Showing posts with label 9/11. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 9/11. Show all posts

Thursday, October 07, 2010

the us government and human experimentation

From Democracy Now!
Exposed: US Doctors Secretly Infected Hundreds of Guatemalans with Syphilis in the 1940s gives a more in-depth look at the recently uncovered story.

The Dark History of Medical Experimentation from the Nazis to Tuskegee to Puerto Rico gives a much more wide-ranging and historical look at how exploited populations have been used in human medical experimentation.

And finally Experiments in Torture: Medical Group Accuses CIA of Carrying Out Illegal Human Experimentation raises the very disturbing possibility that after 9/11, the Bush administration's treatment of Guantanamo detainees included human experimentation in violation of US law and the Nuremberg code. Read: The Torture Papers by Physicians for Human Rights for more details.

Friday, September 17, 2010

one person's america-hating radical is another person's patriotic good ol' boy

Recently I was thinking about how odd it is that some folks on the right wing (e.g. Tea Partiers and the usual suspect of Fox News pundits) are so willing to show contempt and suspicion for the President, the Speaker of the House, Congress in general, various provisions of the US Constitution, basic principles of American democracy, the current policies of the government and then turn around and criticize others (usually liberals, Blacks, Latinos or Muslims) for being unAmerican. Among the most extreme we even have people like Sharron Angle suggesting the possibility of "Second Amendment remedies" to government "tyranny".

On the more apocalyptic side, during the US Presidential election we were endlessly confronted with the loop of Jeremiah Wright saying "God damn America" but most white evangelicals are willing to accept (or even celebrate as a cautionary tale) Ruth Graham's statement "if God doesn't soon bring judgment upon America, He'll have to go back and apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah!” source

As a more entertaining and contemporary way to highlight this kind of right-wing hypocrisy as it relates to how we speak about 9/11, the Center for American Progress put together a Blaming-America-for-9/11-Quiz where you can try to match a set of "controversial" statements about 9/11 with the person who said them. Enjoy.

h/t to Islamicate

Saturday, September 11, 2010

immortal technique on immigration, slavery and religion


muslims and islam were part of twin towers life

To be honest, the more I study and reflect on the "Ground Zero Mosque" issue the more difficulty I have accepting or respecting the whole "sensitivity" argument. First of all, the 9/11 families and victims organizations don't all speak with one voice and several of them (like September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows and Not in Our Name) are opposed to war and Islamophobia. Secondly, if people can tolerate strip clubs and pizza places on "sacred ground" they should be able to tolerate Muslims practicing their religion there. But thirdly, the never stated, and therefore unquestioned, assumption behind the opposition to the Park 51 project is that all Muslims in the US should be equated with the terrorists behind 9/11.

One of the more persuasive counter-arguments (I think) lies in also pointing out the extent to which Muslims are and have been an integral part of American life. Not only does the nearby African Burial Ground hold Muslim bodies. Not only was that part of lower Manhattan historically "Little Syria". Not only is there already a mosque there for Muslims who work nearby. Not only were there Muslims who were victims and heroic responders to the World Trade Center attack. On top of all that, the World Trade Center originally had a Muslim prayer space for the Muslims who were an integral part of the life of the community.


see also
Planet Grenada: "refudiating" islamophobia: park 51 / cordoba house / the (not-really-at)-ground zero mosque


Muslims and Islam Were Part of Twin Towers’ Life
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
New York Times
September 10, 2010

Sometime in 1999, a construction electrician received a new work assignment from his union. The man, Sinclair Hejazi Abdus-Salaam, was told to report to 2 World Trade Center, the southern of the twin towers.

In the union locker room on the 51st floor, Mr. Abdus-Salaam went through a construction worker’s version of due diligence. In the case of an emergency in the building, he asked his foreman and crew, where was he supposed to reassemble? The answer was the corner of Broadway and Vesey.

Over the next few days, noticing some fellow Muslims on the job, Mr. Abdus-Salaam voiced an equally essential question: “So where do you pray at?” And so he learned about the Muslim prayer room on the 17th floor of the south tower.

He went there regularly in the months to come, first doing the ablution known as wudu in a washroom fitted for cleansing hands, face and feet, and then facing toward Mecca to intone the salat prayer.

On any given day, Mr. Abdus-Salaam’s companions in the prayer room might include financial analysts, carpenters, receptionists, secretaries and ironworkers. There were American natives, immigrants who had earned citizenship, visitors conducting international business — the whole Muslim spectrum of nationality and race.

Leaping down the stairs on Sept. 11, 2001, when he had been installing ceiling speakers for a reinsurance company on the 49th floor, Mr. Abdus-Salaam had a brief, panicked thought. He didn’t see any of the Muslims he recognized from the prayer room. Where were they? Had they managed to evacuate?

He staggered out to the gathering place at Broadway and Vesey. From that corner, he watched the south tower collapse, to be followed soon by the north one. Somewhere in the smoking, burning mountain of rubble lay whatever remained of the prayer room, and also of some of the Muslims who had used it.

Given the vitriolic opposition now to the proposal to build a Muslim community center two blocks from ground zero, one might say something else has been destroyed: the realization that Muslim people and the Muslim religion were part of the life of the World Trade Center.

Opponents of the Park51 project say the presence of a Muslim center dishonors the victims of the Islamic extremists who flew two jets into the towers. Yet not only were Muslims peacefully worshiping in the twin towers long before the attacks, but even after the 1993 bombing of one tower by a Muslim radical, Ramzi Yousef, their religious observance generated no opposition

“We weren’t aliens,” Mr. Abdus-Salaam, 60, said in a telephone interview from Florida, where he moved in retirement. “We had a foothold there. You’d walk into the elevator in the morning and say, ‘Salaam aleikum,’ to one construction worker and five more guys in suits would answer, ‘Aleikum salaam.’ ”

One of those men in suits could have been Zafar Sareshwala, a financial executive for the Parsoli Corporation, who went to the prayer room while on business trips from his London office. He was introduced to it, he recently recalled, by a Manhattan investment banker who happened to be Jewish.

“It was so freeing and so calm,” Mr. Sareshwala, 47, said in a phone conversation from Mumbai, where he is now based. “It had the feel of a real mosque. And the best part is that you are in the epicenter of capitalism — New York City, the World Trade Center — and you had this island of spiritualism. I don’t think you could have that combination anywhere in the world.”

How, when and by whom the prayer room was begun remains unclear. Interviews this week with historians and building executives of the trade center came up empty. Many of the Port Authority’s leasing records were destroyed in the towers’ collapse. The imams of several Manhattan mosques whose members sometimes went to the prayer room knew nothing of its origins.

Yet the room’s existence is etched in the memories of participants like Mr. Abdus-Salaam and Mr. Sareshwala. Prof. John L. Esposito of Georgetown University, an expert in Islamic studies, briefly mentions the prayer room in his recent book “The Future of Islam.”

Moreover, the prayer room was not the only example of Muslim religious practice in or near the trade center. About three dozen Muslim staff members of Windows on the World, the restaurant atop the north tower, used a stairwell between the 106th and 107th floors for their daily prayers.

Without enough time to walk to the closest mosque — Masjid Manhattan on Warren Street, about four blocks away — the waiters, chefs, banquet managers and others would lay a tablecloth atop the concrete landing in the stairwell and flatten cardboard boxes from food deliveries to serve as prayer mats.

During Ramadan, the Muslim employees brought their favorite foods from home, and at the end of the daylight fast shared their iftar meal in the restaurant’s employee cafeteria.

Iftar was my best memory,” said Sekou Siby, 45, a chef originally from the Ivory Coast. “It was really special.”

Such memories have been overtaken, though, by others. Mr. Siby’s cousin and roommate, a chef named Abdoul-Karim Traoré, died at Windows on the World on Sept. 11, as did at least one other Muslim staff member, a banquet server named Shabir Ahmed from Bangladesh.

Fekkak Mamdouh, an immigrant from Morocco who was head waiter, attended a worship service just weeks after the attacks that honored the estimated 60 Muslims who died. Far from being viewed as objectionable, the service was conducted with formal support from city, state and federal authorities, who arranged for buses to transport imams and mourners to Warren Street.

There, within sight of the ruins, they chanted salat al-Ghaib, the funeral prayer when there is not an intact corpse.

“It is a shame, shame, shame,” Mr. Mamdouh, 49, said of the Park51 dispute. “Sometimes I wake up and think, this is not what I came to America for. I came here to build this country together. People are using this issue for their own agenda. It’s designed to keep the hate going.”

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

sometimes you can't tell the difference between the onion and the real news...

The Daily Show: FOX Failed To Mention Co-Owner Is One They Accuse Of 'Terror Funding' As a part of its typical fear-mongering, Fox News did a story described links between Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and an unnamed Saudi sponsor by means of the Kingdom Foundation... but it turns out that the Saudi in question, Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal is actually one of the largest shareholders of Fox News' own parent corporation. What!

Thursday, September 11, 2008

"first writing since"

Here's one of my favorite 9/11 poems. I've posted links to the text before but they have since expired. Here is a clip of an actual performance. To be honest, when I read the poem I imagine a more lively delivery in my head, but it is still powerful to see Suheir Hammad recite her own work. Here is "first writing since".

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

9/11 video response from mostly harmless

I'm starting to notice and appreciate the fact that other folks out there who I don't necessarily know about are occasionally interested in the stuff I post and are responding on their own blogs. For example, on Mostly Harmless I just found This One's for the WAAGNFNP and Planet Grenada which is (in part) a response to an Immortal Technique/Mos Def video I posted earlier. The author, who goes by The Constructivist, shares some other political music videos on 9/11 , Katrina, globalization and related issues.

Sunday, September 11, 2005

9/11 poetry

The most beautiful 9/11 poem I've read or heard, by far, has got to be First Writing Since by Suheir Hammad. Another deep piece, with a good amount of historical perspective is A moment of silence before I start this poem by Emmanuel Ortiz. I've mentioned both poems on Planet Grenada before, but due to the anniversary they could bear some repeating. I also found a 9/11 poem on the LADO (Latino American Dawah Organization) website called Pharaoh is just a Leaf which is a bit rougher than the other two but still kind of interesting.