by James Corbett GRTV.ca January 30, 2013
“The DOJ claims that
in planning and waging the Iraq War, ex-President Bush and key members of his
Administration were acting within the legitimate scope of their employment and
are thus immune from suit,” chief counsel Inder Comar of Comar Law said. Source
People didn't seem
to be moved by this. Code Pink had been bought and sold on the bribery market
and their efforts for the cessation of war pretty much muted. With brand new
offices in DC, they were closer to the new President, but having succumb to the
belief that Hope and Change
had arrived and that wars would end and that Guantanamo would close, they
became part of the mainstream. In fact, if they show up now, they appear
lifeless, pointless and powerless to keep the Peace Movement moving in any
direction.
Now we are looking
at more war theaters than ever before, or shall I be more honest here and say
that the theaters have hit the main page of the news instead of being on the
back page under the classified ads. The Wars going on in the so-called middle
east, have been going on since before the Clinton administration. The idea of
gaining a stronghold in Africa far preceded our current president. It's just
that now, with Social Media, and massive access to the news from around the
world.. We can see what is really going on. Something that the indigenous
people of the nations that the US and NATO have been bombing for decades
already knew.
I also quivered at
the outright about face turn that the US made towards Syria who in days of old
was a part of the
extraordinary rendition program and were holding so-called
terrorists in their prisons. Now the US wants to overthrow the Assad regime, a once
staunch ally of the US. It begs to question what the hidden agenda is when the
US makes these allies and you just have to wonder, when the alliance with the
US will come back to haunt them with bombs, drones, airstrikes, invasions and
stealth operations to acquire their once friend's, resources.
CIA agent Robert
Baer: "If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan.
If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to
disappear -- never to see them again -- you send them to Egypt." Source
"The report also shows that as many as 54 foreign governments
reportedly participated in these operations in various ways, including by
hosting CIA prisons on their territories; detaining, interrogating, torturing,
and abusing individuals; assisting in the capture and transport of detainees;
permitting the use of domestic airspace and airports for secret flights
transporting detainees; providing intelligence leading to the secret detention
and extraordinary rendition of individuals; and interrogating individuals who
were secretly being held in the custody of other governments. Foreign
governments also failed to protect detainees from secret detention and
extraordinary rendition on their territories and to conduct effective
investigations into agencies and officials who participated in these
operations.
The 54 governments identified in this report span the continents
of Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America, and include:
Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark,
Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Finland, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hong
Kong, Iceland, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Libya,
Lithuania, Macedonia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Poland,
Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka,
Sweden, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom,
Uzbekistan, Yemen, and Zimbabwe." Source
And now, we have the
Islamic Boogie Man. The epitome of all that is evil. Branded on 911 and blamed
for the incredulous, they have become the bane of Western Society, even if the
statistics show quite the contrary. A war on terror has been initiated and now
every Muslim is suspect. Your friendly neighborhood donut maker and soda seller
is a possible terrorist, despite the fact that they are US citizens also
seeking the Mom's Apple Pie of the American Dream. Quite frankly, the American
Dream has become a nightmare for those law abiding Muslim citizens who want for
their families every right that every other human being deserves. The right to
live in peace and work towards a better tomorrow. In the face of this tyranny,
the eye is skewed towards the threatening so-called Muslim terrorist and with a
broad brush all Muslims are suspect while the crimes perpetrated against
American men, women and children is done by home grown terrorists with no
Islamic affiliation whatsoever. Why is this possible, how is it possible? The
biggest culprit is mainstream media. They decide who will be hated and who will
be adored, whether the object of our ire/affection is deserved or not. Let's
just hope that predator drones are not launched against American citizens,
presumed to be Muslim extremist because quite frankly, these Muslims do not
live on an island separated from the rest of humanity. They are among us and a
drone strike will not be able to tell the difference.
DECEMBER
11, 2015
by GARIKAI CHENGU
Muslim-Americans
are living in a totalitarian police state with worsening harassment, profiling,
and surveillance. The United States’ government may claim liberty and justice
for all; however, in practice, towards Muslims, it exhibits all four major characteristics
of a totalitarian state: a war on terror that targets Muslims abroad, a
totalitarian police state at home, public executions by drones and gulags
outside the rule of law, and a strong reliance on propaganda and political
demagoguery.
The
hallmark of fascism was state oppression of certain targeted non-privileged
groups. Today, Muslims are bearing the brunt of America’s totalitarian police
state.
Despite
FBI records showing that since 9/11, Muslims have committed far less domestic
terror attacks than white supremacists, it is the American-Muslim community
that is under unprecedented levels of surveillance and government intrusion.
Muslims in America are unquestionably experiencing a fascist system of
surveillance, operating at the same level that East Germans faced under the
Stasi spy agency. Researcher, Arun Kundnani, has shown how the FBI has one
counterterrorism spy for every 94 Muslims in the U.S., which approaches Stasi’s
ratio of one spy for every 66 citizens.
Clearly
racism, as much as oil, fuels the War on Terror. White Christians rarely have
to worry that an undercover agent or informant has infiltrated their churches,
student organizations or neighborhoods. The simple fact that U.S. law
enforcement has not infiltrated and spied on conservative Christian communities
to disrupt violent rightwing extremism, which is the biggest terrorism threat
in America, confirms what Muslims in American know in their bones: to worship
Allah is to be suspect.
Federal
judges recently ruled that suspicion-less surveillance of Muslims is
permissible under the U.S. Constitution. The NYPD has admitted that Mosques,
student groups, restaurants, even grade schools, have all been under
surveillance. By rapidly increasing both government policies of secrecy and
surveillance, Mr. Obama’s government is increasing its power to watch its
citizens, while diminishing its citizens’ power to watch their government.
The
threat of homegrown Islamic terrorism has been largely manufactured, so that
the so-called War on Terror can promote multi-billion dollar,
corporate-sponsored militarism abroad and the erosion of two hundred-year-old
civil liberties at home.
Muslim-Americans
are not only facing increasing oppression from the state, but they are also
facing growing prejudice from their fellow countrymen, as hate crimes and civil
liberty violations against Muslims continue to precipitously rise.
A
recent Pew Forum Poll established that Muslims are by far the most disliked
minority in America. According to FBI statistics, anti-Muslim hate crimes
soared by an astounding 50 percent last year. Muslims constitute 1 percent of
the U.S. population, but they are 13 percent of the victims of religious-based
hate crimes. Islamophobia and xenophobia now seem as American as apple pie.
Intolerance of Muslims is often inverted, depicting Muslim customs as an insult
to Western customs.
One
major aspect of American totalitarianism, shared by fascist regimes, is the
nation’s enormous military budget. In 1933, Nazi Germany’s military spending
was 2 percent of their national income; by 1940, it was 44 percent.
Today,
America spends more on her military than the rest of the world combined.
America has expanded its military into having 662 foreign military bases,
according to the Department of Defense’s 2010 Base Structure Report. The War on
Terror has cost $6 trillion, the equivalent of $75,000 for every American
household, calculates Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
Another
hallmark of totalitarianism is the creation of a prison system outside the rule
of law that is largely designed to imprison and torture one minority group. The
Guantanamo Bay gulag is unquestionably a crime against humanity. There is
unlimited cruelty in a system that seems to be unable to free the innocent and
unable to punish the guilty.
In
April 24, 1934, a People’s Court, just like Guantanamo was established, which
also bypassed the judicial system: prisoners were held indefinitely in
isolation and were tortured and subjected to show trials. The People’s Court
was signed into law by Adolf Hitler.
In
2007, a politician who was vehemently against the human rights abuses at
Guantanamo Bay, explained what he would do about the torture camp if he ever
became President:
“When
I am President, I will close Guantanamo. It is a moral outrage, a blight upon
America’s conscience. It is the location of so many of the worst constitutional
abuses in recent years. From inception, Guantanamo was a laboratory for
unlawful military interrogation, detention, and trials.”
The
politician who uttered these words was Senator Barack Obama. Ironically, under
President Obama’s tenure, conditions for Guantanamo detainees, from both a
physical and legal standpoint, have become markedly worse.
Public
executions are perhaps one of the most overt and odious symbols of
totalitarianism. In totalitarian Spain, under General Franco, mass public
executions were the norm, and were often carried out in bullrings or with band
music and onlookers dancing in the victims’ blood. With Hitler and Mussolini
supplying arms to Franco, some 200,000 men and women were publically executed
during the war and bombed from overhead.
Nowadays,
drones are the ultimate totalitarian technology. Washington both uses drones
for what amount to public extra-judicial executions of Muslims abroad, and for
spying on American Muslims at home.
Most
Americans believe that drones are targeted and therefore humane. Nothing could
be further from the truth. By all accounts, drones have killed more children
than terrorists. According to a new report from The Intercept, nearly 90 percent of people killed in drone
strikes in Afghanistan are civilians.
By
2018, some privacy experts believe law enforcement will likely control over
35,000 drones that the government will use to monitor Americans from the skies.
Integral
to the rise of the America Muslim Totalitarian State is propaganda. Sheldon
Wolin has poignantly pointed out that, whereas the production of propaganda was
crudely centralized in Nazi Germany, in the United States, it is left to highly
concentrated media corporations, thus maintaining the illusion of a “free
press”.
The
American propaganda machine is highly sophisticated. It does not rely upon the
radio addresses, speeches, and leaflets disseminated by the Nazi Ministry of
Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, nor does it rely on the crude censorship
or harassment of free press ordered by a Politburo. The propaganda of America’s
“one percent” is subtle yet pervasive; it relies not only on government diktats
but also on the mass media, art, pop culture and Hollywood.
American
cinema and music have always been a remarkably effective means of whipping up
xenophobic wartime sentiment. For example, the highest grossing war film in
history,
American Sniper, and
President Obama’s favorite television show,
Homeland,
both engage in an overly broad generalization of Islam, and depict Muslims and
terrorists in a way that is indicative of widespread Islamophobia in American
culture.
The
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee reported a spike in Islamophobia
and hate crimes after the release of American Sniper, which culminated in the
recent slaying of three young Muslims in North Carolina, who were shot in the
head sniper execution style. American Islamophobia operates in the service of
American militarism and American militarism abroad, and in turn, ratchets up
Islamophobia against minorities at home.
The
media determines our language, our language shapes our thoughts, and our
thoughts determine our actions. Language is the fulcrum of a society’s
perception. Whosoever controls the public’s language, controls the public’s
perception.
The
corporate elites who sit on media editorial boards control said language. In
1983, fifty companies owned ninety percent of U.S. media. Today, only six media
giants control a staggering ninety percent of what the American public listens
to, reads, and watches. “Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the
government can play,” once remarked Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s Minister of
Propaganda.
For
Muslim-Americans the media’s Orwellian totalitarian language is clear: Drones
are Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Torture is Enhanced Interrogation. Occupation is
Liberation.
Donald
Trump’s recent call to ban Muslims from entry into the U.S. is not without
precedent. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 effectively banned all Chinese
immigration to the US. This racist law remained in place for five decades and
required all Chinese to carry identification certificates or face deportation.
When Trump endorsed identification cards to be worn at all times by American
Muslims, his popularity jumped almost 3 percentage points. If Donald Trump’s
policies are viewed by Americans as odious and un-American, then why has he
consistently gained popularity after every anti-Muslim outburst?
America’s
history is stock full of totalitarianism and popularized, irrational fear of
“the other”. It began when the settler pioneers feared Native Americans and
united against them by slaughtering millions in order to quell that fear. As
settlers began to unite around a common identity they feared the British
Monarchy and rebelled against it. Americans then fought against Mexico, France
and various other countries for vast land control. Five hundred documented
revolts on slave ships and the fact that plantation owners were greatly
outnumbered by slaves, cemented the role of fear that perpetuated slavery for
centuries. With greater fear comes greater violence, and with greater violence
comes a greater need to justify that violence by ratcheting up the fear.
After
the attacks on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were forced into interment
camps on American soil. Vietnamese Americans were then targets of xenophobia in
America during the Vietnam War, and then there was the “Red Scare”, which
targeted Russian-Americans throughout the Cold War.
From
the ashes of the Soviet Union arose the terrorists from the oil-rich Middle
East, who became America’s new number one enemy and so the legacy of American
xenophobia continues. Today, as the deliberately unending war on terror rumbles
on abroad, Muslim, Arab, and Sikh Americans fear that they are living in a
totalitarian state.
