WEEKLY WHINE

2001

History tells us that the year 1937 was not a good one for the planet Earth. Japan invaded China. In Germany, concentration camps were already operating.

Tom Hanks, "From the Earth to the Moon"

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BEFORE

The year began, like so many others do, with mixed signals. The Federal Reserve Board lowered the federal funds rate half a percentage point on THU 04 JAN 2001, from 6.5% to 6.0%. This turned out to be only the beginning: by the end of AUG 2001, the federal funds rate would be at 3.5%, with no signs that it would stay there.

By that time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had fallen to 9,949.75, down 6.5% from the start of the year. It was making its second sub-10,000 excursion of the year; the Nasdaq composite index had been even more uninspiring, down 21.2% to 1,805.43. It was reaching levels not seen since before the technology bubble began inflating in 1998.

It's probably fair to say that the American economy reached a recession in MAR 2001, joining many other global powers. Japan's economy has been wounded for several years, but in the first half of the year, layoffs at large corporations combined with near-zero interest rates sent investors scurrying elsewhere.

MAR 2001 saw the descent and reentry of the pride of Russia's space program, the space station Mir. It was built to last five years - it orbited for fifteen. The American space agency, NASA, had been pressuring Russia to drop its commitment to the station, which had been the source of nearly all on orbit experience that has helped make the International Space Station successful. "Thanks for teaching us how to live in space. Now get your station out of the way."

Dennis Tito had been scheduled to be one of the last three cosmonauts to visit Mir. Once the decision to deorbit the station was made, Russia knew that Tito, who'd already paid US$20,000,000 for his ticket into space, would have to go somewhere. So he was offered a position on a Soyuz ferry crew to the International Space Station. NASA suddenly became all bitchy about this, saying that having a tourist on the station would be a liability, if not a danger. Nonetheless, observers worldwide saw Tito's flight as the green light for space tourism. Currently Mark Shuttleworth is due to fly early next year, and a number of other rich people are rumoured to be in line for their trip to space.

On THU 24 MAY 2001, US Senator James Jeffords of Vermont made it known that he would ditch the Republican party, saying that the GOP leadership had become so conservative that it was freezing out the moderates. Jeffords became the only independent in the Senate, giving the Democrats a 50-49 advantage and installing Sen Tom Daschle [D/SD] as Majority Leader. He officially made the switch on MON 04 JUN 2001, just after US President George W Bush signed his US$1,350,000,000,000 tax cut.

As this was going on, Slobodan Milosevic was being held in Yugoslavia, charged with crimes against humanity during his ten years in office as the president of that nation. Shortly after he had taken office in 1989, he decided to delete the autonomy of the Kosovo province, a region comprised mainly of ethnic Albanians. Yugoslavia's mounting tide toward Serbian control prompted several republics to declare independence. Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina all broke off, prompting Milosevic to send in Serbian troops into Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Their job: defend Serbian communities. The "ethnic cleansing" tag was quickly affixed to the conflict by worldwide observers.

Amongst the worst of the war was the four year siege of Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ethnic Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina fought alongside Milosevic's troops from Serbia, pummelling the city that had hosted the Winter Olympics a decade previously. In 1995, what remained of Yugoslavia signed the Dayton Peace Agreement with Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, bringing a formal end to the war.

But in 1998, Milosevic, seeing his popularity decline, started another war, this in Kosovo. At this point the international community had lost its patience, and NATO started a campaign of bombings in Yugoslavia. Nearly three months of strikes had begun to turn public sentiment against Milosevic, blamed for effectively painting an immense bullseye focussed on Belgrade. A dramatic confrontation on TUE 05 OCT 1999, the day of a presidential runoff election, saw hundreds of thousands of Yugoslavians travelling in large convoys, all to the capital. Milosevic's security forces, handed the job of keeping order, refused to crush the rebellion. Vojislav Kostunica emerged from the election victorious.

Milosevic had been arrested and imprisoned in Yugoslavia on MON 02 APR 2001, and nearly three months later, he was taken to The Hague, Netherlands. The International War Crimes Tribunal charged him with crimes against humanity, allegations that had their foundations in the Kosovo war. Several locations revealed evidence of civilian casualties, even executions.

On MON 10 SEP 2001, the DJIA finished down .34 at 9,605.51, and the Nasdaq increased 7.68 to 1,695.38. The Denver Broncos defeated the New York Giants 31-20 in the opening of a new stadium in Denver.

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A bloody civil war was escalating in Spain, and in the United States, President Roosevelt had cause to say that one third of his people were ill housed, ill clad, and ill nourished.

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DURING

TUE 11 SEP 2001. 08:43 EDT. Two F-15s take off from Otis Air National Guard Base, Falmouth, MA, USA. The Federal Aviation Administration has notified the North American Aerospace Defense Command that two commercial airliners, American Airlines flight 11 and United Airlines flight 175, have been hijacked.

08:48 EDT. The business day is about to begin as AA flight 11 strikes One World Trade Center, New York City, NY. Within moments, all major television stations around the world are showing live footage of the fires in the north tower.

09:03 EDT. This is not a drill: UA flight 175 strikes Two World Trade Center. Countless viewers around the world see the devastating fireball, firsthand, live. The world now knows that a deliberate attack on the United States is under way. What the world does not know is whether it is nearly over.

09:10 EDT. US President George W Bush is reading to children in a Florida classroom. Chief of staff Andrew Card enters and whispers into the president's ear. Bush excuses himself from the classroom.

09:21 EDT. All bridges and tunnels in the New York area are closed.

09:30 EDT. George W Bush makes an announcement. "We have had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country." Meanwhile, firefighters and rescue squads are entering the Twin Towers, helping people evacuate, trying to reach the blazing upper floors, anything. The New York Stock Exchange's opening bell, which was to ring at this time, is silent.

09:40 EDT. AA flight 77 strikes the Pentagon, across the Potomac River from Washington, DC. Jet fighters are authorised, by order from the president, to shoot down any aircraft that threatens Washington.

09:45 EDT. The White House and Capitol are evacuated.

09:50 EDT. All commercial flights are grounded, and all airports are closed.

09:57 EDT. George W Bush leaves Florida on Air Force One.

09:58 EDT. An emergency dispatcher receives a call from UA flight 93, a passenger reporting that the plane has been hijacked. A number of passengers, telephoning relatives, discover what happened to the three other hijacked airplanes. They tell their families that they will fight the terrorists.

10:03 EDT. UA flight 93 crashes in southwestern Pennsylvania, 128 km southeast of Pittsburgh.

10:05 EDT. Two World Trade Center, the second tower struck, collapses. The plume of smoke, extending a hundred kilometres from the site, is joined by a cloud of dust that surrounds lower Manhattan Island.

10:13 EDT. The United Nations building in Manhattan is evacuated.

10:29 EDT. The inevitable can be delayed no further: One World Trade Center collapses. The devastation at the site is unimaginable but hidden from view by the dust.

10:30 EDT. The International Space Station passes over the East Coast of the United States. Black smoke is clearly visible to the station's three crewmembers, Commander Frank Culbertson and Flight Engineers Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Tyurin. Later in the day, Culbertson will write, "It all looked incredible from two to three hundred miles away. I can't imagine the tragic scenes on the ground."

11:02 EDT. New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani orders an evacuation of Manhattan south of Canal Street, recommending that all New Yorkers remain at home.

12:39 EDT. George W Bush speaks, having travelled from Florida to Barksdale Air Force Base, LA. He announces that US troops around the world are in the highest state of alert and adds, "Make no mistake, the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts."

13:27 EDT. Washington, DC mayor Anthony Williams declares a state of emergency.

13:44 EDT. The Pentagon sends word that two aircraft carriers, the USS George Washington and the USS John F Kennedy, are being deployed from the US Naval Station, Norfolk, VA to defend New York. Five other warships are also deployed along the East Coast.

13:48 EDT. Air Force One takes off from Barksdale Air Force Base to an undisclosed location, with George W Bush aboard.

14:49 EDT. Rudy Giuliani says that it will take time to tabulate the death toll, and that when it is known, "It will be more than any of us can bear."

16:06 EDT. California governor Gray Davis sends urban search and rescue teams to New York City.

16:10 EDT. Reports say that fires are burning in Seven World Trade Center, across Vesey Street from the main World Trade Center complex.

16:30 EDT. George W Bush leaves Offutt Air Force Base, NE, where he conducted a conference call with the National Security Council, for Washington, DC.

17:20 EDT. Seven World Trade Center, long since evacuated, collapses. Only two buildings of the World Trade Center complex, buildings Four and Six, remain standing, though they have suffered heavy damage.

18:10 EDT. Rudy Giuliani advises New Yorkers to stay home the following day if possible.

18:54 EDT. George W Bush returns to the White House, with his address to the nation scheduled at 20:30 EDT.

19:45 EDT. According to the New York Police Department, at least 78 police officers and an unknown number of firefighters are missing.

20:30 EDT. George W Bush addresses the United States. "The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness and a quiet, unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed.... We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them."

21:57 EDT. According to Rudy Giuliani, rescue workers remain hopeful that survivors will be found underneath the rubble. The west side of Manhattan is without electricity, but the Health Department's tests show that there are no toxic chemical agents in the air.

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And yet, in 1937, Picasso painted his masterpiece Guernica. John Steinbeck published Of Mice and Men, and the Golden Gate Bridge was opened. 1937, then, was not the cataclysmic year of the century; there would be others...

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AFTER

Oddly, a number of aspects of the TUE 11 SEP 2001 story that will be remembered deal with sports. The three major professional sports leagues in the US that were active at the time, Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and Major League Soccer, were all forced to make decisions that would affect the entire country. Baseball's games for that day and the following day were cancelled immediately.

Each day for the remainder of the week, the possibility of reopening New York's three stock exchanges was raised, only to be lowered again come nightfall. The exchanges were simply located too close to Ground Zero. By THU 13 SEP 2001, it became clear that the markets would remain closed for the rest of the week. This was the longest market closure since World War One.

That same day, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, in consultation with league owners and the players' union, decided to cancel all games that weekend. College sports followed suit, and MLB commissioner Bud Selig decided that MON 17 SEP 2001 would be the correct day to resume baseball.

That morning, traders headed to Wall Street early to get through security at the New York Stock Exchange before they entered the building underneath the large American flag stretched across the building's distinctive columns. Inside, the traders were simply relieved to see one another again. Many had lost friends and colleagues in the attacks and found it reassuring to meet up with those who remained. Rudy Giuliani, New York governor George Pataki, and several police officers and firefighters were on hand for the ringing of the opening bell that day, preceded by two minutes of silence and a rendition of "God Bless America".

The final numbers that day were not surprising. The DJIA went into freefall, losing 684.81 to finish at 8,920,70. That was the largest point loss in the DJIA in history. The Nasdaq finished 115.75 points lower, at 1,579.55. The good news was that the panic selling that many had feared never materialised. Circuit breakers, which would have halted trading in extreme selloffs, were not implemented.

That evening, legendary St Louis Cardinals broadcaster Jack Buck stood at home plate in Busch Stadium and told an eager crowd, "I don't know about you, but as for me, the question has already been answered. Should we be here tonight? Yes." The stars and stripes stood above players' names on their uniforms, on the side of their hats, in their hands, and in the hands of the spectators who were the first to view professional sports in the US since the Monday Night Football game twelve hours before the attacks.

Sporting events around the world also recognised these trying times. Before the first Men's World Cup qualifier since TUE 11 SEP 2001, fans at Tehran's Azadi Stadium held a mass prayer in remembrance. European football leaders tried to stand firm against terrorism by having UEFA Champions League matches go ahead as planned that day, but those who played said that they had been in no state to do so. The bosses responded by postponing matches of the following two days.

It was no surprise that the United States would respond, and action came on SUN 07 OCT 2001 with the first air strikes in Afghanistan. The US had previously presented evidence to the international community implicating Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network as the instigators of the attacks, and implicating the Taleban military regime that controlled Afganistan as al-Qaeda's primary support. Aided by the air strikes against Afghan infrastructure, rebel groups led by the Northern Alliance spent the next two months preparing for the ground offensives that would finally remove the Taleban from power.

A week ago, a new government came to power in Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai leads the government, created with an eye toward guaranteeing women's rights and bringing together the varied ethnic backgrounds that make up Afghanistan. It appears that peacekeeping troops from other nations, primarily the United Kingdom, will help maintain order during the interim government's mission.

In general, the entertainment world didn't know what to do. Dan Rather shed tears on David Letterman's first Late Show since TUE 11 SEP 2001. Conan O'Brien spent most of his first Late Night show back apologising for not knowing how to handle the situation. He found success in a clip of a baby lifting two six packs of beer, a clip that won so much appreciation from the audience that it appeared at least twice more that week. On the first Daily Show of his return, Jon Stewart pointed out that his apartment once had a view of the World Trade Center. His view is now the Statue of Liberty.

Rudy Giuliani is nearly done serving as New York City's 107th mayor, with one of his last tasks being the opening of a public platform overlooking Ground Zero. Giuliani's presence was essential in stabilising a city that was very unsure of itself following the events of TUE 11 SEP 2001, with a timely appearance on the first edition of Saturday Night Live since that date. He followed the New York Yankees to each of their World Series games, sharing in the city's joy at Derek Jeter's success and in the city's disappointment at Mariano Rivera's failure. He was also available for the occasional witticism. Asked about the NFL's unsettled postseason schedule, the mayor responded, "They should stop all this nonsense with the other teams and just send the Giants and the Jets to the Super Bowl."

He has been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, though you can't call him Sir Rudy because he's not British. However, his status as a Knight of the British Empire lets you refer to him as Rudy Giuliani, KBE. He is also Time's Person of the Year, and a possible running mate with George W Bush in 2004. He will swear in Michael Bloomberg as the new mayor a few minutes after the ball drops in Times Square to mark the start of 2002.

1968 saw a bloody conflict in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F Kennedy, Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, IL, and countless antiwar protests and demonstrations around the world. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders cut ten orbits around the Moon on TUE 24 DEC 1968, returning stunning images of Earth rising over the cratered lunar surface.

2001 saw a surprise war in Afghanistan, the collapse of the Argentine economy, rising tensions between Israel and Palestine as well as between India and Pakistan, a recession that bore down on the world no matter what the Fed did, heavy job cuts especially at airlines, the largest bankruptcy ever, and a single day in which violent, immature, and shortsighted acts abruptly took thousands of lives and destroyed two famous, if ugly, buildings. And yet, in 2001, a man travelled into space because he wanted to instead of because an astronaut office chose him, men named Bush and Giuliani successfully balanced grief with determination, people around the world joined together on one day to celebrate space travel, and the nations of the world banded together to fight a common threat.

Is 2001 to be remembered as the "cataclysmic year" of the 21st century? If it isn't, I'd like to go on record as hoping that the most cataclysmic year is not 2002. I'm not ready for it yet.