9-11 box cutters 11 september utility knives

[Robert Mahnke]

Whatever killed all those other people won't kill us.  Because we are in
control, masters of our own destiny.

Hell, I want to believe that.

It's not fearlessness at all.  It's a response to that very real fear.


On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 6:54 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> Really? Curcculear logic:
> If we believe little things can be our doom, we give up all volition.
> But if we realize how small the force of box cutter is to resist, as did
> the 3rd flight, it is a small thing.  We are either helpless or fearless of
> boxcutters.???
>
> In other words WTF do you mean?
>
> On Wednesday, November 20, 2013, Robert Mahnke wrote:
>
>> "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?
>>
>>
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