Another emotional storm, another psychic catastrophe in the making. The 9/11 trial is as much about terrorism as it is about the precarious desperate state of America and its own tendencies towards nihilistic blackness. After all, we are implicated in the corrupt mess of the Arab regimes, maybe not technically responsible but accomplices, complicit in that wild carnival of endless debauch taking place. At a simple level, there is a crime of mass murder, outright terrorism; the planning was brilliant.
Traditionally, a plane was hijacked, hostages were exchanged plus cash and safe passage and it was over. No one previously had seen the hole in the defense, the idea of hijacking a plane to use as a weapon. The subjective matter; arab pride, Arab dignity, our filtering process that has distilled two hundred years of Edward Said’s style of Orientalism mixed in with Koran based ideological warfare and a few twisted strains of anarchism aimed at overthrowing the financial system and we see a Macbeth style witch’s brew boiling in the cauldron. And this trial is going to go indefinitely; the goal seems to be having the accused die of old age, a pyrrhic victory, before rejoining the almighty at the behest of a military court decision.
That being said, the Arab desire among some at least of the rhetoric, to destroy America and “little satan” Israel is a futile endeavor. The fact is that entire culture’s are built around the structure of America hatred; its an eco/socio structure in which men socialize, meet their wives, form the basis of professional networks etc. Are the terrorists just more of what Lenin termed “useful idiots”. If that structure falls, and America and Israel are no longer blamed for all the world evils, then it comes back that its all phony and they have been duped, suppressed, repressed on a false premise.
Eric Fischl. Tumbling Woman.---I asked him whether he thought Tumbling Woman was too early after the terrorist attack for people to deal with. "No, it’s more complicated than that," he said. "America has a hard time with the human body and the issues surrounding the body and certainly, mortality is one of those problems. The thing around 9/11 is that it was this horrific event killed 3,000 people but there were no bodies. If you remember all the passion was centered on architecture to replace the Towers. To secure the footprints of the Towers. It had nothing to do with human tragedy because it was too painful. So I think that the Tumbling Woman reminded people that it was a human tragedy."---Read More:http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/scobie/scobie7-21-09.asp
( see link at end) …The trial of the five men accused of plotting the September 11 attacks could go on “for years” lawyers for both the defence and prosecution both conceded on Sunday. …The predictions came a day after the alleged ring-leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-defendants turned their arraignment hearing at a Guantanamo Bay war crimes tribunal into a 13-hour marathon stand-off. The accused appeared intent on frustrating and delaying the process by refusing to answer questions….
---artist Eric Blome from Crystal Lake, Ill., puts the finishing touches on his Sept. 11 tribute sculpture. Blome's 22-foot-tall 2 ton sculpture incorporates four, twisted, 8 foot beams from the World Trade Center into the piece which is adorned with sculptures that capture the emotion of the day and remember the people involved. The sculpture was commissioned by the city of Oak Lawn for its 9-11 memorial....Read More:http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2011/09/02/artist-makes-sept-11-tribute-sculpture/
“It’s going to take time,” said the Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, the chief prosecutor who said he fully expected the defence to file a barrage of motions complaining that the Guantanamo legal process was unfair and unconstitutional.
“I am getting ready for hundreds of motions because we want them to shoot everything they can shoot at us,” he said, acknowledging the delays were “frustrating” and noting that the civilian trial of another September 11 conspirator, Zacarias Moussaoui, took four years. …Read More:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/9249436/Guantanamo-Bay-911-trial-could-go-on-for-years.html
Graydon Parrish 9/11 memorial.---Susan Sontag:The disconnect between last Tuesday's monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a "cowardly" attack on "civilization" or "liberty" or "humanity" or "the free world" but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word "cowardly" is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards. Our leaders are bent on convincing us that everything is O.K. America is not afraid. Our spirit is unbroken, although this was a day that will live in infamy and America is now at war. But everything is not O.K. And this was not Pearl Harbor. Read more http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/09/24/010924ta_talk_wtc#ixzz1uCZcR7ZK
ADDENDUM:
…Walid bin Attash initially sat slumped in his chair in seat-belt
e restraints after resisting attempts to bring him to court from his cell. He was later released from the shackles, on telling his lawyer that he would not disrupt the hearing. Proceedings at the military tribunal were halted when a third defendant, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, went through a series of elaborate prayer rituals, kneeling down next to his desk on a mat.
It was the first public appearance in more than three years for Mohammed, the self-confessed architect of the worst act of terrorism the world has witnessed, and his four alleged co-conspirators. The five men face the death penalty for 2,976 individual counts of murder. …
Ben Grasso. Caution. Read More:http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/kuspit/ben-grasso5-9-11_detail.asp?picnum=5
…Mohammed stroked his straggly, thick beard, grey when last seen, but now tinged heavily reddish-brown with henna, yet showed no emotion as he stared ahead blankly or looked down at notes on his desk. He was wearing white robes, issued by the military authorities, and a white cap. …
…“The reason that he is not putting the earphones on is because of the torture that was inflicted upon him.”
Lawyers have previously been told that they cannot discuss the accusations of torture or the activities of the CIA, whose agents interrogated Mohammed using waterboarding – simulated drowning – 183 times, according to a US federal report. …Read More:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/september-11-attacks/9248340/911-suspects-defiant-as-US-court-attempts-to-begin-trial-proceedings.html
…The start of the hearing was delayed as bin Attash had to be forced by guards from his cell and carried, strapped into a chair, along corridors to the specially built courtroom in a hangar-style structure. …
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