Disco08 said:
Again, if you can't see the logic, I can't make you. I personally think a comparison of a 5% liability on a property you're hoping to make a profit on, regardless of the size of the property, is valid.
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IMPORTANT // Please look after your loved ones, yourself and be kind to others. If you are feeling that the world is too hard to handle there is always help - I implore you not to hesitate in contacting one of these wonderful organisations Lifeline and Beyond Blue ... and I'm sure reaching out to our PRE community we will find a way to help. T.
911 Truth Movement
- Thread starter Harry
- Start date
Again, if you can't see the logic, I can't make you. I personally think a comparison of a 5% liability on a property you're hoping to make a profit on, regardless of the size of the property, is valid.
Disco08 said:
What does this have to do with anything? Sometimes there would be stacks of bidders, sometimes not many, depending on lots of variables. Just like a house.
Disco08 said:
Sorry Disco, but you've now lost all credibility.
You've conspicuously omitted the references in the 911myths site which show that occupancy rates were up to 90% in 1998 - 3 years before the attacks. By Feb 2001 they were up to 98%. Not "just before" the attacks.
You've also taken the quote from the "ruins" article completely out of context. The article is primarily about the Port Authority's decision to privatise the WTC site and has more to say about the costs of the first terrorist attack (in 1993) rather than the second. The book the article quotes extensively was written in 1999. It points out that by 1993 the Towers were returning a profit, but the cost of refitting due to the bombing and to compete with newer office buildings the cost ($800 mill) of refurbishment was prohibitive for the public sector authority. The rest of the article (taken from the book) was about the ideological and practical move towards the privatisation of the buildings (and related public assets).
Scholarship, scientific method and the search for truth?
Yeah, right.
Disco08 said:
Ok now I see the logic, but its clunky and drawing a very long bow. First, just because there aren't many bidders doesn't mean its not an attractive proposition. It can be timing, available finances. For example, to extend my own small scale residential experience, I have said to mates, 'have you seen that property on Jones Street? I wish I had some dough to buy it, it will make money for sure'. I've had them reply 'I know, Thats a ripper, but the timing is out for me'. This actually happened to me recently. Also, once many years ago I got a great property very cheap that had just been sitting on he market for ages, nobody touched it. It had a liability attached to it that was a hassle, but in the scheme of things not that big a deal. I made an %80 profit in 2 years.
Thats the simple facts, there are more complex ones that come into play as the deals get bigger, hedging, joint ventures, diversification, all of which may have to be very complex to get the funding and make it work.
Now the above has only addressed your first logical leap. Given that the first logical leap is questionable, the second one is a real stretch. But even If, for arguments sake, the first logical leap was 100% valid, the second is still a stretch.
tigersnake said:
There's no evidence for the first in any case. The PA was initially hoping for around 1.5 billion from the bidding process and this was up to 3 billion by the time "Lucky Larry" got in on the act.
Of course, this could have been because was because the PA was advertising the imminent and planned attacks as an "insurance opportunity bonanza" in the glossy promotional brochures.
Disco08 said:
Plenty of 'scientists' have signed the Dissent from Darwinism. Does that make the theory of evolution any more plausible? Um, I think you'd agree not. It all depends on the weight of authority and the arguments supporting them.
Really? Most of the issues with TB have to do with antiquity and questions over known issues with its modification. The OR may be flawed, but its account would seem to be plausible to most.
This is where a scientific background is helpful. You DO need a conclusion. Just nit picking is not enough. You need to provide an alternate theory and support it. You can also publish a response or a letter to the editor about flawed methodologies, as experts would know, but has any of the done this is an appropriate forum? No? Why not. Again it is a huge red flag that you continue to ignore.
No. You allude to conspiracy in almost every one of your posts, which is what illicits the response. When questioned your fall back to the standard line above - "it just needs a proper investigation" - as if that would even be possible.
I was talking in general terms. Sorry if that wasn't clear. You DO jump from point to point looking for patterns that might spell conspiracy - in many different forms.
I would love to see that claim substantiated.
Sure, I'll listen to their concerns (I have on this very thread!), but the type of response I hear are those that should be put to the test of peer review, with people who can actually refute them, if they can be. They haven't, which tells me something. Do you see my point?
antman said:
I didn't conspicously omit anything. It's wasn't even my link mate. 3 years out of 33 equates to "right before" IMO and you could have just queried that like any other civilised person would rather than slamming my credibility. Pompous much?
As for the BW article - if I was trying to conceal anything I wouldn't have inclused the link. Let me just post the full context though so we can see just how wrong your assertion is:
A structure begins to fall into a state of ruin when it is no longer supported by the productive relations that created it. But its transformation is complete when it is no longer physically viable and the social imagination that gave it purpose has fled or been banished. Once a building is abandoned at the level of meaning, it is only a matter of time before physical decay upholds its end of the bargain.
In this sense, the World Trade Center came prepackaged as a ruin that has slowly been moving in the direction of becoming a living building. But even in the wake of the bombing, New Yorkers have never been able to successfully fill Yamasaki's twin silos with the kind of psychological investment freely poured into the Empire State, the Chrysler Building, the Woolworth Building, or even Rockefeller Center. From an economic standpoint, the trade center -- subsidized since its inception -- has never functioned, nor was it intended to function, unprotected in the rough-and-tumble real estate marketplace. And in the thirty years since it was built, the social forces of which it remains so highly visible an artifact have definitively realigned.
Relationships among banks and developers, public corporations, the city government, the statehouses of New York and New Jersey, and even the federal government have all been transformed to a point where it is inconceivable that the World Trade Center could be built today -- or even for a moment considered a workable or desirable project. Having escaped destruction at the hands of terrorists seeking to demodernize the world, the trade towers now offer themselves as blunt evidence of the maxing out of the North American skyscraper city. Viewed as a crowning ruin, the towers take on a new symbolic power -- they become eloquent in transmitting the drama of their own vanished moment.
Disco08 said:
The lions and buffalos metaphor is a bit dramatic, Its been a spirited debate, and I enjoy a spirited debate. Personally I 'vetaken it as a personal challenge to pin you down on just one aspect of what I see as a fallacious premise and argument, given your debating style makes you near impossible to pin down, because you just ignore or deny you've been pinned down, or change the subject.
As for your final question though, damn good question.
Disco08 said:
You either omitted material consciously or didn't read it. Either way you don't want to engage with evidence that contradicts your own beliefs.
And now you claim that the last 3 years out of 33 is "right before" - again leaving aside the issue that the Towers "finally" were turning a profit in 1993 just before the first terrorist attack. It took occupancy a while to recover from that event. I wonder why?
Disco08 said:
Yeah, it's a nice well-written piece... but clearly the article means something completely different to each of us. To me it's a quirky reminiscence around NY architectural history, public institution vs privatisation of the same, a history of commerce and real estate. It's clearly personal and subjective in parts - which is why you get lines like: Viewed as a crowning ruin, the towers take on a new symbolic power -- they become eloquent in transmitting the drama of their own vanished moment. It's a history of the troubled life and times of the WTC, not a confirmation of your theory that the towers were never financially viable.
So, somehow this confirms your assertion that the towers were loss making and a liability (although somehow miraculously full and turning a profit at the same time). But then you see the success "right before" the bombings took place as suspicious in itself - I'm not sure why.
See, viewed through the distorting prism of "911 Truth", any event or happening becomes suspicious.
antman said:
Well those lines seem to suggest that it wasn't financially viable. What financially viable venture requires subsidisation throughout its history? Why would the PA want to demolish a financially viable site?
The point about the 97-99 tenancy increase I made was wrong though. I'd read somewhere that entire floors had been tenanted for the first time in those years but actually misread the meaning.
antman said:
Of course the price would go up on the back of 3 years high tenancy fueled by the economic surge of the same time. Doesn't change the fact that a supposedly profitable and attractive site attracted only 2 serious bidders.
Disco08 said:
“Reality is, you know, the tip of an iceberg of irrationality that we've managed to drag ourselves up onto for a few panting moments before we slip back into the sea of the unreal.”
― Terence McKenna
or to put it another way
“Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food.”
― Austin O'Malley
tigersnake said:
The premise of my argument is that the 9/11 commission was an extension of the cover up executed by the Bush regime. As such my argument is that events of this magnitude must be properly investigated.
That's it. The rest is just discussion and conjecture. If you see that as fallacious please do share your reasoning.
Again - I respond to every question. Continuously saying I ignore or deflect when pinned down doesn't change the fact you're wrong.
Disco08 said:
Don't be obtuse. Like many publicly owned institutions it was not profitable for many years of its existence. Then it was, then it got bombed. Then it wasn't profitable again til 1997/98 - it was largely empty for the four years in between. Then it recovered, due to the economy and demand for prime office real estate in New York. So you say "It didn't make money for ages and at one time the PA wanted to demolish it, but then it got all successful due to the economy". Well duh. Point is, it was profitable, and had been for several years. And likely would have been since 1993 if the first terrorist attack occurred.
You know Disco, arguing this sort of minutiae is kind of fun, but whenever we look closely at one of your "suspicious facts/circumstances/coincidences", they just don't hold up.
