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I finally bit the bullet and started the weblog. I can’t guarantee it will be updated every day, but I will update it as frequently as possible.

Saturday 29th September 2001

There are reports that a US Special Forces team has been captured in Afghanistan. This has been denied by the Taliban.

The New York Times reports that shortly after the terrorists attacked, German intelligence operatives intercepted a telephone call between followers of Osama bin Laden which led the FBI to seek urgently two more teams of hijackers.

The UN Security Council has adopted, unanimously, a resolution obliging all member states to act against terrorism.

The Taleban have rejected calls by a delegation of Pakistani clerics to extradite bin Laden: they say they are willing to fight to the death.

Russians recall the “giant mincer” — Afghanistan.

A British reporter has been arrested in Afghanistan.

The former king of Afghanistan is talking with the Northern Alliance to plan a new government to replace the Taleban.

Jack Straw has warned that Osama bin Laden’s group may be planning further attacks, possibly on Britain. Well, yes, that seems likely — but is there evidence that he is?

Former US presidents are lending support while being careful not to upstage G.W. — that would mean they have to be very careful, then?

The former commanders in chief enjoy a perspective unmatched by other Americans on the colossal pressures Mr. Bush faces. While none has had to grapple with a national emergency approaching the carnage on Sept. 11, the elder Mr. Bush was there for the Persian Gulf war, Mr. Clinton ordered bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr. Carter presided over the Iran hostage crisis, and Mr. Ford was in the Oval Office during the Mayagüez incident, in which American troops freed a cargo ship seized off Cambodia. (The other living former president, Ronald Reagan, has Alzheimer’s disease.)

Peace protesters are converging on Washington. One is quoted as saying, In addition to protesting the intended bombing and intended destruction of Afghanistan, I am protesting the over-capitalization of the world. Well, that latter part is fair enough, but if anyone is planning the destruction of Afghanistan I haven’t heard it. One former “peacenik” explains why he isn’t a pacifist any more.

Doesn’t the thought of rushed legislation just make you feel all warm and safe?

The installation of facial recognition systems at US airports is being considered. Gee, that’s a good idea. Especially since it doesn’t work.

The future of flying: significantly less convenient, fairly intrusive security. So when are we going to see the return of passenger liners to cross the Atlantic?

A voice from Kabul: an Afghan woman speaks:

 “People have suffered so much at the hands of the Taliban — they would NEVER support the Taliban. They’ve suffered so much, more than at any time in our history. So long as the Americans don’t attack civilian areas we don’t mind them being here.

 “I’m sure the Americans aren’t going to come and occupy our country as the Russians did. As long as they get rid of the Taliban and terrorists people will be happy. But they won’t be happy if America comes and occupies our country.”

The Onion is back! A week or so ago, you might have thought that there was no chance they could come up with anything remotely amusing on the subject of the WTC/Pentagon attacks. But they have. For starters, there’s their pisstake of the “terror in America” graphics being used by so many papers and TV news programmes:

Here’s some of the headlines:

• Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves In Hell
• American Life Turns Into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie
• U.S. Vows To Defeat Whoever It Is We’re At War With

Plus, of course, my favourite:

• God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule

That picture of Jerry Falwell — for whom egregious is far too kind a term — reminds me: I know I’ve been busy this week, but it took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that his insane “it was all the fault of the liberals, the feminists and the Pagans” comments would probably be available on the Web.

For those who have missed this, Falwell was reported as saying, a few days after the attacks, that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’

Understandably, quite a lot of people were seriously pissed off at this. He came back with what has been described as an apology, saying that he was taken out of context. (As far as I can tell, the apology is no longer online.) As I said at the time, his comments weren’t exactly likely to be capable of being modified by the context, but you can check for yourself.

He made his comments on a Christian programme called The 700 Club hosted by Pat Robertson and a couple of other people I’ve never heard of. It’s a sort of low-brow [!] version of Tonight with Trevor MacDonald with everything looked at from a Christian perspective which ranges from slightly weird to totally bonkers. The programme in question was on Thursday, 13th September and the streamed version can be seen using RealPlayer.

Unfortunately, the section with Falwell is towards the end of the programme — at least three-quarters of the way through it. One of the interesting things about the rest of the programme is how incoherent Pat Robertson is — OK, he’s not so bad as, say, the President of the USA, but then who is? At one point he says, .…as many as 20,000 people may have died in that horrible, uh, accident that took place, the terrorist attack against the World Trade Centre.… Accident?

Sadly, Fundie Fuckwits aren’t confined to the USA, although here they are more concerned with blaming stones for foot & mouth.

SatireWire is also back in action, bringing us news that the USS Enterprise is stealthily orbiting the planet, the crew evenly divided over whether to intervene in Earth’s affairs or to simply get some drinks in Ten-Forward and watch the planet go to shit.…

Landover Baptist’s Mrs. Betty Bowers (”She’s a better Christian than you”; “known throughout Christendom for her joie d’après vivre”) comes up with helpful advice on how to spot Middle Eastern terrorists.

The Jews did it.… It was an American consiracy.… It’s a Hindu plot.… These bizarre theories are, apparently, believed by many (most?) Pakistanis to be the truth behind the WTC/Pentagon attacks. The newspeople are very intelligent, and if they are giving the story, it must be true. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more depressing comment.

Hackers have attacked various sites which they perceive as being associated with terrorism — as these sites include the ACLU, their perceptions would seem to be fairly uninformed by facts.

What with all the tosh about Nostradamus, and the widespread comment about Americans (and those who admire America no matter what the USA does) not understanding why they are so hated across great swathes of the planet, it is easy to overlook the fact that some people, American people, both understood how much some people hate America and saw this sort of attack coming:

It has been said that when an idea’s time has come a lot of people are likely to get it at the same time. In the same way, when something begins to flicker out there in the cosmos a number of people, a small group at first, begin to pick up the signals. They start to see what’s coming.

Our entertainment industry, interestingly enough, has plucked something from the unconscious of a small collective. For about 30 years now, but accelerating quickly this decade, the industry has been telling us about The Big Terrible Thing. Space aliens come and scare us, nuts with nukes try to blow us up.…

Something’s up. And deep down, where the body meets the soul, we are fearful.… Everything’s wonderful, but a world is ending and we sense it.

I don’t mean: “Uh-oh, there’s a depression coming,” I mean: We live in a world of three billion men and hundreds of thousands of nuclear bombs, missiles, warheads. It’s a world of extraordinary germs that can be harnessed and used to kill whole populations, a world of extraordinary chemicals that can be harnessed and used to do the same.

9

Three billion men, and it takes only half a dozen bright and evil ones to harness and deploy.

What are the odds it will happen? Put it another way: What are the odds it will not? Low. Nonexistent, I think.

When you consider who is gifted and crazed with rage … when you think of the terrorist places and the terrorist countries … who do they hate most? The Great Satan, the United States. What is its most important place? Some would say Washington. I would say the great city of the United States is the great city of the world, the dense 10-mile-long island called Manhattan, where the economic and media power of the nation resides, the city that is the psychological center of our modernity, our hedonism, our creativity, our hard-shouldered hipness, our unthinking arrogance.

This article is long, slightly marred by an exceptionally simpleminded Christian (or at least Deist) bit at the end, but is certainly prescient about what would happen to the USA — and did happen two weeks ago, rather later than the author anticipated when she was writing in 1998.

Here’s an interesting piece looking at the discussion among Arab intellectuals in the West over how to respond to the events of September 11th:

Fawaz A. Gerges, a professor at Sarah Lawrence College and the author of America and Political Islam, agreed. “This terribly hideous act, you can never justify it, never rationalize it, regardless of what American foreign policy has done,” he said. “This is not the time to condemn” United States policy, he continued. “This is the time to condemn what has happened. It’s time Arab intellectuals rise to the occasion.”

To Edward Said, one of the most prominent intellectuals, Arab or otherwise, such logic is flawed. “The appropriation or hijacking of language by self-appointed spokesmen goes on all the time,” he said in an e- mail. “But why should we simply accede to the hijackers? To understand is not to condone.”

The Australian provides some interesting analysis of the news coverage of the attacks:

 “The old system of journalism allowed for time — time for reporters to double-check facts and verify sources, time for editors to decide what to go with and what to leave. But in the new system that we have now, time isn’t a controlling factor. Everything is instant — now. The urge to get something new is so strong, the basics of the journalist’s craft get blown over.”

Much comment was made in the initial period following the attacks of the strange non-presence of G.W. Bush (a president of no fixed abode). Stories then began to be circulated that he had been whisked off for his own safety because there were plans to attack Air Force One. This never exactly sounded totally convincing, and the White House seems to be trying to quietly drop the story.

Also being seriously questioned are the claims that the plane which hit the Pentagon had originally targeted the White House. Not, apparently, according to the evidence of radar.

It is quickly becoming a time for politicians to try and get away with just about anything — how politicians in the USA are using the WTC attacks to justify their own agendas. That article links to another which demonstrates that in the “Land of the Free”, saying what you think about G.W. can get you fired. Banning flags in your workplace out of consideration for foreign students can get you suspended for a month.

 “Eminently chowder-headed:” what one American columnists thinks of calls for the two towers to be rebuilt. It’s also nice to hear an American dissenting from the maudlin rubbish that’s been spouted about the New York skyline in the past couple of weeks:

 “The thing we’re going to miss the most is the skyline,” Angus Kress Gillespie, author of Twin Towers: The Life of New York City’s World Trade Center, told the Salon Web site last week. “I don’t want to minimize the loss of life or the financial loss. But a year from now, what we’ll miss is the beautiful outline in the sky.”

But to focus now on something as effete and insignificant as a skyline seems tantamount to minimizing the pain of the victims, the anguish of the grieving and the harrowing fear of a nation on the precipice of war.

As she points out, the two towers were never much liked while they existed. A Salon.com article notes there wasn’t a single prominent critic or architect who over the years came forward to defend the twin towers.

The Empire State Building has re-opened to tourists. It is again the tallest building in New York, and IMHO that is the way it should stay: it (and other buildings in Manhattan, notably the Chrysler building) have a style and elegance which was wholly lacking in the monolithic towers of the World Trade Centre. Build a monument, establish a park to remember the victims of the slaughter and let that stand with the Empire State Building as symbols of the city’s spirit.

Interviewed by Channel 4, Woody Allen notes the irony that the people that did the terrorist act are people that have been so outspoken against American culture, and so, really outspoken against Hollywood films. And yet when they choose to act, they don’t choose to emulate some kind of great political leader or great religious leader; they choose to emulate a villain in a bad James Bond movie or something.

Allen has also spoken about the effect the attacks are likely to have on “Hollywood” movies.

We’re getting to the end of America’s Banned Books Week. There might not be so many attempts to get books banned here (but it isn’t unknown) as in the USA, but it’s well worth looking at the site.

Ever wondered where the Pentagon comes up with these stupid names for their operations? You’re not the only one.

A comic book published in August features the destruction of the Twin Towers and the face of bin Laden on a “10 most wanted” poster.…

What would you do if your teddy bear was possessed? Burn it! Burn it!

Are you smarter than Miss America? Well, of course you are. This little quiz can help you prove it — although, to be fair, non-Yanks can probably only be expected to get 5 out of 8, as the questions are very US-centric. (No, I’m not excusing anything — I got 7 out of 8.)

I’m not even going to describe this report. Go and read it. It’s short and unbelievable.

Monday 24th September 2001

Gas masks, warning sirens and emergency measures loom in our future. Where is all this leading to? Apocalypse soon?

The USA has said that evidence linking Osama bin Laden with the attacks on the World Trade Centre (see diagram here and here for clear information on the damage to Manhattan) and the Pentagon. The evidence will be made available to allies, but not to the Taleban because, in the words of Conoleezza Rice, it is not a government given to western jurisprudence.

The Taleban have admitted losing ground to the Northern Alliance in heavy fighting

Fears are growing of a backlash against Americans and American interests in Arab and Muslim countries when the USA strikes at Afghanistan

Given the right-wing tendencies of the current government, it is not too surprising that one of their first impulses following the terrorist attacks would be to think about introducing identity cards. Of course, these would have to be compulsory to be any use… not that they would be any use. If some crime has been committed, what use is an identity card unless (or for that matter if) you already know who has comitted the crime? What makes the government think that criminals and terrorists won’t be able to forge ID cards? This would simply be a way of irritating the average, law-abiding citizen without doing anything to hinder criminals or terrorists. It is good, then, that opposition to the notion is beginning to be voiced.

Charles Kennedy makes the very sensible point that ID card have failed to stop terrorism in other countries — such as France, Spain and Italy — where they were already in place

Derek Brown writes in The Guardian:

The idea that I must prove my identity on demand is abhorrent. And the notion that such a scheme will help to foil terrorism is just plain ludicrous.

It’s at best a diversion, and at worst a fundamental assault on liberty.…

The [News of the World] told its readers: “An overwhelming majority of British people are convinced the cards would help fight crime, prevent terrorism and identify illegal immigrants.”

Fight crime? Is a criminal less likely to rob, defraud, or commit violence if he or she is carrying a bit of plastic? Prevent terrorism? Too silly for words.

Compaq hits 7.5 out of 10 on the stupidometer.

Sunday 23rd September 2001

Colin Powell has said that the United States will soon release evidence linking Osama bin Laden to the attacks on Washington and New York. The Taleban claim not to know where Bin Laden is.

In Afghanistan the Northern Alliance is engaged in heavy fighting with the Taleban and is “gaining ground”. The MoD refuses to confirm or deny reports that SAS troops are in Afghanistan and have clashed with the Taleban. The USA has admitted that one of its spy planes has been lost over Afghanistan.

A report by John Simpson from inside Afghanistan:

The Taleban have not enjoyed real popularity in the country for at least two years. People say they are starting to be corrupted by power.

The other story you hear is that the Taleban are setting up press gangs in Kabul and Jalalabad in order to make up the numbers they are losing in defections from their armed forces.

The Taleban are becoming increasingly isolated: Pakistan has withdrawn its diplomats, the UAE has broken off diplomatic relations and Saudi Arabia is planning to do the same. Sanctions against Pakistan and India, imposed after the countries conducted nuclear tests, have been lifted by the USA. The Indian economy is being hurt by fears of war. India has assured Pakistan that it has no intention to add to the current complexities that the government and the people of Pakistan are faced with.

Bush says that the war on terrorism won’t stop with al Qaida — but Many countries are not going to share intelligence if they think we’re coming after people on their ground, or people they don’t want us to come after.

Kuwait is supporting the USA: Their government has reiterated its very clear message of support to the United States — something one Kuwaiti official described as ‘carte blanche.’

Major-General Amos Malka, Israel’s chief of military intelligence, says there is no evidence of any link between the terrorist attacks and Iraq. But the possibility of Iran being involved has been raised.

Russia has fears of declining influence in Central Asia and instability in the region leading to conflict on Russia’s southern border:

Russian Chief of General Staff Anatoly Kvashnin has been touring the region, making sure none of the countries extends too helping a hand to Washington.

 “Russia has not considered and is not planning to consider participation in a military operation against Afghanistan,” Kvashnin told reporters during his visit to Tajikistan on Wednesday. As far the “territorial integrity” of the Central Asian nations, he said, “there are relevant bilateral and other obligations.”

 “The problem is, Russian policy in the region is not conducted by politicians, but by military people,” Shukurov said. “And they unfortunately lack vision: They still see America as the main enemy and the repressive governments as their main allies.”

Now the identities of four of the hijackers is in doubt as one of those named turns up alive and well in Casablanca.

58% of Americans favour more intensive security checks for “Arabs”.

The most detailed account yet of what transpired on Flight 93. FBI director Robert Mueller says the passengers were “absolute heroes”.

The FBI and CIA deny the reports that Mossad warned in August of large numbers of suspected terrorists were entering the USA.

According to the Washington Post there are four or five al Qaida groups operating in the USA.

It can be, and has been, cogently argued that the ongoing tension in the Middle East has nothing to do with the recent terrorist attacks (the Arab-Israeli conflict was not the proximate, or even the underlying cause of the Sept. 11 attacks). Maybe not — but the situation in the Middle East and the USA’s clear favouring of Israel, whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, does have something to do with why a lot of people in the Islamic world don’t like, or even positively hate, the USA. In the Middle East, thoughts that Sharon and Arafat might be stumbling into peace get a disappointment as Sharon cancels the Arafat–Peres talks, claimiing Arafat has not delivered 48 hours of “total calm.”

Talking of Israel: Osama is an individual who doesn’t have the resources to arrange this attack . Israel is behind it. A bizarre notion, but widely believed in Pakistan.

Bush is seeking to greatly extend the powers of law enforcement and security services to spy on electronic communications.

Lufthansa introduces sky marshals:

Die Lufthansa verstärkt ihre Sicherheitsanstrengungen. Lufthansa-Chef Jürgen Weber kündigte in einem Gespräch mit der WELT an, dass “ab sofort lagebedingt sogenannte Sky-Marshals eingesetzt werden. Wir haben am Wochenende auch entschieden, den Einbau verstärkter Cockpittüren in Auftrag zu geben.”

[English]

An official statement on CNN about that film of Palestinians celebrating.

The Munich Oktoberfest is going ahead despite everything:

Es liegt zunächst am Wetter, dass das größte Volksfest der Welt ein Drittel weniger Besucher anzieht als in den vergangenen Jahren. Es liegt aber natürlich auch an der Furcht vor Anschlägen.…

Trotzdem ist es richtig, das Fest zu feiern. In zehn Jahren begeht die volkstümliche, auf der ganzen Welt bekannte Veranstaltung ihren zweihundertsten Geburtstag. Die Gaudi ist bereits eine Institution der freien, frohen Spielart europäischer Volkskultur.… Das Fest zu eröffnen ist … riskant. Doch es abzusagen wäre ein Sieg der Einschüchterung.

[English]

Russian hacker faces death penalty under Digital Millennium Copyright Act! Well, no, not really — but that’s what a news story on Yahoo! said after it had been hacked.…

We’ve seen much in the way of both gullibility and stupidity (not to say bigotry — thanks a lot, Falwell) in the wake of the attacks on the USA. It isn’t all from the Nostradamus crap mills, though. Lots of e-mails have been going around pointing out the “sinister message” hidden in the font Wingdings. (I’ve seen a few e-mails about this myself.) This is nothing new, the first stories about the so-called hidden message go back to 1992. This utterly dumb “conspiracy theory” really doesn’t deserve the name. If you type “NYC” and change the font to Wingdings, you get this set of images. That’s it. Get a life, guys.