London bombings: Richard Clarke, public transit, Ian McEwan

Some thoughts following the London bombings, in brief outline:

• How is it that this hasn't happened earlier, in the US, and to a much more destructive and deadly degree? Related to that, I've been meaning to post this fascinating but horrifying article by Richard Clarke that was the cover story of The Atlanic a few months ago:
  

  Ten Years Later
  "Then the second wave of al-Qaeda attacks hit America." A leading expert on counterterrorism imagines the future history of the war on terror. A frightening picture of a country still at war in 2011
  by Richard A. Clarke
  

  
  There's also an accompanying web-only interview with Clarke:
  

  Fatal Vision
  Richard Clarke talks about his frightening scenario of an America hobbled by terrorism—and what we can do to avoid it
  

  
  My bet is that most of the American public, if we've heard of Clarke at all, think of him as a disgruntled whisteblower. But Johnee was highly recommending Clarke's book last year, calling him an American hero, if I remember correctly. The article above of his impressed me greatly--essential reading, I'd say--and makes me want to pick up the book. (BTW, if you're wondering what Clarke is doing these days, beyond writing and speaking through the media: he's chairman of Good Harbor Consulting.)
  
  
• To what degree are we (or should we be) willing to sacrifice our civil liberties in order to deter attacks like this? I'm thinking in particular systems of surveillance like Britain's CCTV--which makes the state closer to Big Brother, but in this case turned out to be essential to finding the perpetrators. There was a NYT Mag story about CCTV, published one month after 9/11 (not coincidentally, I imagine). Thanks to Google, I found the full text here--on the City Pages site, ironically (CP was my first alterna-weekly, as a teen back in the Twin Cities). That piece ever so briefly cites Bentham, Foucault and their concept of the panopticon.
  
  I was independently obessessing about public transit in the week before the London incident--spurred by the near-BART strike we had up here on July 6. Got much I want to write out on this topic (anyone for a high-speed train between downtown LA to downtown SF, with a 2.5 hour travel time??) For now, I'll just post this Sarah Vowell column from Sat July 9's NYT op-ed page: Our Faith-Based Train Rides".
  
  Well, I'll also put up the SFCityScape link, which I've been digging through in the past couple weeks--fascinating stuff. The plan for a high-speed train from SF to LA is mentioned in passing in an article
  on there about the much-anticipated Transbay Terminal to be built downtown SF: "Now imagine this: Caltrain will keep going past its current southern terminus in Gilroy to Salinas in Monterey County, two hours south of the city. High-speed tracks will have been laid up the Peninsula, alongside Caltrain's, allowing passengers to board a train at downtown L.A.'s Union Station and arrive in the Financial District two-and-a-half hours later — or vice-versa." Got to cite Matt Smith of SFWeekly on this as well--my other main source for SF transit, planning, & development issues. Check this column of his from last summer about the political battle over the development of the Transbay Terminal.
  
  
• Finally, anyone up for reading McEwan's Saturday? We got a copy that Anj's dad left with us last month. Here is McEwan's essay that ran on the NYT op-ed page on Friday July 8: "The Surprise We Expected".



• With any of the NYTimes links above, let me know if you want to read the full text. By now, they've disappeared into the paid archives. But I've been using Yahoo's new MyWeb feature to store local copies of the html pages on their servers.
  
  Similarly for the Atlantic links--the full texts are restricted to subscribers. So if you want to read them, let me know and I'll e-mail the full text to you.