Monday, August 30, 2010

The Big Uneasy






Harry


Tonight, August 30, 2010, in theaters across the country is a documentary by the talented Harry Shearer.  It is called "The Big Uneasy" and it is basically about what really happened after Hurricane Katrina.  It involves the work of the Army Corps of Engineers and you should all try to see it.

Below is an interview done with him by Democracy Now that gives a good account of it, so I'll just preface it by saying a few things about my own experience with that body.

During the Rotten Ronnie administration I was working in research administration.  I found the work extremely interesting, although there were several aspects to it.  I considered the main purpose of a department at a University that was in charge of research administration was to take the burden of dealing with federal, state, and local agencies and all their various tasks that are piled on top of the actual research.  In return, I got the opportunity to read the proposals on the cutting edge of just about all sciences and I learned more about Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Micro-Biology, and Engineering than I had learned in my entire student life.

At first, when I called faculty members with questions about their research they were quite hostile and I soon found out why:  when they had been called by the Grants and Contracts Administration Office in the past, it always concerned a complaint that they had not added up their budget correctly, they had used the wrong sheet of information form, and so on.  I was the first to ever call them who had actually read their proposal and had a question about its contents.  I remember one time talking to a physicist who had been very surly until I asked him about the negative sign at the top of an integral sign and his reaction was "My God!  Get rid of it!  It is crazy with it there.  I'll kill my assistant!"  (I did not heard of any homicides in the Physics Department that year, so I imagine he was speaking figuratively.)

Well, there were many interesting incidents, some of them hilarious, but they are not to the point.  I'll try to focus.

One day, my Director handed me a letter from the Administrative Department of the Army Corps of Engineers.  It seems they were refusing to pay the last installment because the final report was "sub-standard".  (Few people realize this, but grants are made to institutions, not to faculty members, because the institution, in this case the University, assumes responsibility for it.)

I called the guy in the Civil Engineering Department who was aready frothing at the mouth.  We decided to get together and I would help him rewrite the final report as I had done this professionally for a number of years in a variety of disciplines.  We finally finished with a nicely polished report and sent it off.

We got another refusal for the same reason.  This time I called them.  As the conversation became more and more heated, it emerged that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the report;  in fact, it was one of the best written and professional ones they had ever received.

So what was wrong?

In the last call, it became apparant that they did not like the conclusion the engineer arrived at which was not to build the dam.  I threatened to let it be known that the University stood by its recommendation and suggested that this would interest several newspapers, that it even had ramifications on a national scale and that newspapers in Washington and New York would be interested.  The final report finally became satisfactory and they would be sending final payment immediately.

It later turned out that they went ahead and built the dam anyway and then ran into a national scale about a fish called a snail darter.  We were able to reassure the public that we did not recomend that they go ahead with the project.

Well, as the documentary points out, things have not changed.  Here is the interview:



"The Big Uneasy"–In New Doc, Harry Shearer Makes the Case that Katrina Was an Unnatural Disaster

Play-big_uneasy
On the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a new documentary, The Big Uneasy, argues that the destruction of New Orleans was an unnatural disaster and how it could have been prevented. We speak with the filmmaker: actor and satirist Harry Shearer. [includes rush transcript]
Filed under Hurricane Katrina
Guest:
Harry Shearer, actor, writer, director, satirist, musician and radio host. He is the voice of dozens of characters on The Simpsons, and his latest project is a feature-length documentary about the causes of the flooding of New Orleans called The Big Uneasy

Rush Transcript

This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
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ANJALI KAMAT: This Sunday marked the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Early on the morning of August 29th, 2005, the storm slammed into the Gulf Coast just south of New Orleans. It ravaged the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama and left over 1,800 people dead. Eighty percent of the city of New Orleans was under water after the levees failed.

President Obama visited New Orleans on Sunday and said that the construction of a fortified levee system to protect the city is underway. He called it a, quote, "a natural disaster but also a man-made catastrophe—a shameful breakdown in government that left countless men, and women, and children abandoned and alone."

Well, we begin today’s show with a new documentary that gets the inside story of why the destruction of New Orleans was an unnatural disaster and how it could have been prevented. The Big Uneasy is a feature-length film by actor and satirist Harry Shearer. Here are some excerpts.

    HARRY SHEARER: We all know what happened to New Orleans on August 29th, 2005: Katrina. FOX NEWS: The biggest natural disaster in America. P.J. CROWLEY: Katrina was a natural disaster. SEN. CHRIS DODD: A major American city went through a natural disaster. REV. AL SHARPTON: Unlike Katrina, where you had a natural disaster. NEWT GINGRICH: When Katrina, the hurricane, did so much damage in New Orleans. GERALDO RIVERA: This natural disaster befell New Orleans. HARRY SHEARER: And yes, it’s true, the Mississippi Gulf Coast did suffer devastating damage from a hurricane that day, but as a part-time resident of New Orleans, I became aware over the weeks and months that followed the flood, as did everybody else here, that there was a very different side to that story. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: We know that Katrina was about a one-in-thiry- to one-in-forty-year storm. MAX MAYFIELD, Fmr. Director, National Hurricane Center: In fact, New Orleans proper likely experienced only Category 1 or Category 2 conditions. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: This is contrary to the US Army Corps of Engineers, who are trying to claim that Katrina was a— COL. JEFFREY BEDEY, Fmr. Cmdr., Hurricane Protection Office, Army Corps of Engineers: One-in-496 probability of occurrence. MICHAEL GRUNWALD: The Army Corps generals came out in their green suits and immediately said that— COL. JEFFREY BEDEY: That was a big storm. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: The reason they’re doing that is to cover their behinds. COL. JEFFREY BEDEY: And you can’t out-engineer Mother Nature. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: Part of their defense was, this was a humongous storm. KAREN DURHAM-AGUILERA, Army Corps of Engineers: Katrina was a storm that was, until then, unimaginable. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: There would obviously be no oversight of the Corps of Engineers and their operations. And as we dug deeper, we found clerical errors, we found misinterpretation of data, misscribing data, as we looked from breach to breach. The kind of mistake at the London Avenue breach is what you learn about in second-year engineering. JOHN BARRY, Member, Louisiana Coastal Protection & Restoration Authority: There was one contractor who in fact went to court, because he did not believe the flood wall he was building could hold in front of a storm, and he wanted the Corps to do it right. LISA MYERS, NBC News: The contractor, Pittman Construction, told the Corps of Engineers that the soil and the foundation for the walls were "not of sufficient strength, rigidity, and stability." JOHN BARRY: He went to court. The Corps fought him and won. And he was compelled to build as designed, which he did. And it failed. BRIG. GEN. MICHAEL WALSH: The design of those walls were based upon a standard Hurricane coming through. The Hurricane Katrina was much larger than what the walls were designed for. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: In many locations, levees were built at ten feet when they should have been at fourteen feet. They had new model data available to them from 1979 onwards that they ignored. MAJ. GEN. CARL STROCK, Fmr. Cmdr., US Army Corps of Engineers: The intensity of this storm simply exceeded the design capacity of this levee. BOB BEA: This was not a natural disaster. In fact, this was a very unnatural disaster. This was a disaster caused by people. Following the release of a report, we’ve had three things coming back: "Atta boy! Go for it! Keep it up!"; the other one, deadly silence; and a third one, "Please shut up."

ANJALI KAMAT: Excerpts from The Big Uneasy, a documentary by Harry Shearer that is playing tonight in theaters across the country.

Actor, writer, satirist, musician, director and part-time New Orleans resident, Harry Shearer, the voice of many characters on The Simpsons, joins me now from New Orleans.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Explain why you decided to make this film.

HARRY SHEARER: Really, very simple proximate cause. I was watching President Obama’s town hall meeting here last October, and when he referred to the flooding of New Orleans as a natural disaster, some three years after these two independent investigative forensic engineering reports had been issued, which agreed that this was a man-made disaster—in one case, the quote from the UC Berkeley people is the largest—"greatest man-made engineering catastrophe since Chernobyl"—when the President called it a natural disaster, I realized that what New Orleans knew, the rest of the country didn’t, that New Orleans had basically lost control of the narrative of its own near destruction. And I thought one way to try to get it back was to do a factual feature-length documentary.

ANJALI KAMAT: And what did you think of President Obama’s comments yesterday? He called it a natural disaster again, but he also said it’s a man-made catastrophe.

HARRY SHEARER: A man-made catastrophe related to the leaving people abandoned, referring to the government failure in the response. That’s exactly the same language he used last October. He refuses to acknowledge that an agency of the federal government, the US Army Corps of Engineers, under administrations of both parties over four-and-a-half decades, is—as the Corps has itself admitted—of course, the head of the Corps who admitted that was no longer the head of the Corps within a few months, but that the Corps was culpable for this disaster. Ray Seed of the University of California, Berkeley, team says clearly—it’s the first scene in my film—that had the right kind of hurricane protection been offered to New Orleans, the worst Hurricane Katrina would have done to New Orleans is, quote, "wet ankles." If the President doesn’t acknowledge that, then we have no hope of getting this thing done right this time.

ANJALI KAMAT: Well, I want to go to a clip. President Obama and the Army Corps of Engineer’s promise that a new flood prevention system that will protect against the worst storm in the next hundred years will be ready by next June. This is Colonel Robert Sinkler, the Hurricane Protection Commander for the US Army Corps of Engineers.

    COL. ROBERT SINKLER: The Corps of Engineers did take—accept responsibility primarily for the four failures that occurred on the outfall canals and in the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal, primarily due to design issues. But since then, we’ve actually taken those areas out of the system, and what we want to do is really fight the storm surge at the perimeter of the city, rather than allowing the storm surge to penetrate into the middle of downtown New Orleans.

ANJALI KAMAT: Harry Shearer, your response?

HARRY SHEARER: You have Colonel Sinkler admitting responsibility, which is one step beyond what the President has done. The Corps has adopted a perimeter response. It’s a good idea, assuming that all elements of the perimeter system are up to snuff, because once water gets in, they have not fixed the defective flood walls that failed so catastrophically last time.

In my film is a whistleblower from the Army Corps of Engineers whose responsibility was to test and install the new pumps on those outfall canals, which are essential to keeping those canals at a safe water level defined by the Corps. She says unequivocally the pumps never passed their testing. They failed. They self-destructed. They were installed anyway. And they will not withstand a hurricane event.

ANJALI KAMAT: Harry Shearer, your film goes into the wetlands around New Orleans. Talk about the role of the Army Corps of Engineers around this.

HARRY SHEARER: Well, you know, now the wetlands is the slow-motion disaster that’s been going on for the last thirty or forty years. The Corps leveed the Mississippi River in response to the flood, the disastrous flood down here, and they have succeeded in making the river not a threat to New Orleans. But the river, by flooding, would replenish the wetlands with sediment every flood time. And now that sediment gets dumped into a hole at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. The Corps didn’t really anticipate that that would start starving the wetlands.

Then the second blow to the wetlands was when oil was discovered in the Gulf and oil companies started making thousands of miles of canals and pipelines to get their equipment out to the Gulf and to bring the oil back. This allowed saltwater to intrude into the marsh, killing the vegetation, which then left the soil unanchored. And we’ve been losing an acre of marsh every hour for the last decade or two.

Richard Campanella, a geographer at Tulane who’s in my film, says we have a window of about ten to twenty years to start reversing this before sea level rise makes it a futile attempt. That’s another thing I looked for in the President’s speech yesterday, in vain, a commitment for serious resources to deal with coastal restoration. In this year’s budget, the President has asked for the munificent sum of $33 million, one-tenth of the amount of money he’s asked for to clean up the water in the Great Lakes, not nearly enough.

ANJALI KAMAT: And how does the oil spill disaster that continues to unfold in the Gulf of Mexico impact the wetlands and coastal restoration near New Orleans?

HARRY SHEARER: Well, you know, we know that there are some serious issues with regard to the deepwater, the plume and the existence of dispersed oil. The teams that have been out actually scouting the marsh, their initial reports, although they are subject to more rigorous science, are that the wetlands, you know, have not been as seriously affected by the spill as it was first feared. I think the most important thing about the BP oil spill with regard to the wetlands is it may have put the subject of Louisiana’s wetlands on the national agenda for a change, that people are now aware of this fragile but very important resource. The wetlands serve a huge function of what Bob Verchick of Loyola calls natural infrastructure. I don’t know the exact ratio, but they serve to buffer and beat down the ferocity of incoming hurricanes, both wind and storm surge, so they are our natural protection system, and we’ve been losing that, as I say, in a slow-motion disaster over three decades.

ANJALI KAMAT: Harry Shearer, talk about the distribution of your film. And your <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-shearer/npr--the-initials-stand-fb697670.html"recent post on Huffington Post talks about "NPR—The Initials Stand for Nothing." Explain what you mean.

HARRY SHEARER: Well, NPR announced recently that they’re no longer National Public Radio, that the initials stand for, NPR. After I found out that they were not going to do a story about this film on either All Things Considered or Morning Edition, I decided to buy some time—you know, those enhanced underwriting announcements at the end of each half-hour. And NPR legal told me this language was unacceptable, quote, "documentary about why New Orleans flooded." The only language that they found acceptable was "documentary about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina." And when I told them it’s not about a hurricane, that was the end of the conversation.

ANJALI KAMAT: And your film is showing across the country tonight?

HARRY SHEARER: Mm-hmm, yes. I thought—I knew you could see sort of coming that the mainstream media were going to do basically reruns of the coverage from five years ago. Here’s me in water, and here’s me with a person on a roof, and more footage of suffering people and some "where are they now?" You know, where’s Ray Nagin now? Where’s Mike Brown now? But we’re still not going to ask the question, "Why did it happen?" So I thought the night after that whole barrage kind of climaxed, it would be a good opportunity to offer people a chance to spend ninety minutes and find out why this thing happened.

ANJALI KAMAT: Well, Harry Shearer, thank you so much for joining us, actor, writer, director, satirist, musician and radio host. He’s the voice of dozens of characters on The Simpsons, and his latest project is a feature-length documentary about the causes of the flooding of New Orleans. It’s called The Big Uneasy. We’ll end with a clip from the film.

    IVOR VAN HEERDEN: When they couldn’t get my own faculty to get rid of me, they made the decision to terminate my position. What was very insulting is they couldn’t tell me why. You know, I felt like a good pair of shoes just being cast off. MICHAEL GRUNWALD: There have been generally no consequences for this catastrophic failure. UNIDENTIFIED: We want to ensure that folks are accountable and responsible for their actions. JED HORNE, Fmr. Metro Editor, New Orleans Times-Picayune: I have no doubt that heads should roll. The fact that Ivor’s is the head that seems to be rolling is the height of irony. PIERCE O’DONNELL, Chief Trial Counsel, MR-GO Lawsuit: The Army Corps builds incompetent levees in New Orleans, and Congress says, "Here’s ten or twenty billion. Go fix your mistakes." MICHAEL GRUNWALD: It’s going to be very difficult to change the culture of that agency. PIERCE O’DONNELL: The Army Corps destroys wetlands, and then Congress says, "Here’s some money to go fix them up." COL. JEFFREY BEDEY: Whether we like it or not, it was political. Not—I don’t say political in a negative sense, just it was political. PIERCE O’DONNELL: Congressmen and women and senators want Army Corps projects in their districts. They want to bring home the bacon. COL. JEFFREY BEDEY: It’s part of how our government works.

ANJALI KAMAT: The Big Uneasy. Stay with us. We’ll be back in a minute, and we’ll go to New Orleans.

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Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Robert Fisk on Iraq


It has been awhile since we've heard from the great Robert Fisk. so it is about time.  He provides a useful corrective to a lot of what Amerikan Media has been contributing, as it were.


Iraq: Torture. Corruption. Civil war. America has Certainly Left Its Mark

When you invade someone else's country, there has to be a first soldier - just as there has to be a last.

The first man in front of the first unit of the first column of the invading American army to reach Fardous Square in the centre of Baghdad in 2003 was Corporal David Breeze of the 3rd Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment. For that reason, of course, he pointed out to me that he wasn't a soldier at all. Marines are not soldiers. They are Marines. But he hadn't talked to his mom for two months and so - equally inevitably - I offered him my satellite phone to call his home in Michigan. Every journalist knows you'll get a good story if you lend your phone to a soldier in a war.

"Hi, you guys," Corporal Breeze bellowed. "I'm in Baghdad. I'm ringing to say 'Hi! I love you. I'm doing fine. I love you guys.' The war will be over in a few days. I'll see you soon." Yes, they all said the war would be over soon. They didn't consult the Iraqis about this pleasant notion. The first suicide bombers - a policeman in a car and then two women in a car - had already hit the Americans on the long highway up to Baghdad. There would be hundreds more. There will be hundreds more in Iraq in the future.

So we should not be taken in by the tomfoolery on the Kuwaiti border in the last few hours, the departure of the last "combat" troops from Iraq two weeks ahead of schedule. Nor by the infantile cries of "We won" from teenage soldiers, some of whom must have been 12-years-old when George W Bush sent his army off on this catastrophic Iraqi adventure. They are leaving behind 50,000 men and women - a third of the entire US occupation force - who will be attacked and who will still have to fight against the insurgency.

Yes, officially they are there to train the gunmen and militiamen and the poorest of the poor who have joined the new Iraqi army, whose own commander does not believe they will be ready to defend their country until 2020. But they will still be in occupation - for surely one of the "American interests" they must defend is their own presence - along with the thousands of armed and indisciplined mercenaries, western and eastern, who are shooting their way around Iraq to safeguard our precious western diplomats and businessmen. So say it out loud: we are not leaving.

Instead, the millions of American soldiers who have passed through Iraq have brought the Iraqis a plague. From Afghanistan - in which they showed as much interest after 2001 as they will show when they start "leaving" that country next year - they brought the infection of al-Qa'ida. They brought the disease of civil war. They injected Iraq with corruption on a grand scale. They stamped the seal of torture on Abu Ghraib - a worthy successor to the same prison under Saddam's vile rule - after stamping the seal of torture on Bagram and the black prisons of Afghanistan. They sectarianised a country that, for all its Saddamite brutality and corruption, had hitherto held its Sunnis and Shias together.

And because the Shias would invariably rule in this new "democracy", the American soldiers gave Iran the victory it had sought so vainly in the terrible 1980-88 war against Saddam. Indeed, men who had attacked the US embassy in Kuwait in the bad old days - men who were allies of the suicide bombers who blew up the Marine base in Beirut in 1983 - now help to run Iraq. The Dawa were "terrorists" in those days. Now they are "democrats". Funny how we've forgotten the 241 US servicemen who died in the Lebanon adventure. Corporal David Breeze was probably two or three-years-old then.

But the sickness continued. America's disaster in Iraq infected Jordan with al-Qa'ida - the hotel bombings in Amman - and then Lebanon again. The arrival of the gunmen from Fatah al-Islam in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian camp in the north of Lebanon - their 34-day war with the Lebanese army - and the scores of civilian dead were a direct result of the Sunni uprising in Iraq. Al-Qa'ida had arrived in Lebanon. Then Iraq under the Americans re-infected Afghanistan with the suicide bomber, the self-immolator who turned America's soldiers from men who fight to men who hide.

Anyway, they are busy re-writing the narrative now. Up to a million Iraqis are dead. Blair cares nothing about them - they do not feature, please note, in his royalties generosity. And nor do most of the American soldiers. They came. They saw. They lost. And now they say they've won. How the Arabs, surviving on six hours of electricity a day in their bleak country, must be hoping for no more victories like this one.


Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for The Independent newspaper.  He is the author of many books on the region, including The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East

From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/iraq-torture-corruption-civil-war-america-has-certainly-left-its-mark-by-robert-fisk

Friday, August 20, 2010

Wikileaks Wins Award -- Blackwater Hides



Here is the announcement along with a slew of comments.

First, however, I forgot to mention that the New York Times felt it had a real breaking news story that Blackwater had moved to the United Arab Emirates.  No kidding?

Jeremy Scahill reported that over two months ago.  Eric Prince, a major donor to the Republican party, relocated there as the Emirates has no extradition arrangement with the United States.  So, all the people who need to prosecute or sue him, forget it.  It also helps him with his taxes.

Jeremy was one of the reporters in Iraq when it was not safe at all.  He reported for Democracy Now at the time.  He also wrote a definitive book of Blackwater and private contractors.

I do have to share a remark he recently made in the context of the idiotic nonsense over the new center in New York.  He suggested that 9:10 and 9:12 be removed from clocks because they were too close to the hallowed 9:11.

On to Wikileaks:

August 19, 2010

Julian Assange wins Sam Adams Award for Integrity

The award is judged by a group of retired senior US military and intelligence personnel, and past winners. This year the award to Julian Assange was unanimous.
Previous winners and ceremony locations:
Coleen Rowley of the FBI; in Washington, D.C.
Katharine Gun of British intelligence; in Copenhagen, Denmark
Sibel Edmonds of the FBI; in Washington, D.C.
Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan; in New York City
Sam Provance, former sergeant, U.S. Army, truth-teller about Abu Ghraib; in Washington, D.C.
Frank Grevil, major, Danish army intelligence, imprisoned for giving the Danish press documents showing that Denmark’s prime minister disregarded warnings that there was no authentic evidence of WMDs in Iraq; in Copenhagen, Denmark
Larry Wilkerson, colonel, U.S. Army (retired), former chief of staff to Secretary Colin Powell at the State Department, who has exposed what he called the “Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal”; in Washington, D.C.
http://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2010/08/15/can-wikileaks-help-save-lives/
Not sure yet where this year's award ceremony will be held, but I'll be there.
Posted by craig on August 19, 2010 12:15 PM in the category Afghanistan

Comments

Congratulations to Assange - this is a richly deserved recognition.
Posted by: Jon at August 19, 2010 12:33 PM

Great to see you back to blogging after a few days - how's the house coming on?
Posted by: John E at August 19, 2010 1:43 PM

Congratulations to Mr. Assange!! Open disclosure is an essential precondition for democracy since for a meaningful public debate to take place one has to be made aware of the facts. But it is not just democracy that benefits from the disclosures in wikileaks, but human rights and civil liberties as well. Again, well done Mr. Assange, and well done Craig Murray for so eloquently bringing your issues to the public eye.
Posted by: Roderick Russell at August 19, 2010 2:57 PM

http://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2010/08/pilger-wikileaks-afghanistan
Shame on the British government for cowering in the face of Washington's threats to Assange.
Posted by: james kenyon at August 19, 2010 3:14 PM

Assange has put lives at risk by revealing classified documents containing details about informers. In my view he has been gravely irresponsible and deserves not an award but a stiff jail sentence.
Posted by: Abe Rene at August 19, 2010 4:56 PM

Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize too.
You kept that award quiet Craig. Well done.
How is the house refit going. Are you knackered? And will we get the 'after' photos having had the 'before' set?
Posted by: somebody at August 19, 2010 5:44 PM

Posted by: somebody at August 19, 2010 5:45 PM

Is Julian Assange a hero or an intelligence operative.
Here's Webster Tarpley's analysis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BabOOgTPtE&feature=related
Posted by: at August 19, 2010 5:46 PM

Abe Rene
Lives are always at risk when the war mongers get their way. Not only are they at risk, they're lost on a daily basis often in staggering numbers and attended by horrendous injuries for those who manage to survive.
However, I'm sure a stiff jail sentence for Assange will ensure the war mongers can sleep safer in their beds.
Posted by: Renee at August 19, 2010 5:47 PM

John Pilger on "Why Wikileaks must be Protected":
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26192.htm
Abe Rene, here's a paragraph:
"On 31 July, the American celebrity reporter Christiane Amanpour interviewed Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the ABC network. She invited Gates to describe to her viewers his "anger" at WikiLeaks. She echoed the Pentagon line that "this leak has blood on its hands," thereby cueing Gates to find WikiLeaks "guilty" of "moral culpability." Such hypocrisy coming from a regime drenched in the blood of the people of Afghanistan and Iraq – as its own files make clear – is apparently not for journalistic enquiry."
The hypocrisy is breathtaking.
Posted by: dreoilin at August 19, 2010 6:25 PM

Yes! What excellent news.
Craig,
thanks for reporting this, and good to see a post from you. What a list of fine people you share this award with. I hope your new home is coming along well.
Abe Rene
(if that really was you), Wikileaks did check the material before they released, and withheld a substantial proportion to prevent people being put at risk.
Posted by: Clark at August 19, 2010 6:29 PM

OK, so it's great to have someone like Assange, Wikileaks, and of course Craig Murray. But so what..we know most of this shit anyway and when was the last time we did anything about what these people bring to our attention.
Posted by: cid at August 19, 2010 7:19 PM

I applaud the stated aims of Wikileaks and support them 100%. And Julian Assange is clearly a bright, techno-savvy young man - but a young man with a burning ambition.
According to John Young of Cryptome (and the original front-man for Wikileaks who resigned over its astronomical fund-raising ambitions), the market for illicit, classified and otherwise confidential information is vast - and VERY lucrative indeed.
Unfortunately, big-money potential, burning ambition, and the explosive emotionally-charged nature of Wilileaks recent leaks (and potentially of those it allegedly holds in reserve) is a combination that is manna from heaven for the Spooks.
Have a look at:
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:Wikileaks_and_the_Mighty_Wurlitzer
For a disturbing alternative view of the Wikileaks saga. It expands on the Webster Tarpley analysis refered to at 5:45 above.
As for Abe Rene - yet another believer in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy - and an angry one too it seems. Oh dear.
Posted by: Sabretache at August 19, 2010 7:38 PM

Cid,
some of us do a little, some do more. Craig does a lot. But just knowing helps - we bear witness. That the Powers That Be know this influences their decisions.
Posted by: Clark at August 19, 2010 7:56 PM

Well done to Julian Assange, keep it coming. The public should be able to make decisions on fact not fiction... I would love to say "the truth sets you free" and mean it... unfortunately for some of my friends round the world its landed them in prison for subversion...though perhaps their minds remain free...
Posted by: Carol at August 19, 2010 7:56 PM

Clark: yes, it is me. Sabretache: I ceased to believe in the tooth fairy a few decades ago. Bush and Rumsfeld's screw-up over the bad planning as well as the questionable decisions to go to war (especially Iraq) in the first place is no reason for Assange to release a great deal of material most which he admits he has not thoroughly read, let alone vetted. Most imprtantly, disclosure is not his decision to make. The informers who risk their lives do so on the understanding that anything they say will be completely secure. So I would say to Assange as would Col. Nathan Jessup to Lt. Kaffee in "A few good men", but with justice: "You put people in danger. Sweet dreams, son."
Posted by: Abe Rene at August 19, 2010 8:40 PM

Like the wiki leaks thing was not endorsed by the Good ole Obama Administration and those monkeys at the CIA. Leak?? my butt. Just grooming the sheep
Posted by: Ishmael at August 19, 2010 8:42 PM

Obama, the drone-firing Peace Laureate should hand over his Nobel Prize to Assange and apologize for embarrassing it. Thank you, Julian.
Posted by: Tony at August 19, 2010 9:04 PM

Abe Rene
Hmm - I wouldn't have gone that far but, now you mention it, your take on the issue would make a good Nathan Jessop (amoral, Orwellian "our business is saving lives", wouldn't bat an eye about killing if his childish sense of honour dictated - so long as it remained secret or he thought he would get away with it, massive ego, blind as a bat to the real issues) to Assanges Kaffee.
Nice one.
Posted by: Sabretache at August 19, 2010 9:16 PM

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Assanges ask for the leaks to be vetted by the US Military then throw a hissy fit?
Don't get me wrong I'm all for disclosure but be careful about making this guy a saint. This is from the wikileaks twitter
"Pentagon wants to bankrupt us by refusing to assist review.Media won't take responsibility.Amnesty won't.What to do?" see "https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/20664647314" Wikileaks whilst laudable is all about the ego of it's main man what with his never sleep in the same place twice crap. FFS have you read about the '1.4 gigabyte mystery file named "Insurance" on the WikiLeaks website' ? Have a look at http://cryptome.org
Guess it will all go the way of Google, remember "Do No Evil (unless the Chinese ask us to remove the references to a certain Square).
Posted by: Paul at August 19, 2010 9:52 PM

Abe Rene
"Assange has put lives at risk by revealing classified documents containing details about informers."
These informers, by collaborating with a foreign occupying armed force, are traitors to their own people. Is that really where your sympathy lies?
Posted by: Johan van Rooyen at August 19, 2010 10:53 PM

Paul,
I can't find that Cryptome article from the Cryptome home page. Could you give a more specific reference please?
Posted by: Clark at August 19, 2010 10:53 PM

Paul,
is this what you were referring to?
http://cryptome.org/0002/wl-diary-mirror.htm
Posted by: Clark at August 19, 2010 11:00 PM

"These informers, by collaborating with a foreign occupying armed force, are traitors to their own people. Is that really where your sympathy lies?"
Informers are a very sensitive topic in Ireland, since we were bedevilled by them for centuries ... I remember being taught that at the age of 8 or 9. However, Julian Assange says they contacted the Pentagon beforehand, and asked them to indicate where sensitive names might be, and they received no reply. So their whining now is two-faced.
Posted by: dreoilin at August 19, 2010 11:42 PM

"John Young of Cryptome"
Is he not a one-man amateur operation?
"(and the original front-man for Wikileaks who resigned over its astronomical fund-raising ambitions)"
Assange argues that their safety, secrecy and online anonymity cost money. He says they need new staff to handle all the material they have -- which needs to be assessed and sometimes unencrypted. He claims they need people they can rely on, people who can be trusted, and they do a lot of background checks on potential employees. I imagine all that costs money.
I think his collaboration with Iceland can only be a good thing.
"The WikiLeaks advised proposal to build an international "new media haven" in Iceland, with the world's strongest press and whistleblower protection laws, and a "Nobel" prize for for Freedom of Expression, has unaminously passed the Icelandic Parliament."
http://www.countercurrents.org/assange170610.htm
Posted by: dreoilin at August 19, 2010 11:57 PM

Paul,
as I understood it, Google got to supply search facilities to China by brokering a deal: the Chinese government wanted certain search results not to be displayed. Google negotiated that such results would be acknowledged with a notice reading "This information is withheld by the Chinese government" or something similar. So they negotiated a compromise that was better than nothing; the Chinese government would not have accepted Google otherwise.
Posted by: Clark at August 20, 2010 1:03 AM

I found the recent activities of Wikileaks most odd.
The US and UK governments being so corrupt must live in perpetual fear of leaks. So, how much better if they could publicise Wikileaks extensively and gather up the leaks and decide which to publish and which not to. Also they could quite easily find out the source.
Read this excellent article and see what I mean:
Hidden Intelligence Operation Behind the Wikileaks Release of "Secret" Documents?
The real story of Wikileaks has clearly not yet been told.
at
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?aid=20580&context=va
Posted by: Ruth at August 20, 2010 1:24 AM

nice post. thanks.
Posted by: cna training at August 20, 2010 3:37 AM

So when do you think Assange will publish documents that detail 911 being an inside job? Answer: never. They don't exist, you silly gooses.
I can't imagine how annoyed Assange gets with 911 Truthy Truthers bothering him all the time.
Posted by: Larry from St. Louis at August 20, 2010 5:30 AM

Is that the book 'How I got WTC7 Collapsed and Collected the Insurance' by Larry Silverstein?
Posted by: somebody at August 20, 2010 8:24 AM

I can't help but feel that a call to throw Assange in jail is specifically hawkish, pro-war. As has been said earlier in the thread, putting the truth-tellers in jail helps the amoral warmongers sleep soundly in their beds.
It does rather seem that WL have taken care to filter the material, along with the journalists with whom they worked. But if that is not enough for the conservatives here, what would be? To have had the material released to WL and then for it to be destroyed, or never released? Isn't that rather like telling Ellsberg he should not have released the Pentagon Papers - which were part of the building domestic pressure that ended the war against Vietnam?
Posted by: Jon at August 20, 2010 9:38 AM

Arthur Silber treats the issue of Wikileaks very well, as always. I find him one of the best and most honest bloggers.
Posted by: antidote at August 20, 2010 12:06 PM

Congrats, Julian
You deserved the award and I hope you get new ones every year.
Posted by: JOSE at August 20, 2010 1:22 PM

John Van Rooyen: 'traitor' is a loaded word. The people who work for the Americans are fighting the Taleban, who are Islamists who would impose a lunatic and oppressive regime, treat women as slaves, and give support to Al-Qaeda. My sympathies are certainly against them. Assange has high-handedly put people at risk and deserves punishment, not sympathy as far as I am concerned.
Posted by: Abe Rene at August 20, 2010 2:06 PM

I could give Abe Rene a long list of 'loaded' words connected to the illegal wars on Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is from one of the doctors in the original group. Remember that they have been going at this for nearly seven years. I admire their tenacity throughout and their resistance to the cold water poured on them by the likes of Mangold and Aaronovitch, Blair's pals Rentoul and Campbell and even Gilligan recently. The cold water has ended up just muddying the water but has so far failed to silence those who call for justice.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/aug/19/david-kelly-inquest-disgrace
Posted by: somebody at August 20, 2010 3:05 PM

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

A Rabbi Speaks the Truth










    The latest score:  Blago 23, Fitzgerald 1 (sort of)

(Obviously, not the Rabbi)



But first, a few words about reader's comments.  The posting on Robert Gibbs and drug testing stirred up quite a few of these.

One of the best was in response to his use of the figure "professional leftists" and one wondered if we were going to start to get paid a salary.  My response was to suggest we for a union, but then I am not ready to go out on strike yet.

Typical of another group were statements to the fact that I must wish that Bush was still President.  People who come to conclusions such as this based on what I said are clearly incapable of reason.

A bit of background might help with following the Rabbi's remarks.  A "trope" is a word I haven't heard used since my days in working with Renaissance Logic and Rhetoric.  It is a general term for any sort of rhetorical practice such a irony or metaphor.  When he says "I know, facts don't matter, I know Postmodernism," it is helpful to know that Postmodernism is a movement that rejects the modernist assertion of the importance of the cognitive orientation started in the 17th Century.  He is having fun with the right-wing commentator who had just been quoted.  He is a very engaging talker.

Here, in its entirety, is Amy Goodman's program on the Mosque controversy that started in New York and spread to infect the absurd throughout the country, strongly motivated to promoted Republican candidates in the next election.






ANJALI KAMAT: Today we spend the hour on the controversy around the proposed construction of an Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan, an issue that has dominated the news over the past few days. Opposition to the center first started among fringe right-wing blogs, who labeled it the "Ground Zero mosque." Over the past few weeks, the issue has been swept into the mainstream, with President Obama ultimately weighing in last week.

The proposed facility, called Park51, is actually two blocks from Ground Zero and is described by the Cordoba Initiative, which is spearheading it, as a community center which will house, quote, "a gym, [...] pool, restaurant, [a] 500-person auditorium, [a] 9/11 memorial, [a] multi-faith chapel, office and [a] conference space, and [a] prayer space."

The project is headed by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, a Muslim cleric who’s been labeled by right-wing critics as an extremist. In fact, Imam Feisal traveled overseas in 2006 with one of President Bush’s closest aides, Karen Hughes. He also helped the FBI with counterterrorism efforts after 9/11.

The proposed community center has nevertheless sparked national headlines, with Republicans vowing to make the controversy a campaign issue in the fall. President Obama addressed the issue on Friday during an iftar dinner celebrating the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in the White House State Dining Room.

    PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country, and the pain and the experience of suffering by those who lost loved ones is just unimaginable. So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders, and Ground Zero is indeed hallowed ground. But let me be clear, as a citizen and as president, I believe that Muslims have the right to practice their religion, as everyone else in this country. And that includes—that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America. And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are.

ANJALI KAMAT: Less than twenty-four hours later, President Obama was asked about the Islamic community center by a reporter and appeared to backtrack from his statement of the night before.

    PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right that people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.

ANJALI KAMAT: Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this week became the most prominent Democrat to oppose the construction of the facility when he said it should be built in another location.

    SEN. HARRY REID: My statement, I think, is pretty simple. Constitution gives us freedom of religion. I think that it’s very obvious that the mosque should be built someplace else, and that’s what I said.

ANJALI KAMAT: In New York, Governor David Paterson’s office said yesterday that they will meet with the developers of the Cordoba House project. Last week, Paterson offered the developers state-owned land to relocate the center far away from Ground Zero. The developers rejected the offer. They also denied that any meeting has been scheduled with Paterson. Project developer Sharif El-Gamal was interviewed on local news station NY1 on Tuesday. He criticized lawmakers who are opposing the center.

    SHARIF EL-GAMAL: It’s a really sad day for America when our politicians choose to look at a constitutional right and use that as basis for their elections. This is not a debate. This is not a debate. This is us as Muslim Americans giving back to our community.

AMY GOODMAN: Today we spend the hour on this issue. We’ll speak with the first Muslim elected to Congress, Minnesota Congress member Keith Ellison. Rabbi Irwin Kula is with us. He’s supporting the Cordoba House. Islamic scholar John Esposito will join us.

And we’re joined by Talat Hamdani. Her son Salman died on 9/11 in the attacks on the World Trade Center. Salman was twenty-three years old. He was a police cadet, an emergency medical technician. He had a degree in biochemistry and was headed to his job as a research assistant at Rockefeller University when the planes hit.

First we’re going to go back seven years. It was on the eve of September 11, 2003. It was there that I met Talat and her now late husband Mohammad Saleem Hamdani as they walked to Ground Zero honoring the dead and talking about their son.

    MOHAMMAD SALEEM HAMDANI: Actually, I was sleeping at that time, you know, and my sister-in-law, she called me, and she said, "Did you heard something?" I said, "No." And she said that one tower already fall down. And the first word from my mouth was that, "Oh, my god! My son is there!" TALAT HAMDANI: We tried to contact him on his cell, Salman, but he wasn’t answering. And then I remembered, the day before, when he came home, he had forgotten his cell phone on the job. He worked at Rockefeller, which is 65 Street and York Avenue. So, being the type of person that he was, an EMT and a police cadet and—apart from being an EMT and police cadet, he was a very, you know, kind person, very generous, very helpful. He would—we knew he would go down to help over there, and if he saw such a disaster, he would respond to it. There was a call given out for all the EMTs to come forward for the rescue help. And finally, his brother, my husband’s brother, went to his office, and they told him he never reported to work. And we waited for him to call home that night. The first night, we were—I wasn’t worried. My husband was. I wasn’t worried. But then—so, the next—that’s how the day went by, you know, just waiting for him to call and—the call that never came. And the third day, we went down to the center that they had made for the families to come and write their—give their names of their loved ones. Armory, it was. Yes, it was the Armory. We went down there, and we registered his name, and we gave our swab samples for the DNA. And we made a flier, searching for him. We put down his name as Sal Hamdani. My brother did not put down his name, the first name, Mohammad, for certain reasons. And we searched for him. Nobody had seen him. We went down the following weeks. We went down to the Ground Zero itself, asking the firemen, showing them his picture. Maybe they saw him. But nobody saw him at all.

AMY GOODMAN: Talat and Saleem Hamdani talking about their son Salman, who died at Ground Zero on September, 11th, 2001. Talat Hamdani is with us now.

Thank you so much for being with us. I know that’s hard for you to see, because you’re both not only talking about your son, but after that, a year later, you lost your husband Saleem.

TALAT HAMDANI: Thank you for having me. Yes, it’s traumatic. Yes, definitely.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, the story of your son is a remarkable one, because he was like many first responders who went down and died, but the story got more complicated. Talk about what happened when you went first looking all over for him, going to the hospitals, to the morgues. Then you went to Mecca to pray to pray for him.

TALAT HAMDANI: A month later, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And at that time, a New York Post headline appeared, that said, "Missing or Hiding? Mystery of the NYPD Cadet from Pakistan," screamed the Post headline. The sensational article noted that someone fitting your son’s description had been seen near the Midtown Tunnel—

TALAT HAMDANI: Midtown Tunnel.

AMY GOODMAN: —a full month after 9/11. You were interrogated. His internet use, his politics, were investigated. What happened then, how you came back to this chaos, when you thought you simply had lost your son at Ground Zero?

TALAT HAMDANI: Well, after 9/11 happened, and like a month later, you know, after we came back from Mecca, there was this voice message on my machine from Congressman Ackerman’s office to contact him, and maybe he’ll help me find my son. He has some news about him. So we contacted his office, and we were interrogated by Congressman Ackerman about his faith and about us and everything. And he led us to believe that maybe he was detained by the INS, by the ICE. And I said, "He’s an American citizen." But he said, "Well, he wasn’t born here." So we were—you know, there was hope, even though being detained, but that hope of being alive. I’ll take it even today. So, I kept, you know, speaking up, because I had to clear his name. If I had not done so, he might have—he definitely would have gone down in history as another, you know, terrorist linked with those attacks. So then, on March 20th, we were notified at 11:30 p.m that his remains—

AMY GOODMAN: This is about six months later.

TALAT HAMDANI: Six months later. And we had the funeral. You know, being a cadet, the NYPD honored him. He went under the American flag—

AMY GOODMAN: The New York Police Department.

TALAT HAMDANI: Yes. He went under the American flag, which he said, "That is honor, Mama." Three years ago, you know, we know someone who died who was a lieutenant, and he said, "Mama, that is honor, and that is how I want to go." And that is how he went.

AMY GOODMAN: And you had the funeral at the mosque on East 96th Street.

TALAT HAMDANI: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Mayor Bloomberg spoke. The Police Commissioner Ray Kelly spoke. Congressman Ackerman spoke.

TALAT HAMDANI: Ackerman came, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And this was after newspapers were camped outside, and cameras, your house, looking for the so-called terrorist.

TALAT HAMDANI: Oh, it was horrible. It was like they descended like vultures upon my house.

AMY GOODMAN: President Bush talked about him as a hero. Salman is named in the USA PATRIOT Act as a hero.

TALAT HAMDANI: Yes, he is.

AMY GOODMAN: So it all turned around. But your son remains dead, as over—as, what, close to 3,000 people died on September 11th.

TALAT HAMDANI: He was one of them, yes, definitely.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, today, come, what, almost nine years later—

TALAT HAMDANI: Nine years.

AMY GOODMAN: —and a community center, an Islamic community center and mosque, is proposed being built a couple of blocks from Ground Zero. Your thoughts?

TALAT HAMDANI: The objection to this Islamic cultural center, I think they are illegal, because the zoning has been approved. There’s nothing wrong with it. People, though they object—some 9/11 families do object to it. They call it insensitivity. But it’s not about sensitivity or insensitivity, about emotions; it’s about the legality of the situation. It is about our rights as Americans. We are protected under the Constitution. There is freedom of religion. You know, if it’s one faith today, it’s going to be another faith tomorrow. That is scary. And to scapegoat the Muslims for the acts of a foreign terrorist, that is—that is hatred. That is wrong, because if we go by that argument, that we were attacked by a foreign terrorist group, who did this in the name of, you know, my faith, Islam, and hence all the Muslims are terrorists, as has been happening since 9/11, I say we have carried the cross. No more. No more. So, if that argument is valid, then, by that token, Timothy McVeigh’s actions also makes all Christians terrorists. So, that is wrong.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and come back to this discussion. Again, we’ll be spending the hour on the controversy of the Islamic cultural center, the proposal for it to be built near Ground Zero. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our guests are Talat Hamdani—her son died at the World Trade Center in the 9/11 attacks. He was among scores of Muslims who died among the close to 3,000 people who died. We’re also joined by Rabbi Irwin Kula, who’s president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. John Esposito is with us, professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University. And Congressman Keith Ellison, Democrat from Minnesota, the first Muslim elected to Congress. I’m Amy Goodman, with Anjali Kamat. Anjali?

ANJALI KAMAT: Congressman Ellison, I want to go to you. What is—why are you supporting the Park51 project? And what is your reaction to the opposition to the project from Democrats, most prominently Harry Reid?

REP. KEITH ELLISON: I have three basic reasons why I think that this is a project that has merit and should move forward.

First of all, by supporting this project, we directly undermine and counteract the narrative of the transnational terrorists who claim that America is at war with Islam. America is not at war with Islam. And all we have to do to demonstrate that is to stand on our Constitution, which guarantees the freedom of worship for all Americans. So, the fact is, is that while Anwar Awlaki and other people like that are trying to argue that the United States is against Islam, America has a Constitution, and hopefully a majority of its population which still believes in religious freedom and tolerance. And so, that is the first reason.

Second reason is that it’s the constitutional right of all Americans to worship as they see fit. And if this project is turned back, it will embolden elements not only in New York, but all over the country, that are trying to stop mosques literally all over the country. Now, of course, this is not a mosque. But the fact is, is that Muslims from New York and in Sheepshead Bay, including that, and other places in Kentucky, places in Michigan, places in Wisconsin, there are these local elements who are fearful about what Muslims represent in this country and are trying to stop them from freedom of worship.

And then, of course, the third reason is the reason that is the very founding of this country. I mean, every school kid knows that when the Pilgrims came to the United States—well, what is now the United States—and landed on Plymouth Rock, it was because they were being persecuted from freedom of practice of their religion. And so, the very root elements of this country are in freedom of faith. And I’m worried that, as we see in Europe, you know, minarets being banned, we see hijabs being banned, that this is a pernicious development, and we should hold fast to our heritage of religious tolerance in the United States.

Now, what do I think about fellow Democrats? Unfortunately, I think that some of them are in some tight races. Their opponents have made this into a divisive wedge issue. And they blinked on the Constitution, because they’re afraid of their prospects in November. But I just want to tell any Democrat that, look, you standing on religious tolerance and freedom is going to be a winning election issue, because this resonates with Americans.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me ask you about President Obama. He made a strong statement on Friday night at a dinner—

REP. KEITH ELLISON: Yes, he did.

AMY GOODMAN: —breaking the fast, the Ramadan—were you there, Congressman Ellison?

REP. KEITH ELLISON: The iftar.

AMY GOODMAN: At iftar. Were you there?

REP. KEITH ELLISON: No, I was on the opposite end of the country with Nancy Pelosi. I was not with the President. But I had been there every year except this one. But I had other obligations that night. But I was aware of the speech, and I was very proud of the President.

AMY GOODMAN: So I wanted to ask what you thought the next day, which surprised many, when this was his response to a follow-up question.

    PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right that people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.

AMY GOODMAN: Many people saw this as President Obama backtracking. Congressman Ellison, your response?

REP. KEITH ELLISON: Well, I don’t think those people are correct. I think no president, no congressman, should be urging or trying to advocate for the erection of a religious institution or the defeat of the building of that same institution. It’s our job to protect people’s rights. It’s not our job to tell people where to put a synagogue or where to put a Buddhist temple or where to put a church or a mosque. The President is correct. He should not be in the business of advocating the construction of a religious institution. What he should be doing is saying that everybody has a right to pursue their rights and that he is going to uphold and defend the Constitution, which means he’s going to guarantee their right to do it. And that includes not creating a hostile atmosphere so that people are afraid or inhibited or chilled from exercising their rights, as politicians like Peter King and many others have done. So I don’t think the President’s wrong.

ANJALI KAMAT: Rabbi Irwin Kula, you wanted to interject?

RABBI IRWIN KULA: Yeah. I understand what Keith is saying, and the President has to be careful, and the politics of this is—are so outlandish. But I actually think the distinction between the right to build and the wisdom to build is a very, very, very dangerous distinction. It actually is pernicious, in a way. And I would have liked the President to say something like this: "I reject the premises of the question, because I know where that question is coming from. That question is coming from already a premise that there are these terrorists and these American Muslims, and they’re equivalent. And therefore, you’re asking me about the wisdom of American Muslims, who have been in New York for a long time in a mosque that was twenty—that was within twelve blocks for the last twenty-seven years. And the very fact of the question of the wisdom is actually to presume suspicion. And so, I reject the question. There’s only two—there’s only one wisdom I care about: the wisdom of the Constitution, I care about, and the wisdom of distinguishing between our genuine enemies and American citizens."

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Rabbi Kula, let me ask you about the statement of the Anti-Defamation League. It pubished a statement opposing the Park51 project, saying, quote, "Ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment," they said, "building an Islamic center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain—unnecessarily—and that is not right." The ADL national director Abraham Foxman later defended this position on CNN.

    ABRAHAM FOXMAN: Our position basically was an appeal to the imam and his supporters. If you want to heal, if you want to reconcile, is this the best place to do it? Should you do it in face—in the face of those who are saying to you, most of the victims, families of the victims, the responders, are saying, "Please don’t do it here. Please don’t do it in our cemetery." I believe, on this issue, the voices, the feelings, the emotions of the families of the victims of the responders, I think take precedent maybe over even the Mayor’s.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League. Rabbi Kula, your response?

RABBI IRWIN KULA: I mean, I’m just deeply disappointed, and I was, you know, quoted as saying I think the ADL should be ashamed of itself. I think the sad thing here is that Abe Foxman, since 9/11, has been one of the most important advocates to ensure that there was not defamation and not prejudice for Muslims, and the shame here is that he actually knows Daisy and knows Imam Feisal for a long time. And so, what I think what we really have here is tremendous political pressure.

AMY GOODMAN: And Daisy is Daisy Khan, the wife of Imam Feisal—

RABBI IRWIN KULA: And Daisy Khan, I’m sorry, yeah, the wife of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. And what we have here is tremendous political pressure. And I’m sure the stories are going to come out in the next months of the kinds of pressures that were put on somebody like Abe. And you can see the torturous kinds of statement that he had to make about the feelings, I mean, which—anguish, and I think we need to say something, that the anguish of people does not automatically translate into public policy. And sometimes anguish and really, really personal suffering needs to be disconnected from public policy, because anguish doesn’t allow us to abandon rationality. Anguish doesn’t allow us to abandon kind of first principles about what our country stands for.

And I had two friends who died in the World Trade Center. I was very involved in this for a long time. And to be able to use the sensitivities of people to really—to really stoke fear, there’s something very cynical about that. And there isn’t such a thing as the sensitivities of 9/11 families. There are a lot of different 9/11 families, and there are not only 9/11 families who lost directly people, but there are 9/11 families who were forced out of their homes for years in the neighborhood. So, what do we mean by the "the feelings of 9/11 families"? These are abstractions used to actually stoke fear in the country.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about Imam Rauf, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is headed, by the way, on a State Department mission for two weeks to the Middle East—

RABBI IRWIN KULA: Right. Exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: —who worked for President Bush’s State Department, worked with one of his closest aides, Karen Hughes—

RABBI IRWIN KULA: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: —when she was doing that public diplomacy to reach out to Muslims.

RABBI IRWIN KULA: Traveled with, half the world.

AMY GOODMAN: How do you know him?

RABBI IRWIN KULA: Well, kind of in the interfaith work that we’ve been doing over the last decade. I was one of the readers of his book, What’s Right with Islam: A New Vision of Muslims in America. We were in Australia recently, at the World Parliament of World Religions. You know, in the interfaith world, there aren’t that many people working at the cutting edge of interfaith. That is what’s so crazy about this story. Imam Feisal has been at the cutting edge of whatever we mean by "moderate Islam." I mean, those words weren’t even used until very, very recently. This is a guy who, well before 9/11, he had two books that are very, very important—Islam: A Search for Meaning and Islam: A Sacred Law. These are things that people need to read. And it’s so easy to take one comment out of context. Any of us who have been in the media, any one of us who have been interviewed, you can take a statement and turn someone into a radical and turn someone into a terrorist. This guy has been at the highest echelons—State Department, FBI. He has spoken in the Aspen Institute. He’s spoken in Washington Cathedral. This is—I mean, it’s really crazy.

And that’s another part of the story that’s very scary. I mean, the community board, before anything, voted this 15-0. There was an amazing conversation. In fact, there was a request from—of Daisy Khan: Could you put a 9/11 memorial inside of the—of what is now Park51? And he said, "Of course. We’re planning on doing that." And it was—this got stoked by a very small group of people, and then—what I would say is an irresponsible national leadership, whether it’s Gingrich and Palin, and then a certain element of the media. And what’s very scary is, what was a local issue that was—that was a non-issue. This is a group of people, led by Imam Feisal, that has been ten blocks from there for the last twenty-seven years. This is a complete non-issue. And so, what it really says is, what’s going on in America?

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, what’s very interesting, as Nate Silver points out, well-known pollster, a plurality of Manhattanites are actually for this.

RABBI IRWIN KULA: Even now.

AMY GOODMAN: Even now.

RABBI IRWIN KULA: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: When—with this swirl of negative publicity. You also have the issue of conservatives attacking, and yet you have—you know, who are very concerned about states’ rights. This went through this long process. Among them, the Landmarks Commission said they’re not going to make this a landmark, this building, that it could be rebuilt. Can you talk about what it means for conservatives to talk about Imam Feisal as a secret radical?

RABBI IRWIN KULA: Well, I think what happens for—in a hyper kind of twenty-four/seven media is, as soon as words like "radical," as soon as words like "extremist" come out, they have a life of their own. And because we’re on a tinderbox right now in the country altogether, when you have 20 percent of Americans unemployed, you know, or even off—they’re not even looking for employment anymore—you have so many Americans in very, very serious pain, when you have so much change happening in a country, sociological and cultural change, and religious change, and when you have so much going on, there’s a kind of tinderbox, and there’s a lot of fear and a lot of anger. And it calls for incredibly mature leadership—by the way, political leadership and religious leadership. And it’s so easy to stoke those fears for political capital. And that’s what we have. So, you put out the word "terrorism" and "extremist," and it’s attached to him forever. Forever.

ANJALI KAMAT: I want to bring in Professor John Esposito into the conversation. He’s the university professor of religion and international affairs at Georgetown University and is author of several books. Most recent is The Future of Islam. Professor Esposito, I want to play a clip for you. It’s the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero has generated a flood of absurd comparisons from the right, including Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich.

    NEWT GINGRICH: Those folks don’t have any interest in reaching out to the community. They’re trying to make a case about supremacy. That’s why they won’t go anywhere else. That’s why they won’t accept any other offer. And I think we ought to be honest about the fact that we have a right—and this happens all the time in America. You know, Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There’s no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center. RUSH LIMBAUGH: Let me ask you, what would happen, do you think, if the Ku Klux Klan wanted to establish a memorial at Gettysburg? CALLER: Well, you know, I don’t know. Nothing’s happening in Lower Manhattan. RUSH LIMBAUGH: What do you mean you don’t know? They wouldn’t get to first base. Nobody would put up with the Klan building a memorial anywhere, much less Gettysburg. CALLER: Well, you’re right there, but where is the—where is the public outrage? If we don’t have it for Lower Manhattan, do you think it’ll— RUSH LIMBAUGH: The public outrage is there! You’re just not seeing it march in the street.

ANJALI KAMAT: That was Rush Limbaugh talking to a caller. Professor Esposito, you’ve said that Islamophobia needs to be taken as seriously as anti-Semitism. Talk about these clips, what the right is saying and the hate it’s whipping up.

JOHN ESPOSITO: Well, I think it’s very clear what’s happening here. Note how Rush Limbaugh talks about the Ku Klux Klan. So he’s equating what? American Muslims and the vast majority of Muslims in the world with the Ku Klux Klan? What’s clear here is a notion of collective guilt and punishment. Let me begin with just a brief quote from an American Muslim who’s also a prominent professional on this issue: "It’s a matter of principle and not the personalities involved. They may be doing it for all the wrong reasons, but we’re being attacked simply and only for not knowing our place, not being sufficiently sorry for a crime we didn’t commit. It’s like we need to assume some collective guilt for 9/11 and act accordingly."

And I think that when you see people—for example, Newt Gingrich. Here’s somebody who’s old enough, from the South, can remember the problems of racism and civil rights. He also is reportedly a Christian. In fact, some reports say he’s a Catholic. He’s got to remember how a theology of anti-Semitism led to a history of pogroms that ultimately led to the Final Solution. And much of that was based on collective guilt, let alone what we did to the Japanese. The fact that folks can say the things that they’re saying now and that media will often publish them—they would use words that media would never allow if one were talking about Jews or African Americans today, and most probably Italian Americans—what we’re seeing is the tip of the iceberg of a social cancer that’s been growing in America for the last decade.

AMY GOODMAN: Rabbi Kula?

RABBI IRWIN KULA: Yeah, I actually agree. I think, very important, when you hear terms like "those folks"—in other words, forget about the tropes using Nazi, Ku Klux Klan, because that is so clear. The more subtle, very dangerous language is when a very important politician—we’re not talking about Newt Gingrich. We’re not talking about some low-level congressperson. We’re talking about someone who has a global stage and is considered an intellectual heavyweight within the Republican Party.

AMY GOODMAN: Who will possibly be running for president on the Republican ticket.

RABBI IRWIN KULA: And a possible—when he uses words like "those folks"—well, wait a second. Imam Feisal and his community aren’t "those folks." They had people who got killed in the World Trade Center, because actually "those folks" live in that neighborhood, which happens to be our neighborhood called Lower Manhattan, called New York, called the United States of America. And that is incredibly insidious, even more insidious than tropes of Nazi and Ku Klux Klan.

AMY GOODMAN: You lost family in the Holocaust.

RABBI IRWIN KULA: Yeah, my—I lost a lot of family—

REP. KEITH ELLISON: Amy? Amy, this is Keith. Can I dive in there?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes. Let me just hear Rabbi Kula talk about the Holocaust for one minute, and then we’re going to go to you, Congressman Elllison.

RABBI IRWIN KULA: Yeah, I just think my father came—my father came here in 1938 from Poland. He came here to escape the Holocaust. He came because of religious—for religious freedom. And here we are. You know, my father is eighty-one, and he’s watching this and can’t believe this, because if you—I mean, and this is where the professor was right. Just take out the word "Muslim" and put in the word "Jew," and you see that this strain, which has always been a part of America—and especially when things get tense, and especially when people are under tremendous stress—and we are—it’s very easy, right, to blame somebody. And now, it turns out, you know, Muslims are getting blamed.

TALAT HAMDANI: Since 9/11. Since 9/11, we’re carrying the cross.

RABBI IRWIN KULA: Since 9/11, right. Since 9/11.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go to break and come back. Congressman Ellison, we’ll go first to you. This is Democracy Now! We’re talking about the controversy swirling around the Islamic cultural center that is planned to be built in Lower Manhattan. We’ll be back in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our subject for the hour, the controversy that is becoming—is increasingly raging, not only in this country, but around the world. Our guests are Talat Hamdani—she lost her son Salman on 9/11. He was one of the emergency responders. Rabbi Kula is with us. Rabbi Irwin Kula is president of the National Center for Learning and Leadership. John Esposito teaches Islamic studies at Georgetown University. And we’re joined by the first Muslim elected to Congress, Keith Ellison. He’s from Minnesota.

Congressman Ellison, you wanted to jump in here?

REP. KEITH ELLISON: Yeah. I wanted to allude to the point that you just made about the world audience. I mean, the world is watching this controversy. Everybody is sort of wondering what’s going to happen. And, you know, I guess my question to your guests—and I’d like to hear your views, as well, if you can share them—what does the rest of the world think about this? What do people who want to have a recruiting script for—to make war on the US think about this controversy? What use do they make of it, when you hear these—some of these outrageous statements that American politicians and cultural leaders are making?

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s go to—

REP. KEITH ELLISON: You know, so, for example, Bryan Fischer—

AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead. Bryan Fischer?

REP. KEITH ELLISON: Bryan Fischer says there should be no more mosques made—built in America. You know, some of the outrageous things that Limbaugh and Gingrich have said, Palin. What does the rest of the world think about this?

AMY GOODMAN: Last month, Tennessee Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey questioned whether Islam is a religion at all and suggested the Constitution’s protection of freedom of religion should not apply to Muslims. Ramsey made the comments while campaigning for the state’s Republican gubernatorial primary race.

    LT. GOV. RON RAMSEY: Now, you know, I’m all about freedom of religion. I’ll obey the First Amendment as much as I obey the Second Amendment, as much as I’ll obey the Tenth Amendment, and on and on and on. But then you cross the line when they start trying to bring Sharia law here to the States, into the United States. We’re already in law, and we live under our Constitution, and they probably live under our Constitution. But it’s scary. Now, you could even argue whether being a Muslim is actually a religion, or is it a nationality, way of life or cult, whatever you want to call it. But certainly we do protect our religions, but at the same time, this is something that we are going to have to face.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Tennessee Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey. He is running for the governorship of Tennessee. Your response—

JOHN ESPOSITO: Amy?

AMY GOODMAN: Congressman, let me go to Professor Esposito.

JOHN ESPOSITO: Let me just make a point here, following up on Keith’s comment. The way this plays out overseas is that, to our friends in the Muslim world, which are the vast majority of Muslims, people are stunned. And it feeds a concern about, as that has existed before, that there’s a double standard—that is, that, on the one hand, we’re admired for our principles and our values, but on the other hand, there’s always been a sense that we say we stand for democracy, we say we stand for pluralism, of freedom of religion—all of these things, as the Gallup World Poll shows, vast majorities of Muslims admire. But significant numbers of Muslims around the world believe that there’s a double standard when it comes to how Muslims themselves are actually treated.

On the other hand, it plays into the extremists. The extremists wind up saying, in effect, "See? At the end of the day, to be a Muslim is to be persecuted. There is a clash of civilizations." And I think that that’s what’s ironic. And it’s underscored by something that you and others said earlier. The problem here is not just that you have some rural rednecks who are making comments; it’s that you have people who hold responsible positions—I’m not even going to say that they are responsible people—but people who hold responsible positions in our society, whether it’s politicians, whether it’s so-called Christian ministers and others. And the fact that you could have, for example, the pastor of a church that only has eighty people, who calls for an event like burning Qur’ans, and that that could then become an international issue and get that kind of coverage, shows the depth of the problem that we face and the urgency about our need to face it.

ANJALI KAMAT: Professor Esposito, this Islamophobia is not a new phenomenon. Can you take us back, over the past decade, really, and talk about the sort of early waves of hate crimes that hit and the hate speech against Muslims?

JOHN ESPOSITO: Well, I think that when you look, for example, at particularly, you know, at post-9/11, you have a wave of hate crimes. But ironically, post-9/11, you have an America that, if you look at polling, responded a lot better than it did after the first couple of years. And I think part of that reason things got much more negative was that while President Bush made a very good distinction between terrorists and Islam, at times the Bush administration played the terrorism card so much that it fed into an American population feeling unduly under siege—not that we don’t have to be concerned about terrorism, but unduly under siege. Then what you see over the years are problems of attacks on mosques.

But more importantly, the fact that you have people like Representative King and others, you have politicians who, over the last decade, have played this card—Rick Lazio and others. You have Christian right ministers—John Hagee, Franklin Graham—these ministers saying that not that terrorists are evil, but Islam is evil. And remember that Hagee and Rod Parsley were two ministers whom McCain embraced. What people forget now when look at—as we lead up to the elections is that during the presidential elections, you could see the Islamophobia in the way in which people were trying to prove that Obama was somehow a Muslim, as if that should discredit him, and indeed Secretary Powell had to speak to that. And on the other hand, you had all the major Republican candidates playing the anti-Islam card. And that’s simply been picked up now by other political candidates now, primarily Republican, but also some Democrats.

So, Islamophobia runs very deep. But what we want to do is not acknowledge that it exists, so—or we even say, well, we shouldn’t use the term. And the reality of it is, it’s like any form of racism. We need to call a spade a spade and address it head-on. If we don’t, this will simply continue to spread.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to the comments of two New York politicians. You just mentioned, Professor Esposito, New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio. He was a longtime congressman. He’s now running against Andrew Cuomo for the governorship of New York. He vehemently opposes the cultural center project. He and many other conservatives have repeatedly questioned the positions taken by one of the project’s founders, Imam Feisal Rauf.

    RICK LAZIO: You know, the person who is spearheading this effort, Imam Rauf, has said, on the very month that we suffered this terrible surprise attack, that America was an accessory to the crime of 9/11 and that Osama bin Laden was, in a real sense, made in the USA. This is not the voice of a bridge builder. I know they’re trying to portray this now as a situation where we’ve got peacemakers and bridge builders. But the person who’s driving this is affiliated with some of the most radical organizations that we know. He refuses to condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization, and he’s affiliated very closely with the Perdana Global group that funded the flotilla that tried to run the blockade in the Middle East.

AMY GOODMAN: Rabbi Kula, you’re saying this isn’t true?

RABBI IRWIN KULA: I mean, some of this just isn’t true. I mean, I understand facts don’t matter. I get that. I really do understand that. I’m a multicultural—I’m a post-modern person who understands there’s multiple narratives. I get it. But that literally isn’t—read the last chapter of his most recent book, Imam Feisal’s last chapter. It’s about love. It’s about a rejection of terrorism. It’s a rejection of violence. And it turns out that a piece of the Muslim world is in crisis right now. We know that. And the question is, are we going to lump every single Muslim in the world together? And that’s what Rick Lazio is doing. And it’s very, very dangerous, because it’s splitting—it’s splitting American Muslims from Americans. That’s a very dangerous thing for the country.

AMY GOODMAN: Congressman Ellison, he is a fellow—he was a fellow congressman, Rick Lazio.

REP. KEITH ELLISON: Well, to me, you know, there is this deep tradition of right-wing populism and scapegoating. He reminds me of "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman. He reminds me of George Wallace, who swore he would never be out-raced again and said, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever," as he stood in front of that schoolhouse door. I mean, there is a tradition of pandering politicians, appealing to the worst impulses in the population. I don’t know if Rick Lazio believes what he says or not. I do know that he sees an opportunity, and he is seizing that opportunity. It’s disgusting and disgraceful. And my question is, how bad do you want to be governor? Are you really willing to throw a whole set of Americans under the bus just so you can be governor?

AMY GOODMAN: I want to also be clear, Congressman Lazio was not fringe. He ran a very close race against Hillary Clinton for the Senate. They were neck and neck. And—Rabbi Kula?

RABBI IRWIN KULA: See, I think what we have to, in a sense, pull back for a second and say there are two strains, both in America, but there are two strains in all human beings. There’s a strain in human being that is afraid of the other. There’s a strain in the human being that, when we get scared and we get insecure, we either, you know, fight—we’re either afraid and fight, we either freeze, you know, or we either run away. And so, that fear is really real. And then there’s this other strain in us as human beings, that wants to reach out, that wants to connect, that recognizes that we are in this together. And those two strains, which are in every single person, are now being played out in the larger political and cultural landscape. And we have to be really—really, those of us who, for whatever reasons, are lucky enough to not be afraid—because it’s really—there’s a certain amount of it that’s just luck—how we were raised and who we got to meet—that what we have to do is we have to mitigate the fear, not make the fear worse.

JOHN ESPOSITO: Amy?

AMY GOODMAN: Let me just bring in Talat Hamdani. You leave here, and you’re going to go to a news conference outside the—

TALAT HAMDANI: It’s a meeting to—right.

AMY GOODMAN: A meeting.

TALAT HAMDANI: A meeting to—how to deal with this issue, and many different organizations who are supporting this cause, fighting for the rights of all Americans, which now are being violated, because, from my perspective, Muslims are as equal members, citizens, as any other faith in this country. They died on 9/11. They were the first responders. They also died after helping. Their children are on the frontlines. So when it comes to—

AMY GOODMAN: When you say "on the frontlines," where?

TALAT HAMDANI: In Afghanistan and Iraq. Muslims are fighting, too. So when it comes for us to pay our duties, we do it. But when it comes to us demanding our rights, we are not getting it. We are being told, you know, "You are a terrorist," which is very wrong. What is mine is mine. I’m doing my duty, and I want my rights. And this stoking the fear that, you know, all these politicians are jumping in on the bandwagon and trying to make it exploit, the tragedy of all those 3,000 people killed for their own political expediency, it’s disgraceful.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask Congressman Ellison, the reports from Gainesville, Florida. A Florida church with "Islam is of the devil" signs in its front lawn plans to host an “International Burn a Qur’an Day” on the ninth anniversary of the September 11th attacks. It reminds me—

REP. KEITH ELLISON: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —back when you were first elected, the whole controversy around your swearing in, wanting to do it on a Qur’an.

REP. KEITH ELLISON: Well, you know, one of the things that I’d like to share with you is that when I met President Bush face to face, he shook my hand vigorously, and he said that he thought was a good thing and that he was happy that I was in the Congress. So, I mean, I think it’s true that, you know, a few years—

AMY GOODMAN: He thought it was a good thing that you were—you were swearing on—actually it was Abraham Lincoln’s Bible, is that right?

REP. KEITH ELLISON: No, no. It was Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean—I mean Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an.

REP. KEITH ELLISON: Yeah, and yeah, President Bush was supportive. And, you know, President Bush is well aware that, you know, I’m a liberal Democrat, and he’s a conservative, but that did not stop us from agreeing that America had a very important heritage of religious tolerance that we both needed to celebrate. But you know what? This is just one of those examples of what happens when politicians and cultural leaders sort of light the fuse. And it does end up in extremely tragic situations, and that’s why it’s so important that you’re doing this program. And I just want to say to the rabbi and to Ms. Talat, who—those of you who live in New York, that I am exceedingly proud of you, and I’m so glad that you’re doing what you’re doing, because, you know, we’ve got to offer that counter-narrative. Most New Yorkers, a plurality of New Yorkers, still believe in our First Amendment heritage. I’m so proud of Mayor Bloomberg.

ANJALI KAMAT: Congressman Ellison, we just have a few seconds left, and I just want to ask you, what political rights do Muslim Americans have now? What political price can they exact, with Democrats and Republicans using this as political capital?

REP. KEITH ELLISON: Well, what actual practical rights Muslims have in America today is in the balance. It’s being determined as we speak. The fact is, is that that—the question you asked me will be answered if this mosque goes forward. And if it doesn’t, I think it will also be answered. And so, the fact is, it’s time to get busy, to reach out in love, to reach out in brother and sisterhood, and to make sure that all Americans can claim the promises of the First Amendment.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you all for being with us, and this is certainly a conversation that will continue, Congressman Keith Ellison, joining us from Minneapolis, first Muslim congressman to be elected to Congress; Professor Esposito from Georgetown University; Rabbi Irwin Kula, who is president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership; and Talat Hamdani, who lost her son on 9/11.

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