These sort of artifacts are fascinating. It reminds me of a t-shirt I saw a man wearing in Thailand in 2012. I was in rural Isan and spotted a Thai man wearing a t-shirt with an image of the falling towers, above the towers were portraits of Bush and Bin Laden with text like "Bush VS Bin Laden".
I never saw a copy of this shirt again in Thailand (which was strange because Bangkok has many, many t-shirt stalls filled with shirts that would be controversial in the west). I googled it and discovered that there were actually many variations on this shirt[0], but I never saw the same design as the one the man was wearing.
Weirdly, this mystery was sorta solved for me this year. A Rudy Giuliani parody account I follow on Instagram posted an image of this controversial handheld game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laden_VS_USA
The image featured on the game is the exact same one I saw on the shirt. And yes, several people on YouTube have acquired and played copies of this game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XNJM_Kamyg&t=142s
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, an unlicensed Game Boy Color game called "Terrifying 9/11" was released, which uses the attack as a central plot point, despite the game essentially being a port of Metal Slug. The quality of the port is actually quite good which leads some to speculate that it's based on an unreleased port by SNK.
It actually has perhaps one of the most impressive examples of video (or something close to it) I've ever seen on the Game Boy. I get the feeling that the game creators didn't mean to cause offense but simply wanted to use the attacks to add context or "plot" in other words.
Off Khao San Road, one or two streets across there was one seller of Bin Laden t-shirts and masks in 2003. He was kinda famous. Got shutdown some point later. Neutral shirts. Just had a nice picture of Bin Laden with his name, might have had the Vs. Not sure if you are saying there were a lot of "controversial in the West" T-Shirts in Thailand about 9-11 or in general, but by end of 2003 he was the only one I could find for 9-11.
There's a comment on the bottom that links to various psy-ops leaflets the US dropped around Afghanistan that's also pretty interesting: http://www.psywarrior.com/Herbafghan02.html
I'd thought that these were related to the 9/11 quilts (though reading the article they turned out to be quite unrelated), at least one of which is still on display at the Pentagon. I've never found a good explanation of the quilt phenomenon - unlike the Afghan carpets which were driven by a mixture of anti-Taliban sentiment and good-old-fashioned commercialism, the 9/11 quilts seemed to motivated by a return to traditional values in the aftermath of tragedy.
Given the history of quilts and infectious disease in the Americas (re: smallpox blankets), I always felt aids quilts were accidentally tasteless and, due to the sincerity of the good intentions behind them, kind of hilarious in a subtle dark humour way.
1. The only documented case of blankets being intentionally used to spread smallpox was recorded simply as "blankets"; there is no indication they were specifically quilts.
2. Quilting as a tradition in WASP culture is so long and dense that any association with smallpox is far from the first; quilts with squares commemorating deaths are very very common.
I'm planning to buy one. Afghanistan and the war has been a constant element in my life since I was a child. They are interesting artefacts connected to the war, but not from the viewpoint of the west. A good reminder of the cruelty and folly of imperialism.
My mum brought a war carpet back from Peshawar for me. At first it looks abstract, you have to stare at it for a while to see the AK 47s, grenade launcher and bullets round the side. "Oh no ma'am", said the seller in response to her not entirely innocent question, "it is not a prayer rug."
The second example is almost haunting in its abstractness. While I understand the “copies of copies” nature of its existence, it nevertheless could be easily interpreted as a reflection of the “lost” nature of the retaliatory war effort, and the way the original attacks had been weaponized into ways that caused America and its values to erode and turn on itself.
The way in which the design reverts to the norm is so profound in a way, even though it's the product of "mistakes". Entropy, evolution, and economies follow parallel patterns.
Reminds me of Jean Baudrillard's progression of simulacra, starting from a faithful, sincere image of the events and ending in stage of pure simulacrum, having no relationship to any reality of the events
This game of telephone took 10 years and used a medium that can be copied with high accuracy. Makes me wonder how much of the original is still left in older literature which was told by word of mouth.
> they could not be seen as other than opportunistic and exploitative
I find this a bit hypocritical considering the incredible opportunism and exploitation represented by the WTC, as well as Bush's immediate command to spend money. They're moralizing other people for holding the very same values that America upholds.
I never saw a copy of this shirt again in Thailand (which was strange because Bangkok has many, many t-shirt stalls filled with shirts that would be controversial in the west). I googled it and discovered that there were actually many variations on this shirt[0], but I never saw the same design as the one the man was wearing.
Weirdly, this mystery was sorta solved for me this year. A Rudy Giuliani parody account I follow on Instagram posted an image of this controversial handheld game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laden_VS_USA
The image featured on the game is the exact same one I saw on the shirt. And yes, several people on YouTube have acquired and played copies of this game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XNJM_Kamyg&t=142s
[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=bin+laden+vs+bush+shirt&tbm=...