While in New York last week, I passed through Ground Zero at the financial district in Manhattan, and one could feel the emotion and eerie atmosphere surrounding the area.  It's been almost five years since 2,986 people died on that spot.  Today, they say the spirits of those who died are still hovering around, and they are still not at peace.

There's been a lot of controversy and debate about plans to build a Freedom Tower, how it should be designed and whether it should serve as a memorial to those who died.  There is no doubt that 9/11 was the biggest tragedy that hit America.  And no matter how much Americans are in denial, 9/11 has in fact changed the way Americans have known how to live and the kind of freedom that they have had.  That freedom has now been redefined.

Five years after 9/11, George Bush has come under fire for allowing the National Security Agency to conduct spying activities on Americans even without court approval.  The controversy has virtually exposed how freedom is being curtailed for those who live in America.  Foreigners visiting the US, especially those from the Middle East and Asia, are routinely subjected to eavesdropping, leaving them with no privacy whatsoever.

The United States' Department of Homeland Security has the capability through satellite technology to zero in on calls made from cellphones and listen to conversations.  In fact, they know that you know they're listening—but they don't care.  Emails are regularly opened, text messages are monitored and fax messages are read with total disregard to one's privacy.

For a country that prides itself on being the number one advocate of human rights, it seems that these same rights no longer exist, as seen in the abuses conducted on prisoners in Abu Ghraib.  In fact, the United Nations is already asking the US to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba and put the prisoners there on trial.

Ironically, the country that is supposed to uphold freedom, democracy and respect for human rights seems to be the one violating the same.  In fact, a foreigner coming to America going through the airport in big cities like New York can be subjected to all kinds of harassment, if the immigration officials so desire.  Now it's even worse, because these officials can arbitrarily use or abuse these special powers with impunity.

This kind of paranoia has really set in all over the United States.  Because of this paranoia, the US has become extremely obsessed with intelligence gathering.  One of the guest speakers at a forum I attended in New York was Malcolm Gladwell—author of the highly popular The Tipping Point and Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking—and he said the American intelligence community had gathered so much information that it's almost impossible to figure out what is accurate from all that clutter.

He said the same thing that happened in Pearl Harbor is happening now, where the intelligence community had an overload of information.  Before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, it was the media, which had only bits and pieces of the information, which rightly predicted that there was going to be an attack.  Today there's a clear case of overload of information with too much chatter.

Whether the Americans admit it or not, there is a different kind of racial discrimination—a discrimination against Muslim-Americans today.  Anyone who has a Middle-eastern hue on his skin is automatically looked upon as a potential terrorist.  Underlying this sense of paranoia is an intense fear that no place is safe—not even the United States, the bastion of freedom and democracy—against the long arm of terrorists hell-bent on destroying the American way of life.

One of the good things though after 9/11 is the hi-tech procedures for security.  One of the buildings I had a meeting in on Fifth Avenue employs biometric technology.  A visitor goes through fingerprint and retinal scanning, and is automatically issued a temporary ID that's good for a maximum of two hours.

You swipe the ID to access the elevators, but it will only allow you access to the specific floor that you're supposed to visit.  If you stay beyond the specific time requested, you will not be able to leave the building unless you are escorted by your host or by the security people at the lobby.  Your ID is only good for the number of hours requested by your host and is automatically invalidated after that.

The NSA eavesdropping scandal has made George Bush one of the most unpopular presidents in the history of the United States.  His popularity rating was so high after 9/11 with his famous "Either you're with us or against us" state of the nation speech.  Today he's experiencing what is probably the lowest point in his presidency.

There are many Americans who are no longer with him at this time.  Americans are complaining about the loss of freedom, and they feel that there's so much infringement on their privacy.  Taxpayers feel that they have been bankrolling a war that is unjustified because there were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq.

The Americans are very antsy about keeping a war that has cost an estimated $250 billion and 2,000 soldiers killed since March 2003.  Now there's a story going around that Bush attacked Iraq because of its vast oil fields to enrich some of his Texan "cronies."  In fact, it is also being suspected that Bush ordered the war in Iraq to give billions in wartime contracts to Halliburton, the company where Vice President Dick Cheney was the CEO.

Former President Jimmy Carter at one time described Washington, D.C., as one of the most corrupt places in the world.  During the memorial service of Coretta King, he publicly chastised government for violating the civil liberties of the Kings and for making them the target of secret government wiretaps, conveniently forgetting that it was a Democrat—John F. Kennedy—who authorized it.

Outspoken black Reverend Joseph Lowery also indulged in some Bush bashing at the Coretta King memorial service, saying that rather than weapons of mass destruction, what they have are "weapons of misdirection."

Filipinos do not realize the kind of freedom that they have today, perhaps even more than what the Americans have.  Needless to say, we have the freest press in the world—but with a price to pay—having the biggest number of journalists killed outside of Iraq.  We must admit, though, we do have eavesdropping and wiretappings—but only for the "Hello Garci" variety.

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