Terrorism

Image by Pantone801, found at Flickr.com

This is so mindboggling it defies commentary. Up until the 1st of July of 2008, Nelson Mandela was considered a terrorist by the United States.

Bush Removes Nelson Mandela from Terror Watch List
By VOA News
01 July 2008

U.S. President George Bush Tuesday signed a bill that allows Nelson Mandela to enter the United States without special clearance.

The measure officially removes Mr. Mandela and his African National Congress from a U.S. terror watch list.

The former South African president may now visit the United States without the U.S. secretary of state having to certify that he is not a terrorist.

Mr. Mandela was placed on the list because of his work with the African National Congress (ANC), which fought to end white minority rule in South Africa.

Mr. Mandela spent 27 years in prison for his work with the ANC to fight apartheid rule in South Africa.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner turns 90 on July 18.

Un.

Be.

lievable.

ZOOOOOOOOOOOMG!

I have been waiting for this documentary since I saw Morgan Spurlock at SXSW last year, when he was there presenting What Would Jesus Buy?, a documentary about Reverend Billy & The Church of Stop Shopping's crusade against conspicuous consumption.

This from Apple.com's trailer park :

If Morgan Spurlock has learned anything from over 30 years of movie-watching, it’s that if the world needs saving, it’s best done by one lone man willing to face danger head on to take it down, action hero style. So, with no military experience, knowledge or expertise, he sets off to do what the CIA, FBI and countless bounty hunters have failed to do: find the world’s most wanted man. Why take on such a seemingly impossible mission? Simple-he wants to make the world safe for his soon to be born child. But before he finds Osama bin Laden, he first needs to learn where he came from, what makes him tick, and most importantly, what exactly created bin Laden to begin with.

Go read the amazing homage written in the Wall Street Journal by his father :

When an unarmed journalist is killed, we are reminded of both the freedoms that we treasure in our society, and how vulnerable we all are to forces that threaten those freedoms.

But this still does not explain the attention given to Danny's tragedy. After all, 30 other journalists were killed in 2002, and 118 journalists have been killed in Iraq alone since that war began.

The shocking element in Danny's murder was that he was killed, not for what he wrote or planned to write, but for what he represented -- America, modernity, openness, pluralism, curiosity, dialogue, fairness, objectivity, freedom of inquiry, truth and respect for all people. In short, each and every one of us was targeted in Karachi in January of 2002.

It's not a touchy feely homage, but a reminder that Daniel Pearl's blood is in all our hands, especially the media :

One of the things that saddens me most is that the press and media have had an active, perhaps even major role in fermenting hate and inhumanity. It was not religious fanaticism alone.

This was first brought to my attention by the Pakistani Consul General who came to offer condolences at our home in California. When we spoke about the anti-Semitic element in Danny's murder she said: "What can you expect of these people who never saw a Jew in their lives and who have been exposed, day and night, to televised images of Israeli soldiers targeting and killing Palestinian children."

At the time, it was not clear whether she was trying to exonerate Pakistan from responsibility for Danny's murder, or to pass on the responsibility to European and Arab media for their persistent de-humanization of Jews, Americans and Israelis. The answer was unveiled in 2004, when a friend told me that photos of Muhammad Al Dura were used as background in the video tape of Danny's murder.

[...]

The Pakistani Consul was right. The media cannot be totally exonerated from responsibility for Daniel's murder, as well as for the "tsunami of hate" that has swept the world and continues to rise.

Go read the whole thing.

JANUARY 11, 2008, is the six-year anniversary of the first arrival of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.

The ACLU is calling on everyone opposed to torture, secret prisons, the suspension of habeas corpus and the overall trampling of democracy and the United States Constitution, to wear orange to symbolize the national shame that is Guantánamo Bay.

From their website :

After hundreds of detentions and two Supreme Court decisions rejecting the administration's detention policies at Gitmo, the legal status of the detainees there remains unresolved and the fight continues to end unlawful detention and the denial of due process.

The ACLU is one of four organizations that have been granted status as human rights observers at the military commission proceedings. When the tribunals began in 2004, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero and two ACLU international human rights lawyers attended the proceedings and blogged about the experience so Americans could know the truth of Guantánamo.

The ACLU has continued to hold government leadership accountable by filing Freedom of Information Act requests for documents that reveal systemic torture to prisoners held in U.S. custody. So far, more than 100,000 pages of government documents detailing the torture and abuse of detainees.

About a conniving opportunist who cheatead first-responders out of medical insurance, worker's compensation and any help at all from the government. All in the name of his beloved "cri de coeur", 9-1-1.

This man doesn't deserve to even think he is deserving of the presidency.

At all.

My friend Elizabeth Upton teaches English as a Second Language at LaGuardia Community College. I went to her class to talk to them about what new things people are trying to do with technology to foster a more participatory democracy.

I have a longer post on my field trip, I just wanted to give you the students clips first.

Here's Susana (Colombia) with a question about terrorism:

Olga (Uzbekistan) on the future of the middle class:

And Miguel Ángel (Mexico) on drug trafficking:

Even mass murdering lunatics can feel insecure about their looks --and use the Q'ran to hit the Grecian Formula. Yet what counter-terrorism" "experts" are reading into Osama's metrosexual attempt to hide his graying hair reads like a Seinfeld parody of the H.A.T.M or hot ass terrorist mess :

Bin Laden appears in the video with a trimmed beard that is apparently dyed black, hiding the streaks of gray seen in previous footage, and wears a beige cloak over a white robe.

According to Azzam Tamimi, head of the London-based Institute of Islamic Political Thought, the beard dye is a "sign of war."

The rigorous Salafi Islamic school to which bin Laden belongs "condones this dye only in preparation for war," he said.

A US intelligence official speaking on condition of anonymity said agencies believe the video is authentic and was produced as recently as August because of a reference to the 62nd anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6.

Down to the snickering of Bin Laden's metrosexual ... ahem ... impotence.

The Manolo, the vast right wing's conspiracy answer to the pinko commy Blackwell, doesn't think Osama is rocking the aging metrosexual look at all. Meanwhile, others think he looks like he is not only dyeing, but dying as well; while the rest of us find a reason to die laughing.

A moment of silence.

Smoke streaming from Ground Zero illuminates the night skyline of lower Manhattan in a view looking east from New Jersey. Photo taken the night of Sept. 16, 2001, by USGS field-crew members Todd Hoefen and Gregg Swayze.

Here's the Victims List.

You can read my story, two years after the fact.

It's also updated.

You know you have a September 11 story.

Now it's your turn to share it.

Post it. Link to it.

We want to know.