It's 9/11 - the 9th of November

In most places in the world, today's date is written 9-11, for it is the 9th day of November.

Three male bombers (allegedly all Iraqis) and 57 bystanders were killed at three hotels - the Grand Hyatt Hotel, the Radisson SAS Hotel, and the Days Inn - in Amman, Jordan, on 9 November 2005.  Al-Qaeda in Iraq immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Today is the 10th anniversary of that event.

On 9 November 2015, a Jordanian police officer picked this day to kill two American contractors and a South African contractor at King Abdullah Special Operations Training Center near the capital, Amman, Jordan's official Petra news agency reported. 

The gunman had been fired.

Four Jordanians and two American were also wounded in today's incident.

Jordanian security forces killed the shooter.

No members of the U.S. military, who cycle through the training center, were involved in the shooting, the U.S. official said.

"We are in contact with the appropriate Jordanian authorities, who have offered their full support," a U.S. Embassy spokesman in Jordan told CNN. "We will report more information when available and appropriate."

This date, 9 November, is also the traditional date, in 1989, tied to the "Fall of the Berlin Wall."

On another the 9th of November, in 1965, the Catholic Worker Movement member Roger Allen LaPorte, protesting against the Vietnam War, set himself on fire in front of the United Nations building.

On 9 November 694, at the Seventeenth Council of Toledo, Egica, a king of the Visigoths of Hispania, accused the Jews of aiding Muslims, sentencing all Jews to slavery.

TL Reader Discovers: "You Accurately Predicted This In 2005"

Patriots' Day. The Boston Marathon. I foresaw this, it appears.

As many of you recall, on September 17, 2012, Dangerous Minds published "Copycat Effect: Meet The Man Who Predicted The Aurora Shooting" by British writer Thomas McGrath. You may wish to read it, if you haven't yet. I detailed a bit of the background to McGrath's article in my piece, "The Man Who Predicted The Aurora Shooting."

Because one of the final questions McGrath asked was about other predictions, I addressed his inquiry by posting "Ten Predictions: Ten Hits."

Now, as it turns out, thanks to an alert reader of this blog, I've been reminded that, indeed, I, Loren Coleman, did foretell the Patriots' Day Boston Marathon terrorist bombing - eight years ago.

I didn't go looking for this, so you can imagine my surprise when I found someone had "discovered" in my past writings that I had "predicted" the Marathon bombings. I had literally forgotten that I had written what was pointed out to me.

On April 25th, I began receiving messages from a reader, Carol J., saying "I decided to randomly browse posts from past years and see that you accurately 'predicted' this [Boston Marathon event] in 2005."

I asked her a little more about how this happened and Carol J. shared, "It was very eerie when I came across it. I felt like I wanted to read something from the past to get my mind off the present and my finger was hovering over 2006 and then it was almost like my finger felt kind of 'pulled' to 2005....For real! Synchromysticism and following intuition at its best."

What Carol J. had found was a long posting I had written on September 10, 2005. In that blog entry, I wrote of the importance of being aware of the special significance of numbers, dates, and special days, in relationship to future acts of terrorism. I penned these words:

...what about the dates? This Bush administration's little known badly named Patriot Day (9/11) may or may not be that important to al Qaeda, as I think they have their own number, date, and name game agenda. They might wish to go for the real Patriots Day, in April, in Maine, or the Patriots Day in Massachusetts, at the Boston Marathon, for example. Thousands of people there. Of course, this is not an invitation, but we have to see that we might not see what they see....

And...

Well, then, truth be told, I live in Portland, Maine, where 9/11 all began for Mohammed Atta, who picked Flight 11, so needless to say, I'm not letting my guard down on 9/11/05. Or 11/9/05. Or 11/11 (Veteran's Day). Or on next April's Patriots Day 2006, 2007, 2008, and so forth. Atta, the leader of the operations wing of 9/11, historically, was tied into those elevens. Afterall, the first mastermind of the 1993 Twin Towers attack was Ramzi Yousef, and he used parts of Bonjinka, a plan to place bombs on 11 planes in the Phillippines, for the eventual 9/11 attacks. Yousef's test run for Bonjinka occurred on, you guessed it, another eleven, December 11, 1994. Sometime, look up the 1970 origins of the naming of the group 'Black September,' whose kidnapping of Israeli athletes attending the Munich Olympics (which was scheduled to end on September 11, 1972), ended in the death of 11 of those athletes. Certainly, 9/11 hits very close to home. And lives on. Mysteries remain that may be hidden in numbers and places.

Clearly, the combination of Patriots Day and the Boston Marathon was too tempting for the terrorists who would conduct the first major attack at a public event, post-9/11.

The scope of the Boston Marathon bombing is enormous. Five deaths resulted: three people from the April 15th bombing, one police officer from the firefight on April 18th, and one suspect from shooting on April 19th. A total of 299 people were injured, with 282 of them from the initial bombs on April 15th, 16 police officers from the firefight on April 19th, and one suspect from shooting on April 19th. The injuries to the victims of the bombings were severe, involving limbs lost at the bomb sites or due to amputations to save their lives.

It was a terrible and horrible series of events in Boston on Patriots' Day. Let us wish and pray that other terrorists will not see what occurred in Boston as a roadmap for future copycat incidents. That is certainly my fear, based on what I know of behavior contagion. It does make me sad to be able to "see" this coming. I take no delight in being close in my predictions.

My hope is that someday, somewhen, predicting behavior patterning is developed to such a level that violent and fatal events can be prevented.

My ideas and insights about "predicting" such events are in my 2004 book, 

a work that the media never wants you to read.

 

The Copycat Effect

(NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004)

Never forget, remember...

A Clockwork Orange

The motion picture A Clockwork Orange was a blockbuster by Stanley Kubrick when it came out in 1972. The controversary about the impact of the graphic violence in the plot, however, lives on. 

An article in UK's Camden Gazette noted in 2005 that a play based on the story was stirring up thoughts about its effect, especially since 12-year-olds were part of the production.

The article overviewed the plot: "A Clockwork Orange sees teenage misfit Alex and his cronies delighting in 'ultra-violence,' dishing out beatings and sexual attacks before Alex is made to participate in a brutal Government-backed scheme to force him to be good."

The copycat effect that followed in the wake of the film was very real. As the British Camden Gazette mentioned: "The film version was withdrawn by Kubrick in 1973 after allegations of copycat killings and violence. It was not re-released until 2000 - a year after Kubrick's death."

The withdrawal of the film discussed is what is specifically the "British withdrawal."

It is also interesting to see where it was banned in the USA. As Wikipedia notes,

In 1976 A Clockwork Orange was removed from an Aurora, Colorado high school due to "objectionable language". A year later in 1977 it was removed from high school classrooms in Westport, Massachusettsfor similar concerns with "objectionable" language. In 1982, it was removed from two Anniston, Alabama libraries, later to be reinstated on a restricted basis. Also, in 1973 a bookseller was arrested for selling the novel. Charges were later dropped. Ironically, each of these instances came after the release of Stanley Kubrick's popular 1972 film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, itself the subject of much controversy.

That's right: Aurora, Colorado!

See The Copycat Effect, pages 221 and 224, for more on A Clockwork Orange and how Oliver Stone felt about Kubrick's withdrawal of the film.

2005's Red Danger Zone

All the warning signs are pointing to a possible series of school shootings from March 20th through April 20th. I hope not, but every indication is that the media is entering its first post-9/11 "shooting rampage" feeding frenzy, and as March nears its end, and into April, "school shootings" could be next.

I base this from an analysis of how the Werther (copycat) effect from other events (mall shootings, murder-suicides, courthouse shootings) spill over into school shootings, and the anniversary reality of the calendar. In my book, The Copycat Effect (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004), I point out the youthful suicidal "school shooting" subculture uses the neo-Nazi calendar as a temporal roadmap. Columbine's and Erfurt, Germany's school shootings are the two most obvious examples.

[This is a reconstructed posting, due to it being deleted by accident.]

+++ UPDATE BULLETIN+++

The above warning of March 18, 2005, was followed by the Red Lake event: Neo-Nazi/Native Jeff Weise, a 16-year-old student at Red Lake High School, killed nine people and then himself in the town of Red Lake, Minnesota, on Monday, March 21, 2005.