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What better way to commemorate this special day than by revisiting an oldie but goodie—a few years ago Detroit police officer Edward Sanchez took home some marijuana that he had confiscated and decided to bake them into some brownies.
Well, the brownies turned out be stronger than Officer Sanchez had anticipated, leading to this classic 911 call where Sanchez told the operator such gems as:
Check out the full audio of the call below and then join me for some Twinkies and pizza.
I can’t disclose what he or she looks like. I can’t talk about the sound of his or her voice. I can say I’m having coffee with Satan. I am allowed to talk about what he or she is not. Satan doesn’t wear red. Satan doesn’t look evil. Satan is perhaps the last person you would ever expect. But S. has agreed to speak to me occasionally on a number of topics. Over coffee.
N: The 10th anniversary of 9/11 just passed. So, it would be fitting for me to ask you, were you involved in that in any way?
S: I was not involved in the act. But I worked on the publicity tour. 9/11 made everyone feel vulnerable and weak. An event like that is like good manure. Fertile grounds to plant evil. When people are weak, they make selfish decisions. Shooting fish in a barrel, bro. Evil sprouted like weeds. I wasn’t even involved in half of it. I got kind of lazy and out of shape, actually, during the last ten years — as you can see.
Ten years ago on this date, we were about to start the second week of rehearsals for Terminus Americana, the new play that would kick-off the third season for Lodestone Theatre Ensemble, which was the Asian American theater company I had co-founded in 1999 and was co-Artistic Director of. Then 9/11 happened and, as it did for everyone else, our world changed.
We cancelled that night’s rehearsal and future rehearsals until further notice. At that moment, putting on a play didn’t seem important anymore. But over the next couple of days, we realized that we had to make a decision. Terminus Americana was scheduled to open in late October—we only had a month-and-a-half to put the show together so if we were going to do it, we had to start asap.
Already, our nation’s leaders were talking about the importance of Americans getting back to their normal routines so there was no doubt that we’d get back to doing what we did—producing plays. But the problem here was with Terminus Americana itself. The play, written by my talented writer friend Matt Pelfrey, told the story of Mac, a normal workingman who survives an office shooting that leaves most of his colleagues dead. Before the shooter (played by my fellow Offender Roger Fan) kills himself, he whispers a “secret” into Mac’s ear, which sets him off on a journey across a mythical America to find the answers behind this violent act. It was a play about America and violence, about how violence had become a sort of religion in the U.S., and how worshipping and feeding into that religion of violence would eventually come back to haunt us.
CORY
Cory Chu-Keenan is a father and a proponent of getting Civics back into American schools. He is an activist for Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Media Reform, and Restoration of Civil Rights. He will be debuting a Politically Conscious Hip-Hop Album in 2012 entitled Technofetishistic Psychodrama under the emcee name, Cory the Keen One.
We don’t teach Civics in America anymore. We teach Literature, Mathematics, and, ahem, History, but we don’t teach our youth how to keep a Democratic Republic. We’ve gotten to the point where we no longer understand what it means to do civic duty.
America was designed as an experiment. It was the first time in human history where the People, the citizenry, were called upon to govern themselves. And this system, designed by the framers of the Constitution, became a beacon of freedom for the rest of the world.
What freedom meant to our founding fathers was chiefly freedom from tyranny. But they couldn’t just say, “Okay, from now on, no more tyranny.” They had to replace monarchical rule with a different form of rule: Rule by the People, for the People.
By now you may have heard that Muslim American activists are outraged by a new children’s coloring book entitled We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids’ Book of Freedom, which they say promotes an anti-Muslim agenda and is inappropriate for children by pointing to examples like this image depicting the assassination of Osama Bin Laden:
I barely had time to begin digesting the details of the story of Anders Behring Breivik, Norway’s own better looking Timothy McVeigh, who slaughtered 92 people last week, when I turn on my computer to find another headline about someone killing his estranged wife and four others at a Texas roller rink, a story overshadowed, of course, by Amy Winehouse joining Janis, Jimi, and Kurt in the “27 Club,” and then there was something in the corner of my screen about an 8 year old boy being hung from the ceiling.
It’s enough to make anyone despair.
And then – and then – there’s the case of Rais Bhuiyan.
(WARNING: This post contains graphic images)
Every now and then, I would visit my French Canadian friend in Santa Monica. He’s an older gentleman, a retired journalist. We are both Canadian immigrants, which is a fact and not oxymoron as you might think. And we are both from Montreal. We would take these long walks in Santa Monica, the epitome of bourgeois Los Angeles, and talk about the world. He’s like a wise uncle to me. I enjoy spending time with him because he reminds me that there’s a whole world out there other than L.A.
“What do you think about killing Bin Laden?” I asked as we were strolling along the ocean.
“What do you think?”
“I feel like they went in and did the job effectively. I don’t feel like celebrating his death is right.”
“I’m not so happy about it,” he said, brushing back his peppered hair in the wind.
“I guess I wonder why they didn’t capture him if he had been unarmed.”
“Had they even thought of negotiating? We never even bothered negotiating with the Taliban. We just went in and invaded Afghanistan. We could have negotiated with the Taliban to turn Bin Laden over. Was that even a thought?”
As I write this it’s only been a little over an hour since President Obama announced to the world that “most wanted” terrorist Osama Bin Laden had been killed but I’m sure Donald Trump and his ilk are already preparing to question the official version of the story. After all, there’s no “proof” that the man is dead and besides, the President’s speech preempted tonight’s episode of the Donald’s Celebrity Apprentice so it’s got to be some sort of conspiracy, right? And love that Fox News continues to make “mistakes” like this:
Others will point out that the timing of the announcement is odd considering it comes exactly 66 years to the day that the news of Hitler’s death was made public. Or that this comes when Obama’s popularity is at its lowest so this must be a calculated effort by his camp to turn that around. Now, I don’t think such a move guarantees a spike in Obama’s poll numbers. There will probably be an initial surge, but what happens if there’s a “retaliation” attack against America or Americans? Or if the war in the Middle East continues to drag on and people are left wondering why? Or oil prices continue to rise instead of fall? Or hate crimes against “brown” people increase dramatically? For that matter, what would’ve happened if this attempt to capture/kill Bin Laden had ended badly leaving Americans and civilians dead and the bad guy still on the loose? Hardly a slam-dunk move on Obama’s part. As for the Hitler connection, well, I’ll leave it to Mr. Trump to speak to that. That seems right up his alley.
Anytime a large-scale catastrophe takes place, the conspiracy theorists come out of the woodwork to offer “alternative” explanations for what occurred. One of the most famous conspiracy theories in recent years was about how our government either let 9/11 happen or actually masterminded the attack to justify war in the Middle East. Now, I was no fan of the Bush administration and know they did some evil and covert shit, but I think this one is a stretch (Popular Mechanics devoted an excellent series to debunking this myth). Considering that actor Charlie Sheen has been one of the most vocal proponents of this theory, perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised by his recent behavior.
So with the speed and power of the internet, alternate theories about the origins of last Friday’s earthquake in Japan sprung up almost immediately. I already blogged about one of these “possible” explanations floating around on the web: that the earthquake was divine or karmic retribution for Pearl Harbor. I’m sure most of us would agree this is pretty racist, not to mention ludicrous. And as I tweeted over the weekend, if this event had really been karma for the atrocity of Pearl Harbor, the earthquake would’ve struck Ben Affleck’s house. Oh, and let’s not forget the Iranian cleric who last year proclaimed that earthquakes were the result of immoral women and their boobs. Uh…yeah…
But there have been other theories that don’t sound as completely and utterly ridiculous (though personally, I think they’re still a little wacky). Here are three of what appear to be the most popular ones:
In 1790, President George Washington made a visit to the city of Newport, R.I. Upon hearing about the trip, Moses Seixas, warden of Newport’s Touro Synagogue, wrote a letter to the President on behalf of his congregation to welcome him. This was a year before the Bill of Rights was ratified and the Jewish community in Newport had good reason to be concerned regarding their standing as “Americans” after having been persecuted in Europe for their religious beliefs.
Washington sensed this anxiety and addressed it in his response to Seixas and his congregation. On the eve of the ninth anniversary of 9/11 and with the stories of hatred toward another religious group constantly in today’s news, I thought it might be appropriate to reprint Washington’s letter, which was written over 200 years ago. Following is both Seixas’ letter to the President and Washington’s response in their entirety:
Dear Dove World Outreach Centre:
So I read the latest news that your pastor Terry Jones is planning to commemorate 9/11 with an “International Burn a Koran Day” on the grounds of your Florida church and you’re calling on other religious groups to join you by burning their own piles of the Koran a.k.a. the Islamic holy book.
Here’s what he said on the subject: “Islam and Sharia law was responsible for 9/11. We see the effects of Islam on Europe. As it has done nothing, Islam is beginning to take over there. Islam is presenting itself as a religion of peace. We want to stop its spread here.”
Now, you’ve been criticized not only by Muslims and other non-Christians, but also sane Christians who see your actions as misguided, hateful and, frankly, a little cuckoo. But you’re not backing down. And why should you? You’re all about standing up for your baby Jesus-inspired convictions and, besides, you’re pumped and ready to literally turn up the heat with your event. There’s no stopping you now so burn, baby, burn! After all, your Facebook page is up:
In recent months, it seems like there’s been story after story about some major earthquake hitting somewhere in the world. Now scientists have reassured us that this is perfectly normal: the amount of earthquakes we’re experiencing is about average; it’s just that they happen to be occurring in more populated areas as opposed to out at sea where many of them usually strike. But what do those eggheads know anyway? If they were really all that, they would’ve invented some machine that could predict and stop earthquakes by now.
Nope, I think there’s something else going on. Something more sinister. But I had no proof of it…until recently. Iran’s Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi told worshippers last week that there was indeed another reason for the rise in earthquakes in that country: sex.
