Mystery Solved...

Thanks to Xymphora for clearing up the mystery of why Bush felt the need to spy on citizens secretly when all they had to do was ask a special court (FISA) for permission after the fact. That court has only turned down a few cases out of more than 15,000 in thirty years. It was because they were using the data mining of Total Information Awareness to spy on everyone:

They were using Echelon to 'Able Danger' the whole country (this is Poindexter's Total Information Awareness, which is supposedly dead, in action). The problem is that FISA was enacted prior to the current capability for data mining, and didn't anticipate how ubiquitous it could be. The reason they couldn't use FISA is that they would have had to obtain a FISA warrant for every person in the country. Data mining requires that you follow each link discovered by your snooping, and wouldn't work if it had to be subjected to FISA or the Constitution. The NYT article, now being spun as resisted by the Bush Administration (as if the NYT would publish anything without Rove's say-so), appears to itself be part of the spinning, a limited hang-out to cover up the bigger scandal.

Schwarzenegger Proved Himself to His Bosses Again

By needlessly executing Tookie Williams, a man who seemed to have redeemed himself for a crime committed, if he did commit it, during his youth three decades ago, Schwarzenegger has now proven his mettle to the Big Boys -- the bastard. They look to see if a potential leader is willing to "sacrifice" someone else. Bush, Clinton and Schwarzenegger have all had to refuse clemency on a highly-publicized, morally ambiguous death penalty case in order to reach the next level in the power hierarchy.

Schwarzenegger, who wants to be a Fascist Supreme Leader, had nothing politically to lose in granting clemency. No one would think he was soft or a wimp. He is the Terminator, after all.

But I KNEW he would execute Williams. It wasn't for the public, it was to impress his superiors. No doubt he got a little psychopathic thrill as well, but it was not done for personal pleasure.

Now, even though at the moment his political support among the public has collapsed, watch him rise.

Palestinian Christians?

Go to a random selection of friends and ask them this question: Do you think Israel should be killing Palestinian Christians? My guess is most of them will say, “There is no such thing. Palestinians are Muslims!”

Funny how our news media has not spoken much about Palestinian Christians, even when the Israeli Defense Force stormed the church in Bethlehem. Isn’t it odd that U.S. fundamentalist Christians don’t know this or choose to ignore it in their weird Christian Zionism? Here is an article published in 2004 in The American Conservative by Anders Strindberg

At the time of the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, it is estimated that the Christians of Palestine numbered some 350,000. Almost 20 percent of the total population at the time, they constituted a vibrant and ancient community; their forbears had listened to St. Peter in Jerusalem as he preached at the first Pentecost. Yet Zionist doctrine held that Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land.” Of the 750,000 Palestinians that were forced from their homes in 1948, some 50,000 were Christians—7 percent of the total number of refugees and 35 percent of the total number of Christians living in Palestine at the time.

In the process of “Judaizing” Palestine, numerous convents, hospices, seminaries, and churches were either destroyed or cleared of their Christian owners and custodians. In one of the most spectacular attacks on a Christian target, on May 17, 1948, the Armenian Orthodox Patriarchate was shelled with about 100 mortar rounds—launched by Zionist forces from the already occupied monastery of the Benedictine Fathers on Mount Zion. The bombardment also damaged St. Jacob’s Convent, the Archangel’s Convent, and their appended churches, their two elementary and seminary schools, as well as their libraries, killing eight people and wounding 120.

Today it is believed that the number of Christians in Israel and occupied Palestine number some 175,000, just over 2 percent of the entire population, but the numbers are rapidly dwindling due to mass emigration. Of those who have remained in the region, most live in Lebanon, where they share in the same bottomless misery as all other refugees, confined to camps where schools are under-funded and overcrowded, where housing is ramshackle, and sanitary conditions are appalling. Most, however, have fled the region altogether. No reliable figures are available, but it is estimated that between 100,000 and 300,000 Palestinian Christians currently live in the U.S.

The Palestinian Christians see themselves, and are seen by their Muslim compatriots, as an integral part of the Palestinian people, and they have long been a vital part of the Palestinian struggle. As the Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, the Reverend Riah Abu al-Assal has explained, “The Arab Palestinian Christians are part and parcel of the Arab Palestinian nation. We have the same history, the same culture, the same habits and the same hopes.”

Yet U.S. media and politicians have become accustomed to thinking of and talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one in which an enlightened democracy is constantly forced to repel attacks from crazy-eyed Islamists bent on the destruction of the Jewish people and the imposition of an Islamic state. Palestinians are equated with Islamists, Islamists with terrorists. It is presumably because all organized Christian activity among Palestinians is non-political and non-violent that the community hardly ever hits the Western headlines; suicide bombers sell more copy than people who congregate for Bible study.

… Christians find themselves under the hammer of the Israeli occupation to no less an extent than Muslims, yet America—supposedly a Christian country—stands idly by because its most politically influential Christians have decided that Palestinian Christians are acceptable collateral damage in their apocalyptic quest. “To be a Christian from the land of Christ is an honor,” says Abbas, a Palestinian Christian whose family lived in Jerusalem for many generations until the purge of 1948. “To be expelled from that land is an injury, and these Zionist Christians in America add insult.”

Abbas is one of the handful of Palestinian Christians that could be described as Evangelical, belonging to a group that appears to be distantly related to the Plymouth Brethren. Cherishing the role of devil’s advocate, I had to ask him, “Is the State of Israel not in fact the fulfillment of God’s promise and a necessary step in the second coming of Christ?” Abbas looked at me briefly and laughed. “You’re kidding, right? You know what they do to our people and our land. If I thought that was part of God’s plan, I’d be an atheist in a second.”

I wonder why we never hear about Palestinian Christians?