ORANGE ALERT for New York City

If I'm not mistaken, NYC has been on constant Orange Alert since the system was instituted. I agree S'tan, RNC hubris may be the death of us. My sense of foreboding is overwhelming.

I am more paranoid and nervous than I was right after the 2001 attacks. I'm constantly packing my belongings, in my imagination... I study the map of Northern NYC to see what roadways I can take to walk out of here.

WHY DOESN'T the NY Times, our paper of record, mention the ORANGE?

It is really enough to make you schizoid... One minute Big Brother is yawning ... the next we're told to consider decimation by biological weaponry.

I'm glued to online news sites 24/7 and know that i am taking in way too much about all of this. Was envious of the waste-encrusted homeless man asleep next to me on the subway this morning. Presumptuous on my part to wonder if he even knows what dirty bombs are???

I've calculated how fast I can pedal my bike from E. Houston to Battery Park. Then how much I can carry with me, with an inflated pair of trousers, ( a survival trick I learned in swimming class when I was 12 years old ) when I jump in the river and float my way to the Jersey shoreline. Lower Manhattan is still redolent of being Targetsville, now Chelsea/Midtown gets to have the crosshairs drawn on it.

The Little Bush cabinet people have relegated themselves to being just a Gang of Incompetents, not politicians. Condosleeza's face in the news now has the same cachet as that of Bozo. Colin Powell's appearances have the repressed emotional tone of a hard core submissive who can't resign his way out. Ashcroft comes off as a clueless delusional at the wheel of a ship only he perceives. It is now impossible for Chenney to appear in anything but the most over organized, super orchestrated events attended by no one other than hard core right wing extremists. The whole regime has bumbled their way into a bottomless abyss of disconnection with the only way out an election defeat, which, secretly, most of them are probably hoping for.

Just imagine the history that will be written about this woozy, slaphappy, dumb-club of a regime. The Marx Brothers, Three Stooges, and, maybe, Donald Duck, are the only cultural equivalents we have for them, except for those entertainment icons were geniuses trying to be idiots, not the other way around.

Careful, those currents are mighty tricky, both off the Battery and up above Inwood. Probably too tricky for swimming. You hear it all the time when bodies and other things are dumped in the river-- they wind up in odd places like Hellgate or Little Brothers Island.
I have my eye, however, on those kyacks bobbing away below N. Moore Street. Anyone want to join me?
There's also the old freight railroad trestle at the point where the Harlem and Hudson meet. You can enter through Inwood Park in the Northwest corner of the island and make it across very quickly to the mainland--we used to do it all the time as kids. It's kind of obscure and might not be as guarded or blocked as the road bridges in a time of shutdown.

NYC has been on Orange alert since 9/11/01.
I doubt the terrorists would strike the GOP convention here because Bush's policies have actually strenthened the terrorist networks.
If anything they would strike the Dems in Boston as Dems (Clinton Administration) had made fighting terrorism a high priority. They actually stopped a number of attacks including the "Millenium Plot."

The whole validity of this current terror alert has been called into question and has caused embarrassment in the Bush administration.
The alert was put out by John Ashcroft's office when it is Tom Ridge's Office of Homeland Security that is supposed to issue these things.
Bush is not happy about this.
Also many people are questioning whether this alert was put out to boost Bush's approval rating which has reached an all time low of late because of Iraq.

Lets face it... for anyone who remembers the days after 9-11 here in NYC.. they sealed off ALL bridges and tunnels and we were all just 'sitting targets' here in Manhattan. I think - like EVERYTHING - in this country ... the media like to whip everyone up into a frenzy and its SO easy to get caught up in this particular issue .. while we as Manhattanites laughed off the Janet Jackson tit media madness, or the Sniper killer shooter fears of the south... this particular frenzy triggers our post traumatic stress syndrom ...which i do believe we all have from living here during 9-11. But I think you won't process or deal with any of it if you get yourself into a panic. There ain't nowt you can do (other than leave the country).. escape route are hopeless cos they will seal off everywhere! Now I understand why my mum is bonkers (she lived through WWII and watched planes dive bomb her street on nightly basis!!!). I am affraid deep down too, but I realize there's only so much that my fear can be channeled into anything that is practical to help the sitution.. I do think that folks should be more vigilant as it is gonna be smth stupid like a bomb in a garbage can (in the UK this happened all the time with the IRA).... We forget but folks around the world live in this kind of terror daily... (FYI - a recent count for my family in Ireland we noted that 12 of our relatives are either murdered or injured due to the conflicts).. not that this makes it all fine for Orange Alert in NYC ... but just putting it in perpective that this kind of alert can go on forever... there is no way we should live on our nerves but deal practically with it...

Hatches can you draw a simple map of that railroad trestle?

Well Anna, I agree the odds are a person here is more likely to meet their demise from any of a wide assortment of other more 'natural' ends.

The orange alerts are really a throwback to the very war you talk about your mother experiencing. The two main motives are to enforce a kind of conformity of anticipation and enable the Little Bushies to take license to institute more marshall measures on the public at large. The actual effect of an alert on any terrorists is almost nil really. Fascists love group paranoia.

I think the whole thing is kind of hot. The possibility of being blown to bits at any second makes trolling around after dark in heels and sequins a little more exciting. So apocolyptic.

hatches, me too, I want to know where that trestle is. Though what do I want to save my pansy-ass little whitebread over-civilised skin for -- at this point? Ya, we KNOW they shut down all the bridges and tunnels -- don't remind me. The only way out is to take the river, or walk north. I guess a rowboat and two strong oars is a good investment. And seven you have the trusty bicycle. But neither of those things are any good in a panicked city if you don't have a fire-arm! So I shoot a fellow New Yorker so I can craawl out ... It's all hopeless.

Newspapers for the last few days are utterly schiz'd. On one page Bloomberg is saying New Yorkers should take the terror alerts 'lightly', and that there is 'no proof' that NY is targeted. Big Brother sez! Golly, yes sir!

Then turn the page, and there's a list of memo-subjects sent to the NYPD, pointing out dozens of NYC locations that are "hot." And tonight on the news there's a section of New Jersey they say is targeted, between Newark airport, encompassing Port Elizabeth and the train tracks... So I row over to New Jersey in my little escapist row-boat to get a fresh faceful of poison gas or whatever "THEY" are serving up that day.

I don't think it does any real good to pretend the horror is NOT happening, or that it "might not happen." It is an existential issue. Certainly we could all die at any time by any means. I simply do not want to feel that the actions of my country are CREATING more nightmare and torment for me and my fellow citizenry. Where is my control -- nowhere.

I may be semi-mad from anxiety, but neither can I take a pill and forget about it. I can't say "Who cares," and go about my picayune business. Because that attitude ADDS to the reality that stands behind the whole "Homeland Insecurity" issue : that our culture is a vampire that has fed not only on the planet, but other cultures for just too bloodie long, and that there's a whole host of people who are bent on putting an end to that vampirism.

It is making life very hard for anyone with a conscience to live in the USA. I dread going out West in a few weeks and putting gasoline in a car. But how do I get around otherwise, on a horse? Maybe. Because I feel like buying gasoline is a fucking crime at this point.

It is in the upper left corner. BTW it is close to the intersection of Seaman Avenue and Cummings Place... for real.

RR Trestle Map

The area S'tan describes in NJ is precisely where Ikea is.
"a section of New Jersey they say is targeted, between Newark airport, encompassing Port Elizabeth and the train tracks..."
Ha! I always knew there was something sinister about that sleekly designed euro furniture. So Un American. I'll bet those odd names (Magiker, Sparren, Fuuker, etc) they give to their products are some kind of terrorist code.

Reports of Assault & Theft all over Iraq now...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/31/international/middleeast/31ABUS.html?th

"In one case, the Red Cross reported that on Sept. 13, 2003, allied forces arrested nine Iraqi men in a hotel in Basra. The men were forced to kneel, with their hands and faces against the ground. The soldiers then stamped on the backs of the necks of those prisoners who raised their heads. The soldiers confiscated their money without issuing receipts, Red Cross inspectors said."

Imagine that. No receipts! A PC War is next: we ask permission before we carpet-bomb... or blow their heads off... like the Columbine Kids: "Do You Believe in God?" Kapowie. There is no right answer.

http://www.iht.com/articles/522482.html

"General John Ashcroft and Robert Mueller 3rd, the director of the FBI, created unease last week with their vague warning that Al Qaeda was planning an attack in the United States. It was not so much the grimly familiar warning. It was the absence of Tom Ridge.
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The public understands that warnings are not likely to be specific.
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But two and a half years after the Sept. 11 attacks, bureaucratic turf battles over the nation's security are inexcusable. The 2002 law that established the Department of Homeland Security gave Ridge the responsibility of coordinating terror-related intelligence analyses and threat assessments. His color-coded terror advisories are often mocked. But at least they signal Washington's best relative estimate of risk.
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Last week, Ashcroft failed to bring Ridge with him - and Ridge had been on television that very morning assuring viewers that there was no new intelligence requiring an increase in the threat level.
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That left everyone wondering what to make of Ashcroft's different message.

What's to wonder... Ashcroft is just covering his ass, so no-one will ever be able to say he DIDN'T warn them. Fascists love mass paranoia, yes, but look Bushie's "approval ratings" are WAY down. There are plenty of cases already of soldiers returning home and killing themselves...
The mass paranoia is spiralling round the other way: golly we might actually be in the wrong.

I thought that this was a very good cartoon pertaining to the present topic. Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to post it here, so I did the next best thing. You'll have to click on the link.

http://www.uclick.com/client/nyt/tt/

On the one hand, I think these alerts we've living under since 9/11 are kind of bogus. I mean every one of them have the same lines. That being " we think there is going to be an attack based on the amount of chatter. We don't know where, when, or any other specific details but we think there is a chance of an attack based on the intelegence."
Well of course there could be an attack. It'obvious to me that they are just covering their ass. They always issue these warning around the time of high profile holidays. Xmas, Passover, and now Memorial Day and that goes all the way through to the 4th of July and beyond to the convention. If (God Forbid) something does happen they can always say "See, we warned you. If nothing happens they can claim that these warnings did indeed prevent an incident from happening.
And that is my other hand argument. It is very hard for terrorist cells to operate when everyone is looking for them. All the most sucessful terrorist attacks have been a big surprise. Look at 9/11. If the Bush Administration had heeded it's own people's warnings instead of turning it's back on it, then perhaps there wouldn't be a big hole in the ground where the WTC once stood. Perhaps 3,000 of our fellow New Yorkers would still be with us today. But this is just speculation.
The fact that the administration is falling over itself when it comes to issuing these warnings should be cause for concern for all Americans. The fact that Bush has actually cut funds for first responders should be cause for concern. The fact that Wyoming gets more funding then NYC for antiterrorist programs should be cause for concern for all Americans.

Americans need to ask themselves this question. If we want to be truly safe and prepared shouldn't we have a President who is serious about antiterrorism on our own shores.

In my opinion it is time for a regime change right here in the good old US of A. I like Kerry and intend on voting for him. But that's me.

In anycase these alerts do serve one important function for the Bush administration.
They keep us all in a state of fear, and that is no way to live.

This paranoia is my paranoia
This paranoia is your paranoia
From Manhattan Island
To the Gulf Stream Waters
This paranoia was made for you and meeeeeeee!

YIKES! The link I left for a cartoon about Ashcroft and the Terror alert system has changed! That link now goes to the lastest Tom Toles cartoon. Oh well. never mind.