George Takei's response to the Tennessee, USA "Don't Say Gay!" bill

So, if we can't say "Gay", can we say "Lesbian"? And if we can't say Gay or Lesbian, can we say "Bi"? I'd love to see them try and regulate the use of that word.

Hmmmm. Saying "good-bye" would take on a whole new meaning.

Maybe we can finally get the homophobic slur, "That's so gay!" cleared from school hallways and playgrounds. Yeah, let's do what George is suggesting. Please buy your t-shirt or button in time for your city's Pride Celebration. And then we can watch anti-gay/anti-lesbian fascistic white Christian harassers try and ban the word "Takei".

image is from here

I'll mention that I'm concerned the replacement phrase could get used in some very white places where sensitivity to racism regarding Japanese-American and Japanese people is low to non-existent. I think The Vapors really fucked up with their one-hit wonder, Turning Japanese. This whole campaign could "go there".

Lesbian news reporter and commentator Rachel Maddow, has declared this "the best new thing!" And she may be right. We'll see. Personally, I'm for replacing the word "gay" when used that way with the term "het".

And, I love George Takei's very clever forms of activism for LGBTIA people. Yay, George!!!!

Anti-Semitism Rears Its Ugly Head in Muslim Press in Jakarta--leave it to someone in Germany to do so: Funny how we don't view White Christians as Dangerous, given them being in charge and all

presumably non-serious white anti-Semitic propagandistic message is from here

The implication in the comments below the article in this post is that white Christians are good, and can only ever be subordinate to the Jew; and that Jews can only ever be assumed to be white. This is assumed even while that has never been historically true--ever. The fallacious idea--a potent one for fascists and oppressed anti-Semites alike--is that (white) Jews REALLY rule, but (white) Christians just APPEAR to rule. This is often what is said about women, and Black people, and the poor, of course.

Patriarchal media--and men themselves--tell us that men don't rule women; women rule men by being all seductive and shit--forgetting, neatly, that it is men that rape and harass and traffic women and girls, not the other way around; white media--and whites themselves--often tell us that whites don't rule Black people, it's Black people, after all, who get into colleges without the grades to back up the admission letters, forgetting, of course, that the matter of getting into colleges is often set by 'who you know' and 'who has money', and Black people, relative to whites in the U.S., have never had more money or more social capital: so generations of wealthier whites get in because their parents did--and not at all because of the grades; media owned, operated, and profited off of by the wealthy tell us that the poor are the greatest thieves of federal tax dollars in the U.S., not the rich, who steal by not even paying taxes, and who steal outright, in every way conceivable--by historically and currently taking land, taking resources, and taking lives.

This is why we cannot organise against the most powerful: because oppressed people always see the most powerful as never being the ones truly in charge; instead we focus on each other as the enemy. Sad. Sad. Sad. See below.

As long as white Christian het men in the U.S. who rule, are seen never to be in charge, how can they be appropriately held to account? As long as political ideologies-in-practice like, oh, say, male supremacy, white supremacy, Christian supremacy, and heterosexism cannot and will not even be NAMED, how can we organise effectively against white Christian het male supremacy? It is still being globalised and it does shape public and private policy around the world--without ever being named by the dominant cultural media.

What follows is an article and two comments from The Jakarta Post. Please click on the title below to link back.

What the death of Osama bin Laden means

Muhamad Ali, Riverside, California | Wed, 05/04/2011 11:02 PM | Opinion

As I watched US President Barack Obama announcing the death of Osama bin Laden with his body buried at sea after Saudi Arabia refused to accept it, I posted my reactions through my Twitter account.

“An ideology is hard to kill with the death of its advocates like Bin Laden, but his death can help reduce his global leadership.”

I tweeted further: “Osama and many terrorists have used Islam to sustain their ideologies and actions, but they don’t represent around 1 billion Muslims in the world.”

However, the death has meant different things to different people around the globe. Many in the US and elsewhere have welcomed and celebrated Bin Laden’s demise as a victory over the leader of number-one terrorist network al-Qaeda.

Obama thinks “we can all agree this is a good day for America”. Obama and Hillary Clinton pointed out that “justice has been served” for the victims of 9/11 in particular, and Americans in general. Many say “the world is now safer”.

American Muslim leaders, including that of CAIR (Council of American-Islamic Relations) welcome the death, because “Osama was a mass murderer”.

Muslim Senator Keith Ellison said Bin Laden was responsible for mass killings in the US, Pakistan, Iraq, Kenya, Tanzania and more, and had caused fear and suffering for many.

Some in the US have expressed their ambivalence toward the death: The killing of a man without trial is clearly not correct for them. Some would expect Bin Laden to have been captured alive.

Some, including self-proclaimed Christians, said “they do not rejoice the death of a human being, no matter how monstrous he was”.

“Judgment and punishment are up to God,” Christian author James Martin wrote. Although he prays that Bin Laden’s departure may lead to peace, as a Christian, he is asked to pray for Bin Laden and at some point forgive him, a command that comes from Jesus.

In Indonesia, when people are preoccupied with domestic problems, including how to deal with the spread of the Negara Islam Indonesia (NII, the Indonesian Islamic State) ideology, including in schools and colleges, mixed responses have been voiced in the media: Many have welcomed the death, whereas others, including the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) moderate leader Said Aqil Siradj implicitly welcomed it but added that the Allied Forces in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Libya could also be regarded as terrorists, radicals and uncivilized.

The US, he implied, should not demonstrate double standards, but serve justice in dealing with terrorism.

Some Islamist leaders have said Bin Laden’s death will not eliminate al-Qaeda. Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) president Luthfi Hasan Ishaaq said the death would have no direct impact in Indonesia because none of Bin Laden’s family has investments here.

He added that violence came from injustice and poverty, so violence would not stop if justice and prosperity were absent.

Another PKS leader commented that al-Qaeda was based on an ideology and had a developed organization and recruitment system and therefore terrorism remained a threat.

Some liberal progressive activists commented that it would be better if Bin Laden were captured alive so he could stand trial and people could hear what he had to say.

Progressive activists commented only a little. One simply observed that when a friend is killed the loss is mourned, but when an enemy is killed, it is rejoiced.

They seem to agree with an analyst that the loss of a symbolic, semi-charismatic leader whose own survival burnished his legend was significant, but that radicalism and violence were not about to end.

Many questions have been raised, including about the future of terrorist ideology: Will terrorism decline? Will the death of Osama bin Laden bring a new world order? How should the world leaders address the root causes of terrorism and reduce its spread in many parts of the world, including Indonesia?

The fatwas or edicts reportedly from Bin Laden have been read and translated into many languages. The edicts issued in 1996, 1998, 2004 and later years contained a global call to war waged against the US and mention some of the reasons for Bin Laden’s ideology of terror: Because of the US presence in the holy sites Mecca and Medina, the unqualified US support of Israel and of the US attacks on Iraq and other “Muslim soil”.

Bin Laden urges the Muslim world to kill American crusaders and Jews, combatants and civilians as well as whoever is in support of them.

For those who show support or sympathy, Bin Laden constitutes a symbol of resistance against the US power. Some observers like Middle Eastern historian Bernard Lewis have argued that Bin Laden was a model for anti-globalization, anti-Westernization and anti-modernism.

Other scholars comment that terrorists as fundamentalists have lived as by-product of modernity.

But the appeal of Bin Laden cannot be overstated because many fatwas were issued to reject such calls. Most Muslims have rejected terrorism, the killing of civilians and the use of violence.

The struggle and discursive debate among Muslim leaders and groups have intensified between those who agree with the ideas but not the violent tactics; those who reject violence and terrorism without qualification; those who sympathize with terrorists and those who commit similar acts of terror in London, Bombay, Manila, Bali, Jakarta and other places.

A survey conducted by Pew Research Center on Muslim publics around the world a few months prior to Bin Laden’s death indicates little support for the al-Qaeda leader. In the Palestinian territories, which he used as rationale for his war, only 34 percent expressed confidence in him to do the right thing in world affairs.

In 2011, about 26 percent of Indonesians supported Bin Laden, compared to 22 percent of Egyptians and 13 percent of Jordanians. These numbers dropped from the figures in 2003 and 2005. This explains why there have been fewer reactions to Bin Laden’s death in the Muslim world than in the US.

Now that Bin Laden has been officially confirmed dead, some people have remained concerned about the perpetration of his ideology.

Others have raised more ethical, philosophical questions about just war, patriotism based on killing, the value of human beings, violence to end violence, soft power and hard power, and the like. Others have pointed to addressing the root causes of terrorism and its circumstances.

The death of a world terrorist seems to have been welcomed by many, albeit in different ways, but this is not sufficient to make this complex world a safer place to live.

The writer is an assistant professor in Islamic studies, Religious Studies Department, University of California, Riverside.

Two disturbing comments were posted at the time I visited. Here they are:

Ahmad G. Ikram, Germany | Wed, 04/05/2011 - 16:05pm
Obama wants to win the next general elections. His advice come from the Jewish lobby, which has now accepts him as a good Christian. His Cairo Declaration some 2 years ago was a farce. Now he is clearly pro-Israel. Obama can perhaps win the next elections and improve his bad image in the US.

No president in the United States can win the elections, if he is not working closely with the powerful Jewish lobby. (Former President Jimmy Carter some two years ago told the plain truth in the CNN).

Moreover, the assassination method reminds me of the Israeli Army, Mossad or Zionists. [The current chief of the CIA is a Jew (Leon Paneta). He would be nominated the new Secretary of Defence in some weeks.] They kill the enemies in this way. The method of assassination has violated the dictum of Christian Agape (Love) for the enemies as well as the International Law. The man, who was assassinated was an inmate from a US Jail and the blood, which was shown in the bungalow of Osama in Abbotabad was probably the blood of this an US-Inmate.

Edo E., Jakarta | Wed, 04/05/2011 - 19:05pm
Yes, Ahmad, Osama has been dead for years, the question is: why now? My first thought was: the freezer, where they kept his corpse, went out of order and the body began irreparably to decompose. So the US-elite had to invent a mission, kill all enemies and throw the real (?) corpse into the sea. A picture of Bin Laden's alleged corpse has already been found of being a manipulated fake.

The Talmudic lobby (disguising as "Jews" to label every attacker as anti Semite) in the US controls the media, the big banks, the US-government, Wall Street and owns the Fed. These misanthropic monsters support Israel as long as it is useful for them, thus there will never be peace in the Near East. And they inflame the "clash of civilizations" to get rid of their 2 big enemies: Islam and Christendom, them being the laughing third party (the same since WW I). Interestingly enough, the latest news say that Bin Laden was "unarmed" when attacked. Together with the "leaked" pictures of Guantanamo, one can see the pattern: to make more Muslims hate the West, especially the USA. The Talmudists are pure evil.

And here's my response to those two commenters:

JulianReal, United States | Wed, 04/05/2011 - 23:05pm
To the commenters: Given that every U.S. president has been Christian, and given that all media is controlled by white Christians, and given that Christianity rules in the U.S., why it is you think Jews (who are not all white, by the way) possess a propagandistic secret power to rule the Western world--and to rule over white Christians, when historically that's never been the case: ever. You'd think if Jews did rule, that somewhere in the Judeo-Christian world Christians wouldn't appear to be on top each and every time. Do you really believe white Christian men, like George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney, were and are powerless people? (They're all Christian.) What would happen, I wonder, if Muslims and Jews realised that it is only white Christian men calling the shots and ruling the West?

P.S. And, if the "Jewish lobby" is so all-powerful, how come we've never had a Jewish president? Doesn't that kind of tell you maybe the "white supremacist Christian lobby" is even MORE powerful?

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