This is a >6500 word article. If you don't like the fact that it's all on one page, so kill me.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

As mentioned, one of the reasons for why I went to the USA, besides visiting my then-boyfriend,  was that I wanted to see it from the inside. Were its citizens really as ignorant and stupid as I was imagining?

I hadn't really met more than some dozens of 'average' US citizens before; some business acquaintances of my father's, the usual embarrassing tourists, and some exchange students (one of which was my slightly annoying block mate at Moscow State University, who threw very loud and messy shavuot parties). I was, of course, quite aware of how silly it was to deem a whole people by the impression that only a handful of its representatives had given, and this made me all the more eager to go to the country itself, so that I could at the very least mock them with a clean conscience ... 

Why did I think they were 'ignorant and stupid'? Well, first of all, tourists generally aren't very good ambassadors for their countries (just think of the usual impression people have of Germans ...). Second, if such a large amount of people vote for a presidential candidate like George W. Bush, that he gets very close to actually winning the election (they can't have forged all of the votes, after all), it must mean that there is something seriously wrong with the society and the people themselves. Also, the fact that US citizens often don't seem to have a clue about what shameless things their government is involved with, or for that part, what the rest of the world actually is like, made me cringe.

Yet another thing is the serious problem of superficiality, a disease that seems to have infested a depressingly large proportion of the citizens of the USA. A 'nice' example of it came in the days following September 11th 2001, when I watched the news on television, and saw smiling young women in New York, who were, as it seemed, happily telling reporters that they thought the government should strike back in violent retaliation. The image was perverse to me, but I assume it is just an automatic reaction for US citizens to smile when a camera is directed at them, and to be 'nice' and 'friendly' to strangers - providing these strangers are, for instance, white, well-groomed, and HIV negative. (Oh, but give me the Russians any time; they only smile if they really have reason to do so ...)

Still, these were just things that stuck to my eyes when watching the country and its people from outside. I couldn't be sure until I had seen some of it with my own eyes.  

To perhaps make it a bit worse, my destination turned out to be Texas. Even in the eyes of US natives, the population in this area is scarier than average.

¤ HOUSTON ¤

The first superficial impressions regarding people in Houston were, for example, that most of them weren't white, Christian and immensely fat (although, in this country, 55% of adults are overweight by international standards, and a whopping 23% are considered obese, while regarding children, the number of overweight is 1 in 5, according to a Worldwatch news release in March 2000). It depended on what places you'd visit, but overall, more than half of the people you'd see walking and riding buses in town were usually black and Hispanic (partly, of course, because the area where I lived was mostly Hispanic). Often people didn't understand what I said, and no one could put their finger on my accent, even though it tends to be more or less regular British English. Silly young (and older, as well) men were just as eager to hit on strange young women as in the Mediterranean (I've been told by US citizens from other parts of the country that it is a particularly Southern trait).

Anyway, this touristing included a quite interesting trip to NASA Space Center, with a tour of the grounds (where the probably most strict prohibition regarded walking on the grass). The tour leader was a rather scary specimen. A young man, perhaps 18-22 years old, who concluded every other sentence with "HA ha ha." That is, he didn't laugh, but he just said "HA ha ha." Everyone on the tour seemed to either find him very annoying, or find great pleasure in laughing at him and imitating him. Even though he definitely wasn't any 'average US citizen', the tour guide, surely, impersonated a certain infamous type of this nationality. 

Another person we met on our touristing trips was the owner of a horse riding camp, digested with pick-up trucks, further into the slightly cooler and less humid mainland of East Texas. He took us on a ride into the surrounding forests, while fishing out Budweiser cans from his saddle bags, giving the impression of a 'regular guy', who worked at a gym in the day, and took out visitors on horse back in the evenings. He, having been born in Houston, couldn't stand living in the city, was fond of horses and dogs, and had a deep fatherly love for his two daughters, whom he kept talking about all the time, and carried around on his shoulders when they weren't riding his horses. The thought of going abroad, or learning another language, seemed very foreign to him, for obvious reasons. Everything he needed and everything he loved was in East Texas. 

In the seaside town of Galveston, we found a god-forgotten oil rig museum. The young museum attendant turned out to like Germany very much, and was annoyed at the fact that it was so expensive to travel there. For him, money was the greatest obstacle against getting more acquainted with foreign countries.
(Also, his confused look when I answered "I'm fine" to his "how are you" made me realise that "how are you" is just a phrase that in this cultural sphere is used in the same way as "hello", "good morning", and so on, and that you're just supposed to answer "hi", "hello", or ... "how are you", without answering the question. ... That's another scary trait of the USA, for the record ...)

Well, most of the people I met in Houston and its environs weren't very scary (perhaps with the exception of the middle aged Christian women who swarmed around you in supermarkets and wanted to talk you into joining their church service next Sunday), and even if they were ignorant, and possibly stupid, it was more often than not in a somehow cute and not extremely distressing way, maybe because these people didn't even pretend like they knew all about the world.  

However, in times like these, I bet many US citizens have woken up to realise that there actually is a world out there, and that 'the outside world' suddenly poses a kind of threat, only they don't understand why.

Not very uncommon are accounts of US citizens, post-9/11/2001, who with tear-filled eyes blurt out the question "Why does everyone hate us?" to uneasy foreigners.

¤ IGNORANCE ¤

If the uneasy foreigner in question starts to carefully sketch a picture of the US government's countless military interventions, its acting as a kind of self-appointed world police ruling over the fates of powerless countries and peoples, of the Gulf war and its repercussions, of the immense support provided by the US government to Israel's government and military, the US citizen in question might become surprised, shocked, angry, or just shake his or her head in disbelief and deny everything as communist or Islamist propaganda. 

It is a plain fact that US citizens generally have a very limited knowledge about the rest of the world. One explanation might be, that the USA covers a very large area, and within this single nation, with its relatively homogenous structure, you can, most of the time, find more than you'll ever need. Others blame the impotent education system of the USA, with the subjects geography, history and political science having been squeezed together into one single subject - 'social studies'. Whatever the reasons, the results are distressing.

As Anne Kelleher, a professor of political science at Pacific Lutheran University in Washington state, who at her "midsize, midlevel, comprehensive university" sees a great many average American college freshmen, puts it (in Laura Miller's article 'America the Ignorant' at salon.com), "You find that a large cross section of students, even when you mention major events of world history - and I'm just talking about European history, things like the Renaissance - will give you blank stares."

Many journalists working for US news services find themselves in great despair after conducting reader's polls on what kind of news are the most interesting to their readers. Eric Ransdell, a foreign correspondent for nine years in Africa and Asia and currently a documentary film maker living in Shanghai, tells in 'America the Ignorant' of when he was at U.S. News & World Report, and how in their polls, foreign news would come in dead last almost every time in terms of what the audience wanted them to deliver. "Mike Ruby and the other editors I was working for at the time all wanted more foreign coverage, more overseas bureaus and a bigger foreign news hole, but what could they do? The fact that as much foreign news finds its way into print and onto television as it does today is, frankly, a miracle given the yodeling ignorance of the American public."

Considering how active their government's foreign involvement is, it is almost dizzying how little interest the US public seems to have in 'the outer world'. But it would actually seem to be a great insult on humanity to simply blame it all on their own ignorance.

¤ PROPAGANDA ¤

Dr. Sarah D. Shields, associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina, says, in an interview by David Williamson with UNC News Services on September 13th, 2001: "I think most Americans don’t have adequate information. When I ask my students, 'why would people in the Middle East be angry at America?', they cannot begin to answer. It’s been a long time, for example, since the news media reported much about our bombing Iraq, but we’re still doing it every week, and there are often casualties."

Then why aren't they provided with that information? In the very obvious case of Iraq, one would think that the government would actually be better off in the eyes of is citizens the less they would get to know about what it's actually doing there.

Since the US constitution is built on 'democracy', and its rulers thus, for the most part, have to rely on their fellow citizens to vote for them, one might think that it should be crucial for the potential rulers to present their actions in a way that would make them liked and loved by the public. A very important part of the disinformation in the USA regarding its government's and its military's activities could very well be that the government wants to keep the people in ignorance, so that its actions abroad aren't questioned.  

Following September 11th last year, the tragedy that struck the USA in one of the, to be perverse, perhaps most magnificent suicide terror attacks of our time in terms of dramatical qualities, was used to mobilise an immense upsurge of 'patriotism'. This 'patriotism' of the masses condoned the government's subsequent actions, masked as 'retaliatory acts' against the alleged masterminds of the attacks. (By the way, has anyone seen clear evidence of Usama bin Laden's direct involvement in the attacks?? If there really was any such evidence, it would have been paraded out to the world to see. But all we have been given are little hints from 'video tapes found in caves' and such. Remember how soon after the attacks the decision to go for Afghanistan was made? Who says they hadn't planned it all beforehand, and just used '9/11' as a well-timed excuse?)

As in the case of so many other countries in this world, there is a strong government-controlled censorship regarding what the mainstream media are allowed to report. It doesn't manifest itself in a very direct way, but rather it silently infiltrates all US mainstream media. Not only through newspapers, radio and television news a one-sided picture of the world is spread, but entertainment sections, such as the film industry, do a good deal of the job when it comes to misleading citizens. 'Historical' and allegedly 'serious' action movies (such as 'Save Private Ryan') indoctrinate people to believe in an image of its government that serves the government's purposes. By making people think that it was nothing but the landing of US forces in Normandy in Operation Overlord that saved the world from National Socialism in WWII, it also lulls them into certainty that it is the mission of the USA to 'look after' the world and see to it that everything goes 'the right way'.

This belief is supported by a person hiding under the nick BornInTheUSA, who on a rather entertaining web page containing some discussion of why Americans are so 'hated' writes: "[A personal note to those people who hate Americans:] What a shame you feel that way, but always remember this... If your country is under attack the GOOD OLD USA will be the 1st to be there to defend your country OR would you rather have us stand back and watch your world fall apart around you. We would never ever wish a 9-11 on your country, but, then again, you have your opinions. Opinions are like assholes -- everyone has one. I'm just glad your opinion means nothing to most of the world!!!"

¤ THE GREAT VICTIMS ¤

And according to the all-infesting propaganda, since September 11th, there is no suffering like American suffering. 

Nothing like the crumbling New York World Trade Center towers has ever happened anywhere in the world. Never have so many and so righteous and so innocent people been so ruthlessly killed. No one can even try to understand what it feels like to be a citizen of the United States of America, so suddenly and so inexplicably wounded by something so dark and frightening that it can only be described as Ultimate Evil.

An apt pupil is Jonathan Rauch, who in his piece 'After 226 Years, an Independence Day Like No Other' in National Journal, June 29th 2002, writes:
"... That is not to deny that many Americans are uncomfortable with homosexuality. It is to affirm that they are much more uncomfortable with intolerance. In the social order that America's militant Islamic enemies would impose, my partner Michael and I would probably not be suffered to live, except perhaps as liars and fugitives. In that sense, this war is not being fought for an abstraction. It is being fought for me. It is being fought for the right of homosexuals to pursue happiness in the only way possible for us. The fact that many of the American fighters do not approve of homosexuality only redoubles my admiration for their sacrifice.
"On this Fourth of July, wherever I am and whatever else I may be doing, I will be giving those fighters my thanks. Never have I been as proud of my country and my fellow citizens as I have been since September 11. On no prior Independence Day have I so well understood, and so keenly felt, my debt to the men who, in 1776, risked everything for what they called certain unalienable rights. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the defense of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and so again, today, do their 285 million descendants; and so do I." 

US citizens - and everyone else exposed to US media, for that part - are made to believe that the terrorists hated the 'freedom' and 'liberty' the United States of America so boldly represent; that they hated the material abundance and the 'freedom of choice' in supermarkets; that they hated the equal rights, and the 'harmonious' multicultural society and 'haven for refugees' as which the US presents itself. 

When asking US citizens why they think people from other countries would hate them, the answer you get most often is something vague, in the line of "it's only natural that inferiors despise and make fun of the No.1". 

¤ ANTI-AMERICANISM ¤

There is plenty of just plain stupid text out on the internet (try searching for <stupid+Americans> on Google, and you're in for some mind-expanding reading). People who oppose the US government's actions let out their hatred on the country's citizens, instead, often through badly considered formulations confusing 'the US government' with 'Americans' (which would actually include all other residents of the both continents North America and South America, as well).

An example is Masha from Russia, who at a discussion about the US military using the a-bomb on Iraq at www.closeup2002.boom.ru writes: "Anyway, talking about a-bomb, Americans are insane! I can't believe that even 9/11 didn't teach'em anything!!!!! they just ignorant!!! and stupid in a certain sense, because not to see such possibility in future is being toooooooo naive! they think that their PRO (protivo-raketnaya oborona) will protect'em from anything.... xa-xa-xa.... "sweet dreams"!"

Richard D. LeCour has on his web site tried to give somewhat straight answers to some 'American-hating' sentiments he has encountered on the web. For example, to the exclamation "I thank God that I'm not a stupid ass-fucking American!", found somewhere in the depths of the web, he answers: "I'm glad I'm not a stupid ass-fucking American, too! I'm just a plain American of average intelligence, eking out a living, trying to live my dreams."

Still, often when a US citizen encounters people who oppose his government, even without excessing into hating 'Americans', not much seems to be needed to make him or her upset. 

Jeffrey C. Goldfarb is a professor of sociology at the New School, and travels each year to Cape Town and Cracow to teach in programs on democracy and diversity, which gather young democracy activists from the whole world. In his article 'Losing Our Best Allies in the War on Terror' in New York Times, August 20th 2002, he writes about his shock when noticing that 'pro-democracy activists take up anti-Americanism'. 
"In my seminar last January, we started our deliberations with reflections on the Sept. 11th attacks. I was shocked by the class discussion. With the exception of a young professor from Nigeria, all the students in Southern Africa were focused not on confronting Al Qaeda but on the American war on terrorism. It seemed that the participants could not imagine that the Americans were victims. They could only understand our power and condemn our excesses.
"Whereas I understood the American operation in Afghanistan as fundamentally a liberation, my South African co-teacher and our students understood it as superpower bullying. Whereas I wanted to understand the mind-set of those who would kill thousands of innocents, including one of my dearest friends, in a suicide bombing, they could only see the horrors of collateral damage of the war on terrorism.
"In Cracow, [...] one of the students explained why they must focus on the reaction to the attacks and not the attacks themselves. It is the war on terrorism that is being used as a cover by dictators around the world to justify crack-downs on democracy advocates. Suddenly the rights of Muslims in the Philippines and Indonesia - or of the democratic critics of the authoritarian "Asian way" in Singapore, Malaysia and Burma - are not important to the Bush administration. Suddenly the strategic resources of Central Asian dictatorships are more important than the lives of human rights activists. Suddenly the defense of the American way of life and our democracy seems to be predicated upon a lack of concern for the democratic rights of people in less advantaged countries."

The encounter with these students did not manage to convince Goldfarb to adopt their stance. But he did come to realise one thing:
"When I think about my students, it seems to me that the young Muslim from Indonesia, the Burmese dissident living in Thailand, the feminists in Poland, Ukraine, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Indonesia are the keys to victory against dogmatism and its terrors. Only they are actually capable of presenting the alternatives to terrorism to their compatriots; that work cannot be done from afar. They are at the front lines of the antiterrorist struggle. Any war that undermines their position - and they convincingly report that it is doing so - is self-defeating.
"I believe that my Asian activist is wrong when she posits a necessary connection between American democracy and foreign dictatorships - and that she wants to be convinced that she is wrong. Warriors on terrorism should be advised. If the war on terrorism is to be a success, people like her must be on our side. We must face military threats on military terms, yet we must realize that the struggle for democracy and against terrorism demands that we listen with great care to the world's democrats and act accordingly."

Still, like the old Bible said, 'do not poke at the stick in your neighbour's eye, without realising that you have a redwood trunk sticking out of your own eye socket' (or something). When it comes to state terrorism, which is just as much terrorism as hijacking jumbo jets and flying them into skyscrapers, the US government is, unfortunately, at the top of the list.

'Anti-Americanism', or common sense that is just understood as 'anti-Americanism' by US citizens who call themselves 'Americans' is, in any case, very common in countries outside the USA. It can take on many shapes, and below is just one example ... Some US citizens would probably be upset by the harsh treatment of one of their dearest national holidays.

An example of 'Euro-snob anti- Americanism' - the Swedish cartoonist Vale's view on Thanksgiving Day.  (Reproduced and translated completely without permission; an action which I defend by arguing that the magazine Arbetaren, in which this comic was published, encourages its readers to share their copies with friends. And by publishing this, I am indeed sharing part of the magazine with my friends, i.e. my readers.) Vacation is over, the crayfish party is drained. Autumn's darkness rules. And the most depressing thing of all: now we have found out that retail trade has coaxed out of us yet another good reason to party a bit at the end of November. Namely: After the great success with Svensk Handel's (Swedish trade organisation for importers, wholesalers, suppliers and retailers) introducing of Halloween to Sweden, the turn has come to another holiday from the USA. Every year since 1621,  Thanksgiving is celebrated, and you eat turkey and thank God that a boatful of Englishmen made it across the Atlantic Ocean and founded the first colony. It's celebrated in the USA, that is. Here, it'll be nada. Svensk Handel has changed its executive. The one with Halloween resigned, and for the new one old ideas won't do. Even though there is so much to be thankful of!

That 15 millions of Africans survived the same  route (despite low-fare ticket) That one million Indians voluntarily put themselves in front of the white man's rifle

That God blesses America. Everyone else finds more than 40 countries in North and South America. But he up  That the presidents of the USA always have had such good hand with bombs That we can get the same surprise-free chow wherever we go there (above Bush) blesses one country. Doesn't he answer for all of his creation anymore?

¤ CULTURE ¤

As hinted in Vale's piece above, not only the US government's actions are to blame for this upsurge of horrid 'anti-Americanism', but also the immense cultural influence from the USA. This culture is, however, not the 'finer' culture of John Steinbeck and Andrew Wyeth, but it encompasses all the greasy things, like soap operas, Ricki Lake and fast food. Films and TV series from the USA fill a lot of the television programmes in most European and many more countries. Music, fashion, and other things sorting under the concept of 'lifestyle' for large parts come directly from the USA. A fantasy image of the USA is created, that makes young people all over the world idolise and adopt everything 'American': cars, chewing gum, Coca-Cola, Levi's jeans ...

This phenomenon (which, by the way, is called "gharbzadegi", 'West-mania', in Arabic), is described well in a song by the Russian rock band Nautilus Pompilius, called "The Last Letter" ("Последнее письмо"), where the singer takes farewell of his childhood and the idolisation of 'America' it was so deeply entwined with. (It kind of makes me cry a bit sometimes, because it reminds me of my ex-boyfriend, for whom, when he was a little Moscow boy, it would have been the greatest thing to work at one of the newly opened McDonald's restaurants, and that's just, well, heartbreaking in its innocence.) A translation of the lyrics might be something like this:

When all songs I don't understand fall silent
My last paper ship shouts in the stingent air

Goodbye, America - oh! 
The place where I've never ever been,
Farewell forever, take the banjo and play for me at our parting ...

Your stone washed jeans became much too small for me
We were taught so long to love your forbidden fruits

Goodbye, America - oh!
The place where I'll never ever be,
Will I hear the song that I'll remember for all life?

(V. Butusov & D. Umetskiy)

The cultural influence of the USA is often closely connected with the strategies of US-based corporations to expand their markets across the world. 

In the streets of Cairo, for instance, the presence of US, as well as and European, big corporations is very evident. Advertisements of Pepsi, Coca-cola, Nike, Nestlé, Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald's jostle on poles and walls all over the place. Ahmed Mohammed Anwar, a 20-year old Cairo University student, interviewed by Adam Shehata of the Swedish weekly Arbetaren (#46-2002), says: "A lot of big foreign corporations have established themselves in Egypt. But there is no real American industry in the country. The USA don't want that, they don't want to help us, but just that we should consume their products."

The one-sided cultural influence creates even more despisal of 'America'. Residents of former Soviet republics, who have grown up with Soviet films, which largely, at least in post-war and post-Stalin times, have been able to proud themselves with supporting the purpose of 'showing what life really is like' (as Grigory Tchukhray, director of, among others, the film Ballad of a Soldier, put it), are often appalled by the US film industry's production, which is flowing over them nowadays. Its empty clichés and constant 'happy endings' fuel the image of US citizens as superficial and ignorant. 

¤ AT HOME ¤

But what good has September 11th done the people of the USA themselves?

The argument that the terrorists who hijacked the planes on September 11th were aiming at 'liberty' seems rather pointless when scrutinising US policy towards its citizens after the attacks. It turns out that if someone was aiming at civil liberty, it were the ones sitting in the US government.

To 'fight terrorism', the 'USA Patriot Act' was passed after 9/11, dramatically increasing the power of the U.S. government to imprison innocent people for indefinite periods under mere suspicion of some knowledge about terrorist activities.

Since the worst restrictions and punishments were inflicted on 'non-white' people, few US citizens spoke out in opposition. A year later, a Freedom Forum poll indicated that a substantial number of US citizens express support for limiting freedom in the name of fighting terrorism. 
Most people in the US think that this just means that airport officials will be slightly more suspicious of socks in sandals, and other such small inconveniences. The US mainstream media confirms that image, and you have to go to alternative and/or foreign sources to find information about it. (A good read is "It's a Free Country: Personal Freedom in America after September 11" from RDV Books, edited by Danny Goldberg, Victor Goldberg and Robert Greenwald.)

Only then you will come across the accounts of unjust detentions. For example, Ali Maqtari, a Yemeni, was jailed without charges for two months after he accompanied his US-born wife to Fort Campbell, despite having no links to terrorism and passing a lie detector test. Or take the federal agents, who investigated a 60-year-old retired man at a gym who had criticised Bush's links to the oil industry, or the agents who questioned a North Carolina student for having an anti-Bush poster in her apartment.

But there are, of course, US citizens who see through some of the government's propaganda. One of them is Eric, a 24 years old guy from Gainesville, Florida, who studies Classic to Early Modern European History at the University of Florida. When I ask him if I can quote him in this article, he stresses that he by no means is 'anti-American'. Still, he hates September 11th. 

This is Eric. Eric hates September 11th.

Typically, Eric isn't really anything near an 'all-American guy' - for example, his friends at school kept a running list for several years of reasons for why he actually is an extraterrestrial.

His reasons for hating 9/11 do not stem from 'US vs. the terrorists' thinking, but more from the aftereffects of the attack. "What gives me hatred", he says, "is how our government is twisting this event, turning it into a banner for it to promote its own causes and to make changes in the government. I don't like how they now shove Sept 11 into every other country's face and say 'it can happen to you so you have to agree with my ideas now'. 
"Then, in our own country, they use it as a tool to make the populace afraid and thus make them willing to agree to changes to our national laws. Things that help erode privacy and personal rights. Intelligence agencies that once had limited power and could only affect small realms of information have been combined to form one large intelligence agency. A sort of secret state police. All information found by our intelligence agencies such as the FBI, CIA, etc all go to this one agency now, under direct control of the president. The president is also trying to arrange that only he can control who gets the jobs in this new agency. 
"It's scary, but our government tells us it's for our own good, to protect us from the Terrorists. That kind of stuff I have grown to hate and it is why I hate Sept 11. It has been so cheapened and tarnished that it has no value anymore."

The agency Eric is talking about is the Department of Homeland Security. This agency will not collect information of its own (or so it's proposed, at least), but will receive information gathered by several institutions such as the FBI, CIA, NSA, the Coast Guard, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and many more. 

CBS news reports in November 16th 2002 that the new department will merge 22 diverse agencies into four divisions: Border and Transportation Security; Emergency Preparedness And Response; Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Countermeasures; and Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection. It will employ 170,000 workers with a combined budget of about $40 billion. Its secretary will have the single mission of "protecting the nation from terrorism".

Critics claim it will just form yet another layer of paper-shuffling analysts to filter intelligence before it gets to the White House, and that this will not do anything but create a framework for more intelligence failures. Also, it will have an impact on civil liberties.

Doug Ireland, at In These Times, wrote on June 21st 2002: "DHS will create a new funnel for surveillance data from the FBI and CIA to local law enforcement. With the new FBI guidelines that permit surveillance of political meetings and the CIA’s first-ever authorization to engage in domestic spying, this DHS pipeline will only encourage the growth of municipal “political police” squads." 

Also, since the terrorist attacks on September 11th, the Bush administration has moved more quickly than any administration since World War II to make government activities, documents and other information secret, according to USA Today, May 15th 2002.
The article states that hundreds of thousands of public documents have been removed from government Web sites. "Other public information has been edited, and access to some materials has been made more difficult. Some government materials yanked from the Internet, such as EPA reports on the consequences of industrial accidents at chemical plants, may be viewed only in government reading rooms. Visitors must have an appointment and have to be accompanied by a government escort.
"The restrictions imposed are a dramatic turnabout from the policies of the past three decades. After the Watergate scandal led to an era of government disclosure, officials typically released all information that did not involve issues such as national security, trade secrets or personal privacy. But after the deadliest attack on U.S. soil, the notion of what could compromise 'national security' was expanded."

Congress members have voiced protests against this, but Bush administration officials counter that they are only doing it to 'fight terrorism'.
"I cannot and will not divulge information ... that will damage the national security of the United States, the safety of its citizens or our efforts to ensure the same in an ongoing investigation," Attorney General John Ashcroft told a Senate panel in December 2001. "Each action taken by the Department of Justice ... is carefully drawn to target a narrow class of individuals: terrorists. Our legal powers are targeted at terrorists. Our investigation is focused on terrorists. Our prevention strategy targets the terrorist threat."

Further, USA Today writes that Ashcroft has refused to identify hundreds of foreigners who have been rounded up since Sept. 11. "Authorities have not said why they have been detained or where they have been held. Ashcroft has closed the hearings for those held on immigration charges.
"Last week, Ashcroft ordered county jails, where most of the foreigners have been held, not to release the prisoners' names. He also refuses to clarify inconsistent government estimates on how many foreigners have been released.
"In October [2001], the Justice Department said it had detained more than 1,100 people in the terrorism probe. About 100 of those were charged with criminal offenses.
"Only one detainee, Zaccarias Moussaoui, has been charged with being involved in the al-Qaeda conspiracy that carried out the attacks on Sept. 11. He is awaiting trial in Virginia on charges that could result in the death penalty.
"At least 718 foreigners have been jailed for immigration violations during the terrorism probe. Many of the violations are minor, such as overstaying a visa.
"Other foreigners have been held as material witnesses, meaning that authorities believe they could be useful in the probe. Justice officials have not released their names and have not identified even the grand juries that might call the material witnesses to testify."

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

It is clear that the terrorist attacks of September 11th also have affected the citizens of the USA in a very negative way, only many of them haven't noticed yet, thanks to effective government propaganda.

9/11 is used by the Bush administration to excuse attacks against Middle Eastern countries - first Afghanistan, and now they are trying their utmost to get at Iraq, as well. The mainstream media has depicted the Afghanistan operation as a 'liberation', masking the reality that the US government is trying to establish a US hegemony over the Middle East. 
Oil is one reason. The oil resources on US territory will only last about ten more years, while Kuwait, for instance, has reserves for another 200 years or so. And instead of trying to find alternative solutions, like the German experiments with vegetable oil as petrol replacement, the Bush administration seems to be trying to expand their resources by force.

The USA, being the only remaining superpower after the cold war, plays a more than crucial role in all international politics, among them inflamed issues like the Israel/Palestine conflict. Its 'with us or against us' policy after September 11th has made it easy for the governments of other states to carry on their questionable wars, by simply labeling their adversaries as 'terrorists' and 'linked with al-Qaeda', like the government of the Russian Federation has done with its war against Chechen separatism.

The autocracy of the US government, its imperialistic aims, and its defying of international law, getting through an exceptional rule, which says US citizens cannot be prosecuted in international courts, is something that needs to be fought against with all our might.

But aiming at 'US citizens in general' is a fatal mistake. To do so is to do the US government a favour, as the real enemy then goes mostly without criticism. And US citizens can't obviously be convinced that their government is wrong by calling them stupid and ignorant. On the contrary - it might actually strengthen their support for their government. 

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Written by Tinet Elmgren, November-December 2002.