9-11 box cutters 11 september utility knives

[John Bailey]

I think that the box cutters/11 September analogy is a good one. Part
of P's point seems to be about how the media almost immediately
reduced the event to a small series of incessantly repeated images,
sound bites, slogans, buzzwords. The White House's media people and
the minds at Fox etc all began coming up with catchphrases. In sum
this worked to produce a narrative which largely goes unquestioned
today.

That doesn't mean it's a huge cover-up (I don't think) but the process
of creation of that narrative, which happens all the time, is
endlessly fascinating and deserves scrutiny. In some cases it can
involve a terrible silencing of other voices.

The example I always think of is Hiroshima (MB DRO ROSHI). The word is
as potent as 9/11, and people tend to avoid the city because in their
minds it's a giant atomic crater. It's actually one of the most lovely
and lively places you could go, and super beautiful in Spring. But to
so many outsiders 'Hiroshima' signifies an image frozen more than half
a century ago. To think that way is akin to imagining that New York
looks and feels the way it did in late 2001.

(same thing going on around Fukushima prefecture right now - western
media coverage is a f--king pornography of the place. When I was there
recently I learned that a lot of people from Hiroshima are visiting to
show their support, knowing how outsiders are turning the place into a
cartoon kingdom of fear to spook each other out).

But back to Joseph's points:

To me, BE doesn't lay out any sympathies to either truther or official
stories. But it does imply:

1. No one story about the day is correct. There are many.
2. Some of these stories are incorrect, and some are out-and-out lies.
3. The media and the government had their own agendas, possibly
sinister, and these created some of the lies. Ongoing lies.
4. "They" are way more remote than ever, or may not exist. The killers
and people who Should Know (eg Windust) are also caught up in stories
that may or may not be true. It may be that no one has the whole
picture.

All made more thorny by the very troubling way Pynchon creates
fictional answers to some real questions - makes up his own narrative
about a web of players and events that directly influenced the events
of 11 September. Unless you buy that Gabriel Ice is real or that he is
based on a very real person, how can dreaming up that narrative not be
another kind of lying?

On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 4:59 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> I will offer an alternate phrase that despite its seeming insignificance has troubled me. Box cutters. Before 11 september  I rarely heard  utility knives refereed to as box cutters and thought of that phrase as a kind of term used by people who don't regularly use hand tools and got a plastic knife to break down shipping boxes from Office Depot.. So I have wondered why have I never once heard them called what I and anyone I know who actually regularly uses these knives for utilitarian purposes calls them- which is utility knives. I have asked about 4-5 people what they think of when they hear the phrase box cutter and people describe either a standard utility knife or a small  plastic handled utility knife with break away blades, or a fold out steel knife. If you google the phrase those are the things you get. Hardware stores have always called them utility knives, but they are now sold on the internet as box cutters too.
>
> You don't kill passengers and flight attendants , then walk to the front of a plane  open the cockpit door and kill a pilot and copilot with a 1/2 inch break-away blade.  A standard utility knife which is called by some a box-cutter is a powerful, sharp, strong and potentially deadly tool, (much more that  a swiss army knife which I always kept in my backpack  when traveling before 9-11), because it has a large grip and close to 2 inches of razor sharp steel blade.
>
> So as far as I can tell the use of the term box -cutter originated from calls of a stewardess but she and others also said knives. What bothers me is the standardization of the description of weapons which aren't really known in detail to the term box-cutters.  It feels indicative of mindless repetition rather than a journalistic curiosity and  an attempt to get a real, detailed and plausible picture of one of the most disturbing events in many decades.
>
> This is a tiny detail in a big picture that Is still very disputed and unclear. Does P really accept the mainstream account? Why does P throw in the rooftop story so weirdly reminiscent of Kennedy's assassination or the underground goings on at Montauk  if he does not give some credence to alternate explanations? Why does everyone in BE chump-out and quit their research if not sheer dread about very powerful and unscrupulous forces? What is the role of the murder in the story? Is it referring to something real?
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> Because something real changed on 11 September 2001. We all know that.  But what actually happened?
>
> Why was Kissinger, the master of murderous coups and secret bombings, Bush's first choice for the inquiry.  Why did Building 7 collapse? Where was the Air Force? Is there really thermite recovered from the site? Where are the engines of the plane that hit the Pentagon?Here is a huge event which remains shrouded in real questions , but  which to look at skeptically is journalistic and media death. Yet many loved ones of victims are profoundly dissatisfied with the official inquiry. Why should we trust known liars and news organizations which reported incredibly spurious crap about WMD's to care deeply enough to truly answer the questions of the many sincere and personally involved, knowledgeable and credible skeptics including victims and first responders. Why not make the utmost effort to put to rest conspiracy theories that can only lead to bitterness and estrangement. And since when did America start thinking the thing to do after apprehending the  unarmed subject of a world-wide manhunt and center of a terrorist conspiracy,  is to shoot him and throw his  body into the Mediterranean?
>
>  Our lives go on.  We go to whatever we call work, live with friends and family, have our own worries and dreams. But now it is one war after another and we  are told it is criminal to question  the "right " of our government to monitor everyone's communication even though they have no interest in hearing what we say to them openly. The constitution evaporates as quickly under one party as the other and the reason is  always 9-11, the biggest emergency call in human history just keeps ringing away  our taxes and rights..   We want to go back to normal, back to the Jack Benny story, back to home made take-out and Ben and Jerrys.  Am I so alone  in being troubled by these nagging questions?  I too am a neighbor of those killed.
>
> I am not convinced as a truther but am even less convinced by the official story.
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