All posts tagged: September 11

Who Gets to Tell the Story of America? A Muslim American Reporter Has Been Asking That Since 9/11.

Who Gets to Tell the Story of America? A Muslim American Reporter Has Been Asking That Since 9/11.

We still too readily confuse military action with strategy. Look at our illegal invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of its President Nicolás Maduro, only to replace him with his ideological acolyte. Fear of immigrants and Muslims remains politically useful. See the Republican Party, which considers Islamophobia as one of its main characteristics. The architecture of surveillance and security built after 9/11 endures. And we remain susceptible to the belief that overwhelming power can resolve fundamentally political problems. See Trump’s Iran policy failures that have neither ended its nuclear program nor toppled the regime. Some days, I wonder whether we learned precisely the wrong lessons. But I am hopeful about something else. The argument over those lessons is no longer being conducted by the same narrow circle of Americans. Twenty-five years ago, Muslims entered the consciousness of many Americans in the worst possible way: through collapsing buildings and the actions of 19 men responsible for an act of almost unimaginable cruelty. America spent the years that followed debating Muslims, invading Muslim countries, surveilling Muslim communities, …

How 9/11 conspiracy theories moved into mainstream American politics | Social Media News

How 9/11 conspiracy theories moved into mainstream American politics | Social Media News

Type the words “9/11 conspiracy theories” into the search bar of YouTube, and there is no shortage of people lining up to tell you what “really” happened. There are countless videos of commentators like Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson giving their hot takes, alongside a seemingly limitless collection of video accounts blaming the CIA, the “deep state”, or the Illuminati. “Inside Job?” reads the thumbnail of one video that has been viewed more than 500,000 times, before it zooms in on footage of the World Trade Center’s two towers on fire on September 11, 2001. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list Twenty-five years after two planes flew into the World Trade Center in New York City, killing nearly 3,000 people, the conspiracy theories are still going strong. If anything, they have only continued to gain pace and mutate. While conspiracy theories were once associated with slightly odd people in tin-foil hats swapping improbable theories from their mothers’ basements, since 2016, when “post-truth” was named Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year, they have become …

On 9/11, Robert De Niro Says Mayor Mamdani Can Be a Bridge For NYC

On 9/11, Robert De Niro Says Mayor Mamdani Can Be a Bridge For NYC

Art helped us process 9/11 in so many ways right after the attacks. But for me the breakthrough wouldn’t come for nearly five years, at a midtown Manhattan movie theater. The Tribeca Film Festival had decided in 2006 to open with a premiere of Paul Greengrass’ United 93, despite puzzling murmurs of “too soon.” (Is there a reverse statute of limitations for when artists can make sense of trauma?) Tribeca organizers — Robert De Niro, producing partner Jane Rosenthal and the rest of the staff of the healing-minded Manhattan film gathering — invited not only Greengrass and the many terrific workaday actors featured in the film but the family members of the victims and heroes of that titular flight’s hijacking. Covering the event for my employer at the time, I approached the old Ziegfeld Theater with a mix of curiosity and anxiety. I had lived through 9/11 — watched the towers burn from a downtown apartment window, stood in Union Square as people streamed in soot-filled and shell-shocked. Was a movie recalling, let alone reclaiming, that …

9/11 Changed the World in Many Ways. It Also Spawned the Digital Media Era

9/11 Changed the World in Many Ways. It Also Spawned the Digital Media Era

People escaping Lower Manhattan over the Brooklyn Bridge at approximately 11:00am on September 11, 2001. Jason Florio/Redux AI firms, to be clear, are engaged in well-intentioned attempts to expand human knowledge, spur scientific breakthroughs, inform decision-making, and facilitate or automate tasks. But, as with most businesses, the essential driver behind these companies is to turn a profit, to amass revenue and power by monetizing the lives, labor, and accumulated learning of others. And when money or power are the overriding motivations, the more fundamental human pursuits—no matter how noble, socially beneficial, or life-affirming—fall by the wayside. It reminds me of an observation made by the artist and critic John Menick, apropos of a series of images captured on 9/11 by fellow artist Wolfgang Staehle. Beginning on September 6, for an exhibition titled “2001,” Staehle used a remote, stationary webcam to render still photos of the downtown skyline every four seconds and automatically send them to a computer, then to a projector, which beamed each image, mural-size, on an art gallery wall. By happenstance, Staehle managed …

9/11 25th Anniversary: How Diane Sawyer and David Muir Reported the Tragedy Live, Then Found Hope in Its Survivors

9/11 25th Anniversary: How Diane Sawyer and David Muir Reported the Tragedy Live, Then Found Hope in Its Survivors

Vanity Fair: Diane, you were on live TV when the first plane hit the north tower on 9/11. How did you manage to keep your composure as the attacks were unfolding in real time? Diane Sawyer: Well, I don’t think it was about me. It was about all of us. Charlie and I were on the air doing Good Morning America. And like so many people watching, your first default position when something’s inconceivable is you try to come up with rational explanations. You say to yourself, “Well, maybe that was a ghastly accident.” Then the second plane hit, and Charlie and I just said, “Oh my God, my God.” Both of us then took our hard turn into the awful reality. David, you were just 27 at the time that you were reporting on 9/11 at WCVB in Boston, and won an award for tracing the hijackers’ path through New England. How did the events shape your career and desire to be in broadcast news? Sawyer: Of course David was only 27. How unfair …

US charges woman for allegedly plotting attack on New York State Capitol | Crime News

US charges woman for allegedly plotting attack on New York State Capitol | Crime News

The suspect, Jessica Bowie, 35, was arrested on charges of providing material support for ‘terrorism’. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States has claimed to have thwarted a planned attack to kill lawmakers at the New York State Capitol. On Thursday, the Department of Justice announced it had arrested a suspect, 35-year-old Jessica Bowie, who was accused of obtaining an explosive after pledging loyalty to ISIL (ISIS). Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list Since 2004, the US has designated ISIL a “foreign terrorist organisation”. Bowie was charged with providing material support to such a group. John A Eisenberg, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for national security, said in a statement that investigators had stopped Bowie “before she was able to act on her plot to bring terror to the Capital Region”. He added that investigators believe Bowie planned to destroy as much of the state capitol as possible, before fleeing to Syria. Case relies on confidential informants In a 21-page complaint, a special agent for the FBI outlined the …