FBI in town, feel safe already!!

The funny thing about the FBI showing up in town en masse is that just the other day, shortly after I watched 9-11 tribute videos for an entire weekend, I commented to my best friend that if they detonated a dirty bomb at the site of the cash register building, we would be killed, too.

They (the FBI et al) followed some man from New York to here. You can see why they would want to detonate a dirty bomb in Denver: You take out the cash register building (above), the capitol (below right), Denver's World Trade Center complex (see maps below), the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception (right and below) -- all in one swoop. Which would mean my best friend and I would be similarly flattened, which is why I am happy there are a million FBI dudes in town these last few days. (My schedule, too, at work would mean that I would probably be home if they struck at the time they struck first on 9-11.)

I am posting some pictures just to show the neighborhood in the good ole days, but I'm also posting a couple maps so you get my point about how close my residence at 1540 Logan St. is to the cash register building. You can see the capitol from where I live. (The basilica is at 1530 as the one map shows. For news buffs, the cash register building, if I am not mistaken, is where the Father's Day massacre took place. I was around here at the time.) The capitol is not two blocks -- the one photo of the capitol building is the view from the end of my block. (I'm in the middle of the block at 1540). So, if you think I am exaggerating, you can see for yourself.

I just think about that guy that was on the phone with the 911 dispatcher when the building started coming down. (Richard? Cosgrove.) Some sick person posted a 9-11 joke about it. It said: What was the last thing to go through his head? (The answer to the joke is "the ceiling.")

But when you think about it, really, those terrorists and those who jumped to flee the fire were killed instantly while you gotta, if you are like me, be worrying about the guy who was on the phone when he says OH GOD! Like I pray to God with all my heart that something did go through his head or that he was knocked out really fast so he did not have to suffer.

Imagine being in that building when it collapsed. Those poor souls. Or being the last one to jump from that group of about 13 folks you always see. Watching everyone go. I just asked Rick about it. I said: Imagine that terror, being the last one. And he comforted me by saying that they went together, that no one would leave anyone and that they probably went fairly quickly because people went when the flames were on them but not before. Like they would have thought someone was coming up for them, and we all know that, in fact, firefighters were coming up for them.

Those poor souls. Those poor souls. That's all we have the power to say. Those poor souls.

I can, on some intellectual level, understand that the terrorists saw 9-11 as the only way they, being David, could wage war on us, Goliath, but I can't fathom that anyone who witnessed it, witnessed the suffering as even we who were not there have because of the mass media -- I cannot fathom how anyone would think that was OK to do, that killing innocent civilians was rational and something to go ahead and proceed with.

I guess they feel that we do the same, and we have, I know, because I understand what we did in places like Hamburg and how we have kicked down a lot of doors around the globe and what we did in Iran, etc. In Hamburg, it was us firebombing the place and whatnot. A civilian city, if I know my history. In other places, it was much more covert but still evil, if I can say that.

(A book that changed my life and my view on American foreign policy forever is the book Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer of The New York Times. It details every coup over the last 100 years or more. Read Overthrow if you have any doubts about whether we have been terrorists in our own rite over the decades. You'll feel ashamed, trust me. Total carnage. And it isn't our soldiers and our Marines. In Overthrow, almost every war we cause is thanks to the CIA and the White House.)

So I can see how we are perceived. How we take a lot of lives and never see the pictures and note the suffering.

But that doesn't really change 9-11.

That doesn't really change the fact that those people died such horrible, horrifying deaths. Was that really necessary? Was that really the ONLY way? And you KNOW it is not. You've got Gandhi and even Martin Luther King Jr. and even the sit-in folks. Surely the terrorists, or freedom fights, could have done something to make their point known if we're their evil empire. But without all the carnage. Without that guy saying OH GOD! while the building collapses and he and the two people with him and so many more fall with it.

Can you imagine what those folks went through? They knew what was up. They knew they were going to die AND IT WAS FUCKING HORRIBLE. And FOR WHAT?? Are things better for anyone right now? Are things better in Afghanistan?

To end on a nice note: The wonderful historic photos of my neighborhood at Colfax and Logan streets are courtesy the Denver Public Library Western History Department. (GO LIBRARIES!) The maps are "borrowed" from Google Earth and Google Maps. Click on the maps if you don't believe me about the proximity of me to downtown and to the capitol building. I'm a few short blocks. A dirty bomb would take out my building, if I understand dirty bombs correctly. (Please do correct me if I am wrong. Maybe they are smaller than I am picturing. I am picturing a small nuclear bomb. Like that would flatten all of downtown, I'm thinking. But you can correct me, too. I'm all about information. The correct information!) Also click on the photos to see some very nice old images. There were some I did not use. One showed the corner of 16th Avenue and Logan Street. A guy was crossing on one of those ancient bicycles. It was very cool. Imagine how fit we all were at the time!

God Bless America, Denver and the FBI!!

UPDATE (Thursday evening): I decided to use the photo I was talking about with the guy riding his bike past the mansion at the northeast corner of 16th Avenue and Logan Street. It is called the William Garrett Fisher mansion. I just love the thought of this guy riding past on his weird old bike that was probably a luxury at the time. BTW if you noticed something different in this posting: I'm toying with the html and adding more buffer, via the margins, around the pix. Why are the margins at times in pixels and at times in points? What do you think of 10pt margins? Too much? I'll keep playing, but if anyone can tell me why pixels and why points, I'd be one happy human.