september eleven

[sway2sway]

my thoughts are with anyone and everyone affected in anyway....who isn't though, I guess? But certainly some people hold physical and emotional scars, whereas others just feel it.

I was commenting a few weeks ago on this, cause everytime I opened the fridge door, my milk jug had the expiry date Sept 11. It's an event so ingrained that every time the door opened I couldn't help but pause for a moment. I was thinking how every generation seems to have dates that are marked with indelible ink, the sharpie of a generation. JFK assassination, pearl harbor............. you know what I mean

[ragmop]

unfortunate that we creatures memorialize, recall and reflect upon those horrific events of our generation (death, destruction) rather than the celebratory ones.

fear and loss: powerful emotional footprints

[Miss Shark]

I watched this show last night TheFallingMan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falling_Man) all about a photo of a person that jumped out of one of the towers, and peoples angry reactions to the use of this image in news papers. They thought the image degraded the person. I find it graceful and empowering.

Rags I think it's all in how each individual looks at it. There are certainly a lot of survival stories, and most certainly heroes of the day to be celebrated.

[Sunshine]

I still cannot believe that it has been 6 years. Some days it feels just like yesterday. It really makes you think doesn't it?

[ragmop]

shark-

very,very good observation and lesson (i suppose that i tend to look on the dark side of things)

but fear and loss do seem to imprint more deeply. for instance, if you were to play word association with most people, in response to "sept 11" or "pearl harbor" or "kennedy assassination", "the lusitainia" or "1929", i would bet the vast majority of responses would focus on fear and loss.

but, not to take away from the day, my hearts, thoughts and prayers go out to those families who suffered any loss that day.

[the duke]

hmm...One of my mates wrote down the date on her lecture notes and said "ya know what today is" it actually took me a little while to get what she was talking about...i remember waking up to it happening on TV though...strange...

I agree somewhat with Rags, it's the deaths that get their anniversaries. Here it's the death of princess Diana, the 20th anniversary of the Hoddle St shootings...but what's good in life doesn't get much press...only the 'feel good' story at the end of the news which gets about a 30sec play.

[sway2sway]

well maybe it's like this-
when I look in the fridge and see a milk jug that says feb 25, it gives me pause too, but it's because it's my own birthday. Or I'd pause if it's my kids birthdays, maybe my parents anniversary. (I drink a lot of milk)
Perhaps we are more inclined to connect with happy dates only on a personal level. I can't think of any happy date that celebrates thousands of people, well I guess holidays like mothers day, country days, that kind of thing. I might pause for those too.

Maybe the fact that we celebrate/memorialize tragedy is an effort to connect with humanity. Maybe we don't know any other way to show that we care and that they matter- until it's all said and done.
I don't know

[Miss Shark]

I really feel that the events of 9/11 brought the world togther in a good way, unlike any other event I can think of.

It is a testament to human nature that gives me hope. When stripped of absolutely everything, knowing the end was most likely there for them, people were thinking of their God, if they had one, their loved ones, and helping people around them. By all accounts that I heard, they were calm, and clear headed, not clawing all over each other, looking out only for themselves. They decided to come together and take action to save the lives of countless others.

No doubt fear and loss strike deep, no doubt.

[sway2sway]

I was flipping through a waiting room magazine the other day, reading about Vioxx (an agressively marketed analgesic, later taken off the market b/c it was linked to cardiac arrest and death) It's estimated about 20 million people took it, possibly 27,000 having heart attacks and dying, who's to know for sure?

a couple summers ago they awarded in favor of the plaintiff (the widow) in the first case against the drug company. At that time there were about 4000 more cases waiting to go to court. I don't know where it is at now. I'm guessing the actually number of attributable deaths might be somewhere in between those numbers, 4 and 27 thousand.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/19/business/19WIRE-VIOXX.html?ei=5088&en=9770ec3256b9638e&ex=1282104000&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

The 9/11 attacks killed about 3 thousand. Not to mention injury, and lots of other loss. and this isn't meant to diminish, or call that event small by any means. But just based on a number perspective....it makes me stop and think who should we really be frightened of (if anyone?), maybe a better word is vigilant. There is the guys in the big boogie man suits that you see the president talking about on the news, then there are the guys in the suits sitting at the board room table that decide what you are going to put in your body, based on their profit margin.

[ragmop]

word, sway . . . :cool:

[sway2sway]

word to the word, ragmop....:cool:

[sway2sway]

The Age of Disaster Capitalism
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2165954,00.html

here's a piece, cause it is a little long, but it is still interesting enough that i could make it through with a hangover, for whatever that is worth.

[Every aspect of the way the Bush administration has defined the parameters of the war on terror has served to maximise its profitability and sustainability as a market - from the definition of the enemy to the rules of engagement to the ever-expanding scale of the battle. The document that launched the department of homeland security declares, "Today's terrorists can strike at any place, at any time, and with virtually any weapon," which conveniently means that the security services required must protect against every imaginable risk in every conceivable place at every possible time. And it's not necessary to prove that a threat is real for it to merit a full-scale response - not with Cheney's famous "1% doctrine", which justified the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that if there is a 1% chance that something is a threat, it requires that the US respond as if the threat is a 100% certainty. This logic has been a particular boon for the makers of various hi-tech detection devices: for instance, because we can conceive of a smallpox attack, the department of homeland security has handed out half a billion dollars to private companies to develop and install detection equipment.

Through all its various name changes - the war on terror, the war on radical Islam, the war against Islamofascism, the third world war, the long war, the generational war - the basic shape of the conflict has remained unchanged. It is limited by neither time nor space nor target. From a military perspective, these sprawling and amorphous traits make the war on terror an unwinnable proposition. But from an economic perspective, they make it an unbeatable one: not a flash-in-the-pan war that could potentially be won but a new and permanent fixture in the global economic architecture.]

[the duke]

There is the guys in the big boogie man suits that you see the president talking about on the news, then there are the guys in the suits sitting at the board room table that decide what you are going to put in your body, based on their profit margin.

For sure!