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Mar 21, 2010

Why I Was Banned in the U.S.A.

 


Why I Was Banned in the U.S.A.

aletho | March 21, 2010 at 3:55 pm | Categories: Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Islamophobia | URL: http://wp.me/pIUmC-1RQ
By Tariq Ramadan | NEWSWEEK | From the magazine issue dated March 29, 2010

When the American embassy called in August 2004, I was just nine days away from starting a job at Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. I had already shipped my possessions from Geneva, Switzerland, where I was living, to Indiana, and enrolled my kids in a school near our new home. Suddenly, however, an embassy official was telling me my visa had been revoked. I was "welcome to reapply," the official said, but no reason was offered for my rejection. Sitting in a barren apartment, I decided the process had become too unpredictable; I didn't want to keep my family in limbo, so I resigned my professorship before it began. I launched a legal battle instead.

It was hardly a fight I had expected. Less than a year earlier, the State Department had invited me to speak in Washington, D.C., and introduced me as a "moderate" Muslim intellectual who denounced terrorism and attacks against civilians. Now it was banning me from U.S. soil under a provision of the Patriot Act that allows for "ideological exclusions." My offense, it seemed, had been to forcefully criticize America's support for Israel and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. accused me of endorsing terrorism through my words and funding it through donations to a Swiss charity with alleged ties to Gaza. Civil-liberties groups challenged my case in court for almost six years until, in late January, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dropped the allegations against me, effectively ending my ban.

In early April I will make my first public appearance in the U.S., at New York City's Cooper Union, participating in a panel discussion about Muslims. While it's a victory of sorts, the fight is not over. Numerous foreign scholars remain banned from U.S. soil. Until the section of the Patriot Act that kept me out of the country is lifted, more people will suffer the same fate. Although the exclusions are carried out in the name of security and stability, they actually threaten both by closing off the open, critical, and constructive dialogue that once defined this country.

In my case, criticizing America's Middle East policies cast doubt on my loyalty to Western values and cost me a job. But prejudice may ultimately cost the U.S. more. By creating divisions and disregarding its values, even in the name of security, America tells the world that it is frightened and unstable—above all, vulnerable. In the long term, it also reinforces the religious, cultural, and social isolation of minority groups, encouraging the very kind of disloyalty that these ideological exclusions are meant to prevent.

It's not the first time America has tried to shield itself from dissenting opinions. During the Cold War, dozens of overseas artists, activists, and intellectuals—including British novelist Doris Lessing, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, and Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez—were denied visas because of their left-leaning ideas. Today, though, the American concept of the "other" has taken on a relatively new and specific form: the Muslim. America must face the reality that, in the West, many adherents to Islam demonstrate loyalty to democratic values through criticism. While violence must always be condemned, such debate must be encouraged if those values are to last.

Ramadan is a professor of Islamic studies at St. Antony's College, Oxford, and author of What I Believe.

© 2010

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Michael Santomauro
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Prof. Sniegoski Interview

 


Sniegoski Interview on RT America TV

Today (March 19), I was on RT America TV (Russia Today) briefly discussing the neocon role in the war on Iraq and the current Obama-Israel dispute.   It is archived on RT America's YouTube site. See:

 

Will instability hurt Mideast peace?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScVWxdFNhc

 

http://tinyurl.com/RTinterview

 

Best,

Stephen Sniegoski

 

Transparent Cabal Website:

 

http://home.comcast.net/~transparentcabal/

 

Amazon listing of The Transparent Cabal:

 

http://tiny.cc/zNV06


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Michael Santomauro
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Genetically modified mosquitos to spread vaccine for malaria

 

Peace.

Michael Santomauro
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Call anytime: 917-974-6367
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Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton

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Israel and the lobby against the US: A sort of crisis

 


Israel and the lobby against the US: A sort of crisis

pulsemedia.org | March 20, 2010 at 4:45 pm | Tags: Jeff Blankfort | Categories: Israel, Israel Lobby, Palestine, US Foreign Policy | URL: http://wp.me/ppCFZ-5xM

by Jeffrey Blankfort
Despite the repeated humiliations by his hosts during his recent recent visit to Israel US Vice President Joe Biden completed the tour with his game face on. Yet, according to Yediot Ahronoth, Israel's most widely read newspaper, Biden had privately complained to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel's behavior was "starting [...]

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Michael Santomauro
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VERBAL OR WRITTEN, A LIE IS STILL A LIE

 


VERBAL OR WRITTEN, A LIE IS STILL A LIE

desertpeace | March 20, 2010 at 2:01 pm | Categories: Corrupt Politics, Israel | URL: http://wp.me/pahWK-2Tl
If Israel puts it in writing, does that make it believable? I THINK NOT!

Netanyahu gives Clinton written commitment

After 40-minute phone conversation with prime minister, US secretary of state says pressure on Israel paid off. Response remains confidential, but American media report Netanyahu sent concluding document with Israeli reply to demands. White House: Obama-Netanyahu meeting yet to be scheduled


WASHINGTON – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sent a written document to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her visit to Moscow, reflecting the Israeli agreement to the Obama administration's demands, American media reported Saturday. The document was sent following a 40-minute phone conversation between the two officials.

The Politico website quoted diplomatic sources as saying that Netanyahu's document reflects the things he has agreed to do in response to Clinton's demands. The same demands were made in the previous phone conversation between the two eight days ago, which was particularly difficult and lasted even more than 40 minutes.

Read the rest HERE

Also..... there is more than just one liar on the scene....

Two Cheers for Netanyahu
Exposure of Obama Complete

by John Walsh


Joe Biden got torpedoed in Israel last week, no question about it. Not as bad as the lethal attack on the USS Liberty, but pretty nasty nonetheless. Biden, however, soldiered on, conferring with his boss for some 90 minutes and leaving the food cold at the Netanyahu homestead.

Bibi's humiliation of Biden and Obama brought out the whole of the punditry, some of it going so far as to criticize the Zionist state. Even Tom Friedman waxed indignant, counseling that the hapless Veep should have packed up and gone home. But, like Biden, Friedman is certain to get over it just as surely as he recanted recently when he had the poor judgment to utter a kind word about China. Uri Avnery captured the Biden fiasco best, observing that a weakling with spit on his face calls it rain. And Pat Buchanan observed that Biden remained in "full pander mode" even as Israel kicked its American poodle. But by midweek the falsehoods had begun to take hold and the punditry was starting to rewrite the story, with Maureen Dowd spinning the incident as a smackdown of Bibi by Barack who had finally "lost his temper." This insight rivaled her accompanying characterization of Israeli colonies in East Jerusalem as "a domestic zoning issue." And by Wednesday, op-eds in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere were blaming the whole incident on Barry for bringing up the "settlement" issue in the first place. Finally toward week's end on Thursday the Washington Post revealed that Barry and Bibi had reached a secret understanding that the settlement construction could continue so long as they remained out of public view. Sic semper Obama.

Netanyahu, however, deserves the undying gratitude of every real progressive in the U.S. This past year has been like a dance of the seven veils for Obama. They had been all teased away, save for one. The veil of peace, the veil of civil liberties, the veil of environmentalism, single-payer, nuclear disarmament (ripped away by a big new budget for nukes), opposition to the banksters – stripped away one by one. The only remaining vestment was opposition to Israel's colonies. And Bibi tore that one off between breakfast and (delayed) dinner, leaving Obama standing as naked as Ishtar or Salome.

So thanks, Bibi, for finishing the job. Now that it's done we can expect all those who aggressively championed candidate Obama to broadcast effusive apologies for so doing. Let us never forget that Obama was not just the candidate of the Democrats but the hands down choice of the most "progressive" wing of the Party, its dream candidate. By revealing Obama for what he is, the limitations of the Dems are laid bare. Obama is all we can expect from them, and it is not much.

By now Obama's backers surely recognize that they should not have urged him on us, just because he was so "cool" in schooling and appearance, or because all their friends liked him. Surely by now they realize that they were not voting for prom king but for the Emperor of the U.S.

With Obama's exposure completed by Bibi, we can expect an apology from the leaders of PDA like Norman Solomon, from the message controllers at The Nation, from other gate keepers in the progressive" movement, from Tom Hayden, Medea Benjamin, Phyllis Bennis and other leaders of UFPJ and the official peace movement, even perhaps from MoveOn.org. Surely they will be in print soon, promising no more pigs in a poke that turn out to be rats when let out of the bag. At the least they will apologize profusely for imposing Obama on us.

I can hardly wait to hear from them.


Source via Uruknet

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