September 11

Was it? I should have looked it up, I guess. I thought it was De Speigel.

I remember Question Time from the day after, around 10pm BBC1 I guess. They had the former US-ambassador to Britain on the panel. The utter hostility and zero-sympathy from the largely-ethnic audience was shocking, disturbing and enlightening. Couple that with the immortalised Palestinian woman cheering and dancing in the street, and my eyes were finally opened to just how divided our world really is.

The night before one of my friends who I hadn't seen for a while had been in town so we'd gone out and got very very drunk.I sort of half woke up late in the afternoon (UK time) and turned the bedside radio on. I was so hung over I drifted in and out of being awake for the next hour or so.On one of the times I woke up I heard them say on the radio something like "Just to repeat the terrible news from America if you haven't heard it - terrorists have flown hijacked planes into both towers of the World Trade Center and both of them have collapsed. There are also reports of a plane hitting the Pentagon". I then dozed off again.I woke up a little while later and was finally properly awake. The radio was playing music (I later found out they were playing music with a news bulletin every 15 minutes) and I distinctly remember thinking "Wow - what a bizarre dream about planes being flown into the WTC towers". Then I heard the next bulletin and went downstairs to watch the TV coverage. I had two main thoughts:

• The world has changed and will never be the same again
• Whoever did this has underestimated the US if they don't think they're going to get seriously hammered for this

Something that came up in conversation with friends a few times over the next few days and weeks was wondering if this would make all those Americans who funded the IRA bombers reflect on their actions.

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Oops! Wrong Planet

This is NOT the thread to discuss this!
Suspensions will happen very easily.

Questions such as were asked could best be anwsered by him."What were you doing on 11 September 2001? What did you make of events as they unfolded? How has your world changed? What reflections did events cause you to have on humanity, religion, life and death?"He admitted, in a rare interview shortly after the attacks, that he used chargers to implode building 7 (WTC7).I have him on DVD saying just that.Google 'WTC7 Larry Silverstein pull it' (ive been at demolitions and his quote is CLEARLY and EXACTLY saying he had the buildings demolished, though I dont think it was anything other than some lame excuse for why the WTC7 building came down in 6.4 seconds.Plus it takes weeks to install chargers,if he actually installed them then it could have been decades ago)Clearly, the CIA told him to stop giving interviews after that lol. (sad actually but a sarcastic laugh)Anyway, on that day I still remember being shocked and confused why the buildings came down.Peter Jennings and Dan Rather commented that the buildings came down just like demolitions.When building 7 came down (it wasnt hit by a plane), everybody was shocked as they ran from the "gray zone" (the area around where rushing ash landed and killed everything in its site).On-site reporters screamed and ran,as their studio interviewers yelled in fear of their fellow reporters fate while the desperate rush from the chasing ash commenced.Firefighters saw the small fires in the Twin Towers that day and confidently said via radio that "we will have the fires out in 30 minutes".Dont ask me anything about 9/11.I dont have a clue what happened.From top to bottom, I am clueless.Anybody who claims to know what happened simply is jumping.My feelings were confusion then and now.All any of us,aside from the government, has is our feelings and memories. (Im glad this is a non-political thread too, because I would ask why the 9/11 Whitewash Commission didnt allow WTC building 7 to be discussed if otherwise)A thread like this is most appropiate.Feelings and memories are all that is relevent for the vast majority of us when we comment.Edited by AdminNosy, : Topic warning.

I agree with much of what crash said about his feelings regarding patriotism toward America as well as animosity against Americans. Real or not that is what I was feeling. Certainly we had voices of sympathy from leaders I had not expected.One thing which stood out was when a Palestinian leader (I'm blanking on her name this moment... Ashwari?) said that whatever events they had suffered was nothing in comparison to what the US just suffered. It was so massive, and shocking and different to anything else seen in history.Then some Israeli reps began saying how the US finally knows what it is like to be an Israeli and proceeded to use statistics to downplay how tragic an event it was for the US, because speaking in %'s to the total population they have suffered much worse (over the years). There even seemed to be a bit of schadenfreude.This was a situation where I would have expected quite the opposite reaction from both parties... especially at the leadership level. Though in both cases, the statements were ultimately some support for what we would do next.

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

I was in work involved in some dangerous task when someone came in and said a plane had hit one of the twin towers. My mind was on avoiding getting killed myself so I paid only slight attention. I thought "helicoptor" or "Cessna" and continued on. Next I heard the second plane had hit and there was talk of a terrorist strike.Behind the shock, horror and awe of seeing those images later was the same thought as MangyTiger mentioned above - the world will never be the same again. I had to admire the fiendish brilliance behind the thinking of 9/11. Someone had finally rumbled the house-of-cards which is western society. They have figured (correctly) that you don't need massive force to topple an unwieldy structureWhilst the WTC strike was dramatic and powerful in what it was saying it wasn't by any means an attempt at a mortal wound - it was a glove struck across the face. A letter of intent. The thought that entered my head that day has only been confirmed since - the recently uncovered plan to down 10 or so planes mid-Atlantic is a case in point. Again, fiendishly brilliant in its thinking. It was a attempted strike parried whose aftershocks would have rippled throughout the structure as did burning fuel oil at WTC.The response to 9/11 will only have encouraged those intent on our destruction. Perhaps one day those manning the battle stations will get around to at least renaming the War on Terror to better reflect what it actually is. "Fight for Survival" strikes me as a better moniker

I seem remember that being a fake.
didn't CNN get in trouble for showing old footage of people dancing in the streets?

Archer Opterix I had just arrived at work and noticed everyone glued to the TV. As I walked in a friend said "A plane just hit the world trade center in New York." As I approached the TV people were looking my diection and I pointed at the TV and said. " You mean like that one there?" Everyone turned their head just in time to see the second plane hit the other tower and the room went silent.I realized at that moment that terrorists had launched an offensive,however my bet had been that it was the Palestinians and not Al-Queda. I did think that it was terrible but I cannot say I was surprised since the middle east has been at war for a long time with the west.My world has not really changed because I never was under the illusion that we could not be touched in that way. Osama indirectly kicked the present oil boom into high gear and this itself may be of far greater damage to the structure of the western world than even the twin towers. Because of the uncertainty in petroleum reserves worldwide we are now subject to very real dangers in the market as countries scramble to deal with a ever more limited resource.As to my view on humanity ,religion life and death I have not changed since my view of humanity is that we have always had a thin veil we call civilization and that has not changed drastically.Religion plays no part in my life so that is a non-issue. Life and death are far bigger than the petty politics and wars that men play.When we have eliminated the means by which we can learn to trust one another we arrive at the present direction all civilizations have faced. A return to the tribal mentality.The world is going to sink or swim though I personally think it will eventually be that we resolve the issues internationally, and maintain a wary peace, I highly doubt we will eliminate the deep seated patterns in our behaviour to one another.So the occasional attack in terror will always happen regardless but the world of people will continue till nature takes her eraser to the lot.

Really? I would be very suprised for CNN to sink that low... you would have thought the potential for inciting racial hatred and violence on a global scale would generate a little more than an un-heard-of (from my perspective) rebuke. Can you find a source?I do know that media in general were rebuked for showing this footage as deeply insensitive and not-representative of the respective governments' positions.

Ah.. upon further inspection it seems that the allegations were fake.Error 404 - Not Found

This is NOT the topic of this thread. Get off it please.

I was in sixth grade, entering 3rd hour French class, and the teacher had the radio on saying that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I really wasn't affected too much. I was only 11 and New York is 2000 miles away. I didn't understand the impact of what had happened, and now, five years later, I don't think I'll ever truly know how horrible it was. It's just too distant in my memory.

It was utter chaos. The night before was a horrid night in and of itself, which I won't go in to. Needless to say, I didn't sleep much that night. My roommate came blasting in to my room, screaming, (paraphrasing) "We're being attacked! They just destroyed the Trade Center and the Pentagon"I flew out of bed and into the living room to see these images of planes slamming in to buildings. Naturally, I knew it was a terrorist attack. Because I was in the military and also working in law enforcement, I knew that I was going to be recalled. So I called the base and sure enough, the reply was "Get your ass to work, now!" Roger that!I scooped up a co-worker where we sat in traffic for 2 hours just trying to get to my own base because we jumped immediately to threatcon Delta, and every vehicle was searched. We just listened, trying to piece it all together. It was very surreal. I'm sure you all remember well. I knew it was coming. I knew of bin Laden long before he was a household name. I knew America's time was going to come eventually. So I wasn't all that surprised. What did surprise me was the level destruction they managed to pull off. You expect a ferry to blown up, or a smaller building, or a convoy. But not the Pentagon itself! I was secular then, so it didn't impact me from that perspective. But you knew intrinsically that it was wrong, and that we had had enough. Given the attacks on the USS Cole, the first Trade Center bombing, etc, a time of reckoning was at hand.

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“There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the 'wisdom' of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious" -C.S. Lewis

It was evening over here and I was watching t.v when it was interrupted with a news bulletin and footage of the 1st hit. The station stayed with it as it unfolded. It was surreal. Hard to comprehend as true. When the 2nd one hit, I lost it. I was sobbing and sobbing. I just asked over and over WHY?

I got back from the US on the 8th of September. And on the 11th my mom told me there was a fire in a twin tower. I thought, well no big deal.But then later on tv, I saw the twin towers in flame, but it didn't seem that they would collapse...so when they did (like they were being demolished), it seemed really weird.I later learn that a tower, called tower 7 was demolished, supposedly due to a fire inside.I came to the conclusion that the US government or the Bush administration more specifically is hiding the truth. I don't believe in any terrorist attacks anymore. I think it was all set-up.A lot of people already described problems about the whole 9/11 plot, like I remember my dad had printed a picture of the Pentagon hijack, but there was no apparent traces of a commercial liner, also the Pennsylvania crash site only showed fragments of the supposed airliner .
At that time I believed the official version. But the official version doesn't make much sense anymore in regard to the evidences. It was shocking to see the planes crash and explode inside the buildings (not going through them), also very shocking is the demolition of the twin towers. It didn't change my world, since I am not American, but I got scared that America would disappear by Islamists. (I know now that it might all have been set up to put the blame on invisible Islamic terrorists) I thought it was unreal, especially for the people inside or near the WTC. Who would have imagined that? Thousands of lives disappeared, and that's the tragedy, but equally bad would be that the US government would be involved in all that.Edited by DogToDolphin, : No reason given.