I transferred all of the links in the weblog to a different database server at pair.com. Please send email if you get any of the database errors that have plagued this site in the past. As far as I can tell, the site is significantly faster now. The BBC has the best article I’ve yet seen on President Bush’s order to freeze the assets of 27 individuals and organizations. The article also has a list of the 27 parties involved. ...
Here’s Phil Agre’s latest set of attack-related links. By the way, I added a bunch of stuff this weekend that may be worth checking out. Looks like the old partners.nytimes.com trick for getting around the authentication at the New York Times web site has been turned off. I’ll have to come up with something new for linking to them. Bush is looking for carte blanche to give money to foreign regimes regardless of their human rights record or past military misdeeds. On one hand, I think that we should give governments the opportunity to turn over a new leaf, but on the other hand I don’t want to see us selling guns and ammo to repressive regimes that they can use to murder their own citizens. Let’s not forget that one of the reasons we’re widely despised in the Middle East is that we provide military aid to Israel and that many of the weapons used against the Palestinians are made in the USA. By the way, let me just say that Patrick Leahy has been the most statesmanlike figure in the US government since the attack. ...
Stories that we were planning on attacking Afghanistan this month even before 9/11 don’t seem to be going away. This one says that the Taliban and bin Laden knew of our plans up to two months ago, and that the 9/11 attacks could have been preemptive strikes in anticipation of this attack. Here’s Phil Agre’s latest set of links concerning the 9/11 attack. I met a Pakistani man today whose brother worked in the World Trade Center until it was destroyed. He normally went to work at about 9, but that morning he arrived half an hour late because his wife had made breakfast and told him that if he didn’t eat it, she’d never make breakfast again. I’ve heard such stories many times on the news, but it was eerie to hear one first hand. ...
I’m making a few small changes to the design of the site this weekend. My real goal is to better separate entries so that I can write longer, multi-paragraph entries that don’t run into the ones that surround them. The first thing I did was add the time posted to each entry and put up a link to a page just for that specific entry. I’m also planning on making a few more tweaks when I get a chance. If you spot any problems or have suggestions for improvements, please send email. ...
I thought Bush gave a good speech last night. He reassured the Islamic world that we aren’t out to get them, and he admonished Americans once again not to take their moronic impulses out on Arabs, Muslims, or people they think might be Muslims or Arabs. He also took a political risk by delivering an ultimatum to the Taliban, and setting an ambitious goal in our fight against terrorism (“Our war on terror begins with al-Qaida, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated . . .”). His Presidency will be judged by how the United States does in meeting that goal. The Times of London gave his speech a positive review. For what it’s worth, I wasn’t impressed with Bush’s delivery except at a few points, but I’m never impressed by his delivery, so you may wish to discount that. ...
I just wanted to say that I’ve been very encouraged by the job Bush and his foreign policy team have been doing in building an international coalition before any action against our attackers. Not only will having a large coalition behind our actions give them more legitimacy, but I believe that our desire to preserve the coalition will force us to be smarter about the actions we do take against whoever it is we take action against. Going off half cocked and invading Afghanistan will instantly blow up any coalition that includes Muslim countries, so it’s good to have them in the coalition. ...
So I was speaking with my Palestinian neighbors last night and they mentioned the fact that President Bush used the word “crusade” without my saying a thing about it, and were pretty incensed about that. The Arabic world has its own version of CNN – you can get it in America over satellite. (It’s based in Qatar and it’s called Al-Jazeera.) There’s no doubt in my mind that his use of that word got major, major play on the Arabic news all day yesterday. ...
One thing I noticed this weekend is that I haven’t really linked to any stories about the amazing human interest stories that have come out of the attacks last Tuesday. The main reason I haven’t done so is that they’re already being incredibly well covered. Just let me say that amidst all of this tragedy, we’ve seen the best that human character has to offer more times than can realistically be counted. Every time I see the number of casualties among firefighters and police officers on the screen, I choke up. ...
I was glad to read today that there’s some wrangling in Congress over the legislation requested by the White House to give it lots of power to fight terrorism and a blank check for billions of dollars, because it demonstrates that our system of government is working as it should, even in the immediate aftermath of a great crisis. Guess who Jerry Falwell blames for the attacks on Tuesday: people he considers to have pissed off God. ...
I heard on the news last night that the names of the terrorists who attended flight school in the United States were all on an FBI list of known terrorists (I’m still looking for a cite on this). That, to me, is an amazing communications failure. All day yesterday, I thought about Customer Relationship Management software, which is used by many firms to provide access to all of the relevant information about a customer whenever someone at a business has contact with that customer. This type of software is becoming pervasive in business because without some sort of information aid, it’s impossible for any person to keep track of all of the data that might prove useful when communicating with a specific customer. Doesn’t it seem logical that we would have similar software systems available when security is off the essence? How could we provide a pilot’s license to someone without first checking to make sure that they’re not going to most likely use that license to break the law? How do we let people board airplanes without checking against these sorts of lists? I find it shocking and depressing that these attacks could possibly have been prevented with nothing more than better information technology. We had the information we needed, we just didn’t provide that information to the people who needed it. I had assumed that these pilots would have been people who had perfectly clean records in order to avoid being caught in the system. It’s much more jarring to discover that there just isn’t any system. ...