“We’ve Lost Something Of Our Soul”-Michael Moore
“We’ve lost something of our soul here in this country…something that separates us from other parts, other countries where we say everybody has their day in court no matter how bad of a person, no matter what piece of scum they are, they have a right to a trial…after World War II, we just didn’t go in and put a bullet to the head of all the top Nazis. We put them on trial.”
I’ve been too busy to comment on the death of Bin Laden, but I certainly dont share the same celebratory sentiment of most Americans. I think my views are more on par with Mr. Moore’s and despite the worlds disdain for his existence he should have been brought to trial especially considering no hard evidence linking him to 9/11 has surfaced yet.
Ground Zero’s Slave Graves
The outrage about the “ground zero mosque” has turned very ugly. A New York City cab driver was stabbed over the weekend after his passenger asked him if he was Muslim. Yet, little know to the public at large, is before the World Trade Center was even designed (with Islamic architectural elements, incidentally), the ground was the mass grave site of African Slaves. The bones of some 20,000 African slaves are buried 25 feet below Lower Manhattan. As at least 10 percent of West African slaves in America were Muslims, it’s not out of bounds to extrapolate that ground zero itself was built on the bones of at least a few Muslim slaves. That is to say, hallowed “Muslim” ground.
For some time, activists, historians, and city officials have been working together to excavate and preserve the bones of the slaves buried under present-day lower Manhattan. A recent excavation of a 14,000 square foot section of the six-acre burial ground found that 92 percent of the 419 skeletons were of African descent, and 40 percent were children under 12. The bones of the 419 slaves were eventually reinterred.
African slaves couldn’t be buried in New York City itself, so they were put to rest along the city’s then-northern border, near present-day Chambers Street. The exact borders of the burial ground are fuzzy, and experts say that without test digs, they won’t be able to tell how far it extends. The area they’ve excavated so far ends just a block or two from ground zero, but with the huge number of African slaves that lived and died in New Amsterdam they may have only found a portion.
At any rate, some of the slaves’ belongings were definitely at ground zero: About 100 boxes of artifacts from the African graves were stored at 6 WTC, which was crushed by the North Tower on 9/11, but thankfully archivists were able to recover them. A few of the items were strings of blue beads found buried with the slaves…which some think could be Islamic prayer beads.
The planned Mosque won’t even be at ground zero proper (across from Brooks Brothers or the Century 21 department store). But if it were, it would still be perfectly defensible. In fact, since WTC was likely built over the centuries-old bones of Muslim slaves, it would be a downright blessing.
The Opener…
Ok, after much hesitation…well really procrastination, I’ve finally started a blog. Yeah I’m a few years late but hey I’ll do my best to deliver worthwhile and entertaining posts, new music, new artwork, etc….and update it regularly. But I’m feeling a little under the weather and it is 4am so I’ll start with an appropriate post paying homage to the lives lost on 9/11…then try to get some sleep.
We will never forget.
