The "9/11 Scholars" and my Smaug Theory
Referencing this ...
http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/OpenLetterToJones.html
Unfortunately for them, I'm a native New Yorker who used to work right in that neighborhood, and so I know more than a little about what they're talking about.
Some really funny parts of the quoted article:
"Judy and Morgan have discovered the WTC was constructed in an enormous "bathtub" to create a barrier to protect the site from overflow of water from the Hudson River, which would have flooded PATH TRAIN tunnels and subways throughout Manhattan. To avoid this catastrophe, it appears to have been indispensable to turn 4/5 of the towers to dust and demolish just 1/5 by more conventional means, such as those Steve Jones has advanced."
Judy and Morgan apparently believe that collapsing the Twin Towers should have caused water from the Hudson River to flood the subway system "throughout Manhattan." This might be true if their foundation was underwater or below the water table in soil, but of course (like most giant skyscrapers) the Twin Towers were built on solid bedrock. The "bathtub" would have been designed to prevent slow leakage of water through the soil between bedrock and surface. Dropping a million tons of skyscraper onto this soil would probably have compacted it enough that any leakage of water through the debris would have been very slow.
They also apparently think that the New York City subway system consists of about 100 cubic feet of tunnels designed by some morons who forgot that Manhattan is an island and thought that "drainage" is what their sinuses do when they sit up. Actually, the subway system is gigantic (the biggest and most complex in the world), mostly located ABOVE the level of the habor, and includes extensive systems for pumping and draining water. They DO sometimes flood, but this is normally due to water main breaks.
A really intense rainstorm can raise the level of the Hudson River and New York Bay. A bit. These are immense waterways, capable of floating container ships, not tiny mountain streams that easily flood given heavy rains upslope. If something (such as, oh, a large part of the Antarctic icecap falling into the sea) raised the ocean level to the point where the ocean was actually in danger of slopping into the subways, Manhattan would have more problems than just a few flooded subways!
Needless to say, there was no particular flood conditions when the terrorists attacked. In fact, as I remember well because I was LIVING on the East Coast at the time, it was a fairly hot and dry day, for September. Clear blue skies. Well, until the planes hit.
"During the course of her interview with me, Judy suggested that the source of the energy required might possibly have been based in space. This is not as fanciful as it might sound, insofar as the US has been pursuing "full spectrum dominance" (of air, sea, land and space!) for some period of time. The very idea of space-based weapons strikes many people as a stretch, if not absurd. But they are trotting out a lot of the same kinds of ridicule and sarcasm as apologists for the official government's account have been advancing to attack those of use who are critics of what we have been told, which is supposed to be "completely ridiculous"! Just listen to O'Reilly or Hannity & Colmes! If we don't consider the full range of possible alternative explanans, we may arrive at false conclusions by eliminating the true hypothesis from serious consideration because it seems farfetched or even absurd. "
Indeed, such weapons are possible. And some even exist.
Of course, an energy beam powerful enough to bring down a major skyscraper would be more than a bit visible from the rest of Manhattan. For that matter, it would have been visible for hundreds of miles around.
This is not because the beam would have to be in the visible spectrum. It might, for instance, be an ultraviolet or even X-ray laser, though an X-ray laser that powerful, pumped by anything other than an orbital nuclear detonation, would be difficult to build with present-day technology.
It is because the Earth has an atmosphere. The beam, even if invisible, would heat, ionize and displace the air on the way down. The result would be a straight flash of lightning along the part of the beam's path that passed through the stratosphere to troposphere, and an audible thunderclap.
This would not only have been visible to witnesses on the ground, it might have been blinding. Literally --- people looking right at the beam might have been dazzled or even permanently blinded by the sidescatter, especially since when the beam hit a solid object (you know, like a freaking GIANT SKYSCRAPER!!!) some of the energy would have been redshifted to visible light, and we're talking about a laser capable of cutting through the support beams of the Twin Towers.
Not only were there no reports of any such flashes of light, but the videotape shot at the time of the second does not show such flashes of light. It does show a rather obvious JUMBO JET flying into the side of one of the towers, entering the tower, and then disappearing in a huge eruption of flame and debris -- but I guess I'd be a dupe of the Conspiracy if I thought that meant that said jet actually crashed into the building, rather than being a clever projection of a holographic technology decades, even centuries in advance of known Earthly technology, right?
"The specific weapons used to destroy the WTC could have been ground based or space based. Judy tends to believe that, whether it was the use of a mirror to reflect an energy beam from Earth or a space-based energy source, it came from above. (My own opinion is that WTC-7 may have played a crucial role here.) If someone suggests that this sounds "loony" or "far out" to them, then I would ask, "How do you know that she's wrong?" It would be scientifically irresponsible not to consider an hypothesis that poses such an intriguing alternative to account for demolishing the WTC, especially given all the evidence she has adduced."
Well, how does James Fetzer know that OTHER things didn't destroy the World Trade Center? For instance, I postulate that Smaug secretly survived The Hobbit and was recruited by deep cover CIA orcs to carry out the 9/11 deception. Wearing a big fake "airplane" outfit, he actually clawed through the side of the towers and used his hot dragonbreath -- hot enough according to Tolkien to melt the Rings of Power -- to burn through the support columns. Not only that, but since the CIA had a _second_ airplane costume available at LaGuardia Airport, Smaug actually played the role of BOTH airplanes.
I think that this is an even MORE "intriguing alternative to account for demolishing the WTC," especially since I think Tolkienian dragons are kewl and have read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion far too many times for my sanity. If someone suggests that this theory sounds "looney" or "far out" to them, then I would ask "How do you know that I'm wrong?"
Now, you may ask, why did nobody _see_ Smaug when he carried out this nefarious mission of draconian terrorism? I'm glad you asked that!
I hypothesize that the OSS, predecessor to the CIA, used the Ark of the Covenant (which as we all know was retrieved by Dr. Jones in the 1930's and subsequently stored in a big secret government warehouse) to locate one of the Rings of Power which survived the end of the Third Age. Using special wonder magitech, the nature of which I cannot explain or I would be assassinated by NSA hobbit death squads, it was re-empowered, and used to turn Smaug invisible for the duration of this mission.
Does this make sense? Well no, not really, but it actually holds together logically better than the notion of ultra-powerful orbital lasers which for some odd reason nobody NOTICES when they fire right into the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world!
And if you believe either story, I have a hot property to sell you. It's this bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn, as yet untoppled either by orbital death rays or flying dragons ...
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/OpenLetterToJones.html
Unfortunately for them, I'm a native New Yorker who used to work right in that neighborhood, and so I know more than a little about what they're talking about.
Some really funny parts of the quoted article:
"Judy and Morgan have discovered the WTC was constructed in an enormous "bathtub" to create a barrier to protect the site from overflow of water from the Hudson River, which would have flooded PATH TRAIN tunnels and subways throughout Manhattan. To avoid this catastrophe, it appears to have been indispensable to turn 4/5 of the towers to dust and demolish just 1/5 by more conventional means, such as those Steve Jones has advanced."
Judy and Morgan apparently believe that collapsing the Twin Towers should have caused water from the Hudson River to flood the subway system "throughout Manhattan." This might be true if their foundation was underwater or below the water table in soil, but of course (like most giant skyscrapers) the Twin Towers were built on solid bedrock. The "bathtub" would have been designed to prevent slow leakage of water through the soil between bedrock and surface. Dropping a million tons of skyscraper onto this soil would probably have compacted it enough that any leakage of water through the debris would have been very slow.
They also apparently think that the New York City subway system consists of about 100 cubic feet of tunnels designed by some morons who forgot that Manhattan is an island and thought that "drainage" is what their sinuses do when they sit up. Actually, the subway system is gigantic (the biggest and most complex in the world), mostly located ABOVE the level of the habor, and includes extensive systems for pumping and draining water. They DO sometimes flood, but this is normally due to water main breaks.
A really intense rainstorm can raise the level of the Hudson River and New York Bay. A bit. These are immense waterways, capable of floating container ships, not tiny mountain streams that easily flood given heavy rains upslope. If something (such as, oh, a large part of the Antarctic icecap falling into the sea) raised the ocean level to the point where the ocean was actually in danger of slopping into the subways, Manhattan would have more problems than just a few flooded subways!
Needless to say, there was no particular flood conditions when the terrorists attacked. In fact, as I remember well because I was LIVING on the East Coast at the time, it was a fairly hot and dry day, for September. Clear blue skies. Well, until the planes hit.
"During the course of her interview with me, Judy suggested that the source of the energy required might possibly have been based in space. This is not as fanciful as it might sound, insofar as the US has been pursuing "full spectrum dominance" (of air, sea, land and space!) for some period of time. The very idea of space-based weapons strikes many people as a stretch, if not absurd. But they are trotting out a lot of the same kinds of ridicule and sarcasm as apologists for the official government's account have been advancing to attack those of use who are critics of what we have been told, which is supposed to be "completely ridiculous"! Just listen to O'Reilly or Hannity & Colmes! If we don't consider the full range of possible alternative explanans, we may arrive at false conclusions by eliminating the true hypothesis from serious consideration because it seems farfetched or even absurd. "
Indeed, such weapons are possible. And some even exist.
Of course, an energy beam powerful enough to bring down a major skyscraper would be more than a bit visible from the rest of Manhattan. For that matter, it would have been visible for hundreds of miles around.
This is not because the beam would have to be in the visible spectrum. It might, for instance, be an ultraviolet or even X-ray laser, though an X-ray laser that powerful, pumped by anything other than an orbital nuclear detonation, would be difficult to build with present-day technology.
It is because the Earth has an atmosphere. The beam, even if invisible, would heat, ionize and displace the air on the way down. The result would be a straight flash of lightning along the part of the beam's path that passed through the stratosphere to troposphere, and an audible thunderclap.
This would not only have been visible to witnesses on the ground, it might have been blinding. Literally --- people looking right at the beam might have been dazzled or even permanently blinded by the sidescatter, especially since when the beam hit a solid object (you know, like a freaking GIANT SKYSCRAPER!!!) some of the energy would have been redshifted to visible light, and we're talking about a laser capable of cutting through the support beams of the Twin Towers.
Not only were there no reports of any such flashes of light, but the videotape shot at the time of the second does not show such flashes of light. It does show a rather obvious JUMBO JET flying into the side of one of the towers, entering the tower, and then disappearing in a huge eruption of flame and debris -- but I guess I'd be a dupe of the Conspiracy if I thought that meant that said jet actually crashed into the building, rather than being a clever projection of a holographic technology decades, even centuries in advance of known Earthly technology, right?
"The specific weapons used to destroy the WTC could have been ground based or space based. Judy tends to believe that, whether it was the use of a mirror to reflect an energy beam from Earth or a space-based energy source, it came from above. (My own opinion is that WTC-7 may have played a crucial role here.) If someone suggests that this sounds "loony" or "far out" to them, then I would ask, "How do you know that she's wrong?" It would be scientifically irresponsible not to consider an hypothesis that poses such an intriguing alternative to account for demolishing the WTC, especially given all the evidence she has adduced."
Well, how does James Fetzer know that OTHER things didn't destroy the World Trade Center? For instance, I postulate that Smaug secretly survived The Hobbit and was recruited by deep cover CIA orcs to carry out the 9/11 deception. Wearing a big fake "airplane" outfit, he actually clawed through the side of the towers and used his hot dragonbreath -- hot enough according to Tolkien to melt the Rings of Power -- to burn through the support columns. Not only that, but since the CIA had a _second_ airplane costume available at LaGuardia Airport, Smaug actually played the role of BOTH airplanes.
I think that this is an even MORE "intriguing alternative to account for demolishing the WTC," especially since I think Tolkienian dragons are kewl and have read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion far too many times for my sanity. If someone suggests that this theory sounds "looney" or "far out" to them, then I would ask "How do you know that I'm wrong?"
Now, you may ask, why did nobody _see_ Smaug when he carried out this nefarious mission of draconian terrorism? I'm glad you asked that!
I hypothesize that the OSS, predecessor to the CIA, used the Ark of the Covenant (which as we all know was retrieved by Dr. Jones in the 1930's and subsequently stored in a big secret government warehouse) to locate one of the Rings of Power which survived the end of the Third Age. Using special wonder magitech, the nature of which I cannot explain or I would be assassinated by NSA hobbit death squads, it was re-empowered, and used to turn Smaug invisible for the duration of this mission.
Does this make sense? Well no, not really, but it actually holds together logically better than the notion of ultra-powerful orbital lasers which for some odd reason nobody NOTICES when they fire right into the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world!
And if you believe either story, I have a hot property to sell you. It's this bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn, as yet untoppled either by orbital death rays or flying dragons ...
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan