This is not war. It's a worldwide manhunt for a criminal, a murderer with the blood of thousands on his hands. But that's it. This ain't even Iraq bombing Kuwait, let alone Pearl Harbor.

Here's my meme. Say it with me now. The United States has not been attacked by a People. It's been attacked by a Person. And despite all the (manufactured?) evidence to the contrary, it's still possible that this person, whoever they are, had financial or logistical help from people who (*treason alert here*) might not have even had brown skin, who believed in a different god (like the Christian one, or the money one, or the power one), may have had other interests, other motives that the news outlets have jumped right over in their quest for a clean, simple story.

No, I'm not talking about W.'s disconnected blatherings about eradicating all evil and ending terrorism as we know it. (If terrorism was really eradicated, U.S. foreign policy as it currently is would become largely irrelevant. They'd have to start doing something more constructive, like feeding the poor or negotiating lasting peace treaties or something. And if George really believes what he's saying, and it sure looks like he does, I'm more scared than ever.)

And I'm not talking about Dick Cheney's disappearance for those crucial first four days (I'd buy that he either was made to disappear so that George would have no competition for the spotlight of absolute control, at least until Giuliani stepped up and started acting all mayorlike, or maybe he was cowered under a desk scared shitless.) Nor am I talking about the jingoistic one-voice treason-baiting whipemup that's passing for news on the networks.

But a rental car with an Arabic-language flight manual at the airport, as if flying a 767 is the kind of thing you can cram for, like a biology test? A passport of one of the suspects 'found' in the rubble? I thought the plane was the bomb, and if that fire was hot enough on those floors to actually melt the entire building, then how did a passport survive without a body? A stewardess' hands tied together, minus the rest of her? How'd they know it was a stewardess? And with all the gruesome photography we've already seen, why not show us this stuff?

I have no proof of these things. But I have been lied to before.

My guess is that the U.S. Government took a bad situation and is trying, clumsily in places, to turn it to their advantage. I believe they have plenty of ready-made 'pieces of evidence' to plant in whatever locations are necessary, either to help sway public opinion or to get convictions out of shaky courts or whatever. I also believe that if there's a couple of things that look fishy, there may be other happenings and items that have escaped scrutiny. (Ten bucks says Bush's 86% approval rating is cooked, and oh yeah, despite the magnitude of the crime committed last week, and despite what Congress and the Post might be yelling, repeat it after me: this is not war. War will begin when we bomb the crap out of Afghanistan and occupy it for a few months starting around Thanksgiving, and then they fight back in their feeble way. Last week was just the biggest crime ever committed, and yes, there is a difference.) I've seen enough, I think, that now I'm questioning everything I see or hear, including the cel phone calls from the planes, the directions airport security is now taking, the fact that the Osama bin Laden has been given a full week's head start (and counting) as if this was some big ole game of hide and seek, there are tons of lines to be read between.

Look, I'm not saying things didn't go down exactly as we've been told. (Okay, maybe I am.) But I am aware of how history is being rewritten right before our eyes, by everyone with an agenda, and I'm trying (along with lots of others, I'm pleased to report) to keep track of everyone's story. And in the coming weeks, the people and companies who get filthy stinking rich off all this war talk are going to have to bear up under ever more scrutiny for their role in this catastrophe.

Here's what I'm reading this week:

The Usual Suspects: CNN / NYT / Reuters / BBC

- a cartoon showing a rooftop party with the host coming out with a tray, the caption being:
"Okay, everybody, let's eat before the food gets dirty!";

- a longer piece by Jeffrey Goldberg, "The Martyr Strategy: What does the new phase of terrorism signify?" focusing on Palestinian extremism and, of course, on Public Enemy Number One;

- a short piece by Lillian Ross on the sudden arrival (and departure) of Bill Clinton to a semi-official function;

- another longer piece by Seymour M. Hersh about the shady backroom workings of Mobil in The Persian Gulf and South Asia, entitled "The Price of Oil";

- two other cartoons:
"So, Jim, where do you see yourself in ten minutes?"
"Relax, don't be afraid, it's just your office."

I went down to help out, but there were a ton of volunteers. I fetched coffee for the workers, but there were a ton of other cooks, and I felt kind of sick.

This is freaking me out in a brand new way. All my clothes stink. Part of me needs a big ole hug, and part of me needs to get away from all humanity. I feel helpless, useless, uncomfortable in my own skin. I don't fear for my life. I fear the same things I always fear. Death before my time, irrelevance, apathy.

It's so quiet here. I can't believe it. The streets are deserted to a degree that I've never experienced before. It's like everyone's exhausted from dealing with yesterday. I know I am.

I wish I could record what it sounds like right now. Not quite silence, but as close as I bet Manhattan will ever get. I can actually hear the waves of the East River, half a mile away.

Apparently I'm two blocks inside the designated lockdown zone for tomorrow too, and the reports say they're going to be arresting anyone on the streets, but screw it, I'm going to work. See, if I don't work, I don't get paid. Of course, if work sends me home, that's another story. (I work near the Red Cross, so this'll be my day for blooding. Or whenever. They'll need it tomrrow, and tomorrow.)

You know, I'm fighting the urge to turn on the TV right now and watch what I know will be more empty jingoist hawk talk from old guys with buzz cuts. It sickens me that our government (in the name of 'freedom') is going to use this as an excuse to blow the shit out of a country of little swarthy people, instead of finding the actual source of the problem.

America is the bully of the world. We're an empire in decline, and a little comeuppance was long overdue. Terrorism is cowardly, no question, but the same people that I watched bemoan and decry the blowings-up here cheered and condoned the very same activities when shown via videophone from Kabul, just like they huzzahed and aintamericagreated when watching the infrared transmissions from Baghdad, and woohooed 'em in Bosnia, and screamed for Arab blood in Oklahoma City.

This little piece of theater we've seen today was absolutely masterful. I'm kind of in awe of the logistics required to make this nation-wide action happen, and I applaud them unreservedly.

(I'm not endorsing what happened. But hear me out here.)

They crashed the first plane into the WTC just before 9:00, when workers (but not many tourists - don't want too many internationals among the casualties if you can help it) were in the building, and then about 20 minutes later, when the world's cameras are trained on the building from all sides, the next plane ponies up and takes out the other building. This much action alone is legend-worthy. To add the Pentagon to the list of successful targets is a lovely exclamation point.

And why do I get the feeling that Osama Bin Laden had nothing to do with it? I bet it was someone else with an OAG flight guide and a few friends (they apparently were armed only with box cutters and knives - how is the Star Wars Initiative gonna defend against that, I ask you?) who hit upon this master plan, and through some combination of dumb luck and excellent planning, managed to lace together a string of wide-bodied gas bombs that found their targets better than any guided missiles ever could.

The targets were clearly the totems of American might. This was a straight attack against the US as a ruling empire. To what end? Well, right now who needs an end. We'll all watch this unfold.

And the American government has responded like the logic-challenged bullies they are, by bombing the shit out of Afghanistan, and trotting General after Senator after Congressman after ex-CIA operative, proclaiming the same shite, our prayers are with the dead, we will hunt down the perpetrators, we will make America Safe Again. Out of these people's mouths, under these circumstances: what rot.

It was a brilliantly managed piece of theater. Yes, people died. I have never seen anything so massive, so heinous, so evil, so amazingly conceived. But I have to say that part of me is deeply impressed.

I heard about the first crash as I was waking up this morning - I had the radio on, I was late, as usual, and they cut in with the news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.

So I flipped on CNN, and when the second plane hit, we heard it out the open window. At that point, it became clear that this was an organized attack and not some freak accident. We made coffee and settled in for the day.

Dust started to gather in the air, a little on the street. The sounds of sirens started to fill the air, and haven't stopped yet. People began walking along our street covered in soot and dust, their faces and clothes ripped, clearly in shock, bearing ice packs and casts, clearly having been discharged from triages nearer the scene.

I've been sequestered in the apartment ever since. The streets have been unpassable, and really, why leave? Here is where the action is.

     

I took these shots on my way to work, after the first tower collapsed, from over on 5th Avenue, just north of Washington Square Park. I live over on the East Side, where there was more smoke and dust but less of a good view of the action. I spent some time up on my roof, talking about the ramifications of all this, whether we're at war, whether this was a reaction or whether it's something we (as Americans) we should react to.

There's still a fire raging in the area that the radio and TV haven't mentioned. Smoke continues to billow around the area, six hours after the double impact. Whoever did this was masterful in their planning and stage management of the operation. It couldn't have happened better. Quite frankly, I'm surprised this hasn't happened before, I'm thrilled that there were no biochemical or nuclear weapons involved, and we might never find or catch whoever did this, despite assurances from Mister Bush.

What are people from Connecticut called?

Connecticutites? Connecticutians? Connecticutters?
Connectors? Cons? Yankees?

Is there a website for these things that I just haven't found? Because I have looked so very, very hard. [Note: I have barely looked at all.] Some of them I know, just because they get used. There's Pennsylvanians and Rhode Islanders, Quebecois and Nunavutters, Dallasites and and Louisvillains, Truth or Consequencers and Toad Suckers, Idahoes, Texasians and Wyominglers, Cape Townies and Addis Ababans, Hong Kongas, Dahomies, Ecuadorations, innocent Uzbekistanders, Burma Shavers, Grenada Televisions and all the other Antillionaires, both Lesser and Greater. But then there's Connecticut.

I remember an episode of Taxi where Reverend Jim Ignatowski works a series of 36-hour shifts in the cab so he can afford a satellite so he can see hundreds of TV channels (which at the time was still a crazy concept to people, unlike today where any ole schmoe can wander home from work, plop down in their ratty old dumpster-bargoon half-couch, flip on the telescreen and watch, in succession, a South Amerrican minor league cricket match, a rather riveting documentary on the history of traffic signs, the final round of the 1959 British Open Golf Tournament (don't tell me - Nicklaus, right? Damn), then switch over and catch some morning show live from somewhere in (I'm guessing) Sicily before switching to the all-Tejano music channel to wind down a little, all of which really happened last night, with no stops on any of the 28,400 showings of Dolores Claiborne or Battlefield Earth starting every eight minutes across the other 791 channels of the digital spectrum, cos hey, I'm eclectic and shit, but there's a limit), but no one else knows why Rev. Jim's working so hard, and theyget all worried about him and finally they follow him home to this horrible apartment beside the airport and there's nothing in the place but this big screen TV, and Jim sits there, transfixed, watching, of all things... a sitting of the Delaware State Legislature as they debate whether to call themselves "Delawarians" or "Delawarites." Alex Rieger gets to deliver one of his little homilies about the dangers of subsuming one's life to the dangers of television, and then at the end of the episode, after he convinces Jim to bring all the equipment back, they're all leaving and you can hear the legislature deicde to go with "Delawarians" and Rieger freaks out - "Dammit, that sounds so dumb! I can't believe they didn't pick 'Delawarites!'"

The torrent of technological advancement has now brought us to the point where such an episode is a quaint little joke. The intricacies of a human genome, the transparency of government, the inner machinations of media and modern psychology, all have advanced so far up the evolutionary scale that there is an office full of already-overburdened people in the busiest city on the planet who still have enough mindspace free, even on a deadline-strewn day like today, to have had an active and heated discussion about the proper designation for the people from Connecticut.

And the web, the world god damned wide freaking web, the Babel-glorious next evolutionary step bringing humanity closer together, has no repository for this valuable and necessary corner of the world's knowledge?