Saturday, September 22, 2001
posted by Irdial , 10:12 AM Þ 
Friday, September 21, 2001

"Your turn now ol' buddy!"
posted by Irdial , 9:02 PM Þ 


ah physics!

"The next Pearl Harbor will not announce itself with a searing
flash of nuclear light"-yeah let's hope not. all of those 20 megaton
weapons sitting there gathering dust.....and don't forget about
tzar bomba! 80 mt straight to the dome piece. but is trench warfare
any better? frankly i would welcome an ebomb. it might get us to rethink
what the f*ck we are doing to the planet. i don't really need these computers
i have here. just to make money. and why do i need the money? please
please ebomb me...please. self sustinance is the only solution as far as i see
it. but it's a little hard in the 8x8 polluted garden we have out back here. cities
ah....it's all fucked up. it's all fucked up completely. what is it to be human?

poof.....
posted by john , 8:07 PM Þ 


E-BOMB


BY JIM WILSON September 2001

In the blink of an eye, electromagnetic bombs could throw civilization back 200 years. And terrorists can build them for $400.

The next Pearl Harbor will not announce itself with a searing flash of nuclear light or with the plaintive wails of those dying of Ebola or its genetically engineered twin. You will hear a sharp crack in the distance. By the time you mistakenly identify this sound as an innocent clap of thunder, the civilized world will have become unhinged. Fluorescent lights and television sets will glow eerily bright, despite being turned off. The aroma of ozone mixed with smoldering plastic will seep from outlet covers as electric wires arc and telephone lines melt. Your Palm Pilot and MP3 player will feel warm to the touch, their batteries overloaded. Your computer, and every bit of data on it, will be toast. And then you will notice that the world sounds different too. The background music of civilization, the whirl of internal-combustion engines, will have stopped. Save a few diesels, engines will never start again. You, however, will remain unharmed, as you find yourself thrust backward 200 years, to a time when electricity meant a lightning bolt fracturing the night sky. This is not a hypothetical, son-of-Y2K scenario. It is a realistic assessment of the damage the Pentagon believes could be inflicted by a new generation of weapons--E-bombs.

The first major test of an American electromagnetic bomb is scheduled for next year. Ultimately, the Army hopes to use E-bomb technology to explode artillery shells in midflight. The Navy wants to use the E-bomb's high-power microwave pulses to neutralize antiship missiles. And, the Air Force plans to equip its bombers, strike fighters, cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles with E-bomb capabilities. When fielded, these will be among the most technologically sophisticated weapons the U.S. military establishment has ever built.

There is, however, another part to the E-bomb story, one that military planners are reluctant to discuss. While American versions of these weapons are based on advanced technologies, terrorists could use a less expensive, low-tech approach to create the same destructive power. "Any nation with even a 1940s technology base could make them," says Carlo Kopp, an Australian-based expert on high-tech warfare. "The threat of E-bomb proliferation is very real." POPULAR MECHANICS estimates a basic weapon could be built for $400. An Old Idea Made New

The theory behind the E-bomb was proposed in 1925 by physicist Arthur H. Compton--not to build weapons, but to study atoms. Compton demonstrated that firing a stream of highly energetic photons into atoms that have a low atomic number causes them to eject a stream of electrons. Physics students know this phenomenon as the Compton Effect. It became a key tool in unlocking the secrets of the atom.

Ironically, this nuclear research led to an unexpected demonstration of the power of the Compton Effect, and spawned a new type of weapon. In 1958, nuclear weapons designers ignited hydrogen bombs high over the Pacific Ocean. The detonations created bursts of gamma rays that, upon striking the oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere, released a tsunami of electrons that spread for hundreds of miles. Street lights were blown out in Hawaii and radio navigation was disrupted for 18 hours, as far away as Australia. The United States set out to learn how to "harden" electronics against this electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and develop EMP weapons.

America has remained at the forefront of EMP weapons development. Although much of this work is classified, it's believed that current efforts are based on using high-temperature superconductors to create intense magnetic fields. What worries terrorism experts is an idea the United States studied but discarded--the Flux Compression Generator (FCG).

A Poor Man's E-Bomb

An FCG is an astoundingly simple weapon. It consists of an explosives-packed tube placed inside a slightly larger copper coil, as shown below. The instant before the chemical explosive is detonated, the coil is energized by a bank of capacitors, creating a magnetic field. The explosive charge detonates from the rear forward. As the tube flares outward it touches the edge of the coil, thereby creating a moving short circuit. "The propagating short has the effect of compressing the magnetic field while reducing the inductance of the stator [coil]," says Kopp. "The result is that FCGs will produce a ramping current pulse, which breaks before the final disintegration of the device. Published results suggest ramp times of tens of hundreds of microseconds and peak currents of tens of millions of amps." The pulse that emerges makes a lightning bolt seem like a flashbulb by comparison.

An Air Force spokesman, who describes this effect as similar to a lightning strike, points out that electronics systems can be protected by placing them in metal enclosures called Faraday Cages that divert any impinging electromagnetic energy directly to the ground. Foreign military analysts say this reassuring explanation is incomplete.

The India Connection

The Indian military has studied FCG devices in detail because it fears that Pakistan, with which it has ongoing conflicts, might use E-bombs against the city of Bangalore, a sort of Indian Silicon Valley. An Indian Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis study of E-bombs points to two problems that have been largely overlooked by the West. The first is that very-high-frequency pulses, in the microwave range, can worm their way around vents in Faraday Cages. The second concern is known as the "late-time EMP effect," and may be the most worrisome aspect of FCG devices. It occurs in the 15 minutes after detonation. During this period, the EMP that surged through electrical systems creates localized magnetic fields. When these magnetic fields collapse, they cause electric surges to travel through the power and telecommunication infrastructure. This string-of-firecrackers effect means that terrorists would not have to drop their homemade E-bombs directly on the targets they wish to destroy. Heavily guarded sites, such as telephone switching centers and electronic funds-transfer exchanges, could be attacked through their electric and telecommunication connections.

Knock out electric power, computers and telecommunication and you've destroyed the foundation of modern society. In the age of Third World-sponsored terrorism, the E-bomb is the great equalizer.

http://popularmechanics.com/science/military/2001/9/e-bomb/print.phtml
posted by Irdial , 7:43 PM Þ 

indeed!
posted by john , 7:28 PM Þ 

Ah yes, Q33NY, that would be part of that mystical prediction of people having nothing better to do!
posted by captain davros , 5:18 PM Þ 

American Airlines Flight 11, Boston to Los Angeles, crashed into World Trade Center
United Airlines Flight 175, Boston to Los Angeles, crashed into World Trade Center
American Airlines Flight 77, Washington to Los Angeles, crashed into Pentagon
United Airlines Flight 93, Newark, N.J., to San Francisco, crashed in rural southwest Pennsylvania

hmmmms....no Q33NY flight
posted by ha , 4:04 PM Þ 

Received in email:
"try this one on for size...

Open a new word Doc, type in capitals Q33NY, the number of the flight that crashed in New York. Then change font size to 26. Then change font to Wingdings.

See what happens ..."
posted by Irdial , 1:29 PM Þ 

From "The Guardian" letters pages:

Dr. Johnson 1749
"Wealth heaped on wealth nor truth nor safety buys,
The dangers gather as the treasures rise."

Voltaire
"It is lamentable that to be a good patriot we must become the enemy of the rest of mankind."

Rudyard Kipling 1892
"when you're wounded and left on Afganistans plains,
and the women come out to cut up the remains,
gest roll to your rifle, and blow out your brains,
an go to your gawd like a soldier."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/extra
posted by Irdial , 1:23 PM Þ 


Disconnect the Dots


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41015-2001Sep16.html

By Joel Garreau Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, September 17, 2001; Page C01

The essence of this first war of the 21st century is that it's not like the old ones.

That's why, as $40 billion is voted for the new war on terrorism, 35,000 reservists are called up and two aircraft carrier battle groups hover near Afghanistan, some warriors and analysts have questions:

In the Information Age, they ask, how do you attack, degrade or destroy a small, shadowy, globally distributed, stateless network of intensely loyal partisans with few fixed assets or addresses?

If bombers are not the right hammer for this nail, what is?

Bombers worked well in wars in which one Industrial Age military threw steel at another. World War II, for instance, was a matchup of roughly symmetrical forces.

This is not true today.

That's why people who think about these things call this new conflict "asymmetric warfare." The terrorist side is different: different organization, different methods of attack -- and of defense.

"It takes a tank to fight a tank. It takes a network to fight a network," says John Arquilla, senior consultant to the international security group Rand and co-author of the forthcoming "Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy."

He asks: "How do you attack a trust structure -- which is what a network is? You're not going to do this with Tomahawk missiles or strategic bombardment."

"It's a whole new playing field. You're not attacking a nation, but a network," says Karen Stephenson, who studies everything from corporations to the U.S. Navy as if they were tribes. Trained as a chemist and anthropologist, she now teaches at Harvard and the University of London. "You have to understand what holds those networks in place, what makes them strong and where the leverage points are. They're not random connections," she says.

Human networks are distinct from electronic ones. They are not the Internet. They are political and emotional connections among people who must trust each other in order to function, like Colombian drug cartels and Basque separatists and the Irish Republican Army. Not to mention high-seas pirates, smugglers of illegal immigrants, and rogue brokers of weapons of mass destruction.

But how to establish a target list in a network?

The good news is that in the last decade we have developed a whole new set of weapons to figure that out.

An industry has arisen to help corporations build new networks and junk old hierarchical bureaucracies in the age of merging and emerging companies, says Kathleen Carley, director of the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems at Carnegie Mellon University. New tools have been developed that analyze how an organization interacts, yielding a kind of X-ray that shows where the key links are.

There is a general set of principles to any network, says Stephenson, whose company, NetForm, has developed software that mathematically analyzes networks.

She points out that typically a network is made up of different kinds of nodes -- pivotal people.

The critical ones are "hubs," "gatekeepers" and "pulsetakers," she believes. Hubs are the people who are directly connected to the most people; they know where the best resources are and they act as clearinghouses of information and ideas, although they often are not aware of their own importance. Gatekeepers are those connected to the "right" people. They are the powers around the throne, and often they know their own importance. Pulsetakers are indirectly connected to a lot of people who know the right people. They are "friends of a friend" to vast numbers of people across widely divergent groups and interests.

The classic example of how to use this analysis is "finding the critical employee in the company -- the lone expert who knows how to fix the machine," Carley says. Ironically, without network analysis, managers frequently don't recognize who that is and the nature of his importance.

"But there's no reason it can't be turned around in the opposite way," she says. There's no reason organizational glitches, screw-ups, jealousies and distrust that slow and degrade performance can't be intentionally introduced." A network's ability to adapt to new challenges can be degraded.

Carley says: "One of the things that leads to the ability to adapt is who knows who and who knows what. The higher that is, the better the group's flexibility. But you can reduce the number of times the group can communicate or congregate. Or you can rotate personnel rapidly." And in war, this may have to be done by capturing or killing them. "You can also segregate the things people are doing, so they learn only on a need-to-know basis. The more isolated the tasks are, the more you inhibit their ability to function as a team.

"Imagine in your office if you knew who went to whom for advice," Carley says. "If you found a set of people who gave out more advice than anyone else and then removed them from the network, so they can't communicate with others, you would infringe on the ability of the network to operate."

In the case of terror networks, people are linked by family ties, marriage ties and shared principles, interests and goals. They thus can be all of one mind, even though they are dispersed and devoted to different tasks. They "know what they have to do" without needing a single-central leadership, command or headquarters.

There is no precise heart or head that can be targeted, Arquilla says. Even if you take out an Osama bin Laden, his organization, al Qaeda ("The Base"), still has the resilience of a classic human network. Bin Laden's, for instance, is made up of an estimated two dozen separate militant Islamic groups in the Philippines, Lebanon, Egypt, Kashmir, Algeria, Indonesia and elsewhere, with hundreds of cells, some of them located in Western Europe and even the United States, as we've discovered in the past week.

On the other hand, depending on the structure of the network, removing a few key nodes can sometimes do a lot of good, says Frank Fukuyama, author of the seminal work "Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity" and now a professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

"Some are so tightly bound to each other that they are not embedded in other networks. Kill a few nodes, and the whole thing collapses. Take the case of the Sendero Luminoso [Shining Path] in Peru. It couldn't have been that hierarchical. It was designed for the mountains of Peru. It couldn't have been terribly centralized. It had a scattered cell structure. It was hard to infiltrate. It was dispersed. And yet when you got [Shining Path founder and leader Abimael] Guzman and a few top aides, the entire thing fell apart.

"The idea that there is no end of terorrists, no way to stamp them all out, that if you kill a hundred, another hundred will spring up -- I would be very careful of that assumption. The network of people who are willing to blow themselves up has to be limited. Sure, there are sympathizers and bagmen and drivers. But the actual core network of suicide bombers is probably a much smaller population. It is also tightknit and hard to infiltrate. But it is limited. It is not obvious to me that there is an endless supply."

Another tactic: advancing the cause of the weakest link.

"Suppose I've got a really powerful pulsetaker," says Stephenson, "vying for a position of dominance. But I also know that a member of the blood kin group is moving forward who is weaker. If you arrange an accident to eliminate the pulsetaker, and let the weaker family member come in, you've helped corrupt the network."

The beauty of seeding weakness into an organization is that you can degrade its effectiveness while still monitoring it, and not causing a new and potentially more efficient organization to replace it. "You don't want to blow away the organization. You want to keep some fraudulent activity going on so you can monitor it. If you blow them away, you lose your leads," says Stephenson. "Better the devil you know. Like [Moammar] Gaddafi. Keep him alive, because you know him. Who knows what sort of clever mastermind might replace him."

Intelligence is crucial to analyze the network's weak links so you can destroy it.

"You're talking about what amounts to a clan or a tribe or brotherhood of blood and spilled blood. That is really tough to crack. Trying to infiltrate it -- we're talking years," says David Ronfeldt, a senior social scientist at Rand. However, from outside the network you can also look for patterns that stand out from the norm, like who talks to whom, e-mail exchanges, telephone records, bank records and who uses whose credit card, says Ronfeldt.

"I would attack on the basis of their trust in the command and control structures by which they operate," says Arquilla. "If they believe they are being listened to, they will be inhibited. If we were to reduce their trust in their infrastructure, it would drive them to non-technical means -- force them to keep their heads down more. A courier carrying a disk has a hell of a long way to go to communicate worldwide. If you slow them down, interception is more likely."

Human networks are distinct from electronic networks. But technology is the sea in which they swim.

"What made nets vulnerable historically is their inability to coordinate their purpose," says Manuel Castells, author of "The Rise of the Network Society," the first volume of his trilogy, "The Information Age."

"But at this point," he says, "they have this ability to be both decentralized and highly focused. That's what's new. And that's technology. Not just electronic. It's their ability to travel everywhere. Their ability to be informed everywhere. Their ability to receive money from everywhere."

This is why Arquilla is dubious about some traditional intelligence-gathering techniques, and enthusiastic about new ones. For instance: You can talk about turning one of the network members over to your side, but "that's problematic," he says. "You don't know if they're playing you as a double agent or are simply psychotic." He is also dubious about the value of satellite reconnaissance in determining what we need to know about these networks.

However, Arquilla likes the idea of understanding how the network works by using clandestine technical collection. For instance, he says, when any computer user surfs on the Web -- looking for travel tickets, say -- more often than not a piece of software, called a cookie, is transmitted to his computer. The device monitors his every move and reports back to some database what he's done.

Now, Arquilla says, "think of something much more powerful than cookies." They exist, he says. One way to use them is by creating "honey pots." This involves identifying Web sites used by activists or setting up a Web site that will attract them, and seeding them with these intelligent software agents. When the activists check in, they can't leave without taking with them a piece of software that allows you to backtrack, getting into at least one part of the enemy network. "That likely gives you his/her all-channel connections, and maybe even some hints about hubs or the direction of some links," says Arquilla.

There are other possibilities.

"You know those little cameras that some people have on top of their monitors? Let me just say that it is entirely possible to activate those and operate them and look through them without the machine being turned on," he says.

Software also exists that "allows you to reconstruct every single keystroke. One after the other. Why is that important? If you do find the right machine, you can reconstruct everything that happens. Even with unbreakable encryption, you have all the keystrokes."

Much of this is hardly new, of course. Divide and conquer has worked for a long time. Whenever the police got a Mafia wiseguy -- Joe Valachi, for instance -- to betray the others, no Mafiosi could trust another one as much anymore. Machiavelli, in "The Prince" of 1505, wrote about the strategic deployment of betrayal to undermine trust.

What's different is our technological ability to track groups in real time and see patterns that may be invisible on the surface. "Our technology is sufficient that you can now handle realistic-ized groups. We can deal with 30 to several thousand," says Carley. "You couldn't do that before."

In 1996, Arquilla and Ronfeldt wrote a slim but highly prescient volume called "The Advent of Netwar" for the National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the defense agencies.

It predicts that in a war between human networks, the side with superior intelligence wins. It also makes some tactical suggestions about countering human networks with counter-networks that actually have been used to combat computer hackers.

They include:

* Find a member of the enemy group who is clearly a harmless idiot; treat him as if he were the most important figure and the only one worthy of being taken seriously.

* Single out competent and genuinely dangerous figures; write them off or call their loyalty to the cause into question.

* Control the stories people tell each other to define their reason for living and acting as they do. The terrorist story, says Ronfeldt, "gives these people common cause -- us versus them. Right now the U.S. would seem to have the edge at the worldwide level. But within the region, there was the dancing in the streets in Palestine. Part of the story is that America's evil, and that America's presence is to blame for so many of the problems in the Middle East. We have to attack that part."

* Find the list of demands extorted by the network; grant some that make no sense and/or disturb and divide their political aims.

* Paint the enemy with PR ugly paint so that they seem beyond the pale, ridiculous, alien, maniacal, inexplicable.

* Destroy their social support networks by using "helpful" but differently valued groups that are not perceived as aggressive.

* Divide and conquer; identify parts of the network that can be pacified and play them against former allies.

* Intensify the human counter-networks in one's own civil society.

Adds Manuel Castells: "We should be organizing our own networks, posing as Islamic terrorist networks. We should then demand to join one of these networks and then destroy the trust structures. Only way to infiltrate. Oldest technique in the world."

Few of these ideas involve flattening Kabul, all of these analysts note.

Stephenson worries that massing the Navy near Afghanistan is "a symbolic show of old-fashioned strength. It's not about that anymore. This whole playing ground has shifted."

"In order to do anything, you cannot be blind," says Castells. "The most extraordinary vulnerability of the American military is it looks like they do not have many informants inside Afghanistan. It also looks like the majority of the components of this network do not relate directly or essentially to nation-states. That is new. Unless we have a fundamental rethinking of strategic matters, it's going to be literally, literally exhausting and impossible. It will be desperate missile attacks at the wrong targets with a lot of suffering. Massive bombardments turn around the opinion in many ways."

"Basically," says Ronfeldt, "you have to find somebody to wipe out."
posted by Irdial , 10:09 AM Þ 
Thursday, September 20, 2001

oops. missed that previous post. sorry folks.
posted by monkeys , 10:25 PM Þ 

Counter Punch - America's Best Political Newsletter
http://www.counterpunch.org/

some really good writing here...just that the huge fonts hurts my eyes. it's too much to copy&paste... check it
posted by ha , 9:53 PM Þ 


no rules

in War & Peace, Tolstoy discourses on the fundamentally sickening notion that war should have rules, proposing that if we made war without rules, if we acted out the agression in its purest form without stitching on morality in order to make the event more palatable, we would soon tire of the horror involved, we would think a little harder about the consequences before drawing out plans of engagement ............. this is something that last tuesday is teaching us ............ why should the notion of our 'fair' warmongering, with our hopes of minimising 'colateral damage', our excusing the likely huge numbers of civilian casualties with the proposal that ours is the 'good cause', be any less palatable than the act of flying a plane into a building ?
posted by a hymn in g to nann , 8:20 PM Þ 

"when does editorial content become propaganda?"
-cbc host

"well i'm just being honest with my feelings. now is the time
for laughter....i mean with all that is happenning. when we print a
cartoon of bin laden walking thru a metal detector with a box cutter
we are just providing a vehicle for people to blow off steam."
-a.w.s editor maclean's magazine

posted by john , 7:40 PM Þ 


"We have to fight the terrorists as if there were no rules and preserve our open society as if there were no terrorists."


Last Tuesday's terrors were so calamitous that they threaten to shake us loose from our constitutional mooring. A civil liberties catastrophe looms as citizens surrender to fear, fury and frustration and as lawmakers throw money and shards of the Bill of Rights at the specter of terrorism.

Some of our elected leaders predict a gloomy future for freedom.

"We're in a new world where we have to rebalance freedom and security," said House Democratic Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt, D-Mo. "We're not going to have all the openness and freedom we have had."

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., repeated the warning: "When you're in this type of conflict, when you're at war, civil liberties are treated differently."

Even staunch First Amendment advocates, haunted by the suffering and devastation in New York City, near Washington, D.C., and the Pennsylvania countryside, are tempted to temporize in the face of insistent calls to suspend or re-examine our commitment to civil liberties.

The First Amendment fallout commenced within hours of the airplanes crashing into their targets. Tuesday afternoon, FBI agents fanned out to persuade Internet firms and service providers to hook up e-mail sniffing software to monitor private citizens' e-mail. While the desire to marshal all resources in such circumstances is understandable, there are serious consequences for private speech and public discourse when ordinary citizens fear that law enforcement officials with broad powers to investigate and detain are listening in.

Expressive activity was curtailed in a variety of places. A high school official reprimanded a student who distributed a flier asking her classmates to pray. Officials at the Baltimore Museum of Art took down a Christopher Wool painting containing the word "Terrorist" (later, they promised to provide "new interpretation" for the painting when it is reinstalled). New York police and members of the National Guard confiscated film from journalists and tourists.

If only that were the worst of it.

Government officials and policymakers immediately called for measures that would chill public discourse, disrupt reporting by the press, and interrupt the flow of information to the public. They want an expansion of law enforcement powers to spy on telephone and Internet traffic, to restrict the use of Internet encryption products that thwart online monitoring of private email, to slow down and divert funds from the declassification of secrets, and to force public libraries to reveal information about patrons' use of their computers.

In Congress, prospects brightened for several troubling measures, including:

  • The Cyber Security Information Act, which among other things would blow a gaping hole in the Freedom of Information Act.


  • Anti-leaks legislation, dubbed the "official secrets acts" by those who are deeply concerned about its impact on speech and the press and the flow of critical information to the public.


  • The Flag Desecration Act, which would for the first time in the history of our nation amend the First Amendment to prohibit burning the flag as a form of political dissent.


    • To compound the threat, there are disturbing examples of private or self-imposed restrictions on expression. Web pages shut down or removed content, a radio network circulated a list of songs that would be problematic to play, an employer confiscated American flags from the desks of workers, and a wire service withheld news footage after Palestinian threats against a photographer.

    It would be foolish to dismiss such events — public or private — as mere nibbling at the edges of our rights. In fact, each nibble diminishes our commitment to freedom and the principles that distinguish our way of life from all others.

    In such an atmosphere, voices of dissent grow silent, probing questions by the press are viewed as unpatriotic and subversive, and whistleblowers inside government with vital information are quieted. In such an atmosphere, propaganda, rumor and paranoia fester and infect. In such an atmosphere, citizens are denied their place as full partners in their own governance.

    By suspending some of our most precious principles, the risk becomes not just terrorists whose hearts have grown rancid with hate but also a citizenry whose hearts are filled with fear.

    There are things we can and should be doing rather than joining the stampede to ditch our rights. As columnist Thomas Friedman put it: "We have to fight the terrorists as if there were no rules and preserve our open society as if there were no terrorists."

    First, we must remember that we've gone down this road too many times before. We have suspended freedom of speech, press and assembly during wartime and other crises, to the point of sending prominent Americans to jail for long terms for uttering unpatriotic words. And always we've looked back in wonderment that we could have been so stupid, that we could have so easily cast aside our democratic heritage.

    We must demand of ourselves that a distinction is made — in public discourse as well as public policy — between what is merely inconvenient and what strikes at the heart of our most important freedoms.

    We must demand of those proposing a degradation of our freedom that they provide an immediate and convincing argument that such an approach represents a real solution rather than a false hope.

    Finally, before we begin to contemplate forfeiture of any of our essential liberties, we must thoroughly examine the lapses in public policy and operations that have become so cruelly evident in the wake of the disaster. Lapses in intelligence collection and analysis; in basic security measures at airports; in granting and monitoring of visas; in national, state and local emergency preparedness.

    As much as we wish to be safe forever from the horrors of last week, we simply cannot protect freedom by forsaking freedom. As much as we want relief from this time of national duress, we simply cannot make ourselves more secure by making fundamental freedoms less secure.

    The words of Samuel Adams, in a different time and context, present a challenge to our natural impulse to sacrifice freedom in the face of terrorism:

    "Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, What should be the reward of such sacrifices? - If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom - go from us in peace. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you."

    What an affront to the courage and heroism shown by those who gave their lives in rescue efforts or in forcing hijackers into a crash if we give in easily to fear or panic.

    Fire from the skies and hatred from afar last Tuesday caused human carnage and suffering at an unthinkable level. They dealt terrifying blows to our financial institutions, our transportation and communications systems, our political and military nerve centers, and to a nation's sense of self and security.

    Do we really want to add constitutional freedoms to that sorrowful list of casualties?

    From Freedom Forum
    posted by Irdial , 3:24 PM Þ 

    Like I said before, cameras and ID cards will do nothing to stop people carrying out these acts. One of these "terrorists" actually had "International Terrorist" as his occupation on his official identity card.

    Some of the pilots who flew the planes were caught on CCTV at ATMs and in the Airport just before they got on the plane. CCTV does not stop crime. ID cards will hurt the millions of people who will be compelled to carry them and use them in transactions.

    What these governments want is TOTAL CONTROL of ORDINARY people; they dont give a toss about "terrorists" this is just a pretext to bring an Orwellian Jackboot state into existance, and they will get ZERO resistance from the sheeple because they all believe that these measures will protect them.

    And dont look to human rights legislation to help you UK citizens, because all the sheeple in Europe ALREADY CARRY ID CARDS BY LAW. It is ILLEGAL to leave your house without your ID in Belgium for example. I have discussed this with Belgian friends before, and they dont have any problem whatsoever with this legislation. Game Over.
    posted by Irdial , 11:05 AM Þ 

    i'm going to go watch dr. mabuse again. that is
    totally fucking unbelievable.
    posted by john , 10:52 AM Þ 

    "The hijackers did not use encryption techniques", the
    official said. or.................................it dosen't matter.
    if it needs to be read then we'll get it for you, um sir

    "and they used it well" -dosen't look like it....does it?
    posted by john , 10:48 AM Þ 

    The most revolting, stupid and irresponsible edition of the Daily Mail was distributed today, with the following cartoon on page 17:

    Not since Nazi era racial propaganda has the world seen a cartoon like this printed in a national newspaper. Its quite a development. The people responsible for it are no different to the people who made the postcards that you can see on this page, and this one. The whole world has gone totally INSANE!
    posted by Irdial , 10:42 AM Þ  

    -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
    Hash: SHA1


    On Wed, 19 Sep 2001 09:10:28 -0500, in alt.security.pgp
     kohster@northwestern.edu (Julian Y. Koh) wrote:
    >
    >http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010918/ts/attack_investigation_dc_23.html
    > 
    >
    > Which makes me wonder why Echelon didn't pick up the traffic.  :)



    | In Washington, DC, an FBI official told reporters the hijackers and their
    | known associates used public computers, such as those in libraries, as
    | well as their own personal computers to communicate. 
    |
    | ``They did use it (the Internet) and they used it well,'' the official
    | said of the e-mails of the hijackers and their associates. The FBI has
    | been able to get e-mails that date back as far as 30 to 45 days, the
    | official said. 
    |
    | The official said the e-mails were in English and Arabic, that there were
    | hundreds of communications, and the e-mails were not just limited to the
    | United States. The hijackers did not use encryption techniques, the
    | official said. 




    O x
    - -----
    Owen Blacker
    Senior Internet Software Developer / Information Security Consultant
    See http://www.owens-place.org.uk/pgp.html -- more about my PGP keys
    Sig  0x3e2056b9 | 18cd 92aa 32aa 81b9 f5e8  c520 6475 6239 3e20 56b9
    - -----
    Opinions are mine.  My employer and their clients can get their own!


    -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
    Version: PGP 7.0
    Comment: Due to RIP, check for revocation before use


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    ve5lCLtojxAAYkmvXSdfiVw5
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    posted by Irdial , 9:05 AM Þ 


    Infinite \In"fi*nite\, a. [L. infinitus: cf. F. infini. See
    In- not, and Finite.]
    1. Unlimited or boundless, in time or space; as, infinite
    duration or distance.

    Whatever is finite, as finite, will admit of no
    comparative relation with infinity; for whatever is
    less than infinite is still infinitely distant from
    infinity; and lower than infinite distance the
    lowest or least can not sink. --H. Brooke.

    2. Without limit in power, capacity, knowledge, or
    excellence; boundless; immeasurably or inconceivably
    great; perfect; as, the infinite wisdom and goodness of
    God; -- opposed to finite.

    Great is our Lord, and of great power; his
    understanding is infinite. --Ps. cxlvii.5.

    O God, how infinite thou art! --I. Watts.

    3. Indefinitely large or extensive; great; vast; immense;
    gigantic; prodigious.

    Infinite riches in a little room. --Marlowe.

    Which infinite calamity shall cause To human life.
    --Milton.

    4. (Math.) Greater than any assignable quantity of the same
    kind; -- said of certain quantities.

    5. (Mus.) Capable of endless repetition; -- said of certain
    forms of the canon, called also perpetual fugues, so
    constructed that their ends lead to their beginnings, and
    the performance may be incessantly repeated. --Moore
    (Encyc. of Music).

    Syn: Boundless; immeasurable; illimitable; interminable;
    limitless; unlimited; endless; eternal.

    Justice, by definition brings closure to an event or crime, sets the record straight, evens out the score. Justice is descreet, deals in instances that have a beginning and an end. And there is always an end in justice, that is how parties seeking justice can finally be satisfied. Since Justice is about bringing balance, and attaining a single goal, rectifying once, an injustice it is totally absurd to speak about INFINITE JUSTICE. You FOOLS!

    Wait a minute:

    The opposite of INTINITE is FINITE. So they for sure have spoken about a FINAL SOLUTION TO THE ISLAMIC TERRORIST PROBLEM. Oh dear me, can you imagine?, "turn the name around boys; no one will notice".
    posted by Irdial , 8:37 AM Þ 

    Argh. Just to put a break in the rather weighty subject, I got my copy of Electric Enigma the other day, and I must say it is truly enchanting. Listening past the walls of "sferics" is fun and reveals beautiful sounds.
    I was amused after seeing "We are the best." in the credits list. :x

    Now back to the regularily scheduled Lead Topic™.
    posted by Barrie , 4:48 AM Þ 
    Wednesday, September 19, 2001


    operation "infinite arrogance"
    posted by john , 10:44 PM Þ 

    following the commentary about last week's events, particularly that on tv, with its appalling imagery, i've occassionally had to blink to wake myself from the illusion that i'm watching a hugely extended, big-budget nature program, complete with hushed, david attenborough - like narration ............. the principle point that seems to be the cause for so much anguish is the fact that, as humans, as sentient beings, we deem ourselves to be 'above' base animal instincts ....... this provides a large part of the enjoyment in watching a programme about, say, walruses ; we see footage of two huge males battling each other, gouging each other apparently senselessly, in order to display their right to 'own' a particular stretch of coastline and first rights to the females upon it, and we can sit and watch this smug in the knowledge that we, as a more refined set of atoms, could never act in such an undignified manner ...............

    i include myself in the arrogant group that blinds itself to the fact that walruses reflect the broader lives of their viewers, and grieve for the fact that ................ well ........ i was going to say that it takes an event like this to remind us of the fact, to show us that in many ways we are a more crude creature than those we record, but i'm not sure, after witnessing the immediate calls for retribution, that we want or are capable of being shown ............... we still resemble the ants nest that erupts in fury when disturbed ..........

    there is a tribe in the amazon, or somewhere similar, that chooses one person to act as its 'history book' : when he/she is old enough, she is told about all events in the tribe's history from her birth onwards, and at a prescribed date in the future the whole tribe gathers to hear their story ....... the history teller has worked his whole life for this moment, has assumed a role of great importance within the tribe, although for a different one to the one she assumes ........... on the prescribed date the history teller stands before his followers and recites the story, at the end of which she is killed and eaten : all debts and arguments prior to that event are void and forgotten, and a new 'history book' is chosen

    do our leaders think the world is dumb enough to presume that the same will happen if they neutralise their idealogical foes ? perhaps our leaders are dumb enough to presume order will magically materialise ?

    perhaps this is just one of these things that must happen as a consequence of our living according to the "laws of nature" ? ......... you know, in the way that a supposedly peaceful pecking order within a brood of chickens is disturbed by the death or deterioration of the most violent pecker, or by the arrival of a cocky ( excuse me ) contender : the slightly weaker creatures see their moment and battle it out to determine who pecks the hardest, after which peace reigns ..................... i don't mean that i agree with it, far from it ; i abhor the fact that as sentient beings we are still unable to take on board the most profound results of our sentient nature : i'm just thinking that maybe our biological, innate animal characteristics still have too powerful a hold over us, and that as a swelled mass, the inertia that results is impossible to resist ( although that's obviously no reason not to try ) ...........................

    posted by a hymn in g to nann , 11:32 AM Þ 

    When you have a leaking pipe that you want to stop, you do not write legislation outlawing leaking pipes; you TURN OFF THE WATER and PATCH THE HOLE. Banning cryptography, introducing ID cards, opening peoples mail, security cameras, face scanners; NONE of these will stop people from bombing, hijacking and murdering.

    Its amazing (though not surprising) that no one has pointed out to the Americans that the most CCTV'd country on earth STILL gets bombed by the IRA whenever they choose to do a campaign. Are we the only people who understand this? cameras have not prevented a SINGLE explosion from taking place in mainland UK. It does however, provide huge revenues for the CCTV companies and the Police, who use them to fleece car drivers.

    The only measures that people should be thinking about are the ones that FIX THE PIPES, in other words, solutions that fix the ROOT CAUSE of all these problems, the main one being an un-democratic United Nations. Everything else is just a ploy to enforce Orwellian controls on the civilized peoples of the earth. It will solve nothing, destroy everything, and leave the "criminals" untouched.

    If freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will have freedom.

    You heard it here first.
    posted by Irdial , 10:42 AM Þ 
    Tuesday, September 18, 2001

    John Brunners 10 sf novels every politician (particularly now i think.Tom) should read:

    1.1984 - George Orwell for it's portrait of a totally efficient tyranny.

    2.Earth Abides - George R. Stewart - For Reminding us about how fragile sociaety is.

    3.No one will escape (Keiner kommt Davon) - Hans Helmut Kirst. For it's picture of Europe declining into nuclear war.

    4.After All, This is England. - Robert muller. For it's hideously convincing depiction of how Fascism might come to us in the guise of patriotism.

    5.The Other man - Giles Cooper. For it protagonist,a British officer dutifully serving the all conquering Nazis.

    6.The man who held the Queen to ransom and sent parliament packing. - Peter van greenway. For the hope it offers us that someone might break the deadlock we are trapped in.

    7.Make Room!Make Room! - Harry Harrison . For showing us what it would be like if we had to live as millions do in poverty stricken nations.

    8.The Devils alternative - For the only credicle scenario i know that suggests why Russia might want to invade the west.

    9.The Time Machine - For the way it allows us to view our petty modern concerns SUB SPECIE AETERNITATIS.

    10.The shockwave rider - John Brunner. In all diffidence because Alvin Toffler and others regard it as a reasonable projection of a computerised society.

    Copyright 1982 John Brunner.

    And speaking of time machines, i sometimes think John Brunner must of had one his insights into what America might become
    are uncanny.Can i also reccomend 'The Sheep Look Up' the title of which is taken from a part of paradise lost, It reads
    "The Sheep look up, but are not fed but swoln (swollen) with wind and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly and foul contagion spreads."
    posted by thomas , 4:14 PM Þ 

    i sent this irdial last night, about 4 or 5 am. he said i should post it here. the reason i didn't originally is because everything i've written recently seems to have come out wrong. anyway here you go...

    ---
    the [george galloway / house of commons] quotes can be found here

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/newsid_1544000/1544565.stm

    along with dennis skinner's and jack straw's.

    i'm scared. this whole thing is so frightening, i know america / the allies / nato are bombing people all over the region. maybe a worse atrocity is the lack of coverage on western media. perhaps then people could understand it. that's not what i'm scared of. i'm scared of america. of what bush can, and will do. of what blair will do to save face, to lick the arse of this seemingly illiterate head of state... maybe i'm in the wrong, i have no problem with dialect or idiosyncrasies but i think the language he uses is just a bit inappropriate for someone of his position. maybe i'm too much the traditionalist.

    i guess bomb strikes are now inevitable. what will they achieve though? in fact, rewind. WHERE is the evidence that bin Laden is involved in all this? a piece in yesterday's Guardian pointed out that the us government had not released any evidence pointing towards him. it seems to me that they are using this as an all too timely and convenient excuse to go after "those folks" that they have been chasing for a while. sadam, ossama, and any of the other innumerable arabian undesirables. today on the bbc i heard of one us politician saying that using this as an excuse to get sadam hussein as well would ease tension in the region. huh?

    i'm not sure of the whole history of the region, but i know the arab isreali conflict was kick started by britain's crap handle of events pre and post wwII. they were given control of isreal, which was then an arab country and they promptly fucked things up. telling the jewish refugees they'd be allowed "back" into the "motherland" (this was generations since they had exiled due to previous grievances) whilst telling the palestinians that they wouldn't allow any jews in. or maybe it was 10,000 and they ended up letting 100,000 in. i have forgotten, i am crap and this was in my gcse's a good four years ago... anyway, we also learnt about hailee selassie and the general arabian feeling towards the west even then... add to this libya, iran, iraq and all of the west's combined efforts at destroying these people's lives and you have a situation that breeds anti american feeling without the need for the assassination of someone who is looked upon as a hero. i thought assassination was outlawed anyway. i realise that the taliban and sadam hussein aren't the most humanitarian of dictators, but i still feel there would be a lot of unrest if they were to be bombed and hunted. and looking at america's history of witch hunts they are hardly short and sharp. it will be a long messy campaign against these invisible enemies. with heavy losses on both sides. mainly the civilian side though. i expect a few tv stations, pharmaceutical companies and maybe even some schools will be "surgically" targeted by cruise missiles. but i'll doubt that even if 10 x the amount of damage, both physical or human, is done against the arab states it will cause a fuss in america...

    this is all over the place and doesn't make sense. i'm tired, and just writing things as they appear. excuse me. like i said. i'm scared.

    so if it does trigger a war. where do we stand? where do i stand? 20 years old. a degree student. therefore one can assume intelligent. possibly not the fittest or strongest person in the world, but with the right training i could be beefed up. maybe i could learn to fly a jet? i've seen the end of the rebellion many times from the cockpit of my TIE fighter and i'm sure they could lock me in a room with MS FS2001 and i'd be qualified in no time.

    but would i want to fight? no. why? because i'm a coward. i'm also a pacifist of some sort. i never want the blood of someone else on my hands, no matter how remotely. i don't believe in this war either. but then again, that could just be me being a coward.

    so then. i could stand up and be a conscientious objector. wear my white feather and put up with the abuse i would undoubtedly get from those too old or young to fight, but perhaps they believe it is right... with a little forethought and practise i may even be able to stand my ground in a debate, with well developed reasoning... i could go further, i could join some sort of resistance. a digital guerilla. i could use my skills to produce anti war propaganda. websites, posters, magazines, leaflets. educate people about why i wouldn't want to fight and what can be done to pressurise the government to resort to more diplomatic means...

    it seems from [irdial's] last post to blogdial, that people are already mobilizing in their own ways, compiling lists of crypto resources. hastily burning stuff on the net onto cdrs... i guess the outbreak of war could severely cripple the internet. even though that is why it was designed in the first place. what i mean is the government could somehow enforce strict censorship in a kind of "careless talk costs lives" style campaign. if the fbi are using carnivore already, and the ARS are recording all mobile phone calls private communication methods will be harder to come across. and yet if we are going to fight against the war mongers over the internet we will need all the help we can.

    perhaps i'm being far too excitable about this whole thing, belive me i'm not looking forward to anything right now. i hope somehow this can bubble over. not that it will happen, maybe the taliban will get scared, hand over bin Laden and then dissolve with a little us help... the us will be happy, they have their man. they always get their man. and "peace" will be restored to the middle east...

    anyway.. if this does happen/ you will be the first i turn to i guess. i trust you, you seem to talk sense a lot of the time. but maybe you are just the old man in the shop in my 1984... i am hoping you will know where to turn to if this all goes wrong.
    posted by alex_tea , 1:13 PM Þ 

    hello everyone, I hope you are as well as you can be, I got a couple of things I'd like to say....

    I am getting sick of seeing so called experts whose only purpose seems to be to express the excitement of being able to be on every news broadcast and say "thats it - last Tuesday the world changed" like its a highpoint in their illustrious career of giving non expert information. On this front the media really does have to hold its head in shame. Every popular peak time news show refuses to really discuss the root of the problem and make people more aware of what the actual situation is and, more importantly, what caused it - its just war this war that - I feel like I'm watching the day today (a parody of news programs if you've not seen it).

    And this is the very problem. As people now start to attack innocents because they may have a passing resemblance to someone of arabic nature, the true nature of what we are dealing with comes out. You know I read a cab driver in the UK is now paralysed from the neck down because of an argument about fares, in which the fools who perpetrated the crime used the recent attacks in the USA as good reason for their attack. Not only is using recent atrocities as a mask for your own personal defects a sickening path to follow, it also shows just the sheer level of ignorance that is faced in trying to resolve this situation - are these people any better than the people on the plane?

    If we are at war then we are not at war with terrorists we are at war with stupidity - with the stupid behaviour that started this, with the stupid behaviour that perpetuates this and with the stupid people who want to remain stupid. Even in our civil society that has access to information so you can educate yourself, people choose to ignore and act like I don't know what, yet jump up and say we are better than you, we know best, our way is right.

    People talking about winning? Someone tell me what can be won here? Apart from an awakening to realising that this cycle of idiocy and anger must change I don't believe much - certainly no war. I look sometimes at the people in power and the popularity words that come out of their mouth and just am taken aback by their sheer irresponsibility.

    I don't know what's right, and I'm certainly not about to say its easy, but surely something must change. I don't know, maybe now isn't the time for the above.

    I'd like to say though that this site and the people who are contributing to it have written and said some of the most enlightening and appropriate material concerning this subject. It seems odd to have to say, but I really appreciate the fact I have access to it and that I have been able to share thoughts and words with people who know how to use their brains - at these points it makes a difference.

    ++++++be well all of you++++++++
    posted by Paul , 11:07 AM Þ 

    In response to Tuesday's terrorist attacks, Clear Channel, the world's
    largest radio network, has sent out a list of some 150 "lyrically
    questionable" songs by everyone from the Animals to the Zombies to its radio
    stations, recommending that the songs not be aired. Some songs are overtly
    violent in their intent, but the majority simply contain metaphorical
    language or narrative aspects that connect uncomfortably with the tragedy.

    http://www.hitsdailydouble.com/news/songs.html

    Clear Channel's List of Songs with Questionable Lyrics

    Artist - Title
    Drowning Pool - "Bodies"
    Mudvayne - "Death Blooms"
    Megadeth - "Dread and the Fugitive"
    Megadeth - "Sweating Bullets"
    Saliva - "Click Click Boom"
    P.O.D. - "Boom"
    Metallica - "Seek and Destroy"
    Metallica - "Harvester or Sorrow"
    Metallica - "Enter Sandman"
    Metallica - "Fade to Black"
    All Rage Against The Machine songs
    Nine Inch Nails - "Head Like a Hole"
    Godsmack - "Bad Religion"
    Tool - "Intolerance"
    Soundgarden - "Blow Up the Outside World"
    AC/DC - "Shot Down in Flames"
    AC/DC - "Shoot to Thrill"
    AC/DC - "Dirty Deeds"
    AC/DC - "Highway to Hell"
    AC/DC - "Safe in New York City"
    AC/DC - "TNT"
    AC/DC - "Hell's Bells"
    Black Sabbath - "War Pigs"
    Black Sabbath - "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath"
    Black Sabbath - "Suicide Solution"
    Dio - "Holy Diver"
    Steve Miller - "Jet Airliner"
    Van Halen - "Jump"
    Queen - "Another One Bites the Dust"
    Queen - "Killer Queen"
    Pat Benatar - "Hit Me with Your Best Shot"
    Pat Benatar - "Love is a Battlefield"
    Oingo Boingo - "Dead Man's Party"
    REM - "It's the End of the World as We Know It"
    Talking Heads - "Burning Down the House"
    Judas Priest - "Some Heads Are Gonna Roll"
    Pink Floyd - "Run Like Hell"
    Pink Floyd - "Mother"
    Savage Garden - "Crash and Burn"
    Dave Matthews Band - "Crash Into Me"
    Bangles - "Walk Like an Egyptian"
    Pretenders - "My City Was Gone"
    Alanis Morissette - "Ironic"
    Barenaked Ladies - "Falling for the First Time"
    Fuel - "Bad Day"
    John Parr - "St. Elmo's Fire"
    Peter Gabriel - "When You're Falling"
    Kansas - "Dust in the Wind"
    Led Zeppelin - "Stairway to Heaven"
    The Beatles - "A Day in the Life"
    The Beatles - "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"
    The Beatles - "Ticket To Ride"
    The Beatles - "Obla Di, Obla Da"
    Bob Dylan/Guns N Roses - "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"
    Arthur Brown - "Fire"
    Blue Oyster Cult - "Burnin' For You"
    Paul McCartney and Wings - "Live and Let Die"
    Jimmy Hendrix - "Hey Joe"
    Jackson Brown - "Doctor My Eyes"
    John Mellencamp - "Crumbling Down"
    John Mellencamp - "I'm On Fire"
    U2 - "Sunday Bloody Sunday"
    Boston - "Smokin"
    Billy Joel - "Only the Good Die Young"
    Barry McGuire - "Eve of Destruction"
    Steam - "Na Na Na Na Hey Hey"
    Drifters - "On Broadway"
    Shelly Fabares - "Johnny Angel"
    Los Bravos - "Black is Black"
    Peter and Gordon - "I Go To Pieces"
    Peter and Gordon - "A World Without Love"
    Elvis - "(You're the) Devil in Disguise"
    Zombies - "She's Not There"
    Elton John - "Benny & The Jets"
    Elton John - "Daniel"
    Elton John - "Rocket Man"
    Jerry Lee Lewis - "Great Balls of Fire"
    Santana - "Evil Ways"
    Louis Armstrong - "What A Wonderful World"
    Youngbloods - "Get Together"
    Ad Libs - "The Boy from New York City"
    Peter Paul and Mary - "Blowin' in the Wind"
    Peter Paul and Mary - "Leavin' on a Jet Plane"
    Rolling Stones - "Ruby Tuesday"
    Simon And Garfunkel - "Bridge Over Troubled Water"
    Happenings - "See You in Septemeber"
    Carole King - "I Feel the Earth Move"
    Yager and Evans - "In the Year 2525"
    Norman Greenbaum - "Spirit in the Sky"
    Brooklyn Bridge - "Worst That Could Happen"
    Three Degrees - "When Will I See You Again"
    Cat Stevens - "Peace Train"
    Cat Stevens - "Morning Has Broken"
    Jan and Dean - "Dead Man's Curve"
    Martha & the Vandellas - "Nowhere to Run"
    Martha and the Vandellas/Van Halen - "Dancing in the Streets"
    Hollies - "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother"
    San Cooke - Herman Hermits, "Wonder World"
    Petula Clark - "A Sign of the Times"
    Don McLean - "American Pie"
    J. Frank Wilson - "Last Kiss"
    Buddy Holly and the Crickets - "That'll Be the Day"
    John Lennon - "Imagine"
    Bobby Darin - "Mack the Knife"
    The Clash - "Rock the Casbah"
    Surfaris - "Wipeout"
    Blood Sweat and Tears - "And When I Die"
    Dave Clark Five - "Bits and Pieces"
    Tramps - "Disco Inferno"
    Paper Lace - "The Night Chicago Died"
    Frank Sinatra - "New York, New York"
    Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Travelin' Band"
    The Gap Band - "You Dropped a Bomb On Me"
    Alien Ant Farm - "Smooth Criminal"
    3 Doors Down - "Duck and Run"
    The Doors - "The End"
    Third Eye Blind - "Jumper"
    Neil Diamond - "America"
    Lenny Kravitz - "Fly Away"
    Tom Petty - "Free Fallin'"
    Bruce Springsteen - "I'm On Fire"
    Bruce Springsteen - "Goin' Down"
    Phil Collins - "In the Air Tonight"
    Alice in Chains - "Rooster"
    Alice in Chains - "Sea of Sorrow"
    Alice in Chains - "Down in a Hole"
    Alice in Chains - "Them Bone"
    Beastie Boys - "Sure Shot"
    Beastie Boys - "Sabotage"
    The Cult - "Fire Woman"
    Everclear - "Santa Monica"
    Filter - "Hey Man, Nice Shot"
    Foo Fighters - "Learn to Fly"
    Korn - "Falling Away From Me"
    Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Aeroplane"
    Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Under the Bridge"
    Smashing Pumpkins - "Bullet With Butterfly Wings"
    System of a Down - "Chop Suey!"
    Skeeter Davis - "End of the World"
    Rickey Nelson - "Travelin' Man"
    Chi-Lites - "Have You Seen Her"
    Animals - "We Gotta Get Out of This Place"
    Fontella Bass - "Rescue Me"
    Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels - "Devil with the Blue Dress"
    James Taylor - "Fire and Rain"
    Edwin Starr/Bruce Springstein - "War"
    Lynyrd Skynyrd - "Tuesday's Gone"
    Limp Bizkit - "Break Stuff"
    Green Day - "Brain Stew"
    Temple of the Dog - "Say Hello to Heaven"
    Sugar Ray - "Fly"
    Local H - "Bound for the Floor"
    Slipknot - "Left Behind, Wait and Bleed"
    Bush - "Speed Kills"
    311 - "Down"
    Stone Temple Pilots - "Big Bang Baby," Dead and Bloated"
    Soundgarden - "Fell on Black Days," Black Hole Sun"
    Nina - "99 LuftBalloons/99 Red Balloons"
    posted by Irdial , 10:32 AM Þ 
    Monday, September 17, 2001

    From: Michael Moore
    Date: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 6:10 AM
    Subject: [Mike's Message] Death, Downtown

    Death, Downtown

    Dear friends,

    I was supposed to fly today on the 4:30 PM American Airlines flight from LAX to JFK. But tonight I find myself stuck in L.A. with an incredible range of emotions over what has happened on the island where I work and live in New York City.

    My wife and I spent the first hours of the day -- after being awakened by phone calls from our parents at 6:40am PT -- trying to contact our daughter at school in New York and our friend JoAnn who works near the World Trade Center.

    I called JoAnn at her office. As someone picked up, the first tower imploded, and the person answering the phone screamed and ran out, leaving me no clue as to whether or not she or JoAnn would live.

    It was a sick, horrible, frightening day.

    On December 27, 1985 I found myself caught in the middle of a terrorist incident at the Vienna airport -- which left 30 people dead, both there and at the Rome airport. (The machine-gunning of passengers in each city was timed to occur at the same moment.)

    I do not feel like discussing that event tonight because it still brings up too much despair and confusion as to how and why I got to live... a fluke, a mistake, a few feet on the tarmac, and I am still here, there but for the grace of...

    Safe. Secure. I'm an American, living in America. I like my illusions. I walk through a metal detector, I put my carry-ons through an x-ray machine, and I know all will be well.

    Here's a short list of my experiences lately with airport security:

    * At the Newark Airport, the plane is late at boarding everyone. The counter can't find my seat. So I am told to just "go ahead and get on" -- without a ticket!

    * At Detroit Metro Airport, I don't want to put the lunch I just bought at the deli through the x-ray machine so, as I pass through the metal detector, I hand the sack to the guard through the space between the detector and the x-ray machine. I tell him "It's just a sandwich." He believes me and doesn't bother to check. The sack has gone through neither security device.

    * At LaGuardia in New York, I check a piece of luggage, but decide to catch a later plane. The first plane leaves without me, but with my bag -- no one knowing what is in it.

    * Back in Detroit, I take my time getting off the commuter plane. By the time I have come down its stairs, the bus that takes the passengers to the terminal has left -- without me. I am alone on the tarmac, free to wander wherever I want. So I do. Eventually, I flag down a pick-up truck and an airplane mechanic gives me a ride the rest of the way to the terminal.

    * I have brought knives, razors; and once, my traveling companion brought a hammer and chisel. No one stopped us.

    Of course, I have gotten away with all of this because the airlines consider my safety SO important, they pay rent-a-cops $5.75 an hour to make sure the bad guys don't get on my plane. That is what my life is worth -- less than the cost of an oil change.

    Too harsh, you say? Well, chew on this: a first-year pilot on American Eagle (the commuter arm of American Airlines) receives around $15,000 a year in annual pay.

    That's right -- $15,000 for the person who has your life in his hands. Until recently, Continental Express paid a little over $13,000 a year. There was one guy, an American Eagle pilot, who had four kids so he went down to the welfare office and applied for food stamps -- and he was eligible!

    Someone on welfare is flying my plane? Is this for real? Yes, it is.

    So spare me the talk about all the precautions the airlines and the FAA is taking. They, like all businesses, are concerned about one thing -- the bottom line and the profit margin.

    Four teams of 3-5 people were all able to penetrate airport security on the same morning at 3 different airports and pull off this heinous act? My only response is -- that's all?

    Well, the pundits are in full diarrhea mode, gushing on about the "terrorist threat" and today's scariest dude on planet earth --
    Osama bin Laden. Hey, who knows, maybe he did it. But, something just doesn't add up.

    Am I being asked to believe that this guy who sleeps in a tent in a desert has been training pilots to fly our most modern, sophisticated jumbo jets with such pinpoint accuracy that they are able to hit these three targets without anyone wondering why these planes were so far off path?

    Or am I being asked to believe that there were four religious/political fanatics who JUST HAPPENED to be skilled airline pilots who JUST HAPPENED to want to kill themselves today?

    Maybe you can find one jumbo jet pilot willing to die for the cause -- but FOUR? Ok, maybe you can -- I don't know.

    What I do know is that all day long I have heard everything about this bin Laden guy except this one fact -- WE created the monster known as Osama bin Laden!

    Where did he go to terrorist school? At the CIA!

    Don't take my word for it -- I saw a piece on MSNBC last year that laid it all out. When the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan, the CIA trained him and his buddies in how to commits acts of terrorism against the Soviet forces. It worked! The Soviets turned and ran. Bin Laden was grateful for what we taught him and thought it might be fun to use those same techniques against us.

    We abhor terrorism -- unless we're the ones doing the terrorizing.

    We paid and trained and armed a group of terrorists in Nicaragua in the 1980s who killed over 30,000 civilians. That was OUR work. You and me. Thirty thousand murdered civilians and who the hell even remembers!

    We fund a lot of oppressive regimes that have killed a lot of innocent people, and we never let the human suffering THAT causes to interrupt our day one single bit.

    We have orphaned so many children, tens of thousands around the world, with our taxpayer-funded terrorism (in Chile, in Vietnam, in Gaza, in Salvador) that I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised when those orphans grow up and are a little whacked in the head from the horror we have helped cause.

    Yet, our recent domestic terrorism bombings have not been conducted by a guy from the desert but rather by our own citizens: a couple of ex-military guys who hated the federal government.

    From the first minutes of today's events, I never heard that possibility suggested. Why is that?

    Maybe it's because the A-rabs are much better foils. A key ingredient in getting Americans whipped into a frenzy against a new enemy is the all-important race card. It's much easier to get us to hate when the object of our hatred doesn't look like us.

    Congressmen and Senators spent the day calling for more money for the military; one Senator on CNN even said he didn't want to hear any more talk about more money for education or health care -- we should have only one priority: our self-defense.

    Will we ever get to the point that we realize we will be more secure when the rest of the world isn't living in poverty so we can have nice running shoes?

    In just 8 months, Bush gets the whole world back to hating us again. He withdraws from the Kyoto agreement, walks us out of the Durban conference on racism, insists on restarting the arms race -- you name it, and Baby Bush has blown it all.

    The Senators and Congressmen tonight broke out in a spontaneous version of "God Bless America." They're not a bad group of singers!

    Yes, God, please do bless us.

    Many families have been devastated tonight. This just is not right. They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, DC, and the planes' destination of California -- these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!

    Why kill them? Why kill anyone? Such insanity...

    Let's mourn, let's grieve, and when it's appropriate let's examine our contribution to the unsafe world we live in.

    It doesn't have to be like this...

    Yours,

    Michael Moore
    mmflint@aol.com
    posted by ha , 9:20 PM Þ 

    Cryptome and a host of other crypto resources are likely to be shutdown if the war panic continues. What methods could be used to assure continued access to crypto for homeland and self-defense by citizens of all nations against communication transgressors?

    A while back a list of global sites for accessing crypto and privacy tools was set up:

    http://jya.com/crypto-free.htm

    This list of crypto sources, and additions to it, should be mirrored and the mirrors widely publicized to aid citizen access to tools for personal and homeland protection worldwide from those urging war and terrorism at home and around the globe.

    To supplement that, Cryptome would appreciate hearing by encrypted mail (anonymous remail too) what others have done or could do to stockpile and distribute self-dense tools. We've sent out a few hundred CDs of the Cryptome collection, and are considering offering here a ~100MB compressed package of the ~8000 files. If so, we would first make more of the packages available to other global sites to offset our bandwidth limitations.

    There are only a few crypto programs in the files, mostly PGP since 2.62. We might grab more for inclusion unless others are doing that. To comply with law we'd have to notify BXA of any new program offerings.

    Responses welcome: jya@pipeline.com

    Pipeline.com is owned by Earthlink, one of the ISPs reportedly now intercepted by Carnivore; Verio, host of this site, may be as well, your hosts too.

    John Young PK below.
    posted by Irdial , 6:51 PM Þ 

    Check it, the tide anti war sentiment is growing.
    WW3 has been looming on the horizon for years; its only now that a hot enough match has been found that will ignite it. No thanks. no to war, no to unfairness, taboo subjects, lies and favouritism.
    posted by Irdial , 6:25 PM Þ 

    I know that all people who post on Blogdial know this; its posted here for the record / for your use.
    posted by Irdial , 6:11 PM Þ 

    Who do you want to fight today?

    AFGHANISTAN

    * Afghan Guerilla Groups and Northern Alliance
    * Al-Qaida
    * Jamaat e Islami
    * Jumbish-i-Milli
    * Taliban

    ALGERIA

    * Armée Islamique du Salut (AIS)
    * FIS
    * Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA)
    * Salafi Call and Struggle Group

    ANGOLA

    * Frente de Libertação do Enclave de Cabinda-Renovada (FLEC-R), Frente de Libertação do Enclave de Cabinda-Forças Armadas Cabindesas (FLEC-FAC) and Frente Democrática de Cabinda (FDC)
    * União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA)

    AUSTRIA

    * People's Extra Parliamentary Opposition (VAPO) and Bavarian Liberation Army (BLA)

    BAHRAIN

    * Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain (IFLB), Movement for the Liberation of Bahrain (MLB) and Hizbullah-Gulf/Bahrain

    BANGLADESH

    * Shanti Bahini

    BELGIUM

    * Cellules Communistes Combattantes (CCC)

    BHUTAN

    * Ethnic Nepalese Rebels

    BOLIVIA

    * Ejercito de Liberación Nacional (ELN)
    * Ejercito Guerrillero Tupac Katari (EGTK)

    BURUNDI

    * Forces pour la Défense de la Démocratie (FDD), Parti pour la Libération du Peuple Hutu (PLPH), Forces Nationales de Libération (FNL) and Front de Libération Nationale (Frolina)

    CAMBODIA

    * Khmer Rouge

    CANADA

    * Front de Libération du Quebec (FLQ)

    CHAD

    * Forces Armées pour la République Fédérale (FARF)
    * Mouvement pour la Democratie et la Justice au Tchad (MDJT)

    CHILE

    * Frente Patriotico Manuel Rodriguez (FPMR)
    * Lautaro Youth Movement (MJL)
    * Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR)

    CHINA, PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC

    * Tibetan separatists
    * Uighur separatists

    COLOMBIA

    * Ejercito de Liberación Nacional (ELN)
    * Ejercito Popular de Liberación (EPL)
    * Frente Ricardo Franco (FRF)
    * Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC)
    * Movimiento 19 de Abril (M-19)

    CONGO, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

    * Mouvement de liberation Congolais (MLC)
    * Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratic (RCD) (Congo)

    DJIBOUTI

    * Front for the Restoration of Unity and Democracy (FRUD)

    ECUADOR

    * Alfaro Vive, Carajo (AVC)
    * Sol Rojo

    EGYPT

    * Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (GAI or GI)
    * Egyptian Islamic Jihad Group

    EL SALVADOR

    * Frente Farabundo Marti de Liberación Nacional (FMLN)

    ERITREA

    * Eritrean Islamic Jihad-Revolution Council (EIJ-RC)
    * Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) and Eritrean Islamic Jihad (EIJ)

    ETHIOPIA

    * Al-Ittihad al-Islami
    * Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF)
    * Oromo Liberation Front (OLF)

    FRANCE

    * Action Directe (AD)
    * Front de la Libération Nationale de la Corse (FLNC)

    GEORGIA

    * Abkhazia rebels
    * South Ossetian rebels

    GERMANY

    * Revolutionaere Zellen (RZ)
    * Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF)

    GREECE

    * Epanastaiki Organosi 17 Noemvri (RO-17)
    * Epanastikos Laikos Agonas (ELA)

    GUATEMALA

    * Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG)

    HONDURAS

    * Cinchonero Movimiento Popular de Liberación (MPL)
    * Comandos Operativos Especiales (COES)
    * Frente Morazanist Populares (FMP)
    * Fuerzas Revolucionarias Populares Lorenzo Zelaya (FRP-LZ)

    INDIA

    * Ananda Marg
    * Bodo separatist guerillas
    * Dal Khalsa, Dashmesh Regiment, Babbar Khalsa, All India Sikh Students Federation and Khalistan Liberation Front
    * Harakat ul-Mujahideen and Associated Groups
    * Indian separatists
    * Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF)
    * National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN)
    * United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA)

    INDONESIA

    * Frente Revolucionária Timorense de Libertação e Independência (Fretilin)
    * Gerakin Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh Movement)
    * Organisasi Papua Merdek (OPM)

    IRAN

    * Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (DPIK) and the Kurdish Communist Party of Iran
    * Democratic Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Arabistan and Al-Harakan al-Islamiya
    * Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) and Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (DPIK)

    IRAQ

    * Al-Dawa al-Islamiya
    * Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)
    * Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)

    ISRAEL

    * Abu Nidal Organisation (ANO)
    * Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP)
    * Hamas and Islamic Jihad
    * Kach Party, Kahane Chai and Revenge Underground
    * Militant Jewish groups, including: Kach Party, Kahane Chai, Revenge Underground, Eyal and Sword of David
    * Organisation of the Armed Arab Struggle (OAAS)
    * Palestine Liberation Front (PLF)
    * Palestinian/Israeli violence
    * Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - Special Command (PFLP-SC)
    * Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC)
    * Popular Struggle Front (PSF)

    ITALY

    * Brigate Rosse (BR)

    JAPAN

    * Aum Shinrikyo
    * Japan (Chukaku-Ha)
    * Japanese Red Army (JRA)
    * Kansai Revolutionary Army

    LAOS

    * United Lao National Liberation Front (ULNLF)

    LEBANON

    * Amal (Hope), Hizbullah (Party of God) and South Lebanon Army (SLA)
    * Factions Armées Revolutionnaires Libanaises (FARL)

    LIBERIA

    * National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL)
    * United Front for the Liberation of Liberia (ULIMO) and United Front for the Liberation of Liberia-Johnson (ULIMO-J)

    LIBYA

    * Fighting Islamic Group in Libya (FIGL), Islamic Movement of Martyrs, Libyan Jihad Movement and Islamic Movement for Change
    * National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL), Fighting Islamic Group in Libya (FIGL), Islamic Movement of Martyrs, Islamic Movement for Change and Libyan Jihad Movement

    MACEDONIA

    * Ethnic Albanian Separatists

    MALI

    * Front Populaire de Libération de l'Azaouad (FPLA)
    * Mouvement Populaire de l'Azaouad (MPA), Front Islamique-Arabe de l'Azaouad (FIAA), Armée Révolutionnaire de l'Azaouad (ARLA)

    MEXICO

    * Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo Insurgente (ERPI)
    * Ejercito Popular Revolucionario (EPR)
    * Ejercito Zapatistas de Liberación Nacional (EZLN)

    MOROCCO

    * Frente Popular Para la Liberación de Sakiet el Hamra y Río de Oro (Polisario)

    MYANMAR (BURMA)

    * Burmese rebels
    * Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and Kachin Democratic Army (KDA)
    * Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA)
    * Karenni Army (KA)
    * Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO) and Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front (ARIF)
    * Shan State Progress Army (SSPA) and Shan State Restoration Council (SSRC)
    * United Wa State Army (UWSA), National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA), Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and New Democratic Army (NDA)

    NAMIBIA

    * Caprivi Liberation Army (CLA)
    * Caprivi Liberation Front (CLF)

    NEPAL

    * Nepalese Rebels
    * People's War

    NIGER

    * Armée Révolutionnaire de Libération du Nord-Niger (ARLN) and Organisation de la Résistance (ORA)
    * Front de Libération de l'Air et l'Azaouad (FLAA), Armée Révolutionnaire de Libération du Nord-Niger (ARLN), Front Patriotique de Libération du Sahara (FPLS)

    PAKISTAN

    * Baluch People's Liberation Front (BPLF), Baluch Students' Organisation-Awami (BSO-A) and Popular Front for Armed Resistance (PFAR)
    * MQM-Altaf (MQM-A) and Nadeem Commando
    * Muhajir Quami Mahaz (MQM)

    PAPUA NEW GUINEA

    * Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA)

    PERU

    * Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA)
    * Sendero Luminoso (SL) [Shining Path]

    PHILIPPINES

    * Abu Sayyaf
    * Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF)
    * Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF)
    * New People's Army (NPA)

    RUSSIA

    * Chechen Guerrillas

    RWANDA

    * Interahamwe

    SAUDI ARABIA

    * Islamic Jihad in Hejaz, Islamic Revolutionary Organisation, Movement for Islamic Change, Tigers of the Gulf, Legion of the Martyr Abdullah al-Huzaifi, Hizbullah Gulf, Brethren (Battalions) of the Faithful, Islamic Peninsula Movement for Change - Jihad Wing, Jamaat al-Adala al-Alamiya and Fighting Ansar of Allah

    SENEGAL

    * Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de la Casamance (MFDC)

    SIERRA LEONE

    * Revolutionary United Front (RUF)

    SOLOMON ISLANDS

    * Malaita Eagles and Isatambu Freedom Fighters (IFF)

    SOMALIA

    * United Somali Congress (USC)
    * Somali National Alliance (SNA)
    * United Somali Congress-Somali Salvation Alliance (USC-SSA)

    SOUTH AFRICA

    * Afrikaaner Weestand Beweeging (AWB, Afrikaaner Resistance Movement) and Boer Attack Troops
    * People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD)

    SPAIN

    * Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA)
    * Grupo de Resistencia Antifascista Primero de Octubre (GRAPO)
    * Iraultza

    SRI LANKA

    * Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)
    * Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) [Tamil Tigers]

    SUDAN

    * South Sudan Independence Movement (SSIM)
    * Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA)

    SYRIA

    * (Syrian) Muslim Brotherhood

    TAJIKISTAN

    * Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP)
    * Islamist Rebels

    THAILAND

    * Pattani United Liberation Organisation (PULO)

    TUNISIA

    * Hizb el Nahda, Islamic Liberation Party and Islamic Tendency Movement

    TURKEY

    * Armenian Liberation Army (ALA), Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) and Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide (JCAG)
    * Devrimci Halk Kurtulus Partisi/Cephesi (DHKP/C)
    * Devrimici Sol
    * Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan (PKK) [Kurdistan Workers' Party]
    * Turkish Hizbullah, Islamic Great Eastern Raiders/Front (IBDA/C), Islamic Movement Organization, Islamic Jihad, Vasat Group, Kaplancilar Group
    * Turkish Hizbullah

    UGANDA

    * Allied Democratic Forces (ADF)
    * Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)
    * West Nile Bank Front (WNBF)

    UNITED KINGDOM

    * Irish National Liberation Army (INLA)
    * Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA)
    * Ulster Defence Association (UDA), Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), Red Hand Commandos and Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF)

    UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

    * Ku Klux Klan
    * Los Macheteros, Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN), Armed Forces of Popular Resistance, Guerrilla Forces of Liberation, Organisation of Volunteers for the Puerto Rican Revolution, People's Revolutionary Commandos and Armed Commandos for National Liberation
    * Right-wing militia groups

    URUGUAY

    * Movimiento de Liberación Nacional (MLN)

    YEMEN

    * Aden-Abyan Islamic Army

    YUGOSLAVIA, FEDERAL REPUBLIC

    * National Movement for the Liberation of Kosovo and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)
    posted by Claus Eggers , 9:02 AM Þ 
    Sunday, September 16, 2001

    Barrie — Tamim's write-up can be found at this link >> http://crucial-systems.com/
    there's more up-to-date info for anyone living in new york city and wanting to volunteer or donate.
    posted by ha , 3:39 PM Þ 

    Both sides of the calendar debate were wrong; the new century began on 11 September 2001.

    All day I fielded phone calls from reporters looking for the "computer security angle" to the story. I couldn't find one, although I expect several to come out of the aftermath.

    Calls for increased security began immediately. Unfortunately, the quickest and easy way to satisfy those demands is by decreasing liberties. This is always short sighted; real security solutions exist that preserve the free society that we all hold dear, but they're harder to find and require reasoned debate. Strong police forces without Constitutional limitations might appeal to those wanting immediate safety, but the reality is the opposite. Laws that limit police power can increase security, by enforcing honesty, integrity, and fairness. It is our very liberties that make our society as safe as it is.

    In times of crisis it's easy to disregard these liberties or, worse, to actively attack them and stigmatize those who support them. We've already seen government proposals for increased wiretapping capabilities and renewed rhetoric about encryption limitations. I fully expect more automatic surveillance of ordinary citizens, limits on information flow and digital-security technologies, and general xenophobia. I do not expect much debate about their actual effectiveness, or their effects on freedom and liberty. It's easier just to react. In 1996, TWA Flight 800 exploded and crashed in the Atlantic. Originally people thought it was a missile attack. The FBI demanded, and Congress passed, a law giving law enforcement greater abilities to expel aliens from the country. Eventually we learned the crash was caused by a mechanical malfunction, but the law still stands.

    We live in a world where nation states are not the only institutions which wield power. International bodies, corporations, non-governmental organizations, pan-national ethnicities, and disparate political groups all have the ability to affect the world in an unprecedented manner. As we adjust to this new reality, it is important that we don't become the very forces we abhor. I consider the terrorist attacks on September 11th to be an attack against America's ideals. If our freedoms erode because of those attacks, then the terrorists have won.

    The ideals we uphold during a crisis define who we are. Freedom and liberty have a price, and that price is constant vigilance so it not be taken from us in the name of security. Ben Franklin said something that was often repeated during the American Revolutionary War: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." It is no less true today.

    From Cryptome, Sept 15 2001
    posted by Irdial , 12:05 PM Þ 

    MP George Galloway was, whilst explaing to the dim witted Adam Bolton on Sky news the REASONING behind this atrocity, was abruptly cut off by the Sky News vision controllers.

    There will be no debate. There will be no reason. There will be no withdrawl from the affairs of the Middle East. There will only be WAR and INSANITY and STUPIDITY, BLINDNESS, LIES and counting of the dead.
    posted by Irdial , 12:01 PM Þ 

    Thanks Barrie. I'm going doing that, it's just that it will be a while before packages start shipping overseas from here in the US. I was hoping that I might be able to dig up the MP3'd before then. Ah well, I guess it's just more time for me to bone up on making Mariopaint music. Thanks!
    posted by bohus , 5:24 AM Þ 

    bohus - most of Irdial's discs are out of print. Send Irdial 3 blank cdrs and a small fee to get all releases on the A212 in mp3 format.

    Very good writeup from Tanim. Very, very good. Is it on a webpage anywhere so I can show my un-blogial friends?
    posted by Barrie , 3:50 AM Þ 

    ok...what da fuck? some kind of sick joke?
    http://members.tripod.com/therev67/wtc/index.htm
    posted by ha , 3:05 AM Þ 
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