The Glow

September 11 was the rush at my bookstore. Classes UofT had begun. Mary called me, said, "There's a plane IN the building." She'd heard it on the radio. I thought, small private plane, an accident. In the afternoon I went to my first class of the year, on cataloguing proedures. No-one said anything about it. In retrospect first I was annoyed that Mary had told me because I had business to do. Thus said I to coworker Anna. Secondly I thought they had it coming.

Interesting read.

My story goes as follows. I had a convention to attend in San Diego, and I left on Sunday the 9th. I actually missed my flight mostly due to the congestion at security. Remeber this was the height of the tech boom and air travel was enormous and it was all being packed into the terminal 2 in Toronto. Anyway, caught the next flight and made it to Sunny San Diego.

Monday was uneventful with some pre convention seminars. Got to see some of lovely San Diego with a supplier. I had seen the supplier a week earlier as we worked out a contract over labour day weekend. When we went to lunch the CNE Airshow was on. I remeber remarking how secure we were in North America that the sound of low flying jets insprired curiousity whereas in places like Bosnia or the Middle East it inspired fear.

Tuesday morning I was up early, as I was trying to keep to Eastern time. Up at 5:00 am PST/8:00 am est. Flipped on CNN while I made coffee in the room fired up the laptop, signed into the VPN and started answering email.

My hotel room looked west out over the northern edge of the San Diego harbour. The entrance to harbour of the major US naval base on the west coast. The harbour is between the mainland and coronado island.

I was lucky enough to see a cruiser exit the harbour the previous day. Silently and gracefully the cruiser slipped by. With another hotel between me and the cruiser I got a real sense of just how tall these powerful machines are.

The cruiser exited the harbour on the monday going by the naval air base on the northern part of the harbour.

Then CNN starts reporting about a plane that has crashed into the WTC. I was thinking it must have been foggy in New York and possibly a small plane, which was echoed on the TV. They then cut to the shots of New York and you can see it is crystal clear day. The gash in the building looks to big.

Anyway, this is about 5:45 am local time. Keep watching and they is just so much confusion, was it a cessna, reports of a 737. Musing by the local abc anchor that CNN was feeding in, that perhaps there was a malfunction in the navigation system in New York. It was clear weather but clearly foggy information as speculation ran rampant.

Thinking about those moments it really made me wonder what the White House knew at that time. I suspect not anything more.

I continued working and watching. Then the infamous second airliner appears. I remember thinking WTF is that. The explosion. I couldnt comprehend what I saw but it all started falling into place. The reporter, trying to remain calm made some inane statement about the nav system again. I shouted at the TV calling him an idiot and that it was obviously an attack.

Then I hear sound from behind me, toward the harbour. I look out and the naval airbase is lit up like a Christmas tree. Jets scrambling. Something was up.

I continued watching, getting emails from faily, co workers. I really dont remeber the whole sequence. The confusion when the plane hit the pentagon, the reports of the Pennsylvania plane, the reports of up to 10 other planes. Then the buildings collapsed.

I went down to breakfast, I had to get some air and see other people. There were others getting on the elevator lost in another world talking to themselves.

The elevator doors opened on the main floor and I walked into the restaurant. It was full but silent. No tears, no screams just absolute silence, absolute attention to the TV but a feeling of shared experience.

Next came the building closures. All buildings were to be closed. My hotel was attached to three office buildings and were the tallest thing on the San Diego skyline. A weird feeling to have all the buildings evacuated and our building left open. Seeing all of the workers leaving and heading home, leaving the downtown abandoned. Seeing the sailors airmen in their cars heading to their bases. An combination of the comforting and disturbing at the same time.

I was here for a reason so I went to the convention centre. There were others and CNN was on the HUGE jumboscreen with the names of the dead scrolling across the bottom. THe specualtion started to settle in on terrorism and it being Bin Laden. The ages were on the screen and I remeber being struck by there being some 2 year old and 4 year children mentioned and thinking how do they fit into this. How can you be in that plane, see those children and then do what was done. The fact that I had a newborn and a 2 year old waiting back in Toronto for me probably sensitized me.

To wrap it up it then began to circulate that there were about 10 to 15 people on those planes that were supposed to be at the convention.

Then the reports that all planes were grounded till further notice. I then realized I was probably going to be stranded about as far from home as I could be for some time frame.

DInner that evening with my American colleagues was an odd thing. They werent sure what had happened other than they knew they were at war. None wanted immeadiate response, just a response as soon as they KNEW who it was. I dont think they expected anything from anyone else, I think all of the outporing of sympathy was a pleasant surprise for them.

The americans I knew felt they were alone and were prepared to do the job on their own.

The flight home many days later was uneventful. Other than I noticed that I was waived through security lines, that knives were plastic but forks were real and that the Air Canada pilot still left his cockpit door slightly ajar for much of the flight home....It is the only time I have felt relief at crossing the border and the only time the passengers on a flight I have been on clapped when we landed at Pearson airport.

5 years on, the feeling has disappated, I have seen wounded soldiers on the flights and many squads of soldiers in the airports when I have gone to the US.

The feeling of solidarity seems to be gone from most of the people I know. I couldnt have been further from the events but they felt close. The confusion at the moment was real, so I just dont buy the backseat drivers that pronounce on it today.

I hope it never happens again, but that feeling in the US of observing the quiet determination they had, the shock at the attack and the willingness to be patient stick with me today. In those days, the response of GWB truely reflected the American people.

In this past week running up to the 5 year anniversary,I have repeatedly been reminded of one cold hard fact.To the North American media this milestone is not about honoring the victims of this horrific act or reminding us why we went to Afgan' in the first place.It's strictly about ratings.
One more thing....let's see how contemptuous the media treats Harper's speech on this occasion.I have not forgotten the free pass they gave Chretien when he refused his responsibilities as our so-called leader after 9-11.He was an arrogant,cold-hearted son of a bitch.

I was asleep in Marshall Minnesota when the second plane hit. Got a phone call to turn on the TV RIGHT NOW and find out what in hell was happening.

Fox news had live pictures. I stayed glued to the tube all day, pretty much numbed out by the enormity of it.

E-mail from lots of friends in NY on their situation and what they saw, one of them saw the second plane hit from her kitchen window.

The thing that I remember most was the flags. In the days after, almost every house and every car had a flag out front or stuck to a window or something.

Funny what sticks in your mind.

Three house moves later I still have my Sept. 11th flag. I'll be flying it tomorrow here in Hamilton. God bless America, we are with you.

I spent Sept. 10 online at United Airlines making some rather complicated ticket reservations for a wedding.

Finally made the reservations and called my NY friend, who was accompanying me, to confirm.

I got up about 6 am PST Sept 11 and tried to finish the ticket purchase but the United Airlines site was down so I clicked on the news and saw the WTC burning.

I flew to upstate NY a few weeks later, just in time for the anthrax attacks, and we never did make the flight connections to the wedding.

We sure cheered hard for the Yankees in the World Series that fall, and that felt great as it was a very normal thing to do even though that series was a real emotional one for many NYers.

I was getting up and suddenly my clock radio was reporting that a plane had flown into a New York building. I quickly turned the bedroom television on and witnessed the second plane flying into the second building. My immediate thought was "what stupid bastards would poke a stick into the eye of the sleeping giant?" I was then filled with a deep and foreboding sense that nothing ever would be the same in my lifetime on this earth. I still have that foreboding.

While driving to work in Albuquerque I heard on the car radio that a plane had hit the WTC, it was the first one, no details, very vague, and I thought that's odd, how can you not miss a building that massive and why would anyone be flying so low? Then, I thought that it must be really foggy in NYC this morning....

That will always be my starting frame for my memories of that day....it must be really foggy in NYC this morning.

I spent the rest of the day trying to get a hold of my younger daughter in DC. After the plane hit the Pentagon, there was no question in mind that we were at war and more horrible things could happen. You could not complete a phone call to DC that day. There was no conceivable reason for my daughter to be anywhere near the Pentagon, but, I was a wreck until I heard from her.

Five years later, I'm still so damn angry and sad. I think of my deceased parents, who never witnessed 9/11, and how any reference to Pearl Harbor was so emotional and personalized with them. I understand their behavior with such clarity now.

Go over to Instapundit's link to an essay by Martin Amis. I read it this morning. I don't agree with all that he says, but, it's the best summation I've ever read on the evil we face.

It was a beautiful day in my neighbourhood when the phone rang. We had just moved, and it was a friend calling from where we used to live asking did I know what was going on?

I had no idea. She just said, "Turn on the television" and hung up.

After watching the devastation at the WTC and the chaos in NYC, I couldn't keep still. I knew this meant something BIG and started running around like a chicken with my head cut off, from room to room, wondering what I should/could do, and feeling, like everyone else, totally helpless.

Then I remembered something a spiritual woman, a Catholic Baroness from Russia, used to say: "Do little things exceedingly well for God and for your brothers and sisters."

That mantra began to centre me. I calmed down, I prayed for everyone involved in this disaster, I purposefully began and finished each daily task. My daughter had just started university in Toronto and called about an hour later, in a panic. Would Toronto be part of the terrorists' plans? I couldn't answer her yes or no, but I did ask if she wanted to come home for a day or two. I told her I thought she was pretty safe in Toronto, based on very little I have to admit, and she decided to stay in Toronto.

I e-mailed two dear friends in New York City, and was deeply relieved when I heard back from them. One worked on Madison Avenue and had walked home to the Bronx, which took her HOURS, and my other friend had to wait hours before finding out whether or not her husband, who also worked in downtown Manhattan, was safe.

I was really proud of New Yorkers after this disaster who totally exemplified the saying, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." I was proud of their solidarity, their resolve, their generosity, their grit, their faith, their loyalty to their country, and I wanted to stand with them. I put a pin of the American and Canadian flags entwined on my jean jacket and still wear it.

I also, from this day, began to feel less and less proud of being a Canadian. We did not stand with our friends. We totally finked out. Under the Chretien Liberal Government we showed what we were made of: a flimsy, gossamer conceit of being "the good guys."

No prayers at the memorial service at Parliament Hill when both the Americans and the British invited Imams, Rabbis, and Christian ministers to speak and pray at their memorial services, no military support when the Brits and the Aussies and many other countries put their money where their mouths were, no solidarity with the U.S. when faced with a terrorist threat never experienced before.

Canada became the NO(THING) country. "Hell no, we won't go," chanted with pride. Toadies of terrorist regimes, multiculural to the point of no-culture, "peacekeepers" of what peace? This was war.

It became obvious that the Liberals and the NDP hadn't a clue what was at stake after 9/11, something I already knew, but the events of 9/11 and Canada's lukewarm response confirmed it, in spades.

9/11 began to separate the sheep from the goats.

...my daughter woke us up and said some moron flew a plane into the WTC on TV. We all thought it was like others, a Cessina, or something small and either the guy was totally lost or lost his mind.

Turned on to CNN (no FOX here) and within a few minutes while Aaron Brown was giving the update from the top of the CNN building or something in the distance I saw the second plane hit over his shoulder.

I was off that day, and still remember sitting in front of the TV all day and night, didn't stop for lunch or anything.

It was surreal to put it mildly. Hijacked planes, ok, know about those, suicide car bombers, ok, but planes? How could they commadeer a plane, let alone fly it.

Then news about something happened in Washington, and smoke.

Then the news about a Florida airplane school teaching a bunch of nicely groomed and behaved Middle Eastern young men, and all they wanted to know is how to fly, not land or take off.

No bells going off in their heads I guess, sad.

Timeline of 9/11...
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&day_of_9/11=dayOf911

Around the block, you're too hard on your fellow Canadians. We took 10,000 people out of the air that day. Yes, Chretien and the Liberals let the world down, after the fact, but that day, and the days that followed, real Canadians stepped up, dug in and shouldered with their American neighbours.

We have our crosses to bear too, worthless politicians like Chretien, Martin and Layton, but they do not speak for Canada. Real Canadians always have, and always will.

I was on the phone with the staff of a business in Iowa. They were just watching begin to happen on TV. I could hear the screaming in the background. Neither the person on the phone nor I understood what was going on, or the magnitude of it. We both joked about New Yorkers - I had to call her back the next day to apologise for my insensitivity. She was appreciative of my apology, and my condolences, though both us were a thousand miles away...

I have to agree with Been Around, my view of Canada as "true north strong and free" diminished after 9/11 with Chretien leading that despicable neutered memorial service.

Yes, one 'good' thing from 9/11, it showed how Canada has sulked away from the once proud Dominion it was. It showed how falsely smug we were believing in the Liberal line about being superior to the Americans.

Only by the grace of God we are starting to move away from that quagmire of this complacent whiny attitude pounded into us from our youth in leftist ideology university and schools and media.

Yet, I wonder how much lower we could have sunk as a nation had the Liberals won the last election.

Worse yet, I shudder to think people still vote for these jackals.

Eyes, wide shut.

Skip, while you are correct about us helping the airlines land, as tot not being hard on fellow Canadians...well I have to disagree.

Who won the election following 9/11 in 2004? Sure the Liberals got in with a low turnout, but bottom line, who was in power and who almost got back in, if it wasn't for the ineptness of Martin and Adscam.

If Chretien was still in power, Adscam would have been buried deep the first week it came out and we'd be blogging about how bad things are in a Liberal run Canada.

Remember there wasn't a Conservative majority thanks to Atlantic Canada and Ontario, Mantioba and parts of Sask and BC.

After reading the comments, I decied that I had to share my own experiance of that day. My father and I were supposed to help cut down a hedge at the church. On that morning, I had chosen to sleep in as we were not neede before 10:00. My dad bang on my door and told me to get up and look at the news. At this point one of the towers was already gone. I got downstairs in time to see the second one go. I felt lost, the world had changed uner my feet. As this was small-town Alberta, no-one ever said that the Americans deserved it. That hedge didn't get cleared that day, we had forgotten as it was trivial, and could be(and was) done later.

To see that rat bastard Chretien weasling out of visitng New York or refusing to stand with our American brothers, was heartbreaking, how could people vote for those SOB's? How could they cheer the enemies of freedom, OUR enemies? How could Canadians just let the Liberals and NDP and their fellow travellers betray our closest allies, who would be there for us had the situation been reversed? How can Canadians still vote for them?

On the morning of September 11, 2001 my wife and I had sent our first-born off to her first day of school on the bus.
She was four and it was a little disconcerting to be sending such a sweet little girl on a school-bus by herself.
About 90 minutes later my father-in-law calls and says a small plane has hit the world trade center.
"Accident" was my first thought but when I turn on the TV the world goes to shit.
My wife and I sit there stunned and my thought shortly thereafter was that this was an act of war.
Then we hear about the Pentagon, a possible car-bomb at, I believe, the Capital Building and we start to wonder if we should get our daughter the hell home from school because there was no indication of how sweeping this attack was.
In the end Hannah stayed at school, we watched and wept.

een

I wonder if Frank La Vigne is claiming he had a paranormal premonition about the attack. It's not clear from his essay whether he believes this or not.

Of course, people get premonitions all of the time. Usually nothing out of the ordinary happens, and people forget about them. Rarely, perhaps out of pure luck, something does happen, and then people spend the rest of their lives telling how they just knew something was wrong.

This selective-memory effect (that is, remembering the hits and forgetting the misses) has convinced many that they are psychic. I think it proves nothing one way or another. It's just fate pulling our string.

I was in Italy for 9-11, near the Swiss border. It happened in the afternoon, and I didn't hear about it till later that night. I had had to work at 6am so I was dead tired and came home to sleep.

The first I saw of it was on the internet, I thought someone had hacked Yahoo and was playing some sick joke.

The next morning the train to work was full of teenagers and Swiss business men laughing and joking about the attacks.

Later that week, when it had sunk in, there was a moment of silence and people were genuinely angry. But no one said "we are all Americans" - no one I heard anyway.

The moment didn't last more than a week or two. People eventually split up into their warring camps again, with half the population wishing for victory over islam and the other half (literally) praising Bin Laden as 'belissima'.

Don't think it's just anti-americanism though - later that fall, when a plane smashed into the regional parliament, the same people laughed and joked about that too. It's not America that they hate as much as it is the west.

Incredible photo's of 9/11

http://www.zenaa.com/wtc/imgindex.htm

I had just woken up to go to school. I had slept in and was really worried I would be late to school. I remember coming down stairs and my family was surrounding the television. My brother was still in his sleeping clothes, and I was trying to figure out why they weren't rushing him through the door, because we both had to be dressed, w/ lunch, and out the door in twenty minutes. They were all watching TV, CNN, with the one tower already hit. The second tower was hit while I was watching TV. My dad said that 'America was being attacked.' I thought it was a misunderstanding. I mean, who would be stupid enough to attack America? Then the second plane hit, and I had to go to school. They pulled the TV into the library and had it set up on cable, watching CNN. Almost a hundred people were in that room, watching what was going on, eating their lunch, not realizing what had been unleashed upon the planet.

I don't remember feeling anything.

Robert - who ever you are, and whatever your game is, your reminiscences aren't adding up. Two things stand out: The next morning the train to work was full of teenagers and Swiss business men laughing and joking about the attacks and Later that week, when it had sunk in.....

a) I don't believe the Swiss are that craven.
b) It took a week for 9/11 to sink in?

Your're a first class jerk. I suggest you crawl back into whatever agenda driven sewer you surfaced from.

chaos theory? unanticipated consequences?

not really.

the amaricans have been ticking off the unwashed schmucks the world over in favour of repressive regimes that use their ill gotten wealth to.... buy american made weapons. which they use to enforce the repression at home.

the iranians for instance havent forgotten how a string of american presidents propped up shah pahlavi.

9/11 is just a very roundabout form of 'payback'. as soon as americans DEAL with the impact THEY have on the citizens of the nations who's repressive regimes they insist on supporting, then there wont be any more aircraft 'impacting' on their skyscrapers.

Ah ha, a strange purple glow on the night of the 10th. What more evidence does anyone need that this was planned and carried out by Bush/Cheney?

Case closed folks.

t. schmuck esq - payback on America by murdering thousands of innocent civilians? You are disgusting. Like your gamey rodent friend Robert, you need to beat it back to the sewer you just surfaced from.

shaken: "What more evidence does anyone need that this was planned and carried out by Bush/Cheney?"

you never disappoint. bravo

Further to my disgust with Canada's response to our nearest neighbour after the attacks of 9/11, the CBC led off the 6:00 a.m. news this morning with Jean Chretien's (dumbass) voice saying, "We'll stand with our neighbours every step of the way." (Funny, I had forgotten this lie.)

He then refused, a few weeks later, to go to New York "to stand" with President Bush. I don't think, Skip, that I've been too hard on Canada at all. Obviously, I admire and support our troops over in the ME and the CPC which has begun to put the backbone into our military and to take the WOT seriously.

I'm disgusted with the Liberals' flip flops (where the heck, for instance is Paul Martin and why didn't he and a bunch of his elitist cronies show up in the House of Commons when the vote to determine how long our troops stay in Afghanistan was held? Disgracefully AWOL--much the same as on his watch as PM...). I'm disgusted that they allowed our military to dwindle to an uneffective force and that they equipped them with substandard weapons and carriers, while stuffing their pockets and those of their friends with Canadians' hard earned cash.

And what to say about Jackass Laydown? A total sell-out. He's a nasty little man and so blinded by his commie-contact lenses he can't tell a terrorist from a teapot. A totally useful idiot to the other side.

Only in Canada? O Canada...

Been Around, You focus too much on 500 or so people. Canada is so much more than the Liberal party, NDP, or the Conservatives. Yes, they are all of the things you say. But they are only 500, out of more than 30 million.

This day, five years ago, thousands and thousands of other Canadians came to the aid of a neighbour in trouble. Quietly, without fanfare, without being asked, in a thousand ways, Airport managers, Red Cross volunteers, Sally Anns, fireman, police officers, counsellors, religious figures and their parishioners, ham radio operators, ambulance drivers, paramedics, hydro workers, bus drivers, friends, relatives, the list is nearly endless. Some headed to New York, some drove stranded Americans from their touchdown in a remote Canadian airport to their homes in the US, hours, days, away. They consoled relatives, acquaintances, one another. Some, the nation's first responders, volunteers mostly, quietly begun preparing for God knows what, knowing that for now, nothing for them was going to be normal for a long time to come.
A nation is not measured by the noisy fringe in the public eye, and those who take that measure, are as shallow in soul as those they criticize.
These are Canadians, Canadian values in practice, not the hollow empty sounds of empty politicians with empty hearts, and empty souls. Canadians are people who are known as those who go and do, at least we were, and for a large measure, will still do. Don't waste yourself on the noisy fringe. Go do what needs to be done.

hi penny!

do you personally know of anyone whose family members suffered repression and disappearance thanks to the support from americans for the local regime?

I do.

Salvadorians.

the list is huge.

how many iranians died in the savak prisons from torture for opposing the shah? hard to say... the shah was supported from before until beyond his 'reign', by americans. thats why iran has such a hate on for the great satan.

Im not saying its justified, but there is a link. it is a form of payback. lots more deaths of "innocent civilians" at the hands of oppresive regimes the world over for the 2nd half of the past century, supported by american interests. lots more than 2800 dead at the WTC in 2001.

payback.

you however go no further than to shoot at the messenger, much like the reaction of numerous american administrations.

Schmuck, that's a strawman argument. Every world backwater loves to blame someone else for they're misery. Freedom is paid for in sweat blood and tears. If you want freedoms, fight for them. The "oppressors" don't seem to have any problems fighting for theirs.

For you Schmuk and Robert; you are fanatical leftovers of a medieval mindset, you rather like the idea of slavery - although probably not for yourselves. You would like to distroy, economically and politically, all independant, sucessful people. United States is the most sucessful nation in the world, it was built by Freedom lovers. Canada was GIVEN freedom in 1867, United States had to fight for their Independance. Canada 'owed' the Old World (Great Britan) for the bloodless gift of independance, consequently our history has been a history of torn loyalities. WWI is a good example of how the same people from two nations (Canada and the U.S.) approached joining that conflict - a conflict that was TOTALLY foreign. Canada mobilized at once and sent the best and brightest young men of our country to be slaughtered in the trenches of France. United States fed the starving people of Europe and later sent troops to win the war for England and France - BUT United States declared war INDEPENDANTLY.

What was that war about? When CPAC says Ypes was our finest hour I cringe, thousands of Canadian soldiers were killed that day to prop up the intrests of England and France. What would our country look like today if all those young men had lived and had families? IMO fighting the Bolcheviks in Russia was indeed a worthwhile cause and Canada sent soldiers to help the exhausted people in Russia - they left when the "Allies' abandoned their Russian ally. Russian people were allowed to perish so that GB and France could keep their 'spheres of influence'. Through all the days of bloodshed and famine that followed the bloody battles in Europe, United States sent hundreds of shiploads of food and clothing to ALL the people of Europe - to Russia, Romania, Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, France....Herbert Hoover was in charge.
WWI set the stage for WWII. ALL freedom loving nations fought with Great Britan against the totalitarian regimes that emerged from the terrible toll of WWI. Who was to blame? IMO, it was cowards and communism (the terms are synomomous); the attack on the twin towers can be traced to the same scources. United States has been infilterated with Old (feudal) World ideas and that Great nation 'forgot' to guard against the evils within and foreign that would rob their people of the Independance the people of United States fought for decades ago.
Canada has been sliding since WWI but we are finally waking up, I believe. There are many medieval minded people who were alowed to live here and foster 'slave state' ideas but in the end MOST Canadians woke up when they found direct links with the governing Liberanos and theft of taxpayers money into the pockets of Liberano friends. We were sliding toward a Russia type disaster - we elected a sensible government and the best Prime Minister Canada has ever had; just in the nick of time.
IMO, President Bush is a good man and a tremendous President - I have nightmares wondering what would have happened in the Free World, had the spongie Al Gore won the 2000 election. The terrorists are agents of distruction - just like the Bolcheviks a hundred years ago - envy and and anger against people who live peacefully, independantly and well fuel the fires of hate. Ignorance and untaught compassion make the terrorists hate all people - not just us - their own people too. The slaughter of innocent people does not ignite outrage and compassion in the hearts of cold blooded terrorists, they believe in the same brute force that Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Chang , Gengis Khan, Sadam Hussan.... used to subdue all independant dreams and aspirations of the people in the lost nations of totalitarian regimes.

People do have psychic moments from time to time. I remember that the night before the towers went down I had a nightmare. I was in a skyscraper in an office. I was standing with alot of people and we were laughing and talking and drinking coffee from paper cups. Suddenly the whole building shook and the ceiling started to come down on us. I remember everything going black and suddenly the floor is tilting and we are falling with all the debris around us. I remember knowing that I was going to die and praying and praying. I am a stay at home Mom and have never in my life ever worked in a skyscraper. I have never had a falling dream like this one and it was very horrifying to me. When I awoke I tried to think why I would dream such a thing. It has never been explained to me and I have just put it down to premonition. What use it was does not make sense to me. I am sure I had a glimpse of what many felt that day before they fell to their deaths.

skip:

the central american oppressors have had full backing from the white house for pretty much the entire 20th century.

the peasants had only each other and in an exploitive move, various and sundry communist agitators. what a great boxing match that was.

it would appear you are in full support of the oppressed in central america fighting for their freedoms, well, so be it!! when they actually do, then don't then criticize their desperate tactics in the face of the full might of a superpower, standing fully behind the tyrants like somoaza in nicaraugua.

check the history books and you will see that noriega of panama also once had backing from the americans until he turned into a loose cannon.

same old same old.

jema:

" United States is the most sucessful nation in the world, it was built by Freedom lovers"

absolutely.

I admire the american spirit of fighting for ones rights. they are the first nation still in existance that was founded by the principles that humans have basic (quoting now) "inalienable" rights.

so why why why is it they now so readily support tyranny when it suits their interests? they appear to be willing to sacrifice the precious freedom of the citizens in countries looked at as 'buffer zones' in the defense of their own freedoms and economic success.

vietnam happened because of the fear of the 'domino effect', yet nguyen van thieu was corrupt to the core and rigged the 'elections' that were conducted in order to stay in power.

the americans behave in grossly hypocritical manner when it comes to promoting and defending freedom. whose freedom? and who's doing the defending?

Eliza:

How do you know it was a "psychic" moment? Suppose every day one out of every thousand people have a weird or upsetting feeling, perhaps in the form of a vivid dream, that something bad is going to happen. I know I get such feelings from time to time. That means that 8,000 New Yorkers alone had "premonitions" of 9/11 the day before, without anyone needing to be psychic.

How many people, upon hearing about the attacks, searched back for some indication, some clue, some bizarre happening, that might have shown it was about to happen? A lot, I bet.

Before assuming you had a psychic experience, you should first seriously consider whether what you experienced could have been a coincidence. Concidences do happen - indeed coincidences must happen.

I can't "prove" your experience wasn't psychic. I do suggest, however, that you consider Occam's Razor, which can be interpreted as "prefer the mundane explanation over the fantastic". Not as exciting, I know, but usually closely to the truth.

Skip, you say to me, vis a vis my criticism of "official Canada": "Don't waste yourself on the noisy fringe."

I know that you are sincere, and of course I acknowledge the many small and large gestures of good will of individual Canadians (I went and gave a pint of blood after years of not giving ['terribly angry at the Red Cross for the HIV tainted blood they knew about and did not withold from patients] and now give four times a year, at the very least).

But you can hardly call the Librano$ and the Dippers "the noisy fringe." The Librano$ were the sitting Canadian government with access to billions of Canadian tax dollars, not to mention in charge of appointments to both the Senate and the Supreme Court of Canada. Both the Dippers' and Libs' causes were/are promoted by the MSM (mainstream media), who though they are NOISY as H*ll can't by any stretch of the imagination be called "fringe." (Though they are now becoming more fringe by the minute--but they weren't in 2001.)

I am doing my own small part to do the right thing and to contribute to my society--but, Skip, I think it is extremely naive of you to dismiss a huge reason why Canada, and too many Canadians, have become complacent and duplicitous in the face of the terrorist threat we are now facing: the lefties in the Liberal and NDP parties, the majority of journalists, AND unionists, AND the members of academia, AND those in the entertainment and writing industries make up far, far more than what you call "the noisy fringe."

They're not fringe. They have a huge influence on our children and their "education," and they are masters of misinformation and misrepresentation.

I see part of what I do as speaking truth into lies. Canadians are woefully badly educated; too many accept what they read in the papers and see on TV and as "good" as Canadians are, they need a wake up call. The fact that well over 100 Librano$ were elected to the House of Commons in the last election, after robbing us blind, tells you a lot about where Canadians are at--and why I will continue to criticize them/us.

We can do far better and we must do far better--like elect a majority CPC government next time--or we could, like other civilizations before us, slide down the slippery slope to oblivion.

AMEN to that, NKOTB.

Whoops: I mean BATB!

Penny and jema 54 - what? What are you going on about?

The Swiss really are that craven, I still do business with them on an almost daily basis. Get them talking about politics and you may as well be talking to Michael Moore. Even the French have a glimmer of rationality from time to time - the Swiss do not. That's what a couple hundred years of pacifism gets you though.

It did not sink in right away. You didn't have blanket news coverage in Italy. And the moment did pass - a couple weeks after I finished my contract in the alps I transfered to Turin to work at the Carabineri school (the paramilitaries). I was teaching them how to fill out NATO casualty forms and vocabulary for guns and bullets and at one point as a grammar exercise we looked at the American national anthem. When we got to 'bombs bursting in air' they cracked up laughing and started telling jokes.

Is that an agenda talking? No, it's plain fact. Europeans didn't give a s&*t. American lives are almost as cheap as Jewish lives to them.

As for being a medievalist who hates success ... I'm not going to refute that with some wishy washy personal story. I'm just going to ask you - J..54 - to look back at my previous post and try and figure out where you went wrong.

Robert; I have been to Switzerland also: it is a very safe country because every male Swiss citizen is a armed trained soldier. They scorn us because they think the males in most of the free world are sponge and flab!
I am sorry if I have lumped you in a group in which you do not belong. I apologise for not paying closer attention to what you have written in previous posts.