human rights & hollow government aspirations

Quite frequently, somewhere in the world, a government does something against human rights, and this causes outrage everywhere. The west often looks at the rest of the world as if it were the guardian of the higher status of “Human Rights Abider”.

Apart from their own heavy past, which I need not regurgitate here, I want to mention modern time fiddling with human rights, and the manipulative statements made by American and European governments.

Way before 911 [in the 60’s], it felt like a galaxy away, Malaysia’s government had issues with immigration, and allegedly, with political opposition. So they came up with the “Internal Security Act”. It didn’t really make it in the headlines again until the late 90’s when it was harshly criticized because it enabled authorities to arrest anyone with little evidence and for any period of time.

As for the political abuse claim, it was reinforced by the fact that opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was indeed arrested under dubious circumstances, thanks to this act.

The West and Malaysia’s then Prime Minister Mahatir hated each other, because he admittedly never minced his words when it came to Europe or America.

But the fact is, most Western countries that were most accusatory of Malaysia now have their own “Internal Security Act”. America has the Patriot Act, and the UK has the Anti Terrorism Act.

It’s been proven that these acts have been misused too. In America, plainly innocent civilians are wrongly arrested and have to undergo harrowing experiences instead of nice trips in and out of “the land of the free”. Even famous people like singer Yusuf Islam a.k.a Cat Stevens was arrested!

In the UK, no doubt that people’s privacy, like yours and mine are under risk, but even worse, thanks to special agreements, people who have made no offenses to British law may be arrested and if requested, deported to the US. I must recognize however that it’s not been as bad as cross-Atlantic.

So frankly, for me, any human rights claim coming from a Western government sounds very hollow. Of course we have made a lot of progress, but Britain and the US are still very hypocritical.

Now let’s be clear. I do agree that terrorism cannot be fought by regular means since it is an irregular opponent. But when things like justice and equality get tampered with, or abused of, the whole “freedom” thing goes down the pipe. These acts should be used with extreme restraint, or at least with minimal impact to day to day lives of innocent civilians.

Otherwise this just isolates the government and currently, the Muslim world. They become two opposed and irreconcilable poles.

I can’t say that it’s entirely due to the ISA, but in Malaysia, the political fallout of the abuse of justice was the rise of an Islamist party called PAS which for a while at least, won over some northern states in Malaysia and imposed harmful Shariah laws. I say harmful because this party is attempting to arabize Malaysians who are otherwise open and kind people with their very own rich culture and identity. Whether it’s about arabizing or westernizing, beautiful cultures should resist such change.
The ISA is probably however, the reason for which Malaysia is the only large South East Asian country still free from terrorism.

But anyway. What does this mean for the West? It means Islamist elements are also likely to be bolstered by this. It means youths who would normally at least partially embrace western culture, as they should if they want to blend in, will instead seek relief from the isolation through extreme Islamism.

Please feel free to comment on this.

muslimwakeup.com

The Pentagate Claim briefly analysed

Howdy all,

A friend of mine recently sent me a link to a flash animation about how the Pentagon plane crash of 911 never happened. This is my take at what I think is a structurally flawed argument. Just so you kow what I’m talking about, watch it anyway:

http://www.pentagonstrike.co.uk/flash.htm#Main

That was an interesting flash animation wasn’t it. Back in 2002 when I first encountered this claim, I posted a link to this french site to a forum:

http://www.reseauvoltaire.net/11septembre.html

I think this site had the original and complete "dossier" claiming the pentagon was not struck by a Boeing at all. Overtaken by the meaning of it all, I decided to take this as the word of god, as a 'dear friend' of mine pointed out and said something like "in a few months maximum, this story will break out and it will be over for Bush"...my email was rightly blasted by a few people and I just figured, indeed, if I’m wrong, I’ll look like a fool [more than I normally do...] so I did something I’d never done before, and never really did thereafter... I retracted.

The thing is... regardless of whether the claim is right, or at least well founded, unfortunately, the authors of this theory –I believe they're French- present their arguments as cheap and geeky alien-sex-claiming conspiracy theorists would: by mixing up 'evidence' and 'claims' and using them in both directions.

example: at some point in the animation [and the conspiracy claim in general] they point to a neat little hole in one of the Pentagon’s inner rings and say "Hmm Moldy/ Sheaplock, how could a Boeing do such damage to a steel-reinforced wall?" and then, later on, they show the site in general and say "how could a Boeing loaded with fuel cause such little damage?"

See what I mean? And yet I actually agree that the damage is odd to say the least, and that there should be more debris... but this is not the way.

They also do the number 2 theorist mistake: add junk evidence to fatten up the dossier. When you have a real case, you don't need to add junk evidence, or use the opinion of simple-minded civilians as expert insight.

For example when they quote a civilian saying "Well, it was a missile”, why is this "homo simplus primat" suddenly a "key witness" whose opinion matters so much? Who is he anyway? These are questions that an honest investigator would ask before quoting anyone in his 'extensive dossier'.

Finally, this case lacks the key backbone: if that plane didn't hit the pentagon, then where did it go? If they have so much evidence of a cover-up at the Pentagon, why were they incapable of finding anything at the true location of the plane? The have happily decided to completely ignore missing evidence. that's mistake number 3.

By no means am I blasting the author of this theory. And I praise them for questioning the authority, and praise them even more for questioning this dubious authority (which has already been caught misleading the public on several issues). I'm merely suspicious of their arguments. This whole pentagon thing is weird, worth being curious about, but as much as you can hate the official version, you gotta see a booger for what it is [choose from definition below].

References and definitions

Booger: 1. Dried nasal mucus 2. An imaginary monster used to frighten children

I love dictionary.com

Please, care to disagree and express yourself!