The day the World changed

Okay, I know, September 11, 2001 that was a long time ago, as I write this we are nearly two years away from that horrible day.

On Tuesday September 11, 2001 I was working as a co-op student at Barrick Gold Corporation in their head office on the 28'th floor of 200 Bay Street, Royal Bank South Tower, Toronto. (They have moved since then.)

Like I said I was a co-op student from the University of Waterloo. Anyway I was working the help desk at about 8:45 in the morning when a call came in. About the same time, the first plane, AA Flight 11 had just smashed into something like the 92 floor of the North Tower. The call was an end user, complaining the wire service, Bloomberg News was down. (I never found out why, I assume that Bloomberg must have had their offices in the WTC.)

We all know what happened next, no matter where you are from the events of that day touched every human on this planet, some for better, most for worse. In Toronto there was a small fire in Union Station which is right across the street from our office. Any other day we would have dismissed it as an accident, September 11, nothing was an accident, someone was out to get us all.

By 11:00 that morning we were sent home for the day, we did not know if Toronto, a short plane ride from New York, was next.

I have heard some otherwise well educated articulate people claim this was all some horrid hoax, maybe the CIA did it, maybe someone's ex-wife. These curious claims smack of the same sort of history denial as Holocaust denial. Sure denial of the Holocaust is worse because the Holocaust was worse, but it is still the same concept repeated on a smaller scale. What those lunatics working for Osama Bin Laden did was murder, they killed over 3000 people. And yes crimes like this happen all the time, I am sure thanks to the 'Realpolitik' of men like Kissinger the US government has far more blood on its hands than Osama Bin Laden, but I live close to New York, both emotionally and physically. More to the point, I do not approve of the actions taken by Kissenger, I would never vote for Nixon if I could. Why therefore should I approve of the actions of Bin Laden?

Why do I leave the link and the Lincoln quotation up? Because I was touched that day. My life was upset and I don't suspect it will ever change back to the way it was before that awful day. We are slaves, we are slaves to our terror, and as long as we are slaves I will leave that reminder to everyone.