A freelance journalist from the UK flies to Los Angeles to do an article for the Guardian, and ends up with a very different story when she is imprisoned for 26 hours and deported for not having a little-known journalist visa.

The idea of deporting someone for not having the proper paperwork is annoying, though not reprehensible, but her experiences of being treated like a criminal are terribly worrisome. Is this the cost of promoting democracy around the world? What happens when immigration officials tag webloggers as de-facto journalists?

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As a follow-up to last month's heated discussion of Bush-Machiavelli comparisons, I'm posting an excerpted interview transcript from Diane Sawyer's interview of George Bush last night.

In it, Bush is repeatedly asked to elaborate on the discrepancy between his pre-war assertions about Saddam's chemical and nuclear capabilities, and he repeatedly dodges the question. When directly asked whether attacking Iraq was justified based on the actual evidence, Bush asks if there's a difference between a power that wants weapons of mass destruction and a power that already has them, and says that post-9/11, both need to be dealt with. "The man is a danger, so we got rid of him." He repeatedly asserted that his actions were justified because "the world is better off because we got rid of him."

This, to me, is the ends justifying the means.

Let the railing begin.

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From Bush's interview with The Sun (the only one-on-one interview the President has granted all year, and not to a US paper):

"Presidents and Prime Ministers should never worry about how they are viewed in short-term history. I think in terms of long-term history.

"I set big goals. And I know what we’re doing is going to have a positive effect on this world."

In other words, the ends justify the means.

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This NYT story scares the shit out of me.

On the surface, it's only mildly disturbing: The Re-elect Bush campaign has worked it so the GOP nominations are held in New York, starting on September 2nd, 2004 (the latest nomination in GOP history). They freely admit that they hope to use the memorial services occurring in NY a few days later to counterpoint Bush's platform of anti-terrorism and national security. From the article:

The back-to-back events would complete the framework for a general election campaign that is being built around national security and Mr. Bush's role in combatting terrorism, Republicans said. Not incidentally, they said they hoped it would deprive the Democratic nominee of critical news coverage during the opening weeks of the general election campaign.

So the original tactic of using 9/11 as a bridge between the parties has failed now that it's time to run for re-election, and that bridge might be used to let Republican voters walk the chasm to the Democratic camp for different ideas on foreign policy and civil rights.

Sure, that's scary, but I wouldn't expect anything less. What really worries me is this excerpt, which seems right on the ball:

The strategy of starting so late and building the campaign around the events in New York is not without risks. Mr. Bush's advisers said they were wary of being portrayed as exploiting the trauma of Sept. 11, a perception that might be particularly difficult to rebut as Mr. Bush shuttles between political events at Madison Square Garden and memorial services at ground zero.

In addition, Mr. Bush's advisers said they remained worried by the economy's persistent weakness, an issue that could trump national security if the threat from terrorism appeared to recede.

So Bush aides are worried that their re-election campaign could fail if the economy gets worse or if the war on terrorism is successful.

Suddenly FDR's quote, "We have nothing to fear, but fear itself" blends worryingly with Alan Sorkin's quote from The American President, "Bob Rumsen is not the least bit interested in solving [the problems of this country]. He is interested in two things, and two things only: Making you afraid of it, and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections."

It troubles me that the Bush administration is making plans 18 months in advance for its own survival that are contingent upon it not achieving the goals it has stated are its primary objective for the remainder of the administration.

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Following up on our discussion of John Brady Kiesling and John H. Brown's resignations from the diplomatic corps, I've received a copy of John Brown's resignation letter. While not as eloquently written as Mr. Kiesling's (which may be why the full copy didn't appear in the news outlets) it's still an interesting read.

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This is really a fascinating article about the Pentagon's view of the purpose of a global superpower (hosted by the U.S. Naval War college) and the whys and whens of international military action. This is the 10,000 foot view of how current international politics relate to the last 50 and the next 50 years.

All the press and public sentiment nowadays relates to the recent past (15 years) and immediate future (10 years). This document goes beyond terrorism and human rights, and looks at geopolitics from the standpoint of economic and sociologic stability of a globalized planet.

The analysis in this document is very, very well thought out, in my opinion, and just as terrifying. The question I'm left with is what is our role in the world? Who gave us the keys and who are we to drive?

Agree or disagree with the moralities presented in this 'plan', it presents a more honest view than the 'of the moment' motives spouted out daily in the chambers of the UN, or the pages of the media.

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I so don't want Fury to become a warblog, but I wold like to point to an editorial critical of the Bush Doctrine that was published in the SFGate today. A highlight:

"Here are the words you will never hear from Dubya: We have won the war on terror. Never will you hear this, because the battle is, by definition, unwinnable; you can't win a war on terror any more than you can win the war against racism, or ignorance, or drugs, or cutesy boy bands or sunlight. Terrorism is as much a concept as a force, an idea as a scattered, well-organized, global network we can't possibly pinpoint."

Yes, the article is designed to enflame people, polarize them one way or the other. At the same time, it underscores my primary anger about our country. Beyond any one action, vote, or invasion, we've become a nation of pre-emptive aggressors who fight because we're scared of what happens if we don't beat people up before they beat us up.

Okay, so if the last warblog post I made was any indication, this will probably get a lot of comments. Go ahead and comment away. I won't be putting as much effort into point-by-point rebuttals to people's vim this time around. I've expressed my opinion well enough.

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The political world is going to shit. I strongly believe that our top leaders are lying to us, that they have their own agendas that don't mesh with the well being of the nation and the world, and that they realize that since the media won't call them on it, they can make more daring and more glaring lies every day.

My question for the weekend is: If the United States is taking on the role of the World's Policeman, ensuring that the world enjoys the American standards for human rights and freedom, then why do we not listen to what that world is saying?

I say 'we' though every day I feel less and less that 'we' are represented by our government. I'm travelling overseas later this month, and I'm just hoping that people in other countries don't treat me like I agree with what my country is doing ostensibly in my name.

I don't understand why Democratic leaders (or any domestic leaders for that matter) aren't coming out against the way this charade-driven prelude to war is being played out. With less than 50% of Americans saying that they would vote to re-elect Bush if the election were held today without even having an alternative candidate in mind, why don't we hear more from those politicians who better represent our views? Why don't we hear it more vocally from the US media? What little true investigative reporting that's done by US news services is usually printed as 'opinion' or 'editorial.' Bush understands that the first step to controlling the media is to make sure the other guy never gets heard.

We're being bullied. We're being spied upon. We're being lied to, and we're being robbed.

Give the populace a lollipop tax refund and make them pay for it later when 'the other guy' is running the country. Make the government earn less and spend more, call it the price for our liberties and tell us that the best thing we can do for our economy is to buy ourselves a new VCR and look the other way.

How do I raise my own flag, for all the world to see? How can I identify with a nation that feels as I do, led by a government that does not? What is the best way to say that I stand up for the ideals that this country was founded upon, but that I think that those ideals are not represented by the people currently at the nation's helm?

What happens to the United States' credibility if we go it alone and invade Iraq, and not find weapons of mass destruction (other than our own) in the ruins we create? Would our leaders plant them, like crooked cops at a drug bust, or would we blanket our slaughter of the Iraqi people under the guise of their emancipation from tyranny? How will other nations ever again justify allying with us when we collaboratively set the rules for a country's disarmament, then unilaterally say 'fuck it. I don't believe you, but since I can't prove it I'll decimate your infrastructure to be on the safe side'? What does it say when our foreign policy is based on Napoleonic Law, and even France won't stand with us?

We're inches away from strip searches for traffic violations. Our bank account and previous travel activity are already looked at by threat-assessment computers to decide which planes we can fly on, and how often we get searched along the way. And more invasive systems are in the works. American citizens are being held without bail, without charges, and without paperwork or public scrutiny, under the oxymoronic guise of protecting our freedoms. If an American was treated this way by any other nation, it wouldn't be tolerated. But this is America, where our government knows what's best.

Our 'terror alert' scale is designed to tell us when to feel scared (but not why), and when to feel safe (but not for how long). We're told to prepare for ambiguous terrorist threats, then told not to feel fear or overreact as we're instructed in how to walk leisurely away from a nuclear attack.

We're being played as puppets. We're brainwashed into thinking that Iraq and Al Qaeda are the same thing, and that having a missile that can travel 113 miles instead of the proscribed 93 miles is tantamount to possessing smallpox.

Our government has told the world that they're either with us or against us, and if they don't like the way we run the world, well, then they just might be next on our list. This is the same ultimatum that's also being given to the people of our country.

How wrong is it that I fear a repeat election in 2004 more than anything that Iraq, Al Qaeda, or even North Korea could do?

How can we stop this ride? I want to get off.

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This is a teriffic read. I't s both comforting and worrisome to know that those on the diplomatic front lines see the same problems as I do.

I hope that Political Counselor John Brady Kiesling's letter of resignation doesn't just slip under the cover of sensationalism in the next news cycle.

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A perfect instance of my unsettlement in the state of the world is when one of the RSS feeds I read comes up with a heading, "More War3 stuff" and I immediately assume it's from Daily Kos, a political commentary site I read, instead of Zhaneel, talking about Warcraft III and the new Frozen Throne beta test.

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Sorry for all the warblogging, but this one caught my eye: Earlier this week the Arab press aired an audio speech purportedly from Bin Laden. Recalling what you read in the press about that speech, did you get a sense that he supported Saddam Hussein?

Several articles, on CNN, the NYT, and other major sites, reported that Bin Laden was supporting Iraq's aggressive military stance (Iraq-the-governmentregime, as Iraq-the-people don't really have a military stance involving biological or chemical weapons). The White House carried this ball, citing it as further evidence that Iraq-the-regime supports the terrorist activities of Al Quaida.

The funny thing is that shortly after the broadcast, MSNBC reported: "At the same time, the message also called on Iraqis to rise up and oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who is a secular leader." This sentence was later downplayed in an edit to the article, and within a day was stricken completely.

Osama is striving for solidarity of the Arab people against the United States; I don't think anyone disputes that. My concern is, given that the seemingly unstoppable Bush War Machine has Iraq in its sights, what is the plan? They'fe talked about ousting Saddam and changing the regime, but to what? Theres a good deal of dispute as to what the Iraqi people think in their hearts. What I haven't heard spoken of is this war's 'win condition'.

Is the conflict over when everyone who's left alive likes us and won't try to build weapons against US interests in the next 10, 20, or 50 years? Is the conflict over when we've bombed their capacities to the point where we can wait another decade before they get close and we have to bomb them again? Is it over when we enthrone someone who has our interests at heart, hoping that they stay our friend, but happy to come back and hit 'reset' again if they don't like us anymore?

But getting back to the bigger point: There seems to be no distinction between Iraq the people and Iraq the government, when such a distinction weakens our own solidarity against them. On the contrary: if Osama says Iraqi people should rise up and take Saddam out of power, then is it smart for us to condemn that, when we've been saying the same thing for years? Maybe it's smart for us to condemn it if the Iraqi people are more hell-bent on destrying the United States than Hussein himself is. This is pretty doubtful, but if that were true, then any conflict we get in to over there isn't going to be resolved by a simple regime change, unless the government we put in place is nothing more than a hostile dictatorship designed to supress the Iraqi people.

If I had to sum up my biggest frustration, it's that the media (tv, radio, web, print: all of it) simplifies the issues into little slices of 'this is what happened today' without ever looking into deeper issues and bigger pictures. The only instances where a broader scope of time is given are in editorial pieces which are so filled with bias and, by definition, opinion, that there are already too many grains of salt in the mix to trust their view, especially when it's so different than the "other side's" (left v right) editorial viewpoint.

Whatever happened to unbiased, nonsensationalistic reporting to people with IQs higher than carrots?

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After a short post about Asian-Pacific attacks on the west coast, and another post on blimp terror, it seems only fitting to note that the only direct fatalities within the US (back then Hawaii was a territory) during World War II were from a single balloon-carried bomb launched by Japan and found by six unlucky and uninformed picnicers in Oregon.

Seems that Japan launched six thousand balloon bombs over a four month period, hoping to incite terror and start forest firest in North America. In response, the US started a campaign to shoot them down off the coast, while keeping their existence a secret from the American populace.

It makes me wonder though. Ridge raises the terror alert to Orange, citing 'the most specific data yet on terrorist activity' and declines to elaborate on what the threat is beyond saying every American should have the means to seal every air-permeable crevice in their home and subsist on their own without outside food, water, or power for at least 36 hours.

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Getting out of bed and walking to the bathroom I flipped awake my sidekick to read the email dreams that it collected as I was busy gathering my own. Sifting past the spam that always seems to fall heavier at night, I noticed the 'CNN Breaking News' that always grabs my attention. I'm always timid about reading these emails: will it be as benign as the FAA ordering an airline to inspect their planes, or was it a declaration of war on Iraq?

"-- NASA reports losing contact with space shuttle Columbia at 9 a.m. EST prior its scheduled landing at 9:16 a.m."

Reading the first few words, I thought I knew how to feel. 'Oh. NASA lost contact with another probe. Sheesh.' Then, 'NASA lost contact with the Shuttle. Wow. That's embarrassing. Reminds me of Spacecamp.' And finally, '16 minutes before landing? Shit.'

And of course, the next email from CNN was sitting there in my inbox, five minutes old:

"-- The space shuttle Columbia, carrying a crew of seven, broke up Saturday morning 200,000 feet above Texas. More soon"

I woke up Rachel to tell her what was going on, remembering just over a year ago on Sept 11 when Ammy woke me up to tell me that 'the world just got crazy.'

Rachel got up and we turned on the TV to a random channel.

Fixating on Rather and Blitzer, by the video clips and the developing story, there was a part of my head sitting in the back of the theater, so to speak, thinking I should feel differently than I did. Yes, I was horrified. Yes, I was stricken. Yet all the while I was comparing this experience to the morning of the Challenger explosion, looking for the reasons why this time the whole morning seemed somehow muted. I didn't need help coping with the tragedy.

I already know what to feel.

And I don't think I'm the only one: Over the course of the day I interacted with a bunch of people, and the only time Columbia even came up was when, after several minutes of talking without any mention of the accident, I asked them if they'd heard the news, just to be sure.

Challenger prepared us for the reality of a shuttle disaster. It reminded us that an astronaut's bravery isn't a hollow thing, and that accidents really can happen. As much as Tufte might have shown that Challenger was preventable, it wasn't because shuttles were inherently safe. Last year there were 15 million commercial aircraft flights in the United States and not a single fatality. When the shuttles were designed, they estimated that there could be a serious mishap (resulting in an RTLS, TAL, AOA, ATO or contingency abort) once every 50 launches.

Beyond Challenger though, 9/11 was the real primer for today. Beyond the fact that Challenger eliminated the surprised shock of such a tragedy, 9/11 gave us a sense of scope. Here was a shock that not only stretched wider, with initial estimates of 20,000 dead lowered to 6,000 and a month later to 3,000, but deeper, as it was just a starting point of a whole new world, and not the shiny kind. I didn't realize just how much we all grew up in the last 16 months until yesterday. Maybe jaded is a better term.

It's terrible to say, but there is some relief in experiencing a closed-end tragedy. The loss of seven lives, a three billion dollar spacecraft, and a dent in space exploration that could last from one to three years; these are all things to make us sad. But at the same time there's a salve in knowing it won't instigate UN resolutions, a half-trillion dollars in new military spending, killing of thousands of enemy troops, and the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction from enemies we're only learning to hate because they hate us.

The tragedy of a space disaster is something I already know how to feel. The emotions it evokes are emotions I can respect within myself and in others. This is sorrow, grief, and moving on. I only wish more tragedies could so easily be dealt with.

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The week that G. W. Bush was inaugurated two years ago, The Onion ran a piece titled Bush: "Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosparity is Finally Over."

I'd be saying 'It's funny because it's true' if I also had the luxury of saying 'It's funny because it's happening to someone else.'

Truly, the Onion is staffed by genius.

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Today G. W. Bush announced America's new strike-first military foreign policy ([pdf] linked from the white house home page. Apparently these guys aren't too big on HTML.)

Ending a long-time defensive posture, the mandate of the armed forces now is to stop people who are perceived to be enemies of the United States, before they get the capability to strike.

It amazes me that we can have a government so xenophobic as to have a 'do unto you before you can do unto me' military policy, and still be anti-gun-control within our own borders.

More and more I've been thinking about how the US world power is resembling that of the Roman Empire, for better or worse.

On a slightly related note, in October of 1945, President Truman altered the Seal of the President so that the eagle's head faced the olive branch, not the arrows (incidentally, the eagle has always faced the olive branch on the Seal of the United States, and on the one dollar bill). Truman said the office of the presidency should be devoted to the practice of peace.

Visiting Truman a few months later, Winston Churchill quipped that perhaps the eagle's head should be mounted on a swivel. (thanks snopes)

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A 9/11 memorial tribute took a turn for the tasteless metaphorical when 80 birds released from a tower didn't, in fact, know how to fly, and fell to the ground.

It turns out that the planners, upon discovering that all the companies offering trained dove and homing pigeon services were booked up, went to the livestock market and bought 80 squab.

The squab, bred for the soul purpose of becoming soup, had never been out of their cages in their brief lives, and knew as much about flying as a rock knows about floating.

In reaction to the mishap, one of the planners qupped that he saved the birds from a better fate than they would otherwise have had, but vets at the animal clinic, treating some of the birds who managed non-fatal landings, if not soft ones (some on people's heads), would beg to differ.

The irony becomes even more palpable when we consider that a memorial statue of a nude, falling woman was draped and removed from Rockefeller Center for being in poor taste.

Now that the anniversary's past, a lot of people feel that the the mourning period is over, and about time, while others throw political correctness to the wind and share their real thoughts about September 11th.

This last link I find really interesting, because the most disturbing thing for me about 9/11 was the dichotomy between horror and fascination. Movies and TV haven't acclimated me to things like murders and violence, but cinema is the thing that's prepared me for such extreme devastation, and so watching TV on 9/11 last year, it was easy to fall into a mode of "What's the next plot-point?" The scariest part was that there was a next plot point, and another, and another, each hit, each collapse perfectly timed to keep us entranced.

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I don't even know what to think of this article, claiming evidence that military craft brought down flight 93.

Not that I think it was necessarily wrong if it happened, but the coverup would be the next -gate scandal. I mean, if Clinton was impeached for lying about having sex, and not the sex, then what would this be?

For the curious, here's a condensed mp3 of the air-traffic recordings of the flight's last half-hour.

I don't want to be sensationalistic, and I really have no knowledge of the validity of the linked article, but I'm really curious if there's any corroborative evidence out there.

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Kerry raised a good point: All those pages I linked to (yahoo, Amazon, CNN, etc) with 9/11-specific modifications, are of course back to normal now.

Anyone know where someone might have archived some of those? I'm about to check Alexa, but I don't know how frequently it scans.

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I'm so deadened to online advertising that I'd been reading articles on CNN for almost an hour before I noticed they replaced all their advertising with candles.

On the Yahoo front, they also took off advertising, turned it monochrome, and made a very nice rememberance site.

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I wonder (and would be very curious to hear) about the experiences and perspectives of folks who have September 11th as a birthday.

Do you feel overshadowed? Is your birthday forever tarnished, or do you think it will become a badge of distinction? Speaking as a real-live nephew of my Uncle Sam, with a Labor Day sister, a Christmas grandmother, a Bastille Day grandfather, not to mention off-by-one Valentine's Day dad and Halloween stepsister, I especially wonder how this particular day of distinction will evolve in the coming decades.

Of course it's too early to tell, but I'd love to hear opinions from those born on or near 9/11.

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Of course it's so obvious that it hadn't even entered my mind these last (almost) nine months, but September 11 is this generation's Kennedy Moment, that time where for the rest of your life you'll remember where you were and what you were doing when it happened or you found out.

I remember when my high school AP History teacher was talking about Kennedy and said we probably didn't have a moment like that in our generation, and several of us piped up with the Challenger explosion. A few others were when Reagan was shot (I don't remember), when the Iran hostage rescue attempt failed, or the Loma Prieta Earthquake (well, for us Californians). Still, most of us felt that Challenger was a good example, if not the Paragon Exemplar of the phenomenon that JFK's assassination was. Several months later, the air attack on Baghdad would be another such moment, staying up and watching the green night-vision

I'm surprised that I didn't actually think about it until today, the last day of the clearing and recovery effort at Manhattan's ground zero, just how big a cognitive reference point this will be in peoples lives. September 11th may be the day we lost our innocence (if it wasn't lost already in the rubble of Hiroshima and Nagasaki). It will certainly outstrip Challenger as my primary Kennedy Moment.

I'm wondering how this compares in the mind of someone old enough to have had the Kennedy assassination affect them? We may still be too close to this one to be able to get a clear perspective, but I'd love to hear your own impressions, along with any Kennedy Moments I may have overlooked.

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This CNN QuickPoll really disturbs me on so many levels:

Talk about picking your battles..

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It's so disturbing. The federal government says there's a credible threat of terrorism in the next week, but they claim they don't have any information on what the threat is.

Then Davis, California Governor, claims there's a credible threat against one of six bridges in California, including the Bay and Golden Gate bridges.

The Federal government then pops up and says that the California threat isn't as credible as the general threat.

What? If there's a general threat, and then there's some additional information indicating a possible target, how is that less credible? Argh. I just feel (as I'm sure a lot of us do) that we're not being given all the facts. I expect to be left in the dark, but I don't like being misdirected, bending the 'truespeak' to fit anti-terrorist tactics.

More later, I'm sure.

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I've had a bit of writers block, knowing that this is post 1,000 on Fury. I felt like it should be something meaningful, but I didn't have anything meaningful to say. Then I stumbled across the Design Defense Ministry, and looking through it, I wondered how many of Fury readers hadn't seen my Javascript experiment, War.

Now more than ever, eh?

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As a Berkeley native of 10 years, I feel like I'm part of the community, and that my City Government should reflect the aggregate views of its constituents, especially when purporting to send a message to the nation and the world on our behalf.

This is why shit like this pisses me off so much. The people of Berkeley as a whole don't support the City Council's condemnation of US attacks on the Taliban, but the vocal minority, along with the Berkeley City Council's self-declared mission to 'be as Berkeley as we can be,' gets in the way of what a democracy should be.

It's ironic that one of the leftmost cities in the country has become a true republic, and not a democracy. In a democracy, official acts mirror the majority will of the people as closely as possible. In a republic, people just elect officials, and from there, the officials do whatever they want, because at least we got to choose who's up on the pedestal. In the US, the elected officials usually try to keep their votes in line with their constituencies, but apparently not in Berkeley.

Sadly, Berkeley is interested in profit more than democracy. The City Council's actions are attempts to differentiate Berkeley from the mainstream, cashing in on the 60s hippyism legacy to maintain a fading individuality because it's good for tourism.

The trouble is twofold. As if I wasn't offended enough that my elected representatives have decided to sell themselves out under the guise of an altruistic purpose, their ill-conceived and politically dishonest tactic backfired, with companies and individuals boycotting Berkeley businesses, and unthinking journalists projecting the will of city council members onto the citizens of Berkeley.

Not to be a linkwhore, but I hope that some of you with weblogs might point out that the People of Berkeley and the City Council of Berkeley are two separate realms that, sadly, only seem to touch one day every few years, when elections roll around.

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Okay, grab your saltshakers, but I figured I'd pass along this email I got from a reader today. The way I see it, it couldn't hurt as long as people don't treat it as gospel:

"Hey guys.. You know elif, my friend in CA; she called me last nite to tell me this: She has a friend in at work who had an Arab boyfriend who disappeared right before the 9/11 tragedy. He was nowhere to be found and one day he wrote an email to the girlfriend and said "stay off of the planes on 9/11 and out of the malls on halloween". She did not think much of this until the events occurred, and she immediately notified FBI afterwards. Keep this in mind: The people who want to and really can harm the U.S. are not outside of this country - they are still inside. The terrorists who died on the planes that day are just some of the people involved, and they have been here at least a couple of years. I don't want to start a scary chain email here, but I do believe a "trick or treat" is one of the twisted humor dates to pull this kind of stuff, and I know my friend would not have told me this if it weren't true to her. So please stay away from the malls on halloween, pass this on to the ones you love if your instincts tell you so. Lots of love to you all.

Feray"

I'd take an ounce of prevention any day, especially when there's a run on the pound of cure.

Update: As everyone and their grandmother has been emailing me, this has been debunked on Snopes. Not to say that you're necessarily safe in a mall on halloween, but that the email in and of itself doesn't constitute a credible threat.

On an interesting side note, SF Gate ran an interesting story a few days ago about how Hollywood screenwriters, including the co-author of Die Hard, are being called upon by the Army to come up with possible threat scenerios.

If all goes according to plan, soon the Army will be prepared for possible asteroid strikes, alien attacks, or reincarnated pharaohs with occult powers.

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Thanks to those who submitted Evil Bert & Evil bin Laden links.

This is an interesting piece because unlike most memes (even All Your Base) there isn't really a 'home' that can claim ownership to it, except perhaps the guy who created the original Evil Bert + bin Laden photo and photoshop guide to the manipulation. Nevertheless, one of the best pages I've seen explaining exactly what probably happened is at lindqvist.com.

Fascinating stuff. This is truly an example of how the online world can affect the offline, and come back again.

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I'm home sick today (I'll omit the details, other than to say it was probably food that did it)...

Anyhow, a few random thoughts: I just read that Kuwait stripped the citizenship of an al Quara spokesperson. It reminded me of one of the later episodes of Babylon 5, when President Mulari is trying to get rid of the Shadow bases his planet allowed, before the Vorlons come to destroy the entire planet because parts were still 'touched.' (No, it's not a perfect parallel, and I'm not trying to make a statement about US actions, just saying what it reminded me of.)

The Evil Bert and bin Laden poster meme is just crazy. Nobody's posted a comprehensive set of links, and I'd do it and assure myself of another few thousand hits, but I don't feel up to it just now. Does anyone have links to any of these pictures? Some news agencies are taking them down or cropping them, so if you see them, save then and/or email them to me and I'll put together a collection page tomorrow. Here's an overview, if you've no idea what I'm talking about.

In related news, The Tourist Guy is giving Bert is Evil a run for its money.

Okay, now it's time to get some food. I haven't eaten anything in 27 hours and, while that's great for the diet, that's about all it's good for.

Thanks again for all the great comments about fury over the past few days though. I'm starting to form a roadmap for changes to the site. Don't worry, most aren't major, and where they are, they don't get in the way of what's already here. That's exactly the kind of thing I needed to know, so thanks again!

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Today I left Berkeley at 7:04 am to drive the 45 miles to work in Sunnyvale. On a good day, I can make the trip in an hour. On a normal rush-hour day, maybe an hour and 45 minutes.

Today I got in at 9:54, nearly three hours after I left.

There was no accident, no construction, just 10mph traffic that stretched on for miles and miles.

After getting in, I was commiserating with a friend who had a worse-than-usual commute down 101 today, and she thinks she has the explanation: Nobody's travelling. Deloitte & Touche, Arthur Anderson, Ernst & Young, and others, all have large campuses in the South Bay, and they all have bans on travelling right now, so everyone's driving to work at the home office.

Argh. Amtrak, here I come. I am sorry that I forsook thee.

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Emily and I went to the Alice Radio Now & Zen Concert in Golden Gate Park today.

Barenaked Ladies, the original headlining band, cancelled last week, as their families didn't want them flying from Toronto to San Francisco, and so they pledged $25,000 to the Red Cross instead. In a rush to find replacement bands (Stereophonic cancelled for similar reasons earlier in the week), Alice managed to sign up Alanis Morissette and Melissa Ethridge to headline the show with a week's notice.

The show itself was great. Despite miserable parking conditions and an admission/security check line over a thousand people long, we still managed to get near the stage just as Stomp started their opening act. The morning was overcast (this is Golden Gate Park, after all), but instead of burning off, the fog grew more dense, and the arena got colder through the day until 4 or so, when the fog finally started to dissipate, and brief breaks of sunlight caused the affected part of the crowd to cheer, much to the probable confusion of whichever band happened to be on stage at the time.

rather than go through a play-by-play of the bands, I just thought I'd share one poignant moment. While the Now & Zen show is an annual event (this is its third year), and plans were naturally made far in advance of 9-11, it was rebranded as "Now & Zen, a day of healing in the park, a charity event for the Red Cross," and went so far as to get an official recognition from Mayor Willie Brown.

Red, white, and blue were the colors of the day. Flags abounded, and spirits were high. By the time Alanis took the stage around 4, everyone was in a good mood and was hyped to see the artist that enticed most of them to come out in the first place.

Alanis was vivacious, and very energetic (I think Cher could learn a few things about love-of-hair from Alanis), and she even played two songs, "The Man," and (argh... I forgot the other one. Anyone?), that she'd never yet played in public. Towards the end of her set the crowds were thinning, and so Em and I ventured forward from our spot on the hill to get a closer vantage point for her last song or two.

Getting right up near the sound booth, we waited for the last song, which I simply assumed (among other things, by the fact that she hadn't played much, if anything, else from 'Supposed former Infatuation Junkie') would be 'Thank You.' It caught me completely unprepared when the first four notes I heard went like this.

I suppose I'm being melodramatic when I say that those four notes threw me, but the song they belonged to is "Uninvited," which instantly struck a chord from the terrorism angle. A stronger sentiment and a clearer implied meaning was scarcely heard that day. After those four notes she stopped the band. The original set list included Uninvited, following up with Thank You as the closer, but they were running over 'curfew' and could only play one song and, quite rightly, Alanis saw that closing with anything other than 'Thank You' wouldn't be right, especially if the final piece was 'Uninvited.' For just a moment I felt my own internal dichotomy, the struggle between peace and vengeance, take external form. I'm only writing about it because I felt, whether it was good or bad, it was powerful.

Anyhow, that was my moment of Zen. We had a nice (though cold) day in the park, listened to some fine music (including Slappy!), had good company, and I finally got to see Alanis (though the bitter tale of how I missed seeing her at the onset of her stardom is a story for another day).

Did anyone else have a moment of Zen last week?

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ARGH! Okay, I know I should have better priorities, and I do, but one thing I've been looking forward to for four months is the season premiere of The West Wing. "Two Cathedrals," last season's cliffhanger, aired on May 16th, and the conclusion, "Manchester, Part I," was scheduled to run last Wednesday, September 19th. For obvious reasons, several of the networks, including NBC, pushed their schedules back one week, and the new air date was September 26th.

Now West Wing producer Aaron Sorkin has decided that, in light of the 9-11 events, he wants to create and air a special episode, to keep the show more in line with current events. He feels that it's important to do this before the season premiere, so the episode has been quickly written, and is currently undergoing filming, for a rushed post-production cycle and airing on October 3rd.

"Manchester," meanwhile, has been pushed back to October 10th.

Maybe it's escapism, maybe it's just withdrawal from a truly great television series, but I'm just glad that some new TV is still on the way next week, including Star Trek: Enterprise, and Buffy starts the following week. Maybe to tide myself over, I'll rent the first season of "Sex in the City" and start making up for not having HBO... It's something to do, anyhow.

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This message was passed on to me by Gina. I think this message should be standard on all flights, and even taught in schools:

As it was at most U.S. airports, last Saturday was the first near-normal day at Denver International since the terrorist attacks. On United's Flight 564 the door had just been locked and the plane was about to pull out of the gate when the captain came on the public address system. "I want to thank you brave folks for coming out today. We don't have any new instructions from the federal government, so from now on we're on our own." The passengers listened in total silence. He explained that airport security measures had pretty much solved the problem of firearms being carried aboard, but not weapons of the type the terrorists apparently used, plastic knives or those fashioned from wood or ceramics. "Sometimes a potential hijacker will announce that he has a bomb. There are no bombs on this aircraft and if someone were to get up and make that claim, don't believe him. "If someone were to stand up, brandish something such as a plastic knife and say 'This is a hijacking' or words to that effect here is what you should do:

Every one of you should stand up and immediately throw things at that person: pillows, books, magazines, eyeglasses, shoes -anything that will throw him off balance and distract his attention. If he has a confederate or two, do the same with them. Most important: get a blanket over him, and then wrestle him to floor and keep him there. We'll land the plane at the nearest airport and the authorities will take it from there." "Remember, there will be one of him and maybe a few confederates, but there are 200 of you. You can overwhelm them.

"The Declaration of Independence says 'We, the people' and that's just what it is when we're up in the air: we, the people, vs. would-be terrorists. I don't think we are going to have any such problem today or tomorrow or for a while, but some time down the road, it is going to happen again and I want you to know what to do.

Now you know. And knowing's half the battle.

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The net is at a standstill in some parts of the country, thanks to a new web server/email hybrid virus. I wonder if it's an act of cyberterrorism (well, all viruses are, though people don't useually mean them to be so debilitating, because what does a 16-year-old know of the difference between terror and mischief?)

Just thought I'd mention it, is all.

PS: Looks like I might get out of here on time today.

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I got forwarded a column today, a column that's been making the rounds. It touched a bit inside me that hasn't been tapped amidst myself and my friends keeping composure, analyzing instead of feeling, scouring news sites to forestall the inevitable moment when we have to face ourselves, our fears, our anger.

I don't expect that everyone will feel the same way about the linked column, but I'm interested to know: what does it touch in you?

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Trying times like these bring out the best and worst in people. I'm lucky enough to work for a company that, in this last week, has played a humanitarian role, acting as a rallying point for donations (Firefighter and Red Cross donations), a center for news and discussion (News and groups), and a means of communicating with loved ones when telephones have gone out (Yahoo! Mail and Messenger).

Working 'for the people' means that the entire company has a feeling of compassion about the news and the country, and it shows through all levels inside and out. What's been so appalling to me is that so many of my friends working for other companies have not been so lucky. On Tuesday and through the rest of the week, so many people felt helpless, needing to gain control in some aspect of their lives, that they used their role as manager to 'tighten the ship,' berating or otherwise slighting employees who let last week's events affect their work through reading more news, or staying home Tuesday.

Many managers and bosses just don't know how to cope, and this is the response. I've heard from friends who have been issued ultimatums last week to not read news sites at all while at work, to discontinue telecommuting practices altogether, to not discuss the WTC tragedy in the workplace, or otherwise let it affect either the organization's bottom line or the illusion that a corporate entity stands apart from the people who are its foundation.

A prime example comes from Palm Beach Florida, where on Friday NCCI Holdings told its employees that "displays of nationalism had no place in the office", ordering employees to take down flags and other national symbols, allegedly sending one woman home for refusing to remove a small flag from her desk.

I'd like to read your thoughts and experiences here, be you an employee or employer. It just stuns me that some of us have become so anesthetized to drama that we can't see the difference between talking about last night's West Wing episode at the water cooler and keeping tabs on events that have affected the stability and freedoms in this country...

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Just a thought: Why is it that everyone (well, 93% of the US population) is jumping on the war bandwagon after this attack, but there was little or no move for massive retaliation after the 1993 WTC bombing?

If that bomb had succeeded it would have resulted in roughly 60,000 fatalities (the number of people in both towers on a given weekday afternoon), yet we didn't have a huge upheaval of the political landscape on a global scale, just because someone underestimated the strength of the building's foundation?

In any other war I can think of, the reaction has been tied to both the size of the invading force and the number of casualties. In a terrorism model, the invading force is so small, and the casualties so high, that we don't know how to treat it.

$40 billion to wage a war that is in any way akin to a 'conventional attack' would likely be missing the point, end up killing countless Afghan citizens who are not part of the extremist movement, and would likely give rise to countless more dissatisfied Islamic people willing to join the extremist movement, in whatever country they happen to live.

There's a fascinating article from US News, written in January, describing how cells form, disperse, and rebuild to avoid elimination. This kind of article exemplifies how attacking a geographic region will do little but call others to join extremist movements, letting other cells grow.

It's a different kind of problem. It's a war against terrorism that we've already been fighting for decades. Of course, with terrorism, stopping the attack 90% of the time isn't good enough, and it's the kind of game where the CIA, NSA, and FBI can't gloat about their successes. We only see the failures.

Obviously we can't do nothing, or have it appear that we're doing nothing, but even so, I believe that changing the way we fight the war won't work either, we just need to fight the way we are fighting better, and use this tragedy as a worldwide poster-child to help us commit other nations to a 'with us or against us' position, effectively allowing us to fight that war with better resources in more cooperative environments.

To write any more would probably be rambling (too late?) but I welcome your response, vehement though I fully expect it to be.

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An article at Fox News brings up a good point of how to think globally by acting locally: Buy something. Anything.

Red Cross donations are great (and boy have donations been rolling in, with $11 million and $6 million (as of this moment) raised via Yahoo! and Amazon, respectively), but the the economy has also been injured, as signified by 12,000 Continental Airlines layoffs, with more to come soon in other industries.

In an effort to shore up my own psyche, I did a little medicinal shopping at IKEA yesterday to the tune of $520. If there's something you've been needing or thinking about getting for a while, now is probably the best time (for the country) for you to get it...

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I was watching TV this morning and I realized I still had some unwatched shows in my TiVo from Sunday and Monday (all the shows it recorded after that were, unbeknownst to my TiVo, actually continuing news coverage).

I sat down and watched Futurama, the Simpsons, and Angel, prizing each (and especially the newsbreaks during the commercials) as little gems of nostalgia, reminders of 'the way things were' just five long days ago.

I don't want to delete them.

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So classes started up at Berkeley again a few weeks ago, and it reminds me of when I first came here, starting my freshman year in 1991.

Life was so different living in the dorms than it was back at home. I had people who were quickly becoming friends all around me all the time. One think I specifically remember was the change in world view. I'm sure this doesn't apply to everyone, but while living at home with my mom, we both kept up closely with current events, local and global. Every week the LA Times would have a quiz about the week's news, and we would each take it, competing on who's been keeping up to date. Keep in mind that there was no 'net so this all our info was gleaned from newspapers and TV.

Anyhow, back at Berkeley, I'd been there no more than a week or so when the Soviet Union quickly and irrevocably self-destructed into its component parts. I had no TV in my dorm room, and I didn't subscribe to the paper, and though I realized the earth-shattering magnitude of these events, my knowledge and awareness of them was primarily gleaned by looking at the headlines of the newspapers in the coin-op dispensers on the way to the dining commons each morning.

I was aware of the impact, but without the data-inroads into my everyday life, I wasn't as 'in touch' with them, and was a far more distant observer.

Today, I practically live on the 'net. Working for a web company, being active in the weblogging community, and having as many 'virtual friends' as local ones, any issue that takes over the net also takes over a corresponding portion of my brain. I started this post wondering if this year's freshmen, 10 years removed from my own experience, have that same detachment, but in writing I realized that the net has tied them into the loop as well, bringing every news tremor to their dorm room with stunning speed and detail.

But what about those people who don't live in this 'wider, closer world'? Another post to follow on that topic soon.

As for now, I have so many conflicting emotions and opinions on where we should go from here and what this means for the way we and the rest of the world will live our lives. I've been a little reluctant to post these opinions in recent days because suddenly this blog has been thrust into a larger audience.

Where before my readership has been a cozy group of around 400-600 people who have been reading for a while and either know me personally or know what I'm about through having read the blog for a while, one post I wrote debunking the Nostradamus meme has garnered over 75,000 visits to the site. Suddenly I'm not writing to a group of friends; I'm standing on a soapbox. And while I feel comfortable expressing views to people who know my personal context, speaking out to a larger group of strangers opens me up to a much wider spectrum of response, including a great deal of reactionary, uninformed criticism, as well as touching sentiment, as you may have noticed by some of the comments to fly through here recently.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that I value you more than I did a week ago; a lot more. Opening the door to a flood of strangers has only thrown the differences between people who read my site and the public at large into sharp contrast, and I feel warmer and fuzzier for having you as readers.

Anyhow, now that the soapbox is beginning to sink down again, (as, surely, is your patience for this long-winded, self-serving sentimental post) I'm feeling more free to discuss my own feelings about the week's events, and (thank god) things that have nothing to do with them.

Take care all. I hope you're all starting to regain your own inner peace...

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These pictures of international commiseration are just amazing, all the more so for the knowledge that they're just a smattering representation of the emotion through the world. (original overloaded source)

Blar. One's down, the other full of broken links now. Anyone have a better link to comisseration pics from around the world? Post it in the comments!

Thanks.

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I agree with David first comment on the previous post. The cathartic response is to use this tightly wound and capable military spring we have and unleash due vengeance.

The reality is that the number of people responsible, or members of the group(s) responsible for this attack almost surely is smaller than the deathtoll thus far, and so as long as we remain a just nation that doesn't believe in the collateral deaths of innocents, we'll likely never get that catharsis.

The more likely way the government will help us find peace (inner peace, that is. The irony is heavy on my heart) is to declare a 'War on Terrorism.' Like the 'War on Drugs' or the 'War on Communism' declaring a war on a principle is a way to keep momentum going even when the target might frequently change. It's a sad justification, as sad as declaring that 'Freedom was attacked today' instead of a people, city, or country, but in lieu of a foreign nation standing up to be toppled over, it's what the people will demand, because I get the feeling that for most Americans, you can't kill a handful of people dead enough to make up for the death and destruction they've already visited upon us.

Is it just me, or is anyone else feeling sharply conflicting emotions within themselves? I am on several levels, the most simple being: The desire to turn into tangible action this fury so many of us feel, and the logical conclusion that opposite sides always disagree on the starting point of a tit-for-tat feud, ensuring that it will go on in perpetuity, always justifiable in the attacker's eyes, whosever turn it is.

It's Thursday morning. Two days have now passed since the world changed, yet the progression from one day to another doesn't seem as granular as it did before. Now it just seems like a steady stream that I just sometimes happen to be awake for or happen to be asleep during.

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Satellite images of Manhattan and the Pentagon

(note: the "Pentagon: After" picture isn't up as I write this. It's possible they took it down at the request of the State Department. We'll see if it goes up later.)

9/13 12:16am: Pentagon 'after' pic is up now. Looking at it, I would never have guessed that a plane hit it, much less a 757 (which, FYI, holds roughly half as much fuel as the 767s that hit the WTC).

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When I was ten years old, I saw a made-for-TV movie, The Day After, a story about the before, during, and after events of a nuclear war, told from the perspective of a small Missouri town.

Seeing that movie, and the graphic images of instant death, both of people and of culture, terrified me. This was in 1983, at the time Reagan was still in a face-off with Russia, feeling out Andropov, so soon after Brezhnev died, and we were all on edge about full scale nuclear war.

Being in 5th grade, I was terrified. What I did know came from TV and movies, and movies like Wargames taught me that if a nuclear war did come, we the people wouldn't know until we saw the flash, glowed, and disappeared in a flying firestorm.

I started to worry whenever I heard a plane go overhead. Our home was in the landing path for the Burbank airport, and whenever I'd hear the roar of the jets in the sky, I'd hold my breath and stay still, praying that it would pass overhead, and that it wasn't Soviet-launched destruction from half a world away.

I was literally incapacitated for months, with these feelings going through me several times a day, never weakening. I wondered if I'd ever feel at peace again, and I was sad that ten years old is a young age to lose your idealism.

Then one Saturday morning, after months of this prolonged terror, I had a realization: Nuclear warheads don't have engines, and they travel faster than the speed of sound when they're approaching their target. I wouldn't hear it coming, and I probably couldn't see it coming either. In a rare feat of logic overcoming emotional response, my fear was instantly gone. Thereafter, whenever I heard a plane I knew that it was a good plane full of friendly people, and didn't portend anything more than people moving safely from place to place. I was still worried about the threat of war, but now I could be worried in a more abstract way, and the adrenaline-fear didn't return because there wasn't a trigger to set it off.

...

I haven't thought about this in years, but as I was getting ready to go to sleep last night I thought I should take advantage of the no-fly order and look out my windows, from which I have a view of the landing pattern of both the Oakland and San Francisco airports, as this would likely be the only time I'd see a completely clear sky.

Off in the distance, I saw a flashing light, moving slowly across the sky, and it was a little jarring. Of course logically I knew that it must be a military aircraft, or at least one cleared to fly, but at the same time I wondered, when I'm back at work today, sandwiched between the flight path of commercial jets leaving from San Jose International, and the Moffett Air Force Base, what feelings will the scream of jet engines stir in me now?

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As your prophecy-buster for the day, I point you to the Nostradamus/World Trade Center Meme.

"In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb" , "The third big war will begin when the big city is burning"

This pair of 'Nostradamus quotes' being propagated via email and web pages, isn't what it appears to be at all. On one hand, by taking two separate brief prophecies, one can form any kind of after-the-fact prediction that one wants to, magnetic-poetry-style, but more importantly, the first quote wasn't written by Nostradamus at all but was written five years ago by Neil Marshall [9/13: The site is apparently pulled down now], a Canadian high school senior in his Critical Analysis of Nostradamus [9/13: Google cache copy].

In his paper, Neil talks about the 'infinite monkeys principle'...

"If I make say a thousand prophecies that are fairly abstract for example:

'In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb'

and goes on to talk about all the ways his own example could be interpreted, basically saying that of 1000 random prophecies like the one he wrote, some are bound to come true. It's just amazing coincidence (or a great cosmic gift, you decide) that the single example he made up for his paper happened to be so appropriate today.

For those naysayers, note that (until today's blogs get indexed by Google) a search for 'brothers torn apart by chaos' retrieves only one entry, the paper mentioned above, while an actual Nostradamus prophecy segment such as 'that which is enclosed in iron and letter in a fish' retrieves nearly 40, all from Nostradamus sites, several of which have the full translated texts.

As for the other part, "The third big war will begin when the big city is burning," well that doesn't appear on the web at all (again, until google indexes the new blog entries).

It's just another urban legend, only operating on Internet time: Shaped, propagated, and publicly debunked, all on the very same day.

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Tired of CNN video loops? Check out some editorial commentary...

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Everyone keeps comparing this to Pearl Harbor, and I understand that: A relatively unprovoked attack, surprise, devastation.

But I start thinking about the Cuban Missile Crisis and though the events are very different, the sense of defenselessness is similar.

Ammy brought up a good point: that if the death-toll is near 50,000 (unlikely, but possible, depending on what was going on when the towers collapsed, we'll see) then the casualties exceed those of the entire Vietnam conflict. All in a couple hours, and all civilians.

Also for comparison (not political comparison, but for scale) Hiroshima and Nagasaki are each estimated to have killed between 60,000 and 90,000 people.

As I said before: fuck fuck fuck fuck.

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Pearl Harbor, Kennedy, Challenger, the WTC,

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

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