" Soylent Green - here today"
This is a "grabber" title for a review of Matt Taibbi's book, "Divide-American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap." For those who want more traditional reviews of this book, that I consider one of the most incisive, erudite, readable and yes, even in a dark way- entertaining books of our day, we have them in abundance: Some are listed here from right to left: The Wall Street Journal, N.Y. Times and then even an early one here in the Democratic party website Dailykos.
I was struck with the similarity between the Soylent Green fiction and Taibbi's depiction of today's America. That distopian future 2022 society's useless takers were "only" slaughtered and used as protein for food while for the unfortunate vulnerable group in today's America, their fate could be worse. They feed the wealthy in a different way, by spending most of their lives in jails and prisons with intolerable (but not publicized) conditions, their numbers doubled over the last few decades even as crime rates have been halved. These now often privatized prisons become the source of steady jobs for their towns, and vast profits for investors. Unionized prison guards can do pretty well in some states also, so have no interest in decreasing the numbers of those incarcerated. Soylent Green was food for survival, the Prison Industrial Complex, fuel for prosperity.
That science fiction book year of 2022, like our country today was divided between the ultra-rich and the useless, the old, the poor. This includes those whose lives began at the very bottom, usually Black children born into families with no father, no network of those with secure livable incomes, and immersed into a culture of violence, at home as well on the streets. Taibbi has a knack for just the right personal illustrations of a larger process. Describing a ten year old kid who was snatched up by a police officer in East New York for stoning a abandoned car window, an older observer mentioned how, "when I was a kid they would have taken him home to his mother, now they are written up and they have a record." Thus a criminal identity is formed, which is seen by a harried court system as a presumption that the apprehended is guilty of whatever described by the arresting officer. No time for overstressed judges to listen to an explanation, but push that guilty plea for time served (no explanation of future consequences) and move right along.
This is a video Taibbi's interview with Jon Stewart where he shares his own journey of learning how bad things really are. Here's the second part. While his 400 page book is additive with multiple vivid examples of the rich being immune while the poor don't have a chance -- in spite of his detailed explication, his very writing of this meaningful book (a very civil act) rather than chaining himself to a federal courthouse has the inevitable subtle byproduct of acknowledging that this is the unchangeable structure of American society in this first part of the 21st century.
Inherently, for those who watch his interview with Stewart, Tiabbi has to pull his punches. He has to share ironic amusement at his observations and not come off as an angry incensed man, and always wear a bemused smile. One comment he made to Stewart in part 2 that "I see you are already asleep" illustrates the problem, that sustaining anger at something so pervasive as what he describes is not only difficult but highly stressful. The conversation has an effect of explaining away of his accusations under Stewart's friendly questions. Thus, the revolutionary becomes the sociologist.
Stewart brings up the irony of "Moral Hazard" being given for government not making home owners whole after the sub-prime collapse, yet this hazard disintegrates when bailing out the prime perpetrators who fomented this. (after all these years the Feds are just allowing those underwater to get new lower rate mortgages) Jon finished by saying "I can't wait to see all the terrible things "they" will say about you, because they will." Actually, after searching for such criticism of his book, including National Review (with no review at all) I did find this one from the ultra right wing "Weekly Standard," where the reviewer shows no evidence of having read the book and just castigates him for earlier work. I have found no serious substantive refutation of any facts or conclusions of this book in any review.
If the Weekly Standard, had reviewed the book, it could have advanced their anti-Democratic party agenda, since the primary individual that Taibbi attributes responsibility for most of the travesties he describes is none other than William Jefferson Clinton. Clinton unleashed both pincers of this gross attack on justice in our society, damning the most destitute matched by immunity for the other extreme. Most tragic, as Clinton did this to gain votes from Republican strongholds, Wall Street and anti-black bigots, he won election but deprived this country of a populist party.
Taibbi only briefly touches on the power and culpability of the Federal Reserve system, as unlike every other defect that could potentially be reversed by legislation or executive implementation, the Federal Reserve has absolute independence. This institution, a fourth branch of government, could be seen as basic cause of the mentality toward the financial elite he decries. since it defines the structure of our economic system. It is based on unlimited created fiat money, the Keynesian consensus, but funnelled through avaricious powerful and often sociopathic financial elites -- who often are members of the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve.
He provides a specific example of self dealing by the Fed, where a sweetheart deal was made between this institution and a bank led by a sitting member of its board. It was unreported at the time, as the Fed operates in secrecy- only with required disclosures months after action is taken. While President Obama could not get even a fraction of the extra trillion for economic stimulus through Congress, the Fed, without any approval of any elected body, created the funds to allow banks to get no-interest money for a rare kind of stimulus. It gave banks the ability to float relatively cheap mortgages to pump up the real estate -- banking industry - with the profit distributed to mainly top executives and then shareholders. This impoverished retirees living on the income from low risk revenue sources that now were undercut by free loans to banks by the Fed. This created a new definition of the ultra rich, now measured by wealth in the billions, who, unlike Tiabbi and his readers, like things exactly the way they are.
The root cause of degradation of life for impoverished African Americans of this book, for me often worse than death itself, is the law the Clinton ran on and signed, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA). That law precipitated an unanticipated change that turned out to be profound. Over the last couple of decades, while crime has halved, it fostered treatment of those in dire need to not only less support, but makes what is provided a landmine for criminalized "error" -- contributing to the doubling of our prison population. Caseworkers who used to attempt to help those in dire need have largely been replaced by "fraud investigators" where any mistake, even by the government agency's overpayment, could lead to jail time and a destroyed life.
It was Clinton, as most of know who ended the Glass Stieagall Act and eliminated or cut funds for monitoring Wall Street companies. His most clear payback was that Goldman Sachs became his largest contributor in 1996. Taibbi is no kinder to our current President and his attorney General. His critique of Holder is interesting, as it points to his long stint as a corporate lawyer, as others in his position have been. He sees that as supporting a common cultural identity to those at the very top of financial firms, so that the very idea of threatening them with real punishment, the sound of gates closing to their life of enjoyment of wealth and family shall never happen. So they manage to insulate these "masters of the universe" from clear responsibility of crimes such as money laundering of sex traffickers and Drug Cartels, and destroying lives of those who thought they were home owners.
And that leads to the ultimate meaning of this book for me, that it shows how the root problem is not who happens to be the President or Attorney General, since the attitude that the financial elite are only committing "white collar crimes" has been internalized in our society. Even if some future idealized administration of a Bernie Sander or Elizabeth Warren would criminally prosecute these "banksters" an individual juror, or appeals court majority could find a loophole to save these solid citizens from the kind of pain that only those who receive a few thousand dollars in food stamps deserve.
This is the tragic message of this brilliant book, that brings to mind the sign over Dante's Inferno, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Yet, I can't really do that myself. So I write this article that will probably hardly be read. And, I have to continue my local political quests in some form, even though the chances of having any effect are nil. What I have learned is why so few choose to stand up in public to voice objection to what is described here. That which is doable behind a keyboard in the privacy of one's own home takes on a different quality as a sole voice in an official public setting. This explains why anger simmers for years, decades even, until there is that spark, and then the unleashed anger is unfocused, leading to a reaction that only reinforces the original cause of outrage. But I guess this is another story for another time.
I'll end with the hypothetical future of that young man described in this book that I mentioned earlier, who years later after a sole uncorroborated "eye witness" in a short trial was convicted, only aided by a harried public defender who just didn't have the resources to mount a meaningful defense. He could do no more than that first lawyer who convinced him as a kid to cop a guilty plea after the two months of "time served" because he couldn't raise the thousand dollars bail. It could be that he is really guilty this time of this third offense he is now serving life for, but the chain of events, the unwritten laws that made avoiding this existence all but impossible were not of his making. He was born onto a conveyor belt, that we have created and perpetuated; its nature made evident for this man when the uniformed officer dragged him away in cuffs for throwing stones at a wrecked car in a junk yard.
------------------------
Addendum:
A problem of this important non-fiction book is a lack of an index, or even a detailed description of each chapter. I have this rough effort below, but the comprehensive index along with annotations should be provided by the publisher on line which I have recommended to them.
Brief chapter descriptions:
Introduction
1- Unintended Consequences
Describes a deputy AG, Eric Holders memo under Clinton to consider the ancillary damages to employees and stockholders when prosecuting major corporations. How this ballooned to provide legitimization for the gross criminality of Wall Street preceding the 2008 meltdown.
2- Frisk and Stop
First pass at showing the excesses of police action against N.Y.C. black youth
3- The Man who couldn't stand up
More on the excesses of cops, the assembly line imitation of justice for petty crimes, and how a minimum penalty of community service can destroy the life of an overstressed mother with several jobs. This compared to the ability of the wealthy elite to summons masses of upright citizens to get off with no personal punishment - no matter the harm of his actions.
4-The Greatest Bank Robbery You Never Heard Of
Detailed and personalized story of how Lehman Brothers didn't go bankrupt, as widely reported. The executives joined the purchaser Barclays and negotiated millions in salaries, while the shareholders and purchasers of bogus instruments were the ones to get not even the proverbial pennies on the dollar.
5- Border Trouble Part 1
This is a different theme, as it describes the misery of those who come across the border of Mexico without documentation. It goes into details including the exact laws and ICE regulations. How police wait at streets where these people must drive their cars to their jobs, and a missing light (real or claimed) leads to arrest and the end of a mother ever seeing her citizen children.
6- Border Trouble Part 2
A self contained story of the open flagrant inside information that can be manufactured for "short raids" Describing the special crudeness of those out to destroy companies that must be smashed by any means. (This is the only part of the book, where some of the details of this ugliness could have been cut short) Taibi gives a nod to his one hero in this book, the N.Y. then AG, Eliot Spitzer who had the guts to go after these guys with the contempt they deserved. I guess it was just an accident that someone happen to notice his tryst in that D.C hotel that ended his career!
7- Little Frauds
Describes the effect of Clinton's "Welfare Reform" All it took was a mistake by the welfare department to send a few hundred dollars extra, to be a crime that caused a woman the loss of her children and personal collapse.
8-Big Frauds
Uses the example of one woman, Linda Almonte, who reported the fraud of Robo Signing first discovered in the sub-prime context. It is also prevalent in collection of debts by major banks, in her case Chase, of unconscionable, sometimes non existing, credit card debt. Clear, lucid, and tragic.
9- Collateral Consequences
Starts with a real life story of a young man who is mugged then arrested by plain clothed police, He is let off, but it caused PTSD, the real thing. I know how fragile we are, as over fifty years ago something like that happened to me, and for weeks I spun around in defense at the sound of footsteps behind me. The summary of the book is completed with Taibbi expressing clearly the rationale for special protection of the Wall Street elite, and then demolishing it.
A call from Sasha
November 1, 2014
A call from Sasha
We keep our land line for unknown reasons, mostly out of habit. It's set to ring twice, then the answering machine picks up with the message, "This is Al and Rena, We are not at home, so please leave a message." and then almost always there is silence. The robo dialer at the other end may have been set to move on to the next, hopefully live response, or the human dialer optimized his/her effort by hanging up on messages.
Today, having just come back from a walk around the neighborhood enhanced by something rare in this Southern California town, the brisk feeling of Fall in the air, I was upbeat. Last night was also a rare event, as we went down to Main Street, where we found an empty table at the diner right next to the lady who was giving out Halloween candy. There were throngs of children with their parents walking by, the little ones being picked up to reach her big basket and say the magic words, "trick or treat." The lady, Sally, would say, "you can take one of the candies," and if the child forgot, the mother would remind her to tell the lady, "thank you."
For a few minutes when Sally had to take a break she asked me to take her place, and I had the honor of being the giver of goodies. The ages were varied. There was a very small smiling package dressed like a bee, complete with wings, whose Mom told how only two month previously she was still part of her own body (well those weren't her words, but that was the case) "If this kid can hold a piece of candy at about 60 days since birth, what will she be doing at five or maybe seventeen?, I thought When they returned after walking the length of this event, maybe an hour later I noted, to the crowd, "She is now about point one percent older than when she just passed buy." And Mom responded with a smile, "and she's heavier too."
Then there was a stunning thin young woman whose costume dress and high heels made her look unusually tall. As she reached over for her candy. She told Sally with a smile, "It's O.K. I'm only seventeen." It was maybe an hour and a half we were there, and then the children started to thin out. Fun is fun, but they can only take so much. Towards the end, as the kids were mostly gone, a final act was a man in a long trench coat skulking down the street. He stopped, and picking out victims, with a villainous laugh flashed opened the coat, exposing a two foot long sequined parody of what could give the average guy either great pleasure or serious inconvenience. At the same moment there appeared two young women who could have been aspiring actresses dressed in police outfits. I did my best to get out my video camera and arrange a confrontation, but they the flasher and cops had gone in different directions. But the fun of it all lingered, as it was time to take our leave and head back home.
Now, after a peaceful night sleep and our walk, I decided to picked up the phone rather than let the answering machine do its job; at first there was silence, so I said "hello" a few times. A youngish voice with an African American tinge responded, with a hello to make contact and then a short canned introduction from her sales pitch. For some reason, I responded by asking her name, and when she told me, I asked her with an upbeat, "how you doing this morning?" She said hesitantly, "pretty good." and I came back with, "you would feel better if you got a few leads from these calls."
She started to loosen up a bit, and said how she sure would. I knew the drill, as her job was to get the name of prospects for the closers to follow up on; she would get a few bucks for this alone, and if an actual big ticket sale were made she would get even more. The down side, as I remembered from a week spent doing her job in a "boiler room" in New York city office building a half century ago, if you didn't get your quota, your desk will be given to the next poor soul who would handle the abuse to make a few bucks.
So Sasha and I had something in common, when I asked her about the responses she was getting from these cold calls; "not to good" she said. "Do, you get a lot of angry people?" She told me a bit plaintively that it seems like it's more and more so. I felt a connection, and closed with something like, "Well, hang in there, I know it's tough." And then with a faint smile through the phone, she said, "Thank you. You just made my morning."
Sorry, I didn't get to tell her that she also just made mine.
A call from Sasha
We keep our land line for unknown reasons, mostly out of habit. It's set to ring twice, then the answering machine picks up with the message, "This is Al and Rena, We are not at home, so please leave a message." and then almost always there is silence. The robo dialer at the other end may have been set to move on to the next, hopefully live response, or the human dialer optimized his/her effort by hanging up on messages.
Today, having just come back from a walk around the neighborhood enhanced by something rare in this Southern California town, the brisk feeling of Fall in the air, I was upbeat. Last night was also a rare event, as we went down to Main Street, where we found an empty table at the diner right next to the lady who was giving out Halloween candy. There were throngs of children with their parents walking by, the little ones being picked up to reach her big basket and say the magic words, "trick or treat." The lady, Sally, would say, "you can take one of the candies," and if the child forgot, the mother would remind her to tell the lady, "thank you."
For a few minutes when Sally had to take a break she asked me to take her place, and I had the honor of being the giver of goodies. The ages were varied. There was a very small smiling package dressed like a bee, complete with wings, whose Mom told how only two month previously she was still part of her own body (well those weren't her words, but that was the case) "If this kid can hold a piece of candy at about 60 days since birth, what will she be doing at five or maybe seventeen?, I thought When they returned after walking the length of this event, maybe an hour later I noted, to the crowd, "She is now about point one percent older than when she just passed buy." And Mom responded with a smile, "and she's heavier too."
Then there was a stunning thin young woman whose costume dress and high heels made her look unusually tall. As she reached over for her candy. She told Sally with a smile, "It's O.K. I'm only seventeen." It was maybe an hour and a half we were there, and then the children started to thin out. Fun is fun, but they can only take so much. Towards the end, as the kids were mostly gone, a final act was a man in a long trench coat skulking down the street. He stopped, and picking out victims, with a villainous laugh flashed opened the coat, exposing a two foot long sequined parody of what could give the average guy either great pleasure or serious inconvenience. At the same moment there appeared two young women who could have been aspiring actresses dressed in police outfits. I did my best to get out my video camera and arrange a confrontation, but they the flasher and cops had gone in different directions. But the fun of it all lingered, as it was time to take our leave and head back home.
Now, after a peaceful night sleep and our walk, I decided to picked up the phone rather than let the answering machine do its job; at first there was silence, so I said "hello" a few times. A youngish voice with an African American tinge responded, with a hello to make contact and then a short canned introduction from her sales pitch. For some reason, I responded by asking her name, and when she told me, I asked her with an upbeat, "how you doing this morning?" She said hesitantly, "pretty good." and I came back with, "you would feel better if you got a few leads from these calls."
She started to loosen up a bit, and said how she sure would. I knew the drill, as her job was to get the name of prospects for the closers to follow up on; she would get a few bucks for this alone, and if an actual big ticket sale were made she would get even more. The down side, as I remembered from a week spent doing her job in a "boiler room" in New York city office building a half century ago, if you didn't get your quota, your desk will be given to the next poor soul who would handle the abuse to make a few bucks.
So Sasha and I had something in common, when I asked her about the responses she was getting from these cold calls; "not to good" she said. "Do, you get a lot of angry people?" She told me a bit plaintively that it seems like it's more and more so. I felt a connection, and closed with something like, "Well, hang in there, I know it's tough." And then with a faint smile through the phone, she said, "Thank you. You just made my morning."
Sorry, I didn't get to tell her that she also just made mine.
Building on academic epistemology
October 6, 2014
Here's the link to an article that prompted this comment: The Unlevel Knowing Field: An Engagement with Dotson’s Third-Order Epistemic Oppression, Alison Bailey.
---------------------------------
When I started to read this article, I was preparing to attempt a technical critique of the conceptual approach as uni-dimensional, that of high power being the unstated characteristic of those who oppress those with less. I was assuming good faith by the writer, that this bias was an error that I may presume to influence.
Among the references was # 5 described in the text as : Or, consider columnist George Will’s recent claim that women cry rape so that they get “special privileged survivor status.”[5]
These cases illustrate how the epistemic agency of knowers is compromised by a credibility deficit. If we think about epistemic credibility as a resource, then it is a resource that is unevenly distributed along gendered and racialized lines.
I double checked the article and while this paraphrase may be the writers conclusion, but it was not what the article said. The quote, meaning exact phrase as written, does not exist in the article. This is not an error, but rather evidence that rather than an epistemic community following precise norms of discourse, there is an ideological element that allows breaches of such clear academic norms as precision of quotations as long as it is advances the consensus of the group.
The quote reflected an article focusing on the individual woman, while the actual article was focused on a movement codified by federal law, translated into university regulations. (the extensive comments were balanced and analytical) It happened to have great validity in my view, and yet was so demeaned by the this writer, Dr. Baily, that she felt safe to debase Mr. Will's precise criticism as being a slur on the weaker gender. Ironically, among the readership of this article only someone outside of academia, myself, bothered to note the inaccurate quotation.
The distortion of this article is that it is based on a proffered truism that epistemic knowledge is an accretion provided by formal education so that the apex must be of those with certification of having mastered this at the highest level. It ignores the possibility that a bi-product of such advanced knowledge may be a worldview that like all such "true believing" communities is defined by a self interest that may transcend the pecuniary. The writer and the readers of this academic site are comfortable in a distortion of George Will's article, since he is among the group that is not respected, Thus confirmation bias is built into the dialog, when the actual words of the enemy do not suffice, no one of the "true believers" will challenge a minor distortion of a quotation. The message in a given article by "the enemy" is comfortably used to solidity one's membership in a value system that is assumed to be "progressive" tacitly understood as moving to an idealized perfection that is only impeded by conservatives.
Epistemic "blindness" is universal, and not a product of "oppression" which is a value laden concept that implies a movement of good against evil, and erroneously exclusively equates the "power to oppress" as being such "evil." I conclude with my own hyperbole, which is that the world view of this article contains a fatal flaw, one that is no more enlightened than that which underlies the most "regressive" movements in the history of civilization. As a most relevant example, while this "enlightened progressivism" currently espouses the celebration of same gender sexuality, it ignores serious investigation of the underlying reasons why other subcultures, African American men for instance and Muslim cultures for another, find it abhorrent. The reality that for the male of the species sexuality has a large element of expression of dominance, with concomitant oppression of the more subordinate, and that this is hard wired into our primate brain is not evaluated, much less acknowledged. . The tools of sociology, ethology and neuroscience that could investigate and possibly support this view are quietly suppressed to the point that this conversation does not even exist. Thus, a perfect example epistemic blindness among the academic social and power elite.
Academic evaluation of how we know, how we think, "epistemology" -- is worthy endeavor that deserves society's support as a vital function that has been entrusted in the institution of academia. This should impart an obligation to its avatars to be alert to their own biases, and then to transcend them. Just as "Nature abhors a vacuum," "Humans abhor isolation from a community" and doing violence to reason is a small price for us to pay to avoid this fate. If every social science is to become simply another cult masked in the very pseudo-precision of its arcane terminology, the loss will be much greater than to its practitioners, but to us all.
Here's the link to an article that prompted this comment: The Unlevel Knowing Field: An Engagement with Dotson’s Third-Order Epistemic Oppression, Alison Bailey.
---------------------------------
When I started to read this article, I was preparing to attempt a technical critique of the conceptual approach as uni-dimensional, that of high power being the unstated characteristic of those who oppress those with less. I was assuming good faith by the writer, that this bias was an error that I may presume to influence.
Among the references was # 5 described in the text as : Or, consider columnist George Will’s recent claim that women cry rape so that they get “special privileged survivor status.”[5]
These cases illustrate how the epistemic agency of knowers is compromised by a credibility deficit. If we think about epistemic credibility as a resource, then it is a resource that is unevenly distributed along gendered and racialized lines.
I double checked the article and while this paraphrase may be the writers conclusion, but it was not what the article said. The quote, meaning exact phrase as written, does not exist in the article. This is not an error, but rather evidence that rather than an epistemic community following precise norms of discourse, there is an ideological element that allows breaches of such clear academic norms as precision of quotations as long as it is advances the consensus of the group.
The quote reflected an article focusing on the individual woman, while the actual article was focused on a movement codified by federal law, translated into university regulations. (the extensive comments were balanced and analytical) It happened to have great validity in my view, and yet was so demeaned by the this writer, Dr. Baily, that she felt safe to debase Mr. Will's precise criticism as being a slur on the weaker gender. Ironically, among the readership of this article only someone outside of academia, myself, bothered to note the inaccurate quotation.
The distortion of this article is that it is based on a proffered truism that epistemic knowledge is an accretion provided by formal education so that the apex must be of those with certification of having mastered this at the highest level. It ignores the possibility that a bi-product of such advanced knowledge may be a worldview that like all such "true believing" communities is defined by a self interest that may transcend the pecuniary. The writer and the readers of this academic site are comfortable in a distortion of George Will's article, since he is among the group that is not respected, Thus confirmation bias is built into the dialog, when the actual words of the enemy do not suffice, no one of the "true believers" will challenge a minor distortion of a quotation. The message in a given article by "the enemy" is comfortably used to solidity one's membership in a value system that is assumed to be "progressive" tacitly understood as moving to an idealized perfection that is only impeded by conservatives.
Epistemic "blindness" is universal, and not a product of "oppression" which is a value laden concept that implies a movement of good against evil, and erroneously exclusively equates the "power to oppress" as being such "evil." I conclude with my own hyperbole, which is that the world view of this article contains a fatal flaw, one that is no more enlightened than that which underlies the most "regressive" movements in the history of civilization. As a most relevant example, while this "enlightened progressivism" currently espouses the celebration of same gender sexuality, it ignores serious investigation of the underlying reasons why other subcultures, African American men for instance and Muslim cultures for another, find it abhorrent. The reality that for the male of the species sexuality has a large element of expression of dominance, with concomitant oppression of the more subordinate, and that this is hard wired into our primate brain is not evaluated, much less acknowledged. . The tools of sociology, ethology and neuroscience that could investigate and possibly support this view are quietly suppressed to the point that this conversation does not even exist. Thus, a perfect example epistemic blindness among the academic social and power elite.
Academic evaluation of how we know, how we think, "epistemology" -- is worthy endeavor that deserves society's support as a vital function that has been entrusted in the institution of academia. This should impart an obligation to its avatars to be alert to their own biases, and then to transcend them. Just as "Nature abhors a vacuum," "Humans abhor isolation from a community" and doing violence to reason is a small price for us to pay to avoid this fate. If every social science is to become simply another cult masked in the very pseudo-precision of its arcane terminology, the loss will be much greater than to its practitioners, but to us all.
On Conflating Jiahadists with Islam, (Comment in NY Times)
Full letter sent in response to a viral email listing all the Muslims in Obama's administration. This is described in comment in the Public Editor's article of 10/30//14 . It shows how individuals can help defuse irrational anger generated by the mass media.
Interesting.
I checked out the second person on the list, Mohammed Elibiary. He's no longer involved with Homeland Security Agency as described
here. This article lays out an indictment of his being someone who should never have been part of the U.S. Government
I
tried to check whether being on the HSA advisory board was only an
honorary position, but even so, his promoting of the worse excesses of
Islam would be unacceptable. On the other hand, while the Koran does
contain the seeds of violence against outsiders, so do the holy books of
Christianity and Judaism. This email is valuable since it points out
that our principle of religious freedom must never be a cover for the
most extreme aspects of religion.
This
presents a challenge to citizens and elected officials alike. We have
to ask whether Mr. Elibiary is a mole who is infiltrating our government
to promote terrorism or trying to build a bridge between moderate
Muslims and our larger society. First one has to believe the existence
of such a thing as "moderate Muslims" and if this is not possible then
we must respond by a type of "inquisition" to demand that all such
people renounce this religion. This would mean a radical change, at the
least repealing our first Amendment ensuring free expression of
religion. In my view this is dangerous, as this was imposed on my
ethnic group over the centuries from 15th century Spain to more recently
in Germany.
This official document describes
Mr. Elibiary as attempting to build a bridge and promote moderate
Islam, as described in this award from the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
an organization that one may assume has a grasp on the background and
activities of this individual. These are difficult times, yet in my
view ignoring the multifaceted nature of religious or secular ideologies
may not provide the security that we all desire..
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