“The golden age of intelligence is before us” The author of The Coming Anarchy, Robert Kaplan (whom I heard on an NPR talkshow this week making intelligent but polemical comments in reference to the famous Samuel Huntington thesis about the clash of civilizations we’re in for) ‘says fighting terrorism will require new rules for spying, but he predicts that fighting an “almost comic book evil” will lead to a revival.’ Salon
Author Archives: FmH
More on African American reactions: ‘Some bluntly ask the race question, “Is this a black man’s fight?” A white friend of mine asked me, “I hope you’re not calling this a white man’s war?” Before I could catch myself I responded, “It is!” And almost immediately after the words came from my mouth I thought: those planes didn’t distinguish by race. But then again, America distinguishes by race.’ –Kevin Alexander Gray, a South Carolina civil rights organizer CounterPunch
Shower Curtain Rises on Ig Nobels: “…(S)ome of the new Ig Nobel laureates, who were honored at a ceremony on Thursday evening at Harvard University, solved a few of the most vexing questions of our time. For example, why does a shower curtain billow inwards when the shower is on?” Wired
The 2,988 Words That Changed a Presidency: An Etymology: ‘When Bush didn’t seem lost, he often seemed scared. When he didn’t seem scared, he often seemed angry. None of this soothed the public. ”It was beginning to look like Bring Me the Head of Osama bin Laden starring Ronald Colman,” one White House official remembered.
The president knew he had not yet said the right things. He returned from Camp David the weekend after the attacks with an intense desire to make a major speech. His aides agreed.’
A blow-by-blow of the deliberations of Bush’s speechwriting team in shaping the address to Congress. They contended with problems including the lack of resolution about how the U.S. would respond, administration reluctance to share too much information with its own speechwriters, and Shrub’s ineloquence, which would mean that some of their finest writing would seem too strange emanating from his mouth. For all the talk about how reassuring the speech ended up being, the emperor truly has no clothes on. The inherent premise of a “presidential” speech ghostwritten by a group of speechwriters has always felt like a jarring charade more than anything else. Doesn’t the public feel the effrontery of being so much victims of inherent spin and manipulation by the image-mongers? Do they really think that these are the ideas of the man in front of the camera? “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” he might as well say. New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”]
Satellites scan entire Afghan territory every week — “Military and commercial satellites are taking new images of the whole of Afghanistan every week, according to military experts. US intelligence services will also be examining pictures taken at least once a day from areas of known significance.” New Scientist
The Florida man infected with pulmonary anthrax has died. Here, a CNN medical consultant comments on the case and the disease.
I think many would agree that it would be a strange coincidence that we’ve had our first case of inhaled anthrax in over 25 years, with everything else that’s going on. Having said that, it’s also important to keep in mind that the public health systems, along with medical hospitals, are very sensitive to this possible infection. Because of the fact that we’re really looking for it, it may be easier to find. To be more specific, some would argue that we did have more cases of anthrax over the last years, but they’re often named as unknowns, since anthrax was such an obscure possibility. We may see more cases, as our screening is heightened, but that won’t necessarily mean terrorism. The public health system deserves mention in this case, since they were able to find it, diagnose it, and treat it, despite the fact that no one has seen it in over a quarter of a century.
And “frantic laboratory work is underway in the US this weekend, as scientists try to find out how a 63-year-old man developed a rare form of anthrax. The tests should reveal whether the bacteria were left by a dead animal half a century ago, escaped from a laboratory – or even formed part of a terrorist attack that might claim more victims.”
Anthrax is primarily a disease of animals. Humans get it mainly from infected meat or wool. Bacteria from animal carcasses can also lurk as spores in the soil for decades.
But animal anthrax has been eradicated east of the Mississippi River in the US. The last cases in Florida were in 1956. The Florida man may have inhaled dust harbouring spores from a long-dead animal – or spores that strayed accidentally from anthrax research labs at Duke…
The Al-Qaeda group suspected of the 11 September terrorist attacks is allied to Iraq, and to Chechen rebels in the former Soviet Union. Iraq and the Soviet Union both developed anthrax weapons consisting of aerosolised spores that would cause pneumonic disease. New Scientist
And here‘s New Scientist‘s intelligent bioterrorism and bioweapons special report.
In Suspect’s Luggage, a Suicide ‘Will’ — “Most of the items were found in two bags that Atta checked on his
flight out of Portland, Maine. But the bags never made it onto the
connecting flight out of Logan International Airport in Boston that
Atta and others hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center in
New York.” LA Times Every news reference to Atta’s luggage says the bags “never made it” onto his deadly flight from Logan, without further explanation. What do you make of that?
Troops Could Face Missiles U.S. Sent Afghanistan in ’80s Taliban may have 100 American Stingers, used against low-flying aircraft. LA Times
Discovery of ‘Baby Galaxy’ a Clever Feat: “Using a clever technique that pushed two of the world’s most
powerful telescopes to their limits, a team of scientists has discovered
a “baby galaxy” so small, faint and distant that it may be one of the
long sought-after building blocks of modern galaxies.” LA Times
F.B.I. Limited Inquiry of Man Now a Suspect in the Attacks — ‘Zacarias Moussaoui, a 33-year-old French citizen of Moroccan
descent, was arrested on Aug. 17 on immigration charges after
he tried to learn how to fly large jet aircraft, but expressed no
interest in mastering how to take off or land.
Senior officials at F.B.I. headquarters rejected requests from
agents in Minneapolis for a wider investigation on two occasions,
even after a French intelligence agency warned the bureau in a
classified two-page cable on Aug. 27 that Mr. Moussaoui had
“Islamic extremist beliefs.” ‘ New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”]
Whether the declared
war against terror will amount to a new cold war I’m not sure. The war
against Communism had a definable end, where ending terrorism is a
goal without a goal line. And I wonder if we have the patience for
another 40-year war. … There is, of course, no Soviet Union of terrorism, but … there are striking parallels.
…If we are serious about this, it is one of those conflicts that can realign the
world. Like the cold war, this one, while it lasts, will assert a gravitational
pull on everything. It will determine who our friends are, revise our
priorities and test the elasticity of our ideals. It will influence which
departments are suddenly overenrolled in our colleges and who the bad
guys are in our movies. It is siphoning our charity from a hundred
important but suddenly less topical causes, and turning grade- school fire
drills into the modern equivalent of my childhood duck- and-cover
exercises. It will provide — already is providing — a new, opportunistic
national-interest spin for lobbyists peddling everything from corporate tax
cuts to medical research to farm subsidies. It may, belatedly, reshape our
lumbering military and our neglected intelligence services. In the cold war,
we trained soldiers to fight on great battlefields and spies to pass for
diplomats. Now, if we’re smart, we’ll be buying agility and shrewdness
and daring. We’ll be featuring Islamic Americans in our Army enlistment
ads and maybe recruiting some of those bright Saudi college kids from
the prolific bin Laden family. New York Times commentary
Sharon’s Remarks Draw U.S. Rebuke: ‘The White House scolded Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon on Friday, dismissing as “unacceptable” his assertion
that as the United States builds international support for its war on
terrorism, it was prepared to sell out Israel the way Britain and
France betrayed Czechoslovakia before World War II.
… The juxtaposition of friction with Israel and cooperation with
Uzbekistan demonstrated the delicate nature of President Bush’s
attempt to build a coalition that will convince the Muslim world that
Washington’s fight is with Bin Laden and his extremist followers,
not with Islam. Bush has tried to soften his government’s image as a
one-sided supporter of Israel in an effort to temper anti-American
sentiment on Arab streets.
So far, the effort does not seem to have convinced many in the Arab
community. But it clearly worries Sharon.’ LA Times
Supreme Court of Georgia Voids Use of Electrocution: “Georgia’s Supreme Court became the first
appellate court in the country today to rule that electrocution is an
unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment, leaving Alabama and
Nebraska as the only states using the electric chair as their sole method of
execution.” New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”]
No Sympathy for Terrorists, but Warnings About Overreaction: The New York Times’ overview and critique of leftist opposition. Curiously enough, this is in the Arts section of the Times.
One difference between dissent during the Vietnam War era and now,
however is that nobody feels any sympathy for the forces decreed by the
American government to be the country’s enemies. The arguments are not
that Mr. bin Laden’s organization, or the Taliban, are progressive or
revolutionary forces, but that war fever, as some critics have
characterized the American response so far, will only lead to no good.But has war fever really taken over? As the week ended, there was no
full-scale invasion or massive bombing of Afghanistan; the White House
has been talking of a carefully calibrated response. It seemed as though
the recommendations of some supposed critics of American policy were
indistinguishable from the actual policies being carried out. The Bush
administration’s announcement that it would send $320 million in food and
medicine to Afghanistan, for example, seemed consistent with the belief
of Katha Pollitt, a columnist for The Nation, that the United States should
take the money it would spend on bombs “to help the wretched Afghan
people and support those among them who favor democracy.”
Historians are already grappling with the place the attacks will have in history, in the long view. Discussions of 9-11 are expected to dominate today’s first Gotham History Festival, “a free series of more than 100 panels, papers, films
and exhibitions in the Graduate Center of the City University of New York” which was planned long before the attacks. New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”]
Why Chechnya Is Different — “Vladimir Putin has made remarkable progress in his campaign to conflate his brutal military campaign in Chechnya with the new U.S.-led war against terrorism. Last week President Bush publicly agreed with Mr. Putin that terrorists with ties to Osama bin Laden are fighting Russian forces in the predominantly Muslim republic, and said they should be “brought to justice.” Since then the Bush administration quietly has begun taking concrete action in support of Moscow.” Washington Post
They Rule: explore the power elite from variety of angles [requires Flash 5]
Florida Man Is Hospitalized With Pulmonary Anthrax: “A 63-year-old Florida man has contracted pulmonary anthrax and
has been hospitalized with the infection, health officials said
yesterday.
But, the officials said, there is no evidence that the man’s disease was
caused by a terrorist attack and there is no public health risk.” [until proven otherwise…] According to the Centers for Disease Control, there have only been 18 human cases of pulmonary anthrax in the U.S. in the 20th century, and none for a quarter century. New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”]
Army of Afghan Refugees Could Spread a Deadly Virus. A tick-borne hemorrhagic fever (vaguely like that caused by the deadly Ebola virus) endemic to the southern Afghani border region could be spread by refugee exodus, especially to Pakistan. New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”]
Where to find old growth forests that the loggers have overlooked in the Northeast New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”]
Show Us Your Evidence: ‘It is a relief to see the new emphasis on evidence after the seesaw of recent weeks on the issue. Secretary of State Powell, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and others initially said that a compelling case would be made against Osama bin Laden, both to coalition allies and to the public at large. They (and President Bush, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and others) then retreated from that commitment, pointing instead only to previous threats bin Laden made, his indictment (not conviction) in the 1998 embassy bombings case almost three years ago, and the belief that the hijackers were linked to bin Laden. Since none of that amounts to evidence in the current case, questions arose regarding the strength of the administration’s case, and even whether the political need for reprisal was taking precedence over the need for careful identification of the actual culprits in this instance.
It didn’t help that the administration failed to disclose the expected evidence at last week’s meeting of NATO defense ministers.’ –Joe Pitts, The American Prospect
US: Russian Plane May Have Been Hit by Missile — “A Russian plane that crashed into the Black Sea with more than 70 people on board may have been hit by a surface-to-air missile, U.S. officials said on Thursday.
The plane could have been a victim of a tragic accident rather than of an act of terror, said the officials, who asked to remain unidentified.” Reuters
Some Things To Consider About Afghanistan — From Those Who’ve Been There. Makes the following points, in convincing detail:
Consider Pakistan an ally in name only, and appreciate that all dealings with Pakistan are fraught with peril .
Appreciate that getting rid of Osama Bin Laden will not “win the war,” and a war on Bin Laden’s organization, Al Qaeda, means a war with the Taliban.
Current U.S. military doctrine is not suited to this kind of war and must be changed.
Know the enemy and the environment, and apply lessons learned from everyone’s past mistakes.
All military operations should be coordinated with, and in support of, the Northern Alliance.
The civil component of any intervention in Afghanistan is crucial. The American Prospect
Understanding turbans: assistance with your racial profiling. Seattle Times [via rW]
Abit belatedly for Wallace Stevens‘ Oct. 2 birthday, here’s a small, mystical masterpiece, “Tattoo”:
The light is like a spider.
It crawls over the water.
It crawls over the edges of the snow.
It crawls under your eyelids
And spreads its webs there–
Its two webs.
The webs of your eyes
Are fastened
To the flesh and bones of you
As to rafters or grass.
There are filaments of your eyes
On the surface of the water
And in the edges of the snow.
Review of Meat-Eating and Human Evolution, ed. by Craig Stanford and Henry Bunn. “Meat-eating maketh man? Of all our relatives among the monkeys and apes, we humans eat the most meat. It forms between 20 and 50 per cent of our diet, while our cousins are predominantly veggies. Common chimps are one of the few relatives who also like the odd steak tartare, but it’s only a tiny part of their diet–about 5 per cent. Because we share a common ancestor with them, it is likely that an ancient relative, living around 6 million years ago, also had a taste for raw flesh.
Meat-Eating and Human Evolution asks when our ancestors became serious meat-eaters and what impact the carnivorous habit had on our evolution.” New Scientist
Afghan Women Speak from Behind the Media Veil ‘ “Now that the U.S. and the Taliban are on two opposite sides in a war, you’ve probably heard a lot about how the Taliban treat women,” said Tamina. Tamina is a member of RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, and her mother was a founding member of the group back in 1977. “You probably know a lot about the restrictions on women in Afghanistan, but maybe you’ve heard less about what Afghan women want instead.” ‘ AlterNet
Reminds me of the joke I was just emailed.
Because killing bin Laden would only create a martyr for the cause and imprisoning him would only inspire further hostage-taking and other terrorist actions to get him released, the message goes, wouldn’t it be a fitting punishment for his crimes to have him scooped up by US special forces, whisked into a U.S. hospital for a complete sex change operation, and then restored to Afghanistan to live as a woman under the Taliban?
NOAA’s remote sensing capabilities “have mapped the wreckage of the World Trade Center in support of recovery and cleanup efforts following the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. The data are being used to provide a very accurate geographic network. Building and utility engineers will be able to determine the location of original foundation support structures, elevator shafts, basement storage areas and building utility connections enabling them to concentrate their digging and recovery efforts in the proper location.
These images will also provide very accurate height measurements as the recovery efforts descend into the basement, to mitigate possible flooding from the surrounding rivers as well as to determine the volume of debris and the reach needed by cranes to remove it.”
This quick ten-point Quiz on Middle East Geography and History will let you know if you have even a starting point for grasping new geopolitical realities. [via MetaFilter] Don’t forget; Sept. 11th was the first day of the rest of your life…
Dr. John C. Lilly Dies at 86. ” An inventor, author and researcher, Lilly was a member of a generation of counterculture scientists and thinkers that included Ram Dass, Werner Erhard and Timothy Leary, all frequent visitors to the Lilly home. He never failed to stir controversy, especially among mainstream scientists,” said the Washington Post obituary. [Let’s leave Werner Erhard out of this, shall we?] Lilly’s work included the exploration of consciousness through the use of isolation tanks, psychedelics, and interspecies communication, especially with dolphins. His 1972 memoir Center of the Cyclone is a good read. Lilly’s site is here. Funny, after not thinking about Lilly for a long time, his name came up in conversation just last week.
Via rc3, this report from a Pakistani newspaper that bin Laden is dug in at a ‘state-of-the-art’ military base in the Pamir, and that an advance party of US commandos are closing in on the heavily-defended site with ‘very hi-tech and not-yet-used-in-combat weapons’ like this
next-generation infantry weapon not supposed to be deployed for nearly another decade, and other sci-fi-sounding kit. It sounds like the reporter is just confusing the fantasy of some future-battlefield projections with current reality, but what do I know about armaments and munitions?
Help build the Sep11 Attack Archive — “webArchivist.org is working with The Internet Archive in collaboration with the Library of Congress to identify and archive pages and sites related to the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. We want to be sure that there is a solid historical record of this time.
We are asking for volunteers to help us identify any web sites or pages that have information or content about the Sep11 Attack. We are especially interested in finding sites by individuals — that record their feelings, experiences or opinions. We are also especially interested in finding non-American sites.” [via wood s lot]
“US called off first attacks. “The United States and Britain yesterday called off military strikes against terrorist targets in Afghanistan at the last minute.
Washington officials say today that a severe attack of last-minute cold feet by some key Arab members of the coalition caused President Bush to postpone the operation.
The waverers are Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan and Oman, and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is embarking on an urgent mission today to strengthen nerves in these countries.” This is London
Details of the evidence of bin Laden and al Qaeda’s involvement in the 9-11 attacks (given to potential allies seeking proof) is leaking out.Attackers tied to earlier bombings: “Two senior officials, who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said the commonality in personnel between the September attacks, the (Oct. 2000) bombing of the USS Cole and the (1998) U.S. embassy bombings was a key point made Tuesday in a presentation to NATO allies in Brussels. Afterward, NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said that ‘clear and conclusive’ proof of bin Laden?s involvement was presented.” MSNBC
Jonah Goldberg on Ann Coulter: the National Review Online editor’s comments on why Coulter (about whose invade-and-Christianize comments in her syndicated column I wrote below) has been dropped from NRO. She made further comments about how “swarthy” men ought to be subjected to added scrutiny in post-attack America, and remained unrepentant about the hubhub, saying she was enjoying the publicity. Goldberg says it is her unprofessionalism, lack of judgment, and sloppy writing, not the substance of her opinions, that is causing her column to be dropped.
Scan Faces, Not E-Mail: “More extensive background checks when applying for a job or renting a home aren’t so troubling, but more surveillance by law-enforcement agencies of e-mail and phone calls isn’t such a good idea. Those are just some of the results of BusinessWeek Online’s recent interactive poll, “Personal Freedom vs. National Security.” Over the course of three weeks, 1,344 of our readers responded to this poll — which, having used a self-selected sample, isn’t a scientific survey by any means.” Business Week
Greyhound Driver’s Throat Slit; Service Halted. Overnight in Tennessee, a passenger repeatedly approached the front of the bus and eventually, according to witnesses, slashed the driver’s throat. The bus overturned and there are conflicting reports of how many fatalities have ensued. Reportedly, the driver survived. There are also conflicting reports about whether the alleged perpetrator is still alive. Greyhound has halted service nationwide. The Justice Dept. reports that the man carried Croatian identification; they doubt that this action is “terrorist-related” but it is too early to tell. The Boston Channel
Before Attacks, U.S. Was Ready to Say It Backed Palestinian State — “Before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, the Bush administration was on the verge of announcing a Middle East diplomatic initiative that would include United States support for the creation of a Palestinian state, administration officials said, and it is now weighing how to revive the plan.” New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”]
LinkLust, “a brand-new European community log.” Destined to be a continental metafilter?
What’s Love Got to Do With It? …Everything. Review of Thomas Lewis MD’s A General Theory of Love (2001):
“Social change activists and psychodynamic psychotherapists often believe that
knowledge is power. Freud proclaimed “Where Id was, there shall Ego be,” confident
that rational insight would tame the irrational powers of our unconscious minds.
Activists work to “get their message out,” believing that if people correctly understood
the social inequities in the world, they would change them. Both the therapist and the
activist tend to think that those who see love as the key to change are “flaky,” full of
“New Age mush.” Imagine their surprise when they learn that neurobiological science
is now discovering that the primary problem in both mental illness and social
alienation lies precisely in our damaged ability to love, and that the cure to both lies in
enhancing that ability. Will those believers in scientific rationality, whether they be
liberal politicians and union activists or psychotherapists, embrace these
cutting-edge scientific findings?” –Michael Bader, Tikkun
The Weblogger User Group: “Who is welcome at this user group meeting?
Anyone, but particularly those with an interest in personal journalism (aka amateur
journalism), building weblogs, personal Web sites, putting diaries, photos, or their
own ideas and thoughts on the Web, or people interested in low-cost content
management and dynamic Web site systems.”
“The Spook is the world’s first fully downloadable consumer magazine in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format. It features short fiction by some of today’s finest writers, celebrity profiles, and reviews. The Spook is a free publication sponsored by its advertisers…”
The Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University — “The Center was founded in 1993 to foster a better understanding of Islam and of Muslim-Christian relations in the West. Now, more than ever, the need for civilizational dialogue between the Muslim World and the West, Islam and Christianity, is evident. Understanding what makes us different — and what makes us the same — can cross the barrier of prejudice and strengthen our common bonds.
The Center’s faculty members are noted scholars on Islam and Christianity, and Mulsim politics, Muslim-Christian Relations, and religion and international affairs.”
How Manhattan’s heroic firemen are finding comfort under the duvet: “It is a simple question women are asking: if the world were to end tomorrow — and it has often felt that way in New York in recent days — would you rather spend your final night with a walking retirement plan or a death-defying hero?” The Spectator UK [via Spike]
Seymour Hersh asks What Went Wrong: the CIA and the failure of American intelligence — “After more than two weeks of around-the-clock investigation into the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the American intelligence community remains confused, divided, and unsure about how the terrorists operated, how many there were, and what they might do next.” The ominous implication of this review of the failure and unpreparedness of the CIA etc. is the likelihood that the war plan that led to the attacks includes a next round. Because the perpetrators could expect that a security crackdown would ensue, one CIA source opines, “whatever they’ve planned for the next round they had in place already.” What’s a CIA to do?
The New Yorker
Hell houses: ‘Some members of the Christian right have taken up the decidedly anti-Christian ideology of “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” They have determined that rather than staying out of the business of Halloween, it is better to give Halloween a real “Christian” meaning: scare the hell out of kids and teens. Since Halloween is most enjoyed by the young’uns, let’s make it the worst experience of their lives. Let’s disturb ’em so bad they never want to have fun again.’ Spark
From within: dissecting the alien subconscious: “Twenty-two years and three sequels (with the promise of more) on, it must surely be said that the alien is in the best of health. With one crucial caveat: the alien is no longer scary. The modern dearth of horror as a serious, rather than a spoof category can be put down to a chronic twenty-first century obsession with overexposure.” Spark
“Along with flag waving and generosity, a less savory American tradition is poised to emerge from the rubble of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks: the lawsuit.” SunSpot
The Feminization of American Culture: “How Modern Chemicals May Be Changing Human Biology” World and I Magazine Editorial [Interesting but a bit of a reach, as the author all but acknowledges, to try to attribute the ‘feminization’ of culture to the effects of environmental estrogens.]
What Bush Said And When He Said It. Journalists dependent on Dubya’s inner circle for backstage details are being fed the unmistakeable message that the president is firmly at the helm. “The fewer people who were in the room, the less likely you are to get a complete picture of what was actually said,” Carney says. “Obviously, like any White House, this White House has come to understand that the telling of the inside story can be useful to them. It’s our job, without being too cynical, to look at what we get with a certain amount of skepticism.” Washington Post
U.S. Believes More Attacks Are Planned: “Federal law enforcement authorities confirmed Saturday that they have received classified briefings dealing with … a situation in which retaliatory strikes are launched by terrorists once the United States begins a military operation aimed at getting Bin Laden, his network and other terrorists.” LA Times
Jerry Ehman wrote me back to say that the Flag of Earth is available here.
Disinformation Dep’t.: George Monbiot shares my skepticism about the documents the investigators are coming up with to build their case — and it’s not just the five pages of notes about which I wrote yesterday. “It’s partly, I think, because they need to show that they are not as clueless as their failure to predict the atrocity suggests. But it’s also because, understandably enough, they want a discrete and discernable enemy to confront, a structure they can penetrate, a membership they can round up, and a figure whose personal evil is commensurate with the crime.
Partly as a result of this wishful thinking, the West found itself in a curious position last week. The Taliban, possibly the most brutal and barbaric regime on earth, was requesting evidence before considering Osama Bin Laden’s extradition: they insisted that he was innocent until proven guilty. The West, in the name of civilisation, was insisting that Bin Laden was guilty, and it would find the evidence later.
For these reasons and many others (such as the initial false certainties about the Oklahoma bombing and the Sudanese medicine factory, and the identification of live innocents as dead terrorists), I think we have some cause to regard the new evidence against Bin Laden with a measure of scepticism. There’s no question that he’s dangerous, and there’s convincing evidence connecting him to previous attacks, but if the West starts chasing the wrong man across the Hindu Kush while the real terrorists are planning their next atrocity, this hardly guarantees our security.” [via Rebecca Blood] Here‘s more about who Monbiot is.
From Making Light: ‘My friend Beth Friedman has a new quote in her .sig: Vs lbh pna ernq guvf, lbh’er va ivbyngvba bs gur Qvtvgny Zvyyraavhz Pbclevtug Npg. It means, “If you can read this, you’re in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.” I dropped her a note saying “What do you do if you can read that without a ROT13 translator?” and she said, “Turn yourself in as a dangerous munition, I guess.” ‘
I like Chuck Taggart’s idea, if we’re going to be flag-wavers, of waving a Whole Earth flag (left), which I’ve always found to be awe-inspiring. Looka!
Taggart also points to this Earth Flag (right), which flies over various SETI Project sites. It is more stylized (that’s the sun, the earth, and the moon, if you hadn’t noticed) and, I think, equally inspiring in its way. I’ve written to see if these are available; if anyone’s interested, I’ll let you know.
India moves to measure its average penis size. “The study is being ordered by the Health Ministry following increasing reports of condoms getting torn during use.
Scientists say condom size could be tailored to requirements if variations in penis size in different regions become apparent.” Ananova
Windows guru Brian Livingston: Your Passport, please: “Windows 9x and Me store your user name and password as plain text in memory every time you dial an ISP and store the text for 10 minutes after you’ve disconnected. Many PCs are silently infected with Trojan horses that can easily read this information. People who use Microsoft’s Passport authentication system, as all Hotmail customers are required to do, are likely to choose the same password for Passport and their dial-up account. With this password, a hacker can access any credit card numbers or other accounts that Passport has recorded.
(Microsoft) apparently decided not to issue a patch because users can upgrade to Windows NT/2000/XP, all of which correctly encrypt the sensitive information.” InfoWorld
From T-Shirts to Terrorism: Roslyn Mazur, former Clinton DOJ appointee, links traffic in counterfeit CDs, movies, computer software (but, also, counterfeit Nike swoosh teeshirts!) to terrorist funding in this Washington Post op-ed piece.
While serving in the Criminal Division at the Department of Justice from 1998 to 2001, I helped catalogue disturbing trends in this area. With cooperation from our copyright and trademark industries — theproducers of software, music, film, books, apparel, pharmaceuticals and other highly sought-after American products — we documented the links between intellectual property (IP) crimes and the even more nefarious crimes they pay for. We found that the post-Cold War landscape of open borders has combined with the anonymity and speed of the Internet, as well as modern telecommunications and the lure of huge, risk-free profits, to give rise to some startling developments.
Supreme Court Suspends Bill Clinton. They didn’t wait long after returning to begin their new session today. “If Bill Clinton ever returns to private law practice — the doors to the Supreme Court may be closed to him.
The justices today suspended the former president from practicing law before the high court. And they gave him 40 days to say why he shouldn’t be permanently kept out.
… The justices didn’t give a reason for today’s action. But disbarment before the Supreme Court often follows a disbarment in lower courts.
And the court action came after it was notified by the Arkansas Supreme Court that Clinton’s Arkansas law license was suspended for five years.” The Boston Channel
I did one of those “vanity searches” for the past few weeks’ of references to Follow Me Here in other weblogs. Here’s the list that came up. Some of them are of course my — and perhaps your — tried-and-true favorites that can be found in the sidebar to this page. But there are some new discoveries too. Someone who takes note of FmH stands a good chance of being like-minded enough to warrant the attention of FmH readers; see what you think:
Entropy… Green
at Nineteen and Grey at Twenty-Two.Hobbsblog: That is stupendous in its
evilDaze Reader – Sex Web Log
& PortalBreaching the Web — katstyle
social commentaryUnknown News: “The news you need,
whether you know it or not…Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful
ThingsJPButler.com: Jason Butler’s Home On
The WebLinkMachineGo: This
is Lima Mike Golf. Shall we blog?
Left back: “(O)n campuses and electronic bulletin boards across the country, large swaths of the anti-globalization movement are turning into an antiwar movement. The transformation is unlikely to alter U.S. foreign policy dramatically. But it might just unravel the anti-globalization movement itself.
One of the anti-globalization movement’s primary goals–and primary successes–in its short life has been repairing the generation-old gulf between intellectuals and labor… Now, with one awful attack, that alliance is splitting at the seams. The hard hats and the hippies are on opposite sides of the barricades once again. At the teach-in at MIT, activists seemed to be gearing up for their generation’s Vietnam–a chance to take on U.S. militarism and imperialism in their own time. They seemed to have forgotten that until last week, that was precisely the debate the American left was trying to avoid.” The New Republic
“If they’ve got him, it makes their guilt and collusion even more clear,” says a US official.Taliban Says Bin Laden Is in Its Control. They say they are moving him around for his safety and encourage him to comply voluntarily with clerics’ request that he leave, but won’t hand him over. “In a meeting with a small group of reporters Sunday, (the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan) said the Taliban has been constantly guarding and protecting Bin Laden for more than two years, since the United Nations called for his hand-over after the U.S. indicted him in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa.” Prospects for avoidance of a US frontal assault on the Taliban regime, if there ever were any, would appear to fade with this news… LA Times
Saddam has germ warfare arsenal, says defecting physicist Telegraph UK; Fugitive says 14 terrorist pilots still on the loose Times of London; ‘Clear and present danger’ — “Attorney General John Ashcroft said Sunday that terrorist activity against the United States may increase once this country responds to this month’s attacks in New York and suburban Washington.” CNN; Intelligence Suggests Terrorists May Be Plotting, Particularly in Asia: “(T)he U.S. has intelligence that American tourists overseas, particularly in Asia, could be targeted for kidnappings or assassinations.” ABC News
A molecular biologist and former NIH and FDA official asserts that biowar is ‘not the end of the world’: “Biological weapons have an apocalyptic reputation. But they are often ineffective in spreading disease.”
The US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, which tracks such incidents, recorded 109 laboratory-associated infections during 1947-73 but not a single secondary case – that is, the infection of a patient’s family member or community contact. Similarly, the medical literature reveals only a handful of persons secondarily infected.
It is also instructive to look at the occurrence of anthrax in industrial settings. Historically, workers involved with certain animal products were at the highest risk but only 18 cases of inhalational anthrax were reported in the US from 1900 to 1978. Human-to-human transmission of anthrax has never been reported. As a public health threat, most biological agents act much like a toxic chemical such as the sarin released in the Tokyo subway by terrorists, with injury limited primarily to those exposed initially.
The Financial Times
If this is true, it’s the first reassuring thing I can believe about the specter of biological terrorism. In contrast, my longstanding habit of being unable to trust either the candor or the adequacy of the assessment behind statements from our government has never before distressed me as much as my current lack of confidence in reassurances such as these: ‘Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson believes the United States is prepared to take care of any kind of biological attack. In an interview with 60 Minutes‘ Mike Wallace, Thompson said, “We’ve got to make sure that people understand that they’re safe.” Thompson said eight staging areas around America are each stocked with 50 tons of medical supplies that can be moved within hours to the site of any bioterrorist attack.’ CBS News
Somehow I’d missed this. Within days of the Sept. 11 attacks, “Agence France-Presse reports that composer Karlheinz Stockhausen causes outrage in Germany when he describes Sept 11 terrorist attacks in US as ‘the greatest work of art ever’; retracts remark at once and asks that it not be reported…” The New York Times today reiterates the issue:
In disjointed comments that were taped by a German radio station and reported internationally, Mr. Stockhausen, 73, called the attack on the World Trade Center “the greatest work of art that is possible in the whole cosmos.” Extending the analogy, he spoke of human minds achieving “something in one act” that “we couldn’t even dream of in music,” in which “people practice like crazy for 10 years, totally fanatically, for a concert, and then die.” Just imagine, he added: “You have people who are so concentrated on one performance, and then 5,000 people are dispatched into eternity, in a single moment. I couldn’t do that. In comparison with that, we’re nothing as composers.”
When he realized how the reporters were reacting, he backtracked and asked that his words not be quoted. “Where has he brought me, that Lucifer?” he asked, referring to one of three invented characters, along with Eve and Michael, who regularly figure in his works.
Stockhausen’s own website claims that he is being misrepresented and slandered.
Osama Bin Laden: Man or Meme? by Robert Wright ‘On Sept. 12, Colin Powell framed America’s impending military response to the previous day’s attack as part of a campaign to “go after terrorism and get it by its branch and its root.” Here is an alternative horticultural metaphor that I came across a few days ago: “Military action to destroy terror ? will be like hitting a fully mature dandelion with a golf club.” ‘ Slate
Unlikely Doves: Counter-terrorism Experts: “The threat of terrorism cannot be effectively countered unless the United States changes its arrogant, me-first global ways and faces up to the fact that many people in other lands are — rightly or wrongly — damn angry at it. This proposition has become something of a mantra among progressives who counsel restraint in response to the horrific attacks of September 11. But it also is a sentiment popular within a subset of the national security establishment: counter-terrorism experts.” AlterNet
The secret war: “A matrix of terrorist cells – allied to bin Laden but often more extreme than him – planned mayhem across the continent from bases in Britain, Spain, Germany and France. Only now are the links between these shadowy groups coming to light as intelligence services realise that, unknown to them, the battle had started long before 11 September.” Guardian UK
Now on John Brockman’s The Edge: ‘I believe that the Edge community can mount a serious conversation about the catastrophic events of the past week that might do some good. Within the community is invaluable expertise in many pertinent areas, not to mention the intelligence that the “Edgies” can bring to the subjects.
So how about a new Edge question:
What Now??‘
Responses so far from (the usual Edge gang and more): Esther Dyson, David Berreby, Syvia Paull, Julian Brown, Jordan Pollack, Cliff Barney, Jay Ogilvy, Timothy Taylor, The Editors of Nature, Mary Catherine Bateson, Richard Dawkins, Robert Axelrod, David Farber, Geoffrey Miller, Freeman Dyson. Robert Provine, Jaron Lanier, Timothy Taylor, Joel Garreau. George Dyson, John McCarthy, Chris Stringer, Steve Grand, Robert Aunger, David G. Myers, Piet Hut, John Maddox, Keith Devlin, Frank Schirrmacher, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Todd Feinberg, M.D., Martin Rees, Douglas Rushkoff, Michael Nesmith, Tor Nørretranders, Bruce Sterling, George Lakoff, Nicholas Humphrey Peter Von Sivers, Cliff Pickover, James P. O’Donnell, Colin Tudge, Karl Sabbagh, Luyen Chou, Yossi Vardi, Todd Siler, Roger C. Schank…
Phil Agre reconsiders: “Having covered the attack and war encyclopedically for two weeks,
I said I’d give it up. For a day I ruthlessly deleted the great
majority of the war-related URL’s that came in. But at last it
began to dawn on me that (1) nothing much is happening right now
except the war, and (2) nothing much except the war seems important.
So despite my deleting, most of this batch of URL’s ends up being
about the war anyway. I’m still trying to reconstruct a sense of
normalcy, though. We shall see.” Red Rock Eaters
Robert Fisk, Mideast correspondent for The Independent UK, raises some curious questions about the document the FBI says it has recovered from among the effects of several of the hijackers. Read the questions he raises, based on his familiarity with Islam. I have had my doubts too, based not on an analysis of the religious doctrine it espouses but the fact that it seems abit too convenient that one copy each of these notes was found in Atta’s baggage (which never made it onto one of the WTC-bound planes), a car at Dulles airport (left behind by one of the Pentagon-bound hijackers), and at the crash site in Pennsylvania, neatly linking together the three endeavors. Fisk notes an “almost-Christian view” of what the hijackers might have felt” and notes that Maronite Christian translators to whom the CIA has turned in the past may have a distorted understanding of Islam. Or could something more sinister be going on?
November is NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month.
You go, guy: Wil Wheaton wrote to Rep. John Cooksey in response to his infamous ‘diaper’ comment. My sentiments exactly, Wil. Thanks.
Primer on Raising Your International Literacy, from rc3 [via Medley]: “Rather than just complaining about the lack of literacy among Americans when it comes to international issues, I’ve decided to provide a short list of ways people can learn more about what’s going on in the world beyond our borders. Not only is it crucial to understand what’s going on around the world, but it’s also pretty interesting. Why follow the 100th day of 24 hour Gary Condit coverage when you can read about things like the Prime Minister of Papua-New Guinea being deposed because he hired South African mercenaries to put down a rebellion on the island of Bougainville? Here’s the list…”
I’m adding Electrolite to the list of weblogs I’ll try to keep up with (and steal links from…?).
In Defense of Freedom: “On September 20, 2001 at the National Press Club in Washington, more than 150 organizations, 300 law professors, and 40 computer scientists expressed support for (this) declaration.” Consider endorsing…
Kids: ‘Help us name this war!’ from Spin On This (“news minus spin equals comedy”). Lots more here too.
Deja vu? Powerful photos document the similarities between scenes from the US bombardment of Belgrade in 1999 and the 9-11-01 attacks. Dedicated “to the innocent,” and entitled “Death on a Very Small Planet.”
November is NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month.
Commentary from the BBC’s defense analyst — The Pentagon’s special forces message: why would the US confirm that special forces are operating in Afghanistan, when the standard response to questions about such activities is to have no comment? Our bluster will get harder and harder to justify without evidence we are doing anything in the absence of an immediate objective for a conventional military strike. And when will military action commence? BBC
Let The Hague decide by Geoffrey Robertson, author of Crimes Against Humanity – The Struggle for Global Justice The Age
Islam gains place in U.S. military as ranks of Muslims grow: “…the military, which a decade ago barely acknowledged Muslims in its ranks, finds itself defending the faith.” Seattle Times
Enterprise Crew May Intervene in Earth Affairs “In Stationary Orbit (SatireWire.com) — Disturbed by ruthless terrorist attacks and talk of war, the crew of the starship Enterprise, which has been stealthily orbiting Earth since August, is reportedly torn over whether to violate Star Fleet’s Prime Directive and intervene in Earth affairs, or gather for drinks in the forward observation lounge and watch the planet go to shit.” satirewire [thanks, David!]
Anti-War Protests Underway in D.C.: “Demonstrators began a series of weekend rallies in the nation’s capital today, shifting from anti-globalization themes to anti-war protests after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.” Washington Post Recall, the IMF/World Bank meetings in Washington scheduled for this weekened were cancelled in the wake of the attacks. The new intolerance of dissent in the air will be a challenge to the anti-globalization movement…
I know I’ve already blinked to an article named “Welcome to 1984” but, as the saying goes, it feels a whole like more like it does now than it ever used to. With no disrespect meant to the need to respond effectively to the 9-11 attacks, perusing the newsstand headlines about “Infinite Justice”, “Enduring Freedom”, “Eternal Vigilance” or whatever it is this week begins to have a surreal feel, already, of permanent war with an ill-defined moving target of an enemy, encouraging dispatches from an ever-changing front, constant catchphrases and buzzwords. To wit, Bloomberg reports that ‘…President George W. Bush said global cooperation to root out terrorism and “isolate” Afghanistan’s Taliban regime “is gaining momentum,” and vowed to use military, diplomatic, financial and legal means.’ Meanwhile, The New York Times displays: “President Says U.S. Is in ‘Hot Pursuit‘ of Terror Group“. <a href=”http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/29/gen.america.under.attack/index.html
“>CNN says, ” President Bush said Saturday that the American people’s “patience and resolve” will be tested in a methodical antiterrorist campaign, but “the cause of freedom will prevail.”
Maybe it’s just that he needs new speechwriters, an implication one might draw from some recent Time magazine commentary. Actually, my other, post-Orwellian, association, to all the sloganeering is the disturbing and hysterical 1988 John Carpenter film, They Live. Those of you who have seen it will probably immediately know what I mean.
“The post-Cold War era ended on September 11th,” quotes Joe Klein: Closework
The United States military has accumulated a storehouse of spectacularly lethal equipment, which it has been willing to use from great distances — perhaps too often — over the past decade; it is probably the most effective conventional-war fighting force in history. But the basic assumptions, the culture, of the military-intelligence complex seem suddenly anachronistic. The nexus of national-defense and intelligence agencies may be as unsuited for a long-term offensive anti-terrorist campaign as they were unprepared to defend New York and Washington against the aerial attacks of September 11th. “The history of the American military ever since Ulysses S. Grant has been about the use of mass and firepower and ‘redundancy’ — the application of overwhelming force,” said Larry K Smith, a defense strategist who was Counsellor to both Les Aspin and William Perry, the Secretaries of Defense during Bill Clinton’s first term. “Overwhelming force implies, almost by definition, a lack of precision. That won’t work now. What we’re going to need is a much greater emphasis on the concentrated application of street smarts. I call these sorts of operations ‘closework.’ They are extremely precise missions that are used when the results are absolutely crucial. They demand the very highest standards of intelligence, of training, of preparation, of timing and execution. We haven’t been particularly good at this in the past.”
Indeed, there seems to be near-unanimous agreement among experts: in the ten years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, almost every aspect of American national-security policy — from military operations to intelligence gathering, from border control to political leadership — has been marked by exactly the kind of institutional lassitude and bureaucratic arrogance that would inhibit the “closework” that Smith proposes. New Yorker
Klein goes on to point fingers (one of the things we’re going to see accelerating now that we’ve sustained our patriotic detente and comraderie about as long as might be expected, and 20-20 hindsight takes over), and largely at the Clinton administration’s unpreparedness. But, as Joshua Micah Marshall points out in his Talking Points ‘mezine’, this “makes you wonder, of course, why the only big foreign policy player (beside CIA Director George Tenet) the Bush administration kept on from the Clinton team was Richard Clarke, head of counter-terrorism at NSC.”
Land Of The Free? Arianna Huffington goes to bat for Bill Maher: ‘As you will see from today’s column, we need your help if we are to stop ABC from canceling “Politically Incorrect.” A small group of zealots have intentionally distorted comments made by Bill Maher, and succeeded in putting the show’s future in jeopardy. If you agree that we can simultaneously rally around the flag and allow dissent and free speech to flourish, please email ABC at netaudr@abc.com or visit www4.PetitionOnline.com/promaher/petition.html and sign the petition.’
Also, if you know anybody in the ABC or Disney hierarchy, please give them a call. This is not just about one show — it’s about avoiding the first step on a really dangerous slippery slope. Thank you so much.’
Dissent, Anyone?: “…a slew of incidents further suggest a dark underside to our near-unanimous flag-waving and monolithic support for George W. Bush.” Chris Moody, The American Prospect
Does Osama Have a Nuclear Bomb? ‘Nobody who knows for sure is talking publicly. Yet for much of the last decade, government reports and intelligence experts have been warning that bin Laden has been trying to build the bomb. The reports have been sporadic but persistent: A 1999 article in the Jerusalem Report magazine claims “bin Laden has several nuclear suitcases,” and a 1998 New York Times article says that a bin Laden aide was arrested in Germany on charges of trying to buy highly enriched uranium.’ Wired
No Lye: Docs Probe ‘Soap Lady’: “Sometime in the 19th century, a fat woman died and her body changed almost entirely into soap.
It may sound like an urban legend, but researchers are serious. On Thursday, they performed a CT scan on the woman’s mummified body hoping to learn more about the process that turns some corpses into a waxy, soap-like substance called adipocere.” Wired
Phil Agre answers the common argument, “… we have to give up some
civil liberties in order to secure ourselves against the danger.”
We must certainly improve our security in many areas. I have
said that myself for years. The fallacy here is in the automatic
association between security and restrictions on civil liberties.
Security can be improved in many ways, for example by rationalizing
identification systems for airport employees or training flight
attendants in martial arts, without having any effect on civil
liberties. Security can be improved in other ways, for example
by preventing identity theft or replacing Microsoft products with
well-engineered software, that greatly improve privacy. And many
proposals for improved security, such as searching passengers’
luggage properly, have a minimal effect on privacy relative to
existing practices. The “trade-off” between security and civil
liberties, therefore, is highly over-rated, and I am quite surprised
by the speed with which many defenders of freedom have given up any
effort to defend the core value of our society as a result of the
terrorist attack.
Field Notes: See No Evil: “Philip Jenkins is a dogged debunker of media-fueled frenzies. Americans should not lose sleep, he has argued, over pedophiles in the clergy, kids on ecstasy, or serial killers. Sex fiends don’t lurk in every day-care center, he insisted in Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America (Yale, 1998). But today Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Penn State University, finds himself in an awkward position: He wants to alert the public to a peril he considers authentic. Lingua Franca
Oh, what the heck, everybody else is doing it, why don’t I link too to this hilarious, poignantly so, article marking the triumphal return of The Onion? 
God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule
“Look, I don’t know, maybe I haven’t made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again,” said the Lord, His divine face betraying visible emotion during a press conference near the site of the fallen Twin Towers. “Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don’t. And to be honest, I’m really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand.”
Caterina is another fan of Samuel Delaney’s Dhalgren, about which I have frequently sung praises. She has also mentioned Mary Douglas’ Purity and Danger, a formative influence on my thinking about the tyranny of culture, oh, almost thirty years ago. Makes me curious about what else I’d find on her attempt to list every book she’s ever read…
This is a mirror of Phil Agre’s war-related links. “…neatly-organized,” commented the prolific Mr. Agre. And here his recent pointers to non-attack-related issues.
Newest twist in web advertising: make ’em view the ads before they can get the content. CNet
White House whitewashers: “Bush staffers chastise NBC for a Clinton interview, Fleischer whacks Maher and the Bush-was-in-danger story falls apart. Tension mounts between the White House and the media.” Salon
In related comments:
“Yeah, yeah, I know what everybody’s thinking: Who cares about a talk-show host who makes millions of dollars a year? But if (Bill) Maher can’t say what he wants, how can you, lowly citizen? And what’s the White House doing editing transcripts? Also, editorial writers have been fired from papers in Oregon and Texas for writing criticism of George W. Bush. Can you say blacklist, anyone?” randomWalks
Teleportation a step closer. Quantum entanglement is demonstrated on a macroscopic scale for the first time. Reuters
