9-11 box cutters 11 september utility knives

Mon Nov 18 10:38:51 CST 2013

RR> Life measured in such a detailed way will always bring to the surface
much that doesnt make sense

I vehemently agree. What makes people believe that it must be possible to
reconstruct a 100% accurate, closed, consistent narrative of any but the
simplest historical moment? (And in "historical" I include last week.)

In practice, the effort to do so *always* requires the selective -- or
tendentious -- exclusion of some dots that someone else will always insist
*must* be connected. See, e.g., Fred Kaplan on JFK assassination theories:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2013/11/john_f_kennedy_conspiracy_theories_debunked_why_the_magic_bullet_and_grassy.html

On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 9:22 AM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> 9/11 in essence in my mind is a massive intelligence failure. conspiracies
> abound because people cant believe we didnt connect the dots or when we did
> we didnt share info or didn't deem it important enough. these bozos should
> have been caught but they weren't.
> I dont understand this 'I question the official narrative'--what
> narrative? all those endless taps into each and every discrepancy or nuance
> of that day and the days leading up to it. Life measured in such a detailed
> way will always bring to the surface much that doesnt make sense or others
> imbued with a significance important to the observer. an horrific event
> heightens this to unimaginable levels.
> I also just have to laugh about talk of knives and cowards. sure it takes
> courage to do alot of things but maybe you will think twice when someone
> cuts a loved one's throat in your presence and then ask yourself wow that
> was courageous. is that how we are defining courage, now? guess that means
> William Calley and Paul Blobel had lots of courage, too.
>
> y'all (as is Pynchon) reacting to the media response and have forgotten
> the event itself.
> where the important questioning of narrative is Iraq not 9/11. you should
> focus your moral outrage there.
>
> rich
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 1:12 PM, Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Maybe only the ringleaders on each plane knew they were suicide missions.
>> Yeah, self-righteous murderous self-redemptive courage....
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>> On Nov 17, 2013, at 12:17 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>>
>> > I worked as a construction electrician for 18 years, and a knife was
>> one of our required hand tools. At first, I bought a three-blade pocket
>> knife, but really only used one of the blades, so I switched to a
>> single-blade. But this become dull quickly, and, on a co-worker's advice, I
>> switched to a utility knife, and stayed with it for the rest of my 18-year
>> career. The retractable blade cut through heavy 500MCM wire insulation like
>> butter, and because spare blades could be stored in the handle (held
>> together with a set-screw), I always had a sharp blade. Sure, there were
>> always assholes who'd Crocodile Dundee me about my pathetic little knife -
>> some of them had switchblades, or the actual knives they used to gut VC in
>> Nam (they said). I'd joke that I didn't need a big phallic knife when I had
>> my small clitoral triangular blade (always shocked some of the conservative
>> Catholic family men with that kind of talk: "I thought you were a nice
>> girl!").
>> >
>> > But it occurs to me, after reading Joseph's post, that this
>> belittlement of the knife used (just a tiny box cutter) went hand in hand
>> with the belittlement of the attackers collective manhood. These guys who
>> commandeered giant planes and crashed them into buildings were "cowards."
>> Bill Maher was actually fired from his Politically Incorrect show for
>> saying that one thing these guys were not, was cowardly. Then there were
>> the initial descriptions of Mohammed Atta as a wimpy little momma's boy who
>> didn't/couldn't have girl friends. One really has to wonder why this sort
>> of thing was dished out and happily swallowed by the gullible public. What
>> part of our brash Western-influenced culture says that it's more honorable
>> to be set-upon by a wimpy, cowardly girly-boy with a tiny knife? Isn't that
>> called pussy-whipping. Why wouldn't we want to be brought down by the
>> biggest, baddest bravest mo-fo out there? It's an odd public relations
>> dilemma: if you refuse to imbue the enemy with any positive traits
>> (strength, bravery, intelligence), then what are you left with? What 4th
>> grader wants to admit they were beat up by a 1st grader?
>> >
>> > I agree with John Bailey that official stories aren't necessarily false
>> by conspiracy, and that it was a tangle of competing interests - literary,
>> political, psychological and economic that put together the Official Story.
>> Actually, I found the Official Story of the first attack on the trade
>> center much more troubling. It took them days to recover the four bodies
>> from the wreckage, yet the very first thing they found was the rental-van's
>> license, lying atop the wreckage like a gift card, which led them
>> immediately to the perpetrators. Sounded a little too much like
>> fore-knowledge in that case. Give us this day our daily conspiracy, I guess.
>> >
>> > Laura
>> >
>> >
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> >> From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
>> >
>> >>
>> >> 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?
>> >>
>> >> 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.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> -
>> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> >
>> > -
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
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