One Less Lunatic

On September 9, 2001 I was down in a basement doing finances for the place I was working at and doing quite a bit of cursing. My assistant ran down the stairs. She began furiously knocking at the office door. This action was in direct contradiction to my wishes to be left alone while I cursed and swore at the numbers before me.

"What?"

"Television...plane...crash..!" Nothing ever excited my assistant but whatever it was had rendered her practically incoherent. Somewhat annoyed, I got up and followed as she plowed back upstairs and into the living room. Smoke filled the television screen. "A plane ran into the Twin Towers," my assistant said, pointing. A second plane then crashed and the Towers were collapsing. "Oh shit," my assistant said.

I passed the rest of that day in an anxiety-ridden fog. I was afraid that the bombers would get Albany next. I stayed overtime that day, waiting for each of my people to return home from day programs across the Capital Region. I was horrified to discover that at one of those programs, the staff turned on the television and watched the horror all day, practically ignoring the developmentally disabled folks they were there to provide a service to. Had I known, I would have gone to pick up my two people who attended that program and brought them to the safety of their home. As it was, I waited until every last van had left the driveway. I stayed for dinner that night. I had to know that every single one of my people was safe.

One of my people in the days to follow became obsessed with the television reports. Another had nightmares. I pulled the plug on the television and announced that it was "broken." The horror receded. The television "got fixed." Life went on.

I went to the gym almost daily. I watched for reports of the dead, searching for the names of folks I knew in the City. The stock market plummeted. The economy began its' free fall souring. I wished fervently that we had gone in and bombed Iran like crazy people back when the students took over the American Embassy instead of trying to "negotiate" with terrorists. Perhaps if we had, 9/11 wouldn't have happened. I declared this to anyone who would listen. (I still believe that today). Life went on.

Wars came. Politicians got elected. People got killed. Our airports now had security checks. Some folks didn't like that. I figured those people in the airplanes on 9/11 would have welcomed the inconvenience of long lines and airport employees with dampened senses of humor if it would have kept them alive. I had my car accident, got my own brain injury. I went cross-country by myself for three weeks in order to retrieve "pieces of my soul" from places I'd never been. During that time, I discovered that there was no security on the trains.

Our country got crazy with religion. More people died. More politicians got voted in and voted out. I was in a chat group on the web that Sunday night when someone said that Osama was finally dead. One of the moderators attempted to keep the chat group on task. That wasn't going to happen. "This is big," I typed. I myself was a mod of that group but suddenly I didn't care about our stated purpose.

Some things I don't understand. In response to hearing about Castro's editorial about how we were "wrong" for killing Osama in front of his family (no, I haven't read the piece yet. It is on my list for another post) my instant retort was, "Screw that." He didn't give a shit about the families of all the people that he had arranged to be killed. I don't give a shit about him dieing in front of his family. Go ahead and call that unchristian of me if you like. I am not a christian anyways and so I really don't care. And I don't understand how the Pakistani government could not have known that Osama was in their midst. I heard that something like 81 Pakistanis were killed a day or two later for their troubles.

Yes, there is one less lunatic alive in a world full of lunatics. My dad says there will be more bombings over here as a retaliation-- smaller targets. And more people will die.

To the people who make decisions about who we may bomb, lets get some balls shall we? Pull our troops out and bring on the nukes, I say. Any bastards who dare to bomb us ought to be nuked out of existence along with their families and friends and countries of origin.

radical bloodthirsty sapphoq

Taliban Attacks and Airport Passenger Searches

Over on the Google newsite, I noted the juxtaposition of two stories. One involved a report that the Taliban attacked both an airport and a foreign military base in Afghanistan. The other was a backlack against the new body scanners in use in some airports in the United States and invasive patdowns.

Afghanistan OnLine ( http://www.afghan-web.com/woman/ ) admits to the burning down of girls' schools and RAWA ( http://www.rawa.org/women.php )reports that the most recent burning down of a girls' school took place this past Monday. Things are not good in Afghanistan, not at all.

Meanwhile, back in the United States, some folks are afraid of radiation leakage from the body scanners that a few airports are currently using. ( http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/11/12/travel.screening/?hpt=Sbin ). And a few folks are calling patdowns invasive and humiliating
( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/12/AR2010111206580.html ). The issue cuts a bit deeper than todays' news stories cover.

At this year's Autreat, there was a presentation about airport security. The full-body scanner that folks are having fits over may actually be beneficial to people who are sensitive to touch who don't use wheelchairs or have prostheses. ( http://autisticcats.blogspot.com/2010/07/autreat-2010-presentations.html ). Another blogger talks about the experience that a female amputee went through ( http://www.thebredafallacy.com/2010/06/on-being-modular-iii.html ). Peggy-- the woman amputee-- took down her initial blogpost about her experience but has left up a post explaining the fallout she experienced from trolls ( http://amputeemommy.blogspot.com/2010/06/lost-message.html ). Peggy's story attracted a bit of attention from the T.S.A. I hope that she will continue to be a catalyst for change. ( http://www.wate.com/global/story.asp?s=12700154 ). It is noted that she was not allowed to reassure her four year old son as he sat next to her crying because someone yelled at him for holding her hand! One worker insisted that Peggy give him both her prothesis and the cloth that covers it-- which must be kept sanitary-- rather than wanding the artificial limb. ( http://www.swisswuff.ch/tech/?p=325 )

There are some able-bodied Americans who don't care for body scanners and others who refuse to fly. It remains the concerns of folks with disabilities that I find most compelling as a woman with brain damage. We the disabled among you cannot be lumped into one population. The concerns of amputees about airport security procedures and possible ameliorative measures are different from those of folks on the autistic spectrum.

So yes, there are problems, severe problems with national security. I maintain that our train stations remain severely lacking in security measures. If I were a terrorist, American train stations would be on my target list. I went halfway across the country on trains. At no time did anyone express the slightest concern over what I may have been carrying in my baggage or on my person. Security wasn't lax on the trains. It was non-existent. And in these times, that is as scarey as the knowledge that any one of us can be detained for an undefined period of time because of the National Patriot Act.

I am obligated to point out that in the United States, we get to choose how we wish to travel. There is no one telling me that I have to take the airplane or the train or that I am restricted to the female only bus, no one dictating that I must be accompanied in public by a male relative, no one demanding that I see the world through a burqa. And there are a bunch of loved ones who now wish that our airport security was tighter on September 11th.

radical sapphoq