Sunday 11 September 2011

A decade on...

It's hard to believe that ten years ago today the western world dropped to its knees. At the time, I was working in a wine shop on Morningside Road making some money to get me through the home straight of my undergraduate course.

 The news filtered through to me from the boozehounds who would come and collect their daily tipple of a two litre bottle of White Lightning.

The scale of the catastrophe never really hit home. It wasn't until I made it back to my flat to watch it unfold on the television that I had a sense of the sheer magnitude of what was happening. 

I have still never seen anything like it in my life. My then girlfriend and I stared, eyes-agape, at the destruction and terror that had engulfed New York. It was mesmerising and utterly terrifying.

As someone who works day in day out with communications, I don't think I'll ever see a stronger message of intent. There was no ambiguity, no space for misinterpretation. This was war. 

And war it was. Or to be more specific, war it still is.



One decade on and the situation hasn't changed. The globe is split like two caged bulls eyeing each other up. Sure, Bin Laden is dead - as are many 1,000s of souls - but the fear of terror still imbues every aspect of western life, while the hatred of capitalism continues to run deep in the East.



But, for the 3,000 people who died on 11 September 2001, none of it matters. They started the day alive. They finished it dead.

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