Country-by-country, a short summary of international responses to U.S. anti-terrorist initiatives. Note the list is organized by region, not purely alphabetically. It's very interesting to see the range of reactions.
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Apparently they were able to get Cheney's pacemaker started again. He's back. Turns out he was in charge all along. Yeah right.
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The Admiral Yamamoto Pearl Harbor quote is a phony. I got sucked into that one, too (see below on 9/14). It's from the movie "Tora! Tora! Tora!". [via MeFi]
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Excellent Bush quote: "'When I take action I'm not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive." Bush finally getting some good press.
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The good news for anyone who advocates caution, delay and debate at this critical time is that you now officially have France in your corner. Wait... that's not good news... didn't we already have airspace overflight issues with them in the last round of attacks against terrorists?
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If you missed the Krulwich piece that was running periodically on ABCNEWS, "Towers Disappear Into Clouds of Dust", you can see it here. Amazing statistics ... 200,000 tons of structural steel, 600,000 square feet of glass, 6 acres of marble, much of it vaporized in the force of the buildings' collapse. Vaporizing steel beams?!
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DEBKAfile is worth checking on periodically as we move toward military action. It's updated 4 times a day. Caveat emptor! This site appears to have liberal does of Israeli propaganda mixed in with current hard data. Still, it's got way more detail on the mechanics of war, troop movements, intelligence data, political analysis, border conditions, and the like than I've ever seen on CNN.
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An Afghan-American writing for Salon has some interesting perspectives. Bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age? They're already there. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and healthcare? Too late. Someone already did all that. New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. He thinks that starting a war between Arabs and the U.S. is exactly what Bin Laden wants. Which is, I guess, a legitimate concern. But if Bin Laden's desire for war is based on his experience with the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan, he's got a huge surprise coming. "Be careful what you wish for."
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A young man in Ohio was in school when he remembered that he forgot to take a pellet gun out of his backpack. Knowing how sensitive schools are - and rightfully so - about weapons, he did the prudent thing and headed straight for the office, explained the situation and turned over the gun. For his honesty, school officials gave him an automatic 10-day suspension with a recommendation for expulsion for one year. This kind of stupidity makes me want to scream. How are we supposed to teach our kids to behave responsibly if idiots in positions of authority insist on behaving like, well, idiots?
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A beautiful collection of photos [via /usr/bin/girl] from around the world, in sympathy with the USA. This may take awhile to load - there are a lot of pictures - but it's worth it. This is so powerful I am speechless.
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War time, like other times of crisis, brings out the best (1, 2, 3, 4) and the worst (1, 2, 3, 4) in people. As the Roman Seneca said, "Ignis aurum probat, miseria fortes homines." Fire proves gold, difficult times prove men.
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If you have a short message of hope and support for the people in New York, you can have it scrolled across the Times Square ticker.
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"I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant, and given him a terrible resolve." -Admiral Yamamoto, shortly after Pearl Harbor. Leonard Pitts, Jr., writing on Wednesday for the Miami Herald, said it best. And to anyone who is talking about America "getting a taste of its own medicine", "reaping what you sow", or mentions the words "just desserts", there is a special meeting, this Saturday, in front of the Afghani Defense Department building in Kabul. You're invited! Don't be late!

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Awhile ago (6/19) I linked AskJeeves' response to the question "Are you gay?", as it was mildly humorous. SatireWire has done the full-blown interview with Jeeves. Discover how the Internet is like a non-arthritic bee. Or something.
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Neale at wrongwaygoback is putting together a timeline, the chronology of events around the bombings. He's used the CNN timeline as the "master" and added additional detail and events from other sources as they are discovered or unfold. This is an important historical Internet document, and it's well done, to boot.
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Marin Rowing Association has an excellent video up on their junior novice team web site. How many people wanna kick some ass? Click on Photos/Video and launch the video. Sort of a recruiting tool. I see Travis in there at least five times, rowing, getting medals, etc; in fact, he's the very first rower you see, sitting in the stroke position facing the coxswain.
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Pretty comprehensive explanation of what "black boxes" are and how they work. They've found the data box from the PA flight, and have the signal for one of the recorders from the Pentagon flight.
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It's alive! I have bandwidth again!
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A fireman plunged from the 83rd floor - over 1000 feet - when the floor gave way beneath him. And lived.
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Almost every episode of Space Ghost, available for download.
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Crayola Crayons, ranked by popularity. Who knew blue was such an overwhelming favorite?
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OK, off the bombings for a while, hopefully... a Stanford professor buys a Las Vegas strip club to fund his medical research. At least, notes one of the city councilmen, "the club's previous owners had run the establishment with an 'air of class'."
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Here's the unclassified CIA Fact Sheet on Osama bin Laden, if you're interested.
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TIME magazine photoessay, "Shattered" has the best photos documenting this tragedy that I've seen so far [via MeFi]. Dial-up sucks! Hopefully... a new cable modem tomorrow!
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Bin Laden is now under house arrest by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Not that that means anything yet. We've played this game before, with terms and conditions of the trial being set and reset and reset yet again. If there is solid evidence forthcoming this should come to a conclusion, one way or the other, fairly quickly. I hope.

update 09-14-01: "Earlier, an Arabic online newspaper reported that the Taliban had put bin Laden under house arrest, but Taliban sources told the Afghan Islamic Press news agency that the report was 'false and fabricated'." Google cache of story, sorry I missed it on the first go 'round.
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And the answer to my question seems to be that the passengers of the flight that crashed near Pittsburgh voted to attack the hijackers. How very... American. Democracy in action, in the middle of a terrorist attack. They are true heros one and all.
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DON'T DRINK THE TAP WATER. A MeFi user reports (no link provided, unfortunately - sorry, but this is important) on a biological warfare warning from the CDC, and New York radio stations are mentioning that biological warfare has been suspected although there is no evidence. The only disease they have specifically named is anthrax. On an eerie note, Travis brought home the story from school -- all four kids were immersed in the news at school yesterday -- that an analyst at Morgan Stanley had predicted a major terrorist attack on a economic center in the U.S., as we head toward global recession. He also predicted that, three weeks later, San Francisco would suffer an outbreak of ... <drumroll>... anthrax! </drumroll> OK, that's just too weird; I'm on bottled water for the foreseeable future.
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Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
       -- William Butler Yeats, excerpt from The Second Coming
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To make it easy to remember the date, today was 9-1-1. It was also very close to the anniversary of the Sadat/Begin Camp David Peace Accords, which were signed at the culmination of a conference that ran from 9/5 - 9/17/78. Today, Sept. 11, exactly 60 years ago, ground was broken on construction of the Pentagon.
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I really, really would like to know what the story is with that plane that went down in Pennsylvania, in a remote area next to a field. Reports from people on the ground say it looked like the plane was deliverately diving. This would indicate - maybe, probably(?) - that the pilot, co-pilot and/or crew fought back on this plane, jammed the stick forward and put the plane in an unrecoverable dive to prevent it from being used in these suicide bombings. In which case, we oughta build statues to those folks, who probably saved thousands of lives. I can't wait until they recover the flight recorders ("black boxes") from that flight. But that could take weeks (the boxes don't transmit).

The news -- relaying what passenger and CNN commentator Babara Olson said when she used her cell phone to call her solicitor-general husband and tell him the plane was being hijacked -- is that the hijackers used knives and box-cutters to take the planes. It is also likely, however, that they threatened passengers and crew by telling them there was a bomb on board and they would detonate it if everyone did not cooperate. Taking initiative to deliberately down the plane under those circumstances -- if that is indeed what happened -- would be one of the bravest things I've ever heard of.
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Amazon has a Red Cross Donation page up. They are accepting donations from $1 to $50 on the site. They are foregoing their normal transaction fee, so 100% of the cash goes to the Red Cross. The numbers are jumping by huge increments every time I refresh. It would be a very cool thing if you would pitch in a couple of bucks. Right now.
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Everyone I talked to today said the same thing, we should wipe Afghanistan off the face of the earth. I think that's premature. We need to know who's responsible beyond a shadow of a doubt. Remember Oklahoma City? That was initially widely reported to be the work of Islamic extremists. However, it turned out to be a domestic terrorist -- Timothy McVeigh. We need to know if any nation-state was involved in this directly or indirectly. Then, perhaps, turn Afghanistan into a parking lot. The urge to strike out is strong. Check out today's Village Voice cover page.

On the other hand, there are those voices raised in alarm who, with some justification, fear curtailment of our civil liberties in a militaristic environment, and who fear the escalation that international military action could initiate. We should, they say, take this opportunity to examine our actions on the international stage, the things that we have done that could stir such hatred by other countries, religions, and factions. The compassionate intellectual approach, if you will. This is reasonable, and appealing, because we know that the urge to strike out is strong and can lead to serious mistakes. There have already been reports of violence against Arab nationals in New York, and that's unacceptable. And civil liberties, once surrendered, can be hard to win back.

But there's a middle ground that is, I think, the right road. Julie pointed out to me that when the first World Trade Center bombing took place, then-President Clinton promised that the perpetrators would be brought to justice. Bin Laden and his followers were identified, but never brought to justice. That, in retrospect, was a mistake. Serious resources should have been devoted to tracking him down. Now, we have a new problem. We have some clues already. Bin Laden went public 3 weeks ago with his promises of a major terrorist action against the U.S. We have confirmation from passengers' phone calls from the hijacked planes that the hijackers were middle eastern. The hijackers were making phone calls from the planes; the NSA is tracking those down. We will find out -- absolutely, positively -- who is behind this, and then we should demand of the country who is hosting them that they be turned over to us immediately. If that doesn't happen, we should attempt to go in and get them. If we are opposed in those efforts, we should drop bombs.

The end result may be the same -- lots of parking in Afghanistan -- but the method is important. It is important for international perception of the United States as a strong and fair player on the international stage, not as another overbearing superpower who believes that might makes right. It is important for Dubya; this is a leadership crisis for him, and he desperately needs to show he has a backbone, but he also needs to be perceived as logical, reasonable and non-partison in the execution of his plans. But most of all, it is important for the American people. Our much-maligned role as international policeman is under attack at home as well as abroad. But that's a job that has to be done, and no one else is capable of doing it. To get America behind the plan, Dubya has to lay out the plan and its logical conclusion. Unilateral military action is only going to widen the split that is already dividing the country. Times of war can and should unite us behind our leader. He has only to lead to make it so. If he can follow the wise words of another President, Teddy Roosevelt: "Speak softly and carry a big stick," maybe I'll even call him "President Bush"!

When Dubya came on the TV at 8:30pm (pretty good speech, BTW), I fully expected him to follow in the steps of his predecessors and say, "As I am speaking, American bombers are targeting carefully selected sites in Afghanistan..." After all, it's been done before. But it didn't happen, and we should be pleased by that. We all want justice, preferably swift and merciless. But we want it applied in the right place, to the right people. Similarly, I expected martial law in New York and DC tonight, but that wasn't forthcoming either, and once again, we should be pleased. Our lives are going to change, and we are going to be subjected to more restrictions and more scrutiny, particularly on public transportation and at public facilitites, but these are impositions I think we can live with. The government seems to be treading lightly now until they establish the facts, and I applaud that. If Dubya has the courage to mete out justice when the perpetrators are unmasked, I will be well and truly impressed.
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I'm a little concerned by one of my son's observations that a couple of his classmates who have brothers in the Marines said those brothers got called in -- on alert -- last night. The administration has been consistently saying that, aside from bin Laden's generalized threats three weeks ago, they had no inkling this was in the works. I hope that's true.
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I'm amazed by the emergency response people and systems and procedures. Securing our nation's leaders, putting all our foreign embassies on alert, scrambling the fighter jets to patrol metropolitan airspaces, grounding the commercial airplanes and locking down the airports, closing the borders, calling up the National Guard... all these things happened within the first hour of the attack. Foresight and planning for events you hope never happen -- disaster scenarios, worst-case scenarios -- paid off.
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Twelve hours later, and the bombings are still the only topic on the news. People leaving the buildings saw other people trapped in a stairwell, and tried to help them, but the trapped people didn't want anybody to touch them because all their skin was burned in the fire. How do you help somebody you can't touch? Police and firefighters are getting cell phone calls from people trapped in the rubble, but they still can't go in because the fires and falling debris are too dangerous. They estimate 200 firefighters and 75 police officers have been killed in rescue attempts so far. Our church, like thousands of others is holding a prayer vigil tonight for the victims and their families. The suffering that is going on right now is too much to comprehend.
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I heard that after the Pentagon was hit by the hijacked plane, C-Span trained their cameras on the Capitol, waiting for the next airplane.
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Ah, the car bomb outside the State Dept. was apparently a false rumor. Thank God.
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Both World Trade Towers collapsed after being hit by two hijacked planes, the Pentagon hit by a third hijacked plane, a fourth plane down in Pennsylvania, a bomb exploding outside the State Department.... today is the day everything changed.

Who is responsible? Talk seems to be centering on Osama bin Laden and his followers, who have been responsible for the most well-coordinated terrorist attacks against the U.S. so far. Bush is talking about serious retaliation. I actually heard the words "World War III" on CNN. It's going to be a long, long time before things return to normal, if they ever do. You can safety forecast draconian measures from our government for the sake of public safety, and this terrorism will lend credence to the calls for extreme measures. There were tens of thousands of people in those two buildings alone... One network reporter was standing on the street below the towers, and people were jumping out of the towers from 80 stories up and landing at her feet. My skin is crawling and my stomach is churning...

You knew it was going to happen sooner or later, I'm just sorry it has.

Many news web sites are overloaded, but some special-purpose mirror sites are still functional: http://robots.cnn.com is up and running. As is http://partners.nytimes.com/.
Servers at C-Span are still carrying live feeds.
Palestinians in the West Bank celebrating.
NYPD live police radio broadcasts.
Official international reactions: www.nato.int/.
Photos compiled.
New Yorkers can check in here.
If you can, you should donate blood today.

I am already numb from the horror.
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And while we're on the topic of seismic activity, today's San Francisco Chronicle reports on pioneering research by Steven N. Ward, a research geophysicist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, on the creation of tsunamis -- tidal waves -- by underwater landslides. His computer models show some fascinating and frightening effects, as in "a Hawaiian volcano that erupted some 2.7 million years ago and sent its side crashing into the sea, setting off enormous tsunamis whose waves Ward has modelled in a computer study. 'After 18 minutes, the slide, barely half complete, set the ocean in full turmoil,' Ward said. He estimates that waves nearly 200 feet high from trough to peak must have slammed the coasts of Oahu and Molokai within minutes."
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In the world's largest science experiment on Friday, at least 1 million British kids jumped up and down at the same time, creating measurable readings on every seismometer in the country. You know, if you live out here in earthquake country, you can always check on these things in real time. Here's the local (Northern California) graph from Friday. The kids were jumping at around 3:00am my time, which is the 13th line on the graph (the one ending in 3:15 on the right). As you can see, their activities didn't register at all here on the left coast of the U.S., but the rest of the day was certainly noisy. Wonder if they stirred something up?
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Since my AT&T/@Home cable modem died yesterday morning, I'm back to dial-up with a 56Kb modem that, thanks to my lousy noisy PacBell phone line, I can only get to connect at about 19.2Kbps. I have to say, there's a qualitative difference in the Internet experience between dialup and broadband. I didn't really appreciate it until I had to go back. So don't expect a lot of new commentary over the next few days. @Home can't get a tech out here until Thursday. :(     On the plus side, it's given me some time to work on few outdated things offline. Like our new ParkerFamily.net home page.
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