A message that I hope maybe will give you pause: The moment that news broke of the horrific Hamas attacks, I and many others who have been advocating for Palestinian freedom, knew what would come next. We knew that there would be no recognition of those attacks as part of a cycle of colonial violence. We knew that there would be no acknowledgement of the hundreds of Palestinians killed in the past year, or the thousands killed in recent years. There would be no desire to understand the desperation and rage of people locked in a prison like animals, and what people may do when so desperate and so few options are made available to them.

And it is not just those who were actively grieving their families, loved ones, and community members, who would not see it. Our press and our governments would make sure that no one would see it. I cannot equate the Hamas attacks to what Israel is doing, and has been doing for years, to the Palestinians - no matter how much people have been insisting that I do so. Not because I ever support the killing of anyone, “innocent” or not, I promise you that I do not support such violence. But because to do so would be inaccurate and dangerous. The systemic oppression of a people, the ethnic cleansing of a people, the genocide against a people, is not the same thing as the horrific actions of those acting violently in response to oppression, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. But when we decide on a larger socio-political scale that the personal matters as much as, or even more than, the systemic in issues that are clearly systemic in nature, we will always default to prioritizing those who are more valued in society. We will default to humanizing one, and dehumanizing the other. And we will find ourselves signed on to systemic retribution that does not feel that it is responsible for what it does.

This is what keeps justifying the violent oppression of millions of people for decades. This is what emboldens people to say that the safety of one people must mean the loss of freedom of another. This is what enables the idea that one population has to prove that they “deserve” their freedom, by insisting on staying meek and silent under violent oppression. This carries the fantasy that healthy, liberal, peace-loving ways of organizing and governing can thrive in a space where people are brutalized every day - and the fantasy that it can exist for their oppressors as well. This idea that an oppressive system is not responsible for the cycles of violence it creates, and not responsible for how it responds to that violence is how a terror attack on September 11, 2001, leads to decades of war and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings. I remember marching and yelling as loud as I could then, and still wishing that I had done more to prevent the death and destruction that we are still seeing today because of our refusal to see and hold ourselves accountable to how our brutal, racist, colonizing systems had created the cycles of violence that so shocked and traumatized us all when the towers fell.

Policy is usually based on facts, not the alternative kind! The biggest threat to America and Americans is Homegrown and perpetrated for the most part by white men, a muslim ban is not going to change that .

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote:Islam has no monopoly on homophobia.There are tons of Christian communities that are virulently anti-gay. A lot of people murder, rape and terrorize other people and are passed off as mentally ill if they have the right skin color. Most of the homophobia in this country is derived/justified using Christianity. Is it possible ISIS inspired Omar Mateen's actions? It's possible, but pretty damn unlikely. His only connections to ISIS are probably him shouting something about ISIS right before dying to cause exactly the type of rhetoric that is happening right now. For years, he's been talking like he's got connections to whatever was "popular" at the time. After the Boston bombings , he claimed to know the Tsarneavs, which the FBI looked into and found without merit, he also claimed to be a member of Hezbollah, said he had family members in Al-Qaeda, ect.. There are reports now that he also was a regular at Pulse and has been going there for the past 3 years, accounts of him drunk at Pulse, getting into fights, and had an account on a gay dating site. Not what i would call a devout muslim, dying for the cause. Not sure, how true these reports are, but I wouldn't be surprised. He could've just been a closeted, self-hating bigot who couldn't come to terms with who he was.

Amazing map, I wonder why all the Muslim countries are red?

1-Not all Muslim countries are red, and some countries in Red are actually Christian.

I

N THE LATE 1990s, Eric Rudolph — raised Catholic and affiliated for a time with a Christian Identity sect — bombed abortion clinics and a gay bar, insisting they were venues of immorality and evil. Last July, an Orthodox Jewish Israeli attacked the marchers in the Jerusalem LGBT pride parade, stabbing six of them, and one of them, a teenager, died of her wounds; justifying his attacks by appealing to Talmudic punishments for homosexuality, he had just been released from a 10-year prison term for doing the same in 2005. Yesterday, a Christian pastor from Arizona, Steven Anderson, praised the slaughter of 49 people in an Orlando LGBT club on the ground that “homosexuals are a bunch of disgusting perverts” and are “pedophiles.”

A 2015 Pew poll found that U.S. Muslims were more accepting of homosexuality than evangelical Christians, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. imilarly, U.S. Muslims are more likely to support same-sex marriage (42 percent support it) than are U.S. evangelicals (28 percent), historically black Protestants (40 percent), Mormons (26 percent) and Jehovah’s Witnesses (14 percent). Indeed, U.S. Muslims are roughly just as likely to support same-sex marriage as Christians generally (44 percent).
Over the last several years, Christian zealots in the U.S. have agitated with both activism and money — often successfully — for the implementation of severely repressive anti-LGBT laws in Christian Africa. That includes Uganda, where they tried to implement the death penalty for homosexuals. The law that was passed, criminalizing homosexuality, has led to severe increases in violent attacks against LGBTs.

Source: https://theintercept.com/2016/06/13/stop-exploiting-lgbt-issues-to-demonize-islam-and-justify-anti-muslim-policies/

We can go on and on about whose religion, ideology, ect is more homophobic. Total waste of time, I do not know of a single sound religious tradition that allows, let alone advocates, for such indiscriminate killing. We have to innoculate ourselves against poisonous absolutist ideologies that deliberately exploit tragedies like this to advance divisive agendas.

Islam has no monopoly on homophobia.There are tons of Christian communities that are virulently anti-gay. A lot of people murder, rape and terrorize other people and are passed off as mentally ill if they have the right skin color. Most of the homophobia in this country is derived/justified using Christianity. Is it possible ISIS inspired Omar Mateen's actions? It's possible, but pretty damn unlikely. His only connections to ISIS are probably him shouting something about ISIS right before dying to cause exactly the type of rhetoric that is happening right now. For years, he's been talking like he's got connections to whatever was "popular" at the time. After the Boston bombings , he claimed to know the Tsarneavs, which the FBI looked into and found without merit, he also claimed to be a member of Hezbollah, said he had family members in Al-Qaeda, ect.. There are reports now that he also was a regular at Pulse and has been going there for the past 3 years, accounts of him drunk at Pulse, getting into fights, and had an account on a gay dating site. Not what i would call a devout muslim, dying for the cause. Not sure, how true these reports are, but I wouldn't be surprised. He could've just been a closeted, self-hating bigot who couldn't come to terms with who he was.

We should also keep a database of middle-aged white men who may decide to cut you up and eat you, as well as high-school and college kids whose parents f* them up.

Retweeted Daniel Lin (@DLin71):

What we know about Paris terrorists
-Not Syrian
-Not refugees
-No encryption

What the US is focusing on
-Syrians
-Refugees
-Encryption

http://www.101greatgoals.com/blog/an-explanation-for-why-turkey-fans-appeared-to-boo-minutes-silence-for-paris-attack-victims/

Exactly what my friend said yesterday about this, this has bern blown way out of proportions.

clear: In Turkey (especially at football matches) a one minute silence is always used to chant for those who died in terrorist attacks.

And what they are chanting is this “?ehitler ölmez, vatan bölünmez”. Translation: “Martyrs, they do not die (they are immortal), homeland (land, our land) is indivisible.”

That is a habit from our past with the terrorist organisation PKK. More than 30,000 of our citizens died over the past 30 years by the PKK (including babies, women, children, teachers, officers, doctors, students and soldiers).

In any event, after PKK terrorists kill someone in Turkey, people chant this. Below is a proof from one Turkish Premier League match:

Same slogan “?ehitler ölmez, vatan bölünmez”.

And also, they booed the terrorist, not the victims. Any victims of terrorism are accepted as martyrs in Turkish culture. There is no disrespect to them, there has not been, there will not be.

You can't bomb and kill enough jihadists to stop terror. You can kill as many al Qaeda and ISIS members, and that will just birth new ones and new groups. Unless the root causes are analyzed and solutions provided for them, there will always be another insurgency. You can't bomb them into submission

The United States does have a rigorous process for vetting refugee applicants, which includes several in-person interviews by U.S. officials, security checks by multiple agencies, significant documentation, and a health screening. This process, which is the most rigorous vetting in the world, takes over a year. The process requires refugees to be vetted by the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, the Department of Homeland Security and the Departments of State and Defense. This review process includes biometric and biographic checks, interviews by specially trained officers who scrutinize the applicant’s explanation of individual circumstances to ensure the applicant is a genuine refugee and is not known to present security concerns to the United States. The process also includes an additional layer of enhanced classified screening measures for those refugees from Syria. In addition, the U.S. Government prioritizes admitting the most vulnerable Syrians, particularly female-headed households, children, survivors of torture, and individuals with severe medical conditions. In fact, of the 12 million Syrians displaced from their homes half are children.

Source: http://www.casey.senate.gov/newsroom/releases/casey-statement-on-admission-of-syrian-refugees

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Jeff, I don't get your argument. Are you saying the reason that women are oppressed, Jews are hated and gays are under fear of death in all middle eastern muslim countries has nothing to do with the beliefs of the people who live there? Or is it that you think these people will immediately shed this upon entry to our country?

I think you are trying to change the topic now that it is clear that nobody is buying what you are selling.

Well, the majority of Americans are buying what I am selling, and all I am selling is a healthy dose of skepticism of the wisdom of the U.S. importing large numbers of people who hold anti-western beliefs. I suppose I am biased in that I have a lot of Jewish friends and considering there is not a single Muslim majority country where jews can freely practice their religion. But of course, that is racist to point out.

Really?

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote:The fans were chanting “?ehitler ölmez vatan bölünmez” (translated from Turkish): "Martyrs live forever, the country is never divided". Furthermore, Turkish soccer fans ALWAYS whistle to show their support. This is misleading and furthering division. Someone yelled "muslims suck" during a moment of silence for Paris before the Lions vs. Packers game on Sunday, you can find bigots everywhere

How do you know that is what they were chanting? And why would you chant ANYTHING during a moment of silence? That is not a moment of silence. Are Turkish soccer fans incapable of being silent?

Got it from a turkish friend. Apparently in Turkish, its not even called a moment of silence but a "Sayg? durusu" meaning respectful stand. This could all be a big misunderstanding

The fans were chanting “?ehitler ölmez vatan bölünmez” (translated from Turkish): "Martyrs live forever, the country is never divided". Furthermore, Turkish soccer fans ALWAYS whistle to show their support. This is misleading and furthering division. Someone yelled "muslims suck" during a moment of silence for Paris before the Lions vs. Packers game on Sunday, you can find bigots everywhere

Refugees are vetted more than others who cross our borders. Seriously people, if a terrorist wants to come in, there are easier ways than posing as a refugee....

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote:OMG. It is not relevant whether the kid bought a clock, stole a clock, reassembled a clock, made a clock from spare parts, or built the clock from scratch, most educated people are in agreement of one thing: It wasn't a bomb, it wasn't a hoax bomb. Give it up already!

It is relevant that it looked like a bomb. White kids have been suspended for having gun shaped objects in school. Sorry you can't make this a Muslim thing. You and the media want it to be about islamaphobia, but it's not. The difference is if a white kid had done it, he wouldn't have been invited to the White House.

I don't think you understood what I wrote, I never said anything about it looking like a bomb..In any case, do you think that if Ahmed was named John and was white,the teacher would've raised the alarm ( no pun intended ) and he would be taken in a room with 5 officers, interrogated and arrested after saying multiple times that it was a clock?

OMG. It is not relevant whether the kid bought a clock, stole a clock, reassembled a clock, made a clock from spare parts, or built the clock from scratch, most educated people are in agreement of one thing: It wasn't a bomb, it wasn't a hoax bomb. Give it up already!