When we couple the sheer amount of angry rhetoric we can find in the media lexicon regarding unions with the relative impotence of most unions and ice the cake with the corrupt ones, our disregard for organized labor isn’t surprising. With many Americans either behind desks or the counters at Walmart (if employed at all), basic concepts like an 8 hour day, health insurance, vacation time – even a fair wage – disappear fast from our minds.

Still, this weekend those of us not manning cash registers, pallet jacks or emergency vehicles will head to beaches and backyards, eat and drink with family and friends and perhaps enjoy sleeping in slightly on a Monday morning. Meanwhile, I wonder how many of those folks out there who like to believe that the labor movement is packed with nothing but lazy, self-entitled commies and socialists will be heading to work this Labor Day.

He sprung the stop on me on the way to our meeting, which was nearby his church, “remembering” he had to drop something off. Because I didn’t particularly like that job and always enjoyed an excuse to be outside the office, I didn’t argue. When we arrived, he took the chance to show me around. It was a newer building - rehabbed and endlessly added on to. The worship area had an open space large enough for hundreds of people to fill, a multimillion dollar sound system and giant projection television screens. I could only imagine that services were more akin to rock concerts than the more solemn Catholic masses I attended.

The worship area wasn’t the only building on the acres of property the church owned. The grounds, nestled between strip malls and gas stations on a busy suburban intersection contained living quarters for the pastor, a school, a warehouse and even a printing press. Since the company I worked for at the time was a print company, my boss made sure to make their printing press a stop on the tour. I generally enjoy visiting the theological worlds of others, even if I don’t share their beliefs or values because every experience teaches me something. This time, things became uncomfortable.

Amidst the rows of machinery, songbooks and pamphlets proclaiming salvation were books titled something akin to “The Coming War With Islam.” I’m not sure if they were printing them or just warehousing them to hand out to the congregation, but one thing was clear – these folks also believed in their own coming holy war.

I’ve thought a lot about that moment recently with all of the vitriolic rhetoric showing up throughout the media regarding the “ground zero mosque” and other mosques in other cities across America. At present, the question “should this mosque be built” is probably the biggest NIMBY issue in America. Much like our food, our shoes or our electronics – Americans love our country’s right to religious freedom, we just don’t like to see how it’s made.

And perhaps this simple thought is why it’s easy for the folks like Newt Gingrich or Sarah Palin to froth at the mouth over the much debated community center, proposed to stand nearby the site where thousands of Americans of all faiths and beliefs were killed, physically injured and emotionally scarred. They can believe they’re doing their own God’s work, because they see someone else as intolerant and scary and justify it by blaming a hateful act by a small group of extremists on a group that comprises billions. These are the same people who once questioned the patriotism and “Americanism” of political dissenters during the Bush years, who now deride the American government almost as much as the jihadists they’re so afraid of.

In a recent New York Times piece, Damien Cave did an excellent job of pointing out and breaking down exactly how Islam as the mortal enemy of the west is now a mainstream belief. Damien writes about Terry Jones, the pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida. Pastor Jones and his flock will burn Korans on the anniversary of 9/11 and apparently have 10 “reasons” for this. While we might dismiss the folks at Dove World Outreach Center as far right lunatics, some of the sentiment behind their desire to burn books can be found in mainstream publications. Even those branded of a more “liberal” persuasion seem to have their own distrust of Islam, if masked slightly.

The list is pretty typical of right wing vitriol, charging all Muslims with everything from being pagans, imperialists, oppressors of women, absolutists about their religion being the “right” one, totalitarians, etc. According to Pastor Jones, Islam is an oppressive way of life that all its followers wish to impose on the rest of the world and they will maim and kill to crush everyone under their fascist sandals. So how is this, exactly different from Evangelical Christians? When we’re arming our soldiers with weapons that have biblical verses on them, demanding that the Ten Commandments be displayed in our courthouses, telling women what we believe they should do with their lives and bodies, expressing a desire to say who can and cannot get married and generally fearful and critical of anything that’s not “from the west,” how is that so different from Pastor Jones’ ten reasons to burn a Koran?

When we allow the most extreme practitioners of a religion to act as representatives and opinion makers for the entire religion, be it in Abrahamic faiths or others, we only make it easier for those extremists to perpetuate and justify their own brand of Holy War. While plenty of people in the world would like to evolve beyond a “my God can beat up your God” mentality and move to a future of larger understanding, we still allow those extremists to shout us down. Extremists feed on confrontation, anger, rhetoric and rage. By whipping up a national fervor over a planned Islamic center at a vacant building near Ground Zero, we’re playing into the hands of folks who whip up a similar tempest against all westerners.

So, whatever happened to “let ye who is without sin cast the first stone?”

Click here to listen to This Is The End Episode 1

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This is the “Status of the Apocalypse.” Millions of people across the globe are Facebook users and if I were a betting man, I’d say they’re probably on Twitter, Tumblr and plenty of other places. So what happens when the news starts filtering in that the world is collapsing? What do we tell our friends, our family and most importantly, our “followers?” For that matter, what do Glenn Beck, Barak Obama, Snooki, Nancy Pelosi or the Pope tell the confused and shrieking masses? The comet might be coming down, the planet might be boiling, nuclear bombs may be exploding – but the internet is still working.

Tell me in no more than three sentences or 140 characters what you’re telling your friends or what you think others are telling the internet at the end of the world. The best dozen or so (depending on responses) will be worked into my piece and read at the next Liquid Burning of Apocalyptic Bard Letters reading on September 9^th and then reposted right here at www.diatribemedia.com. You can submit as many as you like. Tell your friends too! Send all submissions to aaroncynic@gmail.com

–Aaron Cynic

File this under “not surprised:”

Proponents of the device say that the pain ray weapon will allow guards at the prison to break up incidents before they get out of control, with minimal risk to guards and without incapacitating or injuring combatants. Of course, that same logic has been used in other supposed “less than lethal” measures before with limited success. The weapon itself produces a burning sensation which targets can only stand for about 3 seconds. One has to wonder how long before the A.I.D. ends up in an interrogation room.

The agent casually scrolled through his morning messages. Department briefings, special meeting announcements, an office party on the 23^rd floor for some IT guy’s birthday – he thought his name might be Matt. The work of government appears sexy in a press release but it’s pretty tedious day to day, he thought. Finally he found something interesting – a few activity alerts on some of his targets.

The office Agent Robinson worked out of was just one of many huge information hubs scattered across the continental United States. Each Infohub looked like a standard glass high rise office building and was typically placed on the outskirts of a major metropolitan area. The only difference between an Infohub and any other skyscraper was the amount of satellite dishes and antennae on the roof, which thanks to the information age, no one ever noticed.

Located within the walls of Infohubs were non-descript offices, plenty of conventional surveillance systems, thousands of computers, several lock up areas, enhanced interrogation rooms, lethal and non-lethal tactical equipment rooms (armories), and even temporary living quarters. The real excitement though, lay in the analytics department. Each Infohub contained several NaurusInsight systems, supercomputers pioneered in the early 1990’s by the Defense Department for mass electronic surveillance, ECHELON interceptors, a communications monitoring system built during the height of the cold war and subsequently networked into every phone line across the world and the Genisys system. All data mined globally fed through Genisys, an almost sentient software program developed to handle large repositories of information. Data was pulled via Naurus and ECHELON along with information handed over by credit card companies, banks, retail outlets, plus local and regional law enforcement. Even the postal service fed intercepted mail scans into Genisys. The program would route information through about a dozen subroutines in order to determine what individuals or groups could be potential threats and predict their movements and actions, down to what day of the week an individual went grocery shopping.

Essentially, Genisys took care of the bulk of Agent Robinson’s work for him.

Michael, one of his targets, would apparently be out of toilet paper sometime tomorrow.

Geni, as most agents jokingly referred to the system, picked up on Michael years ago after it noticed an email list he maintained during the early 2000’s. Mike would forward out suspect or seditious news articles to a small group of friends. Since then, he started writing and blogging about any number of supposedly hot button political issues, attended various radical left wing meetings, even engaged in street protests. Mike would never be a physical threat to any political administration, federal government, local government, police, or even a partisan opposition group – but Geni knew Mike had something wrong in his head and labeled him an ideological threat.

Agent Robinson slurped his coffee with excitement and read the alert.

Subject number 614: Michael Wilson, aged 35. Ideological threat. Watch level status: Yellow.

Begin sitrep: Subject M. Wilson authored 17 articles, all published on the internet on the following subjects: war, terrorism, Lollapalooza, civil liberties, the constitution, beer, Milton Bradley, Islam, World of Warcraft, Christianity, class war, dubstep music. Facebook activity: 150 links shared, 39 status updates, 10 new friends, 3 friend deletions, joined groups “Americans against war in Iran” “Cryogenically Freeze Eric Estrada’s Head” and “Don’t you hate it when your ass gets sweaty after sitting in your office chair for too long.”

Robinson let out a little laugh and took another swill from his coffee – it was sweet, two sugar packets and two creamers. Never Nutrasweet – like Flouride in drinking water, Nutrasweet was bad for one’s health. He remembered joining the very same Facebook group two nights prior, under the fake account he kept in order to maintain pseudo friendships with some of his more interesting targets. Even though he knew Mike worked as a temp for a firm contracted to sell advertisements in the Tribune, he somehow always thought his personality type seemed more akin to shipping and receiving.

The report continued and Agent Robinson’s soft brown eyes glazed slightly: spending reports for two weeks, travel logs, some minor surveillance footage from various ATM’s across the city, internet browsing history containing pie charts of most viewed themes – the two majors of which were labeled politics (37%) and p (32%) – a ratio the majority of his targets, usually opinionated but otherwise innocuous middle aged males, held. At the bottom, a window popped up – it read “Agent arobinson, what option would you like to execute?” The options read “immediate arrest, detain for questioning, upgrade alert status, continue monitoring.” There was never an option to downgrade alert status. After briefly thinking about the data, Agent Robinson clicked “continue monitoring” and opened the next alert.

He did this a few more times, desperately hoping for something interesting. He read an update on Jack, a 17 year old male from a more rural area, highlighted by Geni because of a questionable flyer Jack printed featuring a caricature of a president drawn with a pencil in his head. Agent Robinson read about Darius, a 47 year old teacher from the city, on Geni’s list because of a paper he authored in college questioning the legitimacy of attacking Afghanistan. He even saw an alert for Jessica, a pseudo hippy college liberal type who often got arrested at one demonstration or another for “civil disobedience.” Though she was orange flagged as a legitimate threat, the only thing close to a crime she had committed in the past two weeks was posting a picture featuring her in a “fuck you” trucker hat on Facebook.

Robinson needed a break. He opened up a news website and read an article on China’s human rights violations and its pervasive surveillance systems. Apparently, the Chinese government installed and networked cameras in two provinces in nearly every public space. Livid with outrage, he nearly spilt his coffee. Why would people stand for that, the elimination of their privacy and freedom? Sure, America had to make a few sacrifices – networked some cameras in more urban “trouble spots” together and yes, he had to monitor people – but those people were deemed threats. His job was different though, it was science. Science and technology figured out the threats and targets – not some arbitrary people, be they part of a governing class or not. For a government to monitor every inch of the public square, especially without scientific proof? That was going too far.

Agent Robinson looked at the clock in the corner of his computer monitor. 11:15, time for Matt in IT’s birthday party. The work of a patriot may never be complete, but at least sometimes there’s cake.

Written by Aaron Cynic

The story of Steve Slater

Steve’s story might be unique in its highly public manner and because it was on a plane, a very touchy subject in American’s eyes. However, the sentiment is anything but. Many Americans have worked as waiters and waitresses, in retail outlets, at call centers, bars and countless other locations and positions where dealing with the “public” isn’t only required, but the main function of the job.

I spent my time serving the public - as a bagger/cart wrangler, later in a hardware store, plus a few years in a sales environment. Who among us that’s worked similar jobs can say we’d mind a chance to careen down the aisles at a retail employer in a shopping cart with a megaphone loudly informing “guests” of their flaws? Who among us would love a chance to find innumerable ways to severely inconvenience and teach poor tippers a lesson? Every person that spits in a street canvassers eye should be given a clipboard and sent out into the street on the coldest day of the year, and so on.

Sure, we’ve all experienced shitty baristas, dealt with tech support folks we can’t understand and have been shortchanged by idiot cashiers. None of that gives a “customer” the right to belittle someone or disrespect a person because they’re on the other side of the counter or wearing a paper hat. We all have our bad days where we snap on folks, but just because some of us don’t wait tables doesn’t mean we shouldn’t show a little empathy. You’re not the first person to make that snide comment or joke, not the first person to curse a worker out, not the first to ask for your bartender’s phone number, not the first person to shout in the phone and hang up on someone and certainly won’t be the last. Show some dignity and have a little empathy.

Cook County Sherriff Tom Dart enlisted 25 garbage collectors to train in surveillance tactics such as looking for pot plants in back yards, taking notes on abandoned cars or realizing that large containers could be a potential terrorist threat. The program, dubbed “Waste Watch” by Waste Management Inc, has already been implemented in 100 communities nationwide according to the Chicago Tribune. Sherriff Dart said the partnership is free and is akin to adding new officers on the streets.

When we look at this program through a post 9/11 lens and take into account the numerous other privacy violations Americans have endured throughout the past decade, the idea of garbage men enlisted to “observe and report” suspicious activity seems almost quaint – even passé. Waste Management Inc’s annual report says of the program “Because our drivers are present at times when neighborhood or business crimes would often go unnoticed, they are able to spot suspicious activity or emergency situations and to contact the appropriate authorities immediately.” All of it even sounds almost like exactly what an active citizen should do – in case of emergency, call the appropriate first responders.

But this isn’t simply about a trash collector working a route and calling the police when witnessing a break in or tipping off the cops after noticing an awful lot of dead chickens in the dumpster behind the corner bar. This is essentially enlisting workers who at the core, are providing a public service (albeit via a privatized company) to spy on other citizens and “report suspicious activity,” which we’ve seen could be anything from an abandoned vehicle or package on a train, to enjoying a falafel sandwich, to owning a copy of The Farmers Almanac.

So before you write this off as innocuous or believe it’s in the best interest (for your safety, of course) for trash collectors to be enlisted as another set of eyes and ears of a government body, remember that the feds are also interested in what you read online, the mail coming into your home, your email, your phone calls, your activities on the street via integrated camera networks. Apparently, that’s the price of freedom.

For no reason, here's the Tayto mascott

Lately, I haven’t had so much time to put together regularish posts, but that doesn’t mean I’m not reading or shaking my fist at current events somewhere. Plenty of other bloggers and writers do this, so why should I miss out on the chance? You want to know what I’m reading and what I think about everything, right?

The Wikileaks story will probably grow further as the week drags on. I wrote a piece for Chicagoist, the other site I write for, which you can read right here. I was going to attempt a more detailed follow up here, but thanks to my editor’s great work, I was able to fit almost everything in. Essentially, my basic points are simply that the data dump can’t be both innocuous information and terribly damaging, that we need to have a serious conversation about when this war is going to end and that if we’re a free, democratic, society, how is it that we’re so secretive? I also highly recommend reading each link in full. The story is nebulous and ever changing, but one of the most significant of the year.

Much like the difference between Obama’s vacation time and Bush’s, it turns out that despite conservative whining and outright falsehoods, the Secret Service is protecting “significantly fewer” figures in the Obama administration.

Does the internet mean the “End of Forgetting?” The New York times had a great piece a few days ago. I’m still slogging through it, but it’s a burning cultural question we should start considering.

I’ve written on this before, but Kevin Drum at Mother Jones makes more salient points regarding the privacy of our credit scores. “I am proposing that we write a regulation prohibiting credit reporting agencies from releasing credit information to anyone not directly involved in extending credit.” For folks like me and millions of other Americans, our nasty credit scores will probably follow us beyond the grave. Debt is a prison, both virtual and in the flesh.

Post by Aaron Cynic