441–450 of 523 posts
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> Bin Laden is a member ... He is however estranged That's a curious way to phrase it, given that he died in 2011.
Saying "he died" is kind of a curious way to frame things, too. "Died" offers a completely different connotation than "killed."
I'm old enough to have pretty vivid memories of watching a lot of this live. I don't really want to relive it. Keep the memories alive? Certainly. But rewatching? Too much. Also, while we can't change the past, we're facing a massive challenge that is devouring thousands of people on a daily basis; let's commit to doing everything we can to defeat that particular monster. That is something we can all help with, in ou…
I was excited to watch this again, mostly because I had zero understandng of the world at that time. It was interesting to see the reactions of the anchors with my older eyes, seeing them display genuine empathy and shock at what they were seeing.
I remember whichever channel I was watching at the time, the anchor continued to question exactly what was going on, but with this site I was able to see other anchors! After the second plane hit, the one I wasn't watching live said it was an obvious terrorist attack, which is a shock to me. I kinda assumed everyone was as confused as I was.
Another shock: I got to feel again the genuine fear I felt then. In all the years that have passed and my anger at all the adults in my life for becoming bloodthirsty and cheering on Bush and the Iraq war, 9/11 had morphed into a vague meme. A symbol of so many of the terrible things I'd eventually learn about the US government.
I'd forgotten just how scary everything was on that particular day.
When reviewing 9/11 attacks (likely the biggest and most disastrous intelligence failure in U.S. history, give or take Pearl Harbor), it's worth remembering that it could have been much worse. If the first plane had hit Indian Point nuclear reactor what, 30 miles from NYC and upwind? It's likely a Chernobyl/Fukushima disaster would have resulted with an exclusion zone well into NYC. That was reportedly part of the pl…
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I don’t think that’s true. Covid is dangerous precisely because healthcare systems can be overwhelmed. If you receive care and have nocomorbid conditions, Covid for most won’t be dangerous, certainly not as dangerous as the 1918 pandemic, which killed young people.
I think that there is a solid argument that the 1918 epidemic would have killed far fewer people if they had had modern treatments for respiratory distress.
Covid 19 results in mild symptoms for most young people. In comparison, the 1918 pandemic was most deadly if you were young, or old.
There is a qualitative difference between the diseases.
When reviewing 9/11 attacks (likely the biggest and most disastrous intelligence failure in U.S. history, give or take Pearl Harbor), it's worth remembering that it could have been much worse. If the first plane had hit Indian Point nuclear reactor what, 30 miles from NYC and upwind? It's likely a Chernobyl/Fukushima disaster would have resulted with an exclusion zone well into NYC. That was reportedly part of the pl…
I'm quite sure I saw an interview with Osama Bin Laden where he talked about that idea. They did consider it, but he said they didn't want to go for a nuclear reactor because they didn't want "things to get out of hand".
I don't remember if it was confirmed by the hosts/interviewer, or if it was my interpretation, but I took that to mean he didn't want the US to use nuclear weapons in retaliation, which he thought they would(might?).
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(Spoilers) The end of Tom Clancy's 1994 book "Debt of Honor" featured a 747 being crashed into the Capital, which is about as close as fiction gets.
A bit closer is the X-Files spinoff The Lone Gunmen, where a March 2001 episode featured a plot to crash an airliner into the world trade center and blame it on terrorists to justify a new war. Obviously 9/11 wasn't some government conspiracy to purposely spark new wars, but the other details are eerily similar.
The sad thing is that uncovering that plot didn’t help prevent the actual attack based on it a few years later…
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bojinka_plot#Phase_III:_CIA_pl...
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The two towers were designed to sustain an accidental hit by a 707 on a descent trajectory. They were instead purposely hit by much larger 747s and at a much higher cruising speed. This meant that the kinetic energy transfer was approximately 8x larger than expected. The 747s at the time of impact also held significantly more fuel (at least 100% more) than those utilised in the 707 attack model.
they were not hit by 747s
When I got home my mom told me my dad's plane had been diverted to Salt Lake City and that he'd be driving back to California where we lived. Dad's best friend was a high ranking US Army officer at the Pentagon. My mom spent all day on the phone with the helpline trying to find out if he was all right. Fortunately she was able to talk to someone there who mentioned they had seen him that day and that he hadn't been in the building.
To me this still feels recent. I don't know that it ever won't.
If watching this footage makes you want to stand up and do something, remember that Covid-19 is killing as many people in the US every two days as died in these attacks. Take small steps to make the world a better place, helping your neighbors, and you can take a stand against entropy.
> Take small steps to make the world a better place, helping your neighbors, and you can take a stand against entropy. A different way to think about it: what if individuals independently taking small steps in only sufficient to maintain the status quo? What if the true state of reality is that something larger is needed, and is possible, but will never come to be because we never even tried to find it?
In times of crisis, it's the local network that will support you, not the federal government. As much as we've been told to embrace individualism over the past century, we're still a cooperative species and will default to cooperation when things turn bad.
If you want to see how well top-down nation building works out, ask the Afghans. The reason the new government never took hold was that there was no political will to address corruption so the old system still endured in local bonds and power structures. You can't have structural reforms without addressing root causes.
When reviewing 9/11 attacks (likely the biggest and most disastrous intelligence failure in U.S. history, give or take Pearl Harbor), it's worth remembering that it could have been much worse. If the first plane had hit Indian Point nuclear reactor what, 30 miles from NYC and upwind? It's likely a Chernobyl/Fukushima disaster would have resulted with an exclusion zone well into NYC. That was reportedly part of the pl…