After breaking the ice with his video message to all Americans, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Washington, D.C. this afternoon for the initial part of his first Papal visit to the United States of America. Watch it all live.
posted on Apr 15, 2008 - View this thread

“You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas." A Vanity Fair reporter investigates the chain of command that tossed out the Geneva Conventions and instituted coercive interrogation techniques -- some might call them torture or even war crimes -- in Bush's Global War on Terror. UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo's now-obsolete 81-page memo to the Pentagon in 2003 [available as PDFs here and here] was crucial, offering a broad range of legal justifications and deniability for disregarding international law in the name of "self-defense." Others say that Yoo was just making "a clear point about the limits of Congress to intrude on the executive branch in its exercise of duties as Commander in Chief." [previously here and here.]
posted on Apr 3, 2008 - View this thread

Curious why the power is out at your office or the fire engines are rushing past your home? If you live in Seattle, public911 might be able to tell you.
posted on Feb 7, 2008 - View this thread

"I've got a shotgun. Do you want me to stop 'em?" On November 14, 61-year old Joe Horn saw two men breaking into his neighbor's home. He called 911, told the operator what he could see through his window. As Horn watched the men, he grew more and more agitated, saying he was going to go outside and shoot them. When the men left the neighbor's home, Horn went outside and did just that.

Now, Texas gets to argue over the hero or villain status of Joe Horn in the public square (a debate made more volatile by concerns that race was been a factor), while weighing the merits of that state's recent adoption of Castle Doctrine (aka "Stand Your Ground" Law). First adopted by Florida in 2005, Castle Doctrine is now law in 19 of 50 states. So what does this mean for Joe Horn? Public accusations of vigilantism aside, what Horn did is arguably legal under Texas law ... or, at least, it would be had he shot the two men after dark.
posted on Dec 5, 2007 - View this thread

Preparing a turkey the MANLY way. Naturally, one of them involves a lot of bacon.
posted on Nov 16, 2007 - View this thread

William Rodriguez gave a captivating presentation in Seattle on 11/07/07. William is believed to be the "Last Man Out" of the north tower of the World Trade Center alive, but not before reentering three times with the master key after the first plane impacted the north tower to help rescue a countless number of people. Here is an interview with William after the presentation. His Ricky Ricardo impersonation at the end is pretty good.
posted on Nov 13, 2007 - View this thread

But Is It War? A vigorous debate among three conservatives about the limits of post-9/11 executive power.
posted on Sep 7, 2007 - View this thread

BBC - The Conspiracy Files 911. A look at the conspiracy culture, internet movie makers, many unresolved questions and some politics. Finally the truth? [Google Video]
posted on Sep 2, 2007 - View this thread

Australian TV show The Chaser recently went to New York and asked some American citizens what date the September 11 attacks occurred on. Here are some of their answers.
posted on Jun 14, 2007 - View this thread

impeachy keen! learn why cleveland is the capital of polka, bowling and kielbasa.
posted on Apr 26, 2007 - View this thread

Powerful photo ads for the Cape Times.
posted on Apr 22, 2007 - View this thread

if you've not heard of the book "confessions of an economic hitman", then these few videos are gonna put your chins on the floor. it is disturbing how much the guy looks like george the second.
posted on Apr 19, 2007 - View this thread

Word is that the DGSE - the French secret intelligence service - knew in January 2001 that al Queda was planning to hijack a US aircraft and may have given warning. (The original article that appeared in Le Monde 2 days ago)
posted on Apr 18, 2007 - View this thread

An excerpt from Don DeLillo's eagerly anticipated and much-hyped new novel Falling Man. It's been done before, at times more memorably [.pdf] than others, but early reviews suggest a return to form for the eerily prescient novelist.
posted on Apr 5, 2007 - View this thread

Why do people hate mimes? First you should get to grips with the history then get into a mime version of 9/11. Follow it up with an interpretation of Camus's The Outsider and Daniel Reyes's Mimes of the Caribbean. End your lesson with Mime World.
posted on Apr 3, 2007 - View this thread

Michael Zebuhr was a 25-year-old Ph.D. candidate at Clemson University. A year ago he was visiting his sister in Minneapolis, and was killed during an attempted hold-up. The assailant pleaded guilty, but others think there is more to the story.
posted on Mar 15, 2007 - View this thread

Mastermind? admitted planning attacks.... can you believe a verdict from partial transcripts edited by the US defence department that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed planned these attacks?
posted on Mar 15, 2007 - View this thread

The greatest enigma of the US "war on terror": He was an intelligence officer of the Egyptian army, a CIA agent, a drill seargent and instructor at Fort Bragg, an FBI informant, and Al Qaeda's number one man inside the US. He was directly or indirectly involved in the assassination of Anwar Sadat, the 1993 WTC bombing, the bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and 9/11. He trained al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan and Sudan and wrote manuals on intelligence, terrorism and asymmetric warfare while living in Silicon Valley with his American wife. He plea bargained, never went to trial, and may be free or in witness protection today. Incidentally, he is barely mentioned in the 9/11 Commission report. Is there some sort of conspiracy or are officials simply afraid of having their gross negligence exposed?
posted on Mar 5, 2007 - View this thread

"Why do they hate us?" was a fairly common question asked by Americans in the wake of 9/11. In his new book The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, Dinesh D'souza gives us the answer: "the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the nonprofit sector, and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world." Some reviews: WaPo, The American Conservative, Esquire. D'souza previously on mefi: [1] [2] [3]
posted on Jan 18, 2007 - View this thread

"Post 9/11 Blues" by MC Riz, a.k.a. Rizwan Ahmed. The single isn't getting much airplay. You may remember Ahmed as the British Muslim actor who was illegally detained while coming home from the Berlin Film Festival.
posted on Dec 28, 2006 - View this thread

US deaths in Iraq exceed 9/11 deaths today but of course the Iraqi deaths crossed that line long ago.
posted on Dec 26, 2006 - View this thread

The Perfume of Garbage: an archaeology of the world trade centers (pdf). What do the the godfather of garbology, a leading post-modern archaeological theorist (blog), and a "space archaeologist"(cf. space junk) think about the WTC? Obviously as a ruin and as an archaeological site - but much more. An intriguing analysis placing the WTC ruins into archaeological context, and, most particularly, responding to the Smithsonian's exhibition of artifacts from the events of September 11, 2001. Also, a commentary (pdf) responding to garbage, space and the WTC. And yes, garbology goes well beyond Mick Jagger ephemera.
posted on Nov 5, 2006 - View this thread

Congressman Jim Gibbons's was 5 points ahead in the polls for the Nevada Governor's race, but that was before these drunken 911 calls. [more at wonkette]
posted on Oct 19, 2006 - View this thread

David Beamer, father of Flight 93 hero Todd Beamer stars in new 527 political TV ad... Misleading? (youtube link)
posted on Oct 10, 2006 - View this thread

Keith Olbermann's Edward R. Murrow^* moment: A Textbook Definition of Cowardice. MSNBC's host excoriates Bush, FOX News host Chris Wallace, and the media for its response to former president Clinton's "tantrum" [still being discussed here]. Note: Don't just read the transcript. Watch the video, because Olbermann's use of visuals adds greatly to the power of his presentation. No matter which side of the red/blue-state divide you're on, students of politics and media will be reviewing this clip for years to come as a little cultural watershed -- if only a consummate example of "Democrat" anger^TM.
posted on Sep 26, 2006 - View this thread

The age of horrorism. On the eve of the fifth anniversary of 9/11, Martin Amis analyses - and abhors - the rise of extreme Islamism. In a penetrating and wide-ranging essay he offers a trenchant critique of the grotesque creed and questions the West's faltering response to this eruption of evil.
posted on Sep 19, 2006 - View this thread

. (embedded QT, via Ursi)
posted on Sep 14, 2006 - View this thread

It took 1291 days, rather than 102 minutes, but as of today the US death toll in Iraq has exceeded the number of lives lost during 9/11. Of course, on the Iraqi side, things are far worse.
posted on Sep 12, 2006 - View this thread

Memorializing Hypereality maybe it is not always something 'new' that bears fruit but rather actually understanding something said before. Especially if we don't listen carefully the first time.
posted on Sep 12, 2006 - View this thread

September 11th Memorial Jenga.
posted on Sep 11, 2006 - View this thread

In 2002 Salon.com ran an article on "forbidden thoughts" about 9/11 that they had heard expressed around them or reported by others. Apparently the response from their viewers was so overwhelming that they ran a second feature based on emails they received. All of which goes to show that while 9/11 united people in thinking about a certain subject, it certainly didn't mean that everyone thought the same thing about that same subject.
posted on Sep 11, 2006 - View this thread

Slavoj Zizek United 93, WTC movies and 9/11 with some perspective no conspiracy theories here just a bit of philosophising.
posted on Sep 11, 2006 - View this thread

"Every man for himself. I was irrationally convinced that if one particle of that sinister cloud managed to touch me I would die."
posted on Sep 11, 2006 - View this thread

When Laura Bush showed up at my son's temporary school two weeks after the attacks for a photo op with these traumatized children, she told us that she couldn't make any promises to help us. "The PTA, not the school system, or god forbid federal government, installed a filtration system to protect our children. [... F]ive years later, I have been diagnosed and am being treated for lymphoma - a blood cancer caused by exposure to toxic chemicals. [...] Five years out there are 12,000 of us, maybe more - who knows? And we are starting to die."
posted on Sep 8, 2006 - View this thread

ABC agrees to take the lies out of their 9/11 miniseries. previously discussed here
posted on Sep 8, 2006 - View this thread

Open Letter to ABC: Don't Airbrush 9/11 (Via C&L.)
posted on Sep 6, 2006 - View this thread

Rudy Giuliani's Grand Illusion (Village Voice) -- In which we learn the difference between what happened and how it got narrated. What we have left is this: At a moment when the public needed a hero, Rudy Giuliani stepped forward. When he assured New York that things would come out all right, he was blessedly believable. It was a fine thing. But it was not nearly as much as we, at the time, imagined.
posted on Sep 2, 2006 - View this thread

On Sept. 11, CNN will replay its coverage from 2001 in real time, online. They will make their little-noticed Pipeline service free for the day.
posted on Aug 25, 2006 - View this thread

Remember the comic book version of the 9/11 Commission Report mentioned earlier this month? Slate have put it online.
posted on Aug 21, 2006 - View this thread

Japanese leftists seize plane with samurai swords. AWOL Marine sets record by hijacking plane from Fresno to Rome. Female Palestinian hijacker becomes radical chic pin-up. D.B. Cooper parachutes from 727 with $200,000 in unmarked bills. Have airplane bombings made us nostalgic for old-school skyjackers who just wanted money or a trip to Cuba? Academic papers analyze skyjacking in the 60s & 70s according to contagion and rational choice models. Check out a prescient pre-9/11 documentary on the subject with great archival clips.
posted on Aug 18, 2006 - View this thread

What If ... 9/11 Never Happened? "The broader culture would have gone its own way, 9/11 or no 9/11—progressing effortlessly from the obsessions of Gary Condit and Survivor in summer ’01 to Brangelina and American Idol in ’06. The Oliver Stone project of August ’06, however, would not be World Trade Center, but, with exquisite timing, Fidel."

One possibility from many in a collection of "could've-beens" compiled by New York Magazine. Other contributions of note: Tom Wolfe, Fareed Zakaria, an alternate-future blog by Andrew Sullivan, and perhaps best of all, a simple sketch from Ex Machina's Brian K. Vaughan.
posted on Aug 15, 2006 - View this thread

Falling Man: the many faces of a 9/11 riddle chronicles the attempts of Tom Junod to identify the "falling man" photographed by Richard Drew on September 11, 2001. Junod wrote an Esquire article about the Falling Man in September 2003 (August 2003 NPR interview) that inspired a documentary. The Falling Man may have been Jonathan Briley.
posted on Aug 10, 2006 - View this thread

An official comic book adaptation of the 9/11 commission report is due to hit bookstores this month. The U.S. Army seeks an Arabic-speaking comic book creator. Meanwhile, an Israeli blogger suspects a Kuwaiti company of misusing Marvel and DC comics. These are just the latest incidents in a long-running history of using comic books for propaganda purposes, ranging from Mussolini and Hitler to Captain America vs. the Nazi-affiliated Red Skull to anticommunist comics for Catholic parochial schools to a phony Black Panther comic book created by COINTELPRO to a comic book of the American invasion of Grenada. However, my favorite site of comic book propaganda tends to focus on more innocuous domestic issues such as bicycle safety, USDA nutrition standards, and fighting crack cocaine. (OK, that last issue isn't so innocuous, but comic book propaganda about health & safety issues still generally blows.)
posted on Aug 4, 2006 - View this thread

Missed Opportunities ...Lawrence Wright tells, for the first time, the story of the F.B.I. agent who had the best chance of foiling the 9/11 plot. Here, with Amy Davidson, Wright talks about how turf wars with the C.I.A. got in the way. Wright’s book “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” will be published by Knopf in August.
posted on Aug 2, 2006 - View this thread

"The real story is actually better than the one we told." A Vanity Fair recounting of NORAD's response to the September 11 attacks, based on "30 hours of never-before-released tapes from the control room," isn't quite the same as what the Pentagon told the 9/11 Commission. Commission staffers "thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission."
posted on Aug 2, 2006 - View this thread

"Tell God to blow the wind from the West." Listen to Kevin Cosgrove speak with a 911 operator during the final moments of his life on September 11, 2001 — and the most heartbreaking moment is, without a doubt, the very final moment.
posted on Jul 27, 2006 - View this thread

CIA Gives Up on Bin Laden Search says a post full of links on Sploid, it was revealed yesterday (when no one was paying attention) that the CIA disbanded its Bin Laden unit one year ago. The post also links to news that the FBI has "no hard evidence" connecting Bin Laden to the 9/11 attacks.
posted on Jul 5, 2006 - View this thread

Gulfport High School class of '61 a facinating collection of life stories. check out the Our Classmates page. David sailed across the atlantic. Babs died when katrina hit the gulf coast. jane has 17 grand-children. C. H. Locklin was a chaplin working at the pentagon on 911.
posted on Jun 23, 2006 - View this thread

The Mystery of Sneha Philip, the Possible 2,705th Victim of 9/11 At 4 PM on September 10th, 2001, Dr. Sneha Philip left her lower Manhattan apartment. Credit card records show that she made a couple purchases at the department store Century 21. Then she vanished. What happened?
posted on Jun 20, 2006 - View this thread

[TV Guide Filter] Tonight on Frontline: The Dark Side. An in-depth look at Dick Cheney's battle with the intelligence community to shape the War on Terror. From Boston.com's preview: "Frontline" delivers a devastating look tonight at the efforts of Vice President Dick Cheney to gain control of the war on terror after 9/11. In doing so, the show purports, he compromised the integrity of America's intelligence system. Check your local listings.
posted on Jun 20, 2006 - View this thread