Anniversary of 9/11 marked under cloud of health problems, funding fights

Joe Xuereb

Sep 14th 2012, 15:40

@ Martin Bezzina Wettinger(Today, 13:06). Thank you for a concise response; it is much appreciated; reading and writing thoughtful comments is never a waste of home but thanks for the sentiment,
The nearest I've 'been' to a falling building is when blocks of flats and chimneys, deemed redundant, are deliberately pulled down. Quite spectacular at a safe distance.** Other than the visual aspect, I know nothing of the mechanics of building materials and their capacity to combust or not. Which leaves the big question - the USA and its democratic* values or lack of them.
I have never been to the USA. I did bother to get a visa to visit once but resented the intrusion so I went to Turkey instead and had a far greater time there (their antiquities are marvellous and so relevant to us Europeans). All in all, quite a democratic country everything considered. America is, of course, the land of the free, the land where dreams come true. Or nightmares.
But beyond Europe and all it stands for, I would still look towards America for comparative safety and freedom to be. I have no problem accepting that, as a superpower, America does have a vested interest in being strong and keeping strong. Not forgetting that it is hated out of all proportion to its wrongs, mostly imagined as I would like to think. Who else that's truly(?) democratic would be replace this comparatively benign policing? I can name a few would-be horrors but it would be unfair seeing that they have not been given a chance to police yet. Maybe we could pick one out of a bag, at random like, and take pot-luck? I still shudder to think. Maybe I am being naive, smug in my denials. But I still prefer the status quo.
Meanwhile, peaceful Libya has done it again. The US envoy has been murdered in Benghazi. Officially Libya is now 'democratic', sorted. But the hotheads are still at what they thrive on. Nothing underhand or conspiratorial about them. They breathe in-you-face violence and throat-cutting. No, give me America anytime.
Fall into the 'Stockholm Syndrome' trap and we stand to lose whatever we have striven for. At a stroke.

* I suspect we overuse the word democracy. In terms of people choosing their leaders, this is fine. But beyond this, we all know that no elected Government can please all people all of the time. Pledges are most certainly not always honoured.

** The pulverisation of the steel supports incorporated into the twin towers is a 'mystery'(?). Accepting the conspiracy theory, where the incendiary devices such that they would turn steel to dust? What about the telephone calls that terrorised passengers made to their relatives from the airplane? Where these too orchestrated and part of the plot? What of the grieving relatives' subsequent coping mechanisms in the face of their tragedy or was this, too, part of the conspiracy?


Democracy to be worth anything has to have fundamental prerequisites. Tribes with inherited leadership does not have any. Why is the monarchy anywhere an

anachronism surviving in some far off islands and a few 'powerful' nations in the progressive West where we left tribalism behind hundreds of years ago? Where it does survive, the monarchy is just a figurehead (as in, a ruler may open Parliaments but may not enact laws). It is all about tradition and nothing else much. The tradition, for instance, of being head of an Institution which would be untenable elsewhere. Some countries stick to their time-honoured traditions even if it 'kills' them. As for being unable to please everybody all of the time - look at Malta, a country divided on any issue going. And Malta is democratic, secular(supposedly) and a respected member of a powerful democratic Union of European countries, 'observing' - as in watching, all religions, and none.

Martin Bezzina Wettinger

Sep 12th 2012, 13:06

Dear Mr.Xuereb,
Thank you for your reply. And I sincerely hope I did not waste too much of your time. My problem is that I find it very hard to believe that fire alone cold annihilate a steel building so neatly to a heap of dust.. I would expect parts of the structure to remain almost intact as the one in Spain.
I would also ready to accept that someone in authority had to take the difficult decision to pull the buildings down with people still in them as I understand that if such a big building fell in a natural and random way it would have hit other buildings near by that could have started a domino effect with a much greater loss of life.
I also agree that the western society have a very important role in policing other countries. However, we need to be reassured that the countries that are doing the policing are truly democratic.

Joe Xuereb

Sep 12th 2012, 01:19

@ Martin Cassar (Yesterday, 15:25). Mr. Cassar, we all know that people just lap up conspiracy anything (why do you think whodunit fiction/film is so popular).

@ Martin Bezzina Wettinger (Yesterday, 12:59). Mr. Bezzina Wettinger, I watched some of the video-clip you linked. I noticed the monotonous female narrator. Impeccable diction sounding almost like a prayer, very flat with no trace of emotion. What we call, 'butter wouldn't melt in her mouth'. And then I thought.....

All these engineers tagged onto their PhDs and so on - why exactly are they out to prove that Washington is the rogue? If my memory serves me right, I mean who hijacked the airplanes had undergone piloting training in the USA. They were identified. Where are they now, men in their thirties. If whoever is so interested in proving the USA's intrigues is proved right, what then?

This would have implications, and horrendous ones at that. The planet has had warlords since day one, hence warring tribes and expansionism. In the modern age, this human phenomenon has developed big time, with major wars these last thousand years, two Great World wars in the last hundred years, followed by the Cold War(with the USSR). A Cold War that has never quite gone away (since the fall of the Berlin Wall the New World Order we were promised has not fulfilled its promise as we all know.

Now, I may be about to say a lot of nonsense but I'll say it just the same. The world, it seems to me, needs policing because a lot of the 'children' are unruly. It is useless to wish for a non-policed world as this will never be the case (all one needs to do is look at the world's track-record). So the question is, the USA has 'led' the world for quite some time. It may not be perfect as only god merits that accolade but on the whole it hasn't done too bad a job. And therefore, it begs the question. If the USA and the West generally, ceases to police the planet, who/what would police the planet with as much democracy, respect for human right, freedom of speech, and so on?


By way of example, there was the case recently of a British Bank being accused by some American financial watchdog of laundering money to Iran (something like that). The Standard (I think it was called) Bank denied the allegation or gave a different version of the matter. In the event, the 'rogue' bank was fined 310million pounds. But the bank itself was not annihilated and is still trading. This because, according to people in the know (I understand Finance, high or low, not at all) say that the collapse of a powerful Institution has horrendous implications all around. As another example, one can imagine the impact that the collapse of a major Religion would have. The Great Depression of the 1920s(?) in America would be like nothing.

Martin Cassar

Sep 11th 2012, 15:25

11 years later and I still have two simple questions puzzling me:
First question: Did Osama Ben Laden attack the USA because the latter is a free and democratic Christian country?

Second question: What should both USA/Nato should achieve so they could declare a conclusive triumph on the ground?

Whodunit?
Immediately a day or two after the 9/11 I read an interesting line: When the Muslims-Christians relations worsen or go sour, look for the Jews (more specifically the Zionists).

Had the USA acted in a more civilized manner and not taking the law by their own hands by killing the [unarmed] Osama Ben Laden perhaps by today we would have known the full truth and know who really was behind 9/11 or was the whole thing of 9/11 was a USA government inside job??

What’s probably jolting the white house at this minute is the number of USA citizens that believe the whole thing in connection with 9/11 was an inside job of own government.

Good hard working American citizens along with the free citizens across the free world should go down and gather in their [Tharir Square] demanding the trial of Bush and Tony Blair and a fair independent investigation of what has actually happened on 9/11/2001.

Christopher Grech

Sep 11th 2012, 14:52

I have read long and hard on 911 on conspiracy (theory vs facts), and have come to one conclusion: the US government has lied many times.

When you compare the official version with facts, and other engineers/professionals who stake thier own careers, one cannot be in awe of the great divide between fact and fiction.

This is quite a good document to read:-

http://www.theglobalmovement.info/images/pdfs/9-11.pdf

and also this one: http://911conspiracytruth.com/

Martin Bezzina Wettinger

Sep 11th 2012, 12:59

I know this is quite a long film but I think you should see it. It is quite worrying for me. I would like to get an opinion from someone who has some technical knowledge.
http://youtu.be/WpUangrE7dY

Joe Xuereb

Sep 11th 2012, 11:03

And there I was being led to believe that 9/11 was all a Washington conspiracy! Instead of volumes, I decided that one short sentence said all there is to say. Saves time and lives all around.

George Attard

Sep 11th 2012, 08:54

The events in New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania still bear the same imapct today as they did 11 years ago. My thoughts and prayers are with all the families of the victims of this horrific act of cowardness and terrorism. I still cannot watch footage of the attacks without getting emotional even after all these years.