Wednesday, June 25, 2008
World Trade Center site
Found this site while doing research for my paper, thought it was pretty interesting because it gives a lot of pictures of what Ground Zero looks like right now, and what it will look like later after the memorial is all built with the Freedom Tower. There is also a lot of facts about all the construction that will be taking place.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Putting the finishing touches on my paper, and still doing some extra research. I found some interesting stuff. First off:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/channel-08/2007/11/question_23_does_rudy_giuliani.html
I couldnt believe this, its the Family Guy clip i posted a while back, spliced with clips from the republican debate. really funny.
Also, when the other group brought in Cloverfield, i was disturbed by the cover art for the DVD, because it reminded me sooooo much of a picture I took at the Statue of Liberty yeeeears ago. I went searching for that pic, but couldn't find it :( Still I find this interesting tho, kinda creepy too..
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/channel-08/2007/11/question_23_does_rudy_giuliani.html
I couldnt believe this, its the Family Guy clip i posted a while back, spliced with clips from the republican debate. really funny.
Also, when the other group brought in Cloverfield, i was disturbed by the cover art for the DVD, because it reminded me sooooo much of a picture I took at the Statue of Liberty yeeeears ago. I went searching for that pic, but couldn't find it :( Still I find this interesting tho, kinda creepy too..
Monday, June 23, 2008
response
I just saw the link that the professor sent us, and it makes me wonder that if everything is revealed about the decisions our president makes then how can things be safe. To what extent should private things be made public? Is revealing everything about our decision making make us weak to the outside world in the long run?
Monday, June 16, 2008
Cheney v. U.S. District Court
"The case Cheney vs. U.S. District Court is scheduled to be heard before the Supreme Court next month and could end up revealing more about the Bush administration's motives for the 2003 Iraq war than any conceivable investigation of U.S. intelligence concerning Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction...."
More links on the court case:
High court hears Cheney case(MSNBC)
Dick Cheney: The (Supreme Court Nominee) Decider (Wall Street Journal blog)
Supreme Court accepts Cheney appeal on energy taskforce (CNN)
Taking on the Supreme Court Case (Washington Post)
More links on the court case:
High court hears Cheney case(MSNBC)
Dick Cheney: The (Supreme Court Nominee) Decider (Wall Street Journal blog)
Supreme Court accepts Cheney appeal on energy taskforce (CNN)
Taking on the Supreme Court Case (Washington Post)
9/11 Memorial Cobblestone
Click here to read the press update about the campaign to purchase cobblestones as gifts.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11 by Dave Kopel
Just a little something to further fuel our confusion over facts in the media.
Two Months Before 9/11, an Urgent Warning to Rice
Sunday, October 1, 2006; Page A17
On July 10, 2001, two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet met with his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, at CIA headquarters to review the latest on Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Black laid out the case, consisting of communications intercepts and other top-secret intelligence showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States. It was a mass of fragments and dots that nonetheless made a compelling case, so compelling to Tenet that he decided he and Black should go to the White House immediately.
Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, from the car and said he needed to see her right away. There was no practical way she could refuse such a request from the CIA director.
For months, Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy, including specific presidential orders called "findings" that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden. Perhaps a dramatic appearance -- Black called it an "out of cycle" session, beyond Tenet's regular weekly meeting with Rice -- would get her attention.
Tenet had been losing sleep over the recent intelligence he'd seen. There was no conclusive, smoking-gun intelligence, but there was such a huge volume of data that an intelligence officer's instinct strongly suggested that something was coming. He and Black hoped to convey the depth of their anxiety and get Rice to kick-start the government into immediate action.
He did not know when, where or how, but Tenet felt there was too much noise in the intelligence systems. Two weeks earlier, he had told Richard A. Clarke, the National Security Council's counterterrorism director: "It's my sixth sense, but I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one."
But Tenet had been having difficulty getting traction on an immediate bin Laden action plan, in part because Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had questioned all the National Security Agency intercepts and other intelligence. Could all this be a grand deception? Rumsfeld had asked. Perhaps it was a plan to measure U.S. reactions and defenses.
Tenet had the NSA review all the intercepts, and the agency concluded they were of genuine al-Qaeda communications. On June 30, a top-secret senior executive intelligence brief contained an article headlined "Bin Laden Threats Are Real."
Tenet hoped his abrupt request for an immediate meeting would shake Rice. He and Black, a veteran covert operator, had two main points when they met with her. First, al-Qaeda was going to attack American interests, possibly in the United States itself. Black emphasized that this amounted to a strategic warning, meaning the problem was so serious that it required an overall plan and strategy. Second, this was a major foreign policy problem that needed to be addressed immediately. They needed to take action that moment -- covert, military, whatever -- to thwart bin Laden.
The United States had human and technical sources, and all the intelligence was consistent, the two men told Rice. Black acknowledged that some of it was uncertain "voodoo" but said it was often this voodoo that was the best indicator.
Tenet and Black felt they were not getting through to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off. President Bush had said he didn't want to swat at flies.
As they all knew, a coherent plan for covert action against bin Laden was in the pipeline, but it would take some time. In recent closed-door meetings the entire National Security Council apparatus had been considering action against bin Laden, including using a new secret weapon: the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, that could fire Hellfire missiles to kill him or his lieutenants. It looked like a possible solution, but there was a raging debate between the CIA and the Pentagon about who would pay for it and who would have authority to shoot.
Besides, Rice seemed focused on other administration priorities, especially the ballistic missile defense system that Bush had campaigned on. She was in a different place.
Tenet left the meeting feeling frustrated. Though Rice had given them a fair hearing, no immediate action meant great risk. Black felt the decision to just keep planning was a sustained policy failure. Rice and the Bush team had been in hibernation too long. "Adults should not have a system like this," he said later.
The July 10 meeting between Tenet, Black and Rice went unmentioned in the various reports of investigations into the Sept. 11 attacks, but it stood out in the minds of Tenet and Black as the starkest warning they had given the White House on bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Though the investigators had access to all the paperwork on the meeting, Black felt there were things the commissions wanted to know about and things they didn't want to know about.
Philip D. Zelikow, the aggressive executive director of the Sept. 11 commission and a University of Virginia professor who had co-authored a book with Rice on Germany, knew something about the July 10 meeting, but it was not clear to him what immediate action really would have meant. In 2005 Rice hired Zelikow as a top aide at the State Department.
Afterward, Tenet looked back on the meeting with Rice as a tremendous lost opportunity to prevent or disrupt the Sept. 11 attacks. Rice could have gotten through to Bush on the threat, but she just didn't get it in time, Tenet thought. He felt that he had done his job and had been very direct about the threat, but that Rice had not moved quickly. He felt she was not organized and did not push people, as he tried to do at the CIA.
Black later said, "The only thing we didn't do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head."
On July 10, 2001, two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet met with his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, at CIA headquarters to review the latest on Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Black laid out the case, consisting of communications intercepts and other top-secret intelligence showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States. It was a mass of fragments and dots that nonetheless made a compelling case, so compelling to Tenet that he decided he and Black should go to the White House immediately.
Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, from the car and said he needed to see her right away. There was no practical way she could refuse such a request from the CIA director.
For months, Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy, including specific presidential orders called "findings" that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden. Perhaps a dramatic appearance -- Black called it an "out of cycle" session, beyond Tenet's regular weekly meeting with Rice -- would get her attention.
Tenet had been losing sleep over the recent intelligence he'd seen. There was no conclusive, smoking-gun intelligence, but there was such a huge volume of data that an intelligence officer's instinct strongly suggested that something was coming. He and Black hoped to convey the depth of their anxiety and get Rice to kick-start the government into immediate action.
He did not know when, where or how, but Tenet felt there was too much noise in the intelligence systems. Two weeks earlier, he had told Richard A. Clarke, the National Security Council's counterterrorism director: "It's my sixth sense, but I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one."
But Tenet had been having difficulty getting traction on an immediate bin Laden action plan, in part because Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had questioned all the National Security Agency intercepts and other intelligence. Could all this be a grand deception? Rumsfeld had asked. Perhaps it was a plan to measure U.S. reactions and defenses.
Tenet had the NSA review all the intercepts, and the agency concluded they were of genuine al-Qaeda communications. On June 30, a top-secret senior executive intelligence brief contained an article headlined "Bin Laden Threats Are Real."
Tenet hoped his abrupt request for an immediate meeting would shake Rice. He and Black, a veteran covert operator, had two main points when they met with her. First, al-Qaeda was going to attack American interests, possibly in the United States itself. Black emphasized that this amounted to a strategic warning, meaning the problem was so serious that it required an overall plan and strategy. Second, this was a major foreign policy problem that needed to be addressed immediately. They needed to take action that moment -- covert, military, whatever -- to thwart bin Laden.
The United States had human and technical sources, and all the intelligence was consistent, the two men told Rice. Black acknowledged that some of it was uncertain "voodoo" but said it was often this voodoo that was the best indicator.
Tenet and Black felt they were not getting through to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off. President Bush had said he didn't want to swat at flies.
As they all knew, a coherent plan for covert action against bin Laden was in the pipeline, but it would take some time. In recent closed-door meetings the entire National Security Council apparatus had been considering action against bin Laden, including using a new secret weapon: the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, that could fire Hellfire missiles to kill him or his lieutenants. It looked like a possible solution, but there was a raging debate between the CIA and the Pentagon about who would pay for it and who would have authority to shoot.
Besides, Rice seemed focused on other administration priorities, especially the ballistic missile defense system that Bush had campaigned on. She was in a different place.
Tenet left the meeting feeling frustrated. Though Rice had given them a fair hearing, no immediate action meant great risk. Black felt the decision to just keep planning was a sustained policy failure. Rice and the Bush team had been in hibernation too long. "Adults should not have a system like this," he said later.
The July 10 meeting between Tenet, Black and Rice went unmentioned in the various reports of investigations into the Sept. 11 attacks, but it stood out in the minds of Tenet and Black as the starkest warning they had given the White House on bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Though the investigators had access to all the paperwork on the meeting, Black felt there were things the commissions wanted to know about and things they didn't want to know about.
Philip D. Zelikow, the aggressive executive director of the Sept. 11 commission and a University of Virginia professor who had co-authored a book with Rice on Germany, knew something about the July 10 meeting, but it was not clear to him what immediate action really would have meant. In 2005 Rice hired Zelikow as a top aide at the State Department.
Afterward, Tenet looked back on the meeting with Rice as a tremendous lost opportunity to prevent or disrupt the Sept. 11 attacks. Rice could have gotten through to Bush on the threat, but she just didn't get it in time, Tenet thought. He felt that he had done his job and had been very direct about the threat, but that Rice had not moved quickly. He felt she was not organized and did not push people, as he tried to do at the CIA.
Black later said, "The only thing we didn't do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head."
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
US seeks death penalty for 9/11 mastermind
WASHINGTON (Agencies)
U.S. military prosecutors will file charges on Monday against the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and five other Guantanamo prisoners and will seek to execute them if they are convicted, officials involved in the process said. The charges against former al Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five other captives will be announced in an 11 a.m. EST (1600 GMT) news conference at the Pentagon. Mohammed, a Pakistani national, has said he planned every aspect of the Sept. 11 attacks.
But his confession could be problematic if used as evidence because the CIA has admitted it subjected him to a simulated drowning technique known as "waterboarding" during interrogations. The procedure is widely considered to be torture and the Guantanamo court rules prohibit the use of evidence obtained through torture, as does an international treaty the United States has signed.The charges against him will include conspiring with al Qaeda to attack and murder civilians and about 3,000 counts of murder for those killed on Sept. 11."I was responsible for the 9/11 Operation, from A to Z," the U.S. military quoted Mohammed as saying in an administrative hearing at Guantanamo, according to the transcript released by the Pentagon in March 2007. "I was the operational director for Sheikh Osama Bin Laden for the organizing, planning, follow-up, and execution of the 9/11 operation." Mohammed also said he was responsible for a 1993 attack on New York's World Trade Center, the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, and an attempt to down two American airplanes using shoe bombs. He also confessed to the beheading of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl.They will be the first charges from the Guantanamo war court alleging direct involvement in the attacks and the first involving the death penalty. Prosecutors will send the charges to a Pentagon appointee overseeing the Guantanamo trials, Susan Crawford, whose approval is needed before any trials can proceed. Mohammed was arrested in Pakistan in March 2003 and handed over to the United States. He is one of 15 "high-value" al Qaeda prisoners previously held in CIA custody and later sent to Guantanamo, most of them in 2006. The U.S. military began sending captives to Guantanamo in January 2002 and hopes to eventually try 80 of the 275 who remain. The widely criticized Guantanamo tribunals are the first U.S. war crimes tribunals since World War Two. They were established after the Sept. 11 attacks to try non-U.S. captives whom the Bush administration considers "enemy combatants" undeserving of legal protections granted to soldiers and civilians. They currently operate under authority of a law Congress passed in 2006, after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the first version.
U.S. military prosecutors will file charges on Monday against the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and five other Guantanamo prisoners and will seek to execute them if they are convicted, officials involved in the process said. The charges against former al Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five other captives will be announced in an 11 a.m. EST (1600 GMT) news conference at the Pentagon. Mohammed, a Pakistani national, has said he planned every aspect of the Sept. 11 attacks.
But his confession could be problematic if used as evidence because the CIA has admitted it subjected him to a simulated drowning technique known as "waterboarding" during interrogations. The procedure is widely considered to be torture and the Guantanamo court rules prohibit the use of evidence obtained through torture, as does an international treaty the United States has signed.The charges against him will include conspiring with al Qaeda to attack and murder civilians and about 3,000 counts of murder for those killed on Sept. 11."I was responsible for the 9/11 Operation, from A to Z," the U.S. military quoted Mohammed as saying in an administrative hearing at Guantanamo, according to the transcript released by the Pentagon in March 2007. "I was the operational director for Sheikh Osama Bin Laden for the organizing, planning, follow-up, and execution of the 9/11 operation." Mohammed also said he was responsible for a 1993 attack on New York's World Trade Center, the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, and an attempt to down two American airplanes using shoe bombs. He also confessed to the beheading of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl.They will be the first charges from the Guantanamo war court alleging direct involvement in the attacks and the first involving the death penalty. Prosecutors will send the charges to a Pentagon appointee overseeing the Guantanamo trials, Susan Crawford, whose approval is needed before any trials can proceed. Mohammed was arrested in Pakistan in March 2003 and handed over to the United States. He is one of 15 "high-value" al Qaeda prisoners previously held in CIA custody and later sent to Guantanamo, most of them in 2006. The U.S. military began sending captives to Guantanamo in January 2002 and hopes to eventually try 80 of the 275 who remain. The widely criticized Guantanamo tribunals are the first U.S. war crimes tribunals since World War Two. They were established after the Sept. 11 attacks to try non-U.S. captives whom the Bush administration considers "enemy combatants" undeserving of legal protections granted to soldiers and civilians. They currently operate under authority of a law Congress passed in 2006, after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the first version.
A NATION CHALLENGED: THE SITE; A Viewing Stand Brings Pilgrims to Ground Zero
A NATION CHALLENGED: THE SITE; A Viewing Stand Brings Pilgrims to Ground Zero
By MICHAEL COOPER
Published: December 31, 2001
The days of craning necks and peeking through gaps in plywood fences ended yesterday when the city opened its first official viewing stand for the World Trade Center site, and thousands of New Yorkers and tourists braved frigid winds and six-block-long lines to get their first unobstructed looks at the devastation.
They wore New York Police Department and Fire Department of New York hats and American flag scarves. They sobbed, prayed, whispered, gawked, snapped pictures and bought souvenirs. And by midday the crowds of people thronging lower Broadway had grown so large that the police set up new rules: people walking downtown were asked to stick to the west side of the street, and people walking uptown were asked to use the east side.
When people finally made their way up the long wooden ramp to the new viewing area, which is on an elevated platform on Fulton Street between Broadway and Church Street, they found a site transformed, even from the days after Sept. 11. The four-story piece of jagged steel that had been the last recognizable section of the towers was taken down weeks ago. The low black building that once housed a Borders bookstore was gone as well.
Had it not been for the pockmarked buildings lining the perimeter, the area would have looked almost like a giant construction site, or, more accurately, a demolition site.
The bells of St. Peter's Church were ringing out ''The First Noel'' shortly after 9 a.m., as the first people made their way up to the platform. The line was already several blocks long.
The first to set foot on the new platform was Greg Packer, 38, of Huntington, N.Y., who said that he arrived at 5 a.m. It was not too surprising, given his history. In recent years, Mr. Packer had appeared in dozens of newspaper articles for being the first in line to get tickets to the opening day of baseball season, to the World Series, to a Sheryl Crow concert.
This experience, Mr. Packer said, was entirely different. ''You feel violated looking at that, and knowing that thousands of people perished,'' said Mr. Packer, who wore red, white and blue sunglasses in the shape of the numbers 2002, a hat with the lettering of the Police Department, the Fire Department and the Yankees on it, and a ''W.T.C. 9/11/01'' pin. ''The thought of it angers me. I wanted to really take a good look for myself.''
Sona Rose-Ber, 38, of Brooklyn, gazed out from the platform and recalled how her parents took her to the site to watch the construction of the towers, how she was just a few blocks away when they were bombed in 1993, and how she watched the devastation from the other side of the East River on Sept. 11. ''I told my husband, 'Don't avoid it,' '' she said quietly. ''We need to see it.''
Carol Kesterson, an American Airlines flight attendant based in Chicago, visited the site during a brief layover to pay her respects to her colleagues who died when the first hijacked jetliner crashed into 1 World Trade Center, the north tower. ''On a day like today, people are showing how much they care,'' she said, weeping, as she stood on the platform. ''Everyone's thoughts are right here in New York.''
A few dozen people were called up at a time. As they gathered at the edge of the platform, some wept and others posed for photographs. A police officer gave instructions: ''People in the front -- we need you to start to exit so the people in the back have an opportunity to see.'' After a few minutes, it was time for the next group.
As they left they were met by a mass of hawkers. Photographs of the towers, before and after Sept. 11, went for $10. N.Y.P.D. and F.D.N.Y. hats were $5 to $10. Soft pretzels were $2. A Mrs. Fields shop across the street, and an Au Bon Pain up the street, were overflowing with people seeking hot chocolate, coffee and restrooms. The few portable toilets at the site are reserved for workers.
Some people complained of the carnival-like atmosphere. But Jim Manuel, 43, a New Jersey state emergency worker who was returning to the site for the first time since September, said it was just human nature. ''It's like the northbound traffic staring at the car wreck in the southbound lane,'' he said, ''except this is a global crossroads.''
Toshi Aki, 32, came from Tokyo with his wife, Keiko, and their 9-year-old daughter, Yoshini. ''I wanted to show her what the biggest moment in history in her life was,'' he said through a translator. ''Not like a picture, not like a video game, not like a movie. I wanted to show her this reality.''
By MICHAEL COOPER
Published: December 31, 2001
The days of craning necks and peeking through gaps in plywood fences ended yesterday when the city opened its first official viewing stand for the World Trade Center site, and thousands of New Yorkers and tourists braved frigid winds and six-block-long lines to get their first unobstructed looks at the devastation.
They wore New York Police Department and Fire Department of New York hats and American flag scarves. They sobbed, prayed, whispered, gawked, snapped pictures and bought souvenirs. And by midday the crowds of people thronging lower Broadway had grown so large that the police set up new rules: people walking downtown were asked to stick to the west side of the street, and people walking uptown were asked to use the east side.
When people finally made their way up the long wooden ramp to the new viewing area, which is on an elevated platform on Fulton Street between Broadway and Church Street, they found a site transformed, even from the days after Sept. 11. The four-story piece of jagged steel that had been the last recognizable section of the towers was taken down weeks ago. The low black building that once housed a Borders bookstore was gone as well.
Had it not been for the pockmarked buildings lining the perimeter, the area would have looked almost like a giant construction site, or, more accurately, a demolition site.
The bells of St. Peter's Church were ringing out ''The First Noel'' shortly after 9 a.m., as the first people made their way up to the platform. The line was already several blocks long.
The first to set foot on the new platform was Greg Packer, 38, of Huntington, N.Y., who said that he arrived at 5 a.m. It was not too surprising, given his history. In recent years, Mr. Packer had appeared in dozens of newspaper articles for being the first in line to get tickets to the opening day of baseball season, to the World Series, to a Sheryl Crow concert.
This experience, Mr. Packer said, was entirely different. ''You feel violated looking at that, and knowing that thousands of people perished,'' said Mr. Packer, who wore red, white and blue sunglasses in the shape of the numbers 2002, a hat with the lettering of the Police Department, the Fire Department and the Yankees on it, and a ''W.T.C. 9/11/01'' pin. ''The thought of it angers me. I wanted to really take a good look for myself.''
Sona Rose-Ber, 38, of Brooklyn, gazed out from the platform and recalled how her parents took her to the site to watch the construction of the towers, how she was just a few blocks away when they were bombed in 1993, and how she watched the devastation from the other side of the East River on Sept. 11. ''I told my husband, 'Don't avoid it,' '' she said quietly. ''We need to see it.''
Carol Kesterson, an American Airlines flight attendant based in Chicago, visited the site during a brief layover to pay her respects to her colleagues who died when the first hijacked jetliner crashed into 1 World Trade Center, the north tower. ''On a day like today, people are showing how much they care,'' she said, weeping, as she stood on the platform. ''Everyone's thoughts are right here in New York.''
A few dozen people were called up at a time. As they gathered at the edge of the platform, some wept and others posed for photographs. A police officer gave instructions: ''People in the front -- we need you to start to exit so the people in the back have an opportunity to see.'' After a few minutes, it was time for the next group.
As they left they were met by a mass of hawkers. Photographs of the towers, before and after Sept. 11, went for $10. N.Y.P.D. and F.D.N.Y. hats were $5 to $10. Soft pretzels were $2. A Mrs. Fields shop across the street, and an Au Bon Pain up the street, were overflowing with people seeking hot chocolate, coffee and restrooms. The few portable toilets at the site are reserved for workers.
Some people complained of the carnival-like atmosphere. But Jim Manuel, 43, a New Jersey state emergency worker who was returning to the site for the first time since September, said it was just human nature. ''It's like the northbound traffic staring at the car wreck in the southbound lane,'' he said, ''except this is a global crossroads.''
Toshi Aki, 32, came from Tokyo with his wife, Keiko, and their 9-year-old daughter, Yoshini. ''I wanted to show her what the biggest moment in history in her life was,'' he said through a translator. ''Not like a picture, not like a video game, not like a movie. I wanted to show her this reality.''
PLUS: OLYMPICS; Sept. 11 Tribute Won't Be on TV
PLUS: OLYMPICS; Sept. 11 Tribute Won't Be on TV
Published: December 17, 2001
Olympic organizers will honor Sept. 11 survivors and victims during the 2002 Winter Games' opening ceremonies, but not as part of the internationally televised program.
A tribute ''of some kind'' will occur in the hour before the show's start, Salt Lake Organizing Committee President Mitt Romney said.
''It's not designed to be a patriotic, American display,'' he said. ''Our view was that while the experience of 9/11 certainly impacts all of us, there should not be a direct tribute in the ceremony itself.''
Published: December 17, 2001
Olympic organizers will honor Sept. 11 survivors and victims during the 2002 Winter Games' opening ceremonies, but not as part of the internationally televised program.
A tribute ''of some kind'' will occur in the hour before the show's start, Salt Lake Organizing Committee President Mitt Romney said.
''It's not designed to be a patriotic, American display,'' he said. ''Our view was that while the experience of 9/11 certainly impacts all of us, there should not be a direct tribute in the ceremony itself.''
In America; The Tourism Crisis
In America; The Tourism Crisis
By BOB HERBERT
Published: November 29, 2001
Michele Angerosi, a well-dressed man in his 30's, was sitting at the bar in Il Bocconcino restaurant in Greenwich Village on Tuesday evening. But he wasn't drinking. He'd come in to tell a friend, the restaurant's owner, Gilberto Petrucci, that he'd just been laid off.
Mr. Angerosi, a waiter at the nearby Ennio & Michael restaurant -- described in the Zagat Survey as a ''first-rate Village Italian'' -- thus joins the scores of thousands of New Yorkers caught in the employment downdraft that has followed the Sept. 11 catastrophe.
''For waiters, it's tough,'' said Mr. Angerosi. ''We pay our bills with tips, so we don't make money if people don't come to eat.''
''It's sad,'' he added. ''You get to a point where you have to pay the rent and you can't work. I don't know what else to do. I came here from Italy and I've been a waiter ever since. I don't know how to do anything else in this city.''
At 5 p.m. there were no customers in Il Bocconcino, which is at the corner of West Houston and Sullivan Streets. ''Things are very bad,'' said Mr. Petrucci. ''We were closed for a week after 9/11 and things never got much better. The Village is for tourists and there are no tourists. All business is completely down.''
Mr. Petrucci does not think he can hold out much longer. ''If it continues this way,'' he said, ''we'll close. I can't survive another month like this.''
It would be difficult to overstate the importance of tourism to New York City. It's a $25-billion-a-year industry, and it has to recover for the city to recover.
When you think of tourism, think jobs, jobs, jobs. Prior to Sept. 11, tourism supported, in one form or another, more than 280,000 jobs in the city. Under normal circumstances, more than 37 million visitors would descend on New York in a year, spending money in department stores and other retail outlets, in restaurants and theaters and hotels, at museums and sports stadiums, at newsstands and sidewalk vendors, in bars and nightclubs.
The $25 billion generated from tourism is the equivalent of $3,100 for every man, woman and child in the city. ''Each tourist,'' said Tim Zagat, co-publisher of the Zagat Survey and chairman of NYC & Company, the city's tourism bureau, ''is carrying a little wheelbarrow full of cash to put in the pockets of New Yorkers.''
Luring tourists back to New York in the booming numbers we've become accustomed to will be an incredibly difficult task. First, there's the nationwide problem of Americans being reluctant to fly. But even as that slowly makes its way back to normal, there are some serious problems here to be dealt with.
New York became more and more of an attraction in recent years because it was safer and the overall quality of life had improved. But now there are ominous signs, as the economy has deteriorated and the police have been diverted to terror-related tasks, that the bad old days are attempting to stage a comeback.
Two shootings last week were particularly chilling. A 5-year-old boy and a 25-year-old man, both bystanders, died when they were hit by stray bullets that came from a gunfight between two men on a street in the Bronx. Two days later, a teenager running an errand for his mother was held up and shot to death by a group of thugs in Brooklyn.
The Police Department acknowledges that there has been a recent increase in shootings. A spokesman for Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said some cops were being redeployed to cope with the problem.
There are also long lines at the city's food pantries and soup kitchens, and an increase in the numbers of homeless men and women sleeping on the streets. And, in a development that carries heavy symbolic resonance for many New Yorkers, there is evidence of a re-emergence of squeegee men at some intersections.
Michael Bloomberg will take over as mayor in a little more than a month. He'll have budget problems to wrestle with. And he'll have to fight for more help from Washington. And he'll have to develop a strategy to prevent a new explosion of crime.
These are not impossible tasks, just tough ones. New York is still the safest big city in America, and the best. Keeping the tourists in mind may help to keep it that way. Because it turns out that what's good for the tourists is good for the rest of us. Just remember: jobs, jobs, jobs.
By BOB HERBERT
Published: November 29, 2001
Michele Angerosi, a well-dressed man in his 30's, was sitting at the bar in Il Bocconcino restaurant in Greenwich Village on Tuesday evening. But he wasn't drinking. He'd come in to tell a friend, the restaurant's owner, Gilberto Petrucci, that he'd just been laid off.
Mr. Angerosi, a waiter at the nearby Ennio & Michael restaurant -- described in the Zagat Survey as a ''first-rate Village Italian'' -- thus joins the scores of thousands of New Yorkers caught in the employment downdraft that has followed the Sept. 11 catastrophe.
''For waiters, it's tough,'' said Mr. Angerosi. ''We pay our bills with tips, so we don't make money if people don't come to eat.''
''It's sad,'' he added. ''You get to a point where you have to pay the rent and you can't work. I don't know what else to do. I came here from Italy and I've been a waiter ever since. I don't know how to do anything else in this city.''
At 5 p.m. there were no customers in Il Bocconcino, which is at the corner of West Houston and Sullivan Streets. ''Things are very bad,'' said Mr. Petrucci. ''We were closed for a week after 9/11 and things never got much better. The Village is for tourists and there are no tourists. All business is completely down.''
Mr. Petrucci does not think he can hold out much longer. ''If it continues this way,'' he said, ''we'll close. I can't survive another month like this.''
It would be difficult to overstate the importance of tourism to New York City. It's a $25-billion-a-year industry, and it has to recover for the city to recover.
When you think of tourism, think jobs, jobs, jobs. Prior to Sept. 11, tourism supported, in one form or another, more than 280,000 jobs in the city. Under normal circumstances, more than 37 million visitors would descend on New York in a year, spending money in department stores and other retail outlets, in restaurants and theaters and hotels, at museums and sports stadiums, at newsstands and sidewalk vendors, in bars and nightclubs.
The $25 billion generated from tourism is the equivalent of $3,100 for every man, woman and child in the city. ''Each tourist,'' said Tim Zagat, co-publisher of the Zagat Survey and chairman of NYC & Company, the city's tourism bureau, ''is carrying a little wheelbarrow full of cash to put in the pockets of New Yorkers.''
Luring tourists back to New York in the booming numbers we've become accustomed to will be an incredibly difficult task. First, there's the nationwide problem of Americans being reluctant to fly. But even as that slowly makes its way back to normal, there are some serious problems here to be dealt with.
New York became more and more of an attraction in recent years because it was safer and the overall quality of life had improved. But now there are ominous signs, as the economy has deteriorated and the police have been diverted to terror-related tasks, that the bad old days are attempting to stage a comeback.
Two shootings last week were particularly chilling. A 5-year-old boy and a 25-year-old man, both bystanders, died when they were hit by stray bullets that came from a gunfight between two men on a street in the Bronx. Two days later, a teenager running an errand for his mother was held up and shot to death by a group of thugs in Brooklyn.
The Police Department acknowledges that there has been a recent increase in shootings. A spokesman for Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said some cops were being redeployed to cope with the problem.
There are also long lines at the city's food pantries and soup kitchens, and an increase in the numbers of homeless men and women sleeping on the streets. And, in a development that carries heavy symbolic resonance for many New Yorkers, there is evidence of a re-emergence of squeegee men at some intersections.
Michael Bloomberg will take over as mayor in a little more than a month. He'll have budget problems to wrestle with. And he'll have to fight for more help from Washington. And he'll have to develop a strategy to prevent a new explosion of crime.
These are not impossible tasks, just tough ones. New York is still the safest big city in America, and the best. Keeping the tourists in mind may help to keep it that way. Because it turns out that what's good for the tourists is good for the rest of us. Just remember: jobs, jobs, jobs.
Foreign Affairs; The Real War
Foreign Affairs; The Real War
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: November 27, 2001
If 9/11 was indeed the onset of World War III, we have to understand what this war is about. We're not fighting to eradicate ''terrorism.'' Terrorism is just a tool. We're fighting to defeat an ideology: religious totalitarianism. World War II and the cold war were fought to defeat secular totalitarianism -- Nazism and Communism -- and World War III is a battle against religious totalitarianism, a view of the world that my faith must reign supreme and can be affirmed and held passionately only if all others are negated. That's bin Ladenism. But unlike Nazism, religious totalitarianism can't be fought by armies alone. It has to be fought in schools, mosques, churches and synagogues, and can be defeated only with the help of imams, rabbis and priests.
The generals we need to fight this war are people like Rabbi David Hartman, from the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. What first attracted me to Rabbi Hartman when I reported from Jerusalem was his contention that unless Jews reinterpreted their faith in a way that embraced modernity, without weakening religious passion, and in a way that affirmed that God speaks multiple languages and is not exhausted by just one faith, they would have no future in the land of Israel. And what also impressed me was that he knew where the battlefield was. He set up his own schools in Israel to compete with fundamentalist Jews, Muslims and Christians, who used their schools to preach exclusivist religious visions.
After recently visiting the Islamic madrasa in Pakistan where many Taliban leaders were educated, and seeing the fundamentalist religious education the young boys there were being given, I telephoned Rabbi Hartman and asked: How do we battle religious totalitarianism?
He answered: ''All faiths that come out of the biblical tradition -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- have the tendency to believe that they have the exclusive truth. When the Taliban wiped out the Buddhist statues, that's what they were saying. But others have said it too. The opposite of religious totalitarianism is an ideology of pluralism -- an ideology that embraces religious diversity and the idea that my faith can be nurtured without claiming exclusive truth. America is the Mecca of that ideology, and that is what bin Laden hates and that is why America had to be destroyed.''
The future of the world may well be decided by how we fight this war. Can Islam, Christianity and Judaism know that God speaks Arabic on Fridays, Hebrew on Saturdays and Latin on Sundays, and that he welcomes different human beings approaching him through their own history, out of their language and cultural heritage? ''Is single-minded fanaticism a necessity for passion and religious survival, or can we have a multilingual view of God -- a notion that God is not exhausted by just one religious path?'' asked Rabbi Hartman.
Many Jews and Christians have already argued that the answer to that question is yes, and some have gone back to their sacred texts to reinterpret their traditions to embrace modernity and pluralism, and to create space for secularism and alternative faiths. Others -- Christian and Jewish fundamentalists -- have rejected this notion, and that is what the battle is about within their faiths.
What is different about Islam is that while there have been a few attempts at such a reformation, none have flowered or found the support of a Muslim state. We patronize Islam, and mislead ourselves, by repeating the mantra that Islam is a faith with no serious problems accepting the secular West, modernity and pluralism, and the only problem is a few bin Ladens. Although there is a deep moral impulse in Islam for justice, charity and compassion, Islam has not developed a dominant religious philosophy that allows equal recognition of alternative faith communities. Bin Laden reflects the most extreme version of that exclusivity, and he hit us in the face with it on 9/11.
Christianity and Judaism struggled with this issue for centuries, but a similar internal struggle within Islam to re-examine its texts and articulate a path for how one can accept pluralism and modernity -- and still be a passionate, devout Muslim -- has not surfaced in any serious way. One hopes that now that the world spotlight has been put on this issue, mainstream Muslims too will realize that their future in this integrated, globalized world depends on their ability to reinterpret their past.
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: November 27, 2001
If 9/11 was indeed the onset of World War III, we have to understand what this war is about. We're not fighting to eradicate ''terrorism.'' Terrorism is just a tool. We're fighting to defeat an ideology: religious totalitarianism. World War II and the cold war were fought to defeat secular totalitarianism -- Nazism and Communism -- and World War III is a battle against religious totalitarianism, a view of the world that my faith must reign supreme and can be affirmed and held passionately only if all others are negated. That's bin Ladenism. But unlike Nazism, religious totalitarianism can't be fought by armies alone. It has to be fought in schools, mosques, churches and synagogues, and can be defeated only with the help of imams, rabbis and priests.
The generals we need to fight this war are people like Rabbi David Hartman, from the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. What first attracted me to Rabbi Hartman when I reported from Jerusalem was his contention that unless Jews reinterpreted their faith in a way that embraced modernity, without weakening religious passion, and in a way that affirmed that God speaks multiple languages and is not exhausted by just one faith, they would have no future in the land of Israel. And what also impressed me was that he knew where the battlefield was. He set up his own schools in Israel to compete with fundamentalist Jews, Muslims and Christians, who used their schools to preach exclusivist religious visions.
After recently visiting the Islamic madrasa in Pakistan where many Taliban leaders were educated, and seeing the fundamentalist religious education the young boys there were being given, I telephoned Rabbi Hartman and asked: How do we battle religious totalitarianism?
He answered: ''All faiths that come out of the biblical tradition -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- have the tendency to believe that they have the exclusive truth. When the Taliban wiped out the Buddhist statues, that's what they were saying. But others have said it too. The opposite of religious totalitarianism is an ideology of pluralism -- an ideology that embraces religious diversity and the idea that my faith can be nurtured without claiming exclusive truth. America is the Mecca of that ideology, and that is what bin Laden hates and that is why America had to be destroyed.''
The future of the world may well be decided by how we fight this war. Can Islam, Christianity and Judaism know that God speaks Arabic on Fridays, Hebrew on Saturdays and Latin on Sundays, and that he welcomes different human beings approaching him through their own history, out of their language and cultural heritage? ''Is single-minded fanaticism a necessity for passion and religious survival, or can we have a multilingual view of God -- a notion that God is not exhausted by just one religious path?'' asked Rabbi Hartman.
Many Jews and Christians have already argued that the answer to that question is yes, and some have gone back to their sacred texts to reinterpret their traditions to embrace modernity and pluralism, and to create space for secularism and alternative faiths. Others -- Christian and Jewish fundamentalists -- have rejected this notion, and that is what the battle is about within their faiths.
What is different about Islam is that while there have been a few attempts at such a reformation, none have flowered or found the support of a Muslim state. We patronize Islam, and mislead ourselves, by repeating the mantra that Islam is a faith with no serious problems accepting the secular West, modernity and pluralism, and the only problem is a few bin Ladens. Although there is a deep moral impulse in Islam for justice, charity and compassion, Islam has not developed a dominant religious philosophy that allows equal recognition of alternative faith communities. Bin Laden reflects the most extreme version of that exclusivity, and he hit us in the face with it on 9/11.
Christianity and Judaism struggled with this issue for centuries, but a similar internal struggle within Islam to re-examine its texts and articulate a path for how one can accept pluralism and modernity -- and still be a passionate, devout Muslim -- has not surfaced in any serious way. One hopes that now that the world spotlight has been put on this issue, mainstream Muslims too will realize that their future in this integrated, globalized world depends on their ability to reinterpret their past.
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