9-11 box cutters 11 september utility knives

Wed Nov 20 19:45:12 CST 2013

"The box cutter-knives story isn't demonstrably false, but it serves to
divert attention from the other weapons and to mask the fact that we don't
have any idea how the hijackings happened."

It's not about someone else trying to divert attention, it's about what we
all want to believe.  We really want to believe that the next time we
surrender our ordinary control over thing and place our lives in other
people's hands by boarding an airplane, the plane won't be seized and flown
into a building.  So we don't want to hear that we don't have any idea how
the hijacking happened.  We want to hear that the hijackers were armed with
puny weapons because this means that if we are faced with such hijackers,
we can resist them and their box-cutters.  You don't need to hypothesize
that someone else is trying to pull wool over our eyes -- we all do to
ourselves that every time we get on a plane.

On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 6:38 PM, Matt Ryan <matthew.ryan at gmail.com> wrote:

> Slate piece that seems salient:
> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2003/09/what_you_think_you_know_about_sept_11_.html
>
> 2.* The misconception*: *We know how the hijackers seized the planes. *Within
> days of Sept. 11, Americans believed they knew how the planes were grabbed:
> Terrorists had taken control by stabbing pilots, passengers, and flight
> attendants with box cutters and knives.
>
> *What's wrong with the story*: It's incomplete and misleading. We don't
> really know what happened on the planes. The cockpit voice recorder
> survived neither New York crash and was damaged beyond salvage in the
> Pentagon crash. The Flight 93 voice recorder doesn't start until several
> minutes after the hijackers took the plane. What little we know about
> tactics and weapons comes from phones calls made by passengers and flight
> attendants. As Edward Jay Epstein<http://edwardjayepstein.com/nether_fictoid9.htm> has
> pointed out, the evidence is incredibly paltry. No one on United Flight
> 175, which crashed into the World Trade Center, reported anything about
> weapons or tactics. One flight attendant on American Flight 11, which also
> crashed into the World Trade Center, said she was disabled by a chemical
> spray, while another flight attendant said a passenger was stabbed or shot.
> On the Pentagon plane, American Flight 77, Barbara Olson reported hijackers
> carrying knives and box cutters but did not describe how they took the
> cockpit. And on United Flight 93, passengers reported knives but also a
> hijacker threatening to explode a bomb. The box cutter-knives story isn't
> demonstrably false, but it serves to divert attention from the other
> weapons and to mask the fact that we don't have any idea how the hijackings
> happened.
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 6:33 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I agree w Ryan. " Box cutter" showed how pre-9/11 hijacker scenario
>> strategy used minimal counter resistance from airline staff (or
>> passegers) not thinking hijackers were on suicide missions.  The passengers
>> on the third plane learned the new equation quickly and valiantly.
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, November 19, 2013, Matt Ryan wrote:
>>
>>> For what it's worth, I have worked various jobs involving regular use of
>>> these blades and the terms "box cutters" and "utility knives" were always
>>> used interchangeably. Maybe it's a regional thing, I dunno.  As far as the
>>> media glomming onto the term box cutters, I'm guessing it has to do with
>>> the narrative they were trying to shape, i.e. "something as mundane as this
>>> ubiquitous little tool was used to carry out this hugely significant
>>> attack, oh the irony, etc."
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 5:21 PM, <malignd at aol.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I may be misremembering, but didn't Popular Science or Popular Mechanics
>>> fully explain the collapse of WTC 7?
>>>
>>> The boxcutter was just an example of one small thing I thought about that
>>> troubled me and an attempt to clarify to myself and anyone interested why.  The
>>> Other issues are quite large and have in no way been adequately addressed. Why
>>> did building seven, unstruck  except by minor debris and the fire that started,
>>> collapse. There has never been a steel frame building that collapsed even from
>>> intense fires leaving twisted framework.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
>>> To: P-list List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>> Sent: Tue, Nov 19, 2013 12:59 am
>>> Subject: Re: 9-11 box cutters 11 september utility knives
>>>
>>>  The boxcutter was just an example of one small thing I thought about that
>>> troubled me and an attempt to clarify to myself and anyone interested why.  The
>>> Other issues are quite large and have in no way been adequately addressed. Why
>>> did building seven, unstruck  except by minor debris and the fire that started,
>>> collapse. There has never been a steel frame building that collapsed even from
>>> intense fires leaving twisted framework.  Whatever hit the pentagon followed a
>>> path that no pilot could accomplish in a747. This is the fucking Pentagpn and
>>> there are no photos or film of a non scheduled flight entering their airspace
>>> which has a large perimeter warning system. The hole in the Pentagon is too
>>> small. The 2 engines never turned up.   Thermite. Explain some of this or point
>>> to a detailed explanation that is not a denial based on the idea that it
>>> couldn't be done covertly..  Which leaves us with the explanation that a covert
>>> plan by the most powerful secretive forces could not do this but 12 alcohol
>>> abusing foreigners who showed no aptitude for flight and some of whom were on
>>> FBI lists could.
>>>
>>> I have a real hard time with that.  As for perfect narratives, that is not the
>>> question. Credible physics concerning what is known is the question.  Did Allah
>>> suspend the conservation of mass?
>>>
>>> Slate magazine is a pathetic joke.
>>>
>>> On Nov 18, 2013, at 11:38 AM, Monte Davis wrote:
>>>
>>> > 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
>>> cour
>>>
>>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20131120/933631b5/attachment.html>