Most people in America and around the world (especially the Muslim part, heh heh) are big losers when it comes to 9/11/01 — from the 3,000 who actually immediately lost their lives in the 9/11 attacks to the 8,000 killed coalition troops to the hundreds of thousands of Islamically inclined people killed for one reason or another in the terror wars. Then there are all the other innumerable losses, from families torn apart by immigration raids to the complete erosion of privacy in the United States and U.K. to the bankrupting of what had been the world’s richest nation through a combination of corporate profiteering and full-time warmongering propaganda. But some people — remember, corporations are people — have done very, very well in the 10 years of 9/11.
The September 11, 2001 attacks have been a symbol of many things and many causes, but like the lavish, flag-draped rebuilding of the site, it has also been a vehicle for enrichment. From corporations to politicians to government officials to nonprofits to the security industry to publishers to the health industry (not to mention the incidents of outright fraud over the years), many people have found ways to profit from one of the nation’s biggest disasters. 9/11 has created an economy all its own.
“The intersection of 9/11 and money is a busy intersection,” says retired New York City firefighter Kenny Specht.
Glenn Corbett, a professor of fire science at John Jay College, active in a range of 9/11 issues, puts it this way: “Lots of people have got their hand in the till. A lot of people and a lot of companies have made a lot of money off of 9/11.”
How much money? Nobody knows and the article, which is actually a shitty article, doesn’t say. But, lots! [Village Voice]
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Has anyone seen the TV commercial for the 911 gold plated coin, the lithograph and the t-shirt combo? Take the money you would spend on that and bake a pan of brownies and take it down to your local firefighters instead.
Or just give money to one of their actual charities.
Firefighters would do better with a few adult brownies. Their job is stressful.
I can help donate to that… Emerald Triangle and all…
Pardon me while I cultivate your acquaintance most assiduously.
What, and make firefighters 9/11 winners? No thank you!
Union firefighters, no less! Anyone notice firefighters only work when there's a fire? Otherwise it's all card games, brownie eating and playing with Dalmatians. And we're paying for that! Ya gonna do something about that Repubicans?
Don't forget all the Calendar Shoots!
Cops and firemen get a free pass. It's those rich, lazy teachers, poisoning our children's minds with science and critical thinking, who are the real menace.
Don't forget janitors, bus drivers and nurses. Everybody knows they bankrupted the economy.
Everytime I see one of those ads, I cringe almost as much as when JG Wentworth ad comes on. Legal thievery .
But it's MY money, and I want it NOWWWWWWWWW!
but fear based profiteering is the American Way!
And the brownz is trying to take it away from us!
I'm not sure who's a winner, but according to Dick Cheney's autobiography, pretty much everyone else in the Bush administration was a loser.
Which might be the one single accurate fact in the book.
But Dubya kept us safe. Well, except for that one day when more Americans died from terrorism than under any other President in history.
And subsequently, U.S of America. U.S. of America is a loser as well. Thanks Dick.
except for the "else" part.
"Wake me up when September ends"
This particular September will never end.
i remember hearing that was played at a soldier's funeral (died in iraq). still can't hear it without tearing up.
NeVAR FErGeTT!!!11!!!
… to make a profit from a tragedy.
1st Chapter in Dick Cheney's memoir.
Is it like Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" — only hearing it Wicked-style as the witch's side of the story?
I would say I’m a looser as is my industry but I have targeted sales efforts for my corporation at opportunities created (enhanced?) by 9/11. That said these sales merely replaced what was available prior to going insane. By the way we have shifted again for the last year traditional manufacturing is up and stuff that sells to the super rich is up. Defense is down over the same period so it would seem our nations priorities have shifted from up armoring Humvee’s to getting the latest designer furnishing for someone’s Hamptons home.
I think the simple answer to this is that we (the collective we) are all 9-11 losers. How else can you explain the decade long waste of human life and trillions of dollars spent as anything but a loss? Oh yes, by using those expenditures to show growth in GDP, wait, what, we are still losing? Fuck!
As a Dept of Defense worker, I guess the answer for me is pretty obvious. How depressing.
As depressing as a series of Ken Layne posts?
It's a chicken/egg conundrum in this instance.
Hey, America won't be safe until every police car in America is equipped with it's own drone, a explosive sniffing robot and side scanning radar!
Don't forget, Ken, there's no "I" in the "American Way"!!!
But there IS an "I" in "Fox News fear propaganda." NEVAR FORGOT!!1
Every night I go to bed cursing my conscience for preventing me from grifting off of gullible 9/11 patriotards. I guess that makes me both a winner and loser. Feels mostly loserish, though.
Nationalizing the means of production might be a good idea. Then paying everyone according to their work, but gradually shifting to paying everyone according to their needs. Voila!
Cheese-eating surrender commie!
There is no such thing as "cheese" in this country. Even on kindergarten menus, they specify "brie" or "gruyere," "camembert," etc. Socialism means having the choice between saint-nectaire and roquefort. Under communism, everyone will be entitled to a little bit of each.
In getting a ready excuse to kill brown people, were we not all a little bit winners after 9/11?
You know who else was a 9/11 winner?
Milo Minderbinder?
The best part is, everyone has a share!
mmm…chocolate-covered cotton.
Mohammed Atta?
Charlie Sheen?
CURSES
Charlie Sheen?
CURSES
Haliburton Shareholders, after Cheney had almost bankrupted the company prior to his election. http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/about_hal/asbesto...
Me? (I got laid the next weekend, with a girl I had had a crush on all summer).
Slightly off-topic, but your post just made me realize:
Laid:good
Beat off: good
Laid off:BAD
Ignore and proceed, thank you.
Xe?
Pamela Geller's plastic surgeon?
If the score is 9 to 11, then you would be the loser.
The Carlyle Group?
Charlie Sheen?
Curses.
Me. I had traffic court in Arlington County courthouse that morning, about 3 miles from the Pentagon. The entire docket was cancelled and never rescheduled. (I am ashamed to mention this)
Strange coincidence, I started my first Superior Court trial here on 9/11 in Tacoma, Washington. They didn't shut down the court, but there were very heavily armed sheriff's officers all over the courthouse that week.
Flavor Fav?
9/11 is a joke?
Well, duh, Rudy Nounverb9/11, who else?
FOX news
The TSA agent who got to keep my deodorant?
Well, I have a bunch of "Remember the Maine" buttons in the attic, so there.
Man, I am so loving 9/11 Nostalgia Month. And 9udy's come back, like a troublesome boil, to lead the festivities and 'run" for "president"! Listen, MSM: 9/11 was the functional equivalent of a baby smearing his own shit on the nursery walls, the temper tantrum of an angry theocrat (like Michele Bachmann). Every commemoration of it, every insane wrangle about rebuilding "ground zero," just ratifies the anger of the people who applauded it. Be sad for the dead, honor the heroes, take care of the wounded, and then forget about it.
And please: "Glenn Corbett, a professor of fire science at John Jay College"… Are we sure that isn't Tom Corbett, a professor of space science at James T Kirk Starfleet Academy? What do you have to burn down to get your PhD?
If it's such an important day, why don't get we all get a paid holiday to commemerate it?
The intersection of 9/11 and money is a busy intersection
I hope no one tries to build a mosque near that intersection. Because that would be disrespectful to blah, blah, blah.
Ever since 9/11 I just can't get enough freedom. Seriously, what the fuck did they do with it?
Did you look in the corner? Or in the spotlight? That's where I lost my religion.
Deep fried it, silly.
Check under the couch cushions. That's where I found Jesus. And 35 cents.
I guess they didn't tell you. Freedom burned up in the flames that day.
freeDUMB, that's freeDUMB, Wookies, Let Freedumb ring (you up at checkout number 5)
Hide it next to the Ark of the Covenant.
9/11 Winners:
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater
9/11 Losers:
Everyone else in the world
No list of 9/11 winners is complete without Rudy.
No list of 9/11 losers is complete without Bernie Kerik.
OK, seriously – can someone not step up and help out here? The man is supposed to be writing for something besides this poop-blog and yet here he is. Kirsten is doing good stuff and Blair has been coming on strong but Ken is posting more now than he has since … hmm … well, since Riley's mysterious absence of about 3 weeks a year ago.
Won't someone help?!?
Ken Layne is the winner of 9/11 losers.
From a 9/11 loser, that's a winner.
Visiting Wonkette is what writers do when they are avoiding writing. Don't ask me how I know.
Operators are standing by
Glenn Corbett, a professor of fire science at John Jay College, active in a range of 9/11 issues, puts it this way: “Lots of people have got their hand in the till. A lot of people and a lot of companies have made a lot of money off of 9/11.”
I ate a lot of pistacchios this morning and felt sick. A lot of Cs and Ds on Rick Perry's report card. A lot of people like to swim at night. Our teacher gave us a lot of homework. Tom Hanks is a lot of animals. Fire science man uses a lot of noncount nouns and plural count nouns. Also.
Anybody can get published today, even a perfesser.
While at Walter Reed and various VA facilities with my younger son, I met a lot of people who had lost parts of themselves in these misadventures on the other side of the planet. Having seen them struggle to overcome their new disabilities, I cannot call them losers. They were taken advantage of by cruel and greedy people, lied to by their Commander in Chief, but they still love us and their country.
Some 9/11 winner has decided to cash in this past month by encircling the San Francisco Caltrain station with scores of metal bollards at a cost of who knows how much. It's hard to think of a more transparent example of some contractor profiting from an utterly worthless "security enhancement."
9/11 was also very good for companies that make insane obtrusive security devices for our paranoid FAA and federal landmarks and buildings.
like Skelator and his crew?
Well it is that wonderful time of year again. And I'm already catching the loathesome stink of Dick Cheney, and 9/11 is still 10 days away – what a treat!
I'm a 9/11 loser.
Soy un perdedor.
I'm a 9/11 whiner.
You could totally base a new scratch off lottery ticket on this. If you find explosives you win 3000x the dollar amount shown!
Relax, freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.
Don't forget about all those dollars those first responders are trying to waste by seeking to be taken care of medically… by the government… they lose… sadly.
Military contractors, the intelligence-industrial complex and Dick Cheney are the 9/11 winners. The rest of humanity are the losers.
From time to time the right wing nutz tell us "Freedom isn't free" – meaning, heating the Pentagon by burning $100 bills is just fine with them.
Using 9/11 to make money appears to have started on 9/12. Read "Mr. Smith Is Dead"
http://dnipogo.org/fcs/spartacus_mr_smith.htm
Folks in Congress stuck their hands into the trough up to the elbows just as fast as they could. They raided the Defense Department maintenance and repair budget to bring the bacon home to their districts, and it cost the lives of American service men and women.
We sent the National Guard to Iraq with re-manufactured Viet Nam-era rifles. Here in Alameda they had drives to gather toothbrushes, toothpaste, tea and lemonade for the troops. We went people off to war without the stuff a reasonable parent includes in their childrens' kit for summer camp.
Body armour? Who needs it? Manufacture Hummers without sufficient protection? Why not?
It's a disgrace, and if there is one thing we can learn on the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 it is there are jerks out there ready to make a buck from the blood of heroes.
Just wait, youngsters, in thirty years Dubya's and Cheney's image will be buffed, plumped and pumped to the point of being carved on Mt. Rushmore; just like they're doing to Ronnie right now. I'm glad I'll be dead.
i don't think so.
really. no snark.
I sincerely hope you are correct.
Make a concrete and chickenwire version of Mt. Rushmore with W and Cheney et al. on it, then charge wingnuts to come see it. Sell'em over-priced bad food, over-charge them in the camping area.
They would not only go for it, they would love it!
>
Winner or loser, I'm sick to hell of 9/11.
same here…I'm turning off everything electronic that weekend.
i don't know about 9/11 winner or loser, but i'm pretty sure i'm an american't.
(with apologies to robert rodriguez).
Anyone who actually had to live through those first few hours in Manahattan and then smell the burnt human flesh for days afterwards is a winner, because we experienced something very profound, very human, very life-affirming. It wasn't anything I would ever want to live through again, but in a strange way I am glad that I didn't just experience on a television screen.
I couldn't agree more. People who experienced it second or third hand don't understand that even the same way someone does who was there, although I guess that can be said about any event. I just think to most people 9/11 represents all these abstract things, and their feelings about it are based more on notions of nationalism and identity than on the kind of raw fear or sadness one experienced who was there or who lost a loved one.
Larry Silverstein got $10 billion. Insurance. On buildings that were losing him money.
That's a lot of money.
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