9/11/01, ten years later.

  On 9/10/2011 at 4:48 PM, marf said:

my European friends need to stop thinking of humans as nations.. America deserved it. I hear this a lot. Who is America exactly?

The people who voted these criminals into office. The people who just look away when shown the atrocities these people have done. The people who remain silent. The people who join the war machine.

  On 9/10/2011 at 4:48 PM, marf said:

my European friends need to stop thinking of humans as nations.

I never do this, actually, but I'm not sure I'm your European friend either.

  On 9/10/2011 at 5:36 PM, azatoth said:

  On 9/10/2011 at 4:48 PM, marf said:

my European friends need to stop thinking of humans as nations.. America deserved it. I hear this a lot. Who is America exactly?

 

The people who voted these criminals into office. The people who just look away when shown the atrocities these people have done. The people who remain silent. The people who join the war machine.

Really think about that statement though. I mean, my world view would have to encompass everyone by that token. The Soviets deserved their holocausts, the Germans and Austrians did, the British deserve anything bad that ever comes to them b/c of imperialism, the Spanish deserved their own bombing a while back for similar reasons, the Japanese deserved the nukes.

I can assure you that if there were people that truly "deserved" to have their lives taken, it probably didn't happen. Tyrants almost always die of their own volition and usually in peace, comfortable and in old age. I can't really see how these people deserved to die.

  On 9/10/2011 at 5:23 PM, usagi said:

ever watch this movie called 11'09''01? came out about a year after and was made up of short films contributed by various intl filmmakers. one of them, by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, is nothing but footage of jumpers intercut with dramatic black-screen pauses and incredibly dramatic slow-building emotional music

 

I thought it was a fucking travesty, in the fullest sense of the word

Just in case anyone's interested

It was the first day of college for me... I had gone to my first class and was going back up to my dorm room. I noticed a ton of people in the TV lounge area, down the hall, and thought it was odd so many people were watching tv in the morning. I went online, and someone had posted that the WTC was on fire. I realized that was probably what everyone was watching, so I went and joined them. When I walked in, all I could see was a single smoking tower, and I asked nervously "where is the other tower?" and in that second the second tower feel... My heart dropped and my stomach turned upside down. I continued to watch until the news anchor said that a plane had crashed in western PA. My parents were flying from Boston to Pittsburgh that morning, and I felt sick... I don't think I've ever ran as fast as I did that day, to get to a phone to call my parents. No one picked up, but I immediately called my sister after trying my parents, and I got through to her... She had just talked to them, but cell phones were hard to reach due to so much traffic.

The rest is mostly a blur of fear and confusion. I remember there were police officers on almost every intersection in Boston for several days after that... Such a surreal feeling.

I remember there was an indian girl in the dorms across from my room, and she asked me to accompany her when she went outside. I was confused and asked why. She said "they are saying it was middle eastern terrorists... It's about to be very bad being Indian, Arab, etc in this country... People are going to target anyone dark". She called it...

Several friends and I went to donate blood. I was turned away though, since I had gotten tattoos several months before. I just remember the walk to the hospital being terrifying... Everyone was so freaked out, and like

I said with the police everywhere...

Then not much longer later, the anthrax scare started... There were reports of suspicious mail at our school. It felt like doom was around every corner.

I was due to fly to Amsterdam on 10/11 then Blair declared a cease fly.

It fucked my holiday up a bit but getting drunk and stoned watching and it on TV in a coffee shop with an old mate who worked for Shell and knew his shit about the economy, oil ect made it an interesting few days of debate over historic and horrific events.

I live in a town with a very large Indian/Asian population and on 9/11 every Muslim gent was on each other doorstep not looking happy or pleased unlike the horrendous propaganda TV showing a minority of people in Afghanistan cheering in the streets which made me feel a little sick with the warped message this was putting out to the rest of the country.

Impo the US banks influence everything, the bush administration are servants to this cause and accept that you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs however I don't think the scale of the attack was quite what they expected to happen rather they were more expecting a few plane crashes or a more direct attack on government buildings hence the FBI building (tower 7?) curiously almost having a self destruct when evacuated which is perfectly logical to protect the data contained within.

Some say it was incompetence on the US governments part who were warned by many worldwide security departments that this was about to happen but I fail to believe that this was this an astute master plan by the Saudi aristocrat, Bin Laden to tip the US economy into a nosedive but rather a bunch of brain washed extremists who were almost allowed to exploit holes security as an excuse to get the US 12yr military industrial complex kick started plus whilst we're over there have a pop at Saddam before he fucks up the US dollar by selling oil in Euros and privatize the world second biggest oil reserves as a bonus? As a result people are killed, the rich are richer and the poor are robbed.

The tragedy of peoples lives in the aircraft, Pentagon, World Trade Center and tens of thousands of Afghanistan means little to those who influenced and will benefit from this atrocity and religion was just used as pawn in a bigger plot for the acquaintance of power and that's before we get onto Iraq.

A dark day and a pivotal point in which the civilized world ceased to prosper as things have been getting worse ever since and will continue to do so until the system of economic growth which keeps the world turning collapses completely.

Don't really remember much from that day. I just thought holy shit, awesomeeeee. It was too surreal to feel bad... I remember my granny saying they will blame it on Saddam to get the oil . she was not far from the truth.

I do remember feeling like a complete dick as it happened in class...some other kid stood up obviously shocked and said in the gayest voice imaginable,

" A 747? Oh my gawd that's like a freaking busplane."

At which point me and my friend fell out of our seats laughing.

Maybe I was eager to stop worrying about people I knew in that area. I dunno. Its so strange the emotions you can go through without your direct input/will ...hard to explain

  On 9/10/2011 at 6:47 PM, Ranky Redlof said:

Don't really remember much from that day. I just thought holy shit, awesomeeeee. It was too surreal to feel bad... I remember my granny saying they will blame it on Saddam to get the oil . she was not far from the truth.

She was not far from the truth, she was sitting on top of the truth and looking at it in the eyes

  On 9/10/2011 at 4:39 PM, Terpentintollwut said:

  On 9/9/2011 at 11:37 PM, Billov said:

I must have been 11 years old. I came home from school, poured a bowl of sugarpuffs and my parents were watching the news. I didn't really know what was happening or why it mattered. I think I was probably pissed off I couldn't flick over to some angry beavers on nickelodeon >:0

 

pretty much how I experienced it. I was pissed off at something before, don't remember what it was, so when my mother said "Strange thing is happening, two planes separately crashed into the same building in NYC", I think I even said "I don't give a shit" or something. Then later on I realized it was some actual fucked up shit going down when they interrupted the stuff I was watching o tv, and some postwoman who was on her route came into our house and watched the tv for some minutes. I don't remember the rest that well, but I was still a little angry I couldn't watch my shows ... kids can be real assholes sometimes.

 

yeup...

Jefferoo, was well worth reading your account bro. Really nothing can compare to the surreal shit storm of being there...

  On 9/10/2011 at 4:39 PM, Terpentintollwut said:

you mean they died that day or in the whole war shit it resulted in ... ?

the war shit. a friend of my dad's died in the towers, but i had friends i knew pretty well die in iraq and afghanistan.

at the time i was going through my super militant anarchist pacifist fight war not wars phase so a lot of my reaction to it was coloured by that. like, as horrible as the attack was, i knew instantly that our reprisal would be at least 10 fold if not more. makes me sick that it turned out so much worse.

still am a pacifist but not as much of an anarchist anymore.

ive had a lot of friends die in afghanistan, and my friends that are still here with me coming back from the wars....it was ridiculous some of the stories they told me. and the cost it had extracted from their psyche.

Maybe you see those pictures of the men in the chopper blowing up iraqi civilians and laughing about it, but I can assure you, there are plenty of soldiers that had served and have to live with the fact that they killed innocents and it does effect them.

yeah i think last year the death toll for suicides of soldiers who served in afghanistan was higher than the death toll of those who actually died in action. it's ludicrous what war does to people, and it's more ludicrous that we continue to wage it.

I have a close friend that has told me in grave detail some of the things he saw in the war in Iraq. He's been on meds and attempted suicide a couple of times. he now chooses to block it out and gets disgruntled if the topic is brought up.

I won't mention some of the stuff he said.

  On 9/10/2011 at 9:03 PM, asymmetrical head said:

 

I won't mention some of the stuff he said.

Why not? Does he read this board? I don't see a problem with sharing it here. I would seriously like to hear about it.

I'm currently reading Blackwater by Jeremy Scahill. Very interesting and detailed look at the private mercenary business that profited massively from 9/11.

I also recommend watching a documentary called "Shadow Company".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBrspkenZR4

one of the worst I can remember is (not naming theaters, names, anything out of respect)

Officers ordering soldiers to fire artillery batteries on villages because they "were bored".

  On 9/10/2011 at 12:39 AM, vamos scorcho said:

they told the teachers to turn it off of the tv.

 

the footage looked like independence day.

Independence Day was scheduled to air on one of the network stations that week, NBC I think.

I was in 10th grade, didn't see the footage until that afternoon. One teacher said, "I don't want to hear any nonsense about going to war or revenge, thousands of people just died." Another teacher, this half-Lebanese guy actually, started asking students about what they knew about terrorist organizations. It was inappropriate the way he asked, but at the same time, he made a point: a lot of kids had never heard of Bin Laden, barely recall any overseas events or any kind, or knew nothing about Afghanistan or the Taliban takeover. It was really aggravating, that even how horrifying and surreal the event was, to think so many people had no idea why this would occur.

My wife's uncle was in tower two and died in the attack. He was told to go back in the upstairs in the building by security and police.

At the time my dad was stationed at RAF Lakenheath at the time. Everyone I knew overseas had similar stories: bases were closed and secured with heavy machine guns and armored vehicles. Dependents off base were sought out and escorted back on base, often by armed personal. In Germany military personal kids in classes off-base were picked up by soldiers armed with assault rifles. No one had any idea what was going on.

One of the few things I remember I recall was watching a live statement by members of congress talking about their new-found solidarity. Someone broke into

God Bless America" and the rest joined in. As cheesy as it sounds it was actually kind of moving. It was the only time my cried the entire day. It's hard to even remember that happening now, with the state of America and the world 10 years later.

the entire world gets to see how 3,000 human beings die on live TV by terrorist action on US

100,000 to 600,000 human beings die with no media coverage as casualties of the resulting state sponsored war on Iraq

  On 9/10/2011 at 10:09 PM, m u st co n t r ol t h o 4 said:

the entire world gets to see how 3,000 human beings die on live TV by terrorist action on US

 

100,000 to 600,000 human beings die with no media coverage as casualties of the resulting state sponsored war on Iraq

the sad thing is there is coverage of it online, and elsewhere, we have all seen it. But the controlled media knows what happens when they broadcast the carnage from both sides (Vietnam War was a gigantic change in the way Americans perceived war).

We need to stop giving into apathy, and the irrational hatred of the "other party" and of ourselves.

  On 9/10/2011 at 10:36 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

  On 9/10/2011 at 10:09 PM, m u st co n t r ol t h o 4 said:

the entire world gets to see how 3,000 human beings die on live TV by terrorist action on US

 

100,000 to 600,000 human beings die with no media coverage as casualties of the resulting state sponsored war on Iraq

 

 

the sad thing is there is coverage of it online, and elsewhere, we have all seen it. But the controlled media knows what happens when they broadcast the carnage from both sides (Vietnam War was a gigantic change in the way Americans perceived war).

 

We need to stop giving into apathy, and the irrational hatred of the "other party" and of ourselves.

But... if it wasn't them, then it was someone else... I can't be wrong, I'm an American :sup:

Too much American exceptionalism exists imo. Idk how it is everywhere else, but does every nation think it's the best nation/place to live/be from? That's just the general consensus in America "even if it sucks, it's still the best place to live" You have no idea how many people believe this. We can't do wrong, our nation was created under God dagnabbit, and ain't no foreigners gonna be tellin' be how to run ma country. We should just nuke'em all to the stone age if you ask me. AMERIKUH! #1 USA!!!!

i got the dirtiest looks in this anthro class i am taking when the prof asked what makes an american an american and i said "an undeserved feeling of exceptionalism."

I was 13 when it happened.

I hate to say this, but I feel the US media is milking it really badly. It was a horrible event that happened, but the media really needs to lay off a bit, in my opinion. Is that wrong to say?

I hate how the US, not all Americans obviously, try to get everyone else to pity them and to justify their actions in the Middle East. I hate how the US, thanks to the media, put themselves up on a pedestal and look down on everyone else. I dunno... that is just my overall feeling of the States. I'm sure I'll get ripped for this.

  On 9/10/2011 at 11:36 PM, halisray said:

I hate to say this, but I feel the US media is milking it really badly. It was a horrible event that happened, but the media really needs to lay off a bit, in my opinion. Is that wrong to say?

god no it's not wrong to say, more people need to be expressing that opinion