October 2001 Archives

"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)

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.)

Another article forwarded by Prof. Mike Watkins, this one from Stratfor

Global Implications of U.S. Anti-Terrorism Law: Summary

In 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.

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.

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.

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.

How about, don't touch it? The FBI's advice on suspicious packages.

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?

The folks over at Metafilter pointed out this story:

Army to Fund Video Games for Aspiring Commanders

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."

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."

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

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 TIMES

October 25, 2001

THE SEARCH

Son's Decade-Long Quest Ends in the Rubble
By NINA BERNSTEIN

For 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."

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

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.

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.

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."

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.

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."

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?"

The Smoking Gun has unclassified CIA documents on bin Laden here.

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:

Back to Front

Blowback Strikes

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.

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.

[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 Cuba

By 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.]

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 Corbusier

This 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 Palisades

The 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 Engineering

In 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 Think

During 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 Money

Another 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.

September 25, 2001

Ron Paul speech in the House of Representatives

Mr. Speaker:

Last week was a bad week for all Americans. The best we can say is that the events have rallied the American spirit of shared love and generosity. Partisanship was put on hold, as it well should have been. We now, as a free people, must deal with this tragedy in the best way possible. Punishment and prevention is mandatory. We must not, however, sacrifice our liberties at the hand of an irrational urgency. Calm deliberation in our effort to restore normalcy is crucial. Cries for dropping nuclear bombs on an enemy not yet identified cannot possibly help in achieving this goal.

Mr. Speaker, I returned to Congress 5 years ago out of deep concern about our foreign policy of international interventionism, and a monetary and fiscal policy I believed would lead to a financial and dollar crisis. Over the past 5 years I have frequently expressed my views on these issues and why I believed our policies should be changed.

This deep concern prompted me to seek and receive seats on the Financial Services and International Relations Committees. I sought to thwart some of the dangers I saw coming, but as the horrific attacks show, these efforts were to no avail. As concerned as I was, the enormity of the two-prong crisis that we now face came with a ferocity no one ever wanted to imagine. But now we must deal with what we have and do our best to restore our country to a more normal status.

I do not believe this can happen if we ignore the truth. We cannot close our eyes to the recent history that has brought us to this international crisis. We should guard against emotionally driven demands to kill many bystanders in an effort to liquidate our enemy. These efforts could well fail to punish the perpetrators while only expanding the war and making things worse by killing innocent non-combatants and further radicalizing Muslim peoples.

It is obviously no easy task to destroy an almost invisible, ubiquitous enemy spread throughout the world, without expanding the war or infringing on our liberties here at home. But above all else, that is our mandate and our key constitutional responsibility- protecting liberty and providing for national security. My strong belief is that in the past, efforts in the US Congress to do much more than this, have diverted our attention and hence led to our neglect of these responsibilities.

Following the September 11th disasters a militant Islamic group in Pakistan held up a sign for all the world to see. It said: AMERICANS, THINK! WHY YOU ARE HATED ALL OVER THE WORLD. We abhor the messenger, but we should not ignore the message.

Here at home we are told that the only reason for the suicidal mass killing we experienced on September 11th is that we are hated because we are free and prosperous. If these two conflicting views are not reconciled we cannot wisely fight nor win the war in which we now find ourselves. We must understand why the hatred is directed toward Americans and not other western countries.

In studying history, I, as many others, have come to the conclusion that war is most often fought for economic reasons. But economic wars are driven by moral and emotional overtones.

Our own revolution was fought to escape from excessive taxation but was inspired and driven by our desire to protect our God-given right to liberty.

The War between the States, fought primarily over tariffs, was nonetheless inspired by the abhorrence of slavery. It is this moral inspiration that drives people to suicidally fight to the death as so many Americans did between 1861 and 1865.

Both economic and moral causes of war must be understood. Ignoring the importance of each is dangerous. We should not casually ignore the root causes of our current fight nor pursue this fight by merely accepting the explanation that they terrorize us out of jealously.

It has already been written that Islamic militants are fighting a "holy war"- a jihad. This drives them to commit acts that to us are beyond comprehension. It seems that they have no concern for economic issues since they have no regard even for their own lives. But an economic issue does exist in this war: OIL!

When the conflict broke out between Iraq and Iran in the early 1980s and we helped to finance and arm Iraq, Anwar Sadat of Egypt profoundly stated: "This is the beginning of the war for oil." Our crisis today is part of this long lasting war over oil.

Osama bin Laden, a wealthy man, left Saudi Arabia in 1979 to join American- sponsored so-called freedom fighters in Afghanistan. He received financial assistance, weapons and training from our CIA, just as his allies in Kosovo continue to receive the same from us today.

Unbelievably, to this day our foreign aid continues to flow into Afghanistan, even as we prepare to go to war against her. My suggestion is, not only should we stop this aid immediately, but we should never have started it in the first place.

It is during this time bin Laden learned to practice terror; tragically, with money from the US taxpayers. But it wasn't until 1991 during what we refer to as the Persian Gulf War that he turned fully against the United States. It was this war, said to protect our oil that brought out the worst in him.

Of course, it isn't our oil. The oil in fact belongs to the Arabs and other Muslim nations of the Persian Gulf. Our military presence in Saudi Arabia is what most Muslims believe to be a sacred violation of holy land. The continuous bombing and embargo of Iraq, has intensified the hatred and contributed to more than over 1,000,000 deaths in Iraq. It is clear that protecting certain oil interests and our presence in the Persian Gulf help drive the holy war.

Muslims see this as an invasion and domination by a foreign enemy which inspires radicalism. This is not new. This war, from their viewpoint, has been going on since the Crusades 1000 year ago. We ignore this history at our own peril.

The radicals react as some Americans might react if China dominated the Gulf of Mexico and had air bases in Texas and Florida. Dominating the Persian Gulf is not a benign activity. It has consequences. The attack on the USS Cole was a warning we ignored.

Furthermore, our support for secular governments in the moderate Arab countries is interpreted by the radicals as more American control over their region than they want. There is no doubt that our policies that are seen by the radicals as favoring one faction over another in the long lasting Middle East conflict add to the distrust and hatred of America.

The hatred has been suppressed because we are a powerful economic and military force and wield a lot of influence. But this suppressed hatred is now becoming more visible and we as Americans for the most part are not even aware of how this could be. Americans have no animosity toward a people they hardly even know. Instead, our policies have been driven by the commercial interests of a few. And now the innocent suffer.

I am hopeful that shedding light on the truth will be helpful in resolving this conflict in the very dangerous period that lies ahead. Without some understanding of the recent and past history of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf we cannot expect to punish the evildoers without expanding the nightmare of hatred that is now sweeping the world.

Punishing the evildoers is crucial. Restoring safety and security to our country is critical. Providing for a strong defense is essential. But extricating ourselves from a holy war that we don't understand is also necessary if we expect to achieve the above-mentioned goals. Let us all hope and pray for guidance in our effort to restore the peace and tranquility we all desire.

We did a poor job in providing the security that all Americans should expect. This is our foremost responsibility. Some members have been quick to point out the shortcomings of the FBI, the CIA and the FAA and claim more money will rectify the situation. I'm not so sure. Bureaucracies by nature are inefficient. The FBI and CIA records come up short. The FBI loses computers and guns and is careless with records. The CIA rarely provides timely intelligence. The FAA's idea of security against hijackers is asking all passengers who packed their bag.

The clamor now is to give more authority and money to these agencies. But, remember, important industries like as our chemical plants and refineries do not depend on government agencies for security. They build fences and hire guards with guns. The airlines have not been allowed to do the same thing. There was a time when airline pilots were allowed and did carry weapons, and yet this has been prohibited by government regulation set to go into effect in November.

If the responsibility had been left with the airlines to provide safety they may have had armed pilots or guards on the planes just as our industrial sites have. Privatizing the FAA, as other countries have, would also give airlines more leeway in providing security. My bill, HR 2896, should be passed immediately to clarify that the federal government will never place a prohibition on pilots being armed.

We face an enormous task to restore the sense of security we have taken for granted for so long. But it can be done. Destroying the evildoers while extricating ourselves from this unholiest of wars is no small challenge. The job is somewhat like getting out of a pit filled with venomous snakes. The sooner we shoot the snakes that immediately threaten us, the sooner we can get safely away. If we're not careful though, we'll breed more snakes and they'll come out of every nook and cranny from around the world and little will be resolved.

It's no easy task, but before we fight we'd better be precise about whom we are fighting and how many there are and where they are hiding, or we'll never know when the war is over and our goals are achieved. Without this knowledge the war can go on for a long, long time, and the war for oil has already been going on for more than 20 years. To this point, our President and his administration have displayed the necessary deliberation. This is a positive change from unauthorized and ineffective retaliatory bombings in past years that only worsened various conflicts.

If we can't or won't define the enemy, the cost to fight such a war will be endless. How many American troops are we prepared to lose? How much money are we prepared to spend? How many innocent civilians, in our nation and others, are we willing to see killed? How many American civilians will we jeopardize? How much of our civil liberties are we prepared to give up? How much prosperity will we sacrifice?

The founders and authors of our Constitution provided an answer for the difficult tasks that we now face. When a precise declaration of war was impossible due to the vagueness of our enemy, the Congress was expected to take it upon themselves to direct the reprisal against an enemy not recognized as a government. In the early days the concern was piracy on the high seas. Piracy was one of only three federal crimes named in the original Constitution.

Today, we have a new type of deadly piracy, in the high sky over our country. The solution the founders came up with under these circumstances was for Congress to grant letters of marque and reprisal. This puts the responsibility in the hands of Congress to direct the President to perform a task with permission to use and reward private sources to carry out the task, such as the elimination of Osama bin Laden and his key supporters. This allows narrow targeting of the enemy. This effort would not preclude the president's other efforts to resolve the crisis, but if successful would preclude a foolish invasion of a remote country with a forbidding terrain like Afghanistan- a country that no foreign power has ever conquered throughout all of history.

Lives could be saved, billions of dollars could be saved, and escalation due to needless and senseless killing could be prevented. Mr. Speaker, we must seriously consider this option. This answer is a world apart from the potential disaster of launching nuclear weapons or endless bombing of an unseen target. "Marque and reprisal" demands the enemy be seen and precisely targeted with minimal danger to others. It should be considered and, for various reasons, is far superior to any effort that could be carried out by the CIA.

We must not sacrifice the civil liberties that generations of Americans have enjoyed and fought for over the past 225 years. Unwise decisions in response to the terror inflicted on us may well fail to destroy our enemy, while undermining our liberties here at home. That will not be a victory worth celebrating. The wise use of marque and reprisal would negate the need to undermine the privacy and rights of our citizens.

As we work through this difficult task, let us resist the temptation to invoke the most authoritarian of all notions that, not too many years ago, tore this nation apart; the military draft. The country is now unified against the enemy. The military draft does nothing to contribute to unity nor, as the Pentagon again has confirmed, does it promote an efficient military.

Precise identification of all travelers on all our air flights is a desired goal. A national ID issued by the federal government would prove to be disastrous to our civil liberties and should not be considered. This type of surveillance power should never be given to an intrusive overbearing government, no matter how well intentioned the motives.

The same results can be better achieved by the marketplace. Passenger IDs voluntarily issued by the airlines could be counterfeit-proof; and loss or theft of an ID could be immediately reported to the proper authorities. An ID, fingerprints, birth certificates, or any other information can be required without any violations of anyone's personal liberty. This delicate information would not be placed in the hands of the government agents but could be made available to law enforcement officers like any other information obtained with probable cause and a warrant.

The heat of the moment has prompted calls by some of our officials for great sacrifice of our liberties and privacy. This poses great danger to our way of life and will provide little help in dealing with our enemies. Efforts of this sort will only punish the innocent and have no effect on a would-be terrorist. We should be careful not to do something just to do something- even something harmful.

Mr. Speaker, I fear that some big mistakes could be made in the pursuit of our enemies if we do not proceed with great caution, wisdom, and deliberation. Action is necessary; inaction is unacceptable. No doubt others recognize the difficulty in targeting such an elusive enemy. This is why the principle behind "marque and reprisal" must be given serious consideration.

In retaliation, an unintended consequence of a policy of wanton destruction without benefit to our cause, could result in the overthrow of moderate Arab nations by the radicals that support bin Laden. This will not serve our interests and will surely exacerbate the threat to all Americans.

As we search for a solution to the mess we're in, it behooves us to look at how John F. Kennedy handled the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Personally, that crisis led to a 5-year tour in the US Air Force for me.

As horrible and dangerous as the present crisis is, those of us that held our breath during some very tense moments that October realized that we were on the brink of a world-wide nuclear holocaust. That crisis represented the greatest potential danger to the world in all of human history.

President Kennedy held firm and stood up to the Soviets as he should have and the confrontation was resolved. What was not known at the time was the reassessment of our policy that placed nuclear missiles in the Soviet's back yard, in Turkey. These missiles were quietly removed a few months later and the world became a safer place in which to live. Eventually, we won the cold war without starting World War III.

Our enemy today, as formidable as he is, cannot compare to the armed might of the Soviet Union in the fall of 1962.

Wisdom and caution on Kennedy's part in dealing with the crisis was indeed "a profile in courage." But his courage was not only in his standing up to the Soviets, but his willingness to re-examine our nuclear missile presence in Turkey, which if it had been known at the time would have been condemned as an act of cowardice.

President Bush now has the challenge to do something equally courageous and wise. This is necessary if we expect to avert a catastrophic World War III. When the President asks for patience as he and his advisors deliberate, seeking a course of action, all Americans should surely heed his request.

Mr. Speaker, I support President Bush and voted for the authority and the money to carry out his responsibility to defend this country, but the degree of death and destruction and chances of escalation must be carefully taken into consideration.

It is only with sadness that I reflect on the support, the dollars, the troops, the weapons and training provided by US taxpayers that are now being used against us. Logic should tell us that intervening in all the wars of the world has been detrimental to our self-interest and should be reconsidered.

The efforts of a small minority in Congress to avoid this confrontation by voting for the foreign policy of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and all the 19th century presidents went unheeded. The unwise policy of supporting so many militants who later became our armed enemies makes little sense whether it's bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. A policy designed to protect America is wise and frugal and hopefully it will once again be considered. George Washington, as we all know, advised strongly, as he departed his presidency, that we should avoid all entangling alliances with foreign nations.

The call for a non-interventionist foreign policy over past years has fallen on deaf ears. My suggestions made here today may meet the same fate. Yet, if truth is spoken, ignoring it will not negate it. In that case something will be lost. But, if something is said to be true and it is not and is ignored, nothing is lost. My goal is to contribute to the truth and to the security of this nation.

What I have said today is different from what is said and accepted in Washington as conventional wisdom, but it is not in conflict with our history or our constitution. It's a policy that has, whenever tried, generated more peace and prosperity than any other policy for dealing with foreign affairs. The authors of the Constitution clearly understood this. Since the light of truth shines brightest in the darkness of evil and ignorance, we should all strive to shine that light.

ABOVE THE CROWD By Bill Gurley

"Don't believe what I saw.
A hundred million bottles washed up on the shore."
- The Police

In the weeks following the World Trade Center tragedy, many government officials were actively lobbying for increased Internet surveillance as a method of restricting terrorist activity. This is likely the direct result of numerous reports that Osama Bin Laden and his many supporters are heavy users of the Internet for organizational and informational purposes. From the floor of the senate, Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire called for "a global prohibition on encryption products without backdoors for government surveillance". Also, many large ISPs, including AOL, Earthlink, and @Home, have reported that the FBI approached them after the tragedy and served them with Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) orders to search for possible communications that may have aided the attacks in New York and Washington.

Protection of Freedom? This type of activity sends shivers down the spines of many pro-privacy technology activists. It should be noted however, that these outspoken and knowledgeable people are not pro-terrorist. In fact, many are terribly disturbed by the terrorist action. That said, they do not believe that you can protect freedom through the process of restricting or destroying it. As ammunition, they are quick to quote Constitutional contributor Benjamin Franklin -- "They that give up essential liberty to obtain temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Disregarding these strong-minded, civil liberties based perspectives; a closer look at Internet surveillance uncovers many problems in both implementation and potential effectiveness. For starters, there is a huge predicament with just how much of the genie is already out of the bottle. So called "strong" encryption techniques (those that are nearly impossible to decipher), are broadly available on the Internet. Moreover, these "programs" are cataloged and archived in many forms - software executables, source code listings, and simple algorithms that describe the general concepts. Also importantly, many of these algorithms have been developed outside the United States.

Another perhaps disturbing but real development is the increased use and availability of Steganography. Steganography is the act of embedding or hiding a message in another transport. Several programs on the Internet, many that are shareware and free to download, make it easy for you to embed one file in another. Typically the transport file (that which hides) is a large dense file type such as a JPEG photo or an MP3 file. Interestingly, these encoding techniques are so slick that the resulting file is indistinguishable to the human eye (JPEG) or ear (MP3). As a result of this "conversion," a covert communication may appear as innocent as two parties sharing a Britney Spears song over the Internet. USA Today has reported that Osama Bin Laden and his followers are heavy users of Steganography.

As mentioned earlier Senator Gregg has suggested that we implement a "global prohibition on encryption products without backdoors for government surveillance". This type of proposition has many difficulties once you look under the covers:

Whom do we trust? We can't get a majority of leading countries to join a coalition against terrorism, and we think we can line everyone up in an organized assault on encryption? Many countries have much stronger perspectives on personal privacy and are therefore unlikely to participate. Other less industrialized countries are going to have a hard time considering this a relevant priority. More importantly, how will we implement the dissemination of government keys? Do we trust all governments that join the effort? Who gets to see cross border communication?

Outlaw a t-shirt? Many in the scientific community have pointed out the silliness in outlawing an algorithm (basically a flow chart of how the code works). First, any good programmer can convert a detailed algorithm into software code, and as such the algorithm (or formula) is the tersest representation of the offending material. Second, these algorithms are everywhere. They're on the Internet, they're on hard drives all over the world, they're in books, and they have even been printed on t-shirts to highlight the free speech implications of such an attempted prohibition. There is absolutely no way to reign in all the copies of these ideas, or to restrict their trade amongst those determined to do so. It's like trying to outlaw the story of "The Three Bears" - too many people already know it at this point.

A sauna in the desert. Once again, Senator Gregg wants encryption software makers to implement government backdoors in their products. The only people I know that actually use encryption products are those that hate, loathe, or at the very least mistrust the government. Government issued encryption programs will see about as much use as a sauna in the desert. They might as well put a sticker on the box that says "don't buy me". This would be a colossal waste of time.

Not so intelligent. Many have suggested that the terrorists are "more intelligent than you think" due to their clever use of these technologies. Another Senator, Jon Kyl of Arizona has commented frequently on the "sophistication" of the terrorists for this very reason. This presumed intelligence might be more a factor of their accusers own ignorance rather than their own aptitude. This stuff is ridiculously easy to obtain. Go to www.google.com, type "Steganography program," and start downloading. You will be able to put an email message into a family photograph within five minutes. You must know the magnitude of the problem you are trying to solve.

"Your hands can't hit what your eyes can't see." Muhammad Ali used this quote to refer to his lightening fast hands, but the same statement is true for message embedded using Steganography. How will the government identify potentially hazardous communications if every photo, music, and video file on the Internet is an unidentifiable transport? And even if you found the transport and decoded it, the message could still be encrypted using "strong encryption." Seems impossible. It probably is.

One "big" haystack. There are an increasing number of ways to move files on the Internet. To name a few -- email, ftp, instant messenger, chat, file lockers, Napster, and Gnutella. In the next few years, the number of emails and instant messages sent each year will be measured in the trillions (for each). Peer-to-peer file transfers will easily number in the billions. How do you monitor all of this? Where could you even store the log data? The pin is small, the haystack is large, and astute cryptographers can use Steganography to increase the size of the haystack.

The government should not give up on computer surveillance. In fact, as a tool that is used to track down a particular offender after isolation and identification, these technologies can be extremely effective. However, we should not be unrealistic about what type of "magic" spy technologies are at our disposal. We are only going to spend a lot of money, waste a lot of time, and create a false sense of security.

J. William Gurley 2001. All rights reserved.

Above the Crowd is a monthly publication focusing on the evolution and economics of high-technology business and strategy. This column can also be found on http://news.cnet.com/news/persarchive/0,11016,0-1270,00.html

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

10/2/01 -- A caravan of garbage trucks, under police escort, moves uptown like a funeral.

10/5/01 -- "We've been at war for ten years," said Debbie's uncle. "Only we didn't know it."

10/8/01 -- I attend a memorial service at St. Bart's for Richard Penny and Edwin Zambrana, Jr. They were Project Renewal employees who worked at the World Trade Center. We had a small business there, recycling paper in the towers. I helped get this contract, but I didn't know either of the men. It was an odd memorial service -- very few people who actually knew them spoke. Their supervisor was too broken up to speak. I was told that he kept searching for the missing that day until the police made him leave. I talked with some of their coworkers afterward. Edwin loved Michael Jordan, and was excited to see him play again. Edwin's father, who also worked at the WTC, had pulled some strings to get him the job. His father made it out; Edwin didn't. Richard Penny was sort of a quiet guy, but he loved the movies. His coworker said that he would spend all of his time at the movies -- foreign films, first-run films, everything -- and would talk all about what was good and what wasn't. I wonder about Richard. A guy who was valedictorian of his class, who struggled with addiction, who spent a decade on the streets, who finally had a home and a steady job, who loved the movies. A guy who is dead for no reason at all.

Here's what the Times wrote:

RICHARD A. PENNY Love of Work and Learning

Even during the 10 years he was homeless, Richard A. Penny loved to work. Even when he slept on a Harlem shelter cot, or dozed upright near Grand Central Terminal, he still rose to polish the brass at St. James' Church, scrub floors or sweep city streets. Three years ago, he found a steady job in the World Trade Center recycling program, now run by Project Renewal, and rented a room in Brooklyn.

"He totally went against all the stereotypes of homeless folks," said Jon Bunge, a caseworker with Project Hope, another of the social service agencies that found work for the "soft-spoken, incredibly thorough" man who listed his best quality as his love of learning.

Mr. Penny, who was 53, told his story as a fall from grace. An only child, he was the 1966 valedictorian of Metropolitan High School. He married young, had a son and worked as a communications craftsman for AT&T for seven years.

Then heroin and a 1975 robbery conviction swept it all away. After 14 months in prison, Mr. Penny retreated to his parents' Brooklyn brownstone. But they died, he was evicted and eventually he lost his metalworking job.

The hard climb from homelessness led to the upper floors of the twin towers, where he was collecting paper on Sept. 11. His memorial service drew more than 100 people. "We loved him," Mr. Bunge said.

10/15/01 -- And a happy ending, to boot: Project Renewal's organic farm is located at Camp LaGuardia, a former-prison-turned-NYC-homeless-shelter up in Chester, NY. When we moved in ten years ago, we inherited 1,500 pristine pairs of boots originally intended for the Marines fighting the Korean War. My coworker, Ruth, has been trying to get them out of storage for years. Sell them, ebay them, whatever. She even gave me a pair. (Including the original directions for "Boots, Combat, Rubber, Insulated, For Use in Snow, Slush, Mud and Water.") They're quite comfy. Today she told me what finally became of them: right after the bombing she heard that rescue workers needed boots. So if you see any rescue workers with 50-year old boots on, you know to thank Ruth.

10/17/01 -- In the lobby of BAM's Harvey Theater, I run into Camilla, a family friend. She and her friend have been up all night, volunteering at Ground Zero, working in the kitchen. She tells me about the awful faces of the workers, who are digging through the rubble six or seven days a week.

10/23/01 -- I realize that I no longer ignore the sounds of sirens.

10/24/01 -- If you haven't been to the Here Is New York show (at 116 Prince Street), go. They have collected photographs from amateurs and professionals, relating to 9/11, and they are displaying them, and you can submit your own pictures and they'll take them, and you can buy copies and the proceeds go to the Children's Aid Society WTC Relief Fund. It's there until 11/4 at least; I suggest you get there before 12:30 (they open at 11) if you want to avoid waiting in line. You can see (and buy) some of the pictures online at www.hereisnewyork.org, but there's only a fraction of them there. So go.

It's strange -- I thought that I couldn't look at any more pictures. And then something like this tears open my eyes and my heart again.

In the midst of the photos is a quote from E.B. White's book Here Is New York, from 1949:

"The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumple the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York, in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headline of the latest edition."

Sandra first told me the Rich Lee, a fellow Yale alum, was among those killed in the WTC. Trip forwarded his obit from the Times. Rich was in BK, and drew the "Drunk Kids" cartoon for the YDN (or was it the Herald?). Anyone with something to write about Rich, please send it on.

Time for a Playroom

Richard Yun Choon and Karen Lee had just started a new life as first-time suburban parents. Their son, Zachary, was approaching his second birthday, and they had moved to their dream house in Great Neck, N.Y., in July. From there, Mrs. Lee would e- mail a steady stream of digital photos of Zachary's days to Mr. Lee at his offices at Cantor Fitzgerald, on the 104th floor of 1 World Trade. "Even though he was so big and intimidating, he was just so cute and loving," said Lynne Engelke, Mrs. Lee's sister. "He worked such long hours, but when he had to leave on a trip he would make a pan of lasagna for Karen, because he was afraid she wouldn't eat while he was away."

Mr. Lee, who was 34, played football at Yale, where he met his future wife, and he was head of equities technology for Cantor Fitzgerald. He kept London hours - up at 3 a.m., but home by 5 p.m., in time to put in some work building shelves and toy boxes for Zachary's new playroom.

[In case you missed this NPR piece featuring Project Renewal, here's the transcript.]

SHOW: All Things Considered DATE: October 16, 2001 LINDA WERTHEIMER, host: There are 1,200 food banks and soup kitchens in New York City. Before September 11th, about half a million people used their services. Since the attacks, many of these institutions have noticed a rise in demand. And the numbers of visible homeless have increased in some areas of the city, as NPR's Margot Adler reports.

MARGOT ADLER reporting:
Scott Williams says he has been on the lookout for seven homeless people who lived in the World Trade Center. He's the director of outreach at Project Renewal, a social service agency that works with the homeless. He's located five of the seven alive, but he's still looking for two, including an African-American man in his 40s.

Mr. SCOTT WILLIAMS (Project Renewal): He was the mayor of the World Trade Center.

ADLER: The mayor? What do you mean?

Mr. WILLIAMS: Yes. That's what he called himself, `the mayor of the Trade Center.' He knew everyone and he was able to connect us with other service-resistant clients.

ADLER: He may have found another place, says Williams, or he may be gone. Many people have noticed an increase in homeless people on the streets in some parts of the city since September 11th. Williams says it's not that there are more homeless, but that people near the World Trade Center moved north and added security has made many places no longer hospitable.

Mr. WILLIAMS: People tend not to go into areas where police or uniformed personnel are. And there's an increased presence in Penn Station, in the Port Authority bus terminal.

ADLER: In many places, in fact. In addition to the homeless, the people who run New York soup kitchens and food pantries have been noticing an increase in demand. At the Yorkville Food Pantry(ph) in Manhattan two weeks ago, for the first time ever, people in line started pushing and shoving in desperation, afraid that food would run out. Jeff Amber is executive director of the Yorkville Pantry.

Mr. JEFF AMBER (Yorkville Food Pantry): We've never run out of food, but there was desperation, so for last week for the first time, we started to get--we borrowed some police barricades.

ADLER: Amber says many pantries like his have seen an increase in demand in the last three weeks. Here are the reasons, he says.

Mr. AMBER: Either people losing jobs in the service economy, in messengers, in waiters' jobs, in food service, maintenance, the kinds of entry-level jobs that everybody has been losing in the last few weeks that are drying up.

ADLER: At the Holy Church of the Apostles(ph) in Manhattan, there's a soup kitchen that used to feed 950. It rose to 1,100 people this summer, but two weeks ago it served 1,450 on one day for lunch. Frank Gonzalez was a messenger who often delivered to the Twin Towers and who received his last paycheck a week after the attack. He was lucky, he said.

Mr. FRANK GONZALEZ: It wasn't time for me to go because I was on a run at the time. I was on the bike and I was up on 34th Street and...

ADLER: Well, have you met other people here that are also having a lot of trouble since the 11th?

Mr. GONZALEZ: Yes, I have. I have a couple of friends that, luckily, they were on the run with me, but I also lost some friends, too.

ADLER: Now, coming out of the subway, he says he loses his sense of direction. The towers were his compass pointing south. Jeff Amber of the Yorkville Pantry says he doesn't have real numbers yet, but he takes a pile of forms filled out by newcomers to the food pantry, all since September 11th.

Mr. AMBER: Client was working with a brokerage firm that was destroyed. Client's spouse worked in a restaurant--only source of income. Client was working in a hotel...

ADLER: Joel Berg, executive director of the New York Coalition Against Hunger, also says it's too early to have hard numbers, but he's done a very informal, preliminary survey.

Mr. JOEL BERG (New York Coalition Against Hunger): We found that a little over 50 percent of the pantries and kitchens showed a immediate increase in need.

ADLER: Berg says most people's image of soup kitchens is a place that feeds the homeless, like men on the Bowery, but over the last 10 years, many clients have been the working poor, and that's a population that should increase even more now. Margot Adler, NPR News, New York.

[Listen to it here.]

A DISPATCH BY ROSSI
From www.mcsweeneys.net (10/18/01)

NEW YORK, NEW YORK — On September 16th, after spending every day since the 11th walking up and down the West Side Highway, trying to volunteer but finding no one who would take me, a woman whose wedding I was supposed to cater called to tell me it was canceled because the city had turned her party space, Seamen's Church Institute, from a maritime museum and party location near the South Street Seaport into a home for hundreds of rescue crews. There was no electricity, no plumbing and no running water, and they were trying to feed, clothe and give counsel to anyone who could get to them.

By the time I showed up at Seamen's, Billy and Dominic were already there, unloading trucks filled with supplies. Billy and Dominic are the security guards at the Institute, sweet men whom I've gotten to be pals with over many years of catering events there. Dominic's head was wrapped in a flag, and he hadn't shaved in days. They were both wide-eyed and pale.

"We were trapped in the tunnel when it happened," Billy said. "I had to walk out and leave Dominic. He told me just go, go."

The best man at Dominic's wedding is among the missing. "There's no way! He was on the 76th floor!" Dominic said. "I can't think about it.... Just keep moving! I've been here since Day One, haven't been home in a week."

It didn't take much to get me on board. "She's a chef," Dominic told the man in charge.

A DISPATCH BY CHERYL WAGNER
From www.mcsweeneys.net (9/24/01)

NEW ORLEANS, LA — I saw souls leap up when the first plane nosed into the building. They hovered there, translucent and stuck. That night I went to Church of the Holy Rosary on Esplanade, to Mass for the first time in ten years. I prayed for the repose of those souls and they faded to sky, wisped away from the roiling smoke.

I imagined my bookish New York friend, elbows and glasses flying, hauling ass in front of a B-movie dustball, tumbleweeding helter-skelter up a Manhattan street. It made me feel better. Then he was musted in dust, cremained. I couldn't remember his phone number or address. Dumb panic.

I cry in public and I'm not sorry.

I can't think straight now.

Next door here in Mid-City, the wifebeaters and their wives, the childbeaters, are getting drunker than ever. They're drinking Cobras, refueling for the long haul. They're armchair generals, foam beer at the mouth.

In the suburbs off River Road, their Coast Guard Reserve Yes Massa Slumlord is sweating. He was always in it for paintball weekends and the money.

They're patrolling the levee. In World War II my Mom said they had submarines in the Gulf of Mexico, lurching whales trying to watch out for us through smudged portholes.

I know a woman who's been waiting ten years for an honest-to-God war to make her real. She has a kind of Gulf War syndrome. Says she didn't get to go last time because she was too fat but everyone else did. Her code name: Hawkwind.

My computer friend wants to know why they keep saying we'll have to tighten our belts, cut back on civil liberties, as if civil liberties are chocolate kisses or double chip ice cream. He dreamt that in the morning he woke up and they had outlawed tan pants.

Patrick forwarded this:

An odd expression of freedom, a brilliant use of the internet?

You decide!

[Ish sez: If you want to see Colin Powell sing "Day-O" while bombs rain on bin Laden, click on this. I'm not sure if the whole destruction-of-the-earth thing at the end is quite the message the authors had in mind, though.]

[From www.davezilla.com, forwarded by Trip]:

October 22, 2001 :: "Smoking a camel"

If you read Michele's blog Sunday, you'd know how sick of the current crop of death slogans she is. Most of them are based on bigotry and ignorance. So who are we to be left out of the fun? We made up our own. They're much funnier.

DISCLAIMER FOR THE TERMINALLY HUMORLESS: No, we don't believe these statements. Nor do we advocate violence. We are just being silly and using this as a catharthsis. Just slow your roll OK? Please feel free to add your own.

Smoking a Camel just took on a whole new meaning. [D]
[Insert Deity here] Bless America. [M]
America: Better TV than France. [D]
Happiness is a cold Afghan. [M]
Making the world safe for SUV-driving yuppies on cellphones. [D]
In the desert, no one can hear you scream. [D]
I can't believe we bombed the whole thing. [M]
You're in good hands with Police-State. [M/D]
It's 10pm. Do you know where your Taliban leader is? [M]
Remember the movie Terminator? Well that. [D]
Bush! Head for the mountains. [M/D]
Get your hands off me, you damned, dirty Afghans! [D]
I'd walk a mile to kill your camel. [M]
Soylent Green is made of Taliban! [D]
Our God is better than your God. [M]
What would George Sr. do? [M]
Guerillas in the mist. [D]
My child is an honor student at Smith Middle School. Your kid doesn't even have a classroom! [M]
Osama? You are the weakest link. Goodbye! [D]
For all you do, this blood's for you. [M]
God bless us everyone. Well, except for bin Laden. He can go straight to Hell. [M]

[Reply 1]

1. Hey Bert!
2. Got Milk (or wheat, or corn, or meat, or any food and drink for that matter)?
3. Crouching Tiger Hidden Laden
4. You're Entering A World Of Pain
5. This is what happens when you f**k a stranger in the ass.

Okay, the last two were stolen from The Big Lebowski, but you've gotta love that film.

[Reply 2]

I feel dirty doing this, but here goes nothin':
1. Bend over and kiss your Afghan good-bye.
2. Hello, my name is Donald Rumsfeld, I'll be your warmonger today...
3. bin Laden, you magnificent bastard, I read your book! (and it doesn't really mention killing innocent people, biological warfare or terrorism as acceptable behavior... you bastard)
4. Oh behave!

[Reply 3]

Anything I can do to combat the "America __" crap on all the news channels, network and local news.

Late Entry: "When Americans Attack", only on Fox.

[This is from www.snopes.com, which I highly recommend as a place to sort out the truth from the rumors.]

Claim: Bert, the Sesame Street muppet, appears on posters carried by supporters of Osama bin Laden.

Status: True.

Origins: Eh? Is that really Bert, the irascible muppet partner of Ernie on TV's Sesame Street, peering over the left shoulder of Osama bin Laden in the poster shown below? How did he get there?

Dino Ignacio, a San Francisco artist, started Bert is Evil!, a long-time favorite humor site on which, as a running joke, he attempted to prove the muppet Bert was "evil" by inserting him, Zelig-like, into photographs with notorious people and infamous historical scenes.

Although Ignacio stopped updating his site few years ago, several mirror sites have kept the gag going, and "Bert is Evil!" enthusiasts have continued to create and post new pictures, including an image of Bert posing with Osama bin Laden:

The picture of muppet Bert with Osama bin Laden was inadvertently picked up by someone in Bangladesh scouring the web looking for photographs of Osama bin Laden to use in a collage-like poster:

Mostafa Kamal, production manager of Azad Products, the Dhaka shop that made the posters, told the AP he had gotten the images off the Internet. "We did not give the pictures a second look or realize what they signified until you pointed it out to us,'' he said. The company had printed about 2,000 posters, and they were snapped up by the demonstrators, who were angry over the U.S.-led attacks on Afghanistan.

Kamal said he would leave out the controversial images from his next posters.

The Osama bin Laden poster -- with the muppet -- was displayed at rallies by pro-bin Laden protesters and appeared in photographs carried by news agencies such as Reuters and Associated Press.

So these guys at Princeton have a bunch of random-number generators flipping digital coins all over the globe, in an effort to track "global consciousness." Evidently some statistical anomalies occurred right after the attack. Weird.

Todd Strandberg has created the Dow Jones Industrial Average for Armageddon, tracking 45 different eschatological variables from Revelations. We reached an all-time high on September 24. You can see just how close we are to the End Times.

"The Boondocks" has been pulled from the Daily News and Newsday for it's less-than-jingoistic stance. This from ABCnews.com:

"Oct. 9 — Thanks to a wave of patriotism following the terrorist attacks on the United States, cartoonist Aaron McGruder's strip The Boondocks really has gone to the boondocks — and even disappeared — in some newspapers.

Last week, Huey Freeman — McGruder's Afro-wearing, pre-pubescent black revolutionary in The Boondocks — called the FBI's terrorist tip line and said he had the names of several Americans who helped train and finance Osama bin Laden, the United States' prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks on America. When the FBI agent on the other end of the phone asks for the names, Huey responds, "All right, let's see … the first one is Reagan. That's R-E-A-G …"

Huey, trying to convince the FBI of his leads, then accuses the CIA of training bin Laden in terrorist tactics against the then-Soviet Union during the Reagan-Bush administration and suggests the current Bush presidency has funded the Taliban government U.S. forces are now fighting. [The CIA has denied training bin Laden or his associates in terror tactics.]

Print editions of the New York Daily News, perhaps leery of the outrage the series of strips would cause, especially in New York, decided to yank The Boondocks for three days that week. Long Island's Newsday also chose not to run The Boondocks but replaced them with previously run, less controversial editions of the strip."

McGruder has, of course, gone even further, replacing his regular comic with the "patriotic" adventures of Flagee and Ribbon. You can read it at ucomics.com (which also carries Doonesbury, Ted Rall, Tom Toles, Pat Oliphant, and other political cartoons.) Of course, there's always Tom Tomorrow . I forget who forwarded Get Your War On to me (Chris?), but here it is.

Somehow, this cartoon by Ruben Bolling sums up for me our complete inability to entertain ourselves right now.

[This letter was written by our own Jason Palmer. I don't think he's sent it to the UN yet. My response follows.]

Mr. Secretary-General:

Writing as an American citizen, I would like to thank you personally for supporting the United States in its war against Afghanistan and al Qaida, as America pursues the limited military activities it believes are necessary to capture and bring to justice the terrorists who planned and/or executed the September 11th attacks on American soil. These attacks are justified so that the United States can be certain that these perpetrators do not attack American citizens again (self-defense), and also to ensure that the perpetrators are adequately punished for their actions (justice).

Forrest writes:

For anyone looking for some different perspectives on current events (including some news not reported in the US press), I highly recommend the excellent roundup of links being compiled by the fine folks at World Press Review magazine...

-- [Fo]

I've also found that the web designers over at Little Green Footballs have an excellent running set of links and commentary. There's lots I would point you to myself, but I suggest you check it out. Check also Counterpunch; www.tompaine.com; and www.alternet.org.

At http://funnystrange.com/quiz/, you can decide who said it: bin Laden, or Falwell/Robertson? I got 10 out of 20 right.

In Literature at the Khyber Pass, Charles Laurence describes his encounters in Afghanistan in 1979:

Was I to be accused of taking pictures of those strange figures in black chadors, flapping down dirt paths like so many winged crows? Had I sealed my fate by saying "no" to the offer of a kilo of dope ($100, by the way)? Was I to be shot for a spy?

We shook hands.

"I, sir, am the secretary of the Jamrud Literary Society," said Khan. "We have just finished reading Charles Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, and I wish to ask your advice."

I could have choked on my chai. Charles Lamb? This book is an historical curio from the days of the British Raj, the literary equivalent of one of those ancient but still chuff-chuffing steam engines, Made in England. Something, surely, was in my tea. Tales from Shakespeare was published, you see, specifically to give the natives a dose of Western civ, the Victorian equivalent to hamburgers and Hollywood.

"My members," Khan went on, propping the rifle casually against the old barrel, "have heard of a writer called Charles Dickens, and would you agree he would be good to read next? But where would we find the books of Charles Dickens?"

This, I assured him, would be an excellent choice, and that the novels were readily available. In fact, I would be happy to send a collection once I had returned–safely–to London.

Khan stood up, and proffered his hand again: "You, sir, are an honorable enemy."

I have treasured those words ever since. An honorable enemy: note the present tense. There could surely be no greater compliment.

I sent him the books, of course, because an honorable enemy keeps his end of the deal. And I have been thinking of this strange story since thousands of souls were so vilely dispatched at the tip of the island that I now call home. Honorable enemy. The Afghans and their Pakistani cousins won the CIA their war, but no one bothered to send them food for their wives and their children, nor even woolly sweaters, used and far too small. America just walked away. That was not honorable.

When all this is over, it might be an idea to make friends with the natives. Amazing what a few copies of old Charles Lamb could do, and a literary society in the least likely of places is a far, far better prospect than a medieval mullah with poison in his heart.

If you bought $1000 worth of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.

If you bought $1000 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer, and traded in the cans for the nickel deposit, you would have $79.

My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.

Turns out this is going to appear on the special edition DVD of 'Holy Grail' being released this week. But in the meantime, it's a fun way to while away downloadable hours...

[Ish sez: Look for the parrot-routine reference. Is this in the original, or did the lego folks throw it in?]

[Debbie forwarded this to me, and I just had to share it.]

Alter our DNA or robots will take over, warns Hawking

Nick Paton Walsh
Sunday September 2, 2001
The Observer

Stephen Hawking, the acclaimed scientist and writer, reignited the debate over genetic engineering yesterday by recommending that humans change their DNA through genetic modification to keep ahead of advances in computer technology and stop intelligent machines from 'taking over the world'. He made the remarks in an interview with the German magazine Focus. Because technology is advancing so quickly, Hawking said, 'computers double their performance every month'. Humans, in contrast, are developing much more slowly, and so must change their DNA make-up or be left behind. 'The danger is real,' he said, 'that this [computer] intelligence will develop and take over the world.'

Hawking, author of the best-selling A Brief History Of Time and a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, recommended 'well-aimed manipulation' of human genes. Through this humans could 'raise the complexity of... the DNA [they are born with], thereby improving people'. He conceded the road to genetic modification would be a long one but said: 'We should follow this road if we want biological systems to remain superior to electronic ones.'

He also advocated cyber-technology - direct links between human brains and computers. 'We must develop as quickly as possible technologies that make possible a direct connection between brain and computer, so that artificial brains contribute to human intelligence rather than opposing it.'

While scientists are excited by the huge possibilities of genetic engineering and human interaction with machines, ethicists urge caution as the experiments could go wrong.

Sue Mayer, director of policy research group Genewatch, rounded on Hawking's remarks. 'He is trying to take the debate about genetic engineering in the wrong direction,' she said. 'It is naive to think that genetic engineering will help us stay ahead of computers.'

Laura writes:

A friend of mine referred me to The Nitpickers Site, and I felt that all of those media-savy friends of mine might appreicate it. This site looks at all the mistakes in various movies, not obvious things like going-back-in-time problems, but rather more important things, like:

In Back to the Future, when the professor asks Marty who the president is in 1984, Marty says "Ronald Reagan," and the professor says "The actor? Yeah, right, and who is the First Lady, Jane Wyman?", this is problematic for several reasons. First, in 1955, Ronald Reagan the actor pronounced his name REEgan and didn't change it until he entered politics. Plus, his divorce from Jane Wyman had made all the papers by then.

or

In Mary Poppins, the robins outside the window of the London townhouse are actually American Robins, not British Robins, which look more like blue birds.

or

In City Slickers, the Holstein cow gives birth to a Gernsey calf.

You can look up your favorite movie and check out all the comments written by people who obviously have way to much time on their hands and have seen the Big Lebowski just a few two many times.

[Ish sez: on a related note, there's www.jumptheshark.com, which chronicles the moment when a TV show "has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on...it's all downhill."]

Along the Lines of "If I Ever Become an Evil Overlord": Villany on a Budget

"Over the past few decades, the cost of effective villainy has skyrocketed, outpacing the Dow, the Consumer Price Index, and even health insurance. These days it's hard to find a secluded mountaintop or isolated island that hasn't already been covered with condos. All the really formidable-looking abandoned warehouses have been converted into high-priced lofts. And don't even think about finding a "fixer upper" castle for a reasonable price. So what's an up-and-coming villain to do?"

http://www.trygve.com/evilonabudget.html

Well, while we're at it, if you've never seen this before....

If I Ever Become an Evil Overlord

1 My legions of terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.

2 My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.

3 My noble half-brother who throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.

4 Shooting is not too good for my enemies.

5 The artefact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box.

6 I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them.

7 When the rebel leader challenges me to fight one-to-one and asks, "Or are you afraid without your armies to back you up?" My reply will be, "No, just sensible."

8 When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him.

9 After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.

10 I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large button labelled "Danger: Do Not Push".

11 I will not order my trusted lieutenant to kill the infant who is destined to overthrow me -- I'll do it myself.

12 I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum -- a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.

13 I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.

14 I will not waste time making my enemies death look like an accident: I'm not accountable to anyone and my other enemies wouldn't believe it.

15 I will make it clear that I do know the meaning of the word "mercy"; I simply choose to show none.

16 One of my advisers will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

17 All slain enemies will be cremated, not left for dead at the bottom of a cliff. The announcement of their death, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.

18 My undercover agents will not have tattoos identifying them as members of my organisation, nor will they be required to wear military boots or adhere to any other dress codes.

19 The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.

20 I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan in operation.

21 I will design all doomsday machines myself. If I must hire a mad scientist to assist me, I will make sure that he is sufficiently twisted to never regret his evil ways and seek to undo the damage he has caused.

22 I will never utter the sentence "But before I kill you there's just one thing I want to know."

23 When I employ people as advisers, I will occasionally listen to their advice.

[Note: Ishbadiddle does not condone evil, its overlords, minions, or the like.]

Mike Watkins, a professor of mine from HBS, forwarded this:

From Jane's

Inside Al-Qaeda: a window into the world of militant Islam and the Afghani alumni

By Richard Engel, Cairo and Amman

The breeding grounds of militant Islamic terrorism span a host of different environments from the Afghan battlefields of the 1980s to places much closer to home. Richard Engel charts the careers of some of Bin Laden's converts and co-conspirators, offering an insight into Al-Qaeda's inner workings.

Sitting on a rooftop in a poor Cairo neighbourhood, 38-year-old Ibrahim recalled when he first met Osama bin Laden. It was 1983 and Ibrahim was one of the leaders of the Gamaa Islamiya (Islamic Group), one of Egypt's two main Islamic militant organizations centred largely in southern Egypt around the town of Assiout.

"I was one of the emirs (commanders) of the Gamaa Islamiya in southern Egypt at the time in Assiout. I was at the university of Assiout, the heart of the Islamic activism," said Ibrahim, who asked not to be further identified. Ibrahim had spent several months at one of Bin Laden's guerrilla training camps in Sudan learning how to use Kalashnikov assault rifles and other light weapons.

Now that his training was complete, it was time for Ibrahim to meet his benefactor, Bin Laden. He travelled to the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh, with a group of Islamic activists, most of them fellow university students.

"We met Osama ibn bin Laden on an Islamic pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia," said Ibrahim, using the traditional Islamic form of the Saudi exile's name. "He was a devoted young man who, like any young man, loved his religion. Then he changed and wanted there to be Islamic movements all over the world, and he fled Saudi Arabia and they stripped him of his citizenship." In a rare move, the Saudi government revoked Bin Laden's nationality in April 1994, despite the prominence of his wealthy family. His family, originally from the southern Yemeni province of Hadhramaut, also publicly disavowed him.

Ibrahim says he remembers bin Laden as both polite and well educated. Bin Laden talked a lot, Ibrahim says, and although he was prosperous, he dressed humbly and kept the company of people with no money.

"Osama bin Laden would help any Islamic group, in Sudan, in any Arab country. God blessed him with money, so he gave to Islamic groups," said Ibrahim.

As Ibrahim and the other students were leaving Saudi Arabia, Bin Laden gave him a bag stuffed with Egyptian currency. Ibrahim would not say how much, but it was clear that the idea was to use it to try to make Egypt an Islamic regime. He wanted to set up a military camp in the hills near Assiout, Ibrahim says. That's when Ibrahim lost his nerve.

"I saw my friends being arrested and being tortured and I didn't want to end up like them. So I made a plea bargain with the police and turned the money over to them," he said. Ibrahim served only one year in prison for his activities with the Gamaa Islamiya. He continues to be monitored by the Egyptian security authorities.

Ibrahim's story is typical of how Bin Laden has tried to align with local militant groups with country-specific grievances to increase his reach and influence. Bin Laden's methods and connections with local militant cells have expanded and become more sophisticated over the years, as exemplified by the case of confessed Jordanian militant Raed Hijazi.

Thirty-two-year-old Hijazi, a former Boston taxi driver and a US citizen, is on trial in Jordan for plotting to blow up a fully booked, 400-room Jordanian hotel and two Christian tourist sites on the border with Israel on the eve of the millennium in December 1999. He faces the death penalty and prosecutors say the Jordanian militant cell Hijazi helped create worked in co-ordination with bin Laden. Hijazi and other members of the Jordan militant group have confessed to many of the prosecution's accusations, but Hijazi's lawyers say he gave information under torture.

Speaking outside the state security court in Amman where Hijazi is being re-tried - he was already sentenced to death in absentia - his father Mohammed says his son is innocent. "No, he has no relation with Bin Laden at all. First of all he is poor. He has no funds. He lives on very little money and his apartment is a very little apartment near Amman. If you belong to Bin Laden you have to have some money," said Mohammed, an engineer of Palestinian origin.

Born in San Jose, California, to relative privilege, Raed Hijazi grew up travelling between the United States, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. In 1986, he enrolled in California State University in Sacramento to study business administration, according to his father. Prosecutors say it was in the United States that he got his first taste of radical Islamic teaching.

A Fijian cleric at a Muslim prayer group near the university convinced Hijazi to travel to Afghanistan to join the mujahideen (Islamic fighters), who had been battling the Soviet Union since 1979. In addition to learning to use mortars and small arms in Afghanistan, Hijazi also formed alliances he would later allegedly use to build his own Jordanian terror cell, according to prosecutors. Hijazi was especially adept with mortars and earned the noms de guerre 'Abu Ahmed the Mortarman' and 'Abu Ahmed the American'. After the beleaguered Soviet troops pulled out of Afghanistan following a decade of fighting, many mujahideen became convinced that a force of devoted Muslim believers could defeat any army, even one belonging to a superpower like the Soviet Union. Some mujahideen made it their goal to bring their holy war from the mountains of Afghanistan to their home countries.

The Afghan alumni

While not all saw combat, some 5,000 Saudis, 3,000 Yemenis, 2,800 Algerians, 2,000 Egyptians, 400 Tunisians, 350 Iraqis, 200 Libyans and dozens of Jordanians served alongside the Afghani mujahideen in the war. Between 1,000 and 1,500 of them returned to Algeria and formed the backbone of the Islamic radicals who are continuing to fight against the government in what has been a nine-year civil war that has claimed more than 100,000 lives. Those who returned to Egypt became valued members of the Gamaa Islamiya and the Gihad group, but their success was severely limited by arrest campaigns and several mass trials in the 1990s under the title of 'the returnees from Afghanistan'. Some Egyptians, who saw that they would be imprisoned if they returned home, remained in Afghanistan or took refuge wherever they could. US authorities have said that as many as 200 Afghan alumni settled in the New York/New Jersey area, some of them congregating around the New Jersey mosque where Omar Abdel Rahman preached.

Largely at the request of Egypt and Algeria, Pakistan has cracked down on its Afghan veterans. Some so-called 'Afghani Arabs' also headed to Asia and joined up in the Philippines with the Abu Sayyaf group - named for a famous Afghan mujahid. Other Afghani Arabs continued to fight the Russians in Tajikistan while still others continued to participate in other conflicts where Muslims were involved, mainly participating in the wars in Bosnia and Chechnya.

Raed Hijazi was one of the Jordanian Afghan returnees who wanted to bring his battle home, according to the prosecution. In 1996, Hijazi met Hader Abu Hoshar, a fellow Afghan veteran who was also of Palestinian origin. Abu Hoshar was a longtime enemy of Jordan and, according to statements given to the court, it was during this meeting at a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria that the plot to carryout a massive attack against foreigners in Jordan was born.

After the plot was set, Hijazi moved back to the United States and worked for the Boston Cab Company. According to prosecutors, he used the job to send some $13,000 to his growing Jordanian terror cell. The group also raised money by selling false documents.

US federal investigators are currently examining a possible link between Hijazi and two of the suspected hijackers who boarded planes in Boston on 11 September and hijacked them for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Investigations say Hijazi is linked to suspects Ahmed Alghamdi and Satam al-Suqami. If proven, it would be a concrete link between the attacks against the United States and Bin Laden.

Jordanian court officials say Hijazi's cell contacted bin Laden's group Al-Qaeda ('The Base') in 1998, asking for help in explosives training. Through a key Al-Qaeda operative known as Abu Zubayida, Bin Laden's group arranged for four people, including Hijazi, to travel through Turkey to a training camp in Afghanistan. Hijazi, prosecutors say, learned to use explosives and remote-controlled triggering devices there.

Abu Zubayida is one of the men Washington has listed as wanted after the terror attacks in New York and Washington. He is believed to function as Al-Qaeda's foreign minister, setting up connections and maintaining relations with Islamic militant cells around the world.

By December 1999, Hijazi's Jordanian cell - now in co-operation with Al-Qaeda, which helped approve targets and coordinate timing - had stockpiled enough nitric and sulphuric acid to make a bomb equivalent to 16-tons of TNT. Jordanian police, who foiled the millennium attack, found the chemicals stockpiled in plastic barrels in a pit dug underneath a house outside of Jordan. A Jordanian intelligence official testifying against Hijazi said that authorities only learned by accident of the terror plot just weeks before it was set to take place.

Western diplomats have said the failed Jordanian plot is a blueprint of how Bin Laden currently operates, using a loosely tied network of local militant groups that operate with his blessing and support, but which cannot be easily traced directly back to him. It is also this loose structure that makes it so difficult for intelligence and police agencies to disrupt the network.

A former Egyptian militant interviewed described the structure of radical Islamic groups as having been modelled after "a bunch of grapes". "Each group operates independently with its members not knowing who the others are. That way, if one member of the group is plucked off by police, the others remain unaffected," he said.

Major players

While there were many heroes and martyrs in the Afghan war, which was supported by US intelligence as part of its battle against communism, many of the mujahideen rallied around three main people: charismatic Saudi financier Osama bin Laden, blind cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and intelligent technocrat Dr Ayman al-Zawahari.

Egyptian-born Sheih Omar Abdel Rahman is currently serving a life sentence in a Minnesota prison after being convicted of conspiring with a group of his followers to destroy the World Trade Center and New York City bridges and tunnels in 1993.

Abdel Rahman's son, Abdullah, says there are both similarities and differences between Bin Laden and his father, the blind imam of Muslim guerrillas. "Sheikh Omar and Osama bin Laden are both Muslims and involved in the Afghani cause and followed the path of the mujahideen in Afghanistan," said Abdullah, who is studying like his father at Cairo's al-Azhar university, the world's oldest centre of Muslim teaching. "Osama bin Laden also donated much of his money to the Afghani cause. The differences between the two are in the level of religious study. Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman is a man who all of his life was dedicated to Islamic study. He was a graduate of al-Azhar University and also holds a doctorate, which he received with highest honours in Koranic studies. He is an Islamic cleric able to issue fatwas (Islamic rulings) saying what is a sin and what is a blessing. On the other hand, Osama bin Laden's education was in engineering and he is a military person with expertise in military training," said Abdullah.

Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman continues to be revered by radical Muslims around the world who view him as their spiritual leader. Both Bin Laden and al-Zawahari, who is now his deputy, have vowed to take revenge against the United States if Abdel Rahman, a diabetic, dies while in a US jail.

Ayman al-Zawahari, 50, has more experience in radical Islamic politics than even Bin Laden. Interpol has listed al-Zawahari among its most wanted men. He is described by Western officials as Bin Laden's right-hand man and heir apparent to his organisation. Hailing from a long line of prominent politicians, doctors and religious leaders, his full name is Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahari, although he has used the code names Abu Mohammed and Abu Fatima.

A surgeon, al-Zawahari has been described as a private, intelligent and vindictive person. "He was first arrested in 1966 when he was just 15 years old for belonging to the then-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's oldest radical Islamic group. During the 1970s, al-Zawahari remained involved with militant Islamic organisations and emerged as a leader of Egypt's Gihad group, which, in conjunction with the Gamaa Islamiya, carried out the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

After Sadat's murder, al-Zawahari was arrested, but police were never able to tie him directly to the assassination. Instead, al-Zawahari was sentenced to three years in prison on a weapons charge. A former friend suggests that al-Zawahari was set up by an enemy who threw an assault rifle into the garden of his family's villa in the affluent Maadi district of Cairo. It was during his incarceration, says the friend, that al-Zawahari snapped, the torture he was subjected to in prison sending him over the edge.

After his release from prison in 1984, al-Zawahari left Egypt for good. Mamoun Hodeibi, the deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, says many members of his organisation went to Afghanistan. "Some of them went there to be doctors. Others worked for charities and Islamic societies," said Hodeibi at the Muslim Brotherhood's Cairo office.

Al-Zawahari was one of these and supported the mujahideen's medical personnel. After the war, al-Zawahari moved to Europe, residing in Switzerland and Denmark, according to Egyptian security officials. Al-Zawahri supposedly carries Egyptian, French, Swiss and Dutch passports, although Switzerland denies he was ever issued a Swiss passport. Egyptian officials say his French and Swiss passports are under the name Amin Othman and that his Dutch passport, number 513116, is in the name Sami Mahmoud.

By the 1990s, al-Zawahari had emerged as the leader of the military wing of the Egyptian Gihad group, known as the Vanguards of Conquest. In the mid-1990s, he returned to Afghanistan to join forces with Bin Laden: a move that caused a rift in his Gihad group.

Diaa Rashwan, a senior researcher of Islamic militant groups at Egypt's al-Ahram centre for strategic studies, says al-Zawahari and Bin Laden have become very close since the announcement in 1998 of the formation of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders. Other key members of the front are Egyptians Mustafa Hamza, 43, and Rifie Ahmed Taha, 47, aa well as Mohammed Islambouli, 46, the brother of Khaled Islambouli, Sadat's assassin. Egyptian intelligence officials say Mohammed Islambouli holds two Egyptian passports, a Qatari passport and an Algerian passport in the name Mahmoud Youssef.

"Ayman al-Zawahari from the beginning was as all the other ordinary Islamists," said Rashwan. "He had his own project to establish an Islamic state here in Egypt, but over the last three years, he has gone closer to the Osama bin Laden theory. It means to fight the enemies of Islam, the Americans and Israelis, but not to build an Islamic state."

Until two weeks ago, rhetoric from men like Ayman al-Zawahari about fighting the enemies of Islam wasn't taken as seriously as it is today. Now, Washington is presumably re-examining statements from al-Zawahari that it may previously have considered bluster. Two years ago, for example, his Gihad group said it had chemical and biological weapons that it intended to use against the United States and Israel.

Defining the terrorists

In 1998, the 22-member Arab League gave its approval to a pan-Arab counter-terrorism treaty. Since then, the nations have in varying degrees been co-operating to extradite and crack down on militants in the Middle East. The Arab pact requires countries to deny support to groups that launch attacks on other nations in the region, share intelligence and extradite suspects. Extraditions between Arab states, which have been frequent but rarely made public, operate according to bilateral treaties: a condition that has been problematic because extradition accords do not exist between all of the Arab League's member nations. Opponents of the treaty also fear that undemocratic Arab governments could use anti-terrorism legislation to target political dissidents.

Since the 11 September attacks against the United States, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak has renewed a call he has consistently made since the late 1990s to hold an international conference against terrorism. While the conference may be vital to close loopholes that allow militant groups to operate in Europe and the United States under the guise of human rights organisations or charities, the overall effectiveness of such a global conference is questionable.

As evidenced from statements made at the Arab League's interior and justice ministers' meetings that established the Arab wide anti-terrorism treaty, there is a deep desire in the Arab world for Israel to be sanctioned for what Arab nations consider its 'state terrorism' against the Palestinians. Furthermore, Arab states do not consider groups like the Lebanese Hizbollah or Palestinian Hamas to be terrorist groups, although they are listed as such by the US State Department. Therefore, one of the toughest steps in battling terrorists, like the vast array of Afghani alumni who operate across borders, may be coming to terms with the age-old question of who is a terrorist.

Jason writes from Japan:

I very much enjoyed the last edition of Ishbadiddle. Over here in Japan, I`ve been spending an exhorbitant amount of time away from my vacation just sitting in coffee shops, reading the Herald Tribune, and thinking about how I/we/Americans should think about the WTC and Pentagon attacks and how we should respond. Originally I thought I must have been crazy to be missing so much of my vacation reading and writing in the local Starbucks here, but now I understand that I am not alone in my constant ruminating.

I know EXACTLY what Matt is saying when he says, `I feel that it's my responsibility as a US resident to have an opinion, and partly just to deal with my growing sense of dread and confusion,` but being here in Japan alone (without other Americans to talk to, but not really alone obviously since there are millions of Japanese and tens of Eurpoean and Australian tourists) its been hard (impossible) to find other people to discuss my thoughts with except Op-Ed wiriters and my Journal.

Up front, I apologize for the haphazard nature of what I write-- I`m on the clock here and have to give up my library computer in less than 30 minutes, so there is little (no) time for editing and reformatting of my ideas, but...

In general, I agree very much with Matt`s analysis, and am (happily) surprised that the Bush team seems to agree with much of the same logic of considering these acts `crimes against humanity` and therefore are pursuing a slow, internationally supported, targeted response of bringing the perpetrators to `justice for their crime of mass murder`.

I do wonder further about this idea that `nations that harbor/enable terrorism` are also guilty of a crime against humanity, and have been thinking alot about `what is terrorism`. To me terrorism seems most clearly defined as `Acts of violence committed by one side in an undeclared war against non-combatants on the other side. What makes terrorism especially unique is not simply its targeting of innocent civilians (non-combatants), but also that the specific non-combatants are not targeted because of who they are specifically, but instead because of what ethnicity, nationality, or other symbol of the opposition their mere existence represents.`

As such, I do see not only the WTC attacks, but also the Palestinian and Israeli counter-attacks in which often it is civilians (and not military personne) who are targted and killed in ongoing acts of violence and counter-violence.

Another thought:

-- Just as you can't keep drugs away
-- from an addict, you can't prevent a determined fanatic
-- from killing people. This demand is fueled by hatred.
-- And what's at the root of this hatred? Is it really
-- democracy? Our loose culture? Or our foreign policy?
-- If it's either of the first two, well then I suppose
-- we will always be hated. But, if it's the latter, is
-- there a way to get to the root causes? What would that
-- mean? I don't have the answers to these questions at
-- all. I wish I did.

I think actually the hatred (and therefore the demand for terrorism) is much more easy to locate than you think. Over the last 50 years, the U.S. has spent (and continues to spend) large sums of money to prop up authoritarian, non-freedom-oriented, regimes throughout the Islamic world. Originally, supporting the Shah in Iran, the King in Saudi Arabia, and other dictators like Suartho in Indonesia and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, was *possibly* a valid foreign policy to contain Communism and to safeguard the defense of Israel. However, with the end of the Cold War, we have seen numerous blowbacks (to use the CIA term) from our own support-of-authoritarian-repressive-regimes policy. The WTC and the Pentagon are merely the latest and largest terrible results.

I do sincerely wish we could go back to 1992 and institute-- by way of economic aid, transition assistance, and the like-- some type of official program to `help move Islamic countries toward democracy and acceptance of individual Western-style liberty` concurrent with the ongoing transition of the former Soviet and Eastern European states. Our failure to do so has caused the Islamic people to become EXTREMELY angry not at their repressive regimes, but at American, whom they rightfully target as the source of their repressive regimes` power-base.

At some point in the War on Terrorism, we will need to confront this reality head on, if we want to have any chance of reducing the source of the anger that Arab Muslims feel.

... I wish I could write more but time has run out. Thanks again for including me on the distribution. Goodbye for now.

-- Jason Palmer