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i was 10 days away from my 11th birthday, living in california, i woke up at 5:47 am local time (8:47 nyc time) with the most naucious feling i have ever felt, knowing that something horrible had happened, i went in and woke up my parents and had them turn on the news. i have a gut feeling that something is going to happen on the 10th anniversary, i keep praying that im wrong, but my premonitions are rarely so...

Sometimes I forget about 9/11 because mom went into coma
months after, and even though she came out of it weeks later,
everything was different after that because of the brain damage.

I had an early class and was driving to the gas station on the way when they were talking about a plane flying into the WTC. When I got back into the car they said another plane had flew into the so I turned around (I wasn't far from my place) and went back home to check the news. What is stuck in my mind the most is the environment. It was a crisp morning and very sunny out and I can see the sun coming through the trees quite clearly in my mind.

I was 15 and was woke up by my grandmother whom stated we've been attacked. She turned on the news and we watched the events unfold. School went on as normal except all of my teachers had the news on and we basically had open disscusion on what was going on and how it made us feel. I remeber this as the day that the country I live in changed and would never be the same. To this day I hope that nothing like this happens in the world again. 9/11 was a tragedy and has wonded a generation.

A friend of my roomate was staying with us on the couch, and he came bursting in my room yelling "Murray, Murray, NEW YORK IS ON FIRE!" I went out to the living room with him and we watched the TV. For some reason I can't remember if the second plane had hit, I don't remember seeing it, and I don't remember seeing the towers collapse either, although I must have seen that. I've blocked it out I guess, though I've seen it again since. I remember Peter Mansbridge on the CBC saying 40 000 people worked in those buildings on a normal day.

I was a full grown man, in another country, but I have to admit I felt scared and anxious. I called my mother, who lived in Alaska at the time (she remarried to an american), and she said 'Oh my God they are bombing us'. She didn't even know who 'they' were, just that 'they' hate 'us'. She later said 'not all muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are muslim'. I had to set her straight on that one! I also called my boss to see if she had seen the news, and she must have heard something in my voice because she asked if I was OK. I am a very empathetic person, and I probably wasn't OK that day.

I follow world events, and international relations, so I was talking about how it may have been Osama, as he had declared war on the US some time before that, and there was the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen the previous year. My friend had no idea, had never heard of Osama bin Laden or al Queda, but everyone knew about him after eh?

I was...7-8 And had no idea really what was going on. But it was everywhere, CBC talked about it all day, and some older gentlemen who stayed at my house talked about a war that could happen.

Later before I really had a grasp of how the world worked. *Not like I do now* I was wondering why Canadians were being sent into a conflict that had little to nothing to do with us.

Now. I accept what is done is done. It is certainly quite the feat to go down south because of this tragedy.

I will give my respects to the dead. As any one with a once of decency in their system should.

Someone kept calling the apartment and I was the only one home. I had a 5 alarm vodka/weed hangover. Finally, at around 1pm I answered the phone and it was my room mate blabbing about Die Hard in New York. I was totally and completely incoherent. He came home around 20 minutes later and we went to the pub on the first floor of the house we lived in because we didn't have cable and the antennae on the TV was f'd bad. While at the pub, my other room mate came back and he convinced us to help him use a cable splitter and get cable from the place on the 2nd floor which was vacant. Luckily we had a key and we didn't have break in through the fire escape.

Once the TV issue was settled, we hung out in the lounge room pulling bongs and drinking screwdrivers watching the news over and over again. I was f'd because I was suppose to leave on the 13th to go overseas, so all my junk was either packed en route or had been thrown out. Then my mom called to tell me that my brother is missing. He lived across the street or highway (not sure) from the pentagon and he wasn't answering his cell phone. Turns out, goofus went and dropped it the ocean while in Florida on vacation.

We also ventured out the Mac's at one point to buy smokes and snacks and the cops stopped us and asked for our ID, and one my roomate only had a library card on him. Everyone was convinced it was the start of WWIII. The uncertainty of the future became a lot greater. The indian guy at the store looked like he was going to fall apart. He said that when the high school let out at like 9 or 10 that morning, enough kids had come over to the store to harass him. gak was f'd that day.

Pacific wrote:Vidal and Chomsky are incompetent when it comes to political commentary? I agree Vidal can get a bit outlandish sometimes but the guy has a fearsome intellect. In any case that's an interesting viewpoint, can I ask who you would recommend reading in their stead?

It depends on what type of politics you're thinking about. If you're looking for commentary on international politics the best thing to do would be to pick up a copy of Foreign Affairs. Domestic politics are harder to good stuff on because the majority of widely available journals are heavily politicized, though most good libraries will give you access to journal archives, American Political Science Review is usually regarded as the best.

Its not so much that Chomsky and Vidal are bad because of their views, though I disagree with most all of what they say, so much as the medium in which they present their political views (popular literature) isn't the best source for commentary on the nature of politics.

Pacific wrote:
Although there was nothing connecting Iraq to 9/11 (although Chomsky's comments regarding Iraq are in 'Hegemony or Survival' I believe), it's possible to make the assumption that the pieces were in place to make a play in the middle east when 9/11 happened. In fact, many republican Hawks had been angling after it for some time prior to 9/11. Once there was an attack of that nature on American soil, it settled the matter.

I'd argue that we had been playing in the Middle East fairly consistently for a long time prior to 9/11, and that, while many Neoconservatives pushed for action in Iraq, 9/11 never made such a move inevitable.