BBC suggested that the hijackers were probably domestic passengers not international, ie boarded in the US, because passports aren't needed for internal flights (obviously)

This just in, in a day full of "this just in's" BBC News reporting that a building close to the site of the WTC is at risk of collapse as a result of the towers collapsing. So is NPR. BBC now reporting that the building is the 40 storey Sallmon Bros building. And that it has collpased now.

No other building has collapsed yet.

blood donor centres running low - all who can are urged to donate as a matter of urgency

The third building (#7) has collapsed. CNN just confirmed. Also says there are fears about another (#5). CNN is interviewing Tom Clancy now.

I don't know if you have seen this: Knives on Board (techstudies2000) Sep 11, 16:49 Tuesday Sept. 11, 2001; 4:35 p.m. EDT Flight Attendants Stabbed Aboard Twin Tower Kamikaze Plane A violent struggle with knife-wielding terrorists took place outside the cockpit of one of two hijacked planes before it slammed into the World Trade Center Tuesday morning, a flight attendant on board reported to American Airlines before her death. "A flight attendant on that plane was apparently able to call the American Airlines operations center to tell them that two flight attendants had been stabbed and that the perpetrators had broken into the flight deck," ABC Radio News reported. The plane was enroute from Boston to Los Angeles when it was commandeered by terrorists for its kamikaze mission.

That last building was 47 stories tall.

CNN is now showing some new closeup footage (from PAX TV) of the second plane hitting. What it shows is the plane going right into the building and possibly coming through the other side.

As to the Pittsburgh plane being brought down "intentionally"....I heard that its suspected target was Camp David and, that fighter jets took it down before it could reach its target. I have no problem understanding how these terrorists and their weapons, could get past airport security at Logan and Dulles, if their security is anything like it is here in Atlanta. Totally disinterested kids, poorly trained and motivated man the security check points here. It would take very little effort to "sneak" something past them. The security level at US airports here in the US is very, very, very minimal compared to that at European airports. In Europe, only passengers can enter the Departure Concourse and Lounges. You can not meet someone directly off a plane in Europe, the way you can over here. Also, in Europe you go thru many, many checkpoints and security before you get on your flight. I just wish to God, US airports were as fussy. Twoyearsago I flew from the US to Ireland via London, but I flew back via Glasgow. As I was sitting in the airport in Glasgow, waiting for my flight to Chicago,I was paged on the airport intercom to report back to the American Airlines desk. I was then grilled by the security forces for 2 hours in a tiny little room, which terrifed me witless. Apparantly, an Irish person entering the UK thru one airport and exiting thru another, raised a red flag on some security services computer and I was deemed a "terrorist threat". As the IRA was very active in the UK at the time, I did my best to understand that these were just people who were doing their job. After my nerves and heart rate returned to normal, I was actually kind of happy that the security forces were taking such "extreme" steps to ensure the safety of airline passengers. I would love to see US airports be equally vigilant. Sorry if I am waffleing....I'm just at a loss, like the rest of you, in trying to comprehend the horror of this carnage.

ABC's Claire Shipman reporting the President is on his way to Washington and will make a statement tonight; "We're told he's angry about what happened and very much wants to make a statement". Congressional leaders also returning from their safe haven, also will make statements. "There's apparently a real premium here in Washington among the leaders of presenting a face of business as usual," she says. The leadership has been warned of the risk but feels it's important to be in Washington. The President will be landing in D.C. where they feel the airspace is as safe as anywhere in the nation. Vice President Cheney will then be removed from the White House as a precaution, though the First Lady is expected to join her husband.

To: "Red Rock Eater News Service" Subject: [RRE]attack From: Phil Agre Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 13:58:22 -0700 Here are some more URL's relating to the attacks this morning. a backup site that generally works when cnn.com does not http://robots.cnn.com/ video of the second plane in New York high bandwidth: http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/091101plane1-large.html low bandwidth: http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/091101plane1-small.html people's stories http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAVZWE2IRC.html Hotline from the National Journal can be accessed today for free http://hotlinescoop.com/web/content/hotline.htm http://nationaljournal.com/pubs/hotline/extra/lastcall/ this site will register people who are safe http://do.millennium.berkeley.edu/ you can query this site to search for people http://do.millennium.berkeley.edu/find.php military analysis http://www.janes.com/ photos from Brooklyn of the buildings collapsing http://www.indigo23.com/ an architect discussing how the buildings collapsed http://home.actlab.utexas.edu/pipermail/discuss/2001-September/000226.html Engineers Shocked By Towers Collapse http://chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-010911kamin-towers.story

a great archive of World Trade Center stuff at

7 WT is the one that just collapsed. I was in that building just a few months ago, visiting my friend. He works (or worked...I don't know if he's ok yet...I hate this) for the city Office of Emergency Management. He took me into the "Bunker" where the command center was. it was built to withstand the blast of a nuclear bomb, a category 5 hurricane, and some other disasters. I don't think they ever thought that tower 1 would collapse onto it. they have cut us off on Long Island. The only way we can get off (if we needed to) are the 2 Connecticut ferries from Pt. Jefferson and Orient Point. They have closed all of the highways, and most of the schools. People are panicing, unfortunately...long lines at the supermarket, gas stations (which I did myself), etc. If this is what war feels like... *sob* thank you all for being here and reading this, and for all of your thoughts. it helps more than you know.

Regarding the stability of the towers: From Before foundation excavation began, the 500 x 1,000-ft site was enclosed by a 3-ft-thick, 70-ft-high concrete cutoff wall built by the slurry trench wall method and keyed 3 ft into rock. Excavation was complicated by two nearby subway tubes that had to be supported without service interruption. A six-level basement was built in the foundation hole. Excavation of 1.2 million cu yd of earth and rock created $90 million of real estate for project owner, the Port of New York Authority. Instead of being trucked off for disposal, spoil was used to create 23 acres of fill in the Hudson River adjacent to the WTC site. It has since been developed as Battery Park City. The twin towers had the world's highest load-bearing walls. Seattle-based structural engineer Worthington, Skilling, Helle and Jackson designed them as vertical cantilevered steel tubes. Exterior columns are 14-in. square hollow box sections spaced 39 in. center-to-center. Spandrels welded to the columns at each floor make them into huge Vierendeel trusses. Each tower is 208 x 208 ft with a column-free interior between the outer walls and the 79-ft x 139-ft core.

further to Beth's post above about security, here's an article from the BBC comparing security at US and UK airports - having been pulled over twice in the UK as a frequent UK/Ireland flyer, one body search, one bag search, I'd agree its annoying at the time, but then you think you'd rather be safe and you're glad it happens ... http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1538000/1538682.stm

There are explosions in Kabul now. Missiles, tracer fire. Antiaircraft fire.

4 F-16s just flew over my house... and now Kabul... Lord help us all.

Some incredible photos. http://www.alternet.org/graphics/story_hirez/terrorist1.jpg http://www.alternet.org/graphics/story_hirez/terrorist2.jpg http://www.alternet.org/graphics/story_hirez/terrorist3.jpg http://www.alternet.org/graphics/story_hirez/terrorist4.jpg http://www.alternet.org/graphics/story_hirez/terrorist5.jpg http://www.alternet.org/graphics/story_hirez/terrorist6.jpg http://www.alternet.org/graphics/story_hirez/terrorist7.jpg http://www.alternet.org/graphics/story_hirez/terrorist8.jpg http://www.alternet.org/graphics/story_hirez/terrorist9.jpg

I am still in shock over today's events and wondering how this could have happened. I am in Canada and think this is the first time I have EVER heard of the Cdn/USA border being closed. I am amazed at how much security has gone into place so quickly. All airports shut down (only taking diverted overseas flights that were to land in U.S.) In our small city, streets to airport are all blocked--no one allowed into or out of airport. Extra police/customs are in place at border already. Cdn.fighter jets had to escort two Korean Air/Lines into Whitehorse airport today when they did not respond to hail. In a total state of disbelieve! HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN??

San Francisco Bay and its bridges and industries and Alameda are all being partolled by AWACS planes this night. There are frightened citizens there, and I worry for them, as well. We are ALL in a state of total disbelief. They have stopped selling stuff on QVC and HSC out of respect... That has to be a first.

It happened because we didn't answer many wake up calls. It happened because minimum wage people do security at airports. It happened because we were thinking about a missle defense system instead of tightening up our obvious security holes. Ebay is full of people selling ghoulish mementos and wtc related domain names. I'm still in shock, I've been channel surfing the major networks, ABC is the only one that hasn't given this whole thing a big garish name. Peter Jennings and Diane Sawyer are doing some pretty good, calm, balanced coverage. Bush's speech made it clear we won't just go after the terrorists but those harboring the terrorists. This is the beginning of a campaign on worldwide terror.

http://news.mpr.org/features/200109/11_newsroom_terrorist/ has photos and also live radio clips. The image of the plane slicing through (from the other side of the building) is shocking. It's in the national images slideshow, the caption reads: "An amateur photographer was snapping a photograph of the damage to one World Trade Center tower at the instant when a second airliner crashed into the other tower. (credit pending) " From: info@kauf.com Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 02:47:49 +0200 To: david@trufun.com Subject: Press release: Help for terror victims by Internet Ladies and Gentlemen Victims and their relatives of the terrorist attacks can get help by Internet. At http://www.wtchelp.com or http://66.33.42.252 they can add a special notice for searching a person and get further information. The Internet page was developed by the company Kaufcom for the WTC Help Organization. Within shortest time, further information and auxiliary functions will be provided to offer a fast and easy help. The WTC Help Organization was found at the 11th of September 2001. Our goal is it to support the victims and their relatives with the best possible help by using the new medias. The WTC Help Organization stays in contact with many other organisations. Patrick Hofer WTC-Help Organization Neue Winterthurerstr. 30 CH-8305 Dietlikon Switzerland Fax: +41 1 888 43 16 Email:hofer@kaufcom.ch

Orrin Hatch said a month a go they knew there was going to be a big attack. Barbara Walters is reporting this and Peter Jennings is appealing on him to explain this more clearly. Hatch is saying he has the real data that Ohsama Bin Ladin did this. He's saying we have about 24 hours to act and round up the terrorists before they go underground.

There is not a message board anywhere that has not talked about this. Every single Yahoo club to which I belong is talking about it. Mostly how numb everyone feels. Non-US people reacting with sadness and condolences and the same determination to win this match. Don't mess with those I love. I am ready to do what must be done!!!

From Reuters

http://reuters.com/ go look at the large photo... it is astounging!

Subject: report from NYC... Date: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 5:36 PM From: Michael McDonough To: Bruce Sterling It started at 8:45 AM with the missile-like scream of something flying too low and fast across the city's heart, followed by a thump that shook the ground. Something is wrong. Minutes later, a second thump. The city empties into the streets. TVs come alive with live video feeds of the planes striking the south sides of the towers. I photograph the fires from my SoHo roof, capturing the north sides on film. The fire has penetrated the towers and is licking up the facades, bright orange tongues through inky black smoke. But the towers are not the towers, they are one tower and one smoky billow the size of an atomic cloud. People are jumping from the upper stories of the remaining tower. A short time later, now on the streets, my wife and I are talking to strangers, exchanging information got from blaring car radios. Mid-sentence, the second tower implodes before our eyes, only a few blocks away, glass shards blowing out from the smoky, collapsing core. Like nightmarish snow, they glisten and sparkle, then disappear. On a normal day, over 100,000 persons pass through the WTC. We have just seen a large number of them vaporized. Debris, chunks of the buildings the size of city buses and automobiles rain down onto the streets of Lower Manhattan. The collapses at first take the tops of the towers. In a matter of seconds, the remaining, lower reaches are infernos. The facades of the towers have fallen onto the surrounding streets. A woman in the hotel next to the towers reports seeing legions of firefighters, police, and medical personnel disappeared beneath the rubble in an instant. Now the explosions have killed not only those in the towers, but those trying to save them on the ground. Elsewhere in the city, as the day grinds on, businesses and shops are closed, locked tight with security gates in place. All civilian vehicular transportation in and out of the city stops. The tunnels are sealed off and empty. The bridges are available for those who want to hike out of the city. At early evening I walk the police cordons around lower Manhattan. On the local streets, urgent laser printed pleas for blood donations are taped to mailboxes and street lamps. Black SUVs with darkened windows scream through intersections in long lines, with sirens and flashing lights. Ambulances from New Jersey and Long Island, and Upstate New York--townships 60 miles and more outside of New York City--course the streets; 20, 30 at a time, they move, heading north to hospitals and triage centers. Military planes dart overhead, then disappear. The city is an uneasy silence broken on occasion by piecing, crackling sounds, warnings and urgent communications. Thousands of people stare blank-eyed and quiet as they watch the buildings all over downtown burn. Dozens of construction workers loaded on trucks--welding kits, steel barriers, men and material--head south, to ground zero. Fire engines line the west side arterial roads, empty, their occupants fighting the out-of-control fires on foot. Military vehicles start to appear. The trucks and cars near the center are shattered, crushed, lost in a hail of ash and metal and concrete. New fires start. Smoke billows easterly, against white smoke against the blue sky of our mid-September day. More buildings are burning. Another flaming, 40 story pile falls. We are helpless; we watch. Cars are burning. Mercury from a million fluorescent lights, PCBs from miles of electrical components, dioxin from football fields of synthetic carpets and miles of PVC piping placed throughout the complex, a toxic, now gray soup belching from the flaming, collapsing hulks. It is as if the city has lost its arms, and is staring blankly at where they used to be, finding flaming, smoking voids in their stead. Michael McDonough New York City 9/11

from another board: scutmonkey Posted On 09/11/01 07:55PM I have a friend that works for Delta Airlines HQ here in Atlanta that person had a couple things to say. One is that the plane over Pennsylvania was intentionally run into the ground by the pilot. All four of those aircraft had radio communications and were describing what was happening at least in the beginning. They issued special emergency codes as well. The pilots locked the cabin doors, but there is a key with the flight attendants that is hidden in a different place on each flight. The terrorist began stabbing crew members and passengers until someone told them where it was. The crew believed that this was a typical hostage and ransom situation and gave up the keys. When the pilots of the Pennsylvania plane realized it wasn't from the other incidents they crashed the jet.

I went into a hospital meeting at 7:30am and came out at 9:00am (CST) this a.m., only to discover that the world was suddenly going to hell! Here in middle Tennessee, the lines are growing longer outside the gas stations...the small town streets are crowded with cars trying to fill up and beat the iminent gas hikes that are rumored to occur by morning. A neighbor works close to the Tennessee/Alabama line and was told that gas in Alabama had shot up to $10.00 a gallon.....jeez....BTW, Thanks to all of you who have expressed condolences on this board. Your support is greatly needed and appreciated!

The Boston Herald is breaking some amazing details: WAR: Hub terror suspects ID'd: Bush vows retaliation after devestating attack by Ed Hayward, Tom Farmer and Cosmo Macero Jr. Wednesday, September 12, 2001 Authorities in Massachusetts identified at least five Arab men as suspects in yesterday's terror attacks launched from Logan International Airport, seizing in the central parking garage a car laden with Arabic-language flight training manuals, sources said last night. Two of the men, whose passports were traced to the United Arab Emirates, were brothers, one of whom was a trained pilot, a source told the Herald, speaking on condition of anonymity. At least two other suspects flew to Logan yesterday from Portland, Maine, where authorities believe they had traveled after crossing over from Canada recently. Once in the air, the hijackers in one plane began killing flight attendants in order to lure a pilot from the cockpit and seize the plane, said one source. ``They started killing stewardesses in the back of the plane as a diversion. The pilot came back to help and that is how they got into the cockpit,'' said the source. The source could not specify whether those events took place on the American Airlines flight that left Logan, or the United Airlines flight. Both planes were plunged into the World Trade Center roughly an hour after they departed Boston. The suspects had no guns, but used shaving kits and other carry-on luggage to smuggle knife-like weapons made up of plastic handles embedded with razor blades, sources familiar with last night's developments said. That finding is consistent with reports of a flight attendant's cell-phone call from one of the doomed airliners. ``People were calling from the plane saying they were getting killed, calling 911,'' said one source. ``One stewardess called her husband to say goodbye.'' Authorities were led to the rental car by a civilian who got into an altercation with several Arab men as they were parking their car, identified by sources as a Mitsubishi sedan. The man, whose name was not available last night, called state police from an out-of-state airport after his own flight landed yesterday and he learned planes hijacked from Logan had been involved in attacks that toppled the World Trade Center's twin towers, crippled the Pentagon and downed another airliner in Pennsylvania. The car, rented from National Rental Car, was secured yesterday by the FBI and authorities have prepared a search warrant. It was unclear when the warrant would be served. State police interviewed more than 130 people at the airport yesterday, as America launched what is expected to be the largest criminal investigation in its history. Investigators suspect the two brothers identified by Bay State investigators were aboard United Airlines Flight 175. The terror plot included the hijacking and crashing of four airliners, including one into the Pentagon, where the Arlington, Va., fire chief estimated the death toll at up to 800. In New York last night, Mayor Rudolph Guiliani told reporters some people are alive in the rubble of the trade center complex, and there was an unconfirmed report of a cop being pulled out alive last night. There was also a report that survivors trapped in the collapsed buildings were making cell-phone calls. A horrified nation witnessed the shocking carnage as the World Trade Center's ``North Tower'' burned and exploded after it was struck just before 9 a.m. by Los Angeles-bound American Airlines Flight 11, which departed Boston's Logan Airport at 7:59 a.m. with 81 passengers, two pilots and nine flight attendants. A second jet - United Airlines Flight 175, that left Logan for L.A. at 8:14 a.m. carrying 56 passengers, seven attendants and two pilots - was captured on video as it sliced through the ``South Tower'' and unleashed a massive fireball just after 9 a.m. Just moments before the first crash, air traffic controllers heard the lone voice of the terror plot speaking from the cockpit of one doomed aircraft. ``We have more planes, we have other planes,'' a voice alleged to be that of a hijacker could be heard saying through a microphone activated by a pilot of American Airlines Flight 11, the Christian Science Monitor reported on its Web site. Establishing the death toll could take weeks. The four airliners alone carried 266 people, none known to survive. At the Pentagon, as many as 800 people could be dead, including plane victims. Roughly 50,000 people worked at the World Trade Center and there was an hour available for evacuations. But the toll already appeared staggering for the men and women who worked to save lives. A firefighters union official said an estimated 200 firefighters had died. An estimated 87 police officers were missing. Within two hours of the initial Trade Center crash, the fiery nightmare gave way to mind-numbing grief, as both towers imploded, raining thick dust, glass shards, metal chunks and human remains on the streets below. As the twin symbols of American capitalism's global reach crashed to the ground in a smoking heap of dust and debris, the Pentagon burned after another fiery strike - this time American Airlines Flight 77, which left Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C., for Los Angeles with 58 passengers, four attendants and two pilots. A fourth hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight 93, carrying 38 passengers, two pilots and five flight attendands out of Newark, N.J., crashed in Pennsylvania with its intended target believed to be the presidential retreat at Camp David. Officials assembled a massive team of investigators as harrowing details of the hijackings began to emerge, culled from desperate cell-phone and radio calls made by passengers and crew: ``One of the pilots keyed their mike so the conversation between the pilot and the person in the cockpit could be heard,'' an unamed controller told the paper. ``The person in the cockpit was speaking English. He was saying something like, `Don't do anything foolish. You're not going to get hurt.' '' The Los Angeles-bound plane requested a flight path for John F. Kennedy Airport, but then its tracking transponder was shut off and it veered toward the Manhattan skyline. A flight attendant aboard Flight 11 called superiors to report two flight attendants had been stabbed and hijackers had broken into the cockpit, ABC News reported. The attendant also relayed the seat number of one hijacker before the plane struck the Trade Center. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft confirmed knives were believed to have been used in the Flight 11 hijacking. Aboard American Airlines Flight 93, just moments before it crashed into the Pentagon, Barbara Olson, wife of Solicitor General Ted Olson, called her husband on a cell phone to tell him hijackers wielding knives and box cutters had hearded passengers and crew into the back of the plane. ``She called her husband twice during the hijacking to tell him the plane had been hijacked, and they lost contact once and she called back,'' reported CNN, where Barbara Olson worked as a commentator. ``She said to Ted, `What do I tell the pilot to do?' CNN reported. ``But there was nothing they could do, they were all kept in the back of the plane.'' In Pennsylvania, an emergency dispatcher received a cell-phone call at 9:58 a.m. from a man who said he was a passenger locked in a bathroom aboard United Flight 93, said dispatch supervisor Glenn Cramer in neighboring Westmoreland County. ``We are being hijacked, we are being hijacked!'' Cramer quoted the man from a transcript of the call. The man told dispatchers the plane ``was going down. He heard some sort of explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane and we lost contact with him,'' Cramer said. Virginia Rep. James Moran said the intended target of the plane was apparently Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, 85 miles away from the crash site. Robert Fitzpatrick, a former second-in-command in the FBI's Boston office, said Boston appears to have been the staging area for the attack on New York and the hijackers most likely had help from others who may still be in Boston. ``There's a terrorist cell operating out of Boston,'' Fitzpatrick said. ``They had to have support, they had to have people on the ground, in Boston, supporting them.'' http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_regional/ausattk09122001.htm

This is beyond words, and beyond understanding. I'm still trying to find words to tell you what I feel about the unspeakable, unimaginable. My thoughts are with all who suffer, the innocent victims, and their families and friends, and with the American people. I send my heartfelt condolences from Germany - we are all with you. Whatever the intention was of this senseless killing, it goes empty: it will unite - has already united - all freedom-loving people all over the world. Take care all of you. Renate

I was at work yesterday when my colleague called me to tell that WTC in NY collapsed and that Pentagon was on fire. I couldn't believe in it. I thought he told me a stupid joke. Everything reminded of some films or books, but not real life. But then I went to news website and the truth struck me with shock. Today I've read your news reports and can't stop thinking about the people trapped in the burning building and those who were caugh in the hijacked planes. The senseless cruelty and detailed preparation of the operation is sth beyond my understanding. I'm joining in grief with everyone and I do hope than anything like this will not happen again.

More on United Flight 93 from today's Miami Herald: Passenger called wife from cell phone shortly before Pittsburgh crash By Paul Rogers and Lisa Fernandez Knight Ridder SAN JOSE, Calif. (12:30 a.m. EDT) -- It might have been the final resistance of a doomed pilot. Or a heroic struggle by a Bay Area passenger. Or a miscalculation by terrorists. But if there was one glimmer of good news amid the numbing enormity of Tuesday's terrorist attacks, it shined in the wreckage of a United Airlines 757, a flight once bound for San Francisco and instead now strewn across a remote field in the coal country of southwestern Pennsylvania. Unlike three other commercial jets that were purposely slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, United Flight 93, for some reason yet unknown, did not hit a terrorist's target Tuesday morning and did not kill thousands of people. The flight crashed instead at 10:06 a.m. EDT in a wooded area 70 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, two hours after it left Newark, N.J. All 45 people on board were killed, said Bill Crowley, a special agent with the FBI in Pittsburgh. Among them were 38 passengers, five flight attendents and two pilots. Minutes before the fiery impact, at least two passengers telephoned from the plane. One man phoned 911, yelling to dispatchers "We are being hijacked! We are being hijacked!'' before the signal was lost. The other, Tom Burnett, 38, the vice president of a Pleasanton, Calif., medical devices company and father of three children, called his wife, Deena, and may have indicated he and other passengers were about to attempt to overpower the hijackers. Burnett told his wife that somebody on the plane had been stabbed, said Father Frank Colacicco, of St. Isidore's Church in Danville. "We're all gonna die, but three of us are going to do something,'' Burnett told his wife, according to Colacicco. He added: "I love you honey'' before the call ended. FBI agents were interviewing members of the family Tuesday night. The FBI said that 40 agents and more than 150 other investigators were combing the crash site as darkness fell, including agents from the Department of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, the FAA and the Pennsylvania State Police. Like the three other doomed jets that took off, and then suddenly veered off course, United Flight 93 sharply turned south after nearing Cleveland. One Congressman told Knight Ridder that some investigators believe the plane's hijackers were attempting to crash into either Camp David, the presidential retreat located 80 miles south of the crash site, at Thurmond, Maryland, or the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. "There was concern that it was heading in the direction of Washington, D.C.,'' said Rep. Jim Moran, D-Virginia. Moran said that Capitol police named the two potential targets in a briefing he received from them. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, described Tuesday as a national tragedy and the scope is only just beginning to sink in. "At Pearl Harbor, there were 2,000 people killed,'' Feinstein said. "This could be tens of thousands.'' United Airlines did not release the passenger list from Flight 93 on Tuesday. At least one other Bay Area resident was confirmed dead, a female student at Santa Clara University. The name of the woman, a junior, was not being released, pending notification of her family, said Barry Holtzclaw, a spokesman for the university. "I'm shattered by this,'' said Holtzclaw. "''The scale of it, the enormity of it, the buildings and the loss off life. The mood of the campus tomorrow will be very very somber.'' It may be weeks before it is known what happened in the doomed flight, experts said. "It fits the same pattern of the other ones,'' said a high-ranking FAA official. "The moves of the plane are similar to what you would see if a struggle or some violent problem occurred in the cockpit.'' Gary Joseph, who co-pilots United 747-400 flights from San Francisco to Shanghai, said he believes the pilots aboard Flight 93 tried to prevent the terrorists from taking control of the aircraft. "They train you to do whatever they say, but that only goes so far,'' Joseph said. "If he had any idea what they were planning, I'm sure he tried to fight them off.'' Joseph said a pilot may try to make sharp turns and dive . . . much the way initial radar records show the plane did in its final minutes in the air . . . to throw a would-be hijacker off balance. "There's been cases where they do that and get control back of the plane. But a jet can only take so much of a dive before it starts to fall apart, I don't know.'' Joseph said it wasn't clear whether the crew was a San Francisco-based one or a New York-based group, because the airline has crews stationed in each city. No family members showed up at San Francisco International Airport to greet the passengers at its normal 11:15 a.m. arrival time, said Ron Wilson, spokesman for San Francisco International Airport. That is possibly because United employees in Chicago reached many of them before they left home. Dozens of clergy members gathered at United's VIP lounge to await survivors. San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown cancelled his trip to meet the victims' families when it appeared nobody would show up. The Boeing 757 seats about to 200 passengers, which means Flight 93 was less than a quarter full. The crash scene is located near one of America's worst civilian disaster, the site of the 1889 Johnstown flood, in which 2,200 people perished when the South Fork Dam collapsed. Jim Marker, a Somerset, Pennsylvania County Commissioner, visited the crash site and said the FBI was investigating the possibility that the plane suffered an explosion before it crashed. The passenger who phoned Westmoreland County dispatchers also said there was an explosion, the Associated Press reported. "They are checking about a mile from the site for some debris that might show there was an explosion,'' said Marker. "They do believe there was that possibility.'' Others in the small town said the crash rocked the area, like an earthquake. "It was 2 miles away, but it shook everything,'' said Bruce Grine, owner of Grine's Service Center in Shanksville. "It shook the windows. We saw smoke. Then the smell. Then somebody came running up the street and said a plane crashed. God, it was terrible.''

Hi all First off, I extend my deepest sympathy to all who lost loved ones in today cowardly attacks. Second I call for a cool headed response (NOT one of a deranged lunatic hopping around like a crazed devil barking orders). I know that many of you are outraged and that some want war, but BELIEVE ME WHEN I SAY THIS: HASTE NEVER HAS AND NEVER WILL PAY OR BEGIN TO PAY FOR WHAT HAPPENED. Be patient and let the United States Government establish it's priorities and wait until they find AND confirm the culprits. Then AND ONLY THEN, will it be safe to let the Pentagon of the leash. I am still coming to grips tonight some 14 hours after Mum tipped me off that the WTC twin towers had been destroyed by a 767 and a 757 and that the Pentagon had been hit by another 767. Although I now understand what happened the SHEER scale of planning that must have gone into the attacks, tell me one thing only: The person/s who masterminded this evil have a monumental hatred for all things American. They are the sort of people who should be put on show trial in front of the whole nation, and assuming they are found guilty, should be executed in public. Rob

Hello everyone, I am from Poland, when I heard the news yesterday I was stunned - I thought it was a kind of a joke and all those pictures which looked like taken from some movie. I am still in shock as well as my family and friends. I extend my sympathy too all Americans and people who lost someone important and loved. It's a tragedy for whole world and I hope that nothing else like this would never take place. take care all of you who are in the middle of this tragedy and please,remember that whole civilizated world is with you. Love, Alexandra

"Taliban rulers deny bin Laden's involvement" http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/11/taliban-reax.htm Olzuza, we are all feeling the sadness today, yesterday we were numb with the shock of this horrible attack on America. This is unprecedented, the biggest thing that has happened in my lifetime. unidentified source: "there's a specific code (7700) a pilot dials in when being hijacked, which causes all sorts of bells and whistles to go off on a controller's screen. *That* would be the reason those guys made them turn them off. Not stupid, at all. Vile, despicable cretins, yes. A plane goes off course, there's a time lag to 1) notice it, 2) inquire, 3) request correction or further explanation, 4) decide there's a threat, 5) measure its gravity, and 6) take action. The first five steps are covered by dialing-in 7700, a motion in the cockpit that's not inconsistent with any other miscellaneous fiddling with knobs and switches necessary to fly the plane.

http://www.wi2600.org/mediawhore/mirrors/sept-11-problems/asu/www.asu.net/wtc/otherpics/wtc35.jpg http://www.wi2600.org/mediawhore/mirrors/sept-11-problems/asu/www.asu.net/wtc/otherpics/ This one is horrible: http://www.wi2600.org/mediawhore/mirrors/sept-11-problems/asu/www.asu.net/wtc/otherpics/wtc55.jpg A tower about to fall:

To find out more about donating online, check: Red Cross and Helping.org

oops, typo, the Red Cross is located at http://www.redcross.org/

I just can't watch TV anymore. I have to take a break from the unending surreal shots of the planes hitting the towers. Those of you at Drool know I'm from the NY area. As a child, I watched the towers go up. Yesterday I watched them come down. Like Liz, I know people who worked there and in the nearby Wall St. area. If you've ever visited downtown NYC, you saw the size of these buildings. If you went up to Windows on the World, the public restaurant, you experienced how high they were. Yesterday, one of our local newscasters felt himself important enough to provide encouragement by declaring 'we made it through Oklahoma City and Columbine and we'll make it through this.' Not to minimize those other tragedies, but the enormous numbers of victims who lost their lives yesterday cannot be compared to those other incidents. I now live outside DC (quite a distance from the Pentagon). Our normally quiet skies were filled with military aircraft yesterday. All's quiet again today. My sister works in upper Manhattan. I'm still trying to find out if she made it out of the city last night. I'll be back to the TV soon because I am fascinated by reports about the many calls made from the planes, how the FBI is progressing in their investigation (too much too little too late, IMO), information as to how these sociopaths pulled this off and stories from the survivors. Lastly, I am trying to wrap my mind's eye around a picture of the NYC skyline without the towers. I drove past them on the Jersey side every day for years. I could see them from almost every town in which I've lived. I saw them this past Sunday and thought 'it's good to be home'. Their absence will forever be a reminder of yesterday's events and the lives lost.

Dear Heavenly Father, We are moved by the alarming news and crisis that our country is facing. This, the greatest nation, founded in the belief that "In God We Trust" and the "Land of the Free". Please have mercy on those suffering, hurting and in fear, and give wisdom & strength to those who are assisting. May the forces of evil be broken by your power and may we humble before thee, our strength and refuge. Give wisdom to our President and all our leaders and bring your comforting peace through the power of your Holy Spirit. Help us here to reach those that have been affected by this tragedy. In the name of our Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus. Amen. (Please send this to all your friends and create a prayer chain throughoutthis nation.)

Another batch of URLs from Phil Agre: -- Wall Street Journal coverage (appears to be available without a subscription) http://interactive.wsj.com/pages/terattack.htm Yahoo links to news stories etc http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/US/Terrorism/ eyewitness accounts http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/talking_point/newsid_1537000/1537530.stm online mechanisms for donating to the Red Cross http://www.amazon.com/paypage/PKAXFNQH7EKCX http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/relief-outside legal coverage http://www.law.com/ mailing list to connect people who can volunteer or provide resources http://207.22.68.76/911volunteers.html aircraft flight tracks http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/spSec/wtcst.jsp front pages of 50 newspapers' coverage of the attack http://www.poynter.org/terrorism/pdf1.htm Current Awareness via Streaming Audio/Video http://gwu.edu/~gprice/audio.htm Speech/Transcripts/Statements from US and Foreign Leaders http://gwu.edu/~gprice/speech.htm Anonymous Remailer Operators Start to Take Remailers Offline http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/current/msg00272.html Middle East Newswire http://www.middleeastwire.com/newswire/ Two Planes Hit Twin Towers at Exactly the Worst Spot http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-000073606sep12.story Security Experts Knew a Major Attack Was Possible http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14031-2001Sep11.html Insurance Cost for Terrorist Attack to Near $1 Billion http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/depth/insure091201.htm Reports: Boston Investigators Find Evidence in Attacks http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010912/ts/attack_suspects_dc_2.html civil engineering aspects of the building collapse http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/wtc.htm online discussion site for pilots http://www.pprune.org/ Rescuers Struggle at Pentagon http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1539000/1539839.stm Why the Killers Threaten World Prosperity http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1538000/1538958.stm In Shock, Teachers Downplay Tragedy http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-000073649sep12.story EBay Cancels Auctions of Attack-Related Items (some idiots were actually gathering rubble in order to sell it on eBay) http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-000073609sep12.story

From abcnews.com ABCNEWS has learned that officials have identified all the hijackers, and estimated there were three to five for each of the four passenger planes involved. At least two of the hijackers were on the Immigration and Naturalization Service "watch list," and it's still unclear whether the individuals entered the United States illegally or whether they entered before their names were placed on the list. Most if not all of the hijackers were Egyptian or Saudi nationals, sources said. In Washington, State Department officials said they have intelligence information that connects the attacks on the twin towers in New York and on the Pentagon to fugitive Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden.

Well it's here in Boston. This is ridiculous...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/bio.html A bio on Bin Laden from pbs.org. Read the disclaimer that the source is unnamed and the info differs from other bios. Seems his father is from Yemen but moved to Saudi years before Osama (one of 50 children? boggles the mind...) was born in '57. Father made his money in Saudi as a construction mogul, from humble beginnings. http://msnbc.com/news/190144.asp?cp1=1

Subject: Yesterday's bombings [4x] Date: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 4:12 PM From: nettime's compiler Reply-To: "nettime's compiler" To: Table of Contents: The Media: As an Attack Unfolds, a Struggle to Provide Vivid Imag es to Homes John Armitage WTC/Pentagon attac folks@arthide.de (folks) Re: New York City Andrew Ross It was supposed to be such a beautiful day "Ivo Skoric" ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 11:42:35 +0100 From: John Armitage Subject: The Media: As an Attack Unfolds, a Struggle to Provide Vivid Imag es to Homes THE NEW YORK TIMES SEP 12, 2001 http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/12/national/12MEDI.html?pagewanted=print The Media: As an Attack Unfolds, a Struggle to Provide Vivid Images to Homes By FELICITY BARRINGER and GERALDINE FABRIKANT Television's broadcast networks and many of its cable channels - both news and entertainment - scrapped their regular schedules yesterday. Radio stations took live television news feeds. Two dozen newspapers published special editions and Web sites threw out their advertising and in some cases stripped down to basic text and still images to help their overtaxed computers handle a demand for news unlike any they had experienced. Between the moment when perplexed morning news broadcasters began fielding calls from Greenwich Village residents who saw a low- flying plane crash into One World Trade Center and the moment more than an hour later when New York's twin towers crumbled into Roman candles of smoky debris, the country's media outlets geared up to become the public stage of a national emergency. By noon, all four major television networks had agreed to share video images. By midafternoon, almost all of AOL Time Warner's cable channels, like TBS and TNT, were carrying CNN; Viacom's CBS News feed was being carried by Viacom's music channels, VH1 and MTV; and Peter Jennings of ABC News was appearing not just on his network, but on Disney's ESPN channel and all ABC radio stations. Most of the networks used variations of the title adopted by CNN: America Under Attack. Images of billowing smoke from lower Manhattan and the low, smoldering profile of the Pentagon, hit, like the Trade Center towers, by a hijacked commercial jetliner, were dominant on all networks. Referring to the unusual agreement to share images among the bitterly competitive news divisions of the networks and CNN, the Fox News president, Roger Ailes, said: "All the networks decided that this is a national emergency. We're not keeping score today." Nor were they making much money, as they largely scrapped commercial advertising. In Washington, where the downtown had become a ghost town after the federal government was shut down, delivery trucks for The Washington Post headed for suburban 7- Eleven stores carrying a special edition dominated by a two-inch headline, "Terror Hits Pentagon, World Trade Center," with a lead editorial headlined "War." Special editions were also published by The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Newark Star-Ledger, The Charlotte Observer in North Carolina, The Austin American-Statesman in Texas, not to mention small dailies like The LaCrosse Tribune in Wisconsin. Traffic at news Web sites soared, with 10 times or more the usual number of users trying to log on, clogging the Internet and slowing response time. Because New York was not just ground zero of the opening attack but also the heartland of the media industry, some of the most dramatic early accounts were from correspondents working at or near their homes. Don Dahler, an ABC News correspondent who covered recent civil wars in Africa, was getting dressed for work in his third-floor apartment in Tribeca, perhaps half a mile from the World Trade Center, when he heard the first plane hit. "I heard what is a very familiar sound anywhere else in the world, in war zones," Mr. Dahler said. "It sounded to me like a missile, a high- pitched scream and a roar followed by an explosion, my mind was telling me it's a missile. Then I saw this gaping wound in the World Trade Center. I called into `Good Morning' immediately and started reporting," standing on his sixth-floor rooftop with a cellular telephone. Mr. Dahler, just one of the network's sources, was not on the air when he felt the first of the two towers collapse. "When it collapsed I could feel a rumble, and I tried to interrupt to say that something was happening right before my eyes," he said. "The building collapsed. I was telling them it looks like its coming down, it looks like it's coming down. They switched to me right after it had fallen." If there were a few stutter-steps like that, it was not surprising. It was one of the rare instances when television brought disaster into American homes in real time. The radical changes in the technology of news delivery, however, along with the quality of video imagery gave most of the day's news broadcasts the feeling of an epic disaster movie. The only genuinely grainy imagery came from the most advanced and portable equipment: CNN's satellite video phones, which allowed that network alone to televise a news conference with the spiritual leader of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, the country that harbors the headquarters of the accused terrorist, Osama Bin Laden. By evening, the same equipment was showing tracer fire and explosions in Kabul. Beyond the vivid pictures, the reporting included a number of mistakes borne of rumors that sprang up throughout the day. CNN reported that another plane was headed for the Pentagon. Fox News reported that the State Department was on fire. CBS News reported that a second airplane tried to attack the Pentagon. All the reports were later corrected. The closest major news organization to the scene was The Wall Street Journal, whose main offices nearby were evacuated at 9:15 a.m. Reporters and editors worked from home or other Dow Jones offices from New Jersey to Hong Kong to prepare a Wednesday issue. Talk radio shows, which sometimes feed on inflammatory commentary, were unusually low key yesterday, with hosts sympathizing or eliciting information from eyewitnesses rather than goading. On the New York radio dial, reporters at news stations struggled to describe the breadth of the destruction. And talk radio hosts - sometimes after ominous music played in the background - covered subjects from airport security to retaliation. The radio reports played a larger role than usual in bringing news to the city, since the antennas that broadcast the signals of WABC and WNBC were destroyed along with the twin towers. New Yorkers without cable television - about 30 percent to 35 percent of the city's viewers - could only get WCBS, whose antenna is on the Empire State Building. The radio journalists reverted to the techniques of Edward R. Murrow's wartime broadcasts from London to make the story visual. On WCBS-AM, the journalist Peter Haskell reported that ambulances were lined up "as far as the eye can see on both sides of the West Side Highway." On WINS, the reporter Steve Kastenbaum said: "It looks like the entire city is just walking home. The Brooklyn Bridge is a sea of people coming off the F.D.R. Drive, walking down from Midtown, walking across the East River to their destinations." Elsewhere in the country, some stations used the event to set up a dialogue with listeners. A Christian radio station in Los Angeles, KFSG-FM, canceled commercial advertising yesterday until 6 p.m. and used itsafternoon hours to take calls from listeners who wanted to talk about the attacks. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 13:16:08 +0200 From: folks@arthide.de (folks) Subject: WTC/Pentagon attac Historically speaking, THIS is the beginning of the new century, 11.09.2001. Those who believe in something like humanity, whether the word has been misused or not, whether someone is fighting against US policy or not, feels with the innocent people who died and those who now bitterly miss them. folks ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 10:16:24 -0500 From: Andrew Ross Subject: Re: New York City As someone who's been moving around downtown New York yesterday and this morning, I'm struck by how many paramilitary vehicles there are on the streets. The National Guard is here, of course, but there are also all sorts of very strange-looking vehicles (with unfamiliar acronyms on the side, if they are identified at all) that you never see on civilian streets, but which clearly belong to the relevant civil authorities. All other things aside (which, I realize, is a large proviso), the atmosphere is neo-martial, and reminds one of how quickly a dense First World metro area can and could be commandeered under other circumstances that one is only left to imagine. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 13:22:14 -0400 From: "Ivo Skoric" Subject: It was supposed to be such a beautiful day Yesterday, it was such a beautiful sunny September day in New York city that the only cloud in the sky was the one raising from the rubble of the World Trade Center. I don't think we can be sure as of yet who did it. Osama bin Laden and his group are obvious suspects - because they already attacked WTC, and maybe they just came back to finish the job. Hezbollah on the other hand has the history of trying to crash a hijacked passenger plane in a building. And nobody even mentions the non-Arab, non-Palestine related options, because they are simply to scary to contemplate: like what if this is 'domestic' terrorism? Regardless, of who did it, however, this was an act of war. This was the single largest atrocity committed against the U.S. on its soil since the Declaration of Independence. It is also important to note that the DoD's beloved Space Shield would do absolutely nothing to protect the U.S. from such an attack that came from inside and was executed by the tools of American corporate business (2 passenger jets owned by the American Airlines and 2 passenger jets owned by the United Airlines), used against the symbols of American economic and military might. Doesn't it look improbable that Pentagon got a direct hit? That was sure enough to humble American arrogance. Yet, that was not enough for the terrorists. That's why I agree with Ruth Wedgwood, a Yale University law professor and terrorism expert, that this is not only an act of war, but also a war crime. Crashing a plane full of passengers in a busy city district at the beginning of a workday should classify clearly as a war crime, on pair with what people in former Yugoslavia or Rwanda did to each other. New York yesterday and today feels like Sarajevo felt after shelling the markeplace. Public transportation did not run, exits from the city were closed down, schools are closed, markets are closed, all airports around the country are shut down, 4000 daily flights are grounded, hospitals in the city are overwhelmed with hundreds, thousands of injured, and we don't even know yet the number of victims. People are eerily calm. Black teenagers here on my corner are unusually quiet and still. It seems that all passengers in subways got a few more wrinkles on their faces than they had yesterday, and everybody is paying the fare, regardless of the service doors being left wide open. The 'hyper- power' is on its knees. UN, World Bank, Capitol, White House, Treasury, State Department and Pentagon are evacuated. And New York will probably never be the same again. I feel the same emptiness as I felt when Mostar lost the Old Bridge. Holy shit - UPS just this moment delivered a package to me - functioning parcel service suggests return to 'normalcy', that's encouraging. About the perpetrators, there are several technical things that are kind of clear: some of them had to be trained pilots capable of driving most modern US passenger jets precisely (Iraqis?). The research of the US flight schedules was done meticulously, as to get a couple of wide fuselage planes, well filled with fuel (intended to fly accross the continent), hitting the twin towers from various points of origins within half an hour. Everything points to terrorists being well rehearsed and well informed. I don't see any other way but to have perpetrators and their supporters brought to justice. Nobody quite expected such a massive, well co-ordinated (4 airliners hijacked simultaneously at 4 different airports) and, unfortunately, highly succesfull attack on the land of the law, such as happened yesterday morning. September 11th will perhaps be remembered in the world's history, because I can't imagine world ever be the same after today in regards to fighting terrorism. I am obviously afraid that citizens will have to put up with even more curtailing of their freedoms to assure their safety. I am just thinking of what nightmare it is going to be to fly inside the US now, with all the increased security that would be put in place to prevent of this happening again - that's why, obviously, I would prefer that the perpetrators are caught sonner than later. As for the reasons - for quite a while we were all aware of how the rule of American law may convey injustice to some people. It is this feeling of injustice and the feeling of helplessness to prevent that injustice, that breeds anger, rage and hate, and ultimately it breaks out in irreversible acts of horrific terrorism. It is true that Palestinians were and still are victims at the hands of the world. And the routes for them to obtain redress are clogged on purpose for a long time. So, for a quite a while they resort to terrorism, including suicidal terrorism. It is true that during NATO's bombing campaign over Yugoslavia, many innocent Yugoslav citizens died. And it is also true that during the Gulf War a much larger number of innocent Iraqis died. Judging by the celebratory mood on streets of Gaza (and even some e-mail messages that came from Belgrade), there are people who do feel a sense of poetic justice in using American passenger planes as cruise missiles to 'punish' the cruise missiles makers. There is no doubt that in some people's minds the U.S. 'deserved' such a reckoning. I hope the U.S. would take this into consideration in its search for the perpetrators and in whatever action it choses to take against them. >From Manhattan: ivo skoric # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net

The White House and ABC News have confirmed that the intended target of the plane that crashed in DC, was NOT The Pentagon. It was The White House. OMG !! The White House have also confirmed that Air Force One and The President, were also intended targets. They have not revealed what brought them to this conclusion. Thank God these other attacks didn't take place and, that the Secret Service took the evasive measures with Air Force One, that they did.

From today's Vancouver Sun: "Wednesday, September 12, 2001 OTTAWA (CP) - Thousands of Canadians from coast to coast responded to calls for blood donations to help American victims of Tuesday's catastrophic attacks in New York and Washington. The hotline set up by Canadian Blood Services for those wishing to donate has been tied up almost permanently, said spokeswoman Lorna Tessier. She urged people to persevere, even though no request for blood has been received from U.S. authorities. ``We've had such an overwhelming response that the 1-888-2-DONATE line has been very difficult to get through on. ``Right now, clearly, the clinics are overwhelmed and we are putting on additional hours and additional clinics, but we don't want people to get discouraged. ``We are going to need their blood. We're anticipating that the need will come up.'' She said the agency doesn't have statistics yet on the number of people who have come forward, but it is in the thousands." I'd point out that nobody's actually asked us for blood yet, but people just felt the need to do something to help. From the National Post: Canadians offer homes to stranded 400 international jets diverted across country Wednesday, September 12, 2001 TORONTO and VANCOUVER - International passenger jets crammed Canadian tarmacs yesterday after all United States airports were closed in the wake of the terrorist attack that levelled the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. About 400 planes were expected to be diverted throughout the day, pouring 10,000 people into Halifax alone. By late afternoon, Vancouver International Airport had received 34 planes diverted from North American destinations, carrying as many as 6,000 people. Another 25 planes were expected at Lester B. Pearson International Airport in Toronto. St. John's International Airport closed its runways after taking in 27 aircraft with 5,000 passengers. Fifty-seven flights were expected to land into the night at the airport in Gander, Nfld. At least 100 controllers and other staff were pulled out of courses and called in on their time off to help handle the deluge of international flights, said Paul Hornbeck, a spokesman for Nav Canada, the agency that handles air traffic control at Canadian airports. International arrival terminals across the country were choked with people while departure areas were virtually deserted -- all outbound flights across Canada were cancelled, except for humanitarian or search-and-rescue missions, police and military flights. Passengers stood in line with their luggage, waiting for hours to be searched before they could be permitted to leave. Bev Aurich, a traveller from Sydney, Australia, who had been headed to Anchorage, Alaska, before being grounded in Vancouver, said she did not mind the inconvenience. "We shouldn't be upset about missing a little trip, when there is such devastation in the United States. We're better to be delayed and be comfortable than to keep to our schedule and risk something," she said. In Toronto, some airport hotels reacted to the situation by increasing their rates to the maximum legal tariff. Meanwhile, concerned residents around the country showed up at airports to offer their homes to travellers. "I had to take the energy I felt and direct it," said Ena Bendon, a Vancouver woman who showed up at the airport to offer accommodation. "I thought of someone with kids here, terrified. I had to do something." Lufthansa pilot Axel Algner was flying a passenger jet from Frankfurt to Chicago when he was told there had been an incident in Manhatten and all planes were being grounded. It wasn't until he landed his plane in Toronto that he was informed of the details. "What I thought is that it was a joke. I couldn't believe it, it's still hard to believe. It just gives me goosebumps even talking about it," he said. Another pilot said he was instructed to lock his cockpit after being told the news. On the ground at Pearson, the airport began a news blackout at 10:30 a.m., according to one passenger. Travellers grouped around fellow passengers with cellphones to learn the details of what had happened. Others lined up to use payphones. Rabbis and Roman Catholic priests were brought in to counsel passengers. In Calgary, which took at least ten diverted flights, every hotel room was filled by early afternoon, but tourism officials said residents were opening up their homes to travellers. In Winnipeg, hotels were also booked solid by early afternoon, prompting the city to invoke its emergency measures plan, transforming public buildings into makeshift dormitories equipped with camp cots, said Penny McMillan, of Tourism Winnipeg. The airport took in 14 diverted domestic flights and three international ones -- generating 1,500 overnight guests. At Vancouver International Airport, Layne Daggett, the airport chaplain, said he placed 500 people, but others still needed accommodation. "I have a strong faith that God is in control even in these kinds of atrocities," he said. Column by Margaret Wente, Globe & Mail (Toronto) By MARGARET WENTE From Wednesday's Globe and Mail 8:45 a.m., Eastern Daylight Time. A crack in the centre of the world. Someone took revenge on America, and America was helpless. Nothing there will ever be the same again. A nation at the height of power, peace and prosperity, blessed by every fortune, whose enemies, it seemed, were as harmless as a few far-off fluffy clouds on a blazing blue September day. A nation that Tuesday looked infinitely vulnerable. It only took a few men who hate America to hijack its own commercial airplanes and turn them into bombs. It only took a few to ram them into America's most potent symbols of financial and military might. America's sense of its own security exploded with those towers in a cloud of smoke and dust. Americans will never feel quite so safe again. Nor will any of the rest of us, who looked to them to keep us safe, too. Their defences were completely useless. Their astounding intelligence and security machine, fuelled by billions and billions of dollars and the best high-tech devices ever invented, could not keep the bad guys out. They slipped through with ease, and struck the nation in its heart. The skyline of the capital of the world has a gaping wound where the towers once stood; a scar that will last forever. The senseless slaughter of civilians, until now, had always happened somewhere else. Now the horror has come home. Who did these things? All indications point to a sacred jihad from the Middle East. Maybe it was Saddam Hussein, exacting his blood revenge at last. Or Osama bin Laden, the millionaire fanatic who hates America for sending troops to Saudi Arabia during the war in the Persian Gulf, and for supporting Israel. " Blood, blood and destruction, destruction ," he commanded in a videotape to his followers last fall. To kill Americans is holy. Those who are responsible are most likely men from remote desert lands. Men from ancient tribal cultures built on blood and revenge. Men whose unshakable beliefs and implacable hatreds go back many centuries farther than the United States and its young ideas of democracy, pluralism and freedom. Hard men, who hide out in desert bunkers and turn the instruments of Western technology � its computers and CD-ROMs and videotapes and airplanes � against the West. Men capable of flying Boeing 747s with pinpoint, deadly accuracy, and of giving up their lives for the greater glory of Allah, and of murder on a massive scale. Men who've mastered all the modern Western technocratic skills, and who deploy them with the implacable determination of fanatics. Men whom most Americans, in their innocent and happy secularism, can scarcely comprehend and hardly ever gave a thought since that nearly bloodless cartoon war in the gulf. That innocence is now gone. For a decade now, these terrorists have been America's greatest threat. Its military muscle could have obliterated them long ago, but the will was never there. The tradeoffs were judged to be too great. Mr. Hussein and Mr. bin Laden are experts at survival. They are hard to catch, and surround themselves with men armed with guns and rocket launchers. Americans would not have been able to stomach too much loss of life to catch these men and the possibility of failure and political embarrassment was too great. And no one wanted to create another Islamic martyr. Everything will change now, will tip and destabilize in ways far beyond knowing. The Middle East, the world's economy, the American intelligence establishment, its entire defence strategy, the way it fights its foes. Millions of people of Islamic faith unfairly tarnished by the terrorism of a few. We have ahead the test by fire of a presidency. We will have agonizing stories of human suffering, too many to bear. We will have the dead, and countless families shattered, and grief and mourning beyond measure. But the wounds to America, though terrible, are very far from mortal. "Americans will persevere," said one New York woman Tuesday, staring hard into the camera. She had seen people die before her eyes. That was her message to us and to the men who did this. Shock and disbelief and grief will give way to anger and resolve. The fanatics and the terrorists will not prevail. The wider Arab world will not rally to support them, and America will not be driven away. Americans will persevere. But everything has changed, and the world will never go back to the way it used to be, before the madness began, at 8:45 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time. BS: Look, the Boston cell probably lived in Boston. They've probably been there for years. The government sheltering them is the American government. There isn't anybody to invade. They're Egyptians and Saudis. Thos governments are already our military allies. We can't invade those countries. There's no place to dress up and go shoot. This isn't World War II. As for bin Laden, by the standards of the Islamic resistance cells, the guy is a *humanitarian.* He *builds their hospitals.* He's not the mastermind of Al Qaeda. He's just a public face that the Western media have projected onto the network. They don't have or need a mastermind, and nabbing him, while satisfying, won't stop Al Qaeda any more than nailing Pablo Escobar makes people stop huffing crack.

Thanks for the links, Terry. I found the one about the buildings' structural aspects fascinating. Engineers suggested that the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed first...because the plane hit the corner of the building, rather than the center, where there is more structural support. When you watched the head-on film, you wondered why the plane was aimed at the side when it could've been placed more centrally. But you have to wonder about the following statement: The planes might have done more damage if they had hit the buildings lower, but they had to fly at a height of about 60 stories to clear nearby buildings. More damage than what????

Even what was left standing is now crumbled into the pit from whence it arose. And thanks for telling future terrorists where exactly to hit a building to do the most damage, media people. I still cannot believe it crumpled like a toy like that. They all did. And so did their inhabitants. I turned on NPR this morning for a break from the news, and they were playing dirges. It was too much! Thanks, all, for your support in what seemed like a cold world before this happened. I wonder what I will feel when the numbness and disbelief wears off...

Will the numbness ever really wear off. Someone posted on Ramble that her neighbors and their 2 children were on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.

from email: "In the days and weeks ahead, it's important for Microsoft and for each of us individually to think about how we can help. As a company, Microsoft is today making a $10 million contribution to assist those who have been impacted by the tragedy. We are contributing $5 million in cash to the September 11 Fund, created by the United Way of New York City and The New York Community Trust. In addition to cash, we are also contributing people and expertise. We have committed up to $5 million in technical assistance, including Microsoft Consulting Services and software to assist in the recovery effort. We also are in contact with business customers who have been severely impacted by yesterday's tragedy to see what we can do to assist them."

Penn Station and the Empire State Building being evacuated.

Bomb threat - no bomb found. People allowed back in. They now take all threats seriously!!!

Thursday 13 September 9:14 AM Bin Laden under house arrest: report Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia had placed alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden under house arrest in the wake of the suicide attacks on the United States, an Arabic online newspaper reported. Quoting "fundamentalist Arab sources", Ilaf said the "Taliban have arrested Osama bin Laden before placing him under surveillance with several of his assistants," including the head of the Egyptian branch of Al-Jihad Ayman Al-Zawahri and bin Laden's military commander, Muhammad Atef Al-Makni. "A number of Afghan fighters are under house arrest along with bin Laden," said the report late Wednesday. But a diplomat at the Taliban's embassy in Abu Dhabi said he could not confirm the report. "All we know is that he (bin Laden) is somewhere in Afghanistan, but we are not aware if he is under house arrest," the diplomat said. Bin Laden and commander Atef have been indicted for the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Bin Laden has emerged as the prime suspects in yesterday's kamikaze hijacked passenger jet strikes on New York and Washington.

I don't know how true this is or not. It was posted on yahoo.com in Australia. http://au.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/20010913/aapworld/1000336445-1141825578.html I don't know why there's not mention of this on CBS, which I'm watching as I write this.

More information all over the net. status of the investigation http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16714-2001Sep12.html Flight 93 Passenger Said He Planned Action http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/pit/news/stories/news-95780920010912-110907.html Controllers' Tale of Flight 11 http://www.csmonitor.com/earlyed/earlyUSA4.html FBI Agents Search Hotels; Arrests Made http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/957448/detail.html animation of the routes of flights 11, 193, and 175 http://pull.xmr3.com/p/29594-9681/22024263/aal11.html http://pull.xmr3.com/p/29594-9681/22024277/ual193final.html http://pull.xmr3.com/p/29594-9681/22024274/ual175_aal11.html Somerset Crash Scene Searched; "Hero" May Have Aborted Terror Mission http://www.post-gazette.com/breaking/20010912somersetp3.asp Cell Calls From Planes Reveal Horror http://msnbc.com/news/627214.asp How the World Trade Center Fell http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1540000/1540044.stm role of the Internet Net Offers Lifeline Amid Tragedy http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-7132246.html World Trade Center Staff Sent E-Mails After Planes Struck http://www.itn.co.uk/news/20010912/business/12cantor.shtml Help Sites Spring Up in Aftermath of WTC Assaults http://www.bizreport.com/article.php?art_id=2113 response Terrorism and Children http://www.ces.purdue.edu/terrorism/children/ http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Sept01/Garbarino.kids.bombing.lgk.html comment Chronic Underfunding of US HUMINT Plays Role in Intelligence Failures http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jdw/jdw010911_1_n.shtml Michael Moore's commentary http://www.michaelmoore.com/2001_0912.html On the Bombings, by Noam Chomsky http://www.lbbs.org/chomnote.htm The Best and Worst From Our Leaders During Crises http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=11909 Terrorists Are Made, Not Born http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/09/12/blowback/ The Rhetoric of War (with examples from editorial pages) http://www.marginalia.org/war.html an example of that rhetoric http://www.nationalreview.com/kudlow/kudlow091101.shtml background background on the Mt. Weather bunker where the politicians were probably taken http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/c3i/mt_weather.htm outline of relevant anti-terrorism etc laws http://news.findlaw.com/legalnews/us/terrorism/laws.html Airport Access Control (one of the security reports that was never properly acted on) http://cas.faa.gov/ig5.pdf news Arab newspapers http://www.the-saudi.net/arab-world/media/newspapers-links.htm http://www.amin.org/jourmag/ French language news sources on the attack http://www.tv5.org/nyc/ Nous Sommes Tous Americains http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3222--221600-,00.html worldwide news in English http://www.kidon.com/media-link/english.shtml Thousands of Newspapers on the Net http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/ end

Be happy you don't live in Hawaii. We Get NO MAIL until the flights resume.

I'm not going to be happy I don't live in Hawaii, that's too much to ask!

a report from Afghanistan: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/13/international/asia/13AFGH.html ABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. If there are Americans clamoring to bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age, they ought to know that this nation does not have so far to go. This is a post-apocalyptic place of felled cities, parched land and downtrodden people. The fragility of this country was part of the message the Taliban government conveyed in a plea for restraint issued late tonight. It said in part, "We appeal to the United States not to put Afghanistan into more misery because our people have suffered so much." Whatever Afghanistan's current cataclysm, its next one seems to require little time to overtake it. Wars fought by sundry protagonists have gone on now for 22 consecutive years, a remorseless drought for 4. Since 1996, most of the nation has been ruled by Taliban mullahs whose vision of the world's purest Islamic state has at least as much to do with controlling social behavior as vouchsafing social welfare. The accused terrorist Osama bin Laden has found a home here, angering much of the world. In 1998, America fired a volley of more than 70 cruise missiles at guerrilla training camps reportedly operated by the Saudi multimillionaire. Now, there seems to be the prospect of another barrage, with Afghan hospitality to the same man as the cause. As fear of an American attack mounted, the Taliban's senior spokesman in Kandahar, Abdul Hai Mutmain, called the few foreign reporters here to issue the statement, which in part defended Mr. bin Laden: "These days, Osama bin Laden's name has become very popular and to an extent it has become a symbol. These days, even to the common people, Osama bin Laden's name is associated with all controversial acts. Osama bin Laden does not have such capabilities. We still hope sanity prevails in the United States. We are confident that if a fair investigation is carried out by American authorities, the Taliban will not be found guilty of involvement in such cowardly acts." The statement also said, "Killing our leaders will not help our people any. There is no factory in Afghanistan that is worth the price of a single missile fired at us. It will simply increase the mistrust between the people in the region and the United States." Whatever else there is to say about this entreaty, one part that is indisputably true is that this land-locked, ruggedly beautiful nation is in absolute misery. Here in Kabul, the capital, roaming clusters of widows beg in the streets, their palms seemingly frozen in a supplicant pose. Withered men pull overloaded carts, their labor less costly than the price of a donkey. Children play in vast ruins, their limbs sometimes wrenched away by remnant land mines. The national life expectancy, according to the central statistics office, has fallen to 42 for males and 40 for females. The prolonged drought has sent nearly a million about 5 percent of the on a desperate flight from hunger. Some have gone to other Afghan cities, others across the border. More than one million are "at risk of starvation," according to the United Nations. Famine is the catastrophe Afghans are used to hearing about. Few yet know of the threat of an American reprisal. The Taliban long ago banned television, and the lack of electricity keeps most people from listening to radio. The nation's 100 or so foreign aid workers suffer no such telecommunications handicaps, however, and today many of them began to flee their adopted home, fearing either the havoc of American bombs or the wrath of subsequent Afghan outrage. Around noon, a special United Nations flight evacuated the first of the expatriates. The remaining foreigners are expected to leave on Thursday, as will three, and perhaps all four, of the American parents here to observe the trial of their children, among eight foreign aid workers accused by the Taliban of preaching Christianity. As foreigners left, the Taliban took unusual precautions: they began searching every vehicle entering government compounds. Visitors were carefully frisked. But however much the Taliban hierarchy was beginning to fret, streets and bazaars were a picture of normality. Word has spread slowly about the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. And even when everyday Afghans heard the news, there were no accompanying video images to sear the horror into their memories. Personal conversations only carried the dull stimuli of abstract words: hijacked planes and collapsed buildings. Khair Khana, a man selling fertilizer in a market, knew just a bit about the attack. He thought a plane had crashed into the White House. And he considered the perpetrators, whoever they are, to be "enemies of God," though he also felt "Americans should look into their hearts and minds about why someone would kill themselves and others" in such a way. He had not thought much about an American retaliation against Afghanistan. When he did consider it, standing in a ramshackle collection of stalls, he shrugged and said: "Americans are powerful and can do anything they like without us stopping them." Nearby, a tailor, Abdul Malik, saw God's justice in America's pain because, as he understands it, the United States has armed the Afghan resistance to fight against the Taliban. "So they at least now know how it feels in their own country," he said. As for Mr. bin Laden, the tailor considered judgment of him to be God's affair. "If Osama is Islam's enemy, he should be gotten rid of," he said. "But if he is a good Muslim and wants Islam to and if America wants him then we hope he destroys America." The common people of Afghanistan are often circumspect with their opinions. As one man said today: "Nobody here talks wholeheartedly any more; it can be dangerous." The Taliban are credited with improving safety. They disarmed the population, they put an end to banditry. But the security has come at a steep price. Women have been forced into head-to-toe gowns known as burqasand evicted from schools and the workplace. Men are obligated to wear long beards or face jail. Banned are musical instruments, chessboards, playing cards, nail polish and neckties. Cheers at soccer matches are restricted to "Allah-u-akbar,"or God is great. Freedom of speech has bowed to religious totalitarianism. Various Taliban police forces patrol the streets. Today, in a derelict building that is used as a precinct office, one 25-year-old constable sat on the floor beneath a single dangling light bulb. His name was Muhammad Anwar. He had heard something about the attack in America but he had no idea how many were killed or what cities were involved. Indeed, it seemed unlikely that he had ever heard of New York. "Attacks like these are not a good thing because Muslims live all over the world and Muslims may have been killed," Mr. Anwar said hesitantly. By his reckoning, Americans were enemies of Afghanistan, as were Jews and Christians. He thought about this a bit more and retracted it partially. "There must have been all kinds of people in the building, not just bad Jews but good Jews, not just bad Christians but good ones." He remembered something he had learned in his madrassa, or religious school. "It is un-Islamic to kill innocent people," he said.

You're not any different, Marcia. Mail is not going between cities on the mainland either.

I heard mail wasn't going over 300 miles from it's point of origin. The airlines carry most of the mail but they may not be allowed to carry it any more.

Yup, back to barge and 2-week mail. From the west coast. It is nice to know there is company in the misery of Paradise.

This very thought provoking piece was written by the impassoned Gerard Van der Leun, who has been on the scene all along in lower Manhattan. All day the images have repeated themselves on television while the smell of the smoke persisted in my rooms. Off and on, all day, I walked to the promenade to look at the reality of it and watch the smoke that didn't stop. It will now play itself out, over and over again in my mind, until the day of my own death. Television and reality. It is very difficult to separate the two, and when one has no reality, television is the thing that replaces it. And because it is through television that those responsible for this monstrous act receive their impression of this country I believe they have made a fundamental miscalculation about the deeper nature of the United States. A miscalculation that will cause to be visited upon them what I pray will be a terrible lesson; a lesson that will make the survivors envy the dead. If you look at television and the endless products of pap and nonsense that are piped out of the media centers of the United States, it is easy to see us as a weak, self-obsessed and foolish people. And many of us are that, even if we pretend to be other than weak, self-obsessed and foolish. We have sitcoms and MTV. We have endless opinions about things which are not really central to serious life questions and serious policy decisions. Our young people look foolish in their vanity and their fashions. Our military institutions are often ridiculed. Our entertainments are light and vapid. Many in positions of influence give short shrift to millions more with deeply held religious and traditional political convictions. Our "major" issues on a day by day basis rarely rise above the level of fretful worry about the "safety of restaurants that allow smoking," or whether or not a flower will be threatened by an oil well. These are serious issues to many Americans, and it is easy to see why such wet and weak concerns would lead others elsewhere in the world to hold us in contempt as a weak and decadent society that cannot defend itself against attack. They see our men as feminine and our women as masculine and, to the fundamentalist mind, this signals a weakness in the blood and bone of the nation.They believe that they can attack such a society with a kind of impunity, or with the expectation of a careful and delicate response. They even note that our President is a man who communicates in a clumsy way, who is an illegitimate ruler, and who does not have the support of many of the ruling elites of the country. They hold him to be easily frightened and stupid. And perhaps he is many, if not all, of these things: clumsy, weak, illegitimate, frightened and stupid. But it will not, in the long run, matter. And I pray it does not avail them. That is all the television America. But there is and always has been another America, and it is this America that I hope will emerge from this day and remind all those who seek to harm us that we can be a nation that is as terrible as it seems foolish. That we are a country of deep resolve and capable of striking back in cold anger without compassion or regret. That we are, as the Japanese knew and were to discover, a sleeping giant and you wake us at your own risk. And once woken we will destroy you, and then rebuild you. The Japanese had their lesson and have learned. Germany had it's lesson and has learned. Now it is the turn of a number of nations in the middle east. We will first tend to our dead. Many funerals will take Place over the next month or so. At the same time we will also prepare for our vengence and I pray it will be terrible and without hesitation or compassion until all terrorists and all the villages, cities, and nations that support them are reduced to rubble. This will be an America whose anger is not hidden beneath grief and the committment to save those not yet dead in the rubble of New York and Washington. This is the America you see when you watch the head of the Fire Department of New York try to express his feelings at losing 300 men in one terrible moment. This is the America of the thousands of rescue workers on the job tonight trying to dig through the rubble. This is the America of terrible resolve that you can read on the face of the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when he states the military is ready to do whatever is required of it. "Whatever is required of it",and I pray we require them to visit horror on our enemies that is a thousand fold worse than what we saw today. You see, it doesn't really matter "who" is the President. It matters only that there is a President. The President is only one man and in times like this he does not really have to lead. He has only to follow and get out of the way. After that what takes place will be done by many, many others in the hundreds and thousands. These people will not be a group of lame celebrities with their puling little concerns whose lives are just roles on television. They will not be a host of sensitive new-age babblers whose fantasies of a perfect world blind them to the evil of this one and the need to tear it out root and branch. These will be Americans with terrible tools and with even more terrible weapons, and the skill and the will to use them. They will be filled with a terrible intensity and, I hope, a deep sense of mission which will not be lightly put aside. This mission should be clear to everyone who has some experience of the world and how the world operates... how reality operates. This mission should be nothing less than one that is willing to use whatever means necessary to target terrorism and to destroy it, wherever it exists. If this means the wholesale destruction of nations, so be it. This mission should be to remind the world that while we are a nation committed to peace, we are a nation to be feared at war. We have the power to do this. We must use it without hindrance. If peace needs to be purchased with the sword, we should be ready to do this. We must become what we were during the Second World War - ruthless and unrelenting. Those who think we are only what they see on our foolish television, need to have a hard and burning lesson on who we are when we decide to turn off the sit-coms and get real. If we cannot do this, we will suffer this again and we will deserve it. The time to fill ourselves with the resolve to crush this monster is now and I pray we are up to the task. Thanks Gerard.

More from Gerard. attack.20.430: Gerard Van der Leun (boswell) Tue 11 Sep 01 08:20 I watched this happen. The enormity of it cannot be communicated. Vile and bestial. We need to destroy any and all capacity anywhere to do anything like this happening ever again. There were thousands in those buildings. Thousands. There is no justice swift enough or sure enough. But all that we have must be brought forward and used without restraint. This is an act of war beyond Pearl Harbor. Military jets overhead again. More ash on the street. attack.20.465: Gerard Van der Leun (boswell) Tue 11 Sep 01 08:34 I am cooled down. Way down., This is pure evil. attack.20.725: Gerard Van der Leun (boswell) Tue 11 Sep 01 12:33 There is no more World Trade Center visible from the Promenade. But you can smell it from there a sort of burnt stench as if someone lit newspaper in a trash can and then poured water on it. That kind of wet burnt stench. It is bright in the sunshine now except for where the Trade Centers stood and there is still a plume of thick brown smoke mouldering up from there and making the sun behind it look dim. Just now I saw three large military helicopters land across the river from the Heights on the big pad at the foot of Wall Street. People on the streets are talking quietly man of them on cells now that some of those nets are back up. Everything is as quiet as it was this morning When I got up and began to take a shower. Showering I felt a vibration shake my building in Brooklyn Heights like a subway train passing deep underneath the structure. I didn't think much of it. I've felt similar vibrations before. Getting out I was dressing and I heard the second explosion from the second plane striking the buildings. I turned on the radio and found out what was happening. I dressed and left the house and walked a block to the Promenade at the edge of Brooklyn Heights and saw both towers in flames sending huge gouts of smoke into the air. You don't know what to think. You don't know what to feel. You are just reacting. The promenade was jammed with people with more arriving. Then as I watched the first tower just imploded and plunged, it seemed to me, straight down and a huge brown and black rolling cloud of smoke came boiling through all the streets between the building and surged upward and took over the sky. You could see bright shiny bits of metal squares tumbling up and down and drifting out of the smoke that moved up and blew out to the south east... it was like confetti or stuff tossed out of windows in a ticker tape parade. I felt the sound before I heard it and it shook everything around me. I heard gasps and screams around me. People were turning away. Everyone with children was leaving the promenade. Some were moving closer. The smoke took over everything. I knew that anyone in that building was dead and I started to shake and to weep and to look around at the others who were in all states of reaction. And I had to go back to my house to regroup. After I was in the house for a few minutes I heard another larger explosion. I went back out and down to the promenade again but this time I couldn't see the sky as I had before. This time the whole sky had been darkened and, the wind having shifted, this fine white ash was swirling down the street. Not heavy, but everywhere around me and it was settling down lightly on all the surfaces. When I got to the promenade again the entire southern tip of Manhattan was enveloped in a dirty brown cloud, No buildings visible at all. Nothing. It filled the sky and made it dark. Turning the corner if you looked uptown past the Brooklyn Bridge which was filled with hordes of people walking towards the Brooklyn shore you could see the buildings start to emerge from the smoke. People were sparse on the promenade now although down towards the end there were more and if you walked down there you could see a little bit into the downtown section of Wall street. And there were ferries moving out of the smoke at high speed. And then I started to hear the military jets but I didn't see them. But no other planes are to be seen. Now it is still smoking there. The trade centers are just gone. Erased. 50,000 people they say work there and 150,000 pass through. What do I feel? I don't know what I feel except that I want vengeance and complete vengeance. I want everything this country possesses put onto the people who did this, and the people who supported this act, and the people who believe this is the way in which political ends are achieved. I want there to be a war and a big war until these people are eradicated who ever they are and where ever they are. I want it made clear that anything even approaching this evil act will be met with utter destruction - people, families, villages, cities, nations. This is an act of war and war must be the response. We will be having a long series of mass funerals for many weeks. I only hope that this country finds the stomach and the resolve to carry retribution forward until it is complete. That is what I feel, now, today. And I'm not alone. I'm not alone at all. attack.20.733: Gerard Van der Leun (boswell) Tue 11 Sep 01 12:42 We need to be in a state of War and to pursue the real aims of war. Against what country? Against a list of countries that support, harbor, or approve of terrorism. A list of countries. All of them. And we need to take action that is terrible and unilateral. Individuals, families, villages, cities, nations.. all must be pursued and eliminated. There needs to be revenge and there needs to be a balancing of the scales. This is the greatest single evil act against Americans in history. It cannot be allowed to stand.

that's exactly how I feel. i found my friend who works for oem, btw. he's ok. he was evacuated when the mayor was from 7 WT. he told me about some of the things he saw... i started to cry. he's still in shock. God bless America.

terry, what address are you finding this on??

Wow Liz, I'm so glad he's safe. Aren't these words from Gerard pregnant with feeling from someone who's been there, smelled and tasted the horror first hand? Powerful, heartfelt words.

Gerard posted this at well.com and gave me permission to repost. It's not on a public web address. More . . . Gerard Van der Leun (boswell) Wed 12 Sep 01 08:05 To answer leroy, I am back at my absurd day-job. So far I'm just about the only one here. Maybe eight people out of 200+. I don't know quite why I am here, but then, in truth, I'm never sure why I am ever here other than that my personal life obligations require me to be here. That may have to change. At any rate, I woke up and could only take about five minutes of the endlessly repeated images of disaster, and having, literally nothing better to do, decided to try and come in. I first walked to the Promenade to see where the Towers were. The vile smoke blooming across the river was still there as it has always been, probably as it always will be in my mind where I will see it first as that moment when the first tower went down carrying thousands to a death I cannot imagine. Still there. And the faint smell lingers too. And there were small clumps of people standing around, one couple even posing for a picture against the new skyline. Then I walked through streets in the Heights that barely had any people on them. Usually full and bustling even on holiday weekends. Now just some elderly people moving slowly and a few clots of Jehovahs Witnesses in their cleaned and pressed clothing going down to put out what I am sure will be an especially "We told you so" issue of the Watchtower. Clark Street station shut down with a few police directly people to the Jay street station. Buy a New York Post because I've read the Times. Walk to Jay Street in the heart of the Brooklyn government center across streets with few pedestrians and no traffic except for police, fire and security vehicles cruising aimlessly about or parked at the curb. Security in front of the courts and the city offices lounging in the bright sunshine of this second day of Indian Summer weather. Down into the Jay Station and a very sparsely occupied A train. We set off on a slow, very slow trip into Manhattan. Several people are reading bibles but most of the 15 or so people are just staring into space and looking vaguely alarmed whenever the train halts between stations -- which is often. I spend this time reading the New York Post which has, inside, a picture of the exterior of one of the towers just before it collapsed. In this picuture I can count around 24 people poking their heads out of the windows or actually on the outside of what has to be the nintieth floor of the towers. All of them, ALL OF THEM, about to ride this building down into oblivion and you know that THEY ALL KNOW THIS. Next to this is a picture of the side of the Tower and a large empty space on the left which is thin air. In this space, close to the tower you can see five to seven people falling with nothing but space above and below them, falling straight down into doom rather than be burned alive. Finally, the train pulls into 23rd Street and halts. After a minute or so you can hear the announcer telling us that we will be held in the station for some time because of a "police investigation" in Penn Station, my destination. I get out and go up to the street to walk the rest of the way. An I walk into a Manhattan I have never seen in the almost 30 years that I've been here. Streets almost utterly clear of traffic for as far uptown or downtown as you can see on 8th Ave. Nearly the same thing on 7th. A smattering of pedestrians that grows somewhat thicker as you approach Penn Station. A nail salon open but with nobody getting their nails done that I can see. Extortionate parking lots that are usually jammed with cars almost empty and with nobody there to collect the money. On the street parking? Oh, we've got it now. Everywhere the hush. Everywhere. Like a ghost town with real ghosts now walking among us. People just standing around, people talking softly on cell phones, and people talking to themselves. On every corner small groups walking slowly into the street or ambling along the sidewalks as if nothing they normally do on Wednesdays in New York City is really all that important after all.

Gerard Van der Leun (boswell) Wed 12 Sep 01 19:05 On blood and the giving of it in New York. It is important to do this, but no longer because of the need. It is pretty clear at this point in the evening of day 2 in New York that the city has more than enough of what it needs to cover for this present emergency. Still, people should give because it is something than they can give. That is the need it fills. As for blood for the wounded and the suffering, there is now a sufficient quantity. And sadly this is because, with the exception of a few miracles that I hope will happen over the next few days, there will not be large numbers of injured beyond those who are already receiving treatment. We are now starting to see the bodies emerge and they will continue in a ghastly parade of orange body bags for weeks now. Soon, tomorrow and over the weekend, the funerals and the memorials will begin. And they will go on and on and on. We will have, if we are *fortunate* 10,000 funerals in this city in the coming weeks. Let me say that again: Ten *thousand* funerals. Try, right now, to close your eyes and visualize this number of funeral ceremonies of every type and description and religion. You cannot do it because the enormity of it is too much for the human mind and soul. But we will have them, one by one and in groups. And here is another fact that comes along behind this number. We do not have enough graves. We do not have enough crematoriums. Many will go unburied for weeks. Many will be burned because that will be the only choice. Many will have to be moved by train, plane, or van to some other place in the state, country, or the world. And we will bury a thousand, and then another thousand, and another. And still the orange body bags will come up out of the pile and the pit one by one by one and lie in rows. And this will go on for weeks if not months. Think about what this will be like. Just stop and try to really see it. And then think this: No matter what many may feel now about the wisdom or the goodness or the morality of retribution, there will come a time during this parade of our dead when this country, already uniting in a way I cannot remember in my 55 years, will have even a greater sea-change of spirit and rage. Many of those who do not really feel this now, for whatever enlightened or unenlightened reason, will feel this change and become part of it. There will be those who do not, a smaller and smaller part of us as the days go by, and they will in the end be left behind. But by far the most of us will be changed by this, even if now we are not. Ten thousand funerals. We cannot imagine it, and yet we will live it. And I hope that each one of us can bear witness to as many as we can bear. It is the least of our duties.

Thanks for that Terry. G's first post is amazing. It says beautifully the resolve and structure of America. Thanks for sharing it.

And his second one is even more powerful. Beware the wrath of righteous indignation.

Thank you, Gerard, for speaking so eloquently what we were all feeling. Ten THOUSAND is the size of a good-sized town. Imagine your entire city dead...

The NY Port Authority is now putting the potential death toll at 20 thousand. I shudder to think what made them increase this up from the earlier figure of 10 thousand. Hopefully, it is just pure conjecture, as the figure of 20 thousand, is just beyond comprehension.

Never forget!!! Hawaii was shocked into action by terrorist acts thousands of miles away yesterday, putting isle military bases on highest alert, grounding air traffic and sending many residents to blood banks and churches. U.S. Navy warships were patrolling the West Coast and Hawaii, ready to respond to any terrorist threat. Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Gordon, a Pacific Fleet spokesman at Pearl Harbor, said the 15 ships patrolling Hawaii waters were deployed or redirected as a precautionary measure, not because of a specific threat. Military bases in Hawaii remained closed today to those without military identification for the second straight day after yesterday's plane hijackings and crashes. More http://starbulletin.com/2001/09/12/news/

Actually, 20,000 was about what I had imagined from the beginning, given the capacity of the two buildings, number of people per floor, etc. Over 200 floors. There could be easily 100 people per floor, despite the steady stream of people getting out after the first attack. I remember one newsperson saying that highest number of American casualties on a single day was in the Civil War battle of Antietam, where about 23,000 were killed.

I wonder if we will ever get an accurate accounting. The fires continue to burn deep inside the hole made by one of the towers. It will simply have to burn itself out since it is too hot and too dangerous to get to now. Frightening! I was asked to post this and so I shall: Flags Across America To show those terrorists that we Americans stick together, FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 14 is "Flags Across America." All Americans are asked to display the American flag either in their homes or cars. Let's keep the meaning of UNITED in "United States". Pass this onto as many people as you know. THANK YOU.

I know Karen, I know... When that figure of 10,000 was initially announced, I thought it was too low, considering the massive amounts of people in the 2 towers. But after a trajedy like this, it is easy and comforting to stick your head in the sand and try to pretend the worst is not going to happen. All too soon, the cold hard reality will get to you, no matter how long you try to put it off.

This is YOUR LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM, a free newsletter sharing life, love and laughter, published by Steve Goodier. http://www.lifesupportsystem.com I asked for it! I invited a response and now am flooded with mail! It may take days to go through it all. Today I printed some of YOUR words in lieu of my usual message. I hope you feel encouraged by the spirit in which they were written. ~ Steve _________________From the Mailbox__________________ Write to Publisher@LifeSupportSystem.com I want to express my great condolence to people of America. I want to say aloud my personal absolute negative expression about the terrorist attack innocent people in New York and Washington. Dostoevsky said there are no great goals to justify the crime if it costs a little tear of child, and how many tears (were shed by) this outrage act? ~ Your subscriber (Kiev, Ukraine) Know that the pain and suffering of Americans is also felt across the mass of water here in Australia. ~ Joanna (Perth, Australia) Let those of us who can, hold a vision of peace, even between ourselves and those who would destroy us. Let those of us who can see the Light, be the Light. ~ A friend Everything came to a standstill here (South Africa) yesterday afternoon at about 3.00 p.m. our time when we first heard the news of the horror! What I do want to say, from our small space, far away from you all in America, is that we grieve for the whole nation and all of you are in our prayers and thoughts -- constantly. ~ Caroline (South Africa) The Canadian People Send Their Deepest Condolences to Our American Friends. We are shocked and horrified, as most Americans are, as soon as we heard the news many rallied, giving blood to the Canadian Red Cross in anticipation of the need by those that might need it. America is our fiend and neighbour, and those that hurt America hurt us. We hope that we never see another tragedy as this again. ~ Doug (Canada) Thank you! Even with all that you and your family have been going through, you have still managed to send inspiration to those of us in need! With all of the negativity out there yesterday, and the "Nuke 'EM" attitude among a lot of Americans that called into CNN and the radio stations here in Chicago, I began to find myself getting more upset about them than the tragedy that caused their feelings. Thank you for reminding the many people who forget in times like this that we are all one -- most humans do NOT believe that the killing of innocents is right, no matter what race! Here in Chicago, an Arab education meeting was hit with a molotov cocktail -- this is exactly what we DON'T need! Thanks again for your call to Americans to see the truth and work through our grief with LOVE! ~ Kelli (Chicago, Illinois) I, like so many of us in the US, live complacently from day to day without fear of danger. Then a tragedy like this occurs and reminds us of the fragility of life and how important it is for us to set aside our differences and all join hands in common bond. ~ Mal (Pasadena, Texas, USA) I live in Barbados, a small island in the West Indies (Caribbean). The tragedy of yesterday shook us here as well. My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone in the States. May God continue to strengthen your nation and be with every one of your leaders as they make decisions and try to rebuild the country. ~ Marie (Barbados) A great gloom has descended on Australia today and will remain for a while to come. The streets were empty in peak hour this morning as people stayed home to watch in horror as the event was broadcast across the nation. And this gloom has remained the whole day, with the attack being just about the only thing on peoples minds. America is far from alone in its hurt and sorrow and we will do whatever we can to help our fellow humans. ~ Nikki (Gold Coast, Australia) I hope that from yesterday events we may learn at least one lesson: that hate only brings violence and destruction. "Love thy enemy" was not written in vain. I pray that the hurt we all feel today does not develop into hate and desire for revenge. ~ Olga (Puerto Rico, USA) My thoughts from South Africa are with you in this dark hour. But I know that you are a country of strong people. People that will support each other and together stand up to become even stronger. ~ Ronelle (Gauteng, South Africa) I am thankful to you always for the positive, uplifting words. I look forward to my daily emails. I never needed them more than I needed them today. I was one of hundreds in Jersey City, at Exchange Place, who watched this event unfold to our shock, horror and disbelief. Thanks for giving me something to hold on to. ~ TL Everything has changed today. Our nation, our world, our civilization. If we are not extremely careful, we could surrender our future to these terrorists in exchange for the perception of peace and security. The terrorists demonstrated that the United States is a free and open country. We have paid a price for having an accessible society. Accessible to all, for whatever purpose they desire. Accessible for good or evil. ~ Eric I light a candle that is burning as a vigil in my home reminding me that Light overcomes darkness. I fly the American flag outside my home at half mast. I turn my headlights on my car to light the way, in my way, for those who feel lost right now. ~ Y.M. Many leaders interviewed on TV have already been saying, if we as mankind would unite during times of peace as we do in tragedy, then we will be able to remove all bad things, including hunger, homelessness, and despair. That is a proactive point of view. ~ Randy ________________________________________________ To subscribe by email, forward this message to: LifeSupport-subscribe@yahoogroups.com To advertise on Your Life Support System, write to this address: advertising@LifeSupportSystem.com For Free stuff! http://www.1freeplace.com/health-life.htm To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: LifeSupport-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com For help unsubscribing, please write lss_publishing@yahoo.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

In addition to thousands of Americans killed they are now saying there were hundreds of UK citizens. My son (he works for a US bank in London) has just got back from spending a week working in NY. He was in the WTC every day. The world really is a global village. What happens to the US happens to us all.

http://tibet.com/NewsRoom/hhdl-letter.htm The Dalai Lama speaks.

The world really is a global village. What happens to the US happens to us all. Let's hope this unity works in the hard task ahead. There are some flights flying into Miami. They seem to be flying lower than usual. Where once we could barely hear them now they are very loud. Very scary. :-(

Thank goodness that your family was spared, Allison. I was thinking about Ben's brother. Isn't he in NYC and probably in that part of it?

Ben's brother works (I believe) for Morgan Stanley, who have (had) 21 floors of the South WTC tower, although it's not their head office in NYC. MS reported yesterday that over 85% (and growing) of their WTC staff had survived. So his odds are good.

Thanks, Mark, for the update. The other night I was watching BBC news' coverage on one of my PBS channels and they were talking about all the foreign nationals who worked in the financial sector.

That's right, Karen. Just like here in London, the NYC financial services industry is one of the most multi-national workforces around. Obviously, the BBC is concerned to take some time focusing on the number of Britons involved, but there will be many nationalities amongst the dead, along with the thousands of Americans. A colleague of mine reports that his NY counterpart works in a suburb in which nearly everybody commutes to Manhattan. Every few doors down the street there was a worker who never came home on Tuesday. Personally, three of my four previous firms had offices in the WTC. It brings the tragedy close to home, but not as close as for the family members and friends of the 20,000.

(Mark) MS reported yesterday that over 85% (and growing) of their WTC staff had survived. So his odds are good. Yes, I heard that about MS also. They credit a 'split second decision to evacuate' after the first plane hit the other tower. It seems to me alot more people got out than you might expect (credit the '93 bombing for that). Yet the stories of those searching for their loved ones, who called before 9 a.m. to say they were OK but who worked above the 90th floor, are absolutely heartbreaking. This will continue for weeks. (Beth) The White House and ABC News have confirmed that the intended target of the plane that crashed in DC, was NOT The Pentagon. It was The White House. OMG !! The White House have also confirmed that Air Force One and The President, were also intended targets. They have not revealed what brought them to this conclusion. I'll tell you--this is spin. Georgie's being criticized for not returning to DC until late afternoon. The plane which hit the Pentagon, the press sec'y says, circled over the White House first. They may have more 'clear and convincing' evidence that the White House and Air Force One (a plane? They're going to hit a plane with a plane with so many other gov't targets around? George was on the ground in Fla. at the time of the attacks) were targeted, but I'm not biting. Though they could've indeed gone for the White House and done far more damage to the country--Dick Cheney was at his desk. ;-P

On Doomed Flight, Passengers Vowed to Perish Fighting By JODI WILGORENand EDWARD WONG They told the people they loved that they would die fighting. In a series of cellular telephone calls to their wives, two passengers aboard the plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field instead of possibly toppling a national landmark learned about the horror of the World Trade Center. From 35,000 feet, they relayed harrowing details about the hijacking in progress to the police. And they vowed to try to thwart the enemy, to prevent others from dying even if they could not save themselves. More: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/13/national/13NEWA.html

Austin's Stratfor.com intelligence reports are some of the best: Situation Reports European markets stabilized in trading Sept. 12, helping to calm the major Asian markets entering the trading day Sept. 13. AFP reports that Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney and South Korea all posted minor gains after steep losses the previous day, though all markets remain fairly below pre-attack levels. Singapore dropped marginally, and Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan -- which were closed Sept. 13 -- posted losses of between 4 and 7 percent. 1519 GMT, 091301 The Afghanistan opposition Northern Alliance, which opposes the ruling Taliban, has appointed a new military chief to replace leader Ahmad Shah Masood, Reuters reported. Masood was replaced with a general named Mukhammad Fakhim on Sep. 11, a few days after Masood was wounded in an attack. Conflicting reports have stated that Masood was actually killed in the attack. 1501 GMT, 091301 The Washington Post reports that the Bush administration is continuing to gather support for a possible strike against Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden and his supporters in Afghanistan, pressuring neighboring Pakistan for intelligence and logistical backing after winning full NATO support Sept. 12. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has pledged his country's full cooperation in the probe into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, VOA news reported, while Saudi Arabia has also reportedly offered its support. The Chinese government is appealing to the United States to consult with countries beyond Europe before launching an attack, BBC reported. 1430 GMT, 091301 Fox News reports that almost all of the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have been identified on flight manifests, including many Saudi and Egyptian nationals and one known supporter of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, considered a prime suspect in the attacks. The news agency, citing law enforcement officials, said that a flight manifest from one of the four flights included the name of a suspected bin Laden supporter, while one person has also been arrested in connection with the attacks in Hamburg, Germany. 1427 GMT, 091301 U.S. authorities said at least one hijacker on each of the four planes used in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was trained at a U.S. flight school, AP reported. Overall, 50 people may have been involved in the operation. Attorney General John Ashcroft said 12 to 24 hijackers commandeered the four planes, and a government official said another two dozen or so are believed to have assisted them, AP reported. The Los Angeles Times reports that about 40 of the men have been accounted for, including those killed in the suicide attacks, but 10 remain at large. The Times also reported at least one of the suspects receiving advanced flight training in Florida was a commercial pilot from Saudi Arabia. 1417 GMT, 091301 The Associated Press reports that a former employee at Huffman Aviation school in Venice Venice, Fla., said FBI agents told him that Mohamed Atta, who stayed in his home while training at the local flight school, was involved in the attack on the World Trade Center Sept. 11. The Miami Herald, citing federal authorities, reports that Atta was one of four suspects who died on American Airlines Flight 11, the first jetliner to crash into the center. A second student at Huffman Aviation, identified as Marwan Alshehhi, is also a suspect. 1410 GMT, 091301 Afghanistan's ruling Taliban Sept. 13 dismissed reports linking Osama bin Laden to terrorist attacks on the United States earlier on the week, and reiterated that they would not hand over the Saudi dissident, AFP reported. Reports had surfaced the previous day claiming that the Taliban had arrested bin Laden. The Taliban is reportedly preparing for a possible U.S. attack, sending its top leader into hiding and repositioning its military hardware throughout the country, The Washington Post reported, citing reports from Pakistani intelligence sources.1405 GMT, 091301 Federal aviation officials said they would allow air travel in the United States to resume Sept. 13 morning. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said authorities were deploying hundreds of U.S. marshals and other agents to airports and airplanes to increase security with the gradual resumption of commercial flights, AP reported. 1400 GMT, 091301 The Times of India has published a report originally carried by an Arabic online newspaper, saying that the Taliban has placed Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden and several of his assistants under house arrest in Afghanistan. A diplomat at the Taliban embassy in Abu Dhabi could not confirm the report. 2318 GMT, 091201 Armed sky marshalls and/or company security officials will accompany flights in the United States for at least a short period of time, possibly indefinitely, according to airline industry officials and the Department of Transportation. 2240 GMT, 091201 Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told Pakistani Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi Sept. 12 that the United States expects full Pakistani cooperation on the search for perpetrators of Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, AFP reported. Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters, "We thought � it would be useful to point out to the Pakistani leadership at every level that we are looking for and expecting their fullest cooperation and their help and support." Washington is concerned about Pakistan's relationship with Afghanistan's Taliban, which is suspected of harboring Osama bin Laden. Pakistan is one of only three countries worldwide that officially recognize the Taliban. 2355 GMT, 091201 Israeli intelligence officials briefing the Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's cabinet Sept. 12 reported that a Middle East government likely sponsored the attack on the United States. They also identified Iraq as the most likely candidate, according to the Middle East News Line (MENL). The news report speculates that Iraq may have financed the operation and recruited Osama bin Laden, stating that Iraq maintains an alliance with bin Laden and radical Islamic groups. 2207 GMT, 091201 NATO's emergency council declared in a statement Sept. 12 that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States fall under the alliance's mutual defense arrangements. This is the first-ever invocation of Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty, which calls for joint action in response to an attack on one alliance member. 2152 GMT, 091201 United Arab Emirates state TV reported Sept. 12 that two men identified by U.S. authorities as possible suspects in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were carrying Saudi passports, AFP reports. The two suspects, Wa'el Mohammad al-Shihri and Ahmad Ibrahim Ali al-Hazzouni, reportedly carried international drivers licenses issued by the UAE and had rented a car which was later seized at Boston's Logan airport. 2150 GMT, 091201 The FAA announced late Wednesday afternoon that passenger air travel will resume temporarily to allow stranded travelers who were diverted Sept. 11 to reach their destinations. The partial opening will occur under heavily-intensified security precautions. The FAA said that it is not yet resuming normal operations due to continued security concerns. 2115 GMT, 091201 The Russian Foreign Ministry said Sept. 12 that Moscow and the European Union plan to step up cooperation to fight international terrorism follow the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, AFP reported. 1935 GMT, 091201 U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has asked central banks to limit the trading in dollars to prevent shocks to the global currency markets, CNNfn reported. The Fed is concerned that a large dollar transaction could create dangerous ripples and harm liquidity. As of Wednesday afternoon, the dollar was bouncing back from earlier losses, stabilizing at 119.38 yen to the dollar and .9067 dollars to the Euro, while trading was thin, AFP reported. Greenspan is due to return from Europe later today. 1935 GMT, 091201 Reacting to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Lebanese Information Minister Ghazi Aridi cautioned against "impulsive" accusations and suggested that the United States should reconsider some international policies that have earned it enemies, the Lebanese Daily Star reported. "There's a need for re-examining the 'New World Order' and the proposed globalization. There's a need for more cooperation and for building relations based on the respect for the rights of people and a just distribution of wealth, not the logic of force," Aridi said. 1935 GMT, 091201 In a national television address, Russian President Vladimir Putin called Sept. 12. for coordinated international action to combat terrorism, which he called the "plague of the 21st century," Agence France-Presse reported. He cited the 1999 bombings of apartment buildings in Moscow in condemning the attacks on New York and Washington. National news agency Interfax quoted Putin in a telegram to Bush as saying, "There is no doubt that such inhuman acts must be punished." Interfax also reported that Russia placed its national air defenses on full alert and that "anti- terrorism measures" were being enforced nationwide. 1935 GMT, 091201 A spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Sept. 12 that the number of Britons who died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack in the United States "could run into hundreds," AFP reported. 1930 GMT, 091201 In a statement Sept. 12 Taliban authorities offered to negotiate about the future of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden if the United States could provide proof of his involvement in the recent terrorist attack on the United States, Kyodo News Service reported, although the group has made similar statements in the past. Reuters reports that the Taliban has beefed up security at government offices and closed the main airport in Kabul after it endured a rocket attack by anti-Taliban forces overnight. 1927 GMT, 091201 Kyodo News Service reports that the United Nations evacuation from Afghanistan will be completed Sept. 14, and will include a large number of foreign aid workers. CNN reported that U.N. staff were taking unusual measures such as taking key documents and computer discs with them. 1852 GMT, 091201 European stock markets strengthened somewhat despite the terrorist attacks on the United States Sept. 11, MSNBC reported. London's FTSE 100 INDEX closed 134.80 points higher at 4,880.80, or up about 2.8 percent, late Sept. 12. The Paris CAC 40 index closed 54.51 points higher at 4,114.26, up 1.34 percent. Frankfurt's DAX was up around 85 points, or 2 percent higher, at 4,358 in late-afternoon trading. 1850 GMT, 091201 Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said Sept. 12 that the United States was "reaping the thorns" of its foreign policy, in a commentary quoted by the official INA news agency on the terrorist attacks the previous day in New York and Washington. 1810 GMT, 091201 A plan to hijack commercial planes and fly them into U.S. targets was reportedly incorporated into a terror strategy by Ramzi Zhmed Yousef, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for masterminding the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, Inquirer News Service reported. The plan was first uncovered in Manila in 1995 after police arrested four suspects in a plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II, and was passed on to U.S. officials by the Philippine government. At least four of Yousef's partners in the 1993 bombing have remained at large, increasing suspicions that they could be involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. 1758 GMT, 091201 The European Union is ramping up its own internal security measures for public transportation, airlines and around public buildings, Reuters reports, while Europol has set up a special task force for police agencies to exchange terrorism information. 1755 GMT, 091201 NATO ambassadors opened a debate Sept. 12 into whether terrorist attacks in New York and Washington represented an "armed attack" against the entire 19-nation alliance, AFP reported. If NATO nations agree on such a stance, the alliance could take "such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area." 1735 GMT, 091201 Citing its already fragile financial situation, as well as the impact of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Midway Air has suspended its operations and laid off 1,700 workers, AP reported. In a statement the company said "demand for air transportation is expected to decline sharply." 1734 GMT, 091201 CNN reports that FBI agents have taken several people in Boston and southern Florida into custody for questioning about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on The World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The FBI is not calling them "suspects", but it does say they may provide material information on the case. Activity in Boston is centered around the Westin Copley Hotel and includes Boston police and SWAT teams. CNN reports that investigations in Florida are focusing their attention on several flight schools. 1720 GMT, 091201 CNN reports that the FBI has identified several suspects in the Boston area thought to be involved in the Sept. 11 hijackings and terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. The report was attributed to a "usually reliable" Boston television station but has not been confirmed by the FBI. 1708 GMT, 091201 The Jerusalem Post reports that Israel has put its air force and anti-aircraft batteries on increased alert and increased the number of its airborne patrols over Israeli airspace. The measures were taken to prevent any unwanted infiltration, air force sources said. Defense forces say no further significant security measures are being taken, as the country was already on a high alert status due to recent terrorist attacks. 1706 GMT, 091201 The Federal Aviation Authority said today that the ban on all U.S. air travel, originally set to end at noon Sept. 12, has been extended indefinitely, National Public Radio reported. The Pentagon is also reportedly being evacuated for a second day in a row. Parts of the Pentagon near the initial impact by a commercial airliner Sept. 11 are becoming increasingly insecure and there are concerns of further collapse, CNN reported. The secretaries of the U.S. Army and Navy have been moved to the building's basement. 1620 GMT, 091201 Ha'aretz reports that Israel reopened its airspace to foreign airline traffic today, though foreign flights must still gain special security clearance before landing. Israeli airspace was closed Sept. 12 due to concerns that the country could be targeted for attacks like those in New York and Washington, D.C. 1631 GMT, 091201 Israeli Defense Forces have ramped up attacks in the territories, The Jerusalem Post reported, saying 10 Palestinians were killed and over 30 wounded in overnight and morning attacks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. Israeli tanks moved into the West Bank city of Jenin early on Sept. 12 and reportedly destroyed a Palestinian security headquarters and two suspected terrorist hideouts before withdrawing. 1635 GMT, 091201 The Taliban said Sept. 12 that any retaliatory strikes by the United States on Afghanistan and on Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, would fail and that Washington would not be able to find any person it targets, AFP reported, citing a Taliban spokesman. Bin Laden is living in Afghanistan under the Taliban militia's protection. The United Nations has ordered all 80 of its employees out of Afghanistan. 1553 GMT, 091101 Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden Sept. 12 congratulated the people who carried out the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., but denied that he was involved, AP reported, citing Abu Dhabi Television's bureau chief in Islamabad. U.S. Embassies in Yemen, Kuwait and Oman and the United Arab Emirates announced that they are closing indefinitely. 1333 GMT, 091201 The FBI has reportedly identified five suspects in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, ABC news reported, citing Boston Herald report. Investigators are searching Boston�s Logan�s airport, where two of the hijacked planes used in the assault originated, and reportedly believe two of the suspects flew from Portland, Maine, to Logan before the attack. 1328 GMT, 091201 Fox News, citing the Boston Herald, reported that two of the suspects so far identified in the search of Logan airport were brothers, one of whom was a trained pilot, and had passports traced to the United Arab Emirates. Reuters though quoted a UAE government source who said there is no evidence that any emirate nationals were aboard the hijacked planes. The Boston Globe reported that one of the five suspects� bags did not make the connection to the plane that was hijacked, and the luggage contained a copy of the Koran, an instructional video on flying commercial airliners and a fuel consumption calculator. The FBI also towed from the airport�s parking garage a rental car with a Virginia license plate that contained Arabic-language flight training manuals, ABC reported. 1325 GMT, 091201 Federal agents are planning to serve search warrants on a home or homes in south Florida of a passengers believed to be on one of the hijacked commercial planes used in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Reuters reported, citing a local television channel report. The station gave no further details of the planned search other than saying it would focus on Davie, a city about 20 miles northwest of Miami, while the FBI was not available to confirm or deny. Fox News reported that at least one Middle Eastern student at flight school Embry-Riddle University in Daytona Beach, Fla., is missing, and that authorities are looking into reports he may have been on one of the hijacked planes. 1320 GMT, 091201 U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said Sept. 11 that there is �no way� that the United States was involved in bombings reported in Afghanistan �s capital Kabul. U.S. President George W. Bush also arrived back at the White House Sept. 11 after shuttling during the day between air force bases in Louisiana and Nebraska. 2257 GMT, 091101 Explosions around Kabul do not appear to be the result of U.S. action, despite speculation that that Saudi militant Osama bin Laden, who shelters in Afghanistan, was behind today's terrorist strikes in New York and Washington. Rather, Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia Sept. 12 launched a massive attack against opposition Northern Alliance forces north of the city. The attack follows allegations that Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Masood died of injuries he received in an assassination attempt Sept. 10. Taliban and Northern Alliance forces have been winding up the summer fighting season over the past few weeks with extensive clashes north of Kabul, and in the northern province of Takhar. 2240 GMT, 091101 CNN showed footage of Afghanistan's capital Kabul under attack early Sept. 12, with explosions and anti-aircraft fire seen throughout the city. Numerous missiles were also seen heading to the city�s airport. The fighting is most likely the result of continued fighting between the opposition Northern Alliance and the ruling Taliban. 2211 GMT, 091101 The New York Stock Exchange has delayed trading indefinitely after the World Trade Center collapsed Sept. 12 following a terrorist attack. The Federal Reserve also announced it is ready to provide additional money to banks if needed. 2142 GMT, 091101 Air Security International has reported that Air Force One has left the Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska and is heading toward Washington, D.C. It also reports that subsidiary building 7 of the World Trade Center has collapsed and that building 5 may follow. AP also reported that the plane that struck the Pentagon was an American Airlines jetliner that had taken off from Dulles International Airport, and that officials say one of the passengers was Barbara Olson, the wife of Solicitor General Theodore Olson, who argues U.S. President George W. Bush's cases before the Supreme Court. 2116 GMT, 091101 Britain, Washington's closest ally, put its security forces on maximum alert Sept. 11 following terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C, AFP reported. All U.S. military forces around the world are also now on Threat Condition Delta, the highest state of alert under the new system. 2123 GMT, 091101 Israel has closed its borders with Egypt and Jordan following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., Sept. 11, Israeli public television reported. Israel earlier closed its airspace for 24 hours to incoming foreign aircraft, and its air force has been placed on high alert. U.S. authorities also boosted surveillance around the U.S. base in Incirlik, southern Turkey, but a spokesman would not specify the level of alert to which troops at the base were posted, AFP reported. The base holds a force of some 40 British and U.S. planes which patrol the no-fly zone over northern Iraq. NATO ambassadors are scheduled to meet in Brussels, while European Union foreign ministers are due to meet early Sept. 12. 2052 GMT, 091101 Fox News is citing a Middle East Broadcasting report which said the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine is now denying involvement in today�s attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., despite earlier reports which said the group had claimed responsibility. Two other Palestinian groups, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, also denied responsibility for the attacks, but blamed U.S. policies in the Mideast, CNN reported. Despite earlier denials by the Taliban, CNN also said government sources have good indications that those involved in the attacks have links to suspected Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden, although no details were given. 2002 GMT, 091101 The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries pledged Sept. 11 to maintain a stable oil supply following a rise in oil prices after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, Kyodo news agency reported. OPEC Secretary-General Ali Rodriquez Araque said member nations will guarantee a sufficient supply of crude oil and are also prepared to use their excess production capability to maintain a stable supply. 1951 GMT, 091101 Fox News is reporting that the commercial airline that crashed into the Pentagon Sept. 11 was American Airlines Flight 77 en route from Dulles Airport in Virginia to Los Angeles. There were 58 passengers, four flight attendants and two pilots on board. A Fox News commentator was on the plane and reportedly made a call from her cell phone, officials said. Fox also cited United Airlines pilots who said UA Flight 175 was the second plane that crashed into the World Trade Center. The Boeing 767 carried 56 passengers, two pilots and seven flight attendants. 1942 GMT, 091101 Sources say that U.S. President George W. Bush has landed at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, center of the Strategic Air Command, after leaving from Louisiana, local radio reported. Fox News also reports that Marine amphibious units are being deployed to Washington, D.C. 1935 GMT, 091101 Fox News is reporting that a U.S. judge last June had set Sept. 12 as the sentencing date for an associate of suspected Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden for his role in the 1998 bombing of a U.S. embassy in Tanzania. The sentencing had been set for the federal courthouse near the World Trade Center, which was destroyed Sept. 11 after being hit by two commercial airliners. Fox is also reporting that a 911 dispatcher in Westmoreland County, Pa., received a cell phone call from a man who said he was a passenger locked in the bathroom of the United Airlines flight which crashed outside of Pittsburgh. The passenger reportedly said the plane was being hijacked. 1909 GMT, 091101 Reuters is reporting that Arabic satellite television channel MBC warned Sept. 8 that followers of suspected Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden were planning a major attack on U.S. and Israeli interests in the next two weeks. Israeli Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer also warned Sept. 10, the day before attacks on U.S. targets in New York and Washington, that "a coalition has been formed recently between terror organizations, Palestinians, Shiites and bin Laden operating against Israeli, American and European targets.� 1850 GMT, 091101 U.S. President George W. Bush will leave Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana for an undisclosed location, Reuters reported Sept. 11, citing a White House official. All airports in the United States have also been closed by order of the Federal Aviation Administration, the first time in U.S. history that air traffic nationwide has been halted, while all U.S. financial markets were closed as well, Fox news reported. 1838 GMT, 091101

Koppel said a Pakistani news agency quoted the taliban saying they do not have Bin Laden under house arrest or any other kind. Frontline is going to show an updated version of their documentary on Bin Laden on thursday. They also have an extensive website http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/

The LA Times has a detailed story FBI Identifies Team of 50 Attackers http://latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-091301terror.story

(Eileen) I'll tell you--this is spin. Georgie's being criticized for not returning to DC until late afternoon. I thought the same thing and said so to Ev last night. Bush was in Florida. Symbolically they might have wanted to hit the White House, but this is a crock to deflect newspapers' criticism. Unfortunately, most Americans do not realize that getting key government functions, including the President, to safety means taking them out of Washington and into bunkers and I'm sure the disaster scenarios for the presidency would involve moving him around. The hijackers wouldn't even have known he eventually went up in Air Force One or where it was headed. Totally idiotic. I bet we never see this 'credible' evidence.

http://www.rand.org/hot/newslinks.html#terror This is the URL for a Rand report on the state of U.S. anti-terrorism policy as of 2000. Executive summary: we don't have one. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/ This is a joint PBS/NYT site on bin Laden, dating from a little after the first WTC bombings.

The die has been cast. The lead story in the Thursday edition of the Washington Post is a detailed description of US negotiations with Pakistan and Tajikstan to provide a staging area or at least safe passage for a mission to track down Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20862-2001Sep12.html The second story starts by saying that Pentagon officials are keeping a tight lid on deployments and planning options, then proceeds to spill the beans extravagantly about the range of plans and preparations in progress for the effort to find and deal with Osama Bin Laden. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20806-2001Sep12.html

Plans underway for massive invasion of Afghanistan: http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,551079,00.html

A wired story reports that FBI agents are busy installing carnivore on ISPs http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46747,00.html

Anti-Attack Feds Push Carnivore By Declan McCullagh 2:00 a.m. Sep. 12, 2001 PDT WASHINGTON -- Federal police are reportedly increasing Internet surveillance after Tuesday's deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Just hours after three airplanes smashed into the buildings in what some U.S. legislators have dubbed a second Pearl Harbor, FBI agents began to visit Web-based, e-mail firms and network providers, according to engineers at those companies who spoke on condition of anonymity. An administrator at one major network service provider said that FBI agents showed up at his workplace on Tuesday "with a couple of Carnivores, requesting permission to place them in our core, along with offers to actually pay for circuits and costs."

From the Guardian article: Nato is now drawing up an emergency plan for a massive attack on Afghanistan if proof emerges that Osama bin Laden, the wanted Saudi-born terrorist sheltered by Afghanistan, was responsible for the attacks. What do they mean by if? A signatory to a treaty is a signatory to a treaty. Also, they are making it sound like it's an obscure passage of the treaty. That it hasn't been invoked isn't relevant IMO. It is the backbone of the NATO alliance. Only the enemy has changed.

http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/misc/janes010911_2_n.shtml The hunt for Bin Laden begins.