9/11

A post dedicated to Dinah, in Texas, because we may be grumpy, but we don’t forget friends.

After so much re-examination and seeing the photos of survivors and the fallen at 9/11 in the Sunday Times Magazine, Phoenix Ark Press want to remember the people inside, and the lives touched and harmed in so many unseen ways. We pray some other moron doesn’t try and ‘commemorate’ today with more horror and fear. Sometimes war is necessary too, the fight against evil or for freedom, but nothing is an absolute and be careful where the rage is directed and how. One of the most moving things about the 7/7 attacks in London was just the silence of Londoners, in Parliament Square, on balconies across the city, just standing side by side, to resist together. The way the War on Terror has been operated, and used as a catch all too, to mask the real movements of money and power, has many deep flaws and generates much fear. It is the principles of freedom you stand by that truly matter, not the force you use or the rules you break, and even the Arab Spring suggests one man’s terrorist is often another man’s freedom fighter. Fear itself is one of the first things you have to fight inside yourself too, because it has a natural escalation and is corrosive.

Did the philospher Francis Fukayama make a grave mistake when he wrote his thesis on The End of History though, believing in the final triumph of the Nation State and Liberal Democracy? We seem to have been in shock ever since. The world, like history, never stops turning, but those liberal values are right and must be defended. With the proviso that we understand we are on a completely interconnected planet, man, animal and biospheres, and must all wake up to it. No freedoms without responsibilities, no rights without awareness, no power without connection, and as little as possible – ‘them’ and ‘us’. To commemorate 9/11 too then, with a full knowledge of how sad and terrible it was, some other events in History, on 11th September. If you look at those ‘Today in History’ websites it is interesting how many of them are American, and so of course see the world from that perspective. So many things have happened and are happening all the time, and actually, in a dating perspective, time zones have shifted too, especially with the arrival of The Gregorian calendar, so those dates, at least the further back you get, are not exactly right either, but it makes you think. Like that song from the Flaming Lips though, that Phoenix have blogged before, today of all days, perhaps we also need a love song for the human and the beauty of nature too. There’s a power and a burning love and light in all of us if we find the courage to reconnect, and do not swallow the dark, the loneliness and the hurt.

THE FLAMING LIPS
One, two, three, four –
Do You Realize – that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize – we’re floating in space –
Do You Realize – that happiness makes you cry
Do You Realize – that everyone you know someday will die

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes – let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It’s hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun don’-go down
It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

2010 Pastor Terry Jones announces that the Dove Outreach Center will not burn the Koran, ‘not now, not ever’
2010 The Medal of Honor is awarded for the first time since the Vietnam War; U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta in Afghanistan
2001 19 Islamist terrorists hijack four commercial jets, killing nearly 3,000 in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania
1995 Soyuz TM-22, lands
1992 Hurricane Iniki hits Kauai Hawaii; 3 die and 8,000 injured
1991 14 die in a Continental Express commuter plane crash near Houston
1988 1/3 of population argues for Estonia autonomy
1988 Sports Aid – jogging to feed the world
1987 Shoot out at Jean-Bertrand Aristides’ church in Haiti, 12 die
1986 President Mubarak receives Israeli premier Peres
1986 U.S. performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1986 Dow Jones Industrial Avg suffered biggest 1-day decline ever, plummeting 86.61 points to 1,792.89. 237.57 million shares traded
1983 U.S.S.R. performs nuclear test at Semipalitinsk, Eastern Kazakhstan U.S.S.R.
1980 Chile adopts its constitution
1973 Chile’s President, Salvador Allende, deposed in a military coup
1969 U.S.S.R. performs nuclear test at Semipalitinsk, Eastern Kazakhstan U.S.S.R.
1967 French president De Gaulle visits Poland
1967 Indian/Chinese border fights
1967 U.S. Surveyor 5 makes 1st chemical analysis of lunar material
1966 France performs nuclear test at Muruora Island
1965 Beatles’ “Help!,” album goes #1 and stays #1 for 9 weeks
1961 Bob Dylan’s 1st New York performance
1959 Congress passes a bill authorizing food stamps for poor Americans
1958 Great Britain performs atmospheric nuclear test at Christmas Island
1952 West German Chancellor Adenauer signs a reparation pact for Jews
1951 Stravinsky’s opera “Rake’s Progress,” premieres in Venice
1951 Florence Chadwick becomes 1st woman to swim English Channel from England to France. It takes 16 hours and 19 minutes
1946 1st mobile long-distance car-to-car telephone conversation
1944 Franklin D. Roosevelt and Churchill meet in Canada at 2nd Quebec Conference
1944 U.S. 5th pantzer division is 1st to enter nazi-Germany
1943 Allied arm forces conquerors Salerno
1943 Jewish ghettos of Minsk and Lida Belorussia liquidated
1943 Last German Q/pirate ship sinks near Easter Island
1943 U.S. and Australian troops join in Salamaua, New Guinea
1942 Transport nr 31 departs with French Jews to nazi-Germany
1941 Franklin D. Roosevelt orders any Axis ship found in American waters be shot on sight
1941 Charles Lindbergh, charges “British, Jewish and Roosevelt administration” are trying to get U.S. into WW II
1940 Hitler begins operation-Sealion (invasion England)
1939 Iraq and Saudi Arabia declare war on nazi-Germany
1930 Stomboli volcano (Sicily) throws 2-ton basaltic rocks 2 miles
1926 Spain leaves League of Nation due to Germany joining
1923 ZR-1 (biggest active dirigible) flies over New York’s tallest skyscraper, Woolworth Tower
1922 British mandate of Palestine begins
1919 U.S. Marines invade Honduras
1914 T Handy publishes “St. Louis Blues”
1909 Max Wolf rediscovers Halley’s comet
1900 President Kruger crosses border with Mozambique
1881 Triple landslides bury Elm, Switzerland
1831 Charles Darwin meets with Captain Fitzroy at Plymouth
1773 Benjamin Franklin writes “There never was a good war or bad peace”
1741 Queen Maria Theresa addresses Hungarian Parliament
1714 French and Spanish troops under duke of Berwick occupy Barcelona
1709 Battle at Malplaquet: England/Austria/Dutch Great Alliance beat France
1697 Battle at Zenta: Prince Eugen van Savoye beats Turkish superior power
1649 Massacre of Drogheda-Cromwell kills 3,000 royalists
1645 Thomas Fairfax’ New Model-army occupies Bristol
1557 Catholic and Lutheran theology debated in Worm
1297 Battle at Stirling Bridge, Scottish rebel Wm Wallace beats English
813 Charles the Great crowns Louis I emperor

The image of the WTC is a public domain photo from Wikepedia