“The war on terror is not a war on Islam”; “The most recent occasions the United States has gone to war has been on behalf of Muslim interests”; “We believe Islam is a peace-loving faith that condemns violence”.
American government officials have said these and similar statements so often since September 11 2001 that in many Muslim countries - such as Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation - they have become diluted and lost much of their resonance.
So recently Washington has tried a fresh approach; namely to demonstrate America’s tolerance, respect and even love for Islam by showing what wonderful lives Muslims lead in the US.
The first instalment of this approach was a series of two-minute TV films and accompanying print advertisements focusing on five Muslims who live in America.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hundreds of Muslim men and boys are being subjected to strip searches in freezing, standing room only detention centers in southern California after being arrested for routine visa irregularities, immigration lawyers said on Thursday.
They estimated that between 1,000 and 2,500 males, some as young as 16, were spending their fourth day locked up in what they called inhumane conditions after voluntarily presenting themselves at immigration offices to register under new anti-terrorism rules.
“The situation in the detention centers is absolutely horrifying. In one center, they were ordered to strip down and given a strip search. They were only given a prison jumpsuit, without any underwear, T-shirts, socks or shoes. They were not given blankets. They are freezing,” Iranian-American lawyer Sohelia Jonoubi told Reuters.
Update: Atrios, god bless ‘im, hits the nail on the head once again. (If his site isn’t on your blog shortlist, well — um, it should be, is all.)
Look folks - imagine you’re dealing with your DMV. Imagine Flunky #1 messes up your driver’s license application and tells you to come down to the office. Then, when you do go down to the office as requested Flunky #2 notices you drove there AND you don’t have your driver’s license (because, well, they screwed up your application). Flunky #2’s boss recently decided they now had a no-tolerance policy on such things and he has you arrested and thrown in jail.
Then, of course it doesn’t stop there. The special DMV judge operates his own special DMV court which has its own rules. Speedy trial? Nah. You could be there awhile. Who will support your family? Who knows. Chances for appeal? Not really.
The DMV judge deports you back to a country you haven’t lived in for 10-15 years. Your American children wave goodbye, as does your wife.
You guys know I love the site. And we’re both part of the TAP family, so I say this as a brother, or at least an older and wiser distant cousin: Unless you’re signalling an imminent Hitchens-like ideological conversion and will soon be throwing your lot in with the smug warbloggers, you probably want to avoid the neat-o secret treehouse words like “fisking.”
And for god’s sake, don’t start talking about “anti-idiotarians.”
From, you will pardon the banal hyperbole, a must-read column by Bob Herbert:
And then there’s Ward Connerly, a black man who spends his days dancing passionately to the tune of the anti-affirmative-action zealots. Some of the folks in that crowd are less than progressive when it comes to race relations, and it looks as if Mr. Connerly, who heads the ironically named American Civil Rights Coalition, has decided to shimmy with the worst of their beliefs. In a television interview last week he argued that segregation of the races was not necessarily racist.
That is extremely strange.
“Supporting segregation need not be racist,” said Mr. Connerly. “One can believe in segregation and believe in equality of the races.”
That is the exact argument that the rabidly racist segregationists made in the era that Trent Lott has looked back upon so fondly. It was destroyed by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
Herbert goes on to discuss Senator Conrad Burns, one of the 51 Senate Republicans who may be called upon to decide Trent Lott’s future:
Back in 1994, while campaigning for a second term, Mr. Burns dropped by a local newspaper, The Bozeman Daily Chronicle, and told an editor an anecdote about one of his constituents, a rancher who wanted to know what life was like in Washington, D.C.
The senator said the rancher asked him, “Conrad, how can you live back there with all those niggers?”
Senator Burns said he told the rancher it was “a hell of a challenge.”
There’s more. Go read the column.
* * *
At this point, it seems pretty clear that Lott is on his way out. But once that’s done, it seems that there are a few more boils to be lanced here: Don Nickles, John Ashcroft, and Conrad Burns, for starters.
It is a myth that the Lott story was driven by the right wing — nobody was on this harder than Atrios, with Josh Marshall running a close second. To their credit, the righty bloggers did pick it up — but what I want to know is, will they keep the pressure on the rest of these guys? Or will it turn out that their outrage, while certainly genuine, was proportionately related to the amount of embarassment being caused?
In other words, will the right now be willing to overlook equally egregious comments and actions, and voting records, as long as no one’s raising a fuss about them? Because that’s kind of been the whole problem all along, hasn’t it?
Iraq’s 11,000-page report to the UN Security Council lists 150 foreign companies, including some from America, Britain, Germany and France, that supported Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction programme, a German newspaper said yesterday.
Berlin’s left-wing Die Tageszeitung newspaper said it had seen a copy of the original Iraqi dossier which was vetted for sensitive information by US officials before being handed to the five permanent Security Council members two weeks ago. An edited version was passed to the remaining 10 members of the Security Council last night.
British officials said the list of companies appeared to be accurate. Eighty German firms and 24 US companies are reported to have supplied Iraq with equipment and know-how for its weapons programmes from 1975 onwards and in some cases support for Baghdad’s conventional arms programme had continued until last year.
It is not known who leaked the report, but it could have come from Iraq. Baghdad is keen to embarrass the US and its allies by showing the close involvement of US, German, British and French firms in helping Iraq develop its weapons of mass destruction when the country was a bulwark against the much feared spread of Iranian revolutionary fervour to the Arab world.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hundreds of Iranian and other Middle East citizens were in southern California jails on Wednesday after coming forward to comply with a new rule to register with immigration authorities only to wind up handcuffed and behind bars.
Shocked and frustrated Islamic and immigrant groups estimate that more than 500 people have been arrested in Los Angeles, neighboring Orange County and San Diego in the past three days under a new nationwide anti-terrorism program. Some unconfirmed reports put the figure as high as 1,000.
The arrests sparked a demonstration by hundreds of Iranians outside a Los Angeles immigration office. The protesters carried banners saying “What’s next? Concentration camps?” and “What happened to liberty and justice?.”
A spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service said no numbers of people arrested would be made public. A Justice Department spokesman could not be reached for comment.
Update: several readers have alerted me to the entirely different spin in the Associated Press version of this story, which is headlined “Thousands Protest New Immigration Policy.”
A videotape of a January 1997 going-away party for former Enron President Rich Kinder features nearly half an hour of absurd skits, songs and testimonials by company executives and prominent Houstonians, the Houston Chronicle reported in its Monday editions.
The collection is all meant in good fun, but some of the comments are ironic in the current climate of corporate scandal.
In one skit, former Administrative Executive Peggy Menchaca played the part of Kinder as he received a budget report from then-President Jeff Skilling, who played himself, and Financial Planning Executive Tod Lindholm.
When the pretend Kinder expressed doubt that Skilling could pull off 600 percent revenue growth for the coming year, Skilling revealed how it could be done.
“We’re going to move from mark-to-market accounting to something I call HFV, or hypothetical future value accounting,” Skilling joked as he read from a script. “If we do that, we can add a kazillion dollars to the bottom line.”
— snip —
President George W. Bush, who then was governor of Texas, also took part in the skit, as did his father.
At the party, the younger Bush pleaded with Kinder: “Don’t leave Texas. You’re too good a man.”
The governor’s father also offered a send-off to Kinder, thanking him for helping his son reach the governor’s mansion.
“You have been fantastic to the Bush family,” the elder Bush said. “I don’t think anybody did more than you did to support George.”
Federal investigators told News2Houston Tuesday that they want to take a closer look at the tape.
So many people think that Dick Armey is the man they’re looking for at Tom Paine, they’ve had to post a clarification:
Lots of readers have contacted us to say, “Rep. Dick Armey admitted doing it!” We know that. It’s easy for Dick Armey to say he did it — he’s a lame duck with no accountability. And indeed, Armey, as House Majority Leader, did ALLOW it to happen. But what TomPaine.com is looking for is THE PERSON WHO *ASKED* ARMEY to ALLOW it to happen. THAT is the person we want to finger.
I knew that. Heck, if it were that easy, I’d be $10,000 richer.
Update: don’t miss Tissue San’s friend, Beer Chan. “You will hear Beer chan drinking in big gulps and cheering anytime anywhere!!”
But of course.
There seem to be quite a few different characters here, if you play around with replacing the two digits at the end of the URL. Don’t have time to explore them all right now, but I feel confident someone out there will pick up the slack.
