NEW YORK (AP) — Relatives of victims killed at the World Trade Center are observing moments of silence to mark the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.Whether there was any big, officially-organized twentieth anniversary remembrance in Iran for the 290 passengers on the Airbus civilian jetliner that was blown out of the sky by the U.S.S. Vincennes, on 3 July 1988, I can't say; if there was, our corporate/government news sources either didn't know or didn't find it newsworthy. Given the prevailing conditions in Iraq, I don't suppose there's much in the way of organized self-pity over the million or so, give or take a few hundred thousand, who've been slaughtered as a result of fully-bipartisan U.S. foreign policy since 1990, from Bush War I through the sanctions regime of the Clinton years, which claimed hundreds of thousands of children, through Bush War II and the subsequent occupation/colonization. Besides, it isn't as though there's a single, particular day to point at there; our bellicose devotion to Iraqi Freedom™ overshadows the whole of the calendar.
The ceremony at ground zero included moments of silence at 8:46 a.m. and 9:03 a.m. — the times that two hijacked jets slammed into the twin towers. Two more moments of silence were to be held at the times the towers fell.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg opened the ceremony by telling the tearful audience: "Today marks the seventh anniversary of the day our world was broken."
Other ceremonies are being held throughout the day around the country, including in Washington and in Pennsylvania. Barack Obama and John McCain are due at ground zero to pay silent respects.
In the terrorism of 11 September 2001, a total of 2,819 people were killed. That's about one-fifteenth of the total number of traffic-accident deaths in the U.S. that year (42,116). It's one-tenth of one percent of the 2,416,425 people who died from all causes in the US that year. Still, it pleases our mass-murdering supervisors that we should all be expected to wallow in a synthetic orgy of self-pity from time to time throughout this day.
To Hell with it, say I, and most especially to Hell with our supervisors. Seven years ago, 2,819 people were killed by a criminal conspiracy. The people who directly did it died in the act, and are thus beyond the short reach of imperfect human justice. No doubt they were directed, supported, and enabled by a relative handful of other guilty people, who would be appropriate subjects for some constitutional remedy such as letters of marque and reprisal. But that's not what happened. The fact remains that we are "governed" by war criminals for the benefit of corporate war profiteers and one particularly-favored Middle Eastern democracy ... and it must be the sort of governance that we deserve, since the US citizenry is too well armed to be so governed without at least its passive consent. No, we howled for this brutal and ruinous pseudo-war, and we begged our supervisors to take as many of our remaining liberties as might please them, in a futile and contemptible exchange for a nonexistent security that our supervisors cannot provide, and would not even if they could.
And there lies the true shame and sorrow of this day.
2 comments:
If the primary conspirators died, one has to wonder why we had to take out our wrath on the entire country of Afghanistan.
I did no such howling.
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