Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader was campaigning in Ohio the other day, and he was questioned by members of a 9/11 Truth group called We Are Change Ohio.
When asked if he supports "the 9/11 Truth Movement and the efforts of activists and victims’ families to expose the lies surrounding the attacks," Nader replied:
“I was there when they were collecting signatures in the audience and I supported it.” Nader commented, referring to We are Change’s activities at the meeting.You can read the article here. Happy anniversary.
“The 9/11 Commission, first of all, it took the members of the great families to push the administration even to have an inquiry, can you imagine an attack like that and the government didn’t even want to have an inquiry?” stated Nader.
Where were you when it happened?
I was at work, headed downstairs with my friend Jami to get coffee. Somebody told us right before the stairs that two planes had hit the World Trade Center. There's a TV in the cafeteria, so about 50 of us gathered around while everybody else tried to get online. I remember there were no news websites available. The traffic was too thick to get online.
26 comments:
Oh, there's also a new double feature up today, and it has nothing to do with 9/11. I promise.
They're not going to reinvestigate 9-11, mainly because it'll show how woefully unprepared our defenses were, and how archaic the equipment and strategies to prevent that kind of thing were and still are today. Hopefully, Obama will bring in Richard Clarke, the person really in charge that day, to revamp the system quietly and correctly. We'll see.
As it is, I didn't realize it was 9/11 until just now. I don't celebrate death days, only birthdays.
I was walking to my office that beautiful September morning. We were on 5th Avenue at that time. At 21st street. I remember turning the corner onto 5th Avenue and seeing the WTC towers directly down at the end of 5th. They stood there perfectly centered in the V formed by the buildings on either side of the avenue. I must have been in the elevator when the first plane went over because when I walked into the office one of my coworkers asked if I'd heard the plane that went overhead. He thought it was going to hit our building. I hadn't heard it. By the time I got to my computer CNN already had streaming video of the burning north tower. After a few minutes several of us went back downstairs see from the street. As we left the building one of the other women in the office was coming in. She'd just seen the fireball erupt from the south tower and said she thought a bomb exploded in the south tower. (We couldn't see the plane strike from our vantage point north of the towers.) As we looked south we saw the smoke and flames billowing out of the south tower. That's where we stood. Just watching those enormous buildings burn. Slowly, as the extent of what was happening emerged and we found out that a plane had struck each building the crowds began to thicken. Large groups of people on the sidewalks and corners. Watching. It was amazing how quickly the traffic began to decrease. Gradually word of what was going on began to work it's way to us, passed from group to group up the avenue. People were leaping or falling from the towers. No one knew how many people were there. Trapped. Then, suddenly, almost like in slow motion, the south tower began to bulge with smoke and debris. And you could see the top start to tip and disappear into the cloud. And people began to cry and gasp in disbelief at what they were seeing. And when the cloud started to disperse you could see that the entire building was gone. The WTC tower was gone. As if it had never been there. And I remember thinking how weird that there is only a single tower now. And thinking how many people must have just died. And then it happened again. And people were just speechless. We went back up to the office. By then the news was out about the Pentagon and the city had shut down the trains and the bridges and tunnels. People figured out if they had someplace to go. I decided to walk uptown to my sister's apartment on 87th street. I walked the whole way in the middle of a carless Broadway. Only moving out of the way of the occasional group of emergency vehicles speeding south. It was incredibly surreal.
I didn't know anyone personally who died. My brother lost two people from his HVAC company. They were apparently in an elevator on their way up to the top floors of the north tower to do maintainance work when the first plane hit. I don't think anyone heard anything from either of them. I don't think their remains have been identified.
That was a weird year for me.
Depression over the election... living outside of Co. Springs, Co... in Feb. I was forced to resign a job in the Metro District where I had bought my first house and worked (they thought I had allowed vandalism to occur or did it myself at one of our water plants)... then the district sucking up to me after they found the real culprits... in March, getting a new job, that paid better... in May, having an abcessed tooth that caused me to loose a 2 molars... in July, the disapearance of a dear friend (her presumed murder) and the continued looking for her whereabouts (that is still ongoing today)... 9/11.
I was getting ready for work and had to drop my boy off at kindergarten, my boy was all ready, calmly sitting watching the today show I had left it on... "Daddy, a plane hit a building." Stunned, I turned to look, a picture of the World Trade Towers on fire with a big gaping hole... a few minutes later the other plane hit... I told the wife, "We've just been attacked by terrorists." She was just getting up and some coffee. I had to split. Went to work and watched most of the events unfold while working.
I was so emotionally drained that year and was all full of Nationalistic Pride chanting... kill, kill, kill!
I only wished I could have looked at it with a healthy perspective. I didn't know nothing about the internet... in fact we had just bought our first computer the year before. I needed it for the SCADA systems to run all the water plants, tank levels. My co-worker had set it up for me and trained me on it.
Hey, MV, I like the new episode - on the smaller pics you can barely read the words, but otherwise, pretty cool!
Thanks! The words on the smaller pics are not meaningful. They're just sound effects.
Jesus, snark. That's an excellent first hand account. "Surreal" is the word, for sure.
And 7o6, I remember the chants of "kill, kill, kill", and for a short time I was one of the chanters. We even bought a flag and hung it on the front porch. Empty gesture, that.
What's Ground Zero look like now, snark? Still just an empty space or has construction begun?
I can't believe we left it empty for so long. Damn, did the terrorists ever win.
Oh, they're building stuff. Sometimes it seems like they're not quite sure what they're building or why. But they're building.
The first time we had the opportunity to actually go right down there was in early December. One of the contractors we do tons of work with has their office only about five blocks away from the WTC site. (Sorry, I refuse to use the term "ground zero". It's a God damn cliche of the highest order.) They invite some of us from our office to their Christmas party every year and that year they had it at their office because it was still tough to plan restaurant type events down their at that time. After we left the party we decided to walk down and see what was going on. It was a really nice mild night. It was about 11pm by the time we got down there. At that time they were still working 24 hours a day to clear debris and look for remains. The entire area was lite up by massive flood lights. It was like being in a huge sports stadium. Much had been removed by then but there was still massive piles of debris. Most of the actual tower debris had been excavated and removed to get access to the lobby areas where they knew many of the police and firemen had perished. But the surrounding smaller WTC buildings were more or less as they had been since the collapse. And the buildings nearby with huge chunks carved out of them where they had been hit by the falling towers. It was really eerie. I wish I had seen the actual site right afterward. It must have been unbelievable. You can't get an appreciation for the vast size and scope of the destruction without having seen it first hand I don't think.
You can see realtime video of the site here on EarthCam.
If you look at cam #2 you can see World Financial Center in the background. It was heavily damaged and restored. All the way on the right, the large white structure, is the temporary PATH train/rail hub. And to the right of that is the new office tower that they built on the site of WTC #7. The long thin line coming in from the left is the ramp down into the pit. That whole area was the undergound concourse and parking garages of the center. The two towers stood flanking either side of that ramp diagonally. The north tower was above and right and the south tower was below and left of it.
MV, that was funny - 62 links! That's exactly what I thought when I saw the post - fookin' A, it was a goddam end o' the year roundup type of post. I stopped after the first sentence myself. Anyone know what it was about?
Anyone know what it was about?
It had something to do with the worst ever terrorist attack on U.S. soil, apparently.
I saw all the blue and didn't even bother. Made eriposte look stingy with his links!
Pretty much, digby's the only person who can get away with "as I wrote in" blah blah blah, because she's always got a point. That one was a baddie. Of course, paradox is the one that recruited Turk, so you get an idea why now.
What a tool. He even took a shot at me.
Who's gonna read that??
I wrote to Jeff, told him about the 62 link blog, and begged him to come back.
He replied, "Nah."
...and begged him to come back.
What? Did Jeff bail?
I don't think he wants to write at TLC, because most of the commentors are idiots. Actually, it's calming down quite a bit. But man, some of the writers sure get shit from this MV guy, whoever he is. I hear he's a Paul freak...
I hear he's a Paul freak...
McCartney or Westerberg?
What? Did Jeff bail?
No, he just called to tell me he's going to be spending some time in the decompression chamber. Again.
Aw, that's a bummer, but whatever he needs. We'll be here when he wants to poke his head out.
Paul Anka?
Oh dear, Turkana's insinuating that MV's simple-minded and needs to go to right wing blogs!
Why does Turkana hate The Left Coaster SO much that he tried, 62 times, to direct traffic AWAY from the site?
See, by including the link in my signature, my intention is to direct traffic TOWARDS my site. Not away from it -- TOWARDS it.
I thought that's how it was done.
Actually, it's stupider than that, since most of the links are to earlier posts on TLC. Talk about your vanity post!
Hmm. That's... kind of what I did in last night's episode.
Ahem.
Oh dear, Turkana's insinuating that MV's simple-minded and needs to go to right wing blogs!
GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
I'm headed right over. Holy shit it's like Christmas!!
That was just hilarious! And isn't it cute how petey's snuggling up to you, hoping you'll pet him?
petey's my little friend.
I can't believe Turkana is actually arguing this with me. I'm getting the giggles.
Meanwhile, euzious (or whatever) is the only person who READ the article, and has the only on-topic comment. The rest is me arguing with the author.
HILARIOUS!!!
You can tell how much work was put into it, having to code all those links, even with a button. Still, it's a blog post, not a dissertation, fucking one sentence saying "go check out the archive links on the right side of the page, lookit what these fucks have done the 7 years from 9/11" would have sufficed. Or put up a thread for people to tell their stories, like you did was good enough. I dunno, people grieve in their own way, I guess, maybe Turkana does it by itemizing and cataloging things. I know everyone's panicking, but the closer we get to November, the less I'm beginning to care.
And I'm so fucking pissed I missed Fringe this week. I hope they have it online. I always read my EW mag a week late, and I'm not used to tv seasons starting in September!
Whoa. I think Hockey Mom just declared war on Russia.
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