I remember watching a news report once and being struck by the glaring contradiction of images displayed by media of Israelis and Palestinians. When Israeli citizens or even troops were shown, they were depicted as either victims of a terrible suicide attack or soldiers at alert facing an unknown enemy. When Palestinians were shown, it was of stone-throwing youths, threatening men in Gaza with wrapped faces shouting angry words or of West Bank police firing machine guns into the air to disperse unruly crowds. While the role of Israeli peace-groups is rarely covered, Palestinian peace groups are thought of as near-mythical. Think resistance and Palestinians, and suicide bombers and terrorists easily come to mind--part of what the media readily covers and displays. Yet there has been a long movement of non-violent resistance on the part of Palestinians. Boston-based journalist Ellen Cantarow looks at a particular act of passive resistance, by Palestinians protesting the debilitating wall being built by the Israeli government.
Read the article here. Excerpts below.
Excerpt:
Before the wall’s advent, Qalqilya’s merchants and Israelis did regular business on either side of the border, while Jayyous’ farmers worked their land all the way up to the Green Line. Now, the monstrous, concrete version of the wall surrounds Qalqilya entirely, bringing to mind high-security prisons or ghettoes from other eras. Jayyous is segregated from most of its former land by the wall in what one could call its "barrier" form – a system of steel fences, razor wire, and patrol roads manned by Israeli soldiers.
Four thousand of the village’s olive and citrus trees were uprooted to make way for the wall. All the village’s wells and over 75 percent of the land are now sequestered behind the wall, isolated on its west – that is, "Israeli" – side. A small Israeli settler colony called Zufim sits amid Jayyous’ former wealth. Israeli plans are on the books to build up to 1,500 new housing units on the bounty confiscated from the village. The new units will destroy the only road over which Jayyous’ farmers can now travel to and from their land: there used to be six of these roads. Israel has already blocked five of them.
Sixty-five-year-old Sharif Omar Khalid, known more familiarly as Abu Azzam, has spent half his life struggling to preserve Jayyous’ land. In 1980, with other farmers representing villages throughout the West Bank, he founded the Land Defense Committee, one of 18 organizations that now make up the Stop the Wall campaign. Gifted with stubborn optimism, he counts as victory an Israeli Supreme Court decision in April 2006, which pushed the path of the wall back from the south side of the village. The decision returned 11 percent of Jayyous’ former land – 750 dunams of the 8,600 blocked by the barrier. (A dunam is a little over a quarter of an acre.)
The wall remains, as does one of its most essential parts: the "agricultural gate." There are two of these on Jayyous’ land – one to the north; another to the south. Almost all of the village’s farmers are forced to use the north gate. Opened by Israeli soldiers for two 45-minute intervals at dawn and dusk, the gate blocks a patrol road manned by the Israelis.
Full article here.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Non-Violent in Palestine
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Angry, Right & White America
It was just eleven days ago that an anti-abortion militant with white supremacist ties gunned down reproductive rights doctor George Tiller in a Kansas church. Just this past April, three Pittsburgh police officers were killed by a teen who believed the government was going to take his guns away, and had frequented white nationalists sites like Stormfront. In the heat of the presidential campaign last June, a gunman walked into a Unitarian Church and opened fire, killing two parisoners during a children's play; the shooter would claim the church's liberal values drove him to violence. And since the election of the first African-American president, gun-sales have risen alongside the daily dosage of rhetoric from conservative right-wing media. So today, after a right-wing white supremacist walked into the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC and opened fire, killing an African-American security guard, why is anyone even remotely surprised?
More after the fold...
It feels like de ja vu, after just covering these themes in the Tiller death. But I find it necessary to again point out that it was just this past April that the Obama administration's Department of Homeland Security released a memo warning of homegrown right-wing radical groups and their propensity for violence. Conservatives--both pundits and politicians--had a meltdown, claiming the government was outlawing opposing opinions and claiming they were being lumped in with racist hate groups. The American Legion soon jumped in, taking issue with the report's warnings of violent right-wing extremists recruiting disaffected one-time members of the armed forced. It was all utter nonsense of course, as the brief on domestic terrorism made no links to conservatism--the conservatives made that link themselves. And the concern of ex-military joining white supremacist groups is based on very recent facts, and in no way tarnishes all veterans. What should have been seen as a tempest in a teapot gained steam however as the media played in, allowing conservatives and right-wing ideologues--backed up by conservative leaning veterans groups--to cast themselves as victims of a liberal witch hunt. In days Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was making an apology for the "language" in the report.
But in the conservative and right-wing cries of foul over this memo, perhaps the lady doth protest too much.
While conservative pundits applaud and sensationalize FBI stings on terrorist fantasies of would-be "jihadists" (often suspiciously funded and aided by government informants), real-life acts of mayhem and murder by domestic right-wing terrorists go on right under our noses. Worse still, many of the most rabid conspiracy theories spouted by the likes of Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and Glenn Beck, serve as "intellectual" fodder for these gunmen. Yet no one in conservative television and radio noise machine is willing to take any responsibility or at the least tone down their rhetoric. In fact, they tend to lash out verbally at any insinuation places even a bit of blame on them. In the wake of George Tiller's death FOX host Bill O'Reilly, who had repeatedly called the doctor a "baby killer," claimed he himself in fact was a victim of the far-left.
Eric Boehlert at Media Matters is having none of it however:If Fox News is going to continue to traffic in hateful, vigilante-style rhetoric, then folks at Fox News, as well as their apologists in the GOP Noise Machine, are going to have to come up with better talking points to spin away the consequences of the right-wing madness they're so eager to incite....The Fox News crew is going to need better talking points because I fear the violence - the bouts of right-wing domestic terrorism - is likely to continue. As long as Fox News and the Noise Machine refuse to back off the incendiary language that they're actively mainstreaming, the political violence, visible just months into Obama's historic first term, may have only begun.
The reality is however that FOX News, while certainly wallowing in the cesspit of xenophobia, racism and intolerance to whip up the more fanatical of its base, did not invent any of this. They've certainly tapped into this angry sentiment and see it as a ratings bonanza, backing up faux-populist hate-rallies like the April "Tea Parties." Looks like Janane Garafalo was RIGHT.
But this type of racism and violence is unfortunately as American as apple pie and baseball, and follows a predictable pattern. When the economy falters and whites, usually disaffected angry males, feel under assault they find easy scapegoats they believe is behind their oppression. Fed along by media demagogues, a militarist gun-obsessed society, heroic vigilantism and an over-inflated patriarchal racial imaginings of their self-worth, they last out---often violently.
Back in 2006 during the emerging twilight of the Bush regime, retired veteran of the U.S. Army Special Forces Stan Goff wrote of this as a hypernormal state of Americana, which he asserts is normally racist, right-leaning and patriarchal if only on an institutional level:These explicitly white supremacist groups, contrasted with the implicitly white supremacist Republican Party, for example, openly embrace a vision of fascism, and openly admire fascist leaders....We need to first see for how long white supremacy has been considered ab-normal in the United States; then we can see how ab-normal it is right now....What is seldom examined in public discourse outside the universities and a handful of anti-racist political formations, is the question of what it means to be “white.” Thinkers from Toni Morrison to Noel Ignatiev to bell hooks to Theodore Allen to Mab Segrest to David Roediger have studied whiteness extensively, in its economic, cultural and political dimensions, and conclude unanimously that there is no “objective” measure for what it means; but that it is a social construction linked absolutely to social power. The insistence on existence of a white race, by racists and non-racists alike, is symptomatic of a form of mystification that conceals the concrete relations of power behind a set of widely accepted abstractions. White supremacy as a beliefhas evolved out of the practice of people in power, who defined themselves as white as a way of differentiating themselves from those over whom they wielded that power. Some very well-known American presidents who made openly white supremacist pronouncements were Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Richard Nixon. Of course, until the dismantling of Jim Crow in the South, white supremacy was a norm, and before the Civil War, slavery was a norm. White supremacy was so normal in 1964 that after the defeat of Goldwater, the Republican Party adopted thinly veiled racist appeals to attract white voters who felt betrayed by the reluctant Democratic Party support for civil rights legislation. Openly racist public officials like Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott, even after their affiliations with white supremacist organizations were publicized, continued to be elected. The Republican appeals to white supremacy were cloaked as opposition to welfare, as “states rights,” and as concern about “crime.” As late as 1999 the Republican-controlled House of Representatives blocked a vote to condemn the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist organization with whom then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott had close ties. How normed does something have to be before we can say it is normal?
And this brings us to a problem with the media, and in part even this blog. The coverage of these specific acts of violence, or even the focus on the hate spewed by FOX News acolytes and others, perhaps obscures a larger more unsettling truth that speaks to the pervasive nature of racism and whiteness in this country. We usually paint these individuals as lone bizarre gunmen driven by senseless hate---bad apples in our otherwise rational and tolerant "post-racial" society. The larger problem however is that there are throngs of these disaffected Americans--mostly white males--prone to believe conspiracy theories that blame Jews, immigrants, blacks and others for their plight. They don't fall out of the sky or come from some strange and mysterious place. They are borne and raised right here, in a society that seems to easily create such individuals and provide them the proper atmosphere for their hatred, xenophobia and violent tendencies to flourish. Tackling that "hard truth" may provide us some greater insight, that is if we dare.
Monday, March 30, 2009
So Torture Doesn't Work...
What a surprise. After having to endure Bush-Cheney apologists blather on about television notions of the hypothetical "ticking time bomb," and other excuses for torture, the verdict is out (again)--it doesn't work. According to a recent article in the Washington Post:
When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an Al Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed....The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of Al Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads. In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida - chiefly names of Al Qaeda members and associates - was obtained before waterboarding was introduced....
What a surprise. Full article below.
Officials: Torture confessions not proven useful
White House pressured CIA to extract plots
WASHINGTON - When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an Al Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed, and they were facing increasing pressure from the White House to get those secrets out of him.
The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of Al Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads.
In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida - chiefly names of Al Qaeda members and associates - was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.
Moreover, within weeks of his capture, US officials had gained evidence that made clear they had misjudged Abu Zubaida. President Bush had publicly described him as "Al Qaeda's chief of operations," and other top officials called him a "trusted associate" of Osama bin Laden and a major figure in the planning of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. None of that was accurate, the new evidence showed.
Read rest of article here.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Obama, Pakistan & Missile-Strike Diplomacy
Yesterday, buried beneath news of shoe-throwing Iraqi journalists and Illinois political shenanigans, the AP displayed what has become an all too-familiar headline: US Missile Strike Suspected in 2 Deaths. Whether its missile strikes or military commandos, the casual invasion of Pakistani territory to fight America's "War on Terror" has become routinely commonplace. As the ritual goes, the US denies involvement but at the same time hails the killing of some key Taliban leader or international terrorist; the Pakistani government lodges a formal complaint about its sovereingty, yet its thought elements in its intelligence service (ISI) are working with the CIA; and (what is disputed by no one) civilian casualities and the destruction of civilian infrastructure takes place amidst whatever "victories" are won. Such collateral damage in what might be called the "Israeli counter-terrorism approach" is accepted as normal.
In this recent event, the AP notes the following:
The latest suspected U.S. strike set a house on fire, said Ajab Khan, a village resident who went to the scene. He said he saw two bodies brought out and three wounded people taken away in a vehicle. Suspected Taliban militants surrounded the house, Khan said — a common occurrence after such strikes.
Since August, there have been well over 30 of these attacks. And even if one or two actual "suspected taliban militants" are killed, so are regular people in these regions--who now live in constant terror of death from the skies at any moment. No independent account has been made of just who is killed by these strikes, or how many. In mid Nov. a strike killed some 13 people. The US, in their non-denial type denial, claims they were militants. The local people say many were just civilians. The truth? Who can say for certain. That's the problem with these types of policies. And sometimes, they go wrong--as in early June when a missile strike killed some 11 Pakistani soldiers.
To be certain, there is a certain grey area between sovereignty and dealing with non-state actors. However, despite such thorny technical aspects of international law, these continued incursions have hardly won any hearts and minds in the area, and some analysts have blamed such a ham-fisted approach for driving many into the growing Taliban insurgency. Others warn that each such act on the part of the US only destabilizes Pakistan's already weak government, a dangerous situation for a fledgeling nuclear power, who looks impotent as its supposed US ally continuously invades and bombs its population. Reacting to popular resentment at home, in Sept. Pakistani troops actually opened fire on approaching US commandos. The US forces turned back, lest some embarrassing international incident occur between these "allies."
Of course, at first glance, many may shake their heads and point yet again to another screw-up of the Bush administration. The only problem is, the recent president-elect signed up for this controversial policy as well.
As far back as early Aug 2007, Obama stated that he would be willing to attack inside Pakistan with or without approval from the Pakistani government. "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act," Obama stated, "we will." Just shortly after this statement, the US missile attacks and commando raids into Pakistan began in earnest.
Of course, no one is suggesting any direct link to Obama's statement and the Bush White House's foreign policy decisions. But it did place the then presidential candidate, looking to sound tough on terror, into a position where he could never condemn the attacks. While not condoning them either, he nevertheless stuck by his earlier assertion that he'd do somewhat the same thing. The only difference to be teased out was that he was talking specifically about "high-value terrorist targets," while the Bush administration seems to be going after anyone they get a scent on. Though, in the eyes of many in Pakistan who were shaken by Obama's statement, not certain such delicate differences amount to a great deal. It's uncertain what the new administration's stance will be towards Pakistan, and whether this missile-strike diplomacy will continue. Hopefully "change we can believe in" includes a more sensible approach.
Related article below:
Obama's Pakistan Problem: "No We Can't!"
Whether ordained by God, the crusade against communism or the Global War on Terror, many Americans believe we have a mandate to police the world, hold dominion over its supply of oil and natural gas and lead the way in whatever way we happen to be leading at the time. John F. Kennedy and his New Frontiersmen believed all this as they escalated their terrible war of choice in Southeast Asia. George W. Bush and his neoincompetents still believe they pursued America's destiny in Iraq. And, from their writing and speeches, Barack Obama and his national security team believe no less strongly in America's calling to put the world right.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Conservative Think Tank Suggests "War on Terror" is Flawed
Just last week, US Attorney General Michael Mukasey urged that Congress should explicitly declare a state of armed conflict with al Qaeda to make clear the United States can detain suspected members as long as the war on terrorism lasts. "Any legislation should acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us," Mukasey said. "Congress should reaffirm that for the duration of the conflict the United States may detain as enemy combatants those who have engaged in hostilities or purposefully supported al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated organizations."
Yet a recently released report by the US funded RAND Corporation--a conservative think tank--undermines the attorney general's rationale, and calls into question the way in which the fight against terrorism is being waged. The report found the idea of a "war on terror" to not only be misguided but counterproductive. Furthermore, it suggested the US should rethink its entire strategy of militarism as a way to combat terrorism. In fact, it pointed out nations like Britain and Australia have long stopped using the phrase "war on terror" to describe strategy against al Qaeda and other terror groups, treating them instead as criminal organizations that are best stopped through intelligence gathering and policing.
Gee. Kind of puts a damper on that whole indefinite war with no end thing the Bush administration has been pushing huh...
Back in 2004, Democratic Presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry stated that he wanted to reduce terrorism to a "nuisance." As Kerry stated in a Times magazine interview, "We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance." Sen. Kerry was drawing on his experience as a prosecutor, and pointed out that just as it was impossible to completely rid any society of prostitution, illegal gambling or organized crime, it was fantasy to think that terrorism could be thoroughly "neutralized" by a "war on terror" no less. For his insightful analysis, one that had been offered up since the wake of the Sept 11th attacks, Sen. Kerry was lambasted by conservatives and a media who played up the seeming gaffe.
Speaking to crowds of supporters, Presidential incumbent George W. Bush repeatdly chided his Democratic opponent. He asserted Sen. Kerry's description of the fight against terrorism as "primarily a law enforcement and intelligence-gathering operation" rather than a battle requiring the full might of American power, was naive. Claiming that the "nuisance" comment offered fresh "new evidence that Senator Kerry fundamentally misunderstands the war on terror," Bush hammered away on this theme--with a little help from his friends.
As noted by the NY Times in an Oct 12 2004 article:In New Jersey, Vice President Dick Cheney called Mr. Kerry's view of terrorism "naïve and dangerous." In a conference call with reporters arranged by the Bush campaign, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, mocked Mr. Kerry for comparing terrorism to gambling and prostitution. "The idea that you can have an acceptable level of terrorism is frightening," Mr. Giuliani said.
As noted by MediaMatters at the time, conservative pundits joined in on the pile-on:PAT BUCHANAN (MSNBC analyst, as guest host of MSNBC's Scarborough Country): Kerry seems to have this -- obviously they try to portray him as a girlie man at the Republican Convention. But he seems to play into this with the phrase about sensitive war, and global test, and now terrorism is a nuisance. [MSNBC, Scarborough Country, 10/11]
SEAN HANNITY (FOX News Channel host and ABC Radio Networks host): He [Kerry] is saying, these are his words, this is his little debate he's had with himself, and the fact that 3,000 of our fellow citizens were slaughtered on 9-11 -- and here we are -- we're supposed to believe that these terrorists are only a mere nuisance -- just a nuisance. [ABC Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 10/11]
HANNITY: You know that nuisance that John Kerry was talking about? We're going to win the war on terror so that American cities and American malls and the American people are going to be safe. That's what the war has always been about. [FOX News Channel, Hannity & Colmes, 10/11]
TONY SNOW (FOX News Channel host and FOX News Radio host, as guest host of FOX News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor): But first, our top story tonight, the political heat is on as we count down to November 2. President Bush and Senator Kerry are back on the campaign trail, pounding away at each other, verbally, of course. This morning, the president pounced on a quote in Sunday's New York Times Magazine where Senator Kerry called terrorists a nuisance. [FOX News Channel, The O'Reilly Factor, 10/11]
GARY BAUER (chairman of the conservative political action committee Campaign for Working Families and a former Republican presidential candidate, sitting in for CNN Crossfire co-host Tucker Carlson): Listen up, Senator Kerry. We're fighting Jihadists, Islamofascists, not just a nuisance or law enforcement problem. [CNN, Crossfire, 10/12]
JACK KEMP (former Republican vice presidential candidate): What John Kerry did is take it and call it a soon-to-be nuisance, which is not correct. [FOX News Channel, Hannity & Colmes, 10/12]
Unfortunately, Sen. Kerry--giving into fear of pressing the issue with a seemingly indifferent or hostile media--simply stated that the Republicans were taking his words out of context. Much more plain spoken had been earlier Democratic foreign-policy wonks.''We're not in a war on terror, in the literal sense,'' said Clinton-era diplomat Richard Holbrooke. ''The war on terror is like saying 'the war on poverty.' It's just a metaphor. What we're really talking about is winning the ideological struggle so that people stop turning themselves into suicide bombers.''
It will be interesting to see what the 2008 presidential candidates--one who thinks a hundred year occupation of Iraq is part of a "global war on terror" and another who intends on ramping up the Afghan war and is on record for unilateral military strikes into a sovereign nation (Pakistan) as a way to "fight terror"--will make of this report. Will they utilize it? Or is their tough talking rhetoric simply seen as more useful during a campaign?
Some further points from the Rand report:
*A transition to the political process is the most common way most terrorist groups end. But the process, found in 43 percent cases examined, is said to be unlikely with al-Qaida, because of its broad, sweeping agenda.
*The second most common way that terrorist groups end, seen in about 40 percent of the cases, is through police and intelligence services. Police are particularly effective because their permanent presence in cities helps them gather information.
*Military force, as currently being used in Iraq and Afghanistan, was effective in only 7 percent of the cases.
*Even where we found some success against al-Qaida, in Pakistan and Iraq, the military played a background or surrogate role. The bulk of the action was taken by intelligence, police and, in some cases, local forces.
*Religious terrorist groups take longer to eliminate than other groups but none has achieved victory in the 38 years covered by the study.
Monday, December 10, 2007
H.R. 1955 = Orwell's 1984 ?
H.R. 1955. Heard of it? Chances are, with our mainstream corporate media engaged in every bit of news except what is most important, you haven't. As Robert Weitzel writing for TRUTHOUT notes, "H.R 1955: the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007...is barely one sentence old before its Orwellian moment: It begins, 'AN ACT - To prevent homegrown terrorism, and for other purposes.'" The document itself reads as so vague--with its concern for "ideologically based violence" and its desire to "disrupt" radical groups--that it leaves open a wide net. Some have likened it to COINTELPRO, the Counter Intelligence Program of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI that ended up spying on peace activists, infiltrating the Black Panthers and wiretapping Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.--all in the name of securing the homeland. Others are calling it, the "Thought Crime" bill, as seemingly simply having an ideology like anarchism or the like could be deemed potentially dangerous and akin to terrorism. Most appalling is that H.R. 1955--that resembles a refined stepchild of the troubling Patriot Act--was proposed by a Democrat (Rep. Jane Harman [D-CA]) and won overwhelming support in the Democratic controlled Congress when it was passed on Oct. 23 by a vote of 404-6. It's companion now rests in the Senate. And despite calls for a reexamination of the bill by civil liberties lawyers, Constitutional scholars, activists and more, it seems to be going full steam ahead.
As noted by Jessica Lee on Indypendent Media, who has confirmed that presidential candidate Barak Obama will also endorse the bill, H.R. 1955 is troubling in its appeal to fear and the never-ending, always-expanding "war on terrorism." She quotes Alejandro Queral, executive director of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center, who has expressed concern over the bill’s vague definitions of “violent radicalization,” “homegrown terrorism,” and the terms within the definitions including “extremist belief system,” “violence” and “force.”
“This bill fits the pattern we are seeing coming out of Congress – both Republican and Democratic –," Queral said, "of a continued campaign of fear, which gets into heads of Americans that we now need to start criminalizing ideology.”
Since the corporate media has been negligent on this story now for well over a month, some stories relating to H.R. 1955 are posted below.
Bringing the War on Terrorism Home: Congress Considers How to ‘Disrupt’ Radical Movements in the United States
From the November 16, 2007 issue | Posted in National |
By Jessica Lee
Under the guise of a bill that calls for the study of “homegrown terrorism,” Congress is apparently trying to broaden the definition of terrorism to encompass both First Amendment political activity and traditional forms of protest such as nonviolent civil disobedience, according to civil liberties advocates, scholars and historians.
The proposed law, The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 (H.R. 1955), was passed by the House of Representative in a 404-6 vote Oct. 23. (The Senate is currently considering a companion bill, S. 1959.) The act would establish a “National Commission on the prevention of violent radicalization and ideologically based violence” and a university-based “Center for Excellence” to “examine and report upon the facts and causes of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism and ideologically based violence in the United States” in order to develop policy for “prevention, disruption and mitigation.”
full article:
http://www.indypendent.org/2007/11/19/homegrown-terrorism/
The House of Reps Vote 404 to 6 to Pass the Bill that Legalizes COINTELPRO?
by Justin Ponkow and Troy Nkrumah
November 28, 2007
One month ago a bill passed almost unanimously in the House. This bill has received no mainstream news coverage. So it must not be that big of a deal, right? It's just a bill that will soon to go to Capitol Hill and since the Democrats are in control we are all safe from further infringements up on our civil rights, right? Well, maybe that is not totally correct since this bill is a lot more than meets the eye. But indicator number one should be the title, and indicator number two should be how fast it is moving through Congress.
On October 23rd of this year, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 passed 404 to 6 in the House. This bill is proposing an expansion of Homeland Security with the objective of spying on citizens whose political or religious beliefs might lead them to commit violent acts. And we are not referring to the attack of Megan Williams or the numerous police murders of non threatening civilians. No this is solely about spying on political dissidents whose politics were shaped through a critical analysis of US Foreign or Domestic policies.
full article:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=14396
Obama Supports Homegrown Terrorism Bill
December 10, 2007 | Posted in IndyBlog |
By Jessica Lee, The Indypendent
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama says that he will support the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (S. 1959). According to the automatic email responses constituents are receiving from his office, Obama appears to be straddling the fence between preserving civil liberties and being tough on terrorism.
“The American people understand that new threats require flexible responses to keep them safe. They also insist that our responses to threats respect the constitution and do not violate the basic tenets of our democracy,” Obama’s email said. Several people who have written to Obama have posted his response on various blogs, including “Justin” who’s personal blog was picked up on diggs.com.
full article:
http://www.indypendent.org/2007/12/10/obama-supports-homegrown-terrorism-bill/
Read Copy of Bill (several versions) yourself:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.01955:
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Black Snake Moan vs Megan Williams
Okay... So by now everyone has heard of the ordeal of Megan Williams, the young black woman who police say was kidnapped, tortured and repeatedly sexually abused for a week long ordeal in Charleston, West Virginia. Williams mother says she was chained, sexually assaulted, doused with hot water, stabbed, forced to eat animal feces, and taunted with racial slurs (n*gger). Six whites, two of them women, were arrested and now face a multitude of charges. Wonder if Craig Brewer, the white guy who showed us a black pimp can cry in Hustle & Flow, and that the long-time southern fantasy of 'white woman slavery' does exist after all in the not-so-subtle symbolisms of Black Snake Moan, will tackle this in his next film?
While news of this bizarre case has been noteworthy, it has interestingly enough not reached the heights of accused dog torturer Michael Vick, or any number of reports featuring missing white girls or young women. The reality is of course that statistics show the sexual abuse of girls and women in American society is a common occurrence. Megan Williams' case compounds the issue by its sheer extremities and the intersections of race and gender in the South. If any serious discussions were to be had, a Pandora's box of American issues of violence, race and women of color could be opened up--but not likely. Instead, the most we'll get are inverted stories like Brewer's Black Snake Moan, that seek to bury harsh realities under complicated symbolic fantasies. Go figure.
At any rate, of all the op eds I have seen on this topic, the best thus far has been from James Peterson at Black Prof.com, who places the issue in a larger perspective.
His piece is reposted in full below:
Why Megan Matters
by James Peterson
First, my heart goes out to Megan Williams, her parents: Carmen and Matthew Williams, as well as her family and the community of Charleston, West Virginia; who, like most of us, must be shocked, outraged and utterly disturbed by the heinous hate crimes that took place in that trailer home located in Logan County.
The agonizing situational irony of this story “breaking” on the sixth anniversary of 9-11 puts into bold relief the sentiments of several or our leading public intellectuals and the abiding sense amongst some African Americans that the so-called War on Terror is misplaced and misdirected if one considers for one moment the consistent acts of terror committed against women and people of color in this country.
After their appearances on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, both Cornel West and Hip Hop artist/activist/actor Mos Def were lambasted by mainstream media for their “extreme” views on Osama Bin Laden, the attack on the twin towers, and American efforts to combat terrorists over seas. Dr. West and others like Dr. Michael Eric Dyson have clearly attempted to re-center any discussion on terror around the experiences of Black Folk in this country in order to provide a reasonable context for why some people simply cannot stomach an American policy that is inherently hypocritical if it does not root out terror in its own back yard.
The fact that these acts of racist terror are executed by American citizens (and I use this term very loosely here) should provide proof positive for Dyson’s and West’s reasonable suggestions that some people of color simply can not genuinely connect themselves to the patriotic machinery that invites us to hate “Islamic Fascists” or to accept a permanent war allegedly committed to eradicating evil overseas when so much evil still lurks right here, in West Virginia, in Louisiana, in New York, Texas, Wyoming or (insert heinous hate-crime locale here) AMERICA.
Six white West Virginians (Frankie Lee Brewster, age 49, Bobby Brewster, 24, Danny Combs, 20, George Messer, 27, Karen Burton, 45, and Alisha Burton, 23) have been charged with the kidnapping, malicious wounding, battery, and sexual assault of 20 year-old Megan Williams. Over the course of a week-long, unimaginable and I am sure for her, unending torture-spree, these six devilish people raped her, scolded her with boiling water, pulled out her hair, beat her, choked her, stabbed her, forced her to drink from a toilet, eat feces and otherwise utterly de-humanized her. They would call her “nigger’ when they stabbed her. And one of the ‘alleged’ assailants exclaimed: “that’s what we do to niggers around here.” Around here being Logan County West Virginia, but for women and people of color who have endured and persevered in the face of all forms of gendered and/or racialized terror, ‘around here’ can mean around the corner.
And so yes, (and I know this will surely bring out all of the haters) 9-11 cannot mean the same thing to me anymore. Not because of our current administration’s flawed foreign policy; not because of the popular youtube movie – Loose Change, but because we live in a country where Megan’s humanity can be erased. And that it can be erased so horrifically with such awfully racist motivation and cruel intentions, means that some of us are not safe from a homegrown (and historically cultivated) strain of terrorism.
Megan matters more to me now because I know that if she were white and her alleged assailants were black than this would be a top news story. It would be front page on all of the major websites and internet platforms. If she were a dog and her alleged assailants were black athletes, every news outlet in the world would converge on these assailants. But alas, she is a human being. She is a woman. She is an African American woman. And since there is no PETH with the power of PETA, (i.e. since some people care more about dogs than they do about people; even people who are treated worse than dogs); and since we live in a world where terror coming from over there is more important than the terror that comes from right here, I just want to make it clear that I stand against the racial terror that operates RIGHT HERE.
Megan matters because her horror story is not the first of its kind and unless we unveil and eradicate the racist elements of our own society it unfortunately will not be the last.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Juan Cole Talks "Heroes" & American Politics
Nothing goes better together than sci fi and politics. Whether it's the philosophical dystopian Matrix Trilogy, or Marvel's foray into bigotry through the X-Men. So it was a treat to see one of my favorite analysts of Mid East affairs Juan Cole, who blogs at Informed Comment, talk politics about NBC's hit series "Heroes." Looking at the obvious inspirations of the show, namely the obsession with security in post-9/11 America, Cole points out how the worldview of "Heroes" clashes with the Bush White House's "1 percent doctrine" on terrorism.
Heroes- Dick Cheney's least favorite TV show?
Why the worldview of "Heroes" clashes with the vice president's "1 percent doctrine" on terrorism.
By Juan Cole
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/05/30/heroes/
May. 30, 2007 NBC's hit series "Heroes" was the most-watched new show on network television this year despite its demanding plot lines and stretches of subtitled Japanese. Its season finale, which aired May 21, dominated the 9 p.m. time slot. What explains the show's popularity, especially with younger viewers? I think it is that, like the Fox thriller "24," "Heroes" is a response to Sept. 11 and the rise of international terrorism. But while "24" skews to the right politically, "Heroes" seems like a left-wing response to those events. In fact, it functions as a thoughtful critique of Vice President Dick Cheney's doctrine on counterterrorism.
In Bush and Cheney's "war on terror," the evildoers are external and are clearly discernible. In "Heroes," each person agonizes over the evil within, a point of view more common on the political left than on the right. Each of the flawed characters is capable of both nobility and iniquity. In Bush's vision, the main threat remains rival states (Saddam's Iraq, Ahmadinejad's Iran). States are absent from "Heroes," as though irrelevant. "Heroes" makes terrorism a universal and psychological issue rather than one attached to a clash of civilizations or to a particular race.
In its commentary on terror, "Heroes" thus avoids the caffeinated Islamophobia of "24." And at a time when "24," a favorite of older Republicans, is fading in the ratings, "Heroes" may also be a better guide to where the thinking of the young, post-Bush generation is heading when it comes to terror. It's certainly where their eyes are going. NBC's "Heroes" runs opposite Fox's "24" on Monday nights and snags a higher total of younger viewers, while the median age of "24" viewers keeps rising. As "Heroes" star Adrian Pasdar, who plays politician Nathan Petrelli, explained in an interview before this season's finale, "On Monday nights we own the demographics." He was referring to winning the ratings battle among the all-important 18-49 age group that advertisers love.
"Heroes" posits a world in which a small number of persons have been born with extraordinary powers drawn from the standard science fiction repertory. The powers include levitating objects, mind reading, flying, miraculous healing, bursting into flames and, as with the painter Isaac Mendez (Santiago Cabrera), prophesying the future. The plot that drives the first season has to do with a prophetic painting by Mendez that shows New York City being blown up. The bomb is not mechanical but is a human being, a mutant, who cannot control his powers and will ultimately explode in the midst of the city if not stopped. For much of the season the mutants do not know exactly who will explode or when, but they know it will happen unless they prevent it.
For full article:
Heroes- Dick Cheney's Least Favorite TV show?
