When I get home from work tonight, Clear Channel will be getting a very angry email from me.
In light of what happened last week, I can certainly see some aspects of the entertainment industry being affected (like that CD cover art from The Coup being pulled), but some of these knee-jerk overreactions are just going too fucking far.
As soon as I heard Microsoft was pulling the WTC out of the landscape in Flight Simulator 2002, I ordered FS 2000. I want to remember that those buildings were there. Everyone else seems to want to chuck them down some sort of memory hole.
I can't stop wondering where this insanity will end. Will TBS stop showing Trading Places all the time, because toward the end Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy are shown walking into, horror of horrors, the intact World Trade Center? Perhaps they'll just edit out the "offensive" parts, and we'll jump right from Dan & Eddie getting on a train to NYC from Philadelphia's 30th Street Station, to the scene at the very end, where they are on the beach of a tropical island-- with no explanation of how they got there.
IMHO, trying to erase the "disturbing" images of the towers as they once stood from all media is an affront to the memory of those who died there last week.
I'm sure there will be a Super Bowl, but the tight security at the one during the Gulf War will pale in comparison to what is forthcoming.
I'm sure a good many people who will be planning the security have read The Sum of All Fears, and think of it as a worst-case scenario. This year we'll probably see fighter jets patrolling the skies for a good distance around the stadium, and possibly a military presence providing security on the ground. Metal detectors at every entrance. We'll probably see much the same at the Olympics in SLC.
Bin Laden can say all he wants that he wasn't behind this... I don't think I'd believe him even if he personally flew to New York and started digging in the rubble with his bare hands to assist the recovery workers.
The United States reaffirms that it will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapons States parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons except in the case of an invasion or any other attack on the United States, its territories, its armed forces or any other troops, its allies or States towards which it has a security commitment, carried out or sustained by such a non-nuclear-weapon State, in association or alliance with a nuclear-weapon State.
That is one hell of a truck-sized loophole, and this situation certainly applies. So it looks like the U.S. could certainly demand the Taliban hand over bin Laden and associates to American authorities, "or else," while not-so-subtly jingling the keys to a Minuteman III.
Other than that, I see the most likely scenario being U.S. military forces invading and sealing the borders of Afghanistan, then hunting down bin Laden themselves.
While watching the news tonight, there was one quote that sounded ominous to me. I don't have it exactly, but it was something to the effect of the United States employing 'the full spectrum [speaker's emphasis] of its military might' in a retaliatory response.
It would seem like overkill to me, but it could be said to sound like the use of nuclear weapons has not been ruled out.
I know the United States has a long-standing 'no first use' policy, but under the circumstances I can't help but wonder if that will remain in effect. How quickly might Afghanistan (or whatever country he's holed up in) cough up bin Laden and his cronies, if they were threatened with an ICBM or two? Would the court of world opinion renounce or support such an action, in light of what has happened? Just looking for other/.ers' thoughts on these points.
~Philly
Re:About the second airplane
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I suspect that the intent was to hit both buildings within a much shorter timespan.
I disagree... I think that the delay was a deliberate part of the plan, to give the TV cameras time to get there so the second strike would be seen live, nationwide-- sort of like in The Siege, when the terrorists wait calmly and don't blow up the city bus until the TV news helicopters get there. I thought of that immediately upon hearing how much time had elapsed between the two strikes (I didn't become aware of what was going on on Tuesday until literally seconds before the second impact). Upon seeing the flight path plane #2 took, my belief that the delay was deliberate was strengthened even more.
CNN is reporting that the networks are going to change their schedules to remove any programming that may upset people.
If the cable channels follow suit, this may well be the first time ever that Skinemax doesn't air something in the interest of good taste.
~Philly
Re:President allowed to target for assassination?
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But I don't think he even has to do that, if he just wants to target bin Laden. I believe CNN said last night that Ford's order specifies assassinations of heads of state, and bin Laden doesn't qualify as a head of state.
~Philly
Re:Why in the hell would he cover it up?
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Don't forget, by this time, most government buildings were empty, is the white house, capital hill or the pentagon worth 100 civilians?
Don't forget, nobody at that time could have known exactly where the plane was headed, and even if they did, who's to say the terrorists wouldn't have tried to crash on a highway choked with fleeing cars full of people, or another non-primary target of opportunity, if they noticed (or had somehow been informed) that the building they were heading for had been evacuated?
I highly doubt that this plane was shot down. Bush's handling of this mess will be a major deciding factor in whether or not he gets a second term. He is aware of what happened to his father after GHWB didn't go 'all the way' and kill Saddam in the Gulf War. GWB would be a fool to not own up to a necessary shootdown of a hijacked passenger jet like that immediately, if he had ordered it. In addition, any cover-up of said shootdown would have to have run pretty fast, deep and wide, and to accomplish that would have taken resources that were otherwise occupied at a chaotic time. Surely some anonymous air traffic controller would have told some news agency by now that he had seen on his radar screen other, smaller jets converging near the big one before it vanished-- because I doubt any fighters would have just flipped a few missiles at this plane from long range. They probably would have at least made some attempt to convince the hijackers to set it down or be shot down short of their target.
~Philly
Re:50,000 copies of Windows destroyed?
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Actually, it did cross my mind today that re-equipping the companies affected by this might just pull the computer companies out of their little slump.
~Philly
Has anyone made database of the missing?
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I've been seeing video of how people missing loved ones are just covering available surfaces near the disaster area with photos of of the missing persons and contact information and wondered, has anyone whipped up a quick and dirty, web-accessible database that could store such information as a photo or two, description, names, and contact info?
Frankly, I'm astonished that I haven't heard of anyone at least working on something like this yet, because if I had the skills to do it, I would. A few computers and scanners operated by volunteers to get photos and other data online might help in the identification effort. This is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, surely we can do better for these poor, desperate people who are taping sheets of paper to news vans, and this would be a perfect way for the geek community to pitch in, IMHO.
And does anybody know anything about early reports of flight 93 being shot down by USAF planes?
CNN is reporting, and I've seen it elsewhere, that people on that flight called relatives who told them of the WTC attacks. It has been said that the men on the flight voted to fight the terrorists once realizing their plight was not likely to come to a negotiated end on a runway somewhere. Apparently, the passengers did prevent them from striking their target, now strongly favored to have been the White House.
Regardless of whether the President was there at the time or not, a successful attack on the White House-- a blow struck against the worldwide symbol of Democracy and America-- would have been just totally detrimental to the [at that time] already-seriously-floundering morale of Mr. and Mrs. America. IMHO, when they identify the passengers who fought the terrorists, a high school or two ought to be named for those guys. They won (or at least fought to a draw) one of the battles of a war of iconoclasm. Those fuckers are attacking the images of this country, the things we hold dear as symbols of America, in order to shake our faith in the system, and hopefully bring the system crashing down.
They could never have taken out Air Force One. The thing is likely bristling with ECM (Note: I am basing this on a documentary I saw on the plane, not the movie starring Harrison Ford), and probably has improvements to the engines and other important parts a la the 'law enforcement package' that cars are sold to police departments with. That's not including a fighter escort who would have taken out, by any means necessary, any plane attempting to crash into or launch a weapon at Air Force One.
For those reasons, I'd have to say the White House would be the easier of the two for bad guys to take out-- but 'easier' is relative, and I say that only because it's a stationary target. I've read that the White House is rather well-defended in terms of anti-aircraft weaponry, but I'll always wonder if it would have been enough to stop a speeding passenger jet piloted by a couple religious-zealot pigdogs.
If they were attempting to purely damage American morale, the best targets they could have hit in the D.C. area would have been the Capitol building-- which would have really turned this whole mess into a Tom Clancy novel-- or the Washington Monument, IMHO.
After the second plane hit the WTC, I just kept waiting to hear about one hitting the Statue of Liberty, or the Empire State Building. Judging how quickly most of the prominent buildings and landmarks were evacuated across the country, a lot of other people were thinking that, too.
While headed into downtown Philly today I heard on the radio that a guy was pulled out of the WTC rubble today, alive, and "not really hurt that badly," according to someone who I presume would be one of the rescuers who pulled him out.
The amazing-if-true part is that he said he was on the 80th floor of one of the buildings when it collapsed... I was only kinda half listening at the time, so I don't have complete specifics.
If it's not BS, that dude must have had one hell of a ride.
Anyone else hear this? Still nothing on CNN.com about that guy.
Perhaps they could do something like that at the WTC, like a Wailing Wall of sorts... maybe polish the still-standing steel and then engrave the names of the dead on it....
You can be certain of one thing-- there are already people working on designs for the memorial.
put on FDR's "day of infamy" speech. Now listen to Bush's speech. There's just no comparison.
That's because Bush's speechwriters only had a few hours to write it. FDR had days to compose his, since the U.S. had known the attack on Pearl Harbor was coming. They simply did nothing to prevent it so the population would be in favor of going to war.
Probably never...would you want to work in an office built there? I wouldn't. They'll probably clear the site and put in a park with a tasteful memorial to the victims-- perhaps separate ones for those employed in the WTC buildings, and the police, fire and rescue workers caught in the collapse.
IIRC, the WTC was close to where you catch the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, so it will get lots of visitors.
They never go into specifics in documentaries about the White House, but it does indeed have some sort of anti-aircraft weaponry deployed around it, you can be fairly certain of that. After today, there will probably be more.
One would think that a rather important site like the Pentagon would have it too... though obviously they do not. I'm sure they'll change that as soon as possible now, but that's just closing the barn door after the horse has already gotten out.
In a scene probably being duplicated in other so-far-untouched major U.S. cities, most of the businesses in downtown Philadelphia, especially the ones in tall buildings, are closing or are already closed.
All city public and parochial schools are closing at noon local time, which has just passed as I write this.
Most people you pass on the street look furious, nauseous, or both.
The Liberty Bell and Independence Mall historical areas are shut down tight.
Mass transit has everything on the street and tracks that it can manage right now to get people home quickly.
This is like something out of a God damned nightmare. I can only hope retribution is swift, violent, and preferably nuclear-- 'no-first-use' declaration be damned.
Being nice isn't always better. In one long-ago Sims session when I was horsing around to see what you could and couldn't do, I killed one of my neighbors (by luring him into a small room built just for the purpose and then sealing it up), seduced his wife, and then married her. And it was fun.
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On Friday I heard a remix of New York Minute, interspersed with some of the more shudder-worthy clips from the news reports, etc. It was God-awful.
~Philly
Maybe they could engineer the purple potatoes' "off-white blotch" to be that symbol that Prince changed his name to.
~Philly
When I get home from work tonight, Clear Channel will be getting a very angry email from me.
In light of what happened last week, I can certainly see some aspects of the entertainment industry being affected (like that CD cover art from The Coup being pulled), but some of these knee-jerk overreactions are just going too fucking far.
As soon as I heard Microsoft was pulling the WTC out of the landscape in Flight Simulator 2002, I ordered FS 2000. I want to remember that those buildings were there. Everyone else seems to want to chuck them down some sort of memory hole.
I can't stop wondering where this insanity will end. Will TBS stop showing Trading Places all the time, because toward the end Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy are shown walking into, horror of horrors, the intact World Trade Center? Perhaps they'll just edit out the "offensive" parts, and we'll jump right from Dan & Eddie getting on a train to NYC from Philadelphia's 30th Street Station, to the scene at the very end, where they are on the beach of a tropical island-- with no explanation of how they got there.
IMHO, trying to erase the "disturbing" images of the towers as they once stood from all media is an affront to the memory of those who died there last week.
~Philly
I'm sure there will be a Super Bowl, but the tight security at the one during the Gulf War will pale in comparison to what is forthcoming.
I'm sure a good many people who will be planning the security have read The Sum of All Fears, and think of it as a worst-case scenario. This year we'll probably see fighter jets patrolling the skies for a good distance around the stadium, and possibly a military presence providing security on the ground. Metal detectors at every entrance. We'll probably see much the same at the Olympics in SLC.
~Philly
Bin Laden can say all he wants that he wasn't behind this... I don't think I'd believe him even if he personally flew to New York and started digging in the rubble with his bare hands to assist the recovery workers.
~Philly
We could have a lot bodybags coming back home if prudence* isn't used.
*- prudence (proo'dns)
n.
1. a number of ICBMs
The United States reaffirms that it will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapons States parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons except in the case of an invasion or any other attack on the United States, its territories, its armed forces or any other troops, its allies or States towards which it has a security commitment, carried out or sustained by such a non-nuclear-weapon State, in association or alliance with a nuclear-weapon State.
That is one hell of a truck-sized loophole, and this situation certainly applies. So it looks like the U.S. could certainly demand the Taliban hand over bin Laden and associates to American authorities, "or else," while not-so-subtly jingling the keys to a Minuteman III.
Other than that, I see the most likely scenario being U.S. military forces invading and sealing the borders of Afghanistan, then hunting down bin Laden themselves.
~Philly
N: Black skull and crossbones
Y: Star of David
C: Hand giving "thumbs up" sign
Kinda freaky.
~Philly
While watching the news tonight, there was one quote that sounded ominous to me. I don't have it exactly, but it was something to the effect of the United States employing 'the full spectrum [speaker's emphasis] of its military might' in a retaliatory response.
/.ers' thoughts on these points.
It would seem like overkill to me, but it could be said to sound like the use of nuclear weapons has not been ruled out.
I know the United States has a long-standing 'no first use' policy, but under the circumstances I can't help but wonder if that will remain in effect. How quickly might Afghanistan (or whatever country he's holed up in) cough up bin Laden and his cronies, if they were threatened with an ICBM or two? Would the court of world opinion renounce or support such an action, in light of what has happened? Just looking for other
~Philly
I suspect that the intent was to hit both buildings within a much shorter timespan.
I disagree... I think that the delay was a deliberate part of the plan, to give the TV cameras time to get there so the second strike would be seen live, nationwide-- sort of like in The Siege, when the terrorists wait calmly and don't blow up the city bus until the TV news helicopters get there. I thought of that immediately upon hearing how much time had elapsed between the two strikes (I didn't become aware of what was going on on Tuesday until literally seconds before the second impact). Upon seeing the flight path plane #2 took, my belief that the delay was deliberate was strengthened even more.
~Philly
CNN is reporting that the networks are going to change their schedules to remove any programming that may upset people.
If the cable channels follow suit, this may well be the first time ever that Skinemax doesn't air something in the interest of good taste.
~Philly
But I don't think he even has to do that, if he just wants to target bin Laden. I believe CNN said last night that Ford's order specifies assassinations of heads of state, and bin Laden doesn't qualify as a head of state.
~Philly
Don't forget, by this time, most government buildings were empty, is the white house, capital hill or the pentagon worth 100 civilians?
Don't forget, nobody at that time could have known exactly where the plane was headed, and even if they did, who's to say the terrorists wouldn't have tried to crash on a highway choked with fleeing cars full of people, or another non-primary target of opportunity, if they noticed (or had somehow been informed) that the building they were heading for had been evacuated?
I highly doubt that this plane was shot down. Bush's handling of this mess will be a major deciding factor in whether or not he gets a second term. He is aware of what happened to his father after GHWB didn't go 'all the way' and kill Saddam in the Gulf War. GWB would be a fool to not own up to a necessary shootdown of a hijacked passenger jet like that immediately, if he had ordered it. In addition, any cover-up of said shootdown would have to have run pretty fast, deep and wide, and to accomplish that would have taken resources that were otherwise occupied at a chaotic time. Surely some anonymous air traffic controller would have told some news agency by now that he had seen on his radar screen other, smaller jets converging near the big one before it vanished-- because I doubt any fighters would have just flipped a few missiles at this plane from long range. They probably would have at least made some attempt to convince the hijackers to set it down or be shot down short of their target.
~Philly
Actually, it did cross my mind today that re-equipping the companies affected by this might just pull the computer companies out of their little slump.
~Philly
I've been seeing video of how people missing loved ones are just covering available surfaces near the disaster area with photos of of the missing persons and contact information and wondered, has anyone whipped up a quick and dirty, web-accessible database that could store such information as a photo or two, description, names, and contact info?
Frankly, I'm astonished that I haven't heard of anyone at least working on something like this yet, because if I had the skills to do it, I would. A few computers and scanners operated by volunteers to get photos and other data online might help in the identification effort. This is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, surely we can do better for these poor, desperate people who are taping sheets of paper to news vans, and this would be a perfect way for the geek community to pitch in, IMHO.
~Philly
And does anybody know anything about early reports of flight 93 being shot down by USAF planes?
CNN is reporting, and I've seen it elsewhere, that people on that flight called relatives who told them of the WTC attacks. It has been said that the men on the flight voted to fight the terrorists once realizing their plight was not likely to come to a negotiated end on a runway somewhere. Apparently, the passengers did prevent them from striking their target, now strongly favored to have been the White House.
Regardless of whether the President was there at the time or not, a successful attack on the White House-- a blow struck against the worldwide symbol of Democracy and America-- would have been just totally detrimental to the [at that time] already-seriously-floundering morale of Mr. and Mrs. America. IMHO, when they identify the passengers who fought the terrorists, a high school or two ought to be named for those guys. They won (or at least fought to a draw) one of the battles of a war of iconoclasm. Those fuckers are attacking the images of this country, the things we hold dear as symbols of America, in order to shake our faith in the system, and hopefully bring the system crashing down.
~Philly
They could never have taken out Air Force One. The thing is likely bristling with ECM (Note: I am basing this on a documentary I saw on the plane, not the movie starring Harrison Ford), and probably has improvements to the engines and other important parts a la the 'law enforcement package' that cars are sold to police departments with. That's not including a fighter escort who would have taken out, by any means necessary, any plane attempting to crash into or launch a weapon at Air Force One.
For those reasons, I'd have to say the White House would be the easier of the two for bad guys to take out-- but 'easier' is relative, and I say that only because it's a stationary target. I've read that the White House is rather well-defended in terms of anti-aircraft weaponry, but I'll always wonder if it would have been enough to stop a speeding passenger jet piloted by a couple religious-zealot pigdogs.
If they were attempting to purely damage American morale, the best targets they could have hit in the D.C. area would have been the Capitol building-- which would have really turned this whole mess into a Tom Clancy novel-- or the Washington Monument, IMHO.
After the second plane hit the WTC, I just kept waiting to hear about one hitting the Statue of Liberty, or the Empire State Building. Judging how quickly most of the prominent buildings and landmarks were evacuated across the country, a lot of other people were thinking that, too.
~Philly
While headed into downtown Philly today I heard on the radio that a guy was pulled out of the WTC rubble today, alive, and "not really hurt that badly," according to someone who I presume would be one of the rescuers who pulled him out.
The amazing-if-true part is that he said he was on the 80th floor of one of the buildings when it collapsed... I was only kinda half listening at the time, so I don't have complete specifics.
If it's not BS, that dude must have had one hell of a ride.
Anyone else hear this? Still nothing on CNN.com about that guy.
~Philly
Doesn't seem morbid, one of the few surviving buildings in Hiroshima became a big part of their memorial to the atomic bombing victims.
Perhaps they could do something like that at the WTC, like a Wailing Wall of sorts... maybe polish the still-standing steel and then engrave the names of the dead on it....
You can be certain of one thing-- there are already people working on designs for the memorial.
~Philly
put on FDR's "day of infamy" speech. Now listen to Bush's speech. There's just no comparison.
That's because Bush's speechwriters only had a few hours to write it. FDR had days to compose his, since the U.S. had known the attack on Pearl Harbor was coming. They simply did nothing to prevent it so the population would be in favor of going to war.
~Philly
Probably never...would you want to work in an office built there? I wouldn't. They'll probably clear the site and put in a park with a tasteful memorial to the victims-- perhaps separate ones for those employed in the WTC buildings, and the police, fire and rescue workers caught in the collapse.
IIRC, the WTC was close to where you catch the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, so it will get lots of visitors.
~Philly
They never go into specifics in documentaries about the White House, but it does indeed have some sort of anti-aircraft weaponry deployed around it, you can be fairly certain of that. After today, there will probably be more.
One would think that a rather important site like the Pentagon would have it too... though obviously they do not. I'm sure they'll change that as soon as possible now, but that's just closing the barn door after the horse has already gotten out.
~Philly
In a scene probably being duplicated in other so-far-untouched major U.S. cities, most of the businesses in downtown Philadelphia, especially the ones in tall buildings, are closing or are already closed.
All city public and parochial schools are closing at noon local time, which has just passed as I write this.
Most people you pass on the street look furious, nauseous, or both.
The Liberty Bell and Independence Mall historical areas are shut down tight.
Mass transit has everything on the street and tracks that it can manage right now to get people home quickly.
This is like something out of a God damned nightmare. I can only hope retribution is swift, violent, and preferably nuclear-- 'no-first-use' declaration be damned.
~Philly
Being nice isn't always better. In one long-ago Sims session when I was horsing around to see what you could and couldn't do, I killed one of my neighbors (by luring him into a small room built just for the purpose and then sealing it up), seduced his wife, and then married her. And it was fun.
~Philly
Where do you live? I want to go through your trash! :-)
~Philly