Editors, Opelika-Auburn News:

Jessica Lane’s recent letter urges Americans to stand up and fight for our freedoms. I couldn’t agree more. However, I can’t agree when she writes that One man who has stood up for our liberty and freedom is Chief Justice Roy Moore.

Let’s look at Roy Moore’s opinions on freedom in his Ex parte H.H. concurring opinion.

Homosexual behavior, Moore writes, is a ground for divorce, an act of sexual misconduct punishable as a crime in Alabama, a crime against nature, an inherent evil, and an act so heinous that it defies one’s ability to describe it. (Alabama’s sexual misconduct law applies equally to heterosexuals and homosexuals, so Moore is either ignorant of the law or lying.)

He says legal discrimination against homosexuals promotes the general welfare of the people of our State in accordance with our law.

And, The State carries the power of the sword, that is, the power to prohibit conduct with physical penalties, such as confinement and even execution. It must use that power to prevent the subversion of children toward this lifestyle, to not encourage a criminal lifestyle. (Moore waffled, and said that he only to give an example of punishments for crimes, but his statement still clearly says that the government would be within its legal and moral prerogatives to implement such barbaric punishment.)

Moore is no freedom fighter. He wants the power to invade the bedrooms of consenting adults. He stands for a nanny State that robs Alabama citizens of their rights whenever he doesn’t like what they do with them. He believes the government should have the power to imprison and slaughter people simply because they are gay.

Give me liberty or give me death indeed! We must fight for liberty — for everyone, not just the people Roy Moore likes.

Sssh, they might hear the pandering… – Our Fearless Leader George W. Bush

While the mainstream newsmedia was occupied with the United States’ war on Afghanistan, President Bush took the opportunity to pass under the media radar while launching another insult to abortion rights and overt pandering to the far Right.

Last year, as his first act in office and on the 28th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, President George W. Bush decided to destroy international family planning and freedom of speech by re-imposing the Mexico City policy or global gag rule. This year, G.W. decided another celebration was in order. For the 29th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Bush declared January 20, 2002, National Sanctity of Human Life Day.

What an ass.

Here’s the best part of all. George W. Bush takes the opportunity to compare abortion supporters to the terrorists responsible for the September 11 massacre:

… we should peacefully commit ourselves to seeking a society that values life — from its very beginnings to its natural end. Unborn children should be welcomed in life and protected in law.

On September 11, we saw clearly that evil exists in this world, and that it does not value life. …

Excuse me while I repeat myself. What an ass.

Targeting civilians is immoral, no matter what the circumstances.

The cognitive dissonance is killing me!

Welcome to Bethlehem

Arik Sharon bellows something about how more civilian deaths on both sides will lead to greater security.

If we keep our voices down, they might not notice the stench of the bodies.

No, that’s not an anti-war radical crying out against the war on Afghanistan or the possible future attack of Iraq. It’s not some starry-eyed Nobel laureate peace organization. It’s Donald Rumsfeld, speaking with a completely straight face, on national television, asserting the United States’ position in support of the Israeli government’s war on Palestine. Irony is now officially dead.

Meanwhile, the tanks rolled into Bethlehem, with $2,400,000,000 of your and my tax dollars paying for gasoline. Assaults were launched against the Ayda and Dehaishe refugee camps, with massive tank fire, mortar fire, gun clashes, and F-16s flying overhead. The IDF has attacked Red Crescent and UN ambulances, television and communication stations, and journalists.

On the other side of the world, Our Fearless Leader sits back on his ass and opines that he’s doing enough already about this human rights catastrophe, that Israel has a right to defend itself and that Yasser Arafat should, somehow, be doing more to stop suicide bombing from his highly strategic position penned in his own basement and surrounded by tanks and barbed wire. Apparently the idea that Palestine might also have a right to defend itself from a brutal occupation and assault is lost on Bush. Lost on everyone in the mainstream political discourse, for that matter. This does not, of course, include a right to murder civilians in suicide bombings. But it does include a right to fight back against the brutal collective punishment assault being launched in the Occupied Territories as we speak.

Then again, perhaps I’m a bit late already for irony’s memorial service. After all, for a week now, Ariel Sharon has declared that he is out to defend the safety and lives of Israeli citizens… through a scorched-earth assault on Palestine which has driven Palestinians to commit 7 suicide bombings in 7 days. Since Sharon isn’t the one who has to bear the consequences of this blood-soaked war he’s launched, I suppose his safety is doing just fine. Meanwhile, however, a lot of people are dying on both sides precisely because of his actions.

For further reading:

• Jerusalem Independent Media Center for up-to-the-minute participatory media updates
• GT 3/16/2002: Occupation and Intifada: Oppression and Resistence, not "Violence"
• GT 2/14/2002: WAR IS PEACE
• GT 2/03/2002: He Thinks You’re An Idiot
• GT 1/31/2002: Sharon Threatens Arafat’s Life
• GT 3/07/2001: War Criminal Ariel Sharon Becomes Prime Minister

Paul Foot of the Guardian recently published a forceful article on the hypocrisy and irresponsibility of much coverage of the Israeli military occupation of Palestine. As Foot argues, there is far, far too much white-washing of the conflict in terms of some mealy-mouthed "pox on both your houses" approach condemning "violence," full stop. Such an approach seems like the pacifist moral high road, but in fact merely amounts to an abdication of responsibility, an abandonment of the conflict under the assumption that "Tut tut, there they go again. Two enemy peoples in a far-off land, caught up in an age-old conflict, swapping atrocity for atrocity, and endlessly killing each other out of some primeval hatred. There is nothing civilised and humane observers can do about it, apparently, except perhaps to hope that sooner or later one side (the strong) will annihilate the other (the weak)."

I remember not too long ago I watched a news commentary show in which Arab and Israeli representatives spoke about the occupation of Palestine. Whenever the Arab representative would point out that Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian territory and Palestinians might just have a right to resist and defend themselves, the Israeli representative would snort and dismissively say that the Arab representative was "still fighting the old war." As if there were a statute of limitations on fundamental human rights. The whole idea that there might, just maybe, be a real distinction between oppressed and oppressors here is completely excluded from the mainstream discourse.

Foot points out an excellent example of the hypocrisy – in fact, an example I have commented on myself in these pages:

Remember the indignant hullabaloo when a shipment of arms, bound apparently for the Palestinians, was intercepted. Whoever complains about arms shipments a hundred times greater that pour regularly from our factories and those of the US into Israel? Anyone in the United States or Britain who opposes such sanctions is taking up an unequivocal stand on the side of illegal occupation, military conquest and economic oppression.

Or as I put it,

Meanwhile Israeli and US leaders condemn Yasser Arafat for attempting to import heavy weapons into the Palestinian Authority. Christ, they are being militarily assaulted by Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships, and you act all surprised when they import weapons to defend themselves against invasion? If we started classifying all the weapons Israel buys and builds as “enhancing terror” (George W.’s words), then Israel would be considered one of the single biggest terrorist states in the world. Oh, but wait, Israel receives $2,040,000,000 every year from US tax dollars for direct military aid, and $720,000,000 more in economic aid. The Palestinian weapons, at least, were not purchased on your and my dime.

OK, now, I should step back for a second. One thing which Foot doesn’t do, and he is wrong not to do it, is to strongly condemn the acts of the deranged, self-styled jihadis of groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The use of force in direct self-defense is legitimate; the use of violent terror in order to kill civilians is not.

Unfortuantely, far too many people on both sides of the conflict assume that resistence fighters and fundamentalist terrorists are cut from the same cloth. I do not agree. These are two fundamentally different tactics and must be understood as fundamentally different ways. We can neither pass off terrorists who bomb innocent civilians as resistence fighters, nor condemn people legitimately defending themselves against tanks, heavily armed infantry, and helicopter gunships – as if the Palestinians resistors, who are being slaughtered left and right by Israeli military forces, were somehow the aggressors.

For further reading:

• GT 1/31/2002 Sharon Threatens Arafat’s Life
• GT 3/07/2001 War Criminal Ariel Sharon Becomes Prime Minister

Yesterday, Irish voters narrowly rejected a referendum that would have tightened Ireland’s constitutional restrictions against abortion, which are already among the harshest restrictions in Europe.

Ahem, I seem to have lost this one. – Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern

Abortion is already illegal under the Irish constitution, but the rejected amendment sought to tighten restrictions by overturning an Irish Supreme Court ruling which authorized therapeutic abortions when the mother threatened to commit suicide, and by imposing harsh criminal penalties for women who received abortions, and the doctors who performed the procedure. Currently, nearly 7,000 Irish women receive abortions each year, but nearly all must have them performed in legal clinics across the Irish Sea in the United Kingdom. Thankfully, EU immigration protections prevent the Irish government from stopping women from leaving the country.

629,041 Irish voters rejected the amendment, while 618,485 voted in favor of it. In urban centers, the vote was much more lopsided, with some 61% of Dublin voters rejecting the new restrictions. Anti-abortion proponents of the referendum urged that it be adopted because a rejection might lead down a slippery slope towards abortion-on-demand in Ireland.

I’m not holding my breath, but let’s hope they’re right.

For further reading:

• GT 2001-03-24: Victory: Abortion Legalized in Switzerland
• GT 2001-03-26: King George End-runs Congressional Review on Global Gag Rule