Where does the hatred come from?

It would appear that Homeland Security is promoting Islamo-phobia in it's recommended training for US Law Enforcement! Where is Obama? Is he just pretending to be Bush lite?

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This fall, U.S. law enforcement personnel will have their final chance to take advantage of a rare opportunity. Participants will travel to Israel to receive “homeland security training,” but the counterterrorism briefings and martial arts practice sessions are only one part of the package. The program also includes visits to Christian religious sites in the Holy Land — an aspect likely to be especially attractive to Christian Zionists — along with other sites such as the Knesset and the Israeli “security fence”.

The Israel program is run by Security Solutions International (SSI), a group that has attracted controversy due to its ties to Islamophobic propaganda groups — as well as its apparent view that indoctrinating first responders with alarmist information about Islam is an essential part of counterterrorism training.

Most striking of all, the SSI Israel trip is funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. DHS’s funding of this venture is a concrete illustration of the ways that Islamophobic fringe groups have exploited the “global war on terror” for their own purposes.[..]So what does this training involve? In addition to martial arts demonstrations including “how to take down an armed suicide bomber”, meetings with Israeli security personnel, and a three-hour presentation on “suicide terror,” the itinerary also includes more tourist-oriented activities. Tourist excursions are both political visits to the Knesset, the West Bank “security barrier,” and southern Israeli towns that have been the target of rocket attacks from Gaza, and religious trips to Jerusalem’s Old City and to “some of Christianity’s holiest sites”.While this DHS-funded trip might already seem a bit odd — especially the emphasis on Christian religious sites during what is ostensibly a counterterrorism training program — things take a turn towards the bizarre in the section of the website advertising SSI’s two day presentations on “The Islamic Jihadist Threat”.

via LobeLog.com

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Sotomayor Says Roe v. Wade Is Established Law

The Huffington Post

Judge Sonia Sotomayor declared unequivocally on Tuesday that the right to choose an abortion, as determined by Roe v. Wade, was established as law by the Supreme Court. In the process, the Obama nominee left the clear impression that she would vote to uphold abortion rights should the she be confirmed to the bench.
"The court's decision in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey reaffirmed the court holding of Roe," Sotomayor told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "That is the precedent of the court and settled in terms of the holding of the court."
Earlier in the question and answer session, Sotomayor was pressed to explain her view on the right to privacy, which provides the constitutional basis for the Supreme Court's ruling on abortion rights.
"There is a right of privacy," she replied. " The court has found it in various places in the Constitution.... It is found in the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable search and seizures ... It's also found in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution when it is considered in the context of the liberty interests protected by the due process clause of the Constitution.

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The World’s Worst Religious Leaders

Foreign Policy
Hassan Nasrallah
Religion: Shiite Islam
Who is he?: Secretary-General of Hezbollah
Country: Lebanon
Quote: “If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak, and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology, and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice I do not say the Israeli.”
Joseph Kony
Religion: Christianity/personality cult
Who is he?: Commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)
Country: Uganda
Quote: “[The spirits] speak to me. They load through me. They will tell us what is going to happen. They say ‘You, Mr. Joseph, tell your people that the enemy is planning to come and attack.’ They will come like dreaming; they will tell us everything.”
Yogi Adityanath
Religion: Hinduism
Who is he?: Religious leader and member of parliament from Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous province
Country: India
Quote: “I want Muslim votes, too. But wash them in Gangajal [Ganges water] first.”
Athuraliye Rathana
Religion: Theravada Buddhism
Who is he?: Monk and member of parliament
Country: Sri Lanka
Quote: “Peace negotiations simply made the LTTE [Tamil Tigers] stronger. We mustn’t talk to them; we can crush the LTTE. It is like surgery.”
Dov Lior
Religion: Hasidic Judaism
Who is he?: Head rabbi of Kiryat Arba settlement
Country: Israel
Quote: “A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail.”

Is Monotheism the Problem or Is It Zealotry

AlterNet has a rather interesting albeit disrespectful article about the "evils" of monotheism. The author's point is that believe in one true god produces a ready conflict when there is disagreement about who is that god and how should one worship him.

The chief authoritarian ideologies of the 20th century were secular and even anti-religious. They are not gone, but they are exhausted. Now, in our global warming, nuclear bomb-loaded world, especially in the United States and the Middle East, we face an older, far more popular and durable ideology: the angry god as mandate and role model.


Like Mark Twain, Bertrand Russell and others before him, Sam Harris insists that the basic premises and literal texts of monotheism are so authoritarian and repressive that people who believe them also easily and frequently support all sorts of other repressive causes. For evidence, see the last 2,000 years of history, or tomorrow's newspaper.


The historic battles within monotheism are legendary: Hebrews vs. Christians, Sunnis vs. Shiites, Catholics vs. Protestants, Lutherans vs. Calvinists, Church of England vs. dissenters, Puritans vs. Baptists, and so many others. Currently some Islamic extremists have a hard time deciding who they despise more: Is it the evil Christian and Jewish heretics, or is it the evil Muslims heretics? So much heresy, so little time.


For monotheism, it always comes down to heresy, to the rejection of orthodoxy. Starting perhaps with Zoroastrianism, each monotheism itself began as a heresy, instantly generating its own orthodoxy. Heresy -- free thought and choosing to reject the rules -- is the primal offense against the monotheists' conception, and love, of their solitary deity.

Indeed, not since the Middle Ages when the conflicts over the true religion tore through Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, Central Asia all the way to China, has the Jihadi call for "monotheism" and killing apostates been heard louder than now. The author makes clear that the Christian and Jewish side of "the monotheism" problem included the original founders of Israel, the guerrilla war against Rome in Palestine. Then of course there was the wars between the Luthers and the Catholics, followed by the bloody crusades.
But is the problem monotheism or is it a self-serving rigid fundamentalist view point that everyone "must" agree or else. One can find that regimented thought in the origins of Orthodox Judaism and Christianity in the Pharisee movement. tiscali.reference.encyclopaedia describes the historical roots of Pharisees. A Pharisee was a...

Member of a conservative Jewish sect that arose in Roman-occupied Palestine in the 2nd century BC in protest against all movements favouring compromise with Hellenistic culture. The Pharisees were devout adherents of the law, both as found in the Torah and in the oral tradition known as the Mishnah.


They were opposed by the Sadducees on several grounds: the Sadducees did not acknowledge the Mishnah; the Pharisees opposed Greek and Roman rule of their country; and the Pharisees held a number of beliefs – such as the existence of hell, angels, and demons, the resurrection of the dead, and the future coming of the Messiah – not found in the Torah.


The Pharisees rejected political action, and in the 1st century AD the left wing of their followers, the Zealots, broke away to pursue a revolutionary nationalist policy. After the fall of Jerusalem, Pharisee ideas became the basis of orthodox Judaism as the people were dispersed throughout the Western Roman Empire.

So the Pharisees where the believers in the Jewish law with rigid interpretations. They also took it upon themselves to decide who was and wasn't complying with their interpretation of the law. But the Zealots put those fundamentalist belief into action. According to Wikipedia the Zealots

have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and say that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord." [...]The Zealots objected to Roman rulership and sought to violently eradicate it; Zealots engaged in violence were called the Sicarii. They raided Jewish habitations and killed Jews they considered collaborators, they also urged Jews to fight Romans and other Jews for their religiopolitical cause. Josephus paints a very bleak picture of their activities as they instituted what he characterized as a murderous "reign of terror" prior to the Jewish Temple's destruction.


According to Josephus, the Zealots followed John of Gischala, who had fought the Romans in Galilee, escaped, came to Jerusalem, and then inspired the locals to a fanatical position that led to the Temple's destruction.

This kind of fundamentalism sounds very much like the operating values of the Israelis, as well as the Jihadis and the fundamentalist Christians in the US. A dogmatic ideological group bent on pursuing their beliefs politically and through warfare are "zealots" indeed.

IRS Cracking Down On Politically Active Churches?

Interesting questions posed by Seeing the Forest citing an LA Times article. But he may be asserting an opinion prematurely.
IRS Cracking Down On War Opponents

The Internal Revenue Service has warned one of Southern California's largest and most liberal churches that it is at risk of losing its tax-exempt status because of an antiwar sermon two days before the 2004 presidential election.


. . . In his sermon, Regas, who from the pulpit opposed both the Vietnam War and 1991's Gulf War, imagined Jesus participating in a political debate with then-candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry. Regas said that "good people of profound faith" could vote for either man, and did not tell parishioners whom to support.


But he criticized the war in Iraq, saying that Jesus would have told Bush, "Mr. President, your doctrine of preemptive war is a failed doctrine. Forcibly changing the regime of an enemy that posed no imminent threat has led to disaster."


[. . .] "We are so careful at our church never to endorse a candidate," Bacon said in a later interview. "One of the strongest sermons I've ever given was against President Clinton's fraying of the social safety net."

How many "conservative" churches that DO tell parishioners how to vote have received similar letters? Has the Heritage Foundation, also a "501c3" charity, received a similar letter? Jerry Falwell? James Dobson? Of course not.

I'm not sure I'd jump to that conclusion yet. I have to wonder if the IRS wasn't indeed looking into similar letters of inquiry going to the above mentioned agencies. The IRS is well known for its excessive albeit even handed enforcement. I think I'll reserve judgment until the facts come out.

Defend religious freedom against "intelligent design"

Rightwing Christian Extremists are trying to turn the US into a theocracy. They want to impose their interpretation of the Bible on all of us by destroying science education in America. Some of you might remember the history of science during the Dark Ages. Galileo wrote a book endorsing the view successfully suppressed by the Church for nearly 200 years by Copernicus that the earth was round, not flat like the Bible says. For his heresy, Galileo was condemned to house arrest for the rest of his life. Today, Rightwing Christian extremists are trying to convince the world that the earth is flat, because the Bible says so. Do you think the supporters of creationism in the schools will stop there? I think not. These folks believe that the Bible is absolute truth.
Do you want to save the US from a new Dark Ages? Support the ACLU.

 

Dear Reader,

I am writing to let you know about a vitally important ACLU case that will begin in a few days.

Once again, the ACLU will be defending religious freedom against those who want to force creationism into our public schools. The underlying conflict has been going on at least since the Scopes trial, a famous ACLU case from an earlier era.

At the core, the conflict is between those who believe science should be taught in science classes and those who want to use our public schools to promote one set of religious beliefs over another.

But, this time, the creationists have a new ploy. It's called "intelligent design" -- an "alternative" to the scientific theory of evolution that religious extremists have cooked up as a way to sneak religious proselytizing into our public schools.

The intelligent design campaign to replace science with faith-based theories in our schools is part of a larger movement that threatens our religious freedoms in a profound way. To learn more about this case, please click here.

The trial about to begin in Dover, Pennsylvania, stems from an ACLU lawsuit challenging a controversial decision by the Dover Area School Board to require biology teachers to present intelligent design as an alternative to the scientific theory of evolution.

The intelligent design movement has two new, powerful spokesmen. In recent weeks, George W. Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist have both endorsed shoving science aside in our children's science classrooms.

It is all too clear that powerful political forces are not just tinkering around the edges of our religious freedom -- they have set their sights on transforming our country from a constitutional democracy to a thinly veiled theocracy. They want to turn America into a country governed by their interpretation of the Bible, serviced by faith-based, taxpayer-funded institutions and guided by religious doctrine against which neither citizens nor judges should dare to speak up.

You and I can't let them get away with it.

As an ACLU member, your support for our work makes it possible for us to carry out a strong defense of religious liberty in cases like this and nationwide. Please take a moment to learn more about our efforts to resist attempts to undermine religious freedom wherever they surface -- from the classrooms of Pennsylvania to the White House. Together, we'll defend religious liberty with every ounce of energy we have.

Sincerely,


Anthony D. Romero
Executive Director
American Civil Liberties Union
www.aclu.org

Pentagon details mishandling of Quran

Pentagon details mishandling of Quran - Terrorism & Security - MSNBC.com

The findings, released after normal business hours Friday evening, are among the results of an investigation last month by Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, the commander of the detention center in Cuba, that was triggered by a Newsweek magazine report — later retracted — that a U.S. soldier had flushed one Guantanamo Bay detainee’s Quran down a toilet.


Desecration allegations linked to deadly demonstrations
The story stirred worldwide controversy and the Bush administration blamed it for deadly demonstrations in Afghanistan.


Hood said in a written statement released Friday evening, along with the new details, that his investigation “revealed a consistent, documented policy of respectful handling of the Quran dating back almost 2 1/2 years.”


Hood said that of nine mishandling cases that were studied in detail, five were confirmed to have happened. He could not determine conclusively whether the four others took place.

Afterhours today, the Pentagon released the report about the abuse of the Quran and curtailing freedom of religion at Guantanamo. What a great way to keep the story quiet. Surely four days ago, Gen. Richard B. Myers knew of this report. I'm sure he was doing his master's bidding by spreading disinformation before the release of this report. It sounds like the kind of thing that would go on in a gulag. I can see why the world see the US as running a gulag in Guantanamo.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Sunday strongly defended the military's treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, calling the prison, which has been harshly criticized by human rights organizations and others, a "model facility."


Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers rejected criticism leveled last week by Amnesty International, the London-based human rights organization, in its annual report on abuses across the globe.