Terrorism Against Muslims Hits Ohio in Ramadan

This disconcerting news about terrorism against Muslims is just in (quoted in full):

Baboucarr Njie was preparing for his prayer session Friday night, Sept. 26, when he heard children in the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton coughing. Soon, Njie himself was overcome with fits of coughing and, like the rest of those in the building, headed for the doors.

"I would stay outside for a minute, then go back in, there were a lot of kids," Njie said. "My throat is still itchy, I need to get some milk."

Njie was one of several affected when a suspected chemical irritant was sprayed into the mosque at 26 Josie St., bringing Dayton police, fire and hazardous material personnel to the building at 9:48 p.m.

Someone "sprayed an irritant into the mosque," Dayton fire District Chief Vince Wiley said, noting that fire investigators believe it was a hand-held spray can.

According to fire dispatch communications, a child reported seeing two men with a white can spraying something into a window. That child was brought to the supervising firefighter at the scene.

Wiley would not discuss that report, but said the investigation has been turned over to police. Police were not commenting.

The 300 or so inside were celebrating the last 10 days of Ramadan with dinner and a prayer session, but the prayer session was interrupted so those suffering from tearing, coughing and shortness of breath could receive treatment.

Wiley said an adult and juvenile were taken to area hospitals and others had their eyes or faces washed on the scene. He did not know how many people were treated at the scene.

Ismail Gula, ISGD secretary, said people were praying during the weekly service when some in the audience began to cough and experience breathing troubles, then left the building. Once outside, several of them called 911, Gula said.

Tarek Sabagh, a member of the ISGD board, wasn't present when the incident occurred.

He said his daughter called and told him to stay away because of the possibility of remaining fumes. Sabagh arrived shortly after and watched from the mosque's steps as members were allowed back inside about 11 p.m. to collect belongings.

"It's very disturbing," Sabagh said. "Something like this has never happened before."

Sabagh said members moved to a Beavercreek school to finish their prayer session as police continued to investigate.

"I don't know if people will have the feeling of trust to come back tomorrow or next week or next month," Sabagh said. "I don't know how people will feel."

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Muslim calendar. During the month, Muslims fast (do not eat) from sunrise to sunset. In the evening and in the morning before the sun comes up, they eat small meals. During this month, they take extra time for family, inner reflection, and spiritual growth.

This shows the anti-Muslim sentiment which is a direct result of the so-called Global War on Terror. You can't have a war based solely on ideology and win. It's always ultimately a lose-lose.

One loss is participation of Muslims in American politics and society, an important way of mitigating terrorism. In fact, it's the only real solution. Yet here's the reaction of one Muslim on dailykos after this incident:

Keep in mind, as many of you know, Muslims in america are well assimilated, mainstream moderate people, often times professionals who contribute greatly to the communities in which they live.

But because of Fox News, because of right wing organizations, like the Clarion FUND and their viscious attacks on islam, because of daniel pipes and ohers like him, Islam has been maligned to the extent thathate crime is an acceptable part of the rights tradition. They believe that Muslims are out to destroy America.

No matter the facts, no matter the reality, all that matters is the propaganda they listen to on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, etc....

Cal Thomas editorials are in my local paper virtually every day. The man rants against muslims all the time. And there are many others like him. Michelle Malkin. This Kathleen Parker who has recenltly called for Palins resignation has viciously attacked muslims in the past.

So many of them. And so, the regular people believe this crap, and they believe it is their duty to defend america against this Mortal enemy.

And when attacks like this happen. Nothing much is done, BECAUSE, muslims are ignored by and large. Their situation their suffering EVEN their votes dont seem to matter much.

Fortunately, a large and sympathetic response from the site assures us that not everyone has that divisive, partisan, emotional, fear-mongering, and unthinking attitude. Now we need more conscientious men and women of conscience in the media reporting an incident like this, and more public outcry.

Major Newspapers Delivering Anti-Islam DVD to Voters in Swing States

There's a new propaganda war on Islam in this election season, cooked up by "neocons and ex-Israeli diplomats", according to this article:

A group of hard-line U.S. neo-conservatives and former Israeli diplomats, among others, are behind the mass distribution, ahead of the November U.S. presidential election, of a controversial DVD that critics have denounced as Islamophobic.
The group, the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), is working with another organisation called the Clarion Fund, which produced the 60-minute video and is itself tied closely to an Israeli organisation called Aish Hatorah.

According to this version of the report,

Millions of voters in U.S. states crucial to this fall's presidential election received DVD copies of a controversial documentary film as advertising inserts in their morning newspapers over the past week, with more expected to be sent out over the upcoming weekend.

The 2006 film, Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West, ...was reportedly delivered, or slated for delivery this weekend, into tens of millions of households in states such as Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Colorado, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Missouri and other "swing states" that don't vote consistently for either party and usually decide elections.

And who are these newspapers? Oh, not the NYT... "all the trash that's profitable to send?"...

The New York Times alone distributed some 145,000 copies of Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West to 11 markets.

In these economic hard times, that's a lot of money. Why the need to push Islamophobia now? Is this supposed to be a racist plug for McCain?

Republicans and their candidate, Sen. John McCain, have made battling the threat posed by radical Islamists a central platform of their campaign, while presenting their Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, as being weak on the issue. Obama has also fought off persistent smear campaigns, particularly among Jewish voters, that he is a closet Muslim.

Gregory Ross, the spokesman for the Clarion group, which produced and is distributing the DVD, told the Harrisburg Patriot-News that the movie was being delivered to 28 million homes throughout the month of September and that the intention was not to sway voters to either candidate.

Right! Of course, the intention had nothing to do with the election! They just wanted to spend a lot of money in swing states because... because... they're "swingers." And they really, really want to be sure that everybody knows that Muslims are a threat. And we need a Great White Right-Wing Hope to save us from THEM.

Clarion Fund was founded by the writer and executive produce of Obsession, Israeli-Canadian Raphael Shore. The group also runs the website Radicalislam.org -- an educational site which implores its readers to "take action against radical Islam" by exploring its resources under four headings: "fueling terror," "Sharia law," "vote 2008," and "radical Islam overview."

Because of Clarion Fund's non-profit, tax-exempt status, it is not permitted to sway voters in a partisan manner. But Radicalislam.org reportedly was, until it was recently pointed out in the media, carrying an article that explicitly endorsed Sen. John McCain.

Ooops. Well, they didn't mean to endorse him. And... are they still granted non-profit status? Or is this another "unregulated" neocon enterprise? Well, as long as they are promoting hate and Islamophobia, I mean, who would want to "regulate" that? Isn't hating Muslims good for security? Well, it seems Clarion, one of the producers of the DVD, is getting some dividends for their efforts,

"We're getting many concerned calls and emails from Muslims around the country who see this as an attempt to not only marginalize and demonize the American Muslim community, but also to sway the election by targeting swing states," Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told IPS. "People are outraged. I haven't seen this kind of outrage in a long time. It's coming to their homes, it's coming to their neighbors and they believe its going to impact their lives and their children's lives negatively."

Hooper also said there had apparently already been an incident of bias against a bus driver for Islamic school children in Ohio. The biased comments were likely inspired by film.

Is that the kind of security they are trying to "promote" in a "non-profit" sort of way? Well, they did put in a substantial investment, so presumably they want a return. A return named McCain.

"I can't imagine that you can produce, package, distribute and advertise this product for less than 50 million dollars," Hooper told IPS.

He also insisted that the substantial financial push may have been intended to sway the election. "Why did they choose to distribute this hate propaganda to millions of homes in swing states in this election?"

Even EMET's spokesman, Ari Morgenstern, admits

"it costs a great deal -- it's a multi-million-dollar effort." Outside experts have estimated the cost of the operation, including reproduction and distribution, at between 15 million dollars and 50 million dollars.

There must be some motivation, and it's obvious what it is.

Not all newspapers were so eager for the advertising dollars that they would distribute this obviously incendiary and prejudicial propaganda, as the IPS reported,

Critics allege that the movie "Obsession" is "hate propaganda" which paints Muslims as violent extremists and, among other things, explicitly compares the threat posed by radical Islam to that of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

At least two major metropolitan newspapers solicited to insert the paid advertisement into their product have refused to do so because of a perceived bias in the film.

Too bad the NYT had no such moral qualms. All their markets are now inundated with this hate material. And this hate material is just part of a broader effort.

Two weeks ago, EMET sponsored a seminar series on Capitol Hill named for the controversial multi-billionaire casino and hotel magnate Sheldon Adelson, a major donor to right-wing Zionist organisations in the U.S.; the far-right lobby group, Freedom's Watch; and the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), whose efforts to persuade Jewish voters that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is aligned with radical anti-Israel forces in the Islamic world have drawn strong criticism from the mainstream Jewish press here.

Making those newspapers look even worse. Is this the fallout of the economic meltdown? More hate? More racism? Less democracy? Sounds like the Republican agenda melding with the right-wing Zionist extremists. It's a hatefest for idealogues.

Not to mention illegal. It is prohibited by law for non-profits or foreign organizations or agents to try to influence an election in any way. And Clarion is just a front, without even an address, acting for an organization in Israel. So where is the law? Or doesn't it matter if this is legal or illegal, just so McCain gets elected?

No respect for the law. More fear. More walls. More divisions between people. The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. Cooperation between people of different ethnic and religions backgrounds gets trumped by the desperate fear-driven fantasized "need" to build walls and bariers between them, seeing others always as threats. Why does the GOP keep sticking to these ideologues? All these propagandists do is make life in America less free, less secure, and the election less democratic.

Charley Reese: Israel is a Huge Liability, on Moral Low Road

This is verbatim from a column few have the courage to write. It is sometimes followed by death or death threats... against those who challenge the "Israel Right or Wrong" policy:

Dump Israel

by Charley Reese

It is long past time for American politicians to quit carrying water for the state of Israel and its powerful U.S. lobby. Congress' craven obedience to the lobby is a disgrace.

America's strategic interests in the Middle East lie with the Arab countries. Israel is a strategic and economic liability. The U.S. government's slavish support of Israel brands us as a hypocrite and is responsible for most of the hostility toward the U.S.

Americans have been brainwashed into believing that it's the Arabs, and the Palestinians in particular, who don't want peace. That is a big lie. The Palestinians made an enormous concession when they agreed to settle for a state on 18 percent of Palestine. Saudi Arabia proposed several years ago a peace plan in which all of the Arab countries would recognize Israel in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. The Israelis rejected it out of hand, just as they reject Arab efforts to have the Middle East a nuclear-free zone.

Israel's goal is and always has been to take all of Palestine and to get rid of the Palestinians. The Israelis employed ethnic cleansing in 1948 and again in 1967 to make hundreds of thousands of Palestinians refugees. For 40 years, the Israelis have refused to give back the Palestinian and Syrian lands they seized in war. They have blatantly violated international law by building settlements on occupied land, and by violating the airspace of other sovereign countries.

Palestinians are the victims, not the villains, in this case. The Israelis make their lives miserable in the hope they will give up and leave. At the same time, the Israelis, in cahoots with the American government, maintain a charade of proposed peace talks. They of course never come to fruition. The Israeli government is not about to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state. If they give the Palestinians anything, it will be a patchwork of enclaves completely surrounded and controlled by Israel. Having created 700,000 Palestinian refugees, the Israelis have from the beginning refused to allow them to return to their homes, farms and businesses, all of which Israel confiscated on the specious grounds that they were "abandoned property."

Without U.S. aid, which now is conservatively estimated to total $108 billion (think of the infrastructure and schools that amount could build in the U.S.), and without the U.S. wielding its veto every time the United Nations tries to act, none of this would be possible.

It is not just the Muslim world that hates our pro-Israel foreign policy, for sound reasons that it is unjust and cruel. Europeans and others around the world are contemptuous of America's slavelike obedience to a small foreign power. It has gotten to the point that to be seen as an ally of the United States is viewed negatively.

The Arab and Muslim people, with the exception of al-Qaida, don't hate America or Americans. It is the pro-Israel foreign policy and, of course, our invasions of two Muslim countries that they hate. Virtually all of the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim propaganda generated in this country has its source in the Israeli lobby and in Israel itself.

Thanks to the unconstitutional largess of the cowardly Congress, Israel is a rich country and one of the world's leading military powers. It doesn't need American aid. It is time to quit dancing to the tune of a lobby with dual loyalties and to pursue America's interests.

Americans are being betrayed by their own politicians, and it's time to treat those scoundrels with the contempt they deserve.

Religion: The Dye-Pack of the People

Bridgethought of the Day: If you want to really smear someone or a large number of someones, use a dye pack.

What does this mean? And What, in fact, is religion?

These are questions, profound questions, with which men like Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Ariel Sharon, L. Ron Hubbard, and Jerry Falwell have wrestled, professionally I might add. And we'll start with the ex-World Bank heavyweight, Paul Wolfowitz, since Banks and Dye-Packs sort of go together.

You see, since the invention of the expression "politically correct" to undermine the taboo against racist, sexist, or otherwise demeaning speech, there's still been that contingent out there looking for a Plan B. But this Plan B was not to be an alternative to Plan A, but rather B was for "Big", as in Something Very All-Inclusive.

Bad-mouthing non-familiar social groups, aka racist/sexist/ethnic slurs, goes along with Free Speech in the minds of members of Familiar Social Groups, namely WASPS, as part of the American Way. And even more important, it goes along with the Institution of Xenophobia, where the more American a person is, the more '50's apple-pie/mom/smiling clean-clothed/Euro-ethnic or Jewish-professional-entertainer/ flag-obsessed/buck-earning/English-speaking/tax-paying/non-foreign-looking/white/ dentally-intact a person is - and vice versa. Patriotism is a culture with a club.

With that in mind, let's find a solution to terrorism. If only all terrorists could be easily identified. What we need is a good dye-pack, something to explode in their faces everytime they try to pull off a terrorist act, successful or not. Problem is, it's not like they're always after something like money that can be planted. But they are after something - somewhere between vengeance, attention, and that feeling of conquering an impossible beast, if only for a moment. Aha, the Beast! That's it!

The Beast reminds us all of what? Religion, of course! "And what rough Beast, its hour come 'round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born ..." What could be more religious than T.S. Eliot, Bethlehem, and Revelations? And to a terrorist, what is the Beast? America is!

Who else watches silently, slouching, as Israel slaughters Lebanese civilians from the air? Who else watches the Palestinians get bulldozed out of a pauper's lane of land for some rich, imported Chosen Ones - and claps with all the fervor and pride of the Romans in their amazing Coliseum? Who else cares so little for infants and children killed from starvation by sanctions, bombings or wars, referring to them callously as "collateral damage"? Who else clamors for more cruel torture and interrogations and demands and end to the humane treatment of prisoners of war? Who else doesn't give a damn about the international laws against assassination or invasion of countries against their will? The Beast, that's who!

So, in the gospel according to Rove, we call ourselves the Savior, and they are the Beast, see? Just reverse the roles. And then the dye-pack. It's religion, the religion of the Beast. Islam. All we do is associate Islam with the Beast and we've got it made! So every time someone who is Muslim fights against anyone from the West or Israel, or better yet, attacks civilian targets, the dye-pack explodes! They are "Islamic Terrorists." They are The Beast.

Religion is really, for the guys mentioned above, something of a racket, a thing that you use to get what you want. So now it's turned into a thing you use to splatter indelible ink all over the enemy you wish to create. So now we can find the Terrorists. They are Muslims! Anyone who is Muslim who does anything "suspicious", becomes a part of Terrorism. He's into the Beast! Then, just to be "politically correct", you have to say "Of course, we don't mean the Good Muslims." Like the Christian or Jewish ones. Or the ones who never pray. Or the ones who don't speak Arabic. Or the ones who work hard to make money and don't give a damn if children are dying in Palestine because it's none of their damn business, right? Those are the Good Muslims. We don't mean them.

The Beast is Islam. The religion of people who are so angry about the extreme continuous oppression of people around the world that they can't wait for the "system" run by the U.S. and Britain to work. Wasn't patience supposed to be a virtue?

Were the terrorists of 9-11 attacking America, their Beast? In the so-called "post 9-11 world", they were creating a new Beast - Islam! And we believe! All Americans follow closely "terror level - elevated" and wonder, where will they strike next? FBI officials dutifully interview every Muslim student, fishing for plots: "Do you know Osama?" As if every Muslim has some sort of conduit to America's Most Wanted Terrorist. Is America crazy, or are they just building up the dye-pack chemical base?

Listen closely to the news: "A group of Muslims has been linked to a terrorist plot." But no one said "Timothy McVeigh, the Christian who blew up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City." Does anyone even know what his religion was? Before he was caught, the first to be arrested was a Muslim from Jordan - the old Middle East Muslim thing. If someone in a terrorist plot is not Muslim, his religion is never mentioned. Terrorism is not a religion, and yet the dye-pack security plan wants it to be. It's a new religon called "Islamist." It's The Beast.

It's driving tyrants crazy overseas. Look at Hosny Mubarak, Egypt's cruel dictator. He bends over backwards, even having his security forces rape innocent women, even locking down mosques to prevent people to pray, even making it a criminal act for any "sheikh" - all are now government-appointed, usually police officers - to say anything remotely construed as "activist" or political. Mubarak's going all out to destroy The Beast of Islam. He's undermining the teaching of the Arabic language. He's preventing the teaching of Islam as a religion. Freedom of religion is part of the Beast. Islam dictates that no religion be coerced or a state religion. That is another part of Islamism, the Terrorist Beast!

Kings Abdullah & Abdullah are trying to do their part to undermine The Beast. The Beast that wants to devour Childe Israel the beloved. The Beast that does not love Childe Israel as Childe Israel should be loved. And who doesn't love beauty, especially beauty that comes from pampering and wealth, flaunted before the filthy vermin that they call the poor people? Ooooh, those stinky poor! Royals understand the disgust of the Israelis. They understand the need to be special. They understand birthright, wealth, inheritance, and being born on a higher plane, born to be pampered, special, Chosen, the Chosen Few, God's beloved. And how could God not love the Beautiful People who live in splendor and indulge their every desire while unworthy creatures do not even deserve a few shekels' worth of drudgery to feed their always-devouring children's mouths?

Yes, Royals and tyrants understand the need for security to protect what was stolen from others less deserving. You know how low-lifes are, always ranting and raving about "rights" and "humanity" and "compassion". But that's not what religion is about. It's about creating fear, love, and loathing. It's about mass emotional manipulation, or so I overheard from those guys who're supposed to know.

Religion is about dye-packs, about putting to sleep 300 million people so they can BELIEVE that they are always RIGHT just because they are Americans and to say otherwise would be unpatriotic, just like the Israelis are always right, because to say otherwise would be anti-Semitic, and that Muslims are always terrorists unless they are the Good Muslims who just want to assimilate and believe the same dye-pack of lies, just like everybody else, so we can all go to hell on the back of one great big Beast.

Whose hour has come 'round at last...