A 9/11 Double Mourning
Tanya Domi was a graduate student at Columbia University on September 11, 2001. She was already in mourning when the planes hit the World Trade Center on that fateful day. Those terrible events sealed her identity as a proud New Yorker.
At the 116th Columbia University subway station, the Number 1 and then Number 2 subway train station sign said, “All Trains Slow Today,” written in chalk on a wall board, startling me as I walked past the hurried makeshift sign and up the steps, entering the university ‘s Morningside Heights campus at about 9:25 a.m. on September 11, 2001.
I thought to myself…”that is strange” because I had never seen such a sign before…never. Â It was such a beautiful September fall morning as I walked across bucolic College Walk to the School of International and Public Affairs to attend my Foreign Policies of the Former Soviet Union graduate class. I was in the second-year of my graduate studies in Human Rights following a four-year tour as a State Department contractor working in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where I had contributed to the implementation of the U.S.-brokered Dayton Peace Accords.
Columbia University's Alma Mater Statute
I was not a traditional student by any standard measure. And because of my professional background in the military and foreign affairs, I readily knew, more than most Americans that on this day the world as we knew it would be unalterably changed.
Despite my misgivings about the subway sign, I quickly set those feelings aside, to make emotional space, as I was steeped in mourning, reeling from a breakup just two days earlier with my lover. I had once been convinced this was the relationship that I had always longed for — the love of my life with whom I would marry and would live out my days with her to the end.
We had a transnational courtship, initially meeting in Provincetown on Thanksgiving in 1997 while I was in the States for consultations from my State Department posting in Sarajevo. We traveled back and forth for several months meeting for romantic interludes, before she arrived permanently to Bosnia in 1998. It was a whirlwind romance that ended, always to be intertwined and conflated with my 9/11 experience.
I was emotionally crushed. Â Every inch of my body hurt. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to move. I was not sleeping much and there was no escaping the pain
Nonetheless, I persisted, bullish in my plan to obtain a graduate degree. I promised myself that I would attend class religiously, no matter how much I hurt emotionally and physically. I rigorously willed myself to persist in the main occupation of my life, even though I was alone and without intimate friends in New York City.
As I entered the student lounge on the ground floor–a mass of students, 300 or more, were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, straining to watch the televisions affixed to the ceiling.
“What is going on?” I asked a friend, whom I had bonded with during my first year international law class. I was watching the  television as I asked him.  He told me that two planes had flown into the World Trade Center Towers. I immediately said, “Oh my god, that is terrorism! That has to be terrorism!”
Smoke was billowing from one of the towers and I was thinking, “no, this is not a movie!” Cameras panned in on people who were jumping to their deaths. It was an unthinkable, unfathomable and surreal situation.
The TV anchors were reporting there were a number of unaccounted planes still in the air. Then the report came in that the Pentagon was hit. I was thinking, “Oh my god, America is under attack.”
People were flipping their phones on and I turned to look for mine and realized that in the halcyon fog of my breakup, I had left it at home (of all days to leave your phone at home–to be in a national crisis without one–I began to lament my distractions.) Little did I know that for most of the day, cell phone service was nearly non-existent and land-line phones did not resume working until 4:00 p.m.
And then the first tower dropped, as a collective gasp and shrieks ricocheted across the room–the tower seemed to fall in a slow, excruciating motion, as dust and debris blew up and down and filled the sky in darkness. I could not wrap my brain around the surreal images unfolding in real-time. I knew it was very likely few people could survive such a horrendous calamity.
I turned to my friend and said: “New York City will be fine. Giuliani will do his job. But with Bush as president, we are so screwed!”
I knew almost immediately we were witnessing a life altering American moment which would be historically referred to as “before 9/11 and after 9/11.”
I became angry–outraged too, that these terrorists so brazenly attacked my city, New York City, one of the greatest cities in the world. I knew that New York City would rebuild, come back, as it always had done during its illustrious history. New Yorkers are resilient and much more generous than conventionally thought to be. It was in the hours and days after the 9/11 attacks, although I was angry, in shock, and at times, fearful, I absolutely fell in love with New Yorkers. My city and its first responders worked without self-regard, until they could do no more; lay their heads down to nap and then get up and do more.
However, I had no doubt that Bush would take America to war very quickly. I had early concerns about his apparent radical foreign policy agenda that marked a significant departure from previous administrations. My concerns would be borne out in ways that many Americans would find abhorrent. Some would call new Bush initiatives like warrantless wiretaps, fundamentally unconstitutional. It is a debate that continues into the present.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=YndXYIPlmd0%3Fversion%3D3%26hl%3Den_US
Classes were cancelled that day, but I could not get home until later in the evening. Sitting at my university computer, emails began rolling in from Sarajevo, written with great concern from dear friends, particularly. At this peculiar moment in my life, I felt a deep kinship with Sarajevans, who were so strong and loving, having survived a three-year siege of their city. Although America came late to their defense, they fell in love with America and Americans. Now, they were supporting New York City and America, evidenced in their urgent emails to me, and later in September more than 7,000 Sarajevans gathered together to sing Mozart’s Requiem Mass as a tribute to America and the lives that were lost on September 11th.
Sarajevo Martyrs Memorial Cemetery
I staggered home later in the afternoon and watched television non-stop for the duration of the week until I could not bear another second. I learned about the 19 Saudi Arabian hijackers, who learned to fly planes in America, but not to land them, ultimately using them as suicide missiles.
CNN broadcast 24/7 and I watched video repeatedly of the planes flying into World Trade Center, as well as into the Pentagon. By the time the Friday night marathon tribute to the victims and country took place, I was more than ready to return to a reassuring episode of “Law and Order,” which envisaged the capture and arrest of the bad guys, who have been prosecuted and thrown into jail. It was a comforting thought in the midst of total chaos. But my thoughts were a fantasy, a wishful attempt to reclaim the idyllic and innocent America that once existed “before 9/11.”
The next morning, I headed to Harry’s Shoes at 83rd and Broadway to buy a new pair of shoes. Having made my purchase, I exited the store to my cell phone ringing.
On the line was a dear friend from Honolulu, Hawaii, who shared the terrible news that the husband of a mutual friend had been one of the passengers on United Flight 93–the hijacked plane that was successfully brought down in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, by its brave passengers, who thwarted another likely attack on the nation’s capitol or the White House in Washington, D.C.
I began to cry–the week’s terrible events finally had caught up with me. The bravery and sacrifice demonstrated by so many Americans–and some who were not–overwhelmed and touched me deeply. All these events, brought home and reinforced my notions that I consciously wanted to live life to its absolute fullest in the big and small moments, to be kind and show respect for others, to tell those who you love, that you indeed love and care about them everyday and live a mindful and conscious life that imbues gratitude and a zest for life.
Reflecting on all those who went to their deaths that fateful day–who had little, if any time to reflect. But we do, at least for today, which recalls Ralph Waldo  Emerson’s “Thanksgiving” poem, a sweet thought to consider as we reflect:
For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food,
For love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.
And may it be so for every day I live to see the morning dawn. After we leave this earth “only love will survive us” (Phillip Larkin.)
(Image (top) of Columbia College Walk)
Tanya L. Domi is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University who teaches about human rights in Eurasia and is a Harriman Institute affiliated faculty member. Prior to teaching at Columbia, Domi worked internationally for more than a decade on issues related to democratic transitional development, including political and media development, human rights, gender issues, sex trafficking, and media freedom.
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General Mark Milley, one of then-President Donald Trump’s top generals who served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says the Republican presidential nominee is “fascist to the core” and there is no one in America who has ever posed more of a threat to the nation.
Milley, appointed by Trump in 2019, served as the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. Armed Forces until his retirement last year. His remarks appear in Watergate journalist Bob Woodward’s latest book, “War,” The Independent reports.
After the January 6, 2021 insurrection, Gen. Milley requested a meeting with incoming Attorney General Merrick Garland, “to urge him to investigate domestic violent extremism and far-right militia movements.”
“According to Woodward, a senior Department of Justice lawyer said at the time that Milley’s sit-down with Garland might have been the first-ever meeting between a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the country’s top civilian law enforcement official. He writes that the general asked for the meeting because he was ‘deeply convinced’ that Trump remained ‘a danger to the country’ even though he had been forced from office after Biden’s election win.
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Later, in March of 2023, Milley spoke directly to Woodward, telling him that “no one has ever been as dangerous to this country” as the former president.
Milley had talked to Woodward about Trump for a previous book, “Peril,” but apparently his concerns had grown stronger since then.
“Do you realize, do you see what this man is?” Milley asked the veteran journalist. “He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country.”
“A fascist to the core,” the General declared.
The Guardian adds that Milley “fears being recalled to uniform and court-martialed should Trump defeat Kamala Harris next month and return to power.”
“He is a walking, talking advertisement of what he’s going to try to do,” Milley recently “warned former colleagues,” Woodward writes. “He’s saying it and it’s not just him, it’s the people around him.”
Former top Trump adviser Steve Bannon, according to Woodward, has vowed to hold Milley “accountable.”
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In 2021, Woodward’s book “Peril” revealed Milley acted to ensure Trump could not misuse the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
“Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley took steps to prevent then-President Donald Trump from misusing the country’s nuclear arsenal during the last month of his presidency, according to a new book by The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Robert Costa obtained by NBC News,” the news organization had reported.
The book “recounted a phone conversation Milley had with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after the Jan. 6 violence at the Capitol, which Pelosi blamed on an ‘unhinged’ Trump. Pelosi said in January that she spoke to Milley about ‘preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.'”
“‘I can guarantee you, you can take it to the bank, that there’ll be, that the nuclear triggers are secure and we’re not going to do — we’re not going to allow anything crazy, illegal, immoral or unethical to happen,’ Milley told her, according to a transcript of the call obtained by the authors.”
“The president alone can order the use of nuclear weapons. But he doesn’t make the decision alone. One person can order it, several people have to launch it.”
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Billionaire Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who purchased the social media platform Twitter and renamed it X, is “all in” on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, The New York Times reports. X has “reportedly worked with Donald Trump’s campaign to censor material that could be harmful to the former president’s White House chances as part of a pattern of election interference that is unprecedented in U.S. history,” according to The Daily Beast.
Musk, The Times reports, “seen over the weekend jumping for joy alongside former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Butler, Pa., is now talking to the Republican candidate multiple times a week.”
Video (below) shows Musk wore a black “Make America Great Again” cap with the words “Never Surrender” embroidered on the side and praising the ex-president’s actions during the attempted assassination.
The relationship between Musk and Trump “has proved significant in other ways. After a reporter’s publication of hacked Trump campaign information last month, the campaign connected with X to prevent the circulation of links to the material on the platform, according to two people with knowledge of the events. X eventually blocked links to the material and suspended the reporter’s account.”
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The reporter, Ken Klippenstein, whose work often focuses on national security issues, published the document because “it’s of keen public interest in an election season.”
Klippenstein last month called his ban “political,” and wrote: “It’s been widely reported that my suspension from X (Twitter) is only temporary. Those reports are false. My ban from X, the company says, is permanent.”
The New York Times’ Aric Toler writes: “Trump’s campaign worked with Musk/Twitter to implement a blanket ban on sharing the link to the Vance dossier.” NBC News’ Kevin Collier adds, “Per NYT, X’s crackdown on Ken Klippenstein and the Iran-hacked Vance doc came after the Trump campaign reached out. Well within each party’s right, but this is the exact same thing Musk, Trump, and the right threw a yearslong fit about over Hunter Biden.”
Journalist Steve Mullis notes, “It’s crazy that this is a single paragraph in the NYT’s Elon Musk story. Given that there were congressional hearings accusing Biden and Democrats of doing this sort of thing, this should be its own huge story.”
Musk, The Times adds, “has effectively moved his base of operations to Pennsylvania, the place that he has recently told confidants he believes is the linchpin to Mr. Trump’s re-election,” and “relentlessly promoted Mr. Trump’s candidacy to his 201 million followers on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter that he bought for $44 billion and has used to spread conspiracy theories about the Democratic Party and to insult its candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris.”
The Times’ article ends with this: “Online, Mr. Musk has painted a dark picture of what would happen if Mr. Trump lost, a circumstance that could hurt Mr. Musk personally. In an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, he acknowledged ‘trashing Kamala nonstop’ and being all in for Mr. Trump.”
“If Mr. Trump loses, he joked, ‘how long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?'”
Democratic strategist Matt McDermott writes, “Doesn’t seem to be enough appreciation for the fact that it’s entirely reasonable to assume that Elon Musk is going all in on Trump because he’s worried about a federal probe into corporate corruption + election interference and knows Trump will shut down an investigation.”
The Times notes that Musk “is personally steering the actions of a super PAC that he has funded with tens of millions of dollars to turn out the vote for Mr. Trump, not just in Pennsylvania but across the country. He has even proposed taking a campaign bus tour across Pennsylvania and knocking on doors himself, in part to see how his money is being used.”
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The Times does not include news from August related to Musk’s super PAC, America PAC.
Attorney Jay Kuo alleged on Substack, “Elon Musk’s PAC Is Harvesting Voter Data.”
“The America PAC is using fraudulent techniques to obtain highly personal information from voters in swing states,” Kuo wrote, pointing to a CNBC “explosive report on how Elon Musk’s America PAC is defrauding voters through online ads. As the report explained, Musk’s Trump-aligned PAC is running a scheme that pretends to register people to vote. But in many cases, the PAC simply collects higher personal information from users that it can later use to retarget them.”
According to The Washington Post, some of Musk’s foreign backers in his $44 billion purchase of Twitter include Billionaire investor Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud ($2 billion) and The Qatar Investment Authority ($375 million). Buzzfeed News in 2022 referred to them as “countries that have historically restricted freedom of speech.”
Watch the video below or at this link.
“What’s even more telling is that America PAC only collects this personal information from users residing in swing states, such as Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina. For anyone else, it actually does assist them with registering to vote,” Kuo wrote. “It’s possible that America PAC simply ‘messed up’ badly by forgetting to actually redirect users in swing states to voter registration sites after scraping their personal information. In so doing, however, it has made it abundantly clear that it treats swing state users very differently than non-swing state ones. In exposing its own operations this way, it has raised a more troubling question: Is Musk involved in improper data harvesting and planning to improperly influence the election, just like we saw in 2016?”
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A prominent former U.S. State Department official who worked to fight Russian disinformation has labeled the Trump presidential campaign an “influence operation,” with several experts echoing his assessment.
Richard Stengel, an NBC News/MSNBC analyst who spent seven years as TIME magazine managing editor and served as the chief executive of the National Constitution Center, on Thursday shared his evaluation.
“The Trump candidacy is not so much a political campaign as what intelligence services call an influence operation, a coordinated effort to use mis-and-disinformation to undermine democratic institutions and processes,” declared Stengel.
Stengel, who served as U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, is the author of the 2019 memoir, “Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It.”
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Stengel’s comment received hundreds of thousands of views on social media, and garnered responses from experts.
“This is correct,” replied Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the well-known professor of history and an expert on fascism, authoritarians, propaganda, and democracy.
“True,” asserted Eric Chenoweth, Director of the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe, adding, “it is correlated with Russian influence operations.”
“The Trump effort has the support of his BFF Putin, who has paid agents in the US as social ‘influencers’ to help promote Russia’s pro-Trump narrative,” noted former U.S. Ambassador to Kosovo, Greg Delawie.
Indeed, early last month the U.S. Dept. of Justice announced it had seized “32 internet domains used in Russian government-directed foreign malign influence campaigns,” which “used these domains, among others, to covertly spread Russian government propaganda with the aim of reducing international support for Ukraine, bolstering pro-Russian policies and interests, and influencing voters in U.S. and foreign elections, including the U.S. 2024 Presidential Election.”
Days later, MSNBC’s Ja’han Jones reported, “MAGA influencers are scrambling after the DOJ’s Russia indictment,” and mentioned “an unsealed affidavit … alleging a Kremlin-backed agency had nearly 600 U.S.-based influencers in its sights as it waged an online-based election manipulation operation in the United States.”
The Washington Spectator’s Dave Troy, an investigative journalist and tech entrepreneur who has written extensively on Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin, responded to Stengel’s post: “Yes. And this would have been a very cool thing for the Obama administration to say in 2015-2016.”
Dr. Joanne Freeman, a professor of American history and of American studies, replied to Stengel’s post with a simple “YUP.”
Stengel’s pronouncement wasn’t so much a revelation as a reminder.
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Earlier this week, David Corn, Mother Jones’ Washington bureau chief and co-author of “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump,” penned an important piece titled: “Trump Is Running a Disinformation Campaign, Not a Political Campaign.”
“He’s not just lying. He’s creating an alternative reality,” Corn states. “His campaign is a full-fledged project to pervert how Americans view the nation and the world, an extensive propaganda campaign designed to fire up fears and intensify anxieties that Trump can then exploit to collect votes. And the political media world has yet to come to terms with the fact that Trump is heading a disinformation crusade more likely to be found in an authoritarian state than a vibrant democracy. This is unlike other presidential campaigns in modern American history—other than his own previous efforts.”
Even before Donald Trump left the White House in disgrace in January of 2021, experts were busy analyzing just how damaging his time on office then had been.
The day after the November 2020 election which Trump ultimately lost but falsely had declared victory, The Washington Post‘s Dan Balz wrote: “Trump has attacked democracy’s institutions, but never so blatantly as he did overnight.”
“For four years, President Trump has sought to undermine the institutions of a democratic society, but never so blatantly as in the early morning hours of Wednesday. His attempt to falsely claim victory and to subvert the election itself by calling for a halt to vote-counting represents the gravest of threats to the stability of the country,” Balz wrote. “A president who respected the Constitution would let things play out. But Trump has shown once again he cares not about the Constitution or the stability and well-being of the country or anything like that. He cares only about himself and retaining the powers he now holds. And so he cries “fraud” when there is no evidence whatsoever of any such thing.”
The Niskanen Center, a D.C. think tank, one week before the violent and deadly January 6, 2021 insurrection Trump allegedly incited, asked: “How Much Did Trump Undermine U.S. Democracy?”
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