[Replay of a Replay] Remembering: Kneeling At The Corner Of Church And Liberty

9.11.09: I forgot that on this date last year both Barack Obama and John McCain visited Ground Zero together. Interesting. I wonder if they will be at Ground Zero today commemorating the 8th anniversary of the date's tragic events. Regardless, I post what I wrote both last year on this day in history and what I wrote a few years before. Peace. BG

_____________________

[It is another cloudless morning here in New England, just like the morning seven years ago. Back then, two planes were already in the morning sky; observers on the ground might have seen them from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont or New York. There would be a different flight plan that day.

Today, 9/11/08, both John McCain and Barack Obama will visit Ground Zero. In honor of that visit, and in honor of that infamous and painful day, I repost a reflection I wrote several years after 9/11/01. Tomorrow, I will offer another reflection, I think, if I feel so moved.]

Yesterday morning, Friday, July 1, I walked west on Liberty Street and came to a slow stop. It was my first time to visit the World Trade Center since it became Ground Zero. I could see the wide-open 16-acre crater left in downtown Manhattan. But it was not the view that stopped me, but something much smaller. For there, in the southeast corner of Ground Zero, stood a street sign that, for me, was full of symbolic irony. I was at the corner of Church and Liberty.

I noted the irony, perhaps with bitterness touching my heart. And then I walked into the open space, tears filling my eyes, sobs erupting from deep within.

I had not expected this. I had not expected to want to fall to my knees, to wail on the ground, to daven before a new sort of Wailing Wall. I had not expected to feel that I could never leave this place; that I could never go back to something simple, safe, tidy, even naive. I had not expected to want to keep this hole in my heart; this hole from which people leapt and fell through tumult and smoke and confusion.

There was no surprise, however, at the enormity. I had always understood that; had felt it; had known its significance. I always understood the mechanics and the engineering; the aerodynamics and the flight paths. I had already stood on the ledge of a broken window; I had fallen. I had huddled with my child in the back of a plane; felt the pressure change in my ears and the turbulence of a bad pilot; I had seen the sparkling Hudson and the September blue; the smoke ahead; and I had felt the tipping of the wings as the engines were throttled full. I had waited for death to come in 3,000 different ways; and yet my imagination remained intact enough to remind me that I had not died even once.

What I had not expected were the tears. I thought that I had passed through that. I thought that I was, if not insouciant, so to speak, I was at least through with all the grief. But I was not. And clearly neither were many of the others walking by me, slowly, each pausing at various signs, reading them, performing a sort of Stations of the Cross along a postmodern Via Dolorosa. An old man, huddled against the massive, imposing fence, his long white hair and flowing beard tangled around his weary face, played an old silver flute, its dulcet tones reaching out and up, Amazing Grace trembling in my ears. He was crying in each breath.

I became quietly indignant (I was too humbled to be truly self-righteous) at those tourists from "far-away" who posed for digital cameras. And I was miffed, though only mildly, by the hawker silently moving through the crowd with a photo album, 9/11 pictures for sale, though numerous postings declared that such sacrilege was strictly forbidden. But I could forgive all this, for grief and horror do strange things to people. The abundance of cameras reminded me of a funeral I went to last spring, where the family of the 39-year-old father killed in a tragic accident gathered at the funeral parlor before the burial so that portraits could be taken around the open casket. My friend, the owner of the parlor, told me that it "happens all the time." Grief does strange things indeed.

I strolled north, stopping frequently. A young woman next to me, her back to the scene as she waited to cross Church - heading toward the Millenium Hilton - blurted into her cell phone, "I am going to get SO f***ed up tonight!" I moved away from her and closer to the fence, admitting to myself, a little sadly perhaps, that the world is indeed a very diverse place. The brown-haired woman to my right stared in disbelief westward, her lips trembling, tears on her cheeks. She wasn't thinking about getting "f***ed up." She was grieving for those who no longer could.

But there was one thing that was physically surprising to me, and beyond the scope of my imagination. It was that, with all the buildings surrounding the site, with the highest to the north, east and south, it was if I was INSIDE something, like a temple, cathedral or sanctuary. What happened on September 11 in New York was literally IN New York; with walls echoing sounds like the Whispering Gallery in St. Paul's Cathedral. I could see the Twin Towers, their heads poking through the ceiling of New York, and I could hear sounds. Sounds unbearable.

Later, I spoke with a woman who witnessed nearly everything on September 11. She told me that she was in the shower of her 23rd floor apartment on Liberty (the southwest corner) when the first plane smashed into the North Tower. She confessed that that she didn't realize what was happening until she was drying herself off. She said she heard a roar of jet engines overhead (the second plane), and then, echoing throughout her house, the sound of thousands of people screaming. (I think I can hear that sound right now.) And I know it was one of the sounds I could still hear trembling in the faint murmurs of the buildings surrounding Ground Zero. The walls do speak. And they speak sorrowfully. (The woman, a Manhattan lawyer I fortuitously met on the train home, told me that she was never able to return to her apartment after closing the door to it just before the towers fell. It was essentially uninhabitable, at least for her. And she told me her entire harrowing story: the dust-cloud filled with glass particles; the people screaming and pressing in the dark, the leaping into a boat on the Hudson, a thrown puppy, the vomiting, the uncertainty about more attacks, and so much more.)

But at the end of my too-short visit to Ground Zero, I could not shake from my mind the street sign, Church and Liberty. For Osama bin Laden attacked America - at least according to his own fatwa - because of its "Christian" infidelity (and its support and alliance with infidel Jews) and the liberty both synagogue and church provide. And it was America's liberties, our very freedoms, he turned against each of us: our freedom of travel, our easy borders, our freedom to build, and work in, tall buildings; our freedom to believe in God and liberty, or not. This is our vacant lot: that our virtues were turned against us by a man and men too impotent to build a nation, too weak to fill it with soldiers and weapons and wealth and commerce and hope; and too poor to attack us with something created by the superiority of their own vision. No, they attacked us with our own virtues, turned into weapons against us. They did not attack us with their virtues, but with their own spiteful vice. And for a moment, we staggered.

This morning, though far from New York, I still stand at the corner of Church and Liberty. I look up and understand: This is the World Trade Center. And I ask myself, "What world are you willing to trade?" My enemy has already asked that question, and he has shown me his answer. And now I give him mine: I am not trading.

Yesterday I walked through New York wearing a T-Shirt my wife gave to me two years ago. It reads on the front, in small print, "July 4, 1776: Remember Why." On the back, in quiet letters, it reads, "Live Free." I was amazed at how many people looked at my simple message as I passed through subway lines or strolled The Mall in Central Park. It is a good message.

Remember why.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Ground Zero, World Trade Center, wtc, Fourth of July, Independence day, Liberty, Osama bin Laden, 9/11, New York City, Manhattan

Watch Out For The Death Blow!

A simple truck driver did more than disturb -- and distort -- this morning's commute in Oakland, California. He dealt a fatal blow to those 9/11 conspiracy theorists who believe that fires in the World Trade Center could not have "melted" steel.

That such foolishness is contradicted by countless blacksmiths everyday does not stop such theorists' wild fantasies. But maybe James Mosqueda's close scrape with death will quench the flames burning in the hearts and minds of far too many souls who stubbornly refuse to believe the simple truth, namely, 9/11 happened exactly the way they saw it happen. When Mr. Mosqueda and his 8,600-gallon gasoline tanker crashed beneath an overpass in Oakland, the result was the undeniable melting of massive steel girders and the collapse of one of Oakland's vital thoroughfares.

Not that the steel actually melted; it just weakened enough to lose its strength and collapse after three hours of raging fury. Which is, of course, identical to the official statement regarding the WTC towers: the fires, along with the brutality of two planes traveling hundreds of miles an hour slicing through both buildings, weakened the structures enough to render them incapable of supporting their own weight.

But, as I said, we only needed to talk to a blacksmith about steel to come to conclusions the 9/11 theorists could not, in all their scientific inquiries, discover for themselves.

Perhaps we will now learn that Mr. Mosqueda wasn't driving at all; witnesses saw a grey-headed middle-aged man from Texas leap from the tanker into what looked like a Washington, D.C. motorcade. It is reported that three hours later, using a reconfigured cell-phone from inside Air Force One, some person called another phone at the Oakland underpass, which triggered a series of thermite bombs to detonate.

It's all just to throw the conspiracy theorists off the trail.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

On 9/11: Rosie O'Donnell and Building 7, Imploding

It may very well be true that we in fact battle against those in high and lofty places, but it is clearly not true that those who sit in such esteemed heights are one whit lofty. Take Rosie O'Donnell, for example. There is nothing particularly outstanding about this woman; there is nothing that would lead any of us to think that she is even particularly gifted. When I think of Rosie, I think of luck more than I think of brains, talent, or even brawn. One wonders where Ms. O'Donnell might be without her connection to Madonna, that diva known widely around the world for her nice, tight, erudite acumen.

In the truest expression of the spirit of this age, Ms. O'Donnell brings to us her perspective on the World Trade Center "attacks" of September 11, 2001: the buildings did not fall according to the laws of physics (or something like that). Instead, it appears that the buildings were felled by internally-placed explosive devices (not that Ms. O'Donnell knows much about internally-placed explosive devices [Sorry. Dreadful joke].) But we can at least find humor in the seriousness of this comedienne; the court jester is earnest. Of course we all know what trouble there is in being earnest, but we shall leave that for another time.

At issue, or so Ms. O'Donnell points out in her blog entry, wtc7, is the curiously aberrant collapse of World Trade Center Building 7. Conspiracy theorists and other 9/11 "scholars," you see, have pointed out that the building could not have collapsed on its own footprint because the fires afflicting it, which have been officially cited as cause of the collapse, were not symmetrical. In other words, for a structure like Building 7 to collapse so perfectly into itself by fire, the fire would have to be evenly distributed throughout the steel-framed building.

Also at issue are assertions that fires of the sort that ripped through the building could not melt steel framing. Add to this reports that witnesses saw plumes of smoke billowing out from the building during collapse, plumes allegedly compatible with detonations, and then blend in some emergency radio comments transmitted during the day, and, well, you've got a major conspiracy.

I will not venture into the science here, though it seems that even a lay person could come up with some pretty compelling explanations. What I would like to focus on is the simple fact that the building collapsed at 5:30 pm, more than eight hours after the very first whiff of jet fuel wafted over Church and Liberty.

And I also want to point out, if but for a second, that not a single person was killed -- or even reported injured -- when that building finally fell.

_________________
What Manner Of Conspiracy Is This?

Let us ignore the fact that if 9/11 occurred at all like it is suggested in the paranoid internet documentary, Loose Change, (see this, or this) then we're dealing with a conspiracy that included hundreds, if not thousands, of people. This requires us to suspend our adherence to what we know to be the cardinal law of crime: If you want secrecy, do your dastardly deeds alone. I think we would all agree that if O. J. Simpson had 1,000 accomplices assisting him with his wife's beheading, he would be serving time in San Quentin right this minute.

We can suspend or accept all the truisms and facts we want, but we cannot suspend the very real fact that this conspiracy proves only one thing: What a lousy conspiracy this is.

Let me ask you: If you have rigged a building with bombs intent on killing and maiming as many people as possible, why would you choose to detonate those bombs when everyone was safely away from that building? How is it that you could only manage to generate a great cloud of dust and a silly conspiracy theory? Why, pray tell, would you not drop the building when its occupants were spilling onto the streets, or when tens of thousands of people stood on the pavement looking skyward? How, too, do you broadcast your intent so blatantly; how is it that the fire department was able to declare that the building was going to collapse and that everyone should clear the area? And how do you manage to drop the building when nary a newscaster had his or her camera trained on the area?

Ah, perhaps there is a reason for such bungling. Perhaps the charges failed to go off at the proper time; perhaps there was a problem. Fair enough, we might conclude, but then we have to ask how it was that the bombs could be later detonated so sequentially, if, as everyone knows, ALL THE ELECTRICAL POWER was shut off for hundreds of city blocks.† Did some stealthy crew spool out wire disguised as a fire hose; did a crew spend some 8 hours (climbing over rubble, too!) reconfiguring the schematics -- and the scheme -- so that the buildings could be plunged down manually?

Really, the view from Rosie's high seat is breathtaking.

__________________
Let us ignore the fact that over 210 acres of debris fell from the sky that September morning. Let us forget that when those first buildings fell in Manhattan, they did so with such force that seismographs moved in Maine. Let us forget that the World Trade Center plaza was built on fill; let us forget that the entire plaza was built over six floors of malls, restaurants, garages, and subway tunnels; let us forget that the ground moved like jelly. Let us forget that each of the buildings was designed to implode by architects who knew that someday the buildings might need to be removed. Let us forget that jet fuel burns away nearly instantly; that fires burned bright that day from gases released from countless carpet fibers, sheets of paper, plastics and woods and varnishes; that fires, drawing torrents of rushing air through narrow passages like elevator shafts, will generate heat aplenty, heat like a blowtorch, local and lethal to flesh, bone, and steel.

Let us forget all this and ask the simple question: Why drop Building 7 at all, and why at 5 o'clock at night?

_______________
Why, Of Course! (Or is that "way off course?")

According to Ms. O'Donnell, there is an answer to our question: the collapse of Building 7 was meant not to destroy people. It was meant to destroy evidence. You know, papers, files, tapes, you know the deal. Come on, you know! Data was destroyed, data that would NOT AT ALL BE DESTROYED IN A COLLAPSE!

Isn't it the case that FIRE destroys the very things Ms. O'Donnell would have you believe were ruined in an intentional implosion (one that could have easily smothered the very fires that would be most effective in destroying incriminating evidence)? It seems obviously true that fire is a vandal's best friend. Why implode? Ah, we'll never know.

And, lastly, who is it that is (most likely) responsible for this great conspiracy? That's right. George W. Bush.

(Alas, not that anyone has ever wondered if the Clinton Administration could have orchestrated 9/11. I mean, it is clear at the very least that the 9/11 attacks were being planned well before George W. Bush stole the presidency. Clinton minion Sandy Berger scooted off with what from the National Archives?! Never mind.)

Here's the fact about 4 planes crashing on the American landscape that fateful day in 2001, written in language Ms. O'Donnell will understand: Bush flied, people died.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

†Perhaps the building was rigged with bombs set to trigger with a mere cell phone call, or some other remote device. That cell coverage was gone in Lower Manhattan is well-known, so we'll have to rule that out. But even if the building was detonated via remote switches, we must ask how it is that the master-minds would have been comfortable with their plan: In the fiery chaos of 9/11, a series of linked bombs could have been -- and surely must've been -- compromised. This problem remains even if we accept the idea that the bombs were on a timer: surely some part of the layout of bombs had to be damaged by fire and debris. But if we admit this, then we admit that if only some bombs detonated, they would have done so asymmetrically. If that is the case, how could asymmetrical detonations cause a building to fall straight down if we have already concluded that only symmetrical explosions could have that effect?