The Freedom Tower

Gov. George Pataki says the Freedom Tower is America’s greatest symbol of “our freedom and independence.”
Critics overseas see it differently.
“Its lifts and stairwells are protected by walls of concrete and steel 60cm thick - robust enough to withstand a bomb blast, perhaps even a plane strike. It has wider exit stairs, better emergency systems and fireproofing. Its office floors sit on top of a concrete vault 24m high - not a security feature but accommodation for a key electricity substation,” says the Mail & Guardian online, Africa’s first online newspaper.
“The new 102-storey Freedom Tower will incorporate even more safety features. In response to the police’s comments, it is set quite a way back from the street on all sides, and surrounded by bollards. And, like 7 World Trade Centre, its 69 office floors will also sit on an impregnable base - this time purely for security reasons. The solid core of the base will be disguised by attractive prismatic glass panels that would shatter like a car windscreen in the event of a blast.
…To many, the last thing the Freedom Tower symbolizes is freedom,” the newspaper said. “This is not a problem unique to the World Trade Centre, of course. The US landscape has been transformed, post-9/11, by barriers, X-ray machines, screening facilities - the apparatus of counter-terrorism.”
This is so painfully true, it hardly bares mentioning but just had to be said.