24 Dead
100+ Wounded
A school demolished and children missing.
Pray for them all!
Quote of the day!
Fox News Ticker
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Prayers For The Victims
24 Dead
100+ Wounded
A school demolished and children missing.
Pray for them all!
Monday, May 20, 2013
SPME and Brandeis Center Letters of Support for UC Santa Cruz Teacher
Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and the Brandeis Center have issued a joint statement of support for UC Santa Cruz teacher of Hebrew Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, who is being smeared and targeted by the pro-Palestinian forces within the UC system because she has had the courage to speak out about anti-Semitism on UC and California State University campuses and name the names of those responsible.,
http://spme.net/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=9123&q=8&s=37
It is past time for the top administrators in the UC system to issue their own statements of support for Rossman-Benjamin's free speech rights and start addressing the problem of anti-Semitism on UC campuses that she is speaking out about. It is also time to take back our campuses from these pro-Palestinian agitators who have created a hostile environment on our campuses.
What say you, UC President Mark Yudof?
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and the Brandeis Center have issued a joint statement of support for UC Santa Cruz teacher of Hebrew Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, who is being smeared and targeted by the pro-Palestinian forces within the UC system because she has had the courage to speak out about anti-Semitism on UC and California State University campuses and name the names of those responsible.,
http://spme.net/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=9123&q=8&s=37
It is past time for the top administrators in the UC system to issue their own statements of support for Rossman-Benjamin's free speech rights and start addressing the problem of anti-Semitism on UC campuses that she is speaking out about. It is also time to take back our campuses from these pro-Palestinian agitators who have created a hostile environment on our campuses.
What say you, UC President Mark Yudof?
The al-Dura Story A Hoax
For over 12 years Israelis have decried the lie of the death of Muhammad al-Dura. Al-Dura, aged 12, was reportedly shot by Israel in a firefight. This supposed murder of a child was filmed by a French reporter and broadcasted all over the world. But after 10 years and a massive legal battle waged by Channel 2 vs. Philippe Karsenty proved that not only was the film doctored, but the child wasn't killed or injured.
The Israeli government spent years and millions of Shekels to prove what the French courts already have proven.
I say bring it on. Either the grave is empty or the body in it doesn't have the DNA of Jamal or any of his family. Want to make a guess on how long he will cave in once an international forensic team is assembled?
The Israeli government spent years and millions of Shekels to prove what the French courts already have proven.
Jamal al-Dura is demanding an international investigation into his son's death. In other words, a group of anti-Semites to determine that the lie is true.Dr. Yehuda David, who was sued for libel by the father of Muhammad al-Dura – and eventually won his case – expressed great satisfaction at the issuing of a report by a special report by a government panel that revisited the infamous incident, in which IDF soldiers were accused of killing the 12 year old Arab boy at the start of the second intifada. The committee determined that not only were the allegations – and a report by French television purporting to show IDF soldiers shooting and killing the boy – a lie, but that the al-Dura is not even dead.
Dr. Yehuda David
According to David, the whole incident stinks of a coverup – and the evidence that shows that not only was al-Dura not killed, but that the entire story was a hoax, perpetrated with the assistance of a French television station, is there for all to see.
Jamal al-Dura and his 12-year-old son, Muhammad, were filmed by Talal Abu Rahma, a local Arab cameraman freelancing for France 2, as they sought cover behind a concrete cylinder after being caught in crossfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian security forces.
The footage, which lasts just over a minute, shows the pair holding onto each other, the boy crying and the father waving, then a burst of gunfire and dust, after which the boy is seen slumped across his father's legs.
Fifty-nine seconds of the footage were initially broadcast on France 2 with a voiceover from Charles Enderlin, France 2's bureau chief in Israel, who did not witness the incident himself but his only information was received by phone from the cameraman.
Enderlin reported that the al-Duras had been the "target of fire from the Israeli positions," and that the boy had died. After an emotional public funeral, Muhammad was hailed throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds as a martyr.
An IDF investigation in October 2000 concluded Israeli soldiers "probably did not shoot the al-Duras." Three senior French journalists who saw the raw footage in 2004 said it was not clear from the footage alone that the boy had died. They noted France 2 had cut the final few seconds of video in which he appeared to lift his hand from his face.
David, a physician at Tel Hashomer hospital near Tel Aviv, entered the al-Dura fray on December 13, 2007 when he told Israel's Channel 10 that he had treated Jamal in 1994 for knife and axe wounds to his arms and legs sustained during an Arab gang attack. David said the scars Jamal claimed as bullet wounds from the 2000 incident were actually scars from a tendon repair operation that David performed in 1994, leading Jamal to sue him for libel. He was initially convicted of a charge, but that decision was overturned by the French Supreme Court in February 2012. The decision was widely seen as a national victory for Israel.
The Israeli committee, in its final word on the subject, said Sunday that “as opposed to the media reports that stated that the child was killed, an examination of the raw video shot by the France 2 staff shows the child alive,” the committee said. That portion of the video was never broadcast. “In addition, there is a great deal of evidence to indicate that al-Dura and his father were never hit by any bullets. The investigation shows that it is very unlikely that the bullet holes seen in the pair came from shots fired by IDF soldiers.”
The new report also questions whether or not the younger al-Dura was even killed. The fact that he was still alive at the end of the French television video, after the gunfire had stopped, could mean that the boy is alive even now. “Since this issue was first raised there have been many contradictions and cold trails, based on the story the French television company told. There are many unanswered questions about many aspects of this incident,” the committee said.
According to David, the answer to this question is clear, and is supported by evidence. “We know that a child whose name is Mohammed al-Dura was taken to Shifa Hospital in Gaza at 9 AM,” David told Arutz Sheva, relying on publicly released information. “We know that the event in which it was claimed that the child was killed actually only began at 3 in the afternoon. So how is it possible that there was a dead child at 9 AM, and they want us to believe that it is the same child who was shot by Israeli soldiers at 3:00?”
So who was the child in the famous video? Most likely a brother of Mohammed, David said. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest this already, David said: According to the results of an investigation by a German group, for example, the shape of the skull of the buried child was different than the shape of the skull of the child seen in the video. The real identity of the child could be confirmed by disinterring him. David is willing to bet that the child will turn out to be the “real” Mohammed al-Dura, the one who died in Shifa Hospital in the morning, as opposed to the “fake” one – the one seen in the video, who is alive and well.
David said that it was regrettable that it had taken the state so long to take a definitive stance on the hoax. “Now we know that Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli government acknowledge the truth – that Jamal al-Dura is a liar, and that all the information supplied by France 2 during the event on September 30, 2000, is a hoax. This has caused a tremendous sacrifice of Israeli lives, because it was the beginning of the second intifada, which led to the loss of 2,500 Israeli lives,” he said, including the victims of the 2012 attack by a Muslim fanatic on a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, who specifically said he was “avenging” the death of al-Dura.
Click here if the video doesn't load.
Source
I say bring it on. Either the grave is empty or the body in it doesn't have the DNA of Jamal or any of his family. Want to make a guess on how long he will cave in once an international forensic team is assembled?
The Battle Of Athens
Or How Common Citizens Removed A Corrupt Government From Their County.
The Battle of Athens (sometimes called the McMinn County War) was a rebellion led by citizens in Athens and Etowah, Tennessee, United States, against the local government in August 1946. The citizens, including some World War II veterans, accused the local officials of political corruption and voter intimidation.
Here is what happened:
Following World War II in 1946, violence erupted when returning American soldiers discovered their Tennessee county had been taken over by political corruption. Their plan to take it back involved bullets—lots of bullets—and dynamite.
Why Athens in McMinn County, Tennessee became a battleground was due to Paul Cantrell, a Democrat running for sheriff in the 1936 election. He won over his Republican opponent, although the victory was tainted by rumors of fraud. Cantrell was a corrupt sheriff—for example, since state law allowed his office to collect fees for each person booked, jailed, and released, deputies boarded buses passing through the city and arrested passengers on bogus charges of drunkenness, forcing them to pay fines. Prostitution, gambling, and kickbacks from illegal drinking establishments were commonplace.
The tide began to turn in 1945 when GIs returning to Athens were subjected to arrest on the flimsiest excuses and heavily fined. When the fed up soldiers attempted to support their choice for sheriff against Pat Mansfield (by then, Cantrell had been elected to the state Senate and backed Mansfield’s bid), matters boiled over into direct conflict on Election Day 1946.
Mansfield hired several hundred armed “deputies” to patrol the voting precincts in Athens—and no doubt to assist in the typical ballot stuffing and voter intimidation. The volatile situation escalated when Walter Ellis, an ex-GI and volunteer poll watcher, was arrested by Mansfield’s deputies and held without charge. A black resident, Tom Gillespie, was refused the right to vote, beaten, and shot. More GIs were arrested and threatened with violence. By the end of the day, the former soldiers had enough.
They broke into the town armory for weapons and besieged the jail, where Mansfield and his deputies had taken the ballet boxes. Battle continued sporadically throughout the night, resulting in wounded on both sides. When the GIs ran out of bullets around dawn, they began throwing dynamite. The deputies inside the jail surrendered.
The highly publicized Battle of Athens not only ousted corruption from one county in Tennessee, the lesson learned would ultimately lead to great reforms in Southern politics.
**************************************************************************
This is a part of American history that all elected official should learn and remember. When the government forgets whom they serve and dictates to the American People what to think, do, say, read, and how to vote, it is incumbent upon the citizens of that town, city, county, state or nation to rise up and remove (By force if necessary.) the dictator.
What happened in Athens, Tennessee was the most extreme example of citizen action. The last resort of a desperate people.
In such desperation the American people will do anything to return their rights to them. Something every politician in this nation should remember.
The Battle of Athens (sometimes called the McMinn County War) was a rebellion led by citizens in Athens and Etowah, Tennessee, United States, against the local government in August 1946. The citizens, including some World War II veterans, accused the local officials of political corruption and voter intimidation.
Here is what happened:
Following World War II in 1946, violence erupted when returning American soldiers discovered their Tennessee county had been taken over by political corruption. Their plan to take it back involved bullets—lots of bullets—and dynamite.
Why Athens in McMinn County, Tennessee became a battleground was due to Paul Cantrell, a Democrat running for sheriff in the 1936 election. He won over his Republican opponent, although the victory was tainted by rumors of fraud. Cantrell was a corrupt sheriff—for example, since state law allowed his office to collect fees for each person booked, jailed, and released, deputies boarded buses passing through the city and arrested passengers on bogus charges of drunkenness, forcing them to pay fines. Prostitution, gambling, and kickbacks from illegal drinking establishments were commonplace.
The tide began to turn in 1945 when GIs returning to Athens were subjected to arrest on the flimsiest excuses and heavily fined. When the fed up soldiers attempted to support their choice for sheriff against Pat Mansfield (by then, Cantrell had been elected to the state Senate and backed Mansfield’s bid), matters boiled over into direct conflict on Election Day 1946.
Mansfield hired several hundred armed “deputies” to patrol the voting precincts in Athens—and no doubt to assist in the typical ballot stuffing and voter intimidation. The volatile situation escalated when Walter Ellis, an ex-GI and volunteer poll watcher, was arrested by Mansfield’s deputies and held without charge. A black resident, Tom Gillespie, was refused the right to vote, beaten, and shot. More GIs were arrested and threatened with violence. By the end of the day, the former soldiers had enough.
They broke into the town armory for weapons and besieged the jail, where Mansfield and his deputies had taken the ballet boxes. Battle continued sporadically throughout the night, resulting in wounded on both sides. When the GIs ran out of bullets around dawn, they began throwing dynamite. The deputies inside the jail surrendered.
The highly publicized Battle of Athens not only ousted corruption from one county in Tennessee, the lesson learned would ultimately lead to great reforms in Southern politics.
**************************************************************************
This is a part of American history that all elected official should learn and remember. When the government forgets whom they serve and dictates to the American People what to think, do, say, read, and how to vote, it is incumbent upon the citizens of that town, city, county, state or nation to rise up and remove (By force if necessary.) the dictator.
What happened in Athens, Tennessee was the most extreme example of citizen action. The last resort of a desperate people.
In such desperation the American people will do anything to return their rights to them. Something every politician in this nation should remember.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
The Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project at the University of California at Berkeley
Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com
Get a load of this:
http://crg.berkeley.edu/content/islamophobia
This, of course, is the brainchild of professor Hatem Bazian, who not so long ago was an activist student at Berkeley. Just this past week, he was sharing a stage at UC San Diego with Cynthia McKinney as she struggled to put a coherent thought together (see my post).
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2013/05/hatem-bazian-cynthia-mckinney-at-ucsd.html
So now Berkeley, which is a boffo institution on its best of days, has this what-ever-you-call- it devoted to documenting any thought or utterance critical of Islam and the Islamist agenda of establishing world-wide supremacy over the rest of us and whatever other religion we may believe in.
Never mind that Muslims enjoy equal rights in America and full freedom to practice their faith-as they do in that other country so vilified by Bazian-Israel.
Never mind that in virtually every Muslim majority nation on earth, religious minorities are being actively persecuted by violent and often legal means.
Never mind that just since 9-11, there have been over 20,000 acts of terror carried out world-wide in the name of Islam.
Never mind the virulent expressions of hate spewing forth from the mouths of imams reading passages from the Koran directed toward Jews and Christians in mosques and madrassas around the world.
Never mind that on almost any day, Muslims in Iraq, Pakistan, or Afghanistan are killing other Muslims (Sunni-Shia) while Sufis and Ahmadiya Muslims are also persecuted in Muslim countries.
None of that matters, you see because all that matters is that little things like the above have given some folks a rather negative perception of Muslims.
Except for the fact that most Americans have done a good job of separating the innocent Muslims from the violent jihadists-and their apologists.
But let's take a look inside the pages of this "project" (link above). The first thing you note is the recent 4th annual study of Islamophobia conference (apparently just concluded). I wonder if Cynthia McKinney spoke at that one.
Also check out the inaugural edition of the Islamophobia Studies Journal and peruse the list of articles. They can be read in full if you are into masochism.
http://crg.berkeley.edu/content/islamophobia/islamophobia-studies-journal
Like this one from Bazian:
http://crg.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/Bazian.pdf
"Since the events of September 11, 2001, the FBI and other security agencies have resorted to the recruitment of Muslim informants by means of enticement and, if necessary, threats of deportation or financial ruin. From the cases that have come to light, it is clear that vast sections of the Muslim
community and its civic and religious institutions are the intended targets of these FBI operations."
Bazian then goes into a lengthy treatise of the "objectionable" FBI efforts to develop sources of information within the Muslim community and likens it to the COINTEL probes of decades past. Of course, what he doesn't stress is that the objective is to save innocent lives from terrorist attacks. His article, was of course, written before the latest attack in Boston.
Speaking of Boston, there is also this gem by Professor Muhammad Tamdgidi of the University of Massachusetts at Boston, in which he quotes a definition of Islamophobia as adopted by the Runnymede Trust on Islamophobia Report of 1997.
http://crg.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/Tamdgidi.pdf
"The Runnymede report defined Islamophobia and “closed views of
Islam” as follows:
1. Islam [is] seen as a single monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to new realities.
2. Islam [is] seen as separate and other—(a) not having any aims or values in common with other cultures (b) not affected by them (c) not influencing them.
3. Islam [is] seen as inferior to the West—barbaric, irrational, primitive, sexist.
4. Islam [is] seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism, engaged in ‘a clash of civilisations’.
5. Islam [is] seen as a political ideology, used for political or military advantage.
6. Criticisms made by Islam of ‘the West’ [are] rejected out of hand."
7. Hostility towards Islam [is] used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society.
8. Anti-Muslim hostility [is] accepted as natural and ‘normal’.4
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But our friends at the IRDP wish to define Islamophobia as follows:
"Islamophobia is a contrived fear or prejudice fomented by the existing Eurocentric and Orientalist global power structure. It is directed at a perceived or real Muslim threat through the maintenance and extension of existing disparities in economic, political, social and cultural relations, while rationalizing the necessity to deploy violence as a tool to achieve "civilizational rehab" of the target communities (Muslim or otherwise). Islamophobia reintroduces and reaffirms a global racial structure through which resource distribution disparities are maintained and extended."
According to that latter definition, I am can proudly attest that I am not an Islamophobe. Admittedly, the former, at least in certain points, is more problematical for me. I know one thing, however; I don't go around referring to people from other religions as "apes and pigs" and envision the day when I will hunt them down behind the last tree or rock to kill them. I don't know where that fits into anyone's definition of "phobia", but it must fit in somewhere.
Another featured article is by two professors at British universities who compare Islamophobia with European anti-Semitism:
http://crg.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/Meer-Modood.pdf
What is conveniently missing from this piece is the fact that most of the anti-Semitism in Europe today is by young male Muslim immigrants who are making it impossible for Jews to walk the streets of major cities dressed in distinctive Jewish garb lest they be insulted, spat upon, accosted or assaulted by the aforementioned criminals while intimidated Europeans turn a blind eye. Also missing are images like this, which just may contribute to "British Islamophobia".
But here is where it really gets good. Introducing Professor Ramon Grosfoguel of (where else?) UC Berkeley:
Ramon Grosfoguel
http://crg.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/Ramon-Grosfoguel.pdf
" For the sake of economizing space, when we use the term “world-system” in this essay, we refer to the “modern/colonial Westernized Christian-centric capitalist/patriarchal world-system” (Ibid). At the risk of sounding ridiculous, we prefer a long phrase like this to characterize the present heterarchical structure (multiple power hierarchies entangled to each other in complex historical ways) of the world-system, than the limited characterization of a single hierarchy called “capitalist world-system” with capital accumulation as the single logic of the system (Ibid). The latter leads
to an economic reductionist understanding of the world-system, while the former leads to a more complex, non-reductive structural-historical analysis. Islamophobia as a form of racism against Muslim people is not an epiphenomenon but constitutive of the international division of labor."
(It means capitalism is bad.)
"At a world level, Islamophobia has been the dominant discourse used in the post-civil rights and post-independence era of dominant cultural racist discourses against Arabs. The events of 911 escalated anti-Arab racism through an Islamophobic hysteria all over the world, specifically among the dominant elites of the United States and Israel. The latter is not surprising given US and Israeli representation of Palestinians, Arabs and Islamic people in general as terrorist decades before 911 (Said 1979; 1981). Theresponsibility of US foreign policy is never linked to the tragic events of 911."
OK. Enough of that. I think you get the flavor. Essentially, everything about the West is bad, which leads one to wonder why the various authors have chosen to live in the West.
This is no Simon Wiesenthal Center, Folks. Keep in mind that as we speak, the 56-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation is still working hard to get the UN to pass a resolution that all member nations should criminalize any criticism of Islam. So is it fair to ask whether this "research and documentation" project is meant to be a repository of information on all those so-called "Islamophobes", real or imagined? Is there a larger agenda at work here against capitalism, democracy, true freedom and respect for ALL religions, and other institutions we have heretofore held so dear?
How sad it is that this is what passes for scholarship in places like the University of California at Berkeley.
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com
Get a load of this:
http://crg.berkeley.edu/content/islamophobia
This, of course, is the brainchild of professor Hatem Bazian, who not so long ago was an activist student at Berkeley. Just this past week, he was sharing a stage at UC San Diego with Cynthia McKinney as she struggled to put a coherent thought together (see my post).
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2013/05/hatem-bazian-cynthia-mckinney-at-ucsd.html
So now Berkeley, which is a boffo institution on its best of days, has this what-ever-you-call- it devoted to documenting any thought or utterance critical of Islam and the Islamist agenda of establishing world-wide supremacy over the rest of us and whatever other religion we may believe in.
Never mind that Muslims enjoy equal rights in America and full freedom to practice their faith-as they do in that other country so vilified by Bazian-Israel.
Never mind that in virtually every Muslim majority nation on earth, religious minorities are being actively persecuted by violent and often legal means.
Never mind that just since 9-11, there have been over 20,000 acts of terror carried out world-wide in the name of Islam.
Never mind the virulent expressions of hate spewing forth from the mouths of imams reading passages from the Koran directed toward Jews and Christians in mosques and madrassas around the world.
Never mind that on almost any day, Muslims in Iraq, Pakistan, or Afghanistan are killing other Muslims (Sunni-Shia) while Sufis and Ahmadiya Muslims are also persecuted in Muslim countries.
None of that matters, you see because all that matters is that little things like the above have given some folks a rather negative perception of Muslims.
Except for the fact that most Americans have done a good job of separating the innocent Muslims from the violent jihadists-and their apologists.
But let's take a look inside the pages of this "project" (link above). The first thing you note is the recent 4th annual study of Islamophobia conference (apparently just concluded). I wonder if Cynthia McKinney spoke at that one.
Also check out the inaugural edition of the Islamophobia Studies Journal and peruse the list of articles. They can be read in full if you are into masochism.
http://crg.berkeley.edu/content/islamophobia/islamophobia-studies-journal
Like this one from Bazian:
http://crg.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/Bazian.pdf
"Since the events of September 11, 2001, the FBI and other security agencies have resorted to the recruitment of Muslim informants by means of enticement and, if necessary, threats of deportation or financial ruin. From the cases that have come to light, it is clear that vast sections of the Muslim
community and its civic and religious institutions are the intended targets of these FBI operations."
Bazian then goes into a lengthy treatise of the "objectionable" FBI efforts to develop sources of information within the Muslim community and likens it to the COINTEL probes of decades past. Of course, what he doesn't stress is that the objective is to save innocent lives from terrorist attacks. His article, was of course, written before the latest attack in Boston.
Speaking of Boston, there is also this gem by Professor Muhammad Tamdgidi of the University of Massachusetts at Boston, in which he quotes a definition of Islamophobia as adopted by the Runnymede Trust on Islamophobia Report of 1997.
http://crg.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/Tamdgidi.pdf
"The Runnymede report defined Islamophobia and “closed views of
Islam” as follows:
1. Islam [is] seen as a single monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to new realities.
2. Islam [is] seen as separate and other—(a) not having any aims or values in common with other cultures (b) not affected by them (c) not influencing them.
3. Islam [is] seen as inferior to the West—barbaric, irrational, primitive, sexist.
4. Islam [is] seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism, engaged in ‘a clash of civilisations’.
5. Islam [is] seen as a political ideology, used for political or military advantage.
6. Criticisms made by Islam of ‘the West’ [are] rejected out of hand."
7. Hostility towards Islam [is] used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society.
8. Anti-Muslim hostility [is] accepted as natural and ‘normal’.4
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But our friends at the IRDP wish to define Islamophobia as follows:
"Islamophobia is a contrived fear or prejudice fomented by the existing Eurocentric and Orientalist global power structure. It is directed at a perceived or real Muslim threat through the maintenance and extension of existing disparities in economic, political, social and cultural relations, while rationalizing the necessity to deploy violence as a tool to achieve "civilizational rehab" of the target communities (Muslim or otherwise). Islamophobia reintroduces and reaffirms a global racial structure through which resource distribution disparities are maintained and extended."
According to that latter definition, I am can proudly attest that I am not an Islamophobe. Admittedly, the former, at least in certain points, is more problematical for me. I know one thing, however; I don't go around referring to people from other religions as "apes and pigs" and envision the day when I will hunt them down behind the last tree or rock to kill them. I don't know where that fits into anyone's definition of "phobia", but it must fit in somewhere.
Another featured article is by two professors at British universities who compare Islamophobia with European anti-Semitism:
http://crg.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/Meer-Modood.pdf
What is conveniently missing from this piece is the fact that most of the anti-Semitism in Europe today is by young male Muslim immigrants who are making it impossible for Jews to walk the streets of major cities dressed in distinctive Jewish garb lest they be insulted, spat upon, accosted or assaulted by the aforementioned criminals while intimidated Europeans turn a blind eye. Also missing are images like this, which just may contribute to "British Islamophobia".
But here is where it really gets good. Introducing Professor Ramon Grosfoguel of (where else?) UC Berkeley:
Ramon Grosfoguel
http://crg.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/Ramon-Grosfoguel.pdf
" For the sake of economizing space, when we use the term “world-system” in this essay, we refer to the “modern/colonial Westernized Christian-centric capitalist/patriarchal world-system” (Ibid). At the risk of sounding ridiculous, we prefer a long phrase like this to characterize the present heterarchical structure (multiple power hierarchies entangled to each other in complex historical ways) of the world-system, than the limited characterization of a single hierarchy called “capitalist world-system” with capital accumulation as the single logic of the system (Ibid). The latter leads
to an economic reductionist understanding of the world-system, while the former leads to a more complex, non-reductive structural-historical analysis. Islamophobia as a form of racism against Muslim people is not an epiphenomenon but constitutive of the international division of labor."
(It means capitalism is bad.)
"At a world level, Islamophobia has been the dominant discourse used in the post-civil rights and post-independence era of dominant cultural racist discourses against Arabs. The events of 911 escalated anti-Arab racism through an Islamophobic hysteria all over the world, specifically among the dominant elites of the United States and Israel. The latter is not surprising given US and Israeli representation of Palestinians, Arabs and Islamic people in general as terrorist decades before 911 (Said 1979; 1981). Theresponsibility of US foreign policy is never linked to the tragic events of 911."
OK. Enough of that. I think you get the flavor. Essentially, everything about the West is bad, which leads one to wonder why the various authors have chosen to live in the West.
This is no Simon Wiesenthal Center, Folks. Keep in mind that as we speak, the 56-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation is still working hard to get the UN to pass a resolution that all member nations should criminalize any criticism of Islam. So is it fair to ask whether this "research and documentation" project is meant to be a repository of information on all those so-called "Islamophobes", real or imagined? Is there a larger agenda at work here against capitalism, democracy, true freedom and respect for ALL religions, and other institutions we have heretofore held so dear?
How sad it is that this is what passes for scholarship in places like the University of California at Berkeley.
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