6.6.10
The terrorist attacks of September 2001 have come up on more than one occasion in the discussion clubs I hold every Saturday. One of the prevailing theories among some Russians is that the Bush administration completely planned the destruction of the twin towers, going so far as to detonate secretly planted explosives after the planes crashed.
Their claims are based on, among other information perhaps, a TV documentary done on the attacks. Questions were raised such as: how could the buildings have fallen so cleanly; and why was there dust emmitted from the bottom floors just before the collapse, as though from an explosion?
Part of me feels that students who tell me this have a lot of balls to mention such a thing to an American. On the other hand, I'm not shy about talking about my antipathy towards the Bush administration, so maybe that gives them courage. Furthermore, the documentary may have very well come from America in the first place since anti-Bush sentiment eventually became just as strong there as in many other places in the world. So who am I to feel a little offended at such blasphemous accusations?
I answer their comments with cool skepticism. I say that while I wouldn't agrue with the claim that Bush had been planning to go to war in Iraq from the beginning of his term, and that I would believe they knew the attacks were coming and deliberately did little to stop them in anticipation of manipulating emotional Americans, I think that if the administration had itself committed the attacks, then they would've established stronger connections between the attackers and Sudam Hussein. They could've said that the high-jackers came from Iraq and not Saudi Arabia; Al-quida didn't even have to enter the picture at all, and American citizens would've been more readily dupped then they were as it is.
As far as those unanswered questions regarding the fall of the towers, I tell my students that the orderly collapse and renegade dust emmisions don't mystify me. After all, they never perform structural tests on skyscrapers by crashing jet-liners into them. How do we know how the buildings should have fallen? Despite my arguments, my students just shake their heads, as if to say, "you poor thing, if only you could come to truly understand the nature of your history."

America has cities and states named after places in Europe and Russia. There are states like New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, and cities St. Petersburg and Moscow (both in Florida, I think), but we haven't named a body of water after any one previously known. That's why I've coined a name for the Gulf of Mexico, "The New Black Sea."
My students didn't appreciate the comparison so much, maybe they thought I was suggesting that the real Black Sea, which is quite nearby, is as dirty as the Gulf of Mexico has become as oil continues to spill from a BP rig.
Regardless, there was some interesting conversation about practical uses of nuclear weapons, as it has recently been suggested that nuking the sea floor might melt the surrounding rock and plug the leak. I tried to spur the converstion with some rather fantasical suggestions: out of one nuke we could make many very small nukes and use them to exterminate cockroaches; we could attach nukes to bar-bells and use them for weight-lifting; or we could use shells of nuclear bombs for flower beds - the flowers' polen would glow in the dark! Being as business oriented as any American natuarlly is, I've already come up with names for my businesses: nuke'em roaches; Pete's nuclear gymnasium; and nuclear powered flowers.
My younger students wanted to found a restaurant called "Nuke-Donald's." The slogan would be "I'm nukin' it!" Other students were much more practical and suggested using the uranium in bombs for nuclear energy. One of the more physics-savy students objected that weapons-grade uranium is not suitable for nulcear power. With that the discussion ended and we left to play ultimate frisbee on the street in front of the school. Thanks mom and dad for the frisbees from home!

I mention the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico because both catastrophes have been and will be intertwined in politics. I expect President Obama to take the initiative and raise support for alternative energy. Where Bush declared his war on terror, Obama may take this chance to wage war with dependence on fossil fuels, or global warming, or what have you. Where Bush managed to destroy lives and stability, Obama may succeed in helping society progress again.
And then perhaps the day will come when America, having achieved complete energy independence through a variety of sustainable clean energies, will point their finger at countries like Russia, which will continue to use their vast fossil-fuel reserves. In response, Russia will look back to the year two thousand and ten and discover that the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was in fact secretly planned by the Obama administration.
I haven't yet heard any such theories about secret attacks on oil rigs. As far as I understand from the state news here, BP and the Obama administration are still occupied with stopping the leak. Has the cause of the leak been established yet? Some sort of explosion, right? Sounds suspicious to me ...