9/11 20 years on

[not-bono-ever]

TV is full of this stuff at the minute - not sure if 20 years is anything more significant than 19 but there you go.

Truly significant moment with its ramifications still evident. The most important event of the 21st century ? Impact still lingers in our everyday lives to an extent

A thread for comments, memories, musing and bollocks. No conspiracy stuff pls

Me ? I watched it on Reuters or Bloomberg or some live channel. Saw plane 2 hit as i was speaking to someone in HMG about it. Phone call hung as soon as I told them plane 2 had hit. I sent my team home on the spot, I knew it was bad. I had a baby on the way. fuck that. walked home rather than use public transport i think. spent the rest of the day on the phone and watching BBC.

 

[wemakeyousoundb]

When I woke up my mom told me there had been a bad accident in the US, I was drinking my coffee watching the live feed on french TV when plane 2 hit and I thought: "this ain't no accident"

 

[Ming]

I was in the local video shop getting some movies and i saw it on the TV behind the counter (I knew it was news not a film). First tower on fire. My initial thought was ‘I hope that’s not an anti capitalist attack’ and quite soon after ‘well that’s fucked any form of political dissent’. I remember that momentum was building from 1999 in Seattle that shut down the WTO meeting and onwards (i discovered Urban around autumn 2000 under my old name) and i thought the powers that be would use this to their advantage. I’d read a book called The New Jackals by Simon Reeve a couple of years earlier (about OBL and Islamic terrorism) so when OBL’s name started showing up in the media it became obvious if horrific. I’ve read the archived Urban thread on that day a few times.

 

[Elpenor]

I had just woken up as I was working as a Hall Porter at my Uni hall of residence during the summer vacation, and had been on late shifts. There were some international students living in the hall who had arrived early for language courses.

Anyway, someone mentioned the news to me, as I went into work for my 2:30pm start. We were watching the news on the big screen in the bar, by this time both planes had hit and we saw the endless repeated shots of the impact. Being a politics student, I opined it was probably Al Qaeda. A prick I worked with started making jokes about songs the radio couldn’t play due to the events.

That evening on my shift I got called by a student whose brother was missing in New York and had run out of credit to call her family. Pretty grim, didn’t know what to do other than let them use the office phone.

 

[two sheds]

US airstrikes killed at least 22,000 civilians since 9/11, analysis finds

US drone and airstrikes have killed at least 22,000 civilians – and perhaps as many as 48,000 – since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, according to new analysis published by the civilian harm monitoring group Airwars. The analysis, based on the US military’s own assertion that it…

www.theindependentbd.com

US airstrikes killed at least 22,000 civilians since 9/11, analysis finds​

Ah well

 

[Ming]

US airstrikes killed at least 22,000 civilians since 9/11, analysis finds

US drone and airstrikes have killed at least 22,000 civilians – and perhaps as many as 48,000 – since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, according to new analysis published by the civilian harm monitoring group Airwars. The analysis, based on the US military’s own assertion that it…

www.theindependentbd.com

Ah well

And destabilised the Middle East. And Afghanistan is back to normal. Still fortunes were made.

 

[maomao]

I was working in a school in China and hadn't watched the news in the morning. The deputy head had told everyone they weren't allowed to tell me about it (because I was the only westerner) so was really freaked out that other teachers kept mentioning aeroplanes and then shutting up. Didn't find out till I got home that night, CCTV was basically playing it on a loop for days.

 

[marty21]

We were on honeymoon!, we were staying in a cottage in Snowshill, Cotswolds. It was also bang in the middle of the foot and mouth Outbreak.

We went for a walk in the morning but turned back as a lot of the fields were 'closed' , so we went home , I put the telly on just after the 1st plane hit , we didn't leave the cottage again that day , just sat there increasingly stunned,shocked,upset.

Later in the week , we got the Eurostar to Paris , I don't remember security being that intense , despite planes still being downed.

 

[petee]

back later with an NYC story, but 911 is our version of 999 and i didn't understand the title at first, so can a mod (editor ?) make it into 9/11 ?

 

[maomao]

back later with an NYC story, but 911 is our version of 999 and i didn't understand the title at first, so can a mod make it into 9/11 ?

Should be 11/9.

 

[two sheds]

And destabilised the Middle East. And Afghanistan is back to normal. Still fortunes were made.

With Blair recently playing the elder statesman to warn the West about the danger of muslim extremism. Well yes, he'd fucking know.

 

[Hollis]

Normal day at work for me in Islington. Remember watching the second plane go in.

The documenatry on ITV last night "9/11 Life Under Attack' was excelllent. - I'd never heard the sound of the first plane going into the tower, or that parts of the second plane went straight through the South Tower.

Can there ever be a more perfect terrorist attack? We're going to be talking about it in 100 years time.

 

[MickiQ]

I was at work when someone who had been into the break room came back in and said "Someone has flown a plane into one of the World Trade Towers" I didn't actually think much to it, thinking it was probably an accident and a light aircraft.
It wasn't until I went to get a cuppa that I discovered the coffee bar ladies (who normally guarded the TV remote like it was the Crown Jewels) were letting people desperately switch around the news channels to try and get more information that I realised something serious was going on. Evil American Megacorp had quite a few Yanks in our building who were all trying to call home and they had an office in WTC 7 so people were trying to call that to find out what was going on but couldn't get through since it had been evacuated.
Co-incidentially 2001 was our first trip to Florida for a fortnight and we had got back one week earlier so if we had booked slightly later we would have been caught up in the chaos afterwards.

 

[krtek a houby]

Should be 11/9.

Agreed with this for a good few years, but came round to realising that it happened in the US and not Europe.

Think we went to the cinema that evening for some escapism.

 

[MrCurry]

It’s funny what inconsequential details stick in the mind, so many years after a world changing event.

I was working in a tiny office in Windsor and we first heard about it from the window cleaners outside, who had a transistor radio with them! Trying to get some news, we jammed a coat hanger in the back of a portable tv which lacked an aerial, and got sound only.

I remember the BBC news presenter being so dead pan, so very calm in his description of the first tower falling that for a long time I believed that by “collapsed” he simply meant one floor had collapsed onto another, not that the whole thing had come down.

My other lasting memory is of all news websites being so flooded with requests that we couldn’t find any news via the web. The websites simply wouldn’t load. In the end I had success using the WAP browser on my mobile, which was already by that time an outdated system. Probably why it remained accessible while the news sites on the regular web crashed.

 

[[62]]

I'd just started what has turned out to be my job for the last 20 years. Had only been there a week and our team were being moved. In those days, the desk and file moves had to be undertaken by a separate team, so we just sat in a communal area whilst that was done.

The other new starter with me (who ended up getting the push, but that's by-the-by...) was droning on about car parking to my new boss when a colleague burst in to say what had happened. I was in a bit of a state of shock. The other new starter was annoyed that his ramblings about car parking were being interrupted and said something dismissive about them all being a bunch of nutters in the middle east anyway, so let's get back to my car parking story. My new boss didn't seem to have grasped the enormity of the situation either and said something along the lines of 'this seems to be bothering you?' to me. They actually put the telly on in said communal area for the rest of the day, which was rare.

I do remember a few comments at the time that suggested 'the Americans' had this coming, or were somewhat gleeful in a 'now they know how the rest of the world feels', which to me showed a pretty warped view of the value of human life.

 

[maomao]

I do remember a few comments at the time that suggested 'the Americans' had this coming, or were somewhat gleeful in a 'now they know how the rest of the world feels', which to me showed a pretty warped view of the value of human life.

I was in China so you can imagine there was rather a lot of this. I can remember an English-speaking, works-in-a-foreign company type coming up to me in a bar to extend his sympathies and me just saying something like 'I'm not a bloody American, I don't care'.

 

[steveo87]

I was at school.
I had nightmares about the guys that jumped for weeks afterward, but then I got pretty numb to terrorism- or certainly to images of it - but whether that's because its fairly ubiquitous these days, or it's part of getting older, or I'm just a boy more cynical to it all nowadays (or a mix of all three).

What I could never have realised, was that it would still be talked about, in contemorary terms, by the time I was 34.

 

[Elpenor]

I think the PLO were in the news sending messages of condolences to the US and being surprised - as in it meant they wanted the world to know it was nothing to do with them.

The prospect of terrorist attacks wasn't new to me as I’d grown up in London in the 80s and 90s so IRA bombs at stations etc were not unusual, although this was on a far different scale.

 

[BillRiver]

I was in a fairly large crowd protesting DSEI Arms Fair when someone announced that the World Trade Centre was on fire.

I was quite ignorant - I thought it was some building in the City Of London, some sort of financial/trading offices or somesuch, and so I cheered along with many others and then continued to dance to the soundsystem.

I didn't find out the truth until quite late that night. After establishing that my uncle was physically safe (he lives in Manhattan), I at some point realised what we'd done, and worried our reaction might have been caught by a news crew and broadcast.

As it happens they showed footage of Palestinian people cheering and dancing instead, and I remember wondering if those people had fully understood the news when they cheered or if they'd been confused/ignorant like me.

I've learnt a lot more about world politics, including Palestine, since then.

 

[Flavour]

got home from school to watch the second tower collapse live

 

[Idris2002]

"That's a terrible thing that's happened in New York, isn't it", said the girl in the cafe.

I wasn't sure what she meant. A little later, in another place, someone walked in off the street and said that a plane had struck the World Trade Centre . . .

By the time I got into the department (there was meant to be a reception that morning, for the new term), everyone was gathered around the radio, and at least one woman was in tears. . .

 

[krtek a houby]

I was in a fairly large crowd protesting DSEI Arms Fair when someone announced that the World Trade Centre was on fire.

I was quite ignorant - I thought it was some building in the City Of London, some sort of financial/trading offices or somesuch, and so I cheered along with many others and then continued to dance to the soundsystem.

I didn't find out the truth until quite late that night. After establishing that my uncle was physically safe (he lives in Manhattan), I at some point realised what we'd done, and worried our reaction might have been caught by a news crew and broadcast.

As it happens they showed footage of Palestinian people cheering and dancing instead, and I remember wondering if those people had fully understood the news when they cheered or if they'd been confused/ignorant like me.

I've learnt a lot more about world politics, including Palestine, since then.

Wasn't that footage of Palestinian people celebrating supposed to be suspect?

 

[Idris2002]

Wasn't that footage of Palestinian people celebrating supposed to be suspect?

That's how I remember it, anyway.

Another thing: by the time I got home that night, the first thing my English housemate said to me was "bloody hell, mate, do you think they'll bring back the call-up?"

 

[Pickman's model]

I was in a fairly large crowd protesting DSEI Arms Fair when someone announced that the World Trade Centre was on fire.

I was quite ignorant - I thought it was some building in the City Of London, some sort of financial/trading offices or somesuch, and so I cheered along with many others and then continued to dance to the soundsystem.

I didn't find out the truth until quite late that night. After establishing that my uncle was physically safe (he lives in Manhattan), I at some point realised what we'd done, and worried our reaction might have been caught by a news crew and broadcast.

As it happens they showed footage of Palestinian people cheering and dancing instead, and I remember wondering if those people had fully understood the news when they cheered or if they'd been confused/ignorant like me.

I've learnt a lot more about world politics, including Palestine, since then.

I was at dsei too, and iirc some girl? with a megaphone announced it, and like a lot of other people I thought it was a light aircraft. I'm pretty sure whoever I heard said it was New York but sure more than one person announced it. After that point my memory gets a bit hazy - got plastered in Bloomsbury of all places watching the news. But yeh I remember the dicey cheer.

 

[eatmorecheese]

I'd just got back home after an early shift. Stuck the telly on to find the last five minutes of Neighbours on.

After the credits rolled, the screen showed an image of one of the towers with a hole in it. I was then glued to the screen as the horrific scenes unfolded for the next few hours.

I speculated on OBL almost straight away because of Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998 ( the latter wrecking my childhood home).

20 years of carnage. Me abandoning the Labour party was a consequence, but it took a couple of years for me to get there. I remember thinking that day that this would define the next few decades of UK foreign policy and that an angered US would lead to many more deaths.

And here we are. Sobering.

 

[baldrick]

I was halfway up a mountain in Morocco the year after my a levels. An American guy staying in the refuge that evening had a radio with him and we heard the news several hours late. My bf at the time said I bet it was Bin Laden. I was like who? Some discussion ensued with my mum over email about whether I ought to come home early. No idea at the time about how the ramifications of it would come to affect the world so profoundly. Weird that I'm now old enough to have 'lived through history' and kids born today would read about it in textbooks.

 

[dessiato]

I've told our story previously. I was at home when it all started. I watched it on TV holding my breath because a friend was supposed to be in one of the towers. We later discovered that for some reason he had changed his mind, not gone in that day, and was, therefore, safe and alive.

 

[Hollis]

This should be good..

 

[rubbershoes]

I'd recommend the podcast Blindspot-The Road to 9/11 about America's intelligence fuck-ups and their failure to prevent it.

There's a fundie christian podcast called Blindspot. Don't download that one by mistake