"Some of your bosses have told us that they can't support anything with the name 'School of the Americas' on it. Our proposal addresses this concern. It changes the name."

- Colonel Mark Morgan, Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation

This article asks whether the U.S. is a state sponsor of terrorism. At issue is the operation of a terrorist training facility at Fort Benning, Georgia whose graduates have been involved in the deaths of tens of thousands of [Latin] American civilians. More information on WHINSEC can be found at the official site above and at SOA Watch's website. My take on the campaign to close the school is that the school is being blamed for atrocities that would have happened whether those involved were trained by or in the U.S. or not. Perhaps it would be more effective to seek to establish accountability for human rights violations among the myriad commanders, warlords, and governments in the hemisphere through, I don't know, some sort of International Tribunal? (Like the one the U.S. refuses to support for reasons other than the values embedded in our Constitution...)

Naturally, WHINSEC's charter and curriculum would require more than cosmetic changes in order to support a commitment to human rights - but that commitment, rather than more pressure to close any one facility, is what is needed.

Here is the most illuminating article I've yet read about the competing views in the Muslim world about what has been happening. Warning: it ain't optimistic for our chances to win any wars against terror.

Friday was Satan's birthday (observed) in which a gathering of celebrants munched on hot chili and goo-goo cluster brownies, partook of frankincense and Air Fresh'ners, visited the basement of terror, the bloody murder WC, the haunted back yard, and put up with howling spirits who spake in foul tongues. In the end, the robots saved the day. (And the wise man profited from following his star)

Saturday was a day of thanksgiving. The sourness of the many cranberries and the bitterness of the bourbon were easily surpassed by the sweetness of everything else. Thanks!

A good short appraisal of our response to terrorism, especially important for those who believe that anyone who expresses doubt over the effectiveness of warfare in stopping terror is a traitor.

I went to MT Laurel (a "new urbanist" development) today to check out their 'town architect.' As he describes it, his job is to make sure all the choir members are singing the same piece of music. In this case, the choir members are houses and the music is "I'm a cute little town." The subject of the lecture was the influence of English Arts & Crafts style on Birmingham's architectural heritage. The reasons for that influence in 1900 are clear, but the reasons to mimic it now are less so. More compelling is the climatic and social sensitivity he talked about in relation to front porches. But, as I walked around, I didn't see a lot of porches that invited relaxation or interaction with the streets. I did admire the effort to preserve or relocate existing trees. My general impression is that the landscape is awkward, but uses great materials while the architecture is competent, but perhaps a bit careless with materials and too cute with paint colors.

Thank you for your patience. I am back at GMT-06:00 now, a seven hour move that required seventeen hours of elapsed travel time. When I got home I found very little that has changed. Here's a brief run-down on new things in Birmingham:

1. Three Starbucks Coffee shops, a net gain of three since I left.
2. Stainless steel columbarium niches have been put in place.
3. City Council elections have soured former mayor Arrington on politics.
4. All the ATMs have brighter screens and the option of Español.
5. DART buses ply three routes through the city center at 10 minute intervals until midnight!
6. Fewer teachers, more students, lower budgets, more trailers - and the education governor is in office.
7. Flags everywhere.

Architecture complicit in Disaster: According to this article by a phusicist at Swarthmore College, there were three sources of energy that contributed to Tuesday's devastating event in New York. The first was the jet fuel contained in both planes, estimated to total 6.9x10^10 metric joules. The second was the kinetic energy of the speeding planes, which he estimates at 1.9x10^9 metric joules in total. The third source of energy was the arrangement of the structure, specifically the positioning of a great deal of mass at great distances from the ground, a potential energy estimated at 6.8x10^11 metric joules, or by far the largest contributor to the furious unleashing of terror.

Even while architecture is guilty, engineering saved hundreds of lives. This article in New Scientist magazine discusses how the particular structural solution used to achieve the evil architectural scheme prevented an even worse catastrophe.

Microsoft has announced that they will remove the towers from future versions of Flight Simulator. It is unclear whether this is to make the game more harmless or more realistic. Also it is unclear whether they will remove potentially threatening language from Word's dictionary.

"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety."

- Benjamin Franklin

"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."

from George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, (1949)

This is what they're telling you to believe. You can't accept it.

Two things you never want to see made:

The chaos of war is reflected in the semantic history of the word "war". "War" can be traced back to the Indo-European root "wers-", to confuse, mix up. In the Germanic family of the Indo-European languages, this root gave rise to several words having to do with confusion or mixture of various kinds. One was the noun "werza-", confusion, which in a later form "werra-" was borrowed into Old French, probably from Frankish, a largely unrecorded Germanic language that contributed about 200 words to the vocabulary of Old French. From the Germanic stem came both the form "werre" in Old North French, the form borrowed into English in the 12th century, and "guerre" (the source of "guerrilla") in the rest of the Old French-speaking area. Both forms meant “war.” Meanwhile another form derived from the same Indo-European root had developed into a word denoting a more benign kind of mixture, Old High German "wurst", meaning “sausage.” Modern German "Wurst" was borrowed into English in the 19th century, first by itself (recorded in 1855) and then as part of the word "liverwurst" (1869), the liver being a translation of German Leber in "Leberwurst."

from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

In all this confusion, I would like to reflect on the use of "war" to characterize the situation in which we are caught up.

A criminal act and an act of war are often the same act - what is different is the context. An act of war involves a relationship between powers in which one seeks to assert its dominion over the resources of another outside the rule of law. A criminal act also seeks to redistribute power, but it takes place within a legal framework for resource distribution.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was an act of war not because it was a surprise, nor because people were killed, nor because of the scale of the destruction. It was an act of war because no legal system encompassed the relations between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

The attack on New York and Washington is a criminal act not because it failed to meet some standard for ferocity or loss, but because international law provides a way to enforce justice without resorting to lawless violence.

To characterize Tuesday's tragedy as an act of war, and to further frame our response plans in terms of waging war is to release the criminals from the rule of law and to insist that they operated from a position of sovereign power. Given the nature of the likely perpetrators, this can only result in an unwinnable campaign (e.g. the war on drugs or the war on poverty) or a tragically misguided attack on people who should have recourse to the rule of law before they are executed.

Our leaders claim that Tuesday's attack was waged against freedom, against openness, against civilization, against our way of life. The only way this attack can be successful is for us, through our fear, to betray our guiding principles and to aid the enemy. If we value America's freedom, openness, and way of life, then we must honor those principles centrally in our response to deplorable terror and lead the way toward a world united under the same values, enforced through the civilized rule of law.