WARNING: Rant thread.
Wow that was difficult to suffer through. I didn't mind remembering those who lost their lives for no good reason on that day, but Americans really need to get some perspective.
Was 9/11 tragic? Of course. In Iraq, there has been 100,000+ civilian deaths! The US military has been raining bombs and missles in that place, and of course it would be natural for them to feel the reaction that we felt to seeing the Twin Towers fall. "Who are these people and why are they killing my countrymen? They must be evil!" That is the exact same thought process they are having. And just as military recruting became an easier sell after 9/11, insurgent recruiting is much easier after the War on Terror.
Not only that, but these military-worshippers can't even entertain the concept of looking at military action through the perspective of a foreigner. If any reaction comes from the Muslim world, it's automatically evil. That sounds to me like calling hornets evil for stinging somebody who kicks their nest. Of course I don't think the hijackings on 9/11 are excused or anything of that sort, but the US government had a large part in provoking the attacks.
Then if you say that, they conflate society with the State and say, "are you saying we brought it upon ourselves?" No, dunderhead, I am saying the US government (and incidentially the policies you support in passing), is causing them to get pissed off and retaliate.
Anyway, the stories about people coming together and helping their fellow humans escape the destruction and harm were moving. The stories about missing family members were touching. But, as expected, this was constantly entangled with military-worship and excessive nationalism. I can't say I expected anything else.
The 911 threads on 4chan almost make up for all the military worship crap.
I'm a 4chan n00b. Where would I go to see those?
a good way to balance out the nationalism
http://encyclopediadramatica.ch/9/11
I've avoided televisions and news channels all day, and have not looked at any newspaper headlines. I can't handle the bullshit. I know we disagree on the genuineness of the 9/11 events but as someone who does not believe the US government (or, at least, some key portions thereof) was a hapless dupe taken by surprise by the attacks, this is doubly frustrating. Not only are we rah-rahing the national security establishment like mindless zombies (http://costsofwar.org/), but we're doing it over an event that I believe was staged at one level or another.
Maddening.
Clayton -
Clayton:I've avoided televisions and news channels all day, and have not looked at any newspaper headlines. I can't handle the bullshit. I know we disagree on the genuineness of the 9/11 events but as someone who does not believe the US government (or, at least, some key portions thereof) was a hapless dupe taken by surprise by the attacks, this is doubly frustrating. Not only are we rah-rahing the national security establishment like mindless zombies (http://costsofwar.org/), but we're doing it over an event that I believe was staged at one level or another. Maddening. Clayton -
I was actually in basically the same boat. Which is why I decided to watch a 9/11 documentary I hadn't seen yet instead. It was the Alex Jones one "9/11 Chronicles: Part one, Truth Rising" (full film here). I didn't know what the content was going to be, but was pleased to see it mostly focus on demonstration efforts by individuals seeking to educate and calling for a new investigation. A lot of footage was shown from demonstrations at the 5th and 6th year anniversaries. It was good to see how many people are actually out there questioning.
(A list of 9/11 documentaries is made available here.)
I was also unaware WTC building 7 was not mentioned at all in the 9/11 Commission Report. I wonder why...
Today:
I can't handle the bullshit. I know we disagree on the genuineness of the 9/11 events but as someone who does not believe the US government (or, at least, some key portions thereof) was a hapless dupe taken by surprise by the attacks, this is doubly frustrating.
Wheylous, are you hacking the threads again?
Lol, no. I am not sure whether that is a tease or an actual question :P
I do not hack threads so as to make them unusable. That is just rude and stupid. The null posts above are either a user error or a system error (I'd say system, as they have happened to me too at times). And the spambot above is... idk, just a spambot, I guess.
The one thing which really makes sad is how most people just don't want to see through the deception. Whoever was responsible (I don't care if it was the Ghost of the Hindu Kush, a handful of suicidal terrorists or a Masonic conspirancy) brought pain and misery to thousands of families. Yet this pain and misery was used to inflict much more of it upon hundreds of thousands of families who had absolutely nothing to do with the attack. While we get all these moving stories of young boys and girls visiting the memorial to pay their respect to their deceased parents nobody gives a damn to all the young boys and girls who are left lonely, desperate and destitute when their fathers are killed by a SEAL kill team or CIA drone operators who think they've just bagged the next bin-Laden while it was really just an ordinary man trying to get on with his life. It's really heartbreaking to see the parents who lost their sons and daughters in New York but what about the parents who lost their sons and daughters in Basra, Bagram, Baghdad and Kabul? Yes, nobody gives a damn about them either. It's all about us.
Albert Schweitzer said Man won't be able to fnd true peace until he extends his compassion upon all creatures in the Universe. I wonder what he would have to say upon seeing people not even able to extend their compassion to fellow human beings who committed no other crime of being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or speaking a different language and praying in a different way.
+1 Kakugo - Steven Landsburg's 2005 article on protectionism is an application of this same moral principle in a different realm but he says it very well. It's just plain ugly to care more about total strangers because they happened to be born in New York than about total strangers because they happened to be born in Baghdad. Such discrimination is formally indistinguishable from old-fashioned racism. The entire edifice of the modern nation-state rests squarely on the foundation of arbitrary, institutionalized discrimination based on the accident of the geographical location of one's birth.
" It's just plain ugly to care more about total strangers because they happened to be born in New York than about total strangers because they happened to be born in Baghdad. Such discrimination is formally indistinguishable from old-fashioned racism. The entire edifice of the modern nation-state rests squarely on the foundation of arbitrary, institutionalized discrimination based on the accident of the geographical location of one's birth."
Quoted you on my Facebook
Wesker1982: " It's just plain ugly to care more about total strangers because they happened to be born in New York than about total strangers because they happened to be born in Baghdad. Such discrimination is formally indistinguishable from old-fashioned racism. The entire edifice of the modern nation-state rests squarely on the foundation of arbitrary, institutionalized discrimination based on the accident of the geographical location of one's birth." Quoted you on my Facebook
everything is discrimination but this particulary example is not racism at all.
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)