Saturday, January 10, 2015
I Am Not Charlie. I Am Ahmed!
#JeSuisAhmed Reveals The Hero Of The Paris Shooting Everyone Needs To Know
In the hours following the deadly attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, much of the public support has been directed toward the victims that worked for the magazine, like editor-in-chief Stéphane Charbonnier, 76-year-old cartoonist Jean Cabut and economist Bernard Maris.
... but it's equally important to remember that the lives of the victims extended beyond the confines of the magazine.
Two of those killed, 42-year-old Ahmed Merabet and 49-year-old Franck Brinsolaro, were police officers — the very people tasked with protecting Charlie Hebdo's staff. Merabet's death was captured on film during a French television broadcast and shared quickly across social media. Two masked gunmen can be seen approaching him, ignoring his pleas to spare his life.
Who Was He? As information about the victims began to filter out, the world learned that Merabet worked at a police station in Paris' 11th Arrondissement, near the location of Charlie Hebdo's offices. Reports also emerged that Merabet was himself Muslim.
He gave his life to protect Charlie Hebdo's right to ridicule his religion, a powerful fact that has now become a trending hashtag on Twitter
Merabet's Sacrifice Matters: Each of the 12 victims deserves equal remembrance and respect. But given the Islamophobic backlash that has already ripped through France — several mosques were vandalized overnight, and many fear that the Charlie Hebdo attack is to blame — the country is in a dangerous place when it comes to anti-Muslim sentiment.
Instead of assuming that everyone who practices Islam is tied to the extremists who carried out Wednesday's violence, we would do well to remember that that vast majority are, in fact, much closer to Ahmed Merabet.
Friday, January 09, 2015
MUSLIMS ARE RIGHT TO BE ANGRY
Catholic League President Bill Donohue comments on the killing of 12 people at the Paris office of the newspaper Charlie Hebdo:
Killing in response to insult, no matter how gross, must be unequivocally condemned. That is why what happened in Paris cannot be tolerated. But neither should we tolerate the kind of intolerance that provoked this violent reaction.
Those who work at this newspaper have a long and disgusting record of going way beyond the mere lampooning of public figures, and this is especially true of their depictions of religious figures.
For example, they have shown nuns masturbating and popes wearing condoms. They have also shown Muhammad in pornographic poses.
While some Muslims today object to any depiction of the Prophet, others do not. Moreover, visual representations of him are not proscribed by the Koran.
What unites Muslims in their anger againstCharlie Hebdo is the vulgar manner in which Muhammad has been portrayed. What they object to is being intentionally insulted over the course of many years. On this aspect, I am in total agreement with them.
Stephane Charbonnier, the paper’s publisher, was killed today in the slaughter. It is too bad that he didn’t understand the role he played in his tragic death.
In 2012, when asked why he insults Muslims, he said, “Muhammad isn’t sacred to me.” Had he not been so narcissistic, he may still be alive.
Muhammad isn’t sacred to me, either, but it would never occur to me to deliberately insult Muslims by trashing him.
Below is just one small example of the double standards that is at work: "freedom of speech" will always be cited when disrespecting Islam and Muslims, but the same "freedom of speech" is then discarded and placed in the trash receptacle when dealing with "Anti-Semitism."
Charlie Hebdo doesn't pull its punches. But some critics say it goes too far, specifically with Muslims.
Charlie Hebdo doesn't pull its punches. But some critics say it goes too far, specifically with Muslims.
The newspaper, after all, fired a cartoonist who published an article deemed anti-Semitic in 2008.
But when it comes to depicting Islam, writes the Financial Times' Tony Barber, the publication has no qualms specifically "mocking, baiting and needling French Muslims."
Thursday, January 08, 2015
The Mystic's Dream
A clouded dream on an earthly night
Hangs upon the crescent moon
A voiceless song in an ageless light
Sings at the coming dawn.
Birds in flight are calling there
Where the heart moves the stones
It's there that my heart is calling
All for the love of you.
Artist: Loreena McKennitt
We Should Fear The Coming Islamophobic Backlash
... there is a wider narrative that is emerging in the rush to judgment, as news media attempt to stitch together details — at first entirely circumstantial— into an explanatory story. The assumption is that the killers are members of some sort of Islamist group, possibly linked to Islamic State, and are exacting political retribution for the publication’s regular satirical attacks on Islam by executing its journalists. And about that, I do have something beyond the obvious to say, just as a starting point.
The first point is that French President Francois Hollande declared this a “terrorist” attack very early on. Now, we don’t need to know any concrete details to understand the purpose of this. “Terrorism” is not a scientific term; it is inherently normative.
The uses of “terrorism” in such contexts are by now well understood. I suggested apropos the Woolwich killing that it functions as a narrative device, setting up a less-than-handful of people as a civilizational threat evoking stoic defense (of “British values,” “la république,” “the West,” etc).
It justifies repressive and securitarian responses that tend to target Muslims as such, responses which in the United Kingdom chiefly come under the rubric of the government’s Prevent strategy.
The second is that there is already an enormous pressure, in this context, to defend Charlie Hebdo as a forceful exponent of “Western values,” or in some cases even as a brilliantly radical bastion of left-wing anti-clericalism.
Now, I think there’s a critical difference between solidarity with the journalists who were attacked, refusing to concede anything to the idea that journalists are somehow “legitimate targets,” and solidarity with what is frankly a racist publication.
I will not waste time arguing over this point here: I simply take it as read that — irrespective of whatever else it does, and whatever valid comment it makes — the way in which that publication represents Islam is racist.
If you need to be convinced of this, then I suggest you do your research, beginning with reading Edward Said’s Orientalism, as well as some basic introductory texts on Islamophobia, and then come back to the conversation.
We have been reminded of the perils of such “you’re with us or against us” campism throughout the “war on terror.” Now, unfortunately, I suspect we’re going to see more of this, and many who know better capitulating to the political blackmail.
The argument will be that for the sake of “good taste” we need “a decent interval” before we start criticizing Charlie Hebdo.
But given the scale of the ongoing anti-Muslim backlash in France, the big and frightening anti-Muslim movements in Germany, and the constant anti-Muslim scares in the UK, and given the ideological purposes to which this atrocity will be put, it is essential to get this right.
No, the offices of Charlie Hebdo should not be raided by gun-wielding murderers. No, journalists are not legitimate targets for killing.
But no, we also shouldn’t line up with the inevitable statist backlash against Muslims, or the ideological charge to defend a fetishized, racialized “secularism,” or concede to the blackmail which forces us into solidarity with a racist institution.
Wednesday, January 07, 2015
She Moves Through The Fair
My young love said to me, my mother won´t mind
And my father won´t slight you for your lack of kine,
And she stepped away from me and this she did say,
It will not be long love 'til our wedding day.
She stepped away from me and she moved through the fair,
And fondly I watched her move here and move there,
Then she went her way homeward with one star awake,
As the swan in the evening moves over the lake.
The people were saying no two were e´er wed,
But one has a sorrow that never was said,
And I smiled as she passed with her goods and her gear,
And that was the last that I saw of my dear.
I dreamt it last night that my young love came in,
So softly she entered her feet made no din,
She came close beside me and this she did say,
It will not be long love 'til our wedding day.
Artist: B-Tribe
DOD Stymies Access To Report On Israel's Nukes
The U.S. Defense Department is so far refusing to produce a report that discusses nuclear technology issues in Israel, in response to a researcher's request for information.
The report at issue is called "Critical Technology Issues in Israel and NATO Countries," written nearly three decades ago. It is not classified.
Grant Smith, founder of the Washington-based Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, Inc., filed a request for the report under the Freedom of Information Act three years ago. When the government failed to produce the document, he followed up with a pro se complaint in September.
In a November answer, government lawyers argued simply that Smith had "failed to state a claim."
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is presiding over the matter and has expressed concern about the pace at which this case is proceeding.
"I'd like to know what is taking so long for a 386-page document," she said at a Nov.
21st hearing in federal court in Washington. "The document was located some time ago."
"It certainly wasn't our intention to circumvent the procedures in this case," said Special Asst. U.S. Attorney Laura Jennings. "Our thought was that it would, in fact, expedite the process."
The report "Critical Technology Issues in Israel and NATO Countries" appears to involve super computers and nuclear capability. It was cited but not identified by title in The Jerusalem Post in a 1990 article, "Supercomputers Slow in Coming."
Similarly, it was referred to in general terms in a 1995 issue of a publication called The Risk Report that discussed a dispute among U.S. federal agencies over whether to sell a powerful computer from Cray Research to a group of Israeli universities.
"The United States approved the sale of powerful computers that could boost Israel's well-known but officially secret A-bomb and missile programs," said the Risk Report article.
"A 1987 Pentagon-sponsored study found that Technion University, one of the schools in the network, was helping design Israel's nuclear re-entry vehicle. U.S. officials say Technion's physicists also worked in Israel's secret weapon complex at Dimona."
The article also said Hebrew University and the Weizmann Institute, two other Israeli institutions which, as members of the Inter-University Computation Center, would have access to the Cray supercomputer, had been cited in the same Pentagon study.
The push to get hold of the Pentagon report is set against the backdrop of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Israel has not signed the treaty.
Iran, on the other hand, has signed the treaty.
In his complaint, Smith noted that the Weizmann Institute, Technion, and Hebrew University raise large sums of tax-exempt donations through affiliates in the United States.
The American Society for Technion-Israel Institute for Technology Inc., for example, reported raising more than $65 million in tax-exempt contributions in 2011.
According to publicly available tax filings by non-profits, the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science reported $59 million in tax-exempt contributions in 2012, and American Friends of Hebrew University raised nearly $48 million in that same year.
Smith's complaint noted that those substantial sums are sent to Israel in addition to the $86 billion in direct foreign aid Israel has received from U.S. taxpayers since 1987 when the Pentagon report was written.
"The Symington Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 prohibits most U.S. foreign aid to any country found trafficking in nuclear enrichment equipment or technology outside international safeguards," said Smith's complaint. "The Glenn Amendment of 1977 to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 calls for an end to U.S. foreign aid to countries that import nuclear reprocessing technology."
On the same day as the Nov. 21st court hearing over the government's delay in producing the report, government lawyer Jennings filed a motion saying that "non-disclosure" agreements applied to the report. "We've become aware of these non-disclosure agreements that apply," she said at the hearing. "We'll now need to do a line by line review."
Smith, representing himself, said:
"So what we've seen most recently is that the government is now coming up with novel ways to try and delay this by talking about mandatory disclosure reviews. We don't think it's meaningful that their captive think tank may have signed NDAs. Perhaps they even have a sock puppet in the Pentagon that signs NDAs on their behalf. It would be the same from our perspective."
Judge Chutkan answered, "I'm not willing to characterize the government responses as necessarily trying to be evasive or deceptive."
During the Nov. 21st hearing, Judge Chutkan asked DOD counsel Mark Herrington how long ago the document had been located.
"Quite a while ago," he answered.
"But Mr. Herrington, this case was filed on September 23," the judge continued. "We are talking about one document that's 386 pages long. I've reviewed my share of documents in my career. It should not take that long to review that document and decide what needs to be redacted."
Describing the Defense Department as "a gigantic bureaucratic machine," Herrington reiterated the government position that it was in fact trying to eliminate delays in producing the report. He said he thought the government could meet a deadline imposed by the judge for responding to Smith's complaint.
"We were hoping to have had a decision two days ago," he explained. "Came close, didn't quite get there."
"Didn't quite get where?" asked Chutkan.
"Making a determination to release the document," replied Herrington, who proceeded to cite Thanksgiving week as an additional complication.
"What we'd like the Court to do," Smith answered, "is to realize that the Department of Defense has failed to respond. If it's necessary that we file an additional motion requesting your personal in-camera review of the document in question, that's what we'd like to do."
Chutkan concluded the hearing by granting a short extension of time to the government. "And I want to caution the government that I'm going to be looking with disfavor on further motions for extensions of time," she warned.
In a late December filing, the government against asked for more time, calling their motion a request for a schedule "modification."
The motion also changed the government's explanation for the ongoing delay, saying the government was checking with Israel to see if its government had any objections to the report's release. There was no further mention of any non-disclosure agreement.
In his response, Smith said: "Given the Defendant's overall bad faith approach to the Plaintiff's public interest FOIA, in camera review by this Court would now be the most efficient and fair way to determine their release status."
A ruling on Smith's request for release of the report "Critical Technology Issues in Israel and NATO Countries" could come as soon as Friday.
By JANET MCMAHON
Tuesday, January 06, 2015
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
