The Mound of Sound

If you’re interested in this problem, check out the articles at The Independent:

http://news.independent.co.uk/appeals/indy_appeal/article2087546.ece

Robert Fisk does not duck controversy. That’s why it was not terribly surprising to read his defence of Jimmy Carter and his book “Palestine, Peace not Apartheid” which has received heaping scorn from just about every paper in North America. It has earned the former president a cornucopia of epithets including the inevitable “anti-semite.”

Writing in The Independent, Fisk dissects the controversy:

“I picked up Jimmy Carter’s new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid at San Francisco airport, and zipped through it in a day. It’s a good, strong read by the only American president approaching sainthood. Carter lists the outrageous treatment meted out to the Palestinians, the Israeli occupation, the dispossession of Palestinian land by Israel, the brutality visited upon this denuded, subject population, and what he calls ‘a system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights’.

“Carter quotes an Israeli as saying he is ‘afraid that we are moving towards a government like that of South Africa, with a dual society of Jewish rulers and Arabs subjects with few rights of citizenship…’. A proposed but unacceptable modification of this choice, Carter adds, ‘is the taking of substantial portions of the occupied territory, with the remaining Palestinians completely surrounded by walls, fences, and Israeli checkpoints, living as prisoners within the small portion of land left to them’.

Critics of Carter and his book like to spout furious indignation at his supposed link between Israel and the apartheid government of South Africa. Once again, Fisk brings up some inconvenient facts:

“But in this context, why, I wonder, didn’t The New York Times and the other gutless mainstream newspapers in the United States mention Israel’s cosy relationship with that very racist apartheid regime in South Africa which Carter is not supposed to mention in his book? Didn’t Israel have a wealthy diamond trade with sanctioned, racist South Africa? Didn’t Israel have a fruitful and deep military relationship with that racist regime? Am I dreaming, looking-glass-like, when I recall that in April of 1976, Prime Minister John Vorster of South Africa – one of the architects of this vile Nazi-like system of apartheid – paid a state visit to Israel and was honoured with an official reception from Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, war hero Moshe Dayan and future Nobel prize-winner Yitzhak Rabin? This of course, certainly did not become part of the great American debate on Carter’s book.”

I don’t believe there is any shortage of anti-semitism in the United States or Canada but I also don’t believe for one minute that the ranks of anti-semites include Jimmy Carter. This is just another “anti-semite” smear job used to silence legitimate and constructive criticism of Israel. For the sake of our society we have to stand up to this venomous nonsense.

If you just can’t find the right gift for that pot dealer in your family, give him (or her) Barry Cooper’s DVD “Never Get Busted Again.”

Cooper is a retired narc from East Texas who made more than 800-drug arrests in his career. He produced the DVD out of the goodness of his little Lone Star heart because he thinks the war on drugs, especially on marijuana, is counter-productive.

Now give Barry his due. He’s made it plain that his tips are only for pot dealers. Heroin or crack or coke dealers are not allowed to watch his DVD, never, ever, ever and that’s final.

While few have yet watched the video it apparently is jam packed with tips such as whether coffee grounds really work as decoys, how to dodge narcotics profiling and how to fool canines every time.

Let’s face it, Barry is out to make a few extra bucks in his golden years. Hard to guess how many copies of this DVD he’s going to sell especially given that people who run and peddle drugs likely don’t have too many qualms about burning bootleg copies.

Bummer man! Some as yet unnamed guy in Bakersfield, California just couldn’t get “into” the Christmas spirit. But he completely lost it when the local school board decided to change the name of the winter and spring breaks to Christmas and Easter respectively.

To get back at those miserable school trustees, the guy staged a protest where he set fire to a Christmas tree, an American flag and a revolutionary flag. As a special twist he then set fire to himself.

When a deputy showed up, Mr. Bozo poured gas over his head. It seems the fumes spread to the nicely roasting Christmas tree nearby and the guy caught fire. Luckily the deputy grabbed a fire extinguisher and put the guy out. Oh, by the way, the inflamed protestor was carrying a sign that read “f__k the religious establishment.”

Guess whose getting a lump of coal in his stocking this year.

The gloves are off. In this corner, the Archbishop of Canterbury. And in this corner, Tony Blair and George Bush.

Archbishop Williams has lambasted Blair and Bush, saying their “ignorant” policies in Iraq have endangered Christians in the Middle East. He said that Muslims now tend to see all Christians as supporters of the “crusading West.” By the way, that’s not a good thing if you’re hanging out in a Muslim country.

“This Christmas, pray for the little town of Bethlehem, and spare a thought for those who have been put at risk by our short-sightedness and ignorance,” Williams wrote in an article for the London Times newspaper.

Williams, who is not shy of controversy, has long been a critic of the Iraq war, saying there was no moral basis for military intervention.

He said the consequences of Anglo-American foreign policy have been the erosion of good relations between the Muslim and Christian communities and made Christians an increasing target for Muslim extremists.

“One warning often made and systematically ignored in the hectic days before the Iraq War was that Western military action … would put Christians in the whole Middle East at risk,” wrote Williams.

Meanwhile President George Bush got in a few spiritual licks of his own. In his Saturday radio spot, he urged Americans to pray for their troops in Iraq. He also told US soldiers in Iraq not to fret, victory is just around the corner.

Artizans

Steve Bell, The Guardian

Times Of London

This ignorant son of a bitch is Virgil Goode, Republican congressman from the great state of Virginia.

This unrepentant bigot in the best Southern tradition wrote a letter to his constituents earlier this month expressing his fury that Minnesota Democratic Representative, Keith Ellison, intends to be sworn in on the Koran when he becomes the first Muslim congressman in American history.

Goode told Fox News he wants to limit legal immigration and end “diversity visas,” which he said let in people “not from European countries” and from “some terrorist states.”

In his letter, Goode warned that if Americans “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.”

Ellison told CNN that he could trace his ancestors to Louisiana as far back as 1742. “I’m about as American as they come,” said Ellison, who converted to Islam in college.

Radio host Dennis Prager, who has said Ellison should quit if he can’t be sworn in with a Bible, was criticized Thursday by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Prager is on the museum board, and critics sought his ouster. The board executive committee didn’t go that far but called Prager’s view “antithetical to the mission of the museum as an institution promoting tolerance and respect for all peoples regardless of their race, religion or ethnicity.”

Take a good look at the ugly face of today’s Republicans, the good old boys of the Deep South. Then take a look at our own radical right-wing and ask yourself if they’re all that much better.