...more recent posts
O.K., I'm going to try to get off politics and back on track here. I guess never having had much of a track to begin with is slowing up this segue. But soon. Real soon now.
Tonight we're going out for dinner as it is our solemn patriotic duty to spend money in local eating establishments (Rudy said so.) And tonight especially so, it being the arbitrary but nevertheless important one month ago day...
The city still smells. Depends on the day and which way the wind blows, but sometimes I wake up in the morning at it is quite strong. Police activity in the Lower East Side is apparently back to normal, what ever that means. Large ad-hoc monuments of flowers and signs are mostly gone, but American flags remain. Everywhere. And firehouses are absolutely bedecked with red white and blue ornaments.
Large upscale restaurants are hurting. I'm assuming all other businesses that rely as much on tourism are hurting too. More local establishments outside the immediate Wall St. zone, like say a little cafe on Clinton St., aren't feeling too much of an effect. I rode home in a cab the other night and was asking the driver what he thought. He said the worst was over and his shifts were getting better.
I guess we'll see about that.
I'm sure the reason I haven't seen this (Pakistani ISI director linked directly to Mahmud Atta) in the U.S. media is because it's incorrect. I mean, our media would never censor anything that might be unpopular with the government. Right?
Now what about getting all those who aid and abet the terrorists? (If you know who backs the ISI you can guess why this will be impossible for the U.S. to do.)
I should rename this page 'gadgets & war' since that's all I post about any more. Today it's back to gadgets: the nokia 5510. Can't say I want one, but that is an interesting take on things.
Anybody use Outlook 4.x on the Mac for email? Could you tell me how to set it to check for new mail automatically at a set interval? I need to explain this to someone with a very tenuous grasp on computers, and I can't get access to a 4.x version of Outlook.
Counterpunch.org has this short and very interesting 1998 interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, titled How Jimmy Carter and I Started the Mujahideen. (via the chock full of heavy links Ethel the blog)
DEBKAfile is a news source a lot of people have been pointing to recently. Here's a New York Observer piece on the website. They say, in part:
But in this new battleground, it is natural to assume there will be new sources of inside dope. And in the days following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and as the U.S. geared up for a military response people have begun passing around a link to Debka.com, a crudely designed, Jerusalem-based Web site that offers Middle Eastern military, diplomatic and intelligence information far more detailed (and frightening) than what is offered by many news organizations. At its best, Debka.com reads like a tip sheet from the desert...Frightening is right. According to debka Putin and Bush have agreed on the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons (in Chechnya and in Afghanistan,) the Chinese (fearful of a new Russian U.S. front) are sending troops to support Bin Laden and the Taliban, a third case of Anthrax in the U.S. is being investigated, Russian and Israeli intelligence both concluded Siberian Airlines 1812 was the vicitim of a terrorist attack and not a stray missle, and that the U.S. is preparing shortly to strike a second country (either Somalia or Iraq.) Scary stories that are moving fast, but are they accurate?
Question and answer with Noam Chomsky.
I'm not scared so much as speechless. If I try to put it into words I get very upset. But if I don't I can go about my day and keep working on my latest web job and not be too paralyzed by what is happening. So I guess that's what I'm going to do.
My hands? What blood?
Still, I won't forget. The bad, but also the good. And I know there are good people out there. New York City is full of them. I saw it. Most people want to help. Yet bad things keep happening. So where I used to suspect we might be under the control of a small cabal bent on evil, I now think it's more likely that we are under the sway of an emergent meta organism which is not exactly human. A sort of human group mind, minus the humanity. I think it emerges through our hierarchical and bureaucratic organizational structures (be they political, military, corporate, religious, or whatever.) It's our worst side and it's fueled by greed and it is devouring lives at this very moment. And the more it feeds the bigger it's appetite grows.
But it is us. And we can turn it. We can make it our best side. I don't know how, but we all do. Keep moving, keep trying, keep being human. Touch someone today. You are love.
A Florida man has died of pulmonary anthrax. Nothing is known yet of how he inhaled the spores. Dr. Sanjay Gupta answered common questions in this CNN interview.
"There have only been 18 confirmed inhalational cases from 1900 to 1976, and not a single case, before yesterday, over the last 25 years. Typically, the way people get it now is through the handling of animals or soil that contain the bacteria and its spores."This is alarming, given the recent talk of possible terrorist antrax attacks, but it's much too early for more rational fear.
Could it be the case that anthrax is really more commonly encountered by humans in nature and merely under or mis-diagnosed? It is reasonable to think that many in the medical community have recently refreshed their knowledge of the symptons and thus the number of reported incidents might rise quickly (if not very far) even without the help of any malevolent human involvement. What if there were suddenly 5 cases in the country? 10? 20? This still might not be any sort of attack. Localization would be the key to deciding how to guess about the terrorist question.
I think it's likely this case has natural causes. But how many will it take before this isn't the gut reaction? Not too many I'll bet, yet we may well get at least one or two more just out of heightened awareness.
MB's grandmother passed away this week. She was 95, and in good health up until the end. I spent most of the last two days on Long Island with the extended family. Lots of great stories remembering the old days in Brooklyn, from the time of the depression up through World War II, and into the early fifties when they moved out to Long Island. That generation lived through some astounding changes. Death, I suppose, is always a sad business, but a long full life lived close with those you love takes most of the heart wrench out of it. Still sad, yes, but an ending that we all think was O.K. with her. She was buried in the last family plot in the Holy Cross Cemetery, which is off Linden Blvd. around 48th street in Brooklyn, not far from where she grew up. Nana - and she was "Nana" to everyone - will be missed. A great woman I am honored to have known.