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FBI CONCLUDES 15 YEARS INVESTIGATION OF ISLAM

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FBI CONCLUDES 15 YEARS INVESTIGATION OF ISLAM

Thinkers Forum USA Editors received this info from Firoz Kamal

Washington Post.

After 15 years of broadly targeting the 3.3-million-member community and extensively monitoring its activities, the FBI declared an end Friday to its surveillance of Muslim Americans, saying its exhaustive study of their beautiful culture was finally complete.

Officials confirmed that the program was started in the fall of 2001 when federal agents, captivated by Islam’s complex history and rich spiritual traditions, redirected the full force of the bureau’s intelligence-gathering apparatus toward developing a more thoughtful, nuanced appreciation of the Muslim-American way of life.

“We’d always known Islam was one of the great world religions, but it wasn’t until we recruited a network of 15,000 informants and infiltrated mosques all over the country that we came to understand just how magnificent and fascinating it truly is,” said FBI director James B. Comey, who noted that agents gained a valuable and eye-opening understanding of Islam—while also learning a lot about themselves and their own faith in the process—after entering the Muslim places of worship to collect as much information as they could on the intriguing personal beliefs of the religion’s followers.

“After analyzing the transcripts of thousands of phone calls and intercepting the communications of prominent Muslim-American leaders and academics, we’ve really come to admire their vibrant culture.”

“The considerable amount of intel we’ve gathered and carefully pored over for the past 15 years has shown us that their faith and customs are really quite inspiring,” Comey added.

“If there’s one thing we’ve taken away from all our surveillance, it’s what a glorious and enriching part of our world Islam is.”

According to sources within the bureau, the harvesting of internet data, widespread racial profiling, and the nationwide mapping of Muslim communities have allowed agents to closely observe the followers of Islam on an extremely personal level, thereby allowing them to develop a deep respect for the amazing ethnic and cultural diversity of the faith’s 1.6 billion believers, as well as the striking distinctions between the religion’s various sects, which, they stressed, went far beyond just Sunni and Shiite.

Remarking on all the information they had gathered, FBI officials emphasized that adherents of Islam speak dozens of beautiful languages—Arabic, but also Urdu, Pashto, Farsi, Bengali, Javanese, and many others—and noted that agents came to treasure this linguistic richness after installing recording devices throughout Muslim-American communities and then surreptitiously listening in on Quranic study groups, prayer sessions, and social events.

“Thanks to advances in video surveillance, we’ve been able to look inside Muslims’ homes and view some breathtaking calligraphy prints and handwoven tapestries,” said former agent Casey Hanna, who fondly recalled assignments that allowed him to overhear moving recitations of the Hadith, which he was fascinated to learn come from an oral tradition and are considered to be the direct word of the Prophet Muhammad.

“I went undercover in hundreds of Muslim-owned businesses and residences across the nation and was lucky enough to sample many variations on the aromatic stews and delectable desserts that serve as staples of halal cuisine—Arabian, North African, Indonesian. They were all delicious, and unlike anything I’d ever tasted.”

“I’ll never forget this one instance when I closely trailed a New York shop owner for three straight years—his coffee was just spectacular,” Hanna added. “Muslims were the first people to drink coffee, you know.”

After realizing they could not fully nurture their curiosity by limiting their study to Muslims in the United States, the FBI reportedly enlisted the help of the NSA to find out more about the incredible religion. Between 2002 and 2008, the bureau is known to have monitored 7,485 email addresses around the globe in order to learn answers to their many questions about Muslims’ compelling lives and rituals, from why they don’t eat pork, to what Muslim holidays are like, to why some Muslim women wear garments that cover their heads while others don’t.

Comey told reporters the FBI also received information from the CIA, whose enhanced interrogation techniques and clandestine intelligence-gathering methods yielded many interesting revelations from Muslim sources around the world, such as the fact that Arabs make up only 15 percent of the global Muslim population, and that through most of history, women in Islamic societies actually had more property rights than women in the West.

Saying they thoroughly enjoyed studying “such a lovely people and such a lovely faith,” Comey explained that agents would often remove a Muslim citizen from their community and keep them detained for days, weeks, or even months on end to learn everything they could from them about Islam.

“There’s no way I could remember the names of all the Muslim citizens that our agents brought in to discuss the beauty of Islam with one-on-one, but rest assured that with their help, the FBI has gained a deep and illuminating understanding of Islamic culture,” said Comey, who noted that by combing through thousands upon thousands of citizens’ banking records, agents discovered with astonishment how some observant Muslims set up special loan payment plans to avoid paying interest, as they consider it usury, which is forbidden under Sharia law.

“It’s crazy to think about, but until little more than a decade ago, I had no idea there were Five Pillars of Islam that guided all Muslims’ spiritual lives. I also didn’t know anything about the multitude of Muslim contributions to mathematics and science that have been absolutely vital to the world.

But that’s not to say they don’t value art, though. Poets like Rumi and Hafez drew upon mystical Sufist interpretations of the Quran to write verse that is every bit as sublime as, say, Keats or Coleridge. And don’t even get me started on the architecture.”

“As this program sadly comes to an end, I just want to thank Muslim Americans from the bottom of my heart for teaching us all about your faith and your culture,” he continued.

“We’ve learned so much about you over the years. More than you could possibly imagine.”

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NINE WAYS DRAWING DOWN OVERSEAS BASES WILL IMPROVE US SECURITY

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NINE WAYS DRAWING DOWN OVERSEAS BASES WILL IMPROVE US SECURITY

By Andrew J. Bacevich and David Vine, Responsible Statecraft.March 11, 2021 | EDUCATE!

Shared by Dr. Syed A. Ehtisham

For every State Department embassy, consulate, and mission there are nearly three U.S. military bases overseas. The disparity between the 277 U.S. diplomatic installations and the estimated 800 U.S. military bases abroad symbolizes how dangerously militarized U.S. foreign policy has become.

Thankfully, across the political spectrum — and even within the U.S. military — there is growing recognition of the problem. Last month the Biden administration announced the Pentagon will conduct an urgently needed “Global Posture Review” to ensure the deployment of U.S. military forces around the world is, as President Joe Biden said, “appropriately aligned with our foreign policy and national security priorities.”

This review offers a historic opportunity to close hundreds of unnecessary military bases abroad and improve national and international security in the process. In contrast to former President Donald Trump’s hasty attempt to withdraw bases and troops from Syria and his attempt to punish Germany by removing installations there, the Global Posture Review provides a chance to close bases carefully and responsibly, save money, and build back U.S. alliances and diplomatic presence worldwide.

“I think we have too much infrastructure overseas,” the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. military, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mark Milley, admitted in December. “Is every one of those [bases] absolutely positively necessary for the defense of the United States?”

Milley called for “a hard, hard look,” acknowledging that many overseas bases are “derivative of where World War II ended.” Since that conflict and the start of the Cold War the United States has maintained thousands of military bases in foreign lands. Three decades after the Cold War’s end, there are still 119 base sites in both Germany and Japan, according to the Pentagon. In South Korea there are 80. Other bases dot the planet from Aruba to Australia, Kenya to Qatar, among more than 80 countries occupied. Ours is the largest collection of extraterritorial bases in world history. China has one overseas base today, in Djibouti.

We have worked for two years with an unusually transpartisan group of military experts who agree “We’ve got too many daggone bases,” as former Air Force General Roger Brady has said. Last week more than forty experts, including veterans, a former member of Congress, scholars, analysts, and advocates, joined the Overseas Base Realignment and Closure Coalition (OBRACC) in sending an open letter to the Biden administration calling for closures to improve national and global security.

Unsurprisingly given the political diversity of a coalition that has involved the Koch Foundation and Codepink, the Cato Institute and Noam Chomsky, the letter’s co-signers differ about how many bases to close, which to close, and how to close them. Despite our differences, we agree on nine major reasons to begin closures. (Full disclosure: We are signers on the letter, too).

1) The costs: an estimated $51.5 billion in 2017 — nearly two times the State Department’s budget. Add troops on installations abroad and the total reaches more than $150 billion. Imagine what we could do with a fraction of the billions spent to maintain this robust overseas infrastructure. Imagine how we could repair crumbling domestic infrastructure, including transportation, electric grids, and ventilator supplies.

2) Bases abroad have fueled a hyper-interventionist foreign policy. Overseas installations simply make it too easy to wage war overseas. Since 1980 U.S. presidents have used foreign bases to launch wars and other attacks at least 25 times in 15 or more countries in the greater Middle East alone. The wars have killed, wounded, and displaced tens of millions.

3) Overseas bases are technologically outdated: rapid response forces can deploy anywhere on Earth fast enough to be based in the continental United States. Increasingly accurate ballistic missiles have made foreign installations into sitting ducks for enemies.

4) Overseas bases destabilize regions and increase the likelihood of future wars: hundreds of U.S. bases surrounding Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea encourage their leaders to boost their own military spending and activity. Imagine how U.S. citizens would feel if Russia or China built a single base near our borders. The calls for a military response would be swift.

5) OBRACC experts agree that bases in the Middle East have fueled radicalization, anti-American propaganda, recruitment by militant groups like al Qaeda, and deadly attacks, such as those of September 11, 2001.

6) Rather than spreading democracy, U.S. bases are found in and support at least 40 countries led by dictators and other undemocratic regimes, including Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Niger, and Turkey. Bases in colonized U.S. territories are a major reason Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana and Virgin Islands, and American Samoa have neither gained full independence nor full U.S. citizenship rights.

7) Overseas bases are bad for the environment. Domestic installations are too, but overseas, the military often ignores domestic environmental standards, resulting in the dumping of hazardous materials, toxic leaks, and daily damage during training.

8) Bases abroad almost always generate protest against U.S. forces. Unsurprisingly, people tend not to like their countries occupied by foreign militaries. Locals also tend not to appreciate crimes committed by military personnel, deadly accidents, environmental harm, and thriving sex work industries supported by bases.

9) OBRACC experts agree that overseas deployments painfully separate U.S. military personnel from their families. Stationing whole families overseas disrupts the careers, schooling, and lives of spouses, children, and other family members.

Thankfully, closing overseas bases is politically easy compared to closing domestic installations. Unlike the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process for domestic facilities, Congress need not be involved in overseas closures. Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush closed hundreds of unnecessary bases in Europe and Asia. For parochial reasons alone, members of Congress should support closing installations overseas to return thousands of personnel and family members, and their paychecks, to their districts and states.

The Biden administration should heed growing demands across the political spectrum, from OBRACC and others, to close overseas bases. Biden should pursue a strategy of drawing down the U.S. military posture abroad, returning troops back home, and building up the country’s diplomatic posture and alliances.  Unless we want to continue our current posture of endless wars, run-away military spending, and armed forces poorly positioned to defend the United States, we must seize this historic opportunity for change.

Dr. S. Akhtar Ehtisham
Blog syedehtisham.blogspot.com
All religions try to take over the establishment and if they fail, they collaborate with it, be it feudal or capitalist.

2020 USA presidential election: Was science on the ballot?

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[Jan] Was science on the ballot?

Message Body

An email received by Thinkers Forum USA :

{Email posted with hyper link as is}

A rare recent ray of light from Science magazine, from Sheila Jasanoff and others:
“The pandemic has seen much hand-wringing about Americans’ unwillingness to “accept science” and follow public health directives…….It is tempting to treat matters of health, safety, and environmental policy as if they are primarily about facts, because this transforms intractable social disputes into seemingly answerable technical questions. But such moves are inimical to democracy. When the key issue is who decides, acting as if disagreements are mainly about evidence is bad politics and bad social science. It turns expertise into an object of distrust and exacerbates American culture’s tendency to alienate people from the perceived elitism of science (2). This creates fertile ground for alternative facts and conspiracy theories that reframe problems and relocate the focus of blame.

Science advice thus occupies a precarious position on the boundary between asserting facts and making policy. It faces the structural problem of being authoritative without becoming authoritarian. It divides power between scientists, who are mainly accountable to their peers, and authorized political representatives, who are accountable to the citizens they serve. This allocation of authority is fundamentally political, even constitutional. We should not be surprised if expert advisers find their claims being questioned, given their consequential role in contemporary governance.”
Worth reading in full and digesting at length IMO. Its at:
https://compcore.cornell.edu/science2021/

Jonathan
Jonathan Latham, PhD
Executive DirectorThe Bioscience Resource Project, Ithaca, NY 14850 USA

Social Media & Women by Nilofar Suhrawardy

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social Media & Women!

The following article is written by Nilofar Suhrawardy

Social Media & Women! | Countercurrents

Nilofar Suhrawardy is based in Delhi. Nilofar Suhrawardy is a senior journalist and writer with specialization in communication studies and nuclear diplomacy. She has come out with several books. These include:– Modi’s Victory, A Lesson for the Congress…? (2019); Arab Spring, Not Just a Mirage! (2019), Image and Substance, Modi’s First Year in Office (2015) and Ayodhya Without the Communal Stamp, In the Name of Indian Secularism (2006)

Of late, a new importance is being accorded to “social media.” The so-called “social media” is allegedly playing an extremely negative role in spread of “socially-approved” abuses targeting weaker sections, particularly minorities and women. Now, is there really such a “social media” or this is just a hype? And aren’t we erring in according it a little too much importance?

Let us accept it, just as Covid-19 knows no socio-cultural lines, Indian women of all religions face similar problems. Marriage seems to be a must for all. Divorce is still viewed as a stigma. Widow-remarriage is hardly given any importance. And practically all face dowry problems and so forth. In Indian society, these may be viewed intrinsically as part of country’s culture, supposed to be legally unacceptable but yet viewed as socially pertinent.

Paradoxically, as communication boom is increasing at an accelerating pace, so are certain chains trying to act as restrictions on people’s life, freedom as well as peace of mind. What else can one say about the increasingly negative role being played by some means of “social media”? These include attempts to poison people’s minds against one another on account of social – particularly religious and caste-based – differences. Continuance of gang-rapes is suggestive of the fairer gender being viewed as easy targets as well as being looked down upon as commodities to be exploited and then discarded.

Of course, the trend to give religious clerics more importance than required in deliberating over controversial issues cannot be ignored. Equally significant is politicization of these irrespective of whether the needed solution is arrived at. Politicians have gone over-board on triple-talaq issue but have remained practically silent on dowry problems. Why?

At this point, it may be pertinent to analyze speculations aired recently about Muslim women. With due to respect to views expressed that, “Muslim Women Can think,” of course an attempt has been made in favor of fairer gender of this community. Nevertheless, the headline does raise apprehensions. What does it suggest? Is an attempt being made to convince others that Muslim women can think? In this case, clearly notions entertained about women at large, including Muslims cannot be ignored. If stereotyped impressions were not held about women in general in most parts of world, this subject would not have been deliberated upon.

The fact that women continue to be discriminated against, are viewed as secondary to males to degree of even being looked down upon cannot be ignored. The most high-ranking jobs in majority of institutions are rarely given to women, irrespective of what their qualifications are. This stands true in political arena too. Limited representation of women in democratically elected bodies, including Parliament, state assemblies and so forth are just a mild illustration of this stark reality. When their vote is as important as that of men, why isn’t their representation in these bodies given much importance? Clearly, once women surge forth as their population demands, Indian political scenario may take a totally different form.

But in all probability, nobody is likely to think or even dream along these lines. There apparently prevails apprehension of men losing their command over politics and in other fields too.

Essentially, it is erroneous to label discrimination faced by women and also sideline their achievements exclusively along religious lines. Nevertheless, speculation raised as well as defended that Muslim can think women needs to be deliberated upon from other angles too. The instant glance at headline clearly raises speculation about negative, primarily stereotyped approach held towards Muslims as a whole and fairer gender of this community. As mentioned earlier, the fact that this approach is held towards women in general only raises questions on why have Muslim women been selected in particular? Why? Should it be assumed a means of gaining greater attention for the subject? Perhaps.

There is no denying, when negative “news” focusing on Muslims is circulated, it is noticed. In fact, it may not be wrong to state; there prevails the trend of according greater attention to “negative” aspects of certain issues than to positive. As for instance, the general tendency is to assume Muslim women in general as fairly conservative, illiterate/semi-literate, dressed from head to toe. The same can be said about most women in the sub-continent, irrespective of their religion, caste, class and other ethnic divisions. Against this backdrop, prospects of Indian community progressing as a whole may be viewed as fairly limited by focusing only on Muslim women.

Besides, how much importance has really been given to factors responsible for backwardness of majority in the country, particularly those residing in rural India? Give a thought; is there a decent school available within a range of few kilometers making it possible for each child, girl and boy, to gain some basic, elementary education? In this context, the fact that Muslims in rural as well as urban areas give at least some importance to ensure that their children acquire some elementary as well as religious education from nearby madarsas cannot be ignored. Those who can afford to, invite a tutor to teach basic principles to their children. Children, include both girls and boys.

It may be noted, the practice of Muslim women being invited to teach children in various Muslim dominated areas is fairly strong, particularly in urban parts. Besides, quite a few women hold classes at their own homes. Apart from this, the fact that Muslim women give considerable importance to engaging in ventures to increase their income cannot be ignored. These include running or assisting in beauty parlors, stitching clothes and/or being linked with tailors in demand from their homes and numerous such means which help in adding to family income. A considerable number of Muslim women engaged in professions such as these belong to weak economic sections. They are not economically privileged and yet are smart enough to try and wriggle out of their economic crises.

So, does this imply that Muslim women cannot think? Or are examples of celebrities needed to defy this claim? No. In fact, in light of examples cited, ordinary Muslim women have been moving along the path of spelling a better future for their families for decades. That the elderly Muslim ladies decided to assemble at Shaheen Bagh in protest against Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is a marked reflection of their stepping forward as strong personalities. Had they been weak individuals, who did not think and act on their own, history would not have witnessed their gathering at Shaheen Bagh and numerous other places.

Against this backdrop, importance of communication demands that prior to stating – Muslim women can think- some relevance needs to be accorded to role being played by ordinary Muslim ladies at large. And this holds true for women of all religious communities. Rather than label spread of negative “abuses” as “socially approved,” it may be more pertinent to view them as agenda of some extremists. Certain individuals/groups may be aiding them in return of some gains.

Importance gained by ladies participating in farmers’ protest and earlier at Shaheen Bagh is a strong slap on those who view the fairer gender as weaklings, who can’t think and act on their own strength. The fact that these ladies have gained attention globally and nationally cannot be undermined. What does this suggest about the so-called spread of “socially approved abuses” targeting minorities and women? If abuses spread through “social media” were really “socially approved,” the role played by ladies belonging to minorities would not have been hailed. Besides, the message, conveyed strongly by ladies in farmers’ protest and at Shaheen Bagh, has not been undermined by so-called “socially approved” “social media.” Their lives and moves may hardly be viewed as at mercy of the so-called “social media!”