September 11, 2001: Personal Stories 10-Years Later

The night of the Attack (it was about 2AM in Aust when it happened) I was watching a Video. I got an excited call from a mate asking if I was watching TV, I responded with a lazy "yeah" he was like "yeah, what the hell you mean yeah? what you watching?" I told him a video and he screamed at me to turn it off. First thing I saw was the first tower burning and was totally dumbstruck, about 30 sec later the 2nd plane hit, I literally thought world war 3 was about to start.

Sept 12 2001 was the day I started a new job doing cold calling for a telephone company in Aust.
My shift started about 12 hrs after the planes hit, needless to say no one was really interested in changing or upgrading their phone plan that day.

Sept 11 2002 probably saw the most memorable 9-11 event for me (apart from the actual event) I was in Sydney in a pub with a few friends and the memorial service was on TV, it was the part where they were reading out the names of all the victims. At the risk of sounding cold and heartless I wasnt really affected by the whole thing, Americans kill thousands of people around the world every year and at that stage I still thought someone had finally had enough and got some back. It was tragic but no more so than when a boat sinks, or an earthquake happens etc etc
Anyway the pub was pretty full with people drinking, playing pool, darts etc etc. A group of American tourists were sitting in front of the TV watching and understandably looking solemn, The group of guys playing pool started getting a bit loud and one screamed something when he missed a shot, next thing you know one of the Americans has jumped up and screamed "SHUT THE $#@^ UP, SHOW SOME RESPECT"
The only thing that stopped him from getting his face smashed in was the bouncers who lukily for him were standing very close.

Being honest it made me mad that someone could be so arrogant and ethnocentric as to think the rest of the world should even give a toss let alone be quiet in a pub for something that happened a year ago and 13 000 miles away. It was a defining moment of our times and was a tragic event and to anyone who lost someone my heart goes out to you.

I only hope the truth of what happened comes out and the real perpetrators are brought to justice, preferably mob/vigilante justice were they are dragged through the streets and torn to pieces by the people whos lives were ruined.

Heres hoping

I was taking a well deserved break...and was Talking to a friend online REDWING who lived just 20 blocks away from the towers.....he was on microphone....he says "hey somethings up" as he takes off from his computer....he comes back moments later and says people are running out of town and he was letting people(strangers) into his house and that we should all turn on the news as one of the twin towers is on fire....

From that time on he was up and down from the puter....helping people and also coming back and talking to his group of friends....probably about thirty of us at the time in the Yahoo chatroom.

then as we are all talking and watching the news the second plane struck....and we were all then talking about why...and the words out of everyone was a concensus that there was an attack going on....as another plane hit the pentagon...and then the mysterious plane of flight 93...as the news broadcasts were vauge on that one on the day, and as we are all talking REDWING freaks out as another onsluaght of people fill the streets as a tower falls.

That day i can say has changed my life because of the work i do....it has made me ask a lot of questions...and do a great many things....in a way it confirmed a path i was on in my life and has made me progress on it...I have always been a doubter of the TPTB...and even before then have been exposing their ways....i was living in Canada at the time...and i now live in England....but before 2001...i was in NEW ZEALAND....new years day 2000...and people will know why....Y2K (which i knew was not as such a threat as the MSM made out).

this is a world that purposely keeps the people living in fear and keeps us divided as then we are easier to control......well no worries there....

While i have been in England i have been arrested under the terrorism act as i was going to Palestine after Yasser Arafat died.....

It just shows that when you say things to people you have to be careful.....I spent 3days getting a mental aessesment to see if i was delusional....but got a clean bill of health...and was allowed to leave....

so if anyone thinks for one second.....that you are free...think again...you are free in a cage...but soon as you shake the cage you are under radar.....I gave up a career in engineering to persue my goal of exposing the monsters who use the MSM to perpetrate crimes on humanity.....All you UFO believers are the next inline for a wake up call in my opinion....So beware.

It is a tough life trying to stay under the radar...and soon we will all be monitored beyond belief,,,,

everything is in my name

Please Let Us Be Enlightened

I was living in a trailer in a clearing in the woods. I hadn't bothered to turn on the TV that morning - I'd rather hear the birds chirping and the squirrels barking in the morning than some talking head getting all set to ruin my day. I'd put my uniform and gun belt on and headed out the door for work, drove down the 100 yards or so to the dirt road I lived on, getting ready to head in. My neighbor met me at the end of my driveway, blocking it, and yelled "you watch yer ass out there today! They got us - everything's a target!"

Perplexed, I yelled back "Who got us? Who's 'us'? I'm a target every day - ain't nothin' new."

He then replied that "terrorists" had flown a plane into the World Trade Center. I'm sort of used to folks getting all emotional and blowing stories up, and sort of figured that it was just another case of a small plane flying into a building. Hadn't one flown into the Sears Tower or something just a few years ago, accidentally? Stuff happens.

"WTC's in New York or something ain't it? That's a long way from here, but I'll keep my eyes peeled - I always do. thanks for the heads up" and I turned on the car radio and headed on in to work. Nothing on the news mentioned "terrorists" yet, it was all confusion and speculation.

Then, while I was en route to work, the second plane hit. It suddenly seemed that the neighbor might be on to something - that was too much coincidence for an accident.

Then reports of a hit on the Pentagon came in. WAY too much coincidence.

After I was already on duty, someone informed me of the Shanksville crash. WAY, WAY too much coincidence. I had to admit that the old neighbor must've been right. I caught some news during my break. In that 10 minute period, the first tower came down. Live. While I watched. Heads were gonna roll.

I didn't see the jumpers until the next day, on the endless-loop news reels. That bothered me. A building collapsing, well, that's abstract. Sure, you know there are people in it, but all you see is the building. Those jumpers - they weren't abstract any more. It bothers me to think of the terror they must have felt to drive them to that extreme.

Most of the following days are in vignettes, still frames. I recall the eerie quiet and the clear blue sky with not a contrail in sight for 4 days while the entire US was a "no fly zone" just like Iraq was at the time.

I recall the Muslim woman who used to come around to talk a bit, dressed in a full burka, telling me the same thing the neighbor had - "watch yourself. You never know what's coming. I could be hiding an AK under this burka" and I recall laughing and saying "you know I'd drop you before you could get a whole AK unwound outta that mess, right?" and she laughed too. There wasn't any rancor, despite how the exchange sounds. We were picking - had done so for a long time, and weren't going to let this stop it. What good is a friendship that can't survive a rough patch?

I recall another friend of mine, a Palestinian, trying to condemn and justify the attacks all at the same time. that was sort of comical.

I recall the "good ol' boys" getting all bent out of shape and attacking anything they thought was Islamic. Several folks from India, Hindus and Sikhs, took the brunt of some of that. People can be pretty stupid.

I recall having to turn the TV off, and leaving it off. How many times can you watch the same exact footage of a building coming down?

I recall instead of watching the same news over and over again, going for walks in my woods instead. it was peaceful out there. Quiet. No jets overhead, just the birds chirping and the squirrels barking.


.

I am going to write my recollection, regardless if anyone reads it, or not. It has been ten years, and September 11, 2001 has effected me in more ways than I can imagine, and I am only 21. I need to write this down for my own personal record. If you do read, I hope you can gain some insight to just one person's life and experiences on this day and how it has effected every day after that.

That day in September, 2001, it was three years since Kay's passing - I loved her a lot. She was my grandmother. We were very similar people.

Stubborn, hot headed, Irish females (perhaps too strong for our own good). We could have been very close. As I am thinking of her, and her death's effect on my family, the "attack" happened.

It was a normal school day, until lunch.

"If your family members commute from NYC" - (which a lot in NEPA do) - "...please report to the office immediately."

Odd.

All teachers acted strange. Solemn. As if they knew some terrible secret our young minds could not comprehend.

Finally, a sain t- a lunch monitor, whose sole purpose it is to ensure us 11-year-old's aren't having food fights, or regular fights, or wrecking havoc...this woman filled me in, and I knew something was not right.

At 11, I could feel it.

"A plane crashed," she explained, with an air of fear. "It may conflict with your parents being home when you get off the bus. We're on lock-down."

I don't know if this is the conspiracy theorist in me (must be a thing from birth), but I knew with ever fiber of my being that this was a lie. This probably contributes to way I cannot trust the media, at all, don't watch cable or even read news. Everything that is delivered to us is censored and skewed for someone else's benefit.

On the lunch line on the way out, we stood in single file. My best friend Aimee, a transplant from Mason City, IA, stood beside me at the back. We were always at the back. In front of us, a popular, preppy, gorgeous and tan girl, Briar. Her sense were also heightened, as were mine, and I could tell by the look of mixed fear and curiosity on her pretty face. She never paid attention to me- I wasn't pretty or thin enough- until now. I had her complete and undivided attention as I tried to tell my peers something was horribly wrong.

I tried to tell them - without any proof - that something was going on. What could cause adults that are supposed to be watching and taking care of us to act this way? I may have been young, but I wasn't that stupid to not catch on when adults are acting strange. I definitely agree with the saying, "Actions speak louder than words."

I told Briar and Aimee that it was a lie. Something deeper than just a regular "plane crash" was going on here, and for some reason the first thought in my head was that there were a group of people - a "gang" or something- that were trying to get us. "Us" as in Americans. They were headed for us at school, thus the reason for a lock-down. We had to be protected because some outside group of insane, radical people wanted to get us and murder us. Sure, a plane crash could have something to do with this, but this was really my inital thought. My 11-year-old mind did not comprehend what the media refers to as "terrorism" (can we pick apart this word for a second? "Terrorist"? One who terrifies? What a ridiculous word) but I had learned enough about regimes and Hitler and bad people to assume this was happening to us. US.

The U.S.

We are the ones who think we are completely untouchable.

The rest of the day went by as if it didn't even matter - our classes seemed half-assed, teachers seemed preoccupied, and so was I. I just wanted to go home. I didn't fear leaving the lock-down environment but I wanted to go home and find out the truth.

My bus, #104, always dropped me off on a street named "Rolling Pines" off of 715. My mom would park her car there to pick up my brother and I because from "Rolling Pines" to my street was an extra 30 minutes because of all of the stops. I guess she worked out a negotiation with my bus driver.

Anyway, as soon as I get into our minivan - complete with rear climate control - my mom started to get frantic. Not the type of frantic when you are afraid for your life, and your loved ones life, but one when you have such a great story filled with gossip to tell that you do not hold back.

"The twin towers..." she said. "The twin towers were hit! By two planes, and we have no idea who did it. New York is a mess."

Growing up in NEPA and having family in jersey and Staten Island, I knew what the twin towers were. I had been there a million times. Taken pictures beside them, they were my landmark when we were driving in the car and I knew we were close to being in the greatest city in the world.

All I knew is that they had been hit.

The rest of the night we stayed in, our eyes glued to the televisions. School districts were closing as if we had a horrible blizzard. My school stayed open, telling us to stay strong.

And so we did.

I remember just being turned 17 years and buying some stuff for my upcoming birthday party with my dad. As we got back in our car (in Germany it was some time in the afternoon) and turned the radio on there was a horrible announcement and we were really shocked.

As we got back home my Mums was already crying sitting in the living room in front of the TV and most of the regular programs were interrupted with news specials.

Seeing this tragedy on TV, it was heartbreaking.

In 2009 me and my sister, grandma and gf got a chance to go on a trip to NYC and we wanted to visit the place where it all happened.

We put down some roses and a little note at the fire department right next to the WTC where a lot of firefighters had lost their lives. Here's a pic of me:



[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/c6b00ade4e7e.jpg[/atsimg]

Ah I really can't describe the feelings we esperienced. My grandma was the first to cry, followed by my sister and gf and yeah I was about being strong and holding "my girls" as I also had to cry.

There was a really polite man at the information booth of the WTC nd he told us if everything is alright and if we want to calm down we could go to the building of "American Express" where the "Fountain of Tears" is situated:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/1f7210e2d950.jpg[/atsimg]

It had eleven "pieces" for eleven employees who died during the attacks with their traits written in each piece:





My grandma and me:



Ground Zero in 2009:



Still to this day I feel a deep sorrow for the ones who died and all their relatives.

I was about 30 miles from the towers, saw the second plane hit and go into the south tower on the tv.
since am a pilot and engineer, i watched with utter disbelief at what had happened and was happening.
Truly tragic event and my sympathies to all who lost their loved ones or acquaintances.

I'm from Greece and it was 3 o'clock in the afternoon.

For a month before the attacks i had nightmares of a disaster and i hardly slept.It was a bad time for me.I expected the end of the world and i had quit my job.Everyone thought that i had lost my mind.

On September 11 i was home,planning my survival for the big disaster,when my aunt came running and screaming that WW3 just started.Someone attacked USA.I turned on the TV and i just couldn't believe what i was watching.

After the first shock,i started researching the conspiracies behind the attacks.Until today everytime i watch a video from that day,it brings tears to my eyes.

reply to post by SkepticOverlord


I remember where I was and what I was doing...
It started out as any normal school day had started for me in the past. I didn't realize that this day was going to end up ending like it did. I was in my second block English class during my sophomore year in high school when 9/11 happened. We had just started on our assignement for the day when it started. Our class had not been going on for ten minutes when one of the other teachers had emailed our teacher. She emailed us asking to turn our tv on in the classroom to CNN, Fox, or whoever. We were not thinking about it at first when our teacher had read her email out loud to us in the room. At first, I thought it was something going on in Washington, like a bill coming up for passage or similar. We had turned the television onto CNN and that is when we saw the North Tower burning. That is when some of us, myself included, realized that something just was not right with this. Little did we know that another jet was in dead aim for the South Tower as the camera from the Empire State Building kept focused on the North Tower.

As we are sitting there watching all of the madness of the day beginning to unfold. At first, everyone was saying that some pilot screwed up and didn't turn far enough out to miss the building. How could someone miss something as big as the Trade Centers were on a crystal clear Tuesday morning? It should have told us something right then and there that this was by no means an accident. That was until we saw the other jet hit the South Tower live on the television. It just seemed to unreal to us that anyone would have the audacity to have done something like this. It was and still is one of those moments that words cannot truely describe just how shocked we were to have witnessed what had just happened in Manhattan. It was one of those things where you just could not form the words needed to describe what was happening.

About an hour into the attacks on the World Trade Center, we first started to hear about the Pentagon being attacked. That was when some of us had started to wonder who was attacking us and why they were. I remember someone even saying that Saddam Hussein was attacking us. By then I had realized that the attack could have been far from over. A lot of us were worried that the DuPont Plant about two or three miles from our school was going to be hit next. We were also wondering where was the next plane coming from and what was it going to hit. That day, there was a lot of uncertainty around us here that someone was going to wind up flying an aircraft into one of the chemical plants. Even after being around these chemicals plants and seeing a lot of them go by the wayside. You just couldn't get the thought out of your mind of one of the current chemical plants being attacked.

As the events began to unfold at the Pentagon and at the World Trade Center. None of us had the slightest idea in the back of our mind that both of the World Trade Center towers were going to collapse. We didn't know at the time that they were going to come down. No one knew that they were going to come down. Not even the firefighters and the cops in the towers knew that the buildings were going to fall to Earth. As we sat and watched the South Tower comes down. The whole room just fell into a dead silence like someone had just punched us in the chest as hard as they could have. All you heard coming from the television was the sound of the sirens wailing as they were heading on into the scene. As we continued to watch what was going on and how it was unfolding. Little did we know that the North Tower would eventually come down a few minutes later. As I'm sitting there with the rest of my class, I was thinking that if this other tower does not come down. Then something had just went terribly wrong with the South Tower and that the North Tower would still be standing afterwards.

We were sitting their with our eyes fixed on the television when CNN had cut away from the fire happening at the Pentagon to show the North Tower in the process of collapsing. At first, we thought that just the upper floors had collapsed on top of the lower floors and that the lower floors were still standing. I mean, how were we to know that the entire building had came down as to what the South Tower had done a half an hour earlier into the attack. Here we were sitting there in the classroom again in dead silence. I mean it was like someone had just delivered a knockout blow to us it was quiet. It was so quiet as the North Tower was falling that you could hear several pindrops in the entire school building. I don't think it was until that moment we realized that something big was going down and it was going down fast.

To be continued in the next post below this...

September 11th, 2001 -UK

Well, the Cable-Guys had finally showed up and after digging a narrow trench to my
house, the two young men set about drilling to get the wires inside.
It looked like the weather would hold up, which I suppose was good, my wife's Grandmother
had turned 100 years-old -that day and everyone was busying themselves with a birthday party.

But I had agreed to stay home and let these chaps fit the TV contraptions... not a bad deal when
the alternative is interacting with in-laws! My wife waved from the car with my 9 year-old son all
strapped in the back, as the Cable Company van pulled in and I waved once and turned to see
what 15 year-olds they'd sent to wreck my house.

They were good. The TV in our bedroom was almost ready and the youngster up there was
finishing off hiding the wires. I was stood with the lad at the set in the living room when the shout
that would change how I viewed the world in the future, rang out.
"Heh Mike...? turn on the TV... a plane as hit something in America"
The crouching young man worked his magic and the screen showed a horrible image... a burning
skyscraper.
The newsreader 'prattled' on with updates of nothing... a light-plane may have strayed off
course and hit a tower of The World Trade Centre... Sometimes Tour Guides fly in too near...
that kinda stuff.

The 'upstairs' guy came down and we... a forty-one year-old and two twenty-somethings stood
and watched the world go mad.
"Aw Christ no..." Mike said as the camera panned about with the Newscaster saying another
aeroplane was flying near.
The blurred shape of an aircraft sped into view and I could feel my senses recallorbrating with
the information.
'This isn't a movie... This is real... I've never seen this sort of madness before...'
All thoughts that were leading to one thing, what was happening and this ISN'T an accident.

The kettle was put on and we -now joined together by this terrible event, sat and drank coffee
in silence.
Then reports came in about the Pentagon taking a hit and I realised there was a war just over
the horizon. Insults like this to the last Superpower wouldn't go by without a response.
The two Cable-Guys said their goodbyes and left to bring horror into other folk's homes.

I tidied up and with one eye, monitored the world going to hell in a handbasket.
But who had finally invaded U.S mainland...? How did they get by all the fancy technology
and 21st Century gizmos?
Was the UK next...? white, Christian, Western Capitalism... what were they attacking?

Later, my family came back and we talked about our regular vacations to the States,
those trips may now be put on hold. The fourth jet-liner had come down in a field and we
looked on at the blurred shaky images of a smoke-filled pit.

It was over... whatever feelings we had that the world was safe and the wealthy West
held all the cards (regardless of oil)... had gone, THEY had caught up.

I know it's not much... a story from another country with no loss to speak of, but I know
that the world I'd grown up in, the one that seemed a little sunnier had gone.
No grand speech, no brightly-coloured bunting or fanfare... just some kid shouting from a
stair-landing...
"Heh Mike...? turn on the TV..."

i'd just been to mcdonalds for lunch and was on my way back to work.

my boss (stupid bitch) didn't believe me until she put the radio/telly on.

it was obvious right from the start it was fake.

when the buildings started falling and the interviews with passers by.

plus all the talk of explosions.

amazing that so many people had to die just to make a few more richer and give them more control.

there's too much evil in this world

wow, just like yesterday,

i was home on the net and my wife called and asked me what is going on. she was at work in the studio and can't remember how she knew about this.

i was in hong kong, i put on cnn and saw the first tower was already hit,

CNN had some split screen with the other crashes, i knew this was not an accident. haven't seen that footage since.

then the other plane hit, on camera and i freaked, range of emotions like you wouldn't believe.

dumbass presenter didn't have a clue or his circuits got overloaded coz he was way lame about the 2nd plane.

like he didn't even see it happen! can't blame him too much, it was surreal.

watched the towers fall.

i thought there would be 10x's the casualties,

watched CNN for the next 7yrs, listened to the bbc radio, got disgusted with the lib spin, till i found fox.

became a news junkie on sept 11, 2001. just about 24/7 still.

I was a sleep at the time when the first plane hit the tower. My daughter who was waiting to go off to high school came rushing in to the room,telling me to turn on the television that a plane had flown in to one of the twin towers.

I jumped up and turned it to NBC and a few minutes later watched the 2nd plane hit the other tower.

I turned to my daughter and said,"remember this date,all that you had for a life before this will change,from this date forward". And it pretty much has.

I knew by the way they had been constructed that those two hits on the towers at those points would be fatal to the structure.

I had even remarked in 1974 when they were beginning to construct them that using a central core and literally hanging each floor off that central core was a disaster waiting to happen and anybody who worked there would be fools to do so.

I did not want to watch it happen so I got dressed and left the house and drove down to the ocean and took a walk out on to the end of the fishing pier.

I then took out a cigarette lit it, looked around to see if anyone else was nearby,and cried like a baby.

I cried for those who were dying in New York and now Washington and other places I had heard on the car radio on the drive over to the pier.

I cried for my children because I knew their innocent childhood was over and that their future would be forever changed.

I cried because all those premonition flashes of planes flying into those two towers I had been having for months had actually come true.

I finally gathered my senses and walked off the pier and went home.

The rest of the day,I have no idea what I did.

Probably prayed a lot.

Continued from above...

For all that anyone of us around here knew at the time. We either had or didn't have an aircraft inbound to one of the chemical plants. During that whole time the chemical plant thing was going through our mind. We sat in that classroom glued to the television because we didn't know when, where, or what the next aircraft was going take a nosedive into. As we were sitting there, the reports of the jet going down just south of Pittsburgh started to come in. It was then that we realized that this one had hit a little too close to home. From what I've heard since then, United 93 had crashed maybe thirty or so miles northeast from the West Virginia-Pennsylvania State Line. None of us realized this when the attacks were happening but the flight that hit the Pentagon had flew over the area twice. Once during the flight where the hijackers had started to storm the cockpit and the second time on the way back to hit the Pentagon.

I've sat and listened to the audio tapes of the FDNY's response to the World Trade Center that day I don't know how many times. It never ceases to amaze me as to how calm that these brave firefighters, cops and paramedics were when all hell was breaking loose around them. From the time the first and second alarms were transmitted to the mayday calls. These men knew what they had to do and that was to go in and save as many lives as they could. They knew that it could wind up being the "last call" for a lot of their brothers. Many of the voices heard on the radio tapes never made it out of the buildings. No one on the scene that day knew how bad it was going to wind up being.



I still to this day remember thinking after I had left my first block science class that this day was not going to turn out to be normal. Little did I know as to how right I was going to be with that thought. It is a day that none of us will soon forget.

It was a day like no other day, first of all i had wrecked my 1994 Cadillac Seville the night before in a ditch off a gravel road. needless to say i wanted to sleep it off and hoped when i woke up the nexy day i could collect my thoughts after driving home down some alley ways with a fractured windshield and hood bent so high i could not see the street lights. But i made it, next thing i wake up and my mother is tugging at me "wake up a plane hit the WTC it's terrorists" in mind state thinking this has to be a dream i see the replay of the first plane hitting the tower thinking... i seen this in a movie this not real. So i dose off a few and come to. Wake up rub the cold out my eyes and then the second plane comes in BOOOOM!~

This is not a dream thinking, same time i seen this before? but Where?

I sober up quickly, now something is wrong the news is saying this is a terrorist attack instantly yet the people behind this must have just slipped through the cracks? Ahhh this is before being a "conspiracy theorist" this was a time when i was concerned with my car, my girl friends and my day to day life ...after all we are rolling off from the Bill Clinton "conspiracy" chuckles.

The odd thing is i r3emember making home made tacos that day while the towers burned, and ya know i recall saying "they will hit the pentagon next" in the sense that if anything the pentagon but why? In a matter of minutes the feed comes on and sure enough the pentagon is burning with a blaze. Strange thing as well, in a few minutes no fire ?

Then i say "the towers will collapse" this was before i got in to steel and iron welding just a year later. So what happens next? This is as if i seen this, knew this but where? What is more ...almost disturbing i was not surprised and it did not affect me? Well that it was going to collapse, as for the loss of life my heart dropped if you want a description, i can not say in words. But yes, I knew something was very wrong with the media calling early on Bin laden when the investigation was not even in it's infancy.

Things got weird after that, people changed after CNN broadcasting the horror and fear of someone that frankly... did not exist. At least any more then me walking in some hood in Chicago and getting mugged and shot for my sneakers. But i HAD to be afraid of these new "people" Muslim extremists, even after the Iran hostage crisis and Gulf 1 did not wear on me, or was suppose to have i suppose. The thing is this whole thing played out like a script. When i went to college and began welding and got in to steel trades i knew... then WTC7

The world ain't sunshine and rainbows people, the world is a mean place ....i grew up

Then i began researching, today i still don't know WHO exactly did this but i know who did not "who they want us to think did" i will just say follow the money. Follow it, all the way to the bloody palms that remain free and the audacity.

That day was a day which many of us can't forget in our lifetimes. I remember being 7. I was being picked up from my primary school and my mum clutched my arm and my brother's...it felt like claws digging in. Our flat was a 2 minute walk and by the time I returned home, I was just in time to see the 2nd tower falling. We were all in shock to say the least and then probably 20 minutes after, my parents started cursing the Muslims...they immediately thought it was them. To be honest, that's all I can remember.

But after that, I remember because of my skin colour (which is brown) people thought I was a Muslim (I'm a Hindu.) They then started treating me and my family quite badly. We heard stories continuously from our relatives and friends of horrifying things being done to them. But even if they were Muslim, it's not them who carried this out, it's EXTREMISTS. I made a thread on this, which I shall copy and paste from issues from here: this thread

Let's start with what occured to the Sikhs:

If I see someone (who) comes in that¹s got a diaper on his head and a fan belt wrapped around the diaper on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over - Congressman John Cooksey, Republican from Louisiana, who serves on the International Relations Subcommittee for the Middle East and South Asia, remarked shortly after the attacks on the Twin Towers on Sept 11, 2001.

What this bigotry idiot is talking about is a Sikh. Sikhs, because of their resemblance to the stereotypical image of Muslims, became victims of harassments, assaults and murder. They were often mistakenly thought to be a follower of Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban. Some Sikh men wear a turban.. after the terrorist attacks occurred, there were disgusting hate crimes even MURDERS...all for wearing a piece of cloth that has cultural significance to them. People on planes even asked to swap seats if a Sikh is sitting next to him/her. Wow.




A study was done by the Discrimination and National Security Initiative (DNSI), an affiliate of the Pluralism Project at Harvard University. 83 per cent Sikhs respondents say they or someone they knew personally had experienced a hate crime or incident.

‘According to figures released in June, there has been a 300% rise in stop and searches of Asian members of the community since the introduction of anti-terrorism legislation.’ That was in 2006 I believe.

If you search on the Internet, there's so many stories you'll find.

And not just Sikhs:
Hindus

Hindus also remain the target of vandalism and harassment. This is not so much because of their religious affiliation, which enforces ideals of equality, but simply because of racism. Hindus are often mistaken for Arabs, which, in the minds of many Americans, are equated with extremist Muslim terrorists. This is not solely due to a lack of information, but to an abundance of misinformation and paranoia propagated by the media. Indeed, when a picture of an Arab individual flashes on the evening news, more times than not the corresponding story is that of a "suspected" terrorist plot.

Even the Semitics..

Year after year, American Jews are far more likely to be the victims of religious hate crime than members of any other group. That was true even in 2001, by far the worst year for anti-Muslim incidents, when 481 were reported — less than half of the 1,042 anti-Jewish crimes tabulated by the FBI the same year.

Muslims:
I know women who had to stop wearing their hijab as they were either cursed at or had it torn for them. They had to go against part of their religion/culture for their safety.

Some other incidences of backlash violence include: a man driving his pick-up truck into the door of the Islamic Center Mosque in Tallahassee, Florida, threatening phone calls to the president of the Arab American Institute, and other local business owners and families of Middle Eastern and Asian descent, conspiracy to damage and destroy, by means of explosives, the King Fahd mosque in California, assaults committed against two people of Indian descent who managed a hotel in Tennessee, and two jars filled with cotton and gasoline were set on fire in front of a local restaurant owned by a Pakistani-American in Utah.4 These are only some of the numerous hate crimes committed around the country after September 11.

www.jannah.org... There are some links on there outlining just some of the hate-crimes that occured, including an Egyptian being shot who was Christian (mistaken for being a Muslim), petrol bombs being nearly hurled at a mosque in Copenhagen to "help" the American and Jordain was shot at and rammed at by a pick up truck!

It's startling to see the hate within our society...we judge a book by its cover, not by what's inside.

I was 18 at the time and living with one of my friends from high school in a rented house in Perth, Australia. It was about midnight and I was just about to go to bed when I got a phone call from my mum.

She told me to go and turn on the TV. I argued a little saying I had to go to bed but she insisted I did. When I turned the TV on the first tower was on fire and the "America Under Attack" banner was up on the screen. I didn't think too much of it until I saw the second plane hit. Then I knew something big was going down.

I went and knocked on my house mate's door and woke him up. He had to be up early for work the next day but stayed up with me to watch the news. I watched it for a good few hours - I think until after the Pentagon got hit - and then went to bed in shock and confused.

I can't exactly remember my initial reaction, but given that I had been following America's invasions of Middle-Eastern countries and observed the arrogance of American people through TV and the internet, I had become more than a little cynical of American foreign policy. I wasn't that surprised that it could have been a terrorist attack. I actually had a small glimpse of hope when I thought that maybe America will learn its lesson and stop invading other countries. I must admit to a small sense of smugness that finally America got some of its own medicine and that they would stop acting like they were the invincible protectors of the world. Of course I felt terrible for the people that died and I make a distinction between the every day person and the decisions of the government.

My suspicions about the OS started to grow in the coming days and months when the media frenzy took over and Bush and co. went to work saying it was a terror attack and that they had to go to war. I remember thinking that this massive tragedy has just taken place and no-one is even going to stop for a moment and mourn? Noone is going to sit back for a while, figure out what happened and what it means and then decide a course of action? Nope, lets just leap into action and go to war!

In particular the pentagon attack and the other plane "crashing" didn't seem on the level to me - but while still in shock I didn't think too much of it. I kind of figured the other plane got shot down and they didn't want to admit it to people, which didn't sit well with me but I could kind of understand.

When I saw the media frenzy and spruiking for war, I knew what the outcome would be instantly - America would invade another country. I actually thought it would be the start of WW3 and, well, I still might be right on that. I remember being outraged and flabbergasted that the country could react in such a knee-jerk manner and that they couldn't see what was blatanty in their face - that their flawed foreign policy directly resulted in this attack happening. Moreover the only possible course of action going forward was to immediately stop invading other countries, which by the way is what pisses off terrorists more than anything else (i.e. not that you are free).

This was probably the time when the rose-coloured glasses started coming off. Previously I just thought that governments were stupid. As time went on it became more and more obvious that the OS didn't match the real events - I tried to talk to some of my friends about it but was largely ignored or shot down - people in Australia cared but weren't as directly affected by the event.

The clincher for me was the introduction of the Patriot Act and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. These events just left a sour taste in my mouth and left no doubt that there was more to the 9/11 event than we were being told. I thought there was no way that Australia could get involved in these wars - that we were smarter than that and it wasn't our problem - but after the Bali bombings, sure enough ol' Johnny Howard was licking Bush's boots all the way into Afghanistan and Iraq. I was disgusted and appalled.

After that, I knew there was something deeply wrong with the world. I had always felt that way, but now I was sure. There's no way that our leaders could accidentally or out of idiocy be making mistake after mistake that leads us down the wrong path.

RIP those who died. I hope that one day we can honour your memory by finding out the truth.

I was up to my waist that morning in water contaminated with heavy metals. Our operation wasn't well funded enough for hazmat suits, but we had fisherman's waders which were just as good for that sort of thing. I was taking water samples in the field, part of a program to try some experimental water purification technologies in catastrophically polluted areas with high population densities.

Where was I, more specifically? What does it matter? Just one of the many places on planet earth where life as living hell is a daily event and gets no anniversary commemorations. Being deep in the field it was to be a week and a half before I returned to civilization and heard about the events of September 11.

That day, as the towers fell and I waded through a viscid goo, 4,500 people died from lack of clean water on planet earth. And 4,500 have died every single day since then. With all due respect to the three-thousand-something innocents who died on 9-11, and their families, I hope you will pardon me if I maintain my quiet, multi-decade focus of my limited attention on the usually-forgotten daily 4,500 instead.

I'm not American and was at work (here in Ireland) when the attacks happened. I was doing some IT work in a client's office and he had his TV on the news, so I pretty much watched the whole thing unfold. And for the next few days, that's what everyone I knew was doing - they were glued to TV, the internet, newspapers, just getting as much news on it as they could.

Although I was a few thousand miles away on 9/11, I had been in New York 2 weeks before the attacks - for a vacation. I loved the city and myself and my friends were made to feel very welcome by everyone we encountered.

I had gone to the WTC, ridden up to the top with the other tourists, been amazed at just how high it was (people on the street below looked like specks), marvelled at the engineering, examined the scale model of NYC which they had, and chatted to a few of the staff there. Took a lot of photos. The sheer size of the buildings amazed me - we have no buildings like that here in Ireland, and it was a real experience being up near the top and hearing the winds hammering the building, and being able to see much of NYC.

To think that some people actually threw themselves out windows from up there - to escape the fires - is heartbreaking.

I particularly remembered the young guy operating the WTC lift for everyone, who looked like he was about 18. He had a ready smile and a speech which he had no doubt rehearsed a thousand times. He started speaking really quickly when the lift moved off, and finished exactly when the lift came to a stop - timed to perfection. He was a very nice & pleasant guy, and everyone gave him a clap. I often wonder if he was lucky enough to be off work on the day it happened, but I know in all likelihood he's probably one of the thousands who died.

I still have my ticket stub from my visit to the WTC, don't know why I kept it but I guess it was me being sentimental.