US Culture: Man Already Knows Everything He Needs to Know About Muslims (The Onion)

The Onion reports:

SALINA, KANSAS — Local man Scott Gentries told reporters Wednesday that his deliberately limited grasp of Islamic history and culture was still more than sufficient to shape his views of the entire Muslim world.

Gentries, 48, said he had absolutely no interest in exposing himself to further knowledge of Islamic civilization or putting his sweeping opinions into a broader context of any kind, and confirmed he was "perfectly happy" to make a handful of emotionally charged words the basis of his mistrust toward all members of the world's second-largest religion.

"I learned all that really matters about the Muslim faith on 9/11," Gentries said in reference to the terrorist attacks on the United States undertaken by 19 of Islam's approximately 1.6 billion practitioners. "What more do I need to know to stigmatize Muslims everywhere as inherently violent radicals?"

"And now they want to build a mosque at Ground Zero," continued Gentries, eliminating any distinction between the 9/11 hijackers and Muslims in general. "No, I won't examine the accuracy of that statement, but yes, I will allow myself to be outraged by it and use it as evidence of these people's universal callousness toward Americans who lost loved ones when the Twin Towers fell."

"Even though I am not one of those people," he added.

When told that the proposed "Ground Zero mosque" is actually a community center two blocks north of the site that would include, in addition to a public prayer space, a 500-seat auditorium, a restaurant, and athletic facilities, Gentries shook his head and said, "I know all I'm going to let myself know."

Gentries explained that it "didn't take long" to find out as much about the tenets of Islam as he needed to. He said he knew Muslims stoned their women for committing adultery, trained for terrorist attacks at fundamentalist madrassas, and believed in jihad, which Gentries described as the thing they used to justify killing infidels.

"All Muslims are at war with America, and I will resist any attempt to challenge that assertion with potentially illuminating facts," said Gentries, who threatened to leave the room if presented with the number of Muslims who live peacefully in the United States, serve in the country's armed forces, or were victims themselves of the 9/11 attacks. "Period."

Read full article....

US Culture: A Burned Mosque Site Far from New York City

CBS News reports:

Federal officials are investigating a fire that started overnight at the site of a new Islamic center in a Nashville [Tennessee] suburb.

Ben Goodwin of the Rutherford County Sheriff's Department confirmed to CBS Affiliate WTVF that the fire, which burned construction equipment at the future site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, is being ruled as arson....

US Politics & Religion: A Way Forward on and beyond the Islamic Cultural Centre (Ezell)

The chair of the center's planning committee, Essim Fathy, said he drove to the site at around 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning after he was contacted by the sheriff's department.

"Our people and community are so worried of what else can happen," said Fathy. "They are so scared."

The fire was smoldering by the time Fathy and the center's imam, Ossama Bahloul, had arrived. Fathy was told that responders had smelled gasoline near the fire....

Digging had begun at the site, which was planned as a place of worship for the approximately 250 Muslim families in the Murfreesboro area, but no structure had been built yet, according to Saleh Sbenaty, a member of the planning committee and a professor of engineering technology at Middle Tennessee State University.

"This is a shock," said Sbenaty. "We've had small act of vandals. But this is going to be a crime and whoever did it, they should be punished to the full extent of the law."

The center had operated for years out of a small business suite. Planning members said the new building, which was being constructed next to a church, would help accommodate the area's growing Muslim community.

"We unfortunately did not experience hostilities for the 30 years we've been here and have only seen the hostility since approval of the site plan for the new center," said Sbenaty.

Opponents of a new Islamic center say they believe the mosque will be more than a place of prayer; they are afraid the 15-acre site that was once farmland will be turned into a terrorist training ground for Muslim militants bent on overthrowing the U.S. government.

"They are not a religion. They are a political, militaristic group," Bob Shelton, a 76-year-old retiree who lives in the area, told The Associated Press.

Shelton was among several hundred demonstrators who recently wore "Vote for Jesus" T-shirts and carried signs that said "No Sharia law for USA!," referring to the Islamic code of law.

Others took their opposition further, spray painting a sign announcing the "Future site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro" and tearing it up....

US Special: America's Legacy of Torture

On Thursday, The New York Times published the editorial "A Legacy of Torture":

The Bush administration insisted that “enhanced interrogation techniques” — torture — were necessary to extract information from prisoners and keep Americans safe from terrorist attacks. Never mind that it was immoral, did huge damage to this country’s global standing and produced little important intelligence. Now, as we had feared, it is also making it much harder to try and convict accused terrorists.

The editorial continued:

Because federal judges cannot trust the confessions of prisoners obtained by intense coercion, they are regularly throwing out the government’s cases against Guantánamo Bay prisoners.

A new report prepared jointly by ProPublica and the National Law Journal showed that the government has lost more than half the cases where Guantánamo prisoners have challenged their detention because they were forcibly interrogated. In some cases the physical coercion was applied by foreign agents working at the behest of the United States; in other cases it was by United States agents.

Even in cases where the government later went back and tried to obtain confessions using “clean,” non-coercive methods, judges are saying those confessions too are tainted by the earlier forcible methods. In most cases, the prisoners have not actually walked free because the government is appealing the decisions. But the trend suggests that the government will continue to have a hard time proving its case even against those prisoners who should be detained.

Credit to the Times for not sheltering Torture within quotation marks and instead noting how the Bush Administration tried to hide it with the euphemism "enhanced interrogation". Credit for calling out the rationalisation/deception that it had produced significant intelligence and for mentioning that this was a moral transgression.

But this is an article that could and should have been written years ago. The legal complications were clear soon after the Guantanamo Bay detention facility was opened in 2002, after the "rendition" of detainees not only to Guantanamo but to "black sites" in countries in the Middle East and Eastern Europe was exposed (but often gingerly set aside), and after techniques such as waterboarding were revealed.

Even the specific information in the ProPublica study is not new. Andy Worthington, who has worked tirelessly for years to bring out the details on Guatanamo's legal minefield, has been keeping a running tally of the habeas corpus cases where prisoners were petitioning for their freedom. Latest score: Prisoners 38, US Government 15.

And the twists and turns of interrogation, torture, and trials are far from complete. Charlie Savage wrote in The New York Times this week:

After working for a year to redeem the international reputation of military commissions, Obama administration officials are alarmed by the first case to go to trial under revamped rules: the prosecution of a former child soldier whom an American interrogator implicitly threatened with gang rape.

The defendant, Omar Khadr, was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan and accused of throwing a grenade that killed an American soldier. Senior officials say his trial is undermining their broader effort to showcase reforms that they say have made military commissions fair and just....

Senior officials at the White House, the Justice Department and the Pentagon have agreed privately that it would be better to reach a plea bargain in the Khadr case so that a less problematic one would be the inaugural trial, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials. But the administration has not pushed to do so because officials fear, for legal and political reasons, that it would be seen as improper interference.

Mr. Khadr’s trial at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay started earlier in August but was put on a month-long hiatus because a lawyer got sick and collapsed in court. The pause has allowed the administration to consider the negative images the trial has already generated.

Chief among them are persistent questions about the propriety of prosecuting a child soldier. Moreover, in a blow to establishing an image of openness, the Pentagon sought to ban journalists who wrote about publicly known information that it decreed should be treated as secret.

The judge declined to suppress statements Mr. Khadr made after an Army interrogator sought to frighten him with a fabricated story about an Afghan youth who disappointed interrogators and was sent to an American prison where he died after a gang rape. In a pretrial hearing, the interrogator confirmed making that implicit threat, but the judge ruled it did not taint Mr. Khadr’s later confessions.

And prosecutors disqualified an officer from the jury because he said he agreed with President Obama that Guantánamo had compromised America’s values and international reputation.

So let's return to the "Legacy of Torture". While The New York Times should be credited for joining the recognition of the Bush Administration's wrongs --- which they got away with for so long in part because the media sometimes supported, often blinded itself to "enhanced interrogation" --- I can't help thinking that even this has a problem with priorities.

Certainly the failure to convict detainees is an outcome of the torture regime that began in 2002. But there are other outcomes that might be placed before, rather than after, this. In an editorial considering the "legal", perhaps the newspaper could have said that the Bush torture was --- beyond any doubt --- illegal.

And perhaps it could have put the "immoral" at the top of the list, especially because the "immoral" of this story has not been remedied and will not be remedied simply by bemoaning a Not Guilty verdict for someone who has spent years behind American bars.

US Politics: Glenn Beck on Martin Luther King "A Radical Socialist Icon"

Glenn Beck stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial today, 47 years to the day after Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington. He claimed to be reclaiming the "civil rights" that King pursued throughout his life. The organisers of the rally brought in King's niece to give an endorsement.

So what did Glenn Beck think in January of Martin Luther King? I've listened to this audio, of a conversation between Beck and his team on his radio programme, several times. I still can't quite --- even with the shrewdest editing --- make sense of what Beck is saying, as it verges on incoherence. However, what I think he is doing is trying to manipulate Martin Luther King into a poster boy for the "radicalised socialists" he believes are in charge of Washington.

But let's hold Beck to a simpler test: if he believes it is wrong to use the image of Martin Luther King to justify one's political agenda, what exactly was he doing in Washington DC today?

The audio begins with a statement by Julian Bond, a civil rights activist from the early 1960s to the present day:

*BOND: We don't remember the King who was the critic of capitalism is, who said...[to] Charles Fager when they were in jail together in Selma in 1965 that he thought a modified form of socialism would be the best system for the United States. We don't remember the Martin Luther King who talked ceaselessly about taking care of the masses and not just dealing with the people at the top of the ladder. So we've kind of anesthetized him. We've made him into a different kind of person than he actually was in life. And it may be that that's one reason he's so celebrated today because we celebrate a different kind of man than really existed. But he was a bit more radical. Not terribly, terribly radical but a bit more radical than we make him out to be today.*

US Video: Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech (1963)
US Politics: The Daily Show on Martin Luther King (1963) and Glenn Beck (2010)

GLENN: Okay. Hold on just a second.

PAT: Wow.

GLENN: This is and correct me if I'm wrong, America. Maybe I'm wrong. But I didn't think it was politically correct ever.

PAT: Oh, my, no.

GLENN: To say that Martin Luther King was a socialist. Ever. I believe this is the first time I've ever heard this from someone, you know, on the side of praising Dr. Martin Luther King. I've heard people say, oh, well, you know, he was a communist, he was a socialist.

PAT: FBI had files on him.

GLENN: Files on him! Okay, I've never heard this as praise for Martin Luther King.

PAT: No. Anybody who's ever said it has been beat down.

GLENN: Beat down. Beat down. Sarah, would you agree with that? Is that your recollection? Keith, is that your recollection? You've never heard anything like it?

SARAH: Absolutely.

GLENN: Right? Keith?

KEITH: Absolutely, yeah, this is a first.

GLENN: Got it. But listen to the words.

PAT: Wow.

GLENN: Listen to the words. We don't remember the King that was a critic of capitalism. That wanted a modified form of socialism, that thought it would be the best system for the United States, that talked ceaselessly about taking care of the masses and not just the people at the top of the ladder.

PAT: I have it again if you want to hear it in his words.

GLENN: Yeah, go ahead, yeah, yeah.

*BOND: We don't remember the King who was the critic of capitalism who said to Charles Fager when they were together in Selma in 1965 that he thought a modified form of socialism would be the best system for the United States. We don't remember the Martin Luther King who talked ceaselessly about taking care of the masses and not just dealing with the people at the top of the ladder. So we've kind of anesthetized to this.*

GLENN: Listen to this.

*BOND: We've made him into a different kind of person than he actually was in life. And it may be that that's one reason he is so celebrated today because we...*

GLENN: Stop. Stop! We celebrate a man that is different than the kind of man that really existed. And maybe that's why he's so celebrated. Do you hear this?

PAT: That's a total admission, that if Martin Luther King, if it got out that he was a socialist or a communist or what.

GLENN: He wouldn't be as celebrated.

PAT: He wouldn't be. Well, he wouldn't be.

GLENN: He wouldn't have been. Okay, so listen. So why in your wildest dreams would you do this? In your wildest dreams would the president or the chairman of the NAACP say that Martin Luther King was not terribly, terribly radical but more radical than we thought, basically a radical socialist? Why would you do that? A guy who we have combined George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. We've combined their birthdays, taken a holiday away from one of them and made it, you know, a double these two guys only deserve one day. Together, they can share it together, we'll call it President's Day. This is Martin Luther King day. Do you understand the icon that we have created? And then now to come out and say he was a radical socialist, this week, this week, this Martin Luther King holiday, why would you do that?

PAT: Hmmm.

GLENN: You are putting every chip up on the table....Why would you do that? Look what you're risking here. If radical socialism is discredited, you have then tainted the image of Martin Luther King. You have a holiday for a guy who, if America he just said, I think it's probably why we celebrate him the way we do now, because we're celebrating somebody who really didn't exist that way. He was different than that.

Now, they're either saying here, the left, that America is a radicalized, not terribly, terribly radicalized but a radicalized socialist nation and so we'll accept it now.

PAT: No.

GLENN: Or they're saying, well, that's just the way it is and I think this is probably more likely scenario that the president is under fire and we know that a radicalized socialist is a label that is going to be attached to this president and so we want to show you that a radicalized socialist is Martin Luther King and it's okay

PAT: He's got his own holiday. Right.

PAT: Perfectly fine.

GLENN: But if, if because now they are tying the fortunes of Barack Obama's policies to Martin Luther King. If radicalized socialism falls apart, what happens to the image of Martin Luther King? If America rejects that, will America be okay with a guy who I mean, the picture that is coming out of the White House to more and more people every day that these are radical socialists, some of them, Van Jones, a radical communist, that they believe in Chairman Mao. To quote Ron Bloom, power comes from the end of a gun. To quote Anita Dunn, my one of my favorite philosophers is Chairman Mao. If this is discredited, you've just put every chip you have on the table into the kitty....

Things are going to get extraordinarily difficult in America because I mean, I don't, I don't know what I don't know how to interpret this any other way. I don't know when it became politically okay to say that Martin Luther King was a radical socialist. You wouldn't even say that about President Obama. If I got on the air and said the guy is a radical socialist, which I do, they hammer me to death! Well, if it's okay that Martin Luther King was a radical socialist, why is it bad to say Barack Obama is a radical socialist? Am I reading this wrong?

PAT: I don't think so. I don't think so. We'll see.

GLENN: I'm waiting for another explanation. I...

PAT: We'll see what kind of fire, if any, Julian Bond comes under. I mean, if this is totally rejected

GLENN: No, no. Let's look for the kind of fire because this is, there are booby traps from the progressive left everywhere. I can't see the booby trap on this one, but maybe there is. There are booby traps everywhere. Let's see if I come under fire from the left for reporting Julian Bond and saying, okay, this is what he said, when did radicalized, not terribly, terribly radical, to quote Julian Bond but a radical socialist, when did that become acceptable in America? If we didn't celebrate, if he wouldn't have been as celebrated today had that news come out, when did it become okay and expect us to celebrate it today? Let's see how much fire I come under for asking that question. But look out, gang. These are the times that try men's souls. The left, look at the power arrayed with the unions and everybody else on the left. They are not going to let this one slide. They may pretend that they are being more moderate, but the uber left, if they are defending and using Martin Luther King as a radical socialist icon, they are not going to back away from socialism.

US Politics: Left-Wing Radio and the Rhetoric of Hate (Haddigan)

US Politics correspondent Lee Haddigan writes for EA:

Liberalism, as a political philosophy, has a proud tradition in the United States. Beginning with reform efforts to alleviate the hardships of industrial workers at the turn of the 20th  century, progressive politicians and activists have attempted to pursue policies over the last century that make the "American Dream" a realistic goal for all Americans. But, at the same time as advancing the notions of tolerance and equality in the United States, liberals have also shown a remarkable intolerance for dissent from their conservative opponents. A 19-page report recently issued by the conservative Media Research Center, The Real Radio Hatemongers: Left-Wing Radio Hosts’ Track Record of Vile and Vicious Rhetoric, provides the latest evidence that some liberals are as susceptible to making personal malicious attacks as their conservative adversaries.

US Politics: Glenn Beck on Martin Luther King “A Radical Socialist Icon”
US Politics: Can Obama and the Democrats Retain Control of Congress? (Haddigan)

Shortly after radio became a nationwide medium of communication in the 1920s, liberals began to attack conservatives for using it to spread a reactionary message of fear and "hate". They have tried to curb right-wing radio hosts, from the controversial "Radio Priest" Father Coughlin in the 1930s to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity today,  through federal regulations. 

The most important of these regulations was the "Fairness Doctrine". This required that every radio station, for a renewal of its licence by the Federal Communications Commission, had to include programming time for the discussion of controversial political issues, with a presentation of both sides of the topic.

Introduced by the liberal administration of President Truman in 1949, the Doctrine was revoked in 1985 by a FCC controlled by Reagan appointees, who argued it contravened the First Amendment right to free speech. In the interim, e President Kennedy and President Johnson had used the measure to blunt conservative criticisms over the airwaves of their policies. FCC enforcement eventually led to conservative Reverend Carl McIntire, in the 1970s, becoming the only radio broadcaster to lose his licence because of violations of the Doctrine. (McIntire attempted unsuccessfully to air Radio Free America from a "pirate" ship off the coast of New Jersey in 1973.)

Democrats have called for a reintroduction of the Fairness Doctrine. Former President Bill Clinton argued on a progressive radio show in 2009, "Well, you either ought to have the Fairness Doctrine or you ought to have more balance on the other side because essentially there has always been a lot of big money to support the right-wing talk shows."

Clinton articulated the longstanding fear of liberals that corporations, and tax-exempt foundations supported by corporations, were financing the Radical Right’s spurious attacks on progressive policies. His argument also drew on the disparity between liberal and conservative representation on national talk radio stations, with the right wing possessing a significant advantage in audience numbers. But, at the heart of liberal complaints against conservative radio hosts, from the thirties to today, is the contention that they foment discord in America with their "Toxic Talk: How the Radical Right Has Poisoned America’s Airwaves", the title of a new book by Bill Press.

Deep in the liberal psyche is the contention that the Radical Right, the so called fright-peddlers and hatemongers of the early 1960s, created the climate for the assassination of President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. The MRC report includes the contentious assertion of Mike Malloy (The Mike Malloy Show, August 26, 2009) on his sadness at the death of Ted Kennedy: “I remember feeling that way in 1963 and again in 1968, when his two brothers were murdered by the right-wing in this country.”

Liberals fear that the same fate awaits President Obama, a tragedy that Ed Schultz suggests some right-wing radio hosts would welcome: “Sometimes I think they want Obama to get shot. I do. I really think that there are conservative broadcasters in this country who would love to see Obama taken out.”

And, apparently, conservative talk radio does not confine itself to encouraging the murder of Presidents. Other bizarre claims made by Malloy include: Limbaugh and Beck want to see repeats of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing; Bill O’Reilly inspires the killing of doctors who provide abortions; and a security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington was killed because of the “poison” pumped out over the airwaves by conservative broadcasters. On a show last September, Malloy declared, "Glenn Beck rails against census workers, and inspires his people to go out and kill one for sport.” And not only did Beck galvanize the murderer, he welcomed the atrocity: “I will guarantee you that O’Reilly and Beck and the rest of these monsters on the neo-fascist right love this stuff. It gives them something else to talk about. It’s sport.”

Liberal radio hosts do not limit themselves to alleging that right-wing figures whip up hate. They also engage in personal attacks on conservatives, some of which contain material that, if aired by Glenn Beck, would lead to his instant dismissal by Fox News. Malloy in October 2008 argued that Michele Bachmann, a Republican Congresswoman from Minnesota, is a “hatemonger” who “would have gladly rounded up the Jews in Germany and shipped them off to death camps. She’s the type of person who would have had no problem sending typhoid-smeared blankets to Native American families awaiting deportation to reservations.” Molloy concluded, “This is an evil bitch from hell. I mean, just an absolute evil woman.”

But even that invective pales compared to Montel Williams almost a year ago when he urged Bachmann, “So, Michele, slit your wrist! Go ahead!  I mean, you know, why not? I mean, if you want to – or, you know, do us all a better thing. Move that knife up about two feet. I mean, start right at the collarbone.”

As the most prominent of conservative radio broadcasters, Rush Limbaugh receives most of the vitriol aired by some liberal radio hosts. Malloy has hoped “that Rush Limbaugh will choke to death on his own throat fat”. A parody song for the Randi Rhodes Show in May included the verse, “He’s a fat conservative butthead/Sick Republican sleazeball/Fearmongering scumbag/Egotistical asswipe/Mean-spirited, hog-wallowing, fat conservative putz/With the face of ahorse’s ass/Mega dildos, Rush!” Hardly the way to build a bridge to tolerance and respect for the differing political philosophies in the United States.

Of course, Rush Limbaugh has no interest in helping foster a spirit of bi-partisanship. The liberal media watchdog group, Media Matters for America, features a link to the "Limbaugh Watch". The site also contains extensive scrutiny (and easily accessed archives) of the misinformation presented in media appearances by Glenn Beck and other conservative broadcasters.

On the other side, the conservative Media Research Centre was founded five years ago to counter what it claimed was a liberal media bias on network news shows. Though not as easily searchable as Media Matters, the MRC website offers extensive evidence for the conservative lament that the media is controlled by liberals, a complaint that dates back to the years of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

As befits the importance of a free media to a healthy democracy, both these sites illustrate by contrast that political debate can be vigorous in the United States. Since the days of Roosevelt’s "fireside chats", however, liberals have been successful in portraying themselves as the responsible and principled political persuasion, opposed by a hatemongering and rabid right wing. Conservatives, understandably, resent their marginalization as the purveyors of extremism and react in a less than civil manner.

The truth is that, for all the instances of red-baiting in America (which continues today with the claims Obama is a socialist), there are similar occurrences of brown-baiting --- comparing conservatives to fascists --- by liberals. In fact, a credible argument can be made that McCarthyism was the result of an enraged conservative minority retaliating against attempts by liberals during World War II to smear all right-wing isolationists as fascist traitors. Until liberals realise that they are part of the reason for the current incivility in political discussion, there appears little likelihood that the nature and tone of debate will change in the United States.