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14 September 2001
[comment] Fear & Loathing in America … Hunter S. Thompson’s reaction. ‘This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed — for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now.’ [via Dr. Menlo]
[comment] Ruin more beautiful than the building — The Times interviews Norman Mailer on the attacks. ‘… [He] said that the remaining steel prongs of the World Trade Centre would inevitably become a national monument. ‘It is more beautiful than the building was,” Mr Mailer, 78, who described the towers as ‘two huge buck teeth’ […] ‘I think they will keep it. If they have any sense they will. And politicians usually have exactly that kind of sense, if no other. I don’t disapprove of that. You’ve got that many people killed who’ve had nothing to do with bringing on their own death other than working in a monument to corporatism.”
13 September 2001
[postmortem] Security agencies attacked over ‘stunning failure’‘Quoting a former senior CIA officer responsible for the Middle East, Reuel Gerecht writes: “The CIA probably doesn’t have a single truly qualified Arabic-speaking officer of Middle Eastern background who can play a believable Muslim fundamentalist who would volunteer to spend years of his life with shitty food and no women in the mountains of Afghanistan. “For Christ’s sake, most case officers live in the suburbs of Virginia. We don’t do that kind of thing.”‘
12 September 2001
[nyc] Chris Conroy: ‘A minute passed. Then, I heard a scream from the street below, and a light humming rumble. I lunged for the window, nearly throwing myself out in the process, and I watched as the south tower – the tower I’d stood beneath admiringly, the tower I’d ascended several times, the tower my family and I had entered and departed from bemoaning the length of the ticket line just days before – fell to the ground. It just collapsed before my eyes.’ [Related: Do You Feel Loved?]
[viewpoint] Beyond Belief‘…we saw Lower Manhattan disappear into dust. New York, and therefore all cities, looked fragile and vulnerable. The technology that was bringing us these scenes has wired us closely together into a febrile, mutual dependency. Our way of life, centralised and machine-dependent, has made us frail. Our civilisation, it suddenly seemed, our way of life, is easy to wreck when there are sufficient resources and cruel intent. No missile defence system can protect us. Yesterday afternoon, for a dreamlike, immeasurable period, the appearance was of total war, and of the world’s mightiest empire in ruins. That sense of denial which accompanies all catastrophes kept nagging away: this surely isn’t happening. I’ll blink and it will be gone.’
[history] ‘I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.’ — Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. [via LinkWorthy]
11 September 2001
[disaster] How do you blog something like this? People are trying:
From Metafilter: ‘Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.’

[symbolism] Tarot: The Tower‘The Tower is numbered sixteen and shows a tower struck by lightning, with raging fires within and the top of the tower falling. There are usually figures falling, head-first, from the ruins. The Tower shows us a basic fact of spiritual life – the power of the Gods can strike unexpectedly to break down all the long-established patterns and assumptions that we have taken for granted for so long.’