Mohammed el Gorani, the youngest prisoner held at Guantánamo, has written a
memoir of his time there, the lead up to his imprisonment, and subsequent release years later.
posted by gman
on Dec 14, 2011 -
65 comments
The Memorial. "People talk a lot about the "healing process." Well, this is New York. In the aftermath of a tragedy of monumental proportions, the healing process has been noisy and rude, with elbows out, redolent of greed, power, and the darker forces that drive human existence. And most of the shouting has been about how to make a fitting monument to what happened here. But in a hundred years, all the shouting and all the politics will be forgotten. What will be remembered is what is built here, now, on these sixteen acres." [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Aug 19, 2011 -
37 comments
"What if America wasn't America?" That was the question posed by a series of ads broadcast in the wake of the September 11th attacks, ads which depicted a dystopian America bereft of liberty:
Library -
Diner -
Church. Together with more positive ads like
Remember Freedom and
I Am an American, they encouraged frightened viewers to cherish their freedoms and defend against division and prejudice in the face of terrorism (
seven years previously). The campaign was the work of the
Ad Council, a non-profit agency that employs the creative muscle of volunteer advertisers to raise awareness for social issues of national importance. Founded during WWII as the War Advertising Council, the organization has been behind
some of the most memorable public service campaigns in American history, including
Rosie the Riveter,
Smokey the Bear,
McGruff the Crime Dog, and
the Crash Test Dummies. And the Council is still at it today, producing striking, funny, and above all
effective PSAs on everything from
student invention to
global warming to
arts education to
community service.
Additional resources:
A-to-Z index of Ad Council campaigns -
Campaigns organized by category -
Award-winning campaigns -
PSA Central: A free download directory of TV, radio, and print PSAs
(registration req'd) -
An exhaustive history of the Ad Council [46-page PDF] -
YouTube channel -
Vimeo channel -
Twitter feed
posted by Rhaomi
on Sep 11, 2009 -
69 comments
What is the logical consequence of noting the fact that the terrorist groups that make a difference on planet Earth—such as Hamas and Hezbollah, the PLO, Colombia's FARC—are extensions of, respectively, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and Venezuela? It is the negation of the U.S. government's favorite axiom. It means that when George W. Bush spoke, and when Barack Obama speaks, of America being "at war" against "extremism" or "extremists" they are either being stupid or acting stupid to avoid dealing with the nasty fact that many governments wage indirect warfare.
International relations professor Angelo M. Codevilla argues that
Osama bin Laden is not quite influential, not quite relevant, and probably dead.
(multipage version)
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Mar 27, 2009 -
33 comments
The greatest enigma of the US "war on terror": He was
an intelligence officer of the Egyptian army, a
CIA agent, a
drill seargent and instructor at Fort Bragg, an
FBI informant, and
Al Qaeda's number one man inside the US. He was directly or indirectly involved in
the assassination of Anwar Sadat,
the 1993 WTC bombing,
the bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and
9/11. He
trained al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan and Sudan and wrote manuals on intelligence, terrorism and asymmetric warfare
while living in Silicon Valley with his American wife. He plea bargained, never went to trial, and
may be free or in witness protection today. Incidentally, he is
barely mentioned in
the 9/11 Commission report. Is there some sort of
conspiracy or are officials simply afraid of
having their gross negligence exposed?
posted by inoculatedcities
on Mar 5, 2007 -
26 comments
The age of horrorism. On the eve of the fifth anniversary of 9/11, Martin Amis analyses - and abhors - the rise of extreme Islamism. In a penetrating and wide-ranging essay he offers a trenchant critique of the grotesque creed and questions the West's faltering response to this eruption of evil.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese
on Sep 19, 2006 -
66 comments
Missed Opportunities ...Lawrence Wright tells, for the first time, the story of the F.B.I. agent who had the best chance of foiling the 9/11 plot. Here, with Amy Davidson, Wright talks about how turf wars with the C.I.A. got in the way. Wright’s book “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” will be published by Knopf in August.
posted by Postroad
on Aug 2, 2006 -
13 comments
Tired of standing in line at the airport? Worried that you might share a name with a known terrorist or subversive on the TSA's mysterious no-fly lists? Relax. Get fingerprinted and/or iris scanned. And pay $79.95 a year to become a
Registered Traveler, and
fly Clear in the fast lane. (And note how quickly
conceptual art projects become indistinguishable from
reality.) Meanwhile, the Feds
settle an ACLU lawsuit over the no-fly lists... while revealing no information about them. [Lists recently discussed
here].
posted by digaman
on Jan 25, 2006 -
52 comments
Loose change A one hour analysis of 9/11 and how it is more likely than not that the government was actually behind the attacks. A documentary analyzing the footage and presenting an alternative view to the official version.
posted by zeerobots
on Nov 11, 2005 -
115 comments
A surprise from Al Gore: I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse . I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled "marketplace of ideas" now functions.
How many of you, I wonder, have heard a friend or a family member in the last few years remark that it's almost as if America has entered "an alternate universe"?
I thought maybe it was an aberration when three-quarters of Americans said they believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11, 2001. But more than four years later, between a third and a half still believe Saddam was personally responsible for planning and supporting the attack.
posted by Shanachie
on Oct 6, 2005 -
80 comments
Is the aroma of burning flesh putting you off your lunch? An Israeli company called Patus is marketing a new product called
Odor Screen to EMTs, soldiers, cops, and medical staff who work at the sites of suicide bombings, combat zones, and other modern catastrophes. The
Proustian link between smell and vivid memories is
well established, and by displacing traumatic odors with a "calming vanilla aroma," the company hopes to lessen PTSD in first responders, and
that's no laughing matter. [
via medgadget]
posted by digaman
on Feb 9, 2005 -
26 comments
The Likudization of the World "....he has cast the United States in the very same role in which Israel casts itself, facing the very same threat. In this narrative, the U.S. is fighting a never ending battle for its very survival against utterly irrational forces that seek nothing less than its total extermination. "
posted by troutfishing
on Sep 12, 2004 -
42 comments
CIA Warned of Attack 6 Years Before 9-11 Six years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA warned in a classified report that Islamic extremists likely would strike on U.S. soil at landmarks in Washington or New York, or through the airline industry, according to intelligence officials.
posted by Postroad
on Apr 16, 2004 -
41 comments
Bush Was Warned of Possible Attack in U.S., Official Says "President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday.
The warning came in a secret briefing that Mr. Bush received at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, 2001. A report by a joint Congressional committee last year alluded to a "closely held intelligence report" that month about the threat of an attack by Al Qaeda, and the official confirmed an account by The Associated Press on Friday saying that the report was in fact part of the president's briefing in Crawford." Then again, he had
more important things to deal with that Summer.
posted by owillis
on Apr 10, 2004 -
62 comments
9/11 report preview "As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said. "This was not something that had to happen."
We must wait till January for the full report.
posted by jbou
on Dec 17, 2003 -
17 comments
Three great interviews in
Salon: Former Senator and Vietnam veteran
Max Cleland on the stonewalling of the 9/11 commission and the situation in Iraq, author
Jessica Stern (previously discussed
here) on the recent bombings in Istanbul and Riyadh, and executive director of Amnesty International USA
William Schulz on why the left must confront terror with the same zeal that it battles Bush, or risk irrelevance.
posted by homunculus
on Nov 20, 2003 -
5 comments
20 unanswered questions about 9/11 - "Why after 730 days do we know so little about what really happened that day? No one knows where the alleged mastermind of the attack is, and none of his accomplices has been convicted of any crime. We're not even sure if the 19 people identified by the U.S. government as the suicide hijackers are really the right guys."
posted by suprfli
on Sep 11, 2003 -
26 comments
Half an hour, two years ago.
[If the link won't work for you, copy it and open it with Quicktime. High bandwidth required.]
posted by Asparagirl
on Sep 11, 2003 -
26 comments
«Clearly, one of the most critical questions of the twenty-first century concerns why the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were not prevented. As I outline below, there are numerous aspects regarding the official stories about September 11th which do not fit with known facts, which contradict each other, which defy common sense, and which indicate a pattern of misinformation and coverup. The reports coming out of Washington do very little to alleviate these concerns.»
22 questions to chose from and decide which ones are nightmares of a conspiracy theorist and which ones must be answered.
posted by acrobat
on Sep 4, 2003 -
70 comments
I've written before about the myth of the heartland--roughly speaking, the "red states," which voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 election, as opposed to the "blue states," which voted for Al Gore. The nation's interior is supposedly a place of rugged individualists, unlike the spongers and whiners along the coasts. In reality, of course, rural states are heavily subsidized by urban states. New Jersey pays about $1.50 in federal taxes for every dollar it gets in return; Montana receives about $1.75 in federal spending for every dollar it pays in taxes.
Any sensible program of spending on homeland security would at least partly redress this balance. The most natural targets for terrorism lie in or near great metropolitan areas; surely protecting those areas is the highest priority, right?
Apparently not. Even in the first months after Sept. 11, Republican lawmakers made it clear that they would not support any major effort to rebuild or even secure New York. And now that anti-urban prejudice has taken statistical form: under the formula the Department of Homeland Security has adopted for handing out money, it spends 7 times as much protecting each resident of Wyoming as it does protecting each resident of New York.Paul Krugman, cited by
Eric Alterman in regards to Jonathan Chait's
The 9/10 President, a story we all seemed to have missed. Not long ago, the Washington Post carried
Begging, Borrowing for Security.
Welcome to Trickle Down Homeland Security.
posted by y2karl
on Apr 21, 2003 -
27 comments
Michael Moore is making a deal with Mel Gibson's Icon Prods. to finance
"Fahrenheit 911," a documentary that will trace why the U.S. has become a target for hatred and terrorism. It will also depict alleged dealings between two generations of the Bush and bin Laden clans that led to George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden becoming mortal enemies.
posted by archimago
on Mar 31, 2003 -
37 comments
Bush Doubted on 9/11 Panel Angry lawmakers accused the White House yesterday of secretly trying to derail creation of an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks while professing to support the idea. The White House responded by renewing its pledge of support for the proposal and suggesting an agreement was near.
posted by tranceformer
on Oct 15, 2002 -
38 comments
The man who knew was John O'Neill, former FBI counterterrorism expert who spent six years connecting the dots to bin Laden and the World Trade Center/Pentagon attacks last year. Last night
Frontline broadcast an excellent documentary on the tragic ironies of his life, detailing the actions of the fatuous bureaucrats who stymied his investigations, and his own death in the World Trade Center. This one-man Office of Homeland Security shows that it's not about money or departments or posturing or color-coded alerts -- it's about a commitment to truth and a willingess to act.
posted by skimble
on Oct 4, 2002 -
16 comments
Poetry or propaganda? Gov. James E. McGreevey [of New Jersey] has called for the resignation of the state's poet laureate, citing a poem critical of Israel that Amiri Baraka read at a festival earlier this month.
"Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed," read a line from the poem, which was cited by the Jewish Standard weekly newspaper. "Who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers to stay home that day? Why did Sharon stay away?"
Read the poem in question
here.
posted by orange swan
on Oct 1, 2002 -
112 comments
