102 Minutes That Changed... Nothing.

It's 23:45 here in the UK and I have just spent 2 hours watching new, never before seen footage of 9/11 through the eyes of the people that were there and filmed it with home cameras. The title of the documentary is 102 Minutes That Changed America.

However, after watching it and reflecting on the events of that horrendous day I have realised that nearly eight years on those 102 minutes have actually changed nothing, not just in America but the entire world...and how truly sad and depressing that it.

Watching once again what happened on that day feels me with a fascination driven by dispair, anguish, overwhelming helplessness and anger. Watching this new footage I can now add humility and a sense of pride and hope in humanity to my list of emotions as I watch strangers - humans - coming together to help one another. Setting aside petty differences of race, religion and whatever else divides us in order of joint survival, caring, compassion and maybe even unconditional love in the face of unspeakable evil.

I cannot help but feel that the atrocities of 9/11 were our chance as a species to really change our ways. Apart from religion, the fanatics that supposedly carried out 9/11 also done it for the hatred of everything the West stand for and that includes the bad aswell as the good - our corruption, our greed and our materialistic life styles.

OK, initially everyone wanted revenge and justice and rightly so. But after watching this 102 Minutes documentary I cannot help but feel that eight years on, this was maybe humanities chance to finally grow up and move forward to a future of hope and unity. To use 9/11 as an example to younger generations on how to treat and unite to help your fellow humans in the most dire of circumstances, to change our ways and learn from previous events that ultimately resulted in the carnage of 9/11.

The people of America demonstrated on that day, in those 102 minutes of World altering events, everything that makes civilised humanity worthy of our self proclaimed mantel of self importance. Yet here we are... eight years on with a World still in turmoil and war. Religion still dividing rather than uniting. The World economy on its knees due to greed. Corruption grippling society. We as a species have such short memories. We as a species have lost our voice and refuse to do anything about it but bury our heads in the sand, allowing the very people we elect to power to continue with their dispicible ways and continue with the way things are.

Once again humanity is heading into future that can only guarantee more turmoil, corruption and devastation. I can only ask 'when will we ever learn'?

Great post. Some of us don't have short memories. Some of us, including the families that were directly impacted by 9/11, fight to educate others about 9/11 and fight to have a new, independent investigation so that those that were truly responsible for 9/11 can be brought to justice.

With all due respect, I think you have completely misunderstood the nature of what ocurred on 9/11.

Correct me if I am wrong but from reading your post I gather that you are among those who, like Noam Chomsky, for example, believe that 9/11 was the completely understandable backlash of a world that has lost patience with American interventionism and mischief around the world.

Am I correct in that interpretation? If that were really what happened on 9/11, then I think your point would be justified and yes we could be accused of learning nothing from the attack, since we have just carried on in the same old useless and worn out responses of demonizing the "enemy" and increasing our interventions and meddling.

But that is not what happened on 9/11.

On 9/11, an element of society that is used to manipulating the affairs of the world, mostly for their own gain, struck a blow of treachery, against the society that has enriched them and allowed them to occupy a pre-eminent position in the world. These evil and insatiable people then transferred the blame for the attack to convenient artificially created demons.

They did this to further their own geopolitical imperatives and brought the worst suffering since the Nazi era upon completely innocent people. They have also used intimidation and whipped up hysteria to clamp down upon the freedoms and constitutional guarantees of one of the greatest peoples on earth.

What we are seeing is the advancement of an Orwellian scenario. For the first time in world history, evil people actually have the power and the technological tools to gain complete control of the world and they are going for it.

Wake up America.

[edit on 24-3-2009 by ipsedixit]