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| The flight paths of the 9/11 hijacked planes |
From the YouTube blurb:
A slideshow tribute to the events of September 11, 2001. Focus is on people, their connection with the towers, past and present, and not simply a play by play of news footage. Communicating the full range of expression from terror to sacrifice, compassion, and sacrifice...as well as the ways in which people responded as friends, neighbors and as Americans. Set to Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, which was played at Ground Zero during the memorial service the same week as the tragedy.
Our government should mark the anniversary by getting the hell out of Afghanistan.
ReplyDeleteBush = Clinton = Obama = Biden
SF,
DeleteI believe that we have the best change of getting the hell out of Afghanistan with Donald J. Trump in office.
I'm still waiting for someone to explain our compelling national interests in being there ... or anywhere else in the Middle East, for that matter. Our track record for "doing good" in the world since the end of WWII isn't that great, which makes a good argument for staying home and minding our own business.
Delete@AOW
DeleteThat's assuming the military will follow Trump's orders. Evidence is to the contrary. He ordered withdrawal of all armed forces from Syria more than a year ago. It has not happened yet.
@Mustang
Our leadership no longer bothers to offer reasons. Last effort was Obama's, "We are fighting there to deny them space in which to plan their attacks." Hard to believe he even said that once since 9/11 was planned in Germany, but he said it many times.
@Jayhawk - Trump reneged on the initial order to pull out of Syria, and stated that we would remain to “protect the oil”.
DeleteThe NWO needs its' markets, sf...
ReplyDeleteFJ.
DeleteThe NWO needs to be abrogated.
...from your lips to God's ears.
DeleteThe youngins didn't even know what the date meant. So much for our educational system.
ReplyDeleteWell, we don't want to offend anyone, do we?
DeleteI'm offended.....
DeleteNever forget what happened, who did it, and the religion that inspired them!
ReplyDeleteI always remember the great people here and elsewhere across America who can face the Islamic threat and fight the hate-America left that undercuts the spirit of our righteous nation.
Hello, Jason, my good friend.
DeleteThank you for stopping by.
Your excellent essays contributed so much to my understanding of the threat of Islam and the threat of the hate-America left. I hope that people are still reading your essays!
Why not republish at least some ofJason's essays right, AOW?
Delete_________ 19 Years Ago Today ________
ReplyDeleteOne bright morning, nineteeen years ago,
No one dreamt, while going off to work,
Lunatics had planned to go berserk
Yielding fury like a lava flow.
Just nineteen years –– an amplitude of woe ––
Denial since that demons near us lurk
Enraptured by sheer rage –– sharp like a dirk ––
Craftily whetted in hellfire’s glow.
A grim corrosion followed the attack.
Demented perverts scheme to have us think
Euro-centric values are at fault ––
American prosperity is black ––
Greed and gall have brought us to the brink
Of seeing all we have come to a halt.
~ FreeThinke
Meditation on a Tragic Anniversary
ReplyDeleteA radiant cloudless mornin
___ air fresh and clear
______sky the brightest blue
_________ mood mellow
A lovely young day bright with promise ––
And then a gleaming silver shell appeared
___ mirroring beautifully the morning sunshine
______ A Thing of Beauty –– but horribly out of place
_________ like a spacecraft from an alien planet
Dipping crazily far too low upon the skyline
___ before anyone could feel the menace ––
______ it smashed directly into a gigantic upright construct ––
_________ one of a pair ––
Twin monuments to Greed and Vain Ambition some were quick to say
But sudden violent death eradicated an entire investment firm
___ in one horrific instant ––
______ dozens of bright young lives incinerated –– gone!
Before dazed onlookers could begin to understand what was happening
___ another silver shell acting as a missile
______ crashed into the second of the giant pair.
Ugly buildings! A hideous blot
___ on the once-graceful Manhattan skyline.
“Ada Louise Huxtable might secretly rejoice at this,”
___ part of me thought wickedly, for I had always resented
______ the overbearing, outsized twins ––
_________ Bounders! Interlopers ! Invaders!
But before that ruined day was halfway through
___ three-thousand innocents had been
______ burned alive, brains and eyeballs boiled
_________ skulls pulverized, skeletons crushed
_________ between twisting, white hot girders
_________ pelted with falling rubble midst the flames
_________ caught, crippled, crumpled, smashed to bits ––
___Smothered in collapsing stairwells and buried alive
______ in a torrent of red hot cinders and debris
In so many ways the scene must have mimicked the final hours
___ of the residents of Pompeii and Herculaneum
And then there were those hideous echoes
___ of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire ––
Where so many jumped to their deaths
___ to escape being burned alive ––
In an instant smashed skulls, broken bones and bloody pulp
___ were all that remained of their vibrant young lives.
And not so long ago in Benghazi –– to mark the anniversary
______ of this Great Triumph of Barbarity over Civilization
_________ our young, handsome, well-meaning,
_________ hopelessly naive, ambassador to Libya
____________was surrounded in his quarters,
____________ dragged out into the streets
____________ beaten, sodomized and brutally murdered.
But what does any of this matter? What difference does it make?
___ Let’s just forget about it, and MOVE ON.
______ Might as well.
We are privileged to live in interesting times.
____________ Kyrie eleison!
____________ Kyrie eleison!
____________ Christe eleison!
~ FreeThinke
______ A Wry Memorial _____
ReplyDeleteThe Swarthy Ones took over;
And made weapons of four planes.
The riders had no cover;
They suffered dreadful pains
That ended once their deathtraps
Burst into roaring fires
Turning instantly to mere scraps––
Cinders––made of former flyers.
The burning towers crumpled,
And fell into the street.
New York was more than rumpled;
Briefly, it knew defeat.
The nation drew together;
We felt collective grief.
Anger broke its tether;
To express it gave relief.
But juat nineteen years hence
We're at each other's throats;
We've built ourselves a fence
Over which the Devil gloats.
We've failed to give the orders
To build a proper wall
Sealing off our borders
To the fiends who’d have us fall.
Instead, we've made division––
Went to war against ourselves––
And are mired in derision
Sparked by partisan elves,
Who forget this blessed land
In pursuit of powers lost
In close elections manned
By fraud. So, tempest-tossed
The country is in turmoil.
The enemy's our own.
He says it's all for Big Oil,
And he'll soon usurp the Throne.
The heap of twisted rubble
Raising toxic fumes for weeks
No longer gives us trouble
Because of media leaks
Designed to throw us off the scent
Of whom we need to blame
And encourage ruinous dissent
That hopes to break the frame
That holds us all together
And preserves our liberty,
So many now doubt whether
We really should be free.
And each rabble rousing louse
Should 'neath these words be pinned:
"He who troubleth his own house
Shall inherit–––the wind"
~ FreeThinke
o/t - I think that Trump's going to GOAT the Nobel...
ReplyDeleteThersites,
DeleteWowzer! That's gonna "leave a mark"!
Never have, never will.
ReplyDeleteOld NFO,
DeleteSame here!
One of my cousin's friends was working in an office near to Ground Zero on 9/11. Body after body came down -- headfirst. Yes, there was splatter and gore.
ReplyDeleteMy cousin's friend was permanently traumatized.
I have friends who worked recovery at the Pentagon. Very small body parts. It was awful!
Franco,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for adding the poetry. It enhances this blog post.
Thank you, AOW. At times just a small bit of ACKNOWKEDGEMENT is the Pearl of Great Price. ;-)
DeleteI've not done much,
___ I know that's true,
But could it be so bad
__ for me to write a song
To let the world know how I long
___ for it to be aware, if just a tad,
______ that I once lived here too?
~ FreeThinke
"Let us fervently hope that the Middle East peace brokered by the Trump Administration endures for at least a few years!"
ReplyDeletePallets of cash Trump had to send to the Middle East to make this happen = 0. Our president drives the left so mad that they are now advocating pulling down their own Nobel Peace Prize statue.
ReplyDeleteAlabanza: In Praise of Local 100
BY MARTÍN ESPADA
for the 43 members of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local l00, working at the Windows on the World restaurant, who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center.
Alabanza. Praise the cook with a shaven head
and a tattoo on his shoulder that said Oye,
a blue-eyed Puerto Rican with people from Fajardo,
the harbor of pirates centuries ago.
Praise the lighthouse in Fajardo, candle
glimmering white to worship the dark saint of the sea.
Alabanza. Praise the cook’s yellow Pirates cap
worn in the name of Roberto Clemente, his plane
that flamed into the ocean loaded with cans for Nicaragua,
for all the mouths chewing the ash of earthquakes.
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen radio, dial clicked
even before the dial on the oven, so that music and Spanish
rose before bread. Praise the bread. Alabanza.
Praise Manhattan from a hundred and seven flights up,
like Atlantis glimpsed through the windows of an ancient aquarium.
Praise the great windows where immigrants from the kitchen
could squint and almost see their world, hear the chant of nations:
Ecuador, México, Republica Dominicana,
Haiti, Yemen, Ghana, Bangladesh.
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen in the morning,
where the gas burned blue on every stove
and exhaust fans fired their diminutive propellers,
hands cracked eggs with quick thumbs
or sliced open cartons to build an altar of cans.
Alabanza. Praise the busboy’s music, the chime-chime
of his dishes and silverware in the tub.
Alabanza. Praise the dish-dog, the dishwasher
who worked that morning because another dishwasher
could not stop coughing, or because he needed overtime
to pile the sacks of rice and beans for a family
floating away on some Caribbean island plagued by frogs.
Alabanza. Praise the waitress who heard the radio in the kitchen
and sang to herself about a man gone. Alabanza.
After the thunder wilder than thunder,
after the shudder deep in the glass of the great windows,
after the radio stopped singing like a tree full of terrified frogs,
after night burst the dam of day and flooded the kitchen,
for a time the stoves glowed in darkness like the lighthouse in Fajardo,
like a cook’s soul. Soul I say, even if the dead cannot tell us
about the bristles of God’s beard because God has no face,
soul I say, to name the smoke-beings flung in constellations
across the night sky of this city and cities to come.
Alabanza I say, even if God has no face.
Alabanza. When the war began, from Manhattan and Kabul
two constellations of smoke rose and drifted to each other,
mingling in icy air, and one said with an Afghan tongue:
Teach me to dance. We have no music here.
And the other said with a Spanish tongue:
I will teach you. Music is all we have.
Great poem, ducky! Alabanza!
DeleteI'll never forget.
ReplyDelete