Justifying the Crusades, the Inquisition and Islamophobia

Note: updated 6:00 pm March 13, 08
For more on these topics see links to previous posts-


In doing research on the Holocaust and especially on what occurred in the Balkans i.e. Croatia/ Serbia during World War II I came across this interesting video . In the video the claim is made that Arabs were brought into Coatia to help the Nazis and the Croatian collaborators mass murder the Jews and Gypsies and others. But there is something odd about the video in that it seems to make too much of the involvement of Arabs / Muslims in the Holocaust. I don't doubt the veracity of the piece .

The Grand Mufti & Hitler, and Palestinian Genocide of Jews




Here we have the Arab /Palestinian Islamic connection to the Holocaust in the Balkans. Therefore since some Muslims killed Jews and others in the Balkans what are we to conclude from this fact. Are we to conclude that Muslims have always hated Jews. This is not quite true since anti-Semitism as preached in Christian countries was for the most part unknown in the Islamic world until the 19th century.
Is part of the rationale behind this video that even The Holocaust can now in part be blamed on the Arabs, Palestinians, and Muslims. The Muslims and their leader the Mufti are as reprehensible as anyone else who willingly took part in the slaughter of the Jews, Gypsies and others .But that these Muslims took part in these atrocities doe not necessarily mean that all Muslims would have agreed with their actions.So these Muslims are guilty of War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity and should have been punished for their crimes.

But there were many people and organizations who suffered few if any consequences for the part they played in The Holocaust such as the Catholic Church and other Christian Churches which took part in these atrocities all over Europe including the Balkans and Eastern Europe.

So forget about the fact that millions of Christians willingly took part in the Holocaust.

Forget about the 2,000 year hatred of the Jews preached by the Christian Churches and Christian Leaders.

Forget the fact that the Vatican didn't finally absolve Jews of the collective guilt of the Killing of Jesus until the 1960s.

Forget that the Vatican has not apologized unconditionally for its anti-Semitism and its silence during the Holocaust.

It is a matter of historical fact that in part,at least, it was the 2000 year long preachings against the Jews by the Christian Churches which laid the ground-work for Hitler's Final Solution.

Often one hears the remark that why didn't the Jews of Germany and Europe take more action to resist the Nazis. But given the history of European Jewry many of them saw this as just another outbreak of anti-Semitism and that no matter how bad it got it would soon pass. After centuries of having governments and Monarchs and Popes pass legislation restricting the rights of their Jewish citizens and banning them from the professions and other jobs and then locking them in the Ghettos at night and having undergone the Inquisition and such the European Jews had become accustomed to being oppressed and hated by Christians. But since the time of the Enlightenment and the rise of liberalism and notions like equality and Human Rights throughout most of Europe the Jews had been able to improve their lot and were almost convinced that the populace and the Church and those in power now accepted them and their religion.But the Conservative Christians hated liberalism in all its forms and to further discredit its growing appeal used the old hatred of the Jews to discredit it . These reactionaries claimed that liberalism and all reform movements were being used and manipulated by the Jews to undermine the legitimate authority of the Church and those in secular power including the Monarchs.

The Monarchy of the various nations from the Kings and Queens of England to Tsars of Russia owed their authority not to the people but to God and the Church whether Protestant, Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church or the Russian or Eastern Orthodox Church. Further to question the natural hierarchy or the basis of the class structure was seen as questioning the Church and God. God made the poor and rich and the Monarchs and each was supposed to know their place and just accept it . There are many now in our present age who still make such claims i.e. the Neoconservatives and the Religious Right and Evangelical Christians - if you are poor God made you that way and the Rich are being rewarded by God- or George Bush is president of the United States because God chose him as he did Tony Blair of England and Stephen Harper of Canada. So how then can any of us mere mortals criticize these chosen one's of God.

Anyway ,What we are supposed to believe is that Hitler and the Nazis invented anti-Semitism and so were not part of the long history of Christian ant-Semitism. In fact there are those who claim that anti-Semitism in European Christian countries was not really that serious of a problem. According to this view yes they will admit there were outbreaks of anti-Semitism but these were usually a matter of mob violence and had nothing to do with those in positions of authority whether the Church, or the Monarchs or Nobles or the governments of the time.


It 's like the torturous arguments Christians have developed claiming Hitler was never a Christian but was an Atheist or an Evil Pagan and that of all those who followed him only a few if any were Christians.

The thing of it is is that whatever becomes the prevalent view in our society or whatever is taught or promulgated by Western Civilization is to be taken as the truth .
For instance if you visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum online there is very little about Anti-Semitism prior to the rise of the Nazis. The website also does not deal in any detail with the history of anti-semitism in the United States i.e. the Ku Klux Klan,Father Coughlin the popular radio preacher of the 1930s or with Henry Ford and his newspaper the Deerborn Press and how he helped to introduce the American Public with the vile Protocols of the Elders of Zion or Ford's personal connections with Hitler. Or what they suggest is that the Nazis form of anti-semitism is more virulent and hateful and is characterized as being a modern form of anti-semitism. As liberalism arose in the 19th century so did a more vicious form of anti-semitism. This assumption or theory is far from being conclusive.

In anti-liberal and anti-democratic societies such as Russia under the Tzar's tens of thousands of Jews were massacred in Pogroms which were instigated quite often by officials and the secret police acting on behalf of the Russian government. It was the Secret Police of Russia which created the notorious Fraud and Forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Russia of course claimed itself to be a Christian Nation. The Protocols blamed all of the problems of the time on the Jews. Marxism, Darwinism, liberalism , and those who were against the monarchy or who believed in and took seriously Thomas Pain's The Rights of Man were all being manipulated by the evil Jews. Those insisting on equal rights for women or who wanted to reform the labor laws or who defended the rights of Children were attempting to over-throw Christian morality .


The Wrath Of The Jews

By Liat Weingart, AlterNet. December 15, 2004.

The dominant narrative of the Holocaust arms Israel to the teeth, demonizes Palestinians and leaves Jews feeling abandoned, isolated and angry.

I'm in the living room of a family friend, a Jewish woman who emigrated from Poland. The subject changes from yoga to Israel-Palestine, and I tell her that I think America needs to change its foreign policy towards Israel. She says, "In what way, so that the Arabs will throw the Jews into the sea?" It takes four minutes of back and forth for the conversation to further degenerate. She finally says, "Look, what I have to say isn't pretty, but I'm not afraid. I'm going to say it anyways. The Palestinians are nothing but vermin. They make trouble in every country they live in. Even the other Arab countries don't want them."

I take a deep breath. I've heard this before, except with "Jews" instead of "Palestinians." Jews are vermin. They make trouble in every country they live in.

------
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum


ANTISEMITISM IN HISTORY: FROM THE CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST TO 1400
--------


-- also compare to propaganda film 300 - anti-Iranian anti-Arab, anti-Muslim

Compare this form of vicious racist critique of Islam to Anti-Semitism

Christians for centuries believed it was their duty to oppress or kill all heretics, witches, pagans and other non-Christians from Muslims to Jews to Native Americans to the people of India or South Africa to Asia

History of Reconquista against the Jihad in Spain

Definition of Jihad:
What is Jihad: The Arabic word Jihad is derived from the root word Jahada (struggle). Jihad has come to mean an offensive war to be waged by Muslims against all non-Muslims to convert them to Islam on the pain of death. Jihad is enjoined on all Muslims by the Quran.

...While all forms of religious fanaticism are negative, only Islam raises slaughter of all Kafirs (non-Muslims) to a holy creed, it teaches Muslims to gloat over the killing of non-Muslims and celebrate their death. Hence Islam is the most demented and dangerous form of religious fanaticism. And it is not Islamic fanaticism that is to be blamed for this, as Islam itself is fanaticism.

...The lecherous pedophile prophet of Islam Mohammed-ibn-abdallah had 16 wives. And the Muslim sultans over the ages have stuffed their harems with thousands of wives from the victims of the conquered populations. The sole purpose was to humiliate the defeated enemy, satisfy Muslim lust and procreate endless children who were brought up as Muslims to add to the number of blood-thirsty murderers.

With these baby creating factories not only did the Muslims breed like rats, but they also treated their wives and concubines (Muslim ladies) worse than cattle. Till today, the Muslims look upon a wife as only a devise given by some Allah to beget children, and more the merrier. This why Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world

The lecherous mass-murderer prophet of Islam, has said that no abortion or use of contraceptives is allowed to regulate the growth of population. So the Muslims keep multiplying like mosquitoes and one hundred Muslims turn into one thousand in just one decade. With such monstrous fertility rates, they can inundate any land with their blood-thirsty progeny in no time and then say that the land is a Muslim majority land.

This website dealing with the Crusades and the Reconquista of Spain is historical revisionism and twists facts to suit its agenda. It is also a form of apologetics for Christianity though it goes further. The writers characterize the Crusades and the Inquisition in terms of Christian Triumphalism and idealism and romanticism. Scholars in more recent times have tried to view the Crusades as they really were as opposed to how they have been portrayed in Christian propaganda.But over the past few years there has been an effort to abandon or undermine the attempts by historians to depict the Crusades, the Reconquista and the Inquisition and anti-Semitism in as factual a manner as possible stripped of the Church's propaganda.

Note how the writer speaks about Muslims as the Nazis and Neo-Nazis speak about the Jews. Muslims breed like rats, vermin, mosquitoes and their women are mere baby factories. This is a vile form of racism but goes unnoticed because it is aimed at Muslims and Arabs etc. Most Protestant Fundamentalists and Evangelicals and Roman Catholics are also against birth control or abortion and believe that most women belong at home looking after their children and providing a good home for their husband who is the Master of the household.
As for women in West their freedom and liberation did not come easily many had to suffer or even die in order to achieve what they so far have and the Religious Right would take all of those gains away in an instant if they could .

These Christians and Neoconservatives want to rewrite history in order to re-establish the old Christian Myths. By recreating these myths it is believed that the West itself can perceive itself more positively. This is necessary in order to unite the West in its ultimate struggle against the forces of darkness which at the moment are represented in a very real way by the Islamic Terrorists. But in this revisionist view Islam has always been the enemy of Christianity. Islam they claim at its very heart is an enemy of Western Civilization and Christianity.

In this new interpretation of History Jews and Christians have always been united against their common enemy Islam.
(Oceania has always been at war with Europa and Christians have always loved and protected the Jews - And Arabs have always been the enemies of science, reason,liberalism,and all things civilized- see Will Durant's Our Oriental Heritage etc. we owe so much in our civilization to the Persians and other Arab and Islamic countries from the sciences and mathematics to philosophy and the arts )

When the first Crusade began in 1097 the Crusaders in their zealousness first massacred tens of thousands of European Jews before heading off to the Holy Land. No longer was anti-Semitism a matter of rhetoric . The Church from its beginnings had preached against the Jews. Now this preaching was to be taken at face value and seriously . If the Jews were as evil as the Church claimed then why not kill as many Jews as possible.

When the Crusaders reached Constantinople and later Jerusalem they could not understand how Christians , Jews and Muslims could in good faith co-exist. Therefore the Crusaders concluded the Christians in these lands were not abiding by the dogmas and doctrines of the Church in Rome . The only way to deal with apostate and heretical Christians was to kill them . Again and again the Crusaders killed not only Muslims but also the Christians and Jews who had lived amongst the Muslims in relative peace for several centuries.Their view was that any true Christian would not have lived passively alongside the hated Muslims. As for the Jews they were the killers of Christ and were the minions of the Anti-Christ and Satan and therefore deserved to be killed. Though the Church claimed that not all Jews were to be killed since a remnant must be left to suffer for their crimes and to be witnesses to the triumph of Christianity.

The other main point of this and other such websites is to prove that Christianity has never committed any great wrongs . The Church is therefore pure from its beginnings to the present and has nothing to apologize for.

For instance in the book God Against the Gods Kirsch argues that in fact from the very beginning Christianity proved itself to be a religion of intolerance and oppression . Once the Christian Church was made the official and only Church of the Roman Empire the Christians began their bloody and brutal and unmerciful war against the Pagans and against all heretics.All Pagan Priests were murdered and all the altars to Pagan Gods were destroyed and Pagans were commanded to convert to Christianity or die . Many Pagans in fact chose martyrdom rather than renounce their beliefs. Of course Christian then as now do not recognize these Pagan Martyrs as true Martyrs. But who is to say that the Pagan martyrs are not the real martyrs and that their religion was the One True Religion.

Anyway the fact is that more Pagans were persecuted and killed by the Christians then Christians were persecuted by the Pagans . And in comparison only a few Christians were in fact killed by the Pagan Romans except for several instances such as Nero scape-goating the Christians for the Burning of Rome .The Pagans themselves preached and practiced at that time in the Roman Empire Religious Tolerance and believed everyone had the right to worship whatever God they wished to. When the Romans fought against the Jews of Judea it was over political questions more than religion this is why not everyone in Judea supported the rebellion by the Jewish Zealots against the Romans. This is not to suggest that the Romans were a pure and virtuous lot. They too took part in massacres and genocide against groups whom they believed to be a threat to the Roman Empire . Emperor Julius Caesar for instance needed a war to increase his reputation and to allow him through plundering to increase his personal wealth so he could increase his political power so he engaged in a trumped up propaganda effort to give him an excuse to attack the Celts in Northern Europe and Britain . During the campaign he massacred over one million Celts and took another million into slavery.
So Julius Cesar was a Straussian/ Neoconservative if not one of the first. Fighting a so-called Just War always improves public perception of a leader. And the people in general do love a Just-War since it fills them with pride and patriotic fervor .

and so it goes,
GORD.

Neocons Racism & Religious Bigotry Encouraging Islamophobia

NOTE: UPDATED 8:47 March 11, 2008

Since the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, members of the Christian Right in the United States and some sectors of the Western Media have continued this tradition of hostility, claiming that Muhammad was irredeemiably addicted to war. Some have gone so far as to claim that he was a terrorist and a pediophile.(pp. 17-18 MUHAMMAD , Karen Armstrong ))

We can no longer afford to indulge this type of bigotry,because it is a gift to extremists who can use such statements to "prove" that the Western world is indeed engaged on a new crusade against the Islamic world . Muhammad was not a man of violence . We must approach his life in a balanced way , in order to appreciate his considerable achievements. To cultivate an inaccurate prejudice damages the tolerance, liberality, and compassion that are supposed to characterize Western culture. (p.18 MUHAMMAD , K.A.)

As a paradigmatic personality, Muhammad has important lessons , not only for Muslims, but also for Western people. His life was a jihad...this word does not mean " holy war " but " struggle ". Muhammad literally sweated with the effort to bring peace to war-torn Arabia, and we need people who are prepared to do this today. His life was a tireless campaign against greed, injustice, and arrogance. He realized that Arabia was at a turning point and that the old way of thinking would no longer suffice, so he wore himself out in the creative effort to evolve an entirely new solution. We entered another era of history on September 11, and must strive with equal intensity to develop a different outlook. (p. 19 MUHAMMAD, K.A.)

Anyway part of course of what is disturbing about the Straussian Neocon's is their belief that because they are doing what's best for society or humankind or just for the powerful elite they belong to or wish to belong to is that they therefore see nothing wrong with lies and fabrications and using whatever methods they wish to defeat those who stand in the way of their agenda or their radical political & social program.

and so these Neocons or those influenced by them are willing to spread malicious rumors about opponents or use an individuals race or religious beliefs or what have you to defeat the individual or for that matter any group to which they are opposed i.e. liberals, Muslims , socialists, immigrants (legal or illegal ) , minorities, the poor, the homeless , gays .( see for instance Ann Coulter's Godless which is an attack on anyone who dares disagree with the Radical Religious Right's and Fascistic Neocon's Agendas )

So for instance when they talk about the War on Terror they do not just talk about various groups which commit acts of terror who then claim that they did so because their religion demands it of them . So the 9/11 terrorists who are Muslims are characterized by the Neocons and the Religious Right as representing not just a fringe group within the Islamic world but rather as typical of all Muslims everywhere and at all times. In the end what they want to spread is virulent form of racism against Islam . This form of racism is referred to as Islamophobia. While those who adhere to this form of racism or religious bigotry often use their code words such as " Islamofascists " or " Jihadists " or simply " Terrorists " by which they mean " Islamic " or " Arab " or " Palestinian Terrorists " which really in their vocabulary means all Muslims and all Arabs everywhere. That is all Muslims are therefore in their view potential " Terrorists ". So Muslims living in America have become quite aware of the animosity towards them by Christian Americans and by the media in general. But many keep silent hoping things will not deteriorate .

So for instance we get these articles and books of revisionist history which blame the whole of the Christian Crusades from their beginnings in 1097 and over the course of several centuries on the Islamic World. Some historians argue that the Crusades in Europe continued into the 17th century and others claim it continued right through to the First World War and General Allenby's entering of Damascus in 1919. There are those like myself who believe the Crusades never really ended and will not end until all of the Middle East and all Muslim nations have been conquered or destroyed by Western Christianity.

What is also disturbing is even someone like Chistopher Hitchens whom I admire otherwise in his book attacking religion GOD IS NOT GREAT:How Religion Poisons Everything makes a point of after attacking all religions as irrational takes special delight in criticizing Islam claiming Muhammad was a charlatan and a war monger and a sexual pervert. Much of what Hitchens claims about Muhammad is debatable. But one wonders why he reserves such venom for Muhammad and Islam . For one thing it is fashionable among certain intellectuals to attack Islam because as of 9/11 it is an easy and permissible target. It is odd for someone who claims to be an expert on Religion that he seems to know very little about the life of Muhammad . As an intellectual it is duty to learn more about his subject matter ,at least, on the most superficial level .Only reading books on Islam which were written by Neoconservative propagandists and toadies just doesn't wash. Now unfortunately I have to pay more attention to Hitchens and others to discover what other groups they have an unwarranted hate on for.

So the Neocons and the Radical Religious Right expound negative views about Islam as if their views were beyond question . And these views have permeated through Western Culture and so hatred of all Muslims and Islam itself has become an acceptable form of racism and bigotry.

As for interpretations of the Qu'ran there are still debates among Muslims about the meaning of certain passages in the same way that many Christians disagree about the meaning of various passages in the Bible from Genesis through to the Gospels and the Book of Revelation. This is apparent to anyone who has given any thought to the matter or who has investigated and researched the History of Christianity. My fear is that most people don't think about such matters and prefer to be spoon-fed what they are told they are supposed to think about religion or politics or anything else. The problem is that there are always those ideologues such as the Neocons or others who are quite willing to fulfill that role.

Anyway in the same way as Christians argue about the meaning of the Gospels so do Muslims argue about the meaning of the Qu'ran. In earlier times those who disagreed with official Church doctrine were banished or were tortured told to recant and then were hanged , drawn and quartered or burned at the stake. These were not a mere handful but counted in the tens of thousands throughout Europe besides the Crusades into various parts of Europe into the Balkans for instance etc. or massacres such as the killing of between 20,000 to 100,000 Hugenots on St. Bartholomews Day in France.

So in Islam as Karen Armstrong points out

" The process continues today. Some Muslim fundamentalists have based their militant ideology on the life of Muhammad; Muslim extremists believe that he would have condoned and admired thei atrocities. Other Muslims are appalled by these claims , and point to the extraordinary pluralism of the Qu'ran which condemns aggression and sees all rightly guided religions as deriving from the one God.

We have a long history of Islamophobia in Western Culture that dates back to the times of the Crusades. In the twelfth century,Christian monks in Europe insisted that Islam was a violent religion of the sword , and that Muhammad was a charlatan who imposed his religion on a reluctant world by force of arms; they called him a lecher and a sexual pervert. This distorted version of the Prophet's life became one of the received ideas of the West, and Western people have always found it difficult to see Muhammad in a more objective light. ( Muhammad: A Prophet For Our Time, p.17 pub.2006)

a little racism on the side:

In this article below " Worshippers of Death " by Dershowitz in his typical fashion characterizes not just a few Muslims who are part of extremist groups as being fanatical but rather he suggests all Muslims are part of some sort of " death cult ". What he and other Islamophobes believe contrary to historical fact is that Islam is a religion of violence and that its founder Muhammad was an unethical charlatan and sexual deviant and whatever else their fertile imaginations can come up with . Some of the views expressed by these religious bigots are rooted in the the beliefs and urban legends of the Superstitious and paranoid delusions of the Christians in the Dark Ages. This is also due to the fact that many Westerns still see the Crusades as a brilliant moment in out history rather than what it really was which is one of the lowest points in our history. But again contrary to historical facts as usual Dershowitz claims that Christians have in contrast always been peaceful loving and compassionate . So the killing of tens of thousands of Pagans by the Christians once they had become the official and only religion permitted in the Roman Empire from 400 A.D. (C.E.) onward. Well I guess after all they were Pagans and therefore according to to most Christians these human beings unwilling to become Christians deserved to die for denying Christ as the Messiah.

When not killing Pagans the 'holier-than-thou' Christians deemed all those Christians who didn't abide by the theology adopted by the official church as Heretics who were then murdered . But that we are told was a good thing because all heretics deserve to die.

And when the Europeans became restless in the eleventh century or so they decided to reclaim the Holy Land from the Muslims. It didn't matter that the Muslims had been living in these lands for a few hundred years. So the Church geared up its own propaganda machine of lies , myths, and urban legends claiming Muslims were killing pilgrims to the Holy Land and had desecrated Jerusalem etc. So began the mass murdering of Jews , Muslims and Christians who lived side by side in the Holy Land. So began a thousand years of crusading by Europeans and now Americans claiming the Holy Land as the rightful property of Western Christian Civilization.

And of course according to Dershowitz in his revisionist history Arabs and Muslims have always been anti-semitic but Christians never were. So he wants us to forget that the Christian Church going back to the Early Church Fathers preached anti-semitism . The Catholic Church up until the 1960s promulgated the view that the Jews were responsible for the death of Christ and so were made to suffer of course their suffering in diaspora would not have been so bad if Christians weren't persecuting them by way of restrictive laws, pogroms, massacres, denial of their civil and human rights and in the end leading to the Holocaust and the Final Solution. But of course according to Dershowitz and the Pope Hitler and all his followers and all those millions of Europeans who collaborated with Hitler and those who gleefully rounded up the Jews in their countries to send them as far away as possible they must have all been secretly Muslims and Arabs or whatever group Dershowitz wants to demonize.

He mentions the children in a way reminiscent of anti-semites and Nazis or like the KKK speaking about African Americans
or how Americans in the old west talked about Native Americans even their children had to be killed till their numbers were reduced till they were no longer seen as a threat.


an article posted on Information Clearing House
Pro Torture Zionist Professor Demonizing Islam and Arabic Culture? Worshippers of Death By Alan M Dershowitz

03/03/08 "Wall Street Journal" - -- Zahra Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber.

At the recent funeral for the assassinated Hezbollah terrorist Imad Moughnaya -- the mass murderer responsible for killing 241 marines in 1983 and more than 100 women, children and men in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 -- Ms. Maladan was quoted in the New York Times giving the following warning to her son: "if you're not going to follow the steps of the Islamic resistance martyrs, then I don't want you."

Zahra Maladan represents a dramatic shift in the way we must fight to protect our citizens against enemies who are sworn to kill them by killing themselves. The traditional paradigm was that mothers who love their children want them to live in peace, marry and produce grandchildren. Women in general, and mothers in particular, were seen as a counterweight to male belligerence. The picture of the mother weeping as her son is led off to battle -- even a just battle -- has been a constant and powerful image.


Civilian casualties also increase when terrorists operate from within civilian enclaves and hide behind human shields. This relatively new phenomenon undercuts the second basic premise of conventional warfare: Combatants can easily be distinguished from noncombatants. Has Zahra Maladan become a combatant by urging her son to blow himself up? Have the religious leaders who preach a culture of death lost their status as noncombatants? What about "civilians" who willingly allow themselves to be used as human shields? Or their homes as launching pads for terrorist rockets?

The traditional sharp distinction between soldiers in uniform and civilians in nonmilitary garb has given way to a continuum. At the more civilian end are babies and true noncombatants; at the more military end are the religious leaders who incite mass murder; in the middle are ordinary citizens who facilitate, finance or encourage terrorism. There are no hard and fast lines of demarcation, and mistakes are inevitable -- as the terrorists well understand.

We need new rules, strategies and tactics to deal effectively and fairly with these dangerous new realities. We cannot simply wait until the son of Zahra Maladan -- and the sons and daughters of hundreds of others like her -- decide to follow his mother's demand. We must stop them before they export their sick and dangerous culture of death to our shores.

‘Unwavering Commitment’ to Inequality

By Ramzy Baroud

07/03/08 "ICH" -- -- Death hovered over Gaza long before locally-made Palestinian rockets struck near the Israeli southern town of Sderot on February 27, killing Roni Yechiah and sparking an Israeli ‘retaliation’ that has already claimed over 120 Palestinian lives.

Yechiah’s death was actually the first of its kind in nine months, and understandably so. The crude Palestinian rockets were often criticised even by Palestinians as useless in the tit-for-tat style of war underway, while easily used by Israeli officials as a cacus belli, or at least as an excuse for keeping Gaza ‘contained’, besieged and on the brink of starvation.

For Israel the rockets are important as a pretext to maintain a state of siege against Hamas, and a low-intensity warfare that creates permanent distraction from the confiscation of Palestinian land and the expansion of illegal settlements – and also as justification for the slow moving ‘peace process’.

However, while pro-Israeli pundits in the US and elsewhere are prepared to defend Israel’s actions, many Israelis are no longer buying into their government’s pretexts.

According to a recent Tel Aviv University Poll, cited by the Israeli daily Haaretz on February 27, “sixty-four per cent of Israelis say the government must hold direct talks with the Hamas government in Gaza towards a cease-fire and the release of captive soldier Gilad Shalit."

and the attacks on Obama ,racism & islamophobia. It seems one of the worst accusations against someone these days is to call a person a Muslim. This label is as bad as "Communist" or "liberal" or New Dealer or " Fag " or " Jew ". So our racist society carries on moving from one convenient target to another . But what can we expect its not as if we long ago left our racist past behind us.Society as Leo Strauss would argue needs its outsider group or pariahs and a common enemy to keep society united and in Strauss 's view healthy. Dershowitz and others are merely fulfilling their roles as " Good Neocons " or " Good Christians ".

People For The American Way.

March 6, 2008
Obama Must Explain His Faith

For months, rumors have been swirling around that Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim. One would think that these sorts of rumors would be easily quashed by his seemingly straight-forward declarations that he is, in fact, a “devout Christian [who has] been a member of the same church for 20 years [and prays] to Jesus every night.”

For the most, these rumors have been dismissed by anyone willing to look at the evidence or take Obama’s words at face value. But for those with a religious/political agenda to advance, it turns out that the simple question of Obama’s faith is really, really complicated.

Case in point:



Missionary to Capitol Hill and Evangelical leader Rev. Rob Schenck (pronounced SHANK) takes on the thorny question of Barack Obama's religious identity in a new video blog posting called Faith and Action Live! which will post today, March 5, at 1:00 PM (EST) at www.faithandaction.org.

…

In his video blog, Rev. Schenck discusses Senator Obama's public profession of Christian faith, his Muslim background and the view of the Islamic world on what defines a Muslim.

Schenck reports that last year he “sent a research assistant to Chicago to investigate Obama's relationship to his church, the Trinity United Church of Christ, where until recently Obama's spiritual mentor, Dr. Jeremiah Wright, was pastor” and emerged with a report that found “Obama's Christianity woefully deficient.”

At the time, Schenck seemed willing to accept that Obama was a Christian, but now Schenck is growing concerned that Obama may in fact be a Muslim because, as he put it, the issue is really how the Muslim world defines being Muslim. As he sees it, Muslims inherit their religion from their parents, specifically their fathers. Thus, to be born of a Muslim father makes one a Muslim. By Schenck’s analysis, Obama has a Muslim father and a Muslim name and while he may now proclaim himself a Christian, the question remains whether he is really just an apostate, infidel, or unfaithful Muslim rather than a non-Muslim.

For his part, Schenck declared that he has no reason not to take Obama “at his word” regarding his Christianity … and then proceeded to question the legitimacy and depth of his faith, saying “The question becomes: How serious, how profound is the religious commitment that Barack Obama has made" considering that the United Church of Christ to which he belongs has strayed dramatically from “historical, Biblical Christianity … from historic, moral Christian instruction.” Schenck also says it is interesting that Obama claims to “pray to Jesus” rather than “pray to God in Jesus’ name” and takes issue with Obama’s claim that his views on topics like civil unions and abortion don’t make him any less of a Christian, saying that “he owes the public a further explanation of that and most certainly religious people.”

--
Obama is accused by some Zealous Christians of claiming to be a Christian while really being a Muslim in secret or by the mere fact of his parentage - as the Nazis believed anyone born to Jewish parents was still considered a Jew even if they or even their parents or grandparents had converted to from Judaism to Christianity.

Obama was brought up as a Muslim but converted to Christianity over twenty years ago. Yet the racist and religious bigots and Neocons are looking for as many ways as they can to discredit Obama.One wonders how much has Hillary Clinton been part of this smear campaign. But being a Muslim should not determine whether or not people should vote for Obama. They should vote for him or not based on his policies and the direction in which he wishes to take America. We can all agree that there are terrorists who call themselves Muslim and believe that their actions are justified by the Quran. But the majority of the the world's Muslims do not agree with these terrorists and how they interpret the Quran.It is comparable to claiming that the terrorist Tim McVeigh is representative of all Christians or that the Ku Klux Klan represented all Christians. Did the Christians who followed Adolph Hitler and the Nazis represent all Christians or only a minority of Christians.
But what would it matter if Obama was in fact a Muslim and said as much. His religious beliefs should not matter that much except where his beliefs and his role as President could be shown to come into conflict.

To determine whether or not one was Jewish the Jesuits up till recent times also used a formula of going back several generations - if any of your distant ancestors was Jewish so then you are considered by the Jesuits to be Jewish and so you could not become a Jesuit or hold office within the Vatican -This was so because as they reasoned the curse is still upon you that is to be the wretched of the earth to wander and to be oppressed to be ill-treated and spat upon by the " good Christians " for the crime committed by your ancestors of killing Jesus. In parts of Europe after Easter Sunday 's sermon Christians would go out and find someone who was Jewish and slap their face or they would spit upon them . This is one of those traditions which has left some of us skeptical about Christianity's teachings about brotherly love and and such. If Christianity was a religion of love why is its whole history soaked in blood. Blood of the infidels, blood of the heretics, blood of the indigenous peoples of Africa, Australia, North America , South America etc.

Of course the Christian apologists claim that even the slaves kidnapped and chained and taken to America are supposed to be grateful because they then were introduced to Christianity. This is rather a perverse bit of logic. The same they would claim for the slaughter of millions of Native Americans - they either converted and therefore were saved for all eternity or they refused to convert and therefore deserved to die.

So what is the crime for which now all Muslims are being charged and found guilty for 9/11 or for the Crusades which were really attempts by Europeans to plunder and conquer the Holy Land and destroy the Byzantine Empire. Their intention was to conquer and enrich themselves or to die on the battlefield and thereby go directly to Heaven . But while they ransacked the Holy Land they did their best to kill all the Muslims , apostate Christians and the Jews.

Selected Bibliography:

On the question of the slaughter of Roman Pagans by the Established Roman Christian Church see Jonathan Kirsch 's God Against the Gods:The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism ( 2004)

& Edward Gibbons' Rise and Fall of The Roman Empire

& Will Durrant's Our Oriental Heritage,The Story of Civilization, Volume 1,( 1935)

on Muhammad and Islam see Karen Armstrong's Muhammad a Prophet For Our Time , 2006

& her book Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today's World , ( 2001) and she has written a number of other excellent books on religion which are worthwhile reading see my bibliography to the right.

Bernard Lewis 's The crisis of Islam : holy war and unholy terror, (2003)

& Infidels : THE conflict between Christendom and Islam, 638‑2002 , by Andrew Wheatcroft (2003)

--Constantine’s Sword: The Church and The Jews- A History , . by James Carroll(Pub. 2001)

--- The Crucified Jew: Twenty Centuries of Anti- Semitism, by Dan Cohen-Sherbok (1992)

For revisionist history on the Crusades see
:History of Reconquista against the Jihad in Spain

Definition of Jihad:
What is Jihad: The Arabic word Jihad is derived from the root word Jahada (struggle). Jihad has come to mean an offensive war to be waged by Muslims against all non-Muslims to convert them to Islam on the pain of death. Jihad is enjoined on all Muslims by the Quran.

...While all forms of religious fanaticism are negative, only Islam raises slaughter of all Kafirs (non-Muslims) to a holy creed, it teaches Muslims to gloat over the killing of non-Muslims and celebrate their death. Hence Islam is the most demented and dangerous form of religious fanaticism. And it is not Islamic fanaticism that is to be blamed for this, as Islam itself is fanaticism

And so it goes,
GORD.

Neocons : Godless and Moral Relativists

Anyway in my las post I was again talking about Leo Strasuss and the Neocons so here's a little introduction to the Neoconservative ideology and its basic distrust in democracy or human rights.

The Power of Nightmares

This film explores the origins in the 1940s and 50s of Islamic Fundamentalism in the Middle East, and Neoconservatism in America, parallels between these movements, and their effect on the world today. From the introduction to Part 1:

"Both [the Islamists and Neoconservatives] were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world. And both had a very similar explanation for what caused that failure. These two groups have changed the world, but not in the way that either intended. Together, they created today's nightmare vision of a secret, organized evil that threatens the world. A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. And those with the darkest fears became the most powerful. " The Power of Nightmares, Baby It's Cold Outside.

The Power of Nightmares Intro.




The Power of Nightmares 1




also see :

How Neoconservatives Conquered Washington – and Launched a War
by Michael Lind/April 10, 2003

As a result of several bizarre and unforeseeable contingencies – such as the selection rather than election of George W. Bush, and Sept. 11 – the foreign policy of the world's only global power is being made by a small clique that is unrepresentative of either the U.S. population or the mainstream foreign policy establishment.

--
And so the Straussian Neoconsevative believes that the ends justify the means. They believe as did their prophet Leo Strauss that those in power have a right and a duty to tell Noble Lies in order to unite and thereby give society a purpose .Religion for instance can be used to give the populace a sense of meaning and purpose. The Neoconservative or Straussian may not believe in God or in morality but he or she will give lip-service to both in order to prevent society from falling into chaos. The Neoconservative believes that without these pious lies society will fall apart.

In order to further unite society the Neoconservative will focus on a devious, evil and all powerful enemy which is at the gates . The enemy as such will stop at nothing in its desire to destroy Western Civilization and Christianity.

The neoconservative argues that we must use whatever tactics and methods we can to fight this enemy. The struggle is such that those in authority must be willing and be permitted to go beyond the laws of the land or international laws or any restrictions placed on them by morality. Morality and law are to be ignored in this struggle for civilization's very survival.

Therefore ,if need be they will lie, kill, kidnap, and torture all in their claim to save their country .

It is as if the Neoconservatives had magical powers. They wave a magic wand and they chant in the name of national security or in the name of the war on terror or defend Western Civilization and thereby anything that they do; whatever orders they give are suddenly legal and virtuous . To the Neoconservatives the use of propaganda techniques is not seen as wrong, or evil but rather as necessary.

Lying becomes their habit their forte . the lies come easily to them since they believe the lies are noble they for the good of the government and therefore of the nation. They do not see themselves as the government of the day but see themselves and the nation as one. If the majority of Americans disagree with their policies then it is of little consequence. They know what is best for the nation as far as they are concerned . Much of what they do seems to benefit only a few . But they believe those few are the only really important ones and therefore are the nation.

Unfortunately to a great extent the Neoconservatives ideology and propaganda has already eroded society's belief in some form of morality. That is to say in defending our society a large percentage of the populace already believes that we should not be restricted in our responses to our enemies since it is a battle to the death. So now we live in age of winners and losers. We are told that it's not how you play the game but whether you win or lose that matters.This sort of notion permeates our society . It is like the perverted sense of self-righteousness people get when they watch the personal life of some public figure or Hollywood star or super-wealthy over-indulged rich girl or whatever implode . People also get a kick out of watching other people being humiliated on some reality show in which we all get to gloat over their failure. We are led to believe that only one or a few can or will succeed so we better get used to it . So you are either part of the successful ruling elite or a failure who's whining is inconsequential.
----------
So here some more examples of how Bush , Cheney and the Neoconservatives operate their propaganda machinenery:


Bush Poised to Veto Waterboarding Ban by Dan Eggen.

Washington Post Staff Writer
March 8, 2008;

President Bush today will veto legislation meant to ban the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics and will argue that the agency needs to use tougher methods than the U.S. military to wrest information from terrorism suspects, administration officials said.

Bush's decision to veto an intelligence authorization bill that contains the waterboarding provision is the subject of his weekly presidential radio address, to be broadcast today, the White House said.

"The bill would take away one of the most valuable tools on the war on terror: the CIA program to detain and question key terrorist leaders and operatives," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said yesterday.

Although long expected, Bush's formal move to veto the bill reignites the Washington debate over the proper limits of the U.S. interrogation policies and whether the CIA has engaged in torture by subjecting prisoners to severe tactics, including waterboarding, a type of simulated drowning.

--------

also see :

The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss by Shadia Drury ,( 2005 updated edition )

and: Leo Strauss: An Intellectual Biography by Daniel Tanguay ,2007
and so it goes,
GORD.

Ideals of The Bush/ Cheney Regime :Deception ,Guile, And Fraud : How To Frame A Democrat

Nicolas Boileau-Despraux, :
" Honor is like an island, rugged and without a beach; once we have left it, we can never return."

Samuel Adams :
" The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men."


Samuel Adams :
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anyway here is another example of more Injustice In the Bush/Cheney/ Rove Regime-

- here's a quote from Paul Craig Roberts' article Going to Jail for Being a Democrat: How Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman Got Roved


" The Siegelman case makes it clear exactly what Bush, Rove, and the disgraced Bush flunky Alberto Gonzales intended by firing the eight Republican US Attorneys. These eight refused to politicize their office by falsely prosecuting Democrats in order to achieve a Rovian political agenda. Apparently, there were only eight honest persons among the 1,200 Republican US Attorneys. Bush, Rove, and Gonzales had no problem with the other 1,192. Professors Donald Shields and John Cragan report that the Bush Justice Department has investigated seven times more Democratic than Republican officials."

Besides the injustice done to Siegleman himself what is more troublesome is the damage done to the American system of justice. Bush and Co. are of course are mostly responsible for this state of affairs. But at the same time we should not let those 1,192 lawyers off the hook who did not stand up to defend the ideals of justice and fair trials They too bare a great responsibility for what has gone wrong under the Bush Tyranny. As I have mentioned before in other countries when such things have taken place the lawyers were willing to stand up against such tyranny, to speak out , to demonstrate, to march in the streets , to dare the government to arrest them and to continue to do so after hundreds were imprisoned or beaten and torture or killed or disappeared - such so called backward nations like Burma , Pakistan and others have witnessed such events where individuals showed their courage and defended their own integrity and human dignity rather than be bought of by a few pieces of silver.

The question Roberts asks at the end of the article is " Is a justice system that functions in this way worthy of respect? Can we believe any convictions obtained by federal prosecutors?"

(Note: see CBS 60 minutes video report on the case below)


All the usual tricks were used in the case of former Democratic Governor of Alabama Siegleman to have him charged and then convicted on various trumped up charges. Individuals were ordered to find some dirt that could be used against him. There were false accusations made and never retracted. The media was pressured or used by Bush and Karl Rove's people to spin their own propaganda. They pressured prosecutor's and judges and even witnesses and jurors to do their bidding. They also when other methods failed committed voter fraud to steal the election from Siegelman.After being sentenced to seven years in prison and then having the whole case against him overturned Siegleman still remains in prison.The American system of justice under Bush, Cheney and Karl Rove etc. has become a farce. But this is what the Neoconservatives and their toadies have worked for since day one.

It used to be said that it is better to allow a hundred guilty men to go free than to keep one innocent man in prison . The Neoconservative view is that it is better to lock up a hundred innocent man rather than allow one guilty man go free. This is all part of the New Society in the New American Century - Heaven help us all !!!

In order to understand the beliefs , policies and actions of those in the Bush Regime it is helpful, if not essential, to understand how as Neoconsrvatives they are influenced by the political philosophy of Leo Strauss. Though the Neoconservatives publicly claim to believe in democracy and equality and make claims concerning rights of individuals as proclaimed in the United States Constitution and The Bill of Rights this is not supported by their ideology. If anything they seem to be anti-democratic and see ' human rights' as an unnecessary luxury. Leo Strauss adhered to Plato's view of humankind that people can be divided up into three distinct types . They form a natural hierarchy . These include the 'Wise ', the 'gentlemen' and the vulgar or masses . only the Wise and the gentlemen as a superior few an elite have the right to govern and their policies are by their very nature akin to being divinely inspired and therefore beyond question. This also means by implication that how they succeed to positions of power and maintain their hold on power is also beyond questioning by the so-called " vulgar " masses, the unwashed , the unenlightened and the ill-informed .

The so-called ' Wise ' are those who are the real power behind the throne as it were advising and manipulating those who are the more visible heads of state who Strauss refers to as the ' gentlemen '.

According to scholar Shadia Drury ,Leo Strauss believed that:

" the real solution is for the wise to rule behind the scene. They must draft laws; and they must pose as prophets so that people will believe that their laws are divinely inspired. But the wise must also be free to ignore the laws whenever they find it advantageous to do so. Classic natural right is characterized by its ' flexibility ' and its unwillingness to recognize any categorical imperatives In short, the real Platonic solution as understood by Strauss is the covert tyranny of the wise "

...The wise are the lovers of the harsh unadulterated truth. They are capable of looking into the abyss without fear and trembling ; for they recognize neither God nor moral imperatives."

"The covert rule of the philosophers is facilitated by the overwhelming credulity of the gentlemen. For all his nobility ,the gentleman is more gullible and unworldly And the more gullible and unperceptive he is, the easier it is for the wise to control and manipulate him . The philosopher must impart to him the harsh truths about the world and about his inferiors without destroying his ideals . The message is this . You are noble and honest ; and the world is bound to be a better place if noble men such as yourself reign supreme. But virtue is bound to be defeated if she is naive enough to play by the rules. If you want success, you have to rely on deception , guile and fraud...( as for the ignorant masses ) If you wish to move them to acts of courage and self-sacrifice, you must make them believe that their very existence is under threat. "

from: ( p. xv The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss by Shadia B. Drury 2005 ed.)

Among the Neoconservatives we can include Karl Rove , Paul Wolfowitz , Cheney , William Kristol, & President George W. Bush and others are the so-called ' gentlemen ' Our own Prime Minister Stephen Harper I imagine and Britain's Tony Blair are themselves among the group of these so-called 'gentlemen '. These days I would include Hillary Clinton in this group as she is always making excuses for the policies of the Bush Regime. Though she claims she would create a more universal health care program and more money for educations yet she defends torture and foreign wars while claiming America's superiority and exceptionalism which for her all divinely ordained . To put the case another way Hillary Clinton believes that America is beyond reproach among the world's nations. She also believes that America's enemies which are everywhere are planning to destroy America and Western Civilization. Her solution like that of Bush and Cheney and Senator John McCain is to use the military and even nuclear weapons or the threat of these rather than diplomacy. Hillary Clinton seems to have little interest in the United Nations except when it can be used to promote America's interest and agenda. Hillary also has little respect for International Law or the International Court. For instance Hillary Clinton has also rarely if ever mentioned what she would do about the over 100,000 private contractors/ mercenaries in Iraq .Is she as craven as Bush & co.

Even Hillary Clinton's ' tearing up ' in front of cameras seemed all in all calculated as she moved from the tough Margaret Thatcher 'Iron Lady ' style to the caring and compassionate woman who just by being a woman is more compassionate than any man could be. It is hard to believe but there are some women who still believe this sort of rot . Surely no one would consider Margaret Thatcher or Condoleeza Rice as the paragons of compassion. Condoleeza Rice was more concerned about shopping for the season's latest in Prada shoes than to fly down to Louisiana to check on the victims of Katrina. Margaret Thatcher in order to insure victory in the next election started her unnecessary and pointless war in the Falklands It also remind one of George Bush's campaign persona of the caring compassionate conservative. There is nothing caring or compassionate about his Neoconservative policies and his chuckling every time someone ask him about torture or about the victims of Katrina etc. This is odd since Hillary Clinton also seems to have some sort of nervous laugh is this to hide something or does it let us know she's just bluffing her way through or is it a signal that the subject is not one she cares about or thinks as being important.

For example the former Democratic Governor Siegelman case illustrates the unethical and illegal lengths to which Bush and Cheney and Karl Rove are willing to go to get rid of someone they don't like. Someone like Siegelman represents to them the enemy within who are seen as being as dangerous as the enemy without. According to the Bushites Democrats who are seen as 'too liberal ' along with all those labeled as 'liberals ' must be removed from positions of power and authority. They are willing to tolerate Democrats who know how to behave themselves when it comes to the important issues as defined by the Neoconservatives.The neoconservatives are not shy about using whatever tactics they need to push their agenda forward. As we see in the United States the mainstream media to a great extent has been co-opted by the Neoconservatives . To use a sexist phrase the media has been emasculated and neutralized. Sometimes it is difficult to know if the article on so-called Islamofascism is from the Washington Post , The New York Times or The New Republic or The Aryan Nation . I've actually had this happen several times; I just couldn't believe that a mainstream or liberal newspaper would approve of such a racist diatribe. . Even the word 'liberal' has now become a pejorative term and is used as an insult or a slur and can destroy the career of someone in politics or the media.

In the case against Siegelman the Bush Regime once again politicized the Attorney Generals Department . By using intimidation, a bit of blackmail, some coercion putting pressure on the Judge, on the prosecutors on witnesses , on the jurors and on the media they managed to scuttle the man's career and are keeping in prison for crimes for which he has now been absolved. So even having one sentencing over-turned doesn't count for much even if the person had been a state governor. If this is the case what can or have these people who are working for Bush and Cheney or Karl Rove or Alberto Gonzales been told that they are permitted to do in the case of average American citizens.

And at the end of the day all these thugs , sycophants, toadies , quizzlings from Bush and Cheney on down will get away with whatever they have done wrong. For when you can claim that you are committing crimes for the sake of the nation or the sake of national security and then plead executive privilege then no one is made accountable. But of course this is not completely true since sooner or later a few unimportant people will get thrown to the wolves to make it look as if the American system of justice and its government are still in working order.

This is why Hillary Clinton rarely talks about specific abuses of power by the Bush Regime since the electorate might start questioning whether former president Bill Clinton had abused his position that is besides committing the odd and unimportant indiscretion such as a little sex on the side. The other reason Hillary doesn't talk about this matter is that if she did then people would expect her to do something concrete about once she got into power. But this is why the Republicans and Neoconservatives don't really fear having Hillary as president . They know she knows how the game is played and so will ruffle as few feathers as possible.

CBS 60 Minutes - Bush/ Cheney/ Rove Frame Democrat Don Siegelman



And the following is the article mentioned above by Paul Craig Roberts on the injustices of the Siegleman case explaining as best he can the complexity of the case. But the conclusion is rather straightforward as Siegelman was and is innocent and that the whole thing was a witch-hunt on the part of Karl Rove and Company.

From AlterNet.org
Going to Jail for Being a Democrat: How Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman Got Roved

By Paul Craig Roberts, CounterPunch. March 3, 2008.

Don Siegelman, a popular Democratic governor of Alabama, a Republican state, was framed in a crooked trial, convicted on June 29, 2006, and sent to Federal prison by the corrupt and immoral Bush administration.

and :
52 former state attorney generals from across America, both Republicans and Democrats, have urged the US Congress to investigate the Bush administration's use of the US Department of Justice to rid themselves of a Democratic governor who "they could not beat fair and square," according to Grant Woods, former Republican Attorney General of Arizona and co-chair of the McCain for President leadership committee. Woods says that he has never seen a case with so "many red flags pointing to injustice."

It is a crime for prosecutors to withhold exculpatory evidence. The Washington Post reported on February 26 that Siegelman's attorneys have called for a special prosecutor after CBS quoted prosecution witness Bailey "as saying prosecutors met with him about 70 times. He said they had him regularly write out his testimony because they were frustrated with his recollection of events. The written notes, if they existed, could have damaged the credibility of Bailey's story, but no such notes were turned over to the defense, as would have been required by law."

The prosecutors also had help from some jurors. On a WOTM Special Report hosted by former US Attorney Raymond Johnson, Alabama lawyer Julian McPhillips produced emails from two jurors about influencing other jurors in order to achieve a conviction.

However, Federal District Judge, Mark Fuller, a George W. Bush appointee, ignored the tainted jury. Fuller's handling of the case suspiciously favored the prosecution. He bore a strong grudge against Siegelman. Fuller had been an Alabama district attorney before Bush made him a federal judge. Fuller's successor as district attorney was appointed by Siegelman and produced evidence that suggested that Fuller had connived with his former senior assistant in a "pension spiking" scheme, which some viewed as a fraud or attempted fraud against the state retirement system.

Horton reports that career prosecutors advised against the case, concluded it was a political vendetta and walked away from it. Canary's "girls" were "flailing about trying to find loyal troopers who would shut up and do what is expected of them," a category into which Scott Horton says Louis Franklin and his deputy Stephen Feaga fell. The jurors were presented with what Bailey's and Methvin's testimony indicates to be Bailey's perjury suborned by the US Attorney's office and misled about what the testimony actually meant.

...Unable to defeat Siegelman even with leaks from a phony investigation designed to smear him, the Republicans decided to steal the election. After all districts had reported the vote count, Siegelman thanked the voters for reelecting him and went to bed. During the night the Republicans, with no Democratic voting officials present, "recounted" the ballots in Baldwin County. Six thousand Siegelman votes that had been reported disappeared in the recount. The next morning Republican Bob Riley declared himself the winner.

The theft was so hastily arranged that the thieves forgot to change any of the other vote outcomes on the ballots. All other races had the same totals as originally reported, a statistical impossibility had there actually been a computer glitch as the election thieves claimed.

The Republican attorney general Pryor refused a recount.

For which : President Bush rewarded William Pryor for his service by making him a federal judge ...

... a prosecution witness against Siegelman also made charges against Pryor and US Senator Jeff Sessions (R, AL), but neither of the Republicans were investigated.

... When Leura Canary's false case was finally brought to court, Federal District Judge U.W. Clemon threw it out of court. Clemon cited an assistant US Attorney and an assistant state attorney general for contempt of court. All charges against Siegelman and his co-defendants were dropped on October 5, 2004.

Vindicated, Siegelman began his campaign for recovering the governorship in 2006. The word came from Washington to "take another look at the case," a phrase that could well be understood as "get Siegelman at all costs." Siegelman was indicted a second time on October 26, 2005, costing him the Democratic primary. The jury twice deadlocked and was twice sent back by Siegelman's adversary, Judge Fuller. With charges of jury-tampering in the air, Siegelman was acquitted of 25 counts and found guilty of "pay for play." Judge Fuller had Siegelman handcuffed and manacled and immediately whisked off to prison for a seven-year sentence. Normally a non-dangerous person is left at liberty while the case is being appealed.

Former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Terry Butts said that justice in America today is about political agendas, "not about convicting real criminals." Butts said that Siegelman's attorneys and allies expect reprisals from the US Attorney's office and Alabama's Republican establishment.

Siegelman has been in prison for over a year. His appeal cannot move forward, because Judge Fuller's court has not produced a transcript of the trial needed for appeal. In other words, Republicans are preventing Siegelman from being released on appeal by a higher court.

Karl Rove refused to testify about the case before Congress.

The Department of Justice refuses to release Siegelman trial documents to Congress. It won't even let Congress see what Leura Canary had to say to her bosses about the ethics challenges brought against her, which they swept under the carpet."

and so it goes,
GORD.

America's Brutal Prisons - Torture and Humiliation : The New American VALUES

Now, when a little wrong is committed people know that they should condemn it, but when such a great wrong as attacking a state is committed people do not know that they should condemn it. On the contrary, it is applauded, called righteous. Can this be said to be knowing the difference between the righteous and the unrighteous? Hence we know the gentlemen of the world are confused about the difference between righteousness and unrighteousness.

If the rulers sincerely desire the empire to be wealthy and dislike to have it poor, desire to have it orderly and dislike to have it chaotic, they should bring about universal love and mutual aid. This is the way of the sage-kings and the way to order for the world, and it should not be neglected.

The Ethical and Political Works of Motse [Mozi] (Mo-tzu) (c. 400s-300s BCE)

If every one in the world will love universally; states not attacking one another; houses not disturbing one another; thieves and robbers becoming extinct; emperor and ministers, fathers and sons, all being affectionate and filial -- if all this comes to pass the world will be orderly. Therefore, how can the wise man who has charge of governing the empire fail to restrain hate and encourage love? So, when there is universal love in the world it will be orderly, and when there is mutual hate in the world it will be disorderly.

MOZI from MOZI BOOK 4 Universal Love



Anyway here's more about the use of torture and inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees. But they are not detainees of Abu Ghriab or Guantanamo rather they are prisoners in US Federal and State prisons. This is all part of those wonderful Christian and democratic values America is fighting in Iraq to protect. Those in authority in America and the American people need to stop hiding their collective heads in the sand and take a look at the society that they have become.

America's Brutal Prison's/ Texas etc.
A UK CHANNEL 4 NEWS report on American prisons.
Added: February 24, 2008



For more on the state of American prisons here is a recent report from The Washington Post:
New High In US Prison Numbers/ By N.C. Aizenman/The Washington Post/ 29 February 2008

Growth attributed to more stringent sentencing laws.

More than one in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year and the federal government $5 billion more, according to a report released yesterday.

With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving far-more-populous China a distant second, according to a study by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.

The growth in prison population is largely because of tougher state and federal sentencing imposed since the mid-1980s. Minorities have been particularly affected: One in nine black men ages 20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women ages 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 for white women in the same age group.

The report compiled and analyzed data from several sources, including the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics and Bureau of Prisons and each state's department of corrections. It did not include individuals detained for noncriminal immigration violations.

Although studies generally find that imprisoning more offenders reduces crime, the effect may be less influential than changes in the unemployment rate, wages, the ratio of police officers to residents and the proportion of young people in the population, report co-author Adam Gelb said.

In addition, when it comes to preventing repeat offenses by nonviolent criminals - who make up about half of the incarcerated population - less-expensive punishments such as community supervision, electronic monitoring and mandatory drug counseling might prove as much or more effective than jail.

For instance, Florida, which has almost doubled its prison population over the past 15 years, has experienced a smaller drop in crime than New York, which, after a brief increase, has reduced its number of inmates to below the 1993 level.

"There is no question that putting violent and chronic offenders behind bars lowers the crime rate and provides punishment that is well deserved," said Gelb, who as director of the Center's Public Safety Performance Project advises states on developing alternatives to incarceration. "On the other hand, there are large numbers of people behind bars who could be supervised in the community safely and effectively at a much lower cost - while also paying taxes, paying restitution to their victims and paying child support."

Sociologist James Q. Wilson, who in the 1980s helped develop the "broken windows" theory that smaller crimes must be punished to deter more serious ones, agreed that sentences for some drug crimes were too long. However, Wilson disagreed that the rise in the U.S. prison population should be considered a cause for alarm: "The fact that we have a large prison population by itself is not a central problem because it has contributed to the extraordinary increase in public safety we have had in this country."

About 91 percent of incarcerated adults are under state or local jurisdiction. And the report also documents the tradeoffs state governments have faced as they devote larger shares of their budgets to house them. For instance, over the past two decades, state spending on corrections (adjusted for inflation) increased 127 percent; spending on higher education rose 21 percent.

Five states - Vermont, Michigan, Oregon, Connecticut and Delaware - now spend as much as or more on corrections as on higher education. Locally, Maryland is near the top, spending 74 cents on corrections for every dollar it spends on higher education. Virginia spends 60 cents on the dollar.

Despite reaching its latest milestone, the nation's incarcerated population has been growing more slowly since 2000 than it did during the 1990s, when harsher sentencing laws began to take effect. These included a 1986 federal law (since revised) mandating prison terms for crack cocaine offenses that were up to eight times as long as for those involving powder cocaine. In the 1990s, many states adopted "three-strikes-you're-out" laws and curtailed the powers of parole boards.

Many state systems also send offenders back to prison for technical violations of their parole or probation, such as failing a drug test or missing an appointment with a supervisory officer. A 2005 study of California's system, for example, found that more than two-thirds of parolees were being returned to prison within three years of release, 40 percent for technical infractions.

"We're just stuck in this carousel that people get off of, then get right back on again," said Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton, who as New York City police commissioner in the 1990s oversaw a significant reduction in crime.

Because of these policy shifts, the nationwide prison population swelled by about 80 percent from 1990 to 2000, increasing by as much as 86,000 a year. By contrast, from 2007 to 2008, that population increased by 25,000, a 2 percent rise.

The U.S. Supreme Court has recently issued decisions giving judges more leeway under mandatory sentencing laws, and a number of states - including Texas, which has the country's second-highest incarceration rate - are seeking to reduce their prison population by adopting alternative punishments.

Last year, Maryland officials began developing a new risk-assessment system to ensure that low-level offenders are not kept in jail longer than necessary, said Shannon Avery, executive director of a policy planning division of the state's Department of Public Safety.

"That's what you have to do when you don't have enormous amounts of tax dollars available for building prisons," she said.

Among the early innovators that states can look to is Virginia, which overhauled its system for sentencing nonviolent offenders in the mid-1990s. Although the state's incarceration rate remains relatively high, Virginia has managed to slow the growth of its prison population substantially and reduce the share of its budget spent on corrections while still reducing its crime rate.

State judges use a point system to weigh factors believed to predict a lawbreaker's likelihood of becoming a repeat offender or otherwise pose a threat to public safety. Those deemed low risk are given alternative sentences. As a result, the share of Virginia prison beds occupied by nonviolent convicts has dropped, from 40 percent in 1994 to 23 percent in 2007.

"The idea is to make a distinction between the people we're afraid of and the ones we're just ticked off at," said Rick Kern, director of the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission. "Not that you shouldn't punish them. But if it's going to cost $27,500 a year to keep them locked up, then maybe we should be smarter about how we do it."

also see this article from Human Rights Watch. What is of concern is that most Americans are unaware or indifferent to how prisoners are treated. Again the notion is that once someone is incarcerated they no longer have any human rights . Americans once again show their lust for revenge and their need for their pound of flesh.

Human Rights Watch :Prisoner Abuse: How Different are U.S. Prisons?

By Jamie Fellner, Esq.

The sadistic abuse and sexual humiliation by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison has shocked most Americans—but not those of us familiar with U.S. jails and prisons. In American prisons today, wanton staff brutality and degrading treatment of inmates occur across the country with distressing frequency.
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The Pentagon has said it wants to send more people to Iraq who have U.S. prison experience. But before it does, it should look closely at the human rights records of their prisons.

A federal judge in 1999 concluded that Texas prisons were pervaded by a “culture of sadistic and malicious violence.” In 1995, a federal judge found a stunning pattern of staff assaults, abusive use of electronic stun devices guns, beatings, and brutality at Pelican Bay Prison in California, and concluded the violence “appears to be open, acknowledged, tolerated and sometimes expressly approved” by high ranking corrections officials.

In recent years, U.S. prison inmates have been beaten with fists and batons, stomped on, kicked, shot, stunned with electronic devices, doused with chemical sprays, choked, and slammed face first onto concrete floors by the officers whose job it is to guard them. Inmates have ended up with broken jaws, smashed ribs, perforated eardrums, missing teeth, burn scars—not to mention psychological scars and emotional pain. Some have died.

and so it goes,
GORD.

VICTOR JARA-CHILEAN MARTYR /POET/MUSICIAN / POLITICAL FOLK ARTIST

So here's a little musical interlude to begin the week:

Victor Jara- el cigarrito



Anyway here is some music dedicated to those struggling against oppression in the Americas or in Burma or Iraq or the Middle East or America wherever the Fascists and Neocons are trying to undermine Democracy, Freedom and Justice .
Victor Jara became a martyr for the cause of freedom , justice and democracy during the America backed violent and brutal Coup of Pinochet to overthrow the legally elected President Allende of Chile. Thousands were murdered in the name of the American Empire to protect the rapacious anti-union American Corporations .Americans have never had much use for protecting the freedom and democratic forces in other countries. And so it goes ...

Here's an english song by Christy Moore about Victor Jara




Victor Jara Manifiesto



Artist: Victor Jara
Song: Manifiesto

Yo no canto por cantar
ni por tener buena voz
canto porque la guitarra
tiene sentido y razón
tiene corazón de tierra
y alas de palomita
es como el agua bendita
santiguas glorias y penas
aquí se encajó mi canto
como dijiera Violeta
guitarra trabajadora
con olor a primavera

Que no es guitarra de ricos
ni cosa que se parezca
mi canto es de los andiamos
para alcanzar las estrellas
que el canto tiene sentido
cuando palpita en las venas
del que morirá cantado
las verdades verdaderas
no las lisonjas fugazes
ni las famas extranjeras
sino el canto de una lonja
hasta el fondo de la tierra

Ahí donde llega todo
y donde todo comienza
canto que ha sido valiente
siempre será canción nueva
siempre será canción nueva
siempre será canción nueva

Joan Jara:
"I don't sing for love of singing
or to show off my voice
but for the statements
made by my honest guitar
for its heart is of earth
and like the dove it goes flying
tenderly as holy water
blessing the brave and the dying
so my song has found a purpose
as Violetta Parra would say
yes, my guitar is a worker
shining and smelling of spring
my guitar is not for killers
greedy for money and power
but for the people who labour
so that future may flower
for a song takes on a meaning
when its own heartbeat is strong
sung by a man who will die singing
truthfully singing his song

I don't sing for adulation
or so that strangers may weep
I sing for a far strip of country
narrow but endlessly deep
in the earth in which we begin
in the earth in which we end
brave songs will give birth
to a song which will always be new"

Lyrics and translation from ST Lyrics.com

Commandante Che Guevera-Victor Jara





Victor Jara Manifiesto
Brief Biography of Victor Jara

On September 16, 1973, Chilean political songwriter and activist Victor Jara was brutally murdered in Santiago's boxing stadium during the aftermath of the U.S.-backed September 10-11 coup d'etat which resulted in the death of the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, and the installation of a repressive military dictatorship. The US-influenced regime change frustrated the Chilean people's hope for a government that would bring their country socio-economic justice, replacing it instead with a despair that would continue for the next 17 years under the repressive leadership of Augusto Pinochet, who after the coup abolished civil liberties, dissolved congress, banned unions activities and workers' strikes, and reversed the agrarian and economic reforms of Allende's socialist government. More than twenty-two hundred people were 'disappeared' under Pinochet's authoritarian rule.

Victor Jara was born in the small town of Lonquen, Chile on September 23, 1932 to Manuel and Amanda Jara. As a child, Victor experienced first-hand what it was like to live a humble life. His father provided for his family with the wages he earned as a day laborer while his mother added to the family's income by working odd jobs. When Victor was still a young child his father, who had an alcohol problem and was an abusive husband, left home to work as a field laborer in the countryside. Conditions were rough for his mother who was left alone to raise Victor and his siblings. Notwithstanding, she managed to spend a great deal of time with her children, often playing the guitar and singing Chilean folk songs for them. Victor's mother died when he was only fifteen years old.

After spending a short time in a seminary and then in the military, Victor went on to study theater at the University of Chile, where he developed an interest in directing. After finishing school, he began his career as a director and was involved in numerous theater productions. It was during this time that Victor Jara experienced a renewed interest in traditional Chilean folk songs as well as national politics. Also during this time, he met Violeta Parra, another Nueva Cancion artist, who was the owner of a small café. In 1966, Victor Jara released his first LP, the self-titled "Victor Jara." That same year, he joined another Nueva Cancion group, Quilapayún, serving as the band's art director until 1969. In 1970, Victor ended his career as a director and turned his energy towards furthering the Chilean people's struggle for peace and justice through his songs, political activism, and support for leftist Chilean President Salvador Allende.

Allende, who belonged to the leftist coalition party, Unidad Popular, had been voted into office on a platform promising to take-over large foreign companies and monopolies, expropriate all landholdings over 80 hectares, and increase spending on social programs. His first year in office was a remarkable success - the working population saw their income increase by 50% while the real income of all Chileans rose an equally impressive 30%. But in spite of these early advances, by 1973, dissatisfaction with his presidency grew when economic conditions soured. While these difficulties were in part due to general market conditions and the side effects of his socially progressive policies, a major factor in the decline were the activities of his domestic and foreign critics. At home, the entrenched conservative elite controlled 95% of the radio stations, 90% of the newspapers, and all of the weekly magazines. The Catholic Church was adamantly opposed to his policies and the working class was divided largely as a result of the conservatives' stranglehold over public discourse. Overseas, hostile foreign interests had successfully influenced a significant reduction in both foreign investment and multilateral aid. Moreover, between 1970 and 1973, the United States Government spent $8 million pursuing a policy intentionally aimed at destabilizing the Chilean economy - a policy that had been authorized by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (who was just recently honored by President George Bush with an appointment as the chairman of the 'Independent' 9/11 Investigative Commission, which Mr. Kissinger declined)

and so it goes,
GORD.

HILLARY CLINTON DREAMS OF WORLD WAR 3 !!! OBAMA PREFERS DIPLOMACY OVER BOMBING EVERYBODY

HILLARY CLINTON DREAMS OF WORLD WAR III
THE POLITICS OF FEAR: NUKE THEM ALL !!!
BE AFRAID ! BE VERY AFRAID !!! THE WORLD HATES US !!!



------------------------------------------------------------------------

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne...

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income - to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Barack Obama : from 2002 Speech Against the War/ see rest of the speech below.


Anyway the speech made by Barack Obama against the Iraq War is far from the equivocating and ambivalent sentiments about the war that has been expressed by the quisling Hillary Clinton. Barack even names names ( Karl Rove, Richard Perle , Paul Wolfowitz )of the people who had insisted that the Bush Regime go to war with Iraq claiming that Saddam in some way or other was connected with the 9/11 attacks or with Islamic Terrorism. But this was not the case. Now Hillary Clinton and John McCain want to widen the war to take on Iran and Syria to begin with . Both of them play on the American peoples fears rather than appealing to their reason . What Bush , Cheney , John McCain , Hillary Clinton have been doing is to create a well -defined enemy as opposed to the amorphous ill-defined enemy of the Islamic Terrorists.

By invading and continuing to occupy a sovereign state they have to a great extent fallen into the terrorists trap proving to the Muslim world and to others around the world that the United States only pays lip-service to notions such as freedom, democracy, and human rights and self-determination which were supposedly ideals upon which America as a nation was founded.

Of course it has become more and more apparent that America's real ideals are self-interest, materialism, greed, revenge,Xenophobia, fear-mongering and war-mongering and Empire Building all things Hillary and McCain are in favor of. The Bush Regime has also shown contempt for the United Nations and for any International Agreements it may have agreed to in the past. The American attitude is that such agreements are fine until they are no longer convenient for America to adhere to.


Re: Hillary Clinton 3 am Ad/ Barack Obam's Response



So here's my take on this:Hillary will answer the phone with a pre-programmed knee-jerk response to bomb the bastards no matter what the circumstances are - in other words she would be more willing to use Nukes than would Barack Obama- diplomacy she and McCain believe is a sign of weakness . To put it another way diplomacy should be used as Bush Cheney and Condoleeza rice use it as a cover for what they actually intend to do. As for their friends the Bush , McCain , Hillary view is to do a lot of arm twisting and throwing out various forms of threats to so -called friends who do not want to necessarily back America " Right or Wrong ".

Even Neocon Tucker is critical of Hillary Clinton and seems to like Obama



And here's extremist pro-Bush Neocon Straussian Cult member William Kristol extolling the Politics of Fear- Kristol giving Hillary advice is this a sign that the Neocons and Republicans fear going on the campaign trail against Obama.




Obama's 2002 Speech Against the War, Delivered by Supporters

Supporters from across the country re-create Barack Obama's 2002 speech. You can read the full speech from 2002 and his plan to end the war at www.barackobama.com/judgment
Added: October 01, 2007

Barack Obama - October 2002 Speech

Against Going to War With Iraq

By Barack Obama
October 2, 2002

-- - -Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil. I don’t oppose all wars.

My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton’s army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain. I don’t oppose all wars.

After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again. I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism.

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income - to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. Now let me be clear - I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the President today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings. You want a fight, President Bush?

Let’s fight to make sure that the UN inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe. You want a fight, President Bush?

Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn’t simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil. Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.

The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not — we will not — travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain.

and so it goes,
GORD.