Assalamualaikum warahmatullah...
Forwarded by a friend.
A very nice article. Was written by a jew. I think it's a fair point of
view. Happy reading.
To MODERATORS, please delete if this is a double posting.
Wassalamualaikum warahmatullah....
_________________________________________________
Assalamualaaikum...
Even an honest, atheist Jew know the truth and defend it. What does it take
to educate/dicipline a Pope? A God's smack on the face?
Muhammad's sword
Pope Benedict XVI in the service of George W. Bush
By Uri Avner
09/24/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Since the days when Roman
emperors threw Christians to the lions, the relations between the emperors
and the heads of the church have undergone many changes.
Constantine the Great, who became emperor in the year 306 - exactly 1700
years ago - encouraged the practice of Christianity in the empire, which
included Palestine. Centuries later, the church split into an Eastern
(Orthodox) and a Western (Catholic) part. In the West, the Bishop of Rome,
who acquired the title of Pope, demanded that the emperor accept his
superiority.
The struggle between the emperors and the popes played a central role in
European history and divided the peoples. It knew ups and downs. Some
emperors dismissed or expelled a pope, some popes dismissed or
excommunicated an emperor. One of the emperors, Henry IV, "walked to
Canossa", standing for three days barefoot in the snow in front of the
Pope's castle, until the Pope deigned to annul his excommunication.
But there were times when emperors and popes lived in peace with each
other. We are witnessing such a period today. Between the present Pope,
Benedict XVI, and the present emperor, George Bush II, there exists a
wonderful harmony. Last week's speech by the Pope, which aroused a
worldwide storm, went well with Bush's crusade against "Islamofascism", in
the context of the "clash of civilizations".
In his lecture at a German university, the 265th Pope described what he
sees as a huge difference between Christianity and Islam: while
Christianity is based on reason, Islam denies it. While Christians see the
logic of God's actions, Muslims deny that there is any such logic in the
actions of Allah.
As a Jewish atheist, I do not intend to enter the fray of this debate. It
is much beyond my humble abilities to understand the logic of the Pope. But
I cannot overlook one passage, which concerns me too, as an Israeli living
near the fault-line of this "war of civilizations".
In order to prove the lack of reason in Islam, the Pope asserts that the
Prophet Muhammad ordered his followers to spread their religion by the
sword. According to the Pope, that is unreasonable, because faith is born
of the soul, not of the body. How can the sword influence the soul?
To support his case, the Pope quoted - of all people - a Byzantine emperor,
who belonged, of course, to the competing Eastern Church. At the end of the
14th century, Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus told of a debate he had - or so
he said (its occurrence is in doubt) - with an unnamed Persian Muslim
scholar. In the heat of the argument, the emperor (according to himself)
flung the following words at his adversary:
Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find
things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword
the faith he preached.
These words give rise to three questions: (a) Why did the Emperor say them?
(b) Are they true? (c) Why did the present Pope quote them?
When Manuel II wrote his treatise, he was the head of a dying empire. He
assumed power in 1391, when only a few provinces of the once illustrious
empire remained. These, too, were already under Turkish threat.
At that point in time, the Ottoman Turks had reached the banks of the
Danube. They had conquered Bulgaria and the north of Greece, and had twice
defeated relieving armies sent by Europe to save the Eastern Empire. On 29
May 1453, only a few years after Manuel's death, his capital,
Constantinople (the present Istanbul), fell to the Turks, putting an end to
the empire that had lasted for more than a thousand years.
During his reign, Manuel made the rounds of the capitals of Europe in an
attempt to drum up support. He promised to reunite the church. There is no
doubt that he wrote his religious treatise in order to incite the Christian
countries against the Turks and convince them to start a new crusade. The
aim was practical, theology was serving politics.
In this sense, the quote serves exactly the requirements of the present
Emperor, George Bush II. He, too, wants to unite the Christian world
against the mainly Muslim "Axis of Evil". Moreover, the Turks are again
knocking on the doors of Europe, this time peacefully. It is well known
that the Pope supports the forces that object to the entry of Turkey into
the European Union.
Is there any truth in Manuel's argument?
The pope himself threw in a word of caution. As a serious and renowned
theologian, he could not afford to falsify written texts. Therefore, he
admitted that the Qur'an specifically forbade the spreading of the faith by
force. He quoted the second Sura, Verse 256 (strangely fallible, for a
pope, he meant Verse 257) which says: "There must be no coercion in matters
of faith."
How can one ignore such an unequivocal statement? The Pope simply argues
that this commandment was laid down by the Prophet when he was at the
beginning of his career, still weak and powerless, but that later on he
ordered the use of the sword in the service of the faith. Such an order
does not exist in the Qur'an. True, Muhammad called for the use of the
sword in his war against opposing tribes - Christian, Jewish and others -
in Arabia, when he was building his state. But that was a political act,
not a religious one; basically a fight for territory, not for the spreading
of the faith.
Jesus said: "You will recognize them by their fruits." The treatment of
other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: how did the
Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the
power to "spread the faith by the sword"?
Well, they just did not.
For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become
Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian
Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The
Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived
at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian
faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained
devoutly Christian.
True, the Albanians did convert to Islam, and so did the Bosniaks. But
nobody argues that they did this under duress. They adopted Islam in order
to become favourites of the government and enjoy the fruits.
In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and
Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle Jesus. At
that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by the Muslims,
Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout this long
period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the
expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did the majority of the
inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith - and
they were the forefathers of most of today's Palestinians.
There no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As
is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like
of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets
like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim
Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian,
Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek
philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How
would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the "spreading of
the faith by the sword"?
What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics
reconquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious
terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to
become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And where did the hundreds
of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape? Almost all
of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Sephardi
("Spanish") Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the
west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire)
in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew
nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the auto-da-fe,
the pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in almost all
Christian countries, up to the Holocaust.
Why? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the "peoples of
the book". In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and
Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal rights, but almost. They
had to pay a special poll tax, but were exempted from military service - a
trade-off that was quite welcome to many Jews. It has been said that Muslim
rulers frowned upon any attempt to convert Jews to Islam even by gentle
persuasion - because it entailed the loss of taxes.
Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep
sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for fifty
generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many
times "by the sword" to get them to abandon their faith.
The story about "spreading the faith by the sword" is an evil legend, one
of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars against the
Muslims - the reconquista of Spain by the Christians, the Crusades and the
repulsion of the Turks, who almost conquered Vienna. I suspect that the
German Pope, too, honestly believes in these fables. That means that the
leader of the Catholic world, who is a Christian theologian in his own
right, did not make the effort to study the history of other religions.
Why did he utter these words in public? And why now?
There is no escape from viewing them against the background of the new
Crusade of Bush and his evangelist supporters, with his slogans of
"Islamofascism" and the "global war on terror" - when "terrorism" has
become a synonym for Muslims. For Bush's handlers, this is a cynical
attempt to justify the domination of the world's oil resources. Not for the
first time in history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of
economic interests; not for the first time, a robbers' expedition becomes a
Crusade.
The speech of the Pope blends into this effort. Who can foretell the dire
consequences?
Uri Avnery is an Israeli author and activist. He is the head of the Israeli
peace movement, "Gush Shalom". http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en
--------------------------------------------------------------------
U.S. Gets 'Sovietized'
By Eric Margolis
09/24/06 "Toronto Sun" -- -- In the late 1980s, I was the first western
journalist allowed into the world's most dreaded prison, Moscow's sinister
Lubyanka. Muscovites dared not even utter the name of KGB's headquarters,
calling it instead after a nearby toy store, "Detsky Mir."
I still shudder recalling Lubyanka's underground cells, grim interrogation
rooms, and execution cellars where tens of thousands were tortured and
shot. I sat at the desk from which the monsters who ran Cheka (Soviet
secret police) — Dzerzhinsky, Yagoda, Yezhov, Beria — ordered 30 million
victims to their deaths.
Prisoners taken in the dead of night to Lubyanka were systematically beaten
for days with rubber hoses and clubs. There were special cold rooms where
prisoners could be frozen to near death. Sleep deprivation was a favourite
and most effective Cheka technique. So was near-drowning in water fouled
with urine and feces.
I recall these past horrors because of what this column has long called the
gradual "Sovietization" of the United States. This shameful week, it became
clear Canada is also afflicted.
We have seen America's president and vice president, sworn to uphold the
Constitution, advocating some of the same interrogation techniques the KGB
used at the Lubyanka. They apparently believe beating, freezing, sleep
deprivation and near-drowning are necessary to prevent terrorist attacks.
So did Stalin.
The White House insisted that anyone — including Americans — could be
kidnapped and tried in camera using "evidence" obtained by torturing other
suspects. Bush & Co. deny the U.S. uses torture but reject the basic law of
habeaus corpus and U.S. laws against the evil practice. The UN says Bush's
plans violate international law and the Geneva Conventions.
This week's tentative agreement between Bush and Congress may somewhat
limit torture, but exempts U.S. officials from having to observe the Geneva
Convention.
Canadians had a shocking view of similar creeping totalitarianism as the
full horror of Maher Arar's persecution was revealed. Thanks to false
information from the RCMP, the U.S. arrested a Canadian citizen and sent
him to Syria. Arab states and Pakistan were being used by the Bush
administration for outsourced torture. Syria denies the charges.
Suspects were kidnapped by the U.S., often on the basis of faulty
information or lies, then sent to Arab states to be tortured until they
confessed. The apparent objective of this "rendition" program? To find a
few kernels of useful information. The Cheka and East Germany's Stasi used
the same practice.
I never thought I'd see the United States — champion of human rights and
rule of law — legislating torture and Soviet-style kangaroo tribunals. I
never thought I'd see Congress and a majority of Americans supporting such
police state measures. Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln must be turning
in their graves.
To me, Canada has always been a haven of moderation, decency, and rule of
law — until the Maher Arar affair shockingly showed this country could also
quickly fall into police state behaviour.
Arar's despicable treatment by Canada and the U.S. was the result of a U.S.
witch hunt, plus anti-Muslim racism, stupidity, bureaucratic cowardice and
incompetence.
We saw Ottawa aiding the outrageous persecution of its citizens, and the
U.S. shamefully refusing to aid the Arar inquiry.
Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who authorized Arar's arrest,
should face justice for this and many other malfeasances. The current U.S.
Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, who denied the Bush administration was
responsible for Arar's abduction and torture, should be ashamed.
Canada must demand a thorough U.S. investigation, apology, and guarantee
Canadians will never again become victims of such state-run criminal
activity. It's time for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to advise his new
best friends in Washington that Canada is not a banana republic.
Officials directly involved in the most sordid, disgraceful case in
Canada's modern history, must face justice. They are as much guilty as the
torturers who beat Maher Arar mercilessly for 10 months.
Copyright Toronto Sun
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Scheer: Rendering Unto Syria
Posted on Sep 19, 2006 (
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060919_robert_scheer_rendering_unto_syria/
)
By Robert Scheer
What an outrage for the president to invoke the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights in his address to the United Nations, a day after a Canadian
government commission accused the U.S. of rendering a Canadian to Syria for
torture. Did no one on his staff inform the president that Article 5 of
that declaration explicitly states, "No one shall be subjected to torture
or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment"?
For those, like Bush, who regard torture as a variant of college fraternity
hazing, it would be instructive to consider the fate of Maher Arar as
revealed in that devastating Canadian judicial report released on Monday.
Arar, a Canadian citizen and engineer who had fled repressive Syria two
decades earlier as a teenager, was seized by the FBI at JFK Airport and
"rendered" to the government of Syria for nearly a year of being whipped
with a "shredded electrical cable until he was disoriented"—that is, when
he was not confined to his coffin-size cage.
The United States transported Arar to the very same Syria which Bush has
been condemning since his first days in office, and as he did again on
Tuesday, calling Syria "a crossroad for terrorism." So, will anyone in that
somnambulant White House press corps dare ask the president why he would
turn over a prisoner to such a government? And an innocent one at that?
Yes, innocent. On Monday, the Canadian justice who headed a 30-month
investigation of this case concluded: "I am able to say categorically that
there is no evidence that Mr. Arar has committed any offense." The judge
employed characteristic Canadian restraint in concluding in his damning
three-volume, 822-page report that "The American authorities who handled
Mr. Arar's case treated Mr. Arar in a most regrettable fashion. They
removed him to Syria against his wishes and in the face of his statements
that he would be tortured if sent there. Moreover they dealt with Canadian
officials involved with Mr. Arar's case in a less than forthcoming manner."
To put it a bit more bluntly: U.S. officials lied to their Canadian
counterparts and never revealed that Arar was "rendered" to Syria precisely
to be tortured.
In fact, the outsourcing of torture, as Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.)
exposes so brilliantly on his website, has been the official and
all-too-common practice of this president since 9/11. Foreign nationals
have been stolen off the streets of even close democratic allies of the
United States and sent to be tortured by regimes otherwise branded as
fascist by this president.
Yet even the highly skilled and practiced torturers in Syria concluded that
the Canadian engineer was totally innocent. Since no one in this
administration has seen fit to apologize to Mr. Arar, or his government,
are we to conclude that they feel the Syrian torturers failed to find
evidence of guilt because they were too restrained in their techniques? We
are not likely to find out if Congress and the media continue to ignore the
frightening descent of this presidency into barbarism.
The epic copout behind all this, of course, is that national security after
9/11 requires the shredding of America's reputation for treating liberty as
sacred. The argument is that while errors may occur when you cast a wide
net—the U.S. currently is holding, according to an Associated Press report
last week, more than 14,000 uncharged foreign nationals in unregulated
military prisons around the world—these horrendous tactics are needed to
nab the truly bad actors.
That, in effect, is the argument advanced by the president in his press
conference last week defending the efficacy, indeed the necessity, of
inhuman practices as proscribed in Article Three of the Geneva Convention.
Burbling with his standard unwarranted optimism, Bush cited what he claimed
to be the excellent results of the interrogation of alleged 9/11 mastermind
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has been held prisoner in secret locations for
the past three years.
But according to the reports of the 9/11 Commission and the Senate
Intelligence Committee, what has been learned from the interrogation of
Khalid and other "key witnesses" is that there was nothing but enmity
between bin Laden's gang and the regime of Saddam Hussein. Despite up to
five years of torture, it seems that those key witnesses still did not tell
the Bush administration what it wanted to hear. Perhaps they should have
been rendered to some other nation with a richer tradition in such
investigative techniques.
1
Comments (total: 31)
Comment #24960 by jmkoch on 9/22 at 1:57 pm
The Maher Arar case would not faze Bush supporters. The guy was
Arab. Isn't that "probable cause." What rights? Better safe than
sorry.
Conservatives wail against "caring more about rights of terrorists
than the safety of Americans." They see no problem in presuming that
whoever gets detained is a likely or potential terrorist. They
imagine an Osama bin Laden look alike in a cell. Or any Muslim who
travels, talks funny, or fails to praise Israel also qualifies. The
waterboard or electrode treatment serve as due punishment, even if
the accompanying interrogation yields only shrieks and phony leads.
It's a visceral act of revenge against "those people" for 9/11.
Of the 39% of US voters who actually turn out to vote in November,
perhaps a decisive 51% (20% of the population) do support torture,
and that is all W needs.
Comment #24879 by Pat on 9/22 at 5:05 am
re Comment #24812 by Derek on 9/21 - "America cannot export
democracy, freedom and liberty abroad if it is abandoned at home."
Amen man! You've got that right! To claim to be exporting democracy
at the point of a gun while taking away your own people's freedoms is
purest hypocrisy.
re Comment #24836 by Dan Noel - "A PFC may talk under torture. So may
a sergeant. But a senior officer does not; he/she shuts up, or tells
plausible lies, or tells bits of truth that cannot possibly harm
his/her cause." ... "A prime example is president Bush, who has been
harassed by reporters, bloggers and liberals for years and yet still
misleads and lies compulsively."
Please tell me you don't truly believe what you just said!
1. Your statement assumes lower ranks would sing like canaries if
tortured but the brass are somehow immune to torture because they
have integrity? Does integrity and the ability to shrug off torture
come to an individual as an added bonus only when they achieve higher
rank or does it come as the result of demonstrated courage in the
face of actual danger as well as a good upbringing by loving parents
who instill good values? Exactly how much actual danger do most high
brass ever even face, being so far behind the actual fighting lines
and well protected by those selfsame lower ranks who do all the
actual fighting and dying? No offense intended man, but what a crock
of nonsense! Courage in the face of life threatening danger has zero
to do with rank!
2. Bush's questioning by reporters somehow equates to being immune
from torture? Balderdash! My sergeant husband has more courage in his
baby fingernail than Bush has in his entire body.
The president of Venezuela walks among his people without fear and
willingly faces tough questions, but your president Bush goes nowhere
without a small army of armed thugs, bomb-proof vehicles, and
anti-aircraft missiles parked on the roof of every building he stays
in. He's so 'brave' he can't even handle dissenting questioning, let
alone face actual danger. He lives perpetually in a bomb-proof glass
bubble world. Big brave President Bush? NOT!
The fact that someone has a star on their collar instead of a stripe
on their sleeve doesn't somehow make one braver or more immune to
torture! In my opinion, if genuine torturers got their hands on Bush
he'd be peeing his pants and begging to tell all he knows in 30
minutes. Why? Because bullies are notorious for their cowardice!
They're only brave when they have their gang to back them up. And as
for integrity...liars don't have any or they wouldn't be compulsive
liars now would they!
How many of America's top brass dragged America into a war with Iraq
on total lies? How few of those same big, brave, integrity-filled
brass stood up and called them on their lies? How many big brave
brass have the integrity of their convictions to be willing to stand
in the trenches with the foot soldiers they order to go fight other
foot soldiers? Zero! They and their kids are all home hiding out in
the National Guard while everyone else's kids are ordered to go face
the bullets.
The way America's leaders have constantly thrown their weight around
and threatened or attacked any country that doesn't toe the American
line shows that the vast majority of America's leaders for at least
the last half century have been nothing less than world-class
bullies! They've proved this over and over again by only attacking
countries that are clearly militarily weaker, even if they're
democracies (i.e. Lebanon), while sucking up to any dictators willing
to accept the same goals as America.
The American military leadership and the word integrity don't belong
in the same sentence. It's as much of a oxymoron as to equate George
Bush with the words 'great statesman'! I'm sure there are a few with
integrity but I'm also sure they're in the minority or America would
be in far fewer wars.
Comment #24836 by Dan Noel on 9/21 at 9:09 pm
If a top brass of the U.S. intelligence or military community was
ever captured and arrested by "the terrorists" and subject to
torture, would he/she talk? If so, what would be revealed? All the
state secrets in his/her possession? Perhaps information that has not
been asked? To think so is an insult to that individual's integrity.
A PFC may talk under torture. So may a sergeant. But a senior officer
does not; he/she shuts up, or tells plausible lies, or tells bits of
truth that cannot possibly harm his/her cause.
The same goes for terrorists. An idiot who is willing to explode with
his bomb may talk under torture, but will hardly say anything useful.
A top-level leader will not talk under torture, or will lead his
interrogators on false leads, or will talk too late for the
information to be valuable.
A prime example is president Bush, who has been harassed by
reporters, bloggers and liberals for years and yet still misleads and
lies compulsively.
Comment #24812 by Derek on 9/21 at 5:21 pm
America cannot export democracy, freedom and liberty abroad if it is
abandoned at home.
As a Christian, Bush should not have invaded Iraq nor should he be
subverting the conventions, laws and rules governing America and the
world.
Reverting to torture will make him no different from the terrorists!
Bush has sullied America's reputation for sure as he squandered the
goodwill following 9/11.
Bush and Company are perhaps the 'real' terrorists in our world.
Occupation and militarism does not win over anyone.
Conflict, violence and war are contrary to God and how He would have
us to live.
There is indeed a great need for dialogue of cultures, religions, and
peoples of our world if we are to avoid further conflict in the
Arab/Muslim Middle East.
Comment #24808 by Gary Kilner on 9/21 at 5:02 pm
Unfortunately, many Americans still do not appreciate or perceive the
clear and immediate danger that the neocons (aka neo-fascists)pose to
us and our entire way of life. They have a definite goal of
establishing a Corporate-American empire extending around the world.
The 9/11 WTC attack of which the Bush administration had been given
previous information before the attack followed by Bush's
"pre-emptive" attack on Iraq and the following occupation of Iraq are
manifestations of the PNAC imperial plans.
The neocons have the same philosophy as their soul-mates the Nazis
and the Soviets that the (their) end justifies the means, no matter
how horrific.
Comment #24719 by Twilighttime on 9/21 at 9:47 am
The neocons for whom Bush fronts are obsessed with torture. The
message they send with this insane behavior is to every nation and
person in the world--"thwart our corporate domination of thw rold and
we will destroy you in the most painful, degrading ways possible.
Fear us. Bow to us. We not only control you, we are your new
perverted god."
Comment #24678 by Sabreena Barton on 9/21 at 6:39 am
Everything about bush is regrettable! Mr. Bush fancies himself a
king it seems, and can see himself as doing no wrong. In his world
he the rich get richer, the poor have no value and therefore are
expendable. The military is for dying and those that can be pawned
off for torture should be. He is a despot and a criminal and should
be treated as such by the world. He has brought the U.S.A. to the
lowest regard the world has ever seen with his lies and double
standards. Who can believe such as he? He spies on and sets up the
torture of his own citizens. What do you expect him to do to those
of other coutries?
Sabreena Barton
Comment #24617 by R. A. Earl on 9/20 at 9:34 pm
As Dave and K. Allen reported earlier, the RCMP, yup, those
scarlet-jacketed images of John Wayne-type honesty, morality and
sense of fair play, apparently LIED THROUGH THEIR TEETH to American
authorities which resulted in the deportation and torturing of Arar.
And now the Commissioner of the RCMP won't comment to the public who
pays him and his fellow conpirators.
The RCMP should be censured by the Government of Canada and
substantial compensation paid to Arar… money which should come from
the POCKETS of those officers and officials who LIED. Then those
involved should be dishonorably dismissed.
When public officials lie to the public either by omission or
commission, they should be arrested, charged, tried and, if
convicted, sentenced to a minimum of 25 years. It is intolerable for
the public in a democracy to be lied to by their pulbic servants.
Plain and simple. Intolerable.
Comment #24610 by Lynda on 9/20 at 9:04 pm
Bush is a liar, an embarrassment, and in my book, the greatest threat
to peace there is. We already had enough of an image problem around
the world, and that image is now so tarnished it'll take generations
to clean up.
The very first time I saw that man on TV I felt he was evil
incarnate. I didn't vote for Bush either time. I was sick the first
time he got in and convinced he stole the election. I not only cried
the second time, but sunk into a serious depression for almost 3
months. "We the people" need to take back the government. Somewhere
along the way, we forgot that WE control the government, not the
other way around.
What puzzles me the most is that no move has been made on the
international level to call this man and his entire administration on
their actions. If he isn't stopped my fear is that he will lead us
all into WWIII. He's already got his eye on Iran next.
Comment #24606 by Montrealaise on 9/20 at 8:49 pm
Maher Arar is a Canadian hero.
Comment #24588 by Paul D. Crowther on 9/20 at 6:33 pm
No wonder the country is becoming more hated by the rest of the
world. Where were the brains of the American voters to promote such
people to power?
Comment #24568 by Pat on 9/20 at 4:14 pm
Comment #245m wrong to say ordinary Americans are wonderful people?
Sure there are still some who love Bush and refuse to believe he's a
liar but...How many Americans who supposedly voted for Bush, in
reality, actually voted against him but had their votes illegally
manipulated through Diebold and other forms of voter fraud? How many
tried to vote but were blocked from voting in areas where the public
was known to be anti-Bush? How many instances of vote manipulation
were discovered and nothing done about it because the crooks already
in power blocked any investigation?
I refuse to believe that there are that many multiple millions of
idiots in America who still believe Bush and his cabal of war mongers
are honest men who desire America's good. Had an HONEST vote been
taken there's no way he'd have survived a second election, even if
his first election was an honest one (which I doubt)!
I disagree with you Ethan. Not all Americans are bad or politically
lazy people. Sure there are some still taken in by the hype of a
deceitful main stream media manipulation designed to perpetuate the
power of the evil ones who've cheated their way to power. That
doesn't make all Americans "arrogant, ignorant and risk-averse" as
you stated.
In this much I agree with you totally...far more "Ordinary Americans
should start taking responsibility for the actions of their
government." That is true of every adult in every country. The
problem with accomplishing this is that Americans seem to be sitting
around feeling helpless to stop the never-ending power grab of crooks
who lied their way to power and then continually assist one another
in maintaining that power. I believe the majority of Americans would
vote the Commander-in-Thief and all of his lying minions of evil out
of office if they could find some honest politicians to run in their
place and some honest judges and lawyers to prosecute the current
liars and thieves right into major jail sentences for their theivery
and war crimes.
As a Canadian I've seen this same sort of corruption going on for
years among those in power in my own country, and have seen evidence
of it in the news broadcasts of every other country. Anyone who tries
to run for office as an honest person of integrity, who truly wants
to better the lives of all men, is continually blocked from
accomplishing anything by the massive number of crooks in office. Who
was it who once said, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts
absolutely."?
As I've said before, when are people going to realize that the
so-called two party system is an out and out lie designed to give
people the illusion that their vote is actually going to give them a
better government "next time around". How can you have an honest
government if those already in power will only support your political
position if you become as big a crook and liar as they are? As long
as people continue to vote 'party' instead of for individuals of
integrity we will continue to suffer from the poor governance of
political liars whose only goal in life is to gain further power and
profit.
I don't know what it will take for the mass of humanity to finally
overpower the crooks, liars, and power-hungry who've managed to gain
control of all the governments of this world, in EVERY country, but
somehow we the people must find a way to hold all of our leaders
accountable. If we don't soon find a way to remove from high office
all the crooks, liars and war-profiteers, our world is doomed to a
final descent into the total hell of anarchy and world war III, in
the near future, that will be worse than all other wars put together.
Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Digest message: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
HarakahDaily: http://www.harakahdaily.com
PAS Homepage: http://www.parti-pas.org
HarakahDaily.com disclaims any liability whatsoever or however arising from the
posting of e-mails herein. Authors of the emails are advised to ensure that the
contents of their e-mails do not attract any liability, civil or criminal.
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/harakahdaily/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/harakahdaily/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
