This month, on September 11, the world's attention will once again turn to the memorial ceremony being held at Ground Zero to mark the fourth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center. Once again a roll call of the names of the 2,749 victims will be delivered. This time, the brothers and sisters of those who died will be asked to read out the names of the siblings they lost.
Yet there's no formal memorial at Ground Zero for friends and relatives to visit. In fact, four years on from 9/11 there has been very little development at the site. In June, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) announced that two temporary memorials would be created until the permanent memorial on the site, Reflecting Absence, was finished in 2009, and already Reflecting Absence is beset by criticisms from some parties that the exhibits will be anti-American.
Apart from reading about the history of the World Trade Center on panels attached to the high wire fence around the perimeter, all visitors to the site can do is gawp into the vast basin the fence encloses where the foundations of the Twin Towers once stood.