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(Text of a talk given at the Marxism-2006 conference held in Toronto, Ontario)

In George W. Bush's address to Congress on September 20, 2001 he said, "They [the terrorists] hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."

In the weeks following this speech, I suppose the American president concluded that "if the terrorists hate us because we are free, then they will hate us less if we are less free." It certainly seems as if he put that bizarre conclusion into practice.

Within 50 days of 9/11, the American Patriot Act was in effect and within 100 days, Canada's Anti-Terrorist Act was approved by Parliament. We Canadians put the same spin on the legislation as our American neighbors, implying that any negative criticism of it would be considered "unpatriotic." Sadly, security had become incompatible with liberty.

Today, as we approach the fifth anniversary of 9/11, each of the basic democratic freedoms I shared with you in George Bush's words has been severely compromised.

For Muslims in Canada, freedom of religion is less assured today than it was five years ago. Just because they are Muslims, many have been victimized by security certificate investigations, which allow authorities to detain anyone indefinitely. Others have been placed on no-fly lists or no- passport lists -- often without their knowledge, until the day they need to travel or renew their documents. Moreover, these lists are made up by civil servants, not by the courts.


Muslims in Canada today suffer from more discrimination, and more harassment at schools or in workplaces than before 9/11. The government and media have shown that they couldn't care less.

Young Canadian Muslims -- especially women wearing the traditional Hijab headscarf, or other distinctive Islamic clothing -- are made to feel like strangers, foreigners and aliens in their own country.

Hate literature against Islam and Muslims is on the rise, with statistics showing that Muslims are replacing Blacks and Jews as the number-one group victimized by hate and vandalism in Canada. But very little has been offered through government programs to educate the general public, or to make any impact in the school system.

Canadian Muslims are this country's largest non-Christian religious group, numbering some 750,000. About half of us are Canadian-born and the rest are immigrants from more than 50 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe.

Anti-Islam in the Canadian media is alive and well. You have only to glance at summaries of The Canadian Islamic Congress's annual research report on the subject to see that the National Post is the worst offender; unfortunately, other major papers in this country are not far behind.

More than half of the print and broadcast news media in Canada are owned and controlled by one family. Most of the post 9/11 Canadian media did not object to the compromise of Canadian civil liberties, to the war on Iraq and George Bush's lies about it, or to the sending of Canadian troops into Afghanistan. Almost none did investigative reporting on any of these three subjects. There is an alarming connection between this concentration of ownership and editorial integrity. So much for freedom of speech!

If anything good came out of 9/11 and the events that have followed over the past several years, it has been a noticeable increase in grassroots political activism; such a public groundswell of opinion has not been seen since the Vietnam War era.

More than 20 million people across the globe demonstrated in the streets just before the American invasion of Iraq in March, 2003. And every year for the last four, anti-war demonstrations have shown growing solidarity with the Palestinian people. More demonstrations and protests are being mounted every year against the injustice and greed that are fuelling the current globalization movement -- a system that benefits only 20% of the world's population.

Now, for the first time in history, the political left is working with conservative Muslims on issues of social justice, with the long-term goal of building a world that lives by peace, through justice. Communists, Marxists, socialists, and nationalists are working with civil libertarians, liberals, and conservatives to achieve this urgent goal together.

The events of 9/11 were co-opted by the Bush administration as a thin pretext for an all-out war against civil liberties at home, combined with a brutal war of aggression against overseas nations. This domestic and international campaign has been mounted on a scale not seen since Hitler's Third Reich, and has been done in the face of a largely unaware public. To truly fight the menace of terrorism and to spread justice with democracy, our leaders must move with an informed public on their side.

Take Iraq three years after the American invasion. Life for most Iraqis has degenerated into abject misery: personal security is non-existent; the country has spiraled down from full employment to 80% unemployment; one of the best education and health care systems in the region has all but disappeared and functions at less than third-world standards.

Meanwhile, educated Iraqi professionals are being assassinated, or forced to emigrate. All of this adds up to nothing less than the slow but sure ethnic cleansing of an entire people. And this is what the U.S. calls "liberation"??

On August 29, 2002 George Bush offered us yet more words to live, or die, by when he explained what distinguishes Us from Them:

"See, we love -- we love freedom. That's what they didn't understand. They hate things; we love things. They act out of hatred; we don't seek revenge, we seek justice out of love."

When you hear such words from the President of the United States of America, you cannot help but fear for the future of planet Earth.

But I am still hopeful that the left will soon unite in a determined pursuit of global justice. There is not a moment to waste.

(Dr. Mohamed Elmasry is national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress. He can be reached at np@canadianislamiccongress.com)

The low point of my recent visit to Pakistan was meeting a friend who has essentially severed relations with his mother. Seeing that once-cheerful and easygoing young man, now full of seething resentment, was truly painful -- all the more so, for I was ineffective in helping him set things straight.

In a comparable situation several years ago a relative, after his marriage, had behaved in a similar way. Married to an insecure woman given to constant nagging, her spouse decided that the only way to survive was to surrender completely. Men like this begin to believe the fallacies of victim hood imposed on them and after a while they become their greatest proponents.

There are many wives guilty of exacerbating such problems. In order to maintain a stranglehold on the husband, his parents (the in-laws) are painted the darkest shade of black. My relative's mother was an ailing woman and he had been her favorite son. I thought of the awful guilt this man would feel if his mother was to die with their relations still strained.

I told him he needed to understand that all relationships are different, but that parents and spouses each have their place. Although lives and routines intersect, the dynamics of a relationship should not be displaced -- not if you want to avoid big trouble, especially in where matters of religion are concerned.

I advised the young man to mend his relations with his mother soon, for later regrets would be unchangeable. Later that evening I found his wife pacing my bedroom like a caged lion. "If he divorces me, I am not a professional and I have nowhere to go etc. etc...." she lamented to me. My reassuring remark, that "I never told him to divorce you" resulted in an elevated hissy fit. Clearly, the lady's insecurity was so enveloping and had become so entrenched in her mind that she believed her survival depended on the demonization of her mother-in-law.

Various verses in the Qur’an deal with maintaining, not severing, relations. (See: Qur’an 4: 8, 36; Qur’an 16: 90; Qur’an 17:26; Qur’an 24:22) But Surah Muhammad states it most succinctly: "Then, is it to be expected of you, if you were put in authority, that you will do mischief in the land, and break your ties of kith and kin?" (Qur’an 47:22) The commentary of these verses is worth reading, for it underscores the premium that is placed on the maintenance of relationships despite disagreements and conflict.

When I was able to calm the young wife and explain my actual intent, she came up with a conspiracy theory: the mother would get her son to start divorce proceedings as soon as he started speaking to her on a regular basis. The wife's venom and ranting are still a vivid memory. Thankfully, however, the man normalized relations with his mother after a few weeks, without divorcing his wife. The mother died within a year.

The Qur'an places a high premium on the good treatment of parents and says in 46:15, "We have enjoined on man's kindness to his parents: In pain did his mother bear him, and in pain did she give him birth." Also in Surah Ahqaf 31:14, "And We have enjoined on man [to be good] to his parents: in travail upon travail did his mother bear him, and in years twain was his weaning: (hear the command), 'Show gratitude to Me and to thy parents: to Me is (thy final) goal'."

God in His infinite wisdom knew that the love a parent has for a child is unconditional and that the reverse does not always apply. And perhaps that was why Allah has stated clearly that in terms of love, one's primary focus is God, followed by the Prophet (pbuh) and then one's parents.

Allah in the Qur’an (36:68) says: "If we grant long life to any, We cause him to be reversed in nature..." This refers to the senility or dementia that older people develop and how they then become child-like and irrational. But even in this state, we are commanded to be good to our parents and not to say a word of contempt to them.

Islam strives to maintain equitable relationships. Having created human beings, Allah knew well their weakness: that once the parents grew old and senile, they would be a burden and might be badly treated by their children. He therefore time and again in the Qur’an mentions that parents be treated well.

An old Western saying goes: "A daughter is a daughter for all her life, a son is a son till he gets a wife." The charms of love and marriage have a way of creating a state of heedlessness.

Men must understand their duties towards their parents and not turn into morons the day after being married. Women should not operate on the premise of "love and worship me to the exclusion of all other relationships." As wives, they must understand that a short-term gain in term of material advantages and power can lead to a great loss in the long term, for the exclusive relationship that they try to impose with their husbands comes at the risk of his other obligations. If the Hereafter seems very remote, there will assuredly be fallout in this world!

This is not to say that parents are always docile and sweet, but the onus for maintaining a good relationship rests largely on the children. If you are in the unenviable position of dealing with an irrational, emotional or abusive parent, seek professional counseling (possibly for the parents as well) to work out coping adjustments.

Abusive treatment, banishment or severing of relationships should not be among your options while your parents (especially your mother) are still alive, for when she dies, your most potent source of prayer has gone.

(This article was abridged and edited for the Friday Magazine.)

I'm fairly certain I exist. Descartes tells me so, and before him, Ibn Sina. And when my son drags me out of bed to play with him in the pre-dawn hours, I really know I do.

So you can imagine how distraught I was when my existence was cast into serious doubt by a major airline. After booking a flight online with British Airways out of Cairo (the nearest accessible airport for Palestinians here -- eight hours and a border crossing away from Gaza), I attempted to enter my "passenger details," including country of citizenship and residence.

Most people wouldn't give this a second thought. But being the owner of a Palestinian Authority passport (which one can acquire only on the basis of an Israeli-issued ID card), I have become accustomed to dealing with Kafkaesque complications in routine matters.

And sure enough, in the drop-down menu of countries, I found the British Indian Ocean Territory, the Isle of Man and even Tuvalu -- but no Palestine.

Now, I understand "Palestine" does not exist on any western maps, so I would have settled for Palestinian Territories (though Palestinian Bantustans might be more appropriate), or Gaza Strip and West Bank, or even Palestinian Authority, as my "pursuant to the Oslo accord"-issued passport states.

But none of these options existed. And neither, it seemed, did I.

I was confused. Where in the world is Laila El-Haddad if not in Palestine, I thought? Certainly not in Israel (as one of many airline customer relations representatives casually suggested).

I sent an email of complaint to British Airways humbly suggesting that they amend their omission of my nation. Several days later, the reply came: "We are unable to assist you with your query via email ... please call your general enquiries department, then select your country from the drop-down list."

Frustrated, I sent a follow-up email and was then told to contact my "nearest general enquiries department" (if I was to take that literally, that would be Tel Aviv). Instead, I opted for customer relations in the UK, whose web support told me there was no guarantee I would ever get a definite answer.

I relayed the tale to my friend, whose own status as an east Jerusalemite is even more precarious than mine as a post-disengagement Gazan. "Could it be," she posited, "that there is no definite answer because we aren't considered definite people?"

I'll leave that for British Airways to answer.

(Freelance journalist and blogger Laila El-Haddad lives in Gaza City. Laila's blog, Raising Yousuf, is named after her two-year-old son. This article was slightly edited for the Friday Magazine.)

A global war of ideas is set to begin and the Anglo-American dominance of international TV news about to end. Arab and Muslim perspectives will receive wider distribution after Al-Jazeera introduces a global television channel that will air the news in English.

Al-Jazeera International is to go on air by mid-2006, beamed from its headquarters in the Qatari capital Doha, with regional broadcast centers in London, Washington and Kuala Lumpur.

When Al-Jazeera was established in 1996, no one had even heard the phrase "war of ideas" in the Islamic world context. The network was established to give Arab-world perspectives on major global issues. However, the phrase became profound in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Much has since been written in the post-September 11 era on the "war of ideas." However, a big chunk of that has been created in the U.S. and the West. Now this "war" will acquire a truly international dimension, with Al- Jazeera establishing a global "battlefield" of ideas.

When the Bush administration went into Afghanistan, it got a taste of how an Arab information medium, Al-Jazeera, would spin the coverage of the battle in that country. It did not like that coverage, which was instantly dubbed "anti-American," "heavily biased," and even "pro-Taliban or al- Qaeda."

Everyone likes to talk about the globalization of information but it has been slow in coming to television news. Europe and the Middle East thus far have been under British Broadcasting Corporation domination and the Cable News Network in terms of international coverage.

The monopoly English-language news coverage from the United States and United Kingdom has provided an inordinate amount of leverage in news selection and, more important, in propagating government spin.

The standard line is that their news is free of government control; however, governments in both countries have a huge say in what news items are covered and how much time is allotted to them daily. When these governments hold hearings, conferences, etc. their major news channels are forced to cover them.

Consequently, long presidential or prime-ministerial news conferences present U.S. and British perspectives to both domestic and world audiences, while foreign perspectives on those very same events are offered only in summary. The result is an inordinate amount of bias toward American or British views.

In news coverage, objectivity requires that the views of both sides be presented. However, there is still ample room for editorializing by journalists who often have a natural inclination to be sympathetic to their own countries.

That reality has never been clearer than since September 11, and especially during the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. Department of Defense required that journalists be "embedded," a euphemism for attaching them to various military units and making sure they didn't talk about things that would jeopardize military operations. The military used this policy to influence predominantly U.S. perspectives in the media during both wars.

Al-Jazeera journalists could not be forced to abide by those rules in Afghanistan, at least until the dismantling of Taliban rule. However, during the Iraq campaign, especially after Saddam Hussein's regime toppled, Al-Jazeera coverage could not remain completely independent.

One Al-Jazeera correspondent made an interesting observation about embedded American journalists. By doing so, the U.S. military provided reporters good coverage from the front side of a military operation, but never from its back side; that is, the destruction, blood and gore left in the wake of war -- the so-called "collateral damage."

For the Bush administration, the most troubling part of Al-Jazeera's coverage was that global audiences became increasingly aware of the channel's "anti-American" bias, even though most Americans did not receive Al-Jazeera first-hand. Now they are about to get that coverage in their living rooms. Consequently, the international coverage of battlefields will undergo profound changes.

Meanwhile, there's likely to be a global Islamic channel in the near future from Saudi Arabia, Malaysia or Indonesia. Such a channel would couch the entire debate of the war of ideas in the Islamic context, as opposed to Al- Jazeera, which will maintain its mainly Arab slant on the news.

Arab and Muslim audiences will have an opportunity to compare daily news, perspectives and slants from the East as well as the West. Through such comparisons they should learn a lot about how much substance there is in U.S. claims that it has no quarrel with Islam. By the same token, they would be exposed to the inadequacies of some of the regimes under which they have been living. This exposure could well bring an end to political systems that should have been thrown in the dustbin decades ago.

The globalization of the war of ideas would pose the same challenges to the United States as the onslaught of democracy in a non-democratic polity. America will have to compete hard on a global scale to promote its own version of reality and truth. Now the war of ideas will be truly democratic as there is likely to be more open competition between those who are lying and those who are telling the truth, no matter who well the information itself is packaged.

(Ehsan Ahrari is the CEO of Strategic Paradigms, a Virginia-based defense consultancy. He can be reached at eahrari@cox.net or stratparadigms@yahoo.com. His columns appear regularly in Asia Times Online. His website: www.ehsanahrari.com. This article was abridged and edited for the Friday Magazine.)

In the Western world of years past, Jews tended to be pro-liberal, if not out rightly pro- socialist. Western liberals, in turn, supported equality, as well as legal and societal emancipation for the Jewish population. The conservative right, by contrast, was viewed by some as the traditional home of nationalism, racism and anti-Semitism.

In recent years, however, three historical processes have given birth to a shift in the place of the Jews within the ideological spectrum.

The first process grew following Israel's victory over its Arab neighbors in the 1967 Six Day War, with the enshrinement of the issue of Palestinian refugees and the deepening of Palestinian hostility. Since then Israel, along with the majority of Diaspora Jews who support it, turned from an acclaimed little David into a cruel Goliath.

Some groups on the European left tend to identify with those viewed as weak, even before examining if they are truly weak - and especially, whether their cause is truly just. In the same vein, automatic anti- Americanism confers the halo of the saintly and the just, and this also has turned into a central criterion in the European left's views regarding Israel.

The second, much more recent, process appeared along with the rise of anti- globalization movements. These groups quickly became synonymous with anti- Americanism, and their ranks were joined not only by elements of the extreme left, but also of the extreme right, as well as pro-Palestinians, anti-Zionists, and anti-Semites.

In Israel, less attention is devoted to a third process, whose impact (on Jews as well as others) is liable to prove more significant than the placards and chants of pro-Palestinian demonstrators. This third factor is the changing demographic face of the West.

Post-World War One U.S. laws restricting immigration discriminated against the entry of southern Europeans (in other words, mostly Catholics) and Eastern Europeans (largely Jews and Orthodox Slavs). To a great degree, these laws barred the entry of Jews who sought to flee the Nazis prior to the Second World War; they stood in the way of rescuing hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of Jews who perished in the Holocaust. This resulted in the emergence of American Jews as the most active group backing a change in immigration laws.

Passed in 1965, the new immigration law also opened the United States to newcomers from the Third World, causing changes in migration patterns throughout the world.

The Jewish segment of the general American population continues to decrease, due more to the numerical rise of Third World immigrants, Hispanics, and African-Americans than to high assimilation or low birth rates. As well, the Muslim proportion, many of Arab descent, is rising. .

According to demographic estimates, by the year 2050 there will be four times as many Arabs as Jews in the United States. The impact of possible demographic repercussions has begun to penetrate the Jewish community.

In recent months, the question "Is broad immigration 'good for the Jews'?" has been asked openly in the United States. In other words, is it right for Jews to continue to support liberal immigration laws?

The Jewish-Israeli implications of mass emigration to Western Europe are already prominent. North Africans and Asians enter Western Europe relatively easily, and disputes among members of the European Union (mainly between France and the other countries) block effective decisions aimed at reducing both legal and illegal emigration.

Muslim immigrants already present a considerable voting population in France, Germany and Belgium. The many anti-Semitic incidents in Western Europe, attributed to the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, were carried out mainly by Muslims. Different political observers trying to explain the increasing anti-Israeli stand of most western states ascribe great importance to the increase in the Muslim population.

These processes are dangerous for both the United States and Western Europe. The U.S. is still considered today to be a country with "Judeo- Christian" values, and when speaking of the "three religions" in America, the reference is to Protestants, Catholics and Jews. This may change in the not-so-distant future, when the country may be spoken of as a "Christian- Muslim-Jewish" nation. It is not hard to assume what this means for the Jews in America.

A similar process may take place in Western Europe -- sooner, and with greater intensity. A "Christian Europe" means not only a tradition of anti- Semitism, but also one of anti-Islam, as part of the continent's consciousness since the Crusades, the subsequent Arab invasion of Spain, and the Turkish military missions that reached the gates of Vienna.

The accelerated secularization process weakens not only church-sanctioned anti-Semitism but also the anti-Muslim tradition. At the same time, low birth rates in Western Europe will oblige it to open its gates to admit the workforce vital for its economy. Western Europe may prefer immigrants from Eastern Europe, but reality will require a continuation, if not an increase, in the number of Arabs entering the West.

And while the immigrants of the past, from India as well as Eastern Europe, wanted and still want to integrate into western society and culture, there is an opposite trend among many of today's Muslim immigrants: they want to win cultural, social and political influence not by assimilation, but rather as a body that maintains its Muslim and Arab character.

Even without these extreme predictions, we must remember that large numbers of immigrants and their children in their adopted nations are turning into lobbies for their countries of origin. This is not the exclusive invention of the American Jews' pro-Israel lobby. In the near future, the widening of Arab lobbies in Western Europe and America to the centers of political influence is liable to enable them to compete with the Jewish lobby.

In the future, Israel and the Jews may face a dilemma: it may be that the conservatives and the nationalists will, in fact be their allies in a fight against immigration.

(This article was edited and abridged for the Friday Magazine.)

It was May 2003. President Bush had declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. The State Department, which had been unenthusiastic about that war, was not inclined to provoke another with neighboring Iran and indeed had been calling for diplomatic engagement with the reform-minded Khatami regime. That regime, for its part, asked the Swiss ambassador to Tehran to forward to the United States a request for talks. These would address U.S. concerns about its nuclear program, as well as the lifting of sanctions and normalization of relations.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage were inclined to accept the offer. Vice President Cheney, soon to declare, "We don’t negotiate with evil, we defeat it," was not. Nor were Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, and his Office of Special Plans. Indeed, Cheney and his neoconservatives had the State Department rebuke the Swiss intermediary as they began to ratchet up the tension level between the countries to its present near-breaking point.

This is the extraordinary narrative provided in large part by a highly reliable source, Powell’s former chief of staff, General Lawrence Wilkerson. He minces no words. "The secret cabal got what it wanted: no negotiations with Tehran," he told Gareth Porter of Inter Press Service in March of this year. "As with many of these issues of national security decision-making, there are no fingerprints. But I would guess Dick Cheney with the blessing of George W Bush [is responsible]."

Feith, who quietly vacated his office in August 2005 after the war for which he’d tirelessly campaigned had been exposed as one based on lies, hired neocon ideologue and Iran-Contra principal Michael Ledeen to work for the OSP in 2002. A longtime friend of fellow Iran-Contra plotter Manucher Ghorbanifar, Ledeen had met with the Iranian arms dealer several times from December 2001 to June 2002. These contacts, opposed by the CIA, which has long distrusted Ghorbanifar, are thought to have some relation to the forged Nigerian uranium documents used to bolster the case for the attack on Iraq.

But Ledeen states that his business with Ghorbanifar related to Iran, not Iraq. Ledeen, as an American Enterprise Institute scholar and journalist for the neocon National Review, has repeatedly called for an immediate U.S. attack on Iran. Meanwhile, Ghorbanifar has been returned to the U.S. government payroll, working with the Vice President’s Office and the Defense Department. He’s been assigned, among other things, to provide intelligence on Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.

Ghorbanifar and one of his associates are thought to be the source of much of the information in the book Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information that Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America... and How the CIA has Ignored it -- written by his friend Congressman Curt Weldon and published in 2005. It declares that Iran is hiding Osama bin Laden, preparing terrorist attacks on the U.S., has a crash program to build nuclear weapons and is the chief sponsor of the insurgency in Iraq. Shades of Ahmad Chalabi!

This is all so déjà vu -- at least for all with eyes to see. The rejection of the Iranian proposal in 2003 reminds me of the Iraqi peace proposals made to the Bush administration from December 2002 to March 2003.

On February 19, 2003 Saddam’s regime indicated to Washington through intermediaries that in exchange for a U.S. promise not to attack, it would (1) cooperate in fighting terrorism; (2) give "full support" for any U.S. plan "in the Arab-Israeli peace process; (3) give "first priority [to the U.S.] as it relates to Iraq oil, mining rights;" (4) cooperate with U.S. strategic interests in the region; and (5) allow "direct U.S. involvement on the ground in disarming Iraq."

The highest-ranking U.S. official directly involved in the discussion was Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board at the Pentagon. The "Prince of Darkness" (as neocon Perle is sometimes known) regarded all the Iraqi pleas for a deal as "non-starters because they all involved Saddam staying in power." The neocons wanted regime change and they got it. Now they want it in Iran.

Why settle for a diplomatic resolution of issues between the U.S. and Iran when you can defeat "evil"?

In 2002, Cheney and Rice spoke authoritatively about Iraq’s attempts to import aluminum tubes "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs" citing intelligence reported by Judith Miller in the New York Times.

Nowadays the press reports about a laptop computer stolen by an Iranian citizen in 2004 with designs "for a small-scale facility to produce uranium gas, the construction of which would give Iran a secret stock that could be enriched for fuel or for bombs" and "drawings on modifying Iran's ballistic missiles in ways that might accommodate a nuclear warhead."

In 2002, unbeknownst to the public, the U.S. intelligence community was divided, with many in the CIA skeptical of the neocons’ claims. In 2006, that community -- even though purged in Cheney’s effort to scapegoat the CIA for "flawed" (as opposed to faked) intelligence - is still probably divided.

With that assumption I read the comments of U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte to the National Press Club on April 20. "The developments in Iran," he declared, "clearly they’re troublesome. By the same token, our assessment at the moment is that even though we believe that Iran is determined to acquire or obtain a nuclear weapon, that we believe that it is still many years off before they are likely to have enough fissile [fissionable] material to assemble into, or to put into a nuclear weapon; perhaps into the next decade. So I think it’s important that this issue be kept in perspective."

Negroponte’s career highlight before acquiring his present Homeland Security post was his ambassadorship in Honduras from 1981 to 1985. During that time (which too few Americans remember) he supervised the training of Nicaraguan Contras and covered up vicious human rights abuses. I wouldn’t suggest that he’s personally opposed to a brutal illegal attack on Iran sometime soon. I don’t know. But by urging that the nuclear issue "be kept in perspective" he may reflect a concern within the "intelligence community" that once again the disinformation apparatus is proceeding unchecked. The neocons may disparage the "reality-based community" in favor of their Nazi-like penchant to create their own alternative reality

But there are professional analysts who still highly valuate things like facts and reality and perspective. So maybe we see here again some conflict within the administration -- between those merely morally compromised by their very involvement in such a regime (and inclined to say, "Hey wait, let’s try to be honest here") and those who lie though their teeth without any moral qualms to obtain their world-transforming objectives.

Of course, the Iran attack advocates aren’t saying that Iran’s 45 minutes away from nuking New York. They’re saying that it has a secret nuclear weapons program (despite IAEA claims that there is no evidence for one), and that the program must be terminated (at some unspecified point) before Iran builds its first nuke. Those acquainted with the science estimate that Iran is anywhere from three to 15 years away from constructing a nuclear weapon if it so desires. The neocons would like us to imagine the mullahs producing nukes sooner rather than later, because they’re hell-bent on regime change in Iran while their man is in office and want to sell their attack as justifiably preemptive -- s an attack to defend the American people.

The power structure is obviously divided on the Iran issue, if not as deeply as one might hope. Democratic Party leaders have indeed competed with the Bush administration to embrace a hard line on Iran. The president’s recent visit to the Hoover Institution to talk with foreign policy wonks who favor an attack suggests the plan’s still on track. But recently there’s been a trend towards advocating negotiations. I would suggest those doing so note that such negotiations might have begun three years ago -- had Cheney and his neocon acolytes (still dangerously occupying key positions) not sabotaged any diplomatic initiatives standing in the way of their imperial ambitions.

(Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu. This article was slightly edited for the Friday Magazine.)

CIC FUNDRAISING DINNERS TO BE HELD IN VANCOUVER, MONTREAL, TORONTO AND WATERLOO -- MARK YOUR CALENDARS NOW AND PLAN TO ATTEND

The Canadian Islamic Congress announces its 2006 fundraising dinners to be held, Inshallah, in:

Vancouver (MAY 27), Montreal (JUNE 3), Toronto (SEPT 9) and Waterloo (SEPT 10)

Each event will feature prominent North American speakers. Plan to attend the CIC dinner nearest your home for a good cause, distinguished guests, good food and good company.

Buy your tickets online today at
http://www.canadianislamiccongress.com/dinner/

Re: HISTORY SHOWS JEWS AND CHRISTIANS KILLED MORE MUSLIMS THAN MUSLIMS KILLED JEWS AND CHRISTIANS By Dr. Mohamed Elmasry

A very well written piece Professor; though I would like to have seen footnotes on the statistics (like 90% of Jews in the modern age support Zionism) so I could use them as references myself. It was a compelling article nonetheless. Continue telling the truth with such an eloquent, reasoned voice.

Thank you.

Salaam.
Nazim Haqqani

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Re: HISTORY SHOWS JEWS AND CHRISTIANS KILLED MORE MUSLIMS THAN MUSLIMS KILLED JEWS AND CHRISTIANS By Dr. Mohamed Elmasry

You should have also mentioned that Christians are the main murderers of Jews. Hitler single-handedly snuffed o ut the lives of six-million Jews. Let's not forget Stalin as well. Both were Christians. During the time of Jesus (Isa alaihi salam) ... the Roman government set off to kill all of the first-born Jews.

Raswadi

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Re: HISTORY SHOWS JEWS AND CHRISTIANS KILLED MORE MUSLIMS THAN MUSLIMS KILLED JEWS AND CHRISTIANS By Dr. Mohamed Elmasry

It bothers me to see people referring to the Roman Catholic Church as "Christian." The RCC is the largest cult on the face of the planet and has nothing to do with Christian doctrine.

With your interest in history, I would encourage you to watch the series of videos at the following link:

http://www.amazingfacts.org/items/storacle_lessons.asp?tTitle=Millennium%20of%20Prophecy

Regards,
Mike

[Editor's note: For the purposes of the article in question, it was appropriate to refer to the Church of Rome as Christian, particularly during pre-Reformation periods when it was the central (but not only) body of Christian authority. This does not contradict the fact that Roman Catholicism has come under much investigative criticism in recent decades -- much of it long overdue and well-deserved.]

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Re: HISTORY SHOWS JEWS AND CHRISTIANS KILLED MORE MUSLIMS THAN MUSLIMS KILLED JEWS AND CHRISTIANS By Dr. Mohamed Elmasry

I liked this article -- as far as it goes -- but I wondered why you did not go further back.

I know many Christians who have, for example, forgotten the Crusades. The British have forgotten their occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. I suspect that if you went further back, the figures would be even more lop- sided. The battles were always in the Middle East, not in England or Germany. If you looked only at non-combatant casualties, wouldn't the figures be even worse?

I am no historian, but picking an arbitrary starting date, the creation of Israel seems wrong to me. I don't have the numbers, but I wonder what they would be.

I have been in casual conversations where the person on the other side made remarks like "Christianity is a peaceful religion..." When I remind them of some of those very old invasions, they start to think.

Dave