451–460 of 523 posts
I hitchhiked and walked to New York 20 years ago today. I had my firefighter and medic credentials faxed to FEMA and then went into ground zero for ~24 hours to dig. I wrote about all of this, later, in what became cDc t-file #396.[1] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20041208005336/http://www.cultde...
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.
Comparing an intentional attack on our nation to a global pandemic is insulting.
Instead all we got was 60 words in 2001 followed by that lousy PATRIOT Act, two decades of drone strikes, several case studies in failed nation building, and then for Covid a president pushing ineffective treatments and ridiculing medical experts.
Yes, it's insulting. But not because it's untrue but because it's hurtful.
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Re: Indian Point - containment buildings are pretty armoured by design. The Indian point containment vessel walls are several feet of high-grade steel reinforced concrete. You might be thinking of the skinny, low quality rebar used in common construction at this point - this isn’t that, the rebar here is 2.25 inches thick, made of good-quality steel, and spaced every fifteen inches or so. The containment building is…
When the towers were first built, one of the design questions was whether or not they could survive being hit by a 747 — on accident, presumably. So, that issue was taken into consideration. At the time of the attack, more modern aircraft were used, which had much thinner skins and were much more lightly constructed. Which means that they got much more shredded by the building construction as they passed through, and…
no, it was a 707 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eE8d94qGPo&t=232s
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> But rewatching? Too much. I remember seeing the SRB trails of OV-099 in the sky. Twenty years later it was possible to rewatch that on Youtube, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. But by now, I've watch that video and a few documentaries. I had no personal loss on January 26 1986, but it still took some time for me to be able to digest it. And I'm glad that I did.
Came in to my 5th grade elementary school class and found my teacher crying. She'd made it through several rounds of the selection process to be on board the Challenger. I don't like to watch that either, but... at least it was far fewer people, who had also signed up to take a risk, and it was a case of negligence rather than malice.
> at least it was far fewer people
Likewise, the destruction of the Twin Towers and a large portion of the Pentagon was a huge symbolic loss for the west in general and the US in particular. That's why the terms 9/11 and "Twin Towers" are almost synonymous yet the crash at the DoD is hardly ever mentioned. The US can suffer the loss of its symbol of the capitalistic market, the Twin Towers. But the bruise to the ego of the DoD is much more sensitive. Today there are full articles that purport to report on the events of 9/11, which do not even mention the Pentagon.
Just ask the guy sitting next to you what happened on 9/11. Any mention of the Pentagon?
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Heart disease and cancer aren't contagious, so your actions on that front will only improve your own life, while being a bit more careful with covid will potentially prevent sickness in a lot of people.
>Heart disease and cancer aren't contagious, so your actions on that front will only improve your own life No, they inflict massive negative externalities on society through healthcare. > while being a bit more careful with covid will potentially prevent sickness in a lot of people. Classic Safety-ism. Even today, 20 years after 9/11 and we are still paying a ludicrous price for this logic.
Good thing the US doesn't have socialized healthcare and private insurers generally exclude preexisting conditions.
> Classic Safety-ism. Even today, 20 years after 9/11 and we are still paying a ludicrous price for this logic.
Funny how the "safety-ism" after 9/11 was pushed by the Republicans and now the Republicans are complaining about Democrats pushing safety measures against Covid.
Except y'know most of these measures actually drastically reduce transmission (tho I agree some are ill-conceived, like I'm not sure curfews do anything but encourage people to meet indoors where transmission risk is significantly higher). Banning shampoo bottles was mostly theatrics.
Bonus:
> no one knows what the effect will be of kids wearing masks all day
I'm going to avoid the bait to reference mask wearing in Asian countries, but sure: that sounds like an important reason to crack down on Covid hard and fast rather than go back an forth on half-assed policies and artificially expand the duration of the crisis and risk a perpetual cycle of masks and vaccinations as poorer communities keep generating resistant mutations.
So I take it you support the mass production of vaccinations and free distribution to developing countries to bring down infection numbers world-wide and protect the US from foreign mutants? If perpetuating this pandemic could traumatize an entire generation of children, maybe this should be considered a national defense emergency and the US should invest a few more billions and rally its allies to do the same. Open up the patents to also get the countries on board that are distrustful of US-supplied vaccines.
Or are you trying to argue that Covid isn't that bad or that it's better if we let children catch it because they have a lower mortality?
I sometimes forget how surreal that day was. Was in high school at the time and sort of at “that age” where the world was still pretty small and revolved around me. Mom waking me up to say “you need to watch this,” with the TV on and both towers are on fire. The morning variety newscasters breaking their household familiarity speaking in a frightening shock that was so out of character. Still went to school that day…
> I think the pandemic has far more historical significance I’m not sure about that. Without 9/11, there would be no wars, perhaps no Obama, etc. It altered the arc of history in a profound way. The recent Frontline episode “America after 9/11”[0] draws a through-line from 9/11 to the events of Jan 6 at the U.S. Capitol. [0] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/america-after-9-11/
The War on Terror took its toll on much of the world. I don't think the pandemic would have played out exactly the same way in a world without 9/11.
However I think it's worth pointing out that to much of the world "9/11" is not just about the terror attacks but also the immediate aftermath and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. It's more of a period of time than a specific moment. Some of those things happened on the day itself, some in the days immediately after, some only months later.
I sometimes forget how surreal that day was. Was in high school at the time and sort of at “that age” where the world was still pretty small and revolved around me. Mom waking me up to say “you need to watch this,” with the TV on and both towers are on fire. The morning variety newscasters breaking their household familiarity speaking in a frightening shock that was so out of character. Still went to school that day…
I’m not sure at all the pandemic is going to be more significant historically. The 9/11 attacks did what Al-Qaeda intended them to - got the USA mired in an expensive, unwinnable war, which ultimately broke the US will to fight and seems to have resulted in a major reconfiguration of US foreign policy.
Citation very much needed.
Al Qaeda is a religious fundamentalist group that wants to bring about the Islamic caliphate under theocratic rule. As I understand it, their plans with the US were primarily to get rid of the US and US influences. Destroying the US was more of an indirect long-term goal as a consequences of establishing a global Islamic hegemony.
I also don't think you can talk about "breaking the US will to fight". Post-9/11 saw the transition from US soldiers to military contractors and drone strikes but also no reduction in US military bases. The influence of the US is led by its economy but reinforced by its military. If anything, the wars increased the US population's aversion to "boots on the ground" but arguably that was already on the way out ever since the traumatizing defeat in Vietnam.
The US continues to be interventionalist and it continues to engage in military operations outside formal declarations of war. It also continues to maintain a massive global network of military bases and an oversized arsenal of nuclear weapons. None of that has changed.
I think there's an observation to be made how the short-lived grief on 9/11 rapidly developed into a thirst for revenge and retaliation, and how computer games influenced the initial coverage of the wars (I distinctly remember the spinning 3D renderings of the missiles used in the initial attacks on Iraq) or how the US military at first embraced embedded reporting and then reporting became increasingly abstract as the wars dragged on and journalists were prohibited from showing the coffins of fallen soldiers.
Twenty years later it now seems that what remained is mostly the dehumanization. I distinctly recall US politicians demanding the assassination of "traitors" like Snowden or Assange during the Obama years but even today the illegal act of war of assassinating an Iranian military official in Iraq hardly raised any eyebrows (except for people worrying about whether this would be followed up by an invasion of Iran or Iran retaliating by attacking someone else like Skinner's pigeon impotently hacking at its cell mate after an electric shock).
The US hasn't lost its will to fight, but it has lost all pretense of its moral high ground. The US government being the hero in Hollywood movies was a bit quaint in the 90s but after 9/11 it's become increasingly uncomfortable to watch for non-Americans.
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I'm with you on being outraged, but organizational dysfunction is the norm and not reigning it in is one way of "dropping the ball". There wasn't, like, one single person who had all this information and he was personally stopped by the head of the CIA from telling the executive branch. It was a SNAFU of competing interests and stupid bureaucracy. The fact that these people were promoted afterwards, however.. yeah, m…
> It was a SNAFU of competing interests and stupid bureaucracy. I hear where you're coming from, but after 20 years, there are several parts of the story for which I can no longer believe this was the case, or use this explanation to give the benefit of the doubt. (There are many other parts for which it does make sense.) I'll save myself looking like an internet crank and just suggest you give the podcast I linked t…
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I thought I remembered the plot to the 1996 film “executive decision” as being a debate whether to shoot the passenger jet out of the sky because the plane was going to be used as a missile, but i just read the plot again and they were going to detonate a nerve agent bomb on board the plane while over a us city, so, similar but not quite a prediction of the predicament.
I just started watching the historical footage from CNN; it's interesting to hear the commentary in between when the first and second planes hit the tower. "Was the plane having any difficulty flying?" "Yes, it seemed to be rocking back and forth" "Was this a navigational error?" An announcement in the South Tower immediately after the crash instructed people to stay in their offices. Even after the second tower was…
Maybe large buildings should have cameras pointed at them with IR modes. Feed it to a national control centre that has experts on staff and links to other agencies. And make those kind of judgements thats will seem obvious in hindsight.
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And maybe do not forget the >360 000 dead civilians the war on terror has cost so far. Innocent bystanders, whose relatives now might feel a urge to join the real terrorists as the only means for them to get revenge, too. Endless cycle. "War on terror" is just a ugly concept and not one that seem to work. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/911-civili... Oh and something that does not get too much atten…
>do not forget the >360 000 dead civilians the war on terror has cost so far. Most of them killed by the same people the US targeted. Funny how all responsibility is always given to the West even when the people doing the killing are their enemies. >the taliban back then only refused to hand over Bin Laden without evidence presented Also after he publicly confessed, not to mention his previous crimes. Their refusal h…
War introduces a lot of entropy into nations. It is the ultimate dice roll in terms of outcomes. You are taking a gamble. And history would suggest that civilians suffer hugely whatever the political outcome. If we know that then how can we shut our eyes to that effect?