Category: censorship

What is Islamophobia?

I just had a bit of jolting experience.

I wanted to make some notes (on actual paper, for once), and I grabbed a notebook. The notebook had all kinds of random scribblings: notes about books; ideas for blog posts; to-do lists started, amended, re-written, and abandoned; German vocabulary for understanding something by Walter Benjamin; notes from a USPTO Software Patent Roundtable. I mean this thing is random. Various projects that never got off the ground over the last five years.

And I think to myself, why don’t I rip out the pages relating to the more thoroughly dead projects? As I start to do so, I stop briefly. I look down at the page. It’s got Arabic letters on it.

And I remember that one time I saw that the tiny, hole-in-the-wall mosque on my block taught weekly Arabic lessons, all levels, beginners welcome, etc. And I decided to check it out. It was a very informal affair, taught by a native speaker to a handful of students with very little knowledge of Arabic. I quickly realized that this class would progress very slowly, if at all, and said, ok, well I checked it out. And thought no more thereon.

When I paused at the page, though, it wasn’t because of this memory. It was because some tiny part in the back of my brain said, woah. Hold up. This is dangerous stuff. Might need to put that in the shredder, not the recycling. What if the feds were searching the garbage and this tidbit just elevated your KST score?

Well, it didn’t say all that. The tiny part of my brain just said “woah”. But behind the woah was a lot of forethought about danger. And although I regard the scenario as far-fetched, unfortunately it’s not as far-fetched as it used to be. (After all, we now know that the US government takes a picture of the outside of every piece of mail and that their procedures for “No Fly” lists and evaluating “Known and Suspected Terrorists” are decisively Kafka-esque.)

This is the power of state-backed Islamophobia today. It reached way into the back of my brain and planted this fear not of Muslims, but a fear of Islam as a dangerous subject, a known or suspected terrorist, a bad reputation.

When will we tire of their games? The war on Communism, the war on drugs, the war on Islam. It’d be pathetic if it didn’t have such dire human consequences.

 

The Post-Post-9/11 Post

It’s over. The long national nightmare of navel-gazing, self-pity, self-indulgence, and excuse-making has at last come to an end.

This is your official notice: effectively immediately, the phrase “post-9/11 world” is obsolete. It has been permanently retired.

It had a good run. A full decade. I have even given you an extra day or so of leeway. But “post-9/11” must now go. For to keep it around, whether out of laziness, convenience, or just force of habit, would be to cheapen and debase it (further). We don’t refer to a “post-Berlin Wall” world, do we? Or “post-JFK”? History is too far advanced for us to still be “post-Civil War” or even “post-World War Two”.

Should you find someone still using the phrase “post-9/11 world”, please remind them: We are now officially in a “post-post-9/11 world”. The use of the phrase “post-9/11” is no longer acceptable.

The post-9/11 world is over.

My email to the BART Board

Hello, my name is Martin MacKerel. I spoke at the special BART Board meeting about the phone service cutoff on August 11th.

First of all, I want to thank you for listening. A few times I have spoken at public meetings of other bodies, and usually the public participation seems just for show. Your meeting seemed genuine.

I have a couple of responses to statements at the meeting. I agree strongly with Edward Hasbrouck’s point that it is not appropriate for BART staff or the Board to have the sole power to temporarily shut off service; instead, the staff should get an injunction from a judge. This is in keeping with the long-standing American idea of checks and balances.

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Special BART Board Meeting on Mobile Phone Service Interruption of August 11th

I spoke at a special BART Board meeting this morning about their cutting of cellphone service during a protest. I thought that the board actually seemed open and interested in public input, in contrast to most public hearings I’ve been to. The President of the Board, Bob Franklin, actually came up to me briefly afterwards and thanked me for my attitude – I had said in my comment that I was taking the Board at their word and meeting in this “appropriate” forum for dialogue before engaging in protest. The meeting did, actually, feel like part of a dialogue.

I came out strongly against the action and in favor of free speech, and pointed out that it took a riot in January 2009 to get Mehserle arrested. One might blame the immaturity of the rioters, but it would be more instructive to consider the deafness of the power structure.

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YouTube Censors Your World for the CIA

This video was pulled from YouTube for “violation of community guidelines”. Whose community? This man killed himself to get the torturers of an invading force out of Afghanistan. That’s noteworthy, and important, and although I might not agree with his politics, I agree with his anti-imperialism. I want to see this video on YouTube, and no doubt many millions across the world are also interested.

Maximilian Forte at Zero Anthropology has the backstory and larger videos. Ironically, of course, the mujahideen used to be part of the CIA’s community. Had this video been about mujahideen killing Soviet rather than US invaders of Afghanistan, no doubt it would have stayed up on YouTube.

A message from a suicide bomber to the CIA agents he is about to kill

If the video doesn’t play properly, you can get the MP4 of a message from a suicide bomber to the CIA agents he is about to kill.

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