The Memorial. "People talk a lot about the "healing process." Well, this is New York. In the aftermath of a tragedy of monumental proportions, the healing process has been noisy and rude, with elbows out, redolent of greed, power, and the darker forces that drive human existence. And most of the shouting has been about how to make a fitting monument to what happened here. But in a hundred years, all the shouting and all the politics will be forgotten. What will be remembered is what is built here, now, on these sixteen acres." [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Aug 19, 2011 -
37 comments
“You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas." A
Vanity Fair reporter investigates the chain of command that tossed out the Geneva Conventions and instituted coercive interrogation techniques -- some might call them torture or even
war crimes -- in Bush's Global War on Terror. UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo's now-obsolete 81-page memo to the Pentagon in 2003 [available as PDFs
here and here] was crucial, offering a broad range of legal justifications and deniability for disregarding international law in the name of
"self-defense." Others
say that Yoo was just making "a clear point about the limits of Congress to intrude on the executive branch in its exercise of duties as Commander in Chief." [previously
here and
here.]
posted by digaman
on Apr 3, 2008 -
76 comments
Half of New Yorkers Believe US Leaders Had Foreknowledge of Impending 9-11 Attacks and “Consciously Failed” To Act; 66% Call For New Probe of Unanswered Questions by Congress or New York’s Attorney General, New Zogby International Poll Reveals
On the eve of a Republican National Convention invoking 9/11 symbols, sound bytes and imagery, half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of New York citizens overall say that some of our leaders "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act," according to the poll conducted by Zogby International. The poll of New York residents was conducted from Tuesday August 24 through Thursday August 26, 2004. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of +/-3.5.
This is probably
bad news for Rudy Giuliani.
posted by jackspace
on Aug 31, 2004 -
112 comments
F.A.A. Official Scrapped Tape of 9/11 Controllers' Statements Shit happens? Or does it? " At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording that day describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said today."
posted by Postroad
on May 6, 2004 -
29 comments
9/11 report preview "As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said. "This was not something that had to happen."
We must wait till January for the full report.
posted by jbou
on Dec 17, 2003 -
17 comments
«Clearly, one of the most critical questions of the twenty-first century concerns why the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were not prevented. As I outline below, there are numerous aspects regarding the official stories about September 11th which do not fit with known facts, which contradict each other, which defy common sense, and which indicate a pattern of misinformation and coverup. The reports coming out of Washington do very little to alleviate these concerns.»
22 questions to chose from and decide which ones are nightmares of a conspiracy theorist and which ones must be answered.
posted by acrobat
on Sep 4, 2003 -
70 comments
The lecture Thomas Friedman gave at
SAIS a few days ago. A longer form, very interesting and informative explanation of what he's learned post-Sept. 11th about the Middle East. Windows Media video and Real video and audio all available.
posted by turbodog
on Mar 10, 2003 -
10 comments
DID YOU EVER WONDER HOW THE FBI KNEW ALL THESE NAMES FIVE MINUTES AFTER THE ATTACK ON AMERICA? I know its just another anonymous site about 9-11 but it does highlight some interesting facts and prompts some questions about what the US government knew prior to the attack.
posted by JonnyX
on Oct 10, 2002 -
26 comments
From Richard Wilbur: "Dear Bill,
The only thing I can say right now is this. There is no excuse for the cold inhumanity of 11 September, and there is no excuse for those Americans, whether of the left or the religious right, who say that we had it coming to us.
Dick"
posted by semmi
on Sep 9, 2002 -
23 comments
NPR's Lost & Found Sound brought together radio producers, artists, historians, archivists, and the public broadcasting community came together to collect and preserve audio traces of the World Trade Center, its neighborhood and the events of 9/11.
What they came up with is
sonicmemorial.org. [more inside]
posted by lampshade
on Sep 8, 2002 -
5 comments
Man missing since 9/11 found. Missing for almost an entire year, give or take... well, actually take exactly 14 days... a 46-year-old schizophrenic amnesiac is found to have been resting in a hospital since the day he went missing in the general area of the World Trade Center. No one knows where he went, why he was there, and how he ended up in a hospital.
Strangely, the mans' family's faith was so strong in his survival that they refused for an entire year to collect 9/11 compensation, or for that matter even obtain a death certificate.
Umm.... wow?
posted by XQUZYPHYR
on Aug 27, 2002 -
14 comments
Could 9/11 Have Been Prevented? From the Time Mag. article
"
Long before the tragic events of September 11th, the White House debated taking the fight to al-Qaeda. It didn't happen and soon it was too late. The saga of a lost chance.
posted by bas67
on Aug 4, 2002 -
22 comments
The Emmy nominations are out and the news nominations go to the biggest story, September 11. No surprises there. PBS has 41 nominations and Fox has 0. No surprises there either. Does this say something about the news industry and it's ability to discern serious news from chaff? Is Bill Moyers a national treasure? Do you think perhaps Murdoch should rethink the direction of his media empire?
posted by nofundy
on Jul 31, 2002 -
19 comments
An excellent piece of media analysis by Michael Wolff in New York Magazine looking at the current summer-movie-plot version of Al Qaeda being artfully constructed by the NY Times ...
Then, perhaps most disconcertingly, the overall narrative itself is patently a dumbed-down rehash. It's Cold War stuff. There is the ubiquitous and yet unknown and unknowable enemy. There's the international jihad, which, with only minor adjustments, replaces the international communist conspiracy. There's the sudden purported hegemony of the Muslim world -- a new Soviet-bloc-style ideological monolith. There is the otherworldly dedication of operatives bent on overthrowing the West. There are the cells. There is the myth of superhuman discipline. There is now, even, the developing Kremlinology of the next tier of men who replace Osama. And at the center of the story, of course, is the bomb. Whether in massive retaliatory form or as a dirty-bomb package, it serves the same effect.
(link cribbed from
Altercation)
posted by mantid
on Jul 1, 2002 -
8 comments
MI6 warned US of Al-Qaeda attacks MI6 warned the American intelligence services about a plot to hijack aircraft and crash them into buildings two years before the September 11 attacks....
I do not subsribe but this is summary of article and may prove very "annoying" to the agencies and people involved. The Sunday Times is too reputable to be readily dismissed as off the wall.
posted by Postroad
on Jun 9, 2002 -
38 comments
Well, well, well... it's amazing the unrelated links Google can turn up when you're careless about your keywords. Looking for the 75th anniversary Hallmark commercial (with all the people on the hillside), got
this PDF file [110kb] from a UK insurance actuaries organization about the possible risks at the World Trade Center.
posted by baylink
on May 17, 2002 -
9 comments
Who started the crusades? Catholic historian Thomas Madden argues that the crusades "were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world." Given all the talk about the crusades in the wake of 9-11, an accurate understanding of the history seems important. But is this accurate or just Catholic revisionism?
posted by boltman
on Apr 6, 2002 -
21 comments
Remember the missing boeing? Well, the man behind that revelation has now come out with a book that will blow all previous conspiracy theories out of the water. (and by conspiracy theories i don't mean 9/11 - but also who shot JFK, etc). Interesting way to get rich.
posted by dabitch
on Mar 18, 2002 -
18 comments
Survivors Healed, but Not Whole "But hearing the story of how Patty crawled out of that room, dutifully dragging her behemoth purse (it weighed a ton, it seemed, with enough odds and ends to supply an army), and this as her colleagues were stripping off their clothes and lapping up water off the floor in a desperate struggle to escape the terrible heat and stay alive -- that was funny.
A half-year after the attack, the reconstruction of the Pentagon is racing along, with crews repairing the broken facade and ready to start roof work today, the six-month anniversary. Harder to mend are the souls of those who were there Sept. 11."
posted by owillis
on Mar 11, 2002 -
2 comments
"Peaceful Tomorrows" launches tomorrow (Feb 14th). "Peaceful Tomorrows continues the work of family members who took part in the Walk for Healing and Peace from the Pentagon to the World Trade Center (winter 2001) as well as those who met with Afghan families affected by the subsequent bombing campaign (January 2002).
Our goal is to facilitate dialogues on alternatives to war that utilize all of America's collective wisdom, skills and talents. "
Good luck Peaceful Tomorrows!
posted by crasspastor
on Feb 13, 2002 -
1 comment
It’ll Never Be The Same Again (~2.5mb mp3 down at the bottom there.) After Neil Young’s predictable
homage, Paul McCartney’s song I can’t stand nor can I escape; Bono’s immense display of poor taste; the atrocious "What’s Going On" cover (I laugh at you Limp Bizkit!); I finally found a tune that makes sense of 9.11 for me. Ryan Adams’ "
New York, New York" doesn’t count because it isn’t about that Tuesday. Fine track though.
posted by raaka
on Feb 5, 2002 -
23 comments
The worst banner design ever? I've seen some tasteless advertising in my day, but this simple animation leaves me speechless. Is there any depth to which advertisers will go to hawk their services?
posted by mathowie
on Jan 21, 2002 -
56 comments
Sacred Commerce? Funny, I walked daily to work past the World Trade Center, and have been in the Middle East more than once, but it never occured to me to connect the WTC with Islamic architecture until I read this.
posted by MidasMulligan
on Dec 31, 2001 -
1 comment
Prophets of doom In June 2000, Lynne Palmer, a 69-year-old Las Vegas resident, published her
Astrological Almanac for 2001... On page 95 of the book, buried among advice on the best days to go to the movies and worst days to lend people money, Palmer had written, in an odd combination of the obvious and the prophetic: "Avoid terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001."
posted by raaka
on Dec 31, 2001 -
23 comments
From a piece in the NYTimes today,
Home Front Is Minefield for President:
"The lesson we're learning," one administration official said today, "is that you can bomb the wrong place in Afghanistan and not take much heat for it. But don't mess up at the post office."Leave it to the White House to come away with exactly the wrong interpretation. But the facts are there, too -- most Americans are more concerned about the (relatively slight) risk of getting Anthrax than the rather significant risk that, if we screw up in Afghanistan, we might lose the current coalition against terrorism, Bin Laden, and any hope for "homeland security" for a long time to come....
posted by mattpfeff
on Oct 25, 2001 -
12 comments
"Closer to 3,000"?
NYC City hall has been quietly trimming the official count of the missing and dead from the collapse of the World Trade Center. This number, often simply "Five thousand" in my and most people's minds, actually comes from several sources, the trickiest of which are reports of missing loved ones to the police. People keep coming up with their own numbers. How would you count it? What does it mean if we say "Five thousand" but your kids learn "Three thousand" in their grade-school social studies texts?
posted by rschram
on Oct 24, 2001 -
36 comments
9/11 Conspirators Stole Identities of Murdered Students: "HAD FBI agents bothered to ask college lecturers in South Wales about the terrorist bomber they supposedly taught over a decade ago, then security chiefs would have realised how Osama bin Laden had carefully created a generation of impostors . . . his agents stole the identities and life histories of at least a dozen Western-educated young men who were all murdered in 1990, according to a former head of the CIA."
posted by ryanshepard
on Sep 22, 2001 -
15 comments
How to combat hijackers. "If someone were to stand up,brandish something such as a plastic knife and say 'This is a hijacking' or words to that effect here is what you should do: Every one of you should stand up and immediately throw things at that person — pillows, books, magazines, eyeglasses, shoes —anything that will throw him off balance and distract his attention. If he has a confederate or two, do the same with them. Most important: get a blanket over him, then wrestle him to floor and keep him there. We'll land the plane at the nearest airport and the authorities will take it from there."
posted by knutmo
on Sep 21, 2001 -
25 comments
