This is my customary input on the Attack on America. The glorious GangstaFeelsGood directed me towards the node Nostradamus and the World Trade Center which basically points out that these 'quotes' are not faithful quotes at all, and in fact, utter bullshit. Thank god.
"In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb... The third big war will begin when the big city is burning" -
Nostradamus 1654
The significance of this date is that we were not expecting it.
There are so many
daylogs written about this.. so many daylogs.
So many news stories and rumours and crying people and racist and religious fuckers perpetuating the gloom. The catbox was amazingly amazingly, the greatest source of information any of us had, and it was just going too quickly to keep up with at times. So of course to slow things down again I retreated to
wonko's
chatterbox archive which is like the best invention in the world. There were a few things people said during the big hubbub that
got me the most. I felt myself in absolute turmoil over this, which i thought at the time was a fucking cop out, because I am in
Australia, as far away as you can get from
New York, and yet I am wrenched. But I realised.. this is the
first time in history that we can all be connected by the
internet during a fucking large
disaster. So
everybody is going to feel it. Because we have accounts from people we
know, and not just nameless faces we have never seen and will never see again. This is why I feel it, this is why we feel it. I wish so much to be able to hug my little
nodey friends who are scared and sad and ruined and to donate my
rare blood and to scour the
rubble for bodies with some life still in them. To rebuild the streets of a city I have never been in,
but may as well have, because of my little lovely friends there, because of a thousand pictures, films,
tv shows, documentaries, because of a hundred
books,
love the city before I have ever been there, and i
love the people who died in that building although I didn't know them. Here are things I heard in the catbox that turned my stomach the most.. the detail, the sense, the futility of the entire scenario was captured a little in each of these.
and the absurd.
- ”A person who answered the phone on the trading floor at interdealer-broker Cantor Fitzgerald, located near the top of the World Trade Center, said: "We're f***ing dying," then hung up.”
- It was amazing to me that people were actually pouring out of windows. I was amazed at the strength of their terror, that they would actually jump to their deaths although they were going to die anyway. I didn’t understand it. I thought, was there a chance some survived? But then..
/msg dustfromamoth I think they did die – it was just preferable to burning alive...
That made me so still and sad.
- “all it could see was all the *paper* - the files, and memos, the institutional infrastructure and expertise in those 2 buildings... it's a massive human AND economic blow.”
- “jesus new york looks like something out of the godzilla movie.”
- Walter is never going to be able to watch Fight Club again without thinking of THIS.
moodster: The difference is that the buildings in Fight CLub were empty...
- “this makes pearl harbor look like a friendly gathering.”
“Bah... this makes Pearl Harbor look like a surprise birthday party.”
- “During the Vietnam war we all said, Well, if we were attacked at home, that would be different. Well, we've been attacked at home.”
- "prime minister howard made this statement with his lips quivering" mental picture. Ew. Australia will be going along with anything the US does to hunt down terrorists.”
- “Yet another example of how religion makes this world a better place.”
- “Hopefully we can come together and rebuild... better...”
- mblase tries to envision 50,000 people gone. I can't do it.
The thing which got me was, even
Disneyland was closed for christ’s sake. To me this is the utter
symbol of the way this incident erased all magic, all fun, all
spritefulness…. Any trace of a
sparkle.
It pissed me off how everybody got all shocked and shaken over Nostradamus’s predictions. One example being:
"It has been foreseen that exactly three hundred and fifty years into the future, silver phoenixs shall strike down the twin brothers of oppression that carried the king's nation, which shall bring upon the apocalypse." - (September 11th, 1651)
Apart from the fact that translations can often be
sketchy at best, this man
also predicted a whole bunch of things that just plain did
not happen. And really, could we call
New York City the “city of god”? His prophecies are also very general. And this is
not the beginning of the apocalypse. Such beliefs are harmful, and they make me so angry I could strangle you all. This type of attitude is what got us into this mess in the first place. A prime example of this is an email I got from one of my friends, a
Christian, who I otherwise respected, despite his beliefs, up until now.
"hi to all
you are all my mates.. from some time in my life.. i wanna get this off my chest.
i think what has occured is the collapse of humanity. this has gone too far... and i believe will go further... so as a loyal friend that i am i want to say i love you all in some way.. and valued the times we shared and will come to share. i feel awkwardly numb.. but awoken in a sense to the feeling in the air of a new era.. this is the 21st century in all it's glory.... great how far humans have evolved after all this time wouldn't you say.... what is the sense... all for a statement... the real perpetrators never come to justice.. on both sides... we are pawns in their litttle ego game... it bites hard that our choice is restricted soo much... i have decided to live life with a new attitude from today... stay safe and close to your families..."
My reply; I clenched my teeth and tried to be as polite as possible, as nice and understanding as possible:
"dollface, much as i love you, i don't think you should be blindly believing something like this, it's dangerous. it very well may be the collapse of humanity, but it may not be. what we don't need right now is a bunch of other fanatics believing in something for no reason.
thats what caused this in the first place. the terrorists believed so strongly in whatever their little goal was, without thought. They were brainless and manic.
we can't be sure what this means for the world so please don't just instinctively expect it all to end. If too many people do this, it may. Suspect it, by all means, be wary of it, speculate, contemplate... but please don't believe.. believe is such a strong word darlink."
Prosaic, inarticulate, but what else can you say to a person. When I saw that I had received a reply I was very
nervous about what it might say to me.
"hey, you are right.. i know.. but i feel something in my stomach.. a total gut instinct.. and i have the gift of knowing the future sometimes... i hope it is not so... i really do.. stay safe my good friend.."
What can one say to something like that? I didn’t say anything. One of my other friends said to me:
"No country would be stupid enough to go to war against USA"
That statement seems logical, but we are dealing with extremists. Logic doesn’t come into the equation. And that is why I spent days, teeth chattering, wondering how I was supposed to go on anyway, knowing..
Anyway. What I am most concerned with now is the rebuilding. There is such a power in something like this. It brings people together, which is a thing I very much love :) It always saddened me that only a few things could bring people together… disaster, religion, and fanaticism..
each of these have dire, dire consequences. Why can’t we just all be together for no reason? Just because we’re alive? It makes no sense. A quote, by
Feuerbach, that speaks to me about the one fundamental flaw of religion:
"We project all our unrealized perfection onto an imaginary non-human entity, God,instead of concerning ourselves with the realizable improvements of our fellow human beings".
Another thing, the
borglist on the catbox was
phenomenal.
dwardu said something about this I thought was very valid (although I saw the value in stopping people from flooding the
catbox with useless information during this time):
I know I'll be borged but have been silenced before today...EDB: Your radical ideas about censorship reflect how americans preach freedom while imposing themselves on the rest of the world. Has today not taught you a lesson?
And the first joke we heard about the incident?
Bet you this is the media release for Windows XP
big banner will unfurl –
"Wont crash like this"
dragoon: May I point out one bright shining spot of humanity in all this: NYC has not reported any looting or other attempt to abuse this tragedy.
That’s what I like :) That’s what I like.
ooooh. that nipple boy just informed me of some looting that occurred, I forget precisely what he said because I accidentally deleted the message but I do know that the looting could only have been accomplished by the rescue and relief workers. Which I think is disgusting, but expected. Sadly.