Category: History

9/11 At Twenty

It was about this time 20 years ago that I returned to the office with a co-worker to hear the South Tower had collapsed.

The office was less than 3 blocks from the White House where we’d headed out of morbid curiosity about thirty minutes before, arriving to Lafayette Park in time to see officers yelling for everyone to get back, they were clearing up to two blocks around the White House.

15 minutes prior, Flight 93 crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Otherwise it was aiming for DC, the Capitol or the White House, for about during that time, that window when dumb me had to rubberneck because sitting there watching the TV felt helpless.

Last year was the first time I got all of my 9/11 day-of thoughts down in one place. 19 years after the fact. Not sure why it took that long.

And of course there are parts missing, either forgotten or purposefully omitted or dismissed because so many others were really *THERE* and who am I to memorialize something I just happened to be in the vicinity of.

But, ultimately, to a certain extent, everyone was *THERE* in some way or another. Either there at the Towers or Pentagon or in New York or DC/NOVA or knew someone who was or watched and thought “what if that were me?” and to varying degrees and emotions felt it.

It’s insane that it’s been 20 years already. To remember there was a time before and what that was like.

Remember, folks. Remember those who were lost. Remember those who survived. The families, the heroes. Remember the lessons. Remember that few don’t define the many. And remember that when some are at their worst there are so many of us who will be at their very best.

Be safe, y’all.

9/11

I remember working in downtown DC, right off McPherson Square, three blocks from the White House, when a friend sent me a message on AIM that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.

I assumed it was a small plane like the Cessna that hit the White House 7 years earlier almost to the day (9/12/94).

Then, after a few minutes, they said a second plane had hit the South Tower.

I ran downstairs and let others know and one of the lawyers turned on the TV to CNN and there it was.

Like the rest of the world we were transfixed, glued, some folks listening to radio or watching another channel in another office, reports of planes everywhere.

And then a noise we’d later find out was Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon 3 miles away.

Phones stop working. There’s no getting calls in or out of DC. I’m back on AIM messaging friends to call my family and my girlfriend and make sure they’re OK.

Is my brother at the Pentagon OK?

Responses from friends: Family’s been trying to call me worried if I’m OK.

*Side note – 9/11 is when the internet really came of age. It was a lifeline for areas where phones just stopped working. Landlines and cellular were useless, jammed, busy.

The internet was key, real time information, and the aftermath was blogging, citizen journalism, etc.

Curiosity about what was happening at the White House sent me outside with one of the secretaries.

Looking back it was a terrible idea, heading toward what could very well have been the target of Flight 93 which would ultimately be brought down in Pennsylvania.

The streets were chaos. Traffic was locked. Sidewalks were packed. We got within a block of the White House before police started yelling at people to get back, they were blocking off up to two blocks from around the building.

And then a moment that was ultimately nothing but is etched.

A boom.

A mass of people panic and cry out and want to run but where do you go?

That moment of chaos and momentary mass hysteria left a mark.

It was a sonic boom from the passing F-15s scrambled to pass over DC. But at the time, it was another plane crash, a car bomb at the State Department, a helicopter crashed on The Mall, it was an attack and there was nothing anyone could do.

We went back to the office to find the South Tower had collapsed.

We watched as dust and debris and smoke settled on New York City.

Pops in the distance. Canisters from a worksite where the Pentagon had been hit going off, but at the time no one knows that.

We watch.

10:28.

The North Tower collapses.

News is a mess. Reports start coming in that despite all flights being ordered grounded there are a handful of planes unaccounted for.

That one or more planes are headed straight for DC.

We move. The whole office grabs and goes, one of the partners offers his place for those who can’t go anywhere else and many of us end up there, a house only a few miles away, but away from the center of DC, away from any targets.

Lunch is Church’s Chicken while we all just watch, glued to the news, worried, wondering what happened, who did this, is it over?

It’s nearly 3pm before I can finally get a phone call to go through to family and friends and make sure everyone is OK. I’m OK. And that I’m coming home.

A long, quiet ride on a nearly empty Metro because everyone else who needed to got out earlier. I’m met at Springfield by my girlfriend.

And we hug and stay like that for a while.

After would be strings of chaotic reminders.

Passing the still smoldering Pentagon on the commuter bus just days later.

The anthrax scare just months later and mail handled every day coming from the Brentwood facility at the heart of it.

Suspicious packages in the park almost every other week.

Unease at any car awkwardly abandoned or left idling in odd locations.

Noting where the nearest bomb shelter was.

Having multiple routes planned out to get out of DC depending on what and where something happened.

But also a coming together. That this wasn’t going to stop us. That we would still go about our lives and not live in fear because that’s what they wanted.

We were all in this together. We were all Americans.

Hard to think that was 19 years ago.

That for so many it’s not even a memory because they were so young or not even alive at the time.

And how truly defining it has been for a generation now.

My experience isn’t unique. Or all that special, really. I’m not nearly as impacted as so many others, people who had friends and family that died that day, were themselves just at or supposed to be at or near as it happened.

But everyone who remembers that day has a story and an experience and that shapes us. There was a before and there has been an after.

Never Forget

And be safe. Be kind. Know that while there is evil in the world there is so much more good. Know that a few don’t define the many.

And know that there are so many who can be their very best when things seem at their worst.

Foundational Internet Writing

This is a fun thread with a lot of interesting articles – though I’m a little surprised at the number of pieces shared that are less than a decade old. Maybe I shouldn’t be. I’m getting old.

But this led to an interesting thought exercise of considering what writings I’ve read through the years that have had a lasting impact – or just been particularly memorable.

The list could probably go on and on, but let’s narrow it down to five. Chronologically:

The Cluetrain Manifesto (2000)

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.
These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can’t be faked.

Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do.

But learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about “listening to customers.” They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.

Is There An Echo In Here? (2004)

No, if you want to see a real echo chamber, open up your daily newspaper or turn on your TV. There you’ll find a narrow, self-reinforcing set of views. The fact that these media explicitly present themselves as a forum for objective truth, open to all ideas, makes them far more pernicious than some site designed to let people examine the 8,000 ways Hillary is a bitch or to let fans rage about how much better Spike was on “Buffy” than he’ll ever be on “Angel.” And if you want to see the apotheosis of the echo chamber — the echo echoing itself so perfectly that it comes perilously close to achieving the 60-cycle om of the empty mind — consider a president who, rather than read the newspaper, is happy to have his aides pick and choose what headlines he learns more about, because he believes them to be “objective.”

We are at a dangerous time in the Internet’s history. There are forces that want to turn it into a place where ideas, images and thoughts can be as carefully screened as callers to a radio talk show. The “echo chamber” meme is not only ill-formed, but it also plays into the hands of those who are ready to misconstrue the Net in order to control it. We’d all be better off if we stopped repeating it and let its sound fade.

I need to do more research to see if Weinberger still feels this way since the whole “echo chamber” and Daily Me has been turned to 11 with social media…

The Long Tail (2004)

Chart Rhapsody’s monthly statistics and you get a “power law” demand curve that looks much like any record store’s, with huge appeal for the top tracks, tailing off quickly for less popular ones. But a really interesting thing happens once you dig below the top 40,000 tracks, which is about the amount of the fluid inventory (the albums carried that will eventually be sold) of the average real-world record store. Here, the Wal-Marts of the world go to zero—either they don’t carry any more CDs, or the few potential local takers for such fringy fare never find it or never even enter the store.

The Rhapsody demand, however, keeps going. Not only is every one of Rhapsody’s top 100,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, the same is true for its top 200,000, top 300,000, and top 400,000. As fast as Rhapsody adds tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it’s just a few people a month, somewhere in the country.

This is the Long Tail.

Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason Part 1 (2007)

Human beings learn, essentially, in only two ways. They learn from experience—the oldest and earliest type of learning—and they learn from people who know more than they do. The second kind of learning comes from either personal contact with living people—teachers, gurus, etc.—or through interaction with the human record, that vast assemblage of texts, images, and symbolic representations that have come to us from the past and is being added to in the present. It is this latter way of learning that is under threat in the realm of digital resources.

It is under threat because, to be successful, it depends on the authenticity of the connection between the teacher/researcher/author who has created a part of the human record and the person who wishes to learn from the study of that part. That connection is authentic only if certain conditions are met. The conditions necessary for learning from a text include a reasonable certainty that the text is what it says it is—that its content is what was created by a named person or persons or is a good-faith translation of that original text by a named person or persons; that the authors possess verifiable credentials and demonstrable expertise; that the learner has knowledge of the date when that text was created and can, therefore, take into account any later developments or discoveries; that the learner possesses the reading skills to interact productively with a complex text; and that the text has a context—that is, its relationships with other texts are set out in the form of citations and bibliographic references. If one thinks of such a learning transaction in terms of someone reading, say, a paper in the proceedings of a scholarly conference, a paper in a scholarly journal, or an article in an authoritative encyclopedia, it is easy to see not only that each of these conditions can and do exist in a print culture but that they could and, in some cases, do exist in the digital world.

And Part 2

The flight from expertise is accompanied by the opposite of expertise—the phenomenon that Andrew Keen has called, in his new book of the same name, “the cult of the amateur.” This cult, says Keen, “worships the creative amateur: the self-taught filmmaker, the dorm-room musician, the unpublished writer. It suggests that everyone—even the most poorly educated and inarticulate amongst us—can and should use digital media to express and realize themselves.” He is referring to the impulse behind Web 2.0, but his words have a wider resonance—a world in which everyone is an expert in a world devoid of expertise.

Emphasis mine.

1,000 True Fans (2008)

To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans.

A true fan is defined as a fan that will buy anything you produce. These diehard fans will drive 200 miles to see you sing; they will buy the hardback and paperback and audible versions of your book; they will purchase your next figurine sight unseen; they will pay for the “best-of” DVD version of your free youtube channel; they will come to your chef’s table once a month. If you have roughly a thousand of true fans like this (also known as super fans), you can make a living — if you are content to make a living but not a fortune.

Tiananmen At Thirty Looks A Lot Like Tiananmen At Twenty

Change certainly doesn’t happen overnight, but one hopes it’s not another thirty, or even ten years, for China.

Yesterday marked the thirtieth anniversary of the end of the Tiananmen Square protests.

Ten years ago I wrote about the twentieth anniversary and most of what applied then applies today — though progress of the “tiny Tiananmens” and efforts of the people of China to write their own histories and forge their own futures has been limited by a state still holding control over information and lives. Change certainly doesn’t happen overnight, but one hopes it’s not another thirty, or even ten years, for China.

Below is the post from ten years ago in its entirety:

Continue reading “Tiananmen At Thirty Looks A Lot Like Tiananmen At Twenty”

Tiananmen At Twenty

Tiananmen may have never happened in the eyes of the CCP.  But every day, every four minutes they have another one, somewhere else.  And the Chinese people see it, feel it, know it first hand.


Tank Man of Tiananmen by Jeff Widener of the Associated Press.

James Fallows at The Atlantic:

I am guessing that you will see no real-time TV reports from the Tiananmen Square area today, and little or no photography. This is based on personal experience there last night, China time, which also leads to personal advice for anyone in Beijing thinking of going there today.

During my time in Beijing over the past year and a half, I’ve often seen the square itself totally closed off to visitors, as it is at the moment. There are always plenty of security forces around — soldiers in green uniforms, various kinds of police in blue uniforms, and “plainclothes” forces who are pretty easy to pick out, like strapping young men in buzz cuts all wearing similar-looking “leisure” clothes. But I have not seen before anything like the situation at the moment.

Yesterday, Wu’er Kaixi, a former student leader during the Tiananmen Square Protests, tried to turn himself in to Chinese authorities after twenty years in exile.  He was detailed by immigration officials at the airport in China’s Macao territory.

The history of China as a nation is hard to nail down.  As dynasties changed through the years, each new emperor brought a rewriting of the nation’s history to best fit their familiy or their own legacy.  And the people went along or didn’t know better, being largely rural.

As a steeply traditional nation, even while under Communism China has found its historical roots hard to leave behind.  Some argue that Confucianism and its hierarchical system ingrained in the Chinese people a mindset that Communism was able to adapt to and co-opt as Maoism – a distinctly different form of Communism than found in the Soviet Union or even Cuba.

History is malleable in Chinese tradition.  “Barbarian” Manchu became “Chinese” when they took control of the country – something that not only allowed them to rule but gave the Han justification to claim Manchuria as Chinese when the Qing Dynasty came to an end.  Tibet is part of China now, thus has always been part of China.  The Chinese Communist Party was able to not only embody Mao but also hold up Sun Yat-Sen, a Democratic reformer, as a hero.

Historically China has been able to change its past to define its present.

It allows China to recognize the 90th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement as a pivitol moment when Chinese stood up against foreign imperialsm in the wake of World War I.  But now they take actions to ensure it doesn’t lead to another incident like the one twenty years ago.  Part of those actions are to ignore Tiananmen.

It never happened.

China is able to forget Mao’s Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward and the millions who lost their lives either through outright slaughter or starvation.  They remove it from history books.  They don’t discuss it.  It never happened.

Tiananmen is the same.  Twenty years ago China was still emerging from under the shadow of Mao.  Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms were turning China from a Communist economy to a more Westernized one, but still with restrictions and certainly with none of the political reforms that a free market invites.  Some within the CCP wanted farther changes.  They were purged.

Deng Xiaoping himself had faced purging from the CCP twice.  Deng was aLong Marcher who had fought with Mao to help bring the CCP to power.  In the late 60s during Mao’s Cultural Revolution Deng was sent to work in a factory in the Jiangxi province but was brought back into power in 1974 at the urging of then Premier Zhou Enlai.  Zhou was a reformer, regularly running at odds to leaders within the CCP, including Mao himself.  When Zhou passed away in 1976, public displays of mourning were brutally put down in the Tiananmen Incident.  Deng would again be removed, put under house arrest. But with Mao’s death in 1976, Deng was able to solidify his backing within the CCP and rise once again within the party and China.

With Deng’s rise came economic reforms that pulled China out of the economic gutter and led to it becoming what it is today, an powerhouse on the world stage.  Deng’s reforms were able to tap into the nation’s natural resources in ways Mao had never been able to.  But with the loosening of economic restrictions came pushing from both sides.

Hardliners saw a weakening of the central authority of the CCP.  Reformists saw an opportunity for political change in Beijing.

Deng proposed Four Modernizations: Agriculture, Industry, Technology, Defense.  In 1978 Wei Jingsheng tacked The Fifth Modernization to a wall in Beijing calling for greater individual freedoms.  Democracy Wall lasted a year before the CCP felt individual expression had gone too far in criticizing the Party.

But not everyone within party leadership was cracking down on demonstrations and individual expression.  Hu Yaobang was another Long Marcher but also one who believed in Deng’s reforms.  He was made Party Chairman in 1981 but was forced to resign in 1987 after being considered too tolerant of student demonstrations by leaders within the CCP.  It would be his death on April 15, 1989 that would lead to Tiananmen.

Crowds gathered and the Party got nervous.  Deng Xiaopeng, thought to be sympathetic to the student protesters, had his hand forced and on May 4th the CCP cracked down on demonstrators.  The rest, as they say, is history.

But not in China.

The Chinese government viewed the Tiananmen Protest as anti-revolutionary and a threat to their power.  While some attempts have been made to rehabilitate Hu’s image, at no point has the Party ever entertained reevaluating what happened at Tiananmen.  Chinese youth are not taught what happened, it’s passed over in favor of lessons on economy and globalization.

Yet in this era of the Internet and access to information world wide in an instant, China is having a hard time rewriting its history as it used to.  Now it is not just a simple matter of burning all old histories in the Forbidden City and writing new ones.  Information is now in the hands of everyone, no matter how big the Great Firewall of China may get.

But does it matter?

Bao Tong worked for Zhou Ziyang, reform minded CCP General Secretary who was forced to resign in the wake of Tiananmen:

Mr. Bao believes that an official reassessment of Tiananmen is crucial for China’s long-term stability. “You have to say it clearly: It’s not a good system, it’s a bad system. It has to be stated that the people who were killed [on June 4] were good people, and they shouldn’t have been killed. . . . We must announce that Tiananmen was a criminal action. That soldiers, from now on and forever, cannot oppose the common people. This gun cannot be pointed at the people.” He holds his fingers up in the shape of a gun and takes aim at the coffee table.

So is there a potential for another student uprising? Mr. Bao doesn’t think so. Although today’s economic turmoil is much more painful for China than the inflation of 1988-89, he believes the threat to the government’s stability is much less.

He first cites China’s tight grip on political discourse today, compared to 1989: “At that time, people could say Mao Zedong was wrong. Today, they can’t say Deng Xiaoping was wrong.” Although Chinese citizens have more ways to communicate today — especially via the Internet — these technologies won’t necessarily lead to calls for change. “The spread of the Internet is a good thing, but it is also a bad thing. Because in the hands of the government, it becomes a tool for brainwashing.” He sees government meddling behind online flare-ups of antiforeign sentiment.

Mr. Bao thinks the real key to Beijing’s control over its citizenry, however, is economic leverage.

As long as the CCP provides for its people, or allows its people to provide for themselves, it is in good standing.  Deng’s policies were ten years old in 1989 and China was still just emerging economically. Now it is the second largest economy in the world.  Its people are arguably much better off now than they were twenty years ago, certainly compared to thirty years ago before Deng’s policies began.

The next protests China sees may not be political but economic.  And they may be in the countrysides more than in the cities.  Because it’s easy to be concerned about politics when you don’t have to worry about where your next meal is coming from.  Rural China may be disproportionately impacted by a global recession.  This is something the CCP can’t block by firewall or by rewriting their history books.

By hiding Tiananmen from the people the CCP can hope to avoid the tough questions behind the events that led to the massacre.  But they feel they can not afford to allow protest and criticism for fear of losing control over the country.

“Every four minutes there is a protest with more than 100 people.” Mr. Bao cites a report that estimates China sees 100,000 protests per year, up from 80,000 three years ago.

Bao calls these “Little Tiananmens”.  And they impress upon the people exatly what the government wants them to forget.

The only freedom they have is what the Chinese Communist Party allows them to have.

Tiananmen may have never happened in the eyes of the CCP.  But every day, every four minutes they have another one, somewhere else.  And the Chinese people see it, feel it, know it first hand.

The CCP is holding onto the idea that history can be written by those in power.  But the people are starting to write their own histories and, with that, they are clamoring to have a hand in their own futures.  And without reevaluation of Tiananmen and the policies and events that led to the massacre, the Chinese Communist Party may find itself written out of history.

But Is The Sentiment Genuine?

Yesterday I commented on Turkey’s recalling of their ambassador in face of a House resolution calling the Armenian Genocide an actual genocide (read the resolution here). The post pulled a good number of anonymous responses that tried to create excuses that either fell into the “what about the others that have suffered?” or the “they deserved it” categories as a defense for Turkey.

The second point has been based merely on accusations that have not been backed up by any links or citations. It is not even conjecture and, barring evidence to support such claims, is easily dismissed as propaganda. Besides, the non-binding resolution does nothing to blame the current Turkish government for what happened, though it does shed light on Turkey’s denial of the events even occurring and attempt at white washing their own history.

The first point is a bit more touchy and understandable, yet fails in the face of “two wrongs don’t make a right”. If an error has been made in one area, is it wrong to try and correct a similar area elsewhere? When someone says “what about the others that have suffered?” you’re absolutely right. That others have suffered the same should be addressed as well. Certainly that might keep us busy for a long time to come, but we should not ignore it. That we haven’t addressed every human atrocity over the last 100 years is unfortunate, but that does not mean we should avoid addressing any of them. One thing at a time. This time it’s Armenia.

One point the comments failed to make against the resolution is the political one.

Why now?

Many see this as a political ploy by Democrats in Congress to slow bleed our military in Iraq and force an early withdrawl. As the CNN article noted:

Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Missouri, sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposing the resolution, and said the backlash threatened by Turkey could disrupt “America’s ability to redeploy U.S. military forces from Iraq,” a top Democratic priority.

Turkey, a NATO member, has been a key U.S. ally in the Middle East and a conduit for sending supplies into Iraq.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday that good relations with Turkey are vital because 70 percent of the air cargo sent to U.S. forces in Iraq and 30 percent of the fuel consumed by those forces fly through Turkey.

U.S. commanders “believe clearly that access to airfields and roads and so on, in Turkey, would very much be put at risk if this resolution passes and the Turks react as strongly as we believe they will,” Gates said.

Bagis said no French planes have flown through Turkish airspace since a French Parliament committee passed a similar resolution last year.

This massacre occured 90 years ago. Why are we only now drafting resolutions calling it a genocide? Certainly they’re overdue, but if this is happening merely as a method of draining our efforts in Iraq, is the sentiment really genuine? Are the Armenians and Ottoman Christians who suffered merely to once more be political pawns?

I find myself torn. On one hand, a genuine recognition and discussion of what happened needs to occur. It was our failure to remain involved and care about the Armenian genocide that inspired Hitler’s plans in Europe.

Yet to remember what happened and recognize it merely to score a backdoor political victory on an unrelated issue is disengenuious and does nothing but dishonor the memory of those who suffered through these horrible events.

A recognition and discussion of the Armenian genocide needs to occur, especially within Turkey itself. But if this is merely an opportunity to grand stand on an issue that no one cared about until they realized the political victory it could achieve on an issue they can’t seem to win when facing it head on then it is a disservice not only to our soldiers in Iraq but the Armenian people.

If it is not happening for the right reasons is it worth happening at all?

Turkey Still Denying Genocide

Turkey has recalled its ambassador in protest of a House resolution that recognizes Turkey’s massacare of Armenians for what it was: genocide. The Armenian Genocide saw the Ottoman Empire kill anywhere from 500,000 to 1.5 million Armenians and Ottoman Christians during forced round-ups and deportations, measures that are thought to have inspired Hitler. What happened needs to be recognized, whether or not Turkey wants to face it’s own history.

UPDATE: The issue was large enough to be front page news at the time and pull American’s into the international community. See New York Times articles from the era, using the search terms “armenians massacre”.

The History Place has a summary of the 1915-1918 events.