Terrorist Action 11/9/2001 - Thread 7

"Palestinian lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi told a news conference the celebrations were ``misguided'' and ``aberrations'' motivated by a feeling among Palestinians that they have been victims of U.S. backing for Israel."

A much more, dare I say, sensible expression of feelings -- there's still a clear belief that the US is at fault for a lot, but tempered with the realization that images of the celebrations just reduced potential public sympathy to a vast new low. It's a very fine line to tread, and I don't think they'll be able to keep on it.

Officials estimate that hundreds of Britons have been killed (my sister has a friend who is still unaccounted for).

Let's give Giuliani the benefit of the doubt and assume that he hasn't slept in about 36 hours, and has done so most of the time working through as much shock and horror as most of the people nearby who could talk about it have, since he was practically right there himself. Take any blood from the guy and he'd probably fall over.

How many of YOU have gotten off your asses and given blood today? I'm sorry to be curt and rude but there is only so much political bent arguing and nitpicking I can take when I'm sitting here watching an extremely distressed coworker try to find a missing friend. This is not the time to discuss things like this.

i'm only glad that NYers have poured out the way they have to help, there's a 6 hour wait on Amsterdam to give blood! And people are waiting!

I'm sorry, Ally, and I really hate that I've become the official bitch of the forum, but if this isn't the time to discuss those politics, then I really don't know when the fuck is. It's not as if our concern over the issue is at fever pitch when we're safe and happy.

It's been suggested that folks make appointments to donate blood, given the HUGE donor response. It's also suggested that these calls are placed during off-peak hours (that is, early in the morning or later in the evening).

Personally, I think there's plenty of wiggle room in this topic (and this forum) to allow both political debates and eyewitness accounts and personal reflection and other such things. If anything, it allows folks a chance to take a breath and collect themselves in regards to this issue, whether they're @ Ground Zero (like Ally) or far, far, far away (like a good number of us). The sad fact is that most of us are powerless to do any to DIRECTLY affect any positive change in NYC or DC - in that light, talking about these events is extremely important.

PS - the Red Cross site is back online. The Red Cross is also taking monetary donations, along with other sites - Amazon, for instance. I believe PayPal is collecting donations as well.

PPS - I'd just like to also offer kudos to all of you other folks on ILE for providing some much-needed perspective on the well- intentioned sensational rhetoric offered by most news sources.

?? But - don't loads of the public live south of 14th street?

*donates*

Done. Not much, but what you can do, you should do. Try and get an appointment, as mentioned, for blood donating; I've set one up myself.

i work for a university, and while taking my lunch today in the students lounge so i could watch the news witnessed two particularly chilling things...

number one: the VOCAL-ness of the (non-arab) students with open racism, jingoism, and sheer hysteria (one beautiful, preppy looking girl staring intently at the news and repeating, over and over, "we should just bomb all of afghanistan.") was disarming. half-truths, media disinformation, and good old fashion prejudice were flying all over the student union today as GOSPEL TRUTH, with the animus of their animosity directed towards...

number two: a small group of middle eastern/muslim students, shunted to one side, huddled around each other, a look of total panic in their eyes, with the eyes their fellow students trained on them, white and black and even asian. the air of paranoia, suspicion, and potential violence was rife, made all the more frightening by the blindingly beautiful day streaming in from outside.

so, while i agree that, in the face of it, the search and rescue and blood drive and donations are all more important in the immediate, the minute this occurred, it became a larger issue for a substantial number of people living in this country: middle eastern immigrants, important enough to call an emergency staff meeting this morning over possible student violence, extra polic, "tracking" foriegn students... if this is brewing at an "insitution of learning" (and if you knew the school i shill for, ha ha) then i'm really sickened to think of what's about to boil over elsewhere...

My girlfriend mentioned needing a copy of her apartment lease to enter her neighborhood, which is even north of Canal. So it seems possible that south-of-14th is being entirely closed off ...

Mike Daddino's account was a wakeup...I am so sorry to all of you who have been hit so hard by this.

I'm underage to give blood. The Red Cross told the school that they need "juice boxes and individually wrapped crackers or cookies," though, so that's something to do.

Anyone tries any of that crap where I work, where we've just hired a student of, I believe, Egyptian background, I'm going to take a distinct pleasure in finding new ways to rip them a new one with a friendly customer service smile on my face.

Feller who runs a good pizza place near here is of Iranian background. Went in today and did what you're supposed to do -- smile, be friendly, order and treat the guy fair. Simple as that.

Gonna try again after work, but even so, I'm still not clear about the gay thing. I can't seem to get an answer on this. What is the current US policy? Is it the same as the Canadian policy? Is it "don't ask don't tell"? I mean, yeah I've had sex since 1977, but I was HIV- the last time I was tested a year ago. Should I just lie? Don't they test all the blood they get? Anyone have any info on this?

Jess, that's frightening. So far, Guiliani is the only political leader who I've heard specifically mention the Middle Eastern community in America, saying that the New York government will not tolerate any persecution and the police will be there protect them. Agree w/ Tadeusz, Guiliani's really been remarkable through all this, from what I've seen.

Hurrah for Nude Spock!

Ah, the world. How I loathe it sometimes.

...but in the greater philly area, already reports of vandalism, a gas station owned by an indian-american CITIZEN (of 14 years) was spray painted with "leave already fucker"...and the bile in me rises again...

This sort of reaction really worries me. It seems Afghan = Taleban for most people. The world was up in arms when a couple of Buddhist statues were destroyed but I haven't seen much coverage of the repression of the Afghan people. My Mum's on the board of a charity which works with refugees and displaced peoples and one of the main countries they focus on is Afghanistan so I've heard many accounts of what's happening in the country. The Taleban are really, really not representative of what the general population think or believe. Until they came to power, women could have an education, go to work and were able to live independent lives. Now, they are not allowed jobs outside the home and cannot leave the home without a husband or close male relative. This means that widows and girl orphans in particular are desperately poor and with civil war ongoing in the country, there are many of them. The UN used to run widows' bakeries where women could be employed and find food, but even these have been forced to close. I'd be happy to see some kind of action against the Taleban, whether Bin Laden is behind what happened yesterday or not, but attacking them and not the ordinary people of Afghanistan would be extremely difficult.

http://www.girlieaction.com/coup/coup-cover-300.jpg

That sucker's coming off the 3 shelves it made it on ...

http://www.realfx.com/dt.jpg

http://us.news2.yimg.com/f/42/31/7m/dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010912/ re/attack_album_dc_1.html

One entertaining moment from last night: Joei was talking on the phone with a friend of ours from Brooklyn about how naming Bin Laden as the culprit seemed too pat and easy. Joei even made the comment, "Like the FBI hadn't tapped the phones of half the Arab population of this country months ago. Hell, they've probably tapped this phone, too!" At this point, I jumped up, ran over to her and started saying into the mouthpiece, "I love the FBI! The FBI is great! Go, FBI, go!" Both sides of the line began to crack up and some tension was relieved.

Then they showed the footage of the second plane again. Damn.

"C-I-L-L. My land-LORD."

"Dark and lonely on a summer night Cill my landlord, Cill my landlord The watchdog's barking, do he bite? Cill my landlord, Cill my landlord Slip into his window, break his neck Then his house I start to wreck Got no reason What the heck? Cill my landlord, Cill my landlord C-I-L-L my landlord"

by Tyrone Green

A guy I know who is keeping his juvenile sense of humor active said to me today: "Osama is angry because he hasnt Bin Laden a long long time"

I dunno. Thought I'd share.

"What was interesting to note, however, was that monitoring company Keynote Systems reported a 10% decrease in worldwide network traffic immediately after the attack - which is quite phenomenal. The way I read that is that you can imagine all the people within hearing and seeing distance of the World Trade Center would rush away from their desks and actually go and see what's happening for themselves." (Bryan Porter, editor New Media Zero)

That's ludicrous - surely 10% of the world's internet users are not located within spitting distance of the WTC. Isn't it more likely to be a collapse in the telecoms network, broken cables etc?

Decrease in web use instead some people maybe switched to watching TV pictures?

Heading north today on foot I passed two police cordons, one at Delancey Street and one at 14th Street. You need a piece of paper with an address in the 'closed' area south of either of these to get back in. A check book with your address on it will do.

Other things I saw today: In Union Square there are flowers, peace grafitti and debates about retaliation going on, citizen to citizen. Police are controlling road crossings, their ears pricked for emergency vehicles which, of course, have priority. Below 14th there are no cars, and more children than usual are playing safely on the streets. On Orchard Street Muslims and Jews go about their business side by side as usual. Up 5th Avenue souvenir hunters are buying up all copies of postcards with the WTC on them. The New York Times, Time Out and the Village Voice are completely unobtainable. The Empire State Building has a one-block cordon around it.

PS: Has anybody heard of the band I Am The World Trade Center? They sound a bit like a lo-fi St Etienne. I don't think we'll be hearing from them again.

Apparently the remaining 7 floors just collapsed.

I took the train into Rockville Centre to see my therapist today. RC is approximately 20 miles away from Manhattan, and about half-way between Bay Shore and Manhattan. There was one obvious sign of the tragedy -- a couple of businesses had flags in their windows where none were before. The thing is that from what little I saw of the town was that businesses with flags seemed to be grouped in little clusters, as if people were following their neighbor's cue. I don't know what to think of that. What's the flag situation elsewhere?

I handle our company's mailing list database (which, again, was not only part of a network-wide back-up, but was also given to our printer quite recently), so no doubt I'll be a key part in spreading the word to our clients about our current situation. Our of a database of six thousand, I'd say about fifty to a hundred contacts were from people in the WTC. They'll all have to be re-addressed, of course, but...in past mailings I occasionally saw a queer kind of corporate callousness when mis-addressed envelopes were returned to us. Sometimes the returned mailing stamped with five or so possible reasons why the mailing was sent back -- sometimes you'll see "deceased."

Mancini-Duffy did a lot of business WTC people. Some of our clients, past and present: Aubrey G. Lanston; Morgan Stanley; Cantor Fitzgerald; Thacher, Proffitt & Wood; Marsh & McLennan (700 workers out of 1,700 not accounted for, the news says); EuroBrokers; Guy Carpenter; and the Port Authority itself. A client of ours who's given us a lot of work lately was Deutsche Bank, a firm with offices both in the WTC and One Liberty Plaza, which just had a partial collapse. I used to go across the street to carry proposals there all the time. Most these WTC client contacts are, at best, just names to me. The only exception I can think of is Julien J. Studley, a real estate firm, who had a few head honchos who I did some proposals with in the past. A fellow employee called me today (a real seasoned vet) and told me that one of the companies we work with JJS got their entire WTC office out, save for two people. Even two is still too grisly to think about it.

She also told me one secretary I'm quite fond of never even entered the building, but had to run for her life once the first tower collapsed, with all the debris and glass flying around. She's been walking with a crutch for the last few months.

Iraq recruited Saudi billionaire fugitive Osama Bin Laden and his Islamic allies to carry out the suicide attacks around the United States, according to Israeli intelligence.

Here's the rest of the article.

I was glad to hear you're alright, Mike.

I'm somewhat concerned about St. Paul's Chapel and Trinity Church. Trinity was founded in 1697 (the current building was built in 1894); St. Paul's Chapel was completed in 1766. Both were filled with praying folk during Black Thursday. I've seen footage where St. Paul's was completely enveloped by debris from one of the fallen towers. The Woo lworth Building is also not far away, to say nothing of my beloved J&R Music World.

(I'm getting these facts from the 1999 NYC Michelin Guide, which is now queerly out-of-date. I bought it at the WTC Borders on August 16th. I kept the receipt.)

I was often fond of telling people that one of the people who plotted the 1993 bombing stood at one of the windows of J&R to watch one tower collapse upon the other. How naive I thought he was...

All too convenient. All too pat.

That said, the names and pictures of 4 possible hijackers are being broadcast as I'm typing - they have broadcast this report twice in the past two hours. All 4 attended flying schools in Florida. 2 are/were residents of Saudi Arabia; 2 have passports from the United Arab Emirates.

I fear that I've been sounding weirdly cold lately, because everybody's words of concern for me have been as impossible to fathom as anything else that's happened. I'm sure I'll appreciate it eventually.

Mancini-Duffy's going to have an informal meeting at 277 Park tomorrow, but I suspect I'm not ready for it yet.

No worries. We're all there for you :-), and you can't place timelines on reacting to something like this.

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