[PrestonSturges]

I like the low sodium Spam, it kicks ass.

9-11 also presented opportunities for sociapathic personalities to do what they do best - claim to be the hero, claim to be "saving" others. They weren't actually stealing from Grandma, they were protecting her from the evil siblings that were conspiring to rob her. See? being caught with her money just proves how virtuous he is. Likewise, we have been inundated with people "saving" us from terrorism or the cheese eating liberal surrender monkeys who conspire with terrorists - that's the wingnut 9-11 scam artist strategy.

[SeaGypsy]

Bush 2's 'best mate', John Howard (in NYC on 9/11) made abundantly clear that terrorism is now defined as any form of political violence/ except when that violence is done by the state.

"We shall stand together on this dark day with our American brothers and defend freedom and democracy against any form of political thuggery" (words to that effect)

Everyone who was alive and able bodied who had made any kind of threat towards infrastructure/ economy/ citizenry/ was suddenly up there next to the UNA bomber. Billions$ were utterly wasted following earth 1ster types around 24/7; often these had been totally inactive for a decade or more in 2001. Spy agency budgets tripled and have stayed that way.

Being a retired E 1ster, besides having recently borrowed a pile of books on Islam and Arabic languages, led me to having a 24 hour multi person team monitor my every move for about a year starting early 2002. It was totally absurd and only ended when I telephoned the agency to make certain statements about their use of public funds in this instance.

I take for granted that my words here and elsewhere on the net are added to various intelligence databases. I really don't care much about it as long as the agencies act in a moral and ethical way with the info they collect. I have lived in the second most politicly violent country in the world (Philippines) and it is truly an ugly thing. Of course there is always a possibility a truly evil regime might get hold of the databases and missuse them in the extreme. This would prove an expensive and futile destraction to preventing truly henious attacks on the populace.

I am not known for holding back my political views. I could have been 'rendered' rediculously easily during any of my many trips to virtually lawless Philippines. It never happened. I have a very close friendship with a certain US Navy Seal and a few Marine vets, besides Filipino police in the anti terrorist brigades. I find these individuals just as human as anybody else.

Currently I am living in a city of near 4 million with about 200,000 muslims. I am the opposite of a racist but I do find their social isolationism/ sense of self superiority more than a little scary.

9/11 changed the world more than any event since WW2. It's sad and scary, but there's no going back. We should make sure we understand exactly how this change effects us; not become cowed and politicly nuetered.

[rockdoc123]

I thought it would be interesting to collate our memories of a day that I believe changed our perspective on the world. I'm of that age that I remember exactly where I was when I heard JFK was killed, the same for MLK. I put 911 in those three important moments in my life that I will always remember. First off I need to state that I did not lose anyone I knew in the event so my views aren't as important as some but I thought I would share.

So my sharing, hoping others will have some as well.

I was in Boston on a course at the time. In the middle of a lecture the head of the institute came in and said....I just wanted to tell everyone that a plane has just gone into one of the towers in NY, no one seems to know what is going on but I thought you should all know. Very quickly after that he came back into the lecture room and said a second plane had gone into the towers and the course was cancelled, everyone to go back to their hotel rooms and pray (yes he said that).
I sat for several hours watching the news and having a hard time believing what had happened. I couldn't' get through on my phone to speak with my wife but given the places I normally travelled it was pretty clear she wouldn't worry too much. As it turned out the hotel one block from where I was staying is where the terrorists had been holed up prior to getting on to the planes. Boston was in lock down mode with police on pretty much every corner downtown.
I spent the next day watching the news continuously not really being able to come to grips with what had happened. At that point getting home seemed a priority but also problematic. I knew a couple of people who were planning on driving back through the border to Toronto and then finding a flight home. My view was everyone else would be doing that as well so instead I used my highend status with Air Canada to figure out a better way home which ended up being hiring a car to get me to Providence, a twin turbo prop to Montreal, a short hop to Ottawa and then Ottawa home. It was a long journey but still better than friends of mine who were in Houston at a conference and ended up hiring a bus to drive them all the way back to Canada.
One of the ironies of my story is that two friends I had made at the course I was on were Qataris. Gentlemen that I still call friends but were in as much a state of shock as the rest of us. They were at their wits end trying to understand how they could now function in the US and also get home to Qatar as soon as possible. I tried to help as much as I could through the Canadian embassy contact I had but I know their journey home was not a pleasant one.

I guess I will always remember this as when the world changed....much as when JFK was shot I remember sitting and watching the reports on our old black and white television and realizing that the world had changed.

[seahorse3]

I was at home getting ready for work, watched the live shot of the second impact, punched and broke an antique dresser, was going to give blood but they were overwhelmed with donors and told the rest of us to go home, grabbed some books, started reading up on the ME , oil, politics, learned of PO, how energy ignorant I was (one of my favorite books to this day is a book called "blood and oil" by Michael Klare). 9-11 led me to here. So yes that day fundamentally changed me and my perspective

[Thralen]

My wife and I were vacationing in London. It was... interesting... to be in a foreign country on 9/11. We hadn't heard anything about it until an Englishman in our hotel said "Oh, you're American aren't you? I'm so sorry..." We headed to our room and switched on the TV to find out what was up.

When we heard about the flight bans we wondered if we would manage to get home on schedule and what we would do if we couldn't. It ended up that our flight we had tickets for was the first one allowed back across the Atlantic. I wish we had had a place to stay longer, we could've scalped those tickets for boatloads of money. We were offered $5,000 per ticket from someone we passed in the airport.

It could've been much worse. We had considered Egypt for that vacation. At least in England there weren't pissed off people cheering the collapses in the streets like there were elsewhere.

Thralen

[midnight-gamer]

I was home, after a grueling night of work on the 3rd shift. A friend sent me a message on my computer urging that I turn on the TV.

Rather than watch the news like most, I went to the bank. This was approximately 1-2 hours after the first attack. Already, there were armed guards at the door and the girl at the counter had no idea what was going on or that people with guns were standing just outside.

[eXpat]

In Schiphol waiting for a plane to go back to Edinburgh. I was lucky i could travel home that day...

[Keith_McClary]

One of the ironies of my story is that two friends I had made at the course I was on were Qataris. Gentlemen that I still call friends but were in as much a state of shock as the rest of us. They were at their wits end trying to understand how they could now function in the US and also get home to Qatar as soon as possible. I tried to help as much as I could through the Canadian embassy contact I had but I know their journey home was not a pleasant one.

Some well connected Saudis had no problems arranging special flights home, some of whom turned out to have aided the perps. But the official investigation focused on Iraq and Afghanistan because the NeoCons wanted to invade them.

[dohboi]

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-09-09/game-unrest-policing-and-war-underclass

"The Game is up": Unrest, policing and the war on the underclass

Ten years after 9/11, the 'War on Terror' is being replaced by a 'War on the Underclass'. In a post-growth Britain where the global financial crisis is being recognised as something more akin to Japan's lost decade(s) rather then a temporary blip it should come as no surprise that we see a return to the semantics of the 'enemy within' albeit within a fundamentally new and intensified form.

[Oneaboveall]

The problem here are the lists -- no-fly, no entry lists, all the lists we don't even know about. Many average folks from Iowa or whatnot get on the list and have no clue why. They're not radical, they're not Muslim, they're white.. yet they can't fly and it's a nightmare getting it sorted out...

Let's be blunt here; these people never cared when it was people with funny names and four-in-ers being listed. It's only when decent-god-fearing-white-folks got caught up these measures do they pay attention. Actually, it's even worse than that. These people actively supported these measures and assumed it was only "those people" who would be the target of the surveillance programs. They were completely shocked when they wound up falling under scrutiny as well.

Divide and conquer is an old game...

[WildRose]

I was at home in Edmonton getting my three kids ready for school. They were aged 15, 10 and 7 years at the time. We watched the images on TV in disbelief and proceeded to my kids' schools, where groups of parents had gathered outside to discuss the events of the morning. I'll never forget the horror in the voices of the people in New York as they watched the second plane hit the building, and then later as the buildings dropped. I'll never forget what a beautiful blue-sky day it was in New York on that September 11th. Our weather here was warm and clear as well, and I took my dog for a long walk later that morning, trying to make sense of what I saw. That's when the worrying started - I was sure the Bush administration would react in a much swifter manner than they did and I was afraid for our future.

That day changed me with the realization that no public place is 100% safe - if any person(s) wanted to inflict pain and suffering in any city, no matter who was behind it, with due diligence it could be done.

[Pretorian]

A guy I know is a relative of one of the victims. He says people come to him all the time telling him where they were on 9/11. The guy lost his father, why would he give a damn where were you on 9/11?

[careinke]

I was Saudi Arabia working for Raytheon as the Raytheon Manager for the RSAF Air Defense School in Al Kharj. At the time I was sitting in a meeting at the company headquarters in Riyadh. One of my instructors called me on my cell, and asked how much Raytheon Stock I had because a commercial jet had just crashed in New York and we, (Raytheon), built the radar system.

So we ran upstairs to security and turned on the Sat News feed. Shortly after we got there, we watched the second plane hit. As the room was filled with retired Air Force officers, about three of us said out loud “That was no accident.” We began our emergency recall to get everyone back to their compounds. The US Air Force people we worked with did the same.

I was sent from headquarters to the living compound to activate our emergency command post. On the way, I could see some light celebrations in the streets. Also, on the drive to the living compound, I was called and briefed on the Pentagon crash and the missing plane.
We were all restricted to the living compound for the next three days. This was not a hardship, our Villas were 5,000 square feet, four bedroom, eight bathroom, places and some of us had pools in our back yard. Plus the compound had all the amenities.

When I returned to work, I was surprised to note that the RSAF Saudis who were also Mattawan were the most sympathetic and apologetic. I got the impression the younger airman were not so displeased.

I was able to chat online with my son who was attending boarding school in Leysin Switzerland. Evidently tensions at the school heated up rather quickly. Some young Arab prince student made an inappropriate comment, in the form of a threat, to an American student. Sides quickly formed between the American expat kids and the rich Arab kids. Surprisingly the Russian gangster kids jumped in on the side of the Americans. That quickly calmed some things down. If you have a brain, you don’t piss off Russian gangsters.

Although I wanted retribution, my biggest fear was our impending loss of privacy and liberty in the name of safety. Those fears were confirmed with the passage of the Patriot Act. Lately they have been reconfirmed by the Obama administration continuing and increasing the power of that cursed act.

[MD]

I was at an industrial machinery auction in southern Kansas. The auction was due to start at 10 am and we were walking about on our pre-inspection tour when the phones began to ring and the murmurs of the crowd began to take on an edge.

Quiet (but with ever-growing concern) queries floated around the room: "What is it?", "What?", "Are you sure?", "is it a prank?", "What? Seriously?"

Then the words "A second plane..." entered the mix, at which point I turned to my business partner in disbelief and said, "I'm going to find a TV somewhere, I will be right back."

Leaving the property I scanned about looking for prospects but only saw cornfields and a gas station, so I turned for town. Fortunately there was a little motel on the outskirts and I thought to myself "lobby" and swung in under the canopy.

I breezed into the lobby looking at the clerk and pointing to the TV saying "I need to see, do you mind?" She just gave me an ashen blank stare. I took that as assent and spent the next ten minutes processing the our new reality.

The next part might strike some of you as being a little callous, unless you are from mid-America and therefore have a grasp on the "whelp... cain't do nothin' 'bout that so let's get back to work and wait fer it to sort itself out" philosophy. So that's what I did. I went back to the auction and we proceeded to buy some of the best deals of our lives because most of the crowd had either left or was milling about in shock.

I didn't see another TV for another 20 hours or so as we completed the auction then drove from Kansas back to Ohio. We listened to the radio for just a little bit, but mostly rode in silence. I think that was a good thing, in hindsight.

[Cloud9]

We all made some bad calls in the aftermath. Initially we did not know that there would not be successive waves of attacks. It is only in retrospect that we have come to understand that this was a once in a lifetime event.

Whether it is moral or not, it is natural to turn to one’s own group for comfort and solace while looking at other groups with suspicion. It is a survival instinct that causes us to be wary of the unknown. Most Americans came to believe that it was Middle Eastern Young Men who brought down the twin towers.

It seemed foolish to spend time an effort frisking the Jamaican Bob Sled Team when they came through the air port.

[Sixstrings]

I was at home, drinking coffee watching the news. Had an interview for a new job scheduled. News came on about an airplane hitting the first tower. I remember thinking that I couldn't get stuck watching that or I'd be late.

Then the other plane hit the other tower, I saw that live. I put a VHS tape in the VCR after the second hit without thinking, maybe I was in shock and I didn't know what was happening and thought I may need to re-watch emergency broadcast system instructions (that may sound dramatic, but at the time nobody knew what was happening other than this was serious). I have about 4 hours of the news coverage recorded, though it's just up in the attic and I've never watched it.

I was just in shock after that second hit. I flipped between news channels.. I landed on a channel doing a live report from the Pentagon. This was a "get the Pentagon's reaction" thing. And then the reporter looked up and said he just heard something. So now one plane, two planes and then the Pentagon hit and wow that's total SHTF. At some point the buildings went down.. the whole cascade of events was a nightmare unfolding on TV. The worst was people didn't know how bad it would get, if this was going to happen in cities all over the nation. Could a nuke be involved too.. bad stuff.

Luckily, that Pentagon hit was the last of it but at the time it felt like the world had gone crazy and the country was under coordinated attack. I fully expected more attacks.

I never made the interview by the way, but nobody noticed and I rescheduled.

I was also taking some college classes at the time. In the following days and weeks, I can remember sitting in an algebra class (of all things) and thinking how pointless it was. Major world events going on, how do you concentrate on algebra. That's what was odd, these major events on a national scale yet locally everything is the same. Sort of a cognitive disconnect there. I do remember how odd it was to not see planes in the sky. All radio stations stopped playing music, went to news. The top 40 station played Amazing Grace.

Anyhow 9/11 really effected me, to be honest more than what's healthy. I was younger then, it put me in a funk for a while.. totally shattered my assumptions about the world. This sort of thing was supposed to happen in fiction not reality. I'd just read Tom Clancy's novel where he wrote pretty much the exact scenario -- at the time, I thought Clancy was stretching believability. And then it happens for real.

9/11 was a loss of innocence.

[careinke]

How have we changed?

Are we safer, or less so?

More free or less?

What is different for our future?

Yes. Americans are more paranoid, angry, desperate, confused, isolated, uneducated, uncultured, uncouth and thus vulnerable to domestic terrorism from right-wing christian extremists who hate women, freedom, commies, fags, artists, socialists, liberals, gays, intellectuals, government workers, unionists, artists, city people, blacks, puerto ricans, mexicans, and the french. Doesn't bode well at all.

Hey, everybody hates the French.

[careinke]

http://original.antiwar.com/lobe/2011/09/09/al-qaedas-project-for-ending-the-american-century-largely-succeeded/

A few choice Osama quotes from the article:

"We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat,"

"We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy, "

"All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written ‘al-Qaeda’, in order to make generals race there and to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations"

Duh, every 2nd Lt in the military knows this. It is a basic tenant of asymmetrical/guerrilla warfare. Relatively small attacks on an empire, leads to massive over-reaction in the name of "security". Eventually, the empire becomes so intrusive/oppressive towards their own citizens, that the citizens revolt. When this happens it leaves a nice vacuum that you move into, providing support, assistance,and slightly less repression to the local populous. Classic, and very hard for an empire to combat.

[Ibon]

Eventually, the empire becomes so intrusive/oppressive towards their own citizens, that the citizens revolt. When this happens it leaves a nice vacuum that you move into, providing support, assistance,and slightly less repression to the local populous. Classic, and very hard for an empire to combat.

You raise the question of when America will experience its "Arab Spring" as citizens rise to confront the corruption and incompetence of their leaders.

[dinopello]

I live close enough to the Pentagon to have heard the crash and seen the smoke, but I happened to be visiting my sister in St Louis. We were waiting for my nieces to get up so we could head out and do something when my sisters husband came back from heading to work and said 'turn on the TV'. I was supposed to fly home the next day.

I remember my brother who was also there not believing me when I told him the conference he was supposed to be at in 3 days as a featured speaker was going to be canceled. He thought my flight out the next day was a go too (it wasn't). I remember the local news caster telling people to stay away from the St Louis Arch and thinking 'they aren't going to attack the arch !'.

I was dreading the flight back which occured several days later because I thought people would be freaked out and tense, but everyone was actually really friendly and talkative and I guess just happy to be going home.