CounterPunch
Special Report:
9/11 One Year After
September
7, 2002
Proverbial
Wisdom
Neighborhood Watch
by Susan Davis
"There are Lots of Neighbors on
Anxiety Street."
(Illinois proverb, 20th-century)
Dear Mr. Ashcroft,
I am writing to you hoping that I can
become a charter member of your TIPS neighborhood surveillance
program. So you'll know my qualifications, I'm a fiber optic
cable installer for a major telecommunications company, and I
spend a lot of time around other people's houses, driveways and
yards. Also, my granddaddy was a Pinkerton in Chicago, and my
dad turned in his high school history teacher in 1953. I hope
you'll think I'm eligible for this work. I understand it's a
strictly state-run volunteer operation.
Ever since you made your announcement,
I've been watching the Davis house on the 600 block of Kankakee
Avenue here in Urbana. We've been installing and repairing on
Kankakee for a few months now, and it's just like you said in
your testimony: we don't really need to notice anything, sometimes
it's all right there if you just look.
External
observation: Mrs. Davis goes out for walk every morning at
6 AM. She comes back at 7 AM. But she never picks up the newspaper.
She just steps right over it. At 7:15, Mr. Davis comes out and
gets the paper. It's almost as if Mrs. Davis isn't allowed to
touch the Wall Street Journal. Isn't that strange? It could be
some kind of signal.
There's a gray box on the front doorstep.
Every Sunday night, a note is placed in this box. Every Monday
at 4:30 AM, a note is picked up. I got a look at it once. It
read "two gallons 2%, no ice cream, thanx." Sure it's
a milk box, but who knows what else Mr. Milkman is dropping off?
There's a yew hedge around the front
yard with an alternating green/rust/green pattern --- it took
me a while to realize that this might be Morse code.
On the back porch railing, a woman's
two-piece bathing suit hangs for days at a time. Usually the
bottom half is on the left, the top is on the right. But some
days it switches to bottom on the right, top on the left. A sign?
I feel a little embarrassed examining a lady's bathing suit this
closely, but I wouldn't do it if I didn't think it was my duty.
Five or six little boys, not all Americans,
are digging a deep tunnel in the middle of the back lawn.
Neighbors: seemed very busy, but a resource to exploit.
Remember the old saying "a neighbor is someone who knows
more about your business than you do."
Inside observations: (This was harder, but I made friends with the
babysitter.) Babysitter thinks family is odd. There is no computer
access inside the house; no modem. The children do not have Instant
Messenger. Mr. Davis heard to say something about "keep
the goddamn phone lines free."
Mr. Davis does most of the laundry, and
all of the dishes.
Mrs. Davis favors a grocery store owned
by an Iraqi. She buys her vegetables from a Chinese woman. She
will not buy meat from the local chain because she claims "it's
irradiated." Paranoid?
Kids complain bitterly about music. Constant
playing of only one Van Morrison CD. (A ritual? A signal?) Tenacious
D. not allowed. Kids limited to half-hour of TV a day; no PlayStation.
If kids aren't getting adequate cultural orientation, possibly
we could coordinate with Child Protective Services, to allow
a closer look.
Other odd goings-on: A gangly, somewhat unkempt man comes over about
once a week in a white truck to meet with Mrs. Davis. They always
follow the same routine: they talk intensely next to a large
rhododendron bush. Sometimes they examine rhododendron bush.
Sometimes they argue. Mrs. Davis was heard to say "Viburnum
is just not going to do it." Could Viburnum be some uncooperative
associate?
Today, a man named Marv spent four hours
cursing in the crawl space under the kitchen porch. I couldn't
hear what the cursing had to do with, something to do with "parts."
He does this about once every two month. Mrs. Davis takes a tolerant
attitude toward obscenity.
Swiss, French, Chinese, Indian, Belgian,
Malaysian, and Barbadian children come and go at all hours. Mixed-race
couples drop by. Pacifists drop by. Librarians drop by. Retired
particle physicists drop by. Male high school students dressed
in evening gowns drop by.
Other peculiar
behavior: Mr. and Mrs. Davis are
polite to Mormon missionaries and rude to Sierra Club missionaries.
How to explain?
Conclusion: Sir, I think
you'll agree that if nothing is really wrong on Kankakee Avenue,
nothing is quite right, either. This bunch of odd ducks bears
closer watching, especially when you consider where they live
-- only four blocks away from the largest mosque in Central Illinois.
I hope I can enlist in your program. You can count on my full
support. Sincerely,
(Anonymous)
PS: Ran into one slight problem you might want to
know about. The babysitter says these people read a lot of books
and magazines, so I took the initiative to ask the local librarian
if she had run a patron record check on them. She got uneasy
and told me that she'd be violating The Patriot Act if she answered
that question, yes or no, for me or anyone else. Does that mean
that you guys at Justice are allowed to ask her to run record
checks, but she is not allowed to tell anyone, even loyal citizens,
that you've asked her? I think more coordination is needed in
the library/TIPS interface. Just a suggestion.
PPS: I decoded the pattern in the hedge: I think
it reads "COURGE MOM."
Susan Davis
teaches at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. She is
the author of Spectacular Nature.
She can be reached at sgdavis@uiuc.edu
CounterPunch Special Report:
9/11 One Year After
Bill Christison
A
Year Later: It's Happening Here
Alexander Cockburn
The
Tenth Crusade
Susan Davis
Mr. Ashcroft's
Neighborhood
Bruce Jackson
When
War Came Home
David Krieger
Looking
Back on September 11
Peter Linebaugh
Levellers and 9/11
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Trouble
with Normal
Tom Stephens
Rise Up...Dump Bush
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September
6, 2002
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Stolen
Trust
Gale Norton, Indians and the Case of the Missing $10 Billion
September
5, 2002
Ben Tripp
Jesus vs.
George the Second
William Hughes
McKinney's
Defeat:
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Gavin Keeney
Beaux
Reves, Citoyens!
Wayne Saunders
War
Begins; Nobody Notices
Irit Katriel
Drunk
with Power:
Israeli Chief of Staff Calls Palestinians a "Cancerous Demographic
Threat"
Gary Leupp
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September
3, 2002
Nabil Amro
Leadership
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Robert Fisk
A Forgotten
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Uri Avnery
The Return
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September
2, 2002
Francis Boyle
Flashback:
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Lou Cohan
Confessions
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Philip Farruggio
Labor
Day Antidote to Apathy
William Blum
Cuban Political
Prisoners
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1, 2002
Dave Marsh
No Surrender:
Springsteen's The Rising
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CNN Reporting
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Sharon's
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Dr. Susan
Block
The Gangbang
Asthete
The Sexual Life
of Catherine M.
Kurt Nimmo
Clueless
at the State Dept.
August 30,
2002
Alexander
Cockburn
American
Journal:
Hitchens, Kissinger, Springsteen, Haggard & Elvis
August 29,
2002
Chris Floyd
The Secret
Sharers:
The CIA and the Murder of Frank Olson
August 28,
2002
William Ring
War on Iraq:
The Brightest Scenario
August 27,
2002
Sam Bahour
The Violence
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Wenonah Hauter
From Johannesburg:
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Jerre Skog
Wanted:
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Uri Avnery
Letter
to a Pilot
August 26,
2002
Sami Al-Arian
Fighting
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Ruebner /
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What
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Brazil
and the IMF:
Democracy and Emerging Market Liberalism
Robert Fisk
War Crimes:
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Douglas Valentine
Phoenix,
CIA and Maj. Gen. Bruce Lawlor: From Vietnam
to Homeland Security
August 24
/ 25, 2002
Susan Davis
Proverbial
Wisdom:
Of Clogs and Enron
Falk / Krieger
No War
Against Iraq
Ceylon Mooney
Fasting
for Iraq
Jonathon
Wright
Police
Brutality in Atlanta
Ralph Nader
Congress's
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Jeffrey St.
Clair
Chainsaw
George
Alexander
Cockburn
Alterman
Cheapens Holocaust
August 23,
2002
Dave Marsh
Selling
Out?
Anthony Gancarski
Super-Duper:
Oil, al-Qaeda and a West African Adventure
William Hughes
Lieberman's
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Kurt Nimmo
The Lapdog
Conversion of CNN:
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Hardline
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About 9/11
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Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
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and Jeffrey St. Clair
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