Let's say I attempt to download some music over a peer-to-peer file-sharing system. One of the keen, young whizkids from the RIAA's l33t anti-theft squad spots me and begins hosing me down with ultra-large packets. Who pays for the bandwidth? The RIAA? Or me? IF I start downloading and leave my computer on over the weekend the RIAA terrorist could, in theory, feed me 10-20 gig of meaningless 'data'. At my cable provider's rates that's AU$1700-3400 (US$850-1700). Since that would instantly bankrupt me, causing my bank to foreclose and me to lose my house, would I have some recourse against the RIAA? Bear in mind that I live in Australia and so this would constitute a violation of even the meagre 'jurisdiction' that the RIAA claims in the US these days...
As I sit here tracing the media threads that have spooled out over the world in the wake of the WTC bombing, things come to light that make me wonder if Muslims had anything to do with this atrocity.
*One, there is the case of the mysterious Google-Groups poster. This is someone who is either bery lucky, very prescient, or was involved in the attack. Critics in that thread pointed to the fact that he predicted previous disasters in for August and earlier in September. However, if he was one of the terrorists engaging in a little loose talk, then he might well have thought the attack was going ahead only to have it postponed. This attack took precise planning. They brought two planes in within eighteen minutes of each other, hijacked at different times and places (and hijacking itself is a risky and unpredictable business). It is easy to see how such an elaborately lethal plan could have had a few false starts. Even with the whole general staff working on it, the Normandy landins didn't go ahead on the planned day and nearly didn't go ahead at all.
*Secondly, there are the biblical ties mentioned by another poster, the bible verse talking about 'two brothers torn apart by chaos'. Since I don't believe Revelations was a true work of prediction, I must take any established link between the bible and a world event to run the other way
*Third, there is the nature of the crime. Domestic flights were taken, not international. This would involve getting all the terrorists into the US and to rendezvous on US soil, when they could have taken long haul flights from other countries and converged on their targets. They also had a ready supply of trained pilots. I have seen it suggested elsewhere that Osama Bin Laden operates an airfield where he trains terrorists in flying large commercial jets for terrorist operations, but Occam's Razor might suggest that the terrorists started as pilots and became terrorists later. Many have commented on the skill with which the planes were flown.
*The choice of targets is as good for separatist christians as it is for Muslims : the Pentagon, military and intelligence bureaucracy and the World Trade Centre, a nexus for big business and globalisation. The lack of sophisticated weaponry (knives and box-cutters) could be a clever move to ensure that none of the terrorists were arrested by airport security, thus blowing the operation, or it could be a sign that the perpetrators are simply an unsophisticated first-time terrorist group.
*There has been no wave of embassy bombings or even attempted embassy bombings around the world, even though these would be easily-organised side-shows to boost the effectiveness of the main terror attack on US soil. In fact such attacks would sow chaos and overload the US intelligence network with reports of violence. They would be very desirable extras if you were an extra-US terrorist organisation that wanted to prove a point.
*No Muslim group or nation anywhere has claimed responsibility for this attack, even thought terrorst groups are usually jumping all over themselves to try and attach their name to any imposing act of terror they can find.
*The Solicitor-General's wife, when she telephoned from the toilet of the airliner that crashed in Pennsylvania, failed to mention the ethnicity of the hijackers. She may have thought it unimportant (heaven knows I would only be concerned with talking to my loved-ones). But it may also indicate that there was 'nothing worth mentioning', i.e. caucasian, american hijackers.
There is no hard evidence here whatsoever, I acknowledge that. There will not be hard evidence for a long time. But remember Oklahoma and don't cast the net to narrowly when searching for the brutal criminals behind this terrible act.
As I read over this, I begin to think that it will vanish rapidly
I'm from australia. I got up at ten to seven this morning and logged on. I went to penny arcade for a dose of the funny and I found an image that said "We don't feel like talking about computer games right now. Our hearts go out to anyone involved in this God awful tragedy" with a link to CNN.com. I followed the link, expecting a joke, or a hoax page or something. I began reading down a bulleted list of the appalling things that had happened and immediately scanned the page for some sign that it was all made up. Some 'CNN.com@*****' or ANYTHING to tell me that this wasn't real news about the real world. It was off the human scale. It was something you simply couldn't imagine happening. I called my girlfriend into the room to have a look and she said 'bullshit' then began to read the story, our fear growing in unison as we learned of the terrible events. We went directly to a local news site to get some corroboration and there it was, large as life.
We had been about to leave for a walk to the beach and back before breakfast. We bought the Sydney Morning Herald on our way down the hill and there was a picture of the World Trade Centre with its guts spraying into the street on the bow of a flowering, orange explosion. There were the faces caked with plaster and concrete dust and the fires. There were the words of desperate fear and shock. There was the disaster.
We took the paper to the beach and sat on the steps above the sand for ten minutes holding each other and reading the stories. My eyes filled with tears not for the victims (whose suffering is too distant and unimaginable for me to understand) but for a human race that could do this to itself, that could produce to groups whose only desire was to do the worst possible things to each other. It is something monumentally sad to me, that faced with the beauty of life we could squander it on violence and destruction. Even the world trade centre towers themselves seemed timeless when I visited them two years ago. Now they are simply gone, forever. Unimaginable.
A little while after me, my girlfriend's eyes began to water and I held her. Then we dried off, picked up the paper and walked home. This is a terrible thing, and americans should know that their horror and shock is ahared by many around the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's say I attempt to download some music over a peer-to-peer file-sharing system. One of the keen, young whizkids from the RIAA's l33t anti-theft squad spots me and begins hosing me down with ultra-large packets. Who pays for the bandwidth? The RIAA? Or me? IF I start downloading and leave my computer on over the weekend the RIAA terrorist could, in theory, feed me 10-20 gig of meaningless 'data'. At my cable provider's rates that's AU$1700-3400 (US$850-1700). Since that would instantly bankrupt me, causing my bank to foreclose and me to lose my house, would I have some recourse against the RIAA? Bear in mind that I live in Australia and so this would constitute a violation of even the meagre 'jurisdiction' that the RIAA claims in the US these days...
I invite responses
As I sit here tracing the media threads that have spooled out over the world in the wake of the WTC bombing, things come to light that make me wonder if Muslims had anything to do with this atrocity.
*One, there is the case of the mysterious Google-Groups poster. This is someone who is either bery lucky, very prescient, or was involved in the attack. Critics in that thread pointed to the fact that he predicted previous disasters in for August and earlier in September. However, if he was one of the terrorists engaging in a little loose talk, then he might well have thought the attack was going ahead only to have it postponed. This attack took precise planning. They brought two planes in within eighteen minutes of each other, hijacked at different times and places (and hijacking itself is a risky and unpredictable business). It is easy to see how such an elaborately lethal plan could have had a few false starts. Even with the whole general staff working on it, the Normandy landins didn't go ahead on the planned day and nearly didn't go ahead at all.
*Secondly, there are the biblical ties mentioned by another poster, the bible verse talking about 'two brothers torn apart by chaos'. Since I don't believe Revelations was a true work of prediction, I must take any established link between the bible and a world event to run the other way
*Third, there is the nature of the crime. Domestic flights were taken, not international. This would involve getting all the terrorists into the US and to rendezvous on US soil, when they could have taken long haul flights from other countries and converged on their targets. They also had a ready supply of trained pilots. I have seen it suggested elsewhere that Osama Bin Laden operates an airfield where he trains terrorists in flying large commercial jets for terrorist operations, but Occam's Razor might suggest that the terrorists started as pilots and became terrorists later. Many have commented on the skill with which the planes were flown.
*The choice of targets is as good for separatist christians as it is for Muslims : the Pentagon, military and intelligence bureaucracy and the World Trade Centre, a nexus for big business and globalisation. The lack of sophisticated weaponry (knives and box-cutters) could be a clever move to ensure that none of the terrorists were arrested by airport security, thus blowing the operation, or it could be a sign that the perpetrators are simply an unsophisticated first-time terrorist group.
*There has been no wave of embassy bombings or even attempted embassy bombings around the world, even though these would be easily-organised side-shows to boost the effectiveness of the main terror attack on US soil. In fact such attacks would sow chaos and overload the US intelligence network with reports of violence. They would be very desirable extras if you were an extra-US terrorist organisation that wanted to prove a point.
*No Muslim group or nation anywhere has claimed responsibility for this attack, even thought terrorst groups are usually jumping all over themselves to try and attach their name to any imposing act of terror they can find.
*The Solicitor-General's wife, when she telephoned from the toilet of the airliner that crashed in Pennsylvania, failed to mention the ethnicity of the hijackers. She may have thought it unimportant (heaven knows I would only be concerned with talking to my loved-ones). But it may also indicate that there was 'nothing worth mentioning', i.e. caucasian, american hijackers.
There is no hard evidence here whatsoever, I acknowledge that. There will not be hard evidence for a long time. But remember Oklahoma and don't cast the net to narrowly when searching for the brutal criminals behind this terrible act.
As I read over this, I begin to think that it will vanish rapidly
As is any small group of disaffected, right-wing christian airline pilots...
I'm from australia. I got up at ten to seven this morning and logged on. I went to penny arcade for a dose of the funny and I found an image that said "We don't feel like talking about computer games right now. Our hearts go out to anyone involved in this God awful tragedy" with a link to CNN.com. I followed the link, expecting a joke, or a hoax page or something. I began reading down a bulleted list of the appalling things that had happened and immediately scanned the page for some sign that it was all made up. Some 'CNN.com@*****' or ANYTHING to tell me that this wasn't real news about the real world. It was off the human scale. It was something you simply couldn't imagine happening. I called my girlfriend into the room to have a look and she said 'bullshit' then began to read the story, our fear growing in unison as we learned of the terrible events. We went directly to a local news site to get some corroboration and there it was, large as life. We had been about to leave for a walk to the beach and back before breakfast. We bought the Sydney Morning Herald on our way down the hill and there was a picture of the World Trade Centre with its guts spraying into the street on the bow of a flowering, orange explosion. There were the faces caked with plaster and concrete dust and the fires. There were the words of desperate fear and shock. There was the disaster. We took the paper to the beach and sat on the steps above the sand for ten minutes holding each other and reading the stories. My eyes filled with tears not for the victims (whose suffering is too distant and unimaginable for me to understand) but for a human race that could do this to itself, that could produce to groups whose only desire was to do the worst possible things to each other. It is something monumentally sad to me, that faced with the beauty of life we could squander it on violence and destruction. Even the world trade centre towers themselves seemed timeless when I visited them two years ago. Now they are simply gone, forever. Unimaginable. A little while after me, my girlfriend's eyes began to water and I held her. Then we dried off, picked up the paper and walked home. This is a terrible thing, and americans should know that their horror and shock is ahared by many around the world.
That Robot pets are nothing but a fad everywhere outside Japan, just like those obtrusive personal stereos and Pokemon