9/11: Forbidden Thoughts

Eventually "Amen" will be replaced by "fuck yeah, bro" in most churches.

This day will forever be remembered, to those who lost loved ones my condolences. #bransoncognac #lecheminduroi pic.twitter.com/V9cN02Xigd

— 50cent (@50cent) September 11, 2021

pure class is that lad 👏👏👏

tbf I had the same reaction to the immediate post-9/11 "New Yorkers are the best people" / "New York is the greatest city etc.," because, like, those pansies in Baltimore or Berlin or Buffalo would have simply crumpled

― Richard Marxist (Ye Mad Puffin),

Fwiw I think New Yorkers' ability to pull together has been exaggerated, or at least is not something unique to NYC, that most everyone else does just as well or better.

New Yorkers are the people who won't be put off by public displays of neuroses, like some might be perturbed if as a total stranger you were to complain to them in an aggravated way about your frustrations with the publuc transit service, they may even fear your hostility could be turned against them. But not a New Yorker, we are more likely to appreciate the display of solidarity.

I feel like in NYC it's pretty much acceptable in most circumstances to interject in an overheard conversation that total strangers are having if you are passionate about the topic and/or have something to add. I explained this to a friend from Holland who was visiting and he was absolutely horrified.

There are just certain behaviors that I feel wouldn't fly anywhere else, but that seem perfectly normal to me. In some places people would think i'm nuts, and they wouldn't be wrong but it's nice that i'm able to get along to whatever degree of getting along this is.

Rudy rolled into the 9/11 dinner drunk out of his mind tonight. Here he is giving his Queen Elisabeth impression, and assuring the audience he was never with a young girl and Prince Andrew. pic.twitter.com/U40YSzS34X

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 12, 2021

Navy flag, American flag, and McDonald’s flag still at half-staff on 9/12 here at Gitmo. pic.twitter.com/Su3gb3tfTc

— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) September 12, 2021

McDonalds one is for an unrelated incident

rip mayor mccheese

America's Burger

20 years later and they still haven't rebuilt the Golden Arches

...

https://i.gifer.com/fetch/w300-preview/47/47619e5bca9708b1e5b88bb23ac236e7.gif

I foresee the traditional Moment of Silence being supplanted in America with the Moment of Incoherent Bellowing, it's just how we demonstrate our reverence now

"Oh I thought it was time for Two Minutes of Hate."

1) i’m definitely over random ppl just posting tourist photos of themselves visiting the WTC ~whenever~

2) i’m at the point where i want every rando to stfu & leave space for ppl directly affected to talk or post photos if they need it. rest of world, just fuckin can it for ONE DAY.

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Saturday, September 11, 2021 11:33 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Tbh, every single living person in the US continues to be directly affected, there is no way any reasonable person should accept the idea that only those who "lost people" were directly affected. All of our lives would be measurably different, and to be honest, probably a lot fucking better.

And of course, that's to say nothing of the millions of Iraqi and Afghani citizens who, yknow, were murdered due to US imperial bloodlust.

so why did saudi arabia participate/primarily drive the attack? i am completely ignorant. certain faction of religious zealots in the govt? trying to get us more mired in the middle east to aserve their interests? some kind of straightforward financial motive?

There aren't any direct answers, but it seems pretty likely that— surprise— the US was working in concert with Saudi Arabia and a number of other regional interests to build more extractive infrastructure in Afghanistan.

Getting closer to September 2001, that year had seen a series of negotiations between the Taliban and a U.S.-led coalition regarding the creation of a new unity government in Afghanistan.

According to attendee Niaz Naik, former Pakistani Minister for Foreign Affairs, “If the Taliban had accepted this coalition, they would have immediately received international economic aid … And the pipelines from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan would have come.”

Naik also stated that Tom Simons, a U.S. representative at the talks, told them that “‘either the Taliban behave as they ought to, or Pakistan convinces them to do so, or we will use another option.’ The words Simons used were ‘a military operation.’”

Such would apparently come to pass after the negotiations broke down. On September 4, 2001, the Bush cabinet authorized the drafting of a new National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD). This document, NSDP-9, called for a sizable covert action initiative which included U.S. ground troops and Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan.

Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance, was dead set against U.S. ground troops in Afghanistan but, on September 9, 2001, he was conveniently assassinated, likely with U.S. complicity on some level.

The next day, on September 10, a second NSDP-9 related meeting was held, focusing on various details of the U.S. military and political plans for Afghanistan.

Then, on September 11...

I know that some of this stuff dwells in the land of conspiracy and paranoid spy-speak, but I really don't put it past US hegemonic interests to orchestrate a mass murder of its own citizens so as to better get at natural resources elsewhere.

That quote above is from Covert Action, btw. https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/09/11/the-twenty-year-shadow-of-9-11-u-s-complicity-in-the-terror-spectacle-and-the-urgent-need-to-end-it/

I know that some of this stuff dwells in the land of conspiracy and paranoid spy-speak, but I really don't put it past US hegemonic interests to orchestrate a mass murder of its own citizens so as to better get at natural resources elsewhere.

oh trust me, my thoughts on this would probably get me laughed off the board

I welcome your thoughts, personally.

I was about to turn 17. I remember that we had an emergency assembly between when the first plane and second plane hit. I went to a Quaker high school, so it was a very gentle assembly, with talk of "holding people in the light," and so on. I only remember three things from the rest of that day.

1) Saying to my friend Richard, "We're going to start a war in the Middle East, probably against Palestine or Iraq"
2) Watching the second plane hit on live television in my beloved biology teacher's classroom
3) Having a screaming match with my father later that evening where I called him a "bloodthirsty pigfucker"

One of Al-Queda's main beefs with the US was the military bases in Saudi Arabia--particularly because Mecca is there. A cool idea we had later was that we wouldn't need the bases there anymore if we invaded Iraq. Problem solved.

i know this is the forbidden thoughts thread but can we please not do inside job talk this week

i'm keeping mum

The twentieth anniversary of 9/11 was going to be an inside job but it was moved to an outdoor venue due to COVID concerns.

guys do you want to summon the 'Lorax

https://s3-prod.adage.com/s3fs-public/styles/800x600/public/20200803_WilfordBrimley_3x2.jpg

i know this is the forbidden thoughts thread but can we please not do inside job talk this week

― nobody like my rap (One Eye Open), Monday, September 13, 2021 9:10 AM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well I guess so many in the US have ignored glaring and obvious reality for the past twenty years, what's one more week.

xpost to table

i expressed myself poorly, i didnt mean that anyone who wasnt there wasnt affected. apologies for any offence caused to you or anyone else itt

9/11 was an inside job by Jonathan Safran Foer so he'd have something to write about

Leo Phoenix lives

Hi VG, I wasn't offended, I just get very...uh...polemical about how the reverberations of this event have quite literally led to the deaths of millions. 3100 people dead is a horror, of course, but millions of people? Unbearable to think about, but we must.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkSMSbFV_q0

shameful lol

so why did saudi arabia participate/primarily drive the attack? i am completely ignorant. certain faction of religious zealots in the govt? trying to get us more mired in the middle east to aserve their interests?

I don't think there are good answers. The long game of inciting a war that eventually gets us to take out Saddam (only to be replaced with a state in Iran's orbit?) feels like a big stretch. I'd guess more along the lines of some religious radicals wanted to do it and the people above them couldn't afford to piss them off/stop them.

Norm Macdonald setting up Andy Dick to laugh at a 9/11 joke... 😂😂😂#NormMacDonald #911remembrance #NeverForget911 pic.twitter.com/LGZcGdX2qy

— Zombie🤬Sexbot (@ZombieSexbot) September 12, 2018

I don't know if this is just the media bubble that I've created for myself, or possibly because I'm in the UK rather than the US, but I feel like these days, about 90% of the time when I see a reference to 9/11 it's in the context of an intentionally edgy/bad-taste joke? Or that 9/11 has become almost the default go-to subject for tasteless jokes (maybe the Challenger space shuttle disaster filled a similar place for an earlier generation?) It's maybe a 'safe' subject for edgy jokes because it's obviously inappropriate to joke about but it's not obviously racist/sexist/ableist etc?

I remember people I knew making bad-taste 9/11 jokes almost straight away (I was 16 at the time, so maybe my peer group was more likely to contain people inclined to make offensive try-hard jokes?), but in media anything less than absolute solemnity seemed verboten for quite a while - it's maybe the memory of that period when it forbidden to openly joke about that is why there are so many jokes now? I wonder a bout people who are too young to remember it first-hand, if they'll encounter 9/11 primarily as a thing that people tell jokes about (I feel this was my experience with the Challenger disaster?)

idk if Giuliani's descent into disgrace and buffoonery has anything to do with it (I know a lot of people always realised he was a buffoon, but he used to get a lot of respect across the centre-left and centre-right as well, right?) Or more generally, the Iraq war and the 'war on terror' more generally where there's a consensus view that sees them in retrospect as follies?

9/11 conspiracies and 'jet fuel can't melt steel beams' must be another factor in making it into a farcical subject? or just how the contemporary internet immediately makes anything and everything into a joke

Can confirm, my 1st grade class started making Challenger jokes almost immediately.

yeah I think how the attack was leveraged for just the dumbest and most evil stuff in the succeeding years definitely contributes. as does our response to “a 9/11 every day” in the Covid era.

https://ifunny.co/picture/the-flu-kills-more-people-every-year-lol-CMNd2bdq7?s=cl

eh fuck it

https://img.ifunny.co/images/eb0dac5efff12b9e090cd7779805afed151fb46cadbde1b4f9de7b76bed5cbc2_1.jpg

yeah I think how the attack was leveraged for just the dumbest and most evil stuff in the succeeding years definitely contributes.

Correct. Meanwhile the right wing have gone for conspiracy shit so much in the ensuing decades that their apetite for harping on an event where the conspiratorial pov is not to their advantage isn't very strong.

i think the constant solemnity in the media mentioned cultivated the urge, coupled with the growing cynicism that comes with being lied to 100% of the time by the president as he starts more and more wars

I did lol when I heard someone refer to the burning of the Fox Christmas tree as "Pine/11"

I will say that the 9/11 jokes in my last book always went over really well— even when I read from it in Lower Manhattan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7mvikSQteQ

the real 9/11

pic.twitter.com/Rd4sT5kd4Z

— Right Wing Cope (@RightWingCope) February 4, 2022