CNN.com - Falwell apologizes to gays, feminists, lesbians - September 14, 2001
OK, work with me on this; follow the bouncing bumbler along: (1) Falwell [along with his little friend Robertson] says publicly and quite clearly that feminists, gays, lesbians, abortionists, and the ACLU are responsible for the WTC bombings. (2) I'm gathering that perhaps one or two more conservative Christians probably said to him, "Jerry, old bean, you went one step too far at the wrong time. Be a man, get out there, and apologize." (3) He calls CNN and says that, although the hijackers and terrorists were really the only ones who attacked, the ACLU and other organizations which secularized America caused God to lift his veil of protection from our country and thus rendered the country vulnerable. (4) But it's still the fault of the hijackers and terrorists.
Now ... walk with me back to that third step, OK? If the ACLU, gays and lesbians ('cause we're organized, you know; we've got an agenda), feminists and whoever else he mentioned before are, in his mind, responsible for God withdrawing His Protection, without which the hijackers and terrorists could not have done what they did ... how does that not ultimately devolve to "You are responsible for this horrible thing"?
THIS is an apology?
I'd hate to see another accusation, if that's an apology.
@ 03:19 AM CST [Link]
You know, you'd think the Chicago police would learn. Something. ANYTHING. At a minimum, you'd think they'd learn that once a youth officer has been actually requested, you CANNOT interrogate a juvenile suspect. (We'll ignore the rather surprising length of time they interrogated him without even calling for a youth officer, shall we? Let's shall.) I would be mildly -- but only mildly -- surprised if this case were reversed on appeal; the case law seems fairly solid with regard to the interrogation of juveniles. The problem is that if his conviction is voided, and his confession tossed out of evidence, then it logically takes his brother's conviction with it; they wouldn't have arrested him without that confession. And that means that two people who may well have been involved in this murder will walk because of police misbehavior.
@ 03:07 PM CST [Link]
The advertisements addressed to gay men were provocative: Learn to write racy stories about your sexual encounters, choose toys ''for solo and partner sex'' or share tales of erotic experiences. All of it was done at government expense, in the name of preventing AIDS. These expenditures--along with other recent allegations of fraud and abuse of federal money to fight AIDS--have upset some AIDS activists and lawmakers.
Um ... yes, I would think they would be upset. Just a tad. Yes.
Although I do understand why the organizations did it. I mean, what's the point in offering AIDS workshops for people who don't show up? (That said, I'd imagine that, even if they do eventually get around to the advertised topic, attendees might be a tad perturbed at the whole "bait-and-switch" aspect.) On the other hand, I can see the usefulness in showing people not only how to have safer sex, but how to channel erotic feelings in different ways; I can see that having a useful role to play in showing people that there are other ways to experience sex.
But I can't imagine this administration being at all happy about teaching people how to write erotic stories, no. Especially when their attitude to sex in general is so ... reactionary.
@ 12:34 PM CST [Link]
OK, that's different. That's VERY different. On your arm. Who knew?
@ 12:27 PM CST [Link]
A digression (yes, before the main entry): The city of Chesterton, Indiana, has decided that it should go on with its Wizard of Oz Festival, since it's largely kid-oriented, and they think that people need the event, need some return to normality. (The Wizard of Oz? Normal? ... Whatever.) So the festival will go on. But No Chicago Drag Queens! Apparently, they're "off color" and "inappropriate". What the fuck? (Oh, dear, that was offcolor, wasn't it?) In the meantime, Munchkins are traveling out from California and Texas. (Really, that's what it says.)
In Palos Heights, [a suburb of Chicago] a Worth man was charged with a hate crime after he allegedly used a 2-foot machete to attack a gas station attendant he thought was of Arab descent, police said. [...] A noisy crowd of young people shouting anti-Arabic insults began a late-night march Wednesday on a Bridgeview mosque but were contained by as many as 125 police officers on a Harlem Avenue streetcorner, where a demonstration lasted past midnight.
9:31pm: According to Fox News Chicago, the same man attacked by the machete was attacked a second time tonight by a completely different person. And outside the mosque in Bridgeview, we have a truly massive anti-Moslem rally, lins of cars passing and honking to support the protesters, which include skinheads waving Confederate flags.
Gary police are also investigating two reports of damage at Arab-American owned gasoline stations, including one that was racked by gunfire Wednesday.
One of my coworkers is an Arab-American. Frankly, I never think of him that way. He was born and raised in this country, and I think of him as the quintessential California dude. You couldn't get much more dude-like, really; never wears slacks if he can wear jeans, never wears jeans if he can wear shorts, never wears shoes if he can wear sneakers, never wears sneakers if he can wear sandals ... And once he opens his mouth, people blocks away look at him and say, "You're from California, aren't you?" He's just a dude.
I overheard a conversation he was having with someone yesterday. Wasn't trying to eavesdrop; after all, we were working and they were both working in the room with me. He was talking about having been yelled at and spit at and threatened as he walked through the Institution to work. And honestly, I couldn't imagine why at first. Why would people from Chicago be all that exercised about some Californian? And then I realized that if your name is Muhamed or Ali or something like that, it's not going to matter where you're from. The only thing that matters is what you look like.
The Sikhs on campus have been threatened. The Sikhs. Anyone in a turban, I guess. The Muslim women are going about in these terrified clusters, looking at everyone as if they're about to be physically attacked at any moment.
There's a little corner store in my neighborhood. Run by a family of Turks, I believe. It's always been jumping, kids in and out getting candy and ice cream, people in the neighborhood stopping in for food or for a chat, the guys from the family that runs it talking it up between themselves ... it's been a very grim place this week. At first, of course, just because grim things were happening, but then things changed. Now it's quiet and they look just as scared as the women on campus.
I don't think that I have much else to say about this event, and there's other news out there. Other current events. And I'm tired of noting the appalling behavior of my countrymen at a time when they should do better. They know better.
And, in fact, there are other events. Other happenings. Even other plane crashes, as bizarre a concept as that seems.
@ 09:25 PM CST [Link]
Today's Token Attempt at Normality: Dan Savage has responded to people writing about Seth Watkins, the HIV-positive AIDS educator who talked about having unsafe sex in his column. He pretty much takes no prisoners in his response to the one negative (what a peculiar word in that context) letter he received. Not that I disagree, necessarily. (Although he's wrong on one thing: you do hear straight people talk about "birth control fatigue", although it's not phrased quite that way; it somehow seems to come out as, "I'm sick and tired of taking the pill/being responsible for everything! If YOU don't want babies, then YOU do something about it!" Granted, that's usually only heard in longterm relationships. But you do hear single women talking about being tired of taking whatever precautions it is that they use.)
@ 04:22 PM CST [Link]
Apparently, the Lebanon Daily Star was right to fear that Israel would act with impugnity after the WTC and Pentagon attacks: The Israeli army staged its largest and deadliest incursion to date into Palestinian territory yesterday, entering the West Bank city of Jenin and two adjacent villages, where 11 Palestinians were reported killed. The Israeli Ministry of Defense spokesman stated, "Maybe the world has been uncomfortable with our tactics, and didn't like what we were doing too much. Maybe they will be more comfortable with our tactics now."
I don't know that the world will be more "comfortable" with the tactics, no ... but I don't expect any comment, either.
@ 03:18 PM CST [Link]
At the Kuwait Embassy in Washington, Tamara Alfson spent yesterday counseling frightened Kuwaiti students attending U.S. schools. One student was told, "You should all die," Alfson said.
A Huntington Station man who screamed that he was "doing this for my country" was arrested last night after trying to run down a Pakistani woman with his car, Suffolk police said. The incident, one of several on Long Island that authorities and victims attributed to a backlash of hatred generated by Tuesday's terrorist attacks, occurred at Walt Whitman Mall in South Huntington.
A 7-Eleven spokesperson said that an unidentified man entered the store around 3 a.m. Wednesday morning, made threatening remarks to the store employee on the overnight shift, then left the scene. The performance was recorded on videotape, which was turned over to Lower Merion Township police yesterday. Lower Merion police said they could not provide any details because the incident was under investigation. But Philadelphia Police Department spokeswoman, Susan Slawson, confirmed that two Philadelphia officers were under investigation. “I am confirming there was an incident that took place with two Philadelphia police officers,” Slawson said. “We are waiting for the Lower Merion police to complete their investigation.” The manager of the 7-Eleven, Affan Hashmi, said he is a native of Pakistan who came to the United States 20 years ago and is now a U.S. citizen.
In Palos Heights, [a suburb of Chicago] a Worth man was charged with a hate crime after he allegedly used a 2-foot machete to attack a gas station attendant he thought was of Arab descent, police said.
Vandals threw a bag of blood on the doorstep of a San Francisco immigration center that serves Arabs. A Pacifica man's car -- and its "Free Palestine" sticker -- was vandalized. And police were checking a report that a Palestinian boy was beaten up in San Francisco.
...some local Muslims already have reported receiving threats over the phone and by e-mail. Hazim Barakat, owner of Old Town Islamic Bookstore, said two bricks had been thrown through the store's front windows Tuesday night. One was wrapped with a note scrawled, "Death to Arab Murderers," Barakat said.
Members of a joint terrorism task force arrived this morning to help Denton fire marshals and police after someone threw a Molotov Cocktail at the Islamic Society of Denton mosque. Fire Marshal Rick Jones said at the scene this morning that investigators from the ATF and FBI are assisting. It is too early to say if the arson attempt is retaliation for the act of war against the United States, he said. [...] Several North Texas mosques received threatening phone calls. Officials at two Muslim schools in Arlington decided to stay closed for the rest of the week. Members of the Islamic Center of Irving and the Madinah Masjid in Carrollton cleaned up debris from windows that were shot out overnight.
If you thought this week couldn't get worse ... you were wrong. Only now we're doing it to ourselves.
@ 02:57 PM CST [Link]
The United States can rebuild the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center within a year as the tallest building in the world, to underline the economic power of the United States, but the moral damage of this tragedy will leave an open door among the Americans whose belief and confidence in American military power and supremacy worldover may be shattered. This is a blow to the American image as the only superpower left in the world.
On the one hand, while the Turkish Daily News is quite correct about the damage to the confidence in our military ... their belief in our ability to rebuild is staggering.
Some are saying that we might never build another "supertall skyscraper" aside from Trump's Chicago dump. (Well, really, the world's tallest building on the Chicago River? Next to the squat but surprisingly graceful Wrigley Building? What a yutz. But I digress.) I suspect we will keep building tall buildings -- to be frank, I suspect we must, in part for psychological reasons; tall buildings somehow define this country ... but in part because, in Manhattan, at least, there's no other way to build. Until yesterday, there was no space.
According to an article I now can't find again, at least 20 square blocks of Manhattan are now classed as "totally destroyed, mostly destroyed, or slightly destroyed." I thought the word he meant for the last one was "damaged" until I saw some footage of what happened to the surrounding buildings, and "slightly destroyed" is really the only way to describe some of them, those most distant in what can only be called a peculiar fallout zone. For the closer ones ... One Liberty Plaza will have to come down -- in fact, it's trying very hard to take itself down in any event. The World Financial Center -- the set of skyscrapers surrounding the Trade Center complex -- will have to come down. Most of the buildings in that 20-block area will have to come down. How do you take down 20 blocks? Where do you put 20 square blocks of rubble? How do you rebuild that much?
The other misconception I've seen is that we'll have the worst cleared away in a few days, in the search for people. But ... it took years to build the towers. Granted that mostly, they contained air -- that's what buildings do, after all -- there's still no way this will be done in a few days. This process, with the WTC alone, will go on for weeks. I don't know how the workers will be able to bear it.
@ 02:17 PM CST [Link]
The shocking Super Terror Tuesday in the United States should now force the international community to wake up to the enormity of the challenge the modern world faces from international terrorism. [...] Few approaches other than terrorism give its practitioners the choice of time and location to spring the surprise. Democracies are specially vulnerable to terrorism, given their justified reluctance to curb the freedoms of their citizens and the built- in opposition to draconian methods in countering terrorism.
Nothing like having your own marketing hype fed back to you in a truly disgusting and distasteful way. "Super Terror Tuesday", indeed.
It'll be interesting to see how reluctant the government is to curb freedoms ... and how reluctant we are to accept it.
That said, it's remarkable how much of the rhetoric from different countries is almost identical. China, of all places, talks about waging all-out war on terrorism. A country subject to notably little international terrorism.
Lebanon's Daily Star notes that, as a consequence of the actions, Hizbollah will need to lay low, because the US will be notably disinclined to restrain Israel from anything they wish to do over the next few months. (Frankly, I suspect that's more of a wishful thought than a prediction.) They also note that even if Hizbollah does lay low, Israel may take the opportunity to clean house, as it were, and the probable US response would be something like, "Oh, you killed a few thousand Palestinians? And they weren't all guerillas? Oh. Too bad. So sad."
@ 01:33 PM CST [Link]
You know, it's fascinating to see the truly MASSIVE extent to which other countries do not understand us At All. Granted, the writer does play fast and loose with the differences between state action and the actions of mobs and individuals. But you wonder how on earth any person could have watched this country at all, ever, and could call us "the only multi-national country in the world in which there was no nationalism or chauvinism". Where on earth would they get a notion THAT misguided? When did we ever say anything of the sort, or present ourselves that way?
I have a feeling that even now, there are people out there with ideals about this country that we never held. And they're about to be bitterly disappointed in our behavior.
I also have a feeling that we'll be asking the question he asks before too long.
@ 01:29 PM CST [Link]
"It's natural that the United States earns the ill will of other nations. They have committed a lot of outrages," 78-year-old Jose Schroeder told Mexico City's Reforma newspaper in a man on the street interview [...] "The U.S. is to blame for this because they were never concerned about the anger they raised in other countries," said Ana Paula Brasil, 28, a set-design student in the drama school in Rio de Janeiro. "They are responsible for deaths across the world and caused unwarranted pain in other countries with its economic policies ..."
Somehow, I don't believe that the US will try to invoke whatever section of the Rio Treaty that's comparable with Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. To be sure, I don't know what help Central and South America and the Organization of American States would be in any event -- it's not as though any of them are military or intelligence powerhouses and they're a very long way away from anything we'd be doing. Nonetheless, you do get the impression that even asking the question would be more than usually pointless. Although it might be fun, in a truly grim way, to watch the countries squirm away from the prospect.
@ 01:14 PM CST [Link]
So, for my day's token attempt to return to normality ... might I suggest that efficiency and consensus are not supposed to be the ONLY goals of the jury trial? Surely one of the points of having a larger group is that it's supposed to be a bit more difficult to persuade more people that someone has committed any given crime. That the system is theoretically supposed to err on the side of releasing the guilty instead of imprisoning the innocent, and that a somewhat more unwieldy group increases the odds.
@ 10:55 AM CST [Link]
While most Americans are familiar with safety procedures designed to protect them on airplanes, many don't know that passengers are sometimes allowed to carry knives on board. That simple fact, published on the Federal Aviation Administration's Web site, likely played a role in at least one of the hijackings that ended in disaster Tuesday. [...] Federal regulations on such weaponry state: ``FAA guidelines allow knives with blades up to 4 inches. However, state and local laws may restrict the carriage of smaller knives in a public airport. We recommend that you contact the airline to determine any additional restrictions it might apply.'' Two AP journalists who travel frequently said they themselves have dropped Swiss Army knives into plastic containers as they walked through airport metal detectors, only to pick them up afterward, and carry them aboard.
I did not know that.
I'm pretty sure I didn't want to know that.
I dare say that rule will be changed. Of course, that leaves the blades in the razor, which can easily be adapted into a weapon. There's no way to make everything completely safe.
@ 02:53 AM CST [Link]
ABCNEWS.com : Poll: Americans Fear More Attacks. Not surprising; they should be expected, really. And isn't instant polling a wonderful thing?
The Washington Post wants us to declare war. They aren't sure on whom, as yet, but they want it done.
Mitch Albom, Miami Herald: This is war in the 21st Century. The horror is in the possibility of more horror. The drive for revenge. [...] the tact Israel has been using for years … you attack us, we attack you back … will be the only U.S. alternative. But as angry as we are, as vengeful as we'll feel in the days to come, we must be careful not to strike out wildly. These are dangerous dominoes we want to knock over. And terrorism, like weeds, is often plucked in one spot only to emerge in another. We must be especially careful not to lash out at our own American brothers and sisters, simply because they may be of a similar ethnicity or religion of the people we suspect did this horror.
The Los Angeles Times: For the United States, battles happened somewhere else. Never again can this nation be quite so secure.
And a commentator on an ABC News broadcast -- former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, of all people -- states that we should conduct indiscriminate reprisals against the whole of Afghanistan. Despite the fact that as yet, we STILL do not know for certain that bin Laden is responsible. Apparently, it's to our advantage to gain a reputation for insane reprisals. (Seriously, that's exactly what he said.) He says it'll depress the activity. Said activity consisting of one attack every three years, assuming that an Arab terrorist group is in fact responsible -- the original Trade Center attack, the attacks on the African embassies, and this one. I'm not sure how you depress wild card attacks much more. And indiscrimate reprisals, aside from the initial shock and regrouping, would seem to create more attacks; it gives motivation. After all, indiscriminate reprisal doesn't seem to have produced quiet in Israel; it just produces more indiscriminate attacks by both sides.
You know, in normal times, you could not muster the political will in this country for that type of policy. If you did it now, today, this minute, then people would cheer. And not mind terribly if it turned out that we'd obliterated the wrong country ... until much later.
@ 02:49 AM CST [Link]
I've also heard a report that I can't confirm that Arab and Arab-American students at Wayne State University in Detroit were physically attacked. There's nothing in either the Detroit Free Press or Detroit News web sites about that, however.
@ 02:04 AM CST [Link]
Explosions Reported in Afghanistan - CNN
Someone is bombing Kabul. I can't imagine that it's us, already. I hope it's not.
And what little I can find sounds as though it's incredibly indiscriminate bombing, but that may just be early reports. I hope it is, anyway.
5:56 pm Central Time: During his press conference, Rumsfeld just said, "I've heard about those bombings, and they have nothing to do with the United States"
@ 05:20 PM CST [Link]
Now the Europeans can never say, "You wouldn't know what it's like to be bombed..." We now know.
Most Palestinian organizations are disavowing all connection to the attacks. Some of them seem to feel that these attacks will point out to the US that the Palestinians are being treated unfairly, and that it will produce sympathy.
How could they possibly have watched us for so long, and know us so little?
Whatever good it will do ... it's certainly worth noting that most Arabs, Middle Easterners, South Asians currently in the US had nothing to do with this, and most will be as appalled as all other Americans. (And it's worth noting, as well, that most such people in this country are Americans.) But I fear that, especially in New York but also throughout the country, people who look as though they could be vaguely Middle Eastern will be targeted in one way or another. That's what happened after the last bombing of the Towers, that's what happened after Oklahoma City. It will certainly happen again.
You know ... say what you will of the news media, but I cannot imagine the hell that the New York media are going through. They know that people that they know were in or near the Trade Center. And still they have to keep doing their jobs, letting the rest of the world know what happened, not knowing or being able to find out what happened to the people they know and love.
@ 12:38 PM CST [Link]
You know, the thing that fascinates me about this article on Mississippi doing Nissan's bidding (NY TIMES, registration required) is that they totally surf past what would seem to be a core issue. Nobody disputes the power of the state to take property via eminent domain. What is rather startling is that the state is doing so purely to hand the property over to a private corporation. Normally, eminent domain may only be used if the state intends to retain the taken property -- for highways and roads, parks, and the like. A parking lot for a private company does not normally fit the bill. "The need to demonstrate to businesses around the country that they are utterly serious about attracting big corporate investments" does not normally fit the bill. I had thought that the transfer of property via eminent domain, in that manner, was in fact flatly illegal.
That said, I think that the civil rights challenge to the state will and should fail; there's no evidence that they would have treated a white family any differently in that situation. Unfortunately, the commerce issue isn't nearly as "sexy" from a media point of view. It is, in fact, not illegal for the state to say, "Sell, or we'll take it and pay a lower price"; that's the way eminent domain generally works, and even if the threat was considerably less immediate, that's the threat that was hanging over all property owners involved.
Of course, the other aspect to this is that the longer the project is delayed, and the more hideous publicity they all get for this, the more likely it is that Nissan will look about and say something like, "You know, we've got a plant in Tennessee already. Why don't we just expand that? They like us there." I'm sure there's a substantial penalty for doing so in the agreement, but ultimately, it might be worth it to them.
@ 10:50 AM CST [Link]
The departure of the Russians was a turning point, and the lights effectively went out for the women of Afghanistan with the emergence of the Taliban in 1994. Overnight the 8,000 women studying at Kabul University were expelled; more than 100,000 young girls were pulled out of schools in the capital, except for Koranic studies; and all work - except in the area of health - was outlawed. Those who wore their burqas incorrectly were whipped with bicycle chains.
One wonders how long this situation can go on. Just watching from abroad, it strikes me that there's a certain inexorable progression looming. First, with such high mortality from childbirth and other causes, and infant mortality at such breathtaking numbers, the number of women in Afghanistan will plummet. As they become more scarce, they will be married off at earlier and earlier ages, which will increase childbirth mortality even more. (They're being married off early now because their fathers don't want to pay to feed them. It's always possible that when they become more valuable, they'll be held out of the marriage market a bit longer, which would be to their benefit, in a strange way.) Increasing scarcity will, of course, make them more valuable livestock. (Given the way they're treated, there is simply no other applicable term; their sole purpose in life is to breed more numbers of Afghan men.) As their lives become more and more onerous, more and more of the Afghan women will flee to the opposition strongholds, where they and their daughters seem to have a chance at living something resembling a normal life. (That is, more of them will try to flee. Most will not succeed, of course. Most of those who do not succeed will be punished, and will most likely die of their punishment.)
Once women become more valuable commodities, the Taliban will no longer be able to allow the opposition areas to continue to exist; they will need to somehow acquire enough armaments and force to destroy the strongholds. The women will then be forced to flee to Pakistan -- the least fundamentalist of the countries bordering Afghanistan. Most of the known ways into the country will be blockaded and patrolled, so the women will need to take riskier paths, which will also contribute to their deaths.
The West is unlikely to do much more to support the opposition in Afghanistan, for historically well-founded reasons. Every time the West supports an opposition party in the Middle East or South Asia or East Africa, for whatever reason, it comes back to bite them in the ass -- Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Angola, the Taliban itself ... the list is long enough that perhaps the West has finally learned from history and determined not to repeat itself.
Which will be unfortunate for the women of Afghanistan.
Something to note, as an odd marker of how bad things are for women: In most countries, there are slightly more males than females born. Thereafter, the ratio drops (apparently we're rather fragile) until in early adulthood, the population of men and women is at approximate parity. After about age 30, the ratio of men to women continues to drop, until in late life -- from age 60 and up -- there are sharply more women than men. Afghanistan must be one of the very few countries in which, from age 15 on up, the ratio of men to women actually increases (look at the numbers on "Sex ratio"); in looking through the Factbook, the only other one I've found is Sudan -- a country that's been in a state of civil war for many many years now.
And now the Taliban is trying to pick a fight with Iran. Good grief.
@ 12:58 AM CST [Link]
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!