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Thursday, September 20, 2001
Sage mom 
| | Yesterday when I was sitting at SFO watching the idle airplanes, I talked on the phone with my mother, now 88 years old and no less wise for the wear. (Still lookin' good too.) |
| | Watching  the World Trade Center rescue efforts on TV, she spoke poetically about the "voices of silence" speaking from the empty space where the buildings used to stand. Mom, who met my father when she was a Red Cross worker in Alaska during the Second World War, has experienced her share of miracles and heartbreaks, and has made the most of every one. Even old age doesn't flatten her spirits. Several years ago she said "at my age you don't miss doing the things you really want to do." As if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Many years ago when a bunch of folks were sitting around a fire in the hippie-ish community where I lived at the time, somebody asked "Who's the sanest person you know?" I was the only one who said "my mother." |
Save a civilian, sign a petition
| | Here's a petition urging President Bush to make a distinction between terrorists and the innocents who might be in the line of fire. |
Talk about faceless
| | Jane's Security news service says Aman, the Israeli military intelligence service, points less to Osama bin Laden than to others in the Al-Qaeda terror network: |
| | Directing the mission, Aman officers believe, were two of the world's foremost terrorist masterminds: the Lebanese Imad Mughniyeh, head of the special overseas operations for Hizbullah, and the Egyptian Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri, senior member of Al-Qaeda and possible successor of the ailing Osama Bin Laden. |
| | The two men have not been seen for some time. Mughniyeh is probably the world¹s most wanted outlaw. Unconfirmed reports in Beirut say he has undergone plastic surgery and is unrecognisable. Zawahiri is thought to be based in Egypt. He could be Bin Laden¹s chief representative outside Afghanistan. |
| | "We've only got scraps of information, not the full picture," admits one intelligence source, "but it was good enough for us to send a warning six weeks ago to our allies that an unprecedented massive terror attack was expected. One of our indications suggested that Imad Mughniyeh met with some of his dormant agents on secret trips to Germany. We believe that the operational brains behind the New-York attack were Mughniyeh and Zawahiri, who were probably financed and got some logistical support from the Iraqi Intelligence Service (SSO)." |
| | Very interesting reading. One especially creepy paragraph: |
| | "Bin Laden is a schoolboy in comparison with Mughniyeh," says an Israeli who knows Mughniyeh . "The guy is a genius, someone who refined the art of terrorism to its utmost level. We studied him and reached the conclusion that he is a clinical psychopath motivated by uncontrollable psychological reasons, which we have given up trying to understand. The killing of his two brothers by the Americans only inflamed his strong motivation." |
| | Remember Irangate? The whole arms-for-hostages thing? That got rolling when the head of the CIA station in Beiruit, William E. Buckley, was kidnapped. Jane's suggests Mughniyeh was not only behind that one, but, "By one unconfirmed account, Mughniyeh tortured and killed Buckley with his own hands." |
| | A year later, in a combined CIA/Mossad operation, a powerful car bomb went off at the entrance to the house of Hizbullah¹s spiritual leader, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah. Seventy-five people were killed. One of them was his brother. |
| | After Israeli helicopter gunships killed the head of Hizbullah and his family in 1992, "Mughniyeh was called back into action and, in a well-planned and devastating attack, his people blew up the Israeli embassy in Argentina. The building was demolished and 92 were killed." And in reprisal for that, "a car bomb went off in a southern Shi¹ite suburb of Beirut. Four people were killed. One of them was called Mughniyeh, but to the deep disappointment of those Israelis who planted the bomb it was the wrong one. Mughniyeh¹s life was saved, but his other brother Fuad was killed. Mughniyeh waited for his opportunity for revenge." |
| | Then, 9-11. Jane's says, "Our Israeli sources claim to see Mughniyeh¹s signature on the wreckage in New York and Washington." |
| | How to counter this kind of terrorism? "To fight these bastards you don¹t need a military attack," said an experienced Israeli commando officer. "You only need to adopt Israel¹s assassination policy." |
| | From President Bush's recent "dead or alive" statement, I take it we just have. |
| | And if we believe what Israeli intelligence is saying about Iraq, this war won't only be fought in Afghanistan. |
Will hack for news
| | Politicians worldwide will have to wake up and make this their highest priority. Governments must be creative and find ways to eliminate the terror. All citizens of all countries must support their governments even if that means a change in their quality of life. New security systems must be installed to protect all of us. |
| | I swear to you, this has nothing to do with PR. Thanks for your support. |
Branded to death
| | To protect its precious brand, Palm's legal creeps have successfully diminished its already falling value. The story is here. |
Never mind
| | Clear Channel, the reviled radio megalith, has issued a press release denying that it ever issued a "banned song" list. The link is on the corporate home page. Be warned: it opens a Microsoft Word document. |
| | In looking for more on this, I ran across the Corporate Media Portal, "a repository of information about corporatized media." It's a muckraking site of the Michael Moore school, but with more bile and less humor — Although they do have this perfect quote from Hunter S. Thompson: |
| | "The radio business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." |
Manners under fire
| | FuckedCompany reports that CDNow laid off people with this tender email from departing CEO Mike Krupit. Please know that your Vice Presidents will be here to support you and the business during this transition. |
New hope for the dead
| | As absurd as it is to do anything for dead people, there is always a satisfaction in doing it, whether the actions involve vengeance or generosity. |
| | The same absurdity applies to dead perpetrators. How do you punish a suicide? |
| | Today Eric Norlin again raises a tough question: What should we do in the face of knowing that something like the above is going to happen? In the context of that question, the conversation between retaliation and pacifism is properly framed. |
| | We know for sure who did it. And they're dead. Worse, we know the kind of people who are likely to do it again, and they are suicidal. Threatening to kill them won't help. Worse than that, we know who harbors them. We do. As one friend wrote this morning, What are we going to do, bomb Vero Beach? |
| | We don't even have the convenience of familiar and organized enemies against whom disproportionate retaliation can be launched. We don't have any leverage by threatening to kill loved ones and civilians surrounding the bad guys pulling the strings in Afghanistan. Witness what Osama bin Laden and the Taliban are willing to let Afghanistan's citizens suffer for the cause of an Islamic "holy war" that turns the stomachs of most Islamic believers. |
| | Maybe it's time to ask what we can do for those who have suffered from terrorism far longer than we have. And to look at the terrorism we have committed or sanctioned for equally as long. That's one Pacifist answer to the question. |
| | Here's another: the final answer must involve love. In the words of St. Paul, quoted at countless weddings, |
| | Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. |
| | Whatever we do, it won't be worth shit if we don't also do some of what St. Paul is talking about. |
| | The answers that work will ultimately come from our hearts. Not our pants. |
Drink the math
| | Just got this from a friend: |
| | If you bought $1000 worth of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49. If you bought $1000 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer, and traded in the cans for the nickel deposit, you would have $79. |
Good words
| | One of my favorite poets is David Whyte, whose book The Heart Aroused provided some of the inspiration for what we said about voice in The Cluetrain Manifesto. Yesterday an old friend shared one of her favorite David Whyte poems with me by email. So before I go to bed I'll pass it along: |
| | This is not
the age of information.
This is NOT
the age of information.
Forget the news,
and the radio,
and the blurred screen.
This is the time
of loaves
and fishes.
People are hungry,
and one good word is bread
for a thousand. |
From one who knows
| | Terror is a game of escalating retribution we have never experienced in the U.S., but we invite if we lash out at the Taliban. Do we want Boston to become Beiruit? Or Belfast? Do we want to make what happened last week okay in the minds of millions of Arabs whose anti-American sentiments have not quite solidified? |
| | Wouldn't that be a more appropriate response now to Islamic terror? To deal with the massive injustice done to the Palestinians, to stop the strangulation of the Iraqi people, to pull the rug from the squalid corrupt governments in several Middle East states, to deal with debt, with poverty, with exploitative trading relations and with refugees. |
| | That might not stop the more fanatical of the terrorists but it would take the edge from the anger of much of the Islamic world. Unfortunately, the US is preparing to do quite the reverse - to inflict more horror on defenceless people. Will we have a national day of mourning when thousands of innocent Afghans and perhaps Iraqis, Sudanese and Libyans are massacred in the coming months? |
| | The plans afoot seem not just further abominations but also perverse. From what has emerged about those who planned last Tuesday's atrocities, it is obvious they were scattered around the western world, including the US, and have been for years. It is reasonable to suppose there are more such "sleepers" and attacking Afghanistan will make no difference to them other than to steel their resolve to inflict yet more horror. |
| | And thanks to my old pal David Templeton for the link. |
The reciprocal conundrum
| | In talking with my sister (a retired Navy commander and graduate of the War College) this morning, an observation seemed to assemble itself in the space between us. |
| | On the one hand, President George W. Bush has been delivered something none of his predecesors have had, going back to President Ford: clear permission to risk the lives of large numbers of American soldiers. The "act of war" that cost us 5,000 people in one day plainly made it the risk possible. |
| | On the other hand, President Bush has also been delivered something no president has had, going back for the duration, and that is absent permission to risk large numbers of civilians in other countries — or anywhere. |
| | Going back at least as far as Hiroshima and Dresden, civilians have occasionally been legitimate targets — big ones — of American wartime military campaigns. But now they are not. |
| | We just lost too many of our own. Too many are already on the front lines of the War Against Terrorism that we entered only last week. And there's no Them here, beyond a few cabals of shadowy fanatics. There are no ethic or national herds of bad guys we can call "Japs," "Jerry," or "Charlie." |
| | We are at war with an 'ism, not a country, a bloc, or even much of an idealogy. |
| | Worse, the terrorism we now so righteously oppose has been a common practice of various U.S. client states for some time — a practice we conveniently overlooked or worse, rationalized. |
| | And all this lays exposed for one reason above all the rest: individual human beings are talking about it on the Net. |
| | No individual is better at that than Michael Moore, whose site has lately turned into blog with almost daily reports. Here are a few punches from his latest: |
| | All of you who are screaming for war: are you prepared to pay the price, to take thousands of more casualties? Because, my big, macho-talking friends, THAT is what this kind of war would be like. America is a complex and open society with a massive and intricate infrastructure that is fragile and vulnerable and susceptible to easy attack and disruption. IT CAN BE BROUGHT DOWN WITH A BOXCUTTER. Let me repeat that: |
| | Bush keeps calling what we are in "a war." Has anyone told him that the more he keeps using this word, the more HE puts US in jeopardy? A "war" implies that two sides are participating in an action to kill as many of the other side as possible. Bush and the pundits use the word like it¹s a one-sided deal, like we¹re going to be the only ones doing the bombing. War means we bomb them, then they bomb us. That¹s what war is, you idiots. We strafe Afghanistan, then the terrorists drop a canister of chemical weapons in the New York subway. We send in a group of commandos and wipe out a camp of Muslims, they take out the Sears Tower. |
| | IT CAN BE BROUGHT DOWN — IT CAN BE BROUGHT TO A TOTAL STANDSTILL — BY A BOXCUTTER! |
| | Nearly a week with no stock market, no commercial television, no professional sports, three days with no planes in the air (for the first time since 1911), no airports open, the country essentially shut down. A week later and the phone lines still don¹t all work. A boxcutter, folks! Do not be misled into thinking he with the biggest missile is going to win this "war." |
There are responses to this message:Re: Thursday, September 20, 2001, xeserom, 7/8/04; 8:44:37 AM Re: Thursday, September 20, 2001, Greg McNeill, 9/20/01; 6:40:59 PM Re: Thursday, September 20, 2001, Dave Winer, 9/20/01; 4:22:28 PM Re: Wednesday, September 19, 2001, rusty, 9/20/01; 1:12:46 AM
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