Filling the Hole. Work has finally begun on the building that is to replace the World Trade Center as New York City's tallest — and the world's tallest, at least as now envisioned, and at least for a while.

Seventy trucks rolled into ground zero Saturday to pour the concrete base of the signature skyscraper at the new World Trade Center, creating the first visible signs of the long-delayed tower.

It's about time.
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I have mentioned here that I sometimes take the PATH interstate subway from the WTC station, so see the Ground Zero worksite up close (albeit at nite). Last August 27th, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin rightly countered implied criticism, by a CBS News 60 Minutes interviewer, of the slow pace of reconstruction of his widely devastated city in these words: "You guys in New York can’t get a hole in the ground fixed and it’s five years later. So let’s be fair." Tho he was criticized for what some perceived as a callous remark, he was absolutely right.
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On September 26th I expressed my hope that New York would stop delaying and reject downsizing, but build, at Ground Zero:

the tallest building on Earth, proof that we are not cowards afraid to build high and proud into the sky.
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And when we build it, let us not give it some stupid name like "Freedom Tower", dishonestly to pretend that it is our freedom, rather than our Zionism, that was attacked on 9/11. Let it indeed bear no name that harkens back to 9/11.
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"World Trade Center" was a good name in its time. It both looked outward and claimed for New York a central position in world commerce. I'm sure we can come up with an equally good name for a new tower, as proud and self-referential as "Empire State Building". Something that dedicates us to world diversity, tolerance, justice, and progress.
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Islamist fanaticism seeks to impose narrow-minded conformity and return us to the Middle Ages. We could not do better in renouncing that program than to dedicate the world's tallest building to the future.

Present plans, alas, are to call the new building "Freedom Tower". I reject such a ridiculous name. Freedom is not a bad thing to which to dedicate a building, or society, but the motive behind naming the replacement for the WTC "Freedom Tower" is to falsify the motive of the 9/11 hijackers and as well falsify what our foreign policy has been dedicated to for 40 years: the slaughter of Moslems to make the Middle East safe for Jews. If they want to name the new building for what the attacks were really all about, let them call it "One Zionist Center" or "Israel Forever Tower". If, however, they want it to speak to our historic aspirations, let them call it something like "Futurespire" or "Justice Tower".
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,867 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:16 PM