On this day, 6 years ago the world was rocked by a tradgedy of epic proportions. Striking at the heart of Capitalism, Fundamentalists/ Extremists flew planes into civilian and government targets with the sole intention of causing as much death and distruption as possible.
The plane...hit at the 93rd floor....Cantor Fitzgerald operated out of the 101st through 105th floors. Of the firm's 1,000 New York employees, 658 were lost.......In the coming days the number of dead and missing will be staggering. Of the wives, thirty-eight were pregnant, fourteen of them for the first time. Forty-six of the lost were engaged to be married; there were at least two weddings planned for the following weekend. Worst of all, these were young people with young families, some with three and four children. Nine hundred and fifty-five sons and daughters lost a father or a mother'.
(Excerpts from 'On Top Of The World - The Remarkable Story of Howard Lutnick, Cantor Fitzgerald and The Twin Towers Attack' by Tom Barbash. )
Many see this as a sad reflection on humanity and the levels to which some have sunk, however in reality such attrocities are commonplace throughout the world, we are just not made aware of them by the media, are desensitized due to excessive exposure or the laws of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) apply and because they are distant, they do not seem as real.
What is truly a sad reflection on humanity is those that try to deny such events (including the Holocaust)
Many other event of similar or greater magnitude have occurred but they see, to have less prominence in the media.
To name a few
"Lost Boys of Sudan." Named after Peter Pan's cadre of orphans, some 26,000 Sudanese boys were forced by violence from their southern Sudan villages in the late 1980s. After walking hundreds of miles and sometimes thousands of miles in search of peace.Emaciated, dehydrated and parentless, only half of the original boys — some 10,000 who survived the journey — arrived at Kakuma Refugee Camp in 1992. The majority of them were between the ages of 8 and 18 (Most of the boys don't know for sure how old they are; aid workers assigned them approximate ages after they arrived in Kenya). Many have spent more than a decade in this and other Kenyan refugee camp, thousands still there to this day. Most left as smal children and dont know whether their Parents, Brothers or Sisters survived. Source -http://www.redcross.org/news/in/africa/010814lostboys_a.html
During the conflict roughly a million ethnic Albanians fled from Yugoslav forces or were forcefully driven by Yugoslav forces from Kosovo, several thousand were killed (the numbers and the ethnic distribution of the casualties are uncertain and highly disputed). An estimated 10,000 ethnic Albanians and 3,000 Serbs are believed to have been killed during the conflict. Some 3,000 people are still missing, of which 2,500 are Albanian, 400 Serbs and 100 Roma. Source - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/781310.stm
"To date more than 400,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced. Countless more have been raped, maimed, and tortured; Men, women, and children created in God's image, innocents all. Ending the atrocities will require your personal leadership in supporting the deployment of a strong U.N. peacekeeping force and multilateral economic sanctions. While we often disagree on matters of politics, we are united in the belief that your intervention can make the critical difference in Darfur. Source - http://www.savedarfur.org/page/community/post/chrispierson/Vjj
Timeline of events on September 11, 2001
8.45am - (all times are EDT) A hijacked passenger jet, American Airlines Flight 11 out of Boston, Massachusetts, crashes into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, tearing a gaping hole in the building and setting it afire.
9.03am - A second hijacked airliner, United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston, crashes into the South Tower of the World Trade Center and explodes. Both buildings are burning.
9.17am - The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) shuts down all New York City area airports.
9.21am - The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey orders all bridges and tunnels in the New York area closed.
9.30am - President Bush, speaking in Sarasota, Florida, says the country has suffered an 'apparent terrorist attack'.
9.40am - The FAA halts all flight operations at US airports, the first time in US history that air traffic nationwide has been halted.
9.43am - American Airlines Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon, sending up a huge plume of smoke. Evacuation begins immediately.
9.45am - The White House evacuates.
9.57am - Bush departs from Florida.
10.05am - The South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses, plummeting into the streets below. A massive cloud of dust and debris forms, and slowly drifts away from the building.
10.10am - A portion of the Pentagon collapses.
10.10am - United Airlines Flight 93, also hijacked, crashes in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, southeast of Pittsburgh.
10.13am - The United Nations building evacuates.
10.22am - In Washington, the State and Justice departments are evacuated, along with the World Bank.
10.24am - The FAA reports that all inbound transatlantic aircraft flying into the United States are being diverted to Canada.
10.28am - The World Trade Center's North Tower collapses from the top down as if it was being peeled apart, releasing a tremendous cloud of debris and smoke.
10.45am - All federal office buildings in Washington are evacuated.
10.57am - New York Governor George Pataki says all state government offices are closed.
11.02am - New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani urges New Yorkers to stay at home and
orders an evacuation of the area south of Canal Street.
11.18am - American Airlines reports it has lost two aircraft. American Flight, a Boeing 767 flying to Boston from Los Angeles, had 81 passengers and 11 crew aboard. Flight 77, a Boeing 757 en route from Washington's Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles, had 58 passengers and six crew members aboard. Flight 11 slammed into the North Tower. Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.
11.26am - United Airlines reports that United Flight 93, en route from Newark, New Jersey to San Francisco, California, has crashed in Pennsylvania. The airline also says that it is 'deeply concerned' about United Flight 175.
11.59am - United Airlines confirms that Flight 175, from Boston to Los Angeles, has crashed with 56 passengers and nine crew members aboard. It hit the World Trade Center's South Tower.
12.04pm - Los Angeles International Airport, the destination of three of the crashed airplanes, is evacuated.
1.27pm - A state of emergency is declared by the city of Washington.
2pm - Senior FBI sources tell CNN they are working on the assumption that the four airplanes that crashed were hijacked as part of a terrorist attack.
4.10pm - Building 7 of the World Trade Center complex is reported on fire.
5.20pm - The 47-storey Building 7 of the World Trade Center complex collapses. The evacuated building is damaged when the Twin Towers across the street collapses earlier in the day. Other nearby buildings in the area remain ablaze.
6.10pm - Giuliani urges New Yorkers to stay home Wednesday if they can.
8.30pm - President Bush addresses the nation, saying 'thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil', and asks for prayers for the families and friends of the victims. 'These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve', he says. The president says the US government will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed the acts and those who harbor them.
Source - CNN.com
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