Tag: United States

Abdul-Jabbar makes a slam dunk, and in doing so deserves his props


Lew Alcindor Kareem Abdul-Jabbar reaches over ...
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Most likely this is NOT the kind of publicity Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wants.  He’s been used to publicity all his life, but the news that he decided to cancel his appearance in Israel where he was to promote a film he was heavily involved in probably is not good for business.  Living in Holloywood, after New York, the publicity capital of America and perhaps the world, Abdul-Jabbar puts himself at the mercy of contacts and people who are available to sell good news as long as that news is good for Israel.  Abdul-Jabbar’s cancellation of his appearance at the Jerusalem Film Festival is not good news for a country that prides itself in spin while brutally murdering  people who oppose it.  Despite  that, Abdul-Jabbar risked the possibility of negative publicity, something he surely doesn’t want while hawking a film.  In spite of that he pursued a principled position of not acquiescing to Israeli oppression of Palestinians.  Be prepared to see a coordinated effort to seesAbdul-Jabbar denigrated and he and his reputation soiled by the Israeli propaganda machine; for now, hats-off to him for his courage.

All those cowering in fear about an impending sharia take over of America, ignore the fear mongerers and fear no more


GOP Presidential Debate June 13, 2011 in New H...
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It’s all a “myth”, but that’s something I’ve been telling you many times here and at the same time highlighting the incendiary, racist and seditious nature of those who are trying to scare the Nation into enforcing a pogrom against Muslims in America. So, read carefully

If you are not vitally concerned about the possibility of radical Muslims infiltrating the U.S. government and establishing a Taliban-style theocracy, then you are not a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination. In addition to talking about tax policy and Afghanistan, Republican candidates have also felt the need to speak out against the menace of “sharia.”

Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum refers to sharia as “an existential threat” to the United States. Pizza magnate Herman Cain declared in March that he would not appoint a Muslim to a Cabinet position or judgeship because “there is this attempt to gradually ease sharia law and the Muslim faith into our government. It does not belong in our government.”

The generally measured campaign of former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty leapt into panic mode over reports that during his governorship, a Minnesota agency had created a sharia-compliant mortgage program to help Muslim homebuyers. “As soon as Gov. Pawlenty became aware of the issue,” spokesman Alex Conant assured reporters, “he personally ordered it shut down.”

On Religion
Faith. Religion. Spirituality. Meaning. In our ever-shrinking world, the tentacles of religion touch everything from governmental policy to individual morality to our basic social constructs. It affects the lives of people of great faith — or no faith at all. This series of weekly columns — launched in 2005 — seeks to illuminate the national conversation.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich has been perhaps the most focused on the sharia threat. “We should have a federal law that says under no circumstances in any jurisdiction in the United States will sharia be used,” Gingrich announced at last fall’s Values Voters Summit. He also called for the removal of Supreme Court justices (a lifetime appointment) if they disagreed.

Gingrich’s call for a federal law banning sharia has gone unheeded so far. But at the local level, nearly two dozen states have introduced or passed laws in the past two years to ban the use of sharia in court cases.

Despite all of the activity to monitor and restrict sharia, however, there remains a great deal of confusion about what it actually is. It’s worth taking a look at some facts to understand why an Islamic code has become such a watchword in the 2012 presidential campaign.

What is sharia?

More than a specific set of laws, sharia is a process through which Muslim scholars and jurists determine God’s will and moral guidance as they apply to every aspect of a Muslim’s life. They study the Quran, as well as the conduct and sayings of the Prophet Mohammed, and sometimes try to arrive at consensus about Islamic law. But different jurists can arrive at very different interpretations of sharia, and it has changed over the centuries.

Importantly, unlike the U.S. Constitution or the Ten Commandments, there is no one document that outlines universally agreed upon sharia.

Then how do Muslim countries use sharia for their systems of justice?

There are indeed some violent and extreme interpretations of sharia. That is what the Taliban used to rule Afghanistan. In other countries, sharia may be primarily used to govern contracts and other agreements. And in a country like Turkey, which is majority Muslim, the national legal system is secular, although individual Muslims may follow sharia in their personal religious observances such as prayer and fasting. In general, to say that a person follows sharia is to say that she is a practicing Muslim.

How and when is it used in U.S. courts?

Sharia is sometimes consulted in civil cases with Muslim litigants who may request a Muslim arbitrator. These may involve issues of marriage contracts or commercial agreements, or probating an Islamic will. They are no different than the practice of judges allowing orthodox Jews to resolve some matters in Jewish courts, also known as beth din.

U.S. courts also regularly interpret foreign law in commercial disputes between two litigants from different countries, or custody agreements brokered in another country. In those cases, Islamic law is treated like any other foreign law or Catholic canon law.

What about extreme punishments like stoning or beheading?

U.S. judges may decide to consider foreign law or religious codes like sharia, but that doesn’t mean those laws override the Constitution. We have a criminal justice system that no outside law can supersede. Additionally, judges consider foreign laws only if they choose to — they can always refuse to recognize a foreign law.

So if sharia is consulted only in certain cases and only at the discretion of the court, why has it become such a high priority for states and GOP candidates? One answer is that sharia opponents believe they need to act not to prevent the way Islamic law is currently used in the U.S. but to prevent a coming takeover by Muslim extremists. The sponsor of an Oklahoma measure banning sharia approved by voters last fall described it as “a pre-emptive strike.” Others, like the conservative Center for Security Policy, assert that all Muslims are bound to work to establish an Islamic state in the U.S.

But if that was true — and the very allegation labels every Muslim in America a national security threat — the creeping Islamic theocracy movement is creeping very slowly. Muslims first moved to the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, for example, nearly a century ago to work in Henry Ford‘s factories. For most of the past 100 years, Dearborn has been home to the largest community of Arabs in the U.S. And yet after five or six generations, Dearborn’s Muslims have not sought to see the city run in accordance with sharia. Bars and the occasional strip clubs dot the town’s avenues, and a pork sausage factory is located next to the city’s first mosque.

Maybe Dearborn’s Muslims are just running a very drawn-out head fake on the country. It’s hard to avoid the more likely conclusion, however, that politicians who cry “Sharia!” are engaging in one of the oldest and least-proud political traditions — xenophobic demagoguery. One of the easiest ways to spot its use is when politicians carelessly throw around a word simply because it scares some voters.

Take Gerald Allen, the Alabama state senator who was moved by the danger posed by sharia to sponsor a bill banning it — but who, when asked for a definition, could not say what sharia was. “I don’t have my file in front of me,” he told reporters. “I wish I could answer you better.” In Tennessee, lawmakers sought to make following sharia a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison — until they learned that their effort would essentially make it illegal to be Muslim in their state.

During last year’s Senate race in Nevada, GOP candidate Sharon Angle blithely asserted that Dearborn, as well as a small town in Texas, currently operate under sharia law. And Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann used the occasion of Osama bin Laden’s death to tie the terrorist mastermind to the word: “It is my hope that this is the beginning of the end of Sharia-compliant terrorism.”

The anti-communist Red Scare of the 1950s made broad use of guilt by innuendo and warnings about shadowy conspiracies. If GOP candidates insist they are not doing the same thing to ordinary Muslims, they can prove it by explaining what they believe sharia is and whether they’re prepared to ban the consideration of all religious codes from civil arbitration. Anything less is simply fear mongering.

fear mongering has become a tenet of the Republican Party and many of those who’ve run for political office in that party; by promoting a non-existing threat Republicans have relegated themselves to a party of irrelevance.  Vote for them at your and the Nation’s peril.

Go Ahead, Shoot! We Don’t Care!


Seal of the United States Department of State.
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That seems to be what Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State seems to be saying to the Israelis who are facing the possibility of confronting another Gaza bound flotilla.  The last one ended in the murder of 9 people, and it doesn’t seem to bother the Israelis or the US State department that this latest one could end up that way as well.  Once again the illegality of the blockade on the part of Israel is completely forgotten in Clinton’s statements and the fact that she, and by extension we, seems to be indifferent to the safety of Americans is equally distressing.  Clinton has even received some support for this shoot first, ask questions or even deal with questions later attitude by other Americans in the press.

It’s not like the Israelis are being “attacked”, they aren’t, it’s just that they’re being asked to treat Palestinians like any other member of the world community, entitled to territorial integrity and the right to self-determination….something the Israelis demand for themselves and it’s not like the flotilla is armed with the latest and greatest existentially threatening military hardware. It’s not, but the histrionics of the Israelis and the American State dept cabal would have you believe otherwise.  So if you’re under the illusion that America looks out for its own, even those who may faithfully, patriotically and legally disagree with American policy, then dispel yourselves of that notion immediately.

 

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Glen Greenwald’s definition of terrorism is right on the money, really


He nails it and has nailed it for some time.  This is what he says

I’ve often written that Terrorism is the most meaningless, and thus most manipulated, term in American political discourse.  But while it lacks any objective meaning, it does have a functional one.  It means:  anyone — especially of the Muslim religion and/or Arab nationality — who fights against the United States and its allies or tries to impede their will.  That’s what “Terrorism” is; that’s all it means.  And it’s just extraordinary how we’ve created what we call ”law” that is intended to do nothing other than justify all acts of American violence while delegitimizing, criminalizing, and converting into Terrorism any acts of resistance to that violence….

it’s not remotely criminal that the U.S. attacked Iraq, spent 7 years destroying the country, and left at least 100,000 people dead.  To even suggest that American officials responsible for that attack should be held criminally liable is to marginalize oneself as a fringe and unSerious radical.  It’s not an idea that’s even heard, let alone accepted…..

The U.S. repeatedly tried to kill Saddam at the start of the Iraq War, and — contrary to Obama’s early pledges — has done the same to Gadaffi in Libya. NATO has explicitly declared Gadaffi to be a “legitimate target.”  But just imagine if an Iraqi had come to the U.S. and attempted to bomb the White House or kill George Bush, or if a Libyan (or Afghan, Pakistani, or Yemeni) did the same to Obama.  Would anyone in American political circles be allowed to suggest that this was a legitimate act of war?  Of course not:  screaming “Terrorism!” would be the only acceptable reaction.

I applaud Greenwald’s courage in taking a stand against the very obvious racist application of the terrorist term.  It’s use is meant to conjure up images of a ‘clash of civilizations’ where no such clash exists.  When one hears the term it can only mean one thing, the destruction of the values that we hold so dearly by Muslims who want to impose Sharia law on an unwitting population.  Quite frankly it is demagogic, designed to elicit a fear and loathing response that it’s hoped will drive America to systemically oppress a group of people based on their race and religion.  I renew my call for all good people of conscience to reject such grandstanding and bigoted behavior and to call it what it is, just like Greenwald, whenever the opportunity presents itself.

 

Alice Walker has a much better sense of history than Herman Cain! Maybe she should run for President


Reading and talking about "Why War is Nev...
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Alice Walker gets it, she understands her responsibility to humanity as a result of the struggles she and people before her went through in this country.

there is for me an awareness of paying off a debt to the Jewish civil rights activists who faced death to come to the side of black people in the South in our time of need. I am especially indebted to Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman who heard our calls for help – our government then as now glacially slow in providing protection to non-violent protestors-and came to stand with us.

They got as far as the truncheons and bullets of a few “good ol’ boys'” of Neshoba County, Mississippi and were beaten and shot to death along with James Cheney, a young black man of formidable courage who died with them. So, even though our boat will be called The Audacity of Hope, it will fly the Goodman, Cheney, Schwerner flag in my own heart.

And what of the children of Palestine, who were ignored in our President’s latest speech on Israel and Palestine, and whose impoverished, terrorized, segregated existence was mocked by the standing ovations recently given in the U.S. Congress to the prime minister of Israel?

I see children, all children, as humanity’s most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left. One child must never be set above another, even in casual conversation, not to mention in speeches that circle the globe.

As insightful as it can get. I admire someone who risks it all, including her life if we are to go on Israel’s past deeds towards such endeavors, to stand up for the rights of people and a cause that’s not politically correct. Perhaps Herman can and all the other demagogues of the GOP can learn a thing or two from Ms. Walker. The WSJ’s James Taranto’s claims of political correctness prohibiting him and others from advancing bigotry ring hollow when weighed against the moral certainty of Walker’s position. Respect!

The GOP is bad for business, which means they’re bad for America


The Republican Party encourages every form of ...
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All the talk about terrorism and fighting a war on terrorism led to the biggest American deficit in the history of our country, under the direction of George W. Bush…..you remember him don’t you?  Well the GOP doesn’t want you to, because they’d rather blame Obama and the Muslims.  Turns out the Republicans are their own worse enemy, brilliantly executing the cutting off of their own nose to spite the face of American business and the American people, what with all their talk about “sharia” law.  It’s a natural extension, “sharia” law and the Repub’s attempts to scare you about it, to the war on terror.  This bit of news shouldn’t come as a surprise

Islamic finance is growing, but politics, and perhaps prejudice, might be hamstringing this business in the United States.

In the past few years bills have been introduced in at least 20 states to forbid courts from invoking foreign laws in rulings. Proponents have touted the bills as a way to prevent Sharia, a code derived from Islamic law, from becoming the law of the land — a risk that many attorneys say is nonexistent. Arizona, Louisiana and Tennessee have passed “Sharia ban” laws, which critics call a way of scoring political points by exploiting anti-Muslim sentiment.

It is unclear whether those laws would directly affect the growth of Islamic finance, which follows the tenets of Sharia law, such as a ban on paying interest. But at the very least, the political climate for Muslims is certainly not fostering a welcoming environment for what experts call an emerging market.

“The U.S. is behind. There is a strong and rapidly growing Muslim population,” said Steven Watts, a partner with KPMG’s financial services consulting practice in Toronto. “The holdup seems to be largely political, but it is to the detriment of the U.S.”

Watts said there are more opportunities, namely “ethical” investments that avoid putting money in gambling or alcohol and could appeal to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

However, Sharia-compliant mortgages (which are permissible under Islamic law because they are structured as lease-back or co-ownership arrangements) are a great entrance to the Islamic finance world, he said.

“There’s not enough of a business to attract a major bank,” said Stephen Lange Ranzini, University’s president and chief executive officer. “It is a big enough niche for us to make a small profit.”

Ranzini said that while anti-Sharia legislation has largely been passed in states that have small Muslim populations, he sees it as harmful.

“Passing laws to ban Sharia when we have American soldiers in two Muslim countries and bases all across Europe where there are large minority Muslim populations is an ill-considered idea,” Ranzini said. “The people that are hyped up about this issue are just very uninformed.”

Ranzini said there are 300,000 Muslims in the United States who are renters, despite having the attributes of creditworthy borrowers.

“Bringing these Muslims onboard as homeowners is good public policy and would assist with solving the housing crisis,” Ranzini said.

’nuff said.

 

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It’s time to call a spade a spade and a bigot a bigot


Muslim bashing by GOP candidates? Nothing new here
By John L. Esposito (I’m glad I’m not the only one who has noticed!)

It’s no surprise that two candidates could not resist playing the “Muslim card” in the recent GOP debate. The bigger surprise is that more candidates did not follow suit.

Park 51 (the plan to build the so-called mosque at ground zero) surfaced the deep roots of fear of Islam and Muslims and triggered a tsunami of hate crimes. Shariah has become the code word and symbol to exploit voters fears and engage in Islam and Muslim-bashing without any push-back because nobody, including most of the candidates, knows what it is. And lets us not forget the Peter King congressional hearings.

Poor Herman Cain knows shariah is a problem, but does not know what it is or why it is a problem? Cain is “uncomfortable” including a Muslim in his cabinet or having one as federal judge because “…there is creeping attempt to gradually ease Shariah Law and the Muslim faith into our government. It does not belong to our government.”

Cain insisted, “There have been instances in New Jersey and Oklahoma where Muslims did try to influence court decisions with Sharia Law.” Is he sure? If so, who, when and where? Why does fellow Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey refuse to toe that line? Pressed in the debate as to why he would not be comfortable having a Muslim in his administration, he replied, ‘I wouldn’t be comfortable because you have peaceful Muslims and militant Muslims – those that are trying to kill us. I meant the ones that are trying to kill us.’ So would he appoint African Americans, Hispanics, Italian-Americans and members of other groups associated with past crime waves or whose members have been imprisoned for violent crimes?

Cain wants to question Muslims about their commitment to the Constitution “to make sure we have people committed to the Constitution working for this country.” But he wouldn’t do the same with Christians or Jews. So much for equality of all citizens.

Newt Gingrich could not afford to be “left” behind: “I’m in favor of saying to people, ‘If you’re not prepared to be loyal to the United States, you will not serve in my administration, period.’ We did this in dealing with the Nazis and we did this in dealing with the communists and it was controversial both times, and both times we discovered, after a while, there are some genuinely bad people who would like to infiltrate our country. And we have got to have the guts to stand up and say no.”

So ALL Muslims, not just an infinitely small number of terrorists, are to be compared to Nazis and communists? Is that the magnitude of the threat? Gingrich and Cain should be real patriots and turn over their evidence to the FBI, Justice Department, Homeland Security and local police because law enforcement offices certainly have not found evidence to support these allegations.

Surprisingly, Tim Pawlenty did not weigh in. Pawlenty has touted the fact that he shut down a program for Sharia compliant mortgages, a program whose creation his administration initially supported. Of course you can’t blame him because, like other candidates, he knows that many potential voters from the right wing of the Republican Party believe Sharia-compliant finance is part of a stealth jihad to subvert the Constitution.

The far right is long on fear mongering and short on providing supportive evidence. They ignore major polls by Gallup, Pew and others that show that the vast majority of Muslims are politically, economically middle class and educationally integrated into American society. Their desire not to be confused by the facts contributes to a growing climate of Islamophobia that has led to discrimination, hate crimes, violence, desecration of mosques and the violation of the civil liberties of Muslim Americans. Surveys have shown that Muslims are not looking to install Islamic law in the U.S., promote terrorism or undermine the American Constitution.

Let’s get it right. Should candidates address issues of national security and concerns about Muslim terrorists in America? Of course they should. What candidates have succumbed to is the exploitation of legitimate fear about domestic terrorism with the brush stroking (or perhaps better the tar and feathering) of a faith and the majority of its mainstream believers. Most states that have moved to pass anti-Shariah legislation have not acted because of a major Muslim attempt to replace American law with Islamic law. Indeed, as a mystified Muslim in North Dakota said when a legislator announced he would push for anti-sharia legislation: “There are only 2,000 of us in the entire state.” In fact, there are far more right wing politicians, political commentators and Islamophobes talking about Shariah than the vast majority of American Muslims who, like Jews and Christians and followers of other faiths, accept and follow the Constitution and American laws.

It’s time to call a spade a spade, a bigot a bigot and stop those who would resurrect the intolerance of the past and add Muslims to a long list of groups that has included Jews, African Americans, World War II Japanese Americans and others who have been victims of religious discrimination and racism.

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If you think black people can’t be racist, look no farther than Herman Cain to dispel that notion


A 66 year old black man from the state of Georgia had this to say about Muslims.

You have peaceful Muslims, then you have militant Muslims, those that are trying to kill us…I was thinking about the ones that were trying to kill us.

I guess he forgot about the history of lynchings of people like him in his home state of Georgia by terrorists. Perhaps Mr. Cain doesn’t know the history of these terrorists whose tactics sound strikingly familiar to ones being used by members of Mr. Cain’s party today!

William J. Simmons renewed the KKK at a Stone Mountain, Georgia, ceremony in 1915. Later, Christian fundamentalist ministers aided recruitment as the Klan portrayed itself as the protector of traditional values during the Jazz Age.

As its membership grew into the millions in the 1920s, the Klan exerted considerable political influence, helping to elect sympathetic candidates to state and national offices. The group was strong not only in southern states such as Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas, but also in Oklahoma, California, Oregon, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. Strongly opposed to non–Anglo-Saxon immigration, the Klan helped secure the passage of strict quotas on immigration. In addition to being racist, the group also espoused hatred of Jews, Catholics, socialists, and unions.

No doubt, Mr. Cain probably believes that black citizens of America wanted to be kept as slaves, so shallow and misguided is his understanding of his own history and that of his country, but what he says sounds good enough to enough Americans to be considered a serious contender to the Republican Party’s nomination!  And you thought we didn’t have a race problem in this country!

Peter King-At it again-Racism and bigotry in the US Congress


It should come as no surprise that King is back at hammering his racist meme of the threatening Muslim terrorist.  It’s probably an orgasmic experience for him to have the bright TV  lights and media attention on him while he makes his case for fear and instability in America.  It’s a tiring rehash of the racism America has for too long been accustomed. This time he wanted to focus on “radicalization” of Islam in the prisons, yet King didn’t call anyone from the federal Bureau of Prisons to make that case.  Instead he and his fellow GOP members along with a few experts repeated the same tired rhetoric for which little substantiation was given.  So because we’ve heard it all before, let’s read what others not so insanely committed to bigotry and divisiveness have to say.

There is no question that a congressional hearing, which targets an entire religion, is morally and strategically wrong-headed. First, it is un-American. This is not the America that I know and have helped build as a lifelong public servant. The America that I know has always provided refuge for those fleeing persecution, from early settlers to recent refugees. The America that I know does not hate and discriminate based on race, religion or creed.

Second, it is counterproductive. King is undermining his own objective. In hosting these hearings, King, as chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, has declared, erroneously, that the Muslim-American community does not partner actively enough to prevent acts of violence—or in the case of prisons, extremism. Despite the offensive and fallacious nature of King’s concern, given extensive evidence that contradicts his claim, the Homeland Security chairman’s strategy makes future partnerships unpalatable. (Rep. Michael Honda)

I think the purpose of King’s hearings is to call into question the Americanness of U.S. Muslims by branding their religion a threat to the nation. And once again I observe that we have been here before, including in 1855 when Protestants circulated an image of Pope Pius IX crumbling the Constitution in his right hand while plunging a sceptre into an American eagle with his left…..the “real issue” here is not the radicalization of Islam in U.S. prisons. It is the sacrifice of American values of liberty and tolerance on the altar of anti-Islamic prejudice. More specifically, it is the abuse of the coercive power of the federal government (something conservatives used to care about) to attack one religion and one religion only. (Stephen Prothero)

The American Muslim blog has an excellent rundown of the above articles and others that clearly show the bias intent of King’s hearings and the deleterious effect they have on American politics and policy.  The one thing King does well is appeal to the basic instincts of his constituents and ostensibly everyone else with the time worn vices of hatred and fear.  Again and again we see and hear that coming from the GOP who live on the premise that if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes believable or true. I got news for you King, baby…..that ain’t so!

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Remember the Peace Dividend? You don’t?


How fast time and certain unpopular ideas fly. The peace dividend was a political slogan popularized by US President George H.W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the early 1990s, purporting to describe the economic benefit of a decrease in defense spending.  The term was frequently used at the end of the Cold War, when many Western nations, except ours, significantly cut military spending.  In fact even after the “Cold War” and the Gulf Wars you would think there would be plenty of opportunities for a “peace dividend”.  We killed Saddam Hussein….no peace dividend, we got rid of bin laden, no peace dividend. President Obama’s Pentagon 2011 budget was the most its ever been, over $700 billion.  Stay tuned.

Trouble spelled P-E-R-R-Y


Rick Perry, governor of Texas is trouble, no matter how you look at it.  He’s trouble for non-Christians and Christians alike, especially after his recent announcements here where he encroaches on everyone’s constitutional right to freedom of religion by proclaiming ‘there’s hope if people will seek out the living Christ.’ One can only guess what happens if you don’t seek out Christ….despair, hopelessness, darkness…..which leads me to Perry’s other troubling announcement, where he likens himself to a prophet!?!  So Prophet Perry wants to convert you to the living Christ, and refusing to accept his invitation means what for you the citizen of Texas and/or the United States?  Does this imagery come to mind to any of you, from a time when someone else maybe foisted upon  himself such divinity?

 

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Too Many Strings Attached


The Egyptian government has decided not to accept any funds from Washington to help it along with its democratization after the overthrow, somewhat peacefully I might add, of former president Hosni Mubarak.  The government has warned non-governmental organizations not to accept money from Washington saying doing so only undermines the security of Egypt at a very delicate time in its history.  Normally that would be good advice and even Americans should be happy that an ally is not extending its hand during our hard times but removing Washington’s ability to control the internal politics of a country once under its sway is most likely an anathema to career politicians who will use such information as this to start to discredit the Egyptian government.  Let’s not forget elections have not taken place in Egypt yet; it is still under the control of the  military which means any rejection of US aid could merely be posturing on Egypt’s part.  Moreover there may be some things that have to be addressed as far as Washington is concerned before such aid is actually given, or perhaps more sinisterly such aid is extended to lay the seeds for future discord should things not go according to Washington’s plan.  For now, Egypt with a history that dates Americas by several centuries has declared itself independent of American money, and that’s a good thing for them and us.

Agenda Driven Terror


America with enough manly men to populate the planet Earth is the most scared country in the world when it comes to terrorism, terrorists and terror, or at least that’s what government wants you to think.  We are a country where even our women are manly men; we have two women running for President who think they can do a better job than the present occupant and one of them has even been heard telling other men to put their man pants on before going off to work, a sort of way of encouraging men who might otherwise not be up to the task of being men.  However, when it comes to brown or funny named people we just loose all sense of proportionality and turn to government, which always solves problems by throwing money at things, to calm us down and protect us.  Tom Engelhardt talks about this phenomenon in his article, The 100% Doctrine in Washington.

…in the near decade since 9/11, while hundreds of Americans died from E. coli, and at least 30,000 from food-borne illnesses generally, only a handful of Americans, perhaps fewer than 25, have died from anything that might be considered a terror attack in this country….in the near decade since 9/11, while hundreds of Americans died from E. coli, and at least 30,000 from food-borne illnesses generally, only a handful of Americans, perhaps fewer than 25, have died from anything that might be considered a terror attack in this country.

…in only one area of life are Americans officially considered 100% scared, and so 100% in need of protection, and that’s when it comes to terrorism. Having lost its communist super-enemy in 1991, it now lives, breathes, and grows on its self-proclaimed responsibility to protect Americans 100% of the time, 100% of the way, from any imaginable terror threat. The National Security Complex has, in fact, grown fat by relentlessly pursuing the promise of making the country totally secure from terrorism, even as life grows ever less secure for so many Americans when it comes to jobs, homes, finances, and other crucial matters.  It is on this pledge of protection that the Complex has managed to extort the tidal flow of funds that have allowed it to bloat to monumental proportions, end up with a yearly national security budget of more than $1.2 trillion, find itself encased in a cocoon of self-protective secrecy, and be 100% assured that its officials will never be brought to justice for any potential crimes they may commit in their “war” on terrorism.

Right now, even in the worst of economic times, the Department of Homeland Security, the Pentagon, and the sprawling labyrinth of competing bureaucracies that likes to call itself the U.S. Intelligence Community are all still expanding.….Any potential act of terrorism simply feeds the system, creating new opportunities to add yet more layers to one bureaucracy or another, or to promote new programs of surveillance, control, and war-making — and the technology that goes with them.  Every minor deviation from terror safety, even involving plots that failed dismally or never had the slightest chance of success, is but an excuse for further funding.

We have been conditioned to gasp and cry for help whenever we hear about an act of terror or an impending act, even though bin Laden is dead.  The military complex has managed to dredge up some others who are equally frightening, ominous and reason for continued vigilance at the expense of American tax dollars.  It doesn’t matter that we have placed ourselves in harms way on the soil of countries that were heretofore not our enemies but have since become after our destruction of their infrastructure and way of life.  Their anger only serves to emphasize, in some perverse way, the need for our continued presence in their country with the possibility of expansive forays into their neighboring countries. 

At a time when the opposition is talking about ways of reducing government they make no mention of pairing down the military complex that Engelhardt talks about, instead choosing to reduce the over trillion dollar deficit, much of it because of militarization on the backs of the elderly and the poor.  We’ve managed to look the other way while the Pentagon robbed us and our allies of billions of dollars as well as investment bankers like Bernie Madoff, who made the Pentagon look like petty thieves, who made away with another couple of hundred billion all under and during the fog of war on terror.  The major players of this shell game, the where did the money go, have managed to escape into obscurity untouched while finger pointing goes on in ways that are so funny it’s pathetic.   Yet there are several constants that remain throughout and that is, terror can only be committed by people of color with funny sounding names who we need to eliminate and whatever other acts of criminality take place on American soil are reason enough for an ever increasing federal government determined to grow even bigger, and less efficient at taxpayers’ expense.  There are a lot of players who are guilty of keeping you stupefied.  Please discover who they are, so you can remove the blinders.

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The Face of American Terrorism


American based terrorism doesn’t get much mention in mainstream media, maybe because those who are responsible for it in many cases reflect the ethnicity of those who write about terrorism.  I mean it’s much easier to call someone who looks different from you and has a funny name a terrorist than it is to call your next door neighbor or the person who attends your church or synagogue one.  Janet Napolitano knows a thing or two about what happens to people who take an even handed approach to this issue of homegrown terrorism because she was excoriated in the media by pundits for a 2009 report released by Homeland Security entitled, Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment. Because there’s no mention of Islam in the title, the report was denounced by many across the political spectrum.  Media Matters does a pretty nice job of detailing the arguments of some of the people opposed to labelling American terrorism just that, and their analysis can be found here.  Needless to say, the 2009 report doesn’t follow the meme so often repeated in public discourse that ‘all terrorists are Muslim’ because such a statement is false on its face, racially charged and bigoted.

Do you know who the people pictured above are?  They are members of Hutaree who see law enforcement as the enemy and  they planned to kill a police officer, possibly at a traffic stop, and then attack the funeral procession to kill more officers. Sounds much like terrorism to me, but instead these folks were charged with seditious conspiracy against the government, attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and possessing a firearm during a crime of violence.  Ever  hear of the group The Sovereign Citizen?  You can see for yourself the width and breadth of this group across the country here.  The FBI has a full page on them which says in essence they do not feel bound to obey the laws of America, do everything to circumvent the law up to and including murder of public officials and the destruction of government institutions.  The ubiquitous federal government isn’t the only entity to see the danger Sovereign Citizen members present to the general public.  A local Texas sheriff, Chief Smith has issued his  own terrorism warning saying in part

Chief Smith wants the Citizens to be aware that these people could be practicing their beliefgs in this area.  Chief Smith warns that these persons have the potential to act out in very violent manners with both citizens and law enforcement if the contact with them is negative.

The Chief has every reason to be concerned.  Just last week a ‘sovereign citizen’ in Florida, claiming he “did not have to follow the law or obey law enforcement officers” fired an AK-47 weapon at a store after calling them repeatedly to demand a product they did not have.  Larry Kelly then led law enforcement officials on a chase through the city of Ensley, Florida before being captured.  Again, last week another ‘sovereign citizen’ Matthew O’Neill was arrested after sending a white powder substance to the Colorado Department of Revenue which was dealing with his tax issues.  It doesn’t take a genius to understand the significance of that in post 911 America does it?  Then it was an act of terrorism, now it’s a disgruntled tax case.  But ‘sovereign citizen’ encounters with the law have also been deadly.  What’s significant is if one were to replace each of the above linked news stories with someone’s Arabic name or reference to their religious belief it would be a sure indicator of their terrorist inclinations, BUT absent such identifying tags, while still abhorrent and deadly, the acts are crimes which we have all too often been accustomed, absent the accompanying terrorism hysteria.  Conservatives have for some time bemoaned the increase in laws on the books to handle what they consider situations already adequately addressed in law, yet many on the right are the first to claim the need for increased laws to save America from ‘sharia law’, for instance to the presence of municipally approved places of worship to articles of clothing to any number of other things associated with Islam and Muslims in America. This is the dilemma America faces today; how to deal with the hypocrisy and demagoguery of politicians and political parties, such as the Republican  and Tea Party, while still legitimately addressing the role of the rule of law.  What’s good for the goose IS good for the gander as well.  It’s either all terrorism or it’s not, but most likely chances are it will not be classified terrorism, especially by the main stream media, as long as people who write about it look like the people above who perpetuate it.

Islamophobes in Tennessee are at it again


A cartoon threatening that the KKK would lynch...
Image via Wikipedia

The folks in the great state of Tennessee are at it again whipping up racist fervor against Muslims in ways that are so comical they look downright stupid and  state representative Bill Ketron is willing to take up that mantle of stupidity.  How could any legislator from Tennessee talk about outlawing material support for terrorist organizations without first talking about the role his/her state played in terrorism with the formation of the Ku Klux Klan in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1865.  With all the talk about people wanting to honor that organization and by people we’re talking about high ranking  officials as well as states it will be interesting to see whether Tennessee will sanction such groups in much the same way as they are calling for with Islamic organizations.  Look at the possibilities of ridding the South of any connection with or support of such clearly racist groups as the Klan, the Imperial Klan of America, Knights of the White Camelia, et.al. who have more poignantly soiled the American fabric than any Muslim or Islamic group has to date.  I think Muslim groups should welcome Ketron’s Material Support for Designated Entities Act demand the state of Tennessee begin cleaning out its own backyard of racists, supremacists and any reference to them by the state.  Let’s see how eager he is to embrace that idea.

But beyond that, Ketron made another faux pas by passing out a video wherein a Muslim imam in it said homosexuality is a sin punishable by death, meaning to imply such a person uttering that remark is clearly a terrorist.  Such sentiments however are not just the belief of Muslims.  Many Christians hold the view that homosexuality is not compatible with Christian doctrine, including Ketron’s own United Methodist Church.  That’s probably one of the more mild remarks made by members of Ketron’s faith.  Would Ketron apply his material support legislation against the people, all Christians, who rallied in New York recently, with some who also said homosexuals are worthy of death?  Hello, Mr. Ketron?

Obama-A Wolf in Sheep’s clothing


There has been a rather shocking revelation from Dr. Cornell West about his interaction with Barack Obama which explains some of the things that were inexplicable before now.  It appears President Obama is a lot more think skinned than his job calls for, and he goes through great lengths to let people know his displeasure.  One can feel  Dr. West’s sense of betrayal on a personal as well as philosophical level when talking about Obama and the many personal appearances West made on his behalf during the 2008 campaign.

West knew he had been “had” when he took a look at Obama’s appointments, as well as the President’s lack of speaking out forcefully enough on the rights of the poor and working class.

when I looked at the neoliberal economic team. The first announcement of Summers and Geithner I went ballistic. I said, ‘Oh, my God, I have really been misled at a very deep level.’ And the same is true for Dennis Ross and the other neo-imperial elites. I said, ‘I have been thoroughly misled, all this populist language is just a facade. I was under the impression that he might bring in the voices of brother Joseph Stiglitz and brother Paul Krugman. I figured, OK, given the structure of constraints of the capitalist democratic procedure that’s probably the best he could do. But at least he would have some voices concerned about working people, dealing with issues of jobs and downsizing and banks, some semblance of democratic accountability for Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats who are just running amuck. I was completely wrong.

I feel West’s pain.  Having surrounded himself with such “advisers” it’s easy to why Obama’s foreign policy so closely mirrors George Bush’s and with main stream media peddling such tripe as this  it doesn’t look like there is any relief in sight.

….in the U.S., we will have to deal with some unpredictable consequences of withdrawing so many troops…more than 60 percent of the Department of Defense’s workforce is contractors, meaning contractors are the majority of the U.S. presence in the country. With the war winding down they’ll be coming home to uncertain employment prospects.The war in Afghanistan is more than just the troops and contractors who are deployed: there is a vast ecosystem of small, medium and large companies back here that support those deployed workers. Without a hundred billion dollars in war costs every year, those companies will struggle to stay in business. An executive at a small defense contractor recently joked to me, “Afghanistan is our business plan.” I asked him what he would do if the war ended. He stared at me for a moment and said, “Well, then I hope we invade Libya.”….Ten years of war have established a discrete class of entrepreneurs, mid-level workers and administrators who are completely reliant upon the U.S. being at war to stay employed.

and one has got to wonder whether the types of advisers Obama has surrounded himself will make that case for America to remain at war in perpetuity with some intractable foe and in so doing  convince Obama to refute  his progressive roots in much the same way as he has with other issues?

In didn’t take long for Obama supporters to come out and blast West for detailing his personal experiences with the president.  To totally discredit West he was even been equated with “birthers”, those who doubt Obama’s citizenship and are in fact racist.  That means therefore West’s opposition to Obama is racist in nature, despite the fact West  himself is an African-America.  Things have come full circle in American politics, and it only promises to get  more interesting as the campaign goes into full swing after Labor Day.  Hang on to your hats!

America’s Celebration of Death


Osama bin Laden is dead and America is celebrating in such grotesque and macabre ways that some commentators have said such a celebratory mood is excessive and inappropriate. However this attitude of partying at the news of the death of a foe or opponent is a part of the American tradition, even when we did it to ourselves as.

I guess for some it was especially easy to celebrate because we attributed what happened on September 11, 2001 to bin Laden  and we all know what happened and what it meant to our Country, but it signifies the continued deterioration of our Nation’s morality and spirit.  We equated “justice” with assassination without blinking an eye and see no contradiction in that position.  From the simplest of minds to the most classically trained in jurisprudence, there was universal acceptance that a dead bin Laden was one who met justice.  We  allowed ourselves to be ruled by the mob mentality that says justice is what satisfies us emotionally not what is right or wrong, even if our happiness isn’t based on the law we’ve been told since kindergarten we must assiduously obey.

We gave into our hatred…much like the throngs of Iranians who surrounded the American embassy during the hostage situation and shouted ‘death to America’ and in such a frenzy allowed ourselves to be judge, jury and executioner, without blinking an eye.  Let’s not forget however, that when we’ve done that  before this is how we looked.

What are Muslims saying


Here it is without the filter; Muslims in the West commenting on the Osama bin laden execution

Raped by hands


Lara Logan, the CBS correspondent who was assaulted in Cairo, Egypt during the “Egyptian revolution” has finally come out and spoken about what happened to her.  It sounds very dramatic and Logan does an excellent job of provoking the imagery, stimulating the schemata but it rings flat on my dead old ears.  Not because I assume the typical attitude of many who don’t believe a rape victim’s story or dismiss it but because Logan, a member of the main stream media elite, has a job that depends on her exciting such mental images of noble wars of empire and chivalrous soldiers intent on serving the Nation or rescuing damsels like herself from the hordes of grabbing, prodding savages of far away place.

Initially we were told she was raped or suffered a violent assault.  Now we are told, by her, that she was ‘raped by hands’ an equally evocative expression.  It’s second nature to her, it’s her job to blur distinctions and make things equivalent when they are not.  Cairo, the city where the ‘rape by hands’ took place is 20 million strong and about a million of them were in Tahrir Square the night Logan’s attack took place.  Raping by hands undoubtedly happened to a lot of people there, men and women, who were jammed in an area not meant for their numbers.

Logan had previously been expelled from Egypt by the Mubarak regime, who at that time was an ally with America in its war on terror, but she was able to re-enter the country shortly thereafter. It appears even from her account she was recognized or identified as being a spy, an Israeli, a Jew or any other appellation to single her out from the rest and then set upon, but how and by whom it is not clear.  One account seems to suggest that Logan wasn’t raped by hands, but rather man handled as she was led away from the place where she was reporting.   Another female reporter claims she too was groped, fondled, sexually assaulted by the crowd but certainly not to the extent that her clothes were ripped off or that she felt fear for  her life.  Instead, this female reporter  claims, defiance at how she was violated;

In the middle of that crowd I suddenly found hands in the intimate parts of my body. When I realised that this was not a one-off incident, but that many people were interested in touching me, I felt vulnerable and became angry.

In an instinctive response, I wanted to smack the molesters, but they disappeared fast. Touching and pulling went on for some minutes when people around me started to notice what was happening.

My Egyptian friends and other friendly Egyptians closed the space around me, and gave precise instructions: while I was pulled forward, they told me to finger point to those people who were molesting me. They looked different from the bright, celebrating faces. After taking me out of the crowd, my new bodyguards turned against the attackers. An awful quarrel started.

With the right embellishment, the account above can turn into ‘rape by hands’ as well as a fear of an impending death, but the above account doesn’t give one that impression; moreover, she doesn’t seem to have assumed the role of  victim and is far too combative to warrant collective sympathy.  I get the impression she would and could readily wipe the floor with her attackers and instead of pitying her want to cheer her on to just such an end.  Yet that’s not what I  feel when I  listen to Logan.

What happened to her reminds me of  an amplified Adela Quested of A Passage to India, the book by E.M. Forster.  Quested an adventurous woman visiting colonized India  became confused after venturing alone into one of the Marabar Caves and emerges from it accusing her host of raping her.  What really happened is a story of human psychology, where a young woman backed up by a cultural belief in her absolute desirability focuses her rage and confusion on one man because of the damage he and by extension everyone in his group, i.e. Indians  have done to her emotional well being.  Logan reminds me of that Quested character , as she spoke of how she was penetrated front and back by the hands of rape during her 60 Minutes interview.  Yet all we have is her word.  None of the people who were with her have been interviewed, she does identify them and one was American, nor do we hear  from any of her rescuers even though she speaks pointedly of how they helped her.  Do we, the general public need to hear any of this or that?  Is it necessary to be allowed into Logan’s pain and suffering?  No, but Logan chose to reveal it to us, to take us there, and give a face to rape.  For me it’s hard to disassociate it from the other faces she’s given us in her role as a reporter.

The GOP bitch slapped by Obama



The Obama Administration has just slapped the Republican Party two times in less than a week and relegated that party to the dust bin of  history because Republicans wallow in mud instead of substance in their political postures.  Any true Republican should hide his/her face in shame at the way their party has been manhandled by the Obama machine.  In effect it, the Republican Party, got what it deserved.  It gave into the crazies of the lunatic fringe within the party with its notions of dubious citizenship and questionable loyalties on the part of Obama and went up in flames when the President adroitly handled both to the point that everyone in the Republican Party was reduced to mumbling and looking quite frankly stupid.

First the release of the much ballyhooed long form birth certificate that party loyalists said was necessary to prove citizenship, when they thought that such a certificate could not be produced, was humiliating for them.  Even the buffoon Donald Trump who so vociferously called for “proof” Obama was a citizen had to double back and say that he was proud of himself for getting Obama to release what should have never been and has never been requested from any other president in modern times to display.  It didn’t help Trump’s cause for him to go on and begin to doubt Obama’s college transcripts/records in an attempt to say he got where he is undeservedly so.  You gotta’ wonder whether Obama is sitting on highest honor diplomas from all the colleges and universities he ever attended, waiting to release them at the most propitious time during a presidential campaign season to further humiliate his opponents. It doesn’t look too good for Trump with the main stream media finally getting tired of his dog and pony show to the extent that even some of them are calling his snipping at Obama’s heels racism in the extreme.  Trump is pathetically embarrassing.

The kicker however is the news released just today, Monday 2 May that bin laden was killed by US forces in Pakistan.    You remember Osama bin Laden don’t you?  The ONE everyone said was responsible for the most heinous terrorist attack on US soil ever in the history of America; the ONE who it was said made it necessary for Americans to invade two countries destroying both theirs and ours in unnecessary wars.  It’s significant to point out that the operation carried out by US special forces was done with far less  US firepower than it took to invade Afghanistan and Iraq practically nullifying the stupefying loss of life that occurred on all sides in what has turned out to be BEFORE bin laden’s death morally senseless, bankrupt wars of occupation.  It took Obama two years to do what Bush couldn’t accomplish in two terms, despite the “mission accomplished” claims to the contrary; had this been the course of action of Bush a lot less “blowback” would have ensued for the world community and a lot more good will could have been generated that could have translated into the dollars and cents the invasions were really meant to accomplish.

In real terms, Obama has out Bush(ed) Bush and in the process made irrelevant the Republican Party which has increasingly separated itself from common political consensus andbeen  overtaken instead by fanatical racist zealots who talk in terms of fear and divisiveness, at the expense of the American people.  In response to them, Obama has slapped them silly, humiliated them; that might not have been his intention, and pushed them further into a corner of isolation and disarray.  It’s sad to see.  I hope the GOP for the good of the nation, stops its genuflections at the altar of American fear and xenophobia and returns to the mainstream.  The way Obama has acted lately, it would serve them good to do so, or else, he may have to slap them silly again.

T