Thoughts

[Lang Attila D.]

Evening, September 12, 2001


  As for first, let me express my shockedness on the catastrophe and my
deepest sympathy with all of you not having news from somebody being
nearby the attack locations.

  What is happening in Hungary is probably very similar to that going
on in most countries now.
  Yesterday, 10 o'clock a.m. EST, what is 4 p.m. at us, a live
television commentary has begun on the first channel of national TV,
showing and translating CNN broadcasting. It went on for seven hours
yesterday. Today it continued for about three hours in the evening
prime time. Meanwhile, hourly short news mostly deal with the tragedy
and almost nothing else. Most commercial channels act similarly.
  The Hungarian government took security measures. All building
belonging to the United States received a strict surveillance. Schools
attended by any American students received too; for security reasons,
it is kept in secret which schools are they and how many students are
present. US Embassy has been closed and guarded. Since the new
ambassador got stick in the US due to the air traffic red light,
government is talking with the ambassador's deputy. They offered help,
including sending special rescue groups to search under the rubble if
required; these groups done a great work after the earthquake in
Turkey. The chief mayor of Budapest called people of the capital to
give blood what may be transported via military lines, but that
probably will be unnecessary. Governmental establishments are flying
black flags.
  US NATO base at Taszar is shut down and put to high alert as all such
bases worldwide.
  People of the street are shocked and in fear for themselves; I talked
with a man who spent part of the first night by visiting an air-raid
shelter to see what could be done there. Most of the fear is now
hopefully over, people understand there is no war and there's no
considerable danger of any more attacks near us or at other places.
  Currency exchange places were at panic, people wanted to sell their
dollars for a while. Shortly after they relaxed about that.
  Hungarian mailing lists are, surprisingly, almost silent about the
catastrophe. At this special time, seemingly people are talking about
all of that on the real life and not on the lists. I didn't check web
forums yet but some of them are probably overwhelmed with discussions.

*

  In a short time after the first crashes, I checked some New York
websites to see if there is connection or not. There was. New York
Times was following the occurrences on the web. CNN.com didn't respond
for a short while, but obviously because of being overcharged and not
due to a cut in the lines. Hungarian online newspapers, of course,
were opening their pages with the news from there.
  Seeing there is contact with New York, and having an opinion that if
any contact would be cut, it wouldn't be the net what stays alive
last, I... (WTC building 5 may collapse, I see on CNN this very
minute) sent promptly a mail to the largest Hungarian mailing list,
saying: "It didn't succeed. The destroy is terrible, but New York City
and Washington is living and operating itself." As time goes on, I see
clearer and clearer I was right. They couldn't stun the cities.
  I never watch CNN since I don't understand spoken English, especially
not with that speed they are talking it, but today it was running all
the day when there was no commentary in Hungarian, to let me see the
subtitles and get news. I connected in each hour to collect and answer
mail, being a moderator of the largest Hungarian mailing list, which
has its center at New York. (The owner was in NJ and is well.) I was
assuming I will have a hard evening both yesterday and today,
moderating the list: I decided not to let people open a political
discussion and especially not to mention the supposed perpetrators in
an electronically searchable way. I hadn't need to; there is, as I
said, silence. Netizens are used to be passionate, so this is a really
new way of reaction.
  I wrote a tiny program do demonstrate in my email signature. The novel
I'm working on is absolutely not a political one, but is settled in
the future, so I changed a sentence in it; now it says that people are
bringing flowers at the Christmas of 2140 not to the statues at Asimov
Center, but to the ones in Asimov Park before the New World Trade
Center. I'm sure it will be rebuilt. I want it to be rebuilt. Depth
gives me the shudders and I couldn't stay in any American city for a
minute without coming over giddy, but in this very case I want it to
see being it stand again on its place. There is a Yiddish word,
_dafke,_ what I can't translate, its Hungarian translations aren't in
the dictionary. Maybe someone understands it. In this case, it means
something that if no World Trade Center any longer in history, _they_
make a small victory even if captured and condemned.

  I searched through memory and found nothing. I was searching about an
occasion, when any person or armed force, with one singular action,
succeeded to kill so many people without an atomic bomb -- if there
really were as many people in the towers as supposed, what is,
unfortunately, is likely enough. Some ten thousands. The worst days in
Auschwitz demanded about ten thousand lifes each, but even that needed
a whole day of hard work for killing as much victims as possible. This
happened in four sudden moments, the crashes and the collapses.
  Who is responsible for these must live no longer in the human society,
from which they excluded themselves of their own free will.


Noon, September 13

  Ten blocks are damaged around World Trade Center in each direction.
The bill is still going higher and higher, counting only property
damage, not lifes. World Trade Center itself costed about 400 million
dollars, what is already slightly beyond the possessions of the
supposed perpetrator. Adding Pentagon, the airlines, and now the
damages around the crash places, it's obvious they won't be able to
compensate the property damage, even if caught alive and willing to do
so, what isn't the faintest chance. I mean that they become willing to
do so. It is off chance that they will be caught alive. Almost all
supposed perpetrators, named so far, are Muslim believers, and if they
really are, they must not commit suicide. They either will be killed
in standing at bay or will be captured.
  Palestinians at Eastern Jerusalem were celebrating, maybe still are.
Pour creatures doesn't understand that, after the American victims,
they will be the very people who will suffer most due to this attack.
Arafat, being the first external politician speaking on CNN, almost
cried and were speaking English, a language what I never heard from
his lips. Obviously, all his forces are absolutely innocent in whole,
the Palestinians are the people to whom this means the worst, after
New York and Washington people.

*

  Emergency Day, maybe this or something similar will be the name of
this Tuesday in history. September 11th -- nine-eleven, the emergency
number in the United States, today's date was the most often called
number at Tuesday in New York and Washington. Emergency forces
suffered high losses in the massive smoke cloud, higher than any time
in history. They were the heroes of the day and aftermath; and the
passengers on airline 93. Yet it's unclear what was the target of that
plane. Not the White House, probably, since it was the real target of
the plane crashing into Pentagon. Airline 93 was probably intended to
target Washington, too, maybe into another skyscraper. Passengers on
board had two choices: let terrorists kill the entire plane and
thousands of others, or try to save those on ground and give a chance
for themselves. When a passenger called his home and heard that a
plane has been hit World Trade Center, the captain was yet alive, as
current informations say. Probably he has been killed in the following
hard fight, and nobody remained to fly the plane.
  In the Hungarian commentaries, a commercial pilot said he doesn't
believe the terrorists had well trained, educated pilots. Watching the
videos of the second World Trade Center crash, it seems clear that it
cut it fine, the pilot needed manoeuvres in the lastest seconds even.
A professional pilot wouldn't do it so. The hijackers' pilots learned
how to guide a Boeing on a VOR signal to the target vicinity, how to
aim it and correct for wind. They couldn't takeoff or land, they
needn't to know that. (CNN is now showing Palestinians demonstrating,
now on the right side. We share your pain, this is written on their
boards.) Even if the terrorist pilot stayed alive, the passengers
couldn't force him to ground the airliner. He was unable to.

  What will happen now? asks the world unisono. President Bush coined
the term "act of war", but in reality, this wasn't a war and no war
may follow it. Two kinds of wars are known: between two or more
sovereign nations and between two parts of the same nation, which is
called a citizen war. A sovereign nation and a small, scattered group
of criminal cannot fight a war against each other. President Bush
coined another term, too: "hunt down". This is what will follow. US
intelligence agencies and armed forces, cooperating with such agencies
and forces from countries worldwide, will investigate and hunt down
all terrorists responsible for the attack, capture or kill them, and
who stays alive will be condemned. This isn't a war, even if they are
armed to the teeth and resist, what is like enough. Countries won't
support them, not even Afghanistan, blamed mostly for giving shelter
for the most supposed perpetrator. They are in the middle of a citizen
war, longing for more than twenty years now. Taliban government was
crazy enough to destroy numerous religional memories some centuries
old, but they are seeming to keep their wits about the fact that they
must not resist in the case if the suspects happen to be proven. In
the second day, there would be no longer a Taliban government.
Unfortunately, this would be the better case.
  Forty thousand commercial airlines fly each day above the United
States. On the first evening I thought what if all these planes
receive an armed onboard security. It would, obviously, affect the air
traffic tickets, but a great percentage of the prices are already
covering the security measures. But would that protect against
hijacking? According to the Hungarian commercial pilot, it wouldn't.
It is too dangerous to gun-fight in an aircraft flying at travel
altitude, any bullet hitting the hull may cause a sudden
dehermetization and make the plane explode. Some decision makers,
however, were talking about such plans, while it is sure that airports
will receive much more tightened security.
  Some decades ago, it was almost a bash to hijack a plane. You take a
gun, go aboard, put it to the captain's head and demand for money.
They give it, you take it, say hi and go.
  That's over. When several kinds of terrorist groups begun to hijack
airplanes for political reasons, the "say hi and go" time was over
already. Who hijacked a plane had greater and greater chances to not
to survive it. But all the time only the people on board were treated
as being in danger.
  What will happen next time when an aircraft becomes hijacked at any
place of the world? Will the captain act as would do before this
Tuesday, or will be fearing that another World Trade Center tragedy is
being planned? What will the captain do if fearing of that? Maybe he
or she will ground the plane, no matter if they survive or die, in a
place where no one is there. Maybe a simple hijacking, planned to
press for some pity million dollars, will end in a plane exploding on
ground because the captain is fearing that the hijacker targets a
skyscraper or a governmental building. It is possible that airline 93
had such an end: maybe they couldn't remove the armed terrorists from
the cockpit and rather than flying into a building, they did something
to kill themselves above outlying country. For such questions,
Hollywood will give us answers; fictional ones, but as good as any. No
doubt, movies will be created portraying several occurrences of this
day.

  Now I'm wondering what if they attack San Francisco or Los Angeles
instead of eastern coast cities. Western coast skyscrapers must be,
and believed to, able to endure earthquakes, what is not required for
eastern coast ones, or not at such a high level. (What is a bad
practice, by the way: it is possible to see an earthquake at any point
of Earth surface, no matter how far away from crust breaks.) Would a
San Francisco or Los Angeles skyscraper be staying on foot after such
an explosion? If the answer is yes, or at least if it isn't no, that
means we must rethink our building habits. Earthquake safe
technologies must be applied everywhere, not only in Japan and other
dangerous places. If the World Trade Center outbraved the attack, we
would mourn for only a portion of casualties now.

  On September 11th, the greatest enemies of globalization realized
globalization. The world is sitting before the TV and is American. We
are all American, what is more, we are New York and Washington
citizens. This is an effect of the time and it will fade away when
America feels its legs again, but now it is existing and will be
remembered. Must be remembered.

  For the time being, three thousand and seven hundred people in New
York are missing, mayor Giuliani says.

La'ng Attila D., iro <lad at rentahost.net> <http://lad.rentahost.net>
This is day 3 of our waiting to see them being hunted down.