Posted by
nickdupree – March 30, 2009
…to “World Trade Center.” Yep, they are reclaiming the old name.
Since I’ll soon be living near the WTC site, I felt obligated to blog about this. Personally, I don’t really care what they name it (“a rose by any other name…”) but I am interested in the outcry the change has precipitated, and am curious about the whole thing.
View of the new WTC from across the Hudson river
Rendering of what the new WTC will look like, 2005 redesign
Why did they dump the name “Freedom Tower?”
Here’s my theory: the World Trade Center authorities just announced their first lease (to a group other than the U.S. government). They are selling two floors to the Chinese, to create a Chinese business center. Problem: no Chinese businessmen could find “Freedom Tower,” because “freedom” is one of the blocked terms on Chinese search engines (if you blog that word in China, it’ll be erased, or “harmonized” by state censors). In order for it to sell space to Chinese tenants, the building had to have a new name. That’s what I think happened.
Nick
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Posted by
nickdupree – September 11, 2006
Anniversary of Terror
September 11, 2001 my grandmother woke me up and told me the country was under attack. I turned on the TV and saw the replays of the second plane flying into the tower. It had just hit the tower — I SAW IT. I know what I saw; planes full of jet fuel hit the world’s tallest buildings at high velocity. I saw civilians trapped above the fires hold hands and jump off. I saw office papers scatter over Manhattan. I saw nurses at St. Vincent’s Hospital stand idle as almost no injured trickled in; people either were crushed dead by the building or got out. I watched TV for weeks as families wept for missing loved ones with no remains to bury. I heard the eerie silence of the skies above, clear with no planes as flying was banned. I listened as our theology professor Dr. Wilson nearly burst into tears of rage and said he felt like quitting, describing how a student had exploited the tragedy with him to get out of extra class the week of 9/11.
Damn that student. Damn selfish, inhuman freaks.
Damn the people making their fortune writing their own twisted novels of the victims’ worst moments and passing it off as fact.
Damn the people making their fortune making movies about the tragedy just as the 9/11 orphans have learned to talk enough to ask “where’s daddy?”
Damn you Bush who used this horror as an excuse to invade unrelated Iraqis while you hold hands with the Saudi despot whose countrymen planned and executed this.
Damn you politicans and armchair pundits on both sides who cynically and repeatedly wrap yourselves in the memories of those lost to score partisan points.
And damn the terrorists who twisted the name of G-d to justify murdering nearly 3,000 while they simply were working to feed their loved ones.
I have so little to say. 9/11 is far too raw for me to make it another cynical “business as usual.” Has America truly lost its humanity?
Nick
Filed Under: Politics and Government
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