division in the ranks

“The world has gone batshit crazy.” say I and get an immediate affirmation. 

“Do your friends feel the same way?” 

“Yes.” came the reply. 

He is in his late thirties, struggling to buy into an overheated housing market, an architect and he does have trouble reconciling planes destroying, with the near free-fall collapse, the Twin Towers, each around a hundred stories high and enclosed by a steel cage and built to withstand a direct impact by a plane. 

“What about Building 7?” say I and am met with a blank stare. 

It’s one of the glaringly obvious unanswered questions seldom asked because so few have ever heard of Building 7, part of the Twin Towers complex, forty seven stories high and not hit by a plane nor by much in the way of rubble. Yet it collapsed into its own footprint at free fall speed and did so a few hours after the Twin Towers collapsed. 

‘Office fires’ was the official story for this miracle of demolition and it’s taken until 2019 for the University of Alaska, Fairbanks to spend the time and resources and release a study conclusively proving that office fires could not produce such a collapse. 

In light of the unending wars which have followed it begs the question … why isn’t this more widely known? It SHOULD change everything related to the ‘who, why, where and what’ of 9/11. 

‘Should, would and could’ – the first implies duty, the second the will and the third the capacity to carry it through. All are sadly in short supply. 

My neighbour and I started on a morning walk recently and met up with another neighbour. The bushfires ravaging parts of the country is, naturally enough, a topic of conversation. No doubt there were arsonists – ‘broken people’ was a charitable way in which they were described – involved but the extent of that involvement isn’t generally seen as a major factor in these ongoing blazes. 

More thoughtful voices recognise that we’ve ceased to allow regular burn offs, the drought is long lasting and many have moved closer to ‘the bush’ which is fine but comes with danger as it does for all of us, for example, who live in the Blue Mountains – one road across the mountains doesn’t make for easy escape. 

I was a bit taken aback to hear this neighbour blame the unions for the fires. Many would say that I’m a conspiracy theorist whereas the truth is that much in life is murky, conspiracies have always existed and I’m not interested in theory, not when it’s fact I’m looking at. 

The story of the U.S.S. Liberty is a case in point. 

Anyway, it was illuminating, in a way, to hear the rationale for this point of view. I think it came down to the fact that the fire fighters are often volunteers and therefore not in a union. Perhaps I missed something. 

He’s a researcher and gets paid for it. I only mention it because he’s not daft and my experience is that most people I’ve met aren’t daft yet can hold the strangest of beliefs. 

A pig in lipstick is still a pig. 

That image, I imagine, cuts across all cultures and all times and means the same to all but the most … unthinking, uncritical. 

It doesn’t take intellectual capacity to understand that image and while much can be dressed up to look reasonable, acceptable at first sight, appearance isn’t reality. 

The deep generational division apparent now is an echo of that old, perhaps biblical idea, the gist of which is that there’ll come a time when it’s brother against brother, man against wife, son against father, daughter … you get the idea. 

Only a decade or so back and I couldn’t quite see how that future could materialise assuming that goodwill and an open mind weren’t in short supply but for all the talk of welcoming diversity, respecting difference, upholding freedom of speech but not if it MIGHT offend, … it’s a pig with lipstick … much like 9/11, much like the concentration of Palestinians into ghettos by Israel all the while pretending to talk peace while stealing land … a pig in lipstick and a disgraceful way to behave in light of their own experience which none are allowed to forget. 

No tears or remembrances for Rwandan genocide, Armenian genocide, Cambodian genocide or the millions slaughtered by Stalin. 

There’s a multifaceted narrative being spun and small wonder that the world is batshit crazy and pigs are seen flying while wearing make-up. 

Off to the garden before it gets too hot – I’ll keep a wary eye out. 

I don’t think I’m clever or particularly bright but it was my ‘good fortune’ to witness the day of the many events of 9/11 for hour after hour. I saw Building 7 come down. An enterprise that large, that far reaching, is bound to have inconsistencies and it does. 

I realised then that very little we’re fed is nourishing and this applies to history as it does to everything. Not everyone has their illusions of a free and fearless media so ruthlessly destroyed.