I surely don't think that, "balanced", means informative. I can barely
stand the coverage of the Republican debates that I hear on Democracy now or
read about. I listen to bits of NPR so I'll have a sense of what the
mainstream media are telling people. But I don't believe in sself torture.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Saturday, March 12, 2016 3:17 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: GOP Debate Civil? Candidates Urged Torture,
Child-Murder, Backing Bloody Dictatorships
Some of my acquaintances say that I should listen to more of the discussion
offered by conservatives, to have a more balanced point of view. Honestly,
I tried. But in addition to the regular violence in the evening news, the
inclusion of the hateful, violent, emotional outbursts of the Right Wing
analysts and talk jocks, upset me to the point of stomach aches and restless
nights. My conservative news now comes from NPR, and my understanding of
what is going on comes to me from the likes of Thom Hartman, Democracy Now,
and Alternative Radio.
I've mentioned other programs, so will spare you this time. But really, at
least assume that I have some basic intelligence. Given the straight
information, I can make up my own mind, and I can add any emotional
outbursts I need.
Some people tell me that it is embarrassing to think of what the world
thinks of our "Debates" among Republican contenders. Frankly, I'm more
concerned as to why our Media considers this such good entertainment, and
also the fact that millions of Americans watch and get all lathered up.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/11/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
GOP Debate Civil? Candidates Urged Torture, Child-Murder, Backingof its members and leaders to death.
Bloody Dictatorships Published on Friday, March 11, 2016 by Informed
Comment GOP Debate Civil? Candidates Urged Torture, Child-Murder,
Backing Bloody Dictatorships by Juan Cole
Presidential candidates Marco Rubio, Donold Trump, Ted Cruz, and John
Kasich put on a display about what "civility" looks like in the
today's Republican Party. (Image: Fox News) The headlines Friday about
the GOP debate in Miami stressed how relatively civil it was, with
less name-calling and pissing matches among the remaining candidates.
Those editors have a weird definition of civility.
So here is Marco Rubio:
"Let me give you an example of a Muslim for example, we ought to be
standing with, President el-Sisi of Egypt, a president of a Muslim
country who is targeting radical.
(BELL RINGS)
. Islamic terrorist. HEWITT: Senator Rubio.
CRUZ: He's hunting them down and stomping them."
Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took advantage of massive popular
demonstrations against Muslim Brotherhood leader and elected Egyptian
president Mohammed Morsi in summer of 2013 to make a brutal military
coup. His soldiers used unnecessary force to clear largely peaceful
Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins, killing hundreds with live ammunition.
Al-Sisi then declared the former ruling party, the Muslim Brotherhood,
a terrorist organization and had his corrupt judiciary sentence thousands
Inin 1967.
fact, the Muslim Brotherhood renounced violence in the 1970s, and
while I am critical of the way it tried to rule Egypt in 2012-2013, I
consider painting it as a terrorist organization to be mere
propaganda.
It is not only the Muslim Brotherhood that has suffered. The al-Sisi
military junta is now the world's second-biggest jailer of journalists
for doing their job. Peaceful civil society movements such as April 6
have been forcibly disbanded and banned. Activists like Ahmad Maher,
Mahinour al-Masri and Alaa Abdel Fattah, heroes of the 2011 youth
protests, are behind bars being mistreated. Egypt's newspapers are
assiduously self-censoring. The country is a political and
intellectual dead zone, with creepy secret police spying on everyone
who makes a peep.
Even foreign academic researchers are not safe, with a young Italian
academic at Cambridge, Giulio Regeni, having been kidnapped, tortured
and his burned body dumped in the desert. Observers say these are the
hallmarks of the secret police. The European Parliament has just urged
the EU to cease military cooperation with Egypt over the young man's
murder:
So let's get this straight. The European Parliament is so disturbed at
the human rights situation that it has urged an EU cut off of military
cooperation with the Egypt of Gen. al-Sisi. But this is the regime
that Marco Rubio demands we admire and support.
Ironically, Rubio's family fled a similar right wing military
dictatorship, that of Fulgencio Batista, in Cuba in 1956. Batista
abrogated the 1940 constitution and ruled ruthlessly, as al-Sisi does.
To now have Rubio pimp for a regime just like the one his family ran
away from in the 1950s is surely among the most disgusting displays in
a political season full of disgusting displays.
Then there was the nauseating display of far rightwing propaganda
against the poor Palestinians, many of whom were ethnically cleansed
from their homes in what is now Israel by Zionist forces in 1948 and again
They have been deprived of their property and any claim to the rightsquestions.
of citizenship in a state by ongoing Israeli theft and confined to
cantons that best resemble those imposed by Apartheid South Africa.
All resistance they offer to Israeli military rule and Israeli further
encroachments on what little they have left is assiduously branded as
terrorism. Anyone who so much as sympathizes with the plight of the
world's largest group of stateless people is branded an inciter to
terrorism. Actual terrorism (violence committed by an organized
non-state group against innocent civilians for political purposes) is
always wrong, and some desperate Palestinians have engaged in it (as
have Israeli Jews). But people do have a right to resist occupation,
and you would think from the GOP debate that it was the Palestinians
who were in power and oppressing the Israelis rather than the other
way around.
Rubio again attacked Donald Trump for saying he wanted to restart a
peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, and that he would
try to be neutral, i.e. a good faith mediator:
"The policy Donald has outlined, I don't know if he realizes, is an
anti-Israeli policy. Maybe that's not your intent but here's why it is
an anti-Israeli policy. There is no peace deal possible with the
Palestinians at this moment. There just isn't."
Rubio is of course being told to say this by wealthy far-right Jewish
donors to his campaign. The idea that Palestinians should just be left
under military rule or under blockade, and should continue to have
their territory stolen from them by the Israelis, and that all this is
their own fault, is just obscurantism in the service of the Israeli
expansionists on the far right. It will one day explode on Israel with
extremely unpleasant consequences, and people like Rubio will bear a
good deal of the blame.
Ted Cruz menaced us with a non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons program.
Any
old demon will do.
Trump again defended his plans to torture prisoners and to murder
their women and children.
The candidates didn't talk so much last night about the four new wars
they had proposed last week.
The poor CNN moderators were often visibly uncomfortable with the
bizarre and bloodthirsty answers they got to their sober foreign policy
C 2014 Juan Coleof its members and leaders to death.
Juan Cole
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GOP Debate Civil? Candidates Urged Torture, Child-Murder, Backing
Bloody Dictatorships Published on Friday, March 11, 2016 by Informed
Comment GOP Debate Civil? Candidates Urged Torture, Child-Murder,
Backing Bloody Dictatorships by Juan Cole
. 4 Comments
.
. Presidential candidates Marco Rubio, Donold Trump, Ted Cruz, and
John Kasich put on a display about what "civility" looks like in the
today's Republican Party. (Image: Fox News)
. The headlines Friday about the GOP debate in Miami stressed how
relatively civil it was, with less name-calling and pissing matches
among the remaining candidates.
. Those editors have a weird definition of civility.
. So here is Marco Rubio:
. "Let me give you an example of a Muslim for example, we ought to be
standing with, President el-Sisi of Egypt, a president of a Muslim
country who is targeting radical.
(BELL RINGS)
. Islamic terrorist. HEWITT: Senator Rubio.
CRUZ: He's hunting them down and stomping them."
Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took advantage of massive popular
demonstrations against Muslim Brotherhood leader and elected Egyptian
president Mohammed Morsi in summer of 2013 to make a brutal military
coup. His soldiers used unnecessary force to clear largely peaceful
Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins, killing hundreds with live ammunition.
Al-Sisi then declared the former ruling party, the Muslim Brotherhood,
a terrorist organization and had his corrupt judiciary sentence thousands
Inin 1967.
fact, the Muslim Brotherhood renounced violence in the 1970s, and
while I am critical of the way it tried to rule Egypt in 2012-2013, I
consider painting it as a terrorist organization to be mere
propaganda.
It is not only the Muslim Brotherhood that has suffered. The al-Sisi
military junta is now the world's second-biggest jailer of journalists
for doing their job. Peaceful civil society movements such as April 6
have been forcibly disbanded and banned. Activists like Ahmad Maher,
Mahinour al-Masri and Alaa Abdel Fattah, heroes of the 2011 youth
protests, are behind bars being mistreated. Egypt's newspapers are
assiduously self-censoring. The country is a political and
intellectual dead zone, with creepy secret police spying on everyone
who makes a peep.
Even foreign academic researchers are not safe, with a young Italian
academic at Cambridge, Giulio Regeni, having been kidnapped, tortured
and his burned body dumped in the desert. Observers say these are the
hallmarks of the secret police. The European Parliament has just urged
the EU to cease military cooperation with Egypt over the young man's
murder:
So let's get this straight. The European Parliament is so disturbed at
the human rights situation that it has urged an EU cut off of military
cooperation with the Egypt of Gen. al-Sisi. But this is the regime
that Marco Rubio demands we admire and support.
Ironically, Rubio's family fled a similar right wing military
dictatorship, that of Fulgencio Batista, in Cuba in 1956. Batista
abrogated the 1940 constitution and ruled ruthlessly, as al-Sisi does.
To now have Rubio pimp for a regime just like the one his family ran
away from in the 1950s is surely among the most disgusting displays in
a political season full of disgusting displays.
Then there was the nauseating display of far rightwing propaganda
against the poor Palestinians, many of whom were ethnically cleansed
from their homes in what is now Israel by Zionist forces in 1948 and again
They have been deprived of their property and any claim to the rightsquestions.
of citizenship in a state by ongoing Israeli theft and confined to
cantons that best resemble those imposed by Apartheid South Africa.
All resistance they offer to Israeli military rule and Israeli further
encroachments on what little they have left is assiduously branded as
terrorism. Anyone who so much as sympathizes with the plight of the
world's largest group of stateless people is branded an inciter to
terrorism. Actual terrorism (violence committed by an organized
non-state group against innocent civilians for political purposes) is
always wrong, and some desperate Palestinians have engaged in it (as
have Israeli Jews). But people do have a right to resist occupation,
and you would think from the GOP debate that it was the Palestinians
who were in power and oppressing the Israelis rather than the other
way around.
Rubio again attacked Donald Trump for saying he wanted to restart a
peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, and that he would
try to be neutral, i.e. a good faith mediator:
"The policy Donald has outlined, I don't know if he realizes, is an
anti-Israeli policy. Maybe that's not your intent but here's why it is
an anti-Israeli policy. There is no peace deal possible with the
Palestinians at this moment. There just isn't."
Rubio is of course being told to say this by wealthy far-right Jewish
donors to his campaign. The idea that Palestinians should just be left
under military rule or under blockade, and should continue to have
their territory stolen from them by the Israelis, and that all this is
their own fault, is just obscurantism in the service of the Israeli
expansionists on the far right. It will one day explode on Israel with
extremely unpleasant consequences, and people like Rubio will bear a
good deal of the blame.
Ted Cruz menaced us with a non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons program.
Any
old demon will do.
Trump again defended his plans to torture prisoners and to murder
their women and children.
The candidates didn't talk so much last night about the four new wars
they had proposed last week.
The poor CNN moderators were often visibly uncomfortable with the
bizarre and bloodthirsty answers they got to their sober foreign policy
C 2014 Juan Cole
