In his New York Times column, Thomas L. Friedman talks about the frightening divisiveness and rise of extremism in American politics.
Amongst it is a spot-on comment about the blogosphere, and the internet in general:
...a blogosphere that at its best enriches our debates, adding new checks on the establishment, and at its worst coarsens our debates to a whole new level, giving a new power to anonymous slanderers to send lies around the world.
The column is here.
Showing posts with label USA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label USA. Show all posts
Friday, October 02, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
US foreign policy is run by?
A rare moment of honesty in the world of politics.
The New York Times reports a speech made by Israeli PM Ehud Olmert :
In an unusually public rebuke, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel said Monday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been forced to abstain from a United Nations resolution on Gaza that she helped draft, after Mr. Olmert placed a phone call to President Bush.
“I said, ‘Get me President Bush on the phone,’ ” Mr. Olmert said in a speech in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, according to The Associated Press. “They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care: ‘I need to talk to him now,’ ” Mr. Olmert continued. “He got off the podium and spoke to me.”
The only surprise is that the bragging about Israel's control over American policy in the region, obviously designed to gain votes in the upcoming election, publicly acknowledged what has long been known but officially denied.
The spin doctors must be in a panic on this one - the Israeli PM telling the US President to get off the podium to speak to him now, which he does.
The report is here.
The New York Times reports a speech made by Israeli PM Ehud Olmert :
In an unusually public rebuke, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel said Monday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been forced to abstain from a United Nations resolution on Gaza that she helped draft, after Mr. Olmert placed a phone call to President Bush.
“I said, ‘Get me President Bush on the phone,’ ” Mr. Olmert said in a speech in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, according to The Associated Press. “They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care: ‘I need to talk to him now,’ ” Mr. Olmert continued. “He got off the podium and spoke to me.”
The only surprise is that the bragging about Israel's control over American policy in the region, obviously designed to gain votes in the upcoming election, publicly acknowledged what has long been known but officially denied.
The spin doctors must be in a panic on this one - the Israeli PM telling the US President to get off the podium to speak to him now, which he does.
The report is here.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Threats to President-elect at all time high
It was inevitable wasn't it, but alarming none the less.
An AP report says:
Threats against a new president historically spike right after an election, but from Maine to Idaho, law enforcement officials are seeing more against Barack Obama than ever before.
...law enforcement officials have seen more potentially threatening writings, Internet postings and other activity directed at Obama than has been seen with any past president-elect...
And I suppose they think this is all good fun. Or something more sinister?
Earlier this week, the Secret Service looked into the case of a sign posted on a tree in Vay, Idaho, with Obama's name and the offer of a "free public hanging."
And in a Maine convenience store, a journalist saw a sign inviting customers to join a betting pool on when Obama might fall victim to an assassin.
The sign solicited $1 (Dh3.67) entries into "The Osama Obama Shotgun Pool," saying the money would go to the person picking the date closest to when Obama would be attacked. "Let's hope we have a winner," said the sign, since taken down.
Not what I'd call a healthy society.
You can read the report here.
An AP report says:
Threats against a new president historically spike right after an election, but from Maine to Idaho, law enforcement officials are seeing more against Barack Obama than ever before.
...law enforcement officials have seen more potentially threatening writings, Internet postings and other activity directed at Obama than has been seen with any past president-elect...
And I suppose they think this is all good fun. Or something more sinister?
Earlier this week, the Secret Service looked into the case of a sign posted on a tree in Vay, Idaho, with Obama's name and the offer of a "free public hanging."
And in a Maine convenience store, a journalist saw a sign inviting customers to join a betting pool on when Obama might fall victim to an assassin.
The sign solicited $1 (Dh3.67) entries into "The Osama Obama Shotgun Pool," saying the money would go to the person picking the date closest to when Obama would be attacked. "Let's hope we have a winner," said the sign, since taken down.
Not what I'd call a healthy society.
You can read the report here.
Friday, November 07, 2008
PS to 'Hope' post
I wasn't going to post a follow-on to my 'Hope at last' posting, but comments left on it have changed my mind.
In that post I expressed my fear for the safety of President-elect Obama. I put that fear into context by stating the fact that the US is a violent country. I also stated the fact of the extent of gun ownership.
Comments on the post took us into the whole gun control debate, although that wasn't the point of the post.
However, as we were taken there I thought I'd draw your attention to a report I've just been reading on the surge in gun buying in response to Barak Obama's election.
A few lines from it:
"I was selling guns before I even opened the door," said George Horne, owner of The Gun Room. "It's gone completely mad. Everyone is buying everything I've got on the shelves. Sales have been crazy."
One customer left with two new assault rifles and said he had already bought 30 weapons since Obama began his campaign for president. "And look at this," he said, unwrapping a black rifle from a plastic cover. "I'm not talking BB guns."
Jerry Stehman told an endless wave of customers at his Jerry's Outdoor Sports store in Grand Junction to come back in two hours to pick up their firearm purchases. For the past 10 days, Stehman said, customers have been gathering cases of ammunition and multiple guns.
And here's how they view their President-elect:
The Grand Junction pawnshop is decorated with bumper stickers: "Obama 08" with hammers and sickles on each end, "Obama for President of Afghanistan" and "Don't Be a Victim. Buy a Gun."
"We don't know where this character is coming from or what he's gonna do to us," Stehman said of Obama. "But I can tell you it's been good for business."
Buying weapons is almost as easy as buying groceries:
By midday Wednesday, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation's "Insta- Check" background check — required for the sale of a firearm and typically about 8 minutes long — was jammed with waits lasting more than two hours..
The quotes are from this article.
In that post I expressed my fear for the safety of President-elect Obama. I put that fear into context by stating the fact that the US is a violent country. I also stated the fact of the extent of gun ownership.
Comments on the post took us into the whole gun control debate, although that wasn't the point of the post.
However, as we were taken there I thought I'd draw your attention to a report I've just been reading on the surge in gun buying in response to Barak Obama's election.
A few lines from it:
"I was selling guns before I even opened the door," said George Horne, owner of The Gun Room. "It's gone completely mad. Everyone is buying everything I've got on the shelves. Sales have been crazy."
One customer left with two new assault rifles and said he had already bought 30 weapons since Obama began his campaign for president. "And look at this," he said, unwrapping a black rifle from a plastic cover. "I'm not talking BB guns."
Jerry Stehman told an endless wave of customers at his Jerry's Outdoor Sports store in Grand Junction to come back in two hours to pick up their firearm purchases. For the past 10 days, Stehman said, customers have been gathering cases of ammunition and multiple guns.
And here's how they view their President-elect:
The Grand Junction pawnshop is decorated with bumper stickers: "Obama 08" with hammers and sickles on each end, "Obama for President of Afghanistan" and "Don't Be a Victim. Buy a Gun."
"We don't know where this character is coming from or what he's gonna do to us," Stehman said of Obama. "But I can tell you it's been good for business."
Buying weapons is almost as easy as buying groceries:
By midday Wednesday, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation's "Insta- Check" background check — required for the sale of a firearm and typically about 8 minutes long — was jammed with waits lasting more than two hours..
The quotes are from this article.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Hope at last
Barak Obama is President-elect.
He seems to be full of confidence for the future but in reality it would have been a good election to lose. It's something of a poison chalice because the breadth and depth of the problems facing him must be unprecedented in American presidential history.
The catastrophic George W Bush presidency has left such an unbelievable mess both in America and around the world that it will probably take more than one term, even more than the two terms which Obama may have, to get us all back to where we need to be.
Just think of the problems the extreme ideology of the far right Bush years have generated.
The collapse of the financial system, the world in recession, the US with trillions of dollars of debt, the erosion of liberties with the illegal snooping on Americans, state-sponsored kidnapping and torture, the junking of the Geneva Conventions, the erosion of international organisations such as the UN, the illegal, immoral and counter-productive invasion of Iraq, chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Israel/Palestine issue worse than ever, the irresponsible use of robots and drones as weapon platforms which have killed hundreds of innocent people, unilateral attacks in friendly ally countries, the world a far more dangerous place than it was when Bush came to power, the encouragement by divisive wedge politics of racism, bigotry and xenophobia.
And so much more.
And added to the disastrous policies, the breathtaking utter incompetence of the way the policies were carried out, from Iraq to Afghanistan to New Orleans.
A lot of people are not going to like what I'm going to say, but it's not opinion it's fact.
Don't blame it all on Bush.
So many people say 'It isn't America's fault, it's the government'. Well, who put the government there? As unpopular as saying it may be, the American people must take their share of the blame.
As must the media. For example, Time magazine made him Person of the Year in 2004.
Incredible as it may seem, they said: For sticking to his guns (literally and figuratively), for reshaping the rules of politics to fit his ten-gallon-hat leadership style and for persuading a majority of voters that he deserved to be in the White House for another four years, George W. Bush is TIME's 2004 Person of the Year.
After the first four years of seeing exactly what their President was doing, about 100 million eligible voters couldn't be bothered to vote in 2004. Those who did voted to give him him another four years. He won 31 of the 50 states. Over 50% of voters agreed with his policies and the way they were carried out and voted for more of the same.
In 2004 over 62 million Americans voted for a continuation of the catastrophic George W Bush administration.
That's an awful lot of people who must take their share of responsibility for the disasters created by Bush in the last four years.
Even in what is being depicted as an Obama landslide, with at this moment as I write 338 electoral college votes to McCain's 168, a broader look at the figures shows that 21 states have voted Republican. Senator McCain has over 55 million votes, which is 47% of votes counted.
Fifty-five million people, and counting, have voted for a continuation of the disastrous policies of the last eight years and for a possible President Palin.
Unbelievable.
Hope for the future, and fear.
The hope is that President Obama can at least begin to repair the damage, to start on the work needed to bring a fairer society, to re-establish America's standing in the world, to move away from the extreme ideology that's blighted the world for the last eight years.
My fear, my real fear, is for the safety of the new president.
Here's more that a lot of people are going to froth at the mouth over but again it's not simply my opinion. Here are some facts.
The US is a violent country awash with firearms. It's worse than the 'lawless' tribal areas on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border because the over 200 million firearms (yes, over 200 million) in American society include many state-of-the-art military weapons.
Violent? According to the FBI there are over 16,000 homicides every year. That's about two murders every hour of every day of every week of every year. It's the death toll of 9/11 every five weeks.
America is home to many terror groups. In recent years we've seen domestic terror groups from the far left and the far right and racist groups. And many disturbed, violent, heavily armed individuals.
We've seen the Oklahoma bombing, which killed at least 158 people including 19 children and injured over 850. We see regular mass murders at schools such as Columbine. We've seen anthrax being sent through the mail.
We've seen the shooting of President Reagan and Governor George Wallace, the killing of President John F. and Robert Kennedy and of Martin Luther King.
This cultural violence and aggression has been adopted by the government for at least the last six years, so extremism has been encouraged by government example.
Just last week we saw the arrest of two armed white supremacist skinheads for plotting to murder Obama.
So I have a real fear for President-elect Obama's safety.
He has so much to do, such huge problems to solve and I firmly believe he's the best chance we have. If I were a religious person I'd be praying for his safety and his success.
And to the 62 millon Americans who at last count have voted for him, thank you.
He seems to be full of confidence for the future but in reality it would have been a good election to lose. It's something of a poison chalice because the breadth and depth of the problems facing him must be unprecedented in American presidential history.
The catastrophic George W Bush presidency has left such an unbelievable mess both in America and around the world that it will probably take more than one term, even more than the two terms which Obama may have, to get us all back to where we need to be.
Just think of the problems the extreme ideology of the far right Bush years have generated.
The collapse of the financial system, the world in recession, the US with trillions of dollars of debt, the erosion of liberties with the illegal snooping on Americans, state-sponsored kidnapping and torture, the junking of the Geneva Conventions, the erosion of international organisations such as the UN, the illegal, immoral and counter-productive invasion of Iraq, chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Israel/Palestine issue worse than ever, the irresponsible use of robots and drones as weapon platforms which have killed hundreds of innocent people, unilateral attacks in friendly ally countries, the world a far more dangerous place than it was when Bush came to power, the encouragement by divisive wedge politics of racism, bigotry and xenophobia.
And so much more.
And added to the disastrous policies, the breathtaking utter incompetence of the way the policies were carried out, from Iraq to Afghanistan to New Orleans.
A lot of people are not going to like what I'm going to say, but it's not opinion it's fact.
Don't blame it all on Bush.
So many people say 'It isn't America's fault, it's the government'. Well, who put the government there? As unpopular as saying it may be, the American people must take their share of the blame.
As must the media. For example, Time magazine made him Person of the Year in 2004.
Incredible as it may seem, they said: For sticking to his guns (literally and figuratively), for reshaping the rules of politics to fit his ten-gallon-hat leadership style and for persuading a majority of voters that he deserved to be in the White House for another four years, George W. Bush is TIME's 2004 Person of the Year.
After the first four years of seeing exactly what their President was doing, about 100 million eligible voters couldn't be bothered to vote in 2004. Those who did voted to give him him another four years. He won 31 of the 50 states. Over 50% of voters agreed with his policies and the way they were carried out and voted for more of the same.
In 2004 over 62 million Americans voted for a continuation of the catastrophic George W Bush administration.
That's an awful lot of people who must take their share of responsibility for the disasters created by Bush in the last four years.
Even in what is being depicted as an Obama landslide, with at this moment as I write 338 electoral college votes to McCain's 168, a broader look at the figures shows that 21 states have voted Republican. Senator McCain has over 55 million votes, which is 47% of votes counted.
Fifty-five million people, and counting, have voted for a continuation of the disastrous policies of the last eight years and for a possible President Palin.
Unbelievable.
Hope for the future, and fear.
The hope is that President Obama can at least begin to repair the damage, to start on the work needed to bring a fairer society, to re-establish America's standing in the world, to move away from the extreme ideology that's blighted the world for the last eight years.
My fear, my real fear, is for the safety of the new president.
Here's more that a lot of people are going to froth at the mouth over but again it's not simply my opinion. Here are some facts.
The US is a violent country awash with firearms. It's worse than the 'lawless' tribal areas on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border because the over 200 million firearms (yes, over 200 million) in American society include many state-of-the-art military weapons.
Violent? According to the FBI there are over 16,000 homicides every year. That's about two murders every hour of every day of every week of every year. It's the death toll of 9/11 every five weeks.
America is home to many terror groups. In recent years we've seen domestic terror groups from the far left and the far right and racist groups. And many disturbed, violent, heavily armed individuals.
We've seen the Oklahoma bombing, which killed at least 158 people including 19 children and injured over 850. We see regular mass murders at schools such as Columbine. We've seen anthrax being sent through the mail.
We've seen the shooting of President Reagan and Governor George Wallace, the killing of President John F. and Robert Kennedy and of Martin Luther King.
This cultural violence and aggression has been adopted by the government for at least the last six years, so extremism has been encouraged by government example.
Just last week we saw the arrest of two armed white supremacist skinheads for plotting to murder Obama.
So I have a real fear for President-elect Obama's safety.
He has so much to do, such huge problems to solve and I firmly believe he's the best chance we have. If I were a religious person I'd be praying for his safety and his success.
And to the 62 millon Americans who at last count have voted for him, thank you.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Double standards
Dr (Condoleezza)Rice said: “This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can threaten its neighbours, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it. Things have changed.”
So a large country can't occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it.
Unless the country is BushW's good ol' US of A, Doctor Rice?
So a large country can't occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it.
Unless the country is BushW's good ol' US of A, Doctor Rice?
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Be very afraid.
I've just been reading the Sydney Morning Herald and found this story.
The US Dunkin' Donuts chain has pulled an online advertisement featuring celebrity chef Rachael Ray, it says.
Here's the ad that had to be pulled:
Well, you would pull it wouldn't you.
Supporting terrorism as it does.
Uhhh?
Yes, "the ad offers symbolic support for terrorism."
What do you mean you can't see what they're frothing at the mouth about?
Here's a clue..."sporting of a jihadi chic keffiyeh"
Jihadi chic! I nearly fell off my chair.
Critics, including conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, complained that the scarf appeared to be traditional garb worn by Arab men. The ad's critics say such scarves have come to symbolise Muslim extremism and terrorism.
These people terrify me. More so because they come from the world's most powerful country, with armed forces that its government is happy to use on a whim.
It's not so much the far-right extremists, paranoid loonies frothing at the mouth when they see things that aren't there, who frighten me. Every country has some of them and they're best ignored. As are the far left fanatics, religious fanatics and fanatics of all persuasions.
But in the good ol' US of A a huge company like DD is running scared of them. What does that say about the climate of fear, where the society they live in finds itself?
The lunatic fringe makes a fevered infantile accusation and it's taken seriously. The company buckles at the accusation and pulls the ad.
They should have threatened legal action for the libel of accusing them of supporting terrorism, demanded a grovelling written apology acknowledging the crass stupidity of the accusation, and run a campaign in the media to expose and ridicule the loonies.
Critics, including conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, complained that the scarf appeared to be traditional garb worn by Arab men. So are sandals. Will wearing sandals come to symbolise extremism and terrorism to these people?
Concede to demands by fanatics and where will it end? The situation will worsen with every win they have.
And since the ad was withdrawn, Michelle Malkin has had this to say on her blog:
It's refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists...Fashion statements may seem insignificant, but when they lead to the mainstreaming of violence -- unintentionally or not -- they matter. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. In post-9/11 America, vigilance must never go out of style.
At this point I'm speechless.
The story is here.
The US Dunkin' Donuts chain has pulled an online advertisement featuring celebrity chef Rachael Ray, it says.
Here's the ad that had to be pulled:
Well, you would pull it wouldn't you.
Supporting terrorism as it does.
Uhhh?
Yes, "the ad offers symbolic support for terrorism."
What do you mean you can't see what they're frothing at the mouth about?
Here's a clue..."sporting of a jihadi chic keffiyeh"
Jihadi chic! I nearly fell off my chair.
Critics, including conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, complained that the scarf appeared to be traditional garb worn by Arab men. The ad's critics say such scarves have come to symbolise Muslim extremism and terrorism.
These people terrify me. More so because they come from the world's most powerful country, with armed forces that its government is happy to use on a whim.
It's not so much the far-right extremists, paranoid loonies frothing at the mouth when they see things that aren't there, who frighten me. Every country has some of them and they're best ignored. As are the far left fanatics, religious fanatics and fanatics of all persuasions.
But in the good ol' US of A a huge company like DD is running scared of them. What does that say about the climate of fear, where the society they live in finds itself?
The lunatic fringe makes a fevered infantile accusation and it's taken seriously. The company buckles at the accusation and pulls the ad.
They should have threatened legal action for the libel of accusing them of supporting terrorism, demanded a grovelling written apology acknowledging the crass stupidity of the accusation, and run a campaign in the media to expose and ridicule the loonies.
Critics, including conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, complained that the scarf appeared to be traditional garb worn by Arab men. So are sandals. Will wearing sandals come to symbolise extremism and terrorism to these people?
Concede to demands by fanatics and where will it end? The situation will worsen with every win they have.
And since the ad was withdrawn, Michelle Malkin has had this to say on her blog:
It's refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists...Fashion statements may seem insignificant, but when they lead to the mainstreaming of violence -- unintentionally or not -- they matter. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. In post-9/11 America, vigilance must never go out of style.
At this point I'm speechless.
The story is here.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
California wildfire tragedy.
I talk about the horrors of the Aussie bushfires every southern summer, and a few months ago the terrible fires in Greece.
Now it's the USA's turn to suffer again, or at least California, from their regular wildfire season.
I remember a couple of years ago when Aussie firefighters went to the US to help fight very bad fires, they came back amazed at the amount of equipment, people, resources their colleagues there had at their disposal.
Even with that it seems they're in danger of being overwhelmed in Southern California. The conditions are familiar to us down-under with the driest year on record, high temperatures, then the high winds. It then only takes a lightning strike, a carelessly dropped cigarette or a campfire not extinguished properly - or an insane arsonist - to start the inferno.
The winds are what firefighters fear the most and meteorologists are saying the worst winds are still to come over the fire areas.
Sadly, one person has been killed and four firefighters seriously injured, plus over a dozen other people injured. Over 200,000 acres have burnt already, while the LA Times is reporting over half a million residents have been ordered to evacuate and Reuters says over 700 homes have been destroyed.
Fire is a terrible, terrible thing.
LA Times photo
Many more photographs plus the ongoing story at LA Times.
Addition on Wednesday...the LA Times is now reporting nearly half a million acres burnt, 1155 homes destroyed and five more deaths 'linked' to the fires. The good news is that winds are slowing, temperature is dropping and humidity is rising.
Now it's the USA's turn to suffer again, or at least California, from their regular wildfire season.
I remember a couple of years ago when Aussie firefighters went to the US to help fight very bad fires, they came back amazed at the amount of equipment, people, resources their colleagues there had at their disposal.
Even with that it seems they're in danger of being overwhelmed in Southern California. The conditions are familiar to us down-under with the driest year on record, high temperatures, then the high winds. It then only takes a lightning strike, a carelessly dropped cigarette or a campfire not extinguished properly - or an insane arsonist - to start the inferno.
The winds are what firefighters fear the most and meteorologists are saying the worst winds are still to come over the fire areas.
Sadly, one person has been killed and four firefighters seriously injured, plus over a dozen other people injured. Over 200,000 acres have burnt already, while the LA Times is reporting over half a million residents have been ordered to evacuate and Reuters says over 700 homes have been destroyed.
Fire is a terrible, terrible thing.
LA Times photo
Many more photographs plus the ongoing story at LA Times.
Addition on Wednesday...the LA Times is now reporting nearly half a million acres burnt, 1155 homes destroyed and five more deaths 'linked' to the fires. The good news is that winds are slowing, temperature is dropping and humidity is rising.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Putting Virginia Tech. into context.
Thirty-two victims and their killer die in one day at Virginia Tech., a horrifying tragedy.
America and much of the world is swamped with days of news coverage, pundits are wheeled out on TV and radio to disect the whole thing.
But. I always have a but.
Put it into context.
That many Americans are shot to death every ten hours. Of every day. Year in and year out.
An average of eight-five Americans die by gunshot every day.
The same number as were killed on 9/11 are killed every five weeks.
Thirty thousand are killed every year.
Go back over the last four paragraphs , read them slowly and think about them.
This is not just armed criminal street gangs, as is often suggested. It's estimated that there are about 250 million guns, from handguns to fully automatic army weapons, throughout American society. That's almost one for every man, woman and child in the country.
Americans For Gun Safety website gives figures for 1998, the latest quoted. In Virginia that year there were 295 homicides, 531 suicides, 33 fatal gun accidents and 13 'other gun deaths', a total of 872. At 12.29 per 100,000 population that's almost as bad as Dubai's road deaths that we complain so much about. That year, 30,708 died by gunshot nationally, a rate of 11.32 per 100,000.
The battle lines are drawn of course - gun control and no gun control spokespeople are out in force.
I was particularly taken with this quote from the Gun Owners of America, who call the school "a victim disarmament zone":
"The latest school shooting demands an immediate end to the gun-free zone law which leaves the nation's schools at the mercy of madmen. It is irresponsibly dangerous to tell citizens that they may not have guns at schools."
Pretty well sums up the thinking in what appears to be the majority of America, or at least by the only people who matter, the ones with power and influence.
And I can't see that the situation will get anything but worse. It's very difficult to change something that's been a part of a culture from its very beginning. It's not impossible, it's happened in other cultures through the millenia, but the people have to want the change.
America is a violent country, created by violence & the gun and it's all ingrained in the phsyche. So in the next decade over 300,000 Americans are going to die at the barrel of a gun.
Astonishingly, they're going to accept it.
Some reading:
Gun deaths per year.
Gun Deaths By State.
Gun Owners of America.
America and much of the world is swamped with days of news coverage, pundits are wheeled out on TV and radio to disect the whole thing.
But. I always have a but.
Put it into context.
That many Americans are shot to death every ten hours. Of every day. Year in and year out.
An average of eight-five Americans die by gunshot every day.
The same number as were killed on 9/11 are killed every five weeks.
Thirty thousand are killed every year.
Go back over the last four paragraphs , read them slowly and think about them.
This is not just armed criminal street gangs, as is often suggested. It's estimated that there are about 250 million guns, from handguns to fully automatic army weapons, throughout American society. That's almost one for every man, woman and child in the country.
Americans For Gun Safety website gives figures for 1998, the latest quoted. In Virginia that year there were 295 homicides, 531 suicides, 33 fatal gun accidents and 13 'other gun deaths', a total of 872. At 12.29 per 100,000 population that's almost as bad as Dubai's road deaths that we complain so much about. That year, 30,708 died by gunshot nationally, a rate of 11.32 per 100,000.
The battle lines are drawn of course - gun control and no gun control spokespeople are out in force.
I was particularly taken with this quote from the Gun Owners of America, who call the school "a victim disarmament zone":
"The latest school shooting demands an immediate end to the gun-free zone law which leaves the nation's schools at the mercy of madmen. It is irresponsibly dangerous to tell citizens that they may not have guns at schools."
Pretty well sums up the thinking in what appears to be the majority of America, or at least by the only people who matter, the ones with power and influence.
And I can't see that the situation will get anything but worse. It's very difficult to change something that's been a part of a culture from its very beginning. It's not impossible, it's happened in other cultures through the millenia, but the people have to want the change.
America is a violent country, created by violence & the gun and it's all ingrained in the phsyche. So in the next decade over 300,000 Americans are going to die at the barrel of a gun.
Astonishingly, they're going to accept it.
Some reading:
Gun deaths per year.
Gun Deaths By State.
Gun Owners of America.
Friday, January 05, 2007
Muslim Congressman - bigots out from under their rocks.
The good ol' US of A has its first Muslim Congressman, Democrat Keith Ellison. An American, born and bred in Detroit who can trace his American ancestors back to 1742.
Inevitably the paranoid bigots have crept from under their rocks - first there was Virgil Goode (Republican, Virginia) who sent this letter to supporters:
When I raise my hand to take the oath on Swearing In Day, I will have the Bible in my other hand. I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way. The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran. We need to stop illegal immigration totally and reduce legal immigration and end the diversity visas policy pushed hard by President Clinton and allowing many persons from the Middle East to come to this country. I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped.
Save us from the evil and the stupidity of these people! Apart from claiming a link between illegal immigrants and Muslims (taking a lead from BushW's 'link' between Saddam and Al Qaida) and the xenophobic racism, there's the basic stupidity. Ellison is a Muslim, how can he swear on a Christian Bible! Equally, Goode is a Christian (obviously in name only) so he can't swear on the Quran.
Then in a CNN interview there was this:
CNN's Glenn Beck: OK. No offense, and I know Muslims. I like Muslims. I've been to mosques. I really don't believe that Islam is a religion of evil. I -- you know, I think it's being hijacked, quite frankly.
With that being said, you are a Democrat. You are saying, "Let's cut and run." And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies."
And I know you're not. I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.
Beck, you prat, I have a request for you. Prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.
It's one of the most serious problems the world has - racists and bigots. They hypocritically claim to defend but actually don't believe in or follow the standards of their own societies or their countries' constitutions.
No tolerance. Only they are right, only they can be trusted, only they are patriots. Everyone who doesn't agree with their feverish bigotry, anyone of a different faith, or even a different branch of their own faith, is an enemy of the state.
Not only in America of course, it's an international evil.
In a clever riposte from Rep. Ellison, as the Washington Post reports:
Yet the holy book at tomorrow's ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We've learned that the new congressman -- in a savvy bit of political symbolism -- will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.
THE bigots always claim to speak on behalf of many others, and there's an interesting comment about Goode's constituents here: Not all of his constituents are narrow-minded bigots.
Other links:
But It's Thomas Jefferson's Koran!
Goode's letter.
Beck's interview.
Inevitably the paranoid bigots have crept from under their rocks - first there was Virgil Goode (Republican, Virginia) who sent this letter to supporters:
When I raise my hand to take the oath on Swearing In Day, I will have the Bible in my other hand. I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way. The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran. We need to stop illegal immigration totally and reduce legal immigration and end the diversity visas policy pushed hard by President Clinton and allowing many persons from the Middle East to come to this country. I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped.
Save us from the evil and the stupidity of these people! Apart from claiming a link between illegal immigrants and Muslims (taking a lead from BushW's 'link' between Saddam and Al Qaida) and the xenophobic racism, there's the basic stupidity. Ellison is a Muslim, how can he swear on a Christian Bible! Equally, Goode is a Christian (obviously in name only) so he can't swear on the Quran.
Then in a CNN interview there was this:
CNN's Glenn Beck: OK. No offense, and I know Muslims. I like Muslims. I've been to mosques. I really don't believe that Islam is a religion of evil. I -- you know, I think it's being hijacked, quite frankly.
With that being said, you are a Democrat. You are saying, "Let's cut and run." And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies."
And I know you're not. I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.
Beck, you prat, I have a request for you. Prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.
It's one of the most serious problems the world has - racists and bigots. They hypocritically claim to defend but actually don't believe in or follow the standards of their own societies or their countries' constitutions.
No tolerance. Only they are right, only they can be trusted, only they are patriots. Everyone who doesn't agree with their feverish bigotry, anyone of a different faith, or even a different branch of their own faith, is an enemy of the state.
Not only in America of course, it's an international evil.
In a clever riposte from Rep. Ellison, as the Washington Post reports:
Yet the holy book at tomorrow's ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We've learned that the new congressman -- in a savvy bit of political symbolism -- will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.
THE bigots always claim to speak on behalf of many others, and there's an interesting comment about Goode's constituents here: Not all of his constituents are narrow-minded bigots.
Other links:
But It's Thomas Jefferson's Koran!
Goode's letter.
Beck's interview.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
What an indictment (cont'd)
A couple of weeks ago I posted a letter which was sent to Gulf News from an American thanking the UAE for sending aid to them. It reads in part:
"I am a heart patient who receives treatment at a small local clinic for people without insurance. At my last visit, I was handed a pamphlet that told me my visit was being paid for by a gift from your nation."
I made the point that the US has so many negative aspects of its own society it should be looking at when I said: It's yet another example of the need to look very seriously at the standards of their own society rather than believe that they should impose it on the rest of the world.
I've just been reading an article in The Guardian which highlights yet another huge failure by successive American governments.
Over 10% of the population of what is by far the world's richest country are, in bureaucracy-speak, "food insecure"
The official explanation of that is "limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways." In English that means those who can’t afford a basic diet on a regular basis. The figures do not include homeless people, who could be expected to be even worse off.
In a 2004 survey by the US Dept of Agriculture, out of 112 million households, 11.9 million were deemed ‘food insecure’. What an astonishing fact. In the world's richest country over 30 million people can't afford to eat properly!
And far from tackling the problem, the situation is worsening. The 'food insecure' went up from 10.5% in 2000 to 11.9% in 2004. And digging deeper into the figures, those ' with hunger' was 3.1% in 2000 which went up to 3.9% in 2004.
It gets worse. The report looked at child poverty, by race. The figures?
% by race living below poverty line
Black 33.3% Hispanic 28.6% White 14.2% Asian/Pacific Islanders 9.5%
There's disparity, but everyone's affected. And again, what astonishing figures.
Very many Americans sincerely believe they have the world's best society and believe that the rest of the world envies them. Remember when he was here, President George HW Bush, defending his son's actions in response to criticism, said: "How come everybody wants to come to the United States if the United States is so bad?"
'Everyone' Mr President? Not on your life. But it shows the mind-set doesn't it.
Given the vast wealth, the technologically advanced society, these things should be utterly unacceptable to the citizens and their governments. Yet we hear very little internal criticism, no radical movements pressurising for change.
We do hear a lot about how the rest of the world should change to a society that's a copy of America's.
In fact it's the other way round. America needs to learn from and adopt policies from other countries around the world. Its society has huge problems that need fixing.
The Guardian report
President George HW Bush's comments
My earlier posting/Thank You letter
"I am a heart patient who receives treatment at a small local clinic for people without insurance. At my last visit, I was handed a pamphlet that told me my visit was being paid for by a gift from your nation."
I made the point that the US has so many negative aspects of its own society it should be looking at when I said: It's yet another example of the need to look very seriously at the standards of their own society rather than believe that they should impose it on the rest of the world.
I've just been reading an article in The Guardian which highlights yet another huge failure by successive American governments.
Over 10% of the population of what is by far the world's richest country are, in bureaucracy-speak, "food insecure"
The official explanation of that is "limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways." In English that means those who can’t afford a basic diet on a regular basis. The figures do not include homeless people, who could be expected to be even worse off.
In a 2004 survey by the US Dept of Agriculture, out of 112 million households, 11.9 million were deemed ‘food insecure’. What an astonishing fact. In the world's richest country over 30 million people can't afford to eat properly!
And far from tackling the problem, the situation is worsening. The 'food insecure' went up from 10.5% in 2000 to 11.9% in 2004. And digging deeper into the figures, those ' with hunger' was 3.1% in 2000 which went up to 3.9% in 2004.
It gets worse. The report looked at child poverty, by race. The figures?
% by race living below poverty line
Black 33.3% Hispanic 28.6% White 14.2% Asian/Pacific Islanders 9.5%
There's disparity, but everyone's affected. And again, what astonishing figures.
Very many Americans sincerely believe they have the world's best society and believe that the rest of the world envies them. Remember when he was here, President George HW Bush, defending his son's actions in response to criticism, said: "How come everybody wants to come to the United States if the United States is so bad?"
'Everyone' Mr President? Not on your life. But it shows the mind-set doesn't it.
Given the vast wealth, the technologically advanced society, these things should be utterly unacceptable to the citizens and their governments. Yet we hear very little internal criticism, no radical movements pressurising for change.
We do hear a lot about how the rest of the world should change to a society that's a copy of America's.
In fact it's the other way round. America needs to learn from and adopt policies from other countries around the world. Its society has huge problems that need fixing.
The Guardian report
President George HW Bush's comments
My earlier posting/Thank You letter
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
What an indictment.
A letter in Gulf News today:
To the people of UAE …
I am a resident of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where we got the full force of Hurricane Katrina.
I am a heart patient who receives treatment at a small local clinic for people without insurance.
At my last visit, I was handed a pamphlet that told me my visit was being paid for by a gift from your nation.
Thank you.
Your gift reminded me that in spite of our differences, we are one people on this planet.
From Mr Gregory Grant
Mississippi, US
Just spend a moment thinking about the implications of those few words.
The USA is by far the world's richest country, yet it has around 50 million of its citizens with no health insurance.
Plaudits to the UAE for sending aid to those people - but how the hell have successive American governments allowed this situation to continue?
It's yet another example of the need to look very seriously at the standards of their own society rather than believe that they should impose it on the rest of the world.
To the people of UAE …
I am a resident of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where we got the full force of Hurricane Katrina.
I am a heart patient who receives treatment at a small local clinic for people without insurance.
At my last visit, I was handed a pamphlet that told me my visit was being paid for by a gift from your nation.
Thank you.
Your gift reminded me that in spite of our differences, we are one people on this planet.
From Mr Gregory Grant
Mississippi, US
Just spend a moment thinking about the implications of those few words.
The USA is by far the world's richest country, yet it has around 50 million of its citizens with no health insurance.
Plaudits to the UAE for sending aid to those people - but how the hell have successive American governments allowed this situation to continue?
It's yet another example of the need to look very seriously at the standards of their own society rather than believe that they should impose it on the rest of the world.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
What's Rummy up to now?
We'd be forgiven for believing that some skulduggery is afoot. If not, why has it not been done officially, transparently, using the armed services to deal with it all, transport and deliver the arms. Why is it a covert operation with dozens of cut-out points?
Obvious conclusions are that not only are there people making a heap of money but that some group/s somewhere are being armed to the teeth. Where, who and why I wonder?
US in secret gun deal
Small arms shipped from Bosnia to Iraq 'go missing' as Pentagon uses dealers
The Guardian
The Pentagon has secretly shipped tens of thousands of small arms from Bosnia to Iraq in the past two years, using a web of private companies, at least one of which is a noted arms smuggler blacklisted by Washington and the UN.
According to a report by Amnesty International, which investigated the sales, the US government arranged for the delivery of at least 200,000 Kalashnikov machine guns from Bosnia to Iraq in 2004-05. But though the weaponry was said to be for arming the fledgling Iraqi military, there is no evidence of the guns reaching their recipient.
Senior western officials in the Balkans fear that some of the guns may have fallen into the wrong hands.
A Nato official described the trade as the largest arms shipments from Bosnia since the second world war. The official told Amnesty: "Nato has no way of monitoring the shipments once they leave Bosnia. There is no tracking mechanism to ensure they do not fall into the wrong hands. There are concerns that some of the weapons may have been siphoned off."
European administrators in Bosnia, as well as NGOs working to oversee the stockpiling and destruction of weapons from the Bosnian war of the 1990s, are furious that the Pentagon's covert arms-to-Iraq programme has undermined the disarmament project.
Nato and European officials confirm there is nothing illegal about the Bosnian government or the Pentagon taking arms to Iraq; the problem is one of transparency and the way the arms deals have been conducted.
"There are Swiss, US and UK companies involved. The deal was organised through the embassies [in Bosnia] and the military attaché offices were involved. The idea was to get the weapons out of Bosnia where they pose a threat and to Iraq where they are needed," the Nato official said.
Mr Wilkinson said: "The problem is we haven't seen the end user."
A complex web of private firms, arms brokers and freight firms, was behind the transfer of the guns, as well as millions of rounds of ammunition, to Iraq at "bargain basement prices", according to Hugh Griffiths, Amnesty's investigator.
The Moldovan air firm which flew the cargo out of a US air base at Tuzla, north-east Bosnia, was flying without a licence. The firm, Aerocom, named in a 2003 UN investigation of the diamonds-for-guns trade in Liberia and Sierra Leone, is now defunct, but its assets and aircraft are registered with another Moldovan firm, Jet Line International.
Some of the firms used in the Pentagon sponsored deals were also engaged in illegal arms shipments from Serbia and Bosnia to Liberia and to Saddam Hussein four years ago.
"The sale, purchase, transportation and storage of the [Bosnian] weapons has been handled entirely by a complex network of private arms brokers, freight forwarders and air cargo companies operating at times illegally and subject to little or no governmental regulation," says the report.
The US shipments were made over a year, from July 2004, via the American Eagle base at Tuzla, and the Croatian port of Ploce by the Bosnian border.
Aerocom is said to have carried 99 tonnes of Bosnian weaponry, almost entirely Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles, in four flights from the Eagle base in August 2004, even though, under pressure from the EU, the firm had just been stripped of its operating licence by the Moldovan government because of "safety and security concerns". Amnesty said there was no available record of the guns reaching their destination.
Mr Griffiths contacted the coalition authorities in Baghdad, who denied all knowledge of any weapons purchases from Bosnia. The contracts are said to have been arranged by the military attache of the time, at the US embassy in Sarajevo. Bosnian documentation named "coalition forces in Iraq" as the end users for five arms shipments.
The Amnesty report says the command force in Iraq, the coalition group training Iraqi security forces, and the overseeing US general, had claimed "not to have ... received any weapons from Bosnia," the report says. Mr Wilkinson said: "What are the control mechanisms? How is it all verified?"
The fate of the arms cargo appears to have been buried in the miasma of contracting and subcontracting that have characterised the deals.
The Pentagon commissioned the US security firms Taos and CACI - which is known for its involvement in the Abu Ghraib prison controversy in Iraq - to orchestrate the arms purchases and shipments. They, in turn, subcontracted to a welter of firms, brokers, and shippers, involving businesses based in Britain, Switzerland, Croatia, Moldova, and Bosnia.
"The [Pentagon] and its principal US contractor, Taos, appear to have no effective systems to ensure that their contractors and subcontractors do not use firms that violate UN embargos and also do not use air cargo firms for arms deliveries that have no valid air operating certificates," Amnesty said.
Obvious conclusions are that not only are there people making a heap of money but that some group/s somewhere are being armed to the teeth. Where, who and why I wonder?
US in secret gun deal
Small arms shipped from Bosnia to Iraq 'go missing' as Pentagon uses dealers
The Guardian
The Pentagon has secretly shipped tens of thousands of small arms from Bosnia to Iraq in the past two years, using a web of private companies, at least one of which is a noted arms smuggler blacklisted by Washington and the UN.
According to a report by Amnesty International, which investigated the sales, the US government arranged for the delivery of at least 200,000 Kalashnikov machine guns from Bosnia to Iraq in 2004-05. But though the weaponry was said to be for arming the fledgling Iraqi military, there is no evidence of the guns reaching their recipient.
Senior western officials in the Balkans fear that some of the guns may have fallen into the wrong hands.
A Nato official described the trade as the largest arms shipments from Bosnia since the second world war. The official told Amnesty: "Nato has no way of monitoring the shipments once they leave Bosnia. There is no tracking mechanism to ensure they do not fall into the wrong hands. There are concerns that some of the weapons may have been siphoned off."
European administrators in Bosnia, as well as NGOs working to oversee the stockpiling and destruction of weapons from the Bosnian war of the 1990s, are furious that the Pentagon's covert arms-to-Iraq programme has undermined the disarmament project.
Nato and European officials confirm there is nothing illegal about the Bosnian government or the Pentagon taking arms to Iraq; the problem is one of transparency and the way the arms deals have been conducted.
"There are Swiss, US and UK companies involved. The deal was organised through the embassies [in Bosnia] and the military attaché offices were involved. The idea was to get the weapons out of Bosnia where they pose a threat and to Iraq where they are needed," the Nato official said.
Mr Wilkinson said: "The problem is we haven't seen the end user."
A complex web of private firms, arms brokers and freight firms, was behind the transfer of the guns, as well as millions of rounds of ammunition, to Iraq at "bargain basement prices", according to Hugh Griffiths, Amnesty's investigator.
The Moldovan air firm which flew the cargo out of a US air base at Tuzla, north-east Bosnia, was flying without a licence. The firm, Aerocom, named in a 2003 UN investigation of the diamonds-for-guns trade in Liberia and Sierra Leone, is now defunct, but its assets and aircraft are registered with another Moldovan firm, Jet Line International.
Some of the firms used in the Pentagon sponsored deals were also engaged in illegal arms shipments from Serbia and Bosnia to Liberia and to Saddam Hussein four years ago.
"The sale, purchase, transportation and storage of the [Bosnian] weapons has been handled entirely by a complex network of private arms brokers, freight forwarders and air cargo companies operating at times illegally and subject to little or no governmental regulation," says the report.
The US shipments were made over a year, from July 2004, via the American Eagle base at Tuzla, and the Croatian port of Ploce by the Bosnian border.
Aerocom is said to have carried 99 tonnes of Bosnian weaponry, almost entirely Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles, in four flights from the Eagle base in August 2004, even though, under pressure from the EU, the firm had just been stripped of its operating licence by the Moldovan government because of "safety and security concerns". Amnesty said there was no available record of the guns reaching their destination.
Mr Griffiths contacted the coalition authorities in Baghdad, who denied all knowledge of any weapons purchases from Bosnia. The contracts are said to have been arranged by the military attache of the time, at the US embassy in Sarajevo. Bosnian documentation named "coalition forces in Iraq" as the end users for five arms shipments.
The Amnesty report says the command force in Iraq, the coalition group training Iraqi security forces, and the overseeing US general, had claimed "not to have ... received any weapons from Bosnia," the report says. Mr Wilkinson said: "What are the control mechanisms? How is it all verified?"
The fate of the arms cargo appears to have been buried in the miasma of contracting and subcontracting that have characterised the deals.
The Pentagon commissioned the US security firms Taos and CACI - which is known for its involvement in the Abu Ghraib prison controversy in Iraq - to orchestrate the arms purchases and shipments. They, in turn, subcontracted to a welter of firms, brokers, and shippers, involving businesses based in Britain, Switzerland, Croatia, Moldova, and Bosnia.
"The [Pentagon] and its principal US contractor, Taos, appear to have no effective systems to ensure that their contractors and subcontractors do not use firms that violate UN embargos and also do not use air cargo firms for arms deliveries that have no valid air operating certificates," Amnesty said.
Friday, March 17, 2006
Iffy democracy
Legislation barring DP World from operating some US ports is going though tacked onto a totally unrelated bill to fund the Iraq adventure. That must be passed, of course, so the ports thing automatically goes through with it.
It's a very iffy version of democracy isn't it, when sleight of hand is perfectly legal and acceptable.
The honest thing to do would be to introduce the bill as a separate piece of legislation. Why have its supporters not done that?
It's a very iffy version of democracy isn't it, when sleight of hand is perfectly legal and acceptable.
The honest thing to do would be to introduce the bill as a separate piece of legislation. Why have its supporters not done that?
Saturday, February 25, 2006
The Ugly American
An ugly face of America is never far below the surface. Scratch the surface and, as shown by the DP World ports issue, the ugly side appears very quickly. Ignorant, racist, xenophobic and paranoid.
The world has long laughed at Americans' ignorance of the world. Racism has been an inherent part of the country since Europeans first landed. Xenophobia has long been apparent but set in in a big way after 9/11. And also since 9/11 paranoia has been added to the already volatile mixture.
Remember that prior to 9/11, terrorist attacks on the US had been carried out by Americans. The mainland hadn't come under attack from foreigners before, an almost unique situation in the world. Other countries have been attacked and invaded through the centuries but when it happened to America panic and paranoia set in. That reaction has been encouraged and inflamed by the government playing the national security card ever since.
The hysteria over DP World's take-over of P&O, much of it cynical pretence and vote buying by politicians in election year, taps into ignorance and fear once again. We're back with Senator Joe McCarthy and reds under the beds, except now it's Arabs. Don't believe me? Read this:
Source: 83rd Congress, 2nd Session, Senate Resolution 301 (2 December 1954).
"CENSURE OF SENATOR JOSEPH MCCARTHY (1954)
Periodically American society has been gripped by fear, and its responses have not done credit to its democratic nature. In this century the Red Scare following World War I (see Document 43) saw hundreds of innocent aliens rounded up, imprisoned and deported, for no reason other than fear of their allegedly radical ideas...
The hunt for subversives started during the war itself, and was furthered by congressional committees that often abused their powers of investigation to harass people with whom they differed politically. Then in February 1950, an undistinguished, first-term Republican senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, burst into national prominence when, in a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, he held up a piece of paper that he claimed was a list of 205 known communists currently working in the State Department. McCarthy never produced documentation for a single one of his charges, but for the next four years he exploited an issue that he realized had touched a nerve in the American public."
Doesn't it all sound depressingly familiar!
Opponents to the DP World/P&O deal are firing up public support by squawking about US ports falling into foreign hands. As these rabble-rousers well know, many American ports have been owned by foreign companies for years. Do Americans think that P&O is an American company I wonder? It's also a fact that responsibility for security, entry & exits rests with the US Coastguard, US Customs is responsible for inspecting containers and US longshoremen handle the cargos. Who owns the ports is irrelevant to those responsibilities.
Then there's the nonsense of "troubling connections" between the UAE and terrorists. The London bombers were home-grown suicide bombers, the 'shoe bomber' was British...where was the outcry against P&O, a British company, owning the ports, given Britain's link with terrorists!
The furore is simple prejudice - what Thomas Friedman in the New York Times calls 'global ethnic profiling'. More succinctly it's the racism of Arab equals Islamic terrorist.
Look at the hogwash of Senator Lindsey Graham's "theUAE, which vows to destroy Israel". Is the Senator really that ignorant of the true facts, or is he deliberately mis-informing his constituents? This is nothing but cynical politicians looking for votes in an election year, fanning the flames of racism, encouraged by the ignorance and paranoia of the electorate.
When the world's only super-power behaves in this way towards a country which has been a staunch ally for decades, we should all be very afraid.
The world has long laughed at Americans' ignorance of the world. Racism has been an inherent part of the country since Europeans first landed. Xenophobia has long been apparent but set in in a big way after 9/11. And also since 9/11 paranoia has been added to the already volatile mixture.
Remember that prior to 9/11, terrorist attacks on the US had been carried out by Americans. The mainland hadn't come under attack from foreigners before, an almost unique situation in the world. Other countries have been attacked and invaded through the centuries but when it happened to America panic and paranoia set in. That reaction has been encouraged and inflamed by the government playing the national security card ever since.
The hysteria over DP World's take-over of P&O, much of it cynical pretence and vote buying by politicians in election year, taps into ignorance and fear once again. We're back with Senator Joe McCarthy and reds under the beds, except now it's Arabs. Don't believe me? Read this:
Source: 83rd Congress, 2nd Session, Senate Resolution 301 (2 December 1954).
"CENSURE OF SENATOR JOSEPH MCCARTHY (1954)
Periodically American society has been gripped by fear, and its responses have not done credit to its democratic nature. In this century the Red Scare following World War I (see Document 43) saw hundreds of innocent aliens rounded up, imprisoned and deported, for no reason other than fear of their allegedly radical ideas...
The hunt for subversives started during the war itself, and was furthered by congressional committees that often abused their powers of investigation to harass people with whom they differed politically. Then in February 1950, an undistinguished, first-term Republican senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, burst into national prominence when, in a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, he held up a piece of paper that he claimed was a list of 205 known communists currently working in the State Department. McCarthy never produced documentation for a single one of his charges, but for the next four years he exploited an issue that he realized had touched a nerve in the American public."
Doesn't it all sound depressingly familiar!
Opponents to the DP World/P&O deal are firing up public support by squawking about US ports falling into foreign hands. As these rabble-rousers well know, many American ports have been owned by foreign companies for years. Do Americans think that P&O is an American company I wonder? It's also a fact that responsibility for security, entry & exits rests with the US Coastguard, US Customs is responsible for inspecting containers and US longshoremen handle the cargos. Who owns the ports is irrelevant to those responsibilities.
Then there's the nonsense of "troubling connections" between the UAE and terrorists. The London bombers were home-grown suicide bombers, the 'shoe bomber' was British...where was the outcry against P&O, a British company, owning the ports, given Britain's link with terrorists!
The furore is simple prejudice - what Thomas Friedman in the New York Times calls 'global ethnic profiling'. More succinctly it's the racism of Arab equals Islamic terrorist.
Look at the hogwash of Senator Lindsey Graham's "theUAE, which vows to destroy Israel". Is the Senator really that ignorant of the true facts, or is he deliberately mis-informing his constituents? This is nothing but cynical politicians looking for votes in an election year, fanning the flames of racism, encouraged by the ignorance and paranoia of the electorate.
When the world's only super-power behaves in this way towards a country which has been a staunch ally for decades, we should all be very afraid.
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