September 11th
On Tuesday, dreadful Mars did come
To the Church of St. Romanos, dripping,
Smoking with the blood of Christian men.
Venus stood, draining tears into cupped hands,
Weeping for the young men and the virgin girls.
Mercury cried out, in comfort or lament,
"Aphrodite, Aphrodite, why are you crying?"
High in the sky, the Moon keeps its distance,
Wondering and trembling with fear,
While all the elements of Heaven
Pour like tears for the City.
LAMENT FOR BYZANTIUM (ANONYMOUS)
[From my journal, September 11th, 2001]:
“No distinction will be made between terrorists and those who harbor them,” the President said tonight. We’ll see.
“I blame this on Senator Church,” somebody just said on FOX News --- referring to the 1973(?) Church Committee that gutted the intelligence services. The news anchor who heard this blinked in incomprehension, obviously having no idea whatsoever who “Senator Church” was. Someone else noted earlier that intelligence has been operating under a recent restriction that won’t allow them to recruit anyone with a “violent” background. So much for infiltrating terrorist organizations. We’ll have to leave that to the Israelis, who are less eaten up with silly “scruples” written by high-ranking ninnies and soccer mommies.
200 firemen dead, at least. 85 policemen missing, at least. Portable morgues are being set up on street corners.
The fashionable mind, in this situation, blames the United States and takes fault with all official actions or inactions. That’s what they’ve been taught is the intelligent position, and "intelligent" people are expected to ape it ("intelligent" people are not expected to actually think; that went out with the Age of Reason, three hundred years ago). At the lower end of fashion are the anti-Arab racists, who are slathering the internet with a thick coat of “Death to Islam, beat up an Arab near you,” etc. (These are the people who never did figure out, over the course of an entire year-long hostage crisis, that Iranians are not Arabs.)
The problem with this country are the people who are ready to tear it down as their first instinct, first reaction to anything. It’s precisely those people for whom this bloody display was intended. It was staged for their benefit. Hopefully they enjoyed it.
...
Rumors of mysterious explosions in Kabul, probably false. We wouldn’t hit Kabul, and terrorists wouldn’t either. Rumors of an attempt to blow up the George Washington bridge, also probably false.
Celebrations in the Palestinian territories. But Arafat, Kaddafi, the Taliban, and the Iranians have all condemned the bombings, no doubt mindful of the Tomahawk’s long reach. The UN timidly evacuating their missions in Afghanistan to avoid soaking up any “collateral damage”. The UN, incidentally, has made no useful comments at all. Hell, even Castro is being nice to us, but those UN guys are real hard cases.
...
3500 Dean Witter employees missing. Number of missing firemen up to 300. Pentagon dead at least 800.
The hijacked flights all took off from airports recently fined for lax security. More careful planning. They boarded early morning commuter flights, when people get irate with airport personnel if any delay occurs, so security precautions are weakest at that hour.
JEREMIAH 8:20 - The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.
[Journal, September 12th, 2001]
NATO Article 5 invoked. One for all and all for one, the theory goes.
The dull, insipid face of normalcy is starting to surface. Logan Airport, which contributed two hijacked planes to the debacle, announced new FFA regulations. The nice spokes-lady was chirpily happy to report that most of the new measures were things that Logan had already implemented! You can bomb us, hijack us, and slaughter us by the thousands, but we will emerge as dumb as ever ...
Ugly rumors crawling around: at ___, students were watching footage of the second plane crash when some foreign students stood up and cheered. This one made the rounds at the office. Sounds like rear echelon paranoia to me.
When we launched sudden war on Iraq, the networks all adopted a little “war logo” --- each network had their own within the first hour. Now everybody’s using the same phrase: “Attack on America”. Each network has a different little graphic to go with it: CBS has a green sweeping radar screen that’s a little creepy. No sense in critiquing something that somebody spent about five minutes thinking up.
...
All signs point to Osama bin Laden --- no surprise there. His bio states that this Saudi rich boy became a devout Moslem while studying economics. Horse hockey. No one ever looked up from Keynes or Veblen and suddenly gave their heart to Allah.
What Osama bin Laden learned from “studying economics” was a lot of Marxist trash about colonialism and imperialism, starring the US as the villain. That’s his real motivation, not the Koran. You can’t blame him for hiding his Bolshevism under a turban ... it allows him to keep his billions without looking like the hypocrite he is. Besides, the Middle East masses want to follow Islamic zealots, not cynical Marxist hacks.
....
Hardest to see are the people who are wandering the streets with pictures of friends of relatives --- little homemade photo displays or desktop publishing jobs --- asking if anyone has seen them. 5000 people missing right now.
JOB 12:22 - He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out to light the shadow of death.
To the Church of St. Romanos, dripping,
Smoking with the blood of Christian men.
Venus stood, draining tears into cupped hands,
Weeping for the young men and the virgin girls.
Mercury cried out, in comfort or lament,
"Aphrodite, Aphrodite, why are you crying?"
High in the sky, the Moon keeps its distance,
Wondering and trembling with fear,
While all the elements of Heaven
Pour like tears for the City.
LAMENT FOR BYZANTIUM (ANONYMOUS)
[From my journal, September 11th, 2001]:
“No distinction will be made between terrorists and those who harbor them,” the President said tonight. We’ll see.
“I blame this on Senator Church,” somebody just said on FOX News --- referring to the 1973(?) Church Committee that gutted the intelligence services. The news anchor who heard this blinked in incomprehension, obviously having no idea whatsoever who “Senator Church” was. Someone else noted earlier that intelligence has been operating under a recent restriction that won’t allow them to recruit anyone with a “violent” background. So much for infiltrating terrorist organizations. We’ll have to leave that to the Israelis, who are less eaten up with silly “scruples” written by high-ranking ninnies and soccer mommies.
200 firemen dead, at least. 85 policemen missing, at least. Portable morgues are being set up on street corners.
The fashionable mind, in this situation, blames the United States and takes fault with all official actions or inactions. That’s what they’ve been taught is the intelligent position, and "intelligent" people are expected to ape it ("intelligent" people are not expected to actually think; that went out with the Age of Reason, three hundred years ago). At the lower end of fashion are the anti-Arab racists, who are slathering the internet with a thick coat of “Death to Islam, beat up an Arab near you,” etc. (These are the people who never did figure out, over the course of an entire year-long hostage crisis, that Iranians are not Arabs.)
The problem with this country are the people who are ready to tear it down as their first instinct, first reaction to anything. It’s precisely those people for whom this bloody display was intended. It was staged for their benefit. Hopefully they enjoyed it.
...
Rumors of mysterious explosions in Kabul, probably false. We wouldn’t hit Kabul, and terrorists wouldn’t either. Rumors of an attempt to blow up the George Washington bridge, also probably false.
Celebrations in the Palestinian territories. But Arafat, Kaddafi, the Taliban, and the Iranians have all condemned the bombings, no doubt mindful of the Tomahawk’s long reach. The UN timidly evacuating their missions in Afghanistan to avoid soaking up any “collateral damage”. The UN, incidentally, has made no useful comments at all. Hell, even Castro is being nice to us, but those UN guys are real hard cases.
...
3500 Dean Witter employees missing. Number of missing firemen up to 300. Pentagon dead at least 800.
The hijacked flights all took off from airports recently fined for lax security. More careful planning. They boarded early morning commuter flights, when people get irate with airport personnel if any delay occurs, so security precautions are weakest at that hour.
JEREMIAH 8:20 - The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.
[Journal, September 12th, 2001]
NATO Article 5 invoked. One for all and all for one, the theory goes.
The dull, insipid face of normalcy is starting to surface. Logan Airport, which contributed two hijacked planes to the debacle, announced new FFA regulations. The nice spokes-lady was chirpily happy to report that most of the new measures were things that Logan had already implemented! You can bomb us, hijack us, and slaughter us by the thousands, but we will emerge as dumb as ever ...
Ugly rumors crawling around: at ___, students were watching footage of the second plane crash when some foreign students stood up and cheered. This one made the rounds at the office. Sounds like rear echelon paranoia to me.
When we launched sudden war on Iraq, the networks all adopted a little “war logo” --- each network had their own within the first hour. Now everybody’s using the same phrase: “Attack on America”. Each network has a different little graphic to go with it: CBS has a green sweeping radar screen that’s a little creepy. No sense in critiquing something that somebody spent about five minutes thinking up.
...
All signs point to Osama bin Laden --- no surprise there. His bio states that this Saudi rich boy became a devout Moslem while studying economics. Horse hockey. No one ever looked up from Keynes or Veblen and suddenly gave their heart to Allah.
What Osama bin Laden learned from “studying economics” was a lot of Marxist trash about colonialism and imperialism, starring the US as the villain. That’s his real motivation, not the Koran. You can’t blame him for hiding his Bolshevism under a turban ... it allows him to keep his billions without looking like the hypocrite he is. Besides, the Middle East masses want to follow Islamic zealots, not cynical Marxist hacks.
....
Hardest to see are the people who are wandering the streets with pictures of friends of relatives --- little homemade photo displays or desktop publishing jobs --- asking if anyone has seen them. 5000 people missing right now.
JOB 12:22 - He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out to light the shadow of death.
posted by Glen Wishard at 10:53 PM
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