Category: War on terror

War on Terror=War on Islam? II


The brutality and torture many prisoners at Guantanamo faced was both physical and psychological.  It was aimed to hurt them as well as humiliate them and in most cases it was aimed at their religion, Islam.  US authorities seized on the animosity generated by 911 and perceptions that Muslims were either responsible to that atrocity or indifferent about it to allow a floodgate of abuse to be directed towards inmates as Muslims and their faith.  This was done through the abuse of Islamic symbols, sexual abuse and intimidation, as well as physical distraction and torture.  Overt attempts at proselytizing of Muslim inmates that had nothing at all to do with their incarceration and or military personnel,  were even employed to intimidate and stir religious passions.  There should be no doubt such tactics were at the very least approved at the highest levels of the command structure in the military if not designed and implemented by them.  It is another dark strain on the American conscience left by the Bush administration.

….desecration of the Qur’an is alleged to have taken many other forms in U.S. detention facilities. Former detainees say it has been handled with disrespect by guards and interrogators—written in, ripped or cut with scissors, squatted over, trampled, kicked, urinated and defecated on, picked up by a dog, tossed around like a ball, used to clean soldiers’ boots, and thrown in a bucket of excrement. A Russian ex-detainee, Timur Ishmuratov, remembers how it would be laid on the back of a handcuffed, bent-over prisoner, so that it would fall to the ground if he stood up. With just a Qur’an and a pair of handcuffs, a Muslim detainee could in this way be made to torture himself.

*snip*

In A Question of Torture, historian Alfred McCoy has chronicled how such “no-touch torture” techniques have been rigorously developed by U.S. interrogators, especially in the CIA. The power to torment Muslims by abusing the Qur’an was not discovered accidentally by Gen. Miller or a clumsy guard at Guantánamo. Bill Dedman of MSNBC has reported how the Qur’an has been used by the U.S. Army as a tool for intelligence gathering. When asked about an “interrogation scenario” called “Fear Up,” one intelligence officer offered Dedman this example of the technique: “Disrespect for the Qur’an.”

*snip*

At Gen. Miller’s Guantánamo, expressions of disrespect for religious practices grew into a kind of regimen. To interrupt prayers, guards made noise by striking things against the holding cages or playing loud rock music. Every morning and evening, just as the detainees were being called to pray, “The Star-Spangled Banner” blared over the loud speaker.

*snip*

In addition to mockery and systematic distraction, professional interrogators used grotesque methods of sexual harassment to impede religious observances. For Muslims, impurity prevents prayer. In Inside the Wire, former Army translator Erik Saar recounts a shocking exploitation of Islamic rules about ritual impurity. Saar was translating for a female Army interrogator who was having trouble getting information out of a young Saudi detainee named Fareek. She told Saar that she wanted to break the strength of Fareek’s relationship with God: “I think we should make him feel so fucking dirty that he can’t go back to his cell and spend the night praying. We have to put up a barrier between him and his God.” So she did a striptease. When Fareek wouldn’t look at her, she walked behind him and “began rubbing her breasts against his back.” According to Saar, she told Fareek that his sexual arousal offended God. Then she told him that she was having her period, and showed him her hand covered in what he thought was menstrual blood (it was red ink). She cursed him and wiped it on his face. As she and Saar left the room, she informed Fareek that the water to his cell would be shut off that night. Even if he managed to calm himself down, he would be too defiled to pray. As for Saar himself, he writes that “there wasn’t enough hot water in all of Cuba to make me feel clean.”

That episode is not the only documented example of such torture. The Bahraini detainee Jumah al-Dossari suffered a darker, more explicitly religious adaptation of the method in late 2002, according to a legal motion filed in U.S. District Court (District of Columbia) by Joshua Colangelo-Bryan and others on his behalf. During al-Dossari’s torture, a female interrogator had his clothing cut off, then removed her own and stood over him. Just before wiping what she said was menstrual blood on his face, she kissed the crucifix on her necklace and said, “This is a gift from Christ for you Muslims.”

Many detainees perceived their incarceration as a general attack on Islam….During the trial of Abu Ghraib’s Specialist Charles Graner, ex-detainee Amin al-Sheikh reported that he had been compelled to eat pork and curse Allah. A Guantánamo detainee informed Capt. Yee that a group of prisoners had been forced to “bow down and prostrate” themselves inside a makeshift “satanic” shrine, where interrogators made them repeat that Satan, not Allah, was their God. Others told of being draped in Israeli flags during interrogation, a claim corroborated by the FBI, while one interrogator explicitly told al-Dossari that “a holy war was occurring, between the Cross and the Star of David on the one hand, and the Crescent on the other.”

No excuse now!


Guantanamo Bay can be closed, and America’s allies are willing to help in that effort.

European Union countries should offer to take in any detainees released from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo, Portugal’s foreign minister said in a letter published Thursday.

Portugal is willing to grant asylum to Guantanamo detainees who cannot return to their home countries, Foreign Minister Luis Amado said in the letter sent to his EU counterparts.

Let’s see how long it takes for impediments to get in the way of seeing this travesty of justice shut down.

Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric


I wish it was George W. Bush saying that statement in the title above, but it isn’t.  Instead it’s a US military officer who served on an intelligence team responsible for interrogating Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaida operatives and who says quite succinctly in a Washington Post editorial that torture cost American lives in the Iraqi campaign.   Even though Bush didn’t utter those words he surely knew of the successes those teams had in Iraq where torture wasn’t employed while still achieving very good results

The methods my team used are not classified (they’re listed in the unclassified Field Manual), but the way we used them was, I like to think, unique. We got to know our enemies, we learned to negotiate with them, and we adapted criminal investigative techniques to our work (something that the Field Manual permits, under the concept of “ruses and trickery”). It worked. Our efforts started a chain of successes that ultimately led to Zarqawi.

*snip*

Our new interrogation methods led to one of the war’s biggest breakthroughs: We convinced one of Zarqawi’s associates to give up the al-Qaeda in Iraq leader’s location. On June 8, 2006, U.S. warplanes dropped two 500-pound bombs on a house where Zarqawi was meeting with other insurgent leaders.

I know the counter-argument well — that we need the rough stuff for the truly hard cases, such as battle-hardened core leaders of al-Qaeda, not just run-of-the-mill Iraqi insurgents. But that’s not always true: We turned several hard cases, including some foreign fighters, by using our new techniques. A few of them never abandoned the jihadist cause but still gave up critical information. One actually told me, “I thought you would torture me, and when you didn’t, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That’s why I decided to cooperate.”

Why didn’t Bush lead the way and instruct his military on the best way to conduct interrogation? Nothing is as it seemed with this Administration; they knew before waging the war that the reasons they gave for it were lies; likewise they knew this war wasn’t being waged to benefit the Iraqis, rather it was to cause their utter humiliation and destruction as a powerful society.  Torture became a means to that end.  Bush surely read and or heard the cries of many within his Administration that torture was not consistent with American military policy yet it continued under his watch.  Is it any wonder why there are some who think Bush should be tried for war crimes? Count me among them!

John McCain winner of the 2008 presidential elections


Please vote for Barack Obama.  Vote for Barack Obama, please.  I sincerely hope Obama wins the elections this coming Tuesday and I urge all who are reading this to vote for the man. He is a better candidate and person than John McCain, but despite all I’ve said, I don ‘t think he will win.  There are three main reasons why I believe this.

Our Country been betrayed by three; the government we elect to represent us and pave the way for the preservation of our freedoms and the fulfillment of our potential as a society, an obsequious press which has spouted every lie mouthed, and a candidate himself who has allowed and exploited political expediency over principle in this campaign.

September 11, 2001 was an awful day in the history of the country. It rocked the very foundation of the nation and allowed politicians and those who served with them an opportunity to expand government in ways not attempted since the Civil War.  From September 12, 2001 until today,  Americans have been fed a steady diet of hate and fear which has been difficult to remove from our collective consciousness and which politicians and members of the press have used to advance separate agendas which have had ramifications for this present election.

Our government failed us, using the fear generated by the terror attacks of 911 to turn American citizen against another, in its quest to expand government, open new lands for military conquest and limit the rights and freedoms it knew would get in the way of government tyranny.   Increased surveillance, forced renditions of people with strange names or faiths, denial of people to due process and the coercion of other institutions to achieve these goals, notably telecommunications companies, were all a part of government’s utilization of 911’s terror.  People of faith trusted their government and believed what they were told and re-elected that government a second time, while sending an “opposition” party to power in the alternative branch of government, the legislative,  to pick up where and perhaps enhance what the executive failed to do or could not do.  Unfortunately that branch of government too failed us becoming a rubber stamp for a government out of control, echoing the “lie” that would lead to such horrible acts of legislation as the Patriot and the Military Commissions Acts , passed, ratified and in some cases passed or extended a second time. We believed what was being told to us even though those that told us knew they were lying and those that reported what we were told didn’t care they were passing along the lie.  The press confused corporate responsibility with corporate profit, making yellow journalism the order of the day, using it to pit us against one another, and boosting a poorly run and essentially racist campaign to legitimacy.

But unfortunately, Barack Obama shares some blame in this debacle.  He in the minds of some, and me didn’t really do a good enough job distinguishing himself from his opponent.  Sure, there is the obvious  which makes this an historic race of enormous proportions, but Mr. Obama fell prey to political expediency, the order of the day with politicians, which basically says don’t take a stand, always fall in-between, be middle of the road, let the absence of your actions make you a winner.  In doing so he allowed a significant portion of the population to be smeared, i.e. Muslims and Arabs, he did not clearly delineate his policies from those of his opponent and in the process showed an absence of character.  It is not enough to reduce campaigns to simple sound bites and one word slogans that are different from those of your opponent; leaders lead not imitate, and above all they challenge and inspire not duck and dodge.  People intuitively are able to sense the absence of leadership despite all the faux pas trappings surrounding it, and this may account for the close poll numbers in the final days.

Simply put we are not ready nor are our leaders for what it is Mr. Obama wants.  We have been traumatized by foreign and domestic enemies who have sapped our will and spirit in ways that heretofore were unimaginable.  We, in time, will recover but time will be the medicine that heals our wounds, not phony profiteering and slogans.  For now, and for reasons mentioned above, our destiny appears to be that of continuity, doing what we have been accustomed to these last 8 years and regrettably that’s more of the same, status quo….not change.  I wish it weren’t so but that’s how I see it from where I stand.  Meanwhile, please go vote Obama and let’s hope I’m wrong.

The Neocon’s coup within the US government


The attack on Syria was the neocon’s way of asserting their position of dominance within the US government.  It was a signal to the winner of next week’s election that the winner would have to deal with the neocon’s reality of foreign policy and not with any campaign promises, and that reality is there will be no reconciliation with the Syrian government ever and that US troops will not leave Iraq anytime soon.  I disagree with fellow blogger Xymphora who seems to think Obama’s supposed imminent victory means a demise of neocon control over government, but I do agree with Xymp’s statement that ‘peace is the death of zionism’, hence why else would America attack a government that has shown a willingness to be at peace with its neighbors and America’s allies, unless that ally (Israel) doesn’t want peace.  The excuse that the attack was against infiltrators into Iraq from Syria has also been thoroughly discounted.

A top US commander Thursday voiced optimism US troop levels could be cut substantially in western Iraq particularly after provincial elections in the former insurgent stronghold.

Marine Corps Major General John Kelly, who commands the 25,000 US troops in the west, said the tally of security incidents had fallen so low as to be “almost meaningless now.”

“So I would say that I’m very optimistic that we could start to reduce numbers,” he said.

In fact, one could view this attack as a shot across the bow of certain elements within even the military that talk of troop reductions and stability are not consistent with the program of instability and perpetual war that has fueled both the Israeli government and now our own.

There is the possibility that whoever was killed was an enemy to both Syria and the US and as such was a targeted assassination agreed upon by both parties.  As with so much about Mid East occurrences that will never be known; however the message is that the US is in Iraq to stay, regardless of the Maliki government’s decision on the SOFA agreement that for the moment is dead.  That reality has been foisted on the winner of Tuesday’s election whether he likes it or not.

Fomenting Unrest in Iraq


The SOFA, status of force agreement, between the US and Iraq is in jeopardy of not being ratified by the Iraqi government, which has repeatedly asked US forces to leave Iraq, and as a result violence in that country has intensified despite the success of the “surge”. So in order to get the Iraqis to see the necessity of keeping US forces on their soil, the neocons have set about destabilizing Iraq’s neighbors. This latest violation of international law also allows the neocons who want to destabilize all Arab states makes it difficult for whoever becomes President to even talk to the Arabs who along with the rest of the world are outraged over this latest attack on Syrian territory.

The yo-yo called Gitmo


There’s a lot wrong with Guantanamo Bay and this latest episode demonstrates clearly the perils for those detained there.  Seventeen Chinese Muslims who have been detained for seven years were given their marching orders by a federal judge who told them they could go.  What’s extraordinary about that is since 2004 it has been known these men were not hostile to the United States, and were not declared enemy combatants, illegal or otherwise.

The United States determined in 2004 the 17 Uighurs are not enemy combatants, but has kept them at Guantanamo while trying to persuade other countries to resettle them. Officials said they were not returned to China because of credible fears they could be mistreated if returned.

The irony is that instead of turning them over to someone who officials thought might persecute them, it was decided to keep them locked up and persecuted at a US federal facility!  Go figure, but that’s not the end of it.  As I’ve said before, Americans are some of the kindest,  most decent people alive, and they demonstrated that kindness by offering to take care of the men from China once released by the government. Relief and faith based organizations throughout the country offered to take the men in and get them settled in the US, but acting on the politics of fear, the Administration said they were unsure what such a group in the heartland might do and didn’t want to release them.  I guess I can understand the fear the government would have of retribution from people who had been unlawfully detained, tortured and abuse for the last seven years.  Most people wouldn’t take too kindly to that sort of treatment and might want to “get even” as it were.

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end there.  An appeals court has blocked the release of these men until further notice.

A US appeals court has temporarily blocked the release of 17 Chinese Muslim Uighurs from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp as President George W. Bush’s administration scrambles to appeal it.

*snip*

The 17 were officially declared no longer “enemy combatants” by the government in June, and the US government approved their release back in 2004.

But officials had maintained they could continue to hold the men at Guantanamo Bay if no other country accepted them.

The Uighurs were not returned to China due to credible fears they would be tortured upon return.

The White House condemned Tuesday’s ruling, saying it paved the way for extremists to demand the same freedom, and added it would continue to work to find another country to take in the men.

The article goes on to mention the resettlement of a group of the same ethnic Muslims to Albania where they live in peace but “with no possibility of returning to their families any time soon”.  However these Muslims from China are not acceptable in the US……it could be they are too close to corporate media who might in a fit of conscious decide to actually interview them to expose what took place in Guantanamo Bay.  In any event, their saga continues and the terrible legacy of Gitmo, left to us by this Administration, too continues and remains very much in the air.

The West’s obssession with “radical” Islam


A few major newspapers, including one in my home town are giving out free copies, courtesy of a group called The Clarion Fund out of, where else, New York, entitled “Obssession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West”.  I think it’s the “September surprise” of the political season, I don’t care what anyone else says about them revealing pictures of a recently killed Osama bin Ladin.  Of course this is meant to influence people to vote for a certain party in the elections and it’s shameful newspapers are hiding behind the First Amendment to push this garbage on the public.  The politics of fear, while subdued has not been totally eradicated from the American psyche.  I fired off a letter to the person in charge of such a poor decision in my hometown saying something to the effect that the Muslim community welcomes the opportunity to answer people’s questions about this movie, for they are bound to have some, and the movie gives Muslims an excellent opportunity to promulgate their faith and define it as they want to and not as some who are hostile to Islam want.  The response was a tepid thanks for my supporting the First Amendment.

Free speech is manipulated by the powers that be as either a weapon of oppression or to stifle dissent.  When it comes to religious expression two blog posts here have already pointed out how free speech was not even remotely considered when people expressed opinions that were against members of other religious faiths not Muslims, and had to pay a dear price for that, including jail and dismissal from their jobs.  What is  hoped is that Muslims will act in an inflammatory way that will wind up on the front pages of the newspapers disseminating this movie and further increase circulation.  Inevitably the bottom line is money, and someone at the Clarion Fund has enough money to satisfy the needs of an industry that’s losing readers.  It doesn’t matter who it is that’s responsible for this what matters is an American public finally getting back to normal from the nightmare of 911 and a disastrous war, because they see hope for change and realize Muslims in their midst are not out to seek their destruction once again are faced with this made up crisis.  As always, I want to contribute to free speech by posting a link to one of the installments of the video on youtube.com.  I encourage any and all to view all of the segments posted there, and then find your nearest Muslim community and ask them questions about everything in the movie.  I assure you they won’t bite and you might come away feeling quite comfortable with the fact that they are your neighbors.

Computer game encourages killing Muslims


Since the end of the article below says the game became popular because of bloggers who linked to it, let me be one of the bloggers who links to it, not because I want people to play the game which features killing Muslims but because I want someone to hack the game and change the players around a bit.  Let’s see how quickly the game would come down if it featured Christians and Muslims killing Sikhs and Jews, or hmm..let’s say Sikhs and Muslims killing Christians and Hindus, or Hindus and Sikhs killing Jews and Buddhists or Muslims killing Jews, or better yet, Palestinians killing Israelis or Anglicans killing Roman Catholics.  Here’s the article.

A computer game in which players control an American soldier sent to “wipe out the Muslim race” has been condemned as offensive and tasteless by a British Muslim group.

The goal of Muslim Massacre, which can be downloaded for free on the internet, is to “ensure that no Muslim man or woman is left alive”, according to the game’s creator.

Players control an “American Hero” armed with a machine gun and rocket launcher who is parachuted into the Middle East.

Users progress through levels, first killing Arabs that appear on screen and later taking on Osama bin Laden, Mohammed and finally Allah.

The game’s creator, a freelance programmer known as Sigvatr, described the game on the SomethingAwful.com website as “fun and funny”.

In a “How you can help” section, he writes to visitors: “Don’t whinge about how offensive and ‘edgy’ this is.”

British Muslim youth organisation The Ramadhan Foundation expressed its “deep condemnation and anger” at the game.

The group said: “This game is glorifying the killing of Muslims in the Middle East and we urge ISP providers to take action to remove this site from their services as it incites violence towards Muslims and is trying to justify the killing of innocent Muslims.

“We have written to the British Government to urge an inquiry into this game and take action to shut down the site. This is not satire but a deliberate attempt to demonise Muslims.”

The foundation’s chief executive, Mohammed Shafiq, added: “Encouraging children and young people in a game to kill Muslims is unacceptable, tasteless and deeply offensive.

“There is an increase in violence in this country and some of it comes from video games. When kids spend six hours a day on violent games they are more likely to go outside and commit violence.

“If it was the other way around, with a game featuring Muslims killing Israelis or Americans, there would be uproar and rightly so.

“I would urge ISPs to take action against sites like this and there can be no justification for this sort of video game. I hope the person who made this game thinks again.”

The game was first released in January this year but has become more popular in recent days after being linked to by several prominent blogs.

There’s a reason why the WOT is so important to this country


Capital really does drive the decision making process in America.  How much and how fast one can make money is the difference between life and death.  The war on terror was started to enrich neocons who had a stake in companies that profited off of government contracts as well as a federal government that could sell the arms it was making to fight imagined terrorists.  This news headline should come as no surprise:

U.S. says its arms exports boomed this year

U.S. government-brokered overseas arms sales are expected to total about $34 billion in the current fiscal year, up more than 45 percent from the year before, the Pentagon agency in charge said…

Overseas arms sales are a key instrument of U.S. foreign policy as well as a boon to defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co, Northrop Grumman Corp, General Dynamics Corp and Raytheon Co.

In fiscal 2007, such sales totaled $23.3 billion, up from $21 billion in fiscal 2006, according to the security agency‘s figures.

When you look at the countries who are major buyers of US weapons the list includes Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Egypt and Iraq among others. Three of the countries noted have had large American military installations, or sizeable ones on their territory for some time.  Occupation has its privileges.  Iraq, a  country that until recently wasn’t even allowed to have an air force has now began exploring the possibility of  purchasing  F-16 fighter jets from the United States and all this means is mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money for defense contractors.  However, there looms on the horizon a very ugly specter of war with such arms buildup, especially when you consider the players in the presidential election.

Palin has gone on record saying war with Russia over Georgia is a possibility, especially if Georgia becomes a member of NATO, something she proposes. How a two year governor of Alaska who could become the president of the United States can make such a proclamation is beyond me but it no doubt “resonates” with other members of her party and their advisors, the second generation neocons, who make a living from death and destruction.

One that got away


Islam is a moderate voice on the American stage, despite the screeching of some who use it to scare and intimidate Americans into self-serving goals that have more to do with politics than the preservation of the American fabric. Mohammad Qatanani was a target used by such people who wanted him to be a poster boy for their hate, claiming he was a member of Hamas who hid his affiliation with that organization in order to infiltrate America and spread his Islamic deception far and wide throughout this country. But by their works you shall know them or something like comes from the good book as Qatanani who cooperated with US authorities encouraged everyone else to do the same despite all the hate filled rhetoric directed towards him. In so doing he gained the admiration and respect of FBI agents, Jewish Rabbis, and local, state and federal members of the legislative branches of government, even though there were others in government, notably the Department of Homeland Security who wanted Qatanani deported. Well, the news is he won’t be, or at least not for now, although DHS still has 30 days to appeal a judge’s decision that their case was weak and without merit and Qatanani can stay put in the US.

A prominent Muslim cleric, celebrated for his moderation by supporters but accused of ties to a terrorist group by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, today won his bid to call the United States his permanent home.

In his 69-page decision, Immigration Judge Alberto Riefkohl said Homeland Security officials had presented a case weak on evidence and credibility in their effort to cast Imam Mohammad Qatanani as someone who had had ties to Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist organization, and who had lied about it to obtain a so-called green card here.

Riefkohl, often using blunt language in his written decision, said that records obtained by Homeland Security officials from Israeli authorities were “too unreliable to prove that Mr. Qatanani has engaged in terrorist activities.”

He added: “The court also finds DHS’s other evidence is insufficient.”

Outside court on the 11th floor the Peter F. Rodino Federal Building in Newark, the imam’s supporters praised the decision, and said it would bolster their community’s faith in the U.S. justice system. Many Muslims and Arabs saw the government’s deportation effort as evidence that Muslims and Arabs, regardless of their views, are stereotyped as terrorist, or terrorist sympathizers.

Aref Assaf, head of the American Arab Forum in Paterson, said earlier that the case had been watched closely by Muslims and Arabs across the United States as well as overseas.

“We have been working well with the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s office, and immigration, mostly because of the imam and his encouragement to us to cooperate and work with the government,” Assaf explained.

This of course is not the image the government wants you to have, a cooperating, civic minded Islam that identifies itself with the environment in which it voluntarily places itself. Instead Islam has to be defiant, menacing, uncooperative, in order to propel the propaganda that it’s a threat to the survival of the nation. In that sense, Qatanani is one that escaped the snare of the government’s trap and most likely will live to tell about it. Congratulations to him, his family, friends and supporters. Ramadan will have just a little more meaning for them and America will be a better place because of that.

The price you pay for diligence in Israel is terrorism


I am never surprised at the inhumanity of the Israeli killing machine.  What does surprise me is how well it’s covered up and passed over by the entire world community.  Almost no one wants to talk about or expose the atrocities taking place at the hands of the utterly lawless Israeli military community.  This latest news item is as disgusting as all the rest.

We all remember this video of the bound and blindfolded Palestinian man in Israeli custody who was shot at point blank range by an Israeli soldier.  At the time of this occurrence/atrocity my only reaction was he should be thankful he wasn’t shot and killed. (Enter ‘palestinian shot by israeli soldier’ for a youtube.com video search and you’ll get 105 hits, some of them of fatalities) What didn’t even cross my mind was the origins of the video and the person who shot and exposed it.  Now, her story has come to light and it’s as dastardly a story as the events videotaped.  There’s no doubt this story will not get the attention katusha rockets shot onto Israeli territory receive and more than likely one of the members of this family will wind up dead and their death equally ignored but Salam Amira is a mujahidah in every sense of the word as well as a victim of Israeli terrorism.  Would that we could convince George Bush to wage one of his divinely inspired wars on terrorism against them.

Muslim patriotism in the US military


I’ve heard a lot from people especially on the right about problems associated with having Muslims involved in anything American, as if the presence of Muslims is a threat to the process or would somehow leave it tainted. I remember vividly during the first Gulf war when America was concerned about its image, a lot was said about Muslims in the US military and especially those who converted to Islam because of their exposure to the Gulf. Now, however, those same people some of whom are still in the military and those who joined later are “tainted” goods, worthy of suspicion and distrust. America is cannabalistic in that sense when it comes to anyone other than blond hair and blue eyed soldiers fighting its wars. From the Civil War upto the Vietnam war people of color have always been looked down upon as unworthy of service in the US military. Today is no different, except now we have bloggers who point out to those who care to know stories of patriotism in the US military that work for the country. Check out this story of a young man who volunteered to join the military in response to Bush’s war on terror.

State sponsored terrorism


Will Grigg has an excellent blog that talks about the abuses of the federal government against its own citizens in the war on terror.  It’s a compelling blog with plenty of examples of government’s terrorism directed towards its own.  The state wasted no time solidifying its hold on Americans after 911.  Homeland security swelled the ranks of people on no fly lists and interrogates randomly people who enter airports, either checking for terrorists or making them.  What follows is another story of many that is a first hand account of what happens to everyday citizens in airports across this country.  I have had friends who’ve recounted experiences similar to the one written about by Feder, making these kinds of encounters more the rule than the exception.  We are told this is necessary to protect the “homeland” and while  you are digesting that remember no amount of protection is worth the erosion of even one of the rights we have guaranteed us under the Constitution.

I arrived at JFK Airport two weeks ago after a short vacation to Syria and presented my American passport for re-entry to the United States. After 28 hours of traveling, I had settled into a hazy awareness that this was the last, most familiar leg of a long journey. I exchanged friendly words with the Homeland Security official who was recording my name in his computer. He scrolled through my passport, and when his thumb rested on my Syrian visa, he paused. Jerking toward the door of his glass-enclosed booth, he slid my passport into a dingy green plastic folder and walked down the hallway, motioning for me to follow with a flick of his wrist. Where was he taking me, I asked him. “You’ll find out,” he said.

We got to an enclosed holding area in the arrivals section of the airport. He shoved the folder into my hand and gestured toward four sets of Homeland Security guards sitting at large desks. Attached to each desk were metal poles capped with red, white and blue siren lights. I approached two guards carrying weapons and wearing uniforms similar to New York City police officers, but they shook their heads, laughed and said, “Over there,” pointing in the direction of four overflowing holding pens. I approached different desks until I found an official who nodded and shoved my green folder in a crowded metal file holder. When I asked him why I was there, he glared at me, took a sip from his water bottle, bit into a sandwich, and began to dig between his molars with his forefinger. I found a seat next to a man who looked about my age — in his late 20s — and waited.

Omar (not his real name) finished his fifth year in biomedical engineering at City College in June. He had just arrived from Beirut, where he visited his family and was waiting to go home to the apartment he shared with his brother in Harlem. Despite his near-perfect English and designer jeans, Omar looked scared. He rubbed his hands and rocked softly in his seat. He had been waiting for hours already, and, as he pointed out, a number of people — some sick, elderly, pregnant or holding sobbing babies — had too. There were approximately 70 people detained in our cordoned-off section: All were Arab (with the exception of me and the friend I traveled with), and almost all had arrived from Dubai, Amman or Damascus. Many were U.S. citizens.

We were in the front row, sitting a few feet from two guards’ desks. They sneered at each bewildered arrival, told jokes in whispers, swiveled in their office chairs and greeted passing guards who stopped to talk — guards who had a habit of looping their fingers into their holsters. One asked his friend how many nationalities were represented in the room. “About 20. Some of everything today.”

No one who had been detained knew precisely why they were there. A few people were led into private rooms; others were questioned out in the open at desks a few feet from the crowd and then allowed to pass through customs. Some were sent to another section of the holding area with large computer screens and cameras, and then brought back. The uninformed consensus among the detainees was that some people would be fingerprinted, have their irises scanned and be sent back to the countries from which they had disembarked, regardless of citizenship status; others would be fingerprinted and allowed to stay; and the unlucky ones would be detained indefinitely and moved to a more permanent facility.

There was one British tourist in the group. Paul (also not his real name) was traveling with three friends who had passed through customs soon after their plane landed and were waiting for him on the other side of the metal barrier; he suspected he had been detained because of his dark skin. When he asked if he could go to the bathroom, one of the guards said, “I wouldn’t.” “What if someone has to?” I asked. “They will just have to hold it,” the guard responded with a smile. Paul began to cry. I watched as he, over the course of four hours, went from feeling exuberant about his trip to New York to despising the entire country. “I speak the Queen’s English,” he said to me. “I’m third-generation British. I came to America because I’ve always wanted to come here, and now they’ve got me so scared that all I want to do is go home. We’re paying for your stupid war anyway.”

To be powerless and mocked at the same time makes one feel ashamed, which leads quickly to rage. Within a few hours of my arrival, I saw at least 10 people denied the right to use the bathroom or buy food and water. I watched my traveling companion duck under a barrier, run to the bathroom and slip back into the holding section — which, of course, someone of another ethnicity in a state of panic would be very reluctant to do. The United States is good at naming enemies, but apparently we are even better at making them, especially of individuals. I don’t know if it’s worse for national security — and more embarrassing for Americans — that this is the first experience tourists have of our country, or that some U.S. citizens get treated this way upon entering their own country.

Another lie debunked


Remember the July 7, 2005 London city bombings where fifty-six people lost their lives?  It inevitably came down to blame going to Al-Qaeda, although alot of what happened that day was clouded in confusion and open to a lot of speculation.  The actions of the UK government didn’t help matters because they refused to hold any type of inquiry that would answer questions being asked by all in British society, citing how security concerns would be undermined by such efforts!(?)   A great deal was made of the fact that the severity of the blasts, both in damage to property as well as loss of human life, was not characteristic of the Irish Republican Army, an organization which has been at odds with the British government for years, and could only be the work of Al-Qaeda.  By default, the blame has stuck for the last three years.  Now, comes word from the UK, that al-Qaeda is NOT the biggest threat of all the terrorist groups on the British horizon, but rather…..surprise…….the IRA!

Dissident republicans from Northern Ireland are engaged in suspicious activity more than any other radical group in the UK including Islamic extremists, according to security sources.

Statistics from the Home Office of the UK reveal dismal figures regarding arrests and convictions of people for terrorism. More than half of all arrests made for terrorism related offenses were bogus and the people were released without further charges, while the conviction rate for terrorist activity  stands at a paltry 18%.  However, since that fateful day in July,2005, two anti-terrorism laws were inflicted upon UK society which arguably led to the diminished  rights of British citizens and the increased powers of the State which claims to protect them.  Al-Qaeda has served as a useful tool for governments who while claiming to fight it, even when it poses no threat, are also fighting its own citizens.

The war on terror+humanitarian relief=the war on Islam and chaos of muslim societies


I have always been perplexed by the war, either militarily or psychologically the US is waging in places like Somalia and Sudan. Two of the poorest countries in Africa and the world, I just can’t understand what threat these two pose to the greatest military power in the world. I have heard the rhetoric, ‘America is fighting the terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them here’, kind of explanation, but what terrorists are they talking about? Shadowy ‘al-Qaeda’ figures seem to be all they can come up with in the assault on Somalia. Take this for instance.

The US has been engaged in a long, low-profile struggle with Islamist forces in Somalia, reported The Christian Science Monitor. A March 3 missile strike against the southern Somali town of Dobley was aimed at preventing violent Islamist militants from taking root in Somalia and spreading through East Africa. Some observers are concerned such efforts could generate greater anti-US sentiment. Islamist groups are regrouping in Somalia, some with more formal ties to al-Qaeda than in the past, says one security observer on the Counterterrorism Blog. The most important group, says Douglas Farah, is Al Shabab. Mr. Farah, citing a US State Department statement. Al-Shabaab is a violent and brutal extremist group with a number of individuals affiliated with Al Qaeda. Many of its senior leaders are believed to have trained and fought with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Somalia has seen intermittent conflict since two separate colonies gained independence from Britain and Italy in 1960, uniting into one country. Historians say tribal and ethnic conflicts fought over access to resources, including water and pastoral country, once fought with bows and spears are now fought with AK-47s.

The US has had a rather undistinguished history with Sudan as well, having attacked Sudan during the Clinton administration for what was later found to be a mistake, when the pharmaceutical plant Al-Shifa was bombed in 1998.

Kroll Associates’ investigation of the U.S. missile attack had apparently demonstrated the sheer vacuum of evidence allegedly linking the facility or its owner to international terrorism, chemical weapons production, and Osama Bin Laden. As the Washington Post reported: “Because of a cupful of soil, the U.S. flattened this Sudanese factory. Now one of the world’s most respected labs, and some of Washington’s most expensive lawyers, say Salah Idris wasn’t making nerve gas for terrorists, just ibuprofen for headaches.”According to the New York Times although “senior national security advisers [had] described Al Shifa as a secret chemical weapons factory financed by bin Laden”, “State Department and CIA officials [now] argue that the government cannot justify its actions.” Rather than manufacturing chemical weapons, the al-Shifa plant “made both medicine and veterinary drugs, according to U.S. and European engineers and consultants who helped build, design and supply the plant.”

At first glance one might think such actions were/are being undertaken by a federal government which seeks to divert public attention from more pressing issues with regard to its policies, foreign or domestic. In the Sudan incident, many critics on the right and the left cried immediately that the bombing in Sudan was undertaken at a time when Clinton was dealing with the Monica Lewinsky scandal and this was his attempt to relieve himself from that spotlight. Today the US is upset with the way the Sudan is handling its domestic policy in Darfur, a western province of that country, and wants to intervene. The way US officials and others are doing that is quite amusing; claiming they have the best interests of the black, African, Muslim people of Darfur, Sudan the US wants humanitarian aid delivered even under force of arms. By raising the specter of “genocide” which means countries can respond militarily without violating treaties, laws or international agreements, to save the lives of those threatened, the US is insisting on a military presence in the Sudan. But what’s the point of it all? In a word, OIL with a twist. Oil, Israel and Logistics= OIL.

Sudanese oil is found in areas not affected by the conflict in Darfur, notably the southern region of Sudan. That part of the country was plagued with a civil war with the central government for over 20 years, but now there is peace in south Sudan, so what happens after that? Fighting breaks out in the western province of Darfur and with it cries by governments and celebrities alike, people on the right and on the left of the political spectrum to “intervene” to stop the fighting, and with force if necessary. Nevermind that the humanitarian crisis in Sudan doesn’t really exist, or that such calls to action in support of Darfur weren’t made during the 20+ years of the southern Sudanese conflict, what’s important is an excuse is needed to justify a military presence which like the one in Iraq is designed to worsen an already bad crisis, and allow for the eventual exploration of OIL under western auspices. Because of it’s strategic location on the “horn of Africa”, USAFRICOM, responsible for U.S. military operations in and military relations with 53 African nations – an area of responsibility covering all of the African continent was formed on the initiative of the African Oil Policy Initiative Group in or about the same time as cries for intervention in Darfur were raised in the corporate media. At the same time, civil war in Somalia and the US backing of Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia took place to the south of Sudan. None of this is coincidental.

The timeline under which these things happened is clear when viewed against the backdrop of what’s happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, two places where large, vast oil reserves have been the target of large oil companies for a very long time. Current US policy in those two places of the world is also driven by oil interests. The reason for “picking” on these two poor, underdeveloped countries is quite simply about the natural resources that lie underneath their territory. That has always been the dilemma between the west and the east since the development of the modern west; how to meet its growing demands for the earth’s natural resources controlling and dominating those resources in faraway lands while appearing to all concerned to be benign about such manipulation. The pretext for war, i.e. fighting terrorism, or providing humanitarian relief, whereby the citizens of the “west” are made to feel the necessity of sacrificing their sons and daughters to go fight and die in these distant lands has been the job of spokespersons (in and out of government), celebrities and the corporate media. Such lies have done a lot to incite fervor and support for this ideal. It is still inexcusable that the largest and mightiest military power in the world sees the need to destroy underdeveloped countries and essentially defenseless people under such transparent guises.