Based on news reports: US Ambassador Stevens may have died of asphyxiation from smoke during the armed assault:
“U.S. Suspects Libya Attack Was Planned” By Peter Baker, David D. Kirkpatrick, and Alan Cowell, New York Times Sept. 12, 2012:
“Washington — The violent deaths of four American diplomats in Libya during a heavily armed and possibly planned assault on a flimsily protected consulate facility on the Sept. 11 anniversary provoked a crisis in Washington…
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“There were unconfirmed reports that Ambassador Stevens, a highly regarded diplomat who was well liked by officials in the new Libyan government, was pursued by Islamic militants to his death in a safe house, where he may have died of asphyxiation from smoke in a grenade explosion. He was the first American ambassador killed abroad in more than three decades.
“Initial accounts of the assault in Benghazi were attributed to popular anger over what was described as an American-made video that lampooned the Prophet Muhammad xxx But administration officials in Washington said the attack in Libya may have been plotted in advance.
“xxx (T)he attackers in Benghazi were armed with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. Officials said it was possible that an organized group had either been waiting for an opportunity to exploit the protests over the video or perhaps even generated the protests as a cover for their attack. xxx “
Blog admin’s notes: The violence is covered by criminal law provisions. The embassy is covered by the following provisions:
Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations:
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“Art. 22. 1. The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them except with the consent of the head of the mission.
“2. The receiving State is under a special duty to take all the appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity. “
On the other hand, YouTube upon which the video was uploaded is governed by… page views, hits, stock valuation…
In Memoriam: For the men and women we lost on 9/11
“Brittany Clark, an 11-year-old from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, found out at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, through a call from the mayor’s office, that she had been selected to read a poem in memory of her father, Benjamin, at the ceremony at ground zero yesterday.
(original photo shot by Myra Lambino, New York, Central Park, two weeks ago)
“Brittany’s mother, La-Shawn, said that she had submitted the anonymous poem, which has been widely circulated for years, after she heard that organizers were specifically looking for a child to speak.
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“Marianne Keane’s tribute to her stepfather, Franco Lalama, a structural engineer for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, found its way to ceremony organizers through the family of Mr. Lalama’s boss, Neil D. Levin, the Port Authority’s executive director, who also died in the attack. Mr. Levin’s widow, Christine Ann Ferer, asked for submissions from the Port Authority families and forwarded them to City Hall.
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“Following is a transcript of remarks that Brittany Clark, 11, made yesterday in honor of her father, as recorded by The Associated Press.
“This poem makes me feel like my daddy is speaking to me:
I give you this one thought to keep,
I am with you still, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glint on the snow.
I am as sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in morning hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight,
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not think of me as gone,
I am with you still in each new dawn.
“Following is a transcript of the remarks that Marianne Keane, 17, made yesterday in honor of her stepfather, as recorded by The Associated Press.
” “I don’t remember the last time that I told him that I loved him. I would give anything to go back to the morning of Sept. 11 and tell him how much I appreciate everything he’s done for me. But I think that he knows that now. In my eyes he died a hero. And how much more could you ask for?
” “There’s a quote that pretty much speaks for itself: ”You never lose anything, not really. Things, people, they go away sooner or later. You can’t hold them any more than you can hold the moonlight. But if they touched you, if they’re inside of you, then they’re still yours.”
” “Franc, as I look back on these days, I realize how much I’ll truly miss you and how much I truly loved you. You were the best father I could ever ask for. I miss you and I hope you didn’t hurt too much. Love, Marianne.” “
-an article by Kirk Johnson, “Vigilance and Memory: Offering Messages of Love to the Parents They Lost” published in the New York Times Sept. 12, 2002
From the WordPress publishers today: Weekly Writing Challenge: Stylish Imitation by Erica on September 10, 2012 (or imitating the style of an iconic writer without losing your own voice):
“ xxx Better yet, you can tell us about your favorite writer’s tone, or you can take it a step further — after all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Highlight a particular element of your favorite writer’s style, and incorporate it into a post of your own. xxx If you go this route, try writing about what you’d normally discuss on in your blog: personal musings, your favorite artist, your sports team’s wondrous victory. The only catch is that you’ll need to discard your own style temporarily in honor of the wordsmiths who’ve inspired you.”
xxx xxx xxx
Based on those, here is the blog post for the WordPress Weekly Writing Challenge: Stylish Imitation.
The iconic writer i chose is: J.D. Salinger. The style is: stream of consciousness. It’s been described as a “disjointed form of internal monologue” “characterized by associative leaps in syntax and punctuation that may sometimes make the prose difficult to follow”.
When i first wrote the post below, it didn’t have any punctuation marks, but i thought i should aid the readers by putting some commas. What do you think? Unwieldy? i should have done a traditional narrative? (Yes! stop experimenting — we like structured!)
A large part of J.D. Sallinger’s narratives rely on this. Alas, i don’t have it, maybe I’m just rambling on in this post below with no sense or coherence.
Anyway.
Ridges
While we were driving on a newly paved road, the senior law office partner mentioned that when he was a law student, these balmy acacia trees were just sapling. i was once told that the roots of a fully grown acacia tree were wider than a 200-square-meter house, its vast network underground was a labyrinthine of a city spread farther than its canopy of branches and leaves above. Years ago, in a meeting i had to babysit as legal counsel, there was a debate on what to do with the trees that have been uprooted by the typhoon, now just lying around, not breathing, in the expanse of the grounds, some of the trees were half-a-century old, and the botanist-consultants said there was a procedure to reconstruct them and bring them back to life, but it was a laborious and expensive procedure; the engineer-consultants said this was not cost-effective, and so, therefore, the board gave way to the chainsaw workers, carpenters and utility staff, the felled giants were sawed off and sold as lumber, the money earned was reported as profits, and therefore in the balance sheet of things it was shown that we did not lose anything. i watched them saw off the trunks, you could see the rings inside them, each ring equivalent to a year or two, the ridges equivalent to generations. Once we took a street inside a residential area and my colleagues at the backseat tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Hala, ba’t ka dito dumaan, magagalit si Sir” (“Hey watch out why did you take this road, Sir will get angry.”) “Sir” being the senior partner, he was seated in front. And “Sir” of course said no, it was alright. i said it was a short cut – why, what’s wrong. And my colleagues said that when martial law was declared, “Sir” who then had a thriving law career in a prestigious law office and who had unprecedentedly won in a local election, one of the youngest, was going to get arrested by Marcos. He had to go on self-exile abroad, had to sell his house and all his properties, had to start from scratch all over again, study again, take the bar exams again in that foreign land and pass, eke out a living while helping in the anti-dictatorship movement in the Philippines. He bought this house because there were many trees, it was in the middle of the city, he and his family lived here and he had planned on raising his children on that porch, on this road that my colleagues have been avoiding as a route. i asked if this was true, and “Sir” said, well, yes, but it was a long, long time ago no sweat it was alright i didn’t do anything wrong, and my impertinent colleagues said, see – pretty soon tears would well up his eyes, they were ribbing him, and he was of course alright and he just said softly that he was sad that he never got back that same house because he liked living here. Before i learned to drive, i used to ride home with friends, and the usual designated driver, the executive director, always made the mistake of making a right turn at a certain crossroad when we were supposed to go left, everytime, he never corrected, he always turned there. We had to maneuver a U-turn in the middle of that road to go to the other side. Finally, i asked why are you always making a right-turn here, this is the hundredth time. And my friends, the other passengers, said maybe, maybe it was an old habit, see that bend, it led to a building where his ex-wife worked decades ago, he was detained when martial law was declared, they never got back together after that, even after he was released when the dictatorship fell, a new government took over. We think we know someone just because we work with them everyday. Everybody has an anthology of stories, in their trunk, at their core. Just like these trees.
