Terrorist Action 11/9/2001 - Thread 9

Just wanted to make the point: Citizens of countries do tend to start to become fairly nationalistic if they are at threat - and America could conceivably face more terrorist attacks. I am sure every country that has ever been attacked the situation has been exactly the same - look at the end of the second world war, would anyone have disagreed with flag-waving then. The US has just witnessed a devastating attack, the biggest ever in peace time, people do need to find a way to get a certain solidarity and confidence back. (NB. I would not extend falg-waving to persecution of arab minorities etc which I would find abhorrent.)

Apparently there's going to be a story on Mancini-Duffy's get- together on ABC tonight -- whether this means the local or nightly news is unclear to me.

My co-worker described the event as "painful," which could many things.

You say this as if "solidarity and confidence" are necessary, and as if these are things people possess normally. These words are meaningless abstractions to me, as is the flag. My entire family came to this country in the twentieth century. My grandparents are immigrants - I never got a sense from them that "America" (which is actually two continents, not a country) was some sort of unique refuge for them for which I should be grateful. Rather, after a couple of decades of hard work, they seemed to regret the monotonous industrial labor that immigrants were expected to do, and they moved to the country to live more like they did in Ireland. There aren't too many leftist radicals in my family, yet this sort of patriotism is noticeably absent, with the exception of my assimilationist brother, who joined the Methodist church, got a business degree, who likes to pretend that he isn't as dark as an Arab or Mexican, as if he has never been taunted with ethnic slurs - people calling him "Taco" or "Ayatollah".

This sort of nationalism, the empty symbols and rhetoric seem to me to be part of a coercive assimilationist process. I didn't grow up with it, and I resent the insinuation made by the flag-wavers that I should intuitively understand the meaning of these symbols, and that I have more solidarity with them than I do people in other countries. Honestly, some people in the US are every bit as foreign to me as actual foreigners if not more so, growing up, as I did, surrounded by immigrants.

OK, you personally may not have solidarity with these symbols, but some people do, and these people have been hit. Hard. And this is the way it has always been in times like these, for better or for worse. That is all I was trying to say.

Cnn.com is running a poll on their front page: "what is your reaction?" Three choices: shock, sorrow, and anger. Thus are we all expected to have cartoonish, two-dimensional opinions about things: either (a) "I can't believe it," (b) "How awful," or (c) "Let's kick some ass."

And guess which answer has a near-majority?

I wanted to select all three, because that's how I feel.

Did you guys all get that forwarded email from some Canadian guy about how great America is and how generous we are compared to other countries and he's sick of people bashing us? It made me feel good.

Also: anyone seem the story about a vague threat to a cameraman filming a small Palestinian celebration in the West Bank? Apparently he was told by an Authority official that if the footage aired, his life "could not be guaranteed." The footage did not run.

On the other hand, I'm almost glad to see this story, because it draws a clear line between the behaviour of a relatively small group of people and the official, considered response. I.e., evidence of the Authority trying to keep its belligerent elements hidden, even for their own obvious face-saving interests.

...how generous we are compared to other countries and he's sick of people bashing us?

I suppose that's nice ... then again, our foreign aid levels are downright stingy compared to the rest of the developed world, and no one really bashes us. Culturally, maybe, but we pay that back tenfold.

Did you guys all get that forwarded email from some Canadian guy about how great America is and how generous we are compared to other countries and he's sick of people bashing us? It made me feel good.

Yes, and that "message" dates to the immediate post-Vietnam era, I believe. Context, context...

Here's a thought I had back on Tuesday which the pressure of events beat down - along the Jihad vs McWorld lines...is the monoculture America/The West's best long-term weapon against anti-Western extremism gaining political ground? Or so simplify: it's going to be more difficult to persuade somebody that America is the Great Satan if that somebody is hooked already on burgers'n'Britney.

I should say that I found this a pretty depressing thought too.

Yeah, Tom - that's the freewater argument: This where the ideologues start in with the 'end of ideology' arguments because corporate interests will take over, historical nightmares will end, and it will all be about business...

Hmm. For the first time I think I'm truly worried about the overall future. Still, though, it's not for a while and a lot can happen in the meantime...

downtown is erie, went as far as canal, after taking time out of the city on coney island, foolish idea I'd be able to go and get my stuff ( was not thinking straight at all)

lots of nervous loking non whites ( mainly arabs and south asians) going round with starts and stripes pinned to them. south of houston is strage as anyuthng as we were walking back we turned round and saw the smoke turn from white to balck, later we found out more buildings had colapsed.

i won't be wearing red white and blue I have only just changed out of the pair of trousers I was wearing on tuesday and the 99c t shirt I bought yesterday but more than that jingo and nationalism is not what we need now or ever. Grahame Gree said, 'My Nationality is Mankind' This applies now more than ever

did kate get out?

Ally and others if you still want to meet up mail me.

i won't be wearing red white and blue

You got that damn right. Black, like Dan suggested, I'm up for. I refuse to distinguish between the dead by national colors.

But how horribly ironic that you mention some have felt it needed to wear those freakin' colors now. Feh.

Thank you, Bill, for your comments. I strongly agree with them. It is important for people to realize the context of the attack. It is also extremely important for the country to prepare to defend itself.

I am all for discussion of what happened and why. But when push comes to shove, I know what side I'm on.

Jesus Christ, someone linked to that skank Ann Coulter's sickening article. Sorry to inject more politics into this, but I'm sure that I'm not the only Yank who remembers that that CUNT was one of the blond Nazi bimbos screaming for Clinton's head during Monicagate. She billed herself as a "Constitutional scholar," though she has authored no scholarly work on Constitutional law (no law review articles, no books [save some piece of shit Clinton-bashing tome] on the topic) and Alan Dershowitz has (at least once) tore her a new asshole on the TV blabathons. So Ann the Skank Coulter calling to bomb the shit out of Afghanistan is being true to form.

No-one, not even the sleaziest ambulance-chasing slip-and-fall shyster, makes me more ashamed of my fellow lawyer (well, maybe Ken Starr, but that's another rant). Ann Coulter is a disgrace to our profession. (And no, as obnoxious as she was, I am not happy that Barbara Olson is dead.)

No-one weeps for the Palestinians, the Iraqi civilians killed by the US (and the UK, let's not forget that),

This is bullshit. With the amount of Arabs and Israelis in NYC? This is bullshit. Perhaps true in Europe (might I add the only people in the entire world I've seen online bring up this argument - WE REBUILT YOUR FUCKING UNIVERSE, SIT YOUR ASS DOWN, not to sound patriotic as A.M.Aers can very much vouch for my anti-US policy sentiments), but not in the US. I personally have spent the last three to four months hearing shitloads about Israel - I am MARRYING someone who wants to join the Israeli army. I am GREAT TIGHT FRIENDS with an Israel immigrant formerly a sniper in thier army - this is what I hear about all the time. I feel horrible for those people. THey shouldn't have to live like that. And neither sbould the US- this is my point, none of these motherfucking countries we lay money into to hel pTHEIR causes are doing ANYTYING right now. My people - my fucking people, i only found out today that all my people are accounted for and I'm still convinced I forgot SOMEONE in my Citibank depart ent, moved to the WTC about a month after I quit - they are dead. MY PEOPLE ARE FUCKING DEAD. We lay money into other couuntries when their people are dead - where is our support? I am grateful that most of this board has been very supportive and kind. But it's not everyone and it's certainly not representative of the snetiment I got on the internet.

There' sno fucking need. No one should be pleased or happy by this.

And I think that if GWB, whatever his faults, was going tob e hasty, Afghanistan would not exist by now. So we can take some comfort in the whoel war scenario by that. It'd be gone by now if we were going to be complety hasty.

I am so drunk. I am so shattered. It has all hit me tonight, it has all just fucking hit me today on e I founce my last person i thig me . I am totally out of it, I just dont' know what i'd do if I didn't find everyone.

i ma four miles from this and I cannot help. i cannot help, i need to hep. i need to do something. please someone tell me what i can do. i need to get out of nyc.

Folks, having read Ally's post, I think I'm going to stop talking about all that's happened. You will see me in other ILE threads, but I have ceased pretending I've been removed from this all. Further discussion will erode me.

i don't mean to scare you all away - i know i am getting increasingly hysterical but i work in finance, my friends were ALL there, andmy efforts to help my coworkerds find their loveds ones are all failing, i feel helpless.

I think the pace of the news is outstripping our ability to spin narratives from it.

Peter Jennings: "It is not our intention to alarm, but we are receiving truly alarming reports from the intelligence community..." While many of the news outlets are concentrating on the human stories right now, ABC is quietly trying to intimate to the public that the terrorist plot might be even bigger than we were initially led to believe, what with the authorities arresting a whole bunch of people in LaGuardia and Kennedy who were trying to board planes, claiming they were pilots, had many fake IDs, plane tickets from Tuesday, pilot certificates from Vero Beach, knives, etc.

I think to myself: if these people are terrorists, how stupid could they be to try the same tactics so close to Tuesday?

The Pentagon is on fire again.

I just got back from an interfaith service at Buckingham Fountain. Representatives from many faiths spoke - Jewish, Muslim, Protestant, Catholic and Buddhist. Oh, and Jesse Jackson was there. I'm not religious but I was feeling the need for a space for reflection and expression of sadness, away from trivial work stuff, away from the internet and anger, because I'm feeling really angry and irrational lately. Basically there was some non-denominational prayer, but mostly words of wisdom from various religious texts and some non- prayer speeches. One of the Muslim speakers was just awesome - I hope the news cameras got him, because there have been several nasty attacks on Muslims here. The Buddhist woman gave us some good thoughts to meditate on. The B'nai B'rith guy was wonderful as well. It calmed me quite a bit - it also tempered my feelings about religion. There's been a lot of talk about fanaticism lately, but religion has also provided a space where reflection and understanding - listening instead of talking - is sanctioned, not something very common in our culture. It made me want to read the source texts of these faiths - I'm certainly having a hard time reading anything else.

Well, it's official: people are fighting in the streets. My girlfriend saw a scuffle between two people, one screaming "IRAQI" and the other screaming "FAGGOT", then she went into a Genovese drug store to hear a white cashier arguing with some sort of mideastern cashier about whether or not we should bomb/war/whatever. The arab-looking one said, "But you KNEW it was coming! What about all the innocent babies?!" When she relayed this, I asked how this was an argument that "we knew it was coming"... ? So it's our own fault? Our FBI let it happen on purpose, erego no war should ensue?

On the busride home, I was surprised and confused to see some sort of mideastern looking 20-something guy walk up to the bus steps, put on some sort of ghetto-tough-guy posture, bobbing his head and then spit on the steps and doorway of the bus, moments before it came to the last stop. I looked at where he spat, as I was sitting closest to the exit door and then looked up at him just clueless. He gave me what was obviously supposed to be a very hard look and then slammed his fist into the metal bar in front of my face. On his hand, less than a foot in front of my face, I shit you not, were 4 big silver rings (tacky) and one was a big skull with a top hat. I looked at his fist, as I was obviously supposed to, and then looked back at him with a blank look. Then I realized, "Oh, this guy's an Arab! He's either afraid and trying to act tough or else he's siding with the terrorists or some shit"

As soon as I realized what was going on, the doors opened and he was the first out. Some people started saying "don't touch the door, he spit on it"..."he was trying to look all hard"..."take that shit back to Afghanastan, motherfucker."

The above are exact quotes. When I got home, my girlfriend told me what she witnessed and then I told her about the bus incident. It's kind of freaky to even go outside if it's going to turn into a warzone.

Not many things like this happening here in kansas C ity thank God. But City Hall had a bomb threat . I am trying to get on with my life right now, but I'm curious to see what little georgie will do next. Any military operation is always painful . More death.

CNN has been showing what appears to be samidzat footage from somebody filming on a top floor of a building within the World Financial Center, peering into what used to be the Plaza. It's given me the best sense of scale of the damage of anything yet. Yahoo! is also publishing pictures from a John Labriola of people being evacuating from the towers, which also gives me a sense of what my co- workers must've gone through going down those fire stairs.

I just found out from NBC my dad's firm had some offices in Five WTC. I had no idea, none. It looks like there might be some losses.

It seems hard for me to try to mourn for people, so I mourn for things. There was a small park in front of 140 Broadway and to the side of One Liberty Plaza, and had one of these eerie super-realistic sculptures of a circa 1979 businessman sitting on a park bench with his suitcase. If you've ever been there, you'll know what I'm referring to. It magnetized the tourists, who poked at his features in dazed admiration. CNN (I think) showed the sculpture sitting on rubble, apparently wrenched from his seat. At first I thought it was a corpse, though I was still jolted when I realized what exactly what it was.

Fox News is now on some kind of deathwatch for the Millenium Hotel.

let's not discuss the hotels.

I am glad to say that altercations here in my part of the city are almost nonexistant - there are armed police guarding mosques and synagogs but that's it.

Out of curiosity I checked out a Website giving the names of World Trade Center survivors, and someone had hacked it, frequently inserting the words "All Arabs must die" into the space where a survivor's name should have been listed.

This all really sucks. I would hope most Americans would be smarter than this. I know one mosque in the area has been attacked but I have seen nothing first hand.

My fave corner store is run by a family of middle easteren descent. I stopped by there today and chalked their eager gabbiness to my being in a rush. Only afterwards did I think maybe they were looking for friendly faces.

I doubt this though. Since my neighborhood is primarily illegal Mexicans I don't think there is a strong feeling in the air other than sadness. No patroitism or jingoism

A news story I read had a passing reference to Bush today making a "plea to stop the mistreatment Arab Americans." Can anyone provide further info?

"French intelligence agents warned America a month ago that an Arab at a flying school in Boston had travelled to Afghanistan and was suspected of connections with bin Laden. Although the man was detained for having false papers, it appears that France’s warning was lost by the American police. " This from The Times I guess our boys were a bit slow on this one.

I made a new thread as we have passed 100 posts and I don;t know how to link it. Some one help me :(

I probably shouldn't be arguing with Ally here, but I'm in a fit of pique now.
"No-one weeps for the Palestinians, the Iraqi civilians killed by the US (and the UK, let's not forget that)', This is bullshit. With the amount of Arabs and Israelis in NYC? This is bullshit. Perhaps true in Europe..." Oh yes, that's why no-one can get anything done in the US, what with those enormous protests every day of the week clogging up the streets of every major city demanding a halt to the US's support of Israel, sanctions against Iraq etc. I'm not 'pleased' or 'happy' about Tuesday's events, and I'm sorry if I gave that impression and am totally sorry for any loss you may have had. But IT HAS TO BE SAID, people die every day out in the east as a result of US action, the horror and distress felt by many a NYC, and indeed world citizen is something that the citizens of Iraq (for example) have had to go through for the PAST 10 YEARS as a result of sanctions, bombing raids etc. Do we have official days of mourning for them? The children denied proper healthcare, all those classified as 'collateral damage'? No. The sooner people get away from this absurd attitude of "What did we do to deserve this?" the better.
"WE REBUILT YOUR FUCKING UNIVERSE"
Perhaps if you were talking to a German, this would be true. But you're not, and it's not. This kind of attitude is the thin end of the wedge, as the cliche goes.

Terrorist Action 11/9/2001 -- Thread 10.

Y'all gonna stop spamming these threads without comment or do you actually have something to say?