peripathetic

We're coming up to the first anniversary of September the 11th. Actually, that's not strictly true. I'm not sure exactly when the very very first September the 11th WAS, under the calendar system. One thing is certain: this is not the first anniversary. But academic points aside, that date this year will be the first anniversary of the atrocities which happened in various parts of the USA. And everyone's starting to talk about it again, wondering if another attack will be made elsewhere in the world, wondering whether the FBI et al will get there in time - or whether they have planned everything so well this time that they have already caught and foiled an attack and kept it quiet.

The really disquieting significance of this year's anniversary is its proximity in time to the present controversy over an impending war with Iraq. How easy it would be for Bush to garner popular support by choosing September 11, 2002 to launch all manner of ultimatums. Documentaries will screen showing the collapse of the towers, the hole in the Pentagon etc., and Patriotic American Hearts all over the world will flame against Iraq with even more determination.

It could all turn out to be a world of shit.

Far from that date being the beginning of a more aware and safer world, it seems that things have gone (very easily, as they would) the other way and we're now more paranoid, less peaceful and more apt to assume and lash out. Cut to American newscasters: "Gee, Dave, seems like quite a lot of innocent Iraqi people will get killed!" "Yes indeed, Gina, but let us not forget that they killed all those people... in our army who invaded their... villages... and now for the rest of today's news."


There's a reason that big strong lion (from the British Museum, excellent bas-relief) is dying and puking blood. It's because it took on more than it could handle.

Back to the slightly more real world of my here and now, and the safer confines of familiar and unfamiliar blogs, I was looking at the whole Twin Towers thing through the eyes of the copydesk and in a way, that's a good method for sprinboarding to other topics and other sites. So then I visited notsosoft which has a particularly interesting and infuriating posting here. Poor girl, having her own damn copyright the victim of an attempted abduction.