Besides being an enormous drain on our national budget, and mostly a waste of money, our anti-terrorist policies are destructive to peace and co-existence. Look at this United Nations statement: “UN REPORT WARNS OF GLOBAL RESURGENCE OF RACISM AND RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE.”
“As a result” — it doesn’t name the countries, but we know, don’t we, that it’s the U.S., Australia, the UK, Italy, and which others? — as a result …
“… of the proliferation of anti-terrorist policy, discrimination against religious groups, minorities and migrant populations is on the rise, particularly at waiting areas at airports, ports and borders, the United Nation’s top official for monitoring racism warns in his latest report to the UN General Assembly.”
“The General Assembly is invited to draw the attention of Member States to the alarming signs of a retreat in the struggle against racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia as a result of the growing number of counter-terrorism policies that generate new forms of discrimination against groups and entire communities, religions and spiritual traditions,” writes Doudou Diene, the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on racism and related intolerance.
In that context, he said that discrimination against Muslims must be given special attention, but greater vigilance might also be needed against anti-Semitism and “Christianophobia.”
As discrimination is increasing in waiting areas of transportation facilities, the report recommends that Assembly Members take measures to prevent those areas from becoming so-called “no rights zones.”
More BELOW:
Among the measures proposed are training for border policy, care in adopting measures motivated by security threats, and the issuance of basic guarantees in waiting areas.
In addition, the Special Rapporteur requests States to increase their commitment to fight the increase in racist incidents in sports, particularly football, …
We saw an insane example of that today at the Houston airport … with terrible hold-ups because of security bullshit.
And because lots of security workers didn’t show up for work at the airport.
Just put the people on the airplanes, and help them get out of town. They’re not going to blow up the planes! Let’s get real here.
Shut up, George Bush. It’s all bullshit, and you’re dividing us against each other, and killing more people than you’re saving from terrorism.
Besides the airport snafu, how many hours did it take to figure out they ought to use both north and south lanes for those evacuating Galveston/Houston?
Our leaders seem to be tad short of common sense.
Only about 16 hours. You in a hurry or somethin’?
Hey Nick is on CNN with Anderson Cooper. Nick is the viewer on the freeway who called in earlier today, and he has his family and his two Old English sheepdogs in the car with him…. nice man.
He said he hasn’t seen any tanker trucks refilling people’s cars. (Has that been substantiated?)
They’re 20 miles from Austin, and they think it’ll take two hours to get there. Their son lives there.
CNN just showed a picture of Nick and his wife. Wonder how they got that … maybe their son sent it.
I really don’t know what the hell they’re talking about with these tanker trucks anyway.
The semi-sized bulk fuel tankers that deliver to the gas stations normally have only a (guessing from memory) 3″ dia hose. How the hell would they pump into an auto?
Then the bulk fuel trunks 1500-2000 gal capacity that deliver fuel to ag, road crew equip etc, that nozzle is probably 1.5″ dia, so again, how the hell would they pump into an auto.
You would have to have had special adaptions to those tankers to pump from the same size nozzles you have at the gas stations.
If this was happening in my state what you’d have is hundreds of farmers with 100-200 gal service tanks in their pickups delivering fuel to these autos.
Texas has got to have some of these pickup service tank vehicles.
(I used to deliver bulk fuel to farmers as part of our family business. So unless Texas has some system I’ve never heard of before…???)
and use it as a funnel?
Maybe??? But not too likely as I doubt you could cut the rate of flow from either the semi-tanker or bulk truck to rate that would prevent blowing it all back in your face.
I have yet to see a “tanker” filling an auto on CNN.
there are gas stations at rest stops. maybe they are just refilling those?
I’m sure I remember that evacuation of major cities was part of the plan for the period just ahead of nuclear war. If they were going to evacuate NYC in 25 minutes, I’m pretty sure they knew they were going to need to turn all lanes outbound.
Duh.
…is what has happened to refugee admissions to the United States.
Prior to 9/11, the U.S. admitted about 130,000 refugees annually. But the quota is now 70,000 annually, and we’re not coming close to meeting that figure.
For fiscal year 2004 (ending September, 2003), the total admissions were 28,405. For FY 2003, the total admissions were 23,249. For FY 2005, which ends next Thursday, the total will be less than 40,000, an improvement, but still less than 60% of the quota, and 30% of the ante-9/11 average.
Meanwhile, refugees die waiting to come here.
Great reminder.
You made me instantly think of the diary I wrote months ago about Angelina Jolie speaking before the D.C. press club and meeting with the likes of Tom Delay to press for more humane treatment of young child refugees coming to this country. (They’re currently treated horribly.)
Must check and see if Angelina’s legislation got through. She personally donated a large sum to help with the building of a nice place for the kids to be.
Then there’s this wonderful story by Tina Brown about Bill Clinton, which shows what CAN be done to help the world.
The mid 20th century rise in generosity and expansion of rights, in the U.S. at least, coincided with middle class expansion and rising wealth. A guy who advocates sharing is just a common hippie in that kind of economy. In an impoverished nation under occupation, such a figure so rare we start a religion in His name.
All our ugly societal demons were likely to begin resurfacing when resource peaks started imposing shortages of wealth and opportunity. In my mind the scramble all along was to propagate the higher values and sustain them long enough to become culturally ingrained before things eventually got serious.
The nobility’s massive propaganda war disrupted values advancement, and their subsequent opportunity confiscation pulled enough out of the planetary pool to push the middle classes into crisis thinking years ahead of time.
Take a moment to look around at the view. We rolled this rock farther up the mountain than all the world’s peoples or religions or philosophies combined ever managed. As we head back down to start all over again, remember as many gulleys and shortcuts as you can, to tell your kids.
This is incredibly good. Hope you’ll write it up as a diary.