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Wed 14 Jun, 2006 04:32 pm
I am troubled by the language of the times.
I hear daily about the deplorable state of affairs we call the 21st century, that civil liberties are trumped by more pressing issues regarding national security.
The conservative rhetoric out of Washington now resonates throughout Canada and has a trickledown effect even in the junior high school I teach in.
A former member of CSIS on the radio last night defended and justified, not the actual or real abuse of the Canadian terror suspects, but the potential for legitimizing the actions should they take place in the future.
Seems anything can pass by these days so long as we attach the qualifier "...given the world we live in today..."
I would hope that the world in which we lived on September 10, 2001 is not much different from the one today. [URL=http://]Looking at the graph on page 22, there were over 1000 terrorist attacks against American citizens and property in the early to mid 80's[/URL] Page 27 indicates that there were close to 800 international terrorist activities for the same period.
Is "the world we live in today" something fundamentally different than the world we lived in more than 2 decades ago...or more different than the pre-9/11 world?...or have the policies of the major players just altered the course?
I don't know much about history, but I'd like to hear from those who do why the world we live in today is so much different from the past.
The 9/11 attack on American soil was (or is perceived to have been) unprecedented. It provoked many reactions, but the dominant one has been a military effort, as well as a policy of taking steps that erode human rights, all in the name of the War on Terrorism.
That's "the world we live in today," which is another way of saying "everything changed on 9/11." It's a convenient rationale for what we see around us...
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