Protesting Bigotry

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

"About 500 people turned out in New York in heavy rain to protest this week's upcoming witch-hunt, aka Rep. Peter King's Homeland Security hearings . . . ."

Source link: http://www.commondreams.org/further/2011/03/07-1

Appended commentary included this from Commondreams poster, mustbefree:

Do you see?

Did we not cross the Rubicon when we went to Iraq and utterly destroy a nation and murder over 600,000 children, men and women that had nothing to do with what happened on 9/11 and still doing it in other countries and STILL in Iraq?

A secrecy in a government “of the people, for the people and by the people”? To protect a corrupt cabal, to be sure, and a word, homeland, brought from an earlier time in Germany. Is this de javu?

To propose a law so diametrically opposed to the Constitution sent my heart into a tailspin and to see the congress breach their oath to defend the Constitution with a bevy of excuses that would stump a teen. It makes me sick.

Fear is a cancer, safety is not freedom and only freedom of "we the people" would guarantee what safety we would have. This is not politics to me, this is the most serious of attacks undermining this nation. The road to an oven.

Support the troops? For what and to do what? It is an abomination. The German said: They came for other different peoples but not him until finally they came for him. He did not speak up and there was none to speak for him. Will they come for you?

Read ‘em and weep, Tony

Samuel Adams:
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom,-go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

[RZM]

1. Ridiculous hyperbole

Congressional hearings are not 'a road to an oven.'.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

2. Actually, what's ridiculous is the silly

...interpretive spin you place this comment.

The author is not taking issue with Congressional hearings.

[pampango]

3. WaPo: Japanese Americans: House hearings on radical Islam 'sinister'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/08/AR2011030805684.html

During the chaotic days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Basim Elkarra was passing by an Islamic school in Sacramento when he did a double-take: The windows were covered with thousands of origami cranes - peace symbols that had been created and donated by Japanese Americans. Amid the anger and suspicions being aimed at Muslims at that time, the show of support "was a powerful symbol that no one will ever forget," said Elkarra, a Muslim American community leader in California.

It was also the beginning of a bond between the two groups that has intensified as House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) prepares to launch a series of controversial hearings Thursday on radical Islam in the United States.

Spurred by memories of the World War II-era roundup and internment of 110,000 of their own people, Japanese Americans - especially those on the West Coast - have been among the most vocal and passionate supporters of embattled Muslims. They've rallied public support against hate crimes at mosques, signed on to legal briefs opposing the government's indefinite detention of Muslims, organized cross-cultural trips to the Manzanar internment camp memorial near the Sierra Nevada mountains in California, and held "Bridging Communities" workshops in Islamic schools and on college campuses.

Last week, Rep. Michael M. Honda (D-Calif.), who as a child spent several wartime years living behind barbed wire at Camp Amache in southeastern Colorado, denounced King's hearings as "something similarly sinister." "Rep. King's intent seems clear: To cast suspicion upon all Muslim Americans and to stoke the fires of anti-Muslim prejudice and Islamophobia," Honda wrote in an op-ed published by the San Francisco Chronicle.
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Rep. King: Meet Muslim-American Heroes

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-alexander/rep-king-meet-muslimameri_b_832638.html

As a former interrogator who worked alongside Muslim American heroes in Iraq, I feel I need to speak out against the attacks on Muslim Americans by Congress. We have to do something.

I'd like Rep. King to have a talk with my interpreter who almost laid down his life for his adopted country. He is a Muslim-American. I was with him the day he almost died, and I can tell you that 99% of the Islamophobes out there wouldn't put their life on the line for this country like he did.

I know what Muslim-American interpreters and soldiers are doing for their country -- some are now buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Representative King's words are an insult to those heroes. The same day that my Muslim interpreter almost gave his life for the United States, I received a hate email saying all Muslims are terrorists. It literally turned my stomach.

We need to stop demonizing an entire community. This is simply not the way to fight terrorism. And it's not who we are, as Americans. We must be able to separate radical extremists, like members of the Al Qaeda cult, from moderate Muslims who share our same values. It was not by alienating Muslims that my team got to al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. And it was a Muslim-American interpreter who was by my side when we did