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1) 9/11 is a tragic day. It was on on this day in history that a democratically elected government was attacked, the country’s capital was bombed, its president killed, a brutal military dictatorship installed that killed thousands and tortured tens of thousands. Remember Salvador Allende, killed with the support of the U.S. government on 9/11/1973, a day that didn’t change the world, that was “nothing of very great consequence,” as Henry Kissinger assured his boss a few days later. (via Noam Chomsky)

2. Robert Fisk, in the Independent, points out that  For 10 Years, We’ve Lied To Ourselves To Avoid Asking The One Real Question

By their books, ye shall know them.

I’m talking about the volumes, the libraries — nay, the very halls of literature — which the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001 have spawned. Many are spavined with pseudo-patriotism and self-regard, others rotten with the hopeless mythology of CIA/Mossad culprits, a few (from the Muslim world, alas) even referring to the killers as “boys,” almost all avoiding the one thing which any cop looks for after a street crime: the motive.

Why so, I ask myself, after 10 years of war, hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths, lies and hypocrisy and betrayal and sadistic torture by the Americans — our MI5 chaps just heard, understood, maybe looked, of course no touchy-touchy nonsense — and the Taliban? Have we managed to silence ourselves as well as the world with our own fears? Are we still not able to say those three sentences: The 19 murderers of 9/11 claimed they were Muslims. They came from a place called the Middle East. Is there a problem out there?

3. Did Osama win? Andrew Sullivan (The Daily Beast) asks if we let Bin Laden win… but decides that we let our fear win, and concludes that, “Until we decide to grasp hope again, the war will live on. Within us all.”

...I was, like most of us, simply terrorized. And it’s only now, a decade later, that I’ve come to see how significant that feeling was, how transformative it would become. We often talk about terror in terms of the terrorist. We do so less in terms of the terrorized. But it was how this act changed those of us who were bystanders that made this event more awful than a mere mass murder. It was mass murder as theater and as threat.

It took months for this initial trauma to ebb, years for my psyche to regain its equilibrium. And it took me close to a decade to realize just how slickly Osama bin Laden had done his evil work, how insidiously his despicable performance art had reached into my mind and altered it, how carefully he had set the trap and how guilelessly I — we — had walked right into it.

We need to understand that 9/11 worked. It worked as a tactic to induce American self-destruction, even if it failed spectacularly as a strategy to advance Al Qaeda — and its heretical message of suicidal warfare — across the globe.

4. “Follow the Money,” said Deep Throat to Bob Woodward. As a member of the NYFD says, “The intersection of 9/11 and money is a busy intersection,” and The Village Voice looks at some of the players on that corner.9|11: The Winners

The September 11, 2001 attacks have been a symbol of many things and many causes, but like the lavish, flag-draped rebuilding of the site, it has also been a vehicle for enrichment. From corporations to politicians to government officials to nonprofits to the security industry to publishers to the health industry (not to mention the incidents of outright fraud over the years), many people have found ways to profit from one of the nation’s biggest disasters. 9/11 has created an economy all its own.

Fighting the Security State. Why fight against those who want to protect us? Because the Patriot Act in the U.S. has been used 1618 times for drugs, 122 times for fraud, but only 15 times for terrorism. In the U.K., anti-terrorist powers have produced over 100,000 searches, 506 arrests, 0 charges for terrorism. Because the use of torture has irrevocably removed any moral high ground that the brutal 9.11 attacks might have given the West. Because scanners and CCTV cameras simply don’t work.

5. “Torture is Wrong and Never Justified,” says ex-head of U.K. M15 Reith Lectures, BBC4

The use of torture is “wrong and never justified,” the former head of the security service MI5 has insisted. Eliza Manningham-Buller said it should be “utterly rejected even when it may offer the prospect of saving lives.” Giving the second of her BBC Radio Reith lectures, she acknowledged recent disclosures about alleged British intelligence operations in Libya would “raise widespread concerns.”

“No one could justify what went on under Gaddafi’s regime,” she added…She said that the use of torture had not made the world a safer place, adding that the use of water-boarding by the United States was a “profound mistake” and as a result America lost its “moral authority.”

6. The Heroism Of The Public Response Has Been Polluted By What Has Been Done To Prevent A Second 9/11The Independent

The 10th anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Centre towers by two hijacked commercial airliners should be a moment of unambiguous moral clarity. In a way, it still is. Through special newspaper supplements and TV documentaries we are reminded (as if we ever could forget) of the horror of that beautiful sunny morning in New York City: the sight of office workers jumping to certain death as a merciful release from incineration; the desperate calls as husbands and wives, parents and children, made what they knew would be their final messages to those they loved and would never see again.

Yet this commemoration is mixed with something else; the feeling that the heroism of the public response to the horror of that day has been foully polluted by what has been done in our name to prevent a second 9/11. This is encapsulated by the revelations from documents discovered in abandoned buildings in Tripoli, appearing to show the complicity of the British Government in the rendition of a suspected Islamist terrorist from Hong Kong, into the hands of Colonel Gaddafi’s interrogators…. This, of course, was all part of the “war on terror.”

7. Germany Kiboshes Body Scanners At Airports The Local

Body scanners being tested at Hamburg Airport are so error prone that the German government has decided not to introduce them across the country for the time being. The so-called backscatter scanners are supposed to show whether passengers are concealing dangerous items on their bodies. They are broadly similar to “naked” scanners already used in many U.S. airports. The testing in Hamburg from September to the end of July was meant to be the prelude to a nationwide rollout.

But the German scanners had an error rate of 54 per cent, according to government officials, who said that wrinkles in clothing or even perspiration caused false alarms. That meant security personnel were forced to waste an untold amount of time subsequently searching passengers by hand for no reason.

8. Why CCTV Has Failed To Deter Criminals? Cory Doctorow The Guardian

The real story for me is about surveillance, and not the mere use of CCTV footage to apprehend rioters after the fact. It’s about the total failure of CCTV to deter people from committing crimes in the first place….The theory of street crime as a rational act is bankrupt. Evidence-led CCTV deployment shows us where CCTV does work, and that’s in situations where crimes are planned, not pulled off in the heat of the moment…. After the London riots, one thing is certain: anyone promoting CCTVs for deterrence is most likely selling something, probably CCTVs

9. Harper Plans To Bring Back Extraordinary Anti-Terror Powers For Police canada.com

Controversial clauses expanding the powers of police to combat terrorism are going to be reintroduced by the new Conservative majority government, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in an interview with CBC. Harper said for the first time since the Tories took control of the House of Commons the government plans to bring back measures in the Anti-Terrorism Act that expired in 2007.

“We think those measures are necessary. We think they’ve been useful,” Harper said of the expired parts of the act. “They’re applied rarely, but there are times where they’re needed.” The clauses were part of the act, introduced in 2001, and were required to be renewed every three years. They allowed for preventive detention of suspects for up to 72 hours, granted police the ability to arrest terrorism suspects without a warrant and enabled judges to compel witness to testify.

10. Stop Painting Religions In Image Of Their Destructive Followers: Dalai Lama

As the 9-11 anniversary nears, the Dalai Lama is warning that all religions — including his own — have followers who carry the seeds of destructive emotions within them…. He delivered the message to a conference Wednesday in Montreal, an event that examined how religions can promote peace nearly a decade after Sept. 11, 2001.

“Logically, if you criticize Islam due to a few mischievous Muslims, then you have to criticize all world religions,” the Dalai Lama told the packed auditorium. “To create that kind of negative impression to one particular religion — that is totally wrong.” He pointed to his head and said that everyone — himself included — has the potential to develop harmful feelings and it’s the job of religions to help people keep them under control.

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Excerpted from and simplified down to ten from this week’s Tikkunista.