Islamophobia Case Negative - DDI 2015 MM
Islamophobia Case Negative - DDI 2015 MM
Islamophobia Case Negative - DDI 2015 MM
bloody insanity of a man who has caused the death of more Muslims than anyone in
modern history. But now, thanks to waterboarding and other interrogation abuses,
this option may be closed of to us. (Read "Why the CIA Turned Down Dick Cheney.")
1nc T
Definition Surveillance must be defined as both directed and
intrusive
Philip Gounev et al. (Tihomir Bezlov, Anton Kojouharov, Miriana Ilcheva, Mois
Faion, Maurits Beltgens, Center for the Study of Democracy, European Commission)
2015 Part 3: Legal and Investigative Tools http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/homeafairs/e-library/docs/20150312_1_amoc_report_020315_0_220_part_2_en.pdf
7.7.1. Definition There is no universal definition of surveillance. The various
definitions for surveillance generally depend on whether it is used as an umbrella
term or it is more narrowly defined. Advances in technology appear to be a factor in
defining what surveillance is, as they hold the potential to periodically enable
previously unavailable methods, techniques and tools for conducting surveillance
operations (i.e. geolocation/tracking, electronic surveillance, cloud technologies,
storage capacities). Analysis of information in the questionnaires indicates that MS
use diferent approaches in defining surveillance in their legislation. Some MS
diferentiate between simple observation conducted without technical means and
surveillance utilizing technical tools (AT, BE, FI, FR DE, LU). In other MS legislation
distinguishes short-term and long-term surveillance, wherein the defined periods
may vary from state to state (AT, DE, BE). The significance of making a distinction in
the periods for which surveillance is authorised is that most often short-term
surveillance is regulated more loosely and/or does not require a judicial oversight.
Some MS definitions isolate surveillance conducted on the premises of private
homes as a special circumstance, whereby it requires additional judicial
authorisation and oversight (AT, CZ, LU, UK). Overall, MS definitions may be grouped
into two main categories:120 General / broad definitions. In these instances
surveillance is more broadly defined as a special investigative tool that may be
executed through the utilisation of various technical and other means (BG, EE, HU,
LT, SI, FI, SK, SE). Specific examples include: - The method of intelligence data
gathering, when information collected identifying, recognizing and (or) watching an
object (LT). - Covert surveillance of persons, things or areas, covert collection of
comparative samples and conduct of initial examinations and covert examination or
replacement of things the information collected shall be, if necessary, video
recorded, photographed or copied or recorded in another way (EE). - Secret
observations made of a person with the purpose of retrieving information (FI).
Technically specific definitions. Some MS have opted for a more detailed and
specific approach to defining surveillance in their legislations. In such instances,
legal provisions often define surveillance along the logic of the types of technical
means and/or outcome from surveillance activities (BE, AT, FR, DE, LU, PT, SK, SE).
In general, the diferent types of surveillance methods, such as video surveillance,
photographic imaging, bugging, audio surveillance and geo-tracking may be
separately detailed in the definition of surveillance. For example, in France
geolocation/tracking and video-surveillance are regulated separately (FR). This is
because diferent types of surveillance are deemed to have potentially varied levels
of intrusion and may be regulated with diferentiated criteria, e.g. period for
surveillance, authorisation procedure, crime threshold (FR, SI). Surveillance
Violation:
The most Islamophobic fbi policies are in education- the plan is
extra-topical
Weinsten 11 (Adam Weinstein, September 15th, 2011, Mother Jones, That
Islamophobic FBI Training Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg,
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/09/islamophobic-fbi-training-military, AZ)
Agents at the FBI's Quantico, Virginia, training grounds are taught that all
mainstream American Muslims are terrorist sympathizers in a cult that likes to
donate money to killers. That's according to a scoop by Wired's Spencer Ackerman,
who has exposed a series of amazingly clueless Powerpoint slides and documents
from the federales' training on Islam. If you haven't read his story yet, do so now.
Ackerman's report brings new light to an alarming problem that's been welldocumented since 9/11: American police officers, airport screeners, and soldiers
have no freaking clue how to deal with the distinction between the vast majority of
Muslims and the minisule minority that actively seek to do us harm. My MoJo
colleague Adam Serwer points out that local cops around the country have been
getting training that's even worse that the FBI's. He refers to an excellent March
Washington Monthly story detailing how Islamophobic trainers are collecting
homeland security dollars while spewing complete nonsense. For example: "When
you have a Muslim that wears a headband, regardless of color or insignia, basically
what that is telling you is 'I am willing to be a martyr," one trainer blathers. But it
goes way beyond that. Our Islamophobia-beat reporter, Tim Murphy, has detailed on
this site how Rep. Allen West (R-Fla) is championing a skewed, conspiratorial vision
of Islam to convince Americans that we're under attack. I've written about the
meager cultural training ofered to service members and contractors headed for
Iraq and Afghanistan. The materials would be humorous if they weren't so
disturbing: In them Arab men look suspiciously like Lego figures; they're described
as "illogical or irrational," paranoid, and prone to extremes, "perhaps due to the
harsh, desert environment that Arabs have lived in for thousands of years." And
that's just Iraqi Arabsjust wait 'til you read what they say about those dirty Kurds.
All of which is to say that, 10 years after the US government got really preoccupied
with Muslims of all stripes, from Iraqi Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites to Afghan Pashtuns,
Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, and a couple hundred other ethnic and tribal identities (not
to mention Muslim-Americans)our civil servants are still taking a reductive, unfair,
and ultimately dangerous attitude toward them. Which may explain why we let
foreign governments lock them up and torture them, even if they're American
citizens. And perhaps it's why the FBI relies blindly on terrorism informants who
walk the fine between tracking potential terrorists and making them. If we
continue to miseducate the well-intending agents and soldiers who serve
at the tip of the spear, we shouldn't be surprised when that spear misses
its target.
the past, the annual Iftar dinner passed without much notice. Last year, President Barack Obama delivered a boilerplate speech to
the assembled crowd of Muslim-American community activists and Middle Eastern ambassadors about his eforts to spur
entrepreneurship. But this time, amidst a one-sided Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip that was about to claim its 200th death in just a
week, and which the US had backed to the hilt, the heat was on. While Obama prepared his remarks, calls rang out with
unprecedented intensity for invitees to boycott the July 14 ceremony. Among those who urged a boycott in protest of the Gaza
assault and ongoing government spying on Muslim-Americans was the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), an
established presence in Washington representing the countrys largest Arab-American advocacy group. Joining the boycott call was
Mariam Abu-Ali, the sister of Ahmed Abu Ali, a US citizen renditioned to Saudi Arabia for torture before being sentenced to life in
invitation to the State Departments Iftar), others defended their presence at the ceremony. Most vocal among them was Rep. Keith
Ellison (D-MN), one of the two Muslim members of Congress. I disagree with the tactic, Ellison remarked in a statement released
by his office. It will not close Guantanamo Bay, guarantee a cease-fire between Israel and Palestine or undo the NSAs targeting of
Muslims. The Muslim Public Afairs Council (MPAC) echoed Ellison, insisting that the event would allow [them] to engage with
senior White House officials for a decent amount of time on substantive issues. While Muslim-American civil rights groups like the
Council on American Islamic Relations have assumed a more confrontational posture towards the White House and boycotted a
prayer breakfast with former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in protest of his support for NYPD surveillance of Muslims,
MPAC has taken an altogether diferent tack. Its role as a paid consultant on the cable TV series, Tyrant, was perhaps the best
example of its accommodationist stance. Produced by Howard Gordon, the creator of 24 and Homeland, the show starred a
white actor playing a pathological Arab dictator who ruled over the deeply dysfunctional fictional nation of Abuddin. Even
mainstream TV critics derided the series as unbearably Orientalist, with the Washington Posts Hank Stuever describing it as a
stultifyingly acted TV drama stocked with tired and terribly broad notions of Muslim culture in a make-believe nation on the brink.
Leading up to the White House Iftar, a leader of a major Muslim advocacy organization told me on background that MPAC was
bleeding support, especially from younger activists. At the Iftar dinner, Obama launched into a defense of Israels assault on the
Gaza Strip, declaring, I will say very clearly, no country can accept rockets fired indiscriminately at citizens. And so, weve been
very clear that Israel has the right to defend itself against what I consider to be inexcusable attacks from Hamas. He went on to
claim against all evidence that his administration had worked long and hard to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and that it
had emphasized the need to protect civilians, regardless of who they are or where they live. Ali Kurnaz, the central regional
attendees pointing out that Palestinians should have a right to defend themselves too, Kurnaz recalled. Like many others who
joined the dinner, Kurnaz was not aware that Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer had been invited. Dermer was a longtime confidant of
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the son of the Republican former Mayor of Miami Beach. This year, Dermer broke
diplomatic protocol by appearing at a fundraiser for the Republican Jewish Committee, helping to raise money for a partisan
organization dedicated to undermining Obamas agenda.
presence at the Iftar dinner was his stated belief that a cultural tendency towards
belligerency is deeply embedded in the culture of the Arab world and its foremost
religion. According to Kurnaz, Dermer spent the evening isolated in the White Houses Green Room adjacent to the main
reception area, where he milled around mostly without company. None of the activists invited to the dinner approached him. When
story urgently requesting a meeting with Obama. Without that commitment yet in hand, took the opportunity to raise the issue with Obama personally at
the Monday dinner. "I specifically asked the president if he would meet with us to discuss NSA spying on the American Muslim community. The president
seemed to perk up and proceeded to discuss the issue, saying that he takes it very seriously," said Junaid Sulahry, the outreach manager for Muslim
Advocates, a legal and civil rights group. Obama was non-committal, Sulahry said, but displayed "a clear willingness to discuss the issue." Hoda
Elshishtawy, the national policy analyst for the Muslim Public Afairs Council, said that she brought it up as part of a "table-wide discussion" on post-9/11
That tension
has plagued the Obama administration's domestic counterterrorism or, as it
prefers, "countering violent extremism" for its entire tenure. The departments of justice and homeland
surveillance of US Muslims. "Our communities can't be seen as suspects and partners at the same time," Elshishtawy said.
security lead outreach eforts in Muslim and other local communities, stressing vigilance against radicalizing influences and dialogue with law
enforcement. Yet Muslim communities labor under widespread suspicion of incubating terrorism. Surveillance from law enforcement and US intelligence is
countries, a reluctance to foreclose on indefinite detention that functionally is only aimed at Muslims, and difficulty concluding the war in Afghanistan all
of which have strained relations with American-Muslim communities. Some of those community leaders have already come under fire for attending the
White House dinner. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee urged a boycott over the surveillance and administration support for Israel during
the current Gaza ofensive, rejecting what it called "normalization of the continuous breach of our fundamental rights." Representatives of organizations
that rejected the boycott argued that they can exercise greater influence through access than through rejection. "Our strategy is to worth through the
Republicans realize that the fight over gay marriage is over, theyre pivoting back to the old reliable: Muslims. Its true
that Muslim-bashing among Republicans is hardly new, but I think that as 2016 approaches were going to see even more of it as
candidates try to outflank one another. The latest example was LouisianaGovernors Bobby Jindals speech on Monday in
London. Jindal told the audience that there are no-go zones in Europe where Muslims have in essence carved out Islamic autonomous zones that
are ruled by Koranic law and where non-Muslims fear to tread. His point, of course, was to warn Americans that Muslims could try the same thing in
the United States. Now if that concept sounds familiar its because last week Fox News served up this same rancid red meat to its viewers. Some Fox
News anchors claimed these so-called no-go zones existed in parts of France. And Fox News terrorism expert Steve Emerson even went as far as to
say that Birmingham, England, the nations second biggest city with more than one million people, was a totally Muslim city where non-Muslims dont
go in. The backlash to these comments was swift. Even British Prime Minster David Cameron responded, When I heard this, frankly, I choked on my
porridge and I thought it must be April Fools Day. This guy is clearly a complete idiot. Fox
nothing new. In fact, in my view its part of Foxs business model since its viewers hold the most negative views of Muslims of any cable news
audience. Fox is simply giving their viewers what they want to see. But a few days ago, Fox did something truly shocking. They apologized for making
the claims about Muslim-controlled no-go zones in Europe. In fact, they apologized not once, but four times, and admitted unequivocally that these
no-go zones dont even exist. Yet even though the Fox retractions occurred days before Jindal delivered his speech, that didnt stop him from
asserting the same baseless claims. After his speech, Jindal was asked by a CNN reporter for specifics on where exactly these no-go zones are located.
So
what do you do if you are a Republican candidate seeking conservative votes? Simple. Bash
Muslims. We are truly an easy target. For those unfamiliar with Jindal, hes no Louie Gohmert. Hes an Ivy League graduate and a
Rhodes scholar. Jindals remarks were not a mistake, but rather part of a calculated strategy to garner
support from more conservative Republicans for an expected2016 presidential run. Now, in the
past, candidates trying to garner support from these right wing voters could use opposition to
gay marriage to curry favor. As conservative James Kirchick noted in an article he penned for The Wall Street Journal in 2008, the
Jindal, in what looked almost like a sketch from Saturday Night Live, hemmed and hawed, finally responding: I think your viewers know.
Republican Party has a long history of its candidates using not just opposition to gay marriage, but also anti-gay rhetoric to attract support from the
GOP Base. Kirchick went on to urge Republicans to kiss gay-bashing goodbye. But we still saw this bigotry in the 2012 race. For example, Rick Perry
ran a campaign commercial that said you know theres something wrong with this country when gays can openly serve in the military. Polls, however,
now show a majority of Americans support gay marriage. And even the Mike Huckabees of the GOP would have to admit that after the Supreme Court
announced Friday that it is considering the constitutionality of same-sex marriage this term, gay marriage will likely soon be the law of the land.
Bottom line: gay
Oklahoma State Representative John Bennett that Muslims are a cancer that must be cut of
our country and that Muslim-Americans are not loyal to the United States but to the
constitution of Islam. Bennett received a standing ovation from the conservative audience that
heard these remarks, and the Oklahoma GOP Chair even backed him up. And possibly even more comments like the one made by newly sworn in
member of Congress Jody Hice who stated that Islam is not a religion and doesnt deserve First Amendment protection. Was there any backlash from
GOP leaders to this remarks? Nope, in fact people Red States Erick Erickson even spoke at one of his fundraisers and wrote he was proud to support
Hice. This is a far cry from the 2008 presidentialrace when John McCain countered anti-Muslim remarks made by a supporter at one of his campaign
rallies. My hope is that Im wrong. But after seeing close to a thousand people over the weekend protesting a Muslim-American event in Texas that was
ironically organized to counter extremism, Im not so optimistic. The more conservative parts of the GOP base tend to vote in higher numbers in the
primaries. So dont
be surprised when you see Republican candidates trying to get their attention
with this cut of red meat.
1nc case ev
Islamophobia is inherent in civil society- the aff distracts from
social movements, which is key to solve
Collins 15 (Kathryn Collins, March 6th, 2015, The Rising Trend of Islamophobia,
Distraction Magazine, http://www.distractionmagazine.com/2015/03/06/the-risingtrend-of-islamophobia/, AZ)United States citizens are hard to recognize; accents, skin tones,
backgrounds, genetics are all meaningless. Whether by birth or via test, an American citizen is
identifiable primarily by his or her commitment to ideals set forth more than two centuries ago. Any
7th grader can provide the gist of the guarantees set forth by the Founding Fathers; that citizens
ought to be free from government involvement in religious worship, free speech, peaceful assembly
and petition, and harassment; but imagine a scenario where the people who created this credo to
protect themselves and their descendants chose to marginalize and mistreat groups with different
appearances or beliefs. It isnt that hard, is it? Native Americans, African Americans, Jews, Irish
At prestigious, private
institutions of higher education, it may be easy to tsk, ofer a genuinely sympathetic
head shake, and remark on how unenlightened previous generations were, while
marveling at how people could be so cruel and downright ignorant. A large Muslim
population is asking that very question right now. There has been a recent wave of
anti- Muslim sentiments on the international scale. It is leaving many followers of Islam
feeling slighted and frightened for their safety. On February 10th of this year, three
college students (Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, and Razan Mohammad
Abu-Salha) were fatally shot in their home in Chapel Hill , North Carolina. The
Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics, Homosexuals the list goes on.
neighbor who allegedly shot them has been arrested. There is widespread speculation that this was a
hate crime, based on the content of his social media accounts and one of the victims telling a relative
she believed the man resented them for their religion and heritage. The killings occurred after
President Obama asked congressional approval for authorization to use military force to fight the
Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Not to mention the murder of 17 people in France by Islamist terrorists
last month. Could it be a coincidence? That this was truly a horrible incident, a squabble over parking
blown unbelievably out of proportion? That absolutely could be the case. However, in the time since
The schools board of trustees, Hilmy Bakri, said the school had never before been the subject of
vandalism. 2/17/2015: Muslims get out emblazoned across the outside of Skyview Junior High School
same individual. 2/17/2015: A man threatening to bomb a restaurant specializing in Middle Eastern
food and an Islamic center in Austin, TX was arrested. 2/19/2015 :
An Arab-American man
was speaking to his children in Arabic while grocery shopping at a Kroger in
Dearborn, Michigan when he was assaulted by two white men who were enraged upon overhearing
Sheikh-Hussein, 15, was run over by an SUV outside a Somali community center in Kansas City. The
same center that called the police after earlier witnessing a lingering SUV bearing the painted phrase
Islam is worse than Ebola. Whats more worrying than the fact that this isnt new, is the fact that this might
not be newsworthy. The coverage of the attacks in France lasted significantly longer than the coverage
of the three students deaths. In order to form a more perfect union, has this nation enabled
Islamophobia? Hate crimes are generally not reported, and the percentage of hate crimes not reported
by Muslims is even higher, as FBI reports show they are among the most profiled and targeted groups
in the United States, especially since 9-11. To try and ascribe one cause to Islamophobia would be to
try and justify prejudice. The logical mind rejects and the determined mind refuses to accept or seek
out knowledge that would threaten or discredit their ingrained understanding. The news has been
permeated by the ascendance of a new terror group who has seized headlines and world attention
world, Americans might argue that Muslims dont have it so bad! Its not like Belgium or France with
bans on veils or headscarves. However, at the very least, there is an awareness of the community and
might be asking yourselves: Doesn't racism pre-date capitalism? Here we agree with
Callinicos that the heterophobia associated with precapitalist societies was not the same as modern racism. Pre-capitalist
slave and feudal societies of classical Greece and Rome did not rely on racism to justify the use
of slaves. The Greeks and Romans did not have theories of white superiority. If they did, that must have
been unsettling news to Septimus Severus, Roman Emperor from Ad 193 to 211, who was, many historians
claim, a black man. Racism emerged during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from a key
development of capitalism-colonial plantations in the New World where slave labour stolen from Africa
was used to produce tobacco, sugar, and cotton for the global consumer market (Callinicos, 1993).
Callinicos cites Eric Williams who remarks: 'Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the
consequence of slavery' (cited in Callinicos, 1993, p. 24). In effect, racism emerged as the ideology of the plantocracy. It
began with the class of sugar-planters and slave merchants that dominated England's Caribbean colonies. Racism developed out of
the 'systemic slavery' of the New World. The
Their ethics for the other is a tool of capitalist manipulation used to justify the
worst types of racism- the plan turns itself
iek, 1997 (Slavoj, a philosopher and psychoanalyst, also a senior researcher at the Institute
for Advanced Study in the Humanities, in Essen, Germany, Multiculturalism, Or, the Cultural
Logic of Multinational Capitalism New Left Review I/225, September-October, <
http://newleftreview.org/?view=1919>)
is as if we are witnessing the ultimate confirmation of Freuds thesis, from Civilization and
its Discontents, on how, after every assertion of Eros, Thanatos reasserts itself with a vengeance. At the very moment when,
according to the official ideology, we are finally leaving behind the immature political passions
(the regime of the politicalclass struggle and other out-dated divisive antagonisms) for the
mature post-ideological pragmatic universe of rational administration and negotiated consensus,
for the universe, free of utopian impulses, in which the dispassionate administration of social
affairs goes hand in hand with aestheticized hedonism (the pluralism of ways of life)at this very moment,
the foreclosed political is celebrating a triumphant comeback in its most archaic form: of pure,
undistilled racist hatred of the Other which renders the rational toler-ant attitude utterly impotent.
[12] In this precise sense, contemporary postmodern racism is the symptom of multiculturalist late
capitalism, bringing to light the inherent contradiction of the liberal-democratic ideological project.
Liberal tolerance condones the folklorist Other deprived of its substancelike the multitude of
ethnic cuisines in a contemporary megalopolis; however, any real Other is instantly denounced
for its fundamentalism, since the kernel of Otherness resides in the regulation of its jouissance: the real Other is
by definition patriarchal, violent, never the Other of ethereal wisdom and charming customs.
One is tempted to reactualize here the old Marcusean notion of repressive tolerance, reconceiving
it as the tolerance of the Other in its aseptic, benign form, which forecloses the dimension of the
Real of the Others jouissance. [13]
Angeles (UCLA) Previously, iobhan served as the analyst for domestic security and
intelligence at the Congressional Research Service (CRS). She spent five years
working in homeland security serving as the deputy chief of the Intelligence Bureau
of the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (OHSP) (April 2008,
Siobhan, Homeland Security Afairs, The Relationship between the Private Sector
and Fusion Centers: Potential Causes for Concern and Realities,
https://www.hsaj.org/articles/134)
Given that fusion centers are entities established by states and localities to
serve their own law enforcement, emergency response, and homeland security
government agencies would retain and store this data. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who cast the lone dissenting vote against CISA on
the Senate Intelligence Committee, declared the legislation a surveillance bill by another name. Privacy advocates agree. The
lack of use limitations creates yet another loophole for law enforcement to
conduct backdoor searches on Americans, argues a letter sent by a coalition of privacy
organizations, including Free Press Action Fund and New Americas Open Technology Institute. Critics also argue that CISA would not
have prevented the recent spate of high-profile hacking incidents. As the Electronic Frontier Foundations Mark Jaycox noted in a
blog post, the JPMorgan hack occurred because of an un-updated server and prevailing evidence about the Sony breach is
advocacy campaign to pass CISA, see this letter cosigned by many of the most powerful corporate interests in America and sent to
and Islamic supremacists use the specter of Islamophobic hate crime to shut down honest discussion of how
jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism, and intimidate people into
than many groups and fewer per capita than gays or Jews. Anti-Islamic crimes did not involve greater violence than
prior year but still slightly below the annual average of 139 from 2002 to 2011. The small rise in recorded antiIslamic incidents could be attributable to improved data collection rather than a true uptick. Reports submitted by
law enforcement agencies covered a population of 295 million Americans in 2013, 18.6 percent higher than in 2012.
There were 1,031 incidents inspired by religion last year, 625 (60.6 percent) of which were anti-Jewish. Anti-Islamic
from Pews 2011 figure and typical growth of 100,000 per year, there were 4.6 anti-Islamic incidents per 100,000
Muslims in 2013, the same as 2012s rate and lower than the average of 6.0 per 100,000 for 200211. The 2013
rate for Muslims was less than half that for Jews (9.6 per 100,000 for a population of roughly 6.5 million) and
homosexuals/bisexuals (11.0 per 100,000, assuming that they comprise 3.5 percent of the U.S. population). The
rate for blacks was similar to that of Muslims (4.5 per 100,000 for a population of 41.6 million).
Anti-Islamic
hate crimes were no more violent than others in 2013. Of the 6,933 ofenses spanning all hate
crimes, 734 (10.6 percent) were aggravated assaults and 1,720 (24.8 percent) were simple assaults. The 165 antiIslamic ofenses mirrored this breakdown: 17 (10.3 percent) were aggravated assaults and 41 (24.8 percent) were
simple assaults. Further, none of the five deaths in 2013 resulted from anti-Islamic hate crimes.
instead of changing course, the U.S. is in the process of doubling down on its mistakes. How else to explain that the
new GOP presidential hopeful, Jeb Bush, nonchalantly told the Chicago Council on Global Afairs that mistakes were
made in Iraq. He then proceeded to lay out his own plan for becoming the new global sherif in town. Heres a jawdropping statement from that speech: There were mistakes made in Iraq, for sure. Using the intelligence capability
that everybody embraced about weapons of mass destruction was notturns out not to be accurate. Watching his
brothers back, Jeb wove out of thin air a phony consensus that everybody signed on for the rationale for the Iraq
war. Thats despite a vote in Congress in which 23 U.S. Senators and 133 House members opposed it. You see, if
everybody was wrong, then nobody was right. It should come as no surprise that Jebs team of policy wise men
includes many Bush II veterans, among them the unrepentant Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz. His Own Man, With
an Old Plan As much as Jeb Bush insists he is his own man, the audience in Chicago could hear echoes of his
brother Georges cowboy-like approach. When Jeb was asked about how he would handle IS, he said he would
develop a global strategy that would tighten the noose so he and the posse could take them out. During
Bushs remarks, he took aim at the Obama administration for being too quick to disengage from the world and Iraq.
He blamed Obama for creating a power vacuum that set the stage for the rise of IS and Iranian influence. Yet an
examination of President Obamas new National Security Strategy, his proposed military budget and his request for
his own War Powers re-authorization all indicate an administration that is prosecuting a global war on terror with
unfettered latitude as to where and whom it targets. Could it be that this global war on terror, whether it be the
Bush 1.0 or Obama 2.0 version, may actually be what is proliferating the very thing it was aimed to eradicate? One
policy expert who dares to look deeper is Graham Fuller, a career CIA agent and analyst who was vice-chairman of
the CIAs National Intelligence Council. Fuller says it was the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 that set the stage for IS.
By creating an endemically corrupt central government in Baghdad, notes Fuller, the American occupation provided
a focal point to unite disparate opposition groups. As for the high-profile efort to train a new Iraqi army, that
security force collapsed the moment its U.S. handlers left. (In an odd twist to an already bizarre security metanarrative, Fullers former son-in-law is the uncle of accused Boston Marathon Bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev.) *** In linking Washingtons Middle Eastern policies to the rise of terrorist groups in the region, MIT
professor Noam Chomsky takes it even further back. He says the roots start with the U.S. support of Iraq in its brutal
war with Iran in the 1980s, and include the draconian economic sanctions that followed Saddam Husseins 1990
invasion of Kuwait. In Chomskys view, these sanctions punished Iraqi civilians while reinforcing Saddams
dictatorial control. In his 2006 book Devils Game: How the U.S. Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, longtime
Nation correspondent Robert Dreyfuss documents how the U.S., as early as the 1950s, backed the Muslim
Brotherhood in exchange for help fighting communism. Peaces Deadliest Year One way to justify failed policies is to
pretend that they have worked as advertised. Nowhere was this disconnect between rhetoric and reality more on
display than in President Obamas updating this month of his National Security Strategy. In presenting this new
security game-plan, the president exhibited excessive confidence in declaring that the United States was heading
home and moving beyond ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In his mini-version of Bushs infamous Mission
Accomplished statement, he asserted that the threat of catastrophic attacks against the U.S. had diminished.
the UN Assistance Mission counted close to 3,200 civilians killed and more than 6,400 wounded, the deadliest year
since Americas longest war started.
might be asking yourselves: Doesn't racism pre-date capitalism? Here we agree with
Callinicos that the heterophobia associated with precapitalist societies was not the same as modern racism. Pre-capitalist
slave and feudal societies of classical Greece and Rome did not rely on racism to justify the use
of slaves. The Greeks and Romans did not have theories of white superiority. If they did, that must have
been unsettling news to Septimus Severus, Roman Emperor from Ad 193 to 211, who was, many historians
claim, a black man. Racism emerged during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from a key
development of capitalism-colonial plantations in the New World where slave labour stolen from Africa
was used to produce tobacco, sugar, and cotton for the global consumer market (Callinicos, 1993).
Callinicos cites Eric Williams who remarks: 'Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the
consequence of slavery' (cited in Callinicos, 1993, p. 24). In effect, racism emerged as the ideology of the plantocracy. It
began with the class of sugar-planters and slave merchants that dominated England's Caribbean colonies. Racism developed out of
the 'systemic slavery' of the New World. The
Class is the driver of all social and existential conditions. Only emancipation
from the status quo modes of production can enact any form of human
freedom
Ebert and Zavarzadeh 08(Teresa L., English, State University of New York, Albany, Masud,
prolific writer and expert on class ideology, Class in Culture, p.ix-xii)
Class is everywhere and nowhere. It is the most decisive condition of social life: it shapes the
economic and, consequently, the social and cultural resources of people. It determines their birth, healthcare,
clothing, schooling, eating, love, labor, sleep, aging, and death. Yet it remains invisible in the every day and in
practical consciousness because, for the most part, it is dispersed through popular culture,
absorbed in cultural difference, obscured by formal equality before the law or explained
away by philosophical arguments. Class in Culture attempts to trace class in different cultural situations and practices
to make its routes and effects visible. However, the strategies obscuring class are cunning, complex, and subtle, and are at work in
unexpected sites of culture. Consequently, this is not a linear book: it surprises class in the segments, folds, vicinities, points, and
divides of culture. It moves, for example, from Abu Ghraib to the post-deconstructive proclamations of Antonio Negri, from stem
cell research to labor history, from theoretical debates on binaries to diets. It is also written in a variety of registers and lengths: in
the vocabularies of theory, the idioms of description and explanation, as well as in the language of polemics, and in long, short, and
shorter chapters. Regardless of the language, the plane of argument, the length of the text, and the immediate subject of our
critiques, our purpose has been to tease out from these incongruous moments the critical elements of a basic grammar of class-one
that might be useful in reading class in other social sites. Our text on eating, for example, unpacks two diets that, we argue,
reproduce class binaries in the zone of desire. The point here is not only when one eats, one eats class, but also class works in the
most unexpected comers of culture, Eating as a sensuous, even sensual corporeality, is seen as the arena of desire which is
represented in the cultural imaginary as autonomous from social relations. Desire
individuality and singularity are myths but that they are myths in class societies. Individuality and
singularity become reality-not stories that culture tells to divert people from their anonymity in a culture of commoditiesonly when one is free from necessity beyond which "begins that development of human
energy which is an end in itself' (Marx, Capita/III, 958-59). Class is the negation of human freedom.
A theory of class (such as the one we articulate) argues that class is the material logic of social life and
therefore it determines how people live and think . But this is too austere for many contemporary critics.
("Determinism" is a dirty totalizing word in contemporary social critique.) Most writers who still use the concept of class prefer to
talk about it in the more subtle and shaded languages
class is essentially a relation of property, of owning. Class, in short, is a relation to labor because
property is the congealed alienated labor of the other. By owning we obviously do not mean owning just
anything. Owning a home or a car or fine clothes does not by itself put a person in one or another class. What does, is owning
the labor power of others in exchange for wages. Unlike a home or a car, labor (or to be more precise "labor
power") is a commodity that produces value when it is consumed. Structures like homes or machines like
cars or products such as clothes do not produce value. Labor does. Under capitalism, the producers of value do
not own what they produce. The capitalist who has purchased the labor power of the direct producers owns what they
produce. Class is this relation of labor-owning. This means wages are symptoms of estranged labor, of the unfreedom of humans,
namely the exploitation of humans by humans-which is another way to begin explaining class. To
learn about the labor relations that construct class differences , that enable the subjugation of the many by
the few. Under capitalism labor is unfree, it is forced wage-labor that produces "surplus value"-an objectification of a
person's labor as commodities that are appropriated by the capitalist for profit. The labor of the worker, therefore,
becomes "an object" that "exits outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and it
becomes a power on its own confronting him" which, among other things, "means that the life
which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien " (Marx,
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,272). The direct producers' own labor, in other words, negates their freedom because
it is used, in part, to produce commodities not for need but for exchange. One, therefore, is
worker; and, second as a physical subject. The height of this servitude is that it is only as a worker that he can
maintain himself as a physical subject, and that it is only as a physical subject that he is a worker" (273). Under wage labor,
workers, consequently, relate to their own activities as "an alien activity not belonging to [ them]"
(275). The estranged relation of people to the object of their labor is not a local matter but includes all
spheres of social life. ln other words, it is "at the same time the relation to the sensuous external world, to the objects of
nature, as an alien world inimically opposed to [them]" (275). The scope of estrangement in a class society , of
human unfreedom caused by wage labor, is not limited to the alienation of the worker from her products. It includes the productive
activity itself because what is produced is a "summary of the activity, of production," and therefore it is "manifested not only in the
result but in the act of production, within the producing activity itself' (274). The
to the estrangement of humans from humans (277)-the alienation in class societies that is
experienced on the individual level as loneliness. In confronting oneself, one confronts others; which is another
way of saying that one's alienation from the product of one's labor, from productive activity, and from "species
life" is at the same time alienation from other people, their labor, and the objects of their labor . In
class societies, work, therefore, becomes the negation of the worker: he "only feels himself outside his work, and in
his work feels outside himself" (274). Ending class structures is a re-obtaining of human freedom. Freedom
here is not simply the freedom of individuals as symbolized, for instance, in bourgeois "freedom of speech" but is a world-historical
"freedom from necessity" (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme). Class struggle is the struggle for
human emancipation by putting an end to alienated labor (as class relations). Alienated labor is the
bondage of humans to production: it is an effect of wage labor (which turns labor into a means of living) and private property
(which is congealed labor).
humans from this bondage because "all relations of servitude," such as class relations, "are
but modifications and consequences" of the relation of labor to production
Identity-based struggles can never come to grips with the Real of Capital
because todays global capitalism relentlessly fragments identities to ensure
that capitals homogenizing force will prevail.
Slavoj iek, Professor of Sociology at the Institute for Sociology, Ljubljana University, 2k, The
Fragile Absolute, p. 11-15
So where are we, today, with regard to ghosts? The first paradox that strikes us, of course, is that this very process
of
global reflexivization that mercilessly derides and chases the ghosts of the past generates not only
its own immediacy but also its own ghosts, its own spectrality. The most famous ghost, which has been
roaming around for the last 150 years, was not a ghost of the past, but the spectre of the (revolutionary) future
the spectre, of course, from the first sentence of The Communist Manifesto. The automatic reaction to The
Manifesto of todays enlightened liberal reader is: isnt the text simply wrong on so many empirical accounts with regard
to its picture of the social situation, as well as the revolutionary perspective it sustains and propagates? Was there ever a
political manifesto that was more clearly falsified by subsequent historical reality? Is not The Manifesto, at its best, the
exaggerated extrapolation of certain tendencies discernible in the nineteenth century? So let us approach The Manifesto
from the opposite end: where
relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form was, on the contrary, the first
condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of
all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed,
fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones
become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last
compelled to face with sober senses his real condition in life, and his relations with his kind. The
need of a constantly
expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle
everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world
market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of
Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established
national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose
introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw
material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but
in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants,
requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and
self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in
intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness
and narrowmindedness becomes more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there
arises a world literature.6 Is this not, more than ever, our reality today? Ericsson
Toyota cars are manufactured 60 per cent in the USA, Hollywood culture pervades the remotest parts of the
globe. . . . Furthermore, does not the same go also for all forms of ethnic and sexual identities? Should we
not supplement Marxs description in this sense, adding also that sexual onesidedness and narrowmindedness become
more and more impossible; that concerning sexual practices also, all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned,
so that capitalism
capitalism does suspend the power of the old ghosts of tradition, it generates its
own monstrous ghosts. That is to say: on the one hand, capitalism entails the radical secularization of
social life it mercilessly tears apart any aura of authentic nobility, sacredness, honour, and so on:
It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in
the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless
indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation,
the
fundamental lesson of the critique of political economy elaborated by the mature Marx in the years after The
Manifesto is that this reduction of all heavenly chimeras to brutal economic reality generates a
spectrality of its own. When Marx describes the mad selfenhancing circulation of Capital, whose solipsistic path of
self-fecundation reaches its apogee in todays meta-reflexive speculations on futures, it is far too simplistic to claim
that the spectre of this self-engendering monster that pursues its path regardless of any human or
environmental concern is an ideological abstraction, and that one should never forget that behind this abstraction
veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.7 However,
there are real people and natural objects on whose productive capacities and resources Capitals circulation is based, and on
which it feeds like a gigantic parasite. The
of profitability with a blessed indifference to the way its movement will affect social reality. That is
the fundamental systemic violence of capitalism, which is much more uncanny than direct
precapitalist socio-ideological violence: this violence is no longer attributable to concrete individuals and their
evil intentions; it is purely objective, systemic, anonymous.
and Brett Clark, 2010, Professor of Environmental Sociology and Statistics at the University of Oregon, Assistant
Professor of Sociology and Sustainability, 2010, Nothing New Under the Sun? The Old False Promise of New Technology, Review
(Fernand Braudel Center), VOL 33, pp. 203-224, online: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23346882
The concept of historicity within the Marxist tradition empha sizes that social "laws," unlike natural laws, vary across different
historical periods. However, during any specific historical context on the second tier of time, such as the respective extended
periods of feudalism or capitalism in Europe, particular
and Brett Clark, 2010, Professor of Environmental Sociology and Statistics at the University of Oregon, Assistant
Professor of Sociology and Sustainability, 2010, Nothing New Under the Sun? The Old False Promise of New Technology, Review
(Fernand Braudel Center), VOL 33, pp. 203-224, online: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23346882
While these structural arrangements produce various con tradictions, given the social inequalities and ecological degrada tion
that the system inevitably creates, it also provides a degree of structural stability when measured on a limited timescale, such as
decades or centuries. Thus, the "laws" of capitalism, due to their relative constancy over the past centuries, can appear to be laws
of nature that cannot be transcended. But, as historicity suggests, what appears to be a universal law in a particular context may be
possible to compre hend how contemporary environmental problems are similar to those in previous decades and centuries. At
the same time, given the persistence of the social gravity stemming from the structure of the world-system, contemporary
environmental problems are more pressing than they have been in the past due to their extra
ordinary scale, and threaten to transgress the planetary boundar ies that maintain the earth system in a state that supports human
stresses the importance of properly assess ing the forces driving ecological
The bulletin called on law enforcement officers to report activities such as Muslim
hip hop fashion boutiques, hip hop bands, use of online social networks, video
sharing networks, chat forums and blogs.42
A Missouri-based fusion center issued a February 2009 report describing support
for the presidential campaigns of Ron Paul or third party candidates, possession of
the iconic Dont Tread on Me flag and anti-abortion activism as signs of
membership in domestic terrorist groups.43
The Tennessee Fusion Center listed a letter from the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) to public schools on its online map of Terrorism
Events and Other Suspicious Activity. The letter had advised schools that
holiday celebrations focused exclusively on Christmas were an
unconstitutional government endorsement of religion.44
The Virginia Fusion Centers 2009 Terrorism Risk Assessment Report
described student groups at Virginias historically black colleges as
potential breeding grounds for terrorism and characterized the diversity
surrounding a military base as a possible threat.45
Liberty and National Security Program; Michael Price serves as counsel for the
Brennan Centers Liberty and National Security Program (10/18/12, Faiza Patel,
Michael Price, Brennan Center for Justice, Fusion Centers Need More Rules,
Oversight, https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/fusion-centers-need-more-rulesoversight)
Instead of looking for terrorist threats, fusion centers were monitoring lawful
political and religious activity. That year, the Virginia Fusion Center
described a Muslim get-outthe-vote campaign as subversive. In 2009,
the North Central Texas Fusion Center identified lobbying by Muslim
groups as a possible threat.
The DHS dismissed these as isolated episodes, but the two-year Senate
investigation found that such tactics were hardly rare. It concluded that fusion
centers routinely produce irrelevant, useless or inappropriate
intelligence that endangers civil liberties.
None of their information has disrupted a single terrorist plot. These revelations call
into question the value of fusion centers as currently structured. At a minimum,
they underscore the need for greater oversight and clearer rules on what
information fusion centers collect and disseminate.
Of course, efective information sharing is critical to national security. But as the
Senate investigation demonstrates, there is little value in distributing information if
it is shoddy, biased or simply irrelevant. When fusion centers feed such information
into the echo chamber of federal databases, they only compound mistakes and clog
the system.
The DHS has failed to create efective mechanisms or incentives for quality control.
Instead, fusion centers collect and share information according to their
individual standards, which vary considerably.
These rules often permit information to flow to federal agencies that has
no connection to criminal activity let alone terrorism. This creates the risk
that intelligence networks will become saturated with poor or irrelevant information
as well as lend undue credibility to inaccurate data. The Senate report showed that
these risks are not just theoretical.
Fusion centers need explicit and consistent rules. The DHS should ensure that
the information the centers collect and distribute is relevant, useful and
constitutional by requiring them to show some reasonable suspicion that criminal
activity is afoot.
This is not a particularly high bar to clear. The reasonable suspicion standard is
familiar to every police officer. The requirement would serve as an important
bulwark against privacy and civil rights violations, but it would also keep
meaningless information out of the system.
Without such well-defined and familiar standards, as the Senate report
demonstrates, fusion centers are left rudderless.
The Baltimore Police Department has used an invasive and controversial cellphone
tracking device thousands of times in recent years while following instructions from
the FBI to withhold information about it from prosecutors and judges, a detective
revealed in court testimony Wednesday. The testimony shows for the first time how
frequently city police are using a cell site simulator, more commonly known as a
"stingray," a technology that authorities have gone to great lengths to avoid
disclosing. The device mimics a cellphone tower to force phones within its range to
connect. Police use it to track down stolen phones or find people. Until recently, the
technology was largely unknown to the public. Privacy advocates nationwide have
raised questions whether there has been proper oversight of its use. Baltimore has
emerged in recent months as a battleground for the debate. In one case last fall, a
city detective said a nondisclosure agreement with federal authorities prevented
him from answering questions about the device. The judge threatened to hold him
in contempt if he didn't provide information, and prosecutors withdrew the
evidence. The nondisclosure agreement, presented for the first time in court
Wednesday, explicitly instructs prosecutors to drop cases if pressed on the
technology, and tells them to contact the FBI if legislators or judges are asking
questions. Detective Emmanuel Cabreja, a member of the Police Department's
Advanced Technical Team, testified that police own a Hailstorm cell site simulator
the latest version of the stingray and have used the technology 4,300 times since
2007. Cabreja said he had used it 600 to 800 times in less than two years as a
member of the unit. Nate Wessler, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties
Union, said 4,300 uses is "huge number." He noted that most agencies have not
released data. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement says its officers have
used the device about 1,800 times. Police in Tallahassee say they have used it more
than 250 times; police in Tacoma, Wash., 170 times. Former U.S. Judge Brian L.
Owsley, a law professor at Indiana Tech, said he was "blown away" by the Baltimore
figure and the terms of the nondisclosure agreement. "That's a significant amount
of control," he said. Agencies have invoked the nondisclosure agreement to keep
information secret. At a hearing last year, a Maryland State Police commander told
state lawmakers that "Homeland Security" prevented him from discussing the
technology. Wessler said the secrecy is upending the system of checks and
balances built into the criminal justice system. "In Baltimore, they've been using
this since 2007, and it's only been in the last several months that defense attorneys
have learned enough to start asking questions," he said. "Our entire judicial system
and constitution is set up to avoid a 'just trust us' system where the use of invasive
surveillance gear is secret."
But by law, utilities must hand over customer records which include any billing
and payment information, phone numbers and power consumption data to the
DEA without court warrants if drug agents believe the data is relevant to an
investigation. So the utility eventually complied, after losing a legal fight earlier this
month. Meet the administrative subpoena (.pdf): With a federal officials signature, banks, hospitals,
bookstores, telecommunications companies and even utilities and internet service providers virtually all
businesses are required to hand over sensitive data on individuals or corporations,
as long as a government agent declares the information is relevant to an
investigation. Via a wide range of laws, Congress has authorized the government to bypass
the Fourth Amendment the constitutional guard against unreasonable searches and seizures that
requires a probable-cause warrant signed by a judge. In fact, there are roughly 335 federal statutes on the books
(.pdf) passed by Congress giving dozens upon dozens of federal agencies the power of the administrative
subpoena, according to interviews and government reports. (.pdf) I think this is out of control. What has happened
is, unfortunately, these statutes have been on the books for many, many years and the courts have acquiesced,
in San Francisco, ordered Golden Valley to fork over the data earlier this month, the court said the case was easily
decided because the records were relevant to a government drug investigation. With the data the Alaska utility
physically search their homes and businesses. But the administrative subpoena
doesnt just apply to utility records and drug cases. Congress has spread the
authority across a huge swath of the U.S. government , for investigating everything from
hazardous waste disposal, the environment, atomic energy, child exploitation, food stamp fraud, medical insurance
fraud, terrorism, securities violations, satellites, seals, student loans, and for breaches of dozens of laws pertaining
to fruits, vegetables, livestock and crops. Not one of the government agencies with some of the broadest
administrative subpoena powers Wired contacted, including the departments of Commerce, Energy, Agriculture, the
Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI, would voluntarily hand over data detailing how often they issued
administrative subpoenas. The Drug Enforcement Administration obtained the power under the Comprehensive
Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 and is believed to be among the biggest issuers of administrative
subpoenas. Its a tool in the toolbox we have to build a drug investigation. Obviously, a much, much lower
threshold than a search warrant, said Lawrence Payne, a DEA spokesman, referring to the administrative subpoena
generically. Payne declined to discuss individual cases. Payne said in a telephone interview that no database was
kept on the number of administrative subpoenas the DEA issued. But in 2006, Ava Cooper Davis, the DEAs deputy
assistant administrator, told a congressional hearing, The administrative subpoena must have a DEA case file
number, be signed by the investigators supervisor, and be given a sequential number for recording in a log book or
computer database so that a particular field office can track and account for any administrative subpoenas issued
by that office. After being shown Davis statement, Payne then told Wired to send in a Freedom of Information Act
request, as did some of the local DEA offices we contacted, if they got back to us at all. Would suggest a FOIA
request to see whether you can get a number of administrative subpoenas. Our databases have changed over the
years as far as how things are tracked and we dont have access to those in public afairs unfortunately, Payne
said in an e-mail. He said the agency has never been asked how many times it issued administrative
subpoenas. Amy Baggio, a Portland, Oregon federal public defender representing drug defendants for a decade,
said DEA agents use these like a doctors prescription pad on their desk. Sometimes, she said, they issue
hundreds upon hundreds of them for a single prosecution often targeting mobile phone records. They
are
IsraelPalestine conflict, and the World section editor at AlterNet. His work has also appeared in Salon,
The Daily Beasts Open Zion blog, Vice, BBC Persian, +972 magazine, the Electronic Intifada, Extra!,
and Common Dreams, Kane is citing the book Enemies Within by Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman,
Alex Kane on Enemies Within : Inside the NYPDs Secret Spying Unit and bin Ladens Final Plot Against
America, October 24th, 2013, http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/raking-the-coals-islamophobiasurveillance-targeting-and-the-nypds-secret-spying-unit)
Like the NYPD, the FBI has used its own power to pressure Muslims into becoming
informants in exchange for help. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the
FBI has told Muslim-Americans trapped abroad because of their inclusion on a no-fly
list that they could get of easily by spying on their own communities back home
in the US. For all the oversight of the FBI something the NYPD doesnt have to
contend with parts of the federal agency still view Muslims as targets for spying
rather than partners in the fight against terrorism. Far from an aberration in
America's post-9/11 landscape, the NYPD is merely the most extreme example of a
law enforcement apparatus running roughshod over the rights of Muslim
Americans. What's also missing from Apuzzo and Goldmans otherwise excellent
expos of the NYPD is the larger political context in which the spying took
place. The NYPD's logic is Islamophobic at its core: all Muslims are deemed
potential terrorists until they're proven not to be, an inversion of how law
enforcement is supposed to work. Yet there's little exploration of how
Islamophobic discourse from the media and elected officials contribute to the
implementation and acceptance of spying targeting Muslims. In the same year that
Apuzzo and Goldman began reporting on the NYPD's Intelligence Division,
New York Republican Peter King set up House hearings to probe
radicalization among Muslim-Americans a transparent attempt to cast
aspersions on one particular community. In 2010, anti-Muslim blogger Pamela
Geller worked the national media into a frenzy over what was inaccurately labeled
the Ground Zero mosque. King, Geller and other prominent figures who
demonized Muslims directly after 9/11 opened up space for institutions
with even more power, like the police, to move a discourse of bigotry into
policies of bigotry. In an atmosphere where anti-Muslim sentiment largely
went unchallenged, it's no surprise that hardly an eye was batted when
the NYPD hired CIA officials to implement an intelligence collection
program aimed at law-abiding citizens. The book presents an undeniably
damning portrait of the NYPDs surveillance operation. Now, its up to the courts and
lawmakers to decide whether these operations are legal or prudent. Three federal
lawsuits are being pursued in reaction to Apuzzo's and Goldman's groundbreaking
investigations. The next New York City mayor will have to grapple with the question
of continuing or halting the spy operations. Judges and elected officials will have a
documented record on which to look back to decide these weighty questions in the
coming months: Enemies Within.
being made that Muslims are here in the United States to abrogate the US constitution, to overthrow the US
government and replace it with Sharia law, which couldnt be further from the truth. As the facts would have it, the
American Muslim community is a well-educated, well-integrated and looking to continue to do so in the world. You
cant identify an American Muslim radical voice in the United States, whereas if you go to Europe, you can find
people that have a platform that say despicable objectionable things. In the US, thats just not the case. But we
still have in the US, which is really exporting anti-Muslim sentiment to other parts of the world especially Europe, we
still have this fear of Islam that absolutely does give rise to justify these surveillance policies. GOSZTOLA: So for
people who are hearing this debate and they maybe think its kind of abstract, weve been hearing people talk
about collection of the information and then weve been hearing about how the information is stored. And right now
when were talking about the program under the Patriot Act, the Section 215 program, which is the bulk records
collection of the phone records, its all about whos going to hold it, whos going to store it, and its kind of like were
not talking about the collection. Id like you to talk about why the collection would be really bad and I think a thing
you could address is how the collection of peoples information in Muslim communities in New York is a huge deal
for them and collecting that information is the beginning of the injustice. ABBAS: Absolutely. What we know a lot
about now regarding the NSAs surveillance programs is what is collected, some of the searching mechanisms that
PCLOB board has determined itself, a board that was authorized by Congress years ago, that the sifting through
everybodys information on an ongoing basis actually is not only objectionable in itself but its not productive by
any criteria. So you have for instance James Clapper arguing that theres the piece of mind quotients that is part
of the benefit of their surveillance program because were monitoring everything. At the very least we know that
nothing is happening. But this mentality that gave rise to the NSA program is really the objectionable thing that
needs to end because it gives rise to not only indiscriminate collection of information automatically through these
telecommunications companies, but its also given rise to a network of 15,000 FBI informants that have saturated
the Muslim community across the country, that are sent to mosques without any type of criminal predicate just to
collect information because theres a sense that thats where the problem. And thats the inevitable result of
indiscriminate collection. Its always going to be the case that indiscriminate collectionin addition to not being
productivwill lead to despicable consequences. And Ill end my answer here. The saddest thing Ive ever heard
as a CAIR staf attorney, and I hear lots of sad things, was when
he goes to the mosque to pray, his mom warns him to be careful. And the
mom warns him to be careful because theres an understanding based on
experience that the mosque is likely filled with informants and infiltrators
that are not there to make us any safer but there to extract information
from innocent Americans by any means necessary.