Drumbeat for War and Anti-Muslim Scapegoating

Atonal war drums, demagoguery and American hysteria

Amy Goodman has a piece at Democracy Now on the idiot wind blowing across the Potomac, and hot air emitting from Republican Party presidential candidates.

Notes Goodman:

In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, media coverage has seen familiar patterns: uncritically repeat government claims, defend expansive state power, and blame the Muslim community for the acts of a few. We discuss media fearmongering, anti-Muslim scapegoating, ISIL’s roots, and war profiteering with Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and co-founder of The Intercept. 'Every time there’s a terrorist attack, Western leaders exploit that attack to do more wars,' Greenwald says. 'Which in turn means they transfer huge amounts of taxpayer money to these corporations that sell arms. And so investors are fully aware that the main people who are going to benefit from this escalation as a result of Paris are not the American people or the people of the West — and certainly not the people of Syria — it is essentially the military-industrial complex.'

House Speaker Paul Ryan leads the Republicans and xenophobes as he guided H.R. 4038, the American Security Against Foreign Enemies (SAFE) Act of 2015, garnering a veto-proof majority, (Fahrenthold and DelReal, Washington Post) (Roll call vote, H.R. 4038 (Govtrack.us)) (DeBonis, Post).

Fourth-seven House Democrats, including Wisconsin's Ron Kind (D-La Crosse), voted for the SAFE Act, (The Progressive Midwesterner).

SAFE faces a likely defeat in the Senate.

SAFE is nonsense that law enforcement and "intelligence professionals, immigration officials and humanitarian groups" dismiss as politicians' appeals to xenophobia, (NYT).

To believe Ryan and other sponsors of SAFE, terrorists pretending to flee Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) are coming to our homeland disguised as children and displaced families.

Since the Senate will not address the legislation until after Thanksgiving we must all live in fear over the Holiday weekend extending to next year when they begin coming here.

President Obama said he would veto this act if necessary,

On the corporate media front CNN suspended a reporter, Elise Labott, for a tweet expressing sympathy for Syrian refugees, (Girad, U.S. Uncut).

And Hillary the hawk dropped rational pretensions on the 'Region,' notes Sarah Lazare:

Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Clinton called for a 'new phase' in the fight against the Islamic State (referred to as ISIS or IS), including a major intensification in a bombing campaign; 'ground forces actually taking back more territory;' an 'intelligence surge;' and no-fly zones over Syria. 'Our goal is not to deter or contain ISIS, but to defeat and destroy ISIS,' she said, in an implicit criticism of President Barack Obama as being too tepid on military intervention—and a signal that she intends to tack far to his right, (TruthDig, CommonDreams, Council on Foreign Relations).

The leading candidate for the Republican nomination for the presidency, Donald Trump, continued his rants leading him to the top of the Republican political culture yesterday, calling for increased surveillance of American Muslims and warrantless searches:

We’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule,' Trump said. 'And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.'

Yahoo News asked Trump whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion. He wouldn’t rule it out.

'We’re going to have to — we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,' Trump said when presented with the idea. 'We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.' (Walker, Yahoo News)

Trump is openly calling for suspension of the First and Fourth Amendments, and the targeting of a minority religion.

To borrow a quote from Noam Chomsky in 2002 during which Chomsky correctly predicted massive civilian causalities in Afghanistan and radicalization and destabilization of the region following full-spectrum U.S. interventions:

"(L)iberal intellectuals have lined up in support of the war machine in the familiar style — discussed, for example, by Randolph Bourne in classic essays–and since they know they do not have the intellectual competence to deal with those who refuse to go along, resort to what comes natural to the educated classes: hysterical tantrums, lies, and abuse. ... There are more important things to do–such as continue to falsify their increasingly desperate claim that everyone is following them in their depraved subordination to power," (Leon, CounterPunch).

To paraphrase Grace Abbott, of Hull House in 1917 contacting Sen. Robert M. La Follette urging his help to stay out of World War I:

Irresponsible and war-crazed press, scurrilous libels, malicious falsehoods fill the public press of the country at a time when every consideration for our country require that a spirit of fairness should be observed in the discussions of the momentous questions under consideration.

Sen. Robert M. La Follette voted against a Declaration of War in 1917, and
read one of many telegrams from across the country opposing WW I
George Mason University

Paul Ryan Begins Congressional Malpractice as Speaker

Scott Walker gazes and tears up as Paul Ryan speaks at
Republican convention in 2102 in Tampa, Florida.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) is playing hard-right politics—posturing and lying—with real lives and deadly consequences as he begins his tenure as House Speaker.

The Ayn Rand fanatic is taken seriously by establishment Washington, and is routinely accurately described as a liar and fool by Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman and the majority of Janesville, Wisconsin voters.

It's no surprise 'Lying' Ryan is playing the demagogue on the refugee crisis and ginning up fears of the others as one of his first acts of duplicity as Speaker.

Notes a New York Times lede editorial:

The House is expected to vote Thursday on H.R. 4038, the American Security Against Foreign Enemies (SAFE) Act of 2015, which Republican sponsors say 'would put in place the most robust national-security vetting process in history' for refugees, one that would 'do everything possible to prevent terrorists from reaching our shores.'

Conceived partly in response to the Paris attacks, the bill seeks to 'pause' admission of Syrian and Iraqi refugees. Though there are real fears of terrorism, this measure represents election-year pandering to the xenophobia that rears up when threats from abroad arise. People who know these issues — law enforcement and intelligence professionals, immigration officials and humanitarian groups — say that this wrongheaded proposal simply would not protect Americans from 'foreign enemies.'

Ryan's sop to Republican-voting bigots is SOP.

Less known is Ryan's 2014 floating an onerous but at least a version of a comprehensive immigration bill that had support of the vast majority of the American public, the majority of the House and Senate but plays horribly with the neo-fascist GOP base.

Ryan had stoked speculation he was considering a run for the presidency earlier this year, a consideration aborted perhaps after Ryan learned he might to have work weekends, and his noise about immigration reform bill breaking up families would come back to haunt him, (Kim, The Politico) (Frontline, WGBH Educational Foundation).

Republicans bring shame

A House Speaker Ryan has to appear and behave bigoted and xenophobic about refugees fleeing, about the only mission accomplished by Republican-led Congressional sessions beyond sabotaging a robust economic recovery.

Obama Action for Refugees and Immigrants

President Obama's two executive orders regarding executive prosecutorial discretion (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA)) on undocumented humans were as expected halted by the rightist Judge Andrew S. Hanen on Feb. 16, who ordered a preliminary injunction on the orders.

Hanen has a history of targeting immigrant communities, (Hennessy-Fiske, LA Times).

Hanen's injunction and other litigation were affirmed by decisions written by Federalist Society U.S. District Judge, Jerry Edwin Smith, of the rightest Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in State of Texas et al v. United States of America et al (No. 15-40238) (November 2015) writing for a split three-judge panel earlier this month.

In dissent (pp. 71-124), Judge Carolyn Dineen King eviscerates the tortured logic and contrived justification used in State of Texas et al v. United States of America et al to be considered by the federal judiciary, noting the inescapable conclusion that the case's non-justiciability, (its wrongful hearing by the Court), is admitted by plaintiffs. See also Judge Stephen A. Higginson's powerful dissent (pp 43-68) in the Fifth Circuit panel's denial of the "motion to stay the preliminary injunction or narrow its scope pending appeal," (New York Times document, May, 2015).

Writes Judge King, "Plaintiffs concede that if the DAPA Memorandum is only an exercise in enforcement  discretion—without  granting  any  'additional  benefits'—it  is unreviewable under  5  U.S.C.  §  701(a), (p. 84)."

Obama is expected to appeal the case to the United States Supreme Court but he faces a tight deadline, (Worth Tow, Frontline).

The solution is simple: Comprehensive and total amnesty for 11.3 million undocumented humans in the face of the paralysis and corruption of Congress and its abdication of America at its best, protected by a corrupt judiciary.

Those white, low-information bigots who cannot stand a rainbow-colored America can leave if they like and establish a white homeland somewhere and worship Odin.

Scott Walker, GOP Demonize as Pres Obama's Finest Hour Arises

'Go back to where you came from.' Passengers aboard the St. Louis
in 1939. These refugees from Nazi Germany were forced to return
to Europe after both Cuba and the US denied them refuge.
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Dr. Liane Reif-Lehrer

Scott Walker and Republican governors' demagogic appeals to the xenophobic swaths of America are predictable, stupid and reprehensible.

Legally, Republican governors have no standing to determine who resides in respective states, the ludicrous Republican position propagated after President Obama "announced a plan to resettle at least 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States next year," (White House), per the law, with orderly safety and security procedures and out a sense of simple decency.

Factually, the refugees fleeing Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) are victims of the same aggregations of apocalyptic, mystical crazies created by U.S. military intervention, destabilization and murder of millions of Muslims, (Cole, Informed Comment) (Welton, CounterPunch) cheered on by Republicans calling for more war now while demonizing refugees.

Historically, the Republican governors' bleating 'we will not accept refugees," is reminiscent of the infamous American rejection of Jews fleeing NAZI Germany and being refused permission to emigrate to the Untied States in 1939.

Consider the voyage of German transatlantic liner St. Louis in 1939 loaded with over 900 Jewish passengers fleeing the Third Reich, seeking Cuba and the United States as destinations.

Many Cubans resented the relatively large number of refugees (including 2,500 Jews), whom the government had already admitted into the country, because they appeared to be competitors for scarce jobs.

Hostility toward immigrants fueled both antisemitism and xenophobia. Both agents of Nazi Germany and indigenous right-wing movements hyped the immigrant issue in their publications and demonstrations, claiming that incoming Jews were Communists. Two of the papers—Diario de la Marina, owned by the influential Rivero family, and Avance, owned by the Zayas family, had supported the Spanish fascist leader General Francisco Franco, who, after a three-year civil war, had just overthrown the Spanish Republic in the spring of 1939 with the help of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. ...

Following the US government's refusal to permit the passengers to disembark, the St. Louis sailed back to Europe on June 6, 1939. The passengers did not return to Germany, however. Jewish organizations (particularly the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) negotiated with four European governments to secure entry visas for the passengers: Great Britain took 288 passengers; the Netherlands admitted 181 passengers, Belgium took in 214 passengers; and 224 passengers found at least temporary refuge in France. Of the 288 passengers admitted by Great Britain, all survived World War II save one, who was killed during an air raid in 1940. Of the 620 passengers who returned to continent, 87 (14%) managed to emigrate before the German invasion of Western Europe in May 1940. 532 St. Louis passengers were trapped when Germany conquered Western Europe. Just over half, 278 survived the Holocaust. 254 died: 84 who had been in Belgium; 84 who had found refuge in Holland, and 86 who had been admitted to France. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Is Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) the NAZIs? No, but not for lack of trying.

Republicans conflate anyone convenient with Daesh, playing on ignorance and hate and hoping nobody notices what they're doing.

The Republican Party's demagoguery towards perceived dangerous and inferior classes of people ought to alarm and appall any decent American as Islamophobia is thriving, U.S. Mosques are threatened, and a Mosque in Canada is set ablaze by nativists, (Goodman, Democracy Now).

America under rightwing pressure turned the St. Louis back less than one year before Americans in streets across the country celebrated the fall of Paris to the NAZIs in 1940.

As Republicans preach hate today, their end game won't be political failure, it is a moral failure with tragic consequences to follow.

"To slam the door in their faces -- to decide not to help when we know that we can help -- would be a betrayal of our values. It would be un-American," said President Obama in a statement explaining the defense of Syrian refugees fleeing Daesh (ISIS, ISIL), (Pope, White House; November 17, 2015).

As the great journalist Ralph Mcgill wrote in 1958 following the dynamiting of a Jewish Temple in Atlanta:

Let us face the facts. This is a harvest. It is the crop of things sown. ...

It is not possible to preach lawlessness and restrict it.

To be sure, none said go bomb a Jewish temple or a school. But let it be understood that when leadership in high places in any degree fails to support constituted authority, it opens the gates to all those who wish to take law into their hands.

Thank you, President Obama for sticking up for decency in America.

"This embrace of humanity's deepest values is itself a rejection of the tortured ISIS worldview," notes Richard Fontaine in the Wall Street Journal.

We need this embrace not just because it's decent but also because the rightwing Republicans are playing with fire and dynamite.