Who's that knocking on my door?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wp4O7v5320

Nous sommes tous des américains.

Even if they spoiled it and turned even their most stalwart friends into anti-Americans by their later actions.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

My primary reaction is one of great sadness for the three thousand who died - many of whom had connections with people here in Ireland.

However there is also a feeling of great anger that those feelings were exploited by the neo-con mob to do what they were planning to do anyway - invade Iraq.  Scheuenmann (McCain's senior foreign policy adviser) and oher neo-cons had been calling for the invasion of Iraq for years - and now seized on 9/11 as a casus belli despite the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and the secular Baathist regime was a mortal enemy of Al Qaeda and other Islamic revolutionary groups.

However I am also tired of Bush being blamed for everything - that is too convenient an excuse.  He was re-elected, and now it looks like Bush III may well be elected in his place.

So we have to look for a deeper analysis of what is wrong with the USA.  It is not simply a case of a credulous people being duped by a small elite.  There seems to be a war like disposition within the USA which thinks that 1 US life is worth thousands of others.

After all the US killed millions in the carpet bombing of Vietnam and other conflicts since - all in the name of Freedom - American freedom to do more or less what they want to others whist accepting to responsibility for their own actions.

3000 dead is quite a small figure in the context of what the US routinely does to smaller nations.  The outrage over 9/11 is also a statement that really only US security and imperial power matters - everybody else doesn't count.

Sadly, therefore, a terrible tragedy for 3000 and their families has now become a symbol for an infantile rage directed against all others who do not accept US imperial rule without question.

The moral bankruptcy of Al Qaeda has been trumped by the far greater moral bankruptcy of a Nation with far greater power to do good - and yet chooses to do evil instead.

We gave the US a fool's pardon when they re-elected Bush.  Elect McCain and there is no excusing the supremacist mindset at the heart of his campaign.  You will have become the Fourth Reich.

Vote McCain for war without gain

First, to me it is elf september -- 11/9. The events are a long way back. I remember my little brother coming into my room at my parent's place back in Holland, saying best kut. So, that's for the 'where was I'.

The 'war on terrorism' has heralded in a new age of illiberalism and has been used for divisive purposes both domestically and internationally.

At the outset, I imagined a different kind of war on terror in which the 'moment' would be used for global partnership, to create stability, to expand what Thomas P.M. Barnett later called the 'core'.

Black ops, renditions, human rights abuses, I was willing to take those on board. As Billmon once wrote about himself, I ignored the fact that the US would do both that, and engage in conventional warfare in volatile areas that would draw it into open-ended guerrilla wars. I also wildly overestimated our own competence in every area, from strategic decision-making to tactics, to simple operational competence.

Anyway, some selected writing from back in the day:

I'm feeling numb right now - alt.atheism | Google Groups (September 11th)

Even from across the Atlantic, the tragedy is very unreal but yet
terribly real. Most of all it hurts. It hurts to hear the number of
possible deaths, it hurts to see the panic on the television, at this
stage, it hurts to see the way how the Americans are dealing with this
horrible event.

Have strength.

WTC plane bombs - alt.atheism | Google Groups (September 12th)

Mr. Bin Laden, if he is indeed responsible for this, issued an
official declaration of war a number of years ago, as far as the news
I'm getting is reliable. This is simply an act of war, like Pearl
Harbor was, though in that case we can be certain that the act came
prior to the official declaration, a tradition made popular by Hitler.

Now, you can't force a terrorist movement to fight a war on your
terms, so the war against terrorism will not be an ordinary war in
which large armed groups clash, which is not to say that it will not
get violent and ugly. Since talking does not appear to be an option,
the deal will basically be to weed it out while at the same time
trying not to (further) damage stability within the areas in which
intervention takes place. This is very difficult, of course.

Since it seems reasonable to suppose that terrorism (and not so much
rogue states) will remain the largest threat to the western world for
the coming decades, the armies need to change, with which they have
not been to fast because the existing power structures have been quite
effective in their opposition to these changes.

There is plenty to do, but war in a traditional sense does not seem to
be the course of action to take, unless there is a state behind this,
in which case it is relatively evident what is to be done.

>There is enough of a surplus of humans on this planet to justify the
>elimination of a few million zealous barbarians. Just remember that they
>initiated this atrocity.

This is just foolishness. What do you mean "they"? Anyone who is a
muslim fundamentalist and calls America the great satan can be held
responsible and killed now? How do you determine that this is even a
remotely valid criterion? Besides, this will lead to an even larger
radicalization of the anti-Americanism in the muslim world.

The Answer is Violence? - alt.atheism | Google Groups (September 13th)

The question 'why?' has a virtually unlimited scope and depth. What do
you want to know? The social processes that produce kamikaze pilots?
The geopolitical processes preceding this attack? We might equally
conclude from these considerations that we have to overthrow islamic
fundamentalism as we might conclude that America should go back to its
isolationist foreign policy of the interbellum.

Personally, I believe in the first option. The only long-term solution
to this problem is the spreading of democracy and democratic values,
which has its own requirements in turn.

On the short term we have to prevent similar attacks from taking
place. Talking to terrorists is not an option right now, because of
the general feeling in America, because the demands they are likely to
make will be entirely unreasonable. These are brainwashed fanatics.
They are also hurt by America's foreign policy, but the dumb fact is
that you can't be friends with everyone if you're a global superpower
with quite a few interests of your own. The US should think thrice
before funding another rebellion, but that can't be made undone now.

This leaves us with violence. I see no impossibility in seriously
reducing the capability of terrorist networks like Bin Laden's to make
attacks against American targets through violence, if it is directed
and executed in the right way, i.e. against the leaders. We should not
be shy in this as the terrorists themselves have not proven themselves
unwilling of doing this, besides of which these are not government
leaders.

We can of course analyse for years and years, but there comes a time
for action. When that time comes, and I believe it to be soon, it is
important that we act as one and that we act in a way which harms our
long-term policy as little as possible.

WTC plane bombs - alt.atheism | Google Groups (September 17th)

>If we have truly declared a war against terrorism, it is not enough to take
>out the terrorists. Governments, organizations, and people who support
>terrorism, encourage terrorism, and/or tolerate terrorism can not be allowed
>to exist. That is because these entities pose just as much of a threat to
>civilization as the terrorists themselves. If we took out bin Laden and his
>organization, but left the Taliban in place - we have only bought ourselves
>time. When you're getting rid of weeds, you have to pull them out by the
>root. I've heard talk about eliminating (i.e. killing/assassinating) Saddam
>Hussein. One congressman and member of the strategic arms commitee said "I
>can not imagine a world without terrorism - or with significantly less
>terrorism - that has Saddam Hussein in it."

The problem with this is that there is no natural solution for the
political problem in Iraq. The majority of the people in the country
are shi'ite muslims, the government is sunnite and the north is
largely populated by Kurds. A Kurdish state is not really possible
because this would involve large parts of Turkey, Syria and Iran.

A number of things could happen if Saddam is brought to justice, it is
possible that another sunnite from his circle takes over, there is no
reason to believe that this will lead to a less oppressive government.
The shi'ites could overthrow the government and take over, which leads
to a number of options, a shi'ite controlled Iraq, a complete or
partial merger with Iran, or a shi'ite state in the south.

Any of these three would be accompanied by a lot of chaos and strife,
but perhaps a more stable situation might emerge. As I understood it,
problem is that the US was rather apprehensive about a successful
shi'ite rebellion as this would strengthen the position of Iran, not a
state known for its firm opposition to terrorism either, it must be
added.

>Based on what I've heard from our leaders and the analysts, I would be
>shocked if we didn't use military force to remove the Taliban from power in
>Afghanistan, find bin Laden, his network, and eliminate them. I would also
>be shocked if Afghanistan was the only country we focused on, I've heard
>speculation about Iraq, Sudan, and others that I can't remember right now.

Sudan is a very interesting thing from the viewpoint of domestic
politics of course, they've got rebel christians in the south fighting
a dictatorial muslim government in the north.

I know the US feels it has a strong resolve at this moment, but I
don't know how strong that resolve will remain after fighting for
years in countries as inhospitable and anarchic as Afghanistan or
Sudan. We have to ask ourselves the question if this is a necessary
course to take in preventing future terrorist attacks.

>Just about the only thing I wouldn't support is the use of nuclear weapons,
>but if the Taliban followed through on their threats to retaliate to any
>military action - and they hit either the capital building, the white house,
>and/or the Sears tower, I could be made to change my mind on even that. I
>pray (in the figurative sense) that civilian casualties remain as low as
>possible, but if Afghans heed the crys of their leaders to join the "holy
>war" against us, they will die. I doubt Bush will make the grave mistake
>Lyndon B. Johnson made during Vietnam, forcing our soldiers to fight a war
>with one hand tied behind their back, to fight a war with rules - as if such
>a thing were possible.

A war with rules is not a problem, as long as those rules are directed
towards winning it. Being selective where and who you strike can be a
very important thing in fighting the Taliban, you don't want to set
the entire population up against you and behind them, after all. The
problem with Vietnam, as far as I can tell from watching documentaries
about it, was that domestic and international politics dominated the
strategy from the beginning, instead of winning the war.

>If my words seem harsh or particularly hawkish, let
>me just say that I despise war, but they have chosen to create a situation
>where it is either us or the terrorists.

If you think this a collective decision They made, just be careful who
you include in that category.

>It will be us.

Though am pretty upbeat about our capability to complete a successful
operation against global terrorism, whether or not we actually will
pull this off will depend on what general strategy we take and how
well we think it out.

Perhaps overlong, but you know, you asked what it means to me. Largely, it has increased my distrust of all politicians and solidified my perception that I tend to make better calls than they do.

For me it isn't about the larger political context. It's the memories of that day.  I lived in Manhattan back then, way uptown in Morningside Heights. It was far enough away that like most of the world I got the news through the TV. It was close enough that like all New Yorkers, I also experienced it in ways that were not filtered through the media.

My girlfriend was moving that day, she'd been staying at my place for a few months while looking for a place. We argued - that was normal, the relationship was dying, or rather dead. It was becoming clear that the attempt to get back together had not been a good idea. I guess after almost a decade together we needed to really prove that to each other. She stormed out on her own to meet the movers in the Village. After a few minutes of steaming I turned on the TV and prepared to follow her to help out. Instead of 'Weather on the Ones' I got a picture of one of the WTC towers with smoke streaming out. I figured some idiot in a private plane had screwed up. A minute or two later I watched in shock as a jetliner crashed into the other tower.

to be continued if folks are interested...

9/11 is of course the date of an extraordinary event, but  it even more signals a sharp turn in :

• how I (we) view the US.
  
• how the US behaves in the world.

Uptill then, even though the incredible creativity and inventiveness of the 60s, the energy of the 70s were far away, in spite of Reagan or Monica Levinsky, the US still managed to keep some of this aura of the Last Frontier, where one could live up one's dreams.

The events which have unfolded since on the world stage, the incredible nastiness of the internal political scene, the slow erosion of basic individual rights, the contempt for the rule of law, and now these unbelievable polls which show McBush even with or ahead of Obama, they all drive forcefully the same point, which is that those famous "common values" we are supposed to share are dangerously thinning away.

And this is not a small turn of events.

American fundamentalism is being transformed by globalization, as if by a catalyst, into something very deadly.

At the time I knew I was living a watershed moment of history (the only other time in my life I've felt this was the 19/8/91 coup in the USSR).

Today, I didn't realise it was 9/11 until I read Helen's comment on the Open Thread about the anniversary of the Chilean coup of 1973. Even seeing your title on the diary list I didn't make the connection.

A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith

I was in work in a strange office shared half and half between techies and creatives in a perpetual haze of mutual cultural incomprehension. When I first heard I burst out laughing. I thought it was some dumb single engined plane, probably killed himself in a Darwin award headline and nobody else.

Then they said it was an airliner and we went "wha...? How ???"

then the second plane hit and I sat down and don't think I blinked for 2 hours. I didn't think, I couldn't think. It was just the most shocking thing I've ever seen and I couldn't wrap my head around it. The newsroom was quiet (I was at the BBC then), baffled ; how do you sum it up ? how could you sum it up ? One of our regular customers was later tasked to go through all the footage and sort out which would be retained for archive. It took him 4 days, but he had to have a week off to recover from watching it again and again and again and begin to not see it in his head.

Frantic phone calls with a friend to find out if we had news of someone we knew who might have been in the the WTC. It took me a day to find his wife's in-laws in Upstate New York and another day to get confirmation he was okay.

The stories of the people on the planes still haunt me, the stewardess who was on the phone at the moment of collision will never leave me. Their resignation, I've never read a single one of those stories and not cried floods of tears.

And it is only this year that I can see a picture of the plane not hitting the tower and not flinch and close my eyes, whilst hating, really hating the person that put that image back on my tv screen and how cheaply they did it.

I cannot imagine how the republicans can put a video of it at the convention, how they can be so callous. People's deaths used as a marketing prop ? and these filth are at 46% in the polls ? Evidently most of us became Americans that day, whilst republicans couldn't even become human.

That's what 911 means to me. How it was abused is another matter entirely.

keep to the Fen Causeway

I was a Senior in high school back in South Florida.  I walked into my English class after the morning Music Theory class (in which we had no idea what had happened).  Walked in, saw the tv, and thought, "What the hell is going on?"  Watched for a while, and then noticed people jumping from the buildings.  People crying.  Others shouting.  Then the first tower fell, and we all sat stunned.  Second tower fell after what seemed like just a few seconds.  News of the Pentagon worried all of us, since my aunt occasionally went to it for work.  Took about three hours to find she was okay.  Uncle was on the Metro at the time, wound up walking home from Crystal City and seeing the hole in the Pentagon.  Quote a scene.

For me, it's mostly anger.  At the perpetrators, and at the Bush administration for exploiting the events.  Explains my political views pretty well, though, at least as far as foreign policy goes.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

I probably can dedicate an essay to what 9/11 means for me personally. It's probably my generation's JFK moment - I had that afternoon no lectures and was delivering mail. My route was a two-parter: halfway I had to get back to the distribution building to get my second load and I was sorting the last bits when the news of four o'clock came by on the radio.

One of those moments you go, "What? WHAT?!? WHAT did he say?"

But I still had to finish my work and get home by train - it was half past seven when I got back, already distraught, and by that time both towers had collapsed.

First incomprehension and rage. Then sadness. And now added, disappointment. Disappointment because 9/11 has been so blatantly used for the political gains of the neocons, and the lies that were fed to the public enabled them to bring the USA into its downward political spiral. And now, seven years down the line, we are still being fed the identical lies, lies that keep killing the innocent, and lies dragged rough-shod over the graves of the victims of 9/11. And that is a disgrace I find a very hard to stomach.

I'll repost the poem I added two years ago in the commemorating thread of 2006. As I wrote then, 9/11 is also probably my personal watershed of losing the last of childish innocence, and tripped me into taking greater interest in world politics. (Would I be posting at ET if 9/11 hadn't happened?)

Nomad:

Gemini

1995
seventeen and long-haired
never deserted
the narthex of innocence
cool
windowpane
against cheek
the antcity underneath
my reflection
is sprawling
against all corners
of the world
here on
the navel the
paragons of orient
sky trembles
still
with blue

2001
and even the stars can fall;
even Eng and Chang died synchronous
the fusillade, the
dying crumple
murderers of truth, murderers
of insanity
murderers, murderers
raped innocence for good
a city discrowned
craped in sobs of rended smoke
when my history flaked
loose and
what I saw was
the traffic-light jump
from green
to orange
to red:
ne plus ultra

             ~12-09-2001

When I woke up around 6:45 AM PDT (we were living on the Peninsula), Bob Edwards on NPR's Morning Edition was talking over the phone to someone at the NYFD and I understood there was some big fire at the WTC and it was really serious.

Then we got into the morning routine of rousing the kids, breakfast, getting them into the minivan, driving to the bus stop, getting them into the school bus bound to the French school in San Francisco...

It's only once back home that I watched on TV what had happened across the country: one tower was gone and the second was just collapsing...

Elsewhere, in the Bay area, other families were woken up by a phone call from a parent sitting in United flight 93 bound to SFO airport, telling them their plane had been hijacked, that they'd learned what had happened to the other planes and that they were going to try to regain control...

On KQED, they announced that the FAA had grounded all flights in the US. The only public face shown on TV all day was Giuliani's. Bush/Cheney were nowhere to be found until much later in the evening.

Later in the morning, an unexpected sound: I watched through the window to see a 747 from Thai Airways on the landing path to San Francisco Airport and a few seconds after, a F16 fighter jet. I learned later that the captain argued with the authorities that they didn't have enough fuel left to divert to Canada, so they let them land at SFO after warning them that any "suspicious" move would cause them to be shot down...

Their flight had left Bangkok maybe 12 hours earlier, but they were landing in a radically new country, a country where colleagues of mine, decent, mild mannered folks, would seriously consider dropping nukes on Afghanistan (Iraq wasn't put into the picture just yet). I hadn't fully realized it yet (we moved back to France the year after), but to this day, it is indeed a radically different country, and our view of it, as Europeans, has decidedly changed (Exhibit A: Martin's diary and the comments), even for this European who was living there at the time.

Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.

I won't re-type what I wrote a year ago. Some quotes:

...But first check the news. I switched on TV, and flipped to CNN.

What I saw was a burning WTC North, and then the impact into WTC South.

It was a replay, but only maybe twenty minutes later...

...As the magnitude of the attack became clear (or not clear -- at the time, casualty estimates ran up into the ten thousands), a knot grew in my stomach. A feeling that this event will have consequences, even worse consequences.

...the second big shock. Part of my American friends, who used to be sane people, turned into raving lunatics, demanding the nuking of Afghanistan or all the Middle East. And it wasn't just words, they meant it, it became clear as the forum descended into a flame war between them and the rest of us (including most Americans).

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

My 9/11 started in 1999, when almost everything went very badly wrong and seemed to stay wrong for a long time. Bush's election was a step down a slippery slope, and 9/11 seemed like an expression of something that had been under the surface for a long time.

I was horrified but not entirely surprised. After some anxious moments it turned out that both of my contacts in NYC were fine - although one had a lucky escape by being very late for work.

Mostly I was furious with Bush because it seemed like such a blackly tawdry and almost predictable piece of death theatre to be associated with.  

I haven't changed my mind about any of that - you don't need to believe in shaped charges to understand that 9/11 was wholly preventable. I continued to be furious during the anthrax scares, and the relentless political exploitation of the event afterwards.

Things didn't really start to settle until Katrina. It seemed clear then that we were far beyond any kind of reliance on humanity. Some of the Anglo world in general, and the US Republican core in particular, now worships at a very different shrine.

After seven years it feels like the event has been milked dry. The charge has been dissipated to some extent, and it's almost possible to parody the exploitation.

9/11 played out as a giant public sacrament for the bottom feeders, and it's more crucial than ever to make sure that a relatively sane and talented, if occasionally slightly confused, black politician wins the next election - because it's not so unlikely that the alternative would be an orgy of even more spectacular horrors.

It appears that a lot of the comments are more focused on reactions to the events of 9/11. I'll start there, then go to 'meaning'.

I was in shock for four days - usual weekday routine of work and at home, but strictly by rote. The following Sunday (I think), NPR (as I recall) transmitted a performance of Faure's Requiem - from St. Paul's Church in NYC (I believe). Then I started to cry and couldn't stop for several minutes. Kyrie eleison.

As to meaning - 9/11 in NYC was just another day - like 9/11/73 in Santiago or the day-after-day that the Marines shot everything that moved in Fallujah or 12/7/41 in Hawaii or 8/6/45 and 8/9/45 in Japan - or you name it. We have so many of these days that the fact that they don't simply run continuously is about our only blessing in this regard.

It is a very good thing that we have some of the political developments that defined the social/political experiment that we call the U.S.A. But the experiment has - more than once - blown up the laboratory. This time we seem to have very nearly demolished the infrastructure, too. It may be time to move the remaining domestic scientists to a more hospitable region.

Meantime, we'll fight the good fight and sing the old songs.

paul spencer

It was early evening when a friend called me up with news--which frankly made no sense--and insisted I come over to watch the late evening news (she knew I had no TV).  So my first exposure was the news at the end of the day.  

By that time, almost all information--if it had ever existed--had been leached out.  All that was left was one video clip--of the second plane crashing into the tower with a big explosion--shown obsessively over and over and over.  

It looked like something from a movie.  This should have been a clue, even as the obsessive replay of the one single clip was a clue, but it was months before I caught on.  

With the sinking feeling of icy calm that sometimes comes to me in moments of real, physical crisis, I realized what was going to happen.  The US was at war--or would go to war--somewhere.  And all civil liberties and everything but the flimsy shell of a fake-democracy were over forever.  It would be complete in six months.  

(Of course, I was wrong:  It actually took six years.)  

I discovered how deeply clueless my friends could be.  They never understood what was coming, and mostly still don't, even after it has arrived.  A spooky feeling.

I wondered about the enemy.  It seemed a very clever attack, and I wondered what a clever enemy would do next.  I could think of a dozen possibilities, and watched for them.  None of them happened.  NOTHING happened.  After the better part of a year, I realized there was no enemy--that the existence of an enemy was incompatible with the absence of further strategically purposeful actions.  Then I started learning about the physical circumstances of the WTC collapses, and all doubt was removed.  I did not know HOW it was done, or precisely who, but the only possibility was that 9/11 was an inside job.  Adding to that, the fact that there was still no criminal investigation (3000 people murdered and NO investigation!) was telling.  

By the time the "Jersey girls" (ordinary housewives demanding an ordinary inquiry into how their husbands had died) were being slagged in the media--too obvious!--yet still nobody getting it.  

It took me back.  In November 1963 President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  I sensed there was something wrong with the official story, but I did not really get it.  Young as I was, I should have gotten that the official story violated the laws of physics.  Later, I learned physics in detail and KNEW.  And also knew that there were thousands of physicists and engineers in the US alone who knew that the story was a lie, right at the time, but everyone pretended otherwise.  

And then there was 1968, and now 2001.  The encompassing lies are the most informative.  You can never lose enough faith.  

But living among clueless believers is very strange.  Their emotions get to me:  So very sentimental, so very stereotyped, and so firmly rooted in a world that does not even exist.  

The Fates are kind.

You know, I don't think I've ever written about this. These are my distinct memories.

Day of:

I woke up late, to an everyday radio host who was out of character for obvious reasons.

Watched TV for 10 minutes, drove fast to work.

Watched the towers fall on TV at work.

Did actual work for most of the afternoon. My initial guess was domestic terrorism.

I was a bit shocked, of course, but that's it. I had no emotional reaction at the time - I don't get emotional for people I haven't met, and in the grand scheme of history it was only marginally unique.

I was genuinely surprised by the number of people saying things like "I had to hook up with my ex that night because I couldn't be alone..." I suppose it temporarily knocked people out of the emotional vacuum that so many of us live in.

During the first several weeks after:

The lack of airplane noise was disconcerting, as I had lived within 10 miles of a large international airport for most of my life. The very faint drone of F-16s doing patrol many thousands of feet above the city made it worse. The world felt dangerous.

Late that September I was out on a date. We were at a club, had had a few drinks, we were flirting and she touched my arm, and I knew then it was going to be a good night - but in that moment of vulnerability, that famous photo of the man falling to his death flashed in my head, and I almost lost it. I'm sure the expression on my face didn't change, but I've never been so close to losing it in public as an adult. The pain and emotions were intense, and I don't know how I held it together.

In the following months:

The more US flags I saw, the more the "unreconstructed leftist" I had become during college melted away, to be replaced with something that today I feel is more realistic. Any philosopher who wrote of "natural rights" was tossed in the bin along with all the Christian concepts I was shedding around the same time such as learned helplessness. I used to like the flag and enjoyed the national anthem. Today, I don't exactly dislike them - but they give me pause, and I often sigh inside. I wasn't in NYC when it happened, obviously, and the flags were the sensory event related to 9-11 that I couldn't handle. Frankly, I can draw a direct path from this to my interest in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. The American response was not unusual by historical means, but too many people I respected were saying it was, and I needed a way to deal with it.

One day in December I drove to a bookstore to look for another book on origami. I forgot that it was both a Saturday and the holiday shopping season, and the mall I was going to had a small parking lot. I was quickly pinned in with no escape. The truck in front of me cut off a BMW coming from the other direction for a parking spot. She got out of the car and screamed bloody murder at the driver. Little had changed. I did get a good book on origami boxes.

The night after the bombing began, and for the weeks to follow, I did my best to stay away from the TV, internet, and radio. That night, though, I was driving to the gym, and I couldn't resist. I turned on the radio - not even right wing talk radio, mind you, and heard this: I'll get a gun and start shooting all those damn towel heads myself! The radio was on for three seconds at most.

At the time I had difficulty understanding why so many people were taking it so badly, and why so many turned to racism and nationalism. In retrospect it's clear - many worldviews were fatally wounded that day. I'm not sure how well Europeans can relate to that, as the racism and nationalism is all the external world saw, and the European myths about America that died that day (and were created, for that matter) were not the same.

I've had and continue to have trouble with the conspiracy theorizing of all political stripes. For me it underscores the poor psychological health of this culture in particular, and most of Europe as well. The opacity and complexity of modern societies are such enormous obstacles for the human mind to negotiate in a healthy manner.

you are the media you consume.

the events or the date?

the date is my national holiday, so it is bascially a party

the event we celebate is defeat three hundred years ago.. catalan people , we are weird. Count around 5000-20000 casualties

In Chile, dictature coming, I guess, would be the event.
In that day less than 1000 deaths..along the next year put it in the ten thousands.. so chile still is rememberes

In the US they had their worst terrorist attack with roughly 2000-4000 dead. Not that important, but we ahd pictures and movies, which we did not ha in 1714, and hardly in chile..

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

I was too young to understand the full consequences. 911 was merely a tragedy for people who had lived it.

I started to get it when I moved to NY and felt the raging pulse towards the Iraq War. 911, had not existed politically before it was used by the Bush Administration to justify, morally, a war.

I recently read The concept of 911 by Habermas and Derrida. They discuss the theory of incommunication that 911 exemplifies. It has divided the world between the rationals and the fundamentalists; argued that antagonism was integral to understanding differences around the world.

911 is abject. Only for too many reasons.

Rien n'est gratuit en ce bas monde. Tout s'expie, le bien comme le mal, se paie tot ou tard. Le bien c'est beaucoup plus cher, forcement. Celine

The end of the American Dream.

I was in the Midwest that day. Two conversations come to mind. I was at a friend's place, sitting around the kitchen table, while his wife was giving his infant daughter a bath in the sink. He looked over at her and said, "You know, she will live the the consequences of this day through her life."

Later we went out to our favourite redneck bar, shoot a game of pool. Not many there that night, the local bookie as usual by the end of the bar, a bartender, handful of regulars, blue collars, and a couple random drunks. One of the drunks began waxing eloquent about nuking the middle east. The bookie, a keen observer of the human condition,  looked up at him and said, "Dude, shaddup and siddown. This was coming. We've bombed 'em for years. Paybacks are a bitch."

All the regulars nodded.

I have no visual memories of 9/11.  Not real ones.  I was at home with my younger child, and, of course, the TV wasn't on.  I heard about it in the school playground when picking up my older child, and my first reaction was disbelief.  I think I replied in the first instance that there must be a mistake, because it was impossible that two planes could have hit the towers...

So my memories are of sitting in the kitchen, leaning on the table with my head in my hands and listening to the radio.  (I could hardly tune in our sole television to a live disaster scene when I had two young children in the house).  They're of the three days it took to get an email reply from someone I knew was staying in one of the WTC hotels.

It means the local murder of Ross Parker, a white British youth stabbed by two British Pakistani youths in the immediate aftermath. It means a lot that their own community handed them in to the police.  And that when the loathsome BNP (a far-right) party turned up to try to exploit his murder, it was Ross's family who told them to get on the train and go home.

But, most personally, it means the way I saw the Muslim mums at the school gate retreat from the non-Muslim mums over the following weeks, and the proliferation of hijabs from a minority to a majority choice.

My basic reaction was that international terror had finally come to America in a way that wouldn't be ignored. I did not think of it in terms of politics, human rights or American military power.

As a government security professional working overseas, I had access to much of the "secret" information about terrorists and their targeting. Bin Laden and al Qaeda were not new words nor were their activities. So, the attack was surprizing in scope and specifics but hardly unanticipated. I had come to believe that al Qaeda was a capable, patient, dedicated adversary that would carry out attacks until it succeeded or was eliminated. No morality lessons, just fact.  The terrorists attack, you parry successfully or live with the mess.

The politicians get to try and explain how and why it happened and what they are doing to prevent it from happening again. The moralists get to explain what we did to deserve it and how badly we reacted.

I can swear there ain't no heaven but I pray there ain't no hell. _ Blood Sweat & Tears

Turned on the TV when somebody told me there was an attack on New York.

It stayed on. The endless reel of the video of the second plane is what I remember now. Stunned disbelief at the facts that were on the voice-over, and a kind of dissociation due to distance (the Atlantic) and the strange perfection of the blue-skied video -- the impression that this was video art, an installation, Warhol might have made it.

An attempt to think rationally like an informed citizen: what does this mean? War, certainly.

An unmanaged, unbidden thought, creating no emotion of one kind or another, stealing in once, twice: this is the beginning of the end of the American Empire.

[Events and timelines may have become distorted in my memory.]

I was in the room of the apartment in Germany.
The lady of my life at the time was there, her son and his schoolfriend. BBC News 24 was on in the background while the kids played some game and I was doing something to the hardware of a PC in the corner.

Replays of the 2nd plane hitting the tower turned up on-screen. I didn't feel deeply for the people at that moment, any more than you tend to when shown violence on 24 hour cable news in general. Then the lady mentioned that "aren't the software guys in that building?"

Where we both worked was involved in rolling out internet access to customers and on top of this was a software platform to make various things "user friendly."

The hardware team was pretty multinational, but the Internet specific H/W team was pretty USian in composition. Indeed, some would say some of my working life was spent interfacing between them and other parts of the organisation.

But the software team, they were in Tower 2? I never met any of them, it was all remote working and telephones. Still, it was a numbing thought and a numbing reality. Much more for those who worked closer with them than I did. Some were hit very hard.

I didn't know any of them that well, so the personal effect was muted. But at the same time, I trace the ripples outward. The company's offering was knocked off course by the loss of that team. It wasn't the only factor, but it was one. And many good people lost their livelihoods as the company hit Chapter 11. Not important perhaps compared to the loss of life... but that is the effect on my life and many I cared about. A great international, multi-cultural group were discarded and spread to the four points of the compass. So, though I barely knew some people we lost that day, the ripples ran through my life and changed it at a personal level.

Geopolitically, as someone who lived and studied and worked in the US in the second half of the 90s... I suppose I echo Migeru. The US I knew disappeared in following years. The openness to the world that was imperfect but actually growing and improving in that period went into reverse...

I saw it happen on my stock market website. Not sure what I was working on, but  was following the makrets regularly, and saw the sharp drop to the indices, and then the capital letters news items - "WTC struck" "WTC - 2nd tower struck" (that's when I knew this was seriously bad) and then, for the first time ever, full cap letters titles "WTC TOWER HAS COLLAPSED" then "SECOND WTC TOWER COLLAPSES". I then went home to try to actually watch the news rther than trying to follwo it by internet (mostly overwhelmed).

I remember reacting - shit, they will overreact. I remember that pretty muh everything that transpired in the past few years was announced in the papers on 12 September - I've kept them all and they all did an amazing job that day of putting the event in perspective.

I remember this: self-righteous we're-the-good-guys-ism, with a large side order of revenge (and it struck me as especially revelaing in that respect that the Republicans film on 9/11 at the last convention started with the 1979 hostage crisis - revenge unsated is what the Republicans work with, and they got a massive boost on 9/11.

Article from the Miami Herald

Written by: Leonard Pitts Jr.
Published Wednesday, September 12, 2001

We'll go forward from this moment

It's my job to have something to say.  They pay me to provide words that help make sense of that which troubles the American soul. But in this moment of airless shock when hot tears sting disbelieving eyes, the only thing I can find to say, the only words that seem to fit, must be addressed to the unknown author of this suffering.

You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard. What lesson did you hope to teach us by your coward's attack on our World Trade Center, our Pentagon, us? What was it you hoped we would learn? Whatever it was, please know that you failed. Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your cause. Did you want to make us fear? You just steeled our resolve. Did you want to tear us apart? You just brought us together. Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome family, a family rent by racial, social, political and class division, but a family nonetheless. We're frivolous, yes, capable of expending tremendous emotional energy on pop cultural minutiae -- a singer's revealing dress, a ball team's misfortune, a cartoon mouse. We're wealthy, too, spoiled by the ready availability of trinkets and material goods, and maybe because of that, we walk through life with a certain sense of blithe entitlement. We are fundamentally decent, though -- peace-loving and compassionate. We struggle to know the right thing and to do it. And we are, the overwhelming majority of us, people of faith, believers in a just and loving God.  Some people --you, perhaps -- think that any or all of this makes us weak.  You're mistaken. We are not weak. Indeed, we are strong in ways that cannot be measured by arsenals.

IN PAIN

Yes, we're in pain now. We are in mourning and we are in shock. We're still grappling with the unreality of the awful thing you did, still working to make ourselves understand that this isn't a special effect from some Hollywood blockbuster, isn't the plot development from a Tom Clancy novel.

Both in terms of the awful scope of their ambition and the probable final death toll, your attacks are likely to go down as the worst acts of terrorism in the history of the United States and, probably, the history of the world. You've bloodied us as we have never been bloodied before. But there's a gulf of difference between making us bloody and making us fall. This is the lesson Japan was taught to its bitter sorrow the last time anyone hit us this hard, the last time anyone brought us such abrupt and monumental pain. When roused, we are righteous in our outrage, terrible in our force. When provoked by this level of barbarism, we will bear any suffering, pay any cost, go to any length, in the pursuit of justice. I tell you this without fear of contradiction. I know my people, as you, I think, do not. What I know reassures me. It also causes me to tremble with dread of the future. In the days to come, there will be recrimination and accusation, fingers pointing to determine whose failure allowed this to happen and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. There will be heightened security, misguided talk of revoking basic freedoms. We'll go forward from this moment sobered, chastened, sad. But determined, too. Unimaginably determined.

THE STEEL IN US

You see, the steel in us is not always readily apparent. That aspect of our character is seldom understood by people who don't know us well. On this day, the family's bickering is put on hold.  As Americans we will weep, as Americans we will mourn, and as Americans, we will rise in defense of all that we cherish. So I ask again: What was it you hoped to teach us? It occurs to me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If that's the case, consider the message received. And take this message in exchange: You don't know my people. You don't know what we're capable of. You don't know what you just started.

But you're about to learn.

And this

Be Cool, America. War??? Think it Over
By Matt Taibbi, the exile, 24 September 2001

The terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center used a ploy that any halfway decent chess player would see through at first glance. They sought out our weakness as a people and dared us to stare it in the face, knowing we would not. That weakness is our belief in our ability to control the world absolutely by force. The truth is, you can't control anything, absolutely, by force. On the world stage, as in our day-to-day lives, we are completely dependent on the civility of other people. No amount of vigilance can prevent the man next to you on the subway from sticking a knife in your back. If you watch the first guy, the second will get you. The trick is to make it worth everyone's while to behave. That's what civilization is all about.

There will be no incentive for anyone to behave once the war starts. Our politicians will be safe. Our current administration, which swept into office with the support of about 25% of the population, will remain in office for as long as the war goes on, with a near 100% mandate, insulated from political risk by the insane idea that dissidence in times of war is equal to treason. The terrorists on the other side will be the last ones in their countries to suffer. In the meantime, it's the rest of us--the people outside the presidential bunkers and the secret hideouts in the hills--who will pay the price, spending the next decade or so eating bombs and smallpox and gas and rationed food, bought with the last of our increasingly worthless dollars.

The alternative? Swallowing the attack on New York and pursuing a political solution.

My thoughts: this was the time to push international law forward, using the fact that nobody would dare object if the US showed restraint. Instead, the US came down to the level of the barbarians, past and present. Force, revenge, war - all the things that we had been trying to tame, painstakingly (with the US usually in the lead since at least WWII), were released once again - and from the very place that had claimed we could do better.

What if there had been a better president at that time?

Instead, Americans turned out to be no better than the rest of us, which is a pity. Trouble is, they still haven't realised it, collectively, and I fear what it will take to happen (but it will happen).

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

It was the last day of a two week holiday on the isle of Rhodes, having spent the two weeks visiting every ruin available, we'd decided to spend the last day sitting by the small hotel pool, drinking, finishing the reading materials and catching the sun.

The barmanwas busy making drinks when the phone started ringing , and just didn't stop. so he stopped making my drinks after a minute and flicked the TV from Europop to CNN. some idiot had just flown an aircraft into the WTC, after five minutes he was just about to turn back to his taste of eurodisco, when a second aircraft hit. after an initial shock of people thinking it was a replay of the first, the situation slowly dawned. the space round the bar slowly filled, as each person turned up round the bar toget drinks only to be met with people already watching, or turned up to ask partners/relatives why they hadn't come back.

Much of the rest of the afternoon was spent trying to find out what was happening with our early morning flights home the next morning, where they happening? were we going to be stuck on Rhodes? Was anyone going to be flying anywhere the next morning? if not, what was our hotel situation going to be?

Fortunately we were on the first planes out the next morning, and I've never been on a trip with a more twitchy, paranoid selection of passengers and crew.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.