The View From the Outback

• The World Trade Center & Pentagon Attacks! (9-11-2001)
• Thoughts While Staring at the Ceiling Fan
• Prescription Drug Plans
• My Friend Senator Jesse Helms
• Rush to Glacier National Park Before All the Glaciers are Gone
• Suggested Reading From Past Columns

The World Trade Center & Pentagon Attacks!

A 12-year-old child who played with Microsoft Flight Simulator on his or her computer could have conceived the plot. Hijack airliners using weapons which are easily passed through metal detectors, and choose planes which are destined for long flights, and thus heavily laden with fuel. Fly the plane(s) into high-rise office buildings in major cites. Fly one into the Pentagon. For all the pundits and talking heads on TV, this was not a complicated thing to do. Taking a plane off the runway is fairly complex. Landing it is more complex. But flying it in open space is something you could learn to do on a $60 flight simulator. The terrorists may have been skilled jet pilots. They need not have been.

I am angry, as angry as I have ever been at our government and at the citizens in the country who for decades have thwarted our efforts to investigate, root out, and stop terrorism in its tracks by their whining about privacy rights.

On December 29, 2000, in my Outback column, I wrote the following:

"Aircraft Cockpit Security If you watch TV, you know that a British Airways 747 nearly met a tragic end when a passenger burst into the cockpit and apparently tried to put the plane into a suicide dive. What is missing from most of the reports is that the door to the cockpit was unlocked, as is the custom on British Airways. A spokesman on TV defended the "open door" practice by saying the usual trite "If somebody wants to get in they will get in" (whether the door is locked or not). What nonsense. There is a modest bit of truth in that statement with the cardboard-thin doors and flimsy locks in use on most cockpit doors. U. S. airliners keep their doors locked and do not allow passengers on the "flight deck" while flights are in progress.

There is no excuse for this. If cab drivers in New York City can be protected by a bullet-proof partition between the driver and the rear seat(s), then the airline industry needs to take immediate steps to protect the lives of the crew and passengers on airliners. An average jumbo may carry nearly 400 people. I spent many years trying to get into places I was not supposed to (overseas, on behalf of our beloved government), and later spent many years teaching people how to keep others from gaining forceful access to their homes, businesses, and office buildings. It is a relatively simple matter to make the "wall" and door leading to the pilot cockpit of materials that resist a brute force attempt to crash in. A bullet resistant material should be used in the partition and the compartment door, such as Kevlar (used in bulletproof vests) or bullet- resistant plexiglass, etc.

A good lock and engagement to the solid frame is a simple matter. The deadbolt on your house or apartment is many times better than most locks on cockpit doors. To prevent a passenger from forcing a crew member to unlock the door, the door should be controlled from inside the cockpit. The crew should have to use an intercom to request permission to enter and a closed circuit camera trained above the door with a monitor in the cockpit. The crew should have a key word or phrase to indicate if they are acting under duress when seeking entry to the cockpit. A remote transmitter, like is used on today's cars and trucks to lock and unlock doors, should be hidden where a crew member could get it in case of an emergency in the cockpit.

These are pretty simple and not-very-expensive steps to take to prevent "crazed passengers" from rushing through the unlocked cockpit door as one did on the British Airways flight."

As far as I know, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has never come out with recommendations or requirements for better cockpit security. Airliners that were hijacked on September 11th probably had the same cardboard-thin door as always, and the flight attendants probably had a keys which could be taken with a show of force - if the doors were even locked. My guess is that all that will change shortly. Where the hell has the FAA been in the meantime? Even A pea-brain in the Outback have enough sense to write about cockpit security in December of 2000.

Through lack of funding and hands-on oversight of our intelligence gathering, the Congress has allowed the CIA to lose some of its best people and its focus. And the NSA's equipment and techniques have atrophied to where we can no longer capably and competently intercept communications around the globe. We had the Clinton Administration in particular which allowed a decline in our national security apparatus. (Read "Betrayal, How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security," by Bill Gertz - and other works on the subject.) The rules of engagement changed on the morning of September 11, 2001.

And we have all the liberal cry babies, and Internet geeks who don't shave yet, who railed against such things as the FBI Carnivore program, which might have intercepted e-mails about the plot of September 11, 2001, and so on. Those same people and groups cry out that our rights are being violated when the FBI tries to infiltrate an informant into an organization suspected of organized crime or terrorism. They whimper when FBI agents and other take photos and video tapes of meetings of groups with questionable motives. The rules of engagement changed on the morning of September 11, 2001.

In general, the U.S. government pussy-foots around the world afraid to take on a terrorist group with a dose of its own medicine. President Clinton ordered a pathetic missile raid on the suspected camp of terrorist Osama bin Laden. Not many folks were home, certainly not bin Laden. Israel is pro-active and assassinates terrorists leaders and in many quarters is accused of being "too aggressive." It is time for the U.S. to use some of the highly-trained killers we have and the great technological advantages we have for some pre-emptive actions. Do you mean to tell me that we cannot find Osama bin Laden and kill him? And others like him? We know, or should know, who they are. The rules of engagement changed on the morning of September 11, 2001!

In the end, we may find that the terrorists were here on visas or maybe just sneaked in with false documents or none at all. And that a decent investigation would have shown that they had questionable associations. It is time to act like most of the other countries of the world and tighten our borders and strengthen the investigation of those who seek visas or asylum in this country. The old slogan about how we are a melting pot, and we welcome everyone, needs to be brought into a more rational focus. Our immigration and visa procedures need to be given a hard look. The hue and cry about "racial profiling" when it comes to those from nations who are known to sponsor terrorism, should fall on deaf ears. Yes, I remember that the Arabs were originally blamed for the Oklahoma bombing, but that was probably an isolated case. The rules of engagement changed on the morning of September 11, 2001!

Airport security has been shown to be lax by many planned and unplanned events. There is apparently no security screening device that can detect a plastic knife or similar weapon. The checkpoint screeners are both undertrained and the pay does not normally attract a high caliber of applicant. And what happened to the Federal Air Marshals? They were armed and highly-trained people who rode on selected airplanes to thwart hijacking. How many Air Marshals are there? Is it time to put one on every domestic flight and international flight? The rules of engagement changed on the morning of September 11, 2001!

Thoughts While Staring at the Ceiling Fan

On August 22, 2001, I had a letter-to-the-editor published inThe Wall Street Journal. It was an edited version of a longer letter in which I also made some points about the satellite Internet marketplace. This is about the fifth letter I have had published in WSJ. People must be wondering where is Honey Grove, Texas, and who is this guy? Occasionally I hear from old friends who say, "I saw your letter in the Journal." (You can read the letter on my Web page under Letters to the Editor. Just click on "Back to Richard's Home Page" at the end of this Outback column. It's no big deal and not particularly brilliant, but being in the WSJ makes it special for me.)

Internet Explorer 6.0 is available for free download (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/). On my PIII 800 MHz computer, it loads in about 1+ seconds, versus the slow crawl of version 5.5 loading. There are several new privacy features, including greater control over cookies. I still use Cookie Pal (which is working on an IE 6.0 compatible release). Cookie Pal posted a group of IE 6.0 privacy settings that will allow Pal to do its job until the new version is ready. After we all have a chance to study the IE 6.0 privacy features, which are pretty complex, it may be enough control for many people. There is a floating toolbar that allows you quick access to saving and downloading Internet files and graphics. Whatever other new features there are in IE 6.0 over version 5.5 have not jumped out at me.

Janet Reno, the former U.S. Attorney General, is apparently going to run for Governor of Florida. What is she smoking? She has about as much chance of becoming governor as Fidel Castro has of becoming Mayor of Miami. We always hear about the "baggage" a candidate brings with him or her. Janet Reno's baggage could fill the cargo hold of a 747 jetliner. Make your own list. Janet, what in the world are you thinking? I will send her an abject personal apology for these remarks if she becomes governor.

Several states are issuing driver's licenses to illegal aliens. Are you paying attention? Driver's licenses for illegal aliens? I thought we had some laws that illegal aliens should be deported. What's next? Law school scholarships for illegal aliens so that they can work the legal system even harder to thwart the intent of our immigrations laws? I give up. There is no hope for this country. It will eventually be taken over by hordes of people who come here illegally from all over the world - because we no longer have the moral resolve to enforce the laws we have. My hat is off to the Australians. If you have not been paying attention, they recently turned away a shipload of refugees who were trying to enter Australia illegally. Cheers and beers, mates.

If you think, as I do, that the "tree huggers" in this country are completely irrational and out of control, take note of the situation in Germany. In Frankfurt, where I once lived, you have to get a permit to cut down any tree which has a circumference of 24 inches or more at a distance of three feet above the ground. One fellow who owned an apartment building had an Oak tree growing between the sidewalk and the building's front door. He wanted to build a larger building on the site. He was not able to get permission to fell the mighty Oak and his plans for a bigger building and more rental income were shelved. Germany is so over regulated that it often defies description - even to the Germans. You have to have a license to play golf. It is supposed to keep the duffers off the courses. I guess you have to vacation in Spain to learn the game. Or sneak on the courses at 3 a.m. and play by flashlight.

There has been a lot of resistance, particularly in California, to building new high-tension power lines on those big steel towers we see crossing the country. Maybe these folks wish that electricity could somehow come to their homes out of the air, without those messy towers and wires. Good news. We have such a source of electricity. Lightning! Comes right into your home with no wires. California prides itself in being a leader in technology. Get hopping on a way to put a lightning rod on your house and then store all that electrical energy until you need it. One word of caution. Don't hook the lightning rod directly to the AC outlets in your house. I have been "visited" by lightning three times, with the destruction of, or damage to, of about $10,000 worth of electronics. Please advise soonest when you have "captured lightning in a bottle" for later use. I am a potential customer. I am tired of pulling nearly every AC plug in the house when I hear thunder.

Prescription Drug Plans

Earlier, I noted that Prozac was going off patent and the generic (much cheaper) version would soon be available. I suggested that anyone who continued to take the name-brand Prozac instead of the generic was either not too bright or did not care about money. I am heartened to read that the major prescription-drug plans have "leaned" on doctors to switch their patients to the less expensive generic. And that the rather massive changeover to the generic version of Prozac is one of the quickest and most dramatic changes ever seen.

What really caught my eye in the story in the WSJ (8-20-2001) was a list of the number of people who are covered by the various prescription-drug plans (one of them was my plan). They mentioned three major drug plans who collectively serve 187 million people! Who then are the ones in this country without a "prescription drug benefit plan"? All of the chest thumping by both parties about providing "all seniors with prescription drugs" seems a bit disingenuous. A closer look needs to be taken at how many don't already have a plan. I have a plan. I would not want Medicare to start covering my prescription drugs, or for any of the other 187 million people under an existing plan. It would be a terrible waste of government funds. The effort needs to be more targeted.

President Bush tried an interim measure with a Drug Discount Card for seniors, who would pay about $25 for the cards. I assume that anyone over a certain age could buy one of the discount cards. Now, a federal judge has halted the discount card program by granting a preliminary injunction. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of 55,000 pharmacists and 130,000 pharmacies who claimed the program was harmful to their profits and was an illegal use of government power.

Here's a thought. There are at least 187 million people (and probably more) who already have a prescription-drug plan. There are about 40 million people eligible for Medicare. Find out how many seniors do not already have a plan. It might be cheaper for the government to pay the fees to enter the uncovered people into private prescription-drug plans than to provide blanket coverage for Medicare recipients. With modest co-pay arrangements, there would be few seniors who then could not afford their medications. A small fund could be available in Medicare for "hardship cases," such as people with limited incomes who take a bunch of drugs. In any event, it is time for some creative thinking in the White House and on the Hill about prescription drugs. Providing total prescription coverage under Medicare for everyone, whether you already have a plan or not, seems like another exercise in government excess.

My Friend Senator Jesse Helms

Sen. Jesse Helms will not seek reelection from the state of North Carolina. The news media reports have been full of name calling and vilification of the man. They could not even wait to get rid of him before they unleashed their venom. Jesse was always a thorn in the side of liberals and the liberal media. He was always characterized by liberals as a "racist," an "obstructionist," a "homophobe," and so on. He stood on his principles and never wavered. He "told it like it was," often without regard for the political consequences.

I never met Senator Helms in person, but I consider him to be a friend. Twice I lived in North Carolina, once as a U.S. Marine and later as a Federal agent. In about 1982, I sent the senator the final draft of my espionage novel, "Serpent on the Hill," which I wrote under my pen name of Philip Eliot. It was about a Russian KGB mole in our political system who married an American, eventually became a U.S. Senator - and ran for president. I asked the senator to read it and provide me with a quote for the dust jacket. Back came a letter with the following:

"Serpent on the Hill is a book for every American who's concerned about our National security - and for every American who isn't. Jesse Helms, Senator, N.C."

Thank you, sir! More than I had even hoped for.

This began an exchange of letters over the years. One exchange was most memorable. Sen. Helms had been interviewed at length on C-SPAN in late 1998. He came across as a kind, thoughtful man, who loved his country and yearned for a return to the days when hard work, truthfulness, and integrity were cherished values. He sounded so rational and convincing in his straightforward answers that the interviewer seemed taken aback. Was he really interviewing Sen. Jesse Helms, or was this guy a wringer who made perfect sense on every issue put to him?

In 1998, I wrote the Senator a letter:

"Dear Jesse: What a delightful interview on C-SPAN with Carl Rutan. If you're not careful you will screw up your hard-earned reputation as an obstinate trouble maker."

I went on to discuss how we shared the same core values. I discussed network news coverage and an anecdote about a wire recorder from the early days of broadcast recording. (My dad had been an announcer in Des Moines at the same time as Ronald "Dutch" Reagan. Jesse had been a broadcaster in Raleigh.) I told Jesse how proud I was to be able to correspond with three straight shooters in the Senate; Helms, Dole, and Goldwater. I rambled on for two pages and sent a couple of newspaper columns I had written.

In his answer of December 9, 1998, Jesse said in part:

"Anyhow, my friend, you have brightened my day, for which I am most grateful."

He mentioned that he was about half-sick with a cold when he did the C-SPAN interview, and was astonished at the number of letters (favorable I assume) that came in from around the country. He complimented me on my writings. That letter brightened my day, so were now even.

There is much more to the story, but I must move on. Jesse Helms is a man of unwavering principle. Of course he stood up for tobacco interests, but what would you do if one of the mainstays of your state's economy was growing tobacco? He at times was obstinate and unyielding on political appointments he opposed. And so on. But on balance, this country is much the better for having had Jesse Helms in the Senate. Many of his core values will linger in the Senate, and in this country, for years and decades to come. I am proud to call him my friend.

If you could sit on the front porch in North Carolina and spin some yarns with Jesse, as I hope to do some day, you would find an entirely different man than the one the media dubbed "Senator No." In these days of caving in to every special-interest and politically-correct group, we need a few more people in Washington who know how to say "No."

(I have nearly every letter, memo, and article I have written since 1989 in one folder on my hard drive - separate from the Docs folder - and backed up many times to CD-ROM. Many earlier writings are on 5 1/4 inch floppies, some of them written in WordStar on a CP/M machine. I pulled a 5 1/4 inch drive from a 386 machine I gave away recently, just in case. I was able to find my 1998 letter to Senator Helms on the hard drive in about one minute.)

Rush to Glacier National Park Before All the Glaciers are Gone

NBC Nightly News gave us a story recently about how the glaciers at Glacier National Park were slowly going away. There were 150 glaciers in the park in 1887 and now there are only 50. (An article in "Scientific American" says that there were 150 glaciers in the park in 1850. Take your pick of dates.) The temperature at the park was said to have risen 3.5 degrees in the past 110 years. That is a rise of 4/100ths of a degree per year! If they were trying to impress people with the impending doom of the planet from global warming, they might better have left out that statistic. The reporter said that the rise in the temperature and the decline in glaciers was: "Most likely, they say, victims of industrial global warming." Oh, really. And who are "they"? Among many other factors, one would also need to look at the rates of snow fall over the 110 years, since precipitation helps replenish a glacier.

One person interviewed on the NBC newscast said that if you want to see a glacier at the park, you had better come now, as they won't be around much longer, or words to that effect. By my calculations - and figures quoted in some research - it will take about 50 years for the rest of the park's glaciers to melt. In the meantime, God's plan for the world's climate may change and we will be heading back toward another mini ice age. There might be glaciers in Minneapolis. Who knows?

Interestingly, I found the story of "The receding glaciers at Glacier National Park" in press coverage at least as far back as 1998. Why bring it up again this week? Here is my theory. The mainstream media has been caught lying and exaggerating about global warming and the environment; in particular about the "pristine wilderness" and the wildlife in ANWR in Alaska that would be harmed by drilling for oil - and about how terrible it was for the U.S. to withdraw from the Kyoto deal. They searched the archives to find a story that "proves global warming" and could tug at the heart strings of viewers with beautiful pictures of another "pristine" natural wonder that was being ravaged by "industrial global warming."

So, they dusted off the Glacier National Park story to throw more sand in the face of our president who said that the Kyoto protocol is "fatally flawed" (which it is). Remember my admonition in the introduction to this column that most of what we read and see is shaped by a very few people in New York, D.C., and Hollywood. You need to be very skeptical of what you read and hear, including what I write here. Do your own research and see if you are getting the straight scoop. Like with doctors, seek a second or third opinion.

I did a search on google.com for "melting glaciers." Oh, Lord. It ruined my day. Back came a flood of articles about melting glaciers, global warming, rising oceans and the usual hot-button issues. Once again, you can find supposedly credible scientists who completely disagree on the subject. For example, from a NASA article came the following:

"Dec. 27, 2000 - New evidence suggests that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is retreating more slowly and contributing less to rising global sea levels than scientists once thought .... Our previous best estimates that the ice sheet was adding one millimeter per year to global sea level are almost certainly too high." (Quoting Robert Bindschadler, a glaciologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.)

From an article in "Scientific American": "For now, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, (at the UN), has taken the position that both the polar ice caps are most likely to remain constant in size throughout the next century. The panel's forecasts for sea-level rise range from 20 centimeters to almost one meter - a tolerable range of change that humanity has dealt with successfully in the past."

Of course, you will find hundreds of articles and "studies" that tell of the impending doom from global warming, melting ice, and rising seas. One quote from "Science and Environment Fortnightly," April 30, 1999, was fascinating:

"With the end of the Little Ice Age (1430 -1850), glaciers have been retreating with the rise in atmospheric temperatures. 'In the last 100 years alone, the global mean temperature has increased by about 0.5 to 1 degree Celsius .... and the rapid receding of glaciers, to a major extent, is a consequence of global warming,' says Jagdish Bahadur, a leading glaciologist from New Delhi."

A one degree rise in temperature in 100 years is melting glaciers? Mr. Bahadur, give me a break. Does that mean some glaciers melted when the temperature rose about 1/100th of a degree in any given year? There perhaps is another explanation. Please tell us what it is. Are volcanic eruptions heating the core of the earth? That's probably not the answer. In fact, the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 dropped Earth's temperature by one degree for two years. The eruption sent a cloud of aerosols into the air that partially blocked the rays of the sun. Did atomic testing overheat the atmosphere or the earth?

I will ask my ham-radio friends in Italy to keep good track of the temperature on their garden thermometers since Vesuvius has been erupting. That will be better information than some of the junk science we read. What role does El Nino play? Or La Nina? And what causes both of these? Is the melting the result of changes on the Sun (we know there is an 11-year-solar cycle that affects communications)? Give us some plausible explanation, other than a 1-degree rise in temperature in 100 years is melting glaciers.

Also note that the Little Ice Age ended in about 1850, around the time there were still 150 glaciers in Glacier National Park. The Little Ice Age was the cause of many of the glaciers existing around 1850. Was there a lot of "man-made pollution" in the 1850s from cars and industrial plants that started a trend to global warming? Think about that. The Model-T Ford was first produced in 1909. Apparently, it has been all downhill for our climate since then - according to the environmental alarmists.

Reading about the Little Ice Age is interesting. In one article in The Washington Post (see citation below), one paragraph jumped out at me:

"With each climate change, whether global or local, ecological communities shifted north or south or were disrupted .... Likewise, human cultures were uprooted and driven to more favorable locales, or people adapted by changing their technologies and behaviors."

In one of my earlier columns about global warming, I suggested that a warming trend was good news to those in Siberia (where my friend's apartment radiators blew apart from stress this cold winter) or Minneapolis (where I got frostbite walking to school). Also, it might be that God's plan was for Miami to become so hot that people would abandon it and leave it to the animals who were better adapted to the heat. Not as far fetched as I had supposed with my somewhat tongue-in-cheek remarks. We humans are a bit arrogant to think that everything will stay as we prefer it, and if changes are on the horizon, we can thwart those changes by human intervention.

There are highly-credible scientists who attribute about 95% of the changes in our atmosphere and global temperatures to volcanic eruptions, ocean currents, varying output from the sun, and solar radiation flares.

You can read a good article about the Little Ice Age - and the puzzle of climate change, at:

http://www.vehiclechoice.org/climate/cutler.html

Suggested Reading From Past Columns

Global warming and environmental debate:

"Chipping Away at the Global Warming and Environmental Alarmists," September 1, 2001
"John Stossel And ABC's 'Tampering With Nature,'" June 29, 2001
"The Kyoto Protocol & Global Warming - A Monumental Scam?" June 16, 2001
"Environmentalism For Dummies," April 7, 2001
"Environmentalism For Dummies - Part II," April 21, 2001
"Public Interest Groups With Sometimes Very Little Public Interest," May 12, 2001

Politics:

"Forget Liar & Adulterer - Cong. Gary Condit is Simply Stupid," September 1, 2001
"Government Waste and Fraud," August 18, 2001
"President Bush's Excellent Adventure," June 29, 2001
"The Bush Budget - Fighting Over 4% Growth Versus 8% Growth Is Nonsense," April 21, 2001
"Campaign Finance Reform - A Senatorial Catharsis - And National Snow Job," March 31, 2001
"Florida Secretary Of State Literally Begged Networks Not To Call Election Early," March 24, 2001
"The Ever-Expanding First Amendment," January 26, 2001
"Bush Administration Needs To Review The Mission Of Federal Law Enforcement," January 26, 2001
"New York, What Were You Thinking?" November 13, 2000 (Re: Hillary Clinton)
"Lessons Learned In Election 2000?" November 13, 2000
"How The Federal Government Corrupts The Constitution To Intrude Into Your Life," October 30, 2000

Prescription drugs being advertised on TV - abuses in the pharmaceutical industry - supplements:

"Baycol Cholesterol Drug Withdrawn From the Market," August 18, 2001
"The New Cholesterol Guidelines - Everybody Gets A Pill," July 7, 2001
"Bitter Pills To Swallow," June 2, 2001
"The Drug Companies Continue Their Assault On Your Pocketbook," May 19, 2001
"Herbal Remedies, Supplements, And Alternative Therapies," September 18, 2000
"Prescription for Disaster," September 11, 2000

Computers and Technology:

"LCD Flat Panel Displays & Dual Monitor Video Boards," August 18, 2001
"DishNetwork's Personal Video Recorder Dish Pro 501," July 28, 2001

Interesting Books to Read:

"Body of Secrets," by James Bamford, July 28, 2001 (About NSA)
"Your Body Clock," August 4, 2001

Health - General:

"Trans Fatty Acids - The Hidden Fat," August 4, 2001
"Your Body Clock," August 4, 2001

A case history of horrendous abuse by Federal law enforcement:

"FBI Sniper At Ruby Ridge My Be Tried For Manslaughter," June 9, 2001.

Late Night TV Cruel Humor, et al.:

"David Letterman Grovels For The Colombians," May 19, 2001
"Are Leno And Letterman Using The Same CD-ROM For Constructing Jokes?" May 12, 2001
"Late Night Comedians Struggle To Lampoon Bush," May 5, 2001
"Late-Night TV Sick Humor," August 28, 2000
"Late-Night TV Political Comedy," August 14, 2000

Crime, guns, gun-control:

"Eyewitness Testimony is Suspect," August 18, 2001
"The AMA Is Losing Its Way," June 29 2001

Telemarketing:

"Telemarketers, Caller-ID, et al," August 4, 2001
"Rid Yourself of Telemarketers," October 23, 2000

COPYRIGHT 2001 Richard C. Rhodes

You are welcome to quote sections from this page - or the whole page, as long as the source URL is included. Of course, I would be flattered if anyone linked to this page. It is very hard to be the writer, editor, fact checker, copy editor, and publisher of anything. So, I welcome corrections of fact, notes of misspelled words, and so on.

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