Woody Allen's comments on 9/11

[savafan]

Here is the expert I've been waiting to hear from.

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash3.htm

Tue Jun 28 2005 09:40:21 ET

Woody Allen says he, as a filmmaker, is not interested in 9/11.

'It's too small, history overwhelms it," Allen reportedly tells DER SPIEGEL.

"The history of the world is like: He kills me, I kill him, only with different cosmetics and different castings. So in 2001, some fanatics killed some Americans, and now some Americans are killing some Iraqis."

Tuesday's NY POST quotes the master director: "And in my childhood, some Nazis killed Jews. And now, some Jewish people and some Palestinians are killing each other. Political questions, if you go back thousands of years, are ephemeral, not important. History is the same thing over and over again."

[RedsBaron]

I'm pretty sure RFS62 is waiting to hear from Billy Ray Cyrus on this issue.

[westofyou]

History is the same thing over and over again."

He's right, history is bigger than one day.

[Johnny Footstool]

He's right, history is bigger than one day.

Yes. Unfortunately, it's impossible to get the proper perspective on an event when it's so fresh in your memory. September 11, 2001 was an important date in history, to be sure. But there are many, many other dates that are more important.

[RBA]

Yes. Unfortunately, it's impossible to get the proper perspective on an event when it's so fresh in your memory. September 11, 2001 was an important date in history, to be sure. But there are many, many other dates that are more important.

July 4th 1776. It was the birthdate of the Greatest Nation the world has ever known.

[registerthis]

Very true, but with one significant difference:

For the first time since becoming the single dominant world power, the United States was attacked on its soil. That had never been seen before. Noam Chomsky talks about this significance when discussing the context of 9/11.

[RedFanAlways1966]

And on to more important issues...

How does Woody feel about old men who shag their teen step-daughter and then divorce their wife to sleep/live/marry step-daughter?

His opinions are real important to me.

[RedFanAlways1966]

Very true, but with one significant difference:

For the first time since becoming the single dominant world power, the United States was attacked on its soil. That had never been seen before. Noam Chomsky talks about this significance when discussing the context of 9/11.

I need some clarification on this statement, register. Do we consider flying airplanes into buildings an attack? If so, wouldn't the Oklahoma City bombing also be considered an attack? Or even the Puerto Ricans who attempt to kill Pres. H.S. Truman.

Do we consider plane hijackers members of some sort of enemy army or military? If so, then Timothy McVeigh & Terry Nichols should be considered members of an enemy group.

I guess that Pearl Harbor, since HI was not officially a state yet, does not count either. How about raids made by Pancho Villa and his ragtag bunch into New Mexico?

I could probably think of more. I have not read Chomsky, but I am not sure of his meaning in this regard. I am also not sure I agree with that statement left as-is.

[RBA]

I think Santa Barbara was torpedoed by Japanese submarines during World War 2. I'll look it up.

[CrackerJack]

For the first time since becoming the single dominant world power, the United States was attacked on its soil. That had never been seen before.

Um, yes it has. What do you call Timothy McVeigh? The WTC bombings in the early 90's? Foreign nationals who come here and commit crimes? They are all technically "attacks on our soil" just as this was.

This wasn't a government attacking us, but an individual group of people with an agenda not sponsored by any recognized country, nation or land mass, just like Tim McVeigh, a religious motivation and a thirst for revenge...kind of like what we're doing now in Iraq, where many more innocent people will die as a result of our response to it than who died on that day.

Just because they were "Islamic Arabs" I think Americans tend to automatically associate them with Islamic countries and therefore link it to war and a reason to get rid of some more undesireables via major military action...people just waiting for an excuse to use our machines on someone. It's quite sad really, just as sad as 9/11 was.

[RBA]

California State Military Department
The California State Military Museum
Preserving California's Military Heritage
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

California and the Second World War
The Shelling of Ellwood
On 23 February 1942. the Imperial Japanese Navy's submarine I-17, under the command of Commander Nishino Kozo, surfaces shells the oil refinery near Santa Barbara. Before the war, as skipper of an oil tanker, Nishino had refueled there. The shelling does only minor damages to a pier and an oil well derrick, but creates "invasion" fears along the West Coast.

Contemporary newspaper accounts describe the attack as off the Ellwood oil fields 12 miles north of Santa Barbara, and report 16 shells fired, beginning at 7:15 p.m. on the 23rd of February 1942. Three shells struck near the Bankline Co. oil refinery, the apparent target of the shelling. Rigging and pumping equipment at a well about 1,000 yards inland were destroyed but otherwise no damage was caused. One shell overshot the target by three miles and landed on the Tecolote ranch, where it exploded. Another landed on the nearby Staniff ranch, dug a hole five feet deep, but failed to explode. Eleven other shells fell short and dropped into the sea. Description of the attack and damage to the oil refinery was provided by the superindentent, F.W. Borden. The first report of the attack was called in to police by Mrs. George Heaney of San Marcos Pass, who observed the submarine through binoculars and reported it was about a mile offshore. Oil refinery worker Bob Miller also called in a report during the attack. According to the official report of the 11th Naval District, the I-17 surfaced at 7:10 pm, Pacific War Time (2 hours ahead of standard time, so about a half hour after sunset), shortly after President Roosevelt's weekly fireside "chat" began. At 7:15 pm, the submarine began firing from its deck gun at the oil refinery. It ceased firing at 7:35 and departed on the surface; it was observed still on the suface exiting the south end of the Santa Barbara Channel at 8:30.

A 1982 issue of Parade magazine published a possible reason for the attack:

The first Japanese attack on the U.S. mainland, in 1942, was triggered by cactus spines in the rear end of a Japanese naval captain.

In the late 1930s, Kozo Nishino was commander of a Japanese tanker taking on crude oil at the Ellwood oil field. On the way up the path from the beach to a formal ceremony welcoming him and his crew, Nishino slipped and fell into a prickly-pear cactus. Workers on a nearby oil rig broke into guffaws at the sight of the proud commander having cactus spines plucked from his posterior. Then and there, the humiliated Nishino swore to get even.

He had to wait for war between the U.S. and Japan, but on Feb. 23, 1942, he got his revenge. From 7:07 to 7:45 p.m., he directed the shelling of the Ellwood oil field from his submarine, the I-17. Though about 24 shells were fired from a 5.5-inch deck gun, little damage was done. One rig needed a $500 repair job after the shelling, and one man was wounded while trying to defuse an unexploded shell.

U.S. planes gave chase to the sub, but Nishino got away. Thereafter, American coastal defenses were improved, so the mainland suffered only one more submarine attack by the Japanese during the war, at Fort Stevens in Oregon.


Most accounts however have the I-17 firing 16 17 rounds fired from 19:15 to 19:35 hours

[RBA]

Oh, and wasn't the White House burned down during the War of 1812? I think that qualifies an attack on U.S. soil.

[LincolnparkRed]

Oh, and wasn't the White House burned down during the War of 1812? I think that qualifies an attack on U.S. soil.

and by foreign soldiers no less

[Redsfaithful]

For those of you talking about things that happened more than twenty years ago:

For the first time since becoming the single dominant world power, the United States was attacked on its soil.

[gm]

the mainland suffered only one more submarine attack by the Japanese during the war, at Fort Stevens in Oregon

Been there, seen that. The concrete-reinforced batteries are still intact, near Astoria.

http://www.historylink.org/essays/ou...m?file_id=7217

Interesting eyewitness story. We report, you decide.

http://www.onalaskalife.com/articles...s/00attack.txt