A WEEK OFF

Regular visitors to this blog (are there any?) may have noticed a slight lull in the number of postings here by me, the self-proclaimed 'Radical', in recent weeks. To be honest, February has been a bit of a mad month for me and I have slightly taken my eye off the (blogging) ball. In exactly seven days, I'll be back to blogging on an almost daily basis - exposing the myriad of lies and exaggerations and half-truths peddled by the Laptop Bombardiers and the Armchair Islamophobes.

As I said, the number of blogs that I have posted has slowed down but (thankfully! weirdly?) the hits continue to rise. Having started this blog in early December after a long period of personal and professional frustration with the right-wing, war-mongering, terrorism-fuelling, Muslim-demonizing trajectory of our political classes and the unthinking, uncritical, incurious and - frankly - xenophobic coverage of the world by our 'mainstream' media, I am pleased to see the hit counter (below, scroll down to the bottom) approaching a whopping two thousand.

So, thank you. And I will be back. Shortly. In a week. Watch this space.

(In the meantime, check out the excellent www.antiwar.com)

TIME FOR MUSLIMS TO SAY: 'NOT IN MY NAME'

Muslims often - rightly - accuse the media and the security services of Islamophobia, of hyping the terrorism threat, of distorting intelligence and fabricating evidence, of demonizing ordinary Muslims. In fact, this blog of mine has done so several times, based on solid facts, since its inception in December.

Yet we must remember that there are unquestionaly and undeniably several 'bad apples' (for want of a softer euphemism!) in the Muslim community - men (and women) who do actually (wrongly) believe Islam condones and even sanctifies violence and bloodshed; who do view jihad (mistakenly) as a primarily military, rather than a spiritual, struggle; who do in fact hate the West not simply for its foreign policy but because it is the West; it is non-Muslim, secular and liberal.

One such fanatical Muslim bigot is British-born, Birmingham-based Parviz Khan, who was sentenced to life in prison this week after pleading guilty to a plot to kidnap and behead a Muslim soldier serving in the British army. The security services had bugged his home in Alum Rock and the transcripts of the surveillance intercepts make for a chilling and rather disturbing read:

"The MI5 bugging device at Parviz Khan's Birmingham home recorded attempts to indoctrinate Khan's five-year-old son in the ethos of al-Qaida inspired violence.

In one passage co-defendant Hamid Elasmar asks the boy: "How do you cut their neck?"
Khan then prompts the youngster, saying: "How do you cut them with a knife? Show me."
Then Khan is heard saying: "Like this. Good."

Khan was also recorded asking his son: "Who do you love?" "I love sheikh Osama Bin Laden," the child replies. Khan asks his son if he loves anyone else. The boy names extreme Muslim cleric Abu Hamza and Islamic militant sheikh Abdullah Rehman.

Then Khan asks the youngster: "Who do you kill?" The child replies: "America kill." Asked who else, the boy responds "Bush I kill" and "Blair kill." Prompted by his father, the five-year-old says he also wants to kill "kuffar" (a derogatory term for a non- Muslim), "Hindu," and "sharabi" (drunks).

Khan was also recorded discussing his desire that his three-year-old daughter should eventually marry a terrorist. "Inshallah [God willing], she'll marry into them and give birth to them," he told Zahoor Iqbal, a long-time friend. The trial jury was told that Khan then called his daughter towards him and asked her: "What will you cook for the men in the mountains?"

This is not 'jihad'. This is not even simply 'terrorism'. This is child abuse - plain and simple. How any self-proclaimed, so-called 'Muslim' can justify filling their innocent children's heads with such bile, hatred and violence, I simply do not know!

On February 14th 2003, I marched in London with millions of anti-war Muslims, protesting against the impending invasion of Iraq and carrying banners proclaiming 'Not In My Name'. At times like this, when I see the miserable, humourless, hate-filled mug shot of 'Muslims' like Parviz Khan staring out from the TV screen, I have to say to him and to his ilk: 'Not In My Name'. You do not represent my Islam, my Quran or my Prophet. You are a disgrace, a shame, an embarrassment and I disassociate myself and my beliefs from you and yours.

HAIL TO THE TORTURER-IN-CHIEF!

Outgoing US President George W. Bush gave a rare interview this week to a non-American, non-deferential, non-fawning interviewer, the BBC’s Matt Frei.

The main focus of the interview was (predictably, depressingly) the President’s preference for torturing his way to victory in the so-called ‘War on Terror’. These are some of the main (outrageous) points which the BBC interview highlighted:

• Bush believes that the London bombings – among other things – justifies the American use of torture (sorry, ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’!)
  
  
• Bush believes America still supports human rights and occupies the international moral high ground (!!)
  
  
• Bush will veto any attempt by the Senate to ban waterboarding
  
  
• Bush does not consider waterboarding to be a form of torture
  

Yet, as the Guardian noted, on the very same day, one of the Bush administration’s very own Justice Department officials – Steven Bradbury, head of the Office of Legal Counsel – pointed out in congressional testimony,

“Let me be clear, though: There has been no determination by the justice department that the use of waterboarding, under any circumstances, would be lawful under current law.”

Outside of the delusional corridors of the White House and the right-wing thinktanks of the neocrazy neocons, there are few sane souls who would dispute that waterboarding is indeed wholly, totally, undeniably, unquestionaly, indisputably and self-evidently an immoral, inhumane and brutal act of torture.

Former POW, Iraq war supporter and Republican Party presidential-candidate-to-be, Senator John McCain, is opposed to waterboarding, which he considers to be torture. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage – who happens to have been second-in-command at Bush’s State Department during the invasion of Iraq, and also happens to be a former US naval commando – also has a dim view of waterboarding:

“Of course water-boarding is torture. I can't believe we're even debating it. We shouldn't be doing that kind of stuff."

What precisely is “that kind of stuff”? Former US military psychologist Bruce Lefever, who underwent a diluted form of ‘waterboarding’ during his training, said it was “terrifying”, and that “you're strapped to an inclined gurney and you're in four-point restraint, your head is almost immobilized, and they pour water between your nose and your mouth, so if you're likely to breathe, you're going to get a lot of water. You go into an oxygen panic." It is not waterboarding – it is, put simply, water torture.

You can watch a mocked-up, diluted version of a waterboarding below, courtesy of MSNBC:


The reality is that waterboarding has long been a weapon not simply of Mr Bush’s heroic and hallowed counter-terrorism operatives, but of torturers and tyrants throughout history. Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge were amongst the 20th century’s most infamous practioners of waterboarding, as you can see below in a photo of one of the actual ‘waterboards’ used by the torturers of the Khymer Rouge.

And, most damning of all, the United States itself prosecuted Japanese officers in the wake of World War II, for waterboarding American prisoners of war – including an officer named Yukio Asano. As Senator Edward Kennedy has pointed out:

“Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II.”

How ironic! The US president declares in 2005, “We don’t do torture”, and then admits to, and defends, the use of waterboarding against terror suspects; while almost half a century earlier, the US government prosecuted Japanese officers for carrying out the very same practice against Americans. Hypocrisy? Double standards? Short-sightedness? All of the above. And all in the name of justifying, defending, and apologizing for torture, carried out by the supposed leader of the ‘free’ world, the United States of America. Waterboarding joins Abu Ghraib, Guatanamo Bay and extraordinary rendition in the long list of ignominious (and unAmerican!) legacies left to America, and to the world, by George Bush and his pathetic and immoral ‘War on Terror’.

TOP FIVE REASONS WHY ONLY OBAMA CAN BEAT MCCAIN

Sitting here watching the election race on this side of the ‘pond’, I am delighted and genuinely bemused to see that my preferred presidential candidate – the lesser of all the various evils – Senator Barack Obama is on a roll, having won five primaries on the trot and now having captured more states and amassed more delegates than former front runner and former first lady, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

With the Republicans on the verge of crowning Senator John McCain as their candidate, it is time for undecided Democrats and wavering independents to think long and hard about who the best candidate would be to deal with the specific threat from McCain – who has cross-party appeal, an affable and likeable personality, a ‘maverick’ reputation and a distinguished military background as a former prisoner of war.

Nonetheless, according to the most recent Associated Press poll, Barack Obama (unlike Hillary Clinton) would narrowly defeat John McCain if they were matched today in the presidential election. This doesn’t really surprise me, as I believe that there are five overwhelming and undeniable reasons why Obama is the only man (sorry, person) who can beat McCain, come November:

1. IRAQ

The issue of Iraq remains bitterly divisive in modern America and is unlikely to go away any time soon. It was a major factor in the Republicans' defeat in the November 2006 mid-term elections and – despite the supposed success of the General David Petraeus’ recent troop ‘surge’ in Baghdad – polls continue to suggest a majority of Americans view Iraq as a top concern and want US troops home as soon as possible.
Here’s how New York Times columnist Frank Rich reported the story in January:

"The continued political import of Iraq could be found in three different polls in the past six weeks -- Pew, ABC News-Washington Post and Wall Street Journal-NBC News . .. the percentage of Americans who believe that the war is going well has risen strikingly in tandem with the diminution of violence -- from 30 percent in February to 48 percent in November, for instance, in the Pew survey. Even so, these same polls show no change at all in the public's verdict on this misadventure or in President Bush's dismal overall approval rating. By the same margins as before (sometimes even slightly larger), a majority of Americans favor withdrawal no matter what happened during the 'surge.' In another poll (Gallup), a majority still call the war a mistake, a finding that has varied little since February 2006."

On the same day, The Times concluded: "Concern over the war in Iraq, despite recent advances in security there, also remains on the minds of independent voters and has contributed to a shift toward Democrats..."

Obama, unliked Clinton, opposed the Iraq war from the very beginning, calling it a "dumb" war. His anti-war stance is in tune with the majority of Americans. McCain, on the other hand, has been a passionate and ardent supporter of the Iraq misadventure and now bizarrely agitates for war against Iran too. In a recent town-hall meeting, he confessed to being perfectly okay with American troops staying in Iraq for another hundred years (!) Obama has already begun referring, cleverly and accurately, to the ‘Bush-McCain Republicans’, tying the Arizona Senator to the unpopular president and his even more unpopular war. Let’s hope for more of this in the run-up to November…

2. RHETORIC

Whatever you think of Obama, it is impossible to deny his verbal virtuosity. Ever since his barn-storming, eye-catching, heart-lifting speech to the Democratic Convention in July 2004, Obama has drawn crowds wherever he has gone, inspiring and motivating the masses with lofty and soaring rhetoric. McCain, on the other hand, sends people to sleep with his stump speeches (unless, of course, he is singing songs about bombing Iran). Blogger Democrashield makes an interesting comparison, in this regard, between the Republican frontrunner in 2008 and the losing Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry, in 2004:

“Kerry was seen as a passionateless and boring speaker, more suited to long-winded tirades in the Senate than rousing speeches on the stump; similarly, McCain is also a passionateless speaker who fails to rouse crowds of even his most ardent supporters.”

And the Guardian’s Michael Tomasky has this rather astute observation:

“Tonight's memorable moment as a television-watching experience came when CNN switched from Obama's victory speech to John McCain's. McCain started his speech before Obama finished his - a little tacky, but not a capital crime. Well, as Keith Olbermann dryly noted on MSNBC, someone needs to remind McCain that in the future he'd better speak before Obama. The Illinois Democrat was leading 18,000 attendees to fever pitch in his speech when CNN cut away. McCain, by contrast, was talking to what could have been mistaken for a bingo game in a church parish hall. The contrast was striking, and not lost on anyone imagining the two of them on a stage together at some point this fall.”

3. AGE

Senator Barack Obama is 46 years old. He will be a healthy and youthful 47 come November. Senator John McCain is 71 years old. He will be 72 come November - making him the oldest first-term president ever in the United States.

Now, of course, this quarter-century age gap could be used by McCain to remind voters of his greater experience, maturity and wisdom; on the other hand, the trend across democratic countries in the West is to pick younger politicians as party and as national leaders (from Blair to Sarkozy, from Cameron to Clegg). In a poll conducted for the New York Times and CBS television last year, just over half of Americans said the best age for a US president was the 50s. Fewer than one percent said a president in their 70s would be best.

For me, fundamentally, Obama’s relative youth fits in with his popular message of change, hope and the future. McCain’s age serves to remind voters that he was a candidate before (in 2000), that he served in a distant and unpopular former war (Vietnam) and that he could die of a heart attack (or simply ‘old age’) while sitting in the Oval Office (making his choice of vice-presidential running-mate even more crucial and relevant). Ultimately, it is difficult for someone in the eight decade of their life, with a recent history of skin cancer, and a head of white hair, to make the case for change and renewal and a fresh start – especially in a self-professed ‘young’ country like the United States!

4. INDEPENDENTS

In a close election, which November ‘08 is likely to be, the votes of independents could be crucial, if not decisive.

John McCain’s entire campaign rests – and has always rested – on his appeal to independents, his big-tent approach to politics, whereby he wins over as many (if not more) independents, waverers and even Democrats as he does Republicans. On the Democrat side, only Obama has proved that he can reach out to independents in a big way. In yesterday’s Virginia primary, two-thirds of the independents who cast their ballots in the Democratic race went for Obama over Clinton. (In fact, Obama has won more independents than Clinton in every single primary so far.)

Meanwhile, as The Nation reported, also in Virginia:

“…in the single most stunning number of the night, McCain actually lost among independents who cast their ballots in the Republican primary. His margin of victory came not from independents, but from Republicans--a terrible omen for his "electability." Huckabee also beat McCain in those bastions of independent (but also, of course, megachurch) voting, the suburbs, while Obama was pulling 60 percent of suburbanites on the other side. The other prime indicators of how independents might vote in November looked equally good for Obama and lousy for McCain: While Obama won big with under-45 voters, who are the most likely to register independent, McCain lost big among the youngest voters (under 30) while taking 47 percent of the 30-44 age group. To add just one more bit of sour news for McCain, fewer independents voted in the Republican primary in Virginia this year -- 76 percent of the voters were card-carrying GOPers, as opposed to just 63 percent in 2000.”

5. PARTY UNITY

Obama, if/when he wins the nomination, can rely on Democrats rallying around ‘their’ candidate. Only die-hard, dyed-in-the-wool partisan Clintonites – and they are, actually, few in number – will continue to question his credentials and his leadership. The rest of the Democratic Party is likely to fall in line behind him – in fact, exit polls in yesterday’s important Virginia primary showed the Illinois Senator making inroads into Hillary Clinton’s supposedly ‘core’ constituencies; the parts of the Democratic Party that those not named ‘Clinton’ had previously found difficult to reach.

As US pollster John Zogby writes:

“In addition to his momentum of victories, he has made significant inroads into constituencies that were the core of his opponent's support.

“Thus, in Virginia and Maryland, exit polls revealed that he tied with Senator Clinton among white voters, and actually defeated her among women, lower-income voters, rural voters, those over 65 years of age, Catholics, and Hispanics.”

McCain, however, is struggling to win over his party’s conservative Christian base. Despite being within spitting distance of his party’s nomination, he still seems wholly unable to win over evangelicals (not to mention influential, right-wing, talk-radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham), with rival candidate (and former pastor) Mike Huckabee still winning the occasional state (e.g. Kansas, Louisiana), and with self-professed conservative Republicans voting 51 percent for Huckabee and 35 percent for McCain in yesterday’s Virginia primary, and ‘evangelical’ Republicans splitting 61 per cent to 28 per cent in favour of Huckabee. Conservatives don’t trust McCain on the economy (he voted against the Bush tax cuts), nor on immigration (he supported President Bush’s unpopular ‘amnesty’ proposals), while evangelicals question his commitment to Christian fundamentalism and his flip-flopping on key ‘moral’ issues like abortion and homosexuality. Time magazine calls it his ‘two front battle’ – but does McCain really have the time, energy or resources to be fighting on two fronts come November, and would a Democratic nominee like Senator Clinton (who would, presumably, have her own two or even three front battle with the youth, black and anti-war wings of her own party) be the best person to capitalize on McCain’s obvious internal problem?

So, in conclusion, I do hope it is Senator Barack Obama who wins the Democratic nomination – not simply because he is the best of a bad bunch but because he is the only candidate with a real chance of beating the worst of the current bunch, Senator John “bomb, bomb, bomb” McCain. As I have said, I have serious worries about the Arizona senator, who despite his maverick image and media love-in, remains the hawk in hawk's clothing. If Obama wins the nomination, and carries on inspiring friends and foes alike, then I believe he can win the election in November, with a campaign narrative contrasting his positives with McCain’s negatives: youth versus age, the future versus the past, inspiration and hope versus tough-talk and fear-mongering. Good luck Barry!

ONE LAW FOR THE JEWS, NO LAW FOR THE MUSLIMS

I have been deliberating over the weekend as to whether or not to blog on the subject of Sharia law, and the predictable (and predictably nauseating) 'row' generated in our tolerant, thoughtful and reasoned media(!)

The fact of the matter is this: the Archbishop of Canterbury, one of this country’s most serious and interesting thinkers, did not ‘call’ for Sharia law and nor did he advocate a parallel and separate legal code outside of British law for religious minorities like the Muslim community. Given the hysterical reaction to his comments, I am convinced that 99.9 per cent of his critics in the press have not even bothered to read his lengthy, nuanced and erudite speech in full. You can read it here. I urge you to do so, before passing (mindless, uninformed) judgement a la the press pack.

One point, however, I would like to make is this (and forgive the perhaps superficially – yet unintended – anti-Semitic undertones): what about the Jews? I know, I know. Every time something ‘bad’ happens to Muslims, or Islam gets a bad press, we Muslims like to blame the poor ol’ Jews and look for a Jewish cause or a Jewish excuse. In this particular case, I have no intention of blaming them or castigating them but simply drawing attention to the typical double standards of our media pundits, commentators and pontificators. After all, the papers have been full of articles decrying the Archbishop’s comments, on the seemingly reasonable grounds that there should be one British law, which should apply to one and all, in an equal manner – no exceptions, therefore, for those hand-chopping, adulterer-flogging backward Muslims! Yet there has been hardly any mention in this whole debate of the (Yiddish) elephant in the room. What about the Beth Din, the orthodox Jewish rabbinical courts that are in daily use across Britain, and have been for centuries? Why no mention of them in this whole Islamophobic furore?

One rare report that touched on this issue appeared on the BBC website on Thursday:

“British Jews, particularly the orthodox, will frequently turn to their own religious courts, the Beth Din, to resolve civil disputes, covering issues as diverse as business and divorce.

"There's no compulsion", the registrar of the London Beth Din, David Frei, said. "We can't drag people in off the streets."

"Both sides in a dispute must be Jewish, obviously, and must have agreed to have their case heard by the Beth Din. Once that has happened, its eventual decision is binding.”

There is no compulsion but the decision is binding, under English law, which recognizes civil arbitration. So there you have it: if Sharia courts are introduced, it will be the end of the world as we know it, homosexuals will be thrown off the top of Big Ben and adulterers will be stoned in Trafalgar Square, and the Muslims will be free to govern and judge themselves according to their own medieval and backward laws. That’s the current media narrative. The only problem is that Muslims are not calling for the Islamic penal code (if such a thing even exists in a singular, unanimous and agreed-upon form) to be introduced into British law, and nor did the Archbishop even refer to this aspect of the Sharia. Muslims – and I refer here to some Muslims; not all Muslims – are simply, as I understand it, calling for the Islamic equivalent of the Beth Din. If it is good enough for the children of Isaac, why not for the children of Ishmael?

(And there is no point arguing, as 'Mad Mel' Phillips and the rest of the right-wing bloggers and commentators have, that “Jewish participation in Beth Din religious tribunals is entirely voluntary” because so too is Muslim participation in the Sharia courts that already exist in this country. In fact, film-maker Ayesha Khan, writing in the Guardian, correctly points out that many Muslim women in Britain are already “committed to using the sharia system, whether or not it had any recognition in national law” and we must “take seriously their religious and cultural preferences and practices”.)

ISLAMOPHOBIA: THE SUNDAY TIMES

I am not sure how many of you saw this ridiculous headline in the Sunday Times last week:

“Family of teen Muslim invited men to rape her”

The story concerns a poor 15-year-old Pakistani girl who was forced by her mother-in-law into a life of prostitution. Subjected to an arranged marriage, she came to Britain thinking she would be wed to a healthy and handsome young man. Instead, the family who received here in the UK made her marry an unemployed and seriously retarded 40-year-old man, with an IQ of a 5-year-old. According to the paper, the family then "invited" local men to rape her.

To cut a long story short, a horrible and heinous crime has taken place. Horrible and disgusting things are going on within parts of the immigrant Pakistani community. But, my question is this: what on earth has this got to do with Islam or Muslims? Why refer to “teen Muslim” in the headline? What has the girl’s faith or that family’s faith got to do with anything? Islam neither sanctions forced marriages nor marriages conducted under false pretences, and it forcefully condemns, prohibits and punishes rape – especially child-rape!

So, I ask again – why the ‘Muslim’ headline? It is not a Muslim story. But the Islamophobic propagandists who seem to dominate the print media these days have to turn every Asian story, every Pakistani story, every immigration story, every multiculturalism story and, of course, every terrorism story into a ‘Muslim’ story or an ‘Islam’ story. It is no wonder that a recent study commissioned by London Mayor Ken Livingstone found “that in one typical week in 2006, over 90 per cent of the media articles that referred to Islam and Muslims were negative. The overall picture presented by the media was that Islam is profoundly different from and a threat to the west.”

Interestingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the Sunday Times reporter who wrote the article is a man named Abul Taher. Despite his Muslim-sounding name, he has form in this area (of Islamophobia). In fact, blogger Karima Hamdan has compiled a selection of recent anti-Muslim gems penned by Abul Taher.

In addition, tucked away in the fifth paragraph of the article, we see the real source of this ‘story’:

“The case is highlighted in a report by the Centre for Social Cohesion, which has found that policemen, councillors and taxi drivers are turning a blind eye or even conniving in enforcing the Asian community's strict "moral code" on young women.”

Ah, the good ol’ Centre for Social Cohesion! I have already blogged here about this notoriously neoconservative, right-wing and anti-Muslim ‘thinktank’ and the obnoxious, imbalanced and Islamophobic views of its spotty young director, Douglas Murray.

It is a tragedy that the once-great Sunday Times newspaper chooses to now inflame community relations and stoke anti-Muslim prejudice by peddling sensationalist stories with ludicrous headlines from Islam-obsessed journos like Abul Taher and Islam-obsessed thinktanks like the Centre for Social Cohesion.

I urge you all to protest to the Sunday Times over this inflammatory, unnecessary and undeniable anti-Muslim and Islamophobic headline and ask them to change it on their website forthwith.

BEWARE MCCAIN: THE HAWK IN HAWK'S CLOTHING

Super Tuesday is almost upon us. While the Democratic race is likely to carry on until the summer, with Obama breathing down Clinton's bony neck until the bitter end (and, fingers crossed, triumphing against all odds!), Tuesday's tsunami of nationwide Republican primaries could easily see Senator John McCain wrap up the GOP's presidential nomination.

Since McCain's victory in Florida over his quiffed millionaire chief rival Mitt Romney, the pundits have anointed him as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee and the Democrats have begun asking which of their two candidates (the pro-war white woman or the anti-war black man) is best placed to beat the maverick Republican senator from Arizona.

McCain, as usual, has benefited from an uncritical and unthinking wave of positive, flattering and semi-adulatory press coverage (including an endorsement from the supposedly liberal New York Times). He is often described, bizarrely, as a "moderate" and a "liberal". In fact, one newspaper described McCain and his two newest best friends in the GOP - Governor Arnold Schwarznegger of California and former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani - as the three "liberal Republican amigos":

Yet, the only liberal or moderate criteria which these three subscribe to relate to social issues - they are all pro-homosexuality and pro-abortion. Is that how we now define liberalism? How we now define moderation? Whether or not you vote for gay marriage? Whether or not you support the killing of foetuses? Forget issues of war and peace, forget econonomic issues; it's all about trendy and amoral 'social liberalism'.

The fact is, as Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo has outlined in great detail, John McCain is more pro-war than even George W. Bush or Dick Cheney. He was perhaps the only Republican in Congress to attack the then US Defense Secretary -and bloviating warmonger-in-chief - Donald Rumsfeld from the right. He ludicrously believes the US military 'surge' in Iraq is working - despite swathes of evidence to the contrary. He thinks American Muslims should stay out of politics and are unsuited for high office. And his solution to the 'problem' of Iran's nuclear programme is - wait for it - to BOMB! Don't believe me? Watch him sing - yes, sing - his solution to a crowd of cheering (and presumably bloodthirsty) Republican supporters:


As for his new best friend - and, God forbid, potential vice-presidential running-mate - Rudy Giuliani, his views on the need to bomb the Middle East into submission and declare World War III against Islamists (or does he really mean Islam?) are well-known and well-documented. In fact, the man who, according to Senator Joe Biden only has three words in his vocabulary ('a noun, a verb, and 9-11"), came close to describing all Muslims as a "perverted people" in one of his campaign ads. Again, don't believe me? Watch for yourself how naked appeals to redneck Islamophobia and knee-jerk militarism have become the defining characteristics for Republicans who are supposed to be 'liberals' and 'moderates':


In fact, Middle East scholar and blogger Professor Juan Cole has an excellent piece in Salon this week, entitled 'Blowback from the GOP's holy war'. Cole points out:

"Why might all this rhetoric targeting Muslims be unwise? For one thing, allowing the Christian conservative base to set an agenda that demonizes Muslims contains the danger of turning off more moderate segments of the GOP and American voters at large. McCain's comment on the importance of a president's being Christian appeared to have backfired on him in precisely that way.

"Moreover, Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans are swing voters in key states such as Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Florida. While they tended to vote for George W. Bush in 2000, by 2004 these groups overwhelmingly supported John Kerry, and the heavy-handed and bigoted rhetoric of the Republican candidates may drive them away from the GOP altogether."

Here's hoping - and here's hoping that US Muslims, combined with US lefties, liberals and independents who see through the McCain-Giuliani-Arnie 'liberal/moderate' charade, elect a Democrat to the White House in November.