So far, WMDs have remained in the hands of the ‘good guys’ – those who put freedom and democracy as a high ideals – at least towards their own people. What would happen when a dictatorship [minus Pakistan because it is an 'ally'] gets hold of those weapons? What happens when a fascist country takes control of the world? No, it is not Iran – it is the path that these United States are taking now under the guidance of Cheney and the total irreverence of Bush and his administration – not to mention the total impotence of the democrats. Yesterday I watched an interview with author Naomi Wolf on CSPAN. She was discussing her alarming book The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. Naturally, it is the ‘end of America as we know it’ – the end of freedoms, civil rights and democracy.
Too far fetched? Yes. That is what people in Germany believed also at one time. Wolf, in her book and in her interview, discusses the 10 steps to dictatorship – the sudden and the stealth. It is a blueprint that all dictatorships work out of, and Wolf sees that it has all been initiated in the US by the Bush administration, and she argues that we need to only look at the lessons of history to see where we are going. A scary thought indeed.
Here are her ten steps:
Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
Create a gulag: Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal “outer space”) – where torture takes place. At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as outsiders: troublemakers, spies, “enemies of the people” or “criminals”. Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison system; it makes them feel safer and they do not identify with the prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders – opposition members, labour activists, clergy and journalists – are arrested and sent there as well.
Develop a thug caste: When leaders who seek what I call a “fascist shift” want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorise citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution. [Besides several examples mentioned in her book, Wolf, in her interview, adds Blackwater which the Bush administration is discussing' extending its contracts' within the United States].
Set up an internal surveillance system
Harass citizens’ groups
Engage in arbitrary detention and release
Target key individuals [eg. academics and intellectuals, artists etc.]
Control the press
Dissent equals treason: Cast dissent as “treason” and criticism as “espionage’. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of “spy” and “traitor”. … most Americans do not realise that since September of last year – when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 – the president has the power to call any US citizen an “enemy combatant”. He has the power to define what “enemy combatant” means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define “enemy combatant” any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly.
Suspend the rule of lawThe John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency – which the president now has enhanced powers to declare – he can send Michigan’s militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state’s governor and its citizens.
I think she forgot invocation of religion.
Think it can’t happen here? check Wolf’s book with details of how it is already happening. Or read her article in The Guardian before the book was published, or watch her interview on CSPAN.
Better yet, read Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen here [version of this book could be found here if you have not read it before]. When Buzz Windrip’s political campaign gets ahead after rallying the people with buzz-words and the fear of unknown enemy threats, the people begin to chant the following to the tune of Yankee Doodle:
“The snakes disloyal to our Buzz
We’re riding on a rail,
They’ll wish to God they never was,
When we get them in jail!
Chorus:
“Buzz and buzz and keep it up
To victory he’s floated.
You were a most ungrateful pup,
Unless for Buzz you voted.
“Every M.M. gets a whip
To use upon some traitor,
And every Antibuzz we skip
Today, we’ll tend to later.”
Well this is what ‘his’ MySpace entry says. Some funny guy posted an entry under Saddam Hussein’s name: “I AM SADDAM,HELLO EVERYONE” – Male – 71 years old – Alabama – United States – Single – Capricorn.
I just though it was funny. Not sure if the poster who posted it meant it as fun. I hope he meant it as a joke. The point is, while I am against the war in Iraq, Saddam was no ‘hero’. If those are Arab heroes, then pleeeeease… NO MORE heroes.
I had to be the first to go see Rendition, a movie featuring Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep, Omar Metwally and Jake Gyllenhaal. Rendition tells the story of an Egyptian/American [Omar Metwally] who lived in the States since he was 14 and married an American woman [Witherspoon]. On the way back from one of his trips overseas he is secretly detained, his information wiped off the passenger list, and is shipped to a ‘North African’ country whose name was tactfully not mentioned, where he was tortured in order to extract information from him about a terrorist group. Added to the mix is the congresswoman [Meryl Streep] with the southern accent, who gave the order for him to be ‘renditioned’, the CIA officer [Gyllenhaal] located in the North African country and who works closely with the local intelligence agency headed by a ruthless local torturer named Fawwal [Igal Naor]. In spite of Witherspoon’s very brief role, she was extraordinary in her performance, not to mention that she was also the catalyst who insisted on bringing her husband home.
The movie includes two concurrent plots that involve – and in many ways humanizes – its characters, and ends with an unexpected twist that makes us rethink the movie’s sequence of events. Throughout the movie we are given multiple perspectives – that of the cold congresswoman who believes her own story that ‘America does not torture’, and the CIA office who views his ‘first torture’ and wavers between his loyalty to his position on the one hand and his own moral values on the other, and the congressman’ assistant who decides he could put his job on the line for only that much but eventually abandons the ’cause’ for his own career interests.
In addition to all this, there are the Arabs – clearly filmed in Morocco – where we see Fawwal tortured by his own family demons, a daughter who runs away to live with her boyfriend and a sister who had done the same earlier in life. His personal and his professional lives intertwine and it is that which brings all the threads of the two subplots together towards the end.
The movie is powerful with a powerful message: torture does not work. Yes, we could have told them that already, but it seems more and more people have been duped by this administration to believe that this is all done with good cause. The torture scenes were heartbreaking and painful to watch. – the breaking down of another human being through physical and mental abuse.
The movie left me angry – on a human level, at what humans do to others; on a spiritual level, at what is done in the name of a ‘Christian administration’; on a political level, not only at this swindling administration, but more so at the Arab torturers who accept torturing their own.
Definitely worth seeing. But it is not just a movie…. see… most significantly, its premiere was yesterday, and only today we hear this in the news:
Members of a Congressional committee have issued an apology to Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was wrongly detained at JFK Airport in 2002 as a suspected terrorist and subjected to extraordinary rendition to Syria, where he was tortured into making a false confession. … The Bush administration has never apologized to Arar and is working to block his lawsuit against the US government. [link]
When I read this today.. it almost seemed like a continuation of the movie – a sort of closure to the events that took place.
The movie’s website is here, and to view the trailer:
hmm…. I thought long and hard before posting this. While I attempt in this blog to expose fundamentalism on ALL sides, be it Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, you name it… this one in particular is so disturbing, I hesitated in publishing it. Yesterday Bill Moyers, God bless him, had a program on PBS about the extremist group Christians United for Israel with its insane pastor Hagee. I had written about Hagee before, but this video is particularly disturbing.
Bush sent this message to the group as they began their summit:
“I appreciate CUFI members and all event participants for your passion and dedication to enhancing the relationship between the United States and Israel. Your efforts set a shining example for others and help lay the foundation of peace for generations to come. Laura and I send our best wishes for a memorable event. May God bless you. George W. Bush, president of the United States.”
McCain said “It’s very hard trying to do the lords work in the city of Satan”. Lieberman called Hagee “a man of God and those words really do fit him; and, I’d add something else, like Moses he’s become the leader of a mighty multitude, even greater than the multitude that Moses led from Egypt to the promised land.” And others and others…
Hagee reminded his audience:
But the Palestinians have never owned the land. I want you to hear this very clearly. The Land of Israel was given to Abraham, Issac and Jacob and their seed in an eternal covenant. It is recorded in the book of Genesis. The boundaries are there in the Bible. And that land belongs to the Jewish people today, tomorrow and forever because it is their covenant by the word of God.
Hagee even mentions ‘9000 Jews being forced out of Gaza and are now living in tents’. EXCUSE ME????
As an Egyptian, I am amused by this insanity. It reminds me so much of Bin Laden’s message – he, and other extremist fundamentalists tend to say the same things, with minor changes of cast and characters.
As an American, I am disturbed at the hijacking of our foreign policy by ignorant groups falling into the trap of fundamentalism and the game of ‘let’s play religion for political gains’.
But most of all… as a Christian… I am outraged – angry – seething with anger – at the twisting of a religion of peace into this distorted version of hatred and lunacy, prejudice and inciting.
A group of my friends rightly noted: the lunatics are now running the asylum!! Indeed.. and their leader is that man in the White House.
Watch the video and/or read the transcript: [link]
Towards the end of the Second World War German technicians developed a new type of bomb which, when fired, would open up and release hundreds of smaller bombs that would then rain down on targets spread over a wide area. These weapons were further advanced during the Cold War and have since become standard weaponry for most conventional armies.There are many types but collectively, they are known as cluster bombs. [link]
In Lebanon
In the first two months since the end of the conflict, more than 150 civilians have been killed or injured by cluster bombs.
The U.S. National Security Agency just released a set of classified documents on the attack against the USS Liberty in the Mediterranean in 1967. The documents may be accessed here http://www.nsa.gov/liberty .
No, it did not make it to the media. Nor will it. It only made its way on the Internet and in some publications such as The Chicago Tribune, whose editors even took the time to interview survivors . It states:
The documents also suggest that the U.S. government, anxious to spare Israel’s reputation and preserve its alliance with the U.S., closed the case with what even some of its participants now say was a hasty and seriously flawed investigation. [link]
Hey.. it is just another Israeli ‘mistake’. What’s the fuss? [To learn more about the USS Liberty click here]. From the Veteran’s site:
The legion of pro-Israel, anti-American apologists, while small, makes up for its lack of numbers and inability to mount any kind of legitimate defense by launching loud, vicious ad hominem attacks on anyone who attempts to raise the issue of the attack being deliberate. These anti-American apologists refuse to discuss the facts of the case. Rather they rely on “big lie” propaganda and attack anyone who questions the Israeli position as being “anti-Semitic”.
How long will the survivors of the attack ’survive’?
معلهش يا سيدى الفاضل القس ديزموند توتو – منعوك من الكلام فى جامعة واحدة أمريكية لكن العالم مليان جامعات والأهم العالم مليان ناس هتسمعك طول ما فينا نفس
الأسبوع ده سحبت جامعة سان توماس بولاية مينيسوتا الأمريكية دعوتها للقس المحترم صاحب التاريخ الطويل والعربق فى الدفاع ضد العنصرية والدفاع من أجل حقوق الإنسان, وقد بررت هذا السحب بأنها وصلتها معلومات أن القس تحدث بشكل قد يعتبر معاد للسامية حول إسرائيل وأن بعض الجماعات اليهودية تعترض على حديثه. وقالت الجامعة كذلك أنها لا تقول بأن القس معاديا للسامية بل تقول فقط أن بعض ما قاله قد يضايق تلك الجماعات التى إعترضت أنه شبه إسرائيل بهتلر فى حديث له فى بوسطن عام 2002
من ناحية أخرى رفضت منظمة السالفيشيون أرمى بالسماح لمارسيل خليفة بإقامة حفلته بمدينة سان دياجو فى المركز التابع لها وقد قالت أنه لابد حتى يكون هناك توازن أن يكون هناك شخصا اسرائيليا فى نفس الوقت مع خليفة على المسرح
نعم لابد من الإعتراف أن هذا موقعا واحدا فقط بينما سمح لمارسيل خليفة بتقديم حفلاته فى أماكن كثيرة, وكذلك سمح لتوتو بالحديث فى أماكن كثيرة أيضا وهذه هى الديمقراطية, ولكن ما هو غير مقبول أن يحدث تكميم للأفواه كلما نطق أحدهم بكلمة ضد إسرائيل ورضوخ المسؤولين لطلبات الجماعات الصهيونية التى تحاول جاهدة إخماد كل صوت عربى
على كل لو كان اسمه كمنوتو بدلا من توتو, أو اسمه باريس هيلتون أو غيرها لكان الترحيب به أكيد. تعيش وتاخذ غيرها يا توتو ويا مارسيل خليفة
The University of St. Thomas in Minnesota has withdrawn its invitation to South African Bishop Desmond Tutu to speak to its students:
…in a move that still has faculty members shaking their heads in disbelief, St. Thomas administrators—concerned that Tutu’s appearance might offend local Jews—told organizers that a visit from the archbishop was out of the question.
“We had heard some things he said that some people judged to be anti-Semitic and against Israeli policy,” says Doug Hennes, St. Thomas’s vice president for university and government relations. “We’re not saying he’s anti-Semitic. But he’s compared the state of Israel to Hitler and our feeling was that making moral equivalencies like that are hurtful to some members of the Jewish community.”
St. Thomas officials made this inference after Hennes talked to Julie Swiler, a spokeswoman for the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas. “I told him that I’d run across some statements that were of concern to me,” says Swiler. “In a 2002 speech in Boston, he made some comments that were especially hurtful.”
On the same note, renowned Lebanese Oud player Marcel Khalife was also denied the San Diego’s Joan B. Kroc Theatre at the Salvation Army’s Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center [link].
Pitchfork media is reporting that United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization “Artist for Peace” oud player Marcel Khalifé can play at the Kennedy Center , the Skirball Center and Boston’s Berklee College, but he won’t be playing at San Diego’s Joan B. Kroc Theatre at the Salvation Army’s Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center. The center said that they’d need an Israeli to play on the same stage. [link]
Hey, if either Tutu or Khalife were called Paris Hilton or Ms. Spears, they would have probably made it easily into those venues. Unlucky them…
I should stress though, as distressing as this news is, that Bishop Tutu and Khalife have been given access to other venues at different times, and in the case of the latter, Khalife has been playing acorss the US in this current tour. It just saddens me deeply when I see attempts at stifling any dissent from or criticism of Israel in particular of all the countries, places and topics in the world!
Didn’t you know? come onnnn people!! aren’t dominatrixes [or is it dominatrixi?] human too? yup. They sure are. They are therefore entitled to their opinions – especially political ones. Here is one dominatrix who wandered into the British political arena and babbled some garbage that made headlines in the British tabloid The Daily Mail.
Oh… oops.. sorry… excuse me… she did not wander? she is who? who you say? Debra Cagan, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Coalition Affairs to Defence Secretary Robert Gates? Nahhhhh… she couldn’t be! huh???? nooooo wayyyy!! Here is what The Daily Mail reports:
Britsh MPs visiting the Pentagon to discuss America’s stance on Iran and Iraq were shocked to be told by one of President Bush’s senior women officials: “I hate all Iranians.” [link]
The Daily Mail continues in clear astonishment:
She made it clear that although the US had no plans to attack Iran, it did not rule out doing so if the Iranians ignored warnings not to develop a nuclear bomb. It was her tone when they met her on September 11 that shocked them most. The MPs say that at one point she said: “In any case, I hate all Iranians.” Although it was an aside, it was not out of keeping with her general demeanour.”She seemed more keen on saying she didn’t like Iranians than that the US had no plans to attack Iran,” said one MP. “She did say there were no plans for an attack but the tone did not fit the words.” Another MP said: “I formed the impression that some in America are looking for an excuse to attack Iran. It was very alarming.”
Ok.. politics aside… what the #$$% is she wearing???? and what’s with the hairdo [or don't] and choker?????
It seems to me that one of the requirements for becoming an employee of this administration is to be a total idiot saying the most outrageous and bizarre utterances possible, and in particular making those wonderfully delightful generalizations that show not only ignorance and contempt, but also racism and prejudice.
Yesterday I watched an interview with author Naomi Wolf on CSPAN. She was discussing her alarming book The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. Naturally, it is the ‘end of America as we know it’ – the end of freedoms, civil rights and democracy.
I just though it was funny. Not sure if the poster who posted it meant it as fun. I hope he meant it as a joke. The point is, while I am against the war in Iraq, Saddam was no ‘hero’. If those are Arab heroes, then pleeeeease… NO MORE heroes.
I had to be the first to go see Rendition, a movie featuring Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep, Omar Metwally and Jake Gyllenhaal. Rendition tells the story of an Egyptian/American [Omar Metwally] who lived in the States since he was 14 and married an American woman [Witherspoon]. On the way back from one of his trips overseas he is secretly detained, his information wiped off the passenger list, and is shipped to a ‘North African’ country whose name was tactfully not mentioned, where he was tortured in order to extract information from him about a terrorist group. Added to the mix is the congresswoman [Meryl Streep] with the southern accent, who gave the order for him to be ‘renditioned’, the CIA officer [Gyllenhaal] located in the North African country and who works closely with the local intelligence agency headed by a ruthless local torturer named Fawwal [Igal Naor]. In spite of Witherspoon’s very brief role, she was extraordinary in her performance, not to mention that she was also the catalyst who insisted on bringing her husband home.
Members of a Congressional committee have issued an apology to 
The U.S. National Security Agency just released a set of classified documents on the attack against the USS Liberty in the Mediterranean in 1967. The documents may be accessed here 
معلهش يا سيدى الفاضل القس ديزموند توتو – منعوك من الكلام فى جامعة واحدة أمريكية لكن العالم مليان جامعات والأهم العالم مليان ناس هتسمعك طول ما فينا نفس
من ناحية أخرى رفضت منظمة السالفيشيون أرمى بالسماح لمارسيل خليفة بإقامة حفلته بمدينة سان دياجو فى المركز التابع لها وقد قالت أنه لابد حتى يكون هناك توازن أن يكون هناك شخصا اسرائيليا فى نفس الوقت مع خليفة على المسرح
Didn’t you know? come onnnn people!! aren’t dominatrixes [or is it dominatrixi?] human too? yup. They sure are. They are therefore entitled to their opinions – especially political ones. Here is one dominatrix who wandered into the British political arena and babbled some garbage that made headlines in the British tabloid The Daily Mail.