Peace and Justice Post

Dr Abdul Ruff Colachal, Nov 3, 2008

Although political parties had feared that the elections might be delayed, Interim government has announced the Parliamentary (General) elections to be held in Bangladesh on 18 December with 13 November the deadline for nominations. Since January 2007, Bangladesh has been run by a military-backed interim government, which promised to curb corruption and hold free elections. Authorities have also said local government elections would be held on the 28 December.

The Bangladesh Election Commission has said it has recorded the identities, fingerprints and photographs of more than 80-million voters to ensure that the elections will be free and fair. The authorities claim that the new register is the most accurate in Bangladesh’s history. The government came to power a year and a half ago President Iajuddin Ahmed cancelled general elections and declared a state of emergency following months of street violence.

Awami League (AL) and BNP — yesterday expressed rather opposing feelings about the developing political scenario in the country vis-à-vis the December 18 parliamentary election.

General elections due last year were postponed after several months of street protests and political violence triggered by a standoff between two former premiers Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia, both of whom face trial on corruption charges involving millions of dollars which were siphoned off in the poor country. The interim government cancelled elections due to be held in January last year.

Local Poll

Elections to local councils in Bangladesh, the first under an army-backed interim government – would be for four city corporations and nine municipalities, were to be held on 4 August 2008. The Awami League, the party of ex-Bangladesh premier Sheikh Hasina Wajed — out on bail from corruption charges and in the United States — swept all four city mayoral posts and eight out of nine municipalities. Sheikh Hasina, who led the country from 1996-2001, said the polls paved the way for a return to democratic rule. The announcement was initially criticized by the main political parties, who said holding local votes before national elections were unconstitutional. The two major political groups, the Awami League and the BNP, have called for outright cancellation of the non-party local polls, claiming they can disrupt the crucial parliamentary vote. However, the Awami League said it would participate in polls for city and town councils on August 4 in a dramatic U-turn on its earlier stand to boycott all polls except the parliamentary elections and that came as a major boost for the military-backed emergency government.

Emergency

The country has a long-running reputation for deep-seated corruption. The current caretaker administration, backed by the military, has pledged to eradicate corruption. Many analysts say the government is determined to destroy the political power of the two women as part of its drive for political reform.

The former prime ministers and leaders of the two main parties, Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina are released now. Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina have dominated Bangladeshi politics for many years. Both have alternated as prime minister since 1991. They are bitter rivals and barely speak to each other. Their mutual loathing is reflected among their respective sets of supporters. As a result, political life has been marked by, at best, ceaseless bickering. Released now from jails, they were in custody, charged with extorting money when they were in power. The “battling Begums'” are being held in detention in the grounds of parliament in Dhaka. Khaleda Zia has been charged with corruption in relation to the choice of who should run two state-run container depots during her second term in office as prime minister. Earlier this year she was charged with tax evasion. Sheikh Hasina faces a new charge of taking illegal payments of some $435,000 from an electricity company. She is already under investigation for extortion and murder. Both women deny any wrongdoing.

A state of emergency was declared on 11 January 2007, caretaker government, backed heavily by the powerful military and important donor countries like the UK, is still in charge. Emergency rule was declared ostensibly to uphold law and order. When the (Bangladesh Nationalist Party) BNP’s term of office ended in October, the country was gripped by a series of violent clashes in which many people were killed. In the end President Iajuddin Ahmed bowed to pressure and declared a state of emergency and the postponement of general elections.

At first glance, the current state of Bangladesh appears to be a paradox: a country under a state of emergency, but where the general public seems quite content. But there is little outward sense of repression, and Dhaka’s social elite, usually most vocal against human rights violations, appear most pleased. The reason for this apparent sense of satisfaction is not difficult to see. The treatment meted out to politicians is not being seen as repression. People across the board see them as retribution for the corruption and abuse of power of the past fifteen years. By the time the state of emergency was declared in January, the public had also become fed up with the constant bickering and street-fighting between the two main political parties.

Normalcy

The caretaker government had elections would be held only once it had rid the country of corruption. Political parties have been banned from holding meetings. Trade union activities, including rallies and demonstrations are also banned. Awami League leader Sheikh Hasina and BNP leader Khaleda Zia face rumblings of discontent against their leadership from within their respective parties. Now the two main parties, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Awami League, have resumed political activities.

If anything interrupts Bangladesh’s peaceful return to democracy in 2008, however, many people believe it is likely to be the spiraling price of food. The food ministry says its stocks are half full and running out. It blames the devastating impact on November’s cyclone and floods last year, as well as record global food prices. But businessmen also blame the government. Its anti-corruption drive, some say, has at times resembled a witch-hunt and so scared away legitimate investments. Whatever the causes, the government’s reputation for competence has dropped as the prices have risen. So far, the public has largely supported the caretaker government. That could easily change if the food crisis continues.

Advantage

Although it is advantageous for Awami League which has won the recent local polls, poll fortunes could shift depending on the course of the campaign. Both parties said it is imperative to lift the state of emergency to make the upcoming election credible. BNP said as a pro-election party it wants to contest in the poll, but an atmosphere conducive to holding a credible election has not yet been created as the military backed caretaker government has not yet met any of its seven demands. After separate meetings with visiting UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in a capital hotel, AL said it will contest in the election and hopes that a peaceful appropriate environment will be created through withdrawal of the state of emergency.

The problem of corruption is so deep-rooted that it will not have time to clean things up before the elections promised by the end of 2008. Many still argue that as long as the two women – even if they are not themselves corrupt – continue to hold run their respective parties, a culture of corruption will remain. The new incumbent ruler would do well pay urgent attention to arrest the corruption tendencies.

It is of paramount importance that a total lifting of the emergency is an imperative for holding a free, fair and credible election. The people won’t have fundamental rights under the state of emergency, so that will be a problem for an acceptable poll. It is expected that a peaceful environment will be created through withdrawal of the state of emergency, as one adviser has already said the restrictions on fundamental rights will be withdrawn and the process will start from tomorrow. Hopefully, Bangladesh will go to polls in a free atmosphere without emergency rule.

Dr Abdul Ruff Colachal has been a university teacher, and has worked in various Indian institutions like JNU, Mysore University, Central Institute of English FL, etc. He is also a political commentator, researcher, and columnist. He has widely published in India and abroad, and has written about state terrorism

Some searching questions

Kashmir Watch,  Oct 21, 2008

By Yoginder Sikand, TwoCircles.net,

Although the so-called mainstream Indian media carefully ignores this, enough evidence exists to suggest that at least some of the killer bomb blasts that have rocked various parts of India in recent years might not at all have been the handiwork of Islamist outfits or of Muslims seeking revenge for anti-Muslim violence, although they are inevitably blamed by intelligence agencies and the media for all such attacks. Because, despite their secular pretensions, influential sections of India’s Hindu-owned, so-called mainstream media are deeply anti-Muslim, they maintain a stony silence on the possibility of Hindutva terrorist outfits being behind several such blasts, as has been alleged by many Muslim as well as secular human rights’ organisations.

This is not to say that I do not agree that some fringe Muslim groups might be involved in some of these blasts. This might well be the case. In addition, the possibility of some hapless Muslim victims of Hindu terrorism, as in Gujarat, or of state terrorism taking to violence in revenge cannot be discounted. My point, however, is that at least some of this violence does not at all appear like the handiwork of Muslims to me, contrary to what the so-called mainstream Indian media would like us to believe.

The Hindu Right has, ever since its inception, consistently used terror as its major weapon for stirring up Hindu passions so as to cultivate a Hindu vote-bank. This has been particularly the case on the eve of major elections, as is the case today. Because the economic and political agenda of the Hindu Right is clearly antithetical to the interests of the vast majority of Indians, particularly the Dalits, Adivasis and Backward Castes, it has no other means of wooing these sections of society than by stoking anti-Muslim hatred. It would not be an exaggeration to say that anti-Muslim (and now, increasingly, anti-Christian) hatred is the major political plank of the Hindu Right. This has been the case from the very onset of the Hindutva political project. Thus, immediately after 1947, the Jan Sangh, the progenitor of the present-day BJP, took up with fiery passion such causes as Cow Protection and the abolition of the semi-autonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir in order to stir Hindu passions against Muslims and garner Hindu votes. The BJP followed in the same path, with its agitation against the Shah Bano judgment and its bloody campaign for the destruction of the Babri Masjid. Today, the issue of ‘Muslim terrorism’ is being deployed as the latest weapon in the Hindu Right’s armoury to fan anti-Muslim hatred and consolidate its Hindu vote bank. Several cases of Hindutva activists being engaged in manufacturing bombs have come to light, and these might just be the tip of the iceberg.

It is thus quite possible that some Hindu extremist outfits might well be behind at least some of the blasts that India has witnessed in recent years, seeking, with the willing compliance of intelligence agencies and influential sections of the media, to portray these as the handiwork of ‘radical Islamists’. After all, this entirely fits in with the agenda of the Hindu Right, for it provides it further ammunition in its anti-Muslim tirade. Following these blasts, anti-Muslim sentiments, even suspicion and hatred, have mounted, and this suits the Hindutva brigade admirably. The fact that such bomb blasts inevitably hurt Muslims by further intensifying anti-Muslim hatred might suggest that several of these blasts might not be the handiwork of Muslims after all, contrary to what the intelligence agencies and the media tell us. This suspicion is further reinforced by credible reports of numerous fake encounters, involving the intelligence agencies, the police and the supine and increasingly anti-Muslim media, in which perfectly innocent Muslim youths are picked up, branded as deadly ‘terrorists’ and incarcerated for years or even shot dead in cold blood.

Continued . . .

REUTERS
Reuters North American News Service, Nov 02, 2008 13:00 EST

JERUSALEM, Nov 2 (Reuters) – Israel’s radical right wing could resort to armed attacks to scupper any accord under which the occupied West Bank would be ceded to the Palestinians, the official in charge of Israeli leaders’ security said on Sunday.

“We discern a willingness among the far right to resort to using guns in order to prevent progress in the diplomatic process,” Yuval Diskin, head of the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency, told Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s cabinet.

A Shin Bet source who provided Reuters with quotes from Diskin’s briefing said he stopped short of predicting settlers or their supporters would try to kill Israeli politicians.

Nov. 4 is the anniversary of the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an ultranationalist Jew who said he carried out the killing to halt Israeli-Palestinian efforts to exchange land for peace.

In the occupied West Bank, settler violence against Palestinians and Israeli security forces has been on the increase. Olmert reiterated at the cabinet session that such attacks were “intolerable”.

Settler leaders have condemned the violence but have made no secret of their community’s opposition to the evacuation of settlements — which have been ruled illegal by the World Court — to make way for a Palestinian state.

The cabinet later decided on a series of steps to take against settler outposts in the West Bank built without government approval, including a crackdown on lawbreakers and a halting of any support for their financing or infrastructure.

Israel has in the past failed to carry out long-standing promises made to U.S. President George W. Bush to evacuate dozens of the West Bank outposts, an issue that has complicated U.S.-backed peace talks.

Olmert has said Israel would have to withdraw from almost all the territory it captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

But he is now serving in a caretaker capacity after resigning in September in a corruption scandal, and the peace deal that Israel and the Palestinians had hoped to achieve this year appears out of reach in the coming months.

Olmert remains prime minister until a new government is in place after a parliamentary election on Feb. 10. (Writing by Dan Williams; editing by Tim Pearce)

Source: Reuters North American News Service

By James Cogan | World Socialist Web Site, 3 November 2008

In open contempt of the repeated protests by the Pakistani government, the US military carried out another two air strikes on October 31 against houses inside Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Agencies (FATA), killing at least 27 people.

Last Wednesday, the government of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani issued a formal protest to the US ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, over an air strike on October 26 that killed 15 people. According to Pakistani officials cited by the New York Times, Patterson was told “such attacks were a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and should be stopped immediately”.

The US answer was given two days later. In the first attack, a remotely-controlled, unmanned Predator plane launched missiles into the home of a local cleric in the village of Asori, in the agency of North Waziristan. It then fired more missiles at a vehicle attempting to leave the scene. It is believed that 24 people died, including women and children. In unconfirmed reports, Pakistani officials have alleged that a senior Al Qaeda leader, Abdur Rehman, also known as Abu Akasha al Iraqi, was among the slain. As with all previous claims, no evidence has been presented.

The second Predator attack was carried out against a home near the town of Wana, in the agency of South Waziristan. The suspected target was the Pakistani Taliban leader Maulvi Nazir, who is believed to have close relations with Afghan Taliban militants who are fighting against the US-led occupation. Nazir reportedly escaped with only minor injuries, but three other people were killed.

The air strikes were the latest in an escalating campaign of attacks into Pakistan. As many as 20 air strikes and one ground incursion have been carried out in the past two months.

The Pakistani prime minister on one occasion denounced the US operations as “acts of terrorism”. It is not only suspected Al Qaeda or Taliban leaders who are being killed, but their wives, children, elderly parents and any other innocent civilians who happen to be in the vicinity of the houses that are being blown to pieces. The attacks are provoking mass outrage throughout the country and are fuelling support for Islamist organisations that are opposed to the civilian government and supporting the anti-US insurgency in Afghanistan.

The official position in Washington is to refuse to confirm or deny that US forces are responsible for the reported attacks.

The reality is that since July, the US military has had carte blanche from the Bush administration to order attacks that violate the sovereignty of Pakistan—an ostensible US ally. Previously, such operations had to be personally approved by the president. Now, the military head of Centcom (Central Command), which covers the Middle East and Central Asia, can unilaterally decide to launch an attack on alleged “terrorist havens”.

Reports are now surfacing that any country, not only Pakistan, can be targeted under Bush’s secret directive. On October 26, US special forces carried out an assault on the Syrian village of Abu Kamal—the first such incursion into Syria. Seven civilians were killed. The operation would have been ordered in close liaison with General David Petraeus, the former commander of US forces in Iraq and the favourite of the most militarist wing of the American ruling class. Petraeus assumed command of Centcom on the same day as the latest Pakistani airstrikes.

The US national security commentator Eli Lake, writing in the New Republic last Tuesday, reported that Bush had authorised Central Command to strike anywhere in its designated region. The only limitation is that Petraeus requires the approval of at least the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to attack targets inside Iran—as the Iranian military theoretically has the capacity to strike back in the Western hemisphere.

If this is correct, the Bush directive has far-reaching implications. It means that Petraeus has the power to order unprovoked acts of war against nations throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, without even the knowledge of the incoming president, let alone a debate and vote in the US Congress.

Roger Cressey, a former aide to Richard Clarke, the chief counter terrorism advisor of the Clinton administration, told the New Republic: “The bar for military operations will be lowered because the downsides for the president are minimal.”

According to Lake, other countries that could be targeted include Yemen, Kenya, Mali and Sudan—the last three are covered by the US military’s newly inaugurated Africa Command.

Barack Obama, the Democratic Party presidential candidate and most likely victor in Tuesday’s election, has made no public comment on either the raid into Syria or Friday’s attack in Pakistan. The silence testifies to his consent. Throughout his campaign, Obama has declared his willingness to order unilateral attacks into Pakistan or other countries allegedly providing a safe haven to terrorists.

Lake commented in the New Republic: “His campaign rhetoric has now become the official war policy he will inherit.” Any administration Obama heads would not only boost the number of US troops in Afghanistan, but intensify the operations over the border.

Antiwar.com

Posted November 2, 2008

Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Parvez Kayani is being rushed to Turkey this evening for a meeting with Turkish government officials hot on the heels of Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani’s talks with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. The meeting appears to be the first step toward Turkish involvement in pressing the United States to halt its air strikes against targets inside Pakistan.

Gilani’s Press Secretary Zahid Bashir confirmed that Turkey has said it will use its “influence” as an important NATO member to stop the US strikes. This is the second high profile NATO member to express concern over the US strikes in recent days. On Friday, Britain’s Lord High Chancellor Jack Straw said that his government opposes any strikes inside Pakistan that don’t come with the government’s consent, and urged the US to respect the sovereignty of its vital allies.

The US has been launching an increasing number of strikes onto Pakistani soil in recent days, with two strikes on Friday killing a total of 32. Prime Minister Gilani once again reiterated his opposition to the strikes last night, saying that the attacks were counterproductive and expressing hope that the next US President will improve ties with his country. Gilani also said he would summon the US ambassador about the strikes, but previous moves to that end have had no apparent effect on the US policy.

Related Stories

• Pakistani Taliban Denies al-Qaeda Ties, Calls for Peace
• Twin US Drone Strikes Kill 32 in Waziristan
• 32 Killed in US Drone Strikes in North and South Waziristan
• Pakistan Demands US Halt Air Strikes

Published on Sunday, November 2, 2008 by Reuters

by Hez Holland

KIBATI, Congo – Hungry, frightened Congolese refugees pleaded for protection from marauding fighters on Sunday while foreign governments discussed aid but hesitated over sending more troops.

Displaced people walk back towards their homes, near Kibumba, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Goma in eastern Congo, Saturday, Nov. 1, 2008. Thousands of war-weary refugees returned to the the road Saturday, taking advantage of a rebel-called cease-fire to try to reach home beyond the front lines of this week’s battles in eastern Congo. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

European, U.S. and U.N. envoys have criss-crosssd the Great Lakes region trying to prevent a newly resurgent Tutsi rebellion in the eastern Congolese borderlands from escalating into a rerun of Democratic Republic of Congo’s 1998-2003 war.After a weekend diplomatic shuttle that took them to Congo, Rwanda and Tanzania, the French and British foreign ministers called for more international aid to Congo’s North Kivu province, where an offensive by rebel general Laurent Nkunda has displaced tens of thousands of people.

A ceasefire by Nkunda appeared to be holding on Sunday.

At Kibati, north of the provincial capital Goma, refugees among 70,000 people sheltering there said they were desperate for protection and would welcome troops from Europe to bolster the 17,000 U.N. peacekeepers already deployed in Congo.

“We want to return to our village, but only if there is security. I have not eaten for six days,” said one elderly woman, Rgwasa Nyakaruhije. “We would be very happy if they sent in a European Union force.”

Around her, displaced civilians huddled in groups in the muddy grass, some under umbrellas or parasols.

“The urgent need for food, water, shelter and care must be covered through international mobilization and the securing of routes to allow aid to reach all North Kivu,” the French and British ministers, Bernard Kouchner and David Miliband, said in a joint statement after their visit.

But they stopped short of announcing a deployment of European Union troops to Congo. France, which holds the rotating EU presidency, had mooted the proposal earlier in the week but encountered resistance from some member states.

Instead, they recommended reinforcing the United Nations peacekeeping force in Congo, already the biggest in the world but badly stretched across a nation the size of Western Europe.

“The U.N. is not providing any security. If the French soldiers came, they would be very welcome,” said Zainabo Bunyurura, 40, who fled to Kibati from her home in Kibumba when the rebels attacked.

She said they burned down her house.

The U.N. says Congo’s army has also killed and looted.

Max Hadorn, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Congo, said restoring security was paramount.

“For us, it’s less a question of being able to mobilize aid but rather of being able to enter different zones with security guaranteed,” he told Reuters.

TUTSI AND HUTU INSURGENTS

An estimated one million people have been forced from their homes in North Kivu by two years of violence that has persisted despite the end of the 1998-2003 war in the vast, former Belgian colony, which is rich in copper, cobalt, gold and diamonds.

Kouchner and Miliband backed political solutions, including a regional summit that could be held next week to bring together the Congolese and Rwandan presidents, Joseph Kabila and Paul Kagame, to discuss the conflict on their borders. Both Congo and Rwanda have accused each other of backing rival rebel groups.

The two presidents have signaled they are ready to take part in talks on ending intertwined insurgencies in Congo that trace their origin back to Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

Less clear is what participation will be given to renegade Tutsi General Nkunda, whose recent offensive on Goma has rekindled the ethnic fault lines that traverse eastern Congo.

Nkunda, who says his four-year-old bush rebellion aims to defend east Congolese Tutsis, says he is ready to talk to the government but wants a neutral mediator. He had abandoned a previous January peace deal, calling it government-imposed.

He accuses Kabila’s army of backing Rwandan Hutu rebels operating in east Congo who took part in the 1994 genocide killings in Rwanda of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Kabila’s government denies this and has in turn accused Tutsi-led Rwanda of backing Nkunda, a charge denied by Kigali.

Foreign governments are pressing Kabila and Kagame to revive a November deal signed in Nairobi under which both pledged to take steps to end the rival Tutsi and Hutu rebellions.

Anti-corruption campaign group Global Witness says the armed factions in North Kivu, including Congo’s army, are using the province’s cassiterite (tin ore), gold and coltan to gain profits and perpetuate the violence, abetted by willing buyers.

“For as long as there are buyers who are willing to trade, directly or indirectly, with groups responsible for grave human rights abuses, there is no incentive for these groups to lay down their arms,” Global Witness director Patrick Alley said.

© Thomson Reuters 2008

Robert Weitzel, Nov. 2, 2008

“You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I’ll tell you what his ’pinions is.”
–Mark Twain

Mark Twain once said that “in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s.” Now if the two are combined, as James Dobson’s right-wing Christian organization, Focus on the Family, did in their recent “Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America,” the bar has been lowered to somewhere between the reasoning power of the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, the most poisonous biological substance known, and that of George W. Bush . . . the most toxic presidential substance yet known [19 percent approval rating].

Dobson’s letter from the “future” was emailed on October 22 to millions of his weekly TV and radio audience in the United States. His purpose was to scare the bejesus out of corn pone connoisseurs who devour the stuff faster than even Jesus can multiply it.

Keep in mind that the targeted readers’ “reasoning power” has already convinced them that they’re going to be Raptured—swooshed up bodily [naked as a third-rate centerfold] into heaven—moments after they initiate an apocalyptic nuclear conflagration in the Middle East, which they hope will eventually engulf the entire world. This is not a one-derivation-above-the-mean crowd, after all.

“To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add the sheep was a tautology.” Thank you, Mr. Twain.

According to the letter, a phantasmagoria of horror begins shortly after Obama takes office. Shedding his centrist campaigning skin, he is transmogrified into a far left-wing liberal antichrist. Outlandish? Keep reading.

In his first week in office Obama fires all 93 U.S. attorneys and replaces them with radical ACLU lawyers. Consequently, the Justice Department initiates criminal proceedings against nearly every member of the Bush administration.

Due to death or retirement, the Supreme Court is taken over by far left-wing radical judges (6-3 majority) who—you guessed it—begin legislating from the bench. The youthful appointees are expected to rule the country for the next 30-40 years.

Same-sex marriage becomes the law and compulsory training in gender identity in elementary school results in the firing of tens of thousands of Christian teachers accused of hate speech for refusing to speak positively about homosexuality.

The Boy Scouts choose to disband rather than obey a Supreme Court decision ordering them to hire homosexual scoutmasters to sleep with young boys in tents.

The Bible can no longer be read on radio or TV because doing so amounts to hate speech, and students cannot pray in school . . . not even silently while sitting outside the principal’s office.

All federal restrictions on abortion are removed and babies are killed only seconds before they can be delivered. Doctors and nurses who refuse to “murder” babies lose their licenses.

A new law mandating equal time for alternative views on public airwaves drives Rush Limbaugh types off the air, essentially shutting down conservative [hate] talk radio in America by 2010.

Commander in Chief Obama proves to be a total wimp, which emboldens Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists who eventually seize control of Iraq, imprisoning, torturing [imitation is the ultimate form of flattery] and putting to death millions of “American sympathizers” in that country.

Obama, it seems, is more interested in sending foreign aid to impoverished Third World countries in the form of food and medical aid, which does nothing but nourish and keep healthy the next generation of terrorists.

Dobson finally lets go of his tenuous grip on reality when he describes how Iran’s one nuclear missile destroys Tel Aviv and forces Israel to cede huge amounts of land to the Palestinians, leaving Israel defenseless. WHAT? Israel cede land? Israel defenseless?

“The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightening ain’t distributed right.” Thank you Mr. Twain.

Oh yeah, and gasoline costs $7 per gallon and only military personnel can own a gun.

Needless to say, the next four years are a living hell for the Dobson clan, much as the last eight years have been for anyone with reasoning power marginally superior to that of Twain’s pet monkey.

As a bona fide left-wing liberal atheist, who “wasted” a vote on Nader, I had mixed feelings reading Dobson’s half-baked corn pone. My initial reaction was something akin to enjoying a preposterously funny Twain satire. But then I began to get the creepy feeling I was reading an American fundamentalist version of the Nazis’1935 Nuremburg Laws, which disenfranchised German Jews and foreshadowed the murderous persecution of European Jewry.

It became clear that what I was actually reading was Focus on the Family’s back-handed glimpse of America under a ruler of their choice . . . say, for instance, Sarah Palin.

Win or lose this time around, Palin is the GOP’s rising star and James Dobson’s heartthrob. She’s the “real deal” of an End Times fundamentalist. Unlike President Bush—a suspected convert—she’s been stuffing her gob with apocalyptic corn pone her entire life. The only way for Palin to get to heaven with her admittedly appealing carcass intact is the Rapture route via an Armageddon avenue, which does not bode well for a survivable foreign policy.

It’s easy to poke fun at the corn pone Focus on the Family and like-mindless organizations dish out during an election. It stops being funny, however, when one realizes that for tens of millions of people this fare is their only sustenance, and this toxic repast, like the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, is the most poisonous of all substances to the body politic.

“If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times” Thank you, Mr. Twain.

Robert Weitzel is a contributing editor to Media With a Conscience (www.mwcnews.net). His essays regularly appear in The Capital Times in Madison, WI. He can be contacted at: robertweitzel@mac.com