Last month, I was forwarded an email containing an article entitled "A German View on Islam," which has apparently been circulating the internet for a few years now under various titles and attributed to various authors. Many sites credit a Dr. Emanuel Tanay ("a well-known and well-respected psychiatrist") with penning the piece, others state that a right-wing blogger from Canada named "Paul" wrote it.
Regardless of who is responsible for this ignorant and offensive screed, the article, which has been posted on numerous anti-Muslim websites, claims that "fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history."
Needless to say, I was surprised to receive this piece (seemingly four years after it was first written and disseminated) via the mailing list of a reputable peace and justice organization.
At the time I wrote a response, but never wound up forwarding it widely as it dovetailed with another piece I had written recently. I've finally gotten around to posting it here (with some minor updates). The issue is still just as relevant now as it was last month, especially with the added and accumulating racist vitriol we've seen lately regarding the Park51 Islamic Community Center in Lower Manhattan.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
The "Peaceful Majority" Report:
A Rejoinder to A German's View on Islam
Sunday, July 18, 2010
When the Truth is Inconvenient:
A Preview of 'Countdown To Zero'
[NOTE: I have not seen this film yet. It is a "preview," not a "review." I reserve the right and welcome the opportunity to retract or revise the advance conclusions I have made. Believe me, I want to be wrong about this stuff.
But I'm not holding my breath.]
*****
A new documentary, directed by Lucy Walker and produced by Lawrence Bender, entitled Countdown To Zero, is set for wide release on July 23, 2010. The film has been heavily publicized and promoted for many months now and is surely already a heavily-favored Oscar contender.
Though the stated goals of the film, exposing the horrifying danger of nuclear weapons and reducing the planet's nuclear stockpile to zero, are noble and necessary indeed, some ideas promoted within the film - which can be gleaned solely from the film's trailer and recent interviews with film contributor Valerie Plame and producer Lawrence Bender - appear to ominously echo the same sensational claims made about Iraq's non-existent WMD, this time about the United States' favorite scapegoat, Iran.
Countdown To Zero acknowledges that there are currently an estimated 23,000 nuclear weapons in the world, spread among nine nations. Though I have not yet seen this film, I am confident that it omits some vital information when mentioning these nuclear-armed countries and their stockpiles, namely that the list consists of all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (The United States, Russia, France, China, the United Kingdom), the only three states on earth to refuse to become signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (Israel, Pakistan, India), and the only country to have ever withdrawn its membership from the Treaty (North Korea).
Additionally, the film states that Israel only has about 80 nuclear bombs, in stark contrast with many estimates that put its nuclear arsenal somewhere between 200 and 400 warheads.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
'Hope' Floats:
Hey Hollywood, Time to Put Your Money Where Your Morality Is
A coalition of nearly twenty U.S.-based human rights and peace groups has joined the global justice community and numerous foreign governments in vowing to send more humanitarian aid ships to break the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza this coming Fall. The coalition, united under the mantle US To Gaza, includes activist organizations such as CodePink, Jews Say No, Veterans For Peace, Voices for Creative Non-Violence, and Jewish Voice For Peace.
In the wake of the deadly Israeli raid on an international flotilla carrying over 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid and hundreds of civilian passengers, during which nine activists were murdered (if not outright executed) by Israeli commandos in international waters, the global call to end the US-backed Israeli siege has grown even more forceful.
Later this year, boats from Europe, Canada, South Africa, India, and the Middle East are expected to set sail for Gaza once again. US To Gaza, which states on its website that "America pays for the blockade with our tax dollars; Americans must join together to end this collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians," aims to add a vital American element to this new Freedom Flotilla.
The U.S. boat, which will be named The Audacity of Hope (irony intended), is expected to carry an American peace delegation of forty to sixty passengers and will join its international flotilla partners en route. But purchasing a suitable ship, securing a sailing crew, obtaining the needed licenses and registration, gathering tons of humanitarian aid, and sailing for Gaza is a costly endeavor. It is estimated that at least $370,000 needs to be raised from private donors in the next month for the U.S. ship to become, not merely hopeful audacity, but a necessary reality.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
World Cup Domination & Entertaining the Empire:
One Aim Changes Everything
"Our situation is like a football match. The superpower countries are the players, and we are just the ball to be kicked around."
- A young Pakistani civilian,
North Waziristan
The Great Game is indeed alive and kicking. This summer's World Cup tournament is providing yet another way for the United States to project its power across the globe, though not as a result of the American national team's action on the pitch.
Rather, this year, the subjugation will be televised.
While the presence of U.S. Marine Corps recruiting advertisements at each and every commercial break is perhaps mundane at this point, far more surprising is the frequent, scripted announcement by various British and Scottish play-by-play commentators on ESPN that "we'd like to welcome our men and women in uniform, serving in over 175 countries and territories, watching today's 2010 FIFA World Cup match on AFN, the American Forces Network." Other various comments have also been made about how proud the ESPN color men are of the American troops, what a fine job they are doing, and that the commentators are "glad to have them with us" and "sincerely hope [the soldiers] are enjoying the broadcast."
Beyond the surreal fact that announcers from the UK, like Adrian Healey, Martin Tyler, and Ian Darke, are eagerly praising American soldiers and sailors during the broadcast as their own ("our brave men and women..."), how can the rest be said with a straight face or without the most shameful sense of hypocrisy? That there are US troops stationed in over 175 countries around the world is a stunning fact in itself - although well-known by now if you've been paying attention at all for the past decade. At this point, there's probably an 'App' for that.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
The Ridiculest:
Bill Maher's Cultural Supremacy and Religious Hierarchy
Bill Maher makes no secret of his contempt for religion. Via his comedy routines, his political commentary, his film Religulous, and his duties as host of Politically Incorrect and now HBO's Real Time, Maher has long warned of the dangers and exploitation of organized religion and how incompatible dogma and doctrine are with the scientific enlightenment of modern society.
Inadvertently and less eloquently paraphrasing Voltaire, who once wrote that "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities" and that religious fanatics "are sick men in delirium who want to chastise their doctors," Maher has said that the belief in religion, which he calls "a neurological disorder," in our society "stops people from thinking" and "justifies crazies." In a 2008 interview with Larry King, Maher stated that religion is "the ultimate hustle."
Maher's critique (or outright bashing) of religious doctrine, dogma, and zealotry is admirable - or would be, if only he weren't such an arrogant hypocrite. While Maher himself claims to be "an equal opportunity offender" who thinks that "all religion is stupid and dangerous," he clearly believes that some faiths are more equal than others. Even though his condemnation of Christianity, notably Catholicism, has won him the animus of bible-thumping bigots like Catholic League head William Donahue and he has excoriated the intolerance of Pat Robertson and reveled in the death of Jerry Falwell, Maher has consistently saved his most virulent attacks for Islam and its followers.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
'Néjàd Vu, All Over Again:
The Media, 'Pretext,' Context, & 9/11
Despite a nearly endless barrage of reporting on Iran's nuclear energy program, the US government's push for a new round of sanctions, and on-going efforts to foment regime change in the Islamic Republic, all had been relatively quiet on the Ahmadinejad front in the Western press for some time.
Until now.
The mainstream media's favorite scapegoat, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, resurfaced on Saturday amidst reports that he called the attacks of September 11, 2001 "a big lie." According to the immediate and rabid response of virtually every Western news network around, this was simply the latest insane claim of the same raving madman who has previously threatened to wipe a foreign state off the map and denied the Holocaust.
Yet, as with those other mistranslated or misunderstood statements, this new claim hardly stands up to even the most cursory scrutiny, as it has been reported with little accompanying context and comparison. According to a translation by Reuters, Ahmadinejad, addressing the staff of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry, stated that, "The September 11 incident was a big fabrication as a pretext for the campaign against terrorism and a prelude for staging an invasion against Afghanistan." PressTV translated the President as saying that the circumstances of 9/11 were a "big lie intended to serve as a pretext for fighting terrorism and setting the grounds for sending troops to Afghanistan."
Most of the press, including CBS, Huffington Post, and Fox, ran with an Associated Press report by Ali Akbar Dareini entitled, "Iran's Ahmadinejad: Sept. 11 attacks a 'big lie'" while CNN and Ha'aretz reprinted the AP with some slight variations like using the headline "Ahmadinejad Calls 9/11 'A Big Fabrication'."
Robert Mackey, writing for The New York Times editorialized that Ahmadinejad told Iranian intelligence officials that the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City was "staged."
By reporting that he called 9/11 a "lie" or "fabrication," the press has completely subverted the meaning of Ahmadinejad's actual statement. Headlines and ledes like the ones printed by the mainstream media give the intentionally misleading interpretation that Ahmadinejad claimed that 9/11 didn't actually happen. But the full quote obviously reveals something quite different. The events of 9/11 - that hijacked airplanes were flown into buildings, killing tens of hundreds of people - is not questioned or denied by Ahmadinejad in these statements. The attacks, in and of themselves, are not debated or disputed. What Ahmadinejad says is that the event itself was the result of, as PressTV reports, a premeditated "scenario and a sophisticated intelligence measure," that was subsequently used as an excuse to justify the so-called "War on Terror" and invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Monday, February 15, 2010
On the Recent Executions in Iran
Recently, a friend asked the following, completely valid, question:
"What do you have to say about the reports of these protesters being executed?"
My short answer is this:
I don't approve of any form of capital punishment and wish that nobody were condemned and put to death, anywhere.
My longer, more pertinent answer is this:
The two young men who were executed at the end of January, Mohammad Reza Ali-Zamani and Arash Rahmanipour, had nothing to do with the post-election protests. Even though almost EVERY single news outlet and human rights group has claimed that the men were arrested in the aftermath of the June 12th reelection of President Ahmadinejad, it's not true. Amazingly enough, in the English speaking press, the truth had to come from the US gov't-run Voice of America (of all places!) which, on January 30th, reported:
"Both [opposition] leaders [Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi] noted that the executed men 'were arrested months before the June 12 election and their cases had nothing to do with post-election events.'"That's coming directly from the leaders of the anti-Ahmadinejad movement! Apparently, the two condemned and executed men were found guilty of numerous things - a verdict I disagree with because I don't think the accusations warrant a death penalty, or that any charges do - including moharebeh, which means "taking up arms against Iran's Islamic system," inciting violence and insurrection, and being members of an organization called Anjoman-e Padeshahi-e Iran (also known as Soldiers of the Kingdom Assembly of Iran, Iran Monarchy Committee, Iran Royal Association, or Tondar), which is an anti-government terrorist group based mainly in Los Angeles that advocates for the forceful overthrow of the Islamic Republic and the restoration of Iranian monarchy, namely the deposed Pahlavi dynasty. Tondar has committed a number of violent acts in Iran, including the 2008 explosion of a mosque in Shiraz where 12 people were killed and over 200 injured, and has been accused of carrying out the recent (January 2010) assassination (via remote controlled motorcycle bomb) of Dr. Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, a particle physics professor at Tehran University, although the group itself denies any responsibility.
The claims that Ali-Zamani and Rahmanipour were detained and convicted for their involvement in post-election actions is bogus since both men were arrested well before the June 2009 election for their connection to the 2008 mosque bombing and were both in prison during the election and subsequent fallout.
In an article, disingenuously titled "Iran 'executes' two over post-election unrest," the BBC even quotes Rahmanipour's lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, saying as much: "He was arrested in Farvardin [the Iranian month covering March-April] - before the election - and charged with co-operation with the Kingdom Assembly."
Nevertheless, the White House felt the need to condemn the execution of the two men tried and convicted of sedition. "We see it as a low point in the Islamic Republic's unjust and ruthless crackdown of peaceful dissent," Bill Burton, deputy press secretary for the White House, told reporters. "Murdering political prisoners who are exercising their universal rights will not bring the respect and legitimacy the Islamic Republic seeks," he continued. "It will only serve to further isolate Iran's government in the world and from its people."
Apparently, according to Obama's administration, it is every Iranian's sovereign right - or perhaps, duty - to work with separatist groups, funded by the United States, to commit violent acts against the Islamic Republic. This is now classified as "peaceful dissent."
So, my final answer is this:
While the death penalty is bad, demonizing, misinformed and deliberate anti-Iranian propaganda spread rapidly and rabidly by the Western press may be far, far worse.
*****
Friday, February 5, 2010
A Plea Grows in Brooklyn:
An Open Letter to District 11
An Open Letter to the Concerned Constituents of New York's 11th Congressional District:
By now, I am sure you are well aware of the appalling and unconscionable retraction of Brooklyn congresswoman Yvette Clarke's signature from two recent Dear Colleague letters to President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding lifting the illegal siege of Gaza and permitting Palestinians to travel between the Occupied Territories. Whereas I was proud of Ms. Clarke's initial stance and courage to be one of the very few who signed onto the letters, I am absolutely outraged by this sudden reversal.
For the past year or so, Ms. Clarke, Democratic representative of New York's 11th District, has been one of the very few humane politicians on the issue of Palestine. She did not sign onto a bogus, seemingly pro-ethnic cleansing bill (H. Con. Res. 111) entitled, "Recognizing the 61st anniversary of the independence of the State of Israel," and was one of only 36 legislators to cast a "no" vote on the AIPAC-written Congressional call to dismiss and bury the findings of the Goldstone Report. Nevertheless, it appears that a meeting with a group of local ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders on February 1 has led Ms. Clarke to regret her support for those two letters.
After this meeting, Ms. Clarke released an Open Letter to her constituents, in which she claimed to "understand how important the safety and security of Israel is to my constituents and the close ties that many share with the great Jewish State [sic]" and regretted adding her signature to the two letters, which she now amazingly concludes, "do not reflect my record with regards to Israel." She goes on to write that the letters "have a provocative and reactionary impact, as they do not provide a complete, and therefore accurate, picture of the situation. They also do not offer a constructive and two-sided balanced solution to the issues facing the region."
Within her despicable "apology" are even the repeated lies about the "threat" that Iran, which has no nuclear weapons and has not attacked any country in over two centuries, now poses to the colonial-settler, expansionist, aggressive, and nuclear-armed garrison apartheid state of Israel. "Israel finds itself confronted with a belligerent Iran that is not only rapidly pursuing nuclear weapons, but also rearming Hezbollah and Hamas which sit on Israel’s northern and southern borders respectively," she writes. "Given the multi-faceted security threats that Israel faces, I added my name to a letter to President Obama encouraging him to adhere to the 2007 Memorandum of Understanding signed between then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledging $30 billion in security assistance over the next 10 years." How's that for a "balanced" view of Iran's (totally legal) nuclear program (which is constantly subject to intrusive monitoring by the IAEA) and the "constructive" use of American tax dollars at a time of extreme economic hardship here in the United States?
In her sniveling, belly-crawling retraction, Ms. Clarke essentially concludes that the letters she originally signed "are uneven in their application of pressure and do not sufficiently present a balanced approach/path to peace." Her cowardice is revealed in full, as she continues, "Please know that I will continue to be the strong and unwavering supporter of the State of Israel as I have been throughout my entire public life while working with the Administration and my colleagues in Congress to ameliorate human suffering wherever it may exist." Apparently, that suffering is no longer extended to Palestinians when Ms. Clarke is threatened by a gang of Brooklyn Zionists.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
The New York Crimes:
All The Lies That Fit to Print
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."- Albert Einstein
"The age of military attacks is over, now we've reached the time for dialogue and understanding. Weapons and threats are a thing of the past...even for mentally challenged people."- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 11/23/2009
The American political, academic, and media establishment has long been beating the drums of war with Iran and, as the author of The New York Times' latest OpEd encouraging the US bombing of that country, University of Texas professor Alan J. Kuperman has now emerged as the Keith Moon of sensational jingoism and, considering his concept of reality, morality, and legality, is probably twice as crazy.
Mr. Kuperman, in a piece published on December 23rd and titled "There’s Only One Way to Stop Iran", stridently advocates for an immediate, unilateral, unprovoked and devastating aerial assault on Iran's nuclear facilities. He writes,
"Since peaceful carrots and sticks cannot work [with Iran], and an invasion would be foolhardy, the United States faces a stark choice: military air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities or acquiescence to Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons."Apparently, Mr. Kuperman's "one way" is a premeditated act of war, a preemptive attack on a sovereign nation that has not threatened nor invaded any country in over two and half centuries. The "stark" choices that Mr. Kuperman proposes do not include the obvious legal answer: for US policy to abide by international law and ratified treaties guaranteeing the right of Iran to a peaceful nuclear energy program and therefore cease threatening Iran with homicidal military action.
Though Mr. Kuperman claims to believe that "negotiation to prevent nuclear proliferation is always preferable to military action," he immediately turns around to state, "We have reached the point where air strikes are the only plausible option with any prospect of preventing Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons." He concludes with the dire warning that "Postponing military action merely provides Iran a window to expand, disperse and harden its nuclear facilities against attack. The sooner the United States takes action, the better."
Mr. Kuperman even believes that "Iran's atomic sites might need to be bombed more than once to persuade Tehran to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons." His suggestions not only defy all basic logic and reason, but, more perversely, demonstrate his utter contempt for global jurisprudence, basic facts, and human life.
Despite being a highly educated scholar, Mr. Kuperman, who has a Ph.D. in political science from MIT, reveals a stunning lack of historical knowledge, a general disinterest in providing any sort of supporting evidence or documentation for his baffling assumptions, and a bewildering inability to discern truth from propaganda, all of which, unfortunately, inform his outrageous conclusions. In fact, there are so many unsubstantiated claims and outright lies packed into the relatively short article, it's an absolute wonder that The New York Times chose to print it. Has the Grey Lady laid off all its fact-checkers?
Then again, it should probably come as no surprise that the "newspaper of record" has no qualms about printing fiction masked as truth, as seen with the relentless build-up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq just seven years ago.
Friday, November 6, 2009
GOLDSTONEWALLED!
US Congress Endorses Israeli War Crimes
- Edward Said
On the afternoon of November 3, 2009, the United States House of Representatives voted in favor of House Resolution 867 (H.Res.867), an AIPAC-backed bill that urges both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to "oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the "Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict," referred to commonly as the "Goldstone Report." With this vote, the US Congress has not only enshrined its opposition to investigations into war crimes and crimes against humanity found to be committed during last winter's Israeli massacre of over 1,400 Palestinians in the closed-off Gaza Strip, but has also affirmed its outrageous and unconscionable commitment to Israel's continuous unfettered aggression and singular unaccountability to international law, rules of military engagement, human rights, and basic morality.
In their successful effort to (yet again) shield the State of Israel from any and all scrutiny or criticism over its illegal use of collective punishment and excessive force against an imprisoned, impoverished, and defenseless civilian population, Congressional supporters of H.Res.867 sought to discredit the UN's 575-page report of meticulously-documented human rights violations. After visiting Gaza, conducting 188 individual interviews of victims and witnesses, studying more than 300 reports, submissions and other documentation including medical reports and forensic analysis of weapons and ammunition remnants collected in Gaza, amounting to more than 10,000 pages, and reviewing over 30 videos and 1,200 photographs, the Mission, led by South African Justice Richard Goldstone, concluded that "violations of international human rights and humanitarian law and possible war crimes and crimes against humanity" were committed by both parties (Israel and Hamas) during the Israeli assault on Gaza (A/HRC/12/48 p.423).
Goldstone's impeccable and unimpeachable credentials cannot be overstated. As a member of the South African Standing Commission of Inquiry Regarding Public Violence and Intimidation, Goldstone was responsible for uncovering and publicizing allegations of the extensive violence committed by Apartheid South African security forces, paving the way for subsequent investigations by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after South African democratization. He served as a judge for the Constitutional Court of South Africa, chairman of the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and was a member of the International Panel of the Commission of Enquiry into the Activities of Nazism in Argentina (CEANA), tasked to identify and prosecute Nazi war criminals who had emigrated to Argentina. In 2004/5, he was a member of the Volker Committee investigation into the UN’s Iraq oil-for-food program.
The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reports that, according to a lecture Goldstone delivered in Jerusalem in 2000, he "believes bringing war criminals to justice stems from the lessons of the Holocaust," which he described as "the worst war crime in the world." In Goldstone's view, the atrocities committed by the Nazis and the lessons learned by the international community in the wake of their discovery have "shaped legal protocol on war" and "constituted the basis for the concept of universal jurisdiction."
Not only this, but in an interview with the Jerusalem Post, his own daughter Nicole (once a resident of Israel) even described Goldstone, who is Jewish, as "a Zionist" who "loves Israel." Goldstone currently serves as a trustee at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Nevertheless, the harrowing conclusions and reasonable recommendations of the UN commission were quickly denounced by many US officials (not to mention the pathetic 'who, me?' outrage and phony self-righteousness exhibited by their Israeli counterparts), most of whom had not even read the report in its entirety; their smug derision of the dispassionate facts presented in the report made perfectly clear their intention to cover-up Israeli war crimes and, in so doing, legitimize and endorse Israel's ongoing suppression, dehumanization, starvation, occupation, and slaughter of the Palestinian people.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Obama vs. Ahmadinejad: A Tale of Two UN Speeches
"The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest."
– Edward L. Bernays, The Engineering of Consent, 1947
We've seen this all before. A popular head-of-state addresses a crowd of diplomats and world leaders, speaking in vagueries and platitudes, expressing a desire to bring about peace and reconciliation, calling for international communication and cooperation. He signals out certain countries and warns of their intransigence and non-compliance, their disregard for international law, their threat to the rest of the world. He says nothing of his own nation's military aggression, its contempt for human rights and the lives of civilians, its support for dictatorships under the guise of promoting democracy. He defends his country's nuclear weapons agenda and encourages a racist solution to the situation in Israel and Palestine.
President Barack Obama, addressing the United Nations General Assembly for the first time yesterday morning, did all this. And no one walked out.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Indoctrination & Education:
Who's Really Brainwashing Our Children?
Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war. - Maria Montessori, physician and educator
I am certainly not in the habit of defending Barack Obama against his detractors, but the controversy drummed up by rabid right-wing hysterics over the President's back-to-school speech on Tuesday is quite simply bizarre and absurd. However, the manufactured uproar and outrage over the President's socialist/fascist/communitarianist (hey, pick an ideology, any ideology!) "brainwashing" of unsuspecting and impressionable students on one of their first days of school brings up very real and very serious concerns over both the potential and realities of aggressive government indoctrination and the abuse of open access to America's youth.
In the days leading up to Obama's fifteen-minute long, syndicated speech, the conservative netherworld was abuzz over what sort of cultish and dangerous hypnotism our Kenyan-born Commie Muslim commander-in-chief would dish out in classrooms all over the country. The paranoia and fear promoted by political and media demagogues and repeated thoughtlessly by their audience of ventriloquist dummies created a sort of dual-McCarthyism, equal parts Joe and Charlie.
