Alaikum assalam
I received these three articles in e-mail links from a news service. There is an url for the News Service here:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/syndicate.html
The reason I am posting these is because I find the matter of trying to ascertain what American popular opinion really is quite perplexing. It is as though George Bush is heedless to any concept that he could become unpopular; but why? Why is the American Peace movement sadly crying out that not enough Americans are objecting to having troops in the Middle East?
What bothers me is perhaps that if I were making such reports in an Australian situation I would be assuming that for my self to know about any opposition to Australian troops in the Middle East, there must be a large silent support for such opposition. Australians never like having to speak up for ourselves, and if only a few have then it can usually be assumed that many more are in agreement; that is, with left wing ideas. Where as the right wing in Australia, the neo-liberals as they are named by modern scholars, tend to speak up brazenly, as though in representation of many when we all know they represent only the filthy rich and the criminals.
The news reports that follow in this post are the kind of news reports that in Australia could only mean a mass popular support for Peace. So why are folk in the US worried that there is not a majority truly in support of Peace? I wonder if it has any connection with Christian Churches? In Australia the Churches have among their congregations those standing up next to the greenies and lefties and other Peace activists. But is it in America that George Bush is influencing the population through their worship in Church? If that is the case then it is about time Islam and Australian Aborigines put all our pieces together because surely between us we could take over the esoteric teaching of all Christian Churches.
Anyhow the three articles will follow, and I am wondering what other Muslims have to comment in respect of them.
Iran Attack - Crisis Is Upon Us
By Paul Craig Roberts
09/245/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- A number of experts have concluded that despite the Bush administration’s desire to attack Iran, the aggression would be too rash and the consequences too dire even for the irrational Bush administration.
Military experts point out that at a time when generals are calling for more troops for Afghanistan and Iraq, it would be ill-advised for Bush to add Iran to the war theater. Experts note that Iran is well armed with missiles capable of attacking US ships and oil facilities throughout the Middle East and that Iran can direct its Shiite allies in Iraq to assault US troops there and set in motion terrorist actions throughout the Middle East.
Diplomatic experts point out that the US is isolated in its desire for war with Iran and has no ally except Israel, thus validating Muslim claims that the US is Israel’s instrument against Muslims in the Middle East. Experts note that military aggression is a war crime and that US violations of international law isolate the US and destroy the soft power on which US leadership has been based. An attack on Iran could be the last straw for Muslims chaffing under the rule of US puppet governments in Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Economic experts point out that the impact on the price of oil would be severe and the economic consequences detrimental. With the US housing bubble deflating, now is not the time for an oil shock.
It is difficult to take exception to this expert analysis. Nevertheless, the Bush administration continues to send war signals. Credible news organizations have reported that US naval attack groups have been given “prepare to deploy orders” that would put them on station off Iran by October 21.
How can Bush administration war plans be reconciled with expert opinion that the consequences would be too dire for the US?
Perhaps the answer is that what appears as irrationality to experts is rationality to neoconservatives. Neocons seek maximum chaos and instability in the Middle East in order to justify long-term US occupation of the region. Following this line of thought, neocons would regard the loss of a US aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf as a way to solidify public support for the war. US public anger at the Iranians could even result in US public support for a military draft in order to win “the war on terror.”
The Bush administration could bring Congress around by announcing a “Gulf of Tonkin” incident or by orchestrating a “terrorist attack.” However, this is unnecessary as Bush has prepared the ground for bypassing Congress with his propagandistic allegations that Iran, by arming Iraqi insurgents, sponsoring terrorism, and building nuclear weapons, is the major part of the ongoing “war against terrorism.” Now that Iran is blamed for rising violence in Iraq, an attack on Iran follows as a matter of course. All Bush has to do is to continue with his lies in order to bring the American public to a new war hysteria.
Bush’s attorney general has demonstrated that he has no qualms about validating any and all extra-legal powers that the White House requires for violating the US Constitution and international law. The congressional attempts to block illegal wiretapping and torture have failed. The Senate has refused to authorize torture, but the Senate has not prevented the administration from torturing detainees. The compromise leaves it to the White House to decide whether its interrogation practices are objectionable. In an editorial (September 22, 2006), the Washington Post concluded that “the abuse can continue.”
Polls show that Bush administration propaganda has convinced a majority of inattentive Americans that Iran is making nuclear weapons. Polls show that a majority support an attack on Iran under this circumstance. The neoconservatives and their media allies have succeeded in causing the public to confuse Iran’s legal nuclear energy program with a weapons program.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, whose inspectors pour over Iran’s nuclear energy program for signs of a weapons program, recently denounced a House Intelligence Committee report as “outrageous and dishonest.” Written by the Republican neocon staff, the Republican report falsely alleges that Iran had enriched uranium to weapons grade last April and that the IAEA had removed a senior safeguards inspector to keep the alleged breach of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Pact secret.
Once again neoconservatives have shown that they will tell any and every lie to achieve their goal of attacking Iran. Jingoistic anti-UN Bush supporters will automatically believe the neocon lie and will swallow right-wing talk radio claims that the UN is protecting Iran’s nuclear weapons program. As we learned from the Iraq hysteria, facts and experts are no impediment to the Bush administration’s lies.
Rumsfeld’s neocon Pentagon has rewritten US war doctrine to permit preemptive nuclear attack on non-nuclear countries. As the US paid a huge public relations cost in terms of world opinion and distrust of the US by endorsing the first use of nuclear weapons, the revision of US war doctrine must have a purpose.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hirsch.php?articleid=9255
Neocons claim that tactical nuclear weapons are necessary to destroy Iran’s underground facilities. However, the real reason for using nukes against Iran is to intimidate Iran from retaliating and to threaten the entire Muslim world with genocide unless Muslims bend to the neocons’ will and accept US hegemony over their part of the world.
In his speech to the United Nations, Hugo Chavez might not have been too deep into hyperbole when he described Bush as an example of demonic evil.
Fighting The International Tyranny Of "We the People"
There are no "Islamic terrorists" in the Middle East.
By Casey Butler
09/25/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Since September 11th, 2001, "We the People" have had ample opportunity for self-examination. When we look around us, "First world" vs. "Third world", if we are honest with ourselves we must recognize that the democracies comprising Western Civilization have collectively become the next world dictator. This dictator is a tyrant unforgiving in its self-righteousness because it gets its very authority from "We the People". We have, inadvertently, through our own irresponsibility and apathy towards participating in our own government, stepped into the shoes of the oppressor.
From those shoes we can see clearly: There are no "Islamic terrorists" in the Middle East.
Timothy McVeigh was a terrorist. The IRA were terrorists. Baader-Meinhoff were terrorists.
These were terrorists because they had the right to free speech... They had the right to assemble in protest and to form political parties... They had the right to vote for whom they pleased... They had the right to run for office themselves to work for peaceful change. They were terrorists because they chose violence instead of working for change within the system available to them.
The Fundamentalist Muslims of the Middle East who are fighting us now, on the other hand, have never had such rights. Our American government and the governments that support it, ie. Western Civilization, have never allowed Muslims any method other than violent resistance for addressing grievances.
The most coherent historical analogy to current Western strategies in the Middle East today is the 19th century American belief in the "Manifest Destiny" of the United States, and its impact on Native American tribes. As part of American Manifest Destiny, Native American lands were carved up by force of arms at the request of merchants, farmers, and ranchers. Native American tribes were forced onto tiny "reservations" administered by "Indian Agents". Today this process is viewed by many historians as ethnic cleansing of holocaust proportions.
As European Americans justified their violent conquest of Western North America, the Native American who fought desperately against the American military and the civilian population for his land, people, religion, and, yes, freedom, was labeled a "savage". Rebellious "Indians" were viewed as less-than-human, and not worthy of the rights shared by the rest of mankind. Said American General Philip Sheridan, "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead."
A glance at a world history book tells us that our 20th century Western Civilization carved up Islamic lands into political entities that suited our "strategic" purposes. Since that time, by supporting tyrants, "shahs", kings, and anyone else who would do our bidding, including Saddam Hussein when it was convenient, the West has, by these proxies, purposely oppressed the human rights of Muslims in the Middle East.
In fact, in its quest for a "stable" oil supply and new markets, Western Civilization has consistently denied Middle Eastern Muslims the rights and equalities shared by the rest of us in the community of nations.
When a spark of these rights does happen to be ignited, as they were in Lebanon and Palestine, with rudimentary free elections that garnered many Western compliments and promises... As soon as the Muslim people made their will known to be contrary to the will of Western Civilization, they were labeled "terrorists" and immediately crushed and denied these rights once again.
In reality, the Muslims who fight us, including Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda, freedom fighters in the truest sense of the word, comparable to our own founders, who, after all, also oppressed women - even held slaves - until they enlightened themselves.
What the USA and its Western democratic counterparts actually fight today are religiously devout men and women, righteous ten-commandment-keeping people according to our own moral and religious codes - from Osama bin Laden down to the last innocent Palestinian killed simply for living in Gaza.
It is not, in the least, hyperbole to say that the Fundamentalist Muslims fighting us today are sacrificing their lives for their brothers and sisters; they are heroically defending their homelands, their cultures, and their religion, from the corruption, crime, and decadence intrinsic to Western capitalism as we know it.
They are people just like you and I. They are fighting the international tyranny of "We the People" who did not bother to follow what our governments and corporations have done to "third-world" nations in order to turn a profit. Those of us who are supposed to run our government and corporations, but who, in fact, were too lazy to care what government did on behalf of the corporate mentality.
Our Politicians and media personalities can call Fundamentalist Muslims "terrorists" or "Islamic fascists" until their faces turn blue...
But that does not change the fundamental truth that Muslims are defending their homelands, culture, and religion, using strategies already employed and legitimized by Western Civilization itself over Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Hanoi, and many other "battlefields", where the homes and businesses of innocent civilians were also considered military targets. It does not change the fundamental truth that Muslims do not fear death because, unlike most of "Western Civilization", they don't just mouth the words, but really believe they are rightfully fighting for God and the survival of their culture and religion. It does not change the fact that Western Civilization's continuing worldwide oppression of Muslims will result in the collapse of democracy everywhere, because democracy is a system based on government by the people, not the wealthy elite... A system, in the USA at least, founded on the fundamental truth of the equality of all before God.
History is clear: No oppressor who has attempted, by force of arms, to implement ideological change among a populace has ever succeeded. By claiming to believe this war is righteous and winnable, our government and the governments of Western Civilization that support it must ignore history and the very world around us. They must twist history to support their own version of "fighting terror", and constantly invent dangers which must be foisted upon their people in order that they can maintain power. In so doing, they have sold the souls of their peoples to the arms industry, to the creators and armorers of the next holocaust.
Is such a "civilization" of any real value to mankind, a civilization based on force of arms seemingly doomed to repeat the errors of its own history? If we are democracies, surely the solution to war is up to us - the people.
Today there is only one way to save our planet from never-ending war and oppression. We must withdraw all Western military and corporate interests from the Middle East. We must encourage democracy there through open, peaceful, positive methods - the types of methods that eventually brought down even the Soviet Union.
The Qur'an, the single authority for all sects of Islam, requires Muslims to accept peace - if a peace is offered that will stop the oppression and the corruption that has obligated Muslims to fight in the first place.
Continuing our present course of war only insures that more Muslims will answer the Qur'an's call for self-defense of the Islamic religion. On the other hand, reversing our course, seeking peace, and positively supporting Middle Eastern Muslim peoples as they seek democracy and self-empowerment through self-determination, will remove all motivation for Muslim resistance.
The West must stop confusing "truth", "liberty", "God", and "democracy" with the brand of secular capitalism that has served it so well. The secular capitalism that drives Western economies is not compatible with the religion of Islam. We in the West must learn to live with this fact, and allow Muslims to develop their own democratic systems and economies. In the West, secular capitalism must re-invent itself under a new paradigm. Unlimited growth, limitless resources, and unrestricted market hegemony are obsolete in today's world. Secular capitalism must evolve or face extinction.
The Muslims who fight us are not criminals. They are not evil. They are not cowards. They are not "fascists".
To bring peace to our globe, all we in the West have to do is stand strong together for what we have always claimed to stand for: The ideal that all people are created equal, with God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We cannot fight our own noble impulses for defending house and home, which, with our eyes open, we can all see reflected in the freedom fighters of Islam today.
We must stop fighting this war, stop endlessly piling war-torn bodies upon the bodies of the nearly 3,000 Americans who perished on September 11th, 2001. We must begin making their deaths meaningful for our planet, we must honor their sacrifice as of the God of Peace, and not of the god of war.
Unlike the Native Americans of the 19th century - many of whom were tribal and warred among themselves, unable to unite to fight their common foe - the Muslims of the Middle East share a powerful commonality: The Qur'an and the religion of Islam.
To have peace we must obliterate our own ignorance of the cultures, traditions, scriptures, and religions of our fellow human beings - with whom we share our planet.
United in peace humanity might stand, but divided by war we will certainly fall.
Copyright Casey Butler -
http://firefighter.eyesalve.org/
By Cindy Sheehan
09/25/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Our "compassionate conservative" misleader was on CNN with Wolf Blitzer and he had the following to say about the heartache and pain that he has caused the world since his illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq began.
BLITZER: Let's move on and talk a little bit about Iraq. Because this is a huge, huge issue, as you know, for the American public, a lot of concern that perhaps they are on the verge of a civil war-if not already a civil war-We see these horrible bodies showing up, tortured, mutilation. The Shia and the Sunni, the Iranians apparently having a negative role. Of course, al Qaeda in Iraq is still operating.
BUSH: Yes, you see - you see it on TV, and that's the power of an enemy that is willing to kill innocent people. But there's also an unbelievable will and resiliency by the Iraqi people.... Admittedly, it seems like a decade ago. I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is - my point is, there's a strong will for democracy.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
That is 125 commas.
With 2701 of our children killed and over 20,000 injured, I would have to type 182 lines filled with commas. Then, if we take in to account the low figure of 100,000 innocent Iraqis killed, I would need pages of commas.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said that: "Nothing is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." I believe that anyone who still supports George and his war of terror on the world have to be going out of their way to ignore the facts, or are profiting some way from this occupation: politically or financially.
I want George and the conscientiously stupid people who avoid evidence like the plague to know that my son was not a comma. Casey was not a cardboard figure, or the one dimensional figure of his widely printed boot camp picture when his cheeks were still chubby from good and plentiful food.
Casey was three dimensional and had hopes and dreams. He wanted to finish college and teach elementary school. He wanted to marry and have babies. I wanted him to marry and have babies. I wanted to hold his children and spoil them and love them like a grandmother should.
Casey loved his brother Andy and his sisters Carly and Janey. He loved our dogs Buster and Chewy and our cats Emily and Molly. Casey watched professional "wrestling" on TV and called it: "male soap operas." He collected toys and we have many boxes of unopened action figures and other collectibles in a storage now.
Casey breathed air, drank water, ate food and everything else that all other human beings do. Above all, he loved God and wanted to serve God his entire life as a Permanent Deacon in the Catholic Church. He also bled and died like a human when he was shot in the back of the head.
Conservatively, the "commas" that the Bush Regime has killed by their lies would fill many pages, but in reality, the once breathing human beings are filling thousands upon thousands of graves and lying under tons of rubble.
I am sorry that the leader of our once great nation is so callous towards the people whose lives he has destroyed. If one agrees with President Chavez of Venezuela, or not, it is inherently evident in our country and the world that we should agree with him when he says democracy is not imposed by "bombs and Marines." Democracy rises from the people. Great Britain did not go to war with our forebears to impose democracy, but to stop it.
Killing innocent people, torture, draining our treasury, stealing elections, spying on American citizens without due process, leaving the people of the Gulf States hanging on their roofs for their dear lives, etc, do not bestow democracy and the people harmed should not be reduced to punctuation marks.
My son and the others will not go down in history as "commas" but as more victims of the war machine...and I hope as the last victims of wars for profit. How can George keep a straight face when he talks about the enemy being willing to "kill innocent people?" When has BushCo every shied away from murdering innocents?
George Bush* will be an asterisk in history.
*Impeached, removed from office, imprisoned for crimes against humanity.
The sooner the better.
Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Casey Austin Sheehan who was KIA in Iraq on 04/04/04. She is the author of Peace Mom: One Mom's Journey through Heartache to Activism.