A Staten-Island group called Where To Turn, formed to provide assistance to 9/11 families, has asked that anti- and pro-“mosque” rallies scheduled for lower Manhattan on September 11 be rescheduled out of respect for the mourning families.
Well, you know how the “antis” responded. [Bronx cheer]
FYI, the September 11th Families Association has issued a statement on the Park51 controversy:
The September 11th Families’ Association represents a diverse, multicultural community with many different opinions and views pertaining to 9/11 issues. The Association’s main goal has always been to unite the 9/11 community and as such we recognize the validity of all sides in issues affecting it. We encourage and promote productive dialogue in the hopes of reaching a resolution to sensitive issues such as the proposed building of a mosque and Islamic cultural center near the WTC site.
I take that to mean they polled the members and there was no clear consensus among the victims’ families.
The Families of September 11 have yet to take a position. Same thing with the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network. As I’ve said before, the September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows supports Park51.
I think a lot of why we can’t have a rational discussion about this issue is summed up in a comment on the Poltico, by someone who calls himself “Louisiana Broker” —
Lest We Forget… Allahu Akbar (God is great) were undoubtedly the last words uttered by the Islamic terrorist hijackers…as they they dove their fully fueled, fully loaded (with innocent passengers) airliners into the World Trade Towers…in rapid succession…on 9/11/2001. What irony now…to have a towering,13 story,100 million dollar mosque…casting an ominous shadow over this empty pit of sorrow and grief…where the dead must hear these same words over and over and over again…in a daily call to prayer…literally…”over their dead bodies.”
It’s like time froze for some people.
First: While we will never know for sure if every bone fragment that wasn’t completely pulverized when the towers collapsed has been found, at this point the pit itself has been pretty much dug out and sifted. They’re still sifting the Fresh Kills landfill, I believe, and occasionally finding remains. (Would Pam Geller object to a mosque at the Fresh Kills landfill?) Also, they occasionally find remains in lower Manhattan outside the “ground zero” area, such as bone fragments on roofs. But the Ground Zero site itself was scooped and scraped out awhile back, pretty much down to bedrock. It hasn’t been a smoldering pile of ash for several years now. By 2006, it was a 16-acre, 70-foot-deep hole. Now they’re starting to plant trees.
Second, yes, it finally is a real construction site. Barring unforeseen disaster, I predict that in five years it will mostly be built over, and in ten years it will be hard to tell where the parameters of “ground zero” were. Life goes on.
Anyway, “Louisiana Broker,” who obviously has never been to Manhattan, imagines that Park51 will “tower” over the Ground Zero site. That’s a joke, right? For anyone who doesn’t get it — see “The Usual Hysteria.” Note in particular the links to satellite image of lower Manhattan and the two really, really big buildings that are in between Ground Zero and the Park51 site.
Finally, the builders have been clear there will be no audio system blasting the “call to prayer” outside the center, and even if there were, no way would you be able to hear it two blocks away over the usual city noise.
But the point is that most of the opposition misunderstands the situation. They’re imagining a mosque towering over the Ground Zero they remember from a few years ago, which isn’t even in the ball park of what’s actually going to be built.
I’m still torn about whether to go down there on September 11 to stand with the “pros.” I’m leaving the date open.
Update: This is a very recent video showing the construction on “ground zero” that also shows what the memorial part of the project will look like. As you watch this, keep in mind that people are getting bent out of shape over a measly 13-story building.
| A look inside the World Trade Center reconstruction project |
The memorial part of the project, a “forest” of 400 trees surrounding two reflecting pools built on the “footprints” of the towers, is supposed to be finished in time for the 10th anniversary. The memorial museum and the One World Trade Center tower (I understand the name “Freedom Tower” is officially nixed) are supposed to be open to the public by 2013.
That bit about “casting an ominous shadow” almost made me laugh out loud, it’s so simultaneously over-the-top and completely impossible. (I mean, even if those much taller buildings in between were magically disappeared, the sun doesn’t shine from the north in Manhattan, so shadows would fall AWAY from the WTC site, and besides, it’s in a block of contiguous buildings, like most of Manhattan, so it would be really hard to know which part of a shadow was ominously Muslim, and which part merely Amish Market-y, or AT&T phone store-y.) But of course, that’s in reality, not in the imaginary dimension that Louisiana Broker lives in.
Whatever you do, don’t let that guy know that, in the future, there will be a big office building on the site, and that it will also have bathrooms. Because then we’ll have to cope with the outrage about how, every single day, people are literally defecating over “their dead bodies.” The horror.
I’m starting to wonder if this isn’t somehow tied in with the respect for “The Greatest Generation?”
You know, those folks from almost 70 years ago who, when faced with the greatest threats this nation and the world had ever known, responded quickly, with great patriotism, and national fervor, unflinching in their self-sacrifice and can-do spirit.
I wonder if certain members of this, “The Greediest Generation,” and their children, don’t think that this, this is finally their moment to shine in history’s spotlight.
On 9/11, like Pearl Harbor, we were attacked. But the attackers were not monolithic nation states seeking to expand their empires through war and holocaust, but a few radical extemists from a religion largely unfamiliar to most Americans, who were bent on revenge for this countries persistant intrusion into a part of the world dominated by that religion.
Like WWII, we had wars on two fronts, Afghanistan and Iraq. But those deteriorated into occupations, with no discernable victory, and there could be no V-A or V-I days, since we still have troops there now, and will have for the forseeable future.
Of course, almost none of the population volunteered, so there was no satisfaction there in ‘taking it to the enemy.’ There was no self-sacrifice. No rationing of meat, or silk, or wheat, or anything. We were told that if we wanted to help the ‘war effort,’ keep shopping.
And so, we are left with the unrequited victory dance that ‘sunshine patriots’ demand as their due. Especially those who never even hazarded a cuticle in the effort.
What to do? Well, there was no victory. No finality. These “patriots (I’ll call the older ones ‘Sunshine Home’ Patriots”) still have the need for an enemy – both foreign and domestic, or where will their greatness lie?
That the enemy, Muslim terrorists, were/are only handfuls of extremists, from a mainstream religion, scattered largely internationally, with some groups national, is unsatisfying. That’s tough to rally around. You need a GRAND enemy if you’re to succeed “The Greatest Generation” and save the country and the world from whatever it is you feel it needs saving from. And you’ve found this enemy in a religion you don’t understand and associate it with all forms of evils to aggrandize your own efforts against that enemy. And so, to help fulfill their “Greatest Generation” wetdream, all Islam, international and local, is part of that GRAND enemy. The one that they’ll be able to tell their children and grandchildren about. How they gave their blood, their sweat, and their tears, at the protests in lower Manhattan, and the torching of Mosques across this land.
And thus, they’ll be eulogized by history as a great generation, and not an ignorant and greedy one. “The Most Ignorant and Greedy Generation” isn’t a title destined to top the NY Times best seller list, or whatever will be used as that metric once newspapers die.
All hail these great “patriots.” This will probably be their pre-protest speach, The St. Geller Day Speach:
“This day is call’d the feast of Geller
He/she that outlives this day,
And comes safe home after horrible traffic,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him/her at the name of Geller.
He/she that shall live this day, and see old age,
If you’re not already there.
As most of you are,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his/’her neighbours
At the local Applebee’s,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Geller’s.’
Then will he/she strip his/her sleeve
And show his/her vericose veins,
Then take off his/her shoes and display
The calloused bunions, bloodied there,
And say ‘These wounds I had on Geller’s day.’
Old men/women
Even older men/women
Ungodly old people with transulecent skin
Held together by Oil of Olay
Forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll/she’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he/she did that day:
Beat a nearby Sikh unconsious.
Harass another passing non-white construction worker.
Stab a hapless Muslim cabby.
Strip burka’s from passing womens heads.
All in the name of the Constitution rights
Of freedom of speach and religion.
For me and mine,
Not thee and thine.
Yeah, those feats.
The feats of these, our generations.
And generations from now, the attacks on 9/11 will long be forgotten, but St. Geller’s Day will long live in history as the turning point of America’s war on intself. A day when the forces of stupidity, ignorance and hatred won, and we finally crossed over to the dark.
“Lord, what fools these mortals be…”
“America’s war on itself.” Yes. We have met the enemy, and he is us.
Ooops, forgot to add my favorite line near the end.
“The feats of these, our generations. ‘The Greatest Degeneration.’
Louisiana Broker: You’re a moron. Cordoba House will be NORTHWEST of the WTC site. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west and the buildings are so close in this area of Manhattan that sometimes you can’t tell what direction is what because you don’t see the sun and shadows. Cordoba House won’t be casting a shadow on the WTC site. Indeed, when the 110-story Liberty Tower is finished, it will cast a shadow over the area north of itself.
Maha: Thanks for these links.
C u n d: I agree with what you say. Further though I’ve decided that the TPers are not the Greatest Generation but the people from the Korean Conflict era and the beginning of Viet Nam. And they do need a new enemy of gigantic importance since the fall of the Soviet Union and Soviet Communism to unite them. Since the Korean Conflict is technically not finished, they don’t have something to cling to such as the end of World War II. They need something to prove they existed and were important. And of course, President Obama isn’t one of them… (This is based on comments by neighbors and relatives, people who are 10 to 20 years older than myself.)
Gulag, that was awesome. Saint Golly Geller’s shall ne’er go by, from now until the ending of the world, but I will have that parody posted on my fridge.
To quote Spike the vampire (from Buffy): “We few, we happy few… we band of buggers.”
PurpleGirl,
Interesting take. Yes, WWII had a victorious conclusion, and Korea and Vietnam did not, and I do think that that affected that generation and their children (I’m a late ’50’s Boomer, myself). I agree.
“The Greatest Degeneration” still fits these people, though. We have degenerated to the point where people believe Orwellian double-speak and want to make Constitutional what shouldn’t, and isn’t for a reason, and make un-Constitutional what should, and already is for a reason.
Confusion or manipulation doesn’t matter. The end result is the same. It’s un-American to those who think this country should be one of laws and inclusion.
But how do you wake up the Sheeple?
…casting an ominous shadow over this empty pit of sorrow and grief…where the dead must hear these same words over and over and over again…in a daily call to prayer…literally…â€over their dead bodies.â€
The Islamic cultural center is north of ground zero..and in Manhattan the sun goes from east to west.. so the shadow won’t even come near to ground zero. And the dead can’t hear.
“What irony now…to have a towering,13 story,100 million dollar mosque…casting an ominous shadow over this empty pit of sorrow and grief…where the dead must hear these same words over and over and over again…in a daily call to prayer…literally…â€over their dead bodies.—
Someone needs to put that asswipe on a plane and drop him off in the middle of Bagdad. Maybe he can discuss the “empty pit of sorrow and grief” with family members of the 100,000 plus families that lost loved ones at the hand of “coalition forces” over the last seven years. What a sanctimonious dimwit. It amazes me how so many in this country will drone on about victims of terror here in this country yet have absolutely no consideration for the hundreds of thousands that have died in Iraq for no good god dam reason.
Oh boy…I commented before I read the comments. Seems a lot of use crazy libruls picked up on the fact that the sun rotates around the earth in an east to west direction..just like God designed it to do.. But upon reflection of Louisiana Boker’s words I think he was talking in what they call a figurative sense, not a liberal sense. Sorta like how the bible says God took my sins and cast them as far as the east is from the west. Now, that could mean my sins remain stationary at an imaginary point, or they could be cast millions of light years away from me and beyond.
Geographically, that’s a spot in Paramus, New Jersey, right next to the Ikea.
“Now, that could mean my sins remain stationary at an imaginary point, or they could be cast millions of light years away from me and beyond”
Applying logic to the Bible? Good luck!
…to me, this threatens to go back to First Principles: Why do I care what someone with an intertoobs handle like”Louisiana” anything has to offer about the emotional toll that any particular religious center may have on the residents of New York?
uncledad, maha….Exactly.
Jack K.,
Yes, exactly. The downside of the internet is that we have to hear from all the idiots, too. Just as if all thoughts were equal in value.