Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room
Thoughts in remembrance of 911
tranglos:
Here are a couple of clips of how the world responded after that event:
* Rejoicing: Fox News footage of Palestinians dancing and celebrating at the news of the fall of the twin towers on 911.-IainB (September 10, 2011, 08:02 AM)
--- End quote ---
Didn't see this thread when it was posted. (New Year Resolution: read DC even more. Only good things can come from that!). I want to use my one post in this thread to say that world history did not start on 9-11, and when we reflect on certain events of that day and the days since, we do a great disservice to everyone involved if we pretend that it did. If history started on 9-11, then the footage of "dancing Palestinians" only serves to prove Palestinians are wicked people with an unexplained hatred for the US and the rest of the Western world. That, of course, is a horrible lie - exactly the kind of lie that gets whole nations cheering for murderous wars. ("Iraqi troops taking Kuwaiti babies out of incubators and dropping them on the hospital floor to die" was another, you probably remember that one.)
You won't see these lies unmasked on CNN or Fox (or even on BBC these days), but there's still that Internet thing. Not to justify or to sugarcoat, but to understand why: Palestinians celebrating 9/11 - a reply from The Electronic Intifada
Renegade:
Really reaching here... where's the harm?
The pic's taken in southern India. The guy's probably a menial laborer working in the Gulf where he picked up the shirt. He would probably be dumb enough to wear it in Manhattan if someone told him it was OK. I wouldn't think too much about it, God knows he doesn't. :)
-nosh (December 26, 2011, 08:19 AM)
--- End quote ---
I don't know where it was taken. I assumed that most people would know what the imagery represented though. The point about someone manufacturing it is a good point though. e.g. If you know that it represents, you obviously have a view point if you try to profit from it.
@IainB - No offense here. I simply find celebrations of mass death distasteful. I may have read into it more than I should have.
By the same token, I don't find swastikas offensive as for me whenever I see them, they don't represent Nazi Germany for me (usually). They're religious symbols that predate that.
@tranglos - I'm neutral on the Israel/Palestine issue. I just don't know enough about it to take a side. My only comment is that "killing people is bad".
My take on 911 - Fair warning - this is offensive to war mongers
My take on 911 is that it's been used politically for some very, very evil purposes. The deaths of those people have been mocked and shit on. They've been used to bomb and murder countless thousands of people. Estimates of civilian casualties in Iraq range from 130,000 to over 600,000 people. That's just Iraq.... And only civilian casualties. The fallout is far worse than just that. That's just the tip of the iceberg.
Some people may remember Public Enemy:
Well, as far as I can see, the US government has made 911 a joke again.
IainB:
The response of the British to 911 was to align themselves squarely alongside the US and send troops into Afghanistan and Iraq.
And look at this result: something really uplifting: Wherever You Are (Military Wives with Gareth Malone) Official Video
I've bought that single 3 times - and I suspect many people have done similarly.
Amazing. The Beeb must have made a mistake and done something positive for a change.
I don't even live in the UK - abandoned the place years ago, yet this song brought tears to my eyes.
Or, if that sort of thing is not to your taste, then maybe you might try to get your upliftment form here instead: Gotta Get Them Damn Jews In Order To Save the World
Hop on over to the Facebook link they give in that post - 100.000.000 person hate Israel and feel the lurve. You might like to report that Facebook page for racial and religious hatred, or like/friend it instead and feel like you are helping Palestine in their jihad (holy war).
Quite coincidentally, I started reading Hitler's Mein Kampf a week ago. That was because my daughter Lily had a project to do just before school closed for the Christmas holidays. It was to watch a movie - The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - and then do some research on the Nazi death camps, and then write it up as project notes.
Lily knew it was about the Holocaust. I have told her a lot about Hitler and the death camps, and she is fascinated in how he could get the German people to do such despicable and horrifying acts. She understands that it seems to be something in us all - not just those "bad" Germans, that has the potential for this sort of psychopathic crime against "other" ("not us") humanity, and that we must not forget these lessons of history.
Well, we watched the film together on a Sunday night, then she went to bed, and on the Monday she was busy, head down, working on her report and doing the research on her laptop. In the afternoon, she came and asked her mother and I if we would like to hear her report, and she read it out to us. She had apparently found the film footage taken by Eisenhower's liberating American forces, and lots of other vid clips and notes about the inhumane treatment and torture of the Jews - some of which I had known about and some I might have forgotten (I saw a lot about it on the BBC TV in documentaries when I was a child).
And there she was, this fresh-faced and serious little girl reading it all out from her handwritten notes, in a matter-of-fact way, and even demonstrating with a baseball bat, some rope and her hands some of the torture the Nazis inflicted on the Jewish victims. For example, (and this is only a small part) by binding them in such a way as to painfully stretch and deform and eventually break their limbs in max prolongation of agony; their use of clubs with pointed nails sticking out of them, to club the backs of the victims so as to inflict max pain and max prolongation of agony.
Innocence observing evil's record. I was in tears as she was reading it out.
She asked, "Daddy, why did Hitler hate the Jews so much?", and I had to explain that it was all because the Jews engineered the crucifixion of Jesus as a common criminal, over 2,000 years ago. That many Christian sects and all true Muslims could not forgive them that.
I told her that probably the only way the Nazis could have done what they did would have been if they were able to perceive the Jews as being less than human - maybe "descended from pigs and apes" as the Koran so unequivocally puts it.
She is as mystified as I am when I tell her that there are people alive today who either deny the reality or the extent of the Holocaust, calling it a "myth" or try to ameliorate it , and there are others - including the appointed president of Iran, and other leaders or religious/clerical leaders and members of the Middle-Eastern Islamic countries who apparently still hope to see themselves carrying Hitler's "final solution" to a conclusion, to avenge the sin of Christ's crucifixion and fulfil Allah's command to exterminate the Jews for their sins.
But her question - "...why did Hitler hate the Jews so much?" - was what got me reading Mein Kampf. I wanted to be able to understand his rationale for what he did, and explain it to her. I told her that was why I was reading it, and that I had not actually wanted to read it, though I had been steeling myself for the time when I would have to.
I am reading this English translation, here, if you want to take a look: Adolf Hitler - Mein Kampf (James Murphy translation).pdf
I am finding myself quite fascinated by its cold, insidious horror. It seems reasonably lucid, coherent, and well-written.
IainB:
@tranglos:
If history started on 9-11, then the footage of "dancing Palestinians" only serves to prove Palestinians are wicked people with an unexplained hatred for the US and the rest of the Western world. That, of course, is a horrible lie - exactly the kind of lie that gets whole nations cheering for murderous wars. ("Iraqi troops taking Kuwaiti babies out of incubators and dropping them on the hospital floor to die" was another, you probably remember that one.)
You won't see these lies unmasked on CNN or Fox (or even on BBC these days), but there's still that Internet thing. Not to justify or to sugarcoat, but to understand why: Palestinians celebrating 9/11 - a reply from The Electronic Intifada
-tranglos (December 26, 2011, 10:47 AM)
--- End quote ---
Regardless of whether "history started on 9-11", it would be irrational (a non sequitur) to assert that:
...the footage of "dancing Palestinians" only serves to prove Palestinians are wicked people with an unexplained hatred for the US and the rest of the Western world.
--- End quote ---
Are you able to say exactly where such an assertion has been made? I don't think I saw it on any CNN/Fox videos, but I could have missed it, I suppose.
As far as I could see the news channels just played the thing without much comment. The dancing itself was verified/corroborated by other Western news media people on the ground (and one of whom happened to be a personal friend of mine - a photographer/cameraman), who confirmed that it was adults dancing for joy, not just children/youths (which seems clear in the video anyway).
So the link that you provide (which I found interesting) would seem to have been a reasonable if belated try at ameliorating the "911 dancing Palestinians" video, but apparently somewhat ambiguous/disingenuous.
The most that I could probably infer from that video is that the dancing Palestinians probably felt that at last Muslims (represented by Al Queda) had finally scored a serious "return blow" on the US - and on home ground too, in the heart of the US capitalist centre. That is, a "return blow" as payback for all the invasions, indignities, machinations, crimes and oppression that they might have perceived the US to have been responsible for in the Middle East.
If that was how they felt, then I would not be qualified to even attempt to dispute such a perception on their part - how could I know what it feels like to be them?
So, I wasn't terribly surprised by the "911 dancing Palestinians" video, for that reason.
I was rather saddened by it though.
So, I wasn't terribly surprised at videos and news reports of when people in the US seemed to be similarly cheered by news of the final killing of Al Queda's leader (Bin Laden) together with some of his henchmen.
I was rather saddened by it though.
Regardless of whose side you are on, it seems as though it is human nature to revel in an injury caused to, or the killing of, a perceived enemy.
Who are we to criticise other people for being "only human"?
But for a chance at birth, we might equally (say) have been born as Palestinians, or as Americans.
Wikipedia on Israel:
SpoilerFollowing the 1947 United Nations decision to partition Palestine, on 14 May 1948 David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization[9] and president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared Israel a state independent from the British Mandate for Palestine.[10][11] Neighboring Arab states invaded the next day in support of the Palestinian Arabs. Israel has since fought several wars with neighboring Arab states,[12] in the course of which it has occupied the West Bank, Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Portions of these territories, including east Jerusalem, have been annexed by Israel, but the border with the neighboring West Bank has not yet been permanently defined.[13][14][15][16][17] Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, but efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have so far not resulted in peace.
--- End quote ---
As a student of the Koran and things Islamic, I was interested to read that former House speaker Newt Gingrich in the US stated recently that:
He believed that “the Jewish people have the right to a state … Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire.”
“I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs,” Gingrich said, “and who were historically part of the Arab community.”
--- End quote ---
Though I didn't like what he said, I could kinda see what he was getting at, insofar as the Arabs could be said to have essentially invented Palestine as an obstacle to peace with Israel - in their own words, for example:
1959 Arab League resolution #1457.
"The Arab countries will not grant citizenship to applicants of Palestinian origin in order to prevent their assimilation into the host countries."
--- End quote ---
- and again:
1957, Horns, Syria - Arab Conference of Refugees.
"Any discussion of the refugee issue that does not promise the right to the annihilation of Israel will be deemed a desecration of the Arab nation and treason."
--- End quote ---
I was reading a post today that said:
Official, institutionalized discrimination against Palestinians is widespread in the Middle East. Where does this Apartheid take place, and what are the reasons behind it?
--- End quote ---
I followed it up and came across this YouTube vid - Apartheid in the Middle East, which seems to make the point and then hammer it home. It has all sorts of people contributing to it - Palestinian and Arab Muslims, Israelis, Lebanese, Arab in Israel, and more - and yours truly (being skeptical) made sure the facts check out. It seems to be honest/true.
To the end it refers to the above two Arab facts/quotes.
Interesting, eh?
I hadn't fully realised how much the Palestinian refugees had things stacked against them until I watched that vid.
Imagine how you and your family might feel if you were trapped in deliberate limbo like that.
Impossible to escape.
IainB:
I am not an American, but I have a feeling of empathy with America, because it is the source where some great minds forged the American Constitution - arguably the first major - if not finest - product of a free people, articulating the vision of their religio-political ideology for democracy, equality, freedom and liberty, and itself based on the foundation stone of the Magna Carta.
Many people might no doubt consider that America has arguably got a long to way to go before it can be seen to have achieved that vision, and others might no doubt consider that America has arguably already strayed too far off course to be able to return to the original vector.
Be that as it may, we should not forget those war-dead innocents who have died because of deliberately murderous acts of war, from other powers - whatever the reason, though the reason in this case seems to be that they would challenge the articulated vision of the American religio-political ideology.
Nor should any freedom-loving people be afraid to stand up and honour such innocent dead, in remembrance.
A people that cannot bring itself to honour and remember the war dead - whether they be dead soldiers and participants, or (as in the case of 911) a few thousand dead, innocent civilians massacred all together on the same day - would arguably be a God-forsaken and spiritually bankrupt people without any moral compass whatsoever. This is why the names of the dead are precious, and are faithfully listed on war graves - similarly on the memorial at Ground Zero, and the names of the terrorists who also died are apparently included - "Lest we forget".
When I started this thread, I was impressed with the way in which the mostly thoughtful discussion proceeded to develop in directions that I could hardly have predicted - not that I wished to see it proceed in any particular direction - and reviewing the thread today, I think it does great credit to the contributors to the thread on the DC Forum.
When I started this thread, my motivation was essentially, as @JavaJones put it:
...To me the most important thing is that those who died on 9/11 are honored and remembered in positive ways.
- Oshyan
-JavaJones (September 14, 2011, 02:44 PM)
--- End quote ---
I had held back from making any comment in memoriam of 911 this year, as I felt that someone else might want to do it, and so I was very pleased when they did - with this kind, thoughtful and rather beautiful statement: (please note that the link below is broken as the original poster self-censored the entire thread)
[quote from: stephen66515]
13 Years
13 Years ago, billions of people around the world went to sleep, completely unaware that life as we knew it was about to change.
Hundreds of people packed their bags for destinations they would never reach.
Thousands fell asleep with a loved one they would never see again.
A moment almost everybody can tell you what they were doing when it happened.
A moment of unity.
A moment the world breathed a breath of sadness as one.
A moment of darkness.
A moment of change.
A moment that would embed itself into the history of nightmares.
So, take this moment, the one right now, while you are reading this...to love the ones you love. Tell them. Be with them. And never forget.
Nobody knows what tomorrow may bring, so live each day like it is your last and take everything as it comes.
________________________________
--- End quote ---
To me, those thoughts by @stephen66515 would seem to be well in line with:
...honored and remembered in positive ways.
- Oshyan
-JavaJones (September 14, 2011, 02:44 PM)
--- End quote ---
Apparently, @stephen66515 was not asked to delete the thread - he self-censored it because of a vitriolic response posted by another person, and he was afraid that it would start a flame war and disgrace the Forum, or something.
I have posted this here because I insist that I and others be allowed to see this genuine, creditable and incredibly positive post by @stephen66515 for what it is - something spontaneously affirming the human life and spirit and which touches us all - and I refuse to allow fascists or the PC brigade to deny people the opportunity to get some upliftment from the whole sorry episode of 911 whenever such an opportunity may arise, such as this.
Therefore, I would request that, if anyone of whatever religio-political ideological persuasion feels inclined to vomit their personal and peculiar negativism, vitriol, bile, hatred, theories or strongly-held opinions on this matter, or otherwise defecate on it in some way, could they please refrain from doing so here and do it in the Basement thread: 911 HATE - hate what you hate or what others like or dislike about it.
(Don't worry, they have a toilet down in the Basement too, if you can't seem to stem the flow once you get started, but please bring your own toilet paper.)
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version