The Islamophobia Excuse

AntiWar
Philip Giraldi

It seems that the Republican presidential aspirants’ fervor to confront Islam has receded a bit with the decline and fall of Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, but one can likely still count on Rick Santorum to come up with some bon mots on the threat posed by Shariah law. Those who fear that hands will soon be lopped off shoplifters caught in Cleveland appear to be making much ado about nothing, but there is a much broader and more insidious agenda that is really playing out behind the scenes. Perry, Gingrich, and Santorum are all smart enough to know that Islamic law is hardly poised to dominate the U.S. legal system, but they are using it as the wedge issue to deny the patriotism of Muslims in general and fuel the demands to exercise a military option against Iran.

Promoting fear of Shariah law is essentially a red herring. There are more than 50 predominantly Muslim countries in the world, and, while most have elements of Shariah in their civil and family law, only two have it as their criminal codes. They are Saudi Arabia and Iran, one a close ally of the United States and the West and the other currently playing the cameo role of a threat to the entire world, to borrow a phrase from the eminent Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel. The countries that do not have Shariah as their criminal codes have modeled their laws on European and American models, some borrowing from Roman law and others from British common law.

Depicting Islam as manifestly medieval, backward, and cruel is not new, as it has been going on in one form or another since the Israelis and Palestinians first locked horns. Recognizing that the propaganda that is being ground out in the mainstream media derives from that conflict, it is easy to understand why Muslims are persistently portrayed in negative terms. And it should be equally unsurprising to learn that those who are denigrating Muslims and Islam are almost invariably among the most uncritical supporters of Likudist Israel and all its works.

The list of those who are passionate about how bad Islam is has a familiar ring to it. It is led by the truly vicious and fanatical like Pamela Geller and includes John Bolton, David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes, and Charles Krauthammer. Geller has written that there is “a systematic campaign to impose Shariah on the secular marketplace” and to pervert the justice system in favor of Islamic exemptions, a theme that has been picked up by Gingrich and Santorum, both of whom favor pointless laws banning Shariah in any form. In a milder form, the same viewpoint is reflected in both the news coverage and the editorial pages of newspapers like The New York Post, The Washington Post, and even The New York Times. The arguments being made are not necessarily intended to convince anyone other than those who are already more than half onboard, but they are designed to keep the issue of how Muslims are not quite like the rest of us on the back burner to so that the legitimate aspirations of Palestinians and other Arabs will somehow always seem suspect. It also fuels other narratives that the neoconservatives and their friends support, like perpetual warfare against Islamic countries to bring about regime changes, suggesting that there is something that is not quite right in the way that Muslim countries govern themselves. The real objective is, however, spelled out in the paper that the neocons presented to Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, “A Clean Break,” advocating the breakup of Arab countries into smaller components that would be perpetually at war with themselves, thereby assuring Israeli predominance in the region. As is so often the case, the conversation in the United States is really all about Israel.

Deliberate Impoverishment of the Western World

The Daily Bell

U.S. poverty totals hit a 50-year high Census Bureau's grim statistics show recession's lingering effects, as young adults move back home and 1 million more Americans go without health insurance ... In a grim portrait of a nation in economic turmoil, the government reported that the number of people living in poverty last year surged to 46.2 million — the most in at least half a century — as 1 million more Americans went without health insurance and household incomes fell sharply. – Los Angeles Times

Dominant Social Theme: These things happen. No reason. Depressions spontaneously occur. They are "market mistakes."

Free-Market Analysis: We've spent considerable time in the past three years (the past decade, actually), analyzing how the powers-that-be have reorganized society, especially American society, in a way that relentlessly reduces prosperity. Figures released yesterday from the US Census provide a startling illustration of just how effective elites have been. (See excerpt above.)

Why would a handful of wealthy central banking families want to impoverish the US and render its citizens penniless? Our conclusion is simple: World government is on the way and the American culture is still resistant to the kind of hyper-regulatory corporatism that is necessary to support this kind of governance.

America (the West, generally) has apparently been under attack by an organized cabal of inter-generational banking families and corporate, business and military enablers for at least 200 years now, and perhaps 300 years. In the past 50 years, the pace has accelerated.

One by one, the UN, IMF, World Bank, BIS, ICC (international court), WHO and countless other globalist organizations have been put in place. The mainstream media treats this evolution as inevitable. It cannot be. Each evolution must be planned, funded and promoted. When it comes to politics of this sort, there are no coincidences, as FDR once observed.

We have taken to calling what has evolved "directed history" – in which events including wars are planned to ensure maximum destruction of the culture as it is in order to further militarize, globalize (and impoverish) what remains.

Because America was a "great exception" – founded as a republic with a culture that was relentlessly entrepreneurial and agricultural – America has been under sustained attack to ensure that its culture is Europeanized and recreated as what we call "regulatory democracy."

Regulatory democracy is one word for what has evolved. Corporatism is another. Fascism (of a sort) would be a third. No matter what word is used, the current Western model for nation states relies heavily on unelected bureaucrats, intelligence agencies and a military industrial complex that basically reports to the aforementioned elites and is not affected by voting or other democratic elements.

The modern nation state is funded by central banks, also seemingly controlled by these elite families, and the ultimate goal is formal global governance. Some question why a formal international government is necessary. The answer is that the elites like to work within a "lawful" environment of their own creation. The more that reality corresponds to their notions and plans, the easier it is to continually consolidate power.

Nothing else – no other sociopolitical model – seems to explain what has happened to America and Europe. The EU is a disaster and the euro has proven to be a currency that has brought ruin on the Southern crescent of that artificial entity. The one-size-fits all central banking policies of the union continue to collapse jobs and economies – something we've been forecasting for several years now.

European elites are on record as anticipating the disaster and welcoming it because it will allow for the creation a closer "political union." But in the Internet era, people are not so easily manipulated as they were in the 20th Century. The pushback to elite plans is extreme. The fate of the EU is by no means pre-determined. Events could easily spin out of control.

In the US, the great merger between Canada, Mexico and America has been all-but-abandoned – for the time being. However, one of the primary figures behind that putative merger is Texas governor Rick Perry who spent much time and political energy in the early 2000s trying create a "North American Union." In our view it is no accident that he is a front-runner for the presidency at this juncture.

The Rick Perry story is certainly illustrative of how the elites work. Perry actively supported a superhighway of some 20 lanes plus railroad tracks that was (and is) planned to bisect the US, running from Mexico to Canada. It would effectively turn the country into two separate halves, both of which would be economic backwaters, as trade and prosperity flowed between Canada and Mexico.

Perry also supported a kind of international health-care in which the US would subsidize medical treatments for Mexicans. He tried to portray this as a rare opportunity to address flaws in the health care system that a bi-national program would counteract. But in reality, it was more internationalism.
Perry was and is a globalist; he is likely a candidate of the elites and it is perhaps no coincidence that he is suddenly a leading GOP choice to run for president. Perry's globalist sympathies were so evident in Texas that he had to write a book renouncing them.
 
In his book, from what we can tell, he basically repurposes most if not all of libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul's message of small government and reliance on the private sector. Perry's statements were so extreme, however, that he has made himself a target on both sides of the aisle.

Perry is just one more unmoored and unprincipled politician, willing to undermine his country and its hundreds of millions for personal gain. (Some have compared him to a used car salesman and claimed in another, less corrupt era he would never have achieved his current position.) He has become a millionaire several times over during his political career, and no doubt millions more await him if he does by some chance become president.

Meanwhile, the larger American economy continues to suffer. Critics in the mainstream media will have plenty of explanations for how their country came to be in the shape that it is in. But from our humble perspective, there can only be one explanation; it's part of a larger plan, at least to some degree. Here's some more from the article, above:

The poverty rate for all Americans rose in 2010 for the third consecutive year, matching the 15.1% figure in 1993 and pushing many more young adults to double up or return to their parents' home to avoid joining the ranks of the poor. Taken together, the annual income and poverty snapshot released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau underscored how the recession is casting a long shadow well after its official end in June 2009 ... 

The total number of Americans who fell below the official poverty line last year rose from 43.6 million in 2009. Of the 2.6-million increase, about two-thirds of the people said they did not work even one week last year. Those with jobs were much less likely to be poor, but the recession and weak recovery have wiped out income gains of prior years for a broad spectrum of workers and their families.


Inflation-adjusted median household income — the middle of the populace — fell 2.3% to $49,445 last year from a year ago and 7% from 2000. "It's a lost decade for the middle class," said Sheldon Danziger, a poverty expert at the University of Michigan. The number of poor children younger than 18 reached its highest level since 1962, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.
This is an unmitigated disaster, and it is hitting young people the hardest. Overall, the number of 25- to 34-year-old men and women who were living with their parents last spring totaled 5.9 million, the article tells us, and this is a 25.5% increase since the recession began in 2007.

Of course, we note the words that are used in the article to describe the current conflagration, specifically the "R" word, recession. This is no recession, from what we can tell. Nor has there been a "weak recovery."

Governor Perry's Death Mission

Der Spiegel
Marc Pitz

In Texas, Steven Michael Woods is slated for execution on Tuesday, despite considerable doubts about his guilt. The inmate is fighting to have his sentence commuted, but his chances are diminishing. State Governor Rick Perry is considered a champion of the death penalty.

In Texas, Steven Michael Woods is slated for execution on Tuesday, despite considerable doubts about his guilt. The inmate is fighting to have his sentence commuted, but his chances are diminishing. State Governor Rick Perry is considered a champion of the death penalty. 

It's a gruesome record, but Rick Perry is proud of it. "Your state has executed 234 death-row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times," NBC's Brian Williams told the Texas governor during this week's presidential debate. Did he ever struggle to sleep at night, Williams continued, "with the idea that anyone of those might have been innocent"?

Before Williams had finished, the auditorium erupted in cheers, even whistles, as if the spectators welcomed this killer number. Then Perry answered grimly: "No sir, I never struggled with that at all."

Asked what he made of the applause, he said: "I think Americans understand justice."

This bizarre moment was almost lost in the subsequent coverage of the Republican candidates' debate. For one man, however, it was a bad omen: Steven Michael Woods.

Woods, 31, is incarcerated in the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, which houses Texas' death row, a four-hour drive east of the capital Austin. His execution for capital murder is set for Tuesday -- one day after the next Republican debate. It would be the 19th execution this year in Texas alone.

Grave Doubts about Verdict
 
There's more, though: Woods, his lawyers and his friends insist he is innocent.

There are indeed grave doubts about the verdict. Marcus Rhodes, Wood's co-defendant and a former friend, has admitted to the double murder in question and already been sentenced -- but to life in prison. Rhodes' DNA was found on the weapons, but not that of Woods.

Yet all courts so far have rejected Wood's appeals. Even the US Supreme Court refused to take up the case. Alex Calhoun, Wood's defense lawyer, has now filed a clemency petition with Governor Perry and the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole, as a last resort.

Black Man Executed In Texas Despite Evidence Of Retardation

NewsOne

A Texas man convicted of murdering two people, and paralyzing another, was executed Tuesday, despite evidence he suffered from metal retardation.

Milton Mathis, 32, was convicted in 1999 for shootings that killed a 24-year-old, Travis Brown III, and 31-year-old, Daniel Hibbard.

The Texas Correctional system discovered that Mathis suffered from mental retardation after IQ tests were administered, but decided to go through with execution because prosecutors contended that his criminal behavior indicated “near-normal intelligence.”

In 2001, Gov. Perry vetoed a bill passed by the Texas legislature banning the execution of the mentally retarded, saying that the state’s judicial system already contained adequate protections for such defendants. Supporters of the bill disagreed, pointing to evidence indicating that at least a half-dozen prisoners with mental deficiencies had been executed since 1990.

Steven Rocket Rosen, who defended Mathis in his original trial, said there was “no excuse” for the actions of his client. But he said Mathis’s mental problems were severe and had been aggravated by heavy drug use from a young age.

According to court records, Mathis began smoking PCP and marijuana soaked in formaldehyde, known as “fry,” as early as age 12.

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