The tolling bell never ceases

In just a couple of weeks it will be the 14th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, arguably one of the stupidest, cruellest and most useless atrocities ever committed.  Nearly 3,000 people perished but the bell still tolls.

This is, or was, Ms. Marcy Borders who had started work for a bank in the Twin Towers just a month before the attack.  According to The Telegraph, she was on the 81st floor but managed to walk out.  Then she was hit by the dust cloud from the tower hit by the second plane.  From that point on her life was a descent to the very pits of existence.

Unable to work again she took the 'four-lane' route to nothingness - drink and drugs, debt and depression.  Her children were removed from her.  But, in perhaps the cruellest twist of the knife that fate could inflict, after about ten years she began to come through it.  Very gradually she tried working again.  There was, after all, the possibility of a future for her.

Then she was diagnosed with stomach cancer.

She has just died at the age of 42.  Asked whether she ever looked at the photo of herself which has become an icon for the Twin Towers attack, she said she tried to avoid doing so: "I try to take myself from being a victim to being a survivor now," she said. "I don't want to be a victim anymore."

Christ Almighty, sometimes there are simply no words!

 

Comments

[Mayfly]

I remember the picture I saw on the front page of the paper the next day, the one of the man falling through the air, a Schrödinger death. I wondered at the fact that the papers supressed the picture afterwards, because to me it captured the very worst of that day : the people who didn't die at first. The ones who hung out the windows, trying to escape the flames. The people who actually were dead the moment the plane hit, but were filled with false hope, looking down on the people come to rescue them, not knowing that rescue was not an option. I saw some Youtube videos of it, where individuals deliberately celebrated those who had to make that awful choice, those people who leapt together, unable to go alone and those who presumably managed to screw up the courage for a second and did jump by themselves. Whilst friends of mine celebrated to some extent, because they felt America's hubris was deserving of a severe reprimand, the picture of the falling man moved me more than any of the stories of survivors or the glimpses of the dead.

What a tragedy, and how it still keeps giving.........

[Whitewall]

Mayfly, you had friends that "celebrated to some extent"? I can say I had no such "friends". I can also say that if I had some that did that...they would be dead.

[Cuffleyburgers]

@ Mayfly - I'm intrigued by your comment "Whilst friends of mine celebrated to some extent, because they felt America's hubris was deserving of a severe reprimand" - are these people still friends of yours?

This was a brilliantly planned and staged surprise attack on civilians and it changed the world or more accurately, provoked a series of disastrously mis-judged counter moves that have set the world on a disastrous course; in some ways you could compare it to the Sarajevo assassination with some important differences - the arch duke could, at a pinch, be considered a legitimate target and the assymetric warfare that has followed is nothing like the Western front; but both have put an end to periods of growing and widespread prosperity and liberty and have arguably set the human race back by decades.

The first led to the end of the hegemony of the British empire, the second, possibly, eventually to that of the USA.

Discuss.

[jimmy glesga]

Cufflyburgers. The human race moves on each day and liberty can only be defended by force.
The USA were apparantly taken by surprise because of their liberal free society which was taken advantage off by the religious nutters however the USA CIA and FBI seem to have been on leave for a helluva lot of time before this attack.
If you let people into your country (muslims) that have said they hate you and death to America then do expect to be attacked.

[Mayfly]

What I took from their comment was that their opinion was that they felt America interfered with other countries to the extent that many people lost their lives, that the USA sat in judgement on others and did not understand that they were not untouchable. It was not the deaths they were celebrating, it was the fact that the USA found itself vulnerable, and it was their hope that lessons would be learned.

I appreciate it is an emotive subject. Whilst I was looking through the Youtube footage, I did come across a large number of videos saying it was staged by the White House, that the planes never existed - there appears to be a deliberately doctored video to show one of the wings passing behind a building in an impossible fashion. As though the people who were there imagined the planes. Was the event not tragic enough without people suggesting other stories which were just as awful?

[Cuffleyburgers]

Jimmy - that is true enough.

The clearest thing we can take away from that terrible day is that we certsinly should not expect our governments and so-called security-services to protect us.

[Mayfly]

I think that last post was rather confusing. I was trying to say that people from everywhere don't agree with the USA's stance on their overseas policies, both inside and outside of the country. However, we can take the event as it happened and deal with that, without being side tracked into "Did it happen?" and "The President was responsible".

[Andrew Duffin]

@Mayfly - well said and I think you are correct.

People of my acquaintance said at the time "Well, America, now you know what it feels like", and they were thinking of the ignorant gullible New Yorkers who gave money to the IRA for so many years, while the IRA were using the money to murder their way around the UK.

It was an understandable, if extreme, reaction.

As for dust lady, indeed her fate was bitter. One can only bow the head.

[jimmy glesga]

Andrew. What a minority of USA Irish bigots did by contributing to the PIRA is totally irrelevant and should be given no consideration regarding the Twin Tower attacks. The PIRA are scum of the Earth but the NY attack was against universal freedom of religion and thought.

[backofanenvelope]

What the Americans need to do is free themselves from the idea that they are God's gift to humanity. Stop lecturing and interfering with all and sundry.

[David Duff]

BOE, you are wasting your words. Great powers always interfere where, in retrospect, they shouldn't. They do it because they *can* do it. We did it constantly 'back in the day'. Now all we do is trot along behind trying to be noticed!

[backofanenvelope]

My words are just my words. They have no effect, so they cannot be wasted.

[David Duff]

Well, perhaps 'wasted' was not the best choice of words but you know what I mean.

[Whitewall]

BOE, you are quite right. Here the body politic has about had it with us being all over the world. Who or what will fill the void? Just how far do you wish America to withdraw?

[backofanenvelope]

Whitewall. I would like you to be a good and faithful ally. I don't like your Emperor popping over here giving us lectures. In return, I would like the UK government to adopt the same policy towards the USA. No lectures, just friendship. I thought our attitude over 9/11 was the correct one; support and sympathy in spades.

[Whitewall]

BOE, I completely understand. Our damnable Emperor has done us untold damage on so many fronts. This effort by him has been deliberate. Americans, like me, remember well the support and sympathy from Great Britain after 9/11. We were grateful then and still are.

[David Duff]

Sorry, Gentlemen, but all that is soppy nonsense! Yes, we share a language and a (mixed!) mutual history and a very generalised legal tradition - but that's it! After that, it is all down to national self interests. And, to complicate matters further, those 'national self interests' will vary according to the personal politics of our respective leaders. Thus, there will never be any meaningful meeting of minds and interests between a resentful black quasi-Marxist and an Eton-educated British toff.

Also, I would add, that both our nations have had their indigent populations watered down from what they once were. Britain, being an ancient and small Island with very long traditions will *probably* cope with this better than America which is, in world terms, still a teen-ager. Already in the USA there is a three-way split developing between whites, blacks and Hispanics which will only grow worse as the influx from South America reaches flood proportions.

[backofanenvelope]

Language determines how you think.

[David Duff]

That is an exceedingly interesting point, BOE, although I instinctively believe it to be wrong. However, I need to think about it first and I'm not sure I have the right language!

[Backofanenvelope]

Insincerity is not a good thing.

[jimmy glesga]

David. You do think in your own language, well I do. Our relationship with the USA should be firm, solid and unwavering. We are an island and have the sea as a border and that is our luck. The USA lost tens of thousands helping us and that should not be forgotten. We have a common interest in freedom at this moment in time.

[David Duff]

You'll remember that, will you, BOE, the next time Mrs. BOE asks what you think of the hat she intends to wear to a wedding?!

Get real, Jimmy, as the 'cousins' might say. In America there was a certain amount, but definitely not an overwhelming amount, of sympathy for our plight in 1940. But it took the attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941 to get them in - and then only *after* Hitler declared war on *them*!

And quite right, too, in my opinion. Governments elected by the people should think very long and hard before committing their people to war irrespective of emotional imperatives.

[Lawrence Duff]

The US is quite the greatest blessing ever bestowed upon humanity by way of a nation state. No other nation state has ever come close to granting freedom and prosperity to as many people as the US. In fact, rather like British naval policy in the early 20C, where we always made sure our navy was bigger than the next two combined, the US has freed and enriched probably more people than the next ten combined.

Consider all those people once behind the iron curtain, and in Mao's China. The 120 million murders perpetrated by those states. Both brought low by the US, and literally billions of people freed to prosper and have a chance at life.

If you would decry such a state, and snigger at its misfortune, then you have truly lost your way.

SoD

[jimmy glesga]

David. The Yanks were always going to war as it was in their economic interest. They knew they would be attacked.
Ok I acknowledge that some stupid Irish Americans and others
hated the British but they went to war for gheir own survival.

[David Duff]

No, Jimmy, Roosevelt wanted war but the majority of the American people did not. They were doing very well flogging us war equipment and when we ran out of money they loaned us some to buy more - in fact I think we repaid the last bit only just recently. They did NOT join the war on our side - it was Hitler who declared war on THEM!

And the American people no more understood their economic interest than you do today! You keep voting Labour even when you know they couldn't run a piss-up in a brewery!