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More WTC News
Posted by
michael
on Thu Sep 13, 2001 08:42 AM
from the staten-island-ferry-now-running dept.
from the staten-island-ferry-now-running dept.
Current WTC happenings: The FBI is searching ISPs with FISA warrants. Architects and civil engineers are starting to speculate on why the towers collapsed. Pictures: NASA, a powerful photoessay, newspaper headlines. Current investigation news: LA Times, NY Times, CNN. They're finally starting to mention casualty figures. Finally, bjb writes: "It isn't the hollywood blockbuster of a story, but I'm a daily reader of Slashdot, and I was on the 38th floor of the WTC 1 building when the first plane hit. Oh, and I was reading Slashdot at the time. You can read about my experience here. It was originally an email that I sent out to friends and family, but I was asked by NPR's Talk of the Nation to make it a web page."
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And here comes Carnivore... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And here comes Carnivore... (Score:4, Funny)
I bet the FBI will suprise people and remove the boxes after they find/don't find what they are looking for.
Re:And here comes Carnivore... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And here comes Carnivore... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm all for civil liberties, but we need to understand that we pay for them with security. The same people who have been claiming that this event will strip us of our civil liberties have also been complaining that the government failed to protect us.
It's understandable that this could happen considering how little access to secure information we want to allow the government to have.
Re:And here comes Carnivore... (Score:5, Insightful)
No amount of inconveniencing will give you the safety you crave.
Repeat after me...
No amount of 'inconveniencing' will give me the safety I crave.
Repeat it over and over as a mantra until you achieve enlightenment.
I could learn martial arts well, with a bunch of buddy's, get onto the plane, kill a few people with some well placed jabs, and take control. Would you be willing to be manacled to prevent this? You can make knives quickly out of many things. Take a stiff plastic or metal box for example. Are you going to make people strip before they get on the plane? I'm sure someone more imaginative than I can come up with scenarios in which even being stripped and manacled would not be enough.
There is no security in the direction you wish to go. As Benjamin Franklin said "Those who would trade liberty for security will get and deserve neither.".
The only way to prevent these attacks is to decrease the motivation to perform them. This is done by being a nicer country, and by being implacably and harshly punitive in our response to such attacks.
I will be traveling by air soon, and I intend to make up some leaflets to distribute at the airport about this. It's either that, or get upset at being patted down and create a scene. I think the leaflet approach to venting my frustrations is much more constructive.
Re:And here comes Carnivore... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure alot of the Japanese Americans who were "inconvenienced" (internment/inconvencience, what's the difference, right RM?) during WWII would see things differently. This is a balancing act for the govt., to be sure, but hyper-reactivity by hawkish proclaimers does not lend itself well to balancing. By seeing and responding to only one angle of this multifaceted issue, those who would bomb now and forget about asking questions later reveal the true nature of their response - anger is always a secondary emotion to fear. Fear is understandable. We all feel it right now. But while it's comforting for some to cover up that primary emotion with tough talk, it's also dangerous to those who might listen, and to the nation as a whole.
Re:And here comes Carnivore... (Score:4, Insightful)
Get real...
Take your logic a step further - Congress needs to immediately pass legislation banning the hijacking of airplanes, and further banning the crashing of airplanes into buildings. Because if those specific laws were in existance, this tragedy could have been prevented. Yeah, that's the ticket...
Ban anything remotely resembling a weapon from going on an airplane. You still have two large problems:
1) the almost complete inability to detect these "banned" weapons given today's lax airport security and low-skilled minimum-wage "security" guards
2) the ability to kill without a "banned" weapon - a pen can easily be used to kill someone, bare hands, fingernails, whatever extreme you wish to take the example. The "prison" examples as frequently sited - prison bans all weapons, prisoners still manage to kill each other despite the bans.
The basic message of Omnifarious' posting is correct. Your statement is similar to another former slashdot arguement, that Columbine supposedly could have been prevented by tougher laws on carrying guns into a school. Right...
The people who put this attack into motion did not care about airline regulations, or laws of any kind. This was an act of terror, an act of war. Tougher rules at airports without increased levels of inforcement and inspection will accomplish NOTHING. The only response the people who committed this act were/are possibly considering is military response.
We have two options: respond militarily, or respond socially (change our public and political policies). I personally favor both - a swift (and devastating) military response (once a proper target is identified) and an attempt to shift our public and political policies in regards to terrorism, terrorist states, and etc.
Certainly, we can and should increase airport security. My base argument here is that flying (like driving) is a privledge and not a right. If I understand that I have to be knocked unconscious in order to fly on a public commercial airline, then I either choose to fly (and be drugged) or not. Likewise, more reasonable talks of banning all sorts of weapons on airplanes does not infringe upon my rights, only upon a privledge. Whether or not I feel it is intelligent to start taking weapons out of the hands of innocent people over this is a whole different matter (argument: ~20 civilians with large knifes on each plane would have almost certainly been able to prevent this sort of hijacking, had they tried to do so).
Re:And here comes Carnivore... (Score:4, Informative)
No-one except Tom Clancy, that is.
Loss of privacy is not necessarily loss of liberty (Score:5, Insightful)
Call it my contrarian nature, but amidst all the usual self-centered-libertarian-police-state-paranoia, I feel compelled to point out that loss of privacy is not necessarily loss of liberty. Nowhere is it guaranteed even in the US constitution; never has it been established that privacy actually produces a freer society; and in practice the idea that you can actually have privacy is a total myth. David Brin makes a good case in his for all of this and more in his controversial The Transparent Society [amazon.com] (chapter one available here [kithrup.com]). His core arguement is for complete transparency - that all citizens should be allowed to observe the activities of individuals, government, and business - rather than the alternative of those having the power to do so using surveillance to their private advantage. While you'll almost certainly have objections, it's well worth consideration, and it's always worth it to look at things from an alternative perspective.
Coordinated Efforts (Score:4, Funny)
Just a thought---
space imaging nyc image 09/12/2001 (Score:4, Funny)
http://www.spaceimaging.com/newsroom/attack_galler y.htm [spaceimaging.com]
Re:It's been said before... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure it is. Events like this open up the potential for society to give up liberties for perceived safety which probably isn't all that real. I for one worry about the future of our liberties in teh name of 'preventing another WTC'
I submit that these bastards could STILL get the weapons on board even with all the changes. No curb side checkin? LIke thats gonna make a DIFFERENCE? Its SO simple to make a weapon - just as a prisoner. Consider this:
Shaving kit - inside, one normal razor that uses a double edged blade. Blade installed, no spares. Elsewhere in your bag, a plastic or wooden handle of some kind with slot for blade, by itself or with other stuff that looks innocent. Maybe a little super glue. GO to a stall in a terminal bathroom. Take blade, insert in handle, glue in place. Slit someones throat when necessary and take over whatever vessel you're on. Think about it - you can probably come up with plenty on your own. Thats just one way and there are plenty others. These guys planned this for MONTHs as the reports of flight training indicate. You wouldn't even NEED to bring weapons with you - maybe one of your pals works IN THE TERMINAL past the checkpoints and cna give you a weapon of some kind. Banning plastic knives? OK - thats gonna help!
Face it folks - no matter WHAT happens, the only thing that could prevent something like this is sky marshals on EVERY flight in civilian clothes. And even then, they may not be able to overpower 5 guys with weapons (since shooting guns in the air is er, not a great idea)
So in short, I think our forefathers wisdom IS applicable and helpful to remind folks that we may be fooled into giving up liberties for supposed security that doesn't really exist
Re:It's been said before... (Score:4, Insightful)
Could an airliner's skin be sufficiently toughened for Air Marshals to be able to use rubber bullets?
If not, tasers, those new infra-red stun devices the military are playing with - even a harpoon gun could be very effective against skyjackers.
A third option, that nobody seems to have mentioned - the pilots already have a "panic button" in the event of a skyjacking. This could easily also put the plane irreversibly on automatic pilot, or remote piloting, to ensure that the vehicle -could- not be used in this way, and WOULD land safely at the nearest suitable emergency runway.
There is a term, used in connection with hostile acts, and the response given. That term is "Dane Gold". It is said that in the times of King Ethelred the Unready, whenever the Danes landed a raiding fleet, King Ethelred would rather just pay them to go away. After a while, the Danes cottoned on to the fact that simply landing on a beach was an easy way to make money. And they made a lot of it.
Thus, today, when someone provides a means for a hostile force to repeatedly profit off exactly the same strategy, they are said to be paying "Dane Gold".
Provided it is even remotely possible for any terrorist organisation to use civilian aircraft as weapons against America, then America is vulnerable to paying that Dane Gold.
Mrs. Thatcher and Ronald Reagan adopted the philosophy of "the only ones paying are the other side". Often, this involved storming aircraft, with guns blazing. I, personally, have intense dislike for their hard-line attitudes. However, I'm not even going to question the fact that the legacy of their strategy was a massive reduction in such actions, in the air and at sea.
The only alternative I can see to their hardline tactics would be Air Marshals on every flight with enough disabling force to cripple any attempt, and some kind of "panic button" the pilot can use as a "last resort" to disable the controls beyond any person's ability to restore, in-flight.
Islamic fundamentalism (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting reading:
- Terror in the Mind of God: the Global Rise of Religious Violence [dannyreviews.com]
- Political Islam [dannyreviews.com]
Meanwhile, in Australia they are already stoning school buses with Islamic kids on them [smh.com.au]... (I have a rant about this on my home page [danny.oz.au].)Danny [danny.oz.au]
[I have written 600 book reviews [dannyreviews.com]]
Hatred against muslims (Score:5, Insightful)
Be careful -- there may be truth in what you say, but it can be misinterpreted.
This is a good place to point out that Islamic leaders around the world have condemned the attack as inhuman and un-islamic. American Islamic leaders in particular have directed their followers to donate blood, money, to volunteer in the emergency response and to assist law enforcement in any way they can. It is also very likely that some of the victims of this crime were muslims themselves.
The US press has not picked up on this yet, but the foreign press (e.g. The London times [thetimes.co.uk]) is starting to to report [thetimes.co.uk] the beginning of a wave of hate crimes in America against Muslims. I even heard one congressinal pinhead libelling Islam as a totalitarian ideology masquerading as a religion. These developments are disgraceful and unworthy.
The real division is not between religions, but between people who believe there can be civilized coexistence between people who have different viewpoints, and those who believe that one side can only enjoy freedom at the expense of the other. Osama bin Laden is one of the latter, and he deivides into two camps: the Christian/Jewish side and the Muslim side. People spreading religious or ethnic hatred are, in effect agreeing with him and doing his work; their personal feelings towards him are simply petty tribalism.
Make no mistake: America was targeted because we are a free, open and pluralistic society where muslims can coexist peacefully with christians, jews and even atheists. This marks us out for special hatred,and with good reason: our success and preeminence in the world shows that all ideologies of intolerance preaching freedom for one viewpoint through the oppression of others are lies.
What we must NOT do (Score:5, Insightful)
What you must NOT do! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is only partly correct. Most of the Middle Eastern oil wells were actually initially exploited by the British, which is also evident from the fact that most of the area was either British protectorate or heavily influenced by the British.
The problem is that it has not and never been proved that they are actually guilty of this.
If you want to save the principles of Western civilization, how about adhering to them in the first place? Like, not bombing someone out of existence because he said he didn't like you and someone else killed a couple of thousand people in your country?
With reactions like this, you can bet that:
BTW As far as Syria is concerned, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad has recently offered support to the US in combatting international terrorism. Now what, nuke 'em?
The problem is that America doesn't know what to do now. Throwing bombs around is probably not the best thing to do just because nobody can think of an alternative.
Re:What we must do (Score:5, Insightful)
Logically this would make sense, but religious fanaticism is not based on logic but something more like brainwashing and indoctrination.
Remember these terrorists committed their acts in the belief they were doing the right thing. Even though there is no religion that I know of that could possibly condone such barbarism - this is not about religion, religion is a victim, along with countless innocent people. In that regard, there would be no "toppled by their own people" since these fundamentalists would rather die for their beliefs/brainwash.
A conventional war in Afganistan would be very costly. Remember the invincible Russian army was decimated. The problem is that there isn't a visible standing army, but a guerilla army that hides in the towns and cities. To push for victory in this theatre would involve levelling every village and town and leave nothing standing, which would involve thousands more innocent victims.
There isn't an easy answer, but a decision must be made. Why is US/Nato nuking/destruction all of Afganistan better that Tuesday's actions? To me it is still genocide.
Concentrate on eliminating all sources of indoctrination, remove the tools for brainwashing and intolerance - remember that the freedom of choice ends when the actions are criminal, fundamentalists behind this attack have abrogated their rights. Root out the organisations responsible. There is no quick solution, only a path that needs to be travelled. Once everyone on the planet has the freedom to choose their destiny can the barricades these terrorists have created be broken down.
Re:What we must do (Score:5, Interesting)
Aside from letting the military take care of military matters, I'll tell you what we should do.
We should mow our lawns. We should go out to eat. We should sit on the porch with a beer. We should travel across the country. When the planes are back in the air, we should fly somewhere.
The terrorists don't have any real hope of getting the U.S. to say "Sorry. We'll stop doing the things that make you angry." They have no defined goal toward which they are working. They have a vague goal of defeating us. Because of this, they know they won't gain anything substantial by performing these acts.
The one thing they can accomplish, is to get us to drastically change our way of life. They can frighten us into not travelling about our own country the way we used to. They can get us to hide in our homes, to quit going to our sporting events, movies, etc.
That's their one spoil of war: our lifestyle. And that's not a spoil the military can get back for us. We have to do that. We have to refuse to give it to them.
The perception, even among ourselves, is that American culture is sometimes shallow. Hopefully, we will prove through this time that it only appears so because we refuse to surrender it to such people as would try to take it from us.
We need to go to our baseball games. We need to go buy a bunch of things we don't need from Walmart. We need to take our SUV's out to the lake for a picnic, or to go camping. We need to be ourselves. If we become somebody else, anybody else, we surrender.
Architectural stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
I was very much impressed with the way the buildings withstood that kind of impact long enough for some people to escape. The loss of life if they had gone immediately, or had toppled sideways just doesn't bear thinking about.
Re:Architectural stuff (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like some bean counter had the influence on the design that an engineer should have. Could be the basis of a huge class action wrongful death suit.
New York Red Cross Needs Tech (Score:5, Interesting)
[techtv.com]
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/showtell/sto
Re:emergency staircase (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The towers collapsed for a simple reason! (Score:4, Informative)
According to him, exposing the steel to 1000F heat for an hour was what finally caused it to fail...
Re:The towers collapsed for a simple reason! (Score:4, Informative)
The Buildings (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently, for the vast majority of buildings in the USA, an impact by an aircraft, similar to what happened, would take them down almost instantly. The construction of these buildings saved lives.
There are many articles in New Scientist Magazine on many related subjects to this event, including one that discusses the buildings [newscientist.com] in some detail.
- - -
Radio Free Nation [radiofreenation.com]
an alternate news site using Slash Code
"If You have a Story, We have a Soap Box"
- - -
Re:The Buildings (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. That the buildings lasted as long as they did is a testament to the engineers who designed and built them. Can we do better the next time around? Absolutely... we have so much more materials and design research under our belts.
Complaining that the buildings "only" stood for about an hour or so seems silly to me. Some are asking, "Why did the buildings collapse?" Well, I'm no civil engineer, but if I had to guess, I'd say it's because THEY WERE RAMMED WITH BIG HONKING PASSENGER JETS CHOCK-FULL-O-FUEL. Sounds like a plausible explanation to me.
Re:The Buildings - The Fuel (Score:5, Interesting)
I, for one, think enough is enough. If these tanks were filled with foam, there is a good chance the momentum of the things would have carried the fuel tanks out the other side of the building and the buildings would not have fallen. They fell because of fire; and fuel cells greatly minimize fire.
The need for offsite backup (Score:5, Informative)
The Washington Post (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Honey, where did you put the map? (Score:4, Informative)
Don't Ask Why They Fell. (Score:5, Insightful)
Trying to build skyscrapers aircraft-proof isn't feasible, I don't think. But building them capable of resisting that kind of trauma for at least a little while is.
WTC bombing prophesyed on rap album cover. (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.rotten.com/news/articles/coup-cover-300 .jpg [rotten.com]
This is not a joke. It appeared in the current issue of Wired magazine, which was on newsstands before this all happened. I guess it's just one of those odd coincidences.
Group canceled that cover (Score:4, Informative)
Rotten dot com expresses all of our feelings: (Score:3, Troll)
time for voluntary biometric identification (Score:3, Interesting)
Back in 1995, I was the lead programmer for INSPass, the INS Passenger Accelerated Service System. Essentially, an individual trades the convenience of getting through customs for giving up their hand geometry on a card that is verified at a kiosk. [usdoj.gov]
Now I read that there are going to be long lines at the airport. A wonderful place for a repeat of the terrorist disasters in Rome and Athens back in the mid-80's. And when it gets really, really busy, an excellent place for a bad guy to get waived through the lined on a frustrating day or by an airline employee who doesn't know what a fake driver's license looks like.
What I would like to see is some sort of voluntary program, offered by either the FAA or the airlines themselves where smart cards are issued. On them, is my face. On the chip, my fingerprint and othe biographic information. I sign up some other time than a day I'm travelling. I agree to have my information checked against known terrorists lists (only)
When I go the airport, I go to a kiosk where I hold the card up to my face to an attendant, who watches me I insert the card and verify my fingerprint, when I'm issued a ticket
No, this is not foolproof. And some will still want to go through the old-fashioned line. And that's fine. But if enough people paticipate, it will take the work load off of those having to do identification the old fashioned way
I hate giving up personal freedoms. But here is one case I'm willing to make an exception.
Why the towers collapsed (Score:5, Informative)
1) Yes, the buildings did withstand the impact of the airplanes. They didn't fall immediately, did they?
2) Buildings are built to a certain fire code, in that the building won't completely catch on fire and collapse for a certain length of time (usu 1hr?). The escape routes are located generally in the four corners. Since the plane took out one of them, this means that the required escape time is now 2+ hours.
3) Jet fuel burns with a much higher temperature than normal fuel.
4) Steel expands and crystalizes under extreme heat. Since the plane(s) hit at a "centre"-ish spot, the steel tried to expand up and down, but since the steel in the "up" and "down" weren't hot and wouldn't move, the steel in the "centre" buckled.
5) Since jetfuel burns hotter, step 4 happened faster and also reduced the "buckle" time by a certain amount - when used along with the increased escape time required, means that considerably fewer people would be able to escape.
6) Since the steel buckled, the upper floors now come crashing down on to the floor immediately below. Being as that floor is not suited to hold X number of upper floors MOVING rapidly at it, it collapsed and repeat until bottom.
Therefore, it was the fire that made the buildings collapse, not the impact of the planes.
-mrsmalkav
Re: Steel Crystal Structures (Score:4, Informative)
I assume that there was both heat-related sag and a brittle region beyond that as you moved farther from the hottest flames. So, it is possible that the metal did, in fact, get brittle and snap in the heat, along with the sagging, leading to a sudden pancake type collapse.
Who would have thought that you needed to plan for hundreds or thousands of gallons of aircraft fuel when sizing fire supression gear in a tower?
Re:Why the towers collapsed (Score:4, Informative)
The steel only buckled right around the fire, but once those supports were removed, the skeleton was then able to buckle and move in ways that buildings shouldn't.
Also, on the escape time, the fire from the fuel probably made passage from the above floors through the escape routes nigh impossible. So pretty much if you were above the point of impact, you were in trouble. After the first impact, they had people from around the 90th floor calling on cel phones talking about the heat and smoke, saying "We're fucking dieing up here".
But yes, the fire is the cause, hence the choosing of planes heading across the country from a "local" airport - LOTS of fuel.
It is un-Islamic to kill innocent people (Score:4, Informative)
[A] 25-year-old constable sat on the floor beneath a single dangling light bulb. His name was Muhammad Anwar. He had heard something about the attack in America but he had no idea how many were killed or what cities were involved. Indeed, it seemed unlikely that he had ever heard of New York.
"Attacks like these are not a good thing because Muslims live all over the world and Muslims may have been killed," Mr. Anwar said hesitantly. By his reckoning, Americans were enemies of Afghanistan, as were Jews and Christians. He thought about this a bit more and retracted it partially. "There must have been all kinds of people in the building, not just bad Jews but good Jews, not just bad Christians but good ones." He remembered something he had learned in his madrassa, or religious school. "It is un-Islamic to kill innocent people," he said.
There will never again be a good day.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that planes have been used themselves as weapons, and the passengers with them, I doubt there will be a high-jacking where they're aren't people like Glick and Barret, who are among the few passangers who apparently made sure that flight 93 crashed in PA woods, and not a national landmark.
The sentiment has been repeated over and over these past two days: "If I fall, the guy behind me will get him."
I hope that if such a day ever comes for me, I can get over my imminent death fast enough to do some good.
Nothing is more dangerous than someone who thinks they have nothing to lose.
Re:There will never again be a good day.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The telly news this morning gave out a bit more detail about one of those guy's calls to his wife on the cell phone. He actually called her 4 different times. By the third one the WTC had already been hit twice, and his wife said that when she told him about hit he got really thoughtful and asked a lot of probing questions.
The next time he called, it was a simple "Three of us are going to do something."
Report from the ER (Score:5, Interesting)
Yesterday, one of the firemen was brought in - in his mid fourties, I would suppose. He had a brother and 3 sons who were all firefighters; one of the latter was not accounted for all day yesterday. He himself had gotten caught in the first collapse, had gotten out and went in the second building and was then caught in that collapse and received some blows of debris into his back, for which he was being treated. It's that kind of bravery from the very salt of the earth which makes me so proud to be an American. God bless to all. K
New Terrorism Victims: Privacy and Civil Liberties (Score:4, Interesting)
They were SUPPOSED to collapse (Score:3, Interesting)
My girlfriend is a civil engineering student, and they discussed the attacks in her Structural Engineering class yesterday. Apparently, the guys who designed the towers should be very proud. In a worst-case scenario, fires would (as they did) cause the steel structures to melt. The towers were designed so that, in that worst-case scenario, they would implode straight down instead of falling over.
Why you should help (Score:3, Insightful)
I can honestly say that the WTC, Pentagon, and Pennsylvania disasters have had a stronger effect on me than I would have ever imagined. I've been somewhat wigged out for the past two days, functioning on auto-pilot in order to get along with the business of life while I deal with feelings of horror, sadness, rage, and worst of all, helplessness.
Horror subsides - the media onslaught will always lead to de-sensitization. The images and video remain horrific, but somehow become lest horrifying through continued exposure. (I hope that makes sense...)
Sadness persists. It should. You should never be able to look back on September 11th and not feel sadness.
Helplessness is altogether different - it won't subside on its own. It requires action, and gone unchecked, can amplify every other negative emotion. This is why I finally got off my ass and donated last night. I realized that it's pointless to feel helpless, because it's so easy to help.
Give blood. If, like me, you can't give blood, give money. It's needed. If you don't have any money, go volunteer at your local blood center. If nothing else, pack an ice chest full of bottled water and hand it out to people waiting in line to donate blood! Do something. On September 11, 2002, when I ask you "What did you do to help one year ago?", I hope you have an answer that you're comfortable with.
So I've conquered helplessness. Horror will take care of itself. I welcome sadness as a sign of my own humanity.
That leaves only sweet, sweet rage.
Making the World Safe For (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe today my sign-off poem ("they were all good people") will make more sense. I've been sending you only very short poems, but today it's something a bit longer (about a page), a poem written at least 20 years ago that seemed to come back to life today:
Making The World Safe For
Yankee, you say, thinking
you understand me, thinking
the 24-point-headline ideas
by which WE fail to understand YOU
will suffice for understanding US.
We are your problem as you are ours;
Let us understand one another.
It won't be easy. While your children starve,
Most of us are trying to loose weight.
We speak from a different part
of the palate, look with a different
openness -- some say veiledness; we have
an innocence -- or is it barbaric daze;
idealism -- some say bullying self-righteousness;
squeamishness about death and torture
if we have to see it...
I am a fat, squeamish Yankee, taught
to understand you by your T-shirt-like labels:
"Kill Me", "Pity Me", "Exploit Me", "Bribe Me",
"Enjoy Me", "Fear Me". I AM not,
CANnot be the thing you think you see,
for I am what you are: the understanding,
not what is misunderstood, which is
where I am absent from myself, and so
become what is easiest to be,
because it fits the headline script:
The Fat Greedy Satan whose crime is
to have failed to make everyone like me;
whose crime is to have dreamed well,
but not well enough; to have created a game
so good, it became the only game in town,
but not good enough to let everyone play;
so now the new game is: Destroy my game.
If all can't have it, let no one have it.
Understand us: We do not need your help
to destroy America. We need your help
to create it. It has not yet been.
Understand us, for we do not. You,
who hate us or condescend to us or toady to us,
you trap us in your sticky visions,
which, hardening, preserve us, your nightmare,
like flies in amber. We cannot be that.
Please understand us. We don't want to destroy you.
But how else can we free ourselves
from your vision?
Dean Blehert
dean@blehert.com
poems and paintings at
www.blehert.com
"It's even sadder than you think:
They were ALL good people."
and as a final note:
Yes, of course -- you can post or forward any poem I send you. Just leave my name with it and, preferably, email and/or url. But at least the name.
Dean
Canadian Editorial (Score:3, Insightful)
Widespread but only partial news coverage was given recently to a remarkable
editorial broadcast from Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television
commentator. What follows is the full text of his broadcast.
"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most
generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth.
Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of
the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and
forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying
even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.
When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who
propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the
streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.
When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in
to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes.
Nobody helped.
The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into
discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about
the decadent, warmongering Americans.
I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the
erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other
country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the
Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why
do all the International lines except Russia fly American Planes?
Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the
moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk
about German technocracy, and you get automobiles.
You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon - not
once, but several times - and safely home again.
You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store
window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued
and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are
breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home
to spend here. When the railways of France,* Germany and India were breaking
down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the
Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned
them an old caboose. Both are still broke.
I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other
people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to
the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during
the San Francisco earthquake.
Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired
of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with
their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at
the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is
not one of those."
Steel supports melted in the fires (Score:3, Interesting)
Interestingly, only one of the two towers was insured [bbc.co.uk] as collapse of them both was unconceivable.
CNN is lying (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:CNN is lying (Score:4, Informative)
If they are really lying, they did a nice job changing the pictures... This [geocities.com] is supposedly a picture of Palestinians celebrating on Tuesday. Notice the little boy. He's wearing a Brazilian national soccer team shirt. And this shirt is quite different [cbf.com.br] from the ones used in 1991. Actually, this one is pretty recent, I think it was used the first time around the 1998 world cup.
I can't say if the picture is really from Tuesday, but it really can raise some questions about this "indie" article. That, and the fact that I live in Brazil and haven't heard a word from anyone at the University of Campinas about this.
Mod Down, CNN lies, but not this time (Score:4, Informative)
However, this time, they are reporting the truth. www.haaretzdaily.com , one of Israel's better independent newspapers also reported this story, and took photos on site, from the past few days, not 1991.
The story at Indymedia was posted by a Brazilian. I think I'll trust sources in Israel instead of someone in South America, Thank You very much.
There is a piece about this in Ha'aretz (Score:4, Interesting)
Also as anyone who has ever been to the top of the WTC towers knows - the towers would sway up to a foot in high winds, twisting actually. I'm dubious one could make a concrete structure that could sway w/o breaking. The other problem with very tall buildings which WTC attempted to solve is the problem of elevators. Queueing theory and engineers at Otis Elevator will tell that buildings that tall get consumed by elevator shafts which makes the building a financial mistake. WTC had an open floor design with each floor of nearly an acre of unobstructed space ~200x200 feet. That is why the buildings were held up by their outside walls and why there were express elevators and elevators that started at high floors.
The views of a Muslim in NY (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The views of a Muslim in NY (Score:5, Insightful)
Too many Americans have no idea what "Islam" is or what "Muslim" means -- they only see sensational media images of machine-gun-toting four-year-olds that are designed to get ratings.
What this person says is true: Jews, Christians and Muslims all pray to the same God. I do not mean this in some literary, allusory sense; I mean it literally. Most Christians know enough history to understand the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. Most Christians in the western world do not realize, however, that a similar historical closeness exists between these two and Islam. The three religions are as family, and they do share the same God, no matter how they pronounce that God's name in their own language.
Furthermore, the basic tenets of all three religions include a respect for human life. Don't be fooled by people who use Islam as an excuse for violence; they are just as misguided as the Catholic inquisitors were hundreds of years ago.
Please, do not hate your Islamic or Arabic neighbors in the US, and please do not hate those in other countries based solely on religious or ethnic origin either. Do not hate, period. Desire instead to compassionately and methodically stamp out violence wherever it exists in the world and through whatever means it occurs (these means to not always consist of physical force).
I guess that's my rant. It's been smouldering for two days...
Re:The views of a Muslim in NY (Score:4, Insightful)
Totally atheist ideoligies have killed at least as many people in the last century as any religious fanatic.
Soviet Pogroms: 20 million
Khmer Rouge: 2 million
Chinese Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution: ?? million
Moron. Read the First Amendment. People can worship or not worship whatever deity, life-force, or shrub they want to. We have laws in this country to to govern what people can do *to* each other. You want to "rehabilitate" those who have a religious bent? Go fuck yourself.
Re:The views of a Muslim in NY (Score:5, Informative)
They probably didn't teach you in Sunday School that most of continental Europe (outside the borders of the Roman Empire) was "Christianized" at swordpoint.
To say nothing of the spread of Christianity beyond Europe during the Colonial Era. (Indeed, there was a doctrine [called repartimenta, IIRC], that essentially justified enslavement of the natives as a way for them to "repay" the Europeans for having troubled themselves to sail across the seas to save their souls.
Don't confuse ideology with history.
An international tragedy (Score:3, Insightful)
- 100 Britons
- 78 Australians
- 100 Japanese
- 27 South Koreans
- 100 - 150 Mexicans
- 6 Irish
Those are the numbers given by CNN, but there have just got to be more from other nations. No Saudis, Isrealis, Chinese, or Indians are mentioned in the article, but it would seem likely that there were plenty of people around from those nations.Let's not forget... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sympathy matters (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a Canadian, but I've been as shaken up by all this as if I were American. The horror of what happened is independent of nation -- everybody (or almost everybody) on the entire planet was hurt by this. I can't imagine what the people in New York and Washington are going through, but I know it's a horrifying thing without anything resembling rational explantion.
Here in Edmonton, all flags are flying at half mast -- not just on government buildings, but anybody who has a flag is doing the same. In the Provincial Legislature Building, there are books that people are signing to express their condolences to America and tell you that you're not alone. A moment of silence has been recommended for 10am today.
Similar things are happening around the world.
And it matters. I was talking to an Arizonan friend of mine last night. We got to talking about all the ways the world is reaching out, about how people are trying to express their shock and horror and outrage all over the world, and she cried. She told me to tell everyone I could that it matters -- the books are not being signed in vain, the half-mast flags are being seen, the sympathy is felt.
It's as important as donating to the Red Cross.
Harry Browne's article, 2 minute read (Score:3, Insightful)
It's here:http://www.antiwar.com/orig/browne2.html [antiwar.com]
His homepage is here:http://www.harrybrowne.org [harrybrowne.org]
It will take you less that 2 minutes to read.
Anti-Islamic Violence (Score:3, Interesting)
Inconvenience vs. safety (Score:5, Insightful)
To those who are willing to be 'inconvenienced' at the aiport in order to be safe... No amount of inconveniencing will give you the safety you crave.
Repeat after me...
No amount of 'inconveniencing' will give me the safety I crave.
Repeat it over and over as a mantra until you achieve enlightenment.
I could learn martial arts well, with a bunch of buddy's, get onto the plane, kill a few people with some well placed jabs, and take control. Would you be willing to be manacled to prevent this? You can make knives quickly out of many things. Take a stiff plastic or metal box for example. Are you going to make people strip before they get on the plane? I'm sure someone more imaginative than I can come up with scenarios in which even being stripped and manacled would not be enough.
There is no security in the direction you wish to go. As Benjamin Franklin said "Those who would trade liberty for security will get and deserve neither.".
The only way to prevent these attacks is to decrease the motivation to perform them. This is done by being a nice country, and by being implacably and harshly punitive in our response to such attacks.
I will be traveling by air soon, and I intend to make up some leaflets to distribute at the airport about this. It's either that, or get upset at being patted down and create a scene. I think the leaflet approach to venting my frustrations is much more constructive.
Concerns and Analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
So I will leave that to someone esle (who is much more qualified to do so):
>Subject: It Doesn't Have to Be Like This
>Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 13:14:00 -0400
Death, Downtown
Dear friends,
I was supposed to fly today on the 4:30 PM American Airlines flight from LAX to JFK. But tonight I find myself stuck in L.A. with an incredible range of emotions over what has happened on the island where I work and live in New York City.
My wife and I spent the first hours of the day -- after being awakened by phone calls from our parents at 6:40am PT -- trying to contact our daughter at school in New York and our friend JoAnn who works near the World Trade Center.
I called JoAnn at her office. As someone picked up, the first tower imploded, and the person answering the phone screamed and ran out, leaving me no clue as to whether or not she or JoAnn would live.
It was a sick, horrible, frightening day.
On December 27, 1985 I found myself caught in the middle of a terrorist incident at the Vienna airport -- which left 30 people dead, both there and at the Rome airport. (The machine-gunning of passengers in each city was timed to occur at the same moment.)
I do not feel like discussing that event tonight because it still brings up too much despair and confusion as to how and why I got to live... a fluke, a mistake, a few feet on the tarmac, and I am still here, there but for the grace of...
Safe. Secure. I'm an American, living in America. I like my illusions. I walk through a metal detector, I put my carry-ons through an x-ray machine, and I know all will be well.
Here's a short list of my experiences lately with airport security:
* At the Newark Airport, the plane is late at boarding everyone. The counter can't find my seat. So I am told to just "go ahead and get on" -- without a ticket!
* At Detroit Metro Airport, I don't want to put the lunch I just bought at the deli through the x-ray machine so, as I pass through the metal detector, I hand the sack to the guard through the space between the detector and the x-ray machine. I tell him "It's just a sandwich." He believes me and doesn't bother to check. The sack has gone through neither security device.
* At LaGuardia in New York, I check a piece of luggage, but decide to catch a later plane. The first plane leaves without me, but with my bag -- no one knowing what is in it.
* Back in Detroit, I take my time getting off the commuter plane. By the time I have come down its stairs, the bus that takes the passengers to the terminal has left -- without me. I am alone on the tarmac, free to wander wherever I want. So I do. Eventually, I flag down a pick-up truck and an airplane mechanic gives me a ride the rest of the way to the terminal.
* I have brought knives, razors; and once, my traveling companion brought a hammer and chisel. No one stopped us. Of course,
I have gotten away with all of this because the airlines consider my safety SO important, they pay rent-a-cops $5.75 an hour to make sure the bad guys don't get on my plane. That is what my life is worth -- less than the cost of an oil change.
Too harsh, you say? Well, chew on this: a first-year pilot on American Eagle (the commuter arm of American Airlines) receives around $15,000 a year in annual pay.
That's right -- $15,000 for the person who has your life in his hands. Until recently, Continental Express paid a little over $13,000 a year. There was one guy, an American Eagle pilot, who had four kids so he went down to the welfare office and applied for food stamps -- and he was eligible!
Someone on welfare is flying my plane? Is this for real? Yes, it is. So spare me the talk about all the precautions the airlines and the FAA is taking. They, like all businesses, are concerned about one thing -- the bottom line and the profit margin.
Four teams of 3-5 people were all able to penetrate airport security on the same morning at 3 different airports and pull off this heinous act? My only response is -- that's all?
Well, the pundits are in full diarrhea mode, gushing on about the "terrorist threat" and today's scariest dude on planet earth -- Osama bin Laden. Hey, who knows, maybe he did it. But, something just doesn't add up.
Am I being asked to believe that this guy who sleeps in a tent in a desert has been training pilots to fly our most modern, sophisticated jumbo jets with such pinpoint accuracy that they are able to hit these three targets without anyone wondering why these planes were so far off path?
Or am I being asked to believe that there were four religious/political fanatics who JUST HAPPENED to be skilled airline pilots who JUST HAPPENED to want to kill themselves today?
Maybe you can find one jumbo jet pilot willing to die for the cause -- but FOUR? Ok, maybe you can -- I don't know. What I do know is that all day long I have heard everything about this bin Laden guy except this one fact -- WE created the monster known as Osama bin Laden!
Where did he go to terrorist school? At the CIA!
Don't take my word for it -- I saw a piece on MSNBC last year that laid it all out. When the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan, the CIA trained him and his buddies in how to commits acts of terrorism against the Soviet forces. It worked! The Soviets turned and ran. Bin Laden was grateful for what we taught him and thought it might be fun to use those same techniques against us.
We abhor terrorism -- unless we're the ones doing the terrorizing.
We paid and trained and armed a group of terrorists in Nicaragua in the 1980s who killed over 30,000 civilians. That was OUR work. You and me. Thirty thousand murdered civilians and who the hell even remembers!
We fund a lot of oppressive regimes that have killed a lot of innocent people, and we never let the human suffering THAT causes to interrupt our day one single bit.
We have orphaned so many children, tens of thousands around the world, with our taxpayer-funded terrorism (in Chile, in Vietnam, in Gaza, in Salvador) that I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised when those orphans grow up and are a little whacked in the head from the horror we have helped cause.
Yet, our recent domestic terrorism bombings have not been conducted by a guy from the desert but rather by our own citizens: a couple of ex-military guys who hated the federal government.
From the first minutes of today's events, I never heard that possibility suggested. Why is that?
Maybe it's because the A-rabs are much better foils. A key ingredient in getting Americans whipped into a frenzy against a new enemy is the all-important race card. It's much easier to get us to hate when the object of our hatred doesn't look like us.
Congressmen and Senators spent the day calling for more money for the military; one Senator on CNN even said he didn't want to hear any more talk about more money for education or health care -- we should have only one priority: our self-defense.
Will we ever get to the point that we realize we will be more secure when the rest of the world isn't living in poverty so we can have nice running shoes?
In just 8 months, Bush gets the whole world back to hating us again. He withdraws from the Kyoto agreement, walks us out of the Durban conference on racism, insists on restarting the arms race -- you name it, and Baby Bush has blown it all.
The Senators and Congressmen tonight broke out in a spontaneous version of "God Bless America." They're not a bad group of singers!
Yes, God, please do bless us.
Many families have been devastated tonight. This just is not right. They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, DC, and the planes' destination of California -- these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!
Why kill them? Why kill anyone? Such insanity...
Let's mourn, let's grieve, and when it's appropriate let's examine our contribution to the unsafe world we live in.
It doesn't have to be like this...
Yours,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
REUTERS: Second Penn debris site found (Score:3, Informative)
A second debris site, 6 to 8 miles from the original crash site of the Somerset county plane has been found. This does not jive with what we know now.
The thinking now is that an A) explosive device went off on the plane or B) we shot it down. Dont be so horrified by this second possibility. Its better than it crashing into another populated building. Read the article. Its amazing.
Is this a "war"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Time and again, I hear politicians from the mayor of NY to congress to the president refering to this as an act of war (see the president's most recent remarks [cnn.com]).
There's a problem with this. If this was an act of war, it cannot, by definition be a federal crime, no?
What's more, if this was an act of war, anyone we "capture" is a prisoner of war, and we must obey the terms of the Geneva Convention and other international treaties. They will have to be re-patriated after the conflict, or brought before an international court for war crimes, NOT tried for federal crimes in the U.S.
Now, I can see the attack on the WTC being called out as a war crime, but if we treat this as an act of war, the Pentagon was a valid military target, and the attack on that building was legal (the point could even be made that Bin Laden had made it quite clear that he had declared war on the U.S. before the attack, unlike the Japanese who had tried but failed to do so before Pearl Harbor). The use of a commercial airline to do it is obviously not acceptable, but I'm not sure how much weight that will carry in a war crimes tribunal.
What I'm trying to say is that we've painted ourselves a very restrictive map here. There's no such thing as "murder" in the criminal sense in an act of war. There's only international treaty on the rules of war.
Now, I'm not a lawyer (I hate the acronym), and I could be wildly off-base here, but is this just short-sightedness or have we decided that the support that we get from the international community as a result of an act of war outweighs our desire to bring these criminals (soldiers?) to trial? Or, are we just planning to ignore international law, and bring anyone we capture to trial anyway?
Red Cross Tech donations needed too! (Score:3, Informative)
The New York American Red Cross is in dire need of technology equipment and services. The field workers and sites have little, if any, means of communication and the central office is processing way too much on completely paper systems. Your help in acquiring these resources would be greatly appreciated.
If you can help, please contact:
Joe Leo, Assistant Director, Business Applications, IT
American Red Cross in Greater New York
phone: 212.875.2409
email: jleo@arcgny.org
150 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, NY 10023
PLEASE NOTE: His email is slammed, so don't resend your messages over and over again.
Following is the list of equipment that the Red Cross needs for its field workers and expanded Emergency Operations Centers. It also needs certified Citrix engineers and Microsoft-certified consultants.
40 IBM computers and laptops (with NICs)
Monitors (with desktops)
Any storage solutions
25 10/100 hubs (8+ Ports)
100 Cat5 cables (All lengths)
50 power strips
Any IBM-compatible memory
Any 3Com wireless NIC cards and LAN products
30 desktop-size UPSs
15 LaserJet printers (HP 1100 or faster) and printer supplies
20 external Zip drives and disks
Any diskettes and R/W CDs
5 external CD burners
5 duplex document scanners
25 extension cords
any colored tie wraps
any Velcro cable wraps
50 Citrix client licenses
12 PCMCIA LAN cards for IBM P20 ThinkPads, preferably 3Com (in addition to those in the new PCs)
50 Microsoft Exchange CALs
35 Microsoft SQL CALs
50 Microsoft Office Professional licenses
15 PC Anywhere licenses
DSL lines
PDAs with wireless capacity and service
Nextel cellphones and service
Thanks in advance for your generous assistance. Any donation will help greatly.
About collapses (Score:3)
The towers went down because they should have done that.
Yes it is horrible that thousands of lifes died on it. But just imagine what would have happened if the tower's security would me made more on standing up and not on falling down. Note that these two objectives cannot be equally achieved in the same level. If one makes a construction stronghold, then it would risk to see things falling from 400 meters over God knows where. On the contrary, if one would make a structure that easily falls down under the first serious weakness, then forget about strenghts.
The people who built WTC made a marvelous construction and we could see it in the way it went down. And be thankful to them for that. If not, just imagine that tower flying down over people who were hundreds of meters away. Imagine the HUGE fire that could break down in lower Manhattan. Note that, under the circumstances of the tragedy, a larger distribution of fire could easily create what is known to some experts as "fire front".
Fire fronts are things that usually remind tales of nuclear wars. But they are real and they happened. They happened in Roterdam in 1940. They were also the cause of the horrible destruction of Dresden in the end of the war. Fire fronts are fires that come up due to large temperatures and streets creating aerodynamical high-speed air currents. In fact, when the second tower went down I was really afraid that we could have got that thing. However the very local fall managed to cut the chances for fire to create a large surface, the main condition for a fire front.
So instead of blaming constructors and think on securities, shoulds, shouldn'ts, maybes and whatifs, maybe you should stop a little and thank those guys for having made a real secure construction. When they did that, no one could even imagine that hijacked airplanes would stuck fullspeed on the construction... Thank God that even after that the "critical fire plan" worked and we didn't have half Manhattan turned into a oven.
Attacks against Islamic Mosques in the US (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.dallasnews.com/attack_on_america/sto
http://www.dallasnews.com/attack_on_america/sto
I promised an Islamic friend at work that if there begin to be efforts to profile Islamic/Arabic members of the population(as there was during WW2 with the Japanese population, and some of them even sent off to camps) that at least myself and my household would vehemntly protest to anyone who would listen and a few who wouldn't.
I fear this is just the beginning.
Steven
Memo in IBM today (Score:3, Interesting)
From: L.V. Gerstner, Jr.
Subject: Update on Tuesday's Events
Dear Colleague:
I want to update you on where we are and what we've done since Tuesday's
tragic events.
First, and most important, we have accounted for all but a handful of our IBM
colleagues who might have been in New York City or Washington, D.C., when
the terrorists struck. Of course, we will not stop until we have accounted for
every one of our people. I know each of us is hoping and praying for a good
outcome.
Sadly, as we have reported on w3, we received confirmation on Wednesday
that one of our colleagues was aboard one of the hijacked airliners. I know
all of us are deeply grieved by this news. In addition, we have been learning
of IBMers whose family members were killed or injured. Moments ago, I
heard from an IBM colleague whose daughter was also on one of the hijacked
planes.
Words fail to convey my sadness when I hear such devastating news, but on
behalf of all IBMers worldwide, I wish to express our condolences to the
family and friends of all those who have lost loved ones.
Let me update you on what we are doing to help customers. You may be
surprised to learn that more than 1,200 IBM customers were located in the
World Trade Center or within a two-block radius. Hundreds of them have
contacted us since Tuesday morning. Currently, we're managing or have
already resolved 20 full-blown emergency situations. We're rolling in large
servers, thousands of ThinkPads and workstations; we're providing thousands
of square feet of data center capacity; re-creating data processing
environments that were destroyed; and relocating customers' operations to
IBM facilities. In addition, we are helping various disaster relief organizations
with IBM products and assistance. Thousands of our colleagues are on the
case, and the work proceeds around the clock.
I continue to receive hundreds of notes from IBMers all over the world. I trust
you understand that I cannot respond to each of them, but I want you to
know that I read every one. I have been deeply moved by the outpouring of
concern and, most of all, your compassionate offers to help in any way
possible.
There are plenty of opportunities for individuals to help. Those of you who
have offered your time and skills may yet be called on, so stand by. Many
have asked if we're going to run blood drives at IBM facilities. We have been
in contact with the Red Cross and have been advised that the best way to
provide blood is to donate it at the local community level. As it happens,
several IBM locations in the U.S. were planning blood drives this week and
next. These will proceed.
A number of relief funds have been established by government and volunteer
agencies, and I know from your notes IBMers will be extraordinarily generous,
as you have been in a number of prior national emergencies. We will provide
on w3 information on ways individuals can contribute.
A special fund, called The September 11th Fund, has been established in New
York City by various organizations, including the United Way. This fund will
deliver financial services and assistance to those who were affected by
Tuesday's catastrophe. IBM has pledged $5 million in cash, technology and
technical assistance to this fund. This is in addition to the uncountable
product and human assistance IBM is providing to other agencies and
organizations to help them manage through the crisis.
As I wrote to you on Tuesday, the most important thing any of us can do is
take care of the job at hand and keep IBM moving forward. I ask you to
remain focused on your customers, your job -- wherever you are in the world
-- and trust that the local teams in New York and Washington, D.C., will
reach out for all the additional assistance they need.
Your concern and self-sacrificing spirit make me so proud of our company and
of each other. Let's stay focused, and stay together.
Amtrak is adding service (Score:4, Informative)
Re:An interesting commentary (Score:3, Informative)
This was written by Gordon Sinclair in 1973 at the end of the Vietnam Conflict.
You can read about it at this site [ryerson.ca], including the aftereffects of what it meant to his career - both good and bad. There's also a RealAudio copy of the recording he did of this, which is backed up by 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic'.