Messages

Fair play,  Tordels, hope things continue to improve. sounds line they will

Again, I should really stay away from the internet when I've been drinking.

LIKE.
I've been drinking too. I'm not going near this thread again till tomorrow.

A bunch of nutters fly two huge planes, filled with aviation fuel, at hundreds of miles an hour into two tall buildings causing a massive fire storm, which, over a period of time, weakens the integrity of the buildings and they collapse, killing thousands of people going about their daily business.  What else is there to say?

Precisely.
The way I see it, conspiracy theories like the 9 11 inside job one are themselves an obstacle to actual anti-authority propaganda (whether you are a proponent of it or not).  Did the U.S. government blow up the twin towers?  I seriously doubt it,  but what they undeniably did was seriously exploit the tragedy to intern people without trial, use torture with impunity, spy on innocent people, illegally invade oil-rich countries and generally assist Al Qaeda in their quest to make the world a less free and more fearful place to live.
All that intense scrutiny over government involvement in the Twin Towers catastrophe, I feel, deflects attention from these issues - the McCarthyesque use of fear to keep people in line, and the starting of  tragic, cack-handedly organised wars. (I'm not on Al Qaeda's side either, black-and-white thinking fans.)

Where you working these days, Professor?

Also, why would they send an unarmed plane?

Because they didn't have any armed ones ready.

The end result of 'ramming' it would be the same as that of shooting it down.

The interviews show it was all ad-hoc. They weren't sure what they were going to do. One suggestion was to take off a wing. The aim was to stop the plane hitting anything vital to the US (Capitol/White House, e.g.), not to safely bring it down.

Jim: I also remember a few pieces of insight into the manner in which the buildings collapsed, which stated it's all very logical. Starting with what you said, loads more fuel ended up in the mix, and then all it took was for one or two floors to fail. Then you've got a structure designed to hold up a certain weight having to hold up two or three times that. Then that falls. The floor underneath now has to cope with four. This becomes incremental all the way down, and happens very fast on reaching the point of no return.

So I don't see conspiracy either. I just see shitty people doing shitty things to create a shitty event. (I also recall around the time, some kind of report stating the intention was to create spectacle rather than bring the towers down. In a sense, they 'got lucky', in the most hideous nature of the word 'lucky'.)

Fair enough. It's probably a far better theory than mine.  I'm not being sarcastic or facetious either,  I just never heard an alternative point of view till now

Jesus, you're all fecking amazing. Darren, it looks like you've chopped up an episode of DR and Quinch, and sewed it all back together in a Frankensteinly manner.  Jon, that's terrrifying and brilliant.

Were there any internal recordings recovered from the plane in question? Z

I don't know.  I thought the 'Let's Roll' thing was recorded somewhere, but I could be wrong.  Also, why would they send an unarmed plane?  The end result of 'ramming' it would be the same as that of shooting it down.

Me, I don't believe the 9/11 attacks were anything other than an Al Qaeda attack.

However, I do remember one little anomaly on the day - that plane that was headed for the White House.  I distinctly recall the news reporting a US fighter plane being sent to deal with it, but the next day we were told that the brave passengers overpowered the terrorists ('Let's roll').  A tad suspicious, I thought.

And moving on to the bit where I cite better-informed sources than a fantastist comics fan:  My friend Paddy, known to RTE News watchers as Western Correspondent Pat McGrath, agreed completely and put together a reel of soundbites from the two days in question; which really did seem to suggest that the fighter plane blipped out of media existence overnight.

Now, maybe the passengers did bring it down, but as I said, I have a fairly vivid memory of the US Air Force having a go first.

EDIT: And as the good Tord... er, Prof Cardigan points out, this is the US government we're talking about, and they are capable of some really, really nasty stuff.  Nixon, forr example, would have had an anti-Nixon journalist murdered if Watergate hadn't blown him out of the water.  http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/09/nixon-jack-anderson-mark-feldstein

Oh,  you are a one.

The Stront flash backs were giving us something else - a way to continue the story of a much loved character without resorting to a technobabble resurrection (but clearly not everyone thought that was good enough).

I agree with you 100%. We're in a minority though

I like the Holy Spirt.

Forquemada crossed my mind,  but I think it was in the nerve centre in the 80s once.  Besides,  I was going for an alliteration theme rather than puns, and didn't want to s stray from it. What's that?  Have I a girlfriend? Not right at the moment,  why do you ask?

I used to think that "Future Shock" was an implausible mental illness, but when we are being warned not to discuss sensitive information in front of our TV in case it's spying on us, I'm not so sure!

Holy fucking shit. 

Dredd yelling you "sick bastard" , seemed uncharacteristically emotional.

That was jarring as heck. I read it in the Frank Miller Batman voice. Honestly I can't blame Dredd for being emotional occasionally, but this felt like an extreme.

I thought so too - it's a bit rich from a man who once forced someone with a phobia of blood to give a pint a week for the rest of his life.
Still,  nobody knows Dredd like his own dad, I suppose. it's still a belter of a story and John Wagner is immeasurably talented (while Frank's talents measure a decade and a bit in length).

Brilliant! Quite honestly,  it's an honour for me to see that you guys like them and are displaying them with your other prog memorabilia.  Next December: Nemesis knives, Fear forks and Sláine spoons to go with them. (Note: There will not be any Nemesis knives,  Fear forks or Sláine spoons.)