Slashdot Mirror
Marking 10 Years Since 9/11/2001
10 years ago today, coordinated terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. killed nearly 3,000 people. It wasn't the first terrorist attack directed against the U.S., or even on U.S. soil, but it was the deadliest, and came at a time of relative peace. Probably most people reading this remember where and how they heard the news. We've often discussed the consequences of the attack: security cordons, ID checks and metal detectors where none existed before, a reexamination of how U.S. policy affects international perception and attitudes, and the encroachment of surveillance policies and technology, to name a few. Today, we don’t want to inundate you with links to tributes and retrospectives, so we’ll offer the only thing we can: a look back at how the day unfolded here. Our thoughts are with everyone who lost friends and family members.
It's not even November yet.
Isn't that 3000 ppl died, that happens also in car accidents every few months.
It's that USA went from being a respected member of the world community to a nation hated even among its allies. A nation that things it owns the whole world, can torture other country's ppls, can force them to act in ways it wants, and that is in everyone else's face.
It was the day that marked the beginning of the end for the USA.
I try to remember the thousands upon thousands of civillians in the Middle East who have perished, as well as the poor souls in America.
I'm sick of that aspect being completely ignored so often by Western Media.
My hat is off, hand on heart - to all of the victims of the event, and the consequences.
Would love to be able to fly without being treated like a criminal though.
Actually I was reading /. when I heard about it.
My thoughts are with everyone who lost friends and family members in the attack.
Fuck religion! This is what happens, over and over.
In 1714, the Spanish army crushed the Catalan resistance and imposed their barbarian culture upon them. A whole nation obliterated.
In 1973, the US-backed Pinochet overthrew the democratic government of Chile. At least 3,197 died.
They got us good. They caused the equivalent of a cytokine storm, a massive autoimmune response. We lost important freedoms, likely for good, and bankrupted ourselves financially and otherwise. The world hates us, our economy is in the toilet, the government is hopelessly corrupt, and we STILL haven't won, because no one really wins asymmetric warfare short of turning the insurgents and their country into a smoking glass crater. They did to us what we did to the Soviets not 20 years ago, and we fell for it.
I remember the madness of trying to get details on that day. One of the things that stuck with me is that most of the major media websites were completely overwhelmed. One of the primary methods of gathering information was through comments on aggregation sites like fark and slashdot: http://slashdot.org/story/01/09/11/1314258/World-Trade-Towers-and-Pentagon-Attacked We all leaned very heavily on the internet on that day, and discovered what a blessing (and/or curse) social media can be.
I sure didn't think i'd be spending the ten year anniversary of 9/11 in Afghanistan... but here I am. strange how life works out. i remember on that day, i wanted nothing more then to find the people who'd done it and make them pay... i wasn't in the military back then.
now, i'm here, they know they've won, we've announced our intentions to leave(surrender) and they attack almost daily. their(Islamists) resolve is stronger then ever. ours(average US citizen) is pathetically weak and short sighted. though, it's not like we have any direction or a plan to get behind.
nope, never thought ten years later, this would be happening.
...the families of EVERYONE who lost their lives as a result as a result... Iraqis, Afghans, Americans, EVERYBODY. I may be a little drunk right now but I am completely perplexed as to why everywhere and everybody's thoughts are focused on the people who lost their lives on that day, not the amount of lives that have been lost on the ensuing 3650 days since 2001. My thoughts are with all families of all nationalities who have lost their lives as a result, whether it be an Australian soldier, Iraqi family or an American who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. My thoughts are with you all.
that the terrorists have won.
I had an FPS site then. My journal today is a rerun of what I posted on that day.
Free Martian Whores!
For some reason, this is the only place that it doesn't bother me to see the 10-year anniversary stuff. I can very clearly remember reading slashdot in an office when news of this began to spread.
What a terrible tragedy the event was.
And what a terrible tragedy the last ten years of response to it has been.
The only politician in the public eye who has been "reexamining" US policy has been Ron Paul... and more recently the other politicos who have been following in his footsteps.
But keep in mind that unlike the others, Paul as ALWAYS been saying these things, for 30 years, while those others are just trying to get your vote, then will do whatever the hell they want if they get in office. Kind of like Obama.
This should be a day of mourning, not just because of the people who died (one of my managers at the time, Vladimir Tomasevic, I am lucky not to have been there too), but it's a day of mourning for the liberties and freedoms lost across USA but also across the entire freaking world. The entire world today looks more and more like a crazy toon town, with cops with machine guns everywhere, insane laws, TSA, just general loss of privacy, liberty, decency, everything, and this should also include the economic calamity that obviously worsened due to the insane response to the events.
This kind of response is not about fighting crime, which terrorism basically is. This kind of response is about destroying the human rights and freedoms, if that still means anything to anybody.
I wish to see return to normalcy and government non-intervention, so I think voting for Ron Paul is the obvious good first step. If the man understands one thing - it's liberty and the other thing is economy.
Also, WTF, USA? Where are 10 towers in place of those 2, 10 that are 5 times as tall?
You can't handle the truth.
I was in 10th grade German class when we got the announcement. I remember not grasping the significance of the news until I saw the look of fear on my teacher's face. I hopped on the school network to try to get updates. I was moderately successful... most sites were down, CNN was a 50/50 shot, and so much of my news that day came in through reading updates and comments on Slashdot, at least until we were allowed to go to the library (the one place in our school that had cable TV).
I'm fearful that we've squandered quite a bit of the opportunity (not the right word, I know) that the tragedy bought us in the following months and years. Instead of making amends with the world, I fear we've gotten involved in three endless wars and brought our country to the brink of bankruptcy, both fiscally and morally.
As one commenter put it, in perhaps the most chillingly precognitive Slashdot comment of all time: "The biggest casualty will probably be our Constitution. Whenever a tragedy likes this occurs, the government always announces a get tough on terrorists policy that will have no effect on the psychopaths who do this, but will severely limit our rights.
"The huge loss of life is bad enough. The subsequent loss of what truly represents what this country stands for will be intolerable."
The terrorists wanted to strike US foreign policy and globalization. The policies the terrorists were trying to strike back against have been make even more aggressive following the attacks, and the US is continuing to push the globalization agenda. Claiming that the terrorists attacked us because of our freedoms is complete nonsense -- they would have attacked us just the same if we had been the USSR (in fact, Osama bin Laden had once fought against the USSR in Afghanistan, an episode that may have had something to do with his hatred for the USA).
Palm trees and 8
Agreed.
100,000 civilians died already in that war and you NEVER hear the USA mentioning them. Even though they started that war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
It's always "Thanks to our troops for your service" but the civilians of Iraq are not even acknowledged. I'm not even saying the US should apologize but they never even mention those civilian victims, as if they didn't exist!
Today the USA want the whole world to pity them. Well no, 9/11 was a tragedy but I won't have any sympathy for people who constantly ignore the innocent victims of their war. It's sick.
The responses OP received (and no doubt I will receive) just show how the US are callous, have no respect for foreigners whose lives they destroy, and never, ever admit any wrongdoing whatsoever. You don't want us to spoil your day by talking about people dying in Iraq, do you? Today should be all about America day, right? And those Iraqi civilians they can be mentioned any other day of the year, just like they have been so far, can't they? Oh wait, they have never been mentioned by the USA... Guess today is their day then!
For the rest of the world, 9/11 should be Fuck America Day and it should be so until the USA own up to their responsibilities towards the victims of the Iraq War.
When I was a kid you'd turn the telly on and see another news report about the IRA blowing up a school or setting off a nail bomb in Soho. It happened too often to stop the country though and America didn't give two shits so the rest of the world didn't say anything. You just got on with it. This country's took a lot from terrorist attacks over the years but September 11th was the first proper kick in the teeth for the previously untouchable Americans who're brainwashed from birth to believe they're the greatest country in the world. That was probably a bigger shock than the lives lost - the fact that someone got to them. This really isn't flamebait so don't consider it as such please. Spare a thought for the lives lost in the attacks yes, but do these people ever spare a thought for the lives lost elsewhere. Those places not in the centre of the universe. http://www.amazon.com/Keep-Calm-Carry-T-Shirt-Red/dp/B004IC0WMM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315749737&sr=8-1
I quite liked this ten minute clip of the initial news bulletins after the first attack.
R.I.P. for the people that died that day... and the thousands more that had to die in other countries that were since then invaded by the US...
who did you want to invade and kill?
Yet we still allow 18,000 or so people to be killed each year by domestic drunk drivers and don't really do anything about it.
The first I heard about this was a news article that simply said "Plane hits World Trade Center."
The first thing that went through my mind was "some dumbass in a Cesna" I didn't know for another hour or two that it serious. An hour or two after that they were evacuating down-town Houston, the buses to the park and ride were so full I took the local Greenspoint Bus instead since it went to Greenspoint mall which wasn't far from my intended stop, even if it did take a lot longer to get there.
Security down town got stupid strong after that. I had to show my ID to simply use the ATM in the tunnel system across the street from the building I worked in. They locked down most of the stairwells in most of the down town buildings, you could only go downstairs, not up, if you could even do that after the attacks. So much for that stay healthy method.
It still saddens me to think back to that day. I don't think W. did the right thing, but for the life of me I don't know what the right thing was. Everyone cheered him on at first and supported the whole open up a can of whoop-ass idea, but when we didn't know where to stop they pointed the finger at him without actually offering a good what solution as to what we should do next. Even Obama is still doing what Bush started, Nobel Peace prize in hand. I think it's time to stop and completely leave the Middle East. We have plenty of oil here we're not allowed to get and we're rapidly developing technology to reduce our need for it. Get the government out of the way and we can cut our demand to quarter of it's current amount in the foreseeable future. I think Ron Paul is right, leave them alone and they'll leave us alone. We made our point, leave with a note saying "do it again and we'll be back" and GTFO out of their affairs. The key to prevention is to get out of everyone else's business and fix our own affairs.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Science flies you to the moon, religion flies you into buildings.
ours(average US citizen) is pathetically weak and short sighted. though, it's not like we have any direction or a plan to get behind.
Short sighted, eh?
Have you thought of the long term ramifications our invasions? And it's not just the emptying of our coffers (wars are extremely expensive) but it's also the chain reaction over the decades with regards to our foreign policy, economic health, and the liberties of our country.
And the pathetically weak part there .... I have a problem with you and other young people being over there and risking your lives for the stupidity of our elected officials. You may not have a problem with it, but I see it as a horrible waste of talent and life.
The main consequence of the attack was that Bush/Cheney invaded Iraq. It's now over 8 years later, and we're still at war in Iraq. No WMD, no Binladen connection, or any of Bush/Cheney's other lies were ever proven anything but lies. Like "the war will pay for itself". The Iraq War has cost us well over $3 TRILLION. It has cost us almost 5000 dead Americans, over 100,000 wounded Americans, and hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded Iraqis. Not to mention the severe costs of Americans torturing so many people.
We'll memorialize 9/11/2001 for a long time. But 3/19/03? What's that? It's the date the US invaded Iraq. Nobody wants to talk about that, so the war never ends.
--
make install -not war
Unfair troll mod requires correction.
Only a completely myopic, brainwashed person without a shred of intellect could possibly think that attacking countless civilians day in and day out is anything but institutionalized terrorism.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Oh I just love it when people who claim to be Liberal and Democrats (I don't mean that in the narrow US political party sense, I mean Liberal as in philosophy and Democrat as in Democratic) jump in and defend a Fascist dictatorship ruled over by a mass murdering psychopath, against the actions of United States and her allies. There's a great book called "What's Left?" by Nick Cohen that details the rise of moral relativism and the decay of Western values really rather well. I recommend you read it.
The Russians had publicity in the west against them so they pulled out of a war that was nothing but negative press to them.
The US was making that bad press and funding the war against the russians.
The Russians may be laughing their ass of at the mess the US has gotten itself into BUT they are not going to aid the taliban just to piss of the Americans.
The US may not be winning the war but they sure as hell are thinning out the Taliban. There is reason the Taliban is using more and more terror tactics in Afghanistan, they are running out of capable recruits.
What you may not have heard is that just after 9/11 the Taliban fielded a fairly capable army and was using traditional war strategies against the Afghani government. They are no longer capable of it. That is not to say the war has been won but you got to have a LOT of hatred to join up for what is practically a suicide mission. Suicide bombers you say? Count them. They have a horrific impact but are totally incapable of being used in any sensible military tactics. Post 9/11 people feared an uprising, the beginning of a new war... but where is the hatred? Just recently Libyan's were shown kissing the US flag for the aid in helping liberate their country. Oh, the US involvement there is far from clean BUT Osama cried for Muslims around the world to rally to a common cause and for 9 years, the answer was silence. There are plenty of individuals with enough hatred but terrorism is hardly new. IRA, Basks, German radicals. There are always going to be people who want to force their minority opinion through violence.
The western world has payed dearly for the war but the price payed on the side of the extremists is far far higher. Their leadership is in ruins, new plots are half-assed and stopped routinely and worsed off all. When the uprising finally started, it was peaceful and directed against Muslim rulers with so far precious little input from extreme Islam. This is not what Osama was dreaming off.
And those who cry about how the west is fighting itself... metal detectors? They have been at airports for decades. Just because the US allowed internal flights to be boarded from the runway by anybody taking anything they wanted doesn't mean that this is the norm. I was search 30 years ago on a boat trip to the UK for crying out load. Maybe the US just needed a wake-up call in general.
As for hatred against the US? There seems to be more hatred amongst rich white boys from the American suburbs then say in Egypt or Tunisia or Libya. Remember the protests in Iran. The ones happening in Syria? Against the evil imparislists! Oh, wait no... they are protesting against their own leaders, leaders who try to use the US as the great Satan and their people are rejecting it.
No, 9/11 saw big changes in the world but I doubt Osama is very pleased with them... even if he was still alive.
But kiddies like you wish to see the world burn and use their own fears to put hatred into other peoples mind, even if those other people got far more important things to worry about. Read the real news for a change, not Fox or the BBC, both are extremists wishing to color the news to suit their agenda but the real news. What real people living real life are thinking.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's a little more complicated than that. There are those of us in the USA who recognize that our government takes actions on its own behalf, often unbeknownst to most citizens, that cause strife, violence, and suffering. The US citizens are currently under economic assault from the same banking/government cartel which has launched full wars on the citizens of other countries. Some of us try to raise awareness, but as many have found through history, it's much easier to get people to hate than to get them to look at the failure of their own actions (or inactions).
Ron Paul, for example, is a presidential candidate who is largely mocked by the media, but he has explained publicly and repeatedly that US foreign policy creates the very conditions that foster terrorism - by interfering in other sovereign nations' governments, by having belligerent and aggressive foreign policy, and also by exporting our inflation by taking advantage of the dollar's reserve status. There are many, many things we do that are wrong, and most happen simply because the schools, media, and government don't see it profitable to make sure that the average Joe (who is too busy either working or watching TV) understands these issues. But the two big parties and the media have already decided that nationalism is our country's pastime, and anyone who questions it must be mocked. Other nations have had similar, if more heavy-handed, cooperation between government and media to suppress dissent, no?
I, for one, as an American, have made it a priority to educate my fellow citizens on such issues. I recently explained to a coworker why the Egyptians who revolted against our satrap Mubarak were also angry at us (our support of his regime through money, training, and weapons). He was shocked. He's not a bad guy, he's just too busy to take any serious steps to get the CIA/Pentagon under control.
When you consider how easy it is for the powers that be to quash real change in our democracy (again see Ron Paul), it becomes a question of whether the American people, even if they woke up to the evils our government does, could do anything to change it. We're not unique as a nation, whatever people believe.
There is no doubt this was a tragedy and a sad day for the American people but from an outsiders perspective (an Australian perspective) this is what we saw happening to you guys.
Why has no forensic investigation ever been carried out and scrutinised? Why wasn't OBL tried and humiliated, and made to face his worst fear in front of the American public? I strongly feel that Americans have been denied actual justice and have instead been given a serve of McJustice by media/military. The true strength of Western democracies has been that they are countries run BY RULE OF LAW that has been refined over a roughly 800 year period. If we look at it from that perspective the military look like a very blunt tool, by comparison. Yet it was the tool of first resort. What does it say about our democracy that one of the strongest was so easily subverted?
The consequences of not applying those principles have drawn the U.S into an asymmetrical war that has cost trillions, without actually being able to hit a target of any meaning. I believe many forth amendment rights have practically been abandoned, you have a domestic spy policy now and bills introduced to protect the freedoms of everyday people are slowly being whittled down.
To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin "The constitution in it's current form will not save the United States from Despotism". The American people have been lied to and deceived, I'm ashamed to say in part, by an Australian Media mogul who learned how to do what he is doing to America in my homeland.
Justice delayed, Just denied.
The war that was being waged on America began when the Towers were hit but the enemy has attacked in such a way that the freedoms that protected US citizens have been hit far more severely than those Towers. The institution of democracy was weakened from within at one of the modern cradles of it's creation and now I see it more compromised than it has ever been. Human rights, the bedrock of your enviable Bill of Rights, the true strength of your nation were treated as an inconvenience to circumvented. Yet it's the only weapon capable of disarming a martyr.
Know your enemy, Know yourself, and whilst the truth must be painful for you to hear will you bludgeon to death the friend who has the courage to look you in the face and tell it to you? The one who says, "hey mate, yer acting like a dickhead". How can you possibly win in Iraq and Afghanistan when the real war is in the cathedrals of your institutions by an enemy who is manipulating you so skillfully that you dance willingly to the tune. Stop, friend, before you destroy yourself and ask who the real enemy is, what the true theater of this war is and what forces are at play?
How many of Ben Franklins warnings will you ignore? Why do I, an Australian, have to point out the wisdom of your own founding fathers whose words have been paraphrased ad infinitum;
Those who trade an essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither security nor liberty
Then why America why, do you keep doing it?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Summarized excerpt from "Al Qeada's Strategy to the Year 2020":
bin Laden's stated goal, before and after the terror attacks in Kenya and on the Cole, was to draw the West into an intractable war with the Middle East. He was an evil fuck, but like some evil fucks in the past, he wasn't crazy or stupid. He got the idea from us in the late 80s when the same policy bankrupted the Soviet Union.
"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life." --October, 2001
"All we have to do is send two mujaheddin... to raise a small piece of cloth on which is written "al-Qaeda" in order to make the generals race there, to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses." --2004
The anniversary of 9/11 always pisses me off. No, not because 3000 people died. 3000 people dying was a tragedy to be sure and the relatives of the victims certainly have my condolences. What pisses me off is the cowardly way that we as Americans reacted and how we continue to behave.
After 9/11 we had a decision. We could either have been brave or cowardly. We chose the path of cowardice. Cowardice is submitting to terror by stripping ourselves of civil liberty, creating a department of "homeland security", and installing pr0n scanners in airports. Cowardice is secret no-fly lists and domestic spying. The worst cowardice was Americans mewing to their politicians to strip them of their liberties to save them from the oh-so-scary terrorist. Cowardice is the path we picked. We gave up essential liberties for a trivial amount of security.
The path of bravery would have been to have by clinging to our essential freedoms and liberties. The nation that stood down the fucking USSR, a REAL threat, managed to go half a century without surrendering their freedoms and running away screaming like cowards. Seriously, consider that. 9/11 stripped away freedoms that we had even when the US was facing down a nation armed with a nuclear arsenal big enough to wipe out the world multiple times over. We faced down a world ending threat and didn't balk, but when a couple of sheep herders managed to knock down two buildings in a manner that they can never repeat again, we promptly shit ourselves and surrender those liberties we guarded when facing down the existential threat that was the USSR. Talking about acting the part of the fucking coward. If there was ever a time to piss ourselves and wipe our ass with the constitution, it was during the Cold War.
Just think about it for a moment. In a time when it was our policy the literally destroy the world if our allies were attacked, you could get on an airplane unmolested and the fourth amendment was still actively enforced.
If you are an American, you are going to die by stuffing your face with too much fucking food. Fucking deal with it. You are not going to die in a terrorist attack. The food you stuff into your god damn face is going to be the death of you. That, or your own body is going to murder you with cancer. If you are really lucky, you might die in an exciting car accident. The fucking terrorist are not going to kill you. If you believe so, you are a god damn coward and an idiot.
Look here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm
Fucking food bacteria kills 10x more people every year than terrorist did in 2001. It kills 300x more people than terrorist have killed Americans in the past decade. Terrorism in 2001 didn't even make it to the top 10 most likely ways to die. It falls well below chocking on your own god damn food over the past decade. That is right, stuffing food into your fat face is literally more likely to kill you than a terrorist.
So what pisses me off about 9/11 is that it is not a time for memorials and what not. What pisses me off is that we sit around circle jerking each other over how scary the terrorist are as we stuff our fat Americans asses with McDonalds food. We mew and bleat to politicians to protect us from one of the most unlikely ways to die imaginable, as we work on scoring a heart attack before the age of 60 by eating ourselves to death.
We could have a 9/11 style attack every single MONTH, and we would still have more people dying to being fat asses. Despite this, I don't see us cowardly begging the government to strip us of our civil liberties to save us from eating ourselves to death.
9/11 pisses me off each and every year because it is a sore reminder that when faced with a minor and petty threat to ourselves, we shit our pants, pissed ourselves, and picked the path of the coward. We gave up our civil liberties and elected asshole politicians who promised to rip apart the constitution. It pains me to think
"THINK FOR YOURSELF. I would have thought Slashdot would even take into account all the controversy regarding 911 and stop just spreading the propaganda that we have been forcefed through all the mainstream sources."
Oddly enough I can think for myself and my conclusion is exactly opposite of yours, because I can contextualize things as separate events, not as one grand conspiracy.
Perhaps you should too.
The best writing I've seen on 9/11 was by Hunter S. Thompson. Hunter knew how the US government worked, and foresaw just about everything that has happened since right from the start:
I was once attacked by a dog. Since then I have carried around a solid gold tiger. It has made me the object of ridicule, my limbs are aching and I can barely afford to eat. But at least I haven't been attacked by any more dogs.
God bless your betters!
Not True. The number of deaths from drunken driving has been steadily reducing for many years. What we've done about it has been very effective. We've treated it as if it were a crime.
How effective do you all suppose it would have been to have declared "WAR" on drunk driving? My guess is that we'd have spent our treasury dry and had to borrow money from China. Probably would have ruined our economy. Sure glad that didn't happen.
It seems if we accept that 9/11 occurs every day in Iraq, then we must also accept that 9/11 happens every day in Libya. So, fuck those terrorist countries too for causing civilian deaths in a war zone.
Let's see... fuck Denmark, fuck Italy, fuck Netherlands, fuck Norway, fuck Sweden, fuck Spain, fuck Turkey, fuck Jordan, fuck Qatar, fuck UAE. Fuck them all.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Don't forget Kucinich as well. Most of the left of the country oppose the Middle Eastern wars. The reason that Paul stands out is that he is pretty much alone on the right. I remember Richard Gere standing at that New York support event and getting booed off stage for daring to suggest that war wasn't the appropriate response. It was a mini-McCarthy era from 2001 to around 2008 or so -- if you didn't have a yellow ribbon on your car, then you supported the terrorists.
And now the same kind of demagoguing is happening to our monetary system -- popular vitriol is being thrown at the government to ensure that the entire system collapses, putting the crown jewel in to Bin Laden's legacy.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
It's shameful that the media coverage is merely a flashback back to 9/11, and I here nothing about the subsequent fear, paranoia, and loss of freedoms that have engulfed the country. It was certainly a horrible day, but the aftermath on our country has been tens of thousands of times worse.
We got into two wars that we're STILL it., We have this lovely patriot act, which continues to be renewed with little debate. We have a continually fearful public, cowed into submission to The Official Reaction. We have ever increasing security theatre at airports. But yet no coverage of any of that. It's all about the day, and nothing about the disaster afterward.
AccountKiller
We have a theocracy. Nobody can win a major seat in our government without professing to be a person of faith.
Secondly, what legislation are you thinking of specifically -- I'd like to read it and see if it says what you say it does.
Finally, if it takes a whack job to stop burning people and money around the world, that's a whack job I'd prefer to the scum currently dictating policy.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Since oil is priced in dollars, when we increase the money supply the whole world feels it. When we sell sovereign debt the same thing happens. China has been importing our inflationary effects for decades to support their export based economy. Arab nations the same with oil. When the portion of your income which goes to food and energy is 30% like in the USA and food and energy prices rise by 20% you feel a pinch. But to the people in Arab nations whose food and energy costs 80% of their income, when those prices rise by 20% they get wiped out. Hence the "arab Spring" (among other drivers). There's a lot more to it that can be better explained by smarter people than me at Mises.org.
I think on all issues he has repeated kept his faith personal and his policies firmly in the separation of church and state category. He wants to legalize drugs and eliminate government restrictions on who can marry whom. That is not a theocratic point of view.
Perhaps you would do well to spend some time quietly contemplating why you feel the need to suppress open exchange of ideas and launch personal attacks. After 9/11 I had a lot of anger, but I found that thinking about the reasons why it happened to be useful, as opposed to blind rage.
FYI the other responder is factually wrong. Ron Paul has a 100% pro-Constitution voting record. Thanks for asking for information on the matter. Here are some good examples of his votes which were pro-constitution but against the religious right: http://thesteadyconservative.com/wordpress/2010/02/09/the-ron-paul-voting-record/
I should note that every that I applied to Ron Paul above should be equally applied to Denis Kucinich, who is very liberal but shares many of the foreign policy views of Dr. Paul and was also suppressed by his own political party for not being nationalistic enough.
I left work at 5 WTC at 9 PM on Monday 9/10/01. So I had planned to go to work late on Tuesday. I woke up in Midtown to my phone ringing off the hook on 9/11/01.
It was a beautiful evening that Monday. I remember turning around and looking at a lone guitarist in the dark in the plaza, under that Fritz Koenig "Sphere" sculpture. I looked up at the towers, then got in the subway.
Those who were killed were not responsible for foreign policy. If you cannot comment on this event without prattling away about foreign policy, I think you are part of the problem in the world. You don't champion the suffering of some by denigrating the suffering of others, you are simply choose sides in a stupid tribal chest thumping match. If you are truly a person of principles, rather than just another voice in the endless turf war, you will see all suffering as a moment to reach for nobler sentiments than the heartlessness you see in these comments.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Terrorism as practiced by groups like Al Qaida is much different. Al Qaida is a military organization with a global reach that has essentially declared war on the United States (as well as dozens of others governments, it seems). One of the core responsibilities of government is to defend its citizenry against military threats. But terrorists don't stop at attacking our military installations; by definition, they aim to kill thousands of civilians at a time as part of a campaign of psychological warfare. To say that we don't need a DHS, greatly increased security at airports and subway stations, etc. is ridiculous. Al Qaida would love it if we went back to our pre-9/11 levels of security (which was mostly aimed at common criminals). They would continue with their 9/11 style attacks on airplanes, the shoe bombing attacks that Richard Reid blew the cover on later, the London subway bombings, the Mumbai hotel massacre, etc, with the goal of getting Americans to believe that government was incapable of protecting them. Like a schoolyard bully, they will continue until they are effectively confronted and stopped.
Americans poured out their blood and tears over the past 200+ years to gain essential freedoms and liberties. Ripping up the fourth and fifth amendment because a bunch of sheep herders can on rare occasion kill a few Americans is pure cowardice. We don't respond violently to each and every little trivial threat, and terrorist fall firmly in the 'trivial threat' category. For the same reason why I would HOPE that Americans would be against random warrantless searches of their homes in attempt to capture more normal criminals, I would hope that they can get a handle on their mewing cowardly fright of an extremely rare way to die, and respond in the same way when confront with terrorism.
There are lots of things we could do to marginally increase our safety. We don't do most of them because it isn't worth the cost. A brutal Soviet style police state has less violent crime. We reject that sort of police state because we are willing to tolerate a little more crime in exchange for liberty. Our courts are biased to let guilty people go free because we don't want to jail innocent people. Terrorism is not magically different. Sure, it is the responsibility of the government to make reasonable efforts to stop terrorist. It sure as shit isn't their responsibility to do it at any cost. The amount we pay in terms of money and liberty to defend against terrorism needs to be balanced by the fact that it is an absurdly rare way for anyone to actually die.
The US has a 200+ year history of bleeding to grow and defend its liberties. We faced down the Soviet Union with one hand tied behind our back in terms of counter espionage because we were so insistent about preserving the liberties that we were fighting for. It is sad and pathetic that when faced with fucking sheep herders that are a couple of centuries behind what the USSR was in terms of population, resources, and technological capability, we promptly shit ourselves and couldn't surrender our liberties against a trivial threat fast enough.
If you want to be a coward, fearful of death due to the absurdly rare chance of being struck down by a terrorist (rather than eating yourself to death), do it quietly. Don't mew and bleat for politicians to piss away MY money and liberty because you can't control your bowels. I appreciate the blood and sacrifices that Americans have made over the past 200+ years to grow and defend their liberty. I don't appreciate sniveling cowards rushing to surrender away what other far more deserving men and women have built.
It is not asking much that you honor the blood and sacrifices made by better and braver men and women than you by making your own tiny and nearly effortless sacrifice of not pissing yourself and bleating to politicians to save you on the rare occasion that a terrorist manages to kill a trivial and minuscule portion of the population. If previous Americans co
you got it twisted son. the war against 9/11 was not iraq. its afghanistan. as a current service member, i absolutely abhor what happened iraq. that was not our fight to begin with and never was. but afghanistan absolutely was the fight for 9/11 and continues to be. as long as those in the middle east continue to wish death against those of us in ANY western nation, then i will continue to fight, till death does me part. for it is not only the sovereignty for our nations, but the right for us to leave in peace without fearing a terrorist attack that i will continue to fight against those that wish harm upon my friends, family, and brethren.
If you think you have a theocracy now, you have seen nothing yet.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Yeah, Paul is quite a devious fuck. When it comes to vote "pro-Constitution" (as if it was holy scripture), he votes for gutting the feds - so that the states can finally set up the theocratic-fascist hellhole he would like to instate.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
He wants to eliminate any federal restrictions on those issues - freeing the states to go as nuts as they please. Sorry, Paul is kinda straightforward, and I gotta honor him for that, but the consequence of his politics will be worse repression than we have seen in the US ever before.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Today the USA want the whole world to pity them.
No we don't. This is a day of national remembrance. We don't want your pity and didn't ask for it.
Firstly, I'm sorry for your loss.
I disagree with what you said about people 'prattling away about foreign policy'. Today should be a day of remembrance and I hope that everyone would be respectful. That being said, the 10th anniversary of the attacks is also an opportunity to look back over the last decade and consider what followed the attacks, whether good choices were made, and what more can be done in future to stop future attacks.
In the past decade there has been so much discussion about taking military and intelligence action and improving security but so little discussion about the US foreign policy which al-Qaeda itself said prompted its actions. There seems to have been a national vow of silence taken in the US, or at least in its media, about the al-Qaeda's stated foreign policy justifications for the attack, it apparently being easier to just repeat that 'they hate our freedom' until it becomes inconceivable that there were - arguably legitimately held, inarguably inexusably expressed - real grievances.
If we're not going to discuss this now, when?
afghanistan absolutely was the fight for 9/11 and continues to be.
How so? Afghanistan was invaded because talibs refused to unconditionally hand over Osama, but they themselves didn't play any significant part in 9/11. So eventually they've got Osama in Pakistan - what's Aghanistan about, now?
Also, let's see what the track record of U.S/NATO there has been so far:
1. Replaced autocratic theocracy with sham democratic theocracy. Beheading for apostasy and stoning to death for adultery are still the law in "liberated" Afghanistan.
2. Taliban-controlled areas, both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, became the breeding ground for terrorists. Now that they are attacked by the U.S., it's a good and easy way to be "martyred" for those looking for it.
3. Poppy production is through the roof again, and floods Russia and Europe. Taliban used to burn the fields and kill the growers; the new government almost entirely consists of those people who cash in on selling drugs.
Really? Afghanistan declared war on America? They ordered the 9/11 attacks? Were any of the hijackers even afghani? NO. Afghanistan was just a convenient shithole to hideout in. Just like Pakistan now. Totally agree that Iraq was unjustified, but why do you think your meddling in Afghanistan is any better?
First, to anyone who lost loved ones in the disaster, you have my condolences, as grief can still be fresh even a decade later, especially if it was a parent's adult child who died. My main point in writing this is to prevent more such disasters.
My wife flew home on 9/10/2001 from Washington, D.C. I can't think what might have happened had it been one day later. She attended a Genoa I workshop to talk on narrative methods and conflict resolution where someone said, "Maybe we should apply some of these ideas to thinking about that Osama bin Laden guy?" But it was too late to prevent what happened.
I agree with other comments here that in some ways 9/11 was Slashdot's finest hour as it kept working when other sites crashed under the load, and it was where I too turned for news updates. We lived near NYC at the time (we could smell the towers burning) and we lost reception on some TV stations with the loss of the towers. When the first tower fell, besides thinking about the sad loss of people, I recalled all the discussions on Slashdot previously on the attempts at encroachment on civil liberties, and thought, with the fall of the tower, so would fall our civil liberties, as those efforts would get the upperhand finally. I'm glad things have been not quite as bad as they could have been domestically, even if the amount of suffering caused abroad (like in Iraq) by the USA as it lashed out in a blind rage has been enormous (and to what end?).
It has been very sad also to see the USA develop some kind of immune disorder as it attacks itself in various ways (same as with asthma or arthritis) like with a war on the "unexpected".
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_war_on_the.html
In the same way that the sunshine vitamin, vitamin D, can help moderate the human immune system, I can think that some sunshine on global issues will ultimately help heal them. But, as Stephen Zunes, a middle east academic scholar said after he tried to make people aware of what was going on with the Middle East and the USA but was accused of all sorts of things:
http://www.truth-out.org/legacy-911-and-war-intellectuals/1315608304
"Raising such questions was not popular, however. Detectives investigating a crime trying to establish a motive are generally not accused of defending the criminals. Fire inspectors inspecting the ruins of a building for the cause of the blaze are not accused of defending its destruction. Yet I found myself, along with scores of other Middle Eastern scholars, being attacked for supposedly defending terrorism."
Ironically, while many people still believe "they hate us because we are free" and that terrorists abhor our democratic values, the truth is more that "they hate us because we fund their oppressors" and if we had stuck to our democratic values in crafting our foreign policy, we might not have seen so much blowback. Sadly, the invasion of Iraq based on false information and broad misconceptions has likely spawned a whole generation of terrorists. As Smedley Butler, a Major General in the US Marine Corps, said, "War is a racket". So, some have said, Iraq and even Afghanistan were supposed to be quagmires.
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
9/11 has brought the issue of security into the public consciousness in the USA. A big problem is that our mainstream view of collective security is not very advanced. In the same way Stephen Zunes says we need to think more deeply about the Middle East and our foreign policy, I'd suggest we in the USA need to think more deeply about what our notion of participatory democracy and how it could relate to collective security, including, for slashdotters' contemplation, how to prevent a cyber-9/11.
Towards that goal of moving such a dialog forward, here are some l
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The states must go "less nuts" with more federal restrictions.
Freedom of movement, to me as a gay man, doesn't matter if 100% of the states voted 51%-49% which legislated gays as second class citizens. That means 49% of the national population is okay with treating me as an equal, but 100% of the laws in 100% of our states says otherwise. Freedom of movement doesn't help here.
I don't believe everything should be up to the states. In Alabama, you can't buy sex toys. Why is it that a 51% vote to 49% vote prevents 49% of the population from purchasing a dildo? The federal government should do more to restrict what states can't restrict on personal freedoms.
An extreme example is that states-right supporters back in the day said that slaves should be legal in some states even if illegal in others - it is up to the individual state. I don't think that freedom of movement is a strong enough argument for allowing some states to restrict freedom in varying degrees.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
afghanistan absolutely was the fight for 9/11 and continues to be.
How so? Afghanistan was invaded because talibs refused to unconditionally hand over Osama, but they themselves didn't play any significant part in 9/11.
I'm no expert, but the basic answer to your question is that the Taliban government of Afghanistan was the only government in the world that supported the 9/11 terrorist attacks and harbored people who would continue to make more terrorist attacks. Even Palestine officially condemned the 9/11 attacks.
So, in a very simple explanation, the Taliban government would harbor more attacks like 9/11 against the world, so it needed to be destroyed.
Of course, the real solution is more complicated than that, and you have correctly pointed out major problems in the war in Afghanistan which are not the optimal outcomes (except for #2 - I think that is an explicit goal of the war, to stop #2 from happening... yes the #2 objective isn't complete yet, nor is the war, and the objective may never be completed).
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
There, I fixed that for you. Paul and Kucinich are quite nationalistic. Both are patriotic and concerned for the country. In fact I consider them both more patriotic than the positions of their respective parties in that they both seem far more concerned about the fate of their fellow citizens.
I have to qualify this by saying that I consider them both quite a distance along the path to lunacy, but on patriotism certainly they are far more trustworthy than the party positions or pols.
I'm sorry but moral relativism and decay is the friggin hallmark of this entire debacle. Let's do this by the numbers;
1. When the Clinton staff was leaving the White House they made a passionate plea to the incoming administration to keep an eagle eye on Bin-laden because they has solid intell that he was up to something ugly. Instead the Bush Administration lead by Dick Cheney spent the next 9 month trying desperately to start a new umbrella missile defense initiative so he could get a bunch of no bid contracts for Halliburton.
2. Our nation has always had strict rules for managing flights that are no been in proper communication up to and including scrambling jets to intercept a jet that hasn't been in communication for more than 10 minutes. Shortly before 9/11 Rumsfeld was put in charge of nations air security and planse could not be scrambled without his say so. He was unavailable to have the jets scrambled until well after the attacks. There is a solid case here for at least criminal negligence, and strong hints at something much worse.
3. Upon the certain attribution of the attack on Al Queda, The Bush Administration, lead by Dick Cheney, began beating a drum to invade Iraq, a country without a single member of Al Queda in its borders, whose only justification for invasion was to pillage their oil resources and provide Dick Cheney an endless supply of no bid contracts for Halliburton. To quote Dick Cheney, when asked why weren't pursuing Bin Laden where he and Al Queda lived (Afghanistan), his response was "There are no good targets in Afghanistan, we're going after Hussein instead."
4. The only justification the Bush Administration could come up with for this insane misadventure, was that Saddam had yellow cake uranium and was a threat to US security (and we were all scared as hell after 9/11.) One of the top experts in the world was sent to determine if the threat had any validity, and when he came back and informed The Bush Administration, the CIA, the FBI and finally when nobody else would listen the Washington Post that there was exactly zero credible threat. The Bush Administration outed his wife as a CIA agent (this was tied back to Karl (Turd Blossom) Rove. This single act clearly qualifies legally as an act of treason.
5. When ex-general Colin Powell, one of the finest and most decorated and respected soldiers to come out of the first Gulf War informed the Bush Administration that the first president Bush's was wise for leaving Iraq alone, and that if "We broke it we'd have to buy i." with innocent Iraqi lives and the lives of our young soldiers, the men in charge of the Bush Administration cut him out of the decision making, and ultimately out of the cabinet altogether.
6. The in the name of national security, they gutted the Bill of Rights, eliminated Habeus Corpus, legalized no warrant wire taps and domestic espionage on a scale never before seen in this country, discarded the Geneva Convention and allowed torture as an allowable means of extracting information and in general just crapped on pretty much everything that distinguished our culture as something worth preserving. By the way if you saw 60 Minutes this evening you'd discover that one of the best CIA interrogators we have in the middle east stated for the record that the Bush Administration just plain lied when it said that torture produced even a single useable piece of information, and he clearly explained why it would always fail to do so in the middle east.
See I don't defend Saddam Hussein, because the man was a vomitous waste of human protein. I just say that bombing the crap out of innocent civilians and getting 10,000 of our best and brightest brought home in body bag, while turning their country into a toxic cesspool in the name of oil and greed and personal self indulgence rates as one of the most heinous things this country has been involved in, in the last 100 years, and we've been involved in some pretty disgusting business. It took Obama what, 3 years to nail Bin Laden? Iraq is still b
I think you are either misunderstanding or are being purposely obtuse. The poster is basically saying the US is morally equivalent to that fascist (why the capital?) dictatorship ruled over by a mass-murdering psychopath. Except it's ruled over by a whole lot of mass-murdering psychopaths. The very fact that you completely ignore the point involving Iraqi civilians killed by US soldiers in a war we started to "liberate" a people who never asked for our help or interference pretty much proves their point.
Your opinions of other country's governments shouldn't get to dictate their governments. To say that the US is somehow special, that out of all the world, the US has the right to dictate terms to other countries about how they govern, is nothing but jingoism and crass exceptionalism. It just doesn't pass the straight-face test. We are not special, we are not different, the rules aren't different for us.
Do you think it would be just fine for, say, the EU to "liberate" the US citizens from their corporate and governmental masters? There are plenty of people in this country who hate and despise the current regime, just like the Iraqis who "cheer" us for coming and bombing their homes. I, for one, would welcome it, I'm a US citizen, isn't that equivalent to the Iraqis who are "happy" the US came and got rid of Saddam? Why would it be different? US authorities torture, murder, and ignore the law to get what they want, and there is a partnership between the government and corporations...that sounds pretty fascist (by the actual definition of fascism, written by the person who started the movement, Mussolini) to me. Why shouldn't other countries come and "liberate" us?
You complain about moral relativism...what else is it when you think we're special, that the US has special rights and privileges that no other nation has? If you want actual moral absolutism, you have to judge your own country by the same rules you judge others, and what you say is good and right to do to others must apply equally to the US. If it is acceptable for the US to attack and displace another nation's government because we don't agree with it, then it is acceptable for other countries to do it to us. And don't cry "But we're America, we're the good guys. They don't have any REAL reason to liberate us because we're RIGHT". Every country thinks they are right. Every form of government claims it's the right one.
Of course, you can just choose to roll with your jingoism and say "But the US is REALLY right." I don't know how you would justify that, other than on the basis of it being your "team", but Americans have historically always been really good at moralizing at others while having just as dubious a moral standing as anyone else, so good luck with that.
"We live as though the world were as it should be, to show it what it can be." - Joss Whedon via Angel