Wednesday, September 12 2001

This is not a time for shooting first and asking questions later.

The attacks on the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon, may turn out be the work of a well-financed, well-organized and well-informed international terrorist group. The U.S. may find itself at war, yet. It is important to remember, though, that either statement may also prove to be untrue. Despite the fact that the media keeps yammering on about a modern-day SMERSH stalking the planet, it doesn't sound like these attacks required a whole lot of sophistication beyond the ability to fly an airplane. How complicated can it be to plan this sort of attack? Even before the advent of the Internet, and on-tap information, you could have ballparked this with a map, dead-tree airline schedules and the most pedestrian of specifics concerning an airplane. I couldn't tell you how to sneak a matte knife past airport scanners but given the fact that Western news programs have been doing the same with actual guns, for years now, it can't be very complicated. Where you learn to fly a passenger jet low enough to hit a six-story building, without bailing in the process, is something that continues to escapes me. That, and the willingness to fly a plane full of people into a building full of people. And if the U.S. is "at war", as people are saying then they are at war with a shadow. Ask yourself, how you can be at war with everyone and no one at the same time. Ask yourself what the consequences are of living your life that way. Ask yourself if you really want to live in "Fortress America". Ask yourself, as Americans, how you are going to go to "war", or mete out justice, if it turns out that this was the work of other Americans. I am not trying to minimize what has happened. I may well be wrong on both counts. Either way, the whole situation just plain sucks beyond comprehension. There is little question that retribution will be visited on those responsible, and it will be awful -- small consolation -- but lashing out in blind anger and panic accomplishes nothing. I guess my point is that, while extraordinary, it is not outside the realm of the possible that this could have been carried out by "a few guys". And I'm really not sure how you fight against that which makes it all the more terrifying. Dubya's plan to wage a long and expensive war against an unseen enemy is little more than smoke and mirrors or, if you're inclined to believe that sort of thing, a slippery slope like you've never seen before. see also : How Good Were the [WTC] Pilots? via rebecca's pocket

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Michael Specter : "It never occurred to me that there was much left to be scared about.

I didn't feel that I was in any danger; I felt like an extra in a movie, waiting for Bruce Willis to come and save the day. But as I stood there, staring at the twisted sky, I began to realize what was happening. People were jumping or diving from the highest floors of the North Tower. Others were clinging to beams and ledges that had buckled when the plane plowed into the building. But, one by one, every few minutes, another person lost his grip or just let go. From down on the street it looked almost like a desperate ballet: some seemed to be flying, their arms sweeping gracefully as they picked up speed. Others tumbled and some just dropped, rigid, all the way down. I was standing next to a woman in a blue blazer that said F.B.I. on it. She was crying and I started to cry, too."

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The North Atlantic Treaty, Article 5 : "The Parties agree that an armed attack against one

or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area." google cacheGah! It has not been invoked yet, but Dubya::ColinPowell is on television floating the idea which ought to be enough to make for another sleepless night...

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Dubya::PaulCellucci is floating the idea of Canada and U.S. merging immigration policies

in order to prevent terrorists from entering U.S. Sorry, no link yet. Just a sinking feeling.

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Rober Wright : The Problem With Retaliation

"Yesterday someone asked me to discuss terrorism in game-theoretic terms, and I realized that, in this case, you almost can't. Game theory assumes that all players are amenable to positive and negative reinforcement. When you're dealing with people who don't mind death—who in a sense even welcome it—your arsenal of negative reinforcement shrinks considerably."

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Elliotte Rusty Harold : "Until the U.S. is willing to honestly address why we're hated, no security measures will be sufficient."

see also : flippin' the WTC

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O'Reilly beta chapter : Perl for Web Site Management

For those of you able to focus enough to get anything done, these days.

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The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is moil

| source : web1913 | Moil \Moil\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Moiled}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Moiling}.] [OE. moillen to wet, OF. moillier, muillier, F. mouller, fr. (assumed) LL. molliare, fr. L. mollis soft. See {Mollify}.] To daub; to make dirty; to soil; to defile. Thou . . . doest thy mind in dirty pleasures moil. --Spenser. | source : web1913 | Moil \Moil\, v. i. [From {Moil} to daub; prob. from the idea of struggling through the wet.] To soil one's self with severe labor; to work with painful effort; to labor; to toil; to drudge. Moil not too much under ground. --Bacon. Now he must moil and drudge for one he loathes. --Dryden. | source : web1913 | Moil \Moil\, n. A spot; a defilement. The moil of death upon them. --Mrs. Browning. | source : wn | moil v 1: work hard; "She was digging away at her math homework" [syn: {labor}, {labour}, {toil}, {fag}, {travail}, {grind}, {drudge}, {dig}] 2: be agitated; of liquids [syn: {churn}, {boil}, {roil}] 3: moisten or soil: "Her tears moiled the letter"

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