Sunday, August 20, 2006

and so it starts...

Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: Fear-mongering leads to anti-Arab hysteria on airplanes

i will have more on this when i get back.

10 comments:

Obob said...

life is perception, some people say this good, i say human nature. but ask yourself, do you profile at other places? do you hold your purse tighter when you see a group of kids of a different color approach you? do you see a hispanic and wonder if they are legal? this happened in europe, the more open minded and refined culture

QUASAR9 said...

Peace & Peace of Mind, more important than piece of land - Except both sides want the same piece of land - and neither side seems willing to co-exist in peace. There is no good keep kidding ourselves.

The problem is not terrorism which kills less people than traffic accidents.
The problem is one side won't let the other side build a future, with the implicit blessing and support from Bush and the USA.

One side with all the military hardware is not interested in conflict resolution but conflict the end game being the removal of palestinians from 'their' land.

Now how can people living under that cloud have peace of mind.

Does it matter whether the land is called Quango or Mango.
What matters is to realise that 12 million people can live in New York, 12 million can live in London, 12 million can live in Tokyo, so where is the problem with 12 million living in Jerusalem.

Unless you really are fascist, racist, supremacist & hegemonist - and underneath all the niceties what you really mean is only 12 million jews shall live in Jerusalem.

Now which false God said that.
Wake up america, open your eyes.

Ecumene said...

The UK Terror plot: what's really going on?A Good Discussion

SadButTrue said...

As I posted on Friendly Neighbour (and also Les Enragés) a few days ago, "After war-mongering, fear-mongering is the Republicans' favourite mongering." As long as CNN has special "scare you silly" days and FOX allows endless harangue that any opponent of Bush is being pro-Al Qaeda the American sheeple will cower cravenly and accept whatever pablum they are fed.

Sarah said...

Betmo, we definitely have a blogging theme going on. I was just about to post about this, but I decided to visit your blog first, because I am quite upset at the moment.

I am in tears at the moment. I was idiotic enought to visit a very popular blog which is anti-Muslim. I made the mistake of reading the comments section of a post which dealt with people refusing to fly because there were Muslims on the plane. Never in my life have I see such hatred and racism. People were calling all Arabics "savages" and telling them to not fly with white people anymore. Not only that, they all agreed that law enforcement shoud force Arabs off all flights.

I take this very seriously, because my niece and nephew are half-Arabic and are being raised in the religion of Islam. My former brother-in-law is from Jordan, and we are his only family. These people are not terrorists, they are American citizens. It bring me to tears to think some ignorant jackass is going to refuse to fly on a plane because of two little harmless kids and an Arabic dad might be sitting next to them.

My former brother-in-law has worked so hard to become an American citizen, and then he gets treated like this by his fellow neighbors. I'm very, very upset. I'm about to open up some fierce words at my blog.

The Future Was Yesterday said...

Obob pinned the reality of human nature accurately. When that big dog the neighbor has lunges at you snarling twice in a row.....you give him a wider berth from then on. I don't think it's "anti" anything as much as it is the most basic of human nature - survival. When we percieve threats to our survial, we become fearful. For whatever reasons, Muslims have been heavily involved in terrorists operations. That doesn't mean all Muslims are bad, it means Muslims are a known terrorist factory. Is the Muslim guy in the seat across from you a Dad with two innocent kids....or is he a terrorist flying with two suicide bombers? You have no way of knowing until it's too late. Imo, we try to apply our values and societal thinking to Muslims, and it does not work. They have a totally different mindset, and set of values. That makes them nothing, only different.

Sadly, many have expressed that "difference" in terroristic ways. Look at all the rapists over the years, about whom their friends and neighbors said: "I can't believe he did that! He was the nicest guy!!"

Sarah said...

TFWY, you missed the point. Please explain to me why MY family members, who are American citizens, should be held up to hate and bigotry because of their ethnic background? My Arabic family members do not think any differently that white Christians do. They have the same life as I do. They go to work, go to school, go to church, go on vacation, ect ect.

Did you know that 60% of Arabs in America are Christian? Not only that, many pass as "white" too. How do you plan on profiling these people?

Remember Timothy McVeigh? White people can be terrorists too, you know.

Sarah said...

*Look at all the rapists over the years, about whom their friends and neighbors said: "I can't believe he did that! He was the nicest guy!!"*

Yeah, and the majority of rapists are white males too. In other words, this gives me free reign to distrust all white men and assume they are all potential rapists. It's only "human nature," right?

Sarah said...

Also, I'll say here what I said at my blog:

If you happen to be on an airplane, and you happen to be uncomfortable because of what a person looks like, YOU get off the plane! Just because you feel uncomfortable does not give you ANY RIGHT to get somebody kicked off a plane.

Take personal responsibility for your own survival, right?

DivaJood said...

Thanks for the link - this is an abomination. Bushco uses fear and hatred to forward his agenda; and he brings out the worst nature in small minds.

At dinner Friday night, I had to leave because someone referred to Arabs as "rag-heads." disgusting.