Limasila: June 2015

TO STEAL FIRST DEHUMANIZE, DAEMONIZE THEN DECLARE WAR

MAFIA GANG STALKERS – Spread Lies, Run a Video Show and a Social/Stalking Media Gossip Sewer;

The Person is Drunk and Violent
The Person is Delusional

AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINIES SUFFERED THE SAME FATE AS AMERICAN INDIANS – I would say ask a Tasmanian Aborigine but Tasmanian Aborigines suffered GENOCIDE.

LOOKING BACK A CECIL RHODES – HE WAS KLEPTOMANIAC – STEALING LAND IN MANY PARTS OF AFRICA. Even in the early part of the 20^th century land in Kenya was being subdivided for British settlers.

Dehumanization and Demonization of the Enemy

-Dustie Marie Spencer, Dec. 2007

"The dehumanization of the enemy or of oneself traduces the truth of the matter: that human life, whether instantiated as a foe, or a comrade, or oneself, possesses value.”

-Michael W. Borough: 157

"Dehumanization is the psychological process whereby opponents view each other as less than human and thus not deserving of moral consideration."[1] When many people think about atrocities involving the dehumanization of the enemy, they envision horrific images of genocide; the Nazi extermination of European Jews, the Tutsi decimation by the majority Hutus in Rwanda, and the genocidal rape of the Bosnian Muslim women. These images are all horrific indeed, but it can be argued that the same process of dehumanization and demonization used in genocides are also used in other less dramatic settings. The term demonization is similar to dehumanization in that it makes the opponent seem subhuman, but not because they are an animal; they are a demon; evil incarnate. Although these processes can be used alone, the two processes are often used in conjunction with one another.

Though not confined to the war zone, dehumanization is often a conception of a wartime tradition. In a letter retrieved from a war zone, the author, Augustin Cochin wrote against the Germans in WWII,

"Dreadful, dreadful race; the more we see them from close up, the more we loathe them...It is annoying to get killed behind the parapet by such animals. They have a peculiar, powerful odor."[2]

These processes can be seen in prisoner of war or internment camps and former labor camps, in addition to church pulpits, the local radio show, and your next door neighbor's barbecue. Dehumanization campaigns may start off as propaganda campaigns, but escalate into the justified slaughter of large quantities of human beings. The demonization or dehumanization of the enemy, real or imagined, are tactics that have often been used to not only give a moral precedence for the killings of people, but offers the killer a way to shield themselves emotionally and psychologically from guilt; a state necessary for carrying out these seemingly heartless acts. "For most human beings, it takes an awful lot to kill another human being...The only way to do it is to justify the killing, to make the enemy look as evil as possible." [3] A good justification is essential for convincing anyone, let alone a large group of people, to engage in any effort, let alone a large-scale one, of the extermination of a group of people of any size. Aside from psychopathic personalities, human beings (including soldiers) have consciences and feelings. They have the capacity to feel guilty for their actions. Whether by mass movement, or by a state-run propaganda campaign, it is dehumanization and/or demonization of the enemy which gives the best possible motivation to carry out the horrendous acts associated with torture, war, politicide, and genocide. After all, it is easier to kill an animal or vermin; to engage in a holy war against a demon or devil, then to kill a fellow human being. Dehumanization and demonization are key components to a successful killing campaign, without which, the world could find the key to the prevention of a lot of unnecessary conflicts. If people, especially leaders, would cease using these tactics, then the world would be able to see a lot less violence.

Methods to the Madness

In the game of clue, a player might solve the murder by concluding that "Mrs. Peacock did it with a candlestick in the study," but in reality when we solve a crime we look not only for hard evidence, but for motivations. In many popular modern television shows, when solving for "who dunnit," the characters factor in who would have the best motivations for committing the crime. Why would we do any less when the international community faces a crisis such as genocide? It's painfully obvious that Hutus killed Tutsis in Rwanda with machetes. However, without understanding why, we can't prevent these types of atrocities from reoccurring. What were the Hutus' motivations? Why did the Nazis kill so many Jewish people? These questions could easily be answered by saying that the Tutsis were killed because they were oppressors of the Hutus during colonialism, or that the Jews were the reason that the Germans lost WWI. These are not satisfying answers, however. If the two parties waged a war with one another, these reasons may be logically motivating. Mere facts alone, however, are not enough to motivate even a soldier to kill another human being. "The approach of necessity must stir deep emotions of hate and revulsion against the enemy...This can be accomplished only by...dramatization..." [4] Writing during the second world war, Leonard Still, the psychiatrist making those claims, was referencing the process of dramatizing the virtues of the Allied powers while stressing the degenerate qualities of the Axis countries. Even to kill in a just war, it is necessary to dehumanize the enemy in order to justify killing "it."

Rationality

Human beings are reasoning creatures. Just like solving x to find y, we need to solve "why" to find x. X may be murder, rape, torture, or even name-calling. According to Preez, "There is a rationality of genocide just as there is a rationality of business or athletics, or war or science." [5] Various forms of rationality have a history rooted in activities within which problems are constituted and solutions are found. Genocidal solutions have strong roots; they don't appear overnight. In I Samuel, 15:3 of the Old Testament, "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." [6] Anyone who has ever read the Bible or picked up a history book knows that Jews have been picked on quite a lot. The Crusades started with pogroms against the Jews and ended with the massacre of Muslims. In 1492, the same year that Columbus was sailing the ocean blue, the Spanish rulers had ordered all of the Jews that had not yet converted to Christianity to be expelled. Prior to this, in 1480, Isabella and Ferdinand had instituted the Inquisition in Spain, which was aimed at Jews, Muslims, heretics, and mystics. The Pope had honored them with the title "the Catholics" for their efforts at religious purification. [7] The logic behind the colonization and subsequent decimation of many indigenous peoples was the belief in spreading civilization to the "barbaric" parts of the world. Often, it seems that people are destroyed with "good intentions." Governments may argue that they only wish to control population growth and to stimulate the economy. They seem quite often to fail at using the correct methods to achieve their goals. [8] Even in hindsight, it is wondered whether or not other methods would have permitted such quick acquisition of these lands. Soldiers worldwide are often uneducated and lack refined reasoning abilities. They are often unprepared to evaluate foreign policy on their own. Some are not even fully developed physically, let alone mentally, when conscripted into military service. [9]
Propaganda & the Media

Jews and Muslims, though seemingly easy targets, haven't been the only victims of discriminatory violence. A contemporary list of targets would include homosexuals, immigrants, and doctors that perform abortions. In America, ethnic Japanese have been targeted, labor organizers, and of course blacks. Some of the discriminatory movements arise out of racism, religious fanaticism, and other motives become violent, while others not. They span a wide range; from genocide, terrorist acts, state terror, mob violence, and soccer riots to protests, demonstrations, vandalism, religious dogma and political agendas. Demonizing propaganda is heard at local football games, in churches, on sit-coms, and discussed at local barbecues. Anti-whatever-you-don't-like-now movements are often characterized by dehumanization. Whether falsely charged or genuine witches, in Salem Massachusetts in the 1500s, many were burned at the stake. Regular people were demonized for often no reason other than a sort of hysteria. All sorts of groups or individuals are demonized now in a modern-day witch hunt for the perverse or unholy.

During WWI, the U.S. Army had recruiting posters portraying the German threat as a marauding gorilla with a bloodied club holding a half-ravished woman slung over its shoulder. In bold letters it reads, "Destroy This Mad Brute." [10] For WWII, Germany offered its artistic touch to propaganda with a poster of a skeletal soldier of the Red Army propped upon a globe with the Jewish Star of David and engulfed in flames. This reads, "Bolshevism without a mask," and references some sort of Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy. An American political cartoon, (not government-sponsored), inquires, "What would Mohammed drive?" The response is the caricature of a man dressed in traditional Moslem garb driving a rental truck with a missile hanging out the back. [11] Hollywood even jumped on the bandwagon with films such as, "Beast of Berlin." and "To Hell with the Kaiser." In a movie by D.W. Griffiths, "Hearts of the World," Germans are depicted launching babies out of windows. Whether justified or not, these images stay with viewers, and it influences their opinions of the adversaries negatively.

Sometimes propagandist rumors can spread news of fake atrocities, such as those preceding, and justifying the Spanish-American War. Alleged Spanish atrocities that probably never happened were published in newspapers, which then landed in the laps of constituents who were more than willing to support the unjust war. These things has set a standard, or pattern for embellished or phony American wartime propaganda. [12] Emphasizing voices of political demagogues in the media, especially through the radio and television venues, can inflame feelings of fear and anger. These sentiments can lead to invidious distinctions between in-groups and out-groups. " Such inflammatory reporting often fuels the escalation spiral and adds to the destructiveness of conflict." [13] Education can be highly ethnocentric and can be heavily influenced by propaganda and inflammatory media. Soldiers, and populations on the whole are often led into wars by campaigns of misinformation and propaganda, for which they often have little defense against.

Many governments are not helpful in this regard. During WWI, the United States created a propaganda office which promoted certain media materials appropriate to their cause. Just in February of 2002, there was talk of opening a new propaganda office under the Orwellian-like title, Office of Strategic Influence. [14] Although the Pentagon has been occupied with psychological operations such as dropping leaflets and utilizing radio broadcasts to undermine the enemy's morale, the newly proposed "black propaganda" was forbidden. This would allow the office to covertly plant disinformation in foreign media, which could then be picked up by domestic sources. Although this idea was raised and abandoned with little fanfare, it poses the possibility of propaganda campaigns in contemporary times that can alter the perception of constituents through demonizing or dehumanizing fabrications.

Us v. Them

In wartime, "we" and "they" are qualitatively different. Subhumanization emerges when this separation is so large, that the "other" might as well be of a different species. A mirror image of dehumanization is nationalism, which can be mistaken for patriotism. Nationalism, especially during a conflict, distorts reality. It can highlight the actions of the party while characterizing the enemies as inferior beings. The fact is that each side feels superior. They are more worthy. Minor differences are dramatized and turned into major divisions. "Their" customs, language, culture, traditions, religion, etc. are all very different from "ours." [15] This is evident by the Balkan conflict. To any outsider, there's not much distinction between a Croat or a Serb or a Bosnian. However, by exaggerating seemingly insignificant differences, in-group sentiments can turn into vehement hate towards the out-groups, successfully intensifying the conflict.

Behavior is a product of social situations. If you take a few people who have never met before and give them even a minimal context, given a short period of time, they will form groups. [16] During the summer of 1954, an experiment was conducted called the Robbers Cave Experiment, named for the location in the mountains. Two sets of twelve year old boys whom were similar in many ways were brought separately to the campsite, and were unaware of each other for several days. The groups engaged in bonding activities and quickly developed "we" feelings. Once the groups became aware of one another, however, they began to develop hostile attitudes towards each other. The offer of rewards for the winning team of a series of competitions escalated hostilities. By the end of the tournament the groups were sworn enemies. [17]

Justification

Unfortunately, the Jews were driven to death camps to be burned in crematoriums or gassed via "red cross" supply trucks; [18] the Tutsis were hacked apart with machetes- men, women, and children alike. Dehumanizing and demonizing an enemy makes it justifiable to not only murder combatants, but non-combatants as well. [19] In judging the fighters in a war, or the participants of violent actions, we often don't take into consideration the justifications of their actions. Although it is easy enough to say that violence is never justifiable, many soldiers are acting on behalf of loyalty to their country or leaders. They are often the executioners, not the ones ordering the execution. [20] The dealers of death most likely believe their causes are just.

Dehumanizing an enemy makes it easier to kill an enemy. It removes certain psychological barriers and helps the perpetrator cope with their action. [21] It provides the soldier protection from psychological damage, like a helmet protecting his brain from external drama. People who have grown up in racial or sexist societies find it difficult to transcend the conventional standards of their time. [22]They have been de-sensitized from a young age to hatred or dislike of other groups. Even very well-educated people find it hard to shake off these stereotypes and wonder how in hindsight they could have been so patronizing and thoughtless.

Dehumanization of the enemy can also lead the perpetrator to go too far. It can erase the distinctions between who is an ally or innocent and who is the enemy. Even while dehumanizing another, during war, soldiers dehumanize themselves. They realize that they are expendable, and this can make it easier to kill the enemy, whom is even more expendable. They may come to see just one life, their own included, as insignificant in the grand scheme of things. [23] People may believe that people become victims based on the "just-world theory" that people will get what they deserve.

Justification can come by way of a legal precedent. Before the Jews were rounded up and deported to concentration camps, there were several laws passed that stripped them of many rights. At first, discriminatory recommendations were directed at non-German Jews. Alarm bells would not ring until later on. The first major law of April 7, 1933, was the "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service." What sounds like promoting positive reform actually stripped Jews and other "politically unreliable" people of the right to work as civil servants. Following this was the restriction on the number of Jewish students permissible at Aryan schools and universities. The infamous 1935 Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of their voting rights and citizenship, in addition to making it illegal for them to inter-marry or even have sexual intercourse with non-Jews. [24]In 1937 and 1938, the "Aryanization" of Jewish businesses came underway, stripping the Jewish people of their ownership rights. After the "Night of Broken Glass," pogrom in the fall of 1938, Nazis barred the Jews from all public schools, cinemas, and sports facilities. Jewish doctors were no longer permitted to treat Aryan patients and identification cards were established to make Jews more easily recognizable, marked by the letter "J."

The Means to an End

The idea to starve the Ukrainians during an artificial famine or to purge tens of millions of real or imagined political opponents of Stalin's may have come out of a loose definition for what were actually "enemies of the Soviet state." The means for punishing these "enemies" for the kulaks, Chechens, and countless of other groups and individuals throughout the Soviet Union were deportation and slave labor in prison and labor camps scattered throughout the territories and satellite states. For the Ukrainians, the means were imposed collective farming and grain confiscation. All the means are tactics of dehumanization and demonization of the enemy, whoever the "enemy" might so happen to be. Often, the populations at large do not approve of the slaughtering of these people. They disbelieve their leaders would have anything to do with it. When the extremities of the Nazi party were noticed, the answer among many people was that Hitler did not know what was going on. During the Great Purges of the Soviet Union, there was a similar sentiment, "If only someone would let Stalin know what was happening." [25]

Hitler and Stalin

Writing a paper about dehumanization would not be complete without addressing the two most notorious figures of the WWII era; Hitler and Stalin. Watching a documentary about the Holocaust shows views of horrific images. Heaps of corpses, so great in number it requires a bulldozer; heavy construction machinery, just to plow the heap into massive graves. Depictions such as these send shivers down people's spines. Hitler becomes the avatar of evil; an anti-Christ; the epitome of all that is unholy. Hitler, it can be said, is responsible for the deaths of more than five million Jews, Roma, degenerates, and anyone else considered unworthy of living in the Reich. Stalin, Hitler's counterpart in Russia, was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions more people than Hitler had claimed. It is often wondered why Stalin's crimes against his own people (and especially of Ukrainians in the 1930s) was, if not ignored by the Western world, at least greatly marginalized. Although it is said that the Nazi as well as the Stalin regimes had objective enemies-that is enemies that changed depending on the prevailing circumstances- [26] it can be argued that much is the same for the West, and their motives to befriend "the devil himself," in order to defeat the Nazis.

Ambiguous enemies are one way to take control in a totalitarian regime. It offers the leeway to switch allies quickly and to make objective criteria for "enemies of the state," almost as a whim. On Hitler's "hit list" initially were the crippled and the retarded. This list later included the Gypsies, homosexuals, and of course, the Jews. In the Soviet Union, the victims were supporters of the old regime initially. This too evolved to include not only political opponents, but particular national groups and ethnicities as well. [27] Swinging a massive movement towards a government's particular cause is not impossible in a democracy, but it's all too easy in a totalitarian regime. The creation of concentration camps, for example, was actually the final stage in a long process of dehumanization of these objective enemies. "Enemies" of the state were not only falsely accused of being agents to foreign powers, but they were classified as vermin and poisonous weeds; they were subhuman. The very existence of Jews was viewed as a threat to the Aryan race. They are nonhuman; they are anti-human. [28] Nazis propagandized the inhuman characteristics of the Jews, and once demonized, the legal isolation of the enemy could begin in earnest.

Nazi Concentration Camps: The Kommando

People in the labor camps were humiliated, deloused and walking around naked all day. These were the ones destined for harsh working conditions. If they become useless they wound up in the gas chambers or the crematoria, but not as long as they were economic assets to the Reich. Canada was the term used to designate those members of the labor gang, or kommando who helped to unload the incoming transports of people destined for the gas chambers. When a transport came, they greeted terror-stricken people who traveled cramped and crushed, crying for water and inquiring what would become of them. The people got off the trains with lots of luggage and crates, meaning to start a new life in the camps." [29] Many did not initially know what their true fate would be. It is the camp law: people going to their death must be deceived to the very end. This is the only permissible form of charity." [30] People were ushered onto trucks lined up, ready to scurry off to the crematoria and gas chambers. To add to the illusion, a Red Cross van might be there, driving back and forth, ironically carrying the gas that would kill the people. Men healthy and young enough to work, left on foot to the camp where their labor was exploited until they were finally were sent to their deaths as well. Some women were spared as well. Many of these were experimented on; artificially inseminated and/or injected with viral or bacterial infections. Canada had the job of unloading people, luggage, and the corpses of dead babies. They loaded the corpses onto the same trucks as invalids and the unconscious to be burned alive. Working there was exhaustive, both emotionally and physically. The prisoners did not enjoy their work. They were forced to usher people to their deaths. Sometimes they would see people they know and vainly try to convince them they were going to be taking a bath before rejoining them at the camps. Many of the Jews were eager to work. They were tired of being hauled around like cattle in stuffy train cars with not enough room to stoop down to relax their legs. All the food these people in the cattle cars had brought with them went to feed the people at the camps, including those that helped the Germans load them onto the trucks. The gold would go to the Reich, further funding their destructive conquests of extermination. Four and a half million people were recorded in the journals of people being sent to the crematoria; the greatest victory of one strong, united Germany: "Ein Reich, ein volk, ein Fuhrer-and four crematoria." [31]

Soviet-Style Concentration Camps

Soviet labor and prison camps took root in Czarist Russia. Prisoners under the Czarist system were sent to forced labor camps in the eighteenth century. They mined, built roads, factories, ships, and the modern European city of St. Petersburg. Applebaum explains different motivations between the Gulags of Lenin or Stalin and the Gulag system of the Czars. The Czarist exile system and the Gulagwere both economic endeavors, in addition to housing criminals and political dissidents. People were exiled to the far reaches of the continent to populate it as well as to exploit the resources there. Even non-criminals were sent away.

In the early twentieth century, political prisoners, such as the Bolsheviks were often exiled into Siberia, and sent into the Czarist prisons there. Unlike other criminals, they were well-fed, and warm in their fur coats and boots. Applebaum demonstrates the niceties of the Peter and Paul Fortress by describing a picture of Trotsky wearing spectacles, in a suit and tie with a very white collar in front of one of the peepholes, later used in the Soviet prisons. [32] Stalin, who was exiled four times and escaped three times, would describe the Czarists regime as toothless. The Bolsheviks experience in Siberia gave them lessons on the need for an "exceptionally strong punitive regime." The first Soviet camps came in the aftermath of the October Revolution. Lenin used industrialized methods of incarceration, where "enemies of the people" were sent in droves to be locked up. Many were stripped naked, forced to face a wall, and shot. The Gulag, or Main Camp Administration, came not only to be the administration of concentration camps of "undesirable elements," but also to represent Soviet repression in the form of the administration of slave labor. Stalin, like the Czars before him, used the Gulag system as an economical tool. He used forced labor to speed up the process of industrialization, and to extract natural resources in Soviet's northern regions. [33] By the end of the 1930s, (helped along by Stalin's great purges of 1937 and 1938), there were camps in all twelve time zones of the Soviet Union.

"Within the camps, the process of dehumanization deepened and grew more extreme, helping both to intimidate the victims and to reinforce the victimizers' belief in the legitimacy of what they were doing." [34]Often they weren't just killed, but they were beaten, stripped naked, humiliated, and generally treated like animals, even before being executed, "To condition those who actually had to carry out the policies. To make it possible for them to do what they did." [35] The prisoners were tortured, interrogated, then tortured some more. They were threatened with death on a daily basis, worked sometimes literally to death, and forced to stay awake under large, bright lights. They were underfed and not well cared for medically. Their privacy was forfeited with the constant watchful eyes peering into the peephole in each prison cell. In the prison camps, often during the interrogation process prisoners were not allowed any contact with each other. Prisoners were reduced to a number; stripped of their identity and dehumanized.

Unlike the Nazis, who had a more definitive definition of undesirables that would wind up in concentration camps, for the Soviet Union, the term "enemy" was more ambiguous. "While millions of Soviet prisoners feared they might die-and millions did-there was no single category of prisoner whose death was absolutely guaranteed." [36] Some prisoners were prevented from killing themselves, and were not killed despite several threats to their lives. In other circumstance, people were killed regularly, as a sport for bored guards. That is, if they didn't die in the harsh labor camp conditions first.Sometimes those arrested never made it to the concentration camps. "...they were driven to a forest at night, lined up, shot in the skull, and buried in mass graves." [37]

Stalin did not dream up the idea of a Gulag archipelago overnight. The Bolsheviks rose up and defeated the "Whites" of the Czarist army. Stalin wanted to ensure not only his successive rise to the top, but wanted to prolong his stay there. He felt that the only way to properly accomplish his goals was to make his prison system as brutal as it was. To carry out the tasks of the Stalin regime, it was not necessary to empty the lunatic asylums to recruit the people with the proper mindset to do the things that they did. Most people will obey even the most outrageous instructions once they have accepted an authority. [38] Stalin was such an authority. He was voted into his position by the people's political bureau. He was the "vanguard of the proletariat." He was the saviour of the people from the Nazi invasion of WWII. Once people accept an authority as legitimate, by whatever means, it is easy to accept the government's judgement. "Once our government leaders and authorities condemn the dangerous elements in our society, it will be the duty of every patriotic citizen to help stamp out the rot that is poisoning our country from within." [39]

America in the War on Terror

Whether the war is just or not, soldiers have a tendency to dehumanize

"According to a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 'You just sort of try to block out the fact that they're human beings and see them as enemies...You call them hajis...You do all the things that make it easier to deal with killing them and mistreating them.'" [40]

The problem with the US soldiers' conceptions' of the enemy is that by dehumanizing the enemy, there is a risk of these conceptions spilling over to other groups, such as POWs or non-combatants. Some soldiers in Iraq have found themselves to be blurring the distinction between different groups of people. They have endangered and mistreated groups that they were charged with protecting. Some US military personnel have been duly charged with extra-combat killings and prisoner abuse. [41] The idea that the enemy is subhuman can be a catalyst for, as well as a result of, the environment. It is not clear whether in fact dehumanization of the enemy causes violent acts to occur or if being engaged in violence acts can cause the justified dehumanization of the enemy. This is particularly uncertain in times of war. Furthermore, when the enemy is dehumanized, it can make it easier for a soldier to violate jus in Bello, or the Geneva conventions, just as some American soldiers in Iraq have been accused of.

When fighters are taken as prisoners of war, the dehumanization caricature they once possessed may begin to fade in the eyes of those holding them in captivity. An enemy soldier may be seen as frightfully similar to the captors. In other cases, the prisoner may be disregarded as inferior. This was never more apparent when the world was shocked by the sadistic abuse and sexual humiliations of Iraqi prisoners held at Abu Ghraib, a prison near Baghdad. Photographs surfaced showing the American soldiers had forced one of the prisoners to stand on top of a box, with his head covered and hands bound with wire. He was told that is he moved, or fell off the box that he would be electrocuted. [42] Also, depicted in photographs, were shots of prisoners stacked in a pyramid or placed in humiliating positions that suggested they were having sex with each other. All this came by the liberators, who when came upon the prison initially, were stunned to find electrodes protruding from the walls and that bodies of people had been eaten by dogs.

Post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a common ailment for many American soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. It is common for the ex-combatant as well as for the ex-victim. It can be argued that the practice of dehumanization is psychologically debilitating. The veteran's treatment may require some sort of reversal in their attitude towards the enemy, posthumously. [43] They must give their enemy some sort of humanity; the humanity that was taken away from them by the perpetrator. Whether the kill is just or not, it is often helpful to revere the victim; to have a moment of silence, to say a prayer. These things can be healing for the mind that has been exposed to the damaging effects of a war zone. Respecting one's enemy may actually be beneficial for all parties.

Non-humanization

"In order to fight at close range one must deny the humanity of one's enemy." [44] Killing someone from a distance is much easier to cope with. Stabbing someone is more difficult that shooting someone, or dropping a bomb on them from far away. No one had to look at the faces of the Japanese people in Hiroshima or Nagasaki when atomic bombs were dropped from airplanes 30,000 feet in the sky. [45] The act of killing becomes easier with increasing emotional and physical distance. With today's technological and sophisticated militaries, enemies are becoming little dots on radar; coordinated targets; push-pins. They are neither evil nor human, but nonhuman. They are devoid of inherent worth. They are killed with indirect trajectory artillery. Combatants cannot come to terms with the deaths of such faraway victims. "The greater the effortlessness of war, the greater the motive to conduct it..." [46] Close your eyes, pull the trigger, and you shall see no more. When there aren't any dead babies, when there is no stench of rotting corpses, when the distance is too great to hear the screams of the dieing, it is easy to ignore; out of sight, out of mind.

Re-Humanizing

Lifting the veil of dehumanization and demonization can greatly increase the odds of de-escalating a conflict, or even of conflict prevention. Rather than seeing another party as evil and as one who enjoys inflicting suffering, the adversary can be seen as a fellow human being who also suffers from the conflict, and who can be accepted as part of the same moral community. [47] Conflict resolution cannot begin until the parties involved recognize the collective right for the other parties to exist. The process of recognizing the common humanity of one's opponents, or humanization, makes it more difficult to justify the use of heavy violence or aggression. [48]

Social education and peace media strategies can help to balance out the voices of extremists. Schools and communities have the capacity to promote cooperation and offer seminars that address the problems of ethnocentrism, prejudice, and the subsequent violent acts as part of the dehumanization process. The parties, and even outside interveners can assist by reducing inaccurate perceptions, stereotypes, and enemy images through workshops, personal therapy, and "rumor control." With the introduction of the humanization processes, the adversaries can recognize one another's legitimacy and come to a state of mutual acceptance. [49] Perceived similarity and common group membership with the adversary is important to reduce the “us-them” line of thought. Recognizing commonalities is an effective way to combat polarization that can arise out of the dehumanization process.

Restoring humanity to an enemy not only makes it less likely to kill them, but making an enemy appear to be worthy is a "noble kill." Honoring a fallen foe can actually have a positive effect on the conscience of the killer. [50] Furthermore, when a soldier gets to know the enemy, they become more human. They aren't the demonic entity that flouts the sacraments, waving a gun around, waiting to be put out of their indecent misery; they have a spouse and children. They care for people, and people care for them. The image of an enemy held by a "reasonable man" may be one where the enemy is a decent man, but perhaps "temporarily misguided by false doctrines or forced to make war against his better will and desire." [51]

NATIVE AMERICANS DEHUMANIZED BY DEMONIZING COLONIAL PROPAGANDA

NOTE: The following description of Systemic Racism, although it relates to events in localized areas of the Americas, is also applicable to all parts of the two Continents.

British officialdom, to keep English Subjects suitably aroused against the Eastern Amerindians, blamed them for a good many of the crimes - they used the term "outrages"in their reports - committed in their colonies. In the case of the Mi'kmaq, without evidence, they blamed them for all the so-called "outrages" that occurred in Acadia.

In fact, there is very little evidence to support a contention that the Mi'kmaq ever indulged in organized atrocities against their enemies. Renegade Mi'kmaq may have indulged in some, but, these were not condoned or sanctioned by Mi'kmaq governments, and were exceptions, not the rule.

The use of demonizing propaganda by governments, for the purpose of arousing public opinion to support their cause, is a well-established practice around the world. It was used for such during the 1990 Persian Gulf War. During that conflict, incidents of brutality, or invented ones, were reported widely by both sides.

The propaganda used to protray opponents as barbarians during the Gulf War was a modern version of the colonial demonizing propaganda that was used so effectively by European colonial authorities to dehumanize the First Nations Peoples of the Americas, which depicted them as bloodthirsty heathen savages.

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First Nations Peoples Dehumanized and Victimized

Systemic Racism in Canada and Nova Scotia

Dr. Daniel N. Paul, C.M., O.N.S., August 31, 2008

"Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race." - Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.”

“I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone… Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.” Dr. Duncan Campbell Scott - 1920

Scott made his mark in Canadian history as the head of the Department of Indian Affairs from 1913 to 1932, a department he had served since joining the federal civil service in 1879.

Even before Confederation, the Canadian government adopted a policy of assimilation (actually, it was the continuation of a policy that British colonial officials had pursued since 1713). The long term goal was to bring the Native peoples from what the white supremacist politicians and bureaucrats described as their ‘savage and unproductive state’ and force (English style) civilization upon them, thus making Canada a homogeneous society in the Anglo-Saxon and Christian tradition.

In 1920, under Scott's direction, it became mandatory for all native children between the ages of seven and fifteen to attend one of Canada's Residential Schools.

The following two quotes are from a presentation that I made as Chair of the Council on Mi’kmaq Education, on November 23, 2007, to the Nova Scotia Government’s Teacher Training Review Panel.

“I’ll start this discourse by thanking the Panel for providing the Council with an opportunity to put forward a proposal for reforming Nova Scotia’s teacher training program to the extent that graduating students will leave a training school with a positive opinion of the Mi’kmaq Nation. To achieve this goal we will advocate that true Mi’kmaq history be a required course for teacher training students. As matters now stand, which doesn’t enhance the effort to effectively counter the systemic stereotype racist image held by most of the majority towards our People, most teachers graduating from teaching training entities in this province know little, or nothing, about First Nations Peoples. And, unfortunately, much of what they do know can be categorized as “White washed history.”

Before proceeding further, I want to diverge from the subject for a moment to state, related to the fact that systemic racism has often caused me to suffer the indignity of being discriminated against because of who I am, that this opportunity to propose positive proactive action to correct a historical wrong through education is something that I’ve been wanting to do for years. If our proposal is accepted, and followed through, it will eventually help realize a long sought after result; non-First Nation peoples accepting our People as equals from a different progressive culture. Therefore, because I see it as essential for the success of the Mi’kmaq People’s future endeavours and prosperity in Nova Scotia, I do hope that during our discourse we can persuade the Panel to embrace what we will propose.”

To-date, nothing of substance has evolved from the presentation.

THE WHY AND HOW SYSTEMIC RACISM EVOLVES

A quote from an October 15, 2006 article by Stephanie M. Schwartz, The Arrogance of Ignorance; Hidden Away, Out of Sight and Out of Mind

“This is an article of facts about the lives of modern-day American Indians, a topic most mainstream American news organizations will not discuss.... It is not a plea for charity. It is not a promotion for non-profit organizations. It is not aimed for pity.... It is, however, an effort to dispel ignorance…. a massive, pervasive, societal ignorance filled with illusions and caricatures which, ultimately, serve only to corrupt the intelligence and decent intent of the average mainstream citizen. Only through knowledge and understanding can solutions be found....”

I recently received an Email from an American Indian leader asking if I could offer an explanation about why racial discrimination in the United States against First Nation Peoples is yet so widespread and pervasive. The following is an edited version of my reply:

“It’s the same on both sides of the border. Somehow, someway, pride in origins needs to be re-instilled in our People, and the non-First Nation population must be educated about the true histories of our Peoples. Then, somehow, someway, a desire to return to the self-sufficiency that was part and parcel of pre-European invasion First Nation existence must be reinstated into the expectations of our Peoples. Depending on another race of people's charity for survival is degrading and fosters feelings of inferiority and insecurity. The end result is that the idleness created for able-bodied People by living on handouts leads to drug, alcohol, family abuse, etc.”

TWO MAJOR PROBLEMS

First: The white man's condescending paternalism. The following is essential for First Nations Peoples to restore self-esteem. We need to come to know, and promote the truth; our intellectual abilities are equal to those of any race of people on the face of Mother Earth! We have the intellectual capability to do things for ourselves, we don’t need others to do things for us. Because we've been treated as mental incompetents, incapable of managing our own affairs by another race of people for centuries, doesn't mean that we have to accept the fabrication as fact. We have much to be proud of. Our People survived the hell on Mother Earth that the European invasion begot them, and are still here. That alone is something to be immensely proud of.

Second: The lack of knowledge about the true histories of First Nations among ourselves, and the general population is almost universal, with very negative results for First Nations. This is a vacuum that Canadian provinces can easily correct by proactive reform, if the will can be found, of education systems, which will require mandatory teaching of real First Nations history in schools. Such won’t be easy to accomplish. Elected officials will have to muster the fortitude to override the obstruction efforts of influential closet white supremacist individuals, who will fight diligently to preserve the status quo, which presently excludes real First Nations history from being included in the Province’s school curriculums.

One of the most serious problems arising for our Peoples, out of our historical exclusion, is, as mentioned, most First Nations Peoples have very little knowledge about their histories. For instance, most Mi’kmaq haven’t any knowledge whatsoever about the fact that their ancestors, trying to save their country from theft by invaders, fought the British bravely for over one hundred and thirty years. All most know about our culture is dancing and artwork.

The before-mentioned can be attributed in a large part to the hunter writing the history. Read most history books written by white men about the invasion and colonizing of the eastern seaboard of North America by Europeans, and you will find nary a positive comment about the heroic efforts made by the area’s original inhabitants to preserve their cultures and homelands. Most of them do not even acknowledge the existence of the great First Nations that once prospered in the area. When they do, it generally is in the most unflattering terms, barbarous people, savages, heathens, etc. One notable exception was made by Joseph Howe in an anti-Confederation speech he delivered in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, in 1867:

“The Indians who fought your forefathers were open enemies, and had good reason for what they did. They were fighting for their country, which they loved, as we have loved it in these latter years. It was a wilderness. There was perhaps not a square mile of cultivation, or a road or a bridge anywhere. But it was their home, and what God in His bounty had given them they defended like brave and true men. They fought the old pioneers of our civilization for a hundred and thirty years, and during all that time they were true to each other and to their country, wilderness though it was....”

EUROPEAN COLONIAL HISTORY

To provide an overview of the horrendous treatment suffered by First Nation Peoples since the European invasion commenced, I’ll lightly touch upon European colonial history with one condensed paragraph. This is necessary because one would need volumes of books to adequately describe it in detail, which we do not have the time for today.

The European subjugation of the indigenous Peoples of the Americas was a crime against humanity that knows no equal in human history. By the time the invaders had managed to appropriate all the lands in the Americas that our ancestors had owned and occupied for millenniums, of the hundreds of diverse civilizations that had existed prior to Columbus, not one was left intact, and tens of millions were dead. During the process, indigenous people suffered every barbarity imaginable, mass murder, germ warfare, enslavement, rape, enforced starvation, relocation, etc. One of the favourite means used by the English to ethnically cleanse the land of its original inhabitants in North America was proclamations offering bounties for the scalps of First Nation men, women, and children. A barbarous means used by them, on three occasions against the Mi'kmaq, in Nova Scotia. Stemming from it, some United States jurisdictions continued to use these ungodly proclamations until the 1860s to try to eliminate some First Nation populations.

The following, related to the systemic racism created for First Nations by dehumanizing demonizing colonial propaganda, contains examples of some of the abhorrent acts that were visited upon First Nations Peoples. One can be certain, if enlightened action is not taken to stop it, similar abhorrent acts will continue to occur for the foreseeable future

WHY RACISM AND OTHER FORMS OF INTOLERANCE ATTITUDES PERSIST

In his discourse in, Lessons at the Halfway Point , Michael Levine accurately identifies why intolerance exists: "If you don't personally get to know people from other racial, religious or cultural groups, its very easy to believe ugly things about them and make them frightening in your mind."

If Europeans had gotten to know, and had accepted indigenous Americans and Africans as equals during colonial times, instead of adopting White supremacist racist beliefs that negatively, and erroneously, depicted both Peoples as wild inhuman savages for the better part of five centuries, these peoples of colour would not have suffered the indescribable hells they did across the Americas, and, in far too many cases, still do.

The following shows how the racism problem that First Nation Peoples suffer is pervasive and, why a Nation of civilized people must fight together to overcome it!

FIRST NATION INVISIBILITY

Buffy Saint-Marie, a member of the Cree Nation, acclaimed singer and human rights activist, stated during an October 1970, interview with the Los Angeles Times, that Indian children “are not taught to be proud they’re Indian. Here the melting pot stands with arms open - if you’re willing to get bleached first.”

This statement by Dalhousie University professor Susan Sherwin about the underlying cause of racism is the best description I’ve ever read. It puts into words why it is so hard to get society to recognize, and accept, that the systemic racism that victimizes First Nations Peoples exists: “....the greatest danger of oppression lies where bias is so pervasive as to be invisible...”

Examples of First Nation invisibility in Canada

The following is a quote from a story published in the May 30, 2007 edition of the Globe and Mail. “Tim Horton’s serves up some controversy” No Drunken Indians Allowed.' The sign was put up by a young employee at an Alberta outlet.

The incident provides a great example of how deeply ingrained in Canadian society systemic racist beliefs about First Nations Peoples are. When a young Caucasian teenager hangs a sign stating "No Drunken Indians Allowed," it shows that she has been taught by others that expressing such racist garbage about First Nation Peoples is not wrong. Her action exposes the reality that there is a long festering sickness loose in Canadian society that needs to be dealt with by federal and provincial governments effectively. After all, it was their predecessors, and British colonial administrations, that instilled in the subconscious of this society, by using dehumanizing demonizing propaganda about First Nations Peoples, the systemic racism that plagues our Peoples today.

Our home, un-native land

First Nations initially overlooked in list of things defining Canada By GREGORY BONNELL The Canadian Press Thu. Jul 17, 2008 - 4:32 AM

TORONTO — Aboriginal people have been granted the 102nd spot on a government-sponsored list of 101 things that most define Canada after online respondents pointed out that First Nations people, culture and symbols weren’t included in the original tally.

The oversight and late addition reflects how the historic marginalization of First Nations people has pushed them to the fringes of Canadian consciousness, an aboriginal studies instructor said...

REVISIONIST HISTORY

In the case of First Nations it's their factual History, which is slowly replacing the fairy tale Caucasian version of demonizing European colonial propaganda, that is branded by those who believe in the supremacy of the European to be "revisionist history". The fairy tale version, unfortunately, is still widely accepted and used by many writers as undisputed fact. I can attest to the veracity of this statement from first hand experience. When my book, We Were Not the Savages , was first published, which outed the widespread use of scalp proclamations by the British, and other atrocities committed by them against Eastern North American First Nations Peoples, I was roundly condemned by many Anglo individuals, from across the spectrum of society, as a “revisionist.”

THE DEHUMANIZING EFFECTS OF SYSTEMIC RACISM

Systemic racism is an evil that tarnishes the good name of most of the "civilized" societies of the Americas. In my view, a society which permits it's First Nations Peoples, in modern times, to continue to be degraded by dehumanizing Eurocentric colonial propaganda is more than a little short on the civilized side.

The negativity that First Nations Peoples suffer from systemic racism in modern times is pervasive and a burden that prevents equal participation in the good life that the majority enjoy. Although both claim to be compassionate countries, with justice for all as a core value, Canada and the United States, with a few notable U.S. internal exceptions, Maine and Montana for instance, are not making any viable effort to substitute colonial propaganda with the truth.

To emphasize the point that they are not substituting fiction with fact, the following is a comparison that shows how racially motivated remarks about other racial groups are dealth with by society, compared to those made about First Nations Peoples:

On April 4, 2007, Don Imus, a radio talk show host made a sexiest racist remark about a female sports team, whose players were mostly of African American heritage, “nappy headed hos.” Rightfully, there was condemnation across the board and he was fired.

During the prior two weeks to that event, I saw three shows on North American T.V., where these degrading terms, describing First Nation Peoples were used: “Injuns,” “Savage Redskins,” “Indian givers,” “Acting like a bunch of wild Indians,” not a word of condemnation. Why not? The answer is simple, a subconscious belief among the majority that the statements are true.

During the colonization of the Americas by invading Europeans tens of millions of First Nations People died from out and out genocidal practices - starvation, the deliberate spreading of European diseases, etc., at their hands. The following is a prime example of how religiously the catastrophe is ignored by Canada and the United States.

Virginia Tech Murders. A sample of the headlines that publisized the horrendous deed in the United States and Canada: "The worst shooting rampage in American history…" "Massacre and Mourning, 33 die in worst shooting in U.S. History," "Rampage called worst mass shooting in U.S. history." "What first appeared to be a single shooting death unfolded into the worst gun massacre in the nation's history.”

In response a First Nation person might want to know: What about the Massacre at Sand Creek in Colorado? It's a historical fact that Methodist minister Col. Chivington and his soldiers massacred between 200 and 400 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, most of the victims were women, children, and elderly men. Chivington specifically ordered the killing of children. When asked why, he said, "Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice."

Another example: At Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota, the U.S. 7th Cavalry, on December 29, 1890, attacked, while they were engaged in a spiritual practice known as the "Ghost Dance,” 350 unarmed Lakota Sioux. Approximately 90 warriors and 200 women and children were killed. Although the attack was officially reported by Field Commander General Nelson A. Miles as an "unjustifiable massacre," twenty three soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor for their participation in the slaughter. The unarmed Lakota men fought back with bare hands. The elderly men and women stood and sang their death songs while falling under the hail of bullets. Soldiers stripped the bodies of the dead Lakota, keeping their ceremonial religious clothing as souvenirs. In spite of this, modern US governments have been steadfast in refusing to revoke the medals.

Joan Redfern, a Lakota Sioux remarks: "To say the Virginia shooting is the worst in all of U.S. history is to pour salt on old wounds. It means erasing and forgetting all of our ancestors who were killed in the past."

JUSTICE COMPARISON

In 1995, Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka were accused and convicted of murdering, torturing, and raping two white girls - horrific crimes. After conviction, Bernardo was sentenced to life, and designated a dangerous offender. He is kept in isolation and, in all likelihood, will never get out of prison. Karla, of course, swung a deal and is now out free.

At the same time in Saskatchewan John Martin Crawford, a previously convicted murderer and rapist of a Cree woman in 1983, was tried and convicted for torturing, raping, and murdering three more Cree women. There is evidence that he may have killed and raped more, and he has a history of committing other violent acts. For these horrific acts, Crawford is serving three concurrent life sentences in open prison confinement, with no chance of parole for 20 years, he has not been declared a dangerous offender.

Crown prosecutor Terry Hinz stated during an interview: "There is no reason why the Paul Bernardo case should have received more publicity than the John Martin Crawford case." These comments made by trial judge Wright during the conviction process answer best why the national media all but ignored this horrendous case:

"What was it about these four victims that made Mr. Crawford feel that he could take their lives after sexually assaulting them, confining them, terrorizing them...?

“And finally, what on earth can explain his actions in mutilating two of them? I refer to his conviction with respect to Ms. Serloin; she was left naked, the final indignity, on her back and exposed and mutilated by biting. Ms. Taysup's arm was cut off at the elbow, for what possible reason?

“It appears to me that Mr. Crawford was attracted to his victims for four reasons: one, they were young; second, they were women; third, they were Native; and fourth, they were prostitutes... The accused treated them with contempt.... He seemed determined to destroy every vestige of their humanity. He left three of them naked and lying on the ground. There is a kind of ferocity in these actions that reminds me of a wild animal, a predator.

“The accused has shown no remorse, absolutely none, no regrets, there's been no effort to explain his actions and, in fact, we know from the tapes that he laughed about the killings." Sensational horrific stuff, isn't it? Thus, there is no rational conclusion that can be drawn from the media's indifference, other than that these women were viewed by them as only "Indians" and, because of they were, of no interest. An example of systemic racism at its worst.

The author of Just Another Indian, journalist Warren Goulding, offers his opinion of why Crawford's crime spree has largely been ignored by the media.

"Race, geography, incompetence, and economics all play a role.," "There are no easy answers to explain Canadians' indifference to this case then, or now, but as a society we must ask ourselves the questions."

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Junior Marshall Case, a Nova Scotia Mi’kmaq boy who was convicted of murder because he was a Mi’kmaq, which needs no elaboration here.

The following is a quote from the November 12 issue of the Halifax Herald

VANCOUVER — Frank Paul spent the last night of his life crawling on his hands and knees at the police station, from where he was dragged to a police wagon and then dumped, drunk and soaking wet, in a back alley where he died.

But Paul’s family heard a starkly different explanation from police when they were finally called about his death on the night of Dec. 6, 1998.

"They said he died in a hit-and-run and that he was found in a ditch," Paul’s cousin, Peggy Clement, said from the New Brunswick community of Elsipogtog, formerly known as Big Cove.”

Paul’s official cause of death was hypothermia.

For Steven Kelleher, the lawyer representing the family, one big question about Paul’s fate begs an answer: "Why?"

"Why was there such a profound and unanimous indifference to this man’s life and death? Lethal indifference."

"EXPERT" OPINIONS

The following is a quote from a column by Jonathan Kay, published by the National Post, October 23, 2007, which illustrates vividly that you can write and have published by a respected publishing entity in this country just about anything about First Nations Peoples, no matter how vile it is.

“....A proper native policy would be guided by the three principles listed above.... The most decrepit and remote reserves, ... would simply be torn down -- their inhabitants installed at government expense in population centres of the residents' choice. The hundreds of millions of dollars that go into running these hell-holes would be used to teach job skills, detox the drunks, educate the children and otherwise integrate the families into mainstream Canadian life....

Self-government would be possible, but only in the same limited way that any Canadian city or town is self-governing. The conceit that native reserves can be re-conceived as culturally distinct "nations" would be given up in favour of a model that promotes integration....

Off the reservation: The reserve system is Canada's worst moral failing. Let's do the right thing and get rid of it. “

NOTE: I had published in the May 26, 2000 issue of the Halifax Herald a column entitled, Where is society's outrage over proposed genocide?, the following is a quote from it.

The headline "Book blames reserves for natives’ plight" appeared over a front-page story in the April 17 issue of this newspaper. The story revealed that in his soon-to-be-published book, First Nations, Second Thoughts, author Tom Flanagan (University of Calgary Professor) advocated the extinction by assimilation of Canada's First Nations Peoples as a means to solve the country's so-called "Indian Problem."

Flanagan, who at the time was an influential Alliance party policy advisor, was not expelled from the party for advocating in his book the extinction of our Peoples by assimilation. Nor did he suffer any penalty from society for asserting in it that First Nation Peoples, because their cultures were not identical to European models, were not civilized. In fact, he has been the recipient of many awards, i.e., the Donner Foundation awarded him its writing prize of $25,000. Alliance party brass did not react in horror to his outrageous suggestions. Today, he is still used as a consultant by the federal government, in fact he led the 2005 PC election campaign.

The before-mentioned examples are just a few of a multitude that could be cited to demonstrate that Canadians have a serious problem of systemic racist attitudes about First Nations Peoples to deal with. To see the relegation of the horrendous murders and abuse of our peoples to a footnote in the obscure corners of the news media, just because of their race, is unforgivable. This is even more so when the offending society promotes itself as a bastion of tolerance, justice and equality for all!

It should be noted that individuals such as Kay and Flanagan always blame First Nation Peoples for their sorry state, never the racism of their own ancestors that created the hardship that our People still suffer today. I’ve yet to hear of an instance where one of them has called for an in-depth investigation into the historical performance of the Department of Indian Affairs. Is it because it has been staffed, over the years by white men, who were hell-bent on solving the “Indian Problem” by engineering and promoting policies and programs to destroy First Nations by assimilation, not lobbying for their acceptance and prosperity. I can state, without hesitation, that such a report, if conducted with outing the unvarnished truth as it’s goal, would shock most Canadians profoundly.

I believe that the before cited recent actions and behavioural conduct by Caucasian society towards our Peoples explains why colonial Governor Edward Cornwallis, although its been amply proven that he indulged in what can be described as genocidal behaviour by trying to exterminate the Mi'kmaq, offering bounties for the scalps of men, women, and children, is still honoured by Nova Scotia and Canada. Can you imagine there being a statue of him in a public park, or having a junior high School, among many other things named after him, if he had tried to exterminate a white race? But, because he only tried to exterminate red people, it’s okay to continue to honour him. By doing so society demeans itself and teaches its children to be racist.

EXAMPLES OF SYSTEMIC RACISM - NOVA SCOTIA STYLE

"Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity." A great piece of wisdom! I don't know who coined it; therefore, proper accreditation cannot be given. However, when writing or talking about the intolerant views of people, I prefer to use ignorance as an excuse for the intolerance displayed. "Stupidity" only comes into play when people indicate by their continued prejudices, that they are too stupid to learn how to recognize and cure their ignorance.

The following are examples of some of the negative incidents, because of systemic racists beliefs among non-First Nation peoples, that I've dealth with in recent times:

An elderly Scottish gentleman, after the first edition of my book, We Were Not the Savages, was published in 1993, told me in a shopping mall. "You creature you, how dare you be critical of those who have done so much for your people. My ancestors educated yours and made their lives complete!" He had not read the book, just some reviews. I suggested he read the book, gave him my card so that he could contact me afterwards, and haven’t heard from him since.

The following is a quote from a speech that was delivered by a white male speaker at a business people's forum I attended in Dartmouth, in the early nineteen nineties: "our ancestors came to the Americas five centuries ago, found, and started populating and developing two vast and vacant continents." He was most apologetic, and embarrassed, when I pointed out to him that when Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492, the estimated population of the two continents was around 95 million:

This nugget, "since responsible government was established here by Europeans," was uttered in a speech made by a former speaker of the Nova Scotia legislature, Art Donahue, to a human rights conference at the Metro Center, which I attended in the nineteen nineties. He ignored, because of ignorance of history, the fact that the Mi'kmaq had developed and implemented responsible government in the area tens of centuries before the European invasion commenced.

The following is a racist insult, depicting us as irresponsible bloodthirsty hunters, made by an official of the Nova Scotia Wildlife Federation, which was published widely in newspapers, T.V., Etc. after we had signed a hunting agreement with the province, without being condemned as racist hype by the news media. "the Micmacs will coat the province, from Yarmouth to Sydney, with the blood of our wildlife." To counter this garbage, I spent, on behalf of the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq, approximately $25,000 on positive newspaper ads. Under the agreement, we had an allocation of 2,000 deer for the first year, only 400 were harvested, and, of course, wildlife still exist today in the Province.

Three highway signs that I lobbied successfully to have changed:

This sign, Annapolis Royal, established 1605, Canada's oldest settlement, was placed at an exit from a newly constructed by-pass express highway to the village of Annapolis Royal. It did not recognize this fact; North America had First Nation settlements for millenniums before Europeans set up any.

After hearing about, and seeing it, I contacted the mayor of the Town of Annapolis Royal, the Warden of Annapolis County, and the Department of Transportation, and voiced my outrage. After they were reminded about First Nation existence, the Mayor and Warden were shocked that they had supported the wording of the sign. Within a few days the signs were removed, and I was invited to a joint meeting of the Councils, so that they could formally apologise. The sign now reads: Annapolis Royal, established 1605, Stroll Through the Centuries.

Signs on highway 102, giving notice of Bedford exits, didn't acknowledge that the Mi'kmaq had been using the Bedford location as a stopping place for tens of centuries before Europeans did. It was recommended by author Elsie Tolson to the Town of Bedford. “Bedford, a Stopping Place Since 1503"

Because the Mi’kmaq had been stopping in the area for tens of centuries, I arranged a meeting with Elsie, and pointed out to her the erroneous message the sign portrayed. She was appalled by the fact that she had not taken into consideration the existence of our ancestors. With her cooperation, the sign now reads, Bedford, A Traditional Stopping Place

This 1997 incident of highway naming borders on the unbelievable.

Background: In 1744, the Mi’kmaq and allies had laid siege on several occasions to the fort at Annapolis Royal. Mascarene, the fort’s governor, appealed to the governor of Massachuetts Bay Colony, William Shirley, for military assistance. Shirley responded by declaring war on the Mi’kmaq, which included a bounty to be paid for the scalps of Mi’kmaq men, women, and children. To help enforce his declaration of war, he sent Captain John Gorham and his Rangers to Nova Scotia. They, by brutally killing many Mi’kmaq, soon established a reputation for barbarity that didn’t take a back seat to the actions of other barbarians. His Rangers were also involved in enforcing Cornwallis’s 1749 proclamation for Mi’kmaq scalps, men, women, and children. Because of their murderous reputations, even the British civilian and military populations of the Annapolis garrison did not welcome these barbarians with open arms. In fact - some say with good cause - many loyal British subjects were terrified of them.

In spite of having this knowledge, HRM municipal councillor Bob Harvey recommended to the Department of Highways that it name a connector highway, connecting Bedford and Sackville, Captain John Gorham Boulevard, which it did, the signs went up. I responded in January 1998 by writing a newspaper column detailing to some extent Gorham’s barbarous history, which even prompted the Halifax Herald to write an opinion demanding that the sign be removed.

The Department of Highways could be excused to some extent because its employees were ignorant of our history, but Bob Harvey, a former school teacher can not. He was well aware of Gorham’s brutality. After I educated highway staff a bit, the sign came down, and the highway was renamed. You can visit this Website http://www.alts.net/ns1625/gorhamj.html to read more about the subject.

I’ll end my narrative with the proposal I made to the Teacher Training Panel for begining the process of eliminating the systemic racism that degrades the First Nations Peoples of Canada, and the Americas.

“Please keep in mind that across the board acceptance of our People by all facets of Canadian society as equal players is essential for our future prosperity and well-being. This is so because, as demonstrated, systemic racism has marginalized and excluded First Nations Peoples for centuries, and is the root of the discrimination we still suffer.

After considering various options that could be used to negate the systemic racism that colonial propaganda created to demean our People, some of them tried without success, I’ve concluded that there is no other way but through education that it can be effectively accomplished.

We now put on the table for consideration by government a proposal for creative proactive reform of the Province’s teacher training education system, which is intended to see taught in teacher training facilities an accurate complementary picture of the Mi’kmaq Nation. In the future, if implemented, graduating students will know that our ancestors abided in a prosperous, socially caring, free, democratic, “YOU” society, prior to European invasion. Most important, course material must impart the fact that our ancestors fought the British to try to preserve their culture and country, not for the perverse pleasure of slaughtering innocent people.

With the goal mentioned, eliminating the systemic racism that colonial propaganda created, and impedes the return to self government by our Peoples, we propose that the Province’s teacher training facilities be required to adopt a mandatory course on the history of the Mi’kmaq Nation, with emphasis on post-European invasion events, and all the warts that go with it. A course all students will have to pass in order to acquire a B.E.D.

I promote such a reform wholeheartedly, because I consider inclusion of true Mi’kmaq history in teacher training curriculum a vital element for successfully removing, in the foreseeable future, from the non-First Nation sub-conscience, the negative picture they hold of First Nations. It will have other positive benefits for the Province; among them, it will be used as a pioneering role model of progressive racial education policy for the rest of the country to follow, and a prosperous Mi’kmaq People will increase the prosperity of all Nova Scotians.

The structuring of a Mi’kmaq history course for teacher training facilities should not be hard. Such individuals as Don Julien, Professor John Reid, Professor Geoffrey Plank, myself, to name a few, can be recruited to help. Also, there is historical information, published in several new books that would be of invaluable assistance towards constructing such a course; examples, "An Unsettled Conquest" - "A Great and Nobel Scheme" - "Accounting for Genocide: Canada's Bureaucratic Assault on Aboriginal People" - "We Were Not the Savages" - "1491, by Charles C. Mann".

I’ll close with a quote from a report submitted to Nova Scotia’s British Governor Cary in 1843 by Joseph Howe, who was the first Indian Commissioner appointed under the provisions of 1842 legislation, - "An Act to Provide for the Instruction and Permanent Settlement of the Indians".

“I trust, however, that should your Excellency not be satisfied with the results of these first experiments, the blame may be laid upon the Commissioner, rather than be charged upon the capacity, or urged against the claims of a people, for whose many good qualities a more extended intercourse has only increased my respect, and who have, if not by Treaty, at least by all the ties of humanity, a claim upon the Government of the Country, which nothing but their entire extinction, or their elevation to a more permanent, and happy position in the scale of Society, can ever entirely discharge.”

My friends, you can be very instrumental in helping us to achieve, at long last, what Howe envisioned for our People one hundred and sixty four years ago in 1843: “their elevation to a more permanent, and happy position in the scale of Society.” Please consider doing so.

********************

Published on Monday, May 3, 2010 by Indian Country Today

Christian ‘Doctrine’ Fueled Dehumanization: UNPFII Report

by Valerie Taliman

NEW YORK - A groundbreaking report examining the roots of Christian domination over indigenous peoples and their lands was released this week at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

"The first thing indigenous peoples share is the experience of having been invaded by those who treated us without compassion because they considered us to be less than human," said Frichner, a citizen of the Onondaga Nation serving her first term on the 16-member UNPFII.

"Dehumanization leads to the second thing indigenous peoples share in common: Being treated on the basis of the belief that those who invaded our territories have a right of lordship or dominance over our existence and, therefore, have the right to take, grant, and dispose of our lands, territories, and resources without our permission or consent."

Frichner said human rights violations faced by indigenous peoples can all be traced to the Doctrine of Discovery and its interpretive framework which has been used for five centuries to take Native lands.

It has also been cited in U.S. Supreme Court land claims cases decided against Indian nations, including the 1955 ruling Tee Hit Ton Indians v. United States, and the 2005 decision in City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York.

The Doctrine of Discovery was among Vatican mandates dating back to the 15th century, called papal bulls, that declared Christian monarchs had the right to claim superior title over land and territories that they "discovered."

The claimed right of "dominion" over Native peoples was based on the thinking that non-Christians were "heathens and uncivilized savages," with no, or limited rights, to land.

The Vatican's Doctrine of Discovery was based on the premise that all non-Christian land belonged to no one because no Christians were living there and no Christian monarch or lord had yet claimed dominion. Once Christian monarchies like Spain or France claimed the right of dominion, that claim was transferred to political successors over centuries.

"Indian land rights have been characterized in U.S. law as nothing more than a permissive right of occupancy or permission from the whites to occupy their own Indian lands," Frichner said.

There were theologians who did not agree that Christian discovery could give dominion over and title to non-Christian lands. The issue was debated at length in the early 1550s in Spain with no input from indigenous peoples, she said. It was a debate among Christian Europeans about whether the Indians of the Americas were human.

"Clearly, (we) have joined the debate by declaring definitively that we are human beings. However, for more than five centuries, the doctrines of discovery and dehumanization have been institutionalized, and this is the context of the work we are doing on the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples," Frichner said.

The study focused on the history of the United States, and points out that the Doctrine of Discovery had been officially incorporated into U.S. Indian policies in the 1823 Supreme Court ruling Johnson v. M'Intosh.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall identified the royal charters of Great Britain pertaining to North America as the source of the argument that "discovery gave title" to the government by whose authority the "discovery" was made.

The royal charter issued to John Cabot in 1496 authorized Cabot and his sons to seek out "isles, countries, and regions of the heathen and infidel, which before this time have been unknown to all Christian people."

This and similar language were cited as the basis for the ruling in Johnson v. M'Intosh that the United States had the ultimate dominion over Indian peoples and lands.

Frichner said the report is a first step in investigating the global scope of the Doctrine of Discovery as a key source of violations of human rights of Native peoples.

A comprehensive study will provide the opportunity to understand that all the struggles that indigenous peoples are engaged in are rooted in "the claim by one people of a right of dominance over another."

Frichner said the discriminatory legal framework that exists today is directly tied to the Doctrine of Discovery which has resulted in the dispossession and impoverishment of indigenous peoples and unlimited resource extraction from their lands.

Kuriakose Bharanikulangara, observer for the Holy See, responded to Frichner's report by saying that the papal bulls that paved the way for European expansion had been abrogated over centuries. He insisted the Church had upheld the rights of indigenous peoples to their ancestral lands, regardless of whether the inhabitants were Christian or not.

Click to read about American Indian Genocide

Click to read about Doctrine of Discovery

CAUCASUS OIL – ANZACS IN TURKEY, HITLER IN STALINGRAD, BUSH IN IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN

World War I

… Turkey closed the straits (Bosphorus and Dardanelles) between the Mediterranean and Black Seas, preventing Russia from exporting her wheat or receiving shipments of materials from her allies. To protect its oil wells in the Middle East, Britain moved a military force up the Persian Gulf to Iraq, where it began engaging Turkish forces. And in December, Turkey began an assault into Russia's Caucasus Mountains....

HITLER IN STALINGRAD - Operation Blue

Operation Blue was the codename for the attack ordered by Adolf Hitler on the Soviet Union’s oil fields in the Caucasus region in 1942. Operation Blue was to fail when the Sixth Army was effectively destroyed at the Battle of Stalingrad.

Operation Blue - the Race for Oil

In a bold move, Hitler enacted Operation Blue - an attempt to seize the oil-rich fields of the Soviet Caucasus.

Afghanistan, Central Asia, Caucasus: Key to oil profits

People's World by: Karen Talbot 18 May 2002

A picture is emerging of what is behind Bush's 'war on terrorism.'

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have provided a qualitatively new opportunity for the U.S., acting especially on behalf of giant oil companies, to permanently entrench its military in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus, where there are vast petroleum reserves - the second-largest in the world. This also positions U.S. armed might on the western doorstep of China, posing an unprecedented threat to South Asia and the entire world.

The way is now open to jumpstart oil and gas pipeline projects through western Afghanistan and Pakistan, both of which also have untapped oil and gas reserves. Likewise, the recent deployment of U.S. military personnel in Georgia, ostensibly to fight terrorists, is aimed at guaranteeing and protecting the projected Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (Turkey) pipeline designed to bypass Russia and Iran. Meanwhile, U.S. energy companies have been feverishly exploring a section of the Caspian Sea, flouting legalities and ignoring jurisdiction disputes.

Some say Washington merely seeks to guarantee oil supplies for U.S. consumers. But in fact, U.S. consumption relies heavily on domestic sources and on Venezuela, Canada, and Africa. No, this is about oil corporation profits, which can be greatly enhanced by selling to energy-hungry South, East, and Southeast Asia, and by outflanking China and Russia in grabbing Central Asian-Caspian Sea Basin energy resources and the pipelines to transport them to market.

Supplies of natural gas and oil, including those from newly discovered huge oil reserves in Kazakhstan, can easily be piped through existing conduits traversing Russia or a proposed pipeline through Iran. But bypassing, and thus hindering, Russian petroleum operations, which rely heavily on European customers, would provide western corporations greater access to the European market. Bypassing Iran would thwart the growing cooperation between Iran, Russia and European oil companies, which have invested heavily in Iran's oil and gas sectors. This is a major factor in the growing rivalry between the U.S. and Europe.

The great oil game

Writing in the Hong Kong-based Asia Times, a business-oriented publication, Ranjit Devraj states: 'Just as the Gulf War in 1991 was about oil, the new conflict in South and Central Asia is no less about access to the region's abundant petroleum resources.'

The very nature of the capitalist system inevitably drives corporations to expand or die - expand at any cost, in human suffering or environmental devastation. Such are the characteristics of today's imperialism, the main source of war, terrorism and violence. Commerce in oil remains paramount in this process.

More than ever, these imperial policies are being carried out by top U.S. government leaders, from the President and Vice President to CIA officials, who have direct ties to the corporations and banks which stand to derive superprofits from these policies, particularly the oil, energy, banking and military-aerospace sectors.

Unocal and Afghanistan

A consortium headed by Unocal had for years sought to build gas and oil pipelines from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea.

A major reason for Washington's support of the Taliban between 1994 and 1997 was the expectation that they would swiftly conquer the whole country, enabling Unocal to build a pipeline there.

Central Asian expert Ahmed Rashid said: 'Impressed by the ruthlessness and willingness of the then-emerging Taliban to cut a pipeline deal, the State Department and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency agreed to funnel arms and funding to the Taliban in their war against the ethnically Tajik Northern Alliance. As recently as 1999, U.S. taxpayers paid the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official ...'

'When the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, Washington said nothing,' John Pilger wrote in The British Daily Mirror. 'Why? Because Taliban leaders were soon on their way to Houston, Texas, to be entertained by executives of the oil company, Unocal.

'With secret U.S. government approval, the company offered them a generous cut of the profits of the oil and gas pumped through a pipeline that the Americans wanted to build from the Soviet central Asia through Afghanistan ...

'Although the deal fell through, it remains an urgent priority of the administration of George W. Bush, which is steeped in the oil industry. Bush's concealed agenda is to exploit the oil and gas reserves in the Caspian basin ... Only if the pipeline runs through Afghanistan can the Americans hope to control it.'

According to Ishtiaq Ahmad, of Eastern Mediterranean University in Cyprus, the Bush administration held negotiations with the Taliban early in 2001, despite a developing rift over terms of the pipeline scheme. Laila Helms, public relations agent for the Taliban (and niece of Richard Helms, former CIA chief), brought an advisor of Mullah Omar to Washington as recently as March 2001. One of the negotiating meetings was held just one month before Sept. 11.

'At one moment during one of the negotiations, U.S. representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs',' said Charles Brisard, co-author of the popular French book, 'Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth.'

After Sept. 11, it became much easier to win international support for bombing the Taliban.

CIA spawns Taliban

All the mujahideen forces, and Osama bin Laden's organization, were incubated by the CIA in the 1980's. This largest-ever covert operation was directed against the newly-born government of the Saur Revolution (which gave equal rights to women, set up health care, literacy, housing, job creation and land reform programs) and then against the Soviets. The mujahideen murdered teachers, doctors, and nurses, tortured women for not wearing the veil, and shot down civilian airliners with U.S.-supplied stinger missiles.

A revealing 1994 book, 'Victory - The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy that Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union,' includes boastful accounts by William Casey, Reagan's CIA Director, of how he convinced the Saudi Arabians to match CIA funding of the mujahideen, and how money, arms and training were funneled through Pakistan.

The book says, 'The strategy attacked the very heart of the Soviet system and included ... substantial financial and military support to the Afghan resistance [sic] as well as supplying the mujahideen personnel to take the war into the Soviet Union itself ... [and a] campaign to reduce dramatically Soviet hard currency earnings by driving down the price of oil with Saudi cooperation and limiting natural gas exports to the West ...'

New made-in-the-USA government - Unocal emerges again

The head of the newly established 'interim' Afghan government conjured up by the Bush administration, Hamid Karzai, has been a CIA covert operator since the 1980s, according to the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan. Karzai supported the Taliban and was a consultant for Unocal.

Bush's envoy to the new government, Zalmay Khalizad, also worked for Unocal. He drew up the risk analysis for the pipeline in 1997, lobbied for the Taliban and took part in negotiations with them. Khalizad was a special advisor to the State Department under Reagan and a key liaison with the mujahideen. He is now on the National Security Council, reporting to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

Enron and other Bush connections

The direct connections between Bush administration personnel and the oil, energy, and military-industrial corporations are very intimate. Here are only a few:

The proposed Baku-Ceyhan pipeline is represented by the Baker & Botts law firm. The principal attorney is James Baker, former secretary of state and chief Bush campaign spokesman in the Florida vote struggle.

In 1994, Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, was a member of Kazakhstan's Oil Advisory Board and helped broker a deal between Chevron and Kazakhstan. Rice is a member of the board of Chevron.

Brown & Root - a unit of Halliburton - will be upgrading the U.S. air base in Uzbekistan. According to an article in Stars and Stripes, 'Brown & Root ... is expected to take charge of base camp maintenance, airfield services and fuel supplies ... run the dining halls and laundry service and oversee the Morale, Welfare and Recreation program.'

Brown & Root performs similar lucrative services at other bases, including those in Bosnia and Kosovo, notably the giant permanent Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo conveniently near the soon-to-be constructed trans-Balkan AMBO pipeline.

Enron Corp., closely linked with Bush and Cheney, conducted the feasibility study for the $2.5 billion trans-Caspian pipeline, a joint venture with Turkmenistan, Bechtel Corp. and General Electric.

Enron had a $3 billion investment in the Dabhol power plant near Bombay, India, the single biggest direct foreign investment in India's history. There was massive opposition to the project in India, due to the huge costs to consumers (700 percent more than from other sources). Enron's survival depended on getting a cheaper source of gas and oil to save the project. This could be solved by the building of a branch of the proposed natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan, to terminate in Multan, Pakistan, near the India border. Also, in 1997 Enron announced it was going to spend over $1 billion building and improving lines within India, so the gas would be piped from Multan to the Bombay Enron plant.

Enron was expecting also to cash in on the main spur of the pipeline ending on the Pakistan coast, from which hydrocarbon supplies would be exported to the vast Asian markets.

Clearly, developments in Afghanistan were critical to Enron. George W. became president just when the India project was in serious trouble. One month later, Vice President Dick Cheney held his first secret meeting with Enron CEO Kenneth Lay. The Bush administration is refusing to reveal the details of this and subsequent consultations with Lay, even in the face of a GAO suit for release of the papers. Nevertheless, it has been documented that the Vice President's energy task force changed a draft energy proposal to include a provision to boost oil and natural gas production in India, clearly targeted to help Enron's Dabhol plant. These are but some of the machinations by Bush and his cohorts to help Enron regarding the India deal. Some of the negotiations with the Taliban to promote the trans-Afghan pipeline and thus also help save Enron transpired just prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.

U.S. bases in Afghanistan and former Soviet republics

'If one looks at the map of the big American bases created for the war in Afghanistan, one is struck by the fact that they are completely identical to the route of the projected oil pipelines to the Indian Ocean,' says Uri Averny, a former member of the Israeli Knesset, writing in the Israeli daily Ma'ariv.

In the name of conducting the war, in addition to placing troops in Georgia, the U.S. also won agreement to station troops in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and to build a long-term base in Kyrgyzstan. Kazakhstan is next.

This entrenchment of a U.S. military presence in Central Asia opens access to another coveted resource-rich region, Siberia. It brings other goals within reach - balkanization of central Asian and trans-Caucasus nations into easily controlled emirate-like entities, lacking any real sovereignty - and further military encirclement of China.

Bush's 'perpetual war' is taking aim at Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and Iran - all rich in petroleum. The U.S. backed brutal Israeli war against the Palestinians seeks to maintain U.S. hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East. U.S. military support to Colombia is now openly admitted by the Bush administration to be aimed at protecting pipelines and putting down popular insurgency. Similarly, the recent U.S.-backed coup attempt against the Chavez government of Venezuela had much to do with controlling that country's petroleum riches.

Increasingly, U.S. and world public opinion is awakening to the hidden agenda of the 'war on terrorism' - the corporate frenzy to plunder oil and other resources in the petroleum-rich arc stretching from the Middle East to southeast Asia. The war in Afghanistan is central to reaping super profits from all that 'black gold.'

The author can be reached at icpj@igc.org

ISLAM PHOBIA IN AUSTRALIA

NOT A WORD FROM TONY ABBOTT ABOUT NON MUSLIM EXTREMISTS

OPINION: Tony Abbott's anti-Muslim bigotry exposed - Australia PM reinforces long-manufactured climate of fear and framing of Muslims as 'Other'.

Al Jazeera 02 Mar 2015 04:19 GMT by Randa Abdel-Fattah by an award-winning author and former lawyer.

In 2011, then opposition immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, sought to persuade the shadow cabinet to take advantage of what were perceived to be increasing concerns among the general public about Australian Muslims. That there was opposition by some members of the shadow cabinet to the suggestion is neither here nor there. The fact is that since coming to office, Prime Minister Tony Abbott's government has used Australian Muslims as political tools to divert attention from its fledgling and uninspiring leadership.

Yesterday's national security statement by the prime minister was no exception.

The message was unequivocal and unapologetic. The rhetoric, totalising and dehumanising. Australian Muslims were invested with meanings that positioned them as the antagonists of "Australian values", as exploitative, duplicitous and problematic "guests".

Unapologetic bigotry

One might say the speech was almost refreshing in its unambiguous and unapologetic bigotry. I suspect that the prime minister, like me, had grown rather tired of dog-whistle politics and euphemisms.

Some Muslims feel targeted by Australia's plans for new security laws

"Team Australia" had a nice ring to it, especially considering our pride as a sporting nation, but didn't allow Abbott to deploy the language of inferiority as a mechanism for exclusion. Instead, he had to resort to using the discourse of nation, nationalism, Australian identity (that is, Anglo-Celtic), and "core values" as a coded discussion of how this game of Dealing With Minorities works. You're either on the team or you're not. You play by our rules or you're kicked off.

Frustrated that not only had the Muslim community not accepted his message, but in fact had dared to express outrage at being made to feel, yet again, outsiders in their own country, Abbott clearly needed to reassess his strategy. Just how would he make the point that a key feature of the racist imaginaries of his government was the idea that Muslims were guests, and that a benevolent Anglo majority host suffered the pedagogical task of managing and schooling them?

From entertaining the idea of placing women who wear face veils into glassed-off areas in the public galleries at Parliament House; to Abbott calling the Mufti of Australia "wrong-headed and unhelpful" for speaking out against a possible ban on Hizb ut-Tahrir; to labelling Muslim organisations "foolish" and "petty" for boycotting a meeting with him after taking offence over his "Team Australia" rhetoric; to his continuous pontificating about the loyalties of "migrants" - the portrayal and positioning of Australian Muslims under this government has been framed in the discourse and policies of "us" and "them". It has deliberately built on and reinforced a long-manufactured climate of fear and framing of Muslims as "Other".

Demonise and alienate

It seems, however, that for Tony Abbott, the rhetoric has not been strong enough. Which is why, with yesterday's security statement, the prime minister abandoned all sense of proportionality, fairness and wise leadership, and opted to demonise and alienate the Muslim community in rather frank terms.

I've often heard western leaders describe Islam as a religion of peace. I wish more Muslim leaders would say that more often, and mean it.

Muslim community leaders were exhorted, yet again, to "speak up clearly" against terror, the clear implication being that they had either been silent or ambiguous in their response to terrorist attacks committed by Muslims. The statement was bewildering given the countless fatwas and statements and press releases and sermons and community projects that have clearly and unequivocally denounced terror in the name of Islam. One wonders what is the magical number?

The reality is, there is none because it is the power to demand condemnation that reveals the contempt with which Abbott and his government view Muslims. Implicit in the demand to condemn is the notion that Muslims somehow need to be reminded that the taking of innocent life is a crime.

Indeed, the prime minister drove the point home when he went on to declare: "I've often heard western leaders describe Islam as a religion of peace. I wish more Muslim leaders would say that more often, and mean it."

Complicit in the 'death cult'

The result was that the prime minister of Australia acted to firmly entrench in the national psyche not only that Australian Muslims are not to be trusted, but that Islam and Muslims are complicit in the "death-cult" ISIL. Notice too that it is "western leaders" who Abbott refers to as describing Islam as a religion of peace. That Abbott rebukes Muslim leaders for not describing Islam thus makes his meaning clear: Western leaders are foolish and misinformed to view Islam in this way given even Muslims don't go so far as to describe Islam as a religion of peace.

Out of 400,000 Australian Muslims, 110 are known to have joined ISIL. And yet, despite this minuscule ratio, Muslims and their faith are being held to account, clearly framed as the enemy in the "war on terror".

Abbott's opinion of Islam and Muslims was laid bare yesterday. Revealing the contempt with which he holds both makes it very clear that relations between this government and the Muslim community have been irreparably damaged.

Randa Abdel-Fattah is an award-winning author, former lawyer and current doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Macquarie University, researching Islamophobia in Australia.

Tony Abbott urges Muslim groups to 'get with the program' and condemn extremism

PM’s comments come as Islamic organisations criticise him for suggesting the community is not genuine about stamping out terrorism

Tony Abbott has said he hopes Muslim groups will “get with the program” and condemn extremist violence, as he came under renewed criticism from Islamic organisations.

On Monday the prime minister chided Muslim leaders for not speaking out often enough and not being genuine in their protestations against extremism within the community.

“I’ve often heard western leaders describe Islam as a ‘religion of peace’. I wish more Muslim leaders would say that more often, and mean it,” Abbott said during an address on national security.

On Tuesday, the Islamic Council of Victoria criticised the prime minister’s statements.

Muslim leaders outraged by Tony Abbott's chiding over extremism

“It’s very convenient for Mr Abbott to pass the buck on this,” spokesman Kuranda Seyit said. “He is very keen to make this a broader issue about Muslims, but it is quite obvious, like many of his political problems, he is very good at shifting the focus from himself to others.

“We continue to encourage the prime minister to reflect the set of values he espouses by utilising a repertoire of inclusive rather than divisive language. The prime minister’s lack of acknowledgement or appreciation of Muslim community leaders and members who volunteer their time to consult with all levels of government and enforcement agencies misleads and incites ill-feeling from the broader community,” Seyit said.

Asked about the criticism on 2GB Radio on Tuesday morning, Abbott said he wanted “everyone who is a part of this country to subscribe to our democratic freedoms”.

“I am pleased that more and more Muslim leaders are coming out and saying Islam is a religion of peace. There is no place in Islam for the kind of abomination we have seen recently done in its name,” Abbott said.

“I’m pleased about this, and I hope that the council of Victoria will get with the program.”

Muslim leaders are furious at the suggestion they are not genuine about stamping out terrorism, with some even vowing to boycott consultations with security agencies.

Some community leaders have told Guardian Australia the prime minister’s statements encourage racism.

“It’s not helpful, it’s divisive. It labels our community as being responsible for the actions of a few,” the head of the Arab Council of Australia, Randa Kattan, said. “It’s not helpful for anyone to make these statements … How much more can we condemn?”

“Stop asking us what we’ve done [to stamp out extremism],” the head of the Lebanese Muslim Association, Samier Dandan said. “Mr Prime Minister, what have you and your government done?”

“He’s living in his own cocoon where he wants to look for scapegoats,” Dandan said of the prime minister.

Labor’s deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek, said Abbott’s comments were “at risk of being counterproductive”.

“I think Australian Muslim leaders have been unequivocal in their condemnation of Daesh, or Isis or Isil or whatever you want to call it – they’ve been unequivocal in their condemnation and it gets pretty annoying to be a strong voice for peace consistently, all the time, and have it unacknowledged in the way the prime minister did yesterday,” Plibersek told ABC radio.

Labor’s spokeswoman for multiculturalism, Michelle Rowland, said Abbott should focus on community engagement rather than pointing the finger of blame.

“I think the problem with the prime minister’s comments yesterday was that it was quite a blanket comment about Islamic leaders,” Rowland told reporters. “I think the overall message should be that we do have this cooperation, we want more of this cooperation and encouragement, and not putting it down where efforts have been made,” she said.

Islamophobia: Tony Abbott urged to speak out against attacks on Muslims

The Guardian Oliver Milman Tuesday 23 September 2014 05.18 BST

Community leaders are deeply worried that Australia’s mission against Islamic State and recent anti-terrorism raids are fuelling attacks against Muslims here

Tony Abbott has been urged to speak out more strongly against Islamophobia in Australia following reports of mosques being defaced, women verbally abused on the street and death threats issued to Muslim figures.

Community leaders have said they are deeply worried that Australia’s mission against Islamic State (Isis) and recent anti-terrorism raids are fuelling attacks against Muslims in Australia.

Almir Colan, executive member of the Islamic Council of Victoria (ICV), told Guardian Australia that his organisation had met government ministers to call on them to change the language they use when talking about the Muslim community.

“We’ve told them they need to fire their speech writers,” he said. “In private they say they support us, but we don’t want to hear it in private, we want to hear it in public.

“We want the prime minister to lower the rhetoric and concentrate on responsible, productive language. If Tony Abbott used strong words, if he said that an attack on Muslims is an attack on all of us, that would isolate the bigots and reassure Muslims.”

Colan said the Muslim community was dismayed at comments made by a Palmer United party senator, Jacqui Lambie, who told parliament that supporters of Islamic sharia law were “maniacs and depraved humans” who would use rape and murder to force every Australian woman to wear a burqa. Lambie wants the burqa banned in Australia.

“I felt ashamed for her, watching that,” Colan said. “Lambie is someone who has become radicalised by media propaganda. It’s deeply, deeply offensive.

“But why is the prime minister not condemning those comments? He talks about team Australia, but we feel it’s like a citizenship test, that we have to keep proving ourselves. It gives indirect permission for bigots to attack us.

“We feel excluded from team Australia. That phrase has caused so many negative divisions in our community. It feels more like team Abbott.”

Colan said his wife had become afraid to leave the house and go shopping in Melbourne for fear of being attacked.

A note that the ICV said appeared to threaten Muslims with death was recently left near a mosque in Doncaster, Victoria.

Threats have also reportedly been made against the grand mufti of Australia, Lakemba mosque and Auburn mosque.

The word “evil” was daubed on a mosque in Mareeba, in Queensland, while anti-Muslim slogans were sprayed on a car in Liverpool, NSW.

Women wearing the hijab have reported being verbally abused on the streets of Sydney and Melbourne, with one woman claiming that a man tried to run her over at a school crossing as she attempted to pick up her daughter.

Islamophobic comments have become commonplace on Twitter and Facebook, with social media users calling on Muslims to be beheaded, deported or blown up.

The incidents follow raids in Sydney and Brisbane involving more than 800 police officers, who allegedly broke up a plot to publicly behead a random member of the public.

The Australian government has committed forces to take on Islamic State in Iraq and has raised the domestic alert level to “high”. New laws are set to be introduced to give intelligence officials greater powers when dealing with terrorism suspects.

Abbott has stressed that everyone is on “team Australia” and has called the Islamic community “absolutely first-class Australians”. But he has also criticised Muslims who protested in Lakemba over the raids and called the ICV “foolish” for not meeting with him in the wake of his “team Australia” comments.

“There are some signs the government is listening, but the language isn’t catching up,” Colan said. “There must be more vocal support for Muslims.

“If there isn’t, I’m worried that more Australians will become radicalised against Muslims. All of this talk, especially from the media, is giving these bigots oxygen. They feel they have cover, they feel as if they are invisible in this cloud of Islamophobia.”

Joseph Wakim, co-founder of the Australian Arabic Council, said that Abbott needed to make a “clear and bold statement” against Islamophobia.

“When he uses his rhetoric of team Australia, he needs to remind people that team Australia isn’t about the kicking of Muslims, it’s not about kicking fellow members of your team who have been part of this community for several centuries,” Wakim told the ABC.

Tensions between Australian Defence League and Muslim community reach violent new height

7.30 By Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop

Updated January 05, 2015 15:16:58

Police and ASIO are scrambling to defuse serious tensions between Australian far-right groups and Islamist extremists, which have reached unprecedented heights in recent weeks with death threats and an apparent attempted murder.

In the most serious case, up to eight gunshots were fired into the Sydney home of a former leader of an anti-Islamic hate group earlier this month

Australia’s Declared War On Muslims

Submitted by alfurqan on Thu, 01/29/2015 – 19:3

source: countercurrents.org

It is official: Australia is at war with Muslims and Islam. Australian politicians and the racist media are fanning the flame of prejudice and racially-motivated violence against Muslims. Anti-Muslims bigotry has become the most important issue in Australian politics. The aim is to demonise Muslims and connect Muslim Australians to U.S.-led war in the Middle East and justify Australia’s direct complicity in U.S.-led imperialist aggression in Syria and Iraq.

First let’s look at how Australia treats Muslim Australians.

The 2014 Social Cohesion report, published by Monash University and the Scanlon Foundation found that Australians were five times more likely to hold negative attitudes towards Muslims than any other religious group. The Government and the media bear full responsibility for the rise in Islamophobic and racially motivated attacks against Muslim Australians.

New anti-terror laws will gag hate preachers and give ASIO agents licence to kill in self defence

Samantha Maiden National Political Editor - The Sunday Telegraph - September 21, 2014 12:00AM

When Will This Hysteria Die Down?

I refer here to the hyper emotionalism and cloudy thinking of way too many Christians in the case of two convicted criminals who met their end recently in Indonesia. I certainly did not plan to say anything further on all this, but each new day I am utterly stunned to find what some Christians continue to say about all this.

Here is my brief reply to the latest: Um, no, sorry, but I will never countenance turning convicted drug smugglers into heroes and saints. That of course is exactly what has been happening all over the place, especially in all sorts of Christian circles. But count me out. I do not want any part of it.

This is quite beautiful. There should be more mercy and forgiveness in the world. “Australian Catholic University has created two scholarships for Indonesian students to study in Australia named after Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. The scholarships would be a fitting tribute to the reformation, courage and dignity of the two men. The scholarships had been created to recognise the university’s commitment to the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life.”

Paragraph 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor. If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person”.

Speaking as a Catholic who has observed the secularised behaviour of the Australian Catholic University over the years, I am sorry to say that it should not be regarded as a good and faithful servant of the Catholic Church.

Ignore anti-Islam hype: Terrorism lurks amongst us all

The Big Smoke Jacob Lynagh 2015/01/31

From Burma to Ireland to the good ole US of A, Jacob Lynagh takes us around the globe to prove that, despite the media beat up, terrorism is NOT just connected to being Muslim.

Whenever terrorism makes headlines in the West, water-cooler conversations, social media and even some journalists aid in spreading misconceptions. One such misconception is the common saying “not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim.”

This is simply not true. Whether it is the result of fear-mongering or just plain ignorance, it is time that people realised terrorism is widespread, predates Islamic terrorism and will likely continue until the end of time.

So here then is a primer on terrorism, an introduction to ten non-Muslim terrorist groups you may not have heard of.

Aum Shinrikyo: Japanese terrorism

Aum Shinrikyo is most known for it’s sarin gas attack on Tokyo’s subway system in 1995, but they were involved in many other illegal activities.

Founded by meditation and yoga instructor Shoko Asahara in 1984, the group adopted many of the beliefs of Christianity, merged with yoga and meditation, and taught that Asahara himself was Christ.

Aum Shinrikyo became popular with Japan’s elite in the early 1990s, and controversy started to swirl in Japanese media because of it. They became known for extortion and drug use in 1980s and have since been linked to the assassination of many critics and their families – they even attempted to assassinate controversial cartoonist Yoshinori Kobayashi in 1993.

By the mid-’90s Aum Shinrikyo could successfully manufacture automatic rifles, sarin gas and other nerve agents. Their gases were first tested on sheep at a station in Western Australia, before they began a campaign of terror in Japan.

The group was responsible for at least five separate chemical weapons attacks against civilians, including the 1995 subway attack which killed twelve. When their headquarters were raided, police found anthrax, ebola, truth serum, methamphetamine, a military helicopter, explosives and many other weapons.

After the raids, the chief of Japan’s National Police Agency was shot four times near his home, and devices set to release cyanide were discovered in many locations around the Tokyo subway system.

The head of Aum Shinrikyo’s Ministry of Science was stabbed to death in front of reporters in Tokyo by a member of Japan’s largest and most influential Yakuza group.

Japan’s receptiveness to new religions helped the group gain tens of thousands of members in the 1990s, and today, under the name Aleph, they continue to boast over one thousand members in Japan.

969 Movement: Burmese terrorism

The 969 Movement is a Buddhist nationalist movement which has been spreading through Burma for decades. The current leader of 969 is Ashin Wirathu, a Buddhist monk who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for his sermons but was released in 2010, after serving seven years.

Around the time Wirathu was released, the 969 Movement experienced a resurgence in support, which was followed by many acts of terror with the intent to commit genocide against the Rohingya people, a Muslim minority in Burma.

Since 2012, the 969 campaign has been responsible for hundreds of deaths, thousands of displacements and the destruction of many buildings, mainly in the Rakhine state.

I once traveled through Meiktila, a small town and vibrant town in the heart of Burma. In 2013 the Muslim populated areas of Meiktila were completely razed by 969 terrorists, reduced to nothing but ash and charred corpses.

Dozens were killed in the streets, more than 12,000 were forced from their homes – many schools and mosques were burned to the ground by the enraged Buddhist mobs.

The group is currently seeking to ban Buddhist women from marrying non-Buddhist men, to protect Burma from what they see as a plot by Muslims to take over the nation.

Contras: Nicaraguan terrorism

The contras were made up of various nationalist and anti-communist groups in Nicaragua, who spread US-backed violence and terror throughout the nation for 11 years, killings tens of thousands.

With a total strength of over 23,000 at its peak, the contras frequently raided civilians towns, where they kidnapped, tortured and executed civilians, including children, indiscriminately. They would flow into civilian areas as a militia, massacre and rape the people, burn the buildings to the ground and leave – similar to Boko Haram’s tactics in Nigeria.

The contras are most known for the Iran-Contra affair, in which the Reagan government violated the arms embargo to sell weapons to Iran and used the proceeds to fund the Nicaraguan contras.

The affair, which violated many US laws, also aided drug traffickers. It was shown that CIA agents worked with cocaine smugglers to provide financial support to the contras. It is also alleged that the Reagan government allowed the contras to bring cocaine into the United States in the mid-1980s, which could have aided in the creation of the crack cocaine epidemic.

Ulster Volunteer Force: Irish terrorism

The Ulster Volunteer Force was an anti-Catholic, loyalist terrorist group, operating armed conflict in Northern Ireland from 1966 until 2007. The group was formed to combat Irish republicanism, and to keep Ireland under British control.

The UVF is known to be responsible for over 500 deaths, with over 80 percent of these being Catholic civilians. They are known in Ireland for the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan car bombings, which killed 33 civilians.

They were also responsible for assassinating three members of an Irish cabaret band in a hail of gunfire. The UVF posed as British soldiers, and set up a fake checkpoint to carry out the attack.

The UVF is celebrated by loyalists throughout Northern Ireland, and their most praised members were of the Shankill Butchers, a gang who abducted, tortured and murdered Catholic civilians at random. The leader of the Butchers, Lenny Murphy, was executed by a Provisional Irish Republican Army hit team in 1982, when we was struck by more than twenty rounds near his home.

There have been allegations of collaboration between the UVF and the British military, which have been denied by both parties.

Golden Dawn: Greek terrorism

Golden Dawn are officially a political party in Greece, with an active membership in Australia. However, it is clear that in their operations, the party is a front for neo-Nazi terrorism.

Golden Dawn hold 16 out of the 300 seats in Greece’s Hellenic Parliament, their flag shows a crooked, black symbol of a red background, reminiscent of the Nazi swastika, and they promote an ultra-nationalist ideology.

To move from the realm of political party to terrorist organization, a group must commit acts of violence against civilians.

Golden Dawn is known for their violent clashes with left-wing, anti-fascist and anarchist groups, and their mob-beatings of individual members. They are reminiscent of some of the more active neo-Nazi terrorist groups in Europe, such as the hooligan fascist groups in Poland, and Pegida and Germany.

When the party founder, and several MPs, were arrested in connection to the murder of an anti-fascist rapper in 2013, the group was branded a criminal organization.

Kach and Kahane Chai: Israeli terrorism

Kach was an anti-Muslim, Zionist political party founded in Israel in the 1970s by American Rabbi, Meir Kahane. After Kahane was assassinated in 1990, the party split, forming breakaway faction Kahane Chai.

Both groups were banned in Israel in 1994, and are designated as terrorist organizations by Israel and the United States.

Kach and Kahane Chai are known for using firearms to threaten opponents, conspiring to assassinate Muslim leaders and attempting to detonate a car bomb at a Palestinian girls school in Jerusalem.

They were banned because of their support of grenade attacks and massacres against Palestinians before they could carry out many of the attacks they had planned.

The US State Department suspects underground Kach members of being involved in a number of attacks against Arabs after the party officially disbanded.

The Jewish Defense League: US terrorism

The Jewish Defense League is a Jewish extremist group, headquartered out of New York City, which was founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane (you may remember him as the founder of Kach) in 1968. The JDL is known for it’s bombings, and violent attacks on neo-Nazis, Palestinians, African-American leaders and moderate Jews who criticise their tactics.

The organisation, which promotes the idea of Jewish superiority, has been linked with dozens of violent terrorist attacks, including the assassination of Alex Odeh of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee via letter bomb, and public declarations that they would pay anyone who kills or maims American Nazis.

An interesting point in JDL history is when Dr. Dre chose to leave rapper Eazy-E’s Ruthless Records for Death Row Records. Fearing a violent response from Death Row Records CEO Suge Knight (who is well-known for his connection to gang members and events involving murder for hire), Ruthless Records hired the JDL to protect them.

Subsequently the JDL was investigated by the FBI for money laundering, which saw the shakedown of Ruthless Records – who hired them – and rappers, including Tupac Shakur.

It has been alleged that the JDL members involved in this incident were trained by Israel, and may have been connected to the murder of Tupac in 1996, although these are unconfirmed.

In 2001, then JDL leader Irv Rubin, was arrested for planning to bomb various Muslim interest groups, mosques and the offices of an Arab-American congressman. Rubin committed suicide in prison – the group is now led by his widow.

Army of God: US terrorism…again

The Army of God is an anti-abortion terrorist organisation in the United States who wield their Christian ideology to claim the legitimacy of using violence to stop abortion. The group came together in 1982, and are known for many violent attacks across America.

In the early 1980s, three AOG men kidnapped abortion doctor Hector Zevallos and his wife, and held them hostage. In 1985, members of the group planted bombs at seven abortion clinics across three states, and, in 1997, AOG member Eric Rudolph set off nail bombs at abortion clinics and at a lesbian bar in Atlanta.

The AOG posted white powder, which they claimed was anthrax, to over 280 abortion providers, and are associated with many murders of abortion doctors.

Their website calls the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller “justifiable homicide,” and calls his murderer an American hero.

They continue to be involved in, and encourage, violent acts against doctors, advocates, abortion clinics and homosexuals. They believe that birth control is “evil” and encourage their members to “never trust police, FBI, or other agents.”

Shining Path: Peruvian terrorism

Shining Path is a communist terrorist group operating in Peru. Communism and insurgency have gone hand-in-hand for decades, from the Khmer Rouge to Che Guevara, but still today, many communist terrorist groups remain in South America.

Shining Path was founded in the 1960s by Abimael Guzman, a former philosophy professor, and became militant in 1980.

Their main goal is to overthrow the Peruvian government, install a dictatorship and spark a global revolution; and this has had a grand impact on many other Maoist groups. The Communist Party of Nepal, for instance, has been inspired by Shining Path’s methods.

Shining Path, who claim to represent the proletariat, is known for its brutal violence against peasant classes, trade union supporters and other Peruvian civilians.

The group has had a resurgence in the last decade, funded by cocaine trafficking, and continue to carry out infrequent, sporadic and brutal attacks against civilians, military installations and government officials. They are generally hated by much of Peru’s citizenry.

Phineas Priesthood: US terrorism…yet again…

The Phineas Priesthood is a Christian terrorist group in the United States which fights against abortion, interracial relationships, race-mixing, taxes, Jews and homosexuality.

The group operates with a fluid membership policy: anybody who acts in the name of the group, is a member of the Phineas Priesthood – a similar method to ISIS.

In 1996 the Priesthood bombed various abortion clinics, the headquarters of The Spokesman-Review newspaper, and robbed multiple banks.

The group’s name comes from biblical Phinehas, who executed an Israelite man and a Midianite woman for what was essentially race-mixing. The Phineas Priesthood uses this biblical reference to justify their opposition to interracial intercourse.

The most recent attack carried out by the Priesthood was just two months ago, on November 28, 2014, when Larry McQuilliams rampaged through Austin Texas, firing his gun at, and attempting to burn, a federal courthouse, police station and Mexican consulate building.

Patrol Sgt Adam Johnson fired a single shot, with one hand, astride his horse from nearly 100 meters away, to pierce McQuilliams’ heart and end his life.

So please, the next time you hear somebody say the words “not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim,” let them know just how wrong, misinformed and ignorant they are. Perhaps one day we can stop this bigoted misconception from popping up every time the media decides to over-represent an Islamic terrorist attack.

Jacob Lynagh is an Adelaide-based freelance journalist who closely follows the political and social issues of the Pacific region and Middle East, as well as the rise and fall of nationalist and anti-fascist movements. He is a Grateful Dead fan, writes about classic Rock whenever possible and wishes the sixties never ended.

CULT SCHOOL CLOSED IN UK

UK CULT SCHOOL DOES NOT TEACH MULTICULTURAL TOLERANCE ONLY ARROGANCE & CREATIONISM

WHAT IS HAPPENING IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND? Destiny Church in New Zealand is asking for Government Money

Durham Free School to close after inadequate rating

Funding axed after Ofsted uncovered ‘catalogue of failures’ including weak student achievement and low standards

…The report said: “Some students hold discriminatory views of other people who have different faiths, values or beliefs from themselves.”

Durham Free School: 'Creationism taught at' free school facing closure

Pupils at Durham Free School were taught creationism during science lessons, according to newspaper Schools Week.

The school, which has already been ordered to close by the Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, has been accused of harbouring "prejudiced views" of children from other faiths that went unchallenged by teachers.

A teacher at the school reportedly asked Year 7 pupils to complete a worksheet as part of their science homework that stated: “Only the Earth has life on it. God has designed the solar system so that the Earth can support life.”

Any school, academy or free school that is found to teach Creationism as a scientific fact would be in breach of the law and its funding agreement.

….

Durham free school to close, says education secretary

Nicky Morgan confirms school’s funding will cease after it failed to improve following after being place in special measures by Ofsted

The education secretary, Nicky Morgan, has confirmed that the troubled Durham free school is to close, a month after Ofsted inspectors revealed that it was beset by weak leadership and bullying.

…

CREATIONISM TEST

Limasila

Thursday, June 11, 2015

JULIE BISHOP AUST. FORGN MINSTR PLEASE MAKE SURE AUSTRALIAN SPIES DO NOT SUPPORT THE MAFIA GANG STALKERS WHO MONITOR AND TERRORIZE US 24/7

PLEASE MAKE SURE AUSTRALIAN SPIES DO NOT SUPPORT THE MAFIA GANG STALKERS WHO MONITOR AND TERRORIZE US 24/7

Monday, June 8, 2015

Pt3 - MAFIA EXTRMST CULT 24/7 TERRZM ETHNIC CLNSNG. AUST SPIES, JKT & CRIME? MELB CULT MRDR. MUSLM FREE AUST & INDO, BUDHST FREE CAMBDA. AUST SOFT ON DRUGS & MAFIA TERRZM.

TO STEAL FIRST DEHUMANIZE, DAEMONIZE THEN DECLARE WAR

MAFIA GANG STALKERS – Spread Lies, Run a Video Show and a Social/Stalking Media Gossip Sewer;

Dehumanization and Demonization of the Enemy

NATIVE AMERICANS DEHUMANIZED BY DEMONIZING COLONIAL PROPAGANDA

CAUCASUS OIL – ANZACS IN TURKEY, HITLER IN STALINGRAD, BUSH IN IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN

World War I

HITLER IN STALINGRAD - Operation Blue

Operation Blue - the Race for Oil

Afghanistan, Central Asia, Caucasus: Key to oil profits

ISLAM PHOBIA IN AUSTRALIA

OPINION: Tony Abbott's anti-Muslim bigotry exposed - Australia PM reinforces long-manufactured climate of fear and framing of Muslims as 'Other'.

Tony Abbott urges Muslim groups to 'get with the program' and condemn extremism

Islamophobia: Tony Abbott urged to speak out against attacks on Muslims

Tensions between Australian Defence League and Muslim community reach violent new height

Australia’s Declared War On Muslims

New anti-terror laws will gag hate preachers and give ASIO agents licence to kill in self defence

When Will This Hysteria Die Down?

Ignore anti-Islam hype: Terrorism lurks amongst us all

CULT SCHOOL CLOSED IN UK

Durham Free School to close after inadequate rating

Durham Free School: 'Creationism taught at' free school facing closure

Durham free school to close, says education secretary

CREATIONISM TEST