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
Recall, I’d been curious about whether any attention was bing paid to the African American reaction to the terrorist attacks. AlterNet observes: Old Glory’s New Appeal to Blacks — “For a younger generation of African Americans like Jones, now may be the first time they have felt such a level of identification and belonging in their national homeland. In the absence of national conflict, younger blacks have often felt like outsiders in America as they have had to deal with America’s history of racial oppression and remnants of racial discrimination that are an everyday reality.
But the terrorist attacks, which killed people of all racial backgrounds, religions and nationalities, have forced many African Americans to come to grips with their Americanness.”
Many of today’s blinks courtesy of Phil Agre’s Red Rock Eaters list. Sadly, here’s what Agre has to say today:
This is the last of these encyclopedic collections of URL’s about the
attack and war that I am going to put together. It’s too much work.
Besides, I feel like the fever broke today. The war talk has suddenly
calmed down, having finally confronted the reality that there’s no
single place to drop a bomb. The whole world has now shifted into
some weird new configuration, and we’re going forward from there.I’d rather have the old world, obviously, but this new world has some
real advantages. I am struck that American culture, amidst all of
the bad feelings that anyone would have, is more thoughtful and less
absorbed with trivia than it was last month. Maybe the rageaholics
will even lose their grip on our political system. We’ll have to see.We’re going to have civil liberties controversies in this new world,
that’s for sure, and I’ll certainly be covering those. And please
do keep sending URL’s that represent, say, the top 5% most important
URL’s reporting information that people aren’t going to come across
by reading the major papers. I hope that everyone has been introduced
to some new information sources by these reader-contributed URL’s; I
know I have.If anybody wants to take over the job of collating URL’s related to the
war, let me know. I’m not sure how that would work, exactly. Maybe
I would simply announce your address to the whole list and ask people
to send the stuff to you. Then you can filter and arrange them however
you want.
Grasping Ruins: Todd Gitlin’s meditation on various aspects of the attack and its aftermath: “We had better inquire deeply into this hatred because terrorists are neither gods nor animals who massacre and ruin and call their acts godly. Others, possibly already in place, may be consecrated to their furious cause, ready to murder again, even with joy in their hearts. To stop terrorism will require more than military self?defense, more than police and courts. Can there be any doubt, to thoughtful people of all persuasions and nations, that there is an urgent need for some disciplined curiosity?”
The people who resolve to do whatever necessary to destroy their Great Satan of choice devote themselves to years of planning. Their lives become the planning and they disappear into their tasks. He who signs up for such schemes convinces himself that there is a devil responsible for his and his people?s wounds; that his hatred is love?for his people or his God? and that he must regenerate himself as pure righteousness and fling himself against absolute evil. As a man, he does not matter. He melts himself down into a symbol, a symbol at war with symbols. Deploying himself against the heart of American capitalism and its chief military citadel, he will overcome earthly limits.
Violence is crucial in his scheme. Violence is at once his break from yesterday, his link to a glorious past and his door to the luminous future. Claiming ancient vindication and denying his modernity, except when it comes to techniques, he struggles to fuse the glorious past with a glorious future and burns up the present between them. To such a man, there can be no civilians. His pure totality is at war against the enemy?s impure totality. Of this, sacred men assure him. If the dead matter at all, it is as symbols themselves, symbols of the raw power, he believes, that has brought him and his people low. Their deaths will stand for his rectitude, inspirations to those who will come along behind him, inspired by his martyrdom.
Open Democracy
Obscure Team Scans Systems To See Where Enemy May Hit. ‘The eclectic, low-profile researchers — among them, a college physics
professor, a nuclear engineer and a veteran of the federal government’s Y2K
preparations — are working in near-obscurity at the Commerce Department.
The team is trying to map the government’s electronic underbelly to identify
the systems and services whose failure or disruption by a hacker or foreign
enemy could cripple the U.S. military or economy or threaten public health,
and to determine how those systems are linked with, or “cascade” upon,
others.’ Wall Street Journal via lists.jammed.com
Editorial: Take the broad view— “This umbrage over presumed US rejection doesn’t behove (sic) us. Members of the cabinet, among others, are still apparently smarting from the perceived US rejection of India?s offer of bases and logistic support. When the US published a list of terrorist and other organisations whose assets were frozen, the cry went up that India?s concerns were ignored. All this unhappiness is absurd and unnecessary and comes from looking at the global fight against terrorism through the prism of India-Pakistan rivalry.” The Indian Express
Happy New Year: It’s 1984. “Seventeen years later than expected, 1984 has arrived. In his address to Congress Thursday, George Bush effectively declared permanent war — war without temporal or geographic limits; war without clear goals; war against a vaguely defined and constantly shifting enemy.” Common Dreams
Berlusconi: The West must conquer Islam: “Breaking ranks with allies reaching out to the Muslim world, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday said Western civilization is superior to Islam. He also said he hopes the West conquers Islamic civilization.
The conservative billionaire’s remarks were instantly disavowed by more moderate politicians in Italy, who called them both ill-timed and offensive.” Salon
White House Drops Claim of Threat to Bush: “The Bush administration appeared to back away yesterday from its claim that a threat was lodged against Air Force One on the day terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.” Doubts about the original ‘spin’ the White House put on Bush’s limited visibility for most of Sept. 11th; are you surprised? Washington Post
Most victims male; many were parents. “A portrait of the people the terrorists murdered Sept. 11 is slowly emerging…” USA Today
When I walked into my local Starbucks yesterday, they were prominently displaying a tally of how much money Starbucks has donated to the relief effort. Now for something completely different — the Guardian UK reports that Starbucks charged rescuers for water: “A branch of the coffee chain Starbucks charged New York rescue workers for water to treat victims of the suicide attack on the World Trade Centre, it emerged today.
Ambulance workers were forced to scramble in their pockets for money to pay a $130 (£88) bill for three cases of water used to treat victims for shock after the twin towers collapsed.”
Architects don’t foresee skyscraper’s demise — “…while skyscrapers may be a painful reminder to some of the September 11 destruction, it’s unlikely they’ll stop sprouting on the urban landscape in the wake of the attacks, architectural experts say.” CNN
Amygdala’s Inner Workings: “The amygdala, an almond-sized and -shaped brain structure, has long been linked with a person’s mental and emotional state. But thanks to scientific advances, researchers have recently grasped how important this 1-inch-long structure really is. Associated with a range of mental conditions from normalcy to depression to even autism, the amygdala has become the focal point of numerous research projects.” The Scientist
“There is no time, there will be time…” A 1998 Forbes magazine essay by Peggy Noonan “devoted to the subject of time–how we experience time, how modern men and women relate to it in ways that might be different from our predecessors. Ms. Noonan has received many requests for reprints since the events in New York the past week.” Wall Street Journal OpinionJournal
Jon Cohen, a writer for Science: Vax Populi: “A viable anthrax vaccine exists. Why aren’t we making it and other defensive vaccines available to the public?” Scroll down for an excellent compilation of links to bioterrorism resources. Slate
Kiss and make up: “Like animals, humans can transcend their capacity for violence…
Humans might be forgiven a little despair now as the warplanes gather and terrorists hide. But in the animal world, giving in completely to the dark side is out of the question.” San Francisco Chronicle
Girls giggle and guys grunt. New Scientist
Response displays kindness of strangers: “Help selflessly offered in emergency situations differs somewhat from everyday acts of kindness, according to psychologist John Dovidio of Colgate University in New York.
In non-emergency situations, people are more selective about who they help and consider the potential costs and benefits of lending a helping hand.” Times-Dispatch
Rouse yourself! Sit up!
Resolutely train yourself to attain peace.
Do not let the king of death, seeing you are careless,
lead you astray and dominate you.
–Sutta Nipata II, 10
An Open Letter to the Peace Movement, a letter to the editor of the Willamette Week Online from Portland playwright Charles Deemer: ‘…(T)here has not been a single military action by the United States that I’ve supported as an adult. Not one.
Over the years, however, I’ve expressed the view that, if the U.S. were under attack, I would support a military response. And I believe that is the case now, which is why I am leaving your ranks.
I am writing to share my steps in deciding to leave the peace movement; to challenge you to do your work in a way that is constructive rather than divisive (as I believe your early responses have been); and to urge you to avoid easy analogies, such as Vietnam, and to find radical new ways to “wage peace.” ‘ [via Ed Fitzgerald]
Mr. Putin’s Choice: “On Monday, Mr. Putin gave Chechnya’s rebels a 72-hour deadline to begin talks on disarmament with his envoy in the region, and he demanded that they “halt all contacts with terrorists and their international organizations.” The statement suggested the possible onset of a major new Russian offensive against the Chechens, which Mr. Putin would insist be accepted on the grounds that some allies of Osama bin Laden allegedly have joined the Chechen resistance.” Washington Post editorial
George Will’s style of yellow journalism and saber rattling, in the Washington Post. There’s no such thing as a war against an abstraction, so we’d better get about the business of Taking Down Enemy Territory. ‘Soon, on campuses, in the media and in Congress (where, in 1991, 47 senators opposed using force to reverse Iraq’s aggression against Kuwait), there will be familiar calls to confine the war to minor objectives. But those objectives would mock the president’s calculated and correct use of the word “war.” When advocates of merely minor objectives are praised as “cooler heads,” the pertinent attribute may be cold feet.’
Anti-terrorism proposals worry civil libertarians. “Advocacy groups, legal experts and some members of Congress are voicing strong concerns that a proposal to expand law enforcement powers in order to ratchet up the fight on terrorism could end up treading on civil liberties enjoyed by all Americans.” CNN
Readers of FmH know I’m often preoccupied with civil liberties issues, and I have since Sept. 11th covered concerns about whether a precipitous reform of law enforcement authority will exact too steep a price to our fundamental rights. In the last few days, I’ve been even more worried about another civil liberties implication of these events, more along the lines of my membership in Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch than the ACLU. The “allies” whose cooperation we are seeking for our global “war on terrorism” are surely looking for concessions in return. They include some authoritarian regimes whose repressive stance toward their own citizens we may no longer have the discretion to object to. The threat of terrorism or of domestic unrest over being in bed with the U.S. may be the impetus, or the pretext, for such regimes to take even more draconian measures, that will make any domestic clampdown in our civil liberties pale in significance by comparison. (Many so-called anti-terrorism measures are of course not really about terrorism, although at times of passion it may be an effort to stop and analyze the implications of proposed new state powers to conclude that.) “If you thought the Taliban were monsters, just wait until you meet the West’s new friends…” warns the Sydney Morning Herald.
Amid fears, antibiotic selling fast: “Pharmacists in New York have sold greater-than-normal amounts of antibiotics for treating anthrax, a highly contagious and potentially fatal disease, amid rising fear of biological warfare.
Sales of antibiotics normally rise in September, when children return to school and parents worry about their exposure to infections. But pharmacists said the sale of Bayer AG’s antimicrobial drug Cipro are much higher than usual.” So reports the Boston Globe, which also has an opinion piece exhorting the U.S. to take this opportunity to reinstitute Iraqi weapons inspections.
Meanwhile, in the New York Times, frightened Europeans snap up gas masks, an editorial on the specter of biological terror, and a report on added security for dams, reservoirs and aqueducts.
In my region, the Quabbin Reservoir in Western Massachusetts, which supplies much of Boston’s water supply, has been “off-line” since last weekend when two light aircraft swooped low over its waters. Experts attempt to reassure us that contaminating the water supply is not as easy as most doomsday scenarios would have it, because the volume of reservoirs is so great that anything short of multiple truckloads of toxic material would be diluted to harmlessness. Will post-attack fears heighten watershed consciousness? How many urban dwellers even know with confidence where their drinking water comes from? Should we all become much more conversant with the language of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) and CBW (chemical and biological warfare)? The Bush admnistration had been reluctant to sign a treaty (one of the many at which it thumbed its nose in its go-it-alone stance until Sept. 11th) that would have tightened controls on the production of biological agents, supposedly because it would have obligated us to reveal details of our so-called “defensive” research into virulent strains of anthrax and who knows what else. Will the administration be able to get away with this with a population more highly educated about the terrible potential of biological weaponry?
Analysts: signs point to U.S. strike within two weeks: “Official lips are sealed, but U.S. analysts say the signs — military buildup, coalition formation, and weather forecasts — point to U.S. strikes on Afghanistan in the next two weeks.” Rapid action before snow falls or resolve of ambivalent allies weakens. Boston Globe
In Cases of Euthanasia, Men Most Often Kill Women — ‘Colorado State University psychologist Silvia Sara Canetto recently uncovered a curious statistic: two thirds of the people who die in so-called mercy killings are women. Moreover, most of these women are killed by men. “Many people may view women’s high rates of death by mercy killing as an indication of men’s beneficence or of women’s healthy pragmatism, rational thinking and self-determination,” Canetto says. “Yet one should be wary of those who present mercy killing as a gift to women. These are fatal gifts, embedded in a long tradition of legitimizing women’s sacrifice.” ‘ Scientific American
No brainer: ‘A new culture war is emerging. This one pits “minders” against “brainers,” and cuts across the usual political lines. Brainers build their cultural castles on the rock of cutting-edge science: genetics, brain biology, and evolutionary psychology. Minders craft a worldview the old-fashioned way, by drawing on religion, philosophy, and classic social science.’ The author, Stankey Kuntz, a fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute think tank, describes himself as a “confirmed minder” and is essentially cheerleading for the various salvos fired against the brainers’ “medicalization of unhappiness.” Perhaps worthwhile, but unfortunately he doesn’t know enough about neuroscience to criticize it, and some of his assertions — e.g., that there is no well-established understanding of the pathophysiologiy of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder — are just plain untrue. It is also remarkable to hear him proclaim that the brain/mind battleground is a new one. Indeed, it’s one of the longest-running shows in the psychological sciences. I won’t go too far into his efforts to disparage and patronize the positions of his opponents as “religion”, since he also seems to know little of the philosophy of science and epistemology. His crowning blow is to imply that this is a battle about “the degree of humanity we shall be able to retain.” You can guess which side he thinks holds all the humanity. National Review
Married 203 Times, He Has Only Memories, Not Wives: “(Egyptian) law and custom make short, legal liaisons a form of protection. Musician, 70, now wants to settle down–with two mates.” LA Times
Los Angeles Times letter to the editor: “I am an 80-year-old veteran of 3 1/2 years in the Army during World War II and am really upset by one thing in our reaction to our recent tragedy. Ever since the terrorist attacks it has been appropriate to sing our national anthem on the radio or TV–yet “America, the Beautiful” or “God Bless America” have been substituted. I hope this is not a case of the religious right trying to use this recent tragedy to promote their agenda of getting God into the national anthem. Our national anthem is “The Star Spangled Banner”.
Some See ‘Ghost’ of Towers at Night: ‘For many New Yorkers, the Twin Towers are legendary. But for some, there is now talk about the buildings, the kind that sometimes spurs urban legends. Some residents of the Lower East Side, who for decades have had an unobstructed view of the majestic 110-story towers simply by glancing down East Broadway or Madison Street, say they see the outlines of the two destroyed buildings.
“It was amazing,” said Mike Atta, who works at a grocery store at Rutgers and Madison streets. “It was a light, a straight light going up into the sky. It actually looked like the Twin Towers.”
Atta said many people have stood outside his store on evenings to admire the “ghost” and have spoken to him about it. “Some people say it’s just a light,” Atta said. “Some people say it’s an amazing thing.” ‘ Newsday [via Spike]
Researchers Find Enzyme Crucial To Preservation Of Memories: “…elimination of the enzyme, calcium-calmodulin dependent kinase (CaMKIV), in the forebrains of mice had profound effects on signaling pathways in the brain and learning behavior.
The scientists began their studies to clarify the enzyme’s role in late long-term potentiation (L-LTP), the process by which enduring memories are established through a mechanism of activating genes that trigger protein synthesis. This protein synthesis, in turn, alters the synapses — connections between neurons — and ?etches? permanent memory pathways.” Science Daily News
FAIR Action Alert: Media Pundits Advocate Civilian Targets Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
The ‘art’ of naming military operations, a 1995 historical survey from the
World Wars to ”infinite justice’. US Army War College Quarterly
Everyone’s talking about how the weblog has served us well as a tool since 9-11. But of course it is also a potential vehicle for inanity. Take this, from WarLog by Jeff Jarvis, self-described “president & creative director of Advance.net and former TV critic for TV Guide, creator of Entertainment Weekly, Sunday Editor of the NY Daily News, and a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner“, who writes (taking the cake from Andrew Sullivan’s “fifth column” comments I noted below):
The Axis alliance of this war: Extreme fundamentalist Muslims who hate America, extreme fundamentalist Christians (read: Falwell) who hate what America has become, and extreme fundamentalist liberals (read Matt Welch and Christopher Hitchens’ attack on them) who want to blame America for what has befallen it. They’re all dangerous lunatics. Shouldn’t we in the media be exposing and ridiculing these kooks and cults? Isn’t that in our job description?
US considers faceprints for air security — “Officials given the task of tightening security at airports were impressed by a demonstration of the technique and believe that the expected opposition of civil liberties groups will resonate less widely with the public because of widespread fears about safety.
A government committee under the jurisdiction of Norman Mineta, the Transport Secretary, examined the FaceIt system last week and was told that it could be installed at key airports within weeks.” Times of London
And:
ID cards “don’t stop crime”: “Civil liberties groups are crying foul over the possible introduction of identity cards in Britain, claiming they would infringe liberty but have little impact on the West’s newly declared war on terrorism.” Reuters
How the British national identification card might look. Times of London
Rep. Barbara Lee: “Why I opposed the resolution to authorize force” San Francisco Chronicle
Remiss: “Dubya and the national media have continued to harp on their latest song: America, America, America! I dearly love my country — I had an American flag hanging in my front window long before the Big Awful came down on the 11th — but this is getting embarrassing. Have they not noticed how many of the missing (go ahead and say it: the dead) are from other countries?” Making Light
Researchers map how schizophrenia engulfs teen brains: “Scientists at UCLA and the National Institute of Mental Health employed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology to
scan a group of teenagers repeatedly as they developed schizophrenia. Using a new image analysis method that detects
very fine changes in the brain, the scientists detected gray matter loss of more than 10 percent first in the parietal, or outer,
regions of the brain; this loss spread to engulf the rest of the brain over five years.” EurekAlert
Now, Doctors Must Identify the Dead Among the Trade Center Rubble, “… gearing up for the largest
effort in the annals of forensic
medicine…” New York Times [login:”fmhreader”; password: “fmhreader”]
How big a war? More on the Wolfowitz/Powell schism. I thought Powell’s restraint in not wanting to march on Baghdad during Desert Storm was a soldier’s conceit about getting done just the job he was sent to do. According to this essay, however, he was more the diplomat even then, concerned for the fragility of the alliance the U.S. had forged.
During the Gulf War, then-President Bush sided with Powell, rejecting calls from Gen.
Norman Schwarzkopf and others to continue on to Baghdad. Bush’s background as a
legislator and, like Powell, a diplomat made him sensitive to Powell’s concerns about
undermining the tenuous coalition that was assembled during the Gulf War.But the current President Bush does not have the foreign policy experience of his father, and
so the question of who has his ear on key foreign policy decisions has been the topic of
much speculation. During the presidential campaign, Bush tried to temper concerns about his
lack of foreign policy experience and knowledge by pointing to the seasoned foreign policy
hands surrounding him. But those advisors have real ideological divides over a number of
issues, and so far Bush has not sided clearly with one side or the other. Salon
The terrorist attacks: news frames and filters Susan D. Moeller’s 1999 book Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine,
War and Death describes a typology of media coverage of assassinations and terrorist events that anticipates what we’ve seen in the last two weeks.
…there is rarely even any cognizance that the media’s rendition is itself
“framed.” Only if multiple similar events are compared is it made evident
that conscious choices guided the media’s coverage. Many news
frames appear to be natural, unforced, perhaps even self-evident ways
of reporting a story.
— Susan D. Moeller
disinformation
U.S. Plans to Release Its Evidence on Bin Laden: “The Bush administration, determined to prove to the world that Osama bin Laden and his cohorts are guilty of the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, plans to make public a detailed analysis of the evidence collected by intelligence and police agencies, senior officials said today.
In deciding to publish its case against the Afghanistan-based terrorist, the administration concluded that international support for its planned military, diplomatic and economic retaliation is more important than the intelligence secrets that might be compromised.” LA Times
The Phantom Towers, a memorial Paul Myoda and Julian Laverdiere
The Phantom Towers, a memorial Paul Myoda and Julian Laverdiere
The Phantom Towers, a memorial Paul Myoda and Julian Laverdiere
