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Bush got his crusade
Mary Shaw
The world was with us in the days immediately following the 9/11 attacks.
But the world cringed five days later, on September 16, 2001, when President George W. Bush reacted to the attacks with the dreaded theopolitical "C-word": "This crusade," he said, "is going to take a while."
That unfortunate choice of words brought to mind, of course, the Christian aggression against Muslims in the so-called Holy Land in the Middle Ages. You know, the capital-C Crusades you learned about (probably in a biased manner) in fourth-grade history class.
Nevertheless, Bush being Bush, the world cringed again when he repeated that C-word. On February 16, 2002, Bush said, "I want to tell you something, we've got no better friends than Canada. They stand with us in this incredibly important crusade to defend freedom, this campaign to do what is right for our children and our grandchildren."
Bush's handlers saw to it that he made clarifying statements recognizing Islam as a peaceful religion. But did those statements come from the heart?
The fact remains that Bush used that C-word repeatedly, and we know from experience that his damage-control efforts are not to be trusted. More importantly, al-Qaeda knows that, too.
And, since then, the American people seem to have caught the crusade fever.
Racism and xenophobia are nothing new in American culture. But the Islamophobia that began with some racial profiling and suspicious looks directed at Middle-Eastern-looking persons after the 9/11 attacks has grown into a dangerous new culture war that threatens our national security.
The escalation seems to have begun with the successful presidential campaign of Barack Hussein Obama. The right-wing talking heads went to town, emphasizing Obama's middle name and the fact that he spent some of his growing years in Indonesia, which claims the world's largest Muslim population. They did it in such a way as to imply that "Muslim" equals "terrorist" (or at least "terrorist sympathizer").
To further scare the white sheep, the right-wing press falsely reported that Obama was educated in a radical Muslim madrassa. Again, they seemed to suggest that anything Islamic, anything Muslim, equals "terrorist".
Then the so-called "birther" movement took conspiracy theories to a new level by refusing to believe that Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate was good enough to prove his U.S. citizenship. And to this day I continue to receive email from birthers who still cling to their long-debunked theory even after the Roberts-led Supreme Court upheld sanctions against birther queen Orly Taitz for filing frivolous lawsuits challenging Obama's citizenship. It's the same kind of thing. The right has stopped at nothing to present Obama as something exotic, not American enough, not Christian enough, and not the kind of person whom the average voter in Kansas can relate to. And, again, they suggest he's a Muslim, as if that means he's in cahoots with Osama. (Oh, yes, the right didn't let that one-letter name difference go unnoticed, either.)
And the propaganda has worked.
United Church of Christ Pastor Jeremiah Wright notwithstanding (apparently he's a Muslim, too), a recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that an alarming 18 percent of Americans believe that Obama is a Muslim. That's up from 11 percent in March 2009. Even more disturbing is the explanation offered by Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. According to the ultra-conservative Washington Times, Kohut alleges that the poll results reflect "the intensification of negative views about Obama among his critics." By citing "negative" views in that breath, Kohut clearly implies that being a Muslim is a bad thing. That sort of bias is particularly shameful for a leading poll taker.
Still, it doesn't take a poll to know that Islamophobia is rampant. And the latest proof of that is the recent hysteria over the proposed Islamic Cultural Center in lower Manhattan.
First of all, the Center has been wrongly described as a mosque. While it would include a prayer space, it would primarily look just like a YMCA, with a fitness center, swimming pool, basketball court, culinary school, and food court. What's so threatening about that?
Furthermore, while it has been described as the "Ground Zero Mosque", it sits two large city blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center. Within those two blocks between the controversial "mosque" site and Ground Zero sit some strip clubs, fast-food restaurants, check-cashing agencies, and bars. Are those businesses more worthy of their location near that hallowed ground than a gym and a cooking school?
Those questions, of course, are rhetorical ones. But, for al-Qaeda, it all validates their perception that the so-called "war on terror" really is a war on Islam. It validates their perception that this really is a crusade. And that validates their jihad.
And so it endangers us more than ever.
Nice going, bigots.
Mary Shaw is a Philadelphia-based writer and activist. She is a former Philadelphia Area Coordinator for the Nobel-Prize-winning human rights group Amnesty International, and her views on politics, human rights, and social justice issues have appeared in numerous online forums and in newspapers and magazines worldwide. Note that the ideas expressed here are the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Amnesty International or any other organization with which she may be associated. E-mail: mary@maryshawonline.com
The Charade Announced: Latest Israeli No-Peace/Peace Talks for September
by Stephen Lendman
On August 21, Haaretz writer Natasha Mozgovaya headlined, "Israel, Palestinians accept US invitation to direct peace talks," saying:
They'll "restart direct talks on Sept. 2 in a modest step toward forging a peace deal within 12 months to create a Palestinian state and peacefully end one of the world's most intractable conflicts."
Another grand illusion is assured, fudged to look real. Henry Kissinger coined the phrase "constructive ambiguity," meaning to give negotiations an appearance of progress. For others, it's putting lipstick on a pig or how Edward Said described the Oslo Accords and Declaration of Principles, saying:
Get out of Islam's face!
By Dennis Rahkonen
Following the Spanish-American War, US troops killed perhaps as many as 600,000 Filipinos who didn't want to simply see a change in imperial masters. Mark Twain famously condemned that terrible slaughter, among whose victims were countless Moro Muslims.
In 1953, our CIA masterminded the overthrow of Iranian secular leader Mohammad Mossadegh, which gave rise to religious/revolutionary impulses culminating in the US embassy seizure in Tehran, plus everything that's happened there since.
In 1958 and again in the early '80s, the US unwisely intervened in Lebanon, incurring Islamic wrath triggering the horrible Marine barracks bombing in Beirut.
Israel will attack Iran: Will Israel attack Iran?!
Kourosh Ziabari
Those who mastermind the U.S.-directed psychological operation against Iran have obliviously forgotten that we're now accustomed to seeing the uninteresting, exhausting charade of "will attack Iran"; you put the subject for it, either the United States or Israel.
Over the past five years, Iran has been recurrently under the threat of an imminent war which the mainstream media have overwhelmingly talked of; a war against Tehran to overthrow the Islamic Republic and bring to power a "democratic" regime which the "international community" favors.
Israeli Academic Freedom at Risk
by Stephen Lendman
Born in Haifa, the son of German-Jewish immigrants who fled during the Nazi period, noted historian Ilan Pappe left Israel in summer 2007, telling London Guardian writer Chris Arnot he began "feeling for a while like public enemy No. 1" for his anti-Zionist views and supporting a boycott against Israeli universities, saying:
"I supported (it) because I believe that without pressure, Israel will not end the occupation....I believe that things would change only if Israel receives a strong message that as long as the occupation continues it would not be a legitimate member of the international community, and that until then its academics, doctors and authors would not be welcome. A similar boycott was imposed on South Africa. It took 21 years, but it eventually led to the end of Apartheid."
Israel's Bogus Construction Moratorium
by Stephen Lendman
Promises made, then broken. Promise peace. Wage war and daily violence throughout the Territories. Announce a settlement construction halt. Keep building, the promised pause (not a freeze) never observed despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's December 8 announced moratorium saying:
"I hope that this decision will help launch meaningful negotiations to reach a historic peace agreement that would finally end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians," what he relentlessly pursues, spurning resolution for an equitable, just peace, wanting surrender, not conciliation on equal terms, what he'll never agree to or accept.
Despite announcing "a suspension of new permits and new construction in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) for a period of ten months," construction never stopped. Israel's land grab continues. Thousands of new units have been approved, New York Times writer Ethan Bronner, on July 14, headlining, "Despite Settlement Freeze, Buildings Rise," saying:
Palestine: Occupied, Divided, Isolated, Oppressed and Unaided
by Stephen Lendman
Imagine the following:
You're ruthlessly oppressed in an occupied country under a system of institutionalized racism, affording rights solely to Jews. You have no recognized nation, no right of citizenship, no democratic freedoms or civil liberties, including no power over your daily life.
You live in constant fear, collectively punished, politically denied, and economically strangled in a continuing cycle of violence. Military orders deny free expression and movement, enclose population centers, close borders, and impose curfews, checkpoints, roadblocks, separation walls, electric fences, dispossessions, land seizures, and domination over all aspects of life under draconian military orders like the following:
The Middle Class
By anaxarchos posted by Michael Collins
Capitalism does not elevate… it expropriates and impoverishes. Its urban slums and shanty towns are a step down from the rural, quasi-capitalist material it begins with. Worldwide, it expropriates wealth from the many instead of creating “prosperity”. (Image)
The original American reference to a "middle class" probably comes from Britain. It referred, as on the continent, to the propertied but untitled yeomanry of the countryside, the rising burghers in the cities, and the mercantile classes as a whole. It was an accurate naming. Originally, what was to become the bourgeoisie really did stand between the aristocracy and the property-less classes.
The Fire of Resistance VS Nuclear Weapons
eileen fleming
[Kansas City] On Monday morning, August 16th, 14 nonviolent peace activists were arrested after blocking a Caterpillar truck on the site of a proposed WMD Facility in Kansas City, Missouri.
Ex-Catholic priest, Frank Cordaro of the Phil Berrigan Catholic Worker House in DM IA, remarked, "It's an honor to be here and get busted! We risk arrest to awaken people from a kind of psychic numbing about the plant. We stand for an alternative to the war economy; we try to temper the U.S. death wish as an empire. Catholic Workers see people hungry; we feed them. We see violence perpetrated by governments; we resist. It's just that simple. It is not an accident that nine of the fourteen arrested come from Midwest Catholic Worker communities. The Catholic Worker movement is a radical lay movement in the USA Catholic Church. Pacifist and nonviolent peace activist, we are best known for our houses of hospitality were we do the Works of Mercy; feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless and give drink to the thirsty. We live and work daily with the poor who suffer directly from the miss use of our national resources, directed towards making nuclear bombs, keeping the rich rich and the poor poor. We know first hand, that even if these god awful bombs are never used, they kill the poor daily by denying them the resources needed to meet their most basic needs."
As Radical As Reality: An Interview with Mickey Z
by Frank Joseph Smecker
Mickey Z is a self-educated writer, activist and lecturer living in New York City. He is the author of nearly ten books, and is probably the only person on the planet to have appeared in both a karate flick with Billy “Tae Bo” Blanks and a political book with Howard Zinn. Aware of today’s mounting environmental, economical and social problems, problems some would say are manifestations of a collapse-in-progress of the traditional institutions, paradigms and behaviors of an unsustainable establishment we’ve known our entire lives, Z channels said awareness into his work, inspiring his readers to do the same. “When exactly does all this goddamned awareness translate into productive action and tangible change?” Z asks. “We’re aware of global warming and its causes, factory farms, war crimes, environmental degradation, political corruption, fixed elections, the health care crisis… We know about it all,” he says. “We talk about it. We write about it. We complain about it. We hold meetings, talks, seminars, and classes about it. We march about it. We make signs about it. Nothing changes.”
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