Author: miscellany101
Pedophilia-Even Jews Suffer From Its Curse
Over the last decade much has been made of pedophilia and how predominant it is in Islamic culture. Everyone from the last Prophet of God to Yassir Arafat has suffered the accusation that this deviant behavior is indicative of Islam. Catholicism too has been branded by pedophilia because of the many revelations some of its clergy have abused worshipers in this way. Under the title, ‘Protecting the pedophiles’, are we to assume with this latest revelation that Judaism, the oldest religion, is the progenitor of this way of life among the religions of the world?
For several weeks in April last year, the seven-year-old son of residents of the ultra-Orthodox Ramat Beit Shemesh neighborhood insisted on staying at home. “This was odd, because he always loved to go to school,” relates his mother. “All of a sudden he looked scared and tried to find excuses not to go.”
Then one day the boy suddenly told his elder brother: “The rabbi touched me.”
“The rabbi” is a teacher at the ultra-Orthodox Yishrei Lev school for boys, which the boy attended. “When his brother asked, ‘Where did he touch you?'” relates the father, “the boy pointed to his intimate parts.”
The parents, who immigrated to Israel from the United States about 10 years ago, are very active in the ultra-Orthodox “Anglo-Saxon” (English-speaking) community in Ramat Beit Shemesh. As soon as the incident became known they received phone calls from rabbis and community functionaries who tried to dissuade them from continuing to investigate, and pressure them to deal with the incident with the help of the Mishmeret Hatzniut modesty patrol from Mea She’arim in Jerusalem.
The parents, who initially submitted to the pressure, ultimately took courage and in August 2008 they filed a complaint with the police. From the questioning of the boy by the police it emerged that ostensibly innocent tickling descended into indecent acts every day during recess over a long period. Parallel to the investigation the parents turned to the school directors, and the teacher was fired. During the following months three other boys from the class also filed complaints against the rabbi with the police.
However, at the start of the current school year the suspect had no difficulty in finding another educational institution in Ramat Beit Shemesh, and has been teaching there ever since.
This week the Jerusalem District Attorney’s Office decided to close the case against the teacher for lack of evidence. The boy’s parents have appealed this decision. They complain that the case was dealt with in a flawed way after several investigators were replaced during the course of the investigation. Beit Shemesh police dismiss these claims.
Ever since the affair was revealed, the parents have been vulnerable and exposed to a community that is condemning them for having laundered their dirty linen in public, and especially for complaining to the authorities. Later on their names were made public, and rumors were circulated to the effect that it was one of their sons who molested his brother. The father of the family has had to leave his synagogue because of the alienating way he was treated by the congregation.
But the most resounding slap, according to the father, was felt by the family when the principal of the school to which their son, the victim of the abuse, had been accepted during the summer, informed them that he had decided to revoke his acceptance on the excuse that he would need treatment that the school did not have the capacity to offer. “I think they simply want to distance us because we are a family that makes problems,” says the father. “My son asked me, ‘Daddy, is it because of what happened?’ What answer could I give him?”
The storm around the Yishrei Lev story refuses to die down, especially as other affairs involving sexual abuse of children have surfaced lately. Four 10-year-olds from the ultra-Orthodox Bais Shalom institution for boys filed complaints with police this year against two rabbis on suspicion of physical and psychological abuse. In the course of the investigation it emerged that one of the teachers is also suspected of sexual molestation.
According to a source familiar with the details of the case, the rabbi would yell at the children that they are stupid and dolts, hit them on their sexual organs and twist their arms tightly.
According to Rabbi Tzvi Rabinsky, the director of the Toras Habayis educational institutions, of which Bais Shalom is one of three schools, the management is not obligated to report as long as the cases have not been proven to it. Also, because the investigation of the institution was carried out during vacation time and found that they are clean, there was no need to suspend the teachers.
According to Rabinsky and educational supervisor Rabbi Yosef Juliard, the complaints refer to the two best teachers at the school, and throughout the entire year during which the parents are claiming the teachers abused their children the directors heard only praise of the teachers from parents. Moreover, according to them, one of the families that filed complaints continued to send the complainant’s younger brother to study with the teacher who is suspected of abuse.
To support their claim regarding the teachers’ innocence, the directors showed a graphological test of one of the teachers in which he came out clear of any suspicion. They say they were prepared to see to all the necessary tests carried out by expert psychologists, but the parents of the children were not prepared to cooperate.
“We initially thought of going to the police, but we can’t spill innocent blood. And apart from that the parents of the other children pressed us not to fire the teachers,” said Yuliard and Rabinsky. According to them the parents’ accusations against the teachers derive from the fact that the teachers sent their children for diagnosis, and there are parents who feel pressured by this.
The second case involves a complaint to the police in December last year by parents concerning the suspicion that their 6-year-old daughter had been molested when she was three by an assistant nursery teacher who is still working at the kindergarten. At around that age the little girl stopped talking and her behavior became problematic. The parents took the girl for various treatments and, as a result, two years later she began to function again normally.
According to the mother, only this year her daughter spontaneously related that the assistant used to strip her naked, tie her up and ask her to touch her body in different ways. “The child had never seen people behaving in a sexual way,” says the father, with tears in his eyes. “How could she have imagined all those details?”
In the meantime the case has been closed for lack of evidence because the girl did not cooperate with the investigation. About a year ago, when the suspicion of another case arose and the parents demanded that the institution take action, the kindergarten employee was suspended, but she has since returned to work.
In Ramat Beit Shemesh, the population consists mostly of ultra-Orthodox Jews from abroad, who are considered more open than the Israeli-born ultra-Orthodox. Most of them work and therefore are more connected to the world around them. However, as new immigrants they are prisoners in the hands of the rabbinical establishment that is the captive of the most extreme Israeli ultra-Orthodoxy. The parents’ reporting to the police in the three cases has been interpreted by the rabbis and school directors as traitorous to the community.
In all the cases, the children’s departure from the schools stirred up a storm. The parents have been cold-shouldered by neighbors and friends, and have had to stop worshiping at their synagogues. As a result of the demands to retract their complaints they are feeling threatened. One family has even left Israel but is continuing to cooperate with police investigators.
“Instead of looking inward in an attempt to understand how Ramat Beit Shemesh has become a city of refuge for pedophiles and how to stop the plague, they are thinking about how to silence us,” said one parent whose child fell victim to sexual abuse.
“There is denial here by an entire community,” says Helise Pollack, a former welfare officer from Ramat Beit Shemesh and an expert on children who have experienced sexual abuse, who is treating some of the children. “They simply don’t believe the complainants. The people suspected of sexual abuse do not look like monsters. These are people who have families, regular people. They make an excellent impression on their surroundings. What happens is that the victim’s family is put on trial.”
However, if thus far the community’s attitude toward those who decided to complain to the police has been one of condemnation, only now, in the wake of the additional cases, are voices beginning to be heard calling for protest against the silencing of the incidents at the price of exposing children to risk of abuse. Recently fear of the “plague of sexual abuse,” as people in the community are defining it, has led to some urgent assemblies of parents to discuss the problem.
About three weeks ago parents whose children are enrolled at the educational institution where the assistant is working convened to discuss what steps to take following a rumor that there has been another complaint against her. A week later, about 15 women met in a private home to hear Pollack and get her advice. “People in Ramat Beit Shemesh are taking the law into their hands,” Pollack said. According to her, “Pedophilia is an addiction. Pedophiles must not be around children.”
Pollack told the women that if the school does not fire the teacher, they must withdraw their children from the school in order to protect them. Her familiarity with the welfare system, the fact that she is religious and not ultra-Orthodox and the fact that she is Anglo-Saxon in origin have made her the address to which the parents are turning. The women were raised in a society where problematic topics like abuse are not discussed, and as mothers they are now going through a process of opening their eyes and mouths in order to warn their children.
“In ultra-Orthodox society the child’s voice is not heard. They prefer to be considerate of the adult,” said one mother.
The women confessed to Pollack their bad feeling about the beatings in heder (traditional school for young boys) as a matter of routine – a rabbi who crudely pushes a child’s face into the Pentateuch on the table, another rabbi who cruelly twists ears – and said that this reality has to stop.
“Write about us compassionately,” one of the women requested after the meeting. “I love this community. ”
At another meeting held this month on the issue of sexual abuse, attended by nearly 100 people, the lecturer, a volunteer from the hotline on sexual abuse issues for religious women and girls, apologized for talking about immodest things. “I didn’t understand why she was apologizing the whole time,” complained one woman. “I got up and said, ‘We’re talking about child abuse. What does that have to do with modesty?'”
The speaker, D., is the mother of children who studied at an institution where sexual abuse took place. Ever since the abuse affairs became known, she has been acting unremitingly to fight the community’s terrible silence. “They are saying that to blame the teachers is murder,” she says, “and talking about how rabbinical law prohibits harming their livelihood. But against that, what about the danger of the harm to children? I am asking how it is possible to keep someone who is suspected of abuse at a school with little children.”
During the past year 10 families applied to the welfare office in Ramat Beit Shemesh and the National Council for the Child concerning such issues. According to the NCC’s director, Dr. Yitzhak Kadman, this represents an increase in the rate of applicants from that neighborhood. However, according to Kadman and Pollack, in Ramat Beit Shemesh a kind of social chaos prevails. “Beit Shemesh has grown at dramatic rates but the welfare office has not been given extra manpower slots. There aren’t enough social workers and welfare officers,” says Kadman. “Among other things a population has arrived here that is closed and extremist, and requires complex treatment.”
The prosecution did not bother to inform the complainants in the Yishrei Lev case that it had been closed, because of a malfunction. This fact added to the parents’ overall feeling that they are being punished for reporting the abuse. “If in this particular community, someone who gathers up the courage and complains doesn’t get the fastest and best treatment, he will retreat and the whole community will get the message that it is not a good idea to report,” says Kadman. “We mustn’t miss this window of opportunity.”
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Part 1
Part 2
The Case Against Religion in America
It’s ironic finding myself writing this article against religion in the US on an early Sunday, but perhaps there is no better time to discuss the effect religion, and especially Christianity, has on the American conscience. I generally thought religion had a positive role to play in the lives of its worshippers until recently when I ran across this survey that suggests six in ten American Protestants consider torture, an illegal activity condemned by the United States under the Reagan and Bush/Clinton administrations, often or sometimes justified! How did the religion of peace, a derisive term reserved for Islam, get to this point in a democracy which supposedly follows the rule of law? Had any other religion’s adherents so overwhelmingly advocated breaking American and international law there would be a tremendous shout to get rid of such people from the shores of America, send them back to ‘where they came from’, in whatever way necessary in order to return us to the God fearing, peace loving and law abiding nation we all know we are; yet the faith that holds the majority of followers in this country, also holds the most number of people who think torture is ok.
I don’t think religion is responsible for that fact, although one could possibly point to scripture to substantiate the assertion Christianity is a violent religion, or to historical events wherein Christian inspired leaders of this country and others were responsible for the wholesale plunder and murder of entire civilizations; Vietnam comes to mind in my lifetime. Most likely scripture and history are not things which people drew on to support their belief in the necessity for torture in modern day America, but that still does not scratch the itch I have to the question why is Christianity so wrapped up in activity that we were told was the sole endeavor of our pagan or Islamic enemy? Perhaps because like so much else that takes place on the world’s stage, the victor usually re-writes history to support negative notions of the vanquished and our modern day, 20-21st century crusade against Islam has made it possible for us to do that, starting with the conquest of Palestine and upto the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
There is however another contributing factor to our belief and/or support for terrorism and that is our increased militarism. It appears our belief in our own military superiority makes us more susceptible to notions of torture than countries not as aggressive as we. We rank with Egypt, South Korea, Nigeria, Turkey, and India as a country that believes some degree of torture should be allowed, whereas the historical base of America, old Europe and those countries we denigrated because of their reticience to embrace our last Iraq adventure, most notably France, Spain and Britain, are less inclined to support torture. The totalitarian regimes of Russia and China have less people who support torture than America as does Iran a country under threat of military action from America or its allies. Does that mean in order to get better, i.e. eschew the idea of torture, we’ll have to get worse first and turn into repressive regimes which have no regard for human rights or the rule of law?
One could look at this in another way, absent the religious/military inference. Despite all the electronic gadgets we own, and I count myself up there among the techno geeks, and all the access we have to various information sources we still are quite backwards in our thinking, and oppressive in our policy making. The enlightenment we claim to possess, the exceptionalism we assert is ours is accepted only by third world countries which equally oppress their citizens or have in place draconian laws which are based on class and ethnicity. We are now wallowing around in the mud they have mixed with the sweat of their citizens and we are no better than they. The very reasons we have given for invading countries, their repressiveness towards their own citizens or the threat they pose to their neighbors has now become a staple which we readily accept as a part of our diet. There are no moral compasses to redirect our wayward ship from the disastrous course it has set for itself into oblivion. Instead what we have are lighthouses of mass media which are shining beacons of darkness that lead an America towards notions that are perfectly ok with torture, even among the religiously minded followers of the Prince of Peace. Perhaps instead of his followers we have become his torturers; after all he is said to have died at the hands of an over zealous state intent on destroying the message he brought. That is the greatest irony; a Christian population which has forsaken its founder and instead identified with his enemies. America, you have lost your way.
Right Wing Hate
I have been watching and listening with a certain amount of detachment the vitriol aimed at President Obama’s health care proposals because it is nothing more than racism that’s fueling the debate and I really want to stay above that base animal instinct. The “right” has a habit of pulling the body politic down into the moral abyss of racism and xenophobia, the two ingredients which also were responsible for the phony war on terror which was led by some of the same cheerleaders and talking heads that are spearheading the anti-health care rhetoric now heard in hallowed halls. Some of the talking heads are so deep in their moral depravity that some of the other right wing groups are saying “enough”!! I really don’t want to deal with the talking head media types that have spoiled our political landscape….I don’t think they’re worth the bandwidth and some of their supporters are so rabid there’s no amount of convincing in any language that’ll get them to reconsider their positions.
I was cruising through my regular reading one morning and ran across the comment section of a story entitled, ‘Obama’s Life at risk in health care battle’ and one comment caught my eye and sums up to me what has gone on in this country the last eight years. The author nails it, so kudos to ‘trippin’ the author of what appears below. Well done!
A 21st Century Fairy Tale
Once upon a time there was a prosperous and moral nation. Their citizens were the envy of the world.
Their rulers became corrupted. They robbed the population in the interest of their political allies, to the point that the once-prosperous nation was now destitute.
Those corrupt political leaders justified their actions by convincing themselves that God hand picked them as leaders, so they were above respecting the moral codes they demanded the citizens abide.
These political figures propagandized the people with easily disprovable lies, but the populace chose not to question. They stoked the flames of discontent at their humiliating fall from grace to whip a jingoistic populace into a frenzy of irrational support for policies that continued to undermine their own interests.
They invaded other nations that were no threat to them, under the guise of self-defense. They used torture designed to elicit false confessions to justify their illegal war. They ginned up stories of imaginary threats to national security, and used them to conduct surveillance on the citizenry. They leveraged the destruction of a prominent building as part of the rationale.
Their military leaders were infused with the arrogance that they were ordained by God. Some interpreted their mission to exterminate all the peoples of a certain religion, a sentiment shared by many of the people who were ignorant of cultures other than their own.
They pitted citizens against each other by spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Those that sought diplomacy were labeled appeasers, those who disagreed, traitors. Violence and mob rule strong armed people into compliance. Bands of thugs shouted down political opponents, and used intimidation to overturn the will of the majority as expressed in elections.
People were shot in churches, police were killed based on rumors propagandized by the media, gay businesses and government buildings were bombed, and even physicians were assassinated.
Citizens of conscience saw the signs early enough to do something, but because it was politically incorrect to draw parallels with past atrocities, they chose to avert their eyes until the entire nation was gripped in fascist totalitarianism. Soon, it was too late.
Name that country.
Trippin’ you get an ‘atta boy’. Well said!
Obama Continues to disappoint
President Obama has many issues but the ones dealing with his approach to the phony war on terror, torture and armed conflicts that he is escalating continue to baffle and upset me. Now he has petitioned the US Supreme Court to suppress release of pictures taken at Abu Ghraib which show torture and prisoner abuse. I understand why he doesn’t want them released; it would force his hand to prosecute those who would be clearly shown violating every conceivable law in the books, our books as well as international treaties we’ve sworn to uphold and protect. However, he can’t give that as a reason for asking they not to be released so instead he chose this:
“there are nearly 200,000 Americans who are serving in harm’s way, and I have a solemn responsibility for their safety as Commander-in-Chief. It is my judgment … that releasing these photos would inflame anti-American opinion and allow our enemies to paint United States troops with a broad, damning and inaccurate brush, thereby endangering them in theaters of war.”
Obama was forced to petition the high court after a lower court ruled the photos should be released ignoring the pleas by some in government that their release would imperil US personnel. The courts have sided with those who cite the Freedom of Information Act which they say requires, or mandates the release of such pictures.
Obama’s petition to block the release is an about face from his earlier position where he called for their release. He has decided to escalate US involvement in Afghanistan and is using that escalation as an excuse for keeping the pictures locked up but he goes on to say with a straight face, ‘Any abuse of detainees is unacceptable. It is against our values. It endangers our security. It will not be tolerated.’
If abuse won’t be tolerated Mr. President, prosecute to the fullest extent of the law those who carried it out as well as those who ordered it. I assert the photos should imperil the freedom and liberty of those who are engaged in the abuse chronicled therein or who were responsible for it. If he is worried about inflaming anti-American opinion, correct those anti-American notions by restoring the rule of law and showing the world we apply that law equally to all even when it hits close to home and involves members of American government. If he’s worried about negative opinions of American foreign policy he should curtail America’s wars of aggression and remove American troops from foreign lands that pose no direct threat to American personnel or American interests. He should return them to America and de-escalate American forces that have been used as advance teams for US corporations to set up permanent bases and expand global markets at the expense of US resources. These theaters of war are ones he has chosen to engage in when the survival or prosperity of our Republic is not at stake. The greatest danger to our military is their deployment to these areas by the very government that wants to protect them by infringing on the rights of the society they are fighting to protect. People who claim that photos showing abuse and or torture of prisoners under American control should be released should also proclaim those who are responsible for their ugly content must be brought to justice. If the Supreme Court rules against the Obama petition most likely he will used the powers of the unitary executive, finely tuned by the Bush administration, to block the release of the pictures. Just one more example of ‘the more things change, the more they remain the same’.
The Princes of Darkness
Much has been said on the pages of Miscellany101 about the war on Iraq, the devastation it caused the Iraqi society in general, at the behest of George Bush and his minions of terror. It appears Bush considered himself acting as the Hand of God in carrying out his murderous, torturous regime against a people who posed no threat to ANYONE, and yet were the victims of a military invasion which was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, as well as the displacement of hundreds of thousands more from their homes.
Bush, who turns 63 in July and was 54 when first sworn into office in 2001, has yet to comment on the reports, which include last week’s GQ magazine expose into the hawkish use of scripture in 2003, when then-defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld forwarded secret intelligence memos to Bush embroidered with biblical passages.
“Therefore, put on the full armour of God,” a verse from Ephesians, and “Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter,” from Isaiah, are among the messages that adorn reports prepared for Bush by Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, juxtaposed with photographs of U.S. forces storming Baghdad.
Stranger still are new accounts emerging from France describing how former president Jacques Chirac was utterly baffled by a 2003 telephone conversation in which Bush reportedly invoked fanatical Old Testament prophesy — including the Earth-ending battle with forces of evil, Gog and Magog — in his arguments to enlist France in the Coalition of the Willing.
“This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins,” Bush said to Chirac, according to Thomas Romer, a University of Lausanne theology professor who was later approached by French officials anxious to understand the context of the biblical reference.
Such ignominy has earned Bush the title of the Prince of Darkness, and this illegal and immoral foray into Iraq must never be forgotten by upstanding citizens of the world who believe in law, order and justice.
Unfortunatelyl Bush is not alone in sharing the nom de plume of Darkness with the latest update about one Erik Prince, CEO of what was once known as Blackwater. Earlier we chronicled the latest charges against him which include his religiouisly inspired desire to rid the world of Muslims by unleashing his mercenary force against the people of Iraq. Now comes word he was engaged in a child prostitution ring on his bases in Iraq.
Blackwater was guilty of using child prostitutes at its compound in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone and that owner Erik Prince knew of this activity and did nothing to stop it.The declarations describe Blackwater as “having young girls provide oral sex to Enterprise members in the ‘Blackwater Man Camp’ in exchange for one American dollar.” They add even though Prince frequently visited this camp, he “failed to stop the ongoing use of prostitutes, including child prostitutes, by his men.”
One of the statements also charges that “Prince’s North Carolina operations had an ongoing wife-swapping and sex ring, which was participated in by many of Mr. Prince’s top executives.”
The irony of all this is religiously inspired behavior on the part of US officials resulted in immoral behavior on the part of those who answered the plea something the US has said its terrorists opponents have been guilty and which started the war on terror. Perhaps we ought to have a war on terror against the people who claimed to be fighting a war on terror. Let us begin at the top, shall we?
Europe’s Hitler Moment Relived
The Europeans are getting all uptight about the Muslim presence on their soil and are reacting pretty much like they did during the middle of the 20th century with their racist diatribe against Jews.
Britain and the rest of the European Union are ignoring a demographic time bomb: a recent rush into the EU by migrants, including millions of Muslims, will change the continent beyond recognition over the next two decades, and almost no policy-makers are talking about it.
The numbers are startling. Only 3.2 per cent of Spain’s population was foreign-born in 1998. In 2007 it was 13.4 per cent. Europe’s Muslim population has more than doubled in the past 30 years and will have doubled again by 2015. In Brussels, the top seven baby boys’ names recently were Mohamed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine and Hamza.
As is with so much else about racial histrionics, a lot of what is being bandied about in Europe is untrue, unproven, distorted, etc. You can find a pretty comprehensive debunking of the “claims” of the racists here. One should pay particular attention to parties and party hacks who spout this racist nonsense and work hard through the electoral process to prevent the prevalence of such notions to influence government policy. Stay tuned for similar garbage to infest America’s shores.
The Iranians pull a fast one
Iran has gone on record to say anti-government protestors were tortured by officials of the government who have since been disciplined. In clear unambiguous language, the Iranians said, ‘ “mistakes” had led to a few “painful accidents which cannot be defended, and those who were involved should be punished.” Throwing the ball in the American court for a demonstration of government accountability can only leave Americans playing hot potato. What can American officials say to the Iranian government’s announcement? Bad Iranians? Ours is still a government that CANNOT conclude whether torture was even done by members of the Bush government let alone decide on a form of punishment for torturers. In fact, the case of Iranians torturing other Iranians who were threatening, or demonstrating depending on which side of the fence you’re sitting, is more legitimate in the rationalizing/legitimizing of torture in that it was done against those who directly affected the Iranian social order as opposed to Americans who tortured and or rendered non Americans on foreign soil who posed no direct threat to Americans or American interests. I note that in the article linked above there is no reference to America’s response to the declaration from Iran. In effect the Iranians have muted America’s response to Iranian excesses after their disputed elections by outdoing the Americans in the rule of law department. We’re left struggling for clear leadership for even clearer situations where criminal behavior has occurred and needs to be punished.
The New Crusades-Christian Mercenaries’ war on Islam
Blackwater founder and Christian mercenary/missionary Erik Prince is in the news again for allegations he sent people to kill Muslim Iraqis under the sponsorship of the US State Department. Inflammatory but you can read the story here.
A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.”
Now even if you believe in the phony war on terror, you have been told several times it had nothing to do with Iraqis; rather we were going there for the purposes of removing a ruler we didn’t like but who we knew all along had nothing to do with 911. Blackwater became Dick Cheney’s praetorian guard, initially to guard his interests, Halliburton, there in Iraq and ostensibly to do Cheney’s demented bidding which included political assassinations the world over. As if the torture issue isn’t reason enough for federal authorities to look into prosecuting Cheney, this latest revelation about Blackwater and the nefarious dealings of its president, Prince, should be the nail in the coffin for Cheney and many other former Bush officials’ incarceration. However, because of Blackwaters’ close ties with federal government officials, many of them career employees who remain when administrations leave and who have a direct impact on policy no matter who’s in charge, don’t look for the investigation into Blackwater malfeasance to go too far, unless the public demands it. Meanwhile, Blackwater and the US government will continue to get away with murder, and earn the scorn of the rest of the world.
Expected to lie or coverup
It’s said Muslims, when asked questions about their activities, are expected to lie and/or coverup their involvement in anything illegal. I don’t know about that, but it does seem that’s what some who enlist in the Israeli Defense Force are expected to do when asked about their abuse of Palestinians.
Far-right activists distributed fliers to fresh draftees at the Israel Defense Forces induction center in Tel Hashomer on Tuesday urging them not to confide in their commanders and to refrain from cooperating with investigators if they physically abuse Palestinians in the territories.
The notice was intended for enlistees into the Kfir infantry brigade, most of whose operations take place in the territories.
It cites the case of First Lieutenant Adam Malul, an officer in the Kfir brigade who is standing trial for beating a Palestinian. In addition, the pamphlet mentions the Kfir brigade commander, Colonel Itai Virov, who was censured for making statements which justified the use of violence against unarmed Palestinians in certain instances.
The brochure stated that these two incidents were cases in which “foreign considerations were involved in the system’s chain of command.”
The bottom of the notice is signed by “students of Rabbi Ginzburg” – a reference to Yitzhak Ginzburg, who is viewed as a leader of extremist settlers in the West Bank. Ginzburg is the author of “Baruch the Man,” a book honoring Baruch Goldstein, the settler who massacred Palestinians at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.
The two examples mentioned in the article only saw the light of day because non-Israelis pressed for the prosecution of the offending parties, otherwise, the implication goes, nothing would have happened to them and the brutality of the Israelis towards the Palestinians under their control would continue unabated. With regard to the latter, of that you can be sure.
Your Tax Dollars hard at work for……….Oil Speculators
Americans are a very tolerant people except when it comes to matters of race and ethnicity, then we become rabid, vociferous, mean, hateful and we tend to get in one another’s face. I wish we would get in the face of people who exploit EVERYBODY by using American bodies and their money for personal enrichment. So this story of an oil speculator who, it could be reasonably argued, was responsible for the high gas prices we experienced last year, should make everyone hoping mad when it’s revealed his tactics resulted in him possibly getting a $100 million bonus from a bank that received US taxpayer bail out funds!! Where are the burning effigies of this Andrew Hall from the lamp posts in front of every town hall; or the demonstrations in front of the corporate offices of Citigroup which received $45 billion dollars of our money because of bad business practices which then turns around and gives $100 million of it away to reward someone else for……..you got it, bad business practices. Sure, it’ll be said Hall helped his company profit and so what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, i.e. the American public, but you could make the same argument that Citigroup has profited too by staying solvent at our expense….literally, with taxpayer money which they don’t deserve.
The issue for me becomes what is the breaking point for American tolerance? Is it whether the President of the United States was really born in Hawaii, who lied in the Gates arrest, health care, the war in Afghanistan, or the theft of America’s wealth by the rich and greedy? It’s really a no brainer! American wealth was robbed by first the “military industrial complex” under George Bush and later by financial institutions under Barack Obama, and we’re just in the first six months or so of his administration! Yet, everyday people go to work to earn their living and support their families, their money is stolen out from underneath them by a government which takes from the poor and well to do and gives it to the rich and militant. Wherever Osama bin Laden is, he must be rolling over with laughter at our priorities. It’s too bad we don’t see the irony in all of this nor apparently feel any outrage about it all. I guffawed at the crocodile tears shed by the NYT which tries to make it seem as if the financial institutions have a dilemma when it comes to finding good high priced talent that can steer these businesses in the shark infested waters of capitalism and if these $100 million bonused executives aren’t around to navigate the treachery then all is lost and we should abandon ship. Corporate entities, like government are far too condescending towards the people they are supposed to serve when they assume the policies and/or the news they report are necessary to help a public unable to care for itself. That attitude alone is worth the indignation of the Public.
The Last Word- Gates, Crowley and Police
I am going to let this be the last post on the unfortunate circumstances surrounding the Henry L. Gates confrontation with Cambridge Police, by saying Crowley lied in his police report using the inflammatory assertion he was sent to the house to look for two black men carrying back packs, using all the frightful imagery he could to justify his illegal arrest of Gates. Police officers are not accustomed to people who assert their rights; they prefer people who are cooperative or acquiesce to the abuse which comes with the power of yielding a badge and a gun. Someone in the comments sections of another post here at Miscellany101. com asked why didn’t the black officer present for Gates’ arrest “represent”, and the answer quite simply is because that black officer sees himself in much the same way as the white officer, who thinks civilians are always suspect no matter who they are or what they have or have not done. I would hazard a guess that there are very few if any officers on the Cambridge police who would go out on a limb and say what Crowley did was wrong because it would literally be professional suicide. Their lives depend on whether they have the support of one another, either during encounters with civilians or procedurally, doing paper work that makes false assertions like being called to a home break-in looking for two black men. An officer like Crowley can have a very successful career with such sloppy police work because he has had the help or the backing of other officers who covered up his abuse. Unfortunately, such attitude is more common than we may think.
Have you seen the latest about a Boston Police officer who referred to Gates as a “banana eating jungle monkey”? Obviously you can have any opinion you want of someone, but doing so without expecting any reaction is the height of chutzpah. Indeed in his missive regarding Gates, officer Justin Barrett claims he would pepper spray Gates for a verbal barrage he, Barrett, himself makes without fear of reprisal. This is the problem with the police; they demand a deferential attitude from civilians who risk the wrath of the State by way of brutality or arrest if such deference is not forthcoming to the satisfaction of police. So this is what Barrett says,
his (Gates) first priority of effort should be go get off the phone and comply with police, for if I was the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey I would have sprayed him in the face with OC deserving of his belligerent non-compliance.
It’s clear from this quote Barrett doesn’t understand his role as a law officer in relation to the public; instead he places himself the arbiter of the law who exacts punishment as he sees fit. Barrett was also a member of the National Guard and a veteran and those roles played a part in shaping his attitudes towards members of the public. While it is not a very intelligent thing to do, writing a media outlet with such overt language, it’s equally not smart to allow yourself to be identified as a member of the police department where you live and the Boston Police department has reacted swiftly, as did Barrett’s National Guard unit, both suspending him pending administrative review. Good; perhaps Barrett doesn’t need to be in a position where he has to interact with a public he thinks “owes” him and not the law compliance. However, even if Barrett was not exposed to the public officially he still has issues which make him an anachronism in today’s world. His letter is directed towards a Boston Globe writer who he calls a “fool” and an “infidel”. Earlier in the same letter he rhetorically asks if that same writer is still in the 5th grade in Catholic school. Does that mean Barrett thinks Catholics are infidels or is the “infidel” remark a throwback to the days when he was serving in the military fighting the war on terror and infidels the world over? Barrett’s world, and I think he has found a home among police officers in the Boston police department, is an encapsulated world where everyone on the inside is good, an “us” and everyone on the outside is bad, evil, against us, and there are no limits to fighting these against us elements who are fools, banana-eating jungle monkeys and infidels.
Our leaders led this charge back so many years ago…….2001 to be precise and they used the same kind of language as Barrett with no consequences for it. In fact they may still enjoy a public following and there’s no reason to believe a cadre of supporters like Barrett and fellow law enforcement officers who emulate the “attitude” and language of those leaders in the past don’t think they are similarly entitled to do and say the same things AND get away with it! I was also struck by his xenophobia, towards women, apparent with his remark how the writer should stay home and make him breakfast on Sunday mornings. While such comments are harmless they show a callous regard to people he doesn’t know, and it is this type of person, an unknown, a stranger who Barrett would most likely would come in contact with as a police officer. Would he be as callous in discharging his duties towards such a person, like Gates? Most likely.
Finally Barrett sees nothing wrong with what he wrote; indeed he says that he’s not a racist and most likely believes that. In an apology he made in response to the aforementioned letter, Barrett again claims he’s no racist and that he treats everyone with respect. What’s chilling about that is a similar pronouncement was made about Sgt. James Crowley, that he’s not racist and he teaches others about racial profiling in the police department and this total disconnect from reality, on the one hand one can spew the most specifically targeted racist infective yet claim he/it is not racist is what is surreal about the entire Gates-Crowley-Barrett-police force episode. Just because you teach racial profiling to a department of like minded people doesn’t make you immune from the affliction, and likewise, the mere announcement one is not a racist doesn’t mean it’s so, or that you can’t be a bad public servant who shouldn’t be turned loose on the public.
Hijab allowed in Georgia Courtrooms
Any form of religious expression which is incontrovertibly linked to a religion should be classified as free speech in America and therefore the bearer or wearer should be allowed to go wherever need be. It was disgraceful for personnel in a Georgia court room to cite a Muslim woman for contempt of court and sentence her to 10 days in prison for the “offense” of wearing her religiously mandated scarf to court. She wasn’t scheduled to testify, she wasn’t a defendant or lawyer in court, she was merely accompanying a relative and was met at the door with the State’s infringement on her right to freedom of religion. That has now changed, for the Muslim citizens of Georgia.
Georgia courtrooms will allow religious headgear after last year’s arrest of a Muslim woman who refused to remove her headscarf in a west Georgia courthouse.The Judicial Council of Georgia voted unanimously this week to allow religious and medical headgear into Georgia courtrooms. It also allows a person to request a private inspection if a security officer wants to conduct a search.
“If this had been a nun, no one would have required her to remove her habit,” said Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Carol Hunstein, who heads the Judicial Council. “I think this is a good rule, and I think it’s clear.”
The policy shift stems from the December 2008 arrest of Lisa Valentine, who was ordered to serve 10 days in jail for contempt of court after she refused to remove her hijab at a courtroom in Douglasville, a town of about 20,000 people west of Atlanta. She was released in less than a day.
Muslim rights activists were infuriated by the incident, pressing the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the incident and organizing a protest. The city also said its employees would take sensitivity training classes.
City officials at the time said they were trying to follow courtroom rules that restricted headgear, but the city said the officer who detained Valentine should have sought a solution that “would preserve the spirit of the law.”
Valentine, who did not immediately return phone messages Friday, said she was accompanying her nephew to a hearing when officials stopped her at the metal detector and told her she couldn’t enter the courtroom with the headscarf, known as a hijab.
She said she was stopped by officers when she objected and turned to leave, and that she was later brought before a municipal court judge who ordered her held for contempt of court.
City officials did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment, but Douglasville Police Chief Joe Whisenant characterized the incident at the time as a miscommunication.
The police department said in a news release that Valentine was found in contempt for fighting with one of the officers, not for wearing a scarf. The city said she was released after it was determined there had not been a fight.
Muslims are just as much a part of the American fabric as any other ethnic group and their rights as citizens cannot and should not be abridged because of personal dislikes or community wide prejudices. Personal likes and dislikes have no place in determining what is legal and illegal. The Constitution, and particularly the 1st amendment says in clear language that the legislative body of this Republic cannot make any law prohibiting the free exercise of any religion. In this regard we are different and better than our European cousins who bend the rules to satisfy contemporary societal mores usually directed towards those they deem distasteful. Whether we like it or not, we have become a pluralistic society that is home to people of faiths, colors, creeds that span the entire breath of human existence; we must live under this umbrella of law that has been developed throughout the lifetime of America, sometimes carefully and deliberately, and at other times impulsively yet judiciously. To do otherwise would make us criminals before the law and before our Creator.
More of the same
WIFE OF NC TERRORISM SUSPECT DESCRIBES ELABORATE POLICE RUSE
The wife of Daniel Boyd, accused of being a terrorist ringleader, said Tuesday that her husband and two sons are “completely innocent” of charges that they plotted to kill themselves and others in the name of Islam.
Meeting at a restaurant in Garner on Tuesday afternoon, Sabrina Boyd sat covered head to toe in traditional Muslim garb, only her brown almond eyes visible. She and her husband, who years ago had military training in Afghanistan and fought with Muslim rebels against the Soviets, were committed to living pure and honest lives, she said. They believed in helping their neighbors and they attempted, on occasion, to help the children of immigrant Muslims hold their faith while growing up amid the pressures of American culture.
“My husband was not plotting,” Boyd said. “It’s premature for everyone to jump on the guilty bandwagon.”
Leaders of the Muslim American Society’s Raleigh branch made a similar point earlier in the day at a news conference held to urge the media not to convict the men before they’ve had a trial.
But Boyd, a 41-year-old mother of five and U.S.-born convert to Islam, reserved her sharpest comments for what she called a cruel trap that law enforcement authorities set up to get her out of her house Monday while agents scoured it for documents after the arrest of her husband, two sons and four other men.
Boyd, whose family lives in the Johnston County community of Willow Spring, described a harrowing experience Monday afternoon when she answered the door to find a man she thought was a family friend wearing a shirt that appeared to be bloodied. He told her that Daniel and their three sons, Dylan, Noah and Zakariya, were in a serious car crash. He asked her to get into a Highway Patrol cruiser that would take her to Duke Hospital, where they were being treated.
Boyd summoned her daughter and pregnant daughter-in-law. They wrapped their heads in scarves, grabbed their Qurans and flew out the door. For Boyd, it was a particularly painful experience. Her 16-year-old son, Luqman, died in a car crash near their home in 2007.
When they arrived at Duke Hospital, the cruiser took them to a construction site at the rear of the facility. A man dressed as a doctor came out and asked whether she was the wife. When she said yes, he extended his hand. She told him she does not shake men’s hands. He then grabbed her wrist and handcuffed her.
“I’m not a doctor. I’m an agent and your family is not in the hospital,” he told her. “You’re being detained, and you need to cooperate with us.”
Boyd estimates she was then surrounded by 30 agents who frisked her and asked whether she had weapons or weapons of mass destruction.
They drove her in a car, separate from her daughter and daughter-in-law, to the Johnston County’s Sheriff’s Department, where she picked up Noah, 15, who was not arrested.
“That was an awful dirty trick,” Boyd said she told the agents. “You guys pulled a horrific lie on me and on my daughters. You know we’ve been through this before.”
U.S. District Attorney George E. B. Holding declined to respond to Boyd’s version. “I am sticking to the four corners of the indictment. We try our cases in court and won’t go back and forth before then,” he said Tuesday.
Trips called pilgrimages
Boyd said the many trips the family made abroad, especially to Jerusalem, were pilgrimages to give her sons an exposure to the Arabic language and a chance to experience the daily rhythms of life in predominantly Muslim communities.
“The point of a pilgrimage is to see the Al-Aksa mosque, the Dome of the Rock, to hear the call to prayer and to make a prayer,” she said.
Boyd said her husband and sons attempted to make two trips to Israel. Daniel and Noah were admitted in 2006. One year later, when her husband wanted to take Zakariya to Jerusalem to help him cope with his brother’s death, the two were denied entry at the airport in Tel Aviv. After being detained for two days, they were flown to France.
As to charges her family stockpiled military-style weapons, Boyd said her family enjoyed hunting and shooting. “They exercise their constitutional right to bear arms,” she said.
The Race Card-Again, from Main Stream Media
There was a rally in Jerusalem against Obama’s policies towards our petulant ally, in which he was called a racist. Big deal. Israelis are upset at what they think is a slight by the President against their occupation of Palestinian land and have resorted to playing the race card and it’s a much improved choice of words than those on display here. Check out the vitriol levelled at the President of the United States. The link provided is the only place you can find this video on the web today. So much for free speech.
Who Played the Race Card in the Gates’ Arrest?
The media, that’s who and with the insertion of the word black men, the media played us the public. It was able to inflame American passions about a subject we’re known to want to avoid, and embroil the Obama presidency at a time when it needs public support for issues like health care and Afghanistan. Turns out the word “black” men was NOT used by the caller who placed the 911 call. In fact when she was asked if the people she saw were black she said she wasn’t sure, so how did this description get inserted into media accounts?? Anyone?
One other interesting point I noticed about what was heard from the released police tapes is Sgt. Crowley asks the dispatch to send someone from Harvard’s police. Why? Gates supposedly supplied both his state’s driver’s license as well as his university identification; did Crowley not accept them, were they not good enough, were they suspect, would he only accept the word of a fellow police officer? Perhaps this was the cause of Gates’ ire; having done everything he was asked to do, i.e. give identification and then some, it still was not good enough for Crowley to stop what at some point must have been considered harassment by Gates.
The media gets knocked around a lot, and this time, it’s deserved. If anyone thinks media doesn’t have an agenda, think again. By touching on a hot button topic, race, the media was able to portray all in a way they determined and at a time and place of their choosing. That said, this wasn’t an issue of bad policing, as I think it was, but rather a racial issue, which the media made. One solution to that is to forsake organized, main stream, corporate media and turn to citizenship media. It has some of the same risks, but it provides you more choices and I am a believer people are their best police, leaders, politicians, defenders, doctors, owners of companies. Try it.
Identifying with the struggle of the people of Gaza
I don’t know why it took so long for this story to come to light, but better late than never, and although I’m not a fan of Alice Walker I admire her integrity for identifying with the struggle of people who are as oppressed as some of the people of Walker’s novels. Now there are two African American women who have put their lives on the line by defying Israeli authority and going to Gaza to see first hand what it’s like there; the other being Cynthia McKinney. Where are African-American males on this issue or any other American male for that matter? You can read what Walker had to say here, at DesertPeace. Hat tip to them. Check out an interview with Walker while in Gaza below.
Islamic Law in the UK
The Islamophobes were up in arms when this issue began to receive the press it has, but here’s what they didn’t tell you.
Increasing numbers of non-Muslims are turning to Sharia courts to resolve commercial disputes and other civil matters, The Times has learnt.
The Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT) said that 5 per cent of its cases involved non-Muslims who were using the courts because they were less cumbersome and more informal than the English legal system.
Freed Chedie, a spokesman for Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siqqiqi, a barrister who set up the tribunal, said: “We put weight on oral agreements, whereas the British courts do not.”
In a case last month a non-Muslim Briton took his Muslim business partner to the tribunal to sort out a dispute over the profits in their car fleet company. “The non-Muslim claimed that there had been an oral agreement between the pair,” said Mr Chedie. “The tribunal found that because of certain things the Muslim man did, that agreement had existed. The non-Muslim was awarded £48,000.”
Imagine that, a non Muslim going before a Muslim court system in the UK and actually winning!?!? We don’t know the percentage of cases where non Muslims prevailed against Muslims in Sharia court and is it really important to know? What counts is it’s a voluntary process that is similar to other tribunals at work in the UK judicial system and it’s only binding if both parties agree and sign BEFORE their case is heard. So what’s so extraordinary about this development in the UK? Nothing at all.
Sage Advice
In light of all the controversy surrounding the Henry L. Gates arrest, I offer this advice to him and anyone else who may have to deal with the police. Don’t say a word, unless you are in the presence of your lawyer.
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