We're discrete about it, sometimes, but we treat Muslims amongst us differently. We're suspicious of the way they dress, their religion, their culture and, well, just what they're really up to. And we've worked out ways to keep tabs on them in the hope of being able to spot acts or words that suggest something is amiss.
Chris Hedges suggests the techniques we've developed to keep a state eye on Muslims will soon be used on you too.
"...violations of fundamental civil liberties will not, in the end, be reserved exclusively for Muslims once the corporate state feels under siege. What is happening to them will happen to the rest of us.
“One of the misapprehensions of the last decade is that the government had to go outside the law to places like Guantanamo or Bagram to abridge the rights of suspects in the name of national security,” said Jeanne Theoharis, a professor of political science at Brooklyn College who has been an outspoken critic of the rights abridgement occurring in Article III courts. “But this is not the case. , but also—dismayingly—within the U.S. federal courts. A similar degradation of rights that has characterized the prison at Guantanamo has also affected the judicial system within the United States. The right to dissent, the right to see the evidence against you, the right to due process, the right to fair and speedy trial, the right to have a judge who will be impartial, the right to fair and not disproportionate punishment, and the right not to be punished before you are convicted have been taken from us in the name of national security. It is not just in special secret prisons that this occurs.”
...“Torture is legal in the United States in the form of years of solitary confinement and the use of special administrative measures,” Theoharis said when we spoke by phone. “The Obama administration has not only refused to hold Bush officials accountable for torture, but maintains torturous conditions in federal prisons. And the Obama administration willfully misled the European Court about the conditions these prisoners face.”
Think a radical, right-wing government in Canada wouldn't follow suit, at least to the extent their actions could be concealed? Stephen Harper had no qualms about establishing a secret police agency made up of Edmonton and Calgary police, the RCMP and our national spy agency, CSIS, to monitor pipeline opponents and identify those who were potential threats. That is the state spying on our own citizens and it's drawn barely a whisper of protest from the Liberals or NDP. Just where do you think people like Harper and Toews would draw the line? Your opinion is as good as anyone's.
10 comments:
Muslims? Maybe!
Toews says that he wants to catch pedophiles and anyone who opposes his legislation supports pedophiles.
Muslims are raised in a religion that is nothing but violent,discriminatory and socially enept. Oh yes...one has to be careful in Canada for being polically incorrect. However, the truth is the truth.
Anon, you must be a great fan of Rush Limbaugh!
And not to put too fine a point on it, Anon, but this post isn't about Muslims, as such, but that the rest of us could soon be treated by our authorities much the same way they now treat Muslims. Your contempt for Islam is off point and worse than childish.
And what do you know of the Muslim religion? How about your contempt for Mormons and their underware? Religion period everywhere what ever it is called, contains its violence. It doesn't mean we have to follow it as most Muslims do. Killing women because they don't conform to the male line. Rush Limbaugh...now there is gracious tunneled vision, cave man with little intellect and I don't even measure one centimetre like that awful man. So put your accusations in the toilet where they belong.
Anon, W. Bush invaded Iraq on false pretences and over one million innocent Iraqis were massacred in the first five years of the war. Now, is that violence or not? I suppose when you kill by dropping multi-ton bombs or use drones then that is not violence. Americans have left but they left the legacy of violence behind.
Then there are people like Wade Michael Page — the 40-year-old man who killed six people in a Sikh temple in Milwaukee thinking that they were Muslims.
U.S is the most violent society in the world. 10,000 people are killed every year through violence mostly by shooting or stabbing. Before you blame another culture or religion look at your own glass-house. Maybe you have some affliction of Islamophobia. Get help.
LD, let it go. I can't be bothered with incoherent, bigoted babbling like this drivel from Anon.
It's all about applesauce.
"If you are neutral in situations of injusttice, you have choosen the side of the oppressor" -Desmond Tutu
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