Saturday, April 17, 2010

Facetious or Fascistic? White Het Male Supremacy and the U.S. Tea Party Movement (clue: their "T" stands for Tyrannical)

 
[image of Tea Party Member in Good Standing is from here]

"Professionals advise 'Arm yourself' When Seconds Count - Cops are minutes away."  
-- Ohio Tea Party Leader Brian Thomas
A group of Tea Partiers recently announcednew federation, designed in part to fight back against charges of racism and extremism.
Julian's note: they don't have any desire to fight the racism and extremism.  
Just the unseemly reports telling the rest of us all about it.

Source of the news story: TPMMuckraker

Local [U.S. Ohio] Tea Party Leader Who Suggested Shooting Hispanics Now Is Wanted By Cops -- Tweets: 'Arm Yourself'

Police are searching for a local Tea Party leader in Ohio who is wanted for violating a temporary protection order. Meanwhile, speakers at a Tea Party rally organized by the man, Brian "Sonny" Thomas, have pulled out after he suggested in a tweet that he wanted to shoot Hispanic immigrants -- then blaming it on a Bee Gees song.

Thomas is the founder and president of the Springboro Tea Party in southwest Ohio. He faces a misdemeanor charge after recently going to the home of the mother of his son, in violation of a protection order. The woman had previously told police that their son had returned from Thomas's home with bruises.

Thomas had already been in hot water, after he tweeted during a march in support of immigration reform: "Illegals everywhere today! So many sp*cks makes me feel like a speck. Grr. Where's my gun?"

Thomas's son, and the son's mother, are Hispanic.

Thomas denied to the Dayton Daily News that he had ever bruised his son. He also said that his anger was focused on illegal immigrants, not legal American citizens like his son.

Thomas has written on his website that the tweet was "facetious." He also explained it to CNN yesterday by saying that he had been listening to the Bee Gees song "Sp*cks and Specks." "I made the reference to the song, not stopping to think of the era that it was produced from and taken out of context could be so offensive to some people," he said.

The Bee Gees song is not about race. It contains the line: "Where are the girls I left all behind, the sp*cks and the specks of the girls on my mind?"

In response to the tweet, several local Ohio pols, including former congressman Jim Traficant, announced that they would not participate in a Tea Party rally that Thomas has been planning to mark Tax Day.


The tweet wasn't the first evidence that Thomas may be unusually preoccupied with race. Among the links to the Springboro Tea Party site is one to a site called white-pride.org, which sells t-shirts expressing pride in various European ancestries. CNN found a picture on Thomas's MySpace page -- no longer available -- of him wearing a "white pride" t-shirt. The "White Pride" slogan is frequently used by white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

As police searched for him yesterday, Thomas tweeted: "Did You Know There are Over 300 Fema Concentration Camps in The United States". He linked to an extremist website telling readers to "resist the new world order." He also tweeted: "Professionals advise 'Arm yourself' When Seconds Count - Cops are minutes away."

The controversy over Thomas comes at a time when the Tea Party movement is seeking to present a more mainstream and less controversial image to the public. A group of Tea Partiers recently announced a new federation, designed in part to fight back against charges of racism and extremism.

Pretend it is April 1: New Law Proposed Across Europe: ALL SIGHTED MEN MUST KEEP THEIR EYES COVERED WHEN IN PUBLIC...

The above image juxtaposes men's condemnations of women East and West. Globally, women can't be determined BY MEN to be moral, fully human, or free no matter how much they wear or don't wear in public. [the image is from here]

 THIS JUST IN: An addendum to the new law: Sighted het men must ALSO keep their eyes covered in private, if any woman or girl in the household or community requests it.


If white het men care so much about women's human rights, that's something they could do to assist in preventing ALL women from being visually and otherwise harassed and raped. So, what do you say, fellas? Still concerned about Muslim women's human rights to be free from the restrictions of the burqa? Or do you just want visual access to the bodies of Muslim women in Europe? Why won't you support ALL women being free from YOUR gaze AND disgusting comments AND threats AND predatory violence? Let's see you get on that bandwagon, for women's human rights!

This post was fully inspired by a commenter at a recent post, on white euro men's calls to legally ban some Muslim women's traditional clothing from being worn in public allegedly FOR women's freedom FROM Muslim men. And since when have white men anywhere in the world ever, collectively, done anything other than rape, oppress, forcibly sterilise, and murder women of color? (And steal the community's children to raise them to be Christian.) For that post and inspirational comment, see *here*.

When White Euro Men Aren't Right: Don't Ban Burqas, Niqabs, or Hijabs!

[image of protesters to European bans on what Muslim women can wear is from here]


European push to ban burqas appalls Afghan women

By Sayed Salahuddin
Reuters
Friday, April 16, 2010; 7:21 AM

KABUL (Reuters) - A firm believer in women's rights, the only thing Afghan lawmaker Shinkai Karokhail finds as appalling as being forced to wear a burqa is a law banning it.

Karokhail is one of many Afghan women who see a double standard in efforts by some European nations to outlaw face veils and burqas -- a move they say restricts a Muslim woman's choice in countries that otherwise make a fuss about personal rights.

"Democratic countries should not become dictatorships and Muslim women should not be deprived from all kinds of opportunities. It should be their choice," said Karokhail.

"Otherwise, what is the difference between forcing women to wear a burqa and forcing them not to? It is discrimination."

France, which has the largest Muslim population in Europe, as well as Italy and Belgium are considering proposals to ban all-enveloping burqas and face veils called niqabs. Many in the West see them as a symbol of the subjugation of women.

In France, government and opposition lawmakers call burqas an affront to the country's secular traditions, though an advisory board has said a banning them may be unlawful.

In deeply conservative Afghanistan, the Taliban made wearing a burqa mandatory for all women during their five-year rule that ended with the U.S-led invasion in 2001. It is still widely worn in the Muslim country, especially in rural areas and the south.

Shukriya Ahmadi, a 35-year-old Afghan government employee, has ditched the burqa since the days of being forced to wear it during Taliban rule. Still, she has only scorn for Western governments seeking to outlaw them:

"This shows they use democracy, freedom of religion and human rights issues only when it suits their purposes," Ahmadi said.

PUNISH THE MEN
She suspects burqa legislation will only help a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan gain support from outraged Muslims and win recruits for their insurgency campaign against the Afghan government and U.S.-led NATO forces.

University student Farida, 20, is another Afghan woman who says the move smacks of a double standard.

"I have never worn a burqa and do not like it," she said. "But why would the West, which calls itself a supporter of democracy take such a decision? I am perplexed and sad."

Even one of Afghanistan's most outspoken and controversial women, former lawmaker Malalai Joya, is a staunch opponent of efforts to ban burqas or tight headscarves called hijabs.

She dislikes burqas, but wears it anyways as a cloak of protection from warlords she has been critical of in the past.

"As much as I am against imposing the hijab on women, I am also against its total ban. It should be regarded a personal matter of every human being and it should be up to women if they prefer to wear it or not," she told Reuters by email.

"It is against the very basic element of democracy to restrict a human being from wearing the clothes of his/her choice. These governments better punish those men who force women to wear hijab, but if any woman wears it out of her own wish, there should be no ban on it."

(Editing by Deepa Babington and Bill Tarrant)

Sonali Kolhatkar and Shazia Reveal The Following About U.S. Occupation: The Women of RAWA are the People Who Should Be in Charge in Afghanistan

 [RAWA logo image is from here]

Contained in this post is a very graphic image of what the U.S. soldiers accomplish, with orders from President Obama and commanding generals in Afghanistan. 
Don't let the callousness of denial and the ease distance govern your conscience.

In the U.S. and UK, mass media and some academics actually get to think that the need for feminist activism is over. The condition of women anywhere impacts women everywhere, and what is happening to our sisters in Afghanistan is intimately connected to what we do, especially this week, as our tax dollars fund the murder of women there. Their blood is on the hands of many of us in the West. Below is discussion of what is happening to women recently, as well as some background on RAWA, in existence, amazingly and bravely, since 1977. I have to wonder, what "wave" do Academic scholars want to put them into? Contemporary revolutionary feminism is a decades long effort. Let's hope the struggle doesn't have to be centuries long. When the herstory books are written, let RAWA shine as a beacon of how to courageously fight on, against every obstacle and force of destruction: local, national, and international.

The U.S.'s murders continue against Afghan women; but those who live continue to speak out. Some speak outside of the country, which is safer to do. This post consists of two separate statements appearning in reverse chronological order. The bottom piece was done over a year before the first one here. Note what has and hasn't changed in that time. GWBush was president when the latter piece was written which is when Shazia was interviewed. That piece goes through some of that decades long history of RAWA. Is Shazia (not her actual name) still alive? Do you know? This first piece is by a long time supporter of RAWA, the activist Sonali Kolhatkar, pictured in the photograph below. She addresses the Obama Administration and other misogynist political entities. The need for revolutionary feminism continues as long as women are terrorised and treated as "casualties" in men's many wars.

This brief statement and image is from the RAWA website, *here*.

Let’s rise against the war crimes of US and its fundamentalist lackeys!

RAWA Statement on Massacre of over 150 civilians in Bala Baluk of Farah Province by the U.S.

Injured girl in Farah. RAWA Photo
What follows next is from *here*.