Notes: Bioterrorism was all over the news this week. Maureen Dowd wrote in her column that upscale women in New York were discussing whether American or Israeli gas masks were best. People discussed what antibiotics to stockpile while some pharmacies ran out of Cipro, an antibiotic thought to be somewhat effective against certain types of germ warfare.

Meanwhile, across the globe in Afghanistan, there is absolute panic over what is believed to be an impending American-led attack. There is supposedly a huge mass of Afghans fleeing to the countryside and across borders. Moreover, In the first days after the terrorist assault on America, even Taliban leaders reportedly fled Kabul in panic though some have returned now.

A band of backward fanatics has made the world pay a huge price in an effort to impose its flat-earth beliefs on the rest of us. Hannah Arendt's book on Nazism, "The Banality of Evil," comes to mind. 10.07.01