9/11: 10th Anniversary

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You might be sick of hearing about 9/11 this, 9/11 that, in which case just ignore this post.

Anyways, I'd just like to say R.I.P to all the people who died in the terrorist attacks on the twin towers in New York, the Pentagon in Arlington, Flight 93 in Pennsylvania all on September 11th 2001, and the people who died a long time afterwards from exposure to the toxic debris from the (former) buildings.

I was 8 years old, in "Year 4" at school (no "grades" here) and I came home. It was around 4pm, when one of my oldest brother's friends came round and was saying "turn on the TV, America is getting attacked!" And that's where I saw, I think, footage on The News, of the towers billowing with smoke, and then them falling.

So, where were you when this happened and how did you find out about it?

Absolutely Simonono. It must be a really difficult time for the friends and family members of those that died.

I was in the 6th form and I remember hearing people talking about it. I didn't fully understand the extent of it, I don't think anyone did, until some time later on. Obviously everyone was pretty shocked. Although strangely I remember it being one of those situations where no one quite knows how to react.

I just don't know what can go so wrong for someone believe that terrorist attacks are a "good" thing to do.

I remember how 9-11 changed me for the better. I didn't really respect Americans before that day. On that very day, I did some sour searching. From that day on, I've loved Americans and America like they're my own to this day and beyond.

It's too bad that it had to take an event like this to repair me from the emotional damage that my parents inflicted on me when The United States was my special interest when I was 10. It took me 16 years for me to turn that part of me back around for the good, but I did it!

At home; my brother rang me up and said "they're gonna nuke Bin Laden for this."

I understand the reaction to the attacks - it was an awful thing - but every time a fuss is made about it I can't help but think of the various atrocities that have been going on around the world (before then and after) that are largely ignored - people tortured, mutilated, raped, murdered in great numbers all the time (mainly in Africa) - by, among other things, religious nutters (of various stripes - not just Muslims, though they're well represented) out to terrorise - who're totally ignored, while these few thousand get eulogised by dint of being killed in America where the media focus is. (Not suggesting the usual and tedious "OMG u r teh racist not caring about teh brown peepuls*" line that gets touted, just that the perspective on it as a singular atrocity doesn't reflect the unhappy state of the world we live in.)

I also worry, as ever. Before the relatively puny attacks on September 11th, I'd been expecting a fission bomb. I'm still expecting that (probably New York or London (smaller Satan but easier target ^^), LA, Washington and Moscow as options), though possibly the world reaction to Bin Liner's comparatively puny attack has made that less likely.


*whoever the f**k they are, they certainly get referenced a lot by ignorant muppets trying to out-bleeding-heart each other.

I was in a doctor's waiting room and I could hear office staff gasping and moving about from office to office telling each other. When I went into see the doctor I told her the news and she said it was probably something to do with Israel/Palestine we then carried on with the consultation.
I then got into my car and switched on the radio to hear reports still coming in of the other attacks, I went home and started to watch the full horror unfold on the tv.

Since then so many stories, so many conspiracies and so many grieving families have to try and get on with their lives. I will always remember the stories about all the police and fire personnel who did not abandon the people they were sent to rescue who sadly didn't make it out either. Heroes.

As Ambivalence wrote, there has been and is so very much tragedy and pure evil we have chosen to ignore for so long, and there is so much that the European/American/'Christian' world has perpetrated upon Islam, 'we' have earned their hatred. The outrage of the WTC attacks is that this was an office building, not a military installation of any kind, chosen simply for a maximum death toll. These people were just a bunch of office workers, cleaning/ maintenance crews, no one who starts wars or fights in them, no one who affected international policy, just unsuspecting people at work. That is the tragedy; it could have been a big shopping mall, a major airport, a mega-hospital, anywhere a lot of people would die.And 3,000 did. R.I.P. Sylkat

That is a common misconception of Islam as a peaceful creed sadly pushed into violence by external forces. Islam is intrinsically violent and 'orrible; it has always been and it cannot ever change (at best it can gradually fade away into meaningless apostasy or syncretism, there's precedent for both.) Reading either the Qur'an or a history of Islam will amply demonstrate this, but few people are prepared to take the commonsense step of learning who the people trying to do us harm are and what they believe. Seems it's much easier for people to respond to a criticism of Islam (like this one) by saying "nah, can't be right, doesn't fit into the worldview I'd like to maintain" than to question the nonsensical platitude that "all religions are equal and harmless."

Anyhoo, rest assured that the Wahhabis (fundier-than-thou Sunnis) who carried out the attacks need no justification whatsoever to murder us infidels, though they'll embrace any spurious one that comes along. They're positively obliged to be unpleasant to anyone who isn't one of them and, funnily enough, they're even more obliged to be unpleasant to Muslims who don't do their religion right. Which leads to a fair amount of the general level of killing and unpleasantness I was lamenting above.

*heavy sigh* Never mind. We can hope that more liberal elements win out among the Arab Spring (unlikely, as they seem to be going either junta or fundy across the board) and that the demise of OPEC (give it ten or twenty years) as a major player in the world starves Islam into the insignificance it deserves.

I was at home, sick. I was watching the news when I saw it come on the screen. My dad had sat up in his recliner and told me to call my mom. I called her (yes, I was five years old, I still knew how to use a phone) and told her that two buildings were just hit by planes. I didn't know until a couple years later that it was New York.

i was in Art class- the last lesson of the day on tuesdays in year9.
Didn't hear anything about it until i got home sometime later and noone was about.i found my mum and brother watching tv in his room and thought it was abit weird but owell..... then i got changed and went to watch cbbc and the news was on....so i tried citv and the news was on there too. so i watched abit to see what was disrupting the cartoons and saw what was happening then was like 'mum, *brother*! guess whats happened...' and then i went to watch it with them.

I was 21 and in my sophomore year of college, but I didn't have a class that day.

I was getting ready to go to my therapist when I saw the news and it showed the North Tower on fire. At first, I thought it was pilot error, considering the incident in 1945 where a plane crashed into the Empire State Building without causing too much damage. It was when I saw the South Tower being hit, and them the Pentagon, when I was thinking "Holy Sh*t!! !"

Last edited by Tim_Tex on 11 Sep 2011, 5:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

RIP to the hundreds of thousands who suffer and die daily, to the indifference of the insulated

really bugs me when there's a memorial or remberance for particular people and you get folk using it as an opportunity to make some sort of point on something else

Exactly- like using deaths to incite nationalism.
Disgusting.

It's not like they just upped and died, is it? Someone saw fit to murder them. Though I suppose ignoring their killers is fair play.

yes. yes. yes.

I was 18, and at home asleep having very odd dreams involving buildings crumbling. When I woke up, my then boyfriend told me to turn on the TV. The whole thing was very surreal.