The tragic irony being that the success of the 2001 conspiracy had nothing to do with airport security in the first place. This was a failure of intelligence at the FBI and CIA levels, not at the concourse checkpoint. As I’ve pointed out many times in the past, the hijackers were not exploiting a weakness in airport security, but rather a weakness in our mind-set — our presumptions, based on years of precedent, as to what a hijacking was, and how it would unfold. What weapons the men used was irrelevant. Ballpoint pens would have sufficed, for the strategy relied not on hardware, but on the element of surprise. So long as the hijackers didn’t chicken out, their plan was all but guaranteed to succeed.
I will otherwise spare my regular readers any further rehashing as to what, since then, has made our airport security apparatus so farcical and ineffective. The topic has granted more than ample coverage in this column over the past eight years. For those of you who are unfamiliar, the points are neatly summarized here. [Read full post]
James Wall on the manipulation of the day’s meaning:
Murderous crime scenes in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, became spiritual staging grounds for an international war against what Time’s Tony Karon describes as “a tiny network of transnational extremists, founded on the remnants of the Arab volunteers who’d fought in the U.S.-backed Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union.”
Ten years later, we remain stunned by losses that we incurred on that day and in the years to follow; we have lost service men and women and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, personal freedoms in the name of national security, and tolerance for those of the Islamic faith. We remember these losses on the 10th anniversary. However, September 11th should not be solely about remembrance, it needs to be about looking forward. Young people are inheriting a world that has been created as a result of September 11th. It is therefore the responsibility of youth to ensure that the world becomes the one we need it to be. In the next decade, young people will remember, but we will no longer remain stunned. [Read full post]
I wish we could call this 10th anniversary year a sort of Jubilee Year, like the tradition cited in Leviticus, which calls for everyone to say “I’m sorry” and be universally pardoned. The prisoners would be freed, and all debts forgiven, mostly because we need God’s mercy and a new start more than anything else. In Leviticus, Jubilee is supposed to be every
Curitiba, Brazil, implemented the world’s first bus rapid transit system in the 1970s. Along with programs to convert floodplains to green space, pedestrianize downtown streets, and improve waste collection, the new “surface metro” transformed the city. Curitiba is the inspiration for many of the other BRT projects I learned about during my year of travel, so a visit there was perfect for my last stop.
New Volvo/Caio biarticulated bus
Malfunctioning loading ramp
New Volvo/Neobus biodiesel biarticulated bus
“Arrive home more quickly with the new Express Line”
The Atacama Desert is known, among other things, for having lithium-yielding salt flats, consistently clear skies for astronomers, and the world’s driest climate. What was supposed to be a quick stopover on my way from Santiago, Chile to Salta, Argentina ended up being an extended stay due to the area’s heaviest snowfall in twenty years. The town of San Pedro is not a bad place to be stranded – I enjoyed the expansive views of badlands (including the Valley of Death, where JPL tested Mars rover prototypes), sandboarding, and flamingo tours. As the forecast for the opening of the pass over the Andes kept worsening, I decided to admit defeat and take the 23-hour bus ride back south to Santiago.
Chuquicamata, in the north of Chile, is the world’s largest open pit copper mine. Built up in the early 1900s by the Anaconda Copper Company, the highly productive mine is a major contributor to Chile’s important copper exports. I visited the mine 30 years after it was nationalized by President Allende and 3 years after the company town of Chuquicamata was completely abandoned, with residents moving to nearby Calama to allow the mining pit to continue to grow. The scale of the place was daunting; trucks that looked minuscule at the bottom of the mine seemed larger than life when the rumbled by up close.
Ferrocarril de Antofagasta a Bolivia
Ferrocarril de Antofagasta a Bolivia
Chuquicamata, abandoned in 2008
The world’s largest open pit copper mine – 5 km long x 3 km wide x 1 km deep
Students, many wearing signs displaying the debt they are incurring to pursue higher education, dance to Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’
Demonstrations earlier this year against HidroAysén piqued youth discontent about the Chilean government’s trending towards increased privatization. As winter approached in May and June, this discontent exploded into massive sit-ins and creative protests against profiteering in Chilean secondary and post-secondary education. Especially egregious were then Education Minister Joaquín Lavín’s attempts to funnel more government funds to his private universities. In three months of continuing demonstrations, charismatic young leaders have put forward a cogent critique of neoliberalism and the widening income gap in the country, and this critique has resonated widely with educators, healthcare workers, and labor unions. Students have been marching with many of these allies, and I found their creative messaging to be quite impressive. In late August, a national labor federation called a general strike, and 600,000 people are estimated to have participated in demonstrations during the two day strike. Even though national media has been working to turn public opinion against the demonstrators by focusing on the actions of a small contingent of violent troublemakers, President Piñera has felt widespread public pressure. He has made some significant concessions, but more seem inevitable as the popular movement continues to grow and he is forced to negotiate further with students.
Cartoon about educational privatization produced by architecture students from the Catholic University in Valparaíso (click on the image for an English translation)
For Sale: Public Education
Mr. Lavín (Minister of Education): Listen to the voice of the people
UDP Medical School: Get on the debtors’ bus
From the nursery to the university – free, quality public education
The Architecture Department mobilizes to fix the structural faults in the educational…
A mini guanaco (water cannon/tear gas launching tank)
Educashun is not four sail
June 16 student protest
“You want education? I’ll sell it to you!”
“Even though it might seem strange, the Catholic University is on strike”
Pictures from an afternoon hike in the Maipo Canyon are below. Relying on public transportation precluded reaching some of the popular destinations higher up, such as Embalse del Yeso, but the sights we ended up seeing were still spectacular.
As a port city, Valparaíso fervently celebrates holidays in honor of patron saints related to fishing. I spent an afternoon enjoying the Festival of Saint Peter and its accompanying music, processions, and flotillas, then finished the day off by enjoying a pastel de jaiba.
Valparaíso’s electric trolleybuses are an iconic part of the city and were even included in the city’s petition for UNESCO World Heritage Site status. A significant portion of the fleet was manufactured by Pullman in the United States in the late 1940s.
1952 Pullman trolleybus
1948 Pullman trolleybus passing through Plaza Sotomayor
A hilly city, Valparaíso developed numerous funiculars for its residents. Sixteen of these iconic transport modes are left in the city, but only a few of them still function.
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