How 9/11 Was Displayed In Non-American Countries. This Is Eye-Opening.

No, it’s not particularly eye-opening. (Is the author exaggerating or just stupid and does realize borders do nothing to change human nature?)

It is reminiscent of how I remember it though. In the aftermath I remember how all of these very different countries from all over the globe made public statements of condolence and offers of support. Places in the Middle East, in South America, countries in the middle of the ocean, poor countries, rich countries, large and small; there was this outpouring of good will and common humanity flowing at our united states. Really comforting feel good stuff to read in the news.

Of course G-dub and crew wasted all of that good will and twisted it into bizarre wars that helped the very forces being fought coalesce into something much scarier and more powerful. That is what happens when good but naive people allow their fear and anger to block their powers of reason and empathy: they are led down dark roads by horrible, evil shepherds. That’s another topic though…

That morning I followed my usual routine and glanced at the headlines online before heading back into the kitchen to make coffee. I glanced at my old Excite home page. I remember I had it set up all silly with an impressionist painting for a background and blue fronts that didn’t stand out from the page much at all. There were 3 columns and headlines from 20 or so news outlets.

I remember reading one of the top headlines in the center column of the page. It was something about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. It could have been the blue font fading into the page background or the fact I hadn’t had coffee yet but I was halfway back through the apartment to coffeepot, picturing someone losing control of a little 2-seater plane, when it clicked into my head what the headline just below it had said. Something about the tower crumbling. Flew right back to the living room and turned on the news. TV was no help. No one seemed to know anything. MTV News was literally calling through all of the celebrities on Ryan Seacrest’s phone and asking them if they knew anything.

…Because they could afford better news than the rest of us? No, it was actually as good or better than any other coverage on TV at that hour. After the first tower fell. the actual information in the news got doled out very slowly for most of the day. All the channels had the same footage and they all were playing the same few clips over and over again. You didn’t see much of what was happening at Ground Zero. Just the clips of the planes hitting the towers and the towers falling. Again and again.

So MTV was playing those clips in the background and crolling texts from viewers at the bottom while playing audio from phone conversations Ryan Seacrest and his coworkers, friends, and associates. Because he’s, well, Ryan Seacrest, all of these people were on location doing their thing, scattered all over the world. The celebs talked about local reactions to the news where-ever they were. People were stunned. …And sympathetic. …And wanting to help. …Because you know, people. People are like that.
I had the TV on but I spent all day and well into the night glued to an IRC chat-room that I had open on my desktop. It had sprung up around an online text-based game that a few thousand people used to play. (Yes, kids, back in the olden days a carrier pigeon would get a packets of 0’s and 1’s to where it was going faster than your dial-up modem. So, the game was text-based.)

Members from countries in Europe were cutting and pasting articles into the chat’s main room for those of us in the U.S. to read. My recollection is that American TV was releasing new developments about 2-3 hours behind the European stations. Some sort of safety precaution? At times like that, knowing definitely feels a lot better than speculation, and the Europeans had our back in the only way they could. A handful sat there for hours, doing nothing but being conduits of as much information as they could find. On the other side of the Atlantic hundreds of people gratefully ate up every little scrap up.

It was comforting to see people from such distances places be so supportive. It’s comforting think that, even in the fucked state of affairs we live under today, that human beings respond to others tragedy with empathy and support. So, eye opening? No. Familiar and reassuring though.

Light in the hearts and mind of everyone affected by 9/11 and all other similar tragedies.  PBWY. AAWY.