Not Even Close

2018-08-06T10:33:12-04:00 Vol. 1, Issue No. 5|
Updated: 08/06/18

The not-even-close replacement for the most famous DUO in the world is an UNO — but we are not supposed to notice we are being gypped. Unfortunately for the PA and Durst Corporation, the real brand won’t rub off. As Larry Silverstein noted last June, it will always be the Freedom Tower. And it is only right that its hollow patriotic symbolism be enshrined by using its real name — since it is the pinnacle of contempt for the will of the people.

As for pinnacles, it is wonderful for the people of New York that aerialist extraordinaire Philippe Petit is going to once again defy death by crossing the Grand Central rotunda to mark its hundredth anniversary. But, actually, what he does is not meant to defy death as much as to challenge the rest of us to ““Keep moving mountains, keep growing wings, keep dreaming…” which is how he concluded his Academy Award acceptance speech for “Man on Wire.”

The current feat pales beside the one he envisioned in his 2002 book, “To Reach the Clouds…” wherein he encouraged us to “pass from hand to hand the bricks of renaissance. Let’s print WE SHALL NOT BE DOOMED and paste the message high in the sky, for all in the world to read aloud. Let’s rebuild the twin towers.”

And then, he promised: “When the towers again twin-tickle the clouds, I offer to walk again, to be the instrument of the builders’ collective voice. Together, we will rejoice in an aerial song of victory. I will carry my life across the wire, as your life, as all our lives, past, present and future—the lives lost, the lives welcomed since. We can overcome.”

But high-priced hype can’t mask the real message of Ground Zero: “We cannot or will not overcome.” It was announced that New York ranks first as a global business center in a worldwide survey of cities — ahead of London, Paris, Tokyo, and Hong Kong.

But the engine of America is powered by the supremacy of the people, not the schemes of plutocrats and overlords. Unfortunately, those who lord it over the people don’t have the imagination to understand that when the people are cut out everybody loses…

The defining story of the week — and in a very real sense, the last ten years — is the story of The WTC Sphere, the massive sculpture that was commissioned to symbolize the purpose of the World Trade Center: Peace and Stability Through Trade.

The triumphant sphere that survived the destruction — battered, but intact — is going into mothballs and no one has explained why. Well, actually, they tried. According to the petition sponsored by 9/11 family members: “The designers of the memorial have ruled that it CANNOT be returned. In order, they said, to protect the integrity of the design.”

Michael Burke, whose brother gave his life on 9/11, has long been an eloquent advocate for those whose voices were silenced forever. He rarely misses an opportunity to point out the follies and fallacies at Ground Zero. And he is leading the charge to return the battered sphere to its original spot at the WTC.

The links below tell the bizarre story, which, coupled with the comments that are part of the families’ petition, bring to light some central questions that need convincing answers:

Why on earth would the future be uncertain for the artifact that was created to symbolize world peace and emerged intact from the inferno of 9/11? Why would anything with such significance and broad public support be banned from its rightful place?

Who is pulling the strings? Where do they get their authority to overrule the public? Why is the WTC agenda so contemptuous of what concerns most people?

Why was the public saddled with a memorial designer who obviously does not have a finger on the pulse of the people? Why does the “integrity of the design” matter more than the integrity of the memorial?

What about the integrity of the eternal flame that was lit at the 2002 dedication of the Sphere in Battery Park? What about the integrity of the government that was founded to serve the people?

When we get the answers to those questions, we will know why the Twin Towers aren’t shining in a reborn skyline today — because it is all part of the same contemptuous agenda. There is a black hole at Ground Zero that sucks anything that makes sense or reflects truth into bureaucratic oblivion. But we do not have to put up with it and give it power.

As Justice Louis D. Brandeis famously said: “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” And, as he also pointed out: “The most important political office is that of the private citizen.”

Those who imperiously usurp the rightful authority of citizens — most egregiously, at the World Trade Center (but getting away with it wherever they can) — have to be reminded who the true authorities are. As the celebrated architect Frank Lloyd Wright said when presented to His Majesty, King Faisal II, of Iraq: “And I am His Majesty, the American Citizen.”

commericalobserver.com | “1 WTC Logo Revealed

Telegraph.co.uk | “…Philippe Petit plans Grand Central Station traverse at 62

Crain’sNewYorkBusiness.com | “NY ranks as No. 1 global business center

Petition Online | “Save the WTC Sphere

The Washington Post | “Future unclear for sphere that survived WTC collapse…

DNAinfo.com| “World Trade Center Sphere Leaving Battery Park By End of April”

TribecaTrib.com| “WTC ‘Sphere’ Leaving Battery Park Soon, Likely Headed to JFK Hangar

DowntownExpress.com | “To the Editor: Don’t reopen Greenwich Street