Fort Hood and the new McCarthyismMuslims are among the US's most loyal citizens, but this terrible shooting may be exploited to cast them as innately unAmericanComments (264)  HA Hellyer guardian.co.uk, Sunday 8 November 2009 18.22 GMT Article historyThe Fort Hood shootings will likely reverberate across the media for weeks to come. In all likelihood, it will be logged as yet further evidence that the Muslims are a dangerous fifth column that simply cannot be trusted in the west.Why? Because the shooter appears to be a Muslim. Worse: a Muslim of Arab origin.It is interesting to see how the media have already reported on this tragic event – immediately, questions (and answers) were posed about the shooter's ethnicity and religion: implicitly (and in some cases, explicitly) making clear that such things were not just relevant to the story, but probably causal factors. The fact that he was born and raised on American soil is irrelevant.Some may simply throw their hands up in the air in frustration, and declare: "Well, of course it's because he was an Arab Muslim that he did this!" Others may just secretly harbour such feelings – but all of them forget about people like John Russell and William Kreutzer.Both were sergeants in the US military. The first shot dead five soldiers a few months ago at Camp Liberty in Baghdad; the second went on a shooting spree at Fort Bragg in the US, killing one, and injuring 18. Neither case (and there are others) received the same amount of media attention as this case is likely to – and in neither did any reputable journalist draw attention to the killer's religion or ethnicity.Why? Well, the answer is clear. Those two individuals were not Muslims, and they were not Arabs.At this point, we simply do not know why the shooter at Fort Hood did what he did (which was abject treachery and murder, without a doubt). Like other soldiers who killed their fellows, it might be down to mental instability – such things happen to soldiers in wartime. We'll find out in the weeks and months to come – but in the meantime, we just don't know.But here is what we do know. We know that Muslim Americans number anything from 3 million to 6 million. We do know that, even without any evidence linking Islam to this tragedy, Muslim organisations denounced the killing, rejecting point blank any connection to religion. We do know that around 20,000 Muslims serve in the US military, and their loyalty to the US is unquestioned.And we also know that people on the far right (and probably on the left as well), will use this sad turn of events to yet again "prove" that Muslim Americans are simply not American. They are merely interlopers on American soil who must be suspected and pulled aside for random checks at airports.Any Muslims who condemn the attacks must…

  Sex abuse 'endemic' in Catholic institutions More than 800 priests, nuns, monks and teachers created an "endemic" culture of child sex abuse in Catholic schools and residential homes over almost 80 years, an inquiry has found.   By Auslan Cramb
Last Updated: 1:04PM BST 21 May 2009 The state-funded institutions in Ireland were a "secret and closed world run on fear", the decade-long report concluded. However, no new prosecutions are expected. The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse found that nuns and priests terrorised children and covered up years of brutality, rape and molestation in workhouse-style schools. Ritual beatings were encouraged and paedophiles were shielded.  
The investigation found that in most cases the religious orders hid the crimes and protected the abusers, sometimes moving them to different schools where they carried on attacking children. One serial sex abuser who began his career as a Christian brother was excused his vows after three cases of sex abuse, but was able to teach for 40 years. He terrorised and sexually abused children in six different schools before he was convicted of sex abuse in the 1980s. In another case, a monk who abused children in England was brought back to Ireland and assigned a teaching post at Lota School in Co Cork, which was run by the Brothers of Charity. He later admitted multiple sexual assaults on boys. Many of the worst outrages involved schools run by the Christian Brothers, who were the largest providers of residential care for boys. At Letterfrack School in Galway, founded on a remote hillside in 1885, levels of sexual abuse were chronic and physical punishment was "severe, excessive and pervasive". Two sex abusers were present at the school for 14 years each. Schools run by the Sisters of Mercy were also part of the culture of abuse. They operated 26 "industrial" schools for girls, including Goldenbridge in Dublin where the regime was "cruel, unrelenting and severe". There was a high level of physical abuse by religious and lay staff and children lived in constant fear of beatings. The school ran a rosary bead industry and imposed "impossible standards" on the girls, who suffered emotional abuse and were regularly "humiliated and belittled". The report calls for a permanent public memorial to the victims. The Taoiseach Brian Cowen said the report was an appalling reminder of a "bygone day" and its recommendations would be taken on board. The Irish state is accused of abdicating responsibility for around 35,000 children who were placed in the network of reformatories, industrial schools and orphanages up to the 1990s, including disadvantaged, neglected and abandoned boys and girls as well as unmarried mothers. The commission's five-volume, 2,500-page report describes a Victorian model of childcare that survived from 1914 through most of the 20th century and will further erode the moral authority of the Catholic Church in Ireland. It says a climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and "all…

  To Mikhail Baryshnikov, time is a great teacher
  "Nobody is born a dancer," Baryshnikov wrote in the 1976 book "Baryshnikov at Work." "You have to want it more than anything."

  Web giants Facebook, Amazon, Twitter join support for net neutrality Internet heavyweights are weighing in on the net neutrality debate, sending a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski on Monday morning supporting his push for new rules.The CEOs of Amazon, Google, Facebook and Twitter, along with some telecommunications and media firms such as EchoStar and XO Communications, sent their letter after a barrage of letters from bipartisan lawmakers criticized a new rule. A vote this Thursday would begin the process of creating new rules on how Internet service providers control access to the Web. Critics have warned Genachowski's push for stronger and broader rules for access to the Web would hurt investment in networks run by AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and other firms that run Internet networks.The tech companies, many from Silicon Valley, disagreed. They wrote that Genachowki's push for rules that would prevent carriers from blocking applications like theirs would help spur more technological innovation and support economic growth."We believe a process that results in common sense baseline rules is critical to ensuring that the Internet remains a key engine of economic growth, innovation, and global competitiveness," the CEOs wrote in the letter.Those signed onto the letter :Jeff Bezos of Amazon; James Geiger, CEO of Cbeyong; Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist; Jay Adelson, CEO of Digg; Kevin Rose, founder of Digg; John Donahoe, CEO of eBay; Charles Ergen, CEO of EchoStar Corp; Erick Blachford, former CEO of Expedia; Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, Caterina Fake, founder of Flickr; Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google; Barry Diller, CEO of IAC; Reid Hoffman, CEO of Linkedin; Scott Heiferman, CEO of Meetup; John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla; David Ulevitch, founder of OpenDNS; Josh Silverman, CEO of Skype; Stan Glasgow, President of Sony Electronics; Thomas Rogers, President of Tivo; Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter; Gilles BianRosa, CEO of Vuze; Carl Grivner, CEO of XO Communications; Steve Chen, founder of YouTube; Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga.  

  From The Sunday Times of London August 16, 2009      Steve Jobs: The man who polished Apple
    Yet secrecy is Apple’s core marketing tool. Jobs’s specialities are 90-minute to two-hour-long presentations to prayer meetings of the faithful. These always end with the words “and one last thing”, at which point he unveils the latest gizmo to geek hallelujahs. Rumours suggest he is, in spite of the transplant, about to do it again in the next few weeks. It will be a dual sensation: the sight of a walking, talking Jobs and of a new tablet computer, a sort of giant iPhone, which, some say, will yet again change the world. Excitement intensified early this month when an unnamed “analyst” was reported as having actually held the tablet. He said it was “better than your average movie experience”.