‘"If I was the president, I could stop terrorist
attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently.
I would first apologize - very
publicly and very sincerely - to all the widows and the orphans, the impoverished
and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American
imperialism.
I would then announce that
America’s global interventions - including the awful bombings - have come to an
end.
And I would inform Israel that it
is no longer the 51st state of the union but – oddly enough – a foreign
country.
I would then reduce the military
budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims
and repair the damage from the many American bombings and invasions. There
would be more than enough money.
Do you know what one year of the
US military budget is equal to? One year. It’s equal to more than $20,000 per
hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born.
"That’s what I’d do on my first three days in the White House.
On the fourth day, I’d be
assassinated."’
The
Anti-Empire Report
Expensive free speech
From al Jazeera opinion page
In the US, a fine and often problematic distinction has been carved out between free speech and hate speech. Behind this distinction lies the US past as a slave-based economy and its present as a racist society and second-class citizenship of African- Americans continuing today. I accept this distinction and I think it is critical, and perhaps especially so in situations of latent or open conflict and racialisation.
........
All the newspapers involved [in prophet Muhammad cartoons] are right-wing papers, and, further, that the global War on Terror is itself a fuzzy war and hence easily seen through ideological lenses