More WTC News 1639
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."
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:3, Insightful)
I've been stunned by the number of people bitching about how the US is going to become a police state, how their liberties have been taken away because they can't carry Smith & Wesson onto the plane, etc.
It's a difficult balance, and some people will always be upset at where the scales fall. For now, let's just accept what protection our government is trying to give us, and complain about it later after we've eliminated whatever threat has caused this
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:3, Insightful)
Since mantras seem to catch on well here (see far below) repeat this one.
If someone is willing to die to kill me there is very little I can do about it.
Not to be defeatist, but that is a very very powerfull force. Yes, if you really want to spend 10 years of your life in a tibetan monistary becoming a total bad ass you could probably hijack a jet with martial arts. Or you could cut a knife out of a stiff plastic box with your teeth. I suppose, with adequate training you could even take over a plane with nothing more than a package of peanuts and a complimentary beverage.
But that's not likely to happen. I know what many of you are thinking, they took over the planes with knives? I'm an active student of the martial arts. A knife is FAR more dangerous inside of 10 feet than a gun is. It's about as deadly inside of 20 feet. Now, at 30,000 feet I'd much rather have a knife on my side than a gun, because one stray shot and the plane has a new skylight. Point being, any research by any amature and you'll realize that knives are the single most effective tool aside from a bomb for hijacking an aircraft.
So here's where I'm going with this. Damn your civil liberties, at least on an aircraft. No, people don't need to be shackled, and they don't need to be treated like they are in a state prison, but our airport security is pathetic. I did a risk assessment on commercial airtravel four years ago. I discovered that 3 out of 4 times airport security won't recognise a -=handgrenade=- going through an x-ray machine. So no, we don't need to do rectal cavity searches. Anyone who tells you that is an alarmist and probably not the brighest bulb on the tree, but we do need to enforce the security protocols that have always been there. That, and can someone please tell me who thought that having knife blades under four inches was allowable? Yeesh.... how deep is your neck anyhow?
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:3, Insightful)
Likewise I will vote against any politician who thinks that invading my privacy in real life will help national security.
Heck, we already had enough information on these guys that we should have known there were suspected terrorists on the flight. Simply connecting that info with "planes off of their flight plans" would have revealed that we had a problem with about 20-30 minutes to get our attack jets in the air.
What, exactly, is carnivore going to do about the fact that we ignore the data we already have?!
Re:And here comes Carnivore... (Score:4, Informative)
No-one except Tom Clancy, that is.
Re:And here comes Carnivore... (Score:3, Interesting)
Freedom isn't free. We must all be willing to pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor in defense of Liberty. Any enemy, foreign or domestic, who attempts to deprive us of our freedom and liberty deserves no mercy.
Freedom and security are inversely proportionate to one another: whenever you increase security, you by necessity sacrifice freedom. Preserving our collective freedom, for ourselves and our children, is more important than any one person's life.
"You cannot enslave a free man; the worst you can do is kill him." -- Robert A. Heinlein
Re:And here comes Carnivore... (Score:3)
In fact, I would not be at all surprised if inside ten years we see at least attempts to amend the constitution, where neccessary, to except those two areas... communications and transportation... from the application of civil liberty laws.
Get used to it, you live in the big bad world now.
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.
Re:My take on things (Score:3, Interesting)
2. The terrorist supposedly told the passengers they also had a bomb. It seems that for the 3 planes that hit the passengers probably didn't know they were going on a crash course, and were told they would not be harmed. Given that they were probably hoping for the best. Supposedly the 4th plane crashed in PA b/c the passengers DID find out they would be screwed either way.
Re:What the hell do you expect? (Score:3, Insightful)
...
Carnivore, and Echelon were first predicated on fears of terrorist activity-- fears that were dismissed by civil libertarians as somewhat vacuous in the past.
...
For one, I believe that the arguments against Carnivore and Echelon were less predicated on the lack of a threat, but on how they were being used (or could be used in the absence of any oversight and surpervision). Carnivore, for instance (leaving Echelon, in whatever degree it actually exists aside), has problems in its wide reaching grasp, and I believe that less people have a problem with it existing as a properly implimented "wire tapping device" (needing to get a court order, etc.), than with the fact that it seemed to collect data outside the scope of what it should be looking for (ie. collecting data on people outside the scope of the court order neccessary for a Wiretap to be put in place).
As far as physical barriers, yes it is a sad fact that more of them will probably be created. That is unfortunately the case when you have the sad reality of what happened to contend with.
I am also willing to be that we will return to the 70's when there was an armed U.S. Marshal on all commerical airflights. Surprise, we aren't safe. These are conditions that have only existed in states under seige such as Israel (it is stardard policy for all ElAl flights to include at least one trained marksman).
If you caught most of the news coverage on the first day (and I think most people did), you might remember pictures of Palestinians dancing in the streets and celebrating the attack. Iraq also had people dancing in the streets, and the latest reports from the FBI are that the terrorists had passports from the United Arab Emerates, and Egypt, and that the rogue Saudi financer Osama Bin Ladin, who is still being hiddin in Afghanistan is behind this, and people wonder why there is no stability in the Middle-East and why there is no peace?
The latest estimates from the FBI are that the attacks may have been in the planning for up to 18 months. I'm still waiting for a second attack as I sit in the shadow of the Empire State Building writing this, and will probably go home soon since while we have a Net link, we have no phones (my wife slightly further up town has phones but no net), and we aren't expected to get service till Monday since there are so many other priorities and emergencies being taken care of.
I apologize for the ranting but I'll try to get back to topic...
Opposition to the growth of surveillance should pursist. It is sad that we may have a growing need for more invasive options, but there must (or at least SHOULD) be ways to balance even that against the current justifiable (as you say and I agree) fears.
Coordinated Efforts (Score:4, Funny)
Just a thought---
Re:Coordinated Efforts (Score:3, Informative)
I.e. You mearly want to know who did it. If that information is obtained illegally doesn't matter. It only needs to be accurate.
In fact you don't even need to be precise. I.e. you can narrow it down to a government and go flatten that country. Like I said war has different rules.
By extension if it's an individual that's responsible rather than a government, you can simply send an assassin after him rather than go for a trial.
I can for instance tell you what the Feds hope to discover. They want it to be Ben Laden acting on contract for Sadam. That way they can send in a full military strike and give the American people (through CNN) an adequate supply of revenge.
For the record however this isn't an American tragedy. Trinidad had an Embassy in the towers and There are several Jamaicans working in that complex. Perhaps over a hundred. Chances are some of us died too. Believe me we are every bit as pissed as you are.
Re:Coordinated Efforts (Score:3, Interesting)
T.
space imaging nyc image 09/12/2001 (Score:4, Funny)
http://www.spaceimaging.com/newsroom/attack_galler y.htm [spaceimaging.com]
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
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)
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.
Re:Don't Ask Why They Fell. (Score:3, Interesting)
people to get out) is remarkable! We need to make sure we keep building them like that.
But we also need to come up with methods of rapid evacuation of large towers.
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: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.
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?
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: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.
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.
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
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?
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'.
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.
Well said. Strength is virtue. (Score:3, Insightful)
You cannot use diplomacy or negotiation with the forces allied against us because they have never used or responded to these mechanisms before. These forces understand what they implement - targetted destruction.
Its amazing how insipid most of the postings have been, but in the long run we are simply going to have to relearn that our safety and way of life is paid for and protected by blood, although there is probably no hope for the incessant mental masturbators posting their anthems of weakness on /.
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.
What we must NOT do (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What we must do (Score:3, Funny)
you are right, the region is far too unstable NOW. but companies are chomping at the bit for this. part of the US funding of the Taliban was to create stability by helping the Taliban eliminate rivals. way to go. this is what happens when the people are not given the choice of what to do, powerful corporate interests dictate the actions of american foreign policy and will presumably continue to do so because no one realy seems to give a damn, even after all this.
Re:What we must do (Score:3, Interesting)
yes they are not buliding right now, but for mid-east to pakistan (and india) oil pipelines, afghanistan is a prime location. if it wasn't for their fascist government and current long-running civil wars.
-sam
Re:What we must do (Score:3, Insightful)
No, there will probably just as much. For every person decrying American "imperialism," there is another person decrying American "isolationism."
I'm not even going to bring up the "What about Hitler" argument. An America who "minds its own business" will be hated for the sin of not doing, of sitting in its ivory tower while people starve, for being rich and complacent while people elsewhere are killed for their race or religion, and for saying "That's not my problem" while people are brutally oppressed.
And then someone, feeling he is justified in destroying the fat, rich America, will attack us so that we do pay attention to someone's suffering. People will hate us because of who we are, not because of what we do. When will Harry Browne learn?
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)
We Are On Notice (Score:3, Insightful)
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]]
Rational governments? (Score:3, Insightful)
This I think is the crux of of the matter. You haven't (and I am not being anti-American in this, Britain has made many of the same mistakes).
You gave support to Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war when your client government in the shape of the Shah was ousted.
You supported the Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan (including Bin Laden, who allegedly was funded by the CIA) when it looked as though they could be a thorn in the side of the Soviet Union.
You can hardly expect the people of Chile to believe you installed rational governments when they had to put up with Pinochet for so many years.
Yes, this was an appalling crime, done by some appalling people. Some understanding of the history of the population from where the criminals came from might prevent such a crime happening again.
Re:We Are On Notice (Score:3, Troll)
The rights of the Palestinians have been systematically trampled. In the Persian Gulf America supports random despotic regimes based merely on their support for American interests. Let us not forget that Bin Laden was supported by the CIA when it was convenient for him to fight in Afghanistan. Sadam was backed when it was convient to oppose the Iranian government that was in itself created to remove the American backed dictatorship of the Shah.
I know this is anti American but I should say that I am not. I honestly believe that America does tend to support Freedom and Democracy. However this is not the case in the Middle East. If it was these acts would not be taking place.
President Bush was correct when he called this a war. The only thing is that he didn't realise which war this was like. It's Vietnam all over again. The United States' aims are vague and are basically that the US and Israel can do whatever they want without respecting the values that they hold dear in the rest of the world. And think about this, why did the US withdraw from Vietnam ? Because it was immoral or because the cost to the US in lives and resources became too great.
The US should learn from it's mistakes and apply the values which it purports to hold dear everywhere.
What you are proposing is to fix the symptoms and not the cause. Fix the cause, be true to democracy and peace. First of all engage Iran, Iran has recovered from it's extremism and now has a president and a population who are desparate to return into the world system. Then, either invade Iraq or end the blockade, whose death count [oneworld.org] dwarves the loss of life in the US over the past few days. Finally, and this is the most difficult part, force Israel to make peace. Israel has a right to exist, but that right cannot include the right to persecute Palestinians. This is the only way and it will eventually happen. What you are proposing, the persecution of 'Islamic Fundamentalism' comes dangerously close to the persecution of Islam. There are 1.3 Billion muslims. The US cannot tell all these people that holy shrines that they have had for 1000 years they cannot have, or that their religion is babaric.
The US can stop these attacks. But it is not by further war. A truly amazing president, like Nixon, must realise that this is a conflict in which the US must understand it's own actions and change it's behaviour. America is a truly great country, perhaps the greatest in history, however this does not mean all US actions are correct.
Re:We Are On Notice (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit. Yours is a simplistic explanation for a complex religio-political phenomenon -- one thing for sure, Fundementalist Moslems would be offended at your characterization. As a matter of fact, your true colors are shown by your premise: you have a beef against the US and give a free pass to terrorism as a result of perceived (imagined?) US atrocities.
What do Germany, Japan, Italy, Britain have in common? Yes, they were once mortal enemies of the US and we fought each other to the death. But, War changed things and now we fight FOR each other and Against each other's enemies to the death. Do not lie that War doesn't change things. A righteous war not fought is an evil omission.
Re:We Are On Notice (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, but the stupid wars weren't "theirs", if you take a better look at the history you'll find the U.S. was very much involved in every war fought in the past 50 years.
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.
Re:Hatred against muslims (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:We Are On Notice (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it would involve spending a huge amount of money of a threat which isn't the most credible. Which probably won't work anyway.
If you want to stop this kind of thing happening again you need better security and intelligence, these need people rather than machines.
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
Guns and airplanes... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:It's been said before... (Score:3, Informative)
[snip]
Consider THIS: A few weeks ago I was at the airport and went to one of those fancy restaurants you can eat in near the terminals (I don't recall the name right now). I ordered steak, and guess what? They gave me a nice large KNIFE to cut it with. This restaurant was AFTER THE SECURITY CHECKPOINT. Chew on that for a while.
Re:It's been said before... (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe the uniforms should have "Knock Me Out And Take My Gun" printed on the back.
No, definitely plainclothes.
Frangible bullets. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's been said before... (Score:3, Informative)
I've probably fired about 100 rounds of Glaser ammo over the years at the range, and I've never had a single round fragment in the barrel. It is more succeptable to damage than traditional ammo (particuarly oil contamination) and it does degrade with age, so it needs to be handled carefully and replaced frequently. (That explains why I've shot so much of it even though it's insanely expensive). For more info, read the FAQ [safetyslug.com] [safetyslug.com].
Re:Honey, where did you put the map? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:emergency staircase (Score:5, Interesting)
WTC Towers not designed to be evacuated (Score:3, Interesting)
Infrastructure for a timely evacuation of 20-30 thousand people would look a *lot* different than a staircase two persons wide.
The handicapped (Score:3, Interesting)
There needs to be some emergency provision for this.
Re:I guess this tragedy isn't open source... (Score:3, Informative)
I simply put it there to prevent people from reprinting my story without my permission. I just don't want it to be used in the wrong way, and this is how I thought I could protect it.
You're entitled to your own thoughts, but if you think I'm doing this for money, you are quite wrong.
Re:hacker help ? (Score:3, Insightful)
This stupid terrorist mentality is what we have to fight both on our side and theirs. I live in the Richardson, TX (just outside of Dallas) and we have a few idiots prancing around here shooting up mosques. Fools.. no better than the damn terrorists. I feel sorry for the innocent Arab ****AMERICANS**** cuz of a witch hunt by a few ignorant trash bastards.
JOhn
Check your Facts. (Score:3, Informative)
Different aims (Score:3, Interesting)
what can we do to genuinely fix the situation ?
or:
what can we do to make ourselves feel better ?(revenge, nukes, blabla)
The politicians (who drive media discourse) are naturally thinking along the lines of:
how can we make the most of the situation ?
The answer to this is to use it to increase American corporate/military dominance of the world. The politicians are just doing their jobs, ie, they're doing what they're paid for, and most of their pay comes from corporate interests.
So, there are several ways to exploit the situation:
1. Increase corporate welfare, ie payment from taxpayers to corporations (also known as defense spending, and foreign aid). It's irrelevent that the missile defense shield will do nothing to protect Americans and will escalate the arms race - that's not the point. In fact, it's great if India, Pakistan, China and Russia respond by increasing their defense spending because (a) we can sell them weapons and (b) it justifies further increases in American defense spending.
2. Clamp down on civil liberties (corporations are not well served by a free and connected society so, you need to stamp out encryption, anonymous speech, decrease the basic ability for people to talk to each other, unionise, complain about GA crops, demand health care, or any other nonsense)
3. Strengthen America's position as "leader of the free world", or to put it another way, tighten one's grip on foreign countries. Any country with an unpleasant tendancy to not bow down to US interests, is told to show subservience or face punitive military action. It's a good time to demand subservience because there will be far less domestic opposition to bombing the hell out of them should anyone disagree.
4. Silence your detractors. Anybody who disagrees with you at a time like this is obviously "unAmerican" "unpatriotic" and "bowing down to terrorism".
The only bad thing is that people might wonder why this happened, you mustn't let people think about that in a meaningful way.
Re:It really saddens me (Score:3, Insightful)