America plans 'world's biggest ever mourning event'

Plans are already being drawn up for what organisers say will be "the world's biggest ever mourning event" to commemorate the first anniversary of the 11 September attacks.

Taking place 365 days after the events that changed the world forever and always, people from all over the United States are being asked to submit their funereal ideas to the government. The most patriotic will be staged using a $100 million federal fund.

Coca-Cola has already pledged a further $20 million to the fund and will sponsor the official grieving parade from Central Park to Ground Zero in the early morning of 11 September 2002. CNN — which has been granted exclusive rights to the event — has said it will donate 12 per cent of its expected $3 billion profit from overseas licensing deals to the Mourning for America Fund.

What's more, a special eight-hour TV special, featuring some of America's richest and most famous people talking about how the event changed their lives personally, will be broadcast on all channels in the evening. Warner Brothers cinemas will be showing Independence Day free of charge for the duration of the day and a special Web site — www.cryforfreedom.com — will list events in your area.

The event will officially begin at 8.46am — the exact time, sort of, that the first plane struck the Twin Towers. A lone fireman will play the first three notes of the National Anthem, whereupon the whole of America, and the rest of the world, will remain silent for six hours and six minutes — one minute for every day that has passed and another so the numbers are the same — in reflection of that terrible day and the appalling loss of life and the bravery of a few and the strength of many and the suffering of us all.

Then, at precisely 2.52pm, President George W Bush will tell the whole universe why it is only a democracy that is entitled to kill innocent people.

The organisers hope the day-long event will unite the world in an outpouring of grief and loss. It rejects suggestions though that it is going over the top. "Sure, there will be monthly official mournings across America every eleventh day of the month, with big ones at the three-month, half-year and nine-month anniversaries in January, April and July," a spokeswoman told us. "But we feel confident that people will hold back some extra special tears for the year anniversary — it's the biggy."

An expert told us that Americans are more prone to mourning than any other race in history. "If you combine the elements of introspection encouraged in American society, the cultural reliance on a few symbols of special significance, the blinkered ideology that money is what underpins society and the outright refusal to accept that other races' views may be as valid as their own — then when something on the scale of the 11 September attacks happens, Americans will, perversely, mourn more as time goes on."

On the tenth anniversary, he told us, America will stand silent for just over two-and-a-half days. "Any country that refuses to shut down in sympathy is likely to be visited by B52 bombers later that week," he told us.