Terrorism

"A number of explosions tore through the British consulate in Turkey today, killing scores of people. George W. Bush is in England, surrounded on all sides by enraged British citizens whose massive protests have required nearly every police officer in London to be put on the line of defense," writes William Rivers Pitt. "It is 3:16 p.m. on Thursday afternoon as I write this. CNN has been covering, with total exclusivity, a parking lot outside a police station for the last hour. They covered an airplane landing. They covered the same airplane sitting still on the tarmac.

Following recent revelations that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency misled the public about air quality in New York following the 9/11 terrorist attack, the New York Daily News has been crowing about how columnist Juan González "was the first to sound the alarm" that ground zero was a toxic dump after 9/11. As Cynthia Cotts points out, however, the newspaper "was not always so crazy about González's scoop.

"Terrorism doesn't just blow up buildings; it blasts every other issue off the political map," journalist Naomi Klein writes. "The spectre of terrorism - real and exaggerated - has become a shield of impunity, protecting governments around the world from scrutiny for their human rights abuses.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft recently launched a national campaign to dismiss growing criticism of the controversial USA Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law passed after the September 11 attacks. Speaking at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, Ashcroft said, "To abandon this tool would disconnect the dots, risk American lives and liberty, and reject Sept. 11th's lessons." The Department of Justice Patriot Act website is LifeandLiberty.gov.