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socrates44online today!socrates44 Blog (144)

1,088 Blog Comments156 Poems156 Poetry144 Blog144 Blogs12 Articles4 Tags2 Forums2 Quizzes2 Videos1 Threads

Crazy World Of Skin Colour

Some dark-skinned people seek to lighten their skin colour
By applying skin creams to make themselves fairer
Most of those creams have some chemical matter
That can cause serious health problems later
Their use is common in countries like India
Where beauty and fair skin tone go together
Girls are encouraged to avoid too much exposure
To the sunshine which can make their skins darker

But some white-skinned people who are born fairer
Are not satisfied with their natural skin colour
And wilfully seek more sunshine exposure
To get a tan and make themselves darker
For them a skin that is darkened looks better
And is more beautiful than their natural colour
Yet, for white people, sunshine overexposure
Can lead to a deadly form of skin cancer

Some animals like to wallow in muddy water
Which when dried can change their outer colour
This serves as a temperature regulator
And keeps off skin pests of one form or another
Animals do not seek to change their skin colour
To consciously make themselves fairer or darker
Such weird action is purely human in nature
In this crazy world of people's skin colour


(The animals must have a good laugh at our expense)
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The Other Side of the Muhammad Ali Story

June 3, 2016 marked the death of arguably the greatest and most beloved Black athlete in history: Muhammad Ali.

No sport has exploited athletes, particularly Black athletes, quite like boxing. The very first boxers in America were African slaves. White slave owners would amuse themselves by forcing slaves to box to the death while wearing iron collars.

Even after the abolition of slavery, boxing became the first sport to be desegregated so that white boxing promoters could continue to exploit Blacks and make money from the deep racism in American society.

Eugenics was used to justified slavery, and the pseudo science of the time “proved” that Blacks were not only mentally inferior, but also physically inferior to whites.

Ironically, early white fight promoters unwittingly created a space where Black boxers could destroy white supremacist ideas of society and racial hierarchy.

The 1910 victory of Jack Johnson against “The Great White Hope” launched one of the greatest nationwide race riots in U.S. history. Out of that embarrassment, in which a Black man defeated a white man, Congress passed a law outlawing boxing films.

With a brief look at the history of boxing, it is abundantly clear that the races and cultures that have suffered the most at any given time always tend to produce the greatest champions.

Boxing has a tendency to both attract and indeed pray upon talent from underprivileged minority communities. Through boxing, one can read a direct chart of the underprivileged in America. The sport highlights the line of minorities who struggle to make it up the ladder, until they succeed, and then disappear from the boxing scene. Tellingly, the minorities that remain in the ring today are a consequence of still being on the bottom rung of America’s economic ladder.

You had the waves of underprivileged Jewish boxers, then Irish boxers, Italian-American boxers, African American boxers, and now, increasingly Hispanic boxers.

In a society that is so violently racist, the sport of boxing became an escape valve for people’s anger. Boxing symbolized a twisted manifestation of the American dream, where minorities have to, literally, fight their way out of poverty.

The modern image of Muhammad Ali, portrayed by the establishment, is one of a Black man dancing in the ring and shouting, “I am the greatest!” His image is now used to sell everything from luxury cars to soft drinks.

Despite the establishment’s whitewashing and Santaclausification of Ali’s image, history shows that the true Muhammad Ali was a staunch Black Nationalist, who was good friends with Malcolm X, and a member of the Black Power group, The Nation of Islam.

Ali was unquestionably the best boxer in history, not simply because of his achievements in the ring, but because he brought the fight against racism and war into professional sports.

Muhammad Ali grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, as the Black freedom struggle was heating up and beginning to boil over. Born in Louisville as Cassius Clay to a house painter and domestic worker, Ali was immersed in America’s racist nature from birth.

After winning the Olympic gold medal at the age of 18, Ali was so proud of his medal that he said he wore it round his neck almost all the time. Fellow Olympian W. Rudolph remarked, “He slept with it, he went to the cafeteria with it. He never took it off.”

Days after returning from the Olympic games, Ali was eating in a restaurant with the medal swinging around his neck and he was denied service by the white restaurant owners. Ali then threw the gold medal into the Ohio river.

Ali found answers to America’s racism in friend and mentor Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam. “X and Ali were one in the same,” journalist J. Tinsley wrote. “Both were young, handsome, intelligent, outspoken African American men who scared the crap out of White America during a time period when racial tension was the norm.”

(Cont'd in Comments section)
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What Are Your Views On Parenting?

Some of you may be familiar with the story of the seven year old Japanese boy who survived for six nights in a forest in northern Japan after his parents abandoned him recently on the side of the road in a forest as punishment for misbehaving,
see the following links:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/06/parents-of-japanese-boy-left-in-forest-face-possible-abuse-charge


http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/03/yamato-tanooka-perils-of-parenting-tantrum-escalate-crisis



Here is a poem I wrote and posted on CS Poetry Corner.

Nature's Lesson For Parents
Author: socrates44

I watched a hatching baby chick
struggling to break free from its shell
that was its home for many days
but now was time to say farewell

Mom had pecked into the shell
a tiny hole to start the process
She did her part dutifully
Now the chick must do the rest

I felt sorry for the struggling chick
and could almost feel the pain
I wanted to break off the shell
thinking it would ease the strain

Then I remembered someone said
the chick must struggle on its own
to start its heart and lungs working
for it to become fully grown

I stood and watched as a miracle
unfolded right in front of me
All by itself the chick broke out
and stood there so cute and furry

There is a lesson here for parents
who are raising a family
Be protective of your children
but do not do it overly

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2013 11:15 AM

About this poem:

I actually witnessed this event.
I wrote this piece after reading a poem entitled "Too Much Love Can Kill" which pointed out that several children from middle class families end up killing themselves through drug use or suicide after they move away from over-protective parental control which imposes a lot of pressure on them to be super achievers.


What are your thoughts on parenting, particularly in today's society?

If you do not mind sharing, what have been/are your personal experiences of parenting your own children?

What advice would you give to a new or prospective parent?

Open Discussion Welcome!!!
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Ferdinand Marcos: The world's biggest “thieving po

"In the early hours of a February morning in 1986, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos flew into exile. After 21 years as president of the Philippines, Marcos had rigged one too many elections. The army had turned against him, and the people had come out on to the streets in their thousands. The Marcoses had seen the crisis coming and been able to prepare their escape, so when they landed that morning at the Hickham USAF base in Hawaii, they brought plenty of possessions with them.

The official US customs record runs to 23 pages. In the two C-141 transport planes that carried them, they had packed: 23 wooden crates; 12 suitcases and bags, and various boxes, whose contents included enough clothes to fill 67 racks; 413 pieces of jewellery, including 70 pairs of jewel-studded cufflinks; an ivory statue of the infant Jesus with a silver mantle and a diamond necklace; 24 gold bricks, inscribed “To my husband on our 24th anniversary”; and more than 27m Philippine pesos in freshly-printed notes. The total value was $15m.
This was a fortune by any standards, easily enough to see the couple through the rest of their lives.

Yet the new government of the Philippines knew this was only a very small part of the Marcoses’ wealth. The reality, they discovered, was that Ferdinand Marcos had amassed a fortune up to 650 times greater. According to a subsequent estimate by the Philippine supreme court, he had accumulated up to $10bn while in office.

Since his official salary had never risen above $13,500 a year, it was blazingly clear this was stolen wealth on the most spectacular scale. Some of his closest allies also stole billions. As their victim was a nation in which 40% of the people survive on less than $2 a day, the Republic of the Philippines decided urgently to try to retrieve its money.

Even amid the chaos of the revolution, the very first executive order issued by the new president, Cory Aquino, established the Presidential Commission on Good Government, the PCGG. It was to recover “all ill-gotten wealth accumulated by former president Ferdinand Marcos, his immediate family, relatives, subordinates and close associates” and given the power to sequester any assets believed to be the proceeds of crime.

Thirty years later, the PCGG is still working, its 94 lawyers, researchers and administrators housed proudly in a building recovered from the Marcos family. The government gives it an annual budget of $2.2m. Its staff have traced money through jurisdictions all over the world and fought their way through hundreds of court cases. And yet something has gone terribly wrong: to date, the PCGG has recovered only a fraction of what was stolen by the Marcos network; no one has served a prison sentence for their part in the crime.

The PCGG archive tells the inside story of the biggest theft in history, and of the master criminal who organised it: skilful, arrogant, cruel. It also opens a door into the offshore world revealed by the Panama Papers. Marcos was one of the first to exploit the rats’ nest of secret jurisdictions and hidden ownership then in the early stages of being built beneath the floorboards of public life.
But what is most important about Marcos is that he committed his crimes as a politician.

His career starts with a cynicism that now seems familiar – manipulating electorates, using money to buy power and power to make money. But he went one big step further in merging politics and finance, converting the instruments of government into one vast cash machine. A handful of other autocrats were also busy stealing from their people in that era – in Haiti, Nicaragua, Iran – but Marcos stole more and he stole better. Ultimately, he emerges as a laboratory specimen from the early stages of a contemporary epidemic: the global contagion of corruption that has since spread through Africa and South America, the Middle East and parts of Asia. Marcos was a model of the politician as thief."

(Cont'd in Comments section)
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Alcoholism!

Based on information in the blogs, I gather that several persons here on CS partake of wine, beer, and/or some other form of alcohol.

An alcoholic is a person who is addicted to the consumption of alcohol.

How, why and when does a person become an alcoholic?

Suggestions for dealing with the problem?


Open Discussion Welcome!
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The Medicalisation of Normality

"Mislabeling everyday problems as mental illness has shocking implications for individuals and society: stigmatising a healthy person as mentally ill leads to unnecessary, harmful medications, the narrowing of horizons, misallocation of medical resources, and draining of the budgets of families and the nation. We also shift responsibility for our mental well-being away from our own naturally resilient and self-healing brains, which have kept us sane for hundreds of thousands of years, and into the hands of 'Big Pharma', who are reaping multi-billion-dollar profits."

http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=464019439257830;res=IELHEA



"Over the last 40 years The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – the bible of the psychiatric professions – has spawned more and more diagnostic categories, "inventing" disorders along the way and radically reducing the range of what can be construed as normal or sane. Meanwhile Big Pharma, feeding its appetite for profits and ours for drugs, has gained an ever greater hold over our mental and emotional lives, medicalising normality.

The more studies that come along to tell us about the rise in mental illness, the more we fit our problems and unhappiness into a category of mental disorder, developing symptoms to take to the doctor in search of a cure. Humans are suggestible creatures. And doctors like to help: they provide the pills Big Pharma recommends, though many must now know that research has shown placebos can work just as well and with fewer side effects."

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/06/mental-illness-medicalising-normality



"ADHD, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, was conceived at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in 1987. It was brought into being by a show of hands, and duly included in a textbook, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Psychiatrists consider it a real disorder, but for those who use scientific evidence to support claims of an illness, it’s fictional. To this day, there have been no scientific tests to support the existence of ADHD.

Then, there are the diagnostic criteria. Whichever way you try and bend them, the criteria are still reflective of normal childhood behaviour. They include “often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities”; “often has difficulties organising tasks and activities”; “often avoids, dislikes or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort”; “often loses things necessary for tasks or activities”; “is often forgetful in daily activities”; “is often on the go”; “often talks excessively” and “often interrupts or intrudes on others”. It’s a reclassification of normal behaviour with a scientific-sounding, made-up label.

Then, there are the drugs that produce nullifying effects and which are hailed as ‘demonstrably effective’. All that has happened is the person has been drugged, and is exhibiting the effects of a dangerous, mind-altering foreign substance in his or her body. Psychiatric drugs have an effect on a person: they will keep him/her quiet and compliant, but drugs don’t cure anything.

The fundamental contradiction lies in the fact that psychiatrists manufacture the labels, they diagnose the ‘disorders,’ and they prescribe the drugs.

If psychiatry was against the medicalisation of normality, then ‘disorders’ like ADHD would be scrapped, the drugging of children would decrease, and the real cause of problems would be found and treated, using less invasive treatments. It’s time for change."

http://www.cchr.org.uk/latest-news/psychiatric-medicalisation-normality-abnormal/
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The truth about Muslims in America

The truth about Muslims in America is perhaps surprising -- but not in the way Trump and his supporters might think.

A look at polls and studies conducted in the last few years shows that Muslims have been crucial in helping law enforcement find terror suspects in the United States. Many have served in the military protecting the country against terrorists. And in many ways, they're a lot like other everyday Americans.

Here's the reality of Muslims in America -- and how it smashes stereotypes:

They are a minuscule portion of the U.S. population
It's difficult to come by hard numbers because the U.S. Census doesn't collect religious data. But the fear of Muslims taking over and imposing Sharia law is unfounded. By some estimates, Muslims make up less than 1% of the U.S. adult population. By 2050, their numbers will grow -- to 2.1%. Of all the Muslims in America, 63% are exactly the kind Trump wants banned -- immigrants.

They're better educated than most Americans
U.S. Muslims have the second-highest level of education among major religious groups in the country; Jews have the highest. And a greater proportion of them have college degrees than the general U.S. population.

They have more gender equality
While in many parts of the Muslim world, women are confined to second-class status, that's not the case among American Muslims. Virtually all of them, 90%, agree that women should be able to work outside the home. American Muslim women hold more college or postgraduate degrees than Muslim men. And they are more likely to work in professional fields than women from most other U.S. religious groups.

They've been here since the birth of the nation ...
Scholars estimate about a quarter to a third of the Africans brought to the United States as slaves were Muslims. Most were then forced to convert to Christianity.

... and they're not just clustered in big cities
American Muslims live in cities big and small all across the United States. The first mosque built in America was in, of all places, Ross, North Dakota, back in 1929.

They're as religious as Christians ...
The general perception of Muslims has one thing right: Most Muslims are very religious. About half say they attend the weekly Friday prayers. But that makes them similar to Christians: About 70% of Christians say religion is important in their lives, and about 45% go to a weekly service.

... but they're not as dogmatic as they are portrayed
Much has been made about fundamentalist Muslims and their strict interpretation of the Quran. But most American Muslims are different. A Pew religious landscape survey found that 57% of American Muslims say there is more than one way to interpret Islam's teachings. A similar number say many different religions can lead to eternal life.

There have been Muslims involved in terrorism ...
From September 11, 2001, until the end of 2014, 109 Muslim-Americans plotted against targets in the United States. And terrorism by Muslim-Americans killed 50 in the same time period. Contrast that with the deaths from other mass shootings just last year: 136 -- more than twice as many as all the deaths from 13 years of Muslim-American terrorism.

... but they've also spoken out against it
After every terrorist attack at home and abroad, the refrain rises, "Where is the Muslim condemnation?" American Muslims have spoken out -- and done much more. A Duke University study found more terrorism suspects and perpetrators were brought to the attention of law enforcement by members of the Muslim-American community than were discovered through U.S. government investigations. And a Pew survey found that roughly half of U.S. Muslims say their religious leaders aren't speaking out enough against Islamic extremism.


http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/08/us/muslims-in-america-shattering-misperception/
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Atheists are the most generous

Atheists are the most generous—even without heavenly reward!

Who gives the most to charitable causes? Those who believe in gods or those who don’t?

“Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven…” (Mark 10:21)

“Any charity you give is for your own good. Any charity you give shall be for the sake of GOD. Any charity you give will be repaid to you…” (Koran 2:272)

Charitable behavior gets big perks in the afterlife, according to Christian and Islamic theology. Philanthropy, in these creeds, is a highly profitable long-term investment, a down payment on ecstatic immortality. Quite the bargain!

But atheists? No heaven awaits them. No pearly gates, eager virgins, harping angels, fluffy clouds, or succulent oasis. No reward whatsoever. Atheists have no faith, no expectation of benefit from a deity. So, atheists are probably selfish, right? Pitiless, parsimonious. Totally stingy misers, not passing a penny off to the poor…correct?

WRONG! Atheists, non-believers, secular humanists, skeptics—the whole gamut of the godless have emerged in recent years as inarguably the most generous benefactors on the globe. That’s right. Hordes of heretics are the world’s biggest damned philanthropists. Both individually and in groups, heathen infidels are topping the fundraising charts.

First, the facts.

The current most charitable individuals in the United States, based on “Estimated Lifetime Giving,” are:

1) Warren Buffett (atheist, donated $40.785 billion to “health, education, humanitarian causes”)

2) Bill & Melinda Gates (atheists, donated $27.602 billion to “global health and development, education”)

3) George Soros (atheist, donated $6.936 billion to “open and democratic societies”)

A century ago, one of the USA’s leading philanthropists was Andrew Carnegie, atheist.

Embedded image from another site


Abridged from article:

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/pellissier20111125

(Posted: Nov 25, 2011)
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Spiritual but not Religious, and Atheist

What does it mean to be Spiritual but not Religious,
as several persons here on CS claim they are?

What is an Atheist?

What does the term “God” signify to you?
Is it an anthropomorphism as taught by religion?

anthropomorphism
- “the attribution of human characteristics or behaviour to a god, animal, or object”.

George Bernard Shaw said:

“The Bible says that God created man in his own image,
and man has been returning the favour ever since.”


Without resorting to anthropomorphism, do you think that there is some overriding principle, order or phenomenon that governs everything in the cosmos, and that one can have a personal direct awareness of this phenomenon, independent of the teachings of any religion?
Some may refer to it as a divine or supreme power, force, or even spirit.
This awareness can be experienced through a closeness to Nature, or through meditation.

Is it possible that such persons can be categorised as “spiritual but not religious”?


In addition, is it possible that an atheist who has abandoned the concept of God as an anthropomorphism, can also have a direct awareness of this phenomenon?

I know that several persons on CS claim to be atheists.
If you are such a person, in view of the points mentioned above, could you please share with us, the basis of your claim of being an atheist?

Also, if you claim to be “spiritual but not religious”, could you please share with us the basis of your claim?

Thanks for your input!

Open discussion welcome!
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Muslims in America

What have Muslims ever done for America? If your sole source of information were Donald Trump, you’d think that the answer was not much – apart from murdering its citizens and trying to destroy its values.

Muslims were part of the US from its very beginnings. Among those who served under the command of chief of the continental army, General George Washington, in the war against British colonialism were Bampett Muhammad, who fought for the Virginia Line between the years 1775 and 1783, and Yusuf Ben Ali, who was a North African Arab. Washington, later America’s first president, didn’t have a problem with Muslims serving in his army. By giving these Muslims the honour of serving America, Washington made it clear that a person did not have to be of a certain religion or have a particular ethnic background to be an American patriot.

Trump tower, wouldn’t have happened without Fazlur Rahman Khan.
The US wouldn’t look the way it does if it weren’t for a Muslim, Fazlur Rahman Khan. The Dhaka-born Bangladeshi-American was known as the “Einstein of structural engineering”. He pioneered a new structural system of frame tubes that revolutionised the building of skyscrapers.The result was a new generation of skyscrapers that reduced the amount of steel necessary in construction and changed the look of American cityscapes.

Treating the sick
Without Ayub Ommaya lots of people, some of them American, would be dead or suffering appalling pain. In 1963, the Pakistani-born Muslim neurosurgeon invented an intraventricular catheter system that can be used for the aspiration of cerebrospinal fluid or the delivery of drugs. What that means is that a soft, plastic, dome-shaped device is placed under the scalp. This so-called Ommaya Reservoir is then connected to a catheter that is placed into your brain. The reservoir is used to provide chemotherapy directly to the site for brain tumours.

Advancing science
Ahmed Zewail won the Nobel prize for Chemistry in 1999, becoming thereby the first Egyptian-born scientist to do so. He is known as the “father of femtochemistry” and for doing pioneering work in the observation of rapid molecular transformations. Zewail, now 69, has spent most of his life in the US where he is now professor of chemistry and physics at Caltech and director of the physical biology center. Postage stamps have been issued to honour his contributions to science and humanity.

Trump tweeted the following earlier this week: “Obama said in his speech that Muslims are our sports heroes. What sport is he talking about, and who?” One of those sports heroes is, Mr Trump, someone you’ve met before. Here are some clues. He was known as the Louisville Lip. He was three times World Heavyweight Boxing Champion. Oh yes, and in 1965 he changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali and later gave interviews explaining his perspective on his new faith. Now you remember. He’s the same guy you met in 2007 when he presented you with a Muhammad Ali award. In May, you posted a photo on Facebook posing with the great Muslim sporting hero and claimed then that he was your friend.
Ali, one of the most famous Muslims in the world, issued a statement saying, "True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so called Islamic Jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion."
He added, "I believe that our political leaders should use their position to bring understanding about the religion of Islam and clarify that these misguided murderers have perverted people's views on what Islam really is."

Here are some more sports heroes. Basketball icons Shaquille O’Neal and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the latter perhaps the greatest NBA star after Michael Jordan. Hakeem Olajuwon, 52, Hall of Fame NBA centre. Oh yes, and Mike Tyson, who set the record as the youngest boxer to win the WBC, WBA and IBF heavyweight titles aged 20.


Abridged from article:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/08/donald-trump-famous-muslims-us-history
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America Created Al-Qaeda and the ISIS Terror Group

Much like Al Qaeda, the Islamic State (ISIS) is made-in-the-USA, an instrument of terror designed to divide and conquer the oil-rich Middle East and to counter Iran’s growing influence in the region.

The fact that the United States has a long and torrid history of backing terrorist groups will surprise only those who watch the news and ignore history.

The CIA first aligned itself with extremist Islam during the Cold War era. Back then, America saw the world in rather simple terms: on one side, the Soviet Union and Third World nationalism, which America regarded as a Soviet tool; on the other side, Western nations and militant political Islam, which America considered an ally in the struggle against the Soviet Union.

The director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan, General William Odom recently remarked, “by any measure the U.S. has long used terrorism".

During the 1970's the CIA used the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as a barrier, both to thwart Soviet expansion and prevent the spread of Marxist ideology among the Arab masses. Lest we forget, the CIA gave birth to Osama Bin Laden and breastfed his organization during the 1980's. Former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told the House of Commons that Al Qaeda was unquestionably a product of Western intelligence agencies.Thousands of Islamist extremists were trained by the CIA and funded by the Saudis, in order to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan.

The Islamic State is its latest weapon that, much like Al Qaeda, is certainly backfiring. ISIS recently rose to international prominence after its thugs began beheading American journalists. Now the terrorist group controls an area the size of the United Kingdom.

In order to understand why the Islamic State has grown and flourished so quickly, one has to take a look at the organization’s American-backed roots. The 2003 American invasion and occupation of Iraq created the pre-conditions for radical Sunni groups, like ISIS, to take root. America, rather unwisely, destroyed Saddam Hussein’s secular state machinery and replaced it with a predominantly Shiite administration. The U.S. occupation caused vast unemployment in Sunni areas, by rejecting socialism and closing down factories in the naive hope that the magical hand of the free market would create jobs. Under the new U.S.-backed Shiite regime, working class Sunni’s lost hundreds of thousands of jobs. Unlike the white Afrikaners in South Africa, who were allowed to keep their wealth after regime change, upper class Sunni’s were systematically dispossessed of their assets and lost their political influence. Rather than promoting religious integration and unity, American policy in Iraq exacerbated sectarian divisions and created a fertile breading ground for Sunni discontent, from which Al Qaeda in Iraq took root.

The so-called “War on Terror” should be seen for what it really is: a pretext for maintaining a dangerously oversized U.S. military. The two most powerful groups in the U.S. foreign policy establishment are the Israel lobby, which directs U.S. Middle East policy, and the Military-Industrial-Complex, which profits from the former group’s actions. Since George W. Bush declared the “War on Terror” in October 2001, it has cost the American taxpayer approximately 6.6 trillion dollars and thousands of fallen sons and daughters; but, the wars have also raked in billions of dollars for Washington’s military elite.

In fact, more than seventy American companies and individuals have won up to $27 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan over the last three years, according to a recent study by the Center for Public Integrity.


Abridged from article:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/america-created-al-qaeda-and-the-isis-terror-group/5402881
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Media Call Out Donald Trump's Plan To Ban Muslims

Media Call Out Donald Trump's Plan To Ban Muslims From The US For Playing Into The Hands Of ISIS

Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook:
Anything To Suggest The US "Is At Odds With The Muslim Faith ... Would Be Counterproductive To Our Efforts" To Defeat ISIS.
In a December 8 press briefing, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook alluded to Trump's proposal in explaining that it "would be counterproductive" to the goal of defeating ISIS to create "the notion that the United States is at odds with the Muslim faith and Islam".
We have troops serving that follow the Muslim faith. And, again, without wading into politics, anything that tries to bolster, if you will, the ISIL narrative that the United States is somehow at war with Islam is contrary to our values and contrary to our national security.
We are, as I mentioned, working with Muslim nations right now. We want to, in essence, take the fight to ISIL with the help of -- of Muslims and others around the world. And anything that -- that somehow challenges that, we think would be counterproductive to our national security.

New York Times' Frank Bruni:
Trump "Has Given The Islamic State ... A Piece Of Propaganda As Big As Any Of His Resorts."
In a December 8 op-ed, New York Times opinion columnist Frank Bruni stated that Trump's policy proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States "has practically collaborated with the enemy by playing into a narrative of Muslim persecution":
But what Trump just did took pressure off the president by redirecting the conversation from his tentativeness to Trump's insane overreach. We should tell him that, and we should add that he has practically collaborated with the enemy by playing into a narrative of Muslim persecution and a grand war between civilizations.
He has given the Islamic State and other barbarians a piece of propaganda as big as any of his resorts and as shimmering as any of his office towers.

NBC News' Richard Engel:
Trump's Policy "Just Feeds Into The ISIS Narrative," And Presents "A National Security Issue."
In a December 7 appearance on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel slammed Trump's proposal to ban foreign Muslims from the United States, saying it "feeds into the ISIS narrative," and "it is a national security issue." Engel explained that ISIS claims "the world is against Muslims and we, ISIS, are defending Muslims. So here comes Mr. Trump and says ISIS is right":
ENGEL: ISIS says, join the ISIS cause because the world is against Muslims and we, ISIS, are defending Muslims. So here comes Mr. Trump and says, ISIS is right. Join the ISIS team or join other radicals, or you're going to be deported, or you're going to be kicked out of the country. I kept saying, thinking to myself while he was making these statements, what exactly would this look like? I spend a lot of time on planes. So you come to the airport. Are there people standing there asking you questions? Are you a Muslim? How exactly do you prove it? Do you prove a negative? What do you know about Islam? Tell me what you think about Mohammed. Does that mean people from Indonesia, people from every corner of the Muslim world, over a billion people, including U.S. citizens?

New York Times' Thomas Friedman:
Trump, by alienating the Muslim world with his call for a ban on Muslims entering America, is acting as the Islamic State's secret agent. ISIS wants every Muslim in America (and Europe) to feel alienated. If that happens, ISIS won't need to recruit anyone. People will will just act on their own. ISIS and Islamic extremism are Muslim problems that can only be fixed by Muslims. Lumping all Muslims together as our enemies will only make that challenge harder.


(Continued in Comments Section)
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