There is No Spoon

The Boston Marathon Bombing: Impact and Implications

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:53:00 +0000

On this episode of the "There is No Spoon" show, we have a detailed discussion of the recent tragedy in Boston and its aftermath. We talk about the impact of the bombing and the aftermath in Boston itself, as well as how it was seen internationally. Also, we discuss the role the media played in the tragedy, particularly the repercussions of the "Disaster Journalism" that resulted. This includes issues of race, ethnicity, "otherness", and simply exercising and excusing poor journalistic practices. Finally, we dive into the question of Miranda rights, as well as what role, if any, Islam and Chechnya have in the debate. On the show are members of the No Spoon team, including Boston-area artist and teacher Jen Palacio (Twitter link), political scientist Fouad Pervez (Twitter link), and Professor of Law and Policy at the Lahore University of Management Sciences Junaid Ahmad.

When Sports and Politics Collide - with Dave Zirin

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 22:56:00 +0000

Dave Zirin, the sports editor of the Nation magazine (who you've probably seen on TV or heard on the radio at some point) joins Ibrahim Abdul-Matin and Fouad Pervez from the No Spoon team to discuss several recent sports events and the political issues underpinning them. In this episode, we discuss Florida Athletic University's decision to sell their stadium's naming rights to a private prison company, the problems with the NCAA as an institution, the role of big money in college sports, baseball academies as sweatshops in Latin America (arguably the most under-covered sports story in the past few weeks, related to Hugo Chavez's death), and the NCAA basketball tournament. Be sure to get Dave's new must-read book, "Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down", which recently received a glowing review in Sports Illustrated. We had technical issues (when taping, Dave's video was frozen and inverted in black and white, hence the references to Ghostface Zirin - YouTube apparently just gave him a blank screen in the final cut), but Google couldn't stop the latest No Spoon episode!

The Banal Militarism of Hollywood

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 02:54:00 +0000

(Reposted from Foreign Policy in Focus: click here for the original) The latest Academy Awards ceremony, which crowned the well-intentioned but fatally flawed Argo as the year’s best film, merely formalized the nearly universal acclaim that director Ben Affleck has received for his gripping CIA drama set in Iran. It also said a lot about what’s wrong with Hollywood today.

Indeed, the Oscars this year seemed to exhibit more American exceptionalism and less diversity than previous years. Just 10 years ago, filmmaker Michael Moore used his acceptance speech to slam the recently launched Iraq war, issuing a prescient warning that was widely criticized for its political content but notable for its inclusion. This year, we had Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, and a military entourage for the first lady. We also had very few brown faces, and no mention of anything happening in the world outside of Hollywood.

Hollywood may be returning to making “serious movies,” but the scope of that seriousness still only extends to mostly white American characters. Argo’s main shortcoming was its poor job contextualizing the situation in Iran in the 1970s. It also followed the Hollywood trend, frequently rewarded, of humanizing Americans while dehumanizing everyone else. Nearly every Iranian in Argo resembled a religious fanatic, and there was minimal effort to explain the source of Iranian rage—in this case, the imposition of a U.S.-backed tyrannical dictator. Given the strong beltway lobby for war with Iran, this caricature is not helpful.

One could argue that it isn’t Hollywood’s job to provide such context, but this misses the reality of the society we live in. The arts serve as a form of cultural diplomacy and fill in gaps in public understanding left by journalism. In an age when foreign news bureaus have been decimated, news research budgets slashed, and local stringers and fly-in celebrity journalists comprise “world news” in America, Hollywood could genuinely enhance the public discourse by giving life to regions of the world most Americans know little about. Instead, films like Argo and Zero Dark Thirty opted to serve as PR arms for the Pentagon and CIA.

Instead of a critical examination of controversial issues like war, drone strikes, and torture, we get what David Sirota calls the “Military Entertainment Complex,” whereby the government essentially lobbies Hollywood to serve as its mouthpiece.

There are exceptions—particularly in the Best Documentary category, year after year—but those mostly prove the rule. Argo gave us CIA talking points on Iran, missing most of the information from 1953-79, and even minimizing Canada’s role in the operation. Zero Dark Thirty gave us a Pentagon/CIA/White House-backed film with false information on torture. The artists and their studios opted to provide minimal humanization of any non-American characters. You feel horror at seeing the children during the violent raid scene in Zero Dark Thirty, but because you have no previous connection to them, it’s not exactly empathy. Finally, both films are passed as true stories. But while each makes use of historical facts, they play with context to manipulate the audience into a pro-American froth.

Appealing to jingoism is certainly easier than prompting national introspection, but is priming an audience for blood what we call art today? It doesn’t mean we need anti-American films, or films that downplay whatever real threats might be posed by Iran or international terrorists. But when dealing with contentious and critical global issues in films, one would think understanding perspectives other than our own, even for limited moments, would be crucial to both artistic integrity and public discourse.

We keep looking for the answer to “why they hate us” even 12 years after 9/11. The answer isn’t pretty, but it isn’t terribly elusive either. Unfortunately, our films keep us searching for the answer.

Guns are not made in the Ghetto

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 22:42:00 +0000

On Tuesday, Feb 12, 2013 President Obama gave his first State of the Union address of his second term. Front and center was the issue of gun violence, both in his speech and in the audience. Most notably, guests Nathaniel and Cleopatra Pendleton, parents of Hadiya Pendelton, attended the address as guests of the President and Mrs. Obama. Hadiya was gunned down in Chicago just days after performing with her high school band at inauguration. Along with Hadiya, the President mentioned the mass shootings of Aurora, Colorado, Oak Creek, Wisconsin, Newtown, Connecticut, and Blacksburg, Virginia as reasons for congress to vote on gun control measures. Alongside the gun control debate we are hearing some discussion of mental health and the need to address mental health in our health care system. The issue of mental health and its connection to gun violence raises a lot of issues around race, class, and how the two are actually related. In this first YOUTUBE episode of the No Spoon Show, Fouad Pervez, Reggie Miller, and Fatima Ashraf of the collective team up with American Muslim Health Professionals to discuss mental health and gun violence. Khizer Husain, President of AMHP, speaks about the definition of mental health and discusses his efforts in Washington with the Department of Health and Human Services to bring this issue to the forefront of our country's overall health care discussion. Maryum Khwaja, licensed therapist and parter at Nasiha Counseling, LLC in NYC brings an experienced perspective to the table, having served as a therapist for over 10 years in the tri-state area. Watch and learn.

About Ending Perpetual War...

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 17:32:00 +0000

There was a lot of hoopla in my city last week, as President Obama was re-inaugurated amidst large crowds. Given the centrality of Obama to our blog (we started this 4 years ago after his initial inauguration, with some of our first posts devoted to capturing the movement that developed around him that catapulted him into the presidency), I though it'd be useful to write down a few thoughts about inauguration #2. The main takeaway from his speech was that he seemed far more bold on domestic politics: the references to climate change, Stonewall, and immigration were much stronger stances than he was willing to make in his first inauguration. Second-term presidencies can bring about more activism, obviously. But, for me, the most interesting part was his discussion of the need to end perpetual war (d'uh, I do international politics). Like so much about Obama, a lot of liberals applauded this (supposedly) brave statement and felt optimism about further distancing ourselves from the Bush years. But...yeah, as seems to be frequently the case with liberals and Obama, they didn't pay attention to what he has actually done. The press didn't do a particularly good job with this either, analyzing his words more than his actions. Perhaps Barry O is really committed to shifting away from militarism. But, the reality is, he's got to walk away from a lot of his own policies to do so.

Yes, the United States is dwindling our official presence in both Iraq and Afghanistan. This means...we're walking back from those wars, right? Not exactly. What we're doing is shifting from official military troops to private troops. You know, Blackwater, etc. There is still a de-escalation, sure, and I'm willing to give credit on that. But, Obama supporters love talking about how he is ending these wars. That's not factually correct. Whether one agrees with whether we should or shouldn't end the wars is a different debate, but the fact is, we're still going to have a lot of troops in those places. They just won't be official American troops. This leads to a larger discussion about PMCs, particularly over issues of legality (since private military contractors [PMCs] do not have to follow the same code of conduct as do official U.S. troops) and making war invisible and, hence, costless (PMC deaths don't get reported to anywhere near the extent that U.S. military deaths do), both of which we haven't really talked about much in the mainstream press. But, yeah, Obama hasn't really ended those wars.

More importantly, Obama has escalated many of Bush's war policies, particularly on civil liberties. From due process to executive power to freedom of speech to military detentions, Obama hasn't changed much. In many cases, he has gone further than Bush did. Check out this site to get a better background on civil liberties issues that we've had in place since the War on Terror began. This is not a pretty list, and it is hardly suggestive of someone interested in ending perpetual war.

Finally, there are the silent wars that Obama has escalated. The Drone War is probably the best example. I've written about it (and the media silence over it) before. It simply isn't getting much coverage. The Drone War is another way to make war on the cheap, but even more so than PMCs, because it doesn't involve any people (on our side) getting hurt. Bush started drone strikes in Pakistan, but Obama has made it seemingly his only policy towards Pakistan. Drones have also been used in Yemen and other places, and the most recent news is that we will be building a drone base in Niger. The topic is very contentious when actually discussed in the media, but it is rarely done so. For a good debate over it, watch the video below.

So the take-home message seems to be: Obama's talk about ending perpetual war flies in the face of everything he's actually been doing. One would think he'd be called out on this more, particularly by his supporters and the press, but given that we've had minimal debates over these topics over the years, this becomes more challenging. It is striking that many people who called Bush a war criminal for his actions support Obama for pursuing similar policies. Apparently one's views on American militarism depend on which party is in power.

Not everyone is playing this game, of course. Here's a great interview on Democracy Now with Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley on their new film "Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield", which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. Its probably one well worth checking out.

Who hasn't tried to co-opt MLK?

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 19:19:00 +0000

As we celebrate MLK Day in America today (and the second inauguration of Barack Obama, one that is definitely being linked to MLK on a few levels...more on that later), I started thinking: why do we know so little about the real King and, as a result, why are so many able to co-opt his messages?

The MLK we're told about (that I've written about before - click here and here to read more) was a man who told us to live together in peace, for whites and blacks to embrace each other, and let our kids play together. This isn't a bad message at all, of course. However, we rarely get the more complicated politics that MLK touched on. He understood the connection between racism, economics, and politics. "I have a dream" is very special and historical...but the dream MLK wanted us to get to involved addressing war, poverty, and the nature of our political system. He was pro-labor (he was assassinated while supporting sanitation workers on strike in Memphis). He was critical of the economic divide in America. He was staunchly opposed to the Vietnam war, and not supportive of our foreign policy in general. He thought we exploited the poor at home and abroad. He had problems with moderate white American leaders, who would be willing to compromise on social issues to bring about a "peace" without justice. So...yeah, not as warm and fuzzy as we hear about. Of course, reality makes him (and those who fought alongside him - one man does not make a movement) far more courageous, noble, and worthy of rememberance. It wasn't easy to fight against segregation. Fighting against segregation, Vietnam, poverty, aspects of capitalism, political dealmaking...yeah, that's a lot more challenging.

But the lack of depth re: what we're taught about MLK makes his message very easy for people to claim as being in the spirit of what they are doing. Glenn Beck tried to absurdly claim he was following in MLK's footsteps with his rally in 2010 on the 45th anniversary of the March on Washington. In 2011, the U.S. Department of Defense claimed MLK might be supportive of the perpetual wars we are currently engaged in. This year, gun advocates are claiming MLK would have stood with them because guns could have helped end slavery sooner - never mind the fact that that is one of the most outlandish counterfactuals ever, and that MLK was...slain by a gun. It seems like lots of people in America with political agendas try to connect their cause to King's. Sometimes, the connections are valid, but most of the time, they're absurdly wrong. These crazy assertions happen because we aren't taught about the real MLK, a complicated man who stood for a lot more than just racial harmony. Had we been given a more accurate and full view of who he was, we would probably appreciate and honor him even more. We also might protest a lot more.

My final point...I find the efforts to connect President Obama to MLK interesting. Wrong, but interesting. This year, there are plenty of links in the inauguration events. One of the bibles Obama is being sworn in on was MLKs. Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of murdered civil rights leader Medgar Evans, gave the invocation. Also...the obvious is that inauguration is happening on MLK Day. However, if MLK was alive today, I'm pretty sure he'd be protesting many of Obama's policies. Obama has done little on poverty and race, having said less on these topics than any Democratic president in a long time. The Obama administration has ratcheted up American militarism abroad, perhaps best exemplified by the Drone War, a topic the press has given the silent treatment. They recently found a way to exempt themselves from their secret rules re: drone strikes, which is...well...stupefying. They continue to attack our civil liberties on a wide scale. These were core issues that MLK on; it seems highly unlikely that he'd support any of Obama's moves on them. Yes, there obviously is a connection between MLK and Obama - without MLK (and Malcolm X, and countless others who aren't widely known), Barack Obama would probably have never had a chance at being President. Yes, these leaders inevitably inspired our current President, and I believe he probably still believes in many things that they fought for (today's inaugural address was more populist than normal). He hasn't implemented them yet, of course, and that's the issue. But that becomes easier when there is no pressure. LBJ was pushed by MLK and the civil rights movement (and the Poor People's Campaign and many other social and political movements at the time) to get us the Civil Rights Act and the Great Society programs. Who's pushing Obama to come through? If we passively allow a false connection between MLK and Obama to occur, we're not helping matters at all.

So, this MLK Day, make a point to learn a little bit more about who King really was. Here are 17 quotes from King that we almost never hear. Try to incorporate his actions and words into your own consciousness. Oh, and be sure to teach others, because they sure won't be getting the full picture of MLK based on the sugar-coated version of the good Doctor we get on MLK Day.

What about the minds of the everyday people?

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 07:51:00 +0000

Mental health is today’s hot topic given last month’s tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut. The importance of this issue is no longer a topic for discussion but a topic for action. It is imperative that our health care system create room for mental illness to be de-stigmatized, detected, treated, and prevented. As I see it, the diagnosis and treatment of heart disease is great for the one who has it; the diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses is great for the person, their family, and their entire community.

But, as we begin to focus detection of mental illness on high-risk individuals in order to prevent heinous crimes like those in Aurora, Colorado, Oak Creek, Wisconsin, and Newtown, Connecticut, we cannot forget the importance of the mental health of the general population. Just as no one is safe from developing cancer these days, no one is safe from a mental health issue. Our world is a high stress place and with events like yesterday’s becoming more commonplace, it’s becoming even more stressful.

Questions of safety and security in everyday life are not to be taken lightly. Many people, especially parents after yesterday, are beginning to question the safety of their children outside of the home. Malls, houses of worship, theaters, and schools - public venues once considered safe and enjoyable places - leave many of us feeling insecure and in some cases, paranoid.

I will wholly admit that last month’s shooting shook me to my core. I immediately jumped online and started to research home schooling. My husband, away on business, called and begged me to keep our son indoors. My sister called us paranoid – and that’s when I paused to think – are we really becoming paranoid? Obviously I can’t just sit in my house day in and day out. Then I started thinking my house could be unsafe. With all of these thoughts came overwhelming feelings of sadness, anger, frustration, and yes, paranoia - and I know I wasn’t the only one feeling this way.

So how do we address the mental health of the general population? I suggest a simple, starter plan of 5 points.

First, mental health should become a standard part of primary care. The World Health Organization has repeatedly called this integration the most viable way to detect and treat mental illness. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requires that insurance plans offer “behavioral health” coverage, including mental health and addiction and substance abuse help, as an “essential health benefit,” which is major progress (that may regress if the Supreme Court decides Obamacare is unconstitutional in March).

Second, mental health professionals should be seen and treated as extremely important members of the field and heavily supported. “Associative stigma,” which is the stigma that mental health professionals experience a result of treating a stigmatized group of people, results in emotional exhaustion and decreased job satisfaction which can have a negative impact on their patients’ treatment.

Third, mental health should become a central topic of discussion in faith-based circles and centers. Muslims (I am calling out Muslims here because I am one) for example, should start de-stigmatizing mental health disorders by pushing for khutbahs, halaqas, and other public discussions on the topic and frequently referencing Quran and Hadith that underscore the existence and importance of mental health. On the spiritual soundness of the heart, Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him said, “There is in the body a piece of flesh – if it becomes good, the whole body becomes good and if it becomes bad, the whole body becomes bad. And indeed it is the heart.” (Bukhari)

Fourth, we need to become better listeners. People are so quick to hear someone’s issue and give advice. If advice worked, the world would be fine. Better than advice is the process of listening, letting someone feel truly heard, allowing someone to vent wholly and truthfully without judgment, and supporting one’s emotional release. That is to say, don’t stop someone from crying. More and more studies are showing the evolutionary advantages of crying, how it may be human nature’s way of emotional healing.

Fifth, give yourself and your loved ones a break. Remember that you are human and you are susceptible to mental illness, and it is very common. A quarter of adults in the US suffer from one or more mental disorders. When you feel sad, hurt, depressed, take it seriously. Do not brush it off as “just a bad day,” or “I need to be stronger.” Because being open to recognizing a problem is true strength.

This blog written by No Spoon blogger Fatima Ashraf was originally published on the American Muslim Health Professionals blog here - http://amhp.us/mental-health-newtown/.

Islamists can make...peace?

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 05:02:00 +0000

Children in Gaza celebrate the ceasfire

I'm not going to rehash the madness re: the violence in Gaza over the past week. There has been plenty written about it, much of it not particularly well. However, now that we have a ceasefire, there is one thing I wanted to bring up. Who helped broker this ceasefire? Well...looks like the big bad Egyptian government. You know, the country run by Mohammad Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood guy. Yes. The Muslim Brotherhood. Remember all that talk after the Egyptian Revolution about how democratization in the Middle East was not cool because they'd elect people we didn't like...and people who'd cause more trouble? Yeah...funny how that worked out.

(Note: Islamists refer to political groups that use Islam as a major informer of their decisions. This is not a term I personally like, because it should really emphasize politics more than religion, but its a commonly used term, so I'll go with it here, reluctantly. These groups include the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Nadl, the Islamic Action Front, Islah, the Party for Justice and Development, etc. This is not include al-Qaeda or other ideological groups that don't really have open ambitions to hold political office.)

I'm not saying I'm supportive of Islamists groups like the Brotherhood. Many of them advocate very conservative and socially backwards policies. You know, like the far right religious extremists in America, many of whom make up the base of the Republican Party. In fact, I'm not that happy they won in Egypt. But....these groups will probably excel in the short-run because they have been around for a while, have institutional advantages as such, and know how to organize. As time passes, I'd expect more liberal groups, dominated by younger people, to start gaining more strength. But...yeah, for now, many of these Islamist groups will do okay in elections

Now, here's the thing. Even if they win, they probably won't win by a ton (despite all the fear-mongering that happens on U.S. media outlets about them, they're not incredibly popular among Muslims). And, more importantly, if they win, they actually have to govern. If they don't, they won't be re-elected. There is a reason Islamist groups that are allowed to participate in politics tend to moderate (sometimes rather substantially - some groups openly distance themselves from religion re: governance, while others purposely don't campaign too hard for fear of angering the regime in power to take away any limited political power they have). Indeed, the only thing that really explains the behaviour of Islamist groups is...incentives. When they have incentives to moderate (i.e. when they are allowed to legitimately participate in elections, even to a limited degree), they do so. When they are barred from elections, they become more extremist, as they have nothing to really lose. I've written about this topic in light of the uprisings in the Arab world and Gaza before. The take home message is: these groups should be allowed to participate in elections and governance. It does seem to moderate their views. The garbage does have to get picked up, and if they don't do it, they'll lose power.

So...in terms of the Gaza ceasefire, did the Egyptian government, run by those crazy Muslim Brotherhood people opt for anti-Semitic discourse against Israel? No. Did they start smuggling arms to Hamas? No. Did they start organizing Arab countries for a war with Israel? No. They helped stop the horrible bloodshed. They were the responsible adults (Israel and the U.S. certainly weren't, nor was Hamas) in the room. They weren't going to risk military destruction at the hands of Israel (which is armed to the teeth) to launch a war...because they would have probably lost badly, which would inevitably cost them at election time. They weren't going to risk losing U.S. aid by ending their peace treaty with Israel...because that would probably lead them to lose power. They would also have probably lost some IMF loans they crucially need to balance their debt, as their economy has been hammered by the global economic slowdown and rising food prices. They may have wanted to do things differently....but because of their constraints (political survival is the most important thing to political leaders, after all), they managed to bring the bloodshed to a halt. Obama leaned heavily on Morsi. Israel, which rarely gives up anything in these negotiations, actually seems to have done so this time.

I'm not trying to be too optimistic, because until Hamas is allowed to actually govern (enter constraints = moderation) and the occupation is ended, I'm not sure we'll see any tangible peace. However, the Islamists were the ones who managed to pull off the ceasefire. Scholars shouldn't be surprised by this. Journalists and pundits certainly are. Let's hope they try to learn that these groups rely on the same political calculations that politicians everywhere do - above all else, win elections. Those constraints almost certainly helped lead to this ceasefire. And...I'll reiterate this from my article above...democracy does not equal instability in the Middle East. Islamists who are allowed real political contestation will probably moderate their views and might end up helping bring about peace, like the Muslim Brotherhood this time. I'm not saying its great that they are in power. I'm just saying we should probably freak out a lot less about them being in power. Its the institutions, not ideology, that shape what Islamists do. Within Egypt, for instance, there are real concerns about domestic politics...not because the Brotherhood is who they are, but because their are serious institutional limitations being put in place on political contestation. In the end of the day, we need to see Islamist groups as political groups more than anything else. They are not crazy and irrational. They are interested in consolidating as much power as possible (see Morsi's actions in the past few days), and we need to be wary of them just like we should all political actors. But...not because they are Islamists, but because they are political groups.

Oh, and by the way, while I'm bashing cultural arguments, look at the celebrations in Gaza over the ceasefire. And I was told these people loved war and death, and were all about violence. Yeah...let's hopefully scratch that nonsense off the list as well. They want peace just like everyone else.

One more thing: if you want to read some good analysis of the events in the Middle East, I recommend (aside from a few news sources), Jadaliyya, an e-zine from a bunch of scholars and researchers who specialize in the Middle East. I know a handful of them - very smart folks with no ideological axes to grind.

The Plutocrats are Coming!

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 12:55:00 +0000

Plutocrats have played a prominent role in the 2012 American elections. Plutocracy is basically the notion of rule by the wealthy - it has been used pretty negatively throughout history, but also has been a propaganda tool by some of the worst facist states of our time. There is little debate that we have some sort of plutocracy in America today - especially post-Citizens United, the rich have an inordinate amount of influence in our political system. In the 2010 races, outside money played a huge role in the GOP winning back the House of Representatives, and in this year's campaign cycle, the ultra wealthy are putting in even more dollars, mostly to support Mitt Romney and the Republicans. But...plutocracy isn't necessarily about political ideology - Democrats get plenty of money from the wealthy, too. In recent years, plutocrats have felt more under assault in America than ever before - this may be technically true, because they've been paying historically low taxes, so any interest in raising these rates will threaten them, whether fair or not. With the financial meltdown, there is a greater interest in the wealth gap, which has widened substantially. In the 1960s, workers made a few times less than CEOs, but now, they make hundreds of times less than CEOs. Additionally, plutocrats basically failed...their insistence on deregulation and their risky financial behavior played a major role in the economic meltdown. Of course, the backlash only seemed to solidify in their minds that they know what's right for the country, and seemed to create greater paranoia that everyone is out to get them. The right-wing hasn't helped matters much, though they might be getting their cues from the people who are financially backing them...wait for it...the plutocrats! Just look at who bankrolls the Tea Party, for example - Jane Mayer's famous expose on the Koch brothers is here). The 2012 race seems to bring the issue of plutocracy to the forefront...though, again, both Democrats and Republicans are relying on the wealthy to finance them. For a great discussion of this issue, check out this fantastic discussion on Bill Moyers' show, with guests Matt Taibbi (of Rolling Stone) and Chrystia Freeland (of Reuters).

Argo and Hollywood's "Muslim World" Problem

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 06:44:00 +0000

I happened to read a blurb about Argo, the new Middle East thriller directed by and starring Ben Affleck a month ago. As someone with a bit of understanding of the dynamics of Iran in the 20th century, I was clearly interested. Also, knowing that Affleck, a politically knowledgeable actor who was close to one of the most outspoken progressives of the 20th century, the late Howard Zinn, made me think that this might be a movie that could teach America a little about the Middle East, minus the usual jingoism and xenophobia. Well, having just watched Argo a few nights ago...progress is slow. Considering the rise of the Islamophobia network over the past decade, this is unfortunate. Argo is only slightly better than the usual Hollywood narrative about Muslims.

So, first things first. I will give Affleck credit - he clearly knows Iran is a touchy subject, and he made a point to open the movie with some discussion about what got us to the 1979 Iranian Revolution. This was useful. There are some comments in the beginning of the movie from CIA operatives that note that the Shah was not exactly a good guy. However, the movie only spends a few minutes providing some sense of context.

In case you don't know the story, the CIA, in one of its first coups (along with the coup in Guatemala in the same year), overthrew the democratically elected and popular Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953. Mossadegh nationalized Iranian oil, angered by British unwillingness to renegotiate a fairer deal than the one in place at the time, which the British had agreed to with Iran's massively corrupt monarchs. Mossadegh used the US-Saudi Arabia deal as a blueprint, but Britain refused, much to America's annoyance. However, over time, the Dulles brothers successfully framed Mossadegh as a potential "communist" (he wasn't), which led the US to join the UK in Operation Ajax, the coup that overthrew the popular Mossadegh and put in place the Shah, a brutal authoritarian dictator. After a long and deadly reign, much of the country revolted against him, leading to the 1979 revolution. After the revolution, Khomeini and the hardline clerics silenced their liberal allies (the anti-Shah revolt involved seemingly everyone, making this move a harsh betrayal to that movement), transforming a secular authoritarian dictatorship to essentially a religious authoritarian dictatorship (albeit with elections). For a more complete recap of America's history with Iran, see this previous post.

Understand that, to get the revolution in 1979, given how much an authoritarian state the Shah's Iran was, you had to have mass unrest. It wasn't just some parts of Iranian society that rebelled...it was the whole society that rebelled. Why did that happen? The Shah's rule was absolute and absolutely horrific. Argo uses animation to illustrate the torture for just a few seconds in the first few minutes that the Shah routinely doled out, but using cartoons makes it seem much less serious. SAVAK, essentially the Shah's thought police (trained by the CIA and Mossad), were brutal. The Shah was merciless. You think Saddam did some terrible things to his people? Yeah...the Shah was worse. Yet...Affleck just shows animation for a second or two.

He also makes a point to mention the Shah's efforts to Westernize Iran, right before cutting to the revolution. This is somewhat true - the Shah definitely wanted Iran to look more like America. However, the way the film juxtaposes that point with the massive, screaming crowd outside the American embassy makes it seem like the crazy religious people comprising all of Iran rebelled largely against the Shah's efforts to get them to wear jeans and not because of torture, dictatorship, repression, or widespread poverty.

This is a huge problem with the film, and with the treatment of Muslims in Hollywood in general. While Affleck does provide some context (again, he does talk briefly about Mossadegh and the Shah's torture), he also leaves enough unsaid or not said well enough to make it very easy for people who don't know what happened to get a false narrative. It is not hard to see how some viewers would think that the Shah did some bad things, but was just trying to move Iran into the modern world, and the religious fanatics that comprise the country went crazy and overthrew the regime. This is a common viewpoint of history amnesiacs who like to point out that Tehran during the Shah's reign was such a modern city. Yes...it was pretty Western, which isn't bad at all...there was also a lot of torture, murder, and monarchical-like wealth disparity beneath the surface. But hey...they had billboards and fancy cars on the streets...hooray!

Argo does not mention how corrupt the Shah was, how his economic policies drove most Iranians into desperate poverty while he and his family and friends lived in obscene wealth. It doesn't mention that he was one of the most brutal autocratic rulers in the region. It doesn't mention how diverse the protest movement was. It does show a lot of angry, screaming Iranians...but without understanding what they were actually so angry about (the Shah's horrible rule, and America's role in robbing them of their democracy), it makes them look fanatical. Yes, some of them were religious extremists. But most were not, and Argo certainly doesn't make that point at all. It also doesn't show how or why the religious zealots essentially hijacked the revolution. The simple fact is (see Egypt today), religious organizations have some of the best institutions in autocratic states, because it is difficult to shut them down. Why, for instance, did the Muslim Brotherhood win elections in Egypt, even though they really aren't that popular? Because they have a strong organizational base in Egypt, much much stronger than any other opposition groups. The same was true in Iran - the mosque network was much better established than other anti-Shah networks, which gave them an advantage in mobilizing. They also resorted to serious violence afterwards to solidify their rule. Those two factors help explain why Khomeini and his band of bearded autocratic brethren were able to take control of the revolution. But...again...they were not the only people marching. They silenced most of their companions after the Shah's regime fell. But...again, Argo makes it seem like he revolution was driven by religious extremists. This is completely false.

Indeed, it seems like almost every single Iranian in the movie is yelling and screaming. That is fine for a comedy bit - Jon Stewart does a good one. However, for the entire movie? Seriously? Even the scene in the market devolves into a screaming match. I understand Iran had some very angry people in 1979, but Argo makes it seem like every Iranian wanted Western blood. This is not true at all. They weren't exactly happy with America - and can you blame them? We took away their democracy and gave them a brutal dictator who we supplied with weapons, trained his brutal secret police, and backed at all times instead of trying to force negotiations with the opposition. However, that displeasure was not blood lust, at least amongst most of the population, something Argo doesn't really illustrate well.

This is a common Hollywood problem. Instead of getting a little of the nuance right re: the Muslim world, they opt for the easy stereotype. Yes, there is no doubt many of the people in Iran in 1979 resembled those in Argo...but most didn't. Yes, many Iranians were angry with America...but there were pretty good reasons to be angry, which aren't really dealt with adequately in the film.

Granted, Affleck is trying to tell a story of the rescue of the 6 Americans who escaped the embassy, so it is a little unfair to be so critical about what he doesn't do. And...unlike most in Hollywood, he does make an effort to give some context. However, he gives you enough to think for a second, but then leaves just enough holes that you get so subsumed in the movie that you forget the context in the first place. In Argo, lets be very clear...the Iranians are the bad guys...and like almost every Iranian. The Americans and Canadians are the heroes. There is no subtlety about it. By the end, you have no recollection why the Iranians were revolting (mostly because you weren't told enough in the beginning, anyway), but you want them to lose badly. And Ben Affleck knows better...which is why this is so disappointing.

Affleck has been involved in many progressive causes over the years. As noted earlier, he was good friends with Howard Zinn, a man who understood the importance of deeper readings in history (see below video). Most importantly, he knows what's going on right now with Iran. Tensions are high, and many want America to go to war with Iran. This film, with its minimal context and simplistic good guys vs. bad guys story doesn't help in that regard.

The real issue might be that so few Americans know anything about the US-Iran relationship from the early 1950s through the revolution. The media hasn't really done a good job (the mainstream press has basically done nothing that I can recall) that illustrates the dynamics of the relationship. Operation Ajax and Mossadegh are words very few Americans know, even though they are critical in understanding what is happening there now. Did you know that the US embassy is speculated to have been seized and Americans taken hostage to avoid a repeat of 1953, when Mossadegh's forces sniffed out the coup, but decided not to hold the Americans in jail, only to have them perform the operation again and succeed within days? Of course you didn't. Almost nobody does. As such, yeah, its not Argo's job to provide more background on the complexities of Iran...the news should be doing this. However, when the news isn't doing this, it would be nice if films that deal with the time pick up some of the slack. Argo does a little bit...but, in my opinion, ultimately fails.

Mind you, I write this as a critic of the Islamic Republic. The religious fanatics that have ruled the country since soon after the revolution betrayed the revolution itself. They are not legitimate rulers, and have done little to help the people of Iran over the years. But it is not helpful to make it seem like Iran is those people alone. Indeed, there are plenty of Iranians fighting the regime on different aspects every day. Many Iranian activists and scholars have been documenting this over the years. The Green Revolution in 2009 proved that plenty of Iranians want nothing to do with their current regime. But American intervention, especially given the history in Iran, may not be a good thing, either. A war with Iran would probably force regime critics to unite with them in order to fight the US...again, we took away their democracy and gave them 26 years of authoritarian horror.

Argo is a fine movie on most levels. It is well-written, well-directed, well-acted, and may be an Oscar favorite. It tells a gripping true story, and even attempts to give some context to one of the most important political phenomenon of the last 40 years, the 1979 Iranian Revolution. However, by the end of it, unless you know what actually happened, you come out humming the Team America theme song, hating Iranians, and wondering what their problem was in 1979. And...if you then flip on the news and hear about what's happening today, it won't be hard for you to translate that into support for a new war with Iran. I am certain that was not Affleck's intent...but he fell into the Hollywood trap re: Muslims in films. He didn't provide enough context, gave monolithic angry anti-Western cartoonish characters, and set them up as the bad guys and the Americans as the good guys. A common question we ask in America is: why do they hate us? The real answer is complicated (and hate isn't an accurate word to use) and we rarely are given it. But...perhaps a better question is: why do we hate them? The news doesn't help much, and Hollywood often fans the flames with problematic narratives. With Argo, Affleck had an opportunity to begin a more educated conversation about Iran. That may not be his job or responsibility, but I suspect that was his goal, and I really wish he had succeeded. Unfortunately, he may have done more harm than good. Here's to hoping he can convey a better message on the publicity tour for the movie...because he clearly wants to help, as evidenced in this old clip below.

Podcast Episode 11: Can a YouTube Video Really Incite Violence?

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 13:21:00 +0000

The attacks against US diplomatic outposts in Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere in the Middle East are allegedly the result of a YouTube film made mocking the Prophet Muhammed. Media coverage has shown Muslims up in arms over this offense but here at There Is No Spoon, we know there's more to the story. Uprisings in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia are always connected to the oppressive sociopolitical environments in these regions. This time, it's no different. This film is a distraction from the real issues. Haroon Moghul (follow him on twitter @hsmoghul) from the New America Foundation and Stephen Sheehi (follow him on twitter @stephensheehi) from the University of South Carolina join Fatima Ashraf, Fouad Pervez, and Junaid Ahmad to discuss.

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The Problem With Voter ID Laws

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 20:37:00 +0000

Last week I posted the following status message to Facebook. Pennsylvania is making it harder for minorities, students and poor people to vote, Ohio is trying to modify procedures and processes for early voting that extend hours in some counties but not others. There's nothing like a presidential election year for engineering even more divisions and greater cultural gaps, cause that's what our country needs.

Not particularly eloquent, but my comment was intended to point out that tactics that focus on voter suppression and increasing the cultural separation among constituents cause more problems than they solve. I mean really, we should be banding together to solve problems, not creating larger rifts. Instead, I inadvertently invited a barrage of comments both on my Facebook wall, on chats and via email.

I thought it was interesting that no one commented on Ohio’s now redacted attempt to lengthen early voting hours in some counties, and reducing the available voting hours in others. But since (in response to the heavy backlash) it looks like the program will be amended to ensure equal voting hours in all Ohio counties, let’s focus on the Pennsylvania Voter ID law and the comments that were thrown my way. Some were ridiculous, for example, equivocating the right to vote with purchasing alcohol.

But some are worth addressing, such as:

Voter ID laws will combat voter fraud and are therefore necessary.
It won’t impact that many people anyway, I don’t know why we don’t have these in every state.
It takes a one person just as long to wait in line at a registry office as another, this has nothing to do with race, age or gender.
It’s easy to get an ID.
All you have to do is go to the registry office, it isn’t that hard.
Most states with voter ID laws make getting the voting ID free.

People with IDs are better off.

While I do agree with the last point, that having a government issued ID is beneficial, tying these benefits to a requirement for voting impacts a state’s population in disproportionate ways, and obtaining an ID is not that easy (especially if you don’t drive) and rules varies from state to state.

I will address the comments after the jump and I'll focus primarily on PA, since it's the newest law and is currently under review. But first:

if you're interested in reading a detailed study on the impacts and implications of exaggerating voter fraud problems and enacting restrictions on voting, this document by the Brennan Center for Justice is an excellent resource.
This site is a good source for information on state requirements for voter id requirements nationwide.
You can find a list of voter registration deadlines by state here.

Now onto the comments!

Comment: Voter ID laws will combat a real problem, voter fraud.

The Brennan Center for Justice has analyzed more than 250 claims of fraud submitted by those supporting the respondents in the Supreme Court's photo ID case, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board. The researchers found absolutely no proven cases of fraudulent votes that could be prevented by the restrictive ID law being challenged.

The state of Pennsylvania has even stipulated that there have been no proven incidences of voter fraud, and that "no evidence or argument that in person voter fraud is likely to occur in November 2012 in the absence of the Photo ID law."

The state is essentially admitting that the program is spending money on a problem that probably doesn't exist. Pennsylvania’s Voter ID law is costly and given that there are virtually no incidents of voter fraud, if I were a taxpayer, I would be livid at this misappropriation of taxpayer dollars.

Millions of dollars - $5 million on voter awareness outreach alone (TV ads, social media blitzes, phone campaigns) - being spent on an ineffectual solution to a virtually non-existent problem. Meanwhile, the state budget cut nearly $1 billion dollars on education last year. How is this fiscally responsible?

Comment: Voter ID Laws won’t impact that many people anyway; I don’t know why we don’t have these in every state.

According to a Brennan Center for Justice Study 10% percent of voting-age citizens who have current photo ID do not have photo ID with both their current address and their current legal name. Therefore, if there were voter ID laws in every state, millions of citizens would be impacted.

In Pennsylvania alone, roughly 758,000 people are impacted by the new law (based on registered voters of the 2008 election).

Comment: It takes a one person just as long to wait in line at a registry office as another, this has nothing to do with race, age or gender. (Implication: Voter ID laws impact all people equally).

This is simply not true. Studies have shown that Voter ID requirements disproportionately affect minorities, women, students, seniors and the poor.

Minorities: A national telephone survey of registered voters who were likely to vote in the 2008 presidential election. In this survey, we asked registered voters if they currently had a valid driver’s license or state issued photo-ID. Respondents were then asked if this ID was expired, if the name on that ID matched that on their voter registration record, and if the address on both the registration record and the ID matched. White respondents had the highest rates of valid identification (88%), followed by Blacks and Latinos (both 81%), and Asian American (80%) registered voters. Therefore, across all groups, it is clear that access to “valid” identification decreases significantly as we move to more stringent qualifications, yet Latinos, African Americans and Asian Americans are less likely to have a state issued ID that meets the criterion established by most states' voter ID laws.

Women: In a similar survey conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice for the 2008 election cycle, results showed that only 48% of voting-age women with ready access to their U.S. birth certificates or have a birth certificate with current legal name– and only 66% of voting-age women with ready access to any proof of citizenship have a document with current legal name.

Students: As many as 18 percent of citizens aged 18-24 do not have photo ID with current address and name, using 2004 census tallies. Photo ID laws in SC, TX, TN, and WI, exclude student IDs as a valid form of identification and residency. Students typically lack the appropriate documentation such as utility bills and property/lease documents needed to verify residency in state.

Seniors: Nationwide, 18 percent of American citizens over age 65 lack the type of photo ID required by restrictive laws. More than 15 percent of Pennsylvania's residents are 65 or older, the fourth highest percentage in the country. In the Pittsburgh metropolitan region that number is even higher -- seniors 65 and older make up more than 17 percent of the population in five of its counties. (Read more here)

Poor: Citizens earning less than $35,000 per year are more than twice as likely to lack current government-issued photo identification as those earning more than $35,000. Indeed, the survey indicates that at least 15 percent of voting-age American citizens earning less than $35,000 per year do not have a valid government-issued photo ID.

In addition to the facts above, it is often more difficult to obtain the proper documentation easily and in a timely manner, as I'll discuss in more detail below.

Comment: Getting an ID is easy and free in states that require it for voting.

For those who move often or don’t own property (those living in dorms or rentals), having appropriate identification with matching addresses can be problematic. Pulling together the paperwork costs time and actual money.

Let's review what's needed in order to get a state issued voter ID in Pennsylvania.

Residents will need a raised seal birth certificate, which costs $10 and according to the application form (found here):

The individual requesting the record must submit a legible copy of his or her valid government issued photo identification. Examples of acceptable identification are a state issued driver's license or non-driver photo ID that verifies the eligible requestor's name and current address. If possible, enlarge photo ID on copier by at least 150%. Photo identification will be shredded after review.

If you do not have acceptable photo identification, it may be necessary for an eligible requestor possessing government issued photo ID to apply for the certified copy of this birth record in your behalf. Eligible requestors must be 18 years of age or older and includes the spouse, parent, grandparent, child, grandchild, or sibling of the individual whose birth record is being requested. If an eligible requestor is unable to apply for this record in your behalf, you may complete and submit a Statement from Requestors Not Possessing Acceptable Government-Issued Photo ID with two documents verifying your current address.

It’s interesting to note here, that in order to obtain your government issued photo ID, you need a raised seal birth certificate, and that in order to obtain your raised seal birth certificate the acceptable photo identification is a valid government issued photo ID.

In order to simplify the process for PA voters, the government has amended some of these requirements. If you are a Pennsylvania born resident, you can use your hospital issued birth certificate in order to obtain your raised seal certificate and the government will refund fees associated with obtaining a raised-seal birth certificate.

But, what if you weren’t born in Pennsylvania? The American populace is much more mobile than in times past. According to the US Census Bureau, the average American moves approximately 14 times in a lifetime. Roughly 40 million Americans change their home address at least once each year. Personally, I've lived in four different states (including the District of Columbia), and have lived in two of those states at different unconnected times in my lifetime.

So, let’s see what might happen if you currently live in Philadelphia, but were born in New Jersey, just over the state line.

According to the online birth certificate application for New Jersey Vital Records, it will cost $25 and will take a minimum of 3 weeks to obtain a raised seal birth certificate. In order to order the document you will need:

One of the following forms of ID with address: A valid government issued photo driver's license with address, a valid government issued photo non-driver's license with address, a valid government issued ID and an alternate form of ID with address from the list below;

-OR-

Two of the following alternate forms of ID with address: Non-photo State issued driver's license/ID card, Green Card, Vehicle Registration, County ID, Insurance Card, School ID, Voter's Registration, Property Tax Statement, Passport, U.S. Military ID w/photo, Vehicle Insurance Card, Bank Statement, Lease or Rental Agreement, Two consecutive months of utility bills (gas, water, electric), or a Public Assistance Card

For some, this might not seem so bad. But consider that several of the above forms of ID also require a raised seal birth certificate to obtain, and students, renters and women who have recently been married or divorced may not have consistent identification at a single address. Ensuring that supporting documentation all have the same address and name spelling will add time, and in some cases, additional costs to the process.

Given that the time frame for obtaining the birth certificate can be greater than 3 weeks, anyone who hasn’t started pulling together the necessary documentation by this week may be close to getting locked out of voting in November.

Aside from the cost and time required for obtaining supporting documentation, there’s also the problem of access to the facilities that issue state IDs.

Comment: All you have to do is go to the registry office, it isn’t that hard.

The state of Pennsylvania has 67 counties, nine of those counties have no centers, eleven centers are open for photos only two days per week, ten centers are open only three days per week, and five centers only four days per week. In Philadelphia, there are four centers, only two are open on Saturdays and only one is open past 6pm (most open after 8:30 and close by 4:30).

One calculation, using the most conservative figure of affected voters (700,000), showed that citizens would have to arrive at the rate of eight per hour, at every state Driver Center, during every hour of photo service, beginning the day Corbett signed the bill and ending Election Day, to get full registration.

In order to facilitate the process, the PA Department of State contracted a vendor to increase opportunities for photo IDs, the cost of which is still unclear. Additionally, it pledged to spend $5 million dollars on a multimedia campaign to reach 8.1 million voters by Nov. 6.

So what does this mean for Pennsylvania voters (or voters in any state with strict ID laws)?

Last week, the Pennsylvania voter identification law was upheld by an appellate judge and the decision about whether or not the law will impact the November election sits before the state supreme court. Registration in PA needs to be complete by October 9^thin order to vote in the November election. Given the limited access to facilities that can issue voter IDs and potential complications that may arise, you should make sure that you have appropriate acceptable ID immediately, and if you don't, you better get started on that process now.

In states where voter ID laws have been upheld, organizations are now shifting focus to helping get disenfranchised voters registered with the appropriate IDs. Read more about some examples in Tennessee, Kansas and South Carolina here. While the impact of the voter ID law in Pennsylvania is uncertain, similar efforts need to start in PA today.

The More Things Change...Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (There is No Spoon Show) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 00:32:00 +0000

Really, NY Post? Do we have to go through this again???

One of the first No Spoon posts dealt with the rather racist ever-classy New York Post cartoon of two white cops shooting a chimpanzee to death over the stimulus bill...the connection being the chimpanzee story in Connecticut at that time, and of course, a black American president being depicted as a chimp. No racism there. None. Have a look at the post here. Well, guess what? The Post is at it again, this time with a cartoon (cartoons again???) covering the controversy surrounding the New York Police Department (NYPD) spying on Muslim across the Northeast. Really funny stuff. And by funny, I mean the xenophobes who draw, write, and connect with this stuff are laughing, while the rest of us are saying...wtf is wrong with you?

As you can see from the picture, they are going with the obvious fact that all the Muslims the NYPD was spying on were terrorists, and that the complaints of Muslims about the invasion of civil rights was nonsensical. This is the common defense of this action - these people attacked us, have proclaimed a war against us, so it is naive to not do something like this. This is almost verbatim the argument Mayor Bloomberg, a man who was a champion for Muslim rights during the Park 51 (aka Ground Zero mosque) debate, gave regarding the complaints from, amongst others, the President of Yale University, over NYPD activity. Seriously. I've said it before, I'll say it again: Islamophobia is pretty kosher in America these days. Good thing, too...it's spreading like crazy. And the more we have people legitimating this irrational and inaccurate activity, the more likely it is to continue.

So, where do we begin. For starters, lets think through the actual problem. News that has been coming out pretty recently showed that the NYPD, sometimes in cahoots with the CIA, was spying on Muslims across state (i.e. NY, not the philosophical "state", though that also applies here) boundaries. They were spying on Muslim students, spying on Muslim institutions, spying on mosques...but...wait for it...without any actual evidence of trouble, other than, you know, being Muslim.

Uh...so...I kind of think that's a problem, what with the whole "rule of law" thing we're supposed to have here. Listen, if there was actual evidence that the people the NYPD was spying on were guilty of crimes, that would be one thing. But...I cannot stress this enough...there is nothing here. They spied on Muslim students from Yale, Columbia, UPenn, Syracuse, NYU, Rutgers, several SUNY schools...and found, not surprisingly, little valuable intel. Amongst the findings...

They learned that these students prayed multiple times each day and had discussions about religion. They also tapped students' emails and found out some of them were even promoting events to educate the public about Islam and further Muslim discourse on religion and the world. Breaking news!
They went undercover on the Muslim Students Association from the City College of New York's whitewater rafting trip and learned that Muslims like whitewater rafting. Alert the press!
They planned to spy on conversations between Somali professors and students at SUNY-Buffalo...just to see what Somalis were talking about. Get out the duct tape!
They infiltrated Muslim bookstores, cafes, businesses, and mosques...and found out Muslims are interested in books about Islam, lectures on Islam, ethnic food, consumerism, and coffee. The jihad is coming, people!

So...the NYPD crossed NY state lines to spy on Muslims, without a shred of evidence, and found out pretty much nothing in terms of national security. The documents show no wrongdoing by the targeted groups and individuals. These are the facts.

First of all...how is this legal? I didn't realize it was okay for law enforcement to spy on Americans without any real evidence of wrongdoing. We're not talking about tapping Whitey Bulger's phone...we're talking about spying on some 19 year old philosophy major who's probably (hopefully) considering changing majors quickly solely because he/she is a Muslim. It's not just spying on people without any real reason...its targeted spying. The only reason these people were being spied on is because they are Muslim. In some cases (like the Somali example from Buffalo), spying was based on religion and ethnicity. Again...no actual evidence of wrongdoing.

So, like driving while black, breathing while Muslim is apparently a problem in the northeast. And before anyone starts with the "they attacked us" crap (which is precisely what Bloomberg and other defenders have claimed), that is nonsensical. Really? The philosophy major attacked you? No, dumb ass, 19 guys, associated with a tiny violent extremist group representing a microscopic percentage of the Muslim population (if you want to even call them Muslim, which I kind of don't) attacked you. If you want to go down that line, understand that all white people are guilty for the crimes of slavery, imperialism, and colonialism. So...don't go down that road. Also, for those, like NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, who are attempting some serious ass-covering here by claiming the spying was based on hard intelligence...explain why there was pretty much nothing found. Explain why huge numbers of Muslim college students were targeted. Do you really think a homegrown terror network is being formed at Yale (excluding Skull and Bones), Rutgers, CCNY, and Columbia? If you do, you are dumber than I thought you were, which is saying something.

Second of all, I didn't realize the NYPD was a national police force. How exactly can they go that far outside their jurisdiction? They've built a gigantic database of where Muslims shop, work, and pray...including Muslims outside of New York. The result is a massive catalog that includes names, businesses, ethnicities, in secret police files. So, does this mean the NYPD, known for this kind of surveillance of Muslims post-9/11, can just go to any state they want, undercover, and spy on that state's Muslims? That is precisely what was happening here. That seems to be a huge problem as well...on top of the already-stated problem that this spying was based on no actual evidence.

Third, this activity strikes me as being particularly damaging, not beneficial, for national security. First, lets not pretend that Muslims are concocting terrorist plots in droves. Right wing extremists across the world are doing so at a much higher rate. Second, as far as the number of Muslim plots go, you know who helps stop them often? Muslims! This is not surprising to people who actually work in this area, because research shows a very small percentage of Muslims actually radicalize, probably because the vast majority reject terrorism. In fact, more religious Muslims are less likely to support terrorism - religion here has a pacifying effect. So, the pool is small in the first place, and Muslims help shrink it even more. Still, despite all of this, we see the NYPD spying ring, which has a high possibility of turning Muslims away from, not towards, law enforcement. This would hurt national security, as noted by No Spoon friend and scholar Haroon Moghul in an excellent article in Foreign Policy. He writes:

Let's imagine you're a young, alienated, impressionable Muslim college kid. Every day you hear common stereotypes about Islam and Muslims; when you turn on the news, all you see is inaccurate conflations of Islam with violence. You feel nobody understands you or your faith. There are only a few people you can talk to, who you trust will understand you, treat you with dignity and respect, and act with your best interests in mind. They probably include your local imam or college chaplain.

But you won't ask the awkward questions if you believe everything you say is spied on, the places you go are monitored, and the police assume, based on your name or faith, that you are a danger to society.

Whom, then, will you turn to? And how does that make us any safer?

Fourth, not only was all this activity highly questionable from a legal standpoint, it is now coming out that the White House helped fund it. Granted, it is not clear that they openly directed resources to this surveillance program, but they are a funding source, and they probably knew what was going on. Their silence up to this point on the topic is deafening. If they didn't know what some of their money was going towards before, they certainly have known for over a week, and have yet to repudiate the NYPD. That's not outright support, but given how charged this issue is (even Republican Governor Chris Christie, amongst many other lawmakers, has called for the Department of Justice and the Attorney General to investigate the NYPD's activities), their silence stands out even more.

So, this is the background of the NYPD spying issue. Pretty obvious violation of civil liberties, questionable jurisdiction issues, harmful to national security, partly financed by the White House, and bipartisan requests for serious investigations. We're talking about some really serious material here. So, what does the NY Post do? Put up a cartoon in which the Muslims are made to look particularly suspicious (even without the explosives), making bombs, and complaining about the NYPD spying on them. The cartoon gives us the textbook evil Muslim cartoon character (in, ironically, a cartoon), even though we know that depiction is horribly wrong and bigoted. Btw, given that a lot of the spying controversy has centered around college students...the cartoon is preposterously inaccurate. Muslims in college don't look like that - at the very least, they are 30 years younger. Also, Muslims in general, don't look anything like that. Look, I've grown a beard a few times, and let me tell you, it itches like crazy. To grow one as long as the people in the cartoon would probably require some mind-numbing drugs. Also...how many Muslims do you know that wear turbans? Seriously....can't we have a little realism with xenophobic cartoons?

More importantly, the cartoon ignores all the facts about the spying case, for which the Associated Press won a Polk award for exposing. This surveillance was based on no evidence, and the spying uncovered basic facts about Islam, not the new al-Qaeda splitter group, the People's Front of Judea (or was it the Judean People's Front?). But this isn't important to the NY Post. Facts be damned, Muslims are evil and should be depicted that way.

Hence, we get the incredibly xenophobic cartoon, another classic from Sean Delonas. Yes...same guy who drew the chimp/cops/Obama cartoon a few years back. Why do I get the feeling he doesn't feel comfortable around non-white people? One result from the backlash (rightfully so, I should add) to that 2009 cartoon was the establishment of a diversity council at the Post...the idea being that they would help create a healthier environment there to root out racist cartoons and the like from the paper. Well...uh...yeah, that didn't work here. Or maybe the Post and Delonas are content with this cartoon that has no factual basis and perpetuates the ugliest form of Islamophobia. Of course, maybe they're just taking their cues from civic leaders, like Ray Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg, both of whom have shown themselves to be completely in support of taking away civil liberties from a group based on no actual information. This is a shame from Bloomberg, who stood by Muslims during the Park 51 insanity. Kelly, of course, appeared on the Islamophobic propaganda film, The Third Jihad, which was shown extensively to the NYPD, so I can't say this is surprising from him.

It is a damn shame that I basically could have lifted a blog post I wrote in 2009, replaced some nouns, and put it up again...but that's sort of what happened here. This is preposterous. As such, I will close by copying some material from the 2009 blog entry. It is up to you to give the Post hell about this cartoon...again. Call them up. Email them. Write them letters. Demand actions. Tell your people to do the same.

In terms of concrete ideas...given the repeat offense, I think people should start asking whether Delonas should be fired. Other demands could include a front page apology, and a real diversity team to monitor the racism. I'm not talking about censorship - I'm talking about curbing hateful xenophobia. How about a real push to boycott the NY Post until it deals with these matters? I don't mean people should stop buying it, as I doubt a whole lot of folks who regularly buy the Post would be offended by the cartoon. I mean people who own places that sell papers (bodegas, drug stores, newstands, etc.) who are not okay with outright racism should stop buying the NY Post to sell. I mean people who advertise in the NY Post should stop advertising in it. I'm talking about big money. It already loses money, but News Corp (Rupert Murdoch's company which owns it) is willing to take financial losses for ideological freedom. So...take a lot more money out of Rupert's pockets. A real boycott could actually work, and folks should start thinking about it.

As The Dude from The Big Lebowski would say, this kind of xenophobic aggression won't stand, man. Make them feel it.

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.