Wegelin & Co. provides private banking services in Switzerland. It offers asset management and investment advisory services for private and institutional clients. The company specializes in developing customized wealth management and retirement planning solutions. Its products include structured products, funds for private and institutional investors, and state street funds. The company also provides pension and financial planning services, hedge fund management services, and customized services for external asset managers. In addition, it offers business process outsourcing services, including outstanding IT infrastructure for third party banks. Wegelin & Co. was founded in 1741 and is based in St. Gallen, Switzerland.
#1
Maybe there was a point to this, but after the tedious and apparently obligatory "Amerikkka is EEEEVILLLL!!! How dare they lecture us honorable Helvetians!!", I lost interest.
Besides, anyone who seriously wants to hide things from the IRS generally goes to the accommodating islands in the Caribbean nowadays. Better weather, nice diving, far less likely to give info to the Feds, and they don't have nearly the slimy history of the Swiss.
...The Post has a story about children who were born after 9/11, who now learn about the events in school. Its rather unbelievable to think there are little moppets walking around, who dont have any memories of that day, who didnt find themselves stunned, horrified, angry, who don't find those three numbers trigger a wave of memories almost every time.
Im a dad now two years and two days ago today and I felt great relief upon learning that the second week of September would mark more than 9/11; I have a happy memory, and a celebration with a happy boy, for the rest of my life. He isnt aware of the dates significance, yet, obviously, and I dread that day. Innocence is so rare and so precious that you want to put it in a museum under secure glass. And the day that he asks, where do you begin?
Posted by: Mike ||
09/11/2009 10:53 ||
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#1
Innocence is so rare and so precious that you want to put it in a museum under secure glass. And the day that he asks, where do you begin? The best parents can hope for is that their children can mature enough before they too have to face the downside of life. E.g, very early in life I learned my uncle saw headless men running during the Japanese attack on Wheeler Field and that my father had nightmares for years after he returned from overseas. My mother was the one who carefully broke that kind of news to me. My father never talked about it.
#2
--- Oh, and just about every parent of the kids I knew growing up had similar stories to tell. When we were 8 or 9, we played at being 'suicide pilots' This would have been about 1956. At school we played 'duck and cover' during drills, to protect us against nuclear attacks that fortunately never happened.
--- Last Christmas I told a 5-yr-old grandnephew a little bit about our uncle at Pearl Harbor. Immediately he made up a game for the two of us to play where he was an American soldier dodging Japanese bombs & bullets during the attack while I threw beanbags at him. He made up the game spontaneously, I just played along. (His mother doesn't allow him to play with toy weapons.) I feel sure that boys his age were all enthused when Leonidas and his 300 marched off to their destiny at Thermopylae. I'm sure they, too, wanted to join those men.
#3
"I'm sure they, too, wanted to join those men."
It's human nature to do whatever it takes to protect ourselves. Unfortunately that instinct is often driven out of us by others (and I won't get into who).
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
09/11/2009 15:46 Comments ||
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Here is the 2009 edition of the "Never Forget" archive. This collection has been assembled over the years, with much input from other Rantburgers. Feel free to add to the list in the comments section. Eyewitness accounts & actualities
Jim Dwyer, Eric Lipton, Kevin Flynn, James Glanz and Ford Fessenden. "Fighting to Live as the Towers Died"New York Times (LRR) -- an incredibly detailed reconstruction of the 102 minutes between the first attack and the final collapse.
Editorial, "Common Valor"Wall Street Journal -- ". . . in the midst of tragedy we do well to recognize that these firefighters did not lose their lives. They gave them."
Peggy Noonan, "Courage Under Fire"Wall Street Journal -- "Three hundred firemen. This is the part that reorders your mind when you think of it. For most of the 5,000 dead were there--they just happened to be there, in the buildings, at their desks or selling coffee or returning e-mail. But the 300 didn't happen to be there, they went there. In the now-famous phrase, they ran into the burning building and not out of the burning building. They ran up the stairs, not down, they went into it and not out of it. They didn't flee, they charged."
"Mysterious Red Bandanna Man Is 9/11 Hero" WNBC-TV -- The story of Wells Crowther, an equities trader and volunteer firefighter who worked in 2 WTC, and was as much a hero as anyone that day.
Vincent Druding, "Ground Zero: a Journal"First Things -- account of an early volunteer in the recovery effort
Rod Dreher, "The Hole in the Skyline"National Review Online -- "Every morning when I open the door to go to work, there is a hole in the sky where the World Trade Center used to be, a memento mori, a reminder of death. Not just the death of the 2,800, but of death itself, and the impermanence of all things human. That hole is the first thing I see in the morning when I leave my house, and the last thing I see at night before I come inside for my supper."
Bruce Springsteen, "The Rising" -- About a firefighter at the WTC. I can't forgive Springsteen his later embrace of moonbattery, but he's a talented songwriter, and this is one time he got it exactly right.
Steven Den Beste, "The First Anniversary" -- "In America we remember. We remember people who made choices. We remember an unforgivable attack. We remember people who refused to submit, and chose to die well, defiant to the end. We remember two words: Let's roll."
James Lileks, "The Daily Bleat" 9/13/01 -- "The men on the plane decided to attack the hijackers. They learned what had happened in New York with the other hijacked planes; they figured their lives were lost already. They fought back. What its like to swallow your terror and act is beyond the imagination of most ordinary folks - but the point is, they were ordinary folks. Were all on that plane now." 9/14/01 -- "The planes are landing again. I saw them fly over the house tonight and I wanted to, and did, cheer. Waved them past. Gnat waved hello as well. Its a heartening sight." the week of 9/17-21/01 -- "Im tired of people who can watch 5,000 people from 62 nations burned alive and crushed to death, and think: well, you know you had this coming." 9/11/02 -- "Were going to win. We dont have any choice." 9/11/03 -- "Two years in; the rest of our lives to go." 9/8/06 -- "Just so you know: 9/11 reset the clock for me. All hands went to midnight. Im interested in what people did after that date, and if the movie [The Path to 9/11] shows that before the attack one side lacked feck and the other was feck-deficient, I don't worry about it. It's like revisiting Congressional debates about Hawaiian harbor security in November 1941. Y'all get a pass. The Etch-A-Sketch's turned over. Now: what have you said lately?"
John Derbyshire, "Two years on"National Review -- a tribute to "small teams of inconceivably brave men and women, working in strange places, unknown and unacknowledged"
Larry Miller, "Two Years"Weekly Standard -- "That's the choice: Stop, or keep going; keep our promises, or forget we made them; be responsible, or irresponsible; face facts, or ignore them. It's easier to stop, you know. Beating these folks will take a very long time. Decades, probably, and that's if we do everything right."
Steven Green, "Terrorized? Hell No!"VodkaPundit (blog posting) -- "Remember, too, our just vengeance. Our president told us, 'I hear you, the rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.' And they do hear us, in Iraq and in Afghanistan. They hear us, not because we used our weapons to murder their civilians, but to bring down their tyrants. From our loss, we gave them hope. The loss felt in Baghdad and Kabul is that of Sisyphus without his stone. The sound they hear is the ring of freedom. And they hear us, even if only a whisper, in Syria, in Iran, and - yes - they hear us in Saudi Arabia, too."
Peggy Noonan, "A Heart, a Cross, a Flag"Wall Street Journal -- "On Sept. 10, 2001 we were, a lot of us, immersed in a national culture--a big, vivid, full-network, broadband, opens-soon-at-a-theater-near-you culture--that allowed us to live knee deep in distraction. . . . And then Sept. 11 came." "I Just Called to Say I Love You,"Wall Street Journal -- "This is what I get from the last messages. People are often stronger than they know, bigger, more gallant than they'd guess. And this: We're all lucky to be here today and able to say what deserves saying, and if you say it a lot, it won't make it common and so unheard, but known and absorbed. I think the sound of the last messages, of what was said, will live as long in human history, and contain within it as much of human history, as any old metallic roar."
Victor Davis Hanson, "The Great Divide"National Review -- "It will require an economist, politician, historian, philosopher, and artist to make sense of the world turned upside down after September 11, which unlike Y2K really did prove to be the abyss between the millennia." "Lessons in War"National Review -- "Bin Ladens killers tore off a great scab on September 11; at once they exposed to billions the evil of radical Islam and with it the Western worlds shock, fright, and difficulty in confronting it and defeating it. That uncertainty ultimately does not arise from our enemies, but from within ourselves this strange disease of thinking we fight back too much when we often do too little."
George W. Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People September 20, 2001 -- "The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them." Never forgive, never forget, never excuse.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/11/2009 07:45 ||
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#1
Thank you.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
09/11/2009 10:10 Comments ||
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#3
One of the really interesting stories of 9/11 was that of Rick Rescorla, head of security for Morgan Stanley/Dean-Witter. He survived the battle of Ia Drang Valley in 1965 in Viet Nam but did not survive the collapse of WTC Tower 2. He died saving others.
by Kevin O'Brien, The Plain Dealer Boy, does today feel like Sept. 10, or what?
Here we stand, just at the edge of fall, that most congenial of seasons.
Soon, the leaves will blaze with color and the air will turn invigoratingly crisp. Pro football starts this weekend. The kids are back in school and our parent-in-chief just gave them a nice, fatherly lecture about the importance of hitting the books.
It's true that this year, our contentment is disturbed by a noisy battle over an issue with enormous implications for America's economic and political future -- as well as the personal futures of every one of us -- government-run health care.
But be of good cheer. Friday is our very first congressionally declared, presidentially blessed, federally administered National Day of Service and Remembrance -- a day of feel-good words and feel-good deeds to counteract all of the negativity that has become associated with Sept. 11, 2001.
(I'm sorry to have to mention this, but that was the day when Islamic al-Qaida terrorists hijacked fuel-laden airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing about 3,000 people.)
Here's what the government Web site Serve.gov says about it:
"The tragic events of September 11, 2001 inspired Americans to come together in a remarkable spirit of unity and compassion. It was a stark reminder that our fate as individuals is inherently tied to the fate of our nation. Eight years later, September 11 continues to evoke strong emotion and is an homage to sacrifice and a call to action."
Let's break that down, euphemisms and all.
Yes, Sept. 11, 2001, was "tragic" -- in the way that only premeditated, politically and religiously motivated mass murder can be. Which is to say it wasn't tragic at all. It was outrageous. It was infamous. It was an act of war -- of jihad, in the parlance of its perpetrators -- carried out against defenseless, unsuspecting, undeserving office workers and travelers.
The "unity" we witnessed among Americans then was actually righteous anger. The "compassion" was actually mourning -- for the office workers whose choices narrowed to burning or leaping, for the would-be rescuers whose devotion to duty cost them their lives, and for the passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93, who chose not to let evil have its way.
You bet our fate as individuals is "inherently tied to the fate of our nation." And yet today, the very same people who excoriated the previous presidential administration for "intelligence failures" want to subject CIA interrogators to criminal prosecution for trying to preserve individual lives and the nation. That kind of service is out of favor.
And yes, "eight years later, Sept. 11 continues to evoke strong emotion."
But if we can just put a more positive spin on it, maybe it won't so much anymore.
It feels like Sept. 10, all right -- Sept. 10, 2001. Before all of the nastiness. Before the pilots and flight attendants had their throats cut. Before the skyscrapers disintegrated. Before the funerals. Before the memorial services for the people whose bodies were never found. Before most of us had any inkling of how very, very deeply our attackers hated us.
But it's not Sept. 10, 2001. It's Sept. 10, 2009 -- one day short of eight years into a war Americans didn't ask for and grew weary of long ago.
Thanks to those CIA guys whose scalps the empty-headed left are demanding, and to a great many other people who defend us, we haven't had to declare other national days of service to take our minds off reality.
If anything, our defenders have done their work too well. They have given us a gift we don't deserve and can't afford: the return of our complacency.
We're more scared of the swine flu than of people who want to kill us.
We're worked up about "climate change" -- though, mercifully, less than we used to be -- rather than about people who want to impose culture change and law change and religion change upon us, at gunpoint if necessary.
Sept. 11, 2001, wasn't a bad dream. It happened, and it would be the height of folly to think that the people who made it happen are done with us.
By all means, remember the heroes and the victims this Friday and honor them, if you're so inclined, with some act of kindness. But remember also the killers, because when it feels enough like Sept. 10 to them, they will give us another Sept. 11.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/11/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Kevin O'Brien hit a homerun with this editorial - 9/11 - Never Forget
#2
Considering how thoroughly liberal the PD is (It's my hometown newspaper) this is stunning.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
09/11/2009 12:30 Comments ||
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#3
Kevin O'Brien has a way with words.
President Obama signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act which, for the first time, officially recognizes September 11 as a National Day of Service and Remembrance. Maybe it would be more appropriate to call the day "National Swim Day" or "Illegal Immigration Day" or "National Embibe Day.
We're worked up about "climate change" -- though, mercifully, less than we used to be -- rather than about people who want to impose culture change and law change and religion change upon us, at gunpoint if necessary.
There are 3000 Americans that were murdered on that day. There are another 5000 military personnel who gave their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan because of 9/11. It is a solemn day and should be remembered that way. Use some other day for community service.
How about commemorating 9/11 by taking part in the Tea Party in Washington D.C. on 9/12. 9/12 could be called "Take Back Your Government Day!" or "Community Service Day."
#4
September 11 is not 'National Service Day' to me; rather, it is Anger Day, or maybe even Rage Day! And every year, as others forget, and lose their anger, I pick up part of the load they dropped. On September 11 don't even think about pushing me with that Religion of Peace and Love BS.
#5
The thought of 9/11 as a day of National Service becomes more palatable when you realize that somewhere today an MQ-9 Reaper is performing service to the nation by servicing one of the bastards who danced when the towers fell. It's only fitting that those who opened the gates of Hell be served a dose of Hellfire.
...Within a few minutes of watching the first episodes, though, I was reminded of something else, something that had attached itself to the show. The mood of the Early Oughts. The show was shot in 2001, and hit the states the year after. It wasnt that the show had anything to do with the mood of the Early Oughts it seemed an example of an exhausted culture that had painted itself into a corner where irrelevance, bureaucracy, and impotence were the dominant tropes, but the tone of the show and its hovering unspoken criticism editorialized nicely against the smothering effect of life in the cubicle world. No, it was who I was when I watched it. What I felt. The fact that I was switching from the hot red feed of the TV news to a DVD, unplugging for a while from the incessant imperatives of the crawl, the words at the bottom of the screen that scraped the screen with the latest events. In those days I turned on the TV as soon as I got up, and read the crawl. I muted the TV during the day, but kept an eye on the crawl. When I finished an episode of the Office I switched back to the dish, and checked the crawl.
This lasted a few years. The internet took over, and I think I stopped watching TV news the day Saddams statue came down. In the most simplistic and emotional sense, it was a tonic chord that provided resolution. But every so often every week, really I remember the event in some odd echo of the emotions I felt on September 11. It might be the closing credit music of a BBC comedy, or an old movie about New York, or driving past a building designed by the architect of the WTC, or just standing in the spot where I stood when I saw the towers fall. Or more: for Gods sake, the Gallery of Regrettable Foods publication date was 9/11; half the time I look at the book on the shelf I recall being in the shower, thinking of the interviews I had lined up, turning off the water and hearing Peter Jennings on the radio, wondering why they were replaying tape of the 91 attack on the towers. I remember what Natalie was doing a happy toddler, she was digging through her box of toys and handing me a phone with a smile as bright as the best tomorrow you could imagine. I remember Jasper on his back, whining, unsure. I remember these things because I picked up my camera and filmed them, because this was a day unlike any other. Today I answered the phone in the same spot where I stood when I called my Washington bureau, told them Id be rewriting the column obviously and wished them well. They were four blocks from the White House. Impossible not to imagine the Fail-Safe squeal on the other end of the line.
On the Hewitt show tonight I started talking about 9/11, and my mouth overran my head, because somewhere down there is a core of anger that hasnt diminished a joule. This doesnt mean anything, by itself anger is an emotion that believes its justification is self-evident by its very existence. Passion is not an argument; rage is not a plan. But as the years go by I find myself as furious now as I was furious then and no less unmanned by the sight of the planes and the plumes. Once a year I watch the thing I cobbled together from the footage I Tivod, and the day is bright and real and true again.
Or not. Its all so far in the past, isnt it? The ten-year-old you had to sit down and console and reassure is off to college. The President is retired seems like he left two years ago. The wars grind on, but as far as the front pages are concerned, theyre like TV shows that lost their popularity but pull enough viewers to avoid cancellation. (The video store doesnt even carry the DVD of the first two seasons anymore.) Were used to the hole in the ground where the towers used to be, and if they announced they wont rebuild, but will pave it over and use it for parking, people would shrug. We havent forgotten that the towers fell, but no one remembers what they planned to replace them with. The towers they planned looked empty in in the pictures shiny, contorted, as if twisting away to avoid a blow.
Right after the towers fell, people whod never liked them as architecture wanted them back just as they were. Get back up in the sky! But it hasnt happened. Even if they build the replacement towers, theres still a space in the sky where no one will ever stand again. We could stand there once. That we couldnt stand there eight years ago was their fault. That we cannot stand there today is ours.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/11/2009 06:15 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Eyewitness accounts & actualities
Boy, does today feel like Sept. 10, or what? 
