The 9/11 curriculum, believed to be the first comprehensive educational plan focusing on the attacks, is expected to be tested this year at schools in New York City, California, New Jersey, Alabama, Indiana, Illinois and Kansas.

It was developed with the help of educators by the Brick, N.J.-based Sept. 11 Education Trust, and was based on primary sources, archival footage and more than 70 interviews with witnesses, family members of victims and politicians, including Giuliani and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a New York senator at the time of the attacks.

The curriculum is taught through videos, lessons and interactive exercises, including one that requires students to use Google Earth software to map global terrorist activity.

Teaching Students About 9/11

At a press conference on Tuesday at a hotel blocks from the World Trade Center site, Giuliani said the program can help students think critically about the attacks as both a historic event and one that shapes the present, noting the continued threat of terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Teachers say that today's middle and high school students might be too young to have strong memories of the attacks, so the program can help them develop insight into what actually happened.

"Students are getting progressively younger as we move further and further away from the events," says Torres. In a few years, students who are taught about the attacks will not even have been alive when they occurred, adds Anthony Gardner, executive director of the Education Trust, whose brother died in the World Trade Center.

9/11 as a Lesson, Not a Memory

Eight years later, this is an example of what Sept. 11, 2001, has become for a generation that's too young to remember much, if anything, about that day: It is an educational DVD, a 167-page textbook, a black binder of class handouts titled "A National Interdisciplinary Curriculum." In Room C215 at Lincoln High School, images of the collapsing Manhattan skyline are now a classroom "warm-up exercise." "Militant," "imploding" and "rubble" are boldfaced vocabulary words for students to memorize. Homework assignments and essay questions ensure that Sept. 11 will indeed be remembered by millions of schoolchildren, if with a new sense of detachment.

More:
The September 11 Education Program
The September 11 Education Trust

It's something. We'll see where it goes from here.

BBC News entitled their piece “Egypt mourns ‘headscarf martyr‘”. Additionally, they describe the murderer’s initial actions toward Sherbini as “insulting her religion” – an inaccurate statement, as W. insulted Sherbini herself, not her religion. Making such a statement skews the reality of the case and paints the story as the “Muslim angry over insult to Islam” trope. Stating this lie trivializes Sherbini’s very real experience of personal hate and Islamophobia. It diminishes W.’s hateful actions toward a Muslim woman. It ignores the fact that it was human being who was hurt, not a religion.

Meanwhile, on this side of the pond…

California: FBI investigating death of Muslim leader in High Desert

The FBI is investigating the death of a Muslim leader whose body was found inside a burned home in Yermo that had recently been spraypainted with racial epithets and Nazi symbols…

When firefighters doused the flames 40 minutes later, they found the body of 51-year-old Imam Ali Mohammed inside the East Yermo Road house he had moved his family out of last month.

"We don't know if it was simply an accident or if there is foul play involved," said sheriff's spokeswoman Cindy Beavers. "We just don't know if a crime occurred yet."

(Why is this a mystery?)

Seattle: Man charged with hate crime for threatening Muslim woman

The woman, who was holding her six-month-old son, tried to reason with the 24-year-old Auburn man by saying that her "her clothing does not make her a bad person," court documents said. When the insults didn't stop, prosecutors said, the woman backed away from Garner and tried to shield her son from him.

Garner then cursed at the woman, got in her face and pulled out a large sheathed knife, court papers said. Garner told the woman he was going to "cut" the woman and her baby with the knife, charging documents said.

Minnesota: Minnesota withdraws "Run Hadji Run" fireworks from shelves

Miami: Miami-Dade police have charged two teens in the latest vandalism of a West Kendall mosque and school that has been targeted twice this year

Gonzalez-Vaca told police that the vandalism had been planned for months. He said "all Muslims are terrorists," according to the report….

Six months ago, the mosque was sprayed with 51 bullets that left broken windows and holes in the building's golden dome. In June 2005, unknown assailants used a large rock to shatter the door of the Islamic center, which draws 500 Muslims for Friday prayers and has a 250-student religious school.

The year before, the center's sign near Southwest 147th Avenue was defaced with a Nazi swastika and profanity. No arrests have been made in the prior vandalisms.

O'Donnell seems to believe that torturing only works on wussies. He identifies himself as just such a person, and says Hannity is one, too. This is why Hannity thinks torture would work, O'Donnell explains: since it would work on him, he thinks it would work on everybody. Hardened warriors, however — be they in the American military or members of Al-Qaeda — are not susceptible to a little waterboarding, a little fingernail-pulling, the occasional afternoon spent being electrocuted. They are real men. And torture doesn't work on real men.

Merriment ensues, since this take on the situation casts Hannity as a wimp. In other words, he's kind of a girl.

Forgive me if I don't find being "too feminine to endure torture" as much of an insult. I mean we're not talking about a snake bite here, or the ability to keep running after you get that stitch in your side. We're talking about undergoing physical pain so horrific it can bring on a spontaneous heart attack in an otherwise healthy individual. Yes, military personnel do get some training in withstanding these techniques, but when it comes to pain at this level, stamina and commitment to one's cause don't mean much. And that's the thing: terrorist groups know this, which is why they do things like refer to each other by code names, and ensure that the chains of communication are so convoluted that the individuals most likely to be caught won't have any information to give.

(In the movies, of course, all the bad guys sit around a table and plan the whole operation together. That way when Kiefer Sutherland captures one of them he can conveniently shoot him in the knee and immediately he'll learn where the bomb is, who put it there, where that guy is now, the first middle and last names of everyone involved in the plot, and all the passwords to their computers.)

Outside of Hollywood it's not so tidy. The "ticking time bomb scenario" isn't unworkable because terrorists are immune to pain: it's unworkable because if you've only captured one guy by the time the bomb has started ticking, you're screwed. You won't get much useful information out of him, because he doesn't have much useful information to give. This is true even if he tells you absolutely everything he knows, which he probably will and then some.

And here we have the other problem with O'Donnell's take. Members of Al-Qaeda, in his imagination, are inhuman, almost literally: so inhuman they don't respond to pain. He tries to pass this off as a progressive argument — since it falls under the rubric of "therefore we shouldn't torture!" — but in doing so he's glossed over all the human rights implications of being a nation that okays torture, not to mention all of the foreign policy decisions that lead desperate people to turn to terrorism in the first place.

He also continues to cast this conflict in gendered terms, where torture is masculine, whether you're enduring it or dishing it out, and cracking under it is feminine and wimpy. Under that logic, if Sean Hannity decides that you know what? he'd rather not be waterboarded, it's not because he's a hypocrite: it's because he's a pussy. If he does go through with it, though, well by gosh buy that man a beer!

Everything about this is heartbreaking, but I was especially moved by the girl who gave a speech about the political situation and had to cover her face to hide her identity. She's only 12 or 13 but already fearing personal reprisals for speaking out in favor of something as basic as her right to go to middle school.

More about the video at alt.muslim

Mary McDonnell and Edward James Olmos appeared with two of the show's executive producers, four UN officials, and moderator Whoopi Goldberg at a panel to discuss human rights, religious conflict, terrorism, gender issues, and other moral conflicts and dilemmas addressed on Battlestar Galactica. The whole panel (about two hours) is available on the UN webcast archives (scroll down to 17 March 2009).

Later, McDonnell responded eloquently to a question about the imperatives of the military versus the rule of democracy and Roslin’s role in executing the fleet’s enemies. For a woman who had been perceived, early on, as a tentative former schoolteacher, President Roslin didn’t blink when it came to tossing a fractious Cylon into space. In fact, in time fans started to call her character “Madam Airlock.”

“She can talk about how she was haunted by the airlock,” Eick said. “But she’s also the one who made it a verb.”

The US Department of Homeland Security is developing a system designed to detect "hostile thoughts" in people walking through border posts, airports and public places. The DHS says recent tests prove it works.

Project Hostile Intent as it was called aimed to help security staff choose who to pull over for a gently probing interview – or more.

Commentators slated the idea that sensors could spot people up to no good from their pulse rate, breathing, skin temperature, or fleeting facial expressions. One likened it to the "pre-crime" units that predict criminal behaviour in the movie Minority Report.

I can never decide whether to be relieved or embarrassed that our police state is so inept at policing the state.

It's not. In Egypt all the American rhetoric about democracy comes with so many caveats and explanations of what's meant by the word "democracy" — explanations Egyptians hear and Americans don't — that no one sees it as 'America failing to live up to its promise' or anything so forgiving. The issue here isn't rhetoric without teeth: it's that no one has been promised democracy in the first place. They've specifically been told that the U.S. will not be promoting democracy if it threatens to come at the expense of stability. Meanwhile American foreign aid dollars are the only thing holding up Mubarak's regime.

Virtual politics

A tool to mobilise?

"Foreign embassies follow up on these blogs and groups and report back to their countries," said Yassin. But most, if not all, of the bloggers' posts distort and misrepresent reality. "They send the wrong information about Egypt to the world," he claimed. Councilor Murad Hassan went further, insisting they deliberately manipulated facts, circulated fabricated pictures, and magnified individual incidents to mislead public opinion. "In addition, the kind of language they use to express their opinions is unsuitable and strange to our society," Hassan told Al-Ahram Weekly.

I said, before I even came here, that I was amazed how popular Facebook is in Egypt. Now that I'm here I've seen firsthand how common it is — even with people as old as me — to end conversations with "Are you on Facebook?" rather than "What's your phone number?" or "What's your e-mail?" I've started doing it myself.

I'm still not sure why it's so big. (One woman told me it was because "we're Arabs – we'll chat for hours with anybody about nothing." Ha.) But I think a real reason is that people are so mobile, especially with going back and forth to the Gulf. And Europe and elsewhere abroad, but especially to the Gulf, which is something members of all classes do. (Europe etc. is more of an upper-class thing.) On Facebook your information stays stable, even if your address and phone number change two or three times a year. And the 'groups' feature lends itself to organizing in a way that's less risky than it would be in Real Life.

This has been going on for several months now. It'll be interesting to see what comes of it.

ETA: rfmcdpei adds more links on this.

After entering her plea, the judge asked Shaw, "Mamn, what were you doing at the Wakonda Country Club?"

"I was attempting to make a citizen's arrest of Karl Rove, your honor," Shaw answered.

"Well," the judge looked up and said, "it's about time."

Rosenthal said: "Some people have said we shouldn’t have hired him because he supports the war in Iraq. That’s absurd."

Er, no. That’s maybe what Rosenthal is hearing — what people are actually saying is that he shouldn’t have been hired because he has been wrong on everything over the course of this war, not to mention the fact that he is an operator first and a commentator second, and his commentary is frequently and deliberately dishonest and misleading in the service of his objectives. If it became necessary to start drafting six year olds to maintain the occupation of Iraq, Bill Kristol would be first in line arguing that six year olds are really much more mature than anyone realizes, and that the experience would be a completely beneficial one for them.

Thursday morning (the 27th) my sister and I were leaving a gas station when I glanced at the newspaper rack and saw The Waterloo Courier's headline that Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated. I reacted the way you do when you hear something big, with what!'s and oh-my-god!'s, and then went searching through the rest of the rack to see if it was in any of the bigger papers, like The New York Times. It wasn't.

Now here is the thing. I honestly did not know if 1) it wasn't in any of the other papers because the news was so fresh that they hadn't gotten the story by the time they went to press, 2) if it was in the other papers but not considered enough of a story to make the front page, 3) if it had happened several days earlier and was old news by now, and I just hadn't heard it because I hadn't been following things, or 4) if it was even true.

Of course #1 did turn out to be right. The story broke, hard, within the hour, and then it was on every TV station, every radio station, my parents were talking about it, half my friends list posted about it, and my husband texted me the news on my phone.

But I thought about my reaction later, and realized what a crap shoot it's become, trying to predict what news will actually make it out of the apparent black hole that is the quote-unquote Muslim world. This goes for all international news, really, but I'm speaking about Muslim countries because so many Muslims complain about the way they're portrayed in the Western press, and I think this is often interpreted as a complaint, solely, about being portrayed negatively. Which is also a problem. But I think the larger issue is that, for all the news that we get in this country about Islam, the Middle East, and to a lesser extent South Asia, so much of it is the same five or six stories, re-hashed, continually, with American actors and American perspectives always, always, unrelentingly at the center. In retrospect it seems ludicrous that I could have thought Bhutto's assassination might be a page 16 blurb in the obits section, but then in so many other cases that's exactly how things have worked.

While I'm here and on the subject: HijabMan's sister and brother-in-law are in Pakistan right now and have been posting dispatches and analysis.

High school offers homeland security curriculum

Gerald Tirozzi, director of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, says he applauds Joppatowne for setting up a program designed to feed the "growth industry" supporting national security. "There are some wonderful vocational education programs out there," he says. But there also are many that are "dealing with outdated vocations. This is new and innovative."

It's also preparing for jobs, he says, that will "exist in vast quantities" for years to come.

(My husband: "Highly regrettable! That's one step under 'not helpful'! You know they're really pissed when they call something 'not helpful.'")

elephantkitty = an American couple doing research in Lahore, and they've been writing about the situation. They posted this very readable background on the recent history of Pakistan, plus other interesting stuff, like The L-Word's function in international diplomacy. Go read.

Around here, I think the typical reaction would be "What escalation of the American-Iranian conflict?" But here are some links worth pondering:

From Taromeet:

"Average people I talk to here do not believe the Bush administration would attack and/or invade Iran for a variety of reasons: the U.S. military is already spread too thin; the growing public unease about the war in Iraq; lack of public support for a third war; it's just too crazy an idea, even for these loons… I usually nod and acknowledge the logic of those arguments, which would certainly give better leaders pause. However, I do not believe this administration acts on logic. I think they have proven that time and again. While the idea of an attack on Iran has been bought up before, the tone seems to be changing from the theoretical to the inevitable. Recent weeks have brought some disturbing writings concerning a U.S. strike on Iran. These are not the rantings of wild-eyed, tin foil hat-wearing conspiracy theorists…"

Read more for the links she provides, from Juan Cole, The New Yorker, Harper's, Salon.com, and other sources that, as she says, are not exactly those of raving lunatics.

And Howard A. Rodman from The Huffington Post:

"[T]he foreign press, which during the run-up to Iraq was far less blinkered than, say, the Gray Lady, has been over this weekend treating an attack on Iran as a fait accompli. See this from the Telegraph (UK). The Times (UK) ran today a headline with the flat declaration, Pentagon 'three-day blitz' plan for Iran. The blitz includes what The Times terms 'plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran.'"

Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert at NYU, writes on the Global Affairs blog of an American media campaign, planned to begin this week, which will ramp up the rhetoric against Iran: "They don't think they'll ever get majority support for this–they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is 'plenty.'"

If that quote's accurate, if that's their standard, they shouldn't have any trouble. The Telegraph article (linked above) reports that "[t]he latest polls show that just one in five Americans would support the bombing of Iran now, but about half would do so if their government considered it necessary: clearly a position from which Mr Bush could build a case for war. Three out of four voters want to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons." *

Of course all this is unsourced speculation. Besides, even if it's true, the prospect of a public relations campaign in favor of war does not equal STOCK UP ON DUCT TAPE AND BOTTLED WATER NOW. Though the level of detail some of these war plans go into is enough to give a person pause, it's also true that — as one Pentagon source said — "We have a targeting list and there are plans, but then there are also plans for repelling an invasion from Canada." So.

But I also find it a bit naive to think that the only thing keeping us out of Iran right now is public disapproval.

For one thing, as the stats above show, the public isn't all that disapproving. For another, where is the evidence that Bu$h & Co. are above all else guided by their approval ratings?

Third, the plan as outlined is a three-day bombing attack, not a dreary commitment of Iraqi proportions. (Criticize that plan for what it is, but you must admit it's easier to sell when they frame it that way.)

Fourth, there's ample evidence that this PR campaign is already underway, cf. the designation of Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization — the first time such a label has been applied to a government's military, as opposed to an independent, non-state organization — or Bush's speech last week to the American Legion in Reno, in which he invoked the specter of nuclear holocaust and said, among other things, that he has "authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities."

Fifth, none of the current presidential front-runners have their political roots in the neocon movement. For you and me this signals a dim hope that the post-election world might be a slightly less Orwellian place, but for Bush et. al. it's call to panic. Once he's out of office, he and Cheney will retain political influence but they'll no longer have their fingers poised directly over The Button. I've heard people argue that any engagement with Iran is unlikely since it's so late in Bush's second term. It seems to me that's one of the better reasons to worry: they've wanted this for years, but their clock is running out.

Whatever they're up to, I wonder what they think they can accomplish in the next 16 months. If bombing's not on the table, what is?

I'm curious to know what folks outside the United States think.

* (For an excellent article outlining the background of Iran and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, read The US and the Iranian Nuclear Impasse.)

Douglas Laird, former security chief for Northwest Airlines, said, "It's hard to believe somebody's not testing the system. I don't normally take a block of cheese and attach wires to it."

These four incidents checked out. But now I'm curious, and I'm hoping some cheesemongers can help me out here:

> Why WOULD someone travel with their blocks of cheese wrapped in wire coils connected to batteries? Is there some obvious "oh yeah I do that with my cheese all the time" answer here that I'm not aware of?

and

> If someone DID want to use cheese in place of explosives for a "dry run" through an airport, what kind of cheese would you recommend?

One of the commenters here suggests Casu Marzu, Mimolette, or Milbenkäse.

Reporting anyone, even Bill O'Reilly, to the Secret Service is not funny, and it's not justified under 'giving them a taste of their own medicine' or proving that 'we' can be just as strong and decisive and asshole-ish as 'they' are.

All it does is normalize the citizen-informant climate they've introduced. Once that work is done, and anonymous tipping becomes a culturally acceptable way of handling personal grudges, it doesn't matter who's in power or what laws are on (or off) the books.

This isn't the first time I've seen something like this and it's working my last nerve.

Two points bear repeating here. One, from the blog post itself:

One problem is that the order cannot be attacked in the courts as unconstitutional unless and until it is used against someone, because no one else would have ’standing’. Being the political animals that they are, the first time they’ll use it will probably be against an undeniable sleazebag, someone almost certainly guilty of the charge. He’d have standing to challenge the order, but the ACLU and other interested groups would be trapped into ‘defending’ a terrorist. And that assumes that someone would be willing to violate the order by taking the case and risking having their entire firm’s assets frozen indefinitely.

And two, from one of the comments:

Q. But if you haven’t done anything wrong, there’s no reason to worry, right?

A. Yeah, unless you have spent any time at all thinking about who’s deciding what “wrong” is.

And in case you missed this gem, on cruising with the neocons:

On this ship, there are no Viet Cong, no three million dead. There is only liberal treachery. Yes, D'Souza says, in a swift shift to domestic politics, "of course" Republican politics is "about class. Republicans are the party of winners, Democrats are the party of losers."

Ok I'd quote more, but there's way too much. Seriously.

The book was published in 1937 and is as racist and colonialist as one would expect. There is much talk of the Natives, and their charming Native habits, etc. What it wasn't, though, was sexist, and watching the movie I was up in arms at little things I wouldn't even have noticed had I not read the book (for the first time) and watched the movie (for the first time) both in the same week.

I am not one of those people who needs a perfect match between the book and the screenplay, and even if I were, Out of Africa wouldn't be one of the darlings I felt obligated to protect. I also realize that a movie is dependent on dialogue in a way a book is not, and having Meryl Streep sitting alone in her kitchen saying "I am observing something about the Maasai…" just wouldn't work.

BUT, the way they chose to handle this was to turn the movie into a romance between Streep and Robert Redford, and put the author's words into his mouth. That's right, he explaaains Kenya to her, in his rugged, been-there-done-that way, and she, the sheltered woman, nods sagely at his wisdom, with just enough intelligence (this being Streep, not Paris Hilton) for the viewer to think, "my, what a good, almost-equal partner she makes! he's so independent, but she's smart enough to appreciate him! what a well-matched couple!" — when in reality the things he's explaaaining, about Gikuyu history and big game hunting, are taken almost verbatim from the book, i.e. stolen from the female narrator. Those should have been Streep's lines, with Redford, if he had to be there at all, being the one to do all the intent listening, all the thoughtful nodding.

Moreover! Because they made it into a romance above all else, the movie was actually more racist than the book was, even though it was made 50 years later. Because they'd turned Streep into a woman who primarily pined for her man, alone out on the sweeping African hills (how poetic!), the myriad relationships Isak Dinesen had with Kenyans were written out. It's true she did have this lover who would come and stay with her every now and then, and I'm sure that was hot and everything, but most of her energy was spent trying to make her farm work and on interacting with people who weren't out on safari ten months a year. Although her relationships with Kenyans were deeply problematic in a colonial context, at least those relationships _existed_, and took up a good portion of her attention and thus a good portion of her ink.

In the movie, however, she's got a couple of African servants or something, whatever — cut to a shot of her on her porch! wind in her hair! wishing her white boyfriend would come home and kiss her on the mouth. Both of them are portrayed as outsiders among the other colonials, which was true in the memoir as well, but making Redford the leading man (as opposed to occasional visitor) forces whatever knowledge he's acquired of the culture and the landscape to be packaged as evidence of his rugged independence, rather than evidence of things he's learned from the Kenyans, and because Streep's the girl and can't out-independent him, her relationships are even more superficial. There's no room for African characters in that set-up, at least none with any background, history, complexity, or expertise in anything that would outshine Redford. So they mostly plant coffee and sweep floors and do things in large mobs.

2. I also saw World Trade Center. From the trailer, I thought it would be a sappy sentimental ode to cops and firefighters, and how surprising would that be, because that's not anything I've heard before in relation to 9/11. Instead it was a disaster movie about some heavy stuff that fell on these two guys.

Whether or not you watch or like the show, it's an interesting look at the "but it's just television!" defense, used repeatedly and then interspersed with comments from soldier-fans in Iraq (who just happen to be *actual interrogators*), and meetings the writers have with the likes of Mary Cheney and Karl Rove.

Please – let me know that you are all right! I heard that some people in Boston were exposed to terroristic cartoon character images flipping them off! I hope that you are all OK.

See ya.

My two new heroes are Sean Stevens and Peter Berdovsky, the two guys arrested for their illegal use of outer space men imagery. Released on bail, they agreed to talk to reporters but would only answer questions about 1970s hairstyles. Best evidence I've seen yet that this insane era may finally be winding down, not only in its rhetoric but in the force behind it, in the realm of actual consequences.

Especially because the one dude's a non-citizen here looking for asylum, case still pending. I mean I laughed at Homeland Security's stoplight of death, too, for example, but admittedly it was only funny if you weren't one of the guys they were rounding up. We're still there, mind you. But.

Anyway, I wish Turner Broadcasting would do that more often. The T was almost empty Wednesday night. I had a seat for me, a seat for my bag, and empty seats on either side. At 6 p.m. on a weekday! That never happens.

The group calls itself Revolutionary Struggle, which I think is awesome because it's like calling cat food Cat Food, but even better is this morning's description from USA Today, that bastion of Serious In-Depth Reporting, which describes them as having "socialist, and somewhat anarchist, ideologies" and showing "strict opposition to current Greek economic policies and political systems as well as the capitalist nature of the West in general."

Well, that narrows it down!

"What good is identifying them?" he asked. "You have to set up encampments like during World War Two with the Japanese and Germans."

At the end of the one-hour show, rich with arguments on why visual identification of "the threat in our midst" would alleviate the public's fears, Klein revealed that he had staged a hoax…

I can't listen anymore. I'm done. There is absolutely nothing that has come out of this war that wasn't predicted before it began. I'm open to hearing people say "I weighed the evidence and at the time I believed X, but now I think Y." I'm even open to hearing hawkish ends-justify-the-means -style arguments. But I'm totally OVER hearing people Americans tell themselves there was just no way, oh *twists hands*, anyone could have seen what was coming round the corner.

¹ Published 08/14/02. Just one example.
² Favorite line: "The extent of the global spread of protest is highlighted by the fact that even the Polar region saw protests with a group of scientists at the US McMurdo Station in Antarctica holding a rally."

Qaeda-Iraq Link U.S. Cited Is Tied to Coercion Claim

During his time in Egyptian custody, Mr. Libi was among a group of what American officials have described as about 150 prisoners sent by the United States from one foreign country to another since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks for the purposes of interrogation. American officials including Ms. Rice have defended the practice, saying it draws on language and cultural expertise of American allies, particularly in the Middle East, and provides an important tool for interrogation.

"Cultural expertise" — you mean torture, right? Oh, no no:

They have said that the United States carries out the renditions only after obtaining explicit assurances from the receiving countries that the prisoners will not be tortured.

Hmm. Let's read on.

Nabil Fahmy, the Egyptian ambassador to the United States, said in a telephone interview on Thursday that he had no specific knowledge of Mr. Libi's case. Mr. Fahmy acknowledged that some prisoners had been sent to Egypt by mutual agreement between the United States and Egypt. "We do interrogations based on our understanding of the culture," Mr. Fahmy said. "We're not in the business of torturing anyone."

Now, maybe Mr. Fahmy is speaking here in the Clintonian sense. They're not in the business of torturing anyone, as in they don't hang a sign on the door that says "Pesky fingernails getting in your way? Not enough electricity in your genitalia? Torture! Available now! Year-end close-out sale on all the latest coercion techniques! Hurry while supplies last!" Maybe he means that, in Egypt, torture is one of the few things not yet privatized, though if the World Bank has its way I'm sure they'll get around to that eventually.

On the other hand, if we take a more global view, I'd say that's exactly what Egypt is in the business of doing. When the U.S. outsources interrogation, where is it going to go? Norway? There's a reason Egypt is the second-largest recipient of American aid, and it's not so much because the Americans are worried about 5-year-old Ali getting enough Vitamin B.

Nevertheless, we, as in Americans, still like to think of torture as aberrant, a shameful secret, because although we know our own government "crosses the line" sometimes (like my euphemism?), we understand that when such information comes to light it should involve hearings, investigations, and the rolling of heads. This is why names like "Abu Ghraib" and "Rodney King" are used in conjunction with the word "scandal," even by those who aren't surprised.

Contrast that with the time an Egyptian friend of mine had to stop by the local police station in Cairo to do some paperwork. The errand took longer than he expected because the cops were busy beating a man they'd picked up for having sex with another man. They left him bloody on the floor of his cell and might have continued until he was dead, but the line was backing up out front and they had other work to do. My friend got his papers signed and left. He did not report the incident, because there was no one to report such things to, and even if there had been it would only serve to implicate himself. He'd seen that kind of thing before and knew there was nothing you could do about it. Such is life in a police state.

Keep in mind these were junior cops in a random cop shop in Cairo, not members of the intelligence hand-picked by the Americans to interrogate members of Al-Qaeda. Does Condoleeza Rice seriously expect us to believe that suspected terrorists in a back room are going to get a warmer, more welcoming treatment than Random Gay Guy gets in full view of the public at large? Why are they even continuing with this charade, saying we don't export terror, no, we're only interested in the Egyptians' "cultural expertise"? If I had to guess, I'd say it's because Egyptians (and the torture victims) have no recourse to complain about the situation, and Americans don't care.

In other Egypt news, the Muslim Brotherhood made record gains in Egypt's parliamentary election last week, despite violence at the polls which left at least six dead as the government tried to prohibit Islamist sympathizers from voting. ([Pictures])

Meanwhile Israel readies forces for strike on nuclear Iran.

I'm so glad the world is safer for democracy.

But at the same time people are asking "why Egypt?" and it upsets me that the press isn't contextualizing this. It's being treated as yet another tragic loss of life, which of course it is, but ultimately a footnote to London: All this violence! It's just terrible! What is the world coming to!

There's no acknowledgment that Egypt's fate is wrapped up with our own, and I don't mean that in a generic "we are all brothers on this ball called Earth" kind of way. I mean it as in Egypt is considered the first place grand prize for al-Qaeda and its sympathizers. Destabilizing America and its economy via 9/11 was an attempt to make the U.S. re-think its support for this and other corrupt regimes in the Middle East (as opposed to some kind of commentary on our culture or lifestyle — if that were true, they would have bombed Las Vegas). And while it would be nice for Bin Laden et. al. if Tunisia or Qatar swung Islamist, it's Egypt and Saudi Arabia that they're really after.*

They've made no secret of this. None. That's what it's been about from the beginning. These are the two most influential countries in the Middle East, and at present both are deeply in bed with America, which might be an afterthought except that America is deeply in bed with Israel and has spent the last 15 years crushing Iraq. Al-Qaeda has no hope or interest in turning Western countries into Islamic theocracies. But this is absolutely their intention in Egypt. Fucking with us is a means to that end, not the other way around, so if anything is going to send FOX News into a fit of paranoia it should be the escalation of violence in Sinai, not the bombings in London.

But isn't "escalation" just another name for "same shit, different day"? From an ideological perspective yes, but from a tactical perspective no. Several radical groups split from the Muslim Brotherhood after the Brothers denounced violence in the 1970s; among them were Islamic Jihad, who assassinated Sadat, and al-Gamayya al-Islamiyya, who began targeting Egypt's tourism industry in 1992. Contrary to popular opinion, tourists were not targeted for their quote-unquote "immorality"**, but because tourism is a major industry in Egypt and provides the country with one of its primary sources of foreign currency, which Egypt needs to pay back its foreign debt and thus be eligible for more loans and American aid (which it in turn needs to continue propping up its otherwise incapacitated economy). Destabilize the tourist industry, in other words, and you destabilize Mubarak's regime, which is utterly dependent on it. Between 1992 and 1997 there was a string of attacks aimed at tourists and tourist targets, culminating with the Luxor massacre. Tourism did in fact drop, though probably not as much as the Islamists would have liked.

Of course Mubarak, dictator that he is, responded to these attacks in kind, by indiscriminately rounding up and torturing those believed to be associated with the Islamists. This silenced some elements of the movement and invigorated others. An uneasy truce was finally declared after the Luxor massacre and after a time al-Gamayya al-Islamiyya was presumed crushed, its followers either dead, imprisoned, or reformed. But there was a smaller, fourth contingent, too: those who slipped out of Egypt and began training in Afghanistan. They became America's problem in 2001.

Remarkably, though, there were still no major incidents in Egypt, in spite of the growing anti-Western sentiment following the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the continued parade of human rights abuses by the Egyptian government for everything from "tarnishing Egypt's image abroad" to reports of gay activity and Satanism. (Apparently the gays, the Satanists, and the image-tarnishers are not much for blowing things up.) That changed with the Taba bombing*** last October, which was the first terrorist incident in Egypt since Luxor seven years earlier. With that the country reverted back to the Bad Old Days, including the imprisonment of over 2,500 Egyptians who might have been involved, or knew someone who was, or knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who was. As the Western press was falling all over itself praising Mubarak (and by extension Bush) for introducing the possibility of democracy in Egypt (which was overstated anyway) Mubarak was overseeing the illegal detention and torture of thousands of its citizens, a fact that the Americans conveniently chose to overlook. The Sharm El-Sheikh bombing, which coincided with the first day of the Taba trial, was in part a retaliation for this sweep. This is the biggest terrorist attack in Egyptian history**** and more proof that revolutionary Islam, a movement thought crushed in 1997, is making a comeback in the largest and most politically powerful country in the Arab world. It also once again floats the fundamental question — common to Iraq and Algeria — over how a country can achieve full democracy when a slim majority or large minority advocates a form of Islamic rule that is inherently undemocratic. So far the most popular compromise seems to be "initiate human and civil rights in every corner except where they involve women," but I'm not satisfied with that answer.

What bugs me most, though? Americans have no language to talk about modern terrorism except through the lens of personal fear. So you can never ever discuss the subject, lest someone think you fell asleep in statistics class and are afraid for your own life, and that's, like, the dorkiest thing ever, worse than reading The Hardy Boys in elementary school or cross-stitching something that says "Bless This House" and hanging it in your living room. That leaves us talking about it in terms of tragedy, which of course it is, and discussing the possible civil liberties issues these events might raise, as of course we should, but as long as an attack like this gets written off as more of the same, *sigh* its real foreign policy implications will be ignored and remain unchallenged. Which is the sort of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.

* Actually reclaiming Palestine is the first place grand prize, but the cooperation of Egypt is considered rucial to this process.
** Although I'm sure there was no love lost there, either. There HAVE been isolated cases of soldiers shooting at Israeli sunbathers in Sinai, but these are not generally considered part of any organized terror campaign.
*** In addition to its connection to the tourist industry, Sinai is significant because it's still controlled under the terms of Egypt's peace treaty with Israel, which among other things limits the police force Egypt can maintain there. Diaaudin Dawood, chairman of the Nasserist Democratic Party, said, "It is indeed a no man's land as it falls under Israeli-termed peace agreements that emasculate Egyptian control over the region."
**** Well, recent history anyway. Egypt has a lot of history.

I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to work that way.

Constitutional Change
By Paul Schemm and Lina Atallah

Soon after the euphoria following the announcement that Egyptians would be able to choose their presidents for the first time ever, activists and opposition politicians began to question how different the new system really is.

On 2 March, the parliament's constitutional affairs committee drew up a framework for the amendment, including conditions for presidential candidates. The results have been almost universally condemned by the opposition and independent political commentators.

"We refuse to go back to the referendum system from a back door," roared a headline in the opposition daily Al Wafd a day later.

The new conditions require candidates to have the support of a certain percentage of elected parliamentarians or members of the local councils in the governorates. The obvious problem for the opposition here is that currently 80 percent of the parliament is controlled by the ruling party, along with the vast majority of local councils. In fact the government itself, in the form of presidential chief of staff Zakariya Azmi, once described the councils as riddled with corruption. (more)

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Any Takers?
By Ursula Lindsey

Even though the constitution is being changed to allow them to field candidates for presidential elections this fall, most parties and opposition groups have serious reservations regarding whether it will be in their power, or their interest, to run.

President of liberal Al Wafd Party Noman Gomaa says he has reached no decision regarding his own possible candidature. “I have no answer currently. It’s not easy to say. It’s a decision to take in the month of May when the text [of the amendment] is published. There are voices and opinions in the party… saying we should present ourselves, take the opportunity to try, but it’s not decided yet.”

Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour, a member of parliament for Al Wafd, says he will advise the party not to present a candidate. “It has never been in the minds of Egyptian politicians to be able to challenge the president,” he says, “and as a result political parties do not have the means—financial, physical, organizational—to do so.”

(more)

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Growing anger at arrests
With thousands said to be still detained without charges in the post-Taba crackdown, the situation in Sinai remains tense, reports Mustafa El-Menshawy

Although Arish, the capital of North Sinai, appears calm, tensions are palpable just beneath the surface. Police patrols and checkpoints seem far too frequent for such a sleepy beach town, and most people are unusually nervous about talking to strangers. Almost every week, dozens of people stage a sit-in after Friday prayers demanding that their relatives — detained after last October's Taba blasts — be released.

The blasts were blamed on nine suspects, all from North Sinai — two were killed in the attacks, two others died after clashes with police, and the five remaining are in custody. According to human rights groups, however, some 2,400 local residents have also been detained; local and international human rights groups have said many of them have been subjected to "brutal torture".

"My husband has been detained since October, and I [was] only [allowed to] visit him this week at the state security office in Cairo. He looked pale and ill, and complained that he had been brutally beaten by the interrogators," Sabha Turefi told Al-Ahram Weekly. "He said he had been blind-folded, with his hands tied behind his back, and stripped down to his underpants despite the cold. He complained about being electrocuted, and hung by his hands from the door for hours," the traumatised 25-year-old wife said, in tears.

She said her husband had done nothing wrong; in any case, the authorities have at no point indicated what, if any, charges these individuals were being held on. Turefi said her husband's offence was that he was "bearded. Can you imagine?"

Others who were detained and released told similar stories of interrogations accompanied by torture, including electrocution. Those who had not been tortured said they had heard screaming, or saw security forces inflicting pain on other detainees.

(more)

Opening the window
By Amira Howeidy

The New York-based international rights group, Human Rights Watch (HRW), released a 43-page report on Tuesday documenting mass arrests and torture in Sinai following the 7 October bombings at the Taba Hilton and two Sinai tourist camps, which killed 34 people, and injured 159.

Two weeks after the bombings, the Interior Ministry identified the assailants as nine Sinai residents; five were in custody, two were killed in the attack, and two remained at large. The ministry said the ringleader — one of the two suspects killed during the bombings — was Iyad Said Salah, a Palestinian with a criminal record who had turned to Islamist extremism, provoked by the Israeli incursion into Rafah at the time into carrying out the attack. Although the ministry announced that the investigation now boiled down to a hunt for the two remaining suspects, subsequent events revealed a far wider security operation was actually taking place.

At least three Egyptian human rights groups documented that mass arrests continued until early December. According to these groups, 2,500 to 3,000 people were detained without charges. The impact of this revelation, made just two months ago, was short lived, limited to a few reports in the opposition press; other news — from the release of an Israeli spy to Coptic-Muslim tension in Upper Egypt — soon drove the story into the background.

Joe Stork, the Washington-based director of HRW's Middle East and North Africa division, told Al-Ahram Weekly that Egyptian human rights groups had "opened a brief window" on the case, "then it was shut again. We are trying to open the window." Stork wrote HRW's Mass Arrests and Torture in Sinai report, and carried out its research with Ahmed Seif El-Islam, director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre, and Aida Seif El-Dawla, chair of the Egyptian Association Against Torture.

They visited Sinai in mid-December for two days, interviewing former detainees, and eyewitnesses to arrests in Al-Arish. In every one of the score of cases HRW investigated, the State Security Investigation (SSI) apparatus had detained individuals without informing them of the reason why. They were usually arrested in pre- dawn raids (many during the month of Ramadan), and those who were picked up were usually held for three days to one week without being charged. While some were released, most were transferred to Tora prison in Cairo and Damanhour Prison in the Nile Delta, the report said. Most of the detainees were Islamists, or thought to be. "This suggests that the official statement [issued by the Interior Ministry on the Sinai bombings] did not fully reflect the investigation into the attacks," the report said, "or that the government was using the occasion to carry out a much broader crackdown against potential opponents, particularly identified as having Islamist sympathies."

HRW said it interviewed several former detainees who provided "credible accounts of torture" at the hands of SSI investigators; others spoke of seeing other detainees who had been badly tortured. The report included horrifying testimonies from two of the detainees. 26-year- old Hamid Batrawi, whose four brothers were already in custody, was arrested on 22 November while driving from Al-Arish to southern Sinai. He was taken to a police station near Suez, and then transferred to the SSI headquarters there. Upon his arrival, the SSI officers asked why he had not mentioned that his brothers had been arrested. He was then stripped to his underpants, his hands tied behind his back, and hung by his hands from the top of an iron door, "causing excruciating pain to his shoulders". With his toes just touching the floor, which was wet, wires were attached to his toes and underpants. He was then beaten with a hose, and administered jolts of electricity every couple of minutes; the shock intensified when his toes rested on the wet floor. This continued for about four and a half hours, after which he was transferred to Suez hospital. When Seif El-Dawla visited him in hospital, she said he could not talk, see or walk.

The second detainee, Abdel-Nour Sayed (not his real name) was picked up from his home at 3am on 18 October; he was held with 200 other detainees for six days in small rooms with no toilet facilities. He told HRW that he was tortured during his first interrogation session upon the orders of a man "who did not speak" and who "was not Egyptian".

Although the report does not address the possible involvement of non-Egyptian interrogators, Sayed's words re-triggered questions about the nature of Israel's role in the investigation. Egypt allowed the Israeli army to enter the area immediately after the bombings to help with rescue operations, official statements at the time said.

Mass Arrests and Torture in Sinai was released during a well-attended press conference at the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre; significantly, around a dozen female relatives of the detainees had come to Cairo from Sinai for the event.

Iman Ahmed Himdan said that security forces stormed her house looking for her husband Ahmed Abdallah Himdan, who was at large. "When they didn't find my husband at home, they took my 16-year-old brother, and started threatening him, and calling him indecent names," Himdan, who wears a black niqab (face veil), said. "The police didn't know I was Ahmed's wife, but when I saw my little brother go through this, I was provoked, and shouted, 'I'm Ahmed's wife, leave my brother alone.' So they took both of us," she told the Weekly. The couple had only been married for three months, and Himdan was two months pregnant. "We were taken to the SSI north Sinai headquarters. My brother was blindfolded, stripped, and beaten severely. Both of us were threatened with electrocution if we didn't tell them where my husband was. We were held for a week, during which I had a nervous breakdown, and an abortion." Himdan and her brother were only released when her husband handed himself in. He's still in custody, she said.

Himdan's cousin, Samah Abu Shita, had a similar experience when police stormed her house "from the window, the balcony and door", during which they stepped on her four-month-old baby girl, and broke one of her ribs. "Our men have done nothing but live as committed, practicing Muslims; they have nothing to do with any illegal activity, and they haven't been charged with anything," she said. Her husband and four brothers have been in custody since November. According to the HRW report, only 100 detainees have been released; some 2,400 remain in detention.

Other victims of the post-Taba bombing security crackdown include the director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre, Ahmed Seif El-Islam, who told reporters at Tuesday's press conference that his house was broken into, and his laptop stolen, at around the same time that the centre issued its initial report on the Sinai arrests. "Back then I thought it was just a burglary," he said. But then, on Monday 21 February, his house was broken into again — this time in broad daylight at noon. His new laptop was stolen, and all of his papers thoroughly searched. "I got the message," he said, "and this is my reply: I will not be silenced, and I will gladly give my blood for freedom."

The press conference fell into a shocked silence.

"There is this disregard, this lawlessness, on the part of the security services that even goes beyond the emergency law, that the authorities have not addressed," Stork told the Weekly. "They have not investigated these abuses, as far as we know, or prosecuted anybody. This issue of impunity is a very important one."

Since December, Stork's requests to meet with Egyptian officials have been ignored; only on the eve of the press conference, on Monday at "midnight", was he informed that he would be meeting with officials at the Interior Ministry and the Prosecutor-General.

In what appears to be a coordinated government reaction to the HRW report, the Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Tuesday taking issue with HRW for not notifying the authorities in advance about the report, "to allow time for a studied response". That HRW issued this report based on fieldwork, the statement said, "demonstrates Egypt's openness and transparency in human rights issues". It rejected HRW's recommendation that the Egyptian government cancel the emergency law, arguing that only the "Egyptian people have the legitimate right to end the emergency law though their representatives in parliament".

It said that only five people were held in custody in connection with the Taba bombings.

A George Rogers Clark High School junior arrested Tuesday for making terrorist threats told LEX 18 News Thursday that the "writings" that got him arrested are being taken out of context.

Winchester police say William Poole, 18, was taken into custody Tuesday morning. Investigators say they discovered materials at Poole's home that outline possible acts of violence aimed at students, teachers, and police.

Poole told LEX 18 that the whole incident is a big misunderstanding. He claims that what his grandparents found in his journal and turned into police was a short story he wrote for English class.

"My story is based on fiction," said Poole, who faces a second-degree felony terrorist threatening charge. "It's a fake story. I made it up. I've been working on one of my short stories, (and) the short story they found was about zombies. Yes, it did say a high school. It was about a high school over ran by zombies."

Even so, police say the nature of the story makes it a felony. "Anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function it's a felony in the state of Kentucky," said Winchester Police detective Steven Caudill.

Poole disputes that he was threatening anyone.

"It didn't mention nobody who lives in Clark County, didn't mention (George Rogers Clark High School), didn't mention no principal or cops, nothing,"
said Poole. "Half the people at high school know me. They know I'm not that stupid, that crazy."

On Thursday, a judge raised Poole's bond from one to five thousand dollars after prosecutors requested it, citing the seriousness of the charge.

Poole is being held at the Clark County Detention Center.

"I am a nigger, and you will just have to put up with my blackness"

I met Amina Wadud two years ago and one thing she said, which will always stick with me, was, "Sometimes you read things" [in Islam] "and you say to yourself, this can't be right. And you have to go from there." This article talks about her disagreement with hudud punishments like the cutting of thieves' hands, or the permission to beat one's wife. Note that she's not saying that's not really what the Qur'an said, or "at the time the Qur'an was written this was appropriate but now we have to interpret things in light of modern circumstances," yadda yadda. She's saying yes, it's in there, and she finds it amoral anyway.

Breaking the ultimate taboo in the Muslim narrative, she stated that despite the fact the Qur'an explicitly asks for cutting off the hands of thieves, she did not agree with the Qur'an. She said she understood that this was a very difficult subject to talk about, but she would be dishonest to herself if she did not express her views.

She maintained that as a Muslim with Allah close to her heart, in all honesty she could not continue with the hypocrisy of lying about how she felt about some verses of the Qur'an.

The audience all but stoned her.

Her book, Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective, is also well worth reading.

Now, for once, they had a chance to put their money where their mouth is, and they caved.

Reaction from the Center for Constitutional Rights is here.

Rights activists reported last month that Egyptian police had detained 2500 people in Sinai and tortured many of them in the hunt for those behind the 7 October bombings targeting Israeli tourists in Taba and two other resorts, which killed at least 34 people.

…

The report by human rights groups in November, which quoted victims and witnesses, said police had hanged men by their arms for hours, with electrodes attached to their toes, and burned their skin with devices that looked like oven lighters.

It also said security forces had taken 140 Sinai women hostage in the hope their families would turn in their menfolk.

The government says it does not condone torture and punishes torturers when it comes across abuses.

Egypt has blamed the blasts on a Palestinian and three Sinai Bedouin, saying there was no indication the bombers were linked to al-Qaida, as Israel and the United States have suggested.

Most of the alleged bombers and accomplices come from al-Arish in north Sinai, close to the border with the Gaza Strip, the government said.

(more)

After three days of listening to graphic testimony at the refugee hearing of South Dakota war resister Jeremy Hinzman, one observer sitting near me shakily remarks, "If you're not a pacifist after sitting through this then nothing will make you into one." In this harshly lit hearing room on Victoria, a refugee board adjudicator is going to have to rule on a most shocking proposition: whether this former soldier of the U.S. 82nd Airborne ought to be granted asylum because he fears participating in war crimes in Iraq.

Those packing the room – mostly Quakers and other peace types – are busy trying to send subliminal messages to presiding member Brian Goodman through their anti-war buttons and peace quilts.

Round one has already been lost. A technical legal ruling forbids Hinzman's counsel, Jeffry House, from arguing the illegality of the war in Iraq and a soldier's duty not to participate in such a war. House considers the ruling a huge ground for appeal should Hinzman be denied refugee status.

But House has another card up his sleeve – an Ontario Court of Appeal precedent in the case of Fereidoon Zolfagharkhani, who deserted from the Iranian military upon learning that Iran intended to gas Kurds. Zolfagharkani was a paramedic, and it would have been his job to treat Kurdish people who didn't die from the attacks so they could withstand interrogation. He won the right to asylum in Canada, and House hopes a similar logic will work in Hinzman's case.

The point at issue is whether Hinzman, as a member of the 82nd, would have been forced to kill civilians or participate in violations of the Geneva Convention during his tour of duty. So House has entered exhibits of media reports from the Washington Post, Democracy NOW and Human Rights Watch with such titles as U.S. Military Attacks On Population Centers, U.S. Military Attacks On Health Clinics and U.S. Military Attacks On Civilians.

Info relating specifically to the exploits of the 82nd Airborne are easy enough to Google. I did the search myself and found a Human Rights Watch report documenting actions of the 82nd Airborne that resulted in the deaths of seven unarmed civilians.

As that report details, "soldiers from the 82nd Airborne's 3rd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment raided the apartment of Fadhil Hamza Hussain al-Janabi in al-Mahmudiyya on the outskirts of Baghdad after receiving a tip from a local pool hall about 'bad guys' in the neighborhood… Al-Janabi's 19-year-old daughter Farah was killed, as was a neighbor."

Outside reports of the 82nd, Hinzman's case turns on how well he can articulate the growing worries he harbours about becoming a killing machine. During his wife's pregnancy back in South Dakota, Hinzman began to disdain his training, which included chanting, "Trained to kill! Kill we will!" Fatherhood, he says, cemented his belief that, unlike the other soldiers, he couldn't make the grass grow with bright red blood.

Two months after his baby's birth and several months before shipping out to Afghanistan, he filed a very complicated conscientious objector (CO) application. "I didn't feel I could kill. I could have done other jobs in the Army," Hinzman says.

What happened then isn't entirely clear. Somehow, the papers were lost and Hinzman resubmitted his CO application. At this point he was in Afghanistan doing kitchen duty. Then one day while scrubbing pots, he says, superiors pulled him from his duties, brought him in front of a tribunal and quickly denied him CO status.

Upon returning to the U.S., he came to realize his only option was to flee to Canada. He led a hard double life, he says – by day training to deploy to Iraq and by night planning an escape route north.

"We were going to Iraq to jack up terrorists. We were told this was a new kind of war, that these people weren't human and that they were not to be treated in a humane way. We were told by commanders in pep talks that these people are evil."

Needing more specifics on who the army considered evil, presiding member Goodman asks, "Who were they referring to as terrorists?"

Hinzman chillingly replies, "They associate everyone in the area as a terrorist."

"The entire population of Iraq was considered a terrorist?" Goodman asks.

"We referred to Iraqis, Saudis, Kuwaitis, Yemenis, Iranians as terrorist, as they came from the Middle East," comes Hinzman's reply.

Somewhat disbelieving, Goodman asks again, "All Arabs from that region were terrorists?"

"Correct, sir."

Though the war in Iraq isn't on trial, House manages to highlight U.S. soldiers' propensity to kill Iraqi civilians. When he introduces his star witness, Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy J. Massey, immigration rep Janet Chisholm weakly objects. "He doesn't have a similar position in the Army," she says of Massey, and suggests he couldn't possibly be an expert on the Geneva Convention.

The soft-spoken, bespectacled Massey, who is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from his tour in Iraq, was not only trained in the Geneva Convention since boot camp but was also assigned to ensure firefights were clean – i.e., carried out according to the army's Standing Operating Procedures and the Geneva Convention.

Within Massey's first 48 hours in Iraq, his platoon of 45 had slaughtered 30 unarmed men, women and children at checkpoints. Marines are trained to set up checkpoints according to a set procedure, but Massey testifies that military fearmongering "was giving us the mindset that every Iraqi was a terrorist."

Now the former Marine even questions whether their procedure for trying to stop a vehicle entering a checkpoint could have been sending the wrong message to approaching Iraqis. As cars moved towards them, a Marine would flash what they believed was the international "Halt" hand symbol, a closed fist in the air. Of course, it is easily mistaken for the internationally recognized brotherhood or solidarity gesture, which is exactly the same.

All this happened in a matter of seconds as the fear of suicide bombers created itchy trigger fingers. "We fired at a cyclic rate. We pulled the trigger and didn't stop," Massey says.

"I witnessed Marines putting rounds into enemy combatants who were expiring. It is not uncommon for a Marine to put rounds in the head of someone playing possum," he says.

Besides trying to establish the realities of soldiering in Iraq, the hearing also puts Hinzman's religious beliefs under the microscope. The war resister and his family attend twice-weekly Quaker gatherings. They are tenders, not members, but Hinzman says that after years of quiet contemplation, he would apply to become a member.

The other question before the refugee board is whether Hinzman is a refugee by reason of a well-founded fear of persecution. To establish this, he would have to show that the U.S. government and its military would persecute him for reasons of political opinion, religion or membership in a social group – namely conscientious objectors to military service in the U.S. Army in Iraq.

All this Goodman will have to weigh to determine if the horrors that he repeatedly heard in gross, exacting detail meet the requirements set out by the Court of Appeal. With written submissions from House and Chisholm not due until the end of January, a ruling probably won't drop until March. Then the world will learn whether Canada considers the actions of the U.S. Army in Iraq to be so dire that conscientious objectors are in need of our protection.

ITHACA, N.Y. — In a study to determine how much the public fears terrorism, almost half of respondents polled nationally said they believe the U.S. government should — in some way — curtail civil liberties for Muslim Americans, according to a new survey released today (Dec. 17) by Cornell University.

About 27 percent of respondents said that all Muslim Americans should be required to register their location with the federal government, and 26 percent said they think that mosques should be closely monitored by U.S. law enforcement agencies. Twenty-nine percent agreed that undercover law enforcement agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations, in order to keep tabs on their activities and fund raising. About 22 percent said the federal government should profile citizens as potential threats based on the fact that they are Muslim or have Middle Eastern heritage. In all, about 44 percent said they believe that some curtailment of civil liberties is necessary for Muslim Americans.

Conversely, 48 percent of respondents nationally said they do not believe that civil liberties for Muslim Americans should be restricted.

The Media and Society Research Group, in Cornell's Department of Communication, commissioned the poll, which was supervised by the Survey Research Institute, in Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. The results were based on 715 completed telephone interviews of respondents across the United States, and the poll has a margin of error of 3.6 percent.

The survey also examined the relation of religiosity to perceptions of Islam and Islamic countries among Christian respondents. Sixty-five percent of self-described highly religious people queried said they view Islam as encouraging violence more than other religions do; in comparison, 42 percent of the respondents who said they were not highly religious saw Islam as encouraging violence. In addition, highly religious respondents also were more likely to describe Islamic countries as violent (64 percent), fanatical (61 percent) and dangerous (64 percent). Fewer of the respondents who said they were not highly religious described Islamic countries as violent (49 percent), fanatical (46 percent) and dangerous (44 percent). But 80 percent of all respondents said they see Islamic countries as being oppressive toward women.

"Our results highlight the need for continued dialogue about issues of civil liberties in time of war," says James Shanahan, Cornell associate professor of communication and a principal investigator in the study. Shanahan and Erik Nisbet, senior research associate with the ILR Survey Research Institute, commissioned the study, and Ron Ostman, professor of communication, and his students administered it.

Shanahan notes: "Most Americans understand that balancing political freedoms with security can sometimes be difficult. Nevertheless, while a majority of Americans support civil liberties even in these difficult times, and while more discussion about civil liberties is always warranted, our findings highlight that personal religiosity as well as exposure to news media are two important correlates of support for restrictions. We need to explore why these two very important channels of discourse may nurture fear rather than understanding."

Researchers found that opinions on restricting civil liberties for Muslim Americans vary by political self-identification. About 40 percent of Republican respondents agreed that Muslim Americans should be required to register their whereabouts, compared with 24 percent of Democratic respondents and 17 percent of independents. Forty-one percent of Republican respondents said that Muslim American civic groups should be infiltrated, compared with 21 percent of Democrats and 27 percent of independents.

On whether mosques should be monitored, about 34 percent of the Republicans polled agreed they should be, compared with 22 percent of Democrats. Thirty-four percent of Republicans said that profiling of Muslim Americans is necessary, compared with 17 percent of Democrats.

The survey also showed a correlation between television news-viewing habits, a respondent's fear level and attitudes toward restrictions on civil liberties for all Americans. Respondents who paid a lot of attention to television news were more likely to favor restrictions on civil liberties, such as greater power for the government to monitor the Internet. Respondents who paid less attention to television news were less likely to support such measures. "The more attention paid to television news, the more you fear terrorism, and you are more likely to favor restrictions on civil liberties," says Nisbet.

WASHINGTON, DC — Cousin Wattle, the official National Thanksgiving Turkey who was to have been pardoned by President Bush in an annual White House ceremony that dates back to the Truman administration, is currently being held without formal charges or access to legal counsel, White House press secretary Scott McClellan confirmed Tuesday…

But as a Nov. 7 Boston Globe article points out, the idea isn't as much of a joke as one might expect. For 200 years Canada has provided refuge to various groups of Americans, including Quakers who didn't want to fight in the Revolutionary War, Native Americans who thought the Canadians would be better at respecting their treaties, African-Americans before and after slavery (though most especially between 1850-1865, after the 1850 passage of the Fugitive Slave Act but before the end of the Civil War), American intellectuals escaping McCarthyism, and of course Vietnam draft-dodgers in the 1960s.

The "stay-and-fight!" crowd certainly has a point. The Republican reaction to threats to emigrate might best be summed up as don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out, and progressives are right to be wary of abandoning their country to those who would do the most damage to it. On the other hand, I've yet to see much discussion over what the word "fight" actually means. Does it mean voting? Rallies and demonstrations? Op-ed letters to American newspapers? Writing angry screeds on the internet? Making radical art and music? Paying taxes? Evading taxes? Signing all those MoveOn petitions? All of these things can be accomplished whether one is sitting in New York or New Zealand.

I understand that many people express their activism in other ways, perhaps primarily through their paid employment, but I admit to scratching my head in confusion at the level of venom being spewed at those who are talking about emigration, when both those doing the talking and those doing the spewing maybe have a blog and work in a bank and vote for a Democrat once every four years. "Stay and fight" is a great bumper sticker slogan, but I need a better definition of what activists are doing in America that they couldn't do outside America before I'm willing to mock those who are thinking of leaving.

More to the point, is it maybe just a teeny tiny little bit possible that there are certain groups who could be MORE active if they weren't worried about ending up on some watch list? I'm thinking in particular of two groups for whom emigrating is a last-ditch option: soldiers who oppose the war in Iraq (or whatever new adventures we'll be getting into under the new Bush administration), and men of Middle Eastern origin between 18-35 who have been asked to "register" with Homeland Security.

So I did some research.

General information

As clever and tongue-in-cheek as that Harper's piece on leaving the country is, it starts with the premise that the reader is American and that "leaving the country" = "renouncing your citizenship." In the real world, of course, you don't need to give up your American citizenship to become an expatriate abroad, though you can always get additional passports if you qualify for them [visit this site for an excellent FAQ on obtaining or retaining dual citizenship]. And it's worth pointing out that those looking most longingly at foreign shores right now probably never had the comfort of an American passport in the first place; legal immigrants and undocumented persons from Middle Eastern countries are the ones with the most to fear from the present administration.

This is the official page for those wishing to move to Canada.
Expertise in Labour Mobility has general information about working abroad.
The Council on International Education Exchange has general information about studying abroad.

This piece talks about entering Canada illegally. The author, "Anonymous," left the U.S. after a felony conviction for growing marijuana made it impossible for him to get a job. (Good comments on the politics of the drug war, too.)

Information for soldiers

Last month's issue of Mother Jones did a piece on soldiers who are refusing to fight in Iraq, which included the profile of two young men who fled to Canada:

"So far, only six U.S. soldiers are known to have fled to Canada rather than fight in Iraq. But in 2003, the Army listed more than 2,774 soldiers as deserters (military personnel are classified as having deserted after not reporting for duty for more than a month), and many observers believe the actual number may be even higher; the Army has acknowledged that it is not aggressively hunting down soldiers who don’t show up. The GI Rights Hotline, a counseling operation run by a national network of antiwar groups, reports that it now receives between 3,000 and 4,000 calls per month from soldiers seeking a way out of the military."

The piece points out that getting conscientious objector status under an all-volunteer army is harder than it was under the draft, for obvious reasons:

"Unlike Vietnam, when young men facing the draft could convincingly claim that they opposed all war, enlistees in a volunteer military have a tough time qualifying as conscientious objectors. In the Army, 61 soldiers applied for conscientious objector status last year, and 31 of those applications were granted. 'The Army does understand people can have a change of heart,' notes spokeswoman Martha Rudd. 'But you can’t ask for a conscientious objector discharge based on moral or religious opposition to a particular war.'"

On the other hand, the nature of the war in Iraq raises other questions. Jeremy Hinzman, a soldier who served in Afghanistan but refuses to go to Iraq, is basing his case for refugee status in Canada on the illegality of the war:

"[Hinzman] cites the Geneva Conventions on War and the Nuremberg Principles; [he and his lawyer] maintain it is a soldier's obligation to refuse illegal orders, and to refuse to participate in war crimes. Jeremy Hinzman's refugee claims also points to the case of a Russian soldier who was granted refugee status in Great Britain after refusing to fight in Chechnya. It cites the UN Handbook on Refugees, which includes in its refugee definitions, soldiers who refuse to participate in wars that have been 'condemned by the international community as contrary to the basic rules of human conduct.'

A key question that the Immigration and Refugee Board will have to answer is whether the jail sentences surely awaiting war resisters in the U.S. would amount to 'persecution for their political or religious beliefs,' as outlined in the UN Handbook on Refugees. [Hinzman's lawyer] Jeffry House gives an unequivocal affirmative on this point.

'To imprison someone for doing the right thing and refusing to participate in war crimes is persecution, pure and simple,' says House."

Another overview of Hinzman's case is available here, including contact information for his lawyer Jeffry House, a former Vietnam-era draft dodger who is now helping soldiers AWOL from Iraq find asylum in Canada.

The author of both these pieces, Gerry Condon, also resisted the draft during the Vietnam era. He points out that the process of seeking refugee status in Canada can take years — possibly outlasting the Iraq war itself — and, even if a claim is ultimately rejected, soldiers will be given the option of going to a third country rather than deported to the U.S.

(By the way, I thought this quote from the Mother Jones article was really touching: "Joe Bangert, a founding member of Vietnam Veterans of America, addressed the group. 'One of the most painful things when we returned from Vietnam was that the veterans from past wars weren’t there for us,' he said. 'They didn’t support us in our questioning and our opposition to war. And I just want to say,' he added, peering intently at the younger veterans, 'we are here for you. We have your back.'")

Other possible resources include:
Vietnam Veterans Against the War
Veterans Against the Iraq War
War Resisters Support Campaign
Soldiers Say No
Canadian Friends Service Committee

Information for Middle Easterners

In 2002 the U.S. and Canada signed the Safe Third Country Agreement, which stipulates that refugees can make their claims in the first of the two countries they enter: "That means claimants trying to enter Canada through the United States would be turned back and told to make their claims in the U.S. … each recognizes the other as a 'safe third country.'" The terms of this agreement make it difficult for someone to claim refugee status in Canada on the basis of one's treatment in the U.S. But as Gerry Condon noted above, the refugee process in Canada is a long one, and often buys refugee-seekers enough time to make other arrangements. More information on Canada's refugee policies is available on their official web site.

However, one need not be classified as a refugee to move to Canada. The easiest way is to marry a Canadian citizen. Interestingly, Canada selectively recognizes same-sex unions for the sake of immigration purposes, which conveniently doubles a person's options. You can also be sponsored by a blood relative with Canadian citizenship, though the process takes longer.

Regardless of nationality or marital status, foreigners can study in Canada for up to six months free and clear. This may afford asylum-seekers the time they need to explore other possibilities for remaining in Canada. American citizens (naturalized or otherwise) can get automatic permission to study in Canada for longer than six months. Nationals from one of these countries must apply for a Temporary Residence Permit to stay in Canada for more than six months.

Canada has a point system to judge who is qualified to immigrate as a "skilled worker." Qualifying applicants must have some combination of education, work experience, work experience in Canada specificially, language skills (English or French), and/or family in Canada. Assess your eligibility. (I recently heard, via word of mouth, that the waiting list for this type of visa is 19 months.)

Those with money and/or business skills can apply under the Business Immigrant program. The assumption here is that you will "contribute to the cultural or athletic life of Canada." In general, Canada seems amiable to those who have the skills or resources to support themselves and hostile to those who may not. It's a NAFTA thing.

If Canada is unappealing — keep in mind Montreal's average temperature in January is -11 Celsius — there's always Germany, Greece, France, Italy, Ireland, and The Netherlands, though it must be said that Europe's ability to live in harmony with its Arab/Muslim minority can make the U.S. look like a pinnacle of tolerance. WorkPermit.com has information about working in Australia, New Zealand, and other English-speaking countries.

Many immigrants have returned to their countries of origin, but this isn't an option for those who left totalitarian regimes out of a fear of political persecution in the first place.

Resources:
Human Rights Watch
American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
American Civil Liberties Organization
National Lawyers Guild
National Network for Immigrant & Refugee Rights
VIVE, Inc.

In the meantime know your rights if you are approached by the FBI (guide available in English, Arabic, Farsi, Punjabi, Spanish, and Portuguese).

Personal stories: