Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Muslims, Murder and Media Bias

By Robert Fantina | CounterPunch | February 13, 2015

With the tragic murder of three young Muslims at Chapel Hill University, apparently by an avowed atheist, it will be interesting to see the reactions from the media, politicians and the public. Let us consider some possibilities, based on recent history.

* A new hashtag, #wearechapelhill will flood the Twittersphere, and people around the world will ‘tweet’ their solidarity with the victims.

* Thousands of people will march at Chapel Hill, all carrying placards reading ‘We are Chapel Hill’.

* World leaders will gather at Chapel Hill, far away, of course, from any of the little people, and march together as a show of solidarity against non-religious-motivated terrorism. Israeli Prime Murderer Benjamin Netanyahu will not be invited, but will show up anyway, and will push his way to the front of the crowd.

* President Barack Obama will decry this as a terrorist act, saying that while not all atheists are violent, those with violent tendencies must be stopped.

* The media will proclaim that Chapel Hill is now the frontier in the war against atheist-inspired terror.

* Atheists around the world will be the targets of harassment and violence.

Now, perhaps we can return to reality for a moment, and give this more serious consideration.

CNN, in its initial report on the crime, said this: “Police haven’t said what may have compelled the accused, Craig Stephen Hicks, to allegedly carry out the attack Tuesday evening. He turned himself in to police later in the night. But given the victims’ religion and comments the alleged shooter apparently left on a Facebook page, many social media users wondered what role, if any, the victims’ faith played.”

Preliminary, unconfirmed reports indicate that the accused gunman knew the victims, and had some conflicts with them over a parking space. Well, that seems to be a far better reason to kill a person than if he or she made a cottage industry out of insulting one’s religion. It will be interesting to see what the media does with this information, should it be confirmed. Will murderers who have twisted parts of a religion to suit their own bizarre beliefs and killed journalists who insulted their religion be seen as worse than a man who kills three people because of a parking-space dispute?

With the flames of hostility towards Muslims constantly being fanned by the government and media, with prominent right wing extremists even calling for their deaths, can this crime be surprising? Following the bombing at the Boston Marathon in 2013, the following Twitter exchange, between FOX News contributor Erik Rush and an individual named Bill Schmalfeldt occurred:

Rush: “Everybody do the National Security Ankle Grab! Let’s bring more Saudis in without screening them.”

Schmalfeldt: “Sweet God are you ALREADY BLAMING MUSLIMS?”

Rush: “@bloodonthemike. Yes, they’re evil. Let’s kill them all.”

Another FOX News political analyst, if such a term can reasonably be applied to a FOX News employee, Andrea Tantaros had these pearls of wisdom to say in August of 2014: “If you study the history of Islam. Our ship captains were getting murdered. The French had to tip us off. I mean these were the days of Thomas Jefferson. They’ve been doing the same thing. This isn’t a surprise. You can’t solve it with a dialogue. You can’t solve it with a summit. You solve it with a bullet to the head. It’s the only thing these people understand. And all we’ve heard from this president is a case to heap praise on this religion, as if to appease them.”

Well, one assumes Ms. Tantaros is gratified that three Muslims from Chapel Hill each did, indeed, receive a bullet to the head. Three down, only 1.8 billion to go.

Prejudice against and corresponding fear of Muslims is nothing new. USA Today reported in 2013 that “Many widely believed Muslims were behind the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, until American militiaman Timothy McVeigh was convicted of the crime.” And following the shootings at Charlie Hebdo, violence against Muslims around the world spiked.

It is still, as is said, early days in the investigation and reporting of this crime. Perhaps it will be seen as just another U.S. campus shooting, so common now as to be hardly newsworthy. Perhaps the religion of the victims and the atheism of the alleged perpetrator will be ignored; after all, when a parking space is at stake, all other considerations pale.

So while the media is to able to paint all Muslims with the same brush as a few extremists in Paris, when Muslims are murder victims, it is merely coincidence. When a Muslim stands on one side of a gun, he and all Muslims are terrorists. When on the other side, they are merely individuals who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It will be interesting to see who is asked to apologize for this crime; perhaps there will be calls for all atheists to do so, although this is, of course, highly unlikely. Atheism is a respected concept in the west, and we all know that atheists, unlike Muslims, are individuals capable of independent thought. It will also be interesting to see how right wing journalists and so-called ministers respond; they are quick to condemn Islam with every invented opportunity, and since they are no fans of atheism, they will have to engage in some interesting verbal gymnastics to condemn atheism without somehow expressing sympathy for Muslims.

It may be some time, if ever, before the motivation for this savage crime is known. But if stories from the lives of the three victims, who by all accounts appear to have been compassionate, promising young people, can be publicized, perhaps prejudices against Muslims can be somewhat reduced, thus giving the deaths of these three young people some meaning.

Robert Fantina’s latest book is Empire, Racism and Genocide: a History of US Foreign Policy (Red Pill Press).

February 13, 2015 Posted by | Islamophobia, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Chapel Hill Shooting and the ‘New Atheist’ Neocons

By Brandon Martinez | Non-Aligned Media | February 11, 2015

A terrible crime has happened in North Carolina – three young Muslim university students were shot dead ‘execution-style’ in their Chapel Hill apartment on Tuesday.

Police have arrested and charged 46-year-old Craig Stephen Hicks with the brutal murders, a man known for posting anti-religion comments online and whose Facebook page is riddled with pictures of and quotes from his ‘New Atheist’ heroes Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher.

The cops are conveniently saying that the Muslim students were not targeted because of their faith, but rather a “parking dispute.”

How bizarre.

“It was execution style, a bullet in every head,” the father of the two deceased girls told the media, insisting that “this was not a dispute over a parking space, this was a hate crime.”

The suspected killer was an avowed ‘anti-theist’ who admired Richard Dawkins, the famed British atheist author and poster boy of the ‘New Atheist’ movement. But police are reticent to link the suspected shooter’s anti-religious attitudes to the odious events in Chapel Hill.

Muslims cannot be portrayed as victims of a vicious hate crime ­­– that would fall too far outside the boundaries of the neocon-induced popular discourse which always presents Muslims as violent, irrational aggressors. Muslims as victims of a lethal hate crime is not politically palatable at the present time when America and its subservient lackeys are executing a war of attrition against the Islamic world, which explains why the cops are avoiding that angle at all costs.

This tragic shooting brings the ‘New Atheist’ movement into focus. Other prominent ‘New Atheists’ include the aforementioned Bill Maher, Sam Harris and the deceased Christopher Hitchens. What all of these characters have in common is an unreserved and unabashed disdain for Islam in particular. Critics have noted that a very large portion of New Atheists’ criticisms of religion is aimed squarely at Islam, leading some to believe that they are political propagandists rather than true free thinkers.

The ‘New Atheist’ movement has little to do with encouraging skepticism and critical thought. It is in actuality an insidious offshoot of neoconservatism, hence the movement’s obsession with disparaging Islam and Muslims. Another notable characteristic of the New Atheists, which coincides nicely with their neocon antecedents, is their proclivity for philosemitism and pro-Israel evangelism – odd for people claiming to oppose ‘all religion.’

We dislike and disavow all religions, but we don’t have a problem with Judaism or the ‘Jewish State of Israel,’ the New Atheists whisper under their breath, hoping their followers don’t notice the brazen contradiction.

Bill Maher calls himself a “big supporter of Israel.” The Israeli war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu frequents his television talk show Real Time. Sam Harris, the author of a number of books on atheism and religion, has said that Jews are the “least of the least offenders” when it comes to acting on irrational religious beliefs. In a 2014 blog post titled “Why Don’t I Criticize Israel?” Harris tells us that the Palestinians are to blame for their own murderous mistreatment by the Zionist Jews. In the same article Harris concedes that Jewish religious texts, particularly the books of Leviticus, Exodus and Deuteronomy in the Old Testament, are “the most repellent, the most sickeningly unethical documents to be found in any religion. They’re worse than the Koran. They’re worse than any part of the New Testament.” While Harris acknowledges the obvious, he excuses it by saying that few Jews take those doctrines seriously or act upon them. He fails to provide any evidence for the assertion that most Jews disregard the Old Testament’s bloodthirsty edicts and he clearly hasn’t familiarized himself with the Babylonian Talmud, which also contains incitement to genocide against non-Jews. “Even the best of the Gentiles should be killed,” reads the Talmud. “The Jews are called human beings, but the non-Jews are not humans. They are beasts,” says Judaism’s ‘holiest book.’

Prominent rabbis have echoed these malignant Talmudic sentiments. Rabbi Shneur Zalman, the godfather of the extremist ‘Chabad’ sect, openly proclaimed that non-Jews have evil souls “with no redeeming qualities whatsoever… All Jews are innately good, all Gentiles are innately evil.” The difference between the souls of Jews and non-Jews is “greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle,” declared Rabbi Abraham Kook, a revered sage of the Jewish religion. At the funeral of Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler who gunned down 29 Palestinians in a Hebron mosque, a prominent Israeli rabbi said, “One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.” In 2010, Israel’s chief Sephardic rabbi, Ovadia Yosef, told his followers that, “Goyim [non-Jews] were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel.” In his 1939 book A Program for the Jews, a rabbi named Harry Waton suggests that Jews are “the highest and most cultured people on earth” who have a right to “subordinate to themselves the rest of mankind and to be the masters over the whole earth.”

The New Atheists don’t seem to lose any sleep over the fact that the Jewish religion holds Jews up as a superior ‘chosen people’ above all others who are destined to accrue all of the world’s wealth, as stipulated most vividly in the Old Testament book of Isaiah.

In an April 2009 C-SPAN interview, Christopher Hitchens, the ‘New Atheist’ former Trotskyite and Iraq war enthusiast, attributed his bellicose neoconservative views to the fact that after the 9/11 attacks some people were saying “the American Jews or the Israeli Jews blew up the World Trade Centre.” Hitchens apparently sensed a career opportunity in coming to the defence of Zionists who stand accused of involvement in 9/11. On another C-SPAN program Hitchens bemoaned a caller’s suggestion that Israel has too much influence in American politics. In addition to shielding Zionists from charges of false flag terrorism and undue political clout, the posh ideologue routinely evangelized in favour of wars in the Muslim world that ultimately served to benefit Israel. It is not hard to understand why.

It is also not particularly arduous to locate the cause of the pro-Zionist inclinations of many New Atheists – they harbour Jewish backgrounds. Maher, Harris and Hitchens all have Jewish roots. Dawkins is a classic example of a ‘Sabbath Goy,’ a well-paid lackey of the Zionists. The Brit showcased his aptitude at singing from the Zionist hymn sheet when he famously equated creationists with ‘Holocaust deniers,’ affirming his blind belief in and subservience to the West’s state-enforced religion.

While some prominent New Atheists occasionally criticize the more extreme elements within Judaism, their infrequent and feeble inferences in that direction reveal the hidden pro-Zionist agenda underpinning their incessant, narrow attacks on Islam. Apart from their ethnic biases, they all know that in order to procure riches by proselytizing anti-religionism to the masses one cannot afford to offend Organized Jewry in the process. “Jews totally run Hollywood,” according to the Jewish journalist Joel Stein. “I don’t care if Americans think we’re running the news media, Hollywood, Wall Street or the government. I just care that we get to keep running them,” Stein concluded in a gutsy 2008 column for the Los Angeles Times, affirming the “dominant” position of Jews in Tinsel Town and Wall Street. Stein forgot to mention the publishing industry which is likewise a Zionist dominated enterprise.

All of this clarifies the reality that the ‘New Atheists’ are lackluster intellectuals motivated purely by greed and opportunism. As ‘guardians of Zion,’ we can assuredly expect these dedicated ‘free thinkers’ to continue to deny the very real threat of Jewish extremism and continue to inflate the counterfeit menace posed by Islamic theocrats.

Beware the neocon ‘New Atheists.’

Copyright 2015 Brandon Martinez

February 12, 2015 Posted by | Islamophobia | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Arab American Students Killed by Racist Terrorist in North Carolina

Investigations Reveal Sinister Motive in Terror Attack

460_0___10000000_0_0_0_0_0_v2chapelhillvictims5

Shooting Victims: Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu Salha, and Razan Abu Salha / Abu Salha Family
By Alexandra Halaby | IMEMC & Agencies | February 11, 2015

Three Arab American students were shot to death Tuesday night inside their apartment near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The three are suspected victims of a terrorist attack.

On Tuesday evening Chapel Hill police say that three people were shot to death at a condominium complex located just east of the University of North Carolina campus. A man has been arrested in these gruesome slayings.

Chapel Hill police told local news outlets that Craig Stephen Hicks, aged 46, was arrested and has been charged with three counts of first degree murder. The suspect is being held at the Durham County Jail as of Wednesday morning.

Police responded to a report of gunshots in the evening of Tuesday, February 10th. Upon entering the home they found three people who were pronounced dead at the scene.

The dead have been identified as Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, of Chapel Hill; his wife, Yusor Mohammed Abu Salha, 21, of Chapel Hill; and Yusor’s sister, Razan Mohammad Abu Salha, aged 19, of Raleigh, North Carolina.

Sources close to the investigation tell IMEMC that all three had been shot in the head.

46-year-old, Craig Stephens Hicks, is in custody suspected of these killings.

Hicks described himself on Facebook updates as an atheist and regularly posted images and texts condemning many religions, Islam among them.

Shock has swept the small community of Chapel Hill, as many neighbors and friends have called the slain family some of the nicest people one could ever know.

An American football and basketball fan, Syrian-born American, Deah Barakat, was a dental student at the University of North Carolina and volunteered with a charity providing emergency dental care to children in Palestine.

Deah regularly updated his Twitter account, and wrote in January: “It’s so freaking sad to hear people saying we should ‘kill Jews’ or ‘kill Palestinians’. As if that’s going to solve anything.”

It has been learned from family members of Barakat that he and Palestinian student, Yusor Abu Salha, were married less than two months ago, in late December. Yusor was planning to enroll in dental school at the university shortly before her death.

Razan, a student also from Palestine and the third murder victim, who was Yusor’s sister and lived with the couple, ran a popular blog detailing her interests in photography and art.

Razan Abu Salha had started a degree at North Carolina State University last summer, where she studied Architectural and Environmental Design.

In a painful turn, last night police in Chapel Hill were forced to turn family members away from the crime scene causing confusion, hurt, and anger.

Many in the Arab American and American Muslim communities are identifying this murder as a hate crime. Based on the alleged murderer’s own social media content, it would appear that his disdain for non-whites and those that are religious could play some part into the motive for these killings.

Yusor and Razan Abu Salha come from a prominent Palestinian family and all of Palestine are mourning their tragic deaths today.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest civil advocacy group for Muslims, called on law enforcement officials Wednesday to address speculation about a motive for the killings.

“Based on the brutal nature of this crime, the past anti-religion statements of the alleged perpetrator, the religious attire of two of the victims and the rising anti-Muslim rhetoric in American society, we urge state and federal law enforcement authorities to quickly address speculation of a possible bias motive in this case,” CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said in a statement. “Our heartfelt condolences go to the families and loved ones of the victims and to the local community.”

Under the current U.S. Federal guidelines of what defines terror, this crime targeting Palestinian women wearing traditional modesty covering while one of the women’s husbands attempted to defend the women from the attack does seem very much like a terrorist attack, one source told IMEMC Wednesday, speaking under conditioning of anonymity.

February 11, 2015 Posted by | Islamophobia | | Leave a comment

Violent Intolerance – U.S. Style

By Robert Fantina | Aletho News | February 10, 2015

There is an old cliché that says if one is not concerned about current conditions in the world, one is not paying attention. While this writer generally attempts to avoid tired clichés, this one certainly seems applicable today.

There sometimes comes a time when white is seen as black, and black as white, and much of society accepts this unquestioningly. One thinks of the fabled emperor, parading down the street in clothes that only intelligent people could see, when he was, in fact, naked. Yet those around him, wanting to appear intelligent, fawned all over him, proclaiming the beauty of his non-existent clothes.

Today, the extreme right wing has millions of followers who have been convinced that all Muslims are terrorists, intent on destroying the United States and killing all Christians. This group also believes that the growing acceptance of marriage equality will bring down the wrath of an angry, intolerant God upon society. They cling to the twisted, inexplicable belief that government-provided health care is an unspeakable evil. These and other bizarre and dangerous beliefs are accepted without question when proclaimed by entertainment shows masquerading as news programs, or by sobbing televangelists demanding money to save America.

Can we possibly step back and take a critical look at just these few issues, to try, probably with little success, to understand why they cause so much anger and hostility?

  • Islam and terrorism. A nation with a long tradition of prejudice, subtle or blatant, against anyone who is not white, seems to find it difficult to break out of that outdated stereotype. People who have grown up seeing mainly whites in their neighborhoods, schools and churches, without exposure to anyone who might speak a different language or have differing religious traditions, can be fearful of the unknown. Certainly when one is taught from childhood that the ‘American Way’, whatever that is, is superior to everything else, anyone who strays from the narrow traditions of that concept must be inferior, and probably dangerous.And what is shown on the news? Stories of people who adhere to some twisted offshoot of Islam, and use that philosophy to commit crimes, are sensationalized. The killing of several people at the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris spawned international pseudo-solidarity with the victims, creating a brand new hashtag for all the world to enjoy. Yet on the same day that that tragedy occurred, at least 50 Muslims, including children as young as 18 months and adults as old as seventy, were slaughtered by so-called Christian militias in the Central African Republic, yet most news stations didn’t see any reason to report on that incident. After all, that happened in Africa, a mostly black nation, so one expects them to go around killing each other. No news there; just more dead black Muslims. Perhaps, just perhaps, if the people who are so fearful of anyone who wears a hijab or a kufeyah were to actually meet a Muslim, and spend a few hours with him or her, perhaps over dinner, they might begin to question what they hear on FOX news. If they were to see such people dropping their children off at school, doing yard work at their home, grocery shopping in the very same store that caters to the local white population, there might begin to be a glimmer of a belief that they are not so different after all, and that that hijab or kufeyah actually represents a religious belief or cultural tradition, and is not in fact hiding a bomb.
  • Marriage equality. The reactions to this among the right-wing are so extreme that volumes could be written attempting to counteract them. However, this writer will attempt to summarize these ideas with a few salient points. First, same-sex marriage has been legal in Canada, where this writer now resides, for years. Amazing as it may seem, life goes on. People go to work and school, have children, grow up, retire, travel, shop and do all the things that people in nations where same-sex marriage is not legal do. Canada has elections, elected officials meet to debate and pass laws, and the fact that marriage equality is the law of the land doesn’t impact any of those activities. No one is forced to marry anyone they don’t want to marry; no church is forced to perform a wedding ceremony if it violates their doctrines.Secondly, since most Christians focus on the New Testament, which records the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, where this angry, vengeful God comes from is a mystery to this writer. As a Christian familiar with both the Old and New Testaments, he is certainly aware of the angry God depicted in the Old Testament. Yet we are told that, with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, all things became new. And nowhere did Jesus Christ condemn any sinner with the exception of the hypocrites (rightwing ministers and newscasters, please take note). He embraced society’s outcasts, and invited everyone to come unto him. As mentioned, this writer is quite familiar with scripture, and he knows of no situation in which Jesus Christ threatened to send plagues if a nation approved same-sex marriage.
  • Health care. Will it bore the reader if this writer brings up this topic yet again? Have we not all grown tired of it? There does not seem to be any logical reason for the peculiar belief that health care is a bad thing. Nor is there any evidence to support the concept that there is only so much health care out there, and if more people get it, some of those who already have it will somehow have less.

But, one might say, isn’t this unnecessary and intrusive government involvement in the personal lives of individuals? Well, no, it isn’t. Since the death panels that Sarah Palin was so concerned about, and that some members of the right wing continue to warn of, don’t now and never did exist, and since personal health care decisions are still left up to the individual and his/her physician, there is nothing intrusive here. However, while we are on the topic of intrusive government involvement in the personal lives of individuals, how does regulating the use of birth control not qualify? Also, is not governing who one can and cannot marry somewhat intrusive?

In 1960, Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts, a Roman Catholic was the Democratic nominee for president. His religion was controversial, but he was elected. In 1984, New York Representative Geraldine Ferraro was the unsuccessful Democratic vice-presidential nominee, the first woman to run for that office for a major party. In 2006, Keith Ellison became the first Muslim elected to the House of Representatives. In 2008, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, an African-American won the presidential election, despite his race. In 2012, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, a Mormon, was the unsuccessful standard-bearer for the Republican Party.

For four of the five people mentioned above, there was much talk about how historic their candidacy was, how the nation had obviously evolved and thrown off early prejudices, since it was able to elect a Catholic and an African-American, and nominate a woman and a Mormon. Yet Mr. Ellison’s election was not heralded with the same lofty words, especially when he chose to take the oath of office with his hand on a copy of the Qur’an rather than the Bible. Conservative columnist Dennis Prager, who took great umbrage, said this: “America, not Keith Ellison, decides what book a Congressman takes his oath on.” No, Mr. Prager, that choice is left to the individual taking the oath of office. And Representative Virgil Goode (R-VA) had this dark warning to issue, saying that Mr. Ellison’s use of the Qur’an was a threat to “… the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America… [and] if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Qur’an.” So it seems that those prejudices weren’t jettisoned quite as successfully as one might like to think. Right wing comments following the 2012 presidential election also reflect this fact. FOX News demi-god Bill O’Reilly proclaimed in despair that “It’s not a traditional American anymore”. The racist ‘tweets’ that filled the Internet following the election also clearly demonstrate that racism is alive and well in the U.S.

So here we are in 2015. The anger, hostility and violence that were perpetrated against African Americans fifty years ago have now been directed towards Muslims. Right wing commentators decry the fact that Muslims have equal rights, proclaiming that the Constitution was meant for Christians only. A new movie, glorifying a serial killer whose victims were mostly Muslim, is a box-office smash. The U.S. government continues to support and finance apartheid Israel, allowing the further savage victimization of its mostly Muslim victims.

While we shake our heads in awe and disgust that U.S. citizens a generation ago were lynching African-Americans for sport, with crowds watching gleefully, future generations will question our current actions. Scenes of Israelis picnicking while watching the slaughter of Palestinians in 2014 will be hung beside photos of angry whites screaming at young black girls walking into newly-integrated schools in the U.S. south in the early 1960s, both indicating the racism and barbarism of an earlier, primitive age. Yet this is the age we are living in, and the one we have some control over. It is beyond time to act, to fight the ignorance that breeds violence, and the strident voices that fan the deadly flames of intolerance. This is not work for someone else to do; there is, unfortunately, no one else to do it.

February 10, 2015 Posted by | Islamophobia | , | Leave a comment

‘Patriotic’ Folly

By Brandon Martinez | Non-Aligned Media | February 6, 2015

Capitalizing on the recent Charlie Hebdo killings in France, many European nationalists have been exploiting the tragedy to bolster sentiment towards their cause.

While the cause of European nationalists is as legitimate as any other nationalist cause, and their misgivings about mass immigration merits reflection, the way in which many of them have gone about promoting their agenda by taking advantage of what appears to be a ‘let it happen’ if not a full blown false flag provocation in Paris last month warrants criticism.

Marine Le Pen, the incumbent leader of France’s ‘National Front’ political party, seized the opportunity to rally the French public behind her anti-Muslim platform. In the wake of the Paris shootings, Le Pen offered the militant language of neoconservatism in a New York Times column, stressing that France is being besieged by “Islamic fundamentalists” who need to be dealt with. Le Pen, like many rightist political leaders in Europe, has in recent years sought to ingratiate herself with the Jewish-Zionist community, hoping to curry favor with the power brokers of that persuasion who can help her into power.

What often goes unsaid in the rhetoric of European nationalists is the fundamental backwardness and duplicity of Western foreign policy. Like its counterparts in Britain and America, France has meted out plenty of violence upon other countries without just cause, but then cries foul when the chickens come home to roost. Canadian journalist Eric Margolis observed that France presently has troops conducting military operations in about a dozen countries, many of which have Muslim majorities, namely “Mali, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, East Africa, Abu Dhabi, Iraq, Afghanistan (from where French troops have been withdrawing, as well as covert operations in Syria, Lebanon and Somalia.” Not to mention France’s leading role in the 2011 war against Libya and its unreserved support of the terrorist state of Israel.

Violence is for the most part counter-productive and shouldn’t be the first option of those seeking retribution for mistreatment, but it can still be said that if France wants to continue to pursue imperial escapades throughout the Muslim world, then it should not be surprised when some of that violence reaches their shores as well. As the mathematician Isaac Newton discovered, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Why shouldn’t that principle apply to the West’s foreign policy?

Anti-Muslim British ‘patriots’ constantly invoke the 2013 murder of Lee Rigby, a British soldier, by two disgruntled British Muslim men in London. “Look how violent Muslims are,” lowbrow English Defence League (EDL) and British National Party (BNP) activists shout in the streets. While the slaying of Rigby was certainly heinous and deplorable, it was predictable blowback for London’s lunatic neoconservative foreign policy. One of Rigby’s killers, Michael Adebolajo, made it clear that he acted in revenge for what he sees as anti-Muslim aggression on the part of the British government, most notably the invasion of both Iraq and Afghanistan alongside the Americans. Rigby’s attackers did not go after civilians, but rather targeted a soldier who represents the British military which has greatly contributed to the deaths of several million Muslims in the Middle East since 2001. Religious fanaticism was a negligible factor in the Rigby killing, but if the sub-par intellects of the EDL and BNP are to be believed religious ideology and a desire to enforce ‘Sharia Law’ in Britain was the sole motivation.

Ditto with Charlie Hebdo and other alleged acts of ‘Muslim’ violence in the West. Even if we were to accept the questionable ‘official stories’ of these events, instead of addressing the underlying causes of Muslim discontent, plastic ‘patriots’ promulgate the neocon folly of ‘they hate us for our freedoms and way of life,’ a rancid myth which doesn’t compute considering the flagrant lack of freedom in much of the West where there are surveillance cameras and cops on every street corner as well as laws on the books that relegate certain political and historical opinions outside the parameters of ‘acceptable’ discourse.

For many unsophisticated ‘patriots’ in Britain, France, America and elsewhere, state-sponsored acts of violence by ‘their side’ is defensible, even admirable, whereas violence in the opposite direction that pales in comparison to the former, and which is often committed in reprisal for perceived wrongs, is contemptible.

They can’t have it both ways.

Copyright 2015 Brandon Martinez

February 7, 2015 Posted by | Islamophobia | , | Leave a comment

France abducts 5 children from Muslim couple falsely suspected of moving to Syria

February 5, 2015

A Muslim couple in France has had their five children abducted by the state over unproven allegations that they are radicals who planned to take the entire family to fight in Syria.
Nearly a dozen police and social service workers entered the couple’s house, on an allegedly false pretext, as the family was packing to move to Tunisia, where the father was born.
Twitter @ http://twitter.com/PressTV
LiveLeak @ http://www.liveleak.com/c/PressTV
Facebook @ http://www.facebook.com/PRESSTV

February 6, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Islamophobia, Video | , | Leave a comment

On Leaving the United States

A Long and Arduous Ordeal

By SAMI AL-ARIAN | CounterPunch | February 6, 2015

After 40 years, my time in the U.S. has come to an end. Like many immigrants of my generation, I came to the U.S. in 1975 to seek a higher education and greater opportunities. I also wanted to live in a free society where freedom of speech, association and religion are not only tolerated but guaranteed and protected under the law. That’s why I decided to stay and raise my family here, after earning my doctorate in 1986. Simply put, to me, freedom of speech and thought represented the cornerstone of a dignified life.

Today, freedom of expression has become a defining feature in the struggle to realize our humanity and liberty. The forces of intolerance, hegemony, and exclusionary politics tend to favor the stifling of free speech and the suppression of dissent. But nothing is more dangerous than when such suppression is perpetrated and sanctioned by government. As one early American once observed, “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” Because government has enormous power and authority over its people, such control must be checked, and people, especially those advocating unpopular opinions, must have absolute protections from governmental overreach and abuse of power.

A case in point of course is the issue of Palestinian self-determination. In the United States, as well as in many other western countries, those who support the Palestinian struggle for justice, and criticize Israel’s occupation and brutal policies, have often experienced an assault on their freedom of speech in academia, media, politics and society at large.

After the tragic events of September 11th, such actions by the government intensified, in the name of security. Far too many people have been targeted and punished because of their unpopular opinions or beliefs.

During their opening statement in my trial in June 2005, my lawyers showed the jury two poster-sized photographs of items that government agents took during searches of my home many years earlier. In one photo, there were several stacks of books taken from my home library. The other photo showed a small gun I owned at the time. The attorney looked the jury in the eyes and said: “This is what this case is about. When the government raided my client’s house, this is what they seized,” he said, pointing to the books, “and this is what they left,” he added, pointing to the gun in the other picture. “This case is not about terrorism but about my client’s right to freedom of speech,” he continued.

Indeed, much of the evidence the government presented to the jury during the six-month trial were speeches I delivered, lectures I presented, articles I wrote, magazines I edited, books I owned, conferences I convened, rallies I attended, interviews I gave, news I heard, and websites I never even accessed.

But the most disturbing part of the trial was not that the government offered my speeches, opinions, books, writings, and dreams into evidence, but that an intimidated judicial system allowed them to be admitted into evidence.

That’s why we applauded the jury’s verdict. Our jurors represented the best society had to offer. Despite all of the fear-mongering and scare tactics used by the authorities, the jury acted as free people, people of conscience, able to see through Big Brother’s tactics.  One hard lesson that must be learned from the trial is that political cases should have no place in a free and democratic society.

But despite the long and arduous ordeal and hardships suffered by my family, I leave with no bitterness or resentment in my heart whatsoever. In fact, I’m very grateful for the opportunities and experiences afforded to me and my family in this country, and for the friendships we’ve cultivated over the decades. These are lifelong connections that could never be affected by distance.

I would like to thank God for all the blessings in my life. My faith sustained me during my many months in solitary confinement and gave me comfort that justice would ultimately prevail.

Our deep thanks go to the friends and supporters across the U.S., from university professors to grassroots activists, individuals and organizations, who have stood alongside us in the struggle for justice.

My trial attorneys, Linda Moreno and the late Bill Moffitt, were the best advocates anyone could ask for, both inside and outside of the courtroom. Their spirit, intelligence, passion and principle were inspirational to so many.

I am also grateful to Jonathan Turley and his legal team, whose tireless efforts saw the case to its conclusion. Jonathan’s commitment to justice and brilliant legal representation resulted in the government finally dropping the case.

Our gratitude also goes to my immigration lawyers, Ira Kurzban and John Pratt, for the tremendous work they did in smoothing the way for this next phase of our lives.

Thanks also to my children for their patience, perseverance and support during the challenges of the last decade. I am so proud of them.

Finally, my wife Nahla h​as been a pillar of love, strength and resilience. She kept our family together during the most difficult times. There are no words to convey the extent of my gratitude.

We look forward to the journey ahead and take with us the countless happy memories we formed during our life in the United States.

Sami Amin Al-Arian is a Palestinian-American civil rights activist who was a computer engineering professor at University of South Florida. 

February 6, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Islamophobia, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

Eight-year-old summoned to French police station for “glorifying terrorism”, two hour interrogation

By Sylvain Mouillard – Libération – 28/1/2015

A school director has filed a complaint against the father of a fourth grader. He is also supposed to have inflicted “bullying” onto the schoolboy, according to the family lawyer.

January 8th, 2015, the day after the killing at Charlie Hebdo.  In a primary school in Nice, fourth grade pupils discuss the tragedy with their schoolteacher. “Are you Charlie?”, he asks them. Ahmed, aged 8, says no. Why not? “Because they caricatured the Prophet. I am with the terrorists.”  The teacher alerts the school headmaster, who decides to summon the boy, and then his parents, who reason with their offspring. But he does not stop there. On January 21st, the head of the school, which is located in the south of the city, lodged a complaint at the police station for “glorification of terrorism”, according to the lawyer for the family of the child, Mr Sefen Guez Guez.

Contacted Wednesday evening by Libération, the Minister of Education confirmed that a complaint had been filed against the father of the child, who is supposed to have made an “intrusion” into the school premises.  And that “an alert had been sent to child protection services.”

“From there, the judicial machine is launched,” Mr Guez Guez, the lawyer defending Ahmed, explains to Libération.

Summoned on Wednesday afternoon to the police station in Nice, as part of an unofficial hearing, the child remained there for almost two hours.

What next?

The lawyer related the events in a series of tweets, under the moniker “IbnSalah” .

[Tweet] S. Ibn Salah Question from OPJ [police officer in the French Criminal Investigation Department]: “What does the word terrorism mean to you ? – I don’t know.” Ahmed. 8-year-old.

[Tweet] S. Ibn Salah “Did you really say that the journalists deserved to die? – It’s not true, I never said that.”

“Placing a child of 8 years in an unofficial hearing, is telling of the current state of hysteria around this notion of glorifying terrorism. In these kind of cases, pedagogy is necessary”, considers Mr Guez Guez, furious. “We do not think of leaving it there, the headmaster’s attitude is unacceptable.”  He accuses him of inflicting “bullying” onto Ahmed by “putting him in the corner” and “depriving him of recreation.”

According to the lawyer, the child also recounted having endured this remark while he was playing in the sandbox: “Stop digging, you will not find a submachine gun to kill us all with.”  Ahmed, a diabetic, had even once been deprived of taking his insulin, according to the lawyer. Contacted by Libération, the prosecutor of Nice confirmed the existence of this unofficial hearing, but did not have any further comment to make.

“In the current context, the school principal decided to report what happened to the police”, Commissioner Marcel Authier explained to the AFP [French Press Agency], noting that it is was absolutely not  a judicial complaint. “The child and his father were summoned to try to understand how a boy of 8 years could be able to make such radical statements”, said the director for the department of public safety. “Obviously, the child does not understand what he said. We do not know where he found his declarations sentiment from”, he said. The primary school, closed, could not be reached on Wednesday evening.

~

Translated by Jenny Bright, Tlaxcala


“Glorifying terrorism”: French Minister of Education Najat Vallaud-Belkacem supports the measures taken by Nice Elementary school

Politicians react after the summoning of Ahmed, 8-years-old, to the police station for having affirmed his support for the perpetrators of the “Charlie Hebdo” attack.

LIBERATION with AFP – January 29, 2015

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem supports the administration of the Nice Elementary School where studies Ahmed, 8, summoned to the police station yesterday for “glorifying terrorism” . The staff “responded appropriately”, the Minister of Education said this Thursday. “I say it strongly, not only has this team done well to behave as such, but its monitoring work, educational as well as social, is a useful endeavour and I thank them for it”, the Minister has insisted from the Presidential Palace where she had met with teachers, educators and associations.

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem also affirmed that “when the father [of the schoolboy] came into the school facility, he had […] a brutal attitude, he even repeatedly entered without authorisation into the school building while threatening school staff.  So it is for this precise reason and for that reason only that the school director filed a complaint against the father and not against the child.”

A statement which the child’s lawyer, Me Sefen Guez Guez, again challenged on his Twitter account.

[Tweet] S. Ibn Salah @najatvb Nonsense. I signed a police report that testifies to the contrary. Go ahead slandering and defaming, but the truth will always emerge.  State lie.

On the right-wing scene as well, some were keen to show their full support for the school headmaster who made the complaint against the child, as for instance Christian Estrosi, UMP mayor of Nice, where the incident occurred, and Eric Ciotti (UMP).

[Tweet] Christian Estrosi Full support for the school headmaster who courageously denounced the facts. I await justice and firmness in front of parental responsibility.

[Tweet] Eric Ciotti I wonder about the collective hysteria merely because of the unofficial hearing of a child and of his parents after alarming declarations had been uttered.

[Tweet] Eric Ciotti Child heard at Nice, the police and teachers have perfectly reacted given the context, I fully support them.

More cautious, Chantal Jouanno (UDI) has wondered, in a message on Twitter, why “no one [has been] putting their trust in the principal and the police.”

[Tweet] Chantal Jouanno Child heard at Nice with his father. No one trusts the school headmaster and the police?

The communist deputy of the mayor of Paris, Ian Brossat, has not reacted on the substance of the case but to the declarations of some right-wing members.

[Tweet] Ian Brossat Those who rejoice at an 8-year-old being summoned by justice howl when their dear Sarkozy is in custody. #Go figure it out.

As for the National Islamophobia Observatory (OIC), he was indignant: “The National Observatory against Islamophobia is indignant about the treatment inflicted on Ahmed, a child of 8 years, summoned to a police station in Nice”, writes in a statement this authority attached to the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), the representative body of Islam in France. “The fight against radicalisation should not lead to mass hysteria but must be inscribed within the Republican legal framework”, said the Observatory, which calls on the Minister of Education, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, “to ensure that such excesses do not happen again and to give priority to dialogue in similar cases.”

On Twitter, where the hashtag #Ahmed8 was used nearly 4000 times Thursday morning, users have already taken up the case, with irony , dismay , annoyance , humour , or to express their agreement with the decision of the school headmaster.

~

Source: http://www.liberation.fr/societe/2015/01/29/enfant-convoque-au-commissariat-pour-apologie-du-terrorisme-la-droite-applaudit_1191086

Translated by Jenny Bright for Tlaxcala

February 1, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Islamophobia | , , , , , | Leave a comment

French Child Interrogated by Police for ‘Apology for Terrorism’

teleSUR | January 29, 2015

French police interrogated an eight year old child because he said that “[he was] not Charlie” in class, in the southern city of Nice on Wednesday.

The professor had begun a discussion with his students the day following the attack on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine that left 12 dead – 10 journalists and two police. The child justified his refusal to identify with Charlie as “they [the journalists] caricatured the prophet. I am with the terrorists.” The school director, alerted by the teacher, decided to file a complaint for the French crime of “apology of terrorism” -similar to inciting terrorism- last week, against his father, confirmed the education ministry.

One week later, the child was interrogated for two hours in the police station of Nice, informed his lawyer, Sefen Guez Guez.

To the question “What does the word terrorism mean to you?” the child replied, “I do not know,” the lawyer tweeted. “Did you say that the journalists deserved to die?” “Wrong, I have never said that,” he said.

Guez denounced the “current state of collective hysteria that surrounds this notion of apology of terrorism.”

“In this kind of case, pedagogy is what we need,” he asserted, saying he intended to sue the director, which he accused of having abusively punished the boy. The boy claimed he was deprived of playtime, had to stand in the corner, and was even told the following while playing in the sand pit, “Stop digging, you will not find any Tommy gun to shoot us all.” As a diabetic, he was also deprived of his insulin shots, claimed his lawyer.

During the two weeks that have followed the Charlie Hebdo attack, over 70 people have been put on trial for “apology of terrorism,” sometimes just for shouting “Allahu Akbar” to municipal police. In Corsica 30 people were found guilty, including people with mental issues.

Stand-up comedian Dieudonne will be heard in a Parisian court on February 4 for having posted on Facebook “I am Charlie Coulibaly,” a combining the slogan “I am Charlie” and the name of the attacker of a Kosher supermarket, a few days after the Charlie Hebdo tragedy.

January 29, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Islamophobia | , | Leave a comment

God Promised Antisemitism to the Zionists

My personal reflections on the Campaign Against Antisemitism survey, by Aaron Dover – January 25, 2015

In order to say what some might consider the un sayable I first need to deconstruct some mythical terms so let me just wade into some taboo territory as though I don’t even see the no-entry signs.

What is anti-Semitism?

“Antisemitism” is a word and a political construct. It has been loaded with meaning and importance like no other word in the English language. This is no exaggeration, it is not meant as hyperbole, if you want evidence of this you need look no further than the UK National Curriculum. I had a look at the core curriculum for secondary school History, and have quoted a section of it below.

– challenges for Britain, Europe and the wider world 1901 to the present day
In addition to studying the Holocaust, this could include:
Examples (non-statutory)
women’s suffrage
the First World War and the Peace Settlement
the inter-war years: the Great Depression and the rise of dictators
the Second World War and the wartime leadership of Winston Churchill
the creation of the welfare state
Indian independence and end of Empire
social, cultural and technological change in post-war British society
Britain’s place in the world since 1945

Now take a look closely at it. It does not say that the Holocaust is a mandatory subject, but it is implied, which is interesting in itself; the optional subjects follow and are clearly marked as such. The Holocaust is the only mandatory subject in this area. Not just any holocaust; there are so many to choose from by now; with new ones happening frequently; this is the Holocaust and is a proper noun with a capital.

The most important things being said here are those that are unsaid. What is unsaid? The Holocaust is the important holocaust i.e. the Jewish one. The Holocaust is exceptional. Not just important; nobody is here to argue with that; but exceptional. The other ideas suggested are important, and many, many ideas that would never appear on that list at all are also very important. The Holocaust is unique, and all students must know about it, and laws in place that criminalise Holocaust denial ensure not just that the topic is covered, but that it will be covered with the broadly accepted narrative. Every child educated in UK schools will be told about the Holocaust and they will be told the same things you were told.

Other holocausts might match it in terms of any particular respect; the brutality of the methods; the nature of the target population; the body count; the ideals of the perpetrators; their propaganda; their moral failings; and so on. But irrespective of any of those things, the proper noun Holocaust retains an exceptional and unique position in the prevailing historical narrative of all Western society.

As a result, a fully-educated Brit will certainly know that Hitler ran the Nazi party in Germany, unless he skipped class a great deal and his parents and friends never mentioned it, but may well be unaware that the British royal family are of German origin.

One of the implications of this is that every child in the UK will learn about Jew-hatred, termed anti-Semitism. No child will be left behind on this subject. They may not hear about other racial prejudices, other holocausts, they may not know how they got what remains of a welfare state around them, but they will know about anti-Semitism and Holocaust. This then becomes the common currency in discussions as the high water mark of evil throughout history, and this is the explanation for the existence of Godwin’s law (or Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies).

The reason people reach for Nazi analogies so frequently is a result of it being this global common currency of an ultimate evil narrative. People wouldn’t write articles in the global press saying “so-and-so is behaving like Ceaucescu” the way they say so-and-so is behaving like Hitler. They know they would lose the majority of their readers on that remark, because no matter how nasty Ceaucescu is, he is just not as famous. Obviously there are countless other examples. This is quite simply because everyone knows about Hitler, and – crucially – everybody knows that everybody knows about Hitler. It’s a given. The Nazis are the one-stop-shop for evilness yardsticks.

The Nazi Holocaust of the Jews (and other victims of that same holocaust) therefore enjoys the same educational status as, say, basic math. In the same way you expect people to be able to do a bit of arithmetic, you can be confident that they have covered these educational subjects. They will know that 6×7=42 and also that the Jews have always suffered persecution throughout their history and were brutally slaughtered at the hands of a maniacal German tyrant who we stopped. They will not necessarily have heard of Zionism, nor have any awareness of the Nakba in Palestine that followed the war. Nor, for that matter, will they necessarily have any knowledge of any holocaust in Armenia for example.

So it follows that you can go and do a survey of people’s views about attitude towards Jews, and that isn’t weird to anyone, because of the Holocaust. They will know the various tropes and stereotypes associated with antisemitism, if they were listening in class, the hook noses, the greed, the blood libels and so on. Therefore if you ask someone in a survey or focus group do you think people perceive Jews to be more interested in money than other people? What will happen is that they will recognise that this view is a view that was held by antisemites, such as the Nazis. You will also know that these tropes have persisted over the ages, because you were taught that. These are ideas about Jews that wax and wane across time and society but never vanish; that is what we are taught. So to enquire as to whether these tropes that you may have first heard about during Holocaust lessons are present today and to be asked if you agree with them is a fair question, if we accept the previous fact.

Hitler was a maniac. But he was not a maniac for his antisemitic views, because these were things he found already lying around him in German society to repurpose to his ends. The antisemitism was there, it is there now, it is here, it is all around us, always, like a field. The field is stronger and weaker in places, but nowhere in space and time is it absent.

A survey therefore is simply a way to measure the field strength at a specific location and time. The questions will reflect the set of tropes that we understand to comprise antisemitism. We don’t ask, in a survey; what do you think about Jews? Open questions are not suited to surveys. So instead we must create a survey based on a set of preconceptions of how to measure the antisemitism field. We ask people about their own feelings in respect of the attitudes we suspect they may hold. This method is fundamentally flawed if we seek an objective answer, because the questions are leading.

If I ask; do you think Jews are more interested in money than most people? I might also ask; do you think Jews are more interested in motorsports than most people? But I do not ask the latter. Of course, you can only ask a limited number of questions so you have to stay focused; and that means discarding anything which could be used as a control for any other questions you are asking. What if we asked that second question and 99% of people responded positively? Thinking “bloody Jews, all into bloody motorsports” would not be the kind of antisemitism we are probing for. It does not fit our preconceived opinion-fingerprint of an antisemite. That’s not to say a dedicated Hasbarist wouldn’t try to make capital of such a statement, but it isn’t one of the statements that sets off a buzzer.

What are these tropes? The stereotyped view of a Jew by an antisemite, we learn, is made up from a number of parts. The hook nose. The evil, the clasped hands, the leering grin, the rubbing of hands in glee at either massive financial gain or the death of Christian babies. That’s your antisemitic stereotype. There’s plenty more to it than that, it extends from this to encompass more. The blood libels, the Jew hungry for the blood of Christians; that’s a blood libel.

What do each of these tropes provide to the ever-eager antisemite hunters? A wealth of opportunity for allegations.

What is antisemitism? Antisemitism poses a very real and very present danger in the UK and Europe, and around the world. On that I will agree with CAAS and their ilk. That is by now one of the most politically powerful ilks in human history. That ilk has made it on the one hand compulsory to learn the Holocaust; but on the other hand has made it criminal to deny or belittle the Holocaust. It has achieved this dual success in many of the developed nations.

Antisemitism is a danger not to the purported victims of said antisemitism, but to the actual victims; those accused of it. Everyone lives in the antisemitism minefield. It is not necessary for me to spell out the consequences for anyone who falls foul of the various bodies of antisemite-hunters that span the globe. Socially, professionally, step on an antsemitism mine, and you’re toast. You could be anyone; you can be the President of the United States, you are in the same minefield. You can even be a Jew, in which case the antisemite-hunter reaches into the bag for a self-hater label instead, it’s not a great substitute but it’s all they’ve got to work with. I’m not going to go into the self-hating Jew mythology here, there are more worthwhile subjects to address.

How do we fight antisemitism? In terms of containing antisemitic sentiment, we gag people and ban things from being said, and we keep everyone in fear of stepping on an antisemitism mine by making examples of public figures on a frequent basis. If people keep seeing careers destroyed by a misplaced remark on Gaza or similar, others will not become too emboldened, even if they harbour such antisemitic thoughts, to vocalise them.

To fight antisemitism, do we also stop the large scale killing of Jews by a monstrous machine of fascist brutality? No. Why? Because we did that decades ago.

How do we fight Islamophobia? In terms of containing Islamophobic sentiment, not very well at all, that’s how. We could try to restrain the media from trying to link individual incidents to all Muslims, through their overt and covert propaganda. But we don’t.

To fight Islamophobia, do we stop the large scale killing of Muslims by a monstrous machine of fascist brutality? No. Why? Because we are the machine. The Western killing machine has run on a fuel of Islamophobic sentiment for over a century.

But the media are focused more on the rise of antisemitism, or a perception of a rise. A survey of this kind signals simply by the fact that it is done, let alone the results, that antisemitism is something we should fear. The minefield is something we should fear.

But the fear of antisemitism is unrelated to incidents of antisemitism. The fear-to-incident ratio has never been higher; the perception of antisemitism and fear of that antisemitism has been boosted as hard as possible by the scaremongers of CAAS. They don’t even care if their survey methodology is a joke. If they send out their survey so literally anyone can fill it in and question 1 is “are you Jewish” and question 2 is “are you British” and you fill it in from any web browser… and take the answers in good faith… allowing literally anyone to contribute to the results… well then you cannot be taking the methodology very seriously. But CAAS doesn’t need to, because they know with their network they can churn out the intended results infographic and get the whole world media singing their song. It’s a song of victimhood that’s had so many re-heatings and re-releases that even Bob Geldof would blush.

It’s a song about the poor Jews feeling scared. Not being actually murdered or gassed or blown to pieces but worrying that they might at some point. Whereas the Muslims victimhood song doesn’t even chart, when they are being massacred day in day out by our stormtroopers and hired guns.

The world is tired of the Jewish victimhood song, and tired of this victimhood being used as a weapon, as a means to bully people into observing Zionist taboos.
Antisemitism is a terrorist weapon. It is used to terrify the world into observing Zionist taboos through fear of losing social standing, being labeled a racist, being fired, exiled, diminished, hounded. This terror is being escalated by CAAS and all the other antisemite-hunters.

I’m Jewish; It takes Jewish privilege to be able to say this. It should not. But to actually question the dogma around antisemitism itself, is one of the ultimate taboos. It’s at the very foundations of the Zionist enterprise.

I don’t think there is any special exceptional Jew-hatred, a special antisemitism field existing all around us throughout time. People are really very pissed off with Israel though.

That’s why the public perception of antisemitism has to be cranked up now, because the gagging needs to be cranked up, because people are waking up, smelling the bullshit and calling out Israel for its actions. Now that is the kind of antisemitism emergency that calls for a total propaganda war. Expect more assaults on free speech, the mines in the minefield are going to be increasingly sensitive. Expect increased casualties of public figures. Expect people to become more reticent about saying stuff; expect media and social media to clamp down on any anti-Israel sentiment.

Because otherwise, you know at this rate, we European Jews will all be going to the gas soon. Yawn.

January 28, 2015 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Islamophobia, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

A Rogue’s Gallery in Paris

We Aren’t Charlie

By Robert Fantina | CounterPunch | January 16, 2015

Much has already been said about the hypocrisy of world leaders, all of whom oppose free speech and freedom of the press to one degree or another, jumping on the ‘I am Charlie’ bandwagon and marching in Paris. Reminiscent of the massive demonstrations in support of the U.S. after 9/11, this rally was just another ‘feel good’ moment, full of photo opportunities for politicians masquerading as statesmen to use in future campaigns.

Let’s look for a minute at just some members of the Rogues Gallery that were on display in Paris.

French President Francois Hollande: As president of the country that, to hear the media and world leaders describe it, is now the front line of some war at which civilization is at stake, Mr. Hollande, of course, had to be there. So what if France banned pro-Palestine demonstrations last summer, when Israel was slaughtering thousands of defenseless men, women and children? Who cares if France assisted in the training of Muslim radicals to fight in Syria? They should have known that their victims were only to be other Muslims, not good, respectable non-Muslims who make a career out of mocking Islam. France taught them how to kill, but perhaps didn’t specify that it was only to be in Syria. But what is any of that? When Muslims, trained and armed by France, shoot up a magazine office in Paris, killing several people, and then go to a market to do the same, somehow we all become Charlie.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu:  According to a recent report, Turkey has the distinction of currently imprisoning forty journalists, more than any other country in the world. But, what are facts, when a good photo op beckons?

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov: Siberian journalist and blogger Dmitry Shipilov was jailed in Russia for three months in 2014, for the crime of “insulting a government servant in the course of his work.” Free speech isn’t quite as free in some places as it might be.

Tunisian Prime Minister Medhi Jomaa:  Mr. Yasine Ayan is currently imprisoned for ‘defaming the army’. Mr Ayan, a civilian, was convicted by a military court and sentenced to three years imprisonment, due to Facebook posts he created in August and September of 2014.

Israeli Prime Murderer Benjamin Netanyahu: Perhaps this writer saved the best for last. The word ‘hypocrite’ simply isn’t strong enough here, but unfortunately, a better one doesn’t exist. Israel, under Mr. Netanyahu’s leadership, arrests and jails people for Facebook posts critical of Israel. During last summer’s genocidal bombing of the Gaza Strip, press vehicles were not ‘collateral damage’; they were successfully targeted, killing the journalists riding in them. Israel pays university students to write blogs and other articles favorable to Israel. It prevents United Nations personnel from visiting the Gaza Strip to see firsthand the damage wreaked there by Israel.

Absent from this Paris love fest was a top representative from the United States. Is it possible that U.S. President Barack Obama knew that for the U.S. to go to France to show support for free speech would simply be too ludicrous? Perhaps he thinks of recent police assaults on reporters in Ferguson, Missouri. Or possibly Edward Snowden, living in asylum in Russia after having revealed the extent to which the U.S. monitors the actions of its own citizens, citizens around the world, and world leaders, comes to mind. Or could he have thought of Chelsea Manning, serving a thirty-five-year sentence for releasing the largest set of government-classified documents ever released to the public, information that was more than a little embarrassing to the government? Or maybe his thoughts were not quite so specific. Knowing that profit-making corporations control most of the ‘mainstream’ press in the U.S., Mr. Obama must surely be aware that, while many people may have the right to speak freely, there is no opportunity for them to do so. The airwaves only broadcast what their corporate masters demand. For example, Occupy Wall Street demonstrators in the thousands were occurring for weeks before any major news stations deemed them worthy of reporting.

Well, what is any of that, if people have a brand new hashtag (#jesuisCharlie), and get to feel a sense of shared outrage? And, to add icing to the rather stale and poorly-made cake, those perpetrating the crime were Muslims, a foreign-looking, foreign-sounding people who wear such things a hijabs and kufiyahs. ‘Different’, of course, must be bad. Just because nearly 25% of the world’s population is Muslim is no reason for people to learn anything about them or, heaven forbid, accept them as fellow human beings. If the media says they are terrorists, hating western society for its freedoms, then it must be so. One wonders why the nearly constant bombing of mainly Muslim nations hasn’t proven to them yet the benefits of western society.

Following the 9/11 attacks, flag lapel pins, and flag decals on car windows were all the rage. They enabled people far removed from the reality of suffering to feel that they were ‘doing their part’ and ‘supporting the troops’. It was never necessary to look at any motivations that might have been behind those attacks; after all, when politicians like New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani were telling the public that ‘they hate us for our freedoms’, well, what else is there to say? Just because the U.S. supports the most repressive Middle Eastern regimes, bombs citizens of the nations it doesn’t support, kidnaps and tortures suspected ‘terrorists’ and generally causes untold suffering, is no reason, a true, flag-waving patriot would say, for them to hate us. No, it is our cherished freedoms (similar to those enjoyed by Canada, Australia, most of Europe, much of South America, etc.), that motivates their hatred.

And now we are all supposed to be Charlie, whatever that means. But a clever phrase, an attractive sign, and the mistaken belief that by waving it one is doing ‘something’, is sufficient for many people. Tomorrow we all go back to our own little worlds, while the same heads of state that piously marched in Paris throw bread and water into the cells of imprisoned journalists, control through wealthy corporations which events become public knowledge and which don’t, and continue to repress their own citizens and press. And then come together again, in a pseudo show of solidarity the next time some event occurs that the governments and media choose to exploit. That it will most likely be at the expense of Muslims is an additional tragedy.

Robert Fantina’s latest book is Empire, Racism and Genocide: a History of US Foreign Policy (Red Pill Press).

January 16, 2015 Posted by | Islamophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Islamic Human Rights Commission cuts ties with ‘Orwellian’ British government

RT | January 14, 2015

One of the UK’s biggest Islamic organizations has refused to participate in future government talks on anti-terror legislation, claiming their contributions to policy are being overlooked.

The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), which describes itself as an “independent, non-profit campaign, research and advocacy organization,” said the British government has been “uncompromising” in its efforts to “legislate away fundamental freedoms in order to tackle terrorism over the last 18 years.”

In a statement released late Tuesday, an IHRC spokesperson said: “Such input perversely allows the government to claim that it has carefully considered the views of civil society organizations, when in fact the final policies were always a foregone conclusion.”

The statement comes at a time when a number of British Islamic organizations feel marginalized by the government, and in some cases have been accused of being linked to terrorist activities overseas.

In November, the Claystone think tank said “more than a quarter” of British charities under investigation by the charity commission were working on Muslim-related issues, and criticized the government for “excessive” surveillance of Islamic charitable groups.

Analysis conducted by the think tank found that out of 76 charities currently being investigated, 20 were led by Muslims, including the civil liberties organization CAGE.

In December, the Demos think tank also said British charities working in conflict zones in the Middle East were being cut off from “millions” of pounds in funding due to counter-terrorism legislation, with some having their private bank accounts closed down completely due to “credit risk.”

Tom Keatingue, a director at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and author of the report, said that the lack of financial access meant that charities were unable to carry out some medical projects overseas, or deliver adequate resources to vulnerable refugees.

The IHRC also hit out at the government’s Counter Terrorism and Security Bill, which is currently being debated in parliament, which the organization called “Orwellian.”

“The bill will introduce a raft of new measures to deal with terrorism and extremism in the UK. It is IHRC’s view that the current proposals are far and away the most Orwellian to date; they will erode civil liberties and turn the UK into a police state.

“Alongside the raft of new laws, we have also seen the government introduce and broaden its PREVENT program, which is aimed at both gathering intelligence on the Muslim community using public sector workers such as teachers and doctors and trying to socially engineer a more compliant Muslim community by legally defining the range of beliefs/views its members are allowed to hold.”

IHRC spokesperson Arzu Merali claimed the government’s ramping up of anti-terror measures were marginalizing British Muslims, and risked turning the UK into a “police state.”

“The anti-terrorism laws have served only to create a sub-par legal regime without due process that targets Muslims. It also demonizes Muslims further, causing backlash and discrimination. Off the back of these processes, we find the UK turning into a police state with little protest. We must stop this slide into authoritarianism,” she said.

Last month, two well-known British Muslim charities, the Muslim Charities Forum and the Birmingham based Islamic Help lost their government grants after being accused by the Department for Communities and Local Government of being linked to terrorist groups.

Both organizations say they were “surprised, dismayed and angered” by DCLG’s decision, which they insisted were based on “unfounded allegations.”

January 14, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Islamophobia | , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »