Right-Wing Bigotry Explodes

If there is one thing we have seen this week it is the fact that the radical right-wing media machine is still extremely racist and Islamophobic. Within hours of the Boston Marathon bombings, right-wing blogs and main-stream media outlets began spewing out their willfully false bigoted speculation about the attackers. Well before the identities of the brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were ever known by law enforcement.

Of course Rupert Murdock’s media outlets, Fox News and the New York Post, were ahead of the pack in their assaults on in general Muslims, Arabs, dark skinned people, and immigrants. Glenn Beck, Brietbart.com, World Net Daily, and Infowars.com all promoted similar bogus conspiracy theories about President Obama whisking away Saudi’s or Moroccan’s in black helicopters just hours after the bombings. Obviously, all part of a secret false flag operation Obama and the top pentagon brass planned for years. How else could Obama declare Marshall Law, send the U.S.military into our streets, and confiscate all our guns?

Oh wait, the government did declare Martial Law and send the military into the streets of Boston, yet they let us keep our guns? Hmmm?  As Meat Loaf likes to say, “two out of three ain’t bad”?  Certainly two out of three is enough to draw vast unsubstantiated conclusions for the Agenda 21/New World Order conspiracy nuts, also known as the current Republican Party.

It turns out that the bombers actually are Muslim. They’re just not dark skinned or from the Middle East. One answer for that came from Texas Republican Representative Louie Gohmert who suggested Muslims were being “trained to act like Hispanic[s]“.

“We know Al Qaeda has camps over with the drug cartels on the other side of the Mexican border,” he said Wednesday on C-Span. “We know that people that are now being trained to come in and act like Hispanic [sic] when they are radical Islamists. We know these things are happening.”

The fact that the brothers are Caucasian (literally from the Caucasus’s) and came into the U.S. in 2002 from Russia and Chechnya, as political refugees, hasn’t stopped the right-wing attacks on dark skinned men and women from the Middle East and Latin America.  Go figure?

Even the extremists Islamic jihadists from the Caucasus’ disavowed any association with our two young Boston bombers, the Tsarnaev brothers. According to a recent Wall Street Journal report,  A jihadist website linked to an Islamist movement founded by a leading Chechen militant posted a statement Sunday that said the group bears no responsibility for the Boston Marathon bombing. “The Caucasian Mujahadeen are not fighting with the United States of America. We are at war with Russia…”  That’s because the U.S. hates what the Russians are doing in Chechnya much like the Caucasian Mujahadeen.

While we don’t know the full story of the brothers yet, it seems more and more evident that the Boston Marathon brothers were essentially acting as “lone wolves”. Yes, the bombers may have been inspired by Al Qaeda websites and rhetoric. However, they do not appear to be members of any known right-wing Islamic extremist organization.

What we do know about the Boston Marathon bombers is that both their family members and their local Mosque rejected the extremist views of the eldest brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. In fact, just three months ago, Tamerlan was kicked out of the local mosque because the imam mentioned Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a sermon. While I’m not a psychologist, this rejection leads me to the lone wolves conclusions. Nonetheless, the right-wing continues their attacks on dark skinned people and Muslims in general with broad sweeping allegations of evildoing.

It just so happens we had a second domestic terrorist attack in the U.S. this week. Kevin Curtis allegedly sent Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker and President Obama ricin laced letters. While Glenn Beck was stoking the flames of bigotry this week toward Arabs over the Boston Marathon bombings, at the same time the right-wing bigot machine was quick to label the White homegrown gun-owning Christian terrorist’s behavior as “mindboggling”.

As the two domestic terrorists stories unfold in the upcoming weeks it will be important to note the disparate narratives the media will tell of the two accounts. Unlike the Tsarnaev brothers, the right-wing will find ever excuse in the world to send Curtis off to the loony bin without ever deeply examining the roots of Curtis’ political ideology, support for gun ownership, belief in common right-wing anti-government conspiracy theories, and most importantly his devotional belief in Jesus Christ.

While members of both the Curtis and Tsarnaev families talk about their deranged relatives having mental illness issues, the Tsarnaev’s religious beliefs will clearly become the overwhelming narrative around for the Boston Marathon bombing. As for the Curtis case, most likely religion will become a non-issue. And while the religious bias will be most obvious in the right-wing main-stream media and blogging community, we should not be surprised if the same bigoted narrative plays out in rest of the main-stream media outlets.

 

UPDATE: Charges were dropped against Kevin Curtis on Tuesday, April 23,2013.

The Pipe Burst

The pipe burst, showering
the bathroom with scalding water.
Forcing me to flee naked into the cold.
I quickly grabbed a bathrobe,
and an old dim flashlight,
to scurry under the house,
and turn off the main valve.
Covered in mud in the dark,
I found myself looking at stars,
the blueness of the sky,
and the violet hue of sunrise,
silhouetting the mountain range.
The smell of coffee wafted outside,
as a pan faced barn owl swept by.

Adrienne Rich: RIP 1929 – 2012

(This article is a work in progress. Over the next couple days I will add to this posting.)

 

A poem by Adrienne Rich, from her collection “The School Among the Ruins”.

To Have Written the Truth

To have spent hours stalking the whine of an insect

have smashed its body in blood on a door

then lain sleepless with rage

To have played in the ship’s orchestra crossing

the triangle route

dissonant arpeggios under cocktail clatter

to have written the truth in a lightning flash

then crushed those words in your hand

balled-up and smoking

with self-absolution

easygoing pal of youth

leans in the doorframe

Kid, you always

took yourself so hard!

2003

by Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich often wrote about death and the human condition. Shortly after her divorce, her husband committed suicide. During this time in her life, Rich became an outspoken feminist and anti-war activist. Yet, when I read her poems, I also feel like Rich is in someway acting like a psychologist trying to work out human pathologies.

In 2005 I was among one hundred fans crammed into a tiny bookstore in Marin, California, to listen to the 76-year-old poet rail against the “War on Terrorism” and the U.S. Government in general. In between her sharp criticism, she would read a poem or two, and then go back into her outrage with U.S. policies, covering a wide rage of issues. Yet, throughout the lecture and reading, Rich maintained a stillness and confidence which made her passionate performance not one of anger, but one of a combination of stirring intellect, honestly, and raw emotion. It was amazing how a 76-year-old woman can awaken an audience of all ages, simply with her words.

According to Poets.com:

“In 1997, she refused the National Medal of Arts, stating that “I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House because the very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration.” She went on to say: “[Art] means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage.”"

Adrienne was the best example of a poet that lived her life believing, and proving, she could say and do anything and no one was going to hold her back.  Rich was an activist, poet, and inspiration to many. RIP, Master Poet Adrienne Rich.

David Duke linked to Hitler Banker guy

I’m just looking deeper into the edited right-wing  link I provided to the “Hitler Banker” video and am finding the KKK, David Duke’s fingerprints all over this!!  The last minutes of this video is now been further edited, that minutes that record the OWS activists chant, “Go Away” and “Nobody wants your hate.”

This video is provided byFreespeach86. This is a site created by David Duke!!

http://www.youtube.com/user/Freespeech86

I will write an articles about this tomorrow.

Palestinian Statehood: The Bid

 Originally published at the Daily Censored for Project Censored.

This past week, President Barack Obama gave a speech at the 66^th gathering of United Nations General Assembly. In part, the speech focused on his attempt to deny the Palestinians their right to U.N recognized statehood. Obama stated, “I am convinced that there is no shortcut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades. Peace is hard work. Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations. If it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now. Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians who must live side by side. Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians, not us, who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them, on borders and on security, on refugees and Jerusalem.”

What Obama didn’t mention is that Israel was created by the United Nations. Repeatedly, Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have voiced disapproval of Palestian’s bid for U.N. recognition of statehood. There essential argument has been, only through negotiations can there be a peaceful resolution to the ongoing conflict. While that might be true, why block the Palestinian’s bid for U.N. recognition of statehood? (More on this question later in the series).

Prime Minster Netanyahu repeated Obama’s point about negotiations during his recent General Assembly speech: “The status of the settlements will be decided only in negotiations.  But we must also be honest.  So I am saying today something that should be said publicly by anyone serious about peace.  In any peace agreement that ends the conflict, some settlements will end up beyond Israel’s borders.  The precise delineation of those borders must be negotiated.  We will be very generous on the size of a future Palestinian state. But as President Obama said, the border will be different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967.”

While I agree negotiations will eventually bring this conflict to an end, haven’t the Palestinians and Israeli’s been negotiating, all be it on and off, for decades now? Why has peace been so allusive? Netanyahu asks that same question in his speech: “So why has peace not been achieved?  Because so far, the Palestinians have been unwilling to accept a Palestinian state, if it meant accepting a Jewish state alongside it.

You see, our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It has always been about the existence of the Jewish state. This is what this conflict is about.  In 1947, the United Nations voted to partition the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews said yes.  The Palestinians said no.  In recent years, the Palestinians twice refused generous offers by Israeli Prime Ministers, to establish a Palestinian state on virtually all the territory won by Israel in the Six Day War”.

Not surprisingly, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas believes there is a different reason for the ongoing conflict. Here is an excerpt from Abbas’ General Assembly speech as he explains why peace has remained allusive: “The core issue here is that the Israeli government refuses to commit to terms of reference for the negotiations that are based on international law and United Nations resolutions, and that it frantically continues to intensify building of settlements on the territory of the State of Palestine.

Settlement activities embody the core of the policy of colonial military occupation of the land of the Palestinian people and all of the brutality of aggression and racial discrimination against our people that this policy entails.”

So to summarize, Netanyahu claims peace has been allusive because the Palestinians refuse Israel’s right to exist and have “refused generous offers” to negotiate a peace settlement. Abbas, on the other than, states Israel “refuses to commit to terms of reference” and “continues to intensify building of settlements.”

Unfortunately for Netanyahu, both of his points fail to hold up under close inspection. First of all, ever since 1988, the PLO and the Palestinian Authority have recognized Israel’s right to exist. The fact is, the Palestinian Authority, with Abbas as President, is the official representatives of the Palestinians living in the Occupied Territory. Therefore, the Palestinian government has recognized Israel’s right to exists.

Certainly, the shamefully militant religious and political Islamic organizations like Hamas have openly questioned Israel’s right to exist. That said, there are militant religious and political Jewish organizations, living in illegal settlements, that do not believe the Palestinians Arabs have a right to exist. Neither Hamas nor the racist illegal settlements are recognized as the legitimate governments of Palestine and Israel respectively.

The second point is a little trickier. Who is telling the truth? Netanyahu claims Israel have made “generous offers” and the Palestinians have refused. All the while Abbas claims Israel “refuses to commit to terms of reference.”

For decades now, Netanyahu and the pro-Israeli lobby have claimed they have made concession after concession and the Palestinians keep walking away from the table. The truth is, over the last twenty plus years, the U.S. and Israel has done everything they can to stall the “peace process” (which had not resulted in peace) and prevent a two-state solution (which would establish Palestinian statehood).

For example, in 1989, the UN General Assembly resolution titled Question of Palestine, called for “the withdrawal of Israel to the 1967 borders” passed by a vote of 153 to 3. The only dissenting were the U.S., Israel, and the island state of Dominica. Then, in 2004, the General Assembly resolution titled Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine called for “the necessity for a commitment to the vision of the two-State solution” and “the withdrawal of Israel from the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.” This passed by a vote of 160 to 6. This time the dissenting votes came from the U.S., Israel, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Palau, and Uganda.

Besides the fact that the U.S. and Israel has blocked every General Assembly resolution calling for a two-State solution, the whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks and the Guardian have revealed a treasure trove of classified U.S. State Department and Palestinian documents that have exposed an astonishing amount of concessions the Palestinians have offered, over the last twenty plus years. According to the Guardian, the extraordinary concessions the PLO were willing to make included:

“As well as the annexation of all East Jerusalem settlements except Har Homa, the Palestine papers show PLO leaders privately suggested swapping part of the flashpoint East Jerusalem Arab neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah for land elsewhere.

Most controversially, they also proposed a joint committee to take over the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City – the neuralgic issue that helped sink the Camp David talks in 2000 after Yasser Arafat refused to concede sovereignty around the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques.

The offers were made in 2008-9, in the wake of George Bush’s Annapolis conference, and were privately hailed by the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, as giving Israel “the biggest Yerushalayim [the Hebrew name for Jerusalem] in history” in order to resolve the world’s most intractable conflict. Israeli leaders, backed by the US government, said the offers were inadequate.”

The Palestine papers expose a vast contradiction in what Netanyahu and the pro-Israeli lobby has been saying, and what has actually been going on behind closed doors at the negotiating table. However, the Palestine papers support Abbas’ assertion that Israel “refuses to commit to terms of reference”.

Last week, the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, declared, “I support … the statehood of Palestinians, an independent, sovereign state of Palestine. It has been long overdue”. This position seems to be overwhelmingly supported by the general public in both Israel and Palestine.

According to a joint Israeli/Palestinian poll published in the Jerusalem Post, nearly 70% of Israeli’s believe Israel should support the Palestinians bid for U.N. recognition of statehood. In the Occupied Territories of Palestine the support for statehood shoots up to over 80%.

This week, the U.S. is putting pressure on fellow U.N Security Council members to reject the Palestinians bid for U.N. recognitions of statehood. The U.S. Congress has been working on several pieces of legislation to punish nations that support Palestinian recognition of statehood. However, a Security Council veto will not prevent the Palestinians from moving forward in their bid for statehood. Going through the motions, if a problem (like a veto) occurs in the Security Council, the Palestinians can evoke the “Uniting for Peace Resolution” which will bring the vote for Palestinian statehood to the full General Assembly. According to a number of polls, including one from the Financial Times, the Palestinians have roughly 170 votes in the General Assembly. This is more than enough to achieve the two-thirds votes needed to win approval.

Hurricane Dean

Freelance writer of essays, news articles, short-stories, and poems. Environmental and human rights activist.