My 9-11 And Jack Whitten's

-by Sam Husseini

I'm not out to compare myself to Jack Whitten, but on this day, my mind is on his 9-11 story and my own.

I'm sure we all have lots of 9-11 stories, but I told one of mine for the first time in my new art show, "Invisibly Present/Visibly Absent" that just opened at Gallery Al-Quds at the Jerusalem Fund near the Kennedy Center.

The piece is "The Scorching Sun Which Brings Them Forth" (above).

On Sept. 11, 2001, my then-partner was visiting me in D.C. and was helping out a bit with my media and political work. She was set to leave town that afternoon, but of course stayed after the attacks-- the planes stopped flying and she helped me full time at my job. We worked nonstop, trying to get information out that might avert the coming further catastrophes. After about two weeks, I took her to Union Station so she could finally go back to Texas, where she was in grad school. Exhausted, I walked in the area, ending up at the Library of Congress, where they had a remarkable art exhibit about prophetic visions. Finally, I went to the main reading room, sunk in a chair to feel like I could breathe for the first time in weeks and looked up at the rotunda to see written on a plaque what appeared to be an ironic boast: "We Taste the Spices of Arabia Yet Never Feel the Scorching Sun Which Brings Them Forth." The quote appears to be from Dudley North, a wealthy British merchant and political apparachack who was treasurer of the English Levant Company.

Really dealing with 9-11 in a painting was probably inspired by Jack Witten. Below is text from a 2009 interview with the artist, who died in 2018. Everyone has heard his voice, he's the person who says "Holy shit!" in what I believe is the only video of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. He then made a great painting titled 9-11-01. He talked about both of these below with Judith Olch Richards for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.





MR. WHITTEN: Now I was in the street that day when the planes came over. There was a gas leak in the street and I went out with the firemen, which I always do. It's always a policy of mine when I hear fire trucks to go downstairs and see what's going on, especially in that area of Manhattan.

MS. RICHARDS: Especially since you had a fire.

MR. WHITTEN: Yeah, and as I'm talking to the firemen, that sound came over our head, huge, loud, tremendous sound, and all of us looked up. The young Frenchman that was doing the documentary [9/11, 2002] with the fire department swung his camera up. As he comes up, half of my body is in that shot. This is the first shot of that, what happened.

MS. RICHARDS: Would you just say that Lispenard is about a mile north of the Twin Towers?

MR. WHITTEN: About that, or less, yes, quite close.

MS. RICHARDS: Yes.

MR. WHITTEN: Lispenard is a block below Canal Street.

MS. RICHARDS: Right.

MR. WHITTEN: We looked up just in time to see this plane over our head, low, wobbling, making a beeline to the World Trade and ramming into it. On that first video when you hear somebody say, "Holy shit!" that's me. [Laughs.] That was my expression, "holy shit." That damn thing rammed in there and a big gaping hole.

MS. RICHARDS: Yes, I read you said you had no doubt that it was not an accident.

MR. WHITTEN: My gut feeling, I'm there, the [fire] captain I remember was there, my tenant downstairs was there, and I remember the captain said, it's a horrible accident. I said, "man that ain't no fucking accident." Excuse me word, but that's what I said. I said, "no, that ain't no fucking accident" and I remember my tenant, "what do you mean, you saw what I saw, you saw what happened." I said, "damn right I saw what happened but it ain't no accident, no way." That was my gut feeling. I had no logical reason or whatever to say but that was my gut feeling. It ain't no accident.

MS. RICHARDS: Yes, he could have steered slightly and missed the building. MR. WHITTEN: Yeah, I mean okay I've had a little bit of pilot training, enough to know that I can muscle the damn thing. The captain and his men jumped in the [fire truck] and just went, didn't even think twice. They took all of their equipment, men, jumped in the [fire truck] and went straight downtown.

MS. RICHARDS: Was there a gas leak on your street? MR. WHITTEN: [Yes, they] left one or two guys there still investigating. We still [had] the problem with the gas leak. Two things [are] going on in my mind, right. We're there still arguing with my tenant about whether it being an accident or not. While we're arguing, the second plane circles around to the south tower and then hit. Then I looked at him straight in the face poking him in the shoulder, I said, "you still think that's an accident" and that time he [and] people were crying, people were yelling on the street. Nobody knows what was happening. But my gut feeling proved to be correct.

MS. RICHARDS: True.

MR. WHITTEN: Nobody could question my gut feeling at that point and then of course the flames. I hate to admit it but I often tell the story about when that plane hit, that was a clear day in Manhattan. The sky was filled with this fantastic chandelier of glass, fantastic. It was totally sublime, glittering.

Before you saw the smoke, before you saw the flames jutting out, you could still see the plane of this thing tucked into the hole. [The tail.] But the breaking of the glass just formed this big chandelier.

I assume[d] that the firemen that went down were just automatically killed. That's what I assume but I was in my local bar like a few days afterwards and I was telling the story of what I saw and I thought these guys were dead and somebody came in the bar and said, "I remember you were telling that story. He says, those guys are not dead. They lived." I felt such relief. [Laughs.] I remember I just broke-- I couldn't control my tears because I was talking to them, you know, and they just took off. I just assumed they all died. This person came and says, "no, those guys did live. They're alive man." It was such a relief. Now we were moving out. I had to clear the whole building out, four floors I had to clear out...

But I made a vow when that happened in the street that when I got another studio, I made a vow. The first painting I will do will be a memorial to 9/11. That was my vow and I stuck by that vow...

MS. RICHARDS: How did you arrive at the form, at the image of the painting?

MR. WHITTEN: From the dollar bill. I'm sitting in the bar one night drinking, thinking about this painting, knowing that I had to have something to start with conceptually. I'm paying my bar bill and I happen to look down at the dollar and I'm thinking, my god, petroleum, oil, money, not a bad place to start, not a bad place to start.

MS. RICHARDS: The image of the pyramid on the dollar bill?

MR. WHITTEN: Yeah, came off the dollar bill, notion of power, symbol.

MS. RICHARDS: And the blackness?

MR. WHITTEN: Right, petroleum, a lot of blood in that painting, gallons of blood. MS. RICHARDS: Yeah, I've read that. What kind of blood did you use?

MR. WHITTEN: Out here where I live with the Spanish, they make blood sausages. It's pig's blood. So I can buy it directly from the butcher shops. They sell it frozen. I had already done experimentation with blood in acrylic. It holds.

MS. RICHARDS: Had you?

MR. WHITTEN: Oh yeah.

MS. RICHARDS: For what work? When was that?

MR. WHITTEN: For paintings that I was done during a lot of experimentation and I had to use blood just to see what would happen. So I had paintings already that I had made with blood in it. It's an amazing color, by the way. You're talking pure iron oxide. It doesn't fade or nothing. Acrylic sets it. I had already done some experimentation with blood but when I came up with the theme that was the guiding conceptual principle for the painting, blood, petroleum, money, which I think are the three components that caused 9/11, the politics of that.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

One of my many pet peeves about people is one that that Donnie Jackass has in spades; the desire and ability to make any historical event or factoid of interest all about himself. Such people can't help themselves. They will turn the conversation on any topic into something about themselves and do it in an instant, in a dozen words or less. It's more than ego. It's also a reflection of deep, deep insecurity. Hence, with our severely mentally ill so-called president, his first reaction to the events of 9/11 was to publicly announce that he now owned the tallest building in New York City. The dust clouds hadn't even settled. His egocentric asinine statement wasn't even true, but that's beside the point. What kind of cretin looks at the collapse of the two towers and the nearly 3000 horrific deaths, claps his hands, and immediately boasts that that makes his building #1? The next question, of course (and it's an obviously rhetorical question), is what kind of person then votes for such a person and keeps supporting him at every turn?

Donnie Jackass made it all even worse a few days ago when, in the White House Rose Garden, he announced, to a group of assembled 9/11 first responders, the signing of a bill designed to aid the first responders who are suffering and dying from the exposure to toxic materials at the World Trade Center site. These people are American heroes who raced to the World Trade Center from all over the country to try to save people and then to clean up the site; and you can bet that on that day and the days after, none of them gave a thought to claiming they had bone spurs that would prevent them from doing the job.

Describing the new legislation to his Rose Garden audience as a bill that "provides pensions for those who are suffering from cancer and other illnesses stemming from the toxic debris," our complete jackass of a president just had to create a little self-glorification. He had to make himself a hero too, at least in his sick mind and the sick minds of those who still hang on his every word:

I was down there also, but I'm not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there. I spent a lot of time down there with you.

Sure you were, Donnie. Sure you were. We've all seen those pictures of you with your trusty gold Trump shovel digging in the smoking debris, sometimes down on your hands and knees pawing at the ashes with your tiny hands in your effort to save people because you care soooo much (another claim he's actually made preciously). Was that before or after you claimed to have personally seen thousand of Muslims cheering on the rooftops of Jersey City as the towers fell to the ground! You just always have to exploit the deaths and injuries of others for your own self-aggrandizement. What a piece of shit-piece of work you are! Your 62 million idiot followers are fooled by you but not the rest of us. In fact, inspiring cretin that you are, you have inspired a viral twitter hashtag reaction called #trumpeulogies from those who see you as you really are and imagine you delivering eulogies that fit your sick persona and always make it about your me, me, me self. So, Below is a small selection of some twitter eulogies from those of us who also happen to be eagerly awaiting your own passing:

• From @gtconway3d (Husband of Kellyanne Conartist)-

I will always remember the deceased as someone who appreciated all the tremendous things I did for him

• From @TimOBrien-

We are gathered here today to honor me, because you're dead and I'm not.

• From @Milo (For the late Australian naturalist Steve Irwin)-

He spent his life with thousands of dangerous animals. And I was down there also, but I'm not considering myself a crocodile hunter. But I was down there. I spent a lot of time down there with you.

• From @JoJoFromJerz-

She had blood coming out of her whatever, and now she's gone. Sad.

• From @Josh_PlainTalk-

People were literally dying to hear me give this eulogy. Obama never did that.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

For today, Tuesday 2/26, a reminder of two Tuesday attacks on The United States Of America; one attack was the product of Saudi state-sponsored terrorism. The other attack was the product of Russian intelligence efforts. Now, both governments are enjoying an "extra special relationship" with the Trump Crime Family and its loyal supporters and accomplices in the Republican Party. You might even say ownership rather than relationship.

Retaliation for 9/11 but an embrace for 11/9. The Russians were more sophisticated. They knew they could buy inaction with money-laundered "campaign contributions" via the NRA. "Moral" of the story? The next time an adversary attacks America, all they have to do to avoid retaliation is OK some hotel construction and send a few checks.

Meanwhile, Americans snore.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

One week ago, on the 17th anniversary of the attacks on our country by Osama bin Laden's Saudi confederates, Señor Trumpanzee awoke and grabbed... his phone. The first tweet out of his increasingly sick mind that day was nothing about the solemness of the day. No, instead it was his hourly mantra "No Collusion! No Collusion!" When you are Donald Jackass Trump, you come first, not your country and certainly not those who died so horribly.

Trump saved paying homage to those who died for his second tweet of the day. By that time he was, no doubt, up and about. He eventually found a suit that still fit, and his handlers lured him onto Air Force One for a flight to the site where the "Let's Roll" plane crashed. Who knows what they promised him in order to get him on the plane but I bet it involved a pony, the pictured MAGA cowboy hat, a fresh bucket of KFC and his favorite red blankie, the one with the yellow star on it.

Upon deplaning in Pennsylvania, Trump seized on what he clearly regarded as merely a photo-op. He was so jazzed about that that he couldn't restrain himself and did a double fist pump. The photo-op went viral, just not the way his handlers planned. The photo was destined for memes, just like so many photos of our child president. Hence, tonight's meme, but, there's something else I like about the photo, other than the grossness of Trump doing a double fist pump to mark the occasion. Check out the expressions of the people around him. Melania looks like she's about to cry, not that I have any sympathy for her, and the guy walking next to her is featuring a perfect "What The Fuck" expression. What The Fuck indeed.

Are We Prepared For The Kind Of Catastrophic Disruption That Will Inevitably Lead To A Trump-Bannon Take Over?

-by Michael Wolkowitz

My old friend Michael Wolkowitz tells people he was formed in the late ‘60s. He's a dissident producer, a Social Democrat, and former board member of many progressive organizations, including a stint as the Chair of the Progressive Congress PAC. He put this post together after the Progressive Caucus Summit in Baltimore over the weekend.

I was not able to attend last weekend’s Progressive Congress Summit. I did, however, receive a thought provoking report of remarks made by Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) during a panel discussion. The essence of the report was this:

"What happens if the country is confronted by a security crisis such as 9/11 or something else, no matter what the circumstances are or who is the instigator? We know that the administration will treat this as a political power opportunity the same way Bush did. We (Progressives/Dems/Both or Other) need to think about doing a better job of responding and not letting he-who-must-not-be-named get away with trying to legitimize either himself, his presidency, or his agenda over a inflicted or self-inflicted national security crisis. She bolstered her argument by referring to the falsely created environment in the 2002 and 2004 elections. She did this quite credibly, bypassing the usual conspiracy discussion that often goes with making any point around 9/11. Conspiracy or not, 9/11 became a political strategy."

I agree with Rep. Jayapal and have been concerned about this very issue. Especially as both a Diasporan Jew and a student of 20th Century Revolutions and Regime Changes. I also believe that in addition to Rep. Jayapal's reminders of the reverberations and manipulations that stemmed from 9/11, it is also worth considering that:

Sadly, we are still on that same duplicitous  post-9/11 war footing.

See: Billions of dollars of off-budget (“PayGo” - HA) on-going war expenditures.

See: Violence, death, destruction, displacement, pain and hardship in Afghanistan/Pakistan/Libya/Syria/Iraq/...

See: Guantanamo Bay.

See: Unconsitutional domestic surveillance.

See: Thousands of undisclosed drone and special ops attacks that kill and maim thousands of innocent people.

See: The acceptance of “The Homeland” as a way of referring to our nation (American is bad enough considering the rest of the Americas).

See:  etc. etc. etc.

I mention these continuing and nightmarish issues merely because the current state of affairs requires that our imagination reach beyond 9/11. We must:

• Remember the Reichstag fire and Kristallnacht. 
• Remember overthrowing Mossadegh and installing the Shah. [Quite a list of these... Lumumba, Allende, et ALL].
• Remember Bolsheviks screwing Menshiviks (see: Bannon).
• Imagine Ivanka as Evita (sorry, always need a tee hee factor).
• Mostly, remember the Empires that have fallen. Which ones? Doesn’t matter. Other than our own current reign, they have all fallen since the dawn of recorded history. It’s just a matter of how messy, how many dead people, how much and what kind of pillaging, and who’s turn comes next.

I do not know whose Empire will come next. I do know that we must understand the entire global (animal, vegetable and mineral) context of the threats hovering and opportunities lurking if we are to survive. We must consider the history of homo sapiens who have lived and are living right now throughout the entire planet. There is a slim but real chance that what President Vaclav Havel used to say could happen: "Truth and Love must prevail over Lies and Hatred."

Why Congress Might "Fix" the 9/11 Justice Bill It Just Passed

The Daily Show's nuanced take on the 9/11 Justice bill that Obama vetoed and Congress passed anyway, overriding his veto. Why might Congress reverse that veto-override? Give it a listen.

by Gaius Publius

"Why would [28 senators] vote to override the thing and then go back against it? Because it's not about what they feel. It's about what they want people to think they feel."

We wrote here about the 9//11 Justice Bill (officially, JASTA, or the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act) and Obama's veto of it, which Congress overrode. We also offered some reasons Obama and some Democrats may have been against it, among them the army of well-funded, Saudi-paid lobbyists operating in the U.S. to "discourage" its support. (Obama himself is a man with legacy needs, and down the road, his kind of legacy will also need financing.)

But a second reason for Obama's opposition is this — in essence, one person's "drone strike on an Afghan 'rebel' village" is another person's "state-sponsored terrorism." Put more simply, it's the tit-for-tat problem: "If you can sue me for terrorism, then I can sue you."

Or, put even more simply, revenge. And as Trevor Noah indicated in the video above, the U.S. has much to regret, or at least to protect against, when it comes to stimulating revenge.

Lawmakers' Regrets

So lawmakers are starting to walk back their two votes — one to pass the bill, one to override the veto — and starting to say words like "national security" and "protect the troops" ("troops" being code for anyone in any position who orders or helps implement what foreign victims may see as our own "state-sponsored terrorism"). 

Joseph K. Grieboski, writing in The Hill, discusses this. The headline:

9/11 bill is a global blunder that will weaken US efforts abroad

Before I continue with the article, notice the phrasing above, then ask yourself: "US efforts" to do what? More drone strikes perhaps? A bombing or two? Needless to say, you should be immediately alert that this piece is sympathetic to Obama's position.

The writer continues:

On Thursday [September 29], the U.S. Congress went over the head of President Obama for the first time, passing the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, a piece of legislation effectively removing the principle of sovereign immunity to allow the families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to directly and privately sue the Saudi government for complicity with terrorists.

While most of the hijackers were Saudi nationals, it is critically important that the across-the-aisle 9/11 commission found no evidence that the Saudi government or senior officials funded the attacks, or had any prior knowledge of it. Instead, the commission report lays much of the blame on a failure of U.S. intelligence and border security, citing the fact that al Qaeda gave plenty of notice of their intent to slaughter American civilians, but domestic defense forces devoted little attention or resources toward addressing the threat.

With the passage of the bill, the United States has provided the opportunity for grieving citizens to launch a legal battle against a false enemy, justifiably angering a nation that is not only a huge supplier of oil for the U.S, but has also served as a key ally in the war on terror.

That middle paragraph is pure pro-Saudi argumentum. I left it in specifically you let you see it for what it is. If this bill gets "fixed" — i.e., neutered — that reasoning ("We can't sue the Saudis anyway; there's no proof") will be a constant part of the justification.

Now the next justification for walking back the bill, and the one I mentioned above (revenge):

Following the 15th anniversary of the attacks, JASTA was clearly directed at [sic] families of 9/11 victims. However, this bill has far-reaching consequences, opening the United States up to retaliatory legislation by foreign nations.

The principle of sovereign immunity, protecting a government from civil or criminal suit, has been maintained for so long by a notion of reciprocity — the United States protects itself from suit by in turn protecting other nations. The bill has taken a significant step towards erosion of this global status quo. If the U.S. will not protect the immunity of other nations, especially an ally such as Saudi Arabia, than there is no mechanism in place to prevent retaliatory measures.

"Directed at" 9/11 families exposes the posturing nature of support (as in, they're striking a pose) for this bill by legislators. The writer could have used the phrase "written to support" the 9/11 families, but I appreciate the his honesty in this case. Notice also that this "principle of sovereign immunity" isn't international law, but a kind of gentlemen's agreement, a "notion of reciprocity." There's nothing holding this international principle in place, nothing upgirding it, but fear of consequences. Good to know.

About those objections more specifically. First, the writer notes Obama, speaking in a town hall shortly after the veto override, saying this: "Obama cited a number of concerns with the overriding of his veto. His primary fear seems to be an infringement on the ability of the United States to continue to carry out global disaster relief. ... The president fears that, should other nations pass similar legislation, the U.S. could be forced to curb its humanitarian aid work out of legal necessity."

Of course we'll be sued for disaster relief. That's what everyone does to governments that help them pick themselves from the rubble of earthquake. Yes, that's sarcasm, and yes, that reasoning is the most phony of phony logic. Likely, though, you'll hear it much repeated when this bill is reconsidered.

Paul Ryan, whose Republican House overwhelmingly supported the bill (only 18 Republicans voted No), is having second thoughts as well:

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said the House would take up a bill to fix problems with JASTA after it comes back from its election recess, admitting Obama's concerns that the bill could subject U.S. service members to lawsuits in foreign courts was legitimate.

There's the "support the troops" argument. Another you'll hear much repeated.

And as Trevor Noah noted in the video above, Mitch McConnell is also have voter's remorse.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took to blaming Obama for Senate Republicans' misunderstanding or misreading of the law. "Nobody really had focused on the potential downside in terms of our international relationships. And I think it was just a ball dropped," he stated.

When it comes to protecting the national security state, it seems almost no one wants to get in the way. That includes our major media.

Big Media Wants the Bill "Fixed" (Neutered) as Well

Major press outlets are also overwhelmingly for a "fix." From an overview of press coverage by Fair.org:

...Notice that the possibility of other countries suing the US for war crimes its government commits is automatically assumed to be undesirable. The Washington Post puts “terrorism” in irony quotes because, of course, the US could never actually commit terrorism; claims to this effect could only be invoked “when convenient” by greedy non-Americans.

The New York Times uses its trademark euphemisms to describe how the US is “engaged in the world” with “drone operations.” A nice way of saying the US uses drones to bomb people in a half-dozen countries with—so far—legal impunity. Changing this state of affairs is simply glossed over as a nonstarter.

USA Today frames any attempt at legal recourse over American terrorism overseas as “retaliation”—presumably for some righteous kill executed by the United States in the service of freedom.

The New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today are saying that exposing American military and intelligence personnel to foreign liability is per se bad—a nativism so casual and matter-of-fact one might hardly notice it until circumstances force them to explicitly state it. No account is taken of the 7 billion non-Americans or their rights. No explanation is given as to why victims of US terror–of which there are many–shouldn’t register in our moral calculus. They just don’t.

The many euphemisms used by the press simply say what I wrote more plainly above — "drone operations," for example, from the Times, means "drone strikes" and "drone kills," but without the hint of blood and death.

Yet Obama and Congress Would Let Foreign Companies Sue the U.S. Under NAFTA and TPP

Adam Johnson, the author of the Fair.org piece, notes the irony of U.S. political elites eagerness to (a) protect our government's right to kill with no exposure to lawsuit, while (b), via instruments like NAFTA and TPP, give foreign companies the right to sue the U.S. over any number of "lost profit" claims. He writes:

The irony is that none of these publications were overly concerned with exposing the US to foreign lawsuits when they offered support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a corporate trade deal that includes a provision for  Investor-State Dispute Settlement—meaning it permits corporations to sue governments, including the US, in the event that a regulation undermines corporate profits. So increased exposure to liability to the US government when it gives more power to corporations is permissible, even desirable, but when it might provide recourse for victims of US war crimes? Not so much.

Let's put that even more succinctly. According to U.S. rulers and their agents: Prevent foreign victims from suing the U.S. for lost life, but allow foreign companies to sue the U.S. for lost money. Shows where their hearts are at, I think. It's clearly with the money, which keeps their system running, and not the victims of it.

Bottom line: After the election, most likely in the lame duck session, the 9/11 families will be sold out by Congress men and women who won't have to face another election for at least two years. Unless those families continue the fight, which I expect. It will be a long slog though. The nearness of this election, I suspect, was part of why the bill got to the floor this time.

Some battles, especially against holder of great wealthy and their enablers, seem never to end. I think, no matter who wins the presidency, that war will further ignite, but that's a thought for another day.

Aruba... Jamaica...

Let's end on a cheerier note. Did I hear Roy Wood Jr. mention "Aruba... Jamaica..." in the clip above? Here you go:

The Beach Boys, set to shots of Barbara Eden in Eden

No victim lawsuits in those smiles.

GP
 

Remembering 9/14 (that's right, 9/14) with the one and only Mitch Waxman, who muses on "the American way"

Mitch writes: "When I was out wandering around on the 11th in Long Island City, it was somewhat forefront in my mind that I wanted to get an uncommon shot of the Freedom Tower from Newtown Creek, which is why I was wandering around in spots which are normally avoided due to fear of arrest for trespassing. The shot above overlooks the DB Cabin railroad bridge and the mouth of Dutch Kills, incidentally." Note 1 World Trade Center -- once, but no longer, aka the Freedom Tower -- popping out of the Manhattan skyline in the background. [All photos by Mitch; click to enlarge.]

by Ken

Especially since my Wednesday-Friday-Sunday DWT schedule had me posting on 9/11, I gave a fair amount of thought to some sort of 9/11-themed post, only to decide that, even with a deadline looming, I didn't have anything sufficiently post-worthy to pull it off -- not even in the week when I finally paid a visit to the One World Observatory, occupying the top three floors of the finally-open-for-business One World Trade Center (which somewhere along the way lost its original designation of "Freedom Tower." I gather the point along the way was when the developers figured out that it would be a lot easier to rent out a building called One World Trade Center than one called Freedom Tower.)

So I've had a ball today with the Newtown Pentacle post by my intrepid NYC-gadding pal Mitch Waxman, titled "fear him," which features an assortment of predictably sensational photos he took on a rare Sunday of solo gadding on this 9/11. (He explains that, while he does frequently get to wander solo during the week, more often than not on the weekends he's leading tours or participating in other public events.)

It turns out that on Sunday Mitch was assailed by a quasi-biblical plague:

I was attacked by friggin Grasshoppers while in pursuit of some of the images in today's post. Grasshoppers, as in a biblical plague like swarm of giant bugs flying at me with murder on their minds -- a gang of grasshoppers in friggin Long Island City. . . .


It was while I was crouched down to get the shot above [which you can click on to enlarge -- Ed.] that the Grasshoppers grew angry at me, and hundreds of chitin clad bullets suddenly erupted from the brush. While I was flailing about in the buzzing crowd, a cramp developed in my left arm and one of my "spells" came upon me. I must've been laying on the tracks crying for a good half hour, cursing the fact that I hadn't decided on studio photography rather than urban landscape. The horror...

For a reason I'll explain in a moment, today Mitch has taken to looking back at what we might call This Day in History, 9/14, sprinkling these remembrances through the post:

On this day in 326 A.D., Emperor Constantine the Great's mom Helena (Helena was the Augusta Imperatrix) is said to have recovered a piece of the True Cross in Palestine, as well as finding the site of the burning bush and a few other odds and ends. She's a Saint now, the Augusta Imperatrix.

In 1741, George Frideric Handel's oratorio "Messiah" was completed on this day.

In 1812, an antichrist named Napoleon marched the Grand Armée of France into the City of Moscow on September 14th.

In 1901, President William McKinley died. The President was shot by an anarchist on Sept. 6th, and it was gangrene that ended up doing him in. McKinley's Vice President, Theodore Roosevelt, succeeded him.

On Sept. 14th in 1959, a Soviet built probe called "Luna 2" crashed into the moon, making it the first man made object to reach the satellite.

In 1715, the French monk Dom Pérignon died on September 14th, and in 1836 - so did Aaron Burr. In the United States, September 14th is "National Eat a Hoagie day."

So what's got Mitch chronicling all those 9/14s past? Here again let me put together two paragraphs from Mitch's post, which you'll not take him back to 9/11 itself:

It occurs, since these shots were largely collected on the 11th of September, that there are certain calendrical markers which loom large in the collective mind. Unfortunately, these events tend to reflect recent history, whereas other moments which were once considered to be of maximum importance are forgotten. September 11th will be remembered for the events of 2001, of course, but what about September the 14th? . . .

Even on the day of the attacks, I mentioned to the little gaggle of refugees who had gathered at my home office in Upper Manhattan that it would be just a matter of two to three decades before Sept. 11th became a legal holiday of national remembrance like Labor Day. Within five to six decades, it would lose its significance, like Labor Day or Veterans Day have. Future generations would figure their vacations around the week between Labor Day and what will likely be called Remembrance Day, and there would be sales at retailers. It’s crass, but that’s the American way.

Yessir, that's the American way. And at the 15-year mark, Mitch's vision seems to be taking shape pretty much on schedule.



A new take on a favorite Long Island City-scape of Mitch's: Below grade in the foreground, a Long Island Rail Road train emerges from its tunnel under the East River, while overhead the subway viaduct waits for no. 1 7 [thanks for correction, D!] trains heading toward or coming from their tunnel not far from the LIRR one, and everywhere else in the photo the new supertall LIC skyscape takes shape. [Again, click to enlarge.]

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It's lucky the WTC 9/11 Memorial is perfect, 'cause its overseers insist nothing can be changed

"9/11 Memorial President Joe Daniels . . . said the sculpture couldn't be placed inside the hallowed grounds.

" 'It's just not a part of the design of the memorial plaza itself,' said Daniels, who added that they are unable to add objects not part of the original plans."

-- from Ben Fractenberg's May 15 DNAinfo report (see below)

From the PWP Landscape Architecture website: "The National September 11th Memorial commemorates the victims of the attacks at the Pentagon, at Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and at the World Trade Center site, both on September 11, 2001, and February 26, 1993. Two gigantic voids – in the footprints of the Twin Towers – and a surrounding forest of oak trees form the core of the rebuilt World Trade Center in New York City and provide a place for contemplation and remembrance within this revitalized urban center."

by Ken

I like the 9/11 Memorial on the site of the destroyed World Trade Center towers, especially now that the plaza is more or less open to pedestrian traffic, no longer requiring the visitor to go through the insane, blocks-long security rigamarole that used to be required to access the site. (The "more or less open" refers to the considerable areas around the plaza which are still cordoned off for ongoing construction.)

I also like the adjacent 9/11 Museum, though entry still requires security rigamarole that seems to me excessive. There's even interesting programming there. Why, I myself have attended a program there, a free one in May featuring NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller, an established security and terrorism expert, talking about, you know, present-day security and terrorism issues, with specific reference to the interview he did with Osama bin Laden in May 1998 for ABC News. In my mind I still see John Miller as a hustling young local TV news reporter. He's built quite a career since then, though, in both journalism and government, and it was interesting as well as informative to see and hear him talk about the subject.

And now I realize it's a lucky thing that the overall project turned out pretty much okay, because we've discovered -- who knew? -- that the plan from which it was built was perfect and unchangeable, apparently in perpetuity.

The discovery came, for most of us, in the ongoing brouhaha over the ultimate destination of the sphere sculpture designed by Fritz Koenig which somehow survived the WTC devastation, and has been housed "temporarily" -- since 2002 -- in the northeast corner of Lower-most Manhattan's Battery Park, as noted in Irene Plagianos's DNAinfo report late yesterday afternoon (lots of links onsite):

Koenig Sphere Moving to WTC Liberty Park, Port Authority Says

By Irene Plagianos | July 21, 2016 4:32pm


The Fritz Koenig sphere sculpture moved to Battery Park in 2002 after being pulled from the rubble at Ground Zero. [Click to enlarge.] It will now be moved to Liberty Park at the WTC site.

FINANCIAL DISTRICT — A 25-ton bronze sculpture that became a symbol of resilience after Sept. 11 is returning to the World Trade Center site — but not to its original home.

Artist Fritz Koenig's Sphere which was pulled from the wreckage of the World Trade Center nearly 15 years ago damaged, but not destroyed after 9/11 will be placed at the WTC's newly opened Liberty Park, an elevated, leafy oasis that overlooks the 9/11 Memorial Plaza.

Port Authority officials voted unanimously Thursday afternoon to move The Sphere, a globe originally designed to symbolize world peace, from its home in Battery Park into Liberty Park before the end of the year, officials said. The sphere had been at Battery Park since 2002 when it was rededicated as a memorial to those who died and an icon of hope.

The decision comes after years of debate about where the giant sphere would ultimately rest. Its placement in Battery Park had been deemed temporary by the Port Authority, which owns the sculpture, while scores of people — residents, families of 9/11 victims, survivors and first responders — have long demanded that 27-foot-high sphere return to its original location, where the 9/11 Memorial Plaza now sits.

While many, including the Battery Park Conservancy, the nonprofit that manages the Battery, wanted to see the Sphere moved, not all in the community were happy with the decision to bring the sculpture to the park, instead of the 9/11 Memorial.

At Thursday's Port Authority meeting, several people voiced concerns about the sphere being placed at the park, some saying it would create too much of a tourist attraction in an area meant to be a peaceful place. Others held that the sphere should simply return to its actual home, join a plaza that's meant to memorialize those who died, or be given a permanent home inside the 9/11 Museum.

“The sphere belongs on the memorial plaza — it can restore some dignity, some gravitas to the site,” said Richard Hughes, a co-founder of the Twin Towers Alliance, a citizens watchdog group for the WTC site. “Now it’s a place where people are playing Pokemon GO, rather than paying their respect.”

The 9/11 Memorial has long said that the Sphere was not part of its original plans, so it can’t be placed there.

Pat Foye, the executive director of the Port Authority said Thursday that the 9/11 Memorial and Museum is “unalterably opposed" to siting the sphere on its property, and there's nothing the Port Authority can do about it — however, he enthusiastically endorsed the Sphere's new Liberty Park location.

"I wholeheartedly recommend that you vote to bring the Sphere back home," he told the panel of Port Authority commissioners.

Foye also said that the relocation of the Sphere is being embraced by the St. Nicholas National Shrine, a reincarnation of St. Nicholas Church, the longtime Greek Orthodox Church that was destroyed on Sept. 11 that is still being built atop Liberty Park.

Michael Burke, whose firefighter brother was killed on 9/11 and has long led the charge to bring the Sphere back to the WTC site, said that he's now onboard with the Liberty Park location.

"I toured this site the other day, and I think it provides a quiet place [for The Sphere], someplace unobtrusive and peaceful," he told the board.

The 92-year-old German artist behind the globe, Fritz Koening, has also said he is pleased with its new location.

I might add that every time I've passed the Sphere in its "temporary" location, it has been a center of attention, exerting an almost magnetic attraction for Battery Park passersby, of both the out-of-town and the local variety. I might also add that I'm not  offended beyond reason by the now-adopted plan to relocate the Sphere, now that it must give up its lovely spot in Battery Park, to the new Liberty Park adjacent to the WTC site.

What caught my attention, though, was this:

The 9/11 Memorial has long said that the Sphere was not part of its original plans, so it can’t be placed there.

Pat Foye, the executive director of the Port Authority said Thursday that the 9/11 Memorial and Museum is “unalterably opposed" to siting the sphere on its property, and there's nothing the Port Authority can do about it — however, he enthusiastically endorsed the Sphere's new Liberty Park location.

Huh? No consideration is possible of whether the Sphere belongs on the 9/11 Memorial site (can there be any question that it does?), or of whether it could be incorporated into the design of the plaza (which I'll bet it can). No changes are allowed to the original design.

There's a link here, which turns out to be to this earlier DNAinfo report by Ben Fractenberg, so I followed it. (Again, there are lots of links onsite.)

World Trade Sphere Must be Moved to 9/11 Memorial, Downtown Residents Say

By Ben Fractenberg | May 15, 2012 8:03am


The sphere in Battery Park in the spring of 2010. It has to move by this fall for construction.

DOWNTOWN — Downtown residents demanded that one of the last remaining objects from Ground Zero become part of the National 9/11 Memorial at a heated Community Board meeting Monday night.

A petition signed by more than 7,000 people asked that The Sphere — a 25-foot-tall sculpture originally at the World Trade Center and now in Battery Park City — become part of the memorial.

"[The Sphere] offers just how much horror, tragedy, violence went on that day," Battery Park resident Jeffery Mihok said.

Mihok called the current memorial "very crisp and antiseptic," and said the sculpture would provide a "great counterpoint to the thought-out nature for the rest of the memorial."

9/11 Memorial President Joe Daniels, who was at the meeting to update the board about projects and construction, said the sculpture couldn't be placed inside the hallowed grounds.

"It's just not a part of the design of the memorial plaza itself," said Daniels, who added that they are unable to add objects not part of the original plans.

The Sphere is currently slated to be moved from Battery Park to a new location, which the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is expected to announce this week.

It was supposed to have been moved to a hangar at John F. Kennedy International Airport until a new home was found, but officials decried the plan.

"It simply cannot be mothballed in some musty hangar at JFK," Sen. Charles Schumer told reporters Saturday.

"It must remain, like now, accessible as a public touchstone for New Yorkers and the visitors from the four corners of the globe."

But community members feel there is only one acceptable place for it to move.

"Putting The Sphere anywhere else denies its meaning," said Michael Burke, whose brother was a first responder killed during the attacks.

Burke started the petition and said he has gotten signatures from people from all over the world.

"'Do the right thing,' is the most common thing expressed on the petition," he said.

Daniels said that while The Sphere can't be placed inside the memorial, he wants to help make sure it is placed somewhere appropriate.

"The most important thing is that this artifact is preserved in a way the public can visit it, learn about it any way they want to," Daniels said.

Sandwiched in here, you'll note, we have the position on the Sphere of 9/ll Memorial President Daniels which I've put atop this post:

"It's just not a part of the design of the memorial plaza itself," said Daniels, who added that they are unable to add objects not part of the original plans.

Wow -- "they are unable to add objects not part of the original plans"! My first thought on reading this was: In the entire history of the human race, has anything ever been built to which nothing could ever be added, at any time, for any reason? My second thought was: Is it really God's-honest-truth, President Daniels, that absolutely nothing has been added -- or, presumably, subtracted? -- to the project since the original plan was designed? Cross your heart and hope to die?

As you may have guessed, I'm dubious. I'd like to know more about this absolute prohibition, this undeviating, unalterable fidelity to the original plan. I can understand as a general principle that the original plan be followed as closely as possible. That closes the way to all sorts of proposals, most of which would likely be highly objectionable. If the idea was that succeeding generations of site custodians might be dangerously susceptible to dubious proposals, the idea isn't without merit. Still and all, is the original plan so sacred that additions can't even be considered? Not even one as clearly deserving of at least consideration as the Sphere? (And is it just additions that can't be allowed? As opposed to subtractions and/or alterations?)

Apparently so. Because the only other explanation is that we've got some self-important bureaucrats digging in their heels on account of they don't wanna, you can't make me.

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Catching up with Mitch Waxman: "If you see something, say something" -- but what of it?

"If you see something, say something"? Just another day on the platform of the 46th Street station of the R train, in Long Island City, Queens. But wait, what's that silver kitchen-trash-can thing, and what's it doing sitting unattended on the platform?

by Ken

I assume folks outside NYC are also told constantly, "If you see something, say something." But certainly we NY-ers have heard it a lot in the post-9/11 world. But what happens, you may wonder, when you see something and you do say something? Not for the first time, our old pal Mitch Waxman had occasion to ask this question, and not for the first time he wasn't exactly crazy about what he found out.

I've been looking for an opportunity since I resumed blogging to catch up with Mitch Waxman, that inveterately cantankerous man-on-the-move-with-a-camera, usually found trudging through the precincts of Western Queens, including the Brooklyn side of his beloved Newtown Creek ("the Newtown Creek," as Mitch and other close personal aficionados of "the" Newtown Creek would put it) -- but also anyplace in the NYC metro area within hailing distance of water. And even, when dire necessity dictates it, in the underground precincts of the subway system, precincts he doesn't visit except under the duress of circumstance.

As I've said any number of times here, Mitch's Monday-Friday Newtown Pentacle blog is my only blogorific "must read." I love the way Mitch trains his formidable powers of observation and the way his wide-ranging mind processes all that material, and I don't know of anyone who makes richer, more revealing use of those basic blog tools: pictures and worse. As I've also mentioned here, when I made that observation to Mitch, he immediately connected it to his history as a comic-book creator, using those very same tools, pictures and words.

The pictures, of course, are peerless, and even for someone as photographically inept as yours truly there's fascination in the virtual photography clinic Mitch frequently includes in his blogposting. I imagine that for actual photo bugs his technical tips must be a treasurable resource. And the words, well, nobody looks at our fair city with quite the betrayed passion that Mitch does.

There was a splendid Newtown Pentacle post a couple of weeks ago, "reptilian devils," in which Mitch went off as only he can go off on worldly conspiracy-seers, built around his charmingly documented conviction that the standard suspects are far too inept to be masterminding and actually carrying out these grandiose webs of secrets. "I want to believe. The world would be so much more interesting if all the nutty and paranoid stuff was true. . . . Have you actually interacted with the government? Try it out, and that should sunder all notions of the 'hidden hand.' " Dark and hilarious -- vintage Mitch.

Then there's today's post, "tried every." It's not a post where the pictures loom as large as they often do on Newtown Pentacle -- this is more of a "story" post -- but still the pictures are gorgeous, aren't they? (You can see them larger-size onsite, with links to even larger sizes.)

tried every

I mentioned this over the weekend to my Facebook peeps, now it’s your turn…


– photo by Mitch Waxman

An old friend of mine recently hit a bit of a health crisis. Surgery ensued, and she’s having a bit of trouble with the purely existential part of her life during recovery – food shopping, laundry, the lifting and carrying sort of stuff. Our Lady of the Pentacle and I volunteered to help her out, and last Saturday our plan involved an afternoon trip to Hunters Point to help out with “whatever.” Before you ask: a) my old friend doesn’t live in one of the new buildings (it’s one of those century old and quite rickety walk up jobs on Jackson where she has lived for literally decades), and b) there was no connection between Court Square and the IND station at Queens Plaza due to maintenance work so we took the R from Astoria and hoofed it the rest of the way.

That’s not the story, though, that’s just the setup.

[SEE THE PHOTO ATOP THIS POST]

Now, this was Fourth of July weekend, of course. The news was abuzz with the news that NYPD was operating a full scale and City wide security operation, and that Hunters Point in particular was going to be focused on due to the gathering at the waterfront to watch the fireworks. I call it the Homeland Security Kabuki show, for various reasons. Pretty standard stuff, in the age of the Terror Wars.

What wasn’t standard was the steel cylinder, which appeared to be some sort of garbage can, sitting on the 46th street subway platform. Having “seen something” a humble narrator thereupon went over to the MTA Station Agent housed in the booth and let her know that the incongruous item was there. She indicated that the authorities would be alerted, and I boarded the incoming R train having “said something.”

As a note, when I arrived at Queens Plaza, I walked over to the NYPD office at the end of the platform and informed the on duty officer of the situation – and also showed him the picture positioned above. He seemed concerned about it.

I was thanked and told that it would be investigated.


– photo by Mitch Waxman

Of course, the 114th precinct being what it is, when Our Lady of the Pentacle and I returned to the 46th street station some three and change hours later… the curious cylinder was still there and clearly unmolested or investigated. That’s when I posted about my experience, and made sure that our local Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer was tagged in my missive. He let me know that he had contacted the precinct and that it would be dealt with. In my neighborhood, JVB is the motive force of all things, and as I’ve mentioned in the past, the council member has a unique ability to twist the dials and move the levers of the municipal machinery.

The thing about Queens which drives me absolutely mad is why it is that when someone “sees something” and “says something,” you still need a high government official to cajole the freaking cops into doing their damn jobs. As far as the MTA station agent goes, she probably didn’t have the union certifications for dialing the phone.

I think it’s the International Brotherhood of Button Pushers, Local 5, who does that. You also need three Union carpenters on duty, but you always need three carpenters for some reason.

WANDERING WITH MITCH

Read more »

No One Brought Their Klan Robes To The Trump Rally In Birmingham

The Republican side of the story is that a big-- very big-- scary black man in a #BlackLivesMatter t-shirt came to a Trump rally in Birmingham looking for trouble and interrupted Trump's address by shouting "Black Lives Matter." Besides, they didn't lynch him so what's all the fuss? After all, what's a little shoving, punching and kicking between neighbors? Mob violence in Alabama, after all, is as American as sweet potato pie-- or at least in their version of what's American. The non-Republican side is simpler: a mob of white racists ganged up on a black man and beat him up... Sweet Home, Alabama!

Did Trump incite them to violence with his repeated demands that they "get him the hell out of here?" After all, the next day he was on Fox and Friends telling the droogs that "Maybe he should have been roughed up. It was disgusting what he was doing." And by definition, of course, anyone who interrupts Trump is disgusting. Listen to what Trump said in Birmingham and you tell me:



Is Trump inciting people to violence against Muslims with his repeated lies that he personally saw Muslims in Jersey City cheering after the World Trade Center came down? "There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down. I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down-- as those buildings came down, and that tells you something. It was well covered at the time." He saw it the same way Carly Fiorina saw Planned Parenthood executives plotting a baby brain extraction business model-- he saw it in his sick and sickening mind.

In response, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop said Trump "has memory issues or willfully distorts the truth, either of which should be concerning for the Republican Party."

"Trump is plain wrong, and he is shamefully politicizing an emotionally charged issue. No one in Jersey City cheered on September 11th," Fulop said. "We were actually among the first to provide responders to help in lower Manhattan. Trump needs to understand that Jersey City will not be part of his hate campaign."

And by the way, the Washington Post Fact Checker gave Trump 4 Pinocchinos for his 9/11 lie.

This appears to be another case of Trump’s overactive imagination, much like his baseless claim that the George W. Bush White House tried to “silence” his Iraq war opposition in 2003. We looked and looked-- and could find absolutely no evidence to support his claim.

But that was merely a matter of self-aggrandizement, whereas now Trump has defamed the Muslim communities of New Jersey. He cannot simply assert something so damning; he must provide some real evidence or else issue an apology.

Predictably, Politifact made the same ruling, although, at leastgraphically, even stronger:

"Thousands and thousands." Why not millions?

Even Virginia's right-wing former governor, Jim Gilmore, is now overtly referring to Trump's ideas as fascist. But when Jersey Governor Chris Christie was asked by reporters about Trump's outrageous charges regarding people in his state cheering about 9/11, all he could do was whine that he can't remember. Afraid of President Trumpy? Christie, soon to be out of a job and looking for work: "I don’t recall that. I don’t... it’s not something that was part of my recollection. I think if it had happened, I would remember it. But, you know, there could be things I forget, too. I don’t remember that. No." Just vile! So the newest Republican Establishment line is now "Only Mitt Romney can save us from the Trumpist fascism that is sweeping the Republican Party base" and chopping their Deep Bench into little, unrecognizable pieces. After all Mitt, avowedly a non-candidate, is polling way ahead of Trump in New Hampshire. Oh.

• Mitt- 31.0%
• Trumpy- 14.6%
• Cruz- 6.8%
• Dr. Ben- 6.8%
• Kasich- 6.4%
• Rubio- 6.2%
• Jeb- 2.8%
• Fiorina- 2.6%
• Christie- 2.4%
• Rand- 2.2%

Lindsey got one vote so he merited a 0.2% and Huckabee got 2 votes so he's rated a 0.4% but poor Santorum didn't even get a single vote. Does New Hampshire want Mitt? Well, they may want him more than the other garbage candidates the GOP is offering but... probably not. In 2012 he only got 46% of the vote against Obama and lost every single population center. Although he tied Obama in Dixville-- 5 votes each-- He only managed 23% in Lyme and 24% in Hanover. In fact, Romney's only New Hampshire blowout was in the Coos County township of Millsfield (100% white and with a family median income of $59,375) where he beat Obama 16 (73%) to 5 (23%).

Oh, and by the by, Trump is again threatening the GOP that if they try to pull anything on him, he'll tear up the peace treaty he signed and run as an independent next November. He was on ABC-TV's This Week extolling the virtues of waterboarding when Stephanopoulos asked him if he would consider a third-party run if GOP opponents try "to take you out." Stephanopoulos was referencing Liz Mair's revelations about a Dark Money Trump Card attack group and her promises in the Wall Street Journal to defeat him. Kasich, Rubio and Jeb fat cat donors are coming together with millions of dollars to make a last-ditch effort to derail Trump. Trump said, "I will see what happens. I have to be treated fairly. If I'm treated fairly, I'm fine."

As a limited liability company, Trump Card LLC wouldn’t have to disclose its donors to the Federal Election Commission. Viveca Novak, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics, said she was aware of no restrictions on the kinds of political activities that could be funded through an LLC. “Anyone can set one up,” she said. “You don’t know who is behind it.”

Ms. Mair, who has ties to the libertarian movement and the GOP establishment, said that donors backing Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Mr. Kasich and Mr. Bush are interested, and that some worry that going public could hurt their candidate.

Rick Wilson, a Republican media consultant, said in an interview that he is prepared to make ads for the new group. Mr. Wilson isn’t involved in fundraising but predicted that a number of Republican donors will start bankrolling an anti-Trump effort.

“People are finally taking the threat that Trump will destroy the Republican Party and lose the general election to Hillary Clinton seriously,” said Mr. Wilson, who recently started working for a new super PAC backing Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

The super PAC supporting Mr. Kasich, New Day for America, on Thursday began airing a series of ads that show Mr. Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson while invoking the Nov. 13 Paris terrorist attacks. “On-the-job training for president does not work,” an ad says.

Mr. Trump responded by threatening to sue the super PAC. “John Kasich should focus his special-interest money on building up his failed image, not negative ads on me,” Mr. Trump said in one of a stream of posts on Twitter.

...Ms. Mair’s anti-Trump effort is planning an especially blunt and direct approach. The group’s memo said it would be pitching opposition research to media in early-voting states, as well as radio and television ads and Web videos that attract media attention based on their “outrageousness and boundary-breaking or bizarre nature.”

One possible ad would link Mr. Trump’s views and style to his celebrity foe, Rosie O’Donnell, in hopes of provoking a reaction from Mr. Trump, according to the memo.

Other possible tactics include fake pro-Trump ads that show him supporting socialized medicine, seizing property through eminent domain and taking other positions that stray from GOP orthodoxy; using a Trump impersonator to show him insulting people; and attacking his business record in “stark, nasty terms.”

The goal, according to the memo, isn’t to convert Mr. Trump’s supporters into backing other candidates, but to dissuade them from voting altogether, especially in New Hampshire’s influential first-in-the-nation primary.

For financing, the memo said the group is seeking $250,000 from donors in multiple GOP presidential camps.

Hypocritical Crackpot Republicans Blame Obama (And Hillary) For ISIS Terrorism In Paris

When I heard that the refugee camp in Calais had gone up in flames Friday night during the terrorist attack in Paris I had two competing thoughts-- attacking the fleeing Syrian refugees was part of the ISIS plan, or that neo-Nazis from Le Pen's Front National found themselves some defenseless targets who couldn't fight back. There were around 6,000 people living there, trying to make their way to the U.K. Would rightists be so inhuman as to set a refugee camp on fire? France is in the middle of a regional election campaign and the front-running candidate in the Calais region is none other than Marine Le Pen, leader of the fascist party who hopes to be elected president of France in 2017.

Here in America, our own home-grown terrorists neo-fascists haven't set any refugees on fire yet but they have certainly been exploiting the horrors of Friday night's attacks in Paris, Ted Cruz and Trump, of course, more than the rest. They're beating up on President Obama for somehow not preventing the tragedy in France, while forgetting Bush didn't even bother to pursue bin-Laden (while Obama's administration sent him to the bottom of the Indian Ocean) and, apparently, forgetful that warnings about a certain tragedy much closer to home were willfully ignored by Cheney and Bush not very long ago. Just a few days ago, Chris Whipple, executive producer and writer of Showtime's The Spymasters: CIA in the Crosshairs, writing for Politico, reminded Americans-- with startling new evidence-- how the Bush Administration-- which Ted Cruz was a part of-- ignored warnings from the CIA and others about the imminent dangers that are now known as 9/11.

"Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." The CIA’s famous Presidential Daily Brief, presented to George W. Bush on August 6, 2001, has always been Exhibit A in the case that his administration shrugged off warnings of an Al Qaeda attack. But months earlier, starting in the spring of 2001, the CIA repeatedly and urgently began to warn the White House that an attack was coming.

By May of 2001, says Cofer Black, then chief of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, “it was very evident that we were going to be struck, we were gonna be struck hard and lots of Americans were going to die.” “There were real plots being manifested,” Cofer’s former boss, George Tenet, told me in his first interview in eight years. “The world felt like it was on the edge of eruption. In this time period of June and July, the threat continues to rise. Terrorists were disappearing [as if in hiding, in preparation for an attack]. Camps were closing. Threat reportings on the rise.” The crisis came to a head on July 10. The critical meeting that took place that day was first reported by Bob Woodward in 2006. Tenet also wrote about it in general terms in his 2007 memoir At the Center of the Storm.

...The drama of failed warnings began when Tenet and Black pitched a plan, in the spring of 2001, called “the Blue Sky paper” to Bush’s new national security team. It called for a covert CIA and military campaign to end the Al Qaeda threat—“getting into the Afghan sanctuary, launching a paramilitary operation, creating a bridge with Uzbekistan.” “And the word back,” says Tenet, “‘was ‘we’re not quite ready to consider this. We don’t want the clock to start ticking.’” (Translation: they did not want a paper trail to show that they’d been warned.) Black, a charismatic ex-operative who had helped the French arrest the terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, says the Bush team just didn’t get the new threat: “I think they were mentally stuck back eight years [before]. They were used to terrorists being Euro-lefties—they drink champagne by night, blow things up during the day, how bad can this be? And it was a very difficult sell to communicate the urgency to this.”

That morning of July 10, the head of the agency’s Al Qaeda unit, Richard Blee, burst into Black’s office. “And he says, ‘Chief, this is it. Roof's fallen in,’” recounts Black. “The information that we had compiled was absolutely compelling. It was multiple-sourced. And it was sort of the last straw.” Black and his deputy rushed to the director’s office to brief Tenet. All agreed an urgent meeting at the White House was needed. Tenet picked up the white phone to Bush’s National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. “I said, ‘Condi, I have to come see you,’” Tenet remembers. “It was one of the rare times in my seven years as director where I said, ‘I have to come see you. We're comin' right now. We have to get there.’”

Tenet vividly recalls the White House meeting with Rice and her team. (George W. Bush was on a trip to Boston.) “Rich [Blee] started by saying, ‘There will be significant terrorist attacks against the United States in the coming weeks or months. The attacks will be spectacular. They may be multiple. Al Qaeda's intention is the destruction of the United States.’" [Condi said:] ‘What do you think we need to do?’ Black responded by slamming his fist on the table, and saying, ‘We need to go on a wartime footing now!’”

...Tenet, who is perhaps the agency’s most embattled director ever, can barely contain himself when talking about the unheeded warnings he says he gave the White House. Twirling an unlit cigar and fidgeting in his chair at our studio in downtown Washington, D.C., he says with resignation: “I can only tell you what we did and what we said.” And when asked about his own responsibility for the attacks on 9/11, he is visibly distraught. “There was never a moment in all this time when you blamed yourself?” I ask him. He shifts uncomfortably in his chair. “Well, look, there … I still look at the ceiling at night about a lot of things. And I'll keep them to myself forever. But we're all human beings."

One of the first candidates for Congress Blue America has endorsed this cycle is the Mayor of Garden Grove in Orange County, Bao Nguyen, not the kind of guy to align himself with reactionaries and fascists like Le Pen, Trump and Cruz. Literally, while I was writing this post, thinking about the burning camp in Calais, he sent me this message: "I am a former refugee whose family was separated to escape Vietnam illegally, while eight months in utero, from the terrors of communist oppression. As a child, I was frequently asked whether I was from the North or the South, and on occasion, I was called 'Viet Cong' or 'gook.'

"I stand in solidarity with the victims of the terrors of war and violence, no matter their race or creed. My roots run deep, always yearning for freedom, where they meet the roots of our great nation-- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. God bless America!"

"A dark portrait of America-- impotent against Islamic State militants, vulnerable against shadowy, undocumented refugees, and isolated in a world of fraying alliances-- emerged from the Republican presidential field on Saturday as candidates seized on the Paris attacks to try to elevate terrorism into a defining issue in the 2016 election," wrote Patrick Healy for the NY Times.

Leading Republicans like Donald J. Trump, Ben Carson and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas called on the Obama administration to halt plans to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees next year. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, warning that the Islamic State would leverage the Paris attacks to add recruits and raise money, said the United States needed to move immediately to assemble a stronger coalition to fight the militants.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida urged Americans to transform their “mind-set” and recognize that “an organized effort to destroy Western civilization” is underway. And Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Americans and President Obama should accept that ground troops-- up to 10,000 of them-- would be needed as part of any coalition of Middle Eastern and European countries to fight the Islamic State.

The Republicans also broadly agreed that the Paris attacks should be the catalyst for a new military strategy against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, which has claimed responsibility for the carnage on Friday. “This will be coming to America,” Mr. Cruz warned. “ISIS plans to bring these acts of terror to America.”

...The most striking aspect of the remarks by the Republicans were the ominous tones and foreboding language that emphasized a kind of fortress-America outlook. Even candidates like Mr. Kasich tempered their previous support for accepting more refugees and migrants from Syria and other countries from the Middle East, reflecting fears that extremists would try to slip through any open door. (A Syrian passport was reportedly found on the body of one of the attackers in Paris.)

...The toughest language came from Mr. Cruz, who is widely viewed as rising in the Republican field after a pair of well-received debate performances. He argued, for instance, that the United States must be willing to accept civilian deaths in Syria and Iraq in order to defeat the Islamic State through intensified airstrikes.

“It will not be deterred by targeted airstrikes with zero tolerance for civilian casualties, when the terrorists have such utter disregard for innocent life,” Mr. Cruz said on Friday night. On Saturday, in an appearance on Fox and Friends, he went on to castigate the president for not being willing, in his view, to go to every length to fight terrorists. “I recognize Barack Obama does not wish to defend this country.”

Mr. Rubio, who is also ascending in the polls, also framed the Paris attacks as a matter of leadership.

“The problem is this president finds himself in a political box, a domestic political box where on the one hand he knows this is something we need but on the other hand he’s restrained by his desire to not be a president that gets us re-engaged in another Middle Eastern conflict,” he said in an interview. “But this is not a Middle Eastern conflict alone.”

As much as the Republicans were adamant that Mr. Obama had not done enough in the fight against the Islamic State, most of them were still tentative about committing more American ground troops to that effort.

Never heard any of these hypocrites criticize Bush or Cheney for "dithering" (the word Kasich used to describe President Obama) when he could have prevented 9/11. Did you?

This morning, at The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald pointed out who the actual culprits who empowered ISIS are (spoiler: not Ed Snowden, who right-wingers are trying to blame). Greenwald was "surprised just by how quickly and blatantly-- how shamelessly-- some of them jumped to exploit the emotions prompted by the carnage in France to blame Snowden: doing so literally as the bodies still lay on the streets of Paris. At first, the tawdry exploiters were the likes of crazed ex-intelligence officials (former CIA chief James Woolsey, who once said Snowden “should be hanged by his neck until he is dead” and now has deep ties to private NSA contractors, along with Iran–obsessed Robert Baer); former Bush/Cheney apparatchiks (ex-White House spokesperson and current Fox personality Dana Perino); right-wing polemicists fired from BuzzFeed for plagiarism; and obscure Fox News comedians (Perino’s co-host).

...[T]here’s the desperation to prevent people from asking how and why ISIS was able to spring up seemingly out of nowhere and be so powerful, able to blow up a Russian passenger plane, a market in Beirut, and the streets of Paris in a single week. That’s the one question western officials are most desperate not to be asked, so directing people’s ire to Edward Snowden and Apple is beneficial in the extreme.

The origins of ISIS are not even in dispute. The Washington Post put it simply: “almost all of the leaders of the Islamic State are former Iraqi officers, including the members of its shadowy military and security committees, and the majority of its emirs and princes.” Even Tony Blair-- Tony Blair-- admits that there’d be no ISIS without the invasion of Iraq: “‘I think there are elements of truth in that,’ he said when asked whether the Iraq invasion had been the ‘principal cause’ of the rise of ISIS.” As the New Yorker‘s John Cassidy put it in August:

By destroying the Iraqi state and setting off reverberations across the region that, ultimately, led to a civil war in Syria, the 2003 invasion created the conditions in which a movement like ISIS could thrive. And, by turning public opinion in the United States and other Western countries against anything that even suggests a prolonged military involvement in the Middle East, the war effectively precluded the possibility of a large-scale multinational effort to smash the self-styled caliphate.

Then there’s the related question of how ISIS has become so well-armed and powerful. There are many causes, but a leading one is the role played by the U.S. and its “allies in the region” (i.e., Gulf tyrannies) in arming them, unwittingly or (in the case of its “allies in the region”) otherwise, by dumping weapons and money into the region with little regard to where they go (even U.S. officials openly acknowledge that their own allies have funded ISIS). But the U.S.’s own once-secret documents strongly suggest U.S. complicity as well, albeit inadvertent, in the rise of ISIS, as powerfully demonstrated by this extraordinary 4-minute clip of Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan with Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency:



Given all this, is there any mystery why “U.S. officials” and the military-intelligence regime, let alone Iraq War-advocating hacks like Jim Woolsey and Dana Perino, are desperate to shift blame away from themselves for ISIS and terror attacks and onto Edward Snowden, journalism about surveillance, or encryption-providing tech companies? Wouldn’t you if you were them? Imagine simultaneously devoting all your efforts to depicting ISIS as the Greatest and Most Evil Threat Ever, while knowing the vital role you played in its genesis and growth.

The clear, overwhelming evidence-- compiled above-- demonstrates how much deceit their blame-shifting accusations require. But the more important point of inquiry is to ask why they are so eager to ensure that everyone but themselves receives scrutiny for what is happening. The answer to that question is equally clear, and disturbing in the extreme.