THE UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNSEL

WHO’S WATCHING THE STORE ?

RECENT SECURITY BREACHES AT THE WHITE HOUSE COMING ON THE HEELS OF

INCREASED AIR ASSAULTS IN IRAQ AND SYRIA, GOING AFTER THE

ISLAMIC STATE, PRESENT UNIQUE SECURITY CHALLENGES

TAGS: WHITE HOUSE SECURITY BREACHES, UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY,

NYPD, NYPD INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTER TERRORISM BUREAUS, DIPLOMATIC SECURITY,

FBI, CIA, DOD, DIS FAILURES,

(Monday September 22, 2014, Washington, DC) If there are any federal officials in the White House and the Secret Service who are concerned with the security of the President, his family, the White House itself and the continuity of government after two security breaches, they should come out from behind whatever bushes they are hiding.  The almost stupefying fact that there could be two serious lapses in security perpetrated by two individual men both within a 24 hour time span, should cause heads to roll and an immediate and thorough investigation and overhaul of the security protocols at the White House and its well-manicured grounds.    How these two illegal incursion onto some of the supposedly “most secured acres” in America leaves some serious questions hanging in sharp relief when held up against reality.  While each event was a different type of threat that they were able to transpire at the White House at all is deeply troubling as well it should be.  President Obama and his family were spending the weekend at the presidential retreat at Camp David and were obviously never in danger but did remark that he is “obviously concerned” that these two events happened.  For their part the Secret Service have announced a review of their existing policies, procedures and practices but many in the intelligence and law enforcement community are skeptical that the Secret Service can objectively conduct such a review.

NOW MORE THAN EVER

As expanded airstrikes have commenced this week with United states and a handful of allied countries targeting ISIL sites both in Iraq and across the border in Syria, intelligence professionals have been warning of an increased threat to our homeland by those sympathetic to the Islamic State (as ISIL now prefers to be called).  Two of our closest allies, The United Kingdom and Australia have each issued nationwide terrorist threat assessments based on intelligence they have received from multiple and corroborating sources.  The Islamic State has gained a prominence for their utter brutality, ethnic cleansing and their ability to control large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.  They control pipelines and refineries the proceeds from which are used to advance their military arsenal and cause.  Some in the international intelligence and counter terrorism community have repeatedly warned that the “Islamic State is like no other terrorist group we have ever seen before”.   One of the realities of the Islamic State that most troubles intelligence experts is that they have been able to recruit to their ranks young men and some women with
western” passports; the kind of passports that are unlikely to draw attention or increased scrutiny at an American airport.  While there is no way to accurately account for the number of westerners who have joined the cause, most conservative estimates place the number between 160 and 200 individuals and, perhaps, as many as 50 from the United States.

The Islamic State has been the first terrorist organization with a viable global reach to attract adherents and foreign fighters to their cause.  The major concern is that these westerners who have traveled to the war zones in Iraq and Syria might be able to return to their home countries with at least some rudimentary skills in bomb making.  Some believe that the training these westerners are receiving is far more advanced than crude bomb making and that they may be plotting and planning from abroad until they are dispatched back home to perpetrate a lethal mission.

Given this sobering assessment of the current fight against terrorism, it is even more jaw-dropping that a 42 year old man from Texas, an Iraq War veteran, Omar Luis Gonzalez, was able to scale the perimeter fence around the White House and gain entry into the residency before being tackled by uniformed officers of the Secret Service.  He was armed with a knife at the time of his arrest and a later search of his car uncovered 800 rounds of ammunition and y several types of heavy bladed weapons.  Mr. Gonzalez could have been packing an improvised explosive device or some other weapon that could have resulted in a serious loss of life, damage to the White House and world-wide embarrassment for our federal government, the Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies who share jurisdiction in Washington, DC.

THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME

Just two weeks ago we marked the tragic 13 year anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.  It was in the wake of that colossal debacle by our CIA, DIS, DOD, FBI, INS and the entire host of federal agencies, individually and collectively, that we realized all too clearly the depth of their ineptitude, dysfunction, and lack of cooperation.   
 
They, all of them, allowed 9-11-01 to happen.  For all the talk of how much safer we are today, we open the weekend newspaper and see that two intruders attempted to gain access to the White House.  Yes, Mr. Gonzalez did penetrate far beyond  the security perimeter and how he was able to manage that feat will be an important aspect of the after action reports and review.

The second individual intent on getting onto the White House grounds was a 19 year old New Jersey man named Kevin Carr.  He drove into the White House entryway at 15^th and E streets and removed to move his automobile.  The uniformed guards at that point of entry were able to diffuse the situation in short order.  Mr. Carr was unarmed and posed no serious threat at any time during the episode.  But both of these events beg the most serious of questions and, the American public will not get answers anytime soon.  Now that committee’s and subcommittees in Congress have promised to have a charade of hearings and political showmanship, it is safe to say we may never have a reasonable explanation for what happened here last weekend.

UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY

By noon time this Wednesday there will be 193 diplomatic delegations here including 140 heads of state. These world leaders including our President will gather at the UN for its annual General Assembly.  While providing security for this week long event has always been a challenge, a challenge that NYPD has met and perfected over decades, the chaos in the world makes this particular General Assembly that much more potentially volatile both in and outside the UN.  The usual hordes of demonstrators are expected and some of the “Occupy Wall Street” group has already assembled.  Yesterday, New York City played host to upwards of 400,000 marchers for environmental issues.  Despite the enormous, sprawling throng, there were fewer than 100 arrests and the march was generally peaceful.  Of course the UN attracts demonstrators from far afield and has always been considered a “top terrorist target” by the NYPD Intelligence and Counter Terrorism Bureau’s.  Monumental precautions are taken to protect the Assembly at the UN plaza as well as at the various Embassies and Consulates where the delegations will be housed for the duration when not in session.  This can be a logistical nightmare for everyone but this year the inconveniences might be even more stringent than in the past.  

THE COMMON DENOMINATOR

It is far too easy and usually ignorantly arrogant to complain about the small inconveniences cause the general public during the week of the General Assembly.  But, if New Yorker’s could put aside their own hassles and stop to recognize that the uppermost leadership of most of the countries on the earth are visiting our City to conduct business, the inconveniences, real and imagined, should shrivel up and blow away.  We New Yorkers know what it is like to sustain a terrorist attack and, if we all take a moment to see the threats various delegations bring with them to our City, we might not get so aggravated and feel so aggrieved.

If there was a singular lesson to be learned by our government and military after 9-11-01 it was that the broad oceans that define our coasts, that the vast distances that have always separated us from the turmoil of the wider world have no significance today.  The hallmark of asymmetrical warfare is for a lowly party of committed minds working diligently to bring death and destruction to our shores and, for most of these groups; “our shores” are defined by the coastal and inland targets contained within our Five Boroughs.

BITING THE BULLET

In many ways tonight is just another routine night for the men and women, the rank and file Officers who patrol out streets, subways, housing projects and all points in between.  They will deal on this night, be they assigned to the ass end of Brooklyn or the farthest reaches of The Bronx as they do every other night day in, day out , 365 days a year.  For many the events that will transpire tomorrow at the United Nations are just another ‘detail’ to make a few overtime bucks.  Some Cops will work barrier detail while others will provide conventional means of protection and security prepared for every and any contingency. 

There are precious few certainties in life particularly in a Cops life but one such certainty will nag on every Cop’s conscientiousness until this travelling road show ends and all the international players return to their homelands.  The specter of terrorism was forged in all of our minds on February 26, 1993 and September 11, 2001.  The world has not been and never will be the same as it was prior to those atrocities.  After the death and destruction perpetrated on OUR soil, in Lower Manhattan on a glorious September morning 13 years ago, the “game” has changed; the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been.

The citizens and high profile visitors who will go to sleep tonight in our City do so peacefully as far as their own mortality and is concerned.  Heads of State from the world over can rest comfortably and confident that the fine men and women of the NYPD stand as sentinels, as protective human shields between them and all those who’s designs are to do them harm. In a more better world, dare we not say a “perfect world”, everyone, be they diplomat or dishwasher, bus driver or emissary, would take comfort in the fact that they are protected and that men and women who’s domain is the night endeavor to keep our City safe, sane, and secure.

http://whnt.com/2014/09/21/new-video-iraq-war-veteran-arrested-after-jumping-white-house-fence/

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-secret-service-20140923,0,2213409.story

http://online.wsj.com/articles/white-house-fence-jumper-was-carrying-knife-1411307041

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/secret-service-launches-probe-white-house-security-breach-n208031

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/housingcomplex/2014/09/22/for-d-c-residents-white-house-security-breach-threatens-to-chip-away-at-their-city/

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/09/22/prosecutor-white-house-intruder-had-800-rounds-ammo-machete-in-car/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/22/white-house-intruder-ammunition_n_5863226.html

http://fox2now.com/2014/09/20/2nd-security-incident-at-white-house-in-2-days/

http://www.scpr.org/news/2014/09/22/46892/white-house-security-breach-intruder-had-800-round/

http://www.wjla.com/articles/2014/09/secret-service-considers-new-security-checkpoints-for-pedestrians-surrounding-white-house-107371.html

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/09/22/secret-service-considering-public-white-house-checkpoints-report-claims/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/09/22/35-breaches-of-white-house-security-mapped/

EBOLA, EMERGING THREATS AND “JET SET” PATHOGENS

BIOLOGICS SOUGHT BY TERRORISTS

New York City Office of Emergency Management: a multi-agency overseer coordinating

the efforts of the FDNY, NYPD and many other federal, regional and local agencies during

a major catastrophe.

TAGS: NYC OFFICE OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, MEDICAL SURVEILLENCE SYSTEM,

NYPD INTEL & COUNTER TERRORISM, FDNY, FDNY HAZ MAT, HAZ TECH,

EBOLA, EMERGING DISEASES, WEAPONIZING VIRUS AND BACTERIA,

BIOLOGICAL WARFARE, THREATS, RISKS,

NATIONAL SECURITY, NYC METRO SECURITY

(Wednesday September 17, 2014) In post September 11, 2001 America, virtually every aspect of society and its institutions ability to function properly has an enhanced importance.  Under the rubric of national security, there is not much that the government federally, by state and locally does not have some influence in or financial support invested.  One might be surprised to learn the breadth and scope of the national security umbrella and, in many respects it is difficult to find fault with this metrics.

Public education is important because in the past two years 24% of the young men and women seeking to enlist in the Armed Services could not even pass the Military Basic Aptitude Test.  So, essentially, 25% of the pool of those who want to serve haven’t the basic skill levels required.  Public health is very important for many reasons not the least of which relates to the circumstances above.  32% of military applicants were deemed unfit on medical/health grounds to serve with juvenile diabetes and obesity as impediments for that segment of the willing.  These facts seriously affect the fighting forces we are able to utilize and, if necessary, deploy.

There is another component in the public health arena that is of grave importance to the government, military planners and public health officials and that is the threat of a biological or chemical agent being effectively weaponized and unleashed among us here on our subways and buses, shopping malls and other locations with high population density. The nature of potential biological weapons is the most concerning.  A sophisticated biologic could be introduced somewhere among us in America and it might take days, weeks or even months until the public health community realized what they were seeing in their patients was something of an offensive weapon.  It is for this reason that every city in America has a medical surveillance system in place.  Hospitals, clinics and doctors are required to supply weekly statistics in some locations such as here in New York City and the Metropolitan area reporting what ailments they are seeing, in what concentration of patients and other clinical markers that may indicate a biologic has been unleashed on the unsuspecting public.  In computer modelling game scenarios and from advanced tracking algorithms, it has become obvious that a highly contagious bacterial or viral agent could remain latent for an elongated period of time before people began showing symptoms and would seek medical attention.  This provides a bacteria or virus with more than adequate lead time to spread.

New York City and our immediate Metro Area have one of the most robust medical tracking and surveillance capabilities in the world.  Given the significance of NYC to those seeking to attack us here, the density of our population, large far reaching commuter networks including Amtrak trains, long distance bus depots and, of course, three of the busiest airports in the country, NYC cannot afford to have anything less than the sophisticated tracking system that has been incrementally developed since 2001 and now, as an “up and running sentinel” stands as the premier system of its kind in America, perhaps, the world.

AMTRAK AND ANTHRAX

The “Acela Corridor” is the segment of the Amtrak network that travels in a mere 3 hours from New York City’s Penn Station to Union Station in Washington, DC.  Its non-stop express service runs several times daily with local trains interspersed in the schedule.  A “local” train makes several station stops in New Jersey, then on to Philadelphia, Baltimore and ultimately the District of Columbia.  In October 2001 just weeks after the 9-11 attacks, a highly sophisticated weaponized “aerosol powder” of anthrax was sent to several TV network personnel, members of the Senate and to a tabloid newspaper.  Each of the letters containing the potentially fatal powder was mailed from the same mailbox near Princeton, NJ; a point not far from several Amtrak stops.  Despite an enormous effort spanning years, the case of these mailings which claimed several lives has never been adequately explained or closed.  It is mentioned here more as a forgotten side note but also as an example of what one dedicated individual possessed of certain, specific scientific talents and knowledge can do if so motivated.  The nagging thought that still perplexes and causes sleepless nights among some of those deeply involved in the long, fruitless investigation has not dissipated.  The next time could be the “real thing”; not just an “attention getter” by a lone actor trying to prove a point as many have since dismissed the case.

EBOLA AND OTHER JET SET VIRUSES

There is no shortage of horrors in the world today.  Bloody, barbaric wars rage ceaselessly, humanitarian crisis of almost incalculable magnitude, and the ever present scourge of terrorism requires constant vigilance.  As if all these “man-made” killing fields, death, and catastrophe were not enough to try to engage in some way for positive, or at least less brutal resolutions, one of the most primitive forms of life on the planet, a virus, namely – Ebola – has once again emerged from the dark, damp jungles of western Africa.  Ebola is one of a viral family known as “hemorrhagic fevers” because the untreated course of the disease will always be some systemic shutdown due to the massive internal and external hemorrhaging that are likely its florid defining end stage.  The mortality rate for Ebola patients is between 50 to 90% making it among the most lethal viral infections known to man.

American Doctor Kent Brantly, contracted Ebola while treating infected patients in Liberia this past July.  His recovery was in some significant ways remarkable but he had the advantage of immediate treatment after he was brought back to the United States and administered an experimental treatment protocol.  In his testimony before a senate sub-committee yesterday, he said of this on-going outbreak, “Many have used the analogy of a fire burning out of control to describe this unprecedented Ebola outbreak. Indeed it is a fire-a fire straight from the pit of hell. We cannot fool ourselves into thinking that the vast moat of the Atlantic Ocean will keep the flames away from our shores. Instead, we must mobilize the resources needed to keep entire nations from being reduced to ashes”.  While it may indeed be among the most hellish of disease processes, it came not from Satan’s lair but from local host reservoirs in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone primarily, and isolated pockets in Nigeria, and Senegal.  It being a blood-borne illness to get the infection one must come in direct contact with the body fluids of an infected human or other primate. One species of bat is known to carry the virus without being infected.  In the first wave of this outbreak, “Patient X”, the epidemiological designation of the “first patient” may have been a two year old boy who came into contact with bloody fluids from an infected animal. 

  

THE NATURE OF A VIRUS

Viruses, as far as pathogens are concerned, are very different from bacteria, fungi, and parasites.  They are small collections of amino acid produced proteins assembled not by cellular DNA material but rather by RNA, the pseudo-negative template of raw DNA.  They cannot live by any definition of the word except in a host’s cell.  They insinuate their way into cells, use that cells genetic machinery to replicate themselves until they are of sufficient quantity to fully crowd that cell to the breaking point when all those untold copies of that virus are released into the host blood stream.  This method of subatomic machination makes viral borne illnesses among the most difficult for medical science to treat.

Viruses can be as difficult to identify due to the fact that they remain hidden as they replicate in the host cells.  Each cell they infect becomes a virtual clandestine virus factory and will not be vacated until the virus, now exponentially multiplied, vacates the now useless host cell.  But, as with other pathogens, there is a wide variety of viruses.  They range in severity from the “common cold” causing rhinovirus, up through the spectrum of mortality to the hemorrhagic viruses including Lassa fever, Dengue fever and Ebola. 

Viruses’ can also present a particular diagnostic challenge.  While replicating in the host cells, the outer membrane of those infected cells serve as “good cover” for the virus factory just beyond that thin membrane.  But, it is that membrane and its receptors and other immune system gadgetry that is more than adequate to protect the immune system from any suspicious intracellular activity.  As in Ebola, this “latency” period, the time between acquiring the infection until the onset of the initial symptoms can be as long as three weeks.  With a three week head start, once symptoms are obvious the disease process is already well established and replicating at an exponential rate.  The virus has the upper hand in this scenario and typically always does.

EMERGING VIRUSES

Ebola was first identified in 1976.  At that time in the years shortly thereafter, several other never before seen pathogens were responsible for outbreaks primarily in west sub-Saharan Africa.  Some of these pathogens were found to be zoonotic; they had originated in an animal population – usually a member of the ape family – and tended to be clustered along the lines where new towns and villages were suddenly encroaching on the local ecosystem in a negative manner.  These pathogens have probably been present in their natural hosts for millennia; it was only as human industry such as lumber and mining companies began altering dramatically these ecosystems; fragile, complex ecosystems that had not changed for centuries.  Settlements and towns were constructed to house the lumbermen and miners, new routes of overland travel, an unprecedented spike in prostitution along these new trade routes, and the recipe for disaster was in place for whatever “opportunistic” disease happened to emerge first.

One of the most frightening developments in virology is that some emerging viruses, through the biological process of natural selection and subsequent mutation, now contain human and mammalian genetic characteristics.  These mutations are of particular concern because they further the means of the virus towards its ultimate ends; death to as many healthy host cells as possible while leaving at least some of the host cells available for further replication of the virus.  With a disease as lethal as Ebola, a supply of rip for the infecting hosts is a necessity.  If it kills all available hosts in too rapid a time it will literally burn itself out.  Such “burning out” of the virus population in a community or settlement is one of the fundamentals of modern epidemiology.

Ebola as it is in nature is not a likely choice for bio-terrorism; it is too fragile outside its host and native environs and requires “blood to blood” contact for transmissibility.  But it does represent the potential of what a similarly lethal pathogen could do to a wide population if deployed.    There is also the specter of what epidemiologists have called the “Jet Set” biologics such as a genetically altered strain of an existing scourge or of an old predator such as Small Pox.  The theory is that a person or persons infects themselves with a fatal pathogen, hops on a plane from where ever they are with a ticket for the United States.  If properly timed that terrorist could wander the subway system here for days if not weeks before eventually taking ill and succumbing to the disease but he could have infected millions in that short time. 

 USAMRIID:  U.S. ARMY MEDICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE of INFECTIOUS DISEASES

The bucolic campus setting here in Frederick, Maryland belies the history of this institute as well as what was once its core mission.  The United States officially got out of the “bio-weapons” age decades ago after some very dark episodes.  Today, with a new mission and purpose its  easy to forget that this entire enterprise was once in the business of creating death on a horrific scale.  Now days, it enjoys a loftier pursuit. We spoke with a physician here to gain a perspective on the potential of a biological attack. A conversation with him rapidly becomes an interesting game of “fill in the blanks”.  He is easy and open in tone but will only go so far when asked direct questions about his work.  For the sake of this discussion we will refer to him as Dr. Jones, a native of table-top flat Kansas holding both MD and PhD degrees.  Dr. Jones admits that USAMRIID has divisions devoted solely to combating any among the jet set viruses. He explains the term jet set as, “In our interconnected world today, with many largely open international borders, it is literally possible that a man living in Senegal today could be working in your local McDonald's next month.  He brings with him from his homeland pathogens native to that part of the world which may cause sickness to others who are here.  Imagine a person who undertook such a mission purposely, with the intent of coming to the United States already infected with some exotic bug.  That one person, that “Patient X” would be the terrorist version of Typhoid Mary.  It is a very sobering thought.”

TERRORISTS SEEKING BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

It is no secret in or out of government, the intelligence community and law enforcement agencies that terrorist groups from al Qaeda to ISIS have long expressed interest in the development and ultimate deployment of biological weapons.  Terrorist groups that were active as far back as the 1960’s sought all manner of biological and chemicals for weaponization.  It has largely been only through luck and the difficulty terrorist cells have had in weaponizing certain agents that we have not seen a full-scale biological attack since World War II.  It certainly has not been from a failure towards that goal on their part.  It is well known and documented that al Qaeda sought to develop biological weapons and had even progressed to the testing phase by using dogs as the test subjects.  For a myriad of technological problems, they were never able to develop a delivery system for any non-conventional agent.

Certainly, on September 11, 2001, one of the primary questions on many minds after the two planes had struck the Twin Towers was if there were biological or chemical weapons that had been secreted on board those massive jet airliners.   Even on that eye opening morning the issue of “unconventional warfare” including biologics and chemicals was not an absurd assumption.  So seriously was it taken that many government agencies including the EPA began monitoring the air in and around the World Trade Center site.  (Unfortunately for many who suffer and die today the EPA did not perform sufficient testing on the quality of the air being inhaled by rescue and recovery workers and residents in the adjacent and immediate neighborhoods.  That’s a discussion for another day.)

As daunting as the challenges are pertaining to the Ebola outbreak that seems to be spreading at a rate initially thought not possible, President Obama announced that he will deploy 3000 US troops in an effort to “contain and control” the lethal spread as well as provide treatment beds, facilities, personnel protective equipment for care givers and forces for security management, that are necessary for our national security.  The spread of this hemorrhagic death threatens to destabilize some of the most already unstable countries on the African continent.  It is also a humanitarian effort aimed at preventing mass migrations by the families of the sick, dying and dead.  As is always the case when chaos reigns some modicum of control must be enforced.

IN HARM’S WAY

One of the most degrading, depersonalizing and over used terms in Washington today is “boots on the ground”.  The term itself makes light of our various military commitments and the fact that we are actually deploying troops – young men and women – into various battle theaters or areas of highest risk.  What each deployment means essentially, even after all the political rhetoric and haggling is that we, our Commander in Chief, with or without a do nothing Congress is placing the lives of American servicemen and women in harm’s way.  Sometimes the old “boots on the ground” metaphor is meant to soften the blow; at other times it is meant to lend an air of “safety”, or “low threat” to our troops and their actual mission.

President Obama will send his 3000 troops, primarily medical personnel, into the African nations most afflicted by this latest outbreak of a deadly virus.  However, despite the humanitarian gloss to the mission lurk unforeseen risks, the inevitable “laws of unintended consequences” and how they have the distinct tendency to upset even the best laid plans. Our personnel will not be entering a welcoming environment no matter how well intended their mission is designed.  It would be beyond naive to believe that our medical, logistical and security presence in those unfriendly, unstable nation/states will be perceived by all on the ground as a purely “gesture of goodwill”.  This mission is as wrought with the potential for unforeseen negative blow-back as has been every mission we’ve undertaken in the past decade.  The absence of some formation of at least a “semi-united African face” on our endeavor may backfire to a degree not yet recognized nor calculated.  We need the African allied nations with resources to participate in this mission or it is, sadly, doomed to fail.  We have experienced interventional failures far too many times since 9-11-01 and we do not need a new front of hostility to be opened in West Africa.

CONSTANT VIGILANCE

The watchwords of our post 9-11 America cannot be repeated often enough.  Constant vigilance must be our stance regardless of the circumstances on the ground where ever we have troops deployed.  The world is a small place; we learned that the hard way back in 2001 when not many of us could pin point Afghanistan on a map.  We have learned a great deal over the course of the intervening years.  Some lessons were learned harder than others; some are still sinking in but, on balance, we are more secure today in very many ways than we were 13 years ago last Thursday.

But, we can never underestimate the motivation, mindless dedication and absolute commitment of our adversaries. We fight people who will go to any lengths, who will gladly sacrifice their own lives for the cause to which they are inextricably bound.  Indeed our world is as small a place as it has ever been and our proximity to the zealots and extremists bent on inflicting death and destruction here is as close as the next apartment, mosque or café.  This reality needs to be what drives us, our foreign policy and our policies and practices at home.

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/guinea/qa.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/16/ebola-by-the-numbers_n_5818834.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_disease

http://online.wsj.com/articles/obama-chances-of-ebola-outbreak-in-u-s-extremely-low-1410898428

http://www.latimes.com/world/africa/la-fg-africa-liberia-ebola-deaths-20140916-story.html

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/16/ebola-could-grow-larger/15734723/

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/spb/mnpages/dispages/vhf.htm

http://www.newsweek.com/algorithm-spotted-ebola-outbreak-9-days-who-announced-it-26387

 Copyright The Brooding Cynyx 2014 © All Rights Reserved

9/11/2001 AND THE FOREVER YOUNG

SO MUCH TAKEN; SO MUCH GIVEN

FOR US FORGETTING IS NOT AN OPTION

AND THAT IS HOW IT SHOULD BE

TAGS: SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 TERRORIST ATTACKS,

WORLD TRADE CENTER TWIN TOWERS – NYC,

UNNATURAL DEATH, THE PASSAGE OF TIME,

REMEMBERANCE, TRIBUTE TO THOSE TAKEN,

GRATITUDE FOR WHAT WAS GIVEN,

FDNY, PAPD, NYPD

(Thursday September 11, 2014. Battery Park, NYC)  The familiar annual rituals were conducted with all due respect and solemnity earlier at the World Trade Center Plaza.  Names of those who perished in the attacks here in New York City on February 26, 1993 and September 11, 2001 in the World Trade Center Twin Towers were read by members of their families as were the names  of those who died 13 years ago today at the Pentagon in Washington, DC and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.  The haunting sounds of bagpipes and the crystalline trumpet notes of Taps provided an appropriately moody soundtrack before and after the reading of the names.  The polished fire bell was struck, moments of significance observed in silence, and within hours the bulk of those assembled had departed to home, their lives and families no freer of remorse and grief than they were when they left home this morning but certainly a little consoled for having mourned among others whose experiences they shared.  As public an event as 9-11-2001 was, it was a deeply personal day for New Yorkers and we wear a significantly more complex vest of emotions connected with what occurred on that day, the days, weeks and months immediately after and right up until today.

Being this close to New York harbor, the briny scent of the sea is prominent as the breeze from the northwest hustles the air along.  There is something primitive in that scent; it is registered in the innermost structures of the human brain.  It seems to fit the mood this part of town evokes on days all year round but especially on a day such as this.  It is at this most southern tip of the island of Manhattan that we meet the sea.  It is the scent of movement, of arrivals and departures, of the cyclicality of the tides; tides as another marker of time’s passage. There is a comfort, though, given by the ebb and flow of the endless tides. It is on the tides that both promise and hope ride; the undercurrents and eddies of morbid and morose concentration need not warrant concern. Today, here, we feel the raw sense of loss as acutely as we did 13 years ago today.  We recall who we lost and value who we still have. 

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Death, in all its guises is never really expected.  Sure, death has a smoother texture when it takes an elderly parent or grandparent; a satiny gracefulness when it comes as the ultimate relief from a long, protracted or debilitating and degenerative disease process.  We accept death as the price of growing old and the growing part of that equation is typically thought of one made over the course of decades.  We grow up, some marry, have children of their own and so it goes.  The tempo of life is kept by heart beats and ticks on the clocks.  Calendar pages flip, seasons change, and it is only after a mad dash of years has somehow slipped by like an eel visible through the murky waters as a shadow just out of reach below the surface calm, that we realize just how fast it all goes.

At some point for most, our age and lifetime become a simple arithmetic equation requiring nothing more than the ability to add and subtract.  When we reach an age where we fully appreciate that we are closer to the end than we are to the beginning, is when the cruelty and sadness of time’s inexorable march takes hold.  It may only be during fleeting, idle moments as we go about that which constitutes our daily life that the equation makes itself known like a fly landing on your ear, an annoyance to be swatted away.  Sure, we can see it, the linear certitude of time in the mirror, on the faces and bodies of the children we held and nurtured as newborns now grown, gone on, and occupied with their own particulars. 

Modern medical science has expanded the length and quality of our lives.  Perhaps, just for this simple equation, the age of 90 is the endpoint.  Certainly, in this case a person who celebrates their 50^th or 55^th birthday has indeed begun the downward trek towards the end.  And, as time passes while neighbors and coworkers, cousins and siblings begin to die, we become, even just in those moments, more cognizant of our mortality; the inevitability of our own demise.

 

We may begin to give serious thought to our pending death and “make arrangements”; write an advanced directive or living will.  We define what conditions we believe we would not want to live under.  We might make it known that we do not to be kept “alive” if our heartbeats and respirations are more a product of Con Ed than our own physiology.  Certainly, no one wants to exist in a chronic comatose state.  When neurological function can no longer be detected by monitors, whoever lived in that body is no longer present: brain death is actual death and there is no coming back once that chasm has been traversed.

Perhaps it is the simple arithmetic of so much of the unnatural death on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, that is the saddest.  The overwhelming majority of those innocents who lost their lives that day were young, vital, active, engaged and certainly not expected to die when they awoke that morning to catch a plane or go to work.  The thousands of smiling faces on makeshift posters that sprung up all over New York City, the sidewalk memorials that seemed to appear magically overnight, depicted young, vibrant people.  The faces of the Members of Service of the FDNY all so healthy and hearty looking; the NYPD and PAPD Officers all still on the job that fateful morning with hopes and dreams of retirement days still years off in the far distance.  Yes, what was taken from us that day was the best of us.  Our youth taken in what had been up until that gorgeous September morning the most unspeakable, unimaginable way, left those who remained to forever feel the weight of that loss just as the amputee still feels the pain in a limb long since removed.

Death is always painful, always difficult but when death strikes like an act of the Old Testament God in a fury of nature it delivers an additional shock.  Not that the deaths of this day 13 years ago were an act of God in any way, shape or form; they were an act of no one’s god, they were the acts of evil in its most pure, unvarnished, methodical delivery.  Yes, it was a shock, a shock like none of us had ever heard, seen, felt, smelled, and tried to comprehend in the moment. 

The stark dichotomies of that morning in Lower Manhattan lent the atrocity an even crueler hellishness.  That amazingly clear, cloudless, azure New York City September sky suddenly marred by angry clouds of billowing, black smoke, orange flames raging from windows as helpless souls crowded at broken out windows seeking relief, redemption or just another gulp of air.  Likely all of them above those fires realized on some level that rescue was remote.  Conversely, the Firemen  who ran up those hundreds and hundreds of stairs ascending in the narrow stairwell passing the descending from above never gave up on the belief that rescue was imminent.  That was what they did and why they were there.  There were countless acts of sacrifice and humanity by people who survived inside and some of those who escaped that will never be known except by those particular people.  There were incalculable acts of heroism and balls; of grit, determination and the fight for life. Acts of selflessness and grace that only the Lord above bore witness to.  Yes, there was much given on that day and on an anniversary such as today it is easy to overlook all that was given to strangers by strangers, to coworkers from coworkers, from FDNY, PAPD and NYPD to the people and public they served. 

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Having borne witness firsthand, having shouldered the agony and sorrow of loss there is also the responsibility to honor it but not be hindered by it.  Milestones have turned to millstones for thousands of families across New York City and the metropolitan area as well as the wider world.  There were rites of passage and celebrations where a parent had been prominently absent.  There were graduations and weddings, vows taken and exchanged without one relative or friend who’d been meant to share those moments but could not.  September 11, 2001.  9/11/01; that date, those numbers, our memories and thoughts so defined by three simple digits 9 1 1. 

Even though thoughts and memories of that day and the days after are carried deeply inside each of us in a personal and private way, protected from tampering, and resistant to fading, this one day, this anniversary is an occasion to gather and mourn collectively and celebrate the lives of those who we lost. 

Sadly we remember them as they were that day, when they left home for work, the last time we saw them.  After 13 years having passed we have aged but they remain the age they were when they were taken from us.  There are empty photo albums and a dearth of family portraits and vacations pics.  It took some time for any semblance of normalcy to be returned to our lives.  And among those who serve, the Job has never been quite the same.  It still retains all its old luster but has been tempered in the flames and fires forged in our memories of mortality and circumstance.

The sun will set on this September 11^th just as it has every year since that Tuesday the 11^th of September in 2001 and with its setting, night will take over and this particular day of recognition, grieving, mourning and commemoration will conclude at midnight when the 11^th bleeds into the 12^th.  And so it goes, on and on. 

http://nypost.com/2014/09/10/generation-911-growing-up-in-the-shadow-of-the-towers/

http://www.ny1.com/content/news/215315/city--nation-mark-13-years-since-september-11th-attacks/

http://gothamist.com/2014/09/11/nyc_commemorates_13th_anniversary_o.php

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/september-11-anniversary/

http://nypost.com/2014/09/11/911-family-members-honor-loved-ones-in-song-and-in-charity/

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