes farther (apogee). This leads to annular eclipses, where the Moon appears slightly smaller than the Sun, resulting in a visible “ring of fire.” That variability undermines the argument for precision design.
You must see that this is not relevant. Again, differences so small that they can’t readily be seen by the natural human eye are irrelevant for my point, but they’re even less so when you’re talking about apogees and perigees. Of course any object appears smaller or larger as you get further or closer away.
It’s simple: just as our ancestors did through all of human history, just go outside and look up — particularly during an eclipse. The equivalence of size is plain. It’s the same one that’s been in front of the face of the human race for all written history. The attempt to complicate the issue by introducing insignificant variations in size due to periodic distance changes is silliness and an attempt to evade the point.
Our ability to even notice eclipses or consider this oddity is contingent on our being here to observe it, not proof that it was designed for us. This is akin to saying puddles are designed for potholes because they fit so well.
It wouldn’t matter if we were here or not.
The “accident” of perfect matching diameters would break statistical probability either way, witness or no witness. Just as a tree falling in a forest makes compression waves in the air regardless of there being an ear there to hear it.
5. WTC 7
Example #5: BBC Prematurely Reported WTC 7's Collapse = 9/11 Inside Job?
Claim: BBC reported WTC 7's collapse 23 minutes early, proving advance knowledge.
Reality: This was a real-time reporting error, not a script from a shadow government. Emergency officials had observed the building's structure was compromised, and journalists were told collapse was likely. The BBC relied on that information.
“Reporting error” is indeed what they try to get us to believe, but it’s necessarily complete bullsh*t. I’ll tell you why in a second.
WTC 7 had massive interior structural damage, including multiple uncontrolled fires. The NIST report (based on structural analysis, materials testing, and simulations) concluded that thermal expansion of beams caused the collapse.
First, the “thermal expansion” explanation never explained the collapses — of any of the three towers. If, as “thermal expansion” says, the floors of Towers 1 and 2 had detached from the interlocking steel beams of each tower’s inner core and outer frame, then the floors themselves would have tried to fall inside of and separately from the steel frames they lost hold of. If the floors had come loose from the inner and outer frames of the building, the floors would have a gravity problem, but the frame itself would not. The steel-girdered frame would still be standing with the now-detached floors piling upon each other and descending toward the ground within them.
“Thermal expansion” was always an attempt to explain away the collapse for the layman, but it doesn’t explain how the hundreds of welded and bolted, interlocking steel beams themselves somehow cut themselves into pieces, floor by floor, to become part of the piled mess below.
As for WTC 7, it had no interior structural damage of any significance, but even if it did, its collapse couldn’t have happened.
No thermite, no controlled demolition — just the structural consequences of hours of fires in an already damaged building.
I’m sorry to have to tell you that this is ludicrous.
And I’m going to tell you why the BBC’s “reporting error” excuse is of no help to the broader fact of conspiracy:
It is not possible that any government official or professional would have been making statements that WTC 7 would be falling that day, except and unless it was to give cover to the eventual deliberate bringing down of the building by planted charges or whatever other method they may have used.
Why is it not possible?
Because every architect and engineer on this Earth knows that there is no such thing as spontaneous implosion. Even the ones who say there is know it’s not possible.
The reason no one speaks up is that every professional in the building or demolition business also knows something else: that to publicly speak the truth on this subject is to invite destruction — of reputation, career, or self. (As you’ll see tragic evidence of below.)
Any expert on buildings who says that WTC 7 imploded -- on its own, in eleven or whatever seconds, and into its own footprint -- knows full well that he’s lying to preserve his career or his life. Because any human being who believed in spontaneous implosion could never have passed his courses and exams, never received his licenses or certifications, and never have landed a job in the industry in the first place.
What I’m getting at is this: Even if the BBC honestly reported an impossible event twenty-three minutes early based on warnings earlier in the day from “professionals” or “officials” to the effect that the building will probably fall, there is still a smoking gun. The fact that any professional or government official suggested that WTC 7 would fall at all is itself proof of conspiracy. Because there is no such thing as a professional in the architectural or building world who believes in the possibility of whole building collapse due to fire or some ad hoc “structural damage,” no matter how significant.
These professionals are too educated, too well-trained, and too intelligent. But they cannot speak the truth because it would be career, or possibly personal, suicide. See the tragic case of demolition expert, Danny Jowenko, here:
AN ASIDE: The Testimony and Death of Demolition Expert, Danny Jowenko …
The following link is a one-minute clip of Dutch demolition expert, Danny Jowenko, looking at the collapse of WTC 7 for the first time, on camera. (Mr. Jowenko died in a car crash in 2011, three days after appearing on a podcast confirming his testimony that WTC 7 had to have been professionally rigged for collapse.)
The best and shortest clip is at the top of this page: Dutch demolition expert Danny Jowenko was shown the collapse of WTC 7 in an interview back in 2006. https://www.911firefighters.org/post/unbiased-demolition-expert-sees-building-7-for-the-first-time
Here is a longer version (7 minutes) at YouTube directly: WTC 7 COLLAPSE REVIEWED BY DEMOLITION EXPERT 1
YouTube video description: “PART 1 - This was taken from a Dutch tv show that was investigating the events of 9/11. An expert on controlled demolition, Danny Jowenko, was asked to review the video of a building collapse. He did not know that WTC 7 collapsed on Sept. 11 at approx. 5:40 pm. As he watched the collapse, he did not have any doubts that the building was brought down by controlled demolition. It was then revealed to him that the building was part of the 9/11 events. He was shocked but stood by his original assessment that the building was brought down with explosives. So, the question that needs to be answered is: How can a 47 story building completely collapse into its own footprint in less than 7 seconds?”
Some related citations from other sites:
From https://www.abreureport.com/2016/03/911-whistleblower-murdered-on-dutch.html:
“Mr. Jowenko would go on to further examine the blueprints for World Trade Center 7, and he only became more convinced that it was indeed a controlled-demolition carried out by a clandestine group of professionals. In a subsequent phone call in 2007, Mr. Jowenko said that he "absolutely" stood by his comments, arguing that he had "examined the drawings and the construction and that it could not have been carried out by fire.
“Mr. Jowenko further said that if a US demolition company were to acknowledge the fact that WTC 7 was a controlled demolition, that it would be "over" for them, that they would be "done." And very true to Mr. Jowenko's predictions, it would not be long before it would be "over" for him, even though he lived outside of the United States.”
“ Jowenko's death comes as the latest of what many 911 Truth advocates call an unlikely string of deaths of key 911 http://uncensored.co.nz/2010/12/10/9-11-the-dead-witnesses/. The most famous of these is former chief of New York City's Emergency Management Response Team, Barry Jennings, who was the last official out of the Emergency Command Center in WTC 7 before its collapse. Jennings said on camera that he had heard explosions from within the building that he knew were not fuel tanks or boilers, as a former ‘boiler man.’”
---
… Back to WTC 7
Apart from the spontaneous implosions of three towers in one afternoon on 9/11, no building — and certainly no steel-girdered building — has ever simply spontaneously collapsed into its own footprint in a matter of seconds. Not for any reason. Airplane collisions don’t do it, infernos don’t do it, and “structural damage” doesn’t do it.
Implosion requires carefully planned and rigged cutting charges and other preparations that effectively cut a sequence of core columns and outer girders in an exact order and with an exact timing. The steel beams of each floor, in effect, have to be cut at the same time, one floor first and then the next, and then the next, in precise order. This is the only thing that allows a steel tower to come straight down into a huge piled mess in a dozen seconds.
Incidentally, because it makes no difference either way, there was practically zero damage of any significance to the underlying structure of WTC 7 — contrary to your and/or NIST’s claim — with only fires on some floors and some exterior damage due to a falling girder from Tower 1 or 2; but even if the entire building had been completely consumed by an inferno of flame, it would still never have imploded into its own footprint. Moreover, what’s not commonly known is that WTC 7 was intended to serve as an emergency command center in NYC and was specially fortified, made extra strong in order to remain viable in various kinds of emergency (such as, I imagine, earthquake, etc.)
Watch the collapse
For those who would like to be reminded of what the WTC 7 collapse looked like, watch the video again here:
Watch how this tower suddenly decided to break all its inner steel girders one floor at a time, from the bottom up, timed in such quick succession that the whole building fell straight down into its own footprint in a matter of seconds. And remember the words of demolition expert Danny Jowenko before his car hit a tree on a straightaway in his home country of the Netherlands.
In any other kind of crime or investigation, these kinds of impossibilities and coincidences would cause investigators to grab their guns and badges and chase down the leads they represent. But when governments (and larger entities) commit crimes, what you find is that the investigators remain at their desks, ordering lunch, whistling to themselves, and looking the other way. Those who own the investigators and the media own the investigation and the outcome.
The 9/11 Commission Report (many hundreds of pages long) never mentioned WTC 7 at all except as a brief footnote in tiny print at the bottom of a single page. And how long did it take NIST to produce their official government report? Wasn’t it years and years to finally get around to coming up with an explanation, and didn’t they refuse to release the computer models that they relied on to justify their theory?
Not that it matters. There are many, many dozens of smoking guns with regard to 9/11. By smoking guns, I mean facts that prove conspiracy, not merely suggest or imply it. WTC 7 was only one of these smoking guns.
6. “FINAL NOTE ON AMERICAN MOON”
Final Note on American Moon: A Masterclass in Deception by Omission
The film is riddled with selective editing, quote mining, and a total disregard for established engineering and physics. It presents old, debunked claims (e.g., the flag waving, shadows, crosshairs) as fresh questions while omitting rebuttals already addressed by NASA, independent scientists, and even international observers — including the Soviet Union, who had every motive to expose a hoax.
This is a breathtakingly dishonest statement.
This 3.5-hour documentary is one of the most well-balanced, clear, rational, honest, and fact-inclusive documentaries you’ll ever watch. It’s also professionally narrated and provides enormous amounts of context and explanation. It starts with 24 minutes of interesting history and context of the Apollo program before moving on to arguments for and against the truth of the moon landings.
The YouTube comments under this documentary consist almost exclusively of statements like this:
No matter how you feel about the subject, you have to acknowledge that this is a conspiracy documentary masterpiece, the sheer volume, detail and scope is astounding.
But reading some of your statements below, it seems that you didn’t do more than flit through it here and there before realizing you wanted to discourage anyone else from seeing it. I’ll point out why I say this below.
The film is riddled with selective editing, quote mining, and a total disregard for established engineering and physics. It presents old, debunked claims (e.g., the flag waving, shadows, crosshairs) as fresh questions […]
Everything you just said is incorrect. An old FOX TV documentary threw in some ridiculous examples of Apollo hoax evidence just so debunkers could use them later as easy targets to mock and deride in the future, which you are doing now. American Moon doesn’t resort to bullshit “evidence” like the camera’s crosshairs, etc. Indeed, American Moon actually argues against some of the non-evidence like the crosshairs and lack of stars in photographs.
Shadows and waving flags: The shadows addressed in American Moon rely strictly on real physics and have not been debunked. Any viewer will understand when he watches the document segment on this. As for the “flag waving,” the old FOX TV documentary displays one example of a flag that moved because it was touched by an astronaut. Obviously ridiculous. Classic case of a bullshit claim. But there is indeed a flag elsewhere in the official NASA footage that stands completely alone and moves on its own, first this way, then back again — obviously and plainly due to the movement of air.
As for engineering and physics in general, the filmmaker’s respect for such things is the very reason he argues argues against the landings. Engineering and physics are on his side.
[…] while omitting rebuttals already addressed by NASA, independent scientists, and even international observers — including the Soviet Union, who had every motive to expose a hoax.
The reason I say you didn’t watch the documentary more than for a few minutes here and there is that you say that American Moon includes things it doesn’t and doesn’t include things it does.
Contrary to your assertion, this excellent and honest documentary answers the claims of various “independent scientists” – the so-called “debunkers” – and the filmmaker explicitly addresses rationally and at some length the question of why the Soviet Union didn’t call out the hoax. Here’s the exact point in the film where this appears:
The statements you made above slandering this documentary are so wrong that I have no choice but to conclude it’s deliberate dishonesty. And that fact alone is all the more reason why people should watch the film.
Apollo's legacy has been independently confirmed:
Retroreflectors still bounce lasers back to Earth.
The documentary addresses this explicitly, and you apparently didn’t catch that part. Lasers have been successfully bounced off the moon itself – without any kind of retro-reflector at all -- since the late 1950s (by MIT, I think), and then again in the 1960s by the Soviet Union. There are newspaper articles referring to these events. Here is that section of the documentary:
Lunar rocks have been studied by geologists worldwide.
The documentary addresses this claim as well. And, again, you don’t seem to know it. Here is the segment that covers this point:
In addition to the documentary’s information on the moon rocks issue, at least one other source has connected dots showing that there has been, over the years, a series of curious thefts of moon rocks from museums around the world, with at least one such rock — and possibly others — then being surreptitiously “put back” after some absence. If I locate the article that connects these dots, I’ll post it somewhere for you to read.
In the meantime, there are collections of reports of these incidents at places like this: https://www.detailedpedia.com/wiki-Stolen_and_missing_Moon_rocks
This is an incidental issue whose resolution has no effect on whether the Apollo missions were real or fake, but why might numerous moon rocks be heisted from museums? Consider your own explanation, but one logical possibility is that advances in scientific knowledge or materials analysis since the moon landings might have eventually have been able to prove some of these rocks to be fake. (Like the moon rock in a museum in the Netherlands that turned out to be petrified wood.) These bizarre thefts may or may not be explainable as the deliberate disappearing of evidence, but it’s something to consider among other hypotheses.
High-resolution images of the landing sites exist.
If NASA can stage moon missions, as millions of people around the world believe, how good an argument is this? Any fifteen-year-old with a copy of Photoshop can do this, and NASA already does things like fabricate fictional images even of the Earth itself using Photoshop, as per their own admission.
Radio signals were triangulated by ham radio operators globally.
Such assertions are weak compared to the quantity of more reliable, provable evidence available. All that’s needed to prove Apollo false is a single proof of the hoax and it’s done, and American Moon gives you many.
For those interested, here are the exact timestamps in American Moon for just a few of the very interesting points made in that presentation:
Obvious instances of the Apollo astronauts being aided by wires – multiple instances caught on the original, official videos of the moon landings:
Radio communications audio response time too short. Later quietly “fixed” by NASA on its web site:
NASA destroyed all data related to the Apollo missions. Why would that be?
The Van Allen Radiation Belts:
The astronauts’ strange behavior upon their triumphant return from their historic mission:
Apollo photographic film returns to Earth completely unaffected by its hours-long exposure to “dangerous” levels of radiation:
There is no rocket flame whatsoever under the departing LEM and there should be. This is explained very well here:
And much more.
FINAL STUFF
“Conclusion: Don’t Mistake Doubt for Depth”
The strategy of pseudoscientific articles like this is to stack questions and anomalies until the average reader feels overwhelmed and assumes there's substance. But this is not science. It's Gish Gallop.
There was zero complexity in my article.
Instead, what I provided are single, simple, direct observations with my own best and logical interpretation for each. My suggestion to the reader was to notice these simple observations and ask himself how he can think to explain them — and to consider looking deeper if he can’t.
Pseudoscience? How about just plain old independent inquiry and giving honest thought to things?
Establishment guard dogs can be counted on to attack honest science whenever it collides with bought science.
The world is complex.
Sometimes the simplest explanation — built on evidence, replication, and logical consistency — is the right one. And that explanation is: we did go to the moon, contrails are not chemical weapons, astrology is bunk, eclipses are coincidence, and WTC 7 fell because it was burning for seven hours.
(1) It has been logically and conclusively proven in many different ways, by concerned researchers all over the world, that we did not go to the moon; (2) chemtrails are not necessarily weapons but they do exist; (3) astrology has been proven accurate (to those who can do it) by simple performance of accurate predictions beyond the odds; (4) the identical size of Moon and Sun is significantly improbable enough to warrant considering that they were deliberately designed that way; and (5) I should never have had to explain this, but the implosion of steel buildings can only and exclusively be accomplished by specially placed explosive charges (or other advanced methods we’re not in on); not by fires or any alleged, ad hoc “structural damage.” Every building and demo expert on the Earth knows this, whether he admits it or not.
Truth doesn't fear scrutiny. But neither does it entertain nonsense forever.
Truth can stand scrutiny, but purveyors of false truth can’t. And they’ll use any trick they think they can get away with to get people to look the hell in some other direction. Derision or mocking, the employing of impressive terms to bluff their competence, misdirection, deliberate or careless misinterpretation, obfuscation, strawman attacks, and other forms of evading the real issue at hand.
These are tactics of intellectual arrogance — perhaps intellectual narcissism — a mindset at odds with science. Intellectual arrogance or narcissism promotes blindered thinking and resists questions, impeding progress toward authentic knowledge. Intellectual humility, by contrast, is maybe the most important characteristic of the honest seeker of truth who is always open to new hypotheses and data without prejudice, an approach more likely to lead to the acquisition of wider, deeper, and more accurate knowledge on all subjects.
Contact me
Anyone who wants to talk about any of the topics above — or about any other issue, really — feel free to contact me anytime. I am open to being wrong on any issue; in fact, on many issues I want to be wrong. Life would be simpler and happier if more things were simply as they appeared.
C.M. Cardinale
“Falsehood will fly, as it were, on the wings of the wind, and carry its tales to every corner of the earth; whilst truth lags behind; her steps, though sure, are slow and solemn, and she has neither vigour nor activity enough to pursue and overtake her enemy…” —Thomas Francklin
“[….]It often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…” —Jonathan Swift
I appreciate the considerable effort you've taken here to so thoroughly rebut one of the world's billions of 'eejits' (I think that's Irish for idiots). Hopefully he read it but as you say, more intelligent minds will recognize the necessity of writing it anyway.
I wore out my brain in "Covid's" early days trying to convince those close to me that it was a hoax. To no avail whatsoever, of course.
Good work man! I admit I skipped the detailed sections on specific "conspiracy theories" 😆 and picked back up at "Final stuff". I'm a psycho-sociologist investigating the psychology of cultism and how it plays out socially, so I focus on the archetypal structures and dynamics common to all of these controversies, as opposed to getting into the details specific to each. I'm trying to wrap up my current draft, *Law Itself Is the Violation* (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZCGm8NYwxAPUfScDhhXayvnChczvHOuj/view), so then I can finish up another one I started, *Truth and the Dishonesties of Belief*. I bet you and I would have oodles to talk about concerning the material in the latter.