Public Address | Cafe | Hard News: Everybody's News

Rich Lock

Mon, 12 Sept 2011 09:39:17 +1200

I thought Cheney was pretty much under the radar and Bush was the butt of lots of jokes (remember how he nearly choked to death on a pretzel while watching football? Good times) in that first six months in office. But perhaps I am misremembering. Or misunderestimating, to quote the…

Kumara Republic

Sun, 11 Sept 2011 20:08:04 +1200

Listened to a NatRad broadcast about American Muslims earlier this afternoon. Surprisingly nuanced, but if you haven't heard of Debbie Schlussel – a hyper-Islamophobe who was interviewed in the broadcast – she's even more nutbarish and hypocritical than Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck. I read that Wikipedia entry so that…

Danielle

Sat, 10 Sept 2011 09:55:27 +1200

because he and GWB were incredibly unpopular at the time

Kyle Matthews

Sat, 10 Sept 2011 09:09:56 +1200

“Dick Cheney stopped flying on commercial airlines before 9/11”, because he and GWB were incredibly unpopular at the time, to the point of his security finding it very difficult to operate in public.

When was the last time that the VP ever flew on commercial airlines, apart from a publicity…

tussock

Fri, 09 Sept 2011 01:34:21 +1200

making up stories about controlled demolitions?
"The great masses will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one"? Makes it hard to talk about the cost-cutting during construction?

But really, there's so much bullshit out there that it takes a bit of serious research to…

DexterX

Thu, 08 Sept 2011 17:16:04 +1200

Yes...................it's all about image enchancement, isn't it.

Simon Grigg

Thu, 08 Sept 2011 14:26:52 +1200

Sometimes it was laughably easy to tear apart the arguments, such as with Colin Powell and his inaccurate and plagarised presentation (not that tearing them apart made any difference).

The 'mobile chemical weapons trailers' that he made such a fuss over were, just months earlier, documented in The Independent as…

Andrew E

Thu, 08 Sept 2011 14:09:55 +1200

I'd dearly love to ask Bill Keller why, as a highly-paid, highly trained and experienced media expert, he wasn't able to this, when these millions of amateur citizens were able to so without really breaking a sweat.

I remember going to speech by Noam Chomsky in London in the mid-1990s.…

Rich Lock

Thu, 08 Sept 2011 13:34:27 +1200

Literally millions of people around the world were able to see through the 'evidence' and pretexts for war which they were presented with. Sometimes it was laughably easy to tear apart the arguments, such as with Colin Powell and his inaccurate and plagarised presentation (not that tearing them apart made…

Angus Robertson

Thu, 08 Sept 2011 13:33:46 +1200

In a room full of elephants would
anyone bother to mention the human?

Everybody mentions the Israel/Palestine conflict. All the time. Its the most popular war. Doesn't make it relevent.

Angus Robertson

Thu, 08 Sept 2011 12:53:13 +1200

Simon Grigg

Wed, 07 Sept 2011 17:09:57 +1200

Or Bill Keller's rampant dishonesty in the NYT today:

But knowing as we now do the exaggeration of Hussein’s threat, the cost in Iraqi and American lives and the fact that none of this great splurge has bought us confidence in Iraq’s future or advanced the cause of freedom elsewhere —…

George Darroch

Wed, 07 Sept 2011 16:20:26 +1200

Since we’re on the nostalgia trip, Toy Judt, 2006, on the failure of ‘liberal’ America.

Why have American liberals acquiesced in President Bush’s catastrophic foreign policy? Why have they so little to say about Iraq, about Lebanon, or about reports of a planned attack on Iran?

nzlemming

Wed, 07 Sept 2011 15:38:13 +1200

Gods, I love reading Fisk! Who else would use "spavined" in his opening paragraph and still make you read to the end?

Ian Dalziel

Wed, 07 Sept 2011 14:38:02 +1200

A Fisk full of dollars...
That’s all very fully documented –
- And not a mention of Israel.
In a room full of elephants would
anyone bother to mention the human?

Joe Wylie

Wed, 07 Sept 2011 13:05:21 +1200

That's all very fully documented -
And not a mention of Israel.

Sacha

Wed, 07 Sept 2011 13:04:55 +1200

And what the attacks revealed about who was actually running the US govt was instructive. Who was sent to the bunker and who was reading goat stories, for instance.

Rich of Observationz

Wed, 07 Sept 2011 12:54:10 +1200

These wild conspiracy theories do rather detract from some fairly demonstrable facts about the runup to the attacks.

The US government was pretty happy with Islamic fundamentalism in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, in corrupt client states (primarily Saudi) and where the fundamentalists formed a geopolitical buffer (Pakistan).

Several of the Bin Laden…

Rich Lock

Wed, 07 Sept 2011 11:40:09 +1200

Pfft, I'm really surprised NASA expects us to fall for that bad photochop.

Ross Mason

Wed, 07 Sept 2011 11:17:51 +1200

Truthiness:

Just in case there are more truthers out there who think NASA did not go to the moon. Here is some good evidence that they did get there and hit those two golfballs!!

Footprints from the Lunar Reconnaissance orbiter. But then, NASA would doctor some tracks in…

Joe Wylie

Wed, 07 Sept 2011 10:50:32 +1200

Thanks Ross & Ian for the posts re. 'controlled demolition'.
Perhaps it's a positive indicator that these things can be discussed without being accused of violating the memory of the victims.

Russell Brown

Wed, 07 Sept 2011 10:16:44 +1200

Just to update the original post:

We will now also be joined by erstwhile NZDF chief former Air Marshall Sir Bruce Ferguson, who will respond to the claims in the book.

Then we'll get them all together to talk further for a Media7 online-only extra.

Carol Stewart

Wed, 07 Sept 2011 10:11:00 +1200

A good 9/11 retrospective from the Guardian here

Kumara Republic

Wed, 07 Sept 2011 10:09:16 +1200

I am just sad that some folk decided to do it. But if you feel you are a patriot to your homeland that had been "invaded and/or influenced" (Saudi Arabia) by another (USA) then no bounds to your actions need necessarily be applied.

Agreed. It's all too commonly forgotten that…

Carol Stewart

Wed, 07 Sept 2011 09:50:42 +1200

Everyone in the United States who were old enough will remember where they were at the time they heard the news.
That goes for our country too, Crystal.
It was early in the morning here – 5 am? – when the news broke. My partner, who was away travelling for…

Marcus Turner

Wed, 07 Sept 2011 09:47:04 +1200

Fair enough.

This has always appealed to me:

Always write angry letters to your enemies. Never mail them.
~ James Fallows

Ian Dalziel

Wed, 07 Sept 2011 09:44:31 +1200

UC/lc Anonymous...
a type nerd
My name is Ian, I too am a type nerd.
One time I ordered a book on type use that sounded really interesting , and was aghast to see the whole thing had been set in a tacky script font, talk about not putting their…

Rich Lock

Wed, 07 Sept 2011 09:04:58 +1200

One wonders then why you posted. If indeed there are people who
would happily lump 300 million people into the same basket and use the deaths of thousands to make a point we can only hope that they'll change their point of view before ever achieving a position of influence…

Crystal Dotson

Wed, 07 Sept 2011 02:13:11 +1200

I was at work, but there was a television in the drivers lounge. When I looked up and saw the the plane going into the tower, I thought it was a movie. Then I realized it was happening for real. Everything changed after that. You normally could hear the planes…

TracyMac

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 23:11:05 +1200

Thank you for this. I got the whole conspiracy-theory bollocks from a previous co-worker of mine, and he would simply not STFU when you pointed out the simple logic – Occam's Razor indeed – of how the buildings would fail. I even did a demo by putting some heavy objects…

Kracklite

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 22:36:49 +1200

Nicely said.

Every building contains within it the energy of its own demolition. All the energy that was required to lift the mass of its own material to its upper levels lies there, waiting. When something fails, all that energy will suddenly be released again and that energy will drive…

3410

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 22:08:26 +1200

True fact: there was a 90s spinoff series called The New WKRP in Cincinnati.

Jeez! You're right. I'd totally forgotten about that.

nzlemming

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 22:04:07 +1200

I never knew you were a type nerd too. We rule, buddy.

EDIT: FTA " This dichotomy, to one degree or another, is the essence of the human nature." Words to live by. You're right, great discussion.

Andrew E

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 21:54:44 +1200

Ever so slightly thread-jacking this discussion, but apropos of someone's point earlier about the dangers of simple dichotomies, I just read a review of a book on typography (stop yawning at the back) which was followed by comment thread almost as civilised as the ones on this site, even though…

Danielle

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 21:33:01 +1200

True fact: there was a 90s spinoff series called The New WKRP in Cincinnati. (I wasn't watching it on September 11, 2001, though.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4go-tz1m_TY

One of my favourite things ever: "the senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity".

3410

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 20:49:10 +1200

watching an old episode of WKRP in Cincinnati

Is there any other kind? ;)

Ross Mason

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 20:35:58 +1200

Here goes Ian: They were steel framed with steel beams from the outside to the inner core. Lots of concrete in the flooring as well. When a few 100 tonnes of fuel explode inside open plan offices a fair bit of wind is created. You saw the flames shooting out…

Rich of Observationz

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 20:30:32 +1200

Chaos mate.

Anyway, the whole CSI thing is (like most other stuff) fiction designed to support an entirely different narrative, that of the infallibility of law enforcement in detecting and charging perps. In reality, those low count PCR things are equally likely to result in a match to the bloke…

Carol Stewart

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 20:22:27 +1200

Good luck with it all, Ian – whatever floats your boat (or melts your external superstructure) ;-)

Ian Dalziel

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 19:31:06 +1200

unburdened by proof...
Occam's razor and all that.
I don't know that the case has been litigated fully in the first place, but that aside my main interest is in the physics of the affair, and I expected better from the home of the Forensic Investigation extravaganza, it was never…

Danielle

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 19:24:59 +1200

made me aware of a genuine undercurrent of anti-Americanism I’d never noticed before in some parts of New Zealand culture

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_sU0pAE-fE

My father – who, it must be said, was not hugely into appeasement – was called a "Yankee bastard" pretty regularly when he lived here in the 70s and…

Carol Stewart

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 17:41:02 +1200

I think we may be on the same page
I sure hope so, Ian, but I don't have any enthusiasm for relitigating the collapse of the twin towers, given that, you know, Al Qaeda took credit for it and there was a ton of evidence implicating them. Occams razor and…

Ian Dalziel

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 16:55:18 +1200

People I know are better qualified to comment on closing the window of doubt and the possibility of proving a negative.
I'm a little thick today, you're gonna have to explain that to me...

chris

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 16:39:46 +1200

This attack, warned Barlow, could be the burning of the Reichstag – the event that the Nazi Party seized on to cement its power in the 1930s.

the nascent that would grow into the TSA was already in force

[[http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/5572235/Gun-charges-against-Urewera-accused-dropped|Police originally sought prosecution under Terrorism Suppression laws but this was…

Thomas Johnson

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 16:34:23 +1200

I flew out of Auckland airport en-route to LAX and Seattle via UA 842 on Sep 11 (NZ Time). It was a special fight – the captain was retiring – so the 747 was showered from the airport fire engines as we pushed back from the gate. It was a…

81stcolumn

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 16:29:54 +1200

On the day I remember coming home from training and watching stuff on the TV news. At the time I looked at my intended and “oh gosh the Muslims are fd and especially the Palestinians”.

That April I went to New York to visit friends and got a chance to…

Marcus Turner

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 16:19:37 +1200

One wonders then why you posted. If indeed there are people who

would happily lump 300 million people into the same basket and use the deaths of thousands to make a point

we can only hope that they'll change their point of view before ever achieving a position of influence…

Rich Lock

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 16:00:05 +1200

Marcus: I'm not actually all that concerned about bringing someone who would happily lump 300 million people into the same basket and use the deaths of thousands to make a point about 'having it coming' round to my way of thinking.

Kumara Republic

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 15:56:59 +1200

I remember watching the whole attack unfolding on TV in a North East Valley flat in 2001. The next few days after, there were the campus debates. An Arab student urging calm when he wasn’t choking back tears, a stereotypical firebrand effectively saying America had it coming, a couple of…

Marcus Turner

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 15:55:47 +1200

If you want to round up all the Rumsfelds, Kissingers, Roves, Blairs, et al and stick a gun in my hand, then I’ll gladly face the moral dilemma of handing out a bit of extra judicial justice, but seriously? Stop fighting a proxy war and wind your fucking necks in,…

Rich Lock

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 15:50:07 +1200

That attitude shook me and, I suppose, made me aware of a genuine undercurrent of anti-Americanism I’d never noticed before in some parts of New Zealand culture.

I didn't, and don't, 'get' that attitude. How did the people in the towers – the secretaries, the barristas, the cleaners, the dish…

George Darroch

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 15:46:53 +1200

, they just want it to be properly, and openly investigated by appropriately qualified engineers.
Sounds fair and reasonable to me

Fair and reasonable. They're useful concepts.

People I know are better qualified to comment on closing the window of doubt and the possibility of proving a negative.

Ian Dalziel

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 15:32:02 +1200

I'd be interested to get an appropriately qualified engineer's perspective on it.
I think we may be on the same page – try these folk
My point in posting the video is that it is being left to concerned individuals to do the research, tests and experiments that NIST and…

Jackie Clark

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 15:25:43 +1200

I kind of wish I had known you back then, Russell, because you said in your missive what I was thinking but was too afraid to say, for fear of offending people.

James Butler

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 15:08:30 +1200

He made a comment about Americans “deserving everything they got.”

That attitude shook me and, I suppose, made me aware of a genuine undercurrent of anti-Americanism I’d never noticed before in some parts of New Zealand culture.

In 2002 I spent a few months as a Lay Clerk at Saint…

BenWilson

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 15:00:49 +1200

I sat through 9/11 all day, with my sister, who had brought her kitten over, having decided her transient lifestyle was unfair on a cat. She was staying, to acclimatize it to the house. The cat died before Bin Laden did.

That day was pivotal for my interest in news,…

Carol Stewart

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 14:55:02 +1200

Actually I did. I'd be interested to get an appropriately qualified engineer's perspective on it.
I am very wary of the idea of 'citizen engineers'. Sounds like the kind of thinking that led to Cave Creek.

Ian Dalziel

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 14:39:37 +1200

Personally I am rather keen on professional standards for scientists and engineers.
I take it you didn't watch the video then...

Andre Alessi

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 14:04:17 +1200

I was in my second or third year of university and living in a flat off Dominion Rd. I had decided to skip my morning classes for a sleep in, turned on the TV (I didn’t have a computer of my own back then) and spent the rest of the…

Rich Lock

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 14:02:05 +1200

There's a rather interesting roundup here of the reaction from various parts of the press to dissent published in The Guardian.

Rather self-aggandising, but interesting to see 10 years worth of 'why do you hate our freedom?' compressed like that.

ETA: Ah, snap.

Andrew E

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 14:01:37 +1200

The Guardian's Seamus Milne has a useful piece looking back at media coverage of the event, and patting the paper on its back for the approach it took after the attacks, and the vitriol it attracted as a result.

Jonathan Steele's article from September 14 is worth reading as an…

Carol Stewart

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 13:52:07 +1200

Personally I am rather keen on professional standards for scientists and engineers. Citizen dentistry anyone?

Ian Dalziel

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 13:26:18 +1200

Bringing down the house...
But there was more than that. Winer and others like him had demonstrated that what we now know as “citizen” or “social” media could not only do the job of crisis reporting differently than established media organisations could – it could, in some important ways, do…

Rich Lock

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 12:06:02 +1200

Flew out from the UK to Minorca in the Med. for my honeymoon on 3rd Sept.

No TV, no internet, no radio, no papers.

Vaguely heard on around the 14th Sept that something really bad had happened (can't remember how we heard). Drove into the nearest large town to try…

Paul Campbell

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 11:46:23 +1200

Chris: Sure way after the fact – just post 9/11 though there was all that talk about 'weapons of mass destruction', fake yellowcake, etc etc the Bush administration had much of the US populace was convinced that Saddam was behind it, lots are still convinced

andin

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 11:44:56 +1200

Sent the three months prior to Sept 11 in the US sussing out interest in a line of lavalava's/pareu's made specifically for men. Good to wear around the house (and if you were brave enough) to wear in public. Walked around Chicago in my product to stares and abuse. It…

Julian Melville

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 11:41:51 +1200

We were in Phnom Penh and had returned to the hotel around 9pm just in time to flick on the TV when the second plane hit. The only channel we could get reliably was a business one (possibly CNBC or Bloomberg?) which had quite a different commentary to the other…

Chris Maslin

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 11:38:12 +1200

OK – I take it back. It's not surprising that no one mentioned Iraq – why would they??

But I do agree it is astounding that Bush et al. managed to swing public opinion (albeit briefly) from the outrage against this event to justify a war against Iraq (Saddam was…

Julian Melville

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 11:36:35 +1200

Gareth – that's an ICQ window. The shock to me is that they still seem to exist!

Paul Campbell

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 11:30:23 +1200

Prior to 9/11 the US media was full of how the Bush administration (Cheney and Rumsfield in particular) considered Iraq as unfinished business – we were obviously being set up for something – no one was surprised when they started to blame Iraq with absolutely no evidence – much less…

Sacha

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 11:26:55 +1200

none of the emails mentions Iraq as a potential target

Changing that was an impressively evil campaign of political communication that makes Crosby Textor look like rank amateurs.

Andrew E

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 11:24:58 +1200

I was just starting a secondment to the UK government. Web access was notoriously slow in the (then) Home Office building, but it simply dried up by around lunchtime on that day. One of my new colleagues had a mate who worked in the ministry's emergency response coordination centre, one…

Gareth Davidson

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 11:23:50 +1200

Wow. Web pages and browers looked like *that* only 10 years ago?

Anyone got any idea what the window/program (certainly not an "app") in the top-right of the screenshot is?

Chris Maslin

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 11:21:55 +1200

Perhaps the most surprising thing that I find reading through the emails is that many people were predicting that the US would invade Afghanistan – but none of the emails mentions Iraq as a potential target...

David Cormack

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 10:19:25 +1200

Living in the UK, it unfolded in the afternoon. All five free to air channels ran coverage of the attack until 7.30pm when BBC2 switched to.... Eastenders.

If they interrupt our soaps, the terrorists have won.

Paul Campbell

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 10:13:46 +1200

I was still living in California – I was woken up by my wife taking the kids to school ... I normally left late to avoid the Bay Area traffic "have you seen what's on the news" and stayed riveted to the TV until the last one came down -…

Robyn Gallagher

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 09:46:37 +1200

CNN.com had frequently updated news coverage of 9/11, but here's the thing – the site was groaning under the pressure from everyone wanting to find out WTF was going on. Even using a stripped-down front page, the site was still very slow to load and I ended up turning to…

Public Address

Tue, 06 Sept 2011 09:46:37 +1200

Discussion from blog post.