Time for Bill O’Racist to Resign in Disgrace

O’Reilly should be fired for using the word “lynching” in the context of a rant about Michelle Obama, despite his faux apology.

A cursory internet search reveals the shocking truth for those of us who weren’t there: photographs depicting a variety of howling posses composed of fire-eyed redneck thugs — terrorists, if you will — skulking through the woods with hounds and lengths of rope; hauling with them an American citizen of African descent, and making their way to a not-so-clandestine location where a cowardly, ritualistic, vigilante execution will take place.

Sepia-toned photographs retaining in permanent clarity the faces — the proud, grinning white “men” gathered like hyenas around the mangled corpse of a black man who had been beaten and hanged by these reactionary monsters. As if the deeds themselves weren’t shameful enough, these ghoulish lynch mobs would often take away souvenirs of their homicides: body parts, clothing, hair — and those terrible photographs.

There are too many of these images. There are too many stories — more than enough to justify any thinking-person’s reluctance to pledge unconditional pride in the entirety our national heritage — a heritage which includes a 1922 U.S. Senate filibuster against an anti-lynching law.

This isn’t ancient history. These aren’t isolated incidents. Perhaps as many as 4,000 American blacks were lynched in the eight decades following the end of the Civil War.

Similar events, in practice and symbolism, occur even today. As recently as last year, nooses were used to intimidate African-Americans. The noose, it seems, has become a newsworthy issue in the fourth American century. Almost exactly ten years ago, in 1998, a black man was tied up and dragged behind a pick-up truck in Jasper, Texas until his body was so decimated it was practically unrecognizable as being the remains of a man.

So there’s no reason why Bill O’Reilly should be surprised when reasonable, rational, thinking Americans want him to be summarily fired for using the word “lynching” in the context of a rant about Michelle Obama. The outrage is righteous and justified. Words matter. And history shows that these words that Bill O’Reilly invoked cast a long, sinister shadow.

You’ve probably read the quote here and on other websites, but I want to make sure Bill O’Reilly’s bigotry is seared into the record, so I’ll post it here again:

And I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels. If that’s how she really feels — that America is a bad country or a flawed nation, whatever — then that’s legit. We’ll track it down.

Lynching? Party? Unless there’s evidence? So we’re to understand from Bill O’Reilly that if someone might be relating a certain level of dissatisfaction with America’s present status and chief executive, that they deserve to be tracked down by Bill O’Reilly’s Lynch Mob?

It doesn’t even matter what Michelle Obama said. We do know that FOX News repeatedly misquoted Mrs. Obama’s statement and regardless of what she said, nothing — no words, intentions or deeds justify the unhinged spike in Bill O’Reilly’s bigoted, splotchy blood pressure to the point of wanting to “track it down” with his “lynching party.” She could’ve said something like, “Bill O’Reilly is a splotchy dillweed who enjoys savory, soapy shower falafels,” and it still wouldn’t justify this flagrantly racist “lynching” analogy.

And if it wasn’t intentional, then it has to be pegged as gross incompetence, and this asshat — this spastic Morton Downey Jr. throwback, this serial liar — should, in fairness, be fired anyway. But considering Bill O’Reilly’s record, incompetence only explains half of it. The rest falls in line with a pattern of well-documented bigotry.

It’s not just his flippant threat to “lynch” Michelle Obama. It’s the Sylvia’s Restaurant rant. It’s the wetback remarks. It’s the white power remarks. All of it. How many other reporters, personalities and celebrities need to be suspended and fired while Bill O’Reilly, time and time again, gets a pass? Instead, FOX News and Roger Ailes enable his prime time behavior because Bill O’Reilly’s radio and TV shows are, of course, somewhat popular among similarly simplistic dolts.

He clearly doesn’t understand the repercussions of this kind of race-baiting language. And that indicates a staggering lack of understanding about what sorts of reactionary people are dialed in. Likewise, when Malkin, Coulter and Beck (among others) use Senator Obama’s middle name or deliberately mispronounce his last name as a pejorative, epithetical attack — knowing the prejudices of their ignorant far-right orcs — they indirectly incite violence against the senator and his family. NBC reported that the hate mail the Obamas received last year prompted the U.S. Secret Service to offer protection earlier in the campaign than is usually the custom. We can only imagine the menacing content of the mail, and we’d be lying to ourselves if we assumed it didn’t have anything to do with the race-baiting, epithets and rumor-mongering assaults from these far-right shmendriks.

But I don’t think Bill O’Reilly should be fired. Don Imus was fired and eventually reappeared — moaning for braaaaiins! on another radio network. I’m sure the same pattern would occur with O’Reilly. He’d go away for ten months or so, and then like a giant, splotchy cancer he’d reemerge on CNBC, replacing Glenn Cock — WHOOPS! I mean, Glenn Beck. I’m sorry about that. Beck he has such an unfortunate last name.

Bill O’Reilly must resign in disgrace for the good of the nation. He should publicly apologize to the Obama family and then, on that same show, he should resign. When he leaves the FOX News building, his FOX News Goon Squad and Tubby Stalking Intern-bots should be ordered to stand down while random passers-by are asked to pelt Bill O’Reilly with eggs, tomatoes and, naturally, falafels — live on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Then he should volunteer to walk around midtown Manhattan wearing a sandwich board that reads: “Ask Me About My History Of Racism (And Free Cell Phone Offer!)”

This is voluntary justice. This requires you, Bill O’Reilly, to own up to your racism and your incompetence and be man for once. Do you have the dignity, Mr. O’Reilly? Or will you, by not admitting to your racism and by not resigning, vindicate those of us who agree that you’re nothing but a coward? Resign, Bill. After all, unlike you and your Stalking McCarthyite Schutzstaffle — your “Lynching Party” — we’re not a mob out for vengeance. This punishment, Mr. O’Reilly, is entirely up to you.

Note: O’ Reilly has since made an attempt at apology:

While talking to a radio caller, I said there should be no lynching in the case — that comment off Clarence Thomas saying he was the victim of a high-tech lynching. He said that on 60 Minutes, you may remember. I’m sorry if my statement offended anybody. That, of course, was not the intention. Context is everything.

via//AlterNet

Neo-Fascism Awareness Week

This week, student organizations at nearly 150 American colleges and universities will be organizing events for “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week,” a national right-wing exercise in irrationality orchestrated by The David Horowitz Freedom Center and the Terrorism Awareness Project.

The mission of the campaign, according to their Web site, is “to confront the two Big Lies of the political left: that George Bush created the war on terror and that Global Warming is a greater danger to Americans than the terrorist threat.” The site further alleges that the academic world is responsible for creating and perpetuating lies about the war in Iraq, the message of Islam, the treatment of Muslim women, and—my personal favorite—the importance of global warming. With just one invented hyphenation, the title “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” alone manages to assign 1.4 billion people radical political ideology by virtue of their religion.

Luckily, the event is not being hosted at Harvard, despite false claims online to the contrary (which were exposed and later corrected) and despite the organizations’ attempt to sign up the Harvard College Republicans (HCR) as sponsors. HCR president, Jeffrey Kwong ’09 had the sense to refuse, recognizing that the event sent the “wrong message, which associates an entire religion with a terrorist political agenda.” Unfortunately, students at many of our peer institutions did not.

The website also lists campus Hillels as possible cosponsors, despite the fact that Jewish student groups frequently work with Arab and Muslim student groups on campus to facilitate dialogue. Both Harvard Hillel and the Progressive Jewish Alliance have asserted their opposition to the event. Horowitz’s suggestion—that, by virtue of their religion and culture, Jewish students would support such outright racism against Muslims—only exacerbates the polarization between Arabs and Jews, and indiscriminately conflates religions, ethnicities, and political allegiances.

It is difficult to argue with those reduce intellectual discourse of complicated issues within Islam to mere sensationalist phrases about the religion itself. No credible academic—on either side of the aisle—would so completely ignore socio-political, historic, and economic issues that are fundamentally entrenched in the idea of Islamo-fascism.

I hesitate to even dignify such clearly ignorant rhetoric with a response, but I fear the profound implications that can and often do materialize from the repeated misconceptions heralded by Horowitz’s brand of “awareness.” Sadly, such a notion of “enlightenment” seeks to teach the academic left lessons such as, “There is no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists.” As Sa’ed Atshan, a Palestinian citizen and head teaching fellow for Government 1206, “Contemporary Political Islam,” said, “People in the world and American Muslims are just as concerned about terrorism. People in the Muslim world are the primary victims, frequently, of what’s going on.”

In Horowitz’s attempt to “enlighten” the academic left, The “Student’s Guide to Organizing Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” recommends both a “Teach-In on ‘The Oppression of Women in Islam’” and “sit-ins in Women’s Studies Departments and campus Women’s Centers.” This is completely ill-informed: Feminist scholars have been among the foremost analysts and critics of women’s systematic mistreatment in all Judeo-Christian societies, including Islamic ones. Moreover, feminist academics—especially in the last 30 years—have been explicitly dedicated to self-criticism, acknowledging their own biases and situated knowledge, as well as the complexity of even speaking about “women’s oppression.”

The use of women as a synecdoche for an entire religion, society, or nation—especially in combination with Orientalist and Social Darwinist notions of Western superiority—is unbelievably dangerous. Subsuming the geographies, histories, and experiences of millions of women into the stereotypical image of the veiled, Arab (and, one assumes, “subordinate”) woman is simply inaccurate (there are over 110 million Muslim women living in the more liberal Indonesia alone). By creating a singular entity of Muslim women, Horowitz allows himself to adopt the voice of the “Muslim woman” and use her oppression for his political aims. The cruel irony that the “feminist” Horowitz fails to realize is that in protesting the “silence about the oppression of women in Islam,” he himself both silences and oppresses Muslim women, depriving them of agency.

Harvard’s own Professor Leila N. Ahmed (who is pointedly critical of medieval Islamic society’s treatment of women), wrote at length of what she calls “colonial feminism”: a part of the “civilizing” mission of the British, whereby British colonial presence in Egypt was justified with claims to liberate “native” women from oppression—all while Englishwomen still lacked the right to vote. Horowitz’s logic is nothing more than colonial feminism in today’s neo-colonialist era.

Unsurprisingly, Horowitz himself has a fairly accepted reputation for being a racist, most famously for his commentary on “the melodrama of black victimization and white oppression.” And it comes as no surprise to discover that the David Horowitz Freedom Center—a 501(c)(3) non-profit—is funded by explicitly far-right private foundations, many of which made their millions from Gulf Oil (according to mediatransparency.org), and thus would have a vested interest in continuing to shore up support for the “War on Terror” and American intervention in the Middle East.

Nothing constructive can come of “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.” In a post-9/11 environment, it is increasingly difficult to be an American Muslim, and efforts like this only serve to further marginalize those living daily on the defensive. Frankly, as a liberal, feminist, American Muslim, immersed in an institution of the academic left, I am upset, but also confused—for I seem to be both victim and oppressor in Horowitz’s Manichean world.

Nadia O. Gaber ’09, a crimson editorial editor, is a history and literature concentrator in Kirkland House. She is president of the Society of Arab Students.

Source: The Harvard Crimson

Arabic as a Terrorist Language

The Right-Wing’s War on the Gibran Academy

Arabic as a Terrorist Language

By ANTHONY DiMAGGIO

A good friend and former Professor of mine always began his classes on the developing world with an introduction to Islam. One of the first points driven home in the class, semester after semester, was the difference between Islam and Arabic. While the terms are obviously not synonymous (one being a religion and the other a language), this basic distinction is disregarded in recent fundamentalist efforts to demonize not only Islam, but the Arabic language itself.

I wanted to believe that we’d come far enough in this country that Muslim-Americans and non-citizens alike don’t have to suffer under irrational hatred, fanaticism, and repression. But for America’s small, but influential right-wing minority, this seems too much to ask.

I am referring to the racist war that has been declared on the Kahlil Gibran International Academy (in New York), and most specifically its Principal, Debbie Almontaser. The Gibran Academy is the first public institution in the U.S. committed specifically to learning the Arabic language. But the way the school has been attacked in media diatribes, one would think it was named after Osama bin Laden, rather than an uncontroversial, but well known poet. The Lebanese-American poet Kahlil Gibran is best known for his classic work, The Prophet, written over 80 years ago and translated into over 20 languages. While Gibran’s works focused heavily on the corruption of Christian clergies and churches of his day, his other common themes include love, religion, life and death, and philosophy.

The Gibran Academy “controversy” comes at a time when Americans are desperately in need of shedding their parochialism of foreign cultures and languages. As the United States has become an international pariah during its occupation of Iraq, attacks on diversity can do little but strengthen American isolationism and ignorance. Americans are consistently rated in world opinion polls along with Iran and North Korea in terms of likeability, and incidents such as the Gibran protest are unlikely to improve its image. The anti-Arabic campaign is being spearheaded by notable reactionaries such as Daniel Pipes and Alicia Colon, as well as newspapers in the Big Apple including the New York Post and New York Sun.

But what, you might ask, are the specific crimes committed by Almontaser and the academy, deemed so egregious as to warrant the right-wing’s wrath? Daniel Pipes lays out his case in a number of editorials written in the NY Sun in the last few months. Pipes claims as “fact” that “Islamic institutions [which Gibran Academy is not], whether schools or mosques, have a pattern of extremism and even violence.” He argues that “learning Arabic in-and-of-itself promotes an Islamic outlook,” as “Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage.” Pipes feels that the teaching of Arabic may lead to “moral decay,” since “Muslims tend to see non-Muslims learning Arabic as a step toward an eventual conversion to Islam, an expectation I encountered while studying Arabic in Cairo in the 1970s.”

In another Op-Ed for the NY Sun, Alicia Colon follows up on Pipe’s statements, protesting that “This proposal [for an Arabic language school] is utter madness, considering that five years after September 11, ground zero is still a hole in the ground and we’re bending over backwards to appease those sympathetic to individuals who would destroy us again.” The editors at the NY Post also deem the anxieties over the school as “right on target.”

Pipe’s and Colon’s anger appear to be derived, in part, from Principal Almontaser’s alleged “support for terrorism.” Almontaser was demonized for initially refusing to condemn a t-shirt with the slogan “Intifada NYC,” which was being sold by the group “Arab Women Active in Art and Media,” which shares an office with another group that has ties to Almontaser (a rather tenuous and tendentious “connection,” I know). Aside from the “crime” of having this connection with the group in question, Almontaser has also committed the second crime of explaining the meaning of the word Intifada: “it basically means ‘shaking off.’ That is the root word if you look it up in Arabic. I understand it is developing a negative connotation due to the uprising in the Palestinian-Israeli areas. I don’t believe the intention is to have any of that kind of [violence] in New York City. I think it’s pretty much an opportunity for girls to express that they are part of New York City societyand shaking off oppression.”

This statement, while seemingly innocent enough, is deemed irrefutable proof of Almontaser’s “gratuitous apology for suicide terrorism,” in Pipe’s own words, and as evidence of “warmongering,” in the eyes of the NY Post editors. Normally whenever I read such fanatical claims amongst American right-wingers, I don’t bother to respond. Pipes and Colon’s claims may be too stupid to merit a rebuttal, but the effectiveness of such attacks is truly disturbing for anyone committed to multiculturalism and democracy. Racist rhetoric has been allowed to dominate media discourse for too long, and has often been successful in setting the terms of debate ­ as erroneous as those terms may be. Consider, for example, an August 26 report from the Chicago Tribune on the disputed school. The story claims that “at the core of the debate [over the school] is a linguistic disconnect.” This may be what apologists for Pipes want the public to believe, but the claim has no bearing on reality whatsoever. For one thing, there has been no “debate” going on here, only racist bullying. American media commentary has been hijacked by pundits who have zero commitment to intellectual debate of the issues, and even less commitment to understanding the nuances that come along with learning about foreign cultures and languages. That the claims of Pipes and others could even be taken seriously by New York political leaders and media reporters is a sign of just how far our intellectual culture has deteriorated.

Consider a few of the following facts that are either ignored or twisted in the current media-political “debate” over the school.

1. While the Kahlil Gibran academy has been attacked for indirectly teaching Islam in a public institution, Gibran himself was not even Muslim, he was Christian Arab. Why the administrators of the school would have consciously chosen Gibran as an inspiration for an “Islamic school” is never explained in media debate (and why would devout Muslims enroll in a school named after a Christian poet expecting to get an Islamic education anyway?). One would hardly know about the school’s non-Muslim roots, however, after reading Pipe’s tirades.

2. The official language of the most populous Muslim country in the world (Indonesia) is not even an Arabic, but Bahasa Indonesia. One wouldn’t know this either by reading the NY Sun or NY Post editorials. That there’s nothing inherently linking Islam with Arabic is a lesson Americans should be taught as children, although it is not included in most civics discourses in this country.

3. Contrary to the claims of Colon and Pipes, Almontaser was indeed correct that the word “Intifada” means “uprising” or “shaking off.” The word is not inherently tied to military attacks on civilians. I used to make this same point when I taught Middle East politics, although I would also presumably be denigrated as a terrorist sympathizer for my failure to declare war on the Arabic language.

4. The nation for which Pipes reserves most of his anger is Palestine ­ as he attacks Palestinian suicide bombers who target Israeli civilians. While predominantly Arabic speaking, Palestine retains a sizable non-Muslim minority, another inconvenient fact ignored by Pipes. Twenty-five percent of West Bank residents are Christian and Jewish speaking Arabs. Such a reality would be deemed little more than a paradox, however, by ignorant minds vilifying the Arabic language as Muslim in orientation.

Claiming that the Arabic language is inherently Muslim makes about as much sense as claiming that English is inherently Christian. But this doesn’t mean that such efforts to confuse the public are ineffective. As of late August (and in light of a five month campaign by the “Stop Madrassa Coalition,” of which Pipes is a part) Almontaser has been pressured to step down as Principal of the Gibran Academy. Furthermore, Pipes and other members of his coalition have vowed not to end their campaign until the academy is permanently closed. The New York Times reports that, in light of the protests, “the chancellor of schools, Joel Klein, is considering other locations for the school [currently in Brooklyn], or even postponing the opening for a year.” The attacks, and many others of their kind, have also left a terrible psychic scar on many Arab-Americans forced to endure unbridled American racism. Sadly, U.S. “multiculturalism” seems to make room only those with enough political and social capital to effectively fight back against media and public prejudice and xenophobia. Even Arab-American citizens are deemed as “outsiders” or “foreigners” within such a twisted value system.

It remains to be seen whether the racist views of Pipes and his ilk are representative of the American public as a whole. How Americans react to anti-Arab/anti-Muslim political-cultural campaigns will do much in determining the status of Arab Americans in the future, and the vigor of our democracy. One thing seems clear though: as long as a loud minority of reactionaries is allowed to hijack public dialogue and debate, not much is going to change.

Anthony DiMaggio has taught Middle East Politics and American Government at Illinois State University. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Mass Media, Mass Propaganda: Examining American News in the “War on Terror” (forthcoming December 2007). He can be reached at adimag2@uic.edu

Source: CounterPunch
http://www.counterpunch.com/dimaggio08302007.html

Scandals, regret mar India’s first woman president

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – It was billed as a proud and historic day for Indian women, as lawmakers voted on Thursday for the country’s first ever female president. But it has turned instead into a major embarrassment for the government.

Pratibha Patil, the ruling coalition’s 72-year-old nominee for the largely ceremonial post of president, should sail through Thursday’s vote with relative ease against the opposition-backed challenger and current vice-president, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat.

But even before she takes office, Patil has run into rougher waters than she or her supporters could have imagined.

And the scandals which are now dogging her candidature — and her habit of putting her foot firmly in her mouth — threaten to undermine the very post of president, analysts say.

“There may be nothing in these charges but for the highest office there should not be an iota of doubt,” said political analyst Kuldip Nayar. “The office definitely has been affected.”

Patil, then governor of the northwestern desert state of Rajasthan, found herself thrust onto the national stage for the first time when the Congress-led coalition and its communist allies failed to agree on a joint candidate for the job.

Out of nowhere, her name came forward, and who could object to a bit of positive discrimination — especially in favor of a nice, unchallenging grandmother with few obvious enemies?

Congress leader Sonia Gandhi, the most powerful politician in the country, called it a “historic” decision.

MUD-SLINGING

But as Patil stepped into the limelight, so did her past. And the public scrutiny has become increasingly uncomfortable.

It soon emerged that the cooperative bank for women she helped establish and which carries her name was closed down by the central bank in 2003 under the weight of its bad debts, amid accusations of financial irregularities by its managers.

The employees union has taken Patil and others to court claiming loans, meant for poor women, were instead made to her brother and other relatives and not returned. She was also accused of trying to shield her brother in a murder inquiry.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has dismissed the charges as “mud-slinging” and Congress says she had very little to do with the running of the bank.

“All the allegations against me are motivated and have already been answered,” Patil said in a statement last week.

But she has managed to sling some mud on herself too.

First, she offended many minority Muslims — and infuriated some historians — by saying that Indian women first veiled their heads to protect themselves against 16th century Muslim invaders.

Then she dismayed modern India by claiming that she had experienced a “divine premonition” that she was destined for higher office from a long dead spiritual guru.

It didn’t get any better when critics dug up a comment she was said to have made as Maharashtra’s health minister in 1975, that people with hereditary diseases should be sterilized.

India has had a few female icons in the past — most famously Sonia Gandhi’s mother-in-law Indira, who was one of the world’s first female prime ministers in 1966.

But women still face widespread discrimination in a country where hundreds of thousands of female foetuses are illegally aborted every year.

Television editor Barkha Dutt says the controversy around the accusations against Patil may well be politically motivated, and that it was hard to tell what was true and what was false.

But the way the gender card was played to support an unknown, apparently unthreatening political nonentity — and presented as history in the making — left her distinctly cold.

“As an unapologetic feminist, the prospect of a woman as the president should be a moment of pride and satisfaction,” she said. “Instead I am left feeling utterly cynical and confused.”

Members of parliament and state assemblies voted in Thursday’s secret ballot. The result is due on Saturday.

Source: Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/19/AR2007071900693.html

How racism has invaded Canada

What is the term ‘brown-skinned’ doing on the front page of a major Canadian daily?

By Robert Fisk

This has been a good week to be in Canada — or an awful week, depending on your point of view – to understand just how irretrievably biased and potentially racist the Canadian press has become. For, after the arrest of 17 Canadian Muslims on “terrorism” charges, the Toronto Globe and Mail and, to a slightly lesser extent, the National Post, have indulged in an orgy of finger-pointing that must reduce the chances of any fair trial and, at the same time, sow fear in the hearts of the country’s more than 700,000 Muslims. In fact, if I were a Canadian Muslim right now, I’d already be checking the airline timetables for a flight out of town. Or is that the purpose of this press campaign?

First, the charges. Even a lawyer for one of the accused has talked of a plot to storm the Parliament in Ottawa, hold MPs hostage and chop off the head of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Without challenging the “facts” or casting any doubt on their sources — primarily the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or Canada’s leak-dripping Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) — reporters have told their readers that the 17 were variously planning to blow up Parliament, CSIS’s headquarters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and sundry other targets. Every veiled and chadored Muslim woman relative of the accused has been photographed and their pictures printed, often on front pages. “Home-grown terrorists” has become theme of the month — even though the “terrorists” have yet to stand trial.

They were in receipt of “fertilizers”, we were told, which could be turned into explosives. When it emerged that Canadian police officers had already switched the “fertilizers” for a less harmful substance, nobody followed up the implications of this apparent “sting”. A Buffalo radio station down in the US even announced that the accused had actually received “explosives”. Bingo: Guilty before trial.

Of course, the Muslim-bashers have laced this nonsense with the usual pious concern for the rights of the accused. “Before I go on, one disclaimer,” purred the Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente. “Nothing has been proved and nobody should rush to judgment.” Which, needless to say, Wente then went on to do in the same paragraph. “The exposure of our very own home-grown terrorists, if that’s what the men aspired to be, was both predictably shocking and shockingly predictable.” And just in case we missed the point of this hypocrisy, Wente ended her column by announcing that “Canada is not exempt from home-grown terrorism”. Angry young men are the tinderbox and Islamism is the match.

The country will probably have better luck than most at “putting out the fire”, she adds. But who, I wonder, is really lighting the match? For a very unpleasant — albeit initially innocuous — phrase has now found its way into the papers. The accused 17 — and, indeed their families and sometimes the country’s entire Muslim community — are now referred to as “Canadian-born”. Well, yes, they are Canadian-born. But there’s a subtle difference between this and being described as a “Canadian” — as other citizens of this vast country are in every other context. And the implications are obvious; there are now two types of Canadian citizen: The Canadian-born variety (Muslims) and Canadians (the rest).

If this seems finicky, try the following sentence from the Globe and Mail’s front page on Tuesday, supposedly an eyewitness account of the police arrest operation: “Parked directly outside his … office was a large, gray, cube-shaped truck and, on the ground nearby, he recognized one of the two brown-skinned young men who had taken possession of the next door rented unit…” Come again? Brown-skinned? What in God’s name is this outrageous piece of racism doing on the front page of a major Canadian daily? What is “brown-skinned” supposed to mean — if it is not just a revolting attempt to isolate Muslims as the “other” in Canada’s highly multicultural society? I notice, for example, that when the paper obsequiously refers to Toronto’s police chief and his reportedly brilliant cops, he is not referred to as “white-skinned” (which he most assuredly is). Amid this swamp, Canada’s journalists are managing to soften the realities of their country’s new military involvement in Afghanistan.

More than 2,000 troops are deployed around Kandahar in active military operations against Taleban insurgents. They are taking the place of US troops, who will be transferred to fight even more Muslims insurgents in Iraq.

Canada is thus now involved in the Afghan war — those who doubt this should note the country has already shelled out $1.8bn in “defense spending” in Afghanistan and only $500m in “additional expenditures”, including humanitarian assistance and democratic renewal (sic) — and, by extension, in Iraq. In other words, Canada has gone to war in the Middle East.

None of this, according to the Canadian foreign minister, could be the cause of Muslim anger at home, although Jack Hooper — the CSIS chief who has a lot to learn about the Middle East but talks far too much — said a few days ago that “we had a high threat profile (in Canada) before Afghanistan. In any event, the presence of Canadians and Canadian forces there has elevated that threat somewhat.” I read all this on a flight from Calgary to Ottawa this week, sitting just a row behind Tim Goddard, his wife Sally and daughter Victoria, who were chatting gently and smiling bravely to the crew and fellow passengers. In the cargo hold of our aircraft lay the coffin of Goddard’s other daughter, Nichola, the first Canadian woman soldier to be killed in action in Afghanistan.

The next day, he scattered sand on Nichola’s coffin at Canada’s national military cemetery. A heartrending photograph of him appeared in the Post — but buried away on Page 6. And on the front page? A picture of British policemen standing outside the Bradford home of a Muslim “who may have links to Canada”. Allegedly, of course.

Source: Robert-Fisk.com
http://robert-fisk.com/articles589.htm

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article754394.ece

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13575.htm

On Cue, “al-Qaeda” Threatens Iran

For the neocons, “al-Qaeda” is a dream come true. For instance, the current arch nemesis of the clash of civilizations gang, Iran—or rather, the latest target, as the previous target, Iraq, is mired in engineered “sectarian violence,” and other targets, such as Syria, await their turn—has supposedly fallen afoul of “al-Qaeda in Iraq,” as the corporate media reports. “The leader of an al-Qaida umbrella group in Iraq threatened to wage war against Iran unless it stops supporting Shi’ites in Iraq within two months, according to an audiotape,” the Associated Press would have us believe, mostly because we are suckers for these sort of things. “Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, who leads the group Islamic State in Iraq, said his Sunni fighters have been preparing for four years to wage a battle against Shi’ite-dominated Iran,” precisely as their handlers—the CIA, Mossad, and MI6—have planned.But wait a minute. Didn’t the nine eleven whitewash commission conclude that “al-Qaeda” is in cahoots with Hezbollah and thus Iran? “In relation to Iran, commission investigators said intelligence ’showed far greater potential for collaboration between Hezbollah and al Qaeda than many had previously thought.’ Iran is a primary sponsor of Hezbollah, or Party of God, the Lebanon-based anti-Israel group that has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States,” the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post, reported on June 26, 2004, never mind “ancient animosities between Shiite and Sunni Muslims,” an angle mentioned by the Associated Press.

On the one hand, “al-Qaeda” supposedly declares a hankering to attack Iran, while on the other, according to NewsroomAmerica, “al-Qaeda” is “using Iran to organize and launch operations against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq and elsewhere, western officials say…. The Financial Times reports that while the extent of al-Qaeda operations based in Iran isn’t clear, it is believed to be taking place with the direct approval of Iran’s hardline Islamic government.”

Go figure.

Last year, the dead Osama bin Laden told “Sunnis in Iraq to retaliate against Shiites, deviating from al Qaeda’s stand of not promoting sectarian violence,” CNN reported. Around the same time, the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the one-legged master terrorist wonder, “railed against Shiites in a four-hour-long audiotape harangue posted on the Internet” and described as “an unprecedented screed that chronicled what al-Zarqawi said was a Shiite campaign throughout history to destroy Islam and help foreign invaders of Muslim lands,” according to USA Today.

It is precisely this fickle character the neocons love, as Osama and Abu Musab will lash out on cue at Shi’ites one day and team up with them the next, never mind purported genocide, betrayal, or bad feelings spanning centuries. Of course, it helps that the commoners, to say nothing of no shortage of senators, are virtual no-nothings when it comes grasping the difference between Sunni and Shia Islam.

A month after the nine eleven whitewash commission made its absurd claim, Iran “arrested a number of Iranian supporters of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda group,” ABC News reported. “Iran says it has arrested and repatriated hundreds of Al Qaeda suspects in the last two years,” likely because they recognize a gaggle of CIA-ISI created patsies and mental patients when they see them. Even though the whitewash commission made sure to implicate Iran, “they said there was no evidence that Iran helped Al Qaeda with the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington,” not that a lackadaisical public is capable of making crucial distinctions, as millions remain convinced Saddam and Osama plotted mayhem and mass murder, mostly because they hate our freedom to jack up the credit card at the local mall.

Of course, as Rick Santorum realizes, the American public is easily swayed by such things, never mind the Brothers Grimm character. “In an alarming display of fearmongering, former Republican Senator Rick Santorum has suggested that a series of ‘unfortunate events,’ namely terrorist attacks, will occur within the next year and change American citizen’s perception of the war,” writes Paul Joseph Watson. “Appearing on the Hugh Hewitt radio show, Santorum also hyped the necessity of “confronting Iran in the Middle East,” and predicted that Giuliani, Romney and Tommy Thompson would be the three surviving Republican candidates who would go head to head in the race for the nomination…. Santorum went on to clearly imply that terror attacks will occur inside America which will alter the body politic and lead to a reversal of the anti-war sentiment now dominating the country.”

Naturally, this “anti-war sentiment” is not only easy for our “representatives” to ignore, as the Democrats pandered to it and then ignored widespread antiwar sentiment after the election was over last November, but it will also be easy to reverse with a bit of manufactured terrorism. Moreover, it is no mistake Santorum mentioned terrorism and Iran in the same breath.

So powerful is “al-Qaeda,” we are told the CIA-ISI created terror organization is operating in India. According to B. Raman, writing for Rediff News, “pro-Al Qaeda jihadi organizations from Pakistan,” including Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, and Lashkar-e-Tayiba, mostly active in the disputed areas of Jammu and Kashmir, are active in India, primarily because of “India’s close relations with the US and Israel. Al Qaeda not only looks upon India as a close associate of the US similar to the UK, but also as providing favorable conditions for its overseas operations directed against US nationals and interests in Indian territory.”

Finally, CIA asset Mahmoud Abbas “said on Monday the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas is protecting al Qaeda and allowing it to gain a foothold in Gaza,” Reuters reports. “It is Hamas that is protecting al Qaeda, and through its bloody behavior Hamas has become very close to al Qaeda,” said Abbas, blaming the phantom organization, or database. “That is why Gaza is in danger and needs help.”

Actually, Gaza is threatened by Israel, currently engaged in a blockade “threatening to destroy the territory’s commercial sector and drive more people into the hands of extremists,” that it to say those resisting occupation. “In the last three weeks, 75 per cent of Gaza’s factories have closed because they are not allowed to import raw material or export finished products, forcing thousands of families to rely on food aid to survive,” notes Gisha, an Israeli human rights organization. “In reality, a policy of collective punishment is being imposed upon 1.4 million people, in violation of international humanitarian law and contradictory to Israel’s interest. Destroying Gaza’s economy only exacerbates dependence on extreme elements.”

Abbas, following his CIA script, signed off on by Olmert, is oblivious to all of this.

But never mind. We have an “al-Qaeda” epidemic just about everywhere, even Gaza.

[…] Wesley Clark Link to Article tommy thompson On Cue, “al-Qaeda” Threatens Iran » Posted at Another Day in the Empire on Monday, July 09, 2007 For the neocons, “al-Qaeda” is a dream come true. For instance, the current arch nemesis of the clash of civilizations gang, Iran—or rather, the latest target, as the previous target, Iraq, is mired in engineered “sectarian violence,” and other targets, such as Syria, await their turn—has supposedly fallen afoul of “al-Qaeda in Iraq, View Entire Article » […]

Source: Another Day in the Empire
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=919

Muslim leaders demand India presidential candidate step down over headscarf remarks

Islamic leaders demanded the ruling coalition withdraw its candidate from India’s presidential race on Tuesday after she said Muslim women should stop wearing their headscarves.

LUCKNOW, India – Islamic leaders demanded the ruling coalition withdraw its candidate from India’s presidential race on Tuesday after she said Muslim women should stop wearing their headscarves.

Several Muslim leaders called on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to find a new candidate for the largely ceremonial post, accusing Pratibha Patil, a Hindu, of insulting Islam by suggesting the headscarf is primitive.

Addressing a conference in the northwestern city of Udaipur over the weekend, Patil said women started wearing the headscarves in India to save themselves from 16th century Muslim invaders, and that it was time to drop what the practice, Indian newspapers reported.

“Now that women are progressing in every field, we should morally support and encourage them by leaving such practices behind,” she said.

Patil, 72, belongs to the moderate Congress party. Parliament and state legislatures choose the president, and the ruling coalition has enough votes to get her elected.

Maulana Khalid Rashid, a member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, said it was God who had asked women to wear a headscarf and that this was enshrined in the Quran, the Muslim holy book. The board is India’s highest Muslim authority on personal matters.

“Any statement against the veil means an opinion against Allah and the Quran which no Muslim will tolerate,” Rashid told The Associated Press.

Historians disagree with Patil. They say the practice of women using scarves in the presence of outsiders was already widespread in the 13th century.

Muslims account for nearly 14 percent of India’s nearly 1.1. billion people. Conservative Muslim women wear headscarves and face-covering veils.

Relations between Hindus and Muslims have been hostile since the bloody partition of the subcontinent into predominantly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan at independence from Britain in 1947.

Hindu religious leaders have not reacted to Patil’s call.

Orthodox Hindu women also cover their faces in the presence of elderly male members of the family, even though their religions doesn’t mandate the practice like for Muslims.

Maulana Hasanul Badr, a Muslim cleric, said it was the duty of Muslim women to cover their bodies.

“Why do politicians interfere in our religious matters? It has become a fashion to pass judgment on Islam,” he said.

“The statement is a clear reflection of Patil’s mind-set about Islam and Muslims. It is better that the United Progressive Alliance change its presidential candidate and opt for a more secular person for this post,” he said, referring to the governing alliance.

Source: Star Tribune
http://www.startribune.com/722/story/1254665.html