9/11

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Uber KruX




on that day america's seemingly invunerable status was proven to be fake, but our greatest strength shined through brighter than ever.

E Pluribus Unum.

you betcha

[Japher]

Anyone see the Discovery Channel show on the Ground Zero rebuilding? The dude's design for the area is cool, and really well thought out...

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by DanielXY
I would do so too...
Your wedding affects you more than the terrorist atacks, heck even a one-night-stand affects you more...

I suppose for most ppl. lives terrorist atacks are meaningless (maybe some shock for a little time while watching the news ... and thats about it)

well i live in greater washington. The attacks affected my professional life (if only because offices were closed) meant my kid was out of school. It meant I met neighbors at a local memorial service. It impacts the way I commute (when they rebuilt the metro station at the Pentagon) how i enter buildings, security at schools, synagogue, etc. It has meant jersey walls infront of what had been attractive buildings.

My friends and relatives in New York were even more directly effected.

A nephew of my wife was injured that day - he was a paramedic, and went to the WTC. Fortunately the injuries were minor. My inlaws, holocaust survivors, were traumatized when the streets of their Brooklyn neighborhood were filled with smoke and ashes. I know people in Washington who climbed out of the burning Pentagon.

3,000 were killed (yes, people of all nations, not just Americans) - but what quite a few Americans recall is that we lucked out to have only 3000 die - the fourth plane could have rendered more damage - if the WTC had fallen earlier thousands more would have died - a total of 50,000 were at work in the WTC that day. And certainly AQ would have been happy at that. Indeed even now they may be working to kill many more than that.

At least over here it did change alot.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Well, it made me change careers...

I suppose that day highlighted different things for different people. For me, living in an Islamic country -- even a secular one -- on 9/11 and after drove home the fact that people elsewhere just plain didn't understand the US, its people and its culture (okay, so 'Poly drove that home, too ). I really wanted to do something for my country in that moment, and the thing I wanted to do most -- and seemed most qualified to do -- was publicly represent the US abroad. I spent a year boning up on old, forgotten facts and learned some new ones (especially about economics and management theory), and took the foreign service exam in Sept. 2002; I passed the exam, interviewed in March, and was offered a job on the spot. I've just been given security and medical clearances, and will head to DC in January for a few months training before being sent who-knows-where.

.

Good luck - theres a lot of hard work ahead for the Foreign Service.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Uber KruX
oh, and about the "most of them innocent", were there any statistics taken on this? were any of them guilty of anything that could even remotely be constrewed as violence towards the middle east?

You forget them killed themselves as well. Furthermore, one could argue that some of the corporations in those buildings had killed thousands of people themselves, only they used money to do it, rather than fire and metal.


This should not be taken as a justification. Just know that not everyone who died had clean hands.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Agathon
Show me where lame ass. All I've posted in this thread was a sarcastic response to Michael's Allende troll (which isn't even on topic) and a regular response to the observations about fear of commercial aircraft.

In what diseased, mentally incompetent universe does this count as a troll?

I'm sure what this thread needed was one more asinine, moronic comment about the president of the US by the latest non Amercian twit to deposit his meager allowance into the debate.

In what diseased, mentally incompetent universe did your sophomoric comment add any value to a thread about the effects of horrible acts?

[MrFun]

I would have liked this thread to have been purely a memorial thread, and others interested in related debates could just create another thread.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Japher
Anyone see the Discovery Channel show on the Ground Zero rebuilding? The dude's design for the area is cool, and really well thought out...

have you seen the recent protests?

The victim's families are still upset. They are upset because they are doing work on the "footprints" of the buildings. The exact spot the buildings stood. But they don't understand you have to run power, water, and sewage lines underneath. Not to mention subway lines. I think the plan does plan to leave the "footprints" as the memorial part, but they still have to run the lines underneath. But they are still protesting this.

[notyoueither]

Apologies for my part, MrFun.

[MrFun]

Oh well -- it's always an Apolytoner's fantasy that he/she can control how his/her thread unfolds . . . .

[Dis]

I can say that 9/11 has only affected my monetarily because of the economic impact. But that impact is very minor. The recession started the previous year, and I cannot put a number on how much 9/11 affected me monetarily.

It affected me emotionally as I said in my first post in this thread. But that feeling has faded. All I feel is a numbness. I don't get emotional when I see the 2 towers in a movie or tv show now. It's only a mild curiosity.

Other than that, I can't think of how it affected me. Security hasn't changed me at all. I haven't flown since 9/11. Not out of fear, but because I have nowhere to go. All my vacations I prefer to drive to because they are close and I like to go camping with my truck. Other homeland security hasn't affected me at all. Sure they may be spying on me, but I don't know about it.

But I still find this picture hilarious. don't ask me why.

[MrFun]

That plane really does look AWFULLY close.

[Tattila the Hun]

Yikes!

I quess they just held a memorial service for a firefighter killed then. Couldn't find his body, so they buried a vile of his donated bone marrow. But I wonder how come it took so long?

Know anyone famous, whose bday is then?

It seems to me, that Pentagon has been all but forgotten. People died there too, y'know.

[ixnay]

Originally posted by Dissident
But I still find this picture hilarious. don't ask me why.

I'll see your pic and raise you this one:

[Tattila the Hun]

Who you gonna call?

[Guardian]

First of all, I'd like to say that I mean no disrespect to anyone in saying this and I still extend my deepest, heartfelt sympathy to those who have lost family and loved ones.

That said, I have to admit that to me, September 11 is getting old. It was a big thing at the time and it affected us all in various ways, but now I find that I don't have much to say about it anymore and I actually find myself thinking that it really doesn't matter all that much.

Looking back at it now, I find that it has affected me no more than the countless other tragedies in places like Bosnia, Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Liberia, Algeria, Jerusalem, Gaza, Chile, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Afghanistan, Peru, Colombia...

...and countless other places where we can't even say the names...

I don't mind a memorial thread, and I respect that this memorial thread was dedicated to September 11. I don't have a problem with that. I'm just saying that to me who had no direct part in any of these tragedies, they are all equally tragic. There is no single incident that clearly stands out to me as being bigger or more significant than the rest.

A death is a death no matter where or how it happens. I mourn them all.

[chequita guevara]

PBS had a great show about the rise and fall of the WTC last night. Normally I hate shows like that, because they're all maudlin and gape-neck, but this was different.

Somethings I forgot about that horrible day. A big part of the horror was that everything didn't happen all at once, but built up.

First one plane crashes. Oh my god, what a horrible accident! And gets the world's attention. And we all watch, as a second plane comes from nowhere and slams into the second building!

People are jumping to escape the fire.

The Pentagon JUST GOT HIT!!!!!! What the hell is going on?!? It's not just a horrific terrorist attack in NYC. It's an attack against the whole country.

What, there's a plane still out there?

Then one tower falls. Oh my god, all those people. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

Then the other tower falls.

Later that day, the third building falls.

It was one thing after another, after another, after another. We didn't have time to process what we were seeing when we were hit again and again.

How many people do you think were killed? "More than we can bear." Gulliani.

And yet depite the fact that some people in this world hate so much that they could do this, we saw others that loved so much that they died trying to save others. The passangers of flight 93. The NYC fireman. Whole firehouses were lost. The NYC PD. Port Authority workers. People who stayed behind to help coworkers.

And that night, contruction workers just started showing up, saying, we can cut steel, you're gonna need us.

NYC came out of this stronger and better. Look at the recent blackouts. Crime actually went down. No rioting, no looting. New Yorkers held blackout parties and took it in stride and helped each other.

[MrFun]

that's cool, Chegitz

[Starchild]

I want to say that it changed me. That my heart has a spot which will always remember that day until the stars go cold. That I stood up and joined in brotherhood with mankind and achieved a sense of union and the transcendence of the limited self.

Except I can't. Sure, I felt the schock, horror, confusion, and disbelief. I watched as planes from the USA where granted safe haven in Canada because America had suddenly, shuddering shut down. I waited for the sesmic shift beneath my feet as the world crumbled.

Yet it didn't. I went to school the next day. I watched TV. I moved countries, made friends, took exams, and aged. The world crawled onward and I watched injustice, cruelty, and death continue it's cold, calculated stalk across the world. I saw shadows stretch and clouds pass over the sun. I saw madness and war, lies and smiles. Two years have moved on and instead of being the changing point, 9-11-2001 is another tile in history's mosaic.

So I eat, drink, laugh, love, cry and suffer. I dance and sing, reveling in the smallest experience. You can wake up in the morning and be cold meat by the end of the day. I live because in the end, we are all ash and dust.

Maybe it did change me.

[orange]

i became more vocal politically in my everyday life

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Starchild
I want to say that it changed me. That my heart has a spot which will always remember that day until the stars go cold. That I stood up and joined in brotherhood with mankind and achieved a sense of union and the transcendence of the limited self.

Except I can't. Sure, I felt the schock, horror, confusion, and disbelief. I watched as planes from the USA where granted safe haven in Canada because America had suddenly, shuddering shut down. I waited for the sesmic shift beneath my feet as the world crumbled.

Yet it didn't. I went to school the next day. I watched TV. I moved countries, made friends, took exams, and aged. The world crawled onward and I watched injustice, cruelty, and death continue it's cold, calculated stalk across the world. I saw shadows stretch and clouds pass over the sun. I saw madness and war, lies and smiles. Two years have moved on and instead of being the changing point, 9-11-2001 is another tile in history's mosaic.

So I eat, drink, laugh, love, cry and suffer. I dance and sing, reveling in the smallest experience. You can wake up in the morning and be cold meat by the end of the day. I live because in the end, we are all ash and dust.

Maybe it did change me.

interesting perspective

[Solly]

But it says nothing.

[Gatekeeper]

Sept. 11, 2001, changed me — not right away, but gradually. I now know that *all* victims of terrorism had it coming to 'em because of the policies enacted by their evil governments and/or evil corporations. Yep. They deserved to die, to have their limbs blown off, and to be brain-damaged.

I didn't think that way prior to Sept. 11, 2001, or even in the months following it. But, hey, I've been exposed to world opinion about this now, so I'm proud to say I've become really jaded and hardened.

Gatekeeper

P.S. And that post above was a crock of ****. It's how I feel like feeling sometimes, though, especially when certain others imply the United States deserved it. In that case, I shall hesitate to shed a tear when their landmarks are brought down and lives lost.

[My Wife Hates CIV]

check this out. i would have started another thread... but i know how ming feels about that.

so... i think this is pretty screwed up.

"NEW YORK (AP) -- Lawsuits blaming airlines, the Port Authority and the Boeing Co. for injuries and deaths in the September 11 terrorist attacks can proceed, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

The defendants had argued that the suits should be dismissed because they had no duty to anticipate and guard against deliberate and suicidal aircraft crashes and because any alleged negligence on their part was not the cause of the deaths and injuries.

In his 49-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein said the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the World Trade Center property, "has not shown that it will prove its defense of governmental immunity as to negligence allegations made by WTC occupants."

The judge also said the evidence he had seen does not support Boeing's argument that the invasion and takeover of the cockpit by the terrorists frees it from liability.

The plaintiffs said Boeing should have designed its cockpit door to prevent hijackers from invading the cockpit.

The plaintiffs had also argued that American and United Airlines and the Port Authority were legally responsible to protect people on the ground when the hijacked aircraft smashed into the twin towers, causing them to collapse.

"

I really like that last part.

[Richelieu]

Jesus...

[DinoDoc]

The judge also said the evidence he had seen does not support Boeing's argument that the invasion and takeover of the cockpit by the terrorists frees it from liability.

The plaintiffs said Boeing should have designed its cockpit door to prevent hijackers from invading the cockpit.

Why not just sue the families of the pilots for opening the door to the cockpit then if we are going to be this petty?

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov

Quote:

Originally posted by Lorizael It certainly changed me. It made me look up.

No joke, it does. Whenever I am walking about and hear a jet engine, I reflexively look up for the source. I tend to watch the planes for a bit to check that everything appears "normal." Heading to La Guardia? Yup, things look okay...

I thought I'd do that less as time went on, but I caught myself doing just this past week...

I was serious too, but in a more metaphorical way. September 11 was one of the major events in my life that made me care just a little bit more about the universe around me.

I hated everything before 9/11, simply because I was depressed and didn't know any better. After such an earth shattering event, however, I actually put thought into the way of things.

[MrFun]

here ya go -- the first 9/11 memorial thread for this year

[Solver]

Sept. 10 here now, and I am adding my voice to what has been said before. I'd loved it if more people changed their avatars and flags to something like mine for the day...

[JohnT]

(copied from another thread that was closed)

I was driving to work, listening to the Tony Bruno Extravaganza and he and Andrew were talking about the media reaction towards Michael Jordan thinking of returning to basketball (again). In a joking voice Tony said "Believe it or not CNN has actually broken away from its 24-hour, wall-to-wall coverage of Michael Jordan to bring you pictures of a building on fire."

Andrew: "I think that's the World Trade Center."

"Get out of here.... wait, it is!"
"Man, that's a huge hole in it! Did a plane crash into it?"

That's when I got to work and found that a number of people had broken out some old TV sets that we kept in the back room and were fiddling with aerials, trying to get some decent reception. I called my wife ASAP and said "Turn on CNN!"