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4. Challenging Islamic Stereotypes

Apr-07-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: The bird often casts its beady eye on the way the world of Islam is portrayed in local media. Here are some stories that show a more nuanced world than you might have heard about.

* Islamic Scholars Conclude Homosexuality Is Natural And Created By God, Thus Permissible Jakarta Post

Homosexuals and homosexuality are natural and created by God, thus permissible within Islam, a discussion concluded here Thursday. Moderate Muslim scholars said there were no reasons to reject homosexuals under Islam, and that the condemnation of homosexuals and homosexuality by mainstream ulema and many other Muslims was based on narrow-minded interpretations of Islamic teachings.

Siti Musdah Mulia of the Indonesia Conference of Religions and Peace cited the Koran’s al-Hujurat (49:3) that one of the blessings for human beings was that all men and women are equal, regardless of ethnicity, wealth, social positions or even sexual orientation.

“There is no difference between lesbians and nonlesbians. In the eyes of God, people are valued based on their piety,” she told the discussion organized by nongovernmental organization Arus Pelangi. “And talking about piety is God’s prerogative to judge,” she added. “The essence of the religion (Islam) is to humanize humans, respect and dignify them.”

* Iranians respond to Israeli Facebook initiative: Israel, we <3 you too Haaretz

The ‘Israel loves Iran’ Facebook campaign has begun to receive numerous responses from Iranians, who stared responding to the Israeli initiative that calls on people to announce their love for the Iranians by posting pictures on Facebook.

Up to Saturday night, graphic artists Ronny Edry and his wife, Michal Tamir, who began the campaign, were still trying to persuade Iranians to respond to the dozens of Israelis that put up posters of themselves with the words, “Iranians, we will never bomb your country, we [heart] you.” (TL:DR? See the toon here.)

* Despite shootings, extremist Islam waning in France Pauline Froissart AFP

Muslims in French suburbs remain vulnerable to extremist indoctrination but those lured into radicalism are an “ultra-minority” and the spread of jihadism is declining, experts say.

Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old suspected Al-Qaeda militant of Algerian descent was killed Thursday following a shootout with police, after being linked to seven murders in southwestern France in the last eight days. The former resident of a Toulouse suburb is believed to have been drawn into radicalism after joining a group of Salafists — an ultra-conservative brand of Islam — and travelling to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“For several years, we have seen a decline in jihadism because of the strong pressure of the French and European security services.”

* The True Role of Muslim Women Romana Khan

Non-conformity to the western ideals of womanhood, was ensued by propaganda to project an image of helpless Muslim women to defame Islam. The West has always adopted a paternalistic attitude to justify the imposition of their own moral paradigm considered to be universal and applicable to all, without any due regard for cultural or religious diversity.

Moreover, the frame of reference used by the West to refer to the rights of Muslim women only focuses upon the veil, equating it with ignorance and subservience. She is judged by what she wears, not what she has to say or what she is capable of achieving. It seems ironic that the West seems to assume the role of a spokesperson for a Muslim woman, yet becomes deaf to what she has to say.

* Strengthening Muslim-Jewish Ties In The Face Of Evil JTA – Jewish & Israel News

Amid the wall-to-wall media coverage of the attacks and their aftermath, one piece of the story has received less attention: the inspiring manner in which Muslims and Jews in France have stood side by side in denouncing these heinous acts.

Thousands of Muslims and Jews reacted to the savage killings of three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse and the earlier murders of three French soldiers, including two Muslims, by joining together in solidarity marches in communities throughout Paris.

12. Quote of the Week

Mar-23-2012 | Comments (3)

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Rumi

4. Tolerance in Canada

Mar-02-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: While Tikkunista is often, usually, always critical of the Stephen Harper Reform party that currently forms the Canadian government, we are hugely supportive and admiring of many wonderful things about Canada. Front and centre is our tolerance from others, which this week got proven to be second to none. Two follow up stories of note follow….

* Canada #1: Tolerance Of Minorities Is Highest In Canada Gallup

Canada was the most tolerant country regarding average community acceptance of the minority groups. Australia, New Zealand and the United States tended to be relatively tolerant as well. The Nordic countries were dispersed throughout the top half of the OECD. The less tolerant end was dominated by southern and eastern European countries and the OECD Asian members.

* ‘What if my daughter is afraid of her?’ The Gazette (Thanks, Ronit!)

Not too long ago, if I saw a woman walking down the street with her face covered by a niqab, I would feel it was my duty to glare. As a non-religious feminist, I had decided that a woman who covers her face is oppressed – that she is uneducated, and that her husband is making her cover up because he’s crazy and/or jealous.

OK, I’m exaggerating a little, but you get the point.

And yet until two months ago, I didn’t even really know a single Muslim. I went to high school in an Ottawa suburb, where I was baptized a Catholic so that I could qualify for schooling in the Catholic school system, which was considered better than the more open public system.

We had one year of religious education that gave us a glimpse of world religions. But I’m pretty sure my education about Islam came mainly from CNN, or Fox. I went to university in a small town in Ontario. I didn’t meet any Muslims there, either.

My real education about Islam came very recently, courtesy of a Montreal daycare.

* OUT OF CORDOBA Beit Zeitoun

(612 Markham St., Toronto: 7–9:30 Saturday, 3/3/12)

OUT OF CORDOBA is a documentary film about the legacy of the city of Cordoba in Moorish Spain and its meaning for our times. Directed by Jacob Bender the film explores the dramatic biographies of Averroes (Ibn Rushd) the Muslim, and Rabbi Moses Maimonides (The Rambam) the Jew. The two were the leading personalities of medieval Islamic Spain and its heritage of “convivencia” (religious coexistence).

Filmed in the USA, Spain, Morocco, France, Italy, Egypt, Israel and Palestine, and ten years in the making, the film also explores contemporary relations between Muslims, Jews, and Christians, the battle against religious extremism and xenophobia, and the revolts for democracy and human rights in the Middle East, and for peace and justice in Occupied Palestine.

A discussion with director Jacob Bender will follow the screening.

Feb. 10th, 2012 :: Year 9, Issue 6

Feb-10-2012 | Comments (0)

1. Followups

Bird’s Eye: We start with a viral video that is painfully funny and pretty accurate about the difference between men’s and women’s brains. The standup guy, Mark Gungor, is pastor of Celebration Church in Green Bay, WI. Russian drillers have reached Lake Vostok, though we’ll have to wait at least 8 months to learn the key answer: is there life? A long and fascinating piece looks further at Western perceptions of Islamic women (Part 3 goes on with this).

* “The Nothing Box” (AKA. Men’s vs. Women’s Brains)- YouTube (Thanks Melissa)

* Drilling Reaches Lake Vostok, Long Trapped Under Antarctic Ice SheetNew York Times

The first hint of contact with the lake was on Saturday, but it was not until Sunday that pressure sensors showed that the drill had fully entered the lake. Lake Vostok, named after the Russian research station above it, is the largest of more than 280 lakes under the miles-thick ice that covers most of the Antarctic continent, and the first one to have a drill bit break through to liquid water from the ice that has kept it sealed off from light and air for somewhere between 15 million and 34 million years.

There have been much-disputed hints that life might still exist there. If so, that would give a great boost to hopes of finding life in similar conditions in icy water on one of the moons of Jupiter.

* Islam, Women and the West Informed Comment

Soon, an entire commercial apparatus to manufacture the eroticized imagery of the Middle East was in place. Entrepreneurs set up local studios where they could gather props, hire prostitutes as models, and then stage harem scenes to create the erotic Oriental postcards their audiences back home demanded. “What the postcard proposes as the truth,” writes the scholar Malek Alloula, “is but a substitute for something that does not exist.”

What is most interesting about this seeming confusion between the imagined and the real, between reading and seeing, is the extent to which the former so often takes precedence over the latter. This, in turn, reflects the primacy in Western thought of the expert “text” – philological, anthropological, theological, etc. – over any lived experience or personal observation of the Muslim world…. This phenomenon reflects what I call the anti-Islam discourse, a totalizing western narrative that dates back to the run-up to the First Crusade at the close of the eleventh century. Yet, its core elements – that Islam is inherently violent, sexually perverse, and anti-modern – remain as influential today as they once were in the halls of the Roman curia.

…Exhibit A may be found in our obsession with the hijab, or veil, as a barometer of social progress and overall well-being within Islamic societies, to such a degree that it has become a commonplace of Western mass-media coverage, social activism, and political discussion alike. For years, the veil has been a staple of endless news articles, books, and documentaries, and it is captured in magazine and television images – all as shorthand for a society, a civilization, or a system that is backward, alien, immobile, and inherently antithetical to human rights and dignity.

3. Islam, and Muslims

Feb-10-2012 | Comments (2)

Bird’s Eye: Yes, this is a somewhat mixed set of posts. General statements about a billion people can be. We start with a surprisingly insightful piece from Cracked magazine, looking at misperceptions. Then we look at Islamophobia in Canada, as an example of the absurd demonization Harper is promulgating. Then an interesting pair: Rushdie is blocked from reading in India, as a result of The Satanic Verses imbroglio. Malik’s article quotes the Bradford Council of Mosques’ Shabbir Akhtar who said, at the height of the Rushdie affair, that self-censorship “is a meaningful demand in a world of varied and passionately held convictions. What Rushdie publishes about Islam is not just his business. It is everyone’s – not least every Muslim’s – business.” Akhtar has changed… read his current views on questioning faith from the T.E.S.

* 5 Ridiculous Things You Probably Believe About Islam Cracked (Thanks, Kofi!)

#5. If You’re a Muslim Woman, You Have to Wear the Veil

So for instance, in France they have about 3 million Muslim women. French police decided to figure out how many of them wore burqas and/or niqabs and found the number to be … 367. Not 367,000, but 367, a number so small that from a statistical point of view, it’s barely enough to register as a margin of error. As for the rest of Europe, the numbers are even more disastrous for the burqa business (for instance, Belgium has 500,000 Muslims, a couple dozen wear the burqa).

Yes, there are Middle Eastern countries where the veils are required by law (namely Iran and Saudi Arabia) and combined those countries have less than 5 percent of the world’s Muslims. There are actually more Muslim countries that outright ban the wearing of the veils than there are that require them

* Pep Talk Led To Terrorism SuspicionsCBC News

A Muslim man alleges he’s become a terror suspect simply because of a workplace quip – he says all he did was tell his sales staff to “blow away” the competition at a trade show. Now Saad Allami is seeking $100,000 from the Quebec provincial police force, one of its sergeants and the provincial Justice Department.

Allami says in a Quebec Superior Court filing that he was arrested in January 2011 and accused of being a terrorist because of a pep talk he gave fellow employees. Allami was a sales manager for a telecommunications firm when he sent out a text message to staff urging them to “blow away” the competition at a New York City convention.

* To Name The Unnameable Kenan Malik.

Salman Rushdie had to back out of attending the 2012 Jaipur Literature Festival because of an assassination threat against him. The lack of support for Rushdie shows that the defence of free speech is no longer seen as an irrevocable duty, writes Kenan Malik.

…Rushdie was due to have attended the festival – which is quickly becoming one of the most important global literary events – to give a talk on Midnight’s Children, the film of which is released later this year, and to take part in a discussion on the history of English in India. Rushdie has visited India many times over the past decade and has attended the festival before. This time Muslim activists issued threats. Instead of standing up the bullies, both local and state governments caved in, both exerting pressure on the festival organizers to keep Rushdie away. “I am sure the organizers will respect the sentiments of the local people”, said Ashok Gehlot, the chief minister of Rajasthan, whose capital is Jaipur.

In the end Rushdie cancelled his trip having, he said, received information about a plot to assassinate him, a plot that now appears may have been invented by the Rajasthan police to “persuade” Rushdie not to come. In response, the novelist Hari Kunzru and the writer and poet Amitava Kumar, both speakers at the festival, publicly read passages from The Satanic Verses. Later, two other speakers, Jeet Thayil and Rushir Joshi, did so too. The novel is still banned in India, having been placed on a proscribed list in 1988 by the then-premier Rajiv Gandhi, who, facing a crucial election, crumbled under Islamist pressure. The festival organizers distanced themselves from what they called Kunzru and Kumar’s “unnecessary provocation”, and put pressure on other speakers not to follow suit.

* Ex-Defender Of The Faith Shabbir Akhtar Times Higher Education -

I lived in Malaysia for three years in the kind of uncertainty westerners face only in times of war. The five daily calls to prayer are the only predictable events in the capital city, Kuala Lumpur. The power cuts are frequent, the traffic jams continuous. Islam is the official religion, but materialism is the ruling creed.

Living in a state where Islam was empowered deepened and darkened my idealistic view of my faith and my people. Though born and raised partly in Pakistan, I had a second childhood in northern industrial England. Here I belonged to a powerless minority and a despised religion. Upon arrival at the International Islamic University, I joined the ruling Muslim majority. Before, when I was in the minority, it was easy to play the moral card.

New lecturers must meet the Saudi-Kurdish rector in his opulent rooms on campus. He invites us to settle down into the comfort and security of dogma. It is us against the world; and the world, especially the western hemisphere, is very wicked. Believers, he tells us, having nothing new to learn. Western-style free inquiry is aimless. Besides, what is the point of free inquiry if God has already revealed to us the whole truth?

5. Women, Head Coverings, and Choices

Feb-03-2012 | Comments (2)

Bird’s Eye: A contrast between an enlightened mother who struggles with letting her 9 year old make her own choice as to whether to wear the hijab or not, and unenlightened countries who make the choice for adult women. Two powerful and human stories lead off, and a sad political update from Al Jazeera follows up.

* Nafeesa’s Blog: Bikini Or Headscarf, The Choice Of A Nine Year Old Girl. (Thanks, Romana!)

That afternoon, as I was leaving for the grocery store, Aliya called out from her room that she wanted to come. A moment later she appeared at the top of the stairs — or more accurately, half of her did. From the waist down, she was my daughter: sneakers, bright socks, jeans a little threadbare at the knees. But from the waist up, this girl was a stranger. Her bright, round face was suspended in a tent of dark cloth like a moon in a starless sky.

“Are you going to wear that?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said slowly, in that tone she had recently begun to use with me when I state the obvious…. On the way to the store, I stole glances at her in my rearview mirror. She stared out the window in silence, appearing as aloof and unconcerned as a Muslim dignitary visiting our small Southern town — I, merely her chauffeur.

I bit my lip. I wanted to ask her to remove her head covering before she got out of the car, but I couldn’t think of a single logical reason why, except that the sight of it made my blood pressure rise. I’d always encouraged her to express her individuality and to resist peer pressure, but now I felt as self-conscious and claustrophobic as if I were wearing that headscarf myself.

* France’s Burqa Ban: Women Are ‘Effectively Under House Arrest’ The Guardian

Hind Ahmas walks into a brasserie in the north Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois. Jaws drop, shoulders tighten and a look of disgust ripples across the faces of haggard men sipping coffee at the bar.

“Hang on, what’s all this? Isn’t that banned?” splutters the outraged waiter behind the bar, waving a wine bottle at her niqab. Ahmas stands firm, clutches her handbag with black-gloved hands and says: “Call the police then.” But she decides there’s no point fighting. We cross the road to a cafe where she’s a regular. No one bats an eyelid; the boss certainly doesn’t want to lose her custom. Ahmas is breaking the law by ordering an espresso and sitting in a booth in the window. But these days she is breaking the law by stepping outside her own front door.

In April, France introduced a law against covering your face in public.Muslim women in full-face veils, or niqab, are now banned from any public activity including walking down the street, taking a bus, going to the shops or collecting their children from school. French politicians in favour of the ban said they were acting to protect the “gender equality” and “dignity” of women. But five months after the law was introduced, the result is a mixture of confusion and apathy.

* Dutch To Ban Muslim Face Veils Next Year Al Jazeera English

The Dutch minority government plans to ban Muslim face veils such as burqas and other forms of clothing that cover the face from next year. The ban would make the Netherlands, where 1 million out of 17 million people are Muslim, the second EU country to ban the burqa after France, and would apply to face-covering veils if they were worn in public.

“People should be able to look at each other’s faces and recognise each other when they meet,” the interior affairs ministry said in a statement on Friday.

The ban will also apply to balaclavas and motorcycle helmets when worn in inappropriate places, such as inside a store, Deputy Prime Minister Maxime Verhagen told reporters, denying that this was a ban on religious clothing. Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam Freedom Party (PVV), which helps give the Liberal-Christian Democrat coalition a majority in parliament, has set considerable political store on getting the so-called burqa ban passed into law.

2. The Faces of Arab Democracy

Dec-02-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Egyptian election results, roughly speaking, are 40% Muslim Brotherhood, 20% Salafi (more traditionalist Muslim), 20% liberal coalition. That’s what happened in Tunisia and Morocco, and what we can expect across the Middle East as more elections get held. We look at a handful of commentators on these developments… Wadah Khanfar, the ex-director general from Al Jazeera, is very interesting; though we’re not sure that the US’ Political Christianity, or India’s Political Hinduism have worked so well. And a lovely graphic vividly demonstrates at how Americans are protected from such commentators via this week’s Time Magazine covers.

* Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Says End To Military Rule Is ‘Top Priority’ The Guardian

The Muslim Brotherhood has fired a warning shot at Egypt’s ruling generals, declaring that a swift end to military rule is the country’s “top priority” as it prepares to take charge of a newly elected parliament.

With provisional election results continuing to emerge, confirming earlier predictions of a strong victory for the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party, the movement’s leaders emphasised that now was the time for “consensus not collision” and agreed to work with parties across the political spectrum to advance the revolution and facilitate a smooth transition to civilian government.

In a sign the Brotherhood will not tolerate parliament being treated as a rubber stamp by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf), which has clung to power despite almost two weeks of anti-junta protests and violent street clashes, senior members of the organisation told the Guardian the generals risked further unrest if they defied the people and failed to return to their barracks next year.

* Democratic Developments in the Arab UpheavalsJuan Cole Informed Comment

The Arab upheavals of 2011 have been very different from one another across countries, but have in common a language of parliamentary democracy as the ultimate ideal (albeit one that sounds more like the old West German Social Democratic Party ideal than like the Neoliberal parliamentary regimes of the US and its close allies). Democracy is not a black and white quality but rather a range of practices that can be highly mature (“consolidated”) or still imperfect and fragile (“unconsolidated”). Whether the aspirations of many Arab young people and intellectuals for greater political freedom will be realized or not, the breadth, depth and fervor of the aspiration is remarkable in itself.

Events are moving quickly in the region, and here are [four] notable developments with implications for democracy in the Middle East:

* What does History Teach Us about the Arab Revolutions? Stephen M. Walt

Anybody who thought that the events that swept through the Arab world in 2011 were going to produce stable and orderly outcomes quickly was living in a dream world. To say this is not to oppose what has happened, or to believe that the old orders could or should have continued. Rather, it is to recognize that radical reform — even revolution — is a long, difficult, and uncertain process, and that the ride is likely to be a bumpy one for years to come.

History also warns that outside powers have at best limited influence over the outcomes of a genuine revolutionary process. Even well-intentioned efforts to aid progressive forces can backfire, as can overt efforts to thwart them. Overall, a policy of “benevolent neglect” may be the more prudent course, making it clear that outsiders are prepared to let each country’s citizens choose their own order, provided that important foreign policy redlines are not crossed. But for a country like the United States, which still sees itself as a model for others and tends to think that it has the right and the wisdom to tell them what to do, patience and restraint can be hard to sustain. And patience is what is needed most these days.

* Those Who Support Democracy Must Welcome The Rise Of Political Islam Wadah Khanfar, The Guardian

Ennahda, the Islamic party in Tunisia, won 41% of the seats of the Tunisian constitutional assembly last month, causing consternation in the west. But Ennahda will not be an exception on the Arab scene. Last Friday the Islamic Justice and Development Party took the biggest share of the vote in Morocco and will lead the new coalition government for the first time in history. And tomorrow Egypt’s elections begin, with the Muslim Brotherhood predicted to become the largest party. There may be more to come. Should free and fair elections be held in Yemen, once the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh falls, the Yemeni Congregation for Reform, also Islamic, will win by a significant majority. This pattern will repeat itself whenever the democratic process takes its course.

Reform-based Islamic movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, work within the political process. They learned a bitter lesson from their armed conflict in Syria against the regime of Hafez al-Assad in 1982, which cost the lives of more than 20,000 people and led to the incarceration or banishment of many thousands more. The Syrian experience convinced mainstream Islamic movements to avoid armed struggle and to observe “strategic patience” instead.

* We Must Protect Americans From Arab FacesTime Magazine covers

9. Desert Treats

Sep-30-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: No, not a misspelling: desert. We start with the Tuareg, a desert culture sliced up like dessert, and given to different countries. Then a song by Tinariwen, the world-renowned Taureg musicians (their new album is just out), a photo feature on sand dunes, and your chance to see the Dead Sea Scrolls, up close and personal.

* The Sahara’s Tuareg National Geographic Magazine

* Mataraden Anexan Tinariwen youtube

* The Most Beautiful Sand Dunes on Earth Environmental Graffiti

* Dead Sea Scrolls Online The Presurfer

Two thousand years after they were written and decades after they were found in desert caves, some of the world-famous Dead Sea Scrolls went online for the first time in a project launched by Israel’s national museum and web giant Google. Images of several Dead Sea Scrolls are now available allowing users to examine and explore these ancient manuscripts at a level of detail never before possible. The high resolution photographs, taken by Ardon Bar-Hama, are up to 1,200 megapixels, almost 200 times more than the average consumer camera, so viewers can see even the most minute details in the parchment.

12: Quote of the Week

Sep-30-2011 | Comments (0)

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Rumi

Sept 9th, 2011 :: Year 8, Issue 25

Sep-09-2011 | Comments (0)

1. 9/11: The International Results

Bird’s Eye: Three sections on 9.11 this week (and at that we didn’t rerun the iconic pictures!) We look at the effects internationally, at the effects internally, and at the growing fight to regain those freedoms we have lost. Internationally, we start with a blazingly insightful Robert Fisk, who explores the unasked question: Why? Chomsky gives an accurate overview on the decade, and explores some of the roads not taken, and Andrew Sullivan (The Daily Beast) asks if we let Bin Laden win… but concludes that we let our fear win, and concludes that, “Until we decide to grasp hope again, the war will live on. Within us all.”

* For 10 Years, We’ve Lied To Ourselves To Avoid Asking The One Real Question Robert Fisk The Independent (Thanks, Antonia!)

By their books, ye shall know them.

I’m talking about the volumes, the libraries – nay, the very halls of literature – which the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001 have spawned. Many are spavined with pseudo-patriotism and self-regard, others rotten with the hopeless mythology of CIA/Mossad culprits, a few (from the Muslim world, alas) even referring to the killers as “boys”, almost all avoiding the one thing which any cop looks for after a street crime: the motive.

Why so, I ask myself, after 10 years of war, hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths, lies and hypocrisy and betrayal and sadistic torture by the Americans – our MI5 chaps just heard, understood, maybe looked, of course no touchy-touchy nonsense – and the Taliban? Have we managed to silence ourselves as well as the world with our own fears? Are we still not able to say those three sentences: The 19 murderers of 9/11 claimed they were Muslims. They came from a place called the Middle East. Is there a problem out there?

* Was There an Alternative? Looking Back on 9/11 a Decade Later Noam Chomsky

We are approaching the 10th anniversary of the horrendous atrocities of September 11, 2001, which, it is commonly held, changed the world. On May 1st, the presumed mastermind of the crime, Osama bin Laden, was assassinated in Pakistan by a team of elite US commandos, Navy SEALs, after he was captured, unarmed and undefended, in Operation Geronimo.

A number of analysts have observed that although bin Laden was finally killed, he won some major successes in his war against the U.S. “He repeatedly asserted that the only way to drive the U.S. from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing Americans into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt them,” Eric Margolis writes. “’Bleeding the U.S.,’ in his words.” The United States, first under George W. Bush and then Barack Obama, rushed right into bin Laden’s trap… Grotesquely overblown military outlays and debt addiction… may be the most pernicious legacy of the man who thought he could defeat the United States” — particularly when the debt is being cynically exploited by the far right, with the collusion of the Democrat establishment, to undermine what remains of social programs, public education, unions, and, in general, remaining barriers to corporate tyranny.

* Did Osama Win? Andrew Sullivan

...I was, like most of us, simply terrorized. And it’s only now, a decade later, that I’ve come to see how significant that feeling was, how transformative it would become. We often talk about terror in terms of the terrorist. We do so less in terms of the terrorized. But it was how this act changed those of us who were bystanders that made this event more awful than a mere mass murder. It was mass murder as theater and as threat.

It took months for this initial trauma to ebb, years for my psyche to regain its equilibrium. And it took me close to a decade to realize just how slickly Osama bin Laden had done his evil work, how insidiously his despicable performance art had reached into my mind and altered it, how carefully he had set the trap and how guilelessly I—we—had walked right into it.

We need to understand that 9/11 worked. It worked as a tactic to induce American self-destruction, even if it failed spectacularly as a strategy to advance Al Qaeda—and its heretical message of suicidal warfare—across the globe.

2. 9/11: The Domestic Results

Sep-09-2011 | Comments (0)

ird’s Eye: “Follow the money,” said Deep Throat to Bob Woodward. $42 million to raise Islamophobic fears in America (and Zadie Smith talks about the effects on her community). As a member of the NYFD says, ““The intersection of 9/11 and money is a busy intersection,” and we look at some of the players on that corner. Photographers can be detained these days “for taking pictures with no apparent aesthetic value”, as Stephen Harper plans to bring back draconian antiterrorist laws, possibly so as to fill the mega-prisons he’s planning to build.

* $42 Million From Seven Foundations Helped Fuel The Rise Of Islamophobia In America ThinkProgress

The Center for American Progress released a 130-page report today which reveals that more than $42 million from seven foundations over the past decade have helped fan the flames of anti-Muslim hate in America. The authors — Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matt Duss, Lee Fang, Scott Keyes, and myself — worked to expose the Islamophobia network in depth, name the major players, connect the dots, and trace the genesis of anti-Muslim propaganda. The report, titled “Fear Inc.: The Roots Of the Islamophobia Network In America,” lifts the veil behind the hate, follows the money, and identifies the names of foundations who have given money, how much they have given, and to whom they have given.

* Race, Religion, and Diversity in London After 9/11 Zadie Smith The New Yorker

Then came the cataclysm. The end of the world for nearly three thousand innocent people. The beginning of a different sort of world for the rest of us. From the epicenter in Manhattan, shock waves rippled across Europe. In North West London, a small but significant change: the stereotype of the Muslim boy was transformed. From quiet, sexless, studious child—sitting in the back of class and destined for an engineering degree—to Public Enemy No.1

*9|11: The Winners Village Voice

The September 11, 2001 attacks have been a symbol of many things and many causes, but like the lavish, flag-draped rebuilding of the site, it has also been a vehicle for enrichment. From corporations to politicians to government officials to nonprofits to the security industry to publishers to the health industry (not to mention the incidents of outright fraud over the years), many people have found ways to profit from one of the nation’s biggest disasters. 9/11 has created an economy all its own.“The intersection of 9/11 and money is a busy intersection,” says retired New York City firefighter Kenny Specht.

* Harper Plans To Bring Back Extraordinary Anti-Terror Powers For Police canada.com

Controversial clauses expanding the powers of police to combat terrorism are going to be reintroduced by the new Conservative majority government, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in an interview with CBC. Harper said for the first time since the Tories took control of the House of Commons the government plans to bring back measures in the Anti-Terrorism Act that expired in 2007.

“We think those measures are necessary. We think they’ve been useful,” Harper said of the expired parts of the act. “They’re applied rarely, but there are times where they’re needed.”The clauses were part of the act, introduced in 2001, and were required to be renewed every three years. They allowed for preventive detention of suspects for up to 72 hours, granted police the ability to arrest terrorism suspects without a warrant and enabled judges to compel witness to testify.

3. 9/11: Fighting the Security State

Sep-09-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Why fight against those who just want to protect us? Because the Patriot Act in the US has been used 1618 times for drugs, 122 times for fraud, 15 times for terrorism. In the UK, anti-terrorist powers have produced over 100,000 searches, 506 arrests, 0 charges for terrorism. Because the use of torture has irrevocably removed any moral high ground that the brutal 9.11 attacks might have given the West. Because scanners and CCTV cameras simply don’t work.

* “Torture is Wrong and Never Justified” says ex-head of UK M15 Reith Lectures, BBC4

The use of torture is “wrong and never justified”, the former head of the security service MI5 has insisted. Eliza Manningham-Buller said it should be “utterly rejected even when it may offer the prospect of saving lives”. Giving the second of her BBC Radio Reith lectures, she acknowledged recent disclosures about alleged British intelligence operations in Libya would “raise widespread concerns”.

“No-one could justify what went on under Gaddafi’s regime,” she added…She said that the use of torture had not made the world a safer place, adding that the use of water-boarding by the United States was a “profound mistake” and as a result America lost its “moral authority”.

* The Heroism Of The Public Response Has Been Polluted By What Has Been Done To Prevent A Second 9/11 The Independent

The 10th anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Centre towers by two hijacked commercial airliners should be a moment of unambiguous moral clarity. In a way, it still is. Through special newspaper supplements and TV documentaries we are reminded (as if we ever could forget) of the horror of that beautiful sunny morning in New York City: the sight of office workers jumping to certain death as a merciful release from incineration; the desperate calls as husbands and wives, parents and children, made what they knew would be their final messages to those they loved and would never see again.

Yet this commemoration is mixed with something else; the feeling that the heroism of the public response to the horror of that day has been foully polluted by what has been done in our name to prevent a second 9/11. This is encapsulated by the revelations from documents discovered in abandoned buildings in Tripoli, appearing to show the complicity of the British Government in the rendition of a suspected Islamist terrorist from Hong Kong, into the hands of Colonel Gaddafi’s interrogators…. This, of course, was all part of the “war on terror”.

* Germany Kiboshes Body Scanners At Airports The Local

Body scanners being tested at Hamburg Airport are so error prone that the German government has decided not to introduce them across the country for the time being. The so-called backscatter scanners are supposed to show whether passengers are concealing dangerous items on their bodies. They are broadly similar to “naked” scanners already used in many US airports. The testing in Hamburg from September to the end of July was meant to be the prelude to a nationwide rollout.

But the German scanners had an error rate of 54 percent, according to government officials, who said that wrinkles in clothing or even perspiration caused false alarms. That meant security personnel were forced to waste an untold amount of time subsequently searching passengers by hand for no reason.

* Why CCTV Has Failed To Deter Criminals? Cory Doctorow The Guardian

The real story for me is about surveillance, and not the mere use of CCTV footage to apprehend rioters after the fact. It’s about the total failure of CCTV to deter people from committing crimes in the first place….The theory of street crime as a rational act is bankrupt. Evidence-led CCTV deployment shows us where CCTV does work, and that’s in situations where crimes are planned, not pulled off in the heat of the moment…. After the London riots, one thing is certain: anyone promoting CCTVs for deterrence is most likely selling something, probably CCTVs

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