h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

After the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, a lot was said about how world-changing they were. They fundamentally altered the political landscape.

Did they? Really? How different is the world now than it was before? Was it really those attacks which precipitated America's wars in the Middle East, or would they have happened anyway? What about politics in Europe? Were they affected? How? And how much?

Those attacks happened just before I started college. I was barely aware of politics at the time. I pay a little more attention to them now.

TRiG.

It definitely tightened up security at air ports all over the world. As well as changing the attitude of the general public, as regards to bomb threats.

Smudger.

I don't think there would have been war in Afghanistan but Iraq probably would have happened.

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I don't know about the world as a whole, but it still has a lasting effect in the US. not only has security increased, but some privacy rights have also been eroded.

It also has had a personal effect on thousands of people. Just the other day, not more than three days ago, we met one of our neighbours while we were walking our dogs. The subject of 9-11 came up and she told us about her daughter's partner's twin brother being killed in the towers.

The attack on Pearl Harbour, the Kennedy assassination and 9-11 all took away a bit of our innocence. But, that which does not kill us makes us stronger. I have no intention of addressing the way these events have been manipulated by politico of both sides

F S

New York City went and built another very tall building near the spot where the Twin Towers had been . Like its predecessors, this new building is controversial, particularly as to its real height.
New York seems to go for tall buildings, so in that respect not a lot changed.

Al Qaeda was pursued very aggressively, at least insofar as public documents can reveal. This was a big change. Before 9/11, Congress seemed indifferent to the prospect of terrorism. Granted, that's one country, not the world. The U.S. has enough clout to ensure that its allies take its security concerns seriously, which may have seemed ironic to France, the UK, and Germany, which had been dealing with terrorists for years already -- probably more effectively than the U.S. had been .

I rather suspect that it increased the general distrust of the 'western' world (some of the people belonging to the 'western world' live eastwards of course,) towards Islam (and possibly for those who don't know the difference, towards everyone who has a light brown skin).

I also suspect that it has acted as a catalyst for the further radicalisation of young Muslim men.

Tragic really.

PP.

On a completely different note, it changed the internet forever... Not necessarily from the point of view of the average user, but certainly from the point of view of service providers...

Prior to 9/11, I suspect many of the major news outlets around the world just kept a website active 'for the sake of it'... The events of that day in terms of traffic volume, leading to the meltdown of virtually every news agency webserver across the globe, showed governments and organisations around the world just how important the internet was, and how many people were relying on it for information...

I don't know if this is a change or not, but when potentially inflammable material pops up on the Internet, it tends to get filtered out by the powers that be in sensitive countries.

I remember a street interview conducted in an English inner city some time after 9/11 where a young man proudly proclaimed "Before 9/11 I was just a bl**dy P***, now I'm a Muslim!" so it could be said to have given ethnic minorities in this country a clear interpretation of identity.

I think I've read something somewhere speculating about the effects of the September 11th attacks on the Northern Ireland peace process, suggesting that it made an IRA return to violence near-impossible.

I think it also marked the end of a post cold war "end of history" narrative which thought that capitalist market democracies had triumphed and that was the end of it.

Re: Northern Ireland - wasn't that because 9/11 put an end to American support for the IRA?

Most people are better at short-term thinking. The long term takes second place, no doubt with the help of Keynes's observation "In the long run, we are all dead." This is too bad, though, as capitalism's more ruinous features take decades to develop. In delicate economies with few social stabilizing factors, capitalism have wreak serious havoc. Globalization has caused unrest in Indonesia, for instance, when crop diversion to ethanol caused spikes in grains that not-wealthy people were heavily dependent on for their food supply.

>>Re: Northern Ireland - wasn't that because 9/11 put an end to American support for the IRA?

Think so. My impression (rightly or wrongly) was that a lot of IRA funding came from Irish-Americans with a blind eye being turned by the US authorities. But then I've also heard that the IRA raised funds through running drugs and robbing banks. Having said all that... I don't really know why I think this stuff - just an impression I've always had from somewhere.

But yeah... the US could hardly allow all that to continue and pretend to be fighting the war on terror. Perhaps we should have invaded Boston (again) years ago...

As I understand it, the terrorism of both sides was a sideline to the main business of dealing drugs, robbing banks and running protection rackets.

Otto, I'd been having the "stop funding Noraid" conversation with Americans (civilians - my military friends had been living here in Germany among those of us crawling around our cars every morning checking for bombs and it was a lot closer to home for them) for years before 9/11 with not much understanding on the part of people I was talking to until that time.

I think here in the UK we were made more aware of the need for checks and to be on the lookout for unusual or suspicious baggage, with the troubles in Northern Island, back in the 70/80s.

I can well remember the extra security back then, I even had a narrow escape myself while passing trough London.

Smudger.

I remember having my car regularly searched when I worked at MoD sites. They'd always ask things like 'have you had any parts replaced recently?' This worried me. I'd confess to an alternator and water pump, but couldn't for the life of me imagine how these would be explosive devices if they'd helped transport me there.

Invade Boston again?

But we *invite* the Tall Ships and any Royals who feel like visiting. Please come on over. We *want* to be visited. Just not 80,000 strong, as hosting in the 2024 Olympics, which many consider biting off too much .

Ooh! Boston has that GBFO Van Der Graff generator! And Fenway Park. Both better reasons to go than the Olympics surely?

PP.