Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

This Doesn’t Prove Shit

The BBC repor­ted this even­ing with some gusto that the US Justice Department had released “the first video” of the impact that took place at the Pentagon on the morn­ing of September 11^th 2001, thanks to a Freedom of Information request by Judicial Watch. In 2002 stills from another Pentagon secur­ity cam­era claimed to show the same, but were of low qual­ity and failed to really clear up any­thing. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton was quoted as say­ing, “finally, we hope that this video will put to rest the con­spir­acy the­or­ies involving American Airlines Flight 77.” Regrettably, it fails to do so.

The still below linked here is taken from the BBC stream of the video — the source cam­era, like the pre­vi­ously released stills, is of low fram­er­ate; this is the only frame con­tain­ing whatever it was that impacted with the Pentagon.

What annoyed me as much as the treat­ment of this release as some­thing con­clus­ive was the tone of the art­icle, which reminded me of every offi­cial response to crit­ical art­icles writ­ten about the incid­ent. Theories have long cir­cu­lated about what happened at the Pentagon, and regard­less of what the offi­cial line is and what is branded as “con­spir­acy the­ory” are the facts — that the dam­age at the Pentagon was not con­sist­ent with an impact by a 757, illus­trated (among other things) by the com­plete lack of vis­ible debris. Okay, so per­haps this can be explained away; why then, if this is so, has the US gov­ern­ment not released the other video and pho­to­graphic mater­ial record­ing the incid­ent, namely the private sur­veil­lance cam­eras at the hotel near the Pentagon (con­fis­cated by the FBI after the attack) and at the pet­rol sta­tion across from the Pentagon. National Geographic News repor­ted in December 2001 that “Velasquez [the owner] says the gas station’s secur­ity cam­eras are close enough to the Pentagon to have recor­ded the moment of impact. “I’ve never seen what the pic­tures looked like,” he said. “The FBI was here within minutes and took the film.”” The author­it­ies have never released these images which, logic argues, should surely show the true events of that morning.

This is no won­der, how­ever, when blinkered atti­tudes like those pre­val­ent in the United States still exist. In 2002 French author Theirry Meyssan released two books attempt­ing to give an object­ive explan­a­tion of what he believed were the real events at the Pentagon, namely that what impacted there could not have been a 757 but was instead a smal­ler plane or mis­sile, or the dam­age was caused by a truck bomb at the site. Leaping aboard the American insti­tu­tion of anti-French sen­ti­ment, Pentagon spokes­man Glen Flood described the book as “a slap in the face and real offence to the American people”. To me it seems that this men­tal­ity has become the norm when deal­ing with issues like this — com­plete rejec­tion of the pos­sible altern­at­ive story sug­ges­ted by the “con­spir­acy the­or­ists” because the rami­fic­a­tions of it being true are so mind-meltingly huge that civil­isa­tion as we know it would implode. The aver­age American, des­pite being faced with over­whelm­ing evid­ence to the con­trary, simply refuses to even enter­tain the pos­sib­il­ity that what happened could be any dif­fer­ent from the offi­cial ver­sion of events.

The release of this video does not help to shore up the defence of the offi­cial story. It should not be treated as such. The other evid­ence of the events at the Pentagon that is still being sup­pressed needs to be released. I don’t like the offi­cial story; I don’t like the implic­a­tions if one of the other the­or­ies turns out to be true. I don’t claim to know either way, but I and mil­lions of oth­ers want to see that other footage.

Yes, what happened at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center on September 11^th was an atro­city in every way. Yes, the loss of human life was hor­rific and ter­rible, and should never be for­got­ten. But that is not a reason to refuse to ques­tion what went on. Those who sug­gest altern­at­ive the­or­ies are not try­ing to insult the dead. They are only try­ing to find the truth.

US releases 9/11 Pentagon video, BBC News, 16÷5÷2006
Why Pentagon released 9/11 tape, BBC News, 16÷5÷2006
The Suppression of Video Footage of the Pentagon Attack, 911research.com
Three Months On, Tension Lingers Near the Pentagon, National Geographic News, 11/12/2001

Better Late Than Never

As the WTC towers fell four and a half years ago, most of Manhattan was engulfed by dust clouds from the massive amounts of debris pro­duced by the col­lapse. Wall Street was closed on September 11^th and re-opened on September 17^th, as author­it­ies were des­per­ate to limit the eco­nomic dam­age of the attacks. The Environmental Protection Agency, with its his­tory of admin­is­trat­ive sucking-up (cov­er­ing up global warm­ing evid­ence, sup­press­ing reports on car fuel effi­ciency, etc), declared the air in Lower Manhattan, which was loaded with asbes­tos, lead, americum and other tox­ins, “safe to breathe” on September 18^th, and thou­sands returned to work.

Now, nearly five years on, reports of the effects to health of those liv­ing and work­ing in the area are begin­ning to reach the main­stream media. BBC News repor­ted yes­ter­day that the count of those with med­ical prob­lems linked dir­ectly to the 9/11 attacks has reached 15,000, many of whom say they were offered “false reas­sur­ances” by the gov­ern­ment. 5,000 are now seek­ing a class-action law­suit. January saw the first death ruled to be due to 9/11 dust — James Zadroga, who worked at Ground Zero.

A foot­note on the report on the BBC News web­site states that “a spe­cial report on the dust fal­lout from the 9/11 attacks will be fea­tured on BBC World start­ing on Wednesday 3 May at 1930 GMT. The doc­u­ment­ary will also be car­ried on BBC News 24.” I first heard about the dust effects in the “Confronting the Evidence: A Call to Reopen the 911 Investigation” doc­u­ment­ary — and that was nearly two years ago.

Problems mount from 9/11 fal­lout, BBC News, 12÷4÷2006
EPA’s 9/11 Air Ratings Distorted, Report Says, LA Times, 23÷8÷2003
“Confronting the Evidence: A Call to Reopen the 911 Investigation”, Reopen911.org
EPA Controversies, Wikipedia

New Orleans: Inside Story

To any­one who has been fol­low­ing the ter­rible events in New Orleans, this will make both inter­est­ing and con­cern­ing read­ing. Since Hurricane Katrina hit the area, its effects have been noth­ing less than cata­strophic, but now the winds have receded, the real prob­lem is a human one.

Michael Barnett, a.k.a. The Interdictor, works for DirectNIC, a large domain host­ing com­pany oper­at­ing out of New Orleans. He and his crew have been holed up in their 9^th-floor office suite, tasked with keep­ing the tens of thou­sands of hos­ted domains online. The build­ing the houses their data centre and office has its own diesel gen­er­at­ors, and as of today their Internet links are still up, and they are still online. His blog, now become the “Survival of New Orleans blog”, doc­u­ments the things he has done and wit­nessed since the hurricane’s impact.

From his office he and his crew broad­casts a web­cam feed (URL is a mir­ror and sub­ject to change) and takes pic­tures of what he can see below — loot­ing, mil­it­ary and police action, and the pro­gress of the flood­wa­ters. And a read of his blog shows things to be a lot worse than the main­stream media is reporting.

He reports police officers car­ry­ing out loot­ing of SUVs, ATMs and guns; emer­gency sup­plies being dropped off bridges by the National Guard, des­troy­ing most of them in the pro­cess; reports of armed civil­ians sur­round­ing police officers — one police source is quoted as saying,

“The people in the city are shoot­ing at the police. They’re upset that they’re not get­ting help quickly enough. The fire­men keep call­ing because they’re under fire. He doesn’t under­stand why the people are shoot­ing at the res­cuers. Here it is 5 days ago the Mayor said get out of town and nobody went and now they’re pissed.”

As he puts it,

“In case any­one in national secur­ity is read­ing this, get the word to President Bush that we need the mil­it­ary in here NOW. The Active Duty Armed Forces. Mr. President, we are los­ing this city. I don’t care what you’re hear­ing on the news. The city is being lost. It is the law of the jungle down here. The com­mand and con­trol struc­ture here is barely func­tion­ing. I’m not sure it’s anyone’s fault — I’m not sure it could be any other way at this point. We need the kind of logist­ical sup­port and infra­struc­ture only the Active Duty mil­it­ary can provide. The hos­pit­als are in dire straights. The police barely have any cap­ab­il­it­ies at this point. The National Guard is doing their best, but the situ­ation is not being con­tained. I’m here to help in any­way I can, but my cap­ab­il­it­ies are lim­ited and drop­ping. Please get the mil­it­ary here to main­tain order before this city is lost.”

The blog’s RSS feed is here.
Apparently it’s also pos­sible to listen to the National Guard radio chan­nel with Winamp here.

Update: I’ve been try­ing a bunch of dif­fer­ent feeds and this is the first I’ve found that works — it’s the Louisiana State Police radio chan­nel in Baton Rouge, the one cur­rently being tran­scribed on #interdictor-scanner (with occa­sional crosstalk on #interdictor-scanner2) on irc.freenode.net. Other feeds are lis­ted here.

Wiretaps in U.S. Jump 19% in 2004

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the num­ber of court-authorized phone taps in the U.S. rose by 19% in 2004.

Authorities made 1710 applic­a­tions for taps, and 1710 applic­a­tions were approved (that’s 100%). And that fig­ure does not include terrorism-related taps, which reached a record 1,754 last year. From the article:

“Between 1994 and 2004, the num­ber of wiretap author­iz­a­tions have increased 48 per­cent, accord­ing to the report. In 2004, New York repor­ted 347 wiretaps, California 180, New Jersey 144, and Florida 72 author­iz­a­tions. While judges author­ized more wiretaps, the aver­age length of time in which a wiretap could occur decreased in 2004 from 44 to 43 days.”