The Hoover-KBR Continuum

Office of the Industrial Workers of the World, New York City

after the Palmer Raid of November 1919

Just in case you were wondering what the KBR detention camps were for…

A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty.

Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to “protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage.” The F.B.I would “apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous” to national security, Hoover’s proposal said. The arrests would be carried out under “a master warrant attached to a list of names” provided by the bureau.

– New York Times

Those arrests, which were proposed in July 1950, were never carried out. But if you go a little bit further back in history, you will get to the time when Hoover was able to arrest thousands of people whose politics he didn’t approve of.

A. Mitchell Palmer was the United States Attorney General under President Woodrow Wilson. Palmer had appointed Hoover as his special assistant. Palmer and Hoover were apparently worried that communists were going to overthrow the American government so they hatched a plan to use the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 to persecute communists, anarchists and social reformers.

In November and December 1919, 10,000 people were arrested and held without trial, many of them for an extended period of time. The Department of Justice subsequently found no evidence of a planned revolution and eventually released most of the prisoners. However, 248 of the suspects, including the famous anarchist and activist Emma Goldman, were put on a ship and deported to Soviet Russia.

There were 6,000 more arrests in January 1920. Again, detainees were held for weeks or months without being charged, without the possibility to post bail, and without access to legal counsel. And again some were deported.

But the idea that the KBR camps are for political prisoners or dissidents is preposterous.

Deportation: the only win-win solution

 

Gillian Gibbons is getting more than her allotted 15 minutes of fame. She is a 54-year old British lady who went to Sudan to teach, I imagine out of a strong sense of doing the right thing and helping those less fortunate. Even if her job paid well, living in Khartoum is obviously no picnic.

In teaching a class of primary school children about animals, Mrs Gibbons had them name a teddy bear. She allowed them to nominate and then vote on the names – apparently introducing a democratic process rarely used in Sudan into the lesson. But that’s not what she got into trouble for.

The children, who were 6 and 7 years old, chose names that were familiar to them. The population of Sudan is 70% Sunni Muslim and the name the children chose in the end was Mohammed. At least one of the children was called Mohammed and certainly more had brothers or fathers or uncles called Mohammed. It seems perfectly reasonable they would choose that name for their bear.

But the authorities have arrested Mrs Gibbons and charged her with insulting religion, inciting hatred, and showing contempt for religious beliefs.

It is clear to anyone with even a modicum of common sense that Mrs Gibbons was doing none of those things. She was teaching a group of children to be creative and reinforcing to them that their ideas had value. So much for introducing progressive educational methodologies into schools in backwards countries.

Apparently under the three charges against her, Mrs Gibbons faces 6 months in prison, a fine, and 40 lashes with a whip. That’s right – a 54-year old school teacher faces being brutally whipped for letting children name a teddy bear. I am outraged.

If the Sudanese authorities feel the need to go ahead with this charade of injustice, I would suggest that they skip the trial and simply deport Mrs Gibbons. The unenlightened citizenry of Sudan should be satisfied with that, and I am sure that Mrs Gibbons would be happy to leave their shithole of a country behind her.

Hypocrites without balls

 

…or 3 degrees of marriage

As you might already know from my previous post, I am reading Michelle Goldberg’s Kingdom Coming and it’s scaring the shit out of me.

This morning on BBC I heard a news story about the Democratic candidates’ LGBT Hollywood campaign forum and it made me angry. Not that it’s hard for politicians to make me angry or anything. But how do people who are for equality and civil rights – who have a woman and a black man as the leading candidates in their party, for fuck’s sake – come out against the rights of gays to marry?

I am sure Hillary Clinton knows the history of women’s suffrage in the United States and how women had to fight just to be able to vote. I am sure she is aware that there are still countries where women don’t have the vote and are treated as chattel. Yet she, a woman, is able to run for president of what may or may not still be the greatest country in the world.

Just as I am certain that Barack Obama knows that blacks in The Amerika used to be slaves and that people like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King made great personal sacrifices to win equality for those who came after them. Yet he, a black man, can run for president.

How dare they – Clinton and Obama – try to draw boundaries around other people’s rights.

I know how they would answer that – that they cannot afford to alienate the majority of voters who are against gay marriage. Yet Clinton described herself last night as “pro civil unions”. And Obama declared that civil unions “wouldn’t be a lesser thing”.

Before I reach my crescendo of anger and disappointment, I feel I should include the information that two candidates, Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich, neither of whom have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the Democratic candidacy, do support gay marriage.

Here’s the thing. There is marriage, then there is covenant marriage, which is a little more something, and then there is civil union, which is a little less something. It’s all fucking marriage though, isn’t it? There shouldn’t be different degrees of it – it’s not murder or burns. Politicians – supposed progressive politicians – are taking a question of equal civil rights and turning it into a disgusting little game of semantics. Clinton and Obama are leaders of a gang of no-ball hypocrites.

The Democratic candidates are worried about alienating voters. I guess it doesn’t matter. The people that actively oppose gay marriage probably wouldn’t vote for a woman or a black man anyway.

Overload

 

Just after I had returned from France, two different friends sent me emails with links to political news stories – both of which have enraged me. I have not been able to write about them because I have had no idea where to start. But here goes.

Darth Cheney

I hope that many of you have already seen the 4-part story that was in the Washington Post. It starts here. I have not yet read the whole thing – it’s very long. What I have read thus far is basically confirmation that Cheney has acted way beyond his powers as vice-president, and has even tricked the “president” into signing orders by allowing him to think that they have already been through all the proper channels and that other advisers have seen them. Several other people are implicated, and others are portrayed as being innocently outside the Cheney cabal. I am not going to attempt to summarise. As I said, I haven’t even read the whole thing yet. It has been difficult because I already loathe Cheney.

I checked the Constitution to see if a vice-president is impeachable on his own. He is.

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

– Article 2, Section 4

And apparently the whole process can be very simple and quick, as shown here. It really is time to impeach Cheney.

** Update ** Crooks & Liars is also calling for Cheney’s impeachment.

Inform on your neighbour

This story seems to be less known. I therefore assume that it has not been published in the mainstream media.

The FBI have gone into academia to cow students, researchers and professors into reporting on their colleagues and peers. It seems to be a pilot project focusing on well-known research universities such as MIT. The FBI has provided Defense Department guidelines on what behaviours may be signs that one of your colleagues has been, or is preparing to, pass on classified or sensitive information. The guidelines will assure you that by reporting on your colleagues to the authorities, you will actually be doing your colleagues a favour. Saving them from themselves, as it were.

Again, I am not going to summarise the articles I read; they are here and here.

This attitude of ‘suspect everyone and narc on your peers’ reminds me of two things: McCarthyism in the US, and communism over here. We could soon all be questioned about why we have foreign friends, why we speak other languages, why we are working late, why we are curious about other people’s research, or, in fact, anything at all.

Hello, totalitarianism.

* Thanks to Moscow Mike and Monkey for the initial links. And an extra thanks to Monkey for you-know-what.

The Christian Taliban in The New Amerika

 

Last week I wrote about Oriana Fallaci’s view of the “Reverse Crusade” – the Muslim invasion of Europe. But I hate getting caught looking in the wrong direction so today’s topic is the Christian Taliban of The New Amerika.

This morning I read an article called “The Crusaders” by Robert Koehler. The article contains a strong and disturbing quote from Mikey Weinstein: The Christian Taliban is running the Department of Defense.

Weinstein is the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which works to ensure that those serving in the US armed forces do not have their constitutional right to religious freedom whipped out from under them.

Mikey Weinstein published a book last year, so I went to amazon to look at it. With God on Our Side is an exposé of the fundamentalist Christian zealotry that has permeated the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. It got good reviews and I am going to read it.

I have a friend in the US Air Force, he is a major and a pilot and a Jew. I have never asked him about being a Jew in the air force or at the academy, but I have talked to my friend who is his wife. For three years in Germany, Leah’s only close friends were other military wives. They were all nice women, but they were also all Christian – the kind that organise their own Bible study twice a week. And Leah continually had to tell them to fuck off because they really really wanted her to join them.

When I was down in Vyškov, teaching at the Czech military university, an American astronaut came to speak and ended up trying to sell Jesus to an audience full of atheist soldiers who had no idea what he was on about. It was so wrong and out of place that it literally made me sick – I barfed into the sink in my office just after.

Back to amazon… you know how when you look at a book, they tell you what other books you might want to browse through. I got a list of titles that turned my blood to ice water:

• Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism by Michelle Goldberg
• American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America by Chris Hedges
• Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom by Barry W. Lynn

This is pretty serious stuff. We are currently at war because God told the pяezident to invade Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. Creationism is being taught in schools all over The New Amerika. Politicians have declared that the United States was founded as a Christian nation (which it was not). Women are continuously being threatened with the loss of our freedom of choice and the ownership of our own bodies. Atheists are feared and reviled. And the witch burnings are sure to start any day now.

How did we get here? I would like to write next about what we need to do to fix things, but I’m afraid that I don’t know. Reason seems to have fled and we really are stuck in an age of mumbo-jumbo. I guess I’ll just stay over here where it’s relatively safe and watch and wait.

 

 

Visas don’t kill people

 

I found three articles yesterday on three different websites related to the requirement for visitors to The New Amerika to obtain a tourist visa. Each of the articles looked at the issue from a different angle.

The first article focuses on an issue that the Czechs love to moan about. Despite being in NATO and the European Union, the Czech Republic has not been granted admission into The Amerika’s Visa Waiver Program (VWP). What this means for Czechs is that to visit The Amerika, they have to subject themselves to a humiliating, costly and uncertain visa application process.

To apply for a visa:

1. Fill in the DS 156 form. Fax it to the US Embassy using a special number. Calls cost CZK 42 (about $2) per minute.

2. The next day, you can call another special number (also billed at CZK 42 per minute) to make an interview appointment. The waiting time for an interview in Prague, according to this webpage, is currently 21 days.

3. Prior to your interview, you pay your fees by bank transfer. That is CZK 2200 (about $100) for the application + CZK 185 for the courier service.

4. You show up for your interview and subject yourself to the whim of your interviewer. They will tell you right then and there whether you are getting a visa (90% of Czech applicants) or not. If you are denied a visa, they will not tell you why.

If you are granted the visa, the embassy keeps your passport for a few days and then returns it to you, with the visa, via the courier service that you have already paid for. If you have not been granted the visa, you get to take your passport home with you, and then you can call the courier service directly to arrange for your prepaid courier charge to be refunded.

There seems to be, at least sometimes, no rhyme or reason to the visa decisions. I know of well-to-do professionals who wanted to go on a short holiday to The Amerika, leaving their two children and their business behind – and one of them was denied a visa.

So a lot of Czechs are not even trying to go to The Amerika, and the first article explains why wealthy Czech travellers are, understandably, choosing to spend their money elsewhere.

An example is Vratislav Hromadko, a wealthy Czech entrepreneur who comes from a virulently anti-Communist family. Hromadko is a rich man and often spends up to CZK 400,000 (over USD 18,000) on his holidays. But he regularly chooses to go scuba diving in Cuba rather than in Florida.

“It’s the same waters, but Cuba gives me less trouble even though it’s a country ruled by a communist police regime.”

Hromadko simply refuses to subject himself to the visa interview.

“It offends me. It is degrading.”

The second article talks about foreign visitors in general, and not only the visa process, but also the rudeness of immigration officials upon arrival in the country.

“In a survey conducted by the travel industry lobby group the Discover America Partnership late last year, the United States scored more than twice as badly as the next region, the Middle East, in terms of travel friendliness.

“Two-thirds of respondents worried they could be held back at airports because of a mistake in form filling or a misstatement to immigration officials. Half said officials were rude and that they feared them more than the threat of terrorism or crime.”

I myself have noticed immigration officials progressively getting ruder and asking more blatantly intrusive questions even of US citizens. I used to be greeted at LAX just with a friendly smile and a sincere sounding, “Welcome home!” But now every time I return to The New Amerika, I am subject to interrogation because I am clearly an unpatriotic misfit and how dare I choose to live outside the borders of the Land of the Free.

Travel Industry Association of America figures show that the number of foreign visitors to The New Amerika (not including our North American neighbours) is down 17% from before September 11, 2001. The US dollar is weak against European currencies, meaning that the whole country is like an after-Christmas sale, yet visitor numbers from Western Europe went down 3% from 2005 to 2006. All of this indicates a lot of money that is not going into the US economy – which is the bottom line.

The third article provides an interesting counterpoint. It criticises the entire Visa Waiver Program for allowing visitors coming into The New Amerika “to sidestep in-place security procedures that screen for terrorists.” The article discusses the problems of, amongst other things, “homegrown jihadists” in Great Britain, the large population of Muslims throughout the European VWP countries, and the liberal naturalisation laws in countries like Denmark, which allow immigrants to obtain citizenship in as little as three years.

I totally see the point of that article, but I cannot agree that doing away with the Visa Waiver Program is the answer. In fact, the requirement to obtain a visa does not keep people out. Or it keeps the wrong people out. I am going to try an analogy that I am not sure will work – guns.

I believe that our laws prohibit certain types of people – convicted felons, for example – from purchasing guns. But if I am a convicted felon and I want a gun, especially if I want it for criminal reasons, I am going to know where to get a gun, and no laws are going to stop me. Before you can say toothless two-bit one-legged crack-smoking smack whore, I’m going to have a gun in my possession.

And if I am a terrorist mastermind and I want to send people into The Amerika to perpetrate a terrorist attack, your visa laws aren’t going to stop me either. Maybe you will not give visas to all of my people, but I only need a few of them there, and you will not be able to keep enough of them out.

Okay, that analogy didn’t quite work, but it’s the best I can do right now. So my final message today to The New Amerika is – please add the Czechs, Slovaks and Poles to the Visa Waiver Program – I am tired of all their bloody moaning.

Another rant about ignorance

Last week I learned that 216 million Americans are scientifically illiterate. This statistic came out of a study by Jon D. Miller that was presented earlier this month at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

What this scientific illiteracy means, according to D.E. Duncan’s article in Technology Review, is that 72% of Americans would not be able to understand an article on basic genetics or global warming or technology that might appear in, for example, the science section of the New York Times. But we are not alone. Miller found that Europeans and the Japanese are even slightly less literate than Americans.

Some people question the importance of understanding science. But you simply cannot exclude an entire field from your sphere of knowledge. I was discussing that very matter just last night as M and I linked the study of logic with mathematics and linguistics. If we had not had at least a basic understanding of all three topics, there would have been a big hole in our discussion. And chances are we would not have recognised it. Ignorance is a dangerous thing.

Duncan writes that over 40% of Americans do not believe in evolution. And about 20% think that the sun revolves around the earth rather than the other way round.

Meanwhile, down in Georgia, state representative Ben Bridges has been in big trouble for a memo that was distributed in his name to legislators in several other states. Bridges has denied any connection with the memo, which calls for a ban on the teaching of evolution in state schools. Nothing new, you may think, but don’t be so hasty.

The reason we must not teach evolution, according to the memo, is that the science is actually based on a deception derived “concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic ‘holy book’ Kabbala dating back at least two millennia.”

The memo references Fixed Earth, the website of The Fair Education Foundation, which would be excellent comedy if you could forget how many people buy into that bullshit. Fixed Earth, of course, takes down anyone who is not a fundamentalist Christian and refers to the Kabbala as “anti-Christ [and] anti-Bible”.

And now it’s time for a rousing chorus of “Blame the Jews! Blame the Jews!”

The memo was distributed by Marshall Hall, president of The Fair Education Foundation. He claims that Bridges saw the memo months earlier and gave him permission to distribute it.

Bridges has said that, although the memo did not come from him, he does not necessarily disagree with it.

“I agree with it more than I would the Big Bang Theory or the Darwin Theory. I am convinced that rather than risk teaching a lie, why teach anything?”

What a bunch of ignorant fucking losers.

Let me leave you with this reminder –

“Evolution is recognized as a central unifying principle of the biological sciences by the scientific community and the education community.”

– Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education.

Why do they hate us?

 

The results are in and the godless atheists have done even worse than promiscuous mayors, old age pensioners and the gay homosexualists.

Gallup pollsters spent three days earlier this month surveying citizens of The New Amerika to see if we are ready for a non-traditional type of president. They asked people if they would be willing to vote for a “generally well-qualified” candidate who was __________.

Here are the different terms that filled in the blank with the percentage of people who gave a positive response to each.

…black 94%

…Jewish 92%

…a woman 88%

…Hispanic 87%

…Mormon 72%

…married for the third time 67%

…72 years of age 57%

…a homosexual 55%

…an atheist 45%

And here is my reaction: the results of this poll illustrate that we are an intolerant and hateful society.

If you would object by saying that Blacks and Jews did well – fuck that. 92% is not good. What 92% says to me is that 8% of Americans wouldn’t accept a Jew in the White House.

Let’s take someone who fits more than one of those labels – me. I am a Jew and a woman and an atheist. How have I fared in the poll?

0.92 x 0.88 x 0.45 = 0.36 or 36%

And I haven’t even thrown my gay best friend into the formula.

What I actually want to express is that I am stunned. This poll is just generally offensive, but I was really surprised to learn that atheists are such a downtrodden minority in The Amerika. I had no idea. Ach jo, something else to get worked up over.

An Atheist loves himself and his fellow man instead of a god. An Atheist accepts that heaven is something for which we should work now – here on earth – for all men together to enjoy. An Atheist accepts that he can get no help through prayer, but that he must find in himself the inner conviction and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue it and to enjoy it. An Atheist accepts that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment.

– from Murray v Curlett petition 1959

American Atheists

The United States of Religious Freaks

Thomas Paine

Or why The New Amerika scares the bejesus out of me.

I am not going to write about raging homosexual evangelical preachers. I am not going to write about polygamists that marry their step-daughters and sisters-in-law. I am not even going to write about Witnesses, Waco or Jonestown. I am just going to tell you about three things I read today that once again make me wonder what happened to Reason.

One – the creationist with the doctorate in palaeontology. Apparently, this young doctor of geosciences does not see palaeontology and creationism as being in conflict with each other. Rather, he sees them as two different “paradigms” we use to study the past. His dissertation gives us a view of the end of the Cretaceous era about 65 million years ago. Yet he believes that the earth cannot be more than 10,000 years old. How does he do that? Trying to reconcile those two opinions would give me the mother of all migraines. Even just sitting here and thinking about it is making me dizzy.

Two – the Inquisition. I thought I would catch up with my friend Miss Mickey so I went over to Future Corpse. Miss Mickey has a post about anti-atheist discrimination. Apparently, in the South, your neighbours treat you differently when you admit that you’re a non-believer. I can only imagine that treating you differently might mean anything from not inviting you to their parties (where there is probably no booze anyway) to tarring and feathering you and burning your house down. I don’t know because I’m at work and I haven’t yet watched the video.

I would not have bothered with the creationist palaeontologist and I would certainly have left the very capable Miss Mickey to deal with the Inquisition on her own, but then I found the icing on the cake, the cherry on the sundae, the multiple olives in my martini, if you will. I found Arkansas.

Three – Thomas Paine denounced. Thomas Paine – inventor, writer of Common Sense and Rights of Man, American revolutionary and libertarian. Thomas Paine whom nine states have honoured by declaring Thomas Paine Day. Arkansas too thought they might like to name a day after Thomas Paine, but in the end their legislature decided not to. Their reason? In addition to his more acceptable works named above, Thomas Paine is also the author of The Age of Reason, in which he wrote:

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

Thomas Paine was an intellectual. He had his own opinions and beliefs and he exercised his freedom of expression. But the Arkansas House of Representatives doesn’t like what Thomas Paine wrote all those years ago. So the Arkansas House of Representatives denounced Thomas Paine as “anti-Christian and anti-Jewish” and therefore unworthy of being recognised for his great contribution to the establishment of what used to be the land of the free.

And once again, I thank god that I live in the most atheist country on the planet.