Are we there yet?
Five years ago, I finished a test and walked out of a training class at Teletech in North Bay. I walked across the road to the Tim Horton's and picked up a coffee and a muffin and headed back for the rest of the class. Upon my return, I noticed that one of the instructors had turned on a data projector and was showing the current news up on the screen. The headline stated that a small plane had crashed into one of the buildings at the World Trade Center.
The rest of the story is something you pretty much know.
A year of seeing the same images and hearing the same comments on television, the radio, and on the internet. Every day, watching planes slam into buildings, and watching people jump from those buildings. Every day, seeing those two buildings collapse.
And then, those images were no longer shown on television. They were deemed too disturbing.
It has been five years. We are not safer than we were before this happened. We are no closer to being safer. If anything, we are far more paranoid. We await the next "9-11" and pray that it won't happen to us.
I don't think it's going to. And not because of what governments or armies have done. My brother once said that there doesn't need to be another attack. They got their point across in one swift slap and now nations live in fear of being slapped again. Mind you, telling that to people in Madrid or London won't help much.
9-11 was a bad day. But there will be more bad days. As long as the memory of what happened five years ago continues to be used as an excuse for war and torture, we have nothing but bad days ahead.
And yes, I passed that test.
The rest of the story is something you pretty much know.
A year of seeing the same images and hearing the same comments on television, the radio, and on the internet. Every day, watching planes slam into buildings, and watching people jump from those buildings. Every day, seeing those two buildings collapse.
And then, those images were no longer shown on television. They were deemed too disturbing.
It has been five years. We are not safer than we were before this happened. We are no closer to being safer. If anything, we are far more paranoid. We await the next "9-11" and pray that it won't happen to us.
I don't think it's going to. And not because of what governments or armies have done. My brother once said that there doesn't need to be another attack. They got their point across in one swift slap and now nations live in fear of being slapped again. Mind you, telling that to people in Madrid or London won't help much.
9-11 was a bad day. But there will be more bad days. As long as the memory of what happened five years ago continues to be used as an excuse for war and torture, we have nothing but bad days ahead.
And yes, I passed that test.
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