Ashe, the homosexual communist agent, approaching Alex Leamas, the ex- British intelligence officer, who is sitting on a bench:
“Do you like birds? The ones with the white collars are wild. The others are domesticated. With people it’s the other way around.”
The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, John le Carre (1965)
“My visit to England reminded me of the role of English royalty and elites in pushing for a conflict starting with the leadership of the first Crusade and on to the Sykes-Picot agreement (1916, dividing Western Asia into British and French interests) the Balfour Declaration (1917 promising a homeland for Jews to get support for the war effort) to the first British occupation of Iraq and Palestine (1919-1920 and beyond) and to the latest British occupation (with the US) of Iraq and its support of the continued occupation and colonization of Palestine (so far 7 of the 10 million Palestinians were made refugees or displaced people).
But on the other hand, now as then many individual citizens and groups were doing such a fantastic job for human rights and justice. Believing indeed that silence is complicity these groups are making a huge difference (e.g. at the University of London and this excellent group that does twinning with Palestine: http://www.twinningwithpalestine.net/ )
The intensified media and educational campaign to vilify Muslims and Islam reached a new low with the David Horowitz blitzkrieg on campuses to promote Islamophobia and titled “Islamofascist awareness week.” Imagine the outrage if we had a Christofascist or Judeofascist awareness weeks on campuses!!. A good summary of this campaign is found on the Black Agenda Report
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=404&Itemid=36
(My own guess is that this will help further awaken the sleeping giant, which is the Arab and Islamic world) The intensified efforts and plans to attack Iran (thinking of it as a supposed preempting of a potential/supposed liberator of the Holy Land). On this front, the attack on Iran is playing a significant factor in choice of president: de jure by the US public but de facto by the Israel lobby. In fact, Israel has the Chutzpa to even rate them on their allegiance: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerPage.jhtml
Giuliani and Clinton are top in subsuming US interests to serve Israeli interests. And here is the Israel positions of these presidential candidates taken from the Zionist think tank “Council of foreign Relations: which claims the conflict goes thousands of years: http://www.cfr.org/publication/13579/
There is now a malicious campaign of vilification and attacks on any one who dares discuss Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights. It was interesting to note the hysterical reactions of Zionist establishment to publications of books like Paul Findley’s “They Dare to Speak Out”, Jimmy Carter’s “Palestine: Peace not apartheid” and Profs. Mearsheimer and Walt “The Israel Lobby: influence on US Foreign Policy.” It is interesting to note that at every talk I give, the requisite quorum of at least three Zionists show up (a bad cop, good cop, and a supposed psychological commentator). This weekend, they are going full force against the Sabeel Conference (Sabeel is a Palestinian Christian liberation theology group with friends around the world). See Friends of Sabeel Website at http://fosna.org and the article promoting the racist demonstration at http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/news/?content_id=3885 In all cases and failing to really address the substance, the attackers resort/ed to name calling the most common of which that was used over the years to silence people are calling them “anti-semite” and/or “self-hating Jews”. For apologists of an apartheid regime to claim victimization is not unusual (white rulers in Apartheid South Africa and their elite supporters in the West for decades claimed victimhood of ANC Terrorism and being trapped on the tip of a black and backward continent. The white rulers literally looked at themselves as a beacon of democracy in the barbarity of those who burn people alive (called neck lacing).
Today it seems unusual to speak about blacks in Africa in denigrating terms (although it is still done in the elite think tanks of Washington and behind the scenes in academic and other elite circles). The attack on Arabs and Muslims is now full fledged and is out in the open. The list is long from the PATRIOT act to warrantless surveillance, to profiling, to verbal abuse, to denial of the right to speak, to denial of employment and promotion, to Guantanamou and Abu Ghrieb, to “rendering” and secret CIA prisons, and on and on. One looks to history to understand the period we are in. The closest I could come-up with is the eleventh century when the Crusades were the norm. For the first 100 years of the crusader onslaught, the Arab and Muslim masses were divided and leaderless. The Crusaders were pragmatic and even established treaties and trades. Then they got greedy and expanded and broke treaties (see Karen Armstrong’s book “Holy War”) and aroused anger and aroused the sleeping giant of Islam.
We see the signs of a similar thing today (as posted above). Here is one more: “Extremist Jews Burn a Church in a Jerusalem” http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/916567.html
(Of course hundreds of religious sites were destroyed by Israel when they depopulated 530 Palestinian Towns and Villages between 1947-1950 and later in 1967 and beyond) Bizarre news: Israel to purchase Chinese fighter jets that have US technology (the article claims Israel technology when everyone knows that the Israeli Lavi was based on US F-16 technologies and that is the reason it was canceled but Israel profited handsomely). http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380641058&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
One good news, in a win for freedom of expression (and against Zionist attempted censorship) the University of Michigan Press will continue the distribution agreement with Pluto Press (the publisher of my book Sharing the Land of Canaan). And in a vuisually impressive action: Condoleeza Rice was confronted by Code Pink activist Desiree Firoos calling her a war criminal (in the opening of the hearings in Congress presided over by AIPAC stooge Tom Lantos, Lantos was visibly shaken).: see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9GytISiHzw
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” — Wendell Phillips
Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD http://qumsiyeh.org
*Carol Anne Gotbaum did not strangle herself with the handcuffs that were used to restrain her.
Thus it follows that the Phoenix Police Department, which claimed that the tiny, 45-year-old mother of three small children somehow choked herself on the cuffs, is concealing the truth about what killed her.
Mrs. Gotbaum, who was on mood stabilizing drugs (which she hadn’t taken that morning), was detained at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport en route to a very expensive alcohol rehabilitation clinic in Tucson.
Her family contact hadn’t met her there, as he was supposed to, which didn’t improve her mood. She had been singled out by the TSA groper squad for individualized molestation, which likewise helped to undermine her serenity. Carol Anne had reportedly attempted suicide in New York a year ago, which suggests that she was severely troubled and desperately seeking help.
By the time the police arrived, Gotbaum was in the middle of a full-orbed breakdown.
“They’re not letting me on!” she exclaimed in a cellphone call to her husband Noah just before her arrest. “It’s all falling apart.” Noah called US Airways officials to plead on behalf of her wife: “It will be okay. She just needs to take her medication.”
It was clearly a medical crisis, not a security issue. But those running the Homeland Security State in which we’ve been sentenced to live insist on treating those situations identically….”
More at William Grigg at Pro Libertate.
“The two branches of the Establishment party are joined in a totalitarian entente, one of them promoting militarism abroad and police state coercion at home, the other pushing wealth redistribution and social engineering everywhere. Granted, the dichotomy isn’t absolute, and each branch dabbles in the other’s metier — something about which I’ll have more to say anon. But as a matter of “branding,” the division of labor described above is pretty reliable.
And the dialectical synthesis of these two varieties of statism is a bigger, bloodier, costlier and more invasive welfare/warfare/social engineering state that is literally at war with the American people.
Recall Kennedy’s words about the federal hate crimes law: “`We are going to fight terrorism, hatred, and bigotry here at home.'”
“Atchison was arrested at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after arriving for a meeting with someone authorities say Atchison thought was the mother of a 5-year-old girl with whom he allegedly arranged to have sex. The woman was actually a Macomb County sheriff’s detective participating in an Internet sex sting operation.
Atchison was charged with three felonies, the most serious of which is crossing state lines with intent to have sex with someone under 12. Conviction carries a minimum 30-year prison sentence and a maximum of life….”
Apparently, there is quite a bit of this stuff going on.
GOP City Council chairman, John Bryan, committed suicide around 2 weeks ago, on being the target of investigation for sexually molesting his 12 and 15 year old adopted daughters. (formerly his foster children). Apparently, he also molested a former babysitter when she was a minor…”
Comment:
No doubt this is a frightening story for parents. But, here at The MindBody Politic, my interest confines itself sternly to the less sensational questions that need asking:
1. What are the dangers of sting operations like this one in terms of entrapment? What are the political rewards that might entice overambitious cops to cross the line and create crimes that would otherwise not have happened?
2. What other ways could child-sex crimes be tackled without using the Internet to lure people?
3. In consideration of the life-long impact on the wife and children of the suspect, was it necessary to reveal his identity, especially before his guilt has been proved in court?
4, What bearing do such operations have on requests for greater control over the Internet by the government?
I am sure these will be seen as very trivial issues next to the nature of the alleged crime. And perhaps there is some validity to that position. But, to my mind, it’s precisely where the perps are unlikely to get sympathy from any quarter that such questions should be raised…
Other interesting points:
1. Partisanship rears its head even on this, at the Democratic Underground, with a jab at “family-values” Republicans…
2. Another undercover child sex sting in Florida unearthed 28 suspects, including three who worked for Disney.. Here’s a Maryland case involving a Homeland Security official. I noted comments from bloggers suggesting that the seeming high incidence of child sex suspects/perps among people in positions of authority in the community might be one reason these cases aren’t prosecuted as they should be.
3. The suspect in this case worked on asset forfeiture in civil and criminal cases in the US Attorney’s office, and had been on a committee to pick the police chief in Gulf Breeze, FLA, according to this report.
And another point:
Over in my native country, India, a well-known guru has been suspected for many years of being a serial pedophile, especially targeting adolescent males under cover of religious intitiation. Many of them are foreigners looking for religious experiences. The rumors have swirled for decades and several journalists and credible witnesses have come forward. In fact, the US State Dept. even has a warning out about him. Yet, I found out recently that the matter has never been investigated formally — and this after at least 25 years of rumors!
This doesn’t mean that I think everything this guru does is fraudulent. He certainly does an enormous amount of charity work. He also seems to have some genuine paranormal powers, along with conjuring and hypnotic abilities, that he uses to good effect on his audience.
And of course, adolescent males above the age of puberty are not five year old children.
But none of that should make him immune from investigation, if the allegations in the reports warrant them…
Still, witness accounts and testimony about a suspects unprovoked actions are different from a sting operation.
He’s gonna find out
who’s naughty or nice….
“The federal government is trying to build a surveillance society,” said John Gilmore, a civil liberties activist in San Francisco whose records were requested by the Identity Project, an ad-hoc group of privacy advocates in California and Alaska. The government, he said, “may be doing it with the best or worst of intentions. . . . But the job of building a surveillance database and populating it with information about us is happening largely without our awareness and without our consent.
Gilmore’s file, which he provided to The Washington Post, included a note from a Customs and Border Patrol officer that he carried the marijuana-related book “Drugs and Your Rights.” “My first reaction was I kind of expected it,” Gilmore said. “My second reaction was, that’s illegal.”
And more:
“James P. Harrison, director of the Identity Project and Ann Harrison’s brother, obtained government records that contained another sister’s phone number in Tokyo as an emergency contact. “So my sister’s phone number ends up being in a government database,” he said. “This is a lot more than just saying who you are, your date of birth.”
And:
“The Automated Targeting System,” Hasbrouck alleged, “is the largest system of government dossiers of individual Americans’ personal activities that the government has ever created.
“He said that travel records are among the most potentially invasive of records because they can suggest links: They show who a traveler sat next to, where they stayed, when they left. “It’s that lifetime log of everywhere you go that can be correlated with other people’s movements that’s most dangerous,” he said. “If you sat next to someone once, that’s a coincidence. If you sat next to them twice, that’s a relationship…….
Zakariya Reed, a Toledo firefighter, said in an interview that he has been detained at least seven times at the Michigan border since fall 2006. Twice, he said, he was questioned by border officials about “politically charged” opinion pieces he had published in his local newspaper. The essays were critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East, he said. Once, during a secondary interview, he said, “they had them printed out on the table in front of me.”
That’s from a Washington Post piece on the scrutiny of travelers.
Also see this:
* A 40-year-old public defender surfing the Web on a library computer in Santa Fe, N.M., finds himself surrounded by four local police officers, then handcuffed and detained by Secret Service agents after someone apparently overhears a political debate in which he suggests that “Bush is out of control.” Andrew O’Connor’s experience in February, during which he was questioned about whether he was a threat to the president, led to legislative hearings in New Mexico over the Patriot Act and government secrecy.”
So, there’s your big cuddly Santa Claus state at work, waiting to come down your chimney, any day now, with more goodies. Can’t wait…..
“He sees you when you’re sleeping,
He knows when you’re awake.
He knows when you’ve been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake!
Video footage:
1.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaiWCS10C5s&mode=related&search=
2.
3.
Courtesy of Rude Pundit at Democratic Underground.
I do not know where the early reporters got 19 and 9 cops from. Looks more like 5-6 here.
“Videos of the Monday night incident show officers pulling Meyer away from the microphone after he asks Kerry about impeaching President Bush and whether he and Bush were both members of the secret society Skull and Bones at Yale University.University spokesman Steve Orlando said Meyer was asked to leave the microphone after his allotted time was up. Meyer can be seen refusing to walk away and getting upset that the microphone was cut off.As two officers take Meyer by the arms, Kerry, D-Mass., can be heard saying, “That’s all right, let me answer his question.”Audience members applaud, and Meyer struggles for several seconds as up to four officers try to remove him from the room. Meyer screams for help and tries to break away from officers with his arms flailing at them, then is forced to the ground and officers order him to stop resisting.As Kerry tells the audience he will answer the student’s “very important question,” Meyer yells at the officers to release him, crying out, “Don’t Tase me, bro,” just before he is shocked by the Taser. He is then led from the room, screaming, “What did I do?”
Ok – everyone is shocked at this tasing. But no need to be if you’ve been following the treatment of antiwar protestors around the country in the past few years. In Pittsburgh, a couple of years ago, at one march, an elderly grandmother was tased and dogs were also used….
It’s good for ordinary citizens to see that the cops are now armed like SWAT teams and that a little confrontation can end in serious injury or death if you make the wrong move.
So, no — I’m not shocked. I am a bit shocked, though, by the number of people saying this student was a brat and had it coming.
The guy asked a question. A question. On his own campus. And no, Mr. Hume, doing some blogging and filming some of your pranks does not make you a semi-professional provocateur — whatever that means.
This is intimidation by the state. Pure and simple. The sort of thing, no doubt, the police are doing on a regular basis in Iraq. And, if you object, you probably get labeled a semi-professional provocateur.
That would also be known as “insurgent,” I guess.
So when Blackwater, the private security contractor, is criticized by Iraqis who claim that its guards just beat them up – and even kill them – for no good reason, we might want to think a bit before dismissing it as just anti-Americanism.
There are, no doubt, plenty of people who have a reflexive dislike of anything American. Just as there are people who reflexively dislike the Chinese or Latins, I suppose.
And an influential super-power will attract all sorts of unwarranted criticism.
But criticism of the Iraq war really does not fall into that category. My sense is that as they watch the shapes and sights of a police state emerge in front of their noses, people are going to ask what role the war played in allowing that to happen. And as they get to know more about the anti-statist argument, they are going to ask themselves, maybe, just maybe, some of these antiwar types aren’t moon-bat hippies, but people who are tired of being played and have decided to say something before the political class do more damage to the economy, to national security, and to any good will towards this nation.
PS:
Consder how many (I wrote 19 first as the reporters used that number, but it looks like an error and may have been 8-9 – corrected , it looked like 5-6 to me), cops were able to rush to this guy and tase him, whereas when students were being gunned down at Virginia Tech, the SWAT teams took their time getting there. Check out the Virginia Tech post on this blog (and others) and compare the response there for yourself.
The tasing appears to have been 50,000 volts (this is usual with tasers and is no joke – it can be lethal). University regulations say that a taser can be used only in cases of harm to the officers. Meyer, while behaving rudely, was carrying a book, Greg Palast’s Armed Madhouse, which questions the 2004 election. Whatever you think of Greg Palast, that is not a lethal weapon.
Glen Greenwald on Dick Cheney’s wishful thinking:
“Two revelations in particular are extraordinary and deserve (but are unlikely to receive) intense media coverage. First, it was Goldsmith who first argued that the administration’s secret, warrantless surveillance programs were illegal, and it was that conclusion which sparked the now famous refusal of Ashcroft/Comey in early 2004 to certify the program’s legality. Goldsmith argued continuously about his conclusion with Addington, and during the course of those arguments, this is what happened:
[Goldsmith] shared the White House’s concern that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act might prevent wiretaps on international calls involving terrorists. But Goldsmith deplored the way the White House tried to fix the problem, which was highly contemptuous of Congress and the courts. “We’re one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court,” Goldsmith recalls Addington telling him in February 2004.
Their goal all along was to “get rid of the obnoxious FISA court” entirely, so that they could freely eavesdrop on whomever they wanted with no warrants or oversight of any kind. And here is Dick Cheney’s top aide, drooling with anticipation at the prospect of another terrorist attack so that they could seize this power without challenge. Addington views the Next Terrorist Attack as the golden opportunity to seize yet more power. Sitting around the White House dreaming of all the great new powers they will have once the new terrorist attack occurs — as Addington was doing — is nothing short of deranged. Contrary to the claims made by Bush and his followers ever since the NSA scandal arose, their real objective in secretly creating “The Terrorist Surveillance Program” was never to find a narrow means to circumvent FISA when, in those few cases, it impeded necessary eavesdropping. Rather, the goal was to get rid of FISA altogether and return the country to the days when our government could spy on us in total secrecy, with no oversight. Of course, until they could “get rid of” that law altogether — through the only tactic they know: exploitation of Terrorism — they simply decided to violate it at will….”
“The jury found Jose Padilla, the accused terrorist guilty. We should remember hiow the accusations were made and the evidence collected — and throw the verdict out:
“For nearly two years, Jose Padilla was denied all access to his lawyers, his family and the court system. The Bush administration claimed that he could be held without trial until the end of its “war on terror.” Allowing Padilla to talk to a lawyer or know that a court was considering his case, the government argued, would threaten national security. Meanwhile, the government was working to create a relationship of complete “dependency” between Padilla and his interrogators, who were busy trying to torture a confession out of him.
As court filings indicate, Padilla was allegedly subjected to sleep deprivation, stress positions and extreme temperatures. Worse, he was held without human contact, without a clock or even natural light — with no way to know how quickly or slowly time was passing. When he was removed from his cell to visit a dentist, goggles and earmuffs were placed on him. Psychologists have long reported that extreme sensory deprivation is one of the quickest ways to drive people mad — and make them willing to confess to anything….”
More at the Washingon Post.
Comment:
There has to be an appeal on the Padilla verdict. Look, the government found him guilty long before it tried him. Verdict first and trial later. That’s Looking Glass justice.
It’s time to take away the nonsense book from which the Bush administration is reading its jurisprudence. Let’s give them the US constitution again.