Tag: the war of terror

America After 9/11: 25 Years of Fear, War, Surveillance, and Permanent Emergency

“I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in  –  and the West in general  –  into an unbearable hell and a choking life.” – Osama bin Laden (October 2001)

“GIVE THEM NIGHTMARES.” – President Donald Trump (September 2026)

Days before the 25th anniversary of 9/11, President Trump flooded his Truth Social account with AI-generated fantasies of himself commanding armies of giant, red-eyed robots.

In one, Trump strides through a darkened Washington surrounded by robotic soldiers beneath the words, “THEY WILL NEVER SLEEP AGAIN.” Another declares, “THEY WILL DREAM OF US FOREVER.” A third depicts Trump seated on a mechanical throne, surrounded by an army of robots and the presidential seal, beneath the warning: “GIVE THEM NIGHTMARES.”

Twenty-five years after 9/11, one has to ask: has the nightmare ever really ended?

For a quarter-century, Americans have been governed by fear: fear of terrorists and foreign enemies, fear of domestic extremists and political opponents, fear of the next attack, the next crisis, the next emergency.

That fear has given us endless war, mass surveillance, militarized police, secret courts, indefinite detention, government watchlists, domestic military deployments and an imperial presidency armed with powers that would have been unthinkable before 9/11.

Now the man entrusted with the imperial powers of the modern-day presidency is publicly imagining himself enthroned over robotic armies, raining destruction on his enemies and promising nightmares.

The imagery may be unhinged from reality, but the powers of the presidency are not.

Neither are the questions raised by Trump’s increasingly unhinged public behavior about whether any president – especially one armed with the accumulated powers of the post-9/11 national-security state – is mentally and temperamentally fit to wield them.

That is where America’s two great anniversaries of 2026 collide.

On July 4, America celebrated 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, born from a revolt against King George III and a system in which too much power rested in the hands of one ruler. At its heart was the radical proposition that government derives its just powers from the consent of the people.

On September 11, we mark 25 years since the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, shattered the nation’s sense of security, and set in motion a massive expansion of presidential, military and national-security power.

America began by rebelling against a king.

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9/11’s Aftereffect: The Constitutional Accountability Abyss

Over the last several weeks in the lead up to the 25th anniversary of al Qaeda’s attack on the U.S., I’ve had American and foreign journalists ask me the same question: how did 9/11 change America?

My answer has generally been some version of this: 9/11 didn’t change us, we allowed it to change us, and in doing so critically damaged our very own political way of life.

We allowed our Arab American and Muslim American fellow citizens to become targets of federal surveillance and to be placed on secret government “watch lists” in the absence of any evidence they’d committed a crime.

We allowed the creation of the most sweeping and invasive surveillance dragnet in American history – first in secret via the National Security Agency’s (NSA) STELLAR WIND program and then openly through the passage of the PATRIOT Act just six weeks after the attacks.

We allowed a previous American president to lead our nation into a war against a country – Iraq – that had nothing to do with al Qaeda’s terrorist atrocities. The drama came complete with a televised presentation of “evidence” to the United Nations Security Council of the continuing threat Saddam Hussein allegedly posed to the region – evidence that turned out to be false.

We allowed those who opposed George W. Bush’s war of choice against Iraq to be targeted by the FBI with surveillance and informant penetration operations that mirrored some of the worst Cold War era tactics employed by J. Edgar Hoover and the organization he led.

We allowed our government to set up secret torture chambers around the world for captured Arab and Muslim men – the CIA’s “rendition, detention, and interrogation” (RDI) program (a.k.a., the torture program). Some, like Khalid Shaik Mohammad (KSM), were directly responsible for the attacks. Others not only had nothing to do with the attacks but no involvement with terrorism at all. And through it all, the U.S. abandoned the very principles of justice under law and due process that it had proclaimed to the world since the trials of German and Japanese war criminals after World War II. That torture program has already damaged the legal case against KSM.

And we allowed the president who authorized these things to get away with all of them and leave office legally unmolested.

I’ve used the phrase “we allowed” because we who are citizens of the Republic cannot escape our responsibility for what George W. Bush did, even if we voted for his opponents in 2000 and 2004.

Yes, there were those who went into the streets to protest the Iraq War and the creation of the Guantanamo prison and its dysfunctional, sham trial system. Those who risked police batons, tasers, and tear gas to raise their voices against unjust wars and the torture of those we captured deserve remembrance and praise. But they were too few in number to alter the course of events because too many of their fellow Americans did not join them when it mattered most.

I witnessed these events from a different angle, that of a senior House staffer working for then-New Jersey Democrat Rush Holt during the final four years of Bush’s presidency. Holt’s repeated efforts to stop runaway surveillance programs from his position on the House Intelligence Committee frequently came to naught because of the refusal of many of his colleagues to join his efforts.

Bush’s authorization of the secret STELLAR WIND mass electronic surveillance program after the 9/11 attacks was a direct violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. It literally represented an impeachable offense, as was his authorization of the CIA’s torture program. And even though multiple impeachment resolutions against Bush or then-Vice President Dick Cheney were introduced, they went nowhere – even though Democrats controlled the House during Bush’s last two years in office.

The fact that not a single House GOP member signed onto any of those resolutions no doubt contributed to the failure to hold Bush accountable for his misconduct in office. It was a posture that stood in stark contrast to the seven House Judiciary Committee Republicans who joined their Democrat colleagues in voting to impeach Richard Nixon for his crimes in office over 30 years earlier.

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The Chief Legacy of 9/11

The chief legacy of 9/11 is as obvious as it is tragic: a state of permanent warfare in the United States, both abroad and in the “homeland” (a term not used in normal discourse before the 9/11 attacks), with millions dead and displaced for no defensible reason.

If you’re 25 years old or younger in America, you’ve never known a time when your country wasn’t at war. “Peace” is no longer seen as desirable, let alone possible. War is seen as America’s natural state; a land of warriors are we, imbued with a “warrior ethos” that applauds kicking other countries when their down and beating the snot out of them just because we can.

Meanwhile, in the “homeland,” surveillance grows ever more intrusive by the day as agents of ICE kick down doors and haul people away to detention centers that are being rapidly expanded. Personal privacy is increasingly a thing of the past as the government wraps itself in a shroud of secrecy that makes oversight and accountability well-nigh impossible.

The global war on terror has become a war of terror. War begets more war, with no end in sight.

Re-reading the Atlantic Monthly 150th anniversary issue from November 2007, I came across this gem of a quote from America’s 9/11 mayor, Rudolph Giuliani:

We’ve got to be patient and committed [in Iraq], but we’ve got to multitask… We’ve got to talk about Iran – Iran is more dangerous than Iraq – and we have got to get the job done in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.

That was Giuliani in July of 2007 when he ran as a Republican presidential candidate. In America, that’s how you get treated as a “serous” candidate for the presidency – by urging for war not just with Iraq and Afghanistan but with Pakistan and Iran as well. We can “multitask” our wars! Truly a sign of American greatness.

Well, Giuliani’s dream has come true – we are talking a lot about Iran today.

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Palestine Action: From UK Direct Action to US Terror Designation

On August 26, 2026, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Palestine Action, a UK organization proscribed as a terrorist group in July 2025. The designation also included the transnational group Masar Badil and the Italy-based digital services provider Autistici Inventati as part of a broader action against the growing threat of violent far-left terrorism.

Palestine Action was founded in 2020 by Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard as a UK-based direct-action group. It describes itself as targeting “corporate enablers of the Israeli military-industrial complex” to “make it impossible for these companies to profit from the oppression of Palestinians.”

The group has targeted Israeli and Western defense manufacturers, a global logistics firm, a British military base, the office of a pro-Israel advocacy organization, a university, and a golf resort owned by President Trump.

Since its founding, the group has forced the permanent closure of Elbit’s Oldham factory and pushed the company to abandon its London headquarters. In 2021, American activist Max Geller was arrested in Kent for chaining himself to a van outside an Elbit-owned weapons factory. In 2022, the group attacked a factory in Glasgow, causing what UK officials later described as millions of dollars in damage.

In May 2023, activists broke into the Kuehne + Nagel offices at Leicester’s Meridian Business Park. They spray-painted the building and dismantled equipment, including phones and computers. In a separate action, a man drove to the gate of Elbit’s UAV Tactical Systems factory with his hands glued to the steering wheel while a woman locked herself inside the car. The protest camp at the site brought the total number of arrests to 43.

In May 2024, activists at the same business park rammed a truck through the factory’s perimeter fence. They climbed onto the roof, broke through it with tools, and sprayed red paint across the building. Seven people were arrested.

On August 6, 2024, seven people aged 20 to 51 broke into Elbit’s Filton facility near Bristol. They were charged with criminal damage, violent disorder, and aggravated burglary. One was also charged with causing grievous bodily harm with intent for allegedly striking a police officer with a sledgehammer.

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25 Years Ago, 9/11 Triggered a US Crusade of Torture

A quarter-century has passed since the terrorist attack that killed almost 3,000 people in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. During the first seven years after that mass atrocity, Pentagon spending doubled. The aftermath of 9/11 was also a huge boost for “the intelligence community.” Despite – and because of – their failure to prevent the carnage on that day, the CIA and the National Security Agency as well as 14 smaller spy agencies boomed with enormous jolts of funds.

Along the way, some line items paid for torture that persisted during the George W. Bush presidency under the euphemism of “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

The most publicized location was Guantánamo on the island of Cuba. There, “the U.S. opened the offshore detention facility in an attempt to evade the rule of law,” the London-based organization Freedom From Torture reports. “In the name of the U.S.’s ‘War on Terror,’ people deemed by the U.S. to be ‘enemy combatants’ were detained at the facility. Many were tortured and denied basic human rights and due process… Since the first detainees arrived in 2002, Guantánamo Bay has imprisoned 780 men and boys from 48 countries… Yet only 16 detainees have ever been convicted of a crime – just 2 percent.”

Despite public pressure, Bush vetoed a version of the Intelligence Authorization Act in March 2008 that would have required CIA interrogators to adhere to Army Field Manual regulations. As soon as Barack Obama became president, he issued an executive order rescinding the free hand for the CIA director on interrogations that Bush had reaffirmed in a July 2007 order. Obama’s directive removed the CIA’s detention power and required the agency to follow Army Field Manual rules.

Yet five and a half years went by before President Obama acknowledged, in his notable words, “We tortured some folks.” He told a news conference: “When we engaged in some of these enhanced interrogation techniques, techniques that I believe and I think any fair-minded person would believe were torture, we crossed a line.”

The acknowledgement came four months before the long-awaited release of a report in December 2014 by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. While heavily redacted, it was a political indictment of torture. “CIA personnel, aided by two outside contractors, decided to initiate a program of indefinite secret detention and the use of brutal interrogation techniques in violation of U.S. law, treaty obligations, and our values,” wrote the committee’s chair, Senator Dianne Feinstein. Among the report’s conclusions:

  • “The CIA’s justification for the use of its enhanced interrogation techniques rested on inaccurate claims of their effectiveness.”
  • “The interrogations of CIA detainees were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others.”
  • “The CIA has actively avoided or impeded congressional oversight of the program.”
  • “Two contract psychologists devised the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques and played a central role in the operation, assessments, and management of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program.”

Months later, the New England Journal of Medicine summed up aspects of the Senate committee’s findings: “Medical professionals, primarily private contractors, filled four basic roles at the black sites: clearing terrorist suspects as ‘medically fit’ for torture; monitoring torture to prevent death and treat injuries; developing novel torture methods; and actually torturing prisoners. All these actions were taken only after CIA and U.S. Department of Justice attorneys assured the medical professionals that they had immunity from prosecution and would not be held legally responsible for violating U.S. and international law against torture as long as they used the techniques approved in legal memos (since withdrawn) written to justify their actions. Lawyers agreed to provide immunity assurances that specific torture techniques were legal ‘enhanced interrogation’ methods only if the physicians assured them that they would be present to prevent permanent harm to prisoners. The CIA opened more than a dozen black sites around the world after 9/11, in which at least 117 prisoners were held; 39 of these prisoners were subjected to one or more torture techniques.”

At least hundreds more “suspected terrorists” who’d been captured by the U.S. were turned over to ruthless governments. “If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan,” former CIA officer Bob Baer said. “If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear – never to see them again – you send them to Egypt.”

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Trump lifts sanctions on top Al Qaeda recruiters, financiers days before 9/11 anniversary

As the US prepares to mark 25 years since Sept. 11, 2001, Donald Trump has removed top Al Qaeda figures from the US list of designated terrorists. Among those he delisted was Abdullah Muhaysini, a Saudi cleric who recruited child fighters and teen suicide bombers to wreak havoc across Syria.

The administration of President Donald Trump has removed the names of some of the world’s most notorious commanders, recruiters and financiers for the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda from its list of specially designated terrorists. Among those relieved of US sanctions this August was Abdullah Muhaysini, a Salafi-jihadi cleric from Saudi Arabia who participated in videotaped massacres of captive soldiers and recruited droves of foreign youth to carry out suicide bombings throughout Syria over the past decade.

The delisting of the jihadist recruiters came as part of the Trump administration’s removal of the government of Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa as a State Sponsor of Terrorists. “These actions represent another historic step by President Trump to give the Syrian people a path to prosperity,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared on August 24, 2026.

Formerly known as Abu Mohammad Al-Jolani, Al-Sharaa is the co-founder of ISIS and founder of Jabhat Al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda. Under the guidance of Western advisors, Al-Sharaa rebranded Al-Nusra as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, before he toppled the government of President Bashar Al-Assad in December 2024.

By the time he seized power, Al-Sharaa had been groomed by his NATO handlers as a reliable local enforcer. When Trump hosted Al-Sharaa in the Oval Office in November 2025, playfully misting him with Trump Cologne and asking how many wives he had, it was clear the US was ready to lift the sanctions that had devastated Syria’s economy. Two months later, Trump pitched a half-baked plan for the Syrian military to attack Iran. Washington had finally found its man in Damascus.

This August, the Trump administration went a step further, lifting sanctions on Al Qaeda propagandists, funders and fighters responsible for gruesome atrocities during the dirty war on Syria. These figures include Abu Sulayman al-Muhajir, a top Al Qaeda recruiter in Australia who fled to Syria; Shafi Sultan Mohammed al-Ajmi, a major Kuwaiti financier of Al-Nusra; and Abdul Samrez Jashari, an Albanian foreign fighter who has taken on a senior role in Syria’s military under Al-Sharaa.

Perhaps none of the Al Qaeda bandits who received sanctions relief from the Trump administration oversaw as many acts of sadistic violence as the Saudi-born, Turkish-backed cleric Abdullah Muhaysini.

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How Britain Tried To Rig the Trial of a Genocide Opponent – and Lost

The jury took just two hours. Tony Greenstein – Jewish socialist, anti-Zionist – had faced fourteen years under the Terrorism Act for three social media posts and a blog article opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The Crown called it “inviting support for Hamas.” The jury called it something else.

Section 12 of the Terrorism Act makes it an offense to invite support for a proscribed organization. Greenstein’s reference to a “Gaza ghetto uprising”, it argued, amounted to support for Hamas. Three social media posts and a blog article. The bill the State was demanding for those words – fourteen years.

Judge Sarah Plaschkes repeatedly objected when Greenstein brought the wider historical-political context of Palestine/Israel into the courtroom – warning him against treating the proceedings as a political forum. When the closing speech came, Greenstein was by now so concerned about what might happen to his barrister that he decided to address the jury himself (no doubt considering what had happened to Barrister Rajiv Menon KC – more of whom later). For thirty minutes he examined the prosecution case and the context in which his posts had been written. The jury wasn’t asked to lay aside the offending words; instead, he guided the jurors in an articulate reading (see his address to the jury, here) in which the world in which they’d been written was made clear (full trial coverage at the Canary, here).

But this court was rigged and thus determined to keep all context out of the courtroom. Nevertheless, despite Judge Plaschkes’ hostile interruptions, Greenstein’s speech laid bare the realities the prosecution had no interest in facing: his opposition to Hamas evident in dozens of articles he’d penned and published on his platform over the years; and Israel’s genocide in Gaza after October 2023. He spelled out the difference between supporting Hamas and defending the right of Palestinians to resist Israeli oppression, and the obvious point that the posts in contention clearly did not express support for Hamas.

Greenstein recounted to the jury how his grandparents fled Poland before the War, and most of those left behind perished in Treblinka. To him, Greenstein told the jury, the Holocaust was not history, but inheritance. He invoked the story of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising as a parallel of Gaza: young Jewish men and women rising up against the SS with smuggled pistols against tanks, knowing it was hopeless yet choosing resistance anyway. October 7th was Gaza’s uprising. The judge objected.

Once Greenstein had finished speaking (to a round of applause from the public gallery), Judge Plaschkes addressed the court to say that she had considered referring Greenstein for contempt of court. She then dismissed his address as a “rambling speech delivered by an old man”. An extraordinary turn of phrase in a criminal trial in which Greenstein was about to find out whether he was to be sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper added Palestine Action to the UK’s list of proscribed organizations in July 2025, under section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000. But proscription criminalizes more than membership. Up to fourteen years in prison can follow under section 12, which makes it an offence to “invite support for a proscribed organization” or to “express an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organization…” That was the provision the Crown used to prosecute Tony Greenstein, and it applies right now to public expressions of support for Palestine Action. Serious concerns over freedom of expression and peaceful assembly were raised by a group of five UN Special Rapporteurs over proscribing a group for property destruction.

On 6 August 2024 activists from Palestine Action staged a break-in at Elbit Systems, in Filton, near Bristol.  It’s an Israeli defense company with British operations supplying equipment to the IDF. They entered facilities, sabotaged machinery and hindered production they regarded as part of Israel’s war-making infrastructure. During the parliamentary debate on the proscription order, it was argued that Palestine Action had targeted only industrial facilities, and not civilians. The government went ahead with proscription anyway.

Rajiv Menon KC represented one of the six defendants in the February 2026 Filton Trial. All six were acquitted of aggravated burglary but the jury failed to agree on criminal damage. At the May retrial, four were convicted. Menon’s closing speech was a masterclass and invoked the 1670 Bushell case – a landmark ruling on jury independence from judicial interference, arguing that the judge could not direct a conviction. Judge Jeremy Johnson then referred Menon for contempt, a referral the Court of Appeal overturned on procedural grounds in May before Johnson referred to it correctly in June.

The Filton defendants were acquitted of the most serious charge – the barrister who defended them is now facing contempt proceedings for the way he did it.

So what lies behind all this courtroom drama is a routine machinery. Proscription – the government’s designation of an organization as terrorist – takes effect by order of the Home Secretary. It falls to the barrister to gauge how far a closing speech can go before crossing the line into contempt, while the judge cautions against political argument. Indeed, the evidence shows that judges are increasingly directing what juries are allowed to hear before threatening barristers with contempt. To an outside observer there is little sign of a conflict – yet behind these routine procedures is something damning: what the jury doesn’t get to hear – could mean years in prison.

And, of course, the elephant in the room is that Britain is directly implicated in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In September 2024, as the government suspended thirty arms export licenses to Israel, Foreign Secretary David Lammy told Parliament that “there exists a clear risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law”. Thirty licenses suspended out of three hundred and fifty. Britain would also continue to supply F-35 components through the global parts pool serving Israel, with the government arguing that withdrawal would undermine allied security. British weapons armed a state committing a genocide despite their supposed withdrawal.

The state that arms Israel prosecutes those who oppose it.

The Crown had brought three posts, a blog article and an accusation of terrorism before the jury. But Greenstein stood on that essential context – despite the hostile judge’s interjections. And a mere two hours after retiring – the jurors returned with a unanimous verdict of not guilty.

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Former Iraqi Official Honored by Biden Admin Placed on Terror Watch List, Has Visa Revoked

A former Iraqi official, who was honored and received an award under the Biden administration, has been placed on the United States government’s “Terror Watchlist” and had her visa revoked, according to multiple reports.

Taif Sami Mohammed Al Shakarchi, who previously served as Iraq’s Minister of Finance, had her visa revoked “this week,” the State Department confirmed to Fox News. While the State Department did not confirm to the outlet “when Mohammed was placed on the terrorist watchlist,” Assistant Secretary of State for Global Public Affairs Dylan Johnson praised the “Trump State Department” for revoking the visas of “foreigners who threaten our nation.”

“While the Biden State Department shamefully celebrated and awarded foreigners who threaten our nation, the Trump State Department revokes their visas and ensures these individuals are removed from our country,” Johnson explained to the outlet.

Mohammed being added to the U.S. government’s “Terror Watchlist” and having her visa revoked comes after she received “the State Department’s International Women of Courage Award in 2022.”

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Judge Throws Out 9/11 Mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Confession Days Before 25th Anniversary of September 11 Terror Attacks

A judge threw out a key confession made by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohmmed just two weeks before the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks.

This is the latest blow to the federal government.

Recall that in July 2024, under the Biden Regime, three September 11 masterminds reached plea deals with the US government, the Department of Defense said.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and his co-conspirators Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawhi will avoid the death penalty in a pre-trial plea deal reached.

An appeals court later canceled that agreement, so the death penalty is back on the table.

3,000 Americans were killed in the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, the Pentagon, and a downed plane in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

On Friday, the New York Post reported that a military judge tossed out a confession by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

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Exclusive: Palestine Action facing new rigged ‘terrorism’ trials

As the British state seeks to destroy Palestine Action, a new trial is underway in which a judge has threatened defendants with a ‘terrorism connection’ if they explain the motives behind their activism. 

It is one of three such trials in which the government has muzzled defendants, blinded jurors and banned local media coverage to guarantee convictions.

The Grayzone can exclusively reveal that hearings have been underway in the trial of the so-called Teledyne Three. These three defendants damaged the clean room of a UK factory which produces parts for the F-35 aircraft which Israel has used to carry out an array of crimes against civilians in the besieged Gaza Strip, and beyond. They are members of the direction action protest collective, Palestine Action, which the British state has designated as a “terrorist entity” in the face of international condemnation. 

The presiding judge in the Teledyne Three case, Driver, has imposed restrictions on the defense which threatens them with a “terrorism connection” if they attempt to explain the motives behind their actions.

The British media is currently forbidden from reporting on the trial or the draconian measures applied by the judge.   

The Teledyne Three case is one of three ongoing trials in which the British state is intensifying its assault on Palestine Action by muzzling defendants and blinding jurors. Stretching the definition of terrorism to the point of absurdity, and applying it as promiscuously as possible, forms the heart of the government’s strategy.

This February, the government’s relentless attempts to designate Palestine Action as a terrorism entity was found “unlawful”. However, the Home Office’s July 2025 designation of the protest group as a “terrorist entity” remains under final appeal. Meanwhile, separate ongoing court proceedings against PA actionists testify to a systematic campaign of dubious legal tactics to sentence defendants as terrorists, drastically increasing their penalties if found guilty.

As first revealed by The Grayzone, British authorities stacked the legal deck against a group of PA defendants known as the Filton Six. A judge imposed severe restrictions on what the defense could say, what the jury was allowed to hear, and which defenses the jurors were allowed to consider. The jury was not even able to know that the defendants could be sentenced as terrorists if found guilty of lesser criminal convictions. The entire case appeared engineered to guarantee convictions. 

In June, four were convicted, receiving jail sentences as “terrorists” of five to eight years.

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