More on the WTC Disaster (Updated) [Sep 11, 2001, 9:30 pm ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
Of course this is not game related (we do not expect to be doing any further
game coverage today), but with the legit news sites being almost impossible to
access at times today, we've been getting loads of requests for more information
about what's been going on. Here is the latest as of about 9:00 PM EDT:
- President Bush addressed the nation 8:30 PM EDT. Here's a wire report: WASHINGTON (AP) - A grim-faced President Bush condemned ghastly attacks in Washington and New York on Tuesday and vowed to "find those responsible and bring them to justice." In the second Oval Office address of his presidency, Bush said the United States would retaliate against ``those behind these evil acts,'' and any country that harbors them.
To recap:
- In two separate attacks, hijacked planes struck both main towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan this morning, and both of the "twin towers" subsequently collapsed.
- A hijacked plane struck the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and part of it has collapsed as well.
- A hijacked plane crashed in western Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. Reports indicate the hijackers planned to crash this plane into Camp David in Maryland.
- 47 Story WTC building seven, one of the five (relatively) smaller buildings in the World Trade Center also later collapsed from ancillary damage.
- The White House, the Pentagon, and the Capitol Building were all evacuated, all domestic flights in the US have been grounded through at least noon tomorrow.
- Other closings include most federal offices, the stock markets, the Disney theme parks, and the cancellation of today's Major League Baseball schedule. The President's speech announced that all federal agencies will be open for business tomorrow.
- Broadcasts out of Afghanistan showed evidence of missile attacks and antiaircraft fire, but what connection this has to today's apparent terrorist attacks in the US is not clear at this point. The US has denied involvement in these attacks.
- In the first hints of any sort at the scope of casualties, the New York City Fire Department has estimated that as many as half of the 400 firefighters dispatched to the scene are missing. CNN has said that 78 Police officers are missing. Also, the death toll from those on the four hijacked planes has been placed at 266. The number of dead and injured at the Pentagon has been widely reported as about 100. No estimates of the number of victims from the World Trade Center have been made.
- People throughout the United States have are being urged to donate blood to help offset significant shortages in New York and Washington. The American Red Cross in Greater New York or the American Red Cross are places to contact about donating blood or money, or both.
- Some news sites seem to be back online. Here are some links that have been more reliable: CNN.com; CNET.com; Yahoo; The New York Times; washingtonpost.com; usnews.com; ABCNEWS.com; FOXNews.com; MSNBC; and BBC News Online.
All of our thoughts go out to the victims of these attacks and their families and friends in what must be an incredibly difficult time.
You are outraged. You cry out for irrational and radical measures. You are the many, the arrogant, the American; with your harsh words and ill-mannered language you bash about and scream pointing the blame on anyone who might look to be Indian, Iranian or Arabian in bloodline. Hollywood has tainted your views; we as free-born Americans know so little about these proud people and find it so easy to create a demonized image of their ways. Movies depict Arabians, Iranians, and many others of the "Middle Eastern" bloodlines as AK-47-wielding shepards and wild-eyed terrorists seeking out nuclear warheads and newscrews. I can't expect eeryone to understand where I'm going with this. But the point is the blame is unfairly placed upon entire countries because of the voluntary ignorance of the middle-aged working-class American. You would see yourselves as untouchable, indestructable, perhaps even infalliable.
"We're America; we're right because a whole bunch of us got mad and said so!" Such a depressing outlook on the rest of the world. How many of you have toured to other countries and said to the Mom & Pop shopkeeper "How much is that in *REAL* money?" You hold yourselves so high, as if the rest of the world's currency meant no more to you than Monopoly money sticking to the tires of your SUV. As a wise teacher said- "A traveller lives and learns while walking the path; A tourist goes to Taiwan, stays at the Hilton and orders a hamburger." I currently hold the honor of being one of this man's disciples for my senior year of high school. I would come to his class for many years to come if I would be permitted just to hear his aquired wisdom. I am not worthy of whatever the source might be.
These are sensitive times that require the compassion and open mindedness and wonder of the traveller. There are those of the media-demonized "Middle-Eastern" bloodlines who now fear for there lives: They fear being beaten in the streets, fearing that just one of the dozens of death threats or bomb threats might hold true. Before you pick up the phone, dial to disable Caller ID, and threaten to end the lives, hopes and dreams of hopeful couples, enterprising scholars, innocent families and the 9-5 sallaryman bacheoler: Grow up. Grow *the fuck* up. Admit you've never even seen a real working bomb. Admit you have no clue how to even eject the clip from that nickel plated Uzi-clone you saw in some Hong Kong blood-opera flick. Your ignorance makes you harmles and at the same time worthless. Now put down the damn phone and let them quiver in relative peace.
You call yourselves Americans, I call you squeeling swine. I *am* a full citizen free-born right here in the United States. I have an expired ID provided by our beloved Air Force by my father, a crash-truck mechanic only months from full retirement. Yet with all the screaming, rioting, and for the love of [your God not mine]: a fist fight between upper-middle-class white American adults over who gets use the gas pump before the price per gallon goes up another cent; I am ashamed to call myself American and have long ago vowed to move to Kyoto, Japan as soon as I can afford it. If I have my way my children won't even learn English. I had sushi for the first time last night. "S'ayonara han-ba-ga" I'm ready. Let *them* land. Anything to make me less American than you drooling losers sloshing to and fro the fridge and TV set.
Yet in the face of this tragedy, one must look to the sky and wonder with a tear in the eye. "Why was this done?" "What have we done to deserve this?" So take a big sniff, wipe your nose (please don't blow in public, oroface management in full-view is rather grotesque) and look me square in the eye with a straight face for a moment.
* "W H Y"
When you fill out your census forms, tax returns, job applications- what religion do proudly proclaim on those pieces of paper? They cannot all be listed here, and I would no doubt alienate many. Let's assume that the majority of readers claim to be Christian (I, for this period will allow myself to pause for a fit of hysterical laughter while bashing upon my withering keyboard, but you must keep a straight face... Okay I'm done). You go to church for two hours per Sunday, preach the contents of your horribly contradicting Bible within those confines, while outside you impose your own ultra-conservative Bible-beating pinhole-minded viewpoints on others and maybe pray an average of two and a half times per day...
Yet the rest of this time, it is money that controls your lives, rations your sanity and happiness to you in bi-weekly paychecks, determines your daily activities and limits your "quality time" with your "family". Your value and social status among your local community is greatly determined by the quality and nature of your material possessions while your so-called Christian [stifling a snort] children, your beautiful, talented, open-hearted children, wear the cross around their necks and join the in-crowd, taking their "friends" out to lunch at Burger Thing, gossiping about the wierd girl while bleaching their hair and changing into their "Princess today; Goddess tomorrow" half-shirts. You are a Materialist, and so am I. <So am I...>
Only years ago, the World Trade Center was first bombed. The objective was to destroy it. Our Muslim friends were tring to save their Christian brethren from the grasp of Materialism. Throughout history the greatest of the world's wonderous structures have been built to honor the religions of a civilization. The Pyramids, Mecca, many of the "Great Wonders of the World", all dedicated to the spiritual purisuit of fulfillment and enlightenment- a taste of heaven. Yet in our society and that of other world commercial trading powers, our greatest structures are built in the name of money. On September 11, 2001 aprox. 9:40 it happened again.
Two commercial aircraft with nearly full tanks of fuel collided with the World Trade Center towers. These were the first targets hit and the primary. I was the first in my classroom to notice that the second building on the NEWS was collapsing much as CNN.com describes as "a peeling banana". By destroying these iconic representations of America's capitalist materialism, these brave soldiers against the secularist ways hoped to destroy our tightwad perception of the flesh realm. Americans simply hold too much value in human life and money, and not at all enough value in human experience. These "terrorists" were willing to make a sacrifice that may actually benefit future generations. You won't even give up your fossil-fueled vehicles for two generations so that electrical cars and mechanically efficient bicylces can replace them, these people forfeit their lives for something they know will be hated. No wonder the love-to-hate-them Middle East is rejoicing in certain regions.
If our economy does crumble to the ground like so much concrete, steel, and glass, we may once again call our elders by the honorific titles they deserve, children may stop defying their parents, and we may remember just what is important in our pointless lives. I love you all, and I will cry this out in the streets until the stones scatter my skull- to bring you into the light. Stay with me. Your patience (My working e-mail address will be at the bottom, it is the only one I will respond to or even read, and I will try to respond to everyone of your comments.)
* "AN ACT OF COWARDACE"- Of Iron Men and Iron Souls
Sacrificing your life, your family, and your future to perform a hated deed in hopes that future generations will comprehend your reasoning is simply not an act of cowardace. By using words like "coward" our president hopes to gain the popularity by moral outrage. Using and abusing the collective conciousness and will of the crowd has been the greatest outrage of all during this. To call these men who died alongside those whom they slew "cowards" is exactly the same as calling any kamikaze pilot who mopped the deck of a battle ship after running out of ammo a coward. It is the same as calling anyone who ever jumped on a grenade a coward. Anyone who ever took a bullet, defended their post- behind the front counter of a gas station, pushed a friend out of harms way only to replace them; would be a coward in this definition as well.
On the other side of this, those who die in unfortunate accidents are not all heros, no more the deer that falls to a hunter's bow (or *sigh* rifle). It is those who die on their knees because sudden injury has made them unable to stand while fighting the enemy at the walls in the name of those too rich or too weak to fight for themselves who die heros. It is those who sacrifice their lives and small fortunes for a better future, for the benefit of a stranger, for honor without glory, who die heros. It is those who take an enemy into their house and love them as friends who are heros.
I am not an innocent child, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, blindly shaking my finger at the public's redneck reaction. In the face of this attack, I weep for the firefighters alone and any soldier who must now guard a foreign US embassy.
* FINAL WORDS
Do I commend these men for their actions? It is a question I cannot answer myself. But know this: I would have shot the aircraft into oblivion mindful of where the missed shots went if I could have been there ready and able, same as anyone else. The only flag I shall carry over my head is the banner of my own family, and that of my beloved, a powerful symbol of the family that is to come; and I will defend these things to the death. Threaten my family and I will die to see their safety. If we go to war I will enlist. I will fight to defend my home. In the air, in the streets, in the kitchen where resides this computer. I will use fists, feet, steak knives and vintage whiskey bottles defending my place of refuge to the end until bullets and greasy envelopes force hot metal through my flesh bursting organs, shattering bone, spilling blood and sending a screaming conciousness into the next world. Just as long as my family is safe. So long as in the end, there can be peace again.
* * *
I honestly expect no one to read this far. You have better things to do and your hatred may blind you to the message I am trying to convey. Instead of your hatred, allow your sense and reasoning to reflect on this. Yes, you have loved and lost. You watched "them" enter the buildings and them become smeared along the collapsing walls. You witnessed firefighters enter the building, bravery being the last thought on their minds, and watched them simply vanish while sweaty politicians butcher the truth on national television writing them off as "missing". Never before in the history of the world has such a well coordinated attack of terrorism graced a peace-loving nation. There *should* be vengeance, there *should* be revenge, there *should* be a "calculated response"; and there will be. "There shall be no distinguishment between those responsible for the attack and those harboring them" quoth our president. We should *not* tolerate terrorism and *should* respond with terror-invoking actions of our own.
But at the same time there are people out there right now beating a veiled woman to death. There is a crisp, shaven man in a fine $2400 suit sitting at home about to call a university ethnic community with a threat on their lives. And these people are no better. And on the other side, people in the dark of night fumble through a translation dictionary trying to paint "Safe House" in Aribac on a banner to put in view of their front yard. These are sensitive times. We ask your patience.
-Zombi Z
LindseysZombiZ@hotmail.com
"We're America; we're right because a whole bunch of us got mad and said so!" Such a depressing outlook on the rest of the world. How many of you have toured to other countries and said to the Mom & Pop shopkeeper "How much is that in *REAL* money?" You hold yourselves so high, as if the rest of the world's currency meant no more to you than Monopoly money sticking to the tires of your SUV. As a wise teacher said- "A traveller lives and learns while walking the path; A tourist goes to Taiwan, stays at the Hilton and orders a hamburger." I currently hold the honor of being one of this man's disciples for my senior year of high school. I would come to his class for many years to come if I would be permitted just to hear his aquired wisdom. I am not worthy of whatever the source might be.
These are sensitive times that require the compassion and open mindedness and wonder of the traveller. There are those of the media-demonized "Middle-Eastern" bloodlines who now fear for there lives: They fear being beaten in the streets, fearing that just one of the dozens of death threats or bomb threats might hold true. Before you pick up the phone, dial to disable Caller ID, and threaten to end the lives, hopes and dreams of hopeful couples, enterprising scholars, innocent families and the 9-5 sallaryman bacheoler: Grow up. Grow *the fuck* up. Admit you've never even seen a real working bomb. Admit you have no clue how to even eject the clip from that nickel plated Uzi-clone you saw in some Hong Kong blood-opera flick. Your ignorance makes you harmles and at the same time worthless. Now put down the damn phone and let them quiver in relative peace.
You call yourselves Americans, I call you squeeling swine. I *am* a full citizen free-born right here in the United States. I have an expired ID provided by our beloved Air Force by my father, a crash-truck mechanic only months from full retirement. Yet with all the screaming, rioting, and for the love of [your God not mine]: a fist fight between upper-middle-class white American adults over who gets use the gas pump before the price per gallon goes up another cent; I am ashamed to call myself American and have long ago vowed to move to Kyoto, Japan as soon as I can afford it. If I have my way my children won't even learn English. I had sushi for the first time last night. "S'ayonara han-ba-ga" I'm ready. Let *them* land. Anything to make me less American than you drooling losers sloshing to and fro the fridge and TV set.
Yet in the face of this tragedy, one must look to the sky and wonder with a tear in the eye. "Why was this done?" "What have we done to deserve this?" So take a big sniff, wipe your nose (please don't blow in public, oroface management in full-view is rather grotesque) and look me square in the eye with a straight face for a moment.
* "W H Y"
When you fill out your census forms, tax returns, job applications- what religion do proudly proclaim on those pieces of paper? They cannot all be listed here, and I would no doubt alienate many. Let's assume that the majority of readers claim to be Christian (I, for this period will allow myself to pause for a fit of hysterical laughter while bashing upon my withering keyboard, but you must keep a straight face... Okay I'm done). You go to church for two hours per Sunday, preach the contents of your horribly contradicting Bible within those confines, while outside you impose your own ultra-conservative Bible-beating pinhole-minded viewpoints on others and maybe pray an average of two and a half times per day...
Yet the rest of this time, it is money that controls your lives, rations your sanity and happiness to you in bi-weekly paychecks, determines your daily activities and limits your "quality time" with your "family". Your value and social status among your local community is greatly determined by the quality and nature of your material possessions while your so-called Christian [stifling a snort] children, your beautiful, talented, open-hearted children, wear the cross around their necks and join the in-crowd, taking their "friends" out to lunch at Burger Thing, gossiping about the wierd girl while bleaching their hair and changing into their "Princess today; Goddess tomorrow" half-shirts. You are a Materialist, and so am I. <So am I...>
Only years ago, the World Trade Center was first bombed. The objective was to destroy it. Our Muslim friends were tring to save their Christian brethren from the grasp of Materialism. Throughout history the greatest of the world's wonderous structures have been built to honor the religions of a civilization. The Pyramids, Mecca, many of the "Great Wonders of the World", all dedicated to the spiritual purisuit of fulfillment and enlightenment- a taste of heaven. Yet in our society and that of other world commercial trading powers, our greatest structures are built in the name of money. On September 11, 2001 aprox. 9:40 it happened again.
Two commercial aircraft with nearly full tanks of fuel collided with the World Trade Center towers. These were the first targets hit and the primary. I was the first in my classroom to notice that the second building on the NEWS was collapsing much as CNN.com describes as "a peeling banana". By destroying these iconic representations of America's capitalist materialism, these brave soldiers against the secularist ways hoped to destroy our tightwad perception of the flesh realm. Americans simply hold too much value in human life and money, and not at all enough value in human experience. These "terrorists" were willing to make a sacrifice that may actually benefit future generations. You won't even give up your fossil-fueled vehicles for two generations so that electrical cars and mechanically efficient bicylces can replace them, these people forfeit their lives for something they know will be hated. No wonder the love-to-hate-them Middle East is rejoicing in certain regions.
If our economy does crumble to the ground like so much concrete, steel, and glass, we may once again call our elders by the honorific titles they deserve, children may stop defying their parents, and we may remember just what is important in our pointless lives. I love you all, and I will cry this out in the streets until the stones scatter my skull- to bring you into the light. Stay with me. Your patience (My working e-mail address will be at the bottom, it is the only one I will respond to or even read, and I will try to respond to everyone of your comments.)
* "AN ACT OF COWARDACE"- Of Iron Men and Iron Souls
Sacrificing your life, your family, and your future to perform a hated deed in hopes that future generations will comprehend your reasoning is simply not an act of cowardace. By using words like "coward" our president hopes to gain the popularity by moral outrage. Using and abusing the collective conciousness and will of the crowd has been the greatest outrage of all during this. To call these men who died alongside those whom they slew "cowards" is exactly the same as calling any kamikaze pilot who mopped the deck of a battle ship after running out of ammo a coward. It is the same as calling anyone who ever jumped on a grenade a coward. Anyone who ever took a bullet, defended their post- behind the front counter of a gas station, pushed a friend out of harms way only to replace them; would be a coward in this definition as well.
On the other side of this, those who die in unfortunate accidents are not all heros, no more the deer that falls to a hunter's bow (or *sigh* rifle). It is those who die on their knees because sudden injury has made them unable to stand while fighting the enemy at the walls in the name of those too rich or too weak to fight for themselves who die heros. It is those who sacrifice their lives and small fortunes for a better future, for the benefit of a stranger, for honor without glory, who die heros. It is those who take an enemy into their house and love them as friends who are heros.
I am not an innocent child, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, blindly shaking my finger at the public's redneck reaction. In the face of this attack, I weep for the firefighters alone and any soldier who must now guard a foreign US embassy.
* FINAL WORDS
Do I commend these men for their actions? It is a question I cannot answer myself. But know this: I would have shot the aircraft into oblivion mindful of where the missed shots went if I could have been there ready and able, same as anyone else. The only flag I shall carry over my head is the banner of my own family, and that of my beloved, a powerful symbol of the family that is to come; and I will defend these things to the death. Threaten my family and I will die to see their safety. If we go to war I will enlist. I will fight to defend my home. In the air, in the streets, in the kitchen where resides this computer. I will use fists, feet, steak knives and vintage whiskey bottles defending my place of refuge to the end until bullets and greasy envelopes force hot metal through my flesh bursting organs, shattering bone, spilling blood and sending a screaming conciousness into the next world. Just as long as my family is safe. So long as in the end, there can be peace again.
* * *
I honestly expect no one to read this far. You have better things to do and your hatred may blind you to the message I am trying to convey. Instead of your hatred, allow your sense and reasoning to reflect on this. Yes, you have loved and lost. You watched "them" enter the buildings and them become smeared along the collapsing walls. You witnessed firefighters enter the building, bravery being the last thought on their minds, and watched them simply vanish while sweaty politicians butcher the truth on national television writing them off as "missing". Never before in the history of the world has such a well coordinated attack of terrorism graced a peace-loving nation. There *should* be vengeance, there *should* be revenge, there *should* be a "calculated response"; and there will be. "There shall be no distinguishment between those responsible for the attack and those harboring them" quoth our president. We should *not* tolerate terrorism and *should* respond with terror-invoking actions of our own.
But at the same time there are people out there right now beating a veiled woman to death. There is a crisp, shaven man in a fine $2400 suit sitting at home about to call a university ethnic community with a threat on their lives. And these people are no better. And on the other side, people in the dark of night fumble through a translation dictionary trying to paint "Safe House" in Aribac on a banner to put in view of their front yard. These are sensitive times. We ask your patience.
-Zombi Z
LindseysZombiZ@hotmail.com
Date
Subject
Author
336.
Sep 12, 2001Sep 12 2001
Why this is and who we think we are
anon@172.186
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