September 11th

Rudy's five big lies about September 11th
Wayne Barrett examines Giuliani's record on terrorism, New York City's preparedness for an attack since 1993, the responsibility for building a bunker in 7 WTC, his history of Democrats and Republicans fighting terror, and worker safety at Ground Zero.
Why Linda Solomon came to Canada after September 11th
"I was one of the Americans blown away by the catastrophe, but living. One who left a hip Manhattan life because of the historical shifts, because of George Bush's frightening policies, because I wanted a better future for my two young sons than the one I
What if September 11th never happened?
Many agree that a democrat (Kerry or Gore) would be President today and Thomas L. Friedman argues (convincingly) that America would "be in a tense standoff with China".
The new conspiracy theorists
Long article about those who say there's more to Sept. 11th than meets the eye.

A Candidate for Commitment

Richard Posner: “The narrative points to something different, banal and deeply disturbing: that it is almost impossible to take effective action to prevent something that hasn't occurred previously. Once the 9/11 attacks did occur, measures were taken that have reduced the likelihood of a recurrence. But before the attacks, it was psychologically and politically impossible to take those measures. The government knew that Al Qaeda had attacked United States facilities and would do so again. But the idea that it would do so by infiltrating operatives into this country to learn to fly commercial aircraft and then crash such aircraft into buildings was so grotesque that anyone who had proposed that we take costly measures to prevent such an event would have been considered a candidate for commitment.”

Posner argues the report, which I have not yet read, is excellent in terms of quality of writing, is very flawed in its analysis and recommendations. It criticizes Presidents Clinton and Bush for “narrow and unimaginative menu of options for action” when Posner writes that instead “[t]he options considered were varied and imaginative” but not feasible. He then lists recommendations that the narrative section of the report implied would be made—there is a risk that they could be read as Posner's recommendations, which is not necessarily true (except the biometric passport recommendation)—compared to the recommendations actually made. The main argument Posner is making, though, is that the commission, much like American culture, is predisposed to ascribing the success of a surprise attack to structural problems rather than the fact that the attack was, by definition, inconceivable, or, in Nassim Taleb's words, a black swan. Americans have been successful in planning for an attack similar to Sept. 11th, but the problem is that the next major attack will be nothing like what they have planned for.

All The Other Wickedness of the Society Facing Them

Walter Laquer has written an article on the future of terrorism and argues, among many things, that the connection between poverty and terrorism is a weak one if it exist at all. This is a blow to the left's assertion that poverty is the root cause, or is a root cause, but Laquer is more nuanced in his arguments, and has little patience for right-wing assertions that fighting terrorism can be fought with traditional war methods. Other points Laquer argues: he suggests that proportional responses to terrorism—especially in what he chillingly believes is the inevitable use of weapons of mass destruction by a very small, tightly knit and very much invisible (so below-the-radar that they may be impossible to defend against) group of fanatics—because war is usually unpopular outside the borders of the country going to war; Pakistan is a potential powderkeg that President Musharraf has little hopes of controlling; resentment in European Islamic population, especially the young, both despite and because of <q cite="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3647/is_200408/ai_n9454304>alcohol, loose morals, general decadence, and all the other wickedness of the society facing them, governments abiding by the Geneva convention and other aspects of international law do so foolishly because terrorists almost by definition do not play by the established rules; and democracies may have to engage in propaganda campaigns—even if it means outright lying—to convince societies that believe that Sept. 11th was the work of the Israeli intelligence agency.

The Network Did Its Job Anyway

Duncan Watts on Toyota's recovery after a key factory burned to the ground: “Within three days, production of the critical valves was in full swing, and within a week, production levels had regained their pre-disaster levels. The kind of coordination this activity required had not been consciously designed, nor could it have been developed in the drastically short time frame required. The surprising fact was that it was already there, lying dormant in the network of informal relations that had been built up between the firms through years of cooperation and information sharing over routine problem-solving tasks. No one could have predicted precisely how this network would come in handy for this particular problem, but they didn't need to—by giving individual workers fast access to information and resources as they discovered their need for them, the network did its job anyway.”

A little later there is an interesting paragraph about workers of a trading firm in New York City just after Sept. 11th, who gathered to determine the passwords of their colleagues who had perished, because those passwords held the key to the remotely-stored data that the company needed access to. It's a case where insecure passwords—or at least passwords were based on something that, collectively, a group of friends or colleagues (or, more likely, both) could guess if the survival of an organization—and indirectly that collective—are at stake.

The Watts article, especially the password anecdote, is a good example of what James Surowiecki called the wisdom of crowds, although from the password example does not say whether the employees were independent and diverse, but they clearly based their guesses on public and private information.

Post-Finals Linkdump

  • Andy “Hankering after things that are out of reach only makes you dissatisfied, so after a while you build a high wall so that you can’t see them any more and that way you don’t get so dissatisfied. You don’t notice the rut, because everyone living your side of the wall has their own rut.” I wrote something similar the other night, something about intimidation. But...
  • ..Betsy Devine says it's not a good idea to blog about your personal crap if you're name is #1 in a search for your name, or if you link to your personal crap from a site that is #1 for your name.
  • Michael Kimmelman thinks that elitists should be in charge of a Sept. 11th memorial. The argument isn't very well-written, but the most of the controversial art—controversial because it challenged the contemporary regime in such a way that made that art long-lasting—were either commissioned or done one one's own dime without it being put to a vote. Any corrections or elaborations on this broad generalization of art history are welcome.
  • Aaron Friedman thinks that car alarms are seriously annoying (I would have gone with "fucking annoying", but it's a family newspaper). There's one that goes off near my apartment complex, and it only goes off around 2 AM or so. I actually considered posting an angry note, but that just escalates the anger of all involved: “False alarms enrage otherwise lawful citizens, and alienate the very people car owners depend on to call the police.”

Not a whole lot this time.

Worst Than Any Nightmare

Photodude: “"when you look at it close up, nearly insignificant amidst the massive destruction, there is a solitary human form. A woman with long red hair, wearing a black top and off white pants. Leaning out in search of an escape she would never find. It's an epic image of one recognizable person looking for a way out of a horror much much larger than them, or worse than any nightmare.”

Christopher Hitchens on Commemorating Sept. 11

Writing on September 8th, Christopher Hitchens argues that we should not be commemorating September 11th too early, or rather that we are commemorating that date in the wrong way:

Should this solemn date be exploited for the settling of scores? Absolutely it should. When confronted with a lethal and determined enemy, one has a responsibility to give short shrift to demoralizing and sinister nonsense. [..]

Two beautiful fall seasons ago, this society was living in a fool's paradise while so far from being "in search of enemies" that its governing establishment barely knew how to tell an enemy from a friend. If there is anything to mark or commemorate, it is the day when that realm of illusion was dispelled—the date that will one day be acknowledged as the one on which our enemies made their most truly "suicidal" mistake.

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