Archive for
September 12th, 2006
Stories
Five years on from 9/11, the world remembers
The mainstream media in many countries have been preoccupied with events in the United States to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon on 9/11 2001. But the repercussions of these events have spread across the globe and people far beyond New York and Washington. Here the Global Voices team has gathered together a sample of citizens' voices marking the anniversary.
We have samples of opinion from regions across the world (click on the link to go directly to individual sections): Africa, China, South East Asia, South Asia, the Americas and French language blogs as well as the Middle East.
We'll start in Africa where kenyanentrepreneur dives in to the most obvious consequence, the US invasion of Iraq, in her post Remembering 9/11:
It's amazing watching all the coverage about 9/11. I have yet to see any mention of the 100,000 innocent Iraqi civillians who have been killed in a war that George Bush started using false pretenses.
WMD's - none have been found
Sadam's links to 9/11 - Bush now says there were no links
Now, we are told the goal was to bring democracy to the Middle East. Let's see - you illegally invade a sovereign nation that has not attacked you, in total contravention of international law.. then, you turn around and claim that you are now going to impose the rule of law & democracy on the country that you have illegally invaded!!
Pana-Blogs Report
#1: Rob Rivera.com remembers the 9/11 attack: "September 11, five years Later"
It was a Tuesday, if I’m not mistaken. I slept in that day, enjoying a prolonged sabatical… I don’t remember what happened minute by minute but I do remember the first moments of my day that morning being something like out of a movie; I woke up to my mom opening the door to my room and with this awe-striken look on her face, yellow rubber gloves covering her hands, staring at me to tell me that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center’s towers. I didn’t say a thing… the disbelief had me at a loss for words. I got up from my bed and walked outside to the kitchen where both my parents were, staring into this small TV mounted on a wall near the corner and in this TV the image of a skyscraper spewing smoke from its side was being shown as messages of “airplane crashes on the World Trade Center in NYC” while the newscasters speculated it might be a terrorist attack. Read the complete post…
#2: Miguel Rodriguez from Tras el sueño que no me deja dormir (ES), shares his memories from the 9/11 attack:
"I was in Dominican Republic, working for Verizon as a consultant. I remember I logged in to the MSN and the first thing a colleague from Panama tells me was the bad news about the attack. In that moment I didn't put too much attention to the subject (because I didn't know the magnitude of what was going on), but later on I began searching on line and couldn't have been more shocked. It was devastating to be in Dominican Republic at that very time, having that country a high rate of their people living in New York. It was the talk of the whole country, they were all worried about the safety of their relatives and friends living in that city. In the news, they didn't stop reporting on the people who died and the ones that were to be found. It was sad, really sad." Continue reading…
#3: Remembering the attack, Queen of Hearts (ES) writes "11 de Septiembre, 5 años después"
"What it hurts is to remember that five years ago there were thousands of people working in those buildings, which I didn't have the chance to explore last year. People told me the towers were majestic, a very impressive sight…But I didn't get there in time to see them. When I had the chance to visit the site, there was only one big empty space, a void, and a hair rising silence.
Yes, there you can listen to the "silence." Being in -ground zero- all you can feel is the smell of death and a silence that screams for the lost souls. It is like a giant open temple…" Read the post in Spanish…
China: Video save taskforce needed
When tens of thousands of Ruian, Zhejiang citizens came out to protest the official conclusion of an investigation into the death of high school teacher Dai Haijing, it didn't take long for the news—despite being banned from mainstream media—to flash through Chinese blogs and BBS'.
When short videos were taken by those at the scene with mobile phones and posted on the internet, it didn't take long for the Chinese versions of Youtube to start deleting them.
A scan of the blogsphere today suggests Global Voices Online bloggers weren't the only ones caught off guard by the video shorts' swift disappearances, or lacking the know-how to preserve these clips, suggesting the need for a Chinese blogsphere rapid response video save taskforce. Any takers?
Here are some tips on how to save video from sites like Youtube.
Syrian Blogsphere in a Week
To start off this week, we have Brian Anthony's testimonial of what his reflections were exactly five years ago, September 11, 2001.
But as I was watching the towers explode over and over again, I couldn't really muster a sense of shock and amazement. And while I felt sickened and saddened for those who were in the towers and those affected by the attacks, I didn't feel any kind of patriotic rage. I felt kind of like one would feel when you hear that life-long party-animal two-pack a day smoker got hit with lung cancer. It's a terrible situation, but an altogether predictable one.
On to more Syrian-like politics, with Ammar Abdulhamid trying to answer The Question…
Can we really have both modernization and democratization as simultaneous processes that can reach an acceptable level of fulfillment in the span of a single lifetime to appeal to all those impatient souls out there?
Burhan Ghalioun, The well known Syrian intellectual, gives his feelings from Paris about the Crisis of Lebanon and the Middle East.
Israel may feel that it is besieged because of the hostility of the greatest number of the Arab States. But this feeling hides a fundamental inferiority complex and does not reveal the reality. The Israelis themselves say – and they are true – that they are able to crush all the arab armies gathered together. Thus, in fact, it is Israel that besieges the Arab countries, thanks to its unmatched military superiority and to the international unrelenting support that it is granted from the USA and Europe…Thanks also to the Arab situation breaking apart and to the collapsing of the Arab front.
Away from politics, to a more interesting subject, with Abu Fares describing how to give a real Bull-Head Tartoussi Feast.
It was my turn to host. I was asked to make it memorable. Some of them I will not see in years, leaving country and kin and heading out to Martinique, to the China Sea, to the Persian Gulf, to Italy, to unknown wharfs and beyond. What we all had in common, in addition to a life binding friendship, is our eternal love for Tartous.
“Something they shall never forget, that’s what they asked for, when I proposed the invitation.”
Links for Tue, 2006-09
The Limey returns home after waiting out hurricane Florence in Bermuda's capital. He's pleased to report that the damage is “nowhere near as bad as it was after [2003 hurricane] Fabian.”
US-based La Reunion-origined blogger Sandy of Reunion-USA2 posts several cartoons illustrating that (Fr): “In the USA, the cost of living is so high that only a minority of lucky ones can afford to work only one job. Case in point, these two cartoons explaining that having multiple jobs has become par for the course.”
Collectif Haiti de Provence points to an Alterpresse article which highlights an important Haitian film event (Fr): “The second edition of the International Festival of Haitian Film (FIFHM) was launched Wednesday September 6 at the Canadian National Film Office (ONF) in the St Denis neighborhood of Montreal. This initiative of the Fabienne Colas Foundation is the most important festival dedicated to Haitian cinema on non-haitian soil. It will be held from September 15 to 24 and will offer Montreal cinephiles about 40 Haitian films made in Haiti, the USA, France and Canada. “
Carpetblogger introduces a new feature, Ask Carpetblogger, in which she'll be answering “questions about life in Crapistan.” The first question is this: “Carpetblogger, how can I tell if I am on a flight to, from or within the Former Soviet Union? How can I be culturally sensitive while on board?”
Vilhelm Konnander writes on how the media treat Vladimir Putin's repeated assurances that he is not considering staying for the third presidential term: “Still, international media continues to report that Putin will leave power in 2008, in the anticipation that somewhere along the line he will change his mind.”
Snowsquare.com writes about a bizarre event held in Moscow last week: the World Toilet Summit & Expo 2006.
Russia Blog compares two Harvard speakers: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1978 and Mohammed Khatami this year.
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