wouldn't do this if he didn't think he could win. I wonder what his game plan would be and how best to counter it?

Obviously, I have ultra high regard for Kevin Ryan.

Perhaps a discussion of the potential problems is warranted.

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"There are none so hoplessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free." (Goethe)

I hope Kevin Ryan brings up the below ironclad demonstration of controlled demolition of the World Trade Center:

A truly vital piece of evidence that provides definitive proof that the World Trade Center towers were brought down by controlled demolition are the videos of yellow-hot molten metal seen cascading off the South Tower (World Trade Center Tower 2).

That piece of evidence isn't merely a smoking gun: it's a smoking nuclear cannon. Those videos, alone and by themselves, are irrefragable *proof* that the South Tower (at the very least) had thermite-like ("like" in the sense of producing comparable temperatures) incendiary demolition charges with the ability to easily slice through structural steel going off within it. There is no innocent explanation for what those videos record.

That is to say, the only way to get around that it is thermite which is causing that yellow-hot metal to cascade off the South Tower before its collapse would be to posit that we are seeing a different form of extremely powerful incendiary with thermite-like temperatures at work in the videos. Of which, even if true, would be every bit as much damning, since no such powerful incendiaries can be accounted for without involving a sinister intent to plant them there.

Below are videos which contain some of this footage:

"Shot from street level of South Tower collapsing," CameraPlanet http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2991254740145858863

http://www.supportthetruth.com/vids/thermite.wmv
http://www.plunder.com/Video-of-Thermite-on-9-11-at-the-W-T-C-and-Physic...

http://www.checktheevidence.com/911/Molten%20Metal%20from%20WTC.mpg

"Wtc 1, impact site close up, tower collapse close up, long shot, people shouting," CameraPlanet http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8564772103237441151

From the color of the yellow-hot molten metal seen cascading off the South Tower, it had to be at least over 1000 °C, yet jet fuel burns in open air at 260-315 °C; nor do burning office, building, or plane materials impart temperatures anywhere near that hot to structural members (indeed, it would present quite a hazard if such articles were constructed with such powerful incendiaries, and so designers of such objects go out of their way to make sure that they are not). Thus, if it wasn't molten iron from thermite that we are seeing come off the South Tower, then by necessity a reaction source with a heat intensity very much like thermite had to be present. Yet there is nothing in the U.S. government's account that can explain such a heat source; indeed, there's nothing innocent that could explain it, since it requires some sort of extremely powerful incendiary.

For more on this, see Steven E. Jones's (Ph.D.; physicist and archaeometrist; former professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Brigham Young University) below paper:

"Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Completely Collapse?," Dr. Steven E. Jones, Journal of 911 Studies, Vol. 3 (September 2006) http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200609/Why_Indeed_Did_the_WTC_...
http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/Papers/J6p2%20.doc (Older version.)

See also:

"Experiments to test NIST 'orange glow' hypothesis," Steven E. Jones, Ph.D., August 31, 2006 http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/Experiments-to-test-NIST-orange-glowh...
http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/Liquid_Aluminum_011.mpg
http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/Liquid_Aluminum_012.mpg

"Experiments with Molten Aluminum," Steven E. Jones with Wesley Lifferth, Jared Dodson, Jacob Stevenson and Shannon Walch, circa June 2006 http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/ExptAlMelt.doc

"A description of molten aluminum poured onto rusty steel," Wes Lifferth, Physics Shop, Brigham Young University, Journal of 9/11 Studies, Vol. 9 (March 2007) http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200703/Molten_Aluminum_Poured_...

Moreover, even the official FEMA scientists Jonathan Barnett, Ronald R. Biederman, and R. D. Sisson, Jr. bolster the evidence that thermate (i.e., thermite with sulfur added, which causes it to slice through steel even faster by forming a eutectic alloy with it) was used to bring down the WTC towers (see "Appendix C: Limited Metallurgical Examination" in World Trade Center Building Performance Study: Data Collection, Preliminary Observations, and Recommendations, Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA 403, May 2002 http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_apc.pdf ):

""
Evidence of a severe high temperature corrosion attack on the steel, including oxidation and sulfidation with subsequent inter granular melting, was readily visible in the near-surface microstructure. ... No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified. The rate of corrosion is also unknown.
""

And in the below paper it is conclusively proved via chemical analysis using wavelength dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (WDS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (X-EDS) that large quantities of thermite analogs (such as thermate) were used in the destruction of the World Trade Center towers:

"Revisiting 9/11/2001--Applying the Scientific Method," Dr. Steven E. Jones, Journal of 911 Studies, Vol. 11 (May 2007) http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/JonesWTC911SciMethod.pd...

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"Terrorism is the health of the State."--James Redford, author of "Jesus Is an Anarchist," June 1, 2006 http://praxeology.net/anarchist-jesus.pdf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stVmEmJ666M

This was interesting because Amy Goodman chose the topics, and most of them, save for WTC7, were the weakest points. Though I know the Popular Mechanics guy was all BS, he did very well against the LC guys, unfortunately.

I hope Kevin can steer the conversation toward the strongest evidence, steer completely clear of any "theories", and focus only on the unanswered question, the conflicting testimony, the needs of the families, and so forth. And to follow up on another comment, *Kevin* needs to explicitly say that he is the skeptic here, not the publisher of Skeptic Mag.

David S Chandler

http://911speakout.org/

4-Ton Girders: Blowing in the Wind?

4-ton girders were found as much as 600 feet from the base of the North Tower of the World Trade Center after its collapse. This raises obvious questions. How fast must they have been ejected from the collapsing building to land that far away? What forces were at work to give such massive structures high horizontal velocities? If anything besides gravity was at work, pandora's box is opened up.

South Tower Coming Down

This is a movie of the collapse of the South Tower of the World Trade Center taken with a hand-held camera. In the original video, the camera is moving wildly, so the details of the collapsing building are hard to see.

To make it easier to study the details of the collapse, I separated the movie frame-by-frame and wrote a program to transform the images in such a way that the image of the building remains fixed, even though the camera is moving. I then reassembled the sequence of still frames into a slow-motion version of the movie.

For more, see 911SpeakOut.org.

--
"But truthfully, I don't really know. We've had trouble getting a handle on Building No. 7."
~~ Dr. Shyam Sunder - Acting Director Building and Fire Research Laboratory (NIST)
"We are unable to provide a full explanation of the total collapse."(NIS)

After listening to his rants on 9/11, I think he should rename the magazine "Strawmen."

The position of a skeptic is to analyze the official claim, which is that Ali Baba and his 19 flunky thieves defeated the most sophisticated defense system in the world, defeated the laws of physics, and strained common sense and credulity in every respect.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Shermer's real job should be to prove the OCT, not disprove Ryan's. Kevin might point that out at the beginning, in addition to pointing out that the 9/11 skeptics' analyses are cumulative, while the government's story is deductive. (We can be wrong on one or two things and still disprove the government's overall claim, but if the OCT is wrong in any respect, the government is shown to be lying and has to account for the change in their narrative.)