The Second Tragedy of September 11, 2011
The attacks on this day were awful and no words can express the damage done to individual and collective lives.
The second tragedy of this event, is that Bush and Blair pursued such a misguided strategy afterwards that they made a second serious attack more likely to happen.
To show how badly they performed, you just have to look at how many people think the attacks didn’t happen and were an event staged by the CIA and the Israelis to get at Muslims. Or something else equally false and bizarre!
We should probably have gone into Afghanistan, but Iraq now looks in the eyes of nearly everybody to be a colossal mistake. Although saying that, Saddam was a cruel tyrant and had to go, if only to protect his own people. But the Arab world seems to specialise in people like him. Just look at Syria, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria and Egypt. And don’t get me going on places like Saudi Arabia and a few others. How many women would like to live in those countries?
The attacks gave us a chance to deal with the real problems of the world. But we just made it worse, by our vengeful actions and our complete disregard for human rights at Guantanamo and other places we are just starting to know about.
Those That Buy The Gun Live Will With The Consequences
The Times today has a story about one child of a couple in Alaska, who accidentally shot a sibling with a pistol, leaving the child a paraplegic. So they are doing what all good American’s do and reach for their lawyer and suing the manufacturer of the gun.
It would have been so much easier and less stressful, if they hadn’t bought the gun in the first place.
After all guns are designed to kill people and when they do, it’s more likely that the victim will be the owner of the gun or one of his friends or family.
The Untold Story of Hurricane Irene
I do find it strange to hear of a hurricane with the same name as my mother, who was a rather placid woman. In fact, I suspect too much so. On the other hand, I think she was rather calm under pressure!
I have just been reading a piece about how New York will be treating the city’s prisoners during the hurricane.
“We are not evacuating Rikers Island,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a news conference this afternoon. Bloomberg annouced a host of extreme measures being taken by New York City in preparation for the arrival of Hurricane Irene, including a shutdown of the public transit system and the unprecedented mandatory evacuation of some 250,000 people from low-lying areas.
But in response to a reporter’s question, the mayor stated in no uncertain terms (and with more than a hint of annoyance) that one group of New Yorkers on vulnerable ground will be staying put.
New York City is surrounded by small islands and barrier beaches, and a glance at the city’s evacuation map reveals all of them to be in Zone A (already under a mandatory evacuation order) or Zone B–all, that is, save one. Rikers Island, which lies in the waters between Queens and the Bronx, is not highlighted at all, meaning it is not to be evacuated under any circumstances.
According to the New York City Department of Corrections’ own website, more than three-quarters of Rikers Island’s 400 acres are built on landfill–which is generally thought to be more vulnerable to natural disasters. Its ten jails have a capacity of close to 17,000 inmates, and normally house at least 12,000, including juveniles and large numbers of prisoners with mental illness.
We were not able to reach anyone at the NYC DOC for comment–but the New York Times’s City Room blog reported: “According to the city’s Department of Correction, no hypothetical evacuation plan for the roughly 12,000 inmates that the facility may house on a given day even exists. Contingencies do exist for smaller-scale relocations from one facility to another.”
So hard luck guys and gals!
Hopefully, they won’t have to endure the horrors of when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. This report is from the ACLU.
A culture of neglect was evident in the days before Katrina, when the sheriff declared that the prisoners would remain “where they belong,” despite the mayor’s decision to declare the city’s first-ever mandatory evacuation. OPP even accepted prisoners, including juveniles as young as 10, from other facilities to ride out the storm.
As floodwaters rose in the OPP buildings, power was lost, and entire buildings were plunged into darkness. Deputies left their posts wholesale, leaving behind prisoners in locked cells, some standing in sewage-tainted water up to their chests …
Prisoners went days without food, water and ventilation, and deputies admit that they received no emergency training and were entirely unaware of any evacuation plan. Even some prison guards were left locked in at their posts to fend for themselves, unable to provide assistance to prisoners in need.
When is the United States justice system going to raise its standards to the level of the civilised world?
I suspect we’d be hearing more of this if Dominique Strauss-Kahn was still in prison on Rikers Island.
Perry Is George Bush on Steroids
That was said by John Morgan, a professional impersonator as he sees Perry as an equally rich seam to be milked for all its worth. Here’s the story.
Good luck to him! But not to the odious Rick Perry!
I like this quote on Rick Perry, by Bruce Bartlett, who was an advisor to Ronald Reagan.
Rick Perry’s an idiot and I don’t think anyone would disagree with that.
It’s funny how in United States politics, the scum always seems to float to the surface.
Abercrombie and Fitch
I don’t wear designer brands and especially those that are obvious to others in the street.
So I was rather amused that Abercrombie and Fitch are reported to be getting angry about a reality TV show in the United States, where some of the odious cast wear their brand. Incidentally, I generally don’t use American brands unless I know the company’s policy on the environment, workplace policies, the death penalty and other matters. As an example you’d never see me in Asda, but I do buy products from Microsoft.
The Last Imperial Legacy in the United States
A letter in The Times yesterday, explains why a city block in the US is the size it is.
City blocks, and indeed much of North America, were laid out in imperial measurements, many of which are still used today
Sir, Tim Teeman said in the Saturday Review on Aug 13th states that “200ft is the length of a city block”. Not so: it is 198ft, because that equals 66 yards or 3 chains or 12 rods, the units by which the whole of North America was surveyed and laid out, within the system of customary measures that still prevails there and survives unofficially in Britain.
I suspect that very few measurements in English cities, towns and the countryside are just how they were originally laid out or modified. They’ve just done the pavements outside my house, and I suspect the road is now about a centimetre narrower, as they’ve replaced the kerbs round the trees, which of course have grown since they were last replaced. I wonder if the Dutch company worked to Imperial or Metric units. I suspect that if they measured everything, it was the latter, but I suspect most of it was well done using the Mark One eyeball.
I Hope Pippa Middleton Is On Commission!
According to that organ of the sex-mad from Tunbridge Wells, the Daily Telegraph, Pippa Middleton’s derriere has inspired a plastic surgery boom in the United States according to this article.
What do they do with all the fat they remove? Perhaps they use it in fast food restaurants. After all there was an enormous fatberg outside an American-owned one in Leicester Square.
If This Man is a Preacher, I’m a Zebra
I’ve read about quite a few child abuse and mad religious cases, but this surely is the worst I’ve ever seen.
Warren Jeffs reputedly had seventy-nine wives. That sounds like seventy-nine too many for their sake!
I would feel that nearly every good Christian, Jew, Muslim, Humanist, Hindu, Sikh or Athiest, feels that if someone needs to be locked up as a menace to women and children, it is Warren Jeffs.
Is Rick Perry Running To Be President of Iran?
They are made for each other, if The Times is to believed, as they are both convinced that the death penalty is the cure to all evils. I’m told it’s very good at stopping innocent peple becoming criminals.
The Iranians are using buses as scaffolds, which is a severe misuse of a noble piece of transport. Let’s make sure that none of London’s redundant bendy buses go to Iran, as they could be used to execute dozens at a time.
It’s about time, the British government and in fact the governments of all countries opposed to the death penalty, put some meaningful pressure on countries that still use this horrendous punishment.
The Anonymous Widower 