The Guardian's Seumas Milne on the roots of the WTC atrocity

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,551036,00.html

Shock, rage and grief there has been aplenty. But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process - or why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world - seems almost entirely absent. Perhaps it is too much to hope that, as rescue workers struggle to pull firefighters from the rubble, any but a small minority might make the connection between what has been visited upon them and what their government has visited upon large parts of the world.

My NY photos from a year or so ago

For those who don't know, I was in NY in April 2000. I took the first photo from the top of the WTC, along with many others; the second was taken on the way there.

Iain Duncan Smith won

On the good side, the Tory party is dead forever now, they've written their own epitaph and it reads "Too old and too mad to live". And on the good side, this might in the long term mean that the Lib Dems become the opposition, causing a leftward shift in UK politics.

On the bad side, all sorts of far-right nonsense will be lent media legitimacy through coming out of the mouth of the leader of the Official Opposition.

Overall this was the result I hoped for.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/newsid_1542000/1542554.stm

Hooray for Noam Chomsky

http://www.counterpunch.org/chomskybomb.html

The September 11 attacks were major atrocities. In terms of number of victims they do not reach the level of many others, for example, Clinton's bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and probably killing tens of thousands of people (no one knows, because the US blocked an inquiry at the UN and no one cares to pursue it). Not to speak of much worse cases, which easily come to mind. But that this was a horrendous crime is not in doubt.

Dubya counterpunch

http://www.counterpunch.org/

"Freedom," said George Bush in Sarasota in the first sentence of his first reaction, "was attacked this morning by a faceless coward." That properly represents the stupidity and blindness of almost all of the mainstream political commentary.