How are you observing this special day? A parade? Picnic? I went out and bought three dozen yellow ribbon magnets and slapped them on my car!
Category: Terra Terra Terra!
Gasp!
Imagine that. There was a Muslim prayer room, right in the World Trade Center, even after the first bombing. I guess people didn’t have Fox News and Glenn Beck to tell them they should be outraged yet:
Given the vitriolic opposition now to the proposal to build a Muslim community center two blocks from ground zero, one might say something else has been destroyed: the realization that Muslim people and the Muslim religion were part of the life of the World Trade Center.
Opponents of the Park51 project say the presence of a Muslim center dishonors the victims of the Islamic extremists who flew two jets into the towers. Yet not only were Muslims peacefully worshiping in the twin towers long before the attacks, but even after the 1993 bombing of one tower by a Muslim radical, Ramzi Yousef, their religious observance generated no opposition.
“We weren’t aliens,” Mr. Abdus-Salaam, 60, said in a telephone interview from Florida, where he moved in retirement. “We had a foothold there. You’d walk into the elevator in the morning and say, ‘Salaam aleikum,’ to one construction worker and five more guys in suits would answer, ‘Aleikum salaam.’ ”
One of those men in suits could have been Zafar Sareshwala, a financial executive for the Parsoli Corporation, who went to the prayer room while on business trips from his London office. He was introduced to it, he recently recalled, by a Manhattan investment banker who happened to be Jewish.
“It was so freeing and so calm,” Mr. Sareshwala, 47, said in a phone conversation from Mumbai, where he is now based. “It had the feel of a real mosque. And the best part is that you are in the epicenter of capitalism — New York City, the World Trade Center — and you had this island of spiritualism. I don’t think you could have that combination anywhere in the world.”
How, when and by whom the prayer room was begun remains unclear. Interviews this week with historians and building executives of the trade center came up empty. Many of the Port Authority’s leasing records were destroyed in the towers’ collapse. The imams of several Manhattan mosques whose members sometimes went to the prayer room knew nothing of its origins.
Festival of War Porn
I remember the day of the WTC attacks, with the teevee playing the footage over and over and over again. My son said to me, “Turn it off, it’s war pornography.”
“You’re right,” I said. I turned it off. And the inevitable drumbeat began.
9/11 is the bloody shirt of the right wing, and boy, do they love to wave it. The fact is, terror attacks are not unusual in most parts of the world. It’s just that America Is Special, and our deaths are always more important than everyone else’s. (When I worked at a newspaper, we used to joke about tragedy headlines: Plane Explodes Mid-Air, Tragically Killing 2 Americans, 239 Others.)
The appropriate way to honor the people who died on 9/11 is… to go on with your own life. And don’t turn on your teevee! Just don’t. Please. Don’t encourage them in pushing the myth of American exceptionalism, or the need to live your life as if we’re in the cross hairs, even if we are. (In fact, especially if we are.
And I will feel exactly the same if – when – terrorists attack us again. I think they will. Working yourself into a paranoid frenzy in the meantime won’t change anything.
Bush 3 — No Lawsuits for Extraordinary Rendition Victim
I suppose I’m suffering from Greenwald Syndrome — yes, Obama’s done some good things, but I just can’t get past the civil liberties horrors of the Bush era that he not only defends, his policies embrace:
The victims of the Bush administration’s programme of “extraordinary rendition” will not be able to sue the private company which transported them to foreign countries for torture by the CIA, after the present White House stepped in to squash their lawsuit on the grounds of national security.
A California court has sided with the Obama administration, which argued that a case led by the British resident Binyam Mohamed against the aerospace giant Boeing was bound to reveal state secrets and sensitive intelligence information.
Legal supporters of Mr Mohamed raised uproar at the decision, which the judge in charge of the case said had presented a “painful conflict between human rights and national security”.
Ben Wizner, attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, who argued the case, called it “a sad day not only for the torture victims whose attempt to seek justice has been extinguished, but for all Americans who care about our nation’s reputation in the world”, and vowed to appeal to the US Supreme Court. “To date, not a single victim of the Bush administration’s torture programme has had his day in court,” the attorney said.
Crazy Uncle Fred To Burn Qu’ran
Come on, you knew this was coming! Thank you, corporate media!
Topeka’s Westboro Baptist Church announced tonight that it plans to burn the Qur’an and an American flag on Sept. 11, though the exact time and location haven’t been determined, a church spokeswoman said.
The burning would occur the same day that a Florida pastor had threatened to burn Qur’ans, which drew condemnation from President Obama, religious leaders and others.
Shirley Phelps-Roper, who announced Westboro Baptist’s plan, said they don’t think that pastor, Terry Jones, will carry out the burning.
Westboro Baptist Church has received international condemnation for its protests at the funerals of gay people and U.S. servicemembers. Church members burned a Qur’an two years ago in Washington, D.C.
Clean Sweep
Well! This is certainly encouraging:
Afghan President Hamid Karzai intends to impose rules restricting international involvement in anti-corruption investigations, a move that U.S. officials fear will hobble efforts to address the endemic graft that threatens support for his administration in Afghanistan and the United States.
Karzai wants to circumscribe the role of American and other foreign law enforcement specialists in two key anti-corruption organizations that have been set up in the Interior Ministry by not allowing them to have direct involvement in investigations.
“The management will be Afghan, and the decision makers will be Afghan, and the investigators will be Afghan,” Mohammad Umer Daudzai, Karzai’s chief of staff, said in a telephone interview Wednesday. Foreign advisers, most of whom work for the U.S. Justice Department, will be limited to “training and coaching, but not decision making,” he said.
Concern about Karzai’s willingness to root out corruption has emerged as a flashpoint in the U.S.-Afghan relationship, with American officials arguing that Karzai has not done enough to demand accountability and Karzai maintaining that the problem has been fueled by the influx of billions of dollars in foreign assistance.
The planned changes have alarmed U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington and prompted efforts to try to persuade Karzai and his advisers to soften the restrictions.
“What he’s proposing would effectively neuter these two bodies,” said a U.S. official involved in Afghanistan policy.
Don’t Worry
If you’re not doing anything wrong, your government won’t have to kidnap and torture you without telling anyone!
Update
Glenn has the details. The Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU have been granted a license to sue the U.S. for ordering the assassination of Anwar Awlaki, an American citizen, without due process.
They’re also proceeding with a lawsuit challenging the procedure that requires them to get permission to sue.
Ironic
Considering that we’re now absolutely okay with arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, I mean.
Men and War
(Inspired by the war fanboys on MSNBC last night….)
War changes you, this I know. I know it from my brother-in-law, whose job it was at 17 to crawl under barbed wire and disarm the bombs attached to the bodies of U.S. troops by the Viet Cong, and then carry those bodies back — because “we don’t leave our people behind.” He still jumps at loud noises.
I know it from the old men I interviewed who were part of the Normandy invasion, especially the one who looked me in the eye and said, “You don’t really want to know, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
Or the young Iraq vet, the neighbor across the hall, who pulled a gun on me in full military stance when he heard me enter my storage unit at night. (I could tell he wasn’t quite sure where he was.) But even if he’d never pulled the gun, I’d know war changed him because I could hear when he woke up screaming in the middle of the night.
Women always know, because we’re the ones who end up cleaning up the emotional mess – or become targets. (Or we run, because it’s too much for many people to handle.) And those women tell other women, until it becomes common knowledge. We’re the ones who see the walking wounded, and know how much it takes for them to get through another day.
I don’t know that women are naturally pacifists. I think it’s that they take a long look at the human wreckage and make an informed choice: This isn’t worth it. Because it usually isn’t.
But the really strange reaction to war, the one that bugs the hell out of me, is that of the men who didn’t go to war. There was a spate of essays in the 80s and 90s from men who confessed how sorry they were they got out of the draft, or didn’t see combat — because “that’s what makes you a man.”
And the outgrowth of that? The George W. Bushes, the William Kristols, the Karl Roves, the Don Rumsfelds, the Robert McNamaras and other assorted half-wits who like to prop up their own inadequacies by sending other men to die for the causes they select.
War is death and destruction, not a glorious cause. If we’re going to send people to die in wars, we need a damned good reason.