Do remember the innocent victims of the attacks on the Twin Towers. I will. The horror of what happened to them that day was unspeakable.
But I shall be avoiding the wall to wall neo-cons and those making money from “security” who will infest the media today. And I will also remember the 500 times more people who died as a result of the attack on Iraq, which had no connection with the attack on the Twin Towers, and no WMD. And I will rmember those who will die in Afghanistan and Libya today.
It is not impossible the anniversary will spark a terrorist attack. But it is quite certain that possibility will be played upon by those whose interest it is in to keep us in a perpetual state of fear, to justify wars abroad which benefit the oil, armament, military supplies and security industries, and provide the excuse for enhanced power for politicians at home at the expense of all our liberties.
Remember New York’s vicitms. But remember all the other victims whose lives have been destroyed by wars launched using the attack on the Twin Towers as a propaganda excuse. I shall do my remembrance standing on the stormy seashore. Not in front of a television.
The significance of 911 is not in the deaths – as many people die from US and allied aggression every few weeks and have done for years; as many die in road accidents every few weeks and have done for years. The significance is that the evils of US foreign policy were brought to public attention, though of course the effect was mitigated by the desperate flurry of propaganda. I’m sure, if the people of the US truly understood how cruel their foreign policy is and how it endangers them in order to enrich a few, they would want it changed. Therefore they have to be kept from understanding. Thus ‘they hate us for our freedom’. Thus ‘War on Saddam’. Thus the patriot act.
Personally I found 911 beautiful and inspiring. David may not have killed Goliath but he certainly tweaked his damn beard.
So the government finally catch up with Craig’s advice:
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14877865
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“UK banks should ring fence their retail banking divisions to protect them from riskier investment banking arms, a government-backed commission has said.”
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Shame it took them years to work it out, and that it won’t be fully implemented until 2019.
Layla Anwar
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http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2011/09/ground-zero.html
9/11 was sad and bad. It was marked by a chain of reactions to it, from the hastily exiting Saudi’s, the only two planes allowed to fly , a lot of hand wringing, the Homeland security act, the patriots act and with plans made to overthrow all those who don’t play ball as we like it.
Courtney rightly asked ‘ but how did it all happen?’
Well Courtney, the FBI and its regional agencies had these people on the radar, they reported their suspicious activities to their own heads and the CIA, who peobably knew as well but let them get on with learning how to fly.
The peculiarity of the strong demand to learn to fly towards instructors, whilst refusing to learn to land should have made all sorts of bells ring, because since the Bojinka plot, discovered nearly ten years earlier. his was a plan to detsroy airliners over the Pacific ocean, simultaneously, coming from various airports. A Rafael Garica, a computer ceo and confidant to the national Buereau of Investigations decoded the plot and handed it over to chief of police Avelino Razon or either FBI agent Bob Haefner.
US secret service agent Brian Parr and FBI agent Charles Stern listened to the whole plot on an extradition flight from Pakistan to the US. The person who relayed the planned attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon was a chap called Murad, the close confidant to Ramsi Yousef.
The plan was discovered in january 1995 by phillipine police who were investigating a possible attack on pope John Paul II on a visit to manila.
They seized a computer with plans detailing 11 planes, all hitting their targets simultaneously, but with bombs placed on the planes, Ramsi was a bomb maker, there were also alternative forms of this plan to just fly civilian airliners into important buildings, the WTC was one of them. (reported in Hindustan press 7Dec. 2001 citing Agence France Press)
The person called Murad, who was involved and convicted for the 1973 WTC bombing, was never closely described. He could have emerged from the ‘Arab platoon of the Palmach’ type of Mossad squad, an elite false flagging force of the Hagenah.
Robert I. Friedman in the Village Voice, April 6th.1993, recounts and interview with Victor Ostrowski, the latter beleived that Mossad (meaning’by way of deception’) was behind the 1993 attack on the WTC. After talks with further Israeli intelligence sourcves, Friedman concluded in a later article that Ostrowsky’s hunch was right.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/09_16_01/
After 911, according to Gallup, there were some countries who did not follow the cheerleading voice, one of them Mexico with only 2% emphasis and support for the impending war on terror. Here is were the smoking gun leads us to. when Vincente Fox and Castaneda, Sr. Foreign minister declared full support, offering troops and support, a public outcry drowned out their support for Bush.
Two Israeli agents sneaked past security into the chamberof deputies, mexico’s parlaiment, posing as cameramen. They aroused suspicions and were apprehended. They were armed with two plastic lock pistols avopiding detection, nine grenades, several sticks of explosives, three detonators and 58 cartridges.
Israel intervened fast, the terrorists, Ben Zvi and Smecke, who should have rotted in mexican jails, were released, Sharon pulled some strings, the story was spiked and they all went home….
http://www.cronica.co.mx/2001/oct/12/nacional107
or alternatively http://www.pgr.gob.mx/cmsocial/bo101/oct/b69701.html.
I hope this gets us to the thousands visitors here…:) Most of these references come from the ‘The war of Freedom’, by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, an excellent researcher with the institute for policy research & development.
my apologies for multiple typos, if they are worse than the truth, tell me off please.
They were two plastic Glock’s off course…among other typo’s, next time I will first re read it before sending, sorry.
That’s an illuminating paper Clark http://noosphere.princeton.edu/911formal.html though it took me a little while to get my head round it, as they say. My experience by the railway line was a one-off. Other events, like thinking about somebody I haven’t thought of or seen in years and they suddenly turn up, going to say the same thing as someone else at the exact same time, in the exact same words, I ascribe to coincidence, but the road to Titu experience was different, and something almost universal it would appear, according to the Princeton research. I don’t go to seances, or gypsy readings, and like to think I have both feet on the ground, tending to seek out generally acceptable explanations for most events so that I can defend them if needed. For the 9/11 experience I have none. Knowing that turtles always return to the breeding grounds from which they came, and that their own young hatch in thousands on one particular night of the year, is different from being able to explain why. I will never forget that day. It was a major turning point in the history of the world.
Mary, I just read the Layla Anwar blog link, and think she has too much anger and too little love. Synechdoche is a dangerous figure of speech when all American citizens are targeted as being one big nasty Uncle Sam!
Jonh Goss, I cried when I first found the Global Consciousness Project. The reductionist, determinist interpretation of science has now held sway for some centuries. The isolating perspective of individualism is propagated almost evangelically. But then it would be, wouldn’t it? It is helpful to commercialism, and it must be the ultimate expression of “divide and rule”.
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On Craig’s thread “Dr Who is a TV Programme”, I found myself at odds with two of my favourite contributors; Nextus argued strongly against me (I’m glad that he did), and Evgueni contributed a little ridicule (which hurt a bit).
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But the unfashionable status of my perspective cannot convince me to deny the evidence, scientific or personal. We’ve all had those strange experiences where we know who is calling and why, just at the moment that the telephone rings. And Aspect’s experiments confirmed Bell’s inequality. We are linked, all is linked. Our universe is, in some sense as yet unfathomable, unified and universally self-aware.
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If we are all separate, why do we keep returning to the blog of a man who opposed torture? Is it not because, at some profound level, we experience each other’s pain, and each other’s happiness, and thus we wish to make our world a better place for all?
John No wonder she has too much anger. Wouldn’t you feel the same if your country has been invaded and pillaged? Layla has been blogging for all the years since Shock and Awe and even before during the sanctions after the first Bush war. There are over one million female headed Iraqi households now and that statistic is apart from the numbers killed, injured, made refugee, orphaned, etc.
Mary, anger is not going to stop NATO forces. I would feel angry if I lived in Iraq, and had lost loved ones, but the lack of love and compassion she shows for families of the victims of 9/11, as though they were to blame for the actions of the Bush family, is callous. She, more than anyone, should be able to empathise with the mothers, and daughters, sisters and aunts of those affected by the twin-towers attack. But perhaps you do become hard beyond redemption – I have not gone through what she has gone through. Her attitude, I feel, is a bit like Ken F. Johnady’s provocative sentence “Personally I found 911 beautiful and inspiring.” I chose to ignore this, and perhaps I would have been wise to ignore Layla’s.
Clark, when I have mentioned to others my experience which took place in the middle of nowhere at the time of the twin-towers attack, which has not been often, nobody has questioned it, as though they might have shared similar experiences. Compare it to Craig’s recollection of that day. He was in a busy office and picked up a “febrile atmosphere in the FCO, like nothing I had ever experienced before.” (COOT 200). He did not know. He was dumbstruck when he saw the repeated images. But I did not see these images. Even when I got back I did not see the images. There was no television where I was staying. Some things, I feel, are beyond explanation.
John Goss, when I read Arab Woman Blues, I feel Layla Anwar’s pain. I look at her e-mail address, and wonder what I could send to her that would help. I find nothing adequate within myself, so I have never written.
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The rationalists dismiss my musings on universal consciousness as fanciful, New Age nonsense, but I have my own problems with the New Agers, most of whom dismiss anger as one of the “negative emotions”, to be eradicated from our psyches by meditation.
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But when people rise up against injustice despite the risk to their own lives and wellbeing, anger is their primary motivator. This is why, recently, so many people here, including myself, could not condemn the rioters en masse. We knew that their anger was justified, even if many of their actions weren’t, and we knew that anger leads to behaviours that are neither rational nor individually justifiable.
On 9/11 let’s not forget, terrorism is something that Palestinian are faced with 24/7…
For what it’s worth, I’ll tell you what came into my heart on hearing the news of 9/11.
1/ Hooray. Islam strikes back at colonial satanic greed.
2/ I don’t believe this was done by Muslims. I made war with some local bobbies about this and they told me I was living in cloud cuckoo land.
3/This act was done by somebody who has never been subjected to discipline or punishment. For some time I wondered whether the Afghan people fell into that category, having not been subjected to British Colonial Rule. But I subsequently realised that these perpetrators who had never been punished are the powerbroking Zionist banking classes. They think that they hold all the cards permanently in their hands. No.
A Zionist is a perverted religious mind, and their grievance is a religious grievance, namely that God removed from them their role as Guardians of the religion of the One God, the religion of Islam. He did so, according to the Quran because they broke all boundaries of their religion. They also have land claim, which has been annulled to parts of the Middle East which they once owned.
It’s perfectly clear in the Qur’an that they deviated twice, the first time being thrown into captivity by the Babylonians and the second time being dispersed by the Romans. And Allah is clear that whenever they return to evil, that He will return to punishment, or if to good, the same. That is a quotation for them from their own book, The Taurat.
‘The tenth anniversary of nine-eleven. For three days now, the top of the “Most Popular” articles on the BBC News website has been “Drunk Swedish elk found in tree”.’
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Well, compared with the official account of 9/11, at least it’s superficially plausible.
Very Good article by Dr Craig Roberts , “Does 9/11 Truth Have A Chance?” in FPJ..
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/09/12/does-911-truth-have-a-chance/
Unending 9/11s: “A Sad Kind of Freedom.”
by Felicity Arbuthnot / September 12th, 2011
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You love your country as the nearest, most precious thing to you. But one day, for example, they may endorse it over to America, and you, too, with your great freedom – you have the freedom to become an air-base.
.— From: “A Sad Kind Of Freedom”, by Nazim Hickmet (1902-1963) courtesy of Rick Rozoff, Stop NATO
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It is instructive to look at the plethora of 9/11 tenth anniversary pullouts in newspapers to note the commemorative programmes, interviews, memories. The heartbreak, broken and lost lives — the ten year old now twenty, who realized, horror struck, that her father was in the building she watched flaming and falling on television.
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There are spreads of other ten years olds, children unborn when their pregnant mother was widowed by a terrible atrocity on a sunlit day, in a city turned dark by smoke and ash. Pregnant survivors, say “experts”, passed their trauma to their children, we learn.
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/….
http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/09/unending-911s-%e2%80%9ca-sad-kind-of-freedom-%e2%80%9d/
I absolutely do not share the sentiments of those who found themselves gleeful or triumphant on 11/9/01. Apart from thinking that it was an illustration of what happens when buildings are attacked from the air – something the USA had never experienced before – and a feeling of utter horror for the people trapped in the buildings, like many of us, especially I think Muslims, I also had a deep sense of foreboding. Some people I talked to on that day said, “Well, now they know what it’s like.” I understood the logic, but I don’t think anyone should have to ‘know what it’s like’. I don’t think ‘knowing what it’s like’ does anything for people other than brutalising them. All those European land wars didn’t make Europeans any less likely to proecute yet more wars against one another or the rest of the world. The Holocaust didn’t result in a benificent Israel – quite the opposite. On the other hand, there were the amazing acts of kindness and selflessness that day and thereafter among ordinary people – that’s the gleam we need to hang onto amidst the dark madness of the human condition.
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I do wish that we would see some equivalent sympathetic media coverage of the people living in countries that have been bombed and otherwise pulverised by the USA/UK et al. We do occasionally get such intelligent programmes – but it is occasionally.
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But it makes no difference, sympathy. They will do what they do. Stay alive, stay awake.
@Suhayl,
” I do wish that we would see some equivalent sympathetic media coverage of the people living in countries that have been bombed and otherwise pulverised by the USA/UK et al. We do occasionally get such intelligent programmes – but it is occasionally.”
And this is so because the “others” are not “us” and their humanity is estimated as a fraction of the Western “us”.
Sad – but true that this is how it is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuC_4mGTs98 The Corbett Report.
@Azra 12th September 2011
On 9/11 let’s not forget, terrorism is something that Palestinian are faced with 24/7…
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Exactly so Azra.
http://www.sapienspromise.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=1912
Link referred to December 2010. This is the latest dated 8 Sept 2011.
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http://www.sapienspromise.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2179
On and on flows the legacy from Bush and Blair’s war on terrrrr.
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13 September 2011 Last updated at 11:13
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Afghan gunfight: Explosions and firing rock Kabul Soldiers and police are engaged in an exchange of gunfire
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An ongoing bomb and gun attack is rocking the centre of the Afghan capital Kabul, with a string of blasts targeting the US embassy and Nato’s Isaf headquarters.
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A string of loud blasts was heard and insurgents are believed to be holed up in a building in the area.
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The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack.
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It comes weeks after suicide attackers stormed the city’s British Council office, killing 12 people.
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The Taliban also claimed responsibility for that hours-long attack on 19 August, saying it was to mark the anniversary of Afghanistan’s independence from the UK in 1919.
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/…http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14897358
People fear the truth because awareness of government lies gives them responsibilities they don’t want.
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Invariably because it interferes with their role as passive consumers.
Reading the Names 9/11
Reading the Names, 9/11/2011
by SUSAN DEER CLOUD
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Today I stood under sky,
violet at dawn then moving
to rain by noon.
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I started reading
the names of the dead …
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every Indian who died
in terrorist attacks
beginning with Columbus.
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Thunder cracked nearby
and made me think of the guns.
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I remembered the ghosts
beaded with bullet holes,
the ones in canoes
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who wave to me
from the Susquehanna.
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I prayed they fared okay
in this week’s flood and will eat
pancakes once more at Manny’s Diner.
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I read until twilight mists
silvered in. Raindrops wet
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my lips like multiple delicate kisses.
I wondered if ghosts kiss …
maybe more delicate than this.
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When the rain stopped
I watched a star shine out.
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The terrorists stole my language
so the names shone out mute.
My heart knew
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the dark city was still
in a state of emergency.
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Susan Deer Cloud is a Métis Indian of Mohawk/Seneca/Blackfoot lineage. An alumna of Binghamton University (M.A. & B.A.) and Goddard College (MFA), she has received various awards and fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, two New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowships (most recent NYFA Fellowship awarded in summer 2011), a Chenango County Council for the Arts Literature Grant, First Prize in Allen Ginsberg Poetry Competition (twice), Prairie Schooner’s Readers’ Choice Award, and Native American Wordcraft Circle Editor’s Award for her multicultural anthology Confluence
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/16/poets-basement-6/
Do remember the innocent victims of the attacks on the Twin Towers.
The word is airstrikes, Craig.
Here’s a good selection of expert opinion on 9-11:
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http://www.twf.org/News/Y2011/0911-Muslims.html