En el noveno aniversario de los ataques terroristas perpetrados en Nueva York y Washington D.C. el 11 de septiembre de 2001, utilizados por la administración Bush para propiciar el lanzamiento de la “Guerra contra el Terror”, sigue siendo tan importante como siempre que se cierre Guantánamo y se exijan responsabilidades a todos aquellos que instigaron la tortura y crearon prisiones secretas y encarcelaron sin presentar cargos ni celebrar juicios. Es absolutamente vital hacer todo eso porque, especialmente en este aniversario, podría decirse que los crímenes e injusticias iniciados por la administración Bush tienen, a los ojos de la gente, una relevancia mucho menor que en cualquier otro momento de los últimos seis años.

¿Acaso el 11 de septiembre nos volvió locos a todos? ¡Qué ajustado (en una extraña, alocada manera) que la apoteosis de esa tormenta de fuego iniciada hace nueve años tenga que ser la de un predicador desquiciado amenazando con otra tormenta de fuego; o la de una quema estilo nazi del Corán; o la de la edificación de una supuesta mezquita a dos cuadras de “zona cero”! Ciertamente, en este sombrío noveno aniversario, el 11-S parece haber producido no paz, o justicia o democracia, o derechos humanos… sino monstruos. Estos monstruos han merodeado por Iraq y han masacrado 100.000 almas, o 500.000, o un millón, y… ¿a quién le importa? Han matado decenas de miles en Afganistán, ¿y a quién le importa?

I was among the many Americans who felt 9/11 indirectly – and yet, how indirect was it? My mother knew a woman killed in the attack. College friends had classmates who died, or who could recount the smoke billowing over their homes. I saw image after image appear on television screens, read commentary, wrote my [...]

Source: Democracy Now! An explosive investigative series published in the Washington Post today begins, “The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs [...]

"The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work." This all "amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight." We chirp endlessly about the Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, the Democrats and Republicans, but this is the Real U.S. Government: functioning in total darkness, beyond elections and parties, so secret, vast and powerful that it evades the control or knowledge of any one person or even any organization.

Source: Salon by Glenn Greenwald February 4, 2010 Last week, I wrote about a revelation buried in a Washington Post article by Dana Priest which described how the Obama administration has adopted the Bush policy of targeting selected American citizens for assassination if they are deemed (by the Executive Branch) to be Terrorists.  As The Washington Times‘ Eli [...]

Published in Amauta with special permission from TomDispatch Source: TomDispatch by Tom Engelhardt January 17, 2010 A country programmatically gripped by fear — yes, that’s us for more than eight years now.  Fear of terrorism to be exact, even as truly terrible things happened in this land and elsewhere, from hurricane Katrina in 2005 to last week’s devastating Haitian [...]

Source: New Stateman by John Pilger December 30, 2009 In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a superstate called Oceania, whose language of war inverted lies that “passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’, ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’.” Barack Obama is the leader of a contemporary Oceania. [...]

Source: Hornberger’s Blog by Jacob G. Hornberger December 28, 2009 To justify the federal government’s massive post-9/11 infringements on civil liberties, the proponents of Big Government have sometimes said, “There hasn’t been another major terrorist attack on the United States since 9/11. ” I have responded with the following: “But if there had been another major terrorist attack, you [...]

Source: Ted Rall Since 9/11, We’ve Embraced Our Inner Coward by Ted Rall December 31, 2009 NEW YORK — Home of the free and the brave. Live free or die. Shoot first; ask questions later. Kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out. These were the mottos of a brash, impetuous, audacious-to-a-fault nation. That nation is dead. Once we Americas did [...]