No Way to Deter New Major Al Qaeda Attack?

Gary Hart and Warren Rudman headed a bi-partisan Defense Department commission which presented its warning of a major Al Qaeda attack pending in January, 2001, as Bush assumed the presidency.

The report here citing the warning also mentions why it is almost impossible to deter such attacks:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/terrorism/july-dec02/senators_10-31.html

"Among the most vulnerable areas: Shipping containers, seaports and border crossings; energy distribution facilities like power plants, pumping stations and pipeline compressor stations; food and water supplies; state and local law enforcement agencies lacking intelligence information, equipment and training; and a public health system unable to quickly detect, contain and respond to chemical or biological attacks."

The Bush administration set aside the commission recommendations:

http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/09/12/bush/

"But on Wednesday, two former senators, the bipartisan co-chairs of a Defense Department-chartered commission on national security, spoke with something between frustration and regret about how White House officials failed to embrace any of the recommendations to prevent acts of domestic terrorism delivered earlier this year."

9/11 followed thereafter.

Today the NY Times reports that our top security official predicts another major attack on us shortly:

Senators Warned of Terrorist Attack on U.S. by July
By MARK MAZZETTI
America's top intelligence official said he was "highly
certain" that Al Qaeda or one of its affiliates would
attempt a large-scale attack on American soil within the
next six months.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/us/politics/03intel.html?th&emc=th

Connecting the dots here, there is probably no way to deter such an attack -- we may hope for good luck, say, of someone informing us what is coming so we can block it. But we can't expect good luck always to do so.

Be prepared!
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"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent [blind copies]

Depressing News

Just about all the news these days is bad:

The Taliban in Afghanistan have figured how to avoid harm from our troops and are gaining strength there.

The job market is unlikely to improve very much because our competitors pay far less to their workers and we have lost jobs overseas to them.

Obama is talking deficits now and our economy (and Republican opposition) leave little room for reform or improvement of things that desperately need it -- health care, education, rebuilding deteriorating infrastructures -- bridges, sewer systems, roads, high speed travel, etc.

Our Western religions are degenerating and focused on killing enemies.

Iran and North Korea are playing nuclear games.

Israel may panic and attack Iran which can then cut off oil supplies from the several nations that must send them past its shores. The expenses for oil, gasoline would go beyond imaginable limits.

We are also losing out to Western Europe where most of our problems were solved in the last century. They have learned that there are no free lunches and set tax rates where they can provide basic needs to their people.

Our main business enterprise is producing weapons which we sell to any and all -- more than the rest of the world combined. Many of these then are used against us.

Some quarter of our children are sexually abused.

This list could go on indefinitely. New horrors are almost daily reported. Most of our news media rarely inform us about what we need to know and give us mainly things that build their ratings -- sex and violence.

Such things are leaving people depressed and many are suffering from PTSD -- particularly our returning military worn out with too many wars.

Where is our national shrink?
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"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent [blind copies]

DO CATHOLIC COLLEGES CHANGE STUDENTS?

One could argue that secular colleges undermine religious faith, but per the studies on which this article reports, Catholic students in Catholic colleges are largely similarly affected by higher education.

As one who has been saddened by the failure of the Catholic Church to reform itself, honest reporting will hopefully shake loose some of the Benedict XVI abuses. This guy schemed his way into the Papacy and is without doubt a sort of devil incarnate, destroying the institution and greatly harming millions -- particularly those women in poor countries giving birth to millions of children who cannot be fed or given medical care because of this Church's constant warfare against contraception. Unfortunately the truth about this ex-Hitler youth is rarely told:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI

There are brilliant and caring Catholic scholars who have been silenced by Benedict's Vatican 'tea party' such as Hans Küng:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_K%C3%BCng

Other Catholic scholars have been forced to move from Catholic to non-Catholic academic positions. But if the analysis below is correct, American Catholic students -- as those in Europe already -- may be departing from at least some of Benedict's dangerous violations of human well-being:

DO CATHOLIC COLLEGES CHANGE STUDENTS?
New research counters widely publicized studies about institutions leading the faithful "astray."

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/02/01/catholic
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent [blind copies]

Premonitions?

I don't believe in ESP, but I do take strong intuitions seriously. They are not always correct, but I suspect that they disclose things that we have either forgotten or not noticed consciously, e.g. body language of someone who speaks otherwise.

I recall 3 life and death premonitions from my childhood.

The first when I must have been about 6 or 7 occurred one night when my father was driving up one of those long uphill roads that one had to travel in Vermont before the super highways arrived. I was sleeping at his side and suddenly awoke and told him that he must pull off the road. He laughed at me at first, but finally yielded to my desperate appeal. Just as he did so, a huge truck came racing down the hill from around a curve on our side of the road. We would have been demolished, had I not acted -- perhaps the echo of a dream?

The second occurred when we were leaving Hanover, NH where we would visit my mother's family on Christmas. As we were leaving my beloved grandfather was waving good-bye and I was suddenly overwhelmed with sadness that I would not see him again. He died of pneumonia a week later.

The last occurred on July 6, 1944. A couple of teenage girls had kindly taken me and my friend, David, to the circus that day. A few minutes after events started I suddenly had the thought -- what would I do in case of a fire? I figured that we could not make it to the exit through the crowd, but looked around and saw that they had left a gap between the side wall and roof of the tent where I could see ropes dangling down. About two minutes later we saw the flames racing up the inside of the tent near the entrance. I grabbed David and steered him back up the stairs to the gap where we slid to safety. More than 100 died that day:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartford_circus_fire

Website has picture.
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"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
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Moving Trial from Manhattan?

I am not bothered by our moving the trial of the 9/11 plotters out of Manhattan. The city is already jammed with traffic and such a well publicized trial could offer the temptation to set off a bomb in the area -- not hard to do with all the delivery trucks cruising -- or on a subway! All of us who live in NYC are familiar with days when some major event blocks our moving about. Imagine many months of such in an already busy part of our city. And many of us still cringe at the sound of a low flying plane!

However, I am glad that we are turning away from the violations of law and morality introduced by the Bush administration's invention of a new category of criminal and treatment of same -- neither a conventional criminal, nor a war enemy. We have held many an innocent individual for indefinite periods at Guantanamo and elsewhere on the basis of bounties offered to people to turn in a 'terrorist'. Obviously many used this device to get rid of personal enemies or settle grudges having nothing to do with terror -- or simply to pull in big bucks.

One of our cities 60 miles up the Hudson -- Newburgh -- is already offering itself for the trial -- new court house, federal prison and airport nearby per its mayor. Or a military base could be used.

The main point here is that we must stop acting like a small dictatorship imprisoning its enemies, real or imagined, without due process. We want others to see us as a model for democracies everywhere. We had better be that!

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U.S. Drops Plan for a 9/11 Trial in New York City
By SCOTT SHANE and BENJAMIN WEISER
The Obama administration bowed to almost unanimous pressure from officials and business leaders to move the trial of
the Sept. 11 plotters from Lower Manhattan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/nyregion/30trial.html?th&emc=th
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent [blind copies]

Lack of Democracy in Public Housing -- and the U.S. genererally!

My wife and I lived happily in public housing for three years (430 W. 125th St. in lower West Harlem) when we were graduate students. We had been given the privilege of bypassing the waiting list by a program designed to desegregate our project (later discontinued because of this special preference).

The cost for residents was 30% of income which saved us on graduate fellowship monies. We were seen as aliens at first -- bill collectors, school truancy officials, whatever. In time, however, people got to know us and the project did my wife the honor of electing her to the NYC Democratic Committee.

While living there we were able to make a difference in several ways. The entrance doors were open, making our stairwells a shoot up location for addicts. We suggested locks for the doors which ended the problem when installed. The elevators for our 21 story building regularly went out of service Friday nights, leaving us with no elevators until Mondays. We got the repair number and our elevators were repaired in hours.

My basic point here was that we made respect for residents by management a basic right and expectation.

I have been increasingly horrified by the decline in that respect of which the article below is only the most recent instance.

All sorts of games are being played with residents. Mandatory hours of community service and such are demanded as though they owed society for its largess -- not the sort of thing required of corporation CEOs!

What particularly impressed us was the improvement in the lives of kids living in decent homes where they could do homework etc. without disruption.

I see this horrendous abuse as just one more example of the split in American culture -- vast wealth for a few versus the well-being of the rest of us!

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Lack of Democracy in Public Housing

"The city's Housing Authority is violating federal regulations that ensure residents participation in policy making, according to this new report by Community Voices Heard. Among the worst violations are the agency's mismanagement of over $20 million in funds earmarked for resident participation activities and the demolishing of a Brooklyn development without holding a public hearing, the study says. It also finds that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is failing to provide the appropriate oversight to ensure that residents can meaningfully and democratically participate."

For the full report, visit http://news.gothamgazette.com/t?ctl=165A03B:DF7B9BA7F88D8CA473847EE6CC291D20E8B2AAF67EB281F0&
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent [blind copies]

Bargain Buying Moves Our Jobs Overseas

One of the major reasons that American jobs are in shorter supply is that more and more Americans are buying from our discount stores -- large chains such as Target, Kmart, Cosgo, Walmart and the smaller 99¢ ones. These in turn are buying their products from the cheapest possible sources -- which turn out to be overseas nations such as China, India, and others that pay their workers minimum wages and do not provide benefits -- health, retirement -- such as do many of our own producers and sales outlets.

We are in effect caught between the devil and the deep blue seas. Most of us with ever lower earnings or losses of jobs seek out the cheapest sources of supply. But the effect of our bargain hunting is to sabotage our national economy!

There are presumably ways to fix things -- but even some of these are risky. China is one of the major offenders, but imposing import taxes on their products could induce retaliation -- they also hold much of our national debt.

Obviously careful moves are essential in reducing the effects of the price wars afflicting us. I trust Obama as the smartest president perhaps that we have ever had to work towards resolving our job problems. Will our chaotic legislators work with him? I hope so. So far the Republicans have been the party of "NO!" -- attacking Obama rather than working in our interests.

This coming year may be most interesting -- such, ironically, is purported to be an old Chinese curse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent [blind copies]