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daydreamerwonderkid · 8 months

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Me, after doing 15 minutes of excessive googling on every Batfam member's birthday only to then realize I've accidentally missed the majority of them this year, and then also finding out that people are still aggressively debating over whether Bruce's birthday is April 7 or February 19, Dick's birthday happens 3-6x throughout the year, and Stephanie might have just popped into existence for all that DC cares:

Batfam birthday dates btw for anyone who needs them are listed beneath the cut:

DISCLAIMER: DC is notorious for being super inconsistent with everything and I am a mere tadpole caught in the tidal wave of DC's ocean. This post will be regularly updated with edits and corrections so please do not use it as word of law, I am begging you.

Update (8/24/23): To keep things more simple and easier for everyone I am going to start categorizing the birth dates I've collected into 3 categories.

-Most popular: Self-explanatory. These are the birth dates that have been canonized and confirmed by DC and are also more wildly celebrated by the fandom. Typically, this should be the first result you see when you google the character's birthday. But not always because DC sucks ass.

-Other date(s): These are the additional birth dates I come across that have been canonized in some form with multiple sources, but are not as wildly celebrated or popularized by DC and/or the fandom. Why am I including them here? Mostly because I don't want people coming in saying I forgot a date. But also because if I have to see this mess, then y'all have too as well.

-Potential but unconfirmed date(s): This is where I will put all the other additional dates I find, but specifically those that are lacking in complete sources or seem to be highly debated and scrutinized.

Also fun emoji ranking guide for me and me alone:

👑👑: Queen Shit. Characters with a consistent and simple birth date(s). Can absolutely do no wrong.

👑😮‍💨: In the Running. Characters who don't have a set birth date, but the mess is minor and completely DC's fault. They shouldn't have to be punished for DC's crimes.

🤡🤡: Gtfo. Shit is so inconsistent and stupidly messy that it's making me lose my shit. I'm putting DC and the characters on trial for this bullshit.

👑Alfred Pennyworth👑

Most popular: August 18

Other date(s): June 27 or August 10

Potential but unconfirmed date(s): September 19 (fml)

(Yes, I'm including Terry, fuck you lol

Also SERIOUSLY WTF is up with so many of these August birthdays!!!! Fuck, was everyone just getting crazy BUSY in November!!!! What's going on in the DC universe that is making November of all months the HORNY MONTH????!!!!)

(Mini update ((8/18/23)): Well, I just found out that apparently June 27th 2023 is also a highly debated birth date for Terry. As is August 10 2023/2024 and August 18 2023/2024. I even saw a mention of September 19 2023, but I don't know how credible that source actually is. I'm just putting it here because I'm losing my mind and I don't want someone to pop in and say I forgot it omfg I'm dying

I'm just ... why? Why is it so hard to just commit to one month and one date. I'm not even concerned about the exact year. Just commit to ONE, man.

Excuse me while I march over to DC HQ and burn the whole place to the ground iswtfg)

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on any of these. I have a massive headache now and am open to any suggestions or clarifications y'all have to offer.

Also, I'm going to fist fight Dick in a Denny's parking lot.

Update (8/17/23): So a mini post that I meant to use as a way to vent how insane Dick was making me somehow blew up way more than I ever expected it to, and now I feel obligated to clarify again that I am open to any corrections and additional info that anyone has to offer.

I'm saying this because I've noticed people reblogging this post for actual Batfam bday references and someone already pointed out I fucked up Tim's bday and now I feel bad for everyone who reblogged this post prior to that edit.

It's probably just the anxiety talking, but yeah I just wanted to put that out there.

Also justice for Stephanie Brown! She deserves to have her own special day and if I have to bully DC into giving her a canon birthday, then you bet your ass I fucking will.

(And to all of y'all who are encouraging Dick to keep running his side scam business, I just have this to say: There's an empty Denny's parking lot somewhere out there just waiting for you, too lol)

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contemplatingoutlander · 9 months

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This Salon article by Ian Hanley-Lopez is well worth taking the time to read. Although it was written in Dec. 2013--BEFORE the age of Trump, it was prescient of the continued trajectory of the Republican Party towards a white nationalist agenda. The article describes:

How the indirect racist messaging of "dog whistle politics" began with George Wallace, using the language of being opposed to "arrogant federal authority," and being for "states’ rights," "law and order, running your own schools, [and] protecting property rights." Even though Wallace was a Southern Democrat (and later an Independent) the "dog whistle" strategies he employed were later appropriated by the GOP in the "Southern Strategy."

How the GOP's "Southern Strategy" slowly developed in the 1960s, when Goldwater began to push “states’ rights,” as well as “freedom of association." This strategy over time helped the Republican Party begin to appeal to those white voters who still held overt or covert racial prejudices.

How Kennedy and Johnson, by promoting civil rights legislation, turned the Democrats into the party identified with championing the civil rights of marginalized racial and ethnic groups.

How Richard Nixon fully embraced the "Southern Strategy," through his messaging of being for "law and order," and against the "forced busing" of children (to integrate public schools). As he gradually adopted this strategy, Nixon also turned against one of his own administration's earlier policies (developed by George Romney), which Nixon later derided as the "forced integration of the suburbs."

How, according to Hanley-Lopez, these changes in the racial strategies and policies of the diverging Republican and Democratic parties in the 1960s/early 1970s contributed to "the rise of racially identified parties," with a majority of white voters shifting to the GOP (which became "in fact, though not in name, the White Man's Party"), and the Democratic Party being associated with racial and ethnic minorities (as well as a smaller proportion of white voters, i.e., well-educated whites, especially white women). [color emphasis of terms, quotes added]

Echoes of Nixon's 1968 campaign ad in one of Trump's 2020 campaign ads

Hanley-Lopez mentions a 1968 Nixon campaign ad that focused on "exploiting the growing panic that equated social protest with social chaos." Above is the video of that 1968 ad: "The First Civil Right." Below is a transcript of the video:

TRANSCRIPT* (Music with snare drum and dissonant piano chords) MALE NARRATOR**: It is time for an honest look at the problem of order in the United States. Dissent is a necessary ingredient of change, but in a system of government that provides for peaceful change, there is no cause that justifies resort to violence. Let us recognize that the first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence. So I pledge to you, we shall have order in the United States. [TEXT: THIS TIME VOTE LIKE YOUR WHOLE WORLD DEPENDED ON IT. . .NIXON] [Color/ emphasis added.]

This 1968 Nixon campaign ad is eerily like at least one Trump 2020 campaign ad, "Abolished," which used some out of context video footage in order to exploit the fears of many white conservative voters regarding the Black Lives Matter protests and the poorly worded "Defund the Police" slogan.

youtube

Below is a transcript of the Trump campaign's 2020 "Abolished" video.

TRANSCRIPT*** [ Phone ringing/ Answering machine beeping/ background music. ] AUTOMATED FEMALE VOICE: You have reached the 911 police emergency line. Due to defunding of the police department, we're sorry but no one is here to take your call. If you're calling to report a rape, please press 1. To report a murder, press 2. To report a home invasion, press 3. For all other crimes, leave your name and number and someone will get back to you. Our estimated wait time is currently five days. Goodbye. [ TEXT: Joe Biden's supporters are fighting to defund police departments. Fox News, 6/6/20 | Violent crime has exploded. ABC News, 6/24/20 | You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America. | TRUMP PENCE KEEP AMERICA GREAT 20 ] TRUMP: I'm Donald J. Trump and I approve this message. [Color/ emphasis added.]

In conclusion, the barely covert racism in the GOP's political messaging that was so prominent during Trump's administration, and currently in the DeSantis Florida administration (among other GOP administrations) was not new. It was deliberately fostered by Republicans, starting in the 1960s, as they deployed their "Southern Strategy" to woo white voters who still had some overt or covert racial prejudices. The "Southern Strategy" relied on Republicans incorporating into their messaging strategies the kind of covert racist messaging that George Wallace used.

This strategy has unfortunately succeeded all too well.

[edited]

______________ *Transcript source (before layout changes/ edits) of the 1968 Nixon campaign's ad "The First Civil Right,"(alternatively called "Law and Order"): Museum of the Moving Image, The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2012. **Note that the "male narrator" sounds a lot like Nixon (at least to me). ***The transcript of the Trump campaign's 2020 "Abolished" ad is based on the English auto-generated YouTube transcript, as well as the video text and sounds/music.

#southern strategy #how the gop became the “white man's party”#george wallace #barry goldwater #richard nixon #donald trump #covert racism #dog whistles #nixon's 1968 the “first civil right”/“law and order” political campaign ad #trump's 2020 “abolished” political campaign ad #ian hanley-lopez #salon #youtube video #the living room candidate video

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jimintomystery · 7 days

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MST3K's most wanted

I've been organizing my Mystery Science Theater 3000 collection, so I've become preoccupied with the handful of episodes that are not easily available, and the reasons why. In case in anyone else is interested, I thought I'd share what I've learned.

For our purposes we'll be focusing on the ten seasons that aired on cable, from 1989 to 1999. With the post-2017 episodes, it's trivial to purchase them on home video or streaming. And the pre-cable stuff, from KTMA, is widely available as bootleg footage, which is probably about as good as you're ever going to get. But the episodes from the cable era have been notoriously difficult to re-release, and require special attention.

Of the 176 MST3K episodes that aired on cable, 166 have been released on home video, and 145 are available for streaming/download on the Gizmoplex. As someone who's been trying to collect the whole series since the 1990s, I think that's pretty impressive. But there are 40 episodes that have been particularly tricky. Let's take a look, won't you?

Currently available on the Gizmoplex, but never on home video (1):

913 - Quest of the Delta Knights

As I understand it, nobody was sure who owned the rights to this movie, or how to contact them, for years. The situation has only recently been cleared up, perhaps too late for a DVD release.

Currently available on the Gizmoplex, but out of print on home video (8):

203 - Jungle Goddess

317 - Viking Women and the Sea Serpent

319 - War of the Colossal Beast

510 - The Painted Hills

619 - Red Zone Cuba

806 - The Undead

808 - The She-Creature

912 - The Screaming Skull

It looks like all of these went out of print due to being on a set where a different episode's rights expired. Theoretically Shout Factory could re-release any of them in a "Lost and Found" set, but that may not be cost-effective as people move away from collecting physical media.

Currently available on home video and MST3K's official YouTube, but not on the Gizmoplex (1):

615 - Kitten with a Whip (Vol. 25 DVD, 2012)

Kitten is one of the Universal movies that could only be licensed for physical media. And yet, it's the only one I can find on the official YouTube channel. Beats me why that is.

Currently available on home video, but not on the Gizmoplex (16):

401 - Space Travelers (Vol. 32 DVD, 2015)

522 - Teen-Age Crime Wave (Vol. 33 DVD, 2015)

524 - 12 to the Moon (Vol. 35 DVD, 2016)

601 - Girls Town (Vol. 39 DVD, 2017)

605 - Colossus and the Headhunters (Vol. 38 DVD, 2017)

614 - San Francisco International (Vol. 32 DVD, 2015)

704 - The Incredible Melting Man (Vol. 36 DVD, 2016)

801 - Revenge of the Creature (Vol. 25 DVD, 2012)

802 - The Leech Woman (25th Anniversary Edition DVD, 2013)

803 - The Mole People (Vol. 26 DVD, 2013)

804 - The Deadly Mantis (Vol. 27 DVD, 2013)

805 - The Thing That Couldn't Die (Vol. 29 DVD, 2013)

814 - Riding With Death (Vol. 36 DVD, 2016)

815 - Agent for H.A.R.M (Vol. 33 DVD, 2015)

901 - The Projected Man (Vol. 30 DVD, 2014)

1013 - Diabolik (Vol. 39 DVD, 2017)

I was able to find the DVD sets listed above on Shout Factory's website. As far as I know, they'll remain in print for the foreseeable future, but there's no way to know how long that will last.

The general pattern with these episodes is that the movies are owned by major studios that would only license them for physical media. Columbia owns Teen-Age Crime Wave and 12 to the Moon. MGM owns Girls Town and The Incredible Melting Man. Paramount owns Diabolik. But the big player here is Universal, which controls the rights to Space Travelers, San Francisco International, Revenge of the Creature, Leech Woman, Mole People, Deadly Mantis, Thing That Couldn't Die, Riding With Death, Agent for H.A.R.M., and Projected Man.

The odd man out here is Colossus and the Headhunters; I can't find any info on who owns the rights to this film, which may be part of the problem.

The real hard cases, the stickiest of wickets, are below...

Released on home video, but now out of print (5):

212 - Godzilla vs. Megalon (Vol. 10 DVD, 2006)

309 - The Amazing Colossal Man (VHS, 1996)

910 - The Final Sacrifice (Vol. 17 DVD, 2010)

1001 - Soultaker (Vol. 14 DVD, 2009)

1012 - Squirm (Turkey Day Collection DVD, 2014)

Megalon and Colossal Man were both recalled when rights issues came up after they were released. Oops. These were produced by Rhino, back before Shout Factory took over.

The Final Sacrifice is particularly tough to find, even unofficially, because director Tjardus Greidanus is very aggressive about tracking down download links. I always figured someone was similarly possessive of Soultaker, since it's clearly a passion project, but that's purely my speculation.

The Turkey Day DVD set is still available on Amazon at a reasonable price, so Squirm is still relatively accessible for now.

Never released on home video or streaming (9):

201 - Rocketship X-M

213 - Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster

311 - It Conquered the World

416 - Fire Maidens of Outer Space

418 - Attack of the the Eye Creatures

807 - Terror from the Year 5000

809 - I was a Teenage Werewolf

905 - The Deadly Bees

906 - The Space Children

In 2017, Shout released its final (?) MST3K DVD collection, which included Satellite Dishes, a compilation of host segments from episodes that "may never get a legitimate release." This included the nine listed above, as well as The Amazing Colossal Man and Quest for the Delta Knights. Of course, Delta Knights eventually got a digital-only release, which is cause for a glimmer of hope. But the others are probably tougher nuts to crack.

Wade Williams owned the rights to Rocketship X-M and had a particular sentimental attachment to the film. His death in 2023 may make it easier to negotiate with his estate, but I wouldn't count on that being a swift process.

Godzilla vs. Megalon and Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster are part of a prestigious franchise, and it's remarkable MST3K got away with riffing on Godzilla movies in the first place. I get the impression that Japanese culture doesn't particularly appreciate the sort of mockery MST3K is known for, so the rights to these two movies may be a long, long shot. Then again I used to think there was no hope of for the Gamera episodes too.

Fire Maidens, Deadly Bees, and Space Children are owned by Olive Films, and currently licensed to Paramount. It's possible a deal can be made later on, but not until the current arrangement expires.

The major bugbear for MST3K fandom is Susan Hart, the widow of American International Pictures co-founder James Nicholson. One way or another the AIP catalog was split up and Hart laid claim to several of their films, including Amazing Colossal Man, It Conquered the World, Eye Creatures, Terror from the Year 5000, and Teenage Werewolf. Hart's price for licensing her movies is very high, and it seems Shout has given up negotiating with her. I suppose the situation could change when she passes away, but I'd feel rather silly hoping for an old woman to die just so I can pay 8 bucks to watch robots laugh at a werewolf movie.

In conclusion, I've already purchased all the movies available on the Gizmoplex (I got most of them in a Kickstarter reward package), and the 31 that aren't available there can be obtained by, ahem, other means. So it's a great time to be an MST3K fan, and I'm still amazed how easy it is to watch the show nowadays.

#mst3k #mystery science theater 3000

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offside-the-lines · 2 months

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Love is stored in New Jersey (Nico/Jack)

Summary Nico hadn't realized how much he had been struggling this season until someone started leaving little presents in his stall. There was no reason why these seemingly mundane items would have such a potent magical aura. He doesn't question it because it makes him feel better— play better— until his curiosity started to gnaw at him. He didn't figure it out until after the plane ride back from Nashville— it just so happens, the calendar had ticked over to Valentine's Day.

For General Audiences | Secret Admirer/Modern with Magic AU (Still Hockey Players) This fic was written for @nightshadehasblorbos as part of @hockeyficexchange's Valentine’s Day HRPF exchange! Thank you to @imperatorrrrr for being my partner in crime creativity and @devilssacrament, @forgottenflowers and @wyattjohnston for being my emotional support betas.

Read on AO3

Below the cut: I did end up writing a little blurb that touches on how the magic in this universe works; you don't need to read it to understand the fic but it's a fun bonus prologue if you're interested.

Everyone has magic. For the majority of people, it’s just a slight tingle under their skin they can barely control— it can make their coffee the perfect temperature or keep a traffic light green for a moment longer in an emergency. Most of the others are more adept users— Magics— are able to perform complicated spells or rituals. Then, there are the fae-touched— as they’re called in the old world— or the Gifted— as they’re called in America.

When Nico Hischier’s magic came in the day before his fourteenth birthday— January 3rd, 2013, he had already known that he would be special. It had been clear to his parents that he had inherited his mother’s Gift when he pulled a tiny spark from Nina’s teddy bear when he was only four years old. They had spent his childhood preparing him for the wonders and the responsibilities of being Gifted, and he took his role very seriously.

The way his mom always explained it: people need the Gifted, like her and like Nico, to keep the magic alive and balanced— to keep everything running. So, Nico had poured himself into his craft; it made him a better hockey player, and more importantly, it made him a better teammate. When he was named Captain of the New Jersey Devils, he put an even heavier burden on himself to make sure everyone on the team had what they needed.

He knew it was not all on him— the team has a Gifted trainer, and both Jonas and Johnny could help— but the thing is, Nico’s also always known his Gift was different— special— more potent than most others— not that he’s met that many other Gifteds, they’re pretty rare after all. Attachment, nostalgia, and comfort— love is what Nico’s Gift pulls from the aether, and love is the purest fuel for magic.

He just wished that people wouldn’t assume that he had all that much luck with love. Unlike his besotten parents and both his lovestruck siblings, he was painfully single. It’s fine— It’s fine because the most important thing right now was the team— The team and winning the Cup.

Read the fic on AO3

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#VDay HRPF Exchange #rox writes #hockey rpf #hrpf #nico hischier/jack hughes #1386 #nicojack

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fatehbaz · 1 year

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From Atlanta to Chicago [...]. These cop cities are training grounds for police violence and must be dismantled to restore a world where life is precious.

In a stunning yet utterly predictable act, Chicago’s “cop academy” has officially opened on the West Side complete with a ribbon-cutting in front of fake street signs and fake housing.

In a city reeling from extreme poverty, a lack of affordable housing, myriad environmental injustices, food apartheid, [...] and in a city where at least 65,000 people are experiencing homelessness, the leadership of the city of Chicago spent $128 million to build fake homes on the city’s resource-starved West Side where officers can practice the violence and brutality that they will mete out to Chicago residents.

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In a disturbing photo, Mayor Lightfoot, [...] Fire Commissioner Nance-Holt and others smile while cutting a red ribbon, proud to have brought this into being. Adding insult to injury, the thirty-two-acre cop academy was built on the city’s West Side, where decades of racist policy (such as redlining and other housing discrimination and disinvestment) by the city government in this majority-nonwhite community have already given way to poverty and population loss. (In just one example, the Rahm Emanuel administration closed half of the West Side’s mental health clinics in 2012, then shuttered numerous West Side schools in his historic closure of fifty schools in 2013.) [...]

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Lest there be any doubt as to whether or not West Siders actually want this cop academy, in 2018 the organizers of the No Cop Academy campaign polled West Garfield Park residents [...]. 95 percent recommended that the city invest in something else - beyond the Chicago Police Department [...]

What kind of society eagerly spends millions of dollars to build fake neighborhoods, but cannot muster the funds to provide actual housing for the unhoused? What kind of society would rather stage and practice violence than provide mental health resources or violence interruption to communities reeling from it everyday? Unfortunately, such questions arise on a routine basis in this city.

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And it is not only in this city. [...] For Chicago, like so many cities across the US, we must remember that policing is not a “rational” response to something called “crime.” Instead, it is a war on poor people (particularly Black and Brown poor people). As Ruth Wilson Gilmore argues, this war treats incarceration as a solution to social and economic ills while conveniently stripping poor and working-class people of color of their political rights and autonomy. [...]

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Additionally, in a cynical move decried by Chicago youth organizers, a chapter of the Boys and Girls Club is set to open at the facility. This is despite Chicago having the second most killings by police of youth under eighteen in the country, and despite several high-profile CPD murders of youth such as thirteen-year-old Adam Toledo and twenty-two-year-old Anthony Alvarez just in the last few years. [...]

They want a fake village where no one lives or thrives. They spend millions on a theme park to practice surveilling, policing, and controlling people. This vision can never be a home for anyone, and thus the Cop Academy should have no place in our city if we are to make Chicago, someday, a true home for its residents. [...]

We must refuse to allow such sadism to become normalized, and continue to make clear in the face of a city leadership which laughs, that, as Ruth Wilson Gilmore says, “where life is precious, life is precious.” [...]

Like the brave protesters facing off against the horrific violence of Atlanta’s proposed Cop City, organizers in Chicago have fought a valiant campaign against the cop academy since it was first proposed during the Emanuel administration. The No Cop Academy campaign, led by Black youth across the city, has led countless protests and actions and was endorsed by more than 100 organizations. [...]

Though the structures have been built, the fight against the cop academy (as well as similar projects in Atlanta and elsewhere) must continue: we must transform every fake cop neighborhood into real, affordable housing and vibrant neighborhoods where every person has what they need to thrive.

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Text by: Nisha Atalie. “From Atlanta to Chicago, Cop Cities Breed Violence.” Rampant Magazine. 30 January 2023. [Italicized first paragraph in this post is directly quoted from the title and subheading printed alongside the article at Rampant.]

#atlanta #this week is the Week of Solidarity with Atlanta forest

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ukrfeminism · 2 months

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A man has been found guilty of the 2005 murder of Emma Caldwell after a trial that raised significant questions about the police investigation of the unsolved murder and the key suspect over almost 20 years, as well as attitudes to reports of violence against sex workers.

Iain Packer, 51, was sentenced to at least 36 years in prison for Caldwell’s murder and was found guilty of 32 other charges against a total of 22 women that amounted to a horrifying course of unchecked physical and sexual violence over two decades. The offences included 11 rapes and multiple sexual assaults.

Sentencing Packer to the second-longest term in Scottish legal history, the judge, Lord Beckett, said the killer was responsible for an “extreme campaign of sexual violence”, preying on the vulnerable and causing “extreme and enduring suffering for so many women and their families”.

Immediately after the verdicts, the Police Scotland assistant chief constable Bex Smith, who is the executive lead for major crime and public protection, apologised directly to Caldwell, her family and “many other victims”, saying they were all “let down by policing in 2005”.

Caldwell was living in a hostel in Glasgow when she disappeared in April 2005, aged 27. Her naked body was found five weeks later in Limefield Woods near Biggar, South Lanarkshire.

Her mother told the trial that Caldwell had started taking heroin to numb her grief over the death of her older sister. She had been making money through sex work at the time of her death. The court heard from a friend of Caldwell’s that Packer had become “obsessed” with her, following her and attempting to scare away her other clients.

Although a rape allegation was first made against Packer in 1990, the prosecutor advocate depute, Richard Goddard KC, told the jury that at that time police were “dismissive” of reports made by sex workers. He said it was a “tragedy” that sex workers felt forced to accept sexual assault as “part and parcel of their job”.

Another witness said Packer chose girls who were “young, vulnerable and on drugs”. Many of the women who gave witness statements were sex workers at the time and some have since died.

Packer – who denied all charges apart from one of a prior indecent assault against Caldwell, for which he admitted he was “ashamed” – gave evidence at the trial over three days, insisting he had not killed Caldwell and that the other women accusing him were either mistaken or liars.

He admitted taking sex workers to the woods where Caldwell’s body was found – but not to the same spot where she was found. Asked where he was on the night Caldwell disappeared, Packer told the court he could have been at work or walking his dogs.

The court had heard earlier from a forensic expert that soil found in his van was a 97% match for earth at the spot where Caldwell was dumped.

Information about the police investigation that came to light during the trial raised significant questions about why it took so long to bring Packer to justice. He gave six statements to police between 2005 and 2007, but was not interviewed under caution as a suspect.

A decade later, concerns about the unsolved case were such that in 2015 the lord advocate ordered Police Scotland to re-investigate not only who killed Caldwell, but flaws in the original inquiry.

The original police investigation was focused on four Turkish men, who were charged with Caldwell’s murder in August 2007, but that case collapsed and the men were released.

Smith made it plain that Strathclyde police, the force that first investigated Caldwell’s murder before Scottish forces were merged into one force in 2013, had failed Packer’s victims.

“A significant number of women and girls who showed remarkable courage to speak up at that time also did not get the justice and support they needed and deserved from Strathclyde police,” she said. “It is clear that further investigations should have been carried out into Emma’s murder following the initial inquiry in 2005. The lack of investigation until 2015 caused unnecessary distress to her family and all those women who had come forward to report sexual violence.”

Caldwell’s mother, Margaret, who has campaigned tenaciously for justice for her daughter, said she felt “betrayed” by the original police investigation and “angry” that it had taken so long for Packer to be brought to justice.

Her solicitor, Aamer Anwar, called for an inquiry into police failings, saying: “A toxic culture of misogyny and corruption meant the police failed so many women and girls who came forward to speak up against Packer.

“Instead of receiving justice and compassion, they were humiliated, dismissed and in some instances arrested, whilst the police gifted freedom to an evil predator to rape and rape again.”

#articles #mvawg #law

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justinspoliticalcorner · 2 days

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MICHAEL R. SISAK and DAVE COLLINS at AP, via NewsNation:

NEW YORK (AP) — New York’s highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein ’s 2020 rape conviction, finding the judge at the landmark #MeToo trial prejudiced the ex-movie mogul with “egregious” improper rulings, including a decision to let women testify about allegations that weren’t part of the case. “We conclude that the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes,” the court’s 4-3 decision said. “The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial.” The state Court of Appeals ruling reopens a painful chapter in America’s reckoning with sexual misconduct by powerful figures — an era that began in 2017 with a flood of allegations against Weinstein. His accusers could again be forced to retell their stories on the witness stand.

The court’s majority said “it is an abuse of judicial discretion to permit untested allegations of nothing more than bad behavior that destroys a defendant’s character but sheds no light on their credibility as related to the criminal charges lodged against them.” In a stinging dissent, Judge Madeline Singas wrote that the majority was “whitewashing the facts to conform to a he-said/she-said narrative,” and said the Court of Appeals was continuing a “disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.” “The majority’s determination perpetuates outdated notions of sexual violence and allows predators to escape accountability,” Singas wrote. Weinstein, 72, has been serving a 23-year sentence in a New York prison following his conviction on charges of criminal sex act for forcibly performing oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006 and rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actress in 2013.

The New York Court of Appeals overturns the 2020 NY rape conviction of serial rapist Harvey Weinstein.

#Harvey Weinstein #MeToo #Rape #Harvey Weinstein Rape Scandal #New York #New York Court of Appeals

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humusboii2thereturnoftheking · 17 days

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Israel is the low-hanging fruit Human Rights Organizations pick on for validation.

Remember these organizations operate on donations. If you were attempting to maximize donations, which topic would you discuss?

(A) The Uyghur concentration camps in China

(B) The genocide and ethnic cleansing in Sudan

(D) One of the worst humanitarian crisis ongoing in Yemen

(E) The terrible human rights violations in Iran

(F) Pakistan expelling two million refugees

(G) Russia's war crimes and massacres in Ukraine

(H) The war in Gaza launched by Hamas

Obviously, the answer is G, as evident by the mind-boggling amount of attention the conflict receives. The popularity of the Israel-Palestine conflict pales in comparison to other global major events and Human Right Organizations know it.

For The Red Cross, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch It is much more profitable, popular and safer to criticize Israel than Russia, Iran, Sudan, China, Pakistan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, etc.

Let's summarize:

The ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) has made 6 times more statements to criticize Israel and has often resorted to hyperbole to cast Israel as a “limitless” destroyer to evoke sympathy for one side and demonize Israel. No statement was made speaking directly about the massacre of October 7th. Beyond language, only 2 statements condemning Hamas include videos and pictures while 38 tweets condemning Israel contain images, graphic testimonies, and videos designed to solicit greater attention and a stronger response. Through their Twitter, it is evident that the ICRC has dedicated large amounts of resources to interviewing doctors and victims in Gaza, to editing infographics and videos, and to appearing on the news to talk about the devastation in Gaza. Comparatively little to no attention was paid to Israeli victims.

Human Rights WatcH (HRW) - Is obsessed with criticizing Israel in the conflict and has been called out by their own founder for abandoning their mission and focusing on scrutinizing Israel. HRW disproportionately focuses on condemnations of Israel and that publications related to Israel often lack credibility. HRW also promotes an agenda based solely on the Palestinian narrative of victimization and Israeli aggression.

Amnesty International - Disproportionately singles out Israel for condemnation, focusing solely on the conflict with the Palestinians, misrepresenting the complexity of the conflict, and ignoring more severe human rights violations in the region. In October 2023, in the aftermath of the brutal Hamas attack on October 7, Amnesty emphasized “the root causes” of the conflict, in particular “Israel’s system of apartheid imposed on all Palestinians.” Amnesty does not identify “root causes” on the part of any other actor, including Palestinians and terror groups.

I will reiterate- these organizations follow the wishes of their donors and while their funding isn't fully transparent here are some notable moments:

• In November 2023, MEMRI leaked a document detailing a €3 million donation in 2018 to HRW from Qatar.

• In February 2020, it was revealed that HRW's Executive Director Ken Roth accepted a donation in 2012 from a Saudi real estate tycoon for $470,000 “promising not to support advocacy of the LGBT community in the Middle East and North Africa.”

• In December 2013, Amnesty International admitted to working with the Alkarama foundation, whose Qatari co-founder has been accused of financing Al Qaeda and its affiliates.

• In February 2021, Indian officials accused Amnesty International India of money laundering.

FURTHER READING:

#Kakistocracy #CorpMedia #Idiocracy #Oligarchs #MegaBanks vs #Union #Occupy #NoDAPL #BLM #SDF #DACA #MeToo #Humanity #DemExit #FeelTheBern #JinJiyanAzadi #BijiRojava

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mariacallous · 3 months

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Across Germany, as many as 1 million people streamed into streets and city squares last week to protest the surging popularity and ever crasser messaging of the extreme right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD). In Berlin alone, under the banner “Defend democracy: Together against the right,” more than 100,000 people crammed onto the Bundestag lawn on the evening of Jan. 21, flowing over into the adjacent streets between Brandenburg Gate and the city’s central train station. The signs and speeches everywhere from the Baltic Sea port of Rostock to the city of Freiburg near the Swiss border hit a similar note: The AfD’s stripe of right-wing radicalism is out of place in democratic Germany.

This may have once been an exaggeration, but it no longer is. Founded in 2013, the AfD isn’t brand new, nor is its provocative, thinly veiled racism and Islamophobia. But over the course of the past five years—and in the face of damning revelations last week about a secret meeting that took place in November—it has radicalized dramatically. The AfD is now more extreme than many fellow far-right parties across Europe, such as the Sweden Democrats, the Finns Party, and the Dutch Party for Freedom, among others.

Germany’s foremost expert on the subject, sociologist Wilhelm Heitmeyer, said the AfD now stands for an “authoritarian national radicalism,” namely, an ideology that propagates a hierarchically ordered, ethnically homogeneous society overseen by a strong-arm state. What’s particularly radical, he said, is the party’s communication with and mobilization of misanthropic groups that rain violence on select minorities. These protagonists encompass a wide array of hate groups, including neo-Nazis, which are largely responsible for the highest level of hate crimes in Germany in three decades. Its victims are refugees, foreign nationals, Jews, Muslims, and LGBTQ+ people.

Research published in the weekly Der Spiegel shows that the AfD, a party started by nationally minded economists who advocated a return to the Deutsche mark as the national currency, now uses language nearly identical to that of the defunct National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), a small, virulently xenophobic, and openly neo-Nazi party that ran in German elections for decades but never managed to win seats in the Bundestag. “The AfD and NPD are very close. Not just in terms of their audience or some of their personalities,” Spiegel claimed. “They have major ideological overlaps. The AfD measures up to the NPD [of 2012] in almost all areas, even if the AfD appears more moderate in its party program.”

Terms used by AfD politicians in countless speeches today were part of the NPD’s lingua franca for years, according to Spiegel. Documents attributed to both parties employ reactionary terminology, some of it straight from Nazi Germany, such as Umvolkung (population replacement) and Volkstod (death of the German nation), as well as Stimmvieh (voting cattle) for voters of opposing parties and Passdeutschen (foreign nationals holding German passports). And like the NPD, Spiegel reported in another study, the AfD maintains close links with violent militants.

And this radicalism, which in the past had turned Germans off, has now lifted the AfD to new heights: It is polling at 22 percent support nationwide, second only to the Christian Democrats, and well over 30 percent in several states, making it the number one political force there in advance of autumn elections.

The bastions of this radicalism can be found in the party’s youth organization, Junge Alternative and three federal states, all of them in eastern Germany: Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. They are deemed the “extreme right” by Germany’s top domestic security agency and are now under observation as a threat to the democratic order. The investigation could land the case before the country’s highest court, which could ban the party outright.

The current outburst of popular indignation at the AfD, echoed by all of the other major political parties, comes on the heels of an investigative exposé that found that at a clandestine meeting in November, ranking AfD personalities met with known neo-Nazis and wealthy financiers to hammer out plans for the forced deportation of foreign nationals and even foreign-born German citizens.

The extremists congregated at a hotel near Potsdam to design what they called a “remigration master plan” to forcibly repatriate millions of people. Shocked observers drew parallels to the 1942 Wannsee Conference, held not far from Potsdam, at which the Nazis coordinated their plan to deport and murder the entire Jewish population of Europe.

While some AfD politicos have tried to distance the party from the Potsdam meeting, others endorsed its purpose. “Remigration is not a secret plan, but a promise. … and there’s no better way to put it,” announced Hans-Christoph Berndt, the AfD point person in the Brandenburg state parliament, on Jan. 17.

Though the exposé had the force of a bombshell, these revelations don’t throw a new light on the AfD. Rather, they confirm the diagnosis of many experts that the AfD, under the leadership of its most extreme figures—particularly Björn Höcke, a member of the Thuringia legislature—has outpaced other European far-right parties in its radicalism. “The current AfD wouldn’t find a place in the ranks of the Sweden Democrats and most of the other more moderate far-right parties among the European Conservatives and Reformists faction in the European Parliament,” said Ann-Cathrine Jungar, a political scientist at Sodertorn University in Sweden.

She explained that like the AfD, the Sweden Democrats, the Finns Party (formerly the True Finns), and the Danish People’s Party are opposed to immigration and favor law-and-order states. But the Nordic rightists’ experiences in office pushed them to adapt to mainstream norms and policy options. (The Sweden Democrats are currently an informal supporter of the Swedish ruling coalition; the Finns are a coalition member in Finland; and the DPP acted as a support party to a conservative Danish government between 2001 and 2011, as well as from 2015 to 2019.)

The radicalized AfD, Jungar said, in contrast to these parties, actively courts militants, trades in antisemitic tropes, and toys with the proposition of Germany exiting NATO and the European Union. Moreover, AfD politicians have stood against adoption rights for same-sex couples, the inclusion of disabled kids in schools, and the legality of abortion. “These positions simply wouldn’t stand a chance in Sweden,” Jungar added.

The case of the AfD’s close ally, Austria’s Freedom Party (FPO), is more complicated, not least because it has been undergoing a fresh phase of radicalization. But even so, the Austrian historian Ulf Brunnbauer of University of Regensburg said that two stints in the federal government since 2000 and tenures in many regional legislatures have pushed the FPO to tone down its more racist positions.

“The FPO is less extremist than the AfD, especially if you take the idea of racial purity as yardstick,” Brunnbauer said, citing the former party’s wooing of naturalized Serbs. “The FPO includes a larger breadth of opinions, whereas the AfD has lost most of its more moderate proponents. With some exceptions, such as the current party head, Herbert Kickl, many FPO people are much more moderate.” Moreover, Brunnbauer noted, there is no comparative neo-Nazi presence and mobilization in Austria like that in eastern Germany.

Benjamin Opratko, a political scientist at Germany’s Leuphana University of Lüneburg, however, is of another opinion—not about the AfD, but about the FPO: “The FPO under Kickl has moved further to the right. It is now indistinguishable from the right-wingers in the AfD,” he argued. “They want people who they think don’t belong here out of Austria. They don’t want to gas them yet, but they want to strip people of their citizenship. They want to cut people’s social benefits to such an extent that their livelihoods are destroyed. That is essentially the program of parties like the AfD and the FPO. They harbor fantasies ranging from populist to fascist.”

Opratko said that neither the AfD nor any of its far-right peers in Western Europe are close to taking full power the way that Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party has in Hungary, or how the Law and Justice party did in Poland.

“By stacking the courts and clamping down on opposition forces, these parties gradually undermined the democratic order,” Opratko said. “This is the AfD’s model. It’s what they want to do.”

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kate04us · 9 months

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It's a little late for the 10th anniversary of the episode, but the review for episode 2x02 - False Pretenses is finally up. In which we first encounter Rusty's new pen pal and get to see mama Raydor try very hard not to freak out about it. Also featuring the Shandy blazer, more of Andy's health obsession, Provenza actually giving a shit, and DDA Rios taking another class in the school of badassery.

#sharon raydor #major crimes #mary mcdonnell #major crimes review #shandy #sharon x andy

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fireleaptfromhousetohouse · 8 months

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Old-style Paedoing, Before It Got Such A Bad Name

Epistemic status: understanding the recent past, which I wasn’t around for, mainly through the lens of comedies, rumour, and scuttlebutt

The story goes that it was an open secret for many years that Sir Jimmy Savile, knight of the realm, was a horrible sex pervert before it all came to light and he was declared a posthumous monster. And this is true - but the specifics are rather vague.

A lot of sources (or, as they are now, brave prescient voices) were bang-on certain he was into some kind of sex crime, but weren’t sure exactly what. Viz simply painted him as a man whose (unspecified) confessional was worth hearing. An early Mitchell and Webb bit came in on some shocking report midway through, leaving the actual deeds as a noodle incident but quite clear they were appalling: ‘you think you know a guy, and then he goes and does something like that.’ Even Johnny Rotten, back in ‘78, went no further than charging him with ‘seediness’ and saying ‘I know some rumours’ in an edgy-kid stream-of-consciousness about all the people he’d like to kill, where he displays a bit too much knowledge about what does and doesn’t constitute libel.

The general charge, if any, seemed to be necrophilia. Lee and Herring’s bit where they dressed as Savile ended with the punchline ‘bagsy I take him to the morgue’. One of Irvine Welsh’s earlier novellas has a Cornish Savile-alike wantonly indulging in any corpse he had access to - Welsh’s version is a more general TV personality rather than specifically a children’s entertainer, probably for fear of litigation. This was no idle fear, Savile was well-known for taking such insinuations courtside, and of course he did sue when Chris Morris falsely announced his death on Radio 1, with the coda ‘the patients [at Savile hunting ground Stoke-Mandeville Hospital] are far from mourning...The majority, if not all of them, are extremely relieved that he’s now dead, although I suspect that some of them will be sorry that he didn't suffer a great deal more’.

Interestingly, Lee and Herring - as they’ve stated publicly - weren’t brave prescient voices. Hanging around Television Centre in their mid-twenties, they’d become aware of this - to them, absurd - rumour that Savile troubled the corpses. They decided that if nothing else it was game for a laugh, presumably with a BBC lawyer standing nervously in the wings and demanding they not get too specific.

Until Savile’s death, this remained a rather murky Soviet truth, and Savile himself remained a respected public figure. Within the third millennium, even as Chris Morris was being castigated for the Paedogeddon special of Brass Eye, BBC brightly-coloured-blobs children’s show The Tweenies had one of its blobs dress up as Savile as a bit of lighthearted fun - in an edition of the show which was, unwisely, repeated in 2013.

(Side note: the same tabloids which threw an ape over the obviously satirical Paedogeddon regularly ran pictures of topless 16-year-olds, until a change in the law in 2003 forced them to stop.)

It’s all out now, of course, but like the sun is one of those things people are wary of looking at directly for fear of the damage it could do. Savile made full abuse of his position as a public figure, to the point that he himself admitted to the necrophilia in idle conversation. Even by the loose standards of the British constabulary they admit there were over 200 actionable complaints made against Savile over the years.

The crux is this - Savile having committed all these beyond-the-pale acts becomes a very convenient way to paper over the point at which, in the broader consciousness, paedophilia went from ‘crime’ to ‘unforgivable, lowest-circle-of-hell crime’ in the vein of necrophilia. Because it was far more acceptable not too long ago, as many legendary musicians can attest. Gary Glitter generally just seemed shocked people were suddenly taking it so seriously - as did Jeffrey Epstein.

Louis Theroux’s rather regretful pair of documentaries about Savile has the man himself being quite blase about his attitude to underage girls - as were the girls themselves, some of whom, while young at the time, were by their own account quite aware what might be on the cards. Does this make them culpable? Of course not, they were children. But there are those who would disagree. At the time, many would have and did disagree - including, quite likely, serving police constables. The Rotherham grooming gang, so beloved a talking point of those who just want to have a go at Pakistanis in general, were enabled top to bottom by a police force who considered their victims to be ‘slags’.

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news4dzhozhar · 6 months

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Israel maintains robust arms trade with rogue regimes

**This is from 2017 but just shows what a sociopath Netanyahu is. Despite all of this, we still give Israel billions (yes billions with a B) every year for "defense". Clearly Bibi sees no irony in providing weapons to be used to perpetrate religious genocide. His ancestors must be turning in their mass graves**

"Many Western states sell arms, but what's unique about Israel is that, wherever war crimes & crimes against humanity are being committed, you find Israel is present," Mack told Al Jazeera. As well as fuelling the current violence in Myanmar & South Sudan, Israel has been accused of clandestinely providing arms used in notorious past episodes of genocide & ethnic cleansing in places such as Rwanda, the Balkans, Chile, Argentina, Sri Lanka, Haiti, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Israel also cultivated close ties to apartheid South Africa, Mack noted.

Yair Auron, a genocide researcher at Israel's Open University, said that Israel's supply of weapons to regimes such as Myanmar should be compared to the sending of arms to Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. "These sales turn me & all Israelis into criminals, because they are sent in our name," he told Al Jazeera. "We are abetting genocide."

Human rights activists are stepping up efforts to expose Israel's long & covert history of supplying weapons & military training to regimes while they actively commit massacres, ethnic cleansing & genocide. The issue of Israel's trade with rogue regimes has been thrust into the spotlight again after revelations that it is sending weapons to Myanmar, in defiance of a US & European arms embargo.

Formerly known as Burma, Myanmar was condemned last month by the United Nations for conducting what it called a "textbook ethnic cleansing" of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya are reported to have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh in recent weeks, after evidence of the torching of entire villages, massacres and systematic rapes.

Israel has not divulged details of its ties to Myanmar's military government, but public records show that it has sold the military there armed patrol boats, guns and surveillance equipment. Myanmar's special forces have also been trained by Israelis.

Israeli firms have also broken with the United States and Europe by supplying weapons and surveillance equipment to militias in South Sudan, where a civil war has raged since late 2013. Some 300,000 Sudanese are believed to have been killed in the fighting.

Eitay Mack, a human rights lawyer, has submitted a spate of petitions to the Israeli courts in an attempt to bring to light details of Israel's trade with such regimes. He said the cases were designed to hasten war crimes investigations of the officials and contractors involved.

Israel is the only major weapons exporter that has consistently bucked the global trend of a downturn in arms sales. In March, it was reported that Israel's weapons trade in 2016 was worth some $6.5bn, up from $5.7bn the year before. That included a 70 percent jump in sales to Africa.

If countries want the best arms, then they probably go to the US and Europe. But when no one else will sell to you, then you turn to Israel.

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 8 months

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By: Jimmy Bangash

In Muslim communities, homosexuality is intrinsically linked to anxiety, intimidation, violence, and, in some cases, death. For many, it involves living a closeted existence for fear of being ostracised or disowned. Islamic theological teachings, disseminated by religious institutions and espoused by community leaders, range from preaching for our execution to advising us to live a life of celibacy. Yet voices on the left, historically a stronghold of LGBT support, do not sufficiently decry the abysmal treatment of gay and bi people of Muslim heritage, nor do they adequately mobilize against this specific and brutal form of homophobia.

This piece will scrutinize homophobia in the Muslim community and explore the left’s reluctance to criticize it in a consistent and productive manner. It will not explore the growth of the LGBT Muslim movement which champions equality and representation of LGBT individuals; rather it will focus on the dominant, wider Muslim community’s response to homosexuality.

Homophobia in the Muslim World

It is not a spurious exaggeration to claim homophobia is more widespread among Muslims than within other religious communities. Rather, statistically relevant polls of social attitudes consistently support the truth of these claims. This evidence provides a bleak picture, particularly when assessing attitudes in Muslim-Majority countries from which western diaspora communities originate.

A 2017 American poll found that 51% of Muslim respondents expressed support for marriage equality, an increased figure over previous years – yet 34% still opposed it. Media outlets disingenuously hailed this 51% as some type of success over Christianity, citing the figure to justify headlines such as “Majority of U.S. Muslims Now Support Gay Marriage, While white Evangelical Christians Remain Opposed.” Noteworthy in this attempt at obfuscation is the comparison between a conservative faction of Christians against a combined figure of liberal and conservative Muslims. In a more honest comparison between conservative Christians and Muslims, the data shows a far more damning portrayal of the conservative Muslim community.

Within Britain, where Muslims are more conservative than their US counterparts, the 2009 Gallup Coexist Index poll asked 500 Muslims if they believed homosexual acts were morally acceptable. 100% agreed that they were not, uniformly presenting homosexual acts as immoral. In the years since, there has been some positive traction around UK Muslims’ attitudes toward homosexuality; however, the picture remains oppressive. Most notably, a 2015 ICM poll found that 52% of British Muslims felt homosexuality should be illegal, with only 18% stating it should be legal. Equally damning was that 47% felt it was unacceptable for gay people to be allowed to work as teachers.

At an international level, the data around Islamic Homophobia is even more alarming. A 2013 PEW global study on Muslim Attitudes reported an almost unilateral condemnation of homosexuality in Muslim communities around the world. Countries expressing the highest acceptance of homosexuality among their Muslim population were Uganda (12%), Mozambique (11%), and Bangladesh (10%), with the other 37 countries, all Muslim-majority, polled showing less than 10%.

All 8 states or territories that mandate the death penalty for homosexuality are Muslim-majority. Among those that do not, many imprison people for being LGBT instead. All of these punishments are derived from mainstream interpretations of Sharia Law and Islamic Jurisprudence, which positions homosexuality as a major sin often equated to Sodomy and adultery. Where people are executed for the crime of being LGBT, the preferred methods of execution are public hanging or public stoning. Unsurprisingly, this international climate of execution and imprisonment encourages mob violence towards LGBT people.

In Brunei, where existing laws already made homosexuality punishable by imprisonment for up to 10 years, an attempt was made in 2019 to introduce the death penalty (by stoning) for convicted offenders despite a long-standing moratorium on executions for any crime. Justified by a new penal code that reflected a strict interpretation of Sharia Law, the policy led to a significant global outcry, which included boycotts and celebrity protests. The government of Brunei subsequently conceded to the international pressure, backtracking its position to clarify that the moratorium on the death penalty would extend to those convicted of “crimes” covered under the new legislation.

Pew Research picture:

Impact: Private Sphere

While an international contextualization of Islamic Homophobia is important, it would be erroneous to assume that its detrimental impact on LGBT individuals takes place exclusively in faraway places such as Afghanistan and Iran. In the West, honor culture – a community mechanism of social control in which coercive tactics such as shunning, loss of community status, and shaming are utilized to pressure family members to take corrective action against those who do not conform to Islamic rules – often thrives within Muslim communities.

In 2017, Jahed Choudhury, a UK Muslim of Bangladeshi heritage, married his white partner in what was called “the first Muslim Gay wedding.” He was featured in the press with his husband and interviewed on national television. Some weeks later, he told a BBC interviewer that members of the Muslim community spat at him in the street. He also revealed that he was receiving hate comments on social media and described a specific message from someone in the community threatening to throw acid on him the next time they saw him. Choudhury then apologized to the Muslim community on national television for the offense of having married his same-sex partner so publicly. In other words, the threats of violence and intimidation were successful.

In 2017, Mahad Olad, a gay American ex-Muslim, was invited to travel to Kenya by his family, who are part of the Somali diaspora community. When they arrived, his mother confiscated Olad’s passport, and informed him that she was aware he was gay and that he had left Islam. In order to “save” him, she had decided to send him to Somali Sheikhs who would bring him back to Islam and make him straight. Only with the assistance of��Ex-Muslims of North America was Olad able to escape his kidnappers and return to the USA.

In another 2017 incident, Siddika Reza, who was Secretary General of the Islamic faith organization NASIMCO (the Organization of North American Shia Ithna-Asheri Muslim Communities), attended the public, same-sex marriage of her son to his fiancé. After she shared pictures of the wedding on her social media account, more than 1000 members of the Shia Muslim community signed a petition calling for her to resign, on the grounds that her endorsement of her son’s marriage “goes against the legitimate majoritarian interpretations of Jaffari fiqh, which NASIMCO must uphold” – essentially, claiming that public endorsement of her son’s wedding was endorsement of sin and was therefore un-Islamic.

The result? Reza resigned from her post. The Muslim community’s social coercion was successful in censuring a member for being too accepting; in this case, it ensured that a mother’s acceptance of her son was suitably punished.

In 2019, Seran M (full name undisclosed), a Swiss 17-year-old of Iraqi heritage, awoke in bed with his father standing over him holding a knife and shouting, “Are you gay? Are you gay?” The father then proceeded to slit Seran’s throat. Fortunately, the teen was able to scramble over a balcony and obtain aid from his neighbours; he was put into an induced coma at a hospital and managed to survive.

While these overt displays of Islamic homophobia are reported by the media, it is imperative to understand how much remains hidden. Many LGBT people of Muslim heritage are forced to live closeted lifestyles to avoid facing these kinds of consequences, with some going as far as to have sham marriages in order to avoid detection. The controlling mechanism of honor culture often causes relatives to buckle under community pressure and disown their kin, tearing families apart and causing traumatic psychological repercussions for the victims.

Impact: Public Sphere

The influence of Islamic homophobia is not limited to the private domestic sphere. Its adherents’ ambitions are to ensure that LGBT rights do not achieve acceptance and that homosexuality is not normalized within wider society, driving them to take their charge into the public arena.

In 2019, Anderton Park School in Brimingham, UK, was the target of protest from members of the Birmingham Muslim community over a primary school education program named “No Outsiders,” as well as other material which they claimed furthered the “gay agenda.” Prior to a court injunction forcing relocation, the protest was held immediately outside the school gates, creating a frightening and intimidating environment for students inside. Videos can be found online of adults from the Birmingham Muslim community shouting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” through megaphones at the school gates, with children in their midst encouraged to chant along. Such deplorable conduct must have had a detrimental impact on any adolescent present who was coming to terms with their sexuality. These protests continued for approximately nine months and included the display of banners which read, “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”

In an effort to show support with a head teacher who had refused to cave to the pressure, LGBT individuals from Birmingham decided to go to the school and hang signs of solidarity, such as pictures of hearts and rainbows, on the school gates. They decided to do this at night so that they would not encounter the protesters and risk direct conflict. Unfortunately, they had not considered that it was Ramadan, and that the Muslim community would be awake late at night, eating before fasting again the next day. In video footage of the resulting confrontation, male members of the Muslim community can be seen creating a climate of fear and intimidation, shouting at LGBT people for coming into “our community.”

Eventually, some Muslim men began throwing eggs at the LGBT people, who then departed, shaken by the entire episode. Their symbols of support on the school gates were subsequently vandalized.

The protests, eventually, were permanently banned by the courts, but it is noteworthy that Anderton Park school suspended the teaching of the “No Outsiders” program for a significant period of time – a definite win for the forces that perpetuate Islamic Homophobia.

Betrayal by the Left

Given the data and visible detrimental impact, one would expect the left, which generally sees itself as a bastion of support for LGBT rights, to champion the challenge against Islamic homophobia. Regrettably, this is not the case. Consider the outcry we see when cake-baking Christians refuse business services to LGBT people; the widespread vocal condemnation from the left reaches across continents. Similarly, there is leftist public outcry around Christian conversion therapy, galvanizing an entire movement for its legislative prohibition. Such action is mobilized by LGBT organizations, political commentators, activists, human rights organizations and even celebrities, who use rhetoric in which the Christian faith is often lambasted, ridiculed, and positioned as archaic and irrelevant – yet no such outcry is forthcoming when Islamic homophobia rears its head. The left remains silent when, for example, Muslim clerics attempt to exorcize gay demons from members of the Muslim community.

As if the left’s silence was not detrimental enough to LGBT rights, its accusations of racism and Islamophobia towards those who seek to criticize Islamic homophobia are a blatant betrayal.

At the Birmingham school protests referenced above, the LGBT community decided to hold a counter protest after the courts had forced the Muslim protesters to move away from the school gates to a more distant location. A small contingent of people, predominantly white, and armed with guitars and rainbow flags, stood across the road from the Muslim protesters, strumming and singing along to love songs. Days later, in a national newspaper, Saima Razzaq, a local Muslim activist who describes herself as “queer,” stated that the actions of white LGBT counter protesters “reek[ed] of a colonial mindset.” Razzaq had been instrumental in the Birmingham community’s response to the homophobic protests, but instead of welcoming the support of white allies, she characterized them as “white saviours” and declared that “the answers have to come from within our community.”

The message was clear: you cannot champion LGBT rights in the UK if you are white and your homophobic opposition is non-white, and to do so renders you racist and neo-colonialist. It did not matter that those Muslims who were protesting LGBT education had made it clear that they wanted it stopped on a nationwide level in a white majority country. Only people of the same color and faith were permitted to lead this challenge. Universal human rights could no longer be fought for universally.

At the 2017 London Pride march, the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB) marched to challenge Islamic Homophobia – with particular focus on Chechnya, where reports of LGBT persecution and gay concentration camps had outraged the community. They carried banners listing the countries that mandated the death penalty for homosexuality, and held witty, provocative placards and signs poking fun at Islam. Near them, a separate contingent of Pride marchers held signs poking fun at Christianity. Pride, after all, had always been a safe place to criticize homophobia whether it was religious, political or cultural.

During the march, police descended on CEMB to tell them that their signs were offensive and requested they be put away. However, they did not accost the holders of signs mocking Christianity. CEMB declined the request and continued to march with their banners and signs.

Days later, the East London Mosque wrote a formal complaint to the Pride organization citing its objection to being named as a mosque which “incited murder and hatred of LGBT.” Imaan, a Muslim LGBT organization, issued a press release condemning the protest. Both organizations claimed the placards within the protest were Islamophobic and caused harm to Muslim people. Pride issued a statement to a national newspaper in which they said they would not tolerate Islamophobia, then suspended CEMB from marching in subsequent Pride marches pending an investigation. The investigation took 8 months, but in the end CEMB was cleared of the charges and eventually able to participate in the following year’s march without any restrictions.

Nevertheless, a message was communicated to the wider public that criticism of Islamic Homophobia is unacceptable. In this case it did not matter that some of the critics were Muslim and others Ex-Muslim. It did not matter that almost all the protesters were diaspora and refugees, individuals who had grown up and lived under Islam and were from Muslim families. It did not matter that many of them had fled countries and communities where imprisonment or death were the penalty for their sexuality. Any criticism of Islamic Homophobia was deemed Islamophobic (anti-Muslim) and racist.

In 2020, the iconic reality show “RuPaul’s Drag Race” invited actor Jeff Goldblum to appear as a guest judge. The drag queen competitors walked a runway with the American “Stars and Stripes” as the theme. Iranian-Canadian contestant Jackie Cox wore a red-striped kaftan and a blue hijab outlined with 50 silver stars; she stated, “You can be Middle-Eastern, you can be Muslim, and you can still be American.”

Goldblum, prompted by the drag artist’s outfit, queried, “Is there something in this religion that is anti-homosexuality and anti-woman? Does that complicate the issue? I'm just raising it and thinking out loud and maybe being stupid.” RuPaul responded that the presentation was complex, and that Drag had “always shaken the tree.”

Social and mainstream media erupted with condemnations of Goldblum’s comment, accusing him of racism and Islamophobia. His comments were labelled as dangerous. The Muslim Advocates organization issued a statement urging Goldblum to apologize; they claimed, “To not apologize for these comments is a silent endorsement of anti-Muslim bigotry.” In other words, yet another message of condemnation for those who seek to question Islamic Homophobia (as well as Islamic sexism in this case), and such questioning was characterized as being anti-Muslim.

There is a painful irony that cannot be missed in a gay man of Iranian heritage (Jackie Cox) wearing a hijab to symbolize Muslim women. Muslim women in Iran have long struggled against mandatory hijab and forced veiling laws. As movements such as white Wednesday have gained momentum in recent years, Iranian women are increasingly resisting and defying the hijab. Theocratic and misogynistic laws allow women to be punished for appearing in public with their hair showing. The BBC reports that 35 women have been arrested since 2017 in the capital city of Tehran alone. Some of these women reported being tortured and beaten.

While this betrayal by the left is abysmal, its attempt to police an audience’s response to Jackie’s art is nothing short of an Orwellian dystopia. Through his art, a drag performer was able to express his “misgivings” about the way LGBT people are treated in Muslim communities and provoke questions about the subject from his audience. Yet, the response from the left was to throw accusations of racism at that audience and eschew any useful dialogue around the real issue at hand. The message was again clear: even when presented with art by and about queer people of Muslim heritage, one may not scrutinize or question Islamic Homophobia. All dialogue around the subject must place Islam in a positive light; to do otherwise is anti-Muslim, Islamophobic, and racist.

Fortunately, Goldblum did not issue an apology – but neither has the Iranian government apologized for its Islamic- and Sharia- inspired execution of LGBT people. Iran still applies the death penalty for the “crime” of two people of the same sex loving each other. Muslim Advocacy group is quick to outrage over a scene on RuPaul’s Drag Race, but it does not appear to have written to the Iranian government to request an apology for state-sanctioned murder, nor has it declared the murder of gay and bi Muslim people in Iran to be anti-Muslim.

Islam is not a Race

The word Islamophobia is a deliberate conflation that blends criticism of an ideology (Islam) with criticism of a people (Muslims). This allows the silencing of any critics of Islam through the accusation of Islamophobia, which carries an inferred accusation of hatred against Muslims – something which would be far better described as Muslimophobia or anti-Muslim bigotry. Due to this conflation, the fear of being accused of Islamophobia makes individuals hesitant to highlight the abhorrent nature of Islamic homophobia, its theological roots, and the corresponding Islamic jurisprudence that results in the ongoing persecution of LGBT people.

Islam is a set of ideas in exactly the same way that Christianity, Capitalism, Communism and Hinduism are all sets of ideas. Ideas must be open to scrutiny, assessment and criticism. They must be open to satire and ridicule. Criticism of ideas leads to societal advancement, as can be seen in the widespread replacement of superstition with reason and the scientific method. Stifling criticism of Islam ultimately hurts Muslims and individuals of Muslim heritage; such censorship enables regressive and harmful practices (such as gay Islamic exorcisms in the UK) to continue, rather than to be scrutinized and stopped.

A majority of adherents to an ideology may be part of a particular racial demographic, whether in reality or in popular imagination. Criticism of that ideology is not, by default, a criticism of the racial demographic. If it were, one could argue that criticism of Capitalism is anti-white, criticism of Communism is anti-Chinese, and criticism of Hinduism is anti-South Asian/Indian. And it’s important to remember that in any case, Muslims are a very racially and ethnically diverse group.

Muslims are people and as such must be protected from bigotry. While all bigotry is unacceptable, we must acknowledge that using facts to highlight problematic beliefs and attitudes within the Muslim community is not bigotry – particularly when the facts themselves highlight rampant discrimination towards a sexual minority that is often in need of protection. Highlighting homophobic aggression and persecution is a responsibility that falls upon civil society, and that responsibility includes Islamic homophobia.

It is hypocritical of the left to allow consistent highlighting and condemnation of Christian homophobia and to position Christians (and, by presumed extension, white people) as robust, rational, critical thinkers able to withstand that criticism while characterizing Muslims as fragile “brown people” in need of protection from cognitive dissonance and critical thinking. This adherence to “Islamic fragility” is racist, paternalistic and patronizing.

Any focus on Islamic homophobia is inevitably challenged by the left with the question, “What about Christians?” It is perfectly acceptable to focus on one specific form of homophobia. In fact, it is essential that this be done, and in so doing it is appropriate to focus on the worst forms of homophobia. Attempting to address Islamic homophobia using an approach tailored to Christian homophobia, or a model designed for tackling homophobia in China, will miss many of the nuances particular to the Islamic faith. It will also be rendered meaningless for a Muslim audience who, by and large, consider Christianity or atheism to be erroneous or even heresy.

A specific focus on Islamic Homophobia allows focused compilation and assessment of data, theology, history, and attitudes. This then leads to specific suggestions for solutions, resource allocation, accountability and timelines for improvement. In order to plan specific remedial measures, we must look at the specific issue.

We must not be silenced by accusations of Islamophobia or racism in our efforts to eradicate the most pernicious form of homophobia that currently persecutes LGBT people across the globe. Rather, we must stand resolute and increase our scrutiny of Islamic homophobia, holding it and the Muslim community to the same standards to which we hold the rest of society. To do anything less is the bigotry of low expectations, and a racist double standard.

Notice that at no point does anyone actually refute the - completely, unambiguously true - fact of Islam being explicitly anti-gay.

https://quranx.com/4.16

If two men among you are guilty of lewdness, punish them both. If they repent and amend, Leave them alone; for Allah is Oft-returning, Most Merciful.

https://quranx.com/7.80-83

We also (sent) Lut: He said to his people: "Do ye commit lewdness such as no people in creation (ever) committed before you? "For ye practise your lusts on men in preference to women: ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds." And his people gave no answer but this: they said, "Drive them out of your city: these are indeed men who want to be clean and pure!" But we saved him and his family, except his wife: she was of those who legged behind.

https://quranx.com/27.54-58

(We also sent) Lut (as a messenger): behold, He said to his people, "Do ye do what is shameful though ye see (its iniquity)? Would ye really approach men in your lusts rather than women? Nay, ye are a people (grossly) ignorant! But his people gave no other answer but this: they said, "Drive out the followers of Lut from your city: these are indeed men who want to be clean and pure!" But We saved him and his family, except his wife; her We destined to be of those who lagged behind. And We rained down on them a shower (of brimstone): and evil was the shower on those who were admonished (but heeded not)!

https://quranx.com/Hadith/Bukhari/USC-MSA/Volume-7/Book-72/Hadith-774/

Narrated Ibn `Abbas: The Prophet (ﷺ) cursed effeminate men (those men who are in the similitude (assume the manners of women) and those women who assume the manners of men, and he said, "Turn them out of your houses." The Prophet (ﷺ) turned out such-and-such man, and `Umar turned out such-and-such woman.

https://quranx.com/Hadith/AbuDawud/USC-MSA/Book-31/Hadith-4007/

Narrated AbuSa'id al-Khudri: The Prophet (ﷺ) said: A man should not look at the private parts of another man, and a woman should not look at the private parts of another woman. A man should not lie with another man without wearing lower garment under one cover; and a woman should not be lie with another woman without wearing lower garment under one cover.

https://quranx.com/Hadith/AbuDawud/USC-MSA/Book-38/Hadith-4447/

Narrated Abdullah ibn Abbas: The Prophet (ﷺ) said: If you find anyone doing as Lot's people did, kill the one who does it, and the one to whom it is done.

Stop defending an ideology that hates you or the people you care about.

#Islam #Jimmy Bangash #criticism of islam #homophobia #anti gay #islam for gays #gays for islam #religion #islamic homophobia #religion is a mental illness

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