U.N. Official: Opium Cuts May Hit Afghan Capability — “Until last year, Afghanistan was the world’s largest producer of heroin… Smuggling the drug to western markets was seen as a major source of funding for the Taliban… Afghanistan began cutting back opium production in the summer of 2000, following a Taliban view that it was unIslamic. But it also cut off a crucial source of funding that has undermined its military capabilities.” Reuters

Natalie Angier: Of Altruism, Heroism and Nature’s Gifts in the Face of Terror

Altruism and heroism. If not for these twin radiant badges of our humanity, there would be no us, and we know it. And so, when their vile opposite threatened to choke us into submission last Tuesday, we rallied them in quantities so great we surprised even ourselves…

“For every 50 people making bomb threats now to mosques,” he said, “there are 500,000 people around the world behaving just the way we hoped they would, with empathy and expressions of grief. We are amazingly civilized.”

True, death-defying acts of heroism may be the province of the few. For the rest of us, simple humanity will do. New York Times

Troops Deployed To Persian Gulf, starting with air force controllers. By the way, the ‘war on terrorism’ is called ‘Operation Infinite Justice.’

Attorney General Ascroft says that it is “pretty clear” that a “variety of foreign governments” were involved in supporting and protecting what he describes as “the networks that conduct these kind of events”; he’s not mentioning names but the incipient meme is of Iraqi involvement. Hard to know how to evaluate this new ‘spin’, since suspicions that Dubya means to finish off Bush Sr.’s Desert Storm project abound. TheBostonChannel

NPR Watch: The rumor is that guest host Neal Conan will be appointed next permanent host of NPR’s Talk of the Nation. Reasonable choice, IMHO, and it’ll be an improvement on the lacklustre (and sometimes rude) Juan Williams.

And: will those other NPR voices sound the same after you’ve seen what they look like? A Slate quiz.

In Disaster’s Aftermath, Once-Cocky Media Culture

Disses the Age of Irony : ‘Editors and writers predict that the prevailing sensibility of celebrity

idolatry and self-conscious knowingness will dissolve. Says Vanity Fair editor Graydon

Carter: “Things that were considered fringe and frivolous are going to disappear.” ‘ Inside How long will this post-frivolity last, d’you think?

And how long will bipartisanship and polite avoidance of dissent in Washington last, while we’re on the subject? The Washington editor of the libertarian Reason says not long:

If grief is bipartisan, however, action is inherently political. Everyone agrees that the perpetrators must pay and that we have to prevent such attacks in the future, but beyond that nothing is certain.

Whom should we attack, and how? How are we going to fix the obviously flawed security systems we have in place? How are we going to pay for it, and what civil liberties are we willing to sacrifice? How do you conduct foreign policy in a places vehemently opposed to U.S. actions and interests?

When the candlelight vigils are over and the camouflaged humvees are gone, people on opposite ends of the political spectrum will answer these questions in fundamentally different ways. How the nation resolves those differences may well be the true legacy of September 11, 2001.

And, from the Washington Post:

A host of suspicions and resentments make it likely, said many Democrats, that the fractiousness that has defined modern politics could soon reappear.

Democrats, and even some Republicans, have expressed concern that the necessity to give broad powers to the White House could go too far, robbing what they said was Congress’s constitutional authority to appropriate money and hold the administration accountable for policy decisions it makes to meet the crisis.

On a less philosophical plane, there is already private grousing about intelligence briefings — considered by some lawmakers to be inadequate — about the attacks and Bush’s intentions for responding. And while virtually every Democrat is publicly expressing support for Bush, there is considerable not-for-attribution criticism among lawmakers and political operatives about the sense of command he has conveyed in public performances.

A petition asking President Bush to publicly condemn hateful remarks made by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. As of my signing, 12,290 signatures since the petition was put up on 9-14. Not much of a chance Dubya will agree with the petitioners, but enough signatures would certainly place him in a dilemmatic position relative to the Far Right, no?

Rush Limbaugh, of all people, called Falwell and Robertson’s position “indefensible… Suggestions of this kind are one of the reasons why all conservatives get tarred and feathered with this extremist, bigoted, racist, sexist, homophobic label or image that isn’t true. The words of Robertson and Falwell are not the words of all conservatives – they are the words of Robertson and Falwell.” [via MetaFilter]

Who did it? Foreign Report presents an alternative view — “Israel’s military intelligence service, Aman,

suspects that Iraq is the state that sponsored the

suicide attacks on the New York Trade Center and

the Pentagon in Washington. Directing the

mission, Aman officers believe, were two of the

world’s foremost terrorist masterminds: the

Lebanese Imad Mughniyeh, head of the special

overseas operations for Hizbullah, and the

Egyptian Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri, senior member of

Al-Qaeda and possible successor of the ailing

Osama Bin Laden.

The two men have not been seen for some time.

Mughniyeh is probably the world’s most wanted

outlaw. Unconfirmed reports in Beirut say he has

undergone plastic surgery and is unrecognisable.

Zawahiri is thought to be based in Egypt. He could

be Bin Laden’s chief representative outside

Afghanistan.” Jane’s Security

Martin Amis comments in The Guardian:

‘Their aim was to torture tens of thousands, and to terrify

hundreds of millions. In this, they have succeeded. The

temperature of planetary fear has been lifted towards the

feverish; “the world hum”, in Don DeLillo’s phrase, is now

as audible as tinnitus. And yet the most durable legacy has

to do with the more distant future, and the disappearance

of an illusion about our loved ones, particularly our

children. American parents will feel this most acutely, but

we will also feel it. The illusion is this. Mothers and fathers

need to feel that they can protect their children. They

can’t, of course, and never could, but they need to feel

that they can. What once seemed more or less impossible

– their pro-tection – now seems obviously and palpably

inconceivable. So from now on we will have to get by

without that need to feel.

…Our best destiny, as planetary cohabitants, is the

development of what has been called “species

consciousness” – something over and above nationalisms,

blocs, religions, ethnicities. During this week of incredulous

misery, I have been trying to apply such a consciousness,

and such a sensibility. Thinking of the victims, the

perpetrators, and the near future, I felt species grief, then

species shame, then species fear.’

In the death zone: “If it comes to a ground war, I believe the western forces will

have a very slim chance of victory. The last army to win in

Afghanistan was that of Alexander the Great; everyone

else has got mauled and pulled out. The CIA made an

awful lot of maps when they were there, but a map is only

as good as the person using it, and there is no safe way to

get troops in. The Afghans are a formidable enemy. I

should know. We in the west pointed them in the right

direction and with a little bit of training, they went a long

way.” Guardian UK

Conspiracy Shows Signs of Following Classic Bin Ladin Doctrine:

“…(T)he entire operation seems to have followed classic al-Qaida rules. Advance teams may have arrived in the U.S. several years before the attacks to lay the ground work, build up a small local support network, collect information, rent houses, etc. These teams would be followed by the actual operational teams, who would learn their jobs as they waited to be activated.

The suicide squads seem not to have relied on cover identities at all, but used their own names, or at least consistent work names. Under these names they enrolled in flight schools, rented apartments, bought and rented cars. Some of the men seemed to have used the same Visa card, on which they rang up substantial charges, and gave the same postal addresses. This was also the same card that was used to buy plane tickets from the East Coast to California on September 11. As attack day drew near, the men may not have been as careful as they might have been about leaving a paper trail; they may have known that it wouldn’t matter.

As was the case in the East Africa embassy bombings, the teams appear to have operated almost completely on their own, meeting with their commanders only at key moments as the plot unfolded. The commanders alone would have known the full picture and how all the pieces were meant to fit together. They’re the ones Washington desperately wants to find, because they might provide the definitive link to bin Ladin, and–of more immediate urgency–could be the key to stopping any other attacks that may be in the making.

Sources: Time magazine, Associated Press, Reuters.” The International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, Herzliya, Israel

An architecture critic reflects on the Twin Towers: “Now that the Trade Center has become a martyr to terrorism, I suspect that architectural criticism of it will cease altogether. It has become a noble monument of a lost past. It is no more possible to know what will replace it as a symbol than it is to know what, if anything, will be built someday where the towers stood. But when the biggest thing in a city that prizes bigness becomes the most fragile thing, and the void has more weight than the solid, the rules of city-building change.” The New Yorker

“Whatever lessons we take from this dreadful attack, we should never forget that it was, after all, a faith based initiative.” — Wendy Kaminer in The American Prospect

“Authorities have grown increasingly certain — from intelligence intercepts, witness interviews and evidence gathered in hijackers’ cars and homes — that a second wave of violence was planned by collaborators. They said Sept. 22 has emerged as an important date in the evidence, but declined to be more specific.” New York Times

Unusual Trading In Chicago Might Have Been Terrorists “There are now widespread efforts by investigators and regulators to determine whether terrorists tried to profit from stock and option trading ahead of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.” German and Japanese regulators, SEC regualtors and the Chicago stock exchange are investigating apparently suspicious trading just before the attacks, which might have indicated advance knowledge. The Boston Channel

Dan Hartung’s ongoing series “Understanding Islam” at lake effect is worth your while. Thanks, Dan. And Chuck Taggart at Looka! suggests fostering better understanding by eating at your local Middle Eastern restaurant.

Israel pulls back forces: “The Israeli military is to withdraw from all

areas under exclusive Palestinian military

and civil control.

The BBC correspondent in Jerusalem says

this amounts to a pullback of a few hundred

metres, but the move is a hugely symbolic

step designed to show Israeli goodwill.

The United States has been trying for

several days to bring calm to the Middle

East as part of efforts to build a worldwide

coalition against terrorism including the Arab

States.” BBC

News: Lethal worm spells double trouble — ‘A computer worm that spreads to both servers and PCs running Microsoft software

flooded the Internet with data Tuesday, but the FBI said that, as of yet, it sees no

link to last week’s terrorist attack.

Known as “Nimda” or “readme.exe,” the worm spreads by sending infected e-mail messages,

copying itself to computers on the same network, and compromising Web servers using Microsoft’s

Internet Information Server (IIS) software.

“It is extraordinary how much traffic this thing has created in a couple of hours,” said Graham Cluley,

senior security consultant for antivirus company Sophos. “As far as we can see, it doesn’t seem to

be using any psychological tricks because it’s all automated.” ‘ I thought things have been running abit slowly today, but I figured it was the increased traffic in the wake of the events of last week… ZDNet News

Nuclear Safety — “What happens if a suicide bomber drives a jumbo jet into one of America’s 103 nuclear power reactors? What happens if a fire fed by thousands of tons of jet fuel roars through a reactor complex–or, worse, through the enormous and barely-protected containment pools of spent nuclear fuel found at every such plant?

…if terrorism is real, then a clear-eyed view would suggest nuclear power is done for… A country that has nuclear power plants, it turns out, has handed over to ‘the enemy’ a quasi-nuclear military capability.” The Nation

Rumsfeld: Terrorism Isn’t Bin Laden Alone. Reassuring insight from our country’s leaders.

Source: Taliban Discussed Extraditing Bin Laden To Third Party; their condition was apparently international recognition of their regime. However, they also threatened to declare a ‘holy war’, or jihad, against the United States if Afghanistan is attacked by the U.S. [I’ve edited my original post, which said the Taliban had declared a jihad, which was how the article to which I linked had originally been headlined in early editions, subsequently amended. Rebecca Blood corrected me, saying, quite correctly, in part, “It’s important to read and report this accurately, … I feel that more and more reasonable voices are being lost.”]

A Reality Show for Your Desktop, but There’s a Catch:

Most people consider a person’s desk to be private space, but

“DeskSwap” makes the on-screen desktop public, laying bare its secrets.

The program is essentially a screensaver. But instead of the typical

screensaver fare — slide shows of cute critters and sun-drenched beaches

— the images displayed by “DeskSwap” are desktops.

Including yours. So when “Desk Swap” kicks in, the first thing it does is take

a snapshot of whatever is on your desktop and sends it to Mr. Daggett’s

computer, where it joins a queue of similar images that are then fed back

to your screen. A new one appears every 30 seconds or so.

There is an undeniable voyeuristic allure to viewing other desktops, akin to

rummaging through a co- worker’s papers and finding a pay stub,

medical bill or an incriminating memo.

After taking “DeskSwap” for a spin, Gene Kan, a developer of the

Gnutella file-sharing technology, said: “It appeals to the inner Jerry

Springer watcher in everyone. It was like `Survivor’ or `Cops.’ It’s a new

form of entertainment: reality computing.” New York Times

Stress From Attacks Will Chase Some Into the Depths of Their Minds, and Stay. The media have begun to speculate in articles like this from the New York Times (rife with commentary from psychiatric pundits like myself) about the extent of psychological trauma that will ensue from the attacks. This is the first event of any such scope so informed by familiarity with post-traumatic stress disorder, and as far as I’m concerned this is both a blessing and a curse. The problem is that this diagnostic concept remains a murky one and a moving target, and that what is in effect a PTSD-treatment industry, invested in its self-perpetuation, has grown up within the profession, with a treatment approach that places us all at risk of self-fulfilling prophecy.

With every iteration of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the profession’s official ‘bible’ of diagnoses and their criteria (we’re up to the second revision of DSM-IV now), the PTSD concept changes in scope. The previous notion, in DSM-III, that the traumatic stressor to which the sufferer had been exposed must have been “outside the range of normal human experience” was removed as unreliable and inaccurate. Instead, DSM-IV requires only that the person’s response to the stressor must involve “intense fear, helplessness, or horror.” How diagnoses are defined is informed not only by empiricism but by the balance between ‘lumping’ and ‘splitting’ tendencies in the zeitgeist of the moment, competing political interests, and the commodification of emotional distress to ensure psychiatry’s continuing “market share”), among other influences. Broadening the range of people ‘eligible’ for the diagnosis of PTSD makes a fundamental difference in our conception of what is a normal, expectable response to adversity, what we need assistance dealing with, whether adversity or stress are expectable and tolerable, how empowered and resilient we are as individuals or a culture, etc.

PTSD was originally codified to inform the psychiatric profession’s response to ‘shellshock’ or ‘combat trauma’ in GIs returning from the American foreign military involvements of the ’40’s, ’50’s, and ’60’s. Thereafter, it fused with attention driven by the women’s movement to domestic abuse and incest. At this juncture, in my opinion, the concept lost much of its specificity and utility to describe a specific range of psychological and physiological responses, to explain symptoms and inform treatment. Naive clinicians with politically correct sensibilities find it politically incorrect not to diagnose any psychiatrically distressed patient who has ever been touched inappropriately, or imagines and reports that they have been, with PTSD, and to attribute all the patient’s psychopathology to that abuse! (You’re all familiar, I’m sure, with the ‘false memory’ controversy, but this is only the tip of the iceberg with the profession’s confusion around and abuse of the PTSD concept.) Empirical evidence has begun to suggest that the responses of sufferers in the major categories subsumed under PTSD — combat veterans, victims of torture, sufferers of serious physical abuse, victims of natural or manmade disasters, survivors of incest and other prolonged sexual violation — are different, and that lumping them together within this ‘wastebasket diagnosis’ may be useless. Just as not every experience of sadness or fear should be subsumed under diagnoses of depressive or anxiety-disorder conditions and subjected to treatment, not all severe stress is a condition requiring medical or psychological treatment.

In fact, I’ve noticed, the articles you’ll be reading about our trauma response to the WTC disaster are starting to acknowledge one central, important distinction along these lines. The immediate stress response (so-called “acute PTSD”) may be normal and expectable. Empirical data provides no answer yet about whether the crucial factor in whether this progresses to the true psychiatric syndrome, “chronic PTSD”, is early intervention. Studies and commentaries within the profession have begun to question this central tenet, suggesting that early intervention may be harmful or at best neutral for the victims, although of course self-serving for the clinicians.

“One large survey of Americans’ mental health found that of those who

said they had been exposed to trauma, about 25 percent developed the

hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder. Experts said that figure might

provide a rough estimate for those traumatized by the New York and

Pentagon attacks.

Other researchers, including Dr. Edna Foa of the University of

Pennsylvania, have come up with higher numbers for the victims of rape

and other forms of physical assault, at least in the first few months after a

trauma. In such studies, which begin following victims immediately after

the event, up to 50 percent of the subjects showed acute symptoms of

post-traumatic stress a month later, when a diagnosis of post-traumatic

stress disorder can first be made. Three months afterward, the numbers

had dropped to about 35 percent. After a year, up to 25 percent

continued to experience difficulties.

But researchers say the people who develop lasting symptoms are not

always the same as those who show immediate signs of extreme distress.

And because of the tragedy’s size, its resemblance both to natural

disasters and to war, and its human toll, researchers say it is impossible to

generalize past findings to what lies ahead.”

Just as this curmudgeon has been railing in these pages about the peril we’re in if we give over control of our national emotional response to the politicians, we may be in parallel peril if we give it over to the ‘PTSD industry’. Just as the authorities in New York have had to stem the tide of volunteers streaming toward Ground Zero (whose motivation to help has alot to do with combatting their own felt helplessness in this way), we may have to stem the tide of mental health professionals streaming toward emotional Ground Zero in our psyches.

I’m sometimes accused of being peevish without proposing alternatives. I’m by no means saying there’s no role for well-informed mental health clinicians in helping shepherd us through both individual and national suffering at a time like this. Indeed, trauma response has dominated my psychiatric work since 9-11’s events. But let’s be careful not to pathologize the outrage, despair and helplessness, not to disempower the normal range of coping responses, and not to create rather than forestall a national epidemic of dependent patients with an abused diagnosis.

Whatever the perils discussed above, they are nevertheless a fate far better than turning our distressed over to the S*c*i*e*n*t*o*l*o*g*i*s*t*s.

Television viewers who turned to Fox News on Friday for coverage of the terrorist attack also saw a message scrolling across the bottom of their screens — National Mental Health Assistance: 800-FOR-TRUTH.

Unknown to the cable news channel, the phone number connects to a Church of S*c*i*e*n*t*o*l*o*g*y center in Los Angeles, where S*c*i*e*n*t*o*l*o*g*i*s*t*s were manning the phones.

While representatives of S*c*i*e*n*t*o*l*o*g*y claimed theirs was a good-faith effort to provide counselling and support, it is well-known that the cult wages war on the mental health profession and its ministrations. St Petersburg Times [Curious about my markup of the name of the cult? Especially with Google placing weblogs’ content at the top of search results, I don’t want a search for its name to readily reveal my critical comments. It is pretty clear that the group retaliates for unfavorable press. — FmH]

Thanks to a reader, another by Wislawa Szymborska: (and wonderfully translated):

Any Case

It could have happened.

It had to happen.

It happened earlier. Later.

Closer. Farther away.

It happened, but not to you.

You survived because you were first.

You survived because you were last.

Because alone. Because the others.

Because on the left. Because on the right.

Because it was raining. Because it was sunny.

Because a shadow fell.

Luckily there was a forest.

Luckily there were no trees.

Luckily a rail, a hook, a beam, a brake,

A frame, a turn, an inch, a second.

Luckily a straw was floating on the water.

Thanks to, thus, in spite of, and yet.

What would have happened if a hand, a leg,

One step, a hair away;

So you are here? Straight from that moment still suspended?

The net’s mesh was tight, but you; through the mesh?

I can’t stop wondering at it, can’t be silent enough.

Listen,

How quickly your heart is beating in me.

(translated from the Polish by Grazyna Drabik & Sharon Olds)

“The arts aren’t just events to be gone ahead with or cancelled after a tragedy. One of the powers of great art is to try to make sense of difficult things. Toronto Globe & Mail critics look at the power of artforms – Dance, Music, Visual art, Literature, Theatre – to help people cope with tragedy.”

And The Boston Globe “asked people who create beauty to reflect on how work like theirs responds to the horrors of Tuesday”: those queried included John Harbison, Bill T. Jones, Oscar Hijuelos, James Taylor, sculptor Dimitri Hadzi, Sonic Youth member Kim Gordon, novelist Robert Parker, political humorist Kate Clinton, playwright Charles L. Mee, poet Robert Pinsky, musician/writer Jennifer Trynin, composer Deborah Henson-Conant, musical director Craig Smith, and Robert Brustein:

This is a time when art is most important because it complicates our thinking and prevents us from falling into melodramatic actions such as those we’re about to take. But this is the time when art is made tongue-tied by authority and when it’s a very small voice among hawkish screams. … The greatest thing that art can do in a time of crisis is to make us aware, not to turn us into our enemies.

Stanford linguist Geoffrey Nunberg: When Words Fail: The Stilted Language of Tragedy: “In the wake of the attacks, though, official America needed something else: language that would reassert control of a world that had gotten terrifyingly out of hand. A high Victorian indignation serves that purpose well. It evokes the moral certainties of a simpler age, when the line between civilization and barbarism was clearly drawn, and powerful nations brooked neither insult nor injury from lesser breeds without the law. This may be the first war of the 21st century, as President Bush has said. But its rhetoric will be taken from the 19th.” LA Times

Add one more to the reasons I think it’s an ill wind blowing when Ira Glass’ name is mentioned. Named radio talk show host of the year by Time, he was, like, Howard Stern should’ve gotten the honor instead. He’s either being serious, and contemptible, or sarcastic, and ridiculous.

A Word On Statistics

“Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.

Unsure of every step: almost all the rest.

Ready to help, if it doesn’t take long: forty-nine.

Always good, because they cannot be otherwise: four – well, maybe five.

Able to admire without envy: eighteen.

Led to error by youth (which passes): sixty, plus or minus.

Those not to be messed with: four-and-forty.

Living in constant fear of someone or something: seventy-seven.

Capable of happiness: twenty-some-odd at most.

Harmless alone, turning savage in crowds: more than half, for sure.

Cruel when forced by circumstances: it’s better not to know, not even approximately.

Wise in hindsight: not many more than wise in foresight.

Getting nothing out of life except things: thirty (though I would like to be wrong).

Balled up in pain and without a flashlight in the dark: eighty-three, sooner or later.

Those who are just: quite a few, thirty-five.

But if it takes effort to understand: three.

Worthy of empathy: ninety-nine.

Mortal: one hundred out of one hundred – a figure that has never varied yet.”

–Wislawa Szymborska (1996 Nobel Laureate in Literature)

‘International terrorism has occurred with frightening regularity in recent decades. Over the years, a number of Atlantic contributors have considered why this is so and what can or should be done about it:

‘In “Thinking About Terrorism” (June 1986), Conor Cruise O’Brien argued that leaders in the United States and elsewhere fundamentally missunderstand why people turn to terrorism — and how to dissuade them from it. O’Brien went on to suggest that our current methods of combatting terrorism not only are bound to fail, but might even encourage attacks.

“Today’s world — especially the free, or capitalist, world — provides highly favorable conditions for terrorist recruitment and activity. The numbers of the frustrated are constantly on the increase, and so is their awareness of the life-style of the better-off and the vulnerability of the better-off….. A wide variety of people feel starved for attention, and one surefire way of attracting instantaneous worldwide attention through television is to slaughter a considerable number of human beings, in a spectacular fashion, in the name of a cause.”

‘Mark Edington’s “Taking the Offensive” (June 1992) argued that the United States and other countries should take a far more active role in stamping out terrorism. Excessive caution on the part of government leaders, he suggested, has prevented our military from taking measures to destroy known centers of terrorist training and weapons stockpiling:

“Whereas target countries must succeed every time in protecting themselves, terrorists have to succeed in their objectives only sporadically…. The defensive strategy toward terrorism has, in essence, made us sitting ducks.” ‘

[I’ve already mentioned, below, Mary Ann Weaver’s “Blowback” (May 1996) and “The Counterterrorist Myth” (July/August 2001) by Reuel Marc Gerecht (“An officer who tries to go native, pretending to be a true-believing radical Muslim searching for brothers in the cause, will make a fool of himself quickly.”)]

Here’s a Google search that will inform about conscientious objector status with regard to the US Selective Service and the military draft.

It is the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and the opening of the holiest ten days of the year, dedicated to individual accounting and atonement — or, as I prefer to think of it, reconciliation. By tradition, we think of renewal and the rebirth of the world at the new year. It is a terrible and frightening new world in which we awaken as the year turns over, but, I pray, also a hopeful one. An Israeli friend told me that the fondest Rosh hashana wish of many there this year is, “May you have a boring year!” To all who choose to observe at this time: a happy new year…

Arafat orders Palestinian ceasefire — ‘The Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has said he has ordered Palestinians to abide by a ceasefire with Israel.

In a message to the Israeli people that coincided with the Jewish New Year, he stated: “I have given strict orders for a total ceasefire and I hope the Israeli Government will respond to this call for peace and will decide to cease firing.” ‘ BBC

FBI warns of surge in hacking — “The FBI has warned of an increase in hacking attacks following last week’s suicide hijacking events in the US.

The cyber attacks were likely to be carried out by “self-described patriot hackers, targeted at those perceived to be responsible for the terrorist attacks”, said the FBI’s National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC).” BBC

Crowd in Ill. demonstrates at mosque as backlash continues against Arab-Americans, Muslims Police turned back 300 marchers — some waving American flags and shouting “USA! USA!” — as they tried to march on a mosque in this Chicago suburb late Wednesday…

“I’m proud to be American and I hate Arabs and I always have,” said (one jingoistic demonstrator). SFGate

Should Americans disturbed by this consider seeking out your local mosque and asking them if you can come and worship with them in solidarity?

Bush is Walking Into a Trap: “In a world that was supposed to have learnt that the rule of law comes above revenge, President Bush appears to be heading for the very disaster that Osama bin Laden has laid down for him. Let us have no doubts about what happened in New York and Washington last week. It was a crime against humanity. We cannot understand America’s need to retaliate unless we accept this bleak, awesome fact. But this crime was perpetrated.” –Robert Fisk, Independent UK [via Common Dreams] And: Washington’s Call for War Plays Into Terrorist Hands: “A maddened U.S. response that hurts still others is what they want: It will fuel the hatred that already fires the self-righteousness about their criminal acts against the innocent.

What the United States needs is cold reconsideration of how it has arrived at this pass. It needs, even more, to foresee disasters that may lie in the future.” –William Pfaff in the International Herald Tribune [via Common Dreams]

” On Tuesday morning, a piece was torn out of our world. A patch of blue sky that should not have been there opened up in the New York skyline.” Jonathan Schell, author of The Fate of the Earth, has continued long after it has become unfashionable to stare unflinchingly at the prospects for the use of weapons of mass destruction. “Among the small number who have been concerned with nuclear arms in recent years, it has been commonly said that the world would not return its attention to this danger until a nuclear weapon was again set off somewhere in the world. Then, the tiny club said to itself, the world would reawaken to its danger.” Like myself, he has found that Tuesday’s events bore much similarity in detail if not in scope to the recurrent nightmare of nuclear destruction dreamed by those who worry about it. Will it awaken us? Los Angeles Times [via Common Dreams] [I found it courageous, and nonetheless abit too brutalizing for right now, for him to suggest that, as bad as Tuesday’s loss of ‘two buildings’ and the accompanying lives were, we consider the possibility of losing ‘all of Manhattan’.]

I.S.P.’s Curb Terrorist Postings and an Anti-Islamic Backlash New York Times

Before-and-after (actually, “…-and-during”) satellite images of lower Manhattan SPOT

Nuclear warfare next, say leaders: “European and US intelligence, law enforcement and military officials are braced for fresh terrorist attacks – including the use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.” Sydney Morning Herald

How to strike at the world’s most inaccessible land Guardian; War plans: the West’s options Sunday Times of London; US has forces in place to strike Afghanistan Times of India [via Phil Agre’s Red Rock Eaters]

Some Therapists Caution That Trauma Services Could Backfire: “…(I)n an open letter to their colleagues distributed this weekend, a group of psychologists questioned whether the ministrations of a therapist are what all people want or need now, at a time when stress, fear, anger, uncertainty and grief are entirely normal, and when the full impact of what has happened has not yet sunk in. And they cautioned that thrusting help on people instead of letting them seek it themselves might in some case do more harm than good.” New York Times

Other psychological dimensions of response, courtesy of Phil Agre:

<a href=”http://www.globe.com/dailyglobe2/256/nation/A_widely_shared_loss_leaves_few_unmarked+.shtml

“>psychological response to the attacks in Boston <

Disaster Mental Health Guidebook

Training Manual for Mental Health and Human Service Workers in Major Disasters

Helping Children Cope with Disasters and Trauma (video)

Primary Care Treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: The Burden to the Individual and to Society

Comorbidity of Psychiatric Disorders and PTSD

Advice on Communicating with Children about Disasters

Law Enforcement Traumatic Stress

Psychiatric Dimensions of Disaster

National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

The Child Survivor of Traumatic Stress

Recovering From Disasters and Other Traumatic Events

information on bereavement

A letter from Eason Jordan, Chief News Executive, CNN, to Jim Romenesko’s Media News:

The suggestion that CNN used 10-year-old images to illustrate Palestinians celebrating the terrorist strikes in the U.S. [which I mention below –FmH] is baseless and ridiculous. The videotape was, in fact, shot Tuesday in East Jerusalem by a Reuters TV crew and included comments from a Palestinian praising Osama Bin Laden, who was not a Gulf War player. The more interesting story — it has the added value of being true — is that Palestinian officials have threatened journalists for taking pictures of these Palestinian celebrations.

Romanesko’s letters column is also full of outraged responses to Salon’s June 12, 2000 lampooning of the recent report from the National Commission on Terrorism on the threat of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Other useful comments on media coverage of Tuesday’s events and their aftermath.

Thanks to readers who pointed me to the information on the Palestinian issue. At any time, but especially this time, our emotional reactivity can’t be allowed to swamp the need for sober assessment of the information…

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Nostrodamus predicted WTC attack? Not.

As usual, look to Ethel for further enlightenment. Among much, the following:

links decrying the theory that a failure of “humint” (human intelligence) is to blame

reports of warnings ignored

HL Mencken on the value of peaceful dissent and the peril of suppressing it

protest from the right about civil liberties implications of antiterrorist crackdown

extraordinary claim, via Counterpunch, that the supposed footage of Palestinians rejoicing in the streets which has further inflamed American sentiments after Tuesday’s attacks are, in fact, from 1991 events

cynical reaction to the Sierra Club’s duck-and-cover response

Other places that have consistently challenged and deepened this week: Random Walks and wood s lot.

9 Failures of the Imagination “Six: Dear reader, two Sundays in the future: you know vastly more than I do about what I mean when I say war. Do you envy me, living in this before, this last shred of relative innocence? I hope not. I hope I ought to envy you, the wild sweet peace you enjoy, the simultaneous epiphany of universal human amity and accord, the melting of all world guns into memorial sculpture which took place on, say, Sept. 16, the miracle that occurred in place of the carnage I?m dreading today. Oh, I hope I ought to envy you; I hope I?m a moron.” New York Times Magazine

Compilation of photos of outpourings of grief and sympathy from around the world. [Slow-loading]

Maureen Dowd: The Modernity of Evil: “Mr. Bush has promised nothing short of wiping out terrorism. But first the

young president, who often seems trapped in the past, must come to grips

with the modernity of evil.” New York Times

Pakistan’s Antiterror Support Avoids Vow of Military Aid — ‘President Pervez Musharraf fears a violent backlash in Pakistan if he

follows Saudi Arabia’s example after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in

1990 and allows American troops free rein on his territory, officials said.

He also faces the prospect of a direct confrontation with the Taliban, who

harbor the terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden and who today threatened

“a massive attack” by its Islamic warriors if Pakistan offers the United

States any assistance.’ New York Times

Pakistan to Demand bin Laden: “A delegation

of senior Pakistani officials will go to

Afghanistan on Monday to demand that

the ruling Taliban militia hand over Osama

bin Laden to the United States, a top government official said Sunday.” New York Times

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Newspaper: Echelon Gave Authorities Warning Of Attacks — “U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies received warning signals at least three months ago that Middle Eastern terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture, according to a story in Germany’s daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ).

The FAZ, quoting unnamed German intelligence sources, said that the Echelon spy network was being used to collect information about the terrorist threats, and that U.K. intelligence services apparently also had advance warning. The FAZ, one of Germany’s most respected dailies, said that even as far back as six months ago western and near-east press services were receiving information that such attacks were being planned.” Washington Post Newsbytes

The European Parliament just approved a report last week saying that Echelon does exist and adopting recommended anti-Echelon measures.

Danny Schechter predicts: “…(Y)ou heard it here first: the road to revenge may just take us back to Baghdad, guilty or not.” Son of Bush to complete Dad’s Desert Storm?

Actually, They DO Dare Call It Treason: the conservative press’ take on dissent. ConWebWatch

“BBC Monitoring maintains a series of country profiles which can be viewed free of charge. Each profile includes an overview, key facts and figures, a biography of the head of government, short notes on the media and a chronology of key events.”

Gunmen shoot boy as warning to India not to help US against Taliban Ananova

Phil Agre continues hard at work. Here are some news sources he compiled from the Islamic world:

Middle East Times (Cairo)

http://www.metimes.com/

http://www.metimes.com/2K1/issue2001-37/opin/opin_index.htm

The Frontier Post from Peshawar, Pakistan

http://www.frontierpost.com.pk/

http://www.frontierpost.com.pk/afghan.asp

The Times of Central Asia (extensive coverage from Kyrgyzstan)

http://www.times.kg/

Syria Times

http://www.teshreen.com/syriatimes/

http://www.teshreen.com/syriatimes/s-sa/apolitic-s.htm

http://www.teshreen.com/syriatimes/s-sa/opinion-s.htm

Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Khaleej Times Home Page

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/editor.htm

Retaliation is trickier than Afghan terrain — “”The idea of a worldwide coalition against terrorism is much better and more effective than one huge military strike, because these people are spread all around the world. Cutting off its head is not effective – it has to be a large, group effort by all countries to stop it.” Christian Science Monitor

The Dalai Lama’s letter to the President of the United States of America

“Man is…the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself,

and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight.”

-Mark Twain

What has been called the “most hateful reaction to appear in print” by [Inside] was penned by Ann Coulter in the National Review:

(“We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.”)

She’s a friend of Barbara Olson, the conservative commentator (and wife of the US Solicitor General) who died on one of the hijacked planes after much-publicized cellphone calls to him from the air. [via Red Rock Eaters]

What Does Osama Bin Laden Want? – Nothing we have. David Plotz in Slate

A number of people, independently, seem to have hit on variants of a technological fix to stop skyjackings using off-the-shelf components and existing technologies, e.g. GPS and autopilot. Under sufficient threat, the ability to fly the plane using cockpit controls would be disabled by the press of a panic button. The plane could then only be flown remotely by a ground controller. Great, except planes are not the terrorists’ only option, of course. Let’s have panic buttons activating remote control everywhere.

WTC lease owner committed to rebuilding. “Lease owner committed to project,

though not exact replicas.” CNN

Op-Ed pages trot out the white hawks: “The morning after the worst terrorist attack in the history, the nations’

great editorial page editors have offered up the wisdom of a group of

middle-aged white men whose claim to fame is that they lost the Vietnam

War.” Tompaine.com

Someone at MetaFilter pointed to this free downloadable Koran (Holy Qur’an). How many of us have ever read it?

Sec’y of State Colin Powell is garnering much praise for the alacrity with which he has apparently hammered out a global alliance in support of US, or even joint, action in the wake of the attack. Russian and Islamic assent has been cited. But I fear we will whitewash and minimize indications that we have not really achieved consensus. The non-U.S. press will be a better indicator of what support we do and do not have. Here, from The Independent: “Despite calls from US President George Bush to Russian

President Vladimir Putin, asking for full support in the wake of

the suicide attacks, Russia is making it clear that it will not

back an American invasion of Afghanistan from bases in the

former Soviet Central Asia.”

General Anatoly Kvashnin, the Russian Chief of Staff, said it

was unlikely that the Russian army would take part in any

“acts of revenge” against the perpetrators of the attacks in the

US. “The US has powerful enough military forces that it can

cope with this task on its own,” he said.

Meanwhile, Nikolai Kovalyov, the former head of the Russian

FSB security service, warned the US that an attack on

Afghanistan would fail to capture Osama bin Laden, the alleged

mastermind of the atrocities, and would backfire on the US. “In

Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain it takes a trainload of

explosives to destroy three militants,” he said. “The chance of

hitting bin Laden is zero.”

Especially if agreements do not hold, as Anthony Lewis says in The New York Times,

Beware Unintended Results: “The danger in the current situation is that hasty, ill-targeted military action

could arouse anti-Western sentiments right across the Middle East. That

could threaten such important U.S. friends as the governments of Egypt

and Jordan — and Saudi Arabia, from which Osama bin Laden is an

angry exile and which is at the core of his grievance. He would be

delighted at a United States response that destabilized the Saudi regime.”

Do we really, for example, have Pakistan’s “unstinted cooperation,” as its military leader has been reported to say? Polite statements of support from the broad spectrum of the international community at a time of condolence may not turn into a sustained commitment. The regimes of the moderate Islamic world in particular are likely to be conciliatory at this time to deflect the specter of American impulsive wrath. But, would they be earnest participants in a world war against Islam which would threaten to erode their in many cases precarious hold over their own populaces?

If the Shrub takes a page from his father’s book (he’s already getting a war to be at the helm of, just like Daddy did… although it didn’t do much for Senior’s reelection success), he will create a coalition in name only, like the Gulf War coalition, which fell apart after a much simpler, limited military objective was readily met. And if we bully the world community into cooperation, we perpetuate the hatred for the way in which the U.S. thows its weight around.

In this light, Harry Browne asks When will we learn?:

“Our foreign policy has been insane for decades.

It was only a matter of time until Americans

would have to suffer personally for it. It is a

terrible tragedy of life that the innocent so often

have to suffer for the sins of the guilty.

When will we learn that we can’t allow our

politicians to bully the world without someone

bullying back eventually?

President Bush has authorized continued

bombing of innocent people in Iraq. President

Clinton bombed innocent people in the Sudan,

Afghanistan, Iraq, and Serbia. President Bush,

senior, invaded Iraq and Panama. President

Reagan bombed innocent people in Libya and

invaded Grenada. And on and on it goes.

Did we think the people who lost their families

and friends and property in all that destruction

would love America for what happened?”

CIA’s Headache: How to Find bin Laden — ‘…reliable intelligence on the whereabouts of Mr. bin Laden,

who was named by Secretary of State Colin Powell as a prime

suspect in the suicide attacks on Tuesday against the World

Trade Center and the Pentagon, has been rare, despite what

one source called a “rich and active” surveillance program.’ International Herald Tribune

Mir Tamim Ansary on Afghanistan: The first point this Afghani expatriate writer makes is that we spare the Afghani people:

“… the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They’re not even the government of

Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997.

Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you

think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think “the people of Afghanistan” think “the Jews

in the concentration camps.” It’s not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this

atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would exult if someone would

come in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up

in their country.”

But here’s where it gets interesting:

The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people

speak of “having the belly to do what needs to be done” they’re thinking in terms of having

the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about

killing innocent people. Let’s pull our heads out of the sand. What’s actually on the table is

Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through

Afghanistan to Bin Laden’s hideout. It’s much bigger than that folks. Because to get any

troops to Afghanistan, we’d have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The

conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see

where I’m going. We’re flirting with a world war between Islam and the West.

And guess what: that’s Bin Laden’s program. That’s exactly what he wants. That’s why he did

this. Read his speeches and statements. It’s all right there. He really believes Islam would

beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam

and the West, he’s got a billion soldiers. If the west wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that’s

a billion people with nothing left to lose, that’s even better from Bin Laden’s point of view.

He’s probably wrong, in the end the west would win, whatever that would mean, but the war

would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for

that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?” [via Scripting News]

And, while we’re listening to Dave Winer, here’s something else he has to say which I like:

“What you can do: Renew friendships with people who

are considered enemies, but actually are not. Use the

Internet to meet people with strange last names, and ask

questions and listen to what they say. If they express

anger, try to validate it, not negate it. Have the courage

to go through your beliefs.”

Pentagon Tracked Deadly Jet but Found No Way to Stop It — “During

the hour or so that American

Airlines Flight 77 was under the control of

hijackers, up to the moment it struck the

west side of the Pentagon, military officials

in a command center on the east side of

the building were urgently talking to law

enforcement and air traffic control officials

about what to do

…controllers in New England knew about

8:20 a.m. that American Airlines Flight 11,

bound from Boston to Los Angeles, had

probably been hijacked. When the first

news report was made at 8:48 a.m. that

a plane might have hit the World Trade

Center, they knew it was Flight 11. And

within a few minutes more, controllers

would have known that both United 175

(the second plane to hit the World Trade

Center) and American 77 (which hit the

Pentagon) had probably been hijacked.

But despite elaborate plans that link

civilian and military efforts to control the

nation’s airspace in defense of the country,

and despite two other jetliners’ having

already hit the World Trade Center in

New York, the fighter planes that

scrambled into protective orbits around

Washington did not arrive until 15 minutes

after Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.” New York Times

Old Radio Script Praising U.S. Is a Web Hit — ‘An electronic version of “The Americans,” which was originally broadcast by the late Canadian journalist Gordon

Sinclair, was e-mailed under the guise of a recent editorial — despite the fact Sinclair died in 1984 and wrote the

script in 1973, toward the end of the Vietnam War.

“Widespread but only partial news coverage was given recently to a remarkable editorial broadcast… by Gordon

Sinclair,” the e-mail said in its introduction to the script.’ Reuters

New Perspective on the Issue of Cell Phone Use in Planes New York Times

Rational Fanatics: “What makes suicide bombers tick? While most of the world sees them as lone zealots, they are, in fact, pawns of large terrorist networks that wage calculated psychological warfare. Contrary to popular belief, suicide bombers can be stopped-but only if governments pay more attention to their methods and motivations.” Foreign Policy

Philadelphia Daily News and Art Bell see images of Satan in smoke billowing from decimated World Trade Center towers. [via Spike] Word of the day: pareidolia.

“I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen,’ ” — Rev. Jerry Falwell [thanks to Looka!] Addendum: Falwell’s non-apology.

Helen Highwater writes in Unknown News “We must remember, however, that in America, all suspects are innocent until proven Muslim.”

For all the fine talk by American statesmen and women, repeating over and over that American freedom and the very American way of life has been attacked, let us not forget that the attacks of September 11 didn’t come out of nowhere. They were retaliatory attacks. Even without knowing the Top Secret specifics of recent years, anyone whose eyes are open should understand that this was retaliation.

And now, some Americans are calling for retaliation for yesterday’s retaliation. To me, that sounds like an invitation to another round of … terrorism, retaliation, or call it what you will. It’s asking for yesterday’s events to be repeated.

America will “retaliate,” Americans will feel pretty darn good about it, and the president’s approval ratings will shoot up higher than 110 stories. It all goes without saying, just like the reasons for terrorism go without saying — meaning literally that the reasons can never be seriously discussed.

The agony thousands of American families are going through this morning will be repeated — first in an Arab nation, and then, soon, in America again. What goes around comes around. Again and again and again.

It has been quite troubling to me the extent to which we have begun to use the term “war” to refer to the events of Tuesday. I commented that this cedes a power to the terrorists they do not have if they have merely committed a “terrorist act” of whatever magnitude. Our hyperbole, seemingly a way to articulate the extent to which we feel overwhelmed, blows back. Even more troubling has been our configuring our intended response as a “war on terrorism” and calling for a “declaration of war” from the Congress. Apart from the justification it provides for what is euphemistically called “collateral damage” (which I discuss below), I’m not sure it makes much sense in helping us to envision the nature, the scope or the difficulty of taking appropriate action, to speak of declaring war on the abstraction “terrorism”. (Semantic difficulty suffuses our other “wars” as well — the war on crime, the war on drugs, the war on cancer even — but in a far less malignant way.) Phil Agre is concerned as well:

“Referring to the attacks on the east coast as “war” gives expression

to our emotions about them, and feels proportional to the magnitude

of the atrocity. But if the definition of “war” has shifted beneath

us, then a declaration of war is an even graver matter than it used to

be. Let us take a moment, then, to ask what we are getting ourselves

into. The Bush administration started using the language of “war”

well before they were willing to say who they thought was responsible

for the attacks. That in itself is probably not unprecedented; the

idea of something mysteriously blowing up is hardly new. What is less

precedented is the lack of any clear suspect who was either a foreign

nation state or a domestic organization…

What does it mean as a *political* matter to declare war on a network?

This, it seems to me, is the greatest danger of all. The only moral

justification for war is to preserve the conditions of democracy.

Revenge is not a sufficient motive, except insofar as it preserves

the conditions of democracy by serving as a deterrent. Otherwise the

matter should be treated as a crime and handled by the institutions

of the police and criminal courts. Are the conditions of democracy

in fact under threat? It is possible that they are, and I would

expect the government to present enough evidence of such a threat

before placing the country in a condition of war. The question of

justification is particularly important in the present case given

the dubious conditions under which George W. Bush assumed the office

of the president. His continued rule is also a significant threat

to the conditions of democracy, even though his methods were largely

nonviolent.”

Agre’s essay, Imagining the Next War: Infrastructural Warfare and the Conditions of Democracy, does not appear to be online yet, but when and if he posts it it will probably be at the Red Rock Eater Digest site. Addendum: here.

FBI Cannot Rule Out Shootdown of Penn. Plane, It is still not clear why United Flight 93 was the only one of the four hijacked planes not to reach its target. The national consensus seems to have settled around the comforting and plausible evidence that a heroic group of passengers struggled with the terorists onboard, causing it to go down short of its objective. But it had occurred to many early on that the plane might have been intercepted and shot down by U.S. warplanes. None of the eyewitness accounts I’ve heard so far from the Pennsylvania crash site have hinted at this. But would the government tell us, just now, if they had judged that they had to bring the plane down to save, say, the White House? The flight data recorder from the plane, reportedly just found, might have the answers, but would we know?

Want to read David Horowitz’s latest inanity, reacting to 9-11? Scroll down past the Michael Klare essay. Salon

“Purge our society,” online bigots shout “Post-disaster threats and expressions of racism bubble up on the Web.” Salon

Net fails key test during clamor for information: “At a time when information-starved Americans needed it as never before, the Internet failed miserably in the hours immediately following Tuesday’s terrorist attacks.” Detroit Free Press And: America’s technology crumbles during crisis: ‘In what amounted to the first test of the hugely popular World Wide Web under wartime conditions, people found they had been sold a bill of goods when the likes of Bill Gates had pledged a future of perpetual, always-on “information at your fingertips.” ‘ SiliconValley.com

An FmH reader wrote me, in part,

I am curious and bothered by your comment that you don’t agree with the comment

that “we are the real terrorists and got what we deserved and its hypocritical to

think otherwise.” Seems to me and a lot of the radical left (Chomsky, Zinn, the

usual suspects) that there is no question that we supply more terror and

possibilities and support for terror than anyone else in the world. I don’t get how

you can say you don’t think we deserve it. I believe that the American people have

been tacitly supporting our foreign policy for decades without directly and

powerfully saying “I will not let this stand!”

I’m going to respond publicly both because I should clarify what I meant, and because the email address to which I tried to reply privately had permanent fatal errors. I realize that one should not post someone else’s private correspondence without prior permission, but at least I’m maintaining the writer’s anonymity.

I did not mean to disagree with the premise that the US is the world’s major exporter of terrorism. US officials decrying terrorism are indeed, inherently, hypocrites in this respect. The part of the syllogism which I cannot abide is that there was anything deserved about such indiscriminate civilian carnage. The tacit support shown by the American people for our policies is innocent, ignorant, pitiful or even contemptible, I’m convinced, rather than malevolent. They are inherently victims, not perpetrators, and were so long before any hijacked airliners smashed through their office windows and incinerated them or crushed them beneath tons of rubble.

Understand I’m a psychiatrist, I believe in unconscious motivations.Readers of FmH know that one of my enduring subtexts is the unmasking of covert control, and a word count of my postings would show the simple but profound word “thoughtful” to have great prominence. People largely do not know why they do the things they do without insightful introspection (“consciousness-raising”), and the manipulation of their opinions, the exploitation and cultivation of that inherent ignorance largely precludes such introspection. It is the major tool of social control in modern capitalist society, which I think (in contrast to the clumsiness of the 20th century’s experimentation with totalitarian dictatorships) has perfected social control through mind control in a transparent, Orwellian sense, brilliant for the ways in which it leaves people thinking they are agents with freedom and free will. It’s damned difficult to awaken from the cultural trance (and I’m not trying to come off with anything like the hubristic claim that I’m one of the awakened!) It’s as if, if the public were an individual criminal on trial for a heinous crime, they should be found incompetent to stand trial and not responsible for their actions. They certainly would not deserve the death sentence.

By the way, I’ve also gotten alot of mail objecting to my position that we should rein in our vengeful bloodlust. If I were not already overcome with sorrow, this would make me very sad… In like fashion to what I’ve said above, while I think the perpetrators of these acts must be hunted down, as should those who have directly, culpably harbored them, given them aid and comfort, we would be perpetuating the ascendency of terrorism and evil in the world to wage war on the civilian populace of Afghanistan or whichever people against whom we decide to vent our collective spleen. I fear this is what the dangerous incompetent in the White House, or his handlers, intend in proclaiming a policy of ‘ending states’ that sponsor terrorism.

“If there are Americans clamoring to bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age, they ought to know that this nation does not have so far to go. This is a post-apocalyptic place of felled cities, parched land and downtrodden people”, said Barry Bearak in yesterday’s New York Times. While I suspect the cynics will see the Taliban plea to the U.S. not to bomb Afghanistan as a self-serving attempt to exploit American bleeding-heart compassion only, we should have the courage to remain more compassionate than our enemies.

“AlterNet believes that millions of Americans, while outraged and

disgusted, are wary of the vengeful rhetoric that many politicians

and pundits have adopted. Therefore, we have put together a series

of articles to provoke thoughtful debate and healing, rather than

hasty scapegoating and revenge.” And another

Thoughtful Response to Tuesday’s Terrorism: “Tuesday’s catastrophic events in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania left the world in shock. We offer here a package of reporting, analysis, opinions, and resources designed to help you sort it all out.” Utne Reader

It just occurs to me to say: I apologize to any of you who, usually enjoying FmH’s diversity and variety, are disappointed by my one-track mind in recent days. It goes without saying, I hope — I can’t think of anything else just now…

Feds push Carnivore after attacks: ‘Federal police are reportedly increasing Internet surveillance after Tuesday’s deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Just hours after three airplanes smashed into the buildings in what some U.S. legislators have dubbed a second Pearl Harbor, FBI agents began to visit Web-based, e-mail firms and network providers, according to engineers at those companies who spoke on condition of anonymity.’ Wired

Two important, succinct points from William Pfaff, in the International Herald Tribune. Attacks Show That Political Courage Is the Only Real Defense

“The practical uselessness of revenge has repeatedly been

demonstrated, and continues to be demonstrated in the Middle

East, since those who employ terrorism are not functioning on a

pragmatic scale of reward and punishment. As the Israelis find,

making martyrs of your enemies invites further martyrdoms.”

“The second reaction will be that the United States needs even

more elaborate defenses than now exist. Yet the Pentagon,

CIA, NSA and the rest of the American apparatus of national

security proved incapable of preventing the attacks Tuesday.

They are incapable of preventing their repetition in some other

version.

There are no technological defenses, as such, against this sort of

thing. Surely, if nothing else comes out of the attacks Tuesday,

they ought to have demonstrated to Americans the irrelevance

of national missile defense.” [via Sam Smith]

Cockburn and St. Clair: Who Saw It Coming?

There may be another similarity to Pearl Harbor. The possibility of a Japanese attack in early December of 1941 was known to US Naval Intelligence and to President Roosevelt. Last Tuesday, derision at the failure of US intelligence was widespread. The Washington Post quoted an unnamed top official at the National Security Council as saying, “We don’t know anything here. We’re watching CNN too.” Are we to believe that the $30 billion annual intelligence budget, immense electronic eavesdropping capacity, thousands of agents around the world, produced nothing in the way of a warning? In fact Osama bin Laden, now prime suspect, said in an interview three weeks ago with Abdel-Bari Atwan, the editor of the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, that he planned “very, very big attacks against American interests.”

Here is bin-Laden, probably the most notorious Islamic foe of America on the planet, originally trained by the CIA, planner of other successful attacks on US installations such as the embassies in East Africa, carrying a $5 million FBI bounty on his head proclaiming the imminence of another assault, and US intelligence was impotent, even though the attacks must have taken months, if not years to plan, and even though CNN has reported that bin-Laden and his coordinating group al-Qa’ida had been using an airstrip in Afghanistan to train pilots to fly 767s. CounterPunch

Helping Children After a Disaster; American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Facts For Families: “It is important to acknowledge the

frightening parts of the disaster when talking with a child about it. Falsely minimizing

the danger will not end a child’s concerns. Several factors affect a child’s response

to a disaster.” Can be printed out and used as a handout to guide and encourage parents in talking with their children about yesterday’s events. And: Talking with Children About Terrorism: “Judith Myers-Walls, a Purdue University Extension specialist in child development and family studies, has researched children’s reactions to wars and disasters and offers advice for parents and others on how to help children cope with the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Centers and Pentagon.”

Assume the kids know about it. They probably know more than you think. The reality of today’s world is that news travels far and wide. Adults and children learn about disasters and tragedies shortly after they occur, and live video footage with close-ups and interviews are part of the report. Children and youth are exposed to the events as soon as they can watch TV or interact with others who are consumers of the news. Not talking about it does not protect children. In fact, you may communicate that the subject is taboo and that you are unavailable if you remain silent.

Also: Cornell expert advises parents on how to help children cope with news of terrorist attacks: “…Parents and other adults will naturally tend to become preoccupied, anxious, and sad by the disaster, but they must guard against this where children are concerned. If adults are “psychologically unavailable,” children will suffer. This is a major issue. The message to parents is clear: Don’t become glued to the television and unavailable to your children when they need you most.”

List of World Trade Center tenants (9/11/2001), with type of business and floor where available. SiliconValley.com

The Counterterrorist Myth — “A former CIA operative explains why the terrorist Usama bin Ladin has little to fear from American intelligence.” The Atlantic

Phil Agre, who always shifts into high gear sending out tons of useful URLs to the Red Rock Eaters mailing list when a crisis of such proportion occurs, pointed to the Stratfor (Strategic Forcasting) Situation Reports. One tidbit I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere else is that 9-11 is the year’s anniversary of the Camp David accords. (Recall that the Oklahoma City bombing was, deliberately, on the anniversary of the Waco conflagration.)

SiliconValley.com – Special Reports: a weblog with extensive coverage of multiple aspects of the situation. Blinked there is this disturbing observation by an unnamed former Boston FBI agent that my city is “a facilitator for terrorist activity. There have been cells here of bin Laden’s associates. They’re entrenched here. They’re able to use this area because of the proximity to New York and to fold into the local population, and they’re able to facilitate terrorist attacks.” Boston Globe So it may not have been just lax security at Logan airport. I wonder even more urgently what the civil liberties implications for Boston in particular are, and whether this city (which has its own brand of perennial racial intolerance) will be a particular setting for the outpouring of anti-Arab sentiment. [Disclaimer: just because I’m starting to post links to help us to be more conversant with bin Laden, don’t count me (yet) as among those who are rushing to judgment that this is attributable to him. While I’m hearing wire reports that U.S. listening posts have intercepted communications from his forces saying they’ve hit their targets, the verdict isn’t yet in…]

US Attacked: How You Can Help. Nice compendium all on one page, including on-click access to charities, sending condolences, discussion of “how the US should respond”. Lycos

‘Blowback’ : “In light of evidence from the recently completed US embassy bombing trials, (the authors) examine the genesis, operational methods and organisational structure of the Bin Laden network: Al-Qaeda.” A July 2001 analysis from Jane’s Defence Weekly. (As the estimable Fred Lapides points out, the term ‘blowback’ refers to a situation in which what you’ve set in motion blows up in your face. Bin Laden cut his eye teeth with the Afghani resistance to the Soviet invasion, which the U.S. trained and funded, of course.)

Engineers shocked by towers: “The structural engineer who designed the towers said as recently as last week that their steel columns could remain standing if they were hit by a 707.” Chicago Tribune However, a Salon feature discusses why the towers collapsed:

According to Gregory Fenves, a professor of Civil Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, the planes weakened the buildings’ structures at key points. Fenves, working on information gleaned from preliminary TV reports, stressed that he was speculating. He said that if the planes had hit the structures higher, they could have merely damaged their tops; if they had hit lower, they would have been up against the enormous weight and resistance of the base of the buildings…

Once a building like a World Trade Center tower loses some of its support, the building in effect goes to work, Fenves said. “The loads are trying to redistribute,” he said. “The loads are figuring out how to get back down to the ground.” At the same time, he noted, the fires are deforming the physical properties of the support steel.

Explosions Rock Kabul. Has retaliation begun?

“The United States has denied that it is behind explosions heard near the Afghan capital of Kabul, not far from the city’s airport. Large plumes of smoke can be seen in the city.

The explosions came seconds apart, making buildings shudder in Kabul. There have been no sounds of airplanes or anti-aircraft fire.

During his Pentagon comments, Rumsfeld said the United States had nothing to do with the explosions.” The Boston Channel

Courtesy of Sam Smith (Progressive Review), here are some remarks by David McReynolds of the War Resisters’ League. There’s a fine line between these remarks, which deserve to be considered, and the position with which I don’t hold that we’re the real terrorists, got what we deserved, and are nothing but hypocrites for decrying today’s terrorist acts. Bush cedes too much power to the perpetrators of this action in his saber-rattling address to the nation tonight, when he invokes a ‘war on terrorism.’ I agree with the pundits suggesting we not aggrandize whomever did this; just call it a ‘terrorist attack’. McReynolds:

“We urge Congress and George Bush

that whatever response or policy the U.S. develops it will be clear that

this nation will no longer target civilians, or accept any policy by any

nation which targets civilians. This would mean an end to the sanctions

against Iraq, which have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of

civilians. It would mean not only a condemnation of terrorism by

Palestinians but also the policy of assassination against the Palestinian

leadership by Israel, and the ruthless repression of the Palestinian

population and the continuing occupation by Israel of the West Bank and

Gaza. The policies of militarism pursued by the United States have resulted

in millions of deaths, from the historic tragedy of the Indochina war,

through the funding of death squads in Central America and Colombia, to the

sanctions and air strikes against Iraq. This nation is the largest supplier

of “conventional weapons” in the world – and those weapons fuel the starkest

kind of terrorism from Indonesia to Africa. The early policy of support for

armed resistance in Afghanistan resulted in the victory of the Taliban – and

the creation of Osama Bin Laden.

Other nations have also engaged in these policies. We have, in years past,

condemned the actions of the Russian government in areas such as Chechnya,

the violence on both sides in the Middle East, and in the Balkans. But our

nation must take responsibility for its own actions. Up until now we have

felt safe within our borders. To wake on a clear cool day to find our

largest city under siege reminds us that in a violent world, none are safe.

Let us seek an end of the militarism which has characterized this nation for

decades. Let us seek a world in which security is gained through

disarmament, international cooperation, and social justice – not through

escalation and retaliation. We condemn without reservation attacks such as

those which occurred, which strike at thousands of civilians. May these

profound tragedies remind us of the impact U.S. policies have had on other

civilians in other lands. We are particularly aware of the fear which many

people of Middle Eastern descent, living in this country, may feel at this

time and urge special consideration for this community.

We are one world. We shall live in a state of fear and terror or we shall

move toward a future in which we seek peaceful alternatives to conflict and

a more just distribution of the world’s resources. As we mourn the many

lives lost, our hearts call out for reconciliation, not revenge.”

Just some thoughts…

Last weekend I saw Apocalypse Now Redux, and the intensity of its searing images, which indeed had been with me since first seeing the film on its release day in 1979, had a renewed presence, just in time for its phantasmagoria to fuse with current events. Apocalyptic, indeed. I’ve been going through the motions of my day at the hospital today in a sort of half-reality, after being at home this AM watching events unfold on live TV until I realized I didn’t want these images played and replayed in front of my three-year-old daughter. There’s something comforting about being in a profession like caring for urgently sick patients which has to go on no matter what else is happening in the world; most things would seem so irrelevant for now. When I was able to connect with my wife, I broke down and sobbed, barely able to catch my breath — “My God, what kind of world do we live in??” Does today mark a sudden sea change, after which the world will be forever different? On the other hand, as horrible as this attack has been, people in many parts of the world live in daily fear of terrorism no different in horror if different in magnitude and drama. Welcome to the real world, U.S.? Get used to the post-traumatic scarring of our collective psyche by the eruption of events that shred the fabric of predictability and control with which our lives have been woven.

Many of us are probably thinking similar things. In a way, I’m surprised that this didn’t happen sooner. The methodology used in this terrorist attack appears to be exactly that publicly blueprinted years ago. Pundits talk about the rude awakening from “America the safe”, “America the invulnerable”, cushioned by our enfolding oceans, but our vulnerability to domestic assault and the indiscriminacy of targeting the general population have long been expected. It should not shock us either that it was so easy to carry out four simultaneous hijackings in the face of “airline security measures” (I concede, of course, that we don’t know if further actions, beyond these four, were thwarted today…). I’ve long suspected that we treat mostly our own anxieties and discourage only threats from the frivolous or erratic unbalanced with our x-rays and metal detectors. Turnover among security personnel is amazingly high and compensation amazingly low; the airline companies give the contracts to manage their gate security to the lowest bidder. Security checks are only as good as the vigilance of those conducting them, and subject to the predictable human frailties of diffidence, wavering attention, disinvestment, burnout, and arbitrariness. Lord, I was harrassed when my son and I visited the Statue of Liberty this spring because of a folding knife in my backpack!

I fear that today’s events may not be the culmination, but only the opening volley, in fact. Can we rest assured that the organization and discipline, the zeal and the impunity of such attackers won’t translate into a CBW or suitcase-fission weapon attack? Friends of mine here in Boston cautioned me not to be too comfortable drinking from the water supply today. I dismissed that as histrionics at first, but is it really unrealistic?? And then: we’re likely to wake up in a world tomorrow in which objections to the unprecedented crackdown on our civil liberties we’re likely to face will be about as popular as pacifist conscientious objectors were after Pearl Harbor.

So what can we do, if we live in a world of such terror? If you’re in New York — or even if you’re not — think about giving blood, now if ever… Two of the hijacked flights originated here in Boston. Soon enough, I suppose, it’ll be clear whether I or my friends and immediate community knew anyone on those flights and can be of personal support. Professionally, I may also be able to be useful if there is a need for specialized disaster response counselling for the families and friends of victims here, which is something I’ve trained and volunteered to do. Nowadays, however, the airlines usually bring in their own teams rather than use those, like mine, that are community-based. Barring that, all I can think of has been to take deeper breaths, think for an extra moment before I act, cultivate my compassion and caring, work for peace and justice in small and, if ever possible, larger ways, and raise my children to do so… although with no naive illusions. I have more of a sense now than perhaps ever before of belonging to a nation, a community… of victims. But it’s a cautious, wavering sense of belonging. I can only echo the sentiments of others that, as a nation, we had better think carefully before we decide if, and how, to address our collective thirst for vengeance — especially after hearing the news of Palestinians dancing in the streets rejoicing at these events. The rabid anti-Muslim hysterics are about to begin… Did you notice how ready the news anchors were to give credibility to scurrilous reports that Islamic groups had claimed responsibility?

Readers of FmH know my feelings about B— and his minions, and it goes without saying for me that the ignorant fundamentalist ideologues ought not to be in charge of this show at a time like this. Let’s remember that they didn’t have the country’s mandate to govern in the first place. Although it is customary to say that we all must pull together behind our Administration in a show of strength and unity at such a time of national crisis, if there were ever a time to remind them, and the world, that they do not speak and act for me in perpetuating the hatred by seeking unmeasured Biblical retribution, this is it. After Gandhi, “An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.” Our adamant collective anger will make this an unpopular stance, I know…

I usually like to buff, finesse, and worry my public thoughts into polished form; not good at off-the-cuff ruminating. But I needed to put down some of the inchoate, complicated feelings and reactions fresh. I know my first impulse was to go offline and run and turn on CNN when I learned about this in the morning, as I said in bold type below. It doesn’t seem easy to follow fast-breaking news by point-and-click. Nevertheless, the thoughtful reflections on today’s horror of many of the webloggers I follow (see sidebar) are worth reading.

Mostly, right now, my heart is with the families of the victims of this carnage…

Turn on your TV! In an apparent terrorist act, two planes have been flown into the World Trade Towers in New York. As I just watched the coverage, news is breaking that there is a fire at the Pentagon after an apparent plane crash there. Addendum: all air traffic in US grounded. Another plane crash in western Pennsylvania.

Novel Auction Offers Chance to Buy Immortality — “A place in literary immortality is on offer to the highest bidder.

Best-selling novelists Robert Harris (Enigma), Ken Follett (Eye of the Needle), Pat Barker (The

Ghost Road) and Zadie Smith (White Teeth) are among the authors agreeing to name a

character in forthcoming books after those prepared to pay up for the privilege. Reuters The slide into literary whoredom accelerates [and I liked Zadie Smith too!].

Sacramento Slaying Suspect Kills Self. What’s crazy in Sacramento? This was the second mass killing spree there in three weeks. AP

Case Could Weaken Restraining Orders. A case currently wending its way through the Massachusetts court system challenges the restrictiveness of restraining orders, broadly used to protect victims of domestic violence.Charges have been dismissed against a man who was arrested twice for violating his restraining order by being at the same public event as his victim in their small town; the judge ruled that the prosecutors had not met the burden of proving his proximity had criminal intent. Advocates for battered women fear enforcement of restraining orders will be relaxed; others feel defendants’ rights need to be upheld in these cases. Boston Globe