“This draconian initiative signed into law this morning by Gov. Robert Bentley is so oppressive that even Bull Connor himself would be impressed,” said Wade Henderson, head of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, referring to Birmingham’s notorious segregationist public safety commissioner from the civil rights era. “HB 56 is designed to do nothing more than terrorize the state’s Latino community.”
The Alabama immigration law, which is set to go into effect on Sept. 1, follows Arizona’s lead in requiring police to ask for legal documents if they reasonably suspect someone is in the country illegally.
But the Alabama law goes one step further than SB 1070, which was passed last year and then challenged by the federal government. The Alabama law requires schools to check the citizenship of their students — even though undocumented children are allowed, under law, to attend K-12 schools — and penalizes businesses if they do not check immigration status. It also forbids drivers from transporting undocumented immigrants, even though Alabama does not allow people without proper papers to get driver’s licenses and transport themselves. [ READ MORE ]
New study shows black and white children are biased toward lighter skin. In the study, white children had an overwhelming bias toward white, and black children also had a bias toward white, but it was not nearly as strong as the bias shown by the white children.
Margaret Beale Spencer, a leading researcher in the field of child development, designed the pilot study for CNN’s “AC360.” Beale Spencer used a team of three psychologists to implement it: two testers to execute the study and a statistician to help analyze the results.
Her team tested 133 children from schools that met very specific economic and demographic requirements. In total, eight schools participated: four in the greater New York area and four in Georgia.
The people who lit the fuse on the Shirley Sherrod absurdity, the propaganda pornographers at Fox, are still pretending nothing happened and/or are still mired in the fantasy of reverse racism.
Why?
In the early Seventies, president Richard Nixon seized on an initiative popularized by a Mr. Kevin Phillips called the “Southern Strategy.” Phillips noted that in the wake of Democratic sponsorship of the Civil Rights revolution, the Republican Party’s historic base of the southern black voters would vanish. Blacks were obligated to switch their loyalty to the Democratic party.
Republicans had to re-group or die, …..and, Phillips noted that whites, especially those from the south had to be given reason to desert the Democratic party.
After the 60′s re-alignment of political allegiances, Republicans have since effectively used FEAR — to capture the racist southern vote. The Southern strategy, with opposition to the Voting Rights Act (Civil Rights Act) as the centerpiece, has been a crucial tool in “keeping the racist south” for decades.
Ever since, the only way for Republicans to get votes is to cause irrational fear, smothered in a swamp of racism, hypocrisy and hyperbole.
By: Robert Parry After Israel’s lethal attack in international waters on a civilian flotilla carrying relief supplies to Gaza, a troubling question arises: Have Israeli authorities, who possess a major nuclear arsenal, become dangerously erratic? Combined with other recent incidents, like Israel’s Jan. 20 assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room and its open threats about bombing Iran, Israel might be diagnosed as suffering from a violent form of paranoia if it were a patient in a psychiatric ward rather than a nuclear-armed state.
This question can’t be posed publicly in the American mainstream news media nor in U.S. political circles, where fear of the pro-Israel lobby remains strong. But it is a concern that is being discussed quietly by foreign policy analysts around the world.
Even as America’s commentariat again generates the predictable excuses for Israeli latest actions, the political reality inside Israel is one that is shifting more and more toward a society dominated by Jewish fundamentalists, including an aggressive and racist settler bloc.
The ultra-Orthodox Shas Party is now in the Likud ruling coalition and holds important Cabinet posts such as housing. Shas leaders have made it clear that they favor a country segregated not just between Arab and Jew but between secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews.
If these fundamentalist elements continue to consolidate their political power, the world could soon be facing an isolated and paranoid religious state with some 200 to 400 nuclear warheads along with a sophisticated collection of chemical and biological weapons.
One Israeli émigré, who spent his young adulthood working for the Israeli government, told me that he fears Israel is becoming like North Korea, except qualitatively more dangerous because Israel has an advanced nuclear arsenal and sits in a more strategic part of the world.
The current government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also appears excessively confident that Israel’s sophisticated propaganda network and its American neoconservative allies can overwhelm any criticism of Israeli actions in Washington and ensure eventual U.S. backing for a military strike on Iran.
Netanyahu has been dismissive toward President Barack Obama’s peace initiatives, particularly Obama’s demand that Israel stop building Jewish housing in traditionally Arab areas.
Ignoring those wishes, Netanyahu’s Shas Party allies announced new Jewish construction in Arab East Jerusalem last March as Vice President Joe Biden arrived to reaffirm U.S. solidarity with Israel.
Though Obama let his annoyance be known, Netanyahu followed up by announcing that the Jewish housing construction would go forward.
‘Kiss-and-Make-Up’
Faced with this Israeli intransigence, Obama quieted his criticism. He was reportedly looking forward to a “kiss-and-make-up” session with Netanyahu on Tuesday before Israel’s lethal assault on the “Freedom Flotilla” caused Netanyahu to cancel the meeting and rush back to Israel.
Obama also has fallen in line behind Israeli insistence that a confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program be put at the top of the international agenda and that a new Iranian offer to ship about half its low-enriched uranium out of the country be rejected.
The President had privately urged the leaders of Brazil and Turkey to draw Iran into that agreement, which they did two weeks ago. But Israel and American neocons denounced and ridiculed the deal, demanding instead stiffer sanctions and stepped-up efforts for “regime change” in Iran.
Instead of admitting that he had backed the Iran-Brazil-Turkey deal, Obama stayed silent, as he has in the wake of Israel’s middle-of-the-night commando raid on the flotilla, which left nine peace activists dead early Monday.
In a P.R. blitz on Tuesday, Israeli officials made a point of showing off knives and other hand-made weapons that some of the activists allegedly used to defend the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, when the Israeli commandos landed by ropes from helicopters.
According to Israeli accounts, the resistance from the people onboard led the commandos to open fire. The Israeli government and many U.S. commentators blamed the ship’s resistance for the violence.
However, it would not be unusual ? and certainly not illegal ? for a ship’s crew and passengers in international waters to defend themselves from an armed assault, especially one launched in the dark of night. If the attackers were Somalis instead of Israelis, the ship’s defenders would be hailed as heroes.
In an e-mail to me, Marquette Professor of Moral Theology Daniel C. Maguire cited one important distinction between “Somali piracy and Israeli piracy ? Israel kills during its piracy and then claims it does so in self-defense. That is [a] first in the history of piracy.
“Traditionally, pirates have been outlaws and admit it. It is very much like a rapist saying: ‘The victim I was raping resisted and so I killed her in self-defense.’ A defense like that would make even a mob lawyer blush.”
Act of War
Craig Murray, a former British ambassador and Foreign Office specialist on maritime law, said the Israeli commando raid was a violation of international law and the Law of the Sea, since the ship under a Turkish flag was in international waters.
If “the Israeli commandoes were acting on behalf of the government of Israel in killing the activists in international waters, the applicable law is that of the flag state of the ship on which the incident occurred,” in this case Turkey.
“In legal terms, the Turkish ship was Turkish territory. So,” Murray continued, “Israel is in a position of war with Turkey, and the attack by Israeli commandos falls under international jurisdiction as a war crime.”
However, not surprisingly, the Israeli P.R. response to the intense international criticism worked wonders in winning over the U.S. news media.
After playing video of the Israeli assault and the efforts of some passengers to resist the attackers, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews came down decisively on the Israeli side, calling criticism of the lethal attack “an unfair shot at Israel.”
Matthews added that he agreed with the pro-Israeli position taken by the Washington Post’s neoconservative editorial page, which faulted Israel for the sloppiness of its attack while siding with its purpose.
“We have no sympathy for the motives of the participants in the flotilla — a motley collection that included European sympathizers with the Palestinian cause, Israeli Arab leaders and Turkish Islamic activists,” the Post wrote on Tuesday.
“Israel says that some of the organizers have ties to Hamas and al-Qaeda. What’s plain is that the group’s nominal purpose, delivering “humanitarian” supplies to Gaza, was secondary to the aim of provoking a confrontation.”
New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman weighed in Wednesday with an op-ed that downplayed the human tragedy in Gaza where some 1,400 Palestinians died in an Israeli month-long offensive at the end of 2008 and the start of 2009 and where a blockade has continued for three years.
“That concern for Gaza and Israel’s blockade is so out [of] balance with … other horrific cases in the region that it is not surprising Israelis dismiss it as motivated by hatred — not the advice of friends,” Friedman wrote.
So, in the view of the mainstream U.S. news media, Israel is justified in maintaining a fierce embargo on the 1.5 million people crowded into the tiny Gaza Strip and any “motley collection” of activists that tries to run the blockade is at fault for whatever happens.
Plus, it seems, when Israel launches an attack on a ship in international waters, the people onboard must accept whatever treatment they receive at Israeli hands. They must not fight back.
By contrast, one can only imagine how the U.S. press corps would rise up in collective fury if, say, Iran sent its commandos into international waters to attack and seize vessels that were on a humanitarian mission.
Lost Objectivity
What’s striking in all this is how far the U.S. news media has veered away from its supposed commitment to objectivity, even as it pretends to continue abiding by that journalistic principle.
The U.S. media also would drip with sarcasm over some of the post-facto rationales used to justify the attack, if the attacking nation wasn’t Israel.
For instance, there’s the Israeli accusation that the cargo on the ships wasn’t packed properly.
Shuki Sagis, chief executive of the Israel port at Ashdod, complained to the Jerusalem Post that the supplies ? including scooters for the handicapped, wheelchairs, stretchers, hospital beds, boxes of medicine, food products and toys ? weren’t neatly stacked.
“The cargo ships were loaded haphazardly, with all of the equipment mixed up in the large holds,” Sagis said. “Ships loaded in this way would not be accepted in any port. We are loading the equipment on the trucks far more carefully than it was loaded on to the ships.”
Other Israeli officials claimed that the humanitarian supplies on the ships were not items that were needed by the Gazans.
“I can say with great assurance,” said Colonel Moshe Levi, “that none of the equipment on board is needed in Gaza. The equipment that we found is all equipment that we have regularly allowed into the Strip over the past year.”
Levi said that fact “proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the whole premise of the voyage was for propaganda and provocation and not for humanitarian purposes.”
However, the Israelis did concede that their searches of the vessels turned up no weapons being smuggled into Gaza. The only “contraband” was construction equipment, including sacks of concrete and metal rods, Levi said.
Levi explained that Israel won’t let construction equipment in to rebuild Gaza, which was devastated by a month-long Israeli offensive that ended in January 2009, because the material might be used to build fortifications for “terrorists.”
The notion that bombed-out Gazans must be made to survive in makeshift shanties so some future Israeli assault won’t be complicated by the existence of buildings that might be used by Gaza’s defenders could be regarded in a different context as evidence of grotesque inhumanity.
That is, if the perpetrators were some nation or group that the U.S. media didn’t like.
The Israeli Navy also claimed that it had learned an important lesson from its assault on the Freedom Flotilla.
A top Navy commander told The Jerusalem Post that the next time, Israel will use much more military force to stop the ships.
“We boarded the ship and were attacked as if it was a war,” said the officer, who wasn’t identified by name. “That will mean that we will have to come prepared in the future as if it was a war.”
Combined with other recent incidents, like Israel’s Jan. 20 assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room and its open threats about bombing Iran, Israel might be diagnosed as suffering from a violent form of paranoia if it were a patient in a psychiatric ward rather than a nuclear-armed state.
Yet, instead of addressing this growing threat to world peace — that is, Israel’s increasingly erratic behavior and deepening religious fervor — the U.S. news media continues to give this favored country a free pass.
About The Author: Robert Parrybroke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek.
—————————————————————————– Reference: Was Helen Thomas Right?
—————————————————————————–
Helen Thomas Resigned After Saying This:
One View: Helen Thomas Was Right — While I can’t say I loathe this Administration (I make the distinction that one panders just to get along with everyone while the other was essentially heartless and selfish), I will agree that if the pundits held everyone who made such comments to the same standard that they held Thomas, Fox News would have been gone years ago. By [ Pryme ]
Kentucky Tea-Party/Republican Senate candidate, Rand Paul wants businesses to be exempt from desegregation laws while the chairman of the Tea-Party express, the ignorant, hooded klansman — Mark Williams, a few days after writing that Muslims worship “the terrorists’ monkey god,” apologized for his insensitivity — to Hindus!!LOL!
“In the course of the article I described the ‘god’ worshiped by terrorists as ‘a monkey god.’ I was wrong and that was offensive. I owe an apology to millions of Hindus who worship Lord Hanuman, an actual Monkey God,” Williams wrote Wednesday night.
“Hanuman is worshiped as a symbol of perseverance, strength and devotion. He is known as a destroyer of evil and to inspire and liberate. Those are hardly the traits of whatever the Hell (literally) it is that terrorists worship and worthy of my respect and admiration not ridicule.”
“So, again, to my Hindu friends, I offer my sincerest apologies for my horrible lapse and my insensitivity. It was unintentional, inexplicably ignorant and I am ashamed at my offense toward you,” Williams said.
On CNN Mark Williams Called Obama — “A Indonesian Muslim Turned Welfare Thug and Racist in Chief“
Meanwhile, ophthalmologist Rand Paul, also wants to wants to abolish the federal departments of education, commerce and energy, as well as the income tax — on top of repealing the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act.
David Saltonstall of New York Daily news notes: “Like Palin, with whom Paul now stands atop the Tea Party cake, he is opposed to all government bailouts and earmarks, and President Obama’s ‘socialist‘ health care law. He favors a constitutional amendment banning abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. But in a libertarian twist, he also favors legalizing medical marijuana.
Some of Rand Paul’s positions frighten even staunch conservatives like former Vice President Dick Cheney, who backed Paul’s GOP opponent, in the Kentucky primaries. For example, the father of three wants to pull U.S. military forces out of all overseas missions. Like his daddy – former presidential candidate and libertarian Rep. Ron Paul of Texas – he views the Federal Reserve as a source of much trouble that needs to be clamped down.
“We are encountering a day of reckoning,” Paul said Tuesday night in one of his many ominous, end-is-near warnings. “And this Tea Party movement is a message to Washington that we are unhappy, and we want things done differently.”
———————————
This racist asshole will probably get elected, for Kentucky is a state packed with right-wing bigots — from top to bottom. Blatant prejudice is a staple in this part of America, which Imperial Klans of America grand wizard, Ron Edwards calls home.
Fox Business host states agreement with Rand Paul: Fox Business host John Stossel agreed with Rand Paul’s Civil Rights Act statement saying, “..if a private businesses want to say we don’t want any blond anchor women or mustached guys, it ought to be their right.”
After Israel’s lethal attack in international waters on a civilian flotilla carrying relief supplies to Gaza, a troubling question arises: Have Israeli authorities, who possess a major nuclear arsenal, become dangerously erratic? Combined with other recent incidents, like Israel’s Jan. 20 assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room and its open threats about bombing Iran, Israel might be diagnosed as suffering from a violent form of paranoia if it were a patient in a psychiatric ward rather than a nuclear-armed state.
