Juan Cole, www.juancole.com: The cynical use by the US Republican Party of the Terri Schiavo case repeats, whether deliberately or accidentally, the tactics of Muslim fundamentalists and theocrats in places like Egypt and Pakistan. These tactics involve a disturbing tendency to make private, intimate decisions matters of public interest and then to bring the courts and the legislature to bear on them. President George W. Bush and Republican congressional leaders like Tom Delay have taken us one step closer to theocracy on the Muslim Brotherhood model.
Carol Marbin Miller, Miami Herald: Hours after a judge ordered that Terri Schiavo was not to be removed from her hospice, a team of state agents were en route to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted -- but they stopped short when local police told them they would enforce the judge's order, The Herald has learned.
Agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told police in Pinellas Park, the small town where Schiavo lies at Hospice Woodside, on Thursday that they were on the way to take her to a hospital to resume her feeding.
For a brief period, local police, who have officers at the hospice to keep protesters out, prepared for what sources called ``a showdown.''
In the end, the squad from the FDLE and the Department of Children & Families backed down, apparently concerned about confronting local police outside the hospice.
''We told them that unless they had the judge with them when they came, they were not going to get in,'' said a source with the local police.
www.mediamatters.com: In coverage of the Terri Schiavo case, CNN host Daryn Kagan and senior analyst Jeff Greenfield made sweeping assertions about public opinion of the case that are undermined by polling data.Following footage on the March 24 edition of CNN's Live Today of protestors urging the restoration of Schiavo's feeding tube, Kagan claimed that there are "a lot of people in this country agreeing with them that this would be a death without dignity." Kagan further claimed that there are "[s]trong, divided opinions across the country."
In a report on CNN's Live From... on the impact of the widely aired videotapes of Schiavo, Greenfield stated, "Whatever the medical facts, it is not hard to understand why the average person, looking at those images [of Schiavo], sees them as at least raising doubt." Greenfield's remark followed footage of one of the doctors hired by Schiavo's parents claiming that Schiavo is not in a persistent vegetative state.
…polls do indicate that on the case's central issue -- the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube -- the public is not as divided or as conflicted as Kagan and Greenfield suggest..
• In a March 22 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, 52 percent of respondents agreed with that day's court decision to leave Schiavo's feeding tube unattached; 39 percent disagreed.
• In a March 21-22 CBS News poll, 61 percent of respondents thought Schiavo's feeding tube should have been removed, while 28 percent thought it should have remained in place. Further, 66 percent did not think the feeding tube should be restored while 27 percent thought it should. Asked if Congress and the president should intervene in the Schiavo case, 82 percent said no; 13 percent said yes. Even among evangelicals, 68 percent felt that the president and Congress should stay out of the matter.
In a March 20 ABC News poll, 63 percent of respondents said they support the March 18 court decision to remove Schiavo's feeding tube...
William Rivers Pitt, www.truthout.org: It's the hypocrisy, stupid. It goes on and on and on, and it is exhausting in the extreme to consider, much less address and attack. Lately, the hypocrisy needle has been pegged over into the red. Leave it to the Republican majority to take an important issue, an issue filled with questions about medical ethics, the rights of the disabled people, the rights of spouses, the place of federalism in a national debate and the simple value of human life, and transmogrify it into a ghoulish circus sideshow best used to score political points and do a little fundraising on the side…Consider:
• The Republicans, party of states rights, have bulldozed Florida law and the basic underpinnings of Federalism to take a hand in this matter. Florida law allows a spouse to stand surrogate when medical decisions of life and death are required, but since sticking to their states-rights guns would not give the conservatives the outcome they desire, they betrayed a central ethic of their political philosophy without batting an eye;
• The Republicans, party of the sanctity of marriage, have taken over the role of husband in the process of knocking over their Federalist principles. Gay people getting married is a horrid affront to the sanctity of marriage, but the United States Congress finds no problem elbowing itself into the kitchen-table decisions made between a husband and a wife;
• The Republicans, party of moral values, are enjoying an incredible fundraising opportunity in flogging the Schiavo story. One cannot swing one's cat by the tail without striking a plea for financial assistance from the far-right Republican-allied groups that have turned one family's plight into a river of cash;
• Republicans, party of the 'Culture of Life,' have not one word to say about Sun Hudson. Hudson was a five-month-old baby born in Texas with a genetic disorder that required him to be sustained on machines. Thanks to a law signed by then-Governor Bush in 1999, Texas hospitals are allowed to remove patients from machines if they deem there is no hope, and if the patient's family cannot afford to sustain care. Sun Hudson was removed from his machines two weeks ago, over the thunderous outrage of his mother, and he died. Congressional Republicans were nowhere to be found when the life left his little body;
• Republicans, party of Tom DeLay, have not one word to say about DeLay's staggering double standard in this matter. In 1988, DeLay's father was injured in an accident and left in a condition quite similar to that of Mrs. Schiavo. DeLay sat in private counsel with his family, heard the verdict of the doctors that his father would never recover, considered the stated wishes of his father that he did not want to be left to live sustained by machines should such a thing come to pass, and decided to let the man pass. Had a mob of self-righteous Congressional Democrats tried to batter their way into the decision-making process of the DeLay family in 1988, Tom would have likely attacked them with his bug-extermination equipment, and he would have been fully justified in doing so.
Kulchur War, Defense of Science, Separation of Church & State
http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/schiavo-case-and-islamization-of.html
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
The Schiavo Case and the Islamization of the Republican Party
The cynical use by the US Republican Party of the Terri Schiavo case repeats, whether deliberately or accidentally, the tactics of Muslim fundamentalists and theocrats in places like Egypt and Pakistan. These tactics involve a disturbing tendency to make private, intimate decisions matters of public interest and then to bring the courts and the legislature to bear on them. President George W. Bush and Republican congressional leaders like Tom Delay have taken us one step closer to theocracy on the Muslim Brotherhood model.
The Muslim fundamentalists use a provision of Islamic law called "bringing to account" (hisba). As Al-Ahram weekly notes, "Hisba signifies a case filed by an individual on behalf of society when the plaintiff feels that great harm has been done to religion." Hisba is a medieval idea that had all but lapsed when the fundamentalists brought it back in the 1970s and 1980s.
In this practice, any individual can use the courts to intervene in the private lives of others. Among the more famous cases of such interference is that of Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid in Egypt. A respected modern scholar of Koranic studies, Abu Zaid argued that, contrary to medieval interpretations of Islamic law, women and men should receive equal inheritance shares. (Medieval Islamic law granted women only half the inheritance shares of their brothers). Abu Zaid was accused of sacrilege. Then the allegation of sacrilege was used as a basis on which the fundamentalists sought to have the courts forcibly divorce him from his wife.
Abu Zaid's wife loved her husband. She did not want to be divorced. But the fundamentalists went before the court and said, she is a Muslim, and he is an infidel, and no Muslim woman may be married to an infidel. They represented their efforts as being on behalf of the Islamic religion, which had an interest in seeing to it that heretics like Abu Zaid could not remain married to a Muslim woman. In 1995 the hisba court actually found against them. They fled to Europe, and ultimately settled in Holland.
Likewise, a similar tactic was deployed against the Egyptian feminist author, Nawal Saadawi, but it failed and she was able to remain in the country.
One of the most objectionable features of this fundamentalist tactic is that persons without standing can interfere in private affairs. Perfect strangers can file a case about your marriage, because they represent themselves as defending a public interest (the upholding of religion and morality).
Terri Schiavo's husband is her legal guardian. Her parents have not succeeded in challenging this status of his. As long as he is the guardian, the decision on removing the feeding tubes is between him and their physicians. Her parents have not succeeded in having this responsibility moved from him to them. Even under legislation George W. Bush signed in 1999 while governor of Texas, the spouse and the physician can make this decision.
In passing a special law to allow the case to be kicked to a Federal judge after the state courts had all ruled in favor of the husband, Congress probably shot itself in the foot once again. The law is not a respecter of persons, so the Federal judge will likely rule as the state ones did.
But the most frightening thing about the entire affair is that public figures like congressmen inserted themselves into the case in order to uphold religious strictures. The lawyer arguing against the husband let the cat out of the bag, as reported by the NYT: ' The lawyer, David Gibbs, also said Ms. Schiavo's religious beliefs as a Roman Catholic were being infringed because Pope John Paul II has deemed it unacceptable for Catholics to refuse food and water. "We are now in a position where a court has ordered her to disobey her church and even jeopardize her eternal soul," Mr. Gibbs said. '
In other words, the United States Congress acted in part on behalf of the Roman Catholic church. Both of these public bodies interfered in the private affairs of the Schiavos, just as the fundamentalist Egyptian, Nabih El-Wahsh, tried to interfere in the marriage of Nawal El Saadawi.
Like many of his fundamentalist counterparts in the Middle East, Tom Delay is rather cynically using this issue to divert attention from his own corruption. Like the Muslim fundamentalist manipulators of Hisba, Delay represents himself as acting on behalf of a higher cause. He said of the case over the weekend, ' "This is not a political issue. This is life and death," '
Republican Hisba will have the same effect in the United States that it does in the Middle East. It will reduce the rights of the individual in favor of the rights of religious and political elites to control individuals. Ayatollah Delay isn't different from his counterparts in Iran.
________________________________________
Posted on Sat, Mar. 26, 2005
TERRI SCHIAVO CASE
Police 'showdown' averted
BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER
cmarbin@herald.com
Hours after a judge ordered that Terri Schiavo was not to be removed from her hospice, a team of state agents were en route to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted -- but they stopped short when local police told them they would enforce the judge's order, The Herald has learned.
Agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told police in Pinellas Park, the small town where Schiavo lies at Hospice Woodside, on Thursday that they were on the way to take her to a hospital to resume her feeding.
For a brief period, local police, who have officers at the hospice to keep protesters out, prepared for what sources called ``a showdown.''
In the end, the squad from the FDLE and the Department of Children & Families backed down, apparently concerned about confronting local police outside the hospice.
''We told them that unless they had the judge with them when they came, they were not going to get in,'' said a source with the local police.
''The FDLE called to say they were en route to the scene,'' said an official with the city police who requested anonymity. ``When the sheriff's department and our department told them they could not enforce their order, they backed off.''
The incident,known only to a few and related to The Herald by three different sources involved in Thursday's events, underscores the intense emotion and murky legal terrain that the Schiavo case has created. It also shows that agencies answering directly to Gov. Jeb Bush had planned to use a wrinkle in Florida law that would have allowed them to legally get around the judge's order. The exception in the law allows public agencies to freeze a judge's order whenever an agency appeals it.
CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS
Participants in the high-stakes test of wills, who spoke with The Herald on the condition of anonymity, said they believed the standoff could ultimately have led to a constitutional crisis and a confrontation between dueling lawmen.
''There were two sets of law enforcement officers facing off, waiting for the other to blink,'' said one official with knowledge of Thursday morning's activities.
In jest, one official said local police discussed ``whether we had enough officers to hold off the National Guard.''
''It was kind of a showdown on the part of the locals and the state police,'' the official said. ``It it was not too long after that Jeb Bush was on TV saying that, evidently, he doesn't have as much authority as people think.''
State officials on Friday vigorously denied the notion that any ''showdown'' occurred.
''DCF directed no such action,'' said agency spokeswoman Zoraya Suarez.
Said Bush spokesman Jacob DiPietre: ``There was no showdown. We were ready to go. We didn't want to break the law. There was a process in place and we were following the process. The judge had an order and we were following the order.''
Tim Caddell, a spokesman for the city of Pinellas Park, declined to discuss Thursday's events.
SHELTER FOR SCHIAVO
The developments that set Thursday morning's events in motion began the previous afternoon, when the governor and DCF chief Lucy Hadi held an impromptu news conference to announce they were considering sheltering Schiavo under the state's adult protection law. DCF has been besieged, officials say, by thousands of calls alleging Schiavo is the victim of abuse or neglect.
Alerted by the Bush administration that Schiavo might be on her way to their facility, officials at Morton Plant Hospital went to court themselves Wednesday, asking Circuit Judge George Greer, who ordered the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube last week, what to do.
''It's an extraordinary situation,'' said Beth Hardy, a hospital spokeswoman. ``I don't think any of us has seen anything like it. Ever.''
Greer signed an order Wednesday afternoon forbidding DCF from ''taking possession of Theresa Marie Schiavo or removing her'' from the hospice. He directed ''each and every and singular sheriff of the state of Florida'' to enforce his order.
But Thursday, at 8:15 a.m., DCF lawyers appealed Greer's order to judges at the Second District Court of Appeal in Lakeland.
That created the window of time to seize Schiavo. When DCF filed its appeal, it effectively froze the judge's Wednesday order. It took nearly three hours before the judge found out and canceled the automatic stay, shortly before 11 a.m.
Administrators of the 72-bed hospice, who have endured a withering siege of their facility by protesters since Greer ordered Schiavo's feeding tube removed on March 18, declined to discuss Thursday morning's events in any detail.
''I don't really know, or pretend to know, the specifics of what is going on behind the scenes,'' said Mike Bell, a spokesman for Hospice of the Florida Suncoast, which operates Woodside.
DCF INTENTIONS
According to sources, DCF intended to take Schiavo to Morton Plant Hospital, where her feeding tube had been reinserted in 2003 following a previous judicial order allowing its removal. But hospice officials were aware that the hospital was not likely to perform surgery to reinsert the tube without an order from Greer.
''People knew that taking [Schiavo] did not equate with immediate reinsertion of the feeding tube,'' a source said. ``Hospital officials were working with their legal counsel and their advisors, trying to figure out which order superseded which, and what action they should take.''
Hardy, the hospital spokeswoman, said she does not believe the hospital was made aware Thursday morning that DCF and state police planned to bring Schiavo in. ''We were not aware of that three-hour period,'' she said. ``It's not a discussion we even had, really.''
George Felos, Michael Schiavo's attorney, said he does not think DCF officials knew of the window of opportunity they had created until well after they filed their appeal.
''Frankly, I don't believe when they filed their notice of appeal they realized that that gave them an automatic stay,'' Felos said. ``When we filed our motion to vacate the automatic stay . . . they realized they had a short window of opportunity and they wanted to extend that as long as they could.
``I believe that as soon as DCF knew they had an opportunity, they were mobilizing to take advantage of it, without a doubt.''
Herald staff writers Phil Long and Marc Caputo contributed to this story.
________________________________________
© 2005 Herald.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miami.com
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/11233240.htm
Ignoring polls, CNN's Kagan, Greenfield assessed public opinion in Schiavo case
In coverage of the Terri Schiavo case, CNN host Daryn Kagan and senior analyst Jeff Greenfield made sweeping assertions about public opinion of the case that are undermined by polling data.
Following footage on the March 24 edition of CNN's Live Today of protestors urging the restoration of Schiavo's feeding tube, Kagan claimed that there are "a lot of people in this country agreeing with them that this would be a death without dignity." Kagan further claimed that there are "[s]trong, divided opinions across the country."
In a report on CNN's Live From... on the impact of the widely aired videotapes of Schiavo, Greenfield stated, "Whatever the medical facts, it is not hard to understand why the average person, looking at those images [of Schiavo], sees them as at least raising doubt." Greenfield's remark followed footage of one of the doctors hired by Schiavo's parents claiming that Schiavo is not in a persistent vegetative state.
Kagan and Greenfield might have given viewers a more complete picture had they noted that those who support Michael Schiavo's decision to remove his wife's feeding tube significantly outnumber those who oppose it. Public polls on the Schiavo case have not specifically addressed either assertion made by Kagan or Greenfield -- whether the public feels Schiavo's death would be "death with dignity" or believes that she is in a persistent vegetative state. But polls do indicate that on the case's central issue -- the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube -- the public is not as divided or as conflicted as Kagan and Greenfield suggest:
• In a March 22 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, 52 percent of respondents agreed with that day's court decision to leave Schiavo's feeding tube unattached; 39 percent disagreed.
• In a March 21-22 CBS News poll, 61 percent of respondents thought Schiavo's feeding tube should have been removed, while 28 percent thought it should have remained in place. Further, 66 percent did not think the feeding tube should be restored while 27 percent thought it should. Asked if Congress and the president should intervene in the Schiavo case, 82 percent said no; 13 percent said yes. Even among evangelicals, 68 percent felt that the president and Congress should stay out of the matter.
• In a March 20 ABC News poll, 63 percent of respondents said they support the March 18 court decision to remove Schiavo's feeding tube while 28 percent were opposed.
From the March 24 edition of CNN's Live Today:
KAGAN: We've been listening in to both spokespeople and protestors there, outside the hospice in Pinellas Park, Florida, where Terri Schiavo is right now, expressing some very strong views, views that are controversial. A lot of people in this country agreeing with them that this would be a death without dignity, also saying allegations that Michael Schiavo has abused his wife. We need to point out in the interest of fairness that those allegations have been presented in court a number of times and not accepted by the courts of Florida. Also, there are those who believe that Michael Schiavo is trying to give his wife death with dignity and carrying out her wishes. Strong, divided opinions across this country.
From the March 24 edition of CNN's Live From... :
GREENFIELD: If there's any doubt at all, the argument goes, you must resolve it on behalf of life. Whatever the medical facts, it is not hard to understand why the average person, looking at those images [of Schiavo], sees them as at least raising doubt.
— N.C.
Posted to the web on Friday March 25, 2005 at 2:03 PM EST
Copyright © 2004-2005 Media Matters for America. All rights reserved.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200503250004
Shelter from the Storm
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 28 March 2005
I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail,
Poisoned in the bushes and blown out on the trail,
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn.
"Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm."
-- Bob Dylan
I attempted at the outset of the month to encapsulate the entire history of the Bush administration in one sentence. The frightening part isn't how long the sentence turned out to be, or how damnably infuriating the content of the sentence turned out to be. The frightening part is the simple fact that the sentence is incomplete. The online satire magazine 'The Onion' ran an article a few weeks ago titled “Liberals Suffer Outrage Overload." As with many Onion headlines, there was more truth than fiction in the words.
It's the hypocrisy, stupid. It goes on and on and on, and it is exhausting in the extreme to consider, much less address and attack. Lately, the hypocrisy needle has been pegged over into the red. Leave it to the Republican majority to take an important issue, an issue filled with questions about medical ethics, the rights of the disabled people, the rights of spouses, the place of federalism in a national debate and the simple value of human life, and transmogrify it into a ghoulish circus sideshow best used to score political points and do a little fundraising on the side.
Yes, I am talking about Mrs. Schiavo, again. We just can't seem to get away from this story, for in many ways, it encapsulates so much of what has gone so wrong in this country and with this government. Consider:
• The Republicans, party of states rights, have bulldozed Florida law and the basic underpinnings of Federalism to take a hand in this matter. Florida law allows a spouse to stand surrogate when medical decisions of life and death are required, but since sticking to their states-rights guns would not give the conservatives the outcome they desire, they betrayed a central ethic of their political philosophy without batting an eye;
• The Republicans, party of the sanctity of marriage, have taken over the role of husband in the process of knocking over their Federalist principles. Gay people getting married is a horrid affront to the sanctity of marriage, but the United States Congress finds no problem elbowing itself into the kitchen-table decisions made between a husband and a wife;
• The Republicans, party of moral values, are enjoying an incredible fundraising opportunity in flogging the Schiavo story. One cannot swing one's cat by the tail without striking a plea for financial assistance from the far-right Republican-allied groups that have turned one family's plight into a river of cash;
• Republicans, party of the 'Culture of Life,' have not one word to say about Sun Hudson. Hudson was a five-month-old baby born in Texas with a genetic disorder that required him to be sustained on machines. Thanks to a law signed by then-Governor Bush in 1999, Texas hospitals are allowed to remove patients from machines if they deem there is no hope, and if the patient's family cannot afford to sustain care. Sun Hudson was removed from his machines two weeks ago, over the thunderous outrage of his mother, and he died. Congressional Republicans were nowhere to be found when the life left his little body;
• Republicans, party of Tom DeLay, have not one word to say about DeLay's staggering double standard in this matter. In 1988, DeLay's father was injured in an accident and left in a condition quite similar to that of Mrs. Schiavo. DeLay sat in private counsel with his family, heard the verdict of the doctors that his father would never recover, considered the stated wishes of his father that he did not want to be left to live sustained by machines should such a thing come to pass, and decided to let the man pass. Had a mob of self-righteous Congressional Democrats tried to batter their way into the decision-making process of the DeLay family in 1988, Tom would have likely attacked them with his bug-extermination equipment, and he would have been fully justified in doing so.
Etc.
Ball all of that up with the fact that these are the same cretins whose respect for life in all forms does not extend to the 200,000 or so human beings, a number that includes 1,528 American soldiers, whose lives have been snuffed out in this illegal Iraq war. Add to the pile the tens of thousands of arms, legs, faces and hopes that have been blasted away in this thing, and you are left contemplating the Humvee-sized hole that sits in the center of any 'Culture of Life' argument they would dare put forth.
Every aspect of this Schiavo matter - the hypocrisy and doublespeak, the forgetfulness of casualties that do not help in a political argument, the betrayal of long-standing rhetorical ethics, the rank profiteering, the avoidance of discussion that is in any way meaningful - can be similarly found in the manner in which these people have conducted themselves in this invasion and occupation.
On most days, I would use this laundry list of wretchedness as a rallying cry. Take to the streets, I would say, make your voices heard, scream and shout, get on your feet and do something. This time, however, a different approach seems appropriate. Keeping track of all this stuff, listing the innumerable ways we have been betrayed singularly and en masse, finding ways to put a stop to it, can take a grievous toll.
The time has come, perhaps, to do something else.
Two years ago, on the 2nd of May 2003, George W. Bush donned a flight outfit and landed dramatically on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. He stood before the assembled personnel, quoted Scripture, and declared the war in Iraq to be all but over beneath a banner that proclaimed MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
The anniversary of that day is right around the corner, and a group called 'Mission NOT Accomplished' is organizing a way to mark the occasion. They wish to call attention to the passing of this dubious anniversary, and to keep what happened on that day in the forefront of our national consciousness. Their mission statement reads in part:
On May 2, 2005, We the People have a plan to remember that day, and to keep remembering it until we bring home our troops and begin to repair our damaged relationship with the rest of the world. So great is the magnitude of such an undertaking that many Americans have given in to despair, and many say that it is not possible to rouse the American public to needed action to take back our country. This day will mark a sabbatical from jobs, shopping, television programming, answering e-mail and surfing the Internet. No Walmart shopping, no eating at McDonalds, in fact, no shopping at all, except for absolute necessities.
While we are relaxing and remembering the significance of this day, we are not participating in supporting the corporate structure which feeds the regime currently occupying the White House. We will use this day to visit Veterans' Hospitals, take flowers, gifts, carrot cake, poetry to the people who have given their health and future wellbeing, in many cases, to what they believed was a good cause but turned out to be a lie. Even those who do not see it that way deserve our compassion, our love, and our practical assistance.
It's a good a day as any to take some shelter from the storm.
________________________________________
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.' Join the discussions at his blog forum.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/032805Y.shtml