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Hate 2.0
In July of last year, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group, organized a mass wedding celebration for hundreds of couples in the Gaza Strip. The happy adult grooms, immaculately dressed in black suits and colorful ties, received $500 each from Hamas, no small sum in the besieged territory.
It might have been a joyous event if not for the fact that the brides were "pre-pubescent girls, dressed in white gowns and adorned with garish make-up," according to the article written by author and journalist Paul L. Williams, and republished by rightwing pundit David Horowitz's Frontpage Magazine, who regularly appears on mainstream news networks such as Fox and CNN.
The photos show young girls holding hands with the grooms, and the article goes on to explain how pedophilia is inherent to Islam.
It would have been a sordid tale were it not for the fact that the article is a hoax. The married couples were, in fact, consenting adults, but this did not stop the story from being widely disseminated via a vast network of Web-based publications, blogs and mailing lists, and hundreds of readers left online comments.
The Internet is considered by many to be an information Wild West, where anyone can publish stories, often anonymously, and no matter how derogatory their opinions may be. False stories and hateful opinions about Muslims abound on the Internet and have begun to appear prominently in the mainstream discourse, say American Muslims and groups that monitor the media. Many worry that what one sociologist has termed "respectable racism" is having a corrosive effect on American society, and that hate expressed online has real-world implications. Rightwing extremist ideology is now the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
"Islamaphobia has moved to the mainstream in the years following the 9/11 attacks," said Ibrahim Hooper, the National Communications Director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), based in Washington, D.C. "Things that would have been completely outside the pale, like a letter to the editor saying that Islam is intrinsically evil, that would have never been published before 9/11. Now it's published almost on a daily basis."
Public figures such as politicians and pundits have used their status in society to confer a certain degree of respectability to racist discourse, according to Canadian sociologist Rachad Antonius. He believes the negative connotations attached to being Arab in mainstream culture have made it acceptable to publically stereotype or disparage Arabs.
There is, in any case, no law against expressing racist opinions or what many would consider to be hate speech.
"There is no particular definition of hate speech since we don't ban it," said Floyd Abrams, an attorney and expert on constitutional law. "We ban speech which constitutes an imminent threat of violence. We allow the marketplace of ideas to decide who is worthy of being credited with truthful information and who is not."
Racist opinions are being voiced loudly and publically. Xenophobia was rife at the tea-party convention in Nashville, Tennessee, Feb. 4 to 6, where some speakers railed against multiculturalism, accusing immigrants of threatening Judeo-Christian values. Talk of "white culture" and chants of "Take it back!" are common at gatherings of tea-party members, now a force to be reckoned with in American politics, and pundits such as Fox's Glenn Beck or Ann Coulter have helped stoke the flames.
A newspaper can be held liable for defamatory statements made by others within its pages. But the Communication Decency Act passed by Congress in 1996 offers protection to online publishers who put out content created by third parties.
The article alleging mass pedophile weddings took place in the Gaza Strip, "Hamas Plays Host to Pedophilia," was first published on Williams' website "thelastcrusade.org" on Aug. 7, 2009, and generated nearly 500 reader comments. It was republished in Frontpage Magazine, the online publication of conservative activist David Horowitz.
Williams, an American Christian minister and author, has written extensively about Islam and terrorism. In his book "The Dunces of Doomsday," he claimed that lax security and Egyptian-born professors working at McMaster University's nuclear reactor in Hamilton, Canada, had led to the theft of more than 180 pounds of nuclear material to be used by terrorists in American cities. The university is suing Williams and has called the allegations false and defamatory.
Rachel Ehrenfeld defended Williams in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 21, 2009, referring to the legal action as a "frivolous foreign libel" suit. This despite the fact that Williams' own publisher has issued a retraction, saying in a statement that the allegations about the university being infiltrated by terrorists and the theft of nuclear material were "without basis in fact."
Ironically, Williams claims on his website and in numerous other online publications to have penned at least one feature article for the Wall Street Journal but does not say when. Database searches going as far back as 1976 turned up nothing, and Timothy Lemmer of the Journal wrote me "I don't see a ‘Paul L. Williams' in our archive, searching by byline back to 1984."
He also claims to have been published in USA Today. Database searches did not turn up anything, and Michelle Poblete, the assistant reader editor, wrote me in an email "I did a search in our archive, but I did not find any articles written by Paul L. Williams."
Williams says that he "served as a consultant on organized crime and international terrorism" for the FBI, though this could not be confirmed. Williams maintains that, for over a decade, he "has taught philosophy, religion, and the humanities at The University of Scranton and Wilkes University." Wilkes University has record of him working there one year, 1998, teaching philosophy, while The University of Scranton has record of him teaching an interdisciplinary class there 25 years ago but could not say for how many years he was a professor.
Williams lifted the first few paragraphs and quotes of his article from an Agence France-Presse (AFP) article he did not write, "Hamas sponsors mass wedding in Gaza," published a week earlier on July 30, 2009. But he stopped plagiarizing when he reached the following phrase: "The 450 brides shared none of the glamour, taking seats among the audience of around 1,000 party guests: most couples had already taken part in religious ceremonies elsewhere, with more marriages planned for the next few days."
In his own article, Williams went on to explain how pedophilia is commonplace in Islam, basing his analysis on the traditions of the middle ages and apparently unaware that marrying young, and what would be considered child abuse by modern standards, was a normal occurrence at the time in the ancient world of East and West.
The children holding the hands of the grooms at the celebration in Gaza were not their brides, as he alleged, but their relatives. This was confirmed by other news sources such as Sky News, a sister channel of Fox News. It was also not the first mass wedding to be organized by Hamas in Gaza, where the legal marrying age is 18 or 16 with parental permission if Egyptian Sharia law is followed.
Taghreed El-Khodary, who writes for the New York Times, covered a similar wedding for the paper on Oct. 30, 2008.
"These kids on the stage are the nieces or sisters of the grooms," she said in an email, referring to the young girls in white dresses. "It is a mass wedding in conservative Gaza; hence brides are sitting with their families. It's a symbolic party to give credit to Hamas or whatever institution is funding it."
Williams and Horowitz did not respond to emailed inquiries about the article and requests for interviews.
Muslim groups and media watchdogs say that this is not a simple question of free speech, noting that people with radical views about Christianity, Judaism or Israel are not given prominent platforms on mainstream networks as is Horowitz.
"It's a double standard," said Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "The media wouldn't bring on anti-Semites, neo-Nazis, overt racists, but they will bring on these Muslim-bashers or anti-Arab individuals. They shouldn't bring on anti-Semites or neo-Nazis, and I don't think they should have on these Muslim-haters either."
Norman Finkelstein, an American political scientist and author, has written extensively on the Israel-Palestine conflict. He is fiercely critical of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, and his books have generated controversy as well as received praise from prominent historians and public intellectuals. Yet he has never been invited to appear on a mainstream American network.
"I have never been on American television (not even the cable networks) and the only national radio program I have been on is Democracy Now!" he wrote in an email. "To my mind, the interesting fact is that not even liberal radio programs and moderators would have me on. It is for example unthinkable that I would be on a National Public Radio program. It's the usual stuff: career and funding."
Conservative groups are waging a war of ideas online with players such as David Horowitz' "Frontpage Magazine" and Williams' "The Last Crusade" supplementing rightwing materials that are widely diffused via blogs, chat rooms, mailing lists and other Web publications. This network has facilitated the free flow of ideas, and created virtual havens in which people vent their collective disillusionment or rage. But the connections made there have shifted from the virtual to the real world.
Elements of white nationalism are fusing with rightwing ideology, as supremacist groups like the Council of Conservative Citizens and the National Socialist Movement have made inroads into mainstream culture by exploiting contentious issues such as the economy and immigration. The tea-party movement may now be, by some accounts, one of the most potent political forces in America. What that will translate to in the future remains to be seen. But many Muslims and other minority groups are fearful.
"It has a very corrosive effect on our society," said Hooper of CAIR. "Whenever you legitimize, even through your silence, attacks on a religious or ethnic minority, we are all hurt by that. It's not something that helps our society in any way."
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46 Comments so far
Show AllAfter killing a couple of hundred thousand innocent Muslims in Iraq, ole Barnabe is surprised that a brown shirt movement in America is raising its ugly head. Who could have seen that coming? The nazis had a rally in the town I was living in years ago. The cops had to erect a chain link fence around the nazis to protect them from an unruly mob that would have torn them to pieces if left unchecked. That didn't stop the crowd from raining bottles down on the nazis heads. What is the moral of that story? How does it relate to a silent, spectator American society?
The greatest political imperative today is to move the teabags as far left as possible and making it focus on nonracist populism and anti-corporatism.
And to use their small government ideology to shrink the War Dept.
That won't happen, glenn, so don't hold your breath.
Good luck with that. You make sense, of course, but having spent a tremendous amount of time arguing with a close friend of the 'righteous conservative' persuasion, I can tell you... these guys are not interested in understanding or learning anything. They have a very poor grasp of the economic policies of our times, and are not really aware of other countries and peoples. One senses that their hostility is the result of insecurity and incomprehension in the face of such a bewildering and complex world.
Years ago, tea-baggers or their equivalents would have been living mild, inactive lives politically because the world was smaller and simpler then. They would have been good company in such a setting (even if still racist or ignorant), because it wasn't necessary to know everything about the world in those times. Nowadays, if you want to engage on any meaningful level and not be taken for a belligerent hypocrite, it requires years of knowledge and experience of things outside one's culture. This is simply not going to happen for many ordinary people. Too many people are controlled by the overwhelming forces in their lives, rather than IN control of their lives. THAT is where the frustration and any subsequent catharsis must be directed.
"I can tell you... these guys are not interested in understanding or learning anything."
Are you suggesting that they are the only ones that need to learn or understand anything?
Of course I'm not suggesting anything... that is your interpretation. It is a statement of observation. No 'only' was used here.
Implicit in this statement is the idea that-- perhaps-- those who are bound to convention and tradition in their political or social views tend to be less fair and merciful in their judgments. It's not always the case, certainly, as some lefties are just as intransigent. But by and large, the ones who are most motivated to rally against their opponents and who perceive threats to their homeland usually come from hard right backgrounds.
My comment comes from a remark that Heinrich Boll made about the social experience of Germans living through the Third Reich: "Conformist thinking is not concerned about understanding anything". I think it applies directly to the situation we have now, as far as the uniform behavior of the tea-baggers goes. When you've made a step in that direction, it shows that you are deliberately NOT going to listen to opposing views or opinions out of deference to a stark idealism.
Thanks. Thats why I asked, because that was the way I read it and it didn't really fit in with your prior postings.
Sioux Rose
ZEOFREDO: Thank you for sharing your analysis. I live among people much like those you describe, and they tell me they don't LIKE reading. Thus they get their "news" from TV and they are UTTERLY convinced, what with so many networks, that they are in fact getting a true portrait of events. To begin to educate them is to risk argument that quickly becomes a cursing match. Richard Bach long ago came up with the interesting line, "Argue FOR your limitations and you get to keep them." I agree that the idea of the world's complexity and the fact that financial matters are working like a sieve to slowly diminish their reserves are acting as agents of angst. Suddenly their home values, job security, savings interest rate, investments (if they have any) are being reduced of worth effectively wiping out all those hours of over-time, and all those careful thrifty decisions that presented them with the semblance of a nest egg. The financial uncertainty is the key trigger and TONY that's why they didn't rail at Bush as much. The bottom fell out 2 years ago.
>>One senses that their hostility is the result of insecurity and incomprehension in the face of such a bewildering and complex world.<<
You nailed it. Insecurity in their personal lives, in their public lives, and in their souls. The world that once made such sense no longer seems so clear. Institutions that once appears infallible are fraying around the edges. Truisms once that were treated nearly as God-given Laws of the Universe are becoming trite in the "outer" world. Views that seemed universal in one's limited experience are now subject to criticism and even disdain. The ground seems uneasy under their feet. The horizon fuzzy and uncertain.
What to do, what to do? Get angry? Strike out? Seek to find like-minded individuals? Protest? Organize? Fight? All of these?
At the core is fear. Fear of not understanding the real world we live in. Fear of becoming increasingly irrelevant. Fear of others that seem to threaten those once peaceful kingdoms of their lives. Fear of having to change.
A fearful man is a dangerous man.
Gary
"Belief means not wanting to know what is true."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
There is no point in arguing with them. At all. It's a waste of time according to this fascinating book - available free on-line. The book does list some actions that can be taken, but winning a debate is not one of them. For example, helping to reduce their fear,reducing their sense of self-righteousness, exposing them to 'outside' opinions so they understand how extreme they are, better education, etc.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
Ah Glenn, it's a hippy vs. skinhead battle shaping up. The hippies haven't shown up yet. Not sure if they will. That's the most alarming aspect.
I knew it. I knew it. I was watching progs adopting tea party language. Ron Paul language. At first I thought it proved that so-called 'progressives' were a right wing front to turn the left right.
Well it seems its the opposite. However its a dumb idea and it won't work. The Left tried the same crap under Clinton in 2000. How did that work out?
Glenn isn't advocating a new DLC to a phantasm center. The centrist movement of the D Party has always been a capitulation to corporate interests, not populist. I know you think I'm nuts or an infiltrator, but there is another center, I swear. It's a center that identifies with Kucinich when his policies are presented anonymously. It's the part of the R Party that left after Bush invaded Iraq, tortured, spied, and wrecked the economy. It's people like me who are rejected by the Right as being too Left, and by the Left as being too Right. And in all cases treated by the military psychological operation we call television as not existing. A populist movement would be a strong majority if it could ever set the terms of definition.
Sioux Rose
PITCH: Interesting post and perspective.
OLEMAN RIVER: Thank you for sharing your bio. I think the lives of those infected by the fear/smear campaign of the McCarthy phase could pose as a good subject for a book. You could put your journalism background to good use there, if you are so inclined. Maybe Michael Moore will occasion to do a film on the power of shaping message, manufacturing consent, marginalizing dissent... and your story could be part of it. Showing how the roots of intolerance continue to grow and regrow in spite of the nation's stated freedom-loving ideals. He could give visual power to the lessons taken from John Dean's book, "Conservatives without Conscience," too. For it is the conservative ideology that is only comfortable with ONE "right" way that everyone must line up and embody. The power to demonize factions of the population, those that don't conform to the "right" image and protocols, goes back to the witch burnings, or prior. This is why it was pure genius for Arthur Miller to use that historical reference as a basis for his important play, "The Crucible" which was pointing at our own political "witch hunts." That energetic "template" is not vanquished, evil that it is. It is one tool the dark side will always use to try to slay its enemies, those with the Intention to bring more free will to all sentient beings.
Thoughtful. Especially as I can totally relate to being 'too left to be right' and 'too right to be left'.
Thoughtful. Especially as I can totally relate to being 'too left to be right' and 'too right to be left'.
Maybe the left can coopt the "Tea Bag" movement with a more communitarian "Tea Ball" movement.By brewing entire pots of tea that have to be shared from a tea pot ,as opposed to a single serving.
I like your altruism glenn ford as Donald Sutherland said in an old role"give me positive waves"
Put the beast on a diet for peace!
I agree, and find most of the responses discouraging. We all know there is a hard right portion that is racist, corporatist and only wants our defeat, not common cause. But I think television has co-opted the movement; they even named it so we'd have a convenient handle for our ridicule. The movement ,as it exists on the internet prior to TV-GOP enhancement, does not support Sarah Palin, and that is the group we could find common cause with if we weren't so busy reacting as prescribed by Pravda.
The antiwar movement, for example. What happened to the liberal antiwar movement? One of the most consistent antiwar voices I know of is at antiwar dot com. He hates liberals. Yet, if you read one of his antiwar pieces, you might conclude he was a liberal. At the same time, the liberal voice, the one we would think of as more authentic, is all but gone. So how authentic was it?
As this editorial says, we have new stereotypes, new hatreds and we are still letting television define these things for us. You would think that by now we would have realized that television gives us the version of reality that fits their agenda, not ours.
Thanks for going against the flow, again, glenn.
As usual, the people with the heaviest grievances don't know what they're talking about. I know few people who are right-wing or core North American defenders who have ever befriended someone who is Muslim, much less traveled at some point in their life to a Muslim region of any kind (doesn't have to be middle eastern).
One thing I can say in response to these hateful remarks of Horowitz, et al, is that in several decades of witnessing the personal behavior of Western-raised Jews and Christians, and then observing the predominant manners of those orientated toward Islam, the distinction is clear: Muslims are much less hypocritical in their expressions of faith. I am dispassionate towards these faiths (i.e. a non-believer as far as 'classic' religion goes), but am still disgusted by the jarring contradiction between things-that-are-said-and-things that-are-done which is so apparent in the Judeo-Christian experience. My impression of Muslim culture, conversely, is one of integrity. It might be naive in our modern age, but ordinary Muslims are genuine in the enactment of their faith. The connection between worship and everyday life is more immediate than in our worldly Western civilization.
For the most successful among us here in the West, good works and ethics barely even rate lip service anymore.
Heh, I've noticed the same thing. Muslims seemingly do 'walk the walk' more by following a literal code. Though its hostility to secularism excludes it from being a part of the future; it must be part of the past.
In your view, secularism is the future?
Absolutely. Study history; the advent of humanism freed us.
Freed us? Did it really? Or did we accept a new group of somewhat more tolerant masters for more draconian predecessors?
Humanism did advance thought out of the Dark Ages. It did sponsor advancements in philosophy and dare I call it the liberal ideal. But freedom? Only in very limited fashions and usually for those on the frontiers.
For as long as corporate capitalism is in place there are masters and subjects. Guess which we are?
Gary
"Sure there have been injuries and deaths in boxing -- but none of them serious"
-~ Alan Minter, boxer
Hmm, as a Muslim I am wondering how many Muslims you actually know and how you have determined that Islam is "hostile to secularism". My primary beef with people, the media, etc., is the fact that people (like you) seem to believe that Islam is one entity and you then apply a pre-determined set of assumptions to what you believe that one entity to be. Case in point when people discuss "Sharia Law". There is no such thing as Sharia Law, rather there is sharia laws (note the plural and lack of caps). The word "sharia" literally means "a path" and as the name implies sharia is a process for arriving at laws, not a set of laws itself. There is no one agreed upon book of "Islamic Laws" nor was Islamic Law generally ever meant to be static. Part of sharia laws is the inclusion of secularism. Which you would know if you knew Muslims or Islam with any depth whatsoever.
Ok, you caught me generalizing. Indeed, I know how the Islamic system works, strangely it is quite similar to the system in the US. Federal government(caliphate) State/Provincial Government(sultanate) and local government(emirate) held together by Constitution(Quran) with established legal system founded on logic and jurisprudence(Supreme Court) the employs established precedent(hadith). I read somewhere that this parallel was the legacy of Thomas Jefferson studying legal systems throughout the world, the Islamic system in general.
Where I take issue though, is that secularism is inclusive to the Islamic system. This is false, as secularism is arrogance and innovation in Islam. If the core basis of a legal system is a religious text and any ruling contrary to that religious text is unconstitutional by no stretch of the imagination can that system be considered secular.
See my point?
The Tea Party as the NYT finally figured out are just representative of a very large group of people that are sick and tired of the spending to benefit the top and the disregard of the Constitution.
As to the fringe groups that show up and try to represent themselves as legitimate like Tancrado and those that do hate immigrants, White Supremacist Groups or Brown and Black supremacist groups, the skinheads, the racists of all colors, the people that want to suppress minorities and keep them dependent, these are the ones to be feared.
Time to worry about the real problems.
"The Tea Party as the NYT finally figured out are just repreentative of a very large group of people that are sick and tired of the spending to benefit the top and the disregard of the Constitution".If this is so then they are about 9 years late and the fact that Bush,a white guy,did not get any of their ire says volumes.Tony
"If this is so then they are about 9 years late and the fact that Bush,a white guy,did not get any of their ire says volumes.Tony"
Can't be sure but it looks like they are just as honked at the republicans as the democrats. One thing I'm sure of is that white or black hasn't much to do with it. It's about money and law as far as I can see.
"then they are about 9 years late"
You are right on the money with this! Stealing from a favorite poster, "nail meet hammer"
Veritas,just could not see giving them a pass;Saw on Huffpo the Tea Bag shindig that Ron Paul won a straw poll for prez and got boo'd by the crowd!That had to be a sight;It could be a strange election coming up if the Tea Bagers are as pissed as we are because there is no way I'm voting for a dem and what if they pull the rug on the repugs?I would love it and would laugh for a week but my guess is they will fall in step with whatever repug is there and most dems will do the same.There is friction brewing within both parties and I hope that it will be enough to really shake some booty this time.Tony
All hate is hatred of love.
2.0 Minutes of Hate - from the Great State of Tennessee, home of the Butler Act.
There's already enough generalized animosity towards Islam out there, so why gin it up with lies, unless your intent is to promote hate?
This article refers to "conservative activist David Horowitz." The term "conservative" is incorrectly used here. Horowitz is a self-promoting extremist Zionist who goes around the country accusing professors of being liberal or anti-Israel for taking a balanced view towards Palestinians. His intent is to suppress academic speech. He has a hit list.
That Horowitz reprinted these lies should be widely disseminated to show him for the hatemonger he really is.
-30-
Sioux Rose
OLE MAN RIVER: I believe Horowitz has 3 other dubious credits to his name:
1. He came up with the idea of "compassionate conservative" for dear Bush
2. He is now a Christian, a Baptist, if memory serves me well (denouncing his original faith. Or was it that his original faith was that of a liberal, and now he's a manic conservative on equivalent steroids?)
3. He also asked that students report their professors, play a little McCarthy style game of turning in those educators who might be a tad too liberal in their efforts to get students to think for themselves. Now no authoritarian wants that in the land of the free!
Bring America Back !!!!
****One would almost expect Osama, himself, to call in via
al Jazeera to confirm these were indeed underage girls, and that their wedding vows included a pledge to do Jihad, and that many were martyred in the GAZA attack of 2009. The CIA naturally would confirm His voice decibels., and that He still hates us for our freedoms.
****If you do not believe that our intelligence community is false=flagging us with pointed hate campaigns, then I suggest a good reading of David Southwell's book, "Secrets and LIes"==Exposing The World of Coverups and Deceptions.
They've got reporters, journalists, broadcasters in all major and minor media outlets around the Globe !
Hate campaigns such as the one described in this piece are
commonplace to the 'spooks', but they do serve their intended purpose of creating and manufacturing Hatred !
***Our current Prez has fallen for the boogeyman-in-a-cave concept== with his Drone Crusade to Tora Bora== and although we don't know exactly which cave He calls from, He faithfully calls in to take credit for bombings, and to confirm He is still plotting against us with future attacks. This always comes in handy when you need authorization for 50,000 more troops in Afghan, and the Billions of $$$$ of taxpayer monies in support.
***This is Hate=2010 style ! Mis direction and manipulation of mass media !!
Barnabe F. Geisweiller: Thank you for establishing that Paul L. Williams and the Zionists whom he serves are liars.
The veracity of a person or political movement is an unfailing indicator of the moral character of the person or movement. Zionism is defending the indefensible--namely, its theft of Arab land, etc.--so its only justifications must consist of falsehoods and illogic.
The hatred that they express and incite is of a piece with their lies. Hatred, like lies, provides a pathological justification of the victimization at the root of the whole abomination. Suitably demonized by lies, the Palestinians et al. can be savagely exploited and repressed in a frenzy of hatred; they deserve it, you see, as proven by the lies.
A couple of generations ago scholar Oliver C. Cox established that the hateful "n"-word was a direct historical consequence of the institution of slavery. Call it the politics of etymology. Our white Christian forefathers felt no need to invent such hate speech until they felt the need to enslave Africans.
A movement that requires hateful lies is an inherently destructive phenomenon; regressive, not progressive. In this regard author Geisweller's comments on the Tea Party crowd are entirely apt. A couple of weeks ago several posters to Common Dreams imputed progressive seeds to the Tea Party manure. I hope they read Geisweiller's article.
Political lying is a crime against the universal truths of humanity. Political hatred is the direct precursor to the destruction of humanity itself.
These are boom times for lying and hatred.
I am surprised that the author didn't mention T.B.N. and C.B.N. two huge networks reaching over 2 billion people worldwide,and retranslated widely.Some of the anti-Muslim zealots and right wing Zionist apocalypse pushers are damn scary!
I don't buy cable services or other media,when free TV went digital the only signals available in my area were 5 Trinity stations.
By the way if any readers here are planning to be raptured soon I would be willing to house sit,feed your pets,and water the plants while you are gone.
peace
Some of the comments here should be titled: "Hate 3.0"
This is so because some CD serial poster's are in fact clever provocateurs, while many others shall remain blissfully ignorant until "FEMA" camps become their 'temporary' address...
Hatred is an absolutely necessary response to those who fabricate tales in order to inflame existing tensions while spreading their own bile, who inculcate ignorance and celebrate brutality, like the cretins applauding Joe Stack as a 'tax protestor' (as the Wall St. Journal labelled him), or the innumerable maggots who complain 'ooh, you say you're tolerant but you're not tolerating me!'
Bullies like Horowitz and Pipes and Beck and Palin do not need to be talked to rationally, they need to be smacked in the mouth good and hard every time they open their yaps & mercilessly mocked, not indulged or treated as if they could ever be partners in civilized disagreement.
We have every right and RESPONSIBILITY to protect ourselves from predators. A number of so-called progressives have forgotten their rights and responsibilities. That much is clear.
Yours was a nice reply to the "kick me please" mentality of the modern American left.
Sioux Rose---
The Horowitz campaign to "turn in your Prof," I had heard about but had never verified, while his speaking engagements attacking certain professors I had verified. Thus I chose not to mention that darker side, while it may exist.
You are correct to recall Sen. Joe McCarthy and McCarthyism in this context. When my father was a university instructor (I do not recall his precise "status" in the academic food chain) in microbiology, a disgruntled student accused him of being a "communist."
This resulted in a very lengthy FBI investigation involving interviews of "known associates" including interviews with my classmates' families. I discovered this decades after the relevant events, through the FOIA.
Among my father's J'acusse (sorry, but my French is worse than my German!)? He was seen holding a copy of "The Nation" as he walked down some academic hallway (it was a bit stronger magazine back then).
The FBI decided that my father was not a commie, but I had wondered why I was so unpopular in high school (and why my parents had such a bad divorce), while in later years I got elected to public office. You can see and feel the harm; it is actually generational, and I have been trying to address the implications since my discovery of that secret governmental intrusion into my young life and how it destroyed trust within my own family.
1984. Brave New World. Fahrenheit 451. All the post-war science "fiction" dystopias are coming true.
Thank you for being, and becoming, Sioux!
***
TruthKnowler and soloduff---
You also are soooo right. There are huge psychological issues involved here. For example, inversion and projection. Two short stories from back then stick out. One was about a couple who were into DNA before Crick & Watson and were chemically recombining themselves to grow younger, and then there was a glitch in their experiments and they disappeared! Grew too young! The other short story was of a world where astronauts but they weren't called astronauts were sent out to an artificial moon that had a bunch of machinery in its otherwise hollow interior. One astronaut was tasked with loosening the bolts in the machine. The other was tasked with tightening them. The story ended when one of them dropped a large wrench into the heart of the machine. For the life of me, I cannot recall which engineering slave dropped his wrench into the machine.
Since 9/11 it is fair to ask, Can the government induce mass hysteria at will? (Of course this question goes back at least to Teddy Roosevelt and William Randolph Hearst, but the terms have changed in our digital times. Just before WWII, it took months for Dispatches to reach the NYTimes from Viet Nam, for example.)
People who lie intentionally must be called out. People who are confused must be straightened out. Now there's a dialectic we can believe in. You betcha!
****
Meanwhile, my apologies to all (and I don't play golf!) for failing to follow up on other threads. My computer (dare I tell you I love Macs?) is seriously glitching and I have to keep zapping the PRAM. Hey NSA, my cousin is working for you. Get off my back! But you didn't know that because you have Homeland Security stealing yore budget. And, oh, by the way, I don't own a small plane, but I know a guy who does. He is a really good bridge player. No, actually, I misspoke myself. He doesn't own a plane. He runs the small airport. Can he fly a plane. Yup. Have you checked propane tanks lately, you bloated bastards? Stop stealing my taxes.
Look out. Look up. Look in. © OleManRiver 2010.
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"The other short story was of a world where astronauts but they weren't called astronauts were sent out to an artificial moon that had a bunch of machinery in its otherwise hollow interior. One astronaut was tasked with loosening the bolts in the machine. The other was tasked with tightening them. The story ended when one of them dropped a large wrench into the heart of the machine."
I have no idea who wrote that story, but it sounds like someting Stanislaw Lem would write. He is a Polish science-fiction writer whose novels are imbued with his experience of repressive and nonsensical bureaucratic systems. He does it very well.
Norman Finkelstein is never invited to appear on a major network because he outed Alan Dershowitz as a plagiarist & wrote a book on the way a lot of sleazy profiteers have made oodles of many & gained influence over public discourse by exploiting the Nazi murder in WWII.
"Islamaphobia has moved to the mainstream in the years following the 9/11 attacks"
In the first several paragraphs the author suggests that anonymous bloggers are stirring up Islamaphobia in the USA. He did mention Horowitz, so he knows there's more to it than bloggers. What he didn't mention were the top tier of USan elites with (dubious) claims on both sides of the political spectrum. These elites promote Islamaphobia more that any, because of their influence on the star-struck masses. They regularly spew their messages in the media, which NEVER support universal equity/justice, NEVER support worldwide brotherhood of man. These elites KNOW their role is to promote just the opposite: Detached, selfish, material gluttony, in the USA, to keep the imperial steamroller fueled with the mass churning of munny.
Fact is, America is a racist country just looking for its next target. The racism seeps into every aspect of our lives. The news media promote it through biased headlines and blatant op-eds. Check out the pro-Israeli, anti-Muslim NY Times. The government promotes it by inflammatory statements (like the ones Hillary Clinton regularly makes against Iran)--made to "soften up" the American people for the next attack on a Muslim nation. Television promotes it by pushing an Israeli vision of Muslims--check out the NCIS series where the Mossad agent is the heroine and the Muslims are the terrorists. Unfortunately, Americans are too intellectually lazy to challenge these ideas and so they succumb to the propaganda. A "free" country doesn't have to resort to censorship when all media avenues parrot the imperialist agenda.
Being a long-time celibate non-Catholic heterosexual who has a very young grandson I would like to try an experiment here at CD.
My late younger sister, who was something of a mystic and a brilliant graphic designer for a university, would have really had the hots for Sioux Rose.
My sister also had a grandchild, and a son.
Her love would not be that of "prepubescent girls." Dressed in white gown. Hers would have been an aggressive love, almost like Matt Taibbi's SQUID.
The more I think about this travesty of lies, the angrier I get.
My question? What is the Nature of Evil? If there is such a thing, does it rest in the brain of former Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson? Why are these millionaires still among us and not incarcerated? In maximum security cells (boxes) with no opportunity to communicate with the outside world? Oops, we already do that with "Jihadists."
By its nature, corruption cannot stand and creates its own demise. Humanity cries out for something else. How is that too much to ask? Or am I being a "liberal"?
Just some thoughts in the context of annihilation...
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