Category Archives: USA

Hicks case exposes ‘war on terror’ sham

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“After five years of solitary confinement in a small metal cell, David Hicks pleaded guilty on March 26 to one of the two charges brought against him by US military prosecutors on March 1, to finally get out of the notoriously brutal US military prison at Guantanamo Bay. Hicks’s case has revealed just what a sham the US-led ‘war on terror’ really is.

“For five years Washington, backed to the hilt by Canberra, has claimed that Hicks was one of the most dangerous ‘terrorists’ being held at Guantanamo. He was charged with offences that carrying life sentences. Now, under the plea bargaining deal, his US military prosecutors are talking about him being able to be ‘home before the end the year’. Indeed, on March 31, Hicks was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment, with all but nine months of the sentence suspended. He will serve most of this in an Australian civilian prison.”

Green Left Weekly, 30 March 2007

Bertinotti removes anti-Muslim painting

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Over at Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer posts an indignant report that “the president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, the communist Fausto Bertinotti, has had removed a painting showing a scene from the Battle of Lepanto from the hall in which he receives visitors to this lower house of parliament…. Bertinotti says it is a gesture of peace and dialogue, the painting’s title being ‘Naval battle between Christians and barbarians’, but an anonymous insider reveals it was done to avoid offending Muslims”.

And good for comrade Bertinotti, we say. Voting against the funding of Italian troops in Afghanistan would have been even better, though.

Film on ‘radical Islam’ tied to pro-Israel groups

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A controversial documentary on the threat of radical Islam, promoted by the two most-watched U.S. cable news networks, was marketed and supported in part by self-described “pro-Israel” groups, according to an IPS investigation. Abbreviated versions and segments of “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” ran on FOX News and CNN, but neither station disclosed the film’s connection to HonestReporting, a watchdog group that monitors the media for allegedly negative portrayals of Israel.

While watching the film, it becomes clear that the controversy surrounding “Obsession” has less to with what it says about the threat of radical Islam, than how it presents the information. While the film contains disclaimers stating that “it’s important to remember most Muslims are peaceful and do not support terror,” critics argue that it makes little distinction between the religion of Islam and the political realities that inform terrorism. “It’s all part of that industry of Muslim bashers,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“The sentiment is there, you can see in the [1995] Oklahoma City bombing that it was originally seen as an act of Islamic terrorism,” said Peter Hart of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. “It’s almost a default position for the media, so you’re going to have work like this received uncritically.” The Oklahoma City bombing, initially attributed by the mainstream media to Islamic terrorists, was actually perpetrated by right-wing extremists from the U.S. midwest.

IPS, 26 March 2007

Is Islam compatible with a republic?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Is Islam compatible with a republic? With Islamic radicalism running rampant both in America and throughout the West, all people of goodwill and those who love liberty must emphatically answer, No! With this said, what will America do about the enemies in our midst? Continue to put our heads in the sand and ape the idiotic rantings from the propaganda press? – ‘Islam is a religion of peace’; ‘Islam welcomes all faiths’; ‘George W. Bush is the biggest enemy of freedom, not al-Qaida’; and other asinine babblings of the political left, or will real men rise up, demand that the FBI put every mosque and imam in America under constant surveillance (as J. Edgar Hoover would have done) and find out what is really going on with our Muslim friends here in America?”

Ellis Washington in World Net Daily, 24 March 2007

FBI invite to Robert Spencer condemned

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jihad Watch dhimmitude billboardThe decision by the FBI’s Indianapolis office to bring in author Robert Spencer to talk to its anti-terrorism task force has a Plainfield-based Muslim organization concerned that the bureau is listening to an “Islamophobe” who distorts its faith.

The FBI had planned to bring in Spencer this week to speak to Indiana’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. His appearance was postponed because he had a scheduling conflict. Both Spencer and the FBI hope to reschedule.

Louay Safi, director of leadership development with the Islamic Society of North America, said bringing Spencer in to talk of Islam is akin to bringing an anti-Semite to talk about Jews or a Ku Klux Klan member to talk about race.

Indianapolis Star, 18 March 2007

Florida bus driver fired over Muslim jokes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

ORLANDO, FL (AP) – A bus driver was fired after a Muslim couple complained that he insulted members of their religion over the loudspeaker.

The driver, whose name was not released, was fired Thursday after Hilal Isler of upstate New York said she and her husband, Volkan Isler, were offended. The Turkish-American couple say he launched into a monologue after they boarded the I-Ride Trolley bus March 5.

Hilal Isler said he greeted passengers, told a blonde joke and then one about Muslims.

“And now they’re telling us we’re supposed to be nice to these Muslim terrorists who are trying to kill us all,” Hilal Isler recalled him saying. “Here in America, we call them ‘rag-heads’ or ‘towelheads,’ but that’s not right. What they wear on their heads is more like a sheet. We should be calling them sheetheads.”

After returning to New York, Hilal Isler, who is Muslim but does not wear a traditional head scarf, reported the incident to the Orlando Sentinel and the International Drive Master Transit and Improvement District, which owns I-Ride.

Luann Brooks, executive director of the transit company, told the Sentinel that the driver had been identified on Thursday and dismissed. Brooks said while the driver’s “conduct is not going to be tolerated,” drivers for the service are encouraged to interact with passengers and play the role of ambassadors to the area.

Associated Press, 16 March 2007

Why no media boost for Belgian racists, Diana West wants to know

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Vlaams Belang“Without attracting much attention, representatives of the Belgian political party Vlaams Belang recently visited Washington, D.C. Frank Vanhecke and Filip Dewinter hoped to meet members of Congress; but Congress was in recess. They hoped to engender some understanding of their program to reverse the Islamization of Belgium; but the media were strip-mining the tinsel life and tawdry times of Anna Nicole Smith.

“Maybe they should have known that Tabloid America doesn’t care about the likely transformation of Europe into an Islamic continent, let alone the fate of a French- and Dutch-speaking country of 10 million people.”

Diana West bemoans the failure of the US media to give favourable coverage to the far-right VB, a political party whose origins are to be found among Belgian fascist sympathisers who collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation of 1941-44. In the course of that occupation 25,000 Jews (44% of Belgium’s Jewish community) were deported to concentration camps and killed. But, what the heck, the VB now direct their hatred against Muslims rather than Jews, so they’re alright with Diana West.

Washington Times, 16 March 2007

Tatchell complains he has been ‘smeared as anti-Muslim’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Outrage“Allegations of ‘Islamophobia’ and ‘racism’ are increasingly manufactured and manipulated to stop debate, silence critics and discredit opponents. I have been on the receiving end of this mud-slinging by the Mayor of London and his Socialist Action apparatchiks, the National Assembly Against Racism, the Muslim Council of Britain and the notorious Islamophobia Watch website.

“The unprincipled, sectarian ‘left’ colludes with right-wing Islamists, such as the sexist, homophobic and anti-Semitic fundamentalist cleric, Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi. When I, and others, dared condemn Qaradawi’s support for suicide bombing and female genital mutilation, we were denounced as ‘Islamophobes.’ The idea was to marginalise our critique by smearing us as anti-Muslim. These dirty tricks are the copy-book tactics of the far right. They have nothing in common with humanitarian or socialist values.”

Poor picked-on Peter Tatchell has a whinge in Democratiya, Spring 2007

For a recent critique of Tatchell on the notorious Islamophobia Watch website, see here.

For an example of the support Tatchell has attracted in the right-wing blogoshere see here.