I tried to start my day by catching up with urgent news in the morning paper. It's arguable that this is not the way I should start my day, for I have a hyperactive imagination which can sometimes be set off by the slightest use of a wrong word here, or a hint of editorial bias there. The merest hint of slant can often send me into a paroxysm of distraction -- sometimes (depending on how much coffee I consume) lasting for hours.

However, in the middle of that distraction, I was rudely interrupted by a terribly distracting (but very articulate) tirade about distractions:

In 1967, Charles Hummel wrote an essay about the "tyranny of the urgent," where his point was not that we have insufficient time to accomplish tasks but rather that we prioritize the urgent over the important:

"We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done."

Since his essay was written in a less digital world, Hummel references the impact of the telephone on the urgent, "A man's home is no longer his castle; it is no longer a place away from urgent tasks because the telephone breaches the walls with imperious demands." The latter part of the sentence could now read, "it is no longer a place away from urgent tasks because cable, satellite, Internet, cell phones, etc. breach the walls with imperious demands."

Frankly, there are more important things happening in the world than distractions. I really should be writing about "the first president who is married to a former president who was impeached for having oral sex with an intern in the Oval Office." (From a piece in the Economist Glenn linked even before my distractions started.)

The issue of the future ex-first lady first lady president's ex-president is important, but it has nothing to do with the Inquirer's front page story. An armed robber shot and killed two Loomis security guards, both of whom were retired police officers:

The man sits in a newer, black Acura TL near a Roosevelt Mall bank branch and calmly puts on a pair of black gloves. As a surveillance tape rolls, he emerges from the car, now with gun in hand, and strides toward two Loomis guards, former Philadelphia police officers who are servicing an outdoor ATM machine.

Without a word, he fires, killing the guards and wounding a third inside their armored truck.

"He just came out and essentially assassinated them," Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson said.

"Nothing is true. Everything is permissible."

"Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." The last words of Hassan i Sabbah, Old Man of the Mountain. "Tamaghis ... Ba'dan ... Yass-Waddah ... Waghdas ... Naufana... Ghadis." It is said that an initiate who wishes to know the answer to any question need only repeat these words as he falls asleep and the answer will come in a dream.

His "followers" (if that's the right word) were called "hashashins" or "assassins":

The chosen were drugged, one or two at a time, and taken to this garden by night. When they woke up in the morning they were surrounded by beautiful and scantily clad houris [in Muslim belief, women who live with the blessed in paradise] who would minister to their every need and desire. After being allowed to savor this false -- but pleasant and sensual -- paradise for a day or so, they were again drugged before being taken back to awaken in their own squalid hovel or cave dwelling. To them, it was as if it had been a vivid dream. Ben Sabbah then sent for them, told them Allah had given them a preview of paradise, and surprised them by telling them exactly what each had been up to while in the secret garden."

Besides, Alamut is a philosophical exercise disguised as a novel, with the trappings of a certain historicity and topography. But it does not correspond with today's reality (or lack thereof) in precisely the way it has been assumed. Rather than representing the outcome of any diabolical plan hatched by a terrorist evil genius, today's world is a confused one in which analogies between the book and events quickly break down. Aspiring suicide hijackers, apparently too impatient or too uncertain in their faith, drink and go to strip shows before their fatal mission. Some suicide bombers in the Muslim world are created because of poverty; others because their loved ones are killed indiscriminately by American or Israeli troops, and they no longer have anything to live for. This is hardly the joyfulness with which Bartol's (all male) fedayeen go to their death, longing for the sensual pleasures of an easily visualized afterlife.

Of course, there are many other cases in which Islamic rebels do seem very clearly to be happy to die (as in Alamut) as martyrs for the cause � but, it seems, with an eye to the immortal stature they hope to then attain in the legends of the living, and not with a view towards the afterlife. Perhaps in the book, the fedayeen just don't hate their opponents enough to be relatable with today's mujahedin.

And so if anything, it seems that today's terrorists have grasped the truth behind Hasan ibn Sabbah's nihilistic message -- and not the one with which he made fanatics of his fedayeen at Alamut. The latter rests on the concept of self-interest and the ancient Greek presumption that every man desires the Good. Plato and the Stoics augmented this by adding that every man desires what he perceives to be the Good for him. Aware of the discrepancy, Hasan ibn Sabbah, like so many charlatan prophets, artfully satisfied the self-interest of his fedayeen: paradise in the afterlife. For them, death became a means to this end. However, above and beyond this, Hasan's higher wisdom is the nihilistic one: nothing is true, everything is permissible.

All that from one word -- "assassinated" -- that I read in the Inquirer.

To make the distraction worse, Glenn Reynolds' link to Wiki's Heinlein entry only added fuel to the sex war fires which always smolder in this blog despite my regular attempts to extinguish them. Among other quotes, Wiki has this Heinlein gem (which makes me want to shut down all distractions and seriously read the guy):

Take sex away from people. Make it forbidden, evil. Limit it to ritualistic breeding. Force it to back up into suppressed sadism. Then hand the people a scapegoat to hate. Let them kill a scapegoat occasionally for cathartic release. The mechanism is ages old. Tyrants used it centuries before the word 'psychology' was ever invented. It works, too.

Am I allowed to speculate that what they might need is pornography? Or is it "nihilistic" to negate sexual control? The sexual control types would certainly say so, but I think nihilism encompasses a lot more than that.

Lest these distractions get the better of me, I should return to the story in the Inquirer. Frankly, it irritated me to read about the callused nature of the crime, and if in fact this man was an assassin I wanted to know more about him. I learned that in addition to being an assassin, he wore "blue jeans, a black shirt, white sneakers, and a yellow cap with a black logo":

Killed were Joseph Alullo, 54, of Levittown, who retired as a sergeant in 2000 after 27 years on the force, and William Widmaier, 65, of Fairless Hills, who retired in 1989 after 23 years.

The two Bucks County residents once worked together in the Seventh District in the Northeast and were longtime friends, Johnson said.

The armored truck's 70-year-old driver, who was grazed by glass shattered by bullets fired at him by the gunmen, was not identified because he is a witness. He was treated at a hospital and released.

Within minutes of the shootings, police ordered a lockdown at four nearby schools: Resurrection of Our Lord School, Northeast High School, Woodrow Wilson Middle School, and Rhawnhurst School. They reopened shortly before noon.

The guards were picking up receipts at a drive-through deposit ATM at a Wachovia Bank when the robber - wearing blue jeans, a black shirt, white sneakers, and a yellow cap with a black logo - opened fire with a semiautomatic handgun, police said.

Widmaier, who was servicing the machine, was hit in the chest. Alullo was wounded three times in the chest and abdomen while reaching for his revolver, officials said. The gunman then fired at the truck's windows.

After both guards fell mortally wounded, the gunman grabbed a canvas money bag and ran away. The bag was found empty behind the nearby Turf Club, where the robber had left his car. Authorities did not disclose the amount of money thought to be in the bag.

"We're looking for an armed and dangerous male who had no regard for life at all," Johnson said.

Oh, he also wore black gloves, but they could have been ditched too. I guess the Inquirer should report the color of his clothes, but I'm a bit concerned about profiling, because a lot of young people today wear blue jeans and black shirts, and it just doesn't narrow it down. Aren't we at least entitled to know whether the blue jeans were baggy?

No, because bagginess is a contentious issue. "Reactionary" and "indicative of the growing schism," says a Bucknelll professor quoted in the Inquirer. Wouldn't wanna go there.

Besides, if everything is permissible, then assassins can wear whatever.

Sheesh. I try to be respectful as I can and take everything into account, but things are getting ridiculous when I can't even keep up with the fashions of young people who can't keep up their pants!

Little wonder it's so hard for anyone to keep up with anything.

UPDATE: The assassin -- a man named Mustafa Ali -- has been arrested, and he has confessed:

A fugitive who previously served federal prison time for bank robberies confessed last night to slaying two retired Philly cops.

The stunning development came just a day after William Widmaier and Joseph Alullo - lifelong friends who found a second career as armored truck guards - were gunned down and robbed as they serviced an ATM in Northeast Philadelphia.

The alleged confessed killer, according to police sources, has been identified as Mustafa Ali.

He was arrested on an outstanding warrant from Middletown Township, Bucks County, at about 4 p.m. outside an apartment complex on Woodhaven Road near Covert Road, said Homicide Capt. Michael Costello.

Investigators also found a four-door black Acura TL in the apartment complex that matched the getaway car that was used by the gunman in Thursday's double slaying. The car had been covered by a dark tarp, Costello said.

The Acura had been purchased some time ago in Middletown Township, but the buyer paid with a bad check, which led police to issue the warrant on charges of felony theft, police sources said.

I'd ask why he didn't obey the gun laws, but that would sound like a rhetorical question.

I had to get his name from the Daily News, as today's Inquirer refers to Ali only as "a Northeast Philadelphia man," who "was not identified by police." (I'm hoping that maybe they'll identify him in tomorrow's paper.)

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and a warm welcome to all.

All comments are permitted -- yea, encouraged -- and there's no rule that they have to be true!

It's worth adding that when I wrote this yesterday I had no idea about the identity of the "assassin" -- and if I relied on today's Inquirer I still wouldn't. (It often seems like pulling teeth to get the bare facts of important stories, and this one is becoming national.)

I'm glad the cops arrested this murderous criminal, and it's only too bad he wasn't locked up longer, as police statistics show that 80% of Philadelphia shooters have criminal records.

MORE: CNN reports the suspect's name.

AND MORE: Cynic that I am, I worry about the fact that this seasoned convict has confessed to a double murder while in police custody. I suspect he's been in the joint long enough to know how the system works -- especially that in an emotionally charged case like this involving the cold-blooded murder of former police officers, he'll face the death penalty. "In custody confessions" create a very fertile source of future material for the lawyers who will spend the next fifteen or so years working on his case, and a seasoned ex con can be expected to know this.

Confessing in custody was a good move on Ali's part.

UPDATE (10/07/07): There is not one story or mention in today's Inquirer about the robbery or the arrest. A story which occupied the front page for two days in a row has apparently been dropped -- with the suspect's name never appearing in print.

Or can it be that reporters are afraid to do their job?

UPDATE (Ten minutes later): My mistake in not seeing today's story when I first read through the paper! There is a perfectly good report with plenty of details in the local section:

Murder charges were filed yesterday against the man police say confessed to killing two Loomis armored-truck guards Thursday.

Mustafa Ali, 36, of the 3800 block of Woodhaven Road in Northeast Philadelphia, was arraigned last night on two counts of murder, aggravated assault, robbery and related offenses. He was ordered held without bail pending a preliminary hearing on Wednesday.

"This person will never walk the streets again," Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson asserted yesterday.

The widow of one of the guards was comforted to hear the news.

[...]

Ali, who is also known as Shawn Steele, was arrested late Friday on a warrant from Bucks County on charges of passing a bad $5,000 check, allegedly for the deposit on the car seen in the surveillance images.

According to court records, Steele pleaded guilty to bank-robbery charges in 1993 in federal court. He was sentenced to seven years in prison followed by seven years of supervised released, and ordered to make restitution of $7,315. He was released from prison in 1999.

A police source said that during questioning, Ali had confessed to the shootings. Police said they had known Ali was the shooter when he provided incriminating information and told them where he had buried the gun.

Police found the murder weapon early yesterday, sources said.

At yesterday's news conference, Johnson provided few details of the investigation. Police declined to release a mug shot until after a police lineup had been conducted.

Anyway, I'm delighted to see that the Inquirer has reported the full story along with the confession. (My initial mistake was that I assumed it would be on the front page, or at least the front section.)