There is No Spoon

MLK: More Than Just "I Have a Dream"

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:55:00 +0000

(This oldie-but-goodie is reposted from our archives. Oh, and don't forget to check out this MLK-related post, either) Another year, another MLK day. While many people enjoy this as an extra day off from work or school, a lot of us enjoy to reflect on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That legacy is pretty impressive, but is often reduced to a ridiculously simplistic "black and white people living in harmony" angle by the press and political leaders. In fact, this year, the DoD suggested MLK might understand America's participation in wars today. I'm not even making that up. Seriously. Go read the thing for yourself...it is one of the more insane things I've ever heard.

Of course, racial harmony was a big deal in the 1950s and 1960s - well, it is today as well, though it has evolved to more than just black and white (unless you're Juan Williams, or his supporters). I mean, lynchings were going on, black churches were being bombed, dogs and water hoses were used on non-violent protestors. This is all true. However, what we rarely hear about is King's vision of a more just America. People who read this blog probably know that MLK strongly opposed the war in Vietnam. They also probably know his views on the economic composition of this country...let's just say he wasn't all that sold on our version of capitalism (or capitalism in general). He was pro-unions - in fact, he was in Memphis to support the striking sanitation workers when he was shot and killed. He was highly critical of America - notes were found for a sermon he was to give the week following his murder which was titled "Why America May Go To Hell." Yeah...not the warm cuddly MLK we've been sold, but a harsh critic of American domestic and foreign policy. If he was alive today (a counterfactual that The Boondocks did a controversial but brilliant episode on a few years ago), I'd be shocked if he wasn't branded an enemy of the state.

The fact is, every year, political leaders and the press trot out this image of King that is radically different from the complete King. MLK was about a lot more than the "I Have a Dream" speech, and his views on topics like labor, economics, and war are substantially more relevant to the problems in America today than the caricature MLK celebrated in America who tells us to be nice to people who have a different skin color. So, in that spirit, please make a point to spread the message about the real MLK. Read and encourage others to read Michael Eric Dyson's book on the real MLK. Get involved in debates on the issues he fought hard for (and ultimately was killed for). And, at the very least, encourage people to listen to something other than the "I Have A Dream" speech. The speech few seem to highlight (not surprisingly, given its content) is his address at the Riverside Church. Watch the opening part of it below (the entire text is here), and make sure to spread the word to others.

Podcast Episode 10: The Occupy Movement

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 01:17:00 +0000

Photo Credit: Jen Palacio 2011

On this episode of the There is No Spoon show, we discuss the Occupy movement, which has spread from Occupy Wall Street to hundreds of towns and cities across the United States and the world in the past 1.5 months. Topics include: our own experiences with Occupy, police brutality at the protests, the movement's messages, macro and micro level impacts, and discussions about the movement's next steps. Hosted by Fouad Pervez, the No Spoon team of Joe Soler, Reggie Miller, Junaid Ahmad (joining us from Lahore), and Shahid Buttar (joining us from Oakland on the night of extreme police violence) welcome guests Al Butler and Annabel Park to the episode. Al is the host of the "Al B! in the Afternoon" radio talk show on WURD in Philadelphia, and Annabel is a founder and coordinator of the Coffee Party, an alternative to the Tea Party.

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Follow us on Twitter: Al, Shahid, Fouad, and Reggie.

Podcast Episode 9: Troy Davis and the Criminal Justice System

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:35:00 +0000

On this episode of the There is No Spoon show, we discuss the recent execution of Troy Davis, the criminal justice system, and the death penalty. Hosted by Reggie Miller, the No Spoon team of Jen Palacio, L'Heureux Lewis, and Fouad Pervez welcomes guests Al Butler and Aisha Mohamedi Richard to the episode. Aisha is a criminal defense attorney and immigration specialist, and Al is the host of the "Al B! in the Afternoon" radio talk show on WURD in Philadelphia. We discuss the incentives in the criminal justice system to prosecute for harsher sentences, the effect of the changing media structure on enabling a move towards tougher punishment, the politics behind the death penalty, the privatization of the prison system, and some of the specifics of the Troy Davis case, along with similar cases of high visibility.

To get more involved in these topics, check out: the Innocence Project, the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Amnesty International, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.

Follow us on Twitter: Al, Aisha, L'Heureux, Jen, Fouad, and Reggie.

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Music Credits:
Start of the episode, excerpt from: Strange Fruit (For Troy Davis) mixed from Billie Holiday's Recording by LolasChildMusic
Close of episode: Troy Davis Lives Forever by Rebel Diaz.

A Morning at Occupy Philly - Guest Post by Ally Nauss

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 20:05:00 +0000

It's a cool autumn morning. The hussle and bussle has yet to begin. I sit on a cold granite slab and sip at my coffee, rub my eyes, and look up through the trees toward the towering building in front of me. Here I am, starting day eighteen in protest against what this building has come to represent. What was once a place to symbolize freedom and a voice for the people now serves as a bitter reminder of what greed has done to our political and economic environment.

A group from Occupy Wall Street has come to see us, pass on information from OWS, and see how we are running things. Word has spread of our growth and of the lack of resistance we have seen from the police and the mayor. Although tension exists, we have remained peaceful and respectful. The police have been amicable and hardly seem a necessary presence here. They nod as we pass, tell us good morning, and carry on with downing their burnt coffee and smoking their cigarettes.

My daughter plays in the children's area. One of the occupiers comes by to play peek-a-boo. They both giggle, and the sound echoes in the plaza. It feels safe here- though the crowd is very diverse and several come from the homeless community, there is a great sense of respect and friendship emanating from this place. Of course there are tiffs here and there. Of course people disagree. It's the same with any community.

I am receiving text messages from a friend participating in a sit-in at the local police department. They are gathering in protest of police brutality, both within Philadelphia and across the nation. They sit in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Chicago, Boston, New York, and other Occupy stations which have been treated as pests by the police force. They sit and demand justice for several instances if racism and inhumane treatment of citizens of Philadelphia. We send medical supplies, blankets, food, and heartfelt messages of support. They have made it through the night without arrest. It has been sixteen hours and counting. They plan to stay until Monday morning.

In 45 minutes we plan to kick off our Sunday festival. We have arranged music, poetry, art, and food. The response from the community has been enthusiastic and heartening.

The more I stay here the more I feel it is my place. This is what I am meant to do; live and prove that every human is equal, show that democracy is real, and work to actively change the world I live in. Finally. I have purpose.

Ally Nauss is a Mother, Artist, Knitter, Chef, Game Designer, and Activist involved with the Occupy Movement, in particular with Occupy Philadelphia. You can keep up with the Occupy Movement around the globe through their various sites listed in the unofficial Occupy Together directory.

The MLK Memorial, the Occupy Movements, and Social Justice

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 22:28:00 +0000

I was watching/listening to some of the ceremony this morning at the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial here in Washington, DC. It was an interesting assortment of voices. Some reflected on the past, taking a stroll down memory lane. Others were grateful to see Dr. King being honored - even though the memorial may have been built with unpaid Chinese labor, something Dr. King would absolutely demonstrate against (not the Chinese part, but the unpaid part - remember, he was very pro-labor). Some tried to keep the message alive by pointing out that MLK was not some simple "can't we all just get along" man, and that he would be outraged by the growing economic and social disparities in American today. He'd also certainly be protesting the wars. In other words, the timing couldn't have been better, considering the massive October 15th protests the day before associated with the Occupy movement across the globe. MLK was not a docile spiritual leader who made this one famous speech on the National Mall in 1963, highlighted by four special words. He was a tireless social justice fighter. We get our MLK watered down in America, so I wanted to repost something I wrote a while back about the good Doctor, with the hope that people realize, with the attention on MLK and his memorial, that he would have been out there marching the previous day. The Occupy movements are very much in line with the ideal Dr. King fought for, and ultimately died for. Let us not forget the real MLK in these hard times. Read More >>

Podcast Episode 8: Reflections on the post 9-11 Decade

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 05:01:00 +0000


Photographer: MANDEL NGAN Copyright/Source: AFP/Getty Images

On this two-part episode of There is No Spoon we discuss the post 9-11 decade. We cover the cultural and political shifts that we've witnessed in America since the day of the attacks. In particular, we address the leadership gaps, the PATRIOT act and the civil liberties that Americans have "traded" (knowingly or unknowingly) over the past 10 years.

Shahid Buttar, the Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee offers an overview of just how far we've wandered from the ideals of a free American democracy, and we talk about whether we can find a way back on track so that we can reclaim some of our constitutional rights.

Joining the discussion are No Spoon team members: Will Ley, Reggie Miller, Fouad Pervez and Jen Palacio.

Listen to Part 1:

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More about the Bill of Rights Defense Committee:
Ten years ago on September 11, 2001, the United States suffered the worst terrorist attack in the nation’s history. In the panic of the weeks that followed, the American government began changing its counterterrorism policies in ways that undermined constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties, culminating in the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act on October 26, 2001. Within two weeks of that law’s passage, on November 10, 2001, organizers in Massachusetts founded the Bill of Rights Defense Committee to fight against that dangerous law and others that followed.

To mark the tenth anniversary of these pivotal events in American history and the history of our organization itself, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee is running a series of articles looking back on the last ten years.

I Feel Wrong About Having Columbus Day Off

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:44:00 +0000

Happy Columbus Day, everybody. Yeah...it doesn't feel so good, does it? It feels wrong to celebrate somebody who massacred an indigenous population, huh. It feels worse because kids are generally taught that Columbus was some sort of hero, and learn pretty much nothing about the atrocities he committed. Should we be teaching young kids about genocide? Well...at the very least, we shouldn't be teaching them to lionize somebody who did horrible things. Just keep in mind what Columbus actually did. We've known about the specifics, in pretty specific and graphic detail, for quite some time now, thanks to La Casas.

Anyway, I wanted to refer you to 3 things on Columbus Day. One is last year's post about it from me. Two, check out this video from the National History Day documentary competition. It's relatively short (10 minutes). Three, it's high time to rethink Columbus Day.

Columbus - The Hidden History from Nonchalant Filmmakers on Vimeo.

Hero Worship - Redux

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 23:32:00 +0000

I got a chance to meet one of my heroes last night, John Carlos, and it got me thinking about hero worship again. Hence, this post. A few months back, we had a great discussion on our podcast, reflecting on our thoughts of Malcolm X in light of Manning Marable's new book on Malcolm. One of the main topics we discussed was hero worship on that podcast. We talked about what it is to be a leader, and why it is problematic to engage in hero worship - not only is it not what our beloved leaders would want, but it is also potentially dangerous to the movements they seek to help. Hero worship, of course, has happened to many who we admire. The backlash to Marable's account of Malcolm was a prime example. Instead of recognizing Malcolm's flaws as a way to remind us that he was, indeed, human (which should have actually brought us closer to him), there was anger at the idea that Marable would tear down our hero from his exalted place in our hearts and minds. This, of course, had something to do with Haley's Autobiography, which wasn't entirely accurate and definitely separated Malcolm from us.

What is a consequence of hero worship? Again...we create an almost-superhuman image of a person we admire. This often means we exaggerate their positive traits, but almost definitely hide away any of their flaws. What happens, thus, is we see them as doing little wrong, which is in stark contrast to us. We commit so many mistakes, unlike (supposedly) our heroes. We are at a lower level than them. We cannot ever be like them.

See the problem happening? Instead of seeing people we admire as just extraordinary-but-normal people, we make them Kal-El. Since we don't come from Krypton (pardon the Superman references), we'll never be able to be like them. This is wrong, of course, and not at all what most of our heroes would ever want.

You think most of them even want to be "heroes"? What does it mean to be a hero? Frequently, it means being the kind of person who takes a stand against something wrong and unjust. Well...to be heroic means there needs to be some injustice to fight against. And...I think most of these folks would rather be anonymous and not have those injustices present in our society.

They also want people picking up the mantle and continuing to fight like them. That becomes challenging when people think they'll never be like their heroes. They don't want to be separate from us. They want to be one of us....because they are one of us. We often propagate the problem by putting them up on a pedestal, when they'd rather just lead with many of us. I wrote a piece after the death of one of my political mentors, Howard Zinn, that touched upon this issue.

This leads me back to John Carlos - and, btw, if you're wondering how sports and politics mix, check out our recent podcast on the topic here, with the always-awesome Dave Zirin and Brian Fredrick. So...do you know John's story? If you don't know the name, you definitely know the image at the top of the post. Yes....John Carlos was one of three men (Tommie Smith raised his right fist, Carlos his left, and Australian Peter Norman wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights pin to support Smith and Carlos) who had the courage to turn the 1968 Olympics into a larger statement about injustice, at great consequence to their own lives. John's touring with Dave Zirin, promoting his memoir, The John Carlos Story. Buy the book and check out an event if there's one near you.

John's story is pretty incredible, as he was always connected to larger struggles related to injustice in the world. John Carlos was one of the great athletes of all-time. But his commitment to help others makes him the greatest Olympian of all time, as far as I'm concerned - Charles Barkley also agrees, btw. Of course, I can't find the clip online, but on an ESPN broadcast, when asked if Michael Phelps was the greatest Olympian ever, Barkley immediately responded that John and Tommie Smith were for their courageous act in 1968.

But John's just one of us. He just happens to be athletically gifted. But to John, his athletic gifts afforded him an opportunity to do things (like walk barefoot to symbolize poverty and wear beads to symbolize America's history of lynching en route to the podium that fateful day) that he held to be far more important. That moment is iconic and forever etched in all of our memories. But everything he did leading up to that moment, and all he did afterwards, make him a hero. He's more than just the black fist. He's a fighter against injustice, period, and he always was. He's one of our heroes not just because of that fist, but because he was a real-life Robin Hood as a kid, stealing 50 pounds of food from freight trains and giving it away to the poorest folks in Harlem. Seriously...a real-life Errol Flynn...while he was only a teenager...because poverty didn't make sense to him.

And...he's one of us. Just like Howard Zinn. Just like Malcolm and Martin. Just like countless other men and women who we all admire as our heroes. But what makes them heroic? Not that they're superhuman. No...it's actually the opposite. What makes them heroic is that they take a step down the ladder and are....human. They commit themselves to humanity. They see the struggles of others around them, they empathize with them, and they use that to act on their behalf. They are our heroes because they stay human. And you know what? That's something every one of us can do. Whether that's volunteering at a soup kitchen, working with grassroots organizations to oppose gentrification/media consolidation/the death penalty/erosion of civil liberties/pick your issue, occupying Wall Street and committing acts of civil disobedience, running a blog to inform people about current events, or doing whatever you can to try to leave the world better than you found it.

Heroes are heroic not so much for what they do, but for the things they stand for. We can all be human. We can all stand for things. We can all be heroes.

For Your Safety - By Kate Sloan

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 13:48:00 +0000

The song Flyin by Regina Spektor isn’t about air travel, but when it came on as I was headed to Logan airport last Thursday, 9/15, it seemed appropriate in its quirky sadness. If you don’t know it, it’s a really upbeat-sounding song about abuse.

I was flying to Chicago’s O’Hare and continuing on to Detroit Metro, an airport that that had recently made news after it wrongfully detained passengers on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, four days before.

I remember sitting in my high school psychology class, watching the fall of the second tower. I remember the moment the first plane crashing went from being a possible horrific accident to a very deliberate attack. I remember feeling stunned and frightened and like it was all possibly a dream I’d wake up from to find I was late for school. It’s hard to describe the moment of realization that those planes were full of passengers just trying to get somewhere, possibly home. At that point in my life I had never flown, and was in that moment I was certain I never would.

Time passed. Life happened. I moved to Boston leaving my family and friends in Michigan. For the past year, other than walking and the subway, planes are my main form of transportation. A decade after the attack I didn’t think twice about scheduling a flight for the week of 9/11. In fact the proximity didn’t even occur to me until I read Shoshana Hebshi’s blog post Some Real Shock and Awe: Racially Profiled and Cuffed in Detroit two days before my flight.

As Hebshi’s plane sat on the runway she went from calm certaintity that nothing was wrong, to relief as a flight of stairs approached the plane after 30+ minutes of sitting on the runway after landing, to worrying along with her fellow passengers as they were warned of the consequences of leaving their seats and armed officers began to congregate and board the plane and approach her row.

Hebshi was detained after her plane from Denver landed in Detroit, along with two other passengers sitting next to her. She chose to fly on 9/11 thinking lines at security would be lighter than normal on the anniversary of the attacks. The three (“two Indian men living in the Detroit metro area, and ... a half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife living in suburban Ohio”) were surrounded by armed officers and ordered off their plane, cuffed, patted down, and loaded into the backs of squad cars. They were detained for hours; they were searched and re-searched and strip searched. And they were questioned by officers, home-land security, and the FBI without any initial explanation of why they were being held. Hebshi, herself an American citizen, was asked if she spoke English while being held in a guarded cell containing only a hard cot and a toilet. In short, the three travelers were treated like criminals who had no business being in their own country.

Eventually it came to light that a passenger had reported suspicious activity in their row. The activity was that the two male passengers allegedly used the restroom in succession. Anyone who has ever flown can tell you this happens all the time. Hard to say why. It’s like your sister mentioning she has to pee on a road trip and you realizing that you, too, have to pee. And it’s just easier to do so when you don’t have to climb over the person sitting next to you, so you wait until they get back then get up. Oh, logic.

I’ve always been proud to hail from Detroit, even though things like football records, former mayors, and the public school system sometime call my pride into question. Reading this post, I wasn’t anywhere near proud of my most frequented airport’s “security measures”. If we trust security to do their job, as we all strive to follow their ever-restrictive regulations, then why are innocent passengers detained, searched, and questioned on the basis of a paranoid complaint of using the restroom suspiciously.

In the wake of 9/11, American media (mainly, but many other sources including language) began to construct the image of a terrorist in the same way Hollywood constructs the image of beauty. Suddenly terrorist was used to mean vaguely Middle Eastern or Muslim or possibly even Jewish Canadian. It’s used to mean visually different in a way that capitalizes on frightened peoples’ discomfort. And the laws that passed in the aftermath like the Patriot Act gave way and voice to blind racist accusations. Any immigrant suspected by a law enforcement official of vaguely terrorist ties could be monitored, searched without knowledge, indefinitely detained or deported.

The Patriot Act, among other things, significantly reduced restrictions on law enforcements rights to search and monitor phone, Internet, financial and other personal records without a court order. It also allowed for law officers to search homes, offices, and other places without the owner’s knowledge. Most notably, the act made provisions for law enforcement to detain and deport immigrants suspected of terrorism or related acts. The law also authorized indefinite detentions of immigrants.

Just when I thought homophobia was the last legalized form of discrimination in this country.

I landed in Detroit at midnight, having breezed through security at Logan, in fact I was waved around the body scanner with another woman while the men before an after us (black, Asian) were told to wait and walk through it. On my return trip to Boston I was waved through security in Detroit, again I wasn’t patted down or made to go through the body scanner. It would seem a decent smile and pale freckled skin gets you places, and those places are to your gate on time with your rights intact.

During the car ride home I was telling my sisters about being waved through security and Hebshi’s experience a few days before. They hadn’t heard the story. And my little sister, god love her, responded that I was waved through because I “don’t look like a terrorist”. Even to the smartest twelve year old I know “terrorist” is a way someone looks. And according to homeland security her definition seems to be correct.

On my layover in Chicago both on the way to Detroit and back home to Boston the TSA was doing “random” checks at gates. This meant pulling people aside, checking identification, searching meticulous and delicately (if you’re me) packed bags. I saw three people pulled aside before I bordered my jet to Boston. Two black men and a white man. No one under 30. No women.

It makes me wonder if Hebshi would have been detained at all if her fellow row mates were female.

A big part of this is how sparingly the word terrorist is used when it comes to anyone who looks “white”. Or in reference to Americans who commit domestic acts of terrorism.

I remember learning about Timothy McVeigh in school and never hearing the word terrorist. I remember reading about the attack on the Norwegian summer camp by Anders Behring Breivik and never reading the word terrorist. In fact when the story broke the attack was attributed at first, with no proof, to Muslim extremists, when, in fact, Breivik is a Christian extremist. Yes, those exist.

My great hope is that thoughtful pieces like Hebshi’s document of her experience and injustice in Detroit bring us closer to a world in which the safest way to fly isn’t white. Or perhaps it’s time for Disney to unveil a Muslim prince and princess, so at the very least children aren’t raised to believe terrorist is an ethnicity.

We live in a world where Casey Anthony walks while Troy Davis is executed. Where beyond a reasonable doubt is as subjective as the word right.

Kate Sloan is a writer and editor living in Boston. She writes a blog called staycutegirl and is a contributing writer for The Idler. A list of her posts can be found here. Follow her @Kate_Sloan on twitter.

Podcast Episode 7: Sports, the Lockouts, and Politics

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:32:00 +0000

On this episode of the There is No Spoon show, we talk about sports and politics, from connections between owners and the media, the labor politics in the NFL and NBA lockouts, the role of fans, and the connection between American society and the conflicts raging between owners and players in sports. Joining host Fouad Pervez are Dave Zirin and Brian Fredrick. Dave writes for The Nation, The Progressive, SLAM Magazine, and Sports Illustrated. He hosts the Edge of Sports radio show on Sirius XM, has appeared on numerous media outlets (including the Rachel Maddow Show, Last Call with Carson Daly, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Democracy Now!, All Things Considered, amongst many others) and has written several books, most recently Bad Sports and The John Carlos Story (collaborating with John Carlos). Brian is the Executive Director of the Sports Fans Coalition, a national non-profit organization dedicated to giving sports fans a voice on public policy issues, including public subsidies for stadiums, TV blackouts, the NFL and NBA lockouts, and a college football playoff. Brian has a PhD in Communications and was a senior editor at Media Matters for America. Check out this cool New York Times article about Brian here.

All sports fans (liberal, conservative, or barely interested in politics) should join the Sports Fans Coalition's email list, like them on Facebook, and follow them on Twitter. It's an important group, and really the only one advocating on behalf of sports fans. You can email Brian directly if you have ideas or want to get more directly involved: brian@sportsfans.org. Follow Dave and Brian on Twitter as well.

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The 9/11 Decade - A Leadership Gap

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 21:50:00 +0000

We've just recently seen the 10 year anniversary of 9/11. There have been countless articles and pieces of analysis in the media about the topic, but I wanted to touch on an issue that I think many have neglected: the lack of political and civic leadership in framing 9/11 as a tragedy to connect Americans with others across the globe, which I'd argue has resulted in mostly a lost decade. Instead, 9/11 became an event to separate America from others. This helped enable hyper-nationalism and increased American exceptionalism, both very unusual given the nature of the event. Many leaders, particularly political ones, played this up. A consequence has been that Americans are, today, more likely to distance themselves from various out-groups, both outside of, and in, America (the Islamophobia industry is one of the downstream effects of this).

This is all very bizzarre. A horrible tragedy in which thousands of innocent people died somehow separated us from others. Instead of seeing the pointless deaths on 9/11 as the impetus to be more sensitive and empathetic to tragedies elsewhere, the opposite occurred. If the people were brown/lived outside of Europe or North America, they were abstract figures. We killed over 3,000 civilians in the first month of bombing in Afghanistan...but no empathy. Even if one supported that campaign, it was disturbing to see the lack of compassion for the innocent Afghanis who died from our bombs. Innocent and poor villagers in Pakistan who die (the large majority are civilians) in drone attacks? No interest, no compassion. We never connected the fireball that exploded on a 110 story building to the hole in the ground where homes once stood in Baghdad.

Is it because Americans are horrible people? No. The reality is, people have difficult times psychologically dealing with the type of attack we had on 9/11. Emotions run high, and good people can unknowingly want vengeance on anyone, even if they are innocent. This is where leadership steps in. Being an effective leader means you can separate yourself from emotions in critical times and help people deal with tragedy in a productive way. On 9/12, that meant taking people's fear and anger and sadness and trying to bring some good out of it. That doesn't mean trying to turn everyone into an international humanist (is that a term?) or a true world citizen - that is simply unlikely and unrealistic. It does mean helping people connect tragedies, find empathy for others, and ultimately give to others in need to some degree. It could have been as simple as encouraging Americans to look after each other...and I mean all of us, not just white Americans (what happened). It could have been as simple as encouraging Americans to volunteer more, to engage in more community service, to spend more time helping our friends/families/communities, or to follow the news a little bit more.

It's not like much was needed. However, none of this was done on a large scale. Instead, we were told to go shopping. We were told we were attacked because others hate our freedom. Dangerous racism was allowed to pass. Our civil liberties were slowly taken away in pursuit of some supposedly secure state (which is silly, because we can't ever be fully secure - watch the short video at the bottom of this post to find out what all we lost). Everything was framed in terms of what happened to us, and virtually no focus was placed on what happened to others. The attacks in London and Spain were even connected to us as they became their 9/11, as opposed to just a horrible act of terrorism to others. Massacres committed by Blackwater in Iraq, NATO troops in Afghanistan, errant drone attacks in Pakistan, Middle Eastern governments we back on people trying to obtain democracy...not really a blip on our radar.

9/11 somehow became something that separated us from the rest of the world. It became a noun, verb, and adjective in American discourse. It's as if terrorism and tragedy were America's monopoly - nobody else could apparently go through similar kinds of situations...everything was from the 9/11 lens. Our tragedy became bigger than others, instead of similar to others.

That disconnect, that exceptionalism, that lack of empathy and compassion produced a decade in which America took many steps backwards. We've shown a willingness to kill high numbers of civilians in conflicts, some of which were started under false pretenses, most of which our own policies had something to do with, without much of a blink. How many times do you hear American leaders, journalists (from the mainstream press), or just normal Americans talk with some pain about the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc.? Almost never. I count a comedian, Jon Stewart, as one of the few that has expressed that kind of emotion. Most others haven't, and largely because nobody steered them towards that view.

We've gone even further and isolated some of our fellow Americans. The Islamophobia industry has really made a (financial) killing in the past decade, turning bigoted zealots like Pam Geller and Robert Spencer rich and into media fixtures. We've attacked Americans who dared question the War on Terror and our aggressive foreign policy in the past 10 years. Again, not saying everyone will agree on policy, but the harshness of the attacks reveals something really ugly that happened to our society.

And on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, what happened? Wall-to-wall media coverage, replaying the attack video ad-naseum, and an almost celebratory stance...our tragedy was worse than anyones. 9/11 should be a day for reflection, for sadness, for thinking about what we can do to make the world a better place. It has, instead, become a day for America to separate herself from the world. It should be a day that tests and shows our humanity for people in general - to paraphrase from the Qur'an, if you kill one innocent person, it is as if you've killed all of humanity. It has become anything but that.

I don't blame American people for this strange turn. Many were emotionally scarred to a significant degree from that horrible day, and human psychology is a complicated thing. However, leadership should have steered that emotion to something productive, and at the very least, to an appreciation of humanity, period. That failure has had terrible consequences for everyone around the globe. The hope is people are finally coming out of the fog here in the U.S. (this does seem to be happening...a financial meltdown does strange things), and are starting to at least reconsider a lot of what has happened over the past 10 years. The reality is, we need to have hard discussions about these issues. We're not going to all become pacifists...but we should all at least think a little bit more about how our tragedy connects us to other people in other places (and even at home). We need to reclaim the humanity that we lost in the past decade. It would be the proper way to honor all of those who were lost on that day, and the many more since then.

The greatest casualty of 9/11: The America we knew

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 15:31:00 +0000

Shahid Buttar is the Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.

Reflections on the 9/11 attacks are important and moving. But most overlook the enduring legacy of the attacks, in the form of the vastly greater damage done to American principles over the past decade. Whether in the context of surveillance, torture, or the congressional cowardice that has enabled them, our leaders have sullied the legacy of an America that once inspired the world.

Earlier this summer, when facing a crucial accountability moment for an agency that continues to abuse the rights of millions of Americans, members of Congress asked no tough questions, avoided controversy, and submitted to a White House proposal to entrench the FBI leadership—at the same time as they fought to the knuckles over issues that Congress created in the first place by spending the country into a fiscal black hole and absurdly cutting taxes in the midst of multiple wars.

Most astounding in all this is Congress's apparent abandonment of its own institutional interests. Even in the face of documented lies by the FBI's leadership to congressional committees and repeated proof that Congress, the press, and the public are hearing only tiny slices of the whole truth, Congress has failed to use its many tools to seek transparency and investigate executive abuses.

There was a time that America's leaders took seriously their oaths to defend the Constitution by conducting aggressive oversight of executive agencies. A generation ago, for instance, the Church and Pike Committees investigated many of the same practices that have recurred in the past decade. The failure of their successors in Congress threatens the future of democracy in America and reflects a disturbing pattern of congressional submission to executive power.

Congress began lining up to defend executive abuses in the face of public criticism soon after the 9/11 attacks. Special registration requirements, the PATRIOT Act’s draconian surveillance powers, unprecedented authorities to arbitrarily—and indefinitely—detain individuals on the mere basis of accusation, and major revisions to the FBI Guidelines all generated little debate in Congress.

And while we might find comfort in the hope that a counter-movement would emerge, that hope is misplaced. Despite running on a platform announcing that the “choice between liberty and security” was “false,” the Obama administration has continued—and even expanded—the Bush administration’s surveillance and secrecy. And by reversing course on accountability for torture, the Obama administration affirmed that criminals with enough political connections would receive judges’ robes rather than prison terms.

Even when ordered by multiple courts to release evidence of detainee abuse, the White House refused. In fall 2009, in the midst of a year-long battle to extend healthcare to 42 million underinsured Americans, Congress took less than a week to change the law at the Obama administration's request so that evidence of the Bush administration's abuses would remain hidden from the public. This, after abandoning Obama’s original nominee to lead the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department because she favored applying the law equally to all accused criminals, regardless of their political position.

Leave aside that hiding evidence of detainee abuse places our soldiers at risk abroad by driving the recruitment efforts of violent extremists and effectively inviting our enemies to treat our troops in the same inhumane way. Ignore the 2.3 million Americans rotting behind bars—25 percent of the world's prisoners, in the nation that claims to lead the free world—while politically connected criminals enjoy power, prestige, and even lifetime judicial office. Forget about the sacrifices of the soldiers who gave their lives in WWII to usher in a lost era of peace, or how human rights precedents that our nation established in Nuremberg have been wrecked by our unwillingness to pursue uncomfortable truths.

Think instead about how the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) came to be: through controversy stoked by grassroots activists who broke into an FBI office and elite critics who used their findings to spark a two-year congressional investigation documenting heinous abuses by FBI and CIA officials. The FOIA stood for 40 years, but when courts interpreted it to require the revelation of Pentagon crimes, Congress quickly joined President Obama to change the law. “Move along. Nothing to see here…”

Think about why the CIA destroyed videotapes documenting torture. And then remember the debate in the wake of Osama bin Laden's elimination over whether to revive torture, even though the Defense Department said it was unhelpful and claimed to have ended the practice.

The American people voted in 2008 for change, including restoring constitutional protections against unchecked secret dragnet surveillance and accountability for human rights abuses. The abject failure of our government to reflect that mandate reflects how perverted our republic has grown. For a project that took two and a half centuries to build, the past decade has been catastrophic for democracy in America. When future generations look back on our failures, the attacks of a decade ago will be the least of their concerns.

Ten years ago on September 11, 2001, the United States suffered the worst terrorist attack in the nation’s history. In the panic of the weeks that followed, the American government began changing its counterterrorism policies in ways that undermined constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties, culminating in the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act on October 26, 2001. Within two weeks of that law’s passage, on November 10, 2001, organizers in Massachusetts founded the Bill of Rights Defense Committee to fight against that dangerous law and others that followed.

To mark the tenth anniversary of these pivotal events in American history and of our organization itself, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee is running a series of articles looking back on the last ten years. This post is part of that series.

Credit ratings agencies, the debt ceiling, and AA+

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 18:26:00 +0000

So, apparently Standard and Poor's (S&P) downgraded the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+, the first time America has been listed as anything but AAA. Now, there are problems with this move - for one, S&P seems to have screwed up their calculations by at least $2 trillion. They are also the only credit rating agency to downgrade the U.S. to AA+. That being said, this may have an impact on the global financial markets come Monday. Those things are as stable as Charlie Sheen on a bender these days, and this will probably be yet another factor that messes with them (though I suspect the problems in China [where the government is attempting to control an economic growth slowdown], and Europe [where it seems likely that Greece will default, possibly leading Spain and Portugal to default as well], are really what is driving the markets tanking) come Monday. So, you know, panic! There are two points from all of this that I find interesting. One is the main critique from S&P re: the U.S. downgrade. The other is the credibility of credit rating agencies.

S&P pointed out that political volatility in the U.S. played a huge (if not the major) role in the downgrade. There is plenty of academic research that illustrates the importance of political volatility on capital investment - the more uncertain investors are of a state's political stability, the less likely they are to invest in it. This has generally been used to show why democracies have higher FDI flows than non-democracies, even though non-democracies can use coercion to be more business-friendly. The issue is investors may not be certain these regimes won't be toppled from internal strife. So, it's interesting to see the volatility point being raised about a democracy, particularly the (at least at one point in recent history) global economic leader and unipolar power, the United States. While the calculations appear to be off by a lot, and it seems S&P accounted for domestic politics a lot more than economics, it does show that there are real consequences to the game some far-right Republicans were willing to play over the debt ceiling.

It also points out that some view our democracy as dangerously volatile. This is a real problem moving forward, and might signal the biggest impact of the Tea Party: their lack of interest in any compromise and extremist political views make governing very difficult. Not to say I'm in favor of much of what the Democrats or moderate Republicans are selling, either, but those two groups were much more cognizant of the importance to not turn the debt ceiling debate into a game of brinksmanship it ultimately became. Republicans have to appeal to the far-right for their own political survival as well, so that means any policy debate, particularly one on economics, will be badly damaged by the bitter political divide in this country right now. It's not just that partisan bickering is bad and makes Congress look like a bunch of children - it's that it makes it much harder for us to implement sound policies at a time when we really need them, and now might affect foreign investment and our credit.

This is all true, of course, and something we need to be cognizant about. But...in addition, we should keep in mind who these credit agencies really are. For one, we were downgraded by S&P, but not the other two, Moody's and Fitch. The three of them are frequently referred to as the Big Three. So that might suggest the situation isn't quite as grim as we would think. More importantly...what's the track record of these agencies? Like...in the last economic crisis? Remember the subprime mortgage crisis of just a few years ago? Recall that the Big Three credit rating agencies were accused of enabling the crisis. These are the same people who told us that bundled mortgage securities (that were full of insanely high risk loans) were of the safest nature, even though it was fairly obvious they weren't.

As a result of these securities getting AAA ratings instead of much lower ones, investors bought them like hot cakes. The banks could not have played the horrible games they did with the economy without the high demand for these securities the massively inflated ratings created. The ratings agencies made lots of money from their evaluations of these securities, and were competing against each other in some ways over them, leading to a huge downgrade in the ratings standards. Not surprisingly, when the cat was finally out of the bag, the securities were downgraded and the economy was in ruins. So, there should be no doubt, the Big Three credit ratings agencies bear a lot of responsibility over the economy tanking as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis.

So, it bears to ask: how independent are these agencies? They are publicly traded, meaning they look for profits to their investors...does this alter their rating system? Should we view them as credible anymore, given the role they played just a few years ago? If the answers to these questions are not all positive (they're not), we should be wary about anything any of these agencies say (we should). As such, it seems odd that, despite the real issues I raised earlier, the S&P downgrade might have a big impact on the markets. I'd be suspicious of a thief managing a bank. In the same way, I'd be cautious about trusting a credit rating agency until they clearly demonstrated that they had fixed the problems from last time...even if there was some validity to their concerns.

Skin color and the Oslo attacks

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 14:44:00 +0000

Breivik, the white, right-wing, Christian fundamentalist,
terrorist suspect in the Oslo attacks.

I wanted to direct you to a good article about the media's coverage of the tragedy in Oslo, in which a white, right-wing Christian terrorist killed 92+ people, including children in a youth camp swimming in the water while he was dressed as a policeman. You will probably never hear those words associated with him because, like Joseph Stack, Jared Lee Loughner, and many others, he is simply crazy and not a terrorist with that background. For the press, it seems only brown people can be labeled terrorists, and only with them can we make sweeping generalizations about their race, nationality, political ideology, or religion.

Thus far, the same is being done with Anders Behring Breivik. While his background is being brought up, few seem willing to say that there might be a problem with right-wing extremists, white supremacists, and extremist Christians, all of which might characterize Breivik. Indeed, much of the press coverage initially jumped to the conclusion that Muslim extremists were behind it...with little evidence. Indeed, even when we found out the terrorist was a white Christian, journalists spent much of their discussion connecting these attacks with Norway's NATO connection to the bombings in Libya, and not to the domestic issues, namely Breivik's anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant views. Also...little mention of him as a terrorist. Only Muslims commit terrorist acts. No surprises so far.

Finally, regarding the outpouring of sympathy, which is the right thing to do... it is interesting that when most of the victims have darker skin color, there is nowhere near the same emotion. You know, like the civilians that are killed by errant bombs dropped from 20,000 feet or launched from predator drones that may or may not be relying on good intelligence. We almost never even hear about those. I'm not saying we shouldn't show sympathy for Norway - quite the contrary. I'm just saying we don't do the same when the victims tend to have darker pigmentation and our own government has complicity in their deaths, whether they be scores of innocent peasants in Pakistan killed by frequent drone attacks, women killed in Afghanistan by overzealous NATO troops who tried to cover it up, civilians mowed down without provocation by Blackwater militiamen in Iraq, or Oscar Grant.

Lupe isn't a Fiasco

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 16:39:00 +0000

“I think I’m Malcom X, Martin Luther/ Add a King, Add a Jr.” –Lupe Fiasco Building Minds Faster (B.M.F.)

Recently, Lupe Fiasco has been catapulted to national media attention, not (just) for his music but his political commentary. Two weeks ago on an internet interview with CBS Fiasco said, “To me the biggest terrorist is Obama in the United States of America. I'm trying to fight the terrorism that's causing the other forms of terrorism. You know the root cause of terrorists is the stuff the U.S. government allows to happen. The foreign policies that we have in place in different countries that inspire people to become terrorists." While this set off a firestorm of angry comments and media attention about Lupe’s uncritical eye and virulent condemnation of the continuing trope of Barack Obama as a terrorist, most of these comments miss the mark. Lupe Fiasco, as his name signals, routinely finds himself in controversial positions that are both contradictory and illuminating at the same time. Lupe’s comments about Obama and politics, in a way, channel Malcolm X’s and Martin Luther King Jr’s political commentary.

In November of 1963, Malcolm X commented on President John F. Kennedy’s assassination by suggesting the violence that took Kennedy’s life were “chickens coming home to roost.” At this time, Kennedy was thought of as a friendly president to Black folks and ultimately this became a wedge comment that alienated him from many Black Americans who identified as politically progressives but found his comments irresponsible given the contentious political climate.Less well known, but equally allegorical Fiasco’s remarks eerily reflect Martin Luther King’s speech in 1967 at Riverside Church in Harlem where he said, “They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government.” While Lupe is no Martin Luther King, both were concerned with the government’s role in supporting violence locally and internationally. At the time of King’s comments the United States was enmeshed in a war that he found unconscionable and history would reveal was unnecessary.

In many ways Lupe has been outspoken about Obama’s military advocacy and in 2008 found himself in a flap with another Chicago rapper turned political candidate RhymeFest. Fiasco is no stranger to politically complex views, which he laments are often “dumbed down” into sound bites. Later in the CBS interview, Fiasco states that he does not vote and that his own beliefs about what a vote endorses keep him from the ballot box. Not surprisingly many have responded “If you don’t vote you can’t complain.” To Lupe’s credit he follows in a long line of Black commentators and activists who chose not to vote but offer critical commentary. For many, including Fiasco, voting in a two party system connotes support for a system that they find too limiting and non-representative. In “Words I Never Said”, Fiasco outs himself as a non-voter, “Gaza strip was getting bombed, Obama didn’t say sh*t/That’s why I ain’t vote for him, next one either.” His decision not to cast a ballot doesn’t curtail his speaking or even wearing his politics on his chest. Fiasco, as an avowed Muslim, has been known to rock “Free Gaza” shirts on stage just as easily as he does designer fashions. For Lupe, the continued instability of the Middle East is directly linked to United States involvement which makes Obama culpable given he is Commander-in-Chief of the US Military.

While we may not all share Lupe’s critical stance on Obama or American politics (and most of us don't read the wikileaks wires, though we should) there is a line of logic and historical precedence for his comments. In listening to the knee-jerk responses to Fiasco’s words the significance of his hit single “Words I Never Said” rings out. The song is a critique of the curtailing of rights, particularly free speech, in an era of perceived freedom and liberty. If we don’t listen and take Lupe’s words seriously, it’s almost as if we’ve made his point even louder.

New Developments in Egypt

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Tue, 31 May 2011 21:15:00 +0000

A short follow-up - as many of you know, our very first podcast was on the uprisings in the Middle East, particularly in Egypt. There have been a lot of developments on the ground there, most of which (not shockingly) have not been covered particularly well by the media. Our guest on that first show, Hesham Sallam, has a great write-up on what's going on right now. Hesham is a friend and colleague who is a PhD candidate at Georgetown, studies the persistence of authoritarian regimes, comparative Middle East politics, and is the co-editor of Jadaliyya, and online e-zine produced by the Arab Studies Institute. Give it a read on Jadaliya by clicking here.

Podcast Episode 6: The Death of Osama bin Laden

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Mon, 30 May 2011 02:54:00 +0000

On this episode of the There is No Spoon show, Fatima Ashraf questions Fouad Pervez, Junaid Ahmad, and Reggie Miller about their thoughts on the death of Osama Bin Laden. Fouad is an International Relations doctoral student at Georgetown University and a writer for Foreign Policy in Focus. His latest article, "Pepsi, Pot, Porn...and Politics" looks at the bizzarre discovery of those items on bin Laden's compound, and why they really illustrate the importance of politics over culture in al-Qaeda's modus operandi. Junaid is a faculty member at the Lahore University of Management Sciences and specializes in law and policy. He recently wrote an article, "Pakistan-U.S. relations in the post-Osama era" that examines the heightening tensions between the two countries after the raid. Junaid and Fouad have co-authored several pieces on U.S. foreign policy in South Asia, including this relevant and prescient article, "The US War on Pakistan." Reggie Miller is a non-profit management professional with significant insight into America's post-9/11 culture.

While many in the country celebrated his death, the No Spoon team ponders why it was okay for Americans to celebrate now and be upset at the thought of celebrations abroad on 9/11. They also discusses the serious issues surrounding Bin Laden's death including extra-judicial assassination, the state of affairs in Pakistan, and why Osama drinking Pepsi shouldn't have been a big deal.

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Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire: Why the FBI Needs New Leadership

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Mon, 23 May 2011 14:42:00 +0000

The last ten years have witnessed an assault on the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans, led largely by the FBI. Appointed mere days before the 9/11 attacks, Director Robert S. Mueller III has guided the bureau through the resurrection of many long discredited practices from its COINTELPRO era. Yet, the Obama administration has proposed extending Mueller's term as FBI director. Congress should reject the proposal and insist on a nominee from outside the bureau to restore accountability, law and order. Just ask Nick Merrill in New York, Joe Iosbaker in Chicago or Ahmadullah Niazi in Los Angeles: three law-abiding Americans whose constitutional rights are among the casualties of the last decade.

The last time Congress extended the term of FBI director was in 1972, to keep J. Edgar Hoover in office. Years later, when the Church and Pike committees finally exposed the notorious counterintelligence program (aka COINTELPRO), Congress discovered that Hoover presided over severe abuses for decades.

During the era of Hoover and COINTELPRO, the FBI's most famous target was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who the bureau targeted with a smear campaign aiming to split up his marriage and drive him to suicide. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was accused—without evidence—of subverting the state, as were activists promoting Puerto Rican independence, an end to the war in Vietnam, women's rights and civil rights for racial minorities including Native Americans and African-Americans. According to the US Senate:

Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that ... the bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association.

Repeating errors from Hoover's discredited era hardly offers hope to restore law and order to the FBI. Given the bureau's history as a recidivist agency notorious for recurring abuses of civil rights, why has the president proposed to extend the director's term for the first time in nearly 40 years?

According to The Washington Post, the administration simply failed to get its act together in time: "The president's request that Congress tinker with the 10-year term limit sets a bad precedent.... It may be the path of less resistance to retain an FBI director.... But staffing an administration on schedule is part of the president's job." Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) agreed that the proposed extension would be "a risky precedent to set. Thirty-five years ago, Congress limited the FBI director's term to one 10-year appointment as an important safeguard against improper political influence and abuses of the past."

The Post is correct that the proposed extension threatens the "integrity of the bureau," and Grassley is right that the precedent is dangerous—although both ignored the bureau's mounting failures and abuses. The president's proposal appears only worse when placed in the context of Mueller's tenure.

Don't take my word for it. According to my colleagues at the American Civil Liberties Union, "the FBI's significant misuse of its authorities under the USA PATRIOT Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the infiltration of mosques, the abuse of the material witness statute, the FBI surveillance of peaceful groups with no evidence of criminal wrongdoing and the mishandling of the FBI watch list have raised significant civil liberties concerns" during Mueller's tenure. Similarly, a coalition of 46 civil rights organizations wrote to Congress last year, arguing that:

In considering the potential necessity of legislation to protect civil rights and civil liberties, Congress should not grant [FBI policies] artificial legitimacy, nor should the bureau be afforded credibility that it has not only failed to earn, but actively undermined.... [T]he Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee called for the FBI's General Counsel to be replaced.... As a repeat offender, the bureau is long overdue for intervention by Congress.

When the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned the FBI director about the bureau's surveillance activities, Mueller essentially lied to Congress, covering his tracks with a private letter to some senators admitting abject lawlessness and disclaiming any meaningful limits on the bureau's authority. These violations are offensive in themselves; failing to accurately answer crucial Congressional questions in order to evade accountability is even worse.

Each of these problems, alone, is enough to demand change, rather than continuity, at the FBI. Taken together, they indicate a mounting constitutional crisis screaming out for the "change we can believe in" that the president promised three years ago.

Let's start with the PATRIOT Act. Among other things, PATRIOT expanded national security letters (NSLs): administrative subpoenas immune from review, checks, or balances, demanding private records (often from third parties) while gagging the recipients and preventing disclosure to the public, press or Congress.

Beyond violating the privacy and Fourth Amendment rights of their targets, NSLs also violate the rights of recipients, such as Merrill, an Internet service provider in New York City silenced by the threat of prosecution for simply raising his voice about a letter he received demanding a customer's private information.

The Justice Department's internal watchdog has repeatedly examined the FBI's use of NSLs. Every time, the inspector general documented pervasive, systemic—and even ongoing and expanding—violations by the bureau. The PATRIOT Act dramatically expanded the FBI's powers, but under Mueller's leadership, the bureau exceeded even those, repeatedly breaking the few remaining limits guarding the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans.

And that's just the beginning. Perhaps to justify its expanding budget in a time of fiscal crisis, the FBI has generated numerous fake "terrorist plots." The Bureau's modus operandi has been to recruit ex-convicts, give them huge sums of cash to bribe con men and then train and equip those targets for months (or even years) to commit fake attacks before making dramatic arrests amid sycophantic media fanfare.

In Newburgh, a depressed post-industrial town in upstate New York, the bureau offered tens of thousands of dollars each to four mentally unstable con men (including a schizophrenic and a heroin addict), whose worst real offense appears to be fraud, rather than the bomb plot of which they were ultimately convicted. Sending paid government informants to initiate violent plots presumes the guilt of entire communities on the basis of association and multiplies that offense by profiling according to race, religion or ideology.

Even beyond civil liberties, the strategy is an abject national security failure: profiling overlooks potential threats outside the profile, alienates affected communities, undermines opportunities to gain human intelligence and even encourages the violent extremism that the bureau claims to prevent. Even worse, the strategy does nothing to address real sources of potential terrorism.

In drug investigations, law enforcement agents routinely target producers or distributors—rather than consumers—because prosecuting consumers does nothing to actually reduce the supply of drugs. But under Mueller, the FBI's counterterrorism efforts have ignored producers (those who propose real plots) and distributors (who recruit others to execute them) to settle for prosecuting consumers of terrorism—and fake ones, at that.

It gets worse. Emboldened by a Supreme Court decision last spring, the FBI began a political witch hunt last fall targeting dozens of peace and labor activists in Chicago and Minneapolis. The raids and secret grand jury investigations not only offend the First Amendment, but also reflect the kind of abuse for which the bureau grew infamous under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover.

Finally, the bureau has enmeshed itself in the business of immigration enforcement, by supplying to Immigration and Customs Enforcement pre-conviction arrest data from local police departments around the country—even over the objections of local governing bodies. By supporting the Secure Communities program, the FBI is playing a key role going forward in undermining public safety and enabling a continuing "humanitarian crisis" in immigrant communities.

Like the now-infamous J. Edgar Hoover, Mueller has received widespread praise during his tenure for the bureau's supposedly effective work under his leadership. It took a two-year Congressional investigation and tens of thousands of pages of records and testimony for the FBI's dramatic abuses under Hoover to finally come to light. Mueller is no different; he has received praise from the administration and the Hill only because the FBI cloaks itself in secrecy, and the many communities raising their voices have been silenced by a mainstream press that has uncritically accepted the official narrative.

Rather than extend Mueller's term, Congress should insist on a nominee from outside the bureau and heed the calls of former agents who have recommended "[a] wide-ranging Congressional investigation of the sort conducted by the Church Committee," to uncover further abuses that remain secret. If Congress wants to pass legislation involving the FBI, rather than extend Mueller's term, it should impose a legislative charter to restore law to a lawless domestic intelligence agency that has, yet again, run amok.

This work, originally published by Truthout, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Podcast Episode 5: Malcolm X and Hero Worship

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 21:25:00 +0000

On this episode of There is No Spoon we discuss the legacy of Malcolm X. X has become an icon of human rights activism, Pan-Africanism and Islam. Panelists Dumi L'Heureux Lewis (City College of New York), Fatima Ashraf (Community Activist), Fouad Pervez (Georgetown University), Ibrahim Abdul-Matin (Author of Green Deen), Mayatha Alhassen (University of Southern California) and Zaheer Ali (Columbia University) discuss the recent publication of Manning Marable's "Malcolm X: A Life of Re-Invention" and its influence on X's legacy.

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Podcast Episode 4: On The PATRIOT Act

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 22:47:00 +0000

Today's installment of the There Is No Spoon podcast series examines civil rights and civil liberties issues raised by the PATRIOT Act (portions of which are set to expire in May 2011) and FBI stings authorized under the 2008 Attorney Generals' Guidelines issued by then AG Michael Mukasey. We're joined by a distinguished panel of experts who have engaged these concerns from multiple perspectives.

Emily Berman is Counsel to the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and author of Domestic Intelligence: New Powers, New Risks, a 2011 report documenting problems with DOJ and FBI policies under the 2008 Mukasey Guidelines. Kay Guinane is Program Manager at the Charity and Security Network, and author of the 2009 report, How the Work of Charities Can Counter Terror, which addresses the material support standard of the PATRIOT Act and how it exacerbates some of the root causes of terror. Christina Abraham is Civil Rights Director at CAIR Chicago and has represented numerous individuals interviewed by the FBI, while also speaking and writing about abuses by the Bureau and other government agencies. Shahid Buttar from the No Spoon team is Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and submitted a FOIA request to the FBI in 2008 that eventually prompted disclosure of the Bureau's internal regulations implementing the 2008 Mukasey Guidelines.

Listen here:

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Podcast Episode 3: The Peter King Hearings

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 20:24:00 +0000

On this edition of the There is No Spoon show, we discuss the congressional hearings on domestic terrorism, organized by Congressman Peter King (R-NY). The hearings, divisive and controversial, offered divergent perspectives of Muslim Americans: one as law-abiding people who are unjustly targeted, the other as a community ignoring radicalization among its own.

Joined by Corey Saylor, the Director for Government Affairs of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), the No Spoon team of Fouad Pervez, Reggie Miller, and Fatima Ashraf puts the hearings into context. Several minority communities throughout history have been "McCarthy-ized" by the government. Mr. Saylor provides insight into the importance of the hearings, the commendable reactions of the Muslim American community, and next steps. For additional, interesting perspectives on the hearings, Peter King, and Muslim Americans, check out: this Huffington Post piece by Ingrid Mattson; this Washington Post article by Michelle Boorstein; and Representative Keith Ellison's (D-MN) testimony from the hearings.

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Podcast Episode 2: On Wisconsin

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 23:55:00 +0000

Protesters pack the State Capital building in Madison

On this edition of the There is No Spoon show, we discuss the organizing happening in Wisconsin to prevent the passing of a bill that would end public sector unions from being able to collectively bargain. We provide a basic overview of the situation, some stories from on-the-ground protesters, and historical context of labor unions and labor organizing in Wisconsin and beyond. Our guests, Awais Khaleel (long-time Wisconsin political organizer and Howard Law Student); Marla Delgado (UW-Madison graduate student and community organizer); and Michael Paarlberg (Georgetown graduate student and freelance writer for the Guardian) discuss important issues such as inconsistencies in budget deficit claims and blames as well as the truth behind who makes more - private or public sector employees. Now that the bill has passed the Wisconsin state assembly, tune into the podcast to understand the national repercussions if it passes the state senate.

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Bigotry, Omitted Variable Bias, and Bill Maher

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 15:07:00 +0000

Bill...can we have a word?

I've been entertained by the comedian (he's not a journalist, people, he just follows some mainstream media news and talks about it with some celebrities, fake experts, and [occasionally] actual experts) Bill Maher for many years. I appreciate his show, enjoy that he uses his name and stage to bring about discourse on politics, and often find myself agreeing with what he says. However, on one specific topic, Maher makes me very angry...and, as Mr. McGee learned many years ago, don't make me angry; you wouldn't like me when I'm angry. You see, when it comes to discussions about Muslims and/or Arabs, Bill Maher is a bigot. He's a bigot because he uses a level of analysis that would make most high schoolers uncomfortable. He uses this preposterous thinking to come to some really dangerous, reductionist, essentialist conclusions that smell of the worst kind of Orientalism. And the audience ("liberals" who seemingly don't get it and enjoy cheering on their hero) goes along with the sham. Except it's not just a sham. It's quite dangerous. See the impact of Islamophobia on Muslims in America today? See the overt venomous racist discourse we see and hear so often right now? Well...Bill Maher is part of the problem. And somebody needs to call him on it and knock his discourse straight out. Enter (stage left): me and my foot to break off in Maher ass.

This past week, he did it yet again. Maher, talking about the unfortunate Lara Logan sexual assault, decided to, like he often does, equate the behavior of a few people with some cultural problem with Muslims. This bugs the hell out of me for a few reasons. So, I do social science. I spend my time thinking about correlation and causation - lots of things in the world are correlated, but I want to figure out causality. So...when people use correlation to imply causation without any real thought, I get mad. When they do it to advance bigoted views, I get really mad. When they have almost universal audience approval/cheering when they do it, I go green. (Yes, multiple Incredible Hulk references in this post). Brown Hornet smash! Brown Hornet crush!

So, Tavis Smiley tried to talk Bill down. Granted, he was ineffective and didn't lay out the best argument (in fact, it was pretty terrible), but he tried. Bill was not to be stopped, though. He laid out his usual Muslims are backwards argument, and used this horrible incident to solidify this fact. Now, if you replaced the word Muslim with basically any other minority, you'd get called out for this kind of talk. But...as I've talked about before, it's totally cool to go after Muslims in America today with hate speech.

Maher constantly uses correlation to assume causation. He does so in a casual manner that drives me and others nuts. Here's the problem. Omitted variable bias. The political scientists and economists in the house are nodding their heads right now. The rest of you (unless you've taken a few statistics classes) probably don't know what I'm talking about. But...you probably know the concept, actually. Let me explain. See, when you try to describe what causes something (let's call it "Y"), you want to find the things that cause it (explanatory variables, "X"). However, in order to really know that X is causing Y, we have to control for a lot of things. If we don't, we might get a faulty relationship. If a variable we omit from the equation is actually quite important for "Y" to occur, and it is also tightly correlated to "X", that would cause a serious bias problem...we might say that X explains Y, when in reality, it is Z (the omitted variable) doing all the work and X doesn't actually matter at all once we account for Z. For instance, we might see a correlation between race and crime, but that could go away once we account for poverty. It would be dangerous to make the race claim in that case. But...that's what Maher constantly does with Muslims.

So, on this show, he said that because a few Muslims assaulted Lara Logan (again, totally horrible incident - btw, while what happened to Logan terrible, how about some coverage of the Egyptian journalist who was killed, or the hundreds of protesters who died, at the hands of Mubarak's goon squad? Anything? Anything? Or does the Logan story deserve prominence over many more important and graver stories because she's a white woman from the West? Capehart seems to think this is a reason to turn on Al Jazeera, since they didn't really cover it - thanks, Jason, for ignoring the bigger picture in a gigantic way), that tells us something about the backwards nature of Muslim men, and how that made him wary of the Egyptian revolution and question whether they're ready for democracy. One bad incident. So...small sample size is already a huge problem. Maher then points out all the gender inequality issues in the Middle Eastern countries. He telegraphs this pretty clearly - there is a problem with Muslim men...and Islam is the problem.

Now, he's right that there is a correlation problem. No doubt about that. But...Maher takes variables out of the equation that clearly play a dominant role in the correlation. One...education system? I don't know, who controls the stuff people learn in school? The state. Who runs those states? Backwards, tyrannical, despotic dictators...who we keep in power. You know how you stay in power? You divide the opposition. Besides using Islamist groups as their boogeymen (something the U.S. does pretty well, too), you know what else helps? Don't let men and women unite to oppose you. You know how you do that? Your teach them poorly when they're young and set up a ridiculous gender bias in your society. It also may not be so strategic...some of these rulers are probably just flat-out sexist (and into repression and torture and a bunch of other things that are pretty terrible) in the worst way possible. Yet...we keep them in power so they can push their views on their country? Huh? Anyway...back to the equation...so...I don't really see Islam as a variable at all anymore. Instead, I see dictators being dictators and doing shady stuff, which they can because they are backed by us. Right. Kind of an important omitted variable.

You know what else impacts people's beliefs? The marketplace of ideas. Civil society. You know, things the authoritarian rulers in most Muslim countries (backed by the West) control pretty tightly. You know what the people attacking Logan were yelling? That she was a foreign spy, an Israeli spy. You know where they probably heard that from? Egyptian state TV, which was warning Egyptians about the role of foreign spies posing as journalists causing trouble. They were spies from the U.S., Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah...talk about one hell of a mix! So...yeah, stupid, you think...that's so obviously not true. But...if that's your main source of information, it's not surprising you start repeating nonsense. Reminds me of the American public during the march to the Iraq war...and afterwards. So...again, is Islam explaining why they attacked Logan? Or might it be they kept hearing these lies about foreign spies over and over again? Omitted variable. Also...I'm just saying...if the Israeli spy thing is correct, isn't it entirely possible that Logan was assaulted by pro-Mubarak people who gathered in Tahrir Square? Because, as I pointed out, that was their angle re: foreign journalists - the protesters protected the journalists, which is why you saw many of them get pretty angry about the Mubarak regime and supportive of the revolution, best seen by Anderson Cooper's passionate support of the protesters and harsh language for Mubarak. David Ignatius at the Washington Post at least raised this point...nobody else really has. If that's true, the efforts to portray this assault as yet another reason to distrust Muslims, especially those leading the Egyptian revolution (Bill Maher is one of many, particularly on the right, propagating this view) is entirely fallacious.

Maher does act this nearly every time he discusses Muslims. Anytime you call neo-con Ayaan Hirsi Ali an expert on Islam (what exactly is she an expert on? Seriously...I get it, unfortunate stuff happened to her, but that doesn't magically transform her into a scholarly source on all things Islam, and her pathetic analysis should have encouraged people to stop treating her as such a long time ago), you're probably not working hard enough...or at all. He relies on correlation while crucially ignoring key variables that are probably causing the relationship to happen. Again, the correlation is frequently bad, anyway (Muslim violence against women, Muslim preponderance for suicide terrorism, etc.), but is it causal? It seems to not be - education systems run by American-backed not-remotely-liberal dictators, socio-economic status, occupation, lack of political voice, etc., are all crucial variables that need to be accounted for. My guess is they would negate any "Muslim" effect entirely. This has happened in much of the academic research...the "Muslim" variables tend to not matter when you control for oil, economics, etc. This means the correlation is not good, of course, but the cause is something other than Islam. Yet...Maher, by not being interested in causality, does what the Islamophobes do - attach religion and culture to the problem at hand and use that faulty relationship as a reason to go after Muslims for their Muslim-ness (okay, I'm not even sure what that means). As far as causality goes, it's wrong. As far as bigotry goes, it exemplifies that. And yet, people clap and cheer.

Maybe, one day, Maher will accidentally have a guest on his show that actually knows how to talk about his bigotry issue (he likes his Muslims either ignorant [Ali] or not overly confrontational [Fareed Zakaria]). Maybe that guest will take him to town for his nonsense. And maybe he'll pay attention and try to actually learn something from it and stop making the same mistake: his assertions about Muslims are simply wrong from a causal inference standpoint (which, by itself, should make him want to stop uttering them), and they exemplify some of the ugliest parts of American thought these days. But since I doubt that day will happen, the least people can do is email/call his show or HBO and raise some noise about this, work with organizations to counter Islamophobia, or maybe even get Muslim organizations to call out Maher on his bigotry in a very public way. All could help. Maybe he'll even see the issue, and realize he's on the same side as some of the people he despises the most in the world.

Military Re-Training?

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 05:58:00 +0000

Egyptian soldier in Tahrir Square

It's celebration time! Hosni Mubarak has resigned and turned over the reigns to...the military. Oh wait...last three military rulers in Egypt? Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak. Oh right. Okay, so I do think this is still a big deal, and I'm cautiously optimistic the military will serve as a transition government until free and fair elections are held. They saw the numbers in the streets, and I do believe they realize those numbers will come out again, if not more, if they make this transition not happen. That being said, even if we see a move towards democracy in Egypt (after, presumably, civil institutions are rebuilt somewhat from their hallow roles during the rule of the semi-autocrats for so long), there is this problem. The Egyptian military is huge and probably doesn't want to see itself shrunk.

This makes sense, of course. You make a paycheck from doing X. You will oppose anyone saying that we need to do less X, even if it makes sense...UNLESS you can transition into Y. This is the key point here. Egypt got a lot of American aid, but most of it was for the military (versus economic aid). The military is very strong in Egypt. The military probably doesn't want to shrink too much, though that will be (probably) necessary to take care of domestic issues like the economy. Egypt could use foreign aid to help it out...but if well over half of current U.S. aid goes to the military, I'm not sure that's tenable in the long-run. Though Hein Goemans' latest research is optimistic regarding militaries seizing power through coups moving to elections pretty quickly (pretty fascinating stuff - Hein does some really cool research) if they get lots of military aid, the question is whether this is a good thing on a longer time horizon. Could this turn into a turf war?

If Egypt transitions to a democracy, isn't devoting as much as it currently does to the military a problem? And, more importantly, why would the military be okay with scaling back significantly in 5-10 years? They probably wouldn't. Hell, you see the public outcry in the U.S. when we try to cut back military spending. So, my thinking is...provide alternative careers for these military men. Why not devote some foreign aid to that, specifically? If we can help transition people out of the Egyptian military into decent civilian jobs, this makes it easier for Egypt to eventually cut down its military spending. This is, of course, applicable anywhere, especially the U.S. But in light of the current focus on Egypt, the nature of the transition in government (from a dictator to the military), and the history of military rule in that country, this could be a good debate worth having.

By the way, for more info on the dynamics in the Middle East and Egypt (and I mean good information, unlike what you get on TV, the radio, or the papers), check out our podcast on the situation!

Podcast Episode 1: The Revolts in the Middle East

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 20:30:00 +0000

On this edition of the There is No Spoon show, we discuss the unrest in Egypt and how it relates to the region as a whole. We cover the Muslim Brotherhood, American foreign policy, authoritarian persistance, social movements, and political and economic roots of the uprisings. Our guest is Hesham Sallam, a PhD candidate at Georgetown who studies the persistance of authoritarian regimes, comparative Middle East politics, and is the co-editor of Jadaliyya, and online e-zine produced by the Arab Studies Institute - it is a great resource for analysis of the Middle East. Now that Mubarak has resigned, listen to the podcast and be informed about the issues that will develop in the coming days, weeks, and months.

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Episode 1 was recorded on February 8th, 2011 at 11pm EST.