More Links And Reports On Terrorist Attacks 1056
Two major news updates: the plane downed near Pittsburgh is reported not to have been shot down. A fifth plane which had been feared hijacked, this one a Korean Air jetliner, was forced down by Canadian Air Force planes over the Yukon. However, this plane is reported not to have been hijacked -- instead, its emergency beacon was triggered by a low-fuel indicator.
Importantly -- remember, blood is in demand. The Red Cross' site is mobbed, but here's the blood donation information on a the cached page at google.
More details of the attack and its aftermath: a report at at gnome.org, and a photo at indymedia.org. pajama links to NYC Police scanner traffic (winamp) streamed online, and an anonymous reader also points to another scanner feed.
Shadowwalker Delaforge writes "Hey guys: I'm submitting my web site to yours to get the word out. I've been compiling web sites, and info on the U.S. Attack. These sites are ones that work, and arent' swamped out of existence. I'm also adding new data about where people can donate money, blood, and other things dealing with this.
soccerdad writes "Due to the activities of today, the internet/networking experts at my firm have been asked by some of our clients to be on standby in case anything untoward occurs. They've been monitoring backbone activity, etc., in a "just in case" mode. They've described the activity they're seeing as somewhat strange. The backbone is, according to them, at about 80% utilization -- they've never seen it above 40% before. However, the main portal sites such as Yahoo aren't having substantively higher than normal traffic. They're working on doing some traffic analysis but haven't completed that effort yet."
A small piece of that bandwidth may be saved if you go to the link Kalak suggests: "William Shunn is collecting short notes from people in the terrorist affected areas so you can see who is OK." Look here (or post your name here if you're in an affected city) before tying up a phone connection. Alex Fabrikant submitted another personal information site at Berkeley
Thapthim writes "http://cbc.ca/ has all sorts of information, even in our own city buildings are being shutdown, all air traffic has been suspended. However Canadian Airports are taking in international flights heading into US so the air ports there are free for emergencies."
sn0wcrsh wrote to say that a "short blurb on Channel 7 Boston that the CTO of Akamai was on the fateful plane that hit the trade center" confirms the earlier reports that he was on board.
And ectrix writes: "The CFO of my company, Netegrity was on United Airlines Flight 175, which has been confirmed to us by United Airlines to have hit tower two of the WTC.
WAVY NBC - Norfolk, VA (among other local TV stations I'm sure) is reporting on the air the Threatcon levels at the area Naval, Air Force, and Army bases. They are all at Threatcon Delta. Their website currently only lists their status as of the beginning of the attacks, which was Threatcon Charlie. Norfolk, VA is the home port for the US Atlantic Fleet. Local TV stations also are showing armed (M16s, shotguns) guards patrolling the base grounds and perimeters."
There are updated photos and videos here, and CarbonFusion wrote with another good link to photos and videos.. eddiem writes: "http://www.flightexplorer.com/ will soon let you view the flight path of the planes." Explanations of airport security at How Stuff Works and Cryptome are an interesting read under the circumstances as well.
Bard, Andrew wrote with some updates as well:
"Just to let you know:
- I heard a woman who was on the 92nd floor of the first WTC building when the plane hit it. She was able to escape and so was everyone "in her company" so it is assumed that virtually everyone from the 92nd floor down was evacuated successfully - an estimated 20,000 people of the 25,000 in the building.
- the plane that went down in PA had a woman onboard who locked herself in the bathroom with her cellular phone - she was telling authorities about the hijacking when the plane crashed and killed her - that is the only way the authorities knew for sure what plane went down in PA so quickly, she gave her flight number
- the Mexican border is completely closed and the Canadian border is still open - all International flights have been redirected to Northern Canada
- the planes from Boston were presumably chosen because they were going on long flights (to LA) which would make them larger than average airliners with full tanks of gas
- when the first WTC building crashed (which was the 2nd one to be hit), 125 firemen were down below fighting the fire on the first building to be hit... none of them have been heard from yet - 10,000 emergency personnel in NYC responded to the first WTC getting hit... it is unknown how many of those were crushed in the two collapsed buildings."
Correction (Score:4, Informative)
You can also view images and movies at (Score:2, Informative)
Please email me all your pics and movies, as I will put them online also.
email them to crimson@unspeakable.org
Another building collapsed (Score:5, Informative)
Don't care if I get modded down (Score:2, Informative)
I'm in Canada, and despite our differences with our friends to the south, this incident is just horrific. Seeing the towers collapse was the most stunning and sickening sight I've ever seen.
Condolences and regards to all those in New York, and around America.
One question. Where was that 4th plane headed? Looked like the Pentagon from the ATC displays CNN showed...
If you value your democracy .... (Score:4, Informative)
VOTE!
Please remember that in many parts of the US today is an ELECTION DAY.
Bruce Davis
UNIX Systems Administrator
Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products
Burlington, MA USA
For those speaking German (Score:5, Informative)
Tagesschau [tagesschau.de]
Welt [www.welt.de]
Rheinische Post [rp-online.de]
Spiegel Online [spiegel.de]
Stern [stern.de]
All of these sites have good picture coverage for those who do not speak German. And they are way faster than all US sites at the moment!
Re:5th Plane (Score:2, Informative)
Daniel Lewin of Akamai died. (Score:5, Informative)
I copied this from here [akamai.com].
Re:Innocents.. (Score:3, Informative)
First off, my heartfelt condolences to those who have lost family, friends, and loved ones in this tragedy.
I met with a number of friends at lunch. Some had loved ones who they had been unable to reach to see if they were okay.
I felt powerless over what had happened, and indeed there is nothing anyone can do to change what has already happened. But, I did what I could, today. I offered a shoulder to cry on. I encouraged them to have hope, to know that not knowing does not mean the worst. That there is already a tremendous pulling together of support. Calls for blood donations, people reaching out to friends they hadn't talked with for a long while, and countless other acts across the country and the world where people offer support to one another.
This tragedy can become a rallying point, an opportunity to show the world what we are made of here in the US of A. The Oklahoma bombing, the flooding of the Mississippi River, hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes. We are a people that has a long history of reaching out to help.
A proverb I've liked: "If I cannot do great things, then I will do small things in great ways." (Don't know who wrote it, sorry.) Each person who lends a hand, a shoulder, a caring heart does something tangible. And all of those seemingly small acts, when taken together, can show the world, and ourselves, that we are greater, MUCH greater, than these attacks.
Best source! (Score:4, Informative)
Stratfor [stratfor.com]
Concise, more comprehensive than anything else I've seen, and by far the best analysis.
Usually, they're a leading foreign policy website, focusing on 'intelligence' rather than 'news'.
Remember, the power of terrorists is terror -- don't let them win.
MSNBC: Nuclear Retaliation "Not Off The Table" (Score:5, Informative)
Further:
The entire article is copied below.
U.S. pondering its response
'No options taken off the table' -- senior U.S. official
By Michael Moran
MSNBC
Sept. 11 -- Reeling from the most devastating day of terrorist attacks in history, President George W. Bush and his advisors struggled on Tuesday to devise a response that would convey the depth of the outrage felt across the United States without appearing to lash out blindly.
THE SCALE of the attacks and the loss of life -- mostly in New York City's World Trade Center, but also in Pittsburgh and Washington -- ensured that "no option has been taken off the table," senior U.S. officials said. Asked if that included nuclear weapons, one senior official said: "I said no option is out of the question. That's precisely what I mean."
The nature and precision of the attacks, along with their unknown origin, left the United States with no useful precedents or contingency plans to fall back on. Procedurally, the attacks prompted officials to institute safeguards consistent with a state of war: Airspace over major American cities was cleared of commercial traffic and replaced by military interceptors; large, obvious targets like the White House, Capitol building, the Disney theme parks in Florida and California and the Sears Tower in Chicago, were evacuated. Most tellingly, the president, vice president, congressional leaders and other key government officials were spirited to secure, undisclosed locations -- an indication that the attacks achieved an astounding degree of surprise.
Indeed, many officials echoed the words of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet's commander, Navy Adm. Robert J. Natter: "We have been attacked like we haven't been attacked since Pearl Harbor." He then dispatched aircraft carriers to the waters off New York and Washington -- an unprecedented step -- to provide air cover.
HIGH ALERT
The United States military and its diplomatic organs quickly ordered steps consistent with imminent action.
President Bush placed American military commands around the world, including North American Air Defense Command, or NORAD, on their highest level of alert. Air Force One, carrying Bush, landed briefly at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, the home of Strategic Air Command, the nation's nuclear war fighting command, as well as the so-called "doomsday plane," a flying command post meant for use in case of a nuclear attack on America.
Ambassadors of the world's most powerful military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, scheduled an emergency meeting for 5 p.m. ET to discuss the crisis at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
While no public accusations of blame were made by the U.S. government, senior officials, along with experts on terrorism, were unanimous in their belief that the attacks were the work of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile who leads the shadowy Al-Qaeda terrorist organization. "No one else but Bin Laden has the capability to do this is Bin Laden," one senior intelligence official said. "No one."
Bin Laden is living in Afghanistan as a guest of the Islamic regime there, the Taliban. The United States already has warned the Taliban that any act of terrorism on American soil by bin Laden or his followers would be regarded as an act of war.
That said, exactly how to hit out at bin Laden has been a continuing problem for the United States. U.S. intelligence agencies once tracked his movements within Afghanistan fairly reliably by eavesdropping on cell phone communications. Bin Laden has long since stopped using cell phones and is now said to sleep in a different safe house each night. Three years ago, after the dual bombings at American embassies in Kenya and Mozambique were tied to Al-Qaeda, the United States launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at suspected bin Laden training camps in Afghanistan and a plant in Sudan the CIA suspected of ties with him. Neither air strike did much to dissuade him. The U.S. suspects bin Laden's hand behind the April 2000 attack on the USS destroyer Cole in Yemen.
MILITARY OPTIONS
As President Bush weighs options, the difficulty of pinpointing bin Laden -- if in fact the United States decides he is responsible -- presents a dilemma. Among the options under active consideration:
Major retaliatory airstrikes: The United States could strike at Afghanistan with missile strikes -- possibly even tactical nuclear weapons -- to demonstrate its anger and the grave consequences of such an attack on U.S. soil.
Military invasion: The president could declare war on Afghanistan and order a buildup of forces similar to that which preceded the Gulf War in 1990. Such a move, however, would require the acquiescence of a neighboring state -- either Pakistan or one of the former Soviet Central Asian nations.
Manhunt: The Army's Delta Force or other assets could be inserted into Afghanistan to hunt down Bin Laden.
Proxy action: The United States could exert extreme diplomatic pressure on Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, two states that have supported the Afghan Taliban in the past, to bring Bin Laden to justice.
'NO EASY ANSWERS'
Each and every one of these options has drawbacks, however, and those potential pitfalls will animate the debates of the coming days within the U.S. national security establishment. For instance, the use of nuclear weapons, in any form, risks alienating a world that is almost united in its revulsion at such attacks -- and whose help will be necessary in preventing future such attacks.
"The worst thing we can do is to completely lose our cool and overreact," said Sean Anderson, domestic terrorism expert at Idaho State University who studied the Oklahoma City bombing and the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.
"The best thing we can do is carry on, not to depart from our ordinary constitutional legal processes
Indeed, it is quite possible the United States will refrain from any immediate action until investigators have time to more thoroughly make the case against whoever directed the attack.
"There are not a lot of easy answers," former Secretary of State James Baker told NBC News. "The president, I think, did the right thing when he said 'we're under terrorist attack and we're going to hunt down those responsible.' "
Re:Better security on planes (Score:2, Informative)
Please, please do not let the US spin this! (Score:2, Informative)
Just heard on CNN: knives and cardboard cutters. (Score:5, Informative)
Aditionally, I just heard, that Barbara Olsen, passenger on one of the planes, told her husband, that the terrorists were armed with no more than "knives and cardboard cutters". To me, this basically spells, that there is, no way, that it is virtually impossible to rule out forever a repeat of this kind of sickness. Of course, any kind of sharp object should and will be banned from any future flight,, but that just means they will have to invent a new type of weapon, one that will go undetected, like a wooden knive sheathed in a wooden sheath, together seeming a simple, harmless stick.
Smuggling simple weapons will be almost impossible to eliminate totally.
Some kind of military type fight seems to have broken out in/around Kabul. See other news sources for details.
Stefan.
Re:5th Plane (Score:2, Informative)
Retribution... (Score:2, Informative)
Looks just like Baghdad in 1991.
My account (Score:5, Informative)
get a coffee and noticed that the air was full of papers, like a ticker tape
parade, then i saw that one of the wtc towers was on fire. I asked some guys in
another office what happened, they said that they had heard that a plane hit it.
A this point we were thinking small plane, accident. While we were
watching, all of the sudden we heard the second one and could see it really
low doing a steep turn. Then we watched it fly right into the second tower. At
that point it was obvious that this was not an accident. I thought, i'm on the
37th floor of one of the buildings cloest to the water, i'm getting the fuck out
of here. Grabbed my stuff went to the elevator. The first one was packed so
i took the stairs. When I got out of the building, i figured that I wanted to
get off the island. I usually take the ferry, but the one i catch is too close
to the wtc so I took the wall street one from the east side of the island. I
didn't care where it was going as long as it was New Jersey. I was pretty early
so i didn't have to wait too long. As my ferry was going up the Hudson beside
the wtc the first tower collapsed, it filled the whole downtown area with thick
black smoke about 100 ft high. I caught a train from Hoboken and got 3/4's of
the way home and the power failed. So i got
off and walked until i found a pay phone, cell phones pretty much didn't work. Called my wife and she
came and picked me up. We gave some other people rides home as well.
In all it was kind of exciting, very unreal and very horrible. I'm sure that the
horror of the whole thing will come out in the next few days.
CNN: Explosions Seen, Heard in Kabul, Afghanistan (Score:3, Informative)
From CNN [cnn.com]:
You primitive Americans! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Correction (Score:3, Informative)
If you meet the following conditions, you will be allowed entry to the U.S at this time:
1.) you must be a U.S. citizen
2.) you must be on official U.S. business, or have an immediate emergency need to return to the U.S.
The borders are backed up quite a bit just about everywhere right now, but in most areas, the RCMP are trying to intercept people heading that way, in order to help the border guards filter out the traffic..
I live in Vancouver, and every single hotel and lodging is booked solid. They are having a hard time finding places to put all the people who got diverted here from other internation flights.
more info from cnn (Score:2, Informative)
CNN speculates that it is possible that the fighting could actually be infighting within afghanistan, and this may be civil infighting. No one has been able to pinpoint the missile's origin.
internet rememberance campagin - do your part (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Afghanistan being attacked (Score:5, Informative)
I saw this on one of the other discussions, but it deserves repeating for anyone that might have missed it: If you can't get CNN on TV, or you're stuck at work, you can read the CNN closed caption stream by pointing an IRC client to chat.cnn.com, and joining channel #CNN_Newsfeed
Re:Explosions in Afganistan!! (Score:3, Informative)
The Taliban have been attacking targets just north of Kabul as recently as last night.
http://www.afghan-web.com/aop/today.html [afghan-web.com]
Re:Afghanistan being attacked (Score:2, Informative)
<CC> JUST A SECOND, CNN WOLF
<CC> BLITZER IN WASHINGTON DOING
<CC> SOME REPORTING ON THE
<CC> PRESIDENT, THE PRESIDENT'S
<CC> ACTIVITIES WOLF, JOIN US,.
<CC> >> THANK YOU AARON33
<CC> WERE NOT PART OF THE U.S.
<CC> RETALIATORY STRIKE.
<CC> ONCE AGAIN A REPEATING
<CC> EXPLOSION THAT NIC ROBERTSON
<CC> BEEN REPORTING ABOUT IN
<CC> KABUL NOT PART OF ANY U.S.
<CC> MILITARY STRIKE.
<CC> CLEARLY INDICATING THIS IS
<CC> PART THE CONTINUING CIVIL
<CC> WAR THAT'S BEEN UNDERWAY IN
<CC> AFGHANISTAN NOW FOR
<CC> SOMETIME.
Not the U.S. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Breaking News: Afghanistan Bombing/AA fire (Score:5, Informative)
CNN is reporting that the White House says those attacks in Kabul are part of their internal civil war and not a U.S. attack.
U.S. Attack Blog (Score:1, Informative)
MIRROR of video and pics (Score:3, Informative)
Some video that wasn't on the news [at least when I got it] and some pics that look to be from someone's digital camera nearby.
and I'm still trying to collect more videos and pics...
High resolution pictures from WTC (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.hiris.com/nycpics.htm [hiris.com]
Re:For those speaking French and Dutch (Score:2, Informative)
Le Soir [lesoir.be] (in french)
La Libre Belgique [lalibre.be]
De Standaard [standaard.be] (in dutch).
Also in french :
Le Monde [lemonde.fr]
-DZM
Photos from Brooklyn (Score:3, Informative)
Some friends of mine watched the fire spread down the floors from the plane crashes before the towers collapsed.
http://www.kband.com/photo/ [kband.com]
High-resolution versions of these photographs are available on request.
Re:If you value your democracy .... (Score:3, Informative)
Afghanistan Update (Score:2, Informative)
BREAKING NEWS
Afghanistan opposition claims responsibility for Kabul explosions. Details soon.
Who the Lady with the Cell Phone Was (Score:2, Informative)
Barb Olsen was the passenger on the plane that went down in PA who called out on her cell phone.
She was the wife of Ted Olsen, Solicitor General of the United States. Mr. Olsen represents the United States in cases that appear before the Supreme Court.
I will not even begin to speculate on how this will impact our response to the terrorism.
Re:Just heard on CNN: knives and cardboard cutters (Score:3, Informative)
Aditionally, I just heard, that Barbara Olsen, passenger on one of the planes, told her husband, that the terrorists were armed with no more than "knives and cardboard cutters".
Ummm...without trying to sound callous...how did CNN hear of this? Aren't all the passengers dead? Moderators, please READ the posts prior to hitting MODERATE. It helps.
The report I heard on one of the news stations was that Barbara Olsen called her husband from the plane to tell him that it had been hijacked. I believe that this was the plane that went into the Pentagon.
I have nothing to back this up other than what I heard on (I believe) CBS.
-Rob
Re:the middle east (Score:2, Informative)
This comparison is eery, especially since they too planned to crash a plane into New York City [crimelibrary.com] (scroll towards the end of the article).
Re:The two 747's that landed in Whitehorse (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.koreanair.com/advisory/advisory.htm
CNN LIVE SOUND FEED (Score:2, Informative)
I have set up a some shoutcast servers with the audio off CNN, for all those people who don't have access to CNN
server1 [shoutcast.com] server2 [shoutcast.com]
Mirror for Media (Score:2, Informative)
someone predicted this 'holy way' last week (Score:0, Informative)
it's a newsgroup. he predicts the date, the 'holy war' style, and flight 11.
Strange Internet Traffic (Score:1, Informative)
I might have some insight into this. Being in New York (but nowhere near where the problems are), I was unable to reach anyone by phone (to let them know that I'm fine) until late in the afternoon. However, I was able to e-mail people. So I probably sent roughly 20 to 30 times the normal amount of e-mail.
If everyone in New York (or who knows someone in New York) was heavily using e-mail today, that could account for a great deal of traffic that didn't go to major portals. Just a thought.
Re:Just heard on CNN: knives and cardboard cutters (Score:2, Informative)
--Dan
Why the WTC Collapsed (Score:2, Informative)