Death in the Clouds

#zeemax

Yaar, cell phones are tricky things. When I drive next door to my house, I lose the signal. The same thing can happen in the air.

#Hamidm2

Sir, like they say ...khayal apna apna, pasand apni apni! I will try to dig up more of my "buried" pieces for your enjoyment.

The "At Bertram's Hotel" piece is indirectly related to the current piece, it required a lot more research than this one and took a lot longer. Still, I personally prefer the current piece. Like they say, even the most loving of parents can not distribute their love among the "babies" in equal amounts! :(

#VRV

Now come off it, before you turn into Zee's sancho panja!

to shoot

In hind-sight yes, the title of the article affirms my contention that United 93 was indeed shot in the air and the pax were all dead in the clouds.

BJ, this was done to prevent WTC-like disaster(or anybody who saw the live braodacst on 11/9 can tell us). Govt of the US now cant tell that they indeed killed its own citizens.

P.S: It's Dick Cheney who ordered USAF to shot the commercial aircrafts.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=bDfdOwt2v3Y

9/11 COMMISSION PROCEEDINGS : Lee Hamilton and Transport Secretary Norman Mineta.

9/11 was the biggest fraud in american history, right up there with Gulf of Tonkin.

The fact that a few people could fool an entire nation full of PhDs is quite amazing. This nation, which gave the world some of the most amazing specimen of architectural wonders, has been clobbered into believing that WTC building #7 could collapse on 9/11/2001 even though it wasnt hit by any plane or even debris.

This nation of telecom engineers has been fooled into believing that flight 93's passengers made phone calls from 40,000 feet above ground!

This nation of forensic experts has been beaten into believing that flight 93 was brought down to ground, even though its wreckage was spread over 4 miles area.

This nation of skeptics has been fooled into believing that even though the planes full of fuel allegedly brought down 2 towers, that somehow ONE passport survived intact - the passport of a highjacker! I guess it flew out of the window of plane and landed in FBI's lap :)

#45 Posted by hamidm2,

Are you evading the questions Sir? Did the passengers have satellite phones or cellphones?

Re: # 44

"I am fully convinced that man landed on the moon, and am skeptical that a bedouin flew to heaven on a winged horse ....."

......... then there is still some hope ......

... happy ramadhan (formerly known as ramzan)

#41 Posted by hamidm2,

I am fully convinced that man landed on the moon, and am skeptical that a bedouin flew to heaven on a winged horse .....

BUT, I know as a FACT that you can't talk on the cellphone from an aircraft till literally seconds after take-off.

Have you had your pint yet?

However, there's one plausible explanation to this:

The passengers had 'satellite phones' instead of ordinary cellphones. Then it would indeed be possible, because ONLY those work anywhere between the sub-saharan desert to the inner orbit !!!

bj,

......... bertram's hotel was nice ... very nice

you do good work when you are not busy copying the bible ..

Re: # 27

bj,

.... i hate to say this, but the only thing that was moved by your mawkish piece was my bowel, and i thank you for that - like all desis i too am obsessed with bowel movements .....

...... and there is no point in arguing with zeemax - the man still thinks that man never landed on the moon and the whole thing is a nasa/hollywood production ....... on the other hand he also believes that a bedouin flew to heaven on a winged horse .......... go figure

#39 Posted by hamidm2,

Yaar bhai I'm not making any conspiracy theory. I'm just looking for an answer whether cellular phones can be used in aircraft after take-off. Honestly, that's all.

I've tried several airports in several countries including USA. And I couldn't get the signal as soon as the aircraft cleared the damn runway!

zeemax,

.... stop acting like a chump! ........ what's with you and conspiracy theories? ..... next thing we know, you will be claiming that you have been abducted by little green zionists from mars and that one of them looked like bj ......

#37 Posted by bjkumar,

I'll remember to do that. However in the meantime, I assume tahmed32 means the "Let's Roll' team were happily chatting away on their cellphones at 40,000 feet, and continued to do so hanging by the roof when it suddenly nosedived to 20,000 feet and then stood on its tail straight down from 10,000 !!!

#various Zee

Yaar, next time the pilot asks you to turn off the cell phone during the flight, please pay attention. The way I understand it, if you do not do that - its signal could interfere with the flight's navigational broadcast/reception signals and pose a hazard!

#31 Posted by tahmed32,

1) See below for the flight path of Flight 93 to know at what altitude the plane suddenly nosedived. It was 40,000 feet.

http://911review.org/evidence/93/Flight-93_shot_down.html

2)Because I've tried :) No more signal just after take off!

#31 Posted by tahmed32,

1) See below for the flight path of Flight 93 to know at what altitude the plane suddenly nosedived. It was 40,000 feet.

2)Because I've tried :) No more signal just after take off!

#31 Posted by tahmed32,

1) See below for the flight path of Flight 93 to know at what altitude the plane suddenly nosedived. It was 40,000 feet.

#29 Majumdar

Sigh!
More Sighs!

http://chowk.com/interactors/38620

zeemax: how do you know the altitude of the planes when the phone conversations and how do you know at what altitude there is cell phone transmission is no longer possible?

#27 Posted by bjkumar,

BJ, all your 8 points and whatever ... blah blah ... don't count. It's all hearsay.

What DOES count if you, on your next trip, can turn on your phone and see if the signal indicator shows anything ... i.e. just after the plane has cleared a few hundred feet, let alone a few thousand metres!!!

Beej,

Your article is called "Death in the Clouds" your post 28 is titled "At Bertram's Hotel". Is it just a coincidence or they have been named after (two of my fave) Christie Novels- one faeturing HP, the other Miss Marple?

Regards

At Bertram’s Hotel

Bertie held the girlie magazine close to his face. His myopia made it impossible to read or even gawk except when he held it that way. He had misplaced his pair of glasses – in fact, he hadn’t seen them since last night when he did his bookkeeping.

The numbers had added up, of course. There wasn’t much to those numbers. They just confirmed what he had known already – that revenue was dwindling – it was in a state of free fall, in fact. The number of guests had dropped to a trickle this summer – and this certainly was not the height of the tourist season. It did not help either that his hotel was not in a very prominent location.

But things hadn’t been this bleak till about a couple of years ago – when those Indians opened their motel just across from him. Bertie’s little place was smack in the middle of the island median. The “Bertram’s Hotel” sign was not too visible until one got close to it, by when it would often be too late to make the exit off the highway. And the Indians had placed their prominent neon sign outside, visible from half a mile – right next to his sign – dwarfing it and distracting from it.

Bertie had tried to stay competitive – sometimes by shopping around for supplies – but there was little he could cut back. This business was not very profitable to begin with and labor was expensive. People who could employ their family members at virtually free wages held an insurmountable advantage and Bertie knew it. He had tried to start doing many chores himself including most of the janitorial duties – but there was a limit to what he could do. His stint in Vietnam had left him with a bullet in his right leg – the doctors were not sure that the risks of removing it were worth any benefits, so they had left it alone. Bertie felt he was at a great disadvantage.

Those Indians – he cursed under his breath! Then he dozed off.

Bertie came awake with a start.

The two brown men looked at him without any expression. The shorter one was lugging a small handbag. Bertie took an instinctive dislike to the two. He did not know them, of course, but mistrusted the way they would not meet his gaze.

“How much is a room per night?”

Bertie named a figure. The pair did some calculations – then, as expected, without a word of explanation, they walked back out toward the other hotel. Bertie cursed – those Indians made it very difficult for him to compete. He tried to call the men back, to no avail.

“Oh well, it is perhaps just as well! Who needs a couple of f******, anyway?!” In Bertie’s book, any person who looked less than his vision of an all-American was a candidate for that designation.

* * *

It was a couple of days later. Bertie’s 1987 Corolla had had a leaky gasket and he was dropping it at the mechanic’s – about half a mile from the hotel. He paused suddenly – there was something familiar about the guy in thin mustache stepping out of the Lingerie Store – which actually stored only a little lingerie since it was mostly a store for adult books, videos, and DVDs. Then he remembered – it was the youger of the pair from the other day. The man looked around nervously as he headed toward the cheap-looking rental car. He hadn’t bought anything.

Bertie spat – the pervert was probably just after cheap thrills – gawking inside. He was glad they had not stayed at his hotel, or he would have been cleaning up whatever muck they would leave on the floor!

* * *

The tall stranger stood immobile. His silhouette filled the doorway. The trenchcoat was dripping wet.

“Bertram Daniel?!”

“Call me Bertie! What can I do for you?”

“I need to ask you a few questions.”

He would ask quite a few questions, in fact. Soon the place would be full of other people dressed in wet garments – all colleagues of his. They would all ask from him and from everyone else. They would go through the place with a fine tooth comb. They would examine every little corner of his hotel and the one located next to it. They would haul away tons of evidence. They would know pretty much everything there was to know and still they would know very little.

It had been only a couple of days since history had been made and – lousy history as it was, Bertie’s own place in it was also fixed forever!

(Note: this work is fiction. Earlier posted as an i-log.)

#22 Zeemax

Dear Zeemax,

I agree that the public can be naïve and emotional some of the time. In fact, our Pakistani brothers and sisters are in that state virtually all the time. However, the Amrikkans usually do not go for sentimental stuff. They go for what is often called “crass commercialism” but not the sentimental stuff!

Except once in a while, they think it is okay to be open with their emotions! Once in a rare while – and 9/11 was one of those moments.

Let me entertain you by entertaining for a moment – if only for a moment, your conspiracy theory about “let’s roll” being a “fraudulent” phrase!

In order for this particular factoid to have been a conspiracy, at minimum, the following will have to had come together and be complicit in carrying it out:

(1) Mr. Beamer’s wife Lisa Beamer – who swore that indeed it was his “takia-qalaam”!

(2) The GTE operator Lisa Jefferson – who vouched that she heard Mr. Beamer say those exact words through the open line.

(3) The GTE phone company which provided dialing records to prove that indeed those calls were made.

(4) All the newspaper correspondents who painstakingly put this whole account together.

(5) All the newspaper correspondents’ wives who would put up with such people for having been complicit in such a heinous act.

(6) The thousands of witnesses deposing before the 9/11 Commission who provided corroborating evidence.

(7) All the 9/11 Commission members everyone of whom bought that line hook, line, and sinker!

(8) Mian Hamidm2, who is feeling very sentimentally moved by my piece – but being a typical Male Muslim Pakistani Chauvinistic Jinnah-type – lacks the guts to admit that sentimentality so has to hide it under a cover of criticism!

Are ALL those people complicit together?! I don’t think so.

Dear Hamidm2 sahib,

Thank you for visiting my humble page of the moment. And visiting it no less than three times in succession. :) :)

Have you considered the following possibilities?

1) Chowk decided to reject many of my "better" pieces but decided to pick this piece up only to make me look bad in YOUR eyes? (Hey, it is possible!)

2) I wrote this piece the way I did because I wanted you to recite the words from that Psalm - in a sneaky way?!

3) I wrote this piece the way I did because I wanted the whole chowk crowd (97% Muslim) to be force-fed that Psalm and get its full flavor?!!

Hey, ANYTHING is possible!

PS: Sir, as always, you rock!

chowk staff,

please take this ... this thing off the front page ....... it is really bothering me because i know that bj is a lot better than this ... this piece of garbage

thank you !

chowk staff,

you don't have to put up every thing that is submitted - next thing we know, you will be publishing garbage by masadi !

bj,

... i am sorry, but i know that you can do better than this ....... this was sheer bunkum and really quite stupid - i feel violated ..... if i want to read the bible i can do it on my own - you don't need to reproduce it ........... what a waste !

BJ,

'Let's roll' was a typical fraud pulled on the naive and emotional american public. Have you seen the movie about it? It was a tear jerker which showed the pilot's infant child on the ground more than anything else, still it won awards.

But for starters, how many times have you been able to use a cellphone at 10,000 meters? The movie showed passengers using cellphones like they were in a metro bus. No one even asks this simple question.

Cellphone signals are conveyed by communication towers which travel in a short straight horizontal line (which is why you need so many), and not straight up.

But, I guess you guys will believe anything to jerk your tears!

BJ,

The jarring note in 9/11 events is the mystery of United 93. I saw the movie but I gave u the youtube link of the US media clips.

My recorded video cassettes of the LIVE 9/11 reportage are in India, therefore I cant give u an authoritative reply on this. I remember that ABC or CBS reported that the last hijacked plane was shot by USAF, which was later reported as 'crashed' at Shanksville.

Th visuals of the collapsed twin towers are so overwhelming I/ppl forgot the actual newsreport of the fate of U93. Pl see the visuals of the US media and make ur own conclusions. Btw, I am not into this conspiracy theories...it's just based on the US media intial reports and the latest visual from the US media.

With Flight 93, like with every other aspect of the tragedy that came to be called 9/11, a section of the world audience – mostly located in the “Muslim” world – has come up with wild conspiracy theories. Before any such individuals start really believing their own words, it is worthwhile to point out that while there were no eyewitnesses left, a lot of cell-phone communication did take place and most of the earlier accounts of what happened therein were written by the several newspapers who reconstructed aspects of the event after interviewing the family members receiving those calls. The 9/11 Commission Report came much later and was in many ways a compilation of those very accounts and was in no substantial way any different.

#18 Posted by HP on September 11, 2007 9:59:53 pm

[It is a timely piece and right on the money.]

Thanks, HP!

#17 Posted by okhla99

Regarding the timeframe, this piece was originally posted as an i-log during Spring 2006. (I had provided that bit of information as a footnote during this submittal but it seems to have “fallen off” somewhere.) Clearly, a lot can be done with this theme or with every little bit of this theme. I certainly have not tried to do anything fancy – because the simple truth is sufficient and no matter what one does with it, it is virtually impossible to come up with something more heart-wrenching yet more suspenseful than the simple original of what actually took place!

It is a timely piece and right on the money. Out of the total 502 words, a third are not original and the rest 2/3 are inspired by a movie or are words that have been pretty commonly used on many forums.

I agree that many have written about this event and many more would still write in the years to come and chances are most of them would be repeating a second hand account that was released by the US government. Since there is no eyewitness, a handful of people heard tape-recorded conversation that did not perhaps last more than a few minutes and out of that, only one sentence has been issued for public consumption.

Is this tribute inspiring or is it inspired? How are we going to determine that? We do that by looking at the past history that certainly shows that there is a huge desire to gain sympathy not for the brave souls that perished in Pennsylvania but the effort is to benefit personally from the tragedy.

Some have this exogenous desire to appear incredibly sensitive to subjects that can bring them some redundant recognition. This desire to be recognized emanates from a very shallow tutoring and nurturing in very taxing circumstance while growing up.

This write up is a sick humor when you consider that the purpose is to take credit on the backs of some innocent dead people.

I sometimes think that the God who supposedly created people of his sort had a very sick sense of humor. Is there a Yiddish word for that feeling?

BJK,

You disappoint us. Even compared to your previos articles, this effort is quite pedestrian.


It appears that

1. Either, for a change you have tried to write something original and this, for the first time, reflects your true calibre.

2. Or, more likely, the prtion after Psalm 23 has been lifted straight from somewhere and then you have painstakingly altered phrase by phrase so as to avoid detection.

Whatever it was you were trying, you did not succeed.

Note: thanks are due to chowk.com for putting this piece up in a timely manner to coincide with the September 11 anniversary.

9/11 was a turning point in the life of this country. In many ways, it changed the world and the world has never been the same since. EVERYONE has been affected by it. The hijackers who perpetrated that outrage had the element of surprise on their side – but have it no more.

#14 Borivili Express

I agree that the subcontinental partition was a great tragedy. From my simple perhaps simplistic viewpoint, it was a failure of monumental proportions. The people paid a price for the fault of their leaders – in particular, from my viewpoint, for the megalomania of one racist Muslim leader. But this piece is not about the partition. We live in the present. (Some people claim that many Pakistanis refuse to come to terms with it.) The reality is that India and Pakistan are two separate and (now) very different countries. The other part of the simple reality is that Pakistan is a much smaller country (by its own choice) and by virtue of simple physical size, will always be relegated to a lower status.

#13 Posted by DrDr

Double Doc, you need to make a distinction between those who are untrained civilians – who end up in a situation not of their choosing and found the strength inside, on real short notice, to meet the challenge vesus those who are trained killers, who train for the specific purpose of killing civilians for advancing their political agenda!

#12 Posted by zeemax

Zee, thanks for dropping by! Now go and respond to the poll I was running on the UP thread this morning. :)

[the style seems familiar :) ]

I know, I know – you have absorbed my “style” at such a deep level that it defines your very consciousness and you have not the ability to look at the most mundane of (my) creations without thinking of me. You breathe me, you think of me day-and-night, in moments awake and in moments of sleep and in every moment in-between and it is impossible for you to make a distinction between what is real and what is make-believe. My dear, you are so totally, absolutely, gone-casedly hopeless! I sympathize with you.

#11 Posted by AlephNull
Reminds me of an old song…”Celebrations, and jubiliations…” etc.

#10 Posted by Naqshbandi
Dr. Naqshbandi, I will take that as a compliment and leave it at that. Thanks for the welcome!

#8 Posted by VRV on September 11, 2007 4:59:06 am
Which facts you are referring to? Feel free to elaborate and provide your own perspective based on real information - not the foolish propaganda which has been propagated since right after 9/11 in parts of the Arab world.

(PS: VRV, your “girl friend” is a LOT better-looking than you!)

#14
1947 was a DEFINING moment in the history of India even whole ASia.
More people might have died violent death as in war but never as many civilians

look at this hypocritical stupid hindu, he is sympathizing with a few hundred rich whites and lakhs of browns he has no sympathy for:

Print This Page
Magazine| Sep 17, 2007

Review

One Word, Many Meanings

Such was the polysemy of Partition in the minds of those who lived through the transfer of power

MUSHIRUL HASAN
Qurratulain Hyder died a fortnight ago. Her novel Mere Bhi Sanam Khane portrayed the sparks of Partition blowing up the pathways of a composite culture, leaving a yawning gap of burning dust. Some of the writings of Intizar Husain, now in India as a Sahitya Akademi guest, reflect how an ongoing cultural process was stalled in "a very unnatural way" by a few Muslims and Hindus who, with their puritan frame of mind, contributed to the tragedy of Partition.
To survey the making of Pakistan as a whole, to discover trends in the Partition movement and to seek out its meanings, Yasmin Khan is not the first to make the attempt. Why, then, another tome? Partition, she writes, deserves closer attention as one of 20th century’s darkest hour. It is a loud reminder of the dangers of colonial interventions, and the profound difficulties that dog regime change; lastly, it is "a testament to the follies of empire, which ruptures community evolution, distorts historical trajectories and forces violent state formation from societies that would otherwise have taken...unknowable...paths".

Readable and insightful in parts, Khan’s book neither sheds much light on the protracted negotiations between the Congress, the Muslim League and the British, nor does it seek out and punish the ‘guilty’. Instead, it challenges the one-dimensional versions of the past, the "messy ambiguities" of Partition, and the uncertain meanings of Partition and Pakistan in the minds of the people living through the transfer of power. The book’s merit lies in introducing the various vocabularies of freedom in circulation in the late 1940s.

Elsewhere, I had argued that people had no sense of the newly demarcated frontiers, and little or no knowledge of how the Mountbatten Plan or Radcliffe Award would change their destinies, and, moreover, uproot them from their familiar socio-cultural moorings. "The English have flung away their Raj like a bundle of old straw," an angry peasant told a British official, "and we have been chopped in pieces like butcher’s meat." This was the meaning a ‘subaltern’ attached to the Partition movement.

Did Panipat’s Muslim weavers plan to set up home in Pakistan? No, said Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, the writer-filmmaker. Expectations of what Partition would be were mixed. Some longed for Lahore’s inclusion in India; others hoped the boundary in Punjab would be drawn to include Delhi. "For millions of people like myself," wrote Pakistani writer Shaista Ikramullah, "a Pakistan without Delhi was a body without heart."

Khan holds out much promise in her introduction. Thereafter, her narrative comes alive. She juxtaposes ‘high politics’ and popular mobilisation deftly. The picture is irresistibly suggestive and the prose elegant. She takes a dim view of British pride and conceit, and indicts officials for their hypocrisy and failure in dealing with Partition violence. Her account does not work in a void; she has a sense of the factual.

In describing the horror stories, there is always the great danger of repetition—more trains full of dead bodies, more hacked limbs. At the same time, there is also the redeeming repetition of a strong sense of hope and optimism in these tales of despair. According to Prof Amrik Singh, the Muslims from a village in Rawalpindi district did not want to send the non-Muslims away. Nor did they want to kill them. Those who caused mayhem did not belong to his village but were brought in from far away. Many ordinary people rose above the macabre and sinister politics to help the ‘other’ at the risk of their own lives. In a nutshell, small enclaves of humanism and sanity existed in the surrounding bloodshed.

In a thoughtful epilogue, Khan raises important questions about "a deeply ambiguous, transitional position between empire and nationhood".She asserts, "there was nothing inevitable or pre-planned about the way Partition unfolded". Indeed, "the history of Partition has suggested that modern nation-states had to be crafted out of a chaotic...situation in which myriad voices made their claims and counter-claims".

Saadat Hasan Manto, the enfant terrible of Urdu literature, refused to accept Partition’s bloody consequences for long, but did so in the end, without self-pity or despair. It’s time we did the same.

hmmm.. thin red line - is that what suicide bombers draw too

Hmmm ... the style seems familiar :)

beej:

A very well-written tribute. But I am sorry to see that you have plagiarised from a celebrated lady writer yet again.

I liked this. The quotations from the King James' Version of the Bible with its unmatched language of power and beauty was a delightful reminder of its contents.

Don't know about the twist at the end though...

welcome to Chowk.

I liked this. The quotations from the King James' Version of the Bible with its unmatched language of power and beauty was a delightful reminder of its contents.

Don't know about the twist at the end though...

welcome to Chowk.

Beej, ur writing skills are very good but I doubt ur depiction of United 93 is matching with facts.

I too sympathise with the victims of the 9/11 but United 93 is a different story.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=JZekosYOmXc

Beej, ur writing skills are very good but I doubt ur depiction of United 93 is not matching with facts.

There are countless web-sites set as memorial to the Flight 93 victims (e.g., www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011028flt93mainstoryp7.asp ). For those who care, those are worth a look.

Many of the passenger names (e.g., passengers Beamer, Glick, Bingham and so many others) have virtually become household names - have come to symbolize courage.

Practically nobody remembers (or wants to remember) the names of those hijackers today.

There is little doubt who emerged the REAL winners from this tragedy!

Not that it is something inferior, but I cannot believe you are a janitor. It is OK if you do not wish to disclose your true profession :-)

Harish, I thought you would no by this time! In my "real" life, I am a simple "janitor"! :)

I think you should revive your Hercule Poirot (was it that?) series. Probably make a collection of all those stories and send it to a publisher. Are you a writer by profession? If not what are you?

Thanks Harish. This piece is from last year. I felt bad that nobody here was mentioning 9/11, so felt compelled to bring it back.

Beej bhai, you write so well. You should write more often.