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Archives
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Saturday September 11 2004
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9/11
My comment three years ago...
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I'd have to say that it's worse than it appears.
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Too many have died since that day. Too many still to die.
Meteor Blades, at daily KOS, says it well...
A Fitting Commemoration for September 11
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I know that September 11th is supposed to be a sacred American day, “our” day to mourn the innocent victims – the 3000 dead and thousands of maimed and permanently traumatized – the day on which everything supposedly changed.
At the risk of being once again called unpatriotic, however, let me suggest that we turn this date into something more than an all-American day of remembrance. For one thing, Americans weren’t the only people who died in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania three years ago. Moreover, another September 11 lives in infamy because of the terrorists who toppled the Chilean government three decades ago and proceeded to kill an estimated 3000 of their countrymen.
I’d like to see September 11th transformed into a day of mourning for victims of terrorists everywhere, whether they live in Northern Ireland or Darfur, Cambodia or Israel, Indonesia or Guatemala, Oklahoma City or Madrid, Beslan or Kuta.
Some people, I suspect, may think I seek to downplay the loss that we - both as a nation and as individuals close to the victims - suffered on that dark day. To dilute the memories of our grief and rage and despair. No way. I’ll never forget where I was when I heard the news. I’ll never erase the memory of watching people leap from the flames to certain death on the streets of Lower Manhattan. I’ll never forget the two days I waited a coast away, wondering if a woman I knew had escaped the killers aboard Flight 175. (She did.)
Appalling and spectacular and searing as those events three years ago were, however, we do a disservice to ourselves to pretend that America suffered uniquely from the machinations of terrorists. What better commemoration than henceforth to remember ALL of terrorism’s victims, planetwide, on September 11?
And what better way to set an example - a standard for those in the world our leaders so often lecture about civilized behavior - than to pledge, as I suggested earlier today, never again to overtly or covertly authorize, order, support, promote, fund, train or wink at terrorists whatever their cause, excuse, justification, rationalization, religion, ideology or helpfulness to real or alleged U.S. interests?
For the United States to renounce terrorism as well as denounce it would take the world that much closer to the day when terrorists are the least of everyone's concerns.
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Juan Cole has an excellent overview on the aftermath.
September 11 and Its Aftermath
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Al-Qaeda has succeeded in several of its main goals. It had been trying to convince Muslims that the United States wanted to invade Muslim lands, humiliate Muslim men, and rape Muslim women. Most Muslims found this charge hard to accept. The Bush administration's Iraq invasion, along with the Abu Ghuraib prison torture scandal, was perceived by many Muslims to validate Bin Laden's wisdom and foresightedness.
After the Iraq War, Bin Laden is more popular than George W. Bush even in a significantly secular Muslim country such as Turkey. This is a bizarre finding, a weird turn of events. Turks didn't start out with such an attitude. It grew up in reaction against US policies.
It remains to be seen whether the US will be forced out of Iraq the way it was forced out of Iran in 1979. If so, as al-Zawahiri says, that will be a huge victory. A recent opinion poll did find that over 80 percent of Iraqis want an Islamic state. If Iraq goes Islamist, that will be the biggest victory the movement has had since the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. An Islamist Iraq might well be able ultimately to form a joint state with Syria, starting the process of the formation of the Islamic superstate of which Bin Laden dreams.
If the Muslim world can find a way to combine the sophisticated intellectuals and engineers of Damascus and Cairo with the oil wealth of the Persian Gulf, it could well emerge as a 21st century superpower.
[...]
The US is not winning the war on terror. Al-Qaeda also has by no means won. But across a whole range of objectives, al-Qaeda has accomplished more of its than the US has of its.
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iraq
Heavy Fighting in Sadr City, Fallujah
US Military Deaths Pass 1000
by Juan Cole
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I would wager that very few American newspapers mention the estimate of 12,000 Iraqis dead in the war so far when they report the number of US military dead. (Note that the 12000 figure refers solely to civilian combat deaths and does not include Iraqi soldiers killed).
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Ramadi posts seen as 'symbol of occupation'
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U.S. Marines in Ramadi, one of the deadliest cities in Iraq for American forces, decided in June to halt their patrols through the town and set up observation posts in tall buildings instead.
The idea was to show respect for Iraqi sovereignty and cut down on battles with insurgents, in which innocent civilians could be injured. But rather than reducing tensions, the new strategy may be having the opposite effect.
"When we were originally doing patrols, foot and vehicle, a guy would see the coalition pass by his house for 30 seconds once a week and that would be the extent of his contact," said Lt. Jonathan Hesener, a Marine platoon commander.
"But now everyone in Ramadi sees us on top of the hotel every day as they drive down the street. To them, it's not decreased presence. It's a symbol of occupation."
Much attention is focused on nearby Fallujah as the flash point of violence in Iraq, but it is here in Ramadi that U.S. military officials think that Sunni insurgents must be defeated if the nation is to be stabilized.
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U.S. Troops' Death Rate Rising in Iraq
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With the latest spike in violence in Baghdad, more U.S. troops have died since the turnover of power to an interim Iraqi government at the end of June than were killed during the U.S.-led invasion of the country in the spring of 2003.
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thanks to Antiwar.com
photography
The Digital Journalist has a number of remembrances of a great photojournalist — Carl Mydans.
Remembering Carl Mydans
What made his work so special was that Carl was first and always a journalist...
Carl Mydans, 1907-2004
In the early 1700s, Jonathan Swift wished one: "May you LIVE all the days of your life." For 97 years, Carl Mydans did exactly that.
Carl Mydans: A Personal Story
When I first came to New York in 1979 as an aspiring photojournalist and assistant to then-Time photographer Neil Liefer, I met Carl Mydans while hanging around the 28th-floor photo stockroom, which was right next to the famed offices of the Time/Life photographers.
Nuts and Bolts
On Monday, August 16th, Carl Mydans spent the day with his best friend, Bill Foley... That evening, with his son and daughter, of whom he was so proud, at his bedside, Carl died. He was 97.
History by Carl Mydans
A Digital Journalist multimedia presentation from February of 1998.
deserter
Stung!
A swarm of new media stories on young George W. Bush's dereliction of duty pops his heroic-leadership bubble.
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On Feb. 13, as controversy swirled around President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, the White House released more than 400 pages of documents on the press corps, proving, it claimed, that Bush had served honorably and fulfilled his commitment. The sudden rush of records, often redundant, jumbled and out of chronological order, generally left reporters baffled. From Bush's point of view, the document dump was a political success, as the controversy cooled and the paper trail ran dry.
In retrospect, it's doubtful that even White House aides understood all the information embedded in the records, specifically the payroll documents. It's also unlikely they realized how damaging the information could be when read in the proper context. Seven months later, the document dump is coming back to haunt the White House, thanks to researcher Paul Lukasiak, who has spent that time closely examining the paperwork, and more important, analyzing U.S. statutory law, Department of Defense regulations, and Air Force policies and procedures of the 1960s and 1970s. As a result, Lukasiak arrived at the overwhelming conclusion that not only did Bush walk away from his final two years of military obligation, coming dangerously close to desertion, but he attempted to cover up his absenteeism through swindle and fraud.
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Bush under pressure over military record
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The US president, George Bush, was today under growing scrutiny over his Vietnam-era service record after several different sources questioned his time in the Texas and Alabama air national guards.
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Memos: Bush Suspended From Guard Flying
Memos Show President Bush Failed to Meet Texas Air National Guard Standards During Vietnam War
thanks to Eschaton
photography
Tom Stoddart
Refugees are taken to a camp by bus after arriving in Macedonia from Kosovo. This boy was one of the 1.5 million Albanians driven out of their homes in 1999.
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coke head
ARI'L SHARON:
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OK. Sharon Bush denies she was the source for Kitty Kelley's "Dubyah snorted coke at Camp David" nugget from her new book. Specifically, she said:
"I categorically deny that I ever told Kitty Kelley that George W. Bush used cocaine at Camp David or that I ever saw him use cocaine at Camp David. When Kitty Kelley raised drug use at Camp David, I responded by saying something along the lines of, 'Who would say such a thing?'
"Although there have been tensions between me and various members of the Bush family, I cannot allow this falsehood to go unchallenged."
That would normally be the end of the matter. A named source for the allegation goes on the record denying she was the source.
In this case, however, Kitty Kelley has backup.
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the truth comes out
Pleasure Boat Captains for Truth
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Pleasure Boat Captains for Truth has been formed to counter the deliberate misrepresentation of George W. Bush's drinking record. We seek to portray him as he was, and still is: a "lightweight."
We, the men who were served drinks alongside George W. Bush, have partied with real party animals-- on the shores of Lake Tahoe, up and down the Gulf of Mexico, in the harbors of Kennebunkport. We have seen good men down a dozen kamikazes, and then swim once more onto the beach. We have watched the buzzed and brightest of our generation play beer pong until they were bent double, like beggars under sacks. We have known these party animals, and we have partied with them.
And George W. Bush is no party animal.
Though we come from diverse backgrounds (we are old-money bluebloods as well as the nouveau riche), and though we hold varying political opinions (one of us is even a Jew), we agree on one thing: George W. Bush could not hold his liquor.
The time has come to set the record straight.
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thanks to Steve Showell
states
Another of Stirling Newberry's thought provoking pieces. The comments are equally as interesting.
A brief history of the Energy State
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If it is to be supplanted, it will have to be by the only competing model of state organization - the Information state. The information state is, both positively and negatively - challenging the Energy state. The Information state's weapons - both social and military - are spreading rapidly. The information state's tools are used by both technologists and terrorists. Each shows, as the Merchant-Nationalist state did - that while it cannot beat the mightier, older states - it can frustrate them, that it does not have their heavy overhead and expenses. AlQaeda is an information state in the purest sense - it is the world's most powerful "micronation" - bound together only by information. But the United States, as pointed out, has been gradually becoming an information state itself: the atomic bomb is the signature weapon of the information state, and the use of the media and the bureaucracy are information systems. However, it has not been realized - even as we live through the "information revolution" what an information state looks like
I urge everyone to read Bobbit's book - it is still the only finished book in English that deals with the transition we are in. One can't ask everything. However, the caveat outlined here still stands: the Market state is dying, because states can no longer control their own market, and the global market place is built on a house of oil. Oil is the basis of our currency system as much as gold was in 1900. What reigns now is the energy state, and it stands at its pinnacle - ruling the entire world with its energy currency and its means to power.
However, like all poor state eras, while it is basically peaceful, the anger of unfufilled dreams is underneath it. The Market State came into being, to no small extent, because coal gave it a means to connect great distances, and it exploited that power ruthlessly. Industrialization's great rise of the 19th century can be called "the coal age" as coal provided light, chemicals, power and transportation. Either the energy state will have to fight increasingly bitter wars over oil - or it will have to find a more limitless source of energy - or it will have to shift its basis to an information state.
There is no fourth alternative.
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photography
andrew buurman photographer
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thanks to coincidences
aipac spy case
AIPAC Spy Case involves Intelligence on Iranian WMD
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It ought to be illegal for congressional contests to be interfered with to this extent by money from another state. The technique of targeting congressmen for un-election has given enormous power to all single-issue lobbies, and not just AIPAC. But Hilliard is entirely correct that AIPAC's activities do contribute to bloodshed in the Middle East. By arranging for the far rightwing Likud coalition to have a free hand in dispossessing millions of Palestinians, AIPAC contributes to the hatred for the United States in the Muslim world that breeds terrorism against US citizens.
There is a long hit list of US politicians who were insufficiently obsequious toward the policy of Israeli hawks in the Occupied Territories, whom AIPAC helped unseat by encouraging donations to their opponents. The Charles Percy case became legendary in Congress, and discouraged senators and congressmen from taking on AIPAC.
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Israeli spying on the US is nothing new.
THE MOTHER OF ALL SCANDALS
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So here is the mother of all scandals.
For two years, the FBI has suspected AIPAC of spying for a foreign country, and for those two years (and for decades before) that group suspected of spying for Israel has been reshaping the US Congress for the benefit of a foreign government.
And THAT is the mother of all scandals.
Think about that as billions of your tax dollars flow to Israel while your roads and schools crumble and decay and services are cut.
Think about that as the coffins come home with your loved ones inside.
Think about that when you and a million of your fellow citizens march down the streets of America opposing wars built on lies and deceptions and wonder why the government just doesn’t want to listen to you any more.
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when only too much is enough
I've never seen a model airplane this big. The end is so sad.
B-52
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thanks to Counterspin Central
halliburton
Cheney, Halliburton and Iraq:
The Purloined Letter
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Why was Dick Cheney so eager to invade Iraq? Why did he repeatedly link Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda after September 11, and why did he maintain that not only did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction but that he, Cheney, knew exactly where they were?
Cheney clearly came into office wanting a war on Iraq, as revealed by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil.
Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton in 1995-200. Halliburton is a corporation that does a number of things, including energy and oil and military contracting.
In 2001, Halliburton won a contract from the Department of Defence to provide "emergency services" to the Pentagon. The contract was above-board. Bids were taken from five competitors, and Halliburton won with the low bid. There was nothing illegal or irregular about such a process. But that contract may explain Cheney and his gang on Iraq.
In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Purloined Letter," the blackmail note that the police are looking for is in plain sight. It isn't hidden, just among the ordinary correspondence on the desk. The police don't bother to examine it for that reason.
It is the contract itself that is the scam. It is quite simple. A standing contract to provide "emergency services" to the Pentagon is a potential gold mine under exactly one circumstance. If a major war breaks out, the need for "emergency services" will inevitably be enormous. The contract was worth billions. But only if there was a war. If there was peace, the need for "emergency services" would be small. Halliburton was not doing that well. It needed the big bucks.
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panos
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bush
Bush by numbers: Four years of double standards
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1 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security issued between 20 January 2001 and 10 September 2001 that mentioned al-Qa'ida.
104 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned Iraq or Saddam Hussein.
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thanks to daily KOS
photography
Daniel Mirer
Photographs
Finnish Train Going South, Finland
[more]
thanks to coincidences
cool pens and voting registration
True Majority
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TrueMajority is making it easy to vote with these voter registration and vote by mail tools. Something this good should be shared, so send this link to everyone in your company, your friends, and family. They’ll be glad you did. And below you can also find ways to connect with groups that are registering folks in the streets and door to door.
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Good information on voting. Zoe bought a pen from them. It's pretty interesting. It has this chart that unscrolls from the side of the pen.
The really tall one is Pentagon spending. The next one is children's health. Surprised?
The really tall one is the US and it's allies. The next two are Russia and China. Might they be concerned?
photography
EL GRAN CIRCO BEAS
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thanks to Spitting Image
crusade
The Bush Crusade
Are we reliving that dark, seething religious history of sacred violence that is the Crusades?
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George W. Bush plumbed the deepest place in himself, looking for a simple expression of what the assaults of September 11 required. It was his role to lead the nation, and the very world. The President, at a moment of crisis, defines the communal response. A few days after the assault, George W. Bush did this. Speaking spontaneously, without the aid of advisers or speechwriters, he put a word on the new American purpose that both shaped it and gave it meaning. "This crusade," he said, "this war on terrorism."
Crusade. I remember a momentary feeling of vertigo at the President's use of that word, the outrageous ineptitude of it. The vertigo lifted, and what I felt then was fear, sensing not ineptitude but exactitude. My thoughts went to the elusive Osama bin Laden, how pleased he must have been, Bush already reading from his script. I am a Roman Catholic with a feeling for history, and strong regrets, therefore, over what went wrong in my own tradition once the Crusades were launched. Contrary to schoolboy romances, Hollywood fantasies and the nostalgia of royalty, the Crusades were a set of world-historic crimes. I hear the word with a third ear, alert to its dangers, and I see through its legends to its warnings. For example, in Iraq "insurgents" have lately shocked the world by decapitating hostages, turning the most taboo of acts into a military tactic. But a thousand years ago, Latin crusaders used the severed heads of Muslim fighters as missiles, catapulting them over the fortified walls of cities under siege. Taboos fall in total war, whether crusade or jihad.
For George W. Bush, crusade was an offhand reference. But all the more powerfully for that, it was an accidental probing of unintended but nevertheless real meaning. That the President used the word inadvertently suggests how it expressed his exact truth, an unmasking of his most deeply felt purpose. Crusade, he said. Later, his embarrassed aides suggested that he had meant to use the word only as a synonym for struggle, but Bush's own syntax belied that. He defined crusade as war. Even offhandedly, he had said exactly what he meant.
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pinhole
I finished off the new pinhole mount. (Thursday I had the first part of this pinhole rebuild.)
The actual pinhole is drilled in thin stainless steel. I attached it to the back side of the mount with Barge cement. The front side of the mount is already painted at this point.
I painted the inside with rattle can semi-gloss. The shiny spot isn't the pinhole.
I painted around the pinhole with black laquer (a Sharpie pen). The little dot in the middle is the pin hole. It's .0126" in diameter (.320mm).It's f/204.
The pinhole mount mounted in the camera, a medium format Mamiya Super 23 (2 1/4" x 3 1/4" negatives) with the rangefinder removed. Here the pinole is covered. I epoxied a little piece of wood onto the brass pinhole cover to make it easier to open and close.
The pinhole uncovered for making exposures.
The contraption on top of the camera is a Mamiya sport finder. $25 on eBay. I bought the sport finder for using this body as a street camera. I have some more bits coming in for the street camera project and I will write about using a medium format camera for street photography — if I don't hurt myself, or those around me, in the process. Sport finders are kind of cool. Really bright! The pinholes I've taken seem to be the same angle of view as a normal lens. I will do some testing, but I think I can use the sport finder to compose for the pinhole. It even has parallax compensation to 3 feet. Of course it's not going work for those really close objects. The grip isn't really used in shooting pinhole. For shooting, it needs to be on a tripod or sitting on something that isn't going to move. The grip is useful for carrying this tank around.
The paint is still drying in the inside of the mount. Tomorrow I'll make some test exposures. Then maybe I can get back to that fixed gear bicycle project. It's almost ready to paint.
fahrenheit 9/11
Why I Will Not Seek a Best Documentary Oscar (I'm giving it up in the hopes more voters can see "Fahrenheit 9/11")
by Michael Moore
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I had dinner recently with a well-known pollster who had often worked for Republicans. He told me that when he went to see "Fahrenheit 9/11" he got so distraught he twice had to go out in the lobby and pace during the movie.
"The Bush White House left open a huge void when it came to explaining the war to the American people," he told me. "And your film has filled that void -- and now there is no way to defeat it. It is the atomic bomb of this campaign."
He told me how he had conducted an informal poll with "Fahrenheit 9/11" audiences in three different cities and the results were all the same. "Essentially, 80% of the people going IN to see your movie are already likely Kerry voters and the movie has galvanized them in a way you rarely see Democrats galvanized.
"But, here's the bad news for Bush: Though 80% going IN to your movie are Kerry voters, 100% of those COMING OUT of your movie are Kerry voters. You can't come out of this movie and say, 'I am absolutely and enthusiastically voting for George W. Bush.'"
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trains
D&RGW 1939 Roster of Active Locomotives
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thanks to Life In The Present
oil
Warning: reading this may cause depression.
World Energy Production, Population Growth,
And
The Road to the Olduvai Gorge
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The Olduvai theory is defined by the ratio of world energy production and population.
It states that the life expectancy of Industrial Civilization is less than or equal to 100 years: 1930-2030. After more than a century of strong growth — energy production per capita peaked in 1979. The Olduvai theory explains the 1979 peak and the subsequent decline. Moreover, it says that energy production per capita will fall to its 1930 value by 2030, thus giving Industrial Civilization a lifetime of less than or equal to 100 years. This analysis predicts that the collapse will be strongly correlated with an "epidemic" of permanent blackouts of high-voltage electric power networks — worldwide.
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thanks to The Mike Runge Peak Oil Archive
bob's in cairo
Bob Harris, a sometime poster at This Modern World, has gone from Turkey to Egypt. A great read.
Five wonders
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Quick note now that I've settled here in Cairo for a bit...
The day I left Istanbul, I realized that if the Aegean coast felt a bit like California, then Istanbul felt like the San Francisco of the mideast. You've got hills and density and a history as a trading post and a whole bunch of other similarities. (Although since Istanbul has been around in various forms roughly ten times longer, perhaps I should reverse the phrasing.)
With that in mind, Cairo feels a lot more like New York, in almost every way I can think of. That'll have to do as a shorthand description for the moment.
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the temperature at which freedom burns
Farenheit 9/11 finally arrived on South Whidbey this weekend. Zoe and I saw it tonight. I don't think I really learned anything that I didn't already know. Although I had forgot about the egging of the Bush's motorcade during the inagauration. Anyway, it left me pretty drained. The whole lot should be in jail. Everyone should see this movie.
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