10 years later by mal4prez

If you're wanting to tear off old scabs like I just did, this will do it:

And the song of the night is:

http://www.zappinternet.com/video/ViMsTofFek/Bob-Dylan-The-Times-they-
are-A-changin-1965

Funny how a song can be so pessimistic, as it was in Watchmen (God, I love that intro). I'm trying to tie it to something more hopeful:

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Saturday, September 10, 2011 3:00 PM

BYTEMITE

I have to confess, I didn't have much reaction to 9-11. I was sad for the people who died, of course, and mildly surprised, but other than that, I suppose I'm just kind of psychologically empty.

However, just because I can't fully understand the reaction other people had, I will try to respect it and refrain from further comment. And also to wish you all well, and that nothing bad happens tomorrow.

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Saturday, September 10, 2011 4:14 PM

John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!

This week on Warehouse 13, an FBI agent did a controlled demolition of a skyscraper using thermite, to assassinate Warehouse agents.

As the Warehouse agents tried to get down from the top floor, the lower stairwells and elevators were melted by thermite.

...just like WTC survivors said on 9/11.

Thank the gods Warehouse 13 agents use waterboarding. It works! (Dont cha no)

My TV show last night: Dr Steven Jones PhD in Physics finds Thermite in WTC dust
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2716859370837364542&emb=1&hl=
en
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5508439006201634871
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2753746885394605164

Hollywood winner as seen on History Channel and Asahi TV in Japan
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5095012753871278980&hl=en
http://September911Surprise.PirateNews.org
www.September911Surprise.com (banned by webmaster jews at Alex Jones' Infowars.net)

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Saturday, September 10, 2011 4:24 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

A very good friend of mine, who worked for CNN... long story short, she saw the destruction from the NJ shore...

I hate it for her, that she saw it..

She sat on the shores of Jersey, and saw it all...

I want , even today, to take those images away.........but I can't.

" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "

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Saturday, September 10, 2011 4:25 PM

John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:

I have to confess, I didn't have much reaction to 9-11. I was sad for the people who died, of course, and mildly surprised, but other than that, I suppose I'm just kind of psychologically empty.

What a coincidence, that's what this guy said:

http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.asp?b=18&t=49601

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Saturday, September 10, 2011 4:29 PM

DREAMTROVE

Tuesday morning I was watching Tv with friends, assuring them that the building would not fall, because that defied the laws of physics, i was astounded when they did. It did not take me very long to come to the conclusion that itwas a set up. Shortly after that I tried to talk a conspiracy theorist into the idea, with no success.

Some things are obvious. Pirate news is essentially correct here, even if he is off on some of the particulars, the spirit of what he is trying to say is basically correct. It was a pretty emotional time in new york, we were attacked by terrorists, even if those terrorists wear red white and blue, as they wrap themselves in the flag.

Meanwhile, they ignore the heroes so they can trasnfer that role and continue to heroize the invasion of afghanistan.

Feels like that now. Today seems so normal, and yet...

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Saturday, September 10, 2011 4:35 PM

John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

A very good friend of mine, who worked for CNN... long story short, she saw the destruction from the NJ shore...

I hate it for her, that she saw it..

She sat on the shores of Jersey, and saw it all...

I want , even today, to take those images away.........but I can't.

I saw it live on TV, no fear, just amazement at the realization there's a foreign/domestic conspiracy so powerful it made the US military stand down and allow USA to be attacked, then detonated 100s of bombs inside the WTC and Pentagon in controlled demolitions.

That was my job in the US military...bombing fed buildings in highly populated areas using C4 on nuclear bombs (a common job for 1000s of US soldiers).

Yet this conspiracy is so powerful it controls all the corporate news media to keep its name secret.

A few days on the internet revealed the conspiracy's confessed name...New World Order, along with its secret societies...Bilderburgers, Bohemian Grove, CFR, Trilateral Commission, Skull & Bones, Freemasons, Cabala, Babylonian Talmud, the NWO's signed confession was Operation Northwoods, no video showed any Arab hijackers boarding any crashed airliners and half the suicide hijackers were still alive and were trained at US military bases, jewish israeli mossad agents were arrested on 9/11/2001 dressed as Arabs with explosives in their trucks, etc etc etc.

9/11 was your wake up call for the current US Revolutionary Civil War. Don't hit the snooze button.

BTW CNN is the devil.

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Saturday, September 10, 2011 4:40 PM

John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!

Quote:
Originally posted by DREAMTROVE:

Tuesday morning I was watching Tv with friends, assuring them that the building would not fall, because that defied the laws of physics, i was astounded when they did. It did not take me very long to come to the conclusion that itwas a set up. Shortly after that I tried to talk a conspiracy theorist into the idea, with no success.

Some things are obvious. Pirate news is essentially correct here, even if he is off on some of the particulars, the spirit of what he is trying to say is basically correct. It was a pretty emotional time in new york, we were attacked by terrorists, even if those terrorists wear red white and blue, as they wrap themselves in the flag.

Meanwhile, they ignore the heroes so they can trasnfer that role and continue to heroize the invasion of afghanistan.

Feels like that now. Today seems so normal, and yet...

On 9/11/2001 I was amazed there were 20,000 idiots so stoopid they would dare work inside the WTC, after FBI confessed in court and in NY Times to bombing the WTC in 1993, building the bomb and paying its bomber $1-million and giving him immunity to testify against the blind retarded patsies in court (a "sting"). FBI agents ordered the bomber to detonate the real bomb in WTC, so the bomber tape recorded 100 hours of FBI agents ordering the bombing to go forward for trillionaire kosher President Bill Clinton Blythe Rockefeller.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=emad+salem

Trillionaire Rabbi David Rockefeller built and owned the WTC, before leasing it to jew Larry Silverstein 6 weeks before 9/11/2001. Larry confessed on PBS TV that he personally ordered WTC to be bombed by pre-wired explosive controlled demolitions, with approval from the NYC Fire Dept commander and insurance company, which paid a $10-billion claim for pre-approved arson insurance fraud. google it

This is why my wife turned down a job offer from psychopath Dick Cheney, to work personally for him as Secretary of Defense during Iraq War #1 (that's been waged every day for 20 years). Her job would have been investigating corruption and auditing Pentagon accounts...the same section of the Pentagon that jew Rumsfeld admitted in Congress on 9/10/2001 to $3-trillion being embezzled from the Pentagon...the same section hit the invisible airliner/missle/bomb on 9/11/2001. Can't spend a pension when you're murdered by your boss in the Kosher Nostra.

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Saturday, September 10, 2011 4:56 PM

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

On this day ten years ago, Mayor Rudy Giuliani and President Dubya worked together with al-Qaeda to help reduce the size of government. In just one morning, they were able to reduce the size of New York City's government by

343 New York City Fire Department firefighters
23 New York City Police Department officers
37 Port Authority Police Department officers
15 EMTs, and
3 Court Officers.

And they didn't even pay them any pensions or benefits.

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Saturday, September 10, 2011 5:00 PM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

The September 11th attacks are a weird thing for me, because my marriage began unraveling at the same time that the attacks occurred.

I remember we were sent home that day. And so I was home when I got the phone call from the credit card company. The answering machine normally would have screened it. It was a call that revealed tens of thousands of dollars worth of charges that I'd never known about on a credit card I'd never used.

I remember my creeping horror as I realized the person defrauding me of money was my own wife.

This, comingled with the events of that day, and the mysterious anthrax incidents that followed. I was afraid to eat churros from the street vendors for a while, because I couldn't help but think how easy it would be to mix in the much-advertised suspicious white powdery substance with the sugar that these treats were rolled in.

Then I started to worry about the automated perfume dispensers in public bathrooms. Could they be filled with anthrax instead of air freshener and used to spray bioweapons material onto unsuspecting people?

I was pretty emotional and paranoid for a while. Quietly. Not raving in the way some people get. Took me a while to put myself in order and my life back on track.

So anyway, the tragedy I think of on 9/11 isn't just an unprecedented attack on America. It is also the weird unraveling of my entire life. The beginning of a transformation into a lonely, angry, hurt, paranoid individual. It's a selfish way to look at it, but there it is just the same.

I'll be very glad when the 9/11 coverage and reminders all go away.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all”

Jacob Hornberger

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”

Mahatma Gandhi

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Saturday, September 10, 2011 5:01 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

A very good friend of mine, who worked for CNN... long story short, she saw the destruction from the NJ shore...

I hate it for her, that she saw it..

She sat on the shores of Jersey, and saw it all...

I want , even today, to take those images away.........but I can't.

" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "

I'm so sorry for your friend, Rappy. I feel similar - I wasn't even there, but what happened in those few minutes will never leave me. It was 100's of miles away and powerless to harm me, but it changed me anyway. I can't imagine what it was like for a NYC'er, someone who lived here everyday, and saw their regular turf turn into hell itself. I hope your friend gets some healing tomorrow, from the changes that have happened. We're moving into a different world now.

Bytemite. I sympathize. I am not an emoter and normally things like this don't get me. But I was in this one from the get go, maybe because of other things happening in my life at the time. I can't watch it with a damned near breakdown.

There's no shame if you don't feel all that. You're in a protected place, and that's good. Be grateful that you can maintain your ... innocence? Not the right word, but I hope you know what I mean.

PN, DT: I am not interested in discussing the conspiracy theories. The video I posted showed several networks recording - live - the second plane. Anyone who thinks that was fake, was previously placed explosives, is someone with a brain I want nothing to do with.

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Saturday, September 10, 2011 5:13 PM

Anthony, you're braver than I am. 9-11 happened when a long-awaited unraveling was in progress in my own life. I'm not so willing to get into the details, but the spiral that started then has hit bottom and never returned. I've pretty much accepted life where it ended after all that, and I don't believe it's ever going to change. What I've ended up with is what I've got.

Not that it's un-happytime all the time, but things were lost that hadn't been lost before 9/11. I miss them when I think about them.

Thankfully, the 2000's are done. It's time for a new age.

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Saturday, September 10, 2011 5:27 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Then I started to worry about the automated perfume dispensers in public bathrooms. Could they be filled with anthrax instead of air freshener and used to spray bioweapons material onto unsuspecting people?

So anyway, the tragedy I think of on 9/11 isn't just an unprecedented attack on America. It is also the weird unraveling of my entire life. The beginning of a transformation into a lonely, angry, hurt, paranoid individual. It's a selfish way to look at it, but there it is just the same.

I'll be very glad when the 9/11 coverage and reminders all go away.

I don't think the stories will go away, because the fears are so real for so many people. Sure, the press plays it up in a disgusting way, but the emotional reaction is real. There is PTSD all over the place. It needs to be dealt with. (Added comment about said PTSD left out here...)

Anyway, I had my own paranoia moment. In fall 2001 I met with a college counselor at my university because the local paper (the Metro, I think) had been feeling especially gritty to the touch lately, and I wasn't sure if there might be anthrax in the pages... which is ridiculous and a recent PhD should know better, right? But I couldn't even think straight.

Crazy times.

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Saturday, September 10, 2011 5:57 PM

Quote:

I don't think the stories will go away, because the fears are so real for so many people. Sure, the press plays it up in a disgusting way...

It feels like it's being marketed to us, and being done not as a remembrance or an honorific, but more as a "sell-a-bration" of 9/11. That's why I'm so disgusted by it. Wall-to-wall coverage, tons of commercials about it, all designed to sell us something. Guilt, shame, or a new car or tastier beer.

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Saturday, September 10, 2011 6:06 PM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Quote:

I don't think the stories will go away, because the fears are so real for so many people. Sure, the press plays it up in a disgusting way...

It feels like it's being marketed to us, and being done not as a remembrance or an honorific, but more as a "sell-a-bration" of 9/11. That's why I'm so disgusted by it. Wall-to-wall coverage, tons of commercials about it, all designed to sell us something. Guilt, shame, or a new car or tastier beer.

Hello,

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all”

Jacob Hornberger

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”

Mahatma Gandhi

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Saturday, September 10, 2011 7:52 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Agreed, Mikey - not to mention a dose of bitterness at politicians who chose to leave a great, gaping wound in our country and poke at it every once in a while to make us jump instead of putting them towers right back up as a big Digitus Impudicus to those that thought they could harm us that way, and yet instead our own so-called protectors did the job for them... and folks wonder why I consider them the greater enemy.

There's also something about it which grates on me, it's like those parents who still keep a kids room as a damn shrine twenty years later - past a certain point you've crossed the line from grief into mental illness, I don't mean to minimize anyones losses, but for heavens sake serve the cause of life, not death - life, right here, right now, needs you, the dead have crossed the veil and are beyond anything you can do for them save honor their memory, and you don't do that by shorting the living.

Which is what this is, and why it disgusts me so.

My reaction to that day was a crushing sense of failure, in that I KNEW our policies would come back upon us, and maybe if I'd just been more effective at convincing people, especially with power, to turn away from that course, maybe if all of us had - it might not have come to this, and instead I knew we were gonna charge right the hell off a cliff into insane stupdity, failure following failure like a parent who's child has rejected their authority because they are violent and abusive, then beating them half to death because they wouldn't listen, I knew we were going to take that course, I knew what it would cost us, and had something of a breakdown into misery over the next fifteen or so minutes, got drunk and started working to put the brakes on it if at all possible, only to be hated, cussed at, called a traitor and spit upon for it, by folks who would then come back later and beg me to tell them how to set it right when it was too fucking late to do so.
Plus a damn hefty amount of suspicion, cause remember I had known about WTC 1993, and Ramzi and KSM and Emad Salem and where they got the bomb, Bojinka and all that mess, so I was dubious that folks who knew better could be so conveniently asleep at the switch en-masse, but at the time I felt it far, far more important that we not go off half-cocked and do something stupid, and knowing, KNOWING, mind you, that it was all but hopeless, I tried anyway, only to watch damn fools, deliberate enablers, and grinning political sociopaths carry us right to the bottom as fast as they could.

To say that I am unsympathetic isn't necessarily true, but to me it's the kind of sympathy you give to a friend who has blown off half his foot on purpose with a shotgun while he was drunk and you were trying to stop him and he fucking hit you with a chair and did it anyway.

I figure I ain't gonna make any friends by sayin that, but goddamn it, SOMEONE ought to, had to, say this...

And it might as well be me.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Saturday, September 10, 2011 7:55 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

http://www.theage.com.au/world/102-minutes-to-live-20110909-1k26p.html

Hard to read, but moving.

I remember feeling that depair you feel when you realise just how people can be such arseholes to one another. Kind of doesn't really capture it at all, but it was something like that.

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Sunday, September 11, 2011 7:24 AM

JONGSSTRAW

I'm not watching any of the coverage.

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Sunday, September 11, 2011 7:26 AM

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT

first heard this about a month after. Written by Tom Paxton, the 60's pacifist, folk singer and hippie radical.

If there's a message to take away from 9/11, it's that there are ALWAYS some folks who step up and show the BEST that humanity can be. It's easy to take the lower road, and think and remember the rage and the fear. Better to think about those who found themselves in a bad place and chose to take hard risks, even if they paid the price, and emulate them.

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Sunday, September 11, 2011 9:40 AM

ROCKETJOCK

I woke up this morning having managed to put out of my mind what day it was. Then I made the mistake of reading the Sunday Funnies. Normally that little ritual is an easy and guiltless escape, but I defy any American alive ten years ago to read today's Doonesbury or Dick Tracy without tearing up.

In the last ten years, I have seen my country act with both courage and foolishness, and I fear we have, in the balance, not listened to the better angels of our nature. I pray the next ten years sees us swing back towards greater wisdom.

"She's tore up plenty. But she'll fly true." -- Zoë Washburn

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Sunday, September 11, 2011 12:07 PM

Well, I went into the city this morning, but there wasn't much to see. Which I liked. Only family could get within a few blocks of the WTC. It was shut down all the way around, streets closed, no parking, even the public buildings that generally give a good view of the construction were locked up. I like that it was private. That's what today should be for - the families.

I did find the ceremony online before I left home and saw the children's choir do the anthem, which was lovely. The speeches I have no use for, so tuned out, but they were short and easy to ignore. The reading of names I saw the beginning of, and I'm pretty sure it was still going when I walked through the side streets a few hours later.

Lots of people there, of course, even if they couldn't get close. (This was at about 11. Maybe it opened later, but I didn't check.) Also lots of security. Every few blocks I noticed nondescript gray cars with tinted windows, sitting with engines idling. Strange.

All in all, I have no problem with how the ceremony was carried out. It's a shame that it was front and center of every headline everywhere, but that's just how the media is and has been for some time.

(BTW - the clip of Stewart's first show back after the attacks ended with a very nice bit of text about grief and thanks, etc. Very nice. Until it was signed off with the SUBWAY logo.)

In the end, I love how I spent the day. My dance teacher unearthed her favorite "holiday" combination - big, joyous, sweeping movement - and set it to the music she used in class the week of 9/11. Betta Midler's "I think it's going to rain today." (You know, Human kindness is overflowing.) Skewer me for being cheesy, but it was fabulous.

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Sunday, September 11, 2011 12:17 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:

PN, DT: I am not interested in discussing the conspiracy theories. The video I posted showed several networks recording - live - the second plane. Anyone who thinks that was fake, was previously placed explosives, is someone with a brain I want nothing to do with.

That goes double w/ me too. Conspiracy losers are on par w/ young earth creationists and those who talk at the threatre.

They belong in that 'special' hell.

" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "

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Sunday, September 11, 2011 5:37 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

I'm afraid I agree with you.

I guess my other sense of the day was how like and unlike movies the world really is. On one level it looked like a blockbuster disaster movie. On the other level, it showed how there really is no superhero, no Bruce Willis type to save the day. I kept wondering why they couldn't rescue people from the building tops, but those seemingly impossible feats really are impossible. Sometimes it doesn't matter how brave you are, how wealthy, well organised, no matter how much you want something...sometimes people don't survive.

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Sunday, September 11, 2011 6:56 PM

Beir bua agus beannacht

I was 15. My mother woke me up for school and said something terrible had happened. My first instinct was fear that something had happened to someone I loved. She said that a plane had hit the world trade center. I thought it was an accident, a horrible accident, some pilot had lost control. Then I went into the living room to watch the news and see what was going on, I've always been a sucker for coverage of big things. Then when the second plane hit I was scared, this wasn't an accident. Then the concept of us being under attack was spoken out loud on the TV and it all made sense, that's why two planes had hit.

All day at school our teachers tried to keep us on task, tried not to spend much time on what was going on, said they knew we were unsure and scared but the best thing to do right now was to continue with our lessons etc. That night I went to church for high school group and we prayed with the adults who had come. My friend Sharon was scared because her boyfriend was in the military. I was scared because I didn't know what would happen next.

This year I've watched a few specials on the History channel etc. Last night I watched a show about these two men who saved 70 some people between them but they couldn't get out alive themselves. I cried hard. Today I didn't watch any of it. I got it out of my system last night and I'm done feeling hurt and horrified and awed by the best and worst in humanity. I can't believe its been ten years, it doesn't seem so very long ago at all.

PN, do you still have a wife?

Raptor, I wish you could fix it for your friend too, but you can't, I know it and you know it. Its good that you care about her and want her to feel safe. Talking about stuff like this can be good, gets it out in the open. Did she tell you about it?

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Sunday, September 11, 2011 8:48 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Byte

"One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic."

Even if you don't like the guy who said it, it's pretty much true for a chunk of the population. If not, how else could people see the news about starving children in Africa then change the channel to get their dinner entertainment.

Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?

Yeah, me neither....

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Monday, September 12, 2011 6:06 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

I had a very interesting, and serendipitous, day. I tuned in news, then remembered what day it was and that the two stations I usually watch were doing "minute by minute" replays of 9/11. So I looked for other stuff to watch.

I bumped across another channel--I think it was History Channel but I'm not sure--that was doing something different. They had a map, and would zoom into either the WTC, Pentagon or where 93 crashed, as something was happening in each place, so that you could follow events that were happening at the same time. Interspersed with that were interviews with people who'd been there, who'd lost someone there, who'd rescued or been rescued by someone there. It was riveting, I couldn't look away for hours.

I learned a lot I never knew, partly because they were facts that came out afterwards and I chose not to pay attention back then. I, too, get glued to disasters in the news, so I watched that first day, but not afterwards. I learned one thing that surprised me and that I WISH we'd known back then. They got 14,000 people OUT before the towers came down! That would have meant a lot to me at the time--as evidenced by the fact that it STILL meant a lot to me to find out, all these years later.

I learned a LOT, and it helped me put perspective on what was happening when, but far more interesting were the interviews. Like the interview with a woman whose husband called her four times from 93, who told her what was happening and what they planned, then left the phone on. And what the towers heard the hijacker tell the passengers, because their radio was still on tho' they refused to speak to the control towers. I'll never watch the movie of 93, but this gave me a good picture of how it happened chronologically. They did a lot of the videos with voice-over, and all the ones of 93 were just panning up the aisle of an empty airplane. It worked. Hearing the interviews helped even more.

Like the cameraman who dived under a car when the roiling cloud of dust hit from the falling tower, who thought he'd died because everything went black, and a woman he caught on tape who later got in touch with him.

Like, especially, the two guys up in the tower. One stopped on a floor to holler "anyone there?" There was a guy who was badly injured and on the floor who called out to him. The guy on the floor had decided this was it, he was going to die. The other guy hollered at him to come, but the door was jammed (if I recall correctly, this was either one floor under where the plane hit, or ON that floor). The guy on the floor said "I can't do it", and was ready to give up. The other guy kept at him, saying he had to remember his family, etc., until he convinced the guy to get up. But the door was jammed and he couldn't get out. So he told the guy to climb over a broken part on top of the door. The guy from the floor jumped, missed, but by then was determined, so he jumped again, and the other guy grabbed his arms and dragged him over, and they both made it to safety. Sent shivers down my spine.

There were so many stories, it was truly riveting. News "as it happened" meant nothing to me, it's the media trying to get a grasp on something too big, with information trickling in and them trying to fill the time when there was no new info...the usual stuff. But between putting it in perspective time-wise and the interviews, I found it fascinating and it gave me an insight I never had before.

Three guys at the Pentagon kept going in and bringing people out, until they were stopped by the firemen. They were actually conferring on whether to push through the firemen's line to get past them, and just at that minute, the area they'd been pulling people out of and were trying to get back to collapsed. If the firemen hadn't stopped them, they'd all have died.

A guy and his office workers told to evacuate and headed downstairs as the firemen were coming up. The guy was talking about how he felt like a coward running away, when his foot hit a stair at the same time as a fireman's going up hit it. Said he looked in the guy's eyes and knew he knew what he was going into. He said this guy's step never faltered--"He was going up and striding with purpose, I was going down and my feet faltered".

A fireman who said he was determined to be the last guy out, at every floor he made a quick sweep to see if there was anyone left, and was on the 22nd floor when the tower collapsed. Apparently he rode the staircase all the way to the bottom, ended up on a slab on I think it was the third floor or something, covered in blood but unharmed except for a broken leg! Boy, if you ever believed in a higher power...! The firemen rushed to him--they and the EMTs, etc., had all clustered, ready to save people, but began to realize there were no survivors, so those firemen all rushed to this guy, glad to find someone alive.

A group that was coming down the same staircase that got as far as the sixth floor before the tower came down...out of everything, only that one staircase and the people on it, from the sixth floor down, still stood.

The engineer in charge of rebuilding, who was younger and one of those who built it originally back then. Asked if he ever doubted he would be doing the rebuilding, he said no, it was a mission for him. He wasn't there yesterday...the only day of the year he ABSOLUTELY doesn't go to work is every 9/11.

And on and on and on. So many stories, people who had lived it and told it from their own memories, THAT was something worth seeing, for me, not the news bullshit. I wish I could get a DVD of it so I could watch it again and OWN it; to me that WAS 9/11, but I'm not even sure if it was History Channel or how to find it.

It ended with a looong interview with Bush, so I turned away. The last person I wanted to hear talking about it was HIM! Kept going back, but it went on and on with him--I caught a few seconds every time I tuned back in, and it sickened me every time. His telling was so full of bullshit and his "determination", etc. Why DOES that man smile/smirk even when he's telling about horrors?!?! Eventually the show was over, and the next one went on with the Commission...how the Bush Administration had tried to keep from having one, how the families who grouped together pushed and pushed until they got one, what came out (!!!). Learned a lot from THAT which I'd never known, too, and felt sick to hear it. All the warnings, the Commission questioning people who said "I didn't know" when they DID, or certainly should have had an inkling!

After that was a show on what all went wrong, and they showed two of the hijackers going through the metal detectors and how they'd failed to stop them. One went through, beeped, so they used the wand on him. Nothing happened and he went through. Apparently they're supposed to use the wand on metal every time before passing it over a person, which the security guy didn't. Another guy went through, beeped, they used the wand, IT beeped, and they let him go right through! NONE of that would happen today, but we were so "free" and lax back then, it was really screwed up.

Then they did a show on the engineering, what went wrong and what they do now, how they changed the building codes in New York so that no building will be built which has the weaknesses the towers had. Many graphs and graphics which helped me understand the mechanics of what happened and why.

So I had a good day; it was a good way for ME to commemorate 9/11, to learn, not just remember and "commemorate" or watch "as it happened" news coverage. I'm not into memorials and parades and stuff over something like that, I honor the heroes and innocents who died that day, but what we do for the living has no meaning for me, it wasn't a personal disaster and I have nobody to commemorate. But I'll never forget the things I saw and heard any more than I will seeing it happen initially, it made that big an impact on me, and I'm grateful for it.

Did anyone else hear that they got 14,000 people out before the tower came down? I told Jim, and he said it would have meant a lot to HIM, too, to know it then. I suppose it got mentioned somewhere along the line, but I missed it...and to have known that many got out would have been some small comfort back then.

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Monday, September 12, 2011 1:42 PM

Beir bua agus beannacht

Niki, as I said I've been watching some of the shows too, the personal stories etc. Its really hard to watch them, but I've watched a few and learnt a lot from them, but its still hard for me. But I'm the sort ofperson who needs to cry at least once a week to relieve that emotional pressure inside of me, so its fine to watch sad shows. I know that a lot more people could have died than actually did die, it could have been worse, the towers could have fallen sideways but they fell into themselves. I know that Flight 93 could have hit the Whitehouse but it didn't because those people were on deathground and they did whatever they had to do so others wouldn't be there too, they wanted their last act to do something good. I feel like the whole thing shows us the evil and the good in humanity.

Anthony and Mal4Pres, I hope that those paranoid episodes were isolated incidents, that they cured and that you are both feeling ordinary now, I hope it was a quick thing. That whole anthrax thing was really weird, and no one ever figured it out. I remember my friend told me she wasn't allowed to go to the mailbox alone (she lived on the outskirts of a small city so they had mailboxes out by the road) anymore. I asked why and she said because of anthrax, it was her parents' new rule. I laughed at her and said "Why would anyone want to anthrax you guys, its not like you're important or anything". She was displeased. I tried to explain that I didn't mean it that way. Anyways she's still my friend. I still think that she didn't understand what I meant by that right away.
"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Monday, September 12, 2011 2:36 PM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

Tell her she's not a high profile target.

I like to think that I am no longer paranoid and that I only fear plausible things now.

I like to think that, but I also have this irrational desire to stock lots of ammo, water, and food.

I'm not actually doing it, (yet) but the fact that I feel the desire to do this in a place that does not see frequent natural disasters may hint at a lingering irrationality.

At least in Florida I had an excuse.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all”

Jacob Hornberger

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”

Mahatma Gandhi

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Monday, September 12, 2011 4:12 PM

Beir bua agus beannacht

Anthony, there are many people who are survivalists, at least to some degree. So that isn't so very weird to want to have some things on hand if there's a disaster. Being prepared can be good. There's nothing wrong with that you know. My dad always talks about doing it, getting stuff ready, but he never gets around to it, but he wants to. We don't worry about 2012 or anything like that, but one never knows what could happen in life. We've got a generator ... but its busted. we had some canned food stored away ... but we gave it to the food bank. We had money stashed around, but we had to spend it since times aren't what they used to be. Things like that.
She would have rather liked hearing the "you're not a high profile target" bit, but it came out like it came out, I was 16 and the idea of a girl in my grade not able to go get her mail seemed silly to me.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Wednesday, September 14, 2011 4:23 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Quote:
But I'm the sort ofperson who needs to cry at least once a week to relieve that emotional pressure inside of me, so its fine to watch sad shows.

Oh, boy, does THAT bring back memories! I used to be exactly like that, for most of my life, and just assumed that's the way I was. Getting dx'd let me see it's part of my bipolarity, not "just me", and I accepted it would always be that way...like you said, no biggie. Then I noticed a couple of year ago that it's not true for me any more.

and

I sure as hell don't miss it, but admittedly the relief of letting go was kind of nice. I still cry easily over some things, but the "need" to periodically is gone now; may it be the same for you someday!

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Wednesday, September 14, 2011 4:34 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert did very good and very pointed bits on "remembering 9/13" which made me both laugh and shake my head in despair. We're not the country we used to be:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-september-12-2011/coming-soon---
the-daily-show-remembers-9-13-2001

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/396383/septembe
r-12-2011/shopping-griefportunities

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Wednesday, September 14, 2011 1:06 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Niki2:
Quote:
But I'm the sort ofperson who needs to cry at least once a week to relieve that emotional pressure inside of me, so its fine to watch sad shows.
Oh, boy, does THAT bring back memories! I used to be exactly like that, for most of my life, and just assumed that's the way I was. Getting dx'd let me see it's part of my bipolarity, not "just me", and I accepted it would always be that way...like you said, no biggie. Then I noticed a couple of year ago that it's not true for me any more. and

I sure as hell don't miss it, but admittedly the relief of letting go was kind of nice. I still cry easily over some things, but the "need" to periodically is gone now; may it be the same for you someday!

I guess that's one advantage of growing up in a family where you were beat until you cried, and then beaten more IF you cried. Kind of ironic that I was completely unable to shed a goddam tear at my father's funeral.

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Wednesday, September 14, 2011 1:42 PM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

Despite my parents being Cuban-born, and all the machismo you might assume that to entail, crying was never frowned upon in my family. In fact, any strongly felt emotion might bring tears, and there was never the slightest effort to make negative associations about them.

To this day, my family will often shed tears of happiness at family reunions without hesitation or regret.

As I think back on it though, I believe I remember more tears being shed at happy occasions than sad.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all”

Jacob Hornberger

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”

Mahatma Gandhi

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Wednesday, September 14, 2011 4:12 PM

BYTEMITE

EDIT: Oops, forgot. Sorry.

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Wednesday, September 14, 2011 5:05 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Hello,

Despite my parents being Cuban-born, and all the machismo you might assume that to entail, crying was never frowned upon in my family. In fact, any strongly felt emotion might bring tears, and there was never the slightest effort to make negative associations about them.

To this day, my family will often shed tears of happiness at family reunions without hesitation or regret.

As I think back on it though, I believe I remember more tears being shed at happy occasions than sad.

It's kind of weird, Anthony - I don't view tears or crying as "weakness" in others, but it was instilled in me that it definitely WAS weakness IN ME to ever let such things show. Therefore, I seem to have completely lost the ability.

But I still FEEL all the feelings. I just can't ever let them show.

It's a very odd thing to hold a person's hand while they die, and be able to show no more emotion over it than, "Yup, he's gone."

If anything, I'm quite envious of those who can show such emotions.

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Wednesday, September 14, 2011 8:27 PM