Thursday, September 27, 2001
9/11/2001-Proposed actions for survival
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Lest we forget - lessons and proposed actions for survival
The entire Western world is under a deadly threat, and the world must realize it and act in concert. With the era of globalization the potential of a world war had disappeared, and we relaxed..The industrial countries had become totally interdependent for cooperation and communications, and any disruptions became unthinkable. The potential of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction, led to the 1973 agreement between the powers. The collapse of USSR further decreased the dangers. In small countries, constant border wars and internecine contests for resources (diamonds, oil, metals) became a reality, without threatening world peace, and the threat of terrorists operating in many countries was accepted as a minor annoyance. It was therefore a shock to all countries, when on September 11 a bold and imaginative coup against the symbols of US dominance, turning around the weapons of the US to destroy its own strength, revealed the existence of a shadow power, a virtual government with distributed armies in 40-odd countries. The potential threat of continued attacks became apparent.. Morbid people feeling threatened in their religion-dominated cultures had found a secret salvation in an ideological purpose, that of stopping the US and its allies from a perceived domination of their countries through a perceived imposition of perceived corrupt Western cultures, a concept not unlike and more potent than that of Hitler’s. They developed clandestine agents and elite troops, educated soldiers dedicated to sacrificing their lives in the attack, dedicated to a continued destruction in the West, until US and its collaborators give in and withdraw from Israel and the Mideast (read the bin Laden fatva of 2/23/1998, it is spelled out)..The war will continue, and these jujitsu attacks, utilizing the West’s resources to destroy itself , in the future might involve kamikazes blowing up atomic energy plants and creating Chernobyls; poisoning the drinking waters with plutonium residue stolen from atomic energy plants, sarin attacks, like those on Japan’s subway riders, and biological weapons stolen from Western research facilities by terrorists posing as students. The mind reels. How does the West protect itself?
Some answers involve imposing a quasi-military rule, and suppression of many aspects of our civil rights. While several of the above will be needed, such as universal identity cards and massive utilization of data bases to recognize known terrorists and profile unknown ones, changes in technology and management thinking will enable us to resist attacks without giving up the Bill of Rights, absolute cornerstone of American democracy. The lessons learned in the destruction of the WTC and in the shutting off of Downtown Manhattan for an entire week should help in saving both lives and livelihoods from the attacks of desperadoes in the future. It is not only the al-Quaeda that should scare us, we have many other international and national threats to worry about - the militias, the nationalists (remember Croats blowing up commercial airplanes half a century ago?) and the anarchists who attack world trade.. Let’s consider some concrete ways in which we can reform ourselves and help protect the world:
Better energy sources. Thus, to stop the continued threat of use of commercial airplanes as bombs, we need to substitute non-burning fuel, particularly hydrogen fuel. The crashed American Airlines and United Airlines planes would have killed people on contact without burning and collapsing the entire buildings (recent tall buildings are mostly constructed to withstand the impact of collision). Hydrogen fuel is in use, although it is expensive to produce in fossil-oil-using energy plants (and fossil oil may run out in less than 40 years!), but there are other means, hydro-power, sunlight energy and wind. Think of converting into solid hydrogen fuel the unstable and wasted weather-dependent sun and wind energy, and the electricity produced at night that cannot be canned (fuel cells are expensive and limited). Rethinking energy sources, in view of the threats will give the world fresh means of continuing its existence.
Distribution of assets throughout the country. Corporations that place their entire essential command structures in a central facility can be wiped out, as it may be happening to Cantor Fitzgerald. Decentralization of computer facilities and command/administrative functions throughout the country is essential, it relieves the ecologically unsound overcrowding and excessive costs of city living.. The communication means are in place and the offices and plants gives dying communities a new lease on life. During the current crisis, distribution of facilities made for relatively seamless transfer of functions from the threatened to the safe area. Data files rather then paper file can be kept anywhere, and can be transferred in minutes, no trucks are needed.
Telecommuting. Corporations with decentralized functions and key employees equipped with computer terminals at home (including e-mail) were able to continue activities during the shutoff.
Local command authority and initiative. Think of the Cantor-Fitzgerald managers, who in the absence of the CEO told the employees to keep trading. Conversely, think of the middle managers who took the risk of blame for lost profits and told their employees to get out. Think of the supervisors who organized employee departures in groups, with leaders responsible for holding the group together until Canal Street, making the healthy responsible for the unfirm, and calling members at home later to make sure everyone is safe. Think of the leaders who took the infirm to local garages and stood in the exits to make departees take some people with them to safety.
Disaster plans. Some organizations that had Y2K plans - employee lists with all land and mobile phone numbers, home e-mail and skills - let them get stale after the danger had passed.. Executives did not keep copies in their backpacks or shoulder bags (who has briefcases?), others kept them up to date. In reality, even the stale lists helped. Business continuation plans, with specifics for transfer of functions to alternate locations are important, even sketchy plans. Our Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, was the exemplary leader in a situation of horrors not only because of personal characteristics but also because he had insisted on disaster plans dealing with several scenarios. A touch of paranoia helps, we may all need some. He had the warning of the 1993 attack fresh on his mind. Okay, the fortified command center on the 23rd Floor in WTC Building 7 was a mistake, but the plans were portable, to the temporary command centers in the Police Academy and Pier 94
The government must make for disaster relief without dissipating the country’s resources in law suits, and provide insurance for airlines, so as not to disrupt vital services.
We at T&V offer our condolences to our neighbors at Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village, Church of Epiphany, St. George’s Calvary Church, Brotherhood Synagogue, 13th Precinct, Police Academy, the Fire Department stations and particularly the rescue squads that were wiped out. We pray for you and we cry for you, because your loss is ours, the nation’s and the world’s.
Lest we forget is a line from Rudyard Kipling’s Recessional, a poem composed on Queen Victoria’s 60th Jubilee, in 1897, not as a celebration but as a reminder to be humble and mindful of others.
Lest we forget - lessons and proposed actions for survival
The entire Western world is under a deadly threat, and the world must realize it and act in concert. With the era of globalization the potential of a world war had disappeared, and we relaxed..The industrial countries had become totally interdependent for cooperation and communications, and any disruptions became unthinkable. The potential of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction, led to the 1973 agreement between the powers. The collapse of USSR further decreased the dangers. In small countries, constant border wars and internecine contests for resources (diamonds, oil, metals) became a reality, without threatening world peace, and the threat of terrorists operating in many countries was accepted as a minor annoyance. It was therefore a shock to all countries, when on September 11 a bold and imaginative coup against the symbols of US dominance, turning around the weapons of the US to destroy its own strength, revealed the existence of a shadow power, a virtual government with distributed armies in 40-odd countries. The potential threat of continued attacks became apparent.. Morbid people feeling threatened in their religion-dominated cultures had found a secret salvation in an ideological purpose, that of stopping the US and its allies from a perceived domination of their countries through a perceived imposition of perceived corrupt Western cultures, a concept not unlike and more potent than that of Hitler’s. They developed clandestine agents and elite troops, educated soldiers dedicated to sacrificing their lives in the attack, dedicated to a continued destruction in the West, until US and its collaborators give in and withdraw from Israel and the Mideast (read the bin Laden fatva of 2/23/1998, it is spelled out)..The war will continue, and these jujitsu attacks, utilizing the West’s resources to destroy itself , in the future might involve kamikazes blowing up atomic energy plants and creating Chernobyls; poisoning the drinking waters with plutonium residue stolen from atomic energy plants, sarin attacks, like those on Japan’s subway riders, and biological weapons stolen from Western research facilities by terrorists posing as students. The mind reels. How does the West protect itself?
Some answers involve imposing a quasi-military rule, and suppression of many aspects of our civil rights. While several of the above will be needed, such as universal identity cards and massive utilization of data bases to recognize known terrorists and profile unknown ones, changes in technology and management thinking will enable us to resist attacks without giving up the Bill of Rights, absolute cornerstone of American democracy. The lessons learned in the destruction of the WTC and in the shutting off of Downtown Manhattan for an entire week should help in saving both lives and livelihoods from the attacks of desperadoes in the future. It is not only the al-Quaeda that should scare us, we have many other international and national threats to worry about - the militias, the nationalists (remember Croats blowing up commercial airplanes half a century ago?) and the anarchists who attack world trade.. Let’s consider some concrete ways in which we can reform ourselves and help protect the world:
Better energy sources. Thus, to stop the continued threat of use of commercial airplanes as bombs, we need to substitute non-burning fuel, particularly hydrogen fuel. The crashed American Airlines and United Airlines planes would have killed people on contact without burning and collapsing the entire buildings (recent tall buildings are mostly constructed to withstand the impact of collision). Hydrogen fuel is in use, although it is expensive to produce in fossil-oil-using energy plants (and fossil oil may run out in less than 40 years!), but there are other means, hydro-power, sunlight energy and wind. Think of converting into solid hydrogen fuel the unstable and wasted weather-dependent sun and wind energy, and the electricity produced at night that cannot be canned (fuel cells are expensive and limited). Rethinking energy sources, in view of the threats will give the world fresh means of continuing its existence.
Distribution of assets throughout the country. Corporations that place their entire essential command structures in a central facility can be wiped out, as it may be happening to Cantor Fitzgerald. Decentralization of computer facilities and command/administrative functions throughout the country is essential, it relieves the ecologically unsound overcrowding and excessive costs of city living.. The communication means are in place and the offices and plants gives dying communities a new lease on life. During the current crisis, distribution of facilities made for relatively seamless transfer of functions from the threatened to the safe area. Data files rather then paper file can be kept anywhere, and can be transferred in minutes, no trucks are needed.
Telecommuting. Corporations with decentralized functions and key employees equipped with computer terminals at home (including e-mail) were able to continue activities during the shutoff.
Local command authority and initiative. Think of the Cantor-Fitzgerald managers, who in the absence of the CEO told the employees to keep trading. Conversely, think of the middle managers who took the risk of blame for lost profits and told their employees to get out. Think of the supervisors who organized employee departures in groups, with leaders responsible for holding the group together until Canal Street, making the healthy responsible for the unfirm, and calling members at home later to make sure everyone is safe. Think of the leaders who took the infirm to local garages and stood in the exits to make departees take some people with them to safety.
Disaster plans. Some organizations that had Y2K plans - employee lists with all land and mobile phone numbers, home e-mail and skills - let them get stale after the danger had passed.. Executives did not keep copies in their backpacks or shoulder bags (who has briefcases?), others kept them up to date. In reality, even the stale lists helped. Business continuation plans, with specifics for transfer of functions to alternate locations are important, even sketchy plans. Our Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, was the exemplary leader in a situation of horrors not only because of personal characteristics but also because he had insisted on disaster plans dealing with several scenarios. A touch of paranoia helps, we may all need some. He had the warning of the 1993 attack fresh on his mind. Okay, the fortified command center on the 23rd Floor in WTC Building 7 was a mistake, but the plans were portable, to the temporary command centers in the Police Academy and Pier 94
The government must make for disaster relief without dissipating the country’s resources in law suits, and provide insurance for airlines, so as not to disrupt vital services.
We at T&V offer our condolences to our neighbors at Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village, Church of Epiphany, St. George’s Calvary Church, Brotherhood Synagogue, 13th Precinct, Police Academy, the Fire Department stations and particularly the rescue squads that were wiped out. We pray for you and we cry for you, because your loss is ours, the nation’s and the world’s.
Lest we forget is a line from Rudyard Kipling’s Recessional, a poem composed on Queen Victoria’s 60th Jubilee, in 1897, not as a celebration but as a reminder to be humble and mindful of others.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 2:46 AM 
