The Iranian Official Perspective

A reader, who apparently did some work for Iran some years ago, now regularly gets missives from the Iranian embassy, and he forwarded this one to me. It’s about Iran’s official response to the proposed Koran burning in Florida.

I’ve checked out the email headers and can verify that at least it came from the purported source and there is an Iranian embassy at that address, but I can’t vouch for the full legitimacy of the email.

Subject: Supreme Leader’s Message

Dear Sir/Madam

Please find attached the text of the message of the Supreme Leader of the
Islamic Republic of Iran on the desecration of the Holy Quran in the United
States.

Regards

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

“It is we who sent down the Koran, and we watch over it,” says God

the Mighty, the Wise [Holy Quran, 15:9]

Great Iranian nation, great Islamic Ummah!

The insane, revolting insult to the Holy Quran in America, an incident
occurring under the security provided by the US police, is a major tragic
event that cannot be considered merely as the foolish act of a few worthless
mercenaries. This is a preplanned act by those who since years ago have put
Islamophobic and anti-Muslim policies on their agenda and have tried to
combat Islam and the Quran in numerous ways resorting to a myriad of
propaganda means and campaigns. This is another link in a chain of shameless
measures launched with the blasphemy of Salman Rushdi, the apostate,
followed by the insult of the base Danish caricaturist, tens of anti-Islamic
movies produced in Hollywood and now crowned by this disgusting show. Who
and what is behind such evil acts?

Looking into this trend of evil, as manifested in recent years in atrocious
operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Pakistan, leaves no
doubt that it is designed and masterminded by heads of world imperialism and
Zionist think tanks which have the highest degree of influence in the
government, the military and security agencies of the United States as well
as Britain and some other European countries. These are those at whom the
finger of suspicion of independent truth-finding groups and individuals is
pointed in the case of the attack on the Twin Towers on September the 11th.
The then-president of the US, a criminal, was provided with the pretext to
invade Iraq and Afghanistan; he declared a Crusade and, reportedly, has said
yesterday that with the Church entering the stage the Crusade has truly
begun.

What is aimed at through the recent repulsive incident is, on the one hand,
to take the confrontation with Islam and Muslims to the populace in the
Christian community, to give it a religious coloring and entrenching it with
religious zeal and sentiment by involving the church and, on the other, to
divert the attention of the Muslim nations, enraged and hurt by this hideous
effrontery, away from the issues and developments in the Muslim world and
the Middle East.

This vengeful act is not the beginning of a trend but another stage in the
long history of antagonizing Islam headed by Zionism and the US government.
Now all the heads of world hegemony and impiety are ranked against Islam.
Islam is the religion of human liberation and spirituality, and the Quran is
the book of compassion, wisdom and justice. It is incumbent upon all
free-spirited people of the world and all the followers of the Abrahamic
religions to side with the Muslims in countering these heinous anti-Islamic
policies and acts. Empty, deceitful words cannot exonerate the heads of the
American government from the charge of involvement in this ugly phenomenon.
For years those things held sacred by millions of oppressed Muslims in
Afghanistan and Pakistan, in Iraq, in Lebanon and Palestine have been
desecrated, all their rights and their dignity trampled on. Hundreds of
thousands killed, tens of thousands of men and women captured and tortured,
thousands of children and women kidnapped, and millions injured and made
homeless – all victimized for what? And with these wrongs, why does the
Western media represent Muslims as violence incarnate and Islam, and the
Quran, as a menace to humanity? How can one believe that this vast
conspiracy could be made possible without the support and involvement of the
Zionist circles in the US government?!
O Muslim brethren and sisters in Iran and all over the world!
It is necessary to draw the attention of all to the following points:
First, this incident and similar ones show that what is now being targeted
by the global hegemony and world Imperialism are the very foundations of the
dear Islam, and the Holy Quran. The manifest enmity of the arrogant world
powers towards the Islamic Republic of Iran is because of the manifest
resistance of Iran against them; the claim of these powers in not being the
enemies of other Muslims, and of Islam, is a big lie, a satanic deception.
They are the enemies of Islam, whoever believes in it, and whatever
signifies it.

Second, these spiteful acts against Islam and Muslims stem from the fact
that since a few decades ago the light of Islam has been shining brighter
than ever, its grip on the hearts and souls in the Muslim world and even in
the West has been stronger than ever before. It stems from the fact that the
Islamic Ummah is now more awake than ever and is determined to free itself
of the shackles of two centuries of colonialism and interference. The
incident of insulting the Quran and the Great Prophet of Islam despite all
its bitterness bears great tidings. The bright sun of the Quran will shine
brighter than ever.

Third, we should all know that this incident has nothing to do with
Christianity and the Church; we should not regard the puppet-like acts of a
few idiotic and mercenary priests as those of Christians and church men. We
Muslims will never commit similar acts against what are held sacred in other
religions. Conflict between Muslims and Christians, on a popular scale, is
what our enemies and the stagers of this insane show are after. What the
Quran teaches us is diametrically opposed to this.
Fourth, today the protests of all Muslims are directed at the US government
and American politicians. If they are honest in their claim of not being
involved in this, they must duly punish the main planners and operators of
this heinous crime who have hurt the feelings of one and a half billion
Muslims the world over.

And peace is on him who follows piety.

Sayyed Ali Khamenei

September 13, 2010

I found two things very funny.

They say they’ll never commit similar acts, i.e., desecrate holy books, as if that makes them better people. But instead, they issue fatwahs demanding the death of people like Salman Rushdie, and riot with signs advocating violent acts against other people! I’m not exactly dazzled by their standards of morality. I’d piss on a thousand holy books before I even consider advocating beheading someone.

That last line slays me. One and half billion people are “upset”! It sounds to me like one and a half billion children need to get a life.

Gagging the Mississippi

The Mississippi is a mess. I live in the agricultural, rural upper midwest, and one of the nasty surprises lurking beneath the rich green fields is that the rivers are ugly stews of fertilizers and herbicides and pesticides from agricultural runoff. We have data that it hurts people, too: premature births and birth defects show seasonal fluctuations that peak for children conceived in the spring and summer, when the chemicals are being sprayed into the air and are dribbling into the streams. The villains are agribusiness and overproduction and the corn ethanol boondoggle and horrors like the fecal lakes associated with swine farms. Louisiana’s environmental problems are partly the product of Minnesota’s toxic largesse.

It needs to be known. The Bell Museum at the University of Minnesota has been producing a documentary called Troubled Waters: A Mississippi River Story for the past several years, and it was supposed to have its premiere in October.

The documentary has been indefinitely postponed. Somebody doesn’t want you to see it.

Who, you might wonder, could have shut down the UM’s movie? It was the university itself. They claim it was for further scientific review, but by all accounts, this movie has been rigorously vetted throughout, and that explanation just doesn’t hold up. The other disturbing fact is that the source of the pressure seems to have been University Relations, a department not known for its attention to scientific rigor, but with a mission of responding to community interests. We’re a land-grant university, by the way, in an agricultural state.

Karen Himle is Vice President of University Relations, which is the office that determined the film needed “scientific review.” She is married to John Himle, president of Himle Horner, a public relations firm that represents the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council. The Council is a strong proponent of ethanol and industrial farming, both of which are critiqued in the film. John Himle was also president of the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council from 1978 to 1982 and his organization currently serves as a “member” of the Council.

The University’s “conflict of interest” policy was called into question last year by the Minnesota Daily, which also cited Karen Himle’s summary of her outside sources of income as including Himle Horner and Nebraska farmland crops.
While Himle Horner’s client records are not public (something that has drawn the ire of some in the community as former co-owner Tom Horner is running for governor), Himle Horner was still representing the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council as recently as this summer.

So who is calling the shots at the University of Minnesota? Academics and scientists with some intellectual integrity, or lackeys of big business who care most about short-term profit, no matter the cost to the environment and public health?

Don’t bother answering, I know what the answer will be.

Because everyone knows men like to have something to look at?

A teabagger has won the Republican primary for the senate in Delaware…and now everyone is predicting that Christine O’Donnell doesn’t have a chance in the election. She’s too crazy, they say, she’s a fringe kook, and she can’t possibly get elected…but then, she got elected in the primary, didn’t she? Let’s not get cocky. Especially since she doesn’t like that sort of stuff. Here’s a 90s video where she is talking about her major concern at that time: she opposed masturbation.

I really like that last line of hers. This is why she doesn’t like masturbation.

If he already knows what pleases him and can please himself, then why am I in the picture?

Because, apparently, her only purpose in the relationship is to provide a little friction, and the only way she can improve on her man’s experience is by keeping him ignorant. So yes, why is she in the picture?

Would you believe…

A transgendered woman is running for political office?

In Oklahoma?

Against crazy church lady Sally Kern? This Sally Kern?

It’s no secret that I have a personal belief, I believe it’s a belief of most Christians, that the Bible teaches homosexuality is a sin just like gluttony is a sin… There are things that are going on today that would make my grandmother blush and there were things that when my grandmother was alive that were going on that that would have made her grandmother blush. So as we get farther and farther away from biblical principles, more and more things are accepted. And that’s just the way things are going.

Go Brittany Novotny!

Obama is not an atheist

Please, fellow godless folk, stop trying to claim Obama as one of us. He isn’t. He goes to church sometimes, he has a religious history, he’s happy to use Christian metaphors, he hasn’t claimed to be so much as an agnostic. He’s a liberal Christian who is not obsessed with religion. Take his words at face value; I find it annoying when people look for signs that he’s a hidden member of our little clan. It is so conspiracy-theory.

Maybe it’s a science thing: use Occam’s Razor and make minimal assumptions, and use the simplest explanation to see if it is sufficient to explain a phenomenon. And I’m sorry for those who want him in our club, but the simplest explanation is that he is what he says he is, and nothing in his observed behavior contradicts that.

But don’t worry, atheists aren’t guiltiest of playing that game. We have to look to the wingnuts to see batty pseudo-psychoanalysis carried to a radical extreme. Read Dinesh D’Souza’s recent contribution to Forbes Magazine, which is like a telegraph from Mars it’s so freaking weird.

D’Souza does everything short of accusing Obama of being a spear-chuckin’, bone-in-the-nose savage — he paints a picture of Obama as being some kind of angry African tribesman using ritual magic at his father’s grave to gain revenge against the colonial oppressors of the imperial West.

But instead of readying us for the challenge, our President is trapped in his father’s time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father’s dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.

Demented. Insane. Delusional. And D’Souza is writing a whole book about this nutty analysis he’s made. (One has to wonder why sober, respectable, conservative Forbes Magazine is giving any space at all to this lunatic.)

Look, it’s so much simpler. Obama is not a socialist or a communist or a Luo tribesman. He is a centrist politician from Chicago who believes in improving peoples lives incrementally by working step by step through political compromise. He pisses off the liberal, progressive wing of the Democratic party because we want him to be bold and aggressive, and he’s not, and because he’s also comfortable with the military-industrial status quo. He really annoys the wingnut right because he wants to move the country away from their dreams of a Reaganesque/Randian capitalist paradise, and he is…slowly and tentatively.

That’s really all you need to know to comprehend what Obama is doing and how he works. It’s sufficient to explain everything. We don’t have to postulate that he’s a reincarnated Mau Mau chieftain or that he’s a secret communist plant. He’s just a traditional middle-of-the-road politician from the Midwest.

And good grief, not even daffy D’Souza speculates that he could be a closet atheist. The possibility is almost too horrific to contemplate, don’t you know.

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That’s not my nation, Mr President

My lukewarm support for this president is cooling fast. First he’s making absurd excuses to kowtow to the easily inflamed sensibilities of Islam, and now, apparently, he’s forgotten that this is a secular nation.

Obama said he was proud the country had rallied around the idea that we can’t be divided because of religion or ethnicity – and hopes that is something that can continue.

“We are all Americans, we stand together,” Obama said. “I think it is absolutely important now for majority of Americans to hang onto that thing that is best in us: a belief in religious tolerance. We have to make sure we don’t start turning on each other.”

“We are one nation under God. We may call that God different names, but we are one nation.”

Tolerance is a good idea. But Obama has just divided the nation, forgetting all of his previous brief, superficial mentions of non-believers, into those who are part of his one nation under God, and the rest of us, who are…what? Not part of the nation?

Although it is true that we do call his god many different names. Maybe that’s how Oblivious Obama can consider us godless folk part of his name-calling nation — we do call on god with words like abhorrent, abominable, absurd, acrimonious, appalling, asinine, atrocious, awful, bad, bad-tempered, bananas, barbaric, barbarous, batty, bitter, bloodthirsty, bonkers, brutish, callous, certifiable, childish, cold-blooded, concocted, contemptible, corrupt, cracked, crackers, crazed, cruel, cuckoo, cutting, dangerous, demented, deplorable, depraved, deranged, despicable, detestable, disagreeable, disgusting, dishonest, dishonorable, disreputable, distasteful, disturbed, dreadful, dreamed-up, evil, execrable, fanciful, fatuous, ferocious, fictional, fictitious, fiendish, fierce, foolish, foul, foul, frightful, frivolous, harsh, hateful, heartless, homicidal, hostile, idiotic, inane, inhuman, iniquitous, insipid, insufferable, intolerable, invented, loathsome, loco, loony, loopy, ludicrous, mad, made-up, make-believe, malevolent, malign, malignant, mean, merciless, monstrous, murderous, mythical, mythological, nasty, nauseating, nefarious, noisome, nonexistent, nuts, objectionable, obnoxious, obscene, offensive, pettish, petty, poisonous, pretend, psycho, psychotic, quarrelsome, querulous, rancorous, raving mad, remorseless, repellent, reprehensible, repugnant, repulsive, ridiculous, ruthless, sadistic, savage, schizophrenic, screwy, senseless, sickening, spiteful, storybook, stupid, terrible, unbalanced, unconscionable, unhinged, unpalatable, unpleasant, unprincipled, unsavory, unscrupulous, unspeakable, unstable, vapid, venomous, vile, vile, villainous, vindictive, violent, wicked, and wrongful. I could go on, but I thought I’d be nice and leave out the more scatological and pornographic terms we apply to “that God” and his batty believers.

One diverse nation, yes. Under the thumb of a god, no.

Setting the Koran on fire, vs. setting personal liberties on fire

You know, I’m something of an expert in the public desecration of sacred objects, and I’m seeing the same madness going on right now with Terry Jones and his plan to burn copies of the Koran that I saw in the response to throwing a cracker in the trash — only amplified to a ludicrous degree. People just aren’t getting it; they’re so blinded by an inappropriate attachment to magic relics that they’re missing the real issues.

I publicly destroyed a communion wafer once (OK, a few times). There was a simple reason for it: a few Catholics had responded hysterically to a student who didn’t swallow a wafer with harrassment and threats, and I was demonstrating that that was not acceptable — religious believers may not demand that non-believers grant the same reverence to their rituals and beliefs that they have. Jones’s motivation seems to be more of a fundie head-butt to Moslems while expecting a greater respect for his Bible, but he’s still right — Moslems cannot demand that Christians love their doctrines (and vice versa).

Now what I expected in the wake of my cracker-killing was that Catholics would be annoyed, but that it would be easily rationalized — I’m an unbeliever, their rituals have no meaning to me, Jesus can’t be harmed by some stunt with bread…what I expected was a combination of “tut, tut” and “so what?” and the cleverer Catholics announcing that their faith was too strong to be shaken by a raspberry from an atheist. That’s what I expected; it would have put the poor student’s actions in context and made people step back from the screaming that was going on.

It didn’t work out that way.

The lesson of that incident wasn’t that you can find some jerk somewhere who will disrespect what some group finds holy — that was trivial and uninteresting, and I actually had to ignore many of the elaborate suggestions for cracker disposal sent my way to emphasize the absolute triviality of tossing a cracker/piece of Jesus in the trash. No, the real lesson was that mobs of people will react with irrational freakish hysteria to the idea that other people don’t believe as they do.

The problem isn’t the desecrators. The problem is the people who have an unwarranted sense of privilege, that their beliefs will not be questioned or criticized, ever, by anyone. What I was saying was that it was crazy to believe a cracker turns into Jesus, and what all the outraged Catholics were doing is confirming to an awesome degree just how mad their beliefs were, with their prolonged and excessive outrage.

So I’m looking at this recent episode with Terry Jones — a fellow I don’t like at all, and I think he’s a fanatical goofball — and I see that the serious problem here isn’t Jones at all…it’s all the lunatics who are insisting that burning the Koran is a major international catastrophe.

It’s just a frackin’ book, people.

I am simply astounded at the catalog of high-ranking personages who are contributing to this new frenzy of foolishness.

US President Barack Obama says plans by a small church to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of 9/11 are a “recruitment bonanza” for al-Qaeda.

Mr Obama said that if the Florida burning went ahead, it could endanger US military personnel serving in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

…

Malaysia called it a heinous crime, while Indonesia said it would damage relations between Islam and the West.

In the UK, Downing Street said it would not condone the burning of any book.

“We would strongly oppose any attempt to offend any member of any religious or ethnic group. We are committed to religious tolerance,” said a spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron.

The plan has also sparked condemnation from Iran, the Vatican, Nato and the top US Afghan commander.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called it “disgraceful”.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki warned that the burning could “provoke the reaction of all Muslims as well as that of the faithful of other religions”.

“American statesmen should carry out their obligations in providing the basic and fundamental rights of American Muslims and should prevent the promotion of such obscene and indecent plans,” the official Irna news agency quoted him as saying.

On Monday General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Afghanistan, had warned troops’ lives would be in danger if the church went ahead with its bonfire.

President Obama, you’re a damned fool.

What are you going to do, send in the national guard to prevent Terry Jones’ congregation from destroying their own private property? Will there be new legislation to list items that may not be treated disrespectfully? Shall we surrender a few more liberties because religious zealots are threatening us? Obama can do nothing and should do nothing; he accomplishes nothing by complaining about it, other than being part of the mob confirming the madness of the defenders of faith.

And to suggest that some guy burning a book in a remote land will incite more anti-American sentiment is absurd. We’ve got drones buzzing over Iraq and Afghanistan killing people with a push of a button; we’ve got an armed force occupying those countries; we have bombed their infrastructure into rubble. We’ve killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims. And now we’re to believe that their love of the West will be suddenly devastated by a video of paper burning on youtube? Get a grip, man.

The United States does have an obligation to protect the basic and fundamental rights of all Americans, and that includes allowing them to burn their own property, in addition to allowing them to practice the religion of their choice.

Here’s a hint for appropriate responses. When someone tells you it’s an outrage to burn a bible or a Koran, shrug your shoulders and say, “So what? It’s their own book.” When someone announces that they are going to riot and murder because they are offended, look at them like they’re insane, and explain that offending someone is not a capital crime.

The problem isn’t a few books being burned; that’s not a crime, and it doesn’t diminish anyone else’s personal freedoms. The problem is a whole fleet of deranged wackaloons, including the president of the USA in addition to raving fundamentalist fanatics, who think open, public criticism and disagreement ought to be forbidden, somehow.

And seriously, this whole silly contretemps would have evaporated if a few people learned to shrug their shoulders and react rationally instead of feeding the fury with Serious Pronouncements and Reprovals.

Because when I think ‘peaceful protest’, I think ‘missiles’

What are they thinking? The protesters complaining about that violent, militant religion of Islam building a mosque/community center in New York are now towing about a pair of deactivated missiles at their rallies. I guess Christians are trying to send a message that they’re friendly and non-threatening.

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I’ve been doing it wrong for so many years. When I was protesting the Iraq war, maybe it would have been a more effective demonstration if we’d rented a tank and put a sign on it, “Honk if you hate war”. When we protested that biological warfare work going on at the Dugway Proving Grounds, maybe we should have put talcum powder in envelopes and mailed them to the local newspapers. It’s so much more reassuring to the other side when you couch your message of respectful coexistence in military gear.

The guy who donated the missiles to the protest has a poll. He’s just clueless on so many levels.

Do you want the Mosque @ Ground Zero?

Sure, why not 66%
Hell no! 34%

Free Gregory Koger

Gregory Koger is an ex-con and a revolutionary communist…and none of that should matter in the slightest. He’s also a person who was beat up, handcuffed, maced, arrested, and now faces the prospect of a three year jail sentence for the crime of holding up his iPhone to take pictures of police harrassment. Koger is the young man who was documenting Sunsara Taylor’s protest of the behavior of the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago (which, by the way, ought to change their name to drop the first word), and who, oddly, was manhandled and arrested for taking videos of the event, while Taylor herself, who was doing all the talking, got away relatively unhassled.

Koger has now been convicted of trespassing, and will be sentenced on Wednesday. The whole thing has been Kafkaesque — it’s the most hysterical, overblown response to a guy taking a picture of a public event that I’ve ever heard of, and it’s a slap against everyone’s personal freedoms.

Here is the statement from Sunsara Taylor:

There is no justice in the outrageous conviction of Gregory Koger on charges of trespass, resisting arrest, and battery for the “crime” of videotaping a statement I gave at the “Ethical” Humanist Society of Chicago after they dis-invited me from a long scheduled presentation I was to give on November 1st, 2009. Gregory Koger is not only innocent of all charges he has now been convicted of, he is a righteous and beautiful human being who all people seeking to live an ethical life should support as well as learn deeply from.

How is it that Gregory Koger came to be my videographer last November at the “Ethical” Humanist Society of Chicago?

Gregory’s struggle to understand the source of his own long and bitter experiences of injustice and dehumanization as a young man led him to conclusions that were about much more than himself.

How many young men these days put their bodies on the line to defend the doctors who provide the right to abortion women need to even have a chance at a decent and equal life?

Gregory traveled to Kansas to defend Dr. Leroy Carhart when Carhart was declared “Enemy #1” by the same forces who had long-persecuted the recently murdered Dr. George Tiller.

How many Americans these days take responsibility for stopping the torture committed by the U.S. government in our names, not only under Bush, but also under Obama? How many who claim to oppose the wars and occupations by the U.S. government of Iraq and Afghanistan do more than complain under their breath and then change the channel or turn the page?

Gregory donned the orange jumpsuit of Guantanamo detainees in public protests and he marched against these wars, determined to make his opposition felt by people everywhere, including our sisters and brothers across the globe.

How many white people even notice, let alone stand up against, the systematic police terror and brutality that is a fact of life for youth, especially Black and Latino youth, in the inner cities everywhere?

Gregory went to the Southside of Chicago to speak out against a spate of police shootings of young Black men. He has consistently exposed the disproportionate incarceration and violence experienced by Black people in the criminal justice system.

It is through his activity in these realms, as well as his work with the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund to get revolutionary literature into the U.S. prison system that now holds more than 2.3 million human beings, that I came to know Gregory. It was his interest in morality and ethics, in philosophy and revolution, as well as his passion for film that led him to volunteer for me the weekend I was scheduled to give a talk titled, “Morality Without Gods,” at the “Ethical” Humanist Society of Chicago.

The themes of my talk, which drew on the theoretical framework developed by Bob Avakian in his book, AWAY WITH ALL GODS! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World, examined the basis for a morality that is rooted neither in the brutality and ignorance of Biblical times nor the narrow-minded individualism and relativism of modern U.S. capitalism. I posed the need for a morality that both reflects and serves the struggle to bring into being a world free of all forms of exploitation and oppression, a communist world, a world where everyone contributes whatever they can to society and gets back what they need to live a life worthy of human beings.

The irony is bitter; when it comes to “morality without gods,” it is difficult to think of a starker living contrast than that between Gregory Koger and the conduct of the “Ethical” Humanist Society of Chicago.

I recount all this not only to demonstrate how deeply immoral it is that the “Ethical” Humanist Society of Chicago, spearheaded by their president Matt Cole, has viciously and vengefully persecuted Gregory Koger. I recount this to make clear that it is not only Gregory who will suffer due to this outrageous and unjust verdict, but that all those who are victims of the many injustices and oppression that Gregory fought against will also suffer.

It is incumbent upon all who care about the truth, who care about justice and the human spirit, who care about freedom and rights of the most oppressed and exploited in this country and worldwide, to not only join in insisting that Gregory be immediately released on bail and his conviction overturned, but to learn from Gregory’s example and step up their own involvement in the struggle for human emancipation.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

  • Immediately send statements of support for Gregory to the defense committee AdHoc4Reason@gmail.com

  • Donate money for the appeal. Go to the defense committee website for more information

  • Show your support at the sentencing hearing on September 8.

  • More information will be coming; keep in touch with the Ad Hoc Committee at AdHoc4Reason@gmail.com

The conviction was insane to begin with, but imprisoning a social activist for the crime of photography is simply beyond the pale.

Drop the charges and free Gregory Koger.

I don’t like the Manhattan mosque, but they’ve got the right — as long as I’ve got the right to point and laugh

I’ve been in a bit of a fog for the last few weeks, and am just now catching up on the noise about the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”, and I have to say I’m a bit disappointed in Hitchens. He rightly points out that most of the opposition is base, stupid demagoguery and racism, but then he offers his own reasons why the construction is problematic. They are that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the building, holds odious and undemocratic views, and that encouraging Muslims leads to their attempts to impose their rather unpleasant moralistic views on their neighbors.

Which is all true. However, we have not made thinking ugly thoughts about creating a theocracy illegal — if we did, we ought to simply arrest the Imam for promoting undemocratic ideals. We don’t and we won’t, I hope, because then we’re voluntarily setting ourselves on the road to tyranny that they seem to want. Also, of course, if disseminating propaganda advocating a theocratic state were criminalized, practically every fundamentalist/evangelical Christian leader in the country would also have to be arrested. There’s much to be said for a plan that would scoop up Phil Johnson, Lou Engle, Pat Robertson, the hierarchy of the Catholic church, the leadership of the Discovery Institute, and every tinpot crank preaching a generic fundie gospel in a converted grocery store and throw them into prison…but again, we lose our democratic soul if we lose our tolerance for stupid ideas. If the Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has done nothing that warrants any kind of criminal charges, you can’t simply use evidence of his unpleasant character and nasty dreams to justify civil punishment.

Also, you can’t use the possibility that once they’ve got their community center, local Muslims will start harrassing people who walk their dogs too close to the building as a reason to oppose it. That would be like suggesting that maybe if the work permit for a new Catholic church goes through, someday a priest might rape a little boy or girl inside, therefore it should not be built. Of course those things could happen, which is why there are laws about public access and the protection of minors, and those are what we ought to focus on enforcing.

Naturally, I dislike the idea of constructing religious buildings anywhere, since they are a colossal waste of community resources, typically represent unproductive holes in the tax base, and promote stupid thinking — but guess what? Those aren’t legal cause to interfere with people’s right to waste their time and money. Also, if we accept the privilege of individual autonomy and personal freedom, we don’t have moral cause to interfere.

I do like Hitchens’ conclusion, though: “Let us by all means make the ‘Ground Zero’ debate a test of tolerance. But this will be a one-way street unless it is to be a test of Muslim tolerance as well.” Which is exactly right: we stand back and make it an open example of the principle of liberty that they can build anything they want (within zoning laws), whether it is a mosque, a synagogue, a cathedral, a community center, or a retirement home for mentally ill clowns, but that that freedom does have reasonable community constraints that they are voluntarily accepting, and there’s no going back and saying after the fact that the ideology of their building occupants allows them to violate local laws.