Egyptian ‘Liberals’ Are Out For Blood

Last month, General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and Egypt’s new military strongman, asked Egyptians to “come out to give me the mandate and order to confront violence and potential terrorism.” 

What al-Sisi sought was a green light from the Egyptian street to put down the Muslim Brotherhood, whose supporters were still protesting on behalf of the country’s first elected President, Brotherhood member Mohamed Morsi, whom al-Sisi removed from office and jailed on July 3.

... the reality is that many of those Egyptians who define themselves as liberals supported the July coup as well as today’s crackdown. “Egypt’s liberals are trying to ignore the fact that people are being murdered,” says Samuel Tadros, an Egypt expert and a fellow at Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom. 

“Here, Egyptian liberalism has failed completely. The liberals in support of the coup and the violent crackdown have abandoned morality for short-term political gains.”

... the fact that people who describe themselves as liberals want to see their neighbors’ blood shed suggests that their liberalism isn’t what we typically mean by a political doctrine that prizes individual freedom and seeks as little interference from the state as possible. The reality is that Egypt’s liberals have aligned themselves with the military — the very same regime that they protested against during the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.

Why have liberals turned from democracy, albeit a very imperfect one, back to the military? 

“In Egypt, liberalism didn’t start as it did in Europe with the emergence of an independent bourgeoisie that sought to limit the powers of the state and other entrenched institutions. In Egypt, liberalism was born with the rise of the civil-servant class in the mid–19th century. Since civil servants are a part of the state, this liberalism is not at all interested in limiting the role of the state.”

Moreover, whereas Western liberals have historically seen it as their role to educate their fellow citizens in liberal values, Egyptian liberals have always seen this as the job of the state. Should the state prove incapable of inculcating others with the same ideas and ambitions, then it is up to the state to protect the liberals from what they perceive as the unwashed masses, i.e., their neighbors. And right now it is the Muslim Brothers and their Islamist partners whom the liberals see as a threat that needs to be put down.

In addition to acting in bad faith, the liberals have made a bad deal by siding with the army. Because the liberals never prepared the ground for liberalism, they left it wide open for the Islamists, who over 80 years built a grassroots network that combined political indoctrination with social services that earned them respect and admiration — which is why Morsi won the presidential election in June 2012. 

In spite of al-Sisi’s crackdown, the Muslim Brotherhood will almost surely return — and next time better organized and, holding a vendetta against the army and the millions who clamored for the Brotherhood’s blood, much angrier. 

In the meantime, as Tadros argues, “it’s the Muslim Brotherhood, and not the liberals, who can claim the moral high ground.”

An Analysis Of The One Party State

At The Top Of The Political Pyramid, There Is Not Constant Trade Off Between Liberal and Conservative Agendas, There Is Only THE Agenda.

By Morgan Martell

The most widely proliferated truism of American patriotism is that the the two-party system is a beacon of democracy. Surely, our system is better than that of Iran, where presidential candidates must be approved by a religious council, or perhaps that of Venezuela, where the partly state-owned media disseminates propaganda in each election.

Democrats and Republicans are widely different, it seems, at least that is what their hyper-partisan bickering would imply. Bill Clinton must have been an unabashed liberal, otherwise why would the Republicans despise him so much?

But the reality is that Republican and Democrat presidents have followed the same agenda for half a century. The idea that American governance alternates as a sort of give-and-take between liberalism and conservatism is nothing more than a fantasy. I do not discount that there may be serious and significant differences between democrat and republican individuals, many of them Congressman, or perhaps state legislatures. But at the top of the pyramid, where the power to set agendas resides, there is only the Agenda.

It is fascinating how Bill Clinton began his presidential campaign with playing a Saxophone on live television, talking about his foray into Marijuana (although he claimed to have never inhaled), reminiscing about his protest of the Vietnam war, and ended up with perhaps the most reactionary (meaning maintaining the status quo) administration of any president in modern history. And Obama entered the stage as a candidate of change, only to accelerate political elite hegemony faster than any predecessor.

The scope of this article will mostly cover the period from Reagan to present, with a special emphasis on the Clinton and Obama administrations, and will address issue by issue how Democratic and Republican presidents have set the same course on a wide variety of important issues.

Crime

At the end of Reagan's administration, the incarceration rate was 247 per 100,000 citizens. The demand for prison space had been steadily increasing since the War on Drugs began. Under George H.W. Bush the incarceration rate had increased to 332 per 100,000. It is a common misconception that it is Republicans have the more punitive crime policies. Under Clinton, the incarceration rate skyrocketing to 476 per 100,000 over the next 8 years. The Clinton administration gave 30 billion dollars to states to fund their prisons, and under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act added 100,000 new police officers. The bill was written by current Vice President Joe Biden. The act also expanded the death penalty to fall under 60 more offenses, including drug trafficking, and eliminated funding for inmate education.

Private prisons flourished under Clinton. The ACLU in 2011 published a fascinating review of the private prison system you can read here. Since 1990, the private prison population has increased by 1600%. The number of private prison systems actually peaked in the year 2000 with 153 facilities.

The policy that began under Reagan and has been flourishing through both Bushes, Clinton and Obama, can only be referred to as 'mass incarceration'. As of 2013, the United States holds more prisoners than any other country in the world, including China, as well as a larger percentage of prisoners per population than any other country. For an even more sobering comparison, consider that the United States has more people imprisoned today than Stalin had under his archipelago of gulags.

Arms Sales

On the campaign trail, Bill Clinton made this promise: “I expect to review our arms sales policy and to take it up with the other major arms sellers of the world as a part of a long-term effort to reduce the proliferation of weapons.”

And then, in some astounding turn of events (or predictable, for those who have been watching closely),United States arms sales doubled in Clinton's first year in office alone.

In 2006, the United Nations convened in order to create a 'comprehensive, legally binding instrument establishing common international standards for the import, export and transfer of conventional arms.' The United States was the only country to vote against the measure. In 2008, Obama signaled that he would change the course from the Bush administration and take steps to limit arms sales internationally. And just like 2 decades earlier, United States arms sales tripled in 2011 By 2012, Obama had ended negotiations on the treaty. Is it any surprise, considering Obama received more campaign donations from the Defense Industry than McCain?

And as of a week ago from the publishing of this article, Obama has begun arming terrorist organizations in Syria.

War

It is another common misconception that during Republican presidencies we have periods of war, and during Democratic presidencies we have periods of peace. Of 'official' wars it is certainly the case that the Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq war were begun by H.W. and W. Bush. Though it is important to quantify 'official' because there has not been an official declaration of war since World War II. But Bill Clinton dropped bombs on no less than 4 sovereign countries: Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, and Sudan.

Some of his international military endeavors were exceptionally gruesome. My personal favorite (in other terms, the one that disgusts me the most) is the bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. It is estimated that tens of thousands of civilians died once the supply of medicine was cut off.

And Clinton was able to get away with maintaining one of the darkest stains on America's soiled history, the full-force economic sanctions against Iraq that began with the first Gulf war and ended after Saddam's fall in 2003. The sanctions killed 567,000 children according to the British Medical Societies Lancet. (Later studies have argued the number 350,000 children to be more accurate, for full transparency).

United Nations ambassador Madeline Albright, when asked about these numbers, coldly stated “The price is worth it.”

Obama's first major act of war was a No-Fly zone over Libya which resulted in the removal of Muammar Gaddafi. The media had a well orchestrated propaganda campaign that garnered significant public support for this act.

His second major act of war was the arming of Syrian rebels mentioned earlier, undoubtedly prolonging the horrific civil war. Some of the groups that form the opposition group are terrorist organizations, which makes one recall the policy of Carter and Reagan arming terrorist groups in Afghanistan under Operation Cyclone.

And this section would be incomplete without mentioning the prolonging of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and their extensive use of private contractors.

But the true depths of Obama's war mongering resides in his constant and silent drone war. A policy that started under W. Bush, Obama has expanded the use of drones extensively. He has allowed the usage ofSignature Strikes, whereby drone operators bomb people they do not know, based on movements they find suspicious. Worst of all is the policy of double tapping, bombing the same scene twice after rescuers have come to try and help their fellow citizens. Obama's drones have even bombed funerals.

While the death toll of the Drone war may not be as high as the conventional wars of the Bush family, the moral depravity certainly gives them a run for their money.

Private Military and Intelligence Contractors

In the last section I mentioned Obama's extensive use of private contractors in military and intelligence operations.

It has always been hard to tell exactly how many private contractors are employed by the Federal government, and how many of those are under the umbrella of the Defense Industry. It was under Reagan that the Pentagon's privatization agenda began, and it has continued ever since. An NYU study on the size of government shows that the use of private contractors increased under the Clinton administration by about 25%. It is known that Clinton hired KBR, at the time owned by Halliburton, to build military bases and support troops in Kosovo.

Under Bush, with the Iraq war, was when the use of private contractors skyrocketed. By 2008, the number of private contractors in use in Iraq was 155,000, more than the number of troops, a degree of privatization unprecedented in modern warfare. The public became acquainted with the likes of Blackwater under the Bush administration, with events such as the unprovoked massacres in Baghdad and Fallujah.

I cannot recommend enough the work of investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill regarding Blackwater. If you don't have time for his book, check out his talk on the subject.

During his campaign, Obama promised to cut federal spending on private contractors. It soon became clear, however, that much of the stimulus money would go straight to their pockets. His Afghanistan surge was primarily accomplished through contractors, which made up half of the military forces in the country by 2009. The total number of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan quickly reached 250,000. Security contractors (i.e. private military forces) increased by over 400% under Obama and represent a quarter of all contractors employed by the Pentagon.

The most shocking use of contractors has only recently been revealed. It turns out that they represent a significant amount of the NSA workforce. 483,000 people are employed by private contractors and have 'Top Secret' access. The potential for illicit spying and extortion represented by these numbers is so high as to reach certainty. This is completely mind-blowing and perhaps the most significant threat the American people face today.

Renditions

By now, everyone is familiar with the CIA's policy of rendition, whereby they send suspected terrorists to be interrogated in foreign countries. The process was used extensively during George W. Bush's administration.

But did you know that the process began under Clinton? This PBS Frontline report confirms that the rendition process began in 1995.

In 2007, Obama wrote an article in Foreign Affairs journal stating: “To build a better, freer world, we must first behave in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people… This means ending the practices of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, of detaining thousands without charge or trial, of maintaining a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law.”

But by 2013 it has become clear that the process of rendition has continued. The Washington Post has reported on some specific cases and I highly recommend checking out The Rendition Project which has been tracking the global rendition system extensively.

Globalization

A key process in globalization involves removing national sovereignty in favor of trade agreements that favor the rights of corporations. Bill Clinton championed the NAFTA agreement, which among other issues superseded articles in the Mexican constitution, water rights in Canada, and allows corporations to sue nations when they are in violation of the trade act.

Regardless of your opinion on NAFTA and other trade agreements, Obama has taken the concept of corporate power over national sovereignty to a whole new mind-blowing level with the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, a trade proposal that we only know about because the documents were leaked to the public. You can read the leaked document here. Why the secrecy? The TPP agreement would bestow radical new powers on corporations, including establishing an international tribunal that would override domestic law and would have the power to issue sanctions against governments for failing to abide by their ruling.

The TPP runs contrary to Obama's statement: "We will not negotiate bilateral trade agreements that stop the government from protecting the environment, food safety, or the health of its citizens; give greater rights to foreign investors than to U.S. investors; require the privatization of our vital public services; or prevent developing country governments from adopting humanitarian licensing policies to improve access to life-saving medications.”

And to me the biggest concern is that Congress was kept in the dark along with American citizens, the treaty was negotiated between the Executive branch and corporate executives.

Congressman Alan Grayson summed it up nicely: “It's all about tying the hands of democratically elected governments, and shunting authority over to the non-elected for the benefit of multinational corporations. It's an assault on democratic government.”

But what about taxes? Gay marriage? Abortion? Marijuana?

The crux of the one-party state issue is that the issues involved are the issues that affect the political elite. Issues like gay marriage and abortion can be likened to a pressure valve: the people are forced to exert tremendous amounts of effort to affect social change, essentially utilizing all of the available activism. The minds of the populace are focused on these issues instead of the problems that are actually effecting their lives, such as predatory banks and the steady erosion of civil liberties. And what is the end result? It isn't even federal politicians that affect gay marriage or abortion in the first place, it is the courts and on a state level. Activists go home happy and pat themselves on the back for their 'symbolic victory' when their newly elected president comments on gay marriage. But what is the tangible change?

An issue such as taxes falls under the same category. Ever since Reagan slashed the top tax bracket, the tax burden has been solidly on the middle class. A few percent bump under Obama does not change this, it is simply another pressure valve. The true one percent are unaffected by a small tax increase, their wealth comes from investments and assets.

This is all part of the illusion. Our political system is designed to make us think we have choices when in reality our voice is limited to a couple issues that are unimportant relative to the big picture.

Conclusion

In no uncertain terms, our democracy is an illusion. It is as real as 'Professional Wrestling'. The two parties have consistently followed the same policies, giving American citizens only the illusion of choice. If you took the records of Clinton and Obama and put them under a Republican name, conservatives would cheer their legacy. It is the vitriol and mud-slinging of politics that contributes most to the illusion; without the constant name calling Obama would have long ago ceased to resemble a liberal. When campaigns are in full swing, candidates will refrain from the biggest gun, such as George W. Bush commuting the sentence of only one of the 151 death row cases sent to his desk as Texas Governor: serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, responsible for between 300 and 600 deaths, never brought up on the campaign trail. And at the end of a campaign candidates will become best friends again, when only days earlier they would refer to each other as harbingers of the apocalypse.

There is no trade-off of liberal and conservative agendas in the Executive branch, as the public is led to believe. Rather, Democrat presidencies are designed to placate the populace and give cover for some of the more covert aspects of The Agenda, such as Obama's continuous erosion of civil liberties.

The political elite understand that American 'democracy' is just a game. At the end of the day, they all follow the same agenda. Who is the 'man behind the curtain?'

My Crown Is Called: Deceit

I twist the truth,
I rule the world,
My crown is called deceit
I am the emperor of lies,
You grovel at my feet
I rob you and I slaughter you,
Your downfall is my gain
And still you play the sycophant
And revel in my pain
And all my promises are lies,
All my love is hate
I am the politician,
And I decide your fate

Song: Orgasmatron
Band: MotorHead
Art by: Khannea SunTzu

How The White House Was Won

Were American Voters Presented With A Real Choice?

This episode of Fault Lines takes viewers through a tour of the US 2012 presidential campaign, from the high and low moments, to the Spin Room, to the noisy campaign ads that blanketed swing states. 

We ask whether voters were presented with a real choice between the candidates, and whether the system truly is democratic.

Plotting For A Permanent Republican Presidency

By STEVEN JONAS MD,
Courtesy Of "Truth-Out"

Karl Rove was dreaming of what he called “The Permanent Republican Majority.”   That is he thought that he could achieve a majority vote among the 50% or so of US eligible voters who actually vote, for the Republican candidates for the Presidency, on a permanent basis.  In the 2000 election (1) he had achieved less than a majority of the popular vote (47.9% to Gore’s 48.4%, the rest going to minor candidates [mainly the spoiler Ralph Nader]), and had managed a majority of the electoral vote only by getting, as is very known, a one vote majority on the Supreme Court.  But Karl had a big dream.  For 2004 he would construct a true majority, among those actually voting that is, by pulling “his people” to the polls in numbers out of proportion to their proportion among the eligible.

He did that that year by getting anti-gay marriage initiatives of one sort of another onto the ballots in 12 states where pulling homophobes to the polls in numbers out-of-proportion to their numbers in the general population would boost the vote total for George Bush.  The strategy did work in one sense.  Bush did get 50.7% of the popular vote (2).  

But John Kerry actually won the electoral vote, except that Ohio had been rigged by the Republican Secretary of State, who just happened to also be the Ohio chair for Bush-Cheney(!) (3).

(In fact, Kerry had anticipated such a possible outcome and had prepared a $15,000,000 war chest for legal action.  For unknown reasons he chose not to use it [leaving John Edwards, to whom he had promised he would, in a rage.  Of course, Edwards was not a paragon of ethical behavior either, as it turned out, but that’s another story.]  But Rove knew which end was up.  

And the full Ohio vote-count rigging story would have come out a couple of years later if the man at the technical center of it had not somehow been killed in a light plane crash on his way to testify at a hearing on the matter, for which he had indicated that he was going to tell the truth (3).  [It is interesting to note that Senators Paul Wellstone and Mel Carnahan had some years earlier died the same way.])

Given the closeness of both the popular and electoral vote totals, following the 2004 election it became very apparent that he was no longer focusing on a Permanent Republican Majority.  It was too risky if one wanted to keep GOP control of the Federal government.  For the one thing, the proportion of eligible voters actually voting could go up, and they might go to the other side.  That was the lesson of 2008.  For another, how many times could one put homophobe-philic initiatives or similar ones on state ballots?  No, another strategy had to be developed.  And so instead of the Permanent Republican Majority, Rove and his cohorts came up with the concept of the Permanent Republican Presidency.

The strategy has six major components, built up over time.  And if one has been watching GOP actions since the middle of the last decade one can discern them fairly easily. 

First is the cementing of the vote of the Religious Rightists without going to the lengths of coming up with ballot initiatives and similar.  You simply convert the GOP into what Howard Fineman of MSNBC and The Huffington Post has called “The American Faith Party” (4).  

Second, you fake stories of sex and corruption which manage to take down the principal organization whose principal focus is on registering low-income voters, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) (5).  

Third, following the 2008 election (which you hardly minded losing, given the economic pit into which the country was falling due to the policies enacted by your party --- let the other guy take the blame for the outcomes, which blame the GOP is shoveling on him by the truckload this year) you focus on organizing the right-wing vote at the state level through the very well-funded so-called “Tea Party” movement. 

Fourth, once having taken over both Executive and Legislative branches of a number of state governments, with the very active help of the Fox”News”Channel you make the  practice of “voter fraud” the tool through which you enact a series of state laws designed to achieve wide-spread voter suppression.  Since there have been a series of successful court challenges to those laws, it remains to be seen just how successful they will be this time around.  But Rove and his people are on for the long haul.  

Then (fifth) of course there is “Citizens United” and the “Super-PACs.” Thom Hartmann to the contrary notwithstanding, they have not made a qualitative difference in the owning-class control of the state apparatus in the United States which goes back to the days of the Slave Power.  But they surely have made a quantitative difference in the amount of money the Right-wing has to spend on assuring electoral outcomes to their liking.  

Finally (sixth) there is the widespread cheating which began in earnest in 2004 with the substitution of electronic voting, run by GOP corporate allies, for paper or manual machine voting (3). 

Third, following the 2008 election (which you hardly minded losing, given the economic pit into which the country was falling due to the policies enacted by your party --- let the other guy take the blame for the outcomes, which blame the GOP is shoveling on him by the truckload this year) you focus on organizing the right-wing vote at the state level through the very well-funded so-called “Tea Party” movement. 

It remains to be seen how this will play out in this year’s election.  Until the first Presidential debate, Romney had been far enough behind so that cheating in such states under GOP control as Ohio and Florida would have become fairly obvious.  Following the President’s miserable performance in the first debate, Romney started to catch up and gave himself a chance to win even without cheating and with limited voter suppression.  

With Obama’s strong performance in the second debate, the GOP may have to fall back on cheating to secure victory.  But one can be sure, if they are within striking distance of victory for Romney, and cheating will seal the deal they will surely do what it takes, for them (3).

-

1. 2000 General Election Results, http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=2000

2. 2004 General Election Results, http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=2004

3. Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, The Free Press | News Analysis, Tuesday, 16 October 2012, “Will Bain-Linked E-Voting Machines Give Romney the White House?” Republished on Truthout, Oct. 16, 2012, http://truth-out.org/news/item/12130-will-hig-owned-e-voting-machines-give-romney-the-white-house.

4. Fineman, H., "Rise of Faith within the GOP has created America's First Religious
Party," The Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/republican-
party-religion-first-religious-party_n_1322132.html.

5. Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Community_Organizations_for_Reform_Now.

Voting Against The Machine

Polls show the US presidential election is a close contest. Yet a number of voters argue Obama and Romney are so similar that there’s no point in casting a ballot. Others say they will back a third party with no real chance of winning. By refusing to endorse Obama or Romney, could these citizens decide the next president and what would that mean? 

In this episode of The Stream, we speak to: 

Michael Moschella @MikeMoschella
Founder, New Leaders Council
newleaderscouncil.org 

Jason Brennan
Professor at Georgetown University, author of "The Ethics of Voting"
jasonfbrennan.com 

Kevin Gosztola @kgosztola
Blogger, Firedoglake.com 

1. In the highly contested US presidential campaign between President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney, many voters are disappointed with the positions of the two candidates. A key number of these, around five per cent of likely voters, plan to back third-party candidates, while others may not vote at all.
   
   Analysts say the election could end in a tie due to the electoral college voting system, with both candidates winning 269 out of 538 electoral college votes.
2. Currently there are 32 combinations for a potential electoral tie. The map below shows one possible outcome.

   What do you think? Are Americans who are voting for third-party candidates wasting their vote or changing the system?
   

How Far Is America From Electing A Muslim President?

By Daniel Tutt,

Closer Than You Might Think

As someone deeply engaged in combatting Islamophobia, one of the highlights of the 2008 Presidential election was when General Colin Powell denounced the myth that President Obama is Muslim on Meet the Press. General Powell, a senior statesman respected across partisan lines managed to clear a decade of post 9/11 Islamophobia in a single sentence: “So what if he was?”

So what if President Obama was Muslim?

Of course President Obama is not a Muslim, despite a sizable bloc of the American public still believing that he is. While he may not have realized it, Powell’s statement was more than just a statement in support of then Sen. Obama for president. It told every young American Muslim that they are a part of what it means to be an American. Powell’s statement said that no Americans faith should be a barrier to them holding the highest office in the land.

I’ve never been an advocate for identity politics, but America is a country that thrives off of its diversity, and as the browning of America increases, bringing minorities into positions of power may matter less and less. The election of the nation’s first African American President has not realized Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Beloved Community,” nor has it ushered in greater civil rights for African Americans. It certainly has not ended racism. But its symbolic value is important and it shows that the principle of equality enshrined in the American constitution still means something.

Like race, the religion of a presidential candidate matters. Despite the climate of increasing islamophobia in America, America very well could elect a Muslim for President sooner than many think. If we look at American religious history, we find that perceptions towards religious outsiders change rapidly and surprisingly. It happened in 1960 when the nation elected John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic President, less than 60 years prior anti-Catholic sentiment was so vociferous that many Catholics were murdered.

To gauge whether America might elect a Muslim to be President, we should look closely at the “Islam of America:” Mormonism. Ever since its founding, Mormonism, the first American-born religion, has been portrayed as foreign and often defined in opposition to the Protestant majority. Even today, 16% of Americans say that they would not vote for a Mormon presidential candidate due to their suspicion of the religion’s influence on the country.

In a recent policy brief for the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding entitled, “Beyond the Stereotype: The Shared Story of Muslims and Mormons in America,” I examine the shared history of Mormons and Muslims and present suggestions for how policymakers and leaders from both faiths can move past prejudice towards mutual understanding.

Throughout American history, Mormonism has been culturally and theologically conflated with Islam to paint Mormons as foreign and to drum up xenophobic attitudes against them since Joseph Smith founded Mormonism in 1833 including wholly unflattering comparisons in popular culture.

The similar patterns and frames used to denigrate Mormons and Muslims historically are still with us today. The recent conflagration over the anti-Muslim film “The Innocence of Muslims” highlights how extremist Evangelical groups direct their bigotry at both Muslims and Mormons. Sam Klein, the alleged co-producer, is a former Marine and extremist Christian who has helped train militiamen in California churches and led “protests outside abortion clinics, Mormon temples and mosques.” While the vast majority of Evangelicals do not openly participate in such activities, Mormons and Muslims often internalize these movements as verification of a generally negative and widespread reaction to their respective faiths.

How Far Away Are We from a Muslim President?

Muslims belong to the country’s least favorable religion, and 42 percent of Americans claim that they would not vote for a Muslim presidential candidate. 63 percent of Americans claim to have never met a Muslim, but despite rising levels of Islamophobia in America, majorities of Americans don’t express anxiety with Muslims building a mosque in their neighborhood, or with having a Muslim as their neighbor. According to the Public Religion Research Institute’s recent findings, few Americans report having much knowledge about who Muslims are and what they believe. Only 14 percent of Americans say they know a lot about the religious beliefs and practices of Muslims, and 57 percent say they know only a little.

According to the Pew Forum’s extensive studies of attitudes towards Mormons, Romney’s Mormon faith should not make a substantial difference in his chances at becoming president. Many analysts pointed out that Romney’s inability to court Evangelical Christian voters would present the gravest threat to his chances at getting elected based on his faith. However, with the presidential election less than a week away, Billy Graham a leading evangelical figure in the U.S., removed the word “cult”from his association’s description of Mormonism, although some conservative Christians saw the move as partisanship.

Despite rising levels of Islamophobia, majorities of Americans don’t express anxiety with Muslims building a mosque in their neighborhood, or with having a Muslim neighbor. In other words, most Americans are more and more able to separate their anxieties about the religion Islam from American Muslims civic and political rights. According to the Public Religion Research Institute’s recent findings, few Americans report having much knowledge about who Muslims are and what they believe. Only 14 percent of Americans say they know a lot about the religious beliefs and practices of Muslims, and 57 percent say they know only a little.

In the same study, a majority of Americans claimed that American Muslims are an important part of the religious experience in America, even though a majority does not know a Muslim personally. As Muslim Americans grow in population prejudice will transform as people come into contact with Muslims and form more personal relationships. If Mormonism is any example, the day will soon come when a Muslim will be able to run for president and America will have grown out of its petty prejudices and stereotypes.

Daniel Tutt is a Fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and Outreach Director of Unity Productions Foundation.

This article is part of the “Election 2012 – American Muslims VOTE!” series, which is running on Altmuslim at Patheos, Altmuslimah, Illume, and Aziz Poonawalla’s news and politics blog on Patheos. Click on this special topics page to view all articles in this series and add your comments. Tweet your thoughts on this article, on the series, and on the 2012 elections at #MuslimVOTE.

Via: "Alt-Muslim"

The Rigged Presidential "Debates"

Secret Collusion Between The Two Parties, Funded By Corporations, Run By Lobbyists

By Glenn Greenwald,

The way the two major parties control the presidential debates is a perfect microcosm of how political debates are restricted in general. Though typically shrouded in secrecy, several facts about this process have recently come to light and they are quite instructive.

I was on Democracy Now this morning along with George Farah discussing the ways these debates, designed to cast the appearance of fostering vibrant exchanges, are actually intended to constrict the range of debated views as much as possible. My segment (and the transcript to it) can be seen here, but it was the commentary of Farah - who is a genuine expert in the history of presidential debates - that I found revealing.

He described how the two political parties in the 1990s joined forces to wrest control over the presidential debates away from the independent League of Women Voters, which had long resisted the parties' efforts to shield their presidential candidates from genuine surprise or challenge. Now run by the party-controlled Commission on Presidential Debates, these rituals are designed to do little more than " eliminate spontaneity" and "exclude all viable third-party voices". Citing a just-leaked 21-page "memorandum of understanding" secretly negotiated by the two campaigns to govern the rules of the debates, Farah recounted:

"We have a private corporation that was created by the Republican and Democratic parties called the Commission on Presidential Debates. It seized control of the presidential debates precisely because the League was independent, precisely because this women's organization had the guts to stand up to the candidates that the major-party candidates had nominated. And instead of making public these contracts and resisting the major-party candidates' manipulations, the commission allows the candidates to negotiate these 21-page contracts that dictate all the fundamental terms of the debates."

Gawker's John Cook has an excellent breakdown of the 21-page memo. In his piece, entitled "Leaked Debate Agreement Shows Both Obama and Romney are Sniveling Cowards", Cook details how the rules imposed on these debates demonstrate that, above all else, "both campaigns are terrified at anything even remotely spontaneous happening."

Under this elaborate regime, the candidates "aren't permitted to ask each other questions, propose pledges to each other, or walk outside a 'predesignated area.'" Worse, "the audience members posing questions aren't allowed to ask follow-ups (their mics will be cut off as soon as they get their questions out). Nor will moderator Candy Crowley." The rules even "forbid television coverage from showing reaction shots of the candidates".

All of this means, as Farah put it:

"The town hall debate we're going to see tonight is the most constrained and regulated town hall debate in presidential debate history. The first town hall debate was introduced in 1992, and no one knew what anyone was going to ask, none of the audience members were going to ask. The moderator could ask any follow-up questions. It was exciting, and it was real.

"Well, President George H.W. Bush stumbled in response to an oddly worded question about the federal deficit, and the candidates - the campaigns have panicked and have attempted to avoid that kind of situation from happening again. In 1996, they abolished follow-up questions from the audience.

"In 2004, they began requiring that every single question asked by the audience be submitted in advance on an index card to the moderator, who can then throw out the ones he or she does not like. And that's why the audience has essentially been reduced, in some ways, to props, because the moderator is still ultimately asking the questions.

"And this election cycle is the first time that the moderator herself is prohibited from asking follow-up questions, questions seeking clarification. She's essentially reduced to keeping time and being a lady with a microphone."

Making matters worse still, the Commission is run by lobbyists and funded by large corporations. As Zaid Jilani writes today, the two Commission co-chairmen are former GOP Chairman Frank J. Fahrenkopf, Jr. and former Clinton spokesman Michael D. McCurry. Fahrenkopf is one of the nation's leading lobbyists for the gaming industry, while McCurry advises a long list of corporate clients including the telecom industry.

The debates are paid for by large corporate sponsors, including Anheuser-Busch Companies. As Jilani writes, "in the past, the tobacco industry, AT&T, and others have all been sponsors." And as Farah describes, with all that sponsorship comes the standard benefits:

"FARAH: 'First, the just nice advertising, of course. They get to - you know, Philip Morris sponsored one of the presidential debates, paid $250,000 and got to hang its banner in the post-debate spin room that was seen throughout the country. But more importantly, they get access, and they get to show support for both major parties.'

"AMY GOODMAN: 'The major parties on their podiums have Bud Light on the podium?'

"FARAH: 'Not yet. We're getting there. We're getting there, Amy. But they get to show support for both major parties. How often can corporations find a way to make a single donation that strengthens both the Republican and Democratic parties and get a tax deduction for that kind of donation? So it's a rare contribution. And it also gives them access. They get to go to the actual debate themselves and rub shoulders at private receptions with the campaigns and their staff.'"

Meanwhile, the moderators were selected to ensure that nothing unexpected is asked and that only the most staid and establishment views are heard. As journalism professor Jay Rosen put it when the names of the moderators were unveiled, using terms to describe those views that are acceptable in Washington media circles and those which are "fringe":

"In order to be considered as a candidate for moderator you have to be soaked in the sphere of consensus, likely to stay within the predictable inner rings of the sphere of legitimate controversy, and unlikely in the extreme to select any questions from the sphere of deviance."

Here then, within this one process of structuring the presidential debates, we have every active ingredient that typically defines, and degrades, US democracy. The two parties collude in secret. The have the same interests and goals. Everything is done to ensure that the political process is completely scripted and devoid of any spontaneity or reality.

All views that reside outside the narrow confines of the two parties are rigidly excluded. Anyone who might challenge or subvert the two-party duopoly is rendered invisible.

Lobbyists who enrich themselves by peddling their influence run everything behind the scenes. Corporations pay for the process, which they exploit and is then run to bolster rather than threaten their interests. The media's role is to keep the discourse as restrictive and unthreatening as possible while peddling the delusion that it's all vibrant and free and independent and unrestrained. And it all ends up distorting political realities far more than illuminating them while wildly exaggerating the choices available to citizens and concealing the similarities between the two parties.

To understand the US political process, one can just look to how these sham debates are organized and how they function. This is the same process that repeats itself endlessly in virtually every other political realm.

Via: "The Guardian"

The Talking Heads

“The United States does not have presidential debates in any realistic sense of the word. It holds quadrennial joint appearances by major-party candidates who have been schooled in the art of saying little of consequence in the most absurdly aggressive way. And Americans will be served a full helping this evening.

That is because presidential debates have become the political equivalent of a classic rock radio station. You’ll hear all the hits, and maybe even a few obscure tracks that you’d almost forgotten.

But the whole point of the Barack Obama’s appearance will be to say nothing that harms himself and everything that harms Mitt Romney, just as the whole point of Romney’s appearance will be to say nothing that harms himself and everything that harms Obama.

Neither man will leave his comfort zone. Neither will jump off the narrow track on which this year’s campaign has been running.

In most developed nations—from Canada to Britain to Australia to France—debates are multi-candidate, multi-party affairs. It is not uncommon for five, six, even seven candidates to take the stage. Those countries do not just survive the clashes, they thrive—with higher levels of political engagement than the United States has seen in decades.

Only the most crudely authoritarian states erect the sort of barriers that the United States maintains to entry into the debates by so-called “minor-party” candidates.

And why?

The fool’s argument against expanding the number of contenders is that debates involving more than the nominees of the two big parties—which, conveniently, control the access to the debates through their joint Commission on Presidential Debates—is that it would somehow confuse the electorate. As if Americans aren’t quite as sharp as the French.

Adding more candidates would not create confusion. It would add clarity.”

(John Nichols)

Via: "The Nation Magazine"