February 25, 2012.
As I wrote about on Wednesday, Associated Press over the last year has been publishing an investigative series detailing how the NYPD, often in conjunction with the CIA, has been systematically spying on entire Muslim communities both in New York City and in surrounding areas. Virtually none of those spied upon are suspected of any wrongdoing; they are just innocent people who are targeted for surveillance solely because they are Muslim. That’s why the program is so controversial. This is how this controversy was depicted yesterday by The New York Post, in a cartoon by Sean Delonas.
According to The New York Post, to be Muslim — as between 5-7 million people in America are — is to be a hook-nosed, Osama-worshipping, suicide-bomb-wearing Terrorist. There is no other interpretation for someone justifying a massive, indiscriminate spying program aimed at Muslims generally with this response. It goes without saying that there is not a single other group against whom bigotry this hateful and overt would be tolerated. And that explains a great deal about what has happened with U.S. policy — both foreign and domestic — over the last decade.
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Glenn Greenwald (email: GGreenwald@salon.com) is a former Constitutional and civil rights litigator and is the author of two New York Times Bestselling books on the Bush administration’s executive power and foreign policy abuses. Follow him on Twitter: @ggreenwald. See more Glenn Greenwald articles here.
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Comment: I am not even sure whether to be amused or angered by this kind of racism and its callous attack on the integrity of Muslims everywhere.
But it is exactly why I understand the motives of those who have been pushed too far. This cartoon is hateful. (See Greenwald's article "The causes of protest in Afghanistan" (February 26) for more on this train of thought.)
Today two innocent children were killed in Afghanistan by a NATO/French air strike in Kapisa’s Tagab district. A third victim is not a child but innocent no less.
These killings come less than two weeks after NATO killed eight innocent civilians while they were herding sheep!
And Hillary Clinton wants to invade Syria to save innocent lives. Should she not be looking at what the US-led NATO troops are doing to innocents in Afghanistan before pointing her bloodied fingers elsewhere?
Even as I write here Afghans are taking to the streets to vent their anger at the burning of Qur'ans when just about three weeks ago they were looking at pictures of US marines pissing on dead Afghan bodies!
Yet the New York Post wants its readers to believe that Muslims are the terrorists: the sad thing is that the majority of the ignoramuses on the streets of the empire agree.
Onward!
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