"I see in the near future a crisis approaching. It unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. The money powers preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me & the financial institutions at the rear, the latter is my greatest foe. Corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed."
-- Abraham Lincoln, letter to William Elkins, Nov 21, 1864 (just after the passage of the National Banking Act, right before assasination)
| Lincoln | History | Capitalism | Big Business |
Bill Moyers' keynote address to the Environmental Grantmakers Association conference last week is reprinted here. He talks movingly about the 11th, and fiercefully about the war is giving corporations greater power:
The predators of Washington are up to their old tricks in the pursuit of private plunder at public expense. In the wake of this awful tragedy wrought by terrorism, they are cashing in.Would you like to know the memorial they would offer the almost six thousand people who died in the attacks? Or the legacy they would provide the ten thousand children who lost a parent in the horror? How do they propose to fight the long and costly war on terrorism America must now undertake?
Why, restore the three-martini lunch; that will surely strike fear in the heart of Osama bin Laden. You think I'm kidding, but bringing back the deductible lunch is one of the proposals on the table in Washington right now. There are members of Congress who believe you should sacrifice in this time of crisis by paying for lobbyists' long lunches. And cut capital gains for the wealthy, naturally, that's America's patriotic duty, too. And while we're at it, don't forget to eliminate the Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax, enacted fifteen years ago to prevent corporations from taking so many credits and deductions that they owed little if any taxes. But don't just repeal their minimum tax; give those corporations a refund for all the minimum tax they have ever been assessed.
You look incredulous. But that's taking place in Washington even as we meet here in Brainerd this morning. What else can America do to strike at the terrorists? Why, slip in a special tax break for poor General Electric, and slip inside the Environmental Protection Agency while everyone's distracted and torpedo the recent order to clean the Hudson river of PCBs. Don't worry about NBC, CNBC, or MSNBC reporting it; they're all in the GE family.
It's time for Churchillian courage, we're told. So how would this crowd assure that future generations will look back and say, "This was their finest hour?" That's easy. Give those coal producers freedom to pollute. And shovel generous tax breaks to those giant energy companies; and open the Alaskan wilderness to drilling, that's something to remember the11th of September for. And while the red, white, and blue wave at half-mast over the land of the free and the home of the brave, why, give the President the power to discard democratic debate and the rule-of-law concerning controversial trade agreements, and set up secret tribunals to run roughshod over local communities trying to protect their environment and their health. It's happening as we meet. It's happening right now.
(Props to Ethel for the pointer.)
| Tax Policy | War on Terror | Bill Moyers |
Another article forwarded by Prof. Mike Watkins, this one from Stratfor
Global Implications of U.S. Anti-Terrorism Law: SummaryIn an effort to dismantle the financial underpinnings of international terrorism, the United States is cracking down on global money laundering. But stricter international controls on banking and greater scrutiny in the financial sector could backfire, triggering corruption scandals around the globe. Greater transparency and enforcement will also prompt terrorist groups, drug traffickers and criminal organizations to strengthen cooperation and establish more informal laundering networks.
Read the entire article here.
| Money Laundering |
The new Texas director of homeland security is running for lieutenant governor. So how better to bolster his campaign than a glossy ad featuring an Air Force officer and the American flag? The only problem: it's a Luftwaffe officer. Is it me, or have the folks who provide stock photos become especially lazy? They must have used the same guys who put Bert on the bin Laden poster.
Props to Metafilter for the story.
| Photography | Nazis |
We are all at a wake. The funeral has ended, and we're trying to eat potato salad, drink whatever helps. Some of us are making small talk, others still visibly shaken with grief. Somehow, we're all trying to seem like this is normal.
|
More from Noam Chomsky on the war -- not too different from what was posted previously here (pointing out how the US deals in wholesale terror), but with more laugh lines.
| Noam Chomsky |
Paul, who's in the Army, and who's a doctor, and who was in the Chemical Corps, all of which makes him the closest thing to an in-house anthrax expert we have here at Ishbadiddle, writes:
3 people have died of anthrax. If you can be at all objective about it, you will realize you have nothing to fear. That's the bottom line. You probably have a greater chance of picking up T.B. in an airplane or having a premature heart attack. I think one of the reasons biological weapons weren't used by the U.S. in World War 2 is that they are ineffective. But they seem to be effective as a weapon of terror. Because of the panic, our government is going to spend untold millions to beef up our ability to defend against biological weapons. I think there are cheaper but less palatable ways to improve our security, such as tighter control on visas and resident aliens.
| Anthrax | WMD |
How about, don't touch it? The FBI's advice on suspicious packages.
| How To | FBI |
This article by Arundhati Roy in the Guardian has lots to say, cogently, about the war. (Although I don't know what that thing with the gecko is all about.) She touches on many issues; here's what she says about our bomb-and-food drops:
Aid workers have condemned it as a cynical, dangerous, public-relations exercise. They say that air-dropping food packets is worse than futile.First, because the food will never get to those who really need it. More dangerously, those who run out to retrieve the packets risk being blown up by landmines. A tragic alms race.
Nevertheless, the food packets had a photo-op all to themselves. Their contents were listed in major newspapers. They were vegetarian, we're told, as per Muslim dietary law (!) Each yellow packet, decorated with the American flag, contained: rice, peanut butter, bean salad, strawberry jam, crackers, raisins, flat bread, an apple fruit bar, seasoning, matches, a set of plastic cutlery, a serviette and illustrated user instructions.
After three years of unremitting drought, an air-dropped airline meal in Jalalabad! The level of cultural ineptitude, the failure to understand what months of relentless hunger and grinding poverty really mean, the US government¹s attempt to use even this abject misery to boost its self-image, beggars description.
Reverse the scenario for a moment. Imagine if the Taliban government was to bomb New York City, saying all the while that its real target was the US government and its policies. And suppose, during breaks between the bombing, the Taliban dropped a few thousand packets containing nan and kebabs impaled on an Afghan flag. Would the good people of New York ever find it in themselves to forgive the Afghan government? Even if they were hungry, even if they needed the food, even if they ate it, how would they ever forget the insult, the condescension? Rudi Guiliani, Mayor of New York City, returned a gift of $10m from a Saudi prince because it came with a few words of friendly advice about American policy in the Middle East. Is pride a luxury that only the rich are entitled to?
| Afghanistan | War | PBJ | Food |
The folks over at Metafilter pointed out this story:
Army to Fund Video Games for Aspiring Commanders
| Military |
Clear Channel according to Michael Moore, controls 60% of all rock-radio listening. Here is the list of songs you won't hear on their stations, post-9/11. The list is completely bizarre. (Maybe Tipper helped put it together?) Of course, "Imagine" gets cut. Then again, so does "Walk Like an Egyptian."
| Clear Channel |
The LA Times reports that a woman in Washington, tired of trying to prove to the student loan people that her son really was dead, mailed some of his ashes to the Sallie Mae office. And of course, "people were freaking out and going to the doctor, thinking they had handled anthrax."
| WMD | Education |
The Tower on fire, crumbling. Bodies falling. I'm not into the occult, but there's a certain resonance these days with The Tower, card 16 from the Major Arcana of the Tarot. Some examples:
I have lots more articles (surprise!) but won't get to them until next week at the earliest.W
| 9/11 | Tarot | Occult |
For those who read yesterday's Ish, I wrote about Richard Penny, a Project Renewal employee who died in the WTC. Today the Times wrote this about him and his family.
THE NEW YORK TIMESOctober 25, 2001
THE SEARCH
Son's Decade-Long Quest Ends in the Rubble
By NINA BERNSTEINFor years, Richard Penny searched for the father whose name he bears. He called every Richard Penny in the country with a listed phone number. He posted queries on the Internet. Sometimes Mr. Penny, now a married man of 33 with small sons of his own, would drive from his home in Virginia to the Brooklyn brownstone his family used to own, just hoping for word of the emotionally troubled dad who wandered away more than a dozen years ago.
Last week, news of the father finally reached the son. After a decade lost in a netherworld of homeless shelters and work programs, Richard A. Penny, 53, had made it to a rented room and a steady job. But the job was for the World Trade Center Recycling Project, and when terrorists struck Sept. 11, he was collecting paper on an upper floor of the north tower.
"I've been trying to find him for so long," said Mr. Penny, who only learned of his father's fate after a reporter tracked the son down in a computer records search. "It tears me to pieces to find out that that's how he was living, and that he's dead now."
His father's employers at Project Renewal, the social service agency that had a recycling contract with the Port Authority, say there is no doubt that the senior Mr. Penny was one of two workers who perished in the attacks. They were remembered in a memorial service sponsored by Project Renewal two weeks ago - a service the junior Mr. Penny learned about only afterward.
In the eulogies that day, and in the files of half a dozen agencies that found him temporary jobs or shelter, the father was remembered as a quiet, hard-working man who had been long separated from his wife and only child - a grown son whose whereabouts the father did not know how to discover.
In the years when the son was passing proud benchmarks of success - college, six years in the Marine Corps Reserves, marriage, three children and a management career with a national restaurant chain - the father was caught in a downward spiral of shelter cots and street corners. His life was haunted by a youthful bout with drugs and a 1975 prison term, and by his mother's death years before.
"I would have taken him home in the drop of a hat," said Mr. Penny, who drove to New York last week with his wife, Monika, and the youngest of their three sons, Kyle, 5.
They came not only to mourn, but to try to piece together a vanished life. For the son, it seemed the last chance to connect in some way with the beloved father he had lost at 18. At the very least, he wanted to make sure his father was not counted among the hundreds who still have not had a family member step forward to detail their lives or seek their remains.
"For so long I haven't known anything," Mr. Penny said. "At least now I'm retracing his steps and finding out where the lost years took my Dad."
They arrived at 3 in the morning Friday to begin a bittersweet three- day pilgrimage through the mysterious life and death of the grandfather Kyle will never meet.
First they drove by the proud four- story brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant where the senior Richard A. Penny grew up, beloved only son of an older couple.
"Growing up, he was the star on the block," the son said. "The cleanest cut, the straight arrow guy. He was valedictorian of his high school class, and had so many college scholarship offers."
But he stayed home, married his neighborhood sweetheart, and worked as a communications craftsman for AT&T. Then the blow came: he was accused with neighborhood buddies of trying to hold up a token booth. His parents, Allie and Inez Penny, a retired construction worker and a domestic for a Manhattan family, mortgaged the brownstone to pay for defense lawyers. But the young father, who admitted to having used narcotics, was convicted of the robbery in 1975 and served 14 months.
"When he came home from jail, he was never, ever the same," the son recalled. "He had basically become like a recluse."
The son moved to Virginia with his mother, who now lives in Atlanta. He came back to visit, coaxing his father from the house.
"All I have is good memories of the time my dad and I spent together," he said. "Long walks downtown to catch double features. Stopping by the pizza shop. Playing handball. He never raised his voice to me."
The new crisis came in 1987. The father, then nearly 40, learned he had been adopted, that his birth father was Jewish, his birth mother an African-American acquaintance of the family. He angrily confronted his adoptive mother, who died soon afterward. "He was so devastated he didn't go to her funeral," the son recalled. The brownstone had to be sold; the new owners evicted him. The family never saw him again.
On Friday, the son drove his minivan on the Brooklyn streets that his father had walked after becoming homeless and losing a job as a factory helper in 1992. At the Hope Program, a nonprofit employment service in Brooklyn Heights, Jon Bunge, the director of employment, pointed out a snapshot of the father: a slim, light-skinned man with glasses, resplendent in a white shirt and tie as he graduated from the "job-readiness" program in 1994, having polished brass and scrubbed floors at a church for months.
His trail resurfaces in August 1996, in the records of Ready, Willing and Able, which took over the Harlem Men's Shelter that year. The father, who was sleeping at the shelter, told a caseworker that he wanted to establish "normal family relations" with his son, then 28.
What were the barriers? the father was asked. His answer was noted: "Lost communication. Must track down son."
But he never figured out how. Over the next couple of years, he continued to cycle in and out of work programs. By the time he made his way back to the Hope program in July of 1998, the father was in bad shape."We encouraged him to apply for public assistance," Mr. Bunge recalled. "He just said, `Jon, I don't want to do it. If I apply I'm going to get into that whole web. I just want to work. I just need a job.' "
Three years ago, another agency found him a bunkhouse bed in a Brooklyn brownstone for $235 a month, and a $6-an-hour job recycling paper at the trade center.
In the conference room of Project Renewal, which runs the recycling project, the son was handed the father's memorial program, his final paycheck and his pension plan. He had saved $250 toward retirement, listing beneficiaries in a careful hand: his estranged wife, and his son, Richard Penny.
The son, choking back tears, remembered where he was when his father died: driving near the Pentagon, on one of his frequent business trips for T.G.I. Friday's as manager of Mid-Atlantic recruitment.
Back in the family's home in Hampton, Va., Monika Penny had reached for the small, tarnished flag pin her adoptive parents gave her. She was born of a German mother and an African-American father, left at 2 in a German orphanage.
"I was just hoping," she said, "that one of us would have a connection with our lost parents."
The family's journey led on to the city's Family Assistance Center at Pier 94. There was a seven-page missing person report, questions about scars and dentures, two swabs of the son's mouth for DNA.
Earlier, on the Brooklyn Heights promenade, Kyle had done a pirouette before the skyline, exclaiming, "I'm in love with New York!" Now he leaned close to his Dad. "I wish your father didn't work at the World Trade Center," he whispered, "so he wouldn't be killed."
On Saturday, his parents took a ferry to ground zero with other grieving families. "That was pretty rough," Mr. Penny said later. "Finding him and losing him all over again, realizing I lost him for good."
But there was one more stop: his father's last home. It was night when they arrived at 143 Lewis Avenue, not far from the family's old brownstone. This one was a shabby place, with bunk beds crammed in old parlors. One of the 26 residents appeared with a plastic garbage bag. The father's name was on it.
The son had hoped for a memento, perhaps a book from a man who once listed his best quality as a love of learning. But inside were old clothes, doubled up gloves and hats, and two very old blankets.
It was Richard, instead, who left something for his father - a message, taped like so many to a fence:
"Richard A. Penny, We Love You and Miss You! The Penny Family."
| New York City | Homeless | Project Renewal |
September 1, 1939
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
- W. H. Auden, 1907-1973
| Poetry | W. H. Auden |
So.
As I'm waiting for my train this morning, the rare thing occurs: an intelligible message comes over the subway speaker system. "Due to an ongoing investigation...." the voice says, and I think... nothing of it. I've heard this before; that's how they refer to the trains that are out around the World Trade Center. But then the voice says, "...at 6th Avenue and 54th Street..." which makes me think, "Um, 6th and 54th?" The voice goes on to say that "F train service is suspended between 4th Street and 59th Street," which is essentially all of Manhattan below the Park.
My train roars in and the doors slide open. Do you get on? Do you go into the office? If you had known, last time, you wouldn't have. But this is October, and, Hell yeah, you're a New Yorker! What's a little investigation between friends? And my train zips me all the way to the Upper East Side, just like it should.
Then things get weird again.
As my train pulls into the station, I can clearly see the green pillars of the Lexington stop, which I want. But I have to double check because something's not right. It takes me a while to figure it out, but then I realize, instead of the usual swarm of humanity, I can see across the platform to the other side. There's practically no one there. As I step out of the car, ride the empty escalator (which is usually as busy as a sausage belt at the Jimmy Dean factory), and walk out of the station, I'm getting more and more worried. Rather than ducking and dodging through throngs of commuters, I have space. I walk broadly, without impediment across the lobby, through the turnstile, up the stairs. I'd say there's about one twentieth the number of people I usually see. And that *really* freaks me out, frankly.
As I'm coming up the empty stairs, two MTA workers are carrying a piece of machinery down. What is this? Air filtering devices? Bomb defusing equipment? Ah, just floor polishers. Suddenly I feel better. And, topside, the streets seem to me almost normally populated. I scan the crowd for signs of panic, looking for anyone shaking their head or choking back tears. I listen for radios turned up to a news bulletin, look for a crowd forming around a TV set in a shop window. All things I saw on the 11th. But today, gratefully, I see none. Just the usual chaos and tension of an Upper East Side morning (enough to stress anyone out, for sure, but at least that's all it is).
When I get to the office, the excitement isn't done -- the door is locked, our receptionist is missing. She finally shows up with a harrowing but non-violent story of subway commuting (waiting ten minutes at every stop from Brooklyn to Manhattan; a different kind of Hell). We check the news. There seems to be unidentified bacteria at the main Manhattan Post Office. They think it isn't Anthrax, but maybe it is, but maybe not -- which might be worse, it occurs to me -- but at least no one has done anything that involves body parts and DNA testing.
It's just a little Anthrax scare. And that's such a relief.
Welcome to New York.
| New York City | Subway |
Paul writes:
I did go to Turkey, and I had the misfortune to be there when the bombing started. It did make me a bit wary of looking too American, although I was still walking through Istanbul with my camera around my neck. We watched a lot of CNN when we were in our hotel room to try to figure out what was going on, and whether we were safe in Turkey. I wish one of us had understood Turkish. I would have liked to have understood what they were saying on the local news. Nobody gave us any grief in Turkey, but I kept looking over my shoulder to see if Osama was following me. The worst was when we visited the "covered market," a very touristy collection of shops that was clearly hurting for business. All the shopkeepers knew the instant they saw us we were American and approached us with the inexplicable greeting, "Yes, please." They weren't rude, or anything, just pushy. I hate shopping malls. I hate shopping for a new car. It's sort of a combination of the two. Plus, there I was in a Muslim country, watching CNN and seeing crowds in Pakistan chanting "Death to America." Every time I saw a covered woman (most of whom may have been Arabs, for all I know) or heard the call to prayer broadcast from a minaret, I felt a chill. Stacy insisted on getting a Pizza Hut pizza one night, having not been able to find a real pizza in Armenia, and I was halfway convinced we were going to be murdered while we were in the restaurant. The worst anti-American thing we heard while we were there, though, was from an American working on her PhD in Turkey. Apparently she was reading a book in a park and some jackass sitting on a park bench near her started saying, "Osama" intermittently while staring at her. She looked very American - tall, redhead. When she got fed up and left, he asked (in English), "Where are you going?" while laughing. 6,000 murdered. Very funny.
We didn't venture too far out of Istanbul. The highlight of the trip was a boat trip up the Bosphorus on the Hiawatha, the American consulate's yacht, which is available to consulate employees and local American businessmen for a small fee. We took a picnic, beer and wine (which are plentiful in Turkey), and joined Stacy's consulate friend and a bunch of his acquaintances on the boat. We were on this boat the day after the bombing started in Afghanistan. It was good to be with other Americans.
We did get out among the Turks a bit after the initial fright wore off. The most encouraging encounter we had in Turkey was on one of the Prince's islands, called Buyukada (with umlauts over the Us), in the sea of Marmara and accessible by ferry. When Stacy and I arrived on the island, we rapidly escaped the town, where there were dozens of idle (and smelly) horse carriages waiting for tourists, and walked to the highest point on the island, where we saw a lovely view of the sea. We ran into an old man, who must have been 80. It turned out he spoke pretty good English. He asked us the time, and asked us where we were from. After finding out we were American, he launched into a series of stories of his travels in the U.S. in the late 1940's! He was an aeronautical engineer, and got some training at Stanford. He invited us to his house, where his wife gave us drinks and cookies. He told us a story about a girl he met at a dance at Stanford. While they were dancing she asked him if he was a Muslim or a Mohommedan. When he asked why, she said her grandmother had told her Mahommedans were cannibals. We all laughed.
Will I be deployed? Not till I graduate, anyway, and then there is only a small chance, barring some horrible, but unfortunately not unimaginable, escalation. Nothing is unimaginable now. What happens if we trace the anthrax to Iraq?
My take on the "war" is: I'm for it, and I support the actions in Afghanistan. Sure killing innocent civilians in Afghanistan is wrong, but unlike our enemy, we largely avoid it. Sure public opinion will turn against us in Muslim countries, but we're not trying to win friends (with friends like these...). We cannot do nothing. They bomb American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and we fire token cruise missiles. They bomb the Cole, killing several sailors, and we do nothing. They murder 6,000 Americans on one sunny Tuesday, and we do what? I'm not arguing that we have to act for the sake of action. I honestly think we can fight terrorists like Osama. Part of that battle will be to destroy the governments that permit these crimes to occur, and indeed support them. From all I've heard, there is no difference between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. We must destroy both. This is as clear to me as was the imperative to destroy the Nazis. Is this the final answer? No. I think that what's going to have to happen for these anti-American attacks to stop is for Muslim societies to render unacceptable the belief that Americans are their enemy and deserve to die. I'm sure it is a minority belief, even in Palestine, but it is surprisingly mainstream and disturbingly widespread in the Muslim world. Antisemitism was widespread in Europe before World War 2, before the Nazis were destroyed, but is discredited (for the most part) today.
I also am disheartened to hear this crap about the U.S. creating the Taliban, training Osama, abandoning Afghanistan, or in any other way being responsible for the hatred directed towards us. I believe lousy conditions in Muslim countries feed the hatred, sure. I think Palestinians are unhappy because the Israelis have occupied their country. I think Saudis are unhappy because their country is mismanaged. I believe Pakistanis are unhappy because they are poor. I think Afghans are unhappy because they live in a country that's been a war zone for 20 years. But where does the anger turn? To the biggest, most visible, and most different, outsider. This phenomenon is built on hatred of outsiders. Face it. Sure the U.S. has meddled every now and then, and sure some of our decisions may have been bad in retrospect, but Muslims have mostly themselves to blame for their problems, not the U.S. A case in point - those "children dying in Iraq" because of U.S. sanctions are a fiction. Iraquis suffer because of Saddam Hussein, but the U.S. is blamed. And what is our crime against Saudi Arabia? Merely being there. Infidel soldiers on holy land and all that. The latter opinion may be held only by extremists like Osama, but did you ever ask yourself why non-Muslims aren't allowed to set foot in Mecca?
I also find the concept that the attack on the Pentagon, was in any sense acceptable, whereas the attack in New York was not, is ludicrous. Many of those murdered there may have been soldiers, but they were not soldiers fighting a war against any Muslim country, except perhaps Iraq. Admittedly, I am upset about that attack because it occured in my hometown, and because my brother recently worked there, and because I wear a uniform to work, but I want Americans to STOP apologising for the terrorists actions. Our enemy should be overseas.
I hope you forgive the diatribe. I own a U.S. flag now, and as you can probably tell from the three previous paragraphs, I wave it proudly.
Yours,
Paul
P.S., As an atheist, I suspect I am particularly the enemy of Osama. And he is my enemy. I found the bit in www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war.html about "Monotheistic religion has always brought out the best in us humans; thank you so much for the idea of a vengeful supernatural entity who rewards people in the afterlife! That shit makes a lot of sense!" to reaffirm my faith in God.
| Istanbul | 9/11 | War | Religion | Military |
John Sifton spent time in Afghanistan as an aid worker. His essay is worth reading.
"I got my last haircut in Kabul, but Sept. 11 found me standing on John Street in lower Manhattan with about 20 volunteer rescue workers, amid masses of scorched paper and debris, watching fires burn near where the World Trade Center used to be. A recently returned humanitarian aid worker, I had rushed downtown when the towers collapsed. Brushing dust and ash out of my hair -- still short from my haircut -- I felt the low-level shock that came often in Afghanistan, the kind of shock I felt when I saw dead bodies, starving children, Taliban enemies hung from lampposts by cable. I marveled at the fact that I was feeling this familiar emotion in the financial district of Manhattan, an unusual place to be in shock. For a moment I felt that I had somehow not escaped Afghanistan, that I had brought its disaster home with me to New York."
| 9/11 |
Schools indoctrinate young radicals
Very little from the alien West penetrates the walls of the Darwesh compound. The young Afghan and Pakistani men who study here have heard about the cataclysmic events in New York and Washington but they were astonished and somewhat disbelieving a few days ago when two visitors from the West told them that the 19 suspected hijackers were Muslim zealots from various Arab countries.
The students had been informed by their teachers that the perpetrators had all been Jews. The youths were quite ready to accept that explanation, despite no evidence to back the assertion and despite the fact that governments from Britain to Russia concur with the United States that Osama bin Laden and his terror network were responsible.
It is from this dark and narrow universe that the Taliban leadership has sprung.
| Pakistan | Taliban | Osama bin Laden | Religion | Anti-Semitism | Islam |
Bernard Lewis' 1990 article in the Atlantic is now required reading:
"Islam is one of the world's great religions. Let me be explicit about what I, as a historian of Islam who is not a Muslim, mean by that. Islam has brought comfort and peace of mind to countless millions of men and women. It has given dignity and meaning to drab and impoverished lives. It has taught people of different races to live in brotherhood and people of different creeds to live side by side in reasonable tolerance. It inspired a great civilization in which others besides Muslims lived creative and useful lives and which, by its achievement, enriched the whole world. But Islam, like other religions, has also known periods when it inspired in some of its followers a mood of hatred and violence. It is our misfortune that part, though by no means all or even most, of the Muslim world is now going through such a period, and that much, though again not all, of that hatred is directed against us."
| Islam | War on Terror |
Salman Rushdie's article in the Washington Post
"The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal more than buildings. Such people are against, to offer just a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex. These are tyrants, not Muslims. (Islam is tough on suicides, who are doomed to repeat their deaths through all eternity. However, there needs to be a thorough examination, by Muslims everywhere, of why it is that the faith they love breeds so many violent mutant strains. If the West needs to understand its Unabombers and McVeighs, Islam needs to face up to its bin Ladens.) United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has said that we should now define ourselves not only by what we are for but by what we are against. I would reverse that proposition, because in the present instance what we are against is a no-brainer. Suicidist assassins ram wide-bodied aircraft into the World Trade Center and Pentagon and kill thousands of people: um, I'm against that. But what are we for? What will we risk our lives to defend? Can we unanimously concur that all the items in the above list -- yes, even the short skirts and dancing -- are worth dying for?"
| Religion | Islam |
The Smoking Gun has unclassified CIA documents on bin Laden here.
| CIA |
Peter Beinart, in The New Republic, argues that isolationism, not imperialism, got us into this mess. Larry Mosqueda, in Counterpunch, argues the opposite. Read them as they come to blows over blowback:
| Isolationism | Blowback | War on Terror |
Ted Rall, in Bombing Without Thinking, argues against bombing Afghanistan. Worth reading.
According to most reports, Egyptians are the main suspects for September 11th. So why are we attacking Afghanistan? American intelligence should work with the Egyptian government to track down any members of Gama'at al-Islamiyya who had anything to do with the New York and Washington attacks and put them on trial for mass murder. Arresting murderers ought to take precedence over bombing the places where they trained.A targeted approach would demonstrate to all but the most fanatic elements in the Arab world that the United States is a nation whose retribution is measured and just. It would also serve to destroy the one network to have drawn the most American blood-and reduce the odds of a repeat performance.
| Afghanistan | 9/11 | War |
Patrick writes:
An interesting link concerning an interesting sidebar story in this war. The British are sending the Ghurkhas! They are a group of fighters that are actually Nepali. Their brigades actually date from the peace agreement between Nepal and the East India Company (Nepal was never a British colony, so I guess they were pretty good). This link gives the complete story from the UK army's point of view. I think it raises some interesting issues of who we use to fight our wars and what constitutes bravery and patriotism.
| War | Afghanistan | Military | United Kingdom | Nepal |
[NB: I am in NO way suggesting that the US is behind any of the recent terror attacks, or that there's any Wag-The-Dog going on, despite Willie Nelson's involvement. But this story is just too weird not to share.]
ABC NEWS Friendly Fire Book: U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With CubaBy David Ruppe
N E W Y O R K, May 1 — In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.
The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.
America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."
[Read the rest here.]
| History | Cuba |
Eric Darton, author of Divided We Stand: A Biography of New York City's World Trade Center, has created an online "living archive" of the towers:
A hundred times I have thought: New York is a catastrophe, and fifty times: It is a beautiful catastrophe – Le CorbusierThis quote is incised in the pavement of Battery Park City's esplanade which was built atop landfill from the World Trade Center's excavation.
"I feel this way about it. World trade means world peace and consequently the World Trade Center buildings in New York…had a bigger purpose than just to provide room for tenants. The World Trade Center is a living symbol of man's dedication to world peace…beyond the compelling need to make this a monument to world peace, the World Trade Center should, because of its importance, become a representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men, and through cooperation, his ability to find greatness."– Minoru Yamasaki, chief architect of the World Trade Center
"Building skyscrapers is the nearest peacetime equivalent of war."– Col. William H. Starrett, Skyscrapers & the Men Who Build Them, 1928.
"Aside from everything else, there is an attractive element in the colossal, its own charm to which classic art theory does not have much relevance. Can one claim that it is the artistic value of the pyramids that has so strongly captured the imagination of man? Are they anything more than man-made mounds? And nonetheless, what visitor is insensitive before them? And what is the source of this admiration if not the immensity of the effort and the grandeur of the result? The Tower will be the tallest structure ever built by man. Will it not be grand in its own right?"– Gustave Eiffel
Who knows when some slight shock, disturbing the delicate balance between the social order and thirsty aspiration, shall send the skyscrapers in our cities toppling?– Richard Wright, Native Son
The savaging sea piles its fears
on the shores of the world
no tower can deliver us now
from the enemy wave.– Pablo Neruda, excerpted from "Bomb (II)" from Fin de mundo,
Scenic Overlook: The PalisadesThe Indian. And there's one comfort.
I heard the wise Iachim, looking down
when the railroad cut was fresh, and the bleeding earth
offended us. There is nothing made, he said,
and will be nothing made by these new men,
high tower, or cut, or buildings by a lake
that will not make good ruins.Judith. Ruins? This?
The Indian. Why, when the race is gone, or looks aside
only a little while, the white stone darkens,
the wounds close, and the roofs fall, and the walls
give way to rains. Nothing is made by men
but makes, in the end, good ruins.Van. Well, that's something.
But I can hardly wait.– Maxwell Anderson, excerpt from Act 3 of High Tor (1937).
Reverse EngineeringIn the late 1960s, a high-level Port Authority official invited Andrea to tour the nearly-completed twin towers. It was an overcast day and the whole site was illuminated by thousands of incandescent light bulbs. Riding the construction elevator to the summit, the official told her that the WTC's engineering was unique in more ways than one. Fearful of pilfering by workers, and ever mindful of their balance sheet, the PA had designed special light bulbs that screwed in counter-clockwise – impossible to use in a standard socket.
Tell Us What You Really ThinkDuring the filming of the '80s remake of "King Kong," a tremendous model of the legendary ape lay supine in Austin Tobin Plaza at the base of the towers. One night, unknown pranksters sneaked past security guards and manipulated its simian digits into a distinctly humanoid gesture. When the crew and cast arrived the next morning, they were greeted – to their astonished amusement – by a World Trade Center-sized "up yours."
Eventually You're Talking Real MoneyAnother exponentially expanding dimension of the WTC – besides its height and mass – was its cost. When still being planned for the east side, the pricetag was estimated at $335 million. Sliding west toward cheaper real estate knocked it briefly down to $270 million. But by early 1964, when the PA's World Trade Department head Guy Tozzoli ordered architect Yamasaki to "go higher than the Empire State," the twins had jogged back up to $350 million.
In April 1965, when PA director Austin Tobin exhorted members of the Building Trades Employers' Association: "You, the master builders of the most spectacular skyline in the world will not quail – or be daunted – by the inevitable evolution of new structural concepts" the tab had leapt to $525 million. By the time the towers topped out, the PA's official cost estimate had escalated to $800 million – an amount generally regarded as $300 million shy of the true bottom line. But neither figure accounts for the $25 million in yearly graft that city officials estimate the PA paid to construction locals during the building phase. Certainly the trade center's cost was raised significantly by what planners call "occult factors," such as inflation, interest rate fluctuation, construction delays, and sabotage.
| 9/11 | New York City |
Alexander Cockburn on the FBI and torture:
"The FBI claims it is hampered by its present codes of gentility. If so, there's no need to eye Morocco or France as subcontracting torturers. As a practical matter torture is far from unknown in the interrogation rooms of U.S. law enforcement, with Abner Louima the best-known recent example. . . ."
http://www.newyorkpress.com/14/43/news&columns/wildjustice.cfm
| Torture |
ABOVE THE CROWD By Bill Gurley"Don't believe what I saw.
A hundred million b