It has become impossible to arrive at this day each year without reference to the anniversary it represents, anniversary of events which changed the expected course of history for the USA, as well as devastating the lives of countless families. Had the events of 9/11 never happened, I wonder how different today's USA would be? Impossible to imagine. Some writers have offered the view that this 10th anniversary ought to be the last one when so much attention be paid to it on a national scale. The families of those lost that day, of course will mourn and remember always. Each of us will decide for ourselves, as future anniversaries arrive, the best way to remember - or to forget.
This, the 10th anniversary, I'm posting one of my husband's journal pages, written in September 2001, I was still in England, it would be two years more before we'd meet. He (American) was staying in Canada at the time - probably attending some jazz festival or other where he used to volunteer to help out.
Part of my husband's journal entry for 12th September 2001 "The Day After":
This, the 10th anniversary, I'm posting one of my husband's journal pages, written in September 2001, I was still in England, it would be two years more before we'd meet. He (American) was staying in Canada at the time - probably attending some jazz festival or other where he used to volunteer to help out.
Part of my husband's journal entry for 12th September 2001 "The Day After":
.........I stopped to talk to my young friend, Chris Griffin, in his studio. He had been working on a painting but was just sitting, listening to the radio. He was choked and speechless. "I was just painting," he said. "Now I just can't. It's just too terrible, too senseless." Then he just reached over and unplugged his radio.
It changes the way you think. It changes the way everyone thinks.
Later, each customer at the health-food store, as they paid for their, carob or wheat germ or vitamins, commented how painful, frightening it was to hear the news about the US.
At the Blood Center on Plymouth Street near here, there are lines in the street of Canadians, mostly university students, waiting to help. Some are waiting as long as two hours to get in to donate blood.
I stopped for coffee at a Starbucks. I sat and watched the conversations at other tables, the exchanges between the incoming customers. Everyone shows shock and sorrow at the awful and useless loss. I looked through the remnants of this morning's papers scattered around the tables. I had the passing urge to save them to read again tomorrow. Tomorrow's editions will be very sad.
Some people have likened this attack to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. But it bears little resemblance. The difference is mainly that after Pearl Harbor we knew the identity and location of the attacker. This time we don't. The enemy is faceless. One similarity is that undoubtedly this will increase mass prejudices against the Middle East, The Arab and Israeli states in particular. If we learned nothing from the Second World War experience, there may even be concentration camps of Mid-Eastern-Americans. I just heard a radio news report that a 15 year old Arab American was beaten up in a school yard by school mates.
Another similarity is that the tragedy will probably cause Americans, (that is Mexicans, Canadians and the States) to gravitate more toward unity. The entire democratic free world will probably (or at least should) tend toward greater unity. The Allies, Americans, British and Russians, in the second world war were partners in defending against the aggression of Japan and Germany (as those countries were configured then.) Before then and indeed after, they were not all great friends.
Bush is probably wishing he hadn’t fudged in Florida about now... Canadians have a different view of our political circus. Many actually feel that the US politics are a bit more down to earth than Canadian. Others just think that it is not quite as funny as their own.
To be drug out...
23 comments:
Good morning Twilight. On this day ten years ago, which will be remembered by all who were living, the realm of possibilities as to what actually occurred should also not be forgotten.
Yesterday I watched a documentary, which until yesterday I wasn't aware of, called National Security Alert: 9/11 Pentagon Attack. Living in Northern Virginia, and being familiar with the area, the locations discussed, the roads and highways, it had an even more intimate and profound meaning to me. This film is very revealing, and needs to be seen by every person seeking, and wanting to know, the truth.
Jefferson's Guardian ~~ Hi there!
Thank you for the link. I have watched about half of it, picking and choosing the bits I was unaware of, and then read the FAQs. I had seen a similar presentation, though not such a professional one as this, some years ago. I've remained skeptical and unsure.
Wiki records that there were more than 60 passengers on Flight 77 and 5 hi-jackers, plus pilots and other staff. If the plane didn't hit the Pentagon, what happened to the passengers and staff ?
I have yet to see any credible, or any, explanation at all. We cannot just disregard this enormous fact.
I do think that there's a lot of hidden information about 9/11 which will probably never come to light - too much power at the top to cover it up. But at the same time, there are "plot loopholes" in this scenario, as presented in the video, as well as in the official story. The truth could even be something else entirely.
Twilight, I agree -- there is hidden information about 9/11 which will probably never come to light, just as there was with the JFK public execution.
But remember this: Just because we have no other accounting for the passengers and crew of Flight 77, it doesn't necessarily mean they perished in a crash at the Pentagon that day. There are any of a thousand other scenarios where these people could have been detained and made to vanish without a trace.
The premise of this film adequately, and comprehensively, shows that the flight path, the speed of the aircraft, and the proposed strike-point of the aircraft into the building, contradicts the official accounting of the 9/11 Report.
What I found most persuasive in the video was the segment about the guy called Lloyde - cab driver.
His obvious discomfort with the situation became clear. For me that's proof that "something WAS rotten in the state of...."
If Flight 77 had been re-routed though, wouldn't the people who track flights, and especially in that part of the US, have seen something amiss? If it never set off - same applies, or if it was always a "dummy" flight on the schedule, it still had passengers whose names and families can be traced.
If the plane had been made to crash elsewhere, we'd know about it for sure, unless way out above the ocean, I guess.
Hard thing to countenance, and even harder to fully believe - though knowing, now, the travesties that have happened since, because of that day's events makes it a little bit easier.
I shall have to keep an open mind -and sanity - or .......run away, back across the pond. ;-(
I frankly don't subscribe to the conspiracy theories that have abounded for the last ten years. For purely practical reasons they don't bear scrutiny. Any of them would have needed the involvement and collusion of hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans, and to expect them all to have remained silent for ten years is ludicrous.
I do, however, believe there may well have been collusion within US government departments that allowed the attacks to take place.
Your husband was right about the coming together of nations immediately following the attacks. The show of unity with the US was unprecedented. How that unity was rejected and arrogantly cast aside by the US government of the day is both a tragedy and a crime far greater than the events that created it.
It was probably a moment unique in world history when a superpower could have the led us forward to international peace. It squandered that moment because peace was the last thing it wanted. It wanted war, an opportunity to subdue the Middle East and allow Israel free reign in the region. And war was what we got - what we still have.
Despite the media's attempts to wring emotion from us on days like today, America remains a world pariah for its international response to 9/11.
I just wish they'd give up on all the hypocritical hand-wringing, the silly bell-tolling, the puppet officials with their hand-on-heart pretense, and let everyone get on with their lives. But they won't. It keeps people in fear, and that's want they want.
Probably the most intellectual forum I've seen to date was this past weekend's International Hearings on 9/11 in Toronto. I saw presentations from scientists, engineers, and other experts, and the presentations were very compelling. No one was merely "buying into" any particular story, as it were, and presenters were questioned by a panel of experts in their fields. No one is saying they know for sure what all happened, but the consensus is the official story has a thousand holes in it a mile wide, and many of the statements made by the 9/11 Commission have already been proven to be false.
Furthermore, much of the 9/11 report is still unavailable to the public. Bush and Cheney were opposed to an investigation from the get-go. Read about this, and some of the problems with the 9/11 report at my blog, here.
RJ Adams ~~~ Hi RJ!
I understand and share your feelings about conspiracy theories in general. There are a lot of arguments against, in this case, but some expert evidence which is hard to refute, unless those putting it forward have ulterior movives. Plots thicken, over the years, until it's hard to see forest for trees. I'm clinging to my "don't know" default stance, to retain sanity more than anything else. Because even if the theories are true, or even part true, what could we, the people, do? Power is so out of balance in this country now. We have none.
Mass remembrance of tragic events has become the norm these days.
We still remember 11-11-11 (and so we should) and D-Day, and the blitz etc. The scale of 9/11 may be thought to get out of proportion, country-wide, to we who are not natives and whose country has been under all-out attack for continuous periods of years under both war and terrorism (IRA). The internet has a lot to do with stuff like this becoming overdone. It has its advantages but also some downsides.
Anna VanZ ~ Hi! Thanks for the link - I shall take a look shortly.
Yes, there are loopholes and the people have likely been misled, to what extent we'll never know. It's tempting to believe the worst, and when the Powers That Be will not make the full report available it doesn't allay fears and suspicion.
I agree that there's something, maybe a big something, we are not being told - there almost always is, and has been, in events great and small. That's their power - 'They' can do it. 'They" ought not to have that kind of power, except perhaps DURING times of World War....but not afterwards.
But what can the people do - other than revolt - that's not on the cards - yet.
Twilight, astrologically speaking, do you see a time in the next several years when the tendencies toward a second American revolution would be highly indicated?
GP: "Le Monde" (as French as one can be, and leftish, certainly more anti- than pro- capitalist America) laconically says on the comemorations for 9/11: 10 years of therapy should be enough. But in America it's a very lucrative business!
On Anna van Z's hopes (if I am correct) for a second American Revolution I would think (before reading what T. will say) that it's not in the stars. Neptune is ever present and will prevent actual "hands-on revolution".
Lots of dreams etc. The next to have a go will probably be the Hispanics. Their dreams also will be turned into some "imaginary progress". When M. Luther King's dream became more true with the election of O. we now sense that it's not O. who is in charge, but some "American (arch-capitalist?) force". Love of money, mamon, materialism etc.
But I am curious to read T's opinion (astrologically that is).
Anna VanZ ~~~ Anna VanZ ~~~ that's a good question. Straight answer - a possible time would be around 2025.
(Thanks Gian Paul for your input - I kind of hoped you'd jump in.)
I've been scooting around historical ephemerides - timetables for planetary movements through the centuries - to find out when was the last time two of the slow-moving outer planets, Uranus and Pluto formed an aspect of 120 - called a trine in astrology. This is a harmonious link, but when it's made between Uranus (rebellion, revolution, the unexpected, change) and Pluto (transformation following a breaking down of some kind) the harmony might seem less than what we would usually call harmonious in mundane terms. Working together, in harmony, these two biggies could cause chaos. They'll form a trine during the years around 2025.
The last time they formed a trine was in 1775 (Battle of Lexington - Start of the Revolutionary War).
Astrologers have written lots about the current ( 2010- 2012-ish) Uranus/Pluto Square aspect t - a 90 degree link, challenging aspect in astrology. I don't see this as a good astro atmosphere for revolution though - more indicative of individual spats (as in Arab Spring, protest in Greece, UK and other countries, Wisconsin, etc, also the disaster in Japan, as well as a connection to climate change/disruption ).
2025 or the years just before and after fit a revolutionary style, especially as Pluto will be in Aquarius (the revolutionalry sign!) and backed up by events around 1775.
:-)
Anonymous/Gian Paul ~~~
Le Monde is being very shrewd!
Thanks for your take on "the next revolution" question. I don't see it coming in the next few years, but I think there'll be one of some kind. Maybe, if not outrigh bloddy revolution some kind of struggle- perhaps to split up the US into smaller chunks, more easily administered.
Guessing there, of course. In the meantime, as you say, we'll no doubt see lots of different mini-rebellions.
GP: Unimaginable for me that the US would split into smaller units. Not in today's cards where mobility and easy communications prevail.
And then geopolitics where the US is loosing ground anyway go against it.
The European mess is not going to end up in a return to small units neither. What will happen is that all will come down to a lower common denominator. The Germans, Dutch and Finns will have to watch more how the Greeks, Italians etc. are apt to cheat and twist their own truth - and learn in the process. If that's what democracy means. "Love your neighbour as you would love yourself..."
Anon/Gian Paul ~~~~ Keyword there, GP being "not in today's cards".
By 2025-ish the cards will have changed considerably. There are lots of scenarios I could dream up to make division of the US a likely outcome of struggle in the 2020s, in spite of how unlikely it looks today. Only supposition, though.
What do you think about the years around 2025 being a likely hotspot for some kind of major uprising though ?
Here's something related to the 9/11 hearings that were held in Toronto.
GP: My vision is not as farsighted as the year 2025, fortunately, I guess. By that time many things may be so different from today that I personally doubt that anyone (except some type of Nostradamus bis) can use planetary positions calculated for then to make some valid projections.
PS. Contrary to commonly accepted theory that the dinosaurs disappeared because of some metheor having changed the climate then, biologist recently found that some virus, similar to measles (and having the same effect in humans today) eroded the bone structure of those enormous beasts then. Incapacitated to run around, they must have starved, poor things.
And that's analysing the past. Should normally be easier than to look into the future.
Anna VanZ ~ Many thanks for the link - have read it and will save it. :-)
Anonymous/Gian Paul ~~
LOL -
Your friendly Neo-Nostradamus speaking.....
I know it's a bit out of sight, but the outer planets are good pointers and not difficult to track for a general "feel" of things. I'll stand by 2025 as, at least, "a hotspot" - it's only 14 years from now, not unimaginable.
USA will have elections in 2012, 2016, 2020 and 2024 - unless a dictator arises, then all bets are off! The 2024 election might be the spark that lights the fireworks. ;-)
It's fun to surmise.
Yes, the past is as elusive as the future - so many variables and imponderables.
Wonder if we'll be around to see it?
Will we recognize what passes for America by then?
Anna VanZ ~~~ IF I'm still around I'll be pretty much ga-ga and well into my 80s. I hope I'll remember these online conversations and...smile to myself, as I'm being carted off to prison chanting "Power to the people".
;-D
Anna ~~~BTW I've added your good blog to my link list (Assorted Good Aspects)
:-)
Thanks!
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