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La prima vittima dell 9/11

Res publica   11.09.13  

Slate racconta la tragica fine della prima vittima degli attentati dell'11 Settembre e che senza mai saperlo fu anche l'artefice della tenuta di internet in un giorno di traffico straordinario grazie agli algoritmi che aveva contribuito a sviluppare.
Danny Lewin era un passeggero a bordo del volo 11 dell'American Airlines decollato da Boston e diretto a Los Angeles, dirottato per schiantarsi sulla Torre Nord del World Trade Center.

The 9/11 Commission concurred in its final report, issued four years later, offering a more detailed summary: Based on dozens of interviews with those who spoke with two of the plane's flight attendants during the hijacking, the commission determined that al-Suqami most likely killed Lewin by slashing his throat from behind as he attempted, single-handedly, to try to stop the hijacking. The time of his death was reported to be somewhere between 8:15 and 8:20 a.m.

"He was the first victim of the first war of the 21st century," says Marco Greenberg, Lewin's best friend.

But that act of heroism was not the only way Lewin made his presence felt on that terrible, unique, awful day. In a tragic twist of irony, the algorithms he helped develop, and the company he co-founded--Akamai Technologies--helped the Internet survive that day's crush of traffic-- the Web equivalent of a 100-year flood.

LEGGI ALTRO...

La caccia a Geronimo

Multimedia   14.10.12  

Probabilmente il miglior articolo scritto sugli eventi che portarono all'uccisione del terrorista più ricercato della storia, Osama Bin Laden.

President Obama saw it as a "50–50" proposition. Admiral Bill McRaven, mission commander, knew something would go wrong. So how did the raid that killed bin Laden get green-lighted? In an adaptation from his new book, Mark Bowden weaves together accounts from Obama and top decision-makers for the full story behind the daring operation.

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L'unico americano che non era sulla Terra l'11 Settembre

Geek   11.09.12  

Il 9/11 a New York visto dallo spazio

L'11 Settembre 2001 Frank Culbertson era a bordo della Stazione Spaziale Internazionale quando i terroristi attaccarono il World Trade Center e il Pentagono.
L'astronauta della NASA riuscì a riprendere l'impressionante scia di fumo che si sprigionava dagli incendi delle Twin Towers e si allontanava verso l'oceano Atlantico.

I had just finished a number of tasks this morning, the most time-consuming being the physical exams of all crew members. In a private conversation following that, the flight surgeon told me they were having a very bad day on the ground. I had no idea...

He described the situation to me as best he knew it at ~0900 CDT. I was flabbergasted, then horrified. My first thought was that this wasn't a real conversation, that I was still listening to one of my Tom Clancy tapes. It just didn't seem possible on this scale in our country. I couldn't even imagine the particulars, even before the news of further destruction began coming in.

Vladimir came over pretty quickly, sensing that something very serious was being discussed. I waved Michael into the module as well. They were also amazed and stunned. After we signed off, I tried to explain to Vladimir and Michael as best I could the potential magnitude of this act of terror in downtown Manhattan and at the Pentagon. They clearly understood and were very sympathetic.

I glanced at the World Map on the computer to see where over the world we were and noticed that we were coming southeast out of Canada and would be passing over New England in a few minutes. I zipped around the station until I found a window that would give me a view of NYC and grabbed the nearest camera. It happened to be a video camera, and I was looking south from the window of Michael's cabin.

The smoke seemed to have an odd bloom to it at the base of the column that was streaming south of the city. After reading one of the news articles we just received, I believe we were looking at NY around the time of, or shortly after, the collapse of the second tower.

LEGGI ALTRO...

C'è una mano jihadista dietro la strage di Tolosa

Res publica   21.03.12  

E' un ventiquattrenne legato al terrorismo islamico l'autore della strage alla scuola ebraica di Tolosa. L'uomo, di origini algerine, è braccato dalla polizia e afferma di aver voluto vendicare i bambini palestinesi.
Cade la pista neonazista e con essa la gran parte dei tentativi di analisi sociologica ascoltati in questi giorni. Qualcosa di analogo a parti invertite di quanto accadde con Breivik.

LEGGI ALTRO...

Il vero costo dell'11 settembre

Res publica   04.09.11  

L'America alle prese con la spirale perversa del disastro finanziario delle guerre al terrorismo di Bush, raccontata da Joseph Stiglitz dieci anni dopo gli attentati dell'11 settembre.
Al-Qaeda, dimostratasi più debole rispetto alle previsioni della fine del 2001, sembra essere oggi l'ultimo problema a cui far fornte.

Even if Bush could be forgiven for taking America, and much of the rest of the world, to war on false pretenses, and for misrepresenting the cost of the venture, there is no excuse for how he chose to finance it. His was the first war in history paid for entirely on credit. As America went into battle, with deficits already soaring from his 2001 tax cut, Bush decided to plunge ahead with yet another round of tax "relief" for the wealthy.

Today, America is focused on unemployment and the deficit. Both threats to America's future can, in no small measure, be traced to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Increased defense spending, together with the Bush tax cuts, is a key reason why America went from a fiscal surplus of 2 percent of GDP when Bush was elected to its parlous deficit and debt position today. Direct government spending on those wars so far amounts to roughly $2 trillion-$17,000 for every U.S. household-with bills yet to be received increasing this amount by more than 50 percent.

Moreover, as Bilmes and I argued in our book The Three Trillion Dollar War, the wars contributed to America's macroeconomic weaknesses, which exacerbated its deficits and debt burden. Then, as now, disruption in the Middle East led to higher oil prices, forcing Americans to spend money on oil imports that they otherwise could have spent buying goods produced in the U.S. The Federal Reserve hid these weaknesses by engineering a housing bubble that led to a consumption boom. It will take years to overcome the excessive indebtedness and real-estate overhang that resulted.

Ironically, the wars have undermined America's (and the world's) security, again in ways that Osama Bin Laden could not have imagined. An unpopular war would have made military recruitment difficult in any circumstances. But, as Bush tried to deceive America about the wars' costs, he underfunded the troops, refusing even basic expenditures-say, for armored and mine-resistant vehicles needed to protect American lives or for adequate health care for returning veterans.

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