2020 Hindsight

Insights

Due to "unforseen technical difficulties," my Saturday entry hadn't made it to my static site until now. So please be sure to read it below.

NYTimes Magazine: 9.30.01 The Way We Live Now has a Q&A with Martin E. Marty, a Scholar of Religion. Definitely worth reading.

The fundamentalist, however, says there was a moment in history when a particular book, leader and original social community was perfect.... Fundamentalists teach that there was that perfect moment, and in their selective retrieval they go back to that perfect moment.

...Something comes along which is perceived by the people in such cultures as a total threat to the group, to the world's future. [read more...]

Managing Obsession

Obsessed. I am obsessed over all this information about what's going on. Totally and completely obsessed. My obsession sorta bothers me. Can't I just... well, forget it for a little while? So the fact that I went a whole day without posting is a little consolation.

What did I do instead? I had lunch with a friend. We talked about, well, you know, that horrible event. I talked about the nuclear holocaust with a suitcase bomb dream I had the other morning (I was the one with the suitcase, or else was in the same room with the person who was about to detonate the bomb).

After lunch, I went to a bookstore, hoping to find the Jihad vs McWorld book I read about last Sunday in the L.A. Times. Nope. All out. Hafta special order or wait for the new ones to arrive.

Well, there I was on the Political Science shelf. Anything else enlightening? I saw (and purchased) two books: The CIA & American Democracy, by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones. A few pages into it, I think it'll be an informative read. The back cover had good blurbs. I'll keep ya posted.

The other book I got was a book of essays, Waiting for the Barbarians by Lewis Lapham. The book begins with a poem of the same name as the book, of Roman consuls and praetors dressed up to impress the barbarians that are coming. The introduction says that although the essays were...

"written in a response to a series of unrelated events caught up in the current of the news葉he bombing in Oklahoma City, Nick Nolte's interpretation of Jefferson in Paris, Senator Robert Dole's farewell address to the United States Senate葉hey all touch upon the forms of magical thinking that induce our own latter-day consuls and praetors ...to imagine that somehow they can make good their escape into the land of wish and dream."

I'll let you know how the book is.

Later, I got together with another friend, and we sat around eating pizza and reading the L.A. Times. I was floored by this article , Mostly, they just waited, that traces the steps of the hijackers in Europe and America, recording where they were, and the impression they made on those who were around them. How... how... could they go from being the kind of people described there to those who could fly planes into buildings stretches my comprehension beyond its farthest reach.

Later, we watched a TV show where a group of firemen from Ladder 6 told of their miraculous survival of the fall of Tower 1. The interviews were gripping. But man, most of the oh-please-pull-yer-heartstring narration with background music guaranteed to make you weep was a leetle much. I'd only watched about an hour of coverage on that Tuesday itself, and, not having a TV, I felt the full impact of the newsy-format show that my friend has long since learned to tune out.

When I got home and checked email, I'd gotten yet another of those petition about Afghan women emails. So I sent a response saying that tho the info is accurate, the petition won't do any good, and read these two web pages to learn more.

So, for a day that was spent away from the net, I'm glad I got a little break from my current obsessions about terrorism, war and the apocalypse.

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Hmmm.. when I've gone to post this note, I've gotten the following error:

Sorry! There was an error: Can't find a sub-table named "pt".

The error was detected by Frontier 7.0.1 in mainResponder.respond.

But the story still gets posted. Wonder if there's a glitch with one of those new fixes? Or is it just me?

Oops! more data! I saw that this page didn't get rendered to the static site, and when I tried to render it, I got this message:

Sorry! There was an error: Can't evaluate the expression because the name "flPrintFriendlyTemplate" hasn't been defined.

Well, I hear that this is a bug that's been fixed, so in short order (I hope) this ought to make it out onto my static site.

Thursday 27 September

Virtual Tours of World Trade Center QTVR panoramas and other tours of the WTC in NY, before and after. (Some I've linked to before, but since I learned of some new ones—thanks to the QTVR email list, I thought I'd list 'em all here)

• Before panoramas of the World Trade Center

• Ground Zero at night; photos taken by Jim Galvin, whose lighting crew put up lights for the nighttime rescue/recovery/salvage work. QuickTime and Java versions.

• Remembering the World Trade Center Towers by Jook Leung; NYC skylines and memorials from Brooklyn and New Jersey, plus the Java versions of Jim Galvin's nighttime photos of Ground Zero

• Labelled satellite photo for reference and Yahoo satellite images of the World Trade Center

• Washington Post panoramas with a top-view map that gives you orientation for where you're looking.

• Satellite before and after of the World Trade Center

• After: NYC skyline from a rooftop across the water

• Before and After panoramas, still images

Urban Legends and Folklore about the attacks. Fake pictures. Real pictures. Rumors. Hoaxes.

The Onion's attack coverage is wonderful. Don't miss the Interview with God.

One if by land, two if by sea ...but what about when it's by airliner into the World Trade Center and the warning comes by IM two hours before the crashes?

Sudan Bank Hacked, Bin Laden Info Found, according to a Hacker. Is this what those lawmakers in the ATA mean by making illegally collected evidence admissable?

Nasdaq May Ease Listing Rules. Mebbe until the end of the year?

All your fraud are belong to U.S.—not. White House Will Not Support Push For National ID Card Good. National IDs are prone to fraud. Just look at all those stolen passports that were used for identity and aliases for those hijackers.

left luggage In Hijacker's Bags, a Call to Planning, Prayer and Death

The document is a cross between a chilling spiritual exhortation aimed at the hijackers and an operational mission checklist. With the hijackers all dead, the pages may turn out to provide the most vivid and penetrating glimpse into their mental states and final hours before they embarked on the deadliest act of terrorism in U.S. history.

Guardian Observer: A look at Mohamed Atta, the shy, caring, deadly fanatic. How does this person get to be the sort to fly a plane into a tall building? Also of note: A kind of dual-personality that made his own father not recognize him.

And while it is not hard to see Atta, whose face gazes out from the passport photograph released by the FBI, as that of the mass murderer of Manhattan, el-Amir [a name also used by Atta during his studies in Hamburg] was a shy, considerate man who endeared himself to Western acquaintances.

Such indeed was the gulf between the two that some people, notably his father, insisted last week that Mohamed Atta's identity must have been stolen by the hijackers' leader. That view was given some credibility by a German press report, not denied by the government, that he and two other Hamburg suspects reported in 1999 that their passports had been stolen. However, the same report quoted the Interior Ministry as saying that the reason the three men did so was to obtain new passports, free of stamps that might have jeopardised their chances of obtaining US visas.

I haven't heard any more stories about those whose identities were stolen by the terrorists, after the initial denials and reprisals from a couple of people in Saudi Arabia. Maybe there's more to be learned here.

News and analysis

Only a 2.7 earthquake, but it was close! This was the first time for me to counteract my "if this is big, where'm I gonna go to hide?" instincts. No. Not doorways, not under desks. Next to desks, next to large items. I pointed to it recently (yesterday!), but I'll do so again... how to survive in collapsed buildings. I like the Did you feel it? website.. community feedback to gauge the quake's intensity.

A new item on my Manila Wish List regarding the oh-so-powerful PictureRef macro. (how about a straight href="http://www.urlhere.org/" rather than making me create a shortcut for the destination link?)

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Oh, to be able to indulge in denial and walk away from all of this. Nope, can't do it. At least not right now.

I was talking earlier to someone about all my online news sources; when I got home, I typed 'em up and sent 'em off in email. Of course, that has me checking them.

The Silicon Valley.com weblog has a number of articles worth looking at:

Jessica Stern writes Meeting with the Muj, as part of her research into religious extremism. Pakistan: Poverty means no education, so the radical religious school houses, clothes, feeds, and educates young boys to read the Koran and learn extremist ideologies—jihad. I saw a headline somewhere that said something to the effect of "U.S., Beware trusting Pakistan." After reading this, I understand a bit more why.

A buncha links. (Note: Some articles have perspectives I don't agree with; I'm just tryin' to be informed):

• Truth or Consequences [via Backup Brain] If terrorism is result of US foreign policy, and US changes its policy to cease terrorism, will we be acting or reacting? But the article says it much, much better

• Capitalism Magazine: An American Peace: How To Win The War Against Terrorism This one bothers me.

• Eric Norlin's Tactics of Network Destruction. Take your understanding of computer networks —and how to disable them—and apply that to networks of terrorists. [via Doc]

• Pacific News Service's list of stories on this whole matter.

• Megnut found the information motherlode: Sept 11 Journalists' Resources. If I followed every link there, I'd be doing nothing else for days on end.

• Joshua Allen shows how hard it is to follow the money.

• L.A. Times, also on the money trail: Age-Old Way of Moving Cash Leaves Little Trail

Disks in my audio CD turntable: chant music, especially Arvo Pärt's Kanon Pokajanen.

Two weeks later

Strange little milestones. I've gotten to the point where my immediate waking thought is not about "things are different now. They're dangerous." It takes a few moments of waking consciousness for that to enter in.

Disaster almanac lists different kinds of disasters that occurred On This Day in.... September 11 hasn't been updated yet in the almanac. You can search by all, or search by earthquake, fires, or transportation.

speaking of earthquakes (well, it's topical for California), Looka! pointed to a site describing how to survive in a collapsed building. The information is provided by those who've climbed through wreckage of earthquakes and other disasters葉hey've seen who survives and who got squashed. It's surprising news: Being under doorways, climbing under desks, will get you killed if the building collapses. Instead, look for pockets *next* to objects.

Getting scared all over again In the last two weeks, I've been finding myself of two minds, especially when it comes to looking at the failings of U.S. foreign policy. In this Salon piece, There is no alternative to war, David Rieff argues that the blame-the-foreign-policy perspective misses the point; the goal of terrorism isn't to get better US foreign policy, but to eradicate Western modernity.

Because if the attacks, however reprehensible, are rooted in bad American actions, then it is still possible to believe that terrorism is a reactive phenomenon that would be vastly diminished if the United States started to behave differently, if it was more "even-handed" in the Israel-Palestine dispute, if it lifted the embargo against Iraq, stopped supporting emirs and sheikhs, and so on. By this account, the way for the United States to fight terrorism is to mend its ways, morally and geopolitically -- and not to lash out at the terrorists, which, it is confidently asserted, will only breed more terrorists. Those holding this view tended to focus most fervently in their writings and pronouncements on the evil being done to Muslim immigrants in America, for it buttressed the case that the United States badly needed to put its own house in order.

But while grimly judgmental about America, this view is comparatively optimistic about the future, assuming, that is, that the United States starts behaving better. That is perhaps its deepest attraction. In effect, those holding it can pretend that nothing changed on Sept. 11, 2001; in other words, that the event, however tragic, was epiphenomenal. Unsurprisingly, those who believe this version of what has happened tend to talk not of the future but of the past -- Sabra and Shatila, the Gulf War, the Iraqi embargo, the dirty wars in Central America. For them, the World Trade Center attack changed nothing, and they can go on as before.

The alternative view, to which I happen to subscribe, is that the destruction of the World Trade Center was one of those rare events that symbolically marks a new and much bleaker era. [read more]

Monday the 24th

Rhetorical Ethnocentricism: Understanding the Rhetorical Landscape of Arab-American Relations. In a google cache, via JRobb. Now that there's a lot more attention focused on "what we're saying and what they're saying," it's helpful to understand the role that language plays in two cultural contexts.

For the American culture, language appears to be a medium of communication used to convey information. Emphasis is on function and by extension substance, meaning, and accuracy. A message may tend to be valued more for its content than style. For the Arab culture, language appears to be a social tool used in the weaving of society. Emphasis is on form over function, feeling over meaning, and effect over accuracy. Accordingly, content may be less important than the social chemistry a message creates.

This page on the Cantor-Fitzgerald site is unspeakably sad.

Both Ends Against The Middle

Just been looking at the Book Review section of the L.A. Times. Steve Wasserman has an article that explores 6 different works, called Future Shock: Why History Refuses to Give America a Reprieve from the Reality It Helped Create. Of one of the six, Jihad vs McWorld: How Globsallism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World by Benhamin R. Barber, Wasserman says:

[The book is] a coruscating and lucid look at what he insists is the underlying conflict of our times: religious and tribal fundamentalism versus secular consumerist capitalism. It offers a lens through which to understand the chaotic events of the post-Cold War world.

�����Barber believes the world is simultaneously coming together and falling apart. On the one hand, corporate mergers are steadily weaving the globe into a single international market, challenging traditional notions of national sovereignty. On the other hand, the world is increasingly riven by fratricide, civil war and the breakup of nations. He argues that what capitalism and fundamentalism have in common is a distaste for democracy. [emphasis mine] Both, in different ways, lay siege to the nation-state itself--until now the only guarantor of conditions that have permitted democracy to flourish.

�����Democracy, Barber suggests, may fall victim to a twin-pronged attack: by a global capitalism run rampant, whose essential driving force destroys traditional values as it seeks to maximize profit-taking at virtually any moral or religious or spiritual cost; and by religious, tribal and ethnic fanatics whose various creeds are stamped by intolerance and a rage against the "other." [read more]

Just so's you know

That Doc Searls guy... he's not a hoax!

He happens to live very close to the campus where I went to college, so in the midst of my reunioning, I dropped by with a coupla friends to see him n his family. Very fun!

I'm sure you're all so curious, so here are a few pix. ....

Doc and his son Jeff, on the backyard swing.

Doc's son Jeff recruited swing pushers. Here, he convinced Mike to give 'im a whirl, too.

Here are Doc and I, together. Now no one can claim that either of us is a made-up Kaycee-like Hoax. We each are witnesses. Really.

Oh, and my college reunion? Fantastic. The pix I took from that are going on a different site, for all us class of '81 alumni types.

I must say that it's nice to do a blog entry that isn't about, well, you know, that... that.... *bad* thing.

. . . . .

Photographica is back!!!

The Last Day of Summer

Gee, for some reason, saying that today's the last day of summer sounds almost... well... apocalyptic. I pray we aren't heading toward a nuclear winter.

My dear grrlfriend has been learning some new Manila skills in order to express her outrage at all of this. After I talked her through uploading a picture, she said, "this is the most fun I've had all week."

Gotta take those moments of fun and run with them.

Speaking of which, I'm off to a college reunion. 20th! wow!

Thursday the 20th

Adel Karas, keeper of a small corner shop, was shot dead in his store. The place, close by—San Gabriel (I live in the region, it's called the San Gabriel Valley). Tho detectives call it robbery-related (tho no money was taken), FBI have opened a hate-crime probe. "If Karas was targeted for his perceived religion or ethnicity, a cruel absurdity lies in the ignorance of the act: He was a Coptic Christian who had fled Egypt more than 20 years ago because of persecution by the Muslim majority."

. . .

Listening to the George Bush speech on the radio, feeling mostly heartsick, heartsick for what's to come, I take a bit of comfort that one of the longest periods of applause was in response to this statement:

I ask you to uphold the values of America, and remember why so many have come here. We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them. No one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith. [read the entire text]

But I cringed at the statements about how we're a beacon of democracy, our leaders are elected (cough, cough). And also the discussion of why we are hated, and about totalitarian regimes—which totally ignored the role that our government has played in other parts of the world.

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A day off from the net... it wasn't intentional, but was welcome, nonetheless.

L.A. Times: Phone Call from Aboard Flight 11 Partial description of a phone call from a flight attendant aboard American Airlines Flight 11.

William Safire: Equal Time For Hitler

The primary source of information for the average Afghan is the radio, often a transistor made 30 years ago. The 20 transmitting towers of the Taliban's Radio Shariat (meaning "Islamic law") are spewing out hatred of America all the time.

Why is there no Radio Free Afghanistan broadcasting the truth about the consequences of harboring the headquarters of terrorism?

Why are Afghans not told that their rulers' decision to hide Osama bin Laden is the direct cause of the withdrawal of U.N. relief and the starvation that they now face?