Mosque to be Built Near Ground Zero

Pakistan is currently a democracy.

Indonesia has the largest Muslim population of any country and an elected President

"Democracy in Indonesia is irreversible and a daily fact of life," President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told the World Movement for Democracy's annual assembly, in Jakarta this month. To be sure, Indonesia's transition from authoritarianism to democracy, which began with Suharto's fall in 1998, has been remarkably successful. During Yudhoyono's March visit to Australia, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd proclaimed, "we welcome you now as a member of the family of democracies . . . a nation where freedom of the press is now exercised without constraint, without restraint and without fear of repression."

Yet despite progress in promoting democracy and the rule of law, a relatively free press and abundant news outlets, there are ominous signs that the foundations of democracy are not as sturdy as Jakarta would have the world believe. On a number of occasions in recent years, anti-corruption activists, human rights defenders, journalists, consumers, and private citizens alike have been subjected to criminal investigations, and even imprisonment, merely for engaging in the kind of conduct necessary for the proper functioning of a democratic society.

Noam Chomsky's Failed States

by Charles Marowitz

Book Review

Chomsky, Noam: Failed States, Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Co., New York, ISBN 0-8050-7912-8

(Swans - October 9, 2006)

Noam Chomsky began his career as a semanticist; that is, a person who diligently searches out language in order to better reveal its meaning. It is a short distance from there to becoming a political pundit, as anyone who obfuscates or demeans language is immediately fair game to the serious linguist. Today, when language is constantly being used to conceal meaning and mangle truth, the semanticist is in the front rank of society's defenders. In Chomsky's latest book Failed States, the writer demonstrates how language itself has been taken prisoner.

The picture Chomsky paints of this "failed state" is of a nation dominated by grasping and malevolent "private interests," ruled by corporate powers that work hand in hand with government to enlarge their own profits and suppress the needs and desires of a majority of the American people who are methodically duped by glittering generalities about "democracy" and "freedom" while being economically down-trodden and politically neutered. If only one quarter of the offences contained in Noam Chomsky's book are true, the outlook for American democracy is more than bleak; it is utterly hopeless.

The linguistic-philosopher is blunt about Israel's transgressions in the Holy Land and the cynical union between the U.S. and its marauding client state. He demonstrates that America's call for democracy in Europe and the Middle East is nakedly predicated on self-interest. He impugns the corporization of the universities where unbridled freedom of expression has given way to censorship disguised as "speech codes"; dissent is interpreted as treason; and departments, allegedly devoted to research and development, are in cahoots with private companies embroiled in commerce and industry. Chomsky believes the rot has got in everywhere and one would be inclined to view him as a dotty alarmist if his evidence wasn't so convincing and his facts so incontrovertible.

The book is fastidiously documented and studded with dozens of citations bearing out the author's various contentions; if anything, more than are required to prove their validity. It would have strengthened the work's polemic if Chomsky's voice was not constantly diverted with corroborations but relied more on the cumulative force of his own argument.

Failed States is a disturbingly persuasive indictment of shortcomings that have corroded the fabric of American society to the point where it is threadbare. It tears off the masks of malevolent politicians and scheming corporate pirates whose primary motivation is only greater profitability. It also tends to confirm the suspicions that have been percolating in people's minds as the country has lurched from one scandal to another. Chomsky contends that the trappings of democracy -- free elections, freedom of the press, equal justice, equality of opportunity -- are shibboleths that have been tossed like a deflated football from one administration to the other (both Republican and Democratic) and that manipulative rhetoric has usurped the popular will and hoodwinked the masses. Chomsky's charges are the fodder out of which revolutionary upheaval could grow if the country were not permanently incapable of developing an insurrectionary temperament.

The deeply-embedded corruptions which nullify the nation's politics, warp its religious beliefs, motivate its commercial enterprises, and dehumanize the day-to-day traffic between individuals who look no further than the preservation of their own comfort and well being have de-democratized a nation presumably rooted in democracy. The fact that we condone what the U.S. has become under the present leadership suggests that we are more than a "failed state," we are a damaged human species. That is why we cannot field upright candidates or engage in debates on moral issues without resorting to rancor and bitterness. That is why we draw ourselves into cozy enclaves, insulating our lives from the horrors of the outside world. If the reverence with which we honor our fallen dead in Iraq could be converted into protest against those political evils which persuadeus to sacrifice the lives of our sons, daughters, and husbands, there might be a way to clamber out of the quagmire. Refusing to do so makes us complicit in the crimes being carried out in our name, although without our consent.

I am merely reverberating here the indictments contained in Chomsky's work and doing so because a perfunctory survey of the issues raised there would demean the conventional parameters of book reviewing. It is mildly insulting merely to evaluate the literary aspects of a polemical tract which concerns itself with life-and-death issues that throttle our daily lives forcing us to collude in acts of terror grown in our own native soil. One reads Failed States as one would a Doomsday Book. The difference is it stimulates the will to survive rather than despair.

It is mordantly ironic that Chomsky's earlier book Hegemony of Survival: America's Quest For Global Dominance, which Hugo Chávez brandished before the United Nations General Assembly on September 20, 2006, suddenly became a best seller. It would appear that nothing intrudes into reality if it doesn't first detour onto that freeway which wends its way through the media. I doubt that Chávez is a particular hero of Chomsky's but they are umbilically connected in their contempt for the spread of veiled imperialism. If Chávez's testimonial increases Chomsky's readership, it is a boost every liberal American should applaud. And if it leads them on to Failed States, even better.

With our hate towards Muslims, we are also a failed state.

I was in Turkey last June, and the people there were very friend towards us American tourists. When we were at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, several of us walked about a block from the main entrance to a coffee shop where we had coffee, and the other Turkish patrons greeted us with smiles.

refusing to embrace Muslims until and unless they demonstrate that they are willing to coexist with us is not hate, it is good sense.

Published on Tuesday, May 30, 2006 by the Independent / UK
Why It's Over For America
by Noam Chomsky

An inability to protect its citizens. The belief that it is above the law. A lack of democracy. Three defining characteristics of the 'failed state'. And that, says Noam Chomsky, is exactly what the US is becoming. In an exclusive extract from his devastating new book,"Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy," America's leading thinker explains how his country lost its way.

Among the hardest tasks that anyone can undertake, and one of the most important, is to look honestly in the mirror. If we allow ourselves to do so, we should have little difficulty in finding the characteristics of "failed states" right at home.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0530-20.htm

9. Which of the following statements comes closest to your opinion? 1. The mosque and Islamic community center should be built near Ground Zero because moving it would compromise American values, OR 2. The mosque and Islamic community center should NOT be built because while Muslims have the right to build the mosque at the site near Ground Zero, they should find a less controversial location.
Should be built ........Should not .................DK/NA
27 ...............................67 .............................6

If you bother to look at the public opinion polls you can not escape the conclusion that me and my kind are going to beat you and your kind in this argument. We are right, you are wrong. America has already decided.

That's pretty sick on so many levels. That you think it's a sporting contest that you have to win

Tolerance, however, isn’t the same as understanding, so it is appalling to see New Yorkers who could lead us all away from mosque madness, who should know better, playing to people’s worst instincts.

24a. Do you support or oppose this proposal?


...........Tot .. Rep .. Dem .. Ind .. Wht .. Blk .. Hisp
Support 31% ... 10% ..37% ..32% ..31% ..34% ..19%
Oppose 52 ..82 ..45 .. 50 ..56 ..45 ..60
DK/NA 17 ..8 ..18 ..17 ..13 ..21 ..21

Asra Q. Nomani Asra Q. Nomani – Mon Aug 30, 1:49 am ET
NEW YORK – New revelations about the owner of the mosque building near ground zero could mean a split between him and the project's influential imam, making it unlikely to ever get built.

Sharif El-Gamal, 37, the owner of the building at the center of the storm over the construction of a "ground zero mosque," is a quintessential American story, a man who went from waiting tables in New York's A-list restaurants to buying and selling properties.

But new revelations are emerging that present a very different narrative. And it could lead to a split between the forces behind the mosque.
.
.
The New York state licensing services division, which oversees real-estate agents, is investigating Sharif and his company, SoHo Properties. "We have an open investigation based on a complaint," the spokesman, Joel Barkin, said. According to the complaint, according to people familiar with the case, Taylor Lukof, a 20-something partner at Toro Trading LLC, a New York firm, gave Sharif and his brother $6,200 that was supposed to be kept in escrow for an apartment. When the apartment didn't come through, Lukof asked for the money back, the people familiar with the complaint said, and was promised the money, but he hasn't received any money. Jack Billelo, district manager at the licensing services division, is overseeing the investigation. Lukof declined to comment. Sharif has declined to be interviewed.

After tracking Sharif's finances and talking to acquaintances about his rough-and-tumble business style, I now don't think the mosque will be built at the location staked out near ground zero. According to people familiar with the mosque project, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan, a community leader, were blindsided by the revelations about Sharif, making a partnership unlikely. Moreover, Sharif’s domineering personality troubles them because it doesn't fit into the slow, methodical, and even boring work of building a nonprofit.

I expect that Rauf and Khan will gracefully bow out of this project near ground zero, lead an interfaith community effort to build an Islamic center elsewhere, and welcome Sharif and his family in the congregation with open arms. To me, that’s the best solution out of this political—and now PR—debacle. I'm also certain that somewhere in there the businessman in Sharif will see a profit.

The allegation is that Right wing fear mongers have gotten the people whipped up into a frenzy, that this is the reason public opinion is so against this project. That is a lie. A study released way back July 1 of NYC resident opinion is almost identical in result to the most recent opinion poll of NYC residents,

refusing to embrace Muslims until and unless they demonstrate that they are willing to coexist with us is not hate, it is good sense.

CI,
Can you see ANY legitimate reason why ANY religion should be blocked from building its church anywhere it wants?

Just curious.