Bill O'Reilly and the Problem of CRAP-loaded Propaganda

The image of Bill O'Reilly is from here. 

[CRAP is an acronym standing for Corporate Racist Atrocious Patriarchy]

Bill O'Reilly wants your mind.

Here's a synopsis of what he wants everyone to believe, or at least tries to convince others of:

The poor are a threat to the rich, in that they allegedly exploit the rich to get things they don't deserve or aren't entitled to. Capitalism is good. Being a billionaire is enviable and desirable.

Undocumented workers, immigrants, and refugees, particularly if from Mexico or Syria--not of European descent--are a threat to the employment and rule of white/U.S./European working and middle class people, and to mythic ideas about such political/regional heritages. And, again, 'they' exploit the system to garner advantages they are supposedly not entitled to and that ruling classes supposedly do not have.

Black and Brown people allegedly threaten the relative well-being and entitlements of whites.

Women are allegedly threat to men, sexually, economically, socially, and politically. What they threaten is the dominant standing of men and unbridled sexually violent, abusive, harassing, or coercive actions of men.

Islam is allegedly purportedly evil. There are variations on this theme. Muslims allegedly threaten the safety and well-being of non-Muslims, globally. Arab Muslims are allegedly aligned with extremist terrorist's ideologies and practices. The Koran allegedly only promotes violence, especially against the West.

LGBT people are presented, generally, as a joke or source of entertainment for het folks. The socially conservative anti-queer perspective is that we are also a threat to the alleged sanctity of dominant institutions, both religious and secular. Especially marriage. We also pose a risk of recruiting, sexually abusing, or morally corrupting youth.

The globe and all its life is not threatened by corporate environmental destruction.

Now, for some truths:

The rich don't work to increase their wealth. They invest. They don't work to maintain their lives; they hire people for that. The rich exploit corporate capitalism in every way conceivable, through tax loopholes, inheritance, off-shore bank accounts, shared awareness of how the system works, using social connections, arranged marriage, and inheritance laws to hoard wealth. The resources made available to some poor people are paltry and punishing, and are paid for by the labor of other poor people who support the economy rich people exploit. The rich do not generously fund a healthy economy. They greedily ruin it for everyone except themselves.

This economy always has been built on and rests heavily on the unpaid or exploitively paid labor of people who are not white. Work conditions for poorer people are intended to be brutal, exhausting, and dehumanizing. Nothing has changed. Black, Brown, and Indigenous people are under attack and continuously are threatened with genocide, which is on-going.

Men's wealth depends on white women's and women of color's unpaid or exploitively paid labor. Men's identities depend on sexual access to, and abuse of, women. Women of color

Islam is a rich complex religious and multi-cultural practice and system of belief rooted in history, like Christianity and Judaism.

LGBT people present alternatives to the dehumanizing reality of heterosexist existence. We are targeted for harassment and murder, particularly and disproportionately when Black and/or poor.

Corporate exploitation of the Earth is the practice of ecocide.

What this reveals to me is something far too many of us in the U.S. may already know: it perpetuates the most typical narratives of this dominant culture. But with particular focus on perpetuating and further entrenching xenophobia, racism, misogyny, and heterosexual normalcy.

Not only that, but such media outlets and popular spokespeople are engaged in very well-crafted propaganda techniques which include:
Panic mongering
Character assassination
Projection
Rewriting history and reinforcing false cultural myths
Scapegoating and 'othering'
Naming resistance to oppression as being dangerous violence or terrorism
Naming U.S. militarized foreign and domestic policy as necessary and peace-making
Bullying of anti-status quo truth-tellers and overt hostility to truths that undermine the status quo
An assault on higher education as a means of truth-gathering; a rejection of academic 'experts' as only biased by liberalism
Diversion and avoidance of substantive engaged subjective sharing of experience and theory-naming

For more on that, see here: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/1964:fourteen-propaganda-techniques-fox-news-uses-to-brainwash-americans

I conclude that Bill O'Reilly is thuggish and bullying propaganda-pusher, along with all Right-wing corporate media and extremist Christian and Jewish media and spokespeople. Their terrorism goes unnamed as such by their media, not surprisingly. They perpetrate all significant manifestations of Earthly evil.

What is Women's Courage When Men Define the Terms?

image is from here

Over at Shakesville, I just read Melissa's post "Women are Brave", which you may link back to by clicking *here*. Rather than post a comment on a feminist blog, I'll put my comment here in my own space. I've learned that a male voice isn't always appropriate, and is often enough unwelcome, in spaces designed to be woman-centered.

Her post led me to think back to something I once read by Andrea Dworkin on the subject. I did some searching and found Andrea Dworkin's chapter in her book Our Blood, called "The Sexual Politics of Fear and Courage". A scanned version of the book is available to be read as a pdf document (or may be downloaded) *here*.

As I reflect on Melissa's blog, Dworkin's work, and on the purgatory of contemporary U.S. society, I am struck with the degree to white men define the terms so many of us live by. Inside a white male supremacist system, "courage" is traditionally and ubiquitously understood to be masculine in nature, belonging to men; a capacity understood patriarchally to be inherently male and associated with strength. Fear is understood to be feminine in nature, the "natural" province of women, and is associated with weakness. For men and boys to be what men determine to be "weak", including by being afraid, is--so the status quo society says--to be less manly and more like a woman or girl. For women to be courageous and strong as men define it, is to be unwomanly and more like a man. If she isn't punished for being "brave" in the patriarchal definition of the word, she might gain temporary male status.

In Melissa's incisive account of a stand-up comedy club, I find examples of how men define not only terms but also act them out in social spaces. At the club, a combination of men's sexual violence against women, including the threat of violence and "jovial" harassment and objectification, ensures that women aren't likely to be too unafraid. As Dworkin has stated, "By the time we are women, fear is as familiar to us as air. It is our element. We live in it, we inhale it, we exhale it, and most of the time we do not even notice it." Curiously, the only men I know personally who seem to have this deep-seated fear-orientation to the world are male survivors of child sexual abuse. While women do, in fact, live with courage and bravery as they negotiate many challenges and obstacles, men do their best and worst to make sure fear, in women, is never completely irrational or unwarranted.

The misogynist violence that men direct at women ensures that those men aren't seen--by other woman-hating men--as too weak. Rape is one of many acts in which males may cast off their supposed weakness and exercise patriarchal power by terrorising and violating women. War is another realm where men get to be brave and heroic by doing violence and 'conquering' fear, against the bodies, minds, and spirits of threatened people. Military war, when perpetrated by the Western world, is also the place where imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism, and colonialism are acted out in patriarchal terms. Invasion is always sexualised in the male supremacist imagination.

It's going to be interesting to see how U.S. female soldiers in military combat are regarded by male soldiers: will the women be seen as heroic, like the men? Will any individual woman in military combat be treated more like one of the guys? Or will her patriarchally-defined courage be seen as tainted by her gender? (Sort of the way bigoted straight men argue that marriage is tainted if queers--defined by dominant straight male society as feminine men and masculine women--can do it too.) A serious concern is that any woman in military combat may be additionally vulnerable to rape by male soldiers who want to be sure she doesn't believe she's equal to men. I say additionally because we know this is already happening endemically and systematically to civilian girls and women, and to women troops off the battlefield. Or, rather, off the battlefield that men name as such, for many private and social spaces men occupy are battlefields for women, such as the bed, the home, the workplace, and the street.

We also know that U.S. male soldiers practice rape against the women and girls of invaded countries, usually populated by people of color: even a partial list of such countries invaded and/or occupied by U.S. troops or covert operations is long: Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Guatemala, El Salvador, Grenada, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan. Taken together, the body count is in the many hundreds of thousands; how many of those murder victims were also victims of rape is impossible to say. It was likely to be grossly under-reported or not reported at all: all forms of men's sexual violence is under-reported because terrorising people and forcing submission works to silence and shame them. If we leave out all other European countries that made conquest and occupation of other sovereign nations a national pastime, and only focus on Britain's imperial invasions, we are left with very few countries untouched by brutal, white imperial/patriarchal force. (Source for that comment is *here*.)

What we may notice internationally in the West is that when European white women are in seats of typically and traditionally white male power, they sometimes argue, over the disdainful shouts of men, for equality not supremacy. See, for example: To End Extreme Poverty, Let’s Try Ending Extreme Wealth or this: This bold equality push is just what we needed. In 1997.

When we consider the politics of many prominent, activist women of color, we see comprehensive intersectional analysis and proposals for global peace and justice. See, for example: Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development, by Vandana Shiva, and The Winona LaDuke Reader: A Collection of Essential Writings.

A flip side of this issue of gender and courage is seen when we try and make heroes of  men who preached against many forms of violence, such as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or John Lennon. This is not at all to say either man was non-violent historically in their own lives. At least John Lennon spoke honestly about his abuses as such and endeavored to be a different kind of man in his later years. At least Dr. King set an honorable example of how to love one's enemy while holding them accountable for their crimes against humanity. But when such men advocate peace-not-war, or equality with women, they become vulnerable to being stigmatised 'feminine'.

Referencing Melissa's post, it says a great deal that men on stage doing comedy or men in the audience, need to reinforce and verbalize the worst aspects of male supremacist/patriarchal practice, and in particular to affirm a phallic identity. I admire the woman who did her own comedy, successfully, disproving so much that is taught in a racist patriarchal society like ours about women's power to create something new that is solely hers while deeply shared, in the midst of a culture of sexual predation and cultural appropriation. More power to her. More power to all women fighting for justice and equality.

Despite the saying that sits atop this post, liberally redefining terms won't shift society's political hierarchies. Many of us strive to make language express the complexities of who we are. As I listen to those singly or multiply oppressed, I hear again and again how difficult it is to make the dominant language speak their truths. It is courageous, isn't it, to endure and survive rape and warfare? I'd say so. But will patriarchal men ever see the courage of it, or only determine her survival to be a residual sign of his weakness?

However we maneuver meanings and memes, such effort is insufficient if our goal is liberation. The means and machinery of gynocidal straight male supremacy and genocidal and imperialist white supremacy must be shut down; new systems and institutions fostering equality and non-violence must become the status quo. Only then will new definitions have rooting and resonance beyond small, non-dominant groups of people. And only then will whole truths be spoken about life under siege, without interruption and mistranslation by the former masters.

Referring back to the phrasing in the image above, I'd say: "When peace-work is routinely seen as courageous, and war-making is popularly viewed as the work of cowards, we will know substantive, life-affirming change has occurred."

And when women of color define the terms we all live by, and govern globally, I will know we have radically purged ourselves of purgatory, razed hell, and brought heaven down to Earth.

CRAPPY HALLOWEEN: The Today Show, Brian Williams, Rock Center, and their collective CROCK OF CRAP

The CRAP-loaded media has been pissing me off a lot lately. I'll highlight a few reasons why.



Watch at 2:20 into this clip from the Today Show. How many things are disgustingly wrong with dressing a white-appearing woman and a chihuahua in "Indian Chief" costumes?


The Today Show cast, writers, and producers, and the writers and producers for Brian Williams and Rock Center are collectively nothing more than shills and sold-out vehicles for the Racist-Misogynist Right-wing and for ecocidal Big Oil.

On the Today Show on Halloween, there was an unbelievably blatant display of white supremacist racism. There was a segment on costumes for human and dog, and it was presented as a fashion show. Much to my disgust and horror (not the kind one might expect on Halloween), a white-appearing woman and a dog she was carrying came out dressed in what I can only refer to as a perverse native Amerikkkan costume: feathered headdress on each of them and a “Pocahontas”-type dress on the woman. And no one—not Matt Lauer or anyone else bothering to comment on how inappropriate, hurtful, and racist such an exploitive display of religious and cultural callousness and cruelty is. In case Matt and other NBC news and entertainment cronies are not aware of it, we live in a country where genocide against American Indians is on-going, and one of the ways it occurs is by appropriating and exploiting Native American cultures and religions; also by honoring with holidays the genocidal rapist savage named Christopher Columbus and by celebrating the beginning of the end of life as it was lived for thousands of years on Turtle Island, when Murderous Settlers sat down with Wampanoag Indians in "New England". See the following link for more:

http://www.uaine.org/dom.htm

We are also being fed the most racist-misogynist story--an endless story about how missing white girls and women matter, and missing or murdered girls and women of color do not:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/295168/nbc-today-show-investigator-takes-tour-of-missing-baby%E2%80%99s-home

Let's read a report about all the stories that are "too dark" for the Today Show and the NBC Nightly News to report on:

http://madamenoire.com/79158/no-one-misses-the-missing-black-girls/


Also on NBC is a new "news" program hosted by the nightly news anchor for NBC, Brian Williams. It is called “Rock Center” for Rockefeller Center in mid-town Manhattan. Let's keep in mind that Rockefellers helped make Corporate Capitalism the sleazy, greedy, unjust system it is. The Rockefellers have been the largest beneficiaries of the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank. The Fed makes damn sure the Filthy Rich stay ever filthier and even richer. For more, please see here: http://www.apfn.net/doc-100_bankruptcy27.htm

The first story of the hour was about there is an economic oasis in this miserable-for-the-middle-class economy. (This is an economy and economic system that has been miserable and murderous for working poor people for far longer than three years.) The media loves to toss us bones and pretend it is good news. In this case it's worse than that. There is no oasis, only the opportunity to make Big Oil Execs and their Shareholders ever more filthy rich than they already are. In a small town in Montana fracking is taking over, destroying the Earth, using up and polluting water, and turning the land of the Black Feet into wasteland. It is being funded by Big Oil and we are led to believe “it's all good” there. There's absolutely nothing sustainable about what's going on. It's same old ecocidal, genocidal atrocity packaged up NBC with by Brian Williams as the friendly-faced deliverer of more bad news that he actually believes is good. White people get to move there and get jobs doing awful things. They may get a house for a home out of it. When oil is no longer in the rocks there, the economy will die and the area will likely become a Ghost Town.

Let's see how sleazily the story-writers for Brian Williams and the very white Harry Smith evade responsibility for the systemic problems with the US globalised economy, which murders millions worldwide and is utterly unsustainable. Instead of responsible reporting, we are told that all any one needs is "opportunity" which is code for "Our immoral economic system will not offer you any meaningful way to live; but if you're privileged enough, or are willing to do work that most people cannot do, you may get the chance to earn enough money to stay in debt for the rest of your life."


http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/boomtown-north-dakota-town-becomes-hot-job-market/60kg0iy?cpkey=70e0703b-3ba2-434e-aabb-1c56c22aecf9%7c%7c%7c%7c

See, for the unacknowledged future of the story above:

From Boomtown to Ghost Town

Overview:

In order to fully understand the geographic concept of natural resource use, students should learn about the ways that resource extraction affects the physical and human landscape. In this lesson, they will discuss how a specific economic activity in a region can facilitate the creation of towns, which often turn into ghost towns if the economic activity ends.

On the same program, xenophobia, racism, and misogyny combined forces to produce a vile segment on the danger of Chinese women coming the US to give birth, so that their child is US-born and entitled to all that the US has to offer, such as a failing (and murderous) economic system, gross and rampant racism, wholesale destruction of the Earth, and heteropatriarchal practices that the US Right thinks are good for what ails Amerikkka. While it was noted that not many women from China are actually doing what the report said Chinese women are doing, it was also noted, in a way that made me think FOX News and NBC were now one and the same, that any and every incident of this occurring was an outrage and must be stopped.

From *the Asian Nation website*: 

Empress Tsu-his ruled China from 1898 to 1908 from the Dragon Throne. The New York Times described her as "the wicked witch of the East, a reptilian dragon lady who had arranged the poisoning, strangling, beheading, or forced suicide of anyone who had ever challenged her autocratic rule." The shadow of the Dragon Lady -- with her cruel, perverse, and inhuman ways -- continued to darken encounters between Asian women and the West they flocked to for refuge.

Far from being predatory, many of the first Asian women to come to the U.S. in the mid-1800s were disadvantaged Chinese women, who were tricked, kidnapped, or smuggled into the country to serve the predominantly male Chinese community as prostitutes. The impression that all Asian women were prostitutes, born at that time, "colored the public perception of, attitude toward, and action against all Chinese women for almost a century," writes historian Sucheng Chan.

Police and legislators singled out Chinese women for special restrictions "not so much because they were prostitutes as such (since there were also many White prostitutes around) but because -- as Chinese -- they allegedly brought in especially virulent strains of venereal diseases, introduced opium addiction, and enticed White boys into a life of sin," Chan also writes. Chinese women who were not prostitutes ended up bearing the brunt of the Chinese exclusion laws that passed in the late 1800s.

Racist-Misogynist Corporate greed and exploitation of the poor, working class, and middle class is apparently not an outrage to The Filthy Rich. Neither is the destruction of the Earth. Why doesn't Brian Williams report on the history and present of forced sterilisation of women of color in the US? Why doesn't the CROCK Center report on how Right-wing Republican cockholes work so diligently to control US women of color's and white women's reproductive organs and choices? Would such reports reveal that it is not Chinese women who exploit and abuse our system, but rather Filthy Rich White US Men?

What “offends” the big white cockholes who run this country is a very few Chinese women coming here. Last time I checked—and thanks to a friend of mine for reminding me of this—the US is heavily indebted to China because The Filthy Rich have run what was an apparently functional (while completely dysfunctional and deadly) economic system into the ground, where it now must blow water into rocks to get oil and call that “good”.

Why doesn't Brian get any other point of view—utilising all the many news reporters and newscasters he boasts will be appearing on the program over the weeks—on things like fracking, the harm of Big Oil to people, animals, and the Earth, and xenophobic racism and misogyny? Is Brian not able to do this? Is he just a puppet for his show's corporate producers. (Yes, he is.) Brian Williams is not allowed to say anything at all that might threaten the profits of those he serves—those who have bought his soul and who own his spirit.

If he does have a soul that is not thoroughly possessed by NBC Execs and Shareholders, then let him do a half-hour interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva on all that is fucked up about fracking and Big Oil's solutions to economic problems faced by the middle class. The sad truth is that even if he wanted to do it, his bosses wouldn't let him. You won't see Dr. Shiva on Rock Center any time soon. The only Asian women you'll see are the ones filling up a propaganda segment pretending it is Chinese women, not white US men, ripping us off and taking advantage of our allegedly moral and honorable and good systems of governance and commerce.

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/born-in-the-u-s-a-chinese-women-escape-one-child-policy/6c5e6t7

NBC wants us to believe that everything out of the friendly-faced Brian Williams' mouth is truthful and responsible, when most of what he reports is neither.

Shame on you, Brian Williams and Harry Smith--and, especially, on your writers and producers--for misleading the US public and doing so to fatten the wallets and pad the off-shore bank accounts of the Filthy Rich. Does NBC stand for Nothing But CRAP?


(Note: CRAP: corporate racist atrocious patriarchy)

Thoughts as the Occupation of U.S. Corporate Public Spaces by Liberal, Progressive, and Radical Protestors continues

What is above is from Democracy Now!

I have also been watching the predictably stupid the self-serving commentary by White Conservatives with a microphone in Corporate Media. And how those bought and sold-out spokespeople serve the 1% well, without sincere, humane regard for anyone less privileged than they are. CNN, not too surprisingly, is rivaling FOX in its propagandistic pro-patriarchal patter. I hope you keep them honest, Anderson Cooper.

I've heard some very thoughtful, concerned, and compassionate remarks from demonstrators and protesters around Wall Street and across the United Rapes of Amerikkka, mostly from people WHM supremacist Corporate Media will not allow to the microphone.

When hard-working while unpaid people speak of the need for "jobs" I hope that there is activist reflection on what those jobs ought to serve to do: should they come into existence, will they support Western Corporate Capitalist racist-misogynist-heterosexist values and objectives?

I hope, against great evidence, that city police forces break with their bosses and start organising with protestors to hold dirty white-collar criminals accountable for their war crimes and economic crimes against the 99%.

I hope cooperative housing, barter economies, and other pro-community anti-corporate work and jobs are vocally identified and supported. While we all struggle to survive in various ways, we don't need to prioritise life-support to a system of gross destruction colloquially known as "Western Civilisation". As one pro-Indigenist slogan reads: "U.S. OUT OF NORTH AMERICA!"

I hope that once and for all, U.S. terrorism against Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous people is named as such, and that Western Corporate Media is held to account for perpetuating an erroneous idea that self-determination, anti-colonial activism, anti-imperialist organising, and ideosyncratic aggression by people who aren't white constitutes "terrorism". It isn't nearly as terrifying as the well-funded, systematic, and on-going aggression perpetrated by rich whites and men, and their thugs and cronies, all over the world.

I hope it is kept in mind and protest action that "class warfare" is what is being waged daily by the richest 1% against the 99%, nationally and internationally. And that getting more power in a murderous, ecocidal system, while often necessary, isn't a humane or sustainable project.

And I hope that out of these protests a new radical anti-heterosexism perspective is fostered and nurtured which doesn't pretend "gender" is  just difference without dominance--by men against women and everyone male not deemed appropriately masculinist in behavior.

And I hope that "peace" is understood to be more than an absence of Empire-reinforcing warfare, gross militarism fused to a sociopathic form of patriotism, although surely it is at least that. And I hope that it surfaces among the white- and male-dominated groups that it is and will continue to be women of color leading us all to a better present and future. Those of us who are either white or male can work to promote and support the activism of Asian, Indigenous, Black, and Brown feminists across the globe. And to assist in the non-imperialistic flourishing of their values and practices.

What I hope doesn't get lost is the perspectives and prescriptions from the most marginalised and oppressed people in the U.S. and in places that U.S. economic domestic and foreign policy negatively impacts. I hope microphones are permanently installed in places that have been completely silenced by CRAP-loaded Corporate Media, including by Indigenous activists addressing how corporate capitalism, white supremacy, and euro-patterned patriarchal practices combine forces to continue a hundreds-years-old genocide. And by women across class and race who speak to the on-going millennia-old gynocide. I expect, however, that those two groups specifically will be marginalised in progressive white- and male-dominated activist venues. I'd love to be wrong about that.

I close, for now, with this, from Democracy Now!:

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, and David Cameron, Prime Minister of the UK, are Conservative White Het Male Supremacists

photo of Boris Johnson and David Cameron is from here

Violence erupting among young poor Black men in London is a necessary response to all the violence against the Black community in England, committed by the capitalists, media, politicians, economic theorists, and military.

Anyone who argues otherwise is perpetuating lethal anti-Black activism in the form of well-organised systems of racist oppression and human destruction.

When will the racist thugs among the white het male-dominated police forces, white het male-dominated political leaders, WHM supremacist media (including that owned and operated by Rupert Murdoch), be held to account for the violence against Black people that they routinely and commonly commit?

Globalised Western corporate capitalism has produced unprecedented horrific poverty among people of color, grotesquely unjust and unearned wealth among whites, and the disparity between the two groups necessitates violence against the WHM supremacist State. Nothing short of violent retaliation will get anyone's attention. Nothing short of violent retaliation will get the media's attention. That violence by the poor will always be seen as more dangerous than the on-going violence of the white rich against the poor is something that is a fact of life in a white supremacist nation-state.

We see the same thing in the US and in every other country where male supremacy, white supremacy, and corporate capitalism are ideologically and institutionally fused to one another in the behavior and values of white wealthy mass murderers of the poor. We must keep in mind that multiracial regions globally, regionally, and in so many places locally where people of color live with (or near) whites, “the poor” are always disproportionately children and women of color. The poor may also be men of color, white women, and white men and children. But the poverty of whites is a by-product of racist/misogynist corporate capitalism: it is very specifically and deliberately designed to commit genocide and gynocide without media and elected politicians ever bothering to notice. 

"Corporate destruction of Mother Earth most censored issue in Indian country", by Brenda Norrell

Most Censored in Indian Country: The Corporate Polluters

Corporate destruction of Mother Earth most censored issue in Indian country

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
Photo: Marisa Joseph, Yankton Sioux, stands with Gerald Danforth, Oneida Wisconsin, before the solar panels and wind generator providing power to the Earthcycles. Photo Brenda Norrell.

NEW TOWN, North Dakota -- The 16th Annual Protecting Mother Earth Gathering revealed the most censored issues in Indian country, including the corporate polluters who are protected and promoted, under the guise of economic development. From Peabody Coal in Arizona, to BP on the Gulf Coast, and tar sands profiteers in Alberta, Canada, corporations destroy the land, air and water.

The Gathering of the Indigenous Environmental Network attracted Native Americans from throughout the United States, First Nations in Canada, Wixirika from Mexico and Maya from Guatemala, July 28-31.

For the rest of this post, please click *here*, at Censored News. Thank you, Brenda, for uncensoring the news.

A Few Thoughts About Speech and Freedom

image is from here

There have been many conversations that were begun here but not finished. The most glaringly recent example is what appeared to be a good discussion with MRA James Huff, on politics and reality. But he decided to not show up for the rest of it after an initial engagement here.

He didn't send any email explaining why he was leaving the conversation: James, if you read this, please let me know why you decided to duck out in such an irresponsible way. For all the free speech rights you enjoy, you've become shockingly silent. Why is that? (I hope it's not due to family illness; but if it were, you'd surely have been able to let me know that.)

This is typical, in my experience, of men who fight for men to have more not less rights, more not less power, more not less social advantages and entitlements. Men speak up when it suits their own interests but get quiet in the face of sustained challenge to the patriarchal power they have and enjoy exploiting.

In my country, rich white publicly heterosexual men are fighting tooth and nail to make sure none of 'em are taxed one bit more than they already are--including taxed just the way that poor and working class people are taxed; that is, without loopholes, without corporate welfare, without access to the meaningful and fair use of laws, lawyers, and all manner of economic systemic help that benefits the rich while punishing (and never privileging) the poor. There are actually ads on television from Big Oil stating that taxing Big Oil and other mega-industrial energy companies would be a bad thing for "us". Why? Why is it bad for us if they pay what they owe, just like every poor US American? How does reducing national debt work against the interests of poor and working people? (It might mean that the interest rates on the debts poor and working class people carry would be lowered, after all.) Are energy conglomerates' wealthy stockholders and CEOs more important human beings? Are the rich entitled to better, less economically terrifying lives than poor people? (I know that the wealthy believe this, but is it right, just, or true?)

In my country, those who state that a man or men have raped them are immediately accused of lying and are made to prove they were raped. Men who lie about never having raped anyone ever don't get scrutinised by media and the public; they are not ever made to prove they didn't commit rape, once or many times. To speak out about rape is to be immediately accused by white male-owned, white male-dominated media of committing the "crime" of speaking out against rapists.

In my country, white, het, and male supremacy are so intimately and intricately embedded in values, practices, and social structures that even to state opposition to those values and practices, whether interpersonal, institutional, or both, is not, in and of itself, a meaningful form of activism.

As I've discussed here in the past, me stating views about things, as I often do, does not necessarily constitute radical activism in my opinion; it functions, perhaps, as a place for such activism to be brought into recognition and regard. (I've written about this before.) Actively and meaningfully supporting the struggles of oppressed people (with accountability to the oppressed) to gain power, liberation, and freedom from those people and systems that harm them is meaningful activism to me.

I hope in the coming months to link to far more activist efforts globally--to the organised struggles of Indigenous people, radical women of color, Feminist Lesbians, and white women. Their speech-through-action needs a larger public stage.

This blog centers on the struggles of women globally to support their work and to publicly analyse and challenge the powers that harm women unrelentingly. But it is the work of women on the ground, not in cyberspace, who are the front line in feminist struggles. More power to them.

When you hear or read pro-oppression speech, note how it frames up discussions; note how it uses ideas like "objectivity" and "rationality" and "science" to bolster its truth-claims. Note which of many forms of masculinist Eurocentric supremacy are embedded in such terms. (See Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, and Marimba Ani, Yurugu:An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior, for much more on this.)

When you read books about "the history of [something]" note whether it assumes that only those who write and get published constitute the tellers of the history being described. Note how many poor women of color are the tellers of both history and truth. And please remember that poor women of color across sexuality and region are the majority of the world's population; they are not what white men call them: a minority. White het men are a minority within a minority of white men: they just get to speak so much, so often, with such overwhelming authority, that we think there are more of them than there actually are.

When we encounter efforts to attain freedom, what are we wanting freedom from and what are we wanting freedom to do? And, most especially, who is the "we"? Is our sexual orientation assumed to be normal and natural, or is it generally socially despised, exploited, or ignored? What color and gender are we? Where do we live? What sorts of privileges do we have?

Beware of the "we" that won't own or name their own structural and social privilege. They likely don't speak for the majority: poor women of color globally who are not without privileges and power but usually without institutional support, without leadership roles within nation-states, and without published books written in their own voices, detailing their own regional and personal-political struggles.

Vandana Shiva on 'growth fetishism' and more: "Who Pollutes: The Rich and Powerful or Poor and Powerless?"

What follows is being cross-posted from ZCommunications. Please click on the title below to link back.

Who Pollutes: The Rich and Powerful or Poor and Powerless?

---

By Vandana Shiva

Saturday, July 23, 2011

On the 29^th of June, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met with editors of a few newspapers. When asked about whether he had been putting pressure on the Environment Ministry to approve environmentally destructive projects, he said “yes”, and justified by quoting Indira Gandhi “poverty is the biggest polluter, we need to have a balance”. Indira Gandhi had said this in Stockholm in 1972 at the first Environmental Conference. She had also quoted from the Atharvaveda – 

“Whatever, I dig of you, O Earth,

May that grow quickly upon you,

O Pure One, may my thrust never pierce thy

Vital points, thy heart”. 

The Prime Minister has conveniently ignored the more significant quote. 

The Prime Minister’s duty is to uphold the nation’s constitution and nations laws, including environmental laws, not subvert them. By admitting that he has been putting pressure on the environment ministry, he has admitted that he is subverting the law. Most commentators view the removal of Jairam Ramesh from the Environment Ministry during the July 12^th, 2011 cabinet reshuffle as a further step in environmental deregulation. 

While quoting Indira Gandhi to justify his subversion of environmental law, the Prime Minister seems to have forgotten that Indira Gandhi created the country’s environmental governance structure during her tenure as Prime Minister. It was Indira Gandhi’s intervention that supported the call of movements and scientists to not build a hydro-electric project in Silent Valley in Kerala saving a biodiversity rich ecosystem. It was Indira Gandhi’s concern that Mussorie, the queen of the hills, was being stripped naked by limestone mining that led to the Environment Ministry to take action. We were invited to do the study of the environmental impact of limestone mining in Doon Valley in 1981. Our study became the basis of the Supreme Court case. In 1983, the Supreme Court shut down the mines. 

In the pre-trade liberalization days, it was accepted that if commerce undermines ecosystems which support life, then commercial activity must stop, because life must carry on. Art. 21 of the Constitution make it the duty of the state to protect life. Since ecological processes support life, the state has a duty to protect ecology. 

Under Prof. Manmohan Singh’s leadership since the 1990’s based on “growth fetishism”, all ecological devastation is justified in the name of growth. Who is driving this ecological devastation and the pollution? The rich and powerful corporations or the poor and powerless women, farmers, tribals and the displaced rural communities who become urban slum dwellers? 

The poor live in the places polluted by the rich. They do not cause the pollution. And they live in polluted places because they are displaced from their homes in rural areas where they have lived sustainably for millennia. 

They are victims of pollution because they are victims of dispossession. This is environmental injustice. And it is an inevitable consequence of outsourcing of pollution from rich countries in the garb of FDI.  

Coastal Orissa is a case in point. In the Jagatsingpur district where POSCO’s giant steel plant is planned as the highest FDI of $ 12 billion farmers, grow biodiversity – betel vines and paddy, coconut and cashew, fruits and fish. There is no pollution and no waste.  There is a prosperity that GDP does not count. This economy of sustenance is being uprooted with violence to enable POSCO to export our iron-ore and steel. Every law of the land including the Forest Rights Act and the Coastal Zone Regulation Act are being violated as committee after committee has recognized. And when the Ministry of Environment Committees affirms the violation of laws, it is the Prime Minister who puts pressure on the Environment Minister to give an approval to POSCO. It was the women and children of Govindpur, Dinkia and Nuagaon who lay down in front of the police in the scorching sun to stop the land grab in June. They were still forming a human barricade when I visited on 23^rd June.  

The Prime Minister is intervening to promote this land grab and resource grab. POSCO gets our land and our resources. What we will inherit from the POSCO project is ecological destruction, pollution, displaced people and the destruction of our democracy.  

In India, it is the corporations that are building giant coal based power plants who are major climate polluters. It is the automobile industry that pushes more cars on our roads that are leading to higher carbon dioxide emissions. Emissions from the use of fossil fuel are driven by the economically powerful, not the poor. But it is the poor who are most vulnerable to the floods, droughts and cyclones that climate change intensifies. 

The same applies for toxic pollution. In 1996, we filed a case in the Supreme Court to stop the import of toxic waste from the U.S. This waste was generated by rich consumers in the U.S, not by the poor in India who put their lives at risk sorting out the toxic garbage. The Bhopal disaster and it its still continuing toxic pollution was not caused by the poor who died in thousands. It was caused by Union Carbide, now owned by Dow.  

A major issue related to toxics is the pesticide, endosulfan. The U.N has banned it. Most countries of the world have banned it. The Supreme Court has ordered an interim ban. 1000 people have died in Kasargod where endosulfan was sprayed on Cashew plantations for 20 years. More than 9000 are crippled. The innocent victims did not cause the toxic pollution. It was caused by powerful corporations who influence decisions and have blocked a ban on endosulfan, even as people die and children are born disabled. 

Toxic agrichemicals harm all life. Synthetic fertilizers run into rivers and oceans, creating “dead zones”. Nitrogen oxide released from nitrogen fertilizers accumulates in the atmosphere as a green house gas that is 300 times more damaging than carbon dioxide. These synthetic fertilizers also make bombs as the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai and the Oklahoma bombings in the U.S have shown. 

We now have a new form of pollution in agriculture – genetic pollution from genetically engineered crops. Genetic pollution is destroying biodiversity and devastating farmers livelihoods.  

The poor do not cause chemical and genetic pollution – giant chemical / biotechnology corporations do. And the chemical corporations are also the gene giants who now control seed. Here too, instead of being the voice of poor and vulnerable farmers, the Prime Minister is the voice of powerful global corporations through his repeated reference to genetic engineering as the second Green Revolution.  

Whether it is atmospheric pollution, toxic pollution, genetic pollution or urban waste pollution, environmental pollution is an externality of a greed based economy which privatizes profit and natural resources and socializes pollution. The rich accumulate the land, the biodiversity, the water, the air and the profits. The poor bear the burden of dispossession and accumulated pollution.  

We expect the Prime Minister to uphold India’s Constitution and environmental laws not subvert them. We do not expect him to support and promote the polluters. We expect our Prime Minister to recognize that the poor are victims of pollution and environmental degradation, not its cause. We expect the Prime Minister to remember that he holds our precious natural heritage and natural capital in trust for future generations, not to be given away to greedy corporations and destroyed for short term profits. 

We expect our Prime Minister to grow beyond his “growth fetishism” and recognize that we are all part of Mother Earth, and pollution is violence against the Earth and people.

Was Osama bin Laden Born in the U.S.A.? His birth certificate reveals a surprising answer...

image is from here

What if Osama bin Laden was a U.S. American, from birth? What would the fanatical Christian White Right-wing do with that information? Would he become statused, post-mortem, as 'not such a bad guy after all'? Would he move out of the ranks of Adolph Hitler and join the ranks of Timothy McVey?

How much longer will U.S. media focus on bin Laden, rather than the real terrorists of the last ten years: the white het male rich folks who control media, public policy, foreign policy, and government?

When will we see CEOs and corrupt mass murdering politicians hunted down by Navy Seals, for example, with cities and towns across Amerikkka cheering wildly into the night when their bodies are reported dumped into an ocean?

I realise that any "good' Amerikkkan wants to see the bloody body--photos, video please!! "Can you show us the Navy Seals actually killing bin Laden?", many across this perverse country are asking--or demanding.

Meanwhile, there's that debt and deficit, and all that trafficking and raping going on, and all crimes of the white rich against poor people and people of color that broadcasters and reporters never wish to discuss honestly or in any systemic detail. We've got an increasingly white supremacist country, an oligarchical one now more than ever.

We have a death-adoring, murderer-worshipping society, folks. That's what it is and that's who we are. We cheer at assassination, unless it's of our own leaders. Otherwise, bring it on. From here: When asked whether she was glued to the television after the dramatic news, Kirstie said it was not worth her time, although she was glad to hear that the military finally got bin Laden. "No, he's dead. Ding dong the witch is dead. What else do we want? He's dead -- on to the next one."

She probably doesn't mean any of these usual suspects:

But, Seals, they're also hiding in plain site.

U.S. Amerikkkans are a blood-thirsty mob--we want more al Qaeda leaders murdered because we actually think al Qaeda is harming or threatening us more than rich white men--born in the U.S.A., with the long-form birth certificates to prove it.

Here's what the world's worst and most blood-thirsty enemy forces look like, in case you didn't know:

image is from here at Cracked.com

CNN is letting us know how many trillions of dollars bin Laden cost the US, as if rich white men in the US haven't cost us far more than that--the loss of millions of homes, for example, the loss of social programs, the failure of the public school system, allowing men to leave this country, rape girls, and return unarrested--how much money are those girls' lives worth? The U.S. also makes a "medical practice" of stealing medical experts born, raised, and working in Third World countries. The "good" U.S. knowingly lets people in the Third World die unattended by appropriate levels of care while we use their professionals medical knowledge here. And, how callous can an article be as the one linked to from CNN? How much money are the lives of hundreds and thousands of Afghan, Iraqi, and Pakistani lives worth--those snuffed out by U.S. military rulers and the soldiers they train to want to kill? "At any price: freedom" makes a good slogan to allow the rich scumbags to get richer because they're so tied to the military industrial complex, but it doesn't make for anything resembling a humane society. Not that the rich and powerful care about anyone but themselves.

Message top Donald Trump and all the other "Birthers", re: President Barack Obama's birth country

image of pie charts are from here

Shut the fuck up. Really. You're embarrassing yourselves. On second thought, keep at it. You're a bunch of raving white het male supremacists and hopefully we won't vote any of you into office in 2012. Run for office, Donald. Pick Sarah Palin as your running mate, if she'll have you. Or, better yet, be her running mate.

very recent image of Donald Trump is from here

The Two Largest Economic Terrorist Organisations on Earth Are...

Two of the World's Largest Terrorist Organisations 

Against the Global South, Indigenous People, and the Poor:

image is from here

image is from here

All that follows is from ipsnews.net. With thanks to Kanya D'Almeida. Please click on the title below to link back.

Colonial-Style Land Grabbing Back on the Table 

By Kanya D’Almeida 

WASHINGTON, Apr 19, 2011 (IPS) - The highly-contested Principles on Responsible Agricultural Investment (RAI), a set of priorities that peasants’ collectives and food rights groups have been battling for years, are back on the table this week, as the annual Conference on Land and Poverty opened at World Bank headquarters here Monday. 

RAI is "dangerously deceptive" for couching the act of annexing land in the language of human rights and corporate social responsibility, said Shalmali Guttal, a representative from Focus on the Global South.  

"Corporations and governments will win, but local communities, eco-systems and future generations will lose; the takeover of rural peoples’ lands is completely unacceptable no matter what ‘guidelines’ are followed," Guttal stressed.  

A number of organisations including the World Bank, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) jointly formulated the RAI framework, which they describe as a ‘responsible’ means of acquiring vast tracts of farmland. [article continues after the grey block of text. Another block appears a bit later. Both are part of the original presentation of material.] 

Great Rhetoric Masks Ruinous PolicyThroughout the annual Spring Meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that took place here last week, World Bank President Robert Zoellick repeatedly issued warnings about the worsening food crisis, going so far as to call spiking food prices the "biggest threat to the [world’s] poorest nations." "You are all aware of the ingredients," Zoellick said told reporters, "take high food inflation, mix in price gyrations, and then stir in higher fuel costs, and you get a toxic brew of real pain contributing to social unrest." While his comments have largely been met by nods of agreement and high praise from the international development community, protestors and rights- groups refuse to be silenced by what they believe to be empty rhetoric, and continue to speak out forcefully for the right of millions to food. According to Ibrahim Coulibaly from the National Coordination of Peasant Organisations in Mali, "Land grabbing is banditry; it’s about seizing or taking over the only resource that poor people have left and giving it those who already have too much." "The breaching of international human rights law is an intrinsic part of land grabbing," stated Sofía Monsalve from FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN). "Forced evictions, the foreclosure of vast stretches of land for use by rural peoples, the blatant denial of information, and the prevention of meaningful local participation in political decisions that affect people’s lives are all human rights violations."

The principles are a set of non-binding suggestions for investors to consider before participating in large-scale land-acquisition, and are supposedly based on the possibility of a "win-win" situation for both private investors and impoverished peasants. They include broad notions that investments on land should be transparent, environmentally sustainable and strengthen food security rather than jeopardise it.  

Farmers and community organisations have been struggling against the RAI principles, on the grounds that they mask shortsighted annexation by transnational corporations for quick profits.  

International civil servants, farmland investors, bankers and government officials, meeting here Apr. 18-20, will discuss regulatory criteria for implementing these disputed policies.  

GRAIN, an independent research organisation supporting community struggles, reported Monday that since 2009, the biggest proponents of RAI principles - pushing the agenda onward even while local communities resist - have been the European Union, the FAO, G8, G20, IFAD, Japan, Switzerland, the United States and the World Bank. 

 
Investing in a Food Crisis  

In his 2010 commentary ‘Responsibly Destroying the World’s Peasantry’, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier De Schutter wrote that between 2006 and 2009, land equivalent to the total arable area of France was negotiated for sale - with millions of hectares passing from state or peasant ownership into the hands of Western investors including Wall Street banks and private hedge funds, entities that have come to view land as an investment safe haven in a time of financial turmoil.  

De Schutter writes that initial attraction to large-scale land investment was born of the belief that beating hunger was dependent on increased food production and that paltry investment led to scarce supply, resulting in the conclusion that if investors could be lured to the agriculture sector, they should be encouraged to stay.  

"Both [this] diagnosis and remedy are incorrect," De Schutter said. "Hunger and malnutrition are not primarily the result of insufficient food production; they are the result of poverty and inequality, particularly in rural areas, where 75 percent of the world’s poor still reside." 

Fighting Through Earth DemocracyWhile blatant land acquisition remains a tough fight, the loss of natural resources due to less straightforward backroom deals at times presents a much more formidable foe. At a time when the multilateralism of emerging markets has taken centre stage, locals in the Global South are up against not only transnational companies but also state governments that are hand in glove with international corporations. "Five years since the government of India agreed to a 12 billion dollar deal with the South Korean Pohang Steel Company (POSCO) - which plans to set up a primarily export-oriented steel plant on the east coast of Orissa with a captive port, a captive power plant and a captive mine - the communities of this coast have been resisting," Vandana Shiva, the Indian environmentalist-philosopher, told IPS. Locals have been resisting the deal on the grounds that they have a prosperous bio-diverse economy, where food is produced according to the needs of the people and where the laws of the land - under the decentralised democracy of Panchayati Raj as well as India’s Forest Rights Act - allow them to object. While researching POSCO, Shiva found that since the Asian financial crisis the ownership of the company had passed largely into the hands of financiers like Warren Buffet and Goldman Sachs. "So as a result of this so- called globalisation and multilateralism, what does democracy in India look like today?" Shiva asked. "The poor people fighting a company owned by Wall Street, refusing to give up their land, saying ‘we will face bullets, we will face killings, but we will not give up’." "This is the global corporate world that ordinary people in local villages are facing, and they are facing it through what I call ‘Earth Democracy’ - links to the earth and fights where they are on the ground," she added.

"In the past, agricultural development prioritised large-scale, capitalised forms of agriculture, neglecting smallholders who feed local communities," he added.  

"Since governments have failed to protect agricultural workers from exploitation in an increasingly competitive environment, it should come as no wonder that smallholders and agricultural labourers represent a combined 70 percent of those who are unable to feed themselves today," De Schutter concluded.  

A joint statement was issued Sunday in honour of the International Day of Peasant Struggles by farmers, fisher folk, rights and research organisations, and collectives representing hundreds of millions of peasants from South Asia, Latin America and Africa. Over 50 million hectares of arable agricultural land, "enough to feed 50 million families in India", have, in the last decade, been snatched from farmers and placed securely in the hands of private, multinational and transnational corporations, the statement read.  

High Quest Partners, a private strategy consultation firm working in the service of global food, agro- business, and bio-fuel companies, reported last year that global investment in farmland has hit 25 billion dollars and is likely to triple in the very near future.  

"The food price crisis happened because of the commoditisation of food. RAI will legitimise land grabbing worse than in the colonial era," Henry Saragih from La Via Campesina, an organisation representing 200 million peasants worldwide, warned Sunday.  

"One of the objectives of colonialism was to find and absorb the essential resources of the colonies," Saragih told IPS. "Control over oil, gas, and mining came later - control over food production was always a top priority."  

The Network for Social Justice and Human Rights in Brazil expressed fears as to the impact of RAI policies on indigenous communities in South America.  

"[It] will have a devastating effect in the Amazon and Cerrado by giving the green light for illegal activities of large cattle ranchers, agribusinesses, mining and lumber companies to destroy protected forests and biodiversity in food production by small farmers," the network’s representative Maria Luisa Mendonça said. (END)

What CNN (the CRAP News Network) won't tell you about What Terrorism Is and Who the Terrorists (and Terrorised) Are--nor will any CRAP-loaded media

image is from here

There's a lot of propaganda in reports that come from corporate racist patriarchal media. CNN is in that group. What CNN cannot and won't tell you is this:

Christian-identified people, regardless of whether or not they are Christian, commit the most acts of religious warfare and terrorism. And the religious groups they target most are Jews and Muslims.

Men commit the most acts of gendered warfare and terrorism. The groups they target most are women and girls.

Whites commit the most acts of raced warfare and terrorism. The ethnic groups they target most are Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous. In particular, within the U.S., African Americans, American Indians, and Latina/os are under constant threat, are harassed, are threatened, arrested, imprisoned, deported, and killed, with no accountability for the perpetrators who, disproportionately and predominantly are white Christian het men.

With regard to sexual orientation, het men commit the most terrorism against any and all people determined by het men to not be het enough or manly enough. This includes women and girls, transgender and transsexual people, lesbians and gay men, girly boys, feminine men, and masculine women.

Economically, the wealthy commit acts of class warfare and terrorism unrelentingly against the poor and working people.

Militarily and regionally, the U.S. government and its paid operatives (covert terrorists) are committing the most blatant and unrelenting acts of terrorism against many people, most especially, currently, in Central Asia and the Middle East. According to what follows, however, you're supposed to think the most dangerous place to be is Puerto Rico. (Not.)

U.S. wealthy white men are the leaders involved in systematic racist mass murder and genocide happening on U.S. (stolen) soil and off-shore. Disproportionately, Indigenous and other poor populations are poisoned by radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. It is poor and working people, not the wealthy, who are killed in the extraction processes of getting fossil fuels out of the Earth.

Only the rich are committing acts of global and regional ecocide--of the air, water, and land.

Rarely to never are any of these predatory terrorists are held accountable for their crimes against humanity and non-human life, including the Earth. And if anyone tries to terrify them, or threaten them, the threateners may be and sometimes are swiftly executed. For example, women who stand up to their husbands or who threaten to leave, and then do leave. It is then the woman are most at risk of being hunted down and slaughtered.

The article below relies on FBI statistics and utilises pie-charts to make its points.

What we must note is that Christians, whites, men, and "the U.S government" won't and aren't seen as "terrorists" ever, as such. Why aren't all the acts of men's battery, rape, pimping, trafficking, and enslavement of women and girls considered "terroristic events"? Are these actions not terrifying? For whom, exactly, are they not a noteworthy event? Is it not terrifying to a whole class of people (women and girls)? Does the terrorism and coercive to sadistic control of one half of the world's population become irrelevant to agencies tracking violence and acts of domestic and international aggression and hostility?

What the following report does is focus on Latinos (focus on Puerto Ricans), U.S. Jews, and U.S. Muslims--even if to not they aren't as terroristic as the U.S. media pretends. Is "anti-Muslim terrorism", committed by U.S. Christians, even a category of atrocity according to corporate news media and the U.S. government?

So let's review, shall we? This is who ISN'T terrorised systematically or routinely: whites, het men, the rich, and the U.S. as a nation. This would be obvious if anyone was actually paying attention to who is being terrorised--with it being named as such.

With all of this in mind, please read on. The rest of this post's content may be linked back to by clicking on the title just below.

All Terrorists are Muslims…Except the 94% that Aren’t

Posted on 20 January 2010 by Danios

CNN recently published an article entitled Study: Threat of Muslim-American terrorism in U.S. exaggerated; according to a study released by Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “the terrorist threat posed by radicalized Muslim-Americans has been exaggerated.”

Yet, Americans continue to live in mortal fear of radical Islam, a fear propagated and inflamed by right wing Islamophobes.  If one follows the cable news networks, it seems as if all terrorists are Muslims.  It has even become axiomatic in some circles to chant: “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but nearly all terrorists are Muslims.” Muslims and their “leftist dhimmi allies” respond feebly, mentioning Waco as the one counter example, unwittingly affirming the belief that “nearly all terrorists are Muslims.”

But perception is not reality.  The data simply does not support such a hasty conclusion.  On the FBI’s official website, there exists a chronological list of all terrorist attacks committed on U.S. soil from the year 1980 all the way to 2005.  That list can be accessed here (scroll down all the way to the bottom).

Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Soil by Group, From 1980 to 2005, According to FBI Database

According to this data, there were more Jewish acts of terrorism within the United States than Islamic (7% vs 6%).  These radical Jews committed acts of terrorism in the name of their religion.  These were not terrorists who happened to be Jews; rather, they were extremist Jews who committed acts of terrorism based on their religious passions, just like Al-Qaeda and company.

Yet notice the disparity in media coverage between the two.  It would indeed be very interesting to construct a corresponding pie chart that depicted the level of media coverage of each group.  The reason that Muslim apologists and their “leftist dhimmi allies” cannot recall another non-Islamic act of terrorism other than Waco is due to the fact that the media gives menial (if any) coverage to such events.  If a terrorist attack does not fit the “Islam is the perennial and existential threat of our times” narrative, it is simply not paid much attention to, which in a circuitous manner reinforces and “proves” the preconceived narrative.  It is to such an extent that the average American cannot remember any Jewish or Latino terrorist; why should he when he has never even heard of the Jewish Defense League or the Ejercito Popular Boricua Macheteros?  Surely what he does not know does not exist!

The Islamophobes claim that Islam is intrinsically a terrorist religion.  The proof?  Well, just about every terrorist attack is Islamic, they retort.  Unfortunately for them, that’s not quite true.  More like six percent.  Using their defunct logic, these right wingers ought now to conclude that nearly all acts of terrorism are committed by Latinos (or Jews).  Let them dare say it…they couldn’t; it would be political and social suicide to say such a thing. Most Americans would shut down such talk as bigoted; yet, similar statements continue to be said of Islam, without any repercussions.

The Islamophobes live in a fantasy world where everyone is supposedly too “politically correct” to criticize Islam and Muslims.  Yet, the reality is the exact opposite: you can get away with saying anything against the crescent.  Can you imagine the reaction if I said that Latinos should be profiled because after all they are the ones who commit the most terrorism in the country?  (For the record: I don’t believe in such profiling, because I am–unlike the right wing nutters–a believer in American ideals.)

The moral of the story is that Americans ought to calm down when it comes to Islamic terrorism.  Right wingers always live in mortal fear–or rather, they try to make you feel that way.  In fact, Pamela Geller (the queen of internet Islamophobia) literally said her mission was to “scare the bejeezus outta ya.” Don’t be fooled, and don’t be a wuss.  You don’t live in constant fear of radicalized Latinos (unless you’re Lou Dobbs), even though they commit seven times more acts of terrorism than Muslims in America.  Why then are you wetting yourself over Islamic radicals?  In the words of Cenk Uygur: you’re at a ten when you need to be at a four.  Nobody is saying that Islamic terrorism is not a matter of concern, but it’s grossly exaggerated.

Related Posts:
Europol report: All terrorists are Muslims…Except the 99.6% that aren’t
RAND report: Threat of homegrown jihadism exaggerated, Zero U.S. civilians killed since 9/11
Update:
A reader by the name of Dima added:

The FBI Terrorism Report shows…[that] the highest number of terrorist incidents in the U.S. by region (90) took place in Puerto Rico.

Second Update:
An Islamophobe commented on this article, saying that the statistics are flawed because the FBI included small acts such as “stealing rats from a lab” as an act of terrorism.  Of course, this is patently false.  Here is a breakdown of the terrorist attacks by type (the pie chart is from the FBI’s official website and can be accessed here):

Terrorism by Event, From 1980 to 2005, According to FBI Database