Peace in the Middle Easy: Libya.
Remarkable things are happening in the middle east. No one knows how they will shake out, with the Muslim Brotherhood, rebels and other factions vying for a stake in fragile nations and the government’s of western nations continuing to find ways to poke and prod their way into the middle of these uprisings (prior to, during, and surely beyond).
One thing we do know is the people of these nations are fighting for a better life where freedom means food and basic rights, not iPods and new cars. I frankly don’t have anything to offer here other than a plea to stay informed, stay open, and stay supportive in any way you can. This isn’t about religion or borders, this is about people. And, in many cases, kids.
More than half of (Qaddafi’s) 6.5 million subjects are under 18.
A remarkable number, to be sure. One which represents opportunity and hope, yet remains crushed by starvation and unemployment in an oil rich nation.
A Libyan primer from Mother Jones, for your reference.
And a fantastic Twitter account from Sultan Al Qassemi reporting such remarkable things via Zakariya Salem Saad as:
The mercenaries (including Ukrainians, Serbians & Pakistanis) have been given Anti Bullet Vests to protect them from the police who have joined the protesters.
This Friday we’re holding an open Peace In The Middle East celebration at Tequila Bookworm, highlighting music of the region and generally uplifting vibes to help balance the otherwise terrifying reports and put some positive karma out there for the thousands of people fighting for freedom. It’s not anything profound or immediately helpful for the people of these nations, but it is something for friends of all nations to rally around locally. Join us. We can talk, we can dance, we can drink to freedom.
Peace.
Lee
America is my home, you’re not welcome.
Like I said, you’d think it would be hard to argue Moore’s logic, but Ben Shapiro is a man of great faith in completely convoluted and exclusionary analogies.
From thebombbag:
“Moore’s logic goes something like this. A man breaks into your home and kills your family, while carrying a copy of Al Gore’s soporific DVD, “An Inconvenient Truth.” He’s clearly perverting the intent of “An Inconvenient Truth,” which is to put people into a coma; instead he’s using the Gorefest as an excuse to kill people. After the funeral for your family, you come home to find Michael Moore and Al Gore on your doorstep, insisting that they should be able to erect a display case for Al Gore’s Oscar in your living room. Moore explains that since your home was the site of the movie’s perversion, in order to destroy misperceptions about global warming, Gore has a right to use your home for his agenda. If that makes sense to you, you’ve been frontally lobotomized with a chain saw.”—
Ben Shapiro, who just won the award for “Worst Analogy Ever.”
The whole article is horribly misguided. I could do a line-by-line dissection but it’s not worth the time.
Source: thebombbag
More on America’s war on freedom.
September 11 was, of course, an active day in America’s fight against freedom. Following recent Bomb Bag observations on the political right’s drive for a theocracy, Stowe Boyd found some rather more disturbing media abasement and evidence of fuel for the fight against freedom. Go America!
Is This America? - Nicolas Kristof
For a glimpse of how venomous and debased the discourse about Islam has become, consider a blog post in The New Republic this month. Written by Martin Peretz, the magazine’s editor in chief, it asserted: “Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims.”
Mr. Peretz added: “I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment, which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.”
Thus a prominent American commentator, in a magazine long associated with tolerance, ponders whether Muslims should be afforded constitutional freedoms. Is it possible to imagine the same kind of casual slur tossed off about blacks or Jews? How do America’s nearly seven million American Muslims feel when their faith is denounced as barbaric?
This is one of those times that test our values, a bit like the shameful interning of Japanese-Americans during World War II, or the disgraceful refusal to accept Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe.
God bless America, and all the ships at sea.
It gets better:
a Newsweek poll finds that 52 percent of Republicans believe that it is “definitely true” or “probably true” that “Barack Obama sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world.” So a majority of Republicans think that our president wants to impose Islamic law worldwide.
Just in case you were losing track of how deranged the GOP is, and the way that its leaders seem to be embracing lies, xenophobia, and hatred as planks in their platform.
We are skidding toward a mob that wants a religious dictatorship — a theocracy — to take over in America. That’s what Glenn Beck’s event at the Lincoln Memorial meant. Not a return to religion in American public life, but the intent of evangelical Christian right-wing loonies to take over all the branches of Government, rewrite the Constitution, and hound the disbelievers out of the country.
This segues nicely into Michael Moore’s recent post on the fight to prevent a Muslim-run community centre from being built somewhat within the vicinity of NYC’s ground zero. As a proponent of freedom, he’s got this to say:
I am opposed to the building of the “mosque” two blocks from Ground Zero.
I want it built on Ground Zero.
Why? Because I believe in an America that protects those who are the victims of hate and prejudice. I believe in an America that says you have the right to worship whatever God you have, wherever you want to worship. And I believe in an America that says to the world that we are a loving and generous people and if a bunch of murderers steal your religion from you and use it as their excuse to kill 3,000 souls, then I want to help you get your religion back. And I want to put it at the spot where it was stolen from you.
For a nation of supposed freedom lovers, you’d think it would be hard to argue that logic. Of course, that’s not the case when you’ve got the people who believe in the “one, true religion” threatening to burn a Quran on September 11 (and thereby giving protestors in Afghanistan a reason to act like complete assholes). Go America!
Thankfully, there are people on the streets of America who actually believe in freedom. Jacob Isom’s “Dude, you have no Quran!” Tshirts coming soon.
Of course, all this is just getting us warmed up for Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher season premier. You’d think this kind of crazy was all some kind of viral marketing campaign for the show, but no, it’s real folks! Real crazies! Coming for your freedom!
Solution: move to Canada. We’ve got non-bankrupting health care, reasonably stable banking, somewhat offensive but generally quiet conservatives (including those running the country), a better job market, better education (?), cultural freedom, and freedom to marry. We’re not perfect, but man, America, you scare me.
Source: underpaidgenius
Enemies of Christ and Country: first hand observations from Tea Party central.
Such a great read from @thebombbag, I’m just going to include it all, right here:
On Saturday, I biked to Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally on the mall. I didn’t go because I believed in the politics or the people behind this ultra-right movement. I went because I thought it would be funny. Small crowd. Ridiculous posters. Angry people. I wanted to take out my camera, snap pictures, engage some of the crazier folks, and report back that this movement is a deteriorating joke, a parody of itself. Well…
Crowd size: I understand why some of the left-leaning sites like to downplay the size of the crowd but the reflecting pool was shoulder-to-shoulder, the large area to the left of the reflecting pool was lawn chair-to-lawn chair, the WWII memorial was packed, and the area leading up the Washington Monument was loosely packed with folks who didn’t want to fight the crowds. Knowing DC crowds, it would be irresponsible to say that there were much fewer than 100,000 people there.
Ridiculous posters: There weren’t any. There were some pretty ridiculous shirts and lots of ridiculous colonial hats and outfits and “Don’t Tread On Me” paraphernalia but not a lot of ridiculous posters. The reason why there weren’t a lot of ridiculous posters was because Beck asked people not to bring posters. He said he’d like the movement to remain apolitical. Anyone with the ability to look at a bigger picture knows it’s because the racist and misspelled posters of the Tea Party undermine their message and focus the people’s attention on the stupidity of its followers.
I’m capitalizing Tea Party from now on, by the way, because they’re organized and they fall in line. Beck said, “No posters,” and they left their posters home. They are a movement, not some waning fad. They should be taken seriously. They are a proper noun. A frightening, massive, proper noun.
Angry people: Well, there was a lot of crying. When I went to Obama’s inauguration there was a lot of crying, too. I cried, and I’m not much of a crier. There was a sense of hope and optimism in the air and it was overwhelming. We were ready to move on from the past and to tackle the future. The folks at this rally, however, were crying simply BECAUSE we were crying a year and a half ago. They don’t like what we did or tried to do or want to do. They think we have no soul, no patriotism. They think we forgot what made this country great and that we’ve been running it into the ground. They have no proof, they have faith. And faith, I’m finding, is a very dangerous thing to fight.
And faith is exactly what this rally was about.
It was like a Mega Church. It was like I was somewhere in Colorado Springs and not in downtown DC. Every speaker had one message: we need to bring Jesus Christ back into the fold. And every attendee agreed. This country is Jesus’s country. Not God. Not some vague higher power. Not the people’s country. It was Jesus Christ’s country. Jesus before God before family before country. It was frightening.
Several speakers made reference to the “spirit” of Dr. Martin Luther King JR, except I’m pretty sure they were calling on the spirit of Reverend Martin Luther King JR and by spirit I mean the spirit of the word “Reverend” and by reverend I mean a fire-and-brimstone Pentecostal preacher. One of the speakers actually had the audacity to say that he, too, had a dream – and that dream was that all Americans, including the “Red Man”, would come to worship Jesus Christ. Which is as far away from King’s dream as you could get.
You know, I always saw the Tea Party as racist. How could you not? And they declared over-and-over again that they weren’t racist and that we were being reverse racists for claiming that they were racists. Well…I still think they’re by-and-large racist but I don’t they they want to bring us back to 1963 or 1861 or 1776. After listening to the speeches and observing the people and seeing their tears and hearing their cheers I think what they really want, at the end of the day, is a Theocracy.
A Theocracy.
The only thing more dangerous than 100k+ racists wanting to “take the country back” is 100k+ zealots who want to establish a Theocracy. Who honestly believe that fundamental Christianity should be the foundation of every decision this country makes.
This goes beyond the idea of having an official State Religion, something that is in-and-of-itself dangerous. Having a theocracy would put us on the same list with a handful of other countries, including Iran and Afghanistan under the Taliban.
What happens to Jews and Muslims under this proposed theocracy? What happens to the non-believers? Forced conversions? Stonings? Or maybe a more “diplomatic” solution, like increased taxes or segregation or deportation.
I wrote my friend Lauren of STFU, Tea Baggers and told her that I was generally scared of what I saw. They were organized, and they’re redefining the narrative of this country. She responded with a level-headed counterpoint, that once one of “their guys” gets elected and doesn’t do anything they’ll see that all politicians are the same and quiet down a bit.
I’d like to publically respond to that opinion.
You see, they don’t have to really do anything as long as they have an enemy. No republican, hard-right or moderate, wants to end war because war creates an enemy. The Soviet Union, the War on Drugs, the Middle East – they need these wars to create enemies: Communists, drug addicts, and Muslims, respectively. No republican, hard-right or moderate, wants to make abortion illegal – they need abortion to create an enemy: women, pro-choice supporters, liberals. No republican, hard-right or moderate, wants to fix the deficit – they need the deficit to create an enemy: healthcare, welfare, and, through some twisted logic, even taxes.
The more enemies they can define, the more of a powerbase they can solidify. They don’t need to deliver right away, as long as they point to someone that’s standing in the way. And as they continue to bury us in debt and as they continue to screw over the disenfranchised and as they continue to focus their finger-pointing and say, “It’s this person’s fault,” they’ll continue to grow their base and whittle down their opposition.
And the people will continue to buy it. They’ll believe more and more that we’re enemies of Christ and Country. And, before the republicans can stop the monster they’ve created, we’ll get real fundamentals in charge. And we will become a theocracy. And America will no longer exist.
This may not be their plan, but what I saw on Saturday was a bunch of short-sighted politicians and marketers who are unable or unwilling to look twenty years into the future. Short-sightedness and greed have been the true enemies of America since Reagan, and I fully believe that when it comes time to reap the fruits of the labors of the men pulling the strings, it’ll be the end of everything we now know and care for.
Sorry, folks, but THIS is what we should be afraid of, if we’re afraid of anything.
Source: thebombbag
Lover of design, typography, photography, music and life. Critical of close mindedness and a lack of critical thinking.
