Pioneering historian John Hope Franklin dies at 94
His book was required reading for me as a freshman in college so many years ago. Years later as an old man myself, I ran across him in the aisle of the local supermarket in Durham, NC and was impressed by his quick and friendly smile. I hope humanity can find a suitable replacement for him to live among us.
We should all be used to the notion that differences of opinion, no matter how sanely and legally expressed 
and/or carried out are becoming less and less acceptable. We should be used to or accustomed to that because of the previous eight years where political differences were couched in terms that produced an either for us or against us culture. The extension of that was the “us” in the flippant and casually tossed dismissal of dissent used their power to silence expressions different from the mainstream. I must admit there are plenty of voices of dissent and many avenues available for them to express themselves; I must also admit there is the distinct possibility those venues most likely are being searched for to be shut down at a later date. For now, the squashing of dissent has a very distinct flavor of fascism about it that fits the political definition of fascism to the letter.
Canada led the way in the lead up to the fascist abyss with its announcement it would not allow George Galloway to visit that country because it claimed he gave “material support” to Hamas when he led a supply to that besieged strip of land after the Israeli invasion earlier this year.
“Specifically, we have information that indicates you organized a convoy worth over £1 million in aid and vehicles to Hamas, and personally donated vehicles and financing to (former) Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh. Your material support for this organization makes you inadmissible to Canada,”
The intended outcome of this decision is to stifle any expression of support materially or politically for the Palestinian people, not Hamas. The Israelis have been able to tie all support for Palestinians with support for Hamas and therefore because of its undeserved terrorism designation, ostracize those who support the people of Gaza and inevitably Palestinians as a whole. The Israelis set up Hamas as a political straw dog on which many people rest their fate for the next so many years, while Israeli theft of Palestinian land continues until the next straw dog is set up to oppose Hamas and so on and so on. This is not only foolhardy but dangerous, but it allows the Israeli government time to establish some very definite “facts” on the ground while it tries to change the demographics of the region for future considerations. Galloway’s problem is one of being too high profile a dissenter, one who might be able to influence many fence-sitters, politically as a member of British government or personally through the types of lectures he was scheduled to give in Canada. Therefore his exposure to the world community must be limited.
The Canadians have taken a page from the US playbook where Tariq Ramadan is still being refused entry into the US because of a similar accusation. The administration of “change”, Obama, has gone on record to argue Ramadan should not be allowed to visit America. This after Obama himself claimed he wanted to reach out to Muslims all over the world. The Obama administration’s support of Bush’s denial of entry goes to show there’s not much difference between the two governments as it relates to foreign policy.
The visa ban — apparently based on Ramadan’s donations to a group linked to the Palestinian militants Hamas labeled a terrorist organization by Washington — was instituted under former president George W. Bush’s administration….the visa denial (was) pinned to Ramadan having donated 1,300 dollars to a Swiss charity, Association de Secours Palestinien (ASP).
The charity allegedly funded Hamas, the ruling Palestinian group in Gaza, which Washington designates as a terrorist organization.
What’s troubling about this accusation beyond it being “alleged” and not proven is that Ramadan made known to everyone he had donated to the group at a time before Hamas was designated as a terrorism group by the US government. When that label was attached to Hamas, Ramadan ceased giving to the group. In effect he is being held accountable for doing something when at the time he did it it wasn’t illegal. But that’s not his only sin, besides those of his father and his grandfather. Ramadan’s is a passionate voice for moderation and coexistence between a feared Islam and a reluctant West and nothing gets in the way of “fascism” like peace, so like Galloway, Ramadan’s exposure to the West must be confined to a much smaller universe like the halls of Oxford University.
It’s interesting to see the turf war going on between those who are for and against the intermingling of intellectual and political thought all over the world. Obviously North America is still considered home for those who believe in perpetual conflict, have an aggressive warrior mentality and believe in conquering, dominating, and eventually eliminating people deemed undesirable or unwanted. It fit the previous administration like a hand in glove and seems to be the destiny of the Obama administration as well. It also fits the definition of fascism.
“This is an action that sowed massive destruction among civilians. It is not certain that it was possible do have done it differently, but ultimately we have emerged from this operation and are not facing real paralysis from the Qassams. It is very possible that we will repeat such an operation on a larger scale in the years to come, because the problem in the Gaza Strip is not simple and it is not at all certain that it has been solved. What we want this evening is to hear from the fighters.”
Aviv: “I am squad commander of a company that is still in training, from the Givati Brigade. We went into a neighborhood in the southern part of Gaza City. Altogether, this is a special experience. In the course of the training, you wait for the day you will go into Gaza, and in the end it isn’t really like they say it is. It’s more like, you come, you take over a house, you kick the tenants out and you move in. We stayed in a house for something like a week.
“Toward the end of the operation there was a plan to go into a very densely populated area inside Gaza City itself. In the briefings they started to talk to us about orders for opening fire inside the city, because as you know they used a huge amount of firepower and killed a huge number of people along the way, so that we wouldn’t get hurt and they wouldn’t fire on us.
“At first the specified action was to go into a house. We were supposed to go in with an armored personnel carrier called an Achzarit [literally, Cruel] to burst through the lower door, to start shooting inside and then … I call this murder … in effect, we were supposed to go up floor by floor, and any person we identified – we were supposed to shoot. I initially asked myself: Where is the logic in this?
“From above they said it was permissible, because anyone who remained in the sector and inside Gaza City was in effect condemned, a terrorist, because they hadn’t fled. I didn’t really understand: On the one hand they don’t really have anywhere to flee to, but on the other hand they’re telling us they hadn’t fled so it’s their fault … This also scared me a bit. I tried to exert some influence, insofar as is possible from within my subordinate position, to change this. In the end the specification involved going into a house, operating megaphones and telling [the tenants]: ‘Come on, everyone get out, you have five minutes, leave the house, anyone who doesn’t get out gets killed.’
“I went to our soldiers and said, ‘The order has changed. We go into the house, they have five minutes to escape, we check each person who goes out individually to see that he has no weapons, and then we start going into the house floor by floor to clean it out … This means going into the house, opening fire at everything that moves , throwing a grenade, all those things. And then there was a very annoying moment. One of my soldiers came to me and asked, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘What isn’t clear? We don’t want to kill innocent civilians.’ He goes, ‘Yeah? Anyone who’s in there is a terrorist, that’s a known fact.’ I said, ‘Do you think the people there will really run away? No one will run away.’ He says, ‘That’s clear,’ and then his buddies join in: ‘We need to murder any person who’s in there. Yeah, any person who’s in Gaza is a terrorist,’ and all the other things that they stuff our heads with, in the media.
“And then I try to explain to the guy that not everyone who is in there is a terrorist, and that after he kills, say, three children and four mothers, we’ll go upstairs and kill another 20 or so people. And in the end it turns out that [there are] eight floors times five apartments on a floor – something like a minimum of 40 or 50 families that you murder. I tried to explain why we had to let them leave, and only then go into the houses. It didn’t really help. This is really frustrating, to see that they understand that inside Gaza you are allowed to do anything you want, to break down doors of houses for no reason other than it’s cool.
“You do not get the impression from the officers that there is any logic to it, but they won’t say anything. To write ‘death to the Arabs’ on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing in understanding how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics, really. It’s what I’ll remember the most.”
“One of our officers, a company commander, saw someone coming on some road, a woman, an old woman. She was walking along pretty far away, but close enough so you could take out someone you saw there. If she were suspicious, not suspicious – I don’t know. In the end, he sent people up to the roof, to take her out with their weapons. From the description of this story, I simply felt it was murder in cold blood.”
Zamir: “I don’t understand. Why did he shoot her?”
Aviv: “That’s what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: You see a person on a road, walking along a path. He doesn’t have to be with a weapon, you don’t have to identify him with anything and you can just shoot him. With us it was an old woman, on whom I didn’t see any weapon. The order was to take the person out, that woman, the moment you see her.”
Zvi: “Aviv’s descriptions are accurate, but it’s possible to understand where this is coming from. And that woman, you don’t know whether she’s … She wasn’t supposed to be there, because there were announcements and there were bombings. Logic says she shouldn’t be there. The way you describe it, as murder in cold blood, that isn’t right. It’s known that they have lookouts and that sort of thing.”
Gilad: “Even before we went in, the battalion commander made it clear to everyone that a very important lesson from the Second Lebanon War was the way the IDF goes in – with a lot of fire. The intention was to protect soldiers’ lives by means of firepower. In the operation the IDF’s losses really were light and the price was that a lot of Palestinians got killed.”
Ram: “I serve in an operations company in the Givati Brigade. After we’d gone into the first houses, there was a house with a family inside. Entry was relatively calm. We didn’t open fire, we just yelled at everyone to come down. We put them in a room and then left the house and entered it from a different lot. A few days after we went in, there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sharpshooters’ position on the roof. The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn’t understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go, and it was was okay and he should hold his fire and he … he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders.”
Question from the audience: “At what range was this?”
Ram: “Between 100 and 200 meters, something like that. They had also came out of the house that he was on the roof of, they had advanced a bit and suddenly he saw then, people moving around in an area where they were forbidden to move around. I don’t think he felt too bad about it, because after all, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to … I don’t know how to describe it …. The lives of Palestinians, let’s say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers. So as far as they are concerned they can justify it that way.”
Yuval Friedman (chief instructor at the Rabin program): “Wasn’t there a standing order to request permission to open fire?”
Ram: “No. It exists, beyond a certain line. The idea is that you are afraid that they are going to escape from you. If a terrorist is approaching and he is too close, he could blow up the house or something like that.”
Zamir: “After a killing like that, by mistake, do they do some sort of investigation in the IDF? Do they look into how they could have corrected it?”
Ram: “They haven’t come from the Military Police’s investigative unit yet. There hasn’t been any … For all incidents, there are individual investigations and general examinations, of all of the conduct of the war. But they haven’t focused on this specifically.”
Moshe: “The attitude is very simple: It isn’t pleasant to say so, but no one cares at all. We aren’t investigating this. This is what happens during fighting and this is what happens during routine security.”
Ram: “What I do remember in particular at the beginning is the feeling of almost a religious mission. My sergeant is a student at a hesder yeshiva [a program that combines religious study and military service]. Before we went in, he assembled the whole platoon and led the prayer for those going into battle. A brigade rabbi was there, who afterward came into Gaza and went around patting us on the shoulder and encouraging us, and praying with people. And also when we were inside they sent in those booklets, full of Psalms, a ton of Psalms. I think that at least in the house I was in for a week, we could have filled a room with the Psalms they sent us, and other booklets like that.
“There was a huge gap between what the Education Corps sent out and what the IDF rabbinate sent out. The Education Corps published a pamphlet for commanders – something about the history of Israel’s fighting in Gaza from 1948 to the present. The rabbinate brought in a lot of booklets and articles, and … their message was very clear: We are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the gentiles who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land. This was the main message, and the whole sense many soldiers had in this operation was of a religious war. From my position as a commander and ‘explainer,’ I attempted to talk about the politics – the streams in Palestinian society, about how not everyone who is in Gaza is Hamas, and not every inhabitant wants to vanquish us. I wanted to explain to the soldiers that this war is not a war for the sanctification of the holy name, but rather one to stop the Qassams.”
Opposing Zionism is neither anti-Semitic nor particularly radical. It requires only that we take our own values seriously and no longer, as the book of Amos has it, “turn justice into wormwood and hurl righteousness to the ground.”
The political movement which asserts the supremacy of Israeli Jews over all others will lead the world into another world war, so it is that the editorial below which appeared in the Los Angeles Times is a particularly good one beckoning the world to take heed of this problem and solve it. Several bloggers have mentioned the editorial below but it wasn’t until I read it in its entirety that I felt it was worth mentioning here at Miscellany101. It is rather long, so I’ll excerpt it but strongly encourage everyone who reads this post to go to the link and read it.
Israeli policies have rendered the once apparently inevitable two-state solution less and less feasible. Years of Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have methodically diminished the viability of a Palestinian state. Israel’s new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has even refused to endorse the idea of an independent Palestinian state, which suggests an immediate future of more of the same: more settlements, more punitive assaults.
All of this has led to a revival of the Brit Shalom idea of a single, secular binational state in which Jews and Arabs have equal political rights. The obstacles are, of course, enormous. They include not just a powerful Israeli attachment to the idea of an exclusively Jewish state, but its Palestinian analogue: Hamas’ ideal of Islamic rule. Both sides would have to find assurance that their security was guaranteed. What precise shape such a state would take — a strict, vote-by-vote democracy or a more complex federalist system — would involve years of painful negotiation, wiser leaders than now exist and an uncompromising commitment from the rest of the world, particularly from the United States.
Meanwhile, the characterization of anti-Zionism as an “epidemic” more dangerous than anti-Semitism reveals only the unsustainability of the position into which Israel’s apologists have been forced. Faced with international condemnation, they seek to limit the discourse, to erect walls that delineate what can and can’t be said.
It’s not working. Opposing Zionism is neither anti-Semitic nor particularly radical. It requires only that we take our own values seriously and no longer, as the book of Amos has it, “turn justice into wormwood and hurl righteousness to the ground.”
Establishing a secular, pluralist, democratic government in Israel and Palestine would of course mean the abandonment of the Zionist dream. It might also mean the only salvation for the Jewish ideals of justice that date back to Jeremiah.
I never knew just how incendiary toilet paper could be. First it was given a heightened status for the military personnel at Guantanamo Bay who were told how the maniacally trained terrorists could fashion knives from toilet paper and kill all the guards there and then swim to mainland USA and continue their killing rampage with other improvised weapons equally deadly. Of course it’s hilarious, but there were some misguided souls who believed it. Now comes word toilet paper is too dangerous to allow the citizens of Gaza to have and so all aide shipments that include toilet paper cannot be allowed. In the light of that explanation, I can understand why hummus is not allowed in either, seeing as how hummus creates the condition that calls for the use of toilet paper. Next we’ll be told how feminine products such as pads and tampons aren’t allowed for adult women.
The first video below is what the Israeli government wants you to see, and the second one is what they don’t want you to see. When I looked at them I thought it should be the opposite. In other words the government of Israel should NOT want you to see how carefree and safe the people of Israel are because the myth perpetuated is that they live under constant fear of death and extermination. The entire world is asked to sacrifice everything they can to prevent the elimination of the Israeli people at the hands of the Palestinian hordes. On the other hand the spinmeisters want you, a casual observer, to associate death and destruction with everything about Palestinian life, the implication being the Palestinians are the cause of that fate and not anything the Israelis have done to them. But with most things surrounding the conflict on the soil of the Holy Land, reality is far different.
Israel sees no harm in showing a picture of its society which encourages tourism, because Israelis and those who visit it are indeed safe, and the death and destruction visited upon Palestinians is rampant, random, discriminatory (i.e.targeted towards civilians) intimidating and if the Israeli government had anything to do with it, out of sight of the everyday international citizen. For us, American citizens, we are responsible for both images, both videos, and there’s no way of getting around our complicity especially in the visions of the latter.
FUN AND HAPPINESS IN ISRAEL
DEATH AND DESTRUCTION IN GAZA
Bush and Cheney need to be in jail now. This all started back in 2003 when the Bush administration gave tacit approval to the notion that Israelis could kill their political opponents no matter where they were, even on American soil. Such are the depths at which the Bush administration went to circumvent the rule of law and plunge America into the abyss of an international pariah. Imagine for a moment, taking an unpopular position against the US government during the height of any government sponsored initiative and finding yourself the target of a group supported by that same government sent to kill you. Our government was set up to avoid just this type of criminality; offering everyone of us, citizens and by extension the rest of the world community with whom we have signed treaties, recourse to judicial review and representative deliberation, not exclusively executive orders, which this “death squad” was a part of and out of access to the other branches of government. This looks like the banana republics of old that sent their legionnaires of death throughout their territories on the prowl for those who opposed such tactics to silence, torture or kill them. We were better than that; whether we can still claim that is anyone’s guess.
They got over big time, just when I thought integrity mattered and would win out, it appears sleaze is still the driving force in American politics!
“Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair announced today that Ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. has requested that his selection to be Chairman of the National Intelligence Council not proceed,” read a statement from Blair’s office. “Director Blair accepted Ambassador Freeman’s decision with regret.”
“Critics have seized on retired ambassador Charles ‘Chas’ Freeman’s ties to Saudi Arabia and views on human rights in China to argue against his appointment as chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), but Freeman’s defenders charge that their real aim is to impose an ideological litmus test on top government officials and ensure a continued policy of reflexive US support for Israel,”
And while it may seem to be a GOP inspired campaign to get Freeman’s nomination withdrawn it was anything but!
Steven Rosen, a former director of the American Israel Political Affairs Committee due to stand trial this April for espionage for Israel, is the leader of the campaign against Freeman’s appointment. In his wake, a host of critics from the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to the New Republic’s Marty Peretz have emerged to assail Freeman’s comments on Israeli policies and demand that Obama rescind the diplomat’s appointment. The campaign against Freeman spread to Congress, where a handful of representatives including the top recipient of AIPAC donations, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), called for an investigation of Freeman’s business ties to China and Saudi Arabia.
Freeman’s would have been an ideal position to influence intelligence data on a wide variety of subjects, including whether certain states had nuclear capability, i.e. Iran and or Syria. With some one more easily malleable, the Lobby could get intelligence to reflect its position vis-a-vis these countries and resulting American policy decisions but Freeman did not fit the bill and so had to be removed. I’m curious what it was that got Freeman to withdraw his name from consideration. I am looking forward to the day when American officials are willing to stand up and be counted when it comes to facing a Lobby that does not reflect American interests. It seems Freeman was not that kind of man, so perhaps it’s good he not take the position. Next?!
On another front it seems Hillary isn’t quite the man, or woman, I thought she was. In an earlier post I congratulated her for what I thought was taking a position about Israeli actions that were against American interests. Well it turns out she didn’t quite take the stand I thought she had. Instead, Clinton is speaking political correctness, the kind of language that’s good for double speak and confusion, just the kind of predicament people like to take advantage of when oppressing others while making themselves look like victims.
When Mrs. Clinton was asked in Ramallah how she felt about Jewish settlements in the West Bank, a cause of strife with Palestinians, she said the United States would raise “the issue” with the next Israeli government. Asked about it again in Brussels, she recited the official American position that settlements were “unhelpful.”
In Israel, Mrs. Clinton did not publicly broach settlements at all. And she only gingerly raised the issue of border crossings to Gaza, which Israel has mostly kept closed, drawing criticismfrom European leaders and human rights groups.
So, it appears the juggernaut of Lobby interests continues in the face of frighten American politicians who cannot muster the courage to take stands that are consistent with the interests of their own country. If nothing else, such blatant displays of cowardice should be good fodder for political advertisements of their opponents in future political campaigns. It’s time to show such people the door. Next!?
UPDATE:
At least Charles Freeman goes out with a bang.
I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country. I agreed to chair the NIC to strengthen it and protect it against politicization, not to introduce it to efforts by a special interest group to assert control over it through a protracted political campaign.
It is apparent that we Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance to our country as well as to our allies and friends.
The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.
So it appears what is needed in American policy is young, fresh pugnacious blood. I respect Freeman who is at an age where he might not want to summon the rigors necessary for the job he was nominated for, so I would urge Obama to find someone equally as blunt and frank who is up to the task of making America independent of Israel and it’s interests and lobby.
When people put their mind to it they can do anything. Anything! One of the great poets of the 20th century once said, ‘the hand of the believer is the hand of God, dominant, resourceful, full of light…..His heart is indifferent to the riches of the world.’ Where some people see barriers, others see challenges. When some stop, others excel, and so it is with Bilqis Abdul Qaadir, a senior high school student who has broken the record for the most points scored in a high school basketball career by either male or female for the state of Massachusetts. Coming from the home of Tarheel and Blue Devil basketball that’s no small feat in my opinion so Ms. Abdul Qaadir deserves major respect. However what she has done so well in, playing basketball, is overshadowed by the fact that she did it while being an observant Muslim adult woman, wearing the hijab and covering herself, albeit innovatively, according to her religious tradition. The young lady seems to have everything going for her, a loving family with both parents involved in her life and an eye towards life after collegiate basketball and she has managed that without any trace of bitterness or victimhood built up after years of Islamophobia in this country. My hats off to her and I wish her all the success in the world. She’s a role model, as a woman, a Muslim, a student athlete, and a member of this society we all can look up to.
The land of opportunity is better than what we’ve witnessed the last eight years of fear and warmongering and so it is, that ingenuity on the part of a citizen and the will on the part of a businessman combined to render a service to a community and do so successfully in a time of economic turmoil.
University Bank now has an entire subsidiary devoted to financial products that comply with Muslim religious law, or Shariah. It has done nearly $80 million in Islamically approvable “mortgage-alternative” financing for residential and commercial real estate in 15 states.
This past week, while the stock market plunged to its lowest point in a dozen years and close-to-home General Motors teetered near bankruptcy, University Bank recorded one of its best periods ever. It completed 11 home sales, more than twice the weekly average, to observant Muslim customers, and pushed four more closings into next week.
On more than one occasion I have chided Muslim customers who allowed themselves to be debased by a Charlotte, NC bank that really doesn’t want their business. No one should pay anyone else to take their money. So maybe those good citizens of Charlotte can go down to a bank who really wants their business and help make them even more profitable. There’s a lesson to learn from this: people working together can accomplish a lot more for all than one group that wants to humiliate another group because of some false sense of patriotism, citizenship or racial/ethnic arrogance.
It’s really amusing to see the Lobby going through its gyrations while opposing all the Obama administration is doing regarding foreign policy and Israel. Theirs is a coordinated, multiprong effort at causing instability and chaos and they’ve gotten off to a good start. Here’s their latest attempt. They seem to be upset with the appointment of Charles Freeman as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, calling him alternately an “Arabist”, a human rights abuser, a Saudi lackey, etc. Of course what he is is someone the Lobby cannot manipulate or control and as head of the NIC would probably have a say in how intelligence is vetted or interpreted regarding Iran, a country in Israel’s sights. So far, both Freeman and Obama have had little to say about the Lobby’s efforts at voiding his nomination. It’ll be interesting to see who blinks first.
I’m speechless and at the same time want to shout out at the top of my lungs, FINALLY! For now, I’ve got to give Hillary Clinton her props for having more balls than most men in Washington. I guess this is a fine time to recognize her for that since we’re celebrating International Women’s day.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticised Israel’s plans to demolish more than 80 Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem as “unhelpful” and a violation of its international obligations.
In the first public rebuke of a specific Israeli policy since the new US administration took office, Mrs Clinton indicated the plan contravened the provisions in the five-year-old internationally agreed “road-map” that calls for a halt to all settlement activity.
Let’s hope her boss doesn’t hang her out to dry like the last Secretary of State was with George Bush.
The Sun newspaper in England ran a story with a photo given to it by one of the local British rednecks/islamophobes of a British bus driver praying in the bus he drove. The article stated quite clearly the driver had forced everyone off his bus and inconvenienced them so that he could pray. Turns out it was all a lie and it seems The Sun newspaper makes a hobby of lying and inciting public passions against Muslim residents of the UK.
Here is more evidence of the Sun paper doing the same thing, entirely making up a story of supposed Muslim excess when there wasn’t anything to it. By the time the smoke clears what’s left is a public that is misinformed, angry and mistrustful of one another and an industry that has profited from lies and deception.
I wish Mr. Raulynaitis had received a lot more than the paltry sum of 30,000 pounds for the Sun’s lies. The Sun is owned by K. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp which had revenues of 25 billion USD in 2006. I would have suggested to Mr. Raulynaitis that would be a great figure from which to start bargaining in settling his lawsuit against the Sun.
Truth CAN be stranger than fiction. Dean Grose, mayor of Los Alamitos, California sent the questionable image below to an African American constituent and then claimed mea culpa when it blew up in his face. His claim should have been, i’m_an_idiot. Where do they find these people?
Buried deep in the pages of a CNN report about a CNN sponsored poll is this
Once again, last week’s question garnered a huge response. And the question was: Are there any political heroes left in this country or anywhere else around the world?
One rule we stated at the outset was that you were not allowed to vote for President Obama. The rule upset a few of you, some of you because you thought it was presumptuous of me to assume you would write in Obama, some because you couldn’t think of anyone else.
Two members of the U.S. Senate were essentially tied for third place, Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy and Republican Senator Arlen Specter. Both have many years under their belt in the Capitol. Both are seasoned political warriors. And both, coincidentally, are fighting battles against cancer.
Specter was often named by you viewers along with fellow Republicans Olympia Snow and Susan Collins for being the only members of their party to vote for the fiscal stimulus.
In second place, an answer we originally thought might get the gold medal, the answer “no one.”
The winner, President Jimmy Carter, edging out all other presidents, congresspeople, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi and lots more.
Carter has been at odds with the lobby for some time, especially since the publication of his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” and his remarks about the Jewish lobby’s influence on U.S. foreign policy. Former colleagues in his administration have turned against him as well as the average man in the street but that hasn’t stopped Carter from making his case and being well received, even if not at home. In other words the attempted mud slinging didn’t stick and people have valued Carter’s contribution to the discourse about Israel and Palestine.
Now Bill Moyers is caught in the cross hairs of the mudslingers for his views on the latest Israeli attempt at controlled genocide in Gaza. Since his rebuke of Israeli policy he has been attacked in no less than three separate publications for his past indiscretions 40 years ago. Of course this was all meant to blunt the impact of Moyers’ rebuke, discredit him and hope the force of his indignation will not be as well received. However, taking a page from the Carter notebook, Moyers should press on, write a book about how the lobby tries to silence members of the press by using other members of the press to write dirt about its opponents, and he should make that a central theme on his PBS show for as long as he has that platform from which to speak. He should shout out for all to hear and see that free speech and especially responsible free speech is a cherished American tradition that won’t be cowed by innuendo and intimidation or the treat of diminished popularity. I hope he has the nerve, the chutzpah to do and say that. I wish him luck.
I am always amazed at people who see signs in everything when there’s nothing much to see. In today’s age, every act of any Muslim is examined for signs of association or affiliation with al-Qaida or any other such organization deemed by the Western press as terrorist. The recent crime of Muzzammil Hassan, who murdered his wife in the most brutal way in upstate New York is another example of the divining of random acts of humanity with Islam. Aasiyah Zubair Hassan was killed by Muzzammil Hassan, after filing for divorce from him yet the Islamopundits the likes of Daniel Pipes who claims her death was an “honor killing” for her attempts at escape from a torturous marriage and opines Muzzammil was a secret Wahhabi insurgent in collusion with other Wahhabis to do destroy the American way of life have turned this tragedy into their hatefilled lust.
Yet the reality is Hassan was no more than an abuser, a predator against women, and not just this last victim he killed. Most news accounts allude to his marriage with Aasiya as his third but not many tell of his previous marriages and how his former wives suffered at his hands as well. Check out this description from a former in-law of what Hassan’s marriages were like
It’s been five days now that my family along with the whole American Muslim community has been in shock. The fact that Muzzammil was married to my first cousin before marrying the victim still horrifies us. Ms. Zubair was his third wife. Both of his earlier wives filed divorce on the same grounds of severe domestic violence and abuses.
My cousin lived with him for only a year. Yet, it took her several years to get rid of the fear of living with a man in marriage. He was known as violent and abusive in the community. He had nothing to do with Islam. He had changed his name from Syed Muzzammil Hassan to Mo Steve Hassan. He had no background of community service or involvement in the Mosque or in any other organization. Neither his character and nor his faith were sound. In addition, he had no background or expertise in TV production or media.
But it did not matter. Even with this bad reputation, horrible background and lack of experience in media market, he still got the stage at the most reputable American Muslim conventions. Our leaders and established organizations did not bother to vet him. No questions or flags were raised about him. He was introduced at these conventions with huge respect and the Muslim community was told to give him generous funds for Bridges TV.
The crime of negligence was committed by the greater society, American as well as Muslim and all who were silent are conspirators in the tragic death of Ms. Zubair, but Islam was as irrelevant to this woman’s death as football was to the death of Nicole Simpson at the hands of her husband. Until we separate the evil that men do from the divinely inspired theology they may embrace that really has nothing at all to do with their evil, we show our prejudices and bigotry which gets us nowhere.
Few people have raised my hackles more than the group of people dubbed “neocons” who were responsible for the misguided adventure in Iraq and Richard Perle stands at the top of that list of evil, lying, traitors to all that is America. But even Perle has outdone himself in his latest attempts to shed the “neocon” title and his responsibility for the Iraq war. Sounding ever so much like every other Holocaust denier, Perle asserts
I know of no statement, public or private by any neoconservative in or near government, advocating the invasion of Iraq primarily for the purpose of of promoting democracy or advancing some grand neoconservative vision.
This is what he said in the days before the invasion of Iraq
My own view is that Iraq is more capable of democratic reform than almost any other country in the region, and so I would hope that if there is military action, our objective should not be to simply to remove Saddam Hussein, but to replace him with a decent regime ideally a regime that, at least, in the long term could become pluralist and democratic.
Perle is a liar, and part of his pathology is he really enjoys pissing people off with his lies, and watching them scurrying around trying to document them. It’s a form of entertainment for him.
There was this grand meeting he held recently, like a ruler summoning his court, where he sat at the head of the table and beguiled all assembled with the many lies he has made a career making, and afterwards he probably sat back to read the reviews of what he said and chuckled; it’s entertainment. The man is mad and perverted and it’s a shame a President of the United States allowed him, Perle, to shape American influence as disastrously as he did, and who now sits back and claims he is innocent. It’s pathological. He’s a denier much like the Holocaust Revisionist who claims the Holocaust never happened. They can be forgiven for time has erased the evidence they say never existed and people have rebuilt what was destroyed during the dark days of human history and WWII; Perle can’t be forgiven because he still makes the claim that he had nothing to do with the destruction of Iraq and its destruction wasn’t his aim, while millions of Iraqis have died or been displaced and thousands of American soldiers have died and are still dying in a remote land of his, Perle’s choosing, for no reason except regime change. Perle is rabid, and like most rabid animals, he should be put out of his misery and spare us ours.
The last years of the Bush administration have been one big lie after another, and it hasn’t taken much time to unravel all of them. Here goes the latest revelation.
The super conservatives, led by the neocons betrayed even their main mentor Ronald Reagan, with their adoption of torture as an instrument in the war on terror, for it was Ronald Reagan who signed the Convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman degrading punishment. It defines torture as
any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.
The Convention left no wriggle room for Bush and his cronies. It expressly says there are no legitimate reasons for torture, even the phony war on terror.
No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
So why isn’t Bush in jail? He certainly should be
Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.
Each State Party shall make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature.
Moreover, why aren’t we the public who put him in office more outraged at his criminal behavior? Bush steadily encroached on the rule of law very early on in his term, declaring the UN irrelevant and declaring to all that America was willing to go it alone if it could not get the support of the world community. Along the way, he simply ignored laws that got in the way of his grand schemes and paid no attention to the voices of international bodies and agencies which clamored for the US to follow the laws it signed, agreed to or even wrote. Instead he listened to the polls and until 2006 after all the damage was done, took delight in the fact that the American electorate simply went along with his programs. Our lack of condemnation and outcry for his lawlessness was all he needed to complete his coup d’etat against the American government. We are as much to blame for torture carried out under the Bush Administration as Bush himself. But there were voices of dissent, opposition to what Bush was doing.
A United Nations anti-torture panel yesterday urged the United States to shut down its Guantanamo Bay detention camp, close any secret overseas CIA prisons, and halt the use of what it said are cruel and degrading interrogation techniques.
The panel also found that many of the detention and interrogation policies the Bush administration put in place for the war on terrorism around the world were at odds with the commitments the United States made when it ratified the global Convention Against Torture treaty in 1994.
The report said that holding detainees in secret prisons, as the CIA is reportedly doing overseas with high-level Al Qaeda suspects, violates the treaty.
So there really isn’t any excuse for Bush not to be in jail, or Cheney or any of the others within his administration who violated a treaty that the US Congress ratified. It simply is a case of the people not demanding accountability of their elected officials to the law.
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