Putting Lipstick On A Pig

It's September 11 once again, now seven years out from the attacks that paralyzed my city and horrified the nation and the world.

 

As John Lennon once sang, "And so this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over, a new one just begun."

 

It has gotten so far from the hopes and dreams of a nation of September 12, 2001 that we have dumbed down the attacks. Unable to capture and bring to justice the real criminal behind the tragedy, despite an admitted new effort to land him in the desperate eleventh hour hopes of salvaging a legacy, we've decided to try and change the story: Osama bin Laden was never the man behind the attacks, Khalid Sheik Muhammed was!

 

And we have always been at war with Eastasia.

 

Under Bill Clinton, while internally we were divided thanks to a small handful of uberpartisan numbnuts who believed in party ahead of God and country, we presented to the world a beacon of hope, of good will, of what was right with this nation and could be right for the world. On September 11, indeed, the world stood side by side with us and declared "we are all Americans" from France to Palestine and beyond.

 

That's all gone now, along with our "inheritance" of freedom, democracy, and abundance. We slide slowly into the abyss of has-been, clinging to whatever outcropping of rock extends pitifully past the margins, but inexorably, we lose our grip little by little, and slip to the next handhold: we elected a man who pushed us over the precipice by lying us into an invasion we had no business attending to, watching him fumble even that distraction as the world looked on in horror (except Russia, who licked her lips and pounced on her satellite states), and then not having recognized our mistake in electing George Bush in 2000, a man who was clearly unfit for the job, then slapping the world in the face with a cold towel by RE-electing this moron.

 

Our freedoms slipped off our backs, and now we walk the streets in terror, not of some hooded bearded man with a bomb strapped to his chest, but of the cop with the M-16 searching our backpacks and briefcases, of the long line waiting to board a plane barefoot, of applying for a bank account.

 

We sat and watched our livelihoods ported to Mumbai or Djarkarta, and as our houses lost value so extensively that many of us could not even recoup and repay our mortgages if we somehow managed to find some moron dumb enough to buy our house at the going rate.

 

Teen suicides have been up each year since 2005 in this country, at an alarming rate caused in large part by suicides among those occupying Iraq. Meanwhile, teen pregnancy rates have reversed field, after declining in the decades since Roe v. Wade, meaning we are creating a permanent underclass of single moms-- the shotgun at Levi Johnston's back notwithstanding. Meanwhile, life expectancy has begun to drift downward.

 

Five million more people do not have health care since 2000. Millions more are underinsured, preferring the extra few bucks to pay the rent,  gambling with their lives. Ten million more struggle today in the depths of poverty without even the safety net of a welfare check to protect them from catastrophe.

 

All this, but today, on this sacred day, at this sacred moment, you only read about "lipstick on a pig" jokes.

 

We went from "morning in America" to "morons in America", in less than four years, now eight. On a day, at a time, that we should be re-dedicating ourselves to our American brothers and sisters, re-consecrating the memory of those we've lost, we're distracted by the clown in glasses and high heels and her sidekick, Rusty the Wonder P.O.W.

 

I can't imagine why. But it has to stop. We're being attacked, this time by an enemy we actually can see, and fight.

 

Ourselves.

All hail Memeorandum!

Whoops!

I love Wayne Barrett, and his writing style, so let me punch this right up:

A 15-page "memorandum for the record," prepared by a commission counsel and dated April 20, 2004, quotes Giuliani conceding that it wasn't until "after 9/11" that "we brought in people to brief us on al Qaeda." According to the memorandum, Giuliani told two commission members and five staffers: "But we had nothing like this pre 9/11, which was a mistake, because if experts share a lot of info," there would be a "better chance of someone making heads and tails" of the "situation." (Such memoranda are not verbatim transcripts of the confidential commission interviews, but are described on the cover page as "100 percent accurate" notes taken by staffers, stamped "commission sensitive/unclassified" on the top of each page.)

Asked about the “flow of information about al Qaeda threats from 1998-2001,” Giuliani said: “At the time, I wasn’t told it was al Qaeda, but now that I look back at it, I think it was al Qaeda.” He also said that as part of one of his post-9/11 briefings, “we had in Bodansky, who had written a book on bin Laden.” Giuliani was referring to Yossef Bodanksy, the author of Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, which was published in 1999 and predicted “spectacular terrorist strikes in Washington and/or New York.” Giuliani wrote in his own book, Leadership, that Judi Nathan got him a copy of Bodansky’s prophetic work “shortly after 9/11,” and that he covered it in “highlighter and notes,” citing his study of it as an example of how he “mastered a subject.” Apparently, he also invited Bodansky to address key members of his staff.

Giuliani attributed his pre-9/11 shortcomings in part to the FBI, which was run by his close friend (and current endorser) Louis Freeh, and to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, an FBI-directed partnership with the NYPD. "We already had JTTF, and got flow information no one else got," he explained. "But did we get the flow of information we wanted? No. We would be told about a threat, but not about the underlying nature of the threat. I wanted all the same information the FBI had, and we didn't get that until after 9/11. Immediately after 9/11, we were made a complete partner." He added: "Without 9/11, I never would have been able to send an adviser to FBI briefings."

Why is this important?

Well, because you might have heard in his stump speech...wait, let Barrett tell it...

Rudy Giuliani told an audience at Pat Robertson's Regent University: "Bin Laden declared war on us. We didn't hear it. I thought it was pretty clear at the time, but a lot of people didn't see it, couldn't see it." Other tenets of his standard stump speech include the assertion that he's been "studying terrorism" for more than 30 years, and that "the thing that distinguishes me on terrorism is that I have more experience in dealing with it" than the other presidential candidates.

"Clear at the time"? What "time", Rudy? September 12th, when the rest of us had been sitting with that knowledge for 24 hours? Was this before or after you asked for the briefing on Al Qaeda, Rudy?

Turns out, his secret testimony was corroborated by then-fire chief Thomas van Essen and disgraced then-police commissioner Bernard Kerik: NO BRIEFINGS ON AL QAEDA PRIOR TO 9/11!

Meditations On Nine-Eleven

Call this a prayer. Call this a meditation. Call this an afirmation, sermon, an essay, whatever you like. This comes from my heart, and is something I've been meaning to say for a while:

I am not afraid.

In the days immediately following September 11, 2001, as I watched the plume of smoke rise off the rubble pile and glad-handers and hate mongers scramble to find some way to exploit the deaths of thousands and the loss of naivete of Americans, I was scared. As I watched the empty hospitals, devoid of casualties, I was terrified.

I remember sitting in my office that Friday, September 14, as the building-wide PA system clicked on announcing a bomb scare. It was time to evacuate.

After the initial scramble to gather up the few necessities...a wallet, cellphone, keys, making sure others got to the fire exit safely...I stood in a crowd waiting my turn to walk the stairs, not sure if I'd make it out of the building, and if I did, what awaited me there.

I could take a deep breath, and I sobbed. And then walked. The heat was dreadful, bodies packed the steps, and it was a hot and humid day, a rainy late summer morning.

An hour later, I made my way back to the building. Miracle of miracles! The bomb scare was a phony, the elevators were running and we all got back to some semblance of work.

But I am not afraid anymore. That single sob, that single teardrop on my cheek, was the only concession I've made to my fear, six long years ago.

I am not afraid.

I am not afraid of Al Qaeda, of Osama bin Laden, of Hamas and Hezbollah. I am not afraid that they can, and will one day, attack this nation again. Some may die, most will not, and by God's word, the next time we'll have a President and a people prepared to handle it like adults.

You took our innocence. You will never have that same result again. I am not afraid.

I am not afraid of George Bush, Dick Cheney, or Karl Rove. I am not afraid of Republicans and their lickspittle blogosphericals who harass and chide anyone who thinks for themselves when it comes to the direction this nation is headed. I am not afraid that they will do anything and everything they can to impose a reactionary, antediluvian agenda that turns the clock back on hundreds of years of progress in this nation.

You cannot succeed. You will not succeed. America has seen behind the curtain of hype, advertising and marketing that shoved an illegal invasion down our throats. We're pretty full, and about to explode. The blowback won't be pretty.

I am not afraid.

I am not afraid of the TSA, the NSA, the CIA, the DEA, the FDA, the FBI, the DHS, or the IRS. I am not afraid because ultimately, my freedom will prevail, even if I may not be in any shape to appreciate it, if even around.

You can take nearly everything from me, anything I might value. You can strip me naked, decide I'm some criminal, force me to the streets then arrest me, take my friends from me, and create a mythos about me. But you cannot take me.

I am not afraid.

I am not afraid of the fear-mongers, the mind-rapers, the heart-stabbers, the soul snatchers, who would parade fear around to sell newspapers or cable TV shows, while ignoring the very truths about themselves.

I am not afraid because I know, the American people know, that these jackasses are trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel for every last viewer and dollar that they can, and have sold their very beings to that end.

We pity you and laugh at you, not with you. Your words are meaningless, your thoughts inane, your shrieking "Talking Points" speak more about your own wet diapers than of our supposed inability to hear your Chicken Little screeches any longer. You miss the bigger picture because you are incapable of wrapping your pea-brains around the truth of the world: you've contributed to so much degradation and contumely in this nation that you, too, are now victimized by it. You've inadvertently Hannitized yourselves for our protection.

I am not afraid.

I will never be afraid again of this world that has been created around me by naked greed and hideous envy, for I am stronger than any of you who would see me buckle and bend to your hatred. I will be true to my soul, and true to my heart, and will fight you with every breath in my body and with every fibre of my being.

And long after you have gone to dust, long after I go to dust, the monument to truth and peace and freedom that I have added a few miserable pebbles to will stand tall and firm as a bulwark against the dark you attempt to bring to the world.

And it will have these words enshrined on it: I AM NOT AFRAID

Bad Air Day

(h/t ThomasLockeHobbs.com)
Not that we in New York didn't know this already and not that we in New York haven't already figured out we got a non-lubricated rumphump, but it's nice to see a Federal agency make a real issue of this:

WASHINGTON - The Government Accountability Office has condemned the cleanup and testing program for Ground Zero-area buildings, saying the federal Environmental Protection Agency has largely ignored New Yorkers' health and safety concerns.

In a report released Wednesday, the nonpartisan federal watchdog claimed EPA's current program for indoor areas contaminated by World Trade Center dust has been underfunded, misdirected and failed to include areas in the Sept. 11 debris cloud north of Canal Street and in Brooklyn.

"While EPA has acted upon lessons learned following this disaster, some concerns remain about its preparedness to respond to indoor contamination following future disasters," concluded author John Stephenson.

The shocking revelation in this report is how the EPA could miss that Brooklyn, which lay for weeks under the cloud of smoke and dust blown off the Trade Center site by prevailing winds (with one or two days' respite due to winbd shifts or rain), was not included in the first round of air quality testing.

Anybody who wasn't blind could see the direction that cloud was flowing.

But, as they say, wait, there's more:

EPA's first indoor cleanup and testing plan, which focused primarily on airborne asbestos contamination and included only residences, was deemed inadequate by the agency's own inspector general.

The second program, inaugurated in late 2005, includes testing of dust for other toxins but still doesn't include businesses or testing of most ventilation systems in apartment towers.

At a news conference Wednesday, Clinton accused the EPA of "understating the potential risks" of indoor contamination to "discourage people from participating" in the new cleanup plan.

In a 26-page point-by-point rebuttal, EPA officials said their decision to limit the geographic scope of their program was based on computer modeling showing that most contamination occurred in Manhattan below Canal Street.

And that's likely true, the most immediate impact of the disaster was likely contained below Canal Street in lower Manhattan.

But people don't live in computer models, so it would have been a prudent and intell-- oh, who the hell am I kidding? We're talking the Bush administration, fer god's sake! Suffice it to say that they scoped out the minimum effort to put into any project, and then deducted a 20% vig off the top for their cronies.

And none of that goes anywhere near the lengths to explaining how, in a business district, commercial buildings were exempted from testing in the first place. I'm sure many of the landlords who owned buildings down there tested on their own (insurance companies likely demanded it,) as I'm sure many apartment building ventilation systems were tested, but let's be real: what landlord is going to risk his occupancy rate in the face of an economic collapse of the area by admitting, yes, there's a problem, and allowing tenants to make informed decisions about whether to continue living and working in his buildings?

The EPA should have been in there on September 12th, digging in the dirt to find out what was happening.

In the course of thirty years of Republican dominance in the White House, we as a nation have come to expect very little from our Presidents, basically, protect us at some minimal quantifiable level.

This administration has failed to do even that much. It failed to stop the terrorist attacks on 9/11, despite warnings out the wazoo about them coming. It has downgraded every single Federally funded program, from FDA inspections to FEMA disaster relief. It has cut funding to the Army Corps of Engineers in every single year of its existence, including the year after Katrina.

And now this.

I know the stated intent of some of Bush's backers was to make government small enough to drown in a bathtub. I just didn't think they meant to include the rest of us, as well.

Sure, Let's Fight Them There...

So we doesn't have to, you know, fight them here:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Four people, including a former member of Guyana's parliament, have been charged with planning to blow up New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, U.S. officials said on Saturday.

This was "one of the most chilling plots imaginable," Roslynn Mauskopf, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said at a news conference in New York. "The devastation that would be caused ... is just unthinkable."

The plotters sought to blow up the airport's jet fuel tanks and part of the 40-mile (64-km) pipeline feeding them from New Jersey. Three of the four suspects, who included a former airline cargo handler, have been arrested, federal law enforcement officials said.

In a recorded conversation one suspect predicted there would be few survivors and that the attacks would result in the destruction of "the whole of Kennedy."

That's a pretty dubious claim, of course, but to say a billion dollars in damage and a few hundred lives lost, not to mention disruption of national air travel for several weeks, would not be out of line.

Targets in the airport plot included terminal buildings, aircraft and fuel tanks, as well as the fuel pipeline to the airport. Pipeline operator Buckeye Partners L.P. said it had been cooperating with authorities since the investigation started in January 2006.

Spokesman Roy Haase declined to comment on security measures but said speculation the plotters hoped to destroy large parts of the pipeline were unrealistic, since any damage would be confined to the area where fuel leaked and the pipeline was almost entirely underground.

"There's no oxygen in the pipeline. It's completely full of liquid and you need oxygen for ignition," Haase said.

(Full disclosure: I have certain investments with Buckeye, which is part of the Carlyle Group)

The tanks themselves blowing up would have been the biggest concern, of course, as well as any above ground piping and hoses that lead from them. Since fueling operations are generally done as passengers off-load and re-load, minimal passenger deaths would have resulted if any planes had been affected at all.

This does, however, expose a huge hole in America's philosophy in battling terror crimes: waging a war against whom you believe to be the most likely adversary comes nowhere close to preventing terror attacks, full stop. Moreover, waging a war that can easily be painted as a "Crusade" (and you'd think those master media manipulators would have thought this aspect out a little better) is not going to ensure your adversaries will all gather in one place to battle you.

In fact, if anything, by having such a bloody-minded focus on one place, you allow all sorts of flanking manuevers and indeed, every year since 2002, we've seen more terror attacks in more places killing more people, and that's after factoring out Iraq and Afghanistan from the statistics.

The one-percent theory-- you know, that we have to be right 100% of the time, but if terrorist are right even once out of a hundred, we lose-- is a bit of a farce, as well, when applied here. The Iraq invasion increases the likelihood that we will be wrong, and fairly frequently.

What should have happened after September 11-- find Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, roll them up, bring them to a trial-- would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, made many more friends out of our potential adversaries, prevented any number of plots around the world, and garnered the good will of a world grateful to see that the big bully can keep his gun in his holster.

What I see in the Islamist world is not an organized state of war, but ad hoc cells itching for revenge against us. Those would all have gone away as the cells realized there was no safe haven for them anywhere to operate with the blind eye of local governments.

Would there still be terror attacks? Sure, but fewer and smaller scale, with less financial support and emotional blessings attached, which means more chance of catching them before they strike. And truly, we could have established a coalition of the willing to create strike forces that by treaty could stop terrorist attacks anywhere, because who wants Sharm el-Sheik to happen in their backyard?

Led by America's vast and unnecessary military power, we could easily have signed up countries frm Lebanon to Indonesia to Mexico and Canada in the blink of an eye, anyone of whom could invite us in to deal with terorist cells.

What happened after September 11 has only left America exhausted, vulnerable, and morally bereft at a time we can ill afford to have our flaws examined by the entire world, as our star begins to wane and other stars rise to replace us at the top.

And now we have what we have.

More Fallout From 9/11

The death toll from the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 has risen by one, officially:

Felicia Dunn-Jones died Feb. 10, 2002, and the cause of her death was determined to be sarcoidosis with cardiac involvement, said the New York City medical examiner's office.

"The office of chief medical examiner has thus concluded that Mrs. Dunn-Jones' exposure to World Trade Center dust on 9/11/01 contributed to her death and it has been ruled a homicide," read a news release from the agency, which had previously refused to include her in the list of 9/11 victims.

This is the first official death attributed, at least in part, to exposure to toxic fumes and dust at Ground Zero.

Eighteen thousand people were evacuated from those buildings. Hundreds of thousands of people work in the immediate vicinity. Millions were barraged with smoke for weeks afterwards.

For most of that time frame that the rubble burned and smoldered, throwing off fumes and dust, the prevailing winds carried the smoke offshore for the most part. If you believe in God, this may be a piece of evidence, since the weather at that time of summer usually comes up from the south, which would have meant millions more exposed to the stench and particles.

One day, I think it may have been the following Wednesday, the winds shifted around, and the fumes blew up into Manhattan. I remember that day well. I remember smelling the air and knowing I was smelling death. It was the second worst smell in my lifetime (I grew up across the river from a fat rending plant).

Many believe that the recent spike in respiratory disease in the city is due to exposure to these toxins. While I'd find it hard to agree with that conclusion, I cannot deny the possibility. Certainly, asbestos was in the air, and who knows what toxins from carpeting, dust, and other materials burned in the intense heat were released.

Sarcoidosis is an immune system disease that is caused by small tumours called "granulomas" which are epithelial cells that have been encapsulated by lymph cells (I'm sure at least one medical professional will complain about that description, but we're not medical experts here, and I've probably already taxed my readership's biology knowledge at "epithelial").

In and of itself, sarcoidosis is not necessarily fatal, but its immunosuppressive features can activate other diseases, such as tuberculosis. And of course, breathing becomes a chore.

On a lighter note, another effect of the 9/11 attacks was seen yesterday, as a peregrine falcon nest was discovered atop the Queens tower of the Throgs Neck Bridge. Peregrines are not unusual in New York City, preferring to nest high above the streets of the city. However, with the continual bustle of building at the World Trade Center site, their usual nesting places in lower Manhattan (such as One Wall Street) are too noisy (yes, noisy) for them to feel comfortable raising chicks there.

Oddly enough, the Throgs Neck Bridge, which is probably more conducive to a falcon nest anyway, is being renovated, which is how the nest was discovered. This is the first set of falcon nestlings born on top of the bridge since the 1980s, another indicator that the falcons have been forced away from their usual haunts in lower Manhattan, where nestlings were an annual occurence.

Gee....How Nice Of Him...

Three thousand Americans died on September 11, 2001. On September 14, President George W Bush vowed to get "the folks who did this"

I'm guessing Hamid Karzai missed that memo:

KABUL (Reuters) - The Taliban freed a French aid worker on Saturday as President Hamid Karzai marked the anniversary of the end of communist rule with a fresh offer of olive branch to the resurgent Islamic guerrillas.

WHA?????

Let's take a closer look at this:

At a colorful ceremony in Kabul for the 15th anniversary of the fall of the Soviet-backed communist regime, Karzai again pleaded with the Taliban to talk peace.

"Today, while celebrating the jihad victory, we once again invite those who have sided with aliens because of seduction against their nation, to give up sedition and evil and join peaceful life," he said.

And those three thousand dead Americans, the nation that put you, an Unocal puppet, back in charge, including the natural gas pipeline Unocal is building to Pakistan?

Wouldn't it be nice if the those men and women could join you at your festival of peace?

The real kicker was the Taliban response to this offer:

France's Foreign Ministry confirmed that one member of an aid group who had been kidnapped in Afghanistan early this month had been released.

Why are we fighting in Iraq again?

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