9/11, +20

[BoSoxGal]

A new docuseries captures 9/11 minute by minute

9/11: One Day in America forces the viewer to experience the attacks in painful detail.

President Biden’s anticipation of the 20th anniversary of 9/11 has been calamitous. Other commemorations are available, though. 9/11: One Day in America is a six-part documentary series, premiered at Tribeca Film Festival this summer, with a tight focus on the experience of people (survivors) on the ground that day. It is told minute by minute, hour by hour, as events unfold, thus avoiding all subsequent geopolitical reference. The extended opening episode, “First Response”, begins on the day, running from early morning to 9.50am; the second, “The South Tower”, picks up the story from 8.48am to 9.50am; the third, “Collapse”, from 9.40am to 10.50am; and so on, relentlessly, almost in real time, for seven hours in total.

Made by National Geographic in collaboration with the 9/11 Memorial & Museum and directed by the British-Paraguayan documentary-maker Daniel Bogado (who has worked extensively for Channel 4’s Dispatches), 9/11: One Day in America never allows you to look away. However much you have watched footage of, or read about, the attacks, it forces you to endure the day as never before; to experience it more directly, in greater detail. Few of us over these past 20 years have wanted to revisit these horrors once we had first seen them.

Using more than 951 hours of archival footage, and 54 original interviews with survivors, these two strands are intertwined as closely as possible, sometimes melding as we see the present speaker in footage from 2001, too. It is all first-person, the present tense, not looking forward beyond the moment.

We first see Fire Chief Joseph Pfeifer, then a few days past his retirement date but doing a job he loved. He is investigating a routine gas leak a few blocks away from the World Trade Center, early that morning, as American Airlines Flight 11 suddenly roars low overhead, smashing into the North Tower. He rushes there to take command, showing incredible composure both then and now, despite losing his younger brother, another firefighter, that day.

Captain Jay Jonas remembers the firemen shaking hands, wishing each other good luck: “Of all those guys I was surrounded by, I was the only one who survived, they all died.” Although, as part of its immersive immediacy, the documentary offers almost no retrospective statistics, the fact is that 343 New York City Fire Department firefighters died that day. “They went up when they should have gone back down to save themselves,” says one survivor.

There are those terrible pictures of people clinging to the outside of the building. “I can’t imagine, the choice of burning to death and jumping, knowing you’re dying – poor people,” says the firefighter Ed Fahey. There is an awful sequence where a milling group of firefighters on the ground floor startle as they hear over and over again the tremendous impact of falling bodies, a terrifying sound.

The other attacks that day, on the Pentagon and Flight 93, are briefly covered. But otherwise the focus remains tightly on the World Trade Center – the flames, the dust, the terror – up to the final rescue from the rubble, which was made by the former marine Jason Thomas and the ex-paramedic Chuck Sereika, who had both headed to the site to help. These are strenuously positive stories among so much death – and, breaking its own rules, the documentary now flashes forward to some emotional reunions of the rescuers and the rescued.

In 9/11: One Day in America there is, though, no account at all of the perpetrators, of why and how they acted. They’re referred to only as “hijackers”, save for one scene in which a confused survivor, Daphne Carlisle, says she doesn’t understand what happened or why: “A plane was hijacked? Excuse me? Terrorists? Jesus! In America? I don’t know what to say.” It is perhaps the only time the word “terrorist” is used. The words “Islamic” or “Islamist” do not appear, let alone the name of al-Qaeda. There is no footage of George W Bush or Rudy Giuliani from the day either.

So the editing is exact: it’s that day, in America. The intention is commemorative, honorific, sorrowful, even, finally, a little celebratory of the courage shown. It fulfils this brief admirably. Yet its impact is more complicated. To see this all again, more intensely conveyed than ever before, is also to realise anew the ferocity of the hatred expressed in what is still the worst single act of terrorism ever committed.

“9/11: One Day in America” is being repeat broadcast on National Geographic.

https://www.newstatesman.com/9-11-one-d ... hic-review

[BoSoxGal]

Tonight I watched Fahrenheit 9/11 again on Michael Moore’s YouTube page where he aired it for free - it’s showing there for a week if anyone wants to watch it again or for the first time. I don’t think I’ve seen it since I watched it in the theatre when it opened. I was reminded of the rage and grief and anguish I felt back in 2003 when Dubya dragged us into Iraq with the cluster already ongoing in Afghanistan. After watching it again I’m ashamed of how much I let myself forget thinking about the ongoing killing of innocents that my country was engaged in over the intervening years.

I just read this NYT piece, which I highly recommend, on the drone strike in Kabul following the suicide bombing attack that killed 13 of our troops and many dozens of civilians. Beware, this story is fucking heartbreaking. NYT has confirmed that the drone took out an aid worker and 7 children - and there was no bomb in the vehicle, only water. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/worl ... -isis.html

20 years of horrific carnage. Has anything good come of any of it?

Allahu Akbar

[rubato]

Credit to Bill Clinton for attacking Al Qaeda with cruise missiles in 1998. Had we followed up more consistently and vigorously 9-11 may not have happened.

In future when some person or group reveals themselves in this way we need to persecute them to extinction.

yrs,
rubato

[Big RR]

Of course extinction can be hard when you have 2 or 3 people willing to step in for every one liquidated.

[Jarlaxle]

Of course extinction can be hard when you have 2 or 3 people willing to step in for every one liquidated.

Sometimes, the right tool for the job is nerve gas.

[Big RR]

Killing everyone is a solution? I don't see it. Tighten your gripp and more people will just fall through your fingers.

[Bicycle Bill]

Killing everyone is a solution? I don't see it. Tighten your gripp and more people will just fall through your fingers.

I don't know about that.  If you want to destroy a den of vipers, a colony of termites, or a swarm of fire ants, you kill ALL the vipers, termites, or fire ants.

-"BB"-

[Jarlaxle]

Exactly. There was never anything in Afghanistan that a couple billion cubic feet of nerve agent wouldn't fix.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Exactly. There was never anything in Afghanistan that a couple billion cubic feet of nerve agent wouldn't fix.

I was going to respond seriously to your post, Jarl. Then I saw your new tagline - or noticed it for the first time - "Ron DeSantis 2024!"

You have one very weird sense of humor, Jarl.

[Big RR]

In case it was intended to be serious, can you point to any time in history where that sort of plan worked and led to a lasting peace? I can't, in fact it has always encouraged others to take up the cause of the oppressed, and for former enemies in the oppressed camps to forget their difference and join together to fight a common enemy.

[Econoline]

Rome vs Carthage, maybe?

[Big RR]

Rome vs Carthage, maybe?

Maybe, but as I recall it was not total annihilation, they enslaved a significant part of the populace; but then maybe Jarl would suggest that as well?

[Bicycle Bill]

9/11 Memorial float seen at 40th Annual Popcorn Festival
parade in Valparaiso (IN) this past weekend....



Float was sponsored by .... wait for it ..... Valparaiso Republican Party.   Seriously, WTF were they thinking??

-"BB"-

[BoSoxGal]

Pretty bad taste exhibited there. But hey, at least they didn’t have popcorn coming out of the buildings.

[Bicycle Bill]

Pretty bad taste exhibited there. But hey, at least they didn’t have popcorn coming out of the buildings.

No, but if you look at the picture above, they used popcorn (both popped and un-popped) to simulate the beer in the 13 glasses for the 13 members of the US military who died as the result of a suicide attack in Kabul on August 26th ... sort of an update to the 'empty table' for the MIAs.

Let's see –

• mixed messages — don't forget 9/11, but don't forget those thirteen people who died a couple weeks ago in Afghanistan either!

• buildings that look NOTHING at all like the WTC towers
  (where are those iconic Gothic arches on the first six floors and the vertical steel framing that extended the height of the buildings?)

• and someone's kid riding on the thing who doesn't seem to have a clue as to why he's there or what's going on

I've seen groups of high school students do a better job with the floats they used to put together for the Homecoming Parade.

-"BB"-

[Joe Guy]

At first glance of the video, the float looked to me like a trailer with two 'Porta Potties' on it. It was a tasteless and stupid idea even if the people who created it were sincere and they were attempting to make some kind of patriotic statement.

I'm surprised it was allowed in the parade.

[Jarlaxle]

Rome vs Carthage, maybe?

Spot on.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Well, it's a new theory - the towers brought down by giant (Federal) spiders.

[Jarlaxle]

Exactly. There was never anything in Afghanistan that a couple billion cubic feet of nerve agent wouldn't fix.

I was going to respond seriously to your post, Jarl. Then I saw your new tagline - or noticed it for the first time - "Ron DeSantis 2024!"

You have one very weird sense of humor, Jarl.

There was nothing humorous in my post. Afghanistan should have been STERILIZED by 2002.

[BoSoxGal]

At first glance of the video, the float looked to me like a trailer with two 'Porta Potties' on it. It was a tasteless and stupid idea even if the people who created it were sincere and they were attempting to make some kind of patriotic statement.

I'm surprised it was allowed in the parade.

I wonder if you’ve ever lived in small town America?

Having lived there myself a lot of years - southwest, mountain west and northern New England - I’m not at all surprised.