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Further Updates On Terrorist Attack
Contradicting earlier reports, reader Adam Brookman writes: "I can guarantee that no car bomb went off in front of the State Dept. in DC. My father is part of the critical personel at State dept. When I read that I called him. He said he heard the same thing and he also heard that the building was hit by a plane, but neither were true."
Worth reading is this analysis of the motives and some possible suspects in today's violence, at Jane's International Security News. They've picked three plausible attackers. Motive aside, Jack Bryar has a convincing take on who is really most hurt by the attacks today.
babyruth writes: "amazon.com has a Red Cross Relief fund set up on their homepage, where you can contribute online. Only several hundred have contributed so far, let the power of /. help!" Iridium provides a link straight to the donations page, noting that "All standard fees are waived -- all proceeds go directly to the Red Cross." Of course, the Red Cross is -still- in desperate need of blood. If you can donate, please call 1-800-HELP-NOW to find the donation center nearest to you.
iggyflashbulb writes: "CNN reports some oddball group not associated with bin Laden is attacking Kabul at night. Are they taking advantage of the NY situation or did they create it?"
An anonymous reader writes: "Following the sad (and outrageous) mess of these terrorist attacks, results are already starting to impact the country. When a RSM failed on one of our 5500 Ciscos, we recieved the following notice
'Due to a national emergency completion of your case, delivery of your parts or engineer will be delayed until further notice. Several areas of the country have restricted transportation and currently no air traffic is available. Cisco will notify you as soon a we are able to dispatch your order.'
There doesn't seem to any information on Cisco's site."
CERT is in action as well: SilentTone writes: "Ween Hall at Carnegie-Mellon University was evacuated today so the the Computer Emergency Response Team could go into action."
Many readers have been assembling mirrors for the overloaded news sites of the world. Jon Anhold writes: "I've compiled more photos and what not, mirrored many of the sites around to help the load. They're available here: http://ziggy.dreamland.net/wtc/"
Owen Bossola writes: "This is a simple webpage I put up with shots I took all day of the World Trade Center. I go to school across the river at Stevens Institute of Technology and I watched the whole thing from campus. It is absolutely nuts, I'm looking out my window and for the first time, downtown NYC is dark, and there aren't two large buildings gleaming back at me."
rhyder writes: "I was last in the World Trade Center and the attached World Financial Center on Saturday evening. Many people I know work in those buildings, even more live and work in the shadow of those 2 towers.
From the Port Authority of NY and NJ:
- The Port Authority
- Trade Center Concourse Level Map
- Trade Center Plaza Level Map
- Trade Center Complex Overview
- Area Map showing southern tip of Manhattan and the Trade Center location."
Anyone else able to confirm this rumor?
Jon Bishop asks: "Why Today? Why did this attack happen on September 11, 2001. Here is a guess. I played with the date commonly used for programming. YYYYMMDD returns 20010911. 911...in 2001. Is this play on numbers intentional or coincidence?" It may be significant that the anniversary of a Congressional resolution "favoring a Jewish homeland in Palestine" falls on this date. Then again, if you go back a century or two, you may find a lot of anniversaries that seem just as significant.
Carl Merritt writes: "Since many sites seem to be creaking under the load today I've dumped every relevant picture and video I can find onto my server, please feel free to suck up some of my unused bandwidth with downloads or links: http://www.binaryvista.com/WTC/ I'll probably leave it up for a couple weeks, or until CNN asks me to remove their pictures ;-)."
An Anonymous Coward writes "I just want to remind everyone that there is still active air cover over at least Chicago. A tanker is orbiting O'Hare and at least what appear to be two F-15s are making the rounds. If you would like more information including frequencies I suggest subscribing to the CARMA mailing list at QTH.net for up to date monitoring information."
Disheartening news from Egypt: soulflakes points to this story of some Egyptians celebrating the attacks today. Here's a BBC piece which indicates the feeling is shared in some other African countries. This doesn't mean that all or most people in any country feel the same way.
yoda389 writes: "I'm getting reports from friends that gas prices are jumping to as much as $5.00 a gallon. There are huge lines at all gas stations here in my hometown someplace in Wisconsin." And ikohl1 writes: "A friend just informed me of how gas prices were raised to $3.50 in a town near where i live. I didn't believe him at first but I found this article on Yahoo."
Gas prices may fluctuate in the short term, but in the long haul, effects on exports of goods physical and abstract may be affected just as drastically: elliotj writes: "MSNBC has a Steven Levy opinion piece on the possible implications of today's attack on America and governmental policy on encryption export restrictions. Personally, I think we need to determine exactly what happened before blaming physical or electronic security measures for a role in the tragedy. I heard the planes were hi-jacked with knives ... that doesn't sound very high-tech or a sign of significant security failings to me. It is the act itself that is so shocking and sickening."
The van contained no explosives, but the three people involved have been detained for questioning.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
The CNN news feed will be open again at 8AM ET. It just shut off a few minutes ago.
Jeremy
From
m l
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,34190,00.ht
September Anniversary of Several Past Attacks, Events
Tuesday, September 11, 2001
September marks the anniversary of several noted political events and terrorist attacks.
On Sept. 11, 1922, a British mandate was proclaimed in Palestine, despite Arab protests. It lasted until 1948, after the United Nations authorized a partition of the territory and the state of Israel was established.
On Sept. 6, 1970, three planes from TWA, Swissair and BOAC carrying more than 400 hostages were hijacked and ordered to the Jordanian airport by the PFLP, in what is known as "Skyjack Sunday." Another terrorist team tried to hijack an El Al Boeing over London but security staff foiled the attempt and captured one of the hijackers, Leila Khalid, alive. The German, Swiss and British Governments all agreed to the PFLP's demands and released a number of terrorists, including Khalid, held in their jails.
On Sept. 11, 1972, the troubled Munich Summer Olympics, also remembered as "the Olympics of Terror," ended. For 21 hours under live television cameras,hooded gunmen of the Palestinian faction "Black September" held Israeli athletes hostage, killing 11 of them duringa botched getaway and airport firefight with German antiterrorism squads.
On Sept. 28, 2000, the eve of Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year), Ariel Sharon, then- leader of the opposition right-wing Likud party, visited the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. Sharon, accompanied by an entourage of security officers, claimed he was exercising his right to visit the Mount, but his visit angered many Arabs, both Israeli and Palestinian. The day after the visit saw the beginning of what is known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
John 17:20
There were no explosives in the van.
I made a web site button that I'm using on sites I admin. I encourage everyone else to either use this one or make their own or something.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
I was on top of that building two weeks ago. I got the pictures that I took there yesterday. I can't really bring myself to open the package again. I don't think it has really sunk in for me yet. It all seemed so big, larger than life when I was standing there looking up at it and then when I was at the top staring down. I can't believe that the place is gone. I'm thinking of the French kid that took my picture in front of the rest of the Manhattan skyline. I'm angry, but I think I'm too shaken up to be as angry as I will be later.
I'm not a religous person, but God be with the victims and protect the rescue workers as they do their best. I don't think I will ever forget the images of those people jumping from the top floors. I won't sleep well tonight.
God bless you all.
1) DC Special Operations Police Channel is streamed at http://www.penguinradio.com/
2) This is a posting from the DC Police Scanner mailing list (qth.net). Very interesting on air cover over DC.
---
FW:------
--
All,
These are my own observations based only on my hand notes taken at the time.
I started listening to the events around 1030 EDT. The Trade Towers and the
Pentagon had already been attacked. By that time there was not a peep of
civil air traffic in the area. One of the first things I heard was Andrews
tower announcing on their VHF & UHF freqs that their airspace was closed and
that all intruders would be shot down. That certainly put an exclamation
point on what I was to hear for the rest of the day.
Throughout the day the Regan National controller (125.65) was the overall
controlling authority for the DC area. He authorized all departures and
entries into the Class B airspace. That role still remains as of 2200 EDT.
As of 2100 EDT Andrews is starting to return to normal with Airevacs and some
helos and VIP jets starting to fly in.
Fighters:
By 1030 there were two flights of DC ANG F-16s (Wild & Caps) up in Combat
Air Patrol (CAP). At that time there were news reports of another, missing
airliner, so I assume the F-16s were up protecting the DC area from that
possibility. Soon these F-16s were joined by three more F-16s from Langley,
North Dakota ANG aircraft normally deployed to Langley in an air defense
mode. The DC ANG flight leader assumed the role as CAP commander trying to
keep all the aircraft straight. DC ANG F-16s assumed control the airspace
below 23,000 ft and the Langley F-16s and alter, F-15s took the airspace
above that.
After about an hour, two Langley F-15s (First) joined the CAP and took up
position high above the area. They were also joined by some F-18s up from
Oceana. This caused some problems as far as refueling was concerned. The
KC-10s, who had the drogue capability, were ready to RTB and were out of
fuel. One of the KC-10s (Team 23) took it upon himself to set up to refuel
his aircraft from the available KC-135 (Tazz) so that he would be in a
position to refuel both the boom aircraft (F-16s & F-15s) and the drogue guys
(F-18s).
In the early afternoon, a flight of two VA ANG F-16s (Fury) came up to the DC
area to join the CAP group. The CAP commander later sent them back to the
Richmond area because there were too many aircraft in the DC area. After
about 30 minutes the VA ANG guys decided to end their CAP around Richmond and
RTB'ed to Harry Byrd International.
Tankers:
By 1030 there were two McGuire KC-10s (Team 23 & 24) up in the area. I'm not
sure if they were already in the general area when the events unfolded or
they were scrambled from McGuire. They started refueling the DC & Langley
F-16s so they could stay in the area. For awhile, in the morning, Team 23
also assumed the role of an AWACS giving target and vectoring information to
the CAP fighters. Team 23 eventually recovered at Andrews and refueled and
went back up in the late PM (1740). What a crew. They deserve a medal.
They've been up there since at least 1030 this morning.
Around the same time as the McGuire tankers were noted, two KC-135s from the
Maine ANG (Maine 85 & 86) were also in the area working with the McGuire
tankers. I believe that these guys had been up off the East Coast and were
diverted to the area to support operations.
Later in the morning and in the early afternoon two OH ANG KC-135s (Tazz &
Flop) and two PA ANG KC-135s (Steel) also joined the support crowd.
AWACS:
About an hour after I started listening, an AWACS (Bandsaw Kilo) was noted
off the MD/VA coast and started taking control of the airspace. However, the
DC ANG CAP commander continued to control the immediate airspace around
downtown DC. Later in the afternoon he was joined by another AWACS
(Chalice). I'm assuming that these aircraft were deployed from Langley or
possibly Seymour-Johnson. Bandsaw and Chalice were both in the area until
quite late in the evening.
Helos:
They were so many medevac helos trying to get into the Pentagon area to
extricate the wounded that I couldn't keep track of all of them.
Interspersed among the medevacs were several 1st Helo Sqdn (Mussels) getting
into the Pentagon area to take out some of the military VIPs (JCS).
There were also a couple of US Navy helos (HU-720) and another ) that came up
to Andrews from Norfolk. I'm assuming that these were carrying VIPs from
CincLant. News reports said that the area of the Pentagon that was struck by
the plane housed mostly USN & Marine offices.
Late in the PM there were several Nighthawk helos operating back & forth
between MCAF Quantico and Andrews. I'm assuming that they were shuttling
military VIPs.
NCS:
Huntress assumed NCS role sometime in the late morning and set up on 255.8,
228.9 & 234.6. Huntress assumed responsibility for designating targets and
releasing fighters to prosecute these targets.
The DC ANG F-16s and Langley F-15s as well as the AWACS and tankers have
been up continuously, -all day. They are still up and it's 2200 EDT. They
must be bushed.
These crews certainly have shown a very high level of professionalism and
devotion to duty. I for one am glad they are up there looking over us. Those
of you who support our military you can be VERY PROUD of their actions on
this day.
Wasn't there a story on \. the other day about the Govt. raiding an ISP that mostly served Islamic sites? I have searched for it here, but cannot find it now. I was wondering now if they did that because they had some idea that something big was about to go down??
"You can't play with my yo-yo"
Air cover is also being flown over Boston, MA. Earlier today I witnessed three flybys by what appeared to be an F-15 at very low levels over my hometown of Winthrop. An hour ago I saw two aircraft, one following the other fly over Winthrop and head out to sea. If I had to guess, it was a fighter and a tanker but since I couldn't actually see it, dont hold me to it.
I can confirm that a second plane was reported on the local DC television stations, and it was described as detailed above.
i could easily say something about palestinian squirrels or Osama Bin Koala, but i just am not in the mood. this type of event depresses hell out of me. i know one can easily consider the loss of life and death toll and think "this is horrible". but it is when i think about the small things that really bother me. imagine, everyone on their way to work, listening to the stereo, just rocking out, never expecting that today was the day they die. or the little kid who kisses his mommy goodbye when he leaves for school. it was the last time. and to even begin to consider how the families and friends of those who have died and are missing feel. there are people going to sleep tonight not knowing if they will ever see their spouse, kid, or best friend ever again. so i will try to get my mind off all of this.
No we can't. We must fight this TOOTH AND NAIL. We can't change our (americans) lives because of the terrorist attack. If we lose even the slightest amount of freedom the terrorists have WON.
We must fight the good fight and not let people in congress pass new laws. "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.".
It is a tragic and sad thing that has happened. This is an attack on humanity and civilization and the world as a whole, especially americans tne symbol of freedom and capitalism CANNOT bend, we cannot break, we cannot even flex.
Will I still fly American Airlines? Yep. I always have and always will.
I am not going to change my ways of exercising my freedoms for terroists, not now, not ever.
I think something like this should give everyone new perspective, but I don't think new laws will protect us at all. Just take away our freedoms and let the terrorists win.
Jeremy
There was one earlier. I made a link at http://www.penguinradio.com/nontraditional/scanner s/
According to USA Today, this attack was all in the making if Bin Laden is the case. The article is only about 3 months old, but it details on how Osama Bin Laden used encryption inside of pictures most likely to hide possible attacks. They say this is Bin Laden's latest encryption scheme to convey terrorist information. So when the CIA says did not know this was going to happen, really maybe they are covering up the fact that they sort of knew this but didn't think it would amount to anything.
I have set up a rather extensive set of image and video mirrors.
http://www.watership.org/media/
I have made tar balls of the images and the movies so everyone will be able to set up their own mirror.
http://watership.org/media/images.tar.gz -(26985k)
http://watership.org/media/movies.tar.gz -(200189k)
i am not sure on the copyright issues. But anyone is welcome to dload and set up content mirrors.
Producing satire is kind of hopeless because of the literacy rate of the American public. - Frank Zappa
You can find the front page of the Seattle-PI here:p imaa1x320010911.pdf
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/frontpage/seattle_
If you use linux view this with xpdf, ghostview seems to render it improperly.
Good night America, tomorrow is a new day.
A group known as the Northern Alliance, an Afghan group opposed to the Taliban and associated with Shah Massooda, has taken credit for the explosions in Afghanistan.
The site you linked to doesn't work. Please repost...
From skyscraper.org
World Trade Center History and Stats
The World Trade Center
Height: 1,368 and 1,362 feet (417 and 415 meters)
Owners: Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
Architect: Minoru Yamasaki, Emery Roth and Sons consulting
Engineer: John Skilling and Leslie Robertson of Worthington, Skilling, Helle and Jackson
Ground Breaking: August 5, 1966
Opened: 1970-73; April 4, 1973 ribbon cutting
The World Trade Center is more than its signature twin towers: it is a complex of seven buildings on 16-acres, constructed and operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ). The towers, One and Two World Trade Center, rise at the heart of the complex, each climbing more than 100 feet higher than the silver mast of the Empire State Building.
Construction of a world trade facility had been under consideration since the end of WWII. In the late 1950s the Port Authority took interest in the project and in 1962 fixed its site on the west side of Lower Manhattan on a superblock bounded by Vesey, Liberty, Church and West Streets. Architect Minoru Yamasaki was selected to design the project; architects Emery Roth & Sons handled production work, and, at the request of Yamasaki, the firm of Worthington, Skilling, Helle and Jackson served as engineers.
The Port Authority envisioned a project with a total of 10 million square feet of office space. To achieve this, Yamasaki considered more than a hundred different building configurations before settling on the concept of twin towers and three lower-rise structures. Designed to be very tall to maximize the area of the plaza, the towers were initially to rise to only 80-90 stories. Only later was it decided to construct them as the world's tallest buildings, following a suggestion said to have originated with the Port Authority's public relations staff.
Yamasaki and engineers John Skilling and Les Robertson worked closely, and the relationship between the towers' design and structure is clear. Faced with the difficulties of building to unprecedented heights, the engineers employed an innovative structural model: a rigid "hollow tube" of closely spaced steel columns with floor trusses extending across to a central core. The columns, finished with a silver-colored aluminum alloy, were 18 3/4" wide and set only 22" apart, making the towers appear from afar to have no windows at all.
Also unique to the engineering design were its core and elevator system. The twin towers were the first supertall buildings designed without any masonry. Worried that the intense air pressure created by the buildings' high speed elevators might buckle conventional shafts, engineers designed a solution using a drywall system fixed to the reinforced steel core. For the elevators, to serve 110 stories with a traditional configuration would have required half the area of the lower stories be used for shaftways. Otis Elevators developed an express and local system, whereby passengers would change at "sky lobbies" on the 44th and 78th floors, halving the number of shaftways.
Construction began in 1966 and cost an estimated $1.5 billion. One World Trade Center was ready for its first tenants in late 1970, though the upper stories were not completed until 1972; Two World Trade Center was finished in 1973. Excavation to bedrock 70 feet below produced the material for the Battery Park City landfill project in the Hudson River. When complete, the Center met with mixed reviews, but at 1,368 and 1,362 feet and 110 stories each, the twin towers were the world's tallest, and largest, buildings until the Sears Tower surpassed them both in 1974.
I work in DC area. I listened to the radio around noon. They had several eyewitnesses descibing the Pentagon hit. All of them talked about "small commuter plane", not a large jet.
Appearently the CNN news feed (being displayed in #cnn_newsfeed @ irc.idlenet.org) is down till 8AM EST.
:)
If anybody finds any running newsfeed plz post them
'..that kernel panicked like a nun in a crack house!'
Interesting, but fortunately Nostradamus made a number of predictions which turned out to be incorrect.
Probably stuff that has been seen already
check out www.markvd.net
This is my sig, there are many like it but this one is mine...
Here is some more information about the Northern Alliance and Shah Massoud.
Typical astrologer, make the prediction vague enough, and you can read "anything" into it.
My Weblog
I've read this all over the net today and I think the reference of "city of god" being New York is quite a stretch.
--
I'm trying to setup a site remembering NYC and WTC before all of this happened. I've setup a site
with pictures of more pleasant times..
Linuxpowered
If you have pictures of the city/twin towers before this incident, please send them to me.
I'm sorry the code is a little rough around the edges (be sure you fill out the forms completely), but I wasn't expecting to go public with it so soon.
Please don't mod this down. I'm really not trying to spam; Just giving a place for those without their own websites to publish their accounts without getting lost in the thousands of Slashdot posts. Thanks.
Got Rhinos?
This isn't offical, but I saw what appeared to be a large plane fying around Pittsburgh with two smaller planes behind it. I would guess this is a refueler with two fighter jets behind it.
The plane in Somerset hit way to close to home today. Thank god the pilot was brave enough to crash before he got to any major cities, not to be selfish but I'm glad that my hometown of Pittsburgh wasn't hit.
Did anybody look up today? Here in the Midwest, while this tragedy can seem so close on the TV it almost vanishes into the background when you step outside and see everything and everyone going about their business normally. Until you look up. When the FAA shut down all domestic air travel, they almost turned off the sky. It was a pure blue here in Iowa today, interrupted only by the occaisional cirrus cloud. Right now, the stars wink alone. The contrails, the glints of silver in the sunset, all gone. Routes out of DSM, STL, Chicago, Kansas City, Minneapolis crisscross the sky daily, but not today. It felt very strange to look up at that barren sky. It's a sight that hasn't been seen in many decades, and I don't expect to see it again.
My condolences go out to the friends and family of the victims of this horrific crime. Attending an east coast college, I have talked with many people who are from the areas where the attacks occured. This has hit close to home. I really have no words to describe what I am feeling.
With that said, I refer you to the excellent salon.com. Their coverage of this event has been extraordinary. I especially hope you read the first-person accounts of the terror. A number: that is difficult to identify with. A person, however, is much different. Remember each one of those thousands was a person, with his/her own life and nothing should be taken for granted.
please say your just being an ass here and trying (not succeeding) to make a joke.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Can anyone comnirm the rumour about the attack on Camp David?
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
Everyone just assumes this came from the Middle-East. That's what we thought when OKC happened, and it turned out to be something entirely different.
dinner: it's what's for beer
This site needs to be slashdotted. Profiting off a disaster like this is lower than tha act itself
. as px?prodno=1468594&zoom=yes
http://www.cafepress.com/cp/store/productdetail
It is very important that we all get back to 'business as usual' as quickly and calmly as possible. If we give in to terrified speculation, hording gas, selling our stock or other panic moves that will fsck our country then we may as well throw up our hands and say, "Terrorists Win!"
If we get back to business and focus on providing support for families and blood for the wounded we will come out of this OK.
God Bless,
Jason Henriksen
I doubt the great leader is GWB. My interpretation for the great leader would be none other than the good ol' United States of America.
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." -- Plato (427?-347? BC)
It is more likely that old fashioned counterintelligent-style phone tricks were used rather than fancy encryption.
After all, if the NSA can probably defeat any encryption if they have reason to suspect they need to. It's nearly impossible to screen the entire Muslim/Islamic community for suspicious rug orders that may or not be instructions.
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Actually, no, I am not.
There is not a single commercially available (=legal) DivX player available.
I cannot download one from Microsoft, Intel, or any other software company that I can trust.
When I can purchase a DivX player at the store or download the codec from a respectable software company, then I will consider using it.
-seem to host a lot of feeds that supply many views surrounding this issue on the Quicktime Player.
-FoxNews(conservative)
-CNN(spoon and fork it to you)
-BBC(Outside perspective)
-NPR(detailed, scientific, public perspective)-WGBH Boston.
You should try this player, I was psyched.
-walloo
willywalloo's mostly macly - URL
Yeah, and the village idiot will ascend to the throne (a widely-distributed fake Nostradamus prophecy).
Nostradamus wrote his "prophecies" in a language that only he knew in fear of death. Scholars have been trying to translate his ramblings for hundreds of years and every once in awhile they try and take their "translations" and compare them to modern events. Heck, most studies of his work said that he had no further predictions after 2000/05/05 which was widely viewed to be his prediction of the end of the world. Guess what? We're still here.
Peter Jennings just reported on ABC news television that some survivors have indeed been pulled from the rubble! This supposedly comes from the Mayor. Lets keep pulling them out!
And of course, as soon as my opinion doesn't agree with the "common slashdot crowd" of content pirates, I get modded down as a troll.
Here is group at google
I posted the link. Here's where you can get the pdf
terrorist.pdf
If you don't say anything, you won't be called on to repeat it. -- Calvin Coolidge
The approach recommended by Cohen, ironically, complements very well the classic strategy pursued by terrorists. Marxist militant Carlos Marighella, whose tactical blueprint has been followed by terrorists worldwide, explained that terrorists attack innocent people in order to provoke governments "to intensify repression. The police roundups, house searches, arrests of innocent people, make life unbearable.... Rejecting the 'so-called political solution,' the urban guerrilla must become more aggressive and violent, resorting without letup to sabotage, terrorism, expropriations, assaults, kidnappings, and executions, heightening the disastrous situation in which the government must act." Marighella went on to explain how this cycle continues until the existing political order is completely subverted, and a revolutionary regime takes power.
The gravest danger presented by today's terrorist attacks is that the effort to find and punish perpetrators will become a war upon the liberties of the American people. Yes, those responsible for the attacks must be found and punished with pitiless severity. But at the same time Americans must demand an immediate end to our interventionist foreign policy, which exacted such a tragic price in American blood on this terrible day.
Seastead this.
Gotta love those whacky Russian hackers.
My family has a business drilling and blasting rock when new roads or buildings are put in. They can't do any blasting for 48 hours due to a lock-down on all explosive materials.
Over at yahoo news there is a story that states that the terrorists on the flight rosters were names of members of Bin Ladin's terrorist group...check it out for yourself:o o.com/h/nm/20010911/wl/crash_binladen_dc_4.html
http://us.news2.yimg.com/f/42/31/7m/dailynews.yah
This is a false quote this is not an original quatraine from Nostredamas it is a made up quatrane that was used to prove a point about how easily Nostredamas and predictions could be applied. Search the net again or the newsgroups and you'll find this out.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
this is a time that the whole country should stand behind NY as they embark on a herculean task of reconstructing and evacuating. but that doesn't mean the rest of the country should stop. they should go on.
or so http://www.cnn.com is initally reporting, though that have no further developments at the time of this post. Also from cnn.com Among those presumed dead are the New York Fire Department's deputy chief and first deputy commissioner. Also presumed dead is Ray Downey, who led the NYFD team that helped out after the bombing in Oklahoma City.
http://caffeinehigh.net/~jm/Sep112001/
have fun downloading... and if you have more stuff, IM me at obfuscatedSN or email me at jm@caffeinehigh.net
--Justin Mitchell
"2nd Place is a fancy word for losing" --Bender (Futurama)
Actually I recall reading he had made predictions out to 3000-something, so maybe we still have a little more time.
"In the year 2525, if man is still alive..."
The revolution will NOT be televised.
I'm certain that I am not the only one receiving frantic phone calls from friends and relatives around the country about $5-8/gallon gasoline prices. Usually these alerts are retold third- or fourth-hand accounts.
I drove around town just for kicks, and all the stations had the same prices that were posted Tuesday morning.
This reminds me of a real-world version of an email hoax, only this one has the potential to be self-fufilling: At each station there were lines of cars waiting to fill up on $1.75 gas.
Like alot of stories today, this one is getting out of control. Do your part: do not spread these rumors, and challenge the information of those who do.
Information wants to be Free. Useful Information will cost you.
Of course the US is vulnerable to kamakazi attacks from commercial airlines... just like any city without an active air defense system within their borders that doesn't shoot down civilian aircraft...
There's your problem there...
What freaked me out was the collapse of the twin towers...I know a bit about structural engineering, and knew that these buildings were designed to withstand a passenger jet hitting them. But what really got to me is how they collapsed, like a controlled explosion where the fold the building in on itself.
One Declan McCullagh's mailing list, someone posted a much better analysis of the collapse than what has been seen in the media...most of the media engineers were mostly wrong. Take a gander at this url: http://www.pfarrell.com/rants/archtower.html.
This article talks about how the outside latticework of the WTC was actually a load-bearing member, and there were no internal support columns...and this explains why it collapsed the way that it did.
We can only theorize that the extreme heat of the jet fuel weaking the steel coupled with the fact that these jets were going fast enough to destroy the lattice work on almost all four sides of the structure where they hit caused the eventual collapse of the structures.We can only that what dieties you pray to that they fell in the manner the did...if they had fallen sidewas, in different directions...the death toll would have gone up by possibly an order of magnitutde!
ttyl, Farrell J. McGovern (No relation)
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
The Towers did exactly what they were supposed to do. They were engineered to fold in on themselves so that they do not take our multiple blocks in the City. The amount of fuel that was expended burned a typical 4 hour fire in about 10 min. That fatigued the girders enough that the floors that were affected started falling in on themselves. Each floor is designed to hold two floors worth of debris before they buckle. The floors that eventually gave way were holding much more than that. The buildings did exactly what was needed. They did not take out more than was minimal in a horrible situation. BTW, I am 10 min outside of the city, and the New Jersey Turnpike was shutdown, including all bridges in the area. All ways in and out were shutdown for a while. They are still not letting anyone into the City. It is 12:30AM now.
One Token Ring to Rule them All, One Search Engine to Find Them, One WAN to bring them in, and TCP/IP Bind them...
On another note, I hope as many people as possible can be rescued, and the brave men and women of the NYPD and FD that gave thier lives to save people today.
Wait a minute - there were 12 years of deficit military spending under Reagan/Bush at the end of the Cold War, yet somehow it's all Jimmy Carter's fault? For the money that they spent, you could have rebuilt any putative Carter fall-off in intelligence capabilities many times over. Not to mention the question of whether Cold War-style intelligence operations are even applicable to the new rogue-states-and-terrorism foreign policy.
I think the jury's still out on the Clinton administration's foreign policy - years of perspective are usually needed before we can really understand the present or the recent past. I will point out that the Israelis and Palestinians seemed a lot happier to negotiate when Clinton was running the show, so much so that the fact that they were not able to reach a final agreement before he left office was widely seen as dooming the negotiations by all parties.
My $.02, anyway.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
How can it use "new" code, if there was never any "old" code?
The divx "codec" was/is something along the lines of a hexedited microsoft mpeg4 encoder dll that allowed encoding at > 320x200 size and at higher bitrates.
I would hardly call that "innovation". Take someone else's code, change a couple bits, and call it your own.
Something for us all to note that many many families lost parents tonight - and we should not forget the firemen and police - over 300 estimated in various media outlets - attempting to rescue people - these are tru non combatants whose only thought was for the injured and dying.
S C. html
There is a n NY time story here - but i have copied the text into this post to attempt to cope with the massively overloaded servers they have today
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/12/nyregion/12RE
Firefighters Dash Into Towers; Many Do Not Return
By JANE FRITSCH
New York firefighters, impelled by instinct and training, rushed to the World Trade Center yesterday to evacuate victims. Then the buildings fell down. The firefighters never came out.
More than 100 were unaccounted for, possibly making this the worst disaster in the New York Fire Department's history, explosions having collapsed the two main towers onto the first wave of rescuers as they snaked through stairwells and hallways. In the tumult, the temporary command center set up on a nearby street to deal with the calamity was buried in a rolling wave of concrete chunks.
Among those who died there were Chief of Department Peter J. Ganci, and First Deputy Fire Commissioner William M. Feehan. Also killed was one of the department's Roman Catholic chaplains, Michael F. Judge, who had rushed to the scene to comfort victims.
There was no trace of three of the fire department's most elite units, Rescues 1, 2 and 4, officials said last night.
A police official said last night that some officers at the scene were also unaccounted for, but "we don't have numbers." The official denied reports of 60 missing officers from the department's Emergency Services Unit, and 18 from the Brooklyn North Task Force.
Police officials said that as the day unfolded, several officers who had been presumed lost had surfaced. "The numbers are not that extravagant," said Assistant Chief Thomas P. Fahey. As night deepened, officials were able to bring in cranes and heavy shovels to begin moving rubble in hopes of finding survivors. At the same time, they had to contend with several fires that were still burning in adjacent buildings, officials said.
But hours earlier, the notion of a rescue effort seemed remote.
"We will be lucky if we don't lose 200 or 300 guys," said Michael Carter, the vice president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, who was on the scene. "There are entire companies we can't find. At this point, it's less of a firefighting operation and more like a war."
Like dazed and bloodied soldiers, thousands of firefighters and police officers wandered helplessly throughout the afternoon and evening on the West Side Highway, blocked by the danger of further catastrophe from attempting to enter the scene. Officials feared the collapse of 7 World Trade Center, another high-rise burning in the complex. It finally fell in the early evening.
By 9 a.m., about 200 firefighters had already arrived at the scene, many of them racing up stairways to reach people trapped on the upper floors, fire officials said. Many of the rescuers were from six-person units that specialize in building collapses, and many are now missing, presumed to have died when the buildings collapsed.
Marite Anez, who was working in an office on the 87th floor of 1 World Trade Center, said that as she and hundreds of others scrambled down stairways, she passed many firefighters climbing up.
When she reached the first floor, she said, the building collapsed. "You couldn't see anything," she said. "That's when everyone panicked. Everyone was pushing. The fire people gave us light, showed us the way out. The ones who were going up, I'm sure they died."
Edward Fahey, among the first firefighters to arrive, said he had to dodge bodies that were being propelled from windows on the upper floors.
Robert Byrne, from a fire company on Houston Street, said he was on the 30th floor when the second plane hit. "We were trying to evacuate civilians," he said. "The hallways were filled with dust and smoke. The whole building was shaking. We feared it would collapse, and the chief said to get the hell out of there."
Like many survivors, Mr. Byrne seemed oblivious to the soot and dust that covered his body. He stared blankly and spoke haltingly.
"I managed to get out of the building just a few seconds before it collapsed," he said. "I hugged the wall with a couple of people. We got very lucky. I don't know what happened to the company. Just me and the lieutenant got out."
From the beginning, the city's emergency response was hampered. Soon after the first plane hit, the command center for the Office of Emergency Management at 7 World Trade Center was evacuated.
Fire officials set up a mobile unit outside the complex, on Vesey Street, but that was destroyed when the buildings came down. After that, fire officials moved their command post to a firehouse in Greenwich Village, at Houston Street and Avenue of the Americas.
There were conflicting reports about whether people in the second building were told to evacuate after the first tower was hit. Several people said they heard an annoucement over the building's public address system saying they should stay put, and that the building was secure. Others said they did not hear any announcements.
One former Port Authority official said that according to procedures drawn up with the Fire Department, evacuations would only be conducted on the floors immediately above and below the fire. With a capacity of 50,000 workers, simultaneous evacuation could lead to chaos, the former official said.
For many, the only help had to come from colleagues and others who were fleeing.
A woman who worked for Morgan Stanley on the 64th floor of Tower 2 -- able to walk only with crutches -- was carried down by fellow employees. "It was incredibly difficult," said the woman, who asked that her name not be used. "They had me over their shoulder for 5 or 10 flights and just couldn't do it."
Another co-worker she knew only as Louis came upon the struggling group, lifted the woman to his shoulder and carried her by himself, she said, adding that the temperature in the stairwell was at least 90 degrees.
At about the 15th or 20th floor, the woman recalled, a security guard said they were out of danger, and urged Louis to leave the woman and continue on his own. Louis refused.
"He carried me down all 54 flights, and then out of the building," she said, "all the way to the E.M.T. guys, and he stuck with me until we got one who said I could go in an ambulance."
After the first building collapsed, people began looking everywhere for survivors amid the rubble. Flames popped out of an ambulance; taxis slammed into buildings. One man walked around calling out, "Is anyone there? Show me an arm. Show me an arm." He got no response.
Someone asked a firefighter, "Is there anything I can do?"
"There's nothing anybody can do," the firefighter replied. "There's nothing anybody can do."
Firefighters appeared utterly dejected and dumbfounded, standing around with their hands on their hips.
Mike Fitzpatrick, 38, said he and seven other firefighters were in the lobby of the first building to collapse when one became trapped. They had begun trying to cut him out when the second building collapsed, and they couldn't get hear him anymore. Then they had to leave.
"We stayed because one of our officers was trapped," he said. "We were trying to dig him out -- we were trying to dig him out. He was alive. It collapsed on him."
By 11 a.m., hundreds of dazed firefighters were on the scene. Many were on their knees; some were crying, their heads in their hands, sitting on piles of debris.
No one raced toward the wreckage, afraid that more would fall. Some called their families on borrowed cell phones.
"I love you too," one said. "I'll come home safe -- don't worry."
A sea of firefighters and police officers slumped against building or sat dejectedly on the West Side Highway for most of the afternoon. Many refused to talk. Many were in tears.
Lines of fire trucks and other emergency vehicles sat covered with a thick coating of dust and office papers that had floated out of the sky. They had come from Passaic, N.J., Hicksville, N.Y., all over the region, but mostly they had to sit and wait.
Frank Carino, 36, a New York firefighter, said he had tried to rescue men on the seventh and eighth floors of one building but the ladder of his aerial truck did not reach high enough. "They had broken the windows and they were yelling out at us the stairways were on fire," he said. "One of the men was using a megaphone." He added that he believed the two were rescued by firefighters within the building.
Another firefighter, who declined to give his name, knelt on the asphalt, a towel over his shoulder and his eyes bloodshot.
"I saw at least 10 people jump," he said. "I heard even more than that land and crash through the glass ceiling in the atrium. We could hear them crash. We thought the roof was crashing down but then we looked up and saw that people were falling through the glass. Some people fell right onto the pavement." He stopped, unable to continue talking.
He said he entered the lobby of 2 World Trade Center with his company, but was immediately blown across the lobby. "We did our best to crawl out," he said. "My company is still missing two guys. They went back in to help people."
By early evening, hundreds of firefighters stood and watched as ladder trucks poured water onto sections of the towers still belching black smoke. The sense of shock and urgency of earlier in the day was gone. As daylight faded, a handful of firefighters, constructions workers and police officers still scrambled over the rubble with flashlights, but found the same thing as teams earlier in the day -- no sounds, no voices, little sign of life.
The three blocks of Church Street that border the World Trade Center were lined with the burnt hulks of ambulances, fire trucks and police cars left where their drivers had abandoned them.
At the corner of Liberty and Church Streets, a five-story section of the top of a building loomed over the road, causing firefighters to stare anxiously above them as they walked below. A New York State flag still flew in front of 7 World Trade Center but the building was a blackened mass. Six inches of ash and office paper covered the graves at the St. James Cathedral, across the street from the towers.
The chaplain who died, Father Judge, 68, was found by firefighters on the street along with his driver. They recognized him and took him to St. Peter's Church on Barclay Street, where they laid his body at the altar. "The church was there and they figured it was a safe place to put him," said Brother Thomas Cole of the St. Francis Friary on 31st Street, where Father Judge lived.
His body, wrapped in sheets, was later moved to the empty firehouse across the street from the friary. Later, two dozen friars and firefighters, some weeping, held an impromptu service for him there, reciting the blessing of St. Francis: "May the Lord bless you and keep you and show his face to you, and have mercy on you."
Brother Cole said that Father Judge's morning prayer had been for "peace and joy in our city."
Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, also a Fire Department chaplain, recalled that Father Judge gave a sermon recently, "a homily about how you have to enjoy each day with your friends and family. He was a remarkable human being."
*********
Lets not forget those people who help us when we need them - these guys are truly heroes
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
And exactly what freedoms are we talking about giving up? Right to privacy - you'll still have it, when your at home... in private. Right to free speech, you'll still have it. Right to congregate, right to bare arms, right to freedom of religion... exactly which right is it that you think you might lose from this? No matter what laws they pass I don't believe that I'm losing any rights afforded to me by the current constitution so what constitution are you going by? Are you afraid that you might be detained at an airport for a more thorough search, would that be an inconvenience? Yes. But there is no greater inconvenience than death.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Look, I can't claim to understand the idea "The us had it coming"
That is such utter bullshit.
The people killed, they had it coming right?
The atack on people and a nation we deserve that right?
Dont believe for a second ANYONE deserves this, not any person or any country. Not the civlians of the country anyhow.
Jeremy
www.stratfor.com
This is quite a nice page on why the WTC collapsed.
Im surprised how quick the response is to write these articles.
http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/wtc.htm
Several people have posted about a mysterious fellow in alt.prophesies.nostradamus, who stated on Sept 4th that he would be gone for good in one week. His other posts predicted a big terrible event, with religious overtones and a suggestion that he was endangering himself by warning of it.
Keep in mind, however, that self-proclaimed prophets post to this newsgroup repeatedly, making predictions of vague events on specific dates, over and over, playing the odds. This fellow, for instance, posted that something big would happen on 9/01, and became evasive when nothing big occurred on that date. Then the 9/11 prediction.
Usenet regulars are also familiar with Daniel Min, who spent the past few years repeatedly predicting the end of the world by specific dates. Every few weeks he was sure we'd be hit by a comet on a specific date a few weeks later. Then we have Sollog, who claims just about every news item to be a "hit" for one of his predictions.
So, take these with a grain of salt. I certainly do hope the gov't investigates this one fellow, but it could very easily be a dead end.
Etc etc
Okay, carter started the trend and no one went back on it due to the political sitaution. It is a long debate, I am on the phone right now or I would defend myself. I just think that he did indeed start the trend of reducing our intelligence. Call it off-wing but I bet you hear it a lot soon.
On another note check this link out. State department warned about "U.S. citizens and interests abroad may be at increased risk of a terrorist action from extremist groups" and ". We are also concerned about information we received in May 2001 that American citizens may be the target of a terrorist threat from extremist groups with links to Usama Bin Ladin's Al-Qaida organization."
I don't know there are so many factors in something like this it is wrong to blame any one person or group I guess. Anyhow heres a link....
State Department Public Announcement
Jeremy
If we remove the Taliban from Afghanistan this will all be worth it. They have caused far more suffering on their own people than this attack has caused, or any of Bin Laden's (other?) attacks.
I tried to give blood, but they don't want it because I am diabetic. I wish I could do something, but I'm persona non grata in this situation.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
I keep getting "lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!" when I try to post this so instead here is a link to what I was going to post (but posted in the UserFriendly comment threads).
A Call of Prayer for Our Nation
In summary it contains:
"I went to church at 7pm tonight to pray. A piece of paper was handed out to those that attended. I retype it here for those of you that may not be sure what to pray for, maybe looking for more to pray for, or bible verses to aid you in this time of tragedy."
would comprise a truly musical response to this event, should the perps be *DEFINITELY* identified. (very important. DON'T hit the wrong people!)
I hate to say this last bit, as it hurts me.. but..
kill *them*, their *entire families*, their *entire extended families*, and their *ancestors* (defilation of gravesites); ALL of their friends, etc. etc, etc..
Jihad!
Fire with fire.
It worked for the Cosa Nostra, and the KGB.. It'll work for us. Show them we can go absolutely nuts without limit, and make it VERY personal. Throw in some Hannibal shit just to make things interesting.
And no.. this not a joke or a troll.
If they are not discussing shit like this in washington, they just aren't thinking.
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
This might be off-topic but In my book it's not, since its about the information covered.
Slashdot has been my primary source of information, just about all the biggest news feed were jammed, didn't have any tv to watch, and the progress at which people posted here and all the links given, plus the overall stability of the site, I mean, I'm impressed.... I was sure at some point when the server started being overloaded that it would be down for hours, instead, it was just for minutes or simple slowdown but nothing critical like the big feeds which were totaly busted.
Unfortunately. this is not the kind of event you'd want to happen to test the overall stability of a server and the quality of it's content, but at least it hanged in there, where others that have way more financial power and supposely professionnal staff to do the job, failed.
Thanks to all the Slashdot team, and us, readers/contributors.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
All I saw was "bin laden is linked...bin ladin is linked...." and never a "linked by" or "linked because of". Is speculation passed through yahoo now considered almost concrete proof? Scary...
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
It looks like all passengers and flight personnel (including the pilots) on the the flight bound for Pentagon were herded to the back of the plane by hijackers armed with knives and cardboard cutters.
This just goes to show we have no public training on how to handle this situtation. I don't think a "high-tech" solution, like banning encryption is needed. How about something simple... educate the public?
This is an urban legend. Even though it was just 'born' today, it's totally fabricated.
Here's the debunking.
Kevin Fox
It is more than just rights lost now. It starts a trend, it sets a mindset. It changes pressures and ploys people will use to pass oppresive measures. Don't underestimate the ways people will use this to their advantage. For one I can see bubbling to gun control and several other things. Maybe the chatter will die down but I can see many opportunity seekers trying to "protect" america from things like "guns, terrorists, etc", I mean Hey whats the difference?
:(
It happens. There are already people whop preach the "restrict encryption use" so that "evil people" can't "secretly" communicate using encryption. Come on laws like the DMCA pass in peacetime! This is still peacetime but people are in a state of shock and sadness and a need to "fix" what is now "broken". People with an agenda will be glad to use anything to their advantage and no I don't think im over-reacting
Jeremy
Uhmm, cute but incorrect. I don't believe nostradamus's prophecies, but to follow it correctly.
City of God... Definately not NYC, Jerusalem is the city of God === Jerusalem
Where the two brothers... 3 buildings fell, and they weren't brothers, they were 1 center with MANY workers and separate offices, if you're going to follow that logic, the brothers must be the people at war. This could be the Palestinians vs Isreali, or perhaps the civil war being played out in Afghanistan. Brothers don't have to love each other, they are just "related" some how. (in prophecies at least, I love my brother) == Inconclusive, but it's 2 political factions
Fortress... Pentagon, eh, maybe, but that's an office building. Note that they didn't crash into a military BASE where there would be missiles and such to attack them. This is perhaps the US as a whole more accurately, since the US has not suffered an attack on their soil of this magnitude for a long time, but is a symbolically important target to many groups. Of course, the US is very open. Crossing boarders in other countries is much more difficult. Perhaps this could be viewed as the World Trade Center, the warground of what was until not long ago, and I am sure will remain the modern warfare, that is fought at a terminal in stock shares, not with guns. == Also inconclusive
Great Leader... GWB, Congress, The US... Keep giong, it could even be someone on the other side, the Great Leader of the attack (though I don't think he's so great) == Still inconclusive
Big City... Eh, NYC
Still, this is pretty ambiguous. I don't really follow nostradamus nor do I think that this is one of the signs of the end of the world. This is bad, this sucks, this is a shock to us, this isn't apocalyptic prophecy. OBL (not to cast this on him until it's known) is not the sort of charismatic leader to start the kind of war that gets printed in the bible in the end of days. Whoever did this will be brought to justice swiftly and forcefully. This isn't a war they can win. The one in the Bible is one that drags out and is fought hard by both sides. Not to sound overconfident, but I haven't seen the sort of military force yet that I would expect from such a power. Until planes fly over my house that aren't from the US, and start carrying out surgical strikes against us, I won't believe that it is that sort of war. This will not stand, they can not win. The sort of war in the bible, I would be standing out front with my hunting rifles right now gunning down an invasion.
Let me be very clear, everything that follows is speculation. It will probably be days if not weeks before we have a good idea what has happened today. We may never really know all that has led up to this tragedy, but what is the likely scenario?
We know that 4 planes were hijacked and 3 slammed into buildings.
Almost certainly all the hijackers on the planes are now dead as well as many many victims. By targeting the WTC and Pentagon they have attacked buildings with both actual and symbolic value to the American way of life. These are places presumably intended to produce as many casualties as possible and demonstrate the vulnerabilities of even our greatest organizations.
Clearly these people hate America and Americans and are perfectly happy to give their lives to hurt us and create terror. Multiple people prepared to give their lives in the assault suggest a religious group with beliefs that their souls will be honored after their death. Essentially all major religions (e.g. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism) share a fundamental respect for life, but at many times and places their teachings have been corrupted to justify killing in God's name. In the current case Islam seems the most likely, not because they are especially vulnerable, but because people in Islamic regions seem the most likely to hate Americans at this point in history.
We must bear partial responsibility for the hate they feel towards us. At some point there was a failure to connect with these people and address their concerns in a reasonable way. Now the world has stepped down a path that will almost certainly lead to even greater destruction. Of course, our unseen attackers bear the greatest responsibility and will hopefully be called to account, but we must wonder if there was anything society could do to redress their grievances before they grew to the point that they perceived violence as their only option.
What does it take to do this? Most likely you need pilots trained on these planes or one's like them. This ensures that the pilot will in fact fly directly into the target, and minimized the chance of the original pilot conveying that something is wrong. Probably it would be easier to find suicide bombers and send them to flight school than to recruit pilots to be bombers.
Terrorists would also need weapons. This means either being able to conceal them through security or being able to go around security. If you have money it is probably easier to get weapons that can be walked through a metal detector than to research ways to breach security. This is especially true if you plan to go through more than one airport. Hard plastics and ceramics can be made into some nasty things if cost is not a concern. Alternatively, a sharp obsidian or glass knife with wooden handle could probably be made for a bargain.
Once on the plane you want to be able to take control and get into the locked cockpit. Threatening passengers might get one to open the cockpit but it's not totally reliable and they would certainly send distress signals first. More preferably one would want to practice breaking into cockpits and have a tool or ram that could do it quickly. A slightly modified piece of luggage might serve as a ram. (I don't know what the locking mechanisms are like but someone taking the time to train as a pilot certainly would have access to them and perhaps figure out how to quickly defeat them.)
A single terrorist is somewhat likely to be overpowered in the tight quarters of an airliner, and is at greater risk if he has to pilot the plane himself while in a cockpit that can no longer be secured properly. This suggests that you need multiple suicidal terrorists per plane. Two might be enough, but three would be safer because that still gives them a backup even after your pilot takes the controls.
To continue speculating, we are talking about 8-12 hijackers, at least 4 of which pilots. They would probably want some financial backers and other organizers. It would make sense to have associates to recruit the next generation of terrorists. If they're foreign nationals you need an identity and papers, or some other way to get into the country. Of course securing entrance into the country wouldn't require telling the person you get the false papers from what you intend to do. While they do want some people in support positions, they wouldn't want too many as it increases the opportunities of leaks that would kill the whole project. I'm guessing that somewhere between 10 and 30 people knew about this attack in advance.
The main cost is in preparation time and finding the right people to go through with it. The point is that you don't actually need an army, expensive weaponry, or lots of financial backing to accomplish this. Of course, having financial backing and encouragement is perhaps rather likely and would make things easier, especially if they come from third world nations where the relative income is quite low.
Obviously we will have to wait until the facts are known to see how accurate my speculations are, and truth is often stranger than imagination.
If you have The Learning Channel on your television sets you will be able to view coverage of the tragedy from the BBC as of 21:34 Pacific Time. Interesting to see what information comes out over there, along with their opinions.
http://russnelson.com/wtc.html has pics off the wallstreetitalia.com webcam, on the 73rd floor of the Empire State Building. One of them was just moments before the first tower collapsed.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
http://www.janes.com/security/international_securi ty/news/jir/jir010911_1_n.shtml
Certainly an eventful month for the Taliban.
I find it interesting that just this past Friday, (September 7th) the U.S. Department of State issued the following "Worldwide Caution" travel bulletin for the benefit of US travelers:
"Over the last several months, the U.S. Government has learned that U.S. citizens and interests abroad may be at increased risk of a terrorist action from extremist groups. In addition, we have received unconfirmed information that terrorist actions may be taken against U.S. military facilities and/or establishments frequented by U.S. military personnel in Korea and Japan. We are also concerned about information we received in May 2001 that American citizens may be the target of a terrorist threat from extremist groups with links to Usama Bin Ladin's Al-Qaida organization. In the past, such individuals have not distinguished between official and civilian targets. As always, we take this information seriously. U.S. Government facilities worldwide remain at a heightened state of alert."
[From: http://travel.state.gov/wwc1.html ]
My wife saw lines backed out into the street for gas that cost $5 a gallon. She knew I was almost out of gas so she called me and I went to fill up. I waited in line for twenty minutes and paid $1.81, which is only about 30 cents higher then normal, however I do not work in the city.
While waiting in line I heard on the news that some people had report gas prices as high as $6 to $7 dollars a gallon. There were a few minor car accidents because of the lines backed out into the streets, in some cases for a few blocks, just to get gas. A local reporter had been told by the owner of a local gas station that he had received a call stating that they would quit production of gas tomorrow. A lot of gas stations in the area have ran out of gas (even those selling at $5 a gallon).
The governor came on the air around 2~3pm (I cannot remember) and stated that since we were not in a state of emergency at the time, the stations were not breaking the law, however people should quit buying at stations that are jacking the prices up and there were hotlines setup to report what stations those were. The oil companies denied saying that production would cease, most people think that was just an excuse on the part of the gas stations owners to jack up the price. By the time I went home (5:50pm), most of the prices I saw where only 30 to 50 cents higher then normal, with the highest prices being at $2 dollars a gallon. The more respectable gas stations were the least affected, every 7-11 that I saw tonight (at least eight or nine) had completely taken their prices off of the sign.
When I worked at American Express I wrote a filter to check credit card applications against the OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) database. The database has names (real names) of terrorists and drug dealers who have had their assets seized by the courts to compensate their victims. The joke at the time was "what terrorist is going to use their real name?" The filter I was required to write checked against the real names of the terrorists.
So, perhaps you are another person who thinks that terrorists are too dumb to not give a real name. A bastard like Bin Ladin has more enemies than just the US, believe me.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
"The Americans have forgotten that God exists. They have us by the throat and now they find themselves in a science fiction film scenario, but this time Rambo's not there to save the White House."
I don't understand the people watching the bombings and celebrating, how can they have such a skewed view of Americans? Is it just because they see us as rich?
I don't know if anyone is interested in this, but maybe. When my dad died about a year ago, one of the mementos I got was this army knife that my Grandpa used in World War 2 (It's a Kabar knife - I think they're still standard issue in the armed forces). These things are pretty big, maybe 2/3 my arm length, and if you look at them you can see that they're designed to kill someone.
So, when I flew home, I threw this in my bag and didn't really remember that I shouldn't bring this on the plane. But it went right through all the security checks, and none of the security people noticed it in my bag. I was kind of surprised that I got it through so easy.
Anyway, I thought I'd mention it since people are saying that the hijackers used knifes to take over the plane. It can't have been too hard to get them on.
A> Commercial availability does not equate to being legal. Many items are "commercially available" but have restrictions on them as to be warranted illegal (IE radar detectors, beer, etc.) Linux for quite some time was not a commercially available product... does that make it illegal and since it has the original code that was available during this non-commercial period is that illegal also?
B> Can you prove what you say about hex edited code. I have seen several people make this claim and not one has been able to substantiate it with code, proof, a site, or a lawsuit from Microsoft to back up the claim. If DivX were in fact "stolen" pirate ware MS would be all over DIVX.COM.
C>And since when does anyone (especially on Slashdot) consider Microsoft or Intel either trustworthy or respectable?
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
It may be significant that the anniversary of a Congressional resolution "favoring a Jewish homeland in Palestine" falls on this date. Then again, if you go back a century or two, you may find a lot of anniversaries that seem just as significant.
Yeah, approximately 1 out of every 365 events that has ever happened happened on this day.
For an added kick in the nuts, today is UN International Peace Day
This can't be true.
:)
GW is NOT a great leader
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
perhaps the fbi is putting carnivore to some good
use?
just a thought.
this really sucks.
god bless everyone.
.:JMT:.
}:kill.process:{
People are comparing this disaster to the bombing of Peal Harbor by the Japanese. That was a bad time to be a Japanese American. I understand they were sent to interrment camps. It's just as well becuase if they had been outside the camps they might have been lynched.
Now is not a good time to be of Arabian descent. I haven't heard anything yet, but I predict there will be murder.
Also, politicians are debating on television how to balance the principles of the bill of rights with the threat that is facing us today. What are they calling for, if not interrment camps.
I am certain it will be bad. I know that foriegners are about to suffer, but will it become to bad that I will be forced to withold my liberal views for fear of violent retaliation?
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
You are on the right course. It's a JIHAD.
Ahem...
I propose that Sept 11 was selected because the team was in place for weeks waiting for good weather over all targets at the same time.
Only saw video of WTC 2 strike. If all of the terrorist pilots had that skill level, they needed good visibility, i.e., he was too wobbly to be a seasoned instrumet pilot.
I suspect that the whole bunch laid in wait until the weather was right in both DC and NYC before they even left for Logan, Newark and Dulles.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
I just saw the statement of Arafat on CNN. He appeared emotional and shocked, his lips trembled as he spoke. He condemned the attack, and seemed sincere although he did not look directly at the camera.
According to theregister.com some one put the WTC on Ebay. It was pulled quickly.
Little 5" copper statues of the WTC can be found on Ebay for $130.
Tomarrow you will see parts of the WTC listed on Ebay.
Next week you will be able to buy commemoritive $5 coins minted by The American Mint which will be leagal tender in Libiria.
21 days from now you will be able to get a 11" x 17" coffie table book detailing the history of the World Trade Center in living color.
Within a month the insurance policies and wills of those killed will put money in the hands of people not mentaly equiped to handle the responsablitiy of the new money.
Within the month Pres Bush will sound like an idiot by saying that we need his Missel Defence Shield more than ever.
Within the year our constitutional rights will be slightly limited in the name of freedom.
30 years from now no one will have as of yet taken credit for this attack and we will see our freedomes striped down to fight a nonvisable enamy. Any one ever see the movie Brazil?
I will spare you the darker side of what I see, but I think that these things should hold you over for a while.
Ascii artist &
A few simple steps that could lessen the risk of skyjackings.
1. Cockpit door locked from the inside at all times. (Flight attendants must knock to deliver food and coffee).
2. Peephole in cockpit to verify who is knocking.
3. bullet-proof cockpit bulkhead.
4. As a last resort, all cockpits equiped with shotguns loaded with beanbag ammunition, (to avoid hull peircings).
These 4 simple safety measures would have prevented this tragedy. Cardboard cutters would not do much against a bulletproof bulkhead. Granted, some passengers may have been killed, but I would postulate that such a mission would not even have been hatched if these safefty measures were in place.
Dag Maggot
I have no pants and I must scream
I just got off the phone with my friend whose girlfriend has a nearly miraculous survival story.
She arrived at work on the 81st floor of the north tower at 8:45am EDT today. The first plane crashed into this tower at about 8:55am EDT about 5 floors above her. After the initial confusion and chaos, everybody on her floor headed towards the exits and began the slow evacuation down the stairs.
While the first building was being evacuated, the second plane hit the south tower at about 9:05am. An hour later while still making her way down the stairs of the north tower, the south tower collapses at 10:07am. 20 minutes after that at 10:27am, and nearly an hour and a half after the first plane crashed into her building, she makes it to the bottom floor as the north tower begins to collapse down onto her. (Sadly, I assume everybody in floors any higher than 81 probably didn't make it out of the building.)
She was one of the last people to make it out of the building, but she did not make it far before a door fell on top of her and pinned her to the ground. In retrospect, she was very lucky because the door shielded her from glass and other falling objects.
After the dust settled somewhat, she was discovered by police and taken to the hospital. She is in stable condition and is being treated for bruises, cuts, and broken bones.
I can only imagine how she must feel to have been at ground zero and still be alive to tell about it.
When reading an article on Cnet today I read that the plane headed to the pentagon was being followed and watched by 2 jets. I went back to find the link and Cnet has taken it off the page, or moved it entirely. I don't understand why, if we were following the plane and watching it, did we do nothing about it before it hit killing 800 so far. I assume that is what passer-by's saw when they said they saw a second aircraft swirve off.
On 9/4 he said in 7 days he was going away never to return. 9/4 + 7 = 9/11.
And that's my $0.32 (adjusted for inflation).
Yep. Hysteria, finger pointing, confusion, pointless acts of mirroring karma-whoring, and trolling in ways that we can only dream of in peace time.
Well if we know these people may be associated with Bin Ladin's organization, and they used their real names to get the tickets, shouldn't that have rasied an eyebrow somewhere?
I think the big problem may be that the U.S. has pissed off so many different groups of terrorists that it's tough to keep good intelligence available on all of them. It was much easier to track one Soviet Union that it is to track umpteen zillion terrorist cells and/or anti-American elements that range about the Middle and Far East, Africa, and South America.
I think there have been some situations where the U.S. has made enemies instead of friends; and I think we're going to find out that the rest of the world is not as ready to forgive and forget as the U.S. has been in similar circumstances. It's easy to let bygones be bygones when the goal is to keep the economy on track; when you're more concerned about freedom and/or civil rights for your people, you're a lot less likely to be willing to make up with your past adversaries.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I really don't buy the red scare theory you've just tossed out. Right-wingers, especially those with military experience would be suspect number one for domestic terror. They're organized in militias, have the will and equipment to do it, have the rhetoric, etc.
Where are the leftist militias?
Please stop with the facetious "but the US earned it" comments. Any large-scale power acts in its own self interest. That is just as true today as it was 2000+ years ago when Rome sowed the remains of Carthage, their mortal enemy, with salt. Smaller groups act in their self interest as well - the "recent unpleasantness" in Zimbabwe over land seizures is an excellent case in point. That my self interest may not be your self interest is an entirely normal state of affairs - most affairs of state are zero-sum games. Despite the complaints from around the world about American hegemonism, most of those counries who now use the UN as a forum to complain regularly and bitterly, would not have had access to such a venue if it were not for American desires. The League of Nations was largely an American creation, and the UN was based on the same principles, shoved down the throats of unwilling and relatively ungrateful Europeans.
Or is this the old "blame the victim" game, legitimized because the victim happens to be big? Does that mean that my 5'2" wife should go out and start pistol-whipping NFL linebackers? They're bigger, meaner, and nastier, so they must have it coming.
The UN and the Western World decided to create an artificial state in Palestine,
As opposed to what? The rump state left behind when the Ottoman Empire fell apart? Remember - the Ottoman Empire held all of the Mid-East until the end of WW1. Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, all of the Saudi peninsula states - all of these countries were born on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. Greece didn't get its freedom all that much earier, either. Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Albania, Austria, and most of Southeastern Europe all come from similar bastard progeny - the old Austro-Hungarian empire. What about Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland - all formerly parts of the Russian Empire, freed by the fall of the Tsars. Are they just as illegitimate?
and billions of US dollars flow into an oppresive regime to suppress the native Palestinians.
Native? Really? I thought they arrived after the Romans pushed the Jews out, in about 100 AD. If you want to play the "prior posession" game, Palestinians are relative latecomers. Prior art, in this case, goes to the Jews, whether you like it or not. You can use the argument that the Jews are returning, and that the Palestinians have 1800 years of posession, but if that's the case, then you might as well turn around and tell every Native American that they don't have a legitimate claim either - whether the time is 50, 100, 200, or 1800 years doesn't really make a difference, it's whoever was second to last, by your logic.
What am I saying here? Review ALL of the facts before you make such sweeping statements. Apply your arguments evenhandedly - the law applies to all, not just to some.
This is a nation-state-level act of war. The deliberate, pre-meditated murder of >10,000 individuals. The destruction of $billions of personnal property. IMHO, once the perpetrator(s) behind this are determined, whichever government is harboring them and their operation should be requested to hand them and their operation over, all giftwrapped with pretty bows, for criminal prosecution. Failure to do so would demonstrate conspiracy after the fact by the national government in an act of war. My personal choice would be to see those responsible charged, in criminal court in the district of Manhattan, state of New York, with 10,000 1st degree murder charges. Presuming they are found guilty, I would like to see them serve those sentances consecutively. I would like to see _every single individual_ in the sponsoring organizations similarly arrested and charged with 10,000 counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
At first I was hearing reports of missile strikes in the Afghani capital, but all such reports seem to have stopped... Was the information simply an unfounded rumor which turned out to be untrue, or is the press holding something back (for any of various possible reasons)?
Just another weird coincidence? I hope so.
---
"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
So there's no country to go to war with. It's another mess like Bosnia. There are 25 million people in an area the size of Texas, some of whom hate the US and some who don't. Now what?
This song jumped into my head today, after I read the lyrics I was weirded out...
"That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane -
Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn -
world serves its own needs, don't misserve your own needs. Feed it up a knock,
speed, grunt no, strength no. Ladder structure clatter with fear of height,
down height. Wire in a fire, represent the seven games in a government for
hire and a combat site. Left her, wasn't coming in a hurry with the furies
breathing down your neck. Team by team reporters baffled, trump, tethered
crop. Look at that low plane! Fine then. Uh oh, overflow, population,
common group, but it'll do. Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its
own needs, listen to your heart bleed. Tell me with the rapture and the
reverent in the right - right. You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright
light, feeling pretty psyched.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
Six o'clock - TV hour. Don't get caught in foreign tower. Slash and burn,
return, listen to yourself churn. Lock him in uniform and book burning,
blood letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate. Light a candle,
light a motive. Step down, step down. Watch a heel crush, crush. Uh oh,
this means no fear - cavalier. Renegade and steer clear! A tournament,
a tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives
and I decline.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
The other night I tripped a nice continental drift divide. Mount St. Edelite.
Leonard Bernstein. Leonid Breshnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs.
Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom! You symbiotic, patriotic,
slam, but neck, right? Right.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine...fine...
(It's time I had some time alone)"
-It's the End of the World as we Know it (and I Feel Fine) by REM
Damnit I AM acting my age. I'm 15 in hex!
Formally submitting my first diff patch, I fired this letter off to the Federal Aviation Administration, the overbearing bureaucracy whose oversights led to four plane crashes and thousands killed. The trip I took was to Defcon 9.
I took a trip to Las Vegas in July. My flight from Phoenix went normally except for one serious, disturbing mistake made by Phoenix security checkpoint staff. I thought it was funny at first that such as a glaring lapse of policy occured, but after the tragic events in New York and Washington, I revistited this story and I wonder whether four lapses in "Airport Security" caused the deaths of so many people today.
Suitcasenuke is the name of a computer I jerryrigged in an old Samsonite suitcase for portability. I have edited this account for clarity, the original is at http://telconnect.net/~sean/suitcasenuke/
Transporting:
The finished product is rather heavy and bulky--65 pounds give or take. It barely fit as a carryon. I took America West flight 113 from Phoenix Sky Harbor International to Las Vegas McCarran on a busy Thursday afternoon.
Approaching "SECURITY CHECKPOINT A," I cut in line by 10 people hollering out to the security staff that I could nto have suitcase nuke X-rayed as the machine is a very sensitive piece of electronic equipment.
Preparing for this, I had all the fixins to prove to them this frightening apparatus wasn't a bomb. Packed in there were my keyboard, mouse, power cord, vga cable so I could plug it into one of their terminals if need be. The screener blatantly ignores my request to pass it through and I'm eventually in front of the walk-through metal detector. This staffer does not understand English very will and I do not understand his natiove Swahili. Thankfully my brother had already gone through and was also trying to get through to the screener. Five minutes of this, and there are easily sixty people behind me in line.
Pressed with the queue, he grabbed the suitcase and fit it through the little gap between the metal detector and the X-ray machine and flailed his hand behind him, motioning me to 'go over there.'
I found myself staring at an unstaffed table with a plane to Vegas to catch, not blow out of the sky. My impatient brother didn't feel like further embattling the screeners and rigamorol. Off we went.
They didn't plug it in. They didn't swab it for explosive residue. They didn't even open it.
I smuggled--if that's the right word--a 70 pound suitcase right passed "Airport Security."
Makes me wish it were a suitcase nuke.
Now before you go out and arrest me, I beg of you to reconsider airport security policies. For example, arresting people who make bomb jokes at the gate is the embodiment of stupidity and maligned priorities. If I was really going to blow up the plane, would I be talking about it at the security checkpoint?
How hard would it be to smuggle an 18" polycarbonate machete onto a plane by maybe taping it to your thigh or sandwiching it in your suitcase between a lead plate? Even if I obviously brought contraband aboard, what's the chance the underpayed, undereducated, understaffed, and overly apathetic security screener overlook it or not know what it is? Or would he be too lazy and not even get up and make a fuss about it if he did recognize it? Don't say it's not possible. It happened to me. I did it at an airport with one of the best records in the industry. Phoenix Sky Harbor had two violations last year. Is this one Number 3? Which other violations do you not know about?
The FAA failed in its security measures four times the morning of 11th Septembenr and as a result, our nation mourns. Could that 18" polycarbonate machete worn by a survivalist or a law-abiding american concerned only with the defense of his legitimate fellow passengers ultimately ensure their safety? Barbara Olson's plane was taken down by two hijackers armed with cardboard cutters. Could a right to self-defense have saved United Flights 99 and 175 and American Airlines Flights 11 and 77 and prevented this atrocity?
Does the FAA honestly think it will stop a suicidal hijacker on a mission for Allah by having a ticket clerk ask "Have any unknown persons been in the possession of your baggage?"
Don't cast this off. Please. THe Administration's policies have failed America. I want to see them changed.
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
Being a dot.commie who was recently downsized I had spent a lot of time looking through employment classifieds.
Wanna know how much those fine folks who run the security checkpoints make per hour? Here's what they make in Seattle.
Makes you wonder why it didn't happen sooner.
I can confirm that there was a man who said a second plane was at the Pentagon. Apparently the plane (which the witness described as grey with 2 big propellers (i.e. not a civilian plane)) looked as though it was diving straight for the Pentagon, but lifted up out of the dust and flew away. I thought it was odd myself that no one else was reporting this...
the problem was the way you phrased it.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I cannot play DiVX:-) (god I hate that fucking name!) encoded AVI files on my Mac without first having Microsoft Media Player 6.3 installed, and then intructing the DiVX player where to find it when it first runs.
Therefore I assume that it requires MS's codec, yes?
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Actually.. the "two brothers" makes better sense if you think of the US and Israel as two brothers. Perhaps this is more a prophecy to come later, caused by some "chaos".
Of course, I would like to think all this Nostradamus talk is not true. Can anyone reference anything which disproves this philosophy?
http://www.cnn.com/video/us/2001/09/12/first.plane .hits.gp.med.html
1st admendment says they can say it, but also that you can bitch and moan.
service@cafepress.com
product number 1468594
You would probably want to review Sections 3 & 4 of their Member Agreement before writing.
They do not review items prior to posting, but reserve the right to remove "offensive" items.
"Time is an abstract concept devised by carbon-based lifeforms to monitor their ongoing decay." - Thundercleese
Just a note that those attacking Kabul at night might not be who the news is reporting them to be. The weapons they appear to be using would be out of range for small forces to obtain. It might be that we have already started an attack of some sort and are using this as a cover.
Ok, take the flight numbers: 11, 93, 175, and 77
Do some math.
11 = Today's Date
9+3 = 12 = Tomorrow
1+7+5 = 13 = Thursday
7+7 = 14 = Friday
Freaky.
http://plock.net/post/377/
I *swear* my newsfeed (CBC TV, Canada) reported a crash in Colorado. There was never a retraction, nor was there any mention of it again.
NORAD is out in Colorado, although it wouldn't be even scratched by this sort of attack.
Can anyone authoritatively confirm or deny? There were enough rumours flying around in the AM that it's probably just another... but CBC was pretty good about dispelling the rumours once they were known to be false.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Didn't Nostradamous say he'd wear a turben? Didn't he say a huge nation would be undermined by his operations?
< copy of NYT webpage from 01:00 09/12/01 (real link here, but it is a slow load. >
Lower Manhattan to Stay Closed
September 12, 2001
Lower Manhattan is expected to remain cut off from the rest of the city today, and schools and stock exchanges will be closed.
Subways, streets and bridges leading to Lower Manhattan are expected to remain closed today. The city's three airports will be closed at least until 2 p.m. The Lincoln and Holland Tunnels will be closed to all but non-emergency traffic vehicles, officials said, but New Jersey-bound traffic on the George Washington Bridge's upper level will be allowed. Westbound traffic on Staten Island's three bridges will also be allowed.
The Police Department said that no one above 14th Street would be allowed to go south of there. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani urged people not to come into Manhattan.
Subway trains will not stop at stations south of Canal Street, a transit spokesman, Bob Slovak, said. PATH service will operate, but officials urged commuters to stay home.
The city's public schools chancellor, Harold O. Levy, ordered schools closed, probably through tomorrow. He summoned principals, assistant principals, guidance counselors, social workers and school psychologists to go to work "to prepare plans to respond to the tragedy."
Four downtown colleges -- Pace University, the Borough of Manhattan Community College, the New School University and New York University -- canceled classes today. <end of article copy>
Here's also a very handy link to subway, bus, bridge and other local transportation info in NYC. It's at the official MTA site, so it's reliable. Basically south of Canal St. is shut down, and all bridges are just for outbound traffic, as of this post. I've found the cops at the bridges to be reasonable if you are on foot and have a compelling/official reason to get on the island.
God bless America.
evanchik.net
..my girlfriend pointed this out to me, even though it was super obvious.
9/11/01 or 911
Unbelievable.
Pretty much a realtime conversation right now...
r
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wtcdisaste
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
the killing of the opposition leader against the Taliban. He is said to have secretly helped the U.S. get spies into Afghanistan to watch Bin Laden. So the bombing 3 days ago would have been a nice way to prepare for today's events, and the rockets tonight are thought to be the work of opposition supporters.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
All that I heard was there was a HELICOPTER in the vacinity (not a prop driven fixted wing), that moved to the opposite side of the Pentagon as the commercial flight was crashing.
Look up my name and see other threads.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
"All the activities of Osama bin Laden are under the tight control of the Taliban," Usman Shaharyar, a Taliban foreign ministry official, told The Associated Press.
www.bergen.com/morenews/osama25200106248.htm
From a newspaper article on June 25th.
The Taliban seems to belive that bin Laden did not, and would not have had the capability to, perform these terrorist attacks. Are they right? Does bin Laden have them fooled? Are they willing accomplises? Does bin Laden's popularity with the Afgani people cause the Taliban to belive that moving against him would collapse their fragile hold on the country? I'm sure we'll find out more as the investigation continues.
If it turns out, as it is now being reported, that "box cutter" knives were the weapons used to take control of the plane then the sophistication needed to have pulled this coordinated terror attack would not have been as high as originally thought*. It would, however, have required considerable "out of the box" thinking by the terrorists. It seems the most dangerous weapon in the terrorist's arsenal is creativity.
* It would still almost certainly have required the terrorists themselves to be able to pilot the aircraft, and that would certainly have required some sophisticated training; but without the need to smuggle weapons on board all the planes simultaneously, the logistics of this act become MUCH simpler.
No guns, bazooka, missles, or special equipment is required
You're right, anybody with sufficient training could take out a flight crew with their bare hands. I know at least two mild-manner techie types with black belts that could incapacitate three guys in seconds. The first never sees it coming, the second has no time to react and the third is so outclassed by the attacker he's useless.
Plus of course, if you're willing to die you can do anything. The adrenaline advantage is on their side. No explosives, no weapons... just murderous intent. So how do you test against that?
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Hiroshima, Vietnam, sanctions against poor starving Iraqis, these are crimes against humanity. This is simply justice, against a nation that has gone crazy with it's own ideals of invincibility and superiority. And especially against the childish and dangerous attitude of George Bush towards foreign relations.
My hearts go out to all the Muslim people that are regrettabley going to suffer the prejudices that the vengful and misunderstanding americans are going to display.
I agree completely, we need to continue to live our American lives. Go to work, focus as best you can on our professions. I understand MLB cancelling their games today, but barring security threats in the coming days college and pro football should continue. Yes, hang the flags at half mast, say a prayer or give a moment of silence before the games, but continue in our public American traditions, as trite as they may be. Also, I believe it was a mistake to cancel the Emmys on this coming Sunday night. All this barring credible direct threats, of course.
We should do everything we can to show that terrorist attacks will have the smallest impact possible, even on our most simple activities.
"This wound is beyond my ability to heal. We need Elvis medicine!"
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As the baader meinhof boys said, "The greater the atrocity, the greater the value." You are utterly naive if you don't understand why the killing of innocents is justified to these people, and far preferable to the killing of soldiers.
Yes, I mourn for the loss of life. But not greatly. I've lost too many family members these past two years to feel sincere grief for strangers. This incident is only outstanding for it's location and it photogenic nature. It will not be helped by me pretending to be touched, like the drama queens who are flooding this site. The reactions I'm seeing are the reactions of people whose lives have made them so numb, that when a major incident takes place they feel alive again, and begin to crave more disaster.
Did you know it is a common practice in parts of Africa to crack holes in fuel pipelines to steal petroleum? Did you know that this often results in huge explosions? These explosions often kill thousands -- literally thousands -- of africans. If I go through my life feeling soulful grief for those whose lives are foreshortened by incomprehensible catastrophe, I will be paralysed.
Innocent people die. Get used to it. The US has never been squeamish about murdering innocents. Over 2000 civilians died in Panama.
Denial isn't just a river in Italy
Paid for by The U.S Government
http://www.narrowminds.net/laden.htm
... has been quoted blaming 'dirty spaniards' for the destruction of the towers.
Yeah, but the innocents aren't the targets.
Know someone who is stealing cable? Report them!
Check my post below, look up my name, I put news up that I'd like an answer to. Why did we do nothing when we had 2 jets following the plane to the pentagon?
SheepDogg
I do not really think one would need a fully-trained pilot to crash-land an airplane. The hijackers could have told the pilots to fly the plane to New York without revealing they were planning on leveling a building with it. I would guess the pilot would cooperate if he thought the hijackers would merely force the plane to land and then negotiate with the government over their grievances and the hostages, as most hijackers do. Instead, when the plane was within sufficient proximity of the towers, where anyone who knows how to use a steering wheel could operate it, the terrorists could have then wrested control from the pilot and simply aimed the plane in the right direction. Knowledge of how to read the numerous gauges and operation of equipment such as the landing gear would have been quite superfluous.
It has already been revealed that the terrorists overtook the plane with common knives and cardboard shears (box cutters), which probably anyone could have gotten on board legitimately.
I would also point to an Arab nation as the source of the attacks, not because of the Islamic religion, but because nearly every Arab nation has more than sufficient temporal reasons for justifiably hating the United States. We are allied with Israel; more than enough cause for the Palestinians. In the 1960s and 70s, Israel invaded several of its neighbors, with our help. We betrayed Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran, then went to war with him when he invaded Kuwait. We currently maintain a dictatorship in Saudi Arabia for economic goals. Prior to Ayatollah Khomeini, we maintained a similar dictatorship in Iran. We have bombed Libya on numerous occasions, and even killed Mohammar Qadaffis own daughter in one raid. We supported the Afghani Mujahadeen in their war against Russia, then withdrew after our goals were satisfied (defeat the communists), leaving them to fight their civil wars themselves.
Finally, there are numerous stories in the Old Testament (mythology shared by both Christians and Jews) of people killing in Gods name. In fact, one could argue that in several stories, Yahweh was in fact a Hebrew war god much like Mars or Ares from GræcoRoman mythology. The ancient Hebrews prayed to Him before going to battle, He saw them to victory, and they sacrificed much of their spoils to Him afterward. The phenomenon is not a corruption by rulers but, historically, the norm for many religions. Few religions are, under the surface, about universal love and peace.
Liberty in your lifetime
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This has got to stop. Islam, at least as far as I understand it, is a religion of peace and devotion . Just look at the tens of millions of the true Islamics, the decent American citizens who love this land and in times of crisis like this unfaitly bear the brunt of our typical narrow-minded hostilities. Our tendency to blame an entire culture for the actions of one nut indicates that we're still carrying Segrigationist-era prejudices.
Fanatics like Osama bin Laden and what I fear to be a growing proportion of the Arab world follow a bastardized and corrupt version of Islam that somehow justifies horrendous atrocities like September 11th--I think a New York Times columnist called it Islamism, the -ism to indicate it's juvenile delinquency.
Islamism, Islamist, Islamistic. Let's adopt this term and end an injustice against our fellow Americans.
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
Oh, and it's not like the City of God could be Washington either.....
That's one heaven I don't want to see.
If any of you don't have a PayPal account yet, you can sign up and get $5 free. My first act: give give it to the red cross fund. Go to PayPal now and sign up!
You can't see this if you have sigs turned off.
According to a GeoStrategyDirect.com intelligence newsletter published in May, bin Laden's organization is belived to have as many as 20 tactical nuclear devices stolen from Russian forces by Chechen rebels. If this is true, then the recent terror attacks could have been much worse. If bin Laden does have these nukes and plans on using them as an "insurance policy" then it could explain why he would think he could make such an alleged attack with impunity.
I D= 22611
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The following text is from a WorldNetDaily news article on May 11th of this year.
"Russian intelligence sources who are fighting bin Laden members in Chechnya believe [he] has a handful of tactical nuclear weapons," said the report. "Arab intelligence sources say the Al Qaida head has as many as 20 weapons."
Al Qaida is the name of the terrorist group bin Laden leads.
The report says "both sides agree" that the Saudi terrorist managed to acquire his weapons by supporting the Chechen cause with money and volunteers, in exchange for nuclear materials and technology.
www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_
To view a supposed bin Laden recruitment video, go to:
www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/06/21/video.binla
Why does stuff like this have to happen? I'm just trying to live my insignificant life peacefully and quietly. I become upset enough over insignificant things without having to deal with stuff like this and all the potential ramifications. Maybe I should move to Antarctica.
Know someone who is stealing cable? Report them!
9/11 is the anniversary of the discovery (by euros) of Mann. Island where the WTC buildings were.
Someone suggested in a joking way: what if it was Native Americans. WTC is a good target for someone getting back at you for trading your nations for beads.
--This isn't at all meant to be serious-or-even to make you think that it's true--
I just want people to open their minds to who could be responsible. I don't think Native Americans would do anything like this.
My money is on Bin Ladin [not the whole Arab community].
VIDEOS AT THIS SITE
Get your Unix fortune now!
The mayor was prepared to announce that Habeus Corpus and Freedom of Assembly would be suspended along with the scheduled Primary Election.
Then an aide reminded him they were already suspended.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
Wasn't the sentencing for one of the perps of the 93 WTC bombing today?
Economic attack anyone? Maybe the WTO opposition had something to do with it.
In the distance you hear an ominous moo.
Just a small nit-pick, but it's "kamikaze", not "kamakazi". The word kamikaze (meaning "divine wind") is comprised of two kanji characters, kami (meaning god or divine), and kaze (meaning wind). Tell a Japanese person that these terrorist attacks were "kamikaze" attacks and watch how pissed off they get. :-)
Based upon our specialist analysis, we have identified the following as potential suspects:
Osama bin Laden and Al-Qa'eda ("the Base")
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
Saddam Hussein
The best way to make sure you have the right people is to take them all out. Every one of the useless motherfuckers.
The more info we get, the less this looks like another American militia job. But something strikes me as odd--doesn't bin Laden usually crow about his attacks after the fact? I haven't heard anything about him doing so tonight. Could it be him, or is it more likely to be another organization?
-Legion
Picked up this list of potentially involved organizations from some dude on IRC.
Everyone seems to be blaming Osama bin Laden. I hope people do their research completely before resolving to that conclusion. Just imagine we get him extradited to the U.S., try him, convict him, and summarily inject him; only to have the Sears Tower impaled by a Concorde the following day.
It could be anyone. This thing sucks, but justice is only sweet when it's 100% confirmed to be imposed on those who instigated the original offense.
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
I know the feeling. Here in Wichita, KS we've got a couple of little airports, McConnel AFB, and two semi-decent sized airports. And, of course - Beech Aircraft (er - Raytheon now), Boeing, Cessna, and some smaller aircraft companies. Normally, it's so busy that when Cessna wanted to expaned, they decided on a different site - there's just too much normal air traffic here!
But today - after they grounded commercial traffic, there was nada. It's so normal to hear the comming and going of commerical aircraft that you never really notice it, until now when it's completely gone.
However, there's the sounds of aircraft again now - we've got the B1B's, Kansas Air National Guard, and even more importantly, the refuling wing just a couple miles from the house. There's a fairly good amount of traffic comming from ther for the last couple hours, probably mostly from the refuling wing.
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
Let's assume that some serious actions are going to be taken by the United States (and possibly her allies) in the near future- very likely actions against the Taliban in Afganistan.
What then becomes of the rest of the world- and who do we end up fighting?
Pakistan is extremely friendly with the Taliban, and also happens to have a Nuclear arsenal.
If Pakistan joins the fight, you can bet India will hop on our side to finish off the Pakistanis in an effort to win back Kashmir.
As I understand, relations are currently strained between India and China, so it would take a bit of diplomacy to make sure China isn't convinced to support Pakistan. Does anyone know the Chinese foreign policy in terms of the mid-east and mid-asia?
In addition, we have to worry about the other Arab nations that are lending moral support to these attacks. Palestine is just waiting for us to make a wrong move so that the Arab nations will unite against us and Israel. It will take some diplomacy and maybe some mid-east withdrawl to make sure things stay peachy with our Arab friends.
Bin Laden's number one priority is overthrowing the Saudi government, so we'll likely find support there, despite their friendly attitude to the Taliban government.
Russia is likely to stay neutral, maybe providing support for the removal of Taliban. Russia hasn't had the best track record in Afghanistan, and it might be best if they stayed out of this altogether. The people of afghanistan are more likely to support an effort to overthrow the Taliban as long as it isn't also supported by old enemies.
Along those lines, there is likely to be support among the Afghan people themselves who have an interest in seeing the Taliban removed. The Northern Alliance needs help, and is fairly popular in Afghanistan from what I understand. As long as we don't start shelling the villages and killing civilians, we might be able to get the Afghani people to support our elimination of the Taliban, and ensure that a pro-US sentiment is put in place to avoid future terrorist influences.
Other than that, most of the world shows support. East Asia will likely stay neutral, trying to rebuild it's economy. Western Europe, North/Central/South America, and many other countries seem to be willing to either help us or keep their nose out of our business.
Can anyone else think of any other possible international ramifications? All of this is assuming that overwhelming evidence confirming bin Laden's involvement in the attack is presented. Not many nations would support an attack that is unwarranted.
Exactly right, we must not run in fear, but rather find those responsible. If it is found that bin laden was behind it, there is no need to have any more American lives lost going after him. Just the President coming on national television with a monitor next to him with a picture of a missle silo in Colorado saying "We are bringing you this live, Afghanistan I am not expert on this type of stuff, but they tell me after 15 minutes, we can no longer disarm these nukes that will be launched at you, and will hit your country in 20 minutes. So you better get ta crackin on finding him, because the way I see it, you dont have much time." I am sure something to this effect would produce results...effective results is a different story.
Does anyone have a link to a clip of the first plane?
That's a good point.
The ONLY cause of the gas price increase was increased demand--because some idiots got it around that the prices would go up.
We have a scanner over here and we sometimes listen to cell calls. Let's just say, all of the "slower" people rushed on down to the gas station for gas. The "quicker" folks tried to explain that this bombing should have no significant effect on gas prices.
It's too bad self-fufilling proficies(?) can still come true.
I'll bet the rubble is cleared out within a month, and new construction starts next spring. Bigger.
i woke up this morning, it was a normal day. Then, i read slashdot and saw what happened. As i stared in disbelief at the newscast from cnn, i realized that a large part of my life will be changed for a long time. I live a short ride from new york city, up until recently i worked mere blocks from the towers. I saw them everyday when i drove the williamsburg bridge, i never thought they would be gone in my lifetime. I, as many other long islanders feel that the city was our city. At any moment i could go and experience the wonders of one of the greatest cities in the world.
i have memories, from my entire life, about going to the city to just look around, shop, and go to shows. Now, the twin towers, one of the symbols of nyc is gone. my life, as the lives of thousands, has been forever changed.
throughout the day, my phone was ringing all day, with people concerned about my family, and other people we knew. Thankfully, noone i knew was hurt. But others werent as fortunate.
Roads all throughout the area were closed, everything ground to a standstill.
Then, during the afternoon, around 2, i hear the sound of a plane. i ran to find the source, worried that another plane was going to hit. I have not felt fear like that in a long time.
The world is forever changed by the acts of a few. I give my condolences to all who died, and to those who helped save lives.
The UN was evacuated as a security precaution.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Hello,
we were woken from our sleep to watchg the horrific images from the other side of the world. I have visited the USA twice and my memories arte of a relaxed, friendly , peaceful place.
It is tragic that misguided fanatics were able to create so much terror in such a great country. India stands by the USA in herr hour of crisis .
Please accept my (and my whole country's) prayers.
regds, Gaius
These bastards are already trying to profit off of this tragedy. Sometimes people make me sick. Everyone check out the popup ad on www.novus.com Then find an e-mail address on the site and let them know what you think of it. I know I already did in quite explicit detail...
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Please mod this up, as I feel my collection and connection is one of the best out there [bucknell.edu]:
1 _In_America/images/gallery/index.html
http://www.students.bucknell.edu/ekrout/images/91
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Is it just me or does this article suddenly take on new meaning?
8 21 5
Hosting Provider Shut Down By FBI
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/09/07/004
My hopes and prayers go out to everyone affected by this tragic event.
I wouldn't think much expertise would be needed as long as the hijackers don't have to take off themselves, then they could force the pilots to navigate towards NY and when close enough kill the pilots and take over the controls. Read this BBC article:
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
...and if you think that's funny, come visit me here in sunny Western Australia and I'll show you just how hard Wandoo wood is. If you know Jarrah, try twice as dense. PNG has stuff locally called Ironwood which is even harder. It eats steel sawblades (a sharp high-tensile saw might get three, maybe four inches into a log before it gets too blunt to cut anything). This kind of stuff is dead easy to conceal in other plastic/wooden innocuous-looking items such as walking sticks. There is no defense against it.
The defense should be in the people. If a hijacker was stupid enough to stand up in an Israeli aircraft, he would be dead before he took ten steps.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I have two problems with what you say.
First, your argument does not depend on the particulars of US actions in the Middle East, so it seems to justify *any* action the US government takes, however evil or misguided. I'm not a citizen of that US and will never willingly be one.
2. Suppose these terrorists had known *in advance* that they would be tracked down and executed by the US. Would they still have done it? Hmm - let's think... So you're going to punish them by subjecting them to *one of their own accepted mission parameters*. Scary. That should really deter them next time. I think to punish these people you have to hurt what they value most - and that certainly isn't their lives.
I know this is going to be unpopular, but isn't this the type of thing that Carnivore and/or Echelon is supposed to intercept?
Interesting sentiment, but...
We don't know that Echelon even exists.
We really don't know that Echelon is literally worldwide. If this was coordinated entirely overseas, it might make Echelon moot.
The terrorists might not have used e-mail / telephone or any other kind of electronic communications. Apparently the CIA used to track Bin Laden by monitoring his satellite phone calls, but he got wise to that and quit using it. For all we know, he now relies on carrier pigeons or something.
Even if they did use electronic communication, maybe it was encrypted. I know we are all paranoid, and assume the NSA has the resources to decrypt any and all encrypted e-mail, but maybe that's not the case after all.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Microsoft calls that an innovation. To be fair though, Microsoft changes the bits so the program has more useless features and crashes more often. The Divx crew added useful capability to the software.
After I had woken up from passing out in my chair this evening, I caught that one of the networks "head reporters" had crossed the police line and had gone in to see the wreckage. The reporter on FOX said that there were only 4 floors left where the two towers once stood. 4 of 110, that is a terrifying remainder. I also heard on the radio that people are using cell phones to contact the outside from the rubble, trying to tell rescuers where they are. At first when they said the building was falling, I thought it wa just the top where the plane had hit, not the entire damn thing! God be with those people who are out there looking for survivors.
Who knew life could be this funny?
You would still have a story to post your feelings. Choice is good. Not everybody on /. is American and not everybody wants
to discuss the same thing in all
stories.
I live in a small town of about 10,000 people in the hills (Grass Valley, CA) and there is absolutely nothing worthwhile hitting here. We have a SWAT force in front of our county buildings and an airplane constantly circling over the city. OK, it is just a twin turbo-prop craft, but that just goes to show how it has affected everyone here.
My name fits again.
Several cameras at the doors (all angles) and a couple of concealed remote-control instant-acting dart guns would be a better idea, plus a R/C slug-thrower carefully limited to not putting holes in the aircraft's skin.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
And you would rather have ole Slick Willy back during this?
Or a cardboard cutout of Gore standing infront of the WhiteHouse? (Because the real one would be over in NORAD mountain, making illigal campaign phone calls.)
After this, Bush will certainly be a great leader, because this country will be led out of this tragedy. Any way you slice it, unless he flips out, he will be a great leader. Just because you don't like his social opinions doesn't mean you have to cut him down now.
I have to stop wasting so much time reading Slashdot. It's interfering with my crystal meth addiction.
We here at school have begun collecting images and video to help out with the bandwidth problem the news sites are having... Here Also feel free to send anything in...
The following is from an email I once received. I think it is appropriate to post it at this time.
This, from a Canadian newspaper, is worth sharing.
America: The Good Neighbor. 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 trenchant remarks as printed in the Congressional Record:
"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, 5 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 America.
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 Japan technology, and you get radios. You talk about German technology, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technology, 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 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."
Stand proud, America! Wear it proudly!!
This is one of the best editorials that I have ever read regarding the United States. It is nice that one man realizes it. I only wish that the rest of the world would realize it. We are always blamed for everything, and never even get a thank you for the things we do.
I would hope that each of you would send this to as many people as you can and emphasize that they should send it to as many of their friends until this letter is sent to every person on the web. I am just a single American that has read this, I SURE HOPE THAT A LOT MORE READ IT SOON.
The civil engineering faculty at Sydney University has another (quite informative) analysis here:
http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/wtc.htm
not sure if anyone has posted this, but rotten.com has some sad pictures of people falling from the WTC.
engineers designed a solution using a drywall system fixed to the reinforced steel core.
This would explain the huge quantity of dust involved.
I heard the same story from a friend here in Calgary but I didn't see it confirmed by anyone else during the day.
In #coverage on irc.slashnet.org our operators are posting the latest news on the events. The channel is +m, so please message opers with your (validated) news sources.
--
If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
This is hard to say but I feel like I have to say something.
It goes without saying that this has been a terrible day.
The loss of life, and a horrible way to die.
However, I'm even more terrible than the acts of terrorism
are the possible reactions to these acts.
We cannot afford to become reactionary. We cannot afford to lose
our heads. I overhead some co-workers making racist comments today.
Being multi-ethic and Jewish that rather upset me. Well, I don't
have to be Jewish to be intolerant of racial prejudice, but it does
make me feel even more threatened since some people are equally
racist against Jews as Arabs and Muslims. So I take it personally.
Anyway, above all, as Americans in this crisis,
_WE NEED TO KEEP OUR HEADS_
This is a crisis but we must not let our emotions get out of control
or the reaction will be worse than what happened today.
At the very least we need to wait for due process of law and
have proof of who really committed these atrocities. We cannot tolerate
harassment and violence against ethnic minorities who may be blamed.
If it does turn out that the Osama Bin Ladin is responsible for this
that we cannot tolerate the bombing of civilian populations in Afghanistan.
The Taliban is a fascist government. Many of the Afghanistan people
are against the Taliban but they do not exactly have the same freedoms
of free speech and assembly that we enjoy in this country. Bombing
civilian targets in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Yugoslavia etc. etc. etc.
is just as bad as the atrocities American experienced today.
Understand that the mainstream corporate media does not widely report
what our government has done to countries around the world. Also consider
that our government is partially responsible for placing the Taliban in
power by supporting them during the Soviet Union's war with Afghanistan.
Most likely the terrorists who committed these atrocities today
are only out for revenge. They have no other motive and they feel
like they have nothing to lose. We cannot win a war against small
groups of people who are only out for revenge. We need to think
very thoroughly about the calls to war and what it will really mean.
This has been a terrible terrible day. History might show this to be
a day of great change. Now we must decide whether that change will
be for better or for worse. We need to mourn our losses. I hope
that I can appeal to our better nature. That we as Americans will
not give into the madness of this terrible day. I hope that we will
rally around the call for peace instead of the call for revenge
that would be the downfall of us all.
I know that some may take my statements as derogatory.
Please think about what I have said. While I am critical of
some of the actions of our government, I do love this country.
I say what I say is because despite what has happened today
and in the past I still hope for the best.
My prayers go out for the victims, their friends and family,
the spirit of our country, and for the entire world.
This signature used to contain a cute kitty virus with ansii art. Please set the slashdot editors on fire. Thank you
I just got back from donating my wonderful O- blood at the Peabody, Mass., Red Cross.
I arrived today directly from work, at 5:30ish. I and about 350-400 people donated at this small center (9 beds). The WONDERFUL people at the Red Cross kept going and going, finishing up between 1:30am and 2am. I donated around 1:25am.
I want to send a huge thanks out to all those doing the work, and the donating. No one may ever read this, but the work and patience of both staff and donors deserves kudos.
Have a look at this page, the date on the page info shows when it was created. That quote is doctored.
t m
http://www.ed.brocku.ca/~nmarshal/nostradamus.h
What Nostradamus actually said was "In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb"
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I hate to say this at a time like this, but I'm not so sure about the Pearl Harbor analogy. Pearl Harbor was a military target, and the attacks on WTC were definately civilian.
I would think the better analogy would be the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with a tremendous toll on human life. Perhaps this is a step below and to the side.
No media outlet seems to mention this much, it seems.
I'm agnostic, so I can say a prayer for those in New York and Washington without being hypocritical. I'll do the same when America chooses inevitably to take it's vengeance out on other innocent civilians in retaliation.
Please let me be wrong. There's been enough death already today.
Reporters in Palestinian areas have been threatened that their lives may be in danger if they publicize pictures of palestinians celebrating the WTC and Pentagon disasters. This is similar to threats which Italian reporters received when they documented the lyniching of Israelis in ramalla by a palestinian mob a few months ago.
Here's a report about it from AP (you can find more on this at The Jerusalem Post.
You can see a picture of this at my page
Arafat horrified; Palestinians celebrating
By Mohammed Daraghmeh, The Associated Press
NABLUS, West Bank (AP) - Thousands of Palestinians celebrated toiday's terror attacks in the United States, chanting "God is Great" and distributing candy to passers-by, even as their leader, Yasser Arafat, said he was horrified.
The US government has become increasingly unpopular in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the past year of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, with many Palestinians accusing Washington of siding with Israel.
In the West Bank town of Nablus, about 3,000 people poured into the street shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and government targets in Washington.
Demonstrators distributed candy in a traditional gesture of celebration. Several Palestinian gunmen shot in the air, while other marchers carried Palestinian flags.
Nawal Abdel Fatah, 48, wearing a long black dress, threw sweets in the air, saying she was happy because "America is the head of the snake, America always stands by Israel in its war against us."
Her daughter Maysoon, 22, said she hoped the next attack would be launched against Tel Aviv.
In traditionally Arab eastern Jerusalem, there was a smaller gathering of about two dozen people, many of them young children led in chants by adults. Some drivers passing the scene honked their horns and flashed victory signs from their windows.
'Most men would sooner die than think, and most men do.'
All of the news media is currently pointing the finger at Bin Laden. This strikes me as being slightly too suspicious. I have not read a single report that suggests that this could be a military strike by a country such as Iraq.
Look at the facts:
Iraq has been bombed heavily by the US over the last few years.
Iraq has the resources to stage an attack like this.
Iraq has elite troops who would be capable of hijacking and flying the planes.
Iraq really hates the US.
So why is no-one else speculating that Saddam could be behind this?
HH
There have been a few posts here about lax security & speculating about how the hijackings were undertaken. Here's my theory: it was a lot simpler than a lot of security & terrorism experts are saying, and even the terrorists are surprised by the magnitude of the devastation they've wrought. Let me explain.
When I first heard about this at 7am one thing bugged me. How did 4 planes, from 3 airports, belonging to 2 airlines, get hijacked within minutes of each other? I was making a mistaken assumption, however -- the same one that our airport security systems have been making that allowed this tragedy to occur. I assumed you'd need a gun to effectively or meaningfully hijack a plane
I heard later Tues. that the planes, as far as is yet known, were hijacked by men with KNIVES. Some reports referred to them as "box knives," which implies to me improvised &/or small tools, rather than specialized and combat-oriented weapons.
Do you know how many times I've gotten on a plane with a 3-inch Spyderco knife on my person? And in my carry-on luggage? For hiking trips in Alaska or just because I carry it most days? It's easy to do. I've even taken a 3" Spyderco through the Boston airport on the way to Westchester NY. So I know first hand that you don't need special ceramic weapons to get a blade past Boston airport security.
I think that this was a relatively small-time operation, at least compared to what some "experts" are saying. You get 4 guys willing to die for the cause, some luggage, plane tickets, and knives. Train them in the basics of flying these planes (which has been said to be easy once they're airborne), teach them how to kill the pilots quickly with their toys, get them into the US, and send them on their way. It could take as little as a dozen people to plan & execute it, with, say, $20k for direct expenses. A few weeks, plus however long you want to train them with the knives & planes.
I heard a professional commercial pilot say on NPR tonight that a 180-pound man could break into one of those cockpit doors easily. No battering ram necessary. So the single hijacker gets up 15 minutes before NYC, as if to go to the lavatory, then busts down the cockpit door and kills both pilots. Within 2 minutes of getting out of his seat, he's flying the plane. No one is going to fuck with him at this point because 1) they're afraid of causing the plane to crash, and 2) they're terrified in general, and 3) on some level they expect these guys to behave like all the hijackers we've ever heard of, which is to say that they'll try to negotiate the release of political prisoners or something -- not crash the plane in the next 20 minutes. This theory also explains the reports that no emergency messages were sent from the crashed planes -- the pilots were killed or incapacitated immediately and lost control from that point onward. Thus, also, the frantic calls passengers "were told" to make (according to headlines on washingtonpost.com) to inform unaware authorities of the hijacking underway.
My conclusion: the hijackers got lucky in that this was totally ruthless, audacious, innovative, and unexpected. I don't think anything like it will happen again.
"It's an erotic, spectacular scene that captures the thrusting, violent, vibrant world Bohemian spirit..."
Besides the suspects mentioned in one of the links, (3 mentioned: Palestinian group, Iraq, Osama), I think a fourth should not be ruled out in advance. Right extremist americans (i.e. T. McVeigh followers).
I intend to live forever, so far so good.
Why hit the presidents holiday house? the national air guard base is not that far from Camp David, i think that is probably the intended target....
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
The Boston Herald, quoting a source it did not identify, reported that authorities had seized a car at Logan airport that contained Arabic-language flight training manuals. The source said five Arab men had been identified as suspects, including a trained pilot. At least two of those men flew to Logan on Tuesday from Portland, Maine, the Herald said.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.WTCA.ORG 63.212.153.3
NS2.WTCA.ORG 63.212.153.2
bash$ traceroute 63.212.153.2
traceroute to 63.212.153.2 (63.212.153.2), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
4 c1-pos6-1.hrfrct1.home.net (24.7.76.161) 3.852 ms 3.773 ms 3.709 ms
5 c1-pos3-0.nycmny1.home.net (24.7.69.2) 6.378 ms 6.437 ms 6.406 ms
6 pos1-0.core1.NewYork1.Level3.net (63.211.54.69) 13.082 ms 13.111 ms 13.073 ms
7 so-4-0-0.mp1.NewYork1.Level3.net (209.247.10.33) 13.195 ms 13.145 ms 13.308 ms
8 loopback0.ipaccess1.NewYork1.Level3.net (209.244.2.211) 13.904 ms 13.840 ms 13.943 ms
9 * * *
www.digivill.net
A (American) friend of mine is in China where I guess they block access to most sites like CNN and basically I ended up pasting cnn.com's story to him in AIM. The news is apparently hard to come by in those parts.
Are there any frequently updated mirrors and/or free (no charge) proxies that people can use to get info about this? I wrote up a lame perl script that fetches whatever address you put in the url and spews it back to you (but at least it appears to be coming from my cablemodem instead of cnn.com) but that didn't seem to work for him... I guess maybe they filter out urls that have "cnn.com" in them? Anyway, any suggestions?
rooooar
The Boston Globe is reporting that a car was found at Boston airport (name?) with Arabic flight manuals. Apparently they got into an altercation with someone in the parking lot. That person notified authorities about the incedent after hearing of the tragedy when he landed at his destination leading them to this car. They are fairly certain that passports, the flight training manuals, and possibly other information in the car link these people to Bin Laden's "base". One of the suspects was a trained pilot and a member of the Arabic something Leage (?).
I mean he can take what 12men? with 12box cutters and razor blades and in one morning they can take out the WTC and part of the Pentigon before 10AM.
I read this... and i was stunned...
Get rid of the spaces un the url
This page used to broadcast live pictures from one of the decks in WTC.
Now it's all black... I wonder if that thing is up?
No shit?
Americans probably won't find this very comforting right now, but I'll give a short newsbreak: Unless you haven't noticed, you are in war, have been for a long time!
Look, for the last 50 years, Americans have been bombing cities here and there all over the world, leaving hundreds of thousands if not millions people dead, charred, mothers and brothers wailing over their graves. Sure, Americans were always the good guys, and sure, American bombs only killed soldiers. But hey, even innocent people do die in wars. America just got it first civilian casualties in 50 years!
So, we can now wait to see how the American reaction will be different from the reaction of those rag-head mad-dog arabs, who cry for eternal revenge after their relatives have been killed and homes bombed to ground.
Really, get over it.
IIRC, iraq also prices its oil in euros..
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
From http://www.dawn.com and http://www.timesofindia.com KARACHI, Sept 12: Lashkar-i-Taiba group fighting against Indian rule in Kashmir today claimed responsibility for the wave of terrorist attacks in the United States.It said suicide bombers had hijacked jets which plunged into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, in attacks which it is feared killed thousands. "The attack was carried out by our fidayeen (suicidal group) led by commander Abu Samama," Lashkar spokesman Khalid Saif said in a statement faxed to AFP. "The attacks on the World Trade Centre and other places were not an act of terrorism but an Islamic duty." (AFP)(Posted @ 11:55 PST)
they deny it now .. check the latest on dawn.com
I heard, there where still some people surviving but locked in by debris. Some of them even used mobiles. I wonder if it might be possible to get easier access through some subway or sewer tunnels, especially since i read, that one subway tunnel passed very close and even had to be considered when building the WTC.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
What are the likely long-term consequences of this tragedy for things like
* broadband (we saw quite a few servers overloaded, having no TV in the office);
* Echelon
?
I just want to quickly remind everyone that Paypal will give you $5 to sign up (according to their front page), so you could sign and give $5 at least without it costing you a dime, theoretically.
This may not seem like much... but if enough people do it, it will be.
p.s. no, I don't work for them
Get off my launchpad!
I just typed a few domain names into networksolutions to see if they were taken. These were:
m
wtccollapses.com
wtcdestroyed.com
wtcfalls.co
Course, the profiteering already began with gasoline and no doubt it will continue.
What about the White House? Wouldn't that be a likely target? If not, what does it say about the terrorists' goals that they _didn't_ target the White House?
The targets they did hit are symbols of American power, economic and military. Do they think that American political power is not as important to the public as money and guns? Are they right in that thought?
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
Someone has probably already said this (there are 4 pages of comments jesus christ) but has anyone started making plans to rebuild the towers?
It seems symbolically like the right sort of thing to do..especially if we rebuilt them taller than those malasian towers.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
"Have you noticed the way people's intelligence
capabilities decline sharply the minute they
start waving guns around?" (Dr. Who)
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- This morning, on the September 12th, just when the dust had settled in the downtown of Manhattan, a helicopter launched from a helipad near the apparently collapsed World Trade Center.
Moments later, the helicopter circled the missing towers three times counterclockwise, and *POOF* a huge smoke cloud appeared, covering the entire downtown area.
As the smoke faded, the two World Trace Center buildings emerged from the midst of the cloud, just as they were two days ago!
People couldn't believe their eyes. The multitude of TV helicopters patrolling the area immediately pointed their cameras at the strange helicopter.
On the landing rack of the helicopter, there was posing, in a tailcoat, who else but David Copperfield!
The city of New York sighed and applauded, and applauded, and applauded. Everyone rejoiced. The world had been saved.
Then, David Copperfield bowed for the ninth time, waved his wand, and *POOF* the helicopter disappeared in a huge explosion and a smoke cloud.
What do you people thin of stewardesses (and stewards) being given the power of being armed with a stun gun or something like a projectile to knock out terrorists? Of course, additional training would be required but I nobody is talking about what should be done to prevent future disasters like this (in any country).
Do your best, hope for the best, suspect the worst.
On a side note, did anyone else notice the number of non-news channels that covered this? VH-1 in particular was covering it very early in the day. All four of the 'home-shopping' or QVC style channels I flipped past were not doing any programming, just a notice about the attacks. Later some started a news feed too. Later in the day other channels such as MT-V, Discovery, HGTV, etc either showed news feed or a notice about the attacks.
Some here hate large profit-based businesses, some here support them whole-heartedly, and most of us are somewhere in the middle. But I think it reflects on these stations, particularly the shopping channels, that they forgot about the profits they were loosing every second, and did a decent act. Even if the truth was they were unable to broadcast for technical reasons, if it was for any other reason such as a hurricane, they would have been on the air within an hour, feeding from another site.
While the most praise goes to the rescuers in NYC, I just wanted to say that this should be appreciated in its own perspective.
I have to stop wasting so much time reading Slashdot. It's interfering with my crystal meth addiction.
Personally, I'd like to see three towers built in the place where the WTC once stood, with the middle one much taller than the other two. That way, it would look like a giant middle finger, directed straight at the fuckers who did this.
"There never was a good war or bad peace."
hmmm, an anonymous coward who calls for genocide. Maybe we could fly a jetliner into a building highly populated with civillian "sand-niggers". I bet you would think that was a grand idea, wouldn't you? We could make it a holy war against islam. Christ, I'm sick you people.
Some people think that there was something about the german people that allowed them to be nazis. An opposing view: I see nazis everyday. They just don't have a hitler. Maybe assholes like you should just kill yourselves and leave us civilized, peace loving people alone.
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
I may hurt your feelings, though I try just speak my mind up. I know I'm touchy now, so try to take the following casually. I trust on the moderators to view this as a foreigner's honest, differing viewpoint.
1. US Citizens have not had war in their own continent/country for a few, what, hundred years. It shows somewhat in the shockedness of the commentary. Of course this is awful. It does not happen only to someone else somewhere else, neither is what happens to you unique in this day and age. A few surprise attacks and -strikes from last century come to mind. Some of them out of scale, some changing our world for ever.
2. JFK: one mad US citizen. OKC: a few mad US citizen. Yet every time the foreigners get blamed before the attackers are found.
I am shocked and afraid of the future now. I live on the other side of the world from there. Most of us do. Live in fear of the US reaction and what that will do for the world. The world we all have to live in. There is no escape from this planet just yet, not even for chosen few US citizens. We must get along. Focus on anything else, and the nature will take care of us for good.
Sorry if I hurt your feelings; this is just critique that comes to mind while trying to work over the shock by absorbing as much information and commentary about the situation as possible.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
Even more panic and havoc could have been caused by spreading some nasty infectious diseases. Viruses keep killing indefinitely, and with an incubation period. You don't even know if you've got it until you break out. This would cause _real_ panic. The West Nile virus caused some panic, and it's barely a threat at all. Imagine Ebola outbreaks on a couple stock traders who'd been in the stock exchange that day...
This terrorist attack hit symbols of power, and killed a couple thousand people. I just hope that nobody tossed some Anthrax or something into the mix. We won't know for a while whether any bio-weapons were used, because of the incubation period.
Terrorist threats are the major threat to the world these days, AFAIK. None of them would be insane enough to use ICBMs, because they couldn't deny involvement very easily if the missile was launched from their base. Screw missile defence. (It's not useless, since a missile could be fired by accident or something. I just don't think it's worth the money it would cost, and that that money could be better spent on health care and stuff.)
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
Yeah, and don't pull stocks out. That would be very cowardly. Of course a bunch of morons are going to panic, sell, and lower your stock values. That dosn't mean you should be one of them. Whether you lose money or not, which is questionable, everyone needs to not sell and support our economy
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
an online condolence register has been opened at http://newyorkcondolence.com/ or http://nycondolence.com/
Read this site to view the truth about the nostradamus prophecy.
http://fury.com/article/925.php
It was just on the news.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Even one well-trained and armed security guard on each plane - preferably incognito - would be sufficient to make such an attack very difficult, if not impossible. Also pilots need to be able to defend themselves.
If the airlines can pay for 10 flight attendants, then paying for one extra person shouldn't make a huge difference to their operating costs.
Given that screening does not work, it's the only thing to do.
Michael Albert just posted this to the ZMag updates list. Well worth reading:
Calamitous Perspective
By Michael Albert
Sending a commentary on a topic other than today?s horrific events has
seemed untenable. Addressing today?s events has also seemed untenable. That
our web and email server has been inaccessible all day, depriving us of
internet communications and of access to update ZNet hasn?t helped. It seems
web traffic was so great that it caused problems in Washington State, around
Seattle, where our servers are located.
A simple chronicle of the day?s events would be superfluous. Known facts are
displayed on every TV station. Reliable deductions are relatively obvious.
After routine take-offs four planes were commandeered by terror teams and
simultaneously flown on dramatically distorted trajectories to demolish
pre-selected targets. The devastation is not yet known, but is certainly
horrific. What can one conclude other than that devastating suicidal
terrorist attacks are eminently doable? Annihilating skyscrapers in the U.S.
or other developed countries is harder than the U.S. bombing cities in
targeted nations, but it is evidently far from impossible.
Good-hearted Americans will mourn these innocent and horrible deaths with
dignity and with respect. Media analysts and politicians, however, will soon
use pictures of the rubble to seek increased police and military spending
and greater state interventionary and surveillance powers. They will intone
that killing civilians is cowardly and warrants swift and merciless
punishment. They will however ignore having themselves supported the recent
assault on Yugoslavia that terrorized that country?s civilian population to
topple its despised government. They will also ignore that the U.S.-led
embargo of Iraq has caused hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, again
to destabilize a hated government. Today?s terrorism was horrendously vile.
It arose in a terror-infected world.
People throughout the third world have long had their destiny held hostage
by distant rulers. First world diplomats and entrepreneurs year after year
pursue power and profit imposing nearly unimaginable third world calamity.
Due to our distance from the victims and the endless mass media obfuscation
of their plight, we first world citizens fail to realize that when a million
people starve because a poor country?s energies are commandeered to benefit
multinational capital, it is murder. But, it is murder, and so third world
populations have long endured near total dependence on choices made by
distant authoritative leaders who are callous to their futures.
The same abysmal condition has arrived, to a degree, for populations in
developed countries. Those who died in today?s attacks also suffered a
choice made by far away actors callous to the carnage they imposed. First
world populations may henceforth share not the degrading conditions and
daily poverty of the third world, but some of the fear of being held hostage
by others. To try to overcome this condition, but even more to enlarge their
already grotesquely bloated powers, first world leaders may in coming weeks
challenge decades of gains in civil and legal rights, trying to turn back
freedom's clock.
Can anything curtail the carnage of capital, the carnage of terrorism, and
the carnage of repressive reaction? Our best hope is to win institutional
change that reduces profit-seeking and political subordination, while also
reducing desires to lash out with mindless and inhumane terrorism.
In coming weeks we may suffer a kind of celebration in America, a
celebration of security and of power, a celebration of surreptitious
information retrieval, a celebration of arms growth, and perhaps of
assassination, all described as virtuous goals rather than uncivil
abominations, all touted as if the terror victims will be honored rather
than defiled by our preparing to entomb still more innocent people around
the world. Normal good-hearted Americans will weep for the suffering that
today?s events exacted and hope to create a world in which such hate and
callousness disappears. But I fear that America?s leaders will cynically
bulk up their ammo belts while seeking to make ubiquitous their listening
devices?trying to relegate public freedoms to an incinerator.
In this environment, people of good will must explain as often as necessary
that terrorism is horrific and insane, but so too is capitalist business as
usual. And we must not step back from dissent, but must instead work harder
to oppose all kinds of injustice with massive public demonstrations and
civil disobedience.
Female Prison Rape in NY
These people can not simply be the blood-thirsty madmen which our media has fed us to believe. Perhaps we should all seek to discover why such incredible acts are necessary to their cause? Why are they so pissed off?
We see only the shiny surface of this world; most of us have no idea how the world really operates. The western world, led by America, holds much of the world in slavery. The slave states are the first interface to much of the basic elements of our society, from banannas to oil. Also, the slaves are as vital to our society as were the rowers -- chained to their oars -- on ancient ships. Perhaps they sense disaster towards the bow; maybe they'd rather chance the master's whip than face certain destruction.
Our thirst is unquenchable yet we drink and drink and drink. This is what we're born into and trained for. We are ignorant and stupid.
"Oh my God! The World Trade Towers! And the Pentagon! And...Pennsylvania? WTF?"
Then I though, well maybe they were making a triple strike against America's Economic Power, America's Military Power and Pittsburgh.
My thoughts go out to all the people that lost friends or relatives this day. If this post offends you then I am sorry. If it raises even a smile then it has served its purpose -- "To laugh at death is not a crime - so long as you start with your own"
Phear my l33t homepage.
actually from what i've heard, the faa and other gov't agencies pushed for greater domestic flight security but the airlines (yes, that's private industry) resisted. also the faa has been continually conducting tests of airport security - boston was fined ove $100k because of security lapses. unlike you, the faa has never found security lapses funny and has worked hard to fix them.
and so now, suddenly realising the gravity of the situation, you yell at them.
brilliant.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
Many people have suggested that there was a failure in airport security which allowed the terrorists to get onboard the plane... this is not necessarily the case. It appears at this point that the terrorists used knives and "box cutters" to take over the planes. If under 4 inches the knives would have easily (and legally) passed the checkpoints without question. As small as box cutters are (essentially razor blades with handles), they would also be considered fine for flight by security checkpoints. In this case, there *was* no failure in airport security.
As for longer blades, I found an interesting discussion on airport knife policies, and the ease of sneaking knives longer than 4" here.
If a person wishes to have a weapon onboard an airplane, there are any number of legal or undetectable ways to carry on, construct, or even fake one. No number of regulations can prevent this... there can only be adequate security measures onboard the plane to deal with such problems.
~Giddeon
"All you need is love" John Lennon.....
/. really kept the lines open!
Hope nothing else goes down,Grab some sleep if you can. Tomorrow I'm gonna finish this old farmers truck so he can get groceries. I'll have a wake for all those poor souls when it's time and I'm gonna go back to work and help a few people keep it together. I'm not going to give up one day to fear or hate. God bless the US
Right on
What a clever little tosser you are - if you loot at the site you've linked to, you'll see that it's a "fascinating collection of surreal writings and images". You, you clever little gash, have just tried to back up your claim by linking to a site that describes itself as "a YAHOO for denizens of alternate realities." Way to go, champ.
http://nycondolence.com This website is an expression of deep sorrow for what happened to the victims of these tragic events. Condolances can be posted to this website and will be collected in order to show compassion for and respect to the friends and relatives of these victims. Please post your condolence on this website.
City of God = NYC
Two Brothers = WTC
Fortress = Pentagon
Great Leader = G.Bush
Big City = NYC
Well there probably shouldn't be two references to New York. But what about Jerusalem? What if this has something to do with te Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Surely there is "great thunder" in "The City of God" these days...
But then again, I actually don't believe very much in astrological predictions, but they might, such as in this case, be rather interesting to play with.
And poke her, with the soft cushions!!!
I must say that I fully disagree with what has happened in the US at the moment. It was a cowardly and evil act of terrorism.
I do however think that comparisons to Pearl Harbor are a bit off base.
Pearl Harbor was a military target, the WTC was a civilian target.
I'm also not saying that it is payback or justice for what happened in Hiroshima.
I just think that a better comparison than Pearl Harbor is a comparison to Hiroshima.
I'm not US citizen, so i don't know really well US geography.
I assume there is a nuclear powerplant around a big city. What happens if someone throw a plane to this nuclear power plant ?
and then we come for you you green skinned bastard !
No but, yeah but, no but...
They are saying they brought in knives and used those to hijack the plane. Recently I had my jaw broken and I had to get titanium plates in my jaw. But I asked the doctor if I would set off the metal dectors at the air port and he responded "no, you could bring a gun made out of titanium through the metal dector and it wouldnt set it off." I do not konw if titanium is easy to get a hold of... but I bet if you tried you could. This is scary if there exists a metal that will not set of metal dectors. Think its time to upgrade airport secerity?!?
How do you take a picture of the best moment of your life?
apart the fact, nostradamus used this kind of 'code-language' to encrypt his research against the inquisition.
that being the most reasonable source of all his uttering, his theses could be translated as research of chemical or physical reactions.
I saw an interview with a man from Flights International on the BBC last night. Apparently security was reviewed under the Clinton administration by a committee chaired by Al Gore (probably post-Lockerbie). All the recommendations of the final report were implemented for international flights but the airlines balked at the internal flight recommendations saying they would slow them down too much.
Sig pending!
As it happens, A Muslim from Libya lived with me for a year, his name was Muhammad. He was one of the kindest, gentlest men I have ever known, and easily the holiest. It's true what you say about the Muslim creed being peaceful. Their treatment of animals particularly.
However, Muhammad explained that the Islamic call to arms is irrefutable to it's believers. He said that even tough he could never hurt a person unless he or a loved one was in the worst of danger, he did say that he would shoot Salman Rushdie in the street, no question. This shocked me, you would have had to know the man to really appreciate the gravity of his conviction, but the fact is that *The general consensus* amongst Muslims is the very same. If religious law calls for the killing of a person, there's no if's, and's or but's, and only a few Muslims would refuse.
"We kill to cure, with cures that kill" - Skinny Puppy
They are in Europe. I don't think they ever did suicide missions. Nor do the right wing terrorists, which make me believe it is religious groups. Suicide missions are so much more compelling when you believe paradice waits as a reward.
So you are suggesting a nutter with a knife could have taken on the other nutter with a knife. So the solution is that there are no security checks and arm all the passengers.
The solutions is to monitor internal flights in the same way that they are required to monitor international flights. US internal security sucks, plain and simple. This disaster was created by the US consumer and the airlines desire for cheap hassle free flights. Prices must rise to pay for the security required.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
What if the cockpit was permanently and irrevokably locked off from the cabin? Then the plane cannot be hijacked once it's in the air no matter what the hijackers do. And there's no need for freedom-restricting military security in all airports...
Scott
First of all, I am sorry for all those who have become a victim in any way to these attacks. Said that...
1. Defenetely, these attacks were counterstrikes to US politics in Middle East and Europe.
2. I strongly disagree with Bush claiming these attacks being "cowardly acts". I think, that organizing and implementing such plan takes extreme courage, even if performed by a mad man, which I don't think is a case. One should have a clear head to plan all this.
3. Targets are defenetly symbolic - world's economy center, "world's" military center. Both destroyed within one day, showing that US is not actually such a strong giant as many may think.
4. Responding fast is doubtly even half a deal. It's like saying "I respawn very fast in Q3". I get killed in the first place anyway.
5. It is shocking to which extent of globaliztion US can go... as usual... everything shut down nationwide...
6. Counterstrike from US will cause only more attacks. US is still too powerfull to fight in open space, especially by small countries.
...once again, I am sorry for all those who became a victim...
Leonid Mamtchenkov
iggyflashbulb writes: "CNN reports some oddball group not associated with bin Laden is attacking Kabul at night. Are they taking advantage of the NY situation or did they create it?"
This is not some "oddball group" - the article itself says that the attackers are from the opposition to the Taliban. They are also the U.N. -recognized government of Afghanistan, even if they only control 5-10% of the country. There is no way they created the "NY situation."
Total Collected: $204,504.35
Number of Payments: 8501
only several hundred had donated at the time this was linked to
way to go slashdotters!
don't know where to donate? you do now
He observed a second airplane immediately swing behind the first in a follow like manner and swoop down on the Pentagon only to pull up at the last second, out of the smoke cloud, and fly away
This is very important. Pictures, taken at NYC also clearly shows the presence of ANOTHER SMALL PLANE of the same type as described above.
Please note, that the area in NYC (and, I believe, also over Washington is closed for flights.) Coincidence ???
See photos here:
http://www.cyberus.ca/~stany/
US news sites may be clogged, so here are some non-us sites.
Reddif USA
times of India - Lots of photos.
Dawn - check out the editorial on Afghanistan. BTW, this is a pakistani newspaper, but very credible.
This is the text version of their site.
I am so profoundly sad for the people and families of those who died.
I want my old world back.
Speak truth to power.
The attack on the USA just goes to show that inequalities caused by
... Not to mention some
the US government breed violence. It is unreasonable to treat large
numbers of people unfairly and expect them just to lie down and take
it. Eventually they will reach a point where their lives are worth
little and they have no prospects. Then they will become violent.
This is not the first time either. Anyone remember the LA riots or
the attack on the USS Cole? I could go on.
The US has a long history of inequality. At home, hospitals and
schools are more and more for the rich and we can just build fences to
keep the poor in their ghettos right? Pay more for the rent-a-cop
sitting at the border between the nice plush suburbs and the rest of
the world. But no f**king way the rich will pay more taxes so the poor
don't want to steal all their stuff!
And then of course, there is the USA on the international stage. You
can't go round bombing countries everywhere and not make emenies. It
only takes a few of them to hijack planes and
of them smuggling suitcase nukes into the USA. Also, the
unquestioning support of Israel despite the atrocities (on both sides)
will only lead to religious fanatics as enemies.
So what does the US do now? Nuke them till they glow?
In the short term, yes, I'm all for the elimination of terrorists.
But in the long term it's time that the people of the USA to realise
that inequality must be reduced. Spend less on defence and more on
health, education and welfare. Choose a sane international policy,
stop acting like an international bully.
Stand up and be counted. Vote. Above all, don't elect another total
moron like George W. Bush.
DROS - Open-Source Robot Software
Here's what we can see here in Canada. There is a lot of pics and videos in the page, they are all in flash format (videos too). Page is in french but you can see them as well.
a tt entat/indexTemporaire.html
http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/actualite/
If you want to watch what we can see from our TV set here, here's the live stream from CBC :
http://radio.cbc.ca/cbcradio.ram (radio)
http://www.cbcradio3.com/ram/cbctvlive.ram (TV)
On this page again, it says that about 300 firemens and 85 policemens are reported missing. At the pentagon, there is about 800 deaths.
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
Too late to get noticed, but not too late to fuck for some karma. I just meta-moderated a whole lot of fucking losers down to hell for "Insightful" garbage mods on bullshit comments.
I abhor and reject and am fucking pissed at what happened yesterday. By the same token, I detest what a bunch of assholes our politicians are turning out to be. When its a fucking Hollywood movie, everything's AOK , right? But when it's for-fucking-real they're telling parents to TURN OFF THE TV SO THE KIDS DONT SEEIT?
Now we have hundreds of pussy mealy mouth politicians who (a) ran for office to get rich and who (b) lost themselves and have friends who lost BIG $$$ in the stock market and (c) have been bought and sold by corporate lobbyists - let's see what the fuck they can do about this situation...
I love this country but make no mistake about it - if the entire US congress were in the wtc today we'd be better off. God help us.
It came down real fast
due to lack of good support
I smell a lawsuit.
What in nine hells was being DONE by air traffic control when the deviation (and subsequent lack of communication) was noticed? WHEN was it noticed? WHERE the fuck was the NY Air National Guard during the 18 minutes after the first impact? Is anyone going to try and sell the idea that 20 minutes wasn't enough time to get LOCAL jets in the air for intercept? Take a gander at the locations of NY squadron locations.
I'll buy the explanation that noone believed the first one would actually hit. I'm not gonna buy it for the second WTC hit. That plane should have been downed in the river.
Hannan Ashrawi (sp???), former Palestinian spokeswoman back when it seemed the peace talks were going somewhere, but since not seen as often in public anymore because she disagrees with the way Arafat is running the Palestinian Authority, just spoke on CNN about the "Palestinians dancing in the street" footage we've all seen.
She claimed the people shown celebrating and dancing are a *very* small minority group and do not in any way represent Palestinians as a whole. Moreover, though small groups of people may have been celebrating when they heard America was hit, celebrations soon subsided when it became clear that possibly thousands had been killed. The general attitude in the West Bank and Gaza is one of horror, disgust and sympathy with American victims.
Bear in mind that Ashrawi (I really should've looked this up, sorry) is one of the most moderate Palestinians around and that she's also one of very few Palestinians with some authority who's got any idea about pr Western style (as in, she knows it's not a good idea to scream "I will sacrifice *all* of my sons for Allah to make Israel suffer the way we suffer" when a suicide bomber's just blown up a kiddie disco in Tel Aviv - it doesn't do the Palestinian cause any good in the Western eye) so she's bound to say something like this.
However, if you think about it, she may, partly, be right. I myself have only seen that footage with the guy handing out free food to passersby (you know which footage I mean). Consider that in the 22 hrs since it happened, there hasn't been any new footage of Palestinians dancing in the street. It's always the same clip. If this celebration was going on on any substantial scale, I should think we would've seen more footage of it.
Disclaimer: I'm not Palestinian, nor am I Israeli, nor am I sympathetic to either cause (in the sense that I don't believe either people should be destroyed to give the other Lebensraum)
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
Its at times like this that it becomes particularly painful that the American Red Cross does not allow gay men to donate blood.
The u.s. has two options now :
1) Realize the causes of the problem and stop the irrational behavior towards other nations
2) Response by magnifying that behavior and feedback the whole problem
Let all hope they "Choose wisely"...
HarKal
I was just wondering if anyone knows what Bin Laden wants?
All I know is that the media has painted him as a madman who has sworn to destroy america because it is so free, tolerant and wonderful.
I don't believe anyone with any intelligence will buy that for one second (although the american populace does, by and large, seem to believe that some countries hate america because it so lurrvely).
Anyone have any good links to sites which actually try and think about his motives? maybe even ones biased towards his cause, at least then we might get a clearer view of why people are willing to die for it.
----
p
According to this statement from a senator, the american people should forgo a few freedoms to insure security. Big Brother is COMING PEOPLE!!
" ``This is a war situation we're in,'' Sen. Charles Grassley (news - bio - voting record), R-Iowa, said, adding that Tuesday's tragedy likely would alter Americans' sense of security and lead them to forgo some freedoms for added safety in the future. "
Its tragic what happened, but our freedoms are about to be tested and/or removed.
It's sad to think that the US has been the catalyst for peace between Israel and Palestine, and the Palestinians don't see it that way.
Unfortunately, I think that shortly they will realize how much we've been calming the Israelis.
If you do something right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
Terrorist have for years used "sleepers". These would be young children trained and brain washed. They are then sent to the US, Canada, and other countries. They blend in get education and regular jobs. Once all the sleepers make it to the places they need to be, they recieve a call, or message and bang. The terrorists could have been the pilot, co-pilot, or any memeber of the flight crew. The resources need for this now really are reduced. All it took was time.
www.crystalflame.net is mirroring as much as I can possibly find, and linking to the large mirrors that aren't easily mirrorable.
I love your generalizations and inaccuracies. This is the biggest piece of reactionary crap I've seen posted yet.
In every conflict there is a side. The US has intervened in many conflicts, often at the request of one of those sides. Inevitably, the other side views us as the enemy.
Do you think that the Kuwaiti are complaining because we parked a carrier group off the coast of Iraq? Regardless of oil, do you think it was right for the citizenry there to be subjected to brutal torture and treatment?
I'm not going to attempt a point by point disagreement here, as you've been amazingly vague. But realize that in EVERY conflict that we've been involved, there were those who were native to the area who WANTED us there.
If you do something right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
I believe that was the Korean airliner forced down in Canada. It did NOT crash. Its emergency beacon was activated, reportedly for a 'low fuel' indicator, and someone with common sense AND authority had it landed & checked out. Good show.
Silly fools.
I live in Louisville, KY.
Yesterday the news was reporting that gas was going to be $4 by this morning and $5 by tomorrow.
Last night I drove by the gas station by my house. Regular was $1.69. There were 20 car long lines at the pumps.
This morning it was $1.64. Five cents less.
And there were no lines....
gg paranoia
I logged this from CNN's IRC live feed [edited slightly for readability], while I was watching it on TV. He says that the evnts of yesterday wouldn't be believable in a book (and he's right, of course). I especially love the way they switch to New York as soon as he points a finger at them...
Session Start: Tue Sep 11 17:20:07 2001
*** Now talking in #CNN_Newsfeed
*** Topic is 'Live CNN Closed Captioning'
JOINING ME HERE IN THE
WASHINGTON STUDIO, A
FAMILIAR NAME, A FAMILIAR
FACE, BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF
SO MANY NOVELS.
TOM CLANCY.
MYSTERIES AT THE HEART, TOM
CLANCY, AT THE MILITARY
COMMUNITY, THE INTELLIGENCE
COMMUNITY, PEOPLE IN OUR
NEWSROOM HAVE BEEN SAYING
WHAT IS THINK IS LIKE RIGHT
OUT OF A TOM CLANCY NOVEL.
BUT HAVE YOU -- COULD YOU
POSSIBLY IMAGINE SOMETHING
LIKE THIS TO WRITE ABOUT?
>> NO.
ONE OF THE PROBLEMS WITH
BEING A WRITER OF FICTION,
IS YOU CAN'T KEEP WUP ALL OF
THE MAD MAN IN THE WORLD, AS
MUCH AS YOU TRY.
AND I -- I FRANKLY WOULD
HAVE THOUGHT THAT THIS WAS
NOT A CREDIBLE THREAT TO THE
HAVE FOUR SEPARATE PEOPLE TO
DECIDE TO COMMIT SUICIDE IN
THE SAME WAY IN THE SAME
MORNING.
JUDY: WHY NOT?
>> BECAUSE GIVING UP YOUR
OWN LIFE IS NOT WHAT YOU DO.
EVERYONE IS ASSUMING THAT
THESE ARE ISLAMIC TERRORIST,
IF SO, THEY HAVE DEFIED
THEIR OWN RELIGION.
ISLAM DOES NOT PERMIT
SUICIDE, IT SAYS THAT YOU GO
TO HEATING OIL IF DO YOU
SOMETHING LIKE THIS.
JUDY: WE HAVE SEEN THE
SUICIDE BOMBINGS IN THE
MIDDLE EAST AND ISRAEL.
>> JUDY WE SAW PEOPLE IN
NORTHERN IRELAND CATHOLICS
ACTING LOOISH LIKE SAVIDGES
AND PROTESTANTS ACTING LIKE
SAVIDGES AND MUSLIMS ACTING
LIKE SAVIDGES.
IT'S BECAUSE THEY ARE FOOLS.
JUDY: WHAT DOES THIS SAY
NOW?
YOU'VE -- YOU'VE DONE A LOT
OF REPORTING.
NOT NOT ONLY WRITE FICTION,
YOU DO A LOT OF REPORTING
FROM INSIDE OF THE
INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY.
INSIDE OF THE MILITARY
COMMUNITY.
WHAT SDL DOES THIS SAY HOW
WELL-PREPARED AS A COUNTRY?
>> EVERYONE ASK THAT KIND OF
A QUESTION WHEN THINGS GO
WRONG, AND YOU DON'T ASK THE
QUESTION WHEN THINGS DON'T
GO RIGHT AND THE REASON IS
YOU CAN'T TELL WHEN THINGS
GO RIGHT IN THE BUSINESS.
ONE OF THE THINGS THAT I
HAVE BEEN SAYING FOR YEARS,
WE NEED TO UPGRADE THE HUMAN
CAPABILITY -- THE HUMAN
INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITIES IN
THE CIA.
BECAUSE YOU CAN DO A LOT OF
SATELLITES AND A LOT OF
EAVESDROPPING TECHNIQUES,
BUT YOU CAN'T -- YOU CAN'T
FIND OUT WHAT IS IN A
PERSON'S MIND EXCEPT BY
TALKING TO THAT PERSON.
AND SO THE AGENCY NEEDS TO
INCREASE ITS HUMAN -- IT'S
HUMAN INTELLIGENCE
CAPABILITY.
THE CIA HAS ABOUT 20,000
EMPLOIT ELESS OF A -- IT
SHOULD BE DOUBLED.
BUT AMERICA AS A NATION
DOESN'T LOVE OR INTELLIGENCE
COMMUNITY.
AND CERTAINLY THE NEWS MEDIA
DOESN'T LOVE OUR
INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY.
JUDY: I WILL HAVE TO
INTERRUPT TOM CLANCY, I AM
TOLD AARON BROWN IN NEW YORK
HAS A DEVELOPMENT.
AARON?
AARON: WELL, JUDY, ANOTHER
IN THE LAST FEW SECOND,
ANOTHER BUILDING, WE WILL
SPECULATE CAREFULLY HERE
THAT THERE WAS BUILDING
NUMBER 7.
ONE OF THE BUILDINGS IN
SUPPORT OF THE WORLD TRADE
CENTER TOWERS HAS COLLAPSED.
THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE BEEN
WITH US FOR A WHILE, YOU CAN
SEE, INDEED, THE SMOKE COLOR
HAS CHANGED, GOTTEN MUCH
LIGHTER.
SO WE BELIEVE THAT YET
ANOTHER BUILDING, THIS WOULD
BE THE THIRD BUILDING HAS
COLLAPSED.
LIKELY, BUILDING NUMBER
SEVEN.
ALTHOUGH, WE ALSO HEARD THAT
THERE WERE PROBLEMS AT
BUILDING NUMBER FIVE.
AND IT'S POSSIBLE THAT THAT
ONE WENT DOWN, TOO.
AGAIN, ANOTHER BUILDING IN
THE WORLD TRADE CENTER
COMPLEX APPEARS TO NOW HAVE
CAVED IN.
AFTER THESE ATTACKS.
JUDY?
JUDY: AARON, WE'RE LOOKING
AT THESE PICTURES, TOM
CLANCY AND I AS WE SIT HERE
IN THE WASHINGTON STUDIO,
AND JUST AS A COME BACK TO
TOM CLANCY.
I WANT TO READ JUST A
PORTION OF THE STATEMENT
ISSUED BY SECRETARY OF STATE
POWELL, COLIN POWELL CALLING
THESE ATTACKS A TERRIBLE
TRAGEDY, TERRIBLE TRAGEDY
BEFALLEN NOT JUST MY NATION,
BUT ALL OF THE NATIONS OF
THIS REGIONAL, THE NATIONS.
WORLD.
ALL THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN
DEMOCRACY.
TOM CLANCY, YOU WERE SAYING
SURE, WE CAN ASK THESE
QUESTIONS ABOUT FAILED
SECURITY, FAILED
INTELLIGENCE, WHEN THINGS GO
WRONG.
BUT WE HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO
THE ASK THESE
QUESTIONS, DON'T WE?
>> HAVE YOU THE RIGHT TO THE
SAY WHATEVER YOU WANT.
IT'S A PRACTICAL MATTER OF
ONE OF THE THINGS THAT YOU
WANT TO DO, IF YOU OF THE
WANT TO PREVENT THIS IS TO
BUILD UP YOUR LINE OF THE
DEFENSE.
AND FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE IS
THE INTELLIGENCE CAPABILITY.
WHEN OF THE LAST TIME THAT
THE CNN OR THE NEWS MEDIA
ISF SAID IN GENERAL TO PUT
MORE MONEY OF THE
INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY INTO
THE CIA.
YOU WOULD NEVER DO THAT.
JUDY: WE WOULDN'T TAKE THE
SIDE IN THAT IN TERMS OF
WHAT DO YOU FUND.
>> THAT YOU HAVE FAILED.
WHY NOT HELP THEM SUCCEED
FOR A WHILE.
JUDY: ARE YOU SAYING THAT
THEY ARE SIGNIFICANTLY
UNDERFUNDED IN THAT AREA NOT
JUST THE CIA BUT THE FBI?
>> HUMAN INTELLIGENCE IS
DEEMPHASIZED.
THE FBI'S JOB -- IS --
>> SPYING IS WHAT WE ARE
TALKING ABOUT.
>> THAT'S WHAT THE
INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS DO, IS
THEY SPY.
ANDEI HAS 20,000 EMPLOYEES.
ABOUT 700 OF WHOM ARE
ACTUALLY SPOOKS.
AND OF THEM AS MANY AS
TWO-THIRDS GET OUT AND GET
OUTSIDE AND DO THE SPOOK
OPERATIONS AND WE NEED TO DO
BETTER THAT, MORE THAN THAT
YOU GATHER THE INFORMATION
OF THIS TYPE OF PUTTING
PEOPLE OUT IN THE STREETS.
SEEING THE COPS GATHERED
INFORMATION FROM THE
INFORMANTS.
THIS ISN'T ROCKET SCIENCE.
A NUMBER OF HIRING THE
PEOPLE AND LETTING THEM DO
THE WORK.
I HAVE TO TURN IT BACK OVER
TO THE AARON.
The current day palastinians are arabs. The philistines mentioned in the bible were not. The current day palastinians have no better claim than any other group in the world. They never controlled that land as a single nation. Since the fall of the 2nd Jewish Temple, that land was either directly controlled by the Romans, Turks(Ottomans) or Britain. Never has that land been under control of an Arab government. The Arabs control 99% of the Middle East land mass. Why do the palastinians (which are arabs) have a right to the last 1%?
I found this link last night when /. was /.ed
http://www.asce.org/news/pr042900_opalfasullo.cfm
It's a link about the main engineer involved in the construction of the Twin Towers.
Although some people may think his team's design was fatally flawed, I believe that the design did it's job. The structure held long enough for what at this time appears to be at least a partial evacuation.
This morning, Wednesday, I can still hear, and see, pairs of them overhead every 15 minutes or so. You know, an F-16 lit by the dawn looks very pretty for being such a deadly machine.
Best Slashdot Co
I can't imagine why not. Gives online life a little frisson. Even if you just sign up a throwaway account, it's good to give these people continuity in their flaming. It's a catharsis thing for them. You might even be saving livesd by giving them someone to strike out at harmlessly online!
Denial isn't just a river in Italy
City of God = NYC
..
If you look at it this way:
Q: What are americans? A: Captialists
You will see NYC is 'the capitalists city of god'
Two Brothers = WTC
Fortress = Pentagon
It could also be Camp David
Great Leader = G.Bush
Bush or America IMHO
Big City = NYC
NYC is not yet on fire, just a few buildings
The big city could also mean any other city.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I can't help but think the fireman in the video was probably one of the first on the scene and one of the casualties.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
Thank you
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
Anyone have any clues? Fox news put up this web page.
Yeah, right.
It didn't crash in the Denver/Boulder area or in Colorado Springs (where the Air Force Academy and NORAD are located).
I think Canada must be getting some screwy news on this, one of my coworkers is from Canada and her mother called saying she had heard a plane had crashed in the town of Summit, Colorado. There is no town of Summit, Colorado, although there is a county, but nothing has happened there that I've heard about (I live and work about an hour from Summit county).
However, the "Goodbye to Mile High" football game was postponed, which, to some Coloradans, is more devastating than an airplane crash.
The local papers here are:
Rocky Mountain News
Denver Post
Neither of these have reported any airplane strikes, but feel free to look for yourself.
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
On the radio in to work today they were interviewing Michigan's Attorney General, Jennifer M. Granholm, about the sharp raise in gas prices. According to the major gas distributors, the price of gas at the retail level should NOT be affected. Any gas stations that have raised their prices significantly are doing so illegally.
She encouraged everyone that drives past gas stations, in Michigan, that have raised their prices greatly to report it to the attorney general website so that they can take action against said gas stations.
She also said to remember which gas stations are doing it and never by gas from them again.
I am also sure that the Attorney Generals of other states will also be looking in to similar cases in their states.
That 5 planes were shot down was also reported on BBC World, following a report from a local US TV station, but I haven't heard anything about it since. Obviously, if it is true, it will come to light in the next few hours/days. You can't cover up the crashing of 4 planes.
1. Is this the first time /. took an IRC server to its limits by mentioning it ? (irc.idlenet.org)
2. Regarding the hot phase: are people with common sense and a net connection actually a faster news service than the established agencies? Kind of a peer-to-peer news ticker?
3. Regarding the bombing of Kabul last night: was that a "contra" group coming to help of the american cause because they were funded by "oddball" american entitites like the CIA (remember Nicaragua?) ?
+++ath0
People saw the PA plane crash..they didn't see any missile hit it.
If 4 other planes are missing that will be pretty hard to hide. How would the missing people be explained?
There was a rumor of a 5th crash near Camp David that turned out to be false.
If an extra plane goes down they won't be able to hide it. A lot of people will be missing.
I'm English, and I live in the UK. First, let me express my condolences to the people of America.
One of our respected national newspapers devotes today's first 5 pages to the appalling acts of terrorism yesterday. I would expect no less. The next page has a story titled "Bush refuses to ban Sinn Fein Funding".
Let me explain the significance of this.
Sinn Fein is the political wing of the IRA, the Irish Republican Army. A terrorist organization. Much of my childhood (near London) was characterized by the IRA terror campaign. Question: Why are there no litter bins on London stations? Answer: Because the IRA dropped bombs into a few of them, and removing the bins was all that could be done to stop this style of bombing.
Basically what this means is that it is legal for Americans to fund terrorist organizations. This isn't an empty issue, it is estimated that 70% of the funding of Irish terrorists comes from the US. (Sorry, I can't remember the original source - a much used statistic though.)
Now I'm not pro- or anti- Bush. My total knowledge of the US political system is based on being in DisneyWorld in Florida in December 2000! Neither do I have solutions for the problems in Northern Ireland. All I'm suggesting is that maybe this would be a good time to get your legislation in order? Surely the implicit support of terrorism (through funding) should be banned?
One of our many losses yesterday:
l
http://akamai.com/html/en/nr/press/press292.htm
I sit here wondering how long it will be before I hear that some acquaintance was lost in this attack. Of course I hope that won't be the case, but who knows?
Meanwhile, even my home town of 5 or 6 thousand may be sending two firefighters to help cover NYC fire stations while the regular guys are at the WTC either giving it their all or already gave it.
I know the "my enemies enemy is my friend" thing but shouldn't the US be more careful in future?? These terrorists _were_ good, they may have been CIA trained, some years ago... O-B-L was a cia-supported combatant in their conflict with the Soviets,(the bigger enemy) Iraq was US supported during its conflict with Iran (then the bigger enemy) Ho Chi Minh was US supported in WWII against the Japanese (then ,also, the bigger enemy). Spot the trend? It's time allies were chosen on a long-term strategic consideration (10-30yrs) rather than the on-going historical tactical context which is current. It's dificult to accuse people of being religious zealots bent on distruction when, not long ago, they were _your_ religius zealots bent on someone-elses destruction on your behalf.
Also, it's hard when the boot is on the other foot... I live in the UK and have been affected by two large IRA bombings on English soil; Manchester and Canary Wharf. These are US-civilian supported religious terrorists using terror bombings to promote their own "jihad" against a fellow western democracy. Now the Irish-American community in NYC knows what it feels like to be on the receiving end of someone elses arms-donations. Just to put it in perspective against all the self-righteous comments I've been reading earlier. I'm not condoning any behaviour, just putting over a point. Anyones life should be sacred; black, white, asian, arabic whatever... No political or religious cause is worth ONE life lost on any side.
BTW, I'm staying anonymous, I don't need flame-junk-mail from the all-in-caps-AOL-redneck militia, thanks....
It's that simple. As a general rule, we don't care. The average American has no idea how much aid we send to Israel. They have NO idea why there is a "war" going on in the Middle East. They don't understand why they are fighting for the same land or how long it has been going on. Ask people on the street about the Jews and Palastinians and at least 90% of the time you'll get a blank stare.
What they do understand is people killing innocent citizens. If people in the Middle East want to change our policy they picked the WRONG WAY TO DO IT. Sure, this is a great way to get news coverage, but you'll get bombed, bad. We're now backed in a corner and the American public DEMANDS a military response. Nothing else will do.
Someone in Colorado Springs told us gas there was $8 a gallon there last night. Gas in Thornton (suburb of Denver) was $1.61 - 1.65 a gallon last night, and the prices at the one gas station I passed on the way to work were the same as last night.
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
Thank you both.
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
I think one thing we need to think about as a country is what have we (our leaders) done to piss people off so much that they are willing to do something like this? While I'd hate to think that something like this might help a group get what they want, I think we need to evaluate a lot of our policies and maybe make some changes, in order to hopefully prevent something like this from happening again. /. (for the most part) hate Microsoft. Consider that a lot of countries look upon the USA the same way.
America spends way to much time throwing its weight around. People on
This was posted to Jerry Pournelle's site.
...
Dear Jerry,
Following is a message which my one of my best friends passed along with permission to distribute to those who might be interested. It fills in the details that I missed in my original conversation with him and attempted to relate to you.
Tom has given me permission to distribute the message - please feel free to post it if you deem it appropriate.
Sincerely,
Art Russell Major, US Army (Retired)
Message Follows:
Today was a tragedy for all of America and to my family, a very personal one. Lynn and my Niece Liz's husband, Jeremy Glick was on United flight 93 this morning. When the Hijackers took control of flight 93. Jeremy called my niece who in-turn conferenced him to 911. Jeremy relayed to the police what was happening as the hijacking unfolded. As our niece Liz listened, Jeremy told the police there were three Arab terrorists with knives and a large red box that they claimed contained a bomb. Jeremy tracked the second by second details and relayed them to the police by phone. After several minutes of describing the scene, Jeremy and several other passengers decided there was nothing to lose by rushing the hijackers. Although United Flight 93 crashed outside of Pittsburgh, with the loss of all souls. Jeremy and the other patriotic heroes saved the lives of many people on the ground that would have died if the Arab terrorists had been able to complete their heinous mission.
Please offer your prayers for all of those who perished or were injured in this tragic of all days and to our niece Liz Glick and her 2-month-old child, Emerson, who are left without their loving Husband and Father.
May we remember Jeremy and the other brave souls as heroes, soldiers and Americans' on United flight 93 whom so gallantry gave their lives to save many others.
Lynn, our four adult children and I are headed to New York to be with our family during this time of great sadness
All of my best,
Tom
We find
says it all.
says it all..
Does anybody else find it odd that we've heard nothing from Senator Clinton on this?
www.eFax.com are spammers
Well people are starting to calm down up here that the main even t is over. But there is huge concern about what has happened, how many will survive and what this might lead to. And if you believe in the profits, Nostradomus made a prediction, which so far is being interpreted as this event. Now remember, it's all in how you read it. For all we know, he might have just meant 2 brothers, not the 2 twin towers. Nut it still sounds scary.
My best goes out to everyone involved, and hope that there are many survivors found but I fear the worst, so best we could all hope for was quick deaths for those who did die.
my 2 cents plus 2 more, but a sad 2 cents it is
http://www.unspeakable.org
I'm trying to gather as many pic and video as possible then I plan on burning them to CD. Cause something like this doesn't happen that often.
oogly boogly!
The first semi-official statement from bin Laden: An article (in swedish) in the swedish newspaper Expressen says (13:15 today) that "the saudian dissident Usama bin Laden congratulates those who performed the terror attacks against USA, but denies any involvement, says a person working close with Usama".
bin laden is suppose to be worth 200 million dollars!! his power comes mostly from his money. if his money is in international bank then it must be SEIZED NOW! if it is in some bank in arab country or hidden in swiss bank then HACKERS GO FOR IT. we need to make that money disappear. if bin ladan loses that 200 million he loses the means to carry out his plans
The wickedness and awesome cruelty of a crushed and humiliated people
... all these must be obscured lest they provide the smallest fractional reason for yesterday's mass savagery.
By Robert Fisk
12 September 2001
So it has come to this. The entire modern history of the Middle East the collapse of the Ottoman empire, the Balfour declaration, Lawrence of Arabia's lies, the Arab revolt, the foundation of the state of Israel, four Arab-Israeli wars and the 34 years of Israel's brutal occupation of Arab land all erased within hours as those who claim to represent a crushed, humiliated population struck back with the wickedness and awesome cruelty of a doomed people. Is it fair is it moral to write this so soon, without proof, when the last act of barbarism, in Oklahoma, turned out to be the work of home-grown Americans? I fear it is. America is at war and, unless I am mistaken, many thousands more are now scheduled to die in the Middle East, perhaps in America too. Some of us warned of "the explosion to come''. But we never dreamt this nightmare.
And yes, Osama bin Laden comes to mind, his money, his theology, his frightening dedication to destroy American power. I have sat in front of bin Laden as he described how his men helped to destroy the Russian army in Afghanistan and thus the Soviet Union. Their boundless confidence allowed them to declare war on America. But this is not the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming days. It is also about American missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village called Qana and about a Lebanese militia paid and uniformed by America's Israeli ally hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee camps.
No, there is no doubting the utter, indescribable evil of what has happened in the United States. That Palestinians could celebrate the massacre of 20,000, perhaps 35,000 innocent people is not only a symbol of their despair but of their political immaturity, of their failure to grasp what they had always been accusing their Israeli enemies of doing: acting disproportionately. All the years of rhetoric, all the promises to strike at the heart of America, to cut off the head of "the American snake'' we took for empty threats. How could a backward, conservative, undemocratic and corrupt group of regimes and small, violent organisations fulfil such preposterous promises? Now we know.
And in the hours that followed yesterday's annihilation, I began to remember those other extraordinary assaults upon the US and its allies, miniature now by comparison with yesterday's casualties. Did not the suicide bombers who killed 241 American servicemen and 100 French paratroops in Beirut on 23 October 1983, time their attacks with unthinkable precision?
There were just seven seconds between the Marine bombing and the destruction of the French three miles away. Then there were the attacks on US bases in Saudi Arabia, and last year's attempt almost successful it now turns out to sink the USS Cole in Aden. And then how easy was our failure to recognise the new weapon of the Middle East which neither Americans nor any other Westerners could equal: the despair-driven, desperate suicide bomber.
And there will be, inevitably, and quite immorally, an attempt to obscure the historical wrongs and the injustices that lie behind yesterday's firestorms. We will be told about "mindless terrorism'', the "mindless" bit being essential if we are not to realise how hated America has become in the land of the birth of three great religions.
Ask an Arab how he responds to 20,000 or 30,000 innocent deaths and he or she will respond as decent people should, that it is an unspeakable crime. But they will ask why we did not use such words about the sanctions that have destroyed the lives of perhaps half a million children in Iraq, why we did not rage about the 17,500 civilians killed in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. And those basic reasons why the Middle East caught fire last September the Israeli occupation of Arab land, the dispossession of Palestinians, the bombardments and state-sponsored executions
No, Israel was not to blame though we can be sure that Saddam Hussein and the other grotesque dictators will claim so but the malign influence of history and our share in its burden must surely stand in the dark with the suicide bombers. Our broken promises, perhaps even our destruction of the Ottoman Empire, led inevitably to this tragedy. America has bankrolled Israel's wars for so many years that it believed this would be cost-free. No longer so. But, of course, the US will want to strike back against "world terror'', and last night's bombardment of Kabul may have been the opening salvo. Indeed, who could ever point the finger at Americans now for using that pejorative and sometimes racist word "terrorism''?
Eight years ago, I helped to make a television series that tried to explain why so many Muslims had come to hate the West. Last night, I remembered some of those Muslims in that film, their families burnt by American-made bombs and weapons. They talked about how no one would help them but God. Theology versus technology, the suicide bomber against the nuclear power. Now we have learnt what this means.
Thanks, Allism.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
--the people of Palestine have been raised on the basic assumption that America is an evil set of corporations and power-hungry rulers that has ruined their lives. This, in essence, is completely true. We have sided with their enemy. We have helped to destroy their innocent civilians and their land. These people have no hope but to commit such acts to attract attention to their situation. God knows we weren't listening before, but look now! I completely understand the motivation behind such an ordeal. America stands on other countries to put itself in a position of power. Even more unfortunately, the Department of Defense is going to start carpet-bombing the country of the attack's origin, even though the person (or people) who organized the strike probably aren't even there. We will end up killing just as many innocent people, and ultimately committing a counter-act of terrorism. I sincerely hope that trigger-happy George W. doesn't jump the gun on this one, but somehow I think that the popular American opinion of "Bomb the bastards!" will prevail.
i live in the northern ohio area, and there was a crazy demand for gas. there were fist fights breaking out at the stations when people were accused of cutting in line. they had to block off the exit to the road, to stop more cars from coming down them. it was crazy. also, i have seen on the news, that alot of our gas station owners are now under arrest for price raising and contributing to the public panic. this is not a rumor, i saw this myself.
badjohny
http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/paypage/PKAXFNQH
If you can't donate blood, please donate financially.
-- null
Hi,
[quote]
Did a search for the group *apparently* claiming responsibility for this attack, The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. This is report of a claim is unverified, but
their website is
http://www.alhourriah.org/urgent.asp
there is a message that has appeared there in the last 90 minutes.
can someone translate it please?
[/quote]
Subsequently, the claim has been withdrawn, but it might still be interesting to see what they say.
Tequila - drink of the gods.
Even if they did use electronic communication, maybe it was encrypted.
However any organised terrorist, the people involved here certainly are organised, is going to be well aware that their communications are likely to be intercepted.
Thus they are more likely to use code systems most including bogus communications and communications intended to mislead.
I wont post this huge post say this or that.. I'll just leave you with a few thoughts. America will survive, They might not.. Sometime there is a peace that is only found on the other side of war.
I'm from India. Yesterday I came home from work, switched on the TV & was dumbstruck by the brutal & horrid attacks on WTC. It was simply unbelivable to see the towers disintegrating before my eyes...live on TV. The first thought that crossed my mind was Tom Clancy's "Executive Orders"..but as usual reality is much bizarre than fiction.
My hearfelt & deep condolences to all American people, especially those affected directly by the tragedy.
This has highlighted the real menace of terrorists in todays world & how it affects all countries equally. The time is probably not right to say this, but in a way, the US has brought this upon itself by promoting regimes like Taliban in Afghanistan & Pakistan when it suited US's politics. Now you're seeing the consequences.
These terrorist nations have waged a proxy-war with our peaceful democracy for decades now..we are paying a terrible price with our people's lives. It's time that US brand these nations as terrorists & take action against these criminals.
I might add that any sympathy for the Palestinian cause has been severely undermined, even though they may have nothing to do with this (?). They're going to be the ones who truly pay for this attack, even if we never launch a single missile.
Find those responsible?
Sure if you feel the need to have revenge. It solves nothin gbut, tends to make people feel better.
How about dropping support for Isereal and the little pupet dictatorships we have setup in the Middle east?
How about not being complicit any further in the atrocities commited against the palestiniens?
Nah... fuck that. They are just sand niggers anyway. Lets just find the evil people who hurt us and hurt them back. Thats garaunteed to solve the problem.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
As I mentioned earlier, I searched the old articles here and could not find the piece on Infocom's raid. I know it was here, I meta-moderated some of the comments from it about 7 days ago. Did someone force Slashdot to remove it?
"You can't play with my yo-yo"
Lack of good support? Those buildings showed exemplary support since they were able to withstand not only collisions with large aircraft traveling several hundred miles an hour but were also able to support the upper levels despite having large holes blown in them. One civil engineer I saw being interviewed said that the twin towers had supports spaced 3.5 ft apart, whereas normal buildings have 10 ft between supports. The building eventually collapsed because the intense heat from the fires weakened the supports at the upper levels, causing those levels to fall onto levels below. To give an example, level 110 fell onto level 109, the support below level 109 is now holding twice the weight than it was designed to hold and the support was also weaked by the heat. Level 109 collaped onto 108, 108 is also weakened by heat and is now supporting 3x the weight, so it collapsed. And so on down to the bottom. Without the fire, those buildings likely would still be standing. Goes to show that these terrorists had this thing planned down to the smallest detail.
Yes, and all the partisan bullcrap is only going to get in the way. We are all Americans, not Democrats or Republicans! Politics is indefinitely suspended.
Instead people cutting him down, why don't we just stand behind our leader, and show the world we are a united country, not a country of infighting and politics.
No claim... except currently living there.
They live there now, under the thumb of an opressive regieme (Isreal), which has prevented
them from making any sort of forwards progress in years. Not to mention occasionally killing some of them.
> The Arabs control 99% of the Middle East land
> mass. Why do the palastinians (which are
> arabs) have a right to the last 1%?
Because they live there maybe? Perhaps because
they have been living there? What gives the jews
any right to come in and take that last 1% from
them, just because they control 99% of the land mass.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Lack of coverage might be do to the fact that the other planes causes the most carnage in recent American and world history, while the PA plane hit some trees...
It would appear that the FDR and CVR from this plane would be the most easily recoverable.
Assuming that is that the terrorists did not disable them as they did with the transponders...
Because in the past fifty years, US government policy has killed millions of civilians worldwide, all to keep career politicians in office. Everything that you feel now, shock, revulsion, anger, is the same genuine feeling that has existed for years in Beiruit and Baghdad, in North Korea and Vietnam and Cuba, in every place else that has suffered US bombs and US sanctions.
All I have to say to that is...Oh please. So you're basically claiming that a large portion of US government officals engineer the deaths of innocents to further their own motives?
Gee, even assuming for a moment that your claim's somehow true...Funny how that also sounds like almost every Islamic Fundamentalist i've ever heard about- Religious fanatics, many of whom seem to think terror attacks that kill innocents are the only ways to promote themselves and ensure their happy afterlife.
Because the US parks carrier battle groups on peoples' doorsteps all over the world, threatens civilian populations, then hangs out the signs saying "Make us go away. Just try."
Feel like actually backing yourself up with examples? Like one of the other replies here, remember that we're almost always INVITED to be somewhere.
The US is hated on a deep and personal level by large parts of the world.
Oh? Go look at the list of apologies and promises of support from foreign governments on cnn.com, and say that again. Since when did groupings of Islamic Fundamentalists and other terrorists become a "large part of the world"?
People like you spouting this tired rhetoric once again make me sick...As I watch the news this morning, i'm reminded that there is NEVER any reason to kill thousands of INNOCENT CIVILIANS, simply because our foreign policies don't rub them the right way.
For god sakes, how the hell can you essentially defend the motives of these people, after seeing the people leaping out of the higher floors of the WTC to die in the fall, rather than burning to death?
The anchor on MSNBC right now looks like he can barely contain his laughter as he smiles his way through the recap of yesterday's news. The woman anchor on CNN last night did the same thing. The shithead ABC reporters were shoving their microphones in little kids' (like 6 or 7 years old) faces last night and asking them how they felt after they watched the WTC fall from their classroom windows. How do you *think* they felt, you worthless piece of shit?
-Legion
This event is tragic and I hope whoever caused it is discovered and brought to justice, to be trialed for his/her actions.
However, I hope this does not turn into some witchhunt, where everyone who says anything negative, criticizing, hostile, or even hateful towards the US government is automatically assumed to be some kind of conspiring terrorist, and denied his or her rights.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Why does it take something like this to get politicians to finally take their jobs seriously and really get work done for the country?
I wish they would work this hard and this serious even in times of peace and prosperity as I expect;
Ok NOBODY deserves something like this! Certainly not civilians. This is a horrible happening!
But the bloodthirsty reactions of some people are absolutely absurt. The "an eye for an eye" idea is uncivilised and proven to be ineffective (since for example that is the israeli policy). Peace will not be established by humiliating and hurting whole populations. Besides bringing the brains behind this attack to justice the fundamentals of foreign policy of the US will have to change. I is and has always backfired, maybe not as directly as now but it has backfired.
Iraq (Sadam) was funded to fight Iran (Islam)
Israel is funded to fight palestinians
Bin Laden was funded to fight the russians in Afganistan. The list of foreign policy decisions the US have made which have turned against them and mostly others is endless (I am not even mentioning asia and south america)
Let this not so much lead to PAY BACK but more to curing the roots of trouble in the world. Most people may find this to be way to mild but I am convinced that most hatred in the world is caused by feelings of injustice, feelings of powerlessness, and the lack of knowledge.
greetings Asha
This could be a defining moment in world history if the great powers of the world united against terrorism. Every large nation (democratic or otherwise) has a very good reason to join the fight against international terrorism.
The US has Islamic terrorists and a few home-grown ones, and the Zapatistas in Mexico next door. The EU has the Northern Irish problem and the Basques in Spain/France, not to mention the Balkans. India has Kashmir and a nasty war next door in Sri Lanka. Russia has Chechnya and its brand of Islamic terrorism (not that I'm defending the Russian actions there), plus some problems in Uzbekistan and other ex-republics. China has been having problems recently with non-ethnic Chinese in North-West China.
If these countries and others with similar problems (South Africa, Columbia, Algeria, got together and really cooperated, world terrorism could be dealt a death blow. Economic sanctions against countries harbouring terrorists, limitations on training of non-military personnel, restrictions on munitions exports and production, intelligence-sharing, military facility usage, impartial arbitration of grieviences (this is actually the most important of all of the above, if you can eliminate marginalized people you go a long way toward eliminating the conditions that create fanatics and terrorists in the first place).
If it worked well, world-wide security could be enhanced and protected to the extent that mines could be outlawed (even in the US, one of the few countries not to sign the international ban on mines).
I'd sleep better at night, anyway...
No sig for me - too lazy to fill one in...
it's not exaggeration to say that America is forever changed by the tragedy.
... i dont know.
We should actively keep it in our minds.
I made a few small logos/slogans which i'd like to share:
9-11
(as in september 11, and emergency)
Remember the Skyline
WTC 2002
(as in, rebuild)
do copy it and pass it on to others if you think its worth sharing. these
are meant as an expression of solidarity, of remembrance
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
You don't NEED guns OR explosives and it's not hard to fly a 757 ONCE IT'S UP IN THE AIR.
The hard part is LANDING, which is not a problem if you plan to fly into a building!
The revolution will NOT be televised.
That was the closed captioning output being streamed through an IRC channel. It's being typed in real-time by a third person. Tom Clancy was being interviewed live , in person, in CNN's studios, on TV. Sorry about the confusion.
I heard on the radio this morning, that the passengers on the Pittsburgh flight knew they were going to die, and decided to die on their own terms.
In my mind they are true heros.
Why isn't the media focussing on this? My guess is two-fold: First, there is evidence, albiet weak, that Bin-Laden is involved. This doesn't seem to me to be unlikely even if Iraq was involved. The second is that this is perhaps the nightmare scenario for the media, US government, and some of those advocating the most extreme measures at the moment: What if you really can't do anything to the barbarians who organised this attrocity? What if you can't teach them a lesson, because if they were capable of being taught it, they'd have "learned" by now? What if the act might even have been inspired by a desire to get back at the West for previous lessons?
Racists should be sent back to where they came from
Large aircraft are, by themselves, dangerous weapons of mass destruction, we can see this plainly now. It is necessary to design and install safety overrides on all large aircraft, so that control can be taken away from the pilot in the event of just such an emergency.
Everybody reading this is intelligent enough to understand the necessary design elements of such an override system, such as the guarantee of secure operation (encryption, authorization, physical security, etc) so I won't go into it further. But we, the techies, are the ones responsible for pushing this forward, for the protection of everyone, including ourselves. Oh, I almost forgot to mention, obviously the control system software must be open source, the entire design must be open. Imagine the consequences of the security system itself being compromised.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
My condolences to all the people who lost anyone in this tragedy.
I have a 1 year old daughter, and it's sad to know that she will never see the beauty of the WTC in the skyline... only in history books. That someone destroying one of America's largest landmarks, killing thousands and thousands of people is not something out of a movie but will be REALITY to their generation is a sad thing to me.
When she reads about this in a history book and can comprehend it and asks me why someone would do something like this, I don't know how to give a sufficient answer that will not make her go to bed that night and lie awake hoping that a plane doesn't crash through her window.
This is truly the end of the innocence
I completely fail to understand what these terrorists try to achieve. This act of terror will create retaliation if the terrorist behind it comes forward with their case. So they can't. We will never know why they did it. We can't ask them. We will not hear their point of view - even thou I don't think any point of view can justify this kind of terrorist attack.
The United States and most of the world (I come from Denmark) will reject this attack and will probably become more hostile and unforgiving... is that a goal?
So all we end up with is the terrible loss of thousands of innocent civilians. And many times that amount of family members who have lost their dear ones...
Why?
-:) Oh no - not again.
www.rednebula.com
Regardless, wouldn't you be concerned if gas prices increased by 200-300% overnight? Or if the prices of any necessities increased by that much so quickly.
This story was covered by slashdot last week.
This could be pure coincidence, but I can't help but wonder if maybe the government knew something was coming but didn't know exactly what.
is 1-888-2-DONATE (1-888-236-6283)
For those Canadians who want to help.
(-me.)
I am a Christian, and I no more believe that the Crusades where the work of Christ than do I believe that the Inquisitions were Christian. This is not the forum for a religious debate mind you, but I thought I would shed a little light.
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
Was it me, or did Bush declare War in his latest speach (10:55 EDT) ?
It sounds like he wants enough money to run war opps (as well as relief efforts).
"Yes.. no matter what the culture, folk dancing is stupid." -MST3K
I seriously doubt they expected it to completely collapse. They probably intended to gut it with the fire. But I don't give fucking terrorists much credit for that level of intelligence. They knew they would cause a world of hurt with a lot of fuel and fire. I doubt they thought much beyond that.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Yeah, and the village idiot will ascend to the throne (a widely-distributed fake Nostradamus prophecy).
Assuming, nostradamus meant the US
Village - Texas
Idiot - GW Bush
So, do some research before you post.;-)
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Clearly, the plane that went down in PA was supposed to go somewhere else, not the woods. Some people in the media and government officials have speculated that it was bound for Camp David, other's say Pittsburgh. At any rate, _something_ interrupted the flight plan for that plane. At first I thought perhaps a passenger or few got up the balls to smash the hijacker-pilots face into the steering column, however a friend of mine postulated that perhaps we shot it down (we as in the USAF). The more I thought about it, the more plausible it sounded. Then this morning my girlfriend IMs me and and said that she heard from a caller on the Howard Stern show this morning that the caller (from Somerset PA) heard an explosion in the sky above, then saw the passenger plane going down with two jets soaring up through the smoke. If this is true, I find it entirely justifiable for the USAF to shoot down that plane. Although they killed innocent people, the loss of life was -- I'm sure -- reduced by downing it in an unpopulated area. Good job.
We dance to all the wrong songs.
--Refused.
I want to firstly mention that I am encouraged to see general sentiments here lean towards not acting rashly/hastilly.
However, with the "obvious" finger leaning towards some sort of large terrorist organization, and particularly with news outlets spouting sketchy information linking various Arab organizations to this, I think it is important to consider just how accurate US intelligence can realistically be.
Here's an idea:
If you wanted to definatively turn international public opinion against the Arab world, or draw America into supporting Israeli actions against Palestinians, how would you do it..? Stage a terrorist attack that America could not possibly dismiss, perhaps?
I would like to start a discussion here which considers the possibility that the seemingly "obvious" culprits here, while convenient targets for cathartic retribution, might not have anything to do with the tragedies in NYC and DC.
(With all respect to those who have chosen careers in law enforcement, the FBI has had some terrible gaffs recently and this might be a usefull exercise..)
A lot of us couldn't help but notice that it was a beautifully clear, sunshiny day yesterday, so counter to the deeply sad feelings we all had. As I was pondering this and the question of "why today", I realized the two issues are tied: the terrorists picked yesterday because of bright clear weather so they could see their targets and line up their approches from a long distance.
Miko O'Sullivan
It is sad that it takes things like this to wake people out of their soma induced stupor. I keep hearing things like "now is the time for us to come together and be kind/nice". Excuse me whilst I wretch. EVERY TIME is the time to be kind and work with not against your fellow man.
There will probably be a lot of touchy feely movements (with a lot of showboating and posturing), that will soon disipate. It is like with new mothers... after birth, their hormones make them love themselves, their baby, the world, and everything... then a week later the baby is found starved to death because the mother neglected it while screwing her fifth boyfriend of the week... its temporary and not legitimate. I sincerely hope that people learn that it is vigilance and consistency (and continuity) that is important... if people are touched by this and make a LIFE CHANGE to be better people, then that is great. But I have seen too many post tragedies in which the love of your neighbor is really only a fear induced fad. Hate to sound cynical, but I think there are many that need to learn that introspection is the first and last step to enlightenment.
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
How about the right to think that getting on a jetliner will be safe?
What about the right to think that when I go to work today in a 100 story building, will it get hit by a jetliner?
How about the right to feel save driving down the road, or taking your kids to the park.
These are not 'rights' given to us by any constitution or anything like that, they are the rights of humanity I guess you could say. I believe this is what he was referring to..
Zeno
(April 16, 1953)
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Perhaps it is good time to set up a new poll. I would like to see what the reaction of world is.
e.g.,
kill all those bastards,
call for peace,
...
In what kind of weird national setup can $5 US per GALLON be considered expensive?
~cHrisA friend of mine sent me the links in the text below, I have cut out the relavent passages and put them below with the links for reference. I wanted to post it to make sure, that IF there is anything to this that authorities might see it. Read on... pretty scary? or incredible coincidence? First claims: Date: 2001-08-31 11:03:37 PST Something is going to happen tomorrow. This is a witness against everyone on this newsgroup. I hate this newsgroup, and everyone on it sucks. REPENT! You are all evil liars! Do not be so evil, and be holy. You are going to get me killed because of the truth of my mouth. I am not telling you what is going to happen until it does, because an EVIL and adulterous generation seeks for a sign. Date: 2001-09-04 12:40:28 PST Wait 7 days, and then maybe I'll answer this post. You see, I am going away in seven days, and you will not hear from me again. X Final Claim: Date: 2001-09-11 07:43:26 PST 7 days ago I said in 7 days from then I would explain the meaning of my 911 prophecy. A witness against everyone in America!!! US, the cry of your sins has reached unto heaven!!! Now I go away. The witness is thus completed. After the witness, if the people don't repent, there will AN EVEN GREATER witness, and an EVEN GREATER punishment if the people do not repent. (Of course they wont! Only individuals repent, never the whole nation!) Don't be stupid SUSA. Bin Laden is not responsible for these attacks. SATAN himself, the GOD of the EARTH is responsible for these attacks, your own KING!! Check your history, you'll see! They are a test to see if Americans are STUPID ENOUGH to go to war with a completely INNOCENT country over it. To see if America is STUPID ENOUGH to arrest INNOCENT people over it. DAMN YOU CHRISTIANS!!!!!! DAMN YOU POLICE MEN!!!!!!!!!!! DAMN YOU GOVERNMENT WORKERS!!! DAMN YOU MILITARY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DAMN YOU TEACHERS!!!!!!!! DAMN YOU CHRISTIANS!!!!! The cup of your sin in almost full. God is going to pour out his wrath all over America. Get the hell out right now. Do not be partakers of the sins. Quit your jobs. Go out into the deserted areas of the earth. Live there instead. The world will be destroyed. This is unavoidable. You can only try to take a few people with you as you go. What more can you do?
Anyway - THIS is the 'correct' interpetation
"In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two Brothers torn apart by chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb. The third big war will begin when the big city is burning."
It's quite clear that he was referring to Man U's downfall in the Premiership.
City of God = Stadium of Light (Sunderland)
Great Thunder = Kevin Philips hat trick - Crowd go wild
Brothers torn apart by chaos = The Nevilles can't defend - No change there
The fortress endures = Sunderland unbeaten at home
Great leader will succumb = Alex Ferguson throws a tantrum and quits
The third big war will begin = Arsenal V Leeds United FA cup final
Big city is burning = Arsenal win 2-0 - Leeds United fans go on the rampage
heh
Tequila - drink of the gods.
The nature of air piracy has changed. Before this, if you were the unfortunate victim of a hijacking, you would have a reasonable chance of living through the event if you kept your head down.
No more.
After watching yesterday's video I know one thing, I'd rather go out in a hail of bullets than cowering in the back of the plane, while it slams into a building. Give every passenger a gun and the scumbags wouldn't even make it to the cockpit door.
You're using her as bait, Master!
CNN has reported the government has recordings of phonecalls "intercepted" after the event discussing the targets hit. Apparently these calls directly implicate an organization funded by Bin Laden. Public information on this is very sparse.
This is perhaps a direct product of ECHELON.
While these results are clearly valuable, it still leaves open questions of benefit VS potenital for abuse.
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
How about Mossad? An effective way to eliminate your enemy is to get another nation pissed-off at them...
You're using her as bait, Master!
look beyond the planes. the WTC towers were supposed to withstand direct impact from a Boeing 707 craft, and, from what i've gathered, the main airfleets of commercial us airlines used craft of that size at the time and after the WTC was built. mentioning survival from a 767 would be a different barrel of monkeys, but would still understandably not topple a set of towers immediately. .. The blast just so happened to be located at the point where it could do the most damage."
i'd turn to the 1993 bombing as the true test of structure soundness. here's a quote i found from WNYF:
"The blast was centered on the B2 level. It was so intense that it caused the collapse of the steel reinforced concrete floor to the floor below (B3 level), which in turn caused more collapses. Tons of debris were piled onto the B6 level floor. A steel fire door that opens to the B2 level from a stairway from the B1 level was blown off it's hinges and embedded into a wall 35 feet away.
judging from the statement, i'd say that the blast had potential to toppled the building, and for a building to sustain damage like that, well, let's just say that the infrastructure was very very sound. had it failed then, many more deaths could have resulted, as there would have been no time to evacuate at all.
i'd give more kudos to the civil engineer for sustaining the bomb blast than the 767, more for the fact that from what i've heard, the building was built mainly to survive a collision with an airplane, and not on a bomb blast, though the plane incident is far more ghastly than the bomb, mostly because it ultimately destroyed the twin towers and killed many, many more people.
I'm not sure, (too young) but didn't their used to be something called the sky marshals? Plainclothes guys who would fly on all domestic flights who were authorized to carry weapons.
This is maybe something that the FAA should consider bringing back. I know that it is dangerous to have guns, but even a fast acting tranquilizer blow gun in a guy's pocket could have taken out the bad guys when their backs were turned and saved thousands of lives. Heck, there are hundreds of ways to kill/incapacitate someone with your bare hands.
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. --Sun-Tzu
...but have you noticed that you never see Osama bin Laden and Bill gates together?
then find a new site ... really simple choice, isnt it?
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
The United States has been on poor terms with countries in the Middle East for some time; consequently, many Americans harbor a low-level dislike for Arabs and Muslims. But the recent attack on our country has brought that dislike to the surface; now, we run the risk of that dislike turning to blind hatred.
Did you see? "Kill All Arabics" written in the dust on a New York street.
There is a precedence for hatred of race, and it inevitably shames us. During World War II, Hitler painted Jews as being the source of all Germany's problems; the country's blind hatred of the Jewish populace led to the slaughter of countless Jews. Throughout the 1900's, many American people persecuted Blacks, believing them to be sub-human. Is it true? Most of us believe that this is now only the policy of White Supremacist groups, such as the Klu Klux Klan. So, do we now start hating all Arabs and Muslims? Even if they are Americans? Our own people?
The United States is often called the world's melting pot. People of every race and nationality have come to make their homes here. My grandparents were European immigrants. Perhaps your ancestors were immigrants as well. If the IRA stages an attack on our country, do we turn against all Irish? If the Japanese Red Army bombs our cities, do we condemn all Japanese? If madmen bomb Oklahoma, would we cry for the death of all Americans? Why is it that some now call for the death of all Middle Easterners?
The recent attack on our country by a handful of millitants is their attempt to push us into irrational behaviour. They are waving a red flag at us, hoping we'll rush, like bulls. Do we take this bait and condemn all Middle Eastern Americans? We risk lashing out at people who would be our friends and are our allies. The heart of our country has never been attacked before, and it has thrown us into a frenzy. Our true enemies want to toss us into confusion; to set us against our own people.
We will not be pushed into this.
Thomas Sanders te_sanders@yahoo.com
Adequacy has an account (from Jerry Pournelle's site) about passengers attempting to overpower the terrorists on United flight 93, the one that crashed in Pennsylvania. Probably not a coincidence.
Looking at the broadcasts of all the emergency workers covered in soot made me wonder what kind of threat is posed by inhaling the dust in lower Manhattan.
For example: The use of asbestos in building construction was curtailed at around the same time that the WTC was completed (I admit my source is a "father of a friend"); was any used in constructing the WTC?
My prayers go out to the victims and their families.
Jonathan
...economically anyway.
There's no way that the US gov could police us all for *any* particular purpose. For example, they can't even stop us from funding drug lords in Columbia and we *do* have lots of laws against that. They are smart enough to not even bother trying to stop us from "just sending money to my relatives overseas".
Please explain this to your peers. I wonder if the UK has banned Sinn Fein funding itself? Did it have any effect? Has anyone been prosecuted for breaking said law? I really am curious since from my point of view from this side of the A the reason that it has not been banned is so obvious that it certainly should not merit press coverage, discussion, or debate at all.
Sorry to lay it out like that, but since I have honestly no position on that particular situation, perhaps I can objectively add that what some call "terrorists", others call "freedom fighters", or heroes. Yes, I can say that even in light of what has happened here. I can understand why some in Egypt would celebrate. I can still be angry and have a desire for vengance as well...
OTOH, you can bet that the various agencies will be analyzing all trades in stocks, precious metals, oil futures etc. on the various exhanges around the world so that perhaps they can find leads to people that did know that this was coming. Perhaps a few speculated with a number of well placed orders figuring that they could make material gain as well as "spiritual". I would not be surprised if they do find a few that opened accounts and shorted some stocks the day before, bought a bunch of gold, and then sold after, etc.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
I am saying, right now the way our lives are lived, if that changes as a whole we have all lost something. If I am not quite sure what you mean by the rights you have mentioned that we currently have in some way affected these terrorists and their ability to cause this.
I am guessing that by engineering guns, and rockets, we are taking away from people. Yes that is true but it is a sad reality.
If we EVER stop doing that, then only the terrorists will have the guns and the and bombs. While I have merely had rights taken away from me. Not only my right to own a gun but also the very rights you mention, the rights to feel save.
IT is a sad fact of reality and it is purely idealism if you believe that eradicating gun sales will erdaicate the majority of gun problems. We will become a more fearful society overall I believe.
Jeremy
"in the city of god (tall buildings, sparkly), two brothers (the towers) will fall in chaos; the third war begins in the burning city"
nostradamus 1654
there is a little more, but i cant exactly remember the rest...
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
So, even if religion is taken out and politics is substituted in, the same applies, as history proves so many times to those that wish to learn. Personally I am prompted to ask that you and others not 'judge' Christians by the actions of the bad, but I realize fully that this is a two way relationship. I trully empathize, as I had massive issues with elitism and hypocricy in my youth.
Well, I really have got to get back to business, as I am tremendously busy, but thought I would share. I enjoy civil intellectual discussions and if you want to discuss this, email me. And be careful about them redneck statements, I am a DSL redneck!!! Not AOL, I do have SOME dignity! hehe
In closing however, rereading your comment on the Nazi comparison and the world being better off without religion, I will say this. If you look at the teachings of Christ, not some pediphilic groping priest, you will find all the elements for a very enlightened and loving society. It is when people either rebel for the sake of sheer rebelling and spitefullness or let emotional zeal cloud the true lessons that you have problems... I suppose that you will find that lesson in every other aspect of life as well.
"He Who Knows Others Is Wise. He Who Knows Himself Is Enlightened." -Tao Te Ching
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
Remember that not everyone uses "our" calendar. This may be a significant date on other calendar systems.
Paul
I often was persecuted for this and basically told to shut up an never ask questions, but in reality Christ tells us to very much question your own faith. Otherwise, how strong is it trully, and how would you expect it to hold up in trully trying times. It would be like the Marines sitting down recruits and showing them a nice video demonstration of 'How to be a Marine' then actually being suprised (in a real situation) when half of them blow their own heads off, and the other half run and hide. Steel is tempered by will, skill, strength and also pressure and intense heat. It is my belief that we should strive to achieve that within ourselves.
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
The buildings were struck by a fucking airliner. I'm pretty sure that wasn't in the goddamn design specs.
Came down real fast, my ASS. The towers held together fine until the fires melted the steel structural members.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I`d just watched a program which mentioned how it was built, and how it was a new design which was weaker than other types of building. Fair call about the design specs! But that point notwithstanding, would it still be standing today if it had been built with more support?
Please send this letter or something similar to your representatives in Congress. Email is largely ignored, so I recommend printing and mailing. You can find your senators' mailing addresses at http://www.senate.gov/senators/senator_by_state.cf m
Encourage your family, friends, coworkers and neighbors to do the same. Billions of dollars will be needed to rebuild the damage. Donating money is a good deed, but the United States must use these billions that we now need, not send it to those who celebrated carnage and destruction.
I'm sorry that I can't substantiate this at all, but during one of the news reports, a reporter mentioned that the US will be using what he called a "Black hole" that will capture thousands and thousands of phone call conversations which they will then go on to analyze for specific keywords. Did anyone else see this? Is this an admission of Echelon?
Sure, there's a trade-off between light weight and ultimate strength. You can ALWAYS build a building stronger. The trick is to build is strong enough, because otherwise you're wasting money and construction time.
If the building had been twice as strong, it might still be standing. However, it might also not have been built. This is the engineer's dilemma: How strong is strong enough? It's a tough call.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
It's incredible to imagine any fanatical organization attracting a dozen suicide terrorists for 4 teams of ~3 per plane.
What seems more likely is that only the terrorist pilots knew these were suicide missions and that other members of the team were given other explanations for their mission goals.
I have heard hearsay accounts of children being recruited used as couriers, but in fact unknowingly carried bombs to their own demise. The best suicide bomber would be one unwary of their purpose and personal death, less likely to tip off security with anxiety or have second thoughts and spoil the plan. After the fact, no one is alive to tell other members in the terrorist organization and affect morale/ discredit leadership.
This offers another possible explanation to the crash in PA, where fellow terrorists may have discovered their true purpose en route and wrestled the plane to the ground, in addition to other possibilities voiced, such as military shootdown or victim heroics.
"You have liberated me from thought."
Errr... I happen to work in Wean Hall. Classes were cancelled at CMU yesterday, and managers in SCS were encouraged to let their groups go (and across campus, in other schools, likewise AFAIK). However, Wean was not 'evacuated' - I was there for several hours, and there were a few other people there as well. Slashdot, please update this claim - Wean was not evacuated.
--Matthew
Our enemy isn't Afganistan, but the terrorists operating there and the Taliban who support them. They have plenty of enemies themselves, and we can support them. If we're smart, we'll also help the country rebuild.
Providence area stations are showing video of a young arabic man being led off a stopped train (from Boston) in Providence. The man is in handcuffs. They report that possibly a second man (not caught on video) was also taken into custody.
sig is
A plan to hijack commercial planes and fly them into U.S. targets was reportedly incorporated into a terror strategy by Ramzi Zhmed Yousef, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for masterminding the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, Inquirer News Service reported. The plan was first uncovered in Manila in 1995 after police arrested four suspects in a plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II, and was passed on to U.S. officials by the Philippine government. At least four of Yousef's partners in the 1993 bombing have remained at large, increasing suspicions that they could be involved in the Sept. 12 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
http://www.inq7.net/nat/2001/sep/13/nat_4-1.htm
I sent this to my friends:
_________________
Everyone,
As is often the case, the Economist seems to have the best story: America under Attack
Also see The Economist front page
Stratfor provides interesting and more complete analysis.
Lax Security One of the important points made in the article is that security in U.S. airports and on U.S. airplanes before the bombing was lax compared to the security in Europe.
George Bush had Increased Support for Israel. The Economist article does not mention that the Bush Administration in the U.S. had recently increased its support for the Israeli government and therefore also Israeli violence. The Clinton administration, in contrast, was more careful not to do things which could be interpreted as an incitement to violence.
Once again, intelligence agencies were useless. It is amazing to me that "intelligence" authorities claim that they did not have any idea that there would be an attack like this. Below is a link to an album cover from a band called "The Coup". It is black American "Party Music". The album was sold long before today's bombing. The album cover shows both towers of the World Trade Center in New York in flames:
The Coup -- Party Music, album cover shows the World Trade Center towers burning.
If black rap artists can have this idea, why didn't the intelligence agencies have it? The idea was not particularly innovative, since the World Trade Center had already been bombed once. Did the intelligence agencies think that those who did it would just stop trying?
From one of the Stratfor articles: "Reuters is reporting that Arabic satellite television channel MBC warned Sept. 8 that followers of suspected Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden were planning a major attack on U.S. and Israeli interests in the next two weeks."
Violence is Assumed. Commentators on three of the largest U.S. TV networks, NBC, CBS, and ABC, have made comments that assume without debate that the U.S. will engage in military action in retaliation. One U.S. senator said on TV that the U.S. response should be comparable to the U.S. response to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. One of the U.S. responses at the time of Pearl Harbor was to be the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons. Is the senator suggesting that?
This is my reply to the many people who are recommending violence as an answer to violence:
Do you have any thought that violence in retaliation might be a mistake, and might just invite further violence? Those who say no may change their minds after they consider the following issues:
The U.S. government (not necessarily the U.S. people) has a history of thinking that violence is the answer. The U.S. government killed 2,100,000 people in Vietnam and maybe 150,000 people in Iraq. The U.S. has bombed 14 countries in 30 years, killing a roughly estimated 3,000,000 people. None of the people who were killed were in any way directly threatening the U.S. These people had mothers and fathers, friends and families and wives.
Most of the citizens of the U.S. had, and have, no idea of the beliefs of the people that their government killed. Most people in the U.S. cannot even locate the countries the U.S. government bombed on a map of the world. People cannot be thought to have chosen violence when they do not come close to understanding the issues. It is often the government that chooses violence, not the people.
No matter how violent a country is, or how many people a violent country kills, there is still an inexhaustible supply of people in other countries who also want to engage in violence. Violence can be unending. Do you want that?
No matter how angry you are, there are thousands of people who are more angry than you. Do you want them to attack you?
As was mentioned above, the Bush administration recently increased U.S. support for the violence of the Israelis. This was sure to make the people being killed by the Israelis unhappy. Do you find it surprising that some of them are motivated to violence also?
There are many countries where people are severely distressed by Israeli violence. Recently there was a TV news story about street violence in which Israelis were killed. The Israeli counter-attack was shown on TV: A helicopter fired rockets at a building, causing huge explosions. It is not important in this instance whether the Israelis are the aggressors. What is important is that a significant number of people in the world think they are the aggressors.
The problems between the Jews and the Arabs have existed for 3,300 years. The Jews say that they are the "chosen people" of God. The Jews say that Arabs are descended from an illegitimate child of their tribal founder, Abraham, and a slave girl.
It is not difficult to understand the thoughts of the Arabs. It is not difficult to understand that it is annoying to live next to a group of people who claim that they are superior, and that Arabs are inferior. It is not difficult to understand that it is annoying to live near people who claim that you are a descendent of a bastard and that God doesn't like you as much.
It is also not difficult to understand that the constant claims of the Jews of superiority over everyone else (including people of European descent like me) are mentally de-centering to Arabs who happen to be psychologically conflicted.
Violence is caused by mentally de-centered people. Mentally de-centered people engage in violence. It's that simple. Being violent toward them makes mentally de-centered people even more mentally de-centered. That's why violence is not a good answer to violence.
The U.S., and all those who hate violence, should take very strong action. But the action must be designed to cure the problem of highly-conflicted, mentally de-centered people. Whatever that response is, it must be more sophisticated than violence.
The terrorists are extreme examples of mentally disturbed people. Remember that those who crashed airplanes into the buildings cannot possibly benefit from their own actions. They are dead. Someone who is willing to commit suicide is about as mentally de-centered as it is possible to be.
Does the U.S. really have a place in a dispute that began 3,100 years before the founding of the country? How many people here really understand this dispute? What percentage of the citizens of the U.S. can even find Israel on a map of the world? I think the percentage is low.
I find the arrogance of my Jewish friends annoying, too. However, there are many differences between myself and the terrorists. I am less conflicted. I am better educated. It doesn't matter to me what other people have been saying for thousands of years; I don't believe Jews actually are superior. I don't live in an area where I am at risk of being killed by Israelis. I am not Arab, so I am not the target of the strongest claims of Jews that they are superior.
I can also understand why Jews would find Arabs annoying. There is an element of the Arab culture that allows Arabs to think that lies are sometimes acceptable. My Arab friends have sometimes lied to me over trivial issues. To someone who values careful thought, lies are extremely repugnant.
Should we be giving Israel money when that will be seen as us a choosing to enter a 3,300 year-old conflict? The U.S. government gives billions of dollars every year to Israel. If anything, this money seems to have made Israel weaker. The Israelis have spent money they didn't earn; this is always a corrupting influence; they have had problems with inflation. It can hardly be said that the people of the U.S. give the money; most have no idea that money is going to Israel. So, the people pay the money, but the government gives it away. Rightly or wrongly, sensibly or crazily, the Arabs see this money as encouragement of Israel's violence toward them.
On this particular issue both cultures are crazy! They've been killing each other since the time of the Pharaohs! What does this have to do with the U.S.? Do we walk into bars and take part in any fight that is happening there?
The U.S. has a history of secret interference with the governments of other countries. We often hear about secret activities of the U.S. government after it is too late to object. The U.S. supported the killing of president Mossadegh of Iran, and then supported an extremely weak man, the Shah of Iran. (See Iran 1953: Making it safe for the King of Kings) [thirdworldtraveler.com], for example.) This provoked a revolution in Iran that was hostile to the United States. Citizens of the U.S. were kept hostage.
The U.S. secret agencies' secret answer to the anti-U.S. sentiment was to support Saddam Hussein of Iraq against Iran. We supported Saddam Hussein's violent war against Iran. However, when Saddam Hussein became violent toward another country in the region, we spent billions of dollars to kill an estimated 150,000 Iraqis and destroy their property.
When executives do things openly they make lots of mistakes, and are sometimes held accountable, usually in a very peaceful way, and usually by their own staffs. When executives do things in secret, there is little accountability, and the mistakes can become huge.
Anyone interested in the activities of secret U.S. agencies may have been interested in a segment of the CBS show "60 Minutes" about the secret involvement of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the killing of Chilean General Rene Schneider. The show aired on Sunday, September 9, 2001. General Schneider was a strong supporter of democracy. Here are links to information about U.S. interference with democracy in Chile:
National Security Archive Chile Documentation Project [gwu.edu]
PBS News Hour: "... evidence of a policy to undermine democracy in Chile and to support dictatorship there" [pbs.org]
Hinchey Report, CIA Activities in Chile [state.gov]
Iran, Iraq, and Chile are just three of the countries that have suffered from secret U.S. involvement. There is some discussion of U.S. government interference in Saudi Arabia below. Also, don't forget Nicaragua. I asked someone who went to Nicaragua during U.S. involvement there whether it was possible to see the wealth that the U.S. government was pouring into that small country. The amount was said to be about $1,000,000 per day. I was told, no, there was no evidence of the money that was spent.
There is a cycle: 1) The U.S. government influences other governments in hidden ways, including arranging the killing of foreign leaders. 2) Some members of the countries with whom the U.S. has interfered want to retaliate violently to the violence of the U.S. 3) The U.S. uses the violent retaliation as a justification for more hidden activity.
Invading countries and killing the residents and destroying their property is not a way of relating I consider socially skilled. Why do the citizens of one country think they can kill the citizens of another? If killing is the answer, can't the U.S. ask a better question?
The interference in the affairs of other countries by the secret U.S. agencies has prompted some people to retaliate. These people who retaliate are called "terrorists" in the U.S. The terrorists make everyone in the U.S. less safe. So, U.S. citizens have, in some ways, gotten less security for the money they spent on secret activities.
The violent attitude toward people outside the U.S. has, predictably, spread to the internal police forces in the U.S. When some religious fanatics decided to do stupid things in Waco, Texas, the U.S. government responded by bringing in very violent-minded people. The result was that people were killed.
There were people who didn't like the activities of the U.S. police forces in Waco. There were people who were psychologically de-centered by these activities. One of them, Timothy McVeigh, bombed a U.S. government building in Oklahoma. So then the U.S. government killed him.
Secrecy encourages people not to trust. Violence encourages violence.
We tend to hear about the activities of secret U.S. government agencies about 30 years after they occur. What are they doing now?
It is 10:00 o'clock. Do you know what the U.S. government is doing? No, it is a fact that you don't. You don't know any other time, either. You cannot even know how much of your money is spent on secret activities, because the budget for secret U.S. government agencies is hidden in other appropriations.
Definition of a terrorist: The other country's CIA.
There is in the U.S. very little attempt at understanding other cultures. Arab friends of mine have described situations in Saudi Arabia that are extremely volatile. Apparently Osama bin Laden, and many average Saudis who live in the U.S., feel very unhappy with U.S. influence in Saudi Arabia. They think that there should be political parties and democracy in Saudi Arabia. However, the U.S. government strongly supports the dictatorial regime of the house of Al Saud. Residents of Saudi Arabia, for example, are not allowed to leave the country without an exit visa. They are potentially prisoners of their own country.
Why not ask ourselves why Osama bin Laden is willing to go to so much trouble to promote terrorism? Maybe we would learn something. I am NOT saying Osama bin Laden is right about anything, and definitely his violence is reprehensible. Nevertheless it may help to understand him. According to Arabs to whom I've talked, there is considerable good reason to be dissatisfied with the secret actions of the U.S. government.
As other people have said in the past, the U.S. government has a history of supporting corrupt dictatorships. The U.S. government supported Pakistan against India! India is the world's most populous democracy. It has been suggested that the preference for supporting dictatorships is due to U.S. government corruption. A dictator is almost certain to be willing to support embezzlement of U.S. government money, and to keep it secret. Trying to arrange embezzlement would be very dangerous in a democracy because of the danger of being discovered.
Under the stress of conflict, people show how they truly think. It has always annoyed me that people who call themselves Christian often reveal that they don't really believe in the important messages of Christianity, and that they don't even understand those messages.
Basically, Jesus Christ's idea of not returning violence with violence means that we can vigorously protect ourselves, but that any response must be the true minimum necessary to achieve security. This is a theory that can be recommended even to the majority of people in the world who are not Christian. The theory seems to fit the facts. The facts seem to be that violence always has severely negative side-effects that overwhelm any effect that might be seen as positive.
Answers? Prevention is an answer. Better understanding is an answer. Being charitable long before any problems begin occurring is a good answer. And maybe there are times when we just don't know the answer.
There is often considerable misunderstanding about non-violent methods. One reason to suggest non-violent methods is that they can be extremely powerful. For example, suppose that representatives from the U.S. knew Osama bin Laden's family. Or suppose that you understood how money is transferred to bin Laden. Or suppose the U.S. was so well-liked in the region that bin Laden had difficulty finding supporters. One of the values of non-violent methods is that literally hundreds of them are available, and many of them are far, far cheaper than violence.
The desire for non-violence is a desire to be extremely powerful. Those who are really powerful can have a strong influence just by voicing disapproval.
There are many people who support violence because they want to act out their own personal anger, while at the same time hiding their internal conflict from themselves. It is a fact that such people would be FAR more comfortable if they could be helped to understand and take responsibility for their anger. Acting out anger is like a drug. It provides only temporary relief, and it makes the person who does it more angry. Having un-recognized anger is like carrying a 100-pound sack of cement on your back wherever you go. Un-recognized anger drags you down 24 hours per day.
Violence is not a good answer to violence.
Regards,
Michael Jennings
Michael Jennings
P.O. Box 14491
Portland, OR 97293-0491
U.S.A.
E-Mail: M_Jennings@USA.com
This letter maybe sent to anyone by email without permission from the author, provided that no changes are made. If you print this article with no changes, you may give it to anyone you know. Other use requires permission. Copyright 2001.
Please mention errors and shortcomings to the author.
Bush's education improvements were
I too heard the interview with the guy claiming to see a second (chase?) plane at the Pentagon. Has anybody else heard more? I searched the usual places (google and deja/google) but came up dry. I *really* want to find out if this guy was on crack or if there was something else going on. Creepy cool.
This is the link:
http://boston.com/news/daily/12/boston_links.htm
SPOT satellite image of Manhattan, acquired on September 11 at 11:55 AM EST, 3 hours after two planes crashed into the World Trade Center. The colors result from the use of infrared bands to identify the actual fire hot spots (see red spots near the base of the smoke plume). The .tif and .jpg files were created with SPOT 20 meter resolution imagery. The SPOT satellites orbit at an altitude of 822 km.
http://www.spot.com/home/news/NYC-091101.jpg
http://www.spot.com/home/news/NYC-091101.tif
This copyrighted image may be used free of charge, with the appropriate copyright attribution, as follows:
(C)CNES/SPOT Image 2001
Politics is when a person can confortably sit behind a nice protected site and send 18 yo's to kill and be killed, or order a strike on one area 'for the people/humanity' yet ignore another area that has equal or even greater problems of the same type, and finding out it was a political deflection and personal gain that was the true motivation.
Honor is personal and does not say if you look at me wrong, I wrong you back. It is the thing that keeps you quiet and humble in the face of adversity (being spit on and cursed) because you know that your cause is righteous. Honorable people do not resort to violence, only cowards who are afraid of solving the problem do.
Who is trully the coward, the bully that beats on a weaker foe, or the one who helps him up and faces the ridicule from his 'friends' with upraised eyes?
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
Got this as spam at the office - apologies if you've seen it....
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
trenchant remarks as printed in the Congressional Record:
"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."
Stand proud, America!
Chemical Weapons
As a volunteer fireman, yesterday I spent on a standby at my firehouse both watching the news and hearing it over my handheld police scanner. Now, I heard that the van by the GW Bridge, which supposedly contained "bombs", did in fact contain Chemical Weapons. I myself heard a Haz-Mat (Hazardous Materials) team dispatched to the location of the van, and then radio silence on two key frequencies for quite a while. Keep in mind that if it had been a bomb, the bomb squad would have been dispatched. In addition, over the buff pagers I heard that it was suspected to contain chemical weapons, from another buff who heard the police originally who pulled over the van. I confirmed this with a friend of my family who works in the DA's office who said the government does not wish this to be made public as of yet. Also, I can find no sites on the web reporting this. Although once the state of panic has dissipated, I'm sure the government will let us know more on this. God Bless and I hope all of you are okay; my heart goes out to those still buried and those who lost their lives.
"Are there Eco-Terrorists and other extreme-left-wing types that are sick enough to do something like this?"
Absolutely, positively not. Left-wingers are by definition compassionate people who place an extremely high value on life. Only right-wingers could possibly be evil enough to have done this.
(What on earth did I mean by that?)
UN didn't send you into Iraq. The Somalia mission that tesulted in a number of US casualties was not nder UN command. The US carrier groups in the gulf aren't there on UN orders. The war on drugs in South America isn't UN ordered. Panama wasn't UN ordered. The missile attack on Quadafi wasn't UN ordered.
Denial isn't just a river in Italy
damn it.
Denial isn't just a river in Italy
I stayed home from work today because the thought of programming just seemed insignificant compared to the disaster of the present time. After reading some news posts, I thought about running out to get an American flag to hang at my apartment...after determining that Home Depot had flags, I immediately raced out to pick one up. Once I arrived and found that there were still flags left (they were selling them off the walls) I put it across my handle bars and started to ride. I thought about hanging the flag on my apartment and it seemed so weak, so trite and Bush and all the other leaders told us to be strong. The sentiment here in California (Santa Barbara) has not been particularly strong and not many people have been saying much...passion started to come over me and I began to feel this burning in my heart to ride...so I began, much like forest Gump is portrayed on his long run...I started riding down the street towards UCSB...cars honked, people gave thumbs up...I knew I was on a mission...someone had to bring hope to this small city so far away. As I continued to ride, the passions grew, more people honked, I began to shout things, patriotric things. I don't think in my whole life I have ever appreciated what it meant to be patriotic. And now, by no rational choice of my own, it had overcome me. I continued to ride, sometimes shouting, sometimes in silence, always in remorse of my fellow citizens who lie in the rubble in our two strongest cities. Countless people responsed, countless people didn't...but if I gave even one single person hope or pride then I felt it to all worth it. In the middle of my ride, I began to feel pain and thrist. Parched, I stopped into a nearby gas station and asked the attendant if he would so kind as to spare a drink from the fountain sodas. I told him I was bearing the American Flag and had forgot to bring along my wallet (all I had were CC), and he kindly assisted me (Chevron). I continued on, not sure when I would stop, not sure what else would happen, but I had to, for what else can one do in the wake of such tragedy than to try to share feelings with the reast of society that remains alive, but still affected.
"Stand tall America, show your support!"
Dan Allen
Comment removed based on user account deletion
unless you take it from a different perspective.
Try this...
The terrorists are evil, so the American's must be good - God's people. Where is the heartland of these God's people? NYC?
B.T.W. this is not my perspective.
Get the Hell off my planet, you slimy mobster Bush!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
apparently he said no such thing either, it was a student in 1995 (or sometime around then) who was doing an essay and under the infinite monkeys principle said that if you make enough sufficiently vague prophecies, there are enough events that happen in the world for most of them to become "true". The "the third great war" was added later by some unknown person.
Doesn't mean that I should have been modded to -1, Troll. Christ moderators, it's not like _I_ made up the rumour. I could understand a bunch of (-1, Overrated), but not flamebait and troll.
[/gripe]
If God gave us curiosity
At what price, and with what reliability?
OK, so it was a PR exercise. Pick your reason, but defending a monarchy from a dictorship that was previously being supported against a theocracy, all in the name of God and Freedom is laughable.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Sorry I can't help you out, anonymous coward, but you'll need to find a way to live long being stupid from someone else. You're sadly mistaken about me. Good luck tho, I know its hard for morons like yourself to live past 22. Damn thats old!
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
See the latest version of the letter above at What Should be the Response to Violence?
One of the headings: "The CIA trained Osama bin Laden."
Bush's education improvements were